by Pastor Linda Skinner
The hottest topic in the church world today is the topic of churches re-opening their buildings. I was talking to my nephew in Rocklin, CA, who is on staff at a large mega-church in that area. They are wrestling with how and when to start having in-person services.
He and I both agreed that it was really unfair for people to talk about the church being closed. Both of our churches only closed their buildings, but the ministries continued in whatever way we had available to us to do those ministries. Our staffs have gone to hospitals and prayed with people (when we are allowed to do so) and (when not allowed to be in person), we prayed over the phone with them. We’ve never missed a week of having a worship service, and those online services are reaching a broader congregation than we ever had in our buildings.
At Washington Cathedral, most of our TLC groups starting meeting right away on Zoom, Teams or Go-to-Meeting. As a staff, we’ve been doing counseling appointments and follow up phone calls to our entire mailing list. Even our choir has been meeting weekly via Zoom to practice our songs, encourage and support one another. The church is open even though the building is closed. My nephew said he’s ministering to his Junior High groups via Zoom almost every night. The church may have to go underground, online virtual or stealth, but it will never go away. We are the Bride of Christ and our work will only be done when He comes to end it. So please, never for a moment think that the church is closed.
At some point we are looking forward to opening up the building for people to come back together in fellowship. However, we are only going to do so when we are allowed to do it, and it works for the health and safety of our congregation and staff. Just this week, our governor announced that those counties who are going to Phase 2 next week, can gather again when some very strict rules and protocols are in place. (We are in King County and our county has not been released to go to Phase 2 and no date has yet been given to us.) However, we know that guidelines tell us our initial limit will be 50 people in the sanctuary. So, how and when we do that we have still to ascertain.
One recent article said it so well. It is the same discussion Pastor Tim has had with us over the past weeks as a staff. We know we have differing opinions in our congregation about when and how we should make the steps to open the doors of the building. We also know that more important than anything else is that our “hearts for one another are always open” even if we don’t like or agree with what is happening. This point was made so well in the article that I’ve given you a brief recap of the main points of that article:
“Over the course of the last eight weeks, I have had a ton of conversations with pastors who are wrestling through what reopening their building looks like. In some ways, the conversations are encouraging: pastors are leaning into the hard work and thinking well through this process. In other ways, these calls are heartbreaking: the divided state of our nation has forced pastors into a no-win situation where regardless of what they decide, someone will let them know how stupid they are being.
Church, we are better than this.
We have three types of people right now: red light people are not ready to go back out, yellow light people are being cautious, and green light people have been back to normal for weeks. The Church needs to be better than anything I have heard so far:
"We are not a green, yellow or red light church. We are a Traffic Light Church with all lights on. We should honor one another's opinions."
Let that sink in.
Regardless of when we go back, I am pretty convinced that God cares more about how we go back, how we treat people as we think through this, and how we care for those whose opinions differ from ours.”
Please pray for our staff and our leadership as we prayerfully consider how and when we begin in-person worship. It is apparent it will be phased in very slowly, but we are committed to continuing to provide online options for those who cannot meet in person. It is also, apparent, that it will be some time before we can have the kind of in-person fellowship we had before this pandemic. So, lets vow to be patient with one another and with ourselves.
Blessings to all,
Pastor Linda