Dear Fort Lupton, Aspen Park, and Leadville Churches,
May the Lord Jesus bless you with his grace and peace as we begin to move into the summer! I wanted to take some time to write all of you an update letter to let you know what is going on with respect to holding in-person church meetings, as well as share with you what our futures are going to look like in the coming months. I continue to communicate with conference leaders regarding ongoing church closures. As many of you know, our churches, schools, and other conference-owned facilities are closed through May 31, 2020. However, I recently spoke with Eric Nelson (RMC Vice President) and Mickey Mallory (RMC Ministerial Director), and they informed me that each congregation will have to adhere to the directives given by their county public health departments after June 1, 2020, in order to resume in-person worship services. Some of our counties are currently NOT permitting congregations to hold regular church services in their buildings at this time, so I am in ongoing discussions with the RMC risk management department and executive committee, as well as each public health department of Weld, Jefferson, and Lake counties, regarding their future requirements for public gatherings and places of worship. I will continue to give all of you updates as I receive them.
What Church Services Will Look Like for the Foreseeable Future
In preparation for re-opening our church buildings and holding services, I want to make all my churches aware of some important changes that will take place in how we conduct our worship services. As many of you have probably realized, we have reached a new normal; when we finally resume in-person gatherings, we will be unable to go back to “business as usual” for quite some time. Each congregation will follow their county’s public health protocol for COVID-19 in order to safeguard the health of those who attend our services. Accordingly, I wanted to make you aware of some of those directives so you know what to expect as we begin to re-open our church buildings:
• Continue social distancing by keeping 6 feet of space between people.
• Have hand sanitizer available and use it often.
• Abstain from shaking hands, hugging, or other forms of physical contact, except
between family members who live in the same residence.
• Wear a mask, scarf, or other covering over your nose and mouth throughout the
worship service to protect others from inhaling the water droplets you normally
disperse when you breathe or talk.
• Refrain from handling items and disinfect handled items regularly; this means that
we will most likely not make use of bulletins or pass out hymnals for the time
being.
• Postpone fellowship meals until further notice (with creative exceptions).
• Disinfect building premises and high-traffic objects after each use.
I understand how “un-fun” these activities are, and I can sympathize with those who might even rankle at having to practice them. I will respond to these grievances more substantially in the final section of my letter, but let me simply say here there are two reasons why we should willingly follow these procedures. First, following these practices is directly in line with our health message, and is a complement to it. As Adventists, we can see the wisdom in following these practices, because this is essentially what we’ve been saying about epidemics since the mid-nineteenth century. Second, and most importantly, it is an act of love. Even though businesses and gathering places are starting to re-open, COVID-19 has not been eradicated. People are still getting sick from the virus, and older populations and those with pre-existing medical conditions are still very susceptible to contracting and dying from COVID-19. Philippians 2:1-4 (NKJV) states, “Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” In this passage, Paul tells us to treat each other like Jesus has treated us by putting others before ourselves (vv. 1-4). Paul then describes how Jesus treated us: he made himself nothing, he took upon himself the form of a servant, and he lovingly humbled himself all the way to dying for us on a cross (vv. 5-8). Let us not follow these procedures during worship because we have to. Let us follow these procedures because we love each other and want to take care of each other.
New Developments in Church Life
But these developments in how we will conduct worship together are not the only update to our churches re-opening. I also have exciting new developments to report about the lives of our congregations! Several of you are aware of this, but for those who don’t know: in addition to continuing to be the pastor of the Adventist churches in Fort Lupton and Aspen Park, I also recently received the pleasure of becoming the pastor of the Adventist church in Leadville; I am currently in conversation with Summit Fellowship, the Adventist church in Copper Mountain, about being their new pastor as well. I consider myself very blessed and fortunate to be the pastor of such fine congregations, and I look forward to working with all these churches. It is my hope that, in time, the sisterhood of churches that already exists among congregations in the Rocky Mountain Conference will deepen between Fort Lupton, Aspen Park, Leadville, and possibly Summit Fellowship as you share me.
In light of these additional pastoral responsibilities, therefore, I wanted to make you all aware of changes to my activities in the coming months. Starting sometime in June, I will begin hosting an online, mid-week event using Zoom. While this will most likely take place on Wednesday evenings at 7:00 p.m., I’m open to other suggestions that might fit others’ schedules (if you have an idea, please feel free to email or text me). Many of us have already been conducting mid-week prayer events for our specific congregations on Zoom, so this will be an easy transition for most people. This hour-long, mid-week service will be more along the lines of a Bible study, but it will still include a substantial time for praying together. Due to the logistics of planning three prayer meetings, whether in-person or online, I have decided to combine the mid-week gatherings of Fort Lupton, Aspen Park, and Leadville into a single online event. Nevertheless, I don’t want to discourage people from hosting their own mid-week gatherings for prayer, fellowship, and Bible study with fellow church members, so please feel free to start something like that for your specific congregation. Just let me know what you’re doing and when you’re doing it, so we don’t compete with each other for the day and time.
