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Sabbath Reflections

Sabbath Reflections

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A guide to understanding and practicing Sabbath rest.

About Ryan

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Our Vision

I didn't begin studying Sabbath because I had figured out how to rest.
Quite the opposite.

As a pastor, husband, dad, and someone who has always found it pretty easy to fill a calendar, I began to realize how deeply my sense of worth could become connected to what I accomplished. Even rest could become something I tried to do well.

During a sabbatical from pastoral ministry, I was given something I wasn't accustomed to having: space. Without the usual demands of sermons, meetings, decisions, and the next thing that needed to get done, I began paying attention to what happened when I stopped.

Some of what I discovered was uncomfortable. Stopping exposed how much I depended on productivity, how difficult it could be to receive my limits, and how quickly I measured a good day by what I had accomplished.

But I also began discovering Sabbath as gift.

Sabbath wasn't simply recovery so I could get back to work. It was a practice that was forming me—teaching me to stop, to receive my limits, to delight in what was already around me, to become more present to God and the people I love, and to receive my life as something given rather than something I had to achieve.

Those questions eventually became the focus of my doctoral research and the beginning of Sabbath for Everyone.

Today, I serve as Lead Pastor of Compassion Church in Corvallis, Oregon, and as Academic Dean of Pacific Evangelical School of Ministry. I earned a Doctor of Leadership from George Fox University, where my research explored Sabbath as a formative spiritual practice.

But Sabbath for Everyone isn't primarily an academic project. It has grown out of trying to practice Sabbath in the middle of an ordinary and sometimes very full life.

My hope is to help people rediscover Sabbath without turning it into another thing to get right.

Sabbath is a gift.
And I believe it really can be for everyone.

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