Reflections from COVID-19 Season:
I
hope these reflections are accurate, in step with the Spirit, and are valuable
to your consideration of the “new normal” whatever that will be.
Mark
2:22 “No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will
burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one
puts new wine into fresh wineskins.”
1. The scope of
one’s influence is no longer bounded by geography. This has
been the case for many years, but most of us are just discovering it. My
friend, Woody Thorne, gave me a copy of The World is Flat many
years ago and I consumed it, believed it, and acted upon it. The premise of the
book is that anyone with a computer and an internet connection can communicate
and do business with anyone else on the entire planet. It’s only been recently
that the Church was forced to deal with this reality. This new normal will
require us to ask and answer some important questions.
a.
Who and where is your intended audience?
b.
How can we best connect with them?
c.
How can we best tailor the delivery of our timeless truth to
this rapidly changing group and environment?
2. If you are
not adept at the effective use of electronic communication with individuals and
groups, you had better catch up, quickly! We who refuse to adapt will
quickly become dinosaurs. We will either become ineffective or irrelevant, and
probably already have.
3. Reconsider
intercontinental travel for the purpose of training. If we can
deliver the needed training via electronic media with excellence and relational
connection, we should save the thousands of dollars. Instead of squeezing ten
hours of training into two or three days (like drinking from a firehose), we
can spread it out to ten weeks of one hour each, allowing the trainees to
process, practice, and engage each week with better understanding, wiser
questions, and greater depth of learning.
a.
If the opportunity is more about relationship building than
delivery of content, book the air fare and make the trip primarily relational
in focus.
b.
If the opportunity is more about training in skills and
knowledge, schedule a series of webinars and deliver the content. Save the
money, and watch the relational development happen naturally across the series
of meetings.
For example
– In recent weeks I have done sports chaplaincy training: weekly with a group
across the USA, Pakistan, Philippines, Trinidad, and Ukraine,
biweekly with colleagues in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska,
occasionally with compadres in Latin America from Mexico to Argentina,
weekly with comrades in Eurasia from Latvia, through Moscow, and into
Central Asia, and I’m scheduled to do two ninety minute sessions with
twenty-five new trainees in Chennai, India. I am doing all the training
from my home office at no cost beyond my time and attention. All I need is a
computer and an internet connection. Relationships have been established with
each across numerous years through meetings in the USA and abroad.
4. Reconsider
these issues. All of them.
a.
How do you define success? This may have changed recently.
Write it down and refer to it often.
b.
What do you measure and how do you measure it? Clarify these
and systematize the measurements.
c.
What is absolutely essential to what you do? Identify these,
list them, and keep the list visible.
d.
What is simply preferred? Identify these, list them, and
keep them off you teammates’ essential list.
e.
What should we stop (not resume) doing? Make a list. Stick
to it. Give that job to someone else or don’t do it at all.
f.
How shall we communicate in this new normal? Build a strategy.
Develop the necessary skills. Acquire the tools. Don’t acquiesce to antiquated
forms.
5. What will it
cost us to adapt to be transformational in the new normal? Some likely
costs are listed below.
a.
Spilled wine and ruined wineskins – if we fail to adapt.
b.
Discomfort
c.
Dissatisfaction
d.
Occasional failure
e.
Inefficiency
f.
Experimentation
g.
Discarding of ineffective forms
h.
No longer the expert, I have become a novice.
6. What could
be the impact of wise and skillful adaptation to the new normal? Some
possibilities are listed below.
a.
New wine in fresh wineskins – if we faithfully adapt.
b.
Excitement
c.
Joy
d.
Dynamism
e.
Discovery
f.
Empowerment
g.
Renaissance
As
we approach the eleventh week of this season of our lives, some quiet
reflection, a lot of reading, and two cups of good coffee had my mind ready to
burst with these thoughts. I hope
they are of some value to you. I greatly value our friendship, collaboration in
ministry, and your calling from our Lord.
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