Preparing for God to Grow Us, and Be Ready If He Does
A Shock Absorber discussion on Soul Revival Church's Planning Day
This week on The Shock Absorber,
and I sat down to talk through Soul Revival Church’s upcoming 2025 Planning Day. As always, we chat, not just about the practice of the day, but the theology and strategy that have led to the Planning Day being a key moment in our life together as a church. The ‘why’, ‘what’, and ‘how’ of Planning Day fit into the bigger question of how a church prepares for growth if God chooses to bring it about.Before discussing the Planning Day specifically, we begin by discussing writing, memory, and storytelling.
Storytelling, tradition, and why memory forms faith
I’ve been doing some recent writing on collective memory and how churches hand down their life together through shared stories. Memory is lived through people, across generations, and it quietly shapes how we see God, one another, and ourselves.
Remembering to Believe: How Collective Remembering Shapes Faith Formation
I have spent the last few weeks trying to write up a chapter for a presentation I gave at the Children’s Spirituality Summit in Chicago last year. While it has taken a while to wrangle all the dispersed PowerPoint slides and index cards that I used for the presentation back into a coherent whole, I have enjoyed returning to the topic of collaborative memory and the formation of the autobiographical self as an interpretive lens through which to understand childhood faith formation in the intergenerational church.
Collective memory, and the act of collectively remembering, is one of the deep reasons intergenerational church works: when faith is handed down as a story we belong to, not just as ideas we agree with. It tells us who we are as members of the “holy catholic church”.
Learning from independent creativity
We also take a quick detour into the world of independent media and the sort of long-form creativity you see in people like Ryan Holiday and Jonathan Wilson. What they’ve built isn’t just content but a durable influence formed through patience, discipline, and clarity of calling.
It is a helpful reminder for Christians that God has made us finite in terms of our time, energy and attention. We can’t chase every idea, every ministry, or every program. But we can be faithful and excellent in the space He’s actually entrusted to us.
Why Planning Day belongs to the whole church
Around the 20-minute mark, we finally turned to the Planning Day itself and why Soul Revival invites everyone, not just staff or our eldership (aka Parish Council for those of us who are Anglicans).
Planning Day is a theological statement as much as it is a logistical one: the church is family, and the whole family gets a voice. Planning day creates a space to celebrate what God has done, listen to each other, and discern together where He may be leading next. When more people bring their perspectives, we can diversify our awareness and understanding of what God is doing and how we can best follow his lead into the future.
This doesn’t mean that leadership disappears. However, it is expressed relationally, not mechanically.
Looking ahead to 2030
As we look toward the 2025 Planning Day, we’re doing so within Soul Revival’s broader 2030 “Double Up” vision. If God continues to bless us with growth in numbers, we are also going to need to have growth in discipleship, mission and the resources required to do both these well.
The most important questions ahead of us are not “What do we want to build?” but:
What might God want to grow next? and
How can the church be ready if He chooses to do that?
If you’re part of Soul Revival — or just curious how churches can plan with faith and imagination — I hope this conversation encourages you to both remember what God has already done and prepare with open hands for whatever He might do next.
And as always, listen along to The Shock Absorber podcast on your regular podcasting platform, or click through on one of the links below.