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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, explores the vital role of ministry sabbaticals as times of personal and professional refreshment designed to enhance future ministry effectiveness. He offers practical guidance on making the most of the sabbatical experience to return renewed and ready for leadership.
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Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Here on this podcast, that's what we do. We talk about practical issues of what it means to lead an organization or a church in the day to day grind of ministry. Well, a few weeks ago, I received an email from a podcast listener asking if I would do a podcast on ministry sabbaticals.
Jeff Iorg:That sounded like a great idea to me. So I put together some material today on ministry sabbaticals and I want to try to approach this material in three different ways. But before I do that, let me say thank you for emailing me this idea. And if you're out there listening to the podcast and you have a theme or a topic or a concept that you'd like for
Jeff Iorg:me to address, just send me
Jeff Iorg:an email, jorg@sbc.net. That's jiorg@sbc.net. Comes straight to me. I'll look at it and see if there's a way that I can include it in a future podcast. So today, we're talking about ministry sabbaticals.
Jeff Iorg:And as I said, I wanna cover this in three broad areas. First, let's talk about what is a sabbatical. Second, how to create a plan or a proposal for a sabbatical policy for your organization. And third, some practical issues to keep in mind if you've been given a sabbatical or you're preparing to go on one, how you can make get the most effective experience possible. So first of all, what is a sabbatical?
Jeff Iorg:Well, it is a focused time of personal
Jeff Iorg:and professional refreshment. A sabbatical is a focused time of personal and professional refreshment.
Jeff Iorg:Now, a common misconception about a sabbatical is that it is an extended vacation. Now while a sabbatical includes rest, and we'll talk about that in a few minutes, a sabbatical is not an extra vacation that you're granted because you've been in ministry leadership for a certain length of time. It is a personal and professional focus time for refreshment. Now sabbaticals are most common in the academy, meaning among the faculties of universities or colleges or seminaries. That's of course where I've had my most experience with them because for twenty years as a seminary president, our school had a robust sabbatical policy, and we had faculty take advantage of it on a regular basis, and it was part of my responsibility to manage that policy on behalf of the seminary.
Jeff Iorg:So I have extensive experience in sabbaticals in the academy where they're most common. I've also, had a sabbatical as a ministry leader, and I'll talk more about that later in the podcast. And of course, I've watched others as they've experienced sabbaticals in either churches or in administrative context. So a sabbatical has an overall goal, and that overall goal is future effectiveness. Now, let's summarize.
Jeff Iorg:What is a sabbatical? It's a focus time of personal and professional refreshment. It's most common in the academy, but it is found in other ministry organizations and settings. Biggest misconception, it's a big vacation. Because the overall goal is not
Jeff Iorg:a vacation, it's to ensure or to maximize your future effectiveness for ministry. Now, as you're thinking about creating a plan or a proposal for a sabbatical policy, I wanna also give you a big caution that comes with two organizations that have sabbatical policies, and that is an ugly thing called resentment. Resentment.
Jeff Iorg:You know, not everyone in an organization gets a sabbatical, and those who don't can question why do some people get a privilege that others don't, And why do people get a sabbatical when I, in my work or in my role, don't ever receive one? Now this can be within an organization, like a school where you have faculty getting sabbatical, but administrators or other workers not getting them. It can also be in a church context where you present an idea for a sabbatical and your church members think, now why would a pastor need that much time away from his job responsibilities? I don't get that. I sell insurance, and they don't give me a sabbatical.
Jeff Iorg:I work on cars for a living, and I don't get a sabbatical.
Jeff Iorg:I coach football for a living and there's no sabbatical coming. These are
Jeff Iorg:the things that go through the minds of people when they hear the concept sabbatical. It can foster some resentment. That's why it's important when you're crafting a plan or a proposal for a sabbatical or for a sabbatical policy that you do it carefully and intentionally so that it answers some of those concerns and lays out the reasoning for a sabbatical in a way that is beneficial to the organization and to the future effectiveness of the organization as well as to the person who's receiving the sabbatical. So
Jeff Iorg:let's move to the second section, creating this plan or this proposal. I wanna talk about five or six different items as a a part
Jeff Iorg:of this. First, if you're planning to propose a sabbatical, it needs to have a clear purpose. And the purpose is not to give you a vacation, or to give you more rest, or to give you a break. The purpose has to be future effectiveness. And it has to be focused on your personal and professional refreshment, So that the purpose has an organizational focus as well as a personal focus.
