Emotions: Causes of Burnout

By Ian Bartley

Pastor Ian Bartley is Credentialed Minister with Australian Christian Churches since 1986 Lead Pastor of Church of New Life Katoomba Pastoring NSW Australia Director of Cornerstone Community Care /Food Solutions, Feed up to One Hundred Families Every week Katoomba NSW Australia Director of New South Wales Pastors Emeritus ( connecting with Retir

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Jul 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958678046

Book preview

Contents

Introduction

Chaper One: Endurance and Burnout

Chapter Two: Over Commitment and Time Managment

Chapter Three: The Emotional Mind

Chapter Four: Demanding Perfection

Chapter Five: Burnout and Superego

Chapter Six: Managing Impulses

Chapter Seven: Lagalism and Burnout

Chapter Eight: Biological insights into burnout

Chapter Nine: Set up for Burnout: early onset

Chapter Ten: Internal Moods Enbracing Frailty

Chapter Eleven: Challenge My Beliefs and Toxic Theology

Chapter Twelve: Emotional Rest

Chapter Thirteen: The Revolving Door of Ministry

Chapter Fourteen: Entrenched Thinking Verses the Meaning of Salvation

Chapter Fifteen: The image of Ministry and Compassion Workers

Chapter Sixteen: Complexity of leadership and ministry (Jageman the 2005 The L Factor)

Chapter Seventeen: Private Life Verses Public Life

Chapter Eighteen: Burnout and the inner child

Chapter Twenty: Feelings of Threat and Prejudice

Chapter Nineteen: (Merson 2001) Page 89 on Cultural and Psychological connections to Burnout and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Chapter Twenty: Family Systems

Chapter Twenty One: Personal Development

Chapter Twenty Two: Emotion and Religion

Chapter Twenty Three: Faulty Thinking and Burnout

Chapter Twenty Four: Antidote to Burnout (Slang Yum Tan 2003) Rest Page 21

Chapter Twenty Five: Burnout and Ego (John Sandford1982) Pages 60-67

Chapter Twenty Six: The Joy of Burnout

References

Introduction

In my thirty five years as a Born Again Christian and twenty five years of those in ministry I have seen lots of people come and go. People have an encounter with Jesus Christ have their lives turned around. They are excited about God they are full of zeal wanting to tell the whole world of their new found faith in God. How ever over time they get involved with the church and even become leaders or pastors in their own right. Then all of a sudden they have disappeared or gone completely cold on God. They are distancing themselves and are discouraged and offended in some way. We have asked the question over and over. Why do so many Christians drop off? I read that scripture that states in the last days many shall fall away and the love of many will grow cold Matt 24: 10-14 .I think it is such a waste and so tragic to see people who one minute were so in love with Jesus and then become discouraged and cynical about the church, previous committed people and leaders will even be expressing big doubts about God. Many of these people will blame the church and other Christians for what they have done to them or they did not care and abandoned them in some way. Yes it is true that there is, and have been leaders in the church who have let people down badly and been abusive. The trouble is we can often have such high expectations in ourselves or others and when those expectations fail we become dissolution and angry. Feelings can be very strong and much of the burn out we have comes from you as a person who has allowed others responses and reactions to control your feelings rather than taking hold of your feelings and choosing not to have others behaviour transferred on to you. The problem with Pastors and leaders even church members is they feel responsible for others and what happens to them or what they decide to do. This is the role of a rescuer who ends up drowning themselves trying to rescue others. I cannot be responsible for others all the time and I cannot allow others rejection of me to affect me and my feelings. Yes it can be disappointing when people abandon you or reject you end up even hateing you but I can learn to deal with that. I do not have to be loved by them all the time to know I am loved. So this is an attempt to help Christians of all stations in and outside the church to be there at the end.

Chaper One

Endurance and Burnout

Running the Race (Hebrews 12: 1-2) Laying a foundation from Scripture

So how do we run the race to the very end with out burning out? The Bible has some great clues.

Hebrews 12: 1-2 (NKJV)

1 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Reading these verses in Hebrews 12: 1-2, we can ask, what is the issue the writer is addressing here and how does this relate to burnout? If you look at the background of the book of Hebrews, the Hebrew Christians had encountered excommunication, major persecution and humiliation from their fellow Jews for their faith in Jesus Christ. The book is written speaking of the excellence of the Gospel above the law;(Matthew Henry) Page 888. But the most threatening thing was not the persecution but the " weight of their sin that was able to ensnare them ". Consequently there was a great falling away as internal turmoil was bringing about exhaustion. Many were giving up their faith and going back to Judaism. The pressures these Jew encountered was too much to endure (Bagster’s Bible Study1976) Page 77 and (. Elwell, Robert and Yarbrough Encountering The New Testament 1998) Page 348-349.

The writer of this passage draws from the idea of the Olympic spirit that was part of the ancient Greek athletic games, in particular the marathon. The Ancient Greek World (Rodgers 2000) Pages 62-63 and Pages 210 -211 Races on Foot and by Chariot the oldest and most prestigious race was the foot race. The point about the Christian life, he is making is that we are in a race like a marathon. It is a long race. It requires endurance. In other words, it is not how you start but how you finish running the marathon that really makes the difference.

And it is not just physical endurance that will keep you in the race but more importantly emotional and mental endurance. All of us face challenges in life. In this document we will explore the emotional state and what will make or break your endurance, when you face such challenges. The spirit is never tired, it is always energized. Our emotions are not energized they do get tired and spent. Is this what leads to Christian workers and compassion workers becoming burnt out? Some call it spiritual burnout, but is it that just emotional tiredness and based in the emotion area? Although according to (Smith 1960) in his book Spiritual Burnout, he attributes burn out to Theological issues Christians have which I will address in the theology area of this book.

As I have stated what concerns me is the drop off rate of many Christians in service and how they just walk away from God and the church. Many stop going to church altogether and they become very fragile and 1(John Bevere 2004) Bate of Satan Pages95-108; says they are offended in some way. There are people who work really hard in churches then something happens and suddenly they are disillusioned and put off from serving in the church.

So what needs to be understood here is it is not how people start the race but how a people finishes the race that really makes a difference. People can start out sprinting, but do they have the endurance to finish the race? When a person finds that discouragement sets in or frustration arises, are they seeing signs of emotional burnout in its beginning stages?

Having run in a number of marathons I have learnt how important it is to start slow, to conserve energy, not to begin sprinting too early. In my fifties I used to run with a bunch of old guys most of the time but there was an event where we took on a bunch of young guys who were about 16 to 20 years old. They knew how to run so at the start of the race they would take off and leave us old guys for dead. However, as the race wore on you would see these guys up the front coming into view and gradually they would become closer to you. Then they were alongside you and before too long they were behind you. The older guys could beat them because the older guys had learnt how to conserve energy. They had learnt how to endure,