In August on 2024 I officially became the Youth Pastor at The Bridge Church in Nashville, Ga. This was a dream come true in many ways. I have for the longest time felt called to be a Pastor. I first felt the call around age 14 and I am currently 27 years old. So for over a decade I have felt called to the ministry of shepherding souls and teaching people how to follow Jesus in their day to day.
Part of what this new leap forward meant though was that I needed to as John Ortberg says “ruthlessly eliminate hurry” from my life. So much of my life up until that point involved me doing a lot. And that was a beautiful season. Especially the season even before I got married to my amazing wife. As a single man in the church, called to ministry I gave a lot of my free time, energy and resources completely to the church. I had no family to think about. I was able to be open and widespread for anyone’s use and that is how I operated for quite a while.
Entering marriage though, adding a newborn baby and then stepping into a new role as the Youth Pastor meant I needed to ruthlessly reexamine my life and cut out anything that I did not feel could contribute to my calling as a husband, father and Pastor. So the podcast ‘Into the Fray’ was axed. I simply had no time to plan, record, edit and promote what I had been working on for the past two-three years. That meant I stepped away from helping with the media team on Sunday mornings. I took a step back even from this blog to a degree by way of not posting as often or writing as often as I once did. Some relationships that were not adding value to my life, I gave distance too. I simply just stopped doing everything and focused in on the main things.
Those main things being: my full time job as a cabinet builder, my relationship with my wife and us leading our family into the direction God has called us to, my role as a Youth pastor to the Bridge Youth. These three are what take up the majority of my time. I get up at 4am and make a pot of coffee and reading for an hour and a half. Mixed into that is some sermon prep for Wednesday nights and preplanning for further down the line. I then work from 7am-4pm and then come home. Three days a week I work out for an hour to an hour and a half, usually with my baby girl. And then we roll into play time, cooking, family dinner and getting ready for bed. To which I typically stay up just a little bit longer than the girls in order to relax a bit. Point being my general day is packed. And I am focused on what I am called to do nothing else.
My days feel more valuable now. My time is more valuable. There is no time to waste time. But even though I feel accomplished at the end of my day everyday causing me to sleep well, I can feel the burnout rearing its ugly head. I need rest. I need a break from the stresses both good and bad in my life.
Years prior I read a transformative book called ‘The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry’ by John Mark Comer and in this book he talks about spiritual disciplines like: silence, sabbath and solitude. The purpose of the book is specifically to call Christians who are running 90-nothing to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus and slow down. Make time for meditation and reflection. Make time for rest and renewal. John Mark comes at this from a “I was once a megachurch pastor who was running on fumes” perspective. This book convinced me Sabbath was a biblical practice that was good for my soul. The problem was that this book came out years ago and I have yet to practice Sabbath.
My convictions had not met my reality just yet. Granted that is typically how it goes.
But my mouth has yet to catch up with what my heart knows
Propaganda(Made Straight)
And my heart is still lightyears behind my library
This new season of my life requires me to practice what I preach. So on January 31st at 6pm -February 1st at 6pm me and my family started practicing Sabbath.
Why Do People Not Practice Sabbath?
I remember growing up in the church and hearing about the days when stores were not open on Sundays. The stores were not open so everyone could go to church. By the time I was growing up though in the early 2000’s no one I knew practiced Sabbath. And stores were very much open. We regularly went grocery shopping after getting lunch at a hometown restaurant on Sundays. Sundays were not a day of rest. And the idea of any day being a day of rest was hilarious. That was just not in anyone’s realm of reality. Things had to be done.
In Exodus 20:8-11 God gives Moses the fourth commandment of the famous ten. He says:
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates. For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.(CSB)
This is very interesting. I remember hearing an old Reformed preacher say once that “the Sabbath is the one commandment evangelicals do not follow.” It’s odd right? We have evangelicals fighting to have the Ten commandments posted in schools, courtrooms, and the like, yet practicing the Sabbath is the one commandment majority evangelicals refuse to practice.
The reason why is in recent memory many Christian just have come to explain it away by doing hermeneutical gymnastics. Meaning, Christians have learned to explain away following the one command that actually gives back.
Following the commands to not murder, not commit adultery, not to lie, all are commands that make us good neighbors. They cause us to be more loving. They restrain our sinful hearts. The fourth command though does cause us to be more loving, but in a different way. It’s not us restraining our anger, rather is us just simply stopping our lives and resting. It calls us to rest not to “stop murdering.”
