Imagine that you are a teacher in a grade school. The day is going along as normal and all of the kids are currently in your classroom at their desks reading. Suddenly, the active shooter notification sounds. You pause for half a second trying to remember if there was a drill scheduled for today, before you realize this is the real thing. You remember your training and quickly shut and lock the door. Then you turn to your Teacher’s Aide and have her lead the children to move to the designated area. You sit and wait as quietly as possible. Neither you nor your aide have your cell phones in the classroom. The only line of communication is the intercom system.
The waiting grows and grows. The children are getting antsy, and they begin to ask questions in whispers. But as time passes the emotional extremes widen within the group of youngsters. Some begin to question if they are going to die. They begin to cry and ask if they will ever see their parents again. Others start to question the silence all around. “If there was something going on, wouldn’t there be more noise,” they ask. Your Aide begins to ask this too. She suggests that maybe it is safe, and maybe they should go check to see.
About this time, a voice you don’t recognize comes over the intercom. “Alright everyone, it is time to come on out. It was a false alarm.” Immediately your Aide pops up and begins to gather the children together to lead them out of the classroom. You on the other hand are a little more hesitant. There is something that just isn’t right. And as you are thinking this, another, different voice booms over the PA system. “Everyone stay put! We are still in an active shooter situation and it appears they have access to the public address system.”
You quickly round the class back up and start the waiting all over. Your students are now very confused, and you are not much better. The talk really gets going now and those once frightened are now terrified. The others who once questioned the validity of this situation are now convinced it isn’t a real threat. Some in the group begin to mock and shame the ones who don’t agree with their personal view. The best you can do is to just quiet the group for now. But the hours pass and soon it is dark and you have been huddled up for nearly 9 hours now. Some in the group don’t really grasp the depth of the situation and talk about how bored they are. Your Aide keeps trying to convince you to gather up the kids and make a run for it. And the competing voices over the classroom speaker seem to come on about once an hour adding to the confusion.
Your own kids go to this school too. In the midst of comforting all of the students, you think of your own kids and hope they are being comforted as well. There is no protocol for this exact situation. You have never had to lead in this exact way. You want to seem confident and comforting, but you don’t know the right answers and you could use a little encouragement yourself!
After about 10 hours, you hear a knock on the door and a SWAT team member comes bursting through in full tactical gear. Some kids scream, others start to cry. The officer quickly leads you out of the building and behind a row of police vans. There are helicopters and journalist all around. You wonder about the safety of your own kids and everyone else in the building.
They calm everyone down and move you to a secure building a few blocks away. After a few hours, the news comes out that a prankster had hacked into the school, set off the active shooter alert and was also able to speak over the intercom.
Now that you can look back on it with clarity, it may feel like you overreacted. The Teachers Aide smugly reminds you of how you stopped her from letting the kids out hours earlier. Some of the parents express they felt like their children were being held hostage and they question how it is that you couldn’t figure out the reality of the situation. “Did you hear any violent noises? Did you bother looking out the window to try and get a sense of any real urgency?”
However, you did the best that you could with the information that you had. Exercising prudence was the right thing to do no matter what you know when the situation is over. In that setting, your greatest responsibility was the safety of the ones in your charge. The very worst thing that happened was that some sat quietly for a few hours. Had the situation been different… if there was an active shooter, and had you neglected this primary responsibility of the children’s safety, the consequences could have been something that you would never want to live with.
To clarify, this is a very unperfect allegory. I am in no way saying that I think this current situation of the pandemic is a hoax. There are lots of loopholes to my tale, but I hope you get the point. Being a leader in this time is difficult and stressful. Leading a church during this time is challenging and I don’t often know if I doing the right thing. However, in the interest of prudence, I have tried to make the best decisions I can with the information I have understanding that in this case my primary responsibility is the safety of the ones in my charge. In the meantime, the worst thing that has happened to those in our church family is that we missed meeting in a building together one hour a week. I can live with that.
June 7th we open back up again. I pray this is a wise decision as well.
Experience Grace 