Minister Burnout and the Patterns Leaders Can Break
Christian leaders can face pressures that contribute to burnout, but they are not powerless. Drawing from Ryan Connor and R. Loren Sandford, this article highlights practical patterns ministers can break to pursue restored health and sustainable service.
- Leaders can learn to say no and resist feeling personally obligated to everyone.
- Healthy ministry requires rest, exercise, good meals, and honoring a day off.
- Dysfunctional relationships between ministers and elders can be a serious factor in burnout.
By Mark A. Taylor
Any of us could create situations that might lead to burnout among our Christian leaders. But burnout-afflicted ministers are not at the mercy of forces around them. They can control several steps that will lead to restored health.
Ryan Connor this week makes some suggestions. R. Loren Sandford offers more in his book Renewal for the Wounded Warrior: A Burnout Survival Guide for Believers (Chosen Books, 2010). His advice for growing out of burnout can also help many of us from falling into it in the first place. Some of his ideas:
Breaking Patterns That Lead to Burnout
Break the personal obligation pattern. Are you a leader who feels โpersonally obligatedโ to everyone in your care? Are you afraid to say no for fear of being disliked? Do you harbor the mistaken notion that terrible things will happen to those youโre leading unless youโre personally involved in all their decisions and actions? Sandford suggests that leaders learn to say no, refuse to go to routine meetings called by others on their day off, and risk disappointing others for the sake of their own health.
Break the self-sacrifice pattern. This is demonstrated by workaholism and lack of exercise. Some ministers believe, โIf Iโm not working to exhaustion, Iโm not working hard enough.โ Other ministers take time for themselves, for their families, for their hobbies, and for exerciseโand they live to minister effectively for a lifetime.
Break the self-abuse pattern. Eat regularly. Eat well. Choose healthy foods. Avoid the habit of on-the-go fast-food meals grabbed between appointments. Make meals a pleasant event in the company of others.
Take your day off; remember Godโs command to observe the Sabbath. Realize that 60-hour workweeks are not noble; they are set-ups for collapse.
Breaking the Isolation Pattern
Break the isolation pattern. Can you relate to the following observation by Sandford? โMost patterns of government practiced in the modern church keep the pastor isolated and deprive him of any real power to lead.โ Sandford decries the notion that church is a democracy and bemoans the pattern of some congregations who choose elders to โensure dissenting voices in high places.โ
Sandfordโs solution is to recruit full-time and part-time staff members whom he regards as elders. โTogether we lead the church in spiritual matters,โ he writes, while an administrative board works with them on โmatters financial and contractual.โ
Many of us would balk at such an arrangement, but it seems clear that dysfunctional minister-elder relationships lead to minister burnout as much as any other factor. And of all the precursors to burnout, this, for many will be the most difficult to avoid.
Author: Mark A. Taylor
Mark A. Taylor, who served as Christian Standard editor from 2003 to 2017, retired in June 2017 after almost 41 years with Standard Publishing (Christian Standard Media).