Jeff Iorg:So creating a plan starts with having a clear purpose for the sabbatical. And if you're starting from the position of saying, well, I need a sabbatical because I'm tired, or because I deserve it, or because I need a break, that's not a clear purpose for a sabbatical. Those things may be true, but they can't be the driving reason why you need a sabbatical. Sabbatical has to be much broader than that and have a much grander purpose than that. It has to be focused on your future effectiveness in ministry and the future effectiveness of your organization or your church.
Jeff Iorg:And it has to be a focus time of both personal and professional development or refreshment that ensures this future effectiveness is going to take place. Second thing after purpose is to talk about timing. Now, every organization has a rhythm to its work. There are seasons when you're busier, seasons when you're not as busy. I know that, for example, in schools, it's pretty obvious when that is.
Jeff Iorg:But in an organization like I'm working today, at the executive committee, there's also a a rhythm to this or a season to our work. For example, from the August until the November, we are incredibly busy. From the November to the end of the year, not nearly as busy. Then starting in January and moving through the June, that first six months of the year, very busy. And then from the June or the July 1 on until about the August, not nearly as busy.
Jeff Iorg:So our job, our work here has a rhythm to it. Churches have a rhythm to them as well based on, the ministry cycle that they're involved in, the ministry calendar they're using, the calendar of the community in which they're working, meaning the schools or the companies or the organizations. Churches also have that kind of rhythm. So if you're thinking about the timing for a proposed sabbatical, it needs to take into consideration the organization and the work rhythms that you have there and how you can make a sabbatical fit into those where it's the least disruptive to the organization while at the same time being beneficial to you as well. A third issue in creating a plan is to think about the length of a sabbatical.
Jeff Iorg:Now in the academic world, most sabbaticals are for an academic year. They last at least nine months from the beginning of the academic year until the conclusion. That's really not practical in most ministry organizations or in most organizations that have administrators like I am today that might be given a sabbatical. For those contexts, the best time frame from what I've been able to both observe and to to research is between six weeks to three months. Six weeks seems to be the shortest that really is a valid number, although some people might say a month, but I'm gonna stick with six weeks because you need enough time to take a true break from the work that you're doing.
Jeff Iorg:Now, three months it might be the longest because you're gonna reach a point in that sabbatical time where it becomes counterproductive because now you're neglecting the organization that you're responsible to lead for too long in this sabbatical process. So I can't give you today a fixed number, but I'll say generally speaking, in an academic context, it's usually context, it's usually an academic year. But in organizational context, churches and organizations, it's usually more like six weeks to three months, sometimes shortened to four four weeks, but I'm gonna advocate for at least six because I want you to have enough time to have a complete break from the work that you're doing over that over that six weeks. So we've talked about purpose and timing and length. Now, here's some other aspects of it that you might not have thought about that really need to be a
Jeff Iorg:part of your plan or your proposal. One of them is budgeting, both for sabbatical expenses and the replacement expenses to get your work done while you're on sabbatical. Now, the most obvious one of
Jeff Iorg:these would be, if you're going to have six or eight weeks away from the preaching ministry, if you're a pastor, your church needs high quality preaching during that season while you're out. And that means you're going to have to either bring in a guest speaker, like a almost like an interim preacher for that six to eight weeks or however long it's gonna be, and you're gonna have to have a very intentional plan of what that's going to be like. It it can't just be a haphazard, well, we'll just have some guys in our church do the talking or do the speaking. Well, that might work, but if you're going to plan in a way that is going to use the sabbatical to also advance the work of your church, this might be a time when you bring in someone for six to eight weeks and says, I'm gonna come in and teach on this topic or this theme or this idea, and I'm going to develop that over a few weeks and develop a relationship with the congregation so that I can actually accomplish that.
