To everything there is a season: the Church and taking ‘time out’

Far from being just a long holiday, a sabbatical is a time of renewal and reflection for clergy. Liz Roberts explores what some of the clergy in our area have been getting up to on their once-a-decade sabbatical.

Many of us will be gearing up for holidays about now, even if that’s only two weeks with the phone off the hook and the curtains closed, watching Wimbledon. But what about the clergy embarking on a sabbatical this summer? Have they wangled themselves a three-month holiday?

‘Far from it!’, says the Revd Oliver Simon, the recently retired Berkshire Archdeaconry Adviser on Sabbaticals. ‘It’s an essential breather from being the person to whom everyone passes the buck.’ Oliver’s job is to take the clergy’s germ of an idea about a programme for renewal and help him or her crystallise that thought into firm plans. He advises where funding can be applied for and, to some extent, performs the role of networker.

A time of re-creation is a Biblical injunction, laid down in Leviticus 25: its avoidance was condemned (2 Chronicles 36:21). The land was to be left fallow for the seventh year, the poor could glean whatever grew and God promised the sixth year would yield enough food to cover the period before the next possible harvest. Every Diocese has a different pattern for honouring the Creator’s plan – in Oxford, it amounts to paid leave of absence for 3 months every 10 years in-post, whether parish or sector. Whether our clergy would agree that faith alone makes the pre-sabbatical arrangements fall neatly into place is a matter of dispute: Richard Cowles of the Wheatley Team says the activity to organise being out of the parish for three months is frenetic, and the admin on return is huge – on the other hand, Chris Stott of Harwell and Chilton found the latter burden somewhat diminished by calculating his departure based on when he would have to return – he came back in August, typically the closed season for meetings.

Renewing vocation

Richard started his sabbatical with a cycling pilgrimage to the sacred sites of Wales, culminating in a week’s retreat.  He then took a five-week holiday in Italy with his wife, and returned for a month’s reading programme on his passion, Science and Religion. He says that his sabbatical renewed his sense of vocation, giving him time for uncluttered thinking and the chance to develop a vision for his own life and that of his parishes.

Duncan Barnes, of Woughton Local Ecumenical Partnership, found the down-time crucial to, as he puts it, ‘rehabilitating the human being rather than the clergyman’. He visited school-church partnership projects around the country to complement his work with the Bridgebuilder Trust and brought back ideas for engaging schools in special projects, which he was able to put immediately into practice back home. Duncan, too, took a long holiday, in New York and Canada, drawing strength from the chance to catch up with distant family he would not otherwise get to see and, on a more prosaic level, learned the PC software program Microsoft Excel, to make him more efficient with his parish admin. (Congregations, please note!) Duncan found it easy to get away because he is part of a large team including Methodist, Baptist and URC colleagues and cover was always at hand, but for small rural parishes, the picture is quite different. Chris needed to draft in a few clergy from outside the parish and when Chris’s non stipendiary minister was hit by a debilitating virus (thankfully temporary, but nevertheless enervating), taking her out of the picture, too, it was down to the leadership team left behind to do a lot of fast and fancy footwork to find cover without disrupting the sabbatical. The Harwell and Chilton experience was clearly unfortunate, but Richard is adamant that an incumbent ‘going missing’ for three months is a wonderful opportunity for the raising up of new, mature leaders who – with prayer and a following wind – continue with their contribution to the ministry landscape long after the clergyman or woman has returned.

Inspiration

Chris has managed two sabbaticals whilst Rector. In the most recent, in 2004, he travelled to Sinai and took part in a desert pilgrimage, including a trek in the mountains, sleeping out under the stars. He returned to a conference on ‘new ways of church’ in Sheffield, looking at new models for the parish church to be at the heart of a community, the culture of which has changed almost unrecognisably in a matter of a couple of generations. Along with holiday time with wife Eva, Chris said the sabbatical fed his imagination, reminded him of the value of solitude and gave him the opportunity for a renewed sense of purpose in the place where he has been sent. Preceded by a Willow Creek conference and then NEAC in Blackpool in 2003, he had a life-changing 18 months, the ‘high’ he got from which didn’t really wear off until earlier this year.  

A time for congregations, too

Oliver Simon says that, as congregants, we often aren’t interested enough in the great adventures or renewal experiences of our sabbatical-taking clergy. He sees them too often sucked right back into the grind, into an unchanged ‘the vicar does everything’ attitude. The three clergy interviewed here, however, had – happily – found that we were anxious to make their learning episode ours, too. Chris, indeed, said that his time away went to the very core of his faith and approach to ministry to such an extent that the experience was almost beyond articulating in mere words, however many church groups wanted to see the slide-show. Oliver’s point serves to remind us, though, that we all have a part to play in ensuring that the revivifying experience of a sabbatical continues to sustain our clergy long after their return; only then can we as worshipping communities derive the blessing which is envisaged in Scripture.

Oliver Simon concludes that the three elements of a sabbatical – retreat, study, and holiday (often the only chance for many years that a member of the clergy has to get far, far away for a good length of time with the family) – are vital to the reinvigoration of the calling. And – with much of the credit for this going to his careful preparation of sabbatical-observing clergy –  he has never known anyone for whom the opportunity of three months’ unhindered reflection meant they returned to their duties concluding that they were in the wrong job!

Liz Roberts works as a freelance publicist for charities and worships at St Matthew’s Harwell, Oxon