COVID producing something good? I know what you are thinking: Which side of the public health policy debate is he on? Though I do have my opinions, I really want to talk about the missing story of the COVID Pandemic – how God created an amazing opportunity for community in the midst of the conflicts, confusion, and crowdedness of our modern life.
Five years ago this month, COVID flipped our world on its head. Today I wonder, did we learn the lessons God intended for us?
When I left work that Friday – the 13th – I put a quote on my office door, more for me to remember as who knew how long it would be before anyone would come by. It’s a quote from Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring:
“’I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
“’So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
COVID wasn’t my first experience with a pandemic. The first time was while we were living in China the spring of 2003. Like a slow-moving avalanche, we watched SARS roll across the country, shutting down everything in its path and sending people into panic. My parents were visiting from the US. Just in time I flew them to Beijing to send them back home, knowing that when I returned to Xi’an I’d be quarantined.
Even as everything else was closing, provincial officials insisted we keep our international school open – the only school to stay open – fearing foreign experts would otherwise flee, leaving them short-handed when things opened back up. So, practically overnight we moved our entire school to a vacant house we’d recently rented next to our offices and home. As teachers and students complied with required health measures, we kept the school going.
Though people died from SARS, that pandemic didn’t last as long as COVID did, nor was it nearly as global in impact. But we did learn lessons about how to flex and adapt and keep doing what God had called us to do while heeding government orders. Our actions proved a shining testimony to local authorities.
Now it is March 2020. Anticipating our governor’s orders, we are closing our offices and shifting dozens of staff members spread over diverse locations to home-based operations, even while preparing to ramp up our in-person emergency food program to handle an increase in need. We have no idea what is about to hit.
In mere days, we go from providing food to the usual hundreds of people a week to serving 50,000 a month. As faithful volunteers stay home due to age or health concerns, a host of new volunteers, many of them suddenly unemployed, show up to help, wearing gear out of a sci-fi movie.
Even before the lockdown begins, staff members call in sick, some plagued with long COVID to this day. We can’t risk losing all our staff at once – thus shutting down operations – so we separate them into teams that never connect in person. I direct them virtually, sometimes from miles away.
While we scale back some operations at the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, much of our work must keep going. Refugees just arrived need settling. Immigrants have documents facing immovable court deadlines. Houseless high school students and their host families need looking after. People suffering with HIV/AIDS need meals and supplies. Victims of domestic violence and sexual assault are now even more at risk. And all the people suddenly thrown out of work are desperately lining up for blocks for emergency food.
I am so impressed with our staff, volunteers, and donors who step up overnight and work like the heroes they are, practically 24/7. To paraphrase Gandalf, they know they have a job to do – and they do it.
As my wife and I shift our work to home, our youngest daughter, Hannah, is suddenly out of work. Her pre-K class at a church-run school is no longer operating. But the church keeps paying her and other staff so they won’t suffer, faithfully passing on emergency PPP funds.
Hannah’s old job isn’t returning any time soon, so by the new school year she’s found work on the other side of the world – virtually. From our house in the night hours, she zooms into her pre-K classroom at that same old school in China and keeps kids learning even as they are shut in at home.
My wife, who’s been running wrap-around services for a local school, provides similar help for her students in need. Isolated as they are, she drops by their homes with donated laptops, learning resources, and emergency food and checks up on them and their parents – albeit through masks and gloves.
There we are, the three of us holed up in our own house, operating via our computers and phones, checking on family, friends, students, and coworkers scattered far and wide. It takes creative effort and hard work, but like millions of others, we flex and adapt.
As we leave church that last Sunday before lockdown, we have no idea this is our final large gathering for a year. Later that week, church pastors ask those us life group leaders to gather our house groups together the following Sunday. Over the next couple of Sundays, our little life group doubles in size, joined by strays searching for community.
Then word comes: we can’t meet like that either. Even our own people are concerned about gathering in such close quarters. So, we flex and adapt again.
The church moves to an online worship and teaching mode – not nearly as satisfying, but we’re still connecting with each other and hearing from God. The children’s pastor comes up with a creative segment for the kids – and the rest of us gladly listen in. Following the online service, our life groups gather over zoom.
