The Pandemic and Pastoring

 

Thirty years ago this summer I got my driver’s license. In those three decades I have driven some interesting vehicles, some interesting places, and some interesting miles. But nothing I have ever driven matches what I experienced last Monday. Coming across Interstate 80 west out of Illinois close to the Iowa border I saw a deep purple blush spread across the horizon. I said to myself, “That doesn’t look good.” Little did I know how not good it would turn out to be. If you have followed the news this week you have heard of it by now, no doubt. A derecho.

          Derecho, derived from the Spanish word for “straight”, is the equivalent of a straight line tornado or hurricane. Tornados whirl in a circular fashion, dashing haphazardly across the landscape. Hurricanes revolve around an eye, dumping multiple inches of rain as they slowly deteriorate over land. Derechos howl straight across the plains. Birthed in a line of thunderstorms, they morph into something bigger than the sum of their parts. Hurricanes make landfall after days of breathless news commentary. Sirens howl to warn us of possible tornados. Derechos, like dogs gone suddenly mad, simply attack and batter into submission everything in their path, a path that extends on a wide front for hundreds of miles. …and that is what I was driving straight into, unbeknownst to me, five days ago.

          Seated beside me in the front seat of the van was my eleven year old son, Sam. In the seat immediately behind me was my eighteen year old son, Jack. In the back seat was my sixteen year old daughter, Emma. My passengers, my family, my life. It was about 1:30 PM. As the light of the brilliant August sun faded to darkness the wind began to pick up. Leaves and twigs began to fly through the air. The air began to physically push the van sideways, buffeting it in short bursts. Off to the left, in the dust of a ditch, I briefly saw a small dust devil form. Raising my eyes to the rearview mirror I snapped to Jack, “Check for a tornado warning, will you?” Our phones were silent. I did not know the local radio channels. I had no idea what was ahead of me. It was probably better that way.

          Jack informed me he could not find any tornado warning on his weather app, just a radar line of strong rain stretching ahead of us. By now, the rain had begun to pick up. Blown by the wind in sheets, the waves of drops raced across the interstate ahead of us. Around us, traffic began to slow. I raised my wipers to the highest setting, fumbled for my lights, and slowed with them. Ok. Bad storm. Been there, done that lots of times in the hundreds of thousands of miles I have driven in the last thirty years.

          Then the derecho hit us. What had been waves of rain became a solid mass of water. I was no longer in a van. It was a submarine. Water not falling, but hurling itself at the van coming from the passenger side. Attacking us like all the fiends of hell scrambling to gain purchase on a lost soul. The wind no longer buffeted the van; it propelled itself against the side, pushing us inexorably from the slow lane into the fast lane. It was not a wind anymore. It was a force, like gravity gone sideways. Risking one brief glance into the rearview mirror, I could not see Emma. She was still laying down. Raising my voice I snapped, “Everybody, seat belts on, now!” Her head popped up. She knows me, heard the soberness in my voice, and she and Jack obliged. In the front seat, Sam’s was already on. The darkness faded toward night. Around us, vehicles began to pull off to the berm, huddling for purchase under bridges, under the lee side of a small hill. I kept driving.

          Someone asked me this week, “Why didn’t you pull over?” Good question. Several things were running through my head. First, I do not like the idea of parking in bad visibility on the side of an interstate. Too easy to get slammed from behind. Nor did I want to shelter beside some small hill on which trees were. Dimly through the dark and the rain, I could see trees bent in unearthly shapes, all facing one direction. No way those were all going to hold and I did not want a tree coming down on the van. But more than that, a sixth sense kept me going. When you have forward momentum you can manage a sideways push better. You can attack it by angling your steering wheel off kilter sort of like mowing a self-propelled lawnmower on a hill. The gravity drags you down but the engine drives you forward while the sideways tilt keeps you in a straight line. The wind, clocked variously along that section of the Illinois/Iowa border at 90 to 100 miles per hour, was not gusting against the side of the van. It was brutalizing us with an unvaried intensity. I have never seen anything like it.

          So on we went. It was the only thing to do, the safest thing to do I thought. Beside me, Sam began to cry. He has had a hard year in his eleven year old life. His emotions lie close to the surface. Fear had him now. The derecho chased him mere inches from his face. The other two were deathly silent. I straightened my seat up, gripped the steering wheel with both arms so tightly my left arm still hurt late into the night, and went forward. It was beyond my experience but I had no choice. I was in it. Correction, we were in it. I was responsible for them. I did not know what I was facing. I could not ask for help. I could not go around it. I could not avoid it. With little information, with the situation deteriorating from bad to worse, with it all on the line all I could do was go forward the best I could.

