027: How to Bounce Back From Burnout (Tangible Tips For You & Your Volunteers)

Transcript
Episode 027: How to Bounce Back From Burnout (Tangible Tips For You & Your Volunteers)

Intro 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to The Small Church Ministry Podcast.

Laurie Graham 0:15
Hey, welcome back to podcast episode number 27, we are officially entering the second half of 2022!

So, I got to meet with our team the other day, and we were so excited to talk about the next half, like six months left of the year. You know, so many times we talk about how fast time goes, like it’s July already, or my youngest is turning 18 this summer, and I just keep asking, how did this happen? Like, where did the time go? And also, am I really that old? But the truth is, there’s so much time ahead of us. Time for newness and change, time for renewal and revision. Nothing has to stay the same. This Sunday could be totally different for you than last Sunday, and you can be different too! So even if we only have one day left on this planet, it can be a very different day. I really believe God created us this way. He created us to learn, and change, and grow, to become, to transform. So as you look ahead to the next season, what would you like to see different? How would you like to be different? 

During our anniversary last month, if you weren’t able to catch us live, one of the things we talked about was that hope has to come before help. So often, we want to help people. We see this issue or that issue and we want to help them, and the reality is, if people don’t have hope that something could change, they don’t want our help. They can’t receive it and it’s the same for us. Have you ever been on the receiving end of this, like somebody keeps trying to help you and you’re rolling your eyes because you’ve tried it. You’ve done it, you don’t believe there’s a fix for it, and maybe there’s not. That’s when we don’t want help, we can’t receive it. And I just want to say it’s the same with burnout. If you are feeling burnt out or your team is or a volunteer you work with, if you think that’s just the way it is, and it’ll never change, and of course it makes sense, and it’s just going to be this way or even that God wants it like this, then there’s no way to receive any help. If we don’t believe it could be different, why would we waste our time? Now, if you can give me some hope, though, I’m totally in. 

Laurie Graham 2:30
So here’s the thing. I want to give you some hope. It’s not something I can hand you tangibly, or have delivered from Amazon, of course, but I can share my story and the stories of other people. Stories of healthy small church ministry, of volunteers who show up early and excited to serve, of pastors’ wives who don’t do at all and don’t feel bad that they don’t. Of pastors who aren’t looking for other careers of churches ministering out of joy, not obligation. I can tell you stories of churches who are not short on volunteers because they’ve gotten off that hamster wheel of trying to meet all the needs. I can also give you stories of people who were on the verge of quitting, totally burnt out and exhausted, and they are excited for ministry again! I’ve been there too. People who were incredibly burnt out finding passion again, and along with it, some healthier boundaries. Do you want that too? 

And maybe it’s not you, maybe it’s your volunteers. Maybe you have volunteers showing signs of burnout? If you do, you’re not alone. I see you, I hear you, and I also want to tell you, you don’t have to stay there. I have been there and I’m not there now. There is recovery from burnout. There is renewable from the loss of vision. There is inspiration for something new because this is our God. It’s who He is, it’s what He’s done, and it’s also who He created us to be, to be the influence and not the victim. You see, He didn’t create us just to reflect the environment that’s around us. He actually created us to be a thermostat, to set the tone. So if you’re finding yourself a little bit tired or your team is, or if your volunteers are losing their momentum, or maybe they seem less committed or less excited, or even a little bit crabby, I have got five super practical tips for you to put in place. Now, these are things you could do this week, this month, this season. They can change your culture, and you don’t need a committee, a meeting, or even a vote to make it happen. So let’s jump into these things that you could start applying like right now. 

So the first thing is this, acknowledge it, accept it, and allow it. This thing called burnout or exhaustion. Don’t over-spiritualize it, and in fact, instead of spiritualizing it, let’s humanize it. We need to quit beating ourselves up or making others feel bad for being tired or exhausted or depleted. We need to be okay with our own humanity. Now, we don’t have to like this human stuff, these limits that we have on our energy, our capacity, even our physical beings in different seasons. I mean, being a human isn’t always fun. So we don’t always like it, but the truth is, God created us human. He made us like this. We were not created to keep going like an Energizer Bunny.

