After about eight months of experiencing the worst pandemic we’ve seen since the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919, I expect to feel somewhat adjusted to this new reality. However, like many of you, I begin and end each day with thoughts of how COVID-19 continues to shape my life and work.

One month in—after the shuttering of schools, churches, and businesses—one of my leaders encouraged members of our team to write individual “quarantine reflections,” for future reference. A few weeks ago, I decided to open the virtual time capsule and read what I wrote on April 13, 2020:

My feelings during this season are mixed with peace and anxiety, calm and confusion, focus and distraction. I know that God is all-powerful, sovereign, and good. However, Satan tries to put doubts in my mind and heart. And, I begin to overanalyze the situation and what is going on around me. I start asking, “What if?” I bury myself in my work, because being busy is therapeutic, or at least it keeps some of the doubt and worry at bay. And then, I start thinking, “Is all this work in vain?”

Those thoughts led to a more recent question I’ve been reflecting on: “For whom do I work?” In this instance, the church answer is correct: “I work for Jesus.” The first part of Colossians 3:17 says, “And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.” So, how do you and I “do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus”? Many are the ways, but here are my three for now:

1. Be thankful. The second part of Colossians 3:17 says, “. . . giving thanks to God the Father through him.” At the beginning of what my wife and I refer to as, “all this mess,” we created a Blessings Jar and placed it on our kitchen table, along with a pen and note paper. Every time we walked by the kitchen and thought of one of God’s blessings, we would jot it down and drop in the jar. Our married children took a similar approach. Recently, my three-year-old granddaughter’s parents opened a blessing note she had dictated. She was thankful for, “Jesus, donuts, and the cross.” Shouldn’t that be our thanksgiving too—maybe without the “donuts”?
   
2. Love others. Earlier in chapter 3 of Colossians, Paul writes in verse 14, “Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.” This is something we should already be doing. However, I have discovered that I have developed “COVID-19 Irritability”. I’m less patient than I was prior to the pandemic. Traffic, rude behavior at the grocery store, people who don’t agree with me, people at church who breathe on me. All this and a list of other irritabilities frustrate me more than they did pre-pandemic. But, Jesus says to love others.
   
3. Persevere. Paul writes to another group of believers and encourages them to “not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.” (Galatians 6:9) Just when we feel overly burdened with ministry and wondering how much longer we can hold on, God offers encouragement to persevere with the promise of an eternal reward.

Thankfulness, love, and perseverance—three indicators that we work for Jesus. They help us realize that in the midst of a tumultuous and unpredictable world, we are kingdom laborers first. And, those ministry challenges? Our ultimate authority is Jesus. For whom do you work? I hope that my heart, head, and hands indicate that I work for Jesus.

Landry Holmes is the Manager of LifeWay Kids Ongoing Bible Studies and Network Partnerships, Nashville, TN, and is a graduate of Howard Payne University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The author of It’s Worth It: Uncovering How One Week Can Transform Your Church and a general editor of the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary for Kids, Landry is a church leader, writer, workshop facilitator, and publisher. He teaches kids at his church in Middle Tennessee, where his wife Janetta is the Preschool Minister. They enjoy spending time with their two adult sons and their wives, and spoiling their five grandchildren.

“A little goes a long way.” That statement could be the motto of every kids ministry, I think. It could apply to so many things. But today, let’s use it this way: A little encouragement and a little (or a lot) of prayer goes a long way. 

“And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25; emphasis added)

Let me start by trying to encourage you a little. You have faced many obstacles this year. You have faced changing ministry dynamics at an incredible rate. You have faced technological challenges. You have faced challenges to your ministry philosophy and strategy. You may have faced personal loss or job loss. You’ve faced a lot this year.

“But God…” This is one of my favorite transitional statements from Ephesians 2 because it reminds us that God makes dead things alive. So yes, you’ve faced many tough challenges this year. And we don’t know how many more will come our way. But God, who is rich in mercy, grace, and love, has sustained you and will sustain you through it all. There is a biblical truth that we must not forget: God is not finished with you yet (Philippians 1:6); He is producing in you “an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.” (See 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.) So take heart. Whatever you face, do not give up because He is with you and will never leave you. Even though you walk through the dark and difficult times, you don’t have to fear churn, change, or challenges that come your way because God has been, is now, and always will be near. 

May God grant you whatever you need during this season of life. Peace. Comfort. Strength. Rest. He is able to do more than we can ever imagine. 

What about the parents and kids you serve? They’ve faced, and likely continue to face, huge hurdles in their family life. With work, school, extracurriculars, church, and more in a constant state of churn, all of these have the potential of putting strain on their relationships. With honorable intentions, during 2020 many kids ministries have sought out print and digital resources to provide to the families they serve in order to promote family discipleship. These are good efforts and should be pursued. As the Lord leads you, continue to do this.

But what about encouragement? Is this a normal part of your ministry rhythm with parents and kids?  

