SkintightTransformation

Sabbaticals for Pastors 101

Taking time for sabbatical rest is crucial to the success and longevity of your ministry. How often you take a sabbatical and what you do while on sabbatical is incredibly important.

 

Rhythm

We all have natural rhythms to our lives.  We take our vacations at a certain time every year.  We ramp up ministry seasons for short periods of time and have special focuses in our churches on missions, prayer and leadership from time to time.  Getting into a rhythm can be helpful in sustaining a healthy ministry pace as well as setting up a good way to plan from year to year.

 

Just like our ministries, our lives have a rhythm also.  Take a few minutes looking at your yearly calendar.  Where are the natural places for you to rest?  Keep in mind that you may need a first, second and third choice.

 

Frequency

How often should you take a sabbatical?  For every person it is different but here is a good rule of thumb for pastors:

 

• Once a month do a quick recharge –            

Take 1 full day where you don’t produce anything for a quick recharge to your personal batteries

• Once a year, unplug-

Every year take 2-3 days, get alone with just you and God to unplug from your duties and responsibilities

• Every 6 years take an extended sabbatical

Plan an extended sabbatical that includes time away, time for family, time for counseling or coaching.  This could be for 1-3 months

 

Types of Sabbaticals

 

Quick Recharge

Most people assume that if they have one day off a week, it is enough rest and they simply continue with ministry and life.  For most people, however, this is not true.  Your mind, spirit and body need a regular recharge.  This could be a day for prayer and fasting, relaxing or time in the Word.  If we’re honest, most of us would admit that our one-day-off a week is more about catching up with things around our home and doing things that keep us just as busy as we would be at work.  Take one day a month for a quick recharge

 

Unplug

Ministry life can have a fast pace and it can take a toll on us over long periods of time.  Unplugging helps to get us out of task mode and focused on what God is doing.  It’s important to take a 2-3 days a year to get away and listen to God.  Consider that a good time to take a 2-3 day sabbatical, is right before you begin planning.  Use this time to discern where God is moving in your church.  One possible upgrade to this plan is to take a key elder or staff person with you and spend time listening and praying together.

 

Extended Sabbatical

This is the most difficult sabbatical for most pastors to take.  It requires more planning beforehand and it is more about getting you, the pastor healthy than it is about just resting.  Most of us identify who we are with what we do.  An extended sabbatical forces us to clarify our identity, passions and calling.  You can use this time to do almost anything… as long as it has nothing to do with work!

 

Where to start

If you haven’t taken a sabbatical in more than 10 years, then I would suggest you start small, versus jumping right into the extended sabbatical.  (an exception would be if you feel like you are on a crash course to ministry burnout)  Start with doing six months of the quick recharges and then move to an ‘unplug’ (2-3 day) sabbatical.  This way when the time is right for you to take an extended sabbatical you have some good disciplines worked out before hand.

 

You Need a Mentor

No matter which sabbatical you are taking you need to have a mentor.  A mentor is someone you talk to about what you will be doing on your sabbatical before it starts and your mentor is the person you connect with to process after your sabbatical.  If you do even a one-day sabbatical and don’t use a mentor you’re missing out on perspective and good accountability for how you use your time.

 

A mentor can be someone in your church, like an elder or it can be someone outside your church, such as another pastor or elder.  You can also choose to hire a coach.  A coach will be able to set you up with an agenda and offer you valuable outside perspective.

 

Do you have any sabbatical practices that are helpful?   Please share them!

Strategic Planning 101

For most organizations, strategic planning is something you think you do pretty well, but deep down, you know you could be better at it.  Everybody and every organization plans, some are really intentional and strategic and others pretty much fly by the seat of their pants.  Here are some things to think about as you approach planning in your life, ministry and church.

 

Determine your loop

Your loop is the amount of time you need to evaluate in order to make sure that you new plan takes into consideration your past successes and failures.  If you don’t know where your blind spots are, you’ll miss crucial opportunities to avoid repeating mistakes and the chance to capitalize on some of your strengths. 

