If you're a pastor I probaby have very little to teach you about the Sabbath . However, in my observation and my experience it is apparent to me that many of us in ministry are not personally applying this principle and getting sufficient rest. Unless that gets corrected, many in ministry now simply won't be there for the long haul.
Sidebar: Let's be honest, the opposite issue is also a problem for some pastors -laziness. Now that we've acknowledged that is a problem for some let's save that for another day and focus on the flip side of the coin.
For the first year of planting our church (Calvary Fellowship, West Hartford), I hurt my walk with God, my family and all other relationships because I didn't get enough rest. I had left fulltime ministry and worked a fulltime job while getting our new church off the ground. In my resource "How to Survive Your First Year of Planting a Church" I describe this in more detail and what I did to turn that around. But I mention it to acknowledge, I have been guilty of not taking God seriously about getting proper rest. And to a certain extent, I still deal with this challenge.
How about you? How are you doing in this area? Being tired at the end of a hard day's work is a good thing, but feeling like you might fall apart at an moment is a very dangerous place to be. If you aren't resting, what is holding you back?
Having introduced this thought, I'll be posting over the next few days some of the barriers pastors face to getting proper rest and some thoughts/strategies on how to overcome them. Feel free to share your insights/experience too!
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