{"id":12458,"date":"2020-02-14T08:20:17","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T14:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=12458"},"modified":"2020-02-14T08:30:35","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T14:30:35","slug":"when-calamity-strikes-pastors-missionaries-are-essential-personnel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=12458","title":{"rendered":"When Calamity Strikes, Pastors &#038; Missionaries Are \u201dEssential Personnel\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Editor&rsquo;s Note: As the world continues to struggle with the spread of the coronavirus, I and several other pastors received the following email from a friend who pastors a local church in China.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Just wanted to send an encouragement to you guys. As we&rsquo;re processing the coronavirus news over here in China, we&rsquo;ve talked with our congregations and met with pastors of other churches in our association to share news and discuss decision-making. We&rsquo;ve certainly gone before the Lord in prayer and meditated on his Word.<\/p>\n<p>One other thing that we&rsquo;ve done is think historically. How have Christians throughout the centuries responded to plagues and epidemics? How have they encouraged their churches? Did they stay or go?<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s interesting how many times pastors will speak of the necessity for essential public servants to stay and not flee. And by &ldquo;essential,&rdquo; they mean folks like doctors, nurses, government employees, and&hellip;wait for it&hellip;ministers of the gospel.<\/p>\n<p>Take W.S. Plumer for example, in his commentary on Psalm 91:<\/p>\n<p>In times of public calamity, as a general rule we should stand in our lot, and do and suffer the Lord&rsquo;s will there. We may indeed flee from pestilence, if we neglect no duty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How one pastor in China responded amid the coronavirus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[176,312,315],"class_list":["post-12458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-church-history","tag-leadership","tag-pastoring","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12458"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12461,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12458\/revisions\/12461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}