Finding Rest in Ministry Rhythms—

I love an old-fashioned paper calendar. I spend time marking it up with all kinds of colors based on the occasion. Later this month, there is a week outlined bright orange and blue with BEACH written in big letters. Beach Week happens towards the end of every summer and is a family rhythm. We know when we get there, it’s a glorious week of sun, surf, and relaxation; then school will greet us shortly on the other side.

I can’t help but think about creation when I think about rhythms. Those were the first ones! And what was lying on the other side of that week of creation was rest. How good our God is that from the beginning He gave us light and darkness to mark the most basic rhythms! We don’t need a clock or calendar to know this rhythm. It’s what we expect to happen, and our bodies anticipate it. (Newborn mamas, the babies will catch on to it—I promise).

Ministry rhythms are also a glorious gift from God. Before I joined staff at our church, the children’s ministry events began to beautifully integrate my family’s yearly rhythm with the liturgical calendar. Growing up in a different denomination, I didn’t really know much about a liturgical calendar. Yet, after a couple of years, my children, especially, began to anticipate events on it. “Super duper excited” might be more accurate than “began to anticipate.” Yet, what it’s done is linked our calendars with the redemptive story of Christ.

In late November, we look towards the Advent Party. A Build-a-Pageant at Christmas Eve with bales of hay continually picked up and tossed around by the toddlers dressed as angels and shepherds touches the hearts of our whole covenant family. In early spring, we have Palm Sunday worship with fresh palm leaves and to everyone’s delight—Cupid the Donkey! Our kids get to enter into a scene where they can use their senses of sight, touch, and smell to wonder at these snippets of God’s story. These became ministry rhythms that give our hearts and bodies that walking-through-life kind of rhythm. We know how to do it. And as we move through a year step by step, these unforced rhythms carry us along the way.

The Message’s version of Matthew 11:28-30 describes it so well,  “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

This applies for the good of the kids and families we serve, but it also applies just as much to the work of ministry. Adhering to a yearly ministry rhythm means that  much of the work has already been constructed. This is the best part! I have found it so helpful for all of the behind- the-scenes work also. Updating our policies and training our people happens every mid-August, and celebrating them happens everyday(!) but especially in May. We take a couple weeks of intentional rest in late July after He’s allowed us to be part of a great work in VBS. It’s tempting to try the shiny and new events or curriculum and eventually updates are necessary, but we are wise to make them thoughtfully and prayerfully and ease into them.

The goal of rhythms is rest. Our good, orderly God laid it out for us in the beginning of His creative work. “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Genesis 2:1-3).

We’re allowed time to reflect on His blessings during our rest. We begin to take Jesus’s pace of walking through this life—the pace of peace. His rhythmic pace gives us that extra margin to dwell with the flock, but ultimately to dwell with Him. He is the treasure of leaning into rhythms, and we get to invite others into taking on that pace when we value them in the life of the local church.