This is technically take two.

Not of writing, but of thinking out loud. What you’re reading started as a voice recording during my drive from Grand Canyon University to my Thursday night college group. I got out of class early, my brain was full, and I decided to do what my dad always tells me to do: just start talking and see what comes out.

If we haven’t met, hi… my name’s Ava! I’m behind a lot of the creative communication you see at Keenly.

Lately, I’ve been challenged to write more from my own perspective and to offer a younger voice shaped by growing up in ministry. Ministry has been woven into my life for as long as I can remember. My family has served together, struggled together, healed together, and found ourselves in a really healthy place now. That hasn’t always been the case, but I think that history matters. It’s probably why I’m not scared off by ministry, even though I know firsthand how hard it can be.

All of that context matters for what’s been rattling around in my head lately.

Nostalgia: When Memory Turns into a Mission

In class today, I wrote something in the margin of my notes:

Nostalgia sometimes is recreating memories.

I was sitting in an entrepreneurial class… networking, PR, business models, all the things. We were talking about audience pain points, and naturally, my brain wandered. (As it does.) I’ve used Keenly and its initiatives as real-world examples in a lot of my classes because it’s the most tangible intersection I have of business, ministry, and real people.

Somewhere in the middle of that assignment, nostalgia popped up.

Personally, I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

Back when I had just graduated high school, it was such a strange, specific season. Everyone tells you not to take it for granted… and I definitely didn’t listen. The summer was something else, and you can expect some future stories. A friend group formed that honestly never would’ve existed if high school had just kept going. Even though my class was not very big, we were people who never really had a reason to cross paths.

One of my friends said recently, “If high school never ended, we couldn’t have had this season.” And they’re right. I’m genuinely grateful for where I am now.

But here’s the tension.

As that group has grown up and spread out to different colleges, different states, entirely different lives, there’s this quiet temptation that shows up when we’re together again. We don’t always just want to make new memories. We want to recreate the feeling of the first ones. The first trip. The first adventure. The first time everything felt easy and fun and altogether. And hey maybe that’s just what I am observing, but I fear it is true.

And no matter how good the new moments are, they never feel quite the same.
That’s when it clicked.

Why Nostalgia Becomes a Barrier

I’ve heard people in ministry talk about nostalgia for as long as I can remember.

“It’s a killer.”
“It’s a weed.”
“It keeps us from moving forward.”
I always understood that it was a problem, but not why, but I think I am now starting to get it.

Nostalgia isn’t bad because memory is bad. It’s bad when memory becomes the goal. When we stop asking, “What’s next?” and start asking, “How do we get back?”

Whether it’s friendships, churches, or entire organizations, we can get stuck trying to recreate a feeling instead of paying attention to what’s actually happening now. The way we’ve always done it. The version of community that once worked. The service style that felt alive ten years ago.

At some point, nostalgia stops being a comfort and starts being a barrier.

I’ve felt that frustration personally, trying to connect with people I love while realizing we’re no longer living the same lives. The temptation is to reach backward instead of learning how to meet each other where we are now.

And honestly? It’s uncomfortable.
(Now remember, I am dictating this from my car and it smelled like weed outside at this point in the drive, which maybe was metaphorical to the “nostalgia” weeds, but I digress… haha)

Here’s where I’m landing…for now.

I want to get better at this. I want to show up to the next gathering, the next conversation, the next season, and ask better questions:

1. How do we build something new without pretending the old never mattered?
2. How do we create fresh memories without chasing old feelings?
3. How do we stay true to who we are while still being brave enough to change?

I don’t think the answer is abandoning the past. I think it’s honoring it without idolizing it. Letting it inform us, not trap us.

Nostalgia will always show up in friendships, in churches, in leadership, in life. The challenge is noticing when it quietly becomes the thing standing in the way of what God might be doing now.

If any of this resonates, just know, you may be dealing with nostalgia too, even if it looks different. And you’re not failing because things don’t feel like they used to. Sometimes that’s just a sign you’re being invited forward.