What do we mean when we suggest that this is a year of ‘Sabbath’ for YCC?

We mean that our primary spiritual focus for this year should be on ‘breathing in’ more than ‘breathing out’.  We mean consistently giving priority to practices and activities that are life-giving for us, both personally and together.

We are not proposing that we can or should stop serving in all the areas to which we are currently committed.  For most of us, this is neither possible nor desirable.  We simply want to help each other find ways to rebalance our lives, and especially our walk with Jesus, after a time that has proved very draining for many.

This applies to us as individual disciples of Jesus, as groups and in friendship circles, and for us corporately as a church.

Here are some practical suggestions:

  • We want to encourage each of us to practice a new spiritual discipline and seek to build this into our daily or weekly rhythm.  You can learn more about various spiritual disciplines here.
  • We want to make a special priority of fellowship, drawing strength & encouragement from each other as we seek to walk more closely with Jesus.  Sharing with each other around a meal table is a great way to do this, both with long-standing friends and as a chance to get to know new people.  Who could you invite?
  • When we meet together for worship our focus is not on ourselves but on God.  Yet as we give ourselves in wholehearted appreciation of Him, we ourselves often find deep spiritual refreshment.  So let’s not ‘neglect meeting together’; it strengthens us.
  • As we continue serving together in teams, we inevitably need to meet for planning and coordination.  But we want all our meetings to have a higher proportion of ‘prayer and worship’ vs ‘business and administration’.
  • We encourage every ministry, group, meeting & activity to review how it can best adjust to a vision of sabbath, and how can it be shaped to more effectively enable rest, fellowship, fun, and food.
  • We all need to carefully cultivate a healthy work/life balance, and this includes ‘church work’.  Jesus is more interested in who we become than in what we do.  So let’s be careful to make time for rest and refreshment, exercise, and investing in our key relationships.
  • We are exploring how, as an employer, YCC can help our staff maintain a good balance and enable space for review and reflection.
  • As far as possible we intend to limit major new YCC ‘projects’ for this year.  While some things – such as the Ukraine situation – still call for our loving response, we are seeking to delay embarking on new plans and proposals, to give ourselves more space to simply ‘be’; to be with each other and to be with Jesus together.  We aim to assess each new ‘opportunity’ through the lens of sabbath, by simply asking “why is this especially important during this period?”
  • We are hoping for the opportunity to receive input from teachers and leaders from beyond Yeovil in order to refresh us.
  • We are seeking to think creatively about what we do corporately during the August holiday period, especially to ensure that those who serve on Sundays are able to have a healthy break.  We want to ensure that however, we meet, we make the emphasis on deepening our connection together as family.

In terms of our vision areas, it seems clear that during this period our focus needs to be chiefly on:

Becoming a community where Jesus is wholeheartedly worshipped, deeply experienced and clearly known.

Praying and creating space for renewal
in ourselves and
our communities.

More suggestions can be found in the ‘Rule of Life’ document that we published previously, which can be accessed here.