Churches coming out of COVID - Interview with three pastors - GotQuestions.org Podcast Episode 8

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. On today's show, we've got three local

Colorado pastors to talk to you about something that I know a lot of us have had on our minds for the past year or so.

It's COVID and how COVID restrictions and quarantines and safety procedures and so forth work with how we attend our churches.

So today I have with me Brian Sharp, the pastor at Northview Evangelical Free Church, John Dracy, the pastor at Calvary South Denver, and Josh Lindstrom, the pastor at Woodman Valley Chapel.

So gentlemen, thank you for being on the show. It's great to have you. To start us off, I just want to talk a little briefly about what the past year has been like for you as a pastor.

What are some of the unique struggles you've experienced with trying to manage, lead a congregation over the past year?

And even what are some of the maybe unexpected positive things you've seen develop over the past year of just dealing with COVID and everything thereof?

Yeah, for me, it was an interesting year. I started at Northview March 1st, 2020.

So I actually preached twice in person, and then we went online. So it's just a crazy beginning to my tenure at Northview.

And I think for us, COVID, when everything shut down, it affected everyone.

But for us, we started meeting back again July 5th, and we've basically been in person since the start.

And Northview is a church of 85 to 100. We meet in a

YMCA. So we have a pretty large gym that we can meet in. And so when you talk about just the

COVID restrictions and kind of dealing with COVID, we had a lot of freedom because we have so much space.

And because of the size of our church, we could meet fully on Sunday mornings. We did kids ministry starting in September.

And so in all reality, we've basically been doing church as normal as much as you can since August, September with our affinity groups and youth ministries, small groups and stuff like that.

So some of that, we've done a couple of our small groups meet online virtually.

Some of our groups meet in person. And so what we've learned is, okay, it's not a one size fits all.

We need to kind of figure out what works best for the people in each group. And so it's been a kind of steep learning curve for me just coming in brand new.

But in some ways, I think being brand new afforded me a lot of grace.

We didn't have a lot of dissension in our church. And I think some of that was, you know, when you go through a transition, the church is happy they have a pastor, you know.

And so in some ways that afforded me some grace. I think a lot of the people I've talked to, pastors that had the least amount of fighting or least amount of dissension have been new pastors because they're still in the honeymoon period.

And that's kind of where I started from. Yeah, Brian, I was able to actually visit your church before you came in March and took over and you have a wonderful fellowship.

Thank you. My and I actually relate with you because I took over our church in January of 2020, and then

COVID happened. And so, you know, as you put it, there's unique challenges with taking over a church.

And statistically, there's going to be a fallout, you know, you just expect it. And no matter who the pastor is.

And so as odd as this sounds for us, one of the things that we faced as a church with COVID and a transition here was that, you know,

God does, in fact, work all things together for good. And that's absolutely true. And in this case, it worked in our favor, because it kind of filtered out the people that, you know, are like, again, fall under the statistic of like, yeah, we're not going to come to this church anymore.

And then as a result, we had, I remember we had 10th Avenue North play at our church.

And there was like 1000 people here. And then that week, we had to stop meeting. And for we didn't meet for 84 days.

And so one of the challenges that we were facing as a church is how do you, again, just like what a lot of churches are dealing with big, smaller, medium, you know, how do you manage everyone to transition to going online, and now everyone's going online, and then

YouTube is going down. And then, you know, you have all these technical difficulties, and then you're frustrated, because it's not going the way you planned.

And then aside from technical difficulties, what we saw in our church, I don't know if you guys face this, but, you know, even for the most introverted people that loved this at the beginning, what we were seeing was massive amounts of depression throughout the church, our church faced domestic violence with congregants.

We unfortunately had people dealing with drug abuse and alcohol abuse, and we even dealt with suicide at our church.

And it just it was like a wave. And it was one of those things because, you know, as church leaders, we train community is valuable.

