292 | Burnout, Wilderness, and the Way Forward: A Conversation with Scott Savage

Burnout isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a quiet epidemic. Across every industry, leaders are exhausted, teams are stretched thin, and emotional resilience is wearing down. And it’s not just happening out there. It’s happening to us—in boardrooms, church offices, classrooms, and Zoom calls.

That’s why we’re revisiting one of our most timely and needed conversations: Scott Savage’s raw and hope-filled journey through burnout, wilderness seasons, and the rhythms that restore us.

Scott, a pastor and writer, shares what really happens when a leader hits the wall—and how to recover with grace, intention, and new resolve. If you’re feeling the pressure (or know someone who is), this episode is essential listening.

💥 Why this episode matters now:

New research shows:

• Burnout is now one of the top three reasons employees leave organizations (Gallup, 2024).
• Emotional exhaustion is contagious—leaders who aren’t well unintentionally wear out their teams.
• Leaders who build in recovery rhythms like sabbaticals lead more engaged, resilient, and loyal teams.

🎧 What you'll take away:

• What burnout really feels like—and why it often creeps in slowly
• How to reframe a “wilderness season” from something to escape into something that transforms
• The leadership power of sabbaticals and sustainable rhythms
• How to lead yourself so you can lead others well
• Practical ways to build a culture that prioritizes health, not just hustle

👀 Don’t miss this if you’re a leader who:

• Feels like you’re running on fumes
• Is navigating team disengagement or high turnover
• Wants to build a healthier, more sustainable leadership culture
• Is ready to lead from wholeness, not hustle

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1. Review us on Apple podcasts 
2. Subscribe - we’re available wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Transcript

Hey, leaders, welcome to the Lead Culture podcast. We're a part of the Art of Leadership Network. I'm your host, Jenny Catron, CEO of the 4Sight Group. We're a company dedicated to helping leaders develop thriving teams. Each week, I'll be your guide as we explore practical strategies to equip you with the tools you need to lead with clarity, confidence, and build on stoppable momentum in your organization. My mission is to be your trusted coach, empowering you to master the art of self-leadership so you'll learn to lead yourself well so you can lead others better. Each week we take a deep dive on a leadership or a culture topic. You'll hear stories from amazing guests and leaders like you who are committed to leading well.

So let's dive in and keep learning on this leadership journey together. Friends, today I'm joined by a long time friend, Scott Savage. Scott is pastor of Cornerstone Church in Prescott, Arizona. He is a writer who has worked with publications like Our Daily Bread, Relevant Magazine, U-Versions Bible app, Moody Radio, Air One. So he's done a lot of really thoughtful writing, especially around the topic of leadership.

Scott loves sharing about navigating wilderness seasons, forgiveness, our identity in Christ, and experiencing health in environments and workplaces. And today we dive into some pretty kind of intense topics of sorts. Scott's perspective is really helpful, really thoughtful, and very honest and vulnerable about a season of burnout that he went through. And he coaches us as leaders on if maybe we've been in burnout or feel like we might be close to burnout, gives some really thoughtful insight around that. We talk about wilderness seasons and just the discomfort of being in a season that you really didn't choose, just kind of found yourself in, really helpful there. And then he digs into healthy rhythms, especially for you and your team, for you as a leader, and then for your team. He talks about the importance of sabbaticals and gives us a little insight there and also has a really helpful tool for you around creating a sabbatical policy for your team. So here's my conversation with Scott Savage.

Jenni Catron (02:49.425)
Scott, this feels like a long overdue conversation. You and I get to connect a ton on social media. We've known each other. I don't know, we've met in person though. Have we met in person? We have not. We've not met in person. I just missed you. had just left Crosspoint when I visited for the first time in 2015. And then I was actually in Wisconsin where you live last year. That's right. you Nashville. gave you grief about it. Yeah. We were like, we just crossed paths. So eventually it will happen in person.

My team harasses me all the time. They say, you tell us that these people are your friends, but are they really your friends? And so I tend to use the term friend, I guess, too liberally, but I, I think it applies. think it applies. It's one of those, you know, we we've connected and known each other for, for many years now. I go.

