Why Do Pastors Burn Out?

In his book The crazy-Making Workplace, Dr. Arch Hart lists reason people in "helping" professions are particularly prone to burnout:

1. They usually have not been taught to care for others in the right way.

2. They care too much out of guilt.

3. They feel inadequate in providing solutions.

4. They allow caring to dominate their thinking.

5. They don't take adequate steps to care for their own feelings or facilitate their own

recovery.

Leith Andersen quotes Peter Drucker as saying the position of senior pastor is one of the three most demanding jobs in America, along with hospital administrator and university president.

One last thought from Chuck Swindoll: "Busyness rapes relationships. It substitutes shallow frenzy for deep friendship. It feeds the ego but starves the inner man. It fills a calendar but fractures a family. It cultivates a program that plows under priorities. Many a church boasts about its active program: 'Something for every night of the week for everybody.' What a shame! With good intentions the local assembly can create the very atmosphere it was designed to curb."

Burnout! Don't let it happen to you!