One of the things I love about living in Kentucky is how distinct every season is. And as a bonus, sometimes we can get all four in a week! But each season has its own feel, its own qualities, and its own challenges. Leaders travel through different seasons in their journey--each has its own qualities and responses. And like the calendar, leadership seasons are cyclical. Here's my best shot at how the seasons flow.

The Honeymoon season of leadership is where a new leader enters the scene and everything is exciting, new, fresh, and optimistic. If you come into a dire situation, you are viewed as a source of hope. If you come into a healthy situation, you are viewed as the successor to continue pressing on. In ministry, this is the equivalent of the "Freshman 15" for college students. Be ready for a lot of casseroles, baked goods, and people wanting to have lunch with you. The emphasis in this stage should be adjusting your family, developing relationships, and spending time talking and listening to folks.

The Pushback season of leadership is when the honeymoon ends. You had this too in your marriage. This was that first fight after settling into your apartment. Our first pushback was over how to sort laundry. Sounds silly, but your first argument with your spouse probably was too. In leadership, pushback happens when you make a change or when they find out you're not Superman. It's not wrong or bad, it's reality. None of us can ever live up to the expectations or imagination of what people think a leader should be. Or pushback can come when a leader feels impressed to make a change of something that has "always been done this way." It's important for a leader to remember to that any change initiative should be done slowly, with others on board, and with careful calculation of the cost and impact on your strategy. Changing something because you don't like it is dumb. Changing something because it doesn't advance the mission or connect people to Jesus is worth exploring. But no matter how small or insignificant you think something is, it likely means something to someone. So be ready for the pushback season. How you handle this is important. Will you listen to people or will you surround yourself with yes men? Will you communicate clearly your heart and intent? Will you build a coalition of other leaders or will you go out on the ledge with a chainsaw alone?

The hopeful next season after pushback is what I'll call "Values, Vision, and Purpose." This is the season where who you are starts to shape who the church is, and what's important starts to rise to the top. Maybe you've got a dream of what you want things to look like down the road? When you share that and craft that, and ultimately write it down, you're capturing a vision. When you write down your values, you're laying out what's most important to you as a church, and what you will shape your priorities, budget, programming, and emphases around. And when you lay out purpose, you are laying out why and for whom you're working. These are huge, because now you're in the season of creating new norms, of cultivating a culture, and beginning the process of transformation. Like working outside during August, this season is hard work. It requires a leader to be proactive, to be relational, and to keep the endgame in mind. It's a huge task, but effective leaders are able to wear multiple hats.

The next season is Mission. This is where things click, where what's been laid out as important is now put into practice. Maybe one of your values is building strong families. At the mission season, you're developing effective next generation ministries, hosting marriage seminars, and preaching regularly on the importance of the home and family for faith formation. If you're into Tuckman's Group Stages, this is similar to the "Performing" stage. Because you've laid out a vision of where things could be, you've given people a goal to chase. Because values have been normed, there's focus on what's important. And since you've laid out purpose, people are willing to serve and take on new projects and ministries because they see the One they're serving.

The last season in the cycle is Transitions. Every church is both organization and organism. People come and go, jobs will take key leaders away, funerals will mark the end of a faithful legacy of people you counted on, and new people will be moving from attender to member to minister. Along with that, healthy organizations occasionally need to go through a process of evaluation and modification. Maybe there's a ministry that once was effective but has gone past its time, or a staff member gets a shift in their job description to match a new sense of calling. These things are normal, healthy, and good. But they require transitions. A transition is different than a change. In a change, things get shuffled and flipped. But in a transition, there's an intentional effort to honor what's been done, identify who can step into the gap, and turn the page to a new chapter. So cheer on the deacon who took a new job across the country, cry with their family, and let them finish well. Then, fill the gap with another qualified leader.

Because the Transition season marks a whole shift in the leader's emphasis, we renew the cycle. So after a leader goes through Transitions, they'll go through Pushback as new leaders and new processes start to take shape which are different than what had been done before. And from there it moves to the Values, Vision and Purpose, then to Mission, and again back to Transitions. What's also worth mentioning is that like Kentucky where the seasons change daily sometimes, there is some fluidity in the Pushback, Values Vision & Purpose, and Mission seasons. Sometimes you'll float back and forth between those, and that's where a leader's flexibility and adaptivity is important (for more on this, check out Situational Leadership).

The season that hasn't been mentioned is the Departure season. In this, a leader is the one making the transition. But it takes a tangent off the cycle because it impacts things much differently. And in the Departure season, the church takes the initiative to make sure that the leader is able to leave well and move off the cycle. In my book Dream Teams, I talk about the importance of leaving well. It's important for a leader to make sure they are setting up the church to continue on without them, and for the church to make sure the hard work and legacy of the leader is celebrated (but not idolized). Because a Departure season naturally means a significant transition, I took it off the cycle, it's inevitable that a Departure season is going to be a "lame duck" in a lot of ways. It's hard to get behind new initiatives because the next leader will bring a different set of ideas, gifts, and personality.

_The two best pictures of God's love for us we can see everyday are marriage and parenting. Marriage describes His relationship with the Church, loving her, caring for her, providing for her, protecting her, serving her, interceding for her, and ultimately dying for her. Parenting, on the other hand, shows the unconditional love for us as individuals. A parent gives their time and energy, their blood, sweat, and tears, and their heart to someone who cannot help themselves. Our kids are born in sin (don't believe me? Volunteer for nursery duty!), are bent towards themselves, and constantly need something...like, always. 

