To Assemble or Not to Assemble - A Response to COVID-19 (edited)

***EDITED***

Since originally published, it has been pointed out to me that during other events such as the Spanish flu and similar hisotical situations many churches have closed.  I don't have the facts to back this up, so I am ready to stand corrected, but I do not believe churches were mandated to close, but rather were asked to close for the public good.  Furthermore, I would like to have historical evidence as to whether all churches closed, some churches closed, or only a select few in highly dense populations closed.

Reglardless.  I don't change my opinion in the matter.  Constitutionally, government does not have the authority to mandate church closures.  Whether we choose to close is a matter of conscious and in this post I am stating my arguments for why we should not close.  As churches, we can remain "open" while still encouraging distancing and even encouraging at risk people to stay at home as much as possible. We simply should never close our doors to those who need us.

And for absolute full disclosure, while I never closed the doors to the church I pastor, I did strongly encourage my congregants to be safe and stay home as much as possible.  We did utilize live streaming and video conferencing for Bible Study.


***ORIGINAL POST***

I think this blog post may be directed more towards my friends and brothers who are pastors than it is to anyone else, but whether you are a pastor, a lay member, or just someone who is looking at current events with an eye of uncertainty and confusion, I am hopeful that you will see a perspective in this article that transcends the current tide of social wisdom and trend.

If the last week has taught us anything at all, it has taught us just how fragile our perceived way of life truly has been.  Within the course of just a few days, everything we took for granted under the name of freedom has been taken away from us and we have given it away freely – our freedom to move from place to place, our freedom to go out and purchase what we want when we want it, and our freedom to assemble together willingly.  It wasn’t taken away from us by an overwhelming military force.  It wasn’t taken away from us by terrorists seeking to destroy our way of life.  It was taken away from us by our own willingness to give in to the fear of a pandemic.  In the course of one week, everything we thought we knew about our own way of life has been ripped away from us – and with the snap of the finger, we live in a different world.  A week and a half ago, we would have all agreed that any threat to our freedoms would have been met with a grass roots uprising of homegrown military force the likes of which the world could not imagine.  Today, those freedoms have been voluntarily laid down without a single finger being raised in opposition.

To be clear, I am not suggesting those freedoms are gone permanently.  I truly hope that the promises we are hearing that all of this is just for a few weeks will render itself true.  Likewise, I am not suggesting in any way that restricting our travel and our movements – in general at least - is necessarily the wrong thing to do under these circumstances.  Nor am I suggesting that putting limitations on the gathering of large groups in general is the wrong thing to do.  I have personally said on many occasions that the gospel of Jesus Christ does not guarantee us any such freedoms and that we ought not to presume we have any rights to them at all.  Yet to see how easily and quickly we laid them down was a surprise even to me.

It is into this new understanding of who we are and what we are willing to do in the face of circumstances such as the outbreak of COVID-19 that I wish to speak.  It is within this context of self-quarantines and restricted movements that I speak this urgent exhortation to every pastor that may find himself reading this article: 

NOW, more than at any time in our lifetimes, it is imperative to the cause of the gospel for the doors of the church to remain open.

And having said that, I want to urge each of the pastors who have canceled in person gatherings in the name of love not only to reconsider their position on this matter, but also to consider whether they need to repent of that decision and what it means regarding their own understanding of the gospel.  Even having said that, I fully expect to receive the ire of many of my pastor friends, but before coming down too quickly on me for those words, please let me give you my reasoning for such a strong exhortation.

I want to give you four reasons why I believe the church, along with pharmacies, grocery stores, hospitals, etc. should remain open during this terrible crisis – after which I want to give you my thoughts on how I believe the doors of the church can remain open without overly exacerbating the risk of spreading this contagion.

1.      The precedent of the past as it relates to the present

When we look back on history, can we really say that COVID-19 is really that different than any of the many threats the world – and the church – has faced throughout history?  This is not the first plague the world has known.  This is not the first time in history that government leaders have suggested – or even forbade – the gathering of the church.  In all these prior circumstances, the true church remained open.  Yes, in some cases, the true church had to go underground, but in the face of plagues, war, famine, and even persecution, the precedent of the church has always been to remain open for business.   In the first century, there were regular concerns over potential plagues and there was imminent concern about governments forbidding the church from gathering for worship.  Yet it was precisely at this precarious time in history that the author of Hebrews said these words that – at least to me – seem as if they could have been writing to pastors and church leaders in March, 2020 as easily as the first century.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.  Hebrews 10:24-25 (ESV)

Those words were written to encourage us that our responsibility is to gather as saints so that we would continue to urge one another to love and good works. We do that through corporate worship and the proclamation of the word.  If we close the doors of the church, foreclosing any opportunity for gathering and worshipping and encouraging one another to good works, we will be at risk of falling into the trap of closing ourselves off from doing the good work that this time, more than any other time in our lifetime, is calling us to do.

