3 Ways Out of Ministry Burnout

Burnout can have a way of pouncing on you, like one of the old Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. I can still remember my first panic attack. I say “first” because it wasn’t the only one. I’m walking down the hallway back to my office after a meeting. All of a sudden gravity feels like it’s turned up to 11. I feel the oxygen getting sucked out of my chest.

I didn’t have language for it in the moment, but I was experiencing symptoms of burnout. I’m so grateful that I had some tools at my disposal and an eager support network to help me through it. If you may be feeling some early symptoms of burnout or find yourself full-on shellshocked by it, you are not at the end of your story. You are not alone. It is real, and it is okay. There is a way out.

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” says Jesus. This is a cumbersome translation. In Greek, the word “rest” isn’t an object. It’s the verb. Jesus promises to rest us. This is something Jesus actively does to us.

“Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” I am so grateful that this is the kind of god that Jesus is. This is no deity who piles it on to see how much we can put up with. This is no deity who puts obstacles in our path to trip us up on purpose. This is no deity who gives us pop quizzes we haven’t studied for. This is a deity who rests us.

Psychologist Christina Maslach identifies three components to burnout—exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. There are spiritual practices that provide an antidote to all three of these components.

Sabbath for the exhaustion of burnout

I once heard a pastor express that he saw no problem burning himself out because he would have all of eternity in heaven to rest. What a sick way live out a vocation of ministry. This is not how God ordered the universe, and it’s not how God made human beings to operate.

Sabbath is the climax of the creation story in Genesis 1. And yeah, there’s some “end of all things” to that complete rest. But there is also a fundamental pattern of six days of work followed by one day of rest. Six plus one. This is baked into the operating system of human beings. We’re not made to work days on end until we finally crash. We are human beings, made in the image of God. We’re not hustlers. We’re not producers, stretching to the next deadline. Our identity is in the One who made us, not in the stuff we achieve and accomplish and produce.

A youth pastor once told me, “I work 80 hours a week because I love it. I don’t know how to turn it off.” This is a recipe for disaster because no human is wired for this. A healthy work-rest rhythm that includes sabbath, retreat, vacation, and extended sabbatical is essential.

The antidote to exhaustion is Sabbath. Healthy self-care is a fundamental step in unspooling the exhaustion of burnout. We have to put the oxygen mask on ourselves before we can offer it to others. Commit yourself to the work of showing the same kind of compassion and empathy to yourself as you do to others.

You are not the ministry work. This is God’s work. It started long before you showed up. It will continue long after you leave. You can afford to set it down one day out of every seven. You were made to.

Spiritual direction for the cynicism of burnout

Cynicism is often the product of either feeling like your voice is not heard or feeling like situations are endlessly out of your control. You can find yourself in a sticky mess once you’ve let cynicism in the door. Cynicism persuades us that we’re the smartest person in the room, and it seduces us into believing those around us are incompetent fools.

Spiritual direction provides an antidote to cynicism. A spiritual director holds a mirror up to us and we can see ourselves for who we really are, as scary and uncomfortable as that can be. When we submit ourselves to the scrutiny of a director, we have to face facts that we’re not the smartest person in the room.

A spiritual director is one who asks questions. They’re familiar with the patterns of human behavior. They get the challenges of ministry, but on a deeper level, they simply get the challenges of being human. It really is the humility required in spiritual direction that smashes cynicism to bits.

To get out of the tarpit of cynicism we need a reorientation. In the road to Emmaus story, two disciples find themselves stuck in a despairing place. They’re so stuck on their own misery they miss that Jesus is standing right with them. It takes Jesus re-telling their story, rearranging the pieces so that they can see from a new perspective that finally switches the light on for them. When we’re stuck in cynicism, we need another pair of eyes on our life to show us what we’re missing.

In spiritual direction, we can find healing from the cynicism of burnout that plagues us.

Centering prayer for the inefficacy of burnout

I don’t remember what exactly it was that triggered my panic attacks at church. Maybe it was the endless to-do lists that never got done. Or the time I frustratedly expressed to a colleague, “If it’s not due today, it can wait.”

I retreated to the sanctuary, a big Gothic space with old pews and arches. There was a big stained glass image of Jesus as the king described in Revelation. All I could do was sit there at the foot of Jesus and breathe. Just breathe.

Inefficacy has to do with that feeling of hopelessness that we’re never enough, that our work is never good enough. Ministry particularly lends itself to this feeling because ministry is people and people aren’t projects that can be completed and shipped. There’s always an unfinished quality to ministry, and so it’s easy to feel like the work is never done.

Centering prayer offers a way to cut through the helpless feelings of inefficacy. We sit in the quiet. We sit in the stillness. And we sit with Jesus. We trust that that’s enough. We trust that grace is enough. In centering prayer, we take 20 to 30 minutes to stop and do nothing. Amidst the busyness and the to-do lists and the distractions, Jesus simply invites us to be with him.

Ministry work should not be a license for frenzy. As Eugene Peterson writes in The Contemplative Pastor, the busy pastor is the lazy pastor. And the term “busy Christian” should be an oxymoron. Centering prayer is an essential exercise because so often our busyness in church work actually comes from a place of avoiding God’s presence. We can fall in love with all the trappings and appearance of Christlike service and numb ourselves out from a rich spiritual life.

If you’re a missionary, a worship pastor, a church planter, a youth pastor, the pastor of a church small or large, and you find yourself in the throes of burnout, choose to do something about it. Start a rhythm of Sabbath. Put an extended retreat on the calendar. Meet with a spiritual director. Begin experimenting with centering prayer. Trust that Jesus will rest you.