We put time on everything. We put it on, newspapers, on checks. We even have it, like, on our computer down in the bottom. There's this little time and date, why? But we just. We're paranoid about, about time. And and part of that is just the busyness of, of our lives. Somebody said that the United States is the only country in the world that has a mountain named Mount Rushmore, because we're always we're always rushing somewhere.
Well, Merle Burkholder, it's a privilege to have you back on The Anabaptist Perspectives podcast. a little about yourself. You've been in ministry for 45 or so years. You've served in church leadership. You've done a fair amount of teaching and traveling around in missions, things like that. There is a particularly poignant and relevant topic we want to jump in today. And that's the topic of overload and burnout.
And I'm guessing you've had quite a bit of experience with this in all those years of ministry and seen it in a lot of different environments. feels like the more I look, the more I see this in our people. People being overloaded or too busy or. Yeah, or burning out completely. So as we think of that topic, well, let's just jump right into it and start with what is burnout? Let's get some definitions out there.
Yeah, burnout is kind of a state of like emotional and physical exhaustion that just comes from poorly managed stress in life and in the workplace, primarily. But, yeah, it gets at the point where you just have no energy and feel totally depleted and everything becomes a crisis. yeah. So a statement I've heard quite a bit. I'm sure we all have, but, is, this, to quote, it's better to burn out than to rust out. analyze this. Is that a true statement? Well, either way, you're out.
So whether you burn out or rust out, and the goal is to stay in and to be the living, be living life in a way that's sustainable. And to recognize on one hand, this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. And I need to pace myself so that I can be, so my life is sustainable, and what I'm doing is sustainable for the long haul. But on the second, on the other hand, it is a it is a race. And I need to get engaged and I, I'm not and I'm not a spectator. I'm not sitting on the sidelines.
so I need to get involved, but I need to be it needs to be sustainable. Well, so I just wonder then why do we say statements like that? Because it seems, why what's the word just disingenuous or not well articulated or well thought out to, to say that because it feels, oh it's better to burn out than rust out. That's putting a lot of pressure on people, is it not? it's it justifies our busyness and, and, and the pace of our lives. And so it's an excuse To be overly busy.
And part of the problem is that we live in a society where busyness is. valued, and there's a lot of social pressure to be busy. And you think about it, when we meet someone, we’ll often say, so, how's things going? And or, you know, have things been really busy and, oh yeah. It's crazy. You wouldn't believe how busy it is. And, and and I don't know when the last time was that I asked somebody, so have you been busy? And they're like, no, I'm not. Not really. That's it. That is a good point.
I don't know if that's ever happened to me, actually. And so there's this pressure to well, I need to at least appear to be busy. And so even if life is manageable, we still feel pressure to say, oh, yeah, it's just busy. we're really busy. And, and so that that, thing of, well, I'd rather burn out then rust out is kind of a justification for that. For that busyness. And, and then we accept responsibilities and we accept things because we feel like, well, we ought to be busy.
And it's it's the right thing to be really busy. And if I'm not busy, maybe that's not good. And, and so there's this pressure to be to be busy. And we live in a fast paced society where, we don't we don't do rest very well.
and we don't even maybe know how to we maybe don't even know how to rest, because we're just we're so time pressured and so time conscious, and our culture is like, everything is time based, and and we're paranoid about being somewhere without when we don't know what time it is. Like everything that moves by the clock and it's, it's, We put time on everything. We put it on, newspapers, on checks. We even have it, like, on our computer down in the bottom. There's this little time and date, why?
But we just. We're paranoid about About time. And and part of that is just the busyness of, of our lives. Somebody said that the United States is the only country in the world that has a mountain named Mount Rushmore, because we're always we're always rushing somewhere. That's pretty good. I've never heard that one before. Yeah, I'm gonna have to write that down. That's pretty good.
So, can we get into a little of that of of just why, like this performance, this pressure emphasis and then how how does that intersect with the topic at hand, which is overload and burnout. and, you know, I'll kind of let you take this where you will. This is a big topic. So it's kind of hard to know where do we even break into this. Well, there is some value in pressure and.
and a certain amount of pressure can increase performance. And and some people are really, I mean, they, they almost need pressure to function. They so, so some pressure is good and, and our goal isn't to totally remove stress and pressure from our lives, but it's to keep it at a sustainable, level. And not everybody has the same tolerance for pressure.
