A season of rest and freedom

We put the finishing touches of this magazine together just as the Advent season began. For Christians, this time is the beginning of the church year. We mark this time as a season of waiting and preparing our hearts, minds and souls for the gift of God’s presence with us, which we celebrate each year during the Christmas season — or “Christmastide” in liturgical language. 

This Advent season, I am also waiting and preparing for the next season in my life — a season of sabbatical. As a religious organization, BJC has long provided paid sabbatical leave to allow the executive director and other executive staff an opportunity for rest, rejuvenation, reading, recreation and relationship. I am grateful to the Executive Committee of the BJC Board for granting me sabbatical leave for 2026 as well as updating our policies to make this leave available for all employees of BJC after at least seven years working with the organization. 

As I begin my 10th year leading BJC in January 2026, I also will be beginning my sabbatical. Friends and colleagues who have taken sabbaticals in other contexts have reminded me that sabbath is not a vacation; it is a commandment. 

In his spiritual classic The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, “To observe the seventh day does not mean merely to obey or to conform to the strictness of a divine command. To observe is to celebrate the creation of the world and to create the seventh day all over again, the majesty of holiness in time, ‘a day of rest, a day of freedom,’ … .”  

When the BJC Board met this October, they provided me with a blessing for my sabbatical, written by pastor and poet Meta Herrick Carlson. These specific words offer me challenge and comfort as I enter this season of rest and freedom: 

God promised provision on the seventh day, so that you could practice resistance to your zealous rhythms with rest, so that you could stop for a season and trust: 

 

 

I am so small. And also, I matter so much.

 

It is here in the absence of doing you will remember the terrible and wonderful news — that God is still here, making things new, even and often without your help.

This is both a season of rest for me and one of continued new creation for BJC. We are carrying out our work with the guiding star of a renewed mission statement — one that matches the expansiveness of our vision found in our tagline: Faith Freedom For All. We affirm our Baptist roots and perspective, and we reframe our advocacy for and education about religious freedom in the broader context of a growing movement for a just society. Read more about the BJC Board’s work to update our mission statement on pages 15-17 of our magazine.

Our work is done in and with communities across the country while our headquarters remain on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Now — for the first time in six decades — we are at a new address. Before the move in November, current and former staff gathered for a service of grief and gratitude as we honored the space that had housed our organization since 1965. We remembered the significant moments in our office space and shared memories of our first time visiting the building. (See pages 18-21 of our magazine for a special tribute to our longtime organizational home). As we shared and listened, a consistent theme emerged: it was the people more than the place that has shaped our work for our mission. 

Our talented and committed BJC staff team are living into a new mission statement and a new headquarters. My heart is full of gratitude for the opportunity to lead this organization, rooted in a Baptist commitment to soul liberty, as we build a movement towards a just society that cultivates and expands religious freedom for all. Though I will be stepping back from day-to-day leadership of BJC until after Easter, I know that God never stops creating and doing new things in our broken and yet beloved world.

Amanda Tyler is executive director of BJC.

This column originally appeared in the winter 2025 edition of Report from the Capital. You can view it as a PDF or read a digital flip-through edition.