I can't even remember for sure if we've met in person because, you know, social media makes our world so small and video interaction makes it just possible to, you know, to feel like we've actually met. But you're right. I, we, we, we still got to make that happen. We do still got to make it happen. Well, I'm excited to connect with you. You and I share a lot of similar passions on all things leadership and healthy teams and all of that. But I'd love for you to tell more about your leadership journey and maybe by

even starting out with what did early leadership look like for you? What kind of seats were you in early on in leadership? Give us a little bit of your backstory. Yeah. So I, in terms of my ministry experience, I got involved in a campus ministry at Grand Canyon University, which you've probably heard of from internet ads. GCU is a lot bigger than it was when I was there, but I got involved in a campus ministry and just got a seat at the table to start dreaming about how we could create environments for

college students to worship. This was right at the beginning of the passion movement. And so we had a city-wide worship gathering. We were coordinating. And so I got to kind of begin to cut my teeth there and got opportunities to begin to teach from there. And then I went on staff for 10 years at a large legacy church in Phoenix and started as the college pastor. Kind of came in after there had been a moral failure by the predecessor.

Jenni Catron (05:01.424)
And then from there, just got tons of experience, a lot of it, learning frankly, what not to do and models who, you know, I was frustrated by, but people began to coach me, hey, you can learn as much from good models as you can bad models. And so I just got a great opportunity to get lots of experience. I gave 250 sermons that a server got deleted and all those sermons are gone. They're no longer on iTunes, but I am so happy because they were terrible sermons.

And so I got a chance to cut my teeth when it came to preaching and when it came to leadership, being invited to sit at tables that I didn't belong at because of my title, but I had a relationship and I had trust. And so I was invited to speak into things. And so that journey from college pastor to teaching pastor at that church over 10 years was both beautiful in the experience that I got and the growth and development I had from 21 to 31.

It was really difficult because we were a church in decline and there was an unhealthy culture where passive aggressiveness was the primary method of communication, where there was a lack of accountability, where there was tons of responsibility, but no authority. where, you know, our church people, I love a lot of those people that I serve, but there was a really a freedom to criticize the staff. so I've, I've never gotten emails and phone calls like I got.

there after making decisions or preaching. So work through a lot of stuff in therapy and counseling to forgive and grieve. But I really feel like I got a gift in that experience to kind of get an education that went far beyond what I got in college and seminary. Yeah, wow. Well, and like that being your first experience, it's fascinating that you stayed in church ministry work. It is really amazing.

I'm the son of a very determined, loyal man. My dad was the pastor of the same church for over 41 years. He just stepped away in January. My grandfather worked until he was 91. He got a silver star in World War II. In the Battle of the Bulge, he defended his machine gun turret for 36 hours by himself against the Nazis. So there's a part of Savage Men that we are just loyal. live up to the name. Yeah, we are hard headed.

Jenni Catron (07:21.88)
We endure, but, as I look back, I've got a lot of friends who are no longer in this, who went through similar experiences. I'm not better than them. I'm not stronger than them for some reason. I'm still here. I'm still kind of trying to figure that out. But I'm just grateful for God's grace that at times he protected me at times. He healed me at times. He sustained me. And there's a lot of people who I could list if I was winning an Oscar right now for helping me.

just stay in the game, not even get some sort of win or some trophy, just stay in the game. Yeah. Yeah. What was pastoring always a part of the plan for you? Like, was that a, was that a dream? No, no, no, no. When I was a, so my dad was a pastor when I was a kid. Um, I got into middle school, people started seeing things. They started speaking into me. Hey, we see this in you. We could see you doing this.

And then when I was 14 years old, my dad had a stalker. This woman called our house every day, three times a day for 18 months. She would sit in her Buick and watch us walk across the parking lot to our car. She got the church director, he sent a letter to the whole church describing her and my dad's sexual liaisons at the church. I mean, she made our life miserable. And so when I was 15 and a freshman in high school, my youth leader asked me, hey Scott,

Do you think you want to be a pastor like your dad? I could totally see it. And I looked at Karen and I said, Karen, it'll be a cold day in hell when I'm a pastor, because I would never want to put my family through what we've lived through the last 18 months. Right. And so and so that was kind of where I was at at a freshman high school and over a period of four to five years, slowly, you know, my heart began to melt. The hardness began to soften and I began to be open. And it was near my freshman year of college.

that I finally came to the conclusion that I really felt called into vocational ministry. don't know that was gonna be. I figured out later that it was, know, pastoring and then now lead pastoring, but it was quite a journey. And I definitely have seen both as a kid and as a young adult, you know, the challenges and the dark sides of the church. I have my own church stories. And so I think the only way that I'm here after living through all of that is that God is real. He called me.

