171- Sabbatical Toolkit (Why When and How)- with Karl Vaters and Sean Nemecek

This is a podcast done by Karl Vaters (author, Small Church Essentials) and Sean Nemecek, a pastor who ministers to pastors to help keep them vitalized and fruitful.

The name of the podcast is The Church Lobby, Conversations on Faith and Ministry. 

We asked permission to play this episode in its entirety. I think you'll find it to be extremely helpful and practical, dealing with the subject of pastoral sabbaticals. The Why, When, and How. 

Such a need in today's pastoral and church climate, where pastors are commonly becoming burned out and unhealthy, largely due to the demand upon them in this impossible calling (impossible apart from God's enabling help). 

For Poimen Ministries, its staff, ministries, and focus, go to poimenministries.com. To contact Poimen Ministries, email us at strongerpastors@gmail.com. May the Lord revive His work in the midst of these years!

Transcript

171- Sabbatical Toolkit (Why When and How)- with Karl Vaters and Sean Nemecek

Welcome to Strength for Today's Pastor, conversations with current senior pastors and leaders which will strengthen and help you in your pastoral ministry. And now, here's your host, Bill Holdridge of Hoyman Ministries. Welcome to Podcast 171.

Today we're airing an interview between two leadership development pastors, I'm going to call them experts, who are talking about pastoral sabbaticals. Carl Vaters is interviewing Sean Nemechek on his own podcast network, which he calls the Church Lobby. I listened to this interview a couple weeks ago, and having been part of several sabbatical support efforts myself in my role with Hoyman Ministries, I thought, I can't say it any better than these men.

I can't say it any more completely or any clearer than these two fine leaders have done, so I had an idea. I wrote to Carl Vaters and I asked if I could include his sabbatical podcast wholesale into Strength for Today's Pastor, thinking that we probably have a little bit different listening audience. Anyway, he checked with his guest and the answer was yes, so I'm excited because I want to be a part of anything that can help pastors avoid burnout and can strengthen them immensely for years of future service.

Sabbaticals. Keep listening to learn what they're for, how they can be added to any church's efforts to support the ones that bless and equip them. So here we go.

Well, Sean, welcome back to the Church Lobby. It's good to have you here again. Thanks, Carl.

It's great to be back. You and I have had several conversations. We've had some of them in person.

I've been on your podcast. You've been on my podcast. We're all up in each other's business here, but I believe when you were on the Church Lobby last time, we were talking about your very, very good book that was, in fact, nominated for some awards last year.

All of a sudden, the title of it is escaping me. Tell me again. The Weary Leader's Guide to Burnout.

There we go. I had healthy in my head and it was weary. The Weary Leader's Guide to Burnout, which I strongly endorsed and, in fact, listed as one of my top books of 2023.

Well-deserved for that. But even, I believe, in that, we also talked a little bit about sabbatical because you've done a lot of work on that, and you had mentioned that you were working on, you and Pastor in Residence Ministries were working on a clergy sabbatical toolkit, and that is now complete and ready for people to get. So I wanted to talk about that because there have been so many questions that I've had since I took my sabbatical, first one in 40 years last year.

I'm a little late to the party on this, but so many questions about it, and your stuff on it was so helpful to me when I took mine, and now that the toolkit is done, I really want people to know about it and to be able to access it. So I just want to walk through, because you sent me an outline of the toolkit. I know most of what's in it, even though I haven't read it yet, because as we were talking, it isn't physically out yet.

By the time anybody's listening to this, it will be ready for them to order. But I do know most of the work that's in there. So I want to walk through some questions that I think people might have, starting with, I think, the simplest and most basic one of all, which is, okay, what is a sabbatical? Because I think different people have different ideas about what sabbatical is.

Yeah, well, let me just start by saying why I created this toolkit, because so many churches and church leaders really have misunderstandings around the idea of sabbatical. When I proposed sabbatical to my board years ago, they laughed because they didn't really understand it. They just thought I was asking for time off like you might experience in an academic setting.

This is not what we're talking about. A sabbatical is really time away from the work of ministry to focus on relationship with God, to experience God and His good gifts, and to seek His will for the next season in ministry. There's a lot of other things that can happen during a sabbatical, but at its heart, it's really part of a rhythm of healthy work and rest breaks that we encourage every few years to make sure that we aren't on that constant go that can kind of drive us away from self-care and from seeking God, to pause and really check in with God on a deep, deep level.

Yeah, as you mentioned, people are often aware of what an academic sabbatical looks like and why people do that. And most vocations don't require sabbatical. They don't—you know, the average person who works a nine-to-five, sure, they'd love to have a few months off, but sabbatical doesn't really suit their vocation.

