A Five Year Reflection

We have now hit the five year anniversary. It has been five years since the COVID lockouts. Can you believe it? NPR News had an article stating, “March 11 will mark 5 years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. What followed were months of lockdowns, social distancing and fear about this fast-spreading virus.”

For some people it seems like yesterday. For others it seems like an eternity ago. Almost like a nightmare that you finally woke up from. There is so much to think about over those couple of years. The masks. Gloves. Staying at home. Take out only. No holidays. Testing. Sports stadiums were empty and eerie when the games were being played. Zones. Excessive police enforcement. Rush to create a vaccine. No traveling. People stuck on cruise ships. Explosion of zoom meetings. Social distancing. Shields and plastic partitions. Refusing cash. No toilet paper anywhere. Trusting the science that was never consistent and always changing. Loved ones dying alone.

Yeah, there is a lot to remember and maybe a lot we would rather forget. But when I think back to that time, I don't think about all of that stuff. What comes to my mind is the church. When the lockdowns first happened, we were only the second or third church to do drive-in services in our area. Everyone would come and park their cars in the lot and I would preach from our church porch. This went on for a couple of months. Finally in June we started coming back into the building for those that felt comfortable to do so. But it was during those couple of months that we were not truly fellowshiping that it truly hit me. I'm talking about the need of the church. Theologian Andrew Walker, looking back to the time of the COVID lockdowns said, “I’ll say that what the Lord taught me through the lockdowns was that the local church is irreplaceable…I did my best trying to lead my family through those lockdowns [by] watching church online…It just wasn’t enough. And I found myself every Sunday getting increasingly angrier and increasingly more frustrated because I couldn't go to church.”  I think that encapsulates the sentiment quite well.

Christians always say that church is important. But there have always been people that push back on that. They think that it's not really necessary. You can be saved without going to a church, so can it really be that big of a deal. Yes…yes it can. And I understood it more than ever when COVID hit. It was then that I experienced what I always believed. I always knew and believed that church was important for the soul. But when COVID hit, I understood it at a whole new level. I couldn't believe how my heart ached. How much I missed people. How much I needed the hugs, the Lord’s Supper, hearing the collection of God’s people singing His praises, the conversations and interactions. While  I always knew that church was important, it was during that time that I really realized just how important it was to my spiritual health. Charles Spurgeon said, “Never neglect the means of grace; God may bless us when we are not in His house, but we have the greater reason to hope that He will when we are in communion with His saints."

But the sad thing about that is there are still people that don’t realize that, even after going through it. Church is vital for the soul. It is damaging to your heart if you are not actively a part of it. Even if you don’t realize it, absence from church stunts your spiritual growth. This is why the Bible teaches us, “Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:25)

God knows what He is doing. Do you honestly think that He died for the church, planned a wedding between the Church and Christ, had apostles form churches, spent the majority of the New Testament writing about how churches should operate, call ministers to lead them, preserve the church throughout history, gave people spiritual gifts to serve in them, had missionaries sent to start them, purify them when they are unfaithful and have congregate fellowship parallel heaven if it wasn’t important?

Many of God’s people learned a valuable lesson during COVID. The need for God’s house and all that it provides is vital to our souls. That the spiritual is more important than the physical. It made us rethink priorities. God’s people had such a desire for His house that churches that remained closed would end up closing for good. And churches that reopened and remained opened regardless of what the government said, thrived and grew. May we never forget this lesson we lived through and experienced. It has only been five years, but like I said before, for some people COVID seems like an eternity ago. The church is irreplaceable. The church is vital. The church is necessary. Let us live in a manner that reflects that. I’d like to finish with a great quote from Spurgeon to those people who do not think church is important:

“I know there are some who say, “Well, I’ve given myself to the Lord, but I don’t intend to give myself to any church.”  I say, “Now why not?” And they answer, “Because I can be just as good a Christian without it.”  I say, “Are you quite clear about that?  You can be as good a Christian by disobedience to your Lord’s commands as by being obedient?  There’s a brick. What is the brick made for? It’s made to build a house. It is of no use for the brick to tell you that it’s just as good a brick while it’s kicking about on the ground by itself, as it would be as part of a house. Actually, it’s a good-for-nothing brick. So, you rolling stone Christians, I don’t believe that you’re answering the purpose for which Christ saved you. You’re living contrary to the life which Christ would have you live and you are much to blame for the injury you do.”