We’re living a mile-marker moment in the history of humanity. Like the invention of the printing press or WWII, life to come will be marked as before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
I attended a webinar sponsored by Fresh Expressions and Fuller Seminary entitled Two Churches at Once. It recognized the dramatic and lasting changes we’re experiencing right now due to the pandemic.
Click Here to register to watch the video of the webinar.
During the webinar, I found these questions from the Rev. Dr. J.R. Briggs profound. I’ll be spending time with them in the coming days and hope they will be helpful to you as well.
Thoughtful, rich questions like these will help us move forward in clarifying our priorities, purpose, and core beliefs in a new age. They’ll also help us live them out in the new normal.
I’d love to hear your responses. Feel free to share them below- Lisa <><
What has coronavirus taken away?
What has coronavirus not taken away?
What has coronavirus given us?
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© 2020 Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia
Revlisad.com 
Thank you for sharing this with us. I found Dr Briggs and the woman from Fresh Expressions stimulating my thinking but even more instincts about what new expressions might we pursue “with fear and great joy.” My sense of what has been taken away is the illusion of the certainty of my plans and how things will be ordered. I am in a personal place where I don’t experience a great deal of loss, more inconvenience, yet I have family whose lives are now significantly displaced with the prospect of greatly reduced futures. In the previous year I have been intentionally practicing some “voluntary displacement” worshipping at times at a CME church and eating with and making friends with folks at a community meal (there were plenty of volunteers) and those friends are disproportionately at risk.
For me what has not been taken away is “true contrition, kind compassion, purposeful longing for God.” (Those are the wounds for which Julian prayed.) What I experience as very present is a longing for authentic, transparent, vulnerable, joyful, appreciative relationship and opportunity to be of service to others and the nurtured desire to value abiding in the love of God.
We are now given a precious opportunity. “There will be great pressure to revert back” is a quote that stuck with me. None of us are immune from that instinct to want to get back to normal rather than being open to what might be transformed. I have great sympathy for that desire, but I also know from experience that there are opportunities to be explored “with great fear and joy.” Could it be that “small is the new beautiful” and “the circle is the new place to gather?” They come with built in potential for appropriate distancing along with mutuality. I experienced this in practice last week in an AA Meeting. One fellow said something to the effect, “I know the virus is real and I might get sick, but I also know I do have alcoholism and right now I have a healthier fear of alcoholism than the virus.” So what is at stake for us? What about our faith in Jesus Christ is essential to our life? And how will we live that today with the realities of faith, hope, and love?
Thank you for the gift of this personal, thoughtful, and rich reflection. It’s inspiring to see how you’re living out the wounds Julian asked for in prayer. – Lisa <