[0:02]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.
[0:46]Oh, sabbatical is an interesting experience. It's the first time I've ever done one and, uh, I learned so much from it. And it's been about three weeks now since we were off sabbatical.
[0:56]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
[1:12]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.
[1:33]First of all, pre-sabbatical prep is absolutely essential. You can't just simply walk away and have no plan for it whatsoever.
[1:44]Pre-sabbatical prep is essential. Simple things like making sure you put out an email vacation response. Uh, you know what it's like to send someone an email and get a 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.
[2:04]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.
[2:17]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'll 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.
[2:41]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.
[2:50]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,
[3:00]there was nothing to do. Uh, 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.
[3:16]I had planned the sabbatical out over a year in advance of it. I saw this gap in my calendar and I 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.
[3:28]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.
[3:47]Because if any of you has ever experienced that where you're just fried, you're toast, you're burnt out, the break you take isn't a sabbatical, it's just collapse.
[3:55]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.
[4:07]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.
[4:20]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.
[4:31]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.
[4:51]We took 50 days because that was the gap we had on the calendar. It should have been double that. You 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.
[5:05]We've emotionally disconnected. We've 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.
[5:19]We did, you know, just under two months, that is an absolute barebones 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.
[5:34]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.
[5:46]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 sabbatical.
[5:57]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 better. So that's the third one. Fourth one is this. Check in with with a sabbatical coach.
[6:07]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 Nemecheck.com.
[6:19]We'll put links to that in the show notes. And he's he's written a good article as well about that that you can get at seannemechek.com. You can also check out the interview I did with him a while ago, episode 45 on dealing with burnout and ministry. Sean knows his stuff.
[6:33]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.
[6:49]Whether or not I was going to need regular coaching through my sabbatical or whether or not just setting up a plan for myself was going to be okay.
[6:58]Uh, it turned out 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.
[7:07]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.
[7:18]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, uh, just from all kinds of interesting and different circumstances, because life is that way.
[7:31]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.
[7:44]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.
[7:54]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.
[8:04]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.
[8:14]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.
[8:28]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.
[8:39]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?
[8:50]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 barebones schedule during the time you'll be gone.
[9:00]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 your Wednesday night Bible study, or maybe, you know, whatever else you've got, you trim it back to the bare bone stuff.
[9:16]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,
[9:30]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.
[9:48]Maybe you can have a sabbatical exchange with a pastor nearby, while 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.
[10:00]Prepare them for it, give them a schedule they can handle and give them some pastoral oversight, uh, 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 into them.
[10:17]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 on sabbatical is stress.
[10:29]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.
[10:40]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.
[10:50]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.
[11:03]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. Uh, so again, your whole time should not be spent playing video games or watching movies, obviously. Getting away from a screen is a huge part of what we need to be able to do.
[11:18]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.
[11:35]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. Shelley and I watched the entire Lord of the Rings series. Like we're good to go. Okay?
[11:49]Uh, and we felt zero guilt about it. It was just awesome to be 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.
[12:00]Sometimes pastors we have a way of just simply, you know, arranging everything ourselves and then informing our spouse afterwards. But, uh, if you are married, your spouse is going to be a big part of this sabbatical time.
[12:12]Your spouse might work on their own and not be able to take that time off. Uh, most of you probably will be sabbaticalling with your spouse during that time.
[12:21]But whatever that is, make sure that they are a part of the plan from the very beginning as in how long it's 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.
[12:42]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.
[12:51]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
[13:02]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.
[13:13]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.
[13:33]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.
[13:45]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.
[14:05]So, uh, it's okay. What you may discover is, if you especially if you do it instantaneously, you may get sick with the adrenaline drop.
[14:14]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.
[14:29]I was shocked and then I got sick. I got a cold, I got stomach, whatever. It was just like the adrenaline was holding on until I was off and then the body just went, that's it, we're done.
[14:39]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.
[14:50]You need time where you can get sick, whether it's an emotional sickness or a 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.
[15:01]Give yourself time to fade away from those usual duties. It's not going to be instantaneous. Number 11. Well, we've already talked about this a bit. Don't be shocked by a bizarre sleep cycle.
[15:11]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 nowhere to put it, or you may cycle back and forth between the two.
[15:22]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.
[15:33]Okay? So, 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.
[15:45]Have someone not your spouse, who who will be available to talk to people that need to be talked to and then trust them to do it.
[15:55]We talked about a little earlier about someone oversees your email. This is also now someone who's going to be available physically and 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,
[16:10]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.
[16:21]But there needs to be someone in 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.
