Don't Give Up!
March 11th, 2020, the night Rudy Gobert tested positive for Covid-19 and the NBA cancelled the Utah Jazz game against the Toronto Raptors, and subsequently the rest of the United States followed suit. I just returned from Orland from the Exponential conference in Orlando with my team and the rumors and warnings were bubbling. Now the NBA, and the rest of U.S. would shut down, and for this Church planter who just launched Proclaim Church, 6 months prior in September of 2019, there was no class in seminary, breakout session or book, on how to navigate what would ensue.
Our vision early on was to Proclaim the Gospel in our city, fulfilling the Gods redemptive plan. The Gospel is the power of salvation to all who believe”(Romans1:16) Providing good news to the poor, binding up the broken hearted, providing liberty to the captive, freeing the prisoner, and welcoming Gods love, acceptance and restoration into our lives (Isaiah 61:1)”. It was aspirational for sure! The problem now, how do we reach a city locked inside of our houses and apartments? Our plant was an infant, we launched small, in the living room of our home, with a core group of 15 adults. In six months, we had doubled in size, used one of our spare bedrooms as our first children’s ministry, just had our third Sunday outreach service at the local community center. Now we were out of choices, Community centers shut down, Schools shut down and of course our house wasn’t an option now.
As a church planter you learn to be flexible, to make do with less, to go into the venture understanding God would be with you even through the ebbs and flows of navigating change. You have a prospectus, a plan but hold on to it lightly. Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan till you get punched in the face”. Well, Covid wasn’t just a punch in the face, it felt like a drop kick to the neck by Hulk Hogan himself. Hundreds of questions flowed through my mind. Do we stop meeting? Can we meet at a public space, in a park? How do we meet virtually? How much is it going to cost? The pressure was on, not only did I have to navigate the responsibility of safety protocols for our family, but we were also going through an adoption process for our daughter Gloria, and as a new lead planter I had to figure out what to do next for Proclaim, and we had three days to figure it out. Personally felt I scared by the unknown of what we were dealing with, the pressure to figure it out in such a short order it was overwhelming to say the least, but to be honest this wasn’t an unfamiliar place for me. This is church planting at its core.
So we prayed, reached out to other pastors and friends in ministry, talked and strategized and prayed some more. We decided to go virtual, and not meet in person, since no one knew what we were dealing with yet. We wanted to err on the side of caution, but we also wanted to encourage our members that we could still be the church in the midst of this crisis, utilizing the technology and means that we were afforded. That first virtual service we were reminded to be the church, the “sent out Ones”, that it wasn’t about a building or a location, that we were the body of Christ. Incarnational ministry, actively being with those around us, and now we had to do so in our homes and in our spheres of influence. Thank God for Zoom, and for tech guys who were able to find the necessary equipment to make our virtual service audio and video look good. Once the decision was made the pivot was an easy one since we were a new Plant and didn’t have many established ministries or programs to shift.
The pivot wasn’t only in moving from meeting physically to virtually, but also from moving from being outreach/discipleship focused to Discipleship/soul care focused. We notice immediately the need for my wife and I to have a place to process all that we were going through, and we knew that this was going to have to be a focus for our congregation. Our initial plan was to have started small groups after Easter in 2020, but rather than starting curriculum based small groups we started two virtual community care groups on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This was a blessing to allow people to just check in and process all that was going on and to practically pray for one another, it gave us a place to be real, cry and share our fears and to know that were weren’t going through this alone.
We relaunched public services in September of 2020, masked up and praising God. A church opened their doors to us with an assortment of cleaning protocols, but we were meeting Sunday afternoons and were glad to be able to meet physically for those who felt comfortable to do so. This period of the pandemic was the most difficult as a planter due to all the vacillation between proliferation of different Covid variants, to Mask wars, and the now a new problem that emerge of how to set up for both a physical and virtual services. Do we even still do a virtual service? Do we do both? Will people ever come back from virtual services? I think as a pastor/planter I wrestled with this because I understood the importance of both being vigilant against the virus, but I also saw the damage that the isolation was reaping on my congregants. So I walked the line of grace and encouragement loving those God had given me to care for, meeting them where they were at. Sometimes as planters we can be so driven to push and to sow vision and keep the train moving forward, that if we aren’t careful, and self-aware and Congregationally-aware we can hurt ourselves and others in this process, especially in the midst of an unprecedent pandemic which had everyone on edge and barely holding it together.
The next challenge is how do you outreach in the midst of a pandemic where no one wants to be talked to due to fear of contracting Covid, and there are no real physical locations to meet and greet and meet people at? I really felt that I was between a rock and a hard place, in the wine press, again with the With limited budget to do any online and social media initiatives, we created content, but we decided to refocus on what and who we had Infront of us, both physically and virtually.
We move again to a school, third launch, (a recurring theme) in May of 2021. This was a better meeting time we now had a Sunday morning time slot and were excited about the possibilities that this would open for us. 2021 was a weird year though, still navigating different variants of Covid, to dealing with the “virtual slough”, where people would now rather stay home and watch in bed than come to meet in person. I specifically remember during this time that I was really discouraged. One Sunday morning, my small set up team ( 4 individuals) and I were getting everything ready service. We only had 7 people physically and we had 25 online. I remember saying to myself, and to Lord is this what you called me to? My heart was weary, I felt over worked and underappreciated, and worst of all insignificant. I felt that all our efforts weren’t making a difference, we could close up shop, join one of the local established churches and build together. This was hard, harder than I ever expected, especially with all that we had dealt with the last two years, I prayed to God, “a pandemic wasn’t part of the deal”!
As we were breaking down after service, and I was wrestling with all these thoughts and emotions. I remember as clear a day, it still gives me goose bumps as I type. Let me give a little context, we were meeting in an elementary school, and this week the classes had their art work displayed on all the walls of the hallways. I was moving a baby grand piano back into its position, while having this conversation with God, trying to convince Him and myself that it would be ok to throw in the towel. No one would even notice. As I turned the corner pushing the piano into place I look up at the wall and God spoke to my heart as clear as I have ever heard him. In front of me, hanging taped to the hallway wall was a child’s poster that simply said “don’t give up”. Tears fill my eyes as I knew this was a sacred moment that God was using to encourage me, to continue on, that what we were doing wasn’t insignificant, that he saw the faithfulness of our fellowship and that it wasn’t in vain. That was in October of 2021.
So we pressed forward, with a renewed commitment, not knowing what the future would hold but knowing we served the one who held the future. One month later an opportunity would arise that no one saw coming, but God. I was introduced to Pastor Andy Hagen, of Advent Lutheran Church in Boca Raton. Their ministry owned a church not too far away from the city that we were in. They were looking to bring in a congregation to unite with the one that they were supporting at this location. Andy had viewed a few of our services on our Facebook stream and was very excited about possibly uniting Proclaim with Advent at this location. Proclaim would come under the umbrella of Advent Life Ministries and we would spear head the ministry at this location. It was amazing gift from God. We would not only unite with Advent, but we would get a building with over 5000sq ft of ministry space, financial support, and we continued as Proclaim Church an Advent Life Ministry at this location. This could not have been possible if I had given up, thrown in the towel, walked away. Don’t get me wrong, no one would have blame me for closing shop, especially during the time period of our launch and what we experienced during the pandemic. The lesson learned is that perseverance pays off, when we are faithful to God, he is more than faith to us, and even if the end of the story didn’t look like this for us, I know that we would have been taken care of. I can’t wait to see what the future holds, if He has brought us through this, I know what ever comes next, we will be alright because God is with us.
