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| Ms. Mary with her hands raised in the bottom right hand corner |
Ms. Mary sits on the front row at Northcrest. Though she is not a member of the worship team, she is in many ways our “lead worshipper.” She is always the first to stand, the first to raise her hands in praise, the first to clap along with the songs. But Ms. Mary, like many people in our church, is in a high-risk health group. She spends three days a week on a dialysis machine, breathes through a tracheotomy tube, and gets around with the aid of a walker. That has never stopped her from worshipping, teaching children in Sunday School, and bringing a carload of guests to church with her many Sundays.
But the coronavirus pandemic has forced her to stay at home for the last five months. She knows it is not wise for her to be out, so she basically goes to dialysis and goes home now. And she’s not alone. There are hundreds of them in our church – people who, because of their age or their health or both, are not attending church services right now. They are among the most loyal members of our church, and they faithfully worship online each Sunday, while they wait for the day when they can come back.
Our church is certainly not alone. Almost every church in America is dealing with many people in similar situations right now. Most churches are trying their best to help and stay connected to these folks, because we know that they are hurting right now. It is not easy to not be able to go to a place that means so much to you.
But if we’re not careful, we’ll miss something important. These “missing members” are hurting, but they’re not the only ones hurting. Our churches are hurting by not having them. I don’t simply mean that the numbers are down. I mean that when a church is without “vulnerable populations,” it is less than it ought to be. A church without senior adults, without people suffering from chronic illness, without the weak and the infirmed, that is not a church that anyone should want to be a part of. When they are weak, God is strong! God can accomplish more through the weak than the strong can ever accomplish on their own. It’s not just that people like this need the church – the church needs them!
It wasn’t the strongest and the youngest and the smartest and the healthiest and the richest that found Jesus most attractive. It was those who were hurting, those who had problems, those who were sick, those who were dying! And Jesus took that group of unlikely people and built his church! He’s still doing that today! And until these people can fully return to the church, the church will never be what it supposed to be.
In the meantime, we’ll worship without people like Ms. Mary. It’s not the same, but it’s still important that we do it. But I can tell you that everyone in my church longs for the day that she and others like her will be able to walk through those doors again. We won’t be the same until they can!
