Archive for the 'Sabbatical' Category

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Where we’re staying in Switzerland

Published on June 7, 2010 in Sabbatical. 3 Comments

Our church family knows that through a generous grant from the Lilly Foundation, I have the opportunity for a sabbatical this summer.  For for the first five weeks of our sabbatical, we will be headquartered at this chalet in the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Switzerland (D.V.) – - Our Swiss home thanks to the Lilly foundation. . . keep in mind we were only able to do this because of the grant.

The Lauterbrunnen Valley is considered one of the most beautiful places in Europe – - indeed, in all the world.  Wikipedia:

Lauterbrunnen lies at the bottom of a hanging or U-shaped valley that extends south and then south-westwards from the village to meet the 8 kilometers (5 mi) Lauterbrunnen Wall. The valley of Lauterbrunnen (Lauterbrunnental) is one of the deepest in the Alpine chain when compared with the height of the mountains that rise directly on either side. It is a true cleft, rarely more than one kilometre in width, between limestones precipices, sometimes quite perpendicular, everywhere of extreme steepness. It is to this form of the valley that it owes the numerous waterfalls from which it derives its name. The streams descending from the adjoining mountains, on reaching the verge of the rocky walls of the valley, form cascades so high that they are almost lost in spray before they reach the level of the valley. The most famous of these are the Staubbach Falls within less than one kilometres of the village of Lauterbrunnen. The height of the cascade is between 800 and 900 feet (240 and 270 m), one of the highest in Europe formed of a single unbroken fall.

The rest here.

Our prayer is that God will use this pause in pattern and place to allow me to be renewed for pastoral ministry so that I can continue to preach the Word and shepherd the flock.

Walking and Reading on Sabbatical

Published on June 4, 2010 in Sabbatical. 0 Comments

Why not take a walk today (even if it’s raining) and read Psalm 8?  While I admit that we are uniquely blessed in our opportunity to go to Switzerland, the glory of God is seen in every corner of creation.  Take a walk – - and then walk through history with some great reading.

This photo pictures two of the things that I want to accomplish on my sabbatical (D.V.):

  • Walking – The chance to be out in God’s Creation and to prayerfully reflect on life and ministry.
  • Reading – As was famously said, to read great books is to enter into the “Great Conversation.”

 

image

HT: Alan Jacobs

Piper on how he practices the Sabbath principle

Published on June 1, 2010 in Piper and Sabbatical. 1 Comment

One of our goals this summer during my sabbatical is not simply for me to take a sabbatical, but for our church as a whole to grow in their understanding of Sabbath.  In this brief clip, John Piper shares practical wisdom about taking a Sabbath.

You can either read the transcript, watch the video, or listen.

 

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

It’s easy to get the impression that you are always working hard. What do you do to relax and unwind?

I think unwind is a right way to say it, because souls and minds can screw down really tight. You can run on adrenaline for a long time and be at such a fever pitch that it becomes destructive. It’ll give you heart disease and so on.

So it’s a good question, and I think everybody needs to do it. I think that’s what the Sabbath principle is in the Bible. God forbade this agrarian people from working who thought that their livelihood depended on working seven days a week. What a thrilling thing to be told not to work, right? "You cannot work, you have to relax today." So I think the principle is there in the Sabbath principle.

Read more here.

Sabbatical Destination: Laterbrunnen

Published on May 30, 2010 in Sabbatical. 2 Comments

Our sabbatical plan (D.V.) is to be in Lauterbrunnen when. . . I am posting this months in advance, but we’ve so been looking forward to it.

John Piper’s 10 Resolutions for Mental Health

Published on May 26, 2010 in Piper and Sabbatical. 0 Comments

My sabbatical begins today (D.V.).  The goal is renewal.  Below is a post from John Piper in which he summarizes 10 resolutions for mental health given by Clyde Kilby.  I read this on January 1 (thanks Z), but I scheduled it for now, because I want to remind myself of these resolutions during my sabbatical.

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Quoting Piper:

“On October 22, 1976, Clyde Kilby, who is now with Christ in Heaven, gave an unforgettable lecture. I went to hear him that night because I loved him. He had been one of my professors in English Literature at Wheaton College. He opened my eyes to more of life than I knew could be seen.

O, what eyes he had! He was like his hero, C. S. Lewis, in this regard. When he spoke of the tree he saw on the way to class this morning, you wondered why you had been so blind all your life. Since those days in classes with Clyde Kilby, Psalm 19:1 has been central to my life: “The sky is telling the glory of God.”

That night Dr. Kilby had a pastoral heart and a poet’s eye. He pled with us to stop seeking mental health in the mirror of self-analysis, but instead to drink in the remedies of God in nature.

He was not naïve. He knew of sin. He knew of the necessity of redemption in Christ. But he would have said that Christ purchased new eyes for us as well as new hearts. His plea was that we stop being unamazed by the strange glory of ordinary things.

He ended that lecture in 1976 with a list of resolutions. As a tribute to my teacher and a blessing to your soul, I offer them for your joy.

10 Resolutions for Mental Health

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: "There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing."

3. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities.

I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

4. I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

5. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.

6. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence.

7. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder."

8. I shall follow Darwin’s advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.

9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, "fulfill the moment as the moment." I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.

10. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.