Jenni Catron (09:38.702)
He's given me grace and until my calling experience to go away from this is as strong as what got me into this. I'm just going to try to keep pressing forward one day at a time. Yeah. Good for you. Wow. What a crazy story. And yeah, like as a teenager going, there's no way I want to do this. Right. Like there's no way. Fascinating. So remind me, how long have you been in the lead pastor role at Cornerstone?

Eight years. Eight years. Eight years. Okay. What is sustaining you? Like when I'm talking to really leaders of all kinds, but particularly ministry leaders, you know, there's lots of burnout, you know, the rates of burnout, mental health, all of those things are kind of off the charts in lots of leadership circles, but we're particularly seeing in data around pastors. So what's sustaining you? Like, what are you doing to stay healthy as a leader?

Well, I went through burnout in 2012. I think I was 28 at the time. So I took a lot of experience from that, you know, low moment that now I've tried to continue to apply to how I lead. I, that point, back in 2012, I was a first time dad. had a newborn at home. We were in the middle of a long transition. Our pastor had announced his retirement, but he was going to keep pastoring through the search and it ended up taking close to two years.

for us to find a new lead pastor. And so everything kind of felt like it was on stasis and pause mode. We weren't gonna make any changes. meant we weren't gonna make any progress. And so we were starting to see decline. And as a young leader, I didn't have a whole lot of patience for that. So I just, I found myself overwhelmed and overworking, not taking care of myself, not sleeping, not exercising, not eating healthy, drinking too much caffeine.

lots of things that if, you know, I was kind of on the outside of somebody else looking in, kind of pointed out all the flaws, but when you're in the middle of it, you can't see it. And so I took away from that, you know, a lot of, a lot of changes in habits and a lot of things that I try to pay attention to, but, at its core, that burnout experience showed me that, that I intellectually believed that God loved me.

Jenni Catron (11:52.868)
But pragmatically, I think I was still operating from a way of trying to earn that love. And so I took a day away and then when that burnout kind of hit its worst moment. And on that first day away, I went back and read Brandon Manning's book, The Ragamuffin Gospel. And in that book, he talks about this moment. If you could sit across the table like you and I are right now and Jesus was sitting on other side of the table and he knew everything about me.

You know, good and the bad, my successes, my failures, my public sins and my private sins. He knew everything. He said, what would you feel? And the words that came to mind were shame, unworthiness, disappointment, despair, know, guilt, all these things, condemnation. And, and what Manning wrote in that book, he said, you would feel completely loved. And that idea.

just began a revolution in my heart that I feel like I'm still experiencing today, where I began to realize that God not only loved me, but he liked me, that he knew everything about me and he accepted me. And so I didn't have to operate in terms of my preaching or my writing or my leadership to earn something from somebody, the one who could give me it, I'd already give me it. And I couldn't get any more of it than I already had right then. So for me, was...

It's twofold staying in it is, is coming back to that identity as the beloved of Christ. that no matter how many people show up on Sunday, whether the budget goes up or down, we build a new campus, we hire more staff. get more likes or followers. I publish a book or don't publish a book. Like I've already got what I'm going to get from God in spades. Right. I'm not going to get any more of it. And then on the other side, I now have kind of a dashboard that I can look at when it comes to, okay, how am I sleeping?

Am I actually off on my days off? When am I exercising? When's the last time I took time off? Do I have my work email on my phone? Are my kids having to say, hey dad, can you put your phone down? Am I present with the people that I love? Do I have hobbies? Who's the last friend I hung out with that I wasn't calling a friend, but really we were discussing church business. We were just hanging out. Like those for me are the things that I now look at.