          It seemed like hours. In retrospect, it was more like thirty minutes. I moved at about thirty miles an hour west. It raced past me a hundred miles an hour heading east. You do the math. Eventually, I80 came to a complete stop. Too many semis blown over sideways for traffic to continue even after the derecho passed. Getting off the interstate, we drove the river roads along the Mississippi north toward Dubuque. Town after town, no power. Town after town, trees toppled into houses and cars. Town after town, power lines draped the road. Lines of traffic snaking through the obstacle courses that used to be called streets. Eventually, we made it home.

          I lay in bed that night trying to find a way to communicate to my wife how bad it had been. The wordsmith in me could not come up with the words. Later, as her regular breathing told me she had fallen asleep, I wept. Unbidden, there came to my mind the realization this situation has become my entire life.

          In January, I read in the news that China had put an entire urban area on lockdown due to a new respiratory virus. Ahead of me, I saw a deep purple blush on the horizon and I said to myself, “This can’t be good.” Little did I know how not good it would turn out to be. As a pastor, I reacted sooner than most of my contemporaries. Several years ago I read John Barry’s “The Great Influenza”. I knew what SARS was. I paid attention to Ebola. I made decisions for my family and for my church that later proved to be good ones. Essentially, I did the equivalent of turning my lights on, asking my son for a tornado check, calling for the seat belts to be put on, slowing down, gripping the wheel with both hands. I have pastored for twenty-three years. I have been through some storms. All of that was within my experience. But as the calendar turned from January to February and then to March, I had no idea what I was driving into. No one did. The coronavirus pandemic is beyond anyone’s experience.

          For six months, I have been steering my church through a storm. Its howling winds have torn church members from me, driven them into sin. Pinned by events, I have been unable to do the things I would normally do as a pastor to address the situation. Watching in horror, I see them whirling, tumbling end over end spiritually, away in the dark. Ministries are pulled off on the side of the road, perhaps never to start up again. I have seen more missionaries resign in the last six months than I have seen resign in the last six years. Like the big rigs on the interstate, some churches bull ahead as if immune to the weather. It does not surprise me to see them piled up in a heap in a ditch a few miles up the road. This is different. It is not just another storm. We are in a derecho. It howls, demonically, against your church and mine. And your pastor and I have no choice but to drive forward, in terrible conditions, with nothing in our experience like this experience, white knuckles planted on the steering wheel, begging God for wisdom and grace, unable to adequately comfort those weeping beside us, no real idea when the storm will pass, all that we love and live for contained in a fragile vehicle called a church, relentlessly tormented by a pandemic and all its associated media-driven, internet-aggravated, politically-toxic, church-splitting pandemic ferocity.

          …which brings me finally to my point, the thought that rolled around in my head as I vainly sought sleep last Monday night. As bad as it was, how much worse would it have been if Jack, Emma, and Sam had begun to fight with each other? How much worse would have it been if, in the middle of a literal disaster, they had begun to fight with me? Openly disagreeing with my decisions, yelling at each other for the other’s response to the storm, competing with each other, vociferously calling for me to heed their abhorrently timed advice thrown at me from the back seat? It very easily could have pushed me over the balanced knife edge I was on as it was. But they did not. I do not know if they agreed with my decision to ask them to put seatbelts on or not. I do not know if they agreed with my decision to continue driving forward through the storm or not. I do not know if they agreed with my decision to essentially ignore my weeping son beside me so I could focus on the storm or not. Blessed be God, they did not tell me. They just followed my instructions, regardless of what they felt, and kept quiet. My job was impossibly hard enough as it was. I thank God they did not make it any harder. If they had, it just might have killed us all.

          Beloved, your pastor is driving through a storm. It is worse than anything he has ever experienced. He has been and is being forced to make snap decisions with bad information, decisions he has no idea of the actual effects. He cannot not make decisions. And whatever he does will produce disagreement. He will stop ministries you think he should continue. He will continue others you think he should stop. Masks? Service schedules? Budget priorities? Sermon choices? Personnel decisions? The seniors, the youth, the parents, the spiritual, the carnal, the active, the belligerent, saints of all sorts are seated there in his church (or watching along at home) critiquing his every move.

          Stop it. Just stop it. Stop telling everyone in your church what everyone in your church should be doing. Stop telling anyone in your church what your pastor should be doing. Above all, stop telling your pastor. Put your seatbelt on. Follow him. Quietly. And pray. Walk into his office, look him in the eye, and tell him you are for him, and that you will support him in whatever he thinks is best. Beg God to give your pastor wisdom and grace. He is piloting your church through the worst storm of your life. Stop making it harder. You have no idea what disastrous events may flow from it.

          Pray. Follow his lead. And be quiet.

          He is doing the absolute best he can. Let him drive. The Lord will see us through.