John’s Sabbatical Blog

 July 31st, 2008

 …after years of planning and anticipation John McQuaig is on sabbatical for four months this fall and two months in the winter of 2009.
(This is a blog of his experiences)

Annie Dillard once said” The way we spend our days is the way we spend our lives”.

How do we change the patterns that may have developed? How do we challenge our limited worldview? How do we change our days to therefore change our lives?

One of the options is to take a sabbatical. Wikipedia defines it as follows: A sabbatical (from the Late Latin sabbaticus, from the Greek sabbatikos, from Hebrew shabbathon, i.e., Sabbath. ) is a rest from work, a hiatus.

The term and concept of a sabbatical actually was introduced in the bible in Leviticus 25 where there is a commandment to stop working in the fields in the seventh year. It turns out this was good for both the farmer and the land. We have come to understand that “resting” the field or leaving it fallow every few years revitalizes the nutrients in the soil and greatly increases the future harvests. It is also thought that this might be good for us humans as well.

My journey toward a sabbatical started several years ago after hearing a sermon on the subject. I did some research in the bible on the topic and discovered the Leviticus passages. I also inquired of other folks that I knew had taken a sabbatical. Locally the Jeffers Danielson law firm is well known as a firm that provides for a six month sabbatical for its partners every five years. All the partners that I have talked to there really value the time away and opportunity to spend more time with their families.

Our firm has not had a sabbatical policy so if it was to happen it was going to have to be me that made it happen. My wife Melanie and I dreamed about the possibility of a sabbatical but it seemed the more we talked about it the less realistic it became.

The issues were how to transition my client base to other people in the firm, how to provide for the various business interests I am involved in while gone… The personal issues were also significant… the ages of my kids- presently 7 and 12 was definitely a factor. They would miss school, sports and other commitments.

Obviously the point of a sabbatical is to actually leave all that stuff behind and let your “days” take a different direction and challenge how they are spent.

Easier said than done… We probably would have continued to spend our days in the same way until my wife Melanie called my bluff about three years ago and said “You know the best year for the girls to take the year off for a sabbatical would be the 2008-2009 school year. Gwen will be entering second grade and Marit seventh. The most critical timing is Marit’s as seventh grade is in the middle year of middle school and therefore not in transition. She also is not in high school when the stakes are higher.”

My bluff had definitely been called. If ever we were to go on a sabbatical while the girls were at home it would need to be that year. Three years of planning should make it doable so I agreed we would work that direction. 2008-2009 would be our sabbatical year!

We started to consider options and concerns.

One of the tenets of a sabbatical for us was to have an opportunity to do some longer term Christian mission work somewhere in the world. Both Melanie and I had been on mission trips up to two weeks and with a sabbatical we hoped to be able to commit to a longer term mission opportunity. We started to consider options for mission work.

We attended the Global Mission Event of our church- the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The Global Mission Event is an annul affair that brings together missionaries and third world proponents form all over the world to present the challenges they face and the opportunities they see in the mission field. We met several people serving throughout the world and got numerous potential service opportunities.

The next step was to research specific mission assignments. The ELCA maintains a website that aligns volunteers with service opportunities. You enter the information as to what areas of interest you have, the length of time you have available to serve and where you would like to serve. The site then collates the service jobs for you and suggests what might fit with your requirements.

Form this source we discovered the Lithuania Christian College- which has since changed its name to LCC International University. It is a college whose mission is as follows:

“To engage students in a transforming educational experience in order to create a generation of leaders for Eastern Europe who think critically, promote democratic ideals, develop a market economy, and re-build the network of civil society within the context of a Christian worldview.”

I felt I could definitely help with the market economy part…

To make a long story short over the course of a year I made application to the school, got through the online and telephone interviews and provided multiple references. Ultimately I was chosen to teach business Strategy and Business Plan development- right down my alley. The school was able to create a half semester class in each of these areas for me to teach. What a great mission opportunity! I will get to work with the seniors at LCC on their capstone project which is putting together a business plan generally for a business they plan to execute on when they return to their country of origin.

Lithuania is a Baltic country that is about the one third the size of the State of Washington. It has a fairly vibrant economy that is working to find its way in the post soviet world.

I thought we may have a perfect match in terms of me teaching at the school.

August 1 we take off for a couple of weeks in Italy then on to Lithuania to report for work at LCC for three months. Our days are about to change!