We, you know, God works this out so that we can fellowship with one another, but we were training everyone, we can't be near anyone for our own safety.

But what was happening at our church is that we had to come to a place after 84 days when we could, you know, once we could reopen.

And I'm not, I am all for submitting to the governing authorities of the land.

Absolutely. But what I was facing, we came to a point where it was, is it worth the risk of being fined to meet in person so that people can be ministered to?

And so we took that risk. We mitigated spread, we social distance, we did everything. It wasn't like we threw our hands up in the air and it's like, this is the

Wild West. We can do whatever we want. No, I mean, we wanted to be a good witness. But we made a decision with the challenges we were facing that it was worth it more to minister to 5, 10, 20 more people that might come in order for us to do what we're commissioned to do.

And we can do that with online. I mean, right now we're all meeting in four different places. And for me, it came to a place where I knew that every church was dealing with what we were doing, dealing with, and that was the challenges of COVID.

But God put this church in my hands and I needed to be faithful to the families that were struggling.

It was evident that they were struggling. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of things that we had to deal with.

Josh, what do you think? Yeah, I would say that the past,

I don't think I've ever really used the word surreal as much as I have during this

COVID season. A little different than you guys. We were not gathering on weekends in person for 10 months.

A size dynamic, I think, social distancing, it just wasn't going to really be all that feasible for us.

I really hadn't had, I mean, a lot of division. And just between whether it's your pro -mask crowd and your anti -mask crowd, your pro -government and your anti -government.

I think personally, and for our elders, I mean, that was a challenge because I don't think

I've ever really been in a spot in vocational ministry where you're going to make a decision and almost know that half of our people are going to be upset.

So that was kind of trying. On the upside of it though, we had tremendous opportunity for just great outpouring and generosity.

We did a separate, we called it our 2020 challenge to, hey, if you got some extra money from your stimulus, if you got some just extra, you're doing great during COVID, you sell lumber, so you're like a millionaire now.

Awesome. We were able to bring in extra resources and then go out into our city and try to bless others.

And that became sort of invigorating in the midst of all this challenge to have some inroads to ministry that we never really had before to that degree.

And I would say that along with what you got, certainly with some families, domestic violence, marital issues, it seemed like COVID accentuated whatever was there.

If the marriage was kind of struggling, COVID just made it like a train wreck. If the marriage was decent, like they love being home together, great.

We certainly saw that. But then also I think there was an increased, we had people call, like cold calling the church being like, my girlfriend dumped me, but she loved

Jesus. I got to find out what this is about. People had a spiritual hunger. I think it brought some people in.

And so it's been fun to see people who now we reopened on weekends in January and have people like,

I feel like I've been here for eight months, but it's my first time ever stepping foot on campus.

And so the word that we would try to throw, it's been unconventional, but I would hate to say it's been negative because God's been in control and he's been accomplishing things.

So it's not what we're used to, but we've seen enough fruit that I'd be like, hey,

Lord, he knows what he's doing. He's a lot of things, but he's not dumb. Absolutely not.

It's exciting to hear about opportunities that God gave Woodman Valley during COVID.

And to all three of you, what are maybe some opportunities for ministry, some positive things that happened that maybe you didn't fully expect or you wouldn't have expected in light of the lockdowns?

What are some things you experienced or observed? I think we all want to say the church isn't a building until you're not allowed to use your building.

And so I think there was a real great reckoning for some people as to what is my

Christian faith? And I think for some who were just going on weekends, when that was gone, what were they left with?

And so as we move people into smaller communities, we call them huddles, like little watch parties, like just a bunch of mini, we're a multi -site church.

And so we just basically said, we're going to have way more multi -site, tiny little campuses everywhere.

It got people into relationships in a deeper way, because it's one thing to come into a big room and slip in and slip out.

It's another thing to have to go into someone's living room or to be sitting in a parking lot somewhere with just 17 other folk.

