The New Normal

Commenting on the changes to life as we all knew it since January of 2020 would be pedantic for all you who read this.  Like you, our lives have changed dramatically since the government began to respond to the COVID-19 challenge.  For the first time in my ministry, I preached an entire meeting from our music room in Olive Branch, Mississippi, to a church in Brooklyn.  Two days later, on Easter Sunday, I did the same thing for a church in the Bronx.  Other meetings have been postponed as everyone tries to navigate through these unprecedented times.

The Victory Gospel Crusade in western Ohio was scheduled to begin in May, and the plan is to go ahead with the meetings, although we still are unsure whether or not we will be able to meet as usual.  Tomorrow will be another meeting in which we (the pastors and evangelists involved) will discuss our options.  The concept of a drive-in service is not completely out of the question as we look to the future.  The "what-if's" can multiply in meetings like this, particularly as we try to predict the response of unsaved people to our efforts to evangelize.  For my part, I am of the opinion that no one could have predicted that 12 men would spread the gospel over the Mediterranean world in 30 years' time.  No one could have predicted that wicked New England would be transformed by revival just before the American War for Independence.  No one could have predicted that Baptist churches would be planted from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River in 16 years' time.  No one could have predicted that a small prayer meeting in New York City in 1858 would turn into a nationwide movement.  No one would have known that the once drunk construction worker is now the head usher in our local church.  All these things happened because God came in and did a mighty work.  Today, God is working in spite of the circumstances that we might wish were different.  

During our Brooklyn meeting, a man joined our service who had been away from the Lord for some time.  Who can tell what God will do in His heart?  Of course, these kinds of results are very hard for us to see and to follow up on, but they are real nonetheless.

One of the adjustments in this time is having Josiah with us again.  He still takes classes online every day and remains very busy keeping up with his college work, but he is in our home for meals--didn't we pay the college to feed him?--and other times of enjoyment.  We had not expected this development.  Also, he will be able to travel with us to the Victory Gospel Crusade because Neighborhood Bible Time, with whom he is to travel in the summer, has delayed their summertime schedule by one month.

So we are at home for nearly a month, waiting just as you are, wondering just as you are about what finances will look like in a month's time.  We are confident that God is working, and we are excited to be a part of that work.