Lingering together
And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds,not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10:24-25
Together formally and informally
When the pandemic brought a halt to in-person church gatherings we were suddenly bereft of so many of the things that we took for granted about being together. We immediately lost the formal dimension of being able to worship Sunday by Sunday. We also quickly realised we had lost something else in the informal opportunity to catch up with what was happening in one another’s daily lives.
At first we gratefully appreciated the possibilities of a hasty switch to being able to connect online. Church services broadcast digitally plugged a gap in the dimension of worship. Online meetings for Bible study, prayer, children’s and youth ministry became a lifeline.
Seeing people on screen became a crucial and visible reminder that we belong to one another in the body of Christ. However, we soon recognised online ministry was a poor substitute for in-person weekly encounter with God together and face to face community and conversation with one another.
Relating vertically and horizontally
This highlighted the importance of both the vertical and horizontal aspects of being the church. We express our vertical relationship with God together primarily in our gathering for worship each week. The horizontal relationship with one another occurs in the ways in which we express support and encouragement for one another, whether in organised activities or more informal space and time to engage in conversation.
Whether in worshipping God or enjoying fellowship with one another, the importance of intentionally taking and making time and space to linger in the presence of God or be with one another, may be one of the lessons learned during the disruption caused by the pandemic. It has reinforced that we cannot follow Jesus on our own. We need each other to enjoy worship in its fullness and to be sustained as we experience the ups and downs of life’s circumstances and the Christian life.
Lingering and loitering with intent
We linger with God in worship by ensuring we carve out unhurried time on the first day of the week to spend sustained time focused on him, his praise, his Word and in prayer. The busyness of contemporary living threatens to squeeze this rhythm out of our lives. Perhaps in lockdown we realised the loss of this God-given weekly reset for our souls.
We linger with one another in fellowship when we take time to talk to one another about more than the weather, what has been on television or the weekend’s sports’ results. Space around our gatherings allows for deeper conversation about what is going on in our lives, our joys and struggles, what God is saying through what is happening and our need for prayer. However, without greater intentionality we may not ever engage with one another on this kind of level. As the particular strains and stresses of lockdown began to tell, maybe we found ourselves opening up to one another more than usual. If so, that is something we will want to encourage and enhance as we go forward together.
Lingering can sound like a lazy lethargy, but understood in these ways it is much more like loitering with intent, either with God or one another. All of this can sound like an extra demand on our already scarce time, however the lesson might not be that we need to give more of our time to being together in worship and fellowship, but more of ourselves in the place of worship and space of community.
Rev David Thompson is Secretary of the Council for Congregational Life and Witness.