There is a line though from Jesus that I have often heard quoted as a way to explain away practicing Sabbath.
The story goes that Jesus and his disciples were passing through grain fields on the Sabbath and the disciples picked some of the grain to eat. The pharisees then rebuked the disciples and questioned Jesus by saying “See, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath”(Matthew 12:2 CSB). Jesus then recounts this story of King David and his compatriots eating bread in the temple that was reserved only for the priests and yet how this seemed contradictory but it was acceptable. Jesus then posed the point that the priests in the temple on the Sabbath violate this commandment yet they are innocent as well. The point Jesus is making is that the Pharisees are missing the application of the Sabbath by focusing too much on the rules not the motivation of this command. As the old saying goes, “they have missed the forest for the trees.” The next story following this one is on Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath. The Pharisees again question Jesus asking “is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”(Matthew 12:10 CSB). Jesus not only answers but heals a man in response. Again making this point that the pharisees are focusing on the wrong part of the law, and have thus missed how to properly apply the law to their lives.
Passages like these have been used to explain away practicing sabbath. The agrument goes that Jesus was trying to teach the pharrises to find their rest on God not in rituals. This is hogwash. And in fact ignores the point in the ritual of the Sabbath. The ritual of the Sabbath is to teach our body’s by practice how to rest in God for an entire day. If you really believe something, you practice it.
If I really believe I can be an NBA player, you will see me out at the courts every day making layups and practicing free throws. Why? Because of my belief.
The same goes for believing that God is where we ultimately find our rest. If you really believe that, how do you practice it? Probably by rest.
You do not practice this belief by running 90-nothing, working 70 hours a week, running on fumes, and just banking on the belief that “God is where I find my rest.” If God is actually where you find your rest then prove it. Do not work for a day. Do not jam your schedule full of activities that add stress to your life not fulfillment. We often work so hard because of the belief that things need to be done, no one else will do it, and I have to make the most of the time I have. The questions the Sabbath poses for us is “but do you trust God to take care of you when you’re not in control? When you’re not producing? When you’re not actively creating an extra income? Do you still believe God is taking care of you?”
Or are you operating your life in such a way that you are more reliant on your own efforts to take care of your life than God’s sovereign providential hand?
Or in other words: are you resting in your hands or in God’s?
Note: I find it interesting that the people who say "I do not practice Sabbath because I find my rest in the Lord. do not use that same line of thinking when it comes to prayer. Why do you need to audibly talk to God if God already knows everything you need and he already lives in your heart?
What is the Sabbath For?
When we first come across this day of rest it is early on in the pages Genesis. What this means for us is that a day of rest is not a result of the brokenness in the world. After God created everything in the cosmos for six days, he finished his work and Genesis 2 says:
On the seventh day God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation.(CSB)
God did not just cease working on the seventh day. He “declared it holy.” Meaning, God set the seventh day apart from the rest. He himself, took a day of rest. Why? Not because God is burned out or because he just needed a vacation from being God of the universe. Rather Yahweh was setting a precedent. Yahweh was distinguishing himself from other gods.
Where gods in the other creation accounts of the day were endorsing slavery and mistreatment of humans. Yahweh establishes a rhythm of work and rest for the humans and sets an example for us by doing it himself.
But what I love the most about examining the first creation account in Genesis 1-2 is the timeline. It’s again interesting how much evangelicals can spend their time debating about the origins of the universe, how long was a day actually, how can we trace these back to understand the exact pin point moment God spoke the world into existence in order to disprove scientists wrong to which I do not believe the author of Genesis or God himself cares about those arguments at all. Point being though, we focus on all of these details that are not given in the text and yet miss one of the profound details that could radically alter our way of living in the first 2 chapters of our holy text.
At it’s core, Sabbath is as invitation to fill the earth with God’s presence. That first Sabbath is when God took up residence in his creation, and so we set apart a day to remember that and ask him to come in a special way again. And again. And again. Every week.
Now imagine how Adam felt one that first sabbath. Humans were fashioned on the sixth day, which means when Adam first opened his eyes, he was looking at Sabbath and rest.
Sabbath was his baseline. His first moment. His first memory. God’s rest and celebration and filling of the earth is Adam’s very first moment. And only then could go work properly and live into the vocation God had given him.
God’s perspective was to work, then rest.
