Sabbaticals are good and necessary, but...

...it's not always easy for clergy to access them.

From time to time I make points from one of my Substack articles into a series of social media images. I recently did that with this piece about sabbaticals. One of the graphics in particular generated some conversation:

Some of the respondents celebrated the generosity of churches that offer sabbaticals more often. Others named legitimate beefs with the sabbatical policies they are operating under, if there is even a policy in place in their congregations/judicatories/denominations. I know many clergy share these concerns, so I have named some of them below along with thoughts about what to try:

There’s no sabbatical policy in my church/judicatory, and I don’t have a sabbatical written into my terms of call. A sabbatical for clergy might be a new concept for your congregation, so your members may need some educating about what one is, why it is good for the pastor and the congregation, and how it is different from a sabbatical in the academic world (i.e., there’s no expectation of a work product). You don’t have to do all the educating, though, and you certainly don’t have to do all the advocating. Solicit the assistance of your judicatory leader, your pastoral relations team, or a clergy colleague what has benefitted from a sabbatical.

I’ve never stayed a church long enough to get a sabbatical. For a long time sabbaticals - in the congregations and denominations that offer them - have been on a lengthy timeframe such as every 7 or 10 years. That’s a problem because 1) the minister is nearing burnout by year 7 and 2) the average tenure of a pastor is roughly 5 years. (In most denominations, the sabbatical clock starts over when the clergyperson goes to a new ministry setting.) Here’s where judicatory leaders can help: push for pastors to get sabbaticals based on overall years of service, not just time in a particular congregation. Ministers can also help the church think beyond the standard. Instead of 3 months of sabbatical every 7 years, maybe it’s 1 month every other year or 2 months every 4 years. Regardless, all of us need to be working toward normalizing a shorter time between sabbaticals.

There’s no money to fund my sabbatical. The unicorn grant is out there, and it goes by the name of the Lilly Endowment Clergy Renewal Program. You don’t have to get tens of thousands in grant money to have a sabbatical, though. You can get away more inexpensively, supported by smaller funding programs (check with your judicatory and denomination and parachurch organizations), by retreat centers that offer greatly-reduced rates to clergy, or by going to stay with family or friends. Your church can invite laypeople to share their gifts in worship while you’re gone, and I would be willing to bet that your judicatory leader would fill in for you at the Lord’s table at least once if your theology and polity require clergy to offer communion and that your clergy colleagues would be on call for pastoral care emergencies.

I am bi-vocational, so even if I get a sabbatical from my church position, I still have my other job to do. This is a difficult reality to resolve. I wonder what flexibility your other employer might afford you if you can’t get time off from that role, such as allowing you to frontload your weeks so that you have more spacious latter parts to the week, shifting your focus so that you are doing something different from your typical work, or allowing you to take your paid time off in bulk to align with your sabbatical. Or maybe there simply can be more intentionality in living into a new rhythm during sabbatical, even if some of your commitments cannot be moved.

Sabbaticals are really important for allowing ministers to recharge and for reminding the church of who it is distinct from the being and doing of the pastor. But access to sabbaticals is also a justice and equity issue. As one commenter pointed out in response to my Facebook post, the people who are most likely to serve small churches (and thus least likely to have resources or a precedent for sabbaticals) are women and people of color. This disparity is one we must fix for the sake of individuals and the body of Christ as a whole.