To watch the spread of the COVID-19 virus as it goes, well, viral, I am amazed and a little bit in shock.

So many of the things we previously took for granted now seem comparative luxuries. Never before did I wonder if touching the key-pad to enter my PIN will expose me to a life-threatening disease.

Many of us live in parts of the country where we are discouraged from going out in public. Restaurants, bars, theaters, libraries, museums and every other venue where people might gather are now ordered to close down.

As we are in public, we touch surfaces that have been touched hundreds of times in the previous hours. Handrails, elevator buttons, and door handles now pose a threat that was never considered before by most of us.

But here we are. We are thinking of these things now.

A friend recently referred to the societal shutdown as a “collective pause.” Like it or not, the social distancing forces all of us to step back from our normal routine and hopefully reflect upon what is really important.

But I am running up against a little bit of disbelief in myself as to the scope of the problems that this virus is causing. I look at the numbers continuing to climb, but I can’t fully connect all the dots to how this will impact us in the long term.

Maybe this is caused by my own naivety during previous epidemics. But the fact that so often the term “unprecedented” is used to describe our situation tells me that others are struggling to get their heads around it also.

Many church leaders, more qualified than I am, have written about how the church should respond to this outbreak. I can add little to what they are providing as far as an operating plan for the church moving forward. What I can offer are my own reflections on how I view this on a personal level.

First, this outbreak reminds me that we live in a world that is beautiful but flawed. The birds are still calling out their good mornings from the trees. The sun still came up this morning and the trees are beginning to show signs of waking from their winter slumber. Rather than absent-mindedly perusing the COVID-19 statistics, my time would be better spent in reflection upon the gifts that I have been given and thanking the giver of those gifts.

Secondly, the fact that nothing like this has happened in my lifetime also supports the Christian idea of common grace. I do not want to take for granted the fact that I have lived a relatively trouble-free life. This is the first issue that has caused real national distress in my lifetime. I attribute this to God’s grace and should thank Him for it.

Thirdly, I am reminded that we have been promised by Jesus Christ that someday he will return to fix the broken parts in creation. While we are called to use our intellect and skills to respond to problems, we are ultimately dependent upon God for our sustenance. So I should acknowledge my dependence upon God and ask for guidance as to how I should respond to this crisis.

And lastly, I am reminded that God’s ultimate desire is for our holiness rather than our happiness. The New Testament provides multiple reminders that we will face trials as Christians. Yet, history shows that God has grown his church in both depth and numbers when the trials have come. God can, and will, use this crisis to draw us into deeper relationship with him.

I close with Jesus’ words as recorded in John 16:33:

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Before removing a fence, a wise man will seek to understand why it was put there in the first place.

When I look at many churches today, I wonder if they have ever heard this proverb. What I see is a forsaking of anything that could be considered traditional coupled with a full embrace of any new method that will promise to fill the pews. The old ideas and boundaries are declared to be out of date and are cast aside as unnecessary.

One such boundary is the need for humility in leaders of the church. Knowing, as we ought to know, that each of us carries the taint of original sin, leaders should welcome the input of others as they speak into our blind spots.

Humility used to be a trait to be admired in church leaders. Pride, after all, has always been considered one of the seven deadly sins.

But, in too many expressions of the local church, the pastor takes on a role that puts him on a pedestal. The life of such a church is centered around the personality of a celebrity pastor.

Knowingly or unknowingly, such a pastor has allowed himself to take on responsibility that ultimately is not his. He has usurped the responsibility for building the church from the true builder, Jesus Christ.

In an attempt at appearing humble while doing this, such a pastor might refer to himself as the “vision caster” or executive leader of the local church. When he does so, this is a signal to me that he has lost sight of his true role as under-shepherd and defender of the flock.

Usually, this usurpation is in response to church growth methodologies that seem to emulate the structures of successful business enterprises. These leaders have chased the shiny lure of “bigger is always better.”

In my experience, every instance of the pastor taking on this type of role, the pastor felt pressured to surround himself with those who agree with him. Thus he works himself into the position where his ideas never get challenged. While this makes it easier to get his ideas implemented, it is usually disastrous for the church. As a result, the “pastor” becomes a dictator rather than a shepherd.

How many examples do we need to see of mega churches falling into disarray when the pastor leaves the ministry due to age or scandal before we figure out that personality centered churches are not a great idea?

I have been an elder or leader in several different churches through the years. I have noticed some common areas where I have experienced failure in that leadership setting. We failed in three key areas which were apparent in how we organized our meetings.

First, we failed to seek God in fervent prayer to lead us through the issues we were about to discuss. Sure, we had an opening and closing prayer, but it was a “bless this meeting” type prayer rather than an “if you don’t lead us we’re all doomed” type prayer. The former is the prayer of those who are confident that they know the direction and the latter is the prayer of those who rightly understand their dependency upon God for anything good to come out of the meeting.

The second failure was that we did not regularly seek the counsel of God by studying the Scripture to speak to the issues before us. We were more about what a consultant said, or what other churches in the denomination were doing. Yes, we would have a devotional, but too seldom, if at all, did we ask the question, “what does Scripture say about this?” Or, “What Biblical principles speak to this question and how should we apply them?”

The third failure was the recognition that it is Jesus’ responsibility to build the church and that we could be confident that Jesus had arranged for all the gifts to be manifested in the various elders in the church. And, because Jesus had ordained those elders to lead his church, there needed to be trust established between the elders.

I’m not singling out any one of the churches, these three things are common themes, even though they should not be.

Even if we think we know the direction to go, if God does not go before us and if we do not acknowledge our complete dependence upon Him for anything good to happen, we may have the appearance of progress, but it will be the appearance only.

With the advent of the internet and connected mobile devices, it is likely that most of us are distracted too much of the time. We have instant access to knowledge/facts/data on just about any topic we care to investigate. I can attest that this has had a negative impact on my attention span.

With so many distractions, much of the church has felt the pressure to compete for attention. We have resorted to worship settings with complex lighting, smoke machines, and other effects to produce the feel of a rock concert. Sermons are now expected to have video clips or use pop culture references as illustrations.

Basically the whole worship experience is scripted and has become a very large production geared to attract and keep the attention of a culture that is distracted.

There is nothing wrong with any or all of this as long as we don’t lose sight of the message along the way. We can be so focused on method that we give that method more thought than the message we are called to proclaim. We can be so focused on the Sunday morning experience that we lose sight of day to day discipleship and training.

This is problematic because the church is called to make disciples, while “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matthew 28:20).

The root meaning of the word disciple is to learn. Therefore, a disciple is fundamentally a student. The original disciples learned from Jesus by living with him 24/7 for several years. We learn from Jesus through study of the Bible.

As individuals we often struggle with finding balance in our lives. As churches we aparently share that struggle. We struggle with finding the balance between method and message.

If we focus exclusively on the method, we might focus too much on the experience and the performance on a Sunday. Indeed, in some “seeker-sensitive” churches I have attended, the Gospel was not readily discernible in either the music or the sermon.

At the other extreme, we can focus so much on the message without sufficient attention to the method of delivery. This can make the worship experience seem dry and lifeless.

One extreme provides a pep talk with little substance. The other extreme provides a lecture that provides little encouragement for real life.

My point in writing this is that as church leaders, we need to hold these in tension and always seek to find balance.

I would think that a good place to start is to observe how Jesus did ministry as recorded in the gospels. The disciples were many things, but bored was not one of them. Jesus confronted the culture around him when necessary but he also was appealing to those who were not accepted by the religious establishment.

We have a lot to learn . . .