Planning Sabbaticals

A Guide for Congregations and their Pastors

Robert C. Saler

• Publisher: Chalice Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780827231801
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Chiesa cristiana

Sabbaticals are becoming increasingly common practice in congregations, and while there are many books on helping pastors prepare for their time away, there are no texts that approach the experience with the congregation in mind, from start to finish. This guide for congregations and their pastors draws on nearly two decades of wisdom from the Lily Endowment Clergy Renewal Program and helps draw the conversation away from a pastor-centric model and towards a holistic congregational framework for thinking about how the entire community can benefit from a pastor's sabbatical.

1: Shared Journey

Why Pastoral Renewal Leaves Are Good for Congregations

This book will contain several mantras, and this chapter introduces one of the most important ones: the better the renewal time for the congregation, the better the sabbatical time for the pastor, and vice versa. If the congregation has a good experience with the renewal leave, it will not only help sustain the benefits of the pastor’s sabbatical across the next years of shared ministry, but it will help ease both the mind of the pastor and the minds of the congregation members during the leave period.

So with that in mind, let’s explore the dual benefit of clergy renewal leaves: a refreshed pastor and an inspired congregation.

A Refreshed and Reenergized Pastor

As we mentioned before, pastoral sabbaticals are not product-driven. We can put that a different way: the main “product,” so to speak, of a successful pastoral sabbatical is a refreshed and renewed pastor.

At the outset, we should stipulate two things: a pastor’s work is not necessarily harder than that of other congregational members; but it is hard in a different way. In other words, the challenges of pastoral ministry in congregations, while not necessarily more intense than, say, an emergency medical technician or a public-school teacher or a construction worker, are uniquely intense in ways that pastoral renewal leaves can address.

Pastors serve many roles. Depending on the size and nature of the church, they are counselors, weekly public speakers, worship planners, physical plant consultants, Bible and theology teachers, youth faith encouragers, broken toilet fixers, community leaders, social justice advocates, and fundraisers. In communities where English is rare, they are often tutors, immigration counselors, and cultural mentors. They conduct weddings and funerals. Often, they are “on call” for congregational emergencies 24/7, and these emergencies might arise at 2 a.m.—or, smack in the middle of a planned family vacation. They work on Sundays and holidays. It is, as Marva Dawn says, an “odd and wondrous” calling, but it is also an intense one.

And that is just the visible, external work. At an even deeper level, much of the work of the pastor is internal and invisible. Put simply, pastors care at very deep levels, about a great many people, at the most intense points of those peoples’ lives—when loved ones die, when tragedies befall children, when a routine day becomes a scary hospital stay, when God seems far away. Even accompanying their people in times of joy—weddings, graduations, periods of feeling intensely held by God—can produce what psychologists call “eustress”: vital, excited states of heightened emotion that feel wonderful but can also sometimes prove to be overwhelming. (Think of a time when you may have found yourself weeping during or after a joyous occasion; you know you “should” be happy, but your body still feels flooded by emotions in a way that drains you.) In other words, much of the work of being a pastor is internal, emotional, and intense in ways that draw upon deep reserves of emotional and spiritual resources.

Fortunately, most pastors have deep wells. Pastors are trained—often in seminaries, but often too by mentorship and hands-on learning—to sustain themselves in prayer, study of God’s word, intellectual pursuits, and delight in family and friends. Healthy pastors are trained to engage in all the tasks mentioned above (and countless others) from a position of deep centeredness.

Craig Dykstra, an expert in the dynamics of pastoral ministry, writes the following:

Every day pastors are immersed in a constant, and sometimes nearly chaotic, interplay of meaning-filled relationships and demands. They attend to scripture; struggle to discern the gospel’s call and demand on them and their congregations in particular contexts; lead worship, preach and teach; respond to requests for help of all kinds from myriad people in need; live with children, youth and adults through life cycles marked by both great joy and profound sadness; and take responsibility for the unending work of running an organization with buildings, budgets, and public relations and personnel issues.

