# @breyeschow on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CUOFatQh6xU
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/18935024-breyeschow-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/a622ebab2e.jpg
- **Posted:** 2021-09-24T21:50:03.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Bruce Reyes-Chow (@breyeschow) — https://gondola.cc/breyeschow

## Caption

As people don't return to church, we must accept the reality that obligation, habit, and the depth of current relationships are not enough to stay connected. 

If we can shed our ecclesiastical egos, we can receive this as an opportunity to build intimate friendships, implement just structures, and commit to organizing life-giving interactions. 

The time to embrace and embody joyful and radical change is now.

✌️🐝🐑

Some food for thought as we navigate the impact of 18 months of pandemic life. While congregations have done their best to keep the current community together, this time has also magnified people's genuine connections to community. 

Some places have certainly seen greater impact and even growth, but many others have seen how tenuous people's commitments are to the current community as it now exists.

This does not have to be the end — though some communities may discern that it has lived a faithful life and it's time to end — but an embraced awakening. This time of pandemic has been revelatory as it has magnified questions of meaning, commitment, and place, not only in the church, but throughout society. 

I firmly believe that congregational life can and should be a place to BE and DO church, we "just" need to be humble enough to shift, change, and adapt without resentment — but with joy. This will mean letting go of decades of structural patterns, risking resources of time and money, and creating space for community to be built that may not be our preferred way of being. 

If this is to become reality, we will have to be more honest, humble, and open with one another AND  trust the Spirit more than we have probably ever been able to in to in the past.

I offer these up, not out of simply wanting the church to survive, but out of gratitude for what the church has been in my life and a deep and genuine excitement about what it could be in the future.

As I end my weekly benediction, "It's all that easy and it's all that hard."

#pcusa #elca #ucc #umc #abc #church #leadership #hope

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 258
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- **Comments:** 9

## Credits

| Name | Username | Profile | Role |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Bruce Reyes-Chow | @breyeschow | https://gondola.cc/breyeschow | Writer/Author |

## Tags

abc, pcusa, elca, hope, ucc, leadership, church, umc

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