“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves, and rest a while.” — Jesus to his leadership team, Mark 6:31
Presbyterians have a history of generosity toward their pastors. Some of that generosity has worked its way into constitutional mandates. The Book of Order stipulates that all installed pastors shall receive an adequate salary, in accordance with local presbytery guidelines, plus a month of vacation and two weeks of study leave each year. Those of us who serve as the church’s pastors are genuinely grateful for these bottom-line requirements. All too easily, however, minimum standards become the finish line rather than the starting point.
A similar thing happens with church member pledging. We are asked to pledge in advance our guaranteed minimum we’ll give to the church, and this becomes our giving goal for the year. I have discovered in my own giving that my pledge, which should be the beginning point of my giving to the church, all too easily becomes my finishing point.
Is it possible that something like that happens with congregations and their pastors’ terms of call? The congregation promises to provide a particular amount of compensation, and adds the mandated month of vacation and two weeks of study leave. Then once terms of call are in place, they become the compensation goal for subsequent years, with costs of living increases sometimes added. For some congregations, adding to their pastor’s financial compensation is impossible, but any church can afford to give the pastor the gift of time away from work for rest and renewal. Nowhere is it set in stone that the constitutional minimums for time “off” are the gold standard. Yet I have known very few pastors who receive anything other than the mandated minimum. It’s a generous minimum, to be sure. Pastors are grateful for its provisions. But is the minimum all that’s ever needed?
Sabbath keeping
The first issue that arises in considering that question is the matter of weekly Sabbath for pastors. I’ve never known it to be included in a pastor’s terms of call, but why not? One thing is absolutely certain — Sunday affords no Sabbath rest for pastors. So which day should the pastor take as a Sabbath? We pastors are very bad at taking days off, even though most pastors I know have occasionally been lectured by their session or personnel committee to be better about taking a day off.
Of course, we all know that some folk in the church really do think that pastors have it pretty cushy, since pastors can take some time “off” most any day they wish! The church I attend is currently without a pastor, and one of our youth said exasperatedly one day, “How hard can it be to find someone to work just one day a week?”
In one of my churches, the session came under some pressure to assure that its pastor was working a real full-time load, so they asked me to keep track of my hours for a couple of months. When the minimum workweek I reported was 65 hours (shame on me), they dropped the question. They wondered whether they were getting 40 hours worth of work for their money; I wondered whether I was getting 65 hours worth of money for my work! The dark side of this was I had to admit I was in some measure trying to prove my worthiness by how long and hard I worked — some Gospel message I was living!! I thought to myself that if I grabbed four hours here or there for a game of golf or a visit to my favorite bookstore, that was sufficient Sabbath. I was wrong. I was nicely stroked for how long and hard I worked — until I nearly burned out.
Along with their affirmations of my work, I needed for those who paid my way to insist that I practice Sabbath. I needed a day away not only from office work, but also from household work. I needed a day of rest with my family. In terms of my parishioners’ lives, I needed not just an equivalent of their Saturday, a day to mow the yard, change the oil, fix the bicycle, etc. — but also of their Sunday. I needed a day off from wage-work, a “Saturday-like” day, to be sure; but I needed also a Sabbath, a “Sunday-like” day to rest, worship, and put down the paint can as well as the laptop. And I did not know it. Only after fifteen years in ministry did I discover a pastoral mentor who told me he always took a day off plus a weekly Sabbath. The fruitfulness of his ministry hasn’t been hindered a bit by his Sabbath-keeping.
One of the great themes of God’s claim on the Hebrew people was a divine insistence on keeping the Sabbath. It is among the most important, and most oft-repeated, of the commands given in God’s law. Why does God keep hammering on this, anyway? You’d think it would be the easiest command of all to obey: Take a day away from the frenzy each week to rest, enjoy family, and give thanks to God — what’s not to love about that? So why is there such persistent resistance to Sabbath-keeping among God’s people?
