Everything’s Changed

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. Welcome to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. Welcome back to Words of Life. This is week two with our producer, Chris Benjamin. Welcome, Chris.

Hello, everyone. We began a new series discussing the post-COVID church. This week in our discussion, we look back at the beginning of the pandemic as the panel shared what it was like for their church and their community as we went into lockdown. Now, throughout the series, we want to mention the Salvation Army's emotional and spiritual care helpline that is still active if you need someone to speak to. Call 1-844-458-HOPE.

That's 1-844-458-4673. Welcome back to Words of Life, everybody. I know that this conversation is important and we believe that God is going to bless it. We're going to turn our attention to Jeremy and Chan and figure out what church looks like in our communities, kind of as we got into COVID and now in our post-COVID world. So again, we were affected same as everybody else where things immediately as our congregations kind of dispersed and we're at home now in our worship settings. We're fortunate at the time to have at least a preliminary level of live stream already available. So we had a little bit of experience with that. So to be able to launch that into the homes of our members, we're very appreciative of having that capacity to be able to do that.

As we went through, you then figure out, okay, the good and the bad of the virtual world, what's working, what's not. How are we engaging in our worship as it relates to our church members? And then not only within the church members, but how are we engaging within our communities and how are we handling our food distribution? How are we handling those coming in to help with utilities and what we called our Home Sweet Home program, which is a homeless assistance program that we offer. So how do you still engage with those in need, not only within the community, within your church members. So we had to be creative in making that happen.

And we had to get a team around us together, brainstorm, become innovative and create some new initiatives to make that happen. Chan, I am excited that you're here because you are one of our Salvation Army mission specialists. You're actually employed by the Salvation Army specifically to do missional work.

You're here in Atlanta at what we call our International Corps, which on our last episode we learned from Angie. What did your church look like pre-COVID and what's it look like now as we've kind of experienced COVID? We usually do programs like worship because we have been doing, after COVID, we start on all in-person programs. So we have to do virtual worship. But when you have in-person worship as Angie mentioned about, we have English worship, but we translate simultaneously. But if we have virtual worship, we cannot simultaneously, without technology, translate. So it's not easy.

But I just make a phone call to all of the Koreans and then I just heard from them. This is a chance to ponder why we have been doing this. What's the worship? Why we have been doing this worship?

So I know it's really difficult times, but sometimes people just do whatever they just do. But this time it's kind of a chance that we really rethink about what the church looks like, what the worship looks like. So we just rethink about how can you just make people really give meaningful worship in our, I mean, this situation. Chen, I'm glad you mentioned that early kind of response, particularly related to technology and in my own experience, I hear my wife and I attend the salvation army in Atlanta, what they call the Atlanta temple core. I think we all took a breath because we didn't know what to do, what was going to happen. How would we have church? Did you have a moment of vulnerability where you didn't know what was going to happen?

Just kind of, what did that look like for you? I can speak for us. It was very scary because as our services are done in English, we translate at that exact moment. We're going from being able to worship together to now having to do three different worship services in three different languages, not having any experience with audio visual, anything like that. So we're there with our cell phones. How do we do this? How do we not make an absolute fool of ourselves? Because this is out there for all the world. And so it was very overwhelming at the beginning to figure out, okay, what is the best way we can do this?

How can we meet the need of our people and how do we make this work? Because a lot of our folks also aren't necessarily very tech savvy. And so we have some people in our congregation that couldn't get on Facebook.

They didn't, they don't even know how Facebook works. And so trying to figure out the best way to do this and, and even moving into the zoom with the Bible studies and such, and trying to walk some of our ladies through that, okay, you need to download this app. You need to do this and learning as we go along. But as far as the general worship for us, it was really difficult. And I was saying to someone, it's a whole lot easier to have church pre-COVID than at the beginning when we were doing three services, because it took a lot of effort. I think what I'm trying to ask you, if I were being honest, I actually went through a bit of depression during COVID because I just, I'm not used to 2D worship. I need people in my life. And without that interaction, particularly just the social nature of what we do as Christian people, as humans, it left me feeling kind of listless. Anybody else kind of in that place?

Absolutely. So before I came to the Salvation Army or a time in between, I was attending a mega church here in Atlanta and I absolutely loved it. And they had, you know, online services and all the options that I needed, but I was missing a connection. So although it was great and I loved it, there was no connection. So when I thought about COVID and when we shut down and we say, okay, what now? You know, when we talk about online services, great. But how do we connect with people? How do we fellowship? You know, a crucial part of our relationship with God is the fellowship with other believers, with other Christians.

So how do we keep that in the middle of this? So that was the biggest question I had to address. And so I started, you know, simple, just calling and calling and calling and talking and trying to keep that going. But it was a challenge to truly connect, not just click and see a little bit and click off, but connecting with people.

