It is a strange morning. Unlike any Sunday morning in my life. This is the first Sunday of our COVID-19 closure. I am at church expecting no one to come. No classrooms will be filled, the sanctuary will remain silent. I am missing the happy greetings of friends arriving at church together, the purposeful scurry of leaders doing the jobs they have committed to accomplish, and my anticipation that soon I will be preaching to a people who have graciously come to listen.
I know there are many pastors who are having the same experience today. Like me, they have spent the week carefully listening to government proclamations, contacting health agencies, finding the best medical advice, talking to other clergy and church leaders, considering options, and most of all, praying in order to make the difficult decision to suspend services.
It is not an easy decision to ask the church not to gather as the Body of Christ on our chosen day to study, worship, pray, and share the love we have for God and for each other. Coming together is so central to being the church that we cannot imagine not spending the first day of each week with fellow believers. So why take such a dramatic action?
I understand the epidemiological and medical reasons for the large-scale cancellations we are seeing. We are at a critical juncture when this virus becomes a community-spread germ instead of an infection traceable to specific encounters. Public health agencies are asking for social distancing at this point to prevent an explosion of cases severely impacting medical facilities as seen elsewhere in our world.
But there is another layer of consideration that is more significant to our core values as a community of faith. We are cancelling services as an act of love. First, it is a loving act for our fellow believers in our community of faith. We can say, “Don’t come if you feel ill, are over 65, are in a high-risk group, or have been around sick people.” But the desire to see friends, fulfill obligations, a sense it can’t happen to me, or just plain good habits often overrule thoughtful decision making. Sometimes collective wisdom in more important that individual choice. We are loving one another by not exposing vulnerable individuals to the possibility of infection. Our care for sisters and brothers in Christ necessitates that we sacrifice in this significant way.
Secondly, canceling services is an act of love for our world. “Love your neighbor,” we are commanded by Jesus. As governments and medical institutions struggle to deal with the threat of this pandemic virus it is our ministry of loving our neighbors that leads us to step forward and set an example. We are making necessary sacrifices to follow government agency guidelines in slowing the spread of COVID-19 because we love our neighbors, our community, our world.
I don’t know how many Sunday mornings I will spend alone at church, I don’t know the impact this pandemic will have on our community. I don’t know when “normal” will become normal again. But I do know this. There is no greater force at work in our world than the love of God. And we, at First Baptist Church, are going to do everything we can to be a part of expressing that love in our church and to our world.
Category Archives: Making a Difference
A Strange Morning
Filed under Church, God, Grace, Love, Making a Difference, Morrow, Pastor, The Future
Responding to Haiti
We are still struggling to grasp the enormity of the tragedy engulfing Haiti after a magnitude 7 earthquake hit the Caribbean island capital of Port-au-Prince, just a short plane ride away from our front doors. Remember this as we contemplate the loss of life in Haiti: while the earthquake may have been the immediate cause of the loss of life, most of those who died or will die, die from poverty. It is poverty that drives desperate people into densely populated urban wastelands of inadequate structures and almost no government infrastructure. It is poverty that will kill many injured people who will not have adequate food, water, or medical care. Poverty drives crime that interferes with relief work. Poverty is a condition that robs all of health, wholeness, and hope.
Remember this as well, Christians are called to minister to the poor. “Whatever you do for the least of these you do for me,” Jesus said of the poor, oppressed, sick and imprisoned. To help those who are hurting is one of the most Christ-like thinks we can do. I believe that addressing the dehumanizing curse of poverty needs to be one of the highest priorities of any Christ-honoring people. Haiti provides a dramatic test and a pressing opportunity to see just how much we realize this calling in our lives and our churches.
What can we do? Let me offer three things.
PRAY specifically for the relief workers who are right now on the front line of responding to this disaster. Pray for the churches of Haiti. Pray for people who are searching for loved ones, not knowing if they are alive or dead. Pray for the injured that they might receive adequate treatment.
GIVE. Money, more than anything else, is needed for relief agencies to do their work. Through First Baptist Madison you can designate a gift to “Haiti” and your contribution will go through a network of missionaries and state disaster relief organizations that Baptists coordinate so well. If you do not attend First Baptist see that such an opportunity is available at your church or find ways to give at work or personally to relief organizations.
GO. Yes, you! While it will be weeks or months before any but trained relief workers will be able to go, the plans are being made now for the thousands of volunteers that Christian response to this tragedy will require. At First Baptist we will facilitate our participation in these efforts as you live out our calling and go help “the least of these.”
These things we must do to respond to Haiti in a manner led by the Spirit of Christ. One other thing I would suggest, however. One of the greatest redemptive results of the crisis in Haiti could be an awaking of our responsibility to address the issues of poverty in our own community. While the scale is much different, the results of poverty are just the same. Our call right now is to mobilize for ministry in Haiti but our call always is to minister to “the least of these” wherever they found.
Filed under Church, Haiti, Making a Difference, Poverty, Religion
Five Words That Made a Difference
In 1968 I was 14 years old, and living in a suburb outside of Birmingham, Alabama, known as Rocky Ridge. That year five words changed my life.
Books have always been a source of great enjoyment for me and my parents wisely nurtured that interest in many ways. One was to allow me to order just about anything I wanted from the Scholastic Book Club flier that was given to us regularly at school. I ordered books on every subject under the sun and took pride in having the biggest stack of new books every time the teacher distributed our orders in class.
In the eighth grade one of those stacks included a book I ordered only because it had “Birmingham” in the title. It was not until the teacher distributed our books and I began examining my new acquisitions that I found out it was a book about the civil rights movement in Birmingham. In it were pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, and others, leading civil rights marches in downtown Birmingham. Also pictured were the dogs, water hoses, and clubs the Birmingham police turned on protesters.
At this point a classmate spoke to me from over my shoulder, “What you want that book about those (n-word) for?” Some other comments followed from my classmate and others nearby that parroted the racism of their parents. I had not learned such attitudes from my parents. While they had isolated me from the turmoil of the civil rights movement and talked little about the issue, they non-the-less modeled loving acceptance of all and had taught me to respect all people equally. I was confused and did not know what to make of the hatred my classmates’ comments conveyed. Sadly though, bowing to the power of peer pressure, I was quickly agreeing and echoing their prejudices.
That evening I showed the book to my dad and began repeating some that comments of my peers. “Look at this terrible book. It says awful things about Birmingham in it.” Then Dad made his only comment about the book, five words that would stop me dead in my tracks and have a profound impact on me from that moment forward.
“Have you read it yet?”
In that moment I knew that I had just been confronted with the intellectual dishonesty of prejudice. I knew that examining an issue and taking a stand of my own instead of uncritically accepting the judgment of others was a matter of integrity. I also knew that as surely as that was what Dad expected of me, it was what God expected of me as well.
I read the book. I learned about noble men and women making a difference by taking a stand against hatred and injustice. And, by the way, I wrote a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. on the cover of my school notebook for all my classmates to see.
I wonder, “Have I said five words that made a difference lately?” Have you?
Quiet Faith 