210: Burnout Isn’t Anyone Else’s Fault (And That’s Actually Good News For the Church) 

Laurie Graham 0:01
Hey, welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy, and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I’m your host, Laurie Graham. Let’s dive in.

Laurie Graham 0:23
Hey, hey! Welcome back to the Small Church Ministry Podcast. We are kicking off the new year talking about burnout, and I want to tell you why we’re starting the year here. January is usually the time when people talk about fresh starts, new ideas, new vision, and new momentum. That is not wrong, and we’re going to get there.

But here’s what I know after decades of walking alongside people in church ministry—volunteers, leaders, pastors, and people with no roles at all—and honestly, after living this myself: if we don’t talk about burnout first, nothing else matters. Burnout doesn’t just make us tired; it actually shrinks our capacity to think clearly, make good choices, and think creatively. It narrows the options we even give to ourselves. It turns really great ministry into obligation and sometimes even drudgery, and it makes even hopeful conversations feel heavy.

So, we need to talk about burnout before we talk about women’s ministry, before we talk about leadership development, and before we talk about building anything new. I want to talk about us—about the people doing the work—and just be present to see if we’re healthy, if we’re okay, and if the people we’re serving with are okay. Burnout is not just a trendy word, and it also doesn’t always show up dramatically. I hope you hear that. We are often serving alongside people who are feeling very burnt out, and we don’t know it; we don’t see it. We are often showing up that way ourselves, denying what’s really right underneath the surface.

But just because it’s quiet or unseen, or we’re not taking time to recognize it, doesn’t mean it’s not shaping everything around us—because it is. Burnout shapes the way we show up. It shapes the way we respond to pressure. It shapes the way we make decisions. It even shapes the way we hear God. Starting the year here isn’t being pessimistic or a downer; it’s honestly really responsible, and it’s also hope-filled. If you’re sitting here thinking, “I know I’m burnt out, but there’s no other option. There’s nobody else,” that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about. We don’t need to have another year powered by guilt or even grit. What we need is to build this year on agency (which we’re going to talk about), on honesty, and on sustainability. That’s exactly why we’re starting the year talking about burnout.

Now, I’m about to talk about burnout in a way that might feel uncomfortable at first—it’s not the way I usually frame it—but I’m really praying and hoping that this will be incredibly freeing. For me, it has been. A lot of burnout conversations sound a little bit like this: “If leadership would change… if the church culture was healthier… if someone else would step up… if the system wasn’t broken… if our church had more people…”

Now, listen, a lot of that matters. These things matter. Leadership matters, culture matters, and systems matter. I’m not dismissing or minimizing that at all. But what I want us all to hold on to as we start this year is that burnout isn’t anyone else’s fault. It’s no one else’s fault, and this is actually good news. It doesn’t mean you failed or did something wrong, but I do want to call out that we’re responsible for our own burnout. We need to quit putting the blame “out there.”

Honestly, sometimes—though we don’t say it this way—the way we speak almost makes it God’s fault: “God called us to this… God’s asking me to do this… of course, this is something God would want me to do.” If you’re burnt out and saying those things, you’re pretty much blaming God for your burnout. This is so unhealthy. The reason I think it’s so healthy to call this out and say that burnout is your responsibility—yes, I’m saying that if you’re burnt out, it’s your own fault—is that we shouldn’t get stuck in the “shame game.”

We’re going to talk about this. But if we’re responsible for it, that means we’re not stuck waiting for someone else to change or fix it. Can you think about it that way? If I’m responsible, it means I can do something about it. This matters so much because we don’t need to wait on “them” to change the system or their expectations. Waiting on other people to make changes rarely brings any sort of relief; waiting usually extends the pressure and causes a lot of underground bitterness or resentment to grow.

Burnout isn’t just being tired or experiencing compassion fatigue, though those could be wrapped up in it. Burnout is really when we hit a point where we can’t keep working or serving well. But burnout does not start with overwork. I think that’s one of the stories we get wrapped up in: “I’m burnt out because I am doing too much.” That’s an element, but that’s not how burnout starts.

Burnout actually starts with belief—the stories we tell ourselves, often without realizing it. Burnout starts with beliefs like: “I don’t have a choice.” “If I say no, everything will fall apart.” “Someone else should fix this.” “No one else will do it.” Or: “I’ll rest when things calm down.” Ouch, right? I think most of us can be guilty of that one—thinking rest or a break will come after things calm down.

Now, I don’t know about you, but usually, there’s something else around the corner. We’ve all said versions of these things, including: “I can’t do anything unless the leadership changes.” This is not true. In small churches, things often feel really fragile. I’ve worked in big, medium-sized, and small churches; in small churches, things feel a lot more fragile because there isn’t the same pool of volunteers or resources.

