Supplement

Literally from one day to the next, the work we’re all doing changed. Running youth groups on Zoom, recording Facebook Live devotions, livestreaming worship from living rooms–these are not different ways to do the same things we were doing before. They are different things. They are the things we should be doing, because they are the things the moment demands. But they’re different things.

I hope when this is over that we can resist the urge to replace what we were doing before with what we’re doing now. Some of those things we were doing before needed a shakeup and serious scrutiny, but I fear that these digital alternatives will appear the obvious solution. I hope we can find the value in Zoom and livestreaming that is durable and persist with those elements to supplement what we were doing before. That might require letting some of those older things go, and I hope we were thinking about letting them go before the crisis.

Supplement feels more fruitful than replace.