Mike did in fact get the Lily Foundation Grant, which was actually over the $45,000 amount. Pretty cool.

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.

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.

Are you taking risks in your ministry? Are you taking initiative and stepping out of your comfort zone? Maybe the better question is, are you committed to the mission of your church? The more bought in you are to the mission, the more likely you’ll be to take risks.

Ever been in a situation like this? Where a leader is such a control freak that nothing can be done without his approval? It’s so tough and often creates dissension within the church. The truth is, maybe this leader shouldn’t be leading. Maybe they just aren’t right for the job they’re in and need to step down.

That’s probably not going to happen for this youth pastor though. Most likely the administrative pastor won’t step down or be let go, and the youth pastor will just have to continue coping, always feeling strangled in his ministry. The sad thing is, when this is the case, most people don’t stay. I hope that doesn’t happen here, at least for the students’ sake.

Recently on a trip in Kentucky, one of my students submitted an idea to his team that he thought was fantastic, only to have his team totally shoot him down. Towards the end of our first night’s Team Time, he wanted the whole group to get up the next day an hour and a half earlier, so breakfast would be at 6am, thus allowing us to have an hour and a half more on the worksite. It was a huge risk for him to suggest it, but his team wasn’t going for it. It’s not that they didn’t agree with his zeal for the worksite or want to get stuff done, it’s just that he didn’t have the big picture in mind. They reminded him of how we also needed to do our VBS with excellence in the afternoon and would risk falling asleep or being low energy for that if we went with his idea. Plus, we had additional plans the next evening and would be up even later, which meant it might ruin us for the following day. They were gracious enough, but told him they would stick to the normal schedule and just work harder on day 2.

And rather than sulking and whining or secluding himself, the boy took the criticism in stride. I couldn’t believe it. In fact, the whole next day he just kept reminding his team to work hard and was a voice of encouragement the whole day. He served as a great example of what to do when you get shot down and I respect him a ton for it.

Yeah, I didn’t see the whole story at first, but it’s coming to me more and more. You see, I didn’t have all the information in front of me, nor was I looking through the eyes of the senior pastor. He wanted fully committed staff who were integral parts of the entire congregation. It wasn’t just about us not attending Sunday morning; it was the fact that we were not fully committed to the entire church body. Sure we loved the youth group, but he wanted us to grow our love for all members of the church, adults included. It took me a while to see this and I’m still learning and now I respect his decision to let us go. I’m glad I didn’t jump the gun right away and say some things to the senior pastor that could have ruined our relationship. We still talk from time to time and he’s helped me with several writing projects. He and his wife even gave Clare and I our “family” Bible for our wedding.

We can’t always see the big picture when we’re in the middle of a situation, even if we’re trying really hard to see it. James tells us to be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” Such wise counsel, especially when you can’t see the big picture. But if you follow this counsel and trust God will reveal the big picture to you, you’ll eventually come to see with clarity, and you’ll be pretty glad you didn’t fly off the handle.

It all worked out anyway. Tonight is my first night attending a youth group function at our new church. I’m super pumped. Game night here we come!

One of the stories he told us was how on the last trip, all the students got together near the end of the trip to talk about how they wanted to take what they had learned home with them. Throughout the week they had focused on how they, even as teenagers, could come together and change their world for the better. They, as a united team, could create change in their communities if they would only reach for it. So as they gathered together in conversation to talk about what they wanted to do when they got home, they quickly decided that they would all volunteer for their upcoming church VBS (having just completed a VBS in Kentucky they were pretty excited about working with kids). But one student took it a little further. She suggested that on top of working at the VBS in the afternoons, they should all get together in the mornings and find work projects in their community so they could continue serving people  just as they had done on their mission trip. The team loved the idea. Whether it was painting or yard work, they all committed to giving another week of their summer to serving others around them for the sake of Christ.

Unity leads to action. Pretty cool stuff. Even more so when it comes directly from the hearts of unified students.

Get all the information at http://leadertreks.org/refuel-in-the-rockies.html

We will be staying with Wildernest Lodging in the beautiful Breckenridge area of Colorado – lodging and 2 meals are included. And don’t worry, we’ve built in some free time so you won’t miss out on all the Rockies have to offer. Just $199