And, and as we look at people that just seem like they get so much done, they're just always doing something and they're amazing, and but maybe that's not me, and maybe it's okay. I don't have to be living life at the pace of the most energetic person I know. I, I need to know what's sustainable for me and what I can do. And and have a pace that that is sustainable for, for me in, in my life.
And one of the things that I found helpful for me is, we often think about the different things commitments we have in life, like we have our commitment to God, we have our family, we have our work or our ministry. And then there's other things in life and we say, well, God is most important. And then number two is my family. And number three is work. And but then work seems to take up so much more time than maybe some of the other things. And, and so how does that all work.
And, and I think the way I like to think about it is not so much, a list of a one, two, three list, but a pie graph. And my life, I have slices of my life for different things, and I have the slice. Or I'm working on my relationship with God and I'm fellowshipping with him. I have the slice for my family. I have a slice for ministry, and I may have different ministries that I'm involved with, and each one of them has a a slice and when I'm in that slice, that is my number one priority.
And I want to be fully present in that slice. Because one of the things that happens is we have three or 4 or 5 things going on in different areas of our life, and we're in this moment, but we're thinking we have these wheels turning about 3 or 4 other things. And so we're only half of our attention is here, and our energy is being drained by these other things that we know we need to do, or that we something's gonna have to be done about.
We can't do anything about it right now, but some of our mental energy and emotional energy is going into those things, rather than being fully present in the moment where we are. And there's a great little, pamphlet by Charles Hummel called The Tyranny of the urgent, and he talks about how Jesus, you never get this, you never get the feeling that Jesus was in a hurry like he doesn't. You don't.
We don't read about him telling the disciples, come on, pick up the pace here a little bit, like we are going to get to Bethlehem or whatever. Like it's just, no they're walking around and and then he'd have these interruptions and people would say, like the blind man's calling to him and saying, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. And he's on his way to, from Jericho to Jerusalem and. and yet he he he pauses in that moment, and that blind man gets his full attention just just for a bit.
But he's fully present right there in that moment. And then he goes on to what else he's been doing. And I just think, and at the end of Jesus life, he said to the father, I finished the work that you gave me to do. There were still lots of blind people. There were still lots of people that hadn't didn't believe that he was the Messiah. But somehow he had the confidence that I've finished the work that you gave me to do. And being able to discern, what is it that God wants me to do?
Because not every opportunity is a call. there are things that need to be done, but someone else needs to do it. And to recognize I could do it. But being discerning, is this something that God wants me to do? And and that's a challenge too, because today we have so many opportunities and there's so many things that need to be done. But just sensing that these are the things that I am responsible, these are the responsibilities I've accepted.
And when I'm in that moment, to be fully present there and engage in that, let the other things go for now and, and just be fully present right here in this moment. so let's let's jump into a bit more on the definitions then of overload and and burnout. Could you describe maybe a bit of the difference between those two. How do we see this in ourselves if we know. Oh okay. I'm getting close here to to overloading myself or to burning out. yeah. Give us some specifics there.
Well, having too many commitments and having said yes to too many things and recognizing I'm not doing well with some of my commitments, I'm not I'm not really following through. And I forget things. I disappoint people, I tend to be an optimistic person. So when somebody says to me, could you do this? I'm like, oh, yeah, sure, I'll do that. and then I have so many other things going, I forget about it. And they're expecting me to do that.
And then two weeks later, a month later, I find out that, yeah, I forgot that. And and when those things start to happen, like, there was a time where I realized that I was doing that too much and I had to, start saying, you know, I, I need to stop saying yes.
I can't do everything that I think I can and I need to be, and I need to start keeping track of the commitments I have and things that I told people I'll do that I need to write those down, because otherwise I'm going to forget them and I'm going to disappoint people and and then I'm going to be frustrated myself because I, I have these things that I committed to do. And so part of it is just recognizing the commitments I have and, and, knowing when I have enough.
