The time has come!  My Sabbatical renewal leave begins tomorrow.  Over the weekend, I spoke at a men’s retreat for First United Methodist Church of Azle and shared about the work of HBA at my home church, FBC Paradise.

Today is about finalizing everything and getting the last bit of office stuff done before I go off the grid for the next 5 weeks. Please remember the page on our website that provides important information for the month of May.  Please go to http://harvestba.org/sabbaticalresources.

This week, I want to share just a few specifics about how I plan to spend the next few weeks and the long-term objectives.  I have given this time a title focus of Detox and Declutter. Originally, I had planned to spend some significant time on some home projects that have been on the back burner for years, do a lot of reading and unwinding, and a little traveling.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have decided to forego the big projects and just work on decluttering my life (both literally and figuratively).  I’m a bit (my wife would say a lot) of a driven personality type. Both at home and at work, I realized that I have become my own bottleneck and restoring spiritual, emotional, and physical rhythm is going to require a hard reboot, not just a change of scenery.

So, tomorrow morning I’ll be driving to a retreat cabin at Riverbend Retreat Center in Glen Rose (thanks to our wonderful partners at Tarrant Baptist Association) for a 24 hour time of reflection and transition into the difficult task of making life less difficult.

I will begin reading The Rest of God: restoring your soul by restoring Sabbath (Mark Buchanan), start my Sabbatical journal, and begin what I intend as a month of no cell phone, no computer, no social media, no email. Week one will truly be a detox from goals, deadlines, and connectedness.

At the end of the week, I’ll be traveling to Brownwood to take my dad for a day of reminiscing around the home places of some of our ancestors.  We will visit the country cemetery where generations of Lewises are buried, see the creek where my Granny Lewis was baptized over 100 years ago, eat BBQ, and tell stories that help me to remember my heritage and renew my passion for legacy. On Sunday, I’ll preach and sing at the little Methodist church in Brownwood where Dad is a member (my only such activity of the month) because he hasn’t heard me preach (except family funerals or weddings) in ten years.

My reading and reflecting for this month away will be focused on spiritual renewal through Biblical Sabbath/Sabbatical.  My objective beyond my own time away is to work toward developing a resource from a Baptist perspective that will help our churches and pastors through developing Sabbatical plans and resources to keep our pastors healthy and energized.

I can’t wait to see what we may be able to do together!

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