St. Peter's Lutheran Church is trying to put the COVID-19 toll behind it by learning to appreciate the life that has returned to its community as the country recovers.
Christian Post (CP) reports that members of the progressive Saint Peter's Lutheran Church and other congregations across America's New York Synod are ready to meet in person.
But while eager to put the pandemic behind them, several churches of the New York Synod, including Saint Peter's, are going to use the lessons from the outbreak to further effectively shape their ministry.
"Whereas especially here in New York, we get a report from our governor very often about the decreasing [COVID-19 infection] rates, the increasing vaccinations. Everybody is excited about the possibilities that open up for interaction. But that is also balanced, especially in our church, and St. Peter's is an example of this, of not wanting to lose the lessons that we've learned over the past year," said Bishop Paul Egensteiner of the Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Bishop Egensteiner also informed CP that the virus caused a total loss of 60 lives from that congregation.
CP noted that Saint Peter's lost a large number of members, in part because many of them are immigrants, are from minority groups, and are part of low-income families
There are also some parishioners that are undocumented. During the height of the pandemic, many people were unable to work or obtain government aid.
Lessons learned
"[Lessons] about reaching people through remote worship but also about how this pandemic has unevenly affected communities of color, our immigrant communities, our marginalized communities, and how we as a Church are called to address those needs and respond to the inequities and the injustice that has surfaced as a result of this pandemic," explained Egensteiner. "So there's that balance between wanting to be back and not wanting to get back to normal. What has God shown us through this experience that reminds us of how we're called to be Church at this time and address those real human issues for God's children."
As a result of the pandemic, Egensteiner said that problems like food insecurity and systematic racial inequalities have emerged as significant missions, which his synod wants to address more concretely in the aftermath of 2020. He said that the feeding ministry at several of their churches has been active during the last year and a half.
"And now, there is concern to address some of the systemic reasons that people go hungry," he continued. "In fact, as part of our vision plan, one of the focus areas of our vision plan is advocacy to change some of the systemic issues in our society."
In order to help alleviate the unequal effect of the pandemic on communities of color, Egensteiner stated that his denomination encourages members to get vaccinations.
Notwithstanding, Egensteiner asserts that they also respect the wishes of worshippers who do not want to get the COVID-19 vaccination.
"We don't out people who don't get the vaccine. This one congregation, in particular, has two sections in their Sunday morning in-person worship - vaccinated people and unvaccinated people," the minister said. "We're still welcoming unvaccinated people for whatever reason they don't want to get the vaccine but definitely encouraging people to get vaccinated to allow for more of the togetherness and activities that are important to us."
The New York bishop also thinks that the most important lesson that all churches can learn from the pandemic is the necessity of giving people with a "community" in order to meet their spiritual needs.
He said that a community, in whatever shape it takes - online or in person - is required in order to function as the Church. That grounds believers in a more profound sense of identity than the partisanship that is so prevalent in society today.
