- https://urceasternsynod.blogspot.com/2020/06/emerging-into-new-normal.html
and is also available on the denomination's website.
Ready for the new “normal”
A discussion paper for a pandemic recovery and resumption plan
(This is now available as a downloadable pdf on the main URC website -
This document is split into three parts.
The first part offers you a road map to start to
think about the journey ahead, including taking some time to reflect on where
you find yourself now, and how you might travel forwards.
The second part deals with some very practical
issues about being ready to resume activities. It covers some issues of good practice and
provides a series of questions covering many areas of church life. They are largely framed as questions, because
your particular context and circumstances will not be the same as that of
another church. Please seek advice from
the Synod Office if you are unsure about what to do. The issues are grouped according to a
timeline – what should you be thinking about and planning whilst the lockdown
phase continues, how will you get your building ready to start up
activity again, and what to practice during a social distancing phase,
which is very likely to continue for many months after the lockdown and until
the pandemic ends and threat of widespread reinfection passes.
The third part of the document provides some wider questions
of principle, taking you further with the questions you began to consider
in the first part when you looked at road map.
Without in any way following a line that God sent this virus for
a purpose, there is plenty in the Bible to show that God takes awful situations
and brings forth good from them. One
aspect of this might well be that churches take stock and re-focus on what
really matters to them and more importantly to God, rather than unthinkingly
falling back into old patterns and habits.
Part 2 of this paper will help Elders and others to start to consider
how things might be done differently in light of the new circumstances in which
we unwillingly find ourselves.
Different people will need to consider these questions at
different points.
Inevitably, in our conciliar governance, there will be
overlap in the consideration and in making decisions. Remember that you are not alone in this. Your Synod Officers are available to help
you.
The paper was prepared by Synod Moderators.
PART 1 – START HERE: A Road Map for the Way Ahead
Facing an uncertain future
What
seemed like a distant threat at the beginning of 2020 has become a present
reality, changing lives and the way we live indefinitely. Some adapted easily to life under lock down, others
have found the experience hugely traumatic and damaging to their mental
health. Many have had to navigate the
tricky waters of grief – hard enough in “ordinary” times. Coronavirus restrictions have made this even
harder, and we must be aware of those who have not begun to grieve properly, or
grieve well.
Coronavirus
restrictions and social distancing are inevitably going to be part of our life
for many months to come until an effective vaccine is developed and deployed to
the majority of the population (if that proves to be possible at all). The most vulnerable, including those over the
age of 70, are likely to be the last to be able to fully reintegrate into
society, and given the demographic of our churches that means that our common
life together is not likely to get to a recognisable “normal” until, probably,
the middle of 2021 at the earliest, and perhaps for much, much longer.
This
presents a huge challenge to our churches, one with spiritual, emotional,
physical and financial – even existential – dimensions. Yes, we are, as individuals, secure in God’s
love. Yes, the Church of Jesus Christ
will continue –even, “the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (Mt 16:16
NRSV).
However,
church life as we know it will be different for a long time, perhaps forever,
and rather than being fearful of this, we have an opportunity to shape how we
will live well through the pandemic and emerge stronger – yes, stronger
– on the other side.
Looking forward in hope
As
this resource is being prepared we are between Easter and Pentecost. One colleague observed how appropriate that
is. Like the first disciples, we are
waiting to discover God’s new intention for us.
It would be easy to look backwards at how tings used to be. It would be easy to assume that we can get
back to that state – and even make plans to “resume fishing on Galilee.” Having all experienced the pandemic
differently, moving forwards will happen at different speed and in different
ways for each of us. Be gentle with one
another – those rushing ahead and those who need longer to move forwards.
Take
some time as individuals, as Elders’ Meetings/leadership teams, as a local
church, to ponder where are the signs of hope?
Where might we find the green shoots of new life? What shall we do differently, and how shall
we live differently as we work through the pandemic and emerge into this new
season?
How shall we relate
positively to self, to neighbour and to God
through and after this pandemic?
through and after this pandemic?
To
ponder and discuss during the lockdown days
In terms of church life, is there
anything:
Good/valuable that you would like
to continue and develop through this phase?
That you have thought, ‘I wonder
if we could try this…?’ as lockdown continues?
