Starting Over

      I've started many of my writings as of late with something along the lines of,

     "what a crazy season we find ourselves in."

     This is no different...

     I think a lot of us hoped it would be different or at least feel different by this point.  I guess in some ways it does feel differently but for the most part it feels like we're in the movie Groundhog Day.

     This past Wednesday, as I was preparing to have our Wednesday night student service I found myself somewhat overwhelmed.  I have a large dry erase calendar in my office and on it I map out my ministry, our church happenings, and in many ways my life.  I was staring at this relatively blank calendar.  As I began to process what I was feeling I started to realize a monumental fact.  I realized how much time we had lost.  It was so much more than the literal weeks and months we went without meeting and more than any momentum we had in the spring.  I began to lament the discipleship we had lost.  I grieved the time my student leadership team didn't have being mentored.  I wept for the lost summer where so many conversations about the gospel and discipleship occur not to mention the summer is our time to pray, process, and vet upcoming student leaders.  Gone!  Then on top of that I realized that of my four person student leadership team (usually 8-10), my two guys are both seniors and I don't really have that next in line guy in place.  It was a tough day.

     At first I was just kind of down or out of sorts but as I processed this I was able to name that I was grieving.  So I named it, processed it, and asked God what now?  It wasn't until that evening that He showed me.  

     After our Wednesday night service I had plans to meet with my adult and student leadership teams, mainly just to pray and process over this time.  What God had me do was a little different.  He had me have a funeral service of sorts.  It was simple and short but I shared about this past year, the frustrations along with any victories we had.  I shared how I had been feeling today as I processed and grieved.  Then we had a funeral for this past season.

     At a funeral you mourn the loss but you also celebrate the life.  We did that!  I always find it interesting that it's after the graveside when the close friends and family are together that the life is truly celebrated.  Over food and drink loved ones share stories, laughs, tears, and so much more.  I told my teams that we would do the same but that we must leave our grieving here and only celebrate.

     So today we find ourselves not really in a season of rebuilding but one of starting over.  You see, rebuilding implies doing the same thing.  We want to do something new.  Yes, there are things we'll keep about how our ministry has run and hopefully we learn to do them better but there are also things we'll cut lose.  Never has there been a time like this where we have the ability to start our ministries from scratch.  I've been at my church coming up on fifteen years.  It's hard to do this and frustrating at times, after all, I've worked fourteen years to develop this ministry as it is.  But I recognize I've been given a clean pallet so I want to create and build and develop exactly what God has for me, my ministry, and my teams.

     Where do you find yourself?  What are things you're grieving?  Maybe you're like I was and you're grieving and you don't even realize it.  Allow yourself to grieve, mourn, and lament the time and things you've lost and then celebrate them and press on.

     Heaven and hell are realities so we can't afford to give up now, even if it means starting over.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash