This blog post is the first post in a series of posts on the Farewell Tour. The Farewell Tour is my departure from my current ministry position and onto another. Why would I call it the Farewell Tour? I am surely not a rock star and I cannot play any musical instruments. I dubbed my time leaving here as the Farewell Tour because I wanted to share a little bit about my final days here. Saying goodbye is often a difficult and weird thing. I wanted to not make this weird and wanted to be upfront about the process.
Tasks and timeouts are something that I have become familiar with in the last week. I am leaving two churches and going to pastor another two churches. In this transitional stage, I feel like I have four churches until I completely move. I usually do not miss much in regards to “tasks”; however, I have found myself missing some things over the last few weeks. You find out how gracious people can be (or not) when you forget to do something.
In the middle of all of the tasks of the last week, I have chosen to place myself in Timeout. Yes, THAT place! Timeout = the place you avoided as a child. In the last week, I found myself in the middle of boxes, transitional meetings and tasks, packing, more packing, and countless emails and phone calls. So, I placed myself in Timeout. I made myself walk away from the madness and take some time for rest and refocus.
The gift of Sabbath is something that I am SLOWLY appreciating as a pastor. I moved to my current pastoral assignment during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a leader, I navigated many landmines of differences in theological, cultural, and ideological opinions/approaches in how to lead others during the pandemic. I try to observe my Sabbath on Fridays and when you set a boundary with people about your availability, you truly find out how their view your role.
I don’t view pastors as mythical or mystical creatures. We are humans too. We are not meant to work 24/7. When I did my Clinical Pastoral Education internship at a hospital with trauma beds, the Trauma Doctors even had days off. While I think us pastors have an important job, we are not doctors and not everything is a crisis. We need rest too for our own good and for the well-being of the people that we do ministry with.
In the middle of a crazy week, I chose a Timeout. May you take a Timeout too this week!
Java and Jesus 