Tag: Crisis

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Prophets foretelling future.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

“During this time some prophets traveled from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them named Agabus stood up in one of the meetings and predicted by the Spirit that a great famine was coming upon the entire Roman world. (This was fulfilled during the reign of Claudius.) So the believers in Antioch decided to send relief to the brothers and sisters in Judea, everyone giving as much as they could. This they did, entrusting their gifts to Barnabas and Saul to take to the elders of the church in Jerusalem.” Acts 11‬:‭27‬-‭30‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Like the Old Testament Prophets of old, Abagus tells the Church, there is famine coming. GotQuestions.org states, “Claudius Caesar had several unintended effects on Christian history. First, his scattering of the Jews in Rome led directly to Paul’s encounter with Priscilla and Aquila.” And, “God sovereignly used the reign of Claudius Caesar, as He did every other Roman emperor, to continue spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ across the world. Some of Paul’s earliest letters were written under the reign of Claudius Caesar.”

Luke uses this very public tragedy to highlight the prophet office, or the gift of prophecy. A prophet was one who received direct messages from God and communicated them to the people. The gift of prophecy is mainly active as a forth-telling, which is declaring of God’s truth, especially in encouraging one another in the Church. The less common is fore-telling, predicting future events.

Here in Acts 11, Agabus predicted (by the Holy Spirit) that a great famine was coming. Clearly this forecast allowed the Church to prepare ahead of the crisis on behalf of those who would suffer in Jerusalem. This massive mission push was a New Testament theme that not only addressed the speed, agility and ability of believers throughout the entire region. It also highlighted the unity of Christianity in sending money to Jerusalem. This allowed the Pastors to purchase food and get it distributed to those affected. Sending funds and distributing food was a powerful testimony to nonbelievers that the Church didn’t just care about folks spiritual needs but physical needs as well.

This thread of distribution in disasters is still relevant today! During Covid, hundreds of Churches were the distribution centers of food because of the Farmers to Families Food Box Program which began in May of 2020 and ended in May of 2021 having distributed more than 173 million food boxes. And, many people don’t know that ConvoyofHope.org, is oftentimes the first to arrive in national disasters around the country. It is amazing and challenging to know that God has used the Church then and does so still today. One of the marks of Christianity on our culture is how believers give time and money in a crisis – both local and globally. The beauty of this moment recorded in Acts is that God gave warning through the gift of Prophecy that allowed the Church to begin preparing before the famine even hit.

Prayer

​Dad,
It would be great if we (the Church) had more prophetically gifted individuals for just such reasons as Agabus had proven faithful. I have really longed for the Church leadership offices to get beyond just the two pastor/teacher flavors. Lacking our apostolic and prophetic seems to keep us wandering in circles, missing the urgency and the push of the Spirit which both these gifts give us. We have given into fears in our churches because these missing gifts were abused in the past and later shuffled off as insignificant. This one prophetic moment gave the early church more than just a head-start it gave it the edge for politicians and business leaders to follow. This kept the church relevant in resources, leading the charge to care and directing people and funds to where both were much needed. Could you give us another chance, a boost of confidence to follow the model of the early church?

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The Church responding in crisis

Reading Time: 3 minutes 
“During this time some prophets traveled from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them named Agabus stood up in one of the meetings and predicted by the Spirit that a great famine was coming upon the entire Roman world. (This was fulfilled during the reign of Claudius.)” Acts‬ ‭11:27-28‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Go Agabus! We’ve often talked about a prophetic word being an encouragement or an exhortation, keeping things uplifting or giving poignant reminders. I’ve heard it said that prophecy is more forth-telling than it is foretelling. Yet, Luke’s words attest to the fact that God still speaks to warn believers of what’s ahead. Luke also let’s us know the famine did indeed come while Claudius was in power.

What should believers do when given this kind of warning? This group started raising money to get it to Jerusalem BEFORE the need became a reality. This wasn’t some “whoa is us” kind of warning. This wasn’t a doom and gloom scenario. It was a now-that-we-know, let’s get busy response. This is a picture of how and what the modern Church should look like! A Church, led by the Spirit of God, getting future tips of what will happen and then making plans to meet the crisis head on. In their case, it was sending money.

It could have been a lot of things – sending money is great for buying, and storing ahead of time then distributing supplies afterwards.

However, the Church needs a few things for this kind of scenario to happen today: We’ve got to be people of the Spirit. We’ve got to listen to our gifted men and women whom God will speak to. We’ve got to tear down our denominational divides and be willing to come together for action. And, we’ve got to quit worrying about who gets the credit for best response and see ourselves as ONE! Basically, we must fulfill the prayer Jesus prayed in John 17 – we must be in unity!

Looking back at the Church’s response in a global pandemic, individual churches did some spectacular work and responded by collecting and distributing millions of pounds of food with a government program called farmers to families. The first round of purchases occurred from May 15 through June 30, 2020 and saw more than 35.5 million boxes delivered in the first 45 days. In total, USDA has distributed more than 167 million food boxes in support of American farmers and families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and spent about $5 billion. Churches linked arms with nonprofits and had weekly distributions on their own property. The church I served on staff with, Mesa Church, had a weekly food distribution that went from May through to August in 2020. One nonprofit in Costa Mesa, called Trellis, headed up a massive, multi-nonprofit, multi-week distribution in an Ikea parking lot. It was a perfect picture of unity! We were also able to pray with families as their trunks were being filled with fresh groceries.

Yet, even in the midst of great opportunities to serve, we (the Church) still struggled with being horribly distracted by politics, conspiracy theories, and internal infighting over race, masks, vaccines and meeting indoors. Churches NEVER did shut down, never closed! Yet we squabbled over indoor services, creating unnecessary tension between being a super-spreader event and our “religious” rights to gather in a building.

This was ridiculously embarrassing on the Church! Many rallied behind churches that proudly never stopped meeting inside the building. Others stayed home and participated in church online. Still others just took the church out to meet in parks and parking lots. I thought parking lot church was the most exciting thing I’ve seen happen since the 70’s! Bottom line – we divided when we should of and could of been united! And even worse, we took our griefs and gripes to the public forum of social media and made ourselves look like fools!

As Pastors, we were not prepared to mitigate between two vocal, almost militant groups of Christians. Next time I hope, I pray that we get our love-act together and behave and serve as one.

PRAYER

Dad,
I don’t know what grieves your heart more, our sin or our inability to be united? We have done so much better in the past. We need to be better in the future. I believe the last time we had a global pandemic, the church did a better job both in serving and in coming together in agreement on what we should be doing in crisis. I think that may be some of the reasons folks aren’t returning to gather together. It may take awhile to forgive us for acting so poorly.