What is it about the vocation of pastoring that is particularly needful for something like sabbatical? Why does it fit pastor so well? Well, I think part of the reason we really encourage it for pastors is because pastors carry a very heavy weight of responsibility. They also carry the weight of care for people and the grief that comes along with that. And sometimes it's necessary to just take a break, to get away from the work so that we can rest and from that rest, learn how to heal and learn how to re-approach ministry in a healthier way.

Because the demands around us can pull us into that tyranny of the urgent that gets us off mission. And so taking time to rest, to return, to be re-centered in God can really help us refocus for a healthier way of approaching ministry and a healthier focus for our congregation in the long term. So I'm hearing two essential elements here, and if there are others that I'm missing, let me know.

The two essential elements I'm hearing here are one, there is an emotional, psychic, and spiritual toll that pastors bear that most nine to five workers don't bear. They go to work, they deal with the issues at work, they come home, they might be mad at their boss or at their customers, but they're basically able to lay it aside until they have to clock back in again. They don't carry that toll with them.

Pastors do, counselors do, people in medical, you know, EMTs and first responders. There's such a weight to the crisis management that is often a part of that, that weighs on us in a way we don't expect. And secondly, so the emotional weight is there, and secondly, as I've already implied, it's 24-7.

You can leave the church, and years ago you used to be able to leave the church, and when you did, you left your phone behind. Today you don't even get to leave your phone behind, but you're never not the pastor. There's never a time when you clock out from being a pastor, even when you're at home with your family.

Hopefully you can operate as husband, wife, daddy, mommy at home, separate from your pastor's life, but you still don't ever cease from being the pastor. So it's the emotional burden, and it's the constancy of the position that makes the need for a full breakaway even more necessary. Am I describing it accurately? And if so, is there any other pieces that I might be missing? Yeah, I think your description is accurate, but there's one thing I would correct.

I think sabbaticals are for everybody. An increase in just marketplace sabbaticals, the number of companies that are recognizing the good that it provides for their employees at all levels is increasing. And specifically since the pandemic, they've jumped quite a bit.

It's somewhere around 30% of companies now offer some sort of sabbatical leave. Really? I wasn't aware of that. Sometimes it's not paid, but quite often it's just for the high-level executives who kind of carry that same weight of responsibility that pastors feel for the organization.

But quite often it's for everybody. And they're finding that sabbaticals increase productivity, they increase the ability for people to stay in one job for a long period of time and to be promoted. So it's not just for pastors, which I think is really good, because the idea of sabbatical comes from Leviticus 25, the Sabbath year.

That's what the word sabbatical means, it's just Sabbath year. And that was for everybody in Israel. And so the idea that sabbaticals are growing beyond just ministry and academic circles and helping professions is really encouraging to me.

Oh, I like that. That makes sense. I think for a lot of people, the sabbatical feels like a thing you do when things get difficult or when the weight gets really heavy.

And there may be a lot of pastors out there who are going, I don't feel the weight you're talking about. I feel real joy in pastoring. I think it's wonderful.

I want to keep doing it. I don't want to step away from it. Is the sabbatical just for the time of crisis or the time when the weight gets too heavy, or should it be a part of a regular, healthy life that you should take before you feel the need for it? Yeah, we consider it a part of a regular, healthy rhythm of work and rest.

It should happen every five to seven years. We allow a little bit of leeway in that time frame because sometimes some pastors experience particularly heavy seasons where they need a break a little earlier. Other times it can go, you know, just the regular seven years would be a healthy pattern.

I tell people that if you wait to take a sabbatical until you need it, it's too late. Because the sabbatical is designed to help you stay connected with God and invest in the future of ministry. If you start to feel exhausted and then take a sabbatical, you're going to have too much to deal with in the few months that you might be on sabbatical.

We encourage every five to seven years. I mean, that's the way with all breaks. If you wait to take a day off until you feel like you really need a day off, it's too late.

If you wait to take a vacation until you feel overdue for a vacation, it's too late. And sabbatical is the same thing. Yeah, there's a rhythm to this that if we pre-plan it, then my guess is if you pre-plan it and you get there at a correct amount of time rather than waiting too long, you're also going to get more value out of it.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Think of it as exercise.

If you exercise only when you absolutely need it, it's not going to work very well, right? Yeah, yeah. But if it's part of your regular rhythm of maintaining health, you're going to find great benefit from it. The sabbatical is really designed to be that type of thing.

