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3 Reasons Pastors Should Get Away Every Summer - and Solutions for Those Who Think They Can't

Every Senior Pastor should get away from their church for more than ten consecutive days every summer. It might not be practical, but it’s a wise decision for the long haul. Why?

1. TO GET RECHARGED

I’m part of a few networks of large-church pastors. Most of my friends have been leading their churches for over 10 years. Almost all of them take 4-6 weeks away every summer. 

When I first learned this, I asked, “Why do you take so much time away?”

They all said, “If I didn’t, I don’t think I’d be in ministry today.” The one variant was a friend who had dropped out of church-ministry at age 56. He said, “For 16 years I ignored taking extended time away. I think if I’d done taken regular time away, I’d still be in the pastorate.”

I’ve been at New Song 20 years now, and I’m pretty sure I would have gone somewhere else or done something else if I hadn’t begun taking an annual summer break.

Right now every small and medium-sized church pastor reading this is thinking, “Yeah, but these guys all are from large churches. I can’t afford to take extended time away!”

To which I say, yes, these guys all have competent back-up. But if you’re carrying the spiritual weight of your church plus preaching over 40 times a year, you need a break as well. – And I’m not meaning a vacation. You need that too. I’m talking about a break.

Senior pastors carry a spiritual burden and work load that is different than other professions. I don’t have the statistics handy, but every time I read the percentages those who leave the ministry, or are depressed, or whose wives feel constantly burdened, I’m staggered. 

Every preaching pastor needs time away to recharge. No one can preach well from an empty bucket. But the real reason to get away isn’t to skip a few weeks of message preparation. The real reason is because of the weight of ministry – the spiritual weight of the cares of all the people you shepherd.

2. TO GET PERSPECTIVE 

Every time I fly somewhere, whether it’s for a conference, speaking engagement, or vacation, I come home with a fresh perspective on my city and church. I can be gone for as little as three days and come home seeing differently. Stepping back enables me to see old situations in a new light. New Song benefits from this.

 3. TO LEARN FROM OTHERS 

For a pastor, part of the “stepping back” has to include seeing other ministries. I’m of the conviction that the Lord wants us to assemble with believers every Sunday. So during my break, I assemble with other churches. My friend Brian Wilkerson told me he tries to attend 3-4 churches per weekend on his breaks. Dan Grider tries to hit five services between Saturday night and Sunday night. That’s a little more than I need, but you get the point.

Last summer I visited two churches that both had engaging worship and quality teaching. As I sat in the congregation I wondered, “What is it about this church that’s distinctive, and how would a visitor know it?” That thought motivated me to develop what we called our “DNA Statement.” It’s a statement of New Song distinctives. - Core commitments that differentiate us from other churches in our area. These statements are helping refine us. I wouldn’t have thought to write them out without visiting those other churches.

REASONS NOT TO TAKE A BREAK:

There are a lot of obstacles to taking extended time away. Let me help you with a few of them.

Objection: The church can’t financially afford for the pastor to be gone that long.

Response: Two issues here. One is paying the pastor while he’s not working. The other is the inevitable giving-dip that happens when less people show up.

First, the not-working issue: My summer break is a working break. I take four weeks away from New Song, but during that time I work 10-12 hours a day. My break is a writing break. Two summers ago, I wrote a training curriculum for Dynamic Church Planting International. Last summer, I wrote The Bible Questions. 

My break is a change of routine and, hopefully, what I produce benefits New Song as well as the wider Kingdom.

This summer, I’m not even writing a book. Since The Bible Questions comes out this August, I’m writing the sermons for it so other churches can join us in a Bible Questions Campaign this fall. (If your church would like to join us, let me know.) 

Second, the financial issue: having your pastor out of the pulpit may mean fewer donors in the pews. Many churches are beginning to deal with their summer giving-slump by developing online and automated giving programs to enable members to give even when they’re not present.

Objection: The church can’t afford for the pastor to be gone that long.

Response: If your pastor gets called to a greener pasture, you’ll figure out how to do without a senior pastor for much longer than a few weeks. Plus, the quality of your pastor’s post-break ministry will be higher and therefore worth the corresponding dip in quality during his absence

Objection: Who will fill the pulpit?

Response: Many churches are using video teaching these days. One of my friends who pastors a 5,000 member church showed a three week video series by Andy Stanley. Large churches demand quality teaching every weekend. Andy delivered. If your church doesn’t have a staff member who can step up, there are many denominational leaders, as well as college and seminary professors looking for places to preach.

Objection: 4-6 is too long for our size church.

Response: Then shorten it to 14 to 19 days. In my opinion, the minimum is two consecutive Sundays away so that the pastor doesn’t spend all his “away” time preparing for the next week’s sermon.

