How to Deal with Burnout in Ministry

Ministerial burnout is increasingly common in faithful gospel ministry today. There are many reasons why godly pastors and teachers who engage in ministry experience burnout. The growing hostility of a militant world can become both demoralizing and depressing. Even more, the willingness of some professing evangelicals to be more culture-shaped than Bible-shaped can prove deeply dispiriting. Allied to these spiritual battles, some good men and women have such sensitive temperaments that every opposition, large or small, can seem overwhelming.

In this brief article, I would like to focus attention on the sadness and tiredness that deeply affected the holy humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am not suggesting that He experienced ministerial burnout. But our Savior is set before us in Scripture as the prototypical man of faith, the servant of the Lord whom every gospel minister is to model himself after. With that in mind, I want to do two things: first, to highlight the often-neglected reality of our sinless Lord’s experience of difficult, nearly overwhelming ministerial trials, and second, to highlight the unyielding focus of Jesus as He experienced these difficulties.

1. Jesus remembers and knows.

First, consider these remarkable words:

He said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.” (Isa. 49:3–4)

When I am teaching, I often ask my students, “Who spoke these words?” Not once has anyone given the right answer. These words were spoken by Yahweh’s faithful, sinless servant, the One in whom He would be “glorified.” These words came from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ.

These two words, “nothing” and “vanity,” are deeply evocative. In Hebrew nothing is tohu, a word we find in Genesis 1:2: “The earth was without form (tohu).” Vanity is hevel, the word we find liberally sprinkled throughout Ecclesiastes: “vanity of vanities.” On the brink of crucifixion, as our Savior surveyed His ministry and mission, He endured a period of ministerial and personal suffering, yet without sin. The opposition was so relentless and His own disciples so dull and dense that He felt the full weight of the psalmist’s grief when he wrote that darkness was his only friend (see Ps. 88:18).

Every Christian should know, and every gospel minister must know, that we have a Savior who knows the grief and exhaustion of His servants because He Himself has experienced it. Faithfulness in gospel ministry is costly. Consider the words of the psalmist when he cries out:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me? (Ps. 42:5)

He is in the depths not because he has been disobedient, but because he is anticipating the experience of the servant of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

My fundamental point is simply this: When faithful servants of the Lord find themselves in the depths, with the waters of life and ministry billowing over their minds and hearts (see Ps. 69:1–2), they have a faithful Savior who has walked the way of deepest weariness and sadness. He knows your frame, He remembers, and He knows that you are dust (Ps. 103:14).

2. Jesus’ faith directed His actions.

Second, now consider the words that follow:

Yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God. (Isa. 49:4)

As the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s sinless Son, His faithful servant, experienced the depths of ministerial trials and tribulations, He nonetheless planted His troubled heart and mind in the faithfulness of Yahweh. He maintained an unwavering trust in God’s goodness and promise of reward for His travails even as He was assaulted by grief and sadness. Faith in the goodness and love of the heavenly Father will likewise enable us to ride the storm, to continue standing when all around our soul is giving way.

Some of the Lord’s choicest servants are called to walk in darkness, even in a darkness where there seems to be no light. Reflect on these striking words in Isaiah 50:10:

Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the voice of his servant?
Let him who walks in darkness
and has no light
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on his God.

Through Isaiah, the Lord impresses on us that remembering who God is best supports us when ministerial burnout threatens to dismantle our lives and render us unusable in the service of the Lord and His church.

This was the ultimate experience of our Savior. It was His faith in God that kept Him from giving up and turning back when all the lights went out for Him as He hung alone and abandoned on Calvary’s cross. In His bereftness, He still held fast in faith to God, “My God, my God . . . ” (Ps. 22:1; Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34). Darkness encompassed Him, but His faith shone gloriously in that darkness.

Conclusion

There are many reasons for ministerial burnout: personal struggles, familial discord, congregational tensions, national unrest, international crises. Whatever the reasons, Jesus says to every one of His blood-bought and dearly loved people: Have faith in God—the Father who loves you with an everlasting love, the Son who gave Himself for you and who ever lives to make intercession for you, and the Holy Spirit who indwells you to help you (Jer. 31:3; Rom. 8:26; Heb. 7:25). Have faith in God and hold fast to Him, just as our Savior did.