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.