TEAM: Winner Out of "Eight" Words to Describe Sabbatical

The guy in the red hat is Marcus Lynn, and I like the way his mind works. His posts - whether a simple passage of scripture, a challenge for your faith, the pop vs. soda map, or thoughts on leadership – well, this guy has something to say. His musings (“What Kind of Music does God Like?” … Marcus hadn’t thought about it!) or that Apple commercial (nice throw into the mix, Marcus) are fresh, contemporary, smart, and even groovy.

Marcus challenges my concept of a modern day preacher. He’s the small town pastor who just returned from his 8-week sabbatical that he had negotiated into the job offer. (See my previous post, “Pure Sabbatical”).

Unlike most of us, Marcus has a captive audience every Sunday morning. My interview with him took place on the morning of his first day back at work, and he was looking ahead to his sermons with some anxiety, since he hadn’t actually written one word.

He was planning sermons based on his sabbatical experience, “Eight Words for ‘08,” he called them. Here they are:

1. Effective

2. Awake

3. Grace

4. Growth

5. Courage

6. Worship

7. Hot

8. Team – he will spend 4 weeks on this topic.

Although we’ve missed the context of these words and how they relate to Marcus’ experience on sabbatical, I find myself wondering just what he said on the Sundays he talked about “Grace” and “Courage.” And I have BIG. curious thoughts about what the congregation heard on the sermon about “Hot”.

But most of all, I want to comment Marcus on #8 – Team. That’s the word we hear most often, when people discuss the benefits of a sabbatical. Recently, Chris Cain, Director of Software at AppRiver, a growing secure hosting company (with The BlueMan Group as a client!), returned from a 3-week sabbatical to discover his “team” had weathered some difficult times while he was away – very successfully. Team members pulled together and collaborated in new and different ways. And they found strength they didn’t know they had, and confidence in their abilities is through the roof.

The old fashioned concept of a sabbatical as just “leave” from work is one-dimensional and, for a fact, way out-of-date. Business sabbaticals are talent development opportunities for an organization. If you don’t think of “team” when you say “sabbatical”, I wonder if you’re out of touch. You don’t still pay your bills by snail mail, do you?