Obstacles as Opportunities: Preamble

Obstacles as Opportunities: Preamble.  The harvest is in. The barns are full. Turkey and deer find plenty of leavings in the corn fields to pack on winter weight before the cold sets in. Before rushing too quickly into singing carols like, “O Come All Ye Faithful,” congregations sing hymns like, “Come ye thankful people come / raise the song of harvest home. / All is safely gathered in / ere the winter storms begin.” Wood stoves and fallen leaves scent the air with nostalgia, that is, except for the air around the church building. The farmers around here are flinging slurry on their fields. If you need a definition of agricultural slurry, I trust you will find the answer on your first attempt. But suffice it to say, Norman Rockwell didn’t paint any canvases about spreading manure “ere the winter storms begin.”

In a sense, manure is often viewed as an obstacle to breathing deeply this otherwise perfect November air. It stinks literally and metaphorically, as if it were somehow unfair of the farmers to ruin Autumn for the rest of us. To the farmers, however, I presume that manure smells more like an opportunity for next spring’s crop than an obstacle to enjoying this year’s delights. Manure improves the soil. In due time, everyone benefits from improved soil, farmer or friend, though it stinks for a while. 

End-of-year at Grace Community Church brings a healthy rhythm, reviewing the past year and previewing the next year. Like most churches, we check the numbers, draft a budget, assess our strengths and weaknesses, consider course corrections, recommend additions and subtractions in programing, set the theme for emphasis in teaching and preaching, and establish some metrics by which we will measure if we are successful in the new year.

As we look back at 2024 and stare ahead into 2025, the Elders see struggle, mostly financial, ahead of us. Despite keeping to a very frugal budget in 2024, we have zeroed our church savings account, bleeding $500 per week all year long. Unless the Lord intervenes in the first part of 2025 with a windfall, we will have to make some difficult decisions regarding missions giving, rent, and payroll. But our Lord is the Intervener! Therefore, our first challenge in addressing this struggle is our mindset. Will we frame our financial limitations as an obstacle or an opportunity? Viewed as an obstacle, any course correction will feel punitive, even stinky, which is unfortunate and unnecessary. Viewed as an opportunity, which it is, all course corrections carry the optimism of an optimized harvest by this time next year.

Without struggle, we tend to coast. Any coasting I’ve ever known has been downhill. But with struggle, we have opportunities to climb: to respond by faith, to review our vision and mission, to renew our strength “mounting up with wings like eagles” (Isa. 40:31), and to reinvigorate our prayers as we “grow the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18).