Covid, community & the Code
Donald Watts offers his thoughts on the Church emerging from Covid and the importance of unity, and highlights how the republishing of PCI’s constitution has the potential to draw the Church together.
U
nexpected phone calls are not always welcome but it is always good to have a chat with Sarah, the editor of the Presbyterian Herald. “Do you think you could write something positive about the Church coming out from the restrictions of Covid?” she asked. “Something to encourage our readers. Oh, and you might like to say a bit about what’s behind the republishing of the Code as well.” I don’t remember ever having heard the words ‘positive’, ‘encourage’ and ‘the Code’ used together before, so it was a challenge I really couldn’t refuse. There is no doubt that the response to the pandemic has had a dramatic and damaging effect on the life of the church. The patterns of church life, which many of us had enjoyed from childhood, were suddenly shattered – no possibility for organisations to meet, no more socialising over cups of tea, but more fundamentally no opportunity to be with people when they were ill or weak and no coming together for worship. It seemed as though the church as we knew and loved it could hardly continue, and yet it
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Herald October 2022
did! Which actually shouldn’t surprise us at all because we are the church of Jesus Christ and our security is in him. We can have confidence because the victory of the church is not something that we work for, to be secured in the future; it does not depend on our programmes and strategies, but has already been won in the death and resurrection of our Lord. Which is not to minimise the fact that the experience of the pandemic was traumatic for many people and some do feel let down by the church. At a time when people needed to find comfort and feel the support of others around them, church members were being told to stay apart. That was difficult in what is, after all, a community of believers. Now possibilities are opening up again for the church to restore a sense of being together, so we must surely work hard to
…the fundamental issue we face in our denomination is a lack of trust in one another.
offer truly supportive care. We also need to restore within the church the centrality of worship. I suppose what stunned believers most in the response to Covid was that we couldn’t, for a time, meet for worship. Personally, I think that was the right decision, but it was very challenging. The church exists to worship God; that is the heart of our being. Without worship who are we? The Shorter Catechism tells us that our “chief end is to glorify God” and that truth is most fully expressed when we worship together. However, the Bible is also quite clear that when we are faithful, good can come out of a disastrous situation. I like to remember Joseph’s words when, on the death of their father, his brothers assumed Joseph would punish them. Instead he said, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20). I am not, in case there is any misunderstanding, implying that Covid was in any way sent by God – so far as I can judge, it was caused by human carelessness – but in God’s
