Rhythms From a Ministry Gap Year: Curate Summit Transcript
By: Grace Balkan
This year’s Curate Summit theme centers on the word Dwell, which is to inhabit and slow down. A pause. That is precisely what my year in England at a Christian ministry center was for me. I am unashamedly a big proponent of taking a year to do ministry work like this, and especially in a place like Lee Abbey!
Life at Lee Abbey Devon
Lee Abbey Devon is a Christian ministry and retreat center established after World War II by believers who wanted to create a place of rest and rejuvenation for the Christian Church. It is located on 280 acres of beautiful Exmoor National Park coastline in the county of Devon, England. It is right on the edge of the Bristol Channel which separates southwest England from Wales. There is a long, storied history of the property itself that dates back hundreds of years. Most recently, the house itself was used as a boy’s shelter in WWII (think Chronicles of Narnia where the Pevensies are sent to the countryside!). Denominationally, Lee Abbey Devon is Anglican-rooted, but it enjoys supporters and volunteers from denominations and is very Spirit-led.
The retreat center is open to all kinds of guests. They are primarily Christians and some are current/former missionaries. Lee Abbey plans and offers a program of speakers to host week or weekend-long retreats. Guests book it, and the volunteers help run the day-to-day running of the house and estate.
Lee Abbey is also a working estate, a 280-acre property which houses cows, sheep, and pigs. It has been covered in prayer for decades and often described by Christians as a “thin place,” where heaven and earth seem to collide and where people more clearly feel God’s presence.
The whole estate is run by about 40-50 volunteers of all ages from many different countries. Some people are right out of high school, others are mid-career, some bring their families, and still others are young marrieds. All come with the similar purpose: They want to serve God and the body of Christ for the next season of their life. These volunteers from all around the world apply to Lee Abbey, obtain a charity visa, and work primarily on one of the many teams it takes to run the retreat center: Estate team, house team, kitchen team, Beacon (activity) team, bookings team, and administration. I myself was the single member of the Marketing Team.
We serve and eat meals (and have tea!) with the guests who visit, as we believe the act of serving food is both a service to the people on retreat, as well as a good exercise for us to bless others and invite them into the family.
You work on your designated team, but you also help wherever is needed. I mentioned I was on the marketing team, but when numbers were low, I helped wherever needed and got a little taste of a number of teams: Kitchen, estate, tea cottage, etc. But if given the choice, I was out in the fields taking pictures of the estate and animals. (If it says anything, during my leaving speech I was awarded a t-shirt that had “Lee Abbey Estate Reserve Team Member on it.”)
Now for a few reflections on the things that really impacted me during my year at Lee Abbey.
God orchestrates the little moments.
I first heard about Lee Abbey from someone in another state who I have, to this day, never met. My mom struck up a 5-minute conversation with a lady she had not seen before at church who had an English accent. It was providential, it was unexpected, and it changed the trajectory of my life. (Side note: Maybe this is one of those moments for you. I not-so-secretly hope so!). The day-to-day life at Lee Abbey is also made of little moments. When I rushed through the day, it was easy to miss the opportunities in front of me to visit with a friend, pray with someone, bring them a cup of tea.
Serving is good for our souls.
My days had a very different rhythm to them at Lee Abbey. I went from working in a fast-paced, high-speed educational environment here at Hillsdale to serving with my time and hands. Sometimes that meant getting up early to serve breakfast to weary guests, doing the AV for morning worship, scrubbing forks and dishes when the kitchen team needed a hand, setting tables, serving up plates of hot food for the dinner table, counting sheep in the rolling pastures (which, by the way, is NOT actually sleep-inducing but rather requires a high level of focus!), making beds alongside the house team, helping feed baby lambs, or joining our prayer team to intercede with guests after church service.
No two days looked the same. No two guests were the same. And God called me to clean the dirty forks just as much as he called me to manage calendars and send emails. He doesn’t NEED us to do either. But acting in faith blesses Him and blesses us.
The daily lives of great missionaries were full of little daily tasks, prayers and living life. That was a large part of our lives at Lee Abbey: preparing meals, mucking out the pig stalls, stacking plates, serving lots and lots of tea. But life in ministry also taught me something else:
Ministry is harder than I imagined.
Living and working with people day in, day out, while focused on ministry, is hard. You all know this somewhat already by being at Hillsdale. It’s a tight-knit community, and some stresses naturally come with that. In ministry, it is a little different. You have the biggest, most important thing in common with each other. But everyone is also very human, and you realize that quickly. Lee Abbey Devon is pretty remote. We don’t all have cars. The hours can be long. You get weary, they get weary. You get frustrated, annoyed, tired. They do, too.
Community living in that intensive environment isn’t all sunshine and rainbows (despite what my pictures show). But the blessing is well worth it. I got to know SUCH strong Christians and see their faith lived out. See their burdens, hear their testimonies. I realized that even pastors and church leaders are human. We know this on a fundamental level, but it’s different when you all live side-by-side. You learn not to glorify people and are reminded that Jesus had to die to save us all, even those people you look up to. Which leads me to my next reflection:
The church is bigger than we think.
God calls people to Lee Abbey from around the world. For about 8 months, I was the only American there. I got so used to hearing British and international accents that when the occasional American stayed as a guest, their accent was a bit jarring!