It's designed to remind us that we are not in control, that God is in control, and we're dependent on Him and to go to Him regularly. The idea that we can wait to take a sabbatical until we need it is really kind of dangerous. Yeah, yeah.

Part of what I love about the idea that you're putting out a toolkit is I think it's fairly easy for us to find books, articles, podcasts about what we've just been talking about, the philosophical basis behind the sabbatical. I think it's much harder to find practical tools about, okay, help me actually do this. Let's move from the philosophical basis to it to some of those practical tools.

First of all, is there an ideal length or is there a set of different lengths for different situations? How does that work for how long a sabbatical should be? We recommend a sabbatical be about four months in length for a pastor. Three to four months is usually the sweet spot, but I always say some sabbatical is better than no sabbatical. So I've seen people take six weeks.

That's more like an extended vacation. Three to four month time period is really healthy because it takes a while for pastors to unplug, to really enter rest. There's time in there where they can spend time with family.

And then usually about the last half of the sabbatical is spent in dealing with some of the wounds that may have come up from ministry and healing from those, kind of addressing or assessing the nature of ministry, what drains you, what energizes you, and refocusing how you approach your work so that when you go back in, you've just got a much healthier approach. This can't be done in just a few weeks. The level of reflection and prayer and the time with God that's necessary to do that work really does take months to do.

On top of that, just the level of rest that's needed for pastors is so important. Most of them will say to me, I didn't know how tired I was. And it's only after they realize that and they realize what true rest feels like, then they start learning from that rest, how much healthier they are, how much more productive they can be, and start bringing those lessons back into ministry.

The extended time is necessary for that. Tom Hanks Yeah, I can resonate with everything you're saying. First of all, I took 40 years to take my first sabbatical, so I was a little overdue.

And when I took it, I didn't do it because I was feeling like I was in a place of crisis. Things were good. Things were positive.

Things were moving forward. But I saw this gap in my travel calendar and thought, you know what? I haven't done a sabbatical before. I keep hearing from everybody, including Sean, that I should do one.

Let's do this and see what happens. But I could only find, I think, seven or eight weeks, which was about half of the time you're recommending. And I can absolutely testify it wasn't enough.

By the time I felt like I was on it, it was time to prep for getting out of it. Ben Stevens Yeah. And it's amazing how long it takes pastors to really disconnect and to find that baseline of rest.

And honestly, I think it would take all of us a fair amount of time to do that. Carl Tidemann Yeah. Okay.

So, again, on a practical basis, if people are considering a sabbatical, obviously one of the first things people are going to do is look for how do we clear the calendar for that amount of time. But after they are able to clear a spot on the calendar, what are some of the first steps that they should begin to take to start to prepare for a sabbatical? Ben Stevens I think often pastors recognize the need for sabbatical before their church boards do, before their leadership teams do. And sometimes that becomes just an impossible barrier to cross.

So I think the first step is to make sure everybody's on board, that they understand what a sabbatical is, that they call somebody like me to come in and help address the objections, the concerns of the church board, because a lot of them will hear the word sabbatical, and immediately they'll be thinking of why we can't do that, and they can't see why this would be good for the church and why it's worth it. So somebody like me could come in and help them see those things. I think that's where it starts, because once everybody's on the same page, then you can start thinking about moving forward and planning.

So let's get into some of that. What are some of the most common objections that we're going to hear from our church leadership team, and how do we address some of those as they come up? So, yeah, there's all different objections that come up. One of the most common ones is, we can't afford it.

And that's just really takes some creativity for some people to recognize how to afford it. But there's grants out there. There's all different ways of financing a sabbatical.

Another objection is, I don't get a sabbatical. Why should you? That's the first one that always comes to mind for me. Why would a roomful of people who never could ever get a sabbatical think that they're going to grant one to us? And my first response to that is, you probably should get a sabbatical too.

I wish you could. But let's talk about why this will be good for the church. We talk about it in the way that it's an investment in the long-term ministry of the pastor and the health of the church, because long-term ministries are much more effective for churches than many short-term ministries.

And so most pastors right around year 5 and 10 and 15 find some difficulties in ministry. Those are the years when people are most likely to leave a church. If you can, rather than leave to get away from the problems and refresh yourself in a new setting, if you can take a few months away and stay where you're at, you can take the church to the next level.

So those are just a couple of objections that we see. I think how we approach the objections is more important than what to say. Carl, okay, walk us through that.

Carl Objections are usually people's anxiety response. There's some sort of fear that they're experiencing. And if you can be curious about that fear and what's going on in them, it will show you the way to answer those objections.

