COVID19: May 23, 2020 - Come, Let Us Worship

It probably is no surprise to you that I have always spent a lot of my waking hours thinking about worship. Specifically, public worship, the way we do it together in community. Since the middle of March, my thinking about worship has become an obsession. I’ve got nothing but worship on the brain, 24/7. It’s the last thing on my mind when I go to bed at night, and the first thing in the morning. From the dreams I can recall, worship seems to show up a lot there, too.

Online worship has challenged me to the nth degree. That first Sunday, when we had a two-day notice, the only way I could think to do this was Facebook live. So, on Sunday morning, I opened my laptop on the dining room table and spoke to my congregation. The next week, I did the same. But then, I realized that this was making me a nervous wreck. I was so afraid something would go wrong, and I would end up swearing online. (This is something I’m prone to do, reflexively, when things go wrong.) That's when I switched to a recorded offering on YouTube that could also be shared on FB and our website.

Palm Sunday and Easter rolled around and I wanted to offer something special. So, I enlisted the help of a member of our congregation who is a professional. He edited videos that included music and lots of contributions from members. They were both fabulous! But we expended so much energy getting them together that I knew that level of production wasn’t sustainable.

It was back to me. I was getting a lot of feedback about wanting music in online worship, so our Minister of Music figured out how to offer a hymn at the end. Well, that evolved into two hymns. Then we added some gathering music. That’s about when we decided to go to a zoom format, since that would allow more people to participate. (I only realized this was possible from watching colleagues.)

While all this is evolving, I’m learning new skills. I have become a video editor and each week find something new to try. This week, I learned how to edit a video of photos with music in the background and drop it into our worship service. All of this takes time. I’m not just writing a sermon every week. I’m also writing a script, complete with video instructions, setting up a recording session on zoom, gathering extra videos to include, editing, and posting on multiple platforms. I haven’t counted how many hours this takes, from beginning to end, because I’m afraid to know. But I do know there’s a reason why I’m exhausted.

Given all of the above, as you might imagine, I’ve been sensitive to criticism. However, when it’s offered constructively, I appreciate the feedback. (Since I have no idea how people are experiencing this.) As a result, our online worship continues to evolve. Next week I plan to record my sermon from the worship space at Ascension, and we’ll be adding more participants and more liturgy. As exhausting as online worship is for me, I’ve also found it energizing as it’s tapped into my creativity in unexpected ways. (Less than three months ago, I didn’t know how to do any of this stuff!)

But still, it’s not in-person worship. Along with many other people, in the beginning, I wondered if we’d be back in the building for Easter. It didn’t happen. That’s when I thought, whenever we’re back together, we’ll celebrate Easter just as we would have on Easter Sunday. I figured that after we all went home for a while, we’d all be coming back. In time, I realized that wasn’t going to happen, either. Our return to the building wouldn’t be any time soon. And when it did happen, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

At Ascension, we've assembled a Safe Reopening Task Force that is working on a plan that will include a protocol for returning to in-person worship. As I have been reading guidelines and recommendations from a variety of sources, I have a picture of what our return to worship in the building will look like. Granted, I’ve been wrong about a lot of things so far, so I may be wrong about this. But here’s what I’m seeing…

Given the size and configuration of Ascension’s worship space, we will be lucky if forty people will be able to worship at once (out of 566 active members). Having multiple worship services on a Sunday leaves me wondering how the space could be adequately cleaned and aired out between services. (By-the-way, air circulation in this space is a great concern and we cannot open the windows.) So I suspect it might be best to only hold one service. Well then, how do we decide who comes to worship? Roughly half of our people should not be coming, from those who are over a certain age (which keeps shifting), to those who have underlying conditions. Small children may also be excluded because it will be hard for them to observe social distancing rules. Even with all those limitations, that still leaves a lot more than forty people who could gather for in-person worship.

Let’s assume you’re one of the lucky people who gets to come to the building for worship. It may mean signing a waiver and/or making a reservation. (Seriously, what do we do with the people we can’t accommodate in our space?) When you arrive, someone may take your temperature at the door. You will be required to have a face covering. Although there may be no one to greet you, someone will definitely need to police you. (Who will we get to do that thankless task?) There will be hand sanitizer that you will be expected to use upon entering. When you get to your pew, you will be spaced at an appropriate distance from others. (I imagine we will have to tape the areas off.) There will be nothing in your pews, like hymnals. Nothing will be passed from person to person, like offering plates. There will be no singing. Limited congregational speaking (No Creed, no Lord’s Prayer). Certainly, no passing the peace or touching, or even getting close enough to one another to do much more than nod. Holy Communion is a real problem on a lot of levels. The biggest problem I can see – how do you take Holy Communion with a face mask on? There may be ways around that, like prepackaged elements that you take with you as you leave, but again, not really what we’ve all been longing for. After worship, there will be no greeting the pastor at the door, no coffee hour, no visiting. You just go home. Somehow, I think that when people long to worship together in person again, this isn’t what they have in mind. And yet, to be safe, this is what it may very well look like.

And then there’s the whole issue of me, personally. I am of the age where I should be staying home, and I have an underlying condition. If I were not the pastor, I would not put myself through what I described in the above paragraph. It wouldn’t be worth the risk. I would satisfy myself with the many online worship opportunities available to me. But, as the pastor, I think I can handle this safely when the time comes. I envision myself showing up on Sunday morning, entering the back of the chancel, keeping a safe distance from others in the chancel, and doing my thing, with all its limitations. Then when it’s all over, I will exit the same way I entered. And I will go to my car and try to be careful driving home while tears are streaming down my face.

Can you see why I fret over this? Can you understand why it occupies so much of my mind these days? I only long for one thing more than I long to worship in-person with my faith community at Ascension, and that’s to feel the warmth of my grandsons' little bodies as I hug them again. But my longing will remain just that until I can be sure that the people I love will be safe. Until any risk that we take will be minimal, and worth it in the end.

In the meanwhile, I thank God every day that we have the gift of the internet during this pandemic. I can still be with my grandsons. I can still be with God’s beloved people of Ascension. Certainly, not the way I’d like to be, but I’ll take it.