How to Maximize Your Summer Vacation

Photo by li hao on Unsplash

Over the years, I have heard more people talk about needing a vacation from their vacation. Or they don’t take all of their vacation days. 

They end up tired; they don’t enjoy their jobs, and their families don’t have any fun memories to look back on. 

And for what?

In reality, you and I are created to live life in rhythm. We are designed to work hard and play hard. To stress our bodies and then to unwind and let them destress. 

The summer for our family is a favorite season. A time to play, make memories, go on trips and explore. 

We’ve had to learn this as Katie and I didn’t take many vacations growing up. The reality is that it doesn’t have to be expensive to be worthwhile, but it will take some thought. As you get ready for summer, here are some ideas to help you make sure that you are maximizing your summer:

Take all your vacation days. If your company gives you three weeks, take all 3. Don’t leave any left over at the end of the year. You work hard, and your family runs fast throughout the year from activity to activity. One of the biggest wastes is vacation time left over. The average American leaves 6.5 vacation days unused each year. These are free days off; take them.

Parents set the tone. When I am frustrated, tense, or anxious, the whole family feels this way. How do you react to your wife and kids? It bleeds into everyone. You set the tone. Know that you set the tone for everyone else when you are in the car, at the rest stops, or on vacation. This may not be the case in your family, but I have learned how powerful my presence and emotions are in our family and watched them over the years. 

Prepare mentally and emotionally for time off. Being off from work is hard. It is a different rhythm, a different routine. You don’t wake up, make phone calls, check your email, or sit in meetings. If you have young kids, they don’t usually entertain themselves. As a dad, you aren’t used to this. So, mentally and emotionally, prepare for it. You probably work too many hours like most of us, which means emotionally you are fried by the time you get to vacation. Spend the week before mentally and emotionally unpacking and preparing for vacation.

Turn off your email, phone, social media, etc. Vacation means you are not working. I know this is hard to believe, but your company will run without you. When we go on vacation, I turn off my phone, email, social media, etc. Trust me on this, if you want a sure-fire way to build into your family, win enormous points with your spouse and kids, turn off your phone, email and social media. 

Plan Ahead. Do some research wherever you go, even if you are doing a staycation. The internet makes planning a cheap vacation and finding inexpensive fun things to do, incredibly easy. Look for places and things around you that you have never been to and go there.

Make memories. This goes with planning. Find fun places to eat out or places to get unique desserts. Stay up late, and do silly things you wouldn’t normally do. Do whatever you can to make memories. Our kids still talk about things we did 5-10 years ago on vacation. 

How to Maximize Your Summer Vacation

It’s the end of summer and you might be wondering why I’m writing a post about summer vacation.

The reason is simple.

If you want a great summer vacation, a great summer preaching break, you have to plan it. Too many leaders wait until May when they are running on fumes to start thinking about summer vacation and by then, it is really hard to plan a good one.

You have to think through:

  • What will recharge you personally? What will recharge your spouse? Your kids?
  • Who will do your job when you are gone?
  • What will be fun?
  • How will you pay for all that fun?

So, to help you, here are a few common questions I get about a summer break:

Why take a summer break?

This has a ton of reasons, in no particular order. Preaching and leading are hard work. If you’re a pastor who preaches regularly, coming up with something to say every week is tiring. Preaching is tiring. As Charles Spurgeon put it, “It is spiritual warfare every week.” It is mentally, spiritually, relationally, physically and emotionally draining. It is healthy for a pastor to recharge physically, mentally and spiritually. It is good for a church to hear other voices than just their pastor. It is helpful for a pastor’s family for him to get out of the weekly grind of preaching. Doing the other work of a pastor is just different.

Why don’t pastors and leaders take a summer break?

I think many pastors and leaders are afraid to do it. They are afraid to not be at their church as if it all revolves around them or is dependent on them. I love hearing that on a night I am not there that not only does everything run smoothly, but also that our attendance is up, we have a ton of first-time guests, etc. Your church can run without you; God doesn’t need you.

As well, many leaders feel like they need to be running, selling all the time. Get your hustle on!

