From the Pastor’s Desk (69)
Our Heavenly Father created the heavens and the earth in six days and He rested on the seventh day. He rested not because He was tired from work but to show us an example to follow. Rest, therefore, is God’s idea! And it is so important in our life that He commands us to rest periodically. For example, He commanded His people in the Old Testament to rest one day a week, a Sabbath, one year every seven years, a Sabbatical year, and a Jubilee, the fiftieth year, which brought to a close a cycle of seven Sabbatical years. On top of all these, God commanded them to remember and celebrate various feasts, such as Feast of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. These are the feasts when people ceased from their daily work and remembered God’s goodness and worshipped Him. God obviously takes rest very seriously!
Rest, however, is not an end in itself. It is a means to achieve an end, which is to be fruitful and fulfilled in our work. Our common sense and experience tell us that without proper rest we cannot be happy and productive in what we do. If we want to perform at our optimum level, we must rest. There is no other way. This is by God’s design! He takes rest seriously because He takes work seriously!
Therefore, in order for us to become more fruitful and fulfilled in our house church ministry, we are going to rest in July. That means we are going to cease from having our official Shepherds’ Meetings on Wednesdays and House Church Meetings on Fridays the whole month of July. I have noticed in the past several years that July gets pretty hectic with lots of people taking their vacations and VBS and mission trips. Hence, I chose July as a rest month.
What, then, does it mean to rest? Rest is not the same as being idle or lazy. It is not the absence of motion or activity. Instead, rest should be very purposeful, which means, after resting we must become much more productive and fulfilled in our work. Therefore, rest must be something that is very different from our daily work and it should help us unwind, relax and energized. Consequently, how people rest could be very diverse. Depending on your work and career, your rest could be sleeping, gardening, working on your car, doing woodwork, playing sports, reading, taking a walk with your spouse or playing games with your children.
And this is how we are going to rest from our house church ministry in July. We want to rest by doing those activities that help us unwind and energize us so that when we come back together in August, we will become more fruitful and fulfilled in our house church ministry.
Some of us may want to spend an extended time with one’s own family by going on a vacation. Others of us may want to have a joint house church with another house church. We could also have random get-togethers with different members of New Life in a small or a big group setting. Going on a mission trip with one’s own house church or with several other families is another excellent and meaningful way to rest.
We will try this for one year and evaluate the outcome afterwards. My hope at the end of July is to see all of us fully rested and energized that we are ready to get together with our house church members for another year to pursue after God’s vision for the world both locally and globally.
Your pastor,
Eric
p.s. New Life has been growing by leaps and bounds from the beginning. However, we still operate with only one full-time staff. Much of the ministries are being done especially by our 7 team leaders who also serve as house church shepherds. Some of them are getting overloaded with ministries and are in need of rest. So, we have decided to allow them to take an optional sabbatical year after serving their house church for three years. If a team leader decides to take a year off from shepherding ministry, he or she can remain in one’s own house church serving as a member or go to another house church to learn and observe. If this happens in your house church, it is an excellent opportunity for the intern and the others to step up and serve the house church in a greater measure. It’s a win-win situation for everyone!
No Comments to "Let’s Rest from Our House Church Ministry in July!"
