Ep 055: What I Learned By Taking A Sabbatical

[Music] hi I'm Carl Vaders and welcome to the church Lobby conversations on faith and Ministry in this episode well it's just me again the last time I did one with just me it was before I took a sabbatical in the summer the sabbatical is now over and so we're going to talk about what I learned on sabbatical in ways that might help you on yours [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah oh sabbatical is an interesting experience it's the first time I've ever done one and I learned so much from it and it's been about three weeks now since we were off sabbatical so I've had a chance to let some of it kind of filter in and be able to reflect a little bit back on it I've been writing things down all the way through sabbatical written a bunch of stuff down since sabbatical and out of it I have 22 points that I want to share with you today don't worry 22 seems like more than it actually is I've just simply broken them down into bite-sized steps so let's walk through some of the 20 these 22 steps that I learned on sabbatical that I believe are the best points that will help you as well if you're considering sabbatical or if you're not considering sabbatical but maybe you should be so let's walk through them one at a time first of all pre-sabbatical prep is absolutely essential you can't just simply walk away and have no plan for it whatsoever pre-sabbatical prep is essential simple things like making sure you put out an email vacation response you know what it's like to send someone an email and get a response an auto response back that says I'm on vacation or I'm out of the country and nobody gets upset by that everybody appreciates it so now they have an idea of when you're going to be back and when they connect with you again you need to find someone who can screen your Communications for you if at all possible so that if there are emergencies that come through there's one person who knows how to get you and when to get you and part of the reason for that is for your own sake if you walk away and nobody can get a hold of you at all then you're going to have this thing in the back of your mind what if it's an emergency and they can't get a hold of me what will happen well if you can assign someone who can check your email who can check your phone messages who can check your social media messages and they will get a hold of you in case of an emergency now you can actually relax and then what I did was once a week I had a check in with the person who was overseeing my email and social media contacts and so on so that I knew once a week I'm going to check in we're going to be we're going to make sure that nothing goes undone that should be done by me but what I discovered was after the first one or two weeks of people getting used to it there was nothing to do so that middle ground of several weeks I I didn't even need to check in once a week so I could actually get on sabbatical so do the pre-sabbatical prep that's number one second one is this take a sabbatical long before you need a sabbatical I had planned the sabbatical out over a year in advance of it I saw this Gap in my calendar and thought okay I'm not going to put anything in on that Gap and I thought if I do it now if I prepare for it now then I'll get to it before I need it and as it turned out my Reserve batteries I thought would might be in low double digits by the time sabbatical came but in fact they were in single digits I was much closer to Frying out than I realized I would be but boy was I glad that I had it on the calendar and I got to it before I burnt out because because if any of you has ever experienced that where you just fried your toast you're burnt out the break you take isn't a sabbatical it's just collapse so I got there in time for the collapse but it took longer for me to mentally and emotionally relax during the sabbatical because I had waited a little bit too long so do it before you need it it's the old adage when you go camping when is the best time to make sure you know where the flashlight is don't look for the flashlight after it gets dark have the flashlight in hand before it gets dark and the sabbatical is the same thing or another example I've walked across Grand Canyon a couple times and the absolute lesson when you're walking across Grand Canyon doing something that is that physically challenging and so remote that it can be dangerous is eat constantly and drink constantly if you wait until you're thirsty to drink it's too late if you wait until you're hungry to eat it's too late so if we wait until we need a sabbatical to take a sabbatical it's too late it's going to be much more dangerous take your sabbatical long before you think you need your sabbatical number three is this take a longer sabbatical than you think you need we took 50 days because that was the Gap we had on the calendar it should have been double that can't underestimate how much time you're going to need to disconnect first of all mentally and emotionally it was weeks before we really felt like oh we're actually on sabbatical now we've emotionally disconnected we have we've mentally and spiritually disconnected from our home church and we're engaged now in a new way of looking and thinking and seeing things and even in our spiritual lives are different we did you know just under two months that is an absolute Bare Bones minimum from what my experience was I would go four