Covid-19 Update — What’s the Plan?
The last few months have been a whirlwind. We launched our church’s Sunday gatherings in early March and then had to call it quits for the shelter in place order. Since then, we have been meeting Wednesday nights on zoom, and now we are gathering online Sunday mornings for a recorded church liturgy as well. These last ten and a half weeks have been hard. It's hard to not see each other in person. It's hard to not sing the praises of our king together. It's hard to not gather to study his word. Everything about this is hard.
As shelter in place orders are being loosed and the country is moving on a path to open many things back up, I'll bet many of you are wondering what the plan for the Porch is. That's what I'd like to address here.
I'd like to share a few ideas with you that have helped my thinking as I lead us into our next steps. Since we are a church plant, we still only have one elder: me. We haven’t installed a board of elders (that's still a little bit down the road), and I honestly can't wait to get to that point. I'll admit that I am not a perfect leader, and so I appreciate your prayers. There was no class in seminary about how to lead a church that can't meet in person. In my 16 years of pastoral ministry, I haven't had any situation come close to preparing me for this. So I have been processing a lot of this with other Godly pastors here in the city. I am thankful for support from you and them.
#1 Meeting online is not nearly as good as meeting in person, but it doesn't come anywhere close to stopping the Kingdom of God.
The church is God's chosen means to expand his kingdom here on earth. And if you remember from our sermon series What is the Church?, the church is about the people and not a building. It's not just about a group of Christians meeting on Sunday mornings—although we love our church gatherings. When we share our prayer requests on zoom, when we watch the Sunday gatherings online, we are being the church. But we are also being the church when we check in with one another. When we support each other. When we serve our neighbors and friends. All of that makes us the church. And as much as it stinks to miss out on our Sunday gatherings for a while, we are still the church of God and even the devil will not prevail against us.
#2 Our Civic leaders have been put into extremely difficult positions, and it's our duty to pray for and support them with respect.
We talked a lot about this in one of our zoom meetings. It's such a bummer that followers of Jesus these days are known for demanding that they get their way and protesting when they don’t. Like I said in that zoom call, unless the government is specifically telling us that only religious groups aren't allowed to meet, we will support them. We will pray for our leaders and ask God to give them wisdom as they make decisions that will impact millions of people’s health and our economy. It is a hard job and they need our support and love.
#3 Just because we can narrowly pass the guidelines to meet doesn't necessarily mean that we have to gather. Love is our guiding principle—not freedom.
The California state government just released guidelines for houses of worship to reopen starting in June. I'd encourage you to go read them if you have the time.
First, I'm not sure that we do pass the state's guidelines for houses of worship. We could maybe scrape by, but we would have to change a lot of things about how we meet (ie. not singing or reciting together, not sharing coffee, etc.).
Second, we don't want our focus as a community to be on our right to meet. We always want our focus in any situation to be love. We want to be known as a loving people. I think that the most loving thing we can do right now is continue to meet online. By meeting in person right now, we would be putting each other and our guests at risk. Until COVID-19 is wiped out, there will always be some level of risk, but I believe that right now the risk is still too high to justify starting our Sunday gatherings back up. So while it's a bummer to put off meeting for a little while longer, we are doing so because we love each other.
#4 We have a three step plan to move towards meeting on Sundays.
Step 1: Tiny Groups: Starting in June we want to organize into "Tiny Groups" of less than 6 people, preferably 3 or 4. These groups can meet together, mostly in public outdoor spaces with masks on to practice social distancing. It'll be a great way to build friendships, pray for one another, be in community, and still stay safe. And by keeping it to the same 3-6 people, we’ll be minimizing risk as best we can.
Step 2: Missional Families: We have one missional family already going, and we would like to launch a second one. When it's safe to do so with certain restrictions, we will get these groups back together to meet in person once a week while still practicing recommended safety measures.
Step 3: Sunday gatherings: After the missional families have been meeting, we will move towards starting our Sunday gatherings at the Powell location back up. When we do eventually start, things will be a lot different. There will be all kinds of safety protocols that we will have to abide by. The seating will be different. Communion will be different. Things won't just go back to "normal" right away.
Let me answer a few quick questions that you may have.
When will this happen? Truth is, I don't know. We are going to take each of these three steps one at a time. So I really don't want to put a date on it except to begin the next step, "Tiny Groups."
How can I get into a Tiny Group? Two ways. If a few of you chat and want to be a Tiny Group, just let us know, and we'll put it down. If you want to join a tiny group, we'll put you on a list, and we'll group people together (mostly based on where people live). Sign up by emailing admin@porchsf.com
Are we still doing Sundays online? Yup. Until the week before we meet back at the Powell location.
You really don't have any sense of a timeline? Honestly, I'm desperately hoping to get back to in person Sunday gatherings by the end of summer, beginning of fall. But I really don't want to say that's for sure when we are meeting. There is still a lot of unknown. A doctor friend of mine recently told me she thinks there will be a second wave and a second shelter in place. So really, who knows.
Final Thoughts
We serve a powerful and a sovereign God. None of this is outside of his control. We are still his people, and we still have hope as we look forward to his second coming. As a people, let us not put our hope in the success of our little church plant, but let us put our hope in our Lord and our King. So while we are bummed to not be meeting, let's take this opportunity to look for ways to love the people around us. Let's look for ways to reflect his glory. Let's look for ways to speak truth into the lives of the people around us who have been shaken up by all of this and are looking for meaning in life. Let's look to serve our king by loving other.
I love you all and I thank you for your support as I try and lead us as a people. It's a joy to be your pastor.
-Jon