Five Years Ago This Easter, What Were You Doing?
In the spring of 2020, many churches in the United States closed down. They were told to. I am willing to forgive that behavior. In fact, I think I’m commanded to forgive that behavior.
I get it. People were scared. Maybe a week you stay closed until you come to your senses. Maybe two weeks, because they assured us it took only two weeks to slow the spread.
It took a special kind of wrong to close down the church and to keep it closed. When Easter 2020 came, I was sure every church would open again.
I was wrong.
Though I forgive those who closed, I have a very special place in my heart for those who never closed down. Pastor Tony Spell of Baton Rouge, Louisiana is one such person. Not long ago, I sent the following to Pastor Spell. Please allow me to share it with you.
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Dear Pastor Spell,
In the spring of 2020, I was hungry for God. I knew that something was wrong when they closed down all the churches in San Francisco where I lived and where I still live today.
I was coming out of a past of atheism and knew that I needed to be in church. I was going to the wrong churches, but I knew that I was better in church on Sunday mornings than sitting at home. Many of the churches even virtue signaled with big signs outside their churches and virtue signaled in the media about how upright they were for closing down. There was a shocking level of pride in what they were doing.
Some of the San Francisco churches that closed down during the Ides of March 2020 remain closed to this day. I have yet to find a pastor in San Francisco who did not close down.
What I did in response to that — I have no question that it was at the leading of the Holy Spirit — is that I bought a hymnal online and started having my own private services on the steps of the church closest to my home. It was just me and God. It was quietly done. Someone standing ten feet from me would not have known I was having a worship service.
I knew no church that stayed open. I knew no Christian who wanted the churches to stay open. And on Resurrection Sunday, I was most sad. As far as I was concerned, if there was any day the churches needed to be open it was that one.
The churches proudly remained closed.
I called the several local pastors I knew asking them if I could just be in a corner of the sanctuary as they held their Resurrection Sunday services that would be broadcast on Zoom that day. None of them agreed. I don’t know why I was so ardent about being in the sanctuary and not at home, but I was. Something felt so wrong about it.
There were brave pastors in California who didn’t close down, but I didn’t know about them. The media gave you, Pastor Spell, such a difficult time in the lead up to Resurrection Sunday 2020.
I have no question that the stories were meant to intimida
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