It is summer, and that can mean only one thing: unbearably hot weather.
OK, it actually means two things: In addition to the miserable weather, it is also the time most of us take vacations. Why we have chosen to overlap our days away with the worst weather of the year is a mystery, but there you go.
Vacations, when we get them, can be wonderful things. As Robert Orben once observed, “A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in.”
Bob Newhart commented, “Comedians are never really on vacation because you’re always at attention…that antenna is always out there.” Preachers are a bit like that—we’re never really off in the sense that we are always thinking about the church and the next sermon. Still, we need to do our best to get away when possible if for no other reason than to remember there is life beyond our church walls.
Andy Rooney once said, “The best thing about a vacation is planning it.” Chances are you already have planned your vacation for this year; but just in case, I’ve been thinking about some promising vacation options for pastors and church leaders. Maybe you should consider:
• Why not try a visit to Sea World, where you can look at sharks that don’t actually get to vote on your salary?
• This one sounds good to me: a week in a remote cabin just out of cell phone range.
• There’s always the reverse vacation: Send your most annoying members on a trip, and you sit in your office and read peacefully all week.
• Maybe you can take a cruise, where you can watch other people work hard to keep something afloat.
Best of all…
• Visit the church of a friend, hear him preach, then tell him what a great sermon it was and how much you were blessed. It will benefit you, and it will be as good as a vacation to your preacher friend!