SABBATH RETHUNK

Several months ago I switched my day off from Friday to Monday.  This was due to the fact that I have been at church 15 hours or more on  most Sundays ever since we started a 6:30pm service for our students.  So I have room prep and then service in the morning.  Meetings almost all afternoon.  Ending with service in the evening and some clean up and such.  It all adds up to equal a very tired and spent Brian on Mondays.

Anyway- some Mondays have been fun days with my boys when they were off school.  Some have been date days with my wife.  Some have been sleep all day days- especially on Monday's that Shannon has to work.  But today was a little of a lot of stuff.  But it was supposed to be a date the wife and hang out with my boys day.   Shannon and I did go for a walk/jog with the dog.  We went out to breakfast and ran some errands together and then got the boys from school.  We all went as a family to Jake's t-ball game followed by dinner with some friends.  Then I helped Jake build his plan for a Lepricon trap for school (don't ask).  All sounds good.  Except for the fact that my cell phone found it's way in there a few too many times today.  Here's how:

• An emergency call from a travel agent working on Uganda flights that ended up causing me to have to swing by the office and pick some stuff up to mail.  
• A phone call to a broker I'm trying to do some investing through to make my dollar go farther these days.
• A phone call from an detective on a case involving someone from our church.  
• A conversation with a couple I've been meeting with for over a month whose marriage going through a rough time. 
  
• A call from a family who we borrowed their van and broke the headlight on a youth trip, setting up a time to get it fixed. 
• A text from a student wanting her new baby baptized.
• Another student I'm mentoring telling me via text he was going to the movies.

All good/even important things.  Just not a Sabbath from work.   

This day came on the heals of a devotional thought by our Christina at the middle school adult volunteers meeting yesterday on taking a Sabbath day.   It also came on the heals of a ministry article I wrote this week for Simply Youth Ministry on the subject of maximizing the ministry of moments.  In it I recommended that one way to make the most of your time with others is to turn OFF your cell phone.  I also confessed that the entire article is stuff I'm working on, not stuff I have mastered. 

Well today was proof of that.  

So as a result, here is my edict:

On a Sabbath day, which in most cases will be Monday for me, I will not be answering my cell phone, texting, or responding to e-mail.  

It will all have to wait.  I'm spending time with God, my family, and giving my soul a detox from these pieces of technology.

My cell phone bill tells me I spend about 1300 minutes a month using this piece of equipment- 95% of which is for ministry purposes.  I almost never use my desk phone and rarely use our home phone.  I also send hundreds of e-mails and another 150 text messages or so now that my iphone allows me to do a group text to my guys small group and leadership team and such.

But not on Mondays anymore.  So that is my monday night edict.  Wish me luck.