Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic back in the spring, Jason “Bucky” Walters, pastor at Jamestown Christian Church, and the leaders of JCC decided on one thing early on.
“From the beginning, we decided we wanted to be part of the solution, not part of the problem,” Walters said. “That’s kind of been our motto throughout all of this.”
Walters said the leadership group, which consists of the elders of the church, consists of eight or nine guys and each member has different opinions and ideas about how to best navigate COVID-19 as a church, but at the end of the day, he said the group comes together in agreement of what is best for the people.
Following the recommendation from Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear that churches suspend in-person worship services through Dec. 13 due to the significant uptick in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, JCC decided to provide virtual-only services for the next few weeks.
“We don’t want an outbreak to happen and it be traced back to something we could’ve helped,” Walters said. “We have decided to honor the governor’s request. We’ve decided to suspend all of our on-campus gatherings, whether it be Sunday School or mid-week Bible study… We all knew it’s what we needed to do. None of us really wanted to do that. With the cases rising though, and as we sought out the opinions of people we know in the medical field, they’re the experts and so we trust them to help us make these decisions.”
Walters said he recognizes not every church will take the same steps, and he understands each church will do things differently, but he added that he believes the decision to go virtual for a few weeks could set a good example within the community.
“We feel like we can set a good example within our community with this,” Walters said.
Walters said that a few years ago, being thrown into a situation where virtual-only services were needed would be a major cause for concern and would ultimately cripple churches. Now, he said, with more technology options available, churches are still able to keep their congregations engaged and provide a worship experience, albeit a little different than many are used to.
“We decided to jump on that bandwagon pretty quick and upgrade our live-streaming capabilities,” Walters said. “We’ve just been really blessed to be able to do that.”
As for other ministries of the church, including children ministries, the church is utilizing platforms like Zoom. While it’s not perfect, Walters admits, it does help keep children in the church connected.
Keeping that connection is a challenge, Walters said, but he and the other leaders at JCC have used this as an opportunity to rethink how those connections can be made and strengthened.
“What we’ve been doing, through our social media channels and other things like that, we’ve reminded people that we love connection and we believe relationship is a great thing, but we can still have that outside of gathering on a Sunday at church,” Walters said. “We’ve used the phrase ‘Together but Apart’ and whenever I sign off on anything we do virtually, I always encourage people to go shine their light and to be the church.”
“It’s been a blessing and a challenge,” Walters added. “For us as a church, we’ve been realizing that the church isn’t the building. We’ve seen great strides in that with people connecting outside the church. We’ve got a great group of people within our church that are very passionate about checking in on people. They’re calling people or shooting a text. It’s just been a really organic process.”
Walters noted that while opinions vary on the best way to move forward with church during the pandemic, he’s been blessed with a great community of people within the church.
“We’ve had good things come from this,” Walters added. “I believe if you’re faithful, God is going to be faithful back. Our church has been nothing but gracious in our leadership in making decisions. People really haven’t complained about what we’ve asked of them. I’ve joked with the church since early on that there are four of us here on staff at the church that went to Bible college, and none of us took a class on leading a church through a pandemic, so our church has been nothing but gracious.”
Looking ahead, Walters said it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen. As things change seemingly constantly with this virus, he said he’s learned it’s nearly impossible to plan too far ahead. Walters said he hopes that the church will be able to return to in-person gatherings after Dec. 13, but right now, that isn’t a certainty.
“We’re hoping that Dec. 13 is the last time we’re apart, but if it’s not, it isn’t the end of the world,” Walters said. “We’ve just got to be flexible. These aren’t always the decisions we want to make, but it’s the best decision to make at the time, and we feel like God honors that. We’ve seen that. We just want to give him our best with what we can do right now.”
