Fall is an important season for churches and leaders. Serving as executive director of BGAV while also serving as the senior pastor of East End Baptist Church in Suffolk, VA, I can attest to this fact. After a long, hot summer of mission work, conferences, and traveling, the coming of fall signals a time for me to get back into the swing of things; it’s time for me to get back into the rhythms of both denominational and church life. I’ve learned something in my 30 years of ministry, though: when fall arrives, as denominational leaders and church leaders, we need to be prepared for not only the changing colors of the leaves, but we also need to be prepared for the changing colors of people’s lives.

East End Baptist Church is situated on a main highway that dissects northern from southern Suffolk. Based on landmass, Suffolk is the largest county in Virginia. As such, we have a diverse demographic of lifestyles and worldviews. Within a 20-minute drivetime radius of our church, there is the glitz and glamour of Harbourview, the agrarian and open country of Holland and the Great Dismal Swamp, the quaintness and antiqueness of downtown, and the modernized suburban tapestries of Pughsville and Bennett’s Creek. Each fall, all these areas experience family and household migration patterns. Changes within these communities are great indicators of a reciprocal change soon to come to our church, so our church leaders must be prepared for the changes that come with fall.

At the end of every summer, BGAV’s executive leadership team engages in a fall retreat. Over a day and a half, we spend time praying and discerning what God might be doing in our next season of ministry.  During this time, we reflect upon where we’ve been as a state association of churches, so that we might gain some synergistic consensus as to where we might be going in the future. For me over the years, these retreats have been simultaneously energizing and exhausting. Spending time with my peers has yielded some of the most rewarding times of my ministerial career. Most of our discussion topics involve change. We have learned when it comes to ministering to our association of churches, if we want to remain relevant and impactful, change is inevitable.

I can’t wait to see what God does in this upcoming fall season. Two things are certain: the leaves will change, and people’s lives will change. I encourage every church and denominational leader to take advantage of any opportunity to gather with your network of peers regarding ongoing changes within your respective spheres of ministry.    

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