What I Learned on the Sabbatical: Importance (or lack thereof)

By now, some of you are sick of hearing about my sabbatical. It’s like, we get it already. If that’s you, this is advance warning that the next few blog posts I’ll be doing are sabbatical related. Gauge for yourself how much of this you can take! However, this is why I’m doing it: I’ve talked a bunch about where we went and what we did (including my writing projects). However, I haven’t said as much about what I learned. Specifically, I’m thinking about what I learned that is related to the soul, identity, and character, those kinds of things. Yes, I read some great books and learned that way too, but for the next few weeks I want to share some of the deeper things the Lord taught me. To kick it off, let’s talk about self-importance.

For years, I have served as a pastor with a low-level hum of anxiety in the background. It’s like white noise that is so constant that you almost forget it exists. When it actually stops, you suddenly realize that you’ve been living your life with almost no peace. That’s what the sabbatical was like for me. It gave me the chance to stop and realize how constant that niggling anxiety has been in ministry. It also didn’t take much to realize where that anxiety was coming from: it was rooted in a belief that everything depended on me. I had come to believe that if I didn’t preach every Sunday, the church would stop growing. If I didn’t manage to greet every newcomer and remember their name, they probably wouldn’t return the next Sunday. If I didn’t visit everyone and make everyone happy, they’d write some scathing review on Google about our church and we’d crumble. It all depended on me, which is a heavy and impossible load to carry.

Early on in the sabbatical, there were two things that helped expose the absurdity of this belief. The first was a church in Spain that we attended three consecutive Sundays. I wrote about our experience in one of my sabbatical blog posts. The first Sunday we were in Spain, we joined an English church an hour and a half drive away. That didn’t feel sustainable, so we searched out a Spanish-language Protestant church nearer to where we were staying. We found one called La Roca (The Rock) in the town of Vinaros. From the moment we entered, we felt at home. People were warm and friendly and you could tell something good was happening here. By the time the service started, the whole room was packed- I estimated about 400 people or so crowded this simple building. During the service, someone even approached us and asked if we wanted a translator. I don’t know how, but they figured out immediately that we had no clue what was going on. After that, I was hooked. Each remaining week we were in Spain we joined La Roca, sang the songs even when we didn’t understand all the words, and were warmly welcomed even though nobody knew who we were. If I was living in Spain, I’d absolutely make that my home church. And here’s what hit me: it had almost nothing to do with the lead pastor. We did meet him briefly once and he seemed like a godly and wonderful man, but it was a short conversation (mostly because his English was roughly at the same level as my Spanish). The pastor also didn’t preach any of the three Sundays that we were there. They had other staff or even church members preaching, and the sermons weren’t technically “good”. They didn’t delve that much into Scripture and were pretty shallow overall. Despite that, we loved the church, and that’s because we knew that God was at work there. We could see the joy in people’s faces as they worshiped and we experienced their Spirit-given love as they interacted. It was a wakeup call for me. I don’t need to try to be Superman, hitting home runs every Sunday in order for people to want to be part of The Bridge. It’s all about the presence of the Superman, Jesus Christ. 

The second thing that exposed my foolishness was simply reading through the book of Acts. When we arrived in Spain, I was preparing to write my book manuscript. Because the book is about what we can learn about the early church’s cultural engagement, I wanted to read Acts through that lens. Something that hit me repeatedly as I read through Acts and reflected on it during my sunrise walks along the beach was how the star of the show was never Peter, Stephen, Paul, Silas, or Timothy. It was always the Holy Spirit at work in and through them. Here’s an extended excerpt from the chapter in my book manuscript about the empowerment of the Holy Spirit in Acts:

“The book begins with Luke recapping his gospel account (the book of Luke) as what Jesus began to do and teach- the implication being that Acts is about what Jesus continues to do and teach. He’s the star here, not Peter, John, or Paul. It’s the Spirit poured out on the disciples, enabling them to speak in tongues, that sparks the mass conversion of Acts 2:41. In 2:47, it’s the Lord who adds to their number daily those who were being saved and in 13:48, it’s those the Lord has appointed for eternal life who are saved. Whether you’re a Calvinist or Arminian, it’s undeniable that there’s no conversion apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. It’s the Lord who makes Himself known to Paul on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, singlehandedly turning one of the church’s most formidable persecutors into its most formidable evangelist. It’s the Holy Spirit who co-ordinates the meeting between Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10, the event that marks the expansion of Gospel work among Gentiles. In Acts 13, the Holy Spirit makes it known that Paul and Barnabas are set apart for a new mission and the church in Antioch simply hears and obeys the Spirit by commissioning them. When Paul and Barnabas return, Luke emphasizes that their report is not about what they had accomplished, but what God had done (14:27). In Acts 16:6-10, Paul has a plan about where to go but the Holy Spirit continues to close every door, effectively funnelling him to Troas. There, he has a vision directing him to travel to Macedonia. His Gospel work reaches Europe entirely by the initiative of the Spirit. In Acts 18, Paul is directed to stay in Corinth through a dream and on and on it goes. The church grows and the Gospel advances not because of the brilliance or giftedness of its human servants. The church grows and the Gospel advances entirely by the power of the Holy Spirit and the obedient, submissive co-operation of its human servants.”

Reading Acts was another wakeup call early in my sabbatical. Do I trust the work of the Holy Spirit, or do I think that without me the church will fall apart? And if I had hit the snooze on that call, my return from the sabbatical would have been the renewed alarm. Obviously, the church didn’t fall apart without me. Instead, good things continued to happen. New people found our church, they heard the Gospel, they made decisions to follow Jesus. Difficult matters were resolved. It turns out that I’m just one part of this whole project called The Bridge Church, and I’m replaceable- we all are. What is irreplaceable at The Bridge Church is the power and presence of God. 

So the next time I seem to be getting a little too high on my own importance or I seem anxious because I’m believing that the weight of the church rests on me, feel free to remind me of what I learned on my sabbatical. Old habits die hard, you know?

- Craig