How Faith Meets – by Dean Jones

Where How Faith Meets

For the past 8 years, RCMA has used the tagline “Where Faith Meets” as a part of our brand.  The phrase can have multiple meanings, including RCMA’s role in helping to facilitate locations for faith-based organizations selection of destinations and venues, or the fact that numerous faith representatives ‘meet’ at our events throughout the year, or simply that in order to sustain our faith-based organizations, gatherings are needed.

For centuries, people of faith have been creative in their ‘meeting’ places.  Gatherings took place in portable tents, around wells, in fields, public venues, in upper rooms, in caves, in homes. In more recent times, those gatherings have occurred in churches, living rooms, in secret, in public, underground and on mountain tops.

Unique times call for unique measures.  The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t the first crisis the world of faith has faced, nor will it be the last.  During the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, adjustments were made to stifle the progression of the disease.  One group of Protestant pastors in the District of Columbia issued the following statement:

… we, the Pastors’ Federation, in special assembly, do place ourselves on record as cheerfully complying with the request of the Commissioners, which, we understand applies to all churches alike. We furthermore recommend that our people shall conduct in their own homes some form of religious worship remembering in prayer especially the sick, our allied nations at war….

In 1918, the shift was from a sanctuary to homes.  In 2020 if we shift the focus from where we meet, to how we meet, it allows for some creative expression, a change from the norm, the possible use of technology and new ways of interacting with others.

While so many of our friends and colleagues’ livelihoods depend on meetings, selling space, hotel rooms and event support, we are confronted with many factors out of our control.  I think we’d all desire for our world to return to ‘normal’.  We wish we were meeting in a convention center in July.  We wish we were voting yea or nay at the denominational business meeting this summer.  We wish we were ordering room service to our hotel room after a long day of managing our event.  But the reality is – we aren’t! 

So what do we do?  We’ve been forced to shift from ‘where’ to ‘how’. And while this doesn’t provide job security or revenue for our supplier partners, it buys us a bit of time to still conduct business, encourage others, and pursue the goals and work of our faith-based organizations.

I have no doubt that ‘normal’ will return soon. It may be a new ‘normal’, but we’ll grow accustomed to it. We’ll embrace the new paradigm we have to work in and we’ll move forward.  That’s what faith is! It’s the essence of things not seen and the promise of things hoped for.We can hope for the best and believe.

And as we work through the coming days, let’s take some direction from those Protestant pastors in 1918 and add this to our prayers:

We furthermore recommend that our people shall conduct in their own homes some form of religious worship remembering in prayer those that have been displaced from their jobs, those that are discouraged, those that long for human interaction and those that are working diligently to continue their work in the midst of uncertainty…

Let’s Be Careful Out There!

Dean Jones, CMP
RCMA Director of Conferences & Events