Greetings bloggers!
When this whole pandemic started, I realized that the Church was going to go through quite the scene change as an institution. Things were going to be different for us, and to be honest I thought (and still think) that anyone who assumes that we will someday go back to the “normal” we are used to was dreaming. The new normal, whatever that looked like, was actually being shaped by our responses to the pandemic in those early days.
You may not see it this way, but I was excited! We as an institution have been due for a shake up for quite some time, and God has a habit of using chaos and confusion to push us to the changes we don’t want to enact for ourselves. So what can we learn about the church’s response to the pandemic? What is it about the way we’ve been operating the last few months that we might actually want to carry forward? For the next few posts, I want to think out loud a little about those changes.
Truth be told, the pandemic shook up our priorities as an institution like a diet coke in a bike water bottle cage (not that this particular illustration is relevant or top of mind for any particular reason). We may be surprised to see what new priorities have bubbled to the top. For instance, there is a word that has been present in nearly every single e-mail I’ve gotten during the pandemic from church members who approve of what we’re doing, and has been missing in the e-mails that disapprove. And that word is: Connection.
When the church is happy with what we’re offering, it’s because they were given a chance to connect with the folks that we usually see on a weekly basis in worship. When we do a Zoom worship service, the comments after are almost never “Wow! That was a great sermon!” but rather “It was so nice to see everyone today!” The videos we do are rarely praised for their high production quality (there may be a reason for that), but rather are praised for being able to connect with their church family. Sometimes even seeing the building that we used to worship in as a backdrop for a video has helped some folks connect.
If you like me are a church leader, think back to your typical week before the pandemic set in. It might take a while, you may need a coffee break in the middle, but try to remember what life was like before all this. What percentage of your day was spent in the “performance” elements of worship and church? What percentage was spent polishing the sermon? Or practicing music? Or decorating the worship space? And by contrast, how much of your time was spent intentionally connecting the members of your congregation? What percentage was spent helping people see the Spirit of God at work in each other? What percentage was spent creating space for one on one interactions?
I know at least in my case, my percentages were off.
Now this isn’t to say we should have crappy sermons or lousy praise bands. Psalm 33 suggests that we should carry a certain skill in to everything we do for the Lord, and that takes time and effort. But I think as we settle in to the new normal, we ought to take a hard look at what investing in those person to person connections look like, and making them happen even in the midst of this weird season of church.
How might we do that? More on that coming up on Thursday!