When Should You Have Church Again?

In the past month I received several emails asking, “When are we going to have church again?”  Some of these inquiries come from folks eager to get back to normal.  They long for the rhythm of Sunday: getting up, getting dressed, singing the songs of faith, hearing God’s word face to face.  Occasionally the message will say something like: “If people can go to Walmart or Lowes, then it should be safe enough for us to have church.”  I’m not sure we can trust Walmart’s or Lowes’ motives are the same as God’s.

I talked to my fellow pastors.  We tried to figure out what data point to use to show us it is safe to gather in the building again.  The problem is there is not a data point specific enough to make that decision for us.  This is the problem with data: it is good at telling you what is happening, but lousy at making decisions.  One of the pastors said, “I think we can’t wait till it is safe enough to remove people’s anxieties.  We will just need to trust God to tell us.”  Amen, brother.

Some church members have informed me they will not return to corporate worship until a vaccine is developed.  They are in the “at-risk” group and do not want to risk exposure.  I respect that.  Every person is responsible for their own health.

I saw one church’s plan for re-gathering.  The writer of the plan must have been in the military.  Every detail, every possibility was spelled out.  However, a German general once said, “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”  Every church that regathers knows a lot more after the first Sunday back than they did before they regathered.

Some of the problem is the way we think about church.  The word translated “church” in the New Testament is “ekklesia.”  It is a verb that means “to gather a group of people to do something.”  When translated over into Old German, they used the word “kirche.”  It is a noun originally meaning “castle” or fortress.”  The word came over into English as “church.”  Maybe this is why we began to associate the word “church” with place.  Maybe this is why some churches regard their building as fortress, a place to be safe from the world.

I know churches that value “place” over “gathering.”  They make idols of their buildings, complete with fifty-page documents detailing how the building is to be used (mostly “not used’).  Funny that Jesus never had his disciples build a building.  When his followers pointed out how wonderful the Temple was, he told them it would torn down.  Jesus was not into buildings for building’s sake.

The answer to the question, “When should I go to church again?” is to be the church right now.  Church is being the body of Christ.  Bodies are designed for action.  We can be the body without a building.  We can love our neighbors.  We can sow masks for medical personnel.  We can call and check on our brothers and sisters in Christ.  We can listen to good teaching of God’s word.  We can even sing songs of faith – you do not need a building, or an organ, or a fog machine to lift up your voice in praise.

Most of all, we can encourage one another.  Jesus followers can remember that we are Easter people.  Our greatest fear is not death.  Our greatest fear is being distant from our leader.  When Paul wrote, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his purpose,” he was telling us no matter what situation we are in, God is at work.  Find where he is at work and join him.

In the Bible the word for “worship” also means “serve.”  Serve God right now.  Do what he wants.  Love the people around you.  Going to a building is good; being church is better.

Small Signs of Hope…

This week I drove past a mom and her three small children riding bikes on the sidewalk.  The mom was bringing up the rear, like a mother goose herding her goslings.  The oldest child rode confidently at the head of the line, showing the way.  The two smaller children had training wheels on their bikes.  They would peddle a little way, turn and look back to make sure mom was there, and then peddled again.   

As I passed them by, I thought how training wheels are small signs of hope.  They are there for the time between when you first mount a bike and when you can balance on two wheels.  The training wheels seem to say, “One day you will not need us; you can ride on your own.  But right now, we are here to give you enough stability to get to the future.”  Hope is what carries us from here to there. 

I checked my small garden one afternoon this week.  My tomato plants are growing like crazy.  I see the small yellow flowers that very soon will be red tomatoes.  I thought how every flower on the vine is a small sign of hope: something is growing here.  It is not here yet, but it will be.  Hope always has a starting point. 

I did a wedding for a couple last year.  Not too long ago, they sent me a picture of their ultrasound (pregnancy came quickly!).  I could make out the baby’s head, arms, and legs.  This baby in just a few weeks of growth has become a complex being.  He has months to go before he is ready to enter the world, but the pictures are a small sign of hope.  There is new life coming.  He will be greeted with joy.  But his arrival must not be rushed.  Hope needs time to grow and mature. 