to six months the next time I did it which is going to take a lot more prep but we needed it and here's why by the time we finally were able to look around and go oh we're actually on sabbatical now we feel like we're on sabbatical now we've done all of the stuff that we need to do to offload emotionally and mentally by that time it was about time to start gearing up again so we got the gear down and we got the gear up but we didn't get the actual time in the middle that was the main reason we needed in sabbatical so I'm glad I took it 50 days was better than not doing it at all but a hundred would have been much much much much better so that's the third one fourth one is this check in with some with a sabbatical coach before we went off on sabbatical I checked in with my friend Sean Nemechek who coaches people about sabbatical you can get information from him you can check in with him and set up an appointment with him at Sean nemechek.com we'll put links to that in the show notes and he's he's written a good article as well about that you can get at Sean nemechek.com you can also check out the interview I did with him a while ago episode 45 on dealing with burnout in Ministry Sean knows his stuff there are other sabbatical coaches out there but he did a great job with me and basically what Sean did for me was he was able to tell fairly quickly in my conversation with him what I was going to need on my sabbatical whether or not I was going to need regular coaching through my sabbatical or whether or not uh just setting up a plan for myself was going to be okay it turned doubt that just going through it by myself with a good plan worked for me because I wasn't at burnout I wasn't in depression I wasn't all stressed out I was just tired but if you are at a point where you need more help through the sabbatical make sure you have a coach who can tell you what you need and then walk you through it if you need it so check in with sabbatical coach number five have a plan I talked about this pre-sabbatical prep but that's different from having a plan it turned out that almost all of our plans fell apart just from all kinds of interesting and different circumstances because life is that way but having a plan gave us something to adapt from and the parts of the plan that did stick with were really really helpful if you don't have a plan you're probably going to waste your time if you just simply turn off the tap and turn off the activity and don't have a plan to do something else that will refresh you and that will renew you and that will restore you you will end up just wasting your time so having a plan doesn't mean you're going to work but it needs to be a plan that will work it needs to be a plan that will bring you refreshment that will bring you the renewal that you're looking for a coach can help with that but you need to go into it with a plan going into it with nothing is a bad idea number six you need to train the people at your church to be able to have Church Without You Now for the small Church Pastor this is probably the number one reason I'm given why small Church pastors don't take a sabbatical it was the number one reason why I went 40 years without taking a sabbatical and by the time I did take a sabbatical I'm not the lead Pastor anymore so it was a lot easier but if I were to tell myself something you know every once in a while somebody will ask if you were to be able to talk to yourself as a young Pastor what would you say I know now one of the things I would say is this take a sabbatical every 10 years whether you think you need it or not and no matter how hard it you think it's going to be to put it together this is the challenge okay so don't be afraid of that yes you can train your people to have church without you here are a couple ways to do it first of all put the church itself on a bare bone schedule during the time you'll be gone don't expect that they're going to do everything that they normally do when you're around maybe you don't have if your Wednesday night bible study or maybe you know whatever else you've got you trim it back to the Bare Bones stuff it kind of gives them a break in their schedule as well by doing that secondly uh have a pastor or a series of pastors over on Sundays who will preach for you and maybe even a retired Pastor who you know isn't going to be a threat to you isn't going to be perceived as a threat or as an interloper by the congregation someone who can be a soft Landing for you if you're in a denomination ask around are there retired pastors who can help with this or ask other Pastor friends somewhere it can they or do they know of anyone that they trust who can come in and cover some of the areas that can only be done by a pastor maybe you can have a sabbatical exchange with a pastor nearby well they're on sabbatical they cover some of your sabbatical things and and vice versa retired pastors are great for this as well but train your people to have Church Without You pair them for it give them a schedule they can handle and give them some pastoral oversight that you can trust and that you're not going to have to worry about number seven be adaptable in your plan all plans have to have adaptability built in to them if you are determined that your plan is going to take place exactly in the way you lay it out that will create greater stress and the last thing you want in sabbatical is stress you want to reduce your stress so have a