#288 Hindsight

I've been reflecting off and on about how I and the rest of the council at the church I was serving responded to COVID-19 in 2020. Our church, like much of American society, tried a whole bunch of things that we'd never tried before. We stopped gathering for worship for a while. When we came back, we wore face masks and sat farther apart and didn't sing—at least for a couple weeks.

Looking back and having more information, I would do things differently than we did. Trying to meet for worship without singing was miserable. We quickly changed our position on that, but if we did it over again, I'm positive we would have sung together from day one. But the bigger change I would make is not asking church members to wear masks, especially children. We never fully required masks for the congregation, but we (and I in particular) encouraged them for everyone until late in the spring of 2021. I think I and we tried wearing masks out of a desire to love our neighbors and keep them from getting sick. We paid attention to guidelines from state and national agencies and to what schools and other churches in our area were doing. We wanted to keep each other safe. I hoped to set a good example. But with the benefit of hindsight and more data, I don't think the masks helped nearly as much as we hoped, and they often made our fellowship more difficult.

Now I certainly would not have told anyone they couldn't wear a mask at church, and we didn't tell anyone to come back to worshiping in person if they didn't feel comfortable. But I think it's important for me and for us to think through our past decisions. Part of leadership is taking ownership of the choices I've made and admitting when I was wrong or misguided. Even the best intentions don't always lead us the right direction. The early days of COVID-19 felt like nothing I'd ever seen before, but hopefully remembering them will better prepare me for future challenges.

Grace and peace,

BMH