UNDERSTANDING AND PREVENTION OF MISSIONARY BURNOUT

Wendell Friest

RECOGNIZING BURNOUT

"I would rather burn out than rust out." Perhaps you have heard missionaries say that. You may have said words like that yourself at one time or another. I think I have. And if you think of burnout as something like what happens to an electric motor to prevent it from running too long at too high a speed, the choice of burning out rather than rusting out may well be a valid Christian attitude. We want our lives to be useful and productive for the Lord, and we have the assurance that "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God."(Hebrews 4:9) But in psychological parlance, burnout means something different. The word is borrowed from rocketry science and refers to the point at which the fuel of a missile is completely expended. Using this conceptualization of the term, I don't think it is God's will that any of us burn out during the days of our journey on earth.

Oswald (1982) has identified the following sixteen symptoms of clergy burnout:

(1) Tendency to feel negative or cynical about parishioners
(2) Loss of enthusiasm for job
(3) Lowered emotional investment in work
(4) Fatigue and irritability
(5) Cynical and sarcastic humor
(6) Increased withdrawal from parishioners
(7) Increased rigidity in dealing with parishioners
(8) Feelings of isolation and lack of support
(9) Frustration in accomplishing tasks
(10) Increased feeling of sadness
(11) Physical ailments
(12) Lowered enjoyment of sex
(13) Tendency to blame others for problems
(14) Tendency to feel guilty much of the time
(15) Feeling of just hanging on until retirement
(16) Sense of emptiness and depletion

A look at this list makes it clear that burnout is surely not what God wants for us. I believe most missionaries truly want to say with Paul, "I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may accomplish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God." (Acts 20:24) But we must also be concerned that we do not burn out before we have completed the task God has given us. What follows in this article are some suggestions that I have been beginning to formulate, based on observation of myself and other missionaries I have known, for understanding and preventing missionary burnout.

STRESS AND PERSONALITY TYPES

I find it helpful to think of burnout as a function of two variables: stress and time. Burnout seems to be a result of too much stress over too much time. But I am growing more and more to think the amount of stress we experience seems to be determined by a kind of interaction between stressor-type experiences and situations and two broad types of personality, and the problem for us missionaries is that most of us seem to tend towards one or the other of these personality types (and some of us tend towards both). I simply call these A-Type and B-Type Missionary Stress Syndromes.

The A-Type Syndrome I am thinking of is not exactly the same as what psychologists and cardiologists call the Type-A Personality, but there are many similarities. This kind of burnout seems to appear in persons who have developed a conception of self-worth and self-acceptance that is based on a sense of achievement. This style of achievement-based acceptance, interacting with moderate or high stress over a period of time sometimes produces a condition that I call achievement-fatigue.

The B-Type Syndrome I am thinking of is something quite different from what the medical profession calls the Type-B Personality. This kind of burnout seems to appear in persons who have a conception of self-worth based on their ability to be always giving and meeting people's needs. People like this sometimes feel like the name of the Catholic Church in Garrison Keillor's rural Minnesota - Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility (How about that for a missionary wife's job description!). This style (some people call it the "Messiah Complex") under the right circumstances produces a condition that I call compassion-fatigue. It is important to remember that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with having A-Type or B-Type tendencies. The problem comes when we do right things for wrong reasons (e. g. for a sense of achievement or to assuage guilt-feelings). This tends to give a quality of drivenness and compulsion to our ministry and can be a big contributing factor in burnout.

The issue of pride versus inferiority seems to be a big factor in the A-Type pattern - the feeling that we should be able to achieve great things for the Lord if we could just get our act together. Missionaries like this tend to feel that no matter how much they do, they have never done enough. In the B-Type pattern the issue seems more often to be one of guilt versus goodness - the feeling that we ought to be able to help anyone, if we just try hard enough. These missionaries tend to feel that they are never good enough. The A-Type feels worried all the time. The B-Type feels tired all the time. And over a longer period these conditions may produce symptoms of anxiety and depression.

But underneath the sense of feeling tired, guilty, and worried all the time, there are often uglier things like resentment and bitterness, of which we tend to be less aware. In the A-Type missionary these sometimes seem to be related to a frustration at not being recognized or some feeling of a lack of accomplishment and satisfaction. In the B-Type there often seems to be a feeling of frustration at our own needs not being met, and we sometimes try to fight back the awareness of that, because we think we shouldn't feel that way. In both of these patterns there is usually a severe depletion of the ability to enjoy anything and sometimes a sense of never feeling completely sure that one is accepted by others or God.