Jenni Catron (14:11.374)
Yeah. Kind of give me a sense of where I'm at and remind me that one day I won't be the lead pastor of Cornerstone Church and I want to be a healthy whole person then who's not losing his sense of self when a season of ministry ends. Yeah, that's so powerful. That's so powerful. How long did it take you to get back to a healthy place after burnout? What was that? What was that journey like?

well, part of what helped was we were leading a ministry and I realized I was burned out. We had a meeting. We were kind of, around like a U shaped table. The team was and trying to navigate a really big decision. And there was kind of two different points of view in the room. And it kind of often happens leaders. You'll know this moment. Everybody looks to you like, you're the leader. What are we going to do? Where are we going to go? What decision are you going to make? What do you think? And everybody looked at me at a certain point in the meeting. And I said, guys, I've got nothing.

I don't know what we should do. I don't have any vision. I'm exhausted and I just kind of trailed off. And there was a woman in the group who saw the burnout in me and she just said, hey, time out. We're pausing this meeting. Come Scott, come sit in this chair right here. And she sat me in the chair and everybody laid hands on me and I just cried. I felt like I'd failed as a leader.

And we ended up making the decision that we were gonna shutter that ministry. And it was a brutal decision. We ended up having to rewrite our will because of how some relationships changed in the aftermath of that. But what that did is it created the longest period I had nine months in my ministry career where I didn't preach. And so it was close to a year before I felt like I was fully back.

That first nine months was me kind of stepping away from what had become a burden in terms of preaching and allowed me to then begin to regain some healthy rhythms. My counselor is often to remind me that the healing has to go as deep as the wound and the rest has to go as deep as the exhaustion. the hard part is that we get exhausted so much faster than we rest.

Jenni Catron (16:29.497)
and we feel so much slower than we get hurt. And so a lot of us get impatient with the process. Not only do people go to you, hey, shouldn't you be over that by now? Like, I thought you're past that. It's been a long time, but we tend to get impatient with the process. And what happens is the hurt is way down at the bottom and the healing only goes halfway. Well, then we end up carrying unresolved pain with us.

We're really exhausted and the rest only goes part way. So we end up continuing to operate from exhaustion. And so it took a long time longer than I thought. But but I was able to come through it and enter into what was a great season the next few years of ministry. Wow. Wow. Wow. Thanks for sharing that. think so many leaders. If they've not been in a season of burnout, have probably maybe feel like they're there or close to their

And I think there's something a little terrifying about the idea of the healing taking that long. And I think, but I think it's important for us to hear you seem like a pretty ambitious person to me and cheaper in nature, kind of like I am. Right. And so how did you get comfortable with the not doing like in your case, you weren't preaching for nine months. And, again, our identities get so wrapped up in what we do, which I think is part of what leads to burnout sometimes.

How would you coach a leader that is like, am I in burnout? Am I about to be in burnout? How do I, how do I get comfortable with the patients required for healing? Uh, even if, you know, I'll let you kind of pick that up from there. Yeah. I mean, so I think that burnout happens kind of like bankruptcy slowly and then all at once. Yeah. And so often what happens is that you're, kind of moving towards it, but you don't realize it.

or maybe you're in denial about it. And then it happens then very quickly. And that's what often happens as leaders. If we're not in burnout, someone comes to us and they're in burnout. And it's like, Hey, like I didn't see this coming. Or like, this seems to be very sudden. Like if you're using the word burner, that's a pretty big thing. You've probably been building towards it for a while. And so I think if you're not attentive to the warning signs or you've been resisting dealing with it because it brings up some stuff that you just can't face or accept,

Jenni Catron (18:54.565)
the, the challenge is, that, you know, it, it's tough at a certain point to stop it from tipping over. I would encourage you to pay attention to your relationship with God. When you open scripture, are you, are you ever opening it without an agenda? are you only opening it for some sort of purpose for me in that season? I wasn't opening the Bible for me. I was only opening it to write sermons, to prepare devotions, to do things for others. And I had stopped feeding is stopped feeding me.

I'd encourage you to take time thinking about your health, your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual health. The one job you cannot delegate to somebody else is your health. And if you don't take care of you and you're not healthy, you can't serve anybody else. are you getting sleep? How much caffeine are you drinking? Do you have an exercise habit to get your body moving?

And then, and then taking account of things that move into mental and emotional health, what's your stress level? Like how much anxiety are you kind of living with a regular basis? When's the last time you had a panic attack? Um, you know, like paying attention to those things that weren't part of the vernacular when I burned out in 2012, certainly are part of the world we live in today. I pay attention to those things that can, can help you kind of see pre burnout. If you are in burnout though, I think what you have to realize is that your choices are limited in this moment.