Jefferson Bethke(To Hell with the Hustle)
When we do rest, for many of us we are coming at it from this point of exhaustion. We spent the entire week stretching ourselves thin, running with no barriers and come to rest by symbolically falling over on the couch unable even to make to our bed.
What if repositioned ourselves. Took ourselves out of the place God should be in, and instead placed ourselves where we as a finite human should be. What if we operated by resting and then working? That rest would not be a mere nap that hurts more than helps.(I say that as someone who loves naps)
But instead what if we treated rest, Sabbath more like a time of renewal. When we started following Jesus, for many of us we marked that moment by getting baptized symbolically declaring as the famous High School Musical line says “the start of something new.” We then went about the rest of our day, week and lives from that place of renewal in our lives. What if we treated Sabbath that way? A mark in time that we move forward from, not back.
Why Does the Church Need this Practice?
A.J. Swoboda in his beautiful book ‘Subversive Sabbath’ details how Youth Pastors are often stretched thin. Because of a typical Yotuh Pastor’s youth, the church takes advantage of them in harmful ways. This probably explains a bit of why Youth Pastor’s do not stay Youth Pastors for long. The average timeline for someone who is a Youth Pastor is 18 months to 3 years.
I am privileged to have a few friends who work at larger churches than the one I serve at. Many times when I hear their schedules I walk away thanking God that is not my life. But I also question the leadership. Working at a church more times than not means you are guilt tripped into working more than you should. And before I go on let me explain where I am coming from.
I am a hard worker. Anyone who really knows me or my schedule or has seen me work knows this. I have kept the same physically demanding job for almost a decade now. I am conditioned by my father to go the extra mile. I do not complain about the work. I get the work done and keep moving. But it seems that many churches “for the sake of the mission” have no problem burning their team members out. We ask more of people than we should sometimes. And that is not every case but it is many. We teach our people that the mission requires them to burnout, ruin their marriages, neglect their families all for the sake of Jesus. But I do not buy that Jesus would be okay with how many of our churches do ministry.
Just in Matthew chapter 14 we have two instances where Jesus got away from the people. The first time was to get away because he had heard the report about John the baptizer’s head showing up on a platter.
When Jesus heard about it, he withdrew from there by boat to a remote place to be alone.(Matthew 14:13 CSB)
A little further down after the crowds followed Jesus and Jesus then fed the crowds because of his compassion we get note that Jesus again retreated.
Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. After dismissing the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Well into the night, he was there alone. (Matthew 14:22-23 CSB)
These are not the only times Jesus tried or successfully got away from people. A challenge I received years ago was to read through the gospels and every time Jesus retreated from people and places to highlight it. I was shocked at how often Jesus took time away from ministry.
Does this mean Jesus did not care as much about the mission as we do?
Absolutely not. Because even when these crowds cheered for him to be murdered, Jesus kept pressing into the mission. For many of us, when we reach that point of burnout, we will walk away from the mission and our experiences of the church with a sour taste in our mouth. Jesus was murdered and yet kept the mission going.
I fear and know much of our way of doing church today depends more on the hustle mentality than it does on the spiritual disciplines Jesus himself practiced. And this is all because we rest more in our own hands than in God’s.
As the church we are called to live differently than the world. From the Old Testament to the New that philosophy has not changed. Swoboda says “the Jews believed that if you wanted to know who knew God, you could tell by looking at their schedules.” I do not believe the world can look at much of our church culture today and tell that we love God. I fear in fact that much of the world looks at our churches schedules and says “they love to stay busy. Too busy to slow down and be present for a conversation. Too busy to notice they are moving faster than the rest of us sometimes. Too busy to realize now is a time of mourning. Too busy to notice I stopped coming.”
Practicing Sabbath as a church is a prime example to the world of what Christ has done for us. It demonstrates to the world that God takes care of us; that God provides for us. It is a day of oppurnity for us to stop doing “professional ministry” and simply start relating to our neighbors in love. Love is slow, and patient, and kind. You cannot love well with a jammed pack schedule, a to-do list and a hard out in 30 minutes.
Sabbath has that effect on people. It raises questions. My friend Tom Kratenmaker writes a lot about God. But he is not a Christian. He once told me that the one thing about Christians that he admires-that even causes him to consider the truth of Christianity-is when people of faith do something that is deeply inconvenient and painful because they believe in it. “When someone does something inconvenient in a world that worships conveince,” he told me over coffee, “it makes me do a double take.”
A.J. Swoboda (Subversive Sabbath)
What about our weekly schedules causes people in the world to do a double take?
