Sabbatical Reflections: Looking Back on 45 Years of Ministry

Written by Nate Howard, District Superintendent of the Eastern PA District of The Alliance.

While driving to Philadelphia for District Conference last year, I sensed God invite me to revisit and reinterpret the narrative of every season of my life. I was about to head out on an 11-week sabbatical with my wife Sharon where we divided our shared life of 45 years into 10 seasons.

In response to God’s invitation, each week during our sabbatical we attended to a season and journaled while retracing key ministry settings across places like Chicago, New Jersey, and New York City. The experience didn’t feel busy. It felt spacious, like extended quiet times in which God was present and attentive.

Five Truths Confirmed

Looking across all ten seasons, a few things about God’s character were pressed deeply into my soul—truths, I’m sure, I will be tested in and growing in:

1. God’s world is fundamentally safe.

His world is a gift, not a threat. Even in my wilderness seasons, even in what felt like failure, He was present and at work.

2. God delights in me—period.

His delight is not for what I produce, but because I am His. This one has taken 67 years to land, but it is landing.

3. The story is always about God, not me.

He is the hero. Who He is and what He is doing gives my life meaning, not the other way around.

4. God’s work always has at least two levels.

There is a level of what I can see and a level of what He is actually doing. He is always doing more than what I see, never less. This reframes everything.

5. God values who I am becoming over what I am accomplishing.

Formation matters more than fruitfulness and gives permanence to fruitfulness.

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” John 15:16

Four Stories Exposed

The sabbatical also exposed stories I had been living by, often without realizing it:

1. The stitched-together ideal story.

In every season, I noticed that I would scan my environment for the most impressive, put together version of what I should become, then measure myself against that impossible ideal—the youth pastor who grew the group, the missionary revival leader who saw breakthrough, the forward-thinking pastor, the district superintendent who managed everything well. Always striving. Never enough.

2. The “Is it not up to me?” story.

For 67 years, my fundamental operating question has been, “Isn’t it up to me to figure this out, fix this, and secure this outcome?” Throughout the sabbatical, God has been gently—and at times not-so-gently—reorienting me toward a truer question: “Isn’t it up to Me?”

3. The church-growth metrics story.

This one ran deep. For decades, numbers became my primary way of measuring God’s approval, my own security, and whether a season was a success or a failure. The devastating realization was that some seasons I judged as failures because of metrics were precisely the seasons in which God was doing His most significant formation work in me—and meaningful fruit through me. Sadly, I often missed that at the time.

4. The duty-over-delight story.

I have never made a major life decision like where I would live or what role I would take based on the pursuit of delight, only on duty. As I saw it, delight had to be earned through faithful performance. Rest was a reward, not a gift. Choosing based on what brought life felt irresponsible.

The Core Discovery

All of these false narratives traced back to a misguided ultimate purpose directing my life—one I wasn't even aware of most of the time.

I was organizing my life around duty for my worth, efficiency for my security, approval for my belonging, and control for my safety. Yet God was forming in me love, knowing Him as the primary goal, faithfulness when I could only partially see, and trust in His provision.

God saw all the same seasons and facts with a different measuring stick. His verdict was completely different than my own. 

As you can probably see, this brought me a deep sense of liberation. It was an invitation from God to reframe the world in which I'm planted and with the time I have left. I can rest, not because I got ministry right or made perfect decisions, but because God's purpose was always formation in love, not demonstration of competence.

In God’s world, mixed outcomes aren't threats to worth. They're sites of grace.