Last Monday I knew that we would have to cancel our church service. Even before the NBA announced it was postponing their season, I knew it would come down to this. 

I just didn’t think it would happen as fast as it did.

This week has been a whirlwind of landmark announcements, precautions, instructions and down right fear. 

For the fear part we don’t have to look any further than the hoarding of toilet paper that happened this past week. If people contract COVID-19 they will get a high fever, cough and respiratory symptoms … and with all that toilet paper, they may also get a clogged bathroom throne! 

As the week progressed, I thought it might be good for me to think of a way to stream our church service to our congregation. As I said, I knew it would come to that eventually, but I thought I had a couple of weeks to work out the details. 

On Wednesday I signed up for streaming services on YouTube. I already had a YouTube channel to which I post drone videos that I make. All I had to do was click on the request and in twenty-four hours I was able to livestream through my account. 

… But I was just doing that because at some point – maybe in a week or two – I thought it would be necessary. 

I was wrong. As the weekend approached, there were more and more health suggestions and warnings. 

By Friday afternoon, I knew that we didn’t have a week to prepare – we now had one day!

Along with securing a livestream platform on YouTube, I also had downloaded a piece of streaming software, which I hadn’t yet installed on my computer. I wasn’t even sure what it did. 

Now I knew I was going to have to find out more about this software and actually use it. But maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself … 

It was clear that no one was going to force us to close our doors on Sunday. There were, however, recommendations on the size of gatherings organizations should limit themselves to. 

I couldn’t help but think of all the people out shopping in stores, stripping the shelves bare of essentials and non-essentials, purchasing what they “needed” while putting themselves at greater risk of catching or passing on the virus to other shoppers. 

People who were shopping this week were probably in closer contact with others than if they were attending a church service.

Though our church was under the size limit recommendations laid out by the health officials, I knew that there would be many people who, just to feel safe, would not want to come to church.

There were also a good number of seniors in the church who probably needed to avoid being in contact with people.

What went through my thoughts was to hold our service but offer a livestream for those who would stay home. 

That ended up being the plan we executed. How we put the livestream together, I’ll share with you in my next post.

Here’s the thing: Big changes can happen quickly, quicker than you expect or anticipate. If a face-to-face meeting with Christ comes quicker than you expect or anticipate, you will really want to be prepared for that meeting. The preparation is straight forward: place your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and make Him the boss of your life. That’s what you need to do to be ready for the unexpected. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What unexpected decisions did you have to make this last week? Leave your comments and questions below.