plan but be adaptable number eight include large chunks of do nothing time now I know that sounds like the opposite of have a plan and make sure you know what you're doing or you'll end up doing nothing but no that just means don't take your entire sabbatical doing nothing but you should have big chunks of guilt free doing nothing time okay things that normally you'd consider oh that was just a waste and now this shouldn't be the main part of it but you should have periods of it where you know what I'm just going to play video games today or I'm just going to watch a movie today or I'm just going to sit in the hammock today or whatever stuff that normally you'd feel guilty about that you spent your time doing and by guilty I don't mean because it's sinful I mean because it feels like you're not doing something productive so again your whole time should not be spent playing video games or watching movies obviously getting away from the screen is a huge part of what we need to be able to do we spend too much time on our screens but don't make yourself guilty for wanting to do some of those things it's okay to have large chunks of time where you do nothing and do things that otherwise would normally feel like they're wasteful but on a sabbatical they can be restful again it shouldn't be the key part of it but having chunks of do nothing time is really I I loved being able to just sit and watch two or three movies in a row Shelly and I watched the entire Lord of the Rings series like we're good to go okay uh and we felt zero guilt about it it was just awesome being able to do that okay number nine do everything from your with your spouse if you have a spouse do everything with them from planning to implementation sometimes pastors we have a way of just simply you know arranging everything ourselves and then informing our spouse afterwards but if you are married your spouse is going to be a big part of the sabbatical time your spouse might work on their own and not be able to take that time off most of you probably will be sabbaticaling with your spouse during that time but whatever that is make sure that they are a part of the plan from the very beginning as in how long is it going to be to what's the plan going to be to what times are we going to spend together what times will we be spending apart you know there may be times that you need to be away just by yourself or just with a couple friends fishing or camping or whatever those should be planned with your spouse those should be planned together so that you're on the same page with this the last thing you want to create during sabbatical is stress at home so make sure that everybody's on the same page for this do all of that planning with your spouse number 10 give yourself time to fade away from your usual duties I was shocked in the first couple weeks by how hard it was not to check my email and my social media and the News every single day because that was just part of what I did and so this is one of the things that Sean Nemechek helped me with he said for the first couple weeks you're going to feel that so give yourself time to fade away it's okay in the first week or two if you have one or two duties that you didn't quite get done that you really need to get done in order to relax it's okay to spend a couple hours doing that in your first week or two if you realize oh no I forgot to do this before I left and it's got to be done or I'm going to worry about it then go ahead and get it done so you don't have to worry about it in the first two or three weeks give yourself Grace give yourself the chance yes you can get some work done you're going to fade into it and on the other end you're going to fade out of it again if you turn the sabbatical switch off instantly like there's a wall one day you're working like crazy and the next day there's nothing at all that is too sudden it's too hard for most of us emotionally and mentally to be able to do that so it's okay what you may discover is if especially if you do it instantaneously you may get sick with the adrenaline drop I was shocked in the first week we were off I slept over half of of the time from the normal sleeping hours and then a nap or two during the day I slept more than 12 of 24 hours almost every single day for the first week I was shocked and then I got sick I got a cold I got stomach whatever it was because like the adrenaline was holding on until I was off and then the body just went that's it we're done and I I got sick that is a fairly typical thing to happen early in sabbatical which is one of the reasons why early in sabbatical don't plan to take a trip to do something that you have tickets for or whatever you need time where you can get sick whether it's an emotional sickness or physical sickness or a combination of the two or just simply let your body collapse and and get yourself time to check out that's okay give yourself time to fade away from those usual duties it's not going to be instantaneous number 11. we've already talked about this a bit don't be shocked by a bizarre sleep cycle you might sleep for a long time like I did or you may find yourself awake in the middle of the night with your brain buzzing and know where to put it or you may cycle back and forth between the two so be aware that you're likely to have a bizarre sleep cycle for the first few weeks while your body is trying to figure out what is going on here that I'm not rushing to work every