Proceed with Caution

Many of us have, when we are driving, seen a bright yellow diamond-shaped sign with the words, “proceed with caution,” painted on it in large, bold black letters. It may alert us to roadwork, to a particular difficult section of road to traverse, or to a damaged section of road. We usually slow down and drive more carefully. We may see blue and red lights flashing ahead and pass one or more state police cruiser parked on the side of the road and may be an ambulance where a driver who ignored the sign had gone off the road. We breathe a sigh of relief that we paid attention to the sign.

Right now we are entering a stage of the pandemic in which we need to proceed with caution. We need to be alert and prudent in what remains a hazardous situation; to exercise care; and to be wary. We do not need to listen those arguing from misinformation that has been circulating on Facebook that the risk to churchgoers is low. We do, however, need to listen to the health experts who are telling us that we face a very real possibility of a fourth COVID-19 surge and now is not the time to relax our vigilance, to lower our guard.

It is spring. People are impatient and restive. They are tired of the restrictions that public health measures have placed on their lives and, if they are business owners, how these measures have affected their businesses. They are, as a consequence, apt to make unwise decisions and in the case of business owners promote a premature relaxation of the public health measures affecting them the most. Politicians, motivated by their need for business owners’ donations and voters’ support, are inclined to cater to those who believe that the state and local government is overly restrictive in the public health measures that they have implemented. They are willing to take a risk with other people’s lives, believing that they can wiggle their way around being held accountable if there is a surge of new cases and new deaths in the state or the county. They may have even convinced themselves that the health risk to the public is minimal.

In this kind of environment church leaders do need to proceed with caution. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we seen an epidemic of misinformation and denial not only in the United States but also around the world. The state and local governments have been able to secure the cooperation of the public to a large extent in their implementation of public health measures. However, the lack of cooperation of a segment of the population has made their task of containing the pandemic and mitigating its effects more difficult. This population segment has contributed to the virus’ spread where its spread might have otherwise been significantly reduced if not prevented altogether. We hear individuals to whom their communities look for leadership telling people to throw away their face masks and to not be vaccinated.

At this stage it is wishful thinking to talk about post-COVID-19 or after the pandemic. We are whistling past the graveyard. In my state the infection dropped only to plateau. It has begun climbing again. The same thing is happening elsewhere in the United States. Health experts are tracking not only new variants of the virus but also their spread among the younger segments of the population. The stories that make the headlines are the reports of rare allergic reactions to the vaccines, the few unexplained deaths, and the occasional COVID-19 case following full vaccination. On Facebook the anti-vaxxers are having a field day. The CDC’s real life research findings that the vaccines are safe and effective, that the side-affects which accompany the second dose of the vaccine show that the vaccine is working and disappear in a matter of hours, that those who experience an allergic reaction to a vaccine form a very tiny segment of the vaccinated population do not get the same coverage as the more sensational stories. Thousands flocked to Florida during spring break, attracted by the state’s relaxed restrictions. Many of the younger people who went to party in Florida were not university students. My own university cancelled its spring break rather than put its students at risk.

When I weigh the evidence both from the United States and from the rest of the world, I am forced to conclude that the United States will not be entirely COVID-19-free at any time in the immediate future if ever at all. There will be pockets of the virus in the population, and we can anticipate further outbreaks of the virus. Later variants may prove more infectious and deadlier than earlier ones. We are not going to return to the kind of normalcy that we experienced before the pandemic. We will need to change the way that we live and the way that we do church to protect ourselves, our congregations, and our communities.

The COVID-19 pandemic is providing us with a tremendous opportunity to be the church rather than doing church, to focus upon making disciples instead of filling pews. Jesus compared the kingdom of God to yeast in bread dough. The dough will not rise if the yeast clumps in one spot. The dough will only rise if the yeast is encouraged to multiply and is spread throughout the dough. For this reason, we cover the dough and put it in a warm place to rise and then take it out and knead it and put it in a bread pan to rise again.

While a great emphasis is being placed on the physical gathering of the local church of late, an emphasis which at times gives the appearance of being motivated by an irrational fear that one of the outcomes of the pandemic will be the disappearance of physical gatherings of the local church, a development that would affect the institutional survival of the local church, a much greater emphasis need to be put on reaching and engaging the unchurched, particularly the younger generations, and being a catalyst that the Holy Spirit can use to encourage them to become disciples of Jesus Christ.

The local church’s physical gatherings are not the be all and end all of the Christian life. There is far more to being a disciple of Jesus Christ than being a churchgoer. This is not to dismiss the role that such gatherings can play in the life of a Jesus’ follower but to put it in proper perspective. Just as a living faith leads to good deeds, our gatherings, whether in person or online, however, should lead to transformed lives.

Right now the sides of the road are dotted with caution signs. If we hope to reach our destination, we should pay attention to them. We do not want to become a casualty to our own poor judgment. It is better to proceed with caution when caution is called for than to find ourselves at the bottom of a gully, pinned to our seat by an inflated airbag. I for one have rolled my car down a steep embankment. My only thought at the time was to hope that my car did not catch on fire.

I have passed a burning car that crashed through the rails of an elevated highway. The car landed on its roof and burst into flames. The flames quickly engulfed the whole car. They were too hot for the would-be rescuers to force open the doors and drag the driver and any passengers to safety.

At this stage in the pandemic it is best to heed the caution signs. We do not want to find our church and ourselves at the bottom of a gully. Or in a worse state.