Reflections from COVID-19 Season

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.