14 Months After My Controversial Facebook Live Video from the Basement

Author - Umn ministry

June 03, 2021

Revisiting what we said about the coming COVID-19 crisis and what has transpired.

While it feels much longer, we are fourteen months removed from my infamous Facebook live video from my basement where I sounded the alarm that the COVID-19 crisis wasn’t about moving your church online. After my 22-minute video exhorting the church to prepare for the coming crisis, my colleague Josh Laxton and I followed up with subsequent articles aiming to help churches and church leaders process and navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. (Article 1-March 23, 2020, Article 2- April 22, 2020, Article 3- January 7, 2021)

It is important to remember that in March 2020, people were discounting COVID-19, some calling it a hoax and others saying it would pass quickly. After I met with the Surgeon General, he urged me to help churches take this more seriously. And, Josh Laxton and I decided to sound the alarm. Watch the video here if you’d like.

As we have seemingly entered Phase 4 of our crisis leadership framework, Recover and Reemerge, we thought it would be an enlightening exercise to revisit the video and some of our articles to evaluate what we said in light of what transpired.

1. What we said about the real crisis

I emphatically stated, “Moving your church online isn’t the real crisis, the real crisis is weeks away.” The real crisis was the damaging effects of COVID-19. In fact, I went on to note that, if we did not flatten the curve, probably within a week, you’ll know someone who contracted COVID-19; and probably next month (which would have been April), you’ll know someone who died from COVID-19.

If you recall, I shared the following image.

At the time I shared this image, epidemiologists and other experts were saying was that unless we took drastic preventative measures to slow the spread ...