When Can the Church Reopen?

As a pastor, one question I’m getting asked a lot lately is, “When can we reopen the church?” I get it. I miss the gathering of our church family on Sundays and throughout the week as well. But I also want to be wise about when and how we do this, because the stakes are simply too high, both health-wise as well as in regards to the church’s relationship with our neighbors.

Some within the larger church community (outside of Costa Mesa) have been pushing for a restart to gatherings at the end of the month regardless of what the directives from our Governor and other civic leaders happen to be. I understand that they see the mandated closure of the churches both as an unconstitutional and unbiblical limitation. After all, the First Amendment of our Constitution affords us the freedom of religious expression, and scripturally when the Jewish leaders demanded the Apostles stop preaching in the name of Jesus, Peter’s response was, “We must obey God rather than human beings” (Acts 5:29).

However, I would suggest that these current limitations are not about freedom of religious expression so much as they are about public safety. We are still able to spread the gospel and connect with one another. In fact, through live streaming and Zoom, the church has actually been reaching a much wider circle of people than we had been able to when we relied solely upon meeting in the church building on Sundays. So we are not being told to stop sharing the gospel. Rather, we are being asked to stop gathering in groups for a season in order to stem the spread of a virus that can severely impact the most vulnerable members of our population. That’s a different story altogether.

The Apostle Peter also called on believers to “submit yourself for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor [in our case the Federal government] or to the governors” (1 Peter 2:13-14). He explains that our submission and our witness go hand in hand; by submitting we are removing a potential obstacle between unbelievers and the gospel. The Apostle Paul made a similar argument in Romans 13. So unless we are being asked to disobey God, which we are not, then we have a moral obligation to obey those in authority over us.

Furthermore, I cannot help but consider what it would cost us to defy our public officials’ directives and gather early: not only would we be exposing our members to possible exposure, but we’d be declaring to our neighbors that we don’t value their health and safety. Infected people infect people, and one particularly frustrating aspect of COVID-19 is that people are infectious long before they exhibit symptoms. So gathering prematurely not only endangers our own health, but the health of our neighbors. On top of that, we’d be communicating to our city officials that we are not willing to limit our freedoms out of love for our fellow citizens. In effect, by gathering early we’d be sending the opposite message to the one we’ve been working so hard over the years to communicate through our actions: namely, that we love our city and are willing to serve them. Our waiting is an act of service.

This is the first time in my lifetime that the authorities have asked us to stop meeting in order to help protect the health of our community, but it’s not the first time the church has faced it. Back in the 1600’s, Richard Baxter, who was a puritan pastor, wrote, “If the magistrate for a greater good such as the common safety forbids church assemblies in a time of pestilence…it is our duty to obey him.” However, he goes on to explain that if any authority were to outlaw the church gathering “as a renunciation of Christ and our religion, then it is not lawful formally to obey them.”1  That seems reasonable to me.

So we are in a holding pattern, waiting for the day we can gather again in our church buildings. But we are not waiting passively for the go-ahead from the city. In fact, a large number of local pastors including myself are actively working with our city council in order to draft guidelines for the eventual reopening of our church buildings. I will keep you informed on any developments. But for now, we will wait and pray and live stream and gather in Life Groups over Zoom and radiate the love of Christ into our Spheres of Influence. After all, our buildings might be closed, but WE are the church, and we never close.

1: Practical Works of Richard Baxter, V.5, Question 109.