Van is washed and fueled up. Oil has been changed. Stuff is getting packed. GPS is set. Tomorrow we set off for our grand 2 month road trip.
We are appreciative to our LFC family for this gift and we look forward to what God will teach us during this season.
The trip computer is set at 0 now, we look forward to seeing 7500 miles or 12,000 kilometers on it when we hit home in late November.
I am excited to dig deep into my reading plan for the sabbatical.
my sabbatical shelf:
Here are a few pictures from our LFC Groundbreaking on August 30, 2015.
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In just over a week Joanne, Abby, Lydia and I will head out on our long-awaited sabbatical road trip. We are very appreciative to our family at Leduc Fellowship for this season of rest and renewal and we are very excited for this trip of a lifetime.
On this trip, we will be enjoying the time to be together, taking in the beauty of God’s creation and listening to the voice of God concerning the next season of life in ministry.
We will be covering about 7500 miles/12,000 km’s across Canada and the U.S.
Our route is as follows:
Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Minneapolis, Chicago, Nashville, Gatlinburg (Smoky Mountains of Tennessee), Raleigh, Atlanta, New Orleans, San Antonio, Phoenix, Anaheim, Santa Cruz, Portland and then home to Edmonton.
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We will be posting regular updates on this blog along with pictures.
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No, I am not going to list two things here, one strength and one weakness. I am beginning to realize that, as is often the case, the thing that we find as our strength is also our weakness.
Through the last number of years, God has been developing a shepherd’s heart within me. Looking back on my early years of ministry involvement I realize that this work of God began long ago. In the current season of ministry I have found this calling intensified and the joy that comes with it increasing exponentially. This calling and passion has also become my Achilles’ heel.
It is in a desire to care for people that I have found a tiring pace, that at times seems unmanageable. Even in a God-ordained calling, we need to realize our own limitations as well as the limitations that the Lord has put on the calling. God never intended for me, or any of us, to sacrifice our walk with Him for the sake of the call. I must maintain the integrity of my walk with the Lord, in order to be able to accomplish the task He has put before me.
In his book Sabbath:Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives author
I am just coming to the end of the first week of my Sabbatical. It has been a good week, but I am unable to comprehend fully the gift I have before me. So far, I feel that I have had week off and it will come to an end soon. All week I have been fighting the urge to check email constantly. I have been wrestling with the thought that the phone will ring any moment as someone will need me, or have a question to answer.
I have been giving myself some grace as I adjust to a season of rest and sabbath. The grace is needed as I already feel that I need to produce, something…anything. I know I need to recalibrate around a desire to find value in being, rather than doing.
I am currently reading the book “Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives” by Wayne Muller. In the chapter entitled “Rest for the Weary” he makes the following statement:
“I had always assumed that people I loved gave energy to me, and people I disliked took it away from me. Now I realize that every act, no matter how pleasant or nourishing, requires effort, consumes oxygen. Every gesture, every thought or touch, uses some life.
…And so we are given a commandment: Remember the Sabbath. Rest is an essential enzyme of life, as necessary as air. Without rest, we cannot sustain the energy needed to have life. We refuse to rest at our peril–and yet in a world where overwork is seen as a professional virtue, many of us feel we can legitimately be stopped only by illness or collapse.
…If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath–our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us.”
I can relate to these quotes, all three of them. I want to thank the Elders of Leduc Fellowship for the privilege to set time aside to rest, so I do not need to wait for something to take me out of action.
I have often said that ministry is a constant tension between opposing forces. The shifts that take place within the church, often need to take place, but the problem is that the shifts that we make are not toward a healthier balance, but from one extreme to another. Often the true need is for a healthy balance amidst seemingly opposing forces.
Within my 30 years of ministry experience, I have seen the pendulum shift many times in many different directions.
The primary shift I have seen has been between the protection and the proclamation of the Gospel. It has been a fight between focusing inward or expending energies outward.
Of late there has been a very strong effort to see the two peacefully exist within the Bride of Christ.
As a leader, I find it hard to keep these two seemingly opposing forces in check with one another. I struggle with this primarily because the people of The Kingdom have a propensity to fall to one side or the other of the spectrum.
In the role of pastor, I always feel the tension of letting some people down most of the time.
I know my obligation is to please the Lord and follow his lead, but there is still regular tension in leading.
