The Empathy Burnout: When Caring Too Much Becomes Your Ministry Kryptonite

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades addresses the challenge of empathy burnout among church staff. He emphasizes the importance of establishing boundaries to protect emotional well-being while maintaining the ability to care for others effectively. Rhoades provides practical advice on managing emotional absorption and stresses the significance of redirecting burdens to a higher power through prayer. • Empathy can turn into a weakness if not managed properly. • Overemphasis on emotional availability can lead to burnout. • Empathy without boundaries can create emotional codependency. • Practical steps include naming emotional states and having decompression routines. • Prayer can help shift burdens and provide sustainable compassion. • It's crucial to maintain personal emotional health for effective ministry.

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Transcript

When Empathy Becomes A Burden

Welcome And Newsletter Invite

The Crisis Pileup After Sunday

Empathy Without Boundaries Hurts

Ministry Culture Rewards Overavailability

Guardrails For Sustainable Compassion

Practical Steps To Release The Load

A 30-Second Prayer Practice

Protect Your Tank And Stay Healthy

Connect With Todd And Closing

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Church staff members with deep empathy often find their greatest strength becoming their silent weakness. And we're going to talk about how to recognize empathy burnout and protect your ability to care without burning out on today's episode of the podcast. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over chemistry staffing, and you are listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Before we get started today, I mentioned this yesterday, but I have a brand new website I'd love to have you check out. It's a daily email newsletter called ChurchleadershipRadar.com. Churchleadershipradar.com. Just pop in your first name and your email address, and I will send you a really concise email every morning, probably before you're out of bed, that will have some of the top news stories going on in the church world, but also some great resources that I've found that I think would be really helpful to you to be a well-informed and a really healthy church staff member. A lot of things that we can't talk about here on the podcast. So I'd love for you to check it out. It's absolutely free. You can unsubscribe at any time. Churchleadershipradar.com. All right, enough of the promo here today. Let's go ahead and get started with today's podcast. You started by spending 20 minutes after the service on Sunday listening to somebody else's marriage problems right after the service, they came up, said Pastor, hey, and they just start sharing, right? And then on the way home from church, maybe even interrupted your Sunday afternoon nap, you get a text on your phone about a family in crisis. Your phone buzzed three more times on that evening. Every person, seems like each person, every person needs you, like really needs you. Everybody has a crisis, and you're their go-to guy, you're their go-to gal. And you find yourself in this really horrible predicament because you can't you can't say no because that's who you are, and that's what your position is. You've set yourself up, or your church has set yourself up, is you're the one person that people come to when everything just seems to fall apart. And it seems like the old was it, Morton Salt commercial. Hey, when it rains, it pours. It seems that when it rains, it pours. When one person has a crisis, everybody has a crisis, and they're all calling you at the same time. Everyone calls you when their life falls apart. But here's what nobody talks about. Okay, you might feel like this is your superpower, and you might actually take pride in that you're the person that a lot of people come to to talk to. But that superpower could slowly be killing you. Because empathy without boundaries is not ministry, it's a slow motion breakdown. Alright, let's dig down a little bit deeper in this. Because here's the thing about naturally empathetic people. And if you're in the pastor, if you're on a church staff, hopefully you have a good part, one of your one of your better skills, or one of your better personality traits. Hopefully God wired you to be somewhat empathetic. Although I've met some pastors who are anything but empathetic. But I want to share with you what I think something about empathetic people that really it's a plus, but it's also can be a minus. Okay, you feel this is the definition of empathy, right? This is the plus. You feel what others feel, and you feel what others feel really deeply. It's not just it's not just sympathy, it's like emotional absorption, right? Somebody walks into your office carrying anxiety, and you leave carrying anxiety. They dump their depression on you, and you find that honestly, you're a little bit depressed for the rest of the day. You thought this was just being a good pastor, but it turns out it might slowly just be draining your tank. And the church culture doesn't help. We've created a ministry culture in most churches that rewards emotional availability, that rewards this kind of empathy in our pastor, in our pastoral leadership, 24-7. And the pastor who says no to a crisis call, that's not a good thing. The