Pastors (like me) who need to keep producing during their break time should work on things they love doing and would have to do at some other time anyway. For most pastors, that’s sermon preparation. Writing a few sermons ahead of time, disengaging from the weight of the flock, and getting fresh perspective visiting other churches will help them be better leaders throughout the rest of the year.

How might this work in your church?

Top 10 Things Pastors Would Like to Hear from Their People

The majority of Christendom has no idea what it’s like to be a pastor. Pastors think a lot about the words they use, and about the words they hope others will use. I figure Letterman will never get around to this, so I’ve developed the list. In case you’ve ever wondered, here are some of the words pastors dream about hearing. Some of them are tongue-in-cheek; others are straight from the heart. I'm sure you can improve the list. (Post yours below.) Enjoy:

10. “Last week we read that the pastor who preaches and teaches is worthy of double honor, so we’re doubling your salary.”

9. “We’ve funded a line item to send your kids to college. There’s enough for each of them to attend Harvard. While we were at it, we’re paying for your doctorate - and for your wife to get her Masters degree.”

8. “The President’s secretary called. He wants you to do the Invocation for his inauguration. He told me he thinks you’re the next Rick Warren.”

7. “Look Pastor! Outreach Magazine put you on their cover this month!”

6. “Zondervan just called. They want to make your latest sermon series into a book. They’re pretty sure it will be a best-seller.”

5. “Pastor, your sermon last Sunday was better than Billy Graham.”

4. “You’re the godliest man I know.”

3. “We think you’ve earned a six month Sabbatical. The first three months will be in Hawaii. We hope you’ll use the other three months to write a book – which we’ll make sure gets published. We know you’ll be hard to replace in the pulpit, so we’ve convinced Chuck Swindoll to fill in while you’re away.”

2. “Every member of my family has come to Christ now, thanks to you.”

1. “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Hal’s newest book The Bible Questions comes out this September. He’s praying it will launch a Bible reading revolution among seekers and believers alike, and is hoping you and your church will join New Song for this six-week Church-Wide Campaign. Go to http://www.amazon.com/The-Bible-Questions-Shedding-Important/dp/0830856129/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332286835&sr=1-2 to pre-order, or visit www.pastormentor.com in July for quantity discounts and Campaign materials.

Three Reasons Why Faithfulness is More Important than Success

As a teenager, my pastor introduced me to 1 Cor. 4:2 – Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. According to Paul, faithfulness isn’t n option for God’s people, it’s a requirement.

On the other hand, while there’s never a command for us to be successful, Jesus does xpect us to produce results. He doesn’t say, Go and TRY to make disciples. He says, Go and MAKE disciples.”

But faithfulness is more important than any results we might experience, for three reasons:

1. Without faithfulness, I wouldn’t be in the game.

I don’t know any pastor who hasn’t thought about quitting at least every few months. One of the things that keeps me in the game is Ps. 37:4 Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness (NASB).

Pastor, when you quit, you eliminate the possibility of success.

2. Without faithfulness, I wouldn’t be qualified for the game.

I know two pastors who have been unfaithful to the point of having a child out of wedlock. One has tried to continue in ministry. The fruit of his ministry has vastly diminished since his marital unfaithfulness. The other one is currently out of ministry and at odds with the church he once pastored.

3. The Master praises the successful servant for his faithfulness.

In the Parable of the Talents (Mt. 25), two out of three of the servants are incredibly successful. They double their master’s holdings. The Master’s response is not, “Well done good and successful servant,” but “well done good and faithful servant.” Apparently, in Jesus’ mind, our success is determined by our faithfulness.

Maybe Jesus applauds faithfulness because faithfulness leads to success?

Many pastors want to quit almost every Monday. Even “successful” ones. Spurgeon fought depression every Monday.

Lots of pastors want to quit post-Easter. After all, the big day is behind us. So, what’s here to look forward to now?

Something like 85% of pastors quit (or at least want to) after completing a building program. Same reason: what’s there to look forward to now?

Pastor, there is so much to look forward to. Long term, there’s the “well done” words of the Master. Short term, most of what you get to do is a privilege beyond description. You get to handle the Word of God, shepherd the people of God, serve the living God, experience the anointing of the Holy Spirit of God.

Don’t give up!

If you remain faithful, God can achieve success through you. God is an expert at taking little and making much out of it. He took the little boy’s five loaves and two fish and fed the masses with it. He took Gideon’s 300 and defeated the hordes with it. He took David’s stone and dropped a nine foot tall giant with it.

Stay in the game. Don’t disqualify yourself through sin or rude behavior. The Master you serve loves your faithfulness and will reward you for it both here and in the life to come! (Mt. 19:29)

Recovering From the Post-Easter Blues

Every pastor I know gets a little depressed (or a lot depressed) on the days following Easter. It’s natural. Easter is our Super Bowl. We pour our lives into preaching, touching and responding to people, surviving the week on less sleep and more adrenaline than we should. Easter comes and attendance peaks. Then it falls again. Hopefully not to its old level, but we were secretly hoping that ALL our guests would return. When they don’t, well, we’re human, and we get disappointed.

