In Pittsburgh: Awake for 28+ Hours
I’m currently sitting in Mike and Tina Wurschmidt’s house, we are cooking out and things are getting a little surreal. I’ve been awake for over 28 hours and counting.
The beginnings of a support raising trip, starting with switching over to a daytime schedule so I can have meetings. Did I mention things are surreal right now? I’m in the middle of the Shepherd’s Heart Community and I just shared the excitement of the Borgious Pig….
(TWO DAYS LATER)
I finally got to bed at 8PM that day. It’s now Sunday and the Wurschmidt clan (the folks who lead Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship) are all in town for Joel Wurschmidt’s graduation later today. Earlier in the week Tina indicated that since Joel is a “W” in a class of over 200 it could be a very LOOOONG graduation ceremony. I’m thrilled to be here to celebrate Joel but do not relish the idea of watching a slow procession of hundreds of unknown names and faces across the stage.
I’ll keep everyone updated on my continued journeys here in Pittsburgh over the next week.
Leisure and the Gospel: A Day in the Life of Zadok pt. II
(again – a repost to bring us up to speed for more on this topic)
So, we’ve already established that Zadok has about 291 days a year committed to fulfilling his commitments as an intercessory missionary. This alone, however, doesn’t really establish for us just how much he is actually working – since every hour of those days could be spent in a multitude of ways.
Let’s do the numbers on those 291 days.
291 x 24 hours in a day = 6984 potential ‘work hours’ a year
Of course, Zadok has to sleep and gets an average 8 hours a night. We’ll factor this into the number for rest at the end.
291 x 8 hours of sleep = 2328 sleep (rest)
That leaves us with 4656 potential waking hours for working. Zadok has been given grace by God to do the night watch – a lifestyle that suits his character as a contemplative and his predilections as a night owl – and he goes whole hog jumping into it for 6 hours each working day.
291 x 6 hours in the prayer room = 1746 hours in the prayer room
That brings him down to 2910 hours for the rest of his IHOP responsibilities and the mundane activities that make up the rest of life. A man of habit, he decides to clean IHOP four hours a day 6 days a week.
291 x 4 hours of service = 1164 hours in service
That brings him down to 1746 hours for personal household responsibilities. He’s a family man – and he’s consistent in helping his wife with the kids and the household chores for a solid 4 hours each day.
291 x 4 hours of ‘family time’ = 1164 hours of personal household labors
That leaves Zadok with 582 potential leisure hours a year – or about two hours every day. (And that’s for a workhorse who does a fourteen hour day six days a week.)
I’m not going to ask for a show of hands of people who regularly do a fourteen hour day.
If we add up those 582 hours with the hours spent sleeping – and factor them into our percentages – we get…
291 x 10 = 2910 hours of leisure in the average year
plus
73 days off x 24 hours = 1752 hours of leisure on days off
equals
4662 hours of leisure a year
divided by
8760 total hours in a year
equals
53% of hour time each year is spent in leisure, recreation or rest – with a fourteen hour work week six days a week (including sleep in leisure).
In a future post, we’ll compare these numbers with the ‘average American’ ratios for work and leisure – though I’ll tease you by letting you know that ‘technically’ we work more – but then, we haven’t defined work OR leisure yet – which could certainly turn things on their head.
SHOW YOURSELF A MAN: Getting in the Club (repost)
Several months ago a guy was asking what it meant to be a man – to be fully ‘in the club’ so to speak.
That’s a tricky question, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and thought it might serve to help if I talked about some principles that I feel contribute to maturity and stability in the lives of young men.
The first one is simple – and comes directly from David’s mouth. This was his charge to Solomon before he ‘went the way of all the earth: Be strong, show yourself a man.
To put it another way: you are male by birth, but you are a man by choice. It is self-evident that simply because a someone turns eighteen years old – he is not necessarily ‘a man’. (We’ve all me the unfortunate forty-year old who has yet to pass the test) Being a man involves many other factors – but I feel the primary factor is choice.
What you choose (and in a very real sense IF you choose) determines whether you stay a boy or emerge from the shadows of immaturity into strength. If anyone told you it would be easy they were not filled with the spirit of truth. It is a daily choice – and often a difficult choice. Embracing the difficulty, the labor, the toil with a humble spirit is a big piece of what shows you to have passed from boyhood (a state of constant dependancy and little consequential responsibilty) into manhood.
Show yourself a man: Put another way. Don’t tell me that you are a man, but show me by what you choose. Show me by what you pursue. Show me by restraining your eyes, tongue, and $$$. Show me by serving with joy and not complaining.
More to follow…
Back in the Flow: Zadok Returns
I’m reposting this – and will be back in a writing flow through the summer:
Leisure and the Gospel: Zadok’s Labor and Rest
The last few weeks I’ve been thinking about the nature of rest related to the unique work of prayer which we engage in as intercessory missionaries at IHOP-KC. I’ve had the opportunity to engage in some discussions related to our revised absence policy – and thought it would be a good topic to examine critically over the next few weeks.
My basic premise is this: we have no idea how much time we spend ‘resting’ and how little time we spend ‘resting well’. When I say ‘we’ I mean myself as well. One would be hard-pressed to deny that we (in America) live in one of the most privilaged, entitlement-driven, self-serving cultures in human history. Because of this fact, I think an honest examination of the actual quantity AND quality of or leisure can only lead us further into the grace of God.
The question, ultimately, comes down to how the Bible defines work and labor and how the Bible defines rest, recuperation, and leisure, but before we get into the discussion as it relates to the Bible – I’d like to simply look at a few of the basic facts.
-the IHOP-KC missionary lifestyle - by the numbers -
The average IHOP-KC missionary – (we’ll call him ‘Zadok’) – has a ‘work-week’ of six days, assuming he takes one full Sabbath day off a week.
(6 x 52) = 312 ‘work-days’ a year
Then we subtract Zadok’s 21 personal days (any day off where he misses a scheduled sacred trust prayer meeting).
312 – 21 = 291 days
So that means Zadok is ‘working’ 291 days a year – (this assumes that he uses his 21 support/ministry days to do ministry and raise support – which certainly counts as work).
So Zadok ‘works’ 291 days a year (about 42 weeks), and he ‘rests’ an average of 74 days a year (about 10 weeks). Of course, there may be those who have all of their prayer meetings scheduled scheduled within a span 4-5 days – which would change these numbers radically – but we’ll stick with Zadok’s schedule for the sake of simplicity.
So, by the numbers about 80% of his days are spent working and about 20% are spent resting.
These numbers are a little deceiving, however – since every moment of those 291 days isn’t spent ‘working’ – within each day we spend a certain percentage of time working AND resting.
More numbers on that later.