worship leader who isn't there or isn't available for a struggling volunteer, that's not a good thing. And youth pastors often carry the teenager's problems home, and we call it having a pastor's heart, and it is, okay? It is, but what if it's actually emotional codependency disguised as ministry? Ouch. Never thought of it that way, have we? You start to believe that caring less means that you're less spiritual, and so you keep going, you keep absorbing, you keep caring, you keep giving until one day you realize that you're just empty. And you're not even sure what happened. Listen, empathy isn't the problem. Your empathy without protection is the problem. I've seen people bottom out, people that are very empathetic, and they listen and they give and they listen and they give until all of a sudden they just don't have anything left to give. Your empathy isn't the problem. Your empathy without protection is. Healthy empathy, I'm here to tell you today, and maybe you need to hear this. Healthy empathy has guardrails. You can care deeply without carrying everything. You can be present without being totally consumed. Jesus felt compassion for the crowds, but he also withdrew to pray. And he didn't heal every single person in the city. He loved people enough to say no sometimes. And that's not lacking compassion. That's sustainable compassion. That's sustainable empathy. Your job, Pastor, your job, church staff member, is not to fix everybody's problem. It's not to fix everybody's pain. Your job is to point them toward the one who can. So that's all fine and good, Todd. Thanks so much for that wonderful advice. But you're not living my life, and you don't have people texting you and calling you and needing your ear. What does this look like practically? Let me give you some things that I think might help. Start by naming your emotional state after difficult conversations. Okay. Just do a self-assessment after you have that really hard conversation and say, I'm feeling heavy because I absorb their grief, or I'm anxious because I took on their worry. And then create just a simple decompression routine between meetings. 30 seconds just to breathe and release what isn't yours to carry. Because you can't. While you can be empathetic and you can give great advice and great spirit spiritual and biblical wisdom, you don't have to carry all of their burden. You just can't. So I want you to learn this phrase. I can see this is really hard for you. Let's pray about it together. Because prayer can shift the burden from your shoulders to God's. They don't need to look to you for all the answers. And a lot of times that's what they're doing. That's where the burden and the heaviness comes because they're placing, Pastor Todd, this is what I'm going through. What do I do? You need to shift that prayer because you honestly don't have all the answers. Matter of fact, some of the advice I've given over the years was probably not that great advice. And a better advice would be hey, let's pray through this together. Prayer will shift the burden from your shoulders to God. And that's not deflecting, that's redirecting to the absolute right source. So here's your bottom line for today. Your empathy absolutely is not something to run away from. Your empathy is a gift to the church, but it's not supposed to destroy you in the process. All right, this week I'd love for you to try something. After every pastoral conversation, after every kind of dump that somebody calls you or texts you or comes in your office and just dumps something really heavy that they're going through. I'd love to for you to just take 30 seconds after the conversation and say, God, I release to you right now what isn't mine to carry. And that'll do a couple things. First of all, it'll help you to release those things. Second of all, it'll help you to notice what you've been absorbing that was never meant for you. Your emotional tank is not bottomless. Protect it like the ministry resource that it is. Your heart for people is exactly what your church needs. And your church needs you healthy, not burned out. So take care of that gift. Hope this has been helpful for you here today. If there's any way that I can help you, maybe you just want to have a conversation about empathy and how burned out you are. I'd love to have that conversation with you. I would love it. I would love to connect with you in any way. You can reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistry staffing.com. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I'm going to mention it every day this week. Check out the new website, churchleadershipradar.com. Just pop your first name, your email address in there, and I will send you uh more than what you get in this podcast. I'm going to send you some new resources every day. These are fresh resources that are just 24, 48 hours old. Any kind of new news that you need to know that's going on in the church world will be in there as well. Always include something that I forget what I call it, but it's something good that's happened, a positive news story, a church that's really impacting their community or making a difference. I like to share the good, the good things that are happening in the kingdom as well, and you'll get that every day. Church LeadershipWadar.com. All right, that's it for today. Hope you'll join me again right here tomorrow on the Healthy Church death.