How To Practice Sabbath?
Part of my disconnect with having the conviction to practice sabbath and actually practicing it all comes down 1.) not having an example right in front of me and 2.) letting that be an excuse for refusing to try and fail.
So on January 31st 6pm to February 1st-6pm, my family started practicing Sabbath.
Here’s some tips to get your started:
- Declare this day as holy: Holy means to be set apart. Previous times when I tried practicing Sabbath a lot of where I went wrong was by not verbally acknowledging that I was practicing Sabbath. There was no Sabbath language in my vocabulary. So what was a simple yet profound difference this go around was that I marked the day Sabbath by continually referring to our time spent as Sabbath(a day of rest). We only know Friday is Friday because everyone calls it Friday. Even if you do not call it Friday, the people in your life, your phone, the news will call it Friday. We have to likewise put the news out there that the 24 hour block you choose is your Sabbath(a day of rest). So practically speaking, change your vocabulary for this day.
- Light Your Candles: Part of Jewish tradition of the Sabbath was to light two candles. These two candles symbolized the two parts of the fourth commandment. The first part being to “remember” the Sabbath. We are a forgetful people. Acknowledging the day as Holy is like I said before a key part of practicing. The second part is to “observe” the Sabbath. For years I knew I should practice Sabbath. Not because a book told me to or because I put legalism into my life. I knew I should practice Sabbath because I was convinced by the lifestyle of Jesus and the testament of His word about this practice. Yet for years, I remembered, but I did not observe. Do we really believe if we do not practice what we believe? The candles represent the two parts to this spiritual discipline.
- Get rid of work: In general just do not do any type of work. Do not go to your job, do not work around the house, do not try to make more money. Just have the day scheduled free.
- Delight: Now delight will be different for different people. What brings you joy to do may be hell for me. So what are things that you and your family enjoy doing, and make the Sabbath a day of doing those very things. Have fun, celebrate, eat ice cream. As baptism is a celebration of God’s work in your life, so is Sabbath a celebration of God’s work in your week.
- Reflect: That first Sabbath was not perfect, and neither was the second or the third or the fourth. If you are like me, then you do not have a clear living example of someone practicing Sabbath right in front of you so you will be trail blazing for your community. The next day after Sabbath I made a list split into two categories. The two categories were: life giving/lifetaking. I then wrote down the activities of that day and either checked one category or the other.
Eating fast food was not life giving. And note: Zaxbys is my favorite fast food but it did not make my body feel good in a way that produced life. It’s like the difference between drinking water versus a coke. One may at first be refreshing but is actually gonna make you feel sluggish by the end of the day. The other might not be the most refreshing immediately but after a while you will be feel better and more hydrated.
As you can also see in my checklist, I did yard work. Which for some people is stressful, lifetaking work. But for me my work on the day to day is doing physical labor like building cabinets and then mental labor of writing and preaching lessons. Meaning I am in a weird scenario. I need a mind numbing activity. Cutting grass is one of the most peaceful things I could do in a day. I love it. I find so much joy in trimming branches. It’s not work, it’s play for me. The typical rule of thumb is that if your work is physical, rest by doing something mental. If your work is mental, do something that is more physical for rest. And if you are like me and you do both as work, find something that works for you.
The Pharisees had hard lines of what they deemed work. And for many of us, even when we think about Sabbath we fall into those hard lines. As I have told people. about me and my family practicing Sabbath I can see people who do not follow this practice immediately go “oh but you cannot do that, because it is Sabbath.” But Jesus line for rest was “do whatever is healing.” What is healing for you? Working out, though it is good for my mental and emotional health, was too much physical work for me to really delight in. So I do not work out on Sabbath anymore. I do not eat fast food on Sabbath anymore. I do play with my girls and trim branches, I read a good book, I have a good breakfast, I have good coffee with good friends. My family celebrates that Friday night with homemade pizza and ice cream. We watch a funny tv show or movie to get the laughter going. We play, we have fun, we celebrate, and we thank God for rest because if we did not have rest, we would fail at all the striving we do throughout the week.
Sabbath is the one day a week, you stop and celebrate that your God is someone who provides joy, rest, and peace to your life. In a world marked by chasing after every desire, every ounce of security; a people who are set apart because they do not have to chase, but rather they freely step into the graces that has been given to them is a remarkable signpost to the ongoing world that what we have within us is worth exploring for themselves.
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