(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for The Small Normal, originally shared on March 15, 2021. It was the ninety-eighth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
President Biden has presented his goals that
everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one by May 1st,
about 7-weeks from now, and that we should be pretty much back to normal, or at
least to the new normal, by the 4th of July, or about 16-weeks from
now.
We have a way to go before we get close to
the new normal. But now is the time to prepare. Today, I want to talk about four
ways that the New normal will be small and the one way that our smallness will
make us large.
Daylight Saving
Time changed yesterday. That’s Daylight Saving Time, by the way, not Daylight
Savings Time, if you want to be annoying.
Daylight Saving Time was not begun to give farmers extra time to work in
the fields, it was done to save energy just after World War 1.
Either way, it’s
like the probably apocryphal and unnamed Native American chief is said to have
said, “Only the white man could believe that if you cut one end off a blanket
and sew it onto the other end, that you make a longer blanket”.
And if your
thinking that we in California voted to do a way with daylight savings time in
2018, you’re right! That proposition has yet to be approved by our state legislature,
and if it’s approved the resolution goes to Congress. I guess those things take
time. 😊
Sally and I have both had our shots, and two weeks have gone by. But, I think about the story they told us in Boy
Scouts about the Park Ranger who got shots to make himself immune to poison ivy.
It took 6 months, but he finished it and when he was out with a group of other Park
Rangers and they came across a patch of poison ivy he wanted to shock them. He
took off his clothes and rolled around in it. And they were shocked, but it
turned out that the shots were not 100% effective. He broke out in a blistered
rash from head to toe.
None of the vaccines claim 100% effectiveness. We still need to be
vigilant at least until we have herd immunity. Which will take at least until
July. Then the current wisdom, and I want to emphasize “current”, as I
understand it is that we could get the coronavirus, but it will be more like a
flu then a deadly disease, and we are very unlikely to be an asymptomatic
carrier.
But, we’re getting close to the New Normal
and now is the time to start imagining what it will be for the Church in
general and our churches in particular, and to be preparing for it.
I serve on several boards and committees for our synod, a group of about
110 ELCA churches in the Los Angeles, Kern, San Luis Obispo, Santa
Barbara, and Ventura counties, and I’ve been thinking about
that a lot.
I’ve done our videos/blogs/podcasts about aspects of the New Normal that
I think is coming. Today, were going to talk about a little part of what I
think will be The New Normal, and why I think that a big part of it is going to
be small. 😊
The “small” normal will not be new at all. We’ve
gotten used to living in small groups at home, or even all alone. Working in small
groups or more commonly in home-based virtual communities has become
commonplace. Committee meetings take place with Zoom, or something like it, on
our digital devices. Learning from videos and in Zoom environments in our own
homes has become the norm. We don’t have to be in the same room, we don’t have
to be in any room, to meet together virtually. I regularly see people taking
part in meetings while driving in their cars.
Here are four ways in which I think that we
will be seeing The Small Normal in the Church.
First, in the New Normal, “small” will be the
norm. Even before the pandemic, small groups like Bible studies, choirs, and
Sunday School classes were commonplace in most churches.
What will be new will be the purposes for
which small groups are structured will change.
Congregations will not see themselves as one
group, but as many, small diverse groups.
People looking for a church will not be
looking for a chance to be anonymous. They will gravitate to smaller churches
and smaller groups.
We have been starved for community and
meaningful, sustainable relationships. Large gatherings, unless they are in
fact composed of many small gatherings, will not provide this.
Jesus preached to large crowd, but he did not
require large crowds for him to be present.
*Matthew
18:19-20
To be gathered in Jesus’ name is not to use
the name of Jesus as a magic word. It means to be gathered in his reality, his
true presence. And that only requires two people. I think that that is because
two is the minimum number of people needed for a relationship. Like the HOV
lane on the High-occupancy Vehicle lane on the freeway. Two is the smallest number
greater than one, but that’s considered high occupancy. Two are necessary.
Small groups provide an opportunity for the
personal relationships in which people can get immediate feedback on their questions
and challenges in life. They are a place where our relationship with God can be
immediate and nourishing in our relationship with other believers, where people
can be trained and developed as leaders and mentors.
Small groups make our churches nimble. They
provide the opportunities for a diverse people to find diverse expressions of
God’s presence and call in their lives both separately and together.
