Vocation & the church's response to pandemic

 

One of my basic assumptions throughout almost all of my ordained ministry has been that God has some mixture of calling for each community of faith just as is true for individuals. And then together with that and assumption that God gives us all of the tools that we need to be able to do that calling.

Along the way in my ministry I have come to the commitment that whatever I should do and whatever it is that the community should do we should do it with the best of our ability, making the best use of what God has given us to work with. In my monthly cycle of devotional readings, I encounter this quote from George MacDonald:

“What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything He gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for what He may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next.”

Recently I sent out links to several workshops aimed at helping churches navigate into the new world that the pandemic has brought us to. Several of you were interested in learning more. Mary Pat and I attended The first of those sessions having the title, "Reversing the Covid Slump." It was a 1-hour discussion featuring three Episcopal clergy pastors of congregations who have worked at finding a way through the demands of the pandemic. The workshop was energizing,thought provoking, and a reminder that there are many many others around the church who are struggling in a similar way to what St Paul's is.

Below you will find links to three items that may be of interest to you Who want to be involved or better informed about how to be church during this time.

Reversing the Covid Slump workshop from Jan. 27

• An audio recording of the 1 hour conversation. You want to be able to just click on the link and your computer will play the audio. Direct link to workshop audio https://filedn.com/leEoPITdBGNmsbak7v043g7/Reversing%20the%20COVID%20slump.mp3
  
• A document containing the links to various resources that were talked about during the conversation. Direct link to the links shared in the workshop: https://filedn.com/leEoPITdBGNmsbak7v043g7/reversing\_the\_covid\_slump\_links-ed.pdf
  
• A document containing the entire chat during the workshop. This is of some interest Because it shows the breadth of people who were participating. Direct link to the complete chat from the hour-long workshop: https://filedn.com/leEoPITdBGNmsbak7v043g7/reversing\_teh\_covid\_slump\_full\_chat.pdf

The upcoming workshop (gathering) is scheduled for Feb. 9 from 2 pm to 3:30 pm. It is sponsored by an organization called "Invite, Welcome, Connect." The invitation is at https://www.invitewelcomeconnect.com/so/96NvOpHoP?languageTag=en&cid=cdcc814e-7727-49e2-9e27-f72b0d9cdcff#/main and their web site is at https://www.invitewelcomeconnect.com/?utm_campaign=bc02cecc-140c-4e7d-ab1c-2b830ab90e96&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail_lp&cid=cdcc814e-7727-49e2-9e27-f72b0d9cdcff. They describe their purpose as, in part, "being church in a time of pandemic."

One of the best illustrations of the conviction expressed above That I am aware of Is the community of Taizé in France. Some of you may be aware of this community because the deeply spiritual music that they have created over the decades has been shared in many church communities. the most recent issue of America magazine gives a short history of the community,with a focus on how it has responded In the last few years to the pandemic.

The community began with one person, Roger Schutz, the son of a Protestant pastor in France In the 1930s and '40s. He was alarmed with the outbreak of the war and asked himself What can be done? Clearly he couldn't change the terrible catastrophe of what World War II was. But he could do something. He found a friend and then another. They began to pray together,and by the 1950s they began a religious community. At first it involved Protestants and then later Catholics.

By the 1960s when I was traveling alone in Europe as a young man, Everywhere I went people talked about the community have Taizé. Eventually thousands of young people gathered in the little village in France every summer.

The article notes that today tens of thousands of young people from around the world travel as pilgrims to this little village. They sing and pray and discuss what to them are the most urgent issues of the time. The community has flourished because from the beginning they have kept focused on what they could do – not what they couldn’t do. The community has been clear that it was called to minister to the spiritual yearning of young people. The article says, “Some communities are obscured by crisis; others illuminated.”

I could see that claim manifest in the churches that participated in the “Reversing the Covid Slump” workshop. I pray earnestly for the grace to allow St. Paul’s to illustrate it as well.