And just as there is a precedent established by our forebears in the past, we too are establishing a precedent for the future.

2.      The precedent of the present as it relates to the future

We have closed our doors in the name of love.  Please – will you just say those words out loud.  Consider about how silly that sounds.  Let’s be honest as to why we are closing our doors.  We are closing our doors out of fear that a virus will hurt us or someone we love.  We are closing our doors out of fear that the rate of spread of the virus will overwhelm our health care system.  I get it.  I understand that.  But think about the precedent we are setting in closing our doors.  If we are so easily willing to close our doors today for this situation, what will be the situation that we are willing to close our doors for tomorrow?  This is supposed to be a temporary thing to stop the spread of a deadly virus, but the ease in which all our freedoms were stripped away underlines the risk that those same freedoms could be taken away at any time for any reason.  Who is to say precisely how long this will last or how it may evolve?  What happens if the social order starts to break down?  We are already seeing pandemonium in the stores.  What happens if that spreads into neighborhoods and the public in general?  How easily will the state of emergency become the new *permanent* normal? Today, we are unwilling to gather when the risk – for MOST people – is that we may or may not get sick for a few days – even though, yes, there is a possibility that some could die.  What will we do when there is a greater risk that we will be severely punished or imprisoned because we have gathered?  Has not the gospel called us to lay down our lives for the kingdom of God?  The truth is, in many cities across the country, church services aren’t just being discouraged, they have already been banned.  That’s right.  The time has come and is now that in the United States, church services have been banned.  Say that out loud.   Have not we all said on many occasions in our Sunday School classes and bible studies that we would all be willing to lay down our lives for the cause of Christ? Have we not said that we would not forsake the assembling of the saints even if it were against the law? Have not you, pastor, preached from the pulpit that exact message?  How quickly our tunes have changed.

 And that bring me to the third reason.

3.      The understanding of the gospel as it relates to the current situation

Think about the gospel.  So many of us right now are thinking about how dangerous it may be for us to gather in person for worship.  If we love our elderly and at-risk saints, we will cancel our services so as not to put them at risk.  Brothers and sisters, this is not the gospel at all.  The gospel is not “God is love and he wants everyone to be ok.”  The gospel is “Jesus willingly laid down his life so that we may be saved – and he calls each of us to lay down our own lives so that others may be saved.”  Jesus himself said in Matthew 25:16

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (ESV)

We say that we are protecting these saints, but true saints understand the risk of the gospel and would never want their safety to be the reason that someone failed to hear the gospel message.  I am painfully reminded of Paul’s words:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.  Galatians 1:6-7 (ESV)

I urge you to go read the entire letter to the Galatians again in light of our current situation.  If we believe that cutting off access to the physical gathering of saints in the name of love is the gospel, we have lost our way.  If only 5 people are willing to show up for corporate worship, we need to be open for business so that those 5 may gather.  If one lost soul, desperate to find an answer to the chaos that is trying to carry him/her away, shows up at your doorstep, those doors need to be open so that we may share with him that our hope is not in this world, but in the resurrection of the dead through the grace of Jesus Christ.

But you say:

“We haven’t closed the doors; we still have livestreaming, and we still have digital church.”

That brings me to my fourth reason.

4.      The fallacy of digital church as it relates to an alternative to in person gatherings

Livestreaming is good.  Digital church is good.  There will be those who truly are homebound because of their exposure to the virus, just as there are those who are and have previously been homebound for other reasons.  This is one of the many reasons we have ventured down the path of digital church.  But neither livestreaming nor digital church can substitute for in person corporate worship.  Prior to this week, you as pastor would have told your congregation precisely that truth.  What has changed?  The virus?  Don’t be fooled by that line of thinking.  You know as well as I know that no amount of technology can substitute for being together in person.  Just as the lepers needed the personal touch of Jesus…  Just as the hemophiliac woman needed the personal touch of Jesus…  people need our personal touch.  They need our presence and we need theirs.  Let us not for one moment believe the lie that technology is the answer.  We know there are those who have no access to this technology.  Are we abandoning them?  We also know there are those who are not nearly as savvy with technology as others – especially some of our older saints. Are we abandoning them? And most importantly, we also know how unreliable technology can be.  We have been livestreaming our services for a number of months now, and we encourage our members who cannot physically be present to join us during the livestream.  This past Sunday we had an unprecedented number of people voluntarily stay home and participate in church via the livestream.  I’ve read the comments. 

