Sabbaticals are becoming increasingly common practice in congregations, and while there are many books on helping pastors prepare for their time away, there are no texts that approach the experience with the congregation in mind, from start to finish. This guide for congregations and their pastors draws on nearly two decades of wisdom from the Lily Endowment Clergy Renewal Program and helps draw the conversation away from a pastor-centric model and towards a holistic congregational framework for thinking about how the entire community can benefit from a pastor’s sabbatical.
Planned time away from the parish for study, rest, and spiritual renewal can be beneficial-and often necessary-for any pastor, as well as for the congregation. In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition of Alban’s popular Sabbatical Planning for Clergy and Congregations, Bullock and Bruesehoff provide the definitive guide to putting together refreshing pastoral sabbaticals that can help keep ministry vital and growing for the long term
How can you use adversity in your life to propel you to success? It's impossible to make it through life unscathed from trauma or adversity. Not facing these experiences directly often creates dysfunctional coping mechanisms which can lead to burnout or roadblocks for even the most successful people. Filled with stories of modern women who made changes to live more in sync with their purpose and passions, The Resiliency Effect includes actionable advice and exercises, as well as chapters dedicated to realizing common dreams such as how to change careers, take a sabbatical, or start a business. This book will teach you to embrace and overcome adversity so you too can live your biggest dreams. You'll also learn how to determine what habits and coping strategies are blocking you from success and to take tangible steps to make lasting changes in your life.
Are you tired and worn out from ministry? Isn't Jesus' burden supposed to be light? In the pressure-producing machine of our chaotic world, Jesus' words of rest don't often touch our lives. As ministry leaders, we know a lot about biblical rest, yet we don't often experience it. The ancient practice of sabbath provides ample wisdom on how to enter into rest in Christ. Sabbaticals is a guide showing us how to implement Sabbath principles into a sabbatical as well as into the ebb and flow of our entire lives. RUSTY McKIE serves as the lead pastor of Sojourn Community Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He has contributed articles for thegospelcoalition.com, AmICalled.com, and sojournnetwork.com. He has been married to Rachel for thirteen years, and they have two dearly loved children. Rusty loves working and resting alongside family and friends in his beautiful city, Chattanooga.
Reduce the stress, ease the transition, and increase the joy of your next sabbatical. After the professional arrangements have been made, Sabbaticals 101 will guide you through the nuts and bolts of planning and enjoying an academic leave. Issues such as housing, finances, and the settling-in blues are addressed with humor and understanding. A veteran of five overseas sabbaticals and exchanges with her family, Nancy Matthews has learned what works - and what doesn't. She has supplemented this personal experience with interviews of forty other sabbatical veterans, as well as research on cross-cultural adjustment, travelling with children, living abroad, and returning home. Whether you are planning your first or fourth sabbatical, travelling across the world or just settling into a city nearby, read this book first!
What to do if it's time to take stock—and you have no time! Have you ever fantasized about taking time for yourself just to reflect on the quality of your work life? Are you doing what you really want to be doing? Or are you spinning your wheels so fast that you're headed for burnout? And most importantly, is there a way to revitalize and refocus your career to your satisfaction? If you're like most people, that annual vacation doesn't do the trick, and weekends are just a time to collapse before it starts up again on Monday. If you can't afford the luxury of a full-fledged sabbatical, then Clarity Quest is for you. This powerful eight-week "training" program, which culminates in a week of self-discovery, is something that will fit into the busiest of schedules. Pamela Ammondson offers simple exercises to help you: * Break away from career confusion, and let go of old fears * Renew your physical, mental, and emotional energy so that you can think clearly and creatively * Identify your core values * Gain the strength, stamina, and calm needed to make important career and life decisions * Clarify what you really want, and take control of your life with a new sense of purpose and vision For seven weeks, you'll follow the plan, do all the groundwork for your future, and watch your dreams come into focus. When you hit the eighth week, you'll take a week-long sabbatical to fine-tune those goals, recharge your batteries, and commit to making the decisions that will change your life for the better.
More Americans are choosing to take time off from work to relax or re-examine their priorities, so they can return to work energized. Some companies offer formal sabbatical programs, but how can the average person take time off to evaluate their direction, explore their passions, and make time for the things that are really important? Whether you're disillusioned with your career, yearning to follow a dream, or taking time out after a layoff, now is the time to step back and reboot. This book will show you how you can give yourself the best gift ever-—the gift of time. People who take sabbaticals report feeling happier, and they return to their jobs refreshed, reinvigorated, and ready to tackle new challenges. Reboot Your Life draws upon the experiences of the four authors and their interview subjects: 200 people who have taken sabbaticals and 150 organizations offering sabbatical programs. The book includes real-life stories and exercises to help the reader figure out how to plan for and take a sabbatical, or how to use unexpected time off.
This is a book about the behind-the-scenes reality of a life in ministry. It tells you what Zack Eswine wishes somebody else would’ve told him. With over 20 years of experience in ministry, Zack shares with incredible honesty about his own failures, burnout, and pain, all the while addressing the complexities of leadership decisions, church discipline, family dynamics, and so on. Presenting sound pastoral theology couched in autobiographical musings and powerful prose, this book offers a fresh and biblically faithful approach to the care of souls, including your own.
Whether the reader is an adventurer, poet, volunteer, or someone who just needs a break, "Escape 101" provides a step-by-step system to take as much time as needed from a job, career, or business--without losing ground.
Should you care less about your distant future? What about events in your life that have already happened? How should the passage of time affect your planning and assessment of your life? Most of us think it is irrational to ignore the future but completely harmless to dismiss the past. But this book argues that rationality requires temporal neutrality: if you are rational you don't engage in any kind of temporal discounting. The book draws on puzzles about real-life planning to build the case for temporal neutrality. How much should you save for retirement? Does it make sense to cryogenically freeze your brain after death? How much should you ask to be compensated for a past injury? Will climate change make your life meaningless? Meghan Sullivan considers what it is for you to be a person extended over time, how time affects our ability to care about ourselves, and all of the ways that our emotions might bias our rational planning. Drawing substantially from work in social psychology, economics and the history of philosophy, the book offers a systematic new theory of rational planning.
