Some Thoughts on Burnout

How intent should Christians be on avoiding burnout? How do we balance Christ’s call to come to Him so He can give us rest from our labors (Matthew 11:28) with His other call to pick up our crosses to follow Him even unto death (Matthew 16:24)? 

This summer my pastor shared with me a Facebook post from another pastor who wrote that, with all the discourse about “soul care, sabbath’ing, and rest,” he is seeing a trend of younger pastors shrinking from the typical demands and sacrifices of ministry. The post made me wonder how many people may be using the fear of burnout as an excuse to not commit themselves to costly and exhausting acts of service. 

Not long after my pastor told me about that Facebook post, I read a blog post by Tim Challies (whose book Do More Better has been immensely helpful for my productivity) about how, despite how long and how hard he’s tried, he has never found a cure for his struggle to stay asleep. This reminded me of people I know (or know of) who have experienced chronic fatigue. But life goes on, and the people God has placed under our care still need whatever time and energy and attention we can give them. For some of us, at least, sleeplessness might be one of those Paulian thorns that reveal God’s power and all-sufficient grace through our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:7–10).

These two posts put me in mind of something I had read a decade earlier in Kevin DeYoung’s Crazy Busy: “One of the reasons we struggle so mightily with busyness is because we do not expect to struggle” (Crossway, 2013, p. 103). When we expect or demand that our lives not be so busy, it makes the feelings of being overwhelmed worse. This, too, raises the question of whether we just need to accept tiredness as an unavoidable side effect of doing good work.

I think there’s truth in all this. If I had written this post in August when I first had the idea for it, I might have left the matter there. But then I went through a semester when I was at risk of burnout myself—until I lowered my expectations for what I could accomplish this semester and the next—and meanwhile I observed the ominous warning signs of burnout in a close friend. These experiences lead me to conclude that we do need to guard against burnout as much as we can, while also resisting the temptations to sloth and self-preservation. 

What that pastor posted on Facebook, warning against under-exertion, is a timely, needed corrective, but even he acknowledges that burnout exists and is harmful. And I suspect—because of what I know of my own predilections and of the many hard-working, driven people I’m surrounded by—that there are still many people out there who need to be warned against over-exertion. Some people who are scared at the thought of burning out may not even be close to it themselves, but those who are on the point of burning out risk far more than a season of exhaustion. I’m not thinking only of the risks of depression, of hospitalization, of needing years-long recovery, or of never fully recovering. The overworked also risk hurting those they are trying to help. As Christopher Ash warns in Zeal without Burnout, “The problem is that we do not sacrifice alone. It may sound heroic, even romantic, to burn out for Jesus. The reality is that others are implicated in our crashes. A spouse, children, ministry colleagues, prayer partners and faithful friends, all are drawn in to supporting us and propping us up when we collapse” (The Good Book Company, 2016, p. 24). Ash goes on to quote a pastor who is a volunteer firefighter: burnout is “a form of heroic suicide that is counterproductive because you’re now no longer effective in fighting fire and the resources that were dedicated to fighting the fire are not dedicated to saving you” (25). Moreover, as David Murray warns in Reset (Crossway, 2017), burnout can precede major moral lapses. His book opens with the warning, “Slow your pace, or you’ll never finish the race.”

Challies is right that God may withhold the gift of deep and thoroughly restorative sleep, but he also clarifies that we still have a responsibility to seek it. He writes, “I have decided I ought to receive this as God’s will—as a reality to be accepted rather than resented.” At the same time, “That doesn’t mean I won’t keep praying and won’t keep trying—praying for sleep and trying to get better at it. That doesn’t mean I won’t try the next herbal concoction someone recommends as the one that changed their life.” God can still use us when we are sleep-deprived, but Scripture, scientific studies, and street smarts all attest that He designed us to be at our best when we get good sleep. As Ash and Murray each argue in their respective books on burnout, to act as if God didn’t create us to be finite and sleep-dependent is dangerous hubris. So we should do what we can to sleep well, and above all trust God: trust Him to use sleep as He designed it, to restore us, and trust Him to sustain us even when good sleep eludes us. “Either way,” Challies concludes, “it falls to me to trust that he loves, that he cares, and that he knows best.”

I don’t need to nuance or counterbalance what DeYoung wrote, either, because he did so himself in that same chapter of Crazy Busy that’s haunted me so long. I remembered his startling diagnosis that “You Suffer More because You Don’t Expect to Suffer at All” and forgot the careful qualifications he placed around it. He writes, “This may seem a strange way to (almost) end a book on busyness. But keep in mind that this is the last of seven diagnoses, not the only one. … There’s a reason this chapter is not the only chapter in the book” (101). Even as DeYoung is concerned that “We simply don’t think of our busyness as even a possible part of our cross to bear” (103), he also reiterates that we need “rest, rhythm, death to pride, acceptance of our own finitude, and trust in the providence of God” (102). My takeaway from DeYoung is the same as the one I get from Challies: I should do what I can to rest in the midst of my work, and hold on to God’s goodness when that rest isn’t enough and the work won’t ease up. 