single day okay so be don't be shocked by that be prepared for it and when it happens there's not much you can do about it except kind of wait it out but at least you won't be surprised or worried when it happens if you're aware that it might be coming number 12 have someone not your spouse who will be available to talk to people that need to be talked to and then trust them to do it we talked about a little earlier about someone oversees your email this is also now someone who's going to be available physically yeah and let your congregation know during the time that I'm gone if you have any pastoral issues whatsoever even if it's something that you absolutely need me for you don't call me first you call this person first okay you'll let them know there is this person who is going to check those things and it can't be your spouse do not let it be your spouse because it might as well just be you then but there needs to be someone of the congregation you trust who's going to filter through all of these requests because as we all know somebody is going to think it's an emergency that only the pastor can handle and it turns out no somebody else can handle it just fine so have someone in place for that and now a short break to talk about something else if you like the content you're hearing here are two things you can do for us first forward this podcast to a friend second consider becoming a financial supporter through patreon venmo or PayPal just go to carlvators.com support for as little as three dollars a month you can help us put these resources into the hands of the Ministries that need them the most our support link is in the show notes foreign Journal a journal even if you hate it I am not a journaler but I did journal every single day of this and I found it to be helpful what worked for me was uh first thing in the day I journaled about what happened on the previous day I I was more able to kind of assess what happened during the day the next morning than I was at night when I was tired I really highly recommend you do it on paper and not electronically even though there are great electronic journals out there there's been a lot of work done on this recently and it's been discovered that especially when you're processing Deep Emotions or when you're trying to figure out new things or you're doing something in a new way you can process it better and remember it more when you do it on paper than when you do it electronically so even if you haven't liked it journal every single day it doesn't have to be long it can literally be some days you know napped today and read half a book and that might be your entire journal entry for a single day that's okay it doesn't have to be long but the discipline of doing it during sabbatical was really helpful 14. do physical things that you love as pastors most of our life and most of our work is spent inside our own heads Hearts and Spirits and so to get the break we need to not spend the entire sabbatical inside our own heads Hearts and Spirits what do you like to do physically do you like to Garden do you like to fish do you like to hike do you like to play sports do you like to just you know relax in a hammock but think physically about the things you enjoy doing and by doing those things physically it allows your brain to rest a little bit and to get a get out of your own head so do physical things that you love number 15 spend time with friends and family who will ease your emotional load which means spend as little time as possible even with family and friends who cause stress and we all know who those people are we all have friends and family members who when we spend time with them we are refreshed by by them they get us we get them it's not an additional burden it's something that's joyous and we all have friends and family members and we love them just as much but we know that spending time with them will be a burden and it will add stress they won't get why you're unsabbatical they'll think you're lazy or they've got issues of their own that they can't get out of their own head on some of these you're going to have to do there are certain people you just have to check in on a regular basis you know kids spouse may be hopefully not parents you know other people in our lives that we just simply have to check in on because they're part of us a part of our lives and we love them but we need to spend less time with people who give us stress and a lot more time with people who ease our emotional load number 16. go to church outside your usual tradition these were some of the best experiences we had during sabbatical and when I look back on sabbatical years from now these are probably some of the key things I will remember more than anything else first of all I encourage you go to church every Sunday even if you don't feel like it really yeah just like we encourage our own congregation members don't just go to church when you feel like it go to church every Sunday anyway and we need to do the same thing I get it when you're on sabbatical Church feels like work and so going to church feels like dipping back into work but you go to a church that is not your own church and if you step outside of your usual Church tradition it will feel different than that as well so you know if if you're Baptist check out a Methodist Church if your Methodist check out a Presbyterian Church if you're Presbyterian check out the local charismatic church or whatever