It’s been six months. Six months since hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living began restricting visitors. That means I can’t go to the hospital. Or the nursing home. Or the ALF. I cannot go when the phone rings and I hear,
“Pastor, we had to call 911. They’re taking him to the emergency room.”
“Pastor, I’m having surgery next week.”
“Pastor, they moved her to hospice care.”
“Pastor, we just had a baby girl!”
“Pastor, I haven’t had communion for three months.”
In a pre-2020 — pre-CoVid-19 — world, my weekly schedule would include pre- and post-surgery visits, monthly nursing home rounds, homebound communion visits and emergency room prayers. It’s all part of pastoral care in a congregation. I cannot do any of those things now. It feels like you cut one of the legs off my stool.
A lot of visitation and prayer has been replaced by phone calls. It is a gracious alternative, but let’s face it, it’s not he same. It’s not the same as holding a hand for a prayer. It’s not the same as communion at a bedside. It’s not the same as one final face-to-face conversation. It’s not the same as reading scripture to a long-time friend struggling for every breath. It’s not the same as making the sign of the cross on a forehead while speaking words of benediction.
In the past two months, I have been able to visit some of my members in their homes who feel comfortable with an in-person visit. For many, it is the only contact with another person for months.
Others have decided to wait. For a vaccine. For a cure. For the number of positive tests to decrease. For their family to tell them it’s OK to have visitors. I’m always available, but I always respect their wishes.
This reality leaves me feeling like I’m not doing my job. Yes, you can watch me preach on YouTube. You can watch my bible class. You can pray with me on a phone call. But it’s not the same, is it? Pastoral care was designed to be analog, not digital. In person, not remote. Face-to-face.
In the past I have often sighed as I headed out the door for yet another hospital visit. Now I am looking forward to a quick prayer of thanks for the opportunity to do that again.
(Over 850 blog posts and no stories about dogs? This post is way overdue.)
Gabriel is my first dog after I graduated from college, started working at Bell Labs and moved out of an apartment into a house I shared with my friend Jim. He had a beautiful Irish Setter named Shannon. If I got a dog, they could keep each other company. I worked days and Jim worked nights, so the dogs would have plenty of human company, too.
So what kind of a dog did I want to get? I wanted something energetic and active, big enough to run with. This was 1980. Want to do research? You go to the library. It didn’t take me long to decide on a Labrador Retriever. I had seen black ones before, but now I knew they also came in yellow. That’s what I wanted.
OK, so where do you go to get a yellow Lab? This is 1980. You look in the newspaper, under pets. Sure enough, there was an ad for yellow Lab puppies at a home somewhere in the pine barrens of southern New Jersey. I made a call, got directions, and headed out to pick a pup from the litter. I had a map, too. This is 1980. That’s how you navigate.
When I arrived, some kind folks took me down to their basement where about a dozen six week old yellow Lab puppies were running around a large enclosed area. I sat down in the middle of them and let them run around me, on top of me, in and out of my lap. Some chewed on my fingers, some watched carefully from a distance and some wrestled with each other. I learned from my research to watch the little for a while, to tell who was most aggressive and who was most shy. I picked one out that wasn’t the craziest, but seemed to have a good amount of energy. The owners marked a number on the tummy of the one I picked, and I would be able to take him home in a few weeks when he was weaned.
First night home.
I named him Gabriel and I am pretty sure he cried all the way home. I’m pretty sure he cried all night, too, as pups do in their new home. But he quickly adapted to his new place. In those first few months, of course, he chewed out the backs of most of the shoes we owned, chewed up a few candles he got his teeth into and went through a bunch of rawhide.
Gabriel lived up to his retriever breed, naturally fetching anything and everything we would throw around the yard or out into the water of a nearby lake. On one occasion, he came back with a swan by the neck rather than the stick I had thrown! Had I been a hunter, I am sure he would have enjoyed retrieving ducks.
A couple of years later, I moved to Austin, TX for a new job offer. Gabe comfortably rode in the back of my Volkswagen Rabbit Diesel hatchback as we headed out for a new adventure. I rented a pretty nice house in Austin, just a few miles south of the capitol building, and just a short run from what was then called Town Lake (Now Lady Bird Lake). My work hours were such that I had to leave Gabe home alone for a long time each day, so I made sure we went for a run when I got home. Once we got across some busy streets and onto some lake side trails, I could let Gabe off his leash and he would run along side of me, or our ahead of me, or in and out of the water next to me. Four, six, even eight miles later, I would be tired but he would be ready for more.
