The Post-COVID Church

Hi, this is Bernie Dake.

Welcome to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. Welcome back to Words of Life. I'm Bernie Dake, and it is a privilege this morning to welcome our producer back, Chris Benjamin, everybody.

Hello, Bernie. Chris, did you just want to get on the radio? You couldn't live without being heard again? Yeah, I guess.

I always say I'm the person that I prefer to be behind the scenes, but I somehow keep finding myself in this seat. Well, we're glad you're back. I'm just excited that you wanted to be heard again. Well, I wanted to mention, we just finished our three-part conversation on unity.

If you missed any of those episodes, be sure to either subscribe to Words of Life in your favorite podcast store or visit salvationarmysoundcast.org. We had Commissioner Willis Howell and Lieutenant James Harvin join us to just have a really powerful conversation about a topic that the church needs to do a better job discussing. And we're just really grateful for those two to come and be vulnerable and share this important conversation.

Sure. But this week, we launch a six-week panel discussion on the post-COVID church. And we were joined by Salvation Army officers and soldiers from around the southeastern United States to talk about what the church looks like in a post-COVID world.

Yeah. So, of course, when we say post-COVID, we're not acting like we think COVID is over. We're saying now that it's here, everything that's changed. And this week, we really spent most of the time just introducing the panel and learning about each pastor and what their church and their community looks like and how COVID first impacted them. And it's really even hit us close to home with some of our own teammates or family members being diagnosed with COVID.

So it's a very real thing. We'd like to hear your feedback. And we want to know what God has taught you through this crazy time. Reach out to us through email at radio at uss.salvationarmy.org or call us at 1-800-229-9965. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you in the next one. Welcome back to Words of Life, everybody. I'm Bernie Dake and I am so excited to share this panel of people with you.

We're talking about what the church looks like in a post-COVID world. We've got seven friends from around the 15 southeastern United States and the District of Columbia. I'm going to let them introduce themselves and then we're going to get right into the conversation. Lieutenant, I'm Nick Aroki. My wife and I are serving in Stillwater, Oklahoma. We just moved there. We served in Fayetteville, Arkansas for four years before and so we're excited to be there.

Awesome. I'm Captain Liz Bluschewitz all the way from Huntington, West Virginia. Excited to be here in my fifth year of officership. And so God has been good and I came out of Baltimore and so I'm excited to be in Maryland, West Virginia and stand to be Potomac division. Heavy is the head of a salvation army officer after five years.

Put on another star. Hello everybody. My name is Chris and my wife, Carla and I are the pastors of the salvation army church in Frederick, Maryland. It's a beautiful place to be. My name is Jeremy Roland.

I'm from the Atlanta area, specifically in Gwinnett County and I am what they call the corps sergeant major, which means the head elder of the salvation army church there in Gwinnett County and lifelong salvation army member and a salvation army officer's child. But it's great to be here with you as well. Amen. I'm glad you're here too, Jeremy. Chan.

Hi, how are you? This is Chan. I'm Sams. I'm not working for Sams, but this is salvation army mission specialist. I'm a neighbor of the headquarter of the international corps I serve.

Amen. I mean, to read past my husband, David and I are stationed at the Atlanta international corps, multicultural corps here in the Atlanta area. We've been there for just over a year. I'm Antoine Gilcomb. My wife Bethany and I serve in Johnson City, Tennessee, a beautiful part of the country and I'm glad to be here.

We're glad you're here too. Now, we really want to dive right in and figure out what did your church look like? What did your service and your community look like pre-COVID when everything was kind of the old normal? At the Atlanta international corps, as I mentioned, we're a multicultural corps and so we have a Hispanic congregation, Korean congregation, as well as English speaking. We meet together every Sunday and the actual, the holiness meeting, the worship service that we have is done in English and translated into the other two languages.

We have separate Bible studies in the various languages as well. As far as our service to the community, we were very limited. We had a food pantry is what we had at that time. And so it was, our services were a little limited, but as we get into it, we'll see some doors that got opened because of COVID. And so we were just very fortunate with the multicultural side. We bring our youth together because these kids don't speak as much Korean. They don't speak as much Spanish. And so we always come together and do the English stuff as well.

Nice. Now, and you guys would have had music programs as well during the week or some other character building type programs going on? We do. We have music, being an international church, we are blessed with some string and some orchestra music. And then the Salvation Army of course has the brass band.

We've been trying to work on that as well, as well as timbrels. And then we do our programs with our young people to the character building program, as you mentioned, as well as just some Bible studies and a women's group is a very important part of our Hispanic ministry. That's a glimpse into a Salvation Army church in Georgia, in the Atlanta Metro area. What's it look like in Oklahoma? So I was in Arkansas pre-COVID. And so I was one of the ones that moved during the whole COVID pandemic. So there was a big change.

