There’s a familiar Yiddish proverb that says, “We plan, God laughs.” That certainly describes what’s going on at The Warehouse Church OTR. Of course, the more scriptural way of saying that is, “Many plans are in a person’s heart, but the purpose of the LORD will prevail.” (Proverbs 19:21) Our scheduled launch on Resurrection Sunday, April 12, 2020, was waylaid by COVID-19, which some not so affectionately call, “The Rona.” All of our plans and programs which had initially been directed toward in-person gatherings, community building, hugs, and food sharing, were now postponed… indefinitely. We had a hard choice to make. Would we delay the launch until it was safe to re-open with gatherings of people? Or could we do something new? In the start-up business world, the term used to describe what has happened at The Warehouse is a PIVOT. When your first business model for whatever reason will not work, you change directions. Eric Ries, author of “The Lean Startup” coined the term Pivot and explains it simply for us. “A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision. The vision is the destination you have in mind, but if you have an obstacle, you don’t just drive into the obstacle over and over again in the hopes that it will be fine. You, with your GPS, find a way around.” Many well-known companies like YouTube, Avon, Suzuki, Twitter, and Groupon started off with one idea, purpose, or delivery system in mind, and in the course of surveying the atmosphere…found themselves needing or wanting to make a critical adjustment that allowed them to not just stay alive, but to thrive.
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Of course, since we’re a plant, we had not been streaming services for years like HPCUMC does. Nor we did not have the equipment, systems, or expertise to do so. So we scrambled like crazy for the first few weeks to attempt to offer something online. It did not help that I (Sadell) was terrified of doing anything on video. After praying about it, the LORD encouraged me to start by doing short-under 3 minute videos to encourage folks with Scripture who might be anxious or worried about the pandemic. About 30 takes later, I’d conquered my fear and I posted my first video. Then we began to set a course for offering services, Bible study, and informative content online. We added Telestreaming services, Zoom calls, even a phone bible study for Seniors. We discussed with Doug and Anna that given the times and that we did not know when we would meet again in-person, we thought we should just launch The Warehouse Church OTR as an online church. So we shifted our budget toward this end to pay for equipment, software, learning opportunities, etc. and began to put out what we hoped would be content. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Edison’s quote about inventing the lightbulb, pretty much sums up our technological journey so far. Can we get the live stream to successfully be delivered to multiple platforms (Facebook, YouTube, thewarehouse.churchonline.church) at the same time? The answer is sometimes we can, and sometimes we can’t, LOL! We’re playing all these instruments and stems to fill in for sounds and vocals we don’t have, but because our sound system has never had to go through the air to