I talked this week with someone who has cancer.  She has been waiting to see her treatment team.  Waiting is the hardest work of all.  The meeting happened this week.  The doctors laid out their recommendations and showed her the plan.  Her team is optimistic.  A treatment plan is small sign of hope.  There is a direction now, a schedule.  Hope flourishes when there is a plan. 

I’ve been preaching a message series about Body and Soul.  I’ve gotten dozens of emails telling me the messages are speaking to them.  Most the messages I’ve received share the same thought: “I never thought about my body that way before.”  When someone tells me that, I know it’s a compliment to God, not to me.  But the compliments do give me joy.  People are thinking differently.  Thinking differently about your body, your marriage, your friendships, even your kids is a small sign of hope.  Hope requires a shift in thinking. 

Where I live, in South Carolina, we are having the prettiest spring in 20 years.  We’re between the dark, damp days of winter and the baking heat of summer.  Normally spring in South Carolina lasts a week.  Right now, we are on beautiful week number eight.  Every day seems to invite us to go outside, to enjoy the weather, the birds, and flowers.  Each cool morning is a small sign of hope.  Each cool evening invites us to live in this moment, to savor the gifts of breeze and refreshment.  Hope requires you to savor the moments, because they come only once. 

Each day I listen to the news and hear another report about COVID19.  Each day brings news of more deaths, more cases.  I wish the newscasters would share the number of people who are recovering.  I try to remember to do the math.  In South Carolina, 6,757 confirmed cases. Deaths: 283.  I’ve forgotten how to do ratios, but it is a small sign of hope that most people with the virus are not dying.  Hope needs to be reminded about reality. 

I think God sends us small signs of hope, no matter what our crisis.  It is his way of encouraging us, telling us he is still at work, even when things look bad.  We don’t need to be led by our fears.  Maybe a prayer for you to pray is for God to show you small signs of hope.  They are out there.  It’s not a matter of just opening your eyes; it’s a matter of opening your soul. 

Do not Let the Weak Die…

I saw a video clip of a news reporter in Tennessee, giving details of a protest on the steps of the state capital. The protesters were clamoring for the Governor to reopen the state for business and let life return to normal, whatever that means in this COVID19 world. Behind the reporter was a young man in his twenties, holding a sign. It said, “Let the weak die, Open TN (Tennessee).”

This young man’s poster is an echo of other voices. The Lieutenant Governor of Texas said, “There are more important things than living, and that’s saving this country for my children and grandchildren and saving this country for all of us.”  I agree lives may need to be sacrificed to preserve our freedom, but is it right to sacrifice a life to make sure we can all live comfortably? I have a hunch if the Lieutenant Governor infected with Corona virus and hospitalized, he would not be saying, “Go ahead and let me die so the price of gas can go up.” 

Of course, it is easy to skewer politicians and protesters, but I have heard similar comments from everyday folks. “People are going to die from the flu anyway,” someone told me the other day. Isn’t funny how its easy to dismiss “people” but when it is my people, my grandmother, my dad, I think their life is precious.

Throughout history there is a vicious, ugly thought that rises: some people are worth more than others. In the Ancient World, the world of the Bible, that was the way most people thought. Foreigners were enemies. Kill them because their lives do not matter. Enslave them, all they are good for is hard labor. It was a brutal world, where survival of the fittest lead to might makes right.

In Jesus’ world, it was common for baby girls to be abandoned. Girls were not thought to be as valuable as boys. Sick relatives were often set out to die. No need trying to take care of the elderly; they could not work anymore. What value did they add?

Jesus, building on Jewish teaching, taught something radically different. He told a story about a shepherd leaving ninety-nine sheep to go search for the one lost sheep. Bad economics, great shepherding. In that one Bible verse most people know, it is clearly stated, “For God so loved the world…”  Not just certain kinds of people. Not just certain nations. Not just the young and health. The world. Regardless of gender, nationality, orientation, or age, God loves everyone who ever has or ever will exist.

