Is COVID-19 killing ‘clergy’?
 
The reality is that this has taken the lives of some ministry leaders. I am saddened like everyone else about this. Yet, the question to be answered is whether COVID-19 is killing ‘clergy’ – not Bishops, pastors or ministry leaders. Confused? Let me explain.
 
In Chapter three of my book, Leaving Church Becoming Ekklesia, I outlined five necessary transitions that will impact ‘church as we know it’. This chapter I titled Necessary Transitions, dealt with the coming changes to the infrastructure of the ‘church’ system. In chapter five, I presented six characteristics of a major transition. I wrote that this was written so that you don’t have to be blindsided by the coming changes.
 
What is changing, and what are we transitioning to? I believe we are entering the early stages of ‘the day of the saints’. There is a coming shift when God will raise up ordinary believers to impact the earth from the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 6:10; 16:18-19).  Remember, the ministry gifts in Ephesians 4 were given to equip the saints for the work of ministry. When you read all of Isaiah 61, the passage Jesus read in the synagogue (Luke 4:18-19), it declares a people called ‘trees of righteousness’. More importantly, they are empowered to build, raise up and repair (Isaiah 61:3-4).
 
This transition has a direct impact on what we have called ‘clergy’. The church as we know it today has two classes of people, the clergy and the laity. Greg Ogden wrote in his book, Unfinished Business:

Like ekklesia was mistranslated as church, by the 12th century, the ‘clergy’ became a word erroneously used to denote a class of people who were more spiritually astute than the so-called laity. Today we refer to Bishops, pastors and ministry leaders as clergy.
 
However, a study of the Greek word that clergy was supposedly translated from, reveals a different story. Kleros in Greek never implied a distinction between an upper and lower class in the kingdom. Kleros conveys the full inclusion of the Gentiles as equal partners in the benefits of the gospel. Kleros refers to the inheritance in all the saints (Acts 26:18; Colossians 1:12; 1Peter 5:1-3).
 
COVID-19 has shaken the ‘church system’. More and more believers are waking up to the reality that God has design and purpose for them. The concept of ‘clergy’ has begun to slip. The hierarchal system that sustains the contemporary clergy concept has suffered a powerful blow. As the Lord’s ekklesia rises, leadership will become aligned with divine patterns. As the Lord’s ekklesia rises in the earth, clergy will shift from being a spiritual upper class to kleros, which is a body of believers who have inherited the benefits of the Kingdom of Heaven. Are you ready for this transition?

The church as we know it will be drastically different in the next few years. You don't have to be blindsided by the changes. ​

​​8 Minute Read
Adversity brings out things often hidden in the heart. The coronavirus pandemic is exposing some dangerous things in an already divided ‘church’.
 
Before the pandemic and the subsequent lock-down, the church as we know it was already divided by three things.
 
Ideology – this is the division created by churches who follow conservative or liberal politics. Churches have lowered themselves to follow Democratic or Republican views. Many have become the mouthpiece for political candidates rather than the Kingdom. The result is a ‘church’ divided by religious groups bowing to worldly thoughts.
 
Race – In some ‘churches’ this is blatant as some pride themselves as catering to a specific racial group. Others speak of racial unity, but every week they worship in services predominately filled with one particular race. Some congregations are more integrated than others, but isn’t is sad we are still referencing today’s churches as predominately Black, White, Hispanic, or some other racial group.
 
Doctrine – At Antioch, the believers were first called Christians to identify them as separate from the world. Today, we call ourselves Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Pentecostal and the like to separate ourselves from each other. In the first century, the only thing that divided believers was geography. Today we camp around our doctrinal positions and defend them against intrusion from other belief systems

​Even within the categories of ideology, race and doctrine there are deeper divisions too extensive to cover in this blog.
 
As this coronavirus pandemic has spread, it has awakened another line of division created by pride masquerading as faith. Many states have issued ‘stay at home’ mandates. Nationally social distancing has become a new phrase previously unheard of. This shuts down places where large amounts of people gather. Schools, restaurants, bars, casinos, shopping malls, factories, and of course ‘churches’ have been impacted.

n the midst of this, there are church leaders who have chosen to continue to have their regular services. I am not here to judge their decisions, but I do want to highlight a new form of division further fracturing the Body of Christ. There are three categories I have noticed in the past few weeks.
 
First, there are the ‘faith’ groups. These are churches who continue to meet as usual claiming their faith in God protects them from the coronavirus. Implicit in what they claim is that churches that do not gather are lacking in faith. Even within the churches that continue to meet, some of their parishioners chose to stay at home. Unfortunately, they found themselves being referred to as having a lack of faith, weak, or at worst disobeying their leadership.
 
The second group are the politically defiant. They believe the government has overreached its authority when churches are required to limit their gatherings. I have heard such proponents of this line of thinking claim a myriad of political views to justify their beliefs. Like the faith group, the politically defiant imply that those who follow anything suggested by the government are acquiescing to governmental control.
 