If some folks were playing frisbee in the park, Gabe would join them even if uninvited. He would leap up and grab it midair, proudly bringing it to me. He could get some pretty good air!
Gabe was a strong swimmer, churning through the after to go after a thrown ball or stick, almost leaving a wake behind him. He would spring from the land and sail out across the water before splashing in and powerfully dog-paddling out and back. He loved to get wet, even in the cold. To this day, I call any cold, rainy day “Labrador weather.”
Before that year was out, though, I had decided on a career change and was headed for the seminary. Unfortunately, dogs were not welcome in the dormitories, so Gabe would go to live with my dad for a couple of years. Dad was a dog lover, had a great fenced-in yard and even built a house for Gabe. Gabe and my dad’s dog Barney had a great time chasing balls and squirrels together.
When I met a classmate’s sister, who would later become my wife, one of the first things she noticed on my bulletin board was a picture of Gabriel. With a good looking dog like that, she knew I must be a pretty good guy! Gabe knew she was a keeper, too. When my wife-to-be came to Philadelphia to meet my parents, he not only welcomed her but climbed up in bed with her, too.
“She’s a keeper, Bill.”
After our wedding, my wife and I headed for Baltimore for my vicarage year. Inner city life would be very different that what either of us had experienced before, so having a big dog along was a good thing. In fact, on one of our first days in our house, Gabe had pinned a repairman up against the wall to protect us. I had never seen him do that before! He didn’t do that often, but it was reassuring to know he could.
We got a companion for Gabriel that year, a chocolate Lab named Rachel. She was much more docile, just as good of a retriever, and had a beautiful shiny brown coat. Our two dogs were quite popular in Baltimore. Every day after school, kids from the neighborhood would be knocking at our door, asking, “Can we play with your dogs?” Dozens of kids would then chase our two Labs around our small yard. Everyone had such a great time.
I would take Gabe for runs with me early in the morning. Good exercise for him, and good protection for me to and from a nearby park with great running paths. During those runs, I discovered that Gabe had a sixth sense when it came to balls. We would be trotting down a path when suddenly, he would break for the woods of weeds on one side of us, and come out with a baseball or tennis ball. Somehow, he just knew it was there, and that it was there for him to take home. At home, he would chew the cover off and unravel all the string inside.
After vicarage, we moved back to the seminary for one last year of study. We had a house to live in and I put up a wire fence around the yard so the dogs could be outside. Winter was extremely cold that year, and the dogs provided much needed warmth in bed at night.
We moved to Connecticut after graduation for my first call in the ministry. The church was small, but they provided a huge house on four acres of property, a paradise for dogs who loved to run and fetch. I had a five gallon bucket of baseballs and softballs. I would hit them out into the yard and woods from our driveway for Gabe and Rachel to retrieve. We always let them run free, which sometimes meant they would be way off in the woods. But when I whistled from the back door, I could see them coming through the tall weeds of a nearby field, usually pretty muddy or dirty.
Our scariest moment came when my son was about two years old and eye level with Gabriel. Gabe felt assertive one day and snapped at him, scaring all of us. It was completely unexpected and reminded us to closely supervise their interactions.
Dad loved dogs!
Once Gabriel got hold of a tennis ball, he sometimes didn’t want to let it go. When he was especially stubborn, I would insert a broom handle behind the ball in his jaws and pick up up with it. He would not let go if he didn’t want too Other times, I would stand about 10 yards in front of Gabe and throw the ball as hard as I could right at his head. He would catch it in his mouth every time.
When we moved to Iowa to serve a new church, Gabe was about eleven years old and had mellowed out. Our much smaller back yard was fine for him. We went for walks rather than runs.
As often happens with Labs in their teens, Gabe spent a lot more time sleeping on the couch and had a lot less pep. Finally, when he just couldn’t keep much food down, our vet felt a mass in his abdomen, and we knew Gabe’s time was up. He was almost fifteen and would always be the dog we would compare all our other pets to. I don’t know that I have ever bawled the way I did the day I came back from the vet without him. My daughter Katie hand drew a little book for me, to commemorate Gabe’s life and cheer me up. It still brings a smile to my face.
Just a few months later, Rachel would develop a limp which would be diagnosed a malignant tumor in her leg. Our time with her would be over, too. But we would not be dog-less for long. Michael would be next, and that’s a whole different story!
