The Post-Pandemic Church

 Sixth Friday after Penteost

Pauli Murray--Color:White

Lectionary Texts:

Friday: 

OT: 2 Samuel 4

NT: Mark 6:1-6

 

Saturday

OT: 2 Samuel 5:1-10

NT: Mark 6:7-7-13

As most of you know, I'm using the Episcopal calendar for Saints' Days, church seasons, commemorations and colors. The United Methodist Calendar, which has the same format and is made by the same company, has very little of this. Red is the color for only one day a year, Pentecost. Green is the color for more than half the year. How boring! We Methodists may be methodical, but we're not that boring. We need to have Saints' Days and Commorations. I'm now thinking that as a part of the Daily Office project, I need to design a Methodist calendar, that would include important saints and commemorate important Methodists and others. 

Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was the first black woman to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. She was ordained in 1977, along with five white women, in the group of first ordained women Episcopalians. She was born in Baltimore but grew up in Durham. She applied for college at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1938 but was rejected because she was black. She went on to Howard University and from there to Yale Law School, where she was the first African-American and the first woman to graduate from Yale Law. She served as a civil rights lawyer in California for a number of years before receiving a call to ministry from God. She wrote numerous books. I am about to read one of them, Proud Shoes, as a part of my own personal focus on reading Black authors this year.

What will the post-pandemic church be like? My sense is that we are unprepared for it, despite all the preparations pastors may have made or be making. There is much that we do not know. Of course the scariest thing is that we do not know whether there might be another pandemic of something other than Covid. 

Here are some of my own thoughts. We'll see how good a prognosticator I am. The first important fact is that church will come back in greatly diminished numbers. Too many people will have developed habits of doing other things on Sunday. The United States will becomes an increasingly secular country, much as western Europe has become over the last century.Weak churches will close. Strong churches will weaken. We will wonder what we are doing wrong and will have numerous commissions to find out. 

The 2008 General Conference added a phrase to the United Methodist Church vows of membership. The fourth vow which had read:

will you faithfully participate in its ministries by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service?
I will. 

was changed to read: 

Will you faithfully participate in its ministries by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service, and your witness? (italics mine).  I will. 

Many folks have wanted to interpret witness in the loosest possible ways, more or less to make witness equivalent to service. It isn't. While we may consider witness as doing good for others on mission teams, soup kitchens, disaster relief and other good work, it is not the core of witness. Witness is sharing your faith with others--I mean verbally. Telling others about Christ. For those who find this idea too burdensome, one thing you can easily do is invite a friend to church. 

 Another thing pastors and staff and the UM Publishing House should consider doing is creating courses and workshops on faith-sharing. Faith sharing/witnessing does not have to be beating people over the head with the gospel. It can be simple and non-threatening. It can also be a joy in your life. If we don't fulfill that last phrase of our church vows, I'm afraid we will decline until there is little left.

God of our Faith,

Strengthen it. Help us to overcome our faith sharing shyness, Help us to understand that others need Jesus and need the Gospel. Help us to develop the means to give them what they need. In His name. Amen.

 

Faithfully,

Christian