Burnout: The Risk of Reaching Too High

Any dynamic, goal-oriented, aspiring idealist is a potential casualty.

Are you busier than ever in Christian service, but accomplishing little and enjoying it less?

Do you feel depleted and fatigued instead of energetic, beset with physical ailments that won’t go away?

Are you increasingly irritable, disillusioned with people, often difficult to deal with, feeling more and more detached even from close Christian friends?

Has the joy of the Lord given way to melancholy and a malaise you somehow can’t explain?

If some of these questions fit you or someone you know, burnout may be imminent or already in progress.

Remember Fred? Sure, everyone remembers good old Fred! But where has he been lately? For 12 years he and his family faithfully attended church every time the doors were open. He served several terms on the board, including a year as chairman. He taught an adult Sunday school class, served as youth sponsor, participated in church calling programs, and sang in the choir. His wife also was actively involved in the church, and everything appeared to be going well. But when Fred’s last term on the board was up, he and his family abruptly stopped attending church. Calls and visits from pastor and people were rebuffed. Today Fred and his family do not attend church anywhere. They spend weekends backpacking in the mountains, boating on the lake, or just lounging with the Sunday paper.

Fred’s case, a classic example of spiritual burnout, is by no means isolated. Increasing numbers of believers in churches across the country are having similar experiences. Nor is the condition limited to laymen. A growing number of pastors, missionaries, and other full-time Christian workers are leaving their places of service, victims of burnout. Unfortunately, some burning bushes are consumed.

Causes Of Burnout

What is this malady called “burnout”? The expression itself, which comes from those wonderful folks who gave us “identity crisis,” “generation gap,” and “male menopause,” seems well on its way to becoming a household word. In a recent book entitled Burn-Out: The High Cost of High Achievement (Doubleday, 1980), Herbert J. Freudenberger, a New York psychoanalyst, discusses cases of burnout in management, organizations, professions, and families. Business and professional groups are beginning to sponsor seminars on how to cope with burnout. It is time for evangelicals to become more aware of the phenomenon and seek a scriptural basis for prevention and cure.

Burnout in a mechanical sense is familiar enough. There’s the “poof-pop” of a light bulb burning out and leaving us in the dark. It may be a power tool that emits a shower of sparks and quits running just when we need it most. Or it may be a motor that smokes and grinds to a halt. To burn out mechanically is to wear out or become inoperative as a result of friction, overloading, or overheating. In the aerospace industry, the term denotes the termination of rocket or jet-engine operation because of fuel exhaustion or cut-off. In still another context, “burnout” evokes the image of the charred shell of a building gutted by fire.

The term, with these metaphoric implications, vividly characterizes what can happen to individuals, most commonly identified until recently in the “helping” professions, who begin with high, perhaps unrealistic, aspirations and who strive long and hard with few or no results. Underlying such burnout is this basic dichotomy between expectation and actuality. Freudenberger defines a burnout as “someone in a state of fatigue or frustration brought about by devotion to a cause, way of life, or relationship that failed to produce the expected reward.” Or, put in another way, “Whenever the expectation level is dramatically opposed to reality and the person persists in trying to reach that expectation, trouble is on the way. Deep inside, friction is building up, the inevitable result of which will be a depletion of the individual’s resources, an attrition of his vitality, energy, and ability to function” (Burn-Out, p. 13).

It is important to distinguish between burnout and other spiritual maladies that may have similar characteristics or effects. For example, burnout is not rust-out. Those who are inactive, uninvolved, and unengaged will never suffer burnout. Burnout is generally limited to the dynamic, goal-oriented, high-aspiring idealist. Furthermore, burnout is not cop-out, a flagging commitment ordinarily due to the distractions of the world. Demas, who forsook Paul because of his love of this worldly system, may have copped out, but there is no evidence that he burned out.

Ironically, Christian believers are especially susceptible to burnout. This is true for a number of reasons. First, the possibility of burnout exists only where there is fire. Christians, especially spiritual ones, are, ipso facto, fervently commited to Christ and his church. Our dedication to carrying out the Great Commission makes us cause oriented and goal oriented. Our intense desire to “make a difference for Christ,” to “help change the world for God,” makes us prime candidates for burnout if we see no results or only negligible ones. Freudenberger has noted that “to anyone who enters this world with a vision, as the individual with a burn-out temperament does, the actuality is shocking” (p. 172). Our “vision” of Christian service must square with the reality of God’s will and human circumstances. If it doesn’t, the results can be not only shocking but shattering.

