By Ryan Braught
The Part Time Pastor: Full Time Church program of the Church of the Brethren will be sponsoring Practicing the Way: The Sabbath Practice for all Multi-Vocational Pastors this Spring.
What is the Sabbath Practice?
In Practicing the Way, a book by John Mark Comer, we find 9 different Spiritual Practices (Sabbath, Solitude, Scripture, Prayer, Fasting, Generosity, Community, Service, and Witness) that can help followers of Jesus “Be with Jesus, Become like Jesus, Do as He Did.” In this cohort we will explore and practice the spiritual practice of Sabbath.
Sabbath is a twenty-four hour time period set aside to stop, rest, delight, and worship. It is the bestday of the week. In our era of chronic exhaustion, emotional unhealth, and spiritual stagnation, few things are more necessary than the recovery of this ancient practice.
What to expect
Each Practice comes with four session videos, weekly exercises and readings, and additional resources to help your group create life-changing daily rhythms as you apprentice under Jesus together. The sessions are about 30 minutes long and include time for group discussion at the beginning.
Over 4 sessions we will spend time learning about the practice, practicing the practice (in between sessions), reflecting on the practice, and processing the practice together.
Session I will focus on Stop. God built a rhythm of rest into the fabric of creation. When we live in alignment with this ancient rhythm, we find peace and joy, but when we fight it, we fracture our souls.
Practice: Set a time to rest, develop a beginning and ending ritual, and pick one to three Sabbath activities to begin our practice.
Session II will focus on Rest. Sabbath isn’t just a day off to take a long nap — it’s a form of resistance that requires us to fight powerful forces that war against Sabbath spirituality.
Practice: Make a list of what you will not do on the Sabbath, and explore a prayer exercise.
Session III will focus on Delight. Sabbath is a full day set aside to celebrate our life with God in his world, and it is designed to be done in community — a life-giving day of delight.
Practice: Throw a Sabbath feast with your community and pick one to three of our favorite activities to curate joy.
Session IV will focus on Worship. Sabbath isn’t just a day to stop, rest, and throw a feast in community — it’s a holy day set apart and dedicated to God himself.
Practice: Identify one to three of our sacred pathways (ways we deeply enjoy God with our personality and stage of life), and learn to spend the day in worship.
Session I will be on Monday April 27
Session II will be on Monday May 4
Session III will be on Monday May 11
Session IV will be on Monday May 18
(Videos last 30 minutes. Sessions last anywhere from one hour to one hour and 30 minutes)
Register by Wednesday April 22 by completing this form. The first session begins on April 27, at 7 pm EST. An e-mail will be sent by Friday April 24 with details about the first session including a Zoom log-in.
All participants are asked to create an account at Practicing the Way by visiting this link: https://launch.practicingtheway.org/auth/signup?return=/
We also ask that participants go through a Spiritual Health Reflection before and after the Practicing the Way: Sabbath Practice cohort. The Spiritual Health Reflection can be found here: https://www.practicingtheway.org/reflection
Also each participant should have a companion guide for the Sabbath Practice cohort. A digital copy of the Sabbath Practice can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iqqIEQKiDNNzGAJZa_F9fuvGdYidtyRx/view?usp=sharing
Email Ryan Braught with any registration-related questions.