In the midst of the interplay of all this and more, pastors become who they are; indeed, pastors are transformed. The unique confluence of all these forces both requires and gives shape to an imagination marked by characteristics and features unlike those required in any other walk of life. Life lived long enough and fully enough in the pastoral office gives rise to a way of seeing in depth and of creating new realities that is an indispensable gift to the church, to all who are members of it, and indeed to public life and to the world.1

To be healthy, to achieve the “seeing in depth” and “creating new realities” that Dykstra describes, pastors need powerful internal spiritual resources as they move creatively and imaginatively throughout the work of ministry.

If you’ll forgive a pun, though, the logic of clergy sabbaticals is that such resources are indeed “renew-able.” Prayer, spiritual disciplines, delight in loved ones and hobbies, and rest all require time and attention to cultivate—as we will see throughout this book.

Another of the mantras that I will repeat throughout the book, and that I will introduce now, is as follows: sabbaticals are for healthy pastors in healthy congregations. We’ll spend a lot of time in later chapters exploring more about what that means, but here I bring it up as a way of emphasizing that sabbatical leaves are about revitalizing and renewing healthy pastors who could use some time to re-center in the very things that allow them to be excellent at their work: prayer, God’s word, spiritual practices, and delight in their loved ones. Soul care requires soul maintenance.

Laurie Haller, a Methodist pastor who wrote a memoir about her sabbatical experience, had this to say about the effects of the months away spent in exploration and prayer:

I feel more centered and calm than I have in 25 years. Most people will not observe that simply by looking at me. I am the same on the outside. Inside, however, I have been changed and transformed. It’s not to say I won’t be busy come next Monday. Being a pastor in a large church will always be demanding. And I don’t think God necessarily wants me to be less busy. God only wants me to realign my priorities. God wants to be the center of my attention. When love of God comes before anything else, I am convinced that I will be able to stay centered and grounded.2

Congregations whose pastors have returned from sabbaticals often report that their pastors exhibit, simultaneously, a renewed energy but also a deeper calm. This great combination of energy and centeredness can positively impact everything from sermons to Bible studies to committee leadership to pastoral care. It is a lesson at the heart of our Christian faith: when we are centered in God, the labor that we are called to do in God’s vineyard moves with greater ease, but also more excellence.

There is a line in the movie Top Gun in which the commander says to the new pilots, “Gentlemen, you are the top 1 percent of all naval aviators. The elite. The best of the best. We’ll make you better.” Renewal leaves are not for fixing broken or burnt-out pastors, or for healing deeply wounded congregations. They are for excellent pastors who want to re-center in order to continue to be excellent.

I once sat next to a pastor at a conference dinner while they discussed their sabbatical leave. They said something that has stayed with me, and that I have come to value as a powerful image for what sabbaticals can do. “I thought I would come back full,” they said. “Full of new ideas for church programs, full of insights for sermons, full of outreach strategies. Instead, I came back empty. Emptied of pride, emptied of ego, emptied of thinking that it was all about me. It turns out that I didn’t need for God to fill me; I needed time for God to empty me. And when I came back to my congregation empty, that’s when God was ready to fill all of us with new possibilities that I would have been too full to see if God had not emptied me first.”

We’ll say a lot more about what this means in future chapters, but for now we can name the fact that one of the two main goals of any successful renewal program is a revitalized and refreshed pastor. What is the other main goal?

An Inspired Congregation

I’ll say it over and over again in this book: what happens with the pastor and the pastor’s loved ones during a renewal period is only half the equation. Renewal leaves are not just about the pastor. A successful pastoral renewal leave is just as much about what happens before, during, and after the leave on the part of the congregation. The renewal leave does not “belong” to the pastor; the whole process, start to finish, belongs to the congregation. This is the recipe for success during and after the renewal period.

What can happen on the congregation’s end? My favorite story of this comes from my colleague Marty, who pastors a dynamic congregation in central Indiana. Marty has taken two clerg...

Table of contents

• Praise for Planning Sabbaticals
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1: Shared Journey
• 2: Beginning the Dialogue
• 3: What Should the Pastor Do during the Renewal Period?
• 4: What Should the Congregation Do during the Renewal Period?
• 5: How Do Renewal Leaves Bring Us into God’s Mission?
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• About the Author