What Does This Make Possible?

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 happening.

In recent years, the Church in general, and Salem in particular, has struggled connecting with younger generations in a context that has changed much more rapidly than the church has. We don’t have many young adults or families with children and teenagers. The end of the pandemic won’t make that trend disappear. Again, the pandemic has simply accelerated the Church’s decades-long decline in the West.

This might all sound discouraging, but actually it gives us a huge opportunity. Perhaps the best question we can ask right now is, What does our current reality make possible for Salem? That is, what can we do if we’re unencumbered by the baggage from past contexts that weren’t fruitfully reaching younger generations in the 21st century anyway?

Because the number of people who come back for in-person worship will be smaller, we’ll likely begin with only one Sunday morning service. We’ll be able to figure out what time and style work best. We can focus on getting back to the basics of being the Church. 

It will also be possible to connect with more people as we create and serve multiple congregations. Besides an in-person congregation, there will be another digital congregation. Our online worship will continue and many will continue to choose to connect with us that way. Our challenge will be to help those online persons grow as disciples of Jesus and serve in Jesus’ name.

Furthermore, it will be possible for us to work on gathering people in small groups around shared affinities (such as bicycling or parents with toddlers) or service (such as volunteering with Matthew 25 or Central Furniture Rescue). Together those small groups could be organized and cared for and even come together a few times year as yet another congregation.

The Church will be different in the future not because we’ll have a different mission but rather because of how we’ll live out that mission. We’re still invited to participate in loving God and neighbors, making disciples, baptizing them in the name of Jesus and helping them grow and become like Jesus to make a difference in the world. It’s the way we do it that will be different. 

The pandemic crisis is giving us the opportunity to start fresh, if we will follow the Holy Spirit and use our imagination and creativity, taking risks and trying new things. 

Sometimes it’s hard to let go of the baggage from past contexts. At least we know what it is, and that might be preferred to the wilderness and mystery of an unknown future. That’s why some congregations struggle to go back to the way it was, but that’s not choosing life. That’s merely trying to grasp something that you can’t hang on to, like sand slipping though your fingers.

What does this make possible for us now? Time will pass quickly. In two years, we may well be asking what we wish we had done.