In my 34 years of ordained ministry, I've had one official sabbatical leave and a couple other times of study that served the same function, allowing for extended continuing education and renewal. When I was ordained in 1967, the idea of a sabbatical seemed restricted to those working in an academic setting. It has been only in the past 20 years or so that the idea started to take root throughout the church.

My first unofficial sabbatical was only six weeks long. I went off to the clergy renewal study program at Virginia Theological Seminary and benefited greatly from my time there. It wasn't until I was actually there in that program that I discovered how much I needed a time for reflection and extended study after nine years of being the rector of church undergoing dramatic change.

My discoveries about myself and the direction of my ministry which took place at Virginia in the winter of 1984 led me to come back there two years later to work on my doctor of ministry degree. That process involved spending three weeks of study each June over a three-year period. Those weeks served as a kind of expanded continuing education each year, even if it didn't qualify as sabbatical time.

When I started the Doctor of Ministry program in 1986, I was also starting a new church in a suburb of Minneapolis. This was an exciting and challenging ministry that required me to retrain myself almost on a daily basis. Fortunately, I had some colleagues doing the same ministry, and we were able to encourage each other. After about eight years, when we finally found ourselves in a new building, I also discovered a weariness and emptiness in my life. My wife asked if I was supposed to receive a sabbatical, and I remembered that this was part of the call when I accepted the bishop's offer to start the new church. One thing had changed though. No longer was I paid by the diocese. The new church was fully self-supporting. Even though we weren't a full-fledged parish, our bishop's committee had responsibility for all expenses.

You should have seen the skepticism on the faces of members of that committee when I suggested that a sabbatical might be a good thing for their vicar and for the congregation as well. It didn't take long for all kinds of questions to emerge: "How can we pay for this? Are you supposed to be paid while you're on this sabbatical? What are we suppose to do for a priest if you're away? What would you be doing that would help us if you did this?"

The parish needed an education regarding the idea of offering a sabbatical to its pastor. We also needed to handle the issue of financing the sabbatical. It turned out that when I finally was able to take a three-month sabbatical two years later, the church was able to have the leadership of three different priests who did Sunday supply. It wasn't as costly as some first thought. A few people in the congregation actually gave special gifts to fund the church's portion of this. I was also blessed to have members of the church contribute to a fund I could use for some travel and study during the sabbatical. Thankfully, the church's deacon assumed the majority of the serious pastoral calls. Lay members also stepped up their involvement and leadership. Only when I returned did nearly everyone in the congregation conclude that the best thing about the sabbatical was the degree to which they discovered more about themselves and their gifts for ministry during my absence.

There has to be a better way for the church to structure sabbatical ministry so its clergy don't end up as burned out as I was.

The basic problem is that we have a system that lets sabbaticals be the responsibility of the congregation, rather than being more ingrained in the church system. While the diocese encouraged sabbaticals, they were never required.

We also live in a larger church system where the average stay of a rector is from four to seven years. There is some evidence that churches are more often served best by those who stay longer and perhaps working through times of dramatic change in a parish's life.

How many clergy, I wonder, have taken their sabbatical in the form of a move to a new church? If a priest ends up moving every five to seven years, it has a kind of sabbatical pattern to it. There are also many clergy I've known personally who decided to leave at the very point when they might have stayed if only the system would have allowed them time for reflection and study.

The answer to this problem also doesn't reside at the congregational level. I would like to see the Church Pension Fund consider a way to support clergy sabbaticals. Such a system could change the way clergy and their congregations approach this subject. I would imagine this system might set a sabbatical as normative for every six to seven years in ministry. This means that if I took a sabbatical three years ago and decided to move to another church, I could still have my sabbatical, albeit in my fourth year of service at the new church.

When I've shared this idea with clergy friends, more than one has noted that they never stayed long enough in any one place to earn a sabbatical. Others in our world may switch jobs and careers all the time, but many of us in the church work for the same firm throughout our career, even if we happen to serve in different branch offices. When we look at our ministry in this light, it makes more sense to say that we qualify for a sabbatical on a regular basis, no matter how many years we may be at a particular church.

If the sabbatical system were somehow funded, at least in part, by the Church Pension Fund, it would mean that every congregation throughout the church would understand study and reflection time as a basic, non-negotiable part of ministry. Such a system also could lead to new programs by seminaries directed toward the continuing education of clergy. Many seminaries already have such programs in place, and we find that a great many of the participants engage in this work because they come from congregations which endorse the sabbatical idea.

In the course of this study, we might discover that the actual cost for a national sabbatical system could be fairly reasonable. When clergy are taking their sabbatical, their basic salary and benefits could be maintained by the church they serve. The Church Pension Fund might then offer to supplement the congregation's expenses for supply clergy and the clergy's costs for continuing education during the sabbatical.

Where might the money come from for a Church Pension Fund sabbatical policy? Perhaps the pension fund will have undesignated reserve funds available, as it has in the past. After the study is completed, a policy for sabbaticals might be brought to General Convention for some kind of action that would change the pension assessment formula and allow this program to be enacted.

If we in the Episcopal Church can find our way to develop a sabbatical policy that covers all the clergy, I am sure we will discover many hidden benefits in the process. One effect on the Church Pension Fund itself is that clergy might tend to live longer, taking better care of themselves in the process of their active ministry. I don't know what the actuarial consequences might be, but I know they would be beneficial to the clergy who live longer.

I believe that a fairer sabbatical policy would be of particular benefit to smaller congregations which tend to see more clergy turnover than larger churches. I also believe that clergy would stay longer in all kinds of churches as a result of taking regular sabbaticals.

I hope we can move this discussion into a new direction in which all of us engaged in a ministry will find ourselves mutually supporting a system that allows for more personal growth and development. The real winners in such a system are not the clergy. It is the church we love so much, and for which we give ourselves, that will benefit when we are able to serve with as much energy and vision as possible.

The Rev. George H. Martin is interim rector of St. Andrew's Church, Amarillo, Texas.