I am about a week into my six week period of sabbatical and holiday. In some ways today feels like the first day of it as last week was mainly spent tidying things up, writing a sermon and recovering (!) from our enjoyable church weekend. I am aware that most people in their jobs don’t get anything like a sabbatical so I am very grateful to the church. I am conscious that it will be easy for me to let the time pass by so largely for my own benefit- but also for people’s prayers- I thought I would write up the five things that I would like to get out of this time.
1. An opportunity to enjoy God and guard my heart
I mentioned above that most people don’t get sabbaticals- so why should pastors? The verse I keep coming back to (which I did for my last month long sabbatical two years ago) is Proverbs 4:23- “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” I am very conscious that during my regular work as a pastor it is easy to drift into a performance mentality: a list of things one must do for God. Prayer times can get dominated by a forthcoming sermon, pastoral difficulty or big decision that needs to be made. It can be hard to focus on praising God on a Sunday when you are thinking about what you are going to say next. For a while that’s fine as we are to be those who are actively serving God. But in the end the danger is of a heart that grows cold and isn’t thrilled by the Gospel of grace. The danger then is that you are attracted to all kinds of things that aren’t healthy. So- I am looking forward to spending time reading, praying and going to church without having any responsibility!
2. An opportunity to reflect
It is good to be able to reflect on how I am doing as a pastor and how we are doing as a church. If I’m honest I’m conscious of ways that I have fallen short as a pastor and it will be good to ponder ways that I could do things differently when I return. We have also got big challenges and opportunities ahead of us as a church and I am looking forward to thinking and praying about how we face those together.
3. An opportunity to study
I’m aware that in order to preach helpfully it is useful to have a fair amount of background reading going on. That’s partly to sharpen me theologically but also to make sure I’m reading things that help me reflect on the culture that we live in and on living as a Christian in the light of that. I try to read books from different eras of church history- it’s a good way of noticing the blind spots that our present generation has. So at a theological level I’m looking forward to reading Don Carson and Bruce Ware on the person of Jesus (partly in advance of an autumn series in John’s Gospel) alongside some Calvin and Edwards. And to reflect on my own life I’m trying to read Spurgeon’s Lectures to His Students- looking at 19th century wisdom on life as a pastor. And I’ve got David Smith’s book Mission after Christendom plus Schaeffer’s Death in the City to help me reflect culturally. It would be good to read some secular books to help me think about the culture. Any ideas?
4. An opportunity to write
I’m aware that this blog is somewhat sporadic. It’s not a high priority for me (compared with preaching, praying and pastoring) but a number of people have mentioned that they have found some of it useful. I enjoy writing and find it quite relaxing. So one of my hopes is to write up a number of things (recent material on church/state, biographies of Lloyd-Jones and Hudson Taylor and Song of Songs) that I can release regularly over the next few months.
5. An opportunity to get ahead
The autumn term looks busy and exciting with a series on John to put together for here at WRBC plus Magdalen Road’s church weekend on union with Christ and an OakHall weekend on Nehemiah in November. I doubt that I will get all of that written in the next few weeks but I’d like to make some progress.
I’m probably being over ambitious (and I promise I will rest and sleep as well) but I thought it would be useful to write up what I am hoping to get done. I’ll be in Oxford for some of the time and away with friends for other parts- which is useful in itself because it is good to think about some of the above with others. The list above is probably in order of priority so, if you are praying, please pray particularly that I would come back refreshed with a heart that is secure in God’s love.
Praying for you Andy.
For a spot of recent fiction, that raises some interesting questions about contemporary culture – such as, can government be trusted to make good decisions when hiding behind euphemistic ideas such as the ‘war on terror’ – I can recommend le Carrés ‘A Delicate Truth’. Be interested to hear what you make of it.
And of course, I would encourage you to keep blogging, but defer to your better priorities.
Go well.