The call to parenthood really is a call to death to self, much like it does when we are called by Christ to follow Him and deny ourselves. When you become a parent, there really is nothing called "me time" anymore. Someone else is completely dependent on you, just like we are completely dependent on Christ. Stories like this one of part-time parents who still want to play show that the world's picture of parenthood is an accessory. But loving and serving and providing for a child like Jesus loves and serves and provides for us isn't as easy as adding a hobby. It requires a daily commitment to love unconditionally, to serve without anything in return, and to find yourself in the middle of a mess.

Sometimes that mess is what we had recently with a violent 12 hour stomach bug. Other times it is a wayward teenager who disappoints and finds themselves in trouble at school. Or it's a young adult child who found themselves on the wrong side of a payday loan or credit card scam or a positive pregnancy test. Whatever the mess is, God calls us to love, protect, and care for our children because He does the same thing when we find ourselves in a mess. And that's the heart of the Gospel, that the King dies not for His friends but for His enemies. Romans 5 reminds us that we have been justified by faith and are at peace with God through Christ, because at the right time He died for us in our sin. Jesus died for us in our mess, meeting us where we were and rescuing us from the pit. Cleaning off the vomit and scars and stains and death all around us, He makes us new and brings us to life. As a parent, you get to show your child the love of Christ when you clean up the mess, when you walk with them through the struggle, and when on the other side you embrace them and call them your own.

So parents, next time you're cleaning up vomit or crying with your spouse over a mistake your teenager makes, know that you're close to the heart of God, who is our Father. J.I. Packer goes as far to say that the Christian name for God is "Father," meaning we relate to God personally, lovingly, relationally, knowing we are His joy just like your children are your joy. What a lovely picture.

But when you're in the middle of the mess, remember that redemption is better than judgment, and that no mess is beyond repair. Parenting is a messy work, and it's not for the weak of heart. But for those God has blessed with children, He provides the strength and encouragement to press on. The Gospel is enough to carry us through those times, and to give our children a greater hope than anything they could find here.

_In what feels like another life, working in retail with a set schedule took out a lot of planning. Every week we had the same things to clean, the same customers would come in at the same time every day, our orders were delivered by the same guy on the same day, and each shift had its own responsibilities. It was working through a checklist, not rocket science.

One of the things that new ministry leaders learn is that there isn't a time clock to punch in/out of and every day presents its own challenges. So often, you'll leave your house not knowing what your day will face. And since there's no time clock and rarely do ministry leaders have someone checking in on their every actions, it can be easy to slide into a groove and coast. My friend Sam Rainer had a great post on a ministry leader's work balance a few weeks ago.

The answer to this is for a ministry leader to have a driven flexibility. Developing a mindset of driven flexibility allows a ministry leader to confront the daily challenges with the motivation and freedom necessary to be effective in their calling.

Driven - A ministry leader's work ethic

1. God expects us to work hard. There's no room in ministry for lazy bums. You're called to the heavy work of teaching, caring, leading, developing, and overseeing people. There's so much you have to do, there's no room for someone not willing to dig in and grind.
2. Our time is limited. If you have a 45 year ministry career, you'll have roughly 2,250 Sunday's. Here's perspective, 2,250 seconds is 37.5 minutes. So next time you binge watch Netflix, remember that your entire ministry career lasts about the length of a sitcom. You don't have time to focus on things that don't matter.
3. Our church, ministry, family, and soul require our best effort. Guys, you need to be the best husband and dad that you can possibly be. That means you're going to need to work hard, to dig in and invest time and energy when you want to crash. You need to nurture your own soul through spiritual disciplines (not spiritual osmosis) so that you can take care of yourself first before you take care of God's people. And your church needs your best effort. It doesn't need a perfect effort, that's impossible. You'll make mistakes. But when the church called you and affirmed you, they were placing an incredible trust in you. Don't blow it.
4. Every day is a battle against laziness. Idle hands really are the devil's playground. And every day when you make the commitment to fight against laziness, you're driving a wedge between you and the Enemy to prevent him from destroying your ministry. It's a daily reminder for us to remember what's important and fight against the temptation to have an "easy day" or to occupy space in our offices. God has called us to produce, not consume or use.

Flexibility - A ministry leader's attitude

1. Crisis moments don't plan around your schedule. I'll never forget getting a phone call in my PJs from a family who'd just received the worst news of their life in the ER. In those moments, you can't say "Call me in the morning." There are a lot of perks in being in ministry leadership, but with those perks comes the understanding that you're never really "off the clock."
2. Distractions are a ministry opportunity. The guy who constantly tells you stories or the annoying middle schooler who texts you all the time can get under your skin. But it's in those moments we recognize "divine appointments" that we can take advantage of or ignore. One of the biggest lessons I'd share with new leaders is that your capacity as a ministry leader is through relationships, and that disruptions or distractions are God's way of reminding you what's important.
3. People are way more important than projects. It's so tempting to focus on strategic planning, lesson prep, and diving into a new book. In fact, it'd be awesome if in ministry we could have a whole day to ourselves to read, study, pray, and prep. I could get so far ahead if that were true! But when we adopt a flexible attitude, we realize that what matters most isn't alliterating our points or coming up with a vision statement, it's connecting with people and connecting them to God.