(Originally posted 12/31/07)

Developing the Appetite of a Loser

Published on April 23, 2010 in Sabbatical and Self Control. 2 Comments

When we eat right, good food tastes better.  There is a spiritual lesson here.  When we cram our hearts and minds with cultural sugar, we have little appetite for a feast of God’s Word

As mentioned previously (see here), one of my sabbatical goals is to be more disciplined in terms of diet and exercise.  To that end, I have made a real effort to remove junk food from my diet (especially carbs/sugar).

While the overall aim is not so much to lose weight as it is to be a better steward of my health, I am, so far a loser.

To this point, I have noticed two benefits:

  • I feel better.  According to what I am reading, this is because I am not giving my sugar levels a roller coaster ride where I suddenly raise my levels, and then because insulin kicks in, plunge it below even a fasting level.
  • Good food tastes better.  I ate an orange today at lunch time; it was delicious. 

Have you noticed the same thing?  When you are eating right, do vegetables and salad taste far better?

Are you disciplining yourself to get the right nutrition for your soul?

Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control (Proverbs 25:28).

Collin Hansen: “The Toll of our Toiling”

Published on April 1, 2010 in Sabbatical. 0 Comments

It has been nearly 20 years since Jamie and I made the decision to leave the corporate world and go into vocational ministry.  In many ways, I feel that I am at a point where my most productive time is right in front of me.  At the same time, I also see how difficult it is to keep the proper pace in ministry – - to practice Sabbath.

In light of that, I have followed John Piper’s decision to take a leave of absence with special interest.

Notice that Collin Hansen points out it is not just pastors who are given to overwork:

But local church ministry is hardly the only vocation prone to overwork. Teachers, farmers, doctors, lawyers, small business owners, and middle managers alike feel the strains of labor that threaten family and spiritual life. Still, the threat becomes that much more dangerous when we work unto the Lord in taxing jobs where the cause seemingly justifies the means. Who has time to read the Bible, pray, listen to our friends, and care for our children when there’s kingdom work to be done?

Billy Graham might be the most recent patron saint of evangelical exhaustion. His preaching schedule kept him away from his family for much of every year for decades. Due to work, Graham missed the birth of his first child, daughter Gigi, in 1945. Meanwhile, his celebrity status grew so intense that his family sometimes crawled around their home in Montreat, North Carolina, just to avoid the curious gaze of tourists who visited by the busload.

Read the whole thing here.

Matthew Lee Anderson on Piper’s leave of absence

Published on March 28, 2010 in Sabbatical. 5 Comments

I am thankful for a church that is allowing me to take a sabbatical this summer.  Commenting on John Piper announcement that he has been granted an 8 month leave of absence, Anderson explains some of the reasons why a sabbatical is so important.  Does your church make sure your pastor is renewed?  Perhaps, this is a post to pass on to your church elders? 

I for one am thrilled to hear that John Piper has asked for, and been granted, an eight month leave from each of his ministries.

But I don’t quite know why I’m so excited by his decision.  After all, eight months is a relatively short amount of time, and I don’t know Piper at all.

But I suspect there’s a lesson here that all evangelical pastors and their churches need to pay attention to.  And I hope that Piper’s influence can help them learn it.

Growing up within evangelicalism, I saw almost no emphasis on sabbatical periods for pastors, especially in those evangelical communities that have under 200 members and a small support staff.  For them, sabbaticals require a greater level of sacrifice by the whole church community, as most pastors fill roles well beyond the pulpit.

Read the rest here.

Some Very Exciting (by our standards) Brauns Announcements, including a move to Switzerland

Published on January 28, 2010 in Pastoral Search Committees, Sabbatical, The Red Brick Church and Wisdom and Decision Making. 3 Comments

imageBrauns highlights for 2010 (D.V.!).  We are thankful for your prayers.

  • Okay, the move to Switzerland is temporary.  Our church is giving me a sabbatical this summer (not to be confused with vacation – - see a Matt Schmucker article on sabbatical here).  As a part of the sabbatical, our church has been awarded a Lilly grant which means that we will be spending 5 weeks in the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Switzerland (as seen in this picture).
  • I am writing a book with Moody the goal of which is to motivate equip churches looking for a pastor to call a pastor in a Word-centered way.  This was the subject of my doctoral thesis.  Can anything be more strategic for local churches than to call a pastor in a Word-centered way.  You can read a portion of my doctoral thesis here – - but, remember this is written in an academic way, whereas my book will be written for people in local churches.
  • The Romans Project continues on Sunday mornings, but in the Fall, I will preach a new topical (but expository) series: Direction for the Journey: Confidently Stepping Forward in Life.  These are such uncertain, confused times.  Believers so often struggle to know what to believing about God’s will.  This series will show people how to confidently step forward in a Christ-centered way.
  • One of my most significant goals for the next 5 years is to see God continue to develop men in our church as leaders.  This week I am meeting three times with men.  I am focused on this goal.
  • Our oldest daughter turns 16 this year . . . Since we brought her home from the hospital yesterday, this is an adjustment for me.
  • I will be preaching mostly to the Bricks, but also:
    • At a special conference on forgiveness in the Milwaukee area on March 20.
    • At a double ordination service at Morningstar church March 28.  I have never preached at a double wedding, let alone a double ordination.
    • As a keynote speaker at the Peacemakers National Conference, September 16-18, near Washington D.C.  (Here for the Peacemakers blog).