The third group are those who are following state and local guidelines. They choose to ‘social distance’. Because of this, the surge in use of some social media platforms has quadrupled in the last few weeks. Pastors who were never on Facebook before are now broadcasting LIVE every Sunday. ZOOM, Free Conference Call and the like have added thousands of new subscribers. Outdoor drive-in services are being held all around the country. In other words, this final group is looking for ways to ‘gather’ within the guidelines given. But this group is also succumbing to a form of division. Some are claiming that by following the social distancing guidelines, they are proving to be ‘wiser’ than those who don’t. In other words, they have subtly made themselves an elite group of people who have faith, understand government, but who use ‘common sense’.
 
The coronavirus pandemic has added more division to an already weak and divided church system. It really saddens me to hear one side demonizing the other.
 
Finger pointing proves that it is both structurally weak and far off its foundation in Christ. You may ask me, “What would Jesus do in this situation?” I don’t have a perfect answer to this, but one thing I do know, the growing divisiveness in the ‘church system’ created by this pandemic is not of God (1Corinthians 1:10-13). Something is amiss when all these fractions are claiming their view is the Godly response. Somebody, somewhere has missed it.

​Church as we know it’ will not be the same when this is over. The question is, ‘should it remain the same’? Regardless of the ‘source’ of this virus, it has served to shake thie foundations of economic, social, political and religious structures. This is something I have been sharing (in writing) since 2010. We need to take a good look at 'shaking' according to the Word of God. It has some interesting and possibly uncomfortable ramifications.

• ​​Second, the shaking impacts both earth and heaven. It is clear that earth is being shaken, but how do we know that heaven is being shaken? I would suggest that a sign that heaven is being shaken is based on the response from those who should be hearing from the Lord. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice and they won’t follow strangers (John 10:1-5, 27). Yet, the response from the ‘believers’ have been a mishmash of ideologies infused and tainted with political, social and economic interest. Heaven produces and releases a stable and unchanging word (Psalms 33:11; Mark 13:31), but how it is interpreted and released in the earth is creating what appears to be chaos. I reiterate, that heaven is okay, but our relationship with heaven is out of alignment. Thus, what appears TO US as heaven being shaken is in fact our skewed view of divine intent.  
• Third, the defined purpose for shaking is to…’remove those things that are shaken. Shaking is to remove things that are made, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain (Hebrews 12:27). THINGS THAT ARE MADE include any structure or system not sanctioned by the Kingdom. The problem with religious systems is that they don’t believe their system qualifies as one that needs to be shaken.

 It is not a surprise to me that this COVID-19 has shown up as the Lord’s ekklesia is being revealed and re-established in the earth. It is the Lord’s ekklesia that will show the manifold wisdom of God (Ephesians 3:10). It is the Lord’s ekklesia that has access to the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and that has been given authority to bind and loose in the earth (Matthew 16:19). Above all, it is the Lord’s ekklesia that will defeat the gates of hades. In the midst of this, God will not allow man-made church systems to compete with His ekklesia.

​​I believe we are in the early stages of a global realignment of the church as we know it. I struggle with trying not to sound like a doomsayer. I am really a positive guy. The reality is that I believe the coronavirus is the first of several global things that will unravel the church system as we know it. It is time to set our eyes on the purpose and design of the Kingdom. It is the only source of stability we can depend on in the days to come (Hebrews 12:28-29). Blessings!

​Immediately after declaring His intent, He outlined the authority His ekklesia would have. First, the gates of hades would be powerless against it. Second, He gave it the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven which gave them access to all the heavenly government’s resources. He then gave it the authority to bind and loose on earth in accordance with the policies of the Kingdom (Matthew 16:18-19). It is clear that Jesus intended His ekklesia to be a force to be reckoned with.  But something happened.
 
In 1611, King James commissioned a translation of the bible that would bear his name. In doing so, he gave his hand-picked translators a list of fifteen directives to use. It is the third directive that brings us back to where this blog began. King James specifically told the translators to use the word ‘church’ instead of ekklesia. It was a willful and deliberate mistranslation. On the surface it may appear to be a minor switch of words, but the reality is that this mistranslation literally changed the operational trajectory of the Body of Christ.
 
What do you think of today when you hear the word church? The first thing is usually a building, or a place to go to. Then we think in terms of our denominational affiliation, which has become our religious validation for separating ourselves from other brothers and sisters in Christ. Church is equally divided by race, ideology, and of course doctrine. None of these were intended by Jesus Christ at Caesarea Philippi.
 
 Since the mistranslation was entered into the King James bible, the word church has become the common word for most believers. If you are like me, I was raised in the church. I was saved in the church. I have served in the church. I have seen many wonderful things take place in what we know as ‘the church’. I can honestly say that I love the people serving in what we know as ‘the church’. But the fact remains that Jesus never said or intended to build a church. He said He would build His ekklesia – a called-out ruling council that would represent the Kingdom of Heaven in the earth. Church is an illegitimate system operating in the Kingdom of Heaven.

​God was not caught off guard by the coronavirus. The current pandemic in the earth has served to expose the flaws in many earthly systems – religious and secular. The inability to gather has impacted churches around the country. Many are scrambling to survive. What will happen when this is over? Will the church go back to business as usual? Or, is it time to revisit what Jesus actually said and meant when He declared He would build His ekklesia? Maybe it's time to rethink what we know as church! Blessings!
 
The coronavirus blindsided the church. As a believer, you should never be caught off guard. Don’t be blindsided.