How Was My Sabbatical?

Earlier this week, I began a series of two posts on my sabbatical this past September 1-December. That first post was framed around a fairly basic question: “What did I do on my sabbatical?” This second post is a bit more challenging to write as I probe the question, “How was my sabbatical?” There are a wide variety of answers I could offer to that question and even approaches to answering that question.

First, let me offer the simple answer. How was my sabbatical? It was restful, joyful, and restorative. In an inventory I completed before my sabbatical began, I outlined four hopes for my sabbatical, all of which I experienced during the three-month sabbatical:

• Being refreshed in my whole being, particularly my life with God.
• Gaining a new sense of rhythm and direction in my spiritual practices and entrance into a new season with God.
• Having clarity about the next season of life and ministry.  
• Joyful experiences and memories with family, particularly with Kelly.

Now, let me go a bit deeper in the following paragraphs. In my mind, the first month of sabbatical is an intentional season of disengagement. I found this both strange and helpful to step back from regular ministry at Eastbrook, particularly after fourteen years, to gain perspective on who I am, what I am called to, and what new things God may be doing in me. There were days in the first month where I did not know what I “should” be doing after my usually very full schedule as a Senior Pastor. This lack of activity was at times disorienting but also allowed me space to see more clearly things I was carrying in everyday life.

But it is through this disengagement—the lack of activity, the disorientation, the perspective on myself—that I was also able to engage more deeply and undistractedly with our Triune God. My journal entries during the first month were full of prayers that God would not only show me who I am but also show me who He is. I asked God to draw me into a deeper and more transformative encounter with Him during this season, and it was there that I found God meeting me with His love, peace, freedom, and joy even as He stripped away other things. Much like the Holy Spirit hovered over unformed chaos to bring forth God’s good creation, I sensed the Holy Spirit hovering over my life and bringing forth goodness and grace in new ways.

The rhythms of the sabbatical became more spacious in the second month (October). Some days felt full and other times felt empty. I sometimes wondered, “What am I doing?” or “Why am I doing this?” From my first sabbatical in 2017 I learned that this is just part of the normal experience of sabbatical. In a sense, a person just needs to ride those waves of the sabbatical experience. Amidst that, as I continued to press in with God, I experienced breakthroughs I couldn’t plan or prepare for. 

One of those breakthroughs came for me when I took time during the weeks home to read through my journals from the past seven years (2017-2024). While I know it’s not for everyone, I am a big journaler. Those last seven years were momentous years for me, spanning eleven journals filled with a lot of memories. There were a lot of joyful things but also difficult things during those years. There were seasons where I was so stretched that I at times felt like I was in a fog in my ministry role but also in my life with God. It was good to remember so I could celebrate the good things and also open the painful things to the Lord for healing and renewal. It was good to be reminded that no matter how much difficulty I—or any one of us—endure, the Triune God stands with us in love even there. Even there God is Immanuel, God with us.  Without the sabbatical I do not think I would have been able to return to these years in order to see them with such greater clarity or to give my experience of those years to the Lord so steadily over the course of several days.

The end of November brought the end of my sabbatical but also brings the close of the church year with Christ the King Sunday and then the beginning of Advent.  These two aspects of the church year stand strongly in my mind as I prepare to return to Eastbrook. Christ the King Sunday brings into sharp focus an important theme for me as I conclude the sabbatical: Jesus is the King who rules over all things. Anything that may come our way individually or as a church community exists under the reign of Jesus, and that is reassuring no matter what we face. As a pastor, I can rest in the authority and power of King Jesus and the reality that I am not God. That second aspect of the church year is found in the promise-fulfilling incarnation of Jesus our Immanuel which we celebrate in Advent. Jesus reigns over all things but He is also the One who relates to us personally and intimately. He has walked where we walk and lived as we live. As the perfect human being, He has done what we cannot do, bringing redemption and God’s kingdom right into our daily lives. As a pastor I need to constantly remember that Christ is with me as Immanuel, doing what I cannot do, and bringing God’s kingdom into peoples’ lives as I serve Him. These vital realities are things I need to continually return to. 

I mentioned in the previous post that in November, Kelly and I participated in a retreat with the Northumbria Community. I came in with questions I was pondering but, as sometimes happens, God had other things to bring than what I expected. For me, the week was a journey of letting go of things—my plans, my questions, my anxieties, my pains—in order to trust God more deeply and draw near to God more intimately. My own personal prayer, reflection, and reading, my one-on-one sessions with a spiritual director, conversations with others over meals, as well as the community rhythms of regular prayer through the day all ministered me into the presence of God. I was thankful to remember that I can simply trust God with everything and surrender into God’s presence moment by moment in my life.

I sense that some questions and work with God is still before me, not having neatly resolved by the end of the sabbatical. My spiritual director suggested to me that I may still be like a butterfly just beginning to emerge from the chrysalis. Some things are still in development, and I cannot rush them. It is okay to return to the work of pastoral ministry while still in process. These words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are helpful for me in relation to this theme: 

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

I look forward to continue on this journey with you, my friends and readers.