It's inevitable that some people will refer to my sabbatical as "vacation." I try to be polite and not correct them, but for my congregation, it's really important that they understand the difference. I take several weeks of vacation every year, time away from preaching and doing the weekly routine of church stuff. But even during those weeks, I'm never fully off-duty.
I'm sure it's different in multi-staff churches, or even churches with a secretary or administrative assistant. But when you're a solo pastor who has the church phone number forwarded to her cell phone, vacations are not really a time for totally disengaging from my role as a pastor. My congregation is good about not contacting me while I'm on vacation, but there always seems to be things that crop up that need my attention, if even briefly. And if I'm answering an email here, a text there, then I'm not really AWAY from ministry.
Last summer was a perfect illustration. Clif and I had decided to do a getaway to Colorado, just the two of us. We didn't want a lot of plans or running around. We just wanted to breathe in the pine-scented air, read and look at mountains. You know, RELAX. Except soon after we arrived, I got an email from our newly-hired worship leader that his full-time job had suddenly changed and he would not be available on Sundays anymore - beginning now. So I had to figure out who would do music at church the next Sunday. Fortunately, my sister-in-law and her husband graciously agreed to do music and put the lyrics into Media Shout. Then we got a call from my sister-in-law on Friday. "Clifford (her husband) is in the hospital and I don't know how to enter the lyrics. Can you walk me through it?" Notice that she didn't say, "My husband is in the hospital and we can't do music on Sunday." She didn't want to ruin my vacation. But I was worried about my brother-in-law and I was worried about music for worship and so Clif and I looked at each other and said, "We need to go home." It was only one day early - and this was a highly unusual circumstance - but it highlights the problem with a solo pastor going on vacation. There are a lot of things that a lot of people in the church can do - and they DO them all the time. But there are always going to be some things that need the pastor's attention, even briefly.
When you add to that the pastoral care concerns - people I know who are sick or grieving or in financial trouble, all of my people and all of their wounds that I carry with me as I pray for them - I don't ever really get a vacation from being a pastor.
Now I'm going to be gone for 3 months. There is another pastor at the church who will have to figure out emergency musicians or child care workers. There is another pastor who will answer the church phone and hear all the prayer concerns. There is someone else filling that role so that I don't have to. That's what sabbatical is. Truly letting go of being responsible for a group of people.
When I am a camp director at church camp, I'm never off duty. If a kid gets sick in the middle of the night, I have to take him to the nurse's cabin. If a camper misses home and cries, I have to comfort her. But camp only lasts for a few days - a week at the most. Being a solo pastor is like being a camp director all the time. I sleep with my phone next to me in case someone goes to the hospital in the middle of the night. I feel guilty if I miss a call when I'm in the shower (not too guilty, but still a little guilty that their call went to voicemail).
So this week I'm adjusting to the sound of silence. No incoming emails related to church stuff. No texts from my congregation. No phone calls, like at all. It's a little disconcerting, this first week, almost like being in the Twilight Zone. I'm not sure who I am. I know from experience, however, that this feeling fades and then I get to re-discover who I am and explore my own relationship with God apart from being a pastor. How fortunate I am to serve a church that understands this and prepares for this and is really ok with all of it.
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