After church this Sunday, Canon Adrienne Koch will leave for a well-deserved three-month sabbatical. We’ll miss her greatly this summer, but we are also grateful that she will take a few months for rest, prayer, and time with her family.
Sabbatical is a gift for the minister stepping away, but it is also a gift for the congregation (and their colleagues). A priest’s sabbatical is a call to us all to remember the need for sabbath as a time to refresh our souls and delight in God.
Unlike an academic sabbatical, a priest’s sabbatical does not usually have a project or an outcome. This is a time to honor sabbath in its biblical sense: as a time to not work, to set down the tools and best practices of our vocation, and to simply be. To remember that we are valuable not for what we do, but because of who we are in God’s eyes. We are beloved children of God.
This is not just a lesson for the clergy…it’s important for us all to remember the goodness and worth that God has created in each of us, that we sometimes see most clearly when we rest.
We can support Adrienne, first and foremost, by giving thanks for her—before she leaves and after she returns in August—and by keeping her in our prayers while she’s away.
Adrienne has chosen to anchor her sabbatical around returning to sacred rhythms of prayer and companionship. I will pray for her as she does that, but I also plan to tend to my own prayer rhythms as a way of honoring her journey. I invite you to do the same!
Adrienne’s last Sunday before sabbatical is this Sunday, May 17, and she’ll return in early August. On Sunday, September 13, she’ll share her sabbatical experience with us in a forum.
Adrienne leaves this Sunday with our prayers of love and gratitude…may she have a sabbatical that is restful and nourishing, and may she return to us with a renewed sense of the rhythms of God’s grace!
Faithfully,
