Dealing with Burnout: Part 1 — Joel Yoder — Ep. 079

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here in Queens, New York City. I'm with Joel Yoder, and you've been involved with—wow, you've been involved in ministry for quite a while, doing different things, a lot of trainings, this and that. I know you served overseas for a while. A big one that I feel we just don't talk enough about, especially cross-cultural engagement in ministry, is burnout and dealing with that and what is burnout. So my question is, have you experienced burnout personally, and then what does that look like in a cross-cultural setting? It's a good question, and I do agree with you that I don't think we talk about it near enough.

I don't think we prepare our workers enough for it. Have I experienced burnout personally? No, I haven't, but I've been pretty close. In 2017, I think was when I was the closest to burnout, and some of the things that led up to that were an unhealthy desire to be viewed as competent. This feeling that if I said no to requests that would come in, my teammates would say, "Oh, he's not competent." And as I look back, I realize that that was not true. My teammates praised me. They recognized the things that I did, and I'm grateful for my team. I had a great team that I was working with, but part of my sin nature, I guess, I kept taking on more and more responsibilities because I was afraid to say no.

And I look later on at one of the ways to avoid burnout is to learn how to say no, and I didn't know how to say no well. So I kept taking on much more than what I was—even what I knew I could sustain, and it got to the point where I was very close to burnout. Fortunately, I didn't go over the edge. I was able to get some help. I recognized some of the warning signs, and I was able to get help and pass off some responsibilities to other people, so I didn't actually go over that edge. What does burnout look like? I think it looks different for different people, but I'll give a few of the warning signs that might help in describing burnout.

I think one of the things that it can look like is when you start to disengage emotionally. So like when you're thinking, "I just can't handle this anymore," and you just start to withdraw. Almost like just shutting it down. Like, yeah. And it's actually your body that is doing that. It's a mechanism that God has designed in our body to keep us from dying. If we didn't burn out, the emotional overload could kill us.

Like literally, it could kill us. So God has actually given us a mechanism that we start to emotionally disengage because we can't handle all of that. But if you see that, and I did, I started to emotionally disengage, and I knew that was a sign that I was approaching the edge of burnout. Another warning sign of burnout is when you don't enjoy the things that you used to enjoy.

And for me, one of the things I used to love prior to approaching this edge of burnout, one of the things that I used to love was hosting youth groups here in New York City for a weekend. They'd come in for a weekend. Your group was one of those. Yeah. Yeah. I forget which year it was, but your group was one of those. We have missions classes. We go out on the street. We have evangelism, and it's a tremendous opportunity to impact young people for the gospel. I got to the point where I was looking ahead at the calendar, and I would see we have a group scheduler, and I was like, "I don't want to see them.

I don't want them to come." And I knew that that was one of the warning signs of burnout. Did you just kind of push through then? Or how did—yeah, because you know you're not enjoying it, and you're just like, "I dread this," but... It was kind of strange in some ways. I dreaded them coming. I did. I dreaded it.

But when they actually got here, I was able to push through, and I think God gave me the strength that I needed to keep on going, and I enjoyed it. I loved the groups when they were here, but I actually dreaded them coming, and that was not healthy. It was not a healthy place to be in ministry. It's not a fun place to be in ministry because the joy in it was gone, and I don't want people to lose their joy in ministry because one of the things that helps sustain us is when we do have joy in what we're doing, when we love what we do, then we can push through a whole lot.

Yeah. And I really do love what I'm doing. It's just that in that period in my life, I was very close to burnout, and I don't want other people to go through that. It's not something we talk about that much, honestly. I'm guessing a number of our audience have never even heard of the concept of burnout. So just kind of off the top of your head, how common would you say it is for people to be burned out when they're doing, you know, wherever it may be, like in your case here in New York City or somewhere overseas? I don't have statistics on that, so you said off the top of my head. Yeah. I don't have statistics, so I'm not going to try to give any, but I would say that I think it's way too often or it's way too common in our circles.

There are a lot of different factors that play into it, and I'm not sure that I have a set answer for all of those factors. I think some of them is simply the scope of the work or the volume of what could be done and the amount of workers that are available to do it. And one of the aspects about ministry is no matter how much you do, there's always more that could be done. People see the magnitude of the work that could be done, and because it's a good thing, it's ministry, it's working with people, it's pointing people to Christ, it's like, well, we have to keep doing more and more and more.

And I think it's far too common. Even if people don't recognize it as burnout, they might not be medically burned out, but their joy is gone, and they're going through the motions, and they're not as effective as they could be if they were to learn to pace themselves a bit more. Yeah, so maybe we're not very good at teaching people where the line is, like where their limits are, and pacing yourself for a marathon, but instead we're training them to do a sprint, and you just can't sustain it. You actually touched on something else that I care a lot about, and that was training.

