What principles do we as a church need to internalize so that we are ready for the next challenge that will face our community?

On a recent retreat, our elders took a couple hours to consider the question, “What did we learn from Covid?” Overall, we praise God that by his grace our church has persevered after such an unusual two years. We are thankful for the Lord’s protection, as no one in our community died or was hospitalized due to Covid, although members of our church did lose loved ones. We also found ways to worship for the majority of the pandemic. 

This did not come without significant hardships, loss of relationship, and much conflict. For this we continue to grieve. We also strongly believe that some of the Lord’s purpose in bringing Covid to the church was that we might mature as a community, be strengthened through trial, and deepen some of the guiding principles that inform who we are as a church.

Someone reading this article may feel that it emphasizes more resistance to the government than compliance. Let us say at the outset, we should desire to be citizens who are as peaceable as possible, living quiet and undisruptive lives. But there comes a time for the church to remember what G. K. Chesterton said, “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” It’s in going against the momentum of the culture around us that the church most needs resolve. It is now increasingly recognized that many of our responses to Covid were over-reactive. It serves no one to harp on these past disagreements. But it’s still wise to learn from what we experienced. So this essay may not say everything about Covid, but highlights some places where we should strengthen our resolve.

What principles do we as a church need to internalize so that we are ready for the next challenge that will face our community? Listed below are a number of summary statements from our session that fall under our five core values as a church: 

Grace

“Church leaders and congregants must manage and conduct their respective affairs and interactions with grace, especially during emergent times.”

From early on in the pandemic, a guiding principle for our church was, “We are not going to judge one another.” What a gift that our Savior commands us to interact this way (Matt. 7:1). As a church, this approach comes from our first core value in the gospel which tells us that since we have received such grace and patience from God in Christ, we must extend that same grace to one another. Covid created many opportunities on both sides to judge one another. Whether masked or unmasked, obedient to the government or resistant, we had strong temptations to judge each other. 

In a situation like an unprecedented pandemic, we must understand that everyone is doing the best they can to figure out the most God-honoring way to live. This does not mean that everyone is equally right. The Bible does not give us a clear formula on how to operate during a COVID crisis, so we must respect each others’ personal decisions. When the Bible does not speak clearly to a matter, we avoid being overly dogmatic. As a church we must remain principled only around the fundamentals of our faith. 

Grace also enables us to enter civil dialogue and to hear one another charitably. It humbles us to be willing to change our views. It also holds us together as a community, as we wait for the Lord to give more clarity on the way forward. 

Truth

“The church must be dogmatic regarding spiritual issues.”

“The Church and its congregants must consider the whole counsel of God afforded us in Scripture.”

During times of confusion, Christians all the more need the sure foundation of God’s unchanging and inerrant word. When many of us feel that we are not sure who to trust (the government, the media, the medical complex), we must go to the most trustworthy place on earth: the word of God.

During the pandemic, our church continued our normal practice of expository preaching through books of the Bible. As our lives were so flooded with news about the pandemic, it brought health and sanity to our souls to think about the eternal truths revealed to us in the Scriptures. We must deepen our commitment to the full counsel of God in the Bible. With that, we do well to interpret the Bible in agreement with the Reformed theological tradition that has been passed down through the centuries. Every generation has its blind spots and temptations. Reading with historical restraints such as a centuries-long tradition helps us maintain fidelity to the word of God.

In a world of turmoil, the unchanging word of God is our anchor. As our culture increasingly departs from a Christian understanding of the world, the more resolved we will need to be to trust the goodness of God’s written words to us.

Hospitality

“Community is essential in times of crisis.”

“The emotional separation inherent in masking and distancing created lingering deficits in individuals and communities.”

One of the great tragedies of the past two years was how often our essential need for community was disregarded. Our first core value of “grace” covers the missteps we all made in this regard. But as Christians, community is our life. We must be more prepared in the future to defend our community and insist on its importance. 

Though for much of the pandemic people had very different opinions on the efficacy of masking, we should also have factored in more seriously the cost of not seeing people’s faces. We didn’t know if a person was new to church. We couldn’t read the emotions on a person’s face. We greeted each other less on Sundays, and so we were less hospitable. We have a mission to be hospitable, and we must be very circumspect when this mission is being hindered.

Formation

“Worship is essential and bears a primary role to human health and thriving.”

“Spiritual health bears a higher ultimate priority than does medical health.”

Similar to the questions around community, COVID forced us to come to terms with the question: Do I really need worship? Can I live without it? What do I really believe is more important: my body or my soul? The medicalization of our culture has often elevated medical health above all other aspects of life. And while caring for our bodies is important and even biblical (Eccl. 11:10; 1 Tim 5:23), we must resolve that discipleship and worship are the deepest sources of health in our lives. With this, we should be willing to take reasonable risks in order to guard our spiritual health. 

Our culture is often oblivious to the spiritual reality present in Christian worship. It is by faith that we “Keep the Sabbath Day holy,” knowing that the blessings of spiritual rest we receive from the Lord on the Lord’s Day cannot be verified by science but are promised in the sure word of God. 

It should be stated, we are not in the least “anti-science.” We’re only saying that there are certain questions that science can’t answer (e.g. What creates meaning in my life?). We are more than our biology.

Kingdom

“Christian Church officers are responsible before God for the well-being of its congregants and cannot abdicate that responsibility to a human government or enterprise.”

“The concept of societal structure encapsulated in sphere sovereignty (a la Kuyper) is normative; church authority should be judged equal to civil authority in general, and superior (or controlling) within its sphere.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic offered Satan an opportunity to attack the Church; the Church must remain vigilant to identify and repel attacks on its existence and authority. The Church must claim, defend, and exercise full authority over its own worship services.”

One of the things we are most grateful for from the pandemic was that it forced us to think more deeply about the relationship between the church and the state. Politics has remained for years an untouched topic in our spiritual and intellectual life at CCB. Yet, Christians throughout history have had to think deeply about the relationship between the city of God and the city of man.

COVID forced us to address these questions. We gained a new resolve that our church officers are responsible for the spiritual health of our people. We must not abdicate that responsibility to the government, and we must be willing to stand when that authority is challenged—not because we disrespect the government’s authority, but because we take seriously the authority God has entrusted to us, and we know that we will give an account to how we shepherded his sheep (Heb 13:17). The civil magistrate has its God-given “sphere of sovereignty,” but we have ours as well, and it is equally legitimate.

It may be, in the years ahead, that the church will need to be a refuge if Christians ever face more severe persecution. We must steel ourselves for that day. Church officers must be prepared to act courageously, and church members must be prepared to stand together. We have an enemy who wants to tear us apart, and he is crafty: he will take advantage of ambiguous situations to cloud our judgment from what is clear in Scripture. 

We praise God for these lessons, hard as they have come. They are for our good. 

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? 

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, 

nor be weary when reproved by him. 

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, 

and chastises every son whom he receives.” 

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

Hebrews 12:5–7