Session 7 Intro

Title & Source Summary

Episode: 334 – Session 7 Introduction: Sabbath
Hosts: Marty Solomon and Brent Billings
Focus: The Sabbath year (Shmitah), the Year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25), and Sabbath as a spiritual rhythm; an introduction to Session 7

This episode opens Session 7 of the BEMA Discipleship Podcast. It breaks from the content-heavy deep dives of earlier sessions. Marty explains that he is starting a “hundred day step away” from Memorial Day to Labor Day. This sabbatical closes a two-year stretch he has observed as a personal Sabbath year followed by a personal Jubilee year, drawing on Torah’s seven-year rhythms. Marty and Brent describe how a well-planned sabbatical differs from an extended vacation. They explain why firm boundaries are needed for real rest and how the sabbatical is prompting healthier long-term habits in the BEMA ministry. They also set out the unusual shape of Session 7. The first seven episodes, led by Marty, will be reflective and prayer-focused rather than full of information. The second half will feature team members sharing their own spiritual practices. Session 8 will then return to “normal work,” including Josh’s deeper teaching series on the Sabbath.

Key Takeaways

• Sabbath shapes how Session 7 itself is built. It is not only a topic. The episodes will be light on content because piling on information “would not be Sabbath.”
• Torah’s seven-year rhythms can guide modern practice even where they are not legally binding. Marty holds the Sabbath year and Jubilee with an open hand, as principles for worship and growth rather than strict rules.
• A sabbatical is not a long vacation. Without a plan, ministers often come back from unstructured time off feeling as tired as before, or more so.
• Planning the start and the end matters. Like entering and breaking a fast, a sabbatical begun and ended with intention can use its time better.
• Real rest needs firm boundaries. Marty’s emails during the sabbatical will be deleted, not saved, and personal messages get an auto-reply. Without strict limits, normal routines creep back in.
• Sabbath can reset unhealthy patterns for good. Email redirection, contact forms, and a monthly livestream Q&A for Bible questions will continue after Marty returns. This moves away from a “Marty is the answer guy” model.
• Listeners are invited to take part, not just consume. People and discussion groups are encouraged to create their own expression of a Sabbath season.
• The pattern is “six days you work, and on the seventh you rest.” Sessions 1–6 were the work, Session 7 is the rest, and Session 8 returns to work.

Main Concepts & Theories

1. The Sabbath Year (Shmitah)

• Biblical basis: Leviticus 25:1–7 and Deuteronomy 15:1–11 command that every seventh year the land lies fallow and debts are released.
• The rabbinic view: For roughly 1,800 years, Rabbinic (Talmudic) Judaism has held that Shmitah is tied to the physical land of Israel. Only people living in the Land are bound to keep it.
• Marty’s approach: Although he is not legally obligated, Marty uses the Jewish calendar’s Shmitah cycle to time his sabbatical rhythm. The previous Jewish year was a Shmitah year, and he and his ministry changed their daily, monthly, and yearly practices during it. They stopped some rhythms, kept others, and borrowed new ones.
• Institutional practice: Impact Campus Ministries requires every staff member to take a sabbatical every seven years. This is written into ministry policy as a “biblical rhythm.”

2. The Year of Jubilee (Yovel)

• Biblical basis: Leviticus 25:8–55 describes the fiftieth year, after seven cycles of seven years, when land returns to its original family owners and enslaved people go free.
• Historical note: Jews have not observed a Jubilee year since returning from exile under Persian rule.
• Marty’s personal Jubilee: Fifteen to twenty years ago, Marty picked a year on the calendar as his personal Jubilee. He admits the choice was “completely arbitrary” and not biblically binding.
• Key principle: “If you hold these with clenched fists,” they become irrelevant. The question is whether a principle exists that can guide one’s worship and growth.

3. The Working Sabbatical Model

Marty explains why Impact deliberately calls them “working sabbaticals”:

Elements of Marty’s 100-day plan:

1. Working with a spiritual director through the 19th Annotation of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, a version of the Exercises built to be done over months within ordinary daily life rather than in a 30-day silent retreat.
2. Planned family vacations, including a trip to the UK.
3. A structured journal with prompts for reflection.
4. A full break from email, social media, meetings, and Zoom.

4. Decompression and Burnout

• Brent notes that people in ministry often burn out because they do not set good boundaries.
• The first two or three weeks of a sabbatical can be lost to simply decompressing, which is why a longer period such as 100 days is needed.
• Entering with intention aims to shorten that buffer, much as preparing for and breaking a physical fast changes how the fast goes.

5. Being “Cut Off” in a Healthy Way

• Brent says Marty must be “cut off entirely.” Marty jokes that this is a good Hebrew phrase, a play on the Torah penalty of being “cut off from one’s people” (karet).
• The point is that rest needs a deliberate break from routine. This matters even more for someone with highly disciplined daily and weekly habits, because those habits will pull them back into work.