Jeff Iorg:So that costs some money. You're going
Jeff Iorg:to have to bring in someone to get that done. You say, well, I don't really have the preaching responsibility. I have an administrative load or an administrative responsibility. Well, someone's going to pick up that work while you're out of out of on sabbatical, And it's either gonna have to be overtime by the staff you have or fresh assignments to them, which give them additional responsibility, and then that would include perhaps some additional compensation. Or it's gonna have to involve bringing someone else in to manage that work while you're away.
Jeff Iorg:This is the replacement expense that's part of creating a budget for the sabbatical plan. Another part of it is, is there going to be any sabbatical expense that the church or the organization would be willing to pay? Now this could involve something about travel. It could involve something about lodging. It could involve curriculum for a course or a or a study program.
Jeff Iorg:It could involve tuition for something if you're going to a conference or going to some kind of course or class. There's all kinds of expense that can be associated with a sabbatical, and it's important to decide who's going to pay that and who's responsible for it. Now, besides the replacement expenses, which would be the responsibility of the organization perhaps to fulfill, you may have to take on some of the financial responsibility for the personal side of this sabbatical time. I'm not saying that you have to take it on or that your organization can help you with it, but it may be that you're expected to take on some of this as well.
Jeff Iorg:Now a couple of other things. You have to have a reporting mechanism to be accountable for the sabbatical.
Jeff Iorg:Let me give you an example from the academic world. At Gateway Seminary where I I served, we gave either half year or full year sabbaticals to our
Jeff Iorg:faculty. If a faculty member wanted to
Jeff Iorg:go on sabbatical, there was a policy that, of course, governed it. But within that policy, they had to write a specific proposal of what they hoped to accomplish. That proposal had to include both personal and professional refreshment, and it had to be geared toward the overall future effectiveness of the faculty member, both as they served in their context, but also as they served the greater needs of the seminary. So a sabbatical proposal had to encompass all of those things. And that proposal was then brought forward and approved by the vice president for academic services, and then it was presented to me as the president, and and I approved it.
Jeff Iorg:And then it was presented to a committee of the board of trustees who also reviewed it and gave it final approval. And you say, well, why would you take it all the way to the board of trustees? Well, for two reasons. One, because it has financial implications. We're having to budget to replace that faculty member while they're on sabbatical.
Jeff Iorg:That teaching load still has to be fulfilled. And so you'd have to bring in a guest professor, or you have to use your own faculty and teach them overload or overtime for teaching additional courses, or you have to use adjuncts or others. But nevertheless, any way you go about
Jeff Iorg:it, there's gonna be expense involved. So proposals for sabbaticals were approved at these three levels. Then when the faculty member completed their sabbatical, they had to write a full report, which
Jeff Iorg:was usually two to three to four pages narrative explaining how they fulfilled each part of their original plan, what they learned, how they were refreshed, how it shaped them for future effectiveness, and what the results of their sabbatical were going to be as they came back to work for the seminary. And that report was not only shared with the vice president for academics, but also shared with me as president, and then also forwarded on for the board of trustees to read and see the results of the sabbatical and what it was going to do for the faculty member and for the seminary.
Jeff Iorg:That is a high level of accountability. You should give the same kind
Jeff Iorg:of accountability for your sabbatical, whatever that might look like in your organization, whether that's accounting back to a board or accounting back to elders or accounting back to a congregation. If people are going to invest in you at the level of providing you a sabbatical, they deserve a full report of what that sabbatical means both for you and for the organization. That's why, again, going back to the definition, it's both personal and professional refreshment, and it's gearing you for future effectiveness both in your own personal life and ministry, but also in your contribution to the leadership of the organization. You should be able to report back, here's how the sabbatical accomplished these purposes and what it means for me personally and what it means for me organizationally and for all of us as we go forward together. That kind of accountability is a part of a good sabbatical policy or a process.
