Do pastor's hate Bank Holidays?

I have a confession I have a love hate relationship with bank holiday weekends.  It presents a great opportunity for an extended weekend away visiting family or friends unless you're a pastor.  Because Sunday always falls in the middle of a bank holiday weekend.  So if we take Saturday off we get a split bank holiday with preaching and all it's attendant physical, emotional and spiritual strains in the middle.  But my real bug bear comes with the week after, because what it essentially means is I am down a day on preparation but with the same amount of things to prepare for during the week, essentially its a day off but just shifts the pressure to elsewhere in the week.

I'm not moaning, please don't take this in any way as bitter, it's not.  It is a privilege to be called to serve God's people to be set aside and paid to study God's word, pray, teach and disciple.  But here's my point churches, elders, leaders, are there thing you could do to make a bank holiday weekend a bank holiday weekend for your pastor just to show him that you love and value him and his family?  Could you offer to preach that Sunday so they could get away, could you offer to preach the Sunday after a bank holiday so that the pressures of the week don't challenge the rest of a bank holiday?

Summer shut down?

The summer shutdown, schools do it (6 weeks, 7 if you live in Doncaster this year), colleges do it, universities do it.  Even the Martial arts club my boys go to does it.  They basically shut down, run nothing for a period of time because so many people are away and teachers need rest.  Church doesn't do it but there are weeks when I wonder if it may not be a bad idea, but then I stop and think about it and realise it would be horrific.

Don't mishear me, I'm not knocking holidays, I've enjoyed a lovely two week break.  Part in hectic, let's go, let's see, let's climb into bed exhausted and hot at the end of everyday having crammed as much as possible in, London and part in relaxed, cool, tranquil North Yorkshire.  But I do wonder about the spiritual effect of holidays, especially extended holidays.  It used to be that most people went away for a couple of weeks, but there seems to be a growing trend to be away for as much of the school summer holidays as possible, sometimes in long unbroken stretches.

I'm not sure why that is but I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that as families we cram our lives so full of stuff that everything else gets shunted into holiday time.  If we are busy all the time in term time; children at different clubs every night and at weekends, busy with work, busy with life, busy with church.  Then we try to squeeze in visits to family and friends at holidays.  But actually all we are doing is filling up our holidays and making them as busy as the rest of the time.  When do we stop and rest?  When do we stop and take the time to evaluate, to meditate on God's word and slowly chew over what it has to say about our pace of life, priorities, loves, goals and so on?

One by product of the cramming of term time is the cramming of rest time full of people to see, things to do to make up for our inability to do so in overfull term time.  I wonder what damage it is doing to our families, our churches, our communities and the gospel?  I wonder if the concept of leisure and holidays is gradually choking our churches?  If it is becoming the Christians other object of worship, a rival to God?  I'm certainly aware of the danger in my own heart and mind of overworking now and pinning my hopes on rest then.

When our churches seem to shut down or hibernate for the summer there is something wrong.  It's fine for a Martial arts club to do it, or for a school to do so.  But a church is a family, I'm taking it that we don't absent ourselves from our families for weeks at a time.  My fear is that as this becomes the norm we will find ourselves in years to come reaping the costs.

There's no place like home

We are just back from a couple of weeks holiday who took in the hustle and bustle of London and the calm serenity of North Yorkshire.  As well as the period of rest and opportunity to eat ice cream, visit a beach/Buckingham Palace/Tower of London/Scarborough cricket ground, and spend time with the family it also provides an opportunity to visit other churches and just be part of the congregation.  It is an opportunity I enjoy but it reminds me every time that what makes our own church home is the family we find there.  The interconnected interdependent web of relationships.  The shared experiences, the committed care, the easy yet intentional way we are around and with each other.

So I return from holiday refreshed but also pleased to be back to my church family, where God has put me and where I find those relationships that provoke me and go deep which we so desperately need.

The challenge of resting

Busyness is a badge of importance, it's a sign of our value, it's a way of conveying our popularity, our intelligence, our indispensability.  Busyness is all of these and more.  But busyness can also be a symptom of something distinctly dangerous, it can be a warning sign that we need to heed.  But on the other hand in Proverbs busyness can be godly and to be sluggardly is sinful.  How are we to think about our lives, our schedules, our diaries, how are we to plan our time.  What does godliness look like?  Restful?  Lazy?  Busy?  Somewhere in between?

