Reflections: Don’t Forget

Reflections:

By Larry Hovis CBFNC Executive Coordinator

Don’t Forget to Celebrate

Iam, by nature, a planner. I believe in thorough planning in my personal life as well as in my leadership in churches and CBFNC.

Typical organizational planning cycles involve the following stages:

• Assessing – What is the current reality? What needs to be improved or stopped? What needs to be changed or added?

• Visioning – What would a more desirable future look like? • Goal-setting – What should be the areas of focus during the next phase of our life and work? What particular actions do we need to take? What steps will enable us to make changes or improvements? What people or resources are needed? • Executing – How will we structure our time and effort to accomplish the goals we set? • Evaluating – Did we accomplish our goals? Did they produce the desired change?

Did our efforts create the more desirable future we envisioned?

• Celebrating – How are we celebrating our accomplishments and successes, both intended and unintended?

Even when God created the world, He included the practices of Evaluating and Celebrating. Six times during the act of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, God evaluated the work of creation, declaring it “good” (vv. 10, 12, 18, 21, 24, 31). At the end of the process, God celebrated this good work:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation (Gen. 2:1-3).

To be honest, I’m pretty good at the first four stages but pretty terrible at the last two, especially Celebrating. My unspoken mantra is “plan the work and work the plan.” Far too often, after Executing, and maybe only minimal Evaluating, I cycle back around to Assessing, skipping Celebrating altogether. And in doing so, I rob myself and those I lead of a critical practice that is every bit as important as the other stages. I’ve noticed that many churches and ministries share my shortcoming. Far too often they skip over celebration and move on to the next task. The primary exceptions are staff departures (retirements or resignations), major milestones, such as “big” anniversaries (every 25 or 50 years), or constructing new buildings. And we certainly should celebrate these things. This issue of The Gathering, for example, contains some of those kinds of celebrations. But what about the more routine accomplishments? How could we better name and celebrate ongoing, but every bit as important, successes? What happens on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual basis that is worthy of celebration? Might more regular celebration fuel

And what might we celebrate future ministry and nurture that may not be the result of our life together? And what might we goal-setting or task-completion, celebrate that may not be the result of goal-setting but an expression of our deepest or task-completion, but an values and shared culture? expression of our deepest values and shared culture? For example, in this issue of The Gathering we celebrate the ministry of women deacons. Many, though not all, CBFNC partner churches have women staff ministers. A small but growing number have women pastors. But the vast majority have women deacons. The presence of women deacons is a distinguishing characteristic of our partner churches. Yet we rarely celebrate this important aspect of our life together. And maybe, just maybe, during these days of grim statistics for the American church (declining attendance, aging membership, etc.), we should celebrate what is going well and try to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a good example. What might we celebrate about this particular season? Possibilities include: See “Don’t Forget to Celebrate” on page 4. Winter 2021 | 3