Worship Leader Burnout (3 Keys to Staying Healthy)

We’re always so focused on what God wants to do through us that sometimes

we don’t always pay attention to what God actually wants to do in us.

And I think these seasons of exhaustion, these are all really good opportunities

to seek the Lord and learn to be present to what he’s doing inside of you.

Welcome to the Worship Ministry Training podcast, a monthly podcast for

worship leaders who are serious about growing in their craft and calling.

My name is Alex, fellow worship leader.

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All right, let’s get into today’s episode.

Worship Leader, many of us struggle with resting well or not taking care

of ourselves spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and we can get into ruts and

routines and then eventually burn out and be running on fumes and running on empty.

And we do not want that for you.

And so in this episode, we’re going to be talking about the very important

topic of burnout and rest.

And so I have a good friend on that I will introduce you to in a second.

But I just want to encourage you, if you’re feeling tired,

this episode is very important and listen to the whole thing.

And if you know someone in ministry who’s feeling tired,

please send them this episode.

But with that, let me bring on my friend Josh, who I will tell you

about here in a second. Hello, Josh.

How are you doing? Hey, Alex.

I’m well. How are you?

Good, man. I’m glad you’re here.

So I’ll just introduce you, Josh, and then we’ll get into this topic of burnout.

So Josh runs a ministry called Like WISE Worship.

They run cohorts of groups of worship leaders all over

the United States, multiple states.

I’ll give you guys a link to where you can search to

see if there’s one in your state.

But those cohorts gather for fellowship, for encouragement, for training.

But really, the focus of Josh’s ministry is on the care piece, caring

for the worship leaders, spiritual well-being, their emotional well-being,

and really just supporting each other through this weird thing called ministry.

Josh, is there anything that I missed that you feel like you’d like to add?

No, I think you said pretty well.

We do things like annual restorative retreats, and we do a lot of one-on-one

coaching and discipleship with that.

Basically, our ministry exists just to be a support to worship leaders, to lead

long and to have fulfilling ministry.

We love just getting to build relationships with leaders.

I’m going to have you share your story in a bit here

because I want people to understand why you care about this so deeply.

But I think the bigger question that I have is, why are

worship leaders burning out?

Why are so many of us feeling drained, tired, exhausted, just running on fumes,

frazzled, anxiety, whatever?

What’s specifically about the worship leader role causes this?

Yeah, great question.

It’s funny because I feel like this is such a common feeling, and it’s

such a common issue for a lot of leaders.

It’s like you run into a leader who’s not feeling frazzled

sometimes, and you’re like, Oh, you caught off guard a little bit.

But to start with the practical, it’s work, right?

There’s a lot of moving parts for us who manage worship ministries.

You have your own leadership from the stage on Sunday you’re thinking about.

You have your leadership of your volunteer team.

That’s always on your brain.

And you’re essentially, you’re putting on an event every single week.

Let’s just name that, right?

And then in addition to that, I was just talking with a friend, and he made

this observation that a lot of worship leaders, they end up just becoming

people managers out of necessity.

There’s the admin part, the coordination of volunteers, staff, tech team.

So there’s a lot to the mental part of the role.

Then you have the emotional part of the role.

If you’re pastoring your team and members of the congregation,

you’re carrying a lot of what they carry.

That’s an honour and it’s a privilege, but I think that exists.

I think lots of people have this misconception of worship leaders

that we just show up on Sunday and we play our music, and then we head home

and drink coffee until next weekend.

But we also have, for Sundays, we have meetings and we have appointments.

There’s definitely a decent mental load there, even if our jobs don’t

take 50 60 hours a week to complete.

I think that exists.

But honestly, all of that’s really just surface.

I feel like when a worship leader is feeling drained or exhausted,

oftentimes it has to do more with what’s going on maybe underneath the hood

than what their ministry output is.

I think that’s really important for leaders to do that hard work

of exploring that because I think when a lot of us are feeling this way,

we might be blaming the wrong thing.

If we’re blaming the wrong thing, we’ll spend our energy

trying to fix the wrong thing.

Then we’ll end up getting frustrated and we don’t feel like we’re making

any progress or feel stuck.

If you’re listening and you’re like, Man, I’ve been feeling the same way for so

long, it’s possible that you’ve been focused on trying to remedy something

that’s not actually the problem.

To answer your original question, I think so many worst leaders

are feeling drained, exhausted, and burnout for a number of reasons.

Everybody has their own unique situations and stuff like that.

But I feel like the biggest issue is we aren’t always great

at identifying the source and the cause.

