It is always good at moments like these to take a few minutes to reflect on what God is teaching during this time.

1. You do not know what you have till it is gone. There are lots of little things I miss while being inside during lockdown. The most significant is our worship meetings on Sunday morning. I miss the songs being sung by the Lord’s people. There are also the simple pleasures of sitting in a restaurant with my wife on a quiet Friday. I am going to miss my son’s college graduation, and it was our first one, feeling disappointed about it. This time has clarified some of the things I value and do not realize it.
2. I can do without a lot of things. The flip side of point one is also true. I have not missed sports like I thought I would. Casual shopping trips where I spend too much money without planning for it, are definitely not missed. The weekly maintenance around the Church building both before and after worship does not leave a void. Several things I thought were important have proved not to be so significant to me.
3. My connection to people. I am an introvert. I have always valued my time alone with a small group of people. I am surprised at how much I miss seeing everyone. This is especially true on Sundays. The family of God contains people who are precious to me. My family would also love to see my mother, but for the sake of her health, we have stayed away. Time away from family is hard. I never expected to miss my time with people so much.
4. The power of God in weakness. Over the past few weeks, I have been blessed to see God working in so many ways. Several people have reported to me that non-Christian family members have watched our worship programs at home. Others have told me about friends reading religious books along with their Bibles. On top of everything, our Church rallied to take up a massive offering over a 12-day period in which we gave 10% (above our standard 10% to missions) to a local school program. The number still blows me away. God even uses things like the virus to do his mighty work

These are the biggest lessons I am learning, or at least being reminded of during this time. What is God teaching you? The lessons of life are often discovered in seasons of unexpected challenges. I pray this time is a time of growth for all of us.

Lately, I sense I have fallen into a trap.  Sunday comes, and because of our current situation, I find myself watching my sermon online with my family.  Honestly, I usually watch my mannerisms and repeated phrases.  It is humbling to see yourself public speaking. Then, because every Church is online these days, I will scroll through my Facebook feed and look at what other Churches are doing.  

It is incredible how quickly I can go from worshipping God to comparing myself to other people.  I can shift from “Thank you God for our Church,” to some distorted view of worship.  This move goes one of two directions. 

First, I can quickly be filled with a sense of pride.  “Oh God, I thank you I am not like those clueless Churches.”  Some of the videos I am seeing are horrendous.  With all the modern technology, it amazes me how some Churches are doing so poorly.  My ego swells, and my pride in my Church overflows. 

Second, I can just as quickly be filled with shame. “Oh God, why is my Church not like those technologically advanced Churches?” Some of the videos I am seeing are tremendous.  The quality of production rivals Hollywood.  I am amazed with all the technology out there that we are doing so poorly.  My shame grows, and my dislike of my Church overflows. 

It is so easy for believers to find Sunday morning invigorating or humiliating because we are comparing our Church worship to other Churches in our town and across the country.  As I was thinking about this over the past week, I have had conversations with other Christians who had told me the same thing.  On Sunday morning, they are watching multiple worship programs, and it is causing their emotions to ebb and flow with whomever they are watching.  This is not healthy for our souls. 

My plea for you is the same thing I plan on practicing for the rest of this break.  The moment I start watching another Church program, and I start comparing it to the Church I attend, I am going to shut it off and move along.  It is not good for my soul and yours.  It breeds discontentment and arrogance in the lives of believers.  If we don’t, I fear that this time of “online Church” will make us more unhappy and less like the people of God.  This is a trick of the evil one. 

Comparison can steal your joy.  Don’t let it happen, especially when it comes to Church worship. 

During a Junior High school gym class, we were learning to use the weights for building muscles. It was in one of these classes I remember hearing what I thought was the dumbest advice ever. The teacher would repeatedly say, “Don’t forget to breathe.”

What made it seem so incredibly stupid was that I did not think about breathing at all. This one part of my life was completely involuntary. It was innate action that kept me alive. It did not require me to remember it at any point in time. Why would I need to think about it while lifting weights?

It wasn’t too long after we started that I realized what he was saying. When encountered with lifting a heavyweight, the natural tendency is to hold your breath and push harder to overcome the obstacle. When things get strenuous, the temptation is to forget to breathe.

These words resonated through my head recently as I anticipate the coming six weeks or more. Life is out off-kilter with the shutdown for the coronavirus, springtime is arriving, there is the anticipation of things starting to open again, and a busy schedule is looming on the horizon. I can feel myself starting to tense up and the weight of incoming burdens beginning to weigh me down.

“Don’t forget to breathe” may be the best advice I can give you this week and this year. Take time to step back and feel the oxygen move over your lungs. Pause and reflect each day on the way God is working in your life. Build moments into every day that will allow you rest and freedom. Don’t tense up; be willing to give it all over to God.