And so rather than getting defensive or coming up with a whole bunch of responses, it's actually more important to move closer to that person with curiosity and deeper relationship, because that's going to be the best way to answer objections. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. As a pastor, one of the things that I came too late to discover was how often the pushback we received, the objections we hear, are rooted in fear.

Almost all the time, it's rooted in fear. Like, it's hard for me to remember in 40 years of ministry a major objection that wasn't rooted in fear. Yeah, and many times those things aren't really about you.

They're about what's going on in that person's life outside of the church. It just surfaces in the church, and so that curiosity can be incredibly helpful. Okay, what about the fear in the pastor's heart? The fear of the pastor of, if I leave for three to four months and they discover they can do this without me, that's not going to be good for me.

Or the other one is, if I leave for three to four months, it'll fall apart. They're opposite sides of the same coin. They can't do this without me, or what if they discover they can do it without me? How do we address those fear in the pastor's heart? Yeah, we've all heard horror stories of sabbaticals that went wrong.

Pastor found another church and came back from sabbatical to announce that he's leaving, or the church fires the pastor when he returns because they found another pastor. So one of the things we do in this toolkit is help churches develop a policy and an agreement between the church and the pastor to ensure that for at least a year beyond the sabbatical, they'll both stay engaged in this ministry, and that the pastor won't go looking for another church. The church won't go looking for another pastor.

Those things are off the table during the sabbatical time. Just having that agreement in writing actually helps bring a lot of that fear down. The fear that things are going to fall apart, sometimes they do, but that's usually a lack of preparation.

What this toolkit is designed to do is help both the church and the pastor do the advanced preparation they need so that things can go relatively smoothly. But when they don't, that reveals needs within the church, areas for growth, and that can be a very good thing for the church overall. Trevor Burrus Yeah, absolutely.

This is reminding me of the chapter in my book, Decising the Church, entitled Discipleship Fixes Everything. If this is handled correctly, then it can force us into a place of discipling leaders that we otherwise might not see the need for. And if the leadership can learn to manage the church, to lead the church, and to help it actually become healthy as the pastor's getting healthy during sabbatical, those are transferable tools that can continue to grow and to develop and make the church stronger even after the pastor comes back from sabbatical.

How wonderful it is would be for a pastor to come back healthier to a church that's healthier at the end of sabbatical. And if people follow the stuff you're laying out here, that's not just possible. I think that's likely, isn't it? David Yeah, absolutely.

Almost every pastor that I've talked with afterwards has said, this has been really good for my leadership team because they've had to step into some of my role. They understand me better. They're actually better leaders because of it.

And so the long-term gains for the whole church are really great. When you create a leadership vacuum, somebody has to step in, and that stretches them, that grows them. And you can kind of see that at all different levels in the church.

It also helps them realize sometimes we're doing ministries that we just don't need to be doing. We're just doing them for the sake of doing them, you know? And so when you have more limited leadership, you have to be careful about what's important and what's not. And sometimes you let some of these ministries go by the wayside for a few months and realize these aren't really doing anything.

We never really needed these in the first place, and it makes it easier to let go or to kind of kill the golden calf that the church may be hanging on to. Carl I never thought about that. That makes a lot of sense.

It reminds me of the advice I was giving to a lot of pastors as we were just beginning to come out of pandemic for that first year or two. And I'd tell pastors, you know all those programs you had to stop doing during pandemic? Don't be quick to put them all back on the schedule. Assess each one of them and ask yourself, do we really want to do this? Because not starting it after it's already stopped is much easier than stopping it after you start it again.

So this is, again, that opportunity that when we talk about moving churches forward and Maybe the hardest thing for a church is definitely not starting a new program. That's got all kinds of excitement built into it. But the hardest thing is usually stopping a once-loved program that has ceased to have value anymore.

And so if you have to suspend it for a time while you're on sabbatical, that's a great time to consider just not starting it back up again. Go with that inertia before the momentum of restarting it again picks up again. Makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. Now, you mentioned earlier the financial considerations, and let's walk through some of that. Because I think, first of all, what are some of the primary financial considerations that come up? Is it that the pastor isn't going to get paid, and so the pastor needs to find alternate pay? Or is it that the church is going to have to pay somebody to come in and do what the pastor was doing, and so the church is going to need additional finances, a combination of that or something else? So the financial considerations really depend on the nature of the sabbatical that's being taken.

We really strongly encourage churches to continue paying their pastor their regular income, mostly because a lot of pastors are already at a fairly low rate of pay, and they would refuse to take a sabbatical if they didn't have that income. Plus, sabbatical is not avoiding work. It's a part of your calling and your vocation.