Not
that they can't get off track. I remember a colleague sharing an experience of
when she had taken a call to a church in a small town in Kansas. She attended one
of their Bible Study groups, where they pretty much burned through the prefab
lesson for the day and got down to their real purpose: coffee drinking and talking
about members of the congregation. One of them mentioned that a teenage girl
was pregnant and unmarried. She was asked if she was going to do what Pastor (somebody)
would do and make her stand in front of the congregation and confess her sin?
The new pastor said she would think about that and, the next time the group
gathered the new pastor said, “I’ve looked through the church records and it
look like, about once a generation a girl gets pregnant without being married. I
think having them get up in front of the congregation is a good idea, but
before we do that, I want to call the congregations attention to a much more common
sin around here, and that’s the sin of “gossip”. I think those who gossip
should stand up in front of the congregation and confess their sin. All the
participants look down and stared into their coffee cups. Finally, one lifted
their head and said, There wouldn’t be time.”
Small groups that are faithful to their core beliefs and call to
evangelize will grow. Everything that’s healthy grows and reproduces. Every
once in a while, the group will split.
There will be no need for large buildings that are rarely used, but
access to occasional sites, it raves could do it why can't the church? We will
need locations of community particularly after this pandemic.
Second, small groups will be a place for the
new congregations we will find in the New Normal. Last time I talked about
what has been lost. But we have also gained People have had a year for greater
introspection. We have lived to a greater degree apart from physical community,
at least most of us have. Some will have been drawn closer to God through this
experience through the presence of God and some will have been drawn farther
away by the cares of this world.
As we gather again for physically present worship, we will a different
congregation than the one we remember from a year ago.
Small groups will be the means by which to bring new members to
discipleship, where more seasoned members can talk about their experiences as
individuals, and we can all reground ourselves in another way of being the Body
of Christ.
We will see ourselves not only as one body with lots of cells, but as
organs and systems, each gifted with what we need to serve our function
together in the one Body of Christ.
Third, the purposes for which small groups are
structured will change. This will require a change in attitude.
Small groups will not be structured for the
people that are in them, but for the people who are not in them yet. They will
be assembled with the expectation that they will grow. A portion of every
gathering will focus on how people are sharing their faith in such a way that
people come to a living relationship with the one true living God, that is,
lives of faith.
I think a lot about why most of the churches
that I know are so indifferent to doing evangelism. Why do so many of us have
we have so little expectation that, unless someone is raised in our kind of
Christian culture (something we less and less), they will not come to actual
faith. I don’t mean joining a church but coming to an actual life of faith.
Why do we offer modeling but not mentoring,
why do we provide no training for evangelism, or have any expectation that
people will share their faith, and no mechanism for receiving people who are
new to the Christian life, whatever their chronological age, and are nourished
and trained to live a mature, productive, Christian life?
Where do people go when they are looking for
something that truly is awesome? Where they can ask questions of people they
respect, where people are rooted to the living reality of what they speak, and
not as a social service agency that uses religious language and once meaningful
traditions.
Small groups will be structured to change
all those things.
Fourth,
I think that when most people express their preference for traditional worship
or the traditional church, they are speaking of the way things were when they
were growing up and/or when they were new Christians.
I don’t think virtual participation in
committee meetings, education, or worship is going to go away anytime soon.
These will not be just a temporary second-best alternative, but the preferred
method for gathering by younger people, people with economic, or environmental
or mobility issues about personal transportation, and people who are excited by
technological solutions.
Large worship buildings have become dead
weight around the necks of shrinking and aging congregations that remain open
in order to maintain a collegial group of like-minded people (often expresses
as a family), preserve traditions and do small amounts of community service
without actually inviting the community to know Jesus.
Finally, our smallness is our largeness. Jesus said, in the Gospel of
Matthew, the 5th chapter, starting at the 13th verse:
and a few chapters later, in the 13th
chapter, the 33rd verse.
*Matthew 13:33
Our meaning comes from our character, not
our size.
It’s been said that the good news of Jesus
Christ does not call us to be successful. It calls us to be faithful. The
pastors and congregations who said that, though, were not successful, that is,
growing. It was more of a rationalization than a statement of faith.
The Holy Spirit will be the glue that holds us together, largely because that is the only thing that we will have. It is the streams of living water that push and form us, and give us what we need to live. It is the only thing that the Church needs.
The future is small, but our smallness makes us mighty because the quality of our character comes from the gifts of God.
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