So you’re a church leader, and wondering how long you can keep doing it! You’re definitely not alone. Let me share some lines that caught my eye recently:

William G. Thompson led a 5,000 member San Antonio church through seven years of growth and success. Instead of happiness, he found burnout. “I’ve hit the wall,” he told his stunned congregation at Concordia Lutheran Church last April 22, “I’m exhausted-physically, mentally and spiritually.”
One of the largest parishes in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Concordia led the denomination in net growth for three years, adding more than 700 adults to its Sunday worship attendance. But Thompson angered some parishioners by instituting a “contemporary” worship service. It didn’t help that he’d succeeded a legend, either.
Founding Pastor Guido Merkens had led the church for 42 years, and some congregants didn’t like how things were changing. “One woman told me, ‘I used to know every Sunday that I’d hear a pastor preaching, but I don’t anymore,’” Thompson recalled recently. Thompson’s health deteriorated, battered by the demands and stress of pastoring a large, active church. He suffered nightmares for two years and was treated for depression, high cholesterol and allergies — all related to stress from his ministry. “I’m not complaining about Concordia,” Thompson said. “It’s just that a pastor is always trying to please everyone, and he can’t do it.” [Pastor Elliott Pancoast, “Demands of Ministry Take Toll,” Colleagues in Ministry: News Notes for Our Rostered Leaders 6:7 (November 2001), p. 1]”

“What should I do from here?”

    What you see described above is not an isolated incident. Something like this happens to church leaders with alarming frequency — among all fellowships. No Christian religious leader is exempt. In fact, that reality is at the core of my current involvement in Hope Network Ministries.*

    We’ve found that burnout results from a number of sources:

• the unique wiring and habits of the minister himself
• the stress that is part of the price paid by persons who take serious Jesus’ call to “take up the cross and follow me”
• the problem of many ministers simply have no one to confide in and with whom to process their own burdens and the many other burdens they are bearing
• the frustration and weariness that grow out of unrealistic expectations and un-workable structures — the personal and institutional traps associated with many ministries
• the problem of lacking significance — as William Willomon says, “Burnout in ministry does not come from over-work, but from ‘under-meaning.’”