Untitled Sermon (3)

Reboot:

So here we are a year and 6 months later after the entire world seemingly was shut down. Before I say anything I want to take a moment and celebrate these great heroes in this room men, women, teachers, bus drivers, culinary workers, environmental service, administrative assistants, IT, administrators, and all that help this machine go! You are heroes and you should be celebrated! Many of you nervously climbed back into your classroom. Many of you scrapped to learn how to teach virtually. Many of you worked tirelessly to do all that you could to have some semblance of education as best you knew how. I salute you and celebrate you for fighting through. I salute you and celebrate you for braving dangerous territory. I salute you for working through this obstacle called the Covid-19 pandemic. We couldn’t get around it. We couldn’t figure it out. All we could do was be as safe as possible and fight our way through. Now here we are a year and six months later. Can we just pause for a second and be thankful that we are still here. Can we pause for a moment and positively remember those who did not make it back this year. After all that we have been through. After all that we have fought through, and after all that we made through. We just may need to reboot.

There are a few things we need to check on in order to properly reboot. The first thing we need to do is check to see if we are plugged in. We all know that we have new leadership here at JMCSS. With new leadership comes new ideas, new ways of seeing things, new ways of saying things, and different levels of accountability. Often times we get distracted to the point where we are not plugged in. When this happens we all have to remind ourselves of why we do what we do. Your passion for educating children, your passion for technology, your passion for culinary work, your passion for leading, your passion for growing young men and women in athletics and the arts. Make sure you stay plugged into your passion. Systems will change, methods will change, people will change, but passion is what you should remain plugged into. What was your passion when you graduated from college? Hold on to it. What was your passion when you received your first position? Hold on to that. In all that we are going through and all that we have been through we need to stay plugged into our passions. Somebody help me say get plugged back in!

The next thing we need to check is our connection. Somebody say connection! Connection, according to Merriam-Webster, is a situation in which two or more things have the same cause, origin, goal, etc. If you ever have an issue with a router the first thing that help desk will tell you is to check the connection. The reason you have to connect the connection is because the router can produce what it is connected to. If it is not connected to good source or a good signal nothing connected to the router will produce. During this pandemic season many of us became disconnected. We were disconnected from family. Disconnected from our normal way of life. Disconnected from friends. Disconnected from our faith traditions. Leaders were disconnected with team members due to work from home situations. Teachers were disconnected from teaching and students were disconnected from learning. Now here we are striving to reconnect. Reconnecting with friends. Reconnecting with schools. Reconnecting with life, because being connected is important. Proverbs like “No person is an island” or “It takes a village” reminds us that we are all connected, and when we have the same cause or we are connected to the same source with the same vision then we can reach the same goal! Leaders have to set the vision, and everyone else needs to connect to the vision. It works from the central office to the pre-k classroom. Somebody say get Reconnected!

Now if these two aren’t the issue then we need to do a hard reboot. Often times when an electrical device has been unplugged for a while, and has been disconnected for a while it will need to be rebooted. Let me just say there is nothing wrong with rebooting. Many of us have experienced being unplugged. I just can’t get with this. I can’t understand this, and I am done. We all have been there. Many of us have experienced the feeling of being disconnected. It seems like I can’t get on the same frequency, or seems like signal is not connected. I don’t fully agree with the direction, or I don’t like the way things are said and/or done, or I just don’t see eye to eye with it. Part of the real reboot is we recognize such. We recognize we are not plugged in, and we recognize that we are not connected, but we are willing to do something about it. That’s progress in its self. The real beauty of a reboot is many people don’t realize that sometimes when you are not plugged in and you are not connected you miss out on software upgrades. When you get plugged back in and when you reconnect those upgrades are of no use to you until you reboot! Once you do a hard reboot then all of a sudden the passion is back, because we are plugged back into our passions. The charisma is back now because we are now reconnected, and running at full bandwith.

That’s what we are trying to do at Leader’s Credit Union we want to make sure that you are plugged into one of the healthiest Credit Unions financially in the nation. We want you to be plugged in because Leaders Credit Union work to power your passions and make lives better. We want you to be connected to or reconnect to a Credit Union whose roots started from you, so that we can move Forward as One. Lastly Leaders is here to help you reboot financially with free financial wellness through our Freedom Path, provide you with free financial counseling with certified financial counselors, and give you access to the top home lender in West TN. We are invested in our schools rebooting by doubling our efforts through Leaders Education Foundation where we are giving away at least 20 $1,000 grants this year. Go to Leadersgives.org and submit your idea today. We want to be your financial champion! If you are not a member no problem we have a special promo code LCU4EDU to waive your membership fee and give you access to the fullness of Leaders Credit Union.