Mission for a New Normal
In the past eighteen months, while our churches were largely confined to virtual meeting spaces, we have witnessed a social upheaval across North America that has touched on every previous definition of “normal.” For many, planning for and implementing a reopening, or a next normal plan, feels overwhelming. What are the missional implications of this next normal? Does what we were doing pre-Covid still make sense?
Whether we are prepared to acknowledge the change we have experienced, none of us will enter the next normal as the same person we were prior to March 2020. If nothing else, forced isolation has shifted our patterns and daily rhythms, as well as given us time to evaluate everything that used to fill our calendars – including, but not limited to our mission practices.
This does not mean we have stopped practicing our faith – and even in lockdowns, the mission of God has continued – it just might look different from what we were used to. I would like to suggest three simple ways that we can celebrate and lean into this difference.
We have become accustomed to small gatherings – and even these properly distanced and masked. Smaller social “bubbles” have become normative while large gatherings have become uncertain, even anxiety producing.
Families have spent much more time together with extra-curricular activities being among the first cancellations in lockdown. While some families felt stressed and strained, many others found ways to refocus, recalibrate, and live into a new way of being together.
How have families in your church felt empowered (or not) to be on mission in this time?
In the summer of 2020, while sitting around a campfire with a small group of friends, someone asked how the church would persevere in pandemic. The fact that we were still able to gather as friends, outdoors, at the height of local lockdowns, indicated a way forward. Smaller social gatherings have been an entry point for new believers throughout much of recent church practice.
Your congregation has had eighteen months of unintentional small group practice. What have they learned from this experience? How did they practice hospitality when all the normal options were closed to them? If someone does not have a heart for mission at home, nothing magical happens when they get on an airplane or venture into a cross-cultural setting. How might the experiences of families on mission help to reshape your neighborhood engagement post-Covid?
Our engagement with technology and virtual gathering platforms has grown exponentially. Whether established churches or church plants, many report an increase in mission reach. From churches inviting global church leaders as Sunday morning guest speakers via Zoom or livestream, to nursing home residents finding a connection with their home church. The rapid uptake, coupled with acceptance and growing familiarity with technology, creates opportunities for us to develop and grow mission connections in new ways. How will you steward technology usage into the emerging normal? With whom do you need have the important, vulnerable conversations about both the opportunities and limits of technology?
Listen, listen, and then listen some more! This is as much a local call to listen, as it is regional, national, and global. These sixteen months have ushered in a season of reckoning on numerous issues of social justice. From Black Lives Matter, to victims of Residential Schools, to mask mandates and now vaccine mandates, we are being repeatedly confronted with how we care for the well-being of our neighbors. What are the stories your neighbors are telling about their pandemic experience? What are the lingering questions they carry with them? Pay attention to the elements of transcendence, or a search for meaning, in your conversations. As you listen, what is God revealing to you? Where is the Holy Spirit prompting you to engage further? With whom? How?
“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19). Can we receive these words in our post-Covid wrestling with what comes next? Whether these words fill you with curiosity or angst, we have certainty experienced a shift in the mission landscape of our neighborhoods and cities. Through focus on smaller group mission and worship, leaning into the possibilities provided by familiarity with technology, and an active attentiveness to the movement of God in the lives of our neighbors, God is revealing a way to thrive into this next normal.
This blog post is by Norm Dyck