MEMO To: Frank Boyd From: Guy Yeomans, Pastor, St Ives Baptist ...

MEMO
To: Frank Boyd
From: Guy Yeomans, Pastor, St Ives Baptist Church, Sydney, Australia.
Re: Pulpit swap proposal
Date: 24 October 2010
As communicated earlier by email, I am seeking a pulpit swap with a church in England as
a type of sabbatical. See article below which provided me with the inspiration.
To that end I am looking for a pastor willing to swap homes, churches and cars for 3
months.
We intend combining the pulpit swap with several weeks accumulated leave and plan to
be away from 30 August 2011 to 22 January 2012. Our preference would be to start the
pulpit swap from the 1 st Sunday of October until the 1 st Sunday of January but are open to
negotiating those dates. Should the person/family coming here want to stay at our house
while we are away (for part or all the time beyond 3 months) that is OK.
The sending church would continue to pay the relevant allowances and stipends to their
own pastor. Each of us would preach each Sunday as well as undertaking limited pastoral
visitation on request, conduct funerals, and perhaps occasionally attend or lead other
gatherings, such as Bible Studies, special groups etc. Given that each of us would not
need to prepare sermons, but use ones we have preached in the past, and services would
be organised by someone at the home church, there would be an expectation of 2 days
per week, allowing time for attendance at conferences, seminars, study, and travel.
Their ministry in our church could be during any 3 months, including doing it in say 2
blocks. Should the person desire to stay more than 3 months, the pastor could preach
some Sundays only (ie, no other pastoral work) and be paid the usual preaching fee here
of $100 (= 62 pounds).
Here are some details about my church, myself and family:
� My family consists of myself (Accredited Pastor with the Baptist Union of NSW, age

55), my wife Sandra (age 43, an early childhood teacher and also theological
college graduate) and 4yo twins, John and Carys.
� SIBC is a small but growing church with a friendly and caring congregation of about
50 - average attendance at the one Sunday morning service is about 40. The age
profile is skewed towards retirees but recent additions have been younger, including
a few children. The church is in the broad evangelical but not fundamentalist
tradition, with an emphasis on spirituality.
� The church is located on Sydney's leafy North Shore in a predominantly Anglo,
upper-middle socio-economic area. It is a 30 minute drive (outside peak hour!) to
the CBD and there is a good train service to the city (short bus trip or long walk to
the station) as well as express bus service. Twenty minutes in the other direction
are some of the best surf beaches in the world. St Ives is surrounded on 3 sides by
natural bushland national park, and beautiful birds and native animals such as
wallabies can be seen on walks through them. The NSW Baptist Theological
College, adjoining the Macquarie University, is a 15 minute drive.
� We own our own comfortable 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with a swimming pool,
10 minutes walk from the church and 5 minutes walk from a shopping mall and
frequent bus service.
� Our car is a 2010 Ford Mondeo Automatic Diesel wagon.
More details about St Ives Baptist Church and my background can be found at:
www.sibc.org.au Please email me at inigo@y7mail.com for further information.
Grace and peace,
Guy Yeomans
PASTORS E-NEWSLETTER MAY 2010
[from Ken Clendinning, BUNSW Ministry Support and Development]
STAGES of the PASTORAL LIFE CYCLE
In the same way as marriages, human life and organizations tend to go through seasons
or stages, so too pastoral leadership ministry across a pastor’s life span can be
generalized into stages. One of the challenges for pastors is that across these areas of

marriage, life, and organization (church), as well as their own stages across the ministry
life cycle, is that stages don’t line up.
Shooting the Rapids: The cycles of pastoral ministry is one article that looks at this issue of
pastors facing the pressure of being in various formative stages of the ministerial life cycle.
It can be accessed at http://www.faithandleadership.com/content/shooting-the-rapids-the-
cycles-pastoral-ministry and we recommend it to you for consideration. Another article, A
Systems and Developmental Perspective on the Seasons of Pastoral Life and Ministry
also looks at the competing stages of a pastor’s ministry, life, marriage and organizational
cycles and can be found at www.psalmats.org/forum/headley.pdf.
Reflecting on this at a personal level, at the time I first entered pastoral ministry in the
1970’s, when most of our churches were homogenous, the average length of service by
many pastors in any given church was 3-4 years. Much has changed over the last 35
years. In a day where our churches are far more contextual and therefore quite diverse,
pastors usually stay longer, but don’t always finish well. MSD has noticed that today many
pastors stay for an average of 8-10 years but seem to hit a flat or stale period around this
time. There is also a high level of withdrawing from ministry around this period. These
observations seem to support the issues raised in the above articles.
While we think there may be a number of reasons contributing to this, one significant factor
could be related to the biblical principle of the sabbatical. MSD is exploring this issue as it
relates to the pastoral life cycle and whether we might develop recommendations to
churches about pastors taking planned, intentional sabbaticals. This would be an
opportunity to reflect, be refreshed and renewed in one’s relationship with God and His
vision for you and the church. This would also require us to consider ways to support
churches while pastors are on sabbatical. We will keep you up-to-date on our thinking but
would welcome any comments or suggestions you would like to offer.