Coronavirus and the Churches: Time to Pivot Again

At the end of March, hundreds of British churches switched overnight to running online Sunday services in response to the national lockdown imposed by the Government. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on churches was sudden and dramatic.

At the end of June, as the lockdown begins to gradually be lifted, has the time come for British churches to pivot again? Not this time back to congregational Sunday services - which remain banned under the terms of the emergency powers granted in the Coronavirus Act 2020 - but to much smaller expressions of church, meeting outdoors. With groups of six in England (or eight in Scotland) now being able to gather outdoors at a social distance, is it now time for churches to put their energies not into Zoom meetings but into multiple face-to-face gatherings in much smaller numbers?

Photo by Nandhu Kumar from Pexels

The case for a rapid pivot to smaller expressions of church could be made on several grounds:

• The people of God desperately need face-to-face fellowship. From the point of view of pastoral care alone, most Christians and church leaders would agree that it is desirable that we see each other in real life in order to enjoy fellowship. Where this has not been possible, we are grateful for tools of technology that can at least provide some measure of human contact. The ideal, however, remains a gathered church in person - the body of Christ in the flesh (so to speak). Where two or three gather in his name, Christ is present in the midst.

• The opportunity is safe and easy to implement. Just as creative minds were quickly able to apply practical solutions to running online Sunday services, we can now quickly move to weekly small gatherings of church members outdoors. These can take place in parks, gardens, on beaches and in the urban environment - anywhere outdoors where people will not be competing with traffic. We can limit the numbers and maintain social distance so that the gatherings are safe and comply with the law. A typical church of 100 members could expect to launch between 10 and 15 such groups next week. 

• Traditional church services may not be possible till 2021. Research is showing that indoor groups of people are high-risk for covid transmission. Activities such as singing and physical contact increase this risk further. Pubs and nightclubs are high-risk environments; church services are not far behind in terms of their capacity to spread the virus between members. The outbreak in Korea was initially centred around a church. In Germany, churches have been able to partly reopen but congregational singing is banned (!) Against this backdrop, are church leaders genuinely committed to running Zoom services for another 12 months or more? And if a vaccine is never found, what then? Do we have a plan for socially-distanced indoor church services that provide the level of fellowship that Christians need or want?

• Small groups at their best can be effective in disciple-making. In his compelling book John Wesley's Class Meeting: A Model for Making Disciples, Michael Henderson demonstrates the genius of the early Methodist movement in its ability to transform the lives of urban working class members who had been largely neglected by the established church. At the heart of this process was not only public preaching but a highly-developed ecosystem of close discipleship centred on the class meeting. It is fashionable in some middle-class churches to downplay the small group. The reality, however, is that there has never been a gospel-centred movement in modern British history that has made disciples of the urban poor as effectively as early Methodism. It is interesting that Wesley's class meetings, gathering weekly for fellowship, personal accountability and mutual instruction, were limited to six members each - the same number currently permitted to gather outdoors in England under current lockdown measures.  

• Small groups would benefit from input from equipping leadership. Just as the Jerusalem apostles taught 'publicly and from house to house', the small expressions of church that could start outdoors tomorrow should be accessible and accountable to those with gifts to teach, equip and serve the members. If there were no longer a need for church leaders to be planning, running and evaluating online services, could their time and energy not be better spent visiting a small group most days to support and give input? Again, in a church of 100 members, a full-time leadership team of two could realistically visit the 10 to 15 small groups almost every week if they wanted. The modern Wesleyian circuit rider already exists and is probably sitting in an office planning the online Sunday service. A pivot to a radical small group model would be possible, if there were a will to do it. 

• Small groups can sustain mission. I would not suggest that these groups of six to eight should try and replicate church services; nor should they be focused on the seeker. But, by nurturing the believers and providing fellowship and accountability, they can help to sustain Christians in their ongoing life as witnesses for Christ in their homes, families, streets and places of work. These opportunities are multiplying during the current pandemic.  There is no reason of course why those with the gifts to do so could not also start small groups for seekers that meet outdoors at a social distance. 

• The summer months provide a window of opportunity. Although June is looking a bit sketchy weather-wise in Britain, at least we are not yet facing the pandemic in January. By starting an outdoor small group ecosystem now - this week - churches can refine and learn best practice while it is still dry-ish. We can then also plan creatively for the autumn and beyond. Two principles that may help this process are time flexibility and creativity. As the weather turns, groups should plan to meet between rain showers or on dry-ish days, rather than being restricted to a rigid weekly time slot. This of course is easy to do with only six people. We can also learn from pubs which have responded to the ban on indoor smoking by implementing new ways of defining 'outdoors' through the legal and judicious use of gazebos and awnings.   

