Sunday Off
Recently, we at Baylight have been challenged to be more Kingdom-centered. To live lives more centered around the Kingdom and to be a church that is more centered around the Kingdom. And to have more opportunities to do that, to have more time and energy to devote ourselves more fully into the Kingdom, we’re taking the first Sunday of July, August, and September off from our normal Sunday morning gatherings. Today was the first Sunday “off”.
Alinna and I took the opportunity to rest with coffee, tea, and scones and invited anybody to come and join us. I should explain more as to how this connects with being more Kingdom-centered.
Over the last year, I’ve really been convicted by the Lord’s command to rest. I’ve particularly been convicted by the fact that it’s a command, not a suggestion as if it were merely something for my own good. For as long as I can remember, I’ve treated God’s command to rest as God’s suggestion to rest. Practically, what this meant was that when it wasn’t inconvenient to me, then I’d rest. Those moments were pretty rare. It seems that there’s always something more to do. So, I’ve been having this conviction: God worked for 6 days and then he rested on the 7th… what makes me think that I can work for 7? What’s more, God commands His people to do the same. Work for 6 and rest on the 7th.
By purposefully disobeying God in this area, I am purposefully living outside of the rule of God (also known as God’s Kingdom). I realize that this could sound totally self-serving: Obey God by resting. But honestly, it’s been really difficult for me. And the more and more I talk with people living here in the Bay Area, the more and more I realize that I’m not alone. We are constantly busy. I go so far to say that we’re addicted to being busy. In this setting, by intentionally resting, I’m intentionally choosing to be under the rule of God.
That said, I feel that today went well for me. I got to rest. Some people stopped by and I had some good conversations with them. In fact, afterward, I was talking with Alinna and we both felt like we had more and better conversations this morning than we usually do on a normal Sunday morning at “church”. If we used feeling connected to one another and caring for one another as the metric for evaluating “church”, we were probably more the church this morning at our home than when we go to church on any other Sunday. This isn’t to say that we should do this every Sunday in lieu of “going to church”. I don’t think we could pull something like that off. It just made us pause to think about why we don’t get that same quality and quantity of relationship on a Sunday morning at Mountain View Academy from 10:30AM to 12:30PM.
Baylight, what did you do? Feel free to tell your story in the comments for this post!
July 6th, 2009 at 8:35 am
Thanks for the insights Hideyo. Sun was very restful for us as well. We spent a lot of Sat preparing for Sun brunch with folks and when Sun morning rolled around it was calm and refreshing. Definitely enjoyed church in our backyard with God’s creation and people. And I agree that taking the time to actually rest if very very difficult, not only in the Bay area, but I would guess our entire country.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
We ended up taking the morning to rest a bit, and also finish off some “things to do before the baby comes.” Then, in the afternoon we headed up to SF to visit Jason and Marcia’s first church plant meeting at a coffee shop that Jason has mentioned before when he preaches. It was great hanging out with them and seeing the budding of a new community up there. I don’t know if we would have normally had the bandwidth to make it up there, so we were thankful for the time.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
It was great to have a relaxing morning with the kids and not be in any kind of rush to get anywhere. I realized that this is what most people’s Sundays must be like. And I felt jealous! The slower morning and extra down time allowed us to have the relational bandwidth to spend an extended amount of time with my brother’s family — 7 hours in total!
My sister-in-law took Leslie shopping, and my bro and I watched the kids and were able to talk about my Kenya trip and even talk about grassroots, decentralized movements — which they both are trying to make happen as educators/activists. We had a wonderful time talking about spiritual things, and he thought it was the coolest and most progressive thing for a church to take a Sunday off from usual programming to be able to spend time on relationships and rest.
We’re looking forward to our next Sunday off!