My Personal Recovery From Ministry Burnout

How accepting this one reality can heal and bring hope to any ministry leader

Photo by: Young Yi

This newsletter is the third and final part of this week’s series, “Becoming A Healthy Leader”, sharing lessons from my own experiences and teachings from others.

If you enjoyed this series and would like me to write on a certain topic, please let me know in the comment section of this post. Thanks for reading!

In 2022, much like most ministry leaders and pastors, I experienced the culminating effects of burnout and took a leave from pastoral ministry.

For me, the burnout came from unhealthy relationships with my emotions developed through my adolescence, coupled with the COVID-years of ministry tension and strife that affected my mental, emotional, and spiritual health (people calling me a “social justice preacher” or “woke Bible teacher” and even one individual outright calling me a heretic). It all piled up into one nice, large snowball.

I was taught in order to be in ministry, you have to have “thick skin and a soft heart” and I thought that was me. But the last few years taught me that perhaps my skin wasn’t as thick and that my heart was becoming more calloused than soft.

But I’m not here to share my past grievances in ministry. Ask any pastor or ministry leader and you’ll find they have their shiny treasure trove of despair as well (dark joke).

Because of the burnout and the collateral damage in my personal life, I took a step back from pastoral ministry for about 6 months.

And subsequently had my first identity crisis: how could I not be a pastor anymore?

This is what my life was supposed to amount to. This is what I spent tens of thousands of dollars to become through seminary. This is what I felt called to do back in the summer of 2011! I was supposed to finish well and yet here I am spiraling down like a plane shot out of the sky. How could it slip through my fingers from something as silly as burnout?

I thought I was more resilient than that. I guess not.

During my leave from pastoral ministry, I met with a pastoral counselor and over the span of a few months -meeting, talking about my shadow side, the burnout, and all that came messily packaged with it - he helped me cross a bridge I thought I could never cross.

I thought on the other side of this bridge, was hell. A grave six-feet deep, ready to swallow me in. I thought on the other side of this bridge, my identity was going to be consumed and not even the bones were going to be spat out.

Genuinely, I was lost, because on the other side of this bridge was killing my identity as a pastor, a leader, and a shepherd. My ego would never let me do that.

But the words of my pastoral counselor helped me take the first and final step, and every other step in-between, to cross that bridge:

He said, “Young, every Christian’s call is to be more like Jesus, not to be a pastor.”

Simple. Obvious to many. But to me in that season, it was as if I regained sight once again. Why?

Because somewhere along my spiritual journey with Jesus, I had fallen into the pharisaical trap that the Christian life is only worth it when it comes with leadership, power, authority, and a platform.

I was fooled.

But those words … those words … they got me to accept something that has since given me so much freedom. Not just because of what I was ready to let go of, but more-so because of what I was walking into.

I was ready to let go of being a pastor.
I was ready to let go of being a shepherd.
I was ready to let go of being a leader.

And I was ready to walk into the invitation to be more like Jesus.

Then perhaps along the journey, one of the joys I get to experience is to be a pastor, a director, a leader, or whatever. Somehow, I got to a point where the cart was leading the horse.

Crossing that bridge I so feared that day - I never did find a hell-hole, nor a grave, nor any mouth to consume me.

Rather, I found true identity once again.
I found green pastures to enjoy and rest on.
I found a gentle, flowing river I could drink from; one that never runs dry.
And I found the Good Shepherd, inviting me into His arms, giving me refuge from the burnout and the pain and my identity has never been more secure.