# A Sabbatical Primer for Pastors  ## Metadata - Author: [[David Alves]] - Full Title: A Sabbatical Primer for Pastors - Category: #books ## Highlights - After the fall of humanity, the Sabbath also becomes a necessary command, yet its origin is grace, not Law. ([Location 84](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=84)) - Our culture worships accomplishment. Our culture bows at the altar of performance. ([Location 150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=150)) - We must model Jesus’ practice of drawing aside and waiting upon the Father if we are to encourage His life choices to His people. ([Location 153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=153)) - Verdell Davis, a friend of Sonscape Retreats, penned something that powerfully impacted me early in my own sabbatical in 2010. She wrote: God’s call is first a call to himself. And such an encounter demands time, silence of surroundings and spirit, and great longing for God himself. When the longing to know him captures our heart, we will search diligently for the time to get away with him to a quiet place. And in that quiet place, silence becomes the womb in which the work of God in our own lives will be birthed to speak a word of hope to a lonely and hurting world. ([Location 175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=175)) - We need to go into the quiet solitude and listen to what the Lord communicates in the great silences of our lives. ([Location 185](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=185)) - The pastor became a serious student of spiritual warfare and learned from his costly indiscretion that demonic power was very real. ([Location 207](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=207)) - We then stayed in the Poconos in Pennsylvania for two months. That sabbatical refreshed and renewed us, convincing us of the absolute necessity for pastoral couples to experience an extended Sabbath rest—a sabbatical. Marcy and I also began our own weekly Sabbath Day of ceasing—together. ([Location 291](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=291)) - really a stopping or ceasing more than a rest. God never tires. He did not rest on the seventh day. He is the One who never sleeps nor slumbers. He needs no rest. Bible translators would have better served us to stay closer to the denotative definition of the Hebrew than to have made it seem that God just took a short breather. He ceased from His work. He stopped what He was doing. That is what He meant to communicate. Therefore, that is what He calls us to do on our Sabbath—make an abrupt end of our labor. All labor? No, our usual labor—the labor we’ve been doing the other six days of the seven-day week. ([Location 355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=355)) - Someone could convincingly argue that if contemporary pastors observed a regular, weekly Sabbath— ceasing from doing anything on ([Location 369](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=369)) - a “to do” list and resting fully— that they would not need a three to six-month sabbatical. ([Location 370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=370)) - “Sabbatical is a gift to renew you as a person, marked by deep rest rather than to-do lists, projects, or products.” ([Location 373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=373)) - Show me how a man or woman relates to his or her family and I will show you the reason he or she should or should not be in ministry. If I can’t love and honor my father and mother, then how will I honor God? If I can’t live in understanding with my spouse, then how will I see answered prayer in my life (1 Peter 3:7)? If I exasperate my children instead of bringing them up in the training and admonition of the Lord, how can I ever manage the family of families—the church of God (1 Timothy 3:4-5)? ([Location 466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=466)) - But how do we so love our families that they become a model of the body of Christ? We treasure them! ([Location 474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=474)) - Ministry as it is currently practiced in our nation does not usually value or applaud time alone with God or time invested in the family. This is a huge problem that needs to be addressed. ([Location 477](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=477)) - We are promised that if we keep the Sabbath “holy”—set apart to faithfully observe—we will reap these benefits. “Then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 58:14, ESV) ([Location 483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=483)) - Your church needs to know you care enough about them—their families and their spiritual health—to take care of your own. We need to lead by example. If you can’t slow down, how do you expect them to? If you don’t prioritize your time and life, how can you expect them to take you seriously? ([Location 488](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IOX05QE&location=488))