Jeff Iorg:And then finally, and this may surprise you, but sabbatical policies often include a repayment plan. Now, here's how it worked for us at the seminary. Remember, a sabbatical is not a vacation, and it's not a reward for longevity. A sabbatical is an investment in the future. A sabbatical is saying, we believe that you can make a significant investment in our future, both personally and professionally, and we're gonna invest a year of refreshment into your life so that you can come back and serve us for another seven years after this sabbatical.
Jeff Iorg:Now the seminary had a policy that if you left the seminary within two years after you completed your sabbatical, you had to pay back the sabbatical expense.
Jeff Iorg:Now think about that. That's why a sabbatical is not a paid vacation. A sabbatical is an is a ministry and an organizational investment. And
Jeff Iorg:your ministry or your organization is saying to you, we're going to give you six, eight, ten, twelve weeks away to personally rejuvenate and professionally refresh and to come back to us with a robust report of how this has impacted you and how it will impact our organization in the future. And then we're going to watch that unfold over the next few years as the results of your sabbatical become evident in the life and work that we're doing together. And if you come back and you've been six months after your sabbatical and you say, I'm no longer wanting to be a part of this organization or this ministry, I think it's well within the rights of the organization to say, you owe you owe us for that sabbatical because we've invested in someone else's future now, and you or someone else needs to help pay for that experience. Now that may sound a little hard hearted, but it really is just part of having a robust full accountability for this concept called a sabbatical. So we've talked about today what is a sabbatical and how to create a plan or a proposal for a sabbatical policy.
Jeff Iorg:Now let's talk about some practical issues. You've been granted a sabbatical. How do you make it the most effective experience possible? Well, again, five areas. Number one, have an intentional and personalized plan for your sabbatical.
Jeff Iorg:An intentional plan means that you have thought it through, developed it, put it in writing, and I think have it approved by someone who's in authority over you. And personalized means it really is about you. This is your opportunity to focus on your needs and on your development for future effectiveness in leadership. And so that's why it needs to be highly personalized or highly shaped to what you need it to be. So in intentional and personalized planning.
Jeff Iorg:And in the context
Jeff Iorg:of that, make sure it's a realistic plan to accomplish realistic goals.
Jeff Iorg:I think it's fair to say that whatever sabbatical plan you first come up with, you need to probably cut that back by half. Most people who think about planning a sabbatical are far too ambitious about what they think they
Jeff Iorg:can get done in that time frame. So it needs
Jeff Iorg:to be a realistic plan to accomplish realistic goals. As I mentioned earlier, I I had a sabbatical at one point while I was at the seminary. It was a six week sabbatical. And, as I was planning for that, I called two or three people that I knew that were in similar roles of as mine, and I asked them for their guidance on what they had learned through their own sabbatical experiences and how they would speak into my planning for mine. And they all said the same thing.
Jeff Iorg:I planned too much. I over planned it. I I I was way too ambitious, And I learned from that, and so I scaled back substantially what I hoped to accomplish during the sabbatical, and it turned out that it was just about the right amount. But when I was first looking at it, I thought this is way too light, too little, and way less than what I should be doing, but it actually turned out to be just about the right amount. So have a realistic plan.
Jeff Iorg:A second part of sabbatical is to figure out the family dynamics. You know, when when you go go on sabbatical, that doesn't mean your wife or your children are on sabbatical, But that all has to work together somehow. Now I was fortunate when I had the sabbatical at the seminary. My my, children were all out of the house, it was just my wife and I. So we were able to make the plan, just the two of us, for how we were gonna work that time out together.
Jeff Iorg:But nevertheless, you really do have to figure out how your whole family dynamic fits into this realistic plan that's personalized for you and for your needs going forward. So practical issue number one, make an intentional and personalized plan. Make it a realistic plan that focuses on your needs and your future effectiveness, and figure out how the family dynamic will work around that and dial back the expectations so that it's a realistic and workable plan for that time when you're
Jeff Iorg:on sabbatical. Second. The second practical issue is that you have to disengage to be on sabbatical. Disengage means, first of
Jeff Iorg:all, that you have to disengage from your normal schedule. Most of us have a work schedule that we follow fairly consistently. Being on sabbatical means you disengage from that schedule. You you do not keep the same hours. You don't go at the same places and paces.