About twelve years ago, a few of the ushers were chatting about handguns a few minutes before a worship service was about to begin. One of them was considering a new purchase, something a little smaller and easier to conceal. Floyd, sitting there listening, raised his pant leg revealing his weapon in an ankle holster and said, “Like this one?” That was the first time I realized that folks in my church came to church with their guns.
The news of mass shootings in schools, movie theaters, churches and other public places has prompted more and more men and women to purchase and carry guns with them for protection and peace of mind. That same news has moved these same folks to bring their guns to church, too. With weapons concealed beneath sport coats and inside purses, I know our worshipers are carrying on Sunday morning. Is that a good thing? Should you bring a gun to church or any house of prayer?
On the one hand, I appreciate having someone watching my back and noticing who comes into the church. We’ve had visitors in church who arrived on bike, carried backpacks, and looked a little nervous as they found a place to sit. We’ve never had a problem with any of them, but they initially made some feel uneasy.
On the other hand, I doubt that many armed worshipers spend much time honing their shooting skills at the range. Law enforcement officers train and certify often. Should a threat arise, I not confident my average attender would be able to pull and effectively fire a weapon. I’m not sure I would want them to.
And anyway, a very small number of shootings have happened in churches. Though such shootings make the headlines, they are few and far between. As they should be, churches are safe places. Church (or synagogue or mosque) violence is disconcerting, but from what I’ve observed, rare.
I do remember that when we worshiped in Haiti, I caught a glimpse of a 9mm on the belt of just about every male worshiper in the building. But in that country there were also armed guards sitting by every gas pump and grocery store entrance. A local guide with an automatic rifle who accompanied every medical mission team like ours from outside the country. I’m thankful for those who watched out for us. I’m also thankful to live where I can fill my gas tank without a guy with a sawed-off shotgun watching me.
I do not own a gun and do not plan on getting one. Right now, I think that any place where I would need to be armed is most likely a place I shouldn’t be going anyway. But a church has never felt like that kind of a place. And if I should be somewhere, even in church, when someone starts shooting, I know I’m not going to be the hero who takes him out.
I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to be the guest preacher at the church of a colleague and friend who was celebrating the tenth anniversary of his ordination. I haven’t preached at a church that wasn’t my own for a long, long time. I think the last time was in Kenya (with a translator) seven years ago. Anyway, it’s a different experience and I thought I would share my impressions of that day. How is preaching an “away game” different than your “home field”?
First, the only thing I had to think about that day was the sermon. I didn’t have to unlock doors, turn on lights and sound system, update my prayers for the day with special requests, or pick up miscellaneous items left around the sanctuary. Show up, preach, talk to folks afterwards. That’s it.
The biggest difference is that I was preaching to a room full of strangers. Other than my wife and my friend’s family, I didn’t know a soul in the room. Every other Sunday in my congregation, I know every face and name in the room. I’ve been to their homes. I know what’s going on in their lives. They’ve shared with me their blessings and their struggles. I know who’s not there. On this Sunday, though, all of that is missing. I have to remember that God knows them all and His Word will indeed speak to them.
Of course, they don’t know me, either. I’m just the designated hitter. They are there because they crave God’s Word and grace. But they are also wondering, “Who’s this guy?” “How long is he going to preach?” And, “What’s for lunch?” (Hey, I’ve sat in the pew. I know what’s going through your mind.)
It did occur to me that I could pretty much say anything I wanted. I would never see these people again. They would never have to listen to me again, either. I even considered asking their pastor, “Is there anything you want me to tell them that you’ve been hesitant to say?” I didn’t go there, though. That’s not why we gather. The better question before a sermon is the prayer, “Lord, what do you want your people to hear?”
One memorable difference about the morning, though, was all the handshaking I did. Now remember, because of Covid-19 precautions and distancing, elbow bumps and “air shakes” have been our practice. However this community had retained the custom of shaking hands. I did so, but also made frequent use of the nearby hand sanitizer. I shook more hands that morning than I have in the last six months!
I also didn’t do a children’s sermon that morning. I always do a children’s sermon or object lesson preceding the sermon. This congregation, however, did not include that in their worship. I missed that, especially when I saw a number of little ones out there.
Overall, it was a great experience. We were warmly welcomed and enjoyed talking with many of the worshipers after the service. Whether home or away, it’s always a privilege to preach God’s Word. And just as He promised, it never goes out without accomplishing exactly what He intended.