6. Sabbath as Structure: The Seven-Session Design

• Marty once joked that Session 6 would run “forever.” Session 7, as the Sabbath session, would be saved for the day the podcast ended.
• His sabbatical made a mid-course “Session 7 Sabbath” fit naturally.
• Planned structure:
  • Episodes 1–7 (led by Marty): Reflective, guided-prayer episodes with prompts, music, and silence. They draw on Josh’s earlier Mishkan (Tabernacle) series from the end of Session 6, which connects the Tabernacle, Genesis, and the theme of rest.
  • Second half: Team members (Josh, Elle, Reed, and possibly Derek) share their personal spiritual practices. Planned topics include prayer, fasting, a media fast, and the spiritual practice of friendship. An interview episode will offer a workbook-style resource for building a regular spiritual practice alone or in a group.
  • Capstone: Recorded after Marty returns, as a debrief of the sabbatical.
• Session 8: A return to typical deep dives, including Josh’s in-depth series on the Sabbath with more Hebrew word study.

Examples & Applications

• Fasting as a model: Many people know that easing into and out of a physical fast affects how it goes. The same idea applies to vacations, sabbaticals, retreats, or even a weekly Sabbath. For example, using Friday afternoon to wind down makes Saturday’s rest deeper.
• Auto-replies and deleting email: Anyone in a demanding job can use this. Rather than coming back to thousands of unread emails, which makes rest anxious, Marty’s approach tells senders that important matters must be raised again later. Companies such as Daimler have tried similar “mail on holiday” policies that delete incoming email during vacations.
• Organizational sabbatical policies: Impact’s required seven-year sabbatical is an example of an institution building rest into its structure. Universities have long done the same with faculty sabbaticals.
• Family heritage as reflection: Marty’s family trip to Cornwall and Wales, where his paternal Jewish ancestors lived for nearly 800 years, shows how rest can include reflecting on one’s family story and identity.
• Bar mitzvah during sabbatical: Major family milestones can be fully present moments when work is removed.
• Listening differently: Marty knows guided-reflection episodes will feel odd while driving or on a treadmill. He invites listeners to choose a time and place where they can actually pause, journal, and pray.
• Group application: Discussion groups can design their own “Session 7” experience. They might hold a shared media fast, practice silence together, or keep reflective journals instead of studying new material.
• Healthier ministry communication: Sending Bible questions to a monthly livestream Q&A, instead of answering a hundred emails one by one, shows how a leader can avoid becoming the single source of answers and point people toward their own local communities.

Potential Areas for Further Exploration

1. Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15: Study the economic, agricultural, and social-justice parts of Shmitah and Jubilee.
2. Rabbinic debates on Shmitah: Why did the rabbis tie the Sabbath year to the land of Israel? How do modern Israeli farmers observe it, for example through the heter mechira (land-sale exemption)?
3. The Ignatian Spiritual Exercises: Compare the 19th Annotation (in daily life) with the 20th Annotation (the 30-day retreat).
4. The Sabbath in Genesis 1–2 and the Tabernacle: Revisit Josh’s Mishkan series on how creation, the Tabernacle, and rest are linked.
5. Karet (“cut off”): Explore what this Torah penalty means and how being separated from community relates to holiness and restoration.
6. Spiritual disciplines: Revisit BEMA Episode 24 and compare it with the team’s practices described later in Session 7.
7. Friendship as a spiritual practice: Explore biblical models such as David and Jonathan, and Ruth and Naomi.
8. Media fasting: Consider the theology and psychology of stepping away from digital media.
9. Burnout in ministry: Look at research on clergy burnout and how sabbatical practices help prevent it.

Comprehension Questions

1. Why did Rabbinic Judaism decide the Sabbath year (Shmitah) is binding only for those living in the land of Israel, and how does Marty still use this rhythm in his own life?
2. What is the difference between a typical ministry sabbatical and Impact Campus Ministries’ “working sabbatical,” and why does Marty say the planned approach works better?
3. How does the comparison with entering and breaking a physical fast explain why planning the start and end of a sabbatical matters?
4. Why are Marty and Brent so strict about boundaries, such as deleting emails and sending copy-paste text replies, during the sabbatical?
5. How does the structure of Session 7 (reflective episodes, then team practices, then a return to “work” in Session 8) reflect the Sabbath pattern itself?

Personalized Summary

This episode is an invitation to rest. Marty’s hundred-day step away closes a two-year Sabbath and Jubilee journey. It shows how Torah’s seven-year rhythms can shape a modern life when they are held as guiding principles rather than rigid rules. The main lesson is that real rest does not happen by accident. It needs a plan, firm boundaries, and a deliberate start and finish. Session 7 practices what it teaches: in place of more information, it offers space for silence, prayer, and reflection, followed by the team’s own spiritual practices. As a listener, you can join in by listening more slowly, journaling instead of collecting answers, or designing a Sabbath season with your community. After this rest, Session 8 returns to the work, following the pattern “six days you shall labor, but the seventh day is a Sabbath.”