For those of you who don’t know, I am days away from taking a sabbatical from my role as vicar of St Christopher’s Church in Coventry. One of the great gifts of this role is that we are granted occasional sabbaticals – three month periods of rest, recreation and restoration. In Coventry Diocese you are able to apply for this every 7-10 years or so. Now, being long in the tooth, having been vicar here for nearly 12 years, I am about to embark on my second sabbatical (and, in case there are some jealous clergy who have never had one after X years, I am aware how privileged I am).
The nature of sabbaticals is that you have to apply for them well in advance – in my case, around a year beforehand. When I applied, I was in a mess. I was still in the process of recovering from the trauma, stress and loss of COVID; added to that was the very painful loss of a friend who died of cancer in February 2022 and whom I had the heartbreaking privilege of ministering to at the end of her life and taking her funeral; and then, after we adopted a little girl in November 2022 we experienced the most challenging six months or so of my life and I was pushed to the limit. All of this had an impact on my relationship with Jesus. I’ve written and spoken about this in the past so won’t go into much depth right now, but due to the culmination of these different things, I felt far from God and in need of some light at the end of the tunnel. The sabbatical would be that light – it would be a chance to reconnect – reconnect with my faith in Jesus and rekindle my first love for him; but also to reconnect with the people and things I love – my family, above all – creating special memories together, hanging out especially with my teenage daughters – and having the chance to properly celebrate landmarks such as our 20th wedding anniversary, my dad’s 80th birthday etc; friends who I don’t see, because they and I live far away and I can never get away for the weekend; things I love – music, reading, writing, all for pleasure. The more I thought about it, the more wonderful it seemed …
And yet, as I write, I am a few days away from the start of my sabbatical. And, I don’t want to go. The simple reason is that I love my job – I love the church community to which I and the family were called nearly 12 years ago; I love the people I get to work alongside and share life with; I love going to worship with my church on a Sunday and see God bless us week by week as we grow numerically and spiritually together; I love the things I get to do as part of the role – hanging out with awesome young people in the after school youth cafe that I help to run, and the after-school club/worshipping community we lead in our local school which sees around 30 children join us each week. We are seeing breakthrough in lots of different parts of our church’s life. We have experienced God’s provision in lots of different ways, through the arrival of a wonderful ordinand who will have a role in oversight of the church during my sabbatical, through to the appointment of a new church treasurer who replaces her dearly loved and much appreciated predecessor who had to step down to focus on caring for his wife after a decade of faithful service. It’s exciting to see what God is doing in and through this church. We literally had the most wonderful service last weekend, with our largest Sunday attendance of the year, despite it being the Annual Parochial Church Meeting! There is so much that I will miss, and it’s hard to let go.
The other reason I don’t want to go is that, in all honesty, I’m worried … if my priority and focus is on time with Jesus, what if I don’t have the encounters and experiences that I hope for? What if it isn’t the refreshing time for which I long? What if … ? This, of course, is out of my control. All I can do is bring myself fully and wholeheartedly into this time. I am as well-prepared as I can be – I have left the church in as good a state as I can do, and I have a clear plan for how I spend my time during my sabbatical, beginning with a week at Lee Abbey, and then a focus for each day. I can’t do much more. Now, I need to surrender. To let go and let God – to “Be still and know that I am God”. The rest is down to him – and he is able, as I am reminded, “to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20).
As I was on my walk before the service on Sunday, I saw this incredible cloud formation in the sky – the cross standing over the parish and over me, with its light shining brightly. For me I took this as a sign that God is in the case, and that I – and we – can trust in him.
May God be glorified in me and through me and may I be blessed to be a blessing to the church and whomever else God may send across my path.
Halwill Publishing 