Five Years Out from COVID - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It is hard to believe that we are half a decade from the fateful spring of 2020. Do you remember where you were when you realized that life was going to change? I remember two separate events a couple days apart. In the first, I was at Rooster’s (obviously a happy memory as far as the food). I was meeting with a couple other rec league coaches to prepare for the 8th grade spring soccer season. It was warm outside. I remember walking away from that fine wing establishment with the season suspended, having found out while we were there. Then the next day our staff was together in our temporary office after moving out of the old church. We had the TV on, and were watching Governor Mike DeWine tell us that things were going to shut down for a couple weeks to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Ah, got it – two weeks.

Including the pandemic and the response to it, 2020 contained two more of the most controversial events that I have experienced while in ministry: racial unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd, and the 2020 election. Any one of them was intense enough, but all three in the same year? Good grief.

What follows are my own reflections and conclusions about that crazy and trying time, as a church and a nation. I’m taking a page out of Clint Eastwood’s 1966 movie for my headings, in reverse order.

The Ugly

It is obvious enough that the year 2020 radicalized people. Left-right, progressive- conservative, woke-based: all of us moved in one direction or the other. Our church is of the conservative, Bible-believing Calvinist Presbyterian variety. We were before 2020, and we will continue to be. With COVID, we tried to chart a middle way, with a tilt towards freedom and gathering sooner than later. Like many churches, this middle was not quite successful. By this I mean, among other policies:

We shut down for a couple months.
We didn’t require masks for worship, wanting to avoid conscience-binding and leaving that decision up to the individual.
We required masks for children’s ministry leaders.
We encouraged social distancing in worship.
We had a reservation system for Christmas Eve that year so that there wouldn’t be huge crowds together.
We never spoke about the vaccine, either pro or contra, from the pulpit. This was also a matter of conscience, one that we did not believe the church should speak to.

This middle way was received by most people sympathetically, and rejected wholeheartedly by others. Some left because we didn’t make masks mandatory. Others left because we did make them mandatory for children’s ministry leaders (which we did, in part, to mimic the school’s policy whose space we were renting, so we didn’t run afoul of the school administration). Some were furious that we were so lax on social distancing and masking – I remember one phone conversation in particular when someone asked me: “how many people are going to die before you change your policy?!” No one had died (and no one did die), so 0 seemed the right number to shoot for.

Then came the summer of 2020. Earlier in the year I had been sympathetic to the pleas for racial justice, especially after watching the George Floyd video (more on this below). But the mass destruction that followed, the businesses ravaged, the billions of dollars of widespread damage due to looting and rioting – that was inexplicable, expensive and dumb (which, come to think of it, sounds very familiar with what’s been happening this week in a certain city of Angels). The blanket claims that our police forces across the country were irredeemably racist was insane. The mental gymnastics required to bless mass violent mostly peaceful protests but prevent gathered worship or school were challenging. All of this also caused tremendous controversy within the church. Some left, some were offended but stayed, and we worked through it together, thank God.

Then came the fall of 2020, and the election. Donald Trump v. Joe Biden was a big deal. The voting booths were very full, more full than I remember in my years as a voter. It took a long time for the results to get figured out. And throughout, the Facebook takes were blazing hot. Some left the church because of the posts of other members. Offenses were given and taken regularly.

Overall it was a very polarizing year, filled with angst and woe. The isolation exacerbated all of it, making most of us crazy at one time or another. We are not meant to be alone. It was, in many ways, ugly.

The Bad

On the day that our Governor announced the shut-down, we had already committed to worshiping at Franklin church that Sunday. After that, along with almost 100% of all American churches, we closed. For the next 8 weeks, we neglected to gather together as the body of Christ. We “worshiped online” – a dubious, contradictory phrase. Why? Because worship is an embodied experience, and requires participation with the place and people of God. Live-streaming is a helpful substitute if we cannot gather together. But it is not a substitute for worship. A better phrase would be “watching church.” The temporary sanction of communion while dispersed in our homes during COVID was, in my mind, a mistake. There is no substitute for the gathered body receiving the bread and cup together, and in turn, by faith and the power of the Spirit, enjoying the real, spiritual presence of Christ.