 

Consider this: how well you have implanted previously plays directly into your ability to implement in the future.

 

If you’re planning for something in the next three months, then look closely at the past three months.  What were the hang-ups and misses that prevented you from implementing well?  How have things like teamwork, morale and other changes in your church helped or hindered forward momentum?  If you’re planning for the next year, then look at the past year for insights.  If you’re working on a ten year plan... then, you guessed it, look back over the past 10 years.

 

Your loop is determined by how far out you’re planning.

 

Let your dreamers dream

Who are the dreamers in your church or ministry?  The process of dreaming is usually cut short for a couple of different reasons:

1. People are uncomfortable with coming up with new ideas because it’s not their strength.  Put the people who like to dream in a room together and let them have a no-holds-barred dreaming session (or two).
2. Some people get frustrated with creative planning sessions because they feel a need to implement. This is because you told them to implement, but because they immediately go to thinking about how to implement a new idea before its ready.  Dreams take time, and need to be kicked around the room for a while first.
3. Your first idea isn’t always the best idea.  Unfortunately, overly eager implementers will take the first idea they hear and start working on it right away.  Let the dreamers dream, and ask them to come up with multiple ideas.

 

Be committed to the dreaming process.

 

Run your dream through 3 filters

Not every idea is a good idea.  Use these filters to weed out some of the bad ideas.

1.    Does this fit our vision and culture?

Some ideas come from outside sources.  Something you saw at a conference or maybe its something you saw on the Internet or in a book.  Make sure the ideas being presented line up with “who” your church or ministry is.

 2.    What are the obstacles (everything has a cost)

Some ideas are great, but not possible to pull off.  Maybe they are possible but the price tag makes the risk too great.  Consider if you have the finances, the time and the gifts/talents on your team to pull it off.  Perhaps the idea is not for the immediate future and you need to wait for God’s timing.

 3.    What do we need to consider based on what we learned from our loop?

Lastly, take what you learned from your loop (see above).  What are the key learnings about your strengths and limitations that will help you make your plan a reality.

 

Develop an action plan and assign responsibility 

Every good plan needs milestones (major goal points), tasks (a list of what needs to be done) and it all needs to follow a calendar plan.  If communication is a struggle for you, then consider some ways to manage your project with some tools.  I recommend these project management tools.

 

Manymoon- is free and it has a paid upgrade service

Huddle- offers a free trial before you pay for their service 

Basecamp- has a free 30-day trial service and then several pay options

 

Build in accountability

Every good strategic plan needs accountability attached to it.  Someone (or some people) who will hold the people implementing the plan accountable.  It’s very easy for entrepreneurial leaders to be sidetracked by the next great project and let their current projects slide.  By building in accountability, you’ll be able to protect your organizations reputation of being able to implement what you start.

 

Values :: Core vs Cultural

Are they written down?

Every church has values.  Most churches have these values written down.  If you don’t have yours written down then you’re not leveraging the power your values can bring to the church.  I’ve heard it over and over “Values sag”.  If you’re not revisiting your values as a church, evaluating which of your values is starting to sag, then chances are your church is off course or at least has a value for flying by the seat of your pants.  I’m being a little bit sarcastic, but if you really don’t take time for reinforcing the most important aspects of what makes your church unique, then your church will end up being very susceptible to changing winds and fads.

 

Missional Values

Thanks to this guy named, Rick Warren, most churches these days have some variation of the 5 Purposes as presented in his book, The Purpose Driven Church. Worship, Evangelism, Discipleship, Serving and Community are 5 solid missional values.  Your church may have more or less.  I’ve seen some churches simply state their missional values as, “Love God, Love People.”  These are examples of missional values.  They affect what we do as a church, how we disciple people, very often they end up on a wall, in our membership classes and if we’re smart, we revisit our missional values often in our teaching schedule.

