FERGUSON: I never thought I would ever say praise God for the technology, but my wife
told me yesterday, I think that our son, our third son is a minister of a smaller congregation.
They had their midweek prayer service.
He set up a YouTube channel for the congregation.
So it's a small church without resources that other churches have but there are ways and
means and amazingly God has given us ways and means no other generation has ever had
for such a time as this.
Other generations have known much worse than this, much, much worse than this and they
never had the technology.
Other thing that strikes me is when H.B. was speaking that I immediately... as he was talking
about waking up congregation and his hurt.
I thought, yeah, Psalm 42 and 43, I used to lead the people in the house of God.
Somebody was there before H.B. was there.
I guess we could go on until the end of the day just finding scriptures that speak to
our present situation in ways we didn't really notice those resources where there for us
in scripture.
So here's something that just comes to mind.
The church that Derek is a pastor of, we had shared ministry together, there was one of
the elders in the congregation who phoned everybody in the congregation on their birthday.
Now, if he had done that 50 years ago, he would have been bankrupt because you used
to have to pay for every single phone call you made, you could do that on your phone
plan.
Every congregation does not need a tremendous amount of organization for everybody in the
congregation to be phoned, especially those who are most prone to sickness or have least
mobility to say, not what can I do for you, but you will find X, Y, and Z hanging on your
front door because I left it there 10 minutes ago.
There are... it's such an opportunity for us to have the imagination to do the simple
things that when we actually do them, we think, why were we not doing this before?
PARSONS: I think in many churches it has been not ministry as usual, but I think in many
churches it has been service as usual.
John, I think even among our diaconate in the church, the deacons have just continued to
serve in the same ways that you always do with a heightened alert to certain widows
and those who are high risk, making calls to individuals.
I just spoke with a lady... left a message with one of our dear ladies in the church
whose husband went in for an emergency appendectomy a couple nights ago, it happened on her birthday.
Making calls and doing what needs to be done using, though, still I think the necessary
precautions and being very careful about our contact with others and taking the necessary
precautions, being careful not simply for ourselves, but for others.
This is not just about self protection and for the sake of our families, of course, as
we all I'm sure understand this is... as we're striving to protect ourselves so that we do
not transmit something to others.
This is really about just loving our neighbor as ourselves and putting that into practice
and all these various measures.