and go to a different church every week what we did was we had eight Sundays and on four of them we went with friends and every single time we went with friends to church friends who who we trusted and we knew were spiritually mature every one of those experiences was very positive because these are spiritually mature people and they're going to go to good churches the other four we just pick churches on our own that we wanted to check out from four different theological backgrounds all solidly Christian but from who who did Worship in a way that was different from ours in fact I'm going to talk a little bit more about this in the bonus material I'm going to talk about how we found great churches on our sabbatical and I'm also going to talk a little bit but not too much about the one church we went to that was a very bad experience why it was a bad experience and what we learned from that so that'll be in the bonus material so if you're listening to this and you want to listen to the bonus material anybody who supports Us by going to carlvaders.com support we'll get a link to all of our bonus videos and if you go to carlvators.com subscribe you can subscribe to our free newsletter which comes out every Friday and that also has a bonus link and that's only for subscribers and supporters so if you want that additional material that's how to find that and there will be links to that in the show notes so go to church outside your usual tradition and we'll talk more about that in the bonus material number 17. read scripture and pray outside of the way you usually do it I don't recommend that you're going to tear through the entire Bible I do recommend that you go slow through certain portions I highly recommend the gospels spend time just reading the life of Jesus look how he rested look how the patterns and rhythms of his life how healthy they were spend some time in the Psalms if that's something you need to maybe Rejoice through and mourn through that's a good place to go but I highly encourage that you take a section of scripture and you go deep rather than that you go through the entire Bible during that time that's not a bad experience to have either but I think sabbatical is more for slowing down and spending time I also encourage you to read from a different translation because you'll hear it in a different voice a different translation than you're used to and spend some time praying in ways that are different than the way you normally pray there are some good books out there that talk about different prayer Styles and prayer types make sure that it comes from a profoundly Christian Viewpoint because of course there's a lot out there the country from a non-Christian Viewpoint that will open you up to things that are unhealthy but pray in a way different from what you're used to praying in that will help you to open up your heart and your spirit to hearing from the Lord in ways you don't normally hear from him okay the number 18 now read books for fun we don't watch movies and TV for fun as well but don't spend a lot of screen time read fun books yes it's okay to read some devotional books it may even be okay to get into that big theological work you wanted but I really highly recommend don't spend all of your time going deep theologically that is not the brain break that you need read a novel read some fiction read some biography read something that you don't normally quote unquote have the time for but now you do number 19 don't be shocked by moods swings going on a sabbatical is kind of like someone coming off an addiction you may go through bouts of depression that will surprise you and you're going to wonder where it's coming from it's coming off of adrenaline it's coming off of activity it's coming off of feelings of responsibility and you may feel guilty because you're doing what you're doing you may go from a constant hype to all of a sudden complete lethargy and you just feel like in not only are you not doing anything but you may feel like you're not worth anything because you're not doing things and that may be something to look at and go wait a minute have I had what I do tied too much to who I am and now because I'm not doing it I feel like I'm not of value and assess that and walk through that it's another reason why you might want a sabbatical coach to help you deal with those things as they come but don't be shocked when your moods swing erratically during this season especially at the beginning of it number 20. after disconnecting after you've had your disconnect and you've maybe had some time in the middle to actually go through sabbatical time start thinking big picture so as you start getting towards okay we're we're closer to coming out of sabbatical than going into it start fading back into real life gradually and one of the first ways to do that is start asking yourself okay now I'm not talking about church agenda we're not talking about the church facility we're not talking about schedules but ask yourself where am I in my pastoral calling you know am I doing what the Lord has called me to do or have I become too busy just simply putting out fires uh what might this next season of life look for me not the next few weeks or months but years decades and even years and decades aren't even the right word season is the only word I can think of what is the next season the Lord might be calling me into now that you've had some weeks maybe even a couple months to