A recent Zoom meeting with a bunch of college fraternity brothers brought back a flood of memories from four decades ago. I had to write these down before I forget them.
The first involved Joe, a somewhat whiny and annoying brother, who lived in a back room on the second floor of the house. I am not sure what inspired me, but one day I suggested to my friend Gary that we nail Joe’s bedroom door shut, and then rappel out the window. This is not as far-fetched as one might think. Gary was a rock climber, had the necessary rope and harness, and as house manager, I had a hammer and nails.
One day, while Joe was in class or out somewhere else, Gary secured a rope on a radiator and hung it out a third floor window. Gary then used some big old nails to permanently attach the door to the frame from the inside. He rappelled out the window, ran back up to coil up the rope and the project was complete.
I wasn’t there when Joe discovered that he couldn’t open his bedroom door. I so wish I was. All I got to see was the smashed in door when he apparently threw all of his weight against it, breaking the door and frame to get in. It was well worth the cost and effort to replace that door!
A second memory was a lot bloodier, much less entertaining and very vivid. It happened in the kitchen where Bob and I often washed and dried dishes after supper. Don’t ask me why, but one night we decided that it would be fun to stab empty milk jugs with carving knives, like swashbucklers. It’s really not that easy to do. The knife isn’t sharp enough and the jug isn’t heavy enough to actually slice through. However, on one attempt, the knife caught the edge of the counter, Bob’s hand slid up the handle, and sliced through a few of his fingers. I don’t think it hurt that much, but there was a good amount of blood. That blood sport not only required a trip to the emergency room, but also some follow up surgeries so Bob did regain full use of his finger. No, we never tried that again.
A few other miscellaneous memories that sometimes flash through my mind:
Tossing an old refrigerator and sofa off the back porch
Parties that featured live bands, before the days of DJs.
“Blinkey” and trashcans of water dumped off the roof onto the pledges
Gary teaching me how to play guitar
Road trips to see Rocky Horror Picture Show with bags full of toast, rice, water, toilet paper, and playing cards – and absolutely trashing the theater
Eating BLTs and rare roast beef in front of some of the more kosher Jewish brothers – and of course, pizza during Passover
Coming and going via the fire escape through a third floor window outside my room
Drinking some of the worst beer I ever had in my life from a keg far past its prime
I have so many vivid memories of my fraternity brothers from over forty years ago. The bond of the sphinx, as we called it, is strong indeed.
The symptoms were obvious and ominous. High temperature, coughing, a feeling of weakness. After a week of this, on-again, off-again, he decided he needed to go to the emergency room. My wife was working, so I grabbed a mask, hopped in the truck and headed down to pick him up.
He was ready to go when I got to the house. But he could barely stand up and walk. It’s was a good thing that we were going that night. Had we waited a day, things might have been much worse. Somehow, as I was gathering up hearing aids and a list of medications, he made it out and into the passenger side of my truck. Without his hearing aids, our conversation was limited. I called my wife, working in the ER that night, and told her we were on the way.
After I pulled up to the ER entrance, I walked around to the passenger side to help him out. He could barely stand, much less walk the twenty or so yards to the door. A tech by the entrance heard me say, “I’ll see if I can get a wheelchair” and brought one out. With some difficulty, we transferred him to the chair and got him inside. He had a few questions to answer, I got a visitor tag, and the guard handed me an N95 mask to wear, “If you’re going where I think you are going.”
They took him back right away while I parked the truck. I had to wait a bit before my wife came out and said, “Come on back.” We turned left and went down the hall to a part of the ER that was draped in plastic with zippered entrances, an isolation unit for suspected Covid-19 patients. My wife looked at me and said, “If you go back there, we probably won’t be able to go on our trip.” I said, “I know.” But he wouldn’t be able to hear and I couldn’t just let him go back there alone.
So that’s when I went… behind the zipper.
It wasn’t all that exciting. In fact, it was eerily quiet. Because fresh gowns, masks, face shields and gloves were required of the doctors, nurses and techs every time they came in the room, their appearances were few and far between. I sat there in shorts, t-shirt and an N95 mask, wondering when I would get sick. Had we gone one day later, I would not have been allowed back there. Policies and procedures are subject to change, like the wind.
