Have you ever had to make decisions that would be considered acceptable to a few hundred people (keep reading)?

This year’s circumstances have prompted your shepherds to meet on several occasions and hash out decisions we never thought we would have to make.

It is one thing to cancel worship assemblies & Bible classes for ice, snow, tornaders and the like when the safety of the flock was an obvious issue; but a pandemic? Yes, a pandemic! Then the pandemic became a pandemic with a mask mandate no less!

We cancelled, we uncancelled, we cut back, we adjusted, we cordoned off pews, we set aside part of our building, we stopped passing trays, we made videos of lessons for the wee ones, we started using individual communion sets, we provided masks as well as colored bands and livestreamed everything we did.

Through it all, you supported and encouraged us regardless of your differing opinions about what was decided. You humbled yourselves as Jesus teaches us to do and submitted to our leadership even though we ourselves were not always sure that our decisions were the best.

But I assure you they were the best decisions we knew how to make. Our guiding standard was to seek out what we believed God would have us do, rather than heeding anyone else’s opinion, and that has seemed to make all the difference.

And I must give my fellow shepherds credit because we did not always agree. We fussed and discussed and lobbied and reasoned. In the end, however, each of us also found the humility necessary to submit to the consensus of judgment we arrived at together. What a blessing to work with such men!

And so I believe I speak on behalf of each of the other shepherds when I say, “Thank you!” for being patient, understanding and united with us in this ramona/pamona/come on a mess and for keeping faith alive within this precious flock.