And because when I say yes to something, I'm saying no to something else. And so recognizing that, here's an opportunity. But if I say yes, I'll do that, that means where is that going to come in my whole pie graph of my responsibilities, do I have room for another slice? And if I put another slice in there, it has to come from one of the existing slices. So where is it going to come from?
And what am I going to do less of if I'm if I'm going to be able to do this and sometimes what often happens is we respond to the urgent things, rather the important things. And then the things that are really important are the one. That's where the, the, the time for the urgent comes from. So then it's our time with God. It's our time with our family, it's sleep. And and then we get our relationships suffer. We're not drawing strength from Christ, and we're lacking sleep and things start.
Then things just start to look pretty bleak and pretty dark because our relationships aren't healthy. We're tired and I don't know about you, but for me, I need about eight hours of sleep to be a functional person. And if I start operating on about six hours of sleep, I lose my sense of humor. And I'm not a very nice person to be around. And so I just need I need sleep and and we have to recognize that.
But if I make too many commitments and I start cutting out sleep, or I start cutting out my relationship with God, then I run out of energy and and then everything starts to suffer. And I can't do anything well. So let's say we're in this situation and too much pressure schedules two full. We've overcommitted. We've said yes too many times. What are some initial steps in dealing with burnout and overload.
Well, the first thing is to recognize where I am and that, I am, I'm in trouble and where I'm at, it's not sustainable. I'm not going to be able to keep doing this. something has to change. And, and what's going to change? And then to begin to to do some cleanup and look at, okay, there're commitments. I made that I'm not going to be able to fulfill. And so looking at can some of those be passed off to other people. Is there delegation I can do. Are there people that I can ask?
to pick up some of these responsibilities? are there people that could help? are there some things and just in an orderly way, getting out of some of the commitments that I've made and and being able to say to people, I said I would do this, I have a commitment to do this. But, in all reality, I won't be able to do it, long term. And I need something has to change.
And so we begin to take steps to either get help or step out of some responsibilities or, how can I how can I develop myself so that I can do these things? What are things that I like? What resources do I need? What would help me, to be able to to make this sustainable? How can I do that? Because it's kind of like, if you're in financial trouble, if you're spending more money than what you're earning, you have two options. You can cut your spending or you can increase your income.
And the same is true with meeting our commitments. We can either increase our income, our resources, what's coming into our lives so we have more to give, or we can cut out our commitments. And, one of the things that I found was that, the more responsibility I had in leadership, the more I needed time with, with God.
So as I got more responsibility in leadership, I needed to have, a regular extended time of prayer, like a day of prayer so that I was spending like eight hours with God and just kind of worship and, and, and rest and, and extended going through my prayer lists and all of and one of the things that I would do would be to, create a worry list. And you think, well I don't need a worry list, but but, you know, the problem is that there's things that. Okay, so you're driving.
I'm driving somewhere, I'm taking a shower, and then I think about, I need to do this. I need to do that. All these things. But I can't do anything about it right then, because I might not even be able to make a note of it because I'm driving, I'm showering, and. But it's there, and it's it's taking energy. And so when I would create a worry list, I'd get down all the things that I worry about, all the things that I think about.
And then I'd go through the worry list and I think, okay, what do I need? Is there something I need to do? Is there something I can do? There's something I should do about this, and if it is, then I put that on a to do list. If it was something that I can't do anything about, it would go on a prayer list. And so then I'd come out of that with here's my to do list, here's my prayer list.
Another thing I would do is I'd put my schedule before the Lord and say, what thoughts do you have on the next month of my life? And are there things that need to be put on my schedule? Are there things that should be taken off? And that really helped me just to get grounded and to get a sense of direction for.
And so maybe it's getting more more resources and getting more being more intentional and finding ways of getting more direction from God on what he thinks about my schedule, my commitments, and some of that can help us then to be, to be able to function and make it more sustainable. and one of the things you, you mentioned there hinted at. That resonates with me is this sense of, I created this situation. So like, if.
If I have a lot of overload in my life, acknowledging or taking ownership of that and saying I. I mean, I did say yes to all these things and this is kind of my fault. It feels like that's a pretty important first step, because until you acknowledge that, I'm guessing it'd be easy to just say, well, this is everybody else's fault. Who's giving me all this stuff to do and I can't keep up. Is that a is that a reasonable assessment there? it is. Yeah.
