Burn out…How much is too much?
“Sunday comes every six days.”
This is a phrase I have told myself and others for over 22 years. The way in which I SAY this phrase has everything to do with whether I’m burned out or ready to go! For some of my friends who do multiple services across the weekend, their worship experiences have even less days between them. When you sit back and think about the work that goes into creating a different worship experience every week, it can be overwhelming.
So how do you create experiences that are engaging and different every week without killing yourself and your team in the process? I don’t believe that I have fully mastered this idea, but I have learned a few things on the journey that have helped me to throttle the gas and pedal of ministry as well as be able to create meaningful worship experiences on a weekly basis. These are in no specific order, so here we go…
1. Be realistic about your resources. I have never served at a church where I had endless resources to do everything I wanted to do. However, I do feel that have been very blessed with resources that were unique to each church experience. It’s impossible to compare my resources to someone else’s because there are so many subjective factors that give each church culture their own uniqueness and flavor. Take a little inventory:
- My stage is only a certain size. I can do stage craft OR I cannot do stage craft.
- My team consists of a certain number of people. They have communicated to me that they can serve ___ times a month (fill in the blank.)
- I have ______ hours in a week to work and be a fully committed Christ-follower, wife/husband, mother/father, and staff member.
- My budget is ___ (you fill in the blank.)
2. Don’t push your team in a way that you know is not healthy. Excellence is a high value to me and I’m sure to most people reading this blog. Sometimes working with volunteers, this is a tension to be managed. I am very realistic about how much time my volunteers can commit to personal rehearsal and preparation as well as how well they can execute with excellence based on that premise. That’s a fancy way of saying I understand the level of commitment and the ability of my volunteers that I have and I don’t push it. There is nothing worse than being asked to do something on a team that YOU KNOW you can’t do well. If you work with artists, most are so hard on themselves in general, the last thing they need is a leader that pours gasoline on that fire. These people have lives outside of my ministry. They have problems and struggles just like everyone and they don’t need more pressure from me as their leader. They need encouragement and they need a win and sometimes that means choosing an easier song or doing something familiar for that to happen.
3. Have a “Seasons” approach to your ministry. I am not saying in #2 that we should not challenge our teams…just pick a good season of the year to do it. We learn most of our new music in the first quarter of the year and in the summer (excluding Christmas which is what it is!) When we record new songs or work on projects, we do that in the first quarter of the year. The time after Easter and before school starts, we take it down a notch. Less rehearsals, more getting solid in the new songs we have learned, worship leader retreats…things like that. Between August and December, it is what I call “in season.” We are working hard, rehearsing a lot, and there is a lot expected of the team which I communicate in advance.
4. Allow flexible structure with your team. We use Planning Center Online for our scheduling and as a team, we are pretty good at getting out in front of our dates and planning ahead. However, if you are a “people first, program second” leader like I am, you have to be flex with “life happens” to your team. I have seen so many times when I had no idea how I was going to pull a Sunday off when circumstances beyond my control happened that God allowed something different and BETTER to happen. Had I tried to fight the circumstances and force what I wanted, wow…I would have really missed out. You may ask,”What does this have to do with burn out?” For me, this is probably the most important one. The energy I spend on forcing something to work out takes SO MUCH out of me. When I just ask God to step in, relax, and move forward with the best I CAN do, he never disappoints and I am rejuvenated in the process! Not at all worn out by it.
I’m sure there are many more ways to avoid burning out, but these are the most important to me. Not only do they apply to our teams, but they can apply very personally to us as leaders. If I am realistic about what I have, don’t push myself in an unhealthy way, take the “season” approach to my life, and allow flex when things don’t work out – burn out is not even on the table.
What do you think? Share your thoughts with me!
