Sabbati-blog Day 1: Dazed and Confused

I have a love-hate relationship with routine.  In one sense, I love it.  Routines help us get things done.  In another sense, I don’t love it.  Routines have to be done again, and again, and again.  That’s what makes them routine… and also mundane.  Add a few years and you have a genuine rut.

Today the highly developed routines of 9 years of pastoral minstry just evaporated.  Poof.  Gone.  Day one of a 10 week sabbatical was upon me.  All the routine (and sometimes mundane) pastoral duties at Bethel Lutheran Church are being handled by other people for a while.  Weird.

There was a moment this morning when it all hit me.  Our staff meetings at Bethel are lively and quite productive.  With an African Assistant Pastor, a Millennial Director of Christian Outreach and an ultra-organized Secretary we have a good time.  Today, during our routine staff meeting, I sat in silence at my dining room table.  Dazed and confused.

I had been given a chance to rest… but I didn’t know how.

So I prayed.

As I prayed I felt a strange peace wash over me.  My rest is in Him… alone.  My lack of routine had unsettled me, broken me out of my rut and plopped me into a place of freedom and fear.  I had been too comfortable in my routine and I couldn’t recognize it until I was free of it.  Well, I guess I’ll just have to rely on Jesus and follow him, even if I’m not sure where he’s taking me.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” – Matthew 11:28 (ESV)

Coming out of my stupor, God put me to work.  A little of this, a bit of that.  It was a productive day, just not routine.  I have a feeling the only routine I’ll have for a while may be this “sabbati-blog.”  So, I’ll do my best to update here regularly.  I definitely have some adventures ahead over these 10 weeks of rest.  I have been asked by LINC – Twin Cities to write a discipleship curriculum for their new Harvest Incubator for Mission.  For more on that read my last post.  It’s really exciting stuff.  I suspect God will be revealing a lot to me in the process and I’ll share that here.  I’ll be making videos of a simple illustrative method called Agape Sticks.  I’ll post some videos here as I make them.  I’ve also been invited to the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5th in Washington DC.  That will be interesting!

So, follow along as I say goodbye to the rut and hello to sabbatical, even if I am a little dazed and confused!