And so I think it really brought some good clarity to people as to how does my

Christian life play out beyond just attending a service? And I think for some, they realized that they had taken it for granted.

And so I think we've seen sort of renewed vision on the part of some people because they're like, man, if there was skiing, if there was a great hike, if there was a game,

I would do that over church. And now I think there's people who are like, I'm not making that mistake again. However, I think there was also a large swath of people who were sort of nominal in their faith maybe, and then not having that.

I mean, I don't know if they're, I think they've sort of drifted further. And so now our thing is how can we draw some of those people back?

But as I say, we're thrilled with some of the things that the Lord let us go through as much as it was not our first choice.

Yeah, that's interesting because I was thinking about that even in light of us that they do coincide together in terms of, you know, you think

COVID, it's almost like the refiner's fire. And what happens is it's, what's surfacing are the impurities, but what's showing is the outcome of what people really were made of.

And even though there was a lot of negativity and there was just so much, it was a mess.

The result for a lot of families is it really showed like, you know, is my faith in Christ as a result of a church building?

Or is it because I have to actually learn to love my wife at home because I'm with her every day.

And I have to learn to parent my kids better because I'm with them every day and I've never taught them. And now

I'm trying to teach them algebra. And I thought I was going to forget that 20 years ago, but here we are now. And so for us, you know, it was kind of one of those, it helped us to see the gems in the church that, in my opinion, had a call in their life to leadership and a capacity that never would have known had it not been for COVID, which was honestly a wonderful thing in terms of what we saw.

And, you know, just like everyone else, and I know for us, I'm so thankful we have a facility and a lot of churches don't.

And Brian, I know you're going to be able to share this because you guys were meeting at the YMCA. And as a result for churches like us, we had families coming and they're like, our church isn't allowed to meet or they can't meet.

Or Josh, like you, the church is so big we can't meet there. It's just not the ability. So for us, we always made an intention to not say, well, you're here now, so stay, but hey, we're glad that you're here.

But it's so important that you're getting plugged back into the church that you came from because you have community there.

You have life and, you know, you have people that you can spend time with. And so we were glad that we could facilitate that for a lot of people that just, and as you guys know, people just were so hungry for community and everyone was searching for hope in a political answer and an ideology.

And I call it social media propaganda. And what's happening is you've got these families that are like, nothing is filling that cap.

And then they go to church and they hear the word and it's like, it is, it's refreshing to their soul.

So I feel like the surfacing that took place as a result, the good that came from this, because God does work all things together for good, was that it allowed us to facilitate and show people that Christ is the answer.

And for those that didn't treat their relationship with Christ seriously, now we're in a place where it's like, my marriage is about to fail.

But all of this resulted in us forcing to pray together again. And so, and there's story after story after story, but for us, the good we saw was primarily just a refiner's fire showing the outcome of how people really were.

And it wasn't a bad thing. It was a good thing. I think for me coming in, starting

March 1st, it was, my goal was to get to know people and that was kind of out the window, except for there were certain individuals that were helping out with our live stream.

We had never live streamed before. Like one week we had never live streamed, the next week, within five days, we had it all figured out so that we could live stream.

And so the people that helped with our service, all of a sudden I'm getting a lot of time with them.

And so there was some relationship building that I didn't expect. And I think for me,

I was able to work on some things that I wouldn't have worked on before. Being a new pastor, you try and figure out kind of where are the leaders, who are the leaders.

And so it gave me opportunity to find leaders and to just put some leadership structure in place.

The other thing is, I do think we saw a lot of partnership with other churches too.

We have an Iwana ministry and we meet at the YMCA. And so lots of churches weren't having

Iwana or a kids program. And so we were having one because we had the Y and the Y didn't put a real cap on us for the most part.

So we had other churches partner with our church, bringing leaders over and bringing kids over. It just was a great thing.

And we just ended our Iwana season a couple of weeks ago and we saw several kids come to Christ.

