I have just had two weeks annual leave. This weekend I began to think about coming back to work and I started to feel my heart sink at the prospect.
I should probably back up a bit and maybe even rephrase that.
We were meant to be driving to France and Spain and doing a wedding in a beautiful castle in a little town in Andalucía. For obvious reasons, it did not happen.
Oh woe is me and my middle-class, first world problems.
We have a caravan in the Cotswolds, so we spent a lot of the time up there, and look, we still have four boys, so didn’t we do well!!!?
During this time, we got to hang out with people, chat to people, meet new people, renew acquaintances with people, and even, sadly, say goodbye to two people from this age. All of this was done at the appropriate social distance.
Then I thought about coming back to SVC, and it felt as though my world had shrunk back down to the desk in my study and my laptop. All the stuff “out there” over the summer had been reduced to “virtual community” through a screen again. And my heart sank.
There is a great line in one of my all-time favourite songs (‘Sit Down’, by James), that goes,
“If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor.”
Who knew that genuine face to face, human contact would feel like riches?! But it does. And the idea of going back to community through a screen actually makes me want to weep. I am an extreme introvert (I know that most of you will not believe that, but it is true), and even for me, the idea of this ongoing isolation is driving me mad. I actually miss you people. I actually miss hugging people. I actually miss the banter and the setup and the kids running around and the coffee and the messiness of it all.
When it all started, back in March, it was all a little (well, a lot) scary and a little exciting. We had a blank sheet of paper, we had new opportunities to explore what community could be like, we could try out different ways of doing church meetings and involving different people (and certainly, some of those things will carry on); but we all thought it might last three months, or for the more pessimistic, maybe even six months and then we could carry on again.
But…
Here we are. We are almost at six months and, in many ways, the end is still not in sight. What seemed at first to be a brief playing around at things, is increasingly looking like a long-term thing. Who knows when we will be able to meet as a church again? I would be really surprised if it was this year.
We cannot continue to think that we are treading water anymore. We need to make this work for the long run, not just “until things get going again”. Honestly, that fills me with dread, but it is the reality.
So the question is:
What are we going to do about it?
Being a follower of Jesus means being part of his church. Being part of his church means sharing our lives in common in genuine community. Being in community means meeting up together, gathered around our worship of Jesus. Right now, the only way we can do this is via our screens in small groups and on a Sunday.
Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
– Heb 10:24, 25
Some of you work all day on a screen, and the idea of doing church like that just fills you with “zoom gloom”. I get that. Completely and totally. I am with you.
Some of you just can’t motivate yourself, on a Sunday or during the week at housegroup, to stare at a screen and talk to people. I get that. Completely and totally. I am with you.
Some of you are suffering from mental illness and the very idea of it is painful. I get that. Completely and totally. I am with you (I have had to up my dose of Sertraline just to not kill my children!)
But this is us.
We are broken. We are messy. We are tired. We are confused. We are questioning. We are fearful. We are hopeful. We are struggling.
That is church. We need each other. be it through a screen or not. Christianity is a “team game”!
What’s your point?
I am tired, depressed, de-motivated and sick of virtual church. But virtual church is all that we have right now, and for the foreseeable future, and virtual church (whether we feel like it or not) is better than no church, so we need to make it work because we are not meant to survive on our own! We need our small groups. We need our Sundays.
The writer to the Hebrews (above) urged the community to not stop meeting together, all the more because times were hard. At these times, we need each other more than ever.
So, let us pick ourselves up and see if we can make this community-thing work. COVID19 is, sadly, not a passing phase and everything will not go back to normal in a few weeks. It is a long-term thing, so let us be the body of Christ during this time. Church – ekklesia – “a gathering of likeminded people”.
I need you, even if you are only 3″ high on my screen.
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