Moving Forward

Hey Church: It feels like a good time to make plans for 2021 if we haven’t done it yet. The attacks at the Capitol and the changes in national leadership delayed looking past mid-January, but now’s the time to assess where we are and where we are going this year.

I hope we are moving forward. I hope we are creating new paths for ministry not inspite of the pandemic but because of the pandemic.

Do we need to open a door and let the light shine into our meetings and mission plans?  Over the past several months as COVID-19 has weighed us down, I’ve heard these comments from Church People I love:

• We can’t use our unused property to build a shelter.  I’ve always imagined kids playing soccer on that field. (NOTE: The church building has been there for over 50 years and there has never been a soccer game – or any game – played on that lot.)
• We can’t use our Education Wing for transitional housing.  What if we get an influx of children who need Sunday School space? (NOTE: There are five children in the congregation and they are thriving without traditional Sunday School.)
• We can’t close our church.  Sure, we have only eight people participating, but once the pandemic is over everyone will come back!  (NOTE: There were only twelve participants pre-COVID and so “everyone” will not give us the capacity to thrive without some death and resurrection.)
• We are hoping to call a pastor who will bring us back to our glory years after this pandemic is finally over.  (NOTE: The glory years are long gone.  They are never coming back in the way we remember them. The right pastor can lead your congregation towards looking more like the Reign of God, but you have to want that.)

At 9:21 last night, we lived through the 21st minute of the 21st hour of the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century.  It’s time to get moving into the next days and years and centuries.  Or we can stop here and close our church buildings.

It’s easy to say, “Yes, we want to move forward” with our lips but we don’t really want it in our deepest souls.  I’m praying every day that our faithful Church People ask God to make us crave this desire to move forward with more than our words.

Image source and the article is pretty good too.