DeYoung is right to ask, “If we love others, how can we not be busy and burdened at least some of the time?” (105). So, to return to my opening question, we should be intent on avoiding burnout, but not on avoiding sacrifice. But as soon as I say that, I must also add that we should just as vigilantly guard against the martyr complex. DeYoung quotes John the Baptist: “I freely confess I am not the Christ” (48; see John 1:20). Neither are we! The questions we should be asking are: What are these sacrifices for, really? Will they be worth it? Are they actually for God and others, or are they for propping up our own egos? Or as DeYoung puts it, “Am I trying to do good or to make myself look good?” (39). And do our sacrifices—of time, of sleep—proceed from unbelief in God’s redemptive involvement in all things and a proud self-reliance, or do they proceed from a bold confidence that God will use the seeds that fall into the ground and die to bring forth new life (John 12:24)?

As Goes the Church

What do you believe is the most influential institution in the world? If given the formulation, “As goes the ____, so goes the world,” what would you put in the blank? Would you pick the Academy, the Market, the Media, or the State? Or would you pick the Church?

If you are a Christian, I hope you believe the Church is the most influential institution in the world. I hope you would say, “As goes the Church, so goes the world.” After all, it’s only the Church that is the people of God, that has the Word of God, and has the Spirit of God. It’s only the church that Jesus promised to build, and it’s the only institution He promised would prevail (Matthew 16:18). 

But if you are a Christian and are inclined to think the Academy, the Market, the Media, or the State is more influential than the Church, I would encourage you to ask yourself why. Is that way of thinking influenced more by the promises of God in Scripture, or by your perception of current events? Are your priorities driven more by faith or by fear? And I’m going to hazard to guess that this viewpoint may reflect your own sense of vocation, affect your concerns for what other individual Christians should be doing, and shape your vision of what the Church should look like.

If you think the Academy is the most influential, you are probably highly educated and see yourself as a scholar. You may think many more Christians should have advanced degrees, and that many more should be working in either secular or Christian primary and secondary schools. But not only do you want the Academy to be more Christian; it’s possible that you also, however subtly, desire for the Church to look more like the Academy. In the local church, you may gravitate toward fellow intellectuals and away from the people you see as simple or ignorant. You may expect pastors to have seminary degrees, large libraries, and sophisticated sermons.

If you think the Market is the most influential, you are probably smart with money and see yourself as a businessman. You may think many more Christians should be starting businesses, investing, or climbing the corporate ladder. But not only do you want the Market to be more Christian; it’s possible that you also, however subtly, desire for the Church to look more like the Market. In the local church, you may gravitate toward the wealthy or the financially striving and away from the people you see as poor or financially complacent. You may expect pastors to have an entrepreneurial spirit and be administratively gifted.

If you think the Media is the most influential, you are probably gifted in some art-form or medium and see yourself as a creative or a communicator. You may think many more Christians should be going into the film, music, and publishing industries and into journalism. But not only do you want the Media to be more Christian; it’s possible that you also, however subtly, desire for the Church to look more like the Media. In the local church, you may gravitate toward fellow creatives and away from the people you see as mere consumers. You may expect pastors to be artists, entertainers, or so-called “content-creators.”

If you think the State is the most influential, you are probably involved in politics (or just read the news a lot and have a lot of strong opinions) and see yourself as a civil servant or political reformer. You may think many more Christians should go into politics, get more involved at the grassroots level, or at least pay more attention to the news. But not only do you want the State to be more Christian; it’s possible that you also, however subtly, desire for the Church to look more like the State. In the local church, you may gravitate toward those who seem to have power and status in the world and away from those who seem powerless. You may expect pastors to be charismatic executives with an ambitious agenda for what the church can be doing outside its own four walls.

To be sure, right now it doesn’t seem like the Church is influential, at least not positively. It looks as if lately the Church has been better at scaring people away than drawing them in. And I’ll grant that it is a frail and weak thing, beset with sins and failings. But we ought to remember that God likes to use what seems foolish to shame the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27). We should look back to how Christians transformed the Western world two millennia ago: not by starting academies like Plato’s, or by raising capital, or by writing better epics than Homer or plays than Sophocles, or by getting into Caesar’s inner circle, but by forming churches where people heard the gospel preached and sought to live in the light of it together. And we ought to remember that when Jesus walked among us, while He would happily interact with scholars like Nicodemus and businessmen like Zacchaeus, He spent more time with the illiterate and the poor. Likewise, when Paul went on his missionary journeys, he could quote literature to philosophers and get an audience with governors, but getting them on his side was never his priority. 

Yes, go into the Academy or the Market or the Media or the State, if you have the gifting and opportunity for it, and if your motives are predominantly in the right place. But be careful that the perceived importance of your mission does not expand beyond proportion to become the mission, and that your way of contributing to the kingdom does not became the way to advance it. Jesus has His own means and methods—so much better and higher than ours—for accomplishing His purposes in the world, so let’s commit ourselves to them. However unlikely and unimpressive they appear, they will change the course of history.