When a pastor stands to preach, he never knows who is listening to him. And if his sermon is recorded or broadcast, he has no clue who will be hearing his words. He will do well to make sure he knows what he’s talking about.

Case in point.

Last Sunday evening, I spent three hours with the deacons of a church near here.  At the conclusion of the two teaching sessions, I shared a favorite story.

Ted Traylor, pastor of Pensacola’s Olive Baptist Church, told this story to Leadership Journal back in 2001. For over a year, the pastor had tried to get a veteran staff member to make some needed changes in his ministry. But he refused all offers of help and all attempts to supervise him.  The staffer owned this particular phase of the church and no one was going to tell him what to do. So, finally and reluctantly, Pastor Ted terminated him.

The day he fired that staff member, the church held its regular business meeting that night.  A lot of people on that fellow’s team were incensed. “How dare the pastor do such a cruel thing!”  The anger was palpable.  The pastor’s name was mud. For weeks afterward, the bad spirit persisted. People would call the pastor’s home in the middle of the night, then hang up the phone.  Women said harsh things to his wife in the store.  Pastor Ted says, “Had a search committee from Toadsuck, Arkansas come, I would have gone with them.”

One night, as the pastor and his son were returning home, three men from the church were standing at the edge of the yard, waiting to talk.  Traylor sent his son into the house and walked back to where they were standing.

Even though these were among his greatest supporters in the church, Pastor Traylor figured they had come to ask him to leave.

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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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