Issue No. 010| The Service Is the Celebration

The Service Is the Celebration

Reflections on a week that did not look the way anyone would have planned it, in a year that was always supposed to.

Two Sundays ago, Victor and I stepped back into ground-level work at our church.

The sisters who run the Grounded Fellowship at our congregation — a phenomenal group of women who have carried that work faithfully for over a year — were each on their own time away, visiting family and children. The Sunday needed to be covered. Victor and I were the natural fill, because we are the ones who helped start the Grounded Fellowship when our church first launched it in 2024. So that morning, we showed up and did the work we used to do every Sunday — quietly, without fanfare, in service of the community that has shaped us for as long as we have been in ministry together.

By the time we got home that afternoon, I was tired in the particular way that ground-level service makes you tired. The good kind. The kind that means you spent the morning right.

Which is why Mother's Day looked the way it did. We picked up chicken on the way home. We ate it together. I drifted in and out of an afternoon on the couch while Victor and I watched TV. There was no brunch. No outing. No performance of the holiday.

For someone whose ground is serving others, the holiday that does not look like the picture is not a loss. It is a Sunday afternoon resting after the work.

Tenth year. Tenth issue. Tenth anniversary week. The numbers do not always matter. This week, I think they do.

Last week was the most intense week of the brand work I have done in years.

The reveal of the new era of The Fundable Church was on the calendar for Saturday May 16. Ten years of consulting practice was about to be publicly named for the first time. Every system, every doctrine, every framework that has been built quietly in private consulting rooms for a decade was about to step into public form.

And in the middle of that week — on Thursday — Victor and I packed up our son Jonathan's dorm room and moved his things out.

Not because anything went wrong. Because something is going beautifully right. Jonathan is pursuing his college degree, and he is also an extraordinary dancer who has been preparing for a competition in Las Vegas. The dance schedule meant he needed to stay in his area with his troupe to practice through the weeks ahead. So Victor and I went, packed the dorm, brought his things home, and let him stay in the place where the next part of his work is happening.

That is what a launch week actually looks like. The brand work and the family work and the ministry work all happening at once, with none of them taking the lead, all of them given what they need.

By Saturday morning, when it was finally time to step into the room and reveal the work, I was excited. I was also tired. Both at the same time, the way founders are tired on the morning of the launch they have been carrying for years.

The night before — Friday — Victor and I had originally talked about going out to celebrate ten years at one of our favorite restaurants, a place we love for its creole catfish.

We did not go.

What we did instead was order in salmon sandwiches from another restaurant we love, eat them at home, share a piece of chocolate cake, and clink our glasses together.

Thank God for another ten years.

That was the toast. That was the whole celebration. I keep saying our ten years because even though Victor is retired from the day-to-day of the business, he is the co-founder. He is in the foundation of every single thing this brand has ever built. Ten years of nonprofit work. And now this season — ten years of business — beginning in the same kitchen, with the same partner, with the same prayer.

Ten years of service is not measured in the celebrations. It is measured in the showing up.

This past Sunday, the celebration I thought might still happen got replaced by something else.

Our church hosted Together We Vote.

Our congregation is part of the 100% Voters Initiative, an effort organized by COPE — Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement. Our pastor is the founder and executive director of COPE. Under my VMA Consulting Group umbrella, I do some strategic work with the organization as well. They are doing phenomenal work in this region. If you want to know more about it, you can find them at copesite.org.

On Sunday after service, we sat with members of our congregation and walked through what was on their ballots. We did not tell them how to vote. We gave them the information they needed to understand what the items meant and what was at stake. Then together, those who wanted to participate, we voted. We took pictures afterward with the church members who completed their ballots. And then Victor, our pastors, and I walked the ballots together to the registrar's office to drop them off.

That was Sunday. That was how the anniversary weekend actually closed.

Which feels right to me, on the Monday before Memorial Day. Memorial Day is the week we remember those who served. The serving has not stopped. It has changed shape across generations and across forms — military service, civic service, community service, ministry service, family service. The shape changes. The principle does not.

The service is the celebration. The showing up is the work. The ten years are inside that work, not above it.

Next Monday, June opens with the first door of the Marketplace — the Programs Domain. I will share more about that next week.

For this week, I want to leave you with what these last two weeks have taught me again, because every season teaches it differently.

The visions you carry will not always be honored with the celebrations you imagined. They will be honored in chicken on Mother's Day, salmon sandwiches on an anniversary, a dorm move during launch week, a Sunday with your congregation at the registrar's office. The honoring is in the showing up. The showing up is the whole thing.

If the Vision Clarity Intensive window is still on your mind from last week's letter, it is open through Saturday. After that the window closes and the June door opens.

Until next Monday — hold the ones you love close, honor those who have served, and remember that the quiet Sundays are doing more work than they look like they are doing.

— Angela

The Visionary Architect

A weekly letter from Angela Myles · The Myles Factor · themylesfactor.com