Is your church healthy? A sabbatical may reveal the answer...

What would you say if I told you that your church has more to gain by a generous sabbatical policy than the pastor?

Given that few churches even mention the word "sabbatical" in their official documents, my guess is it would raise some eyebrows.

Even amongst pastors who are the most enthusiastic champions of a sabbatical rhythm, there would be a quizzical look of surprise. Yet, speaking as someone who has been fortunate enough to experience three sabbaticals over my ministry life, I stand by the belief that, as much as each pastor immensely benefits from a sabbatical period, the church as a body benefits exponentially more.

Doing sabbatical well

Most sabbatical policies range from a few weeks to three months and are set after a particular rhythm of years of service. The time is typically set aside for the minister to withdraw from usual ministry responsibilities in order to rest and possibly engage in an area of study that will benefit their spiritual refreshment or serve the church more widely.

No doubt such seasons are critically helpful to the pastor through giving them the opportunity for physical and emotional renewal as they temporarily step away from the intensity of front-line ministry.

Although, from my experience of coaching a number of leaders, many pastors fail to maximise the potential opportunities of this gift of time through lack of intentional planning to create an experience that will effectively process the wounds of the past season and heal, or skill up in preparation for the season that they will return to.

Secondly, many pastors lack an understanding that the stressors that, at best, depleted energy, and, at worst, deeply wounded, are not solved simply by resting – they will pounce again at your return, and so the challenge is to use the time to be ready for that moment.

Many pastors on sabbatical experience a temporary reprieve from the burdens of ministry only to be crushed a short while later by a more definitive burnout.

Reliance on the pastor

A well-kept secret is that sabbaticals provide most benefit to the wider church body.

Many are rightly cautious to avoid the vulnerability of churches being built and maintained by the gifts, personality and influence of a single individual. Therefore, healthy churches diversify responsibilities, accountability and influence amongst committees, teams, elderships and trustee boards.

These muscles of organisational power and function are supported by the ligaments of policies and procedures, and in theory it should mean the body of the church is elevated by the presence of the pastor and not dependent upon them. Yet, the reality is most churches are utterly reliant upon the pastor to pull the levers of the church's many limbs, to fill in the malfunctioning systems and to prop up the most ineffectual aspects of the body.

Many pastors have grown to be so skilled in the ability to be the author and sustainer of the church's ministries that their all-pervasive influence can be hard to see as it is so well camouflaged amongst the backdrop of committees, agendas and protocols.

Rarely is this a sinister intention. Leaders love their churches and these sacrifices to "keep the wheels on" are typically joyfully given, at least initially. It is for this reason that many volunteer leaders and elderships are willing to turn a blind eye to this overdependence on the pastor because this vulnerable homeostasis of the body, on a week-to-week basis, actually works.

A sabbatical, however, offers an MRI scan for the health of the church body. Of course, like all such tools, it doesn't reveal everything, but it does provide some answer to the question: Where are our main vulnerabilities as a church?

Questions revealed

For example, over the period of time that I was away on my last sabbatical, the answers to the following ministry-related questions became clearer:

• Which ministry responsibilities are so dependent upon the pastor that they would need to be paused for the duration of the sabbatical?
• What is the depth of quality preachers and service leaders within the congregation?
• To what extent can pastoral issues be shared across the congregation?

The answers to those questions quickly become the priorities for the church leadership to address in the year ahead.

But sabbaticals don't just operate like an MOT for the practical running of ministries; they also bring to the surface critical cultural issues that can be difficult to discern.

For example, an eldership during a sabbatical should pay attention to the following questions:

• Do the staff or key leaders feel sufficiently empowered and confident to move their ministry forward without the pastor's input?
• To what extent are the culture and values of the church driven by the leadership of the church and not just the pastor?
• Which areas of church life were easier without the pastor’s presence and which were more difficult, and why?
• What did you notice about the relational dynamics of the leadership or staff team over the sabbatical, and what does that reveal about the pastor’s particular contribution to the team’s functioning?

It is impossible to accurately explore these vital questions that reveal so much about the health of the church when the pastor is present, and the absence of a regular holiday period will not be sufficient either.

The challenge of all good diagnostic tools (for that is what a sabbatical is) is that their value is proportional to the desire to reveal difficult answers.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul is concerned to combat the idea that a few people are indispensable to the running of the church and many are superfluous. Although it is easy to agree with Paul’s concern and echo that everyone has a part to play in building the functioning body of the church, the reality is that, though it is not as healthy, it can be more convenient to cede the running of the body to a few competent parts.

A sabbatical is a tool to diagnose and propel a church to a greater level of health and whole-body participation. It is not a question of whether we can afford the disruption of a sabbatical, but rather we cannot afford not to have one.