Home > Blog > When Coronavirus Interrupts Your Plans
When Coronavirus Interrupts Your Plans
By New Churches Team
COVID-19 is affecting everyone in the world. And it is changing the landscape for the church. Maybe you were supposed to launch a campus or open your church plant in the coming weeks, but those plans have been stopped in their tracks. How do you deal with the disappointment when your dreams and plans have been crushed by this pandemic?
God-Sized Dreams
When God gives you a dream in your heart, you can taste it, see it, and feel it. Consider when you get a brand new LEGO kit. On the outside of the box the kit is all put together. And that is how dreams come to us. In your heart, the dream God has given you for a church plant is already growing and reaching people for Jesus. But in times like this, we are reminded that the dream in our heart doesn’t come put together. It comes like the inside of the LEGO box. When you open that box all the individual pieces pour out. It’s in that moment that you realize that there are thousands of steps of obedience, disappointment, patience, and moments of discipline to get to the fulfilled dream.
And that’s what we are facing right now. We hold that dream in our heart and the pieces in our hands, but we don’t know where the pieces go. All we can do is be faithful to where we are at right now. Great leaders who have been called to plant churches, that have been called to lead within God’s kingdom, have to slow down and see that what they see as pointless, God can use as purposeful. They can create infrastructures, relationships, and opportunities right now. They can teach their teams to use this time to help them learn how to think outside of the box.
Time to Rise Up
When it comes to leadership as church planters, we are often visionaries and many steps out in front of the church we are leading. In this moment, we should rebel against that tendency and live in the actual moment. Don’t think months and months ahead and into rabbit trails of the unknown. Instead, focus on what you will do this week and next week.
If you start to focus too far out, you can collapse under the anxiety of the unknown. Connect with your church members and let them know what you are doing in the community and how they can come alongside you. In a time when it seems like every single day something new happens, having a posture of adaptability will be a key competency moving forward.
Adapted from the New Churches Q&A Podcast Episode 476: When Coronavirus Interrupts Your Plans (with Josh Gagnon). Click here to listen to more to church planting, multisite, and multiplication tips.