The Church in our Post-COVID World 

Sally Nelson of St Hild College contributed an article for the Autumn 2020 edition of Baptists Together magazine in which she explained how, shaped by Jesus, the Christian story integrates pain rather than rejecting it. This means the Church can be a hopeful presence in a traumatised nation - but it needs to be able to listen as well as speak.

For further reflection

• Who is heard? Who has the opportunity to be heard in our churches? Are there people who are not heard? Are there voices we are filtering out or drowning out that we should be reclaiming?
• How can we listen better to those voices? There is no ‘one size fits all’ response, it all has to be worked out contextually. Look around - what voices are here? What voices are around my church, my community? How can we facilitate that conversation?
• We are Jesus-shaped, we are the body of Christ. Jesus’ story shapes our story. We are called to do that with our hearts, our minds, our souls and our strength - so include voices of people who have really thought deeply about these things theologically, alongside perhaps people who have never thought about them before, and everything in between. That’s Baptist, that’s congregational - and to study Jesus, learning to love him better is always a good thing.