From what I am personally experiencing and observing in my community, one thing the families in our churches and communities need right now is encouragement. Let’s consider how we can encourage the families we serve this week. Here is one idea to help:

1. Pull up a list of families in your ministry and maybe a prayer journal.
2. Divide your list into smaller groups of maybe 3-4 or 5-10 kids/families. If you only have 5-10 families in your ministry, you can take one family per week to start.
3. Get out your calendar and schedule uninterrupted time to pray weekly (or daily if you wish). Don’t let anything become a conflict with this prayer appointment. 
4. Designate each grouping (above) to a specific weekly prayer appointment.
5. A day or so before your prayer appointment, separately text or email each family you are committing to pray for this week to let them know you are praying for them. Ask if there are specific ways they can pray for you. As they respond, add these notes to your prayer journal.
6. In this text/email, be sure to offer a word of encouragement such as sharing a Bible verse or a reminder that God is at work in them, even if they can’t see it now. He is near.
7. Keep your appointment and begin to pray for the families in your ministry. Pray for them by name. Pray for them according to whatever specific details they’ve shared or that you know about their family life.
8. Next week do the same with another family group from your list.

Remember: the work you are called to is first and foremost spiritual work. So whether you have resumed in-person meetings or not, this “little” rhythm of prayer and encouragement will go a long way both in the lives of the families you serve and in your own personal spiritual life.

Social media is both a blessing and a curse. In this post six suggestions are offered to help leaders be wise in their media consumption and engagement. 

GIGO is an old axiom of computer programming that stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. Basically, if your coding is weak (Garbage In), the program’s execution will be weak too (Garbage Out). This axiom was crafted long before social media, but it certainly applies to it, doesn’t it? It seems that social media is full of garbage and it can be quite difficult to participate in it while staying clean. But as followers of Jesus, and especially as leaders in kids ministry, we have to. We need to protect our spirit and our witness before our kids and families as well as a watching world. How can we do this? NOGIGO. No Garbage In. No Garbage Out. Here’s how that works:

NO GARBAGE IN

Consume social media intentionally. For some, the answer is to abstain from social media. That is understandable and for some it might be necessary. But while social media can certainly be quite harmful, it can also be quite helpful. Not only is it a way to stay connected, but it is a way to keep a finger on the pulse of our culture and the church as well. It’s a way to see trends that might be affecting our kids and their families. Most of us, then, should begin by deciding why we are consuming social media and keep that purpose in mind. 

Consume social media wisely. One of the dangers of social media is that it can be a black hole that sucks us in and takes us to bad places we don’t want to go to. Not only is there so much ungodly content, but there is so much bickering, slander, and misinformation as well. And I am not just talking about from our culture—that last part comes from the church too. We need to be wise in how we consume social media so that we can protect our minds and hearts. That begins with monitoring the time we give to it, but also includes the content itself. While we will want to follow diverse views, we shouldn’t follow toxic accounts. 

Consume social media graciously. Perhaps the greatest danger of social media is that it can easily strip a person’s humanity away. It’s easy to forget that behind every 280 character tweet is an image bearer of God. Instead, we can easily reduce people to viewpoints, and if we reject the viewpoint, we find ourselves rejecting the person as well. Social media feeds the sinful binary proposition of “us against them.” There surely is a binary “us and them” presented in Scripture—the church and the world—but notice the middle word is “and” not “against.” Ephesians 6:12 says that no other person is to be our enemy. Rather, we should love all people and desire that all come to repentance of sin. As we consume social media, we need to do so with grace and compassion, not condemnation and intolerance. We need to fight sin in our hearts and strive to think the best, not the worst, of all others. 

NO GARBAGE OUT

Engage in social media intentionally. Just as we need to be wise in what we consume, we need to be wise in what we post. Before we post, we need to consider if what we are about to say is righteous, honoring, helpful, and humble. One of the dangers of social media is that it easily creates modern day Pharisees. Saying something right with the wrong heart makes it not right. Just as saying something wrong from the right heart doesn’t make it right. We need to make sure that all we post is right and that it comes from the right heart. Or else we don’t post it. 

Engage in social media wisely. Another danger of social media is that it feeds the ego. It causes us to think that our perspective is critical and that everyone needs to hear every idea we have about every issue. That simply is not true. Rather, we need to be wise in not only how to engage, but when to engage and when not to engage. There are some squables that are not worth wading into. There are some subjects that are better left alone. Sometimes social media is the worst possible way to work through subjects. We need to be wise and humble to know when to abstain from clicking “post.”  

Engage in social media graciously. Just as there are times when wisdom calls on us to abstain from posting, there are times when wisdom demands that we do. But even then we need to be gracious in what we post. We need to be fair to anyone we are responding to and not misrepresent them. We need to be gracious in recognizing the validity of positions that others hold that we disagree with but that can be supported from Scripture. We need to abstain from demanding that only people who agree exactly with us on every position are godly. Basically we need to remember that our goal is not to win Internet debates, but rather to be winsome servants of King Jesus displaying His fragrance among what is often the putrid stench of social media. 