That’s part of what we love to do at Likewise, is we think that there’s three

generally broad areas where the seeds of burnout are planted and where they are

watered and they grow, and that is rest.

I think we’re all really familiar with that one.

But then there’s also trust, and there’s also discipleship.

If a leader is experiencing a lack of health in one or more of those areas

for any amount of time, I think they’ll start to feel that drain or exhaustion.

That’s really good.

You gave us a lot to think about and a lot of ways to fork this conversation.

I think one of the things I’d like to do, because you said, sometimes

we’re working on the wrong area.

We think I need more rest, but maybe we need more XYZ instead.

But before we really dig into exploring what those areas might be,

maybe you can help the listeners listening or watching do a self-diagnosis

on if they’re burning out.

What would you say are the symptoms or the signs

that worship leaders should look out for in their personal life to realise, wait,

something The pain is not right.

The gauge metre is getting down towards empty.

What are the symptoms?

I think, one, if you’re always exhausted and it’s not making sense to you,

you feel like you’re getting your seven to eight hours of sleep and you’re waking

up exhausted, I think that’s worth exploring And

there could be other reasons for that.

There could be health stuff going on, but it’s just worth paying attention to.

I always kept wanting to blame it on my season of life,

but the problem is I could blame it on my season of life forever just because

life’s busy and there’s things going So if you’re in a place right now where you’re

just like, I’m exhausted, or you keep telling yourself,

as soon as this busy season is over, then I’ll take care of myself.

I think that’s a sign or symptom that you’re close.

And then there’s also this feeling of being checked out.

You start to not get excited about the things you used to get excited about.

Ministry starts to lose its pzazz, I guess, for you.

Everything just starts to feel like another thing you have to go do.

That’s how I knew, personally, I was really close, was I would look at my week

and, okay, there was this meeting, there was this service, this rehearsal,

and they were all mountains I would have to climb.

As soon as I got to the top of them, I felt relief.

That was a huge sign for me.

I was no longer looking forward to the actual ministry.

I was looking to get on the other side of it.

Every meeting starts to annoy you.

Maybe even for you, eventually, if you’re looking at your Sundays and you’re not

really concerned with how they go, that might be a sign that you’re close.

Then the last one I’d mention is you start to get disconnected.

You feel disconnected connected from the Lord.

I’ve talked with a lot of leaders who, when they’re getting burnt

out and they start feeling this way about ministry, there’s almost

like this guilt that comes.

God, you’ve given me this amazing opportunity to serve you, but I just

don’t really enjoy doing it anymore. I’m not sure Why?

So that can create some perceived distance between you and the Lord.

Obviously, we know that he never leaves us, but you can sense that distance.

And then you get disconnected from your own heart in your emotions.

I think Kerry Neuhof says a lot about this part You don’t feel sad

when you’re supposed to feel sad.

Nothing’s getting you as excited as it should, things like that.

So I would mention those things.

If you’re feeling any of those things, it might be time for you just to try to

diagnose where those are coming from. Yeah.

Lack of joy, lack of enthusiasm.

The thing that you used to love doesn’t light you up anymore.

So hopefully, Worship Leader, if you’re listening, you’re not seeing those things

in your life, but maybe you are.

And that’s where the rest of this conversation is very important,

because we’re going to talk about how you can begin to address those.

So just briefly, Josh, tell your story of you were in ministry, worship

leader, and what happened?

How did you find yourself caring so deeply about caring for other worship leaders?

Yes, I started leading worship the day before I turned 13.

Then year after year, I just kept having opportunities.

And by the time I was 14, I was leading in probably six or seven services,

whether that was for youth or kids or whatever, a week.

And so that’s how the journey started.

Did that all the way up until College.

Then I got sent out to my first full-time job at the age of 20.

That’s when things started to get a little challenging for me because by that time,

I had been leading worship five, six times a weekend for about six years.

I’d been doing it a lot.

But then I got a few years into this role, and that’s when I found myself

standing at the precipice or on the edge of the cliff there of Ministry Burnout.

I was feeling a lot of the things that we just talked about, the signs

and symptoms, and I just didn’t want to do it anymore.

The thought of going and doing a job that wasn’t ministry started to become really

appealing to me for a number of reasons.

I ended up leaving that role after a few years on good terms, I had a great mentor

walk me through how to do that.

Then I spent about a year healing from that season.

I experienced a lot of hurt in that season, but I felt like

got to use that to restore me.

Then I’ve been either on church staff or doing likewise worship

in a full-time capacity ever since.

Yeah, well, I mean, six or seven times a week of worship leading would probably

burn anybody out, right?

It’s easy to get into a rut at that point.

Then you mentioned something interesting, the