I kiss Rich goodbye. I am leaving to facilitate a women’s retreat just outside Palo Alto, California. I get through the TSA Precheck lane and stroll past each Hudson Bookseller store on my way to the gate just in case there is a book that catches my attention and begs to keep company with me for the days of travel I have ahead.
I had an incredible time on retreat with the women from Palo Alto Vineyard. I flew from Palo Alto to Portland, where Rich was waiting for me. We drove to Cannon Beach for a three-day retreat with the Vineyard Northwest Leadership Team. From Cannon Beach, we drove to Lincoln City, Oregon, for a two-day Northwest Region Pastor’s and Leader’s retreat, phew!
This pace was not unusual for Rich and me pre-Covid. December through March of 2020, we spent at least two weeks out of the month with churches in the region. All that came to an abrupt end with the March 2020 shutdowns. We spent March of 2020 through March of 2021 pretty much sheltering in place.
Like so many, we had Thanksgiving alone. We masked up and delivered Christmas gifts to our kids and grands, and spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day alone. By February, we were eligible to get vaccinated; by April, we were fully vaccinated. Just as we began to plan for some trips, the Delta variant spread; once again, we took precautions and canceled our fall travel plans.
Thinking back on the first months of the pandemic, we had no idea how long it would last. It is still not over. So many were and are still waiting for things to go back to normal. I don’t think there is any going back to pre-Covid times. I read so many stories of people who have or are making significant changes in their lives. Covid-19 has caused folks to rethink how we are living our lives. People have moved home to be close to family. Some have moved to the country to raise kids outside of the city. We moved during Covid. We downsized and, for the first time, became empty-nesters.
Companies are working remotely as the new normal, adapting to our new reality. Adapting, innovation, and change are happening in every sector of society. I know I am changed. The loss of lives, the disruption of all the rhythms, the countless hours on screens, all the ways our lives came to a screeching halt have changed me. Pre-Covid, I was so high on the FOMO spectrum that I don’t think I could have imagined me today. I have spent months on end grieving so many losses of my own and for others. This season has been brutal for pastors and ministry leaders. All of the pivoting to online services, online ministries, and how to do the Church’s work with so many divisive issues right on the surface.
As congregations are gathering again, many pastors still don’t know who all is still with them. Many people are not returning for any number of reasons. What if this is a catalytic time to bring reformation to the Church in America? What if this is the time to dream and invite the Spirit to release the creativity to birth new forms of Church?
In her book, The Great Emergence Phyliss Tickle posits that massive transitions happen in the Church about every 500 years. We are in one now. She was famous for saying that every 500 years, the church is compelled to have a giant rummage sale in which it trots out things that have accumulated—things like doctrines, traditions, and practices—and sorts through them to see what should be kept and what should be discarded. The goal is to simplify and keep what is most valuable and useful.
Peter Drucker said:
EVERY FEW hundred years in Western history, there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society—its world view, its basic values, its social and political structure, its arts, its key institutions—rearranges itself. Fifty years later there is a new world. And the people born then cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born. We are currently living through such a transformation. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/the-post-capitalist-world
This photo of the Choluteca Bridge in Honduras was widely circulated in the early 2000s. The bridge, completed in 1998, was an engineering masterpiece built to brave storms and hurricanes common to Honduras. Unfortunately, the same year, Hurricane Mitch caused substantial damage to Honduras and its infrastructure. Nevertheless, the Choluteca bridge survived; the Choluteca river moved, it no longer flowed beneath the bridge, the bridge became known as “The Bridge to Nowhere.”
As the hurricane-force winds of all matter of social disruptions have blown and continue to blow, maybe it is time to discern where the river is flowing, to rethink how we structure the work of the Church and do the courageous work of discovering what the Spirit is saying today.