Whenever your days are overwhelming, breathe deep the breath of God. You will get through this, and he will use it for his glory.

The Church community is here to help you grow in your faith.  Each week it provides programs for adults and young people alike to take new steps in their walk with God.  This growth comes through worship, prayer, communion, and ultimately teaching.  It is here to help you read and understand your Bible, along with how it applies to your life.  The Church wants teach you know more about God’s will and encourage you to live it out through the week. 

Through this time of lockdown, I have been wondering about what people are doing to grow spiritually without their community of faith to help them.  Don’t get me wrong, as a Church leader, I am still here to help you, and I am trying to provide resources, but there is only so much I can do. 

The person who is most responsible for your maturity as a believer is YOU.  You need to be able to read, study, and learn on your own.  You need to know how to pray for yourself and others.  You need to feel the desire to sing and find the words to voice your praise.  The most significant factor in your faith journey, other than God, is you. 

During this time of quarantine, some of you will thrive, and some of you will starve.  My prayer is that you will use this time to bring you closer to God.  The primary factor to whether that will happen is staring you in the mirror.  There is no one else to blame right now; your spiritual growth is in your hands. 

Here is the shocking truth; once this is all over, the same person will still be responsible.  This time away from the Church body has not changed anything; it has merely revealed something many of us have ignored.  Each one of us is responsible to God for our own faith, and the Church is just here to help you.

There is a TV show called “Naked and Afraid” where they drop two people in a remote place with nothing but one tool of their choosing and a small woven bag. The show is frequently staged, and I have read stories describing some of the fake settings and film editing. It is still a fascinating study of survival. The most challenging part of the experiment is when one of the contestants calls it quits and decides to go home. Then the person left behind is alone and afraid. The struggle with loneliness is often more significant than the struggle for food, water, shelter or clothing.

We long for companionship. We need people in our lives. God does not just create Adam; he gives him a companion in Eve. In the New Testament, he does not only make new creations; he provides us with a community of believers we call the Church.

One of my fears through this pandemic is that when the dust has settled and people are allowed to go back to their “normal” lives, they will abandon Church meetings. After all, we have survived for weeks and weeks without meeting together, why do we need to go back now?

My continual prayer though this time, is that God will show us our great need for community. I pray we will miss the fellowship of faith. I hope you will feel an absence in our lives that can only be filled by other believers. I dream that we will come out of this time with a greater sense of our connection to the body of believers.

If that does not happen, then much of this time will have been in vain. Let that longing you feel to connect push you toward the Church community. It is not good to be alone and afraid. We were made for connection, and any voice pushing you away from it is not the voice of God.

The first weekend I was in college, I went cruising with some other Freshman down the main street of Joplin with hundreds of other students. There were four of us in the car, and we saw some good-looking girls and decided to pull into a parking lot to talk to them. We were there for a couple of minutes, and a policeman pulled up and wrote us all tickets for loitering. He told us that they had been putting articles in the local paper all week, warning people of the coming crackdown. I did not know of many students who read the paper, and most of us had only been in town for a couple of days. The policeman’s response was, “Ignorance is no excuse.” I have never forgotten his words, and it only cost me $87 to learn them.

Throughout this pandemic, I have felt that line echoing in the back of my head. Every day I am faced with a new set of problems, and I want to move forward, but I simply do not know what to do. Then the voice says, “Ignorance is no excuse.” The words push me to keep reading, working, and trying to find solutions for the Church in this trying time. I must pause for a few minutes today and shout, “I do not have it figured out. I have no clear idea of what to do next. I am totally ignorant in this situation.”

Being a Church leader for so many years has given my insight into several things. I think I can help marriages, parents, people who want to grow in the faith, and those who want to overcome their past. Nothing, I mean nothing, has prepared me for this.

As I read through my social media groups, I am also convinced that no pastor, preacher, or Church leader knows what to do in the immediate future. Several parachurch leaders keep offering advice and making bold predictions, but they are guessing. No one knows what the future looks like for our Church, community, or world. This is true for me as a pastor and also for school and community leaders.

Why do I tell you all this? For two reasons that I hope you will consider. First, you are going to need to be extremely patient with your leaders over the coming months. We are trusting God and doing our best. Two, please pray for Christian leaders into the future. May God guide us with knowledge and wisdom as we move through uncharted waters. I know that ignorance is not an excuse, and I am not trying to make excuses, but we need God’s guiding hand and your grace as we move forward together.

He said, “It is good to be in the house of God” at the beginning of our time of worship on Sunday morning. It sounds true and has echoes of Biblical theology but misses the New Testament understanding of the Church.

In our modern era, the tendency is to equate the building the Church meets in each week with “a house of God.” Unfortunately, the terminology comes from the Old Testament. On the pages there, we read about the temple as the house of the Lord. That was a very literal understanding for them. When Solomon built the temple and dedicated it to God, the people saw the Spirit of God fall on the building, making it a special place. Each year the people went to that temple to give the priests their sacrifices and worship the Lord. On the day of Atonement, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies and the very presence of God on behalf of the people.