Not everything is available to you that was available before. And so now that you're here, the decisions that you make are really limited. Do you want to have a future in this? Is that what you need to do? I have a friend, we were sitting having lunch earlier today. He went through burnout several years ago as a pastor and he ended up changing careers. He's still very much involved in ministry, but it looks very different for him. And he just realized it needed to change.

So you may not have every option in front of you when you're in burnout the way that you do before, but you may need to make a choice there. And I would say certainly when you're, if you're all the way in burnout, you should not be making these choices alone. What burnout does is it twists our ability to perceive reality. If you had perceived that you were headed towards burnout,

Jenni Catron (21:08.537)
you probably would not have ended up in burn-out. And so you need to, you want to do all you can to not make big choices, but sometimes you have to. And if you do bring in wise counselors, people who can see what you can't see, because those decisions you make in that season are really going to change the trajectory of your life. And so, but I do believe that God uses people on the other side of burnout. Burnout is not the end of your, of your usefulness and your purpose. But.

but it's gonna take a while to recover from what you've been through to be able to put you in position to continue to serve and help others. That's really helpful. That's really wise Scott and just the encouragement there. You also talk a lot about wilderness seasons. So speak to that. What does that look like? What's distinction between being in burnout and maybe like what a wilderness season has looked like for you?

Yeah. So I, I define wilderness as a place or a set of circumstances. So it's either somewhere you are or something you're in the middle of experiencing, that challenge us, that test us and stretch us often as the results of an event that we didn't choose. So most people that we see in scripture and most people that I know personally, they didn't wake up one morning and said, Hey, I want to go through the wilderness.

Yeah. It kind of shows up the way that a conflict or a crisis does in your favorite epic movie. mean, Bilbo famously says in the, and Frodo says, you know, like this thing didn't choose me. I wish this ring hadn't come to me. And that's how a lot of us feel about wilderness. didn't choose it. It of came upon us and now we're being tested and challenged and stretched in ways that we never thought possible. But

But throughout the scriptures, the wilderness was the place where people experienced God's presence, God's power, God's preparation for the future, and the intimacy and the connection that I think all of us want. Last year, the best book that I read was Arthur Brooks book, From Strength to Strength. And in that book, he talks about some research that was done that on average a person goes through a crisis every 18 months.

Jenni Catron (23:32.953)
On average, most people go through five or six major life crisis moments. And I think a lot of our crisis moments are wilderness experiences. They strip away the things that we had relied on previously. They take away the props and the crutches that we'd been leaning on and they stretch us and challenge us in ways that we would have never chosen for ourselves. At the same time, when people tell you the story of their life, like I did earlier with my dad's stalker,

they tell stories like that because it's those stories and those moments that shape us and mold us into the people that we are. And it's inexplicable to tell who we are and what we're about without those stories. And so I think wilderness is often a gift that God gives us, but it shows up in a package that we didn't expect. And in the same way that on Easter morning, you're looking underneath the tree and you're seeing the presence, I'm excited for that one, but.

That one over there is wrapped in cartoons from the newspaper. I'm not sure I really want that. It doesn't look very good. We often reject wilderness when it comes in our lives, only to discover later that it was the answer to our prayers. We've been praying, God, I want to feel your presence. God, I want to live a life of purpose. God, I want to feel you closer to me. Okay. So what if that happens in the middle of a place or a circumstance like wilderness?

What happens if that shows up in a circumstance that on a surface you would never choose, but yet that was the period, that was the moment that you look back on that you had the best sense of your relationship with God. so I think burnout can be a wilderness, but wilderness can also show up in seasons when we're not burned out and yet God draws us into the wilderness or some sort of larger purpose or work in our hearts.

What coaching would you give to people for? Almost embracing the wilderness, I remember a wilderness season for me. And I probably have some journal entries about this because I was like. That that achiever, ambitious side of me was like, God, what do need to learn? What are you trying to teach me? Basically trying to find my the quickest route out of the wilderness. kept discovering was that it was like.

