the Joy of Renewal

September is a curious month. It carries the scent of sharpened pencils and the fading

warmth of summer. It’s a season of transitions—school buses rumble back to life, calendars begin to fill, and the church stirs again after the slower rhythms of summer.

For many of us, this season brings a tension. Our schedules quickly fill with practices and games, school plays, concerts, and gatherings with friends as we bask in the cool, crisp fall air. Yet, fall also offers a unique kind of renewal. While spring is often seen as the season of new beginnings, fall reminds us that time is precious and that change is inevitable. It invites us to let go of summer’s pool parties and backyard barbecues and embrace its own beauty—new blooms, spicy scents in the evening air, and a landscape painted in reds, golds, oranges, and browns by the hand of God.

Beneath all this movement, many of us are holding on tightly, trying to stay afloat. Maybe we’re quietly asking: Is this the season where I finally get it right? Or is this the season where I will find joy and peace?

Discipleship in the Season of Change

Discipleship is about finding our place in the Kingdom of God—a place of joy, peace, and purpose.

Let me say this plainly: discipleship is not about getting it “right.” It’s about showing up. It’s about living in the tension between what is and what could be. It’s about learning to say “yet” when everything in us wants to say “no.” Discipleship is about our capacity to live in the here-and-now, even when everything around us is changing—sometimes at a rapid pace.

The Valley of Yet

In a recent reflection from Seedbed (a Wesleyan-Arminian discipleship resource), J.D. Walt invites us into what he calls the “Valley of Yet.” It’s a place where joy doesn’t come from improved circumstances, but from the presence of Christ in the midst of them.

J.D. Walt quotes Habakkuk 3:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vine… yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

This isn’t spiritual optimism. It’s not a glass-half-full mentality. In fact, Walt says, there is no glass. There is only Jesus. Start to finish. Jesus.

Prophetic Imagination

This is the kind of discipleship we need in September. Not the curated kind. Not the kind that waits for the perfect devotional routine or the ideal small group. But the kind that walks into the hospital room, the chemo chair, the broken marriage, the quiet depression—and still whispers, Jesus. Start to finish. Jesus.

Walter Brueggemann, Hebrew Bible scholar and theologian, calls this the prophetic imagination—the ability to see beyond despair into divine possibility. It’s a vision that doesn’t deny suffering but insists that God is still speaking, still moving, still calling us to rejoice. It’s an imagination tuned to where God is guiding us—individually and communally—into something new, something renewed.

Often, we can’t see where God is leading until we look back and trace the steps we’ve taken. Like brushstrokes on a canvas, each moment may seem unclear on its own, but together they reveal a masterpiece.

Banded Discipleship

Kevin M. Watson, author of A Blueprint for Discipleship, reminds us that banded discipleship—the kind practiced by early Methodists—is not about performance but presence. It’s about showing up for one another in vulnerability, accountability, and grace. It’s about asking, “How is it with your soul?” and truly waiting for the answer.

Renewal in the Wild Spaces

Renewal doesn’t come from programs or perfection. It comes from the wild spaces—the margins, the wounds, the places where God meets us in our brokenness and whispers, “You are still mine.” Life is risky. We will make mistakes. But only when we take the risk do we begin to receive the reward.

Rev. Kellen Roggenbuck, a United Methodist pastor in the Wisconsin Annual Conference, offers this pastoral wisdom:

“Damage control is part of life. It would be better to never make a mistake, but once it's made, it's best to handle it with grace and humility. Sometimes that shows others more than our failures ever could.”

This is the heart of discipleship—not avoiding mistakes, but walking through them with grace. Not hiding our wounds, but allowing them to become places of healing for others.

A Posture of Joyful Surrender

So, is this your season of discipleship? Will you find a practice that draws you closer to God’s joy, peace, and purpose? Perhaps this season—both in the church and in your life—is a season of change, like fall itself. Rooted in the past, reaching toward the future, we live in the tension of the “yet, but not yet.” A newness that sparks imagination and hope.

This fall, we’re not called to a new program or strategy. We’re called to a new posture. A posture of joyful surrender. A posture of yet.

Here’s the Invitation:

• Rejoice before anything changes.

• Sing even when you don’t feel like it.

• Pray for others even when your own heart is heavy.

• Show up in your brokenness and let Jesus meet you there.

Because with Jesus, there is no glass half full or half empty. There is only fullness.

Reflection Questions for September

• Where do you see the joy of Jesus in your life right now?

• What does it mean for you to rejoice in the Lord “at the bottom”?

• Who in your life needs you to show up—not with answers, but with presence?