You Are Responsible for Burning Out Your Team

An article by Matt    4 Comments

Burn out in the church is something that we hear about far too much.  It seems like every week I hear of a new story of a pastor, staff member, or volunteer who steps down because they are burned out, or on their way to being burned out.  This is why I was intrigued by a post on Michael Hyatt’s blog last week on the Six Organizational Myths That Sabotage Accountability.  The post walks through six things that get in the way of building a team that truly trusts one another, and holds each other accountable.  Myth five really hit home for me:

Myth 5: Work-Life Balance. You can’t hold people accountable for taking care of themselves.

When leaders realize that peak work performance requires immense energy, and that energy renewal often comes from “life activities,” they may begin to embrace the fact that work and life complement, not compete with one another. (See this great HBR article on this topic.)

Where there is trust and employee engagement, the opportunity exists to talk openly about healthy personal habits. Provide education on fitness, nutrition, and stress management and then get creative with an office challenge or other accountability initiative to celebrate group achievement.

I think that there are many cases where the church is guilty of causing people to burnout.  While serving as a youth pastor, a highly gifted student of mine compared the church to the mafia.  He told me “the church just seems to use you until you have nothing left to give, and then they toss you aside.”  That conversation broke my heart, mainly because all I could do was apologize and promise to help deflect the constant stream of requests that came his way.  At another point in my youth ministry career I had an influential church leader suggest a couple in our church as great potential youth leaders.  When I pointed out that this couple were already members of the worship team, two different committees, and had just had a second child, the response was “well, you never know unless you ask them…”

As church leaders we have a responsibility to not only lead the teams that we have been entrusted with, but also to care for them.  This means that we need to make sure that they are serving in a capacity that allows them to use their gifts, but it also means giving people the freedom to step back for a season and making the shepherding of your team a bigger priority than just getting the job done.  How you are building into your team, caring for their souls, and ensuring that they are living their lives in a balanced, healthy way is a bigger reflection on your ministry than numbers ever will be.  Having the largest church in town, with the slickest worship service means nothing if you are leaving behind a trail of bodies… burned out by being forced to live life out of balance.

How do YOU keep from burning out your team?

As a bonus, Ben Reed shared a story of a church that is doing this well.

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