Pastors Take A Break

Last summer, the Rev. Steve Sheely took his family with him to the annual conference of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in Houston.

It didn’t work out so well, Sheely recalled. Between the long drive, the busy schedule of meetings and three young children in the hotel room, he came back more tired than when he left.

This year, he combined his trip to the conference with a week at a beach house in North Carolina. He was able to catch up with extended family, relax on the beach and spend time with his wife and sons. He then went on to the conference in Charlotte, N.C., while his wife drove home with the boys.

“When I got back, people commented on how rested I looked,” said Sheely, pastor of Rolling Hills Baptist Church in Fayetteville. It was the first time he’s taken two consecutive weeks off in his five years at the church.

Vacations are vital for members of the clergy, who spend their working lives taking care of other people. Time away helps them recoup their energy, reconnect with their families and rekindle the spiritual flame at the heart of their ministries.

Yet it’s not always easy for them to get away. In a onepastor church such as Sheely’s,people look to their minister to fill many roles. Even in larger churches, there can be a sense that only one pastor can fill a particular role.

Reasons pastors gave to a blogger for neglecting to take time off include “The congregation needs me too much,” “It’s not worth the energy and resources,” “I get so much gratification from what I do that I don’t need time off” and “My congregation doesn’t think pastors need a vacation.”

“It’s fine unless there is some kind of crisis,” noted Sheely, explaining that he would return home from vacation if there were a serious accident or adeath in his church family. He recalled a December when a church member died the day after Christmas. He put his longawaited week off on hold to drive to the funeral in Texas.

There were no interruptions in this year’s vacation. His administrative assistant kept things running smoothly, Sheely said. His time away was uninterrupted by a single crisis or phone call.

His brother-in-law, also a pastor, was not so fortunate.

Members of his congregation called him daily about relatively minor matters, Sheely said.

For Sheely, that would defeat the point of taking time away.

“I don’t check e-mail while I’m gone,” he said. “If I have to think about something work-related, it doesn’t feel like a vacation.”

Setting Boundaries A Key

Vacations are important for pastors, who labor long hours in stressful, public roles.

“It’s hard to work a healthy number of hours during the week, because their work is never done,” said the Rev. Rebecca Spooner, a Presbyterian pastor and counselor in Little Rock. Spooner is director of the Lawrence E. Schmidt Center, which provides mental health services to pastors and their families of any denomination. A related clergy counseling network reaches pastors and their families statewide.

The challenge for pastors is to set boundaries around their time off, Spooner said. This means getting clear on what constitutes a vacation and what a pastor is willing to do: Will he take phone calls? Respond to pastoral needs? Return for an emergency?

One pastor she worked with hadn’t had a vacation in several years, Spooner said. Every time he tried to leave town he was called back because of a death.

Another challenge is dealing with the expectations pastors feel from the congregation or from themselves. Although most church members agree that clergy need to take time away, the unspoken expectation is that the pastor should be there for them.

Clergy often put the same unrealistic expectations on themselves, Spooner said. They must learn to give themselves permission to not meet every need.

“For any person to do what they do is very demanding,” she said. “If they don’t take care of themselves, they can’t take care of others. ...

“It can be challenging.Sometimes those needs are genuinely at odds with each other.”

Catholic Priest Likes NASCAR Trips

The Rev. Joe Marconi, pastor of three small Catholic parishes, said even Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in on the importance of clergy self-care.

“He says that an exhausted member of the kingdom is not good for the kingdom,” Marconi said. “Everyday work can get heavy if you’re not taking care of yourself.”

The Catholic church strongly encourages its clergy to take the allotted four weeks of vacation a year, Marconi said. An additional week is set aside fora spiritual retreat.

Vacation time must be planned in advance, so another priest can be recruited to celebrate Masses.

This might be a visiting priest, a retired priest or a member of a religious order, Marconi said. Parish administrators keep other aff airs going while the priest is gone.

Marconi spends his vacation time at NASCAR races, he said. Yet he hasn’t taken time off since last July. He’s been busy with a variety of parish projects, he said. “Before you know it, time slips up on you.”

He’ll remedy that this fall, with the encouragement of parish members and fellow priests. Marconi, who pastors St. Joseph CatholicChurch in Tontitown, St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church on the University of Arkansas campus and St. John’s Catholic Church in Huntsville, plans to spend a week at the Kansas Speedway in October.

A Proactive Approach

Generational diff erences influence a pastor’s view toward vacation, said the Rev. Bill Bryan, director of the intern program and professional formation at the Perkins School of Theology at Southwestern Methodist University.

People of his generation (he’s about 60) didn’t learn the importance of taking a break, Bryan said. Yet the costs were high. Many of his classmates (he graduated from Perkins in 1977) burned out in five to seven years, he said.

Burnout shows itself in several ways. A pastor might quit or get sick or hurt somebody, Bryan said.

“The stakes are very high for us to live a balanced, survivable life style.” It’s important that clergy members base their ministries on grace and Godcenteredness, he said, rather than some measure of their own goodness.

Burnout continues to be a problem, said Spooner, the counselor in Little Rock. Statistics from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) show that 30 percent of clergy leave the ministry in their first five years, she said. Another 25 percent leave in the next fi ve years. The numbers don’t identify why the pastors leave.

Another consideration for clergy members is the stress on their families, Bryan said.

“Being a minister is a little like being a bigamist. You’re married to a spouse and you’re married to the church.” Marriages can suffer, he said, as can relationships with children.

“A good family vacation sorts a lot of that out.”

Part of Bryan’s job is to help incoming clergy learn better patterns of self care. Students in the nine-month intern program are asked to develop a rhythm of devotional practices and rest time to counter the busy days of activity. Such time out is important on a daily, weekly, yearly and sabbatical basis, Bryan said.

“We’re trying to get these patterns into their lives when they start out ... before their marriage is in trouble or they run out of steam (in their spiritual commitment),” he said.