Doing the Stuff
LETTER BY BRIAN MORYKON
Vineyard leader John Wimber is famous for wanting to actually “do the stuff” Jesus did — proclaim forgiveness, restore the sick, free the oppressed.
Regardless of whether one agrees with all his theology, he’s got a point. Jesus preached and demonstrated the Kingdom of Heaven, the realm where justice and wholeness are the norm. So it makes sense that following Jesus means doing outward things that help bring God’s Kingdom to our corner of Earth. What that looks like day to day will be different for each of us according to our life season and unique calling. But it’ll look like something.
And if we’re doing the outward stuff, we better also be doing the inward stuff and together stuff — solitude and sabbath and worship, the practices Jesus modeled and taught. Inner work, like outward work, is much easier to talk about than to do. And it’s easy to confuse the talking for the doing.
That confusion can land you where I was last year, flirting with burnout, a rather embarrassing place to find yourself while working for a spiritual renewal organization.
I’m grateful I was given a sabbatical — an extended time for sabbath rest. I suppose the difference between a sabbatical and a long vacation is intent. Vacations are wonderful, but the word itself carries the idea of escape. I didn’t need to vacate, to check out. I was doing that plenty in my busyness. I needed to show up, to inhabit my life hidden in Christ. My true self had been drowning in distraction and Very Important Work. Sabbath rest helped me to stop flailing and allow Christ to rescue and resuscitate me.
When I came back to work, my teammates called me “Sabbatical Brian,” who from all accounts is a much more pleasant person to be around (and to be).
On Tuesday, my colleague and friend Carolyn Arends came back from a sabbatical of her own — the first in a decade of working at Renovaré. She was already a pleasant person to be around, but her face now has a fresh life in it (along with the slightly bewildered look of someone who’s casually strolled onto a full-speed train). “I learned not to measure the value of a day by how much I got done.” Well said, Sabbatical Carolyn.
This week’s podcast guest, Bill Simmons, is CEO of Hope Rises, a nonprofit that does the most Jesus-like stuff imaginable: they bring healing and dignity to those with leprosy and other diseases. Bill’s family took to calling him “Sabbatical Bill” (it’s a thing, apparently) during his recent time away from work. He came back to work more abandoned to God and with some practical ways to sustain soul health for himself and his staff. (Like the simple practice of a quiet pause for one to two minutes at the start of each Zoom meeting.)
My point here isn’t, “Go take a sabbatical.” I hope you can and I hope you do. But that simply isn’t possible for most people. The point is that the full and good life Christ offers us is a balance of outward, inward, and together. So let’s be intentional about actually doing all the stuff. Together. With God.
Brian Morykon
Director of Communications
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY GRACE POUCH
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1.
Bill Simmons, CEO of Hope Rises (the American Leprosy Mission) joins Nate to talk about his sabbatical on the Life With God podcast.
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2.
“God has been undoing the illusion of control in my life and career,” Bill Simmons writes in this excerpt from his book The Way of Interruption: Spiritual Practice for Organizational Life.
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3.
Tish Harrison Warren explores practices to limit “our restless activity as a nation”and to curb the “degrading worship of the almighty dollar.”
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4.
Dallas Willard explains that many pastors find that the circumstances in which they work “are in conflict with the very goals for which [they] entered the ministry in the first place” in “Sabbath is a Way of Life.”
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5.
“Can Sabbath be a prophetic act… a modern way of telling the powers, ‘Let my people go!’?” John Pattison interviews Walter Brueggemann about his book Sabbath as Resistance.
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6.
“The life of Christ shows us that the way outward is inward.” Rich Villodas looks at Jesus’ balance of public ministry and contemplative practice in “A Spirituality of Privacy.”
Grace Pouch
Content Manager
WORTH QUOTING
“Sabbath sets us free from bondage to our own efforts. Only in this way can we come to the power and joy of a radiant life in ministry, a blessing to all we touch.”
– Dallas Willard (source)
TO CONTEMPLATE
Ten Lepers Healed*
Brian Kershisnik 2010
(source)
What do we do with our freedom? I love the way contemporary artist Brian Kershisnik depicts the celebratory parade of healed lepers (from Luke 17). They are thrilled to be set free of their disease, and all heart-felt celebration glorifies God. But one healed leper — “a foreigner,” according to Jesus — has the faith and humility to throw himself at the Master’s feet in thanksgiving. Sabbaths and sabbaticals not only heal our burnout — certainly a gift worth celebrating — they set us free to bring us a renewed sense of gratitude, a deeper connection with Christ, and a more complete and abandoned dependence upon him as our ever-living Savior, Teacher, Lord, and Friend.
*Image used by permission
TO PONDER
Consider trying one of these practices this week:
Inward: Take a 20-minute walk without a phone. Along the way, say aloud a single phrase from Scripture, such as, “The Lord is my Shepherd; there’s nothing I lack.”
Together: Before a group gathering, like a church class or a Zoom meeting, take a 60 – 90 second pause to remember that God is in your midst.
Outward: Pray for someone’s physical healing (with their permission and agreement). Start small: a headache, joint pain, a good night’s rest.