When Jesus dies, everything changed. The temple veil was torn in two, and humanity was now allowed access to God through the blood of Jesus. The writer of the book of Hebrews says that we can “draw near with confidence.”

Then in Acts chapter two, the Holy Spirit poured out into the hearts of men. The dwelling place of God moved from a building into the human “tent,” and each one of us is now a temple of the Holy Spirit. God now resides in heaven, but his Spirit lives inside of the men and women who follow Jesus. Those people together form this beautiful thing called the Church. Therefore, the Church is not a building but people.

I know all of this seems like an elementary lesson for Christians, but it has been underlined to me through this time of the shutdown. Think of all the things we can do in and for the name of God while we are kept from meeting in the building on Sunday. We can still pray, sing worship songs, read the Bible while studying its contents, contact people through the phone (or text and email), give to various organizations, let your light shine on social media, train up our children in the way of the Lord, and even watch sermons online. These are just a few of the things the people of God can do even when we are not meeting together.

Don’t get me wrong. I still think getting together as a group of believers is vitally important. For now, the followers of Jesus are without a building. He has not left our midst. We are still the Church; just now, we are the Church without walls.

Yesterday was the day the Christian community sets aside to remember the resurrection of Jesus specifically. We traditionally call this day Easter, and it is usually the biggest day in the religious calendar. This year was the most unique one I have experienced in my life and especially my 27 years of ministry. The Church I lead was one of the thousands of Churches who did not meet because of the Corona Virus/COVID-19 pandemic. Here are a few reflections I would like to share from this once in a lifetime experience.

1. People are still interested in religion. One of my fears going into this time of quarantine is that people would forget about the Church and push back from faith. I was encouraged this week to see so many stops to pick up communion at our Church for worship. Then there were all the posts on social media about Jesus, faith, and the Church from the people I lead along with their friends. The appeal of faith has not been reduced; in fact, it might be increasing, and that is encouraging.
2. I am thankful for technology. I am not sure what I would have done if this crisis had happened 25 years ago. In 2020, I can do a high definition recording of my sermon, worship, and prayers. Then we are able to stream them on the web and allow everyone a chance to worship at home. I am thankful for the technology and all the people who are using it for God’s glory
3. It didn’t quite feel like Easter. It was nice to worship at the same time with people of like faith, but it was not the same as being in the building together. I missed the fellowship we experience with the other members of our faith community. Without conversations, handshakes, hugs, and bright smiles, Easter missed some of its joy.
4. The resurrection is still true. The central truth of our faith is not built on our time together. Our belief is grounded on the resurrection of Jesus from the grave. This pandemic will not negate the work of Jesus. The hope found on Easter morning still exists today, maybe especially today.
5. God is still at work. I cling to this truth as a pastor and Church leader. When we are together, I get the joy of hearing people share their stories of spiritual growth. I can witness their changes and steps forward on their journey of faith. At home, I still believe God is at work in the lives of the people who are seeking to grow. My faith as a pastor is placed in God to do his mighty work despite the distance, technology issues, and my failures as a pastor.

These are some of the things I encountered this weekend as I tried to celebrate Easter in a new way. I pray the momentum and feelings of today will carry us until we can meet back together again. I am looking forward to the Church getting back together soon. Until then, keep the faith.

Today is the only Friday truly worthy of giving thanks.

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Several times through the years, I have written about this day being Maundy Thursday. I want to revisit that topic today.

The Thursday of the Holy Week before Easter is known as “Maundy” Thursday. Depending on your Church background, this might be a familiar name, or it might be something you have never heard before today. Here is my textbook explanation:

“Maundy Thursday is observed during Holy Week on the Thursday before Easter. It commemorates the Last Supper when Jesus shared the Passover meal with his disciples on the night before he was crucified. In contrast to joyful Easter celebrations, when Christians worship their resurrected Savior, Maundy Thursday services are typically more solemn occasions, marked by the shadow of Jesus’ betrayal.”

The follow-up question is usually, “But what does ‘Maundy’ mean?”  I looked it up and thought you might like the answer as well:

“Derived from the Latin word mandatum, meaning “commandment,” Maundy refers to the commands Jesus gave his disciples at the Last Supper: to love with humility by serving one another (foot-washing) and to remember his sacrifice through communion or Eucharist.”

Today is Maundy Thursday at it is the day we think about Jesus washing the disciple’s feet, sharing the last supper, and the sacrifice is about to make on Friday. I hope you take a few minutes today to reflect and meditate on the events from so many years ago.   May this evening be a time in which you can connect with God in a deep and meaningful way. 

Tomorrow is already looking “Good.”