There is a Season...

“To many, the closures seemed draconian. Deprived of entertainment, recreation and indoor religion (although St. James Cathedral and First Presbyterian Church held open-air services throughout rainy October), Seattleites derided the closures. ‘An awful day for husbands and wives,’ the Post-Intelligencer huffed. ‘Both had to either remain at home or walk the streets.’”

That quote may seem a bit off to some. “Wait a minute,” you might think, “Covid19 wasn’t around back in October!” And you would be right. This is from a story on the website called Seattle Now & Then, and it refers to the pandemic of 1918-19. That is also the source of the amazingly relevant cartoon at the top.

As we look to the future and wonder what life will be like—especially for the way we do church and ministry as believers—after this current pandemic, it is helpful to remember that we’ve been through all of this before.

Many times.

You might ask, how much changed after 1918-19?

In the long run, not much.

For even better proof, ask yourself, “What happened in 1959?”

If that doesn’t ring a bell, I would not be surprised. Most people have forgotten about the great “Asian Flu” pandemic of 1957-58. Yet in that outbreak of H2N2, as many one million people worldwide, including 116,000 Americans, died. And that didn’t even register at all in the elections of 1960.

To be fair, this current pandemic is going to be more devastating (in the USA at least) than the one in 1957-58. Worldwide it looks like it will be at least as bad as the one in 1968-69, and certainly worse than the one in 2009-10. We are already guaranteed to have more Americans die this time around. But the takeaway for those of us trying to get ahead of the changes coming is, there aren’t likely to be that many. At least not long-lasting, general strategy altering ones.

To be sure, we will see some new things born out of this time. Churches are experimenting and ministering online even more than they were before, but that was happening even without the virus. (If anything, we have learned a lot—both good and bad—in this time. For small group interaction, online is better than nothing. For our large, traditional worship services, not so much.) And people may take a while to relax some of the special hygiene practices like not shaking hands or wearing masks. But the basics of relational evangelism, discipleship, and church life will carry on much as they have since the early church.

So, for actual, real-life ministry, outreach, and fellowship… this has been a pause to normality, not a window into the future of ministry. And, those who feel like failures for not “cracking the code” of ministry during the pandemic should go easy on themselves. This is just the latest of an endless series of such events in church history. God saw them coming and allowed them to happen. And in nearly every case, life went back to “normal” without some sort of seismic shift in ministry.

And to those who see in this “unprecedented” event the start of something big like an awakening, we need to remember that the history of revivals and movements of God show us they are almost always triggered by movements of prayer, repentance, and missions from within the church, and never by external forces like epidemics or other threats.

All that to say, this is neither the end of the world nor a great new beginning. It is just the latest in a long history of similar events. Ours is not to plan a way out of such things, but to remain faithful in service and unwavering in trust towards God as we carry out His mission regardless of our circumstances. He will steer our course.