So, sometimes these stories sound really reasonable: “If I say no, everything will fall apart. If I don’t do it, no one else will. And if nobody else does it, our church is going down.” Sometimes these stories sound reasonable, faithful, or even responsible. But here’s the pattern: if we believe we have no choice, we stop listening to our bodies, our emotions, and the very senses God has given us to live wholly and fully.

We stop noticing resentment. We stop paying attention to fatigue—which is an invitation, by the way. We stop naming the dread that we sometimes feel before Sunday or Wednesday or “one more meeting,” and we keep going. But I want to call out that we’re not going out of faith. Sometimes we say we keep going out of faith, but I’d like to suggest that maybe we keep going out of fear more than faith. I’ve been there.

Please hear me if you’re in the middle of this right now—we’re going to get to hope and change in this episode. And if you are not in a space of burnout, can I please invite you to stay with this conversation so that you can help those around you who are struggling? They might not look like they are. I’m going to tell you: most pastors, when they are in a burnout situation, their congregations do not know it for a very long time—sometimes until it’s too late.

Laurie Graham 10:21
Most ministry leaders who are struggling with burnout—you don’t know it because they’ve decided, by faith or by fear, to show up, to do well, to smile, and to pour out more, even when they are so spent. This is the same with volunteers who are showing up faithfully with no paycheck, maybe even with no title—the ones who quietly clean the kitchen or do the landscaping when no one is looking.

We need to pay attention, not just for ourselves, but also for others, because burnout thrives in spaces where we feel like something is going to be lost, where we care deeply, where we feel like we’re going to be judged, or where we don’t want to disappoint people we care about. Burnout often thrives in places where people care deeply, and that is so characteristic of small-church ministry. So, let’s get into what I mean and what I don’t mean by “it’s not anyone else’s fault,” because I want to be really clear here. When I say burnout isn’t anyone else’s fault—that it’s your own responsibility—I’m not saying that leadership didn’t contribute, that expectations are fair, that your system is healthy, or that you imagined this pressure. All of that might be true.

The leadership might not be great, the expectations might be unfair, and the system might not be healthy. All of this can be true. But what I’m saying is: you still have a choice in the middle of this. You can actually serve healthily in fairly unhealthy places. At some point, continuing to say “yes” and continuing to show up is our decision; it is all along the way. This isn’t blame. There’s no shame in this. This is information, but there’s agency here. I love the word “agency.” Agency simply means “I get to decide.” We all have agency. By the way, that is scriptural; it is biblical that we have agency. We get to decide. We are responsible for ourselves. This is stewardship. But the cool and hopeful thing about the fact that we have agency—that it’s our choice—is that if burnout is someone else’s fault, we’re stuck.

If burnout depends on the leadership or the culture around you, we’re stuck. This is when we get more depressed, more hopeless, and more defeated. Most of us already know how that goes because at some point in our lives, we were stuck. We felt stuck. I really hope you have a time in your life you can point back to and go, “Oh, I remember that feeling, and this is how I got unstuck.” Because getting unstuck is always, always possible. Agency doesn’t mean full control of everyone or everything around you. What it means is options. It means recognizing that even inside constraints, we still have a choice—not always big, dramatic ones, but small, honest ones that make a huge difference. These choices matter.

If you’re in a leadership role or you have a team, I just want to take a quick pause. When I’m saying burnout is my own responsibility, if you’re leading others, I want to be careful how I say this: you can’t just say, “It’s your fault that you’re burnt out; I can lead the way I want.” Do you hear the difference? When I’m talking to you, my own burnout is my responsibility and my agency. As leaders, we don’t want to tell other people, “Hey, by the way, I’m leading the children’s ministry team and you’re burnt out; that’s your own fault, so I’m going to lead the way I want.” You hear what I’m saying, right? Because if you’re leading, you do have influence. You set expectations. You get to normalize certain things in your culture. We shape what people feel allowed to say “no” to.

So, if that’s you, I just want to say it clearly: their burnout might not be your fault—your whole responsibility—but you absolutely create conditions that can cause people to go there. We can create healthy cultures around us that leave people much less likely to end up in burnout. We need to not praise sacrifice without checking capacity. Too often, we praise people who are showing up consistently through burnout and hard situations, instead of offering them breaks.
Let’s stop rewarding people who never say “no” and build a healthier culture if you’re on the leadership side of things.

What I want to focus on in this episode is your own burnout, or helping other people—friends or those serving alongside you—take back ownership of their own lives. Whether we’re leading or volunteering or doing both, it gets personal. Even when we know something is unhealthy, and even when we can name the different pieces and parts that are contributing, the hardest part is still what happens inside us when we imagine stepping back. I want to talk about some of the things that go through our minds when we think about stepping back.

