Looking Back at 2020

Goodness gracious! Like so many people literally around the world, I thought 2020 lingered far longer than was welcome. This has certainly been the most challenging year of my adult life and rivals (perhaps even surpasses in many ways) what I recall of the turmoil of the 1970’s. Over the past few weeks, I have noticed a great many of my social media connections eagerly looking forward to 2021. Unsurprisingly, I have not noticed a single post from someone lamenting the passing of 2020 into history.

Here at the ranch, we are ending the year very differently than we had expected when it began and yet we know we have been blessed during this season. Our immediate family is healthy, safe, and continue to enthusiastically look to the future. With this year-end post, I want to briefly take a look back over the past year. I also want to take a look ahead (no forecasting here friends!!) and contemplate the coming year.

Looking Back

This year began much as the last few had begun. Ministry plans for the coming year were largely already in place, activities were already filling up our calendars, and our regular routines remained more or less settled. Then coronavirus happened.

Educational leadership at all levels responded. With our son already in his second semester on campus, the arrival of COVID-19 changed everything. It was remarkable how quickly his university transitioned all students to online-only for the remainder of the semester. With a robust online program already in place, this was not a huge surprise. The nimble response of K-12 systems (in particular here where my family live in South Georgia) was inspiring.

Let me say honestly that I am well aware that responses of different colleges, universities, and K-12 school systems varied across the nation and were uneven and at times, more difficult than necessary (hindsight is a funny thing). In defense of educators and administrators at all level though, a once-a-century pandemic isn’t exactly something that one spends much time studying when preparing for a career in the education space.

When classes resumed in the fall, it was  after a tremendous amount of planning, training where needed, and consultation with public health experts. I was pleased that both of my kids were able to return to class, even with the challenging restrictions that were necessarily put in place to help mitigate the spread of the virus. While my kids were able to return to campus, developments late in the year forced my own plans to be in Louisville on campus at Southern Seminary to be altered as all classes in December were moved to their virtual environment. Though decidedly disappointed, our family made the best of virtual learning and gained some experience I’m sure we never considered at the4 beginning of the year.

Family plans had to change for all of us. Long-time readers know my family loves to cruise. We have spent close to two months at sea on cruise ships combined over the years and had similar plans for 2020. Alas, those plans were not meant to be. In fact, other vacation plans we considered were cancelled as well. A trip to Tupelo was called off as we considered the risk of asymptomatic virus transmission to Melisa’s family (y’all aren’t youngins anymore you know!) to be too great to ignore.

It wasn’t just vacation plans that had to change though. There were others things impacted by the pandemic too! There were medical procedures that had been in the works that had to be postponed. There were potential visits to college campuses for students soon to be graduating; there was checking up on church members via phone or social media; there was awkward distancing when trying to minister to families that had recently lost loved ones (including my own).

A comprehensive list would be far too long to include here but I am quite certain readers will get the point. Suffice to say there really wasn’t any part of our lives that were not changed for a time during 2020. It has been my prayer for months now that the lessons we’ve learned about endurance and flexibility will outlast this pandemic by many, many years!

Leadership during trials took on a new meaning. There is a lot published both at the academic and popular level on the topic of leadership. I am one that believes leadership skills can be learned, and therefore improved, by people motivated to do so. Crisis leadership was talked and written about (a lot) in 2020. Make no mistake, much of the content was beneficial and likely helped a lot of others as they provided leadership in their context during this pandemic.

The most honest leaders said candidly that they didn’t have all of the answers. The challenges of 2020 are not exactly the kinds of things that are covered in the curriculum of most business schools or seminaries (I know from deep personal experience in both settings). That’s not to say that leadership in a crisis is not discussed at all but on the scale we have endured in 2020…not really! Still, leaders I know were very open about what they were working through, the thinking of their teams, and what was and wasn’t working.

I’ve benefited both from being able to call on people in my network to ask questions while also being available to answer questions from others who were not as far down their own path we were at the time on our own. It has been a particular blessing to see how so many churches have conspicuously improved their online capabilities. In my view, all of Christendom will be better because of being forced to invest in this area of our ministries.

Tomorrow the New Year begins and I am excited about 2021! I will have another post for you called Looking Ahead to 2021 that I hope you will check out when it publishes. Later tonight, as you ring in the New Year, do so with a heart filled with hope!

May God bless you and yours!!