I was in Houston for a couple of days this past week visiting some friends from seminary. It was the first time I’d been at an airport or sat on an airplane since New Years Day 2020.

I’m not too proud to admit that I was a little nervous about flying in the midst of the Omicron scare, but we’d bought the tickets before all this happened. We to visit our friend Mike, who’d resigned from his position at First Christian Houston in April last spring and is facing some challenges finding another job. So, even though it probably wasn’t the best time to travel—especially given the dire predictions about the coming ice storm—we decided we still needed to see Mike.

As I was sitting in the airport, visualizing all the trillions of viruses floating around in the air trying to defeat my N95 mask, I thought about what a strange time we live in. Everything feels a little less certain right now, doesn’t it? Of course, “right now” can include all of the last six years or so. Even so, the world of late feels, if not more, disrupted, then at least a full-on continuation of the disruption we’ve felt down in our bones for some time now.

We’re experiencing inflation in ways we haven’t for decades. Store shelves are often empty. We’re still having to wear masks when we leave our homes. This time last year, we were convinced that the vaccine roll-out meant that we’d soon see the last of Covid. But here we are still wondering when all this is going to end and how many people will get sick and/or die before it’s all over.

Not only that, it’s 2022, and we’re hearing about book burnings in the United States—seeing side-by-side pictures of fundamentalists in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee and Nazis in Berlin, Germany throwing books on a pyre. These are many of the same people who had just recently banned the time-honored graphic novel Maus from the eighth-grade curriculum—apparently not seeing the irony of banning a book … about the Holocaust. You can’t make this stuff up.

Every day there seems to be some new revelation about how the previous administration actively plotted to overthrow the government. White supremacy is on the rise in (did I mention?) 2022! Many Black people feel no safer in their own country now than they did sixty years ago—as the death of yet another young Black man at the hands of Minneapolis Police clearly shows.

In our own state legislature, a super-majority is seeking the legislation that would tie the hands of teachers when it comes to what they teach and school administrators as they strive to keep kids safe while providing a good education. They’ve introduced legislation that would prevent charitable organizations from raising money and paying for cash bail—charitable organizations like, oh say, Douglass Boulevard Christian Church.

I know I’ve said this quite a bit, but the world feels like it’s got one foot dangling over the edge of the abyss.

People in churches all over are feeling the same sense of potential chaos. As preacher types do, as we roamed the streets of Houston, my buddies and I started talking about how our churches were doing, not to mention the state of the larger church.

You may have heard the church has seen better days. It’s true. The Pandemic has kept us apart for so long there’s a fear that once we’re in the clear, people will have moved on from church—found something better to do with their time. Heck, it’s an open question once this Pandemic is over whether many churches will have moved on—or, if not moved on, then bought a cemetery plot and finally accepted the writing on the wall.

And it’s not just because people are staying away. Finances are tenuous in so many congregations. Ministers are leaving the ministry in record numbers because of burnout.

You’ve heard about the great resignation? People are climbing over each other to leave their jobs to find something new—searching for more money, more respect, more exciting jobs. … something that doesn’t suck their soul. CNBC reports that almost one-quarter of the workforce will look to change careers in 2022.

As we sat drinking coffee, my buddy Mike said (as though it just occurred to him), “I’m pretty sure I’m part of the great resignation.”

But lest we think this trauma is only a problem for smaller churches, I want to make sure we understand that even huge churches are finding the path forward much less clear. While we were riding around Houston on the way to breakfast, we drove past Lakewood Church, you know, Joel Osteen’s church. And for whatever reason that makes me do such things, I said, “I’d like to see that place.” I mean, they bought the Compaq Center where the Houston Rockets used to play and converted it into a church building. What does that even look like?

So, we stopped. Unfortunately, all the doors were locked. But as we got ready to go, my friend, Mark saw a buzzer with a speaker—so he pushed it. Mark told the disembodied voice that crackled out that we were from out of town and we’d like to look at the building. The head of church security—he actually wore a badge—told us that we could walk around the upper level, but the sanctuary was being prepared for the young adult worship service.

So, we went in and walked around—snuck into a few bathrooms and pounded on the walls to see if, like the plumber who, right before Christmas, found $600,000 in a bathroom wall, we too could find some money laying around. $600,000 is $600,000.

Of course, three ministers in somebody else’s church building have questions—especially if that church belongs to Joel Osteen.

How do they take care of parking? They have an arrangement with a parking garage.

How big is the sanctuary? 16.7 thousand seats.