A sabbatical is... an extended time away from the day to day demands of parish ministry during which a pastor may rest and study.
I’m kind of surprised that no one has asked me “why.” Why are congregations encouraged to give their pastor(s) sabbaticals? What does it accomplish or compensate for? I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I think I know the answer, at least part of the answer.
First, it takes a long time to educate a pastor. After a person has received a bachelor’s degree, it takes an additional four years to earn a Master of Divinity degree, 3 years in seminary and one year on internship.
Second, it is expensive to educate a pastor. Tuition, fees and books for the 2010-2011 academic year at Wartburg Seminary will cost a student $17,000. Add $16,000 more for living expenses and you have a grand total of $33,000 per year!
Third, the time and expense of preparing a pastor means that the church has a vested interest in pastors having long ministries. It is simply too expensive to have pastors burn out early in their careers, especially because experienced pastors have a ministry often characterized by a special kind of wisdom and patience.
If I won the lottery so that I didn’t need to work to support myself, I would still want to be a pastor. I honestly feel like I’ve got the best job in the world. Even so, there are aspects to this job which are draining. Three are significant in my opinion.
First, a pastor’s work schedule runs contrary to most people’s work schedules. Most people work something like 40 hours a week, mostly Monday through Friday, mostly between 8 am and 5 pm. Pastors work every Sunday and often on Saturdays. Because members of the church mostly work normal schedules, meetings in the church are usually held on weekends and weekday evenings. And while most people are with their family and friends on weekends and holidays like Easter and Christmas, for pastors these times are often hectic work days.
Of course congregations try to compensate for this time issue; I take Fridays off, for example. But the one thing that is hard to compensate for is that my family and friends all work more normal schedules, so that time away form my children or my extended family is really just time lost.
Second, a pastor’s job requires an extraordinary amount of creative output. In one year a solo-pastor might preach 60 sermons, write 12 newsletter articles and teach 30 classes. This is the creative equivalent of writing a novel every year, something that even the most prolific writers don’t do.
Third and for me, most importantly, pastors carry around a lot of emotional weight. Think about your family and friends and close co-workers for a minute. When one of them is hurt or suffering, you hurt and suffer with them. When one of them is excited and joyful, you are excited and joyful with them. This emotional energy (good and bad) demands some of your energy. Pastors have friends and families and co-workers and parishioners. At Grace Lutheran Church, we have 350 members. The problem is that pastors, like all people, have only so much capacity for emotional weight. Sometimes this extra emotional weight causes a pastor to neglect the emotional needs of his/her family and friends.
So it takes a lot of time and money to train a pastor and there are some hard things about being a pastor. That’s why the church wants healthy pastors to have long ministries. When a congregation gives their pastor a sabbatical, they are being good stewards of a resource that belongs to the whole church.
I love my congregation and appreciate their support of sabbaticals. And I hope to be a healthy pastor with a long ministry.
Peace,
Pastor Bernau