And recognizing that, yeah, I'm responsible for this. And I accepted those responsibilities. And especially in, you know, an organization, people tend to push they want to push things up because they don't want to be responsible for the decisions they'll tend to get. If they can get you to sign off on it, then it's like, well, you know, Reagan said, this is what we should do. And to resist that, that pressure and say, well, you decide like it doesn't. I don't think it matters that much.
You make a decision and and so then you don't have to you can keep things. You can push things down to where decisions are made at, at as low a level as possible. And that can really help to take the pressure off of, someone in leadership. So if we're in this situation what's the recovery looking like. You've already mentioned a couple things like growing to be able to actually try and remember the terminology you used.
But basically expanding the capacity that's an option or this sense of pruning cutting things back. Give us some more things on on either of those or other points on recovery, getting out of this slump of, say, burnout or overload. well, it's knowing your limits. And, knowing what you can do and what, what you can't do and, and setting healthy boundaries, being able to say, no, I'm not going.
This is, this is how many trips I'm going to do in a year, in a month, or, and putting limits on setting some boundaries on commitments that that we make. And I'm not going to take an assignment that takes a week of my time, because I just don't have that week to, to give. And so having some boundaries and then accountability for, for our schedules and, having other people that.
Know what we're committing to and maybe having, especially if we're struggling to have some people that we say, I'm not going to accept any new commitments unless that person or these people agree that I can do that. because people that are overloaded, people that are, often people that are overloaded or experienced burnout is they tend to be repeat offenders. So you can clean up and then you just kind of slide back in.
Three years later, five years later, you're back to the same, the same scenario where you just overcommitted again. and so having somebody to help to keep that from happening and where and it's, it can be, it can be frustrating and relieving to have somebody else sign off on your commitments. Because first of all, when somebody brings a request, you can say, well, I have to talk to my spouse. I have to talk to my board. I have to talk to our church leadership team or whatever.
And, and and that takes the pressure off of, the moment making the decision in the moment, because you can put it off. And maybe after you think about it for a week, it doesn't seem as as, desirable or as urgent as it did in the moment. And and also, if the people you have helping you make decisions, say, no, you can go back and say, well, no, I, my team doesn't think I should do that or Whatever it takes the personal part out of it.
It can also be frustrating because there are things you really want to do that people think, no, you shouldn't do that. And you feel restricted because you really would like to do that. But but other people recognize, no, you you can't. and there's, there's also someone told me one time, there's, there's the principle of the distant elephant. So like when an elephant is way across the savannah, it doesn't look very big or very intimidating.
But when an elephant gets within a car's length of you, the ground is shaking and it and it looks really dangerous. And we can make a commitment to something that's two years down the road and say, oh, yeah, I'll do that. And yeah, two years I can do that, or even next year. But then when it's like next week, all of a sudden it's like, why did I say I would do that? I, I don't like I'm not I don't have time to do that. I don't I'm not ready. And and it becomes really stressful.
And so just sometimes pausing and thinking, how am I going to feel about this the week before I'm supposed to do it? It can be really helpful. And Think of it as that elephant's not two years down the road, so to speak. It's pretend it's right. Yeah that's really good. yeah, I wrote that down. That's a good one. Distant elephant.
Yeah. But having, people around us that know us well understand our schedules and can be very honest with us and say, I, don't think you should take all this on or, hey, your schedules looking a little full. Wow, that seems like some real wisdom there. But also, I'm guessing that's going to be really hard for a lot of people to have that level of accountability. Yeah. and some of that is just a result of being optimistic.
And, know, an optimistic person can easily just over commit to thinking, well, I can do. Sure. And they think, you know, or we think as optimistic people, we think we can do a lot more than we actually can. And or we hope we can, and then we get overcommitted and, and just recognizing that, just recognizing that about myself and saying I am an optimistic person, I think I can do more than I can. And that's true.
That and recognizing that that's true can help me to say, yeah, in my mind I think I can, but actually, I, I probably shouldn't, or actually, maybe I can't and I'm going to I'm going to disappoint others and, and disappoint actually be disappointed myself. So one of the things you talk about, is this Elijah model. in part of this process of recovery. Tell us what that is. Well, I think about Elijah. He had this great victory.