To
ponder and discuss as we prepare to emerge from lockdown
AS you look forward to lockdown
being ended, how do you respond to the following? You might like to indicate your strength of
feeling, positive or negative, with a score of 0 to 5, or draw appropriate
“smiley” faces to indicate warmth or coolness towards the idea, or express your
neutrality.
We return to being church in our
traditional/established ways as soon as possible.
We recognise that health and
social restrictions will be with us for a long time and so we cannot do what we’ve
always done at least for a long time.
Our return is governed by what is
financially possible, appreciating that our wider church life’s sustainability
may have been stretched.
Our return, along with practical
considerations on social distancing, will be shaped by discerning God’s new
mission for us in the post-lockdown context, (1) locally, and (2) as a
denomination.
We learn from the lessons of the
lockdown days, mindful that some churches have been able to reach parts of the
community that traditional ministry didn’t touch, including (but not only)
through worship offered online.
Can we see the challenges and
opportunities for ministry in each of these scenarios?
For
reflection
We are on a journey through a
pandemic, not knowing our destination, but aware we follow in a line of saints
of old, who have set off before us in the footsteps of Jesus, walking the
way. Like those before us, we may travel
with faith and doubt, hope and fear, and, perhaps, have a holy encounter along the
way. That we travel at all will mean
that we are changed. Pilgrimage is about
taking and risking such a journey, faith is knowing that we are accompanied by
God, hope is in a Kingdom destination, and love may be experienced with companions.
Let
this reflection lead you into a time of prayer, thanking God for His close
presence, and asking for courage to face the uncertainties, and wisdom to
understand the direction ahead and the speed at which you should travel.
PART 2 – Some Practicalities
PHASE 1: DURING THE LOCKDOWN Getting ready to
re-open
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Who makes the decision to re-open?
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Who should come to church?
|
What additional/alternative worship provision can you make
for those unable to return to public worship immediately? Can you safely produce and distribute
service/notice sheets, sermon transcripts, or worship recordings to those
still at home? (Some research has
shown that Covid-19 can remain active on metal and plastic surfaces for up to
three days and on paper/cardboard for 24 hours.) Can you continue or start to provide
live-streamed worship from the church premises, and can your stay-at-home
members access it if you do? The best
thing that your church might be able to do is to stay in touch with each
other and remind members where broadcast services are available. Can you encourage all members of the
fellowship to all tune into a particular service at the same time,
remembering in prayer the others that they would normally worship alongside?
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Be aware that many of our older members are likely to be
resistant to the idea of staying away from church any longer. Think about how you will emphasise the
importance of them following appropriate advice. Equally, be aware that some of our Elders
and office-holders will feel some pressure to resume their duties: shield
them from that danger as well as coronavirus.
Do not allow that pressure to be exerted upon anyone, even if it means
that there won’t be an organist or preacher available on particular Sundays. To do otherwise is abusive. You will need to alter plans to allow for
key people not being available for an extended period.
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Planning the use of space
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Dealing with the trauma
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Be aware that relationships will have been altered and
broken, whether by bereavement, enduring separation, or even disagreement on
the way to proceed. Give attention to
this and seek healing for all who are hurting, and reconciliation wherever
that is possible. Be conscious that
different people will need different approaches and take different amounts of
time to begin to move on from the trauma they have experienced.
The Revd Carla A. Grosch-Miller and her colleagues in the
Tragedy and Christian Congregations project have researched and written about
congregational trauma. Their web site
at https://tragedyandcongregations.org.uk/
offers a wealth of theological and practical resource and is well worth
accessing.
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PHASE 2: START UP Preparing the
buildings for resumption
|
Physical security check
|
Take a walk around the building and make sure that it all
still looks secure. If there is
evidence of a break-in, exercise caution and consider whether the police
should be called. In any case, notify
your insurance company and Trust Officer.
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Risk assessment
|
Once you are happy to go back into the buildings, walk
through each room in turn looking for any hazards. This should be a part of your regular
monitoring of the building anyway, but this is an ideal time to take stock. Record anything of concern and what steps
you take to mitigate or remove the risk.
Is everything in good order? Is
there unnecessary clutter which might prove an obstacle during emergency
evacuation or present a fire hazard?