We learn as we go.
The first Sunday our life group meets on zoom, I stare at a screen filled with little pictures, like Hollywood Squares of old, each frame containing a family or an individual alone at home. I see kids and their parents, young adults and 40-somethings, plus one old guy (me). We’re all together, connecting as we have never connected before. Like we’re huddling on wreckage from a sinking Titanic.
I’d been missing connectedness ever since our family left our team in China several years before. By connectedness, I mean the sense that others really are thrilled to see you and care about how you are doing.
There we were on screen together, learning how to navigate computer cameras and mics, figuring out how to include little tykes and exhausted parents. Like people starving for food, it didn’t take long for us to develop a pattern of gathering faithfully on zoom every Sunday morning. Then checking up on whoever was missing to make sure they were okay.
We’d all sign on after the church’s virtual service, greeting each other in a jumble of voices. Then we’d go around the screen in some order, each person or family sharing how their week had gone and what concerns they faced. Whoever was designated to lead in prayer that Sunday wrote down each request – and emailed the list out to us for prayer during the week.
Other life groups engaged in deeper theological discussions when they met. But with so many kids on our screen, we kept our conversations simple, referring to a point the pastor had shared or bringing up something heard in the kids’ program.
And then we’d shift to an extended time of prayer, the prayer leader lifting each name and every request to the Throne of Grace. We’d close with a time of communion – each household responsible for providing their own bread and juice.
I noted how reluctant people were to sign off. Week after week, loath to part, we’d wish each other God’s best for the coming week.
Every kid on the screen had had a host of aunts and uncles affirming them by name, joking with them, asking how things were going. We’d celebrated birthdays and commiserated with whoever had lost a job or was sick.
When voices out “there” grew angry at Asians for supposedly bringing on COVID, we rallied around the anxious kids of Chinese parents in our group. We told them those angry voices were just ignorant. And we prayed God would keep them and their parents safe from stupid people. And told them we loved them.
In one frame on our screens, two-year-old Dexter was squirrelly and chatty. We loved hearing new words he was coming up with each time we met. Although his parents often muted their mic, we looked forward to connecting with Dexter every week.
As we did with each of our kids.
One Sunday a new face showed up. A young Jewish guy named Alexander introduced himself, said he was just getting to know Jesus, and was looking for other Jesus people. When we were able to gather at safe distances in a local park that summer, we finally met in person. Alexander said we all looked different in 3-D. A couple years later, all back in person, we celebrated his baptism, applauded his fiancée, celebrated again when she was baptized, and then rejoiced when they were married.
A few weeks ago, I was back in Portland visiting Mosaic, my former church. After service, I bumped into Dexter’s mother. And there was Dexter, now 7 years old – standing tall beside her, squirrelly as ever! Not that he remembered me. Five years is a long time for a little guy. But it didn’t matter.
Seeing him and his parents brought a flood of warm memories of a time when people were hungry to connect. When church was as vibrant and life-affirming as any time I’ve ever experienced in my nearly 70 years of church life.
How surprised I was then when, as COVID lifted, we scattered like dust in a windstorm. All those connections fading into the priorities of lives busy once again.
They say 20% of evangelicals never attend church, the percentages no better for other faith groups. They say the typical churchgoer gets to a church service maybe once a month. Pastors know it takes a month of Sundays to see most of their congregants.
I don’t know about these folks, but I know a lot of us still can’t wait to get together. We remember a time when gathering wasn’t possible and we know what it’s like to go without. Like not eating for days on end.
Personally, I think that COVID experience was a very good thing.
Not for the many who suffered and died. Not for those who still suffer from long COVID. Not for all who lost jobs and experienced difficult seasons as families or isolated individuals. Not for kids who languished without structured school.
No, the good I speak of is how we discovered how valuable community truly is and how gathering for worship, teaching, and fellowship is such a profound treasure. For a season, we thought the authorities were forcing us to close down, not realizing it was the Holy Spirit teaching us to flex and adapt – and to connect as we were meant to do.
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Photos: Coronavirus, NEFP in COVID operation, Hollywood Squares
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