Understand the Timeline

Working in a church is often a waiting game. This is never as true as time spent without a pastor. It seems as though there is never enough time to make up for his absence, or enough to do to get the steam built back up in your church without him around. Time seems to be your adversary, but I assure you, it is not.

Time is valuable for the church going through the fazes of loss, grief, refocus, and mobilization. There is a great deal of time that passes and a lot of water under the bridge during the months that seem to create a great and cavernous gap between ministries. However, ministry just as we said before does not have to stop simply because there is no pastor. But how does time become an asset for a church, rather than a hindrance.

Time is a necessary element in the production of quality products. Simply because the pastor is gone does not mean that things will change, or should change. We as staff members and lay workers must understand that there is a pastor’s office and position for a reason. We have not yet been called to that position, and we must understand what it means to stand humbly before an empty office just as we did an occupied one. Understanding the timeline also means that we understand time:

¹For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:²a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; ³a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; ⁴a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; ⁵a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; ⁶a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; ⁷a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; ⁸a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:2-8