You can take a break and in fact, as the authors of The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal points out, regularly resting increases your performance, and work.

What do you do on a summer break?

Now we get to the goal of your summer break and vacation.

Do you want to learn? Grow in something? Rest and recharge? Do you want to work ahead?

My summer break encapsulates much of that. One of the other advantages for a pastor in taking a break from preaching is working ahead on sermons, using that time to work on your church instead of working in your church. Which is crucial for a leader.

One of the other things I seek to do is spend extended time in the Scripture. Because much of my job is thinking about and prepping the next sermon I am preaching it is easy to not spend time letting the word speak into my soul. During this time, I spend time just letting God speak to my life without thinking about how I can fit that into a sermon. I’ve always thought of a spiritual life like a bucket and if it gets too low, there isn’t anything to give out. And pastor’s give out every week from their spiritual lives as they preach and counsel. During this time, I get to fill my bucket up, which is a huge blessing for the rest of the year.

This is also an opportunity to serve your spouse. What would they find helpful and recharging on your break? How can they rest and rejuvenate?

My elders think this is nuts, how do I teach them this is a good thing?

If there is one thing many pastors need to grow in, it is the ability to lead up to their elders. It isn’t that your elders are against this or something else, they just lack an understanding of what it means to do your job.

Over the years, I’ve had elders who are supportive of this and ones that are not.

Most people have no idea how hard prepping a sermon and giving a sermon is. They have no idea what the warfare is like, what it does to your adrenal glands and your body overall. You might need to do some research and teach them this. Teach your church about the value of other communicators besides yourself.

Two books that have helped me in this area are Adrenaline and Stress and Adrenal Fatigue

If after all this, they still won’t budge. Just take all your vacation at the same time and be gone from your church for 2-4 weeks and don’t call it a preaching break just take your vacation.

I’ve been blessed that my elders see the value in this for me and our church. I shoot to preach 35 weekends a year at Revolution. Each staff member is given 7 Sundays a year where they can be gone from Revolution.

How do you prep for a break?

This is something often overlooked. It is a lot like prepping for a vacation. We’ve already talked about how to figure out what to do on your break, but you have to prepare mentally and physically for the crash that follows. A pastor’s body is so used to the adrenaline that comes from preaching that when you don’t do it, your body goes through withdraw because it craves the adrenaline it is used to having. You have to be aware of this and realize that in the first week of your break you will be tired, cranky, irritable as your body regulates. Being aware of this is huge and talking with your spouse about it.

You also have to figure out who will do what while you’re gone, who will answer email, texts messages and how you will handle social media. I do my best to shut off all of those while I’m on my vacation.

When Life Feels Crazy

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At different points throughout the year life can feel out of control. When we hit summer, with schools out and trips planned, we hope to find ourselves catching our breath, slowing down and recalibrating.

But what happens when that season ends? When late nights on the patio, long walks, afternoon naps or sleeping late and vacations are gone, and you are back to the normal rhythms of life? How do you live when life feels crazy?

If we aren’t careful, we roll from one busy season right into another one and find ourselves constantly out of breath.

With that in mind, here’s how to bring the feeling of a slower pace, summer vacation and breaks into the normal rhythm of life.

1. Build in breaks. You should schedule daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly breaks. Every hour at work, get up and move around, walk around the office to move some blood around and clear your head. I find that when I get up from a sermon or a problem and walk around, when I get back to it, I have a lot more clarity.

Make sure that you have scheduled in breaks during your week, that you are turning off your email alerts at night, things you would do on vacation. (If you don’t turn email off on vacation, start.)

One of the things Katie and I do is look at our family, school and work calendar from a quarterly perspective so we are able to know if it will be a busy season. This helps to make sure you build in a break at some point. Look at it for three months. Is it faster than normal? What is your plan to slow down after that?

2. Look around. In the busyness of life we miss the little things. Smiles, laughs, sad looks, and our surroundings as we run from one thing to the next. We are so focused on our phones, head down, crossing things off our list and being productive that we miss the opportunity to be present.