Because of the similarities between what I call the A-Type Missionary Syndrome and the Type-A Personality, it is probably a little easier for A-Type missionaries to recognize themselves than for B-Types. They share many of the characteristics of people who are prone to cardiac illness. Sehnert lists ten of these characteristics:

(1) Tendency to overplan
(2) Multiple thoughts and actions
(3) Need to win
(4) Desire for recognition
(5) Always feeling guilty
(6) Impatient with delays or interruptions
(7) Overextend themselves
(8) Sense of time urgency
(9) Excessive competitive drive
(10) Workaholics (Sehnert, 1981, pp.43-45)

One factor that seems to be common to many of these characteristics is the feeling of always being in a hurry. Sehnert says of these people, "It is not unusual to see them eating a meal - while reading the paper and listening to the radio - and carrying on a conversation." (1981, p.44)

I think B-Type missionaries, and what I call the Combination Syndrome, have a little harder time recognizing themselves. Tubesing and Tubesing describe these people in the secular world as addicted to helping. Some of the characteristics they have identified are a willingness always to give emotional support but seldom to ask or expect it from others, a feeling of selfishness when not responding to other people's needs, excessive concern not to hurt people's feelings, determination to get a job done no matter what the cost to oneself, desire to avoid conflict, tendency to say "yes" too much and too often, a feeling that one ought to be able to help everyone) and sometimes a sense of getting one's own needs met by helping others. (Tubesing and Tubesing, 1984, pp. 44-45. used by permission.)

The standard strategies for stress management are valuable, of course, for both A-Type and B-Type missionaries. We need to take vacations, take days off, learn to relax physically, do some things for no other reason than pure enjoyment, get some exercise, eat more wisely, learn to see ourselves as a person whose identity is not solely defined by our work. But I think in addition to, these, Christians have some theological resources for dealing with such stress syndromes, and for missionaries these are of crucial importance.

THEOLOGICAL RESOURCES FOR PREVENTION AND HEALING

To prevent burnout, the beginning point for missionaries and the point that informs all of our life and work, is our conception of who we are in relation to God and to the world. The most helpful formulation of this that I have found is Martin Luther's definition of the freedom of a Christian:

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all. (Luther, 1520, in Dillinberger, 1961, p.53)

To really believe this and live accordingly seems to me to involve a two-stage process of spiritual development. The first stage is to come of a slave-modality kind of Christianity into a daughter-son modality. The second stage is to return to a slave modality without ever losing the daughter-son modality. Our example for this is Jesus himself who is both the Son of God and the suffering servant, the joyful slave of God. Consider these two ways in which he described himself: "The Son of Man came eating and drinking. and they say 'Here is a glutton and a wine-bibber...'' (Matthew 11:19), and "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45)

The first stage begins with the truth that God never makes us his slaves. The purpose of the gospel is to restore for us the relationship of sons and daughters to a loving Father. "But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out. 'Abba, Father.' So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir." (Galatians 4:4-7)

Think of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Helmut Thielicke calls it the Parable of the Waiting Father). Here Jesus describes the marked contrast between two different concepts of a person's relationship to God. The reason the father wanted his son back was not because he needed more workers in his family company. It was not because he was understaffed or short-handed, or because he had put such a big investment into bringing up this boy and wanted some return on his investment. He wanted his son. The son, however, couldn't understand that. He said, "...make me like one of your hired men" (Luke 15:19). The son thought the best he could hope for would be the position of an employee, and was probably expecting to talk about what kind of work he would do. The father was not interested in talking about what this boy would do for him. But he was very concerned about the fact that he had a lot of things he wanted to give him - a robe and a ring and shoes and a party. It is not always easy for us to believe that God really thinks like that. To believe that he doesn't care so much about what we do for him as he cares about us. The one you serve is the one who agreed that it was not right that there was not enough wine at the wedding in Cana. Knowing all that he did about the world and about what lay before him, he agreed that day that is was not good that they should run out of wine. God puts a high priority on healing our inability to enjoy, and he wants us to believe that he takes delight in our delight.

In coming out of a slave modality into a son-daughter modality the A-Type missionary is freed from achievement-based acceptance. This person learns to say, "I can relax and enjoy because I don't have to prove anything." The B-Type missionary is released from the Messiah Complex and learns to say, "I can relax and enjoy because I'm not guilty if I'm not always helping people."I sometimes ask Christian workers who are getting close to burnout, "Can you believe God is as happy seeing you and your wife go out for a supper date as he is seeing you lead a Bible study?" The doubtful smiles this question evokes makes it pretty clear how a lot of us think.

