How Goes Thou Now, Church?
Alan Arnold, Pinnacle Associate
The introverts among us possibly welcomed the prospect of a sanctioned stay-at-home interlude. Space, time, and quiet soothes and comforts so many souls. But it’s getting difficult to put a happy face on physical distancing despite clever Twitter memes and funny YouTube postings. The novelty of being home-bound by a virus is wearing thin and it’s becoming clear that this pandemic is going to be long-lived. While not broadcast broadly, the 21st Century Church is facing a challenge as great as health care systems and economies.
Church leaders are responding in innovative ways by live-streaming and drive-in worship services and involving disciples in reaching out via phone, texts, and FaceTime. The church has always been malleable in times of crisis. And here we are again manifesting creativity we’d rather not be calling forth but that is needed for the sake of the Realm of God.
The crisis we’re experiencing gives pastors the opening to engage this question: How do we help people step into a new imagination of what it means to be church? This time of separation is requiring steps toward seeking out God’s will for the world in a dangerous environment and devising new ways to love others as we love ourselves.
There’s a good chance that we will have to reimagine how we do church from the ground up. Clergy have been formed to serve in specific roles that if played correctly will result in successfully serving others in the prevailing manner of their denominations.
But the forms of those established roles have been sidelined by the pandemic and pastors are challenged to find new methods of walking alongside people as Christ’s representatives. Several new approaches are being explored in Pinnacle Leadership’s weekly webinars, Emerging Church Practice – ways that recognize that the ecclesial setting has been fundamentally altered. Where ministry had been carried out in specific space, pastors now are using digital and cellular technology to be present as best they can.
This leads us to unanticipated questions that challenge our ministerial habits. Some examples:
In this time of isolation, how do clergy foster the realization that God is with people in their ordinary activities at home?
How can pastors help people find identity and purpose while they are separated from their professional or public lives?
How can pastors nurture spiritual maturity in folk while distanced from them?
What transformations are needed in clergy to begin to meet and serve people while being far off?
How can the pandemic move us into the “right relatedness” that is such a large part of God’s call?
It is uncertain that established Christian practices can return to pre-COVID-19 ways. Caution and distance may well limit our activity from now on. But Christ has promised to be with and in the church. We count on that! Relying on Christ’s guidance and wisdom, all the faithful will inaugurate the next iteration of God’s presence with God’s people.