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.