Prayer & Sabbath for the Pastor’s Family

Transcript (edited for readability).

Hey, Jan — one of my favorite metaphors in your writing is Herman Melville's harpooner: the pastor rises to his task out of rest, and the importance of Sabbath. Could you talk with us a little bit more about what that means in practical terms for us as pastors, and what are the components in a faithful observance of the Sabbath?

I came to this slowly. Abraham Heschel was very influential — he has a book on the Sabbath. But I was on a retreat — Jan and I were on a retreat in the Poconos, and the leader of the retreat, I didn't know him, he was a Quaker. And it turned out it was a three-day silent retreat. Well, I didn't know it was going to be a silent retreat. And he told the story, as he was introducing himself, that he had a friend, or grew up with a man, who was a Lutheran who specialized in retreats. And what he'd do is, when they entered the room, he'd have them all open up their suitcases and confiscate all the liquor. And he said, "I'll give it back to you" — I'm sorry, resolution, he was a German Lutheran.

So we couldn't talk, and meals were in silence. Douglas Steere was the man who was leading the retreat. We could go out for a walk every day and talk when we were on the trail, but then when we were back together, meals were in silence. And Jan and I realized we'd never done that before. So we decided when we got home that we were going to learn how to keep a Sabbath. We experimented a little bit, and we decided to keep Monday as our Sabbath. After the kids went off to school, we would go to the woods. Maryland, where we lived, was full of rivers and hills and trails, and we could just drive twenty minutes and be in another world. And we would be in silence — took a vow of silence until noon. And then we would open up our lunches, and pray, and then talk, and talk all the way back home. And we found this really refreshing. Our kids loved it, because on Mondays they didn't have to do any work — they didn't have to make their beds, didn't have to obey us. And so they found out there was something going on that made a big difference.

I enjoyed reading about the Sabbath, and preserving that as a special time. I'm curious about domestic life, about pastoral care, keeping the Sabbath — when do you mow the lawn, when do you fix the washing machine? How does that fit into the life of the pastor and his family?

Well, we took Saturdays for our miscellaneous day — lawn mowing, gardening, weed-eating. And then I wrote a letter to my congregation and said, "Come anytime you want, day or night, whenever you need me — but if you can wait till Tuesday, just wait till Tuesday." In twenty-five years of keeping this, I maybe had three or four calls on Monday. People knew what we were doing. But I didn't want my Sabbath to come across as elitist or holier-than-thou or anything like that — that's why I never preached on the Sabbath. And, of course, you make exceptions for emergencies and family things. And I must say we didn't start doing this until all our children were in school — I worked with parents who had preschoolers, and we'd work out ways to do it, sometimes taking turns, since Monday isn't a day most people can take.

I think it was important for me to say, "We'll have no committee meetings on Sunday — this is your day for a Sabbath, and I'll try to protect your time on Sunday." Of course, we had Sunday school, so that was an imperfect Sabbath in some ways. But I think, for us, and for many of my congregation, there was a way of integrating a kind of Sabbath mentality that pervaded the day. Our children, who are fully grown now, they take a Sabbath, they keep a Sabbath. I still think it's probably the most important thing we do — to find ways to step out of the demands of the marketplace, the consumerism, and find ways to customize it to your own setting. I don't think you can be rigid — you'll just go crazy if you try to do that, or you'll make your spouse angry, or your kids sulky.

We, in some ways, compensated for that with our summer vacations. We always came here, after the first few years — came here and had a month of vacation, and we just played. So we had each other, and the kids had us. That was a big thing, I think.

So, Eugene, in connection with Sabbath — you mentioned that one can incorporate play into Sabbath, and it seems to me that most of us today think of play more in terms of amusement or entertainment. A lot of people consider what they call Sabbath to be all kinds of busy activity that's amusing, and yet it leaves them exhausted. Could you talk with us a little bit about how play can be incorporated into it?

Well, I think you do it as a community. If you have a family, have children, they've got to be part of that. For years we had a mallet and ball in the backyard — did croquet. We'd often do that when we had guests. So we were trying to be inventive. And we just had wonderful times in the woods, in the mountains in Maryland too, learning how to identify flowers and birds. By the time our kids were teenagers, they could name all the flowers and recognize all the birds. So there was something playful in that — nothing you had to do, but something that sparked their interest and gave them some kind of framework to keep the fun in Sabbath.

I don't think, for Protestants — probably for Catholics even more than us — we have deep traditions that are multigenerational. So we've got to compensate. But I think if we talk about it, if we have conversation about it, I think it's possible to do much better than most of us do, because these kinds of family rituals really define us as a family — something we pass on, take with us.

Kind of as a follow-up to that — incorporating the element of prayer, not necessarily on the Sabbath, but you mentioned work and prayer can fit together. You usually think you have to stop working so that you can pray, and likewise play and prayer — how can this, a life of prayer — Scripture says "pray continuously" — how do you see that happening?

I recommend to my friends, my parishioners, when I had them, to sit down with their pastor and find two or three books that suit them on prayer. P.T. Forsyth is a favorite of mine. Thomas Merton served me quite well for some time. There are really some good books on prayer, which, if we start looking for them, or talk to our friends about them, give us some impetus. "What are you doing?" "Well, I'm not doing anything." Silence is probably the basis of the most effective prayer, which makes it kind of difficult for people who are always busily active.

That's true — our busy doing.

You made the distinction between private prayer and solitude. And I think in one of your books you even mentioned that private prayer is never private, because we always incorporate others into our prayer. And there's a distinction between prayer and solitude, which I also assume goes along with the silence, but then prayer in private — could you elaborate on that further?

