“I need to make a confession to you,” my friend and also a pastor told me. I nervously braced for an affair or an addiction. Instead, he told me that he had accepted another pastoral call (not necessarily a problem) without telling his wife (major problem). The next few weeks proved very difficult for my friend, to say the least. I can happily report though, he remains in his call and in his marriage.
But how did he get to this point where he did something so endangering to his marriage? My sense is that all people who do holy work — not just pastors, or even church employees, but people who work for non-profits and all sorts of caring professions — go through three stages of work.
Stage One: I Work for Jesus
Graduating seminary I had two goals: serve Jesus as a pastor and procure health insurance for my five-months pregnant wife. Prayers were answered through Zion’s Lutheran, a congregation both ready to hire me and embrace the challenge of helping their pastor and wife bring a child into the world. The solution to our need for a “nest” was to open the “Bird’s Attic.” Literally, the Bird family opened up their attic to us while we waited to move into the home we had managed to find. Every morning for breakfast I would eat Cheerios while listening to the morning report, aka three decades of community gossip, about each and every person in the congregation. At night, because Mr. Bird was a Yankee fan (but otherwise a marvelous guy!) I recapped the day’s adventures, and my wife shared pregnancy progress during mid-inning commercial breaks. Eventually we would then retire to our perch up above, fall asleep, and then rise again to my bowl of Cheerios and the morning report.
I hope as you read this you remember a time in your life when you truly gave your all to a cause. You let go of the guardrails. You overlooked boundaries. You just poured yourself into a calling. You felt purpose, community, and joy in your work. You gladly put in extra time fixing a website, repainting an office, or mentoring a colleague.
To be clear, this isn’t just about pastors but also any position where one feels a sense of working on team “Jesus.” This can be a youth director planning their first mission trip, a non-profit fundraiser pulling off their first donor event, or even a new school teacher decorating their class for students. We wear the company swag because we are not just drinking the Kool-Aid, we are also making it!!
This is a glorious season of life. But as Game of Thrones warns us, “Winter Is Coming.”
Stage Two: I Work for Pharaoh
The initial surge of excitement of any position eventually wears off. At some point, even in doing good and holy work, bitterness can set in. The ministry organization stops feeling like an arena to live out faith and serve a higher purpose. It becomes the employer; we become an employee, hungry for rights and painfully aware of boundaries.
It can begin to feel like one is working for Pharoah. To be clear, I do not mean to suggest one is a slave or to minimize slavery. What I want to communicate with the metaphor of Pharoah is the demand Pharoah makes of the people: make more bricks from less hay. People assume that what you did one time for one person can be done all the time for everyone when they want it. And they dare to complain when the bricks aren’t made soon enough and to their specifications. One looks around and realizes that one is working just as hard with just as much skill as folks in other sectors of the economy, but they seem to have more resources for their work, and they are compensated better for their task. (And they don’t have to work at night, they can worship without getting peppered with questions, and they can go to their kids’ weekend soccer tournaments!!) It isn’t just that the grass is greener, it is that we feel like all we have over here is hay … and the constant pressure to make bricks.
Not liking one’s job is hardly unique to the non-profit or church world. What becomes difficult though is that one has to reconcile the noble aims of the organization with the internal feelings of frustration. No one likes asking yourself questions like: “What is wrong with me that I do not want to go to work today and help poor children learn to read?” It also proves extremely difficult when one’s social world is enmeshed in the organization, because the thought of leaving the organization entails potential loss of friendships. If the organization happens to be a church, then there’s a double whammy in that one can have extreme trouble finding sabbath and renewal.
At this point, typical responses reflect biblical responses to Pharaoh:
- Resist discreetly (Hebrew midwives): This can range from explicitly stealing to simply doing as little as possible.
- Internalize the demands (slaves who protest Moses): This is where people assume that this role requires extreme sacrifice, even believing that our inability to sustain the pace grows out of our lack of faith.
- Fight and Flight (Moses): This is where people run away, perhaps even after a very frustrating outburst.
The latter is where my friend found himself when he called me. Having put a congregation on his back during COVID, he simply ran out of steam a few years later. Frustrations with the national denomination left him feeling incredibly isolated both within the congregation and the broader church. He began to cause tumult in the congregation and looked for a way to leave, finally securing another call in another denomination. He wanted out so badly he figured his wife would ultimately assent, which she (for good reasons) did not. When he called for his confession I had a couple of reactions. As a friend, I told him he was an idiot. As a confessor, I gave him holy absolution. As a fellow minister of the gospel, I empathized.
I knew the deep fatigue and bitterness my friend experienced. It turns out that giving my all to my first congregation, especially in a small town where the pastor functions as therapist, social worker and exorcist, led to burnout. At this point, one wonders what options we have beyond antagonism, silent misery, and constant job shuffling?
Stage Three: I Am Healed (But Not by Self-Care)
God can renew our passion for ministry, turning our bitterness again into a renewed sense of purpose and even joy. Years after Moses kills a man and flees, God encounters him in the burning bush. God calls Moses back into ministry, giving him holy work to do.
It is worth pointing out here that Moses has done nothing to deserve this theophany. Moses has not set about a new routine of yoga, journaling, or hobbies. Moses has not avoided doomscrolling, late-night carbs, or alcohol. Moses simply receives a profound gift: the awesome presence of God that fills us with wonder. The kind of encounter that makes us take off our shoes and reminds us that something far greater than ourselves exists in life.
The road away from burnout and bitterness is not paved with self-care. This movement is a sheer gift, when God breaks through the hardness of our hearts and stokes the fire of our internal burning bush. We again care and want to work.
One might find it strange to read an article about ministry burnout dismissing self-care. But I believe the whole self-care industry is premised on a self-defeating lie: that we are in control of our spiritual health. Behind every self-care speech lurks judgement: If you are bitter, it is because you’ve not done X, Y, or Z to take care of yourself. If you are burned out, you should have, could have, would have done X, Y, or Z; and you better get started right away to heal yourself. It also ignores the fact that following Jesus done well — well, in the words of Bonhoeffer, “Bids a man come and die.”
The burned out of scripture (e.g., Elijah, Naomi, and Jonah) follow the pattern of Moses again and again. They do their duty before God and others, but when life’s successes and failures come, they fall off the wagon in despair and bitterness. They follow no good self-care practices, yet ultimately God renews their call.
I admit that many things conceivably encompassed by self-care form the basis of biblical ethics: honoring the sabbath, trusting other members of the body, avoiding idolatry, and honoring non-work vocations. We just have to read a wee bit further in the story of Moses to see many of these enshrined in the ten commandments. Yet, neither Moses nor Jesus ever says anything remotely like “Focus on preserving and sustaining yourself.”
The reality is that we cannot preserve or sustain our love for ministry. The call and the passion for ministry come from God. It can happen strangely over a vacation, a conversation, or an experience that forces us out of our rut. A discussion about a new project launching can rekindle the fire, as can a side hustle that simply returns out joy to living. Again, all sorts of things can reignite our passion: a contract has been renegotiated, a new staff member joins the team, a new job offer opens up. Furthermore, God has always been in the resurrection business, and he delights in finding ways to stir up new creative energy in our soul.
