by Steve Matthews
Senior Associate Consultant with FaithX

It’s funny how fast our intentions and plans change these days. In a country full of planners and achievers and “do-ers,” there are not a lot of stable structures on which to build our agendas and long-range plans.  Sometimes it’s hard to feel like we are gaining ground because the ground keeps shifting.  We thought COVID-19 would be over by now (or at least under control), yet it is still alive and well in our communities.  Our “normal” lives are still disrupted.  People are still getting sick and dying.  It’s not personal.  The virus is just doing what unchecked viruses do… like all critters, they propagate.

So now what?  Perhaps, it’s time we stop living our lives in reaction to COVID.  We have adapted worship.  We meet on-line.  We gather in church parking lots. We have worked hard to adapt to the ongoing threat. While this pandemic will not last forever, it is here for now.  It is part of our global reality.   

As communities of faith, we could develop a bit of a victim mentality to this impersonal virus.  Even if we don’t acknowledge it, our actions and plans in the age of COVID can be in reaction to the newest threat or perceived threat of this pandemic.  The author and theologian Walter Wink wrote, “The greatest obstacle is simply the belief that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong.  That is the addict’s excuse.”