Another event I would like to inaugurate with the Fort Lupton, Aspen Park, and Leadville churches once the COVID-19 emergency dies down is to hold a regular Sunday pancake breakfast with the members. Perhaps it is too ambitious for each church to have a Sunday pancake breakfast on a quarterly basis, but I would at least like to have it with each congregation on a biannual basis (if possible). The purpose of the Sunday pancake breakfast is simply to spend time fellow-shipping with each other and lovingly cultivating relationships with each other. I think this would be one of several ways to build camaraderie and unity among us – no agenda or pre-planned program, except to gather together and share food with each other. While I will not force this idea on anyone, I hope all three churches like the idea and want to do it as much as I do.
A Final Word on Government and Following Jesus
As I indicated earlier in this letter, I recognize that some – perhaps several – members feel like the government is encroaching on their “freedoms” in order to address the spread of COVID-19. I understand that some of you feel like your “rights” either have been violated by the government or are being taken away by “non-Christian” governing authorities, and that the proper attitude on your part is to challenge or ignore those authorities. I want you to know from the outset that your sense of inconvenience and feeling of frustration by the decisions of leaders, both at the government and at the conference level, is entirely warranted. If you feel frustrated right now, that is perfectly normal and it is okay to feel that way. And if you feel like the closure of your church building inconvenienced you and that the future requirements about masks and sanitizing the church building will be a nuisance to you, then I sympathize with how you feel and recognize how annoying it can be to have to change your habits and normal course of how you used to “do” church. But I want to recommend to you another way, other than resentment toward government and religious leaders.
Paul describes the attitude and core of the Christian life in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (vv. 4-8, NRSV). Many early church fathers believed Paul was giving the Corinthian Church a description of Jesus in this chapter, and I think so, too. I also believe it is imperative that we focus on how Jesus treated people and relate to other people and human institutions in a way imitative of Jesus. Love is the only way to live the Christian life – a love that is rooted in a relationship with Jesus and manifested in longsuffering and patient responses to others.
Over the past two months, I have had several members from various churches express to me, “I have the right to religious freedom,” with the implication being that it is right to oppose anyone who supposedly interferes with that sense of freedom. Ironically, the biblical perspective on rights and freedoms is that their purpose is solely for the benefit of others: we have rights and freedoms for the purpose of loving and serving God (or choosing to not love and serve him), and for the purpose of loving and serving others (or choosing to not love and serve them). The Bible does not support the notion that rights and freedoms exist to guarantee my experience of liberty; instead, the only biblical reason for our possession of rights and freedoms is to serve others – including our brothers and sisters in Christ, those who don’t yet know Jesus, and those who persecute us. Paul addressed the proper use of rights and freedoms in 1 Corinthians 8:1 and 10:23-24, and I think it is helpful to take his thought into consideration when evaluating our own responses to government regulations and an understanding of religious liberty.
All of you know a lot about the Sabbath and Bible prophecy, so do you have the right to oppose leaders who ask that you modify how you worship (and not when or the fact that you worship)? “We know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1, NRSV). According to Paul, we should exercise love by doing our best to follow directives from our leaders, both religious and secular, in modifying how we worship without changing the fact that we worship on the Sabbath – both currently online and when we adapt our future in-person worship services to follow government health protocols.
Most of you are adults and can make your own decisions about how you take care of your health and whether or not you want to wear a mask, social distance, or use hand sanitizer. So do you have the right to refuse to practice these protocols at church in the coming weeks? “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other” (1 Corinthians 10:23-24, NRSV). Since you are free in Christ, I suppose you are free to make your own decisions. But even though you are free to make your own choices, not all choices are beneficial for you or others, nor do they build others up. The litmus test for Christian behavior, according to Paul, is whether or not you are serving others and putting them before yourself. Do your choices help or hurt other church members? Do your choices help or hinder government authorities in their attempts to arrest the spread of COVID-19 so we can return to our usual habits and lifestyles? Do you have the mind of Christ, which is manifested in you continually and genuinely considering others as better than yourself? “But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak” (1 Corinthians 8:9, NRSV).
Brothers and sisters, let us use our freedom to take care of those in our congregations who are at most risk of contracting COVID-19 by following government protocols, which are meant to protect us and keep us as safe as possible. Let us use our right to assemble for worship as a witness to the government and our communities: that our God has given us the gift of the Sabbath, and that the God who gives us rest also wants us to work together with our leaders as much as we possibly can in order to help the most people possible. Let us use our current freedom of movement to continually reach out to people in ways that alleviate their fear, while making it easier for our leaders to address COVID-19 in a timely and expeditious way. Let us not distract them from this course of action by obstinately challenging their actions. If we steward our Christian witness now and exercise our rights and freedoms in loving ways to serve others during this time, our resistance to future government interference in our Sabbath worship will be more Christ-centered, spiritually impactful, and a much more clear demonstration of Christian maturity and God’s wisdom than it would be otherwise.
I invite you to join me in taking this journey of service and working together with our government and conference leaders as far as possible. Rather than focusing our time and energies on alleged global conspiracies or resisting the government, I’m excited to focus on what the Holy Spirit is doing right now: how he’s convicting each of us to have a relationship with Jesus and not focus on other, secondary matters. And so, let us follow what the Father, the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are doing in our lives and what they want to do in and with our churches. I’m excited for the days ahead and what God has in store for us, as he continues to invite us to participate in his missionary work and we continually respond to that invitation in faithfulness by thinking creatively about our mission in the light of COVID-19. “May the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (2 Corinthians 13:13, NIV).
Blessings and peace in Christ,
Pastor Nathaniel