Again, I have been there. I have ended programs. I have stepped back from positions. I have, on occasion, left churches. When we think about stopping or pulling back, taking a break, or pausing, the thoughts that go through our heads are often these: “This program might end.” “They might not continue it.” “My friends might be really disappointed.” “I might be seen as unfaithful.” Or here is a big one: “Kids and families might be affected if I make a change.” “No one will replace me.” Or even: “My stepping back might contribute to the church actually failing.”

Here’s the truth: some of those things might happen. I would guess that a few of those will happen. Some programs might stop. Some people will be upset or disappointed, or judge you as not being faithful. Some expectations will have to adjust. But disappointment is not an emergency. It’s not the same thing as failure. Sometimes—more often than not—the most loving, healthy thing we can do is to stop holding everything together, something that might be breaking us as individuals on the inside. The alternative to not stepping back isn’t faithfulness. The alternative is resentment, bitterness, unhealth, and broken relationships. It happens sometimes that we’re staying, but emotionally we’re checking out because we’re exhausted and burnt out. For those around you, please watch for these things.

Jesus never asked us to destroy ourselves to prove devotion; this is not something that is scriptural. I want to get really practical, because this is difficult and most of us haven’t seen this modeled well. What we sometimes see is someone leaving the church or leaving a position broken, and we wonder what in the world happened. Sometimes it’s happening to us or to those close to us. So, let’s get really practical—real small-church practical. Let’s look at what choosing agency when you’re feeling burnt out can look like. I’m going to give you five things here, and I’ll try to stick to these five. Number one: Can you quit the version of the role that you’re in, but not the relationships? There’s a big distinction here, and it matters to quit the role—or the version of the role you’re in—but not step away from relationships.

Laurie Graham 20:16
Saying or believing something like, “I’m not stepping away from the church or from the community; I’m stepping away from doing this job or this role every single week.” I’m not stepping away from church. Occasionally, it can be necessary or healthy to step away from your church, but normally it is not, and I really want to spend a little bit of time here. God created us to be in community. You are important in your church.

The people around you are important to you. Sometimes it’s not as healthy as we would love it to be, but when we step away from community, some pretty destructive things can start happening inside us, like, “Oh, I guess nobody really cares,” or, “Oh, I guess I don’t need to go every Sunday to feel close to God,” or, “I guess blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Now, by the way, I’m not saying that you have to attend church every Sunday to feel close to God—that was just a little example that popped into my mind. But when we step away from our church community as a whole, we can get pretty independent. We might be “okay,” but we aren’t totally whole, totally connected, or living the way God designed us to live in fullness.

So, if there is a way to step out of a role but not out of the relationships, that is really beautiful. The second thing I want to suggest is that you end programs before they end you. Good programs can still be bad timing. Good programs can be for the future. Good programs can take a pause. I know it because I’ve done this—even pausing things like Sunday School. We’ve talked about this before on the podcast: taking an entire season off from Sunday School for your whole church doesn’t cause destruction or churches to close. It can actually cause a resurgence—a desire to come back and see what we could create.

New creativity, new thoughts, and in the middle of it, people get a break. So, my suggestions again: Quit the version of the role that you’re in without quitting the relationships. End programs before they end you. Reduce the frequency of what you’re doing before resigning completely. Every other week, seasonally, or shorter commitments. Small churches have a way of pushing into a lot of “all or nothing” thinking, and that’s not healthy. There is always middle ground. Tell the truth without over-explaining. We don’t need an apology tour. We don’t need a theological justification. We can literally say something like this: “I realize I’ve been serving from a lot of pressure and outside of my capacity. I need to make a change, and I want to stay connected. This is what I’m going to be doing.” That’s it. A sentence or two. We don’t need to over-explain moving toward health. We don’t. And again, everyone is not going to get this.

Some people are going to be disappointed. Some programs might be affected. And it’s still okay. Accept disappointment without fixing it. We need to release our desire or responsibility for how this affects everyone around us. We can be kind, caring, and loving, and it is still so healthy to just accept the disappointment without fixing it for everyone else. We all know that we grow the most when we are in hard places. But for some reason, some of us—including me—like to save other people from being in hard places. And maybe, just maybe, God’s going to do a lot of growing in the people around you when you take a step to protect your own health because you’re moving toward or experiencing burnout.

