Back to Church (Local CBS Interview)

Just wanted to tell you the story behind the local CBS interview at our church last weekend.

A Pastor in N.C. (Dr. Ron Baity of Return America) sued Governor Roy Cooper regarding his Coronavirus restrictions that were not allowing churches to meet indoors. The result was that a N.C. Court ruled favoring this Pastor’s viewpoint and therefore all the restrictions were lifted on Saturday afternoon for churches to begin meeting. Many churches celebrated and held gatherings the next morning (presumably with social distancing and other precautions). Yet, many other Christians and some Pastors lamented this lawsuit, ruling, and storyline as it developed. They were feeling this was all a “bad look” for Christians and “not loving” for churches and Pastors to be too pushy about meeting for worship again in the midst of the Coronavirus. Our church remained “online only” and did not meet in person the next day.

Immediately after the N.C. court decision on Saturday afternoon I got an email from a local CBS reporter to do a reaction interview for the 11pm news. Honestly… at the time I was tie-dying white T-shirts with my wife and 4 girls and I thought, “Hmmm… a TV interview sounds like a good escape from this.” Truth.  However, I definitely was happy to help and represent myself and our church’s approach during this very uncertain time.

It was not until about 30 minutes before the interview that I was made aware that this reporter had already interviewed Dr. Ron Baity (the Pastor who sued the Governor) and planned for me to be a different perspective. I do not know that Pastor and do not know too much about his lawsuit. I crammed for the interview, prayed, and had a lot of fun working on it Saturday afternoon with a very professional local CBS crew.

You can see the interview here. (2:30)

These are my actual notes from the interview:

As I expected they cut out about 95% of what I shared so I thought I would share some of my notes below. These are notes of things I either did say or had written down to say (from my preparation).  

• Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus! (I wanted to make sure to mention Jesus in the interview. It is His Church!)
• In 32AD Jesus said, “I will build my church.” Christians did not have church buildings until the 3rd century. We are not worried about it.
• We do not just want to “go to” church or “do” church, we want to BE THE CHURCH.
• We have been doing only online livestream services for 9 weeks, and I do not see it as we ever closed. We are not closed. So I am trying not to talk about re-opening. We are talking about it more in terms of re-entering our facility for gatherings with social distancing and all the safe practices for the sake of re-uniting for worship, fellowship, and our mission to love our city well.
• Some of the Governors inconsistency does actually concern me also and I am glad that it is being discussed and addressed, BUT, to be truly honest with you about this, the reputation of the church to our community and the Coronavirus itself concerns me just as much – if not more!
• 1 Corinthians 10 tells Christians that, “Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” Therefore, just because the Gov.’s order was overturned that does not mean we will plan to meet tomorrow.
• 1 Peter 2:17 tells Christians, “Honor all, honor the Governor, love the church, fear God”  (my sermon was on this text that next Sunday- online).
• It is really important to our church that we love one another well and love our neighbor and our community well.
• Obviously, gathering for worship on Sundays is VERY important for us as a church. While our members do personally benefit when we worship, we do not merely gather for ourselves. Our gatherings benefit our community as we pray for the city and as we partner together to love and care for our city.
• We will meet soon. Our plan is online 1 more Sunday, outdoors 2 Sundays, then June inside with social distancing. Legally we could go faster than this. Some churches are going much faster. We feel this strikes a good balance of showing restraint, yet valuing worship for our people.

Last Question… 

The reporter also asked me:

“What would you say to a person in our community who is frustrated with Christians and churches for being impatient about returning to church?”

I replied,

“I would sympathize with the person because I too am frustrated by the lack of patience. However, I would also encourage this person to be patient with those whom they feel are being impatient because this is hard for all of us. I would also take the opportunity to try to help this person correctly understand why worship is so important to Christians.”

Here is our plan for Re-Entry as of now!