Don’t Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater
By Rev. Gaborone Lesito, 19th Episcopal District Field Representative
A new day is coming. Praise the name of the Lord? The novel coronavirus pandemic will not be with us forever. Believe it or not, life will get back to normal. Will the new normal be business-as-usual but under new management?
The AME Church needs to take stock of bad things she has always wanted to eliminate but because of long-standing traditions—some of them unAME—doing so would have been taboo at the time. Some of these include how Sunday worship, Holy Communion, Holy Baptism, funerals, and weddings are conducted.
In each of our churches, there are some bad things we have always wanted to eliminate but had no guts. Has COVD-19 assisted? While COVID-19 has forced the church to eliminate many things, the church must be cautious to not eliminate something good while trying to get rid of something bad.
New and more favourable ways to do things have emerged. Spending on new things such as data connectivity for virtual meetings has surged but travelling has gone down.
Making long speeches in meetings before getting to a point should be something of the past. Yes, we have a lot of time on our hands but not much on Zoom or other platforms.
How parishioners dress up for virtual meetings is a lot different. How are things going to be when the COVID-19 curtain is lifted? There is no more standing for singing, kneeling for praying, and sitting for teaching. The new thing is all sitting down and sometimes pacing up and down our homes during services or meetings. We will certainly go back to normal; but as we do, we must be careful of rejecting the favourable along with the unfavourable.
We find ourselves in a period that has endowed us with a wealth of ideas on how we can continue and sustain ourselves as a church. We have entertained many new ideas; but in the same breath, we have lost many valuable ones. Life has been very normal and we did not have a chance to assess if we were carrying on with bad ideas unawares. This is an opportunity to lose all the bad ideas we have always harboured for sentimental reasons. Yet, we must be careful that we do not lose valuable ideas in our attempt to get rid of the bad ones.
After all is said and done, we must make sure that we still have our baby, “The AME Church” in which to return. The talk and new practices are “Wear your face mask, practice social distancing, sanitise regularly, and wash your hands.” Now, because the water has become so dirty after everyone has washed, the baby may no longer be visible. So, it may be easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let us please check if there are any babies left in the bath before we throw out the water. We must keep them.
