Spring has sprung and that means one thing:  yard sales.  My wife and I hit a community yard sale this past Saturday and while most of what we saw was better suited for the donation box than the yard sale box, I did see a really nice looking recliner….that swiveled…..and rocked…..and reclined…..all in leather.  And the seller even knocked $5 off the price when she found out I bought her couch the year before.  Not sure how I feel about my “frequent buyer” status at a total stranger’s house, but the discount was a nice thought and made the deal even more tempting.  Still, I turned it down. I did buy a classic game “Pit” (harkening back many childhood memories of the adults yelling from the livingroom, “Two! Two! Two!  Three! Three! Three! One! One! One!….DING!”) and “The Diary of Anne Frank” for my 8th grade daughter who is currently reading it and doing a project on it for school.  I figured $.25 wasn’t too steep a price for her to have her own copy.  So even though I left the recliner behind, I did hold onto my “repeat offender” status in this woman’s front yard.

I sit at a desk a fair amount of time when I’m working in the office.  There is quite a bit of administrative work to be done and even with an administrative assistant (who rocks), there’s plenty of screen time in the life of a youth pastor–and I’m not talking about video games.  Emails, reports, publications, curriculum writing, promotion of upcoming events, video editing, social media, and countless other ways that put my duff in a seat looking at a screen.  And that doesn’t even touch the meetings and the sit-time they bring.  Or the time in the car.  Or the couch.

A few years ago, I tried to acquire a stainless steel stand-up height desk for my office.  Its still around, but being used somewhere else and I still have my eye on it.  I’ll keep you posted.

You know how it works…the longer you sit, the longer you want to sit.  The less active you are, the easier it becomes to be less active.  And I can tell you personally that while I can accomplish a whole heck of a lot at work while sitting on my can (yesterday is a great example), I feel much more alive and even stronger when I limit my time on my derriere.

I wrote an article months ago called “Ministry Saddlebags”.  It is about the dangers of a sedentary ministry lifestyle.  Of course, there is by nature a demand to sit down, pound the keyboard, and get stuff done but it seems the larger the ministry, the more demanding the desk chair is for my rear end to be in it.  The bigger the ministry (I moved from medium-sized to larger-sized nearly 7 years ago), the more administrative work seems to be necessary…and that leads to one thing: “saddlebags”.  And not the leather pouches you throw over the horse, but the fatty cellulite ones attached to your (my) outer thighs.

So all this to say that I’m currently looking for creative ways to get off my butt and onto my feet more and more, especially at work.  Just a century ago (you remember those times, don’t you?), America wasn’t as physically stagnate as we are now.  Who knows what trends we can reverse if we get up and move more than we do?  And as strange as this may sound, I’m not even looking at this strictly from a physical perspective, but from a spiritual and ministry perspective.  And I’m looking forward to seeing what develops.

For more on what sitting does, check out this link.