I'm ready to pivot. How about you? 

Universal Basic Income and the Pandemic

Amid the economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 Pandemic, calls for Universal Basic Income are becoming louder. From its origins as a fringe idea, UBI is starting to become an economic measure of choice among some on the economic left in several western countries.

The logic and the appeal of UBI in a time of crisis are easy to see. If during these remarkable times the state is going to throw eye-watering sums of money at supporting working people's incomes - not to mention direct support for the businesses that employ them - why not target that state aid where it will be most effective? By putting a regular amount of hard cash directly into the hands of every citizen without a process of application or means-testing (so the argument goes) the state's resources will both keep people afloat financially and stimulate the economy towards a strong and sustainable recovery after the crisis ends. The goal of directly redistributing wealth is seen as an additional positive outcome by those on the economic left.  

Original proponents of UBI such as Dutch writer Rutger Bregman insist that the actual amount given to every citizen should be generous enough to sustain the individual at a basic level of existence without the need for them to work - unless they wanted to improve their lifestyle beyond the basic.  British think tank Compass, on the other hand, has recommended more modest levels of state funding for its own UBI proposal: weekly tax-free payments of £60 to every adult, £175 for pensioners and £40 for each child under 18, accompanied by the abolition of the state pension and child benefit.

I share with the proponents of UBI the aim of a more equal society. I do not however see Universal Basic Income as an effective way of achieving that desired outcome. My concerns range from the theoretical to the practical. 

• UBI confuses income with assets. Assets are items which can generate economic value - to a household or a business. Assets can be tangible, such as land, property, stock and equipment as well as less tangible such as shares, bonds, copyrights and trademarks. Proponents of UBI tend to frame the discussion in terms of income being used to pay for basic necessities such as food and utilities and as a way of simplifying the welfare state. Such an income may well be appreciated but does not in itself create fundamental structural change to an economy in which assets are not widely distributed. 
• As a Distributist, I see the need for workers owning the means of production as being more important than them having a basic state income. A democracy built upon worker-ownership would see as many people as possible owning economically productive assets. This fundamental economic principle is key to establishing a more equal society. In that sense, I would argue for Universal Basic Assets rather than Universal Basic Income. Times of economic crisis such as the current pandemic should be used not to bail out corporations at risk of financial collapse but to nationalise them, stabilise them and then quickly re-distribute them to those who work in them.  
• UBI breaks the connection between income and work. Some would argue that in the age of automation, that is precisely the point. Bregman for instance envisages a future society in which robots will carry out the vast majority of repetitive work tasks and humans will lead lives of creative leisure underpinned economically by UBI generated by the automated economy. Even if such a society were achievable on a practical level (it may be), I would have concerns for the breaking of the ancient association between labour and material gain. Such a connection has a deep psychological, cultural and even spiritual history. It is unclear how we would cope in the long term as a society with a sudden break in the association between what we do and what we gain. We may discover that UBI unintentionally becomes an example of the Alienation of Labour on steroids.      
• UBI renders working people dependent on economic elites. Some argue that it is impossible to fund a Universal Basic Income. My own view is that it could be done through taxation. This means, in practice, that owners of the means of production along with those who choose to work above the UBI subsistence level, would fund those who choose a life of learning and leisure instead of the 9-to-5 working life. At one level, Bregman argues, this is a very liberating scenario. More profoundly, however, UBI dis-empowers people rather than empowers them by turning us all into donor recipients. Such donations would depend upon the political machinations of the state, lobbied by powerful corporate interests. Levels of UBI would therefore be constantly under review. Concerns about levels of public borrowing combined with efficiency savings would be used to justify keeping UBI at subsistence levels. Citizens would therefore become even more dependent on the largesse of the economic elites than we are at present - and even more so than our feudal peasant ancestors who at least owned the land from which they produced their livelihoods.    

Times of economic crisis are often catalysts for significant change. Processes that were developing at a certain pace can be accelerated overnight.  UBI may find that its time has come. My own view however is that we would do better to see a radical distribution of businesses and other assets as the preferred economic outcome of the current crisis. 

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