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Dec 17 2020

New Year, Same Challenges. Follow the Light!

We couldn’t have imagined we’d still be here last March.

No, we couldn’t have imagined then that we would still be here now but here we are physically distanced, doing drive-through worship, showing up on Zoom, Facebook Live, and YouTube. And, somehow, some way…by the grace of God, it’s working, it’s all working. And it needs to keep working for quite some time.

Recently I had the opportunity to spend some time talking with a public health expert. Someone who lives in the world of exposures and workplace safety. Someone who has no skin in the game except to keep people safe. He said hunker down. The worst is yet to come. We have another 9-12 months ahead of us before we can feel safe gathering in groups indoors. A year?! Another year? We definitely didn’t see that coming last March!

But maybe that news could be freeing. Rather than looking ahead for each corner we need to turn in order to go back to the way things were before, what if we let go of that and just focus on what’s ahead, focus on the new year? What if we dove into the next year with creativity, energy, grace, and adaptability without worrying about being in our buildings? Could this be our best year of ministry yet?

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Mar 17 2020

Keeping Congregations Connected (a series): Beyond Livestream Worship

By the Rev. Ken Howard

This is the first in a multipart series on strategies and tools for faith communities in the face of COVID19

The COVID19 pandemic is not the first time Christianity has been faced with the moral question of how to respond in the face of pandemic. In fact, the question is nearly as old as the Church itself. One of the first times was during the third century Roman plague. Something likely akin to Ebola, the so-called Cyprian plague (after Bishop Cyprian of Carthage) which ravaged the Empire from 250-270 CE.

Just as they had in the Antonin plague of the second century, the powerful and well-to-do of the Empire fled the cities for the relative safety of their countryside villas, leaving the rest of the populace to fend for themselves. As attested to by both Christian and secular writers of the time, just as they did in the previous plague, the Galileans (as they were called) did the opposite, staying behind and even coming in from the countryside to feed the poor, care for the afflicted, comfort the dying, bury the dead, and to attend to public hygiene, doing this not just for the faithful but for their entire communities, Christian and non-Christian alike. It was, as Bishop Cyprian put it, their burden of care. Two remarkable things happened: they helped curb the contagiousness of the plague (the death rate was as much as 50% lower in cities with Christian communities) and the plague (or rather their response to it) helped make Christianity extremely contagious, so that it spread rapidly throughout the Empire.

Today we are faced with a modern plague but the question is the same: how are we called to live in the face of it. And our answers may ultimately lead to our congregations and the communities they serve surviving and thriving together. How might this be?

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Aug 15 2019

Tribal Politics Be Damned: A Pastor’s Plea for Civility Among the Brethren

A Guest Post

By Ron Davis
Ron is the Executive Pastor of Cramerton Church, Charlotte, NC

The hope of the world has never been a political party, politicians, or our ability to leverage political power. It has, and always will be, the beautiful gospel of Jesus Christ. As a pastor, I long to see brothers and sisters who are so driven by their love for one another that the gospel becomes more important than winning an unholy tribal war between Left and Right. Below is my call to civility — and maybe, just maybe, it will find its impact far beyond a late-evening Facebook post:

Dear Friend,

I think our Lord is much more grieved by the attitudes and actions of believers toward one another in Western society, where each side believes they have the “answer” to America’s problems. Both liberal and conservative Christians seem to forget they exist in a secular culture and both of their politics necessarily reflect these same secular points of view. Jesus made it clear: the world will know we are his disciples by our love one for another.

This kind of interaction we find on Facebook is, sadly, fodder for the skeptical mind, as they see the Christian world being so divided over things like politics. The hope of the world is the gospel of Jesus Christ not our ability to prove each other wrong. From my observation, there seems to be very little civility or objectivity from either side. Just a desire to “be right” and to look at almost every single issue with a particular set of glasses (and not gospel-centered ones at that). To me this is shameful and heart-breaking. The early Christian church was not concerned with achieving political dominance over others. It was concerned with making disciples, loving one another, their neighbors, their enemies, everyone – under peril of persecution, torture, and even death.

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