I return to my church this morning after a month-long break, so it’s a good time to do what the Army calls an after action review. That’s when you debrief what happened, why it happened and how to improve next time.
It’s cheaper for a church to give its pastor a few weeks off every five years than to bring on a new one every seven
What my church and I agreed to was a sabbatical—time off for personal renewal—something many churches are adopting as a way of keeping their pastoral leadership fresh and on point. I blogged about two previous sabbaticals here and here. The expectations of pastors are so high today and their pace of ministry so intense, if churches don’t allow for periodic times of rest and restoration they run the risk of burn-out. It’s cheaper for a church to give its pastor a few weeks off every five years than to bring in a new one every seven.
My church is gracious and generous to give each of our ministers four weeks of sabbatical leave every five years, with the expectation that we devise a plan. My plan was simple. I wanted to visit some other churches to see how they did things. Talk with pastors about how they lead. Spend time with my wife. And listen carefully to whatever the Lord wanted to say to me.
A memorable lunch with a pastor and his wife in a Greenville country club that ended up with us in a prayer circle in the middle of the lobby praying for a miracle
I won’t go into all the details of what happened during my sabbatical, but here are a few snapshots. Pam and I had some great time reconnecting at the beach. I went on a silent prayer retreat in the mountains that was unlike anything I’ve experienced before. A trip to Houston to spend a couple of days with a bishop friend. Worship services in different cities with churches of different sizes and styles. Conversations with a wide assortment of pastors. Leisurely time in God’s Word, particularly the account of Elijah on Mount Horeb. Two great books read, one an awesome account of great people of prayer in history called “Kneeling with Giants” and the other a secular management study that challenged my approach to leadership called “The One Thing.” A memorable lunch with a pastor and his wife in a Greenville country club that ended up with us in a prayer circle in the middle of the lobby praying for a miracle. And a journal where I kept track of all the revelation the Lord was downloading to me that grew to over a hundred pages by the end of the month.
Churches can wait to die or hope to live
And in one Holy Spirit-led moment I found myself driving through a little town in middle Georgia called “Siloam.” The name caught my attention because in the Bible it’s the pool place where Jesus heals a blind man. According to John 9:11 the pool’s name means “Sent.”
The center of the town square was a large cemetery that appeared to date to the beginnings of the community, maybe 150 years ago. Huddled up close to the cemetery on three sides, so close to the graves that it was heard to tell where the cemetery ended and their properties began, were three small churches. I noticed a man working at the Baptist church so I pulled in to talk with him. “What’s the story with these churches?” I asked.
Pointing to the Presbyterian church, he said they’d closed their doors a few years before. Looking down the street to the Methodist church, he said, “They’re about to close.” Then, nodding to his own church, he said, “We’ll be next.”
“All the young people have moved to the city because there are no jobs here. Our church has dwindled down to just a few people, and all of us will soon be gone.”
The tableau of three white framed churches pressing close to the cemetery, waiting their turn to die, wasn’t so much an object lesson in the decline of rural America as it was a vision of the challenges faced by all churches. We’re all “sent”–the town’s name was an unintentional irony–to be centers of life in a culture of death. The greatest tragedy of the modern American church is when we end up as dead as the culture around us.
As I drove away, I remembered the verse about the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37:3. “Can these bones live?” the Lord asks. “Thus says the Lord God to these bones,” he goes on to promise, “Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.” Churches can wait to die, I thought, or they can hope to live.
What I learned on sabbatical
So to complete the after action review, here are my takeaways from sabbatical:
- God will speak when we take time to listen.
- Seasons when we step away from the hectic pace of our lives can be more restorative and renewing than anything else we do.
- The kingdom is broader than Southern Baptists and there are godly, Spirit-filled people in every nook and cranny of American church life that are worthwhile finding and getting to know.
- My church is an exciting, life-filled community of believers that I’m privileged to love and serve.
Thanks to Calvin and Hobbs, the greatest comic strip of all time, for the image at top.