The Not-So-Good: My Thoughts on Ministry in the time of COVID-19

In a uniquely trying time, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us some of the beautiful things (along with some of the holes) in our ministry in the Coptic Church.

There may have been a lot of good that came during the time of the pandemic (in terms of ministry, spirituality, and how things were generally handled by the church here in the US) but, unfortunately, there were a lot of worrying aspects to the response as well. And what I want to point out here is that many of these problems have little to do with the actual pandemic. Rather, I think these last few months have been a sort of magnifying glass that brought many of our foundational issues into focus.

These foundational issues speak to the effectiveness of our current and past ministry practices in the church. But rather than dwell on these negatives, I hope that pointing these out would only propel us to new heights and that we would have the foresight, humility, and integrity to call things as they are and to seek to do better. We, the faithful of the Coptic Church, should want better for ourselves. I only hope that pointing these things out would give us clarity and an understanding as to where we are and where we could go if we so desire. Also, I'm sorry for all my ranting in advance.

A Disconnected Congregation

What this time has made clear is that there is an unmistakeable disconnect between church life and home life. It's evident (at least to me) that the ministry that happens in church has not made its way and penetrated the everyday life of most Coptic homes.

Why do I say this? Let's start with the star of this pandemic: livestreaming. This has become our normal. We are streaming liturgies on Sundays. We're streaming sermons, bible studies, and meetings throughout the week. We're streaming Sunday school lessons for the kids. Vespers and Midnight Praises on Saturdays. Even Holy Week and Resurrection services this year came to us through a screen. I even saw one parish begin a dire fundraising campaign (amid an international economic crisis) to raise money to revamp their AV system so that they'd be able to livestream their liturgies "better." Anyone else noticing a troubling pattern here?

I get that this was all done to try and best serve the people when they couldn't be physically present in church, but it worries me that most Coptic households would have been left completely spiritually handicapped had it not been for streaming.

Rather than praying lay services [a liturgical service conducted in the absence of a priest, sometimes referred to as a "reader's service." Ya know like when we go on a retreat or mission trip and we're without a priest and one of the "head deacons" or uncles lead us through praying Liturgy of the Word? It's like that but if we had an actual guide/rubric as to how to actually conduct a service like that because Lord knows I make it up as I go every time] in front of a place we've designated for prayer in our homes (call it a home altar, prayer corner, or icon corner) we streamed liturgies from the four zillion options we had to pick from. Rather than having more time for reading books to edify and build up our faith, we needed lessons, bible studies, and meetings through Zoom. Rather than parents passing on the faith to their children themselves with all the extra free time we had, Sunday school had to be streamed. Rather than effort going towards empowering individuals and families to have a healthy and thriving church life at home through the creation of resources, lesson plans, book recommendations, and lay service texts, all efforts were thrown towards getting as much up on streaming as possible. This poses an important question: if these practices aren't happening, what is it exactly that our ministry was hoping to achieve in the first place?

Again, to zoom out a little, I think the church did a pretty great job with the response to COVID; this was quite a unique time and so much was done to respond. But the takeaway here is that there is something unsustainable or ineffective in our "normal" ministry that caused our response during a pandemic (both that of the leadership and the parishioners) to look the way it did. To put things into perspective, in the earliest centuries of the Church, the faithful would take a piece of the Eucharist home with them and commune of it throughout the week. Their church life seamlessly, naturally, and authentically, was present in their day-to-day. Could we imagine ministry that was so life-giving during normal times that this wouldn't be such a far-fetched idea as a quarantine response plan? Maybe I'm naive. Heck, I know I'm naive, but I guess it's my blog and I get to be 😊.

A Disconnected Liturgy

Back in March when coronavirus was still relatively new and the numbers were just beginning to really climb, a fellow I used to go to church with sent me a link to "Litany Of The Corona Virus" on SoundCloud. Essentially, this was a recording someone had jokingly posted that mimicked typical Coptic liturgical wording and singing and the joke was that he made it about a current event. The guy who messaged it to me must have thought I'd think it was hilarious just like all the comments I saw congregating around that post. Earlier just that same day, my wife and I had been praying the Litany of the Sick at home during our regular prayer times and I remember thinking, "man, I really wish the church could have written a litany to unite us all in prayer about this pandemic."

Anyone else following my frustration here? It was so unfathomable that a prayer could be added to the life of the church to reflect the needs and context of the time that the only place it would have made sense (or even existed) is as a joke.

This would have been an amazing opportunity for us to show that the liturgy is living, relevant, and the "work of the people." How do we think the litanies that we have now existed in the first place? Someone wrote them as a response to the needs of prayer of the congregation. There is a misconception that Orthodoxy is stale, archaic, and that being traditional means you don't change anything. How absurd it is to think that as the spiritual needs change, the Church wouldn't be there to support and heal its people? But we missed our chance to prove those ideas wrong this time around, and for now, having the liturgy address and lift current events in prayer can only be the material of the jokes we tell rather than the prayers we offer.

And this comes back to the question I asked earlier, what is our ministry in the church hoping to achieve if our prayers aren't addressing what our prayers should be addressing?! It is no wonder that "prayer meetings" have become a normal thing for us in the Coptic Church. They come as a response to the need to be able to pray earnestly for current issues. What even is a prayer meeting? The faithful gathering as the body of Christ to pray? If that itch isn't being scratched in the liturgical prayers of the Church, the place where we the faithful gather as the body of Christ (AROUND THE ACTUAL BODY OF CHRIST) to pray, then isn't something wrong?

It was wonderful when a few weeks later, a friend of mine ended up writing a litany that people could use at home. I hope that we get to a point where we expect our corporate liturgical worship to reflect the needs of our time, especially during such an uncertain time as this one.

Disconnected Efforts

I think I've gone on long enough so I'll keep this section short, sweet, and to the point. It was wonderful to see how many beautiful efforts came as a response to the quarantine but at the same time, it all felt a bit frantic.

Every parish tried to stream liturgy, Sunday school, meetings, lectures, feasts, etc. In a time when we didn't need to gather physically and weren't limited by distance, this would have been the opportunity of a lifetime for collaborative work in the church. Just as an example, even just among each diocese, how nice would it have been to see all resources pooled and one joint Sunday school program produced! More than one weekly resource could have been produced to give children more to do when they're stuck at home during quarantine rather than just an hour on Sundays. And gathering all the servants from as many parishes as would collaborate, you'd essentially have endless hands to get the work done.

My hope here isn't to be negative or to be naive. My point is that we as Copts, especially all around the English-speaking world, don't have a great history of collaborating on projects. I know of too many duplicate efforts that are looking to produce two of the same product and there's never really much of a reason. Need examples? How many Sunday school curriculums do we have? How many theological schools/programs and seminaries have launched just in the last ten years?

We have many talented, willing, and ready hands among our clergy and laity and it's to our advantage that we begin to work together more consistently.

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That's enough for today. Thank you to whoever got all the way through to the end. I'll leave you all with this question one last time and I hope each of us can play our part in asking this question sincerely and seeking to make our reality the best it can be, for the glory of Christ and Christ alone: what is our ministry hoping to achieve and are we achieving it?