Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic

Read the Intro & Chapter 1 in Anne Jackson’s book Mad Church Disease this morning. I’m not feeling particularly burned out but I as I started reading, I’m grateful I picked it up. I think I see the first signs of it cropping up. Anne is similar to me. Pastor’s kid, grew up in the church, in our late 20s, a deep love for the church but we’ve seen a lot of reasons not to.

Thoughts I appreciated…

• I am asking God to keep my gifted friends from becoming another statistic – another broken pastor who crawls away from the church and their “calling,” simly trying to survive and rebuild their life.
• When we should have been fighting with our fellow believers back-to-back, we find ourselves bandaging our wounds from friendly fire.
• When we should be breathing life into a comatose world, we find ourselves gasping for air, just trying to survive.
• Since I had allowed spending time with God to be replaced by spending time doing things for God, my spiritual tank had been sucked dry. When that happened, I began to lose perspective on almost every area of my life.
• Does working at this church interfere with your communion with Christ? I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was so wrapped up in doing, I had forgotten how to simply be.
• I thought the more I sacrificed, the more I loved Jesus. The more hours I put in for God’s work, the more I was committed to his cause. I wanted to make my God proud, and I did a great job at it. The only problem? God wasn’t my God. My pride was my god.
• It’s easy for one team member’s unhealthy behaviors to contaminate the entire team or the whole church.