Instead of taxiing down the runway towards a three-month getaway, I embarked on a day-to-day hike through the wilderness of weariness — a sabbatical in the midst of work.
— Greg Asimakoupoulos
Emotional exhaustion, physical weariness, spiritual anorexia. Twelve years of task-oriented ministry had taken its toll. I was battling pastoral burnout, and I was losing. Ironically, the very week the Allied Forces were claiming victory in the Persian Gulf War, my own spirit was surrendering to battle fatigue.
As I prepared my messages for Holy Week, the cross of Good Friday became a symbol of my mental anguish. I was hanging lifelessly on the cross of depression, laboring to breathe under the suffocating weight of routine pastoral demands.
In a conversation with my superintendent, I confessed despair. He suggested a four-syllable remedy: sabbatical.
An extended time away from the never-ending responsibilities of the church (with full pay) was not a foreign concept to me. Two of my closest colleagues had been granted twelve-week sabbaticals the previous summer. For both, the experience involved travel, rest, family reunions, and solitude. No degree was pursued. No article published. No manuscript written. Yet each returned home focused, fresh, and infused with a renewed desire to preach.
In the midst of my melancholy, the thought of “getting away from it all” had presented itself as a welcome hope even before the superintendent’s call. His endorsement fanned my flickering fantasy into a burning desire.
I approached members of the congregation whose support was unquestioned. I confessed my frayed state. I expressed my hopes that the church leadership might endorse a sabbatical leave.
Their responses were less than encouraging: “A sabbati — what?” “For how long?” “You’d still collect a check?” “You’re kidding, right?”
Although mentally I had begun packing my bags, their negative reactions stalled my sabbatical flight on the runway. The word sabbatical did not translate into the vocabulary of my congregation, who are largely blue-collar workers and middle-management lifers. Even the one person with whom I had attended college (whose father was a university professor) protested.
“I know all about sabbaticals for educators,” Jeff boasted. “But I’ve never heard of it in the ministry. Besides, if you take off for three months, the church’s finances will plummet.”
Jeff’s words characterized the feelings of those I approached. My superintendent’s prescription for emotional survival was viewed as an unjustified vacation. I felt betrayed. I thought my church cared for me. Resentment stirred my already troubled spirit.
The pressures of pastoral time demands include the need to find time away from things pastoral. Just as we need a day off weekly, I believe we need extended periods off, at least two to three months every few years. But as I discovered, that isn’t always possible. What then do we do?
Once my anger dissipated, I devised an itinerary for survival. Instead of taxiing down the runway towards a three-month getaway, I embarked on a day-to-day hike through the wilderness of weariness. I developed what turned out to be twelve keys to taking a sabbatical in the midst of work.
Pack Only the Essentials
For as long as necessary, I learned to say no more than I said yes. A wilderness hike is a survival course. It demands living lean.
Christian management consultant Fred Smith learned first hand what it takes to survive: “I ought to be able to write down the two, three, or four major things I simply cannot slight, and I must be sure to work only on them. Everything else has to be pushed aside.”
Realizing a sabbatical would not be forthcoming, I took the initiative and informed the pastoral relations committee what areas I would attend to for three months (and what areas I planned to neglect). They agreed. The essentials in my backpack included worship planning, preaching, writing, and emergency pastoral care.
Office mail I normally would have opened and dealt with, I stuck, unopened, in the boxes of board members. When a couple phoned late one day and asked if they could meet me that night to discuss their marriage problems, I made a judgment call: I decided their problem was not an emergency and said we could schedule an appointment (normally I would have forgone my planned family time and counseled them that night). It turned out that the problem was a temporary flare-up that passed, and we never needed to meet.
The weight of my pack proved just right.
Secure a Reliable Guide
I sensed I should avoid at all costs solitary climbing along the edges of burnout. Emotional exhaustion often disorients us. We need others to point us in the right direction. I took the advice I had given to scores of hurting people in my parish and sought out a reputable Christian therapist. His penetrating questions and tested observations provided weekly guidance as I trudged up the seemingly insurmountable mountains of ministry. I had the security that, no matter how lost I felt, he would help me stay on the trail.
