The Sabbatical I Didn't Have to Earn

by Thomas Riggs

Director of the Communication Services Plan

I was driving from Salina, Kansas, where I had spent the night, to a cabin on the outskirts of Estes Park, Colorado. Between chapters of an audiobook, I would let the hum of the road be my only companion as I traveled the long stretch of I-70 across the high plains of western Kansas and eastern Colorado. This particular stretch of interstate has been deemed by “road scholars” to be one of the most uninteresting drives in the United States.

And somewhere between the monotonous landscape and the stretches of silence, a familiar voice began to stir. It was the voice of insecurity and impostor syndrome, the one I thought I had finally quieted over the previous month. Apparently, it still had a few things to say.

Do you even know how to take a sabbatical? Do you deserve this? Are you just taking advantage of others’ generosity and sluffing off responsibilities just to take an extended vacation? You’re just gonna read books and hike for three weeks, then spend time at home working on projects? Isn’t there a product or proof of productivity required?

So, I opened my phone and started talking back to that voice. I pondered, argued, questioned, and compared ideas, sometimes surprising myself with where the conversations led. Before long, I found myself recording these thoughts almost every day.

I listened to podcasts, none of which had anything to do with church work or religion. I encountered perspectives from a comedian turned apologist, a Jew and a Palestinian, and a blogger turned thinker. I found wisdom in the Stoics, Aragorn from Middle Earth, lesbian and non-binary young adults, and even a Rocky Mountain National Park YouTuber. Somewhere along the way, all these voices became part of a larger conversation I was having with myself.

What did I figure out about a me, a Presbyterian administrative person, taking an official sabbatical?

Here, in no particular order, are several ideas:

• There is no obvious sabbatical model for administrative church staff. Most of the resources I found about sabbaticals assume that the person is a pastor, professor, or teacher and emphasize research, writing, seminars, or other projects. For someone whose ministry is administration, communications, websites, social media, and organizational leadership, those models can simply turn sabbatical into “work in a different location.” I had no interest in working, but in a different way or on a different project.

  
  

• Rest does not need to produce something to be worthwhile. Maybe the most important discovery was that sabbatical can include reading, continuing education, prayer, hiking, exercise, reflection, vacation, and genuine rest without requiring a product or proof of productivity at the end.  Rest is holy and needed and not something that one “earns”.  Eventually, I figured out that sabbatical is less about accomplishing something and more about slowing down, paying attention, and being present. 

  
  

• Administrative church employees may need sabbatical precisely because their ministry carries less visible forms of exhaustion. I began to recognize that unrealistic expectations aren't placed only on pastors, but on church staff as well. The criticism, the burnout, the unhealthy ministry cultures, and the wounds that accumulate quietly over years of serving the church can take a toll, often without us even realizing it. Ideally, for those of us who aren't pastors, a sabbatical offers enough distance to begin recognizing those experiences, naming them for what they are, and perhaps finding some space to heal.

  
  

• A sabbatical can create space to separate identity from vocation. After decades of church work, the question can become not simply “What will I do next?” but “Who am I apart from my job?” That made sabbatical especially valuable for a longtime administrative employee like me approaching retirement: it became an opportunity to experiment with different rhythms and rediscover sources of meaning beyond my professional role.

  
  

• Reflection on the past can be as valuable as planning for the future. Rather than seeing my sabbatical simply as a time to prepare for the next chapter of my professional life, I found myself looking back over my years as a youth minister and communicator. I began remembering the experiences, relationships, ministries, and moments that had brought me energy, purpose, and joy. It also gave me space to revisit some of the more difficult seasons, recognizing, sometimes only in hindsight, the ways God's grace had carried me through them.

  
  

• Sabbatical can help someone imagine a healthier final season of work. Sure, I got away from the desk in my home office. But I didn’t completely disengage. I found that I wanted to return and bring renewed attention to finishing well—completing projects, strengthening relationships, fulfilling responsibilities, and thinking about meaningful service beyond formal employment.

For church administrative people like me, sabbatical does not have to be an extended professional-development project modeled after a pastor's study leave. It can and should be intentional space away from the constant demands of serving the institutional church—space for rest, physical renewal, relationships, learning, spiritual reflection, healing, and rediscovering identity beyond one's job.

Its value may lie less in what an employee produces during the sabbatical than in the perspective, health, clarity, and renewed sense of purpose they bring back from it.