By Steve Matthews, Senior Missional Consultant with FaithX
Ok. It’s true. I am a little bitter, perhaps jealous, when one of my clergy friends gets granted a three-month (or more) paid Sabbatical from the demands of churchland. It’s not that I begrudge them the gift of this time away. They work hard, and they have jumped all the discernment hoops necessary for clergy to get to these demanding jobs. And I worked hard too! I am a lay professional with an MDiv, too, and an MA, and I had to go through my own not-so-easy long-term discernment as a gay man trying to find my way into a vocation. And what about all the non-ordained workers in our faith communities – the nurses, the teachers, others who work in the hot sun all day, and those who piecemeal work together with two or three jobs in order to support their families? Many of these people are our church members who work hard and then show up at church as stalwart volunteers, giving of their time without compensation to help build more loving and just faith communities. They need and deserve Sabbaticals too! Let’s raise some money and share the wealth. We all need a break!
Realistically, perhaps, what we really need are some new models for ministry and new models for being church. For too long we have courted a “hero culture” in our hierarchies. The further up the ladder a pastor/priest climbs (or is pushed) the more expectations are often placed on them, both in terms of work-load and piety (I mean, no church member’s presence in the hospital room of a parishioner matters as much as that of the priest/pastor). As far as our churches are concerned, we often act as if nothing good happens in the world happens unless we are generating it. We have our own hero culture, and it can burn us our trying to do all the good all the time with our own limited resources.
In a recent Christian Century article entitled “The Great Man Theory is Poison for the Church”, Julian DeShazier is encouraging new models of collaboration and increased ministry sharing. He writes, “So it’s no surprise when congregations struggle with collaboration, whether internally or with other churches and organizations. If we don’t see ourselves as special, we tend not to see ourselves as having a place at all. Instead, our goal is to ‘find the right person.’ The special one. Many of our congregational histories are told not as eras of movement but as a list of previous pastors. When things were going well, it’s because we had a good pastor. And when they weren’t? Well, that pastor wasn’t special.”
What might church look like if we moved more and more into shared ministry and interdependent webs of relationships that engaged all of us – clergy and lay leaders and other churches and non-profits and local businesses – in ways that nurture a sustainable local ecosystem where people and systems don’t get burned out… and Sabbaticals are no longer necessary because energy is generative. Is that too much to ask… or envision?
At FaithX, we want to cultivate sustainable structures for a lived faith in community. There are many thresholds for this journey. One of our newest avenues is the Vitality Improvement Program 2.0 (VIP). You can read more about VIP 2.0 here, or feel free to contact us at info@faithx.net. In the meantime, enjoy your summer, take breaks, give yourself some mini-sabbaticals, and let’s move forward together in this important work with more hopeful and realistic expectations and with a more life-giving vision of what’s possible together.