Correct. So the lack of punching in the clock doesn't mean you're not the pastor for those four months. It's all a part of pastoring well.

So it makes sense that you're paid for this, which is part of your work. Yeah. That's right.

And on top of that, the expenses don't have to be great, although sometimes they are. There are grants available that can allow a pastor to have a wonderful sabbatical and pay the church to bring somebody in and help out. Most churches won't get those grants, though.

So you have to be creative. Having some advanced planning is really the key. Do we want to raise funds for this? Do we want to budget funds and have so much money set aside each year so that every seven years we can do this? That's great.

I've seen churches do this for zero extra dollars. The pastor funds their own sabbatical plans, their trips, whatever they're going to do, or they even stay home for their sabbatical. And the church uses the gifts within the church of the elders to fill the pulpit, or maybe they change the way things are going.

They find a volunteer retired minister to come in for the time. It's really just a lack of creativity that says we can't afford this. So it's really possible to have just about any type of sabbatical plan as long as you work ahead of time and you figure out some creative ways to fund this.

And we talk about those different creative ways in the toolkit. So far, I think we've both—at least I know I have been operating under the assumption of full-time pastoring. But we know, of course, that there's a whole lot of pastors out there who are bi-vocational or co-vocational.

That is, they're choosing to do additional secular work in addition to church work. So how does this change for that? First of all, I would assume you recommend leaving both positions, not just keeping your secular job while you're taking a break from the pastorate, or maybe you don't. And if they do that, how do you then address the secular employment and the loss of finances that come with that? Yeah, it really depends on the type of work that they're doing.

If it's a part-time job that they can leave for a little while and maybe find a different part-time job later on, then yeah, you can step away from both. But some pastors, they're full-time in their marketplace job, especially a co-vocational pastor who loves that work. That can be hard.

So we encourage a couple different options. One might be to go talk to your marketplace job and just explain to them what a sabbatical is and how it's being used in the marketplace, and see if they would be willing to grant you a leave of absence or even a paid sabbatical during that time. Some might.

Some may already have those things in place. For others, it might mean extending the length of the sabbatical and just focusing on the weekends as the time for rest. They're working during the week or whatever their schedule is, and then having those times off and extending it from four months to six months, say, so that they can have that extended time and time for reflection, but still stay in their marketplace job.

Carl, so there is value if you can't get away from your marketplace job. There's still value in taking the sabbatical from the pastoral ministry, even if you still do your marketplace job. Yeah, it's not ideal, okay? But sometimes you just have no other options, and so figuring out the way to make this work can be really beneficial for the pastor in the long term.

Okay, that's great. Let's move along into something we've already begun to touch on, and that is somebody coming in or the church caring for itself. What are some of the principles we need to be considering about how the congregation is going to be cared for while the pastor is away? Where do we start on that? Some of this work really starts several months before the sabbatical, identifying people who we can delegate some of the care work to.

Sometimes the elders will just step in and take over. Other times we may need to bring in, like I said, a retired pastor, like an interim pastor for just that period of time. Some of that may have extra expense that needs to be budgeted for.

Other times the churches may just decide, we're going to pull back on a few things to allow people to help out in other areas, and everybody just steps up to help with the care. Identifying what things within the pastor's job description can just be suspended for a few months. We don't need to do this at all.

Long-range planning. You don't want to be doing that while the pastor's on sabbatical. So that's one of those things that would be suspended.

So figuring out just how are we going to take the gifts that we already have in the church and use them during this time in a slightly different way than we've been using? Or who has a gift that can step into this role that may be different and may be more than they've been used to, and find some development through that. So that involves some advanced training, some helping with people. And I usually say to pastors, you want to have at least two weeks before your sabbatical where you really aren't doing much of anything other than helping the people who are stepping into those roles feel comfortable in answering their questions, because they need that as much as you do.

Yeah, I mean, we talked earlier about how if we do this well, it's actually a part of discipling the congregation. It also sounds like if we do this well, it also strengthens our own planning muscles that we will then be able to use later. If you can plan well enough to take a three to four-month sabbatical, then why not keep that kind of advanced planning mode going when you come back from sabbatical? Which we'll get to at the end before the lightning round of some long-term adjustments afterwards.

I'm seeing benefits now that I didn't even experience in my sabbatical, partly because it was the first time I did it, partly because it was so short, and partly because by the time I took my sabbatical, I was no longer the lead pastor. So some of the challenges to the church weren't the same anymore. But I did discover when I was on my sabbatical, there were a handful of unexpected things.

