The church isn’t a building. So focusing on returning to our buildings is fundamentally out of step with the church’s vocation.
Our response to the current global pandemic has reminded us constantly that church, what really makes up the church, is people.
Our worship has moved online. As have our meetings. We gather each Sunday for digital coffee hour. It is amazing how powerful our technology can be in connecting us.
Indiana is currently under a stay-at-home order and our diocese is encouraging compliance. This has significantly helped curb the spread of the coronavirus and protected the most vulnerable.
For weeks now, people have asked “When?”
When…
…can we return to normal?
…can we use our buildings again?
…will I see my friends?
…will I taste the Eucharist?
And the hardest thing for me as a priest and rector of a congregation is having to say: “I don’t know.”
I don’t know when. But I do know that underneath that question is a depth of anxiety and fear that needs to be honored. “When?” feels like the right question.
But the truth is, that “I don’t know” isn’t the real answer to that question. The prophetic, honest answer is closer to “Never.”
No going back
We cannot have what we had. Just as time passes and we cannot be 21 again. We cannot “go back” to how things were in January and just start again.
And therefore, determining when we can be together in our building is no longer a question of capacity—like a teacher responding to your question about using the bathroom with “I don’t know, can you?
It’s more a question of when do we dare? For many, the eagerness to go back will lead to compromising quarantines. For others, it will be staying away for many more months. A dynamic that will bring with it a sense of a separate and unequal congregation.
If we are to move toward small gatherings, then how will we decide who gathers?
And what if we gather in a small group and “reopening” leads to new spikes in our community? Are we willing to bear responsibility for jeopardizing our community to sate our personal desires? Dare we do something so controversial when well more than half of the country is not ready? And if so, to gain what?
As Leonard Pitts, Jr. wrote this week, “I will not die of stupid.“
Doing Something
For several weeks now, I’ve shared with many my apprehension with the desire to “do something.” For many, this is foundational to how they remain motivated to get out of bed in the morning. Or perhaps grounded in the present.
But sometimes, doing something is less about grounding and more a practice of avoidance. This is, ultimately, the principle undergirding God’s command to keep the Sabbath. That we literally set aside time every week to do nothing. Precisely because the allure of doing something is so strong.
And the reason this is a holy practice is not its absence of doing, but the silencing of avoidance. It is the allowing of boredom to set in so that we can notice the world around us.
It seems, then, that this eagerness to return is ultimately an avoidance of Sabbath—an avoidance of this great moment of forced observation—like we’re avoiding the thing that is trying to keep us from avoiding God!
At its heart, this desire to return and constantly focus on when is not only a sating of desire and the elimination of discomfort; it is a rejection of holy introspection and opportune discernment.
In light of this, a rush to return is an attempt to sidestep discernment. Nor is it fully appropriate to our present moment.
We’re Already Open
This returns us to the original idea: that the church never closed. So we are not “reopening”. We remain present to our world and context while adapting to our concerns and capacity.
Remembering that the church is open reminds us that the rush to return brings with it the old shortcuts of normalcy. It is not so much prudent or thoughtful as it is reckless and assuming. Bringing our people into our churches will require new organizing and reflective development. Particularly as only some will be joining us in person.
Recruiting readers and servers, for instance, will not only return, but require new development of volunteer recruitment to reflect the smaller numbers.
The planning, advertising, and setting of calendars will no doubt require timing more than a Friday announcement can give us for Sunday.
Perhaps the thing that remembering that we are already open can give us is the memory of the present experience.
While many are frustrated that they are stuck at home and long to be with friends again, the ability to “go to church digitally” is both adaptive and greater than before. Many of my friends attest to church shopping and attending a dozen or more church services in a week.
The convenience of digital church isn’t the only part that matters, either.
The form of digital communication, especially church done in the home, often bears a more intimate design than a church service recorded at a distance. The true impact of digital church, and how it communicates may be recklessly abandoned in the shuffle to return to normal.
All About Me
The rush to return has one last attribute that deeply concerns me. And that is its intrinsic selfishness. Much of the dialogue around this “reopening” is the demand that we deal with a single operative question: What about me? Whether that is a singular metric (the economy) or a singular person (“I don’t want to.”), it is a selfish frame.
The rush, therefore, avoids other, equally concerning questions. The most obvious concern being What if we haven’t peaked yet?
Nearly as important is another consideration, based on many estimates, that we are looking at a 6-18 month process. In other words, What if we’re still at the beginning?
This means that the rush itself would have us refuse to deal with the deep concern that we must change both ourselves and expectations to match a new present. A present that we may be working with more than a matter of weeks.
The flurry of activity in March and April, all that desperation to do something seemed like a sprint at the start of a marathon. That I hear so little conversation about living through this meaningfully is doubly worrying. Most have focused on loneliness and relative mental health. But rarely with an eye toward long-term distancing.
Little church conversation has focused on this as a new normal.
Similarly, the potential is high that patterns of distancing will become necessary. Perhaps even that a social hibernation will become a very real part of our common experience. The public risk (of this same or a new virus) may return next winter with flu season, even if we feel like we’ve kicked it this summer.
But this isn’t just about COVID-19 itself. Future pandemics and global warming will undoubtedly necessitate changes in our cultural behavior. These may include a kind of sheltering at home that we are experiencing now.
In other words, we’re learning skills that may be necessary beyond this moment. If we’re willing to notice them.