Laurie Graham 5:35
So please, don’t over-spiritualize it, just allow it. It’s going to happen. We need to quit quoting scripture over our limits, as though quoting Isaiah 40 is physically going to help us run and not grow weary. Like, if we were super spiritual enough, we wouldn’t be tired or we wouldn’t need a break. Because that’s not truth. That scripture that says we’re never going to need a break is not in the Bible, and those scriptures that are encouraging, they are not in the Bible to throw at someone in their pain, their hurt, or their exhaustion, or even at yourself. It’s kind of like when people are grieving and other people start pulling out scripture like you should be joyful in all things. You know, honestly, I should do a podcast episode someday on all the scripture that we need to quit quoting and using as memes, but that’s for another day.

So back to burnout. Here’s the thing, we have limits and you don’t get to set the limits of other people, and they also don’t get to set yours. Sometimes things are just tough and can we just acknowledge and accept it and allow it? It’s okay if you’re burned out if you’re a pastor on the verge of quitting, if you’re a volunteer who dreads going to church to teach Sunday school, but let’s call it what it is and stop the shame game. Let’s just accept our humanity. It happens, our capacity is limited, and if we’re burnt out and discouraged, something’s going on. There’s a reason we need to explore it, not push through it. So number one might not seem super tangible, but it’s very important to accept it and allow it and like, let it be. 

Okay. Second step, do something totally fun. Now, I realized for those of us who get our worth from work and accomplishment, this is a tough one, and you’re probably listening to this podcast feeling the same way. Like you’re listening to a podcast episode on burnout in small churches. So most likely, you are the one who serves when you could be sleeping in, and you are the one who cleans up because somebody has to do it, I get it. Sometimes fun, just seems like it’s frivolous, but before you start thinking that this is not a real solution of having fun, or that having fun is a dumb idea. I just want to remind you that God has given us a big, beautiful world, filled with color and sound and fluffy, soft, furry things and amazing things to taste, and to see, and this gift called laughter and friendship. Like where does that fit in your life? If you’re on the verge of burnout, or your team is, chances are you’re not having a whole lot of fun right now. So what could that look like for you? 

Laurie Graham 8:17
If you’re in charge of a team, a ministry area, or if you have a few volunteers who just look to you for support or help, or direction, could you plan a day of fun? It’s not a waste of time. I promise you, it will transform your team. Like go to the beach together, go to the mountains, take a hike, just do a picnic. Make ice cream sundaes together, I don’t care what it is. Take a trip to the zoo, but do something that’s fun. 

There is so much scientific study on the physical and emotional health and the link to enjoying life and laughter, and this is so God! God did not make us to be serious and stifling all the time. Like, take a break. Now if this is a tough one for you, and I want to tell you, this is often a tough one for me, but especially if you have some depression, or even sometimes exhaustion can do this too, you may have lost your enjoyment for things, even things you used to enjoy. I want to encourage you, if that’s where you’re at, please get some help, and don’t think of counseling or coaching, like, that’s for people who are really a total mess and that you’re above that or you can handle it or you don’t need that. We need to stop this whole stigma about professional help being for people who are really needy. I’ve been to counselors and I think every single one of my good friends has too. People go to counseling who want to grow, who want to be different, who want to move past things. So if if you’re kind of on that edge of feeling like oh, I don’t need counselling or that feels extreme. To me, it’s not extreme at all. It’s having a friend that you pay to listen to and I just have to be honest, it’s been super helpful for me.

So, if you are at a place where nothing even sounds fun, and when I say have fun, that just seems like an overwhelming thing, like it can’t happen, I really do want to encourage you find somebody who can help you walk through it. But figure out how to add some fun to your life personally, if you need it, but also, if your team seems to be having some signs of burnout, or loss of energy, or motivation or commitment, do something fun together, like as a team! It totally changes things. And remember, people look to you for an example, even if you are not an official team leader, people look to us. So lead them in this. Do some fun stuff together. 

Laurie Graham 10:43
Okay, third thing that can help with burnout and refresh your team, and even your vision, and this is one of my favorites. It’s all about dreaming. Now, yes, you need to dream for you, but I also want to encourage you to help them dream. Whoever you serve with, whether it’s a co-teacher, or you have an entire ministry team, or somebody who helps you now and then, help them dream because dreaming is not natural for most of us, at least once we reach a certain age. Because when we’re little, we love to dream. We make up stories, and we don’t even know we’re lying because it’s not a lie. It’s a dream, but as we get older, we kind of get bogged down by what is current problems, things we see on the news, current struggles in our lives. You know, when we say that phrase, it’s just the way it is, in our churches in the world, this really ties into hope. Like, we forget to hope. We forget to imagine a different future. 

