Wait for it...

The first question is not “What is a sabbatical?” That might be the most frequently asked question in a culture where sabbatical has been up until very recently the province of academia. But it isn’t the first question. The first question is almost always: “Why sabbatical?”

And it’s a good and honest question. People just don’t get a sabbatical. Although most companies have some kind of vacation policy, an increasing number of people don’t even take the vacation time they are offered. Whether there is an implicit penalty to be paid for time out of the office, or whether one’s internal hard drive doesn’t allow for down time in the midst of the pursuit of the greater good (whatever that might be), or whether vacation time has become a priceless commodity to be hoarded against the inevitable rainy day, what used to be a solid two weeks off sometime in August has become a day here or there at best.

Remember that bumper sticker “Jesus is coming. Look busy.” Exactly. Wouldn’t want to be caught napping when the Lord comes in glory riding on the clouds.  And the secular version is every bit as insidious. Don’t just stand there, we are told. Do something. And so we do something. And then we do something else. And then we keep right on doing…something. Wouldn’t want anyone to think that we are doing nothing at all when there is so much that needs to be done.

A pastor’s life is like that. There are tremendous, non-stop demands on her time. And they are scattershot demands, all over the place. It’s not unusual to go from a prayer breakfast to a staff meeting to bible study to a hospice visit to a vigil at city hall to an adult seminar to a meeting of the board of trustees. And that’s Monday.

Woe is me, right? So busy, so burdened, so booked up, so consequential, so essential. Crocodile tears abound. Let me just get done with this one little thing and we’ll do lunch, say, a month from now?

Why sabbatical? Because sabbatical says no. To all of this pretension to importance and indispensability, sabbatical says no. Knock it off. Don’t just do something; stand there for a while instead. The sun will rise. The world will turn. Jesus will come again. And again. And again. And again—as he does every day. The great blessing of sabbatical's "no" is the time and the space to remember that.

Not just goofin' around

A pastor’s sabbatical is not the same thing as a pastor’s vacation. Folks often mistake one for the other, because both tend to involve travel and a lot of goofing around.

I should own that for myself.

I do a lot of goofing around on my vacations and I have great hope that my upcoming sabbatical time (September 2017 – November 2017) will include abundant goofing around. Indeed, one of the strong sabbatical proposal suggestions of the Lilly Foundation Clergy Renewal folks is that the proposed sabbatical not be so filled with meaningful events that the pastor returns from sabbatical more tired than when she left.

Nevertheless, sabbatical is not vacation. I prepare for my vacation as I would for my own death. All the bulletins are done way in advance, accomplished worship leaders lined up, and pulpit supply/emergency coverage for every eventuality is arranged. Every homebound member is visited one last time (see what I did there)—every pastoral care issue is resolved. All the bases are covered. And all of this is in aid of the goal that the life of the congregation proceeds in my absence without a perceptible blip. The hope in my pastoral heart is that the congregation won’t even notice I’m gone.

A good sabbatical, on the other hand, is designed with exactly the opposite goal in mind.

A productive pastor’s sabbatical is an intentional time and space for the congregation to notice that their pastor is not present and to ponder deeply what that absence means for them and the life of their fellowship. Both in the run-up to the beginning of the sabbatical time and during the months of the pastor’s absence, the congregation is involved in a process of renewal, the exploration and development of their gifts for ministry to one another and of their skills for leadership and program development and of their capacity to enjoy and celebrate one another without pastoral mediation.

My sabbatical committee put it like this:

Connecting with God and each other is very important to all of us; as one member put it, it is part of the DNA of this church family. We need to work at getting to know each other more fully, connecting lives together in healing and purpose. Our pastor’s renewal project is a great opportunity for us to strengthen our relationships with each other and with God.

We will take the time and the effort to work on creating a small group ministry structure within our congregation, which will not only weave a stronger web of relationship but will also develop new ministry leaders. We will encourage and support intentional prayer for each other and for our community. We will create prayer groups and other small fellowship groups, both face-to-face and virtual, that will bring together people who might not otherwise come together on their own…

The sabbatical will be a tandem new experience, a first for both our pastor and our congregation. It will be the first time that we will experience the absence of our pastor for a significant length of time. As she renews and refreshes her sense of vocation during the sabbatical, we will strengthen our relationship with God and each other, taking the opportunity to deepen these relationships in intimate and powerful ways.

So I resolve NOT to prepare for sabbatical as I would for my death. Not gonna lie. That isn’t going to be easy. And chaos may, almost certainly will, ensue.

But I believe that this process of renewal and regeneration for both the congregation and for me involves living with chaos and uncertainty for a little bit no matter how uncomfortable it is, and maybe even celebrating that discomfort as evidence of the high wind of the Holy Spirit blowing through us all. And I am convinced that, in this case, God will be in the whirlwind.

Ballycotton and the Blackbird Pub

Eugene Peterson writes that “Three pastoral acts are basic, so critical, that they determine the shape of everything else. The acts are praying, reading Scripture, and giving spiritual direction….[these acts] are quiet…and they constitute acts of attention.”(1) 

Ballycotton Cliff Walk

These are acts of relationship, requiring silence and space that one might attend to what God is doing in Scripture, in self, and in the people of the church and the community. But there is very little room for quiet and attention to relationship in my daily work with the people of the Lawrence Road Church community. This is a very active missional community, accustomed to its pastor being present and active in the leadership of its social justice, education, pastoral care, and fellowship ministries. Beginning my 15th year alongside my congregation, I know that my relationships with them and with my family, my colleagues, and my God require a time of intentional care and feeding. 

As a child, I would walk into the fields above my home and look out over the wide expanses to the Pacific Ocean below, and know somehow that in the wind and the waves and the silence was soul food that I needed, truly my help that comes from the Lord. When I consider what makes my heart sing, I know it is this, the quiet to attend to what God is doing in me and around me and the wide open space to nurture my relationships with family and friends and recover a sense of myself as one who walks before the Lord in the land of the living. 

For me, renewal is the time to read and to study and to write, to worship with others in the pew, to explore the spiritual practices of contemplative Christian faith, to enjoy my family and my God not because it is my job to do so but because it is my joy. 

Yesterday I made reservations for the first leg of my sabbatical travel. Courtesy of the Clergy Renewal Project of the Indianapolis-based Lilly Foundation, the fam and I are going to Ireland in late September to walk the Ballycotton Cliff Walk, to hunt seashells on the beach with the kiddos, to sit in the seat of giants. And you can be sure that someplace in there, I will hoist a pint at the Blackbird to the Lilly folk for the gift of space and time and joy.

(1)Eugene H. Peterson. Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmanns Publishing Co., 1993) 3.