From the Pastor's Desk: March 30, 2020

Good evening, Stapleton Baptist. Allow me a minute of your time to share some pastoral thoughts about this pandemic and the effect it is having on our church.

COVID-19 presents our church with unique challenges that—to my knowledge—Stapleton Baptist has never had to deal with. We have a rhythm to which our days conform. For years we’ve known that Wednesday was the day for Bible Study, and Sunday was the day for Sunday School and corporate worship in the mornings and evenings. These gatherings have always been in person—Lord willing, they will be again sooner rather than later.

There’s a reason these meetings are near and dear to our hearts and why we’re so reluctant to change to change this rhythm. 

Hebrews 10:24-25: “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, 25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much more as you see the Day approaching.”

Without going into a full Bible study, let me tell you why I’m optimistic about what this season might mean for Stapleton Baptist Church.

The author of Hebrews had a specific concern in these two verses, and it might not be what you think it is. These verses are not primarily about worship services. They’re not even explicitly about worship services. He told us what concerned him in verse 24: the consideration we are to have for one another in order to stir up love and good works. Meeting together—formally or informally, on Sunday morning or Thursday afternoon, whenever, however—was a means to that end. Even when he talks about gathering together, that gathering is to exhort one another to love and good works.

Being unable to see one another during this period of social distancing has led to some real desire to get back to normal amongst the members of Stapleton Baptist with whom I’ve been able to speak. But maybe we need not get back to normal. Maybe we need a new normal.

If COVID-19 has done anything for us, it’s really reinforced the blessing that being able to see each other is. It’s caused us to be creative in how we communicate and how we reach out. The church Facebook page and website—two of the most powerful digital outreach tools at our disposal—are more up to date and functional than they’ve ever been. New people, people who have never darkened our doors, are listening to sermons and watching Wednesday Bible studies and downloading notes to study on their own. Our website went from an average viewership of 30 views per week to almost 550 last week. All it took was a pandemic.

I’m ready for normalcy to return, but I don’t want to get back to the old normal. I want to be back in church and see everyone’s faces again, but I don’t want us to lose this creativity and this embrace of tools that allow us to connect to new people in new ways. Let’s reclaim the old without losing the appreciation for the new.

Right now we’re hindered by this virus as far as gathering together, but it need not hinder us in considering one another in order to stir up love and good works. Send cards. Make phone calls. Send emails. Fire up Facetime or Skype. Share a sermon video or a Wednesday night Bible study. Discuss them with friends, share them on social media, comment and like them. What if you don’t know how to do these things? Now’s a great time to learn! You can’t leave your house for long anyway.

Just a few thoughts of encouragement. It’s easy to see the difficulty in this…but don’t miss the blessing either.