By Craig Carr

When a person follows God’s call into pastoral ministry, they are signing up for a 24/7 commitment. The sky is the limit as to the number and frequency of duties and expectations in ministering to congregations and communities. The actual needs are great, but the imagined expectations members have of pastors often far exceed what’s realistic. Thom Rainer discovered this with his board of elders in the church he was serving in Florida.

Around the boardroom table, Pastor Thom distributed a survey asking the twelve-member board to review a prepared list of 20 ministry responsibilities and to write their estimate of the minimum amount of time required for each area. “I’m not sure exactly what I was anticipating,” reflects Pastor Thom. “I just know that I was shocked when I tallied the results.” The conclusion would have been hilarious if it weren’t so ridiculous. In order to meet the minimum requirement of the resulting expectations from that simple inquiry, it would require the following each week:

Prayer at the church: 14 hours
Sermon preparation: 18 hours
Outreach and evangelism: 10 hours
Counseling: 10 hours
Hospital and home visits: 15 hours
Administrative functions: 18 hours
Community involvement: 5 hours
Denominational involvement: 5 hours
Church meetings: 5 hours
Worship services/preaching: 4 hours
Other: 10 hours

Total per week: 114 hours

Ridiculous, you say? Not far from it. An inquiry among our own pastors in Rocky Mountain Conference revealed that many of them average 55 to 70 hours per week. Is it reasonable to expect 10-hour days, seven days a week? Or what about 12-hour days with one day off per week? Clearly, no one can humanly meet all those expectations, yet the tension between “so much to do” and “so little time” weighs heavily upon every pastor.

So where does a pastor draw the line? And who has enough authority to quell the waves of expected productivity in order for the fatigued pastor to rightfully say, “Stop!” The answer is found in the Sabbath. One of the meanings of the word “Shabbat” is to cease or stop. Serving as a natural boundary against ceaseless labor, the Sabbath offers a weekly diversion from our normal labors and endeavors and strivings. In partial answer to the question, “What day is your Sabbath, Pastor?” let’s review just how different the Sabbath is meant to remain from the other six days of the week.

The Sabbath is Different

In the beginning, God divided the light from the dark- ness, the waters from the land. The Creator differentiated the grass, herbs, fruits, and trees, and divided the day from the night. God created a vast array of living creatures to fill the airspace and the land and the seas, each after its own unique kind. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; (and) let them have dominion . . .” (Gen. 1:26).

After this incredible process of dividing, defining, and distinguishing, God continued that activity in the creation of the Sabbath—a day like no other. “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made” (Gen. 2:2,3). The Sabbath stands in unique contrast to the other days and is characterized by God’s activity of “ending His work” as “He rested . . . from all His work,” as well as distinguishing the Sabbath as holy since “God blessed the seventh day.”

This brief review of creation week is a reminder of how God distinguished everything around us, dividing it into uniquely independent parts. This seems so obvious as we compare day against night, land from water, bass and bird and bear. And as unique as night and day are, the first six days of creation have no comparison with the seventh. Just as the fourth commandment “to remember” commands “six days you shall labor and do all your work,” showing that we are indeed to use our time in productive and meaningful labor on our “work days.” There’s no permission for lethargy or neglect of labor, but the Sabbath gives humanity permission to set aside the busyness of doing work and enter into the rest of God.

The Sabbath Reminds Us Who We Are

The Sabbath is both a memorial of God’s act of creation and His outstretched arm of deliverance from the bondage of slavery: a fitting symbol of humanity’s original identity and redemption from the slavery of sin. [2] It is by entering the rest of the Sabbath that humanity can find its truest identity in the Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a weekly invitation to leave behind the clamor of this world, a refuge from the busyness and demands of productivity. The Sabbath is a divine invitation to a “full stop” from our labors; only then can we find the rest and blessing God intended to regularly quiet our souls and release us from the deception of trying to be Superman or Superwoman. Perhaps you will be equally challenged by this quote:

“Sabbath keeping is the linchpin of a life lived in sync with the rhythms that God himself built into our world, and yet it is the discipline that seems hardest for us to live. Sabbath keeping honors the body’s need for rest, the spirit’s need for replenishment, and the soul’s need to delight itself in God for God’s own sake. It begins with willingness to acknowledge the limits of our humanness and then to take steps to live more graciously within the order of things.” [3]

The challenge is that the distinctiveness of the Sabbath can become a bit fuzzy—not theologically, but in practice—in distinguishing between a “work day” and a “rest day” in the life and ministry of a Seventh-day Adventist pastor. The Sabbath is the busiest, most industrious, and most important day of the pastor’s work week. The practice of ministry dictates that pastors facilitate worship, teach and preach God’s Word, and lead out in a variety of activities and ministries every Sabbath, thus making it the most intense day of their week. From Friday night gatherings to the moment he or she wakes up on Sabbath morning, and until the final “amen” that afternoon or evening, the rigorous engagement of pastoral leadership requires the fullest of energies and commitment. “What day is your Sabbath, Pastor?”

A Tithe of Time

Sabbath rest is a challenge in the lives of Seventh-day Adventist pastors. The question remains: if the Sabbath was meant as a sacred rest for all, but it’s the busiest workday of a pastor’s week, how can pastors receive the refreshment and rejuvenation of the Sabbath in their own lives? The answer challenges us to take a fresh look at another application of Sabbath in which it stands as “a tithe of time.” Remember Christ and His disciples as they returned from laboring for their Master, as recorded in Mark 6:31: “And He said to them, ‘Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.’ For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.” The disciples had been working hard. “They had been putting their whole souls into labor for the people, and this was exhausting their physical and mental strength. It was their duty to rest.” [4] As much as it is our duty to work with Christ, it is also our duty to find rest in Him.

What concerns me for pastors is the temptation to take a “day off” to compensate for Sabbath during the week that turns into a day for errands, such as changing the oil in the car, mowing the lawn, or catching up on paying bills. These are all necessary pursuits that need to be done, yet I wouldn’t save those activities to do on Sabbath, would you? Somehow, amidst the clamor to get things done from week to week, we must also include time for rest, reflection, and rejuvenation. Pastors are encouraged to seek their own “Sabbath time” in addition to the seventh-day Sabbath so that their souls can find rest, renewal, and redefinition. In addition, just as the Sabbath day is one seventh of our week, perhaps we should consider implementing a similar fraction of time into our daily schedules. Instead of working ourselves to death all week only to collapse in exhaustion on Sabbath, perhaps we could learn to seek rest, reflection, and refreshment for a few hours each day.

To my pastor friends: take a moment to review the suggestions in the box below. Perhaps you can incorporate a few more of these into your life and ministry. The rest and spiritual refreshment of Sabbath is essential, but you may need a bit of courage and humility to truly claim it. To my church- attending friends whose work days and rest days are more distinguishable: the next time you see your pastor, I challenge you to ask, “Which day is your Sabbath, pastor?”

–Craig Carr is vice president for administration for the Washington Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in Auburn, Washington. Email him at: [email protected]