Oct 1, 2020
By Gabriel Graffius
Refining Worship
The COVID-19 lockdown came upon us suddenly. From one Sabbath service to the next, First Hopkinton SDB went from attendance of over 100 to a government-imposed limit of 25. Then the limit was ten. Soon after that, it was five. Each week we adjusted our worship service and who participated. Each week our awesome crew had to leave its family at home and “wear more hats” to live-stream the worship service. I am thankful that we were already live-streaming services, so we were making adjustments as opposed to starting something new. On top of the stress and turmoil of a global pandemic, we had to learn how to “do” church in a different way almost every week. To remain faithful to God, our congregation, and many live-stream guests from around the world, we were forced to be innovative and flexible. We also had to evaluate what we did and how we did it to become more effective in this time. I believe this refining process of flexibility, evaluation, and innovation should have been occurring in churches before the pandemic and should continue after it ends. Do you see this process at work in your church? To be honest, I don’t think this is very common. What I find to be far more common is comfort in the way it has always been and even strong resistance to change. The pandemic has now forced a change on all of us—how will we respond when it ends?
Flexibility
One of the many practical ways I envision COVID-19 leading to revitalization is that it forced us to be flexible in how we minister in our church. A few years ago, when I was at Raritan Valley SDB church, membership and regular attendance were dwindling. As a result, we made many adjustments to the service. We stopped doing things that didn’t work with a small number of people. We used recorded music and integrated a projector into the service. We tried a different order of service and even tried a Friday night worship service to better accommodate schedules. Eventually, when the building was sold and in the process of being remodeled, we worshiped in homes, hotel conference rooms, and restaurant banquet areas and had to adjust worship accordingly (I wish we had thought of online church!). It wasn’t normal, but it was necessary. Some things worked better than others. It taught me to be more comfortable with change and to be flexible as a ministry leader. The apostle Paul had a similar strategy in each city he visited, but he was also a very flexible church leader. COVID-19 reminds me of the situations in Acts 18:5-11 and 19:8-10. When met with heavy resistance and expulsion from the synagogue, Paul quickly found new places to minister. The new places of worship and teaching helped him to interact with different people and it resulted in greater growth and outreach than before the move. A little flexibility can make a huge difference in outreach.
Evaluation
Just being flexible and willing to change is not where it ends. We must constantly and honestly assess what is working and what is not working to keep improving at what we do. Whether we did it the first time last week or we have been doing it the same way for 50 years, we have to evaluate its effectiveness and find ways to improve it or even remove it. About two weeks after re-opening, about 70-80% of our regular attendees had returned to church despite the masks and odd seating arrangement. Some, for various reasons, were still not comfortable attending. We knew that nearly all of them were live-streaming, but couldn’t help but wonder what
it would take for them to return. At this point we felt that the church was surviving the pandemic, but not yet thriving. Then, one week we had a technical glitch that took down the live-stream. It was unfortunate, but God was working in it. In the middle of Pastor Dave’s sermon, I was in the back and saw a regular attendee that had not yet “returned” to church standing in the doorway listening. She had been coming to church and live-streaming from her car. She wanted to be at church but wasn’t comfortable in church. It turns out she wasn’t the only one—and this led to a speaker being set up to provide sound to about ten people on the church lawn. Fast forward a few more weeks and the whole service moved outside under a large tent. Many who had been missing returned, and they were joined by several others from the community who took interest in our “in-tents” worship. We went from surviving to thriving by constantly evaluating what we were doing and making adjustments. We were not satisfied until we were reaching as many people as possible. Now, we are evaluating and trying out other uses for the tent. There have also been many requests to get one again next summer!
Innovation
What I described about the lead-up to the tent represented small steps forward that we made after evaluations—but the “in-tents” worship was actually a giant leap of innovation (ironically, this “new” thing for us was a lot like the tabernacle). Minor tweaks are helpful, but being willing to go forward in faith and possibly fail leads to the greatest growth. Many times we can be too risk averse to innovate well. Sometimes, when people speak of the need for the church to be flexible and open to change, they are really asking us to compromise on our beliefs. We can, in fact, be innovative with how and where we minister without compromising the Gospel. Tim Lucas illustrates this well when he says that we can be “closed-handed with the message, but open-handed with our methods.” COVID-19 gave us no choice but to innovate. Beyond the “in-tents” worship, we generated 7-minute video messages on YouTube, added Facebook to our Live Stream, video testimonies were integrated into the service, Zoom Bible studies were started, and outdoor prayer groups gathered. New people from our community and around the world viewed our content or joined us as a result of innovation. At the same time, I was encouraged to see various video messages, Zoom Bible studies, and streaming revivals hosted by our fellow SDBs. Church leaders united and responded quickly to the situation. Some were more out of their comfort zones than others, but we all tried. Each had a different way of doing it, but we continued to minister. The same Gospel was preached, but a whole new group of people were exposed to it because SDB churches utilized different methods. I see a great need for the church to continue, like Paul, to become “all things to all people so that by all possible means” some will be saved (1 Corinthians 9:22). Some events will fall flat. Great ideas might be executed poorly the first time, but we can adjust. Regardless of our past successes or failures, we must never stop being willing to try new things to reach new people.
Repeat
Although we have now been able to return to “in-person” services at First Hopkinton SDB, the need for flexibility, evaluation, and innovation continues. In fact, its presence prior to the virus reduced the disruption when it began. I hope and pray it doesn’t disappear with the virus from our fellow churches. I have begun to view COVID-19, or even all of 2020, as a refiner’s fire for the revitalization of the church—a chance to remove distractions from our lives and help us to fix our eyes on Jesus. It is my prayer that many churches “emerge from this trial purified, resulting in an increase in the praise and honor and glory of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:7). I have heard many members of various churches anticipating the day when things return to normal, the way it used to be. I totally understand, but should we really snap back to 2019? Was the way it used to be the best it could be? The way that God intended us to be? You have been refined for a purpose—go forth in His will.
Gabriel Graffius is the husband to Adrienne, father to Abigail and Lydia, and associate pastor of the First Hopkinton SDB church in Ashaway, RI.
