How to Vacation

Today I want to do a leadership lesson on HOW TO VACATION. 

This is such an important topic because if you vacation wrong, you will come back from your time of rest more exhausted than before you left! We have to remember that for FT staff it’s paid vacation. What are you being paid to do on vacation? Rest! And if you don’t come back from vacation refreshed and full of energy, ready to hit it hard, you have not done the “work” you were paid on vacation to do, which again, is to rest!

Now I know that only FT staff have vacation benefits, but even if you don’t have vacation benefits from New Day, we all take vacation time each year so today’s lesson is applicable regardless of where you get your vacation benefit from. 

You’ve no doubt heard of tornado season. Tornado season is referred to as the period in which tornadoes are most common, and it usually lasts from March through June across the favorable region for their development in the United States, known as Tornado Alley. 

Well, fortunately for us, it’s not tornado season, but it is vacation season 🙂 If you sign in to Google Calendar and look at the “Vacation Tracker” calendar you’ll quickly see that it’s vacation season for the staff. That being the case, I want to talk about HOW TO VACATION. 

Being in ministry is a great joy and a great privilege, but it’s also very draining. Think of yourself as one huge lithium ion battery. As you work day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, it drains your battery. Well, vacation is a time to recharge. You say, Mike, doesn’t this happen automatically? No! Not at all! 

Because we’re so busy with work, there are so many things at home that end up getting filed away in our “need to get to” folder. And sometimes we say to ourselves, “Vacation is here! Now I can finally do all the things I’ve been meaning to do.” Then you end up working twice as hard as when you’re not on vacation and you come back more drained than you were before you left. 

And think about it: How valuable are you going to be to our church if you’re operating on a dead battery?The other week my dad came over to help with a house project. The sheetrock ceiling in one of our bedrooms was caving in and needed to be screwed back into the studs and then patched back up. So my dad came over to help me with the repair. He asked me for my power drill and it worked for about 15 seconds but then it cut out because it had no juice left in the battery. And so it is with us! We can’t get the job done if we don’t have any juice left in our battery. So we have to wisely use our vacation time to recharge our batteries. It doesn’t happen automatically. We have to be intentional about it. 

Now I don’t want you to think in terms of what you can and cannot do on vacation. No! I want you to think in terms of what is energy producing vs what is energy reducing. Certain activities drain us physically and emotionally. Other activities energize us physically and emotionally. And this is different from person to person. If Peter spent his vacation time doing house projects he might be energized by it. If I, on the other hand, spent my vacation time doing house projects it would completely drain me. Each of us needs to be aware of what drains us and what refreshes us and then we need to be intentional about avoiding that which drains and embracing that which refreshes. Again, it doesn’t happen automatically. We have to be intentional about it. 

DISCUSSION QUESTION: What are some things you know you should do on vacation (because they energize you and refresh your soul) and what are some activities you know you should avoid on vacation (because they are energy reducing and leave you worn out)? 

It’s not tornado season – but it is vacation season at New Day. Let’s be intentional about wisely using our vacation time so that we’re not operating on empty when we get back.