Rev. Tashara S. Void, Contributing Writer
March 2020 will forever be etched in our minds. It was the time when the whole world stopped moving, including churches. Things stood still as doors were forced closed, and churches grappled with not being considered essential. It was a time of grief as pastors mourned the closing of their doors and frantically attempted to create a virtual experience to sustain the anxious congregations. The dynamics shifted; what we once called church changed, and the pressure to maintain and sustain increased.
But, in one little corner of the world, one non-pastoral clergywoman could see the growing tension and angst among her peers. So, receiving constant downloads with nowhere to upload them, she reached out to a few of her pastoral colleagues, offering them the content she received in exchange for developing a collaborative group who would bring their congregations together and study collectively on Wednesday evenings. Initially, the pastors were concerned with how their congregations would respond; some even had a separate study on a separate day. But, they all agreed a collaboration was necessary, and the collaborative formed the Family of Faith Bible Study group.
Over the next couple of months, a couple of departments across the connection launched similar programs collaborating across organizations and churches, creating collective studies where there was not one teacher or one church lead but a series of teachers and thought leaders who embodied the spirit of connectionalism and worked as one unit to bring information and spirituality to the masses. There were also clusters of churches coming together that were formed to focus on re-entry and implementing systemic services that worked in tandem and not in competition with one another.
What if this had been the mindset across the denomination? How much less would pastors, presiding elders, and even bishops have been stressed if they used this opportunity to bring people together instead of retreating to isolated silos? How much stronger would we be denominationally if we did not push for individual pastoral or church achievement and instead collaboratively tended to the growing needs of those shutdown, shut-in, and locked-up? How much better would we be had we pooled our resources and created systems that promoted partnerships and togetherness? Picture where we would be now if other pastors had accepted the invitation to join or if other leaders had the same foresight. Imagine the great community of learners and families of faith that would have been born had we put “I” aside for “we.”
2020-2022 was undoubtedly a time of great despair, and there was not one person who was not affected. But, it was also a time of great opportunity, and we missed it, mourning the loss of our open doors and underused buildings. I can only pray that as we return to “business as usual,” we ask God to recover what we overlooked – collaboration, collectivism, and community – and grant us another chance to come together as one denomination.
