Dan Kimball: Vintage Faith

Going on a part-sabbatical, part-research/study/writing break until June

This is my last blog post for a while - as I am taking what is somewhat of a sabbatical. This is the first time I have ever done anything like this in the 21 years I have served on a church staff. I wrote "somewhat of a sabbatical", as sabbatical is supposed to happen every 7 years and is a time of total rest. This sabbatical is taking place once every 21 years and is partial rest. But this is a time period where I will be taking a 100% break from my role at Vintage Faith Church until June 24th. I posted what is happening on Sundays for the teaching in the worship gatherings while I am gone here. 

For those who want to know what I will doing while on this break - during the first half I will be 100% disconnecting from blogs (reading or writing them), no Facebook, Twitter or email. This will be a time to reflect on life, God and this past season of ministry. I will be going to Hawaii and stay at my friends condo for 5 weeks and this is a time of just rest, praying, thinking, reading and being with family. The photo above is Becky and the girls at the beach by my friends condo from last time we were there. So that will be the same scene we shall be experiencing for the first several weeks of this break. I won't be bringing any church leadership books with me, but will be reading some books ranging from C.S. Lewis's ScrewTape Letters (thanks Andrew for the recommendation) to Ace Frehley's biography (the original guitar player for KISS) and some theology books I have been wanting to read, but haven't had time to.  When we return back home from Hawaii, I will then have a week with Katie and Claire on my own while Becky goes off with her sister on a trip. So that is a father/daughter time which should be fun.

Then for the second half of this break from my role at Vintage Faith Church I will heading up to Portland for part of it. I have for some meetings with George Fox University about the Origins Project that is launching in September and doing some interviews with leaders there. And hanging out with Ricky McKinley, and my brother and some other friends while there. And seeing Roger Water's "The Wall" with Ricky and others while in Portland. Then we will be heading to Santa Barbara and visiting with my friend Britt Merrick (Reality Church) and his family (our wives got to meet at a retreat we were both on, so that should be fun getting the families together). Britt has a very excellent book that I just read the manuscript of called Godspeed: Making Christ's Mission Your Own.  On that trip I will be meeting and interviewing church leaders and seeing my friend Dave Kinnaman while there also. So the second half is a somewhat of a working break, but I won't be back yet in my role with Vintage Faith Church. I will be visiting other churches during this time and look forward to being at other Santa Cruz churches. I rarely get to worship and be at other local churches, so we will be doing that during this second half of the break. 

It should be an interesting time period for me, as I have never taken this long of a break from the ongoing role of local church leadership. I am not burned-out by any means, so this is not a burn-out-I-need-a-break time. Almost the opposite, as it has been a pretty sweet and fun time in our church and we have so many things in the planning with adding on two more worship gatherings, bringing on some new key staff and we have had an amazing surge of healthy growth this past season. So it is sort of a proactive time of getting away for both rest and relfection on how I am really doing which seems to only be able to get that from stopping for a while from all the activity of life. I see this break as a learning, visiting other churches, working on some outside of Vintage Faith Church projects and minsitres I am involved with - so both a rest but also learning time period and emotional refreshment from backing out of the normal weight of ongoing resposibility to gain some emotional refreshment and perspective. 

Sunday teaching at Vintage Faith Church while I am on sabbatical

(I am writing this out and linking to this from an email I will be sending our church this week. So a lot of this post is for Vintage Faith Church with the upcoming teaching schedule). 

We finished our 4 week teaching series Everyday Missionary  on Sunday. I did a wrap up about the how the dream of our church is to be a missionary-community-training-center-base here in Santa Cruz. It was stressing that church buildings are good and can be used for mission, and that Sunday teaching is good and important and that we can have good music and bands and lighting etc.  but that those things aren't the primary goals, but only part of the whole missional strategy to see healthy and new disciples made.

I have seen some who tend to go to an extreme and say we don't need buildings, or that we shouldn't have preachers or bands on Sundays or anything "attractional". I don't agree with that philosophy, as many do have preaching, bands and buildings and can still be very missional provided that Sundays is not seen as the spectacular "attraction" for people to be at for the goal. But instead,  it is the followers of Jesus who live their lives during the week as missionaries who are the "attraction" by Jesus in them. And then Sunday meetings come into play as most people will then desire to come to a Sunday meeting and Sundays are important (at least in our strategy as a church). I showed this video on Sunday to emphasize this: 

 

 

Everyone also got coat hangers as they left this past Sunday with a image of Jesus on them (which would take too long to explain) but it was emphasing the reminder that every day we are missionaries in our lives whatever we do.

This Sunday was also my last Sunday teaching at Vintage Faith Church until July 8th. I am taking a sabbatical, my first ever in 21 years like this of vocatonal on a church staff ministry. I will post more on that and what I will be doing before I leave for sabbatical on Monday. But wanted to post the Sunday teaching while I am gone which I will be linking to from an all-church email I will send out this week.

While I am gone, what is happening on Sundays teaching-wise is:

March - April: Smart Love: life together in the way of 1st Corinthians 13 - my friend Jon Talbert from Westgate Church in San Jose will be teaching a 3 week series going through 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Jon leads an amazing ministry called Beautiful Day and has been a good friend for many years. 

April and May: The Hole In Our Gospel: we will be going through a 6 week series somewhat based out of the book, The Hole In Our Gospel which was written by the president of World Vision. We have had some planning meetings for this series and will doing a bunch of very interactive things for truly trying to grasp the depth of the needs of the world and the suffering, hunger and injustice out there. Nathan George, who is part of our church and the leader of Trade As One will be kicking off the series and ending it. We also will be having one Sunday where we show the film Journey To Jamaa. I wish I was here for this series as it is an important one.

In June:  Kristin Jensen and Joe Bishop will be teaching a 4 week series (they are determing what it is right now). 

July 1 - Margaret Feinberg will be with us. I am so thrilled to finally have Margaret at Vintage Faith Church. She is a really good friend and has been to The Abbey before at our church, but not here on a Sunday. So Margaret will finally be with us and so glad our church will get to meet her.  

July - The book of Titus: I will be back and teaching through the New Testament book Titus. I look forward to this as Titus isn't a book that normally seems to get taught a lot. So I will be going through the 3 chapters in 4 weeks. 

August: Proverbs - will be a month teaching through various Proverbs from the Old Testament. 

September through December: The Sermon on the Mount -  we will be teaching through the entire Sermon on the Mount from the book of Matthew. We don't want to rush through this, so will be spending almost 4 months on this incredible section of Jesus' teaching. 

My next post will be my last for a while and I will be disconnecting for 6 weeks entirely from Facebook, blogging, checking emails etc. Then back but doing research and visiting other churches for anotehr 6 weeks before returning to my role at Vintage Faith Church. I have not scheduled any speaking engagments either for 12 weeks while the sabbatical is happening. So will be interesting doing this as it is definetly a break from my normal patterns of life. I'll post this weekend with more on sabbatical thinking and plans.