How do you resurrect yourself up from the Post-Easter Blues?

There are a number of ways you might try. Here’s one I don’t suggest: Take a Vacation

Some pastors plan a vacation for the week after Easter. Why not? We’ve worked hard, we’ve earned it. – And if we’re out of town, we won’t have to see the inevitable empty seats the following Sunday.

The problem with is, all our volunteers are exhausted too. If they follow our example, no one will be around the following weekend, and whatever inertia was generated by a great Easter experience will lost by the abdication of the leader at the critical moment.

The Critical Moment for Leadership

The most critical time for leadership isn’t on the mountaintop, it’s in the valley. A leader’s finest moments come when the troops are down, not up. Picture Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings when the hordes of Mordor are surrounding his men. He shouts, “Someday the strength of men may fail, but it is not this day!” Or Coach Boone in Remember the Titans, when the boys are being ripped apart by racial tension. He leads them on a pre-dawn run through Gettysburg. Great leaders rise up when momentum is waning. For that reason, the Sunday after Easter may be the most important day of the year for the pastor to preach a great sermon.

A second approach to your post-Easter discouragement is to think rationally about what’s happened. (1) You are tired because you worked hard. This is how life works. And (2) attendance will be down because your once-a-year attenders all showed up for Easter. They won’t be back next weekend. Nor will your once-a-month, twice-a-month, or twice-a-year attenders. They haven’t left you; they’re just following their normal patterns.

Don’t allow others’ lukewarm attitudes to quench your fire for God. Instead, leverage the pain you feel to motivate a solution. Thinking rationally, what would it take to inspire those people to return the following Sunday?

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Get excited.

You’ve heard the adage, “The speed of the leader, the speed of the team.” If you are not excited about next weekend, nobody else will be either. But if you are over-the-top energized about what’s coming, your excitement will infect others. So, what type of sermon series would really excite you? Better, what type of series would excite you and the people you’re trying to get to return?

2. Launch a Great, Relevant Series

Almost everyone wants help with their family or marriage. Those two subjects are a universal draw. Another relevant topic is purpose. Rick Warren sold more books with this subject than any piece of literature short of the Bible. A matter that’s on everyone’s mind these days is The End Times. With turbulence in the Middle East and earthquakes in the Pacific Rim, everyone wants to know if we’re approaching the end of the world.

As you advertise the series, generate a sense of urgency by impressing on everyone how relevant/important/life-changing the next Sunday’s message will be. If this feels like manipulation to you, find a different topic or rewrite your opening message. The Bible contains the most relevant/important/life-changing material in all of history. Use it that way.

3. Offer an Incentive to Return

This year we decided to get creative about motivating our newcomers to return. Some might question this concept, but God motives us to get out of bed every day with the offer of sunlight and food and meaningful labor. Esther motivated Xerxes to return the following evening by offering a banquet.  Most of what we do in life is because of some sort of incentive.

For years New Song has offered a free lunch to newcomers on the Sunday following Easter. This year we’re letting them know that if they fill out their Connection Card, we’ll mail them a ticket which could win them an iPad if they’re present at the lunch. Will it bring them back? We’ll find out soon.

4. Create a Follow-Up Event

Two weeks after Easter we’re offering additional incentives to return. We’re holding a special Family Experience for parents and kids. We’re starting Dave Ramsay’s Financial Peace University. We’re launching a Date-Night Marriage Experience. And, we’ll be using my book Future History (http://www.pastormentor.com/html/future_history__book.html) for a study of the end times. You may already have similar events coming up that just need a little advertising. If not, I’m guessing you can generate one or two fairly quickly.

Solutions like these will diminish the post-Easter attendance slump, but let’s face it: no matter what the attendance, you’re still going to be tired. How do you fight the desire to curl up in a ball from sheer exhaustion?

To a certain extent, you don’t. The Sabbath was made for man, and unless you put your pants on differently than the rest of us, you will need to rest. I plan to get a little extra sleep after Easter, but from experience I know that sleep alone does not refresh my soul. So years ago I looked at the life of Elijah to find out how to cure physical and spiritual exhaustion. What I found has helped me ever since.

Three Ways to Speed Recovery from Easter

After climbing Mt. Carmel, Elijah prayed down fire from heaven, executed hundreds of false prophets, prayed again until rain fell, then outran a chariot before taking a forty-day walk. Even with the eleven services we’ll be doing this year, my spiritual and physical workload doesn’t come close to matching Elijah’s. If he could recover from his massive exertion, I can too.

What did Elijah do to recover? Well, first, he slept. That’s on my checklist. Then, three things happened to him that enabled him to continue in ministry.