And I know you deal with some unexpected things in the toolkit. I experienced the first week, I took two naps a day. Now, I'm pro-nap.

Any day I can get a nap in is a good day, and I get them in every day that I can. Unless I'm traveling or something else like that, a short nap is a part of my functioning day. It gives me a second run with some energy and some brain cells still functioning after the nap.

It's like I get two starts to the day. I love a nap. But two naps in the day.

I mean, that happened almost every day during the first week. I was shocked at how tired I was. And then second week, I got sick.

And in talking with you afterward, you were like, yeah, that's about it. Yep. So what other—let's talk about that.

There's unexpected things that happen, and give me an example of one kind of unexpected thing that happens during sabbatical. Yeah, well, like you experience, a lot of pastors experience that. They've been running on adrenaline, and when they come off that adrenaline crash, they get sick.

Another thing that happens is that a lot of pastors, when they're dealing with grief and frustrations in ministry, they kind of stuff those down because they're attending to everyone else and never come back around to dealing with their own grief. And when they have the space to rest, some of that stuff begins to surface. And it can look a little scary.

It can show up as anger, depression, or sadness, but a sabbatical actually gives them the space in the safe presence of God to start to process some of those things in a healing and helpful way, and to learn how to process those things in the future in real time rather than storing them all up. Yeah, and it sounds to me, obviously, that's not just going to be challenging for the pastor, but it's going to be challenging for the pastor's spouse and family when all of a sudden there's this grief that's pouring out or other things that are coming out in ways, like you said, that might even come across as angry. So let's talk about that for a moment.

What are some steps that the pastor's family can take to, one, support the pastor in this, but also to be prepared for some unexpected difficulties that might pop up? Yeah, I think one of the great things that sabbatical provides is time alone with family, where we can reconnect. A lot of times pastors' families feel neglected. That reconnection actually helps provide the safe space for them to deal with grief.

Just being together and loving each other well and spending quality time together—not busy time, but good relational time together—is actually one of the healthiest things that we can do to create the space to deal with grief, because we feel safe, we feel known, we feel connected, and the pastor's family really provides a lot of that. And I presume in this situation, if the pastor's spouse is working, which is probably the case in most situations, that if the pastor's spouse can take some time or the entire sabbatical off as well, that's probably recommended, I would imagine? Yeah, that's another one of the things we address in the toolkit in kind of the miscellaneous section, the special considerations at the end. That's one of the questions we come across.

How much will my spouse be involved in the sabbatical? And it's different from family to family and couple to couple. Some will take a leave of absence from their work. Others will take a couple weeks for vacation.

Some won't want to be involved at all. It really depends on the couple and where they're at and what stage of life they're in. If you have little kids at home, that adds a whole other layer of complexity to taking a sabbatical.

And we talk a little bit about that as well. Okay. I know there are other things that most of us would not expect that would come up during sabbatical that you've seen in the folks that you've talked to.

So one of the things I want to do is we're going to do some bonus material, five to 10 minutes, and I want to talk to you in that bonus material about more of these unexpected things, because I think understanding that they might come really helps us to prepare for them. So let's talk about some of the other unexpected things that can come up during sabbatical. So for listeners, you can get all of the bonus content from Sean and from any of my other guests.

It's really simple. If you become a supporter or if you become a subscriber to the free newsletter, you get a link every single week in the newsletter to get all of the bonus material. Just go to carlvaders.com support.

If you want to become a monthly supporter of this ministry and you'll get all of the bonus material or for free, go to carlvaders.com subscribe. You will get the free weekly newsletter that comes every single Friday. It contains all of the podcasts, all the articles, any news about what this ministry is doing, and it always contains the link to get the bonus material that is only available to those who subscribe or support.

So carlvaders.com support or carlvaders.com subscribe. And we will talk about some of the other unexpected things that might happen on a sabbatical with Sean about that. But before we get to the lightning round, I do want to go through a couple more things with you, Sean.

One of them is, okay, we've talked about going into sabbatical. We've talked about the stuff that happens during sabbatical, but there is a re-entry process. Just like we shouldn't, you mentioned it earlier, for the two weeks before we go on sabbatical, you should be doing very, very little because going to a full stop immediately is unhealthy and going into a full schedule when you come back out of again may even be more unhealthy.

So what are some of the things we need to do to be ready for re-entry into quote unquote real world after sabbatical? Yeah, well, just like astronauts re-entering our Earth's atmosphere, re-entering into the atmosphere of ministry creates some friction. It's normal for there to be some bumps along the way. So we start by recommending you take about two weeks to kind of ease back into ministry.

