By Laura Tarro, pastor at Bethany Covenant in St Charles Illinois. (Let me say that Kris and I love Laura and are so proud of her church planting work. She’s a healthy pastor, and this post will reveal that to you.)
For this pastor, Fridays are for resting. It took a while for me as a church planter to learn how to Sabbath, but my spiritual director was persistent, and my husband was insistent.
I’ve learned to print my sermon notes on Thursday evening, close my laptop, and walk away. It’s the spiritual discipline of trusting that God will bless the time I’ve already invested.
When you are busy and the requirements of your job are legion, it is counterintuitive to stop before the work is complete. As any pastor will tell you, the work is never complete. Given that reality, when should you choose to set the work aside? I have learned that identifying a specific time to rest is essential.
I have regular rhythms in my work. I write monthly church planting reports for my denomination that require certain details on each week’s service, so I document those things on Sunday evenings before I forget the details. I open my staff meeting agenda for later in the week and jot down a few prayer requests that were shared with me in passing that morning.
On Mondays, I go through my email, pray for church members, and open the worship planning document for the following Sunday. I do our worship planning in batches, usually a month at a time, so the service liturgy is already sketched out. I get the following Sunday’s slides ready with prayers, scripture readings, and songs. Then the rest of Mondays are reserved for sermon research. I read through the sermon text and study three to five Bible commentaries on the passage and begin writing out notes.
On Tuesdays, I read the sermon text again and sketch out the main points. If things are really clicking, I will have the main points of the sermon written by Tuesday afternoon and begin organizing the content.
On Wednesdays I meet with our ministry team, which consists of a college student who leads our worship and a church-planting resident. We pray for our congregation and do a bit of problem solving and long-range planning. These two are my ministry partners. We are always learning together in the adaptive space that is church planting.
Thursdays are for wrapping up the sermon. It’s been percolating all week. I’ve been thinking about it as I attend to other tasks, but now is the time to finalize it. The hardest parts for me are illustrations and discussion questions. Each week in our sermon, we pause about two-thirds of the way through for table discussion. I post two questions that are specific to the sermon but usually boil down to: What does this teach us about God’s character? And How does this impact the way we follow Jesus? On Thursdays, I formulate those questions, and I try to think of stories and illustrations that help bring the sermon text into our everyday lives. Then, on Thursday around four o’clock, I print my notes and close my laptop.
Throughout the week, there are extra meetings and occasional unexpected tasks. In my denomination, pastors are strongly urged to have consistent practices of therapy and spiritual direction. My husband and I meet with a therapist once a week because church planting (and pastoring) impacts an entire family system. I try to get coffee or lunch with people from the church and the community a few times a week. As a solo pastor and church planter, there are also calls about insurance, trips to the bank, ordering supplies, and all sorts of truly odd jobs.
There are also monthly rhythms. I meet with a spiritual director once a month. One Tuesday a month I meet with a few of our church members to make dinner for the homeless shelter in town. Other monthly meetings include check ins with a pastor’s group from my denomination, a group of female planters that meet on Zoom, meetings with my church’s leadership team, and sessions with my church planting coach.
On Fridays, I rest. On a typical Friday, I spend some time reading a novel or a bit of theology. I knit, go for walks, or do a little paint by numbers. My husband and I take a Friday morning yoga class at our gym. I pick up our grocery order and tend to the needs of our family. I schedule lunches with friends on Fridays. I relax on our back porch watching the squirrels, the birds, and the changing seasons. My husband and I have time to sit and talk without a sense of hurry to get back to the next pressing thing. Fridays are for resting and that rest often spills over into Saturdays too. I’m learning to trust the Holy Spirit with the work I’ve already invested.
When I started this Sabbath practice it felt like a hard stop. My work involves a lot of detail and complexity, it’s hard to set it aside. But I’ve learned to value the stopping. It’s a choice of intention. It’s a choice to value and honor that God is enough, that God makes up what I lack, and slowness is a choice to respect that. Sabbath is subversive of our cultural values and expectations of always doing more. Sabbath is about trust. It’s a lovely reminder that God knows we are human. Sabbath is an invitation to rest in our Creator.
Thank you for sharing this, Laura. I especially appreciate the intentionality you take to keep your Sabbath. I’ve heard some ministers complain that they are too busy for a Sabbath, but your weekly summary here shows that one has to work to keep a Sabbath.
Thank you, Laura for sharing this, and Scot for sharing the sharing!
It’s nice to hear the way other pastors spend, as Eric Law would say, their Holy Currencies. I’m in my 35th year of being an itinerant United Methodist pastor. I have a similar way of mapping out each week’s “spending” habits. The “habitual” nature seems to open me up to receive the Spirit’s input from the various sources in life. Thank you for inspiring and encouraging witness.