Category Archives: Sabbath

Implementing EHS in Your Church

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (EHS) is a paradigm that ultimately informs every area of a church, ministry, or organization. And so the one question that continually emerges in our work with leaders is: “How do I bring EHS into our church—and then how do I keep it there!?” There are a variety of tools, books, conferences, and curriculums for leaders who want to teach and train their people in emotionally healthy spirituality. Three tools in particular are essential to becoming a transformed EHS church: The EHS Course, EH Skills 2.0, and The Emotionally Healthy Leader. The Three Core Tools The EHS Course. This eight-week spiritual formation course provides a foundational overview of the EHS paradigm for your church or ministry. It includes reading Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and learning to cultivate a rhythm of meeting with Jesus twice a day using Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day: A Forty Day Journey with the Daily Office. Daily. Read more.

Why Transformation Takes So Long!

Last week at our two-day EHS Consultant Training, Wendy Seidman shared Bloom’s taxonomy of how people learn to help us understand why it takes so long for individuals and church/ministry cultures to “get” EHS. The following is her adaptation of Bloom’s classic work on the process people need to move through to really “get” something like EHS: 1- Aware. People hear about EHS for the first time (e.g. Sabbath, slowing down, past’s impact on the present, grieving, learning to feel). 2- Ponder. People think about it, trying to understand or sort through issues as they gather more information. At this point they don’t have a clear inclination for or against it. (e.g. They continue reading, listen to messages, go through the EHS Course, learn a few EHS Skills, talk about Sabbath with others). 3- Value. People think it’s important, find value in it, and commit to it, saying, “I really believe in this EHS. Read more.

Removing the Clutter

Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew, knew she was about to be sent to a concentration camp. In A Life Interrupted, she describes how she knew she could only take with her one small backpack to sustain her as she entered hell. In her mind, she pondered and planned, mentally packed and unpacked that small bag, before finally deciding on a Bible, a volume of favorite poems by Rilke, a bottle of aspirin, an extra sweater, and a chocolate bar. Etty struggled to define what was valuable to her, and what would sustain her on her journey. A stripping-down, a letting-go was inevitable as transport to the death camp came closer. If we are going to have an interior life, out of which we lead, it demands we limit what is in our knapsack, or backpack. Not knowing how to listen to our interior world puts us, our family, and the people we lead in. Read more.

Sabbath: Feasting at God's Banquet

Scripture describes our future as the wedding feast of all wedding feasts. We will see Jesus face to face and be united with him in a massive love and joy that will last forever. On Sabbath, a 24 hour period set apart from our work, we participate in that feast. Thomas Aquinas, in the twelfth century, talked about our craving for a happiness that is so boundless that it is almost terrifying. Sabbath slows us down to satisfy that hunger beneath all our hungers. Christianity is not about what we have to do as leaders – “Do this. Go here. Serve this person. Go the extra mile for the work.” The Christian life is enjoying a feast, a banquet with the living God. There are few greater gifts we can give the people we serve than to stop and experience that feast on Sabbath. And we look forward to our eternal Sabbath when we. Read more.

Sabbath: Receiving Revelation in Rest

When we miss the gift of rest, especially Sabbath rest, we miss so much of God. First, God comes to us with insights and truths that can only come when we rest. Our minds are not filled with our to do list or goals. The soil of our souls remains fallow and God is able to refresh her with fresh nutrients. Goals we think are important, we find out, are irrelevant. His love becomes our experience. We learn to trust Him with the church, with our problems, with our worries. Secondly, we free the people we serve. They see a prophetic sign and wonder that we are no longer slaves to work. We are not under powers and principalities of evil (Deut. 5:12-17). Our identity is in God’s love and goodness, not what we do. Thirdly, we save our communities and cities. We communicate, in a different way, that God is on the throne.. Read more.

Sabbath: Joining God by Playing

The Greek Fathers in the fourth century chose the word perichoerisis to describe the perfect, mutual indwelling of the Trinity. It literally means “dancing around.” I had a difficult time understanding what this had to do with me when I first studied it. But it was Jurgen Moltmann, the great German theologian, who opened up for me the notion of Sabbath as play in his book, Theology of Play. In Proverbs 8, he argued, we observe God “playing” when he made the world. “I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in humankind” (8:30-31). God informs Job that when he created the world, “the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). God is a dancing, playful God. There is a playful wastefulness built into God’s ways in that millions of seeds never germinate, leaves on trees that turn. Read more.

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