Don't preach during those first couple of weeks. Spend time connecting with people relationally, telling them what's happened on your sabbatical, what's been good for you, and listening to them, what's happened while you've been away, what's been going on in their lives. Because during sabbatical, you're going to have no contact with the church, hopefully.

This is going to be an important time to just reconnect. I always tell church boards, there's going to be some things that pop up, little fires that need to be put out. Don't dump them all on your pastor the day he gets back or she gets back.

What we want you to do is think about triaging those things, prioritize them, and spread them out over the first two, three months that the pastor is back, and deal with them slowly and deal with them together so that the pastor isn't overwhelmed. Because you can undo all the good rest that your pastor's had just by dumping those things on him right away. So it's really about just connecting relationally, making sure we're all on the same page again, listening to the pastor and what changes God has brought about in their life, and listening to the church, and what's been happening while you're gone, and then kind of bringing that all back together slowly.

So we plan for it, we go into it, we go through it, we come out of it properly, and then we go right back to doing business as usual. Or, of course, not, because the point of sabbatical isn't just to get the break and get the rest so that you can keep doing what you've already been doing. It is so that you can grow in all of your leadership skills and all of your pastoring calling so that you can be a better pastor, and you can be a healthier pastor, and you can pastor a healthier church.

So what are some long-term adjustments that you have seen people make coming out of sabbatical that helps in longevity? This is one of the key things that, because of my age partially, but also because of the conversations I'm having with a lot of other pastors, I don't think we have in our society enough of an appreciation for the skills that are necessary to build long-term sustainability in our vocation. And sabbatical, to me, is one of those missing elements. I think one of the greatest values for me in sabbatical is to help us with long-term sustainability.

So what are some of those adjustments we'll see ourselves making when we come out of sabbatical in a healthy way? One of the things I talk about in the toolkit is the value of creating a rule of life while you're on sabbatical. A rule of life is just a way of looking at your way of approaching your life and work and just asking, what elements do I need in this to be the healthiest and best me that I can be? So that would include times for exercise, times for prayer, blocking out our schedules in certain ways, and coming back with just a new appreciation for this is what a healthy rhythm will look like. A lot of pastors will do that while they're on sabbatical, and they'll come back, and they'll have to take some time to explain that to their church and give them time to adjust to the new way of ministry.

But they'll find that if they make those changes, they're more productive and more effective in the long term. And so it's really about learning new rhythms, which means learning what you can let go of, what you got to stop doing, and really, more importantly, what you have to say yes to. You know, the things that God has gifted you for, He's called you to, and those are often the things that are getting drowned out by all the other urgent things in ministry.

And so having that refocus and creating the boundaries that are needed to stay on task will be really important for most pastors. So I see that a lot. I see a lot of pastors reinvesting in their family, saying, one of the big lessons for me is recognizing how neglected my family felt and how much sacrifice I've put on them.

And so they come back, and they say to the church, you know, I'm going to limit the number of meetings I have each week in the evening so that I can be with my family. Or here's how I'm going to prioritize my family so that I can be healthy for ministry. And that's a big change that a lot of pastors make.

Carl Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It feels to me that if you take the sabbatical and then come back and just do business as usual, then I think at that point, it might be fair to say you didn't take a sabbatical, you just took some time off. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. If you look in Scripture and you see that the major characters who took time away just to be with God, they quite often returned to the same ministry, but with a different focus. Think of Elijah, for example.

He takes some time away under the broom tree. He goes and sees God on the mountain. And when he leaves, he has new instructions and a new partner in ministry and a new way of approaching ministry that makes it more sustainable for him.

Moses goes up on the mountain, and God tells him, you can't do this alone, and we're going to appoint elders to help you. And again and again, you see people taking breaks and coming back to ministry in a different, healthier way, and that's a really good thing. Carl Yeah.

Yeah, that's wonderful. I want to get to the lightning round in a moment, but first of all, before we get to it, how can people get a hold of this toolkit if they want to get a hold of it? David Yeah, we're going to have the toolkit available on pirministries.org, and they'll be able to purchase it there. The cost will be minimal, and we're going to design it in a way that will be accessible for your whole church.

So you can make up to 25 copies of the workbook, and there will be 30 videos that you can watch, and it should really be a comprehensive tool for your church to use. Carl Yeah, and I don't know of any other tool that is this practical, that has this much experience put into it, and has this much content available for the sabbatical as this. So pirministries.org, we will put a link to that in our show notes, of course.

