“What gets scheduled gets done.”

It’s a pithy line, first proclaimed by a present-day planning guru, with a penchant for productivity. It’s also a mantra I accept. My planner accompanies my every pursuit: work, family, fun. Each piece of my day appears on the pages of my planner. If “what gets scheduled gets done,” then I better schedule everything.

The realities of our “new normal” become more apparent each day, with calendar entries that now include “Zoom meeting with boss,” “Virtual lunch meeting with client,” and so on. A latecomer to the idea of virtual meetings, I heard of Zoom technology through an email from the head of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music on March 11, alerting me to a Zoom meeting with our students. Little did I know that this would become my new reality. After my first Zoom meeting, all I could ask was, How on earth could this new reality be inspiring, productive or creative?

A few years ago I was asked to write an article for the Presbyterian Outlook on innovations in adult education. I agreed to write it, but only if they would let me reframe the question and talk about challenges in adult education. You can read that 2016 article here.

“There’s a monster at the end of this book.” Beloved Sesame Street character Grover does his best to stop the reader from turning pages. He argues, he yells, he builds walls, and he ties knots, but each page brings you closer to the aforementioned monster. Children of all ages delight as the final page reveals that the only monster in the book was one loveable Grover. The pages include the occasional affirmation for the reader: “You are very strong.” “You are very brave.”

Decades after the downfall of the television ministry of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, with their heavy mascara, tearful confessions, and money-raising gimmicks, all of us in mainline Protestantism are now televangelists ourselves these days. And yet we don’t have many models within our tradition of how to do “virtual church” well. We are all figuring it out as we go along. We remember in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Yet now he adds a caveat: “But if there’s more than 10 people, the CDC and local police will show up too.”

The central core of the Easter message every year is an expected emptiness. The angel says to the women, “He is not here; for he has been raised.”