[16:38]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.
[16:48]Second, consider becoming a financial supporter through Patreon, Venmo or PayPal. Just go to Karlvaters.com/support.
[16:56]For as little as $3 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.
[17:15]Number 13, uh, journal. Uh, journal even if you hate it. I am not a journaler, uh, but I did journal every single day of this and I found it to be helpful.
[17:25]Uh, what worked for me was, uh, first thing in the day, I journaled about what happened on the previous day.
[17:32]Uh, 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.
[17:44]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.
[18:00]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 is really helpful.
[18:17]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.
[18:27]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?
[18:40]Do you like to play sports? Do you like to just, you know, relax in a hammock? Uh, but think physically about the things you enjoy doing.
[18:50]And by doing those things physically, it allows your brain to rest a little bit and to 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.
[19:02]Which means spend as little time as possible, even with family and friends who cause stress. And we all know who those people are.
[19:10]We all have friends and family members who when we spend time with them, we are refreshed 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.
[19:22]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 on sabbatical. 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.
[19:37]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, maybe, hopefully not, uh, parents, you know, other people in our lives that we just simply have to check in on because they're part of us, part of our lives, and we love them.
[19:50]But we need to spend less time with people who 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.
[20:00]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.
[20:16]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.
[20:26]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 than that as well.
[20:42]So, you know, if if you're Baptist, check out a Methodist church. If you're Methodist, check out a Presbyterian church. If you're Presbyterian, check out the local charismatic church, or whatever, right? And go to a different church every week.
[20:53]Uh, 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.
[21:04]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 picked churches on our own that we wanted to check out from four different theological backgrounds, all solidly Christian,
[21:17]but from who who did worship in a way that was different from ours. In fact, I'm I'm going to talk a little bit more about this in the bonus material.
[21:26]Uh, 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.
[21:37]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 Karlvaters.com/support, will get a link to all of our bonus videos.
[21:48]And if you go to Karlvaters.com/subscribe, you can subscribe to our free newsletter, which comes out every Friday and that also has a bonus link.
[21:55]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.
[22:07]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.
[22:17]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.
[22:28]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.
[22:40]That's a 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.
[22:50]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.
[23:02]And spend some time praying in ways that are different from the way you normally pray. There are some good books out there that talk about different prayer styles and prayer types.
[23:12]Make sure that it comes from a profoundly Christian viewpoint because of course, there's a lot out there that comes 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.
[23:30]Okay? Number 18, now. Read books for fun. You know, watch movies and TV for fun as well, but don't spend a lot of screen time.
[23:38]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.
[23:51]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.
[24:03]Number 19. Don't be shocked by mood swings. Going on a sabbatical is kind of like someone coming off an addiction.
[24:12]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.
[24:24]It's coming off of feelings of responsibility, and you may feel guilty because you're doing what you're doing. 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?
[24:52]And assess that and walk through that. That's another reason why you might want a sabbatical coach to help you uh 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.
[25:04]Uh number 20. After disconnecting, after you've had your disconnect and you've maybe had some time in the middle to actually, uh, go through sabbatical time.
[25:13]Start thinking big picture. So, as you start getting towards, okay, we're closer to coming out of sabbatical than going into it. Start fading back into real life gradually.
[25:25]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?
[25:35]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 and even, years and decades aren't even the right word. Season is the only word I can think of.
[25:52]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.
[26:10]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, 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?
[26:24]Where is it that you might want to be taking me? And just start jotting things down, and then after half an hour, an 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.
[26:40]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.
[26:55]Then after you started going, hey, maybe we should make adjustments here or there. We did that. Shelley and I had big plans for 2024 that were going to be very busy, very involved, very high planning.
[27:05]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.
[27:18]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.
[27:33]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.
[27:45]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.
[27:57]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.
[28:12]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,
[28:26]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 were we thinking?
[28:37]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 and when you've had some chance to think about it a little more.
[28:51]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 hit it like a light switch to go into sabbatical, don't hit it like a light switch to come out of sabbatical.
[29:02]Just like you needed a 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.
[29:15]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.
[29:31]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 in the last point, don't make permanent commitments that can't be changed, because you're not in the mind space for that.
[29:45]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?
[29:55]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 time.
[30:13]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.
[30:29]If you are a regular subscriber Karlvaters.com/subscribe or supporter, Karlvaters.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 next time.
[30:54]This episode was produced by Veronica Beaver. It was edited by Phil Vaders. Original theme music was written and performed by Jack Wilkins of Jackwilkinsmusic.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.
