In the academic world, professors receive sabbaticals every so often–the word implies seven years, so that’s probably the norm–during which they pursue some program of continuing study approved by their superiors.  The idea is for them to be continually growing in their effectiveness as educators.

In the ministry, a sabbatical might be for six weeks up to a few months.  Most churches are set up to be pastor-dependent and need their main guy at home to keep the program on track and the people focused.

But if they plan well, this can be a win-win thing for everyone.

In 42 years of pastoring six churches, I received two sabbaticals, each for six weeks.  The first, in the late 1970s, was spent in continuing education.  I began by driving to Chicago for the Moody Bible Institute’s annual Pastors Conference, a full week.  I remember a hundred things about that wonderful week to this day. This was followed by four weeks on a college campus in Kentucky during which outstanding Christian leaders spent a week each with us (Carl F. H. Henry, Ray Steadman, etc). The first weekend–confession coming up!–I drove to Cincinnati for two Reds baseball games, heard a debate between Madalyn Murray-O’Hair and a Church of Christ minister, and visited Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace.  (I was getting my money’s worth!)

The second sabbatical came twenty years later, in another church, another state, and involved visiting churches across the land.  I sat in the services of seventeen churches and interviewed a bunch of pastors, then returned home to make some long overdue changes in how we were doing church.

I strongly recommend sabbaticals, both for the ministers as well as for the churches.  It gives the preacher a time to rest and grow and learn and listen. Any church will reap excellent benefits from that happening to their minister.

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Consider this a love note to some unemployed preachers.

Not all, mind you (I’m trying to stave off a ton of irate letters).  Just some.

“I have all this education and training.  Why won’t churches call me as pastor?”

He was angry at God, at all churches, and at the system.  He sported a college degree and two diplomas from seminary, the last entitling him to call himself “Doctor.”

And yet he was unemployed.

His resume’ shows two years each at several churches.  Not a good record.

“The old churches are blackballing me,” he said. “I’m thinking of suing them.”

At one point he said, “I’m giving up on the organized church.”

Now, a casual observer may think I’m betraying a confidence here.  I might be, except for one overriding thing:  I’ve heard this same complaint, in one form or other, at least a half-dozen times over the years.

There’s a lot of this going around.

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