Elijah had a thing about mountains. After expending energy on Mt. Carmel, he recovered energy on Mt. Horeb.

1. Expose Yourself to God’s Power

While Elijah is standing on the mountain, God sends a wind, an earthquake, and a firestorm to rouse him. The Prophet may have been drowsy, but those forces roused him quickly!

In what ways to you experience God’s power?

I get energized by listening to Christian leaders teach on vision and leadership. I’ve never done drugs, but for me, listening to Bill Hybels speak on leadership feels a lot like what I imagine to be a drug-induced high. Bill’s opening talks at the Leadership Summit remind me of why I’m on this planet and why I signed up to plant a church. So every year I buy the Summit DVDs.  Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel have a similar effect on me, so I buy the Catalyst DVDs too.

On Monday and Tuesday after Easter, I’ll watch a few of those messages. And my sense of purpose, hope and energy will elevate.

2. Expose Yourself to God’s Whisper

After his wind, earthquake and fire, Elijah experienced the still small voice of God. The Lord whispered to him, “What are you doing here Elijah?” which initiated an intimate conversation.

I have a chair I love to reflect in. After watching a leadership message, I’ll meet with God in that chair, where more often than not, the Lord brings me to a place of green pastures and restores my soul.

3. Expose Yourself to God’s New Directions

After the whisper, God gave Elijah a new assignment. For three years the Prophet had been focusing on one event: the defeat of Baal worship. Part of his depression came from having no more big event to look forward to.

Pastor, you’re a leader, and leaders need directives and directions on ministries to launch, people to pour into and new hills-to-take. Once the Easter challenge is behind you, listen to God for His next assignment – and don’t settle for something like taking up tennis, or joining a bird-watching society. Listen for how He wants you to build His Kingdom, and then gear up and got after it as He leads. For me, that means sitting in my chair with a journal in my hand, saying, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

These three steps (exposure to God’s power, God’s whisper, and God’s new direction) may look different for you than they do for me. But they restored Elijah to ministry and I believe they will help speed your recover too. We are in this contest for life, so let’s run with endurance the race marked out for us!

A Dangerous Prayer

Twenty-one years ago I prayed a prayer that has changed me more than any other. It changed my vocation, location, orientation, and just about every other “ation” in my life.

 The prayer? “God, I don’t ask you for much today. I just ask that you give me your heart for lost people.”

Nineteen words. Twenty-one syllables. Seventy letters. One request.

I prayed that prayer every day for ninety days. By the end of it, I was a new man. I was no longer content to serve the church. I was compelled to serve God and his purposes in the world. At the time, I was an associate pastor in a nice, safe church in rural Colorado. I was content with that. I planned to stay there for a long, long time.

But the prayer (or, the Lord) wouldn’t let me. The prayer moved me to San Diego County, where I founded New Song Community Church, a church focused on reaching the lost. To date, just a few less than 8,000 people have received Christ through New Song’s ministries. Last year we released a movie that we believe is saving lives daily. (The movie is aptly named, “To Save A Life.”) We’ve helped start seven churches and seven parachurch ministries or outreach-focused companies, one of which has planted 104,000 churches. I am in awe of what God has done.

Here’s what I know:

1. A simple prayer really can change you.

 2. God’s great desire is that all people come to know him.

 3. God uses ordinary people who are willing to take extraordinary risks.

 4. The community you live in will only be reached if people like you pray dangerous prayers and get about the business of building Christ’s church.

 5. Churches that reach out are led by pastors who are compelled by God to reach their communities. Most of these pastors don’t see themselves as overly impressive. They’re just convicted to their core that they must mobilize people to reach out because they are convinced that this is God’s primary purpose for them, and for their people. 

I’ve written an eight-week adventure designed to infect pastors and churches with a love for the lost. If you’d like to become infected, email me at hal@pastormentor.com and I’ll send you a lesson a week for the next eight weeks. If all goes well, you and your community will be changed more than you’ve ever imagined.

Get Out of Town

One of my favorite lines in The Father of the Bride is when Martin Short’s character, Frank, gets excited and says to Steve Martin’s character, George Banks, “Get Out of Town!”

In the early days of New Song, Lori and I felt a low-level weight on us almost every day. We went out of town for a few days and noticed the weight didn’t come with us. When we returned to Oceanside, there is was again.

This led me to believe three things:

1. The idea of territorial demons hinted at in Daniel 10 by the description of the “prince of the kingdom of Persia,” and the “prince of the kingdom of Greece” seems to be true. Some demons have specific geographic assignments and pray attention to the Christian leaders in their realms.

2. Warfare prayer is one of the most important and effective tools in a pastor’s toolbox. (Eph. 6:10-18)

3. Getting out of town from time to time is helpful for spiritual rest and rejuvenation.