Food, Faith and Lockdown

Those who know me will know I am passionate about the role of food in building faith community. The bonds we make around the table are key in building community. Relationships are built, we learn off one another, the table equalises us and we all have to eat. It's central to who I am as a person and in my calling to minister. 

And not gathering around the table has been hard. For us in our church community, food is normally central to what we do. From our community cafe that had just reopened and begun to build in momentum to our mental health support group that ends with a meal to our first Sunday gatherings around the most amazing bring and shares you've ever seen to the impromptu moments in the church building between and around the groups we lead to every meeting where someone will inevitably bring in biscuits or cake or chocolate to our holiday Make Lunch sessions where families come together round the table to share life together in what would otherwise be a difficult time.

Yet now, the only food activity that has continued since our building closed for anything but this very thing is the now twice a week deliveries of food from the amazing charity fareshare to households we support. As we sort the food for the deliveries we make, some of the value of the table is there - the conversations that go on in the kitchen echo with the joy of meals gone by and the opportunities that gathering around food brings for sharing life together are hinted at as we gather round tables to share out food. 

The question of re-opening our buildings and how that will work and what it will look like is hovering in the air. What does church look like post lockdown for a community focussed church without the resources of some of the bigger churches where during lockdown the support needed in the community has been magnified?

And it turns out that actually, the change in our gathering around food has given us some of the answers. In a community where physical presence is key, where internet connection is often on a mobile, where private outside space is minimal and where mental health issues are only going to grow as a result of the trauma we have experienced in the last few months the issues around social distancing in a building to worship are not the issues at the forefront of all of our minds. How do we build community when physically meeting is more difficult? How can we offer mental health support where through the screen we can't tell what the other is thinking? 

In a facebook group this morning, we had this discussion and we began to talk about how food has continued to be a key meeting, growing and life giving thing during lockdown. As we haven't as much gathered, but have paused as we play knock a door step back on deliveries, the deep love of Jesus has been felt in that two metre gap. Where food has been a reason for encounters, those encounters have become beautiful and, at times, essential. 

Often when you meet an individual or family on the doorstep you are the only person they have seen that day. The conversations that are had at that point are often pastorally important, absolutely needed and what my church community calls 'God moments'. One week I spent two hours delivering salad leaves, not because we had a lot (although we did) but because of the conversations we had and along with one of our other drivers who encountered someone at absolutely the right moment, we were able to be church on the doorstep through the moments we had on the way. We wouldn't have been able to have those conversations without the salad leaves. 

At the moment it's in those most needed encounters that we feel the presence of God most deeply. Perhaps post lockdown means building on that. Perhaps food is again the answer, not table gathering as such, because that won't be for a while, but door step encounters in the sharing of food, a moment with a neighbour across (or beyond) the garden fence sharing life, a picnic in the park with however many people is safe at that time, a moment outside the church building with coffee and prayer, an open air cafe, a pause outside a block of flats, a sit on a wall. Perhaps in the cake deliveries, in the church garden meetings, we might begin to feel and become the Christ-centred community we long to be. 

And one day, we will probably gather and we will probably sing and we will very likely sit tightly round tables in the small space we have, but those doorstep moments we have had on the way will enrich us as we speak of the encounters we have had with the deep love of Jesus, as we've not gathered, but stood, with food in between us, an excuse, a reason for a meeting where God's voice could be heard in the two metre gap. 

Learning to ride again

This morning I read one of those articles that someone regularly puts up in ministers groups that speculates on what life will look like once what the new normal is is revealed. 

I realised after I read it that I don't want to read articles like this anymore. I don't want to read your musings which are influenced by your own dreams of church about what church will look like post lockdown. I can't do it any more. 

If there is anything this time is teaching us is that we need to wait and see. I remember just before we had to close our buildings and the feeling in those groups was that we had to make contingency plans and I did that but then two days later I ripped it all up and started again because all the social distancing ideas we put in place were not possible anymore. 

If this time teaches us anything it teaches us that we can't be in control of this. We can't predict how things are going to go. We can have ideas, we can have dreams, we can imagine that church will become everything we want it to be, but that doesn't mean that will happen. 

Our future practise will arise from our experience. I believe our call right now is to be reflective practitioners, to listen and to learn from what is happening and adjust our direction to the hand that is tugging us down the path we might not have quite noticed before. 

