Dear colleagues,

Events are moving so quickly it’s hard to know what to write. The covid-19 pandemic is causing significant disruption, uncertainty, and fear. Some of you are self-quarantining and many of you are dealing with disrupted plans, distance from family and friends. Please know that the college community remains a resource to you in this time of social distancing. I’ve been in touch with many of you in recent days. You can continue to reach out to me and other members of the college staff. We are working to replace college events with online gatherings.

Last Friday, Dio graduate Robert Warren was interviewed on the afternoon CBC Montreal program Let’s Go. Robert is now the vicar of All Saints Anglican Church in Rome and he was being interviewed about his work in recent weeks to put services online. But he also managed to communicate another point: in times of crisis, part of the value of the church is that it is a “small, local association.” Through these networks, members of his church are able to check in one another, care for one another, look out for one another in a way that a massive organization could not. They cannot look after everyone in Rome but they can look after one another (in appropriately distant fashion). For people who are alone, who are sick, who are disabled, this can make a tremendous difference. He had this great line: “When things get tough, that’s when the church gets going.”

Many of us dealt with the cancellation of church services yesterday and some of us experimented with online services. I appreciated what I was able to participate in but it also felt strange not to be in a church building on a Sunday. No matter how much I may teach and think otherwise, I’m realizing how my default understanding of “church” is still shaped by a particular building, a particular kind of worship, and a particular day of the week.

Covid-19 will change many things about the church, both in the short term and in the long term. Perhaps it will help shift my perceptions of what church is and what it is about. Yes, it is about Sunday morning worship. But fundamentally it is about a quality of relationship among a group of people united by their faith in the risen Christ. These coming weeks will be an opportunity to live into those relationships in ways many of us have never before experienced.

Faithfully yours,
Jesse

This message was written by Principal Jesse Zink for this week’s Wingèd Ox, a weekly news digest distributed to the college community.