Yeah, I think my experience is a little bit different because of West Virginia and because of the deep community that is there. As soon as COVID hit for us, it was like a shot of adrenaline in the arm for me. Like people were comparing it to Christmas and I was like, are you crazy?

Like this is Christmas on crack. Like this is what we're made for. Like, let's go. And so instantly our core mobilized and we fought that because we saw some of that roots of depression and some of that. And I just said, in the name of Jesus, no, we're not going there.

You are now a core. And so we commissioned soldiers in homes to say, this is now the Salvation Army. You are responsible for your street, your neighborhood, your whatever. And so our soldiers started doing sidewalk Sunday school. And that is what I think kept, number one, our soldiers encouraged because we already live in a place that's poverty. A lot of our people are unemployed. We say it's living, you know, by mailbox to mailbox because you're waiting for that check to come in at the first of the month. And so that's like normal. And so, and a lot of our people are frontline workers.

I can't think of anybody in Huntington that worked from home or stayed home. I mean, it was business as usual. When I had a fight was this deep rooted sense of justice because our soldiers were like, how come I'm not getting that extra federal money because I'm working and I'm exposed.

And even our staff, I mean, we never shot our core down one day. We moved everything to a plexiglass window and 270,000 pounds of food. We pushed through this window and we had people wrapped around the building. So instantly it was just like, I mean, if you could just, it's just chaos.

I mean, I guess that's the world I live in all the time. I don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing, but it's just like, let's go. Like you do not have time to sit down. You do not have time to like, even, even the computer stuff, we were just like, okay, that's nice, but you need to go visit that person and get the canteen.

I mean, so we just, it was wild for me because it just, every day was like, okay, we have another challenge, another challenge, another challenge. And so we made it intentional that the soldiers would come in and say, what is the word that the word has for you? If I could sell our poor building, I would. We don't need a building, right? Like Psalm 24, God says, lift up your gates.

The King of glory can come in. Like our chapels are big enough for God's glory. This is who we are. Like it's the whole community. Like it is the first responders, the hospital. Like that's, that's who we are. That's the army. And so a suit up and march on, you know, I do not deserve to be sitting in this room.

It's why I can't drink coffee cause I get fired up. What are you talking about? Like, go talk to somebody about Jesus. I just want to speak into that too. I think our biggest fear right now, my biggest fear right now is that, um, we think that getting back into our buildings is the end.

Oh, come on. And that we've hit the peak and pinnacle and now we're back to, to normal. And, uh, that can't happen, but how are we reaching the unsaved and unchurched through this and, uh, getting back into our building, I don't believe is the answer. You know, we become very religious, you know, and you know, I think that easily happens as we go to church at 11 o'clock on Sunday. Right. And I don't think it's a bad thing that we have worship services. I think it's a bad thing when we allow that to be the one-stop shop. Becomes our identity. Yeah. And so, so, you know, for us, you know, you talk about, you know, you know, what are we doing now?

What does it look like? And what's important to us? You know, the, the different creative ways that we're ministering, they're not a substitute.

They're just an extension. I think COVID has allowed us to be more intentional about other ways to reach other people. Now, you know, so many folks, you know, we look at our analytics, anybody who's going to try to do this well, or looking at their analytics from the digital realm, not to get into it too much, but I don't even know if it's as much about how many people are viewing it as much as it is about those few quality views, right? Because you know, that's, it's a change of lifestyle that really ultimately we're preaching. It's our gospel that we're selling that Christ Jesus can change your life, right? No matter what you've been through, the Lord almighty has died.

His blood covers a multitude of sins. So just to speak to like, that is a concern of mine too, that we go back to our Sunday morning, you know, time where, and that's it. And then we go back to our business as usual. And that's the challenge that we have in our church, known as the salvation army, is that we do so much good works. We do so many good things for communities that we allow it to be our substitute. And we miss out on those opportunities to have those interactions with people that are transformational.

So for us personally in Johnson City, you know, those phone calls were initial, those are immediate, you know, texting, calling, my wife does amazing at that, Facebook messages, and you know, you may not always get a response, but they know on the other end when they need you, we're just a phone call away. And I think that's probably the most important thing that we could have done through COVID is continue to keep those lines of communication open because you imagine how many people sit in your pews each Sunday and they're there, but they're not listening. Sure. Yeah. And so I think we just have to be careful, yes, that Sunday doesn't become a thing. Once we get back to Sunday mornings, all is well. Well, no, is it? You know, and so that's really good. I appreciate Jeremy saying that.

Yeah. Now in the salvation army, we are a mission-driven organization. We don't believe in faith by works, but certainly faith without works is dead. I have a sense that there's a lot more that these folks want to share with you, and I hope that you'll tune in to the next episode. 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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