Church in the Time of Covid-19 or What If This Is the New Normal?

Photo credit: Yaroslav Danylchenko

One of the earliest challenges to the life and health of the early church was the delay in Jesus’ promised return. He said he was coming back for them, and his followers counted on it. After his ascension, his disciples remained convinced that Jesus would return in glory in short order.

But what made his followers cling to the idea that as soon as Jesus left he would busy himself by packing his celestial minivan for a return trip?

In short, because when he told them he’d be right back, they believed him.

“When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Matthew 10:23).

“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then we will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not see death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:27-28).

After he had gone, Jesus’ disciples remembered his words. And knowing what they knew, their confidence in his imminent return seems reasonable. No need to panic.

“Pump the brakes, y’all. He said he’d be here. He’ll be here.”

Given their expectations, then, it makes sense that Jesus’ earliest followers devoted themselves to nothing more organizationally ambitious than trying to stay one step ahead of the goons who knee-capped Jesus on Good Friday. And so they huddled together, standing on tiptoes, peeking through the venetian blinds, keeping one eye peeled for the black boots and the other one for Jesus’ grand re-entry.

But Jesus didn’t return, and as Frederich Buechner has pointed out, standing on your tiptoes is exhausting after a while. And that posed a problem to the first generation of Jesus’ followers. As the time for his expected return lengthened and people started dying, some grew restless. “I thought you said he was coming back soon. ‘Soon’ took the last train out of town awhile ago.”

The early church had waited so long that, apparently, some began to wonder if maybe Jesus had come and they’d somehow missed it. “As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2).

Unfulfilled expectation started to take its toll on morale—expectation that, had the early church leaders not figured out a way to recalibrate, might have unraveled the whole Jesus movement. Devotees of the prophets of apocalypse rarely hang around after the world doesn’t end. There has to be a convincing revision of the prophet’s vision, or people invariably shuffle home with hunched shoulders and humiliation in their eyes.

In addition to revising anticipation of Jesus’ return and fortifying the flagging spirits of those who waited, the other danger to the early church had to do with figuring out a new way in the ever-extending “meantime” to organize themselves for the work of announcing the reign of God that Jesus had proclaimed.

Turns out, if you plan for an overnight stay in a hotel but you wind up detained, at some point you’re going to have to revamp your original short term plans. When “overnight” turns into two nights, a week, a month, a year you need to rethink some things. How will you eat? What will you wear? Where is the nearest bar? In other words, how will you occupy yourself as you wait for the time when you can return home?

The early church faced the same daunting challenge. When Jesus didn’t return “in glory,” they had to scramble to figure out what sharing the good news of the unfolding reign of God would look like in the interregnum. Huddling together in upper rooms, they eventually realized, was an unworkable longterm strategy. The early church needed to recalibrate not only its expectations about Jesus’ return but also their mission while they waited. Otherwise, the project Jesus started would begin to crumble.

The challenges of the early church’s revising of its mission occurred to me the other day as I was thinking about the situation the church faces right now, in the midst of a pandemic of indeterminate length. When the shutdowns began in March, many people assumed that the wait to reopen would be fairly short—a couple of weeks, a month or two, and then everything would begin to resume some semblance of normalcy. But we’re now five months in and the prognosis for a return to in-person worship and ministry feels further away than many people anticipated—at least in the medium term.

In short, because of the continued rise in infection rates, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting back together face-to-face anytime soon. And if that’s the case, we have to ask some painful but obvious questions:

• What if for the foreseeable future, as seems likely, this is the new normal?
• If we can’t do the kind of in-person ministry that we’ve always taken for granted would be our mode of accomplishing the work, what would we have to do to recalibrate our mission and ministry to remain faithful to the call to announce God’s new reign of peace and justice?
• Since community is one of the central purposes of our existence as the church, how can sustain that community without being together in the same physical space?
• What are creative ways we can spur spiritual growth in a virtual space?
• If, as we’ve said for some time now, the church is not the building but the people, and if the people can’t gather except huddled in the safety of our own rooms, what does the church look like moving forward?

I’m not nearly as pessimistic about our prospects as some of my colleagues. The challenges we face need not be an existential threat. What if this pain is the prelude to the birth of something new—some new way of being the church that never occurred to anyone before because none of us have collectively faced such an ominous threat before?

I’ve previously [written at length] about the fact that the church and its way of doing mission and ministry is a tool, a delivery system for the good news about God’s plan to create a new world. In other words, the church is not the gospel; it’s a means by which the gospel lives in the world. At different times, therefore, it is imperative that the church adapts to its cultural situation, not the message but the way that message is proclaimed.

We are living in such a moment. So, how can we begin to reimagine mission and ministry to meet the moment in which we find ourselves?