And and I think that Elijah really thought that, okay, the prophets of Baal are all gone and and he has this thing with Ahab. The people decided to follow God. So he's going to be like a counselor to the king, and and everything's going to be great. And then the opposite happens. And his life is threatened. And he, he had this great, thing that he did that took a lot of energy. And it was, was, a very intense experience. And then he runs away and.
he ends up sleeping under a tree and wishing he who could die and and and God sent an angel. And and at that point, God didn't ask him. What are you doing here? The the angel was like, here, this. Yeah. The journey's too great for you. Here's something to eat. Sleep.
comes back and and, then he goes on and he goes way down in the southern part of Sinai and goes in a cave and and, there he’s in, in isolation and, and, you know, sometimes we just need to we need that withdrawal and we need to just step back from everything, and we just need to sleep and eat and and rest and, and I find especially after really intense experiences and I find like if I do an international trip and I'm in a place where things are really in chaos and it's just really is
may even be dangerous, but it's just people are in abject poverty and there's just it's I mean, it's just, you can't hardly comprehend what life is like for those people, and, and you feel drawn to what's happening there and then and I come home Like, how do I even process that? And I just need time to to think and time to rest and and sleep and, and and kind of allow myself to think over what I, what I’ve experienced and process that.
and so that period of time is important before I engage with my normal life and the issues that I face, every day in, in my normal routine. But that period of, resting in and reflection is, is healthy and in getting ready now I'm ready to go and I can engage with the things that I, I normally face when I'm, when I'm at home. But then God came to Elijah in the cave, and kind of his question then to Elijah is, what are you doing here? there's a time to come out of that.
And if we stay there, if we just say, okay, I'm done, I'm I'm withdrawing. And, God doesn't want us to stay there. And he he calls Elijah out and he say, well, I'm going to give you Elisha as a helper. And and here's some things you should do. And you're not alone. There's still 7000 people that haven't, bowed the knee to Baal. And so, no, you're not the only one. You're what you're thinking, isn't really quite right. And God calls us out. Get get reengaged, get going.
But just that, that sequence of, sleeping and and eating and retreating and talking about what's the reality is and then getting some help and and going on. there's that it it seems to me, taking that recovery phase, I guess you could call it a or recovery period, this is going to be really hard if our lives are so busy and schedules just too full, you won't even have a block in the schedule to take that time.
But then there's the like you're saying the other side where Elijah has he does have to eventually leave that cave and go back in. So it's like you have this time of recovery and then a time of returning to the task. Is that a proper way of thinking about it? Yeah. And I think what happens is, so if I'm on a trip and people are needing things from me, I can say, well, I'm getting home Friday evening, Friday night or Saturday morning. I will, I'll take care of that. I'll do that.
Well, then I get home, and now I have this list of things that I promised people I would do that evening or the next morning, and I don't feel like it. okay. I just, I need a, I need a so I can say, well, I'm getting home Friday night. Monday morning I will I'll do that. People can wait two days. It's not most things aren't going to... If they can wait till Friday they can wait till Monday. Probably.
And so just creating that space, being intentional about creating a day or two where I can, go through the whole thing of, of, recovery and then getting myself ready to, okay, now I'm ready to come out of the cave and, and engage with life again. So with that recovery process and getting ourselves back on our feet, as it were, I think you have a list of practical things. You know, some keys that we can utilize and and implement into our lives. Do you want to tell us what those are?
Yeah. first of all, we need sleep. And like we talked about already, we need to know what how much sleep we need to be functional and for life to be sustainable. So we do need sleep, and we can't cut out, too much sleep. Secondly, we need Sabbath rest. we can't go seven days a week. You just can't be on duty 24/7. It just doesn't doesn't work. And so we need those days of of rest.
I knew, a contractor that, he was an excavator and and one time he, we had ordered a load of gravel, and he brought a load of gravel on Sunday morning, and I was like, I said to him the next week, I said, listen, I wasn't expecting you to bring that gravel on Sunday. Like, what about your your, what about your weekend, and your day of rest. He said, Oh, in the summertime? I don't, he said I it's one day in seven, but I save them up.
