Joe Leach – September 2026

The purpose of pastors taking sabbaticals is to rest (or “sabbath”) from regular service/ministry in the church in order be refreshed in God. From the end of May this year until the end of August, Grace Church has released me to be away on sabbatical. For any who are interested, I thought I would put some things down on paper to give a bit of an insight into what that has looked like.

It is very hard to summarise 12 exceptional weeks succinctly but I will try to do that with a few things that kept coming to mind. Privilege. Outside. Walking. Marriage. Literature. Beauty.

Privilege

Right from the outset of my time, I felt a huge sense of privilege to be released in the way that I have been. There is no sense in which I have a ‘right’ to such a thing but it was clear to me throughout that I was being given a huge gift that I have done nothing to deserve. For that, I was and am very grateful. Firstly, to God. And also to the people of Grace Church. Thank you. What a privilege!

Outside

Much of my ‘normal’ life is spent inside. The chance to spend the majority of my day outside was beautifully refreshing and reminded me how much I love to be in the great outdoors as well as how much we were all probably designed to be. Outside is better than inside just as swimming in the sea (which I did a fair bit of) is better than watching cat videos on the sofa (which I did none of). Also, the very warm weather helped.

Walking

A large part of my being outside was spent walking. One highlight of the whole thing was walking around the Lake District for a week. I know I am late to the party on this one but wow! What a stunning place! Having done that relatively early on, I got the bug for walking/hiking and spent much of the time available to me doing that. It proved to be the perfect balance of doing something active that still gave me plenty of headspace to think and pray.   

Marriage

It’s hard to put into words but to put it simply, Liz and I would both agree that the sabbatical did our marriage a whole lot of good. The space the sabbatical created – both in our diaries and in our heads – for us to spend time together was invaluable, and to use the word again, a huge privilege. We are both so grateful.

Literature

I always enjoy reading and so I knew that the chance to spend a lot time doing it was going to be a blessing to me. I expected to get through plenty of Christian stuff and maybe read one or two novels but it became clear relatively quickly that I would have those two the wrong way round and I almost exclusively read works of fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed this and allowed myself to do this on the basis of my last word.

Beauty

In the busyness of life, it is easy to miss – I think for men especially – the goodness of beauty. God has created beauty. I guess he didn’t have to but he certainly did. And as those made in his image, it is in us to create beauty as well. We are not nearly as good at it, which is one reason why being outside and marvelling at his creation is better than being inside and marvelling at man’s creation.

If I were to pick one thing to summarise what I learnt or what God taught me on my sabbatical it would be the value of beauty. That is implicitly difficult to explain. Suffice to say that I have been reminded that sometimes no podcast or programme or even Christian paperback can compete with the experience of sitting under a tree that God made.  

I’m not sure if I still count as a young pastor or not. You can decide. But God-willing I do plan to stay in church ministry for some decades yet. On returning from my sabbatical, I don’t come with a huge sense of fresh vision or strategy for the future. But I do come back refreshed and rested and secure in what God has called me to and confident that he continues to be at work amongst his people.