Which Day Off?

I woke up tired Monday morning.

If you are someone involved with “making church happen” on any given Sunday, you know what I mean. My typical Sunday is as follows…

• up shortly after 5am
• time in the Word
• get ready for church
• at FBC-FH shortly after 7am
• turn on sound and projector systems
• Celebration Orchestra rehearsal at 8am
• odds and ends between rehearsal and worship
• Celebration Choir warm-up at 10am
• Morning Worship 10:15am to 11:30am
• shut down and pack up
• lunch out
• youth praise band rehearsal at 3pm
• RESONATE (youth choir) rehearsal at 4:30pm
• Youth Worship 5:30pm to 7pm

Busy. But that’s not all. For those of us in vocational ministry, our Sundays are “on.” By “on,” I simply mean that we are serving others in the public eye. It can be quite taxing.

So, with all that on my plate, what does my Monday look like?

Pretty wide open, actually.

I used to take Mondays as my Sabbath, my day off. The thinking was that it was the perfect way to recover from Sunday. Well, when I arrived at FBC-FH and took the reigns of the outreach programs therein, Mondays became more complicated. You see, Monday nights are outreach nights at our church. We use the GROW program (God Rewards Our Work), and it is a high priority.

What to do?

I talked to my pastor, Bryan Webb, about it. He understood where I was coming from, but he recommended I take Fridays off. His reasoning was as follows. It doesn’t make much sense taking Monday off and spending it exhausted at home. Might as well come into the office and get some of the less taxing work done.

So that is what I do.

No big meetings. No big projects. Just planning, paperwork, study, organization, website… things like that.

What day do you take as your Sabbath? Why?