Finally Moving Forward

5 Strategic Ministry Shifts During the Pandemic Changed Our Perspective

By Matt Summers
with Janice Summers

Just as the Israelites wandered in the wilderness wondering when they might go back to Egypt, we have found ourselves wondering when we might go back to the way things were just a few months ago.

Our wilderness is Joliet, Illinois, in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Joliet is the third-largest city in Illinois, home to 150,000 residents. Some think Joliet is a suburb of Chicago, nestled just outside the sprawling metropolis, but she is her own community. Both cities were founded in 1833. Joliet resembles anything but a middle-class suburb.

Joliet is a gritty city, home to one of our state’s most populated prisons. Stateville Correctional Center is a maximum-security unit with more than 1,600 inmates. It is also one of our largest local employers. The culture of Joliet is tied to her historic prisons.

Unapologetically blue-collar and economically low-to-middle income, Joliet is a racially diverse community that often challenges our very conservative, suburban-white, middle-class upbringing. We moved here in 2006 to plant Crossroads Christian Church.

Like most married couples in our church, we are a two-income family. Janice is a full-time registered nurse working in Joliet’s only hospital (another one of Joliet’s largest employers). She has worked there 14 years and has served as a registered nurse more than 20.

The Pandemic’s Multifaceted Effects

While many across our country wonder about the effects of the coronavirus, we have seen its devastation firsthand on several fronts. Members of our church have been sick, many people in our community have died, and Janice has been working exclusively with COVID-19 victims since the epidemic began.

This disease is like nothing she has ever seen.

At the peak of the outbreak, our hospital had one remaining open bed in the COVID-19 Unit (while the facility was two nurses short of their census). On several occasions, Janice was pulled to the Intensive Care Units to assist the nurses specializing in critical care.

At the end of May as I write this article, she continues to care for three or more COVID-19 patients during each of her 12-hour shifts. Supplies of personal protective equipment are chronically low. She is required to clean, store, and reuse the same N95 mask and face shield shift after shift; she is given one new surgical mask and one clean pair of scrubs daily.

Like me, she has often wondered when things will return to the way they used to be.

Before shuttering our live services in March, Crossroads was hitting its stride. Two years removed from a multimillion-dollar relocation, we were just beginning to meet our budget needs. Weeks before the shutdown, we experienced our largest non-holiday attendance ever with 1,450 people. We believed we were entering the Promised Land!

Nevertheless, if you told me in February we would have to stop live worship services for a month, I would have told you we wouldn’t survive financially. Two months later, and likely months away from live gatherings in Chicagoland, I’m still marveling at the number of ways God has provided for us. Of course, he always has!

When we acquired our new facility in Joliet three years ago, we knew it would be a financial struggle considering the economic base of our congregation. In our context, $20 per capita giving is saved for our most generous days!

Yet God provided a tenant paying $28,000 a month for 28,000 square feet of space in our building. It seemed like manna from Heaven, and it enabled us to move forward with our relocation. Little did we know, our tenant would be one of our first causalities of the coronavirus (after our live worship services).

As I write this, our tenant is now three months removed from making a payment, and we are perhaps months away from reopening and years away from repaying our losses. But God provided yet again through the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program and a mortgage restructure by The Solomon Foundation. TSF continues to be an incredible ministry partner.

Our Crossroads people have been incredible, as well. We started social distancing during our weekend worship services a week before it was required. Then, days before the stay-at-home order was issued, we decided to move our services online. Our people responded positively with prayers, words of encouragement, and—because most of our families are essential workers—a temporary increase in financial support.

Despite God’s provision, it still felt as if we were wandering in the wilderness. The Paycheck Protection Program and our mortgage restructure were only temporary solutions, and our online engagement and increased giving peaked and flattened. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, I found myself grumbling and wondering when we could go back to Egypt.

Our Multidimensional Response

As we wandered through this wilderness, however, we did not just sit and wait. Instead, we made a number of strategic ministry shifts in response to it.

From programming to pastoring. Traditionally, our ministry staff spends much of their time planning weekend worship services. Today we are spending much of our time pastoring the people in our church. Our staff is calling the thousands of people in our database to check on them, answer any questions they might have, and pray with them. Our people have been tremendously appreciative.

From Sunday to every day. We are now spending more time creating content that fosters daily discipleship rather than weekend worship. We are hosting live prayer events on social media, providing parenting tips for the pandemic from our Next Generation team, and sharing practical marriage advice on a regular basis from our pastors and their wives. We are ministering to one another daily instead of weekly.

From providing to resourcing. In the past, our ministers provided and our people consumed. Children’s ministry often consisted of our Next Gen team organizing events for children to come and learn, apart from their parents. Now our Next Gen team is resourcing parents with materials to disciple their own children. Likewise, rather than providing Communion emblems for our people, we are resourcing them with videos to make their own unleavened bread for Communion for their families.

From consuming to contributing. As a result of the shifts from programming to pastoring, from Sunday to every day, and from doing to resourcing, we are seeing a shift away from consumer Christianity. Our people no longer ask, “What can you do for me?” Instead, they are asking, “What can we do?”

We are seeing positive results across the board, including our people giving greater attention and care to our senior adults who are especially at-risk of COVID-19. Meanwhile, dozens of our women are making thousands of face masks to distribute to people in need. Two of our small-business owners have shifted their production to PPE and are selling it at cost or are giving it away. We are witnessing authentic discipleship as people move from being consumers to contributors!

From what was to what will be. While we grieve what has been lost, we believe the difficult journey we are experiencing will propel us forward, toward the restoration of the early church. In fact, as we share these shifts today, we can’t help but wonder, Why weren’t we doing these things all along? Janice has repeatedly asked: “Are we going to keep doing these things after the pandemic?”

We’re no longer grumbling, wondering when we can return to Egypt. Rather, we’re looking forward to entering the Promised Land.

Matt Summers serves as lead pastor and planter of Crossroads Christian Church in Joliet, Illinois. Janice has worked more than 20 years as a registered nurse.

(Be sure to read this article’s companion piece, a Bible study of the exodus by Kevin Dooley: “The God Who Provides.”)