Jenni Catron (25:52.009)
No, actually, I need you to just be comfortable being here for a bit. But I, in my nature, kept just trying to find what do I need to do to get out of here? Like, how do I get out of here the fastest? What's the fastest route out of this place? And so it was like it was stretching. I've been in a few different ones, but this one in particular was just hard. And I remember just having arguments with God about just wanting to, you know, find the quickest way out. And that was not

That was not the path he had me on. So how do you coach leaders in those wilderness seasons? Well, I think that the first thing that I would say is I can relate to this. wrote a devotion plan for YouVirgin last year called Get Me Out of the Wilderness, because that was my language when I was in the middle of it. I think what I have found reading through the scriptures and all the different instances of people who ended up in the wilderness, all of us have to go through that phase where we're kicking and screaming.

when we're trying to escape. But the wilderness changes when you shift your question. When your question shifts from God, what can I do to get out of here? And when you shift from that question to this question, God, what do you want me to get out of here? Everything changes. That's good. And that second question is a question of surrender. It's a question of unclenching your fist and openness. And I would just say wilderness is going to be terrible for you.

if your fists are clenched and you're closed off and you're fighting against God. Because if you're fighting against God, you are not going to win. My wife is a judge. I tell my kids, if you're arguing with your mom, you're gonna lose, because she is trained professionally to win arguments. So if you're fighting against God, like you're gonna lose that battle. But you can shift when you move from cynicism, God, what do I have to do to get out of here?

to curiosity, God, what do you want me to get out of here? Where are you here? And you start looking for God and you open up to what you can learn. The wilderness can shift from being a punishment in your eyes to being a platform or a launching pad into your future. Moses would never have been able to do what he did in Egypt if he hadn't gone to the wilderness first. Elijah would never have been able to prepare Elisha who did twice as many miracles as he did.

Jenni Catron (28:13.579)
if he hadn't been through the wilderness first. Jesus could not have done his three years of ministry with the confidence in God and his word if he had not been immediately sent to the wilderness right after he came out of the waters of baptism. so wilderness on the surface is terrible. It's painful. It's brutal. We would not ever wish it on our worst enemies. What you went through, in that story, you would never wish that on another leader.

But you would not be the leader you are today without that season with what God deposited in you and who you became. And if you're a leader who's seeking not to be served, but to serve, if you feel like your life has purpose and there's calling and there's mission for you, then a huge part of that is going to be who you are as a person and who you're becoming. And as far as I see in scripture, God uses that wilderness place, the place you woke up and never planned to be.

He uses it to transform you into the kind of person who can do the work he's calling you to do. That's really good. That's really good. So helpful, Scott. I want to ask you about sabbaticals and other healthy rhythms, because that is something I've seen you do and model. And, you know, you have a high commitment to those rhythms of health for you and your team. So tell us a little bit about what that's looked like and

how you are really helping keep, you know, just healthy rhythms, especially for yourself and your staff. Yeah, I I was on staff at a church from 21 to 31 where you got a sabbatical if you quit or if you retired, that was basically it. so I came to the church where I'm the lead pastor of, and they already had a sabbatical policy in place. And there were different lengths of sabbaticals available based upon your role and your leadership kind of load.

but I came into an environment that it was obvious cared about the health of the leadership. I came into it and it's part of what drew me here is I could tell it was a healthy place. And so we have a policy every six years that pastors qualify for a sabbatical. And what has been awesome to see is it's not only been a way to invest in the health of our staff team.

Jenni Catron (30:31.085)
But it's also been a cool way to invest in the volunteer team because each person who's gone on sabbatical and I think we're going to raise send our fifth person on sabbatical during my time here. What I've seen is in each instance, when you give away your responsibilities to go on sabbatical, you don't take them all back. And so what you find is people who had potential and capacity that you didn't see, and it raises their leadership up.

It gives everybody the impression because clearly for that time period, we're operating without that person. So the ministry is no longer going to rise and fall in any one person. And I think it allows a more healthy view of leadership that shows that, I can't always be on and I need to attend to my own soul. And so I strongly encourage every church, every organization. know businesses that have sabbatical policies for varying levels of leaders.