Jeff Iorg:You don't do these things at the same time. You disengage from your schedule. Second, and this will
Jeff Iorg:be really hard for some of you, you disengage from technology. Now that doesn't mean you you can't look at the news or or something like that, but it means that you disengage from the daily input that you're getting from so much technology. You disengage. Third, you disengage your accessibility. This will also be hard for some.
Jeff Iorg:You're just simply not accessible.
Jeff Iorg:You you can't be called while you're on sabbatical to ask questions about the worship service planning or questions about building use or questions about the implementation of some policy. You simply have to be inaccessible. You have to be separated from the daily grind of being with people in ministry. I know when I was on sabbatical, for that six week time frame, one afternoon, I I got a text from a vice president who said, I'm so sorry. We have a piece of paper that has to be signed, and it can only be signed by the president.
Jeff Iorg:It was a legal document related to a trust that we were involved in. I texted him back.
Jeff Iorg:I fully understand. Come by
Jeff Iorg:and I'll sign it. He brought it to my house. It was so fun. He came to my front door, and when I opened the door, he said, don't talk to me about anything. Don't ask me questions about the seminary.
Jeff Iorg:Just read this piece of paper and sign it, and I'm out of here. It was comical because he did not want to interfere at all, and I appreciated his, concern for me. But that's what I
Jeff Iorg:mean when I say no accessibility. You're on sabbatical. You can't keep dealing with the daily grind of people in ministry. And then finally, disengagement can mean that you change locations. Now again, this goes back
Jeff Iorg:to family concerns and other things and I get that. But you may have to go to a different place. If you live in a parsonage next to a church building, you can't have your sabbatical in that parsonage. It's just
Jeff Iorg:not gonna work. You're not gonna be
Jeff Iorg:able to disengage your schedule, your your technology, and your accessibility if you're right there on the property. So you're gonna have to think about how this all works out. I know that, again, on sabbatical for us, we we had about six weeks or so, we spent the first, about one third of that at home just decompressing completely. Then we spent about a third of that traveling and doing some things together that we enjoyed, and then we spent the last third really more focused on ramping up toward moving back into the ministry leadership role that we had. Now we weren't thinking about work every day, but I'm talking about the professional development part that I did, which was part of my sabbatical time.
Jeff Iorg:So disengage, techno schedule, technology, accessibility,
Jeff Iorg:and location may be part of an effective sabbatical. Third, practical issue is you have to rest.
Jeff Iorg:You have to rest your mind and rest your body. Resting your mind means that you disengage your thinking from the daily day to day work of ministry. Now this may not be true for everyone, but I'll just share my experience. When I
Jeff Iorg:went on sabbatical, it took me about a week for my mind to slow down, for my mind to disengage, and
Jeff Iorg:for me to get to a different pace, if you will. And I remember thinking, wow, I I feel I I feel different. I feel like I'm thinking more clearly. I'm I'm I'm just different because my mind is disengaged in resting. But it took several days for me to get there once the sabbatical started.
Jeff Iorg:But a part of resting is also resting your body. And I wanna underscore that this does not just mean lounging around. Resting your body means that that you take care of your body during your sabbatical in ways that maybe contribute to your overall health and well-being. So when I was on sabbatical, for example, I I exercised every day. I still did my walking.
Jeff Iorg:I still did my stretching. I still did the things that I tried to do, except on sabbatical, I tried to be even more consistent about it and try to do it every day. And I found that that physical activity was actually rejuvenating, not fatiguing to me. So part of rest is disengaging your mind and being gone away long enough that your mind really clears and you're able to think differently about your life and work. But also resting your body means that you sleep, but also that means that you eat and exercise and do things that really rejuvenate yourself physically.
Jeff Iorg:Then number four, part of sabbatical is retooling. And I've already used these words, personal and professional refreshment. So let's talk about both of those. A good sabbatical has both personal growth and professional growth. In the retooling, it's both personal retooling and professional retooling.
