Planting a Church During a Pandemic
by Morgan Reed
This view of my living room reminds me of God's faithfulness. I'm not a professional videographer or sound engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but with God's help and the help of instructional YouTube videos, GarageBand, and iMovie, we've been creating a steady stream of content to disciple people and gather them into what God is doing at the Franconia-Springfield Mission. The fruit of these labors has been life-giving discussions among God's people, a weekly opportunity to go deeper in relationship, and the chance to pray with one another. The picture with my light ring and computer sitting on a tub of liturgical supplies is such a good microcosm of what it feels like to plant a church during a pandemic: a tabernacling mindset with God's presence as the only constant. Our living room in this picture reminds me that it does not take many resources to make disciples.
Every Tuesday night since mid-September, we've created a way for people to gather either in person or virtually, to eat together, to have discussion, then to pray together using the "Family Prayer at the Close of the Day" service from the Book of Common Prayer. To prepare the group for the discussion, and maximize our discussion time, I preach a sermon each week ahead of our meeting so that people can listen to or watch it prior to the meeting. We began with 5 discussions on 1 Peter and will now have 3 weeks to talk about the Scriptures and the Creeds, the prayer life of the Church, and the mission of the Church. The audio recording is uploaded to our sermons page (which also goes to our podcast), and a video of the sermon goes onto our YouTube channel.
We continue to meet monthly for the Holy Eucharist outdoors at Lake Accotink and in those trips between our storage unit, the sacristy (i.e., my Honda CRV), the Lake, and back again, God kindly reminds me that this tabernacling experience is allowing His people to worship, to experience His grace in the Sacraments, and to have the fellowship they need to live into our vision of creating a common people in common prayer for uncommon transformation. We would love your prayers as we continue to discern where and how best to tabernacle together during the winter months and continue to cultivate a community of invitation as we seek to invite others into this common life of God in these very uncommon times.
The Rev. Morgan Reed has been called to plant a church that will have real gospel impact in Franconia, Springfield, and Kingstowne, Virginia.