My daughter, Melanie asked me, the other night at supper what this new life/ ministry rhythm I have been talking about will look like in real time.

I suppose, I am going to really begin learning what it looks like next week, when I return to full time work, but I have been giving some thought to the shape of the rhythm as I walk out these final days of this October sabbatical.

I have never been very successful at fitting ministry into a rigid structure or shape so when I think of the future of my personal ministry rhythm I do not think of it like a triangle, square, cube or pyramid.

I have always seen ministry as complex pattern of interconnected threads that move in and through the world I inhabit, some of which I connect directly to and others which I connect to only through a series of other threads that come across mine.

Ministry rhythm to me is a battle between math and music. It is structure for a thing that must be limited, for the sake of the one doing it, but that doesn’t want to be limited by time or space.

Ministry rhythm is about a schedule but it not JUST about scheduling; It’s about values and distractions, urgent things and important things; It’s about legacy, living in the moment and releasing what’s important into the right hands that will take up the stewardship of things left behind; It’s about the moment and the millennium; It’s about the beat I am currently playing and the acknowledgment that I am working through a whole symphony of movements that I need to be aware of because the whole effects the page of music I am now playing and vice versa.

OK, that is a fairly chaotic explanation. SO WHAT IS THE SHAPE OF WHAT’S NEXT? Right now this is the best I can come up with.

I suppose that doesn’t help you much… but it helps me a bit.