But before we let you go, let's do the lightning round questions again. First, what are the biggest changes you've seen in your field of ministry in the last few years, and how have you adapted to them? Ben Well, actually, one of the biggest changes is the number of pastors asking for help with sabbatical. Ben It's amazing, since the pandemic, how many churches are saying, maybe we need to rethink this idea of sabbatical.

And I'm actually having a number of churches contact me and say, can you help us? One church went so deep into this material that they developed an excellent sabbatical plan for their pastors and their entire church staff. Everybody gets a sabbatical now, and it's really been a great benefit to them. So that's a huge change that I'm seeing, and I hope it continues.

Tom Yeah, that's huge. Are there any free websites, any free resources, any free apps that you use that have helped you that you'd recommend for small church ministry? Ben Yeah, there's all sorts of stuff out there. One of the things that has been most helpful for me is connecting with a group known as the Caregivers Forum.

Their website, I believe, is caregiversforum.org, a group of 70 ministries that are all about helping pastors. And if you go to their website, you can look at their directory. PIR is one of the ministries in that directory.

But there are counselors, there's coaches, there's retreat centers, there's all sorts of things available for pastors, and many of them are free. It's a huge help to small church pastors to have that level of directory of resources for them. Tom Tremendous.

We'll put that in the show notes, of course, as we always do. What's the best piece of ministry advice you've ever received? Ben I think the best piece of advice was when people criticize you, 99% of the time it's not about you. It's really about what's going on in their life.

And to recognize that when you're the pastor, you represent God to the people in their minds. And when they're upset with God, they're going to take it out on you. And having the grace to create a space for people to do that and help them through it with curiosity rather than defensiveness is really important.

That saved me a world of hurt. Tom Yeah, and it has me over the years, too. It's one of those lessons that's hard to really sink in.

But once it does, there's a lightning of the burden that is extraordinary. When you realize it's really not about me, it's about them. And then you can address it rather than them.

And then you can set it aside rather than carrying it with you. It doesn't affect your self-image or your self-worth when you recognize the foundation of it. So that's great.

Fnally, what's the funniest or weirdest thing you've ever seen in church? Tom Funny is the weirdest thing. We had a church service one time, and we were at a small building, older church, rural church. And the worship leader decided he wanted everybody to join hands and sing a song together.

So they all kind of came together. And when they did, the pillar that supported the center of the sanctuary collapsed about four inches, and the whole floor dropped. And everybody felt it.

Yeah, you would. It was a movement of the Spirit experience like never before in a little Baptist church. We got the pole fixed by the next week, and everything was fine.

It wasn't—nobody was in danger. But it was quite a funny experience. Wow.

I can imagine they would have tread with a little more caution on that floor for the next little while. Anybody who was there would not walk through that building the same way again. Reminding me a little bit of after the big 89 quake here in San Francisco.

We lived eight miles from the epicenter, and for months afterward, nobody walked in or out of a building the same way. There was an extremely heightened caution that everybody had because of what they'd experienced. I can imagine something similar would have been that way in that building for a while.

All right. Once again, if anybody wants to follow up on this in addition to the information that we'll put about getting the toolkit, how can people find you online if they want to get ahold of you personally? Well, they can connect with me through PIRministries.org or my websites, Pastorsoul.com or SeanNemechek.com. Those are great ways to get ahold of me. All of which we will put in the show notes.

Again, to all of our listeners, we're going to take a break from the podcast, but we are going to go immediately into the bonus material. So if you want the bonus material with Sean or with any of our other guests, you can become a supporter at KarlVaders.com support or a free subscriber at KarlVaders.com subscribe. Either way, you will get a link in every weekly newsletter to get you all the bonus material, including the bonus material with Sean, that we'll be talking about some of the unexpected things that happen on a sabbatical that if you're planning on a sabbatical, you need to be prepared for.

Thank you so much, Sean, for your time today. Thank you for the toolkit. I believe this is going to be a blessing to a whole lot of pastors all over the place.

Thanks for everything you do, Karl, and thanks for letting me be a guest on your podcast. You're welcome. So that's a wrap.

Please feel free to contact Poimen Ministries if there's anything we can do to help strengthen your serve and wait for the announcer to find out how you can contact us and reach out to us in Jesus' name. Strength for Today's Pastor is sponsored by Pointman Ministries. You can find us at PointmanMinistries.com. That's spelled P-O-I-M-E-N Ministries.com. If something in today's program prompts a question or comment, or if you have a topic idea for a future episode, just shoot us an email at StrongerPastors at gmail.com. That's StrongerPastors@gmail.com. May the Lord bless you as you serve Him, His pastors, and His church.