Avoiding Burnout

Peace be with you!  I’m praying for pastors everywhere as they/you navigate the busy season of Lent and all the churchy Easter preparations. Holy Week is a heart-wrenching time: the gravity and mystery of the week as a Christian, the stress of so much work as a pastor of a congregation, the urgency to do right by God during these sacred services. Yesterday I participated in a Lilly Endowment sponsored workshop on Clergy Burnout led by Rev. Kate Davis from the Center for Transforming Engagement.  I signed up because I felt obligated as the program director for one of their grants.  I was ready to play Candy Crush, hoping they wouldn't put us into dreaded breakout rooms to share.  What more could be said about burnout and its counterpart, resilience?  Apparently, a lot.

Rev. Davis unpacked burnout and its prevention/recovery in a way that was actually helpful.  She called us pastors to task by naming our active role in burnout because of our desire to control and be needed (rather than just because we are victims of unhealthy systems).  Both are true, and both need to change.  We live in a world and a church that heavily rewards giving at a cost to ourselves.  We become people who want to overwork and be needed to earn our keep and be worthy of love.

She identified three main causes of burnout: depersonalization/disconnection, exhaustion, and meaninglessness, which can be paired with three aspects of resilience: people (communities of support), practices of holistic wellbeing, and purpose (work that feels worth it even when it's hard).  During this webinar I was also introduced to "stresslaxing," which is when relaxing causes you to feel stress because you're trying to be still but your mind and body are spinning with all that needs to be done and what you should be accomplishing.

Please let me know if you'd like me to share more of her information.  She has studies and resources and assessment tools and tips and charts. To help others from burning out, we were advised to engage in the following practices:  model boundaries, share stories of challenge, and actually share how you're doing when someone asks.  As colleagues, we can also be aware of signs of burnout in one another - the lack of joy in what used to be meaningful work, being distracted, not sleeping well, or becoming cynical/bitter.

So, how am I doing?  I recently started fulltime single-parenting.  I have a thirteen-year-old daughter who is in love with a boy she's been dating a few weeks.  In. Love.  Her grades have all dropped to D's and C's, and she just ended a weeklong period of being mad at me, which my therapist says is a good indication that I'm doing a great job.  My back is aching in three different places because of this. 

That's how I'm doing.  Tell me how you're doing; I really want to know.

Peace and blessings during this busy season,
Sarah