Jesus followers in the first centuries after his resurrection put this into practice. They picked up the abandoned babies and loved them as their own children. They cared for the sick and the elderly. When persecuted for their faith, they were willing to die rather than adapt.

It is true that Jesus followers got a lot wrong as time went by. By the Dark Ages, people who called Jesus “Lord” would go to war in his name. They were not merciful. During the plagues that hit Europe, the sick was not always cared for. People reverted to practices of their ancestors and left the sick to die.

Still, it was the followers of Jesus who built orphanages and hospitals. Established on the teachings of their Lord, they cared for the “least of these.”  There is something about Jesus’ clear instructions that the church cannot shake.

Regimes sprout up to challenge this value of human life from time to time. Not so long ago, people with dark skin were thought to be less than human and were enslaved. Native Americans were torn from their land in the name of economic progress. Hitler touted the superiority of the Aryan race and killed 12 million people. Some were Jews, others deformed, still others were political dissidents.

The greatest flaw when someone protests and says, “Let the weak die” is their failure to see themselves as weak. We all start as weak babies, needing care and nurture. Most of us will at some time get sick and need tender nursing. Many of us will get older and in our final days, we will be weak. Someone will have to feed us and bathe us. We all either are weak, or we will be.

Jesus followers believe Jesus came not for the strong, not for those who can fend for themselves, but for the weak and the meek. He taught us in the greatest sermon ever that until we admit our poverty, our weakness, our need for God, we will never find the strength we truly need. It is the strength, as the Apostle Paul said, the makes all things possible.

If Jesus came to help the weak – everyone of us – do we dare turn to anyone and say, “Go ahead and die?”   Aren’t you glad God is better than that?

Coping with Quarantine…

It feels like Day 2,132 of quarantine.  In reality it’s been only a few weeks.  We’ve all had to find ways to cope. 

Extroverts are suffering more than the rest of us.  They keep ordering take-out just to see people.  Introverts only thought they liked social isolation.  They’ve binge watched everything possible on Netflix and are now watching reruns of MASH on YouTube.   

Thank goodness for good weather.  Most of the yards in my neighborhood now look like Augusta National Golf Course.  People who’ve never had a houseplant have put in gardens.  Ditto for home repair projects.  I actually talked to a man recently who told me he had finished all the home repair projects he’d put off for years and was now reorganizing his attic.  I told him to come over to my house when he got done. 

I’ve never seen so many people exercising.  I see walkers and runners out every day.  Old bikes are being rescued from forgotten corners of garages.  I saw a six-foot tall man riding a pink bike with a banana seat and high-rise handlebars.  You make do with what you have. 

With restaurants closed, home cooking is making a comeback.  I saw on Instagram a woman charting the progress of her “starter” for sour-dough bread.  I sent her message volunteering to be her taste-tester.  I told her, “Have butter, will travel.” 

My fisherman friends are spending a lot of time on the water, though I’m not sure how they are getting their boats in the lake.  I live on a little pond, and neighbors I’ve never seen fish are out there.  Most of them are throwing back what they catch, although I’ve heard rumors a couple of them are experimenting with homemade sushi. 

Sport fans like me are suffering.  When March Madness was called off, all the men who had scheduled their vasectomies in order to binge watch basketball were regretting their decisions (probably on their timing).  Some people enjoy watching reruns of games; I’m not one of them.  I know who won the National Championship in 2010 (Duke).  I don’t really enjoy watching baseball or golf on TV, but to watch reruns of games and matches seems like an Ambien prescription to me. 

I’m catching up on my reading.  Yesterday I read an entire book at one sitting.  It was “Cat in the Hat.”  Just practicing for my time with my yet-to arrive grandchild.  I’m reading the newspaper more slowly.  Believe it or not, there are still classified ads.     

Lust has become a problem for me.  I’m lusting after used tractors with front-end loaders.  Night after night I look at the Facebook marketplace to see what’s available.  You never know when it might be handy to have one.  So far, only one person has met my price: $25.  Turns out he was offering a John Deere scale model toy. 