I work seven days a week over summer, and then I take a week off After it starts snowing. And then those are my Sabbaths. it doesn't work that way. Like, that's not sustainable. Like it? It really is. We need regular, consistent. This is a day when I'm just I'm off duty and I'm really I really am at rest. and that can be hard for a person who is working and then as a church leader. And so Sunday is a day when you're engaging with people at church and you're speaking or you have responsibilities.
So to find where is that? Where is that day of of rest and where is the day that I can really disconnect from my responsibilities and have that, have that time of, of rest. And so that's important. And then we need friends. we need people that we just enjoy being with socially and, there's no, there's no work responsibilities. They're not depending on us for anything. It's just we enjoy being with them. And, it's really just a social, a social relationship, and and people that are, are with us.
And then we need inward renewal. We need to like my days of prayer that I had, time when I could just really get. in touch with what's really going on in my in my heart and get with God and, and just be renewed, spiritually, I read an account of a person that was experiencing burnout, and they went to their mentor and said, I just like, I got nothing. I'm, I'm dry. I'm I'm empty and the well's dry. I'm not getting anything out of the well.
And their mentor told them, no, the problem isn't the well is dry. The problem is your pipe is too short and you need to be digging deeper. Like where are you at? Where you're at in life now? What met your needs five years ago isn't enough now. You need to go deeper now because you have more responsibility you’re at a different stage of life.
And you need to draw from some deeper resources and so having that inward renewal where we're really tapping into what we need for the responsibilities and the place that we are in life. And then I think to be beware of celebrity. Like there are people that would like that think we're really great. And they put us, kind of put us up on a pedestal and, and, we need to resist putting ourselves up there and feeling like we really are somebody special.
because we're not as great as our fans think we are. And but neither are we as bad as our critics think we are. And the problem is, if we, believe the praise of our fans, then we also have to believe the criticism of our critics. And then we go from, you know, in wild, ups and downs because somebody compliments us and we're like, oh, yeah. And then somebody criticizes us and we're like, oh, I'm a failure. And and we go from 0 to 100 and then back down to zero.
And, and the truth is actually somewhere in between. We don't do everything wrong, but we don't do everything right either. And, That celebrity status is something that I think we just need to recognize. That's not really accurate. That's not really true. And so, yeah, maybe the way I live my life, I've met a lot of people, but that doesn't make me a special person. That's just I just met a lot of people.
And so it's like, there was man, that was the he was the, president of Moody Bible Institute, and he said that, one time his daughter asked him, dad are we famous? And he said, no, we're not famous. She said, well, we would be if more people knew us. So fame is just a matter of a lot of people? No, as it doesn't say anything about our character or, it doesn't make us a special person.
And then we need to remember that what we're doing, the sacrifices we're making, and the energy we're spending, it's worth it. It makes a difference. If it makes a difference for eternity, it's it's worth what we're doing. And so now it it may seem like it's taking a lot of energy and, but someday we're going to be grateful for the way we spent our lives and the things that we that we invested in.
So part of it is about perspective and having one eye on eternity and saying, someday I'm going to be glad that this was done. And I don't know that there's any way to avoid it, but I would hate to get into that great multitude before the throne from every tribe and language and nation and say, well, if I knew it was like this, I would have done things differently. I would have lived my life differently and probably will all have some of what we didn't know.
It was like this, but but still keeping one eye on eternity and saying it's worth the effort. It's it does make a difference. And I want to live my life in such a way that when my life is over, there are people who will be in that multitude before the throne, and there are people whose lives are better because of the way I chose to live my life. So it it will be worth it.
So when we look at those keys, we've talked about the definition of these things, how we get these points of burnout and overload, and then some of the practical ways of recovery, these, several practical keys you've just given us. Let's back it out a bit and say if we see someone else who's dealing with burnout or overload or. Yeah, is just overwhelmed, how can we help them? What are what are ways that we can pass this on to someone else?
Well, we look for the signs of people that, we may have responsibility for, people that report to us in an organization or people in our church that, have too many commitments that are complaining about being exhausted. that maybe aren't accomplishing their responsibilities, that things that are too many things are falling through the cracks, and they're not really getting the things done that, that they're, committed to doing. And then we just help people to recognize where they're at.