disconnect your mind and your brain from schedules you might now be able to think bigger picture and start thinking about your calling and and the vision that God has put upon your life and when you first do this you're talking about less than an hour a day you know you get up in the morning you sit down down you have your devotional you read through scripture and then you just sit back with your Journal open and you start thinking and praying and pondering and asking Lord am I where I ought to be where is it that you might want to be taking me and just start jotting things down and then after half an hour hour maybe 15 minutes set it aside and then go do something fun for the rest of the day so you're going to come into this slowly but start thinking big picture number 21 our second to last point is this think long term on your schedule after you've had some of this time to think big picture okay so your fade in is going to begin with thinking big picture about Seasons then after you started going hey maybe we should make adjustments here or there we did that Shelly and I had big plans for 2024 that were going to be very busy very involved very high planning and two-thirds of the way through sabbatical as we started thinking about it we started realizing you know what the agenda that we had looked at for 2024 is not a sustainable agenda for us and we can accomplish everything we wanted to accomplish if we extend out the timeline to two or three years instead of one year and part of the reason we had scheduled it all to be done in one year was because we made our 2024 plans early 2023 when we were on a hyper schedule and we were feeling hyper but once our spirits and our minds slowed down we realized hey God is calling us to do that but he's going to be on a slower schedule it's going to be on a more sustainable schedule so after you start thinking big picture then start thinking long term then start looking at your calendar at your schedule at the things you had planned to do and are there adjustments to make it during this time be careful do not make any irrevocable decisions if you make a decision it has to be something that you can change later because right now you're on an emotional high or low or swinging back between the two so you want to look at things that go hey let's consider doing this maybe we should consider doing that do not cancel plans immediately do not schedule plans immediately you are at a place that is different than your normal life and so it can help you think and look at things big picture but it also puts you in a place that isn't normal and so when you get back to normal you may go what in the world what are we thinking so think those thoughts write them down consider them Factor them in but don't make any unchangeable decisions when you're in that place wait until after sabbatical when you can run it by a few folks when you've had some chance to think about it a little more and then the final thing is this we've talked about it already but fade back in gradually just like you don't hit it like a light switch to go into sabbatical don't hit it like a light switch to come out of sabbatical just like you needed to plan to fade into sabbatical you need a plan to fade out of sabbatical and back into your own life so take on some tasks that you can cancel without disturbing anyone's schedule for instance so as you're as you're fading out decide okay on three weeks out from sabbatical I'm going to start doing some sermon prep again or I'm going to start looking at the calendar for next year and and what we might do for this program or that program but at that time any task you do decide to take on needs to be stuff that has a lot of wiggle room in it don't make commitments like I said under the last Point don't make permanent commitments that can't be changed because you're not in the mind space for that but start thinking about scheduling start thinking about sermon prep start thinking about things that you can do when you get back and there's a richness there that you can discover and that you can dig into okay that's 22 things I hope that was helpful bottom line for me is this if you have not taken a sabbatical ever please please please consider one if you have taken one and it didn't work well for you maybe this will now give you a pattern that you can use to be able to do it well the next next time maybe you think you don't ever need a sabbatical all I can tell you is if you are pastoring you need longer breaks than you realize you need and if you do it well it can give you a much much much greater value than you ever imagined that it possibly could so God bless you as you do that if you are a regular subscriber Carl vaders.com subscribe or supporter carlvaders.com support we are now going to get into the bonus material you'll be able to watch that on YouTube if you get the link by doing one of those two things and again go to the link in the show notes and you'll be able to listen to the bonus material that I'm going to be talking about how we found our great churches on sabbatical all right thanks we'll see you the next time this episode was produced by Veronica Beaver it was edited by Phil Vader's original theme music was written and performed by Jack Wilkins of Jack wilkinsmusic.com the graphic design is by Solomon joy and me I'm Carl Vaders and I hope to talk with you again in the church Lobby [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music]