It was just like, here, we're going through a pandemic, yet we're still having a kids ministry and churches are partnering together. And it was just run really well.

And so just seeing partnership with other churches, seeing the relationships like you guys have talked about where you had to reach out, you had to be intentional.

And we had people getting together and in small clusters or like our small groups are still getting together, but we needed that relationship.

And I just think it pointed out how important a communal faith is. It's not a personal faith.

It's a communal faith. Yeah, there's personal responsibility. There's I'm giving my life to Christ, but it's a communal thing.

And I think that's what you saw coming out of it. I think it's fun that it doesn't matter what size church it is.

What it is, is the church of God being the church of God and being a communal faith together.

Yes, excellent thoughts. I've heard similar stories of stuff happening at churches that pastors never expected that just blew their minds.

So obviously there was a lot of negative, but it's always awesome to hear and see how the positives that the

Holy Spirit is bringing about through the result of this. One question we've been getting at, got questions a lot, and I'm sure you guys are experiencing this to a certain degree.

What do you say to the Christian who's formerly attending your church or maybe another church who's basically come to the realization that, you know,

I kind of like this attending church from home in my pajamas thing. Why do

I need to go back to church in person? Why do I need to connect with people in the real world?

Even had people, like, why don't I just stay at home and read articles on gotquestions .org,

and I'm like the first to say, no, that is absolutely not a substitute for church.

So what do you say to people? How do you help people to understand, like what Brian was saying, that Christianity is a faith in community?

How do you get people to recognize, again, the importance of attending in person, fellowshipping in person, encouraging one another, et cetera?

What do you say to someone who has this wrong attitude about what the church is?

Well, and I think part of the wrestle with this is, you know, there was all this discussion of, you know, is the church doing its job if it's not meeting in person?

We're like, well, don't forsake the meeting together, but you're still meeting online. So you have that message. Well, now we're saying, hey, don't forsake the meeting together.

You need to meet in person now that you can. And so I think some of it is understanding that there's times where we have to pivot and figure out things, but throughout history for 2000 years, the church has been coming together in person and it's a communal thing.

And whether you go to a large church or small church, it's about being in relationship together because it's not about consumerism.

Hey, I can watch TV. I don't have to interact. That's not what Christianity is about. It's about,

I come to give to others. And it may be a conversation that I have on a

Sunday morning. It may be through just being with others, singing together, reading scripture together, praying together, or through something that was said in the sermon.

Yeah, I could listen online, but that interaction after or before the service could spur something on.

And the idea of spurring on one another onto love and good deeds is not, it's not easily done through a

Zoom call. And so that's my encouragement is history has told us we need to be in community and church isn't about going to a building, but it is about living in community.

So it's not about consumerism, whether you're watching on TV or just showing up and leaving and not being engaged.

So I guess that's how I would approach it. Yeah. I, when people are like, you know what, it's funny.

I jumped into someone at Target that goes to the church and it was one of those, how are you? I'm good,

I'm good. And then she full on said, I just gonna be honest. It's so nice just waking up in pajamas and watching church.

And it's, I bet, I mean, I'm the pastor of the church. I want to do that. And I can't even do that. No, you know,

I completely agree. If church history has taught us anything, and we're going through the book of Acts at our church, which is unique because in light of everything happening, there's just such a fear based agenda that it's like, guys, look at the early church who had every reason to be freaking out.

And, and, you know, their lives are at stake. Well, our lives are at stake now because of COVID. And that's true to a degree, but the church, the church scattered, what's interesting about that is the church scattered and it forced them to fulfill again, that great commission that make disciples who make disciples.

And so for us, it, Hey, I want to stay home and watch church from home.

Well, then, you know, man, what a bummer because we don't want to ever make people feel bad in terms of,

I don't feel safe to come to church yet. I completely understand. And it might be that vaccine or that second vaccine or whatever.