Do the electrics look to be in good order (no broken plug
sockets/switches, etc.)? Are the doors
and windows sound? Is there evidence
of a failing roof/water ingress? Is
any emergency lighting working properly? What do you need to do next to
resolve any issues found?
|
Legionella
|
If your water supply has not been drained down during the
lockdown, you will need to make sure that every tap is run for a minimum of
20 minutes. Instant hot water systems
need to be set to 60oC to kill off the legionella bacterium. Fuller advice is available from the Synod
office
|
Cleaning routines
|
If nobody has been accessing your building for some weeks
then the virus will not have survived on any hard surfaces. Even if it has only been visited for
security or a single person livestreaming worship, clean every surface that
might have been touched within the last week.
Remember pews/chairs, tables, microphones, pulpit/lectern, door
handles, etc. This is also an ideal
time to clean children’s toys, books, and shelves that they can reach –
regardless of any worries about coronavirus we have a responsibility to
maintain a safe and healthy environment.
Don’t assume your usual anti-bacterial cleaners will be effective
unless they have also been tested on viruses.
Soap and water are still the best defence against the fatty layer
around the virus. Cleaning as you
go/immediately after use is far more effective than a weekly (or less often)
deep clean.
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PHASE 3: DURING SOCIAL DISTANCING Worship in
the premises
|
Assume that social distancing measures will need to be in
place for many months beyond the end of the lockdown period. Do you need to think about moving chairs
further apart so that only household groups sit together, or closing off some
pews to enforce distancing? Don’t
stack surplus chairs in an unsafe manner, or in places that will cause
evacuation obstacles. Be ready for the
“that’s my seat” protests, but don’t accept them! We have a responsibility to our members and
wider society to continue to do our part in minimising virus spread, and that
will mean ongoing inconvenience for us all.
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Planning for public worship
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Before and after worship
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Sacraments
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Taking the offering
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Junior Church vs All-age/Intergenerational |
Resuming lettings and church activities |
Church activities in the church building
|
Re-opening to other congregations hosted in
the building
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Resuming external lettings
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Church Meetings
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Finances
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PART 3 – What is the “New Normal” for your Church?
Do you still need a church building?
What might worship look like?
Whether or not you have reduced numbers physically able to
meet together, this will be a good time to think about your worship content. Prepare
for the fact that communal singing may still be banned or restricted – how will
that effect the “diet” of worship that will be offered?
We know that even before coronavirus, numbers attending
worship were steadily falling in almost all of our churches. We don’t assume that there was anything that
you were doing that was putting people off, but might the opposite be true: if
you do things differently, you might start to attract others who were not
previously attending worship?
Anecdotally, a number of Ministers have reported many people joining
online worship services that would not or could not attend physically in the
past. Might streaming our worship online
be part of the “new normal”? The thought
of buying and managing the technology might fill you with some
trepidation. It is still better to do a
few things and to do them well (see the Moderators’ report to General Assembly
2018 for more on this).
We might need to identify which things we should give up
permanently – or at least for another season – in order to create space, time
and energy to do new things, or to do some of our old things differently. There is a suggestion that the style of
online worship during lockdown, which is much more about the minister and
others talking to camera, is a very different experience to simply streaming
our “standard” services with viewers/participants at a distance from the
“action”. Might we then need to evolve
two styles of service – one that might be recorded and then streamed (or
distributed by other means such as DVDs or USB memory sticks), as well as the
more recognisable worship offering? Many
churches, pre-pandemic, had stopped their evening service – might an online or
recorded service come to take its place?
Or should it be vice versa – if you are getting a larger congregation
online, should your morning act of worship be that, and then physically gather
in the afternoon or evening? Remember
too that there is nothing that says our main act of worship must be on a Sunday
(though many good reasons why this should also be retained as a day for
worship.)
Be aware that Ministers and worship leaders will be
expecting a significant number of memorial and thanksgiving services
post-pandemic, as the restrictions placed on funerals meant that many were
unable to grieve well or fully. They
will need a good deal of time to prepare these well and lead them for an
extended period, especially if restrictions on numbers, distancing and singing
remain in place. Do not immediately
re-fill diaries with the “same old” – keep plenty of time available for this
vital aspect of ministry.
Many churches have climbed a steep learning curve on using
technology in worship, both from the “provider’s” point of view and that of the
participant. It would seem a shame to
lose that newly gained ground. So how
will your church continue in this rich vein?
