Faithfulness in a "Changing" Church
All of us have struggled during these last twelve months in one way or another. In addition to uncertainty in the early days surrounding the virus, we’ve faced a great political divide and riots through the streets. The one place people go to find peace was ordered to be shut down by overreaching state and local governments. Many churches obliged. Some pushed back.
The one thing that the vast majority of churches did was completely alter their practice. The Divine Service carried on over the internet or radio. Some people would gather, but there would be no singing. If the Sacrament of the Altar was administered, it was done by “self-administration” with a plastic Communion kit that reminds me of a pack of Dunkaroos.
Above all of this, Ash Wednesday takes the cake. The “creative” ways some came up with to administer ashes wasn’t cute. It was irreverent and pointless. What point is there to trace the sign of the cross on someone with hand-sanitizer or to administer ashes via Q-Tip to a facemask? But it’s so meaningful!
When you stop and think of it, there are so many appalling practices the Church has adopted in these days that will take generations of pastors to correct. We have a new liturgical vestment that will most certainly be adopted every flu season from here on out. Get ready.
I don’t know of any congregation that has more people in the pews now than they did at this point last year. People have left and are not coming back. It’s a tragic thing to see some of our people go from worshiping each and every week to potentially forsaking the faith altogether.
What should be the response? Just this week, our district put out a letter to pastors on what to do when facing decline. The second point that is given is absolutely NOT the mindset we ought to have. It read:
2. Accept the fact that church is not coming back to the way it was. God is leading His church to something new, and no one really knows what it will look like. Keep sowing the seeds of the Gospel in Word and Sacrament. Keep doing the work of an evangelist. There is an old saying that I find to be true: God hits a moving target. God blesses and honors our efforts. I am not saying that if you sow seeds your church grows. In fact, I would argue that if you only sow to grow your church, you need to check your motivation. Sow because that is what we are to do. God will grow His kingdom and we ask the Lord to build His kingdom with us; sometimes that means it will grow.
On the one hand, I would like if the church didn’t come back the way it was. Make no mistake about it. There will be no program or gimmick that will help you recover this time. For all the places that put more emphasis on those things than simply on Word and Sacrament, hit the reset button and get back to faithfulness. On the other hand, though, I imagine that this point is an encouragement to be creative with new gimmicks…to accept that we need to expand our “online ministries” and get used to people “worshiping online” instead of being physically present. One evangelical church down this way has already made arrangements to call their very first “online pastor!” (How long before you start getting transfer requests from people out of state because they “watch you online?”)
The above statement does mention Word and Sacrament to its credit, but the line before talks about no one knowing what the church will look like. I beg to differ. We know exactly what the Church will look like so long as we quit messing with it. It’s the world that is constantly changing. The Church remains the same. The liturgy is consistent. The hymns that have carried us for almost two thousand years still lead on. The angels still join in with us and all the company of heaven. The only way you will not know what the Church will look like is if you change it beyond recognition (as we so progressively did in the 90s and 00s) or if we don’t take back all of those bad practices adopted during the last twelve months. God had given us a treasure in the liturgy of the Church. It needs to be the constant in an ever-changing world instead of throwing up our hands wondering how the Church is going to change along with it in order to keep up and stay “relevant.” In these days hear what our Lord says to the church in Smyrna:
“Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).
Faithfulness, brothers. Faithfulness.