In the beginning of 2020, I had a vision. It was a vision to begin doing a lot more outreach ministry for my church in hopes of growing. I had a few things in the works and a lot more on deck and then COVID hit, and it all seemed to grind to a halt. I was disappointed. For a while I even questioned whether or not I had even heard from God, or if practicalities just kicked in, but now I see something different. When all this started, there were skips I didn’t have. COVID was a crash course for me in diplomacy. People on all sides of the aisle had opinions on how all of this should be handled. Now to be clear, compared to some of the horror stories I’ve heard from colleagues, my congregation was a dream, but even so I had to learn to be a bit more diplomatic than at times I wanted to be. The reason for that is simple, when this is over, what will matter more than whether or not I was right about all things COVID, is that the church is still together and moving forward when the COVID smoke clears.
Secondly, I had some very rudimentary video skills and had only ever used Zoom once in my life. All of the sudden I was leading Zoom meetings and learning how to master making videos. These are skills that cannot help but to help as we move forward and had developing those skills not been “made a necessity” I would have found other things to do, and not gained these essential skills for ministry in the 21st century.
Truth be known, God didn’t give me a time table for when all the things I envisioned in 2020 had to take place. What felt like disappointment may have been merely a delay to give me more training so I could better accomplish God’s purposes. When disappointment hits,. it’s really easy to wallow in it, but what if instead of wallowing, we looked what could be done and started to learn new skills so we are better equipped to do the work?
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