I stayed for about six hours, as we waited for tests, test results and the decision to admit him. He didn’t want to watch TV, and was finally able to snooze a bit, so I spent my time reading on my phone and keeping family up-to-date. I called his out-of-state son so they could talk. Finally they were ready to take him to another room, and it was time for me to head home. No one was allowed back in that part of the hospital.
As I write this, that happened a full eight weeks ago, and thankfully neither my wife nor I had any symptoms of illness. We did spend a couple of weeks staying further apart from family, just in case. It turns out he only had to stay in the hospital a few nights, and was discharged home. His wife had to do the ER thing later in the week, but she wasn’t admitted.
We were blessed. I am still careful. People are still getting sick. So far I’ve stayed healthy. I don’t take that for granted. I just give thanks each day.
The intersections in my community are clogged with campaign signs of every size and color, vying for my vote this fall.
Emails fill my inbox that used to be informative newsletters, but are now pleas for subscriptions to courses that will improve every aspect of my life. Once they have your contact info, you will hear from them for the rest of your life, and I believe, from beyond the grave!
I get text messages from anonymous sources who seek my vote in this fall’s elections. Interestingly, the emails are often addressed to my wife’s name or my son’s name. He doesn’t even live in this state anymore.
About half of my social media feeds are sales pitches for T-shirts, subscription boxes, testosterone supplements, fitness programs, how-to-preach-a-better-sermon courses, IQ tests, and of course, your candidate for office.
Phone calls at church offer me endless resources for youth curriculum, audio-visual technology, text-the-whole-congregation and web site design services.
Pretty much all of my mail consists of large campaign postcards or offers for home and auto warranties. Oh, and of course, lot and lots of bonus mile credit card offers.
Every realtor in a ten-mile radius lets me know of houses they’ve sold. Every independent insurance agent has already worked the numbers and covets my business.
Auto dealers in a seventy-five mile radius bend over backwards in emails offering to help me find the vehicle I am looking for.
People knock at my door to give me quotes for window replacements, security systems, trimming my palm trees and cleaning my roof.
And every time – and I kid you not – every time I go to Home Depot, a gentleman approaches me and askls me if I drink bottled water. Duh. Doesn’t everyone? He is there to harvest leads for water tries water purification systems. I got to Home Depot about once a week. Fifty-two times a year. Every week the very same person approaches me. My radar is on. I’ve learned to quickly walk walk away from the obvious question. From adjacent aisles I overhear female and male voice lament, “You talked to me last week.” Or in a nastier tone of voice, “You talk to me every week!” It. Never. Stops.
Everyone is trying to get my attention, my vote, and of course, my money. I know, none of this would happen if someone somewhere didn’t have some modicum of success or earn some cash. It’s a numbers game.
I have never been so popular in my life! Everyone wants to talk to me, help me, encourage me, improve me and enhance me. I’m at my wits end. I am not seeking any of these things. But everything that I have ever even dreamed about is now relentlessly pushed on me. I’m so glad you all want the best for me.
What happens when we attain to omniscience (knowing everything), omnipresence (being everywhere) and omnipotence (able to do anything)? In other words, what happens to us when we approach these qualities that only God possesses?
Let’s start with omniscience. OK, so I don’t know everything. But I know an awful lot about what everyone is doing, what they are thinking, where they are going and their relationships. It’s all right there on social media. I have easy access to everything going on around the world. It’s right there in my constantly updated news feeds. I know all about the incredible wealth of some and the miserable poverty of others.
It’s overwhelming. All that information frightens me, worries me and sometimes disgusts me. It’s too much. I don’t know how to process it all. In those rare spans of time when I don’t have access to news and everyone’s opinions, my mind and my soul begin to relax. I wasn’t designed for that overload. Maybe we should leave omniscience to God.
How about omnipresence? Recent virus quarantining has prompted lots of virtual experiences, digitally taking us places that were beyond our reach before. We can “visit” museums and parks, oceans and outer space, concert halls and theater stages, homes for sale, used car lots and the kitchens of famous chefs. I can go to church just about anywhere I want to. With a VR headset, I can take virtual bike rides across the country and ride the world’s tallest roller coasters. I can go anywhere!
But it’s not real. Well, it’s real, but I’m not really there. I’m here, in one place at a certain time. It’s just an illusion, and it can distract me from being where I am and who I’m with. Omnipresence is a bit much for me. It’s better suited for the divine.
