How to respond to the Coronavirus

This is an open article I wrote for the Evening Leader.  I don’t know when it will be published, but if/when it is, I will update this post.

If you are anything like me, you find yourself scratching your head as to what to do to respond to the Coronavirus.  I am not a passive person, I like to meet challenges head on as aggressively as possible.  The problem is, there is no way to attack a virus.  There are scientists and health professionals out there who are working on a vaccine/treatment, but it isn’t like we can just go do something abut this.

At Wayne Street, we have been having worship services online rather than meeting in person.  This was a very different experience for me, I have never had a strictly online service before.  We have been posting sermons online for a while, but to do something where it is posted to the internet with no congregation present, I have very little experience with that.  Thanks to the Coronavirus, it looks like I am going to get a lot of practice at it.  If you would like to be a part of our Sunday services, you are welcome to join us.  Go to our website (www.waynestreetumc.org) and scroll to the bottom of the page and sign up for our free enewsletter.  Information about how to join our YouTube page for our worship broadcasts will be sent out via the weekly newsletter.  The team and I at Wayne Street are learning a lot about how to make lemonade out of a lemon.  Services online give us a chance to safely gather as many people as we possible can to pray for our community and lift each other’s spirits.

I also had a conversation with Patty Cisco over at Marketing Essentials (www.mktgessentials.com)  We were discussing other possibilities of what people could do to address the immediate need in our community.  She had some great suggestions.  She suggested a collection of used movies or books that people could borrow.  She also suggested donations of puzzle books that could be given to shut ins.  Nursing home patients are now confined to their room because the Coronavirus would be very deadly in a place like that.  Since we can’t visit in person, we can make phone calls to anyone we know in a nursing home or even send cards and letters.  If you would like to make donations or send cards to the folks in nursing homes, you can do that for VanCrest (www.vancrest.com), the Grande Lake Healthcare System (www.communicarehealth.com/facility/grande-lake-healthcare-center), or Otterbein (www.otterbein.org/find-a-location/st-marys).  There are plenty of people there who could use an encouraging word because there isn’t much else they can do right now.  They could use donations of adult coloring books or puzzles of any kind.  Anything to help pass the time.  We could even create posters or banners for the staff to hang on windows or doorways for the people to see.  Anything to let these folks know that we care about them even if we can’t be physically present with them.

I also strongly encourage all of you to check on your neighbors.  If you have elderly neighbors, these folks should not be going to public places.  Make a call, deliver a gallon of milk or a bag of apples.  If you can keep someone who shouldn’t be out in the house, you may literally save a life.

We are going to have to come together and cooperate like never before to get through this.  I know there are some frustrating decisions being made, I was aggravated we couldn’t meet for church.  But no matter what your opinion of the decisions happens to be, they have been made and now we need to look out for each other.  Everyone is concerned and many are at risk.  In order to calm fears, it is going to take everyone doing their part.

It is going to come down to the answer to a single question.  What will we remember about this coronavirus season?  Was this a time of great inconvenience where we all complained about what was happening?  Or was this a season where we showed the coronavirus what happens when our community is threatened?  We need to come together with a positive attitude and make sure everyone is delivered safely through this mess.

This is our chance to reveal greatness if we will seize the opportunity rather than complain about the challenge.