Lamentations & Vaccinations: Pastor Dan Nold Offers Perspective for Tough Times

I don’t know anyone better qualified than Pastor Dan Nold to offer helpful insights to Happy Valley residents who have struggled during 2020 and 2021.

Nold holds both a master’s degree and a doctorate from Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He’s one of our community’s most senior pastors, having led Calvary Church for more than 27 years. That multi-site body not only meets in a hub location near Boalsburg but also in downtown State College, Millheim, Lewistown and Tyrone.

And if all of that wasn’t enough, the burly South Dakota native is well-positioned to understand our so-called “football culture.” Nold played college football for Bethel University, an NCAA Division III school.    

I have previously interviewed Dan on several occasions, most notably in late March of 2020 (while he was still recovering from COVID-19) and then a few weeks later (when he had overcome the virus).  On those occasions and others, I was impressed by his ability to offer perspective on our national and local struggles.

With manifold uncertainties still facing the Centre Region, I presented the veteran clergyman with some uncomfortable questions during a recent conversation: How does he feel about the current atmosphere of our community? How does he feel about the debate between pro-vaccination and anti-vaccination voices? And why does he believe God allowed the Delta variant to challenge all of us with a second round of COVID battles?  

Dan, we’re a year-and-a-half into this COVID battle, and things haven’t gotten that much easier.  How would you describe the current mood in Happy Valley?  

Nold:  Bill, that’s a great question. I posted on Facebook that I lament and that I’m also filled with hope.  So, for me, it’s not one or the other. The lament part is related to how easily we’ve been divided as a community and as a nation in the last 18 months. That’s a deep disappointment. Thinking back to last week, the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, there was a sense of going through a difficult time together and how that made us more united. But now, going through this time together has made us more divided. 

So if you’re asking about the temperature of our community, I don’t think the division is gone. I think in some ways it’s increased. Goodness, you have school districts all over the country—and here locally—up in arms about masks and vaccination. We’re way too easily divided. Not just disagreeing about what’s right but feeling the permission to despise, dismiss and even hate those who disagree with us. 

Do you feel there’s a common root to all our divisions over economics, racial relations and even perspectives on health and science?  

Nold:  I don’t know. At the risk of getting too philosophical, it feels to me like the common root is that we all want to be in control. You know, “I don’t want anybody to be able to tell me what to do.” That’s not a left or a right thing, that’s an everybody thing to me. 

One of our most deeply held values is freedom. But where do you think we should draw the line between freedom and control? 

Nold:  There was more of a sense, I think, in years past of freedom—but not my freedom at the expense of you. There was a sense of community. We all know that in any community, my freedoms must have some sort of limit in terms of how they affect you. And if there’s 300 million of us, I don’t have the freedom to do everything I want to do.

Compared to the weighty issues of our day, sports might seem trivial.  But I liked fellow columnist Mike Poorman’s observation that Penn State’s win over Wisconsin would “most assuredly” offer a boost to this community. As a former college football player, what do you think about the value of sports during this time of chaos?

Nold:  One of the most helpful books that I read this year was “The Search to Belong” by Joseph Myers. He builds on Edward Hall’s work on space and culture. Myers talks about each space as a legitimate space of belonging. There’s a public space, a social space, a personal space and a private space.  All four of those spaces of belonging are helpful in creating a community. In the public space, you’re connected by something outside of yourself, and you might not even know the people in that space, but you still experience a measure of belonging. This is what happens for football fans. There is definitely something to the sense of community that a team creates for us. Even if I don’t know you, I might recognize your face because we sit in the same section at Beaver Stadium. But even as a fan in the stands, there is a sense of community and belonging that we experience. And if we win…that’s even better.
Obviously, racial understanding is an area that needs special attention if we want to create a more united community. I interviewed you and Harold McKenzie (pastor of Unity Church of Jesus Christ) about 15 months ago, and I’m wondering if you think we’ve made progress since then in Happy Valley. 

Nold:   Well, I think there’s been some good things happen, good conversations, steps of progress. I think some people see the issues more clearly or care about the issues more deeply. But I also think that, for me personally, the situation can feel less urgent because of distance in time and space. I can set the situation aside and my life goes back to normal. That’s not good.

The more time passes since the death of George Floyd, for example?

Nold:  Yes, or many other examples. So I need to keep bringing myself back to these issues by books that I read and conversations that I have.
Is there a particular book that you feel like everybody in central Pennsylvania should read? 

Nold:  A number of books have been helpful to me, but one that has been really important is “The Color of Compromise” by Jemar Tisby.  It gave me an opportunity to look at history, at times when the church could have taken opportunities to move things forward and didn’t. We could have stood up for Black brothers and sisters, but we didn’t.

Is there any particular development going on locally that gives you hope—a group, a partnership, a dialogue?

Nold:  The group where I’m most connected is RUN (the Racial Unity Network) which Unity Church and Calvary started initially, but which now includes folks from other churches. That’s a group where good conversations are happening and people are speaking out. But for me, the most instructive thing is my ongoing relationship with Harold. There’s a freedom to say what needs to be said between the two of us, for both of our growth. No book has shaped me more than my relationship with him. 