 

Cultural Values

Cultural values are a little bit trickier to figure out.  Most churches haven’t figured out what their cultural values are.  Most of them are unspoken, but with the right kind of exercises, they can be brought out, celebrated and maximized for your churches benefit. 

Some examples of cultural values are: excellence, work ethic, preaching style, seeker-sensitive, recovery focused, education, social justice,  and simplicity.  The list goes on and on.

 

Two Kinds of Cultural Values

There are two kinds of cultural values: realized, aspirational.  Realized values are already apart of your churches identity.  When you talk about these values you can be proud and show specific examples of how it shows up in everyday life.  When realized values aren’t followed, everyone notices! 

Aspirational values are what you WANT to be a part of your church’s culture.  Sometimes these are revealed to you through God and you just have to work on them. 

Sometimes aspirational values are discovered when you noticed them in another church or organization.  Maybe you like something about how Starbucks treats it’s customers and you want to bring that into your church’s culture. 

Sometimes aspirational values are pipe dreams.  It’s important to do a values discovery to figure out which values are which so that you don’t waste your time on values that are counter-cultural to your church and to figure out which ones you can maximize to accomplish the vision God has given you and your church.

 

Unlocking Church Health :: A True Story

This year past year, Canyon Ridge raised it's overall health by focusing on it's Worship Value. Attendance has gone up over 11% and compared to other churches internationally, Canyon Ridge is an above average church when it comes to overall health.

You may be wondering how focusing on the value of Worship raised the overall health of the church and how this information was obtained. It's really quite simple. Using the Natural Church Development (NCD) tool, we discovered that focusing on worship would have the greatest positive affect on Canyon Ridge's health.  This also set the church up for potential growth. After taking the assessment we discovered that Inspiring Worship was the lowest of the eight signs of a healthy church.

We developed a strategic plan, we implemented it and then we re-evaluated the church's health again this year. Overall, worship went from a 60 (slightly below average) to a 73 which is a great, healthy score and an awesome turn around in one year's time.

When combined with good evaluation and solid strategic planning, the NCD assessment can be a powerful way to turn a church's growth potential in the right direction. Many churches move from one hot button topic to the next without knowing which area of the church should receive their focused attention first. NCD takes the guess work out of figuring out what to work on first and helps any church get the most out of it's time and energy.

For more information about the NCD Survey and church health consulting check out Legacy Coaching.

Why I Stopped Blogging (And why I'm back)

A lot has happened

My life pretty much got turned upside down about a year (maybe a little more than a year ago).  My wife, Sharon started going through major health issues.   Thankfully, we’re on the other side of most of what was going on.  As a result, blogging as a priority, became a pretty low item.

 

I let things slip

I don’t know if you can relate, but when things start getting behind, it get harder and harder to pick them back up again.  Basically that’s what happened with me too.  The more time transpired between my last post the more difficult it was to pick things back up again.

 

I have something to say

I don’t always have something to say, but I do like sharing from my life.  This time I’m going to focus my blog on just a few topics and I’ll be less “random”.  Those topics (which are on the top navigation bar) are:

• Small Groups (It’s my job at Canyon Ridge and I love talking about how to help people grow through community)
• Church Health (One of my life passions is to see churches become more healthy.  At Canyon Ridge I lead a team of people focus on our health as a church.  Also, check out Legacy Coaching for more information on how to bring your church’s health up!)
• Leadership (Leadership is an indispensible part of any church’s vision and mission.  I love leadership; I love leaders and I love share leadership principles)
• Coaching (Coaching is about helping to bring about change in people’s lives and in organizations.  Coaching is one of the best ways to join with the Holy Spirit’s work through transformational conversations.)
• Family (I love what I learn through my family.  Not everything that happens in my life can be shared on my blog and not everything is worth sharing, but certainly when I can I love to share what God is teaching me through my family)