I’m just going to list those five things again for those of you who aren’t looking at the blog post or the transcript and you’re just listening while you’re on a drive, because I think each one of these can offer some really great release, relief, and a lot of freedom: Quit the version of the role you’re in without quitting the relationships. End programs before they end you. Reduce the frequency you’re serving before resigning completely. Tell the truth without over-explaining. Accept disappointment without fixing it for everyone else. We don’t have to smooth out everyone’s reactions. We don’t have to make them understand because, honestly, we can’t. If they’re not in the place where they want to accept this or understand it, we don’t have to make everyone comfortable. Discomfort is oftentimes a big part of really great changes.

The alternative to using your agency to make some new decisions this year—the alternative if you are pressing into burnout—is what happens when we don’t choose limits: we get sharp, reactive, cynical, and depressed. We pull back relationally and emotionally. We stay, but we’re not really present. Oftentimes, things do burn down around us when we stay through our own burnout. I want to really speak this, because the alternative to choosing to be healthy—emotionally, spiritually, and relationally—is not faithfulness. It is not faithfulness to push through being unhealthy or burnt out. The alternative ends up in bitterness, resentment, or honestly, driving yourself physically into the ground. I have story after story of people who have ended up hospitalized because of church ministry—because they refused to have limits.

Pastors, ministry leaders, and volunteers. Bitterness does not build the church, but I will tell you what does: healthy people. Healthy people build the church. So, as we wrap up today, I want to just say loud and clear that you don’t need anybody’s permission to stop serving. You don’t need anybody’s permission to step back. We all have agency. God has put us in charge of our own health. That’s why we have choice. We get to choose to rest. I also want to say you don’t need any kind of dramatic exit or dramatic conversations. This doesn’t have to be a big deal. It might be to some people, but the more we normalize it, the healthier our churches are going to get.

When we say, “Hey, I am beyond capacity; there’s no way around it, I can’t keep doing this,” whether your family is shrinking under the pressure, or your health is, or your job is—we don’t need dramatic exits. We also don’t need a five-year plan. We just need some honest choices before we hit the point where we can’t do anymore. Again, if this is not you—if this is not where you are today—would you share this podcast episode with the people that you serve with? Share the five things. Have a great talk with your pastor, your ministry team, your co-teacher, or the people who hang out with you as volunteers in the church nursery. Ask, “Hey, what do you think about this? How are you feeling? Do any of these options look like things that you think would be healthier for you? Do you need to step back a little bit? Do you need a pause?”

Laurie Graham 30:16
How can we bring this to our churches? You could do an entire study on it, or a sermon; you could teach what we just talked about in this podcast to the people around you—like, let’s just be healthier. Maybe the question isn’t even, “Should I quit?” Maybe the deeper question is, “Why am I afraid to stop?” Maybe that’s a better place to start. What am I scared of? What am I scared it would mean to me or to other people? This is where our freedom to choose really starts. Now, if you are listening and thinking, “I don’t want to keep doing this; I want to keep going in ministry,” is there a place for ongoing support? We have places like that.

Most of what we do in Small Church Ministry is totally free, and I know a lot of people don’t even realize that there are paid spaces connected to the work that we do. So, we’re trying to make sure to at least get the word out for those for whom this would be a good option. The Small Church Network is a $29-a-month membership for volunteers and ministry leaders who want honest support, practical tools, and conversations that actually fit small-church life. Within the Small Church Network, we have seen the most transformational changes—not just for the individual members, but for what’s happening in their churches, because they have grown in this space and taken what they’ve learned back home.

In the Small Church Network, we do monthly trainings, we have live conversations, and we provide resources to take back to help shift things in your church culture toward health, clarify expectations, and make ministry feel lighter and more aligned. To make it easier to check out the Small Church Network at the start of this year, we’re doing something simple and a little bit fun. If you join the Small Church Network within the month of January, you can save $20 on your first month, and you can cancel anytime. So, for $9 this month, you can get in on conversations and trainings that have the potential to transform what’s happening in your heart, your ministry skills, and your church. Again, you can cancel anytime.

There’s no pressure; it’s just an open-door invitation. You’ll find the link in the show notes, or you can always visit smallchurchministry.com/network. Thanks for being here, for choosing to have honest conversations, for listening, and for learning. Your church is so blessed to have you, because you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t care.

Thanks for serving well and for looking to serve in ways that are sustainable—because you matter. You matter not just for what you do, but for who you are. Go have an amazing week! Next Tuesday, when we meet up again, we’re diving into women’s ministry topics. We have some amazing guests joining us on the show who will all be speaking at the Women’s Ministry Conference at the end of the month.

If you haven’t checked that out yet, we host an annual Women’s Ministry for Small Churches Conference, and we’re going to drop the link everywhere to get your free ticket. It is online and it is amazing. It’s happening the last Saturday of this month.

We’ll talk again next week. Until then, be a light.