One of the reasons worship is important in the church is that it gathers us into a praying community. Here's a story: Barbara — she was a recovering alcoholic, and she came to my congregation, our congregation, and she was a new Christian. And after four or five years, she was transferred to another bank in another town. So she came to my study to say goodbye, and I said, "Barbara, you're new at this — what was the hardest thing for you in worship?" "Oh," she said, "that's easy. You'd say, 'Let us pray,' and then you wouldn't say anything, and I just used to go crazy — why doesn't he talk? And it wasn't that long, twenty seconds maybe, thirty seconds. And now, you say 'Let us pray,' and I start praying, and then you start praying, and I say, 'Not yet, Eugene, not yet — I'm not ready yet.'" I think most of us are not used to silence, especially communal silence. But there comes some point at which — "not yet, not yet, I'm not ready yet."

I love that story. You talk about the importance of prayer and the importance of being able to be silent in prayer. I'm wondering, as you look at your own family — I'm curious whether or not there was a habit of prayer among you as well, and whether your children took to that at the beginning, or whether, like Barbara, they might have had a different opinion about it before they left your home.

Yeah, I think most of our family prayers were oral prayers, out-loud prayers. We didn't have — we never had family devotions. We tried, and most of my friends tried, and they were all failures. There's a family I just talked about on Sunday — almost all their kids talked about family devotions, and they said devotions happened no matter what in their family — in the car, walking, playing — but they were family devotions. Scripture was recited, read, and we prayed. And that impressed me a lot. Five children, and he's a busy doctor — sometimes you're doing it on the run — but no matter what, you've got to have devotions.

So, to tie in prayer and also Sabbath and work — you contrast David and Saul with what their temptations were, and talk about Saul's temptation being work. And it struck me that that's a pretty good diagnosis of the guy you're looking at right now. And I wondered, in what ways was work a temptation for you, and how did you answer that — or how did you let the Lord answer that?

Long answer, actually — I talk about this in "The Pastor." When my task was to begin a church, a congregation — I've got to watch, the church is already there, I needed to gather a congregation. I'm a competitor — I've been a competitor since I've been in diapers. For years I satisfied my competitiveness through athletics. I love to win games and races. And for me, starting a new church was just made for me, because there's a lot of adrenaline you can get going there.

And when we completed our sanctuary, after two and a half years — it's beautiful, it's just a piece of art — and everybody was enthusiastic and feeling blessed. And after about three months, attendance started dropping off. And I'd go visit these people, and I'd say, "I've missed you in church for a couple of weeks — is something wrong? Did I say something bad?" "Oh, no, no, no, Pastor — who would have thought a bunch of nobodies like us could have done this? And now I'm really pleased, you're our pastor. But it's springtime, and, you know, the fish are biting, and my wife likes to paint flowers." There was always some kind of excuse like that, which was okay, but, you know, attendance kept going down.

So I went to my supervisor in the presbytery, and I said, "What do I do?" Told him the story. He said, "Start another building campaign." I said, "Another building campaign? You've got to be kidding." He said, "Believe me, I've been through this a lot of times. Americans need a goal — if you don't have a goal, you can see what happens, they lose interest." So I knew he was a star of the building campaign, but I didn't know what to do, and he wasn't any help — he was a church-growth guy, he knew all about goals and what makes them work.

So I didn't do anything. I didn't know what to do — I didn't want to do the wrong thing. And all the ways I knew about doing something had to deal with adrenaline and ambition. So I just quit. I kept doing my work — preparing sermons, visiting people, reading my Bible, praying — and I just — I call it the Badlands. When we go to Montana, we go through this wonderful country, and then we hit the Badlands, and for a day and a half we're in the Badlands, and nothing's going on in the Badlands. And then we come up on the other side, and there are the Rocky Mountains, and everything's fine. And I just kept thinking, "these Badlands, Badlands." But in the process, I learned some things about prayer.

I had a spiritual director at that time — Sister Constance, a Carmelite nun. And she taught me about apophatic prayer. Kataphatic prayer is speaking, it's verbal. Apophatic prayer is silence — but you're being prayerful in the silence. I used the image that I felt like a dog whose master was throwing a Frisbee, and he'd run and get the Frisbee and grab it and bring it back with his tail wagging — that's me, that's what I'd been doing all my life. And now I learned to sit. Another command: just sit. And it was a perfect image for me. I'm still sitting.

When we left Christ Our King and went to Regent, the thing that both Jan and I were most surprised about was how her role changed. A pastor's wife is an invisible person — they're just not there. And suddenly we go to Regent, which is mostly — well, half the people are preparing for pastoral work or teaching, and half are entering the lay workforce again — and suddenly Jan — I'm Jan's husband.

True, true.

And she suddenly becomes a queen. Her hospitality, her smile, her — and, you know, both the faculty and the students just kind of flocked to her. It was kind of fun. I didn't mind being Jan's husband.

Eugene, you mentioned — since she just touched on Jan's shift and her role there — and yet all through your time at Christ Our King, she had a significant part of your life and your ministry.

Oh, yes.

And a special calling, a vocation, as pastor's wife. What could we say to our wives, to these helpmeets who, in many cases, married the man before he became a pastor — probably in most cases — so what are some of the ingredients, do you think, that these courageous women need to embrace, and that unique role?

Well, a lot of affirmation, for one thing, but also some interpretation of the nature of hospitality. That's what Jan was thinking most of the time — how can I welcome these people? So we had a lot of people in our home — committee meetings in our home, new members' meetings in our home. We made our home a place of welcoming, of getting people to know each other. We were deliberate about it. But she was still invisible.