Christians are also particularly susceptible to burnout because of our typically idealistic/perfectionist aspirations and high expectations. Further, the work ethic, ingrained in the American orthodox religious culture, makes it difficult for many Christians to relax and enjoy pleasurable recreation without feeling guilty. Yet another factor is that burnout has been most often spotted in the “helping” professions. It is, or should be, a truism to say that the very lifestyle of the Christian is a “helping” one, even if it is “only” a “helping together by prayer” (2 Cor. 1:11). His may not be one of the professions formally called “helping,” but his compassion for those around him puts him under similar pressures.

We are taught to be “uncompromising in our convictions,” and so we should, but not in the sense that we are inflexible. Failing to reassess our goals and readjust unrealistic ones will almost surely lead, perhaps sooner than later, to burnout. Similarly, we are admonished in Scripture to do whatever our hands find to do with all our might—and so we should. But it is precisely such intensity that can soon produce serious burnout if it is undirected, misdirected, directed toward unrealistic goals and therefore unfulfilled, or unreplenished.

Our society, with its loss of traditional moorings, and our times, with the rapid changes and pressures, make burnout a special problem today. This is no surprise, for the Scriptures tell us that in the last days men’s hearts will become faint. Spiritual burnout seems to be implicit in Paul’s reiterated admonition, “Be not weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Gal. 6:9; see also 2 Thess. 3:13). Kenneth Wuest’s expanded translation makes the implication even more obvious: “Let us not slacken our exertions by reason of the weariness that comes from prolonged effort in habitually doing that which is good,” for “we shall reap if we do not become enfeebled through exhaustion and faint.”

Burned-Out Prophet

Perhaps no scriptural figure illustrates burnout so clearly as Elijah, who, as James reminds us, was a man with feelings just like ours. In fact, common forms of burnout might well be called “the Elijah syndrome.”

Burnout frequently occurs after intense “peak” experiences such as Elijah had in his triumph over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (though it can also follow from extended—but unsuccessful—attempts to achieve change). What an experience it must have been to see the fire of God fall and consume the sacrifice, the wood and stones, and even the water in the trench! But just a short time later, the prophet, too, was consumed, burned out.

The account in 1 Kings 19 reveals that Elijah manifested some distinct characteristics of burnout. First, in traveling a day’s journey into the wilderness, he shows distancing, detachment. Of course, we can’t fault the prophet for getting out of Jezreel, because Jezebel had vowed to kill him within 24 hours. But note that he leaves his servant behind in Beersheba (v. 3). Obviously, he wishes to get away not only from the wicked queen but from everyone else as well. This effort to get away from people is an unmistakable sign of burnout.

As the prophet sits under the broom tree asking to die, he manifests some of the advanced stages of burnout: depression and despair. His request minces no words: “I have had enough, Lord. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors” (that is, “I might as well be dead!” [v. 4, NIV]). Here we see the despondency that often follows prolonged intensity. Elijah proves a classic example of Freudenberger’s description: “It’s the letdown that comes in between crises or directly after ‘mission accomplished.’ Frequently, following a triumph, high achievers [Elijah certainly qualifies] suffer periods of deep melancholia somewhat akin to the postpartum depression some women experience after giving birth [sic]. The feelings are remarkably similar: sadness, separation, sluggishness, and above all emptiness” (p. 110). Elsewhere Freudenberger mentions the burnout’s questioning of “the value of activities and friendship, even of life itself” (p. 63).

The man who displayed such great energy in outrunning Ahab’s chariot (Freudenberger speaks of the burnout candidate’s “sense of omnipotence”) now is completely exhausted, not just physically, but also mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. He stretches out and sleeps beneath the broom tree, awakens just long enough to eat food prepared by an angel, and sleeps again.

