Starting With Rest
As the parent of a 17-month old, the phrase “regular sleep schedule” exists in the theoretical realm for my wife and me. In somewhat baffling fashion, our son will sometimes sleep straight through one night only to be awake for hours the next. Perhaps it’s payback for having a daughter who slept 12 hours a night until she was 2. Whatever the reason, one thing is sure: God is helping me see my insufficiency to achieve success through my own will and strength. I have never valued rest more than I have over the last 3 months.
My son’s sleep regression is happening at the same time that we’ve moved and I’ve started as the youth pastor at a new church. Any of you who have taken over the reins of a youth ministry can relate to this period where you consider what values you hope to build into the ministry culture. One of the things I’m weighing out currently is how we should incorporate rest into our ministry. Before jumping straight to the practical suggestions though, it’s wise to consider how Scripture speaks about rest.
Starting With Rest
When I think about rest, the first verses that usually come to mind are either Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-30, welcoming all who are weary to come receive rest, or the command to observe the Sabbath in Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15. Upon further consideration, the most illuminating example of rest is in Genesis 1. After God created everything in six days, including humanity, he rests on the seventh. This is the precedent for the command to observe the Sabbath. However, God is not the only one to rest on that day.
Did you catch that? I know it’s something I usually gloss over, because of familiarity with the story of creation. The first thing Adam and Eve experience after God creates them is a day of rest with him. We typically think of rest as something that comes after we work - it is called the week-”end” after all, not the week-”start.” But God did not require Adam and Eve to put in their 40 hours before resting. His command to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28) went hand in hand with rest. The work God calls us to flows out of our rest in him. When we accurately see that God’s gracious gift of rest in him is the reason we accomplish anything, then we see a more accurate picture of our identity and purpose. Our identity is not based on how much we can do or produce, but on what God has accomplished on our behalf. We’re able to fulfill our calling to glorify God and be his witness to the world by finding rest in him. Rest is not simply something we have to do because our bodies are limited. Rather, resting in God is something we get to do, a gift that is the starting place of our work.
Crazy Youth Pastors Who Rest
It’s one thing to understand the primary role that rest should have in our relationship with God. It’s another thing to practically apply that truth. I’ve found that it can be surprisingly hard to value rest properly, in both my life and in ministry. After all, aren’t youth pastors supposed to be at games and concerts? Spending time with students and families? Fulfilling that ubiquitous “additional duties as needed” line in our job descriptions? But If God, who is all-powerful and entirely sufficient, modeled rest for us, shouldn’t we value it more highly?
In our personal lives, are we taking time to disconnect from our emails and to-do lists? Are we filling our schedules with events, meetings, and time doing ministry, leaving no margin for resting in God’s provision? Are we actually practicing Sabbath, and not just counting our time working at church on Sunday as good enough? One way we can create margin for rest is by bringing others along who can be the point of contact when we need to step away. This displays our recognition that we can’t accomplish it all on our own. Just as we would think intentionally about the direction of our ministry, it’s crucial to be purposeful about incorporating rest into our lives. It doesn’t happen if we don’t plan for it.
Turning our focus to our youth ministries, it is incredibly easy to fill the schedule with ways for students to connect, grow, and serve. In a desire to accomplish all we hope to, our ministry calendars can become overcrowded. But when the culture around us screams “fill your time with more,” the church should be counter-cultural and proclaim the good news of rest in Christ. When we talk about how rest is important but don’t actually structure our ministry in a way that allows families to practice it, we’re communicating that rest is little more than a “good idea.” Perhaps we need to pare back the number of times we meet on a weekly basis, or space out events and trips. We certainly need to walk alongside parents, helping them value rest and enabling them to integrate it into their schedule - instead of demanding their students fill any free time with our ministry’s events.
When we shift our focus from resting after we work to resting before we work, we reflect the truth of the Gospel more accurately to our students. The good news of Jesus Christ is all about the complete sufficiency of Christ. In our spiritual weakness, we are unable to accomplish our own salvation, and our need to rest parallels that reality. Resting before we work echoes the truth that the Gospel begins with grace, not effort. When we begin with rest, we are able to minister out of the abundance of God’s grace instead of a cup dry from being stretched thin. We learn to see ourselves more clearly, as people who cannot accomplish it all on our own - but who are not left to do it on our own. I certainly haven’t perfected the practice of rest (I do have 2 young kids after all!) but I know it’s valuable enough to keep moving in that direction.