I was sat in a webinar (hate that word) on listening to God in lockdown on Thursday night after the end of a long day when the things that needed to be sorted in the long day had not been sorted and I was feeling a bit disheartened. One of the contributors (forgive me for forgetting who) used the image of learning to ride a bike. At the moment it's like our stabilisers have been taken off and we are very much trying to find them again to find balance.... but actually maybe our call is not to find the stabilisers, maybe actually what is happening right now is that God is helping us to learn to ride in the way he is calling us without them. 

Those stabilisers (the weekly gathering that grounds us, the routine that keeps us in rhythm) have been taken off completely, not just lost, and God has let go of the saddle as we learn to peddle in the way he has taught us to on a journey that has an unknown destination as yet. Perhaps right now, we just need to learn to ride. When you first learn to ride a bike, it's not to go anywhere, it's to learn to adjust your balance as necessary, peddle at the right pace without getting dizzy, to turn the handle bars when the signs tell you to, to press the brakes at the right pressure and to put your feet down to stop when that's what you need to do and not just fall off because the stablisers aren't there to prevent that falling anymore. 

We learn to ride by getting on that bike, reflecting on our experience when we end up with a grazed knee, and doing it a bit differently next time so it doesn't hurt in the same way anymore. 

Our destination is not in our hands right now, and while we can dream and hope, we can't fix our eyes on anything but the direction that will be revealed over time. Our future holds many possibilities, but now is not time to predict the one route that future will take us down. Now is the time to let that route arise from the steps to which we are called. Now is the time to let that route arise from within the community we serve. Now is the time for that route to be revealed by the one who knows when we will be ready to see the destination.

One of the meditations of the day in the Northumbria Community Daily Prayer talks about how "if you must lead, let it be like the wind and all its unshackled direction". That strikes me every time I read it, and is particularly appropriate right now. 

Now is the time to listen to the wind, because the wind, it blows wherever it wishes. 


Photo from https://www.flickr.com/photos/danbax/8568310235/

Would you rather be church?

Would you rather have one church meeting or lots of little pocket size "congregations" all meeting in different places? 

There is a meme going round that I think that people are finding helpful in dealing with the current situation which shows a conversation between the devil and God with the devil claiming he has shut down all churches and God saying, no I've just opened up one in every home. It's quite a comforting image in this time, as it reminds us that God is bigger than this and that the church cannot be killed by a virus. 

However, there is something about it that grates on me. It gives an individualistic image of what church is that perhaps we should try and avoid as much as we should try and avoid the image of the church as the building. 

The word translated church in the New Testament is ekklesia - meaning 'the congregation' or 'the gathering' (however big that gathering is). It is definitely not an individual in their own home singing worship songs alone. It is not taking time out to watch videos of sermons and prayers on a Sunday when you feel like it and can fit it in, but it's about the gathering of believers, Christ centred community.

I'd love to be able to live stream, because there is something about being together at that time that would be really helpful to be being church, but I can't, so I am encouraging people to all follow through the service and join for coffee afterwards to keep some sense of gathering, and in a way, it gives us chance to make that gathering and feel something of our call to Christ Centred Community. 

The likelihood is that our scattering as church is going to go on longer than we might hope, and that even when we are allowed to meet, the restrictions put upon us will make it difficult for us to meet in the ways we want to - because community - gathering - ekklesia - is about togetherness centred on Jesus and our ways of expressing togetherness - physical interaction, eating together, singing together, simply sitting side by side - they don't fit in well with social distancing. The alternatives, for most people, are lacking, but alternatives we are trying to find. 

They're when we are able to share stories and birthdays and worship songs and inspirational quotes on whatsapp. They're when we're able to gather on zoom for coffee or prayer. They're when a small number of us meet to distribute food during the week and we do so motivated by Christ and pray together and sing happy birthday on video. They're in the moments shared over the phone and the meetings on the doorsteps. They're in the joy of seeing someone you know from across the car park. 

Our current situation doesn't mean that each household becomes a church (that doesn't fit nicely theologically and it has the danger of encouraging individualistic faith that feels like it doesn't need to engage with anything bigger). From the beginning of Christianity the church has met together to share food, break bread and worship God together. If we are only meant to do that as individuals from our own homes, where does 2000 years of history sit?

We are the church, and we are the church wherever we are, standing together in worship in a building or scattered in the community, but it doesn't mean there are many pocket size individual churches. And to be honest, I'd rather be church - Christ-centred community called together in worship, service and prayer, whatever that looks like right now. 

"So let's do it - full of belief, confident that we're presentable inside and out. Let's keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let's see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshipping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching" - Hebrews 10:22-25 The Message