After carefully planning, and for the first time in a year and three months, we started our first in-person worship services on the first Sunday in June. We didn’t all meet, but instead, with a limit of 50 people including 15 members of the Sunday service team, our cell groups took turns attending the worship service. It was so nice to see people again after not seeing them for a long time and extraordinary to see new church members who had registered with our church during the time of online services come to the church for the first time.
Because we started worship services offline, we had more newcomers show up compared to when we had online services. In the case of online church services, people would rather attend an online service of their home church in Korea than join the online service of a new church in London. We started with Sunday services in June and planned to add in-person Wednesday evening services in July. However, on Tuesday, a member of the Sunday service team received an alert from the NHS app on their phone stating that they had had close contact with someone who contracted Covid-19. This member took a coronavirus test and the result came back positive. All other members of the Sunday service team tested negative, meaning that they must have contracted the virus from someone outside of the church.
If it was a member of the congregation who tested positive, those who sat around them would need to quarantine, but because it was a member of the Sunday service team who tested positive, we couldn’t have offline services this week. Even though every member of the Sunday service team tested negative, according to government regulations, we are all self-isolating for 10 days. The number of coronavirus cases continues to increase although the number of hospitalizations and deaths remains small. Because the Prime Minister of England had announced the removal of most restrictions in two weeks, we were thinking of expanding in-person worship services but because of this positive case we are wondering what we should do.
The thought that occurred to me is that this kind of thing could have occurred at any time and I am thankful that we could worship up until this time. Further, when I look at this situation, as the Prime Minister has said, instead of waiting until the pandemic is over, we need to learn to live with the virus. This positive case has been a learning experience for us. So, instead of making a big fuss about this positive case in our church, we have decided to properly address it and take it as a manageable problem.
These days, there is a phrase that the church leaders and I have been ruminating on. It goes like this: People of small character tremble at small problems but people of great character, no mater how great the problem is, treat it as just a small problem. This is not saying to take problems lightly or just cover them up and pass them by. We should look at the facts and carefully manage the situation. We shouldn’t be like the twelve spies who went into Canaan and reported back exaggeratedly from their own interpretation “We are like grasshoppers to them,” making the community nervous, but instead should be like Caleb and Joshua who said with an interpretation coming from faith “They are bread for us,” and be bold and daring as we go forward.
Thankfully, whenever we experience times that seem like crisis, God gives us the ability to have composure and be bold. Just like a roly-poly toy that rights itself when it gets knocked over, we have the deep desire to move this situation in the right direction. Just like I have proclaimed at the beginning of each service this year, I want to experience a year with you full of the “Don’t just hang in there, break through” sentiment.
