The Post-COVID Church

BY BART BARBER

Itravel more these days. This morning marks my eighth consecutive day to awaken in a hotel room. Every one of those hotel rooms has featured a TV remote control enclosed in a plastic bag. No hotel ever did that before COVID. Precautions such as this were very common in the early days of the COVID pandemic, when doctors suspected that it was transmitted primarily by contact with contaminated surfaces. And yet it was more than two years ago when researchers concluded that COVID primarily spreads through the air. Nonetheless, we still have plastic bags around our remote controls. They may not do much to prevent the spread of COVID, but they’re relatively inexpensive, and they make guests feel like a hotel is serious about room sanitation.

I’m not angry about the plastic bags. They probably do some good, since hotel remotes are likely unsanitary. For me, the plastic bags are simply a reminder that the COVID pandemic provoked changes, some of which were temporary, and some of which have endured. Those bags remind me that the difference between the temporary changes on the one hand and the lasting changes on the other hand may have as much to do with feelings and economics as they have to do with any cogent rationale.

This applies to churches as well as to hotels. FBC Farmersville has a weekly livestream of our 8:30 worship service. Before COVID, I resisted having any sort of TV ministry. “I’m not trying to send my sermons out to search committees, we want local people to COME to our worship services instead of watching from home, and there aren’t many people outside of Farmersville who are interested in watching our worship services,” I said. But along came COVID-19, and then a weekly livestream became our primary way of staying connected with church members who were quarantining.

No COVID-related impact remains in Farmersville that would justify our having a weekly livestream of our worship service, but we still have it. Why? Well, economics are a factor—we spent a lot of money on that equipment, and we’re not going to let it collect dust. Also, it has taken the place of a pre-existing ministry to shutins, so it still serves a ministry purpose.

Throughout 2020, some people were saying that everything had changed forever. That turned out not to be true. COVID provoked a lot of changes in our churches, to be sure. Some of them were temporary. Some of them endured. There’s no logical formula that could have predicted which changes would last and which ones would fall by the wayside. That may leave you, the member or pastor of a local church, a little bewildered by it all—perhaps even a little frustrated.

My major takeaway from the COVID experience, now that we are on this side of it? I am more confident today about the importance of our local church gatherings than I have ever been before. At least three truths undergird for me this sense of the vital role played by the local assembly of believers.

First, I have seen how much believers can suffer spiritually and emotionally without a local church home. Just a few weeks into the pandemic, and not long before our local schools reopened, a senior adult lady stopped me near the drug store and said, “My son needs to go back to church.” His father had died before the pandemic, so he was grieving. He also was trying to navigate estate-related issues as well as the added stress of trying to adapt to online education for his school-aged children. “He’s going through a lot, right now,” she begged, “and he can’t handle it well without his church family.” We soon resumed our in-person worship services.

Second, I have seen how much the regular preaching and teaching of the Bible can help us stay grounded in the truth while we sort out how to think about vexing questions in politics and society. We may (and do) differ with one another about who kept their sanity during all of this, but the one thing all Americans agreed about was that some of us lost our way during the COVID pandemic in terms of being able to conduct gracefilled, civil conversations with one another that helped us find good answers to hard questions. Quarantine, whatever else it accomplished, put a lot of people into their living rooms to watch TV for hours on end. Deprived of face-to-face conversations with real-life people who might see things from a different angle, we hardened in our opinions and rehearsed the harshest ways of viewing people who thought differently.

To be sure, a New Testament church is not a meeting of the Free-Thinkers Society. We exist to harden opinions about eternal truth. And yet, the preaching and teaching of biblical truth also, by focusing people upon eternal truth, serves to help them to put into eternal perspective the hot-button question of today that will be gone tomorrow.

If Francine in your Sunday School class chooses to wear a mask, the fact that you think her mask is ineffective or unneeded is not a very good reason to interrupt a lesson about how the gospel is the good news of God’s deliverance from an eternal Hell, right?

Third, when a lot of other things stopped working during the height of the pandemic, I was encouraged to see that the simple things were what proved to be the most effective. Biblical preaching, prayer, personal conversation and encouragement, face-to-face discipleship, and targeted outreach beyond the walls of the church building are as effective today as they were two millennia ago.

When a lot of other things stopped working during the height of the pandemic, I was encouraged to see that the simple things were what proved to be the most effective. Biblical preaching, prayer, personal conversation and encouragement, face-to-face discipleship, and targeted outreach beyond the walls of the church building are as effective today as they were two millennia ago.

I offer one final word, especially for younger pastors in our Convention: I hope that your COVID-era leadership has given you confidence in the Lord of the churches, not timidity. You have survived an ordeal—maybe your first ministry ordeal. When the next one comes, you’ll know that you have a powerful and faithful God by your side. Jesus Christ is Lord, not just of our churches, but of everything in the universe from the largest galaxies to the smallest viruses. We are here to serve others in His name, for His sake, with His authority, and under His protection. Even when you can’t see how, that always works.