4 Steps toward Recovery from Burnout
Do you find yourself particularly irritable or full of resentment in your ministry? Do you feel an underlying sense of being overwhelmed even when you’re not in the middle of a task? Perhaps every responsibility feels like a chore and you can’t remember why you signed up for this lifestyle in the first place. You are exhausted but lack the ability to rest and recharge, and you feel the ongoing weight of a season of stress that will not lift.
Chances are, you could be struggling with the effects of burnout. No matter what type of ministry you’re involved in, the demands on your heart, soul, and body are significant and unrelenting. Loving people can be complicated and messy. Finances are often a concern. If you are a lead pastor, you carry a multifaceted load related to shepherding your congregation, casting vision, faithfully unpacking Scripture, and setting overall direction for outreach, discipleship, and member care. If you are living overseas and working in a cross-cultural context, you are confronted daily with the challenges of language acquisition, cultural adaptation, homesickness, and the unique challenges of doing both fellowship and work with a small handful of ministry partners. If you’re a counselor, you spend every day bearing the weight of people’s darkest struggles and deepest pain. Over time, it all takes a toll.
It’s important to recognize when your mind, heart, and body need a reprieve. Because ministry never ends and needs will always abound, it is easy to just plow through to the next task at hand instead of assessing your overall health. Ignoring the warning signs of burnout can further compound your physical and spiritual exhaustion and can strangle your longevity in the work you love. Here are a few pointers toward combatting personal burnout and cultivating wholeness of heart as you continue to move forward in serving others.
Steps toward Wholeness
1) Cultivate rhythms of rest. You must reckon with the reality that you cannot run on empty. You must have pockets of time to unplug, to spend extra time with your family, to invest into a favorite leisure activity, to go to lunch with a friend, and to be quiet and still before the Lord. This rest can be found in small pockets during regular days (hello coffee break) and also cultivated through an intentional day off each week.
In the middle of calling his disciples, healing the sick, raising the dead, and sending out the twelve into towns and villages to proclaim the kingdom of heaven, Jesus speaks clearly about the importance of rest. He says in Matthew 11:28–30: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Hear his heart in these verses. He sees that we labor and are heavy laden, and he says he does not want to add to our load, but to give us rest from it. When we come to Jesus for soul rest, we remember who he is and who we are. We remember that he is the one who ultimately accomplishes his work, and that his biggest desire for us is that we cultivate a deep, abiding relationship with him.
This same sentiment is found in the idea of Sabbath, which introduces the rhythm of physical rest into the weekly calendar. Depending on your ministry responsibilities, it is likely that your day off is not going to be on a Sunday, but it is vital for your ongoing wellbeing that you set aside a day off each week, giving your mind, heart, and body an opportunity for renewal. How can you creatively work this in to your life?
This same sentiment is found in the idea of Sabbath, which introduces the rhythm of physical rest into the weekly calendar. Depending on your ministry responsibilities, it is likely that your day off is not going to be on a Sunday, but it is vital for your ongoing wellbeing that you set aside a day off each week, giving your mind, heart, and body an opportunity for renewal. How can you creatively work this in to your life?
2) Come back to grace, over and over again. We speak of God’s grace often, but perhaps in the throes of ministry, we forget the daily, continual nature of our own need for it. We may lose sight of the fact that the same treasure we offer others is the same thing that powers our own transformation, gives us strength to do good, and keeps us humble. God has accepted us, brought us into his kingdom, made us his sons and daughters, and given us the gift of his Spirit, all because of his own goodness lavished on us through Christ’s work on the cross. It is this same abundant goodness that keeps us going day by day.Romans 5:2 says: “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” What does it mean that we are standing in grace? It means we remember we have been brought into God’s kingdom by his own work and not our own efforts (Ephesians 2:8–9). It means we need to acknowledge our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 9:7–8), because they place us in the perfect position to depend on the Lord’s power to be his hands and feet wherever he gives us opportunity. Grace keeps us from thinking that our ministry is about us or because of us. What a gift to remember when we feel like everything rides on our shoulders.
3) Cultivate a learning posture. It is important when you shoulder ministry responsibility that you remember you are not an expert on everything. Position yourself to learn from others around you, whether through collaborating with colleagues in the field, researching ministry trends, or taking the time to regularly evaluate your goals and practices against clear Scriptural guidelines. Find a mentor who has done this work longer than you and whose walk with the Lord you can emulate. Meet with an accountability group to share your struggles and to stay encouraged to press into Scripture. Pray for the gift of someone in your life who will ask you questions and listen to your answers. It can be tempting to become isolated when you are in leadership, but cutting yourself off from the nurture of the body of Christ will quickly prove to be to your detriment.
4) Multiply yourself. A lot of burnout can stem from having too many tasks completely dependent upon only one person. The reality is, you can’t do it all, and you can’t be indispensable. My husband Andrew and I served as lay members of a church planting team a couple of years ago, and for the first several months in our new city, Andrew was the only person in our growing community who knew how to run the sound system—not only run it, but also put the system together. He was thrilled to use his gifts in this way, and the planning, assembly, and implementation of the equipment was a very fulfilling contribution for him. From week one of our church services, however, he started to keep an eye out for who else in the congregation had an interest in learning the ropes. It was weighty, knowing that from a technological side of things, if he didn’t show up, our weekly services could not happen. We couldn’t go on vacation, couldn’t go out of town to visit family, and he certainly couldn’t afford to be sick. On top of this reality, Andrew worked a full-time job elsewhere and we were also leading a community group out of our home. It was obvious this level of responsibility would not be a sustainable setup for long.
Andrew soon became friends with a new guy who had just joined our small congregation and started inviting him to shadow in the audiovisual ministry. They met at our house several times for trainings (mobile church means your garage is filled with speakers and cables), and by the time our first Easter rolled around, Andrew and Brent were equally dividing up the responsibilities of unpacking the mobile church trailer, setting up the system, running the sound for the service, and packing up everything at the end. A few months later, Andrew began the same training process with another interested church member.
Consider how you can do the same in your ministry field. Who is interested in your niche of service and could be encouraged to help shoulder the responsibility? Who can help you organize volunteer teams, train small group leaders, plan community outreach projects, and mentor students? Be strategic in using your position and platform to develop new leaders who can further the impact of the work and carry some of the load alongside you.
Implementing each of these practices can help set you up for a healthy, holistic ministry life that is both authentic and grounded in biblical truth, helping you heal, renew your strength, and be sustained for longevity, remembering that the hard work you do is out of a response to the grace you yourself have received from Jesus.