I had to struggle against false guilt during this time of healing. For instance, though I feel called to write and find it fulfilling and therapeutic, I felt guilty about taking time away from church-related ministry. My “guide” assured me that writing was part of my calling, part of what my church supported me to do in its outreach to the larger world. Talking this through gave me a new sense of assurance and peace.
Guides come in all shapes and sizes. Not only did a therapist help me, so did my wife, a colleague across town, and even my church chairman. The only prerequisite for trustworthy guides: they need to provide unconditional acceptance that allows you to climb out of your pit at your own pace.
Take Binoculars
I found it essential to take my eyes off my desk to daydream or drink in the beauty of God’s creation at least once a day. It’s so easy to fix my focus on the trail and forget the songbirds overhead that originally called me to ministry.
For six weeks I limited the length of my daily to-do list. Not everyone in the hospital got visited. Letters remained unwritten. Some phone calls weren’t returned. And I recycled a newsletter devotional from two years previous instead of writing a new one. As a result I recaptured enough time to reflect on and rejoice in what I had accomplished. The field glasses of discretionary time allowed me to see the world that existed apart from next week’s sermon.
Pitch Your Tent Nightly
I gave myself permission to sleep in each morning for a week or two. Adrenaline can camouflage how tired we really are. I figured that if I felt the need for a sabbatical, I most likely needed to catch up on my sleep.
Psychologist Archibald Hart of Fuller Seminary suggests a way to determine how much sleep your body demands: if you hide your alarm clock in your night stand for a week, your body will wake up on its own without artificial stimulation.
When I followed his advice, I discovered how weary I was. Much of my depression was actually my body’s muffled cry for rest.
At first I felt guilty for sleeping in and watching the Today Show while sipping coffee (or catching a few warm rays of sunshine as I read the paper on the deck). But after two weeks of not meeting anybody for early morning meetings or worrying about what time I clocked in at the office, I got rid of both my guilt and the accumulating luggage under my eyelids.
Grab Your Walking Stick
That’s another way of saying, establish a realistic exercise routine.
My therapist suggested that my life was in need of balance. For me that meant incorporating an aerobic workout into my daily regimen. I’m not an athlete by lifestyle, and my body gave ready witness to the flabby truth. I began to walk briskly for an hour a day. (I could afford an hour because of my scaled-down demands.)
Ironically, that hour away from my desk was most productive. It gave me time to pray, which I hadn’t been doing much of in my depressed state. Walking also gave me time to reacquaint myself with the satisfaction of muscle fatigue, to be alone with my thoughts, and to catch up on the news — I’d often wear my Walkman. After two months of power walking, I began jogging (I’m up to four miles a day and actually enjoy it).
I’ve discovered there is something refreshing about achieving personal goals, like exercise, that don’t have to pass by the board first. Of all the steps I’ve taken to survive without a sabbatical, regular exercise was the most immediate salvation. At the end of the first week, I was sleeping better and awaking rested. After the second month, my head cleared considerably, and I felt more optimistic.
Remember Your Whittling Knife
Making it through ministry requires making time for me, and that includes digging out my “whittling knife.”
Some of my friends have dusted off their golf clubs or softball mitts. Others have dug out that old fishing pole or invested in a new tennis racquet. I chose to pursue a latent interest in photography, which soon became a meaningful way to express my often captive emotions.
With the pressures of people’s problems, pessimistic pew sitters, and sermon preparation, factoring joy into my routine has worked well.
Call it a hobby. Call it a divine diversion. Call it whatever. I just call it fun and call it often. And I don’t give up because of a busy signal. There will always be a legitimate excuse for not relaxing and having fun. But such excuses are no excuse. Recreation is a means of being re-created from within. Besides, who ever heard of a hiker who didn’t pack a knife, harmonica, or camera?
Carry Along a Hiker’s Log
I journaled my journey. When emotions and thoughts held me hostage, I learned anew that a pen and notebook offered a way of escape. Getting my feelings onto paper relaxed their strangulating grip and let me look at the invisible. I’ve heard it said, “Thoughts untangle and make more sense when they pass through articulating finger tips.”
In addition, as I looked back on previous documented difficulties, I better discerned my tendencies and God’s faithfulness. My journal from seminary days reminded me that discouragement and drivenness have shared my berth before. As I reread my restless seminary journal, I found reason to believe God would rescue me once again.
