Nobody asked what it would cost. Everyone assumed she could carry it.
“Got a minute?” the pastor asks. He has caught Rachel at the coffee station after the staff meeting. “I’ve been thinking about the leadership group. What if we ran a second one in the spring?”
“Sure,” Rachel says. “I think we could.”
It takes about eight seconds.
Halfway through the sentence, she thinks about saying, let me check my calendar. But he is smiling, and the sentence would sound like a no.
She knows what a no looks like in this building. In September, the student pastor passed on the fall kickoff. Nobody was upset. Rachel ended up running registration.
He tells her about the volunteer who led his first team meeting last week. Six months ago, the man barely spoke in a room with more than three people. The pastor is smiling while he tells it, and so is Rachel. She built the first group because the church kept running out of leaders. She has watched it work.
“You’re the only one who could pull this off,” he says. “I don’t even need a plan yet. Just your yes.”
“You have it.”
He gives her another big smile and goes to find the student pastor.
Rachel walks back to her office feeling good. That is the part she will remember later. Nothing about it felt like a mistake.
In six years, she has never missed a deadline. Nobody remembers what some of them cost. Last Easter she rebuilt the parking team schedule at eleven the night before, after two coordinators dropped out. The pastor remembers that Easter went smoothly.
At her desk she opens her calendar to find a place for the first planning session. Monday is full. Tuesday is full. Wednesday is Christmas Eve volunteer scheduling, which she builds by hand every November because she is the only one who knows how the teams fit together. Thursday is a meeting that cannot move. Friday afternoon has a gap.
The gap has a name on it. Leah, 1:1. Rachel has moved it three weeks running.
She drags the planning session onto Friday afternoon. The calendar takes it without a word.
A calendar will take anything you put in it.
Let’s talk →You may not need coaching. Just a conversation.
SPECK Coaching helps churches build organizational clarity, reduce leadership pressure, and develop the kind of healthy rhythms that let the mission actually move.
