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Father Roger Gustafson, pastor of St. Hilary Church in Tiburon created an online Sunday message series called The Upside of Lockdown, designed to help parishioners or viewers focus on what they might want to start, stop, or keep as a result of living with the coronavirus pandemic this past year. (Photo by Christina Gray/Catholic San Francisco)
Feb. 4, 2021
Christina Gray
Catholic San Francisco
Though the end of the pandemic is still a tiny light at the end of a long tunnel, Father Roger Gustafson wants the lives of St. Hilary parishioners to have been changed for the better by it.
The pastor of the Tiburon parish began 2021 with a 6-week online Sunday message series called “The Upside of Lockdown,” a program designed to invite the community to discover the “spiritual upside of being in confinement.”
Vaccines are rolling out slowly in California. The state’s regional stay-at-home order was lifted on Jan. 25 after nearly a full year of on-and-off public health restrictions affecting how we live, work, worship, socialize and educate our children.
“With all those ups and downs, maybe you haven’t thought about what you could take away from this last year,” Father Gustafson says in the first episodes of the series.
“The thing is, if you want to maintain a positive growth mindset in life it’s always a good thing to ask yourself three questions about any experience," he said. "What do I want to stop doing, what do I want to start doing, and what do I want to keep doing?”
“There are many examples of how people’s lives have improved,” Father Gustafson told Catholic San Francisco Feb. 2 about life in lockdown. Family savings accounts, for instance, have doubled according to national surveys. Some have found isolation has given them time to focus on relationships. Working from home is challenging especially for families with working parents and school-age children. But the time together not spent in a daily commute has been an unexpected luxury.
The first three weeks have focused on the home, money and ‘making a plan’ for life instead of living day to day.
The episodes are lighthearted and endearing, with Father Gustofson sharing stories from his own life.
While the topic is of the times, he said, the presentation with its professionally-shot video introduction, graphics and music is something he's been doing since he was a pastor at St. Brendan's in San Francisco.
“I preach in what’s called a 'message series format,'” he said. He takes a topic and delves into it over a 4-6 week time period on Sundays.
It's something he adopted from Church of the Nativity in Archdiocese of Baltimore, founders of the “Rebuilt” movement. The parish in decline spent five years studying the techniques used in the fastest growing churches in America, said Father Gustafson.
One of the things these churches had is common was preaching in a message series style, he said.
“It keeps people focused on a topic, you get spiritual momentum going from week to week, and it keeps people interested.”
Father Gustafson said he and his staff including director of development Lisa Rosenlund brainstormed topics for 2021. The Upside of Shutdown, was a more spontaneous choice after the state went into its second statewide lockdown in November.
He said each episode, or homily, takes about 10 hours from start to finish.
“It takes a whole lot of time,” he said and that’s a part of the Rebuilt philosophy. “The most important thing we do is the Sunday experience. If we don’t get that right we are not getting the foundation right.”
He absolutely believes it is worth the time involved when asked if it has showed up in attendence.
Like many other Catholic churches, St. Hilary's Mass attendance had been declining, said Father Gustafson. "And now, in Covid, when you count the viewers and the people who are showing up here for live Mass, we have increased by 25%.”