If we are now able to record (video or audio-only) our services, how
will we share them? Some are using
established hosting platforms (Church Online, YouTube, Facebook); some have
provided some degree of interaction in online worship, for example through
Zoom; some are putting recordings on their own web site or sharing them as
podcasts. Others are sharing
audio-recordings on USB memory sticks (which seems to be the normal
distribution method for Talking Newspapers now). Others still are emailing transcripts of
devotional material, or hand-delivering or posting printed matter to those who
cannot access more technical routes. As
they put in the extra effort to do this, more people are being included in our
corporate devotional life – those who were “shut-ins” but still part of our
established fellowships and those who are being reached for the first
time. We are two decades into the 21st
Century, and surely it is time for our devotional life to start to catch up,
without losing the richness of our heritage?
Pastoral Care
There is no suggestion that we were doing the wrong things
pre-pandemic, and certainly not that anyone was either under-working or
shirking responsibility. Rather, as we
start to plan for our “new normal”, the challenge is to identify things that we
have recently stopped doing so that we can engage in pastoral care at (or even
above) the lockdown levels. This might
be done through simply not re-starting some of the tasks that took so much time
previously, or it might be through finding others to share the burden of those
activities that are resuming, and also to share in the ministry of pastoral
care.
If (as in many places) pastoral care previously, “didn’t
count unless it was the Minister,” is there now a greater openness to receiving
care from a variety of others? How will
you communicate to the church that pastoral care matters but that it is a
whole-Body responsibility? Should this
be for the Minister’s pastoral letter in a monthly magazine, through a more
personal letter, through teaching and preaching in church, or (almost
certainly) a mixture of this and other means?
What matters now is how to re-shape our churches, to re-set
expectations, and to live in the way that we intend to live, all in a
sustainable manner. What we don’t need
(with very few exceptions) is Ministers working harder: most do too much and
more than they ought. We need a balance
in our ministries that will last beyond a few weeks or months of post-pandemic
recovery.
Meetings
Alongside returning to physical meetings, there will be some
conversations that can properly and helpfully take place through other means –
phone calls and email, for instance, rather than returning to crowded agenda
for our meetings. We need to be clear
about how we will take decisions and about agreeing schemes of delegated
authority – and record what we agree – but much business that doesn’t
require decision-making can easily move to a different forum for discussion,
reporting progress back to the councils of the church as necessary.
Managing external users
Recognising the financial dependence on letting income, are
there user groups that have been problematic and for whom this provides an
opportunity to end or re-negotiate their use?
Have you got an up-to-date written agreement, with clear terms and
conditions of use for every user group?
Do not simply re-admit all previous users into the building without checking
with the Synod Office for an appropriate standardised form of agreement that
give the local church and the trustees of the building an appropriate level of
protection. Are there issues of physical
security and safeguarding that need to be reviewed and updated? Do the user groups carry their own public
liability as they should? Do they
operate their own health and safety policy, or are they aware of, and compliant
with, the church’s policies? Our new
normal must be build around doing things well.
That does not mean that we submerge ourselves in an avalanche of
bureaucracy. It does mean that we do all
things to the glory of God, and that means cutting corners must not be part of
our new way of working.
Conclusion
We would be most unwise to look to get back to “how we
always do things.” This is, we pray, a
once-in-a-lifetime chance to do things better.
Some things, like meeting together, we will be glad to do after the
Covid-19 lockdown is lifted, but let us be wise as to when and how and for what
purposes we start to meet together again.
There are some things that we should be glad that we don’t
have to start again, or at least start them again the way they we used to do
things – things that, “we’ve always done it this way,” when nobody really
remembers or understands why. The
particular areas for which this applies will depend on your local context and
according to your local means. Getting
on with this conversation and discernment should be a priority. If you rush back to the “old ways” you could
miss the single opportunity to find a new way of doing things. For other matters, more careful reflection and
careful planning will be needed, but this is the right time to start the
conversation, rather than unassumingly continuing as you were.
Your Synod officers will be glad to be involved in these
discussions with you, and if it would help to seek external facilitators to
help the discussion move forwards.
We can have a new vision of what we want our churches to be
like – what they become rather than what they have been. There are so many things that we have been
doing that were and are the right things, and we don’t need to throw them
away. But nothing should unthinkingly be
carried forwards. The world has
changed. It cannot go back to how it
was, and in many, many ways, neither should it seek so to do.
I find the advice contained in the Conclusion that we should avoid, in future, doing the same things 'because we have always done them this way' most helpful. I have thought this in connection with my local church, and Synod Meetings, for a long time. Perhaps a golden opportunity presents itself here?
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