This article, Our Sunday Morning Diaspora, from the “Grow Christians” website this morning hit a chord; so much so that I responded in a long comment:
I am the Children, Youth and Families Minister at St. Chad’s Episcopal Church in Albuquerque, NM. I have been part of our “online” services as a musician and now as the Zoom-to-Facebook-Live traffic controller. I host weekly story/game time for preschool-K and K-fifth, a game hour for middle schoolers, and a Sunday morning Sunday school class for preschool-fifth. My own children just completed (if we can call it that) sixth, eighth and eleventh grades. No one in my family has ever sat down and watched the service with me. I think they tried to tune in the first couple of times I played my violin at church, but only to be polite to me. When I host the middle school game time, my own two middle schoolers would only join if forced, so if we did any online interacting where you could see them, they looked put out or like they were possibly surviving by looking at their phone instead of the computer screen. I still invite them, every week, like my other middle schoolers, to join the Zoom, but without force, they haven’t joined.
I have a few middle schoolers that show up for the games, but when I tried to add a Sunday school service or worship on a Sunday night, I’ve only had one kid show up–even more awkward than zero. I’ve had to remind myself that by being witty or coming up with good games or whatever I can’t create a relationship for others with God. I can open myself to being God’s servant in whatever way that means, but I am not the conduit of all that is Holy to either my family or my church kids. They crave community and in person interaction, which I can’t provide. And I have to believe that when this is all done, we’ll all have grown in new ways and that the mystery of the spirit among us (“where three or more are gathered”) and grow in new ways. God hasn’t left us just because we can’t be in church.
As I entered this pandemic stay-at-home time with a bit of a thrill watching Sunday morning services instead of the anxiety of carrying out classes and music at church, I thought this might be a really cool new thing. But as time passed, I found I couldn’t muster the attention to sit through online Sunday “morning prayer,” wandering off to Amazon to shop or to browse the other posts on Facebook instead of devoting my whole attention. So why do I expect that this would be any different with middle schoolers??