You can't always pay your people what your competitors can and certainly on the other side of the great resignation, we're seeing this with our church that we're getting outbid for great talent. You can create a healthy culture where you care not only about the work they're doing, but the person they are. We've sent every single one of our staff to counseling in the last two years and paid a portion of that as a church. You can give your team a sabbatical

where not only you're giving them that time to rest, but also investing in the healing and the reparative and rehabilitative work they're doing while they're away. And you can create a culture where there's boundaries, where people are actually off and they're not bothered while they're off, where they have, you know, not disturb on their phone and they don't need to answer the call because they're not afraid of what you're going to say if you don't answer. And so you can do those things to help people do what you can.

to avoid them being in burnout and create an environment that supports them, you know, and their own emotional health. And that's where I think in an environment where it is, if you're not attentive, you're going to burn out because we live at a pace that's unsustainable and our devices operate in a different way, in a different speed than our heart does. But also because we're going to go through wilderness seasons, the best way to prepare for one, and I would say you're either in one

Jenni Catron (32:51.309)
You're headed into one or you're probably coming out of one. The best place to be is a place of spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical health, because that season is going to stretch and challenge you. And so you can't control where the comes, but you can to some degree have agency over how you show up and how your team shows up. And so I really believe that our job as leaders is to serve and care for our teams, to shepherd them.

And sabbaticals for me are one of many ways that we can do that well. Yeah, that's so powerful. And I love what you said there about, you know, even in the preparation for sabbatical, there's a releasing, right? You're having to give responsibilities away and that behavior in and of itself. I mean, I've had, I've talked with leaders who didn't want to take a sabbatical because they didn't want to release things, right? And it was like, okay.

Caution flag because we're putting probably too much identity, finding too much significance in what we do and we're then unintentionally not developing people and we're not releasing things so that we can keep growing. And so there's like just even that little nugget, not to even mention the just mental and spiritual and emotional health that comes from taking a break, like truly taking a break and you know,

so many leaders that I talked to and myself included, just even the rhythm of Sabbath is hard, know, like keeping that rhythm. And like you said, all of our devices and our tools work against us. And so I feel like now we have to fight even more deliberately for the appropriate boundaries and creating work cultures. One of the things I'm noticing right now, and you and I mentioned this in some...

email conversation before we did the podcast, but even the hybrid work dynamics are creating, nobody knows how to do their work life boundaries anymore because it's all so integrated. And so as leaders, we've got to help set some boundaries, set some parameters, reset the expectations because people are just assuming they need to be on all the time. So unless we're helping shape that,

Jenni Catron (35:09.0)
it's what's leading to the sense of overwhelm that could also lead to the burnout and so forth. And so I just love what you're modeling as a leader saying, building those healthy rhythms, sabbatical being a really key one, but you rattled off a bunch of other things that sounds like you guys do in your culture to help set healthy rhythms as an organization. I think that's so powerful. We have a core value called pursuing health together. And we wrote it this way because you're never going to be perfectly healthy.

The sight of heaven, no individual, much less a collection of individuals is going to be healthy. That's target we're pursuing. We're never going to achieve it, but if we're not intentional about it, we're going to get nowhere close. And so we talk about that this is important that in a world where people are trusting pastors less and less and less, when people are becoming more and more anxious to walk into new churches because of experiences in past churches,

where every week it seems like there's a new story of a new toxic leader or a new church that's doing something terrible, going viral, that actually being healthy leaders, having healthy teams, building healthy cultures, being a healthy church, that just in and of itself before you preach any message, have any branding, that in and of itself is apologetic. In some ways it's the best marketing in the world.

Not that you're trying to manipulate people through marketing, but you're just being healthy. That by itself is attractive. And so we have had a number of years where as a church, we've been a healing place for people who've been hurt in our community. But that should also be true for our team. That's right. be true for our leaders that they get the freedom to be people who get hurt and who need healing in the same way that people in our community get hurt and they come here to discover healing.

