It was well over a year ago that I first read the personnel manual of the church that had elected me to be their new lead pastor. It was not the first church that I had been called by God to lead, but it was the first that had gone out of their way to articulate such a generous vacation offer for their pastoral staff. All pastors, not just the lead pastor, would be given a tiered number of weeks off based upon their number of years in full time ministry to the Kingdom of God. My wife and I have been called to serve churches in Philadelphia, Central New Jersey, and for the past decade, three churches in the Baltimore-DC corridor, and with each new church that God had led us to the clock would reset as we would start over at day one. This was the first church that we walked into where we had already accumulated some vacation time to spare. Continue reading →