Diary of a Church Boy (S01 E08)
Trying to make sense of the concept of a Church Boy (or a Church Girl by extension) in episode 5, we found - according to the Urban Dictionary, that this is a person who, first, has dedicated his or her life to Christ and, secondly, loves the feeling and joy that Church brings.
We spent the next few episodes considering an aspect of this dedication - namely involvement in church and church activities, and its attendant assumptions and pressures.
Owwteebee here. This is ‘Diary of a Church Boy’ and I thought we should consider the second part of that definition; the bit that has to do with feelings and the joy that church brings - especially in the light of this Covid-19 pandemic.
Let’s do this!
I love the feeling and joy that Church brings - and, according to the Urban English Dictionary, that makes me a Church Boy. There’s no shame in that; I embrace it and I’m sure there a lot of us out there that share this sentiment and will embrace this identity too.
But since March of 2020, we’ve been battling a virus that is changing the way we live our lives individually and collectively. This Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted established ways of doing things and church experience even hasn’t been the same. But before we get into that, let me acknowledge some of my concerns here - well, more like confess some of my fears.
As the experts - virologist and epidemiologists, are learning on the fly and sometimes making what I’d call honest mistakes about this novel virus, it was really disconcerting to me to realize that we are forced to adhere to safe practices not so that less people get the virus but so that we can spread out the numbers of people that get it per time.
If you’ve heard of ‘flattening the curve’, that’s the fancy phrase for what I’m talking about. Our social freedom, as it were, is curtailed so that we are not overwhelmed with too many cases than we have the capacity to deal with per time. Now in a country like mine where the medical infrastructure and systems are what they are (and that’s me playing safe in the way I phrase this), you can excuse my fears.
The Corona virus pandemic has also forced us to redefine and reevaluate somethings. For instance, I see that it has forced us to redefine love as active vs. passive. Love, commonly viewed from the standpoint of what one does to show it, must also now be seen from the standpoint of what one does not do to show it.
I stand to be corrected but we are now learning in this season to appreciate the truth that it is much more loving to wave from afar than to shake hands, hug and kiss. It is more loving to stay away from people than to visit.
Speaking directly to the feelings and joy that church brings, we are also forced to redefine if the church is the body of Christ gathered or individuals called out of darkness into the marvelous light of God’s redemptive truth (as it cannot be both now - at least not in the way it used to be).
Church-life, before now, has basically been an embodied in-the-room experience. We had to dress up and show up in order to experience the praise and worship, the preaching and teaching sessions, the corporate prayers and so on! I asked a couple of people what they missed and their post-covid outlook on this. Take a listen.
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One thing is sure, things are not the way they used to be. It’s a new normal right, that we have to deal with and most of that will have to do with rethinking what we’d held on to for so long.
We’ll continue on the next episode.
This podcast is a digital audio diary of my reflections on church-life and faith and you’ll find links to its transcripts on each episode’s notes. ‘Diary of a Church Boy’ is listener supported and you can support for a dollar or equivalent every month on Patreon through the link also on this
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