Days Off and Your Pastor: The Need for More Sundays Away

Over a lunch of fajitas and salsa, I recently made a comment in passing to a colleague and friend about how my contract with FCC allows me to take a Sunday off every quarter (that is, three months) in addition to my four weeks of vacation time (four weeks per year is generally the standard for clergy).

His response?

“Man, I need to hire your agent!” (As though I had Scott Boras reppin’ me at the negotiating table.)

My response?

“Dude…I didn’t even suggest it.  It was my congregation’s idea.”

And it was.  I didn’t even ask for that to be put into my contract.

The thing is…in terms of my own personal self-care, that clause is possibly the most important one in my contract—in part because the contract template given to our churches by the denomination does not, to its serious discredit, include days off or sick time (but both of which I am allowed under FCC's personnel handbook).

And unlike vacation, which tends to be lopsided for pastors (we take a lot of it in the summer, maybe a week in the winter that overlaps with part of the holiday season), the Sundays off are quarterly—I accrue them every three months, which ensures me eight Sundays off per year, which averages out to once every six or seven weeks (6.5 to be exact).

Why is this important?

For me—and, I imagine, many of my colleagues—seven weeks is about the breaking point for us when it comes to the quality of our preaching.  Minute for minute, no other task of our jobs is as spiritually demanding and draining as preaching, and after a time, we reach a point of diminishing returns, when we are no longer at our best and need to ride the pine for a Sunday.

Think of almost any sport—the starters get a rest at some point in the game via timeouts, halftime, substitutions, etc.  Why should it be any different for senior/solo pastors?

Now…it doesn’t *always* work that way.  When I first arrived here last fall, I preached eight Sundays in a row without a break—that went okay for the most part.  But after Ash Wednesday this year, I preached eleven Sundays in a row, and I could feel the fatigue after the seventh or eighth Sunday…and so could my congregants—more than one asked me in April when I would next be allowing myself a Sunday off.  I made a promise to myself never to go that long preaching without a break again.

I am currently midway through a nine-week uninterrupted stretch of preaching, but the good news is that beginning in August, I will not go more than six weeks without a break until, I believe, February of 2013, which I am very grateful for.

Pastors are well-documented workaholics (a Duke Divinity School study concluded that a typical full-time Protestant pastor works an average of 50 hours per week).  This is in no small part due to the fact that our work never ceases.  The myth is that we all we do is give a sermon every week, maybe teach a couple of classes, and then get all of this vacation time.  The reality is that there is always next week’s sermon to be written, there is always another Sunday School or Bible Study curriculum to prepare, there is always another family in need of pastoral care, there is always another mission to support, and there is always the NEXT BIG THING™ to envision.

But giving your pastor a Sunday off every season, in addition to his/her regular vacation time, can create a healthier spiritual leader and, by extension, a healthier congregation.  Having seen this mechanism in action, and having endured some rough weeks in a vocation that I love, I firmly believe in it.

Question: What mechanisms for self-care for your pastors (or for yourself, if you are a pastor) have worked best in your experience?

Yours in Christ,

Eric