What Should Ministries Do?

Over the last few days, I have been involved in so many conversations with people in both church and camp ministries. Most of those conversations have boiled down to one thing, we really aren’t sure what is best. On the one hand we want to be safe, obviously. We want to protect the children, youth, and students in our care, and we are not sure we can safely do that. We also want to protect their families and loved ones and the last thing anyone would ever wants to do is become the reason someone got infected. At the same time, camps and churches are grappling with so many missed opportunities. We cannot impact students the way we want to if we don’t have them in programs, in our care, and in our presence. It’s a difficult thing for sure. I am literally struggling with it every single day and we have been fortunate because our students have taken very well to meeting via technology. So, what do we do?

I’m not an expert on these matters but I do have experience and if you want my advice, which you may not and if so just quit reading. I would say wait. Waiting is hard!! I hate it, like I’m not gonna lie for a couple of weeks I really kinda spiraled a bit and I may go more into that in a future post but for now I think we need to wait. God doesn’t move at the speed we do. I love Isaiah 55:

⁸ For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

And I believe with all my heart that God is in the difficult times just as much as He is the easy ones. This is the challenge of this age. Think about that for a minute, this is the challenge of this age and we owe it to ourselves as believers as followers of Christ to wait and hear from Him on what our next steps should be. Maybe this is our burning bush, our great flood, our opportunity to hear from God like never before. Let’s not rush to get back what we think we lost but wait and see what it is God is trying to show us. Besides, you think you can’t do ministry without seeing people? Paul hardly ever got to see the people he was ministering to, he was dependent on letters and I don’t know how long it took to get a letter from Rome to Philippi but I would imagine longer than I sometimes make students wait in a Zoom waiting room after they lost connection. And Paul was desperate to see people in the churches he started, see Romans 1:11 or I Corinthians 16:7. Or literally any other letter he wrote. Just like we long to have Christian companionship so did he. But, lets not put that ahead of the companion we really need, Jesus. Maybe now is the time that God is calling each of us to draw closer to him as individuals so that when we are able to come back together we are stronger in our relationship with God and able to love one another deeper than ever before. Real John 13:34 love!

So, lets wait in Christ. Wait for our safety, safety for the people we love and so we might hear from our King in a way we never have before that may bring about the worldwide revival we have been hoping for.