Reflections of a Pastor after 13 Months of the Coronavirus
Trinity Wellsprings Church,
The last months of shepherding and leading a church during the coronavirus has been uniquely challenging, frequently exhausting, and often exhilarating all at the same time. These last 13 months has required our church and staff to be endlessly adaptable, flexible, and open to the constant changing circumstances in our world and in our church family.
Here are some reflections from the last 13 months in no particular order.
(1) I’ve been encouraged by the missional footprint of Trinity Wellsprings Church. I’m proud of the way our church has mobilized to meet real needs both in our community and around the world during the last several months, including:
Responded missionally by surprising Neighbor Up Brevard with a food drive for struggling families
Blessed 125 Assisted-Living Health-Care Workers at Zon Assisted Living Facility working on the local front line of the coronavirus
Fed 100 families living in extreme poverty in a town dump in Guatemala (live chickens, 50 lb bag of rice, etc.) during the height of the worldwide lock-down
Helped Iranian seminarian-refugees living in Turkey struggling to survive in the midst of the lock-down
Helped purchase a truck for the missionary family Paul and Thania Heier in Guatemala working with folks in extreme poverty
Participated in “The Perspectives of the World Christian Movement”
Supported young church plants within the ECO family struggling to birth an expression of Christ’s church during the coronavirus
Rallied around Becca Bowers as our “Fall Priority Mission Partner” to send her to Guatemala as a short-term missionary from our own congregation
Provided Thanksgiving dinners for nearby school families and purchased numerous Christmas gifts for local families (in concert with Gifts from the Heart, a consortium of 9 local non-profit agencies).
Partnered with Parker Memorial Missionary Baptist Church (Cocoa) to renovate a house adjacent to the church to become a center for drug addicts to get counseling and move from a life-of-drugs to a life-in-Christ.
Provided meals and the love of Jesus to homeless families for a week through an adapted program via Family Promise of Brevard and served our local homeless and low-income residents by serving monthly at The Daily Bread
Continued our faithful prayer and financial support of our global mission partnerships with Rev. Frank Godberg/Bethel Church in India (church planting), IBCP Seminary in Equatorial Guinea (pastoral leadership training), Unnamed Family in (for security purposes) Unnamed Location (church planting), Candy Reiger in Dominican Republic (church ministry/discipleship), and Fishers of Men Ministries in Haiti (discipleship, poverty).
Continued our faithful prayer and financial support of our local mission partners with Community of Hope (homeless transitional housing), Family Promise of Brevard (homeless families), Love Inc. (poverty), Neighbor Up Brevard (integral mission: low-income housing/after school program/food desert), Nana’s House (locally abused, abandoned, and orphaned children)
And those are just the missional endeavors that come to my mind at the moment!
(2) Our church family will need to embrace an “unmatched level of graciousness” to weather this storm and these changing times.
Our church currently exists in a world soaked in fear, enamored with division, and hostile to peaceful dialogue. In May 2020, I wrote a congregational letter that included these words:
…one value stands head-and-shoulders above all others. In the ensuing weeks ahead, our church family will continue to display an unmatched level of graciousness as we navigate these changes together.
An unmatched level of graciousness.
That was my motto, esp. from March to June of 2020. I sought to communicate various versions of this same leadership axiom nearly every week for months.
In changing times, you will not agree with every decision by the leadership of our church. (Masks? Tent! Live-Stream! Easter!) That’s understandable and, quite frankly, impossible.
Yet we all can – by the Spirit’s power – continue to display an unmatched level of graciousness towards staff, elders, lay leaders, and our wider community as we follow Jesus together.
(3) I’d love to lead our church better in the practice of prayer.
Session adopted a three-year strategic plan which included 9 Dreams and 13 Initiatives that we rolled out during our SHINE Capital Campaign.
Dream #5 was entitled “Prayerful People: Develop More Fully our Identity as “A Praying Church” alongside this description: “We embrace our calling to be a people of prayer, recognizing that the renewal and revitalization of God’s people comes about through the Holy Spirit as God’s children humble themselves in prayer before the throne of grace.”
During Holy Week a few weeks ago, my favorite time was our “Good Friday Prayer Service”. We prayed through the stations of the cross: we prayed for forgiveness, we prayed for peace in our world, we prayed for thankful hearts to be centered on the cross of Christ, and we prayed that our church would overflow with witness, mission, and hope to a hurting world. It was so good to hear my brothers and sisters in Christ pray together!
In the recent past, our church has engaged in a “50 Days of Prayer” experiment, did a church wide study on Paul Miller’s A Praying Life, held 24-hour concerts of prayer, and participated in creative expressions of prayer (remember “the prayer labyrinth”?).
Can you make a daily commitment to pray for your church family?
(4) I long for our church’s culture of discipleship to experience a “heating up” over an open fire.
I recently saw a striking truth on social media:
“The church has majored in holding worship gatherings and minored in discipleship. Let’s restore the balance.”
How do we restore the balance? It’s not by minimizing the corporate aspect of worship in our lives of discipleship. We need to hear the Word. We need to declare God’s worth with the saints in the household of God. We need the “ordinary means of grace” as experienced in the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. And we need the fellowship of God’s people.