Brian Dembowczyk is the managing editor for The Gospel Project. He served in local church ministry for over 16 years before coming to LifeWay. Brian earned an M.Div. from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a D.Min. from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his family live in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

5 Good Things God Might Bring from COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic is bad. This deadly virus is preying on the most vulnerable among us, wreaking havoc on people’s lives, and jeopardizing the world’s economy. And yet, from this great evil, God may just bring greater good. 

“You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result​—the survival of many people.” (Genesis 50:20 CSB)

In 121 characters—what would be a brief tweet—Joseph provides us with one of the most beautiful and important verses about God’s sovereignty and how God can bring good from anything—even evil. What Joseph’s brothers did was evil, but God is not stymied in His pursuit of bringing glory to Himself and good to His people by anything, including evil. It’s a message that we need to take to heart always, but even more so now in the confusing days we are in. 

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to march its way across the globe, leaving dead, sick, bewildered, confused, frightened, and unemployed people in its wake. This should go without saying, but there is nothing good about COVID-19 in and of itself. It is evil—it is contrary to God’s design, a result of sin’s impact on the world. But as we see in the last quarter of the Book of Genesis and even more clearly on the cross, God is capable of bringing good out of even the greatest evil. COVID-19 is no match for God’s glory. Here are five ways God might bring incredible good from the incredible bad of COVID-19. 

1. COVID-19 has given us the opportunity to slow down. This is perhaps the first opportunity we have begun to see. We are all spending a lot more time at home and many of life’s usual distractions have vanished—sports, entertainment, etc. The result is that we have been forced to slow down. While this is a struggle for many people right now, we need to pray that we take advantage of this opportunity and learn from it. We are all too busy. Life is too fast. We multitask too much. Perhaps we are now seeing that life should be less of a brisk race and more of a leisurely walk because a virus has hit the brakes on each of our lives.
   
   
2. COVID-19 has given us the opportunity to reconsider priorities. While people have hoarded toilet paper, it has been encouraging to see sacrifice displayed even more. Remember that sheltering in place is not because COVID-19 is highly lethal for everyone, but rather for the most vulnerable among us. We are sheltering not for our good, but for the good of others. And that is beautiful. We have seen generosity—people and businesses sharing abundantly. And social distancing has helped even the staunchest of introverts appreciate relationships as never before. Needing a global pandemic to help us reconsider our priorities—what really matters—might be extreme, but what an important lesson we are learning.
   
   
3. COVID-19 has given us the opportunity to innovate ministry. Remember when ministry was consistent—reliable—comfortable? Not any more. COVID-19 has forced us all to innovate new ways to minister. We are all scrambling for ways to care for kids, and to continue teaching God’s Word. It’s still early, but as days stretch into weeks of not being able to gather and weeks potentially stretch into months, we will need to innovate even more, such as ways to baptize new believers and celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Is this challenging? Sure. Is it difficult? You bet. But is it good? Without a doubt. Some of us may have been too comfortable before. Some of us may have been stale. Some of us may have wanted to innovate but we were too busy or too afraid to even try. But now, we have not just been allowed to innovate and get creative, we have been forced to. And that’s good.
   
   
4. COVID-19 has given us the opportunity to strengthen families. We all know that kids ministry is vital, but family discipleship is more so. We know that God has designed the home to be the primary arena for discipleship. And we want it to be. We want to help families make it that. But, again, because of the frantic pace of ministry, most of us have not been able to prioritize family discipleship. We have given it our leftovers. Not today. Now this gets our first fruits. And we are already seeing family discipleship begin to thrive. Both the home and the church will be stronger when this is all said and done. Thanks to a virus.
   
   
5. COVID-19 has given us the opportunity to develop leaders. There will be a day when “normal” returns. Sure, because of innovation, normal will not be quite like what it was before. It shouldn’t be. But kids ministry after COVID-19 will look more like it did before COVID-19 than it does now during COVID-19. Our programs and events will get back up and running. And what will they all need—what do we tend to struggle with the most in kids ministry? That’s right, leaders. We have too few leaders and those we have are often worn out. Not only are our leaders getting a rest, have you thought about what else is going on right this moment? As families amp up discipleship, many using the curriculum resources that normally are used by teachers, we are giving dads and moms, grandfathers and grandmothers, guardians and older siblings experience, and, may we pray, passion for kids ministry. People who have not served are learning to serve and even growing in desire to serve. What a gift! Right now, kids ministers need to be lining up our “asks” and preparing new leader training for when this is all over. God willing, we will see a shower of prepared, enthusiastic new leaders jump into ministry with joy, wanting to continue what they have been doing in the home during a pandemic. 

COVID-19, we will rejoice when you are gone, but may we rejoice more in how God might advance the gospel through you. 

Brian Dembowczyk is the managing editor for The Gospel Project. He served in local church ministry for over 16 years before coming to LifeWay. Brian earned an M.Div. from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a D.Min. from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his family live in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.