Many pastors can carry seasons of intense labor without burning out, as long as there’s meaning, support, recovery, and a shared load. Burnout tends to take root when the work becomes unrelenting, when our hearts begin to grow cold, and when we start to believe that our work doesn’t make a difference. So pay attention. When a day off doesn’t relieve your exhaustion, when cynicism starts to color your private thoughts about others, and when you feel increasingly ineffective, don’t ignore it. 

I once heard a pastor I respected describe his experience with burnout. He ignored the early warning signs and slowly slid into despair. In the end, he had to take a significant stretch of time off, and recovery came slowly. Later, his doctor told him that if he had paid attention to the early symptoms, his recovery likely would have taken far less time.

Since then, I’ve seen other pastors go through similar experiences. About fifteen years ago, a counselor who works with pastors offered his professional assessment that I was on the verge of burnout, and he urged me to take a three-month sabbatical.

Pastoral burnout is a real and present danger. Chris Bailey’s book How to Calm Your Mind, while not written from a Christian perspective, helped me better understand what burnout is and why it happens. Bailey argues that burnout is more than mere exhaustion. He draws on the work of Dr. Christina Maslach, a leading researcher in the field, who defines burnout as “a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job.”

According to Maslach’s research, burnout includes three core elements: exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. In other words, burnout isn’t simply being tired. It also includes increasing negativity about our work and an increasingly sense that our efforts aren’t making a difference.

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