“I can’t hear.” 

“No sound.”

“Still can’t hear.”

“Better but still having trouble.”

How could those people be truly worshipping God when they were struggling with the technology so?  You can’t worship under those conditions.  It really is hard to say what was the cause.  On our end, everything seemed fine.  So, even when it is seems good on our sending end, it is not always good on the receiving end.  Is it internet bandwidth?  Is it user error?  Is it something wrong in our setup?  Honestly, the playback seemed fine to me after the fact.  The point is this: livestreaming your worship serves a purpose, but even under these conditions, it cannot substitute for the gathering of the saints.

Most importantly, how can you, as a pastor, perform your solemn duty as shepherd of the flock over the internet?  How can you keep up with the needs of your flock?  How can you even know whether or not they are watching?  As a pastor, you know how easy it is for believers to get into the habit of not coming to church.  How much easier will it be for them to get into the habit of not watching church – especially if there are difficulties for them in watching the stream.  How easy will it be for them to become lax and start watching it half-heartedly while they are doing other things?  Their worship will become divided with other interests.  There is a reason we gather in person – so that we may focus on Jesus without interruption.  Pastor, you will be held accountable for their souls, but how can you know the condition of their soul without constant interaction with them?  For your sake as a pastor as much as theirs, digital church is NOT church – and it is not the final answer to this problem.

So, how can we keep the doors of the church open under conditions like these?  In what way can we be faithful to Hebrews 10:24-25?  We adjust and we adapt.  We put protective measures in place.  We change how we do church without canceling the in-person gathering.  For a small church like mine, the adjustments may not be quite as difficult.  For larger churches, the adjustment may be more extreme. 

First.  We have grown accustomed to and even prefer the large church gatherings, but if we look at history, this is not how we began.  If we look at areas of the world today where church is regulated or banned, this is not how they gather either.  The church of history has always been small.  If your church is larger, consider going to multiple services to keep the gathered number as small as is practical.  This is going to be especially difficult for those large churches that have already gone to multiple services.  I’m not naïve enough to think it will not be a challenge for them.  It will be more work and will require greater commitment on the part of all the workers – or we could just cancel church, right?  On the other hand, if my suspicions are correct, even if you keep the doors of the church open, you are going to see a massive reduction in attendance as people choose to stay home.

Second.  We accommodate with technology, but we don’t substitute technology for the real thing.  There will be many who choose to stay away.  There will be many who MUST stay away because of sickness and contagion.  We need to be able so show them grace for their circumstances while still doing everything we can to reach them with the gospel.  Technology is not the best solution, but just as it was two weeks ago, we don’t ignore it as one of many tools that may be used to proclaim the gospel.

Third. We take all necessary precautions.  This means cleaning.  This means having sanitizer available (assuming we can still get it).  This means not passing the offering plate.  This means respecting social distancing where it is desired but risking everything – even our lives – to maintain close, physical contact where it is needed.  This is NOT the time to distance ourselves from those who truly need us.  Many will want us to keep our distance, but there will still be many who need us to be there for them.  The gospel is about intimacy with God that results in intimacy with others.  Let us take the precautions we need without eliminating the intimacy of the gospel when it is needed.  Make yourself available to them.  Trust God for protection but recognize he may allow you to suffer for the cause of Christ.  If he does, rejoice in the privilege.

Fourth.  BE THE CHURCH.  This is a time where the church can show true leadership.  People will need the church.  People will need the people within the church to step up and be the church.  Show the world we are not afraid to risk our lives to serve one another.  Offer to go to the store for people.  See if they need rides to the pharmacy or doctor.  Be willing to risk everything for the gospel.

I know this article will anger many.  I may even lose a few friends as a result.  But I must speak the truth.  Now is not the time for the doors of the church to close.  This world needs us now more than ever.  Perhaps God is using this to bring to light the true church – to purge the true church and help identify the wheat from the tares.  Brothers and sisters, consider these words.