And yet…our culture constantly bombards our lives with unending opportunities for busyness. An intentional life of discipleship – lived alongside other believers – is increasingly being considered “optional” or “unnecessary”.
Studying the Word in a slow, methodical fashion is slowly “going out of style”. At TWC, we will work hard to combat this mission drift!
Are we hungry for life-on-life discipleship? I’d love for students to be asking Randy and the Small Group Leaders at Riptide: “Can you disciple me?” I’d love to hear of folks asking Pastor Steve or Mike Elmer (when he comes on staff) or any number of other capable lay leaders in our church family: “Can you meet with me every month for spiritual direction?”
Left to our own devices, we plateau in the spiritual life.
In the upcoming months, we will do our best to put a “discipleship lens” over everything we do at Trinity Wellsprings Church. In the Fall, we will aggressively re-launch Life Groups because our church still believes wholeheartedly that the Christian life is best lived alongside other believers in fellowship, in prayer, and in the Word of God.
We also believe that Life Groups provide our church family the best avenue for reaching our neighbors who are also desperate for authentic connections and relationships after a long season of relational disconnectedness and dryness!
(5) Pretending there is no “Dark Side” to Digital Forms of “Church” is not an option.
In April 2020, I penned a blog post for the Reformation21 website entitled “The Dark Side for the Church during Its Online Hiatus”. The dangers of digital worship that takes place without other believers will remain a problem for the church long after covid recedes into the background.
On one hand, I am so thankful for the technology that has allowed our saints and immunocompromised believers to maintain a meaningful connection to our church body through this season of the coronavirus. Our church loves these saints even as we miss their physical presence with us! This has undoubtedly been part of our church practicing “an unmatched level of graciousness” towards one another as people have responded to this global pandemic in divergent ways. I am also incredibly thankful for our Live Stream Team that has persevered through many challenges, toils, and snares!
Yet, I still have many of the same reservations about our en masse pivot to digital worship that I did twelve months ago. After covid (hopefully) recedes to the background, believers will need to do a “theological reckoning” about the “dark side” of these digital forms of church. Several “open questions” that I raised twelve months ago might be worth contemplating:
…The problem is that “participation” of online worship lowers the bar to such an extent as to beg the question of whether this “church” is attracting consumers (to digital content) or raising up worshipers (of the Triune God).
We already live in a cultural moment where a person kayaks on the river or takes a run on the beach on a Sunday morning and posts a picture to Instagram with #church. Evangelicalism’s long confused love affair with its muddled ecclesiology seems to be at a potential tipping point during the coronavirus crisis. Tim Challies asks, “If we all stream our services, will anyone ever come back?” The fact that this is now a question reveals evangelicalism’s shaky foundation: the church’s orientation has been inverted with man at the center…
A church that worships the Triune God recognizes that humanity was made for relational connection (God is Father, Son, & Holy Spirit). Disciples who follow the Incarnate One are meant to incarnate truth and grace in a community of real relationships. An individualized, fuzzy spirituality devoid of the body of Christ is not a recipe for church but for navel-gazing “experience-ism”, an increasingly common and cheap substitute for church in our particular moment in time.
What does it mean to “participate” in the life of the church after covid recedes?
Does the Christian life necessarily include aspects of “service” and “fellowship”?
Can an online worship experience ever duplicate what the New Testament writers portrayed as “the church” wherein the “ekkelsia” was believed to be the harbinger and outpost of the Kingdom of Heaven?
(6) Thank the Staff of Trinity Wellsprings Church…and then double-down on your own commitment to serve in whatever way you can.
I have heard many votes of confidence and appreciation for the staff’s hard-work and endless efforts during the last 13 months. It has been a herculean effort!
Please know that I already feel appreciated. But could you do me a favor? Might you send an encouraging email or note to other members of our staff?
And then…step up to serve?
Like many churches, Trinity Wellsprings Church will be faced over the next several months of (almost) completely re-building our network of lay leaders and faithful volunteers.
It takes the whole body of Christ working together for our church family to effectively disciple children, pour the gospel into the lives of students, welcome new folks onto our campus, and overflow on mission into our community and world!
You can safely and confidently assume that the church desperately needs your participation, your time, and your gifts as we engage in the hard work of re-planting and re-launching Trinity Wellsprings Church for the glory of God!
So…please “SAY YES to SERVING” at Trinity Wellsprings Church! Jump into a new role, a new ministry, or a new way to share your joy and your gifts with others!
Thankful for the privilege of shepherding this beautiful expression of Christ’s body,
Pastor Jason Carter
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An INVITATION (and a Final Thought)
Every church in America is now a church re-plant.
During this season, TWC will need to act like a church re-plant in radically “turning outward” towards our community in hospitality, love, and intentional mission in re-launching our fellowship. We need everyone to rally together!
Thus, you are invited to a lunch after church (11:45-1:15, in the Beach House) on Sunday May 2 entitled “The Replanting of Trinity Wellsprings Church: Our Next Steps”. Can you rsvp as soon as possible so we know how much food to order?
Hope to see you there!