I didn’t follow a schedule or place demands on myself to journal. When needed, I used it as an emotional catharsis, not a diary, and usually for only about fifteen minutes at a time.
Look Out for the Lookouts
Howard Thurman from Harvard Divinity School first introduced me to the concept of “minute vacations” in his book The Inward Journey. There’s something to be said for a wee pause for our network of nerves to identify themselves and relax — reclining in a chair, feet on the desk, eyes closed, meditation. Three or four times a day, such an inner panorama helps recalibrate my perspective.
But minute vacations can be enlarged to include an afternoon of antiquing with your wife, a day at an art museum with your son, going away on a solitary retreat for a night or two to read and pray, or religiously taking a minivacation from work once a week — some call it a day off.
Listen to the Waterfalls
Emotional exhaustion is often accompanied by apathy and dulled feelings; life loses its song. If music could make a difference for someone as tormented as King Saul, how much more for a pastor.
I incorporated my car stereo and boom box into my daily grind, turning on the music that fueled my feelings. I discovered my Walkman to be more than a source of news. It was my emotional jumper cable. Praise music and classical masterpieces, even the big-band sounds of the 1940s lifted my spirits. I cranked up the volume and luxuriated in melodies that ministered to my shriveled heart. The sounds of these alpine waterfalls helped keep this hiker on the hoof.
Pull the Snapshots Out of Your Pack
I regularly update the photos on my desk. Those framed faces remind me whom I’m providing for, and that my provision is more than just bringing home the bacon; my wife and kids want the whole hog to hug and spend time with.
An occasional glimpse at those we love helps us focus on what ultimately matters (and it’s not Mrs. Jones’s hernia). Remembering my identity as a husband and father keeps me from being too compulsive about my role as pastor.
One night, when we were sitting around the dining room table, out of nowhere my seven-year-old daughter said, “I’m so happy when we’re together as a family.” That’s positive reinforcement!
Collect Firewood
In other words, I build altars of praise. I practiced the discipline of personal worship even when the desire to do so was absent. If ever an awareness of God is needed, it is in the blindness of burnout. On the mountain trail in the withering midday heat, the need for firewood is not as obvious as it will be come nightfall. It means doing what we don’t feel like doing at the time.
When I annually explain the process of confirmation to our sixth-grade parents, I suggest that in confirmation we are laying the logs of truth in the fireplace of Christian community, so that when the Holy Spirit ignites a flame of faith, there is something to sustain a fire. That is similar to what I experienced in my private times before the Lord. Upon the cold hearth of my cold heart, I placed the logs found in poetry, music, silence, Scripture.
At first I was tempted to go through the motions of a routine quiet time. But my ability to fake it soon faded. I resisted benign devotions in favor of honest communication with God. No regimented Bible study, no protracted periods of prayer — at times just thoughtful sighs and audible groans in an empty sanctuary were the only twigs I could find. But God was there. He also found me in King David’s diary of depression, the Psalms. He even spoke to me through a couple of those radio Bible teachers our congregations compare us to. Through simple and sincere expressions of friendship with the Father, I collected a pile of logs for when the flame of passion would return.
As of now, those spiritual flames are still in the process of returning. It’s been a slow recovery, with emotional restoration coming far more easily than spiritual. Still, I feel more loved and accepted by God than at any time in my ministry.
Keep in Contact with the Lodge
When paraplegic Mark Wellman climbed Half Dome in Yosemite National Park last fall, he maintained regular contact with the park lodge. His supporters waited at the valley floor with baited interest because of the precarious challenge facing their friend. Mark complied with their need to know how he was doing and used his walkie-talkie often.
I chose to share with my board my ups and downs. I disclosed my own need for pastoral care from a therapist. I distributed articles on the phenomena of pastoral burnout and ministerial stress. I also shared some of my struggles with the church, though not enough to undermine my credibility.
A few critics have pointed to my nonsabbatical sabbatical as evidence of my shortcomings. Our church had been going through a conflict of sorts before and after this period. My candid approach of dealing with my needs lost me a few more credibility points with them.
But for the vast majority in our church, I gained credibility. Many people have repeatedly thanked me for handling the situation as I did, and they have been more open about their own struggles as a result. If I were to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Copyright © 1993 by Christianity Today
