This Saturday marks the one-year anniversary since life as we once knew it completely changed. Now, with the drop in cases and the rise of vaccinations, many are looking ahead and asking:
- What will life after COVID be like?
- What have we learned from this year of lockdowns?
- What will Sunday morning church look like in the future?
- What is best for our kids and our families?
There’s much to contemplate here, and there are no quick-and-easy answers. This week I’ve gathered three timely discussions that probe into this new territory of life-after-a-pandemic. And I remain hopeful that there is, indeed, a light at the end of this dark path. (I’m sure I’ll be writing more on this topic in the weeks to come!)
“What’s Next for Our Culture with COVID?” a podcast interview with Andy Crouch
A transcript of the podcast is also available. “[S]tudents have never expressed so much gratitude for what it means to sit in a classroom with other students and a teacher and have that experience. And they’ve never been more dissatisfied with zoom and mediated instruction. And so, I think that everyone has realized how much being together matters, how much, not everyone would put it this way, but ultimately how much bodies matter; we’re heart, soul, mind, and strength, we can’t divorce our spiritual lives, even our mental lives, our emotional lives from our bodies. And we mediate our presence with one another through our bodies.”
“What We Learned About the Embodied Church During the Pandemic” by Jay Kim
Yes. This! “As the pandemic forced churches to move solely to online spaces, many began focusing an inordinate amount of effort on creating influential content, primarily because the new (for many) medium dictated we do so. But why did I not simply Facetime into the graveside memorial in April or send a kind DM over Instagram a couple of weeks later to my friends in the NICU? Because true pastoral care demands more of us than content. Embodied people need embodied presence, and never more than in times of struggle, grief, and loss.”
“Ecclesiological Gnosticism and the Importance of ‘Place’ in Spiritual Formation” by Drew Heurion
The title is a mouthful, but the article is well worth the read. “The hope of the Christian faith is not to escape our physical world and our physical bodies. Certainly, believers are spiritually present with the Lord immediately upon their death (2 Corinthians 5:8), but according to 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, Paul plainly lays out his case that bodily resurrection at the consummation of this present age is the center of Christian hope. Why do we have this hope in a future, bodily resurrection? Because of our once-crucified but now resurrected king. In Christ we inherit both spiritual and physical life (Romans 5:12-21).”
Have you read (or written!) a great article that you’d like to share? Send me the link here!
Read more in the #ThreeOnThursday series here.
