In my experience, unwillingness to accept feedback necessarily creates growing isolation, and even paranoia and anger. This downward spiral can only be arrested by humble repentance—something that always brings joy, shows us our sin (and limitations!) but even more, Christ’s glory and work and the Father’s love.

Last year I greatly enjoyed getting to know the leaders of World Harvest Mission and learning about their passion to preach the gospel first to themselves and then to the nations.

I sat down with Bob Osborne, executive director, to learn about the distinctives and history of this agency, organized in the late 1970s by pastor, evangelist, and author Jack Miller. Watch the video at the end of this interview to learn more about WHM and their commitment to care for and disciple missionaries to cherish the gospel.

I corresponded with Osborne more recently to solicit his counsel about the problem of burnout among ministry leaders. If you’re stuck in the burnout spiral, I pray you will benefit from Osborne’s wisdom about how the gospel of Jesus Christ transforms how we care for ourselves and support one another.

At World Harvest Mission, you say that “life and ministry must be saturated and motivated by our own need for—and experience of—the gospel of grace.” What does that look like in practical terms on your staff and among your missionaries?

As pastors, workers, or missionaries, our busyness can easily overwhelm our ability to hold onto God’s love for us in Christ, and God’s presence with us as we live in fellowship with the Spirit. We’ve found that the only way to authentically teach these things is to be experiencing them ourselves.

To hold onto the gospel, workers like us need some degree of humility, flexibility, and adaptability. We look for people who have an awareness and understanding of their sin patterns, a strong grasp of the gospel, and can apply the gospel to their lives. We know that whether engaged in cross-cultural ministry abroad or working in the home office, our sin affects how we relate to one another, and we work at applying what we preach and teach to one another.

So we try to create a corporate culture of prayer, repentance, and forgiveness and seek to answer this question: “What does faith, expressing itself in love, look like in this situation?”

Burnout is a common experience among pastors and other ministry leaders. How does the gospel address this problem?

I have a deep and growing burden for Christian leaders because of the alarming number who have fallen over the past decade. As leaders, we are constantly tempted by a deadly cocktail of narcissism and isolation. And once our faith slips from a tight grip on Jesus and his power, we are trying to do tremendously difficult jobs on our own. At that point burnout is never far behind.

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