I desire to continual promote the balance between being called to worship and being sent to care.
This balance allows for a healthy platform for the Great Commission and the Great Commandment to come to fruition as the Bride of Christ fulfills its call. Another reason for this balance is to usher in the now, continuous and not yet Kingdom of God.
My next number of posts will be on this issue and will focus on the “Sentness” of God’s church while at the same time promoting the idea of giving God the Glory in all things.
I remember sitting in the chapel of Edmonton Baptist Seminary (now Taylor Seminary) as a young student poured out his heart. He was sharing of his “failures” as an Intern Youth Pastor of one our sister NAB churches.
This young man summarized his service of 4 months as a complete failure as in his own words “I was unable to build a strong youth ministry in the church and I failed to change the lives of the students as I had determined to do from the beginning.”
As he shared his story while fighting back the tears, I was moved in my heart for this student. When he had finished his testimony the professor running the chapel service for that day stood up, walked to the front and asked the worship team to come back up for the last song. He gave not one word of encouragement to the student, did not offer a prayer for him and seemingly showed no concern for the young man that had just bared his soul.
This service was my first chapel that I had at attended since taking over as the ABA Youth Area Minister, so I felt an obligation to the student. I approached him after the service ended and told him that I was sorry to hear his story. I then asked him to accompany me to my office so we could talk. Once in the safety of my office I asked him a very strongly worded question: “Who told you that you could build a strong ministry and change the lives of students in 4 months?”
I honestly wanted to know if this well intended student had set the bar too high for himself or whether someone had misled him in his goal setting. The answer was that no one had helped him set his goals. Therefore, he did it himself and set very unrealistic goals.
I began to explain to him that building a relational youth ministry was a very slow and arduous process. I told him my personal story of how I poured into the lives of many students for years before seeing any seeming fruit from the effort.
It is my fear that with our leadership at LFC, and with those leading our Clusters especially, I have not helped with realistic goal setting.
I think it is important that I help us all understand that building a Cluster to have a true sense of Biblical community is a long-term task. This calling will require a lengthy commitment that will try your patience and heart’s calling at times.
You will need to learn to be persistent, and you will need to develop thick skin. You are being called to help people develop a sense of community and care where they may not see a need, or understand the potential of what that community may accomplish.
Despite the lack of understanding on the part of the people we serve, I want to encourage you that what we are seeking to accomplish is worth the effort and energy. As we see authentic community develop I assure you we will see Kingdom fruit that will surpass our expectations. It is to that end that I constantly pray for our Cluster Leaders.
So hold fast to the task set before us. Commit to the work and trust the Lord of the harvest for the fruit.
I will be writing more about this topic so please stay tuned.
I have a friend who has spent much time in our home. We would invite him over quite often before he was married. He always complimented us on the meal and the company. One day he said to us that he wanted to be invited over sometime for leftovers and without the house being cleaned. He loves us, and we love him, but he knew the difference between our real life and our acts of planned hospitality.
It was his desire to be “just part of the family”, and that meant the family with all of its messes and “refrigerator leftover buffet”.
It has been hard for Joanne and I to invite people into our home unless we have had the opportunity to make everything ship-shape. Over the years we have loosened a bit on this, but we struggle with this still.
I recently had someone send my a blog post by Jack King an Anglican Priest from Knoxville, Tennessee. In this post King quotes one of his earlier sermons on the topic of “Scruffy Hospitality”. In this message he says:
“Scruffy hospitality means you’re not waiting for everything in your house to be in order before you host and serve friends in your home. Scruffy hospitality means you hunger more for good conversation and serving a simple meal of what you have, not what you don’t have. Scruffy hospitality means you’re more interested in quality conversation than the impression your home or lawn makes. If we only share meals with friends when we’re excellent, we aren’t truly sharing life together.
Don’t allow a to-do list disqualify you from an evening with people you’re called to love in friendship. Scheduling is hard enough in our world. If it’s eating with kind, welcoming people in a less than perfect house versus eating alone, what do you think someone would choose? We tell our guests ‘come as you are,’ perhaps we should tell ourselves ‘host as you are.” Jack King-http://www.knoxpriest.com
In the blog post, King goes on to unpack “Scruffy Hospitality” in a more in-depth manner. I encourage you to click here to go and read his post on the topic. It is well worth the read.
