Lessons from my sabbatical

August 26th, 2024
by Art Dykstra

Rest. The importance of rest. We tend to forget that God himself modeled the way for a 6 day work week with a 7th day of rest. While Jesus is our sabbath rest as far as a commandment, the spiritual principle hasn’t changed. Burn out in the United States is at an all time high. Especially amongst pastors. In fact, 40% of pastors come off of their sabbatical and quit within a week. Why? They didn’t rest. So, we’ll see in a week I guess! Actually, I am recharged! So no worries, unless you were hoping for that, you’re out of luck! You’re stuck with me! Thanks for allowing me to take this time! Oh, Israel was kicked out of the promised land for 70 years corresponding to the time they should have let the land rest during Sabbath. This is a big deal!
The Power of Reflection. I visited a lot of churches and learned from them and their pastors. Unfortunately, many of them are discontent and doing their work out of duty or obligation or are joyless in their ministry and would gladly do something else if they could. I don’t feel that way! It is a privilege. Also, I’m finishing a book off I started in 2008 called “Letters to an unborn child”. In faith, I started writing to children I didn’t have after being told I couldn’t have children and I based it on Solomon’s advice in the first 7 chapters of Proverbs. I had to think a lot about life and the lesson’s I’ve learned and if I accomplish nothing else but that, I think it is a win. But it has been an amazing experience to really think about what I would like to download to my boys. To really think about the lessons I’ve learned and to put them into words! I’m 41,000 words in, the goal is 60,000. It has been a lot more work than I anticipated though so now the goal is to be done by Christmas. It’s essentially a discipleship book for young men and girls.
Learn! While I was at the Billy Graham Evangelical Association’s training facility in North Carolina last week, my wife and I had the privilege of hearing Thom Rainer, a former pastor from St. Pete and the head of a ministry called Church Answers (the BGEA gives pastors a free conference each year). Thom taught through the book of Jude and he wove in some of the data research his ministry has done on dying churches and used the book of Jude to show the solution to the 5 traps that silently kill churches. No church is immune and if you care about Jesus’s bride, you should too! Here is a brief recap:
- Failure to teach doctrine/truths of scripture I don’t think we struggle in this area. We simply want to teach and obey scripture as best as we understand it. But maybe this is a good message for you, parent?
- The low bar of expectations. We fail when we don’t discuss expectations for members around what we agreed to such as giving, serving and participating in the local church. So, since you are the members of FSC, this is your reminder! Giving is simply heart revealing. It’s a portion that represents where is your treasure and trust (and faith)! Serving means that we will regularly be giving of our talents and abilities that God has blessed us with by serving the church and other outward ministries like the GO-Team. We must avoid “consumer” Christianity at all costs! Remember, we are contributors to the community first, consumer’s second. Church isn’t about you, it’s about serving other’s first. It’s crazy if we divide over preferences like chairs verses pews. The question should be, “what serves the community”.
- Failure to understand the importance of church membership. Paul, in Romans 12 and 1 Cor. 12 says we are “Members” of the body of Christ. We belong to a body! The local church is the body. For me, I sure missed our church family this summer. It was hard to visit other churches (I was required as part of my sabbatical to learn from other churches). In fact, a few times I came to FSC because I like it better than almost everything else I’ve experienced! By the way, Thom Rainer really emphasized how important church community is to almost every metric of well-being. Lower levels of anxiety, great joy in life, lower divorce rates, etc. There was a long list associated with the benefits of church membership commitment. Interestingly enough, he said that the benefits are so outstanding that the 5 leading advocates of Gen Z going to church are atheists! Crazy! The greatest voices trying to convince young people to attend church don’t even believe! Because they see the evidence of the benefits! Wow. He also said our culture isn’t actually Anti-church. It’s just the vocal outliers. 85% of nonbelievers have a positive view or is neutral to church attendance and Christianity.
- Failure to be evangelistic. Thom Rainer’s researched showed that it took 15 members to reach 1 in 1950, but today it takes 110 church members to reach one unreached person. We simply aren’t sharing anymore and it’s a huge problem! I left there and we shared Jesus with the Hindu Uber driver on the way to the airport! It was great! Books he recommended: Evangelism in the early church by Michael Greene and any book by Chuck Lawless. One easy thing you can do today is go out with Team Hope on Friday’s with the White’s (hiscall3@gmail.com) or with Chris and Mical Baez (813.370.9522 (c) mical.baez@launchglobal.org 60% of Americans are willing to go if invited but only 1% are actually invited. Wow.
Busyness with good things to the neglect of best things. What are the good things we are called to? Discipleship, prayer, small groups, worship, community, outreach. Today, everything gets in the way of our priorities. God loves it when we golf, fish, have hobbies, but they can easily take a place of worship in our lives over the best things. As a church, we exist as a gospel mission community. I have an acronym for any new ministry to keep us focused (It’s really based on the Acts 2:42 and Matthew 28’s priorities). D.R.M.R. (Doctor, Mister, I call it). Is your ministry idea Doctor Mister? Is it Devotional (is their a Word element), Is it Relational (does it grow community); Is it Missional (does it reach out) and is Reproducible? (does it raise up and disciple others to lead or expand). For example, Family martial arts. We are a church, so we aren’t in the business of raising up ninjas, this sounds like busy work but could it become kingdom work? So when Will approached me many years ago, I asked him if it could be DRMR. And he made it so!
Learn part 2. I also took a refresher Greek course. That was interesting, so I am now praying about taking the next level class. But it’s a considerably larger investment of time… So, right now, I am concentrating on being a dad, husband, pastor so it might be on the back burner for another year. We also visited a number of churches and I interviewed quite a few pastors to get their perspective on life, ministry and family in a busy environment. It was eye opening but I really think we have a good thing going at FSC. It was also amazing to be able to plan for the future. I have an entire year of outlines for our teaching schedule down! Wow!