For more than a decade, my Sunday mornings have started between 5:00 and 5:30. Depending on call times for the worship and tech teams at my church, I’ve been in the parking lot between 5:45 and 6:15. I say “lot,” but that’s a generous term. People who serve at my church are asked to park in one of two grass fields adjacent to the paved parking lots. Since those fields don’t have painted lines, I get out there in the dark with light wands and a reflective vest to start straight-line rows.
Pre-pandemic, that dawn organization used to be critical for us to fit 150-200 vehicles into the field we were using. When the pandemic hit, our church services went online until our commonwealth’s mandates grew loose enough for masked & spaced in-person services. Eventually, those requirements lifted. While my church is seeing Sunday attendance slowly growing this winter, weekend attendance is still maybe half of what it was before COVID.
Some parishioners took a pause for their health, safety, or parameters around their jobs in healthcare or national defense. (The Navy’s nuclear ships & submarines are powered by a production plant in our town.) Others left our church because our leadership team obeyed the governor. Some people pushed in the clutch on their spiritual lives with the welcome excuse of the regulations, heading instead out to recreational activities on Sunday mornings. Others went church shopping online and found services they prefer over ours. Still others migrated to churches with specific political agendas or to pastors who didn’t follow the government’s orders. People who used to serve alongside me became ghosts I saw only on social media, if at all. My wife works on staff at our church, and she has come home multiple times over the past two years—often on staff-meeting Tuesdays—with, “The [insert family name] have left Blue Ridge.” I can imagine it has been incredibly disheartening to be one of our pastors, especially our executive pastor.
But out in the dark on Sunday mornings, my heart’s been buoyed. The people arriving before the sun aren’t disgruntled. They haven’t given up. Even if they’ve chafed under a mask indoors, they’ve counted that small inconvenience as a tiny sacrifice for their mission. Having seen Jesus move in their midst, they remained driven to keep chasing kingdom advances. These folks weren’t trudging with slumped shoulders through a weekend morning on which they’d rather be sleeping in. No: they had smiles on their faces, pep in their step, and joy in their greetings. They radiated an energy that I absorbed and tried to take to my now-smaller asphalt team an hour later.
I haven’t needed to be out there early on most Sunday mornings for the past couple of years. The field can get a bit out of sorts without my organization, but there’s plenty of room for people to park around the problem vehicles. No, I’ve kept showing up for selfish reasons. My pre-dawn greetings have helped me give a sense of normalcy to people accustomed to a bright welcome in the dark, but they’ve also helped me hold onto the last vestiges of what church used to be. As the faces have changed and various teams have shrunk (or completely gone away), connecting with like-minded people has offset the loneliness inherent in social distancing. In the cool of the day, my heart has been warmed by camaraderie. Outside, I’ve gotten to see and absorb the smiles hidden everywhere else under a mask. In the dark, the Light of Life has grown more noticeable.
I’m writing this post the day after CDC dropped a lot of the recommended protection measures we’ve known as a culture for the past 23 months. I don’t know what my church or the North American church at large will look like going forward. But I know where I’ll be tomorrow before the sun comes up. And I know who will be blaring worship music from their SUVs when they find me there.
