The Next Few Months for Kingdom Code

A month into lockdown and we’re beginning to stablise - there is more of an understanding of how our lives work now. We don’t need to worry about panic buying toilet paper, our churches are beginning to get their heads around that live-streaming thing, and this is good!

As I’ve been catching up with people it has become apparent that there are two tribes of people at the moment – those with more time, and those with less time. I think that for the Kingdom Code community we’re mostly in the ‘less-time’ camp. Even if you haven’t suddenly had to start up a home-school, your skillset has just become a very valuable commodity!

Our work, our relationships, our churches have all moved to tech in the last three weeks. It was suggested that the church is now involved in its biggest experiment with technology ever! And, as a community we’re getting stuck in supporting the local church to do this.

A couple of weeks ago many Christian technologists around the world gave up more of their evenings and weekends to participate in the Covid-19 Global Church Hackathon, and some amazing projects were kicked off to serve our church and our world. Some of the things that came out of this week are amazing, and I really want to encourage this. I want to encourage you as part of the Kingdom Code community to use your skills to serve the church well, to help it to flourish in this time.

But with this encouragement to get stuck in, I also want to care for our community too. There are a lot of demands on our time at the moment, and there is a time to go all-hands-on-deck, to make time and energy sacrifices to get things working. But that is not a long term thing! God’s people need to be looked after, protected, and encouraged to rest well in this time.

If your days are anything like mine, you start the work day looking at a screen, talking through a camera, and we are ending our day in a similar way as we share time with friends and family. A lot of meetup groups are going online at the moment, I see the value in this, but I don’t think that Kingdom Code doesn’t need to add to this. Actually - I want to lead us in doing the reverse, let’s not add to the demands to spend more time in front of the screen, but instead use this time to encourage rest, sabbath, offline time. In our Leeds community we had the pattern of gathering on the last Monday of the month, in London we gathered on the first Monday. I’ve put those dates in my diary now as an evening of digital quiet.

We’re not going to go completely quiet, the Kingdom Code blog will still remain active. Over the next few months we’ll be working on some book recommendations, stories of encouragement, etc. If you are wanting to meet together, on Thursday 30th April, Faithtech, are hosting a big call, to meet Christian in the tech from all over the world, to talk, and to pray together. As things begin to change, we’ll review and change what we’re doing to match.

At the top of this post I suggested that there were two tribes of people. If you’re in the camp that has more time than normal, let me encourage you to invest in your relationship with God, maybe buy a copy of From the Garden to the City and read it, talk to your church leader to see how you can serve in this time, log into the Kingdom Builders Slack and ask around for projects, there is lots to do at the moment.

But… if you’re in the tribe that has less time than you would like, let me encourage you to rest. Make time at the end of the day. Go for a walk, listen to a bible reading (I’ve been enjoying the Psalms of Ascent), take time to pray. Don’t feel guilty about not working on that side project right now!