It was a beautiful blessing to watch the faith and hear the testimonies of Christians from literally around the world. My friends from Hungary, Brazil, England, Scotland, Germany, New Zealand, Nepal, China, and South Africa blessed me. Christ’s church was revealed as the body of people from all nations. It reminded me of the passage from Revelation, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10).
It also meant that the goodbyes are especially difficult at Lee Abbey. We all knew the likelihood that we cross paths again on this earth is slim. It makes heaven all the more real and exciting.
Christians need community.
This is probably the biggest takeaway I realized when I left. Community is life changing. It is essential for our spiritual walk. No matter where you go when you graduate or what you do, get plugged in. You will need the support of Christians. We were meant to live alongside one another. That need for community really resonated with me as my year there came to an end.
Dependence and simplicity are spiritually edifying.
Life at Lee Abbey is fairly simple: we get 40 pounds a week. We eat our meals with guests. If we need toothpaste or soap, we requested it from the storeroom. No cars mean walking into the village. A pint with friends. Starting a fire or planning a movie night. Our companionship was with each other, so we got creative.
I noticed I appreciated little blessings more: a 3-minute lift to the village that would have taken me 30 minutes to walk. Listening to conversations on the bus when I would normally have listened to music (after I lost my headphones). A trip to the nearest town was suddenly a big to-do! It became more special. People’s generosity meant more.
Our simplicity created dependence: At Lee Abbey, our first instict when things went wrong was to pray. It almost felt cheesy at first, and then I realized how powerful that attitude was. Prayer wasn’t a last resort. It was the baseline heart posture. We asked God to get involved in our daily lives in real ways, because we needed it. Simple as that. Once, during the summer months our water supply suddenly ran dry. We had over 100 guests on the way, and very little water for guests to shower or flush toilets. The whole community was involved in prayer, not in a trivial way, but in a “we don’t know what else to do but God does” way. We asked God for intervention and wisdom for our maintenance team, and we worked in our power to limit water usage. We even took a shower in the creek nearby (which was one of the most joyful, funny, freezing memories from my time there). It turns out, our connection to the source of water was faulty and eventually got fixed. But it was a great spiritual lesson! We were completely dependent on God, and we had a heightened awareness of that. It didn’t mean there was an immediate fix. But we felt Him work to answer our prayers in real ways.
We are like Sheep.
On a slightly lighter note, my work with the animals on the estate was one of the most memorable things I did there! It brought the Bible to life!
On my first morning on estate duty by myself, the sow had her piglets. Never thought I would be a pig midwife! I don’t know if any of you have worked around pigs before, but I gained a new appreciation for the story of the prodigal son wishing he could eat the pig slop as I was mucking out their stalls. He wanted to eat THAT?! And his father ran to hug him smelling like THAT?!
Or another time when we were sorting sheep, one escaped us, hopped the fence, and fell down into a steep crevice by the barn. It took three grown adults many long moments of huffing and scraping and tugging to get the sheep out of the hole again. And what do you think he did but try to escape and run back? Sheep are fragile, silly creatures. They die easily, sometimes for no apparent reason. They get lost, they follow each other, and they are incredibly dirty. They are prone to injury by preying birds, or their own foolishness. Now with that in mind, go back and read Psalm 23. It is humbling to realize our status before the Lord.
Daily devotions refocus our minds.
Each day at Lee Abbey we followed a structure of morning and afternoon prayer. We all gathered first thing as a sleepy, tired bunch and often wished we could have an extra few minutes of sleep. But there was never a time when I left prayers wishing I had slept in. Starting the day off prioritizing Jesus like that made the entire rest of the day so much more joyful and intentional. This is why we live!
We humans are wandering creatures. The hymn “Come, Thou Fount” said it best: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”
After the chaos of feeding guests and serving more tea, we all gathered in our various uniforms for another short time of prayer and devotions. Just 15 minutes. Just a reset. We went back to herding sheep, cleaning dishes, or sending emails with a renewed sense of WHO we were doing it for. (Side note: this is also a difficult spiritual practice to keep up when not surrounded by community.)
We are built up to be sent out.
This is probably the hardest lesson.
We all spent a year there being poured into, encouraged and serving the Body of Christ. We are inspired by their faith, the stories. And then we have to leave. We return to our home countries.
We are sent out as missionaries to our own communities, because we are meant to be a light to the nations. This is admittedly very hard. I can’t say I’m any good at it. But Lee Abbey is designed to be a launching point for Christians to spread the good news about Jesus.
This doesn’t necessarily mean serving in the jungle. It doesn’t even mean working at church. I’ve reflected lately how my Christian coworker at a very corporate finance job shows Jesus to people by always being available, being approachable, and extending friendship. They notice something different about him, even amidst hard life circumstances. I want to be like that.
I am so grateful to God that He blessed me with the opportunity to get to know Him better in that beautiful place. He calls people there for a reason. It was a glimpse of living each moment for Jesus, and it is a heart posture I want to emulate no matter where I am.
For more information about Lee Abbey Devon, visit leeabbeydevon.org.uk
Grace Balkan | ‘21
After working for a few years post-graduation as Dr. Arnn’s Executive Assistant, I made the transition to ministry work for a year of volunteer service in England. It was a transformational time of beauty, dependence and simplicity. I enjoyed photography, long walks in the English countryside, and a good book and cuppa! I have now returned to Phoenix, Arizona and work as a broker at Charles Schwab.
Phone: 719-749-8240
Instagram: @grace_balkan
