It’s
tempting to wonder whether the Church will ever be the same, once COVID-19 has
moved on; whether we shall be able to pick up where we left off, especially with
regard to how worship is done. Some people may have got so used to the
‘virtual’ that they will cease going to church altogether. Some may return in a
spirit of dogged faithfulness. Others may be coming for the first time, their
curiosity prompted by what they have experienced of online worship and ministry
during the lockdown. They will be wondering whether they will find the same imaginative
richness in a church which, until now, they have never visited. These people
will not be looking to return to a past they barely remember, but to the
present made holy, re-consecrated, perhaps, in ways which speak to them in
whatever circumstances they find themselves in, once this time of trouble has
passed by.
All the
isolation and loneliness we are experiencing needs to have served some purpose,
once it is over. There will, of course, be immediate short-term benefits. We
will look back on it as a time of fruitfulness, when relationships were strengthened,
when neighbours looked out for each other. But will it really bring about the
changes that we hope for regarding society? Could these benefits become longer
term? And how might the Church become instrumental in the transforming of our
society? Much depends on the extent to which people and organisations have
grown accustomed to a changed way of life. As with the workplace, will virtual
worship have become so much easier and cheaper that Sundays as we know them
will cease to be? While I don’t think that the majority of churchgoers will be desperate
to return to their churches in order to hear sermons, or even to sing hymns,
one thing they may want is to be together again in a space where they can
connect more deeply with God and, from that place of connecting, with one
another. I am not convinced that streamed worship, however innovative it is,
can really enable this deep connection.
The
reasons are quite simple. A screen can be switched off, leaving the person as
isolated as they were to begin with. A screen also retains or ‘swallows up’
whatever it has been instrumental in projecting. I have a small icon in front
of my computer monitor. It is never switched off. I can return to it and, in the
face of the Pantocrator, it returns its meaning to me whenever I glance
at it, whether the computer is on or not. There is always a conversation going
on, a mutual exchange that takes place through eye contact and reciprocal
knowing.
People
who normally minister in churches on Sunday morning will need to have done this
connecting, and know how to sustain it once there is a return to normality. People
returning to church, along with those whose lockdown experience of church has
triggered an interest or a need to give church a go, will do so out of a
renewed appreciation of what it means to need other people. We will all have
experienced this need in some measure at least during the coronavirus lockdown.
For those
who are used to working with people around them, the isolation and solitude that
the COVID-19 virus may have brought to their lives may prove to be essential to
their future ministry and to the future life of the Church. Self-isolation is
not something many people experience on a day-to-day basis. As a result, few of
us have learned to value silence and solitude enough to seek it out. Part of
the difficulty lies in the need to be busy. The lockdown weeks will have made
that need all the more acute for those who are unused to simply being at home,
or even working from home, because much of our frenetic activity has to do with
the need to escape from solitude and silence. If we are not busy doing
something, then we are not living. We are failing in some way. It follows that
if the Church is to be at all credible in the way it ministers, it needs to
know how to speak to this fear of failure and even to the deeper unnameable
fears that confront us in enforced solitude, including the fear of death itself.
Speaking
into people’s private and collective fears is central to the preacher’s task.
It is also an intrinsic part of the way we minister online. What we put out online
is, on the whole, not designed to be read in the way you would read a newspaper
or a set of directives relating to how we should manage our lives under
lockdown. If we minister online, we must think and pray ourselves into a place
that transcends the confines of the computer screen. In this respect, we are
also ministering sacramentally, to the extent that our words are written or
spoken directly into that place of understanding which is lodged in the secrecy
of the human heart. There is no intermediary, no preacher or priest. Those who
are on the receiving end of our ministry, being in front of a computer screen,
rather than in a church surrounded by real people, are physically very much
alone, and that aloneness will be reinforced once the virtual service ends and
the computer is turned off.
It
follows that if there is to be virtual worship, those who are leading it need
to know how to reach out to the isolated person, rather than to a non-specific gathering
of ‘followers’. Just as a church congregation is more than a congregation, it
is a gathering of persons; our Twitter followers and other social media
contacts are not simply there to gratify our need for recognition. They are
there because they are seeking something which speaks to them of truth and of
hope, something that connects them with some greater power who they are
recognising, rather than seeing for the first time. This will only be realised
through an experience of ‘returning’ or being returned to a place they have
perhaps always known, but see now as if for the first time.
***
Each day, we will post a
short article by one of Darton, Longman and Todd’s amazing authors, offering a
personal reflection on our current situation in life. Sometimes this will be
written with reference to one of their books, and sometimes about how they are
living in response to the coronavirus and our current world situation. We hope
it will give you a taste of the depth and diversity of DLT’s list – books for
heart, mind and soul that aim to meet the needs and interests of all.
Today’s post is by
Lorraine Cavanagh, author of Waiting on
the Word: Preaching sermons that connect people with God. You can buy a copy here.
my thoughts exactly
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