I think too often we send people without any training, and I think that's a recipe for disaster, number one. You're exactly right in that often ministry is viewed, or we view it as a sprint instead of a marathon. A lot of ministry is just ordinary long work. It continues on, and it's not something that you're going to jump in and fix these problems and point people to Christ and then pack up quickly and go somewhere else. If you go in with that attitude, you probably will burn out, or you'll certainly get disillusioned because it's not going to turn out the way you want. Would you say burnout and disillusionment or just losing the vision? Would you say those two things are different or similar?

I would say they're very similar. Maybe the disillusionment comes after you start to emotionally disengage. That was actually one of the warning signs or maybe the results of burnout. I was going to say a warning sign of burnout. I think it's probably more like a result of burnout is that often people will get disillusioned with missions as a whole. They're like, "This didn't turn out the way I thought. I'll give it to you now. I'm going to give it later on as well, I believe." But one of the ways to avoid burnout is to link your work with serving your Heavenly Father. It's not technically or ultimately my work in ministry is because I love God, and He's the one who's called me to do this.

And so if I can link my work to serving God, then how the people respond is in one way insignificant or irrelevant. Of course, we want the results of people coming to Christ. That's what we want, and that's why we get involved in ministry to some degree, but ultimately ministry, missions is for God. John Piper says, "Missions exist because worship doesn't." And I know people use that quote a lot, but he's exactly right.

Ultimately, missions is for the glory of God. And so if I can link my work to serving God, it can avoid burnout because I'm not technically doing it for the people themselves. And then if they don't respond the way I want, it's disappointing. We do get disappointed. We do sometimes get even disillusioned to some degree with the effectiveness of our ministry. And there are times we need to check our strategies and adjust our strategies if we're not seeing the results that we would like to see. If our work is almost too small, if you know what I mean, to where, "Oh, so-and-so rejected what we're trying to do to help in whatever situation," and it's just crushing to us and devastating to us instead of stepping back and seeing the big picture of what God actually wants.

I like that. And another aspect about this whole thing of how to avoid burnout or like our work in ministry and how do you know how to pace yourself and things like that, no matter when we stop, to some degree it's always arbitrary. And here's what I mean by this. It's actually that that thought comes from Dr. Richard Swenson in his book titled The Overload Syndrome. He says, "No matter when you stop, it's always arbitrary." So if you work until midnight and I show up at your doorstep at midnight and I say, "So how was the day today?" And you're like, "Oh, it was a great day. It was exhausting. I worked 17 hours, but I'm done."

And I'm like, "So why are you stopping now?" You're like, "Well, it's midnight." And I'm like, "Yeah, but surely there are people you could go visit yet, or there's a letter of encouragement to write, or you could send someone an email, or like there's something else you could do, right?" And you're like, "Well, give me a break. It's midnight." And like, yeah, that's kind of my point is like no matter when you stop, there's still work that's not done. And the cool thing about this, or rather the comforting thing about this, is Jesus did that too, as in He stopped even when the work was not done. How do you decide though? Like how did He decide, I guess, is maybe the right question.

I think He gives us a clue. Actually, I think He gives us the answer in Luke chapter 5. Luke chapter 5, verses about 12 to 16, Luke gives us the account. Jesus is in a certain city. He doesn't say what city it is, and He heals a leper. The man is grateful, and He goes out and He tells everyone that Jesus healed him. And it says that a great multitude started coming together to be healed by Jesus. And then in verse 16, I think it says, "Jesus withdrew Himself and went out into the wilderness and prayed." Time and again, we have record where Jesus went out and spent time with His Father. Even when there were people that wanted healing, in Luke 5, He left people that came to Him for healing.

He left them, and He went out and He prayed. So I think the answer is spending time with God, asking God, "What am I supposed to do? What are my limits? What can I do so I can be effective in ministry and avoid burnout?" Yeah, because some of the situations I've been involved in with the refugee crisis, it is so hard because you have, and it's right there in front of you, and you're just like, "Oh, we just have to help every last person that we can, you know, because the situation is so desperate." And so yeah, it's really hard to know like where do you actually stop. And having said that, I'm not giving a reason or an excuse for non-involvement or for laziness.

Not at all. Like we are called to work. Brother Alan Ross says that ministry should make us tired. Like it is hard work. And if you never get tired when you're involved in ministry, you probably aren't working enough. But running yourself to where you're totally exhausted and can't keep on, that works for a sprint for a few days, a few weeks, maybe even a few months. But if you're going to sustain in ministry for the long haul, for year after year after year, you have to find a pace that you can live with. I remember a wise man told me years ago, "You cannot live from one vacation to the next." You have to find a pace that you can live with and keep on going.

That's a really good way of putting it, actually. I think there's a lot of people just in general, in everyday life, they're kind of living either for the weekend or that next vacation because they're just dreading the day-to-day. And I've always thought that would be a horrible way to live, you know? And I'm fortunate that I don't have that. I've never known what that felt like, really, which is a huge blessing, but my, especially if you're doing that in ministry. It's way too easy to fall into though, I'm telling you. It's way too easy to get so busy because there's so much to do to where you're saying, "If I can just hold on like in two months, then we get our next vacation."

