Simon's back!!! Such good news - after a three month sabbatical, Simon has returned and the ministry team is back to full strength again.
Sabbaticals are an important part of a minister's development and ongoing growth. They fit easily into a professional model of continuing professional development, and into the kind of self-fulfiment concept that is very prevalent today; my right to do what I need for my health, wellbeing or what ever it is. It is easy to look at sabbaticals as very individualistic. But as Simon has made clear elsewhere in saying thank you, sabbaticals are in fact very communal experiences. They can only happen, for example, if there is a team, or something approaching it, to allow the space for somebody to take that time. We are fortunate at Bloomsbury in having a ministry team which makes sabbatical a possibility, and we have been very fortunate during this sabbatical that many people have been able and willing to take on various responsibilities, so that nothing which ought to have been done was left undone.
The notion of sabbatical comes, of course, from the theology of sabbath; the gift of one day in seven in which not only is no work required, the people of God are actually forbidden to work, and commanded to rest in trust that God can sustain the world without our help.
Again, it is easy to see such a command as individualistic - my time off, my obedience to God, my guilt when I work too much. But the command was not given to individuals. It is a call to a people, a community. It is the people who are to celebrate being without doing on a regular basis. The Jewish community has developed this around household celebration - the gathering of the family for Sabbath, the sharing of the stories, of friendship, of hospitality.
As a community, at Bloomsbury, we are very busy. There is a lot to do. We do a lot, and are rightly proud of it and pleased with it. But, as Simon's sabbatical has shown us, one of the gifts we can give each other is also the possibility of sSabbath; of space and time to be - celebrating, recuperating, praying, relaxing.
On behalf of the ministry team I want to thank everybody who helped us manage while Simon was sabbaticalling. Let's explore more ways in which we can do this for each other, and in which we can do it as a community.