The Rt Rev Dr Martin Fair reflects on the impact of a global pandemic on the Church.

IMAGINE you’d been asleep since the beginning of this year and had just woken up – and had then decided to check out what had been going on over the last six months? For starters, you’d pinch yourself to check that you weren’t still asleep and in the midst of a horrible nightmare! You’d certainly be left asking, ‘is this for real?’ Of course the headlines you’d find yourself reading would be dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic and its effects – hundreds of thousands of people having died across the world, economies having been brought to a shuddering halt and schools, universities and every social and leisure activity heavily curtailed. Oh and all churches closed.

But you’d read too of the death of a 46 year-old black man, George Floyd, at the hands of officers of the Minneapolis Police Dept and on the back of that you’d find yourself reading that ‘black lives matter’ and of protests and violent demonstrations not just in the United States but in the United Kingdom too. In that context, you’d be left considering the merits or otherwise of removing prominent national statues and renaming streets associated with those who were linked in one way or another with the slave trade.

It’s possible that you’d find yourself concluding that you wanted to go back to sleep! Or wishing that you could hitch a ride on Elon Musk’s SpaceX (one of the more surreal headlines that you’d have come across!) – a one-way ticket into outer space and out of all of this.

But we Christians don’t get to escape or opt out of the harsh realities of our broken world; more than that, we’re called to engage. We have a Saviour who willingly came in to this world and all of its mess, so fleeing from it is hardly going to be Jesus-honouring. If the Church hasn’t anything to say or contribute in times like these then we really have lost our way.

The good news is – and you’d need to dig behind the headlines to read about it – that the Church has been alive and well throughout this time of crisis and unrest.

We’ve all happily sung that ‘the Church is not a building’ but 2020 has been the year when we’ve been forced to work out what that actually means. And we’ve done a pretty good job.

The vast majority of congregations were very quickly able to move their worship online, using any number of digital platforms; some live transmissions, others pre-recorded. Congregations started to make use of Zoom and other such packages, allowing themselves to stay connected, though physically distant – even though no one had ever heard of Zoom beforehand! And aware that many members were not able to access online output, congregations started producing and distributing CD recordings, telephone links and written material, such was the determination among many not to leave folks behind.

Equally so, congregations quickly worked out ways to continue their outreach.

Sometimes that was about distributing children’s resources; sometimes it was about distributing foodstuffs to families that were struggling to cope. In so many ways, the Church found new ways.

Friends, some might suggest that the Church has been asleep, perhaps for much longer than the last few months. Have circumstances caused us to hear the cry, ‘Wake up, O sleeper?’ Are we being roused from our slumbers, being caused to embrace the radical changes required of us? Is this our wake-up moment? The Rt Rev Dr Martin Fair is minister at Arbroath: St Andrew’s and Moderator of the General Assembly in 2020/2021.