preacher vacation

Well, I'm officially on vacation...starting yesterday. What does a pastor do on vacation...well I'll try to give you some insight into this without ruining my vacation :-) For starters, on vacation a preacher enjoys to going to a church that he is not the leader of (this is sort of true, since I always wish I was preaching!). Yesterday, Sara and I went to a stereotypically cool downtown church and were warmly greeted. They had coffee and bistro tables in their worship room in an old theatre. It was good to see how this church of 150 do things....I'm reminded how big and diverse the kingdom is..and I missed Eastview.

On vacation, this preacher also tries not to have a schedule. I spend my life scheduled to the hilt, literally getting on my calendar may take weeks and I'm usually up by 5:00 and go from meeting to meeting, from appointment to appointment, from study to study. Well, on vacation my rule is, no alarm and no advanced planning (within reason). So, I don't know what I'm going to do today. I'm blogging right now, because I felt like it. This leads to another for my time away. No decisions. My job requirers literally hundreds of decision every week. Some are easy because I've been in ministry so long that it's instinctive. Some are excruciatingly difficult...I lose sleep over them and pray about them. So on vacation only decisions like: Pool today? Steak for supper? Nap or read...or both? I am tempted to check my e-mails and stuff, but I'll try not to.

My goal is to hear God's voice in a broader way...to be filled with his word...I'm reading through Genesis for an upcoming sermon series (I heard nine sermons last week at the NACC!). My goal is to rest. I'm tired physically and I hope I'll come back refreshed for what God is doing at our church this Fall. My goal is to be quiet. Pastors talk a lot...so I'm committed to staring at squirrels in the park to go days without t.v. To invite God to invade my soul and say what he wants. My goal is to read...got several books with me. My goal is to write. I have two books I'm working on and this will give me a real chance to give them a shot. well, I would write more but I'm on vacation and I don't feel like it...