Pastoring God's People
For all those who have been commissioned to
pastoral roles of all kinds.
Sabbatical Living
By Arthur Paul Boers
Ralph Keyes, in his book Timelock, observes that in our culture, pauses have disappeared. We have moved from buttons to zippers to Velcro, from stove to pressure cooker to microwave, from tellers to drive-up banking to bank machines, and from diner to drive-in to drive-through. The Internet allows us to get information or to shop at any time. Without pauses to catch our breath we forego the chance to ponder actions, goals, priorities. "The time for choosing, adapting, and collecting oneself no longer exists," writes Jacques Ellul.
Bucking the busy trend
Ironically, pastors are often as busy and unreflective as anyone else. On Sunday
mornings, they are busy providing a Sabbath pause for others but do not always
take those pauses themselves. For years, I was so anxious about Sunday that
I found it hard to worship. Happily, that passed as I became more comfortable
in my role. I also developed the habit of going to church two or more hours
early on Sundays. In the sanctuary I would walk through the entire service-every
prayer, announcement, movement, and word of my sermon. Then I would retreat
to my study and pray for 40 to 45 minutes.
These pauses helped me to worship on Sunday mornings.
Still, Sunday was my busiest day, and I had to take Sabbath time apart from Sundays-at
least twenty-four hours each week. I found that to embrace Sabbath is to trust
that there is enough time for what is most essential, including work and play.
Sabbath reminds us that we are not God and that some things must be released
into God's hands. Hilary of Tours called busyness "a blasphemous anxiety
to do God's work for God." By refusing Sabbath we act as if we were greater
than God, who initiated Sabbaths by resting on the seventh day.
Why do pastors allow themselves to be so busy? There
are many reasons. Many of us are by nature restless. Busyness is easy because
this is how our parishioners live. It is a way to get things done and be recognized.
Busyness helps us avoid facing ourselves. It staves off boredom. It helps us
look important. It can also be a form of laziness; C. S. Lewis used to say that
only lazy people work hard because they do not bother to set priorities.
We offer our congregation a gift when we live sabbatically.
British journalist Monica Furlong once said she wanted pastors who "refuse
to compete with me in strenuousness; who are secure enough in the value of what
they are doing to have time to read, and to sit and think…to be people who
have faced loneliness and discovered how fruitful it is, who can sit still without
feeling guilty, and from whom I can learn some kind of tranquillity in a society
that has almost lost the art."
To model Sabbath-keeping is not easy. Congregational
expectations, cultural pressures, and "powers and principalities" resist
grounded, centered living. While Sabbath-keeping involves simple, attainable
practices that pastors' flexible schedules can accommodate (just take a day off!),
often we are so paralyzed, exhausted, and drained that we give up and do not
even try.
Rendez-vous with God
A place to begin is simply to put it into our calendars. In Space for God,
Don Postema notes that putting "prayer" in his calendar was easy
to ignore, so he wrote in "God!" which was harder to ignore. It
is up to us to make prayer a priority. Otherwise our busy culture decides
for us.
Paying attention to God at key moments of morning and evening orients us to God's priorities; we see what God regards as vital and not merely what the world tells us is urgent.
In The Rhythm of God's Grace: Uncovering Morning
and Evening Prayer, I recommend daily morning and evening prayer as an important
way to shape time differently. Developing the routine
takes away one more stressful decision about how to pray or how long to pray.
Even the busiest schedules can accommodate ten to twenty minutes each morning
and evening when we, like colleagues the world over, practice this routine.
Paying attention to God at key moments of the day orients us to God's priorities;
we see what God regards as vital and not merely what the world tells us is
urgent.
An acquaintance learned about sabbatical living when
he collected one serious traffic citation too many and lost his driver's license.
Now he had to walk thirty minutes to and from work. Going, he thought about his
day, prepared for challenges, and weighed pending decisions so that when he arrived
he was present for his job. After work, he reviewed the day, processed crises,
and slowly released preoccupations so that by the time he came home he had set
his work aside.
Occasionally, something beyond our control brings us
up short, causing us to question how we live. A snowstorm cancels business as
usual. A power outage dims lights and shuts off the television and computer.
Suddenly we have more time. People invariably comment on how much they enjoy
the changed pace.
Ironically, however, those moments do not cause us to
change our lifestyle. Most people quickly return to busyness. When my acquaintance
regained his driver's license, he resumed his harried lifestyle of arriving at
work at the last minute unprepared, and hurrying home without a sense of release
from his job.
In Isaiah 30:15 God promises, "In returning and
rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength." (Isa.
30.15 NRSV). One would hope we can learn sabbatical living without losing driver's
licenses or being disrupted by snow storms, power outages, or other crises. When
we do learn it, however, our congregations will be blessed.
Arthur Paul Boers is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana.