Elders should have sabbaticals, and that means all Elders, whether they are paid by the church or not.
To help you follow my reasoning, let me first establish two principles.
The Principle of Parity
First, we should aim for parity among elders. This flows from the conviction that churches are led by teams of elders. Some of those elders are set aside for prayer and study by being paid so that they don’t have to work. Those elders who are paid are not more important than the others, but will do the lion’s share of the preaching and pastoral work because they’re more available for it. Those who have jobs will do what they can of that same work around their work and family commitments. That availability will be different for different elders in different periods of their lives.
This means that the paid elder is not ‘the Pastor.’ Rather, all of the elders are ‘the pastors.’ Anything that is given, or expected, of a paid elder should be given, or expected, of the other elders in proportion. The phrase ‘in proportion’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting, I appreciate, and its application will require wisdom in different settings, but we should expect this. Whoever in your ecclesiology or denomination is responsible for the welfare of your paid elders/pastors is just as responsible for the welfare of your unpaid elders/pastors, even if the law does not require this of them because it focuses their responsibilities on ‘employees.’
The Principle of Pattern
Second, we should think carefully about where our patterns and practices come from. Whether or not ‘Pastors’ get sabbaticals is a contested issue. In many mainline denominations this is a very standard expectation. In my ‘new church’ world, its much more recent that such things might be expected. Some get nervous about them because they worry how church members will receive paying for a ‘holiday’ for their elders when their work doesn’t give them three months off every seven years. I think that’s reading backwards.
We should not assume that the employment practices of the world are those to be copied. Of course, interestingly, many companies actually do offer these sort of breaks to employees—a colleague at the University has just taken one—though they are likely to be unpaid. Instead, we should adopt godly employee practices and expect to influence our locales to change them. If we think the Bible teaches that all workers should get this sort of provision (and I think you can make the argument for ‘rest’ that is longer than a day and less regular than weekly as well as a weekly sabbath) then we should do it our churches and encourage Christian employees to offer it to their employees.
The principle is simply this: we don’t read from world to church but from church to world. ‘Not everybody gets this’ is not an argument. If its right and not everybody gets it, then that’s a sign that we aren’t in the new creation yet.
Is it right? Pastors’ sabbaticals are loosely based on the sabbatical year in Israel’s calendar, where their work over the previous six meant the ground could be left fallow in the seventh year. It’s the week writ large. The Jubilee year is every seventh sabbatical year, when all debts are repaid and slaves freed. Its notable that Israel didn’t do this (2 Chronicles 36). The principle of work six and rest one is a good one. Of course, paid Pastors don’t ‘work’, so that needs some careful application.
The writer Andy Crouch famously practices this in his own life. He doesn’t work every seventh year. This requires careful stewardship of his resources over the previous six. I suspect it is simply out of reach of most people in the economic systems we live in, but maybe they’re broken. We can still lament them, even if we can’t achieve what goodness would look like. Israel was eventually taken into exile for the exact number of sabbatical years they didn’t celebrate. The land will demand its rest. This principle still continues.
Putting it together
What does this mean? It means that you should offer your pastors rest. The general ‘3 months every seven years’ works, but doesn’t need to be slavishly adhered to. You could go further, after all. It isn’t a holiday. While sometimes churches might choose to send pastors on holiday if they can’t afford it, this is supposed to be a period or prayer, or reflection, or study, or similar, to prepare them to go again with the everyday demands of pastoring. Remember, rest isn’t relaxation.
It also means that you should offer something similar to all of your elders, even those who aren’t paid by the church (which is probably most of them). This should be proportionate, so may not be as long, but it might be if they give significant hours each week to the church. It should be something that benefits them, recognising that they’re unlikely to be able to stop working and might not appreciate several months off from preaching. What is welcome, helpful, and provides rest will be as diverse as your elders are. You do not have to give everyone the same thing, you need to give them what they need.
This plan, whatever it is, needs to provide for their community too. It probably is wise for the paid pastor to worship somewhere else for their time off, in most circumstances. It probably isn’t wise for the unpaid pastor to do so, as you’re most likely cutting them off from community by doing so. It could be, for example: paying for the family to go on holiday as they can’t afford it since the elder has taken lower paying jobs to give more time to the church; paying for the elder to go on a retreat or to visit churches in another place or nation; paying for spiritual direction or counselling if the elders judge that might be helpful; or paying for a particular academic course or period of study.
Perhaps if the elder can take unpaid leave from their job to do such a thing, the church might even consider paying their ‘salary’ as a gift for those weeks. All of these things, of course, require paying, since its easier to give them money than time. In the UK, Trustees will have to make sure this is set up in a way that adheres to charity law, but there would be a way to achieve any of the aims I’ve set out, even if my simple phrasing isn’t exactly what you can do.
The more important thing is to assume that they need the same thing. Sometimes they might need longer: three months out of a full time job might track to more like a year out of a volunteer elder’s time. Other times a shorter period might be more appropriate or proportionate. There won’t be one size fits all.
The most important piece
There’s one piece of this that’s more important than anything else: ask the volunteer elders what would actually serve them. State the church’s heart to provide them with rest for heart and mind, don’t assume that rest has to mean relaxing, and find out what would serve them too.
Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash
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