Normally at this time of year, Co-Mission churches would have been reflecting on another cracking REVIVE weekend – the annual Co-Mission festival.
We’d have been thanking God for over 2,000 people squeezed into a big top for excellent Bible teaching and singing; we’d have been reminiscing about late nights chatting around blazing fire pits, about packed kids’ programmes, about silent discos, about soul-nourishing seminars and about sipping something cold under the stretch tent as the sun sets.
However, ‘normal’ went out the window a long time ago.
In March, as Covid-19 gathered its fierce pace around the world, REVIVE 2020 went the way of Glastonbury, Euro 2020 and the 33rd Annual Sheepshearing Festival (I kid you not), and was shelved.
Having to make that announcement was one of the harder moments of this year.
But to not have REVIVE in any form would have felt too costly. For so many across the Co-Mission network, REVIVE is the high point of the year. It provides such a wonderful respite from the busyness of London life and ministry. It allows us, as a mission movement, to remind ourselves of what’s important (the gospel), and to be equipped to get back out there and get on with the task of seeing lots and lots of people across our city reached for Christ.
And so, despite the restrictions in place, we wanted to do something.
Hence REVIVE Sunday: an hour-long event to be broadcast online for all the Co-Mission churches to tune in to at a time which suited them, on Sunday 21 June. Sure, there’s only so much you can do to repackage a weekend festival into an hour online – but we did what we could, and we were thankful to God for the end result.
There were excellent animations on church planting, reminding us what we’re all about as a movement on mission to London. There was a round-table discussion featuring key workers talking about opportunities they have had to live and speak for Jesus on the frontline of the Covid crisis. There were over 40 musicians involved from across the network, raising the virtual roof with some wonderfully composed songs of praise and thanksgiving. And we were so grateful that Thabiti Anyabwile, due to be one of our main stage speakers, was kind enough to record an excellent sermon on Matthew 5, encouraging us to be people who live as light in a dark world, that many might see our good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven.
So all in all, whilst we grieved not being able to be together in Canterbury for REVIVE ‘as normal’, we were thankful that in this socially distanced age of the ‘new normal’, REVIVE was still able to serve something of its purpose – to unite us as a network, strengthening and spurring us on, so that we’re ready to go and reach people with the gospel.
