In mid-March I came down with the typical symptoms of COVID-19—headache, fever, cough, and mental fog. As the illness progressed, losing my sense of smell seemed to be the mildest symptom, but six months later I still haven’t recovered it. Some of my favorite smells and tastes—coffee, grilled meat, and dark chocolate—are gone. Yet for other people, what the coronavirus stole is infinitely more tragic and difficult to swallow than my inability to enjoy a cup of coffee.
Even for those who have not gotten sick, a thousand things don’t look or feel the same. It can be disconcerting. As leaders we are often called to manage change and navigate setbacks, roadblocks, and transitions. However, this global pandemic has created challenges that seem to alter our lives relentlessly and stymie our plans.
For missionaries, government attempts across the globe to contain the virus have created a challenge to the travel fundamental to fulfilling our work and call. As airline and tourism industries are deeply affected, so are our lives as global workers.
Despite lockdowns, travel bans, and lab tests, we have witnessed how three elements in our lives have enabled us to persevere in seeing ministry continue in spite of what this global pandemic throws at us—technology, tenacity, and transformability.
Technology
By now it’s obvious how technology has enabled us to circumvent the inability to gather face-to-face. It has never been more apparent the Church is neither confined to nor defined by geographical restrictions.
When the pandemic began, we were itinerating in California, separated from our team and congregation in Grenoble, France. Like everyone else for the past six months, we have utilized the gift of technology to lead meetings, engage in prayer, counsel congregants, and mentor colleagues across continents.
During France’s stringent shelter-in-place period, our church was able to worship, pray, and hear the Word. This kept our people connected at a time when isolation and uncertainty left people starving for contact with their faith community.
Tenacity
Since Dalene and I became area director for Western Europe in November 2019, this season has been a crash course in crisis management. Whether helping missionary families trapped miles apart due to travel bans or monitoring multiple coworkers who were sick, hospitalized, or even intubated in a foreign healthcare system, it seemed the sheer scope of acute prayer needs would drive us to physical and emotional exhaustion.
What helped us with any lack of aptitude was latching on to an attitude. Instead of longing to get back to normal, we normalized the need to get back our longing for God. Suddenly the ministry of prayer became the one thing we could depend on as we called out to God for impossible needs and improbable chances. Time and time again our miracle-working, impossibility-defying God came through with amazing answers of healing, recovery, and breakthrough.
Reestablishing the priority of taking every burden and need to Him in intercession fueled another attitude that said, “Lord, however long this takes and wherever this leads us, we are in it for the long haul.” Our prayers changed from “God, bring this trial to a close” to “Father, bring us closer to You through this trial.” We are grateful for this lesson in the priority and power of prayer as we learn to dig in for as long as the virus drags on.
Transformability
Rather than resilience (the capacity to manage disruption and reorganize while retaining essentially the same structures and systems), we have embraced transformability. This is defined as the capacity to create an entirely new system when existing structures make what has been normal impossible.
In Romans 12 Paul admonishes us to let everything die on the alter so we can be transformed by new ways of thinking. We have taken the stance of trying to be as malleable as possible in the hands of the Potter and asking Him to transform—and even totally redefine, if necessary—the way we think about doing church and ministry.
To this end we have found ourselves moving from meeting together by Zoom to instituting house churches, where we release leaders in the Body to lead a small group of people in their homes while conforming to government requirements. Once a month we gather in our parking lot to have in-person moments of community. In addition, we are revamping the way we welcome and engage new students on the campus of our city university.
From the prayer ministry to outreach to refugees to our ministry to victims of human trafficking, every leader and team across our community is being encouraged to pray and seek the Lord for how He may use this pandemic as a restructure and not as a restriction. We are asking God to do new things, and the request is for Him to begin those new things in us.
We don’t know where this path is leading us, but we are armed with these attitudes, surrounded and guided by a God who always leads His people when they are willing to follow and obey into fulness of their destiny, no matter what borders seem closed or what giants stand in their way.
Mark and Dalene Good serve as area directors for Western Europe and coordinate mentor training and hubs for the Europe region. They also lead Le Refuge International Church in Grenoble, France.