One key reason is our lack of trust in God — will God provide all we need if we take a day away from earning money? Can we be sure of making our mark on our world if we aren’t constantly at work? The age-old resistance to Sabbath is as strong today as ever. We seek to guarantee our prosperity and validate our importance by staying incessantly busy. Chronic public busy-ness is a sin and sickness to which pastors are extremely vulnerable. As with God’s people of old, the only way many pastors will take Sabbath is if it’s in their “contract.” What would it be like for a congregation to put into its terms of call a stipulation that their pastor take a full day’s Sabbath each week? Short of that, I’m not sure many of us pastors can be trusted to do so on our own. Even if we know we should, we don’t, in large measure because we get such nice strokes if we’re seen making that extra hospital visit, or show up at that committee meeting, and so on.
Just as it was with Israel keeping Sabbath at God’s insistence as their Provider, so it just might be that pastors will be more likely to keep Sabbath if their congregations (their providers of support) insist on it. Sabbath — what a wonderful pastor appreciation gift!
Quarterly Break
I had just moved to a new call, and some eight weeks after arriving I was startled to see my fellow pastor at the nearest Presbyterian Church sitting in the congregation with her family. Was she on vacation in the middle of the school year despite having school-age children? Or was something wrong in her church? I expressed my delight and surprise at their being with us, and she replied that her congregation had put something in her terms of call I’d never heard of: every month with five Sundays, she’d be given the fifth Sunday off from worship leadership, with the understanding that she’d use it to visit other congregations, to learn from them and to be personally re-energized by receiving rather than giving ministry on Sunday morning. Best of all, this was all their idea, not hers.
What a wonderful idea! I wonder if it was one reason a small congregation that sometimes struggles to make ends meet has been able to keep pastors for lengthy pastorates. Perhaps especially for churches that lack resources to pay large salaries, a gift to the pastor of fifth Sundays away from the pulpit might be well worth considering. It costs that particular church virtually nothing, since elders in the church took turns leading worship on those fifth Sundays. But its gains to them in terms of the pastor’s refreshment, and the stirring of her pastoral imagination, were immense.
Sabbatical
In the Levitical law, the Sabbath command applied not only to one day in seven, it also was extended to one year in seven. Specifically, fields that had been fruitful continuously for six years were given the seventh to lie fallow. The year off gave the field a chance to replenish its mineral supply that had been depleted by steady cultivation. Whether or not the farmer understood the scientific basis, the gift of a year off from work insured that the improved fertility of the land in the remaining six would more than make up for it.
With roots going back to this ancient pattern, the academic world has adopted a practice of awarding scholars a “sabbatical” away from their classrooms every seven years, to enhance their scholarly productivity. However rather than this being a rest, it is an opportunity to focus on different work, the kind that results in publication of books and earning promotions. In fact, academic “sabbaticals” are often especially stressful, because so much of a scholar’s career rides on whether or not he or she produces significant publications during sabbaticals.
In recent years, an increasing number of congregations, and a handful of presbyteries, have begun to acknowledge formally the importance of giving pastors sabbaticals — extended periods away from their ordinary labor field, to give both the laborer and the land some much-needed rest. Unlike academic sabbaticals, pastoral sabbaticals are devoted to personal and vocational renewal rather than to special work projects. Several grant-making institutions have begun to fund pastoral sabbaticals, to assist with the expenses of getting away and of securing substitute pastoral leadership during a pastor’s absence.
As with weekly Sabbath, many pastors won’t take the initiative to ask for a sabbatical. It would be one of its best pastor gifts ever if a congregation were to insist on a Sabbatical for its pastor before it becomes a desperate need. The fact is, if we wait until it is critically needed, a sabbatical can become more of an escape than a renewal. Sometimes, in such cases, the sabbatical becomes a window for leaving the congregation where the stress level has risen to impossible heights.
Even without external funding assistance, most pastors can take a real sabbatical of two to four months, as long as the church continues to pay their salaries. Pulpit supply and pastoral care will need to be arranged, and that may include modest extra funding. But for such a limited investment, the returned benefits to a congregation can be enormous. A pastor who is rested and renewed in body and in spirit will offer stronger, longer leadership to the church. However, the main reason to offer the pastor a sabbatical is not because it makes good “business sense” (though it does that, too). Rather, why not offer the sabbatical, not for what the church gets out of it, but simply as a love gift to the pastor? It could be one of the most affirming, vocation-renewing, and life-transforming gifts your pastor has ever received.
Sheldon W. Sorge served as a pastor and on national PC(USA) staff before accepting a call to serve as the associate director of the Louisville Institute, where he coordinates the Institute’s pastor sabbatical program.