This is hard for me because I like accomplishing things, and you probably do, too. Yet most of us can’t remember what we did last year or five years ago, what we accomplished. But we can remember relationships and experiences.

Which leads to number 3…

3. Laugh with friends. Let’s face it, if you are a leader, you are a serious person. You are a driven, accomplish things kind of person.

I realized something recently. I struggle to enjoy things. I get so focused on winning, accomplishing, and moving forward that I fail to enjoy life. To have fun.

When was the last time you laughed?

I mean, really laughed? So hard that it hurt?

If it has been awhile, if you can’t remember, that is a problem.

4. Savor a meal. Have you had this experience?

You had a great meal with some friends. Good food, great conversation, no kids. It was amazing. Inevitably, someone probably said, “We should do this again soon.”

But…

You don’t.

Months go by where you don’t spend that time with friends, don’t linger over a great meal. We rush from one thing to the next, eating fast food, something thrown together. We sleep too late and stay up too late, so we hurry through a breakfast of cereal or pop-tarts.

Yet food and savoring good food is one of God’s great gifts to us.

There is something about an amazing meal. Something that slows us down and helps us to enjoy and calm down.

5. Take a nap. When life is crazy, one of the best things you can do is stop and take a nap.

I know, I know.

Life is crazy, so who has time for a nap.

You do, and you need one. Your body and your brain need one. I rarely hear someone say, “I’m so mad I took a nap.”

Why You Need a Summer Break

summer break

I’m my summer preaching break and as always, it has been incredibly helpful. If you are a pastor, this is something you need to put into your yearly rhythm.

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know that personal health and leadership health is incredibly important to me. It seems every month I hear about another pastor burning out or running out of steam because they didn’t take care of themselves. If you burnout, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Over the last 3 weeks, I have played longer with my kids, walked on the beach and picked up seashells, took long walks with Katie, took some naps, watched the world cup, worked ahead on sermons, read some great books and spent time with friends.

Who benefits from a summer break. Literally everyone. The pastor taking it does as he is able to recharge physically and spiritually. His family does as they get some much needed down time. What many people fail to realize is that ministry can become an all encompassing endeavor. The church benefits as well from having a pastor come back more passionate and energized than when he left and they benefit from hearing sermons from other voices. It is a win-win for everyone.

Most pastors want to take a summer break, but don’t know how. If that’s you, here are some ideas on how to make your summer break successful:

  1. Plan ahead. We think resting should just happen, but it doesn’t. This is especially true for your summer break. If you are taking vacation, you need to plan ahead so you can disconnect from social media, email and your job. Work out the details so everything is covered and you are not needed.
  2. Disconnect early and connect early. My recommendation during your break is that you disconnect from email, social media, blogging, etc. For me, I can find myself getting angry at posts or distracted and that keeps me from recharging or doing what I should be doing on my break. Put an auto responder on your email a few days before you actually leave so you can begin disconnecting and then turn it back on a few days before you come back so you can ease in.
  3. Leave town. You don’t need to be gone for your whole preaching break, but the more the better. This helps you to truly disconnect and recharge. This doesn’t have to be expensive as you can drive and visit friends or family or stay somewhere cheap. This is why planning ahead is such a benefit.
  4. Don’t feel guilty. It’s summer, so don’t feel bad. Everyone is taking vacation, time off and slowing down. People go to the beach, lake, mountains, the park. Once summer hits, our mindset changes and our schedules change. This is why it is the ideal time for a pastor to take several weeks in a row from regular church activities.
  5. Be purposeful. This isn’t simply about time off. Take a sabbatical for that. This is to recharge and have time off, but also to work ahead, evaluate the ministry and do things you need to do but often neglect because of the time ministry takes. By planning ahead purposefully, you make sure you accomplish what you need to. This summer I spent a lot of time talking to pastors of churches who have broken the 500 mark trying to discern what I need to know as we approach that in our next season of ministry, the kinds of leaders we need on board to break through that barrier.

In the end, a preaching break is really about the longevity of ministry for a pastor and his church. This keeps it fresh and moving in the direction God wants him to. Don’t minimize how important this is. The ones who do, end up burning out or losing passion very quickly.