What Season Are We In?

By Matthew J. Skolnik

Before you gather: Please read the article and Scripture ahead of your meeting. Bring one observation or question to share. Give the conversation the time it needs, and return to it at a later meeting when helpful.

The article that inspired this series: What Is This For?

Formation goal: Discern what the community needs now and choose a sustainable response that fits this season.

Scripture: Mark 6:30–44. Additional reading: Exodus 20:8–11 and Deuteronomy 5:12–15.

Receive and remember

Return to the responsibility you discussed last month. What did you hear from someone affected? What remains uncertain? Thank those who contributed, including people who named a limit. If the listening has not happened, decide whether to continue it. An unfinished practice can still teach the group something about its capacity.

Pray: God of our days and seasons, receive our weariness and our hope. Give us attention to the life before us and freedom to respond faithfully. Amen.

Listen to Scripture

Read Mark 6:30–44. Notice both Jesus’ invitation to rest and his response to the crowd. Let the tension remain as you read. The passage holds needs that cannot be resolved by a slogan about either working harder or stepping away.

Read the full chapter: Mark 6.

Faithfulness in the present season

Two committees can share a faithful purpose and need different next steps. One has energy and trust but little contact with the people it hopes to serve. Another has listened through a painful conflict and needs to rebuild dependable relationships. A third is fulfilling essential responsibilities with too few people. Giving all three the same instruction to launch something new would overlook what is actually happening among them.

In Mark 6, the apostles return to Jesus and report what they have done and taught. Jesus notices that the demands around them leave no leisure even to eat. He invites them away to rest. Their bodily needs enter the story before anyone praises their productivity. Ministry has not made them less human. They need food, companionship, and room to breathe.

The attempted retreat is interrupted. The crowd reaches the place ahead of them, and Jesus responds with compassion. Later, when the disciples ask him to send the people away for food, he draws them into feeding the crowd. He asks what food is available, receives it, blesses and breaks the bread, and gives it through the disciples. The people sit in groups and eat. The passage directs attention to Jesus’ compassion and provision as well as the disciples’ participation.

These details complicate an easy lesson. Jesus’ invitation to rest is real, and so is the crowd’s hunger. The story does not give a committee a schedule for balancing competing demands. It does reveal that neither the disciples nor the crowd are disposable. Leaders cannot use Jesus’ response to cancel everyone else’s need for rest. Nor can a group call itself faithful while becoming indifferent to the people its decisions leave without care.

The Sabbath commands give another resource for discernment. Exodus 20 relates Sabbath to God’s rest after creation. Deuteronomy 5 recalls liberation from slavery and extends rest through the household, including servants and resident foreigners. Rest has a social reach. When we speak about organizational Sabbath, we are making an application of that witness. We must ask who actually receives rest and whose work increases so that others can stop.

A season of Sabbath may involve maintaining essential care while limiting new initiatives. A group could shorten reports, postpone a discretionary project, or make space to listen before reorganizing. It should name what continues, what pauses, who remains responsible, and when the arrangement will be reviewed. Otherwise, a promise of rest can leave staff quietly doing the same work with less support.

Other communities need preparation for change. Their members may not yet share a sense of what is happening. A small experiment or a series of visits could help them discover something together. A community ready to act may have a clear need, willing partners, and resources to respond. It may be faithful to begin now, with a defined scope and a way to learn. Different seasons call for different forms of courage.

The language of seasons is a tool for discernment, not a diagnosis that automatically explains an organization. Groups do not move through a fixed sequence on schedule. Within one presbytery or congregation, a new ministry may be growing while another is ending. People can experience the same moment differently. Someone asking for rest may be naming exhaustion; someone asking for action may be naming a need that has been ignored for years. Both deserve a hearing.

We therefore need evidence as well as impressions. Consider what people have told you, which responsibilities repeatedly go unfinished, where relationships show trust, and what resources are actually available. Notice what gives energy and what consumes it. Include the experience of people with less authority. A leadership group may describe a season as peaceful while those affected by its decisions are struggling to be heard.

The question of timing requires particular care when harm is involved. A desire to proceed slowly must not postpone immediate protection or necessary accountability. A season of discernment can include prompt action to address a dangerous condition. Conversely, anxiety about appearing inactive can push a community into structural changes before it understands the problem. Discernment asks what requires action now and what deserves patient attention.

For your committee, begin with the responsibility you have already examined. What does its purpose require in this season? Perhaps it needs to be carried out more simply. Perhaps the group needs to hear another perspective. Perhaps one promising practice needs steady repetition. You do not need to settle the future of the whole organization to make a faithful adjustment within the work entrusted to you.

Some fruit appears as readiness: people understand each other better, a burden is named, or an agreement becomes more realistic. Such changes deserve recognition even when they do not produce a new program. The faithful response may be small enough to look unremarkable on an annual report. Its significance lies in how it helps people live and serve together now.

Notice, examine, and discern

1. Notice: What tension do you hear between rest, compassion, and participation in Mark 6? What observations about our group’s present life help us recognize a similar tension?
2. Examine: What season do different members think we are in, and what experience supports that view? Who might carry the cost if we increase activity, or if we pause it?
3. Discern: For the responsibility we examined last month, what response fits both its purpose and our present capacity? What needs protection now, and what can wait for deeper understanding?

Listen before choosing a season word. Several descriptions may be useful. Record any unresolved difference that would materially affect a decision. Naming a season should open attention rather than close discussion.

Practice during the month

Choose one adjustment within your authority: simplify one step, protect a period of rest, continue listening, or try a small change. Choose only one. If a change requires another body’s authorization, make a clear recommendation and continue the essential work while it is considered.

Name the purpose, the person or pair who freely agrees to tend it, and what will continue. Ask explicitly whether the adjustment transfers work to staff, caregivers, or another team. Agree how that burden will be prevented or shared. Set the next meeting as a review point; a pause should have a clear boundary even if you later extend it.

Each week, notice one sign that supports or challenges your understanding of the season. It may be a conversation, an unfulfilled commitment, or a moment of renewed energy. Bring one observation, without ranking members’ productivity. You can continue the previous month’s listening within this practice rather than adding another assignment.

Return and celebrate

Next time ask: Did our adjustment make room for the fruit this season needs, and who experienced the difference? Give thanks for truthful limits and responsible care. If the cost landed elsewhere, name it and change the arrangement. Conversation 3 will attend to the relationships that connect your part with the whole.

Closing prayer

Jesus, you notice hunger and weariness. Keep us attentive to both. Release us from the need to prove our worth through activity. Give us courage to protect, patience to listen, and wisdom to act when love requires it. Amen.

Sources and further reading

• Mark 6:30–44: the returning apostles, the invitation to rest, and the feeding of the crowd. Organizational seasons are an application, not a framework supplied by Mark.
• Exodus 20:8–11; Deuteronomy 5:12–15: Sabbath, creation, liberation, and the extension of rest to others.
• For further reflection: Matthew J. Skolnik, What Is This For?, especially Faithfulness Has a Season; and the collection’s companion, Holding the Conversation and Sustaining the Practice.

Acknowledgment

This article and its conversation were influenced by the wisdom shared by the Presbytery of the Western Reserve (PWR) staff in September 2026: Judy Mitchell, Stated Clerk; Laura VanDale, Associate for Justice Ministries; and Josh Daum, Presbytery Operations Manager. With gratitude for their insight, questions, and ministry alongside Matthew J. Skolnik, the author of this collection.

© 2026 Matthew J. Skolnik. Scripture excerpts retain their separate attribution and license.

Scripture and Sources for the complete series