This adjustment in thinking may require a certain amount of courage in financial management. I recall when our family returned to Taiwan after my wife and I finished graduate school. There has probably never been a time in our lives when we felt so poor. At the beginning of each month we would divide our money into envelopes according to our budget. Our tithe went into the first envelope. Money for food, clothing, etc., went into the others. But no matter how poor we were, we always put a little money into an envelope for recreation - a family outing, a dinner date for the parents, or something. I called it our mental health budget, and I believe God thought it was very important.

The next step in the process is to get back into the slave modality without losing the son-daughter modality. I call this the Slave II Modality. Again our model is Jesus, "...who, though he was in the form of God...emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (slave)" (Philippians 2:6-7). For Paul, likewise, the title, "servant (slave) of Jesus Christ" signified a glorious identity and gave him great joy. This identity, however, seems to be a blessing that God does not give. Apparently, we have to do it ourselves. The Bible does not say that God makes us slaves. He makes us sons and daughters (John), heirs (Romans and Galatians), rulers, kings, and priests (Ephesians, 1 Peter, Revelation). But Paul says, "I have made myself a slave." (1 Corinthians 9:19) If we would have this blessed identity, we must give the gift of ourselves freely to God (Romans 12:1). I think this point is extremely important. If we are slaves to God unwillingly, because we feel this is God's demand, something he has imposed or exacted, there will never be joy in our lives - only complaining (maybe repressed), resentment, and bitterness. But willing slavery brings joy and peace.

It took me some years to realize that this was the root of a spirit of complaining and resentment in myself that I could not seem to get rid of. The signs were disturbingly similar to some of the symptoms of burnout described by Oswald. I noticed in myself a kind of cynical dwelling on ways I thought my mission had treated me and my family poorly over the years. This grumbling spirit was clearly wrong because I knew that God had blessed us and more than taken care of our every need through all those years. But it kept coming back. Each time I thought I had dealt with it and finished it, after a time it would pop out and surprise me again. The beginning of a breakthrough for me came when I identified it as the sin of covetousness. But a much bigger breakthrough came when I saw the tremendous freedom that could be mine in choosing to be a servant of Jesus Christ - to be a son of God who chooses joyfully to be a slave.

There is a mystery here. One of the old collects of the Anglican liturgy begins with this adoration: "O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom..." (Book of Common Prayer, p. 17). Real freedom is rooted in the right kind of slavery. And the paradox is that this kind of slavery is also a kind of ultimate medicine for burnout. It frees us to be unimportant, to not have any special recognition or position. It also frees us to not have to be a success.

Success or failure is not the problem of the slave. It is the master's problem. Slaves just do the best they can. And they have to rest and be healthy, too.

In the Slave II Modality we begin to see that it is better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all - as long as we are doing it with Jesus. C. S. Lewis in one of his essays talks about the difference between Norse mythology and Greek mythology. In Norse mythology the gods don t win in the end. When history comes to its conclusion, Father Odin and the gods will finally be overcome by the forces of darkness and chaos, and every Scandinavian knew that was the way it was going to end. But the noble ones believed it would be better to go down with Father Odin than to survive with the forces of chaos. This is like what Thomas ~who was not so much a doubter, I think, as just a pessimist by disposition) said, when the disciples told Jesus if he went to Jerusalem he would be killed: 'Let us also go, that we may die with him. (John 11:16) What the ancient Norse people did not know, of course, was that when Jesus would come we would see that on the other side of the darkness, chaos, and death, is resurrection.

What is important for us missionaries is that in being both a child of God and a slave of God we are identifying with Jesus. We are free "to be abased, and...to abound.' (Philippians 4:12).

We can enjoy without guilt, and we can serve without drivenness or compulsion, and without a need for achievement or recognition. Identifying with Jesus in both his sonship and servanthood, we receive infinite renewals, healing and strength.

REFERENCES

Book of Common Prayer. New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1945.

Luther, Martin. The freedom of a Christian, 1520. In Martin Luther: Selections from his writings, edited by John Dillenberger. New York: Anchor Books, 1961.

Oswald, Roy M. Clergy burnout: a survival kit for church professionals. Ministers Life resources, 1982.

Sehnert, Keith W. Stress/unstress. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981.

Tubesing, Nancy L., and Tubesing, Donald A. Structured exercises in stress management, Volume 2. Duluth: Whole Person Press, 1984.

Dr. Wendell Friest is a member of the pastoral staff of Truth Lutheran Church in Taipei and teaches at China Evangelical Seminary and Holy Light Theological College. This article is adapted from workshops given at the OMF Field Conference in April 1991.

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Originally published in the April 1992 edition of Taiwan Mission

Copyright 1996, Taiwan Mission Quarterly is produced and maintained by Taiwan Missionary Fellowship. Those desiring to reprint articles from Taiwan Mission should write to the editorial committee requesting permission and due acknowledgment should be given.

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