And, and before they get to the point where they become unable to function, we help them to pass off some responsibilities, find people who can help them, and, and help them to deal with with the situation that they find themselves in. And we can be also be involved in their level of commitments and, and guard them from people asking them to do things. And, and if you're talking about who's going to do things and there's a new responsibility, somebody needs to do something.
And you know that a person is close to to overload. You can and people suggest that, well, maybe we should ask them. You can say no, let's not ask them. Like I think they're I think they have enough already. And so we can redirect requests so that they're not faced with, a request to do things. And, we can help to, so we can shield them from, from those requests. And sometimes we can be the person who says no for them.
And, and and we can be that person that they use as the accountability person to to, process their, their requests and, and help them to discern if it's something they really should do or not. So this is you given us a lot to think about here. And as we bring this episode to a close. What's one thing you'd like to leave with our audience?
Well, I think, as I spent time in leadership in a nonprofit organization, I think one of the things that we did too much in the past is we would bring people in for a two year term of service, and we would kind of burn them out, use them up, send them back.
We'd bring in another person, we'd use them up and send them back and I really think that in charitable organizations, I think we're doing better, but I think we need to be thinking more about if this person comes and gives two years of their life in our organization, how can we help them to leave a better person and be strengthened and go out ready to serve in some other capacity or in some other place, rather than having them go back just kind of burned out and, and exhausted.
And so making the experience one of, of strengthening of building up and equipping for future service, even if person is only going to be with us for two years, how can we nurture them and, and help them to be the person that God wants them to be going forward? And I just think that practice of bring people in, burning them out and sending them home, I think we need to rethink that and and do it differently.
And then for ourselves, I think just, really being intentional about having a sustainable lifestyle and thinking about our commitments and being careful that we're not overcommitting, being honest with ourselves about what we can do and what we can't do. And and having God help us to discern what calls are, are, yeah.
What opportunities are really a call from him for things that that we that we should do and my the, one of my basic Premises in life is if that our default answer to God's call is yes, we're going to get to do some pretty amazing things. but on the other side of that is I can't say yes to everything that comes to me is not a call from God. And, so I can't say yes to everything, but God does use people who are willing and who say yes.
That goes back to some of the early things you were saying in the episode where if you've maxed the schedule out completely and there's no room, and you filled it with all these other things and then God comes and gives a call to you, maybe you miss it because you're too busy. You don't even see it. And we also have to realize that when I say yes to one thing, I'm saying no to something else. So it's like goes back to that whole pie graph of, where's that slice going to come from?
And so I'm saying no to something and is what I'm saying yes to really what God wants me to do rather than what I'm going to say No to That's a I think that's an excellent point to end on, just really evaluating. You know, everybody that’s listening to this. What are we saying yes to and what are the things we're saying no to. And when we say yes to something we say no to something else. That's a that's a really powerful point. Well, thank you for coming on and sharing today. You’re Welcome.
Thanks for listening to this episode with Merle Burkholder. If you'd like to learn more about the topic of burnout and overload, we did several episodes with Joel Yoder, a number of years ago, and you can find those in the description down below. As always, you can find all our content on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. And you can also sign up for our email newsletter there. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch you in the next episode. We put time on everything.
We put it on, newspapers, on checks. We even have it, like, on our computer down in the bottom. There's this little time and date, why? But we just. We're paranoid about About time. And and part of that is just the busyness of, of our lives. Somebody said that the United States is the only country in the world that has a mountain named Mount Rushmore, because we're always we're always rushing somewhere. And being able to discern, what is it that God wants me to do?
Because not every opportunity is a call. there are things that need to be done, but someone else needs to do it. And to recognize I could do it. But being discerning, is this something that God wants me to do? And and that's a challenge And we also have to realize that when I say yes to one thing, I'm saying no to something else. So it's like goes back to that whole pie graph of, where's that slice going to come from?
And so I'm saying no to something and is what I'm saying yes to really what God wants me to do rather than what I'm going to say No to We are all busy and seemingly getting busier all the time. Overload and burnout are a natural consequence of a lack of rest. How do we avoid burnout? And how can we see overload coming in the future and avoid it happening to begin with?