It’s a really interesting thing because if you practice creativity and dreaming, and engaging your imagination, it kind of becomes your setpoint. It’s your norm. It’s the way that you live, but many of us have stopped practicing it. So it kind of gets lost. We’re working towards something really hard and there’s a lot of effort, but we lose this thing about dreaming. Now, I do want to tell you, if you’ve lost the ability, or you think you’ve lost the ability to dream, you can totally find it again. It’s not like it’s lost forever. It’s more like losing your keys, like where did they go, and usually, they’re right within reach, but sometimes we need help dreaming. We need to be reminded that it can be different, that it can change because change always comes. 

Now before you go to a negative here, or maybe you’ve already thought yeah, change comes I don’t always like change, God calls us to hope. If nothing else, we have the hope of heaven. Now, why would we have these amazing visions in scripture if God doesn’t want us dreaming of something different? One of my favorite visions that God paints in the Bible is actually from the first chapter of Ezekiel. Ezekiel is standing by this river and he looks up and he sees this windstorm coming out of the north, and an immense cloud with flashing lightning is surrounded by brilliant light, and there’s these living creatures, but above their heads, this is what I love, is there something that looks like a vault it says, sparkling like crystal and awesome!

Laurie Graham 13:17
And even above that vault, there was a throne of lapis lazuli, like this is this beautiful blue gem, and high above the throne, there was a figure of a man surrounded by this brilliant light. And there was an appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, and it says “so was the radiance around him”, like can you imagine that? Can you see it? This is God, this is our creative God. He didn’t just give us a bunch of information in Scripture, He gives images, and He created in us, this ability to dream and the dreaming isn’t just about heaven, it’s about our lives. We can dream for our churches, for the next generation because if there’s no hope, there’s no help. And part of hope is having a dream for something different. 

So we have this exercise that we do in the Small Church Academy, and it’s in one of the earlier units that we do, but we write a seven-year letter and it’s always so beautiful for me when people come into the academy with loads of ministry experiences, because they usually let me know ahead of time, and I appreciate it, they let me know ahead of time that most of the units that they see are already things they’ve read, they’ve done. They’ve been practicing ministry a long time. They know how to develop a mission and a vision and how to lead volunteers, but they want to be with us. They want to be part of the Academy, to be part of this community of people moving forward, and as they get into the course this is where it gets fun. Invariably, this one module, and other things too, but this is always one of them, it changes things for them.

For these people who’ve done ministry for decades and decades. In fact, someone actually said to me recently, somebody who’s been in ministry along, long time, pretty new to the academy, they said this, “I had no idea. I did not realize this exercise would impact me. In fact, I almost didn’t do it. I almost skipped it, but it changed me.” That’s what they said. So from then on, they’re kind of hooked. And they realized that the small church Academy isn’t about all the information they’ve read in other places. It’s very transformative, and that one exercise about dreaming. This is the thing, we need this. It’s not busy work. It’s not just something that’s part of a mission or vision exercise, it is a God-given gift to dream. 

Laurie Graham 15:40
So if you’re on the edge of burnout, or your team is, or somebody you work with is, set aside some time to dream and help them dream. Again, we need to help people, we need to lead them through it and teach them, and if you want a team surrounding you, helping you embrace this, and so many other things, join us in The Small Church Academy, we have a great time! The link for that is in the show notes. But let’s keep going. Okay, so number one, if you’re dealing with burnout, or exhaustion, or ministry fatigue, really, the first thing to do is accept it, acknowledge it, and allow it. The second thing, have some fun. Really, have fun with your team, if you’ve got one, you want to include them, and the third thing is to help them dream and do some dreaming yourself. 

So number four is all about taking a break together, kind of mixing it up. So even if you’re doing ministry and you keep doing ministry, mix it up so it feels like a break, because when you mix it up and do things differently, it really is a break from what we’ve been doing for a really long time. If you’ve been teaching Sunday school for years, and doing it the same all the time and preparing the same, it gets tiring. Do something different! Use a video series, mix it up, have some outside guests, you know. Bring some food in and switch it up for some fellowship, even if it’s for a few weeks. So sometimes when you’re super tired of ministry, and you kind of want to hide under a rock or run away somewhere, we’re not always at a place where we can stop a program like Sunday school or, you know, say we’re not offering the nursery, sometimes we are and I’ve talked about that before, but maybe we’re not. And if you’re not at a place where you can quit making coffee, or quit doing the worship team or quit streaming your videos, right, you can always add some freshness or some newness. 

