It’s been a bit quiet on the blog, recently, I freely admit.   That’s partly been because I’ve been planning for and enjoying a really restful sabbatical, but also because of the background circumstances which have made a sabbatical such an important move.

There’s nothing novel or alarming in that – most people have found the last few years tiring and stressful; those who lead organisations have experienced particular stresses, and those of us who lead volunteer organisations, like churches, their own.

Pastors aren’t unique in experiencing stresses, and most of them have been relatively common.  Some are unique, though, like a pressing and ever-changing series of theological questions for which there were no ready or easy answers, where we discovered some disagreements we hadn’t dreamt might exist.

I’m not going into those again! But I, like many pastors, needed to stand back a while and – stop deciding things, on the hoof.  Hence, a sabbatical.

So I want to offer up some elements of sabbatical planning, from what I learned, in case you’re thinking of something similar.  It might be a large block of time, it might be a couple of weeks when you can press the pause button, but this is the first in a series of ten short posts covering some areas that you’ll need to build in.

Spiritual survival

We’re all built differently, and how you approach your spiritual survival kit will be unique to you.  Here’s how I designed mine.

Bible

I’m a creature of habits, and I’ve used pretty much the same plan for daily bible reading for nearly fifty years (I know! I was ordained a few years before I was born, if you were wondering).  I did not think it was wise to change my spiritual diet and cut out the bible! BUT I thought I could change it up for a bit, for a season. In particular, I didn’t want a biblical book to become the object of study and research – that wasn’t the plan (we’ll come back to that bit).

I wanted my bible reading to be simple, clear, easy and nutritious.

So I took a leaf from Billy Graham’s book.

Proverbs has thirty one chapters, and most months have thirty or thirty one days.  So I simply read the date across to the chapter, and read the appropriate one.  In that way I always had the same biblical-theological background, and the melodic line to Jesus, so all I needed was to enjoy each one in turn, and pray through its relevance.

I was doing a fair amount of travelling, so I used my Kindle.  I guess I could have researched and taken a good commentary on it as well, but that would have defeated my object of refreshing simplicity and ease.

Prayer

I kept this unchanged.  I have my prayer diary built into my Phone’s calendar, so I stayed with that.

Journal

I bought a dedicated planner/journal for my sabbatical, and all my random thoughts and jottings went in there, for later processing.

Church

It’s hard to go to your usual church when you’re on sabbatical, but I really didn’t want to church-shop.  I had decided not to use my Sundays to visit St Famous Church, so I’d identified a nearby church family where a friend is the minister, and I went there, and got to know folk a little bit.  I wasn’t there every Sunday, because of travelling, but it was refreshing being in another, welcoming church, with good teaching and a friendly feel.  I missed our own church by the end, though!

Small group

Because ‘fellowship’ is such a key biblical value, and I knew I couldn’t strike deep friendships in weeks, my wife and I kept our own small group running, apart from school holidays.  That meant there was continuity of relationships, and I wasn’t starved of necessary support, friendship and challenge.

Because my sabbatical wasn’t intended to be spiritually intense, I found this gave me the spiritual rest I needed, without turning me into a hermit.

Reading

Every sabbatical will involve a pile of books at some stage!  I’ll come back to mine when I think about the Intellectual content of a sabbatical, but just to note that I deliberately paused the waterfall effect of what was new, what was needed, what was necessary. I chose a theme, and stuck to it.  And that was refreshing in itself.

I deliberately paused the waterfall effect of reading what was new, what was needed, what was necessary.

In the series of zones that make up a Sabbatical, there’s not much of a sequence in what will follow –  they join together like a lovely jigsaw puzzle,  Except for this piece, the spiritual.  That comes first.

Process question:

• If you’re planning a sabbatical, mini-sabbatical, quiet week or quiet day, what are the spiritual practices you need to take with you, for a healthy time?

• This was my first ever real sabbatical, and many of you will have had one too – what have I missed?