Sabbatical - who and what?

I’ve just spent a few days with 48+ pastors and religious leaders. We were guests of the Louisville Institute and invited into fruitful conversation around sabbaticals. The 48 were the recipients of this year’s Sabbatical Grants for Pastoral Leaders. I’m hopeful for the future of the church given the quality of these women and men, and it was an honor (and fun) to spend time in their company.

We are from California and Kentucky, Minnesota and Maine, Illinois and Indiana, Michigan and Missouri, New Mexico and New Jersey, Wisconsin and Washington, New York and Nova Scotia, Virginia and Vermont, Maryland and the Virgin Islands, Pennsylvania and Oregon, Texas, Georgia and Alabama.

We were led in our discussion by David Wood and Eugene Peterson, and after their words have had more time to soak in, I’ll try to reflect on them here. Their conversation in and of itself was a gift. For now I’d like to leave you with a litany David composed. “What is a sabbatical for?” was his question. In seeking an answer, he harvested the verbs from our 48 carefully crafted proposals to get at the action of a sabbatical.

So, what is a sabbatical for?

To touch, to take up, to trust, and to travel.
To participate, to pursue, to perform, to pause, to plant, to practice, and, above all, to pray.
To write, to work, to walk, to weave, and to worship.
To embark, to explore, to exercise, to examine, to experiment, to engage, to enrich, and to enjoy.
To start, to stop, to strengthen, to see, to seek, to sit, to study, to sharpen, to serve, to search and to sleep.
To incorporate, and to immerse.
To understand.
To discern, to discover, to dance and to deepen.
To gather.
To return, re-orient, read, revive, rest, renew, recreate, reflect, rehearse, rejuvenate, reclaim, retreat, remember, revisit, replenish, refocus, reinvigorate, restore, reconnect, and to row.
To journal and to journey.
To be fed.
To create, to cook, to contemplate, and to celebrate.
To balance and to build.
To awaken, to analyze, to attend, and to affirm.
To follow and to float.
To mediate, to visit, to nurture, to hike, and to harvest.
To live, to listen, to learn.
And above all,
To love.

Notice there is no talk of
Cramming or juggling or dabbling or skimming.
Lots of talk of lingering, balancing, deepening and dwelling and reading.

There is no talk of
Preaching, but of listening;
Or of emailing, but of writing;
Or of teaching, but of learning;
Or of leading, but of following;
Or of calling, but of recovering one’s sense of being called.

(compiled by David J. Wood)

If I can experience even a portion of these verbs, I will have experienced sabbatical.

At the moment, in a word, I feel
Grateful.

Thanks to Sheldon, Jim and Keri of the Louisville Institute and to the many others who contributed to our experience.

Peace...