Instead of taking off on a three-month getaway, I embarked on a day-to-day hike through the wilderness of weariness.
—Greg Asimakoupoulos
Twelve years of task-oriented ministry had taken its toll. I was battling pastoral burnout, and I was losing. The very week the Allied Forces were claiming victory in the Persian Gulf War, my own spirit was surrendering to battle fatigue. Emotional exhaustion. Physical weariness. Spiritual anorexia.
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 was one of 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.
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 whom I was close to. I confessed 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 were largely blue-collar workers and middle-management lifers. The concept was utterly foreign.
Even the one person with whom I had attended college (whose father was a university professor) protested the proposal.
“I know all about sabbaticals for educators,” he said. “But I’ve never heard of it in the ministry. Besides, if you take off for three months, the church’s finances will plummet.”
His 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 the waters of my already troubled spirit. Once the anger dissipated, I devised an itinerary for survival. Instead of taking off on 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 ways to take a sabbatical in the midst of work.
Pack only the essentials
A wilderness hike is a survival course. It demands living lean.
Christian management consultant Fred Smith learned firsthand 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 be sure only to work on them. These are my current majors, the items of greatest importance today. Everything else has to be pushed aside.”
Realizing a sabbatical would not be forthcoming, yet realizing my need for refreshment, 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 that I normally would have 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 flareup that passed, and we never needed to meet.
The weight of my pack proved just right.
Secure a reliable guide
I sensed that I should avoid solitary climbing along the edges of burnout at all costs. Emotional exhaustion can disorient us. We need others to point us in the right direction.
I took the advice I had given to scores of hurting people and sought out a reputable Christian therapist. His penetrating questions and tested observations provided weekly guidance as I kept trudging 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.
Guides come in all shapes and sizes. Whereas a therapist helped me, so did my wife, a colleague across town, 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.
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 not only to our local area but to the larger world. Talking this through gave me a whole new sense of assurance and peace.
Take along binoculars
It’s so easy to fix my focus on the trail that I forget the songbirds overhead that originally called me to ministry. 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.
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 ago instead of writing a new one.
As a result, I recaptured enough time to reflect on what I had done and to enjoy the good feelings that accompanied these accomplishments. 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 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.
Archibald Hart from Fuller Seminary’s School of Psychology suggests a way to determine how much sleep your body demands: if you hide your alarm clock in your nightstand for a week, your body will wake up on its own without artificial stimulation. When I followed his advice, I discovered how weary I really 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 while reading 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
I also needed to 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 profession (or life style), 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 exhilaration of muscle fatigue, to be alone with my thoughts, or 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 enjoying 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 two months my head cleared considerably, and I felt more optimistic.
Remember your whittling knife
What do you mean you don’t know where your knife is? That’s just the point. Your whittling knife (or whatever your forgotten knife is) most likely hasn’t been handled for far too long. But making it through ministry requires making time for you.
Organize an expedition to find your buried golf clubs. Dig out that ol’ fishin’ pole. Invest in a new tennis racket. Start a stamp collection. I chose to pursue a latent interest in photography, which developed into a meaningful expression of my captive emotions.
With the pressures of people’s problems, pessimistic pew sitters, and sermon preparation, factoring joy into a pastor’s journey makes perfect sense. Call it a hobby. Call it a divine diversion. Just call it fun, and call it often. But 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 by definition is a means of being recreated from within. Besides, who ever heard of a hiker who didn’t pack a knife, harmonica, or camera?
Carry along a hiker’s log
Journal your journey. When emotions and thoughts held me hostage, I learned that a pen and notebook are 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 fingertips.”
In addition, documenting the difficulty of present circumstances became a valuable testimony to 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, usually for about fifteen minutes at a time.
Look out for the lookouts
Take time to pause in the midst of the climb.
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. (Almost sounds spiritual, doesn’t it?) Three or four times a day, such an inner panorama can recalibrate one’s 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—now there’s a novel idea!
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 ’40s 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
Update the photos on your 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. They need someone to hug and spend time with.
An occasional glimpse at those we love helps us focus on what ultimately matters most (and it’s not Sister 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 together, out of nowhere my seven-year-old daughter said, “I’m so happy when we’re all together as a family.”
Now there’s positive reinforcement!
Collect firewood
In other words, 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 times of quiet 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 depressions, 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. I feel more loved and accepted by God, though, than at any time in my ministry.
Keep in contact with the lodge
When paraplegic park ranger Mark Wellman climbed Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, he maintained regular contact with the lodge. His supporters anxiously waited on the valley floor 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. Their willingness to believe the despair to which pastors are prone was not only enhanced by the articles, it was strengthened by my willingness to be up-front about myself. The trust that emerged from my continual communication actually quieted most of my insensitive critics.
Still, a few critics pointed to my nonsabbatical 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 most in our church, I gained credibility. Many people repeatedly thanked me for handling the situation as I did, and they were more open about their own struggles as a result. If I were to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Well there you have it, a hiker’s handbook to which I’ll probably refer again. Following these guidelines gave me a refreshed spirit apart from a sabbatical. If I turn to this survival handbook again in the future, I will probably never need a sabbatical—while my church leaders might see the value of giving me one!
Copyright © 1996 by Christianity Today/Leadership