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with busyness.  Adam and Eve were made to be busy, they were made to work, to till the ground and work it, to raise children.  It is part of God's good creation that he gives to them.  Ah but...! you say, then the fall happened.  Work then was different to now, work then was restful, it was enjoyed in a perfect world.  But then as we read through our bible we come to Jesus, and Jesus was busy, he is on mission, one of the words Mark frequently uses in his gospel is 'immediately'.  No sooner has Jesus done this or that but he immediately moves on to the next thing.  And Jesus is perfect, his busyness is not sinful.  So busyness can't simply be tagged sinful, because Jesus is perfect.

Where busyness is a warning to us, where it is a symptom for us to pay attention to is in what it may show us when we stop and ponder why we are busy.  It is what is going on in our hearts behind our busyness that is the key to whether our busyness is godly or sinful.  Why am I busy?  Am I busy because I want to be indispensable?  Am I busy because I believe the lie that I am indispensable?  Am I busy because I don't trust God to provide, to build, to lead...?  Am I busy because I am avoiding something else?  Am I busy because I think I can save people?  Am I busy because it is just a habit I have picked up or drifted into?  Am I busy on mission?  Or am I too busy because I am distracted or overloaded by too many other things which distract me from focus on what I should be doing?

Behind our busyness lie the answers to some fundamental questions; who do I really (functionally) believe God is?  How do I really relate to him?  Who do I believe I am?  What do I believe God has called me to do for his glory?  What does that calling translate into in my daily life?

The irony is that one of the ways we avoid answering those questions is by being too busy to do so.  That's why resting is so challenging, because as we rest we find out how we answer those questions.

God and Illness

I hate being ill.  Let's get that confession out of the way, I know it's not startling but I am beginning to realise that God is using illness to teach me specifically why I hate being ill.  At half term I was laid up for about 7 days with what at the time was diagnosed as a stomach virus, rest was the remedy, after blood tests showed everything else to be fine.  It took weeks to get back up to speed with lethargy and tiredness remaining a problem.  Finally last week I started feeling back to my old self again until the weekend when the same thing hit again, I managed to preach Sunday but pretty much spent the rest of the time in bed, where I have largely been ever since.  The new working diagnosis is a stress related IBS with accompanying medication which has yet to really start working, though that seems a little like a best guess.

God has been using this time laid aside and a little frustrated to teach me a number of things, which I'm hoping are lessons I won't forget when I'm recovered:

My identity is too often formed around what I do.  I know the theology that my identity is secure in Christ, but functionally I tend to live as if my identity is in my role; father, husband, pastor, teacher, governor.  Without being able to fulfil any of those other roles it is easy to see how I have tended to confuse the two functionally.  They are each roles but they are not my identity, my identity is that I am God's child wonderfully and gracious saved in Christ.

I have not been good at rest.  I am a 'yes' man in the worst possible way, not in terms of agreeing to everything someone says but in terms of saying 'yes' to almost every invitation to do something or speaking at something.  Why?  I'm not sure I've fully untangled that one yet, but it will be a mixture of wanting to please, wanting to serve, wanting to be recognised.  When I am back to health I think it is time I sat with good friends and godly leaders as we prayed through what I should and can be saying yes to and what to say no to.  I need to build rest in as part of my ongoing ministry.

Ignoring God's command not to be anxious. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."  Matt 6v34.  I've read it, I've used it pastorally with others but I haven't really rubbed it into my heart and put it into practice in my ministry.  I take things to God but then tend to do all I can to solve them, especially when it is people with problems, which is when the anxiety kicks in that my efforts aren't enough.  It's not that I'm a gibbering wreck, it probably isn't even particularly noticeable to others, but I can now see that as an underlying issue.  It is something I have had to confess to God and repent of and ask his help not to repeat.

I'm sure there are more lessons God is going to teach me either as he heals me of the problem or as I learn to live with it.  But having seen those three things so clearly I am praying that I will learn the lessons and practically do something about them.

Rested and ready

Praise God for holidays. We had a great time and 3-4 inches of snow made it for the family. It is however often only when we are back from a rest that we appreciate how much we needed it, how tired we were before the break.

But now we are back rested and ready for another term building up to Easter.