Now I know I’m not omnipotent. There are definitely limits to my ability to do things. But the plethora of do-it-yourself videos often has me thinking, “I could do that.” Whether it’s preparing food, making repairs, decorating a room, writing a book or whatever, it always looks so easy. It always looks like it’s within my ability. At least that’s what they say. “You can do it!”
The thing is, I don’t necessarily need to do all that. I really don’t need more to do. In fact, it’s often better to let someone else do many of these things. My best efforts never seem to turn out as good as that in the video.
Didn’t the original temptation go something like this: “You’ll be like God”? If I’ve learned anything, it’s better to just be me and let Him be God.
In a faced-covered, quarantined, CoVid-19 world, many churches like mine adapted to streamed online worship services. In some respects, it worked well. In other ways we struggled. Either we’re still just not used to virtual worship or we aren’t cut out for a digital existence. Will this define us from now on, or is this just a season in the life of the church?
As I ponder my own experiences, I see both blessings and failings in the digital church. Here are my observations, as both preacher and worshiper.
We reach more than ever!
As soon as we began to stream our services via Facebook and YouTube, we not only brought worship into the homes of our members, but reached people in faraway places. Our sphere of influence became the globe as family, friends and complete strangers watched and listed to the music and the message. One memorial service we streamed had viewers in New York, Hawaii, Jamaica, England, and South Africa. Those who couldn’t travel could be with us.
I have had the chance to watch and worship with my son, a pastor in Dallas, TX. I don’t often get to hear him preach. Now, I never miss his sermons and am always come away blessed.
The challenge of technology
However, we do not hold corporate worship in a recording studio or on a sound stage. It is one thing to fill a room with sound. It is another to capture it for broadcast. The first few weeks were recorded on my tripod-mounted iPhone X in an empty sanctuary. The cavernous echoes of that empty room made my voice hard to understand. After a month or so, we stepped up to my Macbook Air propped up on a cardboard box in the fifth row of the church. I could patch my microphone into that device for better audio. But since we worship in a room with a lot of windows and natural light, the video was a challenge. When it became apparent that we might be doing this for a long time, we installed a real camera. However with each improvement, the learning curve becomes steeper.
The learning curve was steep for much of our congregation, too. I discovered just how many had never been exposed to Facebook or YouTube, and really didn’t know how to use their phones or computers. So they were not only blessed by being able to watch our worship services, but they took a giant leap into the communications of the twenty-first century.
Is anyone really watching?
I’ve preached to large audiences and small crowds, but never to just a camera. I’ve long believed that a sermon really isn’t a sermon until it is both preached and heard. In front of my phone, I was preaching, but was anyone listening? I had no idea. Usually I can watch the reaction on the faces of the congregation. But in those moments I could only picture their smiles, nods or grimaces in my mind.
Streaming services report analytics for your videos, including the average time people actually spend watching. The average time is always far shorter than the actual length of a sermon. Sure, you can tune out a speaker in front of you, but it’s even easier to click away from a digital sermon.
My own digital worship watching experience was a challenge. As I sat watching in front of my computer or TV, I was at home, not at church. I was surrounded by distractions I could escape from at church. There I can step away from the world for a moment of peace and hope. But at the dining room table, I was still in that demanding and uncertain world. That peace and hope seemed far away.
What about the people?
It’s great to be able to worship in your pajamas with a cup of coffee and plate of breakfast in front of you. But what about the people? What about the people whose voices can join to sing liturgy and hymns? Chances are you’re just listening, unwilling to perform solo. What about the conversations you have before and after (and during!) worship? You can’t catch up with folks you haven’t seen all week, share jokes, complain about the weather and comment on the news. That interaction is an important part of Sunday morning, too. Even though our interactions are elbows rather than hugs, six feet apart and covered with masks, we are with people. We are with people who share our beliefs, share our joys and sorrows, share their stories and listen to ours. I don’t think we ever imagined how much we would miss that.
When someone who’s been in the hospital is back in church, we witnesses to the gift and miracle of God’s healing. When the small voices of children break the silence and also join us in prayer, we find ourselves in the presence of the greatest members of the kingdom of God (Jesus’ words, not mine). When we gather together at the altar for the sacrament, we find ourselves in the presence of angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, praising God and singing, “Hosanna!”
This is our world
For better or worse, digital church is here to stay. This our world. I bank and pay my bills online, do much of my shopping online, and get just about all of my news online. Many see their doctor, go to school, and order restaurant meals via a screen. The church is a part of that world. But the church also affords people the chance to be together, something we really don’t want to live without.
