Masked & Socially-Distanced Outdoor Discussions
Our team is now teaching and doing Bible studies via Zoom, but we also have many international friends who want to meet in-person outdoors, with appropriate social-distancing and mask-wearing procedures. Many of you may feel this is too risky, or that we are acting recklessly. Others of you may feel we are acting in fear by even wearing a mask at all. This is a confusing time, and we are doing our best to listen to the Holy Spirit's leading in our ministry choices.
To those who feel we are endangering others, I would respond that those without Christ are already in eternal danger greater than any virus, and the example of Jesus and the apostles models for us a Christian life which is full of danger (think of Paul's persecutions, shipwrecks, beatings, imprisonments, and eleven of the twelve apostles eventually martyred, etc.).
To those who feel we are acting in fear, I would say that, like Paul, we become all things to all people in order to win as many as possible. To those under the Law, Paul became like them, even though he knew he was not under the Law anymore (1 Cor. 9). Some may call us weak in faith for even wearing a mask, but we are acting in love, to remove any stumbling block or barrier from before people. So that's our balancing act. Romans 14 is key in this scenario: we must neither condemn nor look down upon each other in our opinions on COVID-19.