Can We Still Be Missional in the Winter?

Do you have a favorite season of the year? You might welcome the first buds of spring and anticipate a new season slowly opening like a flower. Or perhaps you gravitate to pools, outdoor events, and a reason to wear shades. Maybe the crisp air of fall, along with pumpkin spice, pumpkin patches, and all things cozy is your jam. But if we are honest, winter is a whole lot harder to love. If you live where the snow falls soft and pretty, you may have to catch your breath in the swirl of landscape transformation—but even snows turns brown and dirty as it is sprayed from car tires and tracked ‘round with our boots. You may live where winter is coldish, but rarely snowy—where the flu wreaks near unstoppable havoc, the grass is brown and weary, the days short and dreary. And yet, I ponder, do we get a pass on missional living in the winter?

Our front door, the one I long to leave open year-round, has been regularly shut to keep the warm in and the cold out—and I admit I feel a little like a hypocrite when the door is shut. I miss the warm rays of sunshine beckoning us out; I miss the play in the front yard, and the conversations that easily ensue. Now it’s earlier dinners and earlier bed-times, and when we endeavor to play outdoors, we are unwrapping soon after the heads are covered and the jackets are zipped. Winter feels like it is starving off a piece of me that finds the connection with my neighbors so life-giving.

But winter—perhaps it has something to offer that I have been missing. Could the posture of open—opening my heart, home, and life to my neighbors—be present, just have a different expression in this season?

Am I mourning the closing of one chapter and forgetting the gratitude for the chapter I am presently in? A story doesn’t end with every plot twist, but my vision is limited and I forget that a changing season doesn’t close the book.

Perhaps winter itself gives my soul more “space to breathe,” a space Emily P. Freeman invites us to through her book and podcast, both titled The Next Right Thing. Like silence, could winter too “[serve] as a colander, helping me discern what I need to hold onto and allowing what I don’t need to fall gently away, making space to access courage and creativity, quieting to hear the voice of God” (27)? Winter, with her gloved hands and chilly drafts, beckons me to assess whether I am letting go of the right things (more on that here). I have her to thank for slowing my steps enough to learn again, like a child, to simply be.

Winter invites me to remember that my value is given, not earned, and I get it turned around when I push doing ahead of being. Likewise, I need the chill of the winter to remind me that He is close as a whisper, but I only know His closeness when I tend ardently to my fire through spending time with Him. I need the winter to rehearse that I don’t need to rush the making, but to trust the Maker.

So in the winter we do slow, spend more time reading books after dinner, eat more often without guests. But our identity doesn’t change, and therefore we still live on mission.

Winter may necessitate that we invite and initiate more intentionally because we are visible outside less often. It may require us to be fully present in the small moments: conversations at the bus stop and when we check the mail or brave the cold to play can be meaningful even if they are brief. Kindness does not have to be large to warm a heart; as a Japanese proverb states, “one kind word can warm three winter months.” In the winter I have to be careful to not negate what I can offer because it feels small—to not stop being missional because doing life with my neighbors takes more planning than spontaneous availability.

Some of the specific ways our family has leaned into missional living in our neighborhood this winter are hosting a Super Bowl party, babysit swapping, giving and receiving help with projects, delivering cookies, checking in more often through text, and facilitating Missional Community gatherings. I share this with the intent of inspiring ideas of other ways you lean into mission in your neighborhood even while it is yet winter. Because friends, when we compare, we focus on us and our doing rather than on Him and simply being.

This winter I want to embrace the season—both what I love about winter, and what I am apt to wish away. I want to remember that

“growth lives in

the uneasiness

the in-between

the unfinished sentence”

(Danielle Doby)

I don’t want to rush the slow and the small for the growth and the learning it has to offer. I want to first and foremost be His, and live out my identity as His daughter—a disciple-making-disciple right where I live—because even in the winter I can still be missional.

Jesus—You are ever present through every season, and I thank You.

Our small ceases to be small when it leaves our hands—again, thank You.

Would You be our guide through the remainder of this winter?

Friends, I’ll leave you with one final quote: “How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!” (Thomas Wentworth Higginson).

Freeman, Emily P.The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions. Revell: 2019.

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