Dear Family and Friends of RRUMC,
First and foremost, I pray that, as you read this you, your family, and all those people whom you love are happy, healthy, and blessed.
I know that, as we continue to battle COVID-19, we are getting weary and run-down and frustrated. I pray for your spiritual, emotional, physical, and financial wellbeing. This has been a long and difficult journey for everyone and it has lasted a lot longer than any of us ever thought it would. Many of you may have heard that my wife and I had COVID at the end of December through the first part of the new year. We are both completely over it and healthy. I am just happy that, six weeks on the other side of it, my senses of taste and smell are finally starting to come back. I thank you for all your prayers.
With the pandemic in mind, I am seeing a lot of books, articles, and online resources for the “post pandemic church.” Supposed experts are already telling us what the perfect recipe is and what the silver bullet looks like that will get the “Church” back up and running again. I am part of a training right now that started back in the fall of last year and it will take me into the summer of this year and possibly beyond. We were supposed to be traveling all over the country each month for the training sessions. As you can guess, everything is now using all virtual platforms. The training has been incredible. This training has helped me rediscover John Wesley, the founder of the United Methodist Church. I feel like I am forming a brand new relationship with a man that lived throughout most of the 1700’s. We are reading a book called “Marks of a Movement: What the Church Can Learn From the Wesleyan Revival.” The author is not even Methodist but is absolutely fascinated with John Wesley and his movement that swept through England, America, and continues today throughout the world. The author, Winfield Bevins, says, “One of the secrets of the success of Wesley’s movement was his willingness to embrace change, his ability to maintain a dynamic synthesis of old and new, tradition and innovation. Wesley returned the Christian faith and practice to its roots by emphasizing radical discipleship and vital relationships.”
The post pandemic church does not have to reinvent itself. We have to go back to the roots of the movement that John Wesley started in the 1700’s. We then use that lens to see what is on the horizon and new ways to encounter whatever “it” is that we see in front of us. I don’t think the church will ever be the same as it was before COVID hit. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has not changed at all. The way the church encounters it, lives it out, and shares it with others will look different than it did before COVID shut everything down.
Will those who stream come back to the in-person church? Will people continue to financially support the church if they are not in person? When will people be willing to serve and volunteer again? When will they feel safe? There are so many questions to answer. We have an opportunity to start, or should I say restart, the movement that John Wesley started so long ago.
Jesus is the same. The human heart is the same. The Gospel message is the same. How will we look back in order to look forward? I covet your prayers as I go through all this training and as I reintroduce myself to John Wesley.
The recipe is out there and the silver bullet that will lead us into the post pandemic church is already there for us, me, to rediscover.
As my coach and friend, Rev. Shane Bishop says, “God can bless anything but He can’t bless nothing.” Let’s give him the post pandemic church and its fresh new movement to bless.
Peace and Blessings,
Rev. Dan