One day last spring every church leader in America was slapped in the face with several new realities: an unusually nasty virus was loose and it was sneakier than most. It seemed to prey on the most vulnerable though no one had guaranteed immunity. If people who normally travelled different paths got together it was easily transmitted and you didn't even have to make physical contact. Like Pig Pen's dust cloud it was in the air around us. Oddly, you could pass it on without knowing you even had the awful thing. There was no cure and it killed people. A lot of people. Nobody liked it, but we all adjusted.
Did I miss something?
The only difference between then and now has been the fast development of a vaccine, but outside of a few people on television with underdeveloped biceps, almost nobody you know has gotten it yet.
So, why are many church leaders rushing to put people back into buildings? The plague is still in the air and it's still very dangerous to humans, even an endangered and diminishing sub-species like church going humans.
Here's part of our shared national experience over the last nine months: getting tired of the routine, flaming failures of pagan politicians to follow guidelines dictated to us little people, First Amendment split decisions from the Supreme Court on the legality of closing/opening churches, garbled messages from various well compensated, self appointed experts. We've seen it all and we're tired of it all but none of it changes the lethality of the virus for some nor how it can be spread by us all.
Nothing has changed. So why the push to re-open churches?
Every church leader at every level has a pastoral role. Pastors are shepherds - remember the rod and staff? They aren't for decoration. The primary job of shepherds is to protect. Fail at that and the rest of it doesn't matter.
Is making a statement, securing the brand, raising money, keeping a staff busy or making people feel safe in a familiar worship environment worth risking those we promised to protect? The swelling tide of re-opened churches currently being body surfed by a lot of pastors indicates somebody is putting something above protecting the people. Under pressure from somewhere it appears many pastors have thrown down the tools of the trade. When the wolf shows up, a staffless shepherd is just a guy in a field. He or she has got nothing and the sheep are toast.
Here's what we know about church culture in America: it's not working. It's certainly not growing. Churches gain or lose at each others expense, pretty much, without making a dent in the larger culture. Bright girls and boys tell us that only 30% of adults will consider entering a church. That shrinking pond is the one most churches are fishing in and the competition is starting to get fierce. The growing 70% who will never enter any church no matter how sincere the people, sharp the pastor, beautiful the sanctuary, tight the worship team or aromatic the coffee, are saying loud and clear that what most churches have been doing lately isn't working for them. Our mandate is to "go into all the world" but the world is yawning in our faces.
Rather than joining a mad rush to get back to business as usual, opening buildings and organizing people once again into nice neat rows with a close-up view of the back of a bad haircut, wouldn't it be better to use this time to reflect and strategize, to pray and search the scriptures and develop a plan for re-starting rather than merely re-opening? Perhaps we could be better positioned to finally take a big swing at long term change in the hurting communities where the Holy Spirit has placed us. We can prepare get to kill a lot of giants without abandoning our primary role as protectors.
We've been handed a sealed crate of rare, mountain fresh air capable of blowing several decades of sameness, staleness and spiritual sterility out of the sanctuary. That's a re-start. Or, we can take the easier route of simply re-opening and go back to what wasn't working before.
