Jason Daye 
Welcome to FrontStage Backstage. This week, we have a hand-picked highlight that we believe you will find valuable. If you do, we invite you to listen to the full conversation. You can find the link to the complete episode in the description. As always, please, Like, Comment, Subscribe, and Share, so we can continue to bring you meaningful ministry content, helping you, pastors, and ministry leaders, just like you, flourish in both life and leadership. Are you ready? Let's go. One of the things Ruth that you, that you speak to oftentimes, I guess we speak of Sabbath as a time of rest, but you also frame Sabbath in a way that I personally have found very helpful, not simply as taking a breather, yeah, but really ceasing from our usual work. Yes, exactly. Can you? Can you share with us a bit about this distinction?

Ruth Haley Barton 
Yeah, well, I think it's really interesting for us to look at the original language. And in, you know, in Genesis, when it says that God rested, the more accurate translation there would probably be that God ceased, because God doesn't need rest. God's not limited the way we are. And so when we go all the way back to the beginning, where we see Sabbath beginning with God and emerging from God's own character, we see that it is about the ceasing. And I think that's a really, a really important nuance, actually, because it gives us a way to think about what we're going to include and exclude on the Sabbath, because we're supposed to be ceasing what we normally do, that way of being in the world where we are, you know, trying to have dominance over the world and be productive and achieve things and get things done, whatever it is that fits in that category for us, that is what we are supposed to cease During the Sabbath.

Jason Daye 
Yeah. So you've shared, you know, personally, some of the things that you like to do on the Sabbath. You like to garden. Some people you know like to do woodworking or painting, or whatever it might be. And so when we think of this idea of Sabbath, it's not necessarily saying we're unplugging, we're just loafing around. I mean, although it could be that, I mean, yeah, we're not gonna discount that. But it is this idea of pulling back from that that, like you said, that usual work. So when we think of our roles as pastors and ministry leaders, no, that can be challenging, as you shared. I think we all experience. I bet everyone watching or listening is resonating with this idea, so talk to us a little bit about pulling back from that usual work, specifically from the perspective of a ministry leader, yeah, yeah.

Ruth Haley Barton 
There's some very important nuances for the ministry leader, for the pastor and ministry leader, because first of all, for most of us, we are engaged in ministry on Sunday mornings, which means we have to think carefully about when and so what I'm encouraging in this book and beyond is that pastors do see and understand that the work that they do to pull off worship services is their work, and that's part of what they need to cease, and that their Sabbath doesn't start until after that work is done. I think you know that in the book, I actually move us towards thinking about Sabbath communities and how communities can practice together. So one of the things I'm suggesting for pastors and staff and high-level volunteers is that we don't load a whole bunch of other stuff in on Sundays, but that when the services are over, the worship services are over, it's done. Nothing else happens in the church building that day, and everybody goes home, including the pastor and the ministry leaders and the parishioners, and the pastor and leadership are actually modeling what Sabbath actually is. If you're not pulling off the worship service, then worship can be a part of your Sabbath. But if you are helping to pull off the worship service, then it's not part. It can't really be seen as your Sabbath rest. And so what I suggest is that pastors see the time after church, 12 or one, all the way until one o'clock on Monday or even into the evening, if they can. That's what I would suggest, because it just takes so much to come down from preaching and all of that, and that the congregation knows that that is the pastoral staff's pattern and practice, and maybe there's a receptionist or a pastor on call for emergencies, but the staff together takes their Sabbath, and the congregation knows this, and it's part of being a Sabbath community, then I think the pastor has to be pretty careful about thinking about what kinds of things they're going to do. So, you know, collapsing in the Lazy Boy and watching football for three hours. I think we need to be careful. I'm not going to tell you what to do on that, but I'm going to say that it might be helpful to pay attention to whether or not that actually is restful, or whether that keeps you riled up on some level. So I do include a story from a guy in this book who talked about being willing to pay attention to what got produced in him when he watched football for three hours. And I really appreciate his honesty, because he's a sports fan, and he loves it, but he also was able to name the fact that it got his competitive juices going. And if the team won, he had one emotion, but if the team lost, he had a. Other emotion, and then it could really tank his whole day if, if the game didn't go the way that he wanted it to, and also paying attention to the fact that it riled him up on the inside, versus helping him to rest into God. So these are the kinds of things we need to pay attention to. And I think pastors in particular need to be careful about somehow distinguishing between the reading and the working that they're doing for study and sermon preparation and things like that, and what they're reading for their own personal soul sake, and to be very careful about what you choose to engage even in the realm of your spirituality on the Sabbath, to make sure that you're not, you know, trying to get a twofer. You know, I'm resting today, and I'm starting to get ahead of my message preparation for next Sunday. I don't want to hear that.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, that's that's good. That's very helpful. One of the things Ruth that you make clear in the book is that we must not pit rest against work or work against rest, right? Like one is not better than the other. And I know as pastors and mystery leaders, it seems very tempting, really, for us to elevate our work even higher, maybe than other vocations. Because, I mean, this is God's work, right? So we have that tendency. Can you help us process a bit through this tension that we tend to create, especially in ministry, between work and rest?

Ruth Haley Barton 
Yes, we do tend to do that, don't we? We do that. We do tend, at the level of our minds, to create these false dichotomies and then elevate one over the other. So I'm glad that you're, you know, bringing us to that point in the book, because one of the things that I've really insisted upon is that, number one, the word work would be in the title of the book, that this wouldn't be seen as a book that's just about rest, but it's the rhythm between the two and and then even in the in the back cover copy, you know, I insisted that it be about the goodness is in the rhythm, because that is where the goodness is. And so it's the rhythms that we want to establish. And the Sabbath is one of the main ways that God has given to us to actually establish sane rhythms of work and rest and to experience the fact that rest gives work meaning, because on the seventh day, like God, we can step back, we can savor the fruits of our work. We can feel the goodness of it. We can eventually, hopefully, get rested enough that we feel good about going back to our work, and that in many, many ways, it does give meaning to our work. And then, of course, our work gives meaning to our rest, because rest without work would probably eventually devolve into laziness and purposelessness and things like that. And so the fact that we have done good work during the week means that we really can know that it's good for us to take a break and to rest and cease from our normal labors. And so you know, almost all the rhythms that we can think of are very positive for the human self and the human person, the rhythms of night and day, the rhythms of eating three meals a day, the rhythms that go along with dancing and music, the rhythms of sunsets, and the rhythms of tides. I mean, rhythms are something that the human person and the human body is oriented towards, because we were created within those realities. And so this is just another rhythm that's really good for us, that God created us to live within

Jason Daye 
FrontStage Backstage is a ministry of PastorServe. Here at PastorServe, we love walking alongside of pastors and ministry leaders. If you'd like to learn details on how you might qualify for a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, please visit PastorServe.org/freesession now. FrontStage Backstage is more than just another podcast. In fact, we create an entire toolkit that complements every single conversation. You can find this toolkit at PastorServe.org/network for this episode, and for every episode in the toolkit, you'll find a number of resources, including our ministry leaders' growth guide. In the growth guide, you'll find both questions and insights that are pulled from the conversation that you and the leaders at your local church or ministry can process together to consider how this content relates to your particular ministry context. Again, you can find the toolkit at PastorServe.org/network. Now we hope that you are finding this content valuable, and if so, we'd love for you to share, comment, like, follow, subscribe, that engagement is incredibly important, and also please take a moment to give us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your engagement and your reviews help other pastors and ministry leaders help find this valuable content. I'm Jason Daye. I'm encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. Thank you, and God bless you.