Church Burn Out

So many people in church now a days suffer with an ongoing disease, you yourself might have suffered or one day might suffer from it. This disease knows no age gap, no generation gap, and seems to enjoy consuming as many people as it can infect. It doesn’t matter how strong you are in your faith, if can still over take you for a short time period. You can be a pastor, music leader, Sunday school teach, the most involved person in your church or the least. This disease? Its called burn out. Burn out? A disease? Yes, I know sounds crazy doesn’t it? So let’s talk about a few of the symptoms of being burnt out.

1. Loss of joy in serving Christ
2. Physical fatigue
3. Feeling of always giving and not receiving
4. Resenting the people we are serving
5.  anger at those making demands
6. self-criticism for putting up with the demands
7. cynicism, negativity, and irritability
8. a sense of being used/taken for granted
9. exploding easily at seemingly inconsequential things
10. social withdraw

As with every disease you don’t have to have every symptom to be classified as sick, and having one symptom does not mean that’s your problem. Being burnt out is a serious problem that many Christians are suffering from. The cause of the problem is that most often we tend to give everything we have for one or more ministry’s, which is fine if the Lord calls you to a ministry(s) then you should give it your all, but when we give our all others take us for advantage. Being burnt out is a group affair, it takes one doing everything as others watch, then the first person eventually reaches a breaking point so they give in and give up. Then another more often than not has to step up and take their place, and so on it goes affecting generation after generation, and church after church.

Many people like to look at being burnt out as a spiritual problem, and yes it can be, but it can also be a problem of being tired of being used. Many people have written article after article on how to rise up and carry on from being burnt out, but is solving one case for a temporary time period really a cure? When I was younger I thought that being burnt out was a figment of people’s imagination, it was just an excuse to not serve the Lord. Then one day I my self was experiencing most of these symptoms, some days just the thought of going to church made me curl up in a ball of defeat. It’s too easy in those days to be mad at yourself, you think you’re so post to move mountains for the Lord and here you are unable to smile. You begin to back out of church because I’ve served my time, I gave my all and no one helped why should I continue? Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 reads

“Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. For if either falls, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up.”

With that being said, maybe the cure is found in the cause. If being burnt out is from giving too much cause you’re a one man show, whether it’s by choice or not, then wouldn’t that also be the cure? Sometimes we tend to feel guilty when asking others to help us with different situations, or sometimes we think that the person doing it has it all under control. If we are ever going to find an end to being burnt out, it has to starts with every individual. Some of us are going to have to learn how to ask others for help, and others are going to have to learn how to help. After all it’s called a church body, you wouldn’t expect your right hand to do everything would you? So let’s be that way with the Church. Let’s start being more willing to rely on each other, let’s prove others can rely on us. If we work together there isn’t anything we can’t accomplish.