3 Lessons I Learned in a Busy (but effective) Season of Ministry

by chadbrooksis@gmail.com | Jul 16, 2018 | ministry, productivity

I’m writing this post while sipping coffee, sitting at the camp and waiting for my breakfast to come out of the over. I spent the night here after an evening meeting out of town and this was closer than the house. I had the ability to spend time with good friends I rarely see after the meeting and I’m waiting for more good friends to show up at the camp so we can have an evening together and stay the night.

I couldn’t do any of this 6 months ago and I’m doing most of this because of the last 6 months.

I want to share you with what I learned from a fast and furious ministry pace that was absolutely worth it, but something I want to avoid at all costs in the future. For a little background information, in six months, our 3-year-old church bought property, went into a capital campaign, built a parking lot, and transitioned into new (to us) temporary space while we are waiting to build our first worship center…all this while keeping up with the regular parts of ministry! There are times when ministry gets busy and it is needless, and their are time where busy has to happen. Here is how I handled (the good and the bad).

3 Lessons I Learned in a Busy Season of Ministry

Know what your willing to lose.
Things are going to get a little crazy. Trust me. I remember when we realized this was just going to be a break-neck pace and we ended up making a rule about new projects. To think you are going to keep everything up at 100% while moving towards some specific goals isn’t realistic.

If you know you are going to drop a few balls, name them before they slip out of your hands. This is a good time to define what is actually mission-critical and realize what can wait for a few months before it gets careful attention. I remember getting a few incredible ideas during this season and having to shelf them. There will be things personally and work-related that simply can’t get the attention it needs during this time.

At the same time, you need to define what balls you need to absolutely hold on to during this season. For us, it meant Sunday morning worship, strategic planning/meeting and communication. In fact, we doubled down on these things. It was worth it. In the middle of a season where we weren’t pursuing many ancillary things, we managed to grow as a church, have a very successful capital campaign and manage our transition to a new space without any major hiccups.

Define your onramps and offramps.
The funny thing is nearly all of these things went straight into each other, if not happening simultaneously. What I could have done better was try to schedule bits of time in-between them to relax and reset. I developed a nasty sinus infection (literally during) the final sermon of our capital campaign. I had planned to spend a few days relaxing here at the camp but spent it in bed at the house.

I also went straight from moving the church to spending a week as part of the design team of our Annual Conference. I serve as the technical director, so I immediately went from physically demanding situations and problem-solving into a week of physically demanding situations and problem-solving!

I could have planned this better, but we realized our move date was also dependent on how many Sundays we had in the new space before we started losing tons of folks serving due to vacations. We needed to get it up and running quickly.

One of the things I did a decent job at keeping up with was going to the gym (typically hitting twice a week), and did a good job at staying focused on my devotional life. I also did a good amount of reading during the time. I managed to carve out time for these activities because I knew these tiny sabbaths would make or break everything.

I did pretty bad at defining any onramps and offramp, so let’s chalk this up to a learning situation.

Intentionally plan your days and weeks.
Whenever you are working on time-sensitive projects, it helps to have a great calendar. Imagine you are cooking Thanksgiving dinner. You have to plan for oven space, prep time, pot usage and many other variables. This is bigger than something one person can do, but you need to have one person keeping a master calendar.

You can do big things like this if you have a great punch list written out and you can tackle one or two things a day. It makes it less stressful and keeps the ball moving forward. When you come into a sticking point (and you will), you will have a few different options you can run in until the issue sorts itself out.

One of the biggest lessons I learned was to never let the bus stop. You might have to make a turn, change lanes or shift into neutral, but don’t let it stop. These types of seasons are busy enough without having to start everything again. Also, have ways you can pivot and keep momentum.

Final Thoughts.

Here is what I feel like I learned the most.
You will absolutely figure out what you are horrible at.
You will find out what others are gifted at.
You will learn the place you fit during these sorts of seasons
You will learn that you, your leadership and church are capable of truly amazing things.

In the end, you can sit back, breathe deeply and realize all of the amazing things God is teaching and showing you. And it’s absolutely worth it.