With August comes the shift from the season of vacations and leisure to routines and structure. Students start back to school, and traffic increases overnight! In ministry, families return to their fall routines which means leaders increase their focus toward ministry and evangelism. Leaders develop plans for their ministries and try to balance church life and home life. The leader’s family faces change as the new school year begins since new grades are entered and new extracurricular activities become part of the routine.
And then one day, the schedule doesn’t work. The leader cannot be in two places at once, or the outdoor fall event is scheduled on the weekend where all it does is rain! What now?
Flex. Don’t break.
If as leaders we become so rigid and so tied to our plans that we cannot be flexible, then we run the risk of spending life miserable and angry. If not that, then maybe we are stressed and anxious! I don’t know about you, but those are not appealing options!
Flexibility is key. When leaders must be flexible, they may have to rely on others for assistance that they may never have thought to call on in a crisis. They may need to rally the rest of the team of ministry leaders to get some ideas or to have someone else take over so that the child’s first gymnastics meet is not missed.
I know that when we have everything planned out and we have our minds set that this is how this ministry event is going to happen it is because we were so careful in the preparations that we think this is the very best plan! It has to be! We spent a long time getting it just right! Doing something different makes us uncomfortable! I don’t want to be flexible! I want it to happen the way I planned it!
But that kind of thinking and attitude makes us rigid. And if we are rigid, we are not flexible. We can be broken.
I know lessons can be learned in brokenness. But lessons can also be learned when we practice flexibility…when we take some deep breaths and come up with a new idea since we cannot take the 4th grade class outside in the torrential downpour.
Our plans may have truly been epic! We may have had an amazing event planned. But when it doesn’t work out, we can pivot and be flexible, or we can breakdown and pout. God is never caught off guard when our plans don’t come to fruition. He knows what will occur and what will not.
So, this year when things don’t work out exactly as you thought, what will be your response? Flex? Or break?
