book review / Brad Smith
Asking Some Tough Questions

The body’s doing the work, but the spirit’s not present. Lynne Baab, associate pastor of a Presbyterian church in Washington State, quotes Robin Sheerer’s pithy description of burnout, and then helps the readers to understand it and deal with it.

Congregations face a shrinking pool of volunteers as fewer women are now at home, and even stay-at-home moms have a schedule of sports and after-school lessons unheard of a generation ago. Those who are available feel the pressure. One of Baab’s interviewees says,

"The fastest way to burn someone out is to know their name . . . The same people get asked over and over. New people, the ones we don’t know the names of, don’t get asked, so they drift off and eventually quit." (42)

Unclear expectations cause further stress, both for volunteers and for those on the church staff. A youth worker, for example, is hired on the basis of his or her relational skills, only to be criticized for not administering the youth program and budget. The message received is, "We said we wanted you to be relational but what we really need is someone gifted in administration" (45).

The chapter entitled "What Congregations Can Do: Identifying and Preventing Burnout" offers practical help. Leaders may overlook such self-evident solutions as clarifying expectations and limiting the number of requests for any one person’s help. Baab offers other, more penetrating suggestions that stretch leaders to rethink their congregational life. The author’s own experience living in Israel gave her first-hand lessons in Sabbath-keeping, which can be adapted to the American context. She also offers suggestions on turning church committees into communities, and investing in volunteers so that they grow rather than burn out.

In moving from the congregation to the individual, Baab explores three tools that might help members of the congregation to serve well:

• the spiritual gifts list in Romans 12
• the Myers-Briggs Type
• the Enneagram Type

The gifts list (compassion, service, exhortation, teaching, administration, giving, and prophecy) is the clearest way of helping people find an appropriate way to serve. The Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram require more training to understand and use, but can be powerful tools against burnout. Baab offers a helpful bibliography for those who might want to study these tools more deeply.

Burnout may result from unhealthiness within church members. Baab deals sensitively with the possibility that congregational leaders, or the ones they oversee, might be driven to volunteer from compulsiveness, or as an escape from the results of trauma in their lives. Leaders with oversight of volunteers may need to encourage them to ask questions such as:

• Am I willing to examine my Christian life and service for signs of being driven by neediness rather than being called and led by God?
• Is my church life lived at a workaholic pace? If so, why?
• Do I only sense God’s love when I’m helping others? (96. Taken from The Overcommitted Christian, by Pamela Evans, 40).

Baab offers probing questions for the leaders to ask themselves:

• Do I watch for fatigue and disouragement in volunteers, or am I so concerned about getting the job done that I cannot see personal needs?
• Do I suggest to people that they take some time off from serving if they seem overly tired?
• Am I open to stopping projects and ministries if keeping them going is damaging to the people involved?
• Do I really believe that people can find healthy places to serve, where they will grow spiritually and learn to rely on God’s grace as they serve? (96-97).

In the foreward, Roy Oswald notes that burned-out volunteers in the local congregation often manifest an inability to worship, and a lack of respect for fellow congregants (vi). How tragic when we think of the supreme, twin commands in the Bible, to love the Lord our God and our neighbor as ourselves!

Beating Burnout in Congregations will be invaluable for pastors, church staff, or volunteers leaders (such as Sunday School superintendents) who long to see their volunteers again serving out of love. It can be read cover to cover, or one can study a specific topic such as the congregation, individual differences, or warning signs for compulsive behavior. I particularly appreciated Baab’s balance between avoiding quick-fix answers on the one hand, and leaving us with no practical help on the other.