So the appointments at the churches are different. But when I talk pre-COVID, I have to look at federal and Chris and I were actually talking earlier how you get in this group. So four years into it, you get in this group where you're finally used to, okay, here's what's going on. Here are the plans.

Here are the partnerships. Here's how we're involved. And then this hits. You're like nothing ever prepared us for that. You know, nothing prepared us to say, Hey, two weeks. Okay. We can all take two weeks off.

But then it wasn't two weeks. And so that looked very different going from working every day with, with guys who are struggling with addictions to now, how do you do that virtually? We, they live together, you know, and so that was a challenge. Liz in your community, how does the Salvation Army serve in the pre-COVID world? Yeah. So West Virginia is wild and wonderful for sure. Our Corps, you never know who was going to walk in or what. Our Corps is very engaged with all forms of life. And so we've had chickens and cows in our Corps for an animal show. Our soldiers love to come in and bring in canned peppers, all kinds of crazy stuff and say, you know, Hey captain, you know, try this out.

I'm trying to see if they can make me cry with their concoctions of peppers and craziness. But really the Corps in, in Huntington is so much a family and it's everybody is in everybody's life and everybody's business, whether you want it or not. And so one of the best things about the Huntington Corps, I would say would be the evangelism and discipleship, the accountability that comes with you are a soldier. And so you were expected to know Jesus and then drag people with you. And so that is a very intentional, our Sunday night meetings are probably the thing I miss the most because that's when we would have 70 to a hundred people in our chapel from the street, who for the first time, that's when they're hearing about Jesus. And so we would do a feeding program on Sunday nights and it would just be, if you can picture mass chaos centered around Jesus, that is the Huntington Corps. And you just never know what's going to happen. Who's going to, you know, say I have a testimony and who's going to encourage somebody. It's just a, it was just a blessing. And I think that's the Appalachia spirit is, is that just we're hard workers and we're going to show up.

And so that was our core pre-COVID. Gotcha. Now, Chen, you're serving in the same court or church that Angie's in, Major Repass. And so I'm going to, I'm going to pass you on this one and go right over to Antoine and say, what does your church look like in community where you serve?

It's a great question. In Johnson City, Tennessee, like many of our churches, our ministry comes from the touch points, right? And so most of our churches, what we call corps, you have so many folks coming through our doors on any given moment, seeking some type of assistance. And I love the Salvation Army because there are many churches who desire to have those touch points that we have, you know, where our love for Jesus extends to our services. And so in Johnson City, pre-COVID, you know, whether it's through our shelter ministry or veterans program, whether it's through our emergency services or even our soup kitchen, you know, those are a lot of touch points that our staff had. And even if it wasn't from sharing the gospel through the scriptures, it was through our love and our compassion, through our meals or through giving somebody a place to take a shower. And even on our financial emergency services side, you know, that was something that at any given point, you know, you're going to have 15 people sitting in the lobby waiting to see the caseworker or waiting to get a food basket. And again, most of our churches are operating that way and very similar in that framework. And so pre-COVID, you know, that was our normal routine. You know, there are places to build, there are places to, or intersections, I guess, to have those conversations if they came about somebody needing prayer or somebody was just going through a rough time.

And so COVID obviously has, you know, made a lot of that go away initially and obviously with these conversations before that, we get to talk about how do we continue to have those intersections with people and continue to seek out those relationships where evangelism and discipling happens with people. So yeah, good times. Indeed. We'll go way up north, at least the furthest north represented in this room to Frederick, Maryland. You know, we have a beautiful core with beautiful, lovely people. The weird thing about Frederick, and I love Frederick, is that they do holiness meeting or our Sunday morning service is before Sunday school.

So that's a, you know, we got used to that. So 10 a.m. we have our holiness meeting followed by Sunday school. Thriving women's ministry, you know, Monday nights we have character building followed by music classes where we bring in people from the community to help teach.

I mean, it's a great time. We serve around 30 kids every Monday night. Wednesday Bible study, women's ministries, men's ministries. We still have a scrapbooking ministry.

It means once a Saturday. A lot going on at the core. But then, you know, pre-COVID, it took us eight months to open up a day center for the homeless. The city, the county, they said, hey, we need someone to step up.

The homeless have nowhere to go during the day. Took us eight months to get it going. And then COVID showed its face and we had to shut down. Lots, lots and lots of doors were opening. God was opening doors left and right. And we believe that the doors are still there. Some of them are closed right now, but we believe God's hand is on that door now and it's going to, they're going to open back up. Now, we haven't heard from Jeremy, but Jeremy is actually at a Salvation Army in Lawrenceville, Georgia, not too far outside of Atlanta.

And he has a lot to offer. We're looking forward to hearing what he has to say with the rest of our panelists and particularly what a post-COVID church looks like. So join us on our next episode as we discuss this a little further. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support.

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