Jeff Iorg:Now, in the area of personal growth, it's something that nourishes your soul. Now, that can be anything from, additional bible reading. It can be worship times. It can be attending a conference or going to a retreat center. It can be something like reading Christian biography and being inspired by the lives of others who've gone on before us, something that nourishes your soul.
Jeff Iorg:So as you're planning your sabbatical or thinking about it, ask what will it do take to replenish me so that so that I come out of this experience spiritually growing and yet also spiritually nourished or enriched?
Jeff Iorg:And then on the professional side, what can I
Jeff Iorg:do during my sabbatical that really shapes me for future effectiveness in the ministry that I lead? For example, one pastor that I know was know knew that when he came back from sabbatical over the next year or two afterwards, a major emphasis of their church was going to be a building program. So he decided during his sabbatical to have the professional growth part of his sabbatical to be interviewing a half dozen pastors who had been through major building projects to ask them for the strengths and weaknesses, for the opportunities and threats, for the aspects of their experience that they could share with him that would help him to be better equipped and to lead more effectively when their church launched into their building project project that he anticipated coming over the next couple of years. So his professional growth aspect, his focused development during the during the sabbatical on getting himself ready to lead more effectively in the future was this series of interviews and writing a report about those interviews that he was then able to share with his leadership of his church when he got back from the sabbatical about how what they could learn together about how to go forward toward these building projects they knew were in their future.
Jeff Iorg:Another friend of mine knew that he needed to really, over the next couple of years after his sabbatical, focus on staff development and changes and improvements in their staffing policies and their staffing compensation and actually in their staff culture. And so he used his sabbatical to study, research, and interview people about those areas and start writing a plan for how they could go forward in that regard. Now, it's important to understand that a sabbatical, again, it's not a vacation. It's about personal and professional refreshment. It's about future effectiveness.
Jeff Iorg:It's your organization investing time in you that you can both personally recover and flourish spiritually, emotionally, physically, but that you can also professionally be enhanced and be prepared to lead more effectively when you come out of the sabbatical. Now again, I'm not saying that a sabbatical needs to be, you know, forty hour weeks working on that ministry project. No. It doesn't need to
Jeff Iorg:be that. But there does need to
Jeff Iorg:be some focus each week or or at some point during the sabbatical where you're really working on some aspect of preparing yourself for future ministry effectiveness. And then the last thing I would say, we've talked about intentionally and making an intentional and personalized plan, disengaging, resting, retooling, and finally, returning. A good sabbatical plan includes a ramp up to get you back in stride. Now this usually only takes a week or two, but you can't just show up the day after sabbatical and jump right back in and expect to be where you left off. Life doesn't work that way.
Jeff Iorg:Organizations keep moving, you're gonna come back to an organization that you've known it's only been six or eight weeks that's changed while you've been gone. So part of your plan needs to be how you're gonna ramp up when you come back into the leadership relationship. And I would lastly say about that, when you come back into this leadership relationship, bring back with you from the sabbatical some new expectations, some new schedules, or some new patterns. Don't feel like you have to jump back into what you left, instead use the sabbatical break in your routines, in your schedule, in your relationships, in your use of technology. Use the break that comes with a sabbatical to reformat how you want to reengage during that ramp up time when you come back from sabbatical.
Jeff Iorg:Recognizing that this is a wonderful time to change life patterns, change organizational relationships, change work habits. It's a good time to do things differently and hopefully in a more healthy way when you come back. Well, thanks for the idea of talking about ministry sabbaticals. Thank you for, sending me that idea, and I'd encourage any one of you out there who have other ideas, send them to me. If you are in an organization that has a sabbatical policy or that practices giving its leadership sabbaticals, then use what I've taught today to help craft good proposals about sabbaticals and make them as effective and meaningful as possible.
Jeff Iorg:If you're in a place that doesn't have this kind of policy or practice, perhaps God will use you to bring forward a proposal of how this can legitimately work and that you can lead your organization to adopt this practice if it would be helpful to you going forward in the long haul. Ministry sabbaticals, they are a part of what enables people to lead for the long haul and I encourage you to think about it as you lead on.