Church Lessons from The Eclipse
by Ashley Graham-Wilcox
This week, I had the opportunity to travel to upstate New York and be in the path of totality for the solar eclipse. Standing on the quiet shore of Lake Ontario with my 10-year old son, 24-year old nephew, and (age-redacted) sister — plus a slew of her friends and neighbors — for 3.5 minutes of simultaneous sunrise and sunset was goosebump-inducing, community-binding, and, yes, mind-blowing.
Since then, my mind keeps floating back to how to best reflect and remember those minutes. So, of course, I turned to Google and asked it what I could be learning from the eclipse — besides what a tiny speck I am on this fragile earth, our island home.
There’s some good stuff in this article about leadership in the workplace from Forbes that highlights lessons from the eclipse: How To Communicate A Vision That Evokes Awe And Wonder:
Pursuing significance is a fundamental human drive; nowhere is its power more evident than in crafting a vision. It's not just about setting goals but understanding why they matter to the organization and the world.
For the additional purposes of our community at Caffeinated Church, here are four lessons I’d add:
Secular Moments Can Make Sacred Connections: The eclipse wasn’t just a meaningful experience, it had major economic impact, and try telling me our churches don’t need both of those things… How are we as churches engaging with our community, in the real world, with secular events, to create connection and meaning and, yes, drive engagement and dollars. For the next eclipse (or, say, pandemic), how can you position your church as the place your community looks to first for context and community?
Make a Plan: The hardest thing to grasp about a total solar eclipse is the once-in-a-lifetime, fleeting, finiteness of it all. Yes, I booked travel to get there and planned a big chunk of life around that, but it was with 10 minutes to go that I thought “a timelapse might be cool,” without giving myself the time or research to consider what angle would be most interesting — or that I’d then be without a camera for the event. And there’s no do-over! (Not until I get to Spain in 2026, that is.) This is why it’s so valuable to have communications committees, proofreaders, and event run-throughs: To catch everything we can before there’s no do-over.
It Takes One Experience to Uncover a Believer: In our community of 15 or so eclipse-watchers, the person who was most awed after had been the most dubious going in. But with that meaningful experience, he’s shouting from the rooftops. So, every experience at our church can matter. Everyone who walks through the door can be changed.
Don’t Yuck Someone Else’s Yum: A meme sticks out to me, of someone who asked his flight going to Little Rock who was chasing the eclipse, and nearly 100% raised their hand. His caption was (something along the lines of): “Don’t you people have anything better to do?” And the comment section was flooded with all the reasons people were interested in the eclipse, overwhelmingly declaring: Just let us live! Yes, it can be fun to be a contrarian and to go against the grain, and there’s also power in giving one another space and grace to find what we enjoy — and to even nerd out about it. Any community is built from different interests and abilities, and even if we don’t understand someone’s passion doesn’t give us the right to mock it. In a church context, that might mean writing blurbs about events you don’t “get,” or sharing photos with groups in all versions of their “Easter best.” It’s not about “We welcome you [to be just like us].”, it’s “We welcome you.” Full stop.
Were you moved by Monday’s eclipse? What lessons can we take into our church work?