So a few other examples of this for some other ministry areas. If you have a worship team, and they’re tired, why not go acoustic for a while if you’ve been electric, or if you usually leave things in a certain way, do it a little different, do three songs instead of five or start with special music and end the service with some worship. Just change it up. If your pastor is tired, I’ve heard of this, pastors’ can do a pastor swap like, you know, switch churches for a few weeks. Change pulpits with another church in town, because everybody gets a little newness and some freshness, and maybe you don’t have to prepare a sermon that week, because you can do the same one you did at your church, and the same for your other pastor friend! 

Laurie Graham 18:14
Now, why this helps burnout is because we’re switching it up. We’re changing the responsibility of where it was, to where it could be in a different way. We’re actually relieving a burden, even if we’re taking on a different responsibility. So the best example I can think of is a few decades ago, I would take some trips up to the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, and it was beautiful! It was also really hard, and it was satisfying, and it was fun, and it was enjoyable, but it really was tough! I’m 5’4, and I was like in my early 20’s, and I’m portaging this big heavy canoe on my head and then paddling a canoe across miles of water,  sometimes in the rain, sometimes in really bad weather, and then you get out of canoe and if you’re not carrying the canoe, you have a heavy backpack on because we had to take everything we needed for a whole week. But you know what, every time the job switched, I looked forward to it because it was something different.

When I was carrying that canoe on my head, I felt like super tough, like I am so awesome, but I couldn’t do it the whole time. And then when I’d get into the canoe in the water and had to paddle, it was also tough, but I got to see the sky and the water and feel the breeze. And then we’d switch it up and somebody else would put it to the canoe and I take the pack. And I’m telling you, I could not have done any one of those jobs straight for seven days, but switching it up, it kept it really fresh and it felt good. So think about switching it up in your ministry. Like, what could you do differently? There are so many creative ways in ministry to take breaks, to share jobs, to add team members, to use special guests, try new locations. So we got to get out a little bit, of what we’re used to doing and dream a little. Get out of the same old, same old. So number four is all about trying something new, like doing something different, switching up ministry, and taking a break from the way you always did things. 

Okay, now, number five, another great tangible tip you can try pretty soon in this season. It might scare you a little, especially if you’re feeling short on volunteers, but I just want to tell you, it is so so good and it will change your ministry and your volunteer culture, especially if you’ve got a little bit of a culture going on of burnout or exhaustion or depletion. So tangible tip number five, is give them a break, or give yourself a break, and by this, I don’t mean switching up ministry, I mean taking a season off. And I don’t mean a Sunday, I don’t mean one day. Maybe your season is a month, and maybe it’s longer, but sometimes we just need a break. Now, if you are the one with burnout, you might be the one who needs a break. 

Laurie Graham 21:06
Now before you say I can’t do it, there’s no way things won’t happen. They can’t do it without me. If I let that person go, there’ll be nobody to teach or nobody to play or nobody to do whatever it is they’re doing. I get it. Please remember, I am in a small church. I have been in a small church for more than 15 years, the same small church, but I also want to just toss this out to you, what’s the alternative? If someone even you is in a place of burnout, and things like taking a little rest or having some fun, or switching ministry up, if these things are not working, what’s the alternative? 

The alternative is that we abuse the gift that God gave us to steward our very being. That we literally abuse ourselves and our volunteers by pushing the God-given limits that He created us to have. Like, God Himself gave us limits. He built us this way, and I think we need not only to respect that, but to embrace it, and celebrate, and explore why he made us human. Because I personally think that God knew what He was doing when he made us limited. To need breaks, to need refreshment, to need time to dream and revision. There’s a reason for it, and we should not be bucking against his design. Our physical capacity, our emotional capacity, our relational capacity, our souls are much more valuable than our service. Please hear that. To God Almighty, the one who loves us, the One who created us, our souls are much more valuable than our service, and I wonder what would change if we started believing that. That my soul and my spirit is so much more valuable than my service, because we get it flipped around. 

When we start thinking our service is more important to God than the person He created us to be, there’s a problem. God has so much more for us than just working and serving and accomplishing. Along with accomplishing and serving, because I do believe that’s part of the picture,  He also has for us freedom, and joy, and satisfaction, and beauty. Like I don’t believe for a minute, we are supposed to feel like a rat on a wheel spinning around and around and around with no break. That is not the God I know, and by the way, if you are the one who’s burning out, this is for you. This is not just for your team. We’re supposed to take care, to care for ourselves. We are the only one who’s actually responsible for us. It’s no one else’s responsibility to tell us when to stop or when to start, it’s us. We need to steward the gift that God gave us, which is us. 