Yeah. That's not where I want workers to be because it robs your joy. And if you're not careful, you can even start resenting the very people that you're going to try to serve. So then how can we as believers help support our brothers and sisters who are serving? And I'm thinking specifically if we're looking in a situation and say, "Hey, that looks like you're going to hit a brick wall."

Do you like try to pull them back or, yeah, how do you help keep them from getting too far gone? Pray for them, I think, is the first thing. And then let them know that you're praying for them. You can send them a WhatsApp message and say, "Hey, I was praying for you today. I just felt this urge to pray. What were you going through? I care about you."

There have been times where I've had people let me know that they were praying for me at the right time when I was going through difficult spots. And that means a lot. Another way that you can help is by keeping them accountable. Depending if they're on your team, depending on the situation, if they're on the same team as you, maybe you can give some warnings like, "You know, I think you're taking on too much." I had a team member that I had to check with before I took on more responsibilities or more things that I loved doing. And part of me resented that. And I was like, "No, I want to do this. I love doing it."

But I know, looking back, I know that they cared enough about me to try to pull me back a little bit so I didn't take on too many responsibilities more than what I was able to do. Another thing that you can do if you're working on the same team is you can try to lighten each other's load. I think it's Wayne Cadero in his book titled Leading on Empty. He gives the thought of each team member writing down the five things that they're doing that they enjoy the most that kind of recharge them. You know, there's some things that we do that we get involved in ministry that get us excited. Like we come out and it's like, "Yeah, I'm pumped.

I'm so happy that I get to do this." And then there's also things that we do that drain us, that we kind of dread. We get up in the morning, we've been pushing them off as long as we can. List those top five things that drain your tank. And then compare lists. So you do your list and I do mine. And we look at them. And there's some things we can't get away from. We can't avoid doing some things that drain us. But maybe you're doing something that you're dreading. And I look at your list and I'm like, "I would love to do that. Let's trade. I'll gladly take that." I get energized by doing that.

And you look at one of mine and it's like, "You see something that I'm doing that I'm dreading, but you actually enjoy." So by lightening each other's load, that's one way that we can spread the work around and continue on and help each other avoid burnout. Sometimes I think our churches are sending churches or our mission organizations can look on and say, "You just need time off. We're going to send you off. And I don't want you to spend time doing PR. I don't want you to spend time, you know, feel like you need to take on speaking engagements. We want you to spend time just relaxing and recharging." Maybe spending time reading good books.

In ministry, we're constantly giving out. And I think it's important to fill, we need to fill ourselves back up again as well. And often burnout is a result of gradually, over a long period of time, just taking out a little bit more than what we can actually sustain. Like you don't typically go from being perfectly fine one day to burned out the next. It's a gradual process, but the recharging process is just as gradual. Cadero. Okay. That's it. Yeah. Cadero makes the point that he says it should take a minimum of six weeks. If someone is almost on the edge of burnout, you're not going to just say, "Take two or three days off and you're good to go."

Two or three days helps. But he says, "Just like you became burned out by gradually over a long period of time, that's how you recharge, like a trickle charger, not a fast charger." We don't like doing things slowly. We like superchargers, charge a phone in 15 minutes and things like that. When it comes to our bodies, it doesn't recharge that fast. That's a really profound thought though, because I've often thought that when I've been working myself really hard, I'm like, "Oh, I'll just take a day and I'll be good to go," you know? And you know, it helps. Sure. But it's not, it's just not the same. One of the things that our churches can do is, as they're looking on, they can say, "Hey, we're going to send you away for even a couple of days is better than nothing."

I'm not saying that the only time you can get recharged is if you take six weeks off. Sometimes missionaries or workers in cross-cultural settings, they don't go away because they can't afford it. And if a church is looking on or someone else that cares, it looks on and says, "Hey, we'd love to give you some time off. You know, here we reserved a spot for you for a week. And we want you to hear some good books that you might enjoy reading and take some time off just to recharge a bit. We see that you're taking on too much. You've been pulling a heavy load." And it takes some time to recharge your batteries again, so to speak.

Well, that's the last question that I had, but is there anything else you would like to share in this episode? I like to give one example of a person who burned out to the point that it killed him. And I'd like to think of what this man could have accomplished. He accomplished a tremendous amount. His name was Robert McCheyney. He was a 19th-century preacher. He graduated from Edenburg College at the age of 14 in 1827. And by the time he was age 23, he was leading a congregation of over a thousand people. He died at age 29.

And before he died, he said, "God has given me a message to deliver and a horse to ride. Alas, I've killed the horse and I can no longer deliver the message." He accomplished a lot in 29 years, technically 15 years from the time he graduated at 14 to the time he died at 29. But I like to think of what he could have accomplished had he lived to be 79 years old instead of 29. If he could have paced himself out a little bit, I think he could have gotten a whole lot more accomplished. And he recognized that. I'm not trying to be critical looking on. He recognized that himself just before he died. And I don't want to see people, certainly don't want to see him falling over, dying at 29.

But just as devastating is when they're emotionally burned out and they become disillusioned with missions as a whole and sometimes even with God. I don't want to see that happen.