Theological Journal - April 25 - Marks of a Post-Pandemic Church

Three challenges facing a Post-Pandemic Church in America.

 -Much has already changed for us as we weather this Coronavirus pandemic and the social distancing it requires.

-Much will remain changed even after the pandemic is controlled and social distancing relaxed.

-We cannot know or predict the full nature and scope of these changes.

Two things we can say at this point with a fair degree of certainty. One is that we will not be returning to the “normal” of the Pre-Pandemic church (and difficult as it is to imagine, that is not a bad thing). And two, the changes coming will be larger (or “worse,” if you prefer) than we will be told; and our ability to cope with or “fix” them will be exaggerated.

Given all this, I want to offer some reflections I first put forward in my 2015 book The Incredible Shrinking Gospel. They seem even more relevant today so I offer them again for your consideration. Given the theological marks of the church – Unity, Apostolicity, Catholicity, Holiness – I explored what some more practical marks related to these theological marks might be in a world like ours. I drew on a scene I recalled from the movie Remember the Titans.

Denzel Washington plays the new black head coach of a highly successful northern Virginia high school football team. These were the early desegregation days of busing. The new coach faces many obstacles to get his black and white players ready to play together for him. In one scene he is preparing them for their opening game. As the team run through drills he calls out “Who are we?” They respond, “The Titans!” “What are we?” the coach asks back. They answer, “Mobile, agile, hostile.” Mo-bile, ag-ile, hos-tile – a good start, I thought, to thinking through some practical marks of the church. To those I would add frag-ile. Mobile, agile, hostile, and fragile are, in my view, four essential marks of a community seeking to learn to be a church in Post-Pandemic America.

What do they mean in our context? I suggest at least the following:

Mobile 

We are a people:  

•ready to move into a new future with the Lord; 

•on the way, who do not ultimately draw our sense of identity or vocation from kith and kin, or town and homestead, but from the One into whose name we are baptized and the diverse community he calls to follow him; 

•willing to forgo our own security for the sake of the Jesus we are following, the One who had no place to lay his head.   

Agile 

We are a people who:  

•seek more relationships, both within the community and with the world around us, especially with the outcast and marginal folks in our communities; 

•accept and even embrace change, willing, ad perhaps even eager, to ride the front edge of the wave; 

•resist the lure of the spectacle which often renders us unable to act in meaningful ways as well as the token, often media-driven, “actions” that yield little effect; 

•like our Lord, are willing and able to bend the knee, take up the basin and towel to serve one another by washing each other’s feet. 

Hostile 

We are a people who:  

 

•serve a Kingdom that challenges all other rulers and powers; and a Lord who came “not to bring peace, but a sword” (that is, meant to provoke and foment change and conflict); 

•live and tell the truth, which, in a world built on lies and illusions cannot help but disturb the peace (we tell the truth especially about ourselves, thus we are a humble people); 

•practice the “violence of love” (Oscar Romero  and are equipped by God with his own “armor” (Eph.6) and overcome the enemy by Jesus’ victory at the cross, our own faithful testimony to him, and our willingness to even give up our lives serving him (Rev.12:10-12); and

•are called to be part of Jesus’ Subversive Counter-Revolutionary movement, to live out a different life as we play our roles in God’s Kingdom movement.   

Fragile 

We are a broken people who:  

•have found healing in Jesus Christ; 

•continue to be a broken people who keep on finding healing in Jesus Christ (this vulnerability to owning our brokenness and receiving Jesus’ healing touch enables us to offer others that very same comfort and healing as they face their own brokenness); 

•are called to “bear our cross,” to live as suffering servants, indeed even “Silent               Servants of the Used, Abused, and Utterly Screwed Up” (Thomas Klise, The Last Western). 

None of this is really new, of course. But they are things we at best paid lip service to in the Pre-Pandemic church. In the Post-Pandemic church in America we may have the opportunity to embrace them not as things we “ought” to do but as quite practical responses we are graciously given to make  incarnate Jesus Christ in that radically changed world. Such at least is may hope and prayer in offering them.