Laurie Graham 24:12
Your example is also so important. What you model means so much more than what you teach. If you drive yourself into the ground, if you sacrifice your soul for serving other people, if your joy has been replaced with demand and obligation, if you feel like you’ve gone from being an influence to feeling like a victim, there really is a time to stop and take a break. Because here’s the thing, a rubber band, I think rubber bands are really cool. I love to fling them I like to shoot them across the room. I use them all the time. Still. I know in this world where we have very little paper, I still have rubber bands everywhere. Because here’s the thing about rubber bands, you can stretch it and it bounces back. It’s really cool. It’s designed for this. You can pull it back and it flings forward at an amazing force, but if you abuse that rubber band, like leave it in the sun, especially in Arizona, if you stretch it beyond its limit, if you put a little cut in it, that rubber band isn’t going to bounce back. It’s going to crack, it’s going to break. It might even get brittle if you leave it out too long.

It’s true for us too. You can only bounce back if you’ve got some bounce left in you. The beauty is is that God refreshes us. He renews us. He’s made our bodies this way, to actually heal themselves. Like, when you have a cut how your body naturally wants that cut to heal and the skin regrows. Even as we age, we are still called to influence. Now it may look different in different seasons, but we are never a crusty old rubber band because God is always working to renew us. But some of that beauty, in the way that God refreshes us, is only found in rest. Truly, there’s no other way to get it. There’s a piece of it that’s only found when we step back. 

It’s that piece of Sabbath, when we pull away. Stepping back to re-envision, stepping back to renew, stepping back just to rest. If you haven’t really studied Biblical Sabbath or God’s rest, like, please look into some resources by Peter Scazero, or Bill and Kristi Gaultier, have some really great stuff on soul shepherding and their soul shepherding ministry. But in future episodes, we’re going to be talking more specifically about sabbaticals in small churches and time off, not just for the pastor, but also for the volunteer, for the ministry leader, for people who are just stepping up. Because God designed us for this. I’ll even be sharing my story with you about what happened when I left my church for six entire months. As the pastor’s wife and a major doer, I’m going to share with you why I left and what happened when I did, and also why I went back. And I’ll tell you, it’s a story and a half for sure, but until that, I hope these five tips will hold you over and give you a place to start. 

Laurie Graham 27:18
If you or your team are experiencing any degree of burnout, please hear that, just a little bit tired, losing some motivation, please step into these five things. Start by accepting it, acknowledging it, allowing it. Now, this is not an easy step. This is actually something you have to lean into and model. The second one I gave you was just have some fun, and really have fun with your team or with your volunteer if you’ve got one, like experiencing this gift. God created us to have some fun and enjoyment. That’s why He gave us beauty and so many other things. It’s very renewing. So figure out how to have some fun. The third thing was spend time dreaming, help your team dream.

Sight, sound, involving all the senses, imagining a different future. The fourth thing, take a break together and mix it up. Like, do ministry differently. Take a break from what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been doing it, and do ministry differently together. And the fifth thing is an actual break. If you’re the one with burnout, take a break, and this is not one Sunday off this is for a season. Figure out how to give your volunteers a break, an actual break, not just doing ministry differently, and again, we’re going to delve much more into that in future episodes. 

But if you are looking for an encouraging community and you haven’t found one yet, like there’s no one surrounding you giving you these messages, and you need more of it, please, like, come find us in our free Facebook community. It’s called The Creative Solutions for Small Churches. You can find the link in the show notes. We’ve also got these amazing quarterly conferences where we go even deeper in community and learning and discussion. Even before the conference, we do speaker interviews and prizes and so much more.

Laurie Graham 29:16
So just watch the smallchurchsummits.com site. It’s also in the show notes for our current or upcoming conferences. If you’re listening at the release of this episode, we are counting down to the Small Church Pastor’s Wife Conference coming up on July 16, 2022. And as soon as that closes out, we’ll be getting ready for our first-ever Worship and Tech, Small Church Ministry Conference. We are so excited about that! We’re gonna dive into not just worship leading from upfront, but the tech struggles of small churches and streaming it, developing musicians and finding them too. 

But until next week, I just want you to take a deep breath. Where is God calling you to transformation? What’s new? What does He have for you? None of us are done growing and changing. There is hope and there is newness. So what’s next for you?
I really would love to know. If you’re on Instagram, come find me there at The Creative Little Church and drop me a DM. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Until next week, just go and be light!