It is 500 days (exactly) since we left Bangalore, with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic.

What a week that was, back in March 2020. After five months without any international travel for Langham (my longest period out of the skies), I had five complex trips planned in the following three months — and I had been my own travel agent. Oh dear! One by one, flights were cancelled, changed (by me, or by the airlines) and then cancelled altogether. Day after day, I sat on my computer riding those changes as best as I could, having no idea what was on the horizon.

It was even harder for Barby. She was due to fly West with me (including time with her sisters in Florida), but on the Friday we decided she should fly East and go straight home to New Zealand. We finally found a flight for her, via Singapore, on the Monday night. On the Monday morning, at a community chapel, it was annnounced that we were leaving — inadvertently implying that we were not returning — and so Barby had 10 hours to say goodbye to people into whom she had poured her life.

A final evening walk in Bangalore … Oh, the dust—and the cricket on the dirt!

I followed Barby to the airport a few hours later (hearing about the arrival of our baby grand-daughter, Liliana, as I walked out the door, literally)— traveling via Dubai, but arriving in Auckland just minutes after Barby. Soon, within a few days, it became clear that the ‘inadvertent’ word was a prophetic word. We did not return. We have not returned. We left with one suitcase each, thinking we’d be back in less than 100 days. The windows were left open, the fridge was left on and the washing basket was occupied with this and that. Our household items and all my key resources remain in India to this day…

Self-isolating in Auckland … eighteen glorious days at Little Huia

The more I’ve heard other peoples’ stories, the more I realise how gracious God has been to us. I’ve been discovering a few things along the way…

These two fruit of the Spirit in my life needed to ripen much, much more. We made a few practical changes in Langham Preaching — like working through the night-time hours being weighted more heavily than the day-time hours, while also placing productivity and progress as a lower priority. We are not in a hurry. The well-being of people is at stake, especially during lockdowns and when Covid comes close to heart and home. For me, being on the edge of the world has had its challenges in the Zoom environment. Once more than 2-3 people are gathered from across the world, I’ve learned to expect the night-shift!  

… and especially in the hands of my Langham Preaching colleagues. We write a weekly prayer bulletin, focusing on intercession & petition for the work. In those early months we added a second weekly bulletin, focusing on exhortation & encouragement to each other. If I was to single out one thing that sustained me during those months, it was sitting ‘under’ this biblical ministry of those whom I lead. Each week, as I edited their words, God stirred my heart. When we decided to publish some of Wilfredo’s prayer-poems (as Prayer in the Time of a Pandemic, link), we ‘wrapped’ his gift inside some of these devotionals. 

As the months have unfolded, I’ve loved being back in the garden, for the first time in 15+ years. And the way Isaiah 61.11 links the garden with the nations has filled me with hope — and then when I singalong to the timezone-aware imperialist patriotic missional hymn, ‘The Day Thou Gavest’ (link), the occasional tear appears as well.

Or, more importantly, try to create spaces where people care for each other. A few months into the crisis, the impact was becoming clear. People were weary, uncertain and sad. The care needed to be mindful of these areas. Increasing our communication seemed to be crucial. That second prayer bulletin, but then having our various teams meeting weekly on Zoom proved to be so significant (with our Global Leadership Team in the picture below). Sharing, praying, having fun — these tend to eclipse the ‘business’. It is remarkable, if relationships are already in place, just how much Zoom can facilitate those relationships and deepen that care. I’ve tried different things as well … a weekly email, ‘Different Week, Same God’ for a season … using Zoom and WhatsApp, as seems appropriate. It has not been easy, as most efforts can feel like a stumble-fumble — especially because of my vantage point on the edge of the pandemic.

Increasingly, I find the way the pain in the pandemic pinballs around the world to be difficult. For example, our people in Bolivia burden me for a (long!) season and then when that begins to lift a little, my heart needs to rush across to a Myanmar, or a Fiji. There is no respite. It is relentless. Someone, somewhere in our work, is always walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It is made worse by the fact that New Zealand is insulated from much of it and New Zealanders seem oblivious to much of it. The pandemic is a noise at a pitch that most people do not readily hear. Ironically, this is what tests mental and emotional health the most — this context of safety and well-being in which I live. For much of the time I’ve struggled to cope and recently, in a devotional, used the sporting metaphor of being ‘out of form’ to describe life and leadership. I need to be reminded, as my father used to sing, that Jesus is the Burden-Bearer (link), for them and for me.

Ever since my days at Carey Baptist College, and now with Langham Preaching, I’ve loved the combination of Nehemiah’s ‘the gracious hand of God was upon me’ and the Psalmist’s ‘may the favour of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us’. They’ve been like an anthem for me, a leadership mantra. It is about trying to gather people and take them to live under that hand, experiencing that favour and discovering what that hand wants to do with us. It is the Lord’s work. He is the Project Manager, while we are mere sub-contractors doing his work at his bidding, with his enabling and guidance. During these difficult Covidian days, I stand amazed at the flowering of creativity, care, collaboration, and cross-pollination among our remarkably resilient people in Langham Preaching.

nice chatting

Paul