In his subsequent dialogue with Jehovah at Mount Horeb, Elijah manifests several more typical characteristics of burnout. He reminds God that he has been very zealous in the Lord’s service, showing a sense of bitterness at the level of appreciation the people—and perhaps God himself—are showing. Further, he reveals the burnout’s typical feeling of indispensability—that he alone is serving God: “I, even I only, am left.” God informs the prophet that there are at least seven thousand others in Israel who have not bowed to Baal.

These feelings of indispensability and lack of appreciation often lead to another characteristic of burnout: feelings of being mistreated, even of paranoia. Elijah said to God, “They seek my life, to take it away.” Who are “they”? He doesn’t say “she” (Jezebel). The antecedent appears earlier in verse 10: the children of Israel who had forsaken God. But there is no evidence that Elijah was in danger from the Israelites, especially now that the three-and-a-half-year drought had been broken.

It is common for the burnout to feel put upon, mistreated, persecuted. He becomes increasingly suspicious of his environment even as he tries to project his difficulties outside himself onto circumstances and people.

A classic example of burnout in literature appears in Graham Greene’s novel, A Burnt-Out Case (Viking, 1961). Querry, a 55-year-old, internationally renowned architect, drops out of civilization and shows up at a leprosarium deep in Africa. Little by little, we learn some of the reasons why he is the mental, emotional, and spiritual equivalent of what in Africa is known as a “burnt-out case”—a mutilated leper who has lost everything that can be eaten away before he can be cured.

Though he had achieved the pinnacle of his profession, with his picture on the cover of Time, Querry feels empty, disillusioned, cynical. He is burned out mentally: “I don’t want to think any more … I don’t want to understand or believe. I would have to think if I believed” (p. 219).

He is burned out emotionally: “I can’t feel at all. I am a leper” (p. 33).

He is burned out socially: “I haven’t enough feeling left for human beings to do anything for them out of pity” (p. 57).

And he is surely burned out spiritually: “I gave it [prayer] up a long time ago. Even in the days when I believed, I seldom prayed. It would have got in the way of work” (p. 51).

Avoiding Burnout

It is important, first, to recognize and reject false cures. These range in variety and severity from excessive work (which only accentuates the problem, creating a vicious circle), or obsessive sporting, or pursuit of materialism and “the high life” to a never-ending search for new pastures—a new location, a new job, a new spouse—to the extremities of gambling, illicit sex, alcohol, and drugs. Believers ordinarily react to early stages of burnout in one of several ways. Sometimes the burning heart leads to the itching ear: the frantic search for new, titillating religious experiences to offset the growing discontent. Perhaps, even more often, burnout leads to freeze-out and dropout—an attempt to keep from getting “burned” by putting out the fire! But all of these false cures have the same effect: they add to the problem rather than alleviate it.

Any true cure is the obverse of the cause. If, as Freudenberger and others have said, the greatest deterrent to burnout is self-awareness, we need to learn the art of monitoring ourselves, facing up to our feelings, listening to the real self. Denial of the fact that we may be burning out leads quickly to dulling and deadness.

If the major cause of burnout is the dichotomy between expectation and actuality, then prevention and cure lie in setting realistic goals, in reassessing and readjusting when necessary, in accepting our limitations. I cannot change the entire world with its violence, its injustice, its billions without Christ. But God can use me to reach my neighbor, my friend, my colleague. And though believers, working collectively in the power of the Spirit, can influence the world, we must accept the fact that evil men and deceivers are growing worse and worse. In view of this increasing decadence, we need a version of Keats’s “negative capability,” that is, the ability to function in the midst of uncertainties, mysteries, seeming defeats, and resultant frustration without breaking down or burning out.

If another cause of burnout, especially in believers, is false motivation, the obverse is service motivated solely by the love of Christ. The more we look to other people for sanction and validation, the more we subject ourselves to burnout. If we serve the Lord for the approval of people or out of a sense of obligation, eventually we will run down and likely burn out.

Another vital element in avoiding or curing burnout is continual renewal—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. We receive physical renewal through proper diet and rest, exercise, and wholesome recreation. Each person must work out the form of diversion that best meets his own needs: jogging, swimming, golf, tennis, handball or whatever. We receive emotional renewal through reading good books and periodicals, engaging in stimulating conversation, pursuing challenging interests. Most important, we receive spiritual renewal by being constantly filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18) and the Word of God (Col. 3:16). We must learn, as Elijah did, that nothing will offset burnout like communing with God.