And like you, and you fill in the blank of what's going to make you feel comfortable with coming back. You know, when everyone's wearing masks, when no one's wearing masks and the list goes on and on.

But for us, we wanted to make a conscientious effort that people are adults and they're going to make a decision, but we're going to persuade people.

And even for ministry leaders who are going to be listening to this later, don't grow weary while doing good. It feels like the things that we're doing is in vain, but it's not.

And the way that you're ministering to people is going to be effective. And you might not be able to see people that are normally wanting to come back until next year.

What a bummer that is. And I know that breaks all of our hearts, but the reality is, and it's true, Brian, we don't forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some.

I mean, the reality is I'm an extrovert. I need people in my life to pour into me, or I'm going to end up on the news for bad reasons.

It's going to be like local pastor goes crazy because denies hanging out with people. And you'll see my face and I'll have like a mug shot where my hair's up.

And it's like, anyways, um, yeah, you know, I, just to encourage people that, you know, the

Lord is going to reveal to you when you need to come back. And the reality is there are people and Josh, you'll probably relate with Brian, you too, just this reality.

I don't want to be everyone's pastor in the sense of, I don't want to solve everyone's problem. I want the community of believers to be able to be in each other's life.

And I can't do that. And I know the church at large is going to be able to effectively do that when we train them.

Your dependency can't be on a pastor or man or person at the pulpit. It has to be on the

Lord because that, you know, because at the end of the day, each of us are one day not going to be at the pulpit anymore, whether the

Lord takes us home or, you know, the Lord redirects us somewhere. And so to me,

I want to use every moment to be at the pulpit, to encourage one another, to stir one another up for good works, like you said,

Brian, and to show them that this faith that we so hold dear to is worth it.

And it's worth it in person. Yeah. I think what we've been trying to do with people is remind them of, of course, it's pretty comfortable to watch in your pajamas.

Like, yeah, that's great. And, you know, heaven was probably pretty comfortable for Jesus too, but he did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he humbled himself and became a servant.

He put on flesh. He dwelt among us. Our faith is actually bound in this incarnational doing ministry in person.

And I don't think it's necessarily, you know, where we, when we weren't meeting, a lot of people kind of threw around the don't neglect meeting together as a habit of some.

And the thing is that was never written. That wasn't written to like, those are house churches that that was written to.

Like it's not, you don't have to have 3000 people in the room to, to assemble, but you need somebody in the room.

And so we are trying to say, everybody needs somebody. Jesus did ministry in the flesh. We, that's sort of what we're based on.

We need to be doing that together. And then the flip side of what we've done is things like a communion.

That's only in person, but that's for people who are coming together as the body of Christ to remember what he did.

So we, we made that decision to not do like an online version, not to have people, you know, take it by themselves at home.

And people have said like, Hey, we missed that. And we're like, well, yeah, when you come back, you can, you can participate.

But that's something we do together. Same with baptisms. We were like, we'll have some, you know, that's in person.

We're not coming to your house. So there's, there's an example that we believe Christ set forth about doing ministry relationally in person.

And there's some things that we think in our polity and our belief that you can't do digitally.

So kind of on, on you, you're going to make a decision as to, you know, if it's comfort that you're after,

I get it, but that actually won't bode well for your Christian walk in the longterm. If you're uncomfortable coming back for those reasons that you guys mentioned, that's, that's great.

We want to be there to minister and give you opportunities. But the goal is at some point that's going to be behind you and you will be back in person because we are doing incarnational relational person ministry.

Excellent thoughts. Thank you for your insight, for your feedback on what you've experienced over the past year.

So in closing, I just want to ask each of you. So I'm not a pastor, three of you are, what can us as congregants, as church members, as church attenders do now that would be an encouragement to you as pastors?

And also this help as things return to normal, whatever that's supposed to look like now.

And what can we be doing that would be especially beneficial to you as a pastor? I guess, you know, we got a little saying in our house, like, just be cool.

