What's the plan?

A pastor friend of mine reached out to myself and another pastor friend the other day to talk about planning. He was trying to plan ahead for the coming year. Typically, churches plan out six months to a year ahead. Many times, planning teams sit around after Easter planning Christmas and sit around Christmas planning Easter. Some might call it a cycle of assumption; being so bold as to assume what you’ll be doing six months from now. I think there was a time that most of us did this without thinking too much about it.

 Those of us who get excited breaking open our new planner each year and filling it with the dreams of the year to come, "get" this cycle of assumption. The big question is do you write in pen or pencil in your yearly planner? I tend to lean more towards hope than assumption, so I use pencil. Let me just say there was a whole lot of erasing going on in my 2020 planner.

So, getting back to these pastor friends of mine. Our conversation was about planning and basically how far out to plan. I think its fair to say many of us might be a little intimidated by writing anything on our planners for 2021. As we talked about ideas and plans for the future coming year in ministry, you could hear the uncertainty in our conversation. Most of us don’t know what next week will bring in our churches let alone months from now. I could sense the cautiousness in our words.

But then I remembered a message my friend had recently preached. It pulled from a scripture I have gone to many times in my life during seasons of uncertainty. Sometimes we slowly move into a posture of paralysis when there is just so much of the unknown around us. Sometimes we aren’t sure if we should move, and if we do move, how far can we boldly wander in the darkness?

The scripture from this message that this conversation reminded me of, was from Jeremiah 29. Gods people had been exiled to Babylon and the prophet Jeremiah sent a letter from Jerusalem to them. The letter he sent was Gods message to the people. The people who were in a similar kind of paralytic posture that some of us might feel right now. A place of not recognizing the world around you. A feeling of not knowing how long we will be living in this “land” of uncertainty. They didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know how to plan, or if they even should; and God sent them a letter of direction through Jeremiah. The letter said this:

“Thus, says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughter’s in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.”

In other words, “LIVE” “PLAN” “PROSPURE” 

Don’t allow your circumstances to paralyze your lives. Although things are different in many ways, work through the challenges and differences and move forward.

So, as I spoke with my friends, we gave ourselves permission to plan. To plant seeds in our ministry gardens and look forward to days of harvest. To cultivate our church families to continue to be disciples and make more disciples for the future. To break open our planners and start to fill in the pages; not with any kind of misdirected assumptions…..but with hope….for the future. To continue to be the church right where we are; and to LIVE, PLAN and PROSPURE in doing so.

What are your plans? What might you hope in faith for the coming year? The Lord of hosts says plant! Build! Grow! 

Break open your planners, write on your calendars, move foreword in faith by the power of the one thing that IS certain; our heavenly Father who loves us abundantly and who wants us to plant seeds in our gardens of hope so we too can have a future harvest in our lives.