Are we still the blessed company of all faithful people?
The most obvious effect has been the catastrophic drop in church attendances, with its inevitable reduction in church income, caused by the closure of church buildings in the most serious phase of the pandemic. One cannot underestimate what the effect of such closures has been. They proclaimed to the general public that the Church was in effect closed for business, just at the very moment when some might have wanted to turn to it for hope and comfort. But worse still, these closures told the world that we were frightened silly that our Almighty God, the Lord of all power and might could actually let us down, that congregations might have caught the virus en bloc and that our public liability insurances would then count for nothing. This does not look much like the faith that Jesus taught us could move mountains!
The other development that has become increasingly obvious since the start of the pandemic is the relatively large numbers of people supposedly watching services online. One uses the word ‘supposedly’ advisedly. Were they regular members of our congregations taking the Government’s advice and avoiding crowded places for their own safety? Or were they part of that group of the uncommitted who put in an occasional appearance in church just in case the God thing might turn out to be true after all? Or were they merely casual browsers, who stumbled upon a service, took one look at it and changed to something else? The problem is that we shall never know, as statistical research on the users of the internet cannot take place. The whole advantage of the internet is that identities are hidden. Maybe it is this very anonymity that has led to there being more worshippers online rather than in the pews.
By watching services online it has become possible for people on the fringes to continue their loose association with their parish church on even more favourable terms – they do not even have to darken the doors of the building, let alone face the embarrassment of meeting a sidesperson with a welcoming smile or having to pass that wretched offerings box. We therefore need to be careful not to treat this boom in onliners as some evangelistic triumph, let alone alter the format of the services so that they become geared towards catching the camera.
This therefore not an argument for abandoning online services, far from it, but rather a plea for us not to let the electronic tail wag the Christian family dog. We must not allow the demands of the camera to dominate what we should be doing in church. The People of God are by very definition the Body of Christ, a physical and living presence of the “blessed company of all faithful people”, who can only worship, learn and grow when they are together. It cannot be its true self if we are content to sit alone in our living rooms, not too far from the comforts of the kettle and the biscuit tin!
However, if we are to take global warming seriously – and the warnings of Jesus Himself in St. Luke 21 which confirm it – then this pandemic will turn out to be the first in a growing number of disasters to hit our world. Who can tell what we will need to do in order to preserve Christian worship and teaching among the faithful and Gospel outreach among those who need Christ so badly, but do not yet know Him.
