Making Adjustments

Written by our Business Administrator, Alan Heath.

The church halls are empty. The voices of little children that sometime creates a joyous cacophony as they move past my office on the way to chapel have disappeared. Likewise, I know longer hear the screams of recreation coming from the playground not too far outside my office.

The hum of activities that seem constant at our church has also fallen silent as the many committees and outside groups can no longer meet. Telephones in the main office have all but fallen silent with an occasional robocall breaking the stillness.

And then the word came that we could not continue to maintain the skeleton crew of someone in the main office, at least one clergy, our custodial crew and myself. It was time to “go home.”

While our worship staff had jumped into action a couple of weeks before and taken advantage of our streaming capabilities and Facebook Live to continue to present meaningful worship, we now had to determine how to maintain the “business” functions of the church.

Just because our operations have temporarily changed does not mean that many of those functions have stopped. There are still bills to pay, payroll to process and, thankfully, donations to receive, book and deposit. Normally, many of those functions are skillfully handled by our financial assistant, Sherry Miears. But Sherry took a long overdue trip to Austin just before this “new reality” hit. And, now, as I perform many of those functions in her place, I have a greater appreciation for the job she does.

But here I am at my home in Greenville. I just finished processing the next payroll for our church staff, CDO, FunStop and Academy. I sure hope I did it correctly! Thankfully, today I had just one bill to pay and used the Online BillPay function of our bank rather than writing a paper check, like we usually do. Then I had to process our monthly mortgage payment so that it would be applied next Monday, when it is due. Again, thanks to the facility of online banking, that wasn’t a major issue. But Sherry will have a lot of work to enter all these transactions into our church accounting system when she is able to return. And that’s when I probably need to go on vacation.

I long for a return to normalcy. I long to see those two-year old’s bouncing off the walls as they traverse the hall through our office area. I long to hear the delightful screams of afternoon recreation once again. I long for my office doorway to be inhabited regularly by staff and members. It will happen. Soon, I hope. And we will look back on these times and remember the special challenges, but also remember the new ways we developed to connect, even at a distance. 

My thanks go to our faithful members, who even during this time of difficulty, continue to support their church with their prayers, gifts, service and witness. We will all make up for the “presence” we long for soon. Until then, stay safe, keep your distance and keep the faith!