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The Alban Institute highlights six reasons for sabbatical leave, from Clergy Renewal: The Alban Guide to Sabbatical Planning:

"Why should congregational lay leaders want their pastors to experience regular renewal leave? Consider these six strong motivations:

1. The very nature of being an effective pastor involves continual spiritual growth. Spiritual depth does not happen by accident; it takes hard, intentional work. Basically, it is a lifelong process involving big chunks of time set aside for reading, prayer, solitude, and reflection... Trying to do this while working [55-65] hours each week is nearly impossible.

2. Parish ministry today is changing rapidly...Meeting this challenge means clergy must periodically retreat from the congregation to retool or refocus their ministry approaches.

3. Without such renewal leave, there is a stronger chance that clergy will, over time, demonstrate the key characteristics of burnout--namely, exhaustion, cynicism, disillusionment, and self-deprecation... Burned-out clergy are much more likely to leave parish ministry... Every pastoral turnover costs a congregation years of progress. Sabbatical leave helps avoid such situations.

4. Another lethal effect of burnout is that it makes a pastor dull, hollow, and uninteresting... Clergy vitality is the greatest asset in building up a congregation.

5. The pastoral role generally involves long, hard hours without weekends off, or even the occasional long weekend... Congregations too often assume that clergy can remain vital and healthy and maintain a sound family life with only one day off per week. This is a crazy norm. We don't know where it comes from, but it permeates every denomination on this continent. When you add up the time off clergy miss that most lay people take for granted, it becomes clear that a three-month renewal leave every four years is a reasonable proposal that helps make up for that loss.

[Keith's note: while it's true that I work a six- or six-and-a-half-day work week, the terms of call for PC(USA) pastors include two weeks study leave and four weeks vacation each year. Everybody's busy; most working people have to work too many hours and too many days a year; and I don't bother myself with comparisons between my schedule and anyone else's.]

6. How can a congregation develop skills in self-sufficiency if their pastor is never off the scene? Clergy renewal leaves can help congregations develop self-sufficiency skills that [can] be invaluable."

Roy Oswald writing in the Introduction to Bullock and Bruesehoff, Clergy Renewal: The Alban Guide to Sabbatical Planning, pp. vi-viii. Copyright (c) 2000 The Alban Institute.

Through the foresight of the Personnel Committee and the goodwill and generosity of the Session, the Pastor has been assigned to an eight-week Ministry Renewal Leave (traditionally called a "sabbatical") in 2009. On this page, I will be posting

• information about the meaning and purpose of MRL,
• various thoughts and ideas regarding my specific plans,
• and, when the time comes, something like a "blog" of my experiences and reflections.

I hope this is useful, and I know that the Renewal will be a win-win-win: it will be 

1. a great opportunity for the church;
2. a refreshment and renewal of my ministry; and
3. all of that will better serve the people we are here to serve, to the glory of the one who gives us the mission.

Although I in no way see sabbatical as a "reward" for the pastor--and I will in no way use it as merely eight more weeks of pure vacation--still, I cannot help but be tremendously grateful for the kind and generous spirit in which members of the Session approached the issue of Ministerial Renewal Leave with my best interests and those of the church in mind. I am deeply humbled.

Q. How long will the sabbatical last?

A. Eight weeks, scheduled for the time in the year when it is hoped to cause the least disruption of the church schedule: July 14-Sept. 8, 2009.

Q. What will it cost the church?

A. The projected church budget for 2009 includes an additional $3000 to cover eight Sundays of pulpit supply as well as honoraria for clergy who may be called in for emergency pastoral services. (Potentially, only a little more than half that amount may be used.) Costs of sabbatical experiences, including travel, will be paid by the pastor, who will continue to receive salary and benefits during the leave.

Q. Why now?

A. The Presbytery of Coastal Carolina has adopted a policy of pastors taking a 12-week sabbatical after each seven years of service. In August 2009, I am looking forward to beginning my 10th year as pastor of this church. (I fully endorsed the length of Renewal Leave determined by the Session in 2007.) By Summer 2009, we will be well into the Capital Campaign segment of the building expansion process, so this just seems like as good a time as ever. In fact, the Personnel Committee in 2007 proposed the sabbatical for 2008, but it seemed wise to give more preparation time to make sure a.) the church was ready and b.) I would have plenty of advance time to consider the most effective and efficient ways this time could be used for the maximum benefit to all of us.

Q. What's the point or purpose of Ministerial Renewal Leave?

A. I'll try to avoid redundancy by directing this question to other places on this web page. But I'll also say this about my philosophy: from the church's perspective, sabbatical, or MLR, is not about specific things that the pastor does, but about the Biblical spirit of renewal. For years I have watched churches, presbyteries, and local ministries send their staff on sabbaticals, but only after approving some major paper, project or presentation that is to be worked on over sabbatical. The words "worked on over sabbatical" ought to be a red flag to all concerned--what a monumental waste of time and money it would be just to send someone out to do a different kind of work with the same level of stress and pressure as always.

That said...I have set out for myself several writing projects to complete during my sabbatical! However, these are not out of a misplaced sense of seeking justification, but as an integrated part of an overall sabbatical program, through which I hope to increase and enhance my ability to understand what this church does, what I as a pastor do, and what God calls us to do.

A properly constructed Renewal Leave should be able to speak for itself in both the content of the experience and--infinitely more importantly--in the ability of the minister to continue, and to be a more capable, more energized pastor in the weeks and years that follow the sabbatical. It's not about reward for the previous years, but preparation for upcoming ones. To that end, I will be excitedly making presentations before and after the Leave. 

Send me your unanswered questions at haregrog@bellsouth.net and I'll add them to the Sabbatical Q & A in the weeks and months ahead.

These are some of the sabbatical experiences being planned for July-September, 2009:

Retreat and Theology Workshop, Avila Retreat Center (NC) 

Reading and Writing Retreat

Worship (Catholic mass, Orthodox vespers, Jewish shabbat, etc.)

Montreat/Black Mountain, NC family retreat

Worship at Lake Junaluska Conference & Retreat Center, NC (Tom Long preaching)

Serbia: St. Sava Cathedral, Monasteries, and the Reformed Christian Church in Serbia (Vojvodina)

Bass, Diana Butler. Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith.

Berkhof, Hendrickus. Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith.

_____. Two Hundred Years of Theology.