“No one can produce constantly without replenishing his resources,” Freudenberger writes. Almost without exception, burned-out believers are those who have been giving out for years but have not been spiritually replenished. The same Lord who sent his followers forth to propagate the Good News also urged them to come apart by themselves into a quiet place to rest and be renewed (Mark 6:31). Churches would do well to consider granting pastoral sabbatical leaves of up to six months for study and travel. Members of church boards might well be required to sit off a year after filling a term (perhaps being part of an advisory board that would meet intermittently with the regular board). Sunday school teachers should be encouraged to take a quarter off every year or so.

Individually we must break out of those old stale patterns. (Groove and grave are derived from the same language source.) I dare you to take an afternoon off work and go to a game, find a new hobby, take up a new sport, read a book in a new field.

According to Freudenberger, one of the most effective ways of inoculating ourselves against burnout is to “get into the habit of noticing—and nurturing—the unspectacular good things that happen to us” (p. 199). Believers should learn to praise God for the small things and for “the dearest freshness of deep down things,” as Gerard Manley Hopkins expressed it.

The psalmist’s words seem to be directed at the problem of burnout: “I had fainted [or, “Think what trouble I would have been in!”] if I had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps. 27:13). There is something about praise that renews us and staves off burnout.

Just as distancing, detachment, and withdrawal are allies of burnout, so fellowship, closeness, and mutual edification are foes of burnout. The evangelical loner, so proudly private that he is reluctant to reveal himself or permit anyone to invade his personal space, is all too common. Experiencing both rewards and setbacks in a vacuum, he is ripe for burnout. Conversely, it is hard to imagine a believer experiencing burnout who enjoys a close, sharing fellowship with other believers and who both gives and receives edification.

Another important difference between the believer fired up and the believer burning out is pacing. The former works in a steady but unhurried pace. The latter is often sporadic, working in a frenzy, then drifting off in search of something new to get revved up about. We are often reminded that in the promise of power from the Spirit (Acts 1:8) the Greek word for power, dunamis, is the source of our word dynamite. But more pertinent is the derivation, from this source, of our word dynamo. The need in Christendom today is not for dynamite but for dynamos. The former goes off with a big bang and then is all burned out; the latter continues steadily to produce, day in and day out.

But even the most dynamic Christian—especially the most dynamic Christian—is in danger of burning out if he lacks what is perhaps the most crucial element of all in coping with burnout: balance. If one kind of burnout occurs when effort expended is in inverse proportion to result (as it does when we feel we have made little headway toward our goals), prevention and cure depend upon balancing the equation.

This does not necessarily mean expending less effort. It may mean reassessing desired results and channeling efforts in other directions. Most certainly it will mean balancing the ideal and the real, vision and actuality. It will mean determining and developing our spiritual gifts (nothing can burn us out faster than trying to accomplish a task for which we are not gifted), recognizing our limitations, and (heresy of heresies in most circles) learning to say a gracious “No” when asked to do something that would cause us to overextend ourselves beyond our God-given capabilities. Through Christ we can do anything we ought to do. But it is precisely this misconceived ought that can make us overwrought and distraught.

Charles Williams has rendered Philippians 4:13 as follows: “I have power for all things through him who puts a dynamo in me.” We may be overcommitted to programs; we can never be overcommitted to Christ. We need to learn the difference.

We must be attentive to signs of potential burnout in ourselves and in others. Once we spot the symptoms, we must apply the antidotes: self-awareness, acceptance, reassessment, proper motivation, diversion and daily renewal, praise, closeness, pacing, and balance.

That fire that should be burning brightly inside you—is it consuming you rather than providing warmth and light? The flame in our spiritual lamps must burn the oil in the wick, not the wick itself, for when that happens they smoke, calling attention to themselves, and are soon burned out. Believers are commanded to be fervent in spirit, but the flame of the candle must not consume the candlestick. The burning must not consume the bush.

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