Bishop Hutterer: Being church in a time of pandemic

Dear Church, 

This Lenten season we live in a time of pandemic. We also live in a time of rapid change. Coronavirus—ignoring the human boundaries of nation-states, class, culture, race, and religion—spreads with the exponential inevitability of a mathematical formula. 

As we struggle to understand the virus and its effect on our daily lives, we also wonder how best to be church together. We are a church whose practices literally go hand-in-hand with sharing the virus: gathering as groups, sharing the peace, partaking communion, crossing ourselves at the baptismal font, passing the plate, praying in circles, and socializing before and after worship. 

Like you, in this time of anxiety I wonder how we balance our community’s need to gather with the need to be safe? With so many unknowns, where do we find the line between valid concern and irrational fear? 

We can start by focusing on what we do know. 

We know this pathogen spreads very easily through the air when a sick person breathes, talks, coughs, or sneezes. We know our hands also pass the virus. We know individuals should practice prudent hygiene like vigorous hand-washing and staying home when sick. 

And we know large gatherings can hasten the rate of infection. By exercising common-sense caution, churches can slow the pace of contagion, buying valuable time for our society and lessening the impact on our communities. 

While churches need not cancel services at this time, there are best practices we can implement. In identifying the ways a church may spread coronavirus, we can creatively find alternatives which still fulfill our needed role as refuge.  

Some of these practices may include: practicing bread-only communion, prayer-hand bowing to each other when sharing the peace or bumping elbows, emptying the baptismal font, postponing social hour, and alternatives to passing the offering plate. 

In our resource and news page at gcsynod.org/coronavirus, we will be collecting alternatives and best practices, as well as sharing the latest relevant news. If you have practices to share, please let us know. 

This world is not as new to us as we think. In the life of the church and in our own lives, we have seen contagious illnesses sicken and sometimes kill the ones we love. Our faith and hope is continually tested by the senselessness of diseases and tragedies. Daily we are confronted with our human frailties and failings. 

Through these and other hardships, the church stands. Together, we find ourselves called to do God’s work in ways as new as each day’s rising sun. Together, we are blessed to draw from a rich foundation of traditions as we think and act. 

Together, we are blessed as the Holy Spirit —ignoring the human boundaries of nation-states, class, culture, race, and religion—moves through our world and guides us in times of uncertainty.  

I give thanks for who we are: blessed communities, together in Christ, serving the world. 

“In this Lenten season, for us who are gathered to worship and praise You, God of mercy, hold us in love.”

The Rev. Deborah K. Hutterer
Bishop
Grand Canyon Synod of the ELCA