Two days ago I wrote about the importance of taking a sabbatical every few years if you are in ministry. Many churches have sabbaticals built into their church constitution, so this idea is not foreign for them. This is a huge blessing to pastors in ministry because the process of taking a sabbatical is not an uphill battle. But, unfortunately, this is not always the case in many churches. Too many churches in fact. For many in ministry, sabbaticals are only a dream, and one that will never come to fruition.

But for those of you whose church does not already support a paid sabbatical for pastors in ministry, my senior pastor friend who recently returned from a 3 month sabbatical (first for him ever) had some words of advice for proposing a sabbatical to your church.

1. Research is Key

My senior pastor friend had the advantage of living in a very academic community, so the idea of sabbaticals was not foreign to many in his congregation. His church however had never supported them before, so he still needed to provide them with convincing arguments (outside of his own) for the value of sabbaticals. Any article, especially from newspapers or Christian magazines (Leadership Journal for example) that lay the case for pastors taking time off from the ministry to recharge is very important to supply your elder board with. Check out writings by H.B. London on sabbaticals and even look at a recent article in the New York Times (Taking a Break From the Lord’s Work http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/nyregion/02burnout.html?_r=1)

2. Communicate Your Desire to Stay Long Term

Truth is, no one wants to give you 3 months paid leave if you’re just going to hit the road after you get back. You need to both have put in multiple years at your current church AND intend to stay at your church for years to come. My friend clearly communicated his desire to stay at his current church until he retired. The more your elder board and church knows you are committed to them, the more committed to helping you they’ll be. Within this, you also need to clearly communicate the long term effects of what constant work in the ministry can do to a person. Facilitating funerals, weddings, late night calls and conversations, time away from family, and tons of personal stress can tear you down. Time to refuel will sustain you for the long term.

3. Present Your Plan and Get Help

Your church needs to know you are taking this very seriously, so you need to clearly present your plan and do it several years in advance. No big decision happens quickly in a church, so know that one, two, or even five years is not a long time to wait. Expect to wait a little for your sabbatical to happen, which means you should start planning it NOW. Also, get  together a small team of about four people who can help you plan a sabbatical that will fulfill you personally and within ministry. The more you surround yourself with people you and the church trusts, the better your chances of getting your sabbatical approved.

That’s it for now. Tomorrow I’ll write a little more about specific approaches to the plan for your sabbatical.

One of my best friends has had a tough last two years. As a financial advisor, the stock market plunge in the fall of 2008 hit him especially hard. When everyone around him lost 40% of their financial worth, he lost more. Several months into the recession he realized his family wouldn’t be able to stay in their house. With great sadness and a huge blow to his pride, they moved into his in-law’s basement.

I didn’t actually meet my friend until about a year ago, which was already almost a year into their struggles. Week after week we would meet together (we were co-leading a small group) and he would tell me story after story of heartbreak. There seemed like no end in sight. The money wasn’t coming in and the struggles were only increasing. Yet my friend, only by the grace of God, had the most integrity of any man I have ever seen. As his world was continually falling in around him, as the pressure mounted on him to provide for his family, and as the thought of the American Dream in his life vanished, he would still not curse God. Sure, he questioned. Sure, he got frustrated. Sure, he even lost it a couple of times. In fact, he told me one time that every night when he went to bed he would hear his five year old son praying that God would give them back their house, and it continually left my friend broken.

But he never gave up. Not on his family and not on his God. He knew the Lord had good in mind for them and as difficult as it was, he relished in what he and his wife were learning of God’s love and grace. Through his laughter and his tears he always thanked God for the blessings in his life and for the friends who surrounded him with great love.

And today, with great excitement and joy, his son’s prayers were finally answered. Today we moved my friend’s family into a new house. It’s a little smaller than their old place and needs some work, but  it’s beautiful. And today my friend’s smile was bigger than I’ve ever seen because his faith had become sight, at least for today.

This past summer my brother–who’s a youth pastor in Wisconsin–and a senior pastor friend of mine both went on sabbaticals. A little over 2 months of time to refresh themselves and renew their passion for ministry. They both took advantage of the time. My brother went on vacation in North Carolina with his family, a marriage retreat with his wife in Colorado, and read a ton of ministry books. My senior pastor friend got the opportunity of a lifetime, visiting Greece and Turkey, as well as a week long silent retreat in a monastery. Both have told me how needed their sabbaticals were for renewing the drive they have for transformational ministry.

Yet, as I talked this past weekend with my senior pastor friend, it saddened me to hear that not everyone was supportive of his taking time off. Even though he got a grant from the Lily Endowment, which paid for his trips and paid for an interim pastor to take his preaching duties, many were still against his sabbatical. He told me how one board member had so adamantly opposed his sabbatical that he left the church because of it.

So sad. People don’t fully understand the amount of time, energy, sacrifice, and heart pastoral staff put into their ministries and people. They need extended time to unplug from work, silence themselves before God, soaking up his wisdom and grace. And we, as members of the church body need our pastoral staff to have sabbaticals because they come back fully charged and ready to do better ministry than they did before.

If you’re looking to go on a sabbatical, next year or five years from now, check out the Lily Endowment. This amazing group gives away about 120 grants every year to pastors going on sabbatical, to the amount of $45,000. You need to write an application, but they walk you through what a good one looks like. It’s worth it though.

Over the weekend I had the opportunity of going to a youth worker training at a friend’s church. I like going to other company trainings for two reasons: 1. because I volunteer in a youth group and can never have too much training, and 2. because I like to see how other companies are doing it. The training was supposed to be from 8:30-12:30, but we didn’t really get started until about 9:15 because us youth workers like to show up late. The training focused on three individual topics: small groups, evangelism, and mentoring. All great things to talk about, but it was a lot to fit into three hours (when you added in the breaks, each session was between 45-55 minutes). By the time we finished I was tired and had a lot of material to look over, but it got me thinking about training in general. So here are my few observations for youth worker training, in no specific order:

1. Balance content and experience

Too often we make the mistake of trying to cram a TON of content into our trainings (that’s what happened this past weekend) and we simply overwhelm those we are training. For some reason we think the real value is solely in the content, but that’s just not true. With the variety of learning modes out there, we need to present content in multiple formats (auditory, visual, and experiential) or we will lose many we are trying to train. Plus, just like when planning sermons, people only retain a small amount of the information they hear anyways, so why not get creative and develop new, innovative ways of delivering your content so they internalize it. Less is more my boss always says.

2. Allow time to process and share

Speaking of internalizing, there was almost no time this past weekend for us to think through what we were receiving for training. There was only one pair and share, but only for five minutes (we needed way more for the subject matter). We also needed just time to internalize what we were learning and how to apply it for our own groups, or at least more discussion with others to help us apply the training.

3. Question asking is key

Even though the trainer told us all at the beginning he welcomed questions, not once did he ask us if we had any questions. I had to interrupt him a couple times to ask a question. People need to be invited to ask questions, for they won’t all interrupt to do it. And especially if we are teaching a complex subject. Plus, as trainers, we also have to ask the participants questions. The trainer this weekend didn’t ask us any questions about our own ministries, which could have been so helpful for applying the training.