A Word From David

In the Room Where It Happens …

I had a crazy day of meetings recently that had me driving from place to place to place to place throughout one long, hectic day. I was beginning to feel slightly stressed, but then I thought back to four years ago and the days of spring and summer in 2020 when all of those meetings would have been on Zoom and there would have been at least three more of them because there was so much to manage in a 600-member congregation living through the shut-down days of early Covid. Now that was exhausting.

 During those days I took to opening meetings by welcoming people to “the Zoom where it happens,” but we mostly wanted to be in a room where something could happen. Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for the technology that allowed us to stay connected when being face-to-face was unwise. 

Those days also helped us understand the difference between transactional meetings and relational ones, and when gathering in person was again safe we offered guidance to congregational leaders to help them decide when Zoom was the better option.

It came down to the purpose of the gathering. If a meeting is to make straightforward decisions or transact basic business of the church, Zoom is fine. But if the meeting aims to deepen spiritual lives, help build relationships, or if it involves emotionally charged items, then face-to-face is far superior. Also, if the space itself matters, being in the room beats being in the Zoom.

Worship ought to be spiritual, relational, and emotional, and the space matters. 

If we view worship as a transaction – you give the church your money and your time on a Sunday morning and, in return, you hope for a spiritual fill-up to help make it through another week – then Zoom might be sufficient. Church, in that scenario, is like any service agency or business. 

But if worship is a core part of building the Beloved Community, being fully present to one another is essential. I believe that our calling as church is to be a foretaste of the Kingdom of God – to be the Beloved Community in and for the world. As such, we are called to live into an alternative economy that cannot be realized transactionally. It can only be born through our relationships – our relationships with Jesus, the Christ, and our relationships with one another as followers of Jesus.

In addition, whether you’ve been in the room or in the Zoom for worship recently, you have probably noticed that I tend to move around the space and use the physical context – the beautiful sanctuary at Western – to amplify the worship gathering and to invite the whole congregation to participate fully in every part of the service. I have not yet figured out how to do that well with Zoom, despite years of working with it.

This Sunday, for example, the sanctuary is going to be a central part of worship not a mere container for it. So, while we will continue to make it possible to connect with worship remotely, I hope that if you are in town you will be able to join us in the room where it happens. I hope to see you, the corporeal you not just the digital representation, at Western this weekend!