And so I would just encourage people that your people, if you're the leader, whatever level it is, whether you're a children's director, a college pastor, a small group leader, a lead pastor, your people are not going to listen to what you do. They're going to repeat, well, that's not what you say. They're going to repeat what you do. You will who you are as a leader and as a discipler. And so if you have no boundaries, if you're always checking email, if you're sending stuff off,

Jenni Catron (37:29.868)
on the weekends or late at night, your team doesn't need a memo from you to know what's expected. They're just going to watch what you do. But if, if, when, if, when they're on vacation and they call you and you answer the phone and you say, Hey, is this my employee who's on vacation right now? Or if you see them come through the security camera on a day off and you text him and say, Hey, what are you doing at the office today? You don't have to like make them like slap them on the hand, but you can positive reinforce, Hey,

It's okay to take a day off. For me, I took my email off my phone for a vacation nine years ago. I've never added it back on. I don't trust myself. It's not that I'm stronger. I'm weak. I'm terrible at saying no. And so I just, I can't stand the temptation. And so I just don't have it so that I can take my phone on vacation with me. I took my phone on sabbatical because I don't make any work calls beyond our staff and our board.

from my cell phone, it all goes through a different number. And so I just think you have to build those boundaries in and at times look weird if your people are gonna catch that vision and they're gonna begin to mimic the way you live so that you can actually do this for the long haul and lead people to taste and see that the Lord is good and experience his love, you're gonna have to go first. And especially if your culture has not been that or you haven't been that as a leader.

and you're gonna have to shift. And the same way we said healing and rest is longer than it takes. As you know, Jenny, and you preach this really loudly, culture shifts. Yeah. They take longer than they should, but the work is absolutely worth it. Yeah, gosh, Scott, that's so good. I feel like we could just go on to part two.

But I have to wrap us for today. That is so helpful. Thank you for your perspective on, I appreciate your honesty around the burnout piece and just being able to speak into leaders from that perspective. The wilderness stuff is so powerful in that we all find ourselves there. And just being honest about that as a leader and learning what we need to, how do you put it? God, what do you want me to get out of here?

Jenni Catron (39:44.104)
out of this experience, what's in it for me in this moment is so helpful. And then finally, just these rhythms, and we just kind of scratched the surface on it, but really helpful to hear your perspective on how you're leading yourself and leading your team in rhythms that are just restorative and sustainable.

That's the big piece. So I know you have a resource for everybody. I'd love to give you an opportunity to share that as well as just tell us how can we connect more with you? Yeah, I'd love to be able to invest in your team, your organization, your church, your leadership and help you build a healthier culture. I've put together a free resource to be able to help you begin to lay out a sabbatical policy and a couple other of the rhythms that I've talked about in this episode. You can go to scot-savage-live.com slash lead culture.

So that's scotsavagelive.com slash lead culture. And you'll be able to see a place where you can get a copy of that. I would love to be able to share some lessons we've learned the hard way to a little bit of what Chris Brown calls the dumb tax for you. And you can learn from our mistakes. Also, if you're in the middle of the wilderness and you're like, Hey, I need some help. If you go on the U version Bible app, just search for, me out of the wilderness. My plan is there.

And it's been awesome to be able to be a voice in people's wilderness experiences. I've got the scars from mine. Hopefully I can save you from some of the scars that I got. And I hope that you find God in the middle of that place you never planned to be. And you find that He's as good to you as He has been to me. Scott, that's so powerful. Thank you so much for investing in us today, coaching us as leaders.

Super valuable and we are just grateful for your voice and your influence. Thanks for having me, Dejani. I appreciate it. All right, friends. I know you were probably scribbling notes as quickly as I was in this episode. Just so many good nuggets. I really kind of wanted to keep Scott on and just keep digging into some of those healthy rhythms that he's established with his team. So I encourage you go check out that resource he gave you at scotsavagelive.com slash lead culture.

Jenni Catron (41:57.356)
And check that out, the U version, a resource he referenced about wilderness. Another great resource. We'll make sure that's in the show notes. But let me know what you thought of this week's episode. What was helpful? Could we do better? Let us know. Connect with me on Instagram or Facebook at GetForesight or at JennyKatrin. Love to connect with you both on the Foresight account and my account. And then I would love it if you would share it with a friend, share it with another leader, talk about it as a team.

and leave that review for me. Guys, it is so helpful when you leave a review, when you give us those five stars, letting us know that we're doing good work that's helping you lead well, helping you lead culture. And if you're looking for even more leadership resources to help you and your team thrive, be sure to sign up for our free weekly Insights newsletter at getforsight.com. That's G-E-T, the number four.

SIGHT.com, you'll get a weekly email from me with articles on leadership, culture, just keeping you in the know on the things that we are learning from and how we're growing as a team here at Foresight as well. So thanks for listening today. Keep leading well, and we'll see you next week.