What do you consider a waste of time?

It's worth sitting with that question for a moment. Your answer reveals more than you might expect about how you actually view rest, and whether you've genuinely embraced what God designed for you or simply preached it to others.

We live in a culture that prizes productivity above almost everything else. Hustle is celebrated. Margin is suspect. And if we're honest, that culture has found a comfortable home inside the church. Ministry staff are often quietly rewarded for overworking. The unspoken message becomes clear: doing more means being more faithful. Rest, by contrast, starts to feel like a luxury, or worse, a moral failure.

“Your Relationships Need More of You The statistics tell a striking story.”

You've likely preached on Sabbath. You may have taught its value with conviction. But what does your own calendar say? For many pastors and ministry leaders, Sabbath sounds right from the pulpit and gets quietly skipped in practice. Not because we don't believe it, but because we've let the urgent crowd out the essential. We stay late to finish the project. We skip the walk outside. We show up to the ministry carnival because we're afraid of what it looks like if we don't. And slowly, without meaning to, we communicate with our lives that rest is what you do when the work is finally done, and the work is never finally done.

But what if rest isn't the reward at the end of faithful ministry? What if it's the fuel that makes faithful ministry possible?

Here are three reasons pastors should “waste more time.”

Genesis 2:3 deserves more weight than we typically give it. God, the Creator of everything that exists, rested. He didn't rest because He was tired. He rested because He was modeling a rhythm for His image-bearers to follow. The Sabbath wasn't an afterthought or a concession to human weakness. It was woven into the fabric of creation itself.

When we build a weekly rhythm of rest into our lives, we are doing something deeply theological. We are declaring, with our time, that we are not God. We are confessing that the work does not rise or fall on our effort alone. Sabbath is an act of trust, a countercultural, embodied acknowledgment that we rely not on our pace or our productivity, but on Him. And practically speaking, God designed our bodies, minds, and souls to need this rhythm. To ignore it isn't noble. It's simply working against the way we were made.

The statistics tell a striking story. We are busier than any previous generation, and lonelier than any previous generation. Those two realities are not a coincidence.

When we crowd rest out of our schedules, relationships are usually the first casualty. There's always a meeting, a deadline, a ministry need that feels more urgent than dinner with your kids or coffee with a friend. But the people God has placed in your life aren't distractions from your calling. They are part of it. Scripture is clear that iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17), that we are not meant to carry the weight of life and ministry in isolation. The relationships that sustain you spiritually require actual time. Guarded, unhurried, present time.

Don't deceive yourself into thinking there will be a season when things slow down enough to invest in the people who matter most. That season rarely arrives on its own. You have to create it.

Studies consistently show that anxiety is running at historic levels among pastors and ministry leaders. And yet, the instinct when we feel anxious is often to work harder, to solve our way out of the pressure through more effort and longer hours. It rarely works. In fact, it usually makes things worse.

Choosing to rest is not passive. It is a direct act of resistance against the anxiety that a relentless pace produces. Philippians 4:6-7 calls us to bring our burdens to God rather than carrying them alone, and it promises a peace that surpasses understanding in return. Sabbath rest is one of the primary ways we practice that exchange. We put down what we've been carrying and trust that God holds what we cannot.

The rhythm God designed for you actually works. That's worth remembering.

So, pastor, will you waste some time this week?

Find 24 hours to stop. To rest. To delight. To worship without an agenda or a role to fill. It won't be wasted. It never is. It may turn out to be exactly what you and your ministry need most.