One of the greatest mysteries of leadership is how your church can go from “Everything’s going great,” to, “Nothing seems to be going right.” Weeks of success are often followed by weeks of missed opportunities.

Sometimes that transition feels like it happens overnight. One week, you have more than enough volunteers. And then the next month your team is scrambling to fill all the holes. Your attendance may be running at an all-time high. And then you see a sudden drop-off over the next few weeks. Even minor missed details seem to bunch up, like sound glitches the same week as misspelled words in the handout and a fender bender in the parking lot.

There is a natural flow to the life of your church. Record success is almost never sustainable over the long haul. You will have weeks where your attendance, giving and baptisms are up, and then weeks where they are down. That’s normal.

But every church should want to keep moving upward. Over the span of a year, we should all want to see continued success, however you define that. The key is to sustain momentum while things are going well.

Success can sometimes blind us to what’s ahead. It can also make us complacent. One of the greatest challenges of ministry is not turning around a bad situation, but keeping a great flow going. Below are some ways to keep things going well when they’re going well.

Celebrate Good Times

Take the time to enjoy the success you’ve seen. Praise God regularly, giving Him the glory and credit due Him. After all, any success you have in ministry is ultimately because the Holy Spirit empowered you and your people.

While you celebrate, acknowledge the hard work that went into getting your ministry to this place. We should feel good about our accomplishments, but we should also recognize the reasons behind it. After a tough season of ministry, it’s good to see all that energy pay off. Let it be a lesson for the next stage God has for you.

Set aside a specific time for reflection and celebration, and then get back to work. Without taking that time, your team may come up with their own celebration. It could last longer than necessary, creating an atmosphere of complacency. It’s a great idea to honor hard work, but you should end the celebrating with a rallying cry to keep the success going.

Anticipate Bad Times

Success has a way of keeping us from seeing problems just ahead. But great leaders can anticipate bad times before they come. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. While you are celebrating the wins, pay attention to potential losses on the horizon.

Keeping a proper perspective about your current season of ministry is vital to sustaining momentum.

The first step is clear communication and feedback. Ask yourself, What am I not hearing? If you don’t ask your staff for their assessments and rely solely on yours, you will have an incomplete picture. Take honest criticism and creative advice from all areas of your team, and use it to anticipate upcoming problems.

Next, consider hypotheticals. Ask yourself, What am I not seeing? Instead of simply repeating the processes that produced the good times, take a look at it from all angles to spot any potential errors or weaknesses. If you think through what can go wrong, you’ll be ready when problems arise.

Finally, collaborate across all areas. Ask yourself, What am I not experiencing? If you only hear good news, the bad news becomes invisible. But when you take time to learn from each department’s experiences, the full picture comes into focus. When your teams work together instead of separately, you will find the losses hiding behind all the wins.

This is not being pessimistic about success but being realistic regarding the natural flow of your church. You’ve had hard times before, so you’ll probably have them again. It’s better to be prepared. If you can anticipate bad situations, you will have more time and energy to tackle them when they arise.

Lean in During the In-Between Times

The worst thing you can do is sit back and think you’ve made it. Now that you’ve had some success, it’s not time to set the cruise control. Success doesn’t mean you’ve stopped growing. It means that the improvement you’ve had is due to the disciplines you put in place.

Continue to learn and grow for the next level of ministry. If God is preparing you for something different, whether it’s a new type of ministry or level of growth, then you will need to make some changes in anticipation. Are you ready?

Part of your team’s spiritual discipleship is leadership development. You, as the lead pastor, should actively encourage their growth in all areas.

As you see growth from one team member, make sure that person sees it too and understands what got him or her there. Encourage team members to take stock of areas in which they need to stretch. Use these good times as opportunities for that stretching. It’s much harder to do it when things aren’t going as well.

Our prayer is for healthy churches across our country. Healthy churches are not those with unsustainable growth but those with achievable excellence. It’s not about keeping a certain level of numerical increases but maintaining a high degree of spiritual advancement. Making disciples is, and has always been, the goal. That’s what success is all about.

To keep that going, we need to celebrate when things are good, look out for how things can go bad, and learn from both. Keeping a proper perspective about your current season of ministry is vital to sustaining momentum.

So be honest with yourself and your team, look for how God is moving in your church, and work to maintain that health into all avenues He is opening for you.