How many of you remember where you were when you first learned about 9/11? How many of you remember where you were when you first heard about COVID-19? Thom Rainer uses this contrast to point out how different this world-changing event is from the others in our lifetime. The fact is lots of things changed for us, and lots of things have changed for our church, but we haven’t really talked about those changes and what they mean for us. So for six weeks, we are going to take some time to “go to school” about how we are different and how God might be working in our lives, but also how our society is different, and how our church might think differently about how God is leading us. Today is the first in the series.
So could we spend a few minutes reflecting on how the pandemic affected our lives at first? What are the things that you and your loved ones experienced at the beginning of the pandemic?
[Take responses from the congregation.]
So now let’s think a little more about what we learned from those experiences.
[Take responses from the congregation.]
In some ways, we are still trying to figure out what we’ve learned, but we all have a sense that things are really different now. And we have questions that came up around our faith: how could God let this happen? But also, for some of us, thank You God, that we’re ok, and Lord, how are we going to get through this? Need help here!
What kinds of things did we have to think about with our church that were different from how things normally were?
[Take responses from the congregation.]
So during the pandemic, what did you and other people learn about church?
[Take responses from the congregation.]
Isn’t that interesting? I feel like I learned some things about what really matters in my life—my family, my sense of community with you all, that I could be creative in how I spent time with others, that God was able to be with me, even when we couldn’t be together, that we could still connect and have a presence in each other’s lives through video and Zoom. In the darkest, loneliest, crazy-making days of the pandemic, I found myself really leaning in to the rest of the promises of Jeremiah 29: “Then you will call to me. You will come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 When you look for me, you will find me. When you wholeheartedly seek me, 14 I will let you find me, declares the LORD. I will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I’ve scattered you, declares the LORD. I will bring you back from the place where you are being held captive.”
At the beginning of his chapter, “Gather Differently and Better,” Thom Rainer uses a great illustration to talk about a big thing we learned in the pandemic. Did you ever play this game when you were a kid? [Do the motions with my hands.] Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and there are the people. That’s how we thought about church back then. There was always some wiseacre—sometimes I was that wiseacre—and I would fold my hands like this, then say the same words, Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and where are the people? Up on top! One, maybe two or three days of the week, the church gathers in this facility [do the motions with my hands the first way] but most of the time—[change hands to do it the second way] we are out in the world.
So what does it mean to be church? Why do we get together?
[Take responses from the congregation.]
Sure, that’s all good. What does the Bible say? So let’s look at our passage from Hebrews to see if we left anything out. For right now, let’s focus in on 10:24–25. According to this, why do we gather together?
[Take responses from the congregation.]
Do you see how this really sums up all the reasons you originally gave? Oh and by the way, does it say when we should gather? Or how we should gather? I think that’s very interesting!
Another thing Thom Rainer talks about is that our understanding of gathering is a little different now—we gather in person and online for the same worship service. And now we have folks who join our worship—but at different times and on different days—by watching the recordings. We have embraced pieces of this, right? As a fellowship, we have decided livestreaming worship is something we want to make available. We have continued to post recordings of our worship on YouTube. And for Bible Study, we gather both in-person and by Zoom. Did you know some of our most faithful attenders for Bible study are on Zoom? And our Trustees often regularly gather on Zoom and in-person. It suggests that our church has the potential to gather people in lots of different ways at lots of different times, and that our fellowship becomes a connector for all these different groups of people. We used to have just one way and one time to gather for worship and study, and now we have many more!
There are down sides to this too, though, right? We don’t see the same people every week in the way that we used to—because some folks are online sometimes—and at some point, we do need to talk about what that means for us.
Which brings us to thinking about our building and how we use it. Thom Rainer writes, “During the quarantine, many…discovered that the church was still the church, even without its facilities. Yes, we desired to return to in-person gatherings so we could be with our friends again. But we found we could do a lot of things as a church without relying on our buildings…We realized, it seemed, that our facilities were more tools than necessities. What if we now use those tools to reach and minister to our community?”(p. 17) Or put another way, how is our facility demonstrating God’s love to the community? Do they feel welcome here? When someone is in our facility, how do we make sure God touches them? Isn’t that part of the reason we have done Impact Squantum? To make our building more accessible for more people, to open up the front of the building, so more people could find and be drawn into our facility? So our building could be as welcoming as we are?
You know, it’s weird to think about, but in the earliest days of the Church we learned about in Acts today, they didn’t even have a building. Baby church shared the Temple with other Jews, and they met in each other’s homes and shared meals together.
So here’s my suggestion to us as we look forward:
Let’s do more to reconnect as a fellowship, to remind ourselves really how much we enjoy walking through life together. Perhaps we could do a regular gathering together—maybe a monthly potluck that Leslie Doyle’s been suggesting for a while, or dinner groups that meet in each other’s homes, some way that we are gathering, as Hebrews says, to encourage one another and spur each other on to love and good deeds.
We have always said the church is the people—not just the building—and through the pandemic we learned some things about looking after each other and trusting God. Now is a great time to remind ourselves how God works through our time together to help us stay encouraged and motivated in loving each other and releasing God’s grace into our community. At the end of the day, we don’t have to stress or worry about our church moving forward. The pandemic did not catch God off guard—God was already ahead of us to work even this for good. And God has great things in mind for us here in Squantum! Let us hear God speak to us through Jeremiah, “I know the plans that I have for you, declares the LORD. They are plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future filled with hope.”