Thanks to Press Features for sharing their work on Unsplash. We’re coming up on seven months in this COVID-19 pandemic. We canceled in-person worship the first time on March 15. This experience has been difficult for many and continues to get more bleak. The coronavirus has now sickened more than 33 million and killed more than 1 million people globally. Our country, for the moment, has the most confirmed cases and the highest death toll with over 200,000 virus deaths. The number of cases and deaths in our state continues to rise. Without doubt, this is a difficult moment. Still, the reality in the church is we’ve been here before. The 1917–18 Spanish flu was the most fatal pandemic in history. A hundred years ago it killed more than 50 million people. Churches in some parts of the world were shut for a year. And before that, we know the great church reformer, Martin Luther, dealt with fatal epidemics every few years. None of that may have happened in our lifetime, but we h...
Photo by Nothing Ahead from Pexels As we enter a new year, there may be light at the end of the tunnel of the pandemic. With two approved vaccines now, we hope that at some point in 2021 we won’t have to wear masks, mind physical distance, and refrain from larger groups. Still, if you’re hoping that the church will return to the way it was before the pandemic, I imagine you will be disappointed. I’m sorry. Just the same, while this is a hard truth for some, it also sounds like a breath of fresh air for others. That doesn’t mean the church will be unrecognizable. The people of Salem aren’t disappearing suddenly. There are many of us worshiping, growing, serving, giving, and telling others about what God has done in Jesus. When we do gather in-person again, however, we won’t have as many people as we did prior to the pandemic. In-person worship attendance was already struggling and declining before the pandemic. The crisis has simply accelerated what was already happen...
General Conference, our global family reunion that speaks officially for The United Methodist Church, just concluded last night. This was a specially called session of 864 delegates (half lay, half clergy) from all over the world to discuss and act on the report of the Commission on a Way Forward over the issue of human sexuality. Two of the plans presented had the most support: the Traditional Plan as well as the One Church Plan, which was endorsed by the Council of Bishops. The One Church Plan would have given each local congregation and pastor the authority to make their own choices regarding same-sex weddings based on their cultural context. In an emotional, contested, rancorous, yet majority decision, the General Conference chose the Traditional Plan. The vote was 438 to 384 (this doesn’t equal 864 as some of the international delegates did not make it to St. Louis because they didn’t get visas). The chosen Traditional Plan basically keeps the current language in our ...
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