If it were up to me, I would never shut down worship again. Maybe there will come a time when a plague is so bad that it kills 50% of the population. The Black Plague of 1347-1351 killed around 30-60% of those who contracted it according to historical estimates. No real treatment, no germ theory, malnutrition – none of these helped. Compared to this, it is appropriate to call it the “COVID cold.” That sounds flippant, maybe it is. I know that many people lost loved ones, and I am not making light of those losses. But the truth by the numbers is that this was simply not a threat to the majority of the population. For anyone under 60, the danger of dying from COVID was similar to driving 25,000 miles in your car for a year, or birthing two babies in a year in the US (or, an IFR of .038%). The disastrous effects of COVID were not COVID, but the restrictive, oppressive reactions and restrictions and interventions in society because of COVID. But even if a plague like the Bubonic one were to be visited upon us, the church should not shut down. The visible church practices obedience to God and points us to the hope that we desperately need in a lonely, terrified, hopeless world. The hypocrisy of keeping liquor stores and weed dispensaries open because they are essential, while pressuring churches to close is about as dystopian as it gets. “Numb thyself” apparently is more important than “worship the Lord thy God.”

We were even closed on Easter Sunday that year. One family offered to host an outdoor Easter service, with me preaching from a cherry picker and everyone outside. We (the elders) collectively said “no.” This was a bad decision, one that I regret. I hope we never close on a Sunday again.

Related to the summer of unrest and claims of systemic racism, I wrote this. After the inexcusable corruption that has followed, I would not have written that. By July 4th, 2020 I began to see through some of the hysteria, and wrote this (also linked). At the end of 2020, I wrote this piece (again, linked) on the falsehood of critical theory. Throughout that time, I had several conversations with some of you who argued, pushed back, and discussed these things with me in faithful and helpful ways. Praise God for the body of Christ.

The Good

The Lord blessed us with so much good coming out of COVID. Here are five of those blessings:

1. We opened worship back up on June 7, 2020, and stayed open even though we didn’t have a building, since the schools would not open to anyone. Those four months of worship outside were so memorable. My personal favorite was the one on September 13th, in a massive thunderstorm. Everyone knew it was coming, and around 20 people showed up (including staff). Singing into the downpour, preaching while drenched to the bone – what a joy.
2. We tried a lot of new things to stay connected – live prayer on social media, live-streaming, and social events via zoom to name a few. Streaming, of course, has continued, and has become a kind of front door to our church. I don’t know that we would ever have started streaming apart from COVID. We don’t want anyone to stay home who can come to church, but it does help the homebound stay connected to our church.
3. We persevered through huge challenges. Our staff did a phenomenal job through trials of all sorts. Our deacons kept showing up to volunteer and kept caring and praying for our people. Our elders kept leading, and maintained our staff instead of laying them off. They didn’t panic when we had no idea whether we would survive financially.
4. In fact, we started a capital campaign in fall of 2020, thumbing our nose at the uncertainty and trusting that God knew what was coming even if we didn’t. That campaign was wildly successful thanks to so many of you, and led to the beautiful building we have now, a power-tool for ministry and worship in a strategic location.
5. We became, to use a favorite word of mine coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, more anti-fragile. Let me explain. Let us say you are taking a road trip from Orange County to Franklin County (let us also assume your truck doesn’t get set on fire by protesters as you that chaotic county). You are riding in an old but proud 1980 F-150 pickup truck. This 45 year old gem has broken struts, among other problems. Your task is to haul one box, which must be placed in the bed of the truck, without being tied down. Here are three scenarios based on three different kinds of cargo:
  1. A few dozen eggs thrown in haphazardly: These will be a soupy, rotten mess when you pull into your abode in Ohio. They are fragile, they break under stress.
  2. A 50-lb. dumbbell: This sturdy piece of iron will not break, bend or bow. It will emerge out of the box (if the box isn’t destroyed) unchanged. It is robust, it remains the same under stress.
  3. A can of paint that has been sitting for a year, but tightly sealed. That can of paint will get jostled and jolted, and at the end of the trip, when you open it, it will actually have improved. The pigments will be fully mixed, and will be ready for use. That can of paint is anti-fragile, it benefits and improves from stress.

This has been the net gain with NAPC. We have served our community and city with greater impact. We speak clearly about and stand up for controversial but clear Biblical matters, which is now more than ever part of our culture. Those who stayed through the tough times are bonded together more strongly than we once were. Those who have joined us more recently are clear on our identity as a church, and appreciate it.

Only God knows what is coming. We will probably make mistakes from time to time – hopefully we will be humble enough to own up to them, repent if we need to, and keep moving. God brought us this far, in unpredictable ways. As the Gospel song says, “He never failed me yet.” By His grace we will be faithful to His calling on this church. When more volatility and disruption and stress come, Lord willing, it will only make us better and tougher and stronger – more anti-fragile – in our commitment to Christ as individuals and as a church.

For His glory in the next 5 years,

Pastor David