When I got three sons, when you want to get amped up about something, like just be cool, deep breath, everything's going to be fine.

And I think a lot of pastors would appreciate that if people in their church would just be cool, like it's not the decisions aren't exactly what you want.

I get it. They're probably making decisions that the pastors and leaders don't exactly want.

It's a trying time. And if you can certainly express your feelings, awesome.

Be part of the community of faith, fantastic. But to think of all the voices pastors are getting and all sometimes angst -filled, angry voices, if you can bring a little lukewarm water in between that fire and ice that pastor's getting all the time,

I think they'd really appreciate that to say, hey, we might not even agree with everything, but just so you know, we're coming back.

This is our church, like that vote of confidence that we're together in this, I think would go a long way for guys.

Completely, completely agree. Yeah, nothing thrills me more as a pastor than to see people responding to the gospel and what they're hearing.

And even, and this is just me on a personal level, knowing that people pray for me is ginormous.

And you know, people, hey, pastor, I'm praying for you. Yeah, yes. If you ever are wondering, should

I be praying for John and Caroline's race? The answer is always yes. And this was especially true for us because like COVID happened and things, you know, this really helped us prioritize even as leaders, what is important.

And to me, prayer is so vital. And for, and especially because, you know, my daughter got

MISC in November, which is a post -complication of COVID, which is multi -inflammatory system.

And her organs were inflamed, her, part of her brain was all throughout her body. And then the body of Christ, we had people praying for my daughter all around the world.

And like, you just, you feel it and you know it and God healed her. No post complications with her heart or her brain.

And then it's like a breather. And then our house almost burned down 12 weeks ago. And so now we're in this, people are still praying.

None of us are hurt. And I'm in this season right now where people keep apologizing to me.

I'm so sorry. And it's like, I'm not, I'm not. I'm just so thankful for prayer and for the amount of people that have been just pouring, just pouring time into my family from afar.

And so as a pastor to answer your question, Shay, what encourages me when I know congregants are seeking the

Lord, when they're on their knees, praying on behalf of not just my family, but everyone else. Got it.

Yeah. Prayer is huge. And communicating that you're praying for us is,

I mean, that's huge. And I think giving leaders the benefit of the doubt, like we didn't come into this with a,

I mean, the manual we have is scripture and nowhere in scripture is a pandemic mentioned. And so giving us the benefit of the doubt, like you would want us to give you the benefit of the doubt.

And I think there's an importance of not assuming intentions. I think that's huge.

And then, I don't know. There's so much in scripture about unity.

Like, I think it's interesting that the mature believers told, hey, give up your rights for the immature believer.

And so I would love for all of us to just think, hey, I'm a mature believer. I'm going to give up my rights for someone else.

Like as a pastor, if I saw a bunch of people saying, no, it's not about me. What do you need? Like, that would be huge.

And so I think just seeking that unity and just saying, hey, it's not about me and my rights, because ultimately we're citizens of heaven.

Like our citizenship isn't here in the US. Like it really is not. Like, and when we get so focused on that, that we forget that we're brothers and sisters in Christ and our citizenship's in heaven, fully there, like let's live in unity with brothers and sisters.

And so, yeah, I just, as I thought about those are kind of my thoughts on kind of how you would help a pastor, encourage a pastor, because if,

I don't know, if a church was seeking unity and giving each other that, that'd be, that'd be so encouraging.

Amen. Amen. Guys, that's, that's great. This is probably one of my favorite shows we've done so far.

Love the conversations. Love hearing from you from the pastoral perspective. So Brian, John, Josh, thank you for your time today.

Thank you for coming on the show. And for listeners, I hope this has been beneficial to you, whether you're a pastor who are struggling with these same issues or whether you're a congregant who's just not wanting to know, have a little insight into how pastors are dealing with and how you can possibly be an encouragement to them.

So hope the show's beneficial and encouraging to you as well. So, got questions? Bible has answers.