Baptist Spirituality

“It was in the wilderness that Satan attacked Jesus the hardest. It was not in his ministry. It was not in his upbringing. It happened in the moments immediately after God identified Jesus publicly as God’s Beloved Son, in whom He was well pleased. Jesus knew His identity before He was tempted and before He even preached his first sermon, but it was His identity that was threatened the most.”

These were the words that my spiritual director spoke when I was two weeks out from sabbatical leave. I had come to him with a great sense of doubt, anxiety, and uncertainty. I was filled with doubt about my competency and effectiveness as a minister, feeling that I had failed my church in the many ways it could have grown if I were more assertive early on in my ministry. I was anxious about leaving for eight weeks, not because I feared the church wouldn’t survive without me, but because I wasn’t sure how I would survive without the church. I was uncertain because I did not know how I might face myself — and God — in the wilderness of my own making.

I expressed to him that my biggest concern was in “taking off the robe,” as the Reverend Jim Dant once said concerning his sabbatical leave. What would I do without the rhythms of pastoral obligation that so ordered my life? Where would I be without my daily prayers with God constantly focusing on church, ministry, calling, and congregation? Without that kind of structure, what was left in the relationship between us?

Who was I without the robe, and would there be anything left of me to which God might relate?

Just when all those around me were assuring me they loved me, cared for me, appreciated me, yes, even admired me, I experienced myself as a useless, unloved, and despicable person . . . Just when I had found a home, I felt absolutely homeless”  -Henri Nouwen

In A Sabbatical Primer for Pastors, David Alves writes, “Most of the congregation does not experience the relentless, chronic spiritual attack and oppression that spiritual leaders endure” (p. 52). This barrage of spiritual warfare creates walls in the soul and a calloused heart. Soon, the clerical exterior calcifies so soundly that not even the Holy Spirit can break through.

Keeping Sabbath by way of sabbatical — an exercise of divesting of the religious life — seeks to dismantle that wall, restart the heart, and bring health in places otherwise neglected. It’s a search for that first word God uttered before public ministry, “Thou art my Beloved,” and to understand what “Beloved” means without having people affirm (or deny) that identity on a weekly basis.

This kind of vulnerability brings an acute spiritual warfare that is unique. The minister heading on sabbatical is a minister heading into the wilderness at his most vulnerable. There are no safety nets, and the sheer exile from community can be jarring. It’s the time when the Predator sniffs out the weakest prey.

Spiritual warfare in the furnace of the desert requires a different strategy for victory. Weakness brings not failure, but a certain reliance on God that you get only when divorced from the rhythms of congregational leadership. Sabbaticals hone an identity forged by a clarity of mind that weekly ministry fails to cultivate. Prayer, fasting, discipleship, fellowship, and worship happen without the distractions of performances, perceptions, or expectations.

It is the place where we find that the very things we ministers believe feed our souls actually consume us. Sabbatical deepens a spiritual well that we haven’t plumbed in a long time.

As I prepare to leave, not four days out as of the writing of this entry, the Lord has been bringing to mind a song that one of our church members, Tom, used to sing often for our congregation, Bring Back the New Again. I never really favored that song. It sounded more like Frank Sinatra than Bill Gather, although I appreciated Tom’s gift. But its the song the Lord used this week to bring comfort and reassurance, a testimony that God is in the business of making us whole, of re-centering us even if it means bringing a jackhammer to hardened hearts, of bringing back the new again that we might discover our “first love” (Rev. 2:4-5).

A few weeks ago, even before this alchemy of doubt, anxiety, and uncertainty set in, someone passed along a spiritual “word” they received from the Lord just for me: I would come under Satan’s attack doubly for the work that I’ve been doing in the name of Jesus. The Spirit knew that her prophetic witness would hit at just the right moment, although she feared that I would think her crazy. As I prepare to enter the darkness of wilderness, I’m grateful she had the courage to share that with me. God often speaks by way of confirmation.

Sources

David Alves, A Sabbatical Primer for Pastors (Createspace, 2014).
Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love (New York: Image Doubleday Books, 1996).