Lawrence religious leaders discuss struggles and pleasant surprises of distance worship

photo by: Screenshot

Members of the Lawrence Interfaith Alliance attend a monthly meeting via Zoom on Wednesday, April 22, 2020. Pictured from top left to bottom right are Lyle Seger, retired United Methodist pastor; guest Mackenzie Clark, Journal-World public safety reporter; Thad Holcombe, retired minister of Ecumenical Campus Ministries; Jessica Derise, coordinating United Church of Christ pastor; Judy Roitman, guiding teacher at the Kansas Zen Center and member of the Jewish Community Center; Marco Serrano, rector at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church; Barry Williams, interim transitional pastor at First Presbyterian Church; Aaron Stockwell, interim minister at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lawrence; Debbie Garber, pastor at Westside Presbyterian Church; Joanna Harader, pastor at Peace Mennonite Church; and Rob Baldwin, rector at Trinity Episcopal Church and chaplain at Bishop Seabury Academy.

As some groups wage a legal battle against the governor’s ban on mass gatherings, several Lawrence-area religious leaders are more concerned with how to stay connected with their congregations without seeing them in person.

Holding virtual services has presented plenty of challenges and complications, but it has also brought some pleasant surprises.

Members of the Lawrence Interfaith Alliance, LIA, invited the Journal-World to sit in on a monthly meeting, held Wednesday via the online videoconferencing platform Zoom as concerns about the pandemic coronavirus, COVID-19, persist.

All of the participants in Wednesday’s meeting had moved their services, classes and even coffee groups to online platforms, but that is not so for all Kansas churches. The Journal-World has reported that some churches in the Lawrence-Douglas County area have continued to hold in-person services, despite Gov. Laura Kelly’s executive order banning public gatherings of more than 10 people to slow the spread of the virus.

Pastors at First Baptist Church in Dodge City and Calvary Baptist Church in Junction City have filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the governor’s order. On Saturday, Judge John Broomes granted a temporary restraining order to prevent Kelly’s enforcement of the order for those two churches.

During a hearing via telephone Thursday, the judge set the next status conference in the case for April 27 and directed counsel for the opposing parties to work out several issues in the meantime, including whether an in-person court hearing would be necessary.

‘Real faithfulness’

The LIA members shared several viewpoints and concerns about churches still holding in-person services, as well as their own mixed emotions.

Barry Williams, interim transitional pastor at First Presbyterian Church, said he’d recently signed a letter with several other pastors around the state in support of the stay-at-home order.

“The commandment to love one another includes making some modest sacrifices in activities and relationships in order to express that love, that care, that concern for others who are vulnerable, and we can never know who’s vulnerable,” Williams said.

Thad Holcombe, retired minister of Ecumenical Campus Ministries at the University of Kansas, said that in the Christian church there are historical suspicions of science and of the state. Marco Serrano, rector at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, cited a rejection of expertise in today’s climate.

“There’s been a breakdown of trust in our society, and so the notion of expertise has become politicized,” he said.

Joanna Harader, pastor at Peace Mennonite Church, said she’d been thinking about the people who don’t have the option to stay at home, such as grocery store workers and bus drivers.

“For those who do have the option but choose to risk their health and others’ health to do things that don’t need to be done … I feel like my anger and my compassion go together, and I don’t think that just because we want to be compassionate means we also can’t be angry,” Harader said.

Many of the LIA members had expressed hesitation to talk about the ongoing controversy, including Rob Baldwin, rector at Trinity Episcopal Church and chaplain of Bishop Seabury Academy. He mentioned scripture discouraging speaking out against those “who we think are not doing what we think Jesus wants them to be doing.”

But he said of the churches in the community that are trying to find ways to safely serve the most vulnerable in their populations: “That’s a real struggle; that’s real faithfulness.”

“Christian discipleship is the struggle that we have all been engaging in: watching our parishioners die via cellphone, postponing baptisms and weddings, trying to find ways to reach out to people — that’s the story,” Baldwin said. “And one person behaving badly is like the child in the back of the classroom, desperate for attention, by kicking their desk over, and we’re just feeding that narrative.”

‘A new way to connect’

LIA members shared excitement about the new and creative ways they’re bringing their congregations together, and some of the surprising things they’ve seen in recent weeks.

Judy Roitman, guiding teacher at the Kansas Zen Center and member of the Jewish Community Center, said the Zen Center’s online practice has seen international attendance by viewers in places such as Singapore, Barcelona, the Czech Republic and Montreal. She had virtually attended a friend’s practice in Little Rock, Ark.

“In some ways, the world becomes smaller,” she said.

Aaron Stockwell, interim minister at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lawrence, said he has seen an increase in attendance over in-person services.

“We have a lot of people who have sort of drifted away from the congregation and they’re now able to join us, which has been truly wonderful to see,” Stockwell said.

Williams said he was trying to find ways “to notice absences in the congregation; to notice people who are more disconnected than normal.”

Though videoconferencing has been the source of some technological difficulties, many of the leaders said they do feel that their congregations are staying connected in meaningful ways.

“We’re learning a new way to connect to one another that is incredibly powerful. I’m seeing elders in my congregation who are embracing new technology, who didn’t think they would ever do that,” Stockwell said. “… This gathering online will not replace gathering in person. I also don’t think it’s better or it’s worse; it’s just different.”

Some challenges are difficult to work around, though. For instance, singing together is difficult with the lag of video connections. However, Roitman said she has learned that “if you sing very, very slowly, you can do it together.”

Debbie Garber, pastor at West Side Presbyterian Church, said her congregation did its first virtual communion recently. She said such rituals are “sort of weird” to do from a near-empty sanctuary and through a distance medium, “but I think it’s important that we do them and let them just kind of reside and sit there to help people keep connected until we can come back together again.”

Holcombe also noted that inequities still persist. Not everybody has access to Zoom, and not everyone is on social media, he said.

Service projects have also posed challenges. Harader mentioned that volunteers are finding ways to keep LINK, the Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen, running. She and Serrano also mentioned congregants sewing hundreds of masks.

“I think everyone’s just trying to think as creatively as they can, how to reach out and be in contact with people without being right next to each other,” Serrano said.

Contact Mackenzie Clark

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