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of poverty in our region, although folks in State College might not see it.

Nold:  We’re a multi-site church, so we are ministering in Tyrone and Millheim and Lewistown in addition to our gathering places in Boalsburg and State College. There are levels of economic difficulty outside State College. I mean, it’s called “Happy Valley” for a reason—because of the economic security that the university brings. And the unfortunate reality is that we tend to think that the way we live is normal. We’re not so aware of people living in the margins, good people who need a hand.  

One of the great joys of being at Calvary during the last 18 months has been seeing how generous people have been, even during a colossal time of struggle. The first thing we set up was a community relief fund. And out of that, we gave money to nonprofits, to other churches and to individuals who were struggling. Somewhere between $150,000 and $200,000 in non-budgeted funds have been given, and there’s still money going out.

We started our conversation by talking about reasons to lament. But what do you see these days that’s giving you hope? 

Nold:  I see a stirring in people’s hearts for something more. Something more than politics, something more than the normal ways that we’ve done things. I think it’s a hunger for God, but others might just describe it as a hunger for something deeper. But my hope is not based on some number of people deciding they’re going to go all-in for Jesus. My hope is in the fact that we have an all-in God. He’s my unwavering certainty in the midst of times of uncertainty.

I also see some hope in the way the church—and that’s my domain—is starting to say, “Maybe there’s a better way than the old way in which we did things.” Churches are going to be forced to reckon with that question because a lot of people aren’t coming back to church. I think there’s a good number of people who are concerned about the virus. But I also think it’s a matter of habit. Everybody says it takes at least 30 days to form a habit, and we had 200 or 300, maybe even 500, days to form the habit of not gathering in a building for church. Regardless of the reasons, I recently saw a stat that suggests we could see one in every five churches close in the next few years. 

Has Calvary Church, your church, experienced some of this drop in attendance? 

Nold:  Yes, absolutely. I don’t think there are too many churches that haven’t. You know, in the American church we have viewed the success of a church as being based on how many people gather in your building on Sunday morning. That’s the metric that everybody uses. But after COVID hit, when we couldn’t count attendance as a measure of success, we started trying to determine how many people are actually engaged in the mission of the church. That is, how many people were giving, leading, serving, loving their neighbors, praying? We had 2,000 to 3,000 people at that time who considered Calvary their church (among all five meeting locations), with an average attendance of 1,400 each Sunday. But when we looked at actual commitment and engagement, we saw that we weren’t really a church of 2,000 to 3,000.  We were actually a church of 200 to 300 with a really large fan base. 

Of course, everybody loves fans, but God has so much more for us. So we’re trying to change our perspective on what really constitutes the growth of the church and what are we aiming for. Are we really changing our community, changing our neighborhoods and helping to change our world? As we’ve been saying over and over again, maybe God is less interested in how well we gather and more interested in how well we scatter—loving our neighbors, providing toilet paper when there was none to buy or dropping off a meal when a neighbor was quarantined.  

Do you have a particular spiritual perspective on why God has allowed this Delta variant to develop and give us round two of COVID? Did we fail to learn some lesson from round one? 

Nold:  If you believe God is omnipotent, and I do, then obviously you believe he could have stopped it. But I tend to focus less on his intention for allowing this to happen or stopping it and more on his sovereign ability to grow us in the midst of any trial, any storm. He has this amazing creative ability to work in the midst of the most difficult of times. If there are still things that we haven’t learned yet, I think they would include a greater sense of humility, a greater sense of how little in life we can control and maybe a greater heart capacity to love our neighbors and even the people who disagree with us.

You pastor a five-location church with people who hold varying views on the issues of our day.  What is your personal position on COVID vaccinations?

Nold:  Great question. I’ll say first of all that I’ve talked to a lot of good people who, for a variety of reasons, have decided not to be vaccinated. Some because of health, some because of uncertainty. My wife and I both had COVID, and we decided to be vaccinated as soon as we could. Yes, there was some uncertainty because of the speed with which it was developed, but there’s always uncertainty in life. Both Lynn and I felt this was the best decision; It wasn’t much of a question for us. 

But I think all of us need to show more grace toward others and a willingness to understand where each other is coming from. Our unwillingness to hear the other side—whichever side that is—has made everything more difficult. We can’t be saying, “You’re a monster if you do this” or “You’re an idiot if you do that.”

I have encouraged people to get vaccinated when they’ve asked me for my take on the issue, but I want the church to be a place that can mend fences and love people. During a recent service, I talked about a common verse (John 3:16) that even those who don’t go to church will probably recognize. It simply says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” 

My question is this:  is there anybody left out of “whoever?” Vaccinated, unvaccinated or anti-vax, Democrat or Republican?  Is there anybody left out of “whoever?” That’s where I have to keep coming back.  If nobody’s left out of “whoever,” then God loves them and that’s also my calling.