Where do we go from here?
In travel terms, the shoulder season is that ambiguous time between peak and off-peak tourism. That feels to me like where we are here in the U.S. with Covid. Vaccines are widely available now to teens and adults, and many are fully inoculated. At the same time, children aren’t eligible for shots yet, and at last check the vaccination rate is under 30% in my county. Life in community is starting to resume, though what that looks like varies widely. Churches are deciding whether and how to dial back precautions. Pastors are juggling ever-changing public health information, growing levels of impatience among church members, the interconnectedness of programming (e.g., how can we start back Sunday School for parents if we don’t feel comfortable re-gathering their children?), and concerns about what responsibilities they’ll be left holding once we can all toss our masks into the bonfire. How, then, do we move forward in this weird and complicated time?
I have continually been delighted by how the book of Acts, which has been part of a regular lectionary diet lately, speaks to our situation. Jesus flies away into the sky, the Holy Spirit breezes through, and suddenly everything looks and feels and sounds different. The rest of Acts is about Jesus’ followers feeling their way along, making assumptions that the Spirit must correct, doing new things (and sometimes stumbling a bit), partnering with unlikely people, and generally figuring out how to share the gospel now that their leader is in their hearts and not before their eyes.
In other words, they experiment - constantly. Everything is up for discussion, because the movement is not what it was when Jesus was around, and it’s not yet what it will be once the momentum really picks up.
This is where we are. This Covid shoulder season is a chance to discover, to try and reflect, then to try and reflect again based on what we learn. This goes for long-time ministries and those we’re just now dreaming about. Here’s an outline for experimentation that you can adapt to your context:
Trying
What is God inviting us to try?
What excites us about trying this thing?
How would trying this thing help us be more fully who God is encouraging us to be?
Who will lead our attempt?
What do we need (e.g., information, tools, partners, spiritual preparation) to get started?
When will we try this thing?
How will we pay attention to how God might be at work in, around, and through us as we try this thing?
When will we reflect on what we’ve tried?
Reflecting
What were the main tasks in planning and implementing this thing that we tried?
What relationships did we start or strengthen as we tried it?
What did we learn about ourselves (individually and/or as a congregation) and/or our larger community by trying this thing?
How did we make faithful use of our gifts (e.g., time, talents, connections, space, money) by trying this thing?
Where did we notice God at work in, around, and through us as we tried this thing?
Based on our responses to the above, what might God be inviting us to try next?
These questions are designed to frame experimentation and discernment as the faithful processes that they are, generate excitement for what might be possible, provide a means for ending (without shame) initiatives that don’t work, and show how good things come from trial and error.
There is no full-fledged how-to for emerging from a pandemic. All we can do - actually, what we get to do - is try and have fun doing it.
Photo by Girl with red hat on Unsplash.