I’ve been seized with the urge to ramble.  I now understand the idea of a Sunday drive.  The other day I loaded up the dogs and drove nowhere.  They enjoyed letting their ears flap and I needed to see something beside the four walls of the house. 

Watching the news is important to me now.  I’d forgotten we had local news on TV.  I find myself hoping for a report that the case numbers and deaths are going down.  The good thing about the local news is there is no playful banter among the news staff; they’re all in separate rooms or at home. 

I’m spending more time in intentional prayer.  I pray more deeply for people I love and for people I know.  I’m hearing God speak to places in my soul I wish he would leave alone.  Quarantine has arrested the business of life and opened up space in my heart.  “Be still and know that I am God” is easier, now that meetings are suspended. 

Most of all, quarantine is teaching me to cope with hope.  Quarantine will end.  The threat of COVID-19 will pass.  We’ll eat out again.  Meetings will resume.  Kids will go back to school.  We will all find a new normal. 

Followers of Jesus are people of hope.  We wait for our quarantine on earth to end, wait for the day when the sin virus no longer contaminates our world and our souls.  But our hope is not in a change of circumstance.  Our hope is in a person, a Savior.   

To hope in Jesus means you know that no matter what is happening in you or around you, he has promised you something better.  That hope he sealed with his death on the cross and guaranteed with his resurrection.  Put your life in his hands and his promise is your hope. 

We Are the World…

I read in the news today that the streets of Beirut are empty.  Ditto the streets of Baghdad, Beijing, London, and New York.  ISIS, of all people, is telling its followers not to travel because of the virus.  When you look at the Center for Disease Control map of the world, there are a small handful of countries without COVID19 cases.  You can’t help but wonder if that is because of a lack of testing.  Whatever normal was, it isn’t now.

It feels like the whole world is shutting down.  Unemployment claims in our country jumped 3,000% in March.  The governor of my state has shut down all businesses that require close contact.  I squeezed in and got a haircut before the deadline.  Who knows when I get another haircut by a professional?

All around the world restaurants are closed.  We’ve gone back in time when most meals were cooked at home.  I’m seeing parts of my freezer I didn’t know existed.  People are binge watching shows, but if you like to watch sports, you’ve been dropped into the desert.

One evening this week, we went for a drive.  We had no destination, just wanted to get out of the house.  For the first time in my life, I understood the whole idea of a “Sunday drive.”  Just ramble.  Take a road you’ve never taken and see where it takes you.  Everyone in the world is feeling cooped up.

In an odd way, it's comforting to know that everyone in world is experiencing this.  The concern about COVID19 is the same in Wuhan, China as it is in Sumter, SC.  No one wants to get this virus. Everyone wants to get this over as soon as possible.  Everyone is waiting, which is some of the hardest work to do.

If you pause and think about it, when was the last time everyone on the planet was experiencing the same thing?  Never.  The mom in Johannesburg, South Africa deals with the same thing as the mom in Tokyo. 

People have asked me if God is trying to tell us something.  I’m sure he is.  I’ve seen the preachers who are declaring this is the beginning of the end.  Other preachers are saying this is God’s judgment on the world. 

I don’t know for sure about any of the that, but here’s what I do know for sure:  we are all God’s creation.  Human beings spend enormous energy dividing ourselves.  We look at people with a different color skin, or a different language, or a different religion, and we find a reason to hate.  We construct versions of reality that tell us we are better than other people because of where we live or where we’ve gone to school.  I love my country but being an American doesn’t make me better than a Russian. 

The Apostle Paul wrote a great truth in Romans: “God is no respecter of persons…”  There is a lot of theology packed into that verse.  God sees all of us as we truly are.  He knows every person on this planet, all 7.8 billion of us.  He knows every one of us will have a moment when we realize there is a problem we cannot solve by wealth, ancestry, or nationality.  Right now, all 7.6 billion of us are realizing we are vulnerable to virus that is no respecter of persons.  From the slums of Mumbai to the high-rises of Dubai, the virus will not discriminate.

We are the world.  Every person on this planet is a creation of God, whether they know him or not.  Everyone is a microscopic particle away from infection.  We are the world waiting.

That’s why we need something else God said about this world: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes on him will not perish, but have everlasting life.” 

Whatever your fears, anxieties, depressions, do not forget this:  There is a God who loves you.  He gave his son for you.  When you believe this, death - whether it comes from a virus or a cancer or old age – death will not have the last word over you. God does.  And he wants you to have a life that goes beyond death.  A life that starts when you believe.

We are the world God loves.  Believe.

The Last Time this Happened…

Despite what my children think, I am too young to remember World War II.  My parents, however, lived through that time.  It was the last time in American history when everyone’s life changed.

We forget there was rationing.  People were allotted only a certain amount of meat, sugar, and butter.  Only the sugar was problem for my people; they had cattle and a milk cow.  It was hard on one cousin, however.  He had a still in the swap and needed sugar for the shine. 

Tires and gasoline were rationed.  When my parents got married, my Uncle J.N., who had a service station, swapped out tires for my Daddy so he and Mama could drive off on their honeymoon.  I don’t know how they scrounged up the gas.

Household goods were not easily obtained.  Electricity had come to my family’s ranch, but they couldn’t buy a refrigerator.  Daddy knew Mr. J.W. Crews had a refrigerator in his camp house and somehow talked him into letting him have it until he could buy one. 

Every town within a hundred miles of the coast organized lookouts for enemy planes.  People grew victory gardens so they could get fresh vegetables.  There was no television, but almost everyone had a radio and listened hungrily to the nightly news. 

The young men were off fighting and those too old to fight were being pushed to produce.   Women started doing work they had never done before.  My mother attended Florida Southern College during the war.  There were almost no male students.  The women were expected to help constructing new buildings on campus.  My mother told of pushing wheelbarrows of concrete to build sidewalks across the campus.  In those days, you rolled up your sleeves and you did what you had to do.

My father was not drafted and did not volunteer.  He was a farmer, and the sole provider of his mother.  He fought the war by growing the food that was needed.  Other family members went off to war.  My step-father Lawrence trained as a pilot and flew B-24s.  My cousin Top Barlow parachuted into Sicily and Italy and landed at Anzio.  My Uncle Pete joined the navy.  Once, he roped a practice torpedo to get it back on board the ship.  To win World War II, everyone had to do their part.  

The wars that followed World War II were different.  They were distant affairs.  Korea and Vietnam were difficult because it was hard to know what winning looked like.  The war was fought by draftees, while the elite took deferments in college or grad school. 

In the first Gulf War, the military mobilized, but nothing was rationed.  After 9-11, again we went to war, the war we are still in.  Again, it has been hard to define victory.  Families of military members are impacted.  In a town like mine, with a large base, it is our neighbors who go off and fight and return.  Sometimes, they don’t come back.  But most for most our country, this war is a headline, a campaign issue.  Amazon is still bringing us everything we need.

The Corona Virus Pandemic is the first time since World War II every American’s life has changed.  Whatever normal was for us three weeks ago has changed.  Getting toilet paper and Lysol has become a quest.  We’re working from home.  Churches have gone virtual.  In my town, the movie theater, the car wash, and the YMCA have all shut down.  People are losing jobs.  Medical workers are courageously going in to wage war on a virus that can’t be seen with the naked eye.  School is out.  Teachers are teaching virtually.  It is looking like there will be no graduation from kindergarten or college this year, just a diploma in the mail.

The good news is people are adjusting.  We’re figuring it out.  Yes, we are fighting anxieties and some depression, but we’re fighting.  We will get through this.  COVID19 will not last forever.   There is more resilience in people than we think.

Through all these difficult days, we need to remember God is with us.  At the end of his life, after the people of God had wandered in the wilderness for forty years, Moses reminded his people: “The Lord has blessed you in all the work of your hands.  He has watched over your journey through this vast desert.  These forty years, the LORD your God has been with you and you have not lacked anything (Deuteronomy 2:7).” 

The Lord is watching over us.  No matter how long this lasts, no matter how abnormal these days, the Lord is watching over us.  Thanks be to God.