Covid Chaos

So, March 22nd 2020 Live Oak Church had a great day. We installed our Elders and Deacons and were beginning a great surge forward with momentum. Live Oak Church didn’t explode onto the scene. It has been a slow and sluggish path. However, we were finally gaining some momentum…then it hit.

The governor got on TV and strongly suggested of groups no more than 10 to meet together because of this growing pandemic called Covid-19.

The next week we were having church online…we thought it might last 2-4 weeks. It lasted 12. We had to rethink Life Groups…if you bought stock in Zoom on March 21st you made a fortune. We had to rethink worship. We had to rethink connection. We basically had to Re Launch Live Oak Church digitally.

Then it happened. The governor got back on TV and gave us permission to get back to life. That Sunday was a glorious day! We actually had as many as we did before we shut down! For three Sundays it seemed like we were going to get back to normal. We were about to relaunch our kids ministry when that blasted governor got back on TV. The cases spiked. Today we had to go BACK to worship online.

God’s word says Hope deferred makes the heart sick…well man I am sick. It is difficult because I don’t know how to strategize this. There is no whiteboard session that can figure this out. We don’t know how long this will affect us. We don’t know what it will do to the economy of our congregation so we have to be extra cautious spending money, which is frustrating because the needs are growing in our community as well.

When you train to be a church planter, you are trained to be flexible…you gotta be like Gumby. However, nothing has trained us for this. This goes beyond staffing issues, building issues, conflict issues. This is Covid-19.

The only thing that makes me not quit and move to Greenland is that this didn’t catch God off guard. So, there must be a plan in it? Right? So, what do we do?

Remember God is sovereign
Remember that I am not and am prone to overthinking
Remember to plan with pencil not with pen
Remember the mission is to Love God Love People and Live Boldly so do that however you can do that, whenever you can do that, wherever you can do that.