April 9

Endure

I'm just now coming to terms with some of the residual effects of the past 14 months. We have changed, and in several ways I had not anticipated.

As with most other churches around the country who are now gathering in person again, so are we. And we are grateful to be able to do so. God provided an unanticipated meeting space for us, and it's working out.

But, with gathering again come some unanticipated elements. Not all of our people are euphoric in response to our return to in-person gatherings. While is was our extroverts who struggled during the past year, it is now our introverts who are struggling.

The complaints and criticisms I previously received all came from one direction, one viewpoint. But the winds of discontent have changed. Now the complaints and criticisms are coming from the other direction, the opposite viewpoint.

I've had more than one person tell me that "this past year has been the best of all possible scenarios for me." Others have said that over the past year the church has changed. Too much so for their liking.

Some familiar friends are no longer with us. And we've gained some new friends. Not everybody knows everybody. And for some, this is proving to be challenging.

Maybe we've lost the ability (even the desire) to connect with people we do not already know well.

Zoom has been good. And Zoom has been bad. Zoom has allowed us to stay connected, at least in a digital sense. But, it's made us, all of us quite comfortable. Connecting to Zoom is a lot easier than getting up and getting the family to church by 10am on a Sunday, or to a mid-week GC gathering.

It may be that over the past 14 months we've lost the capacity to be inconvenienced.

I've also come to see that we're off our game. Many of us have not purposefully served anyone else in our church (or otherwise) in a very long time. Recruiting volunteers for most everything is a new and weighty challenge right now.

It may be we've lost sight of our calling to serve each other. Maybe we've grown content to simply allow others to serve us.

I mourn the present losses. I really do. Each of these downward trends discourages me. However, each of these can be rectified. But these losses can only be corrected when each and all of us return to who we've been created to be.

Our church identity statement says this: "We are a Family of Servant Missionaries learning to Be and Make Disciples." It hits me as ironic that today our identities of "family," "servant" and "missionary" are each under threat.

As Radiant Church Juneau we will have to recalibrate, course-correct, and endeavor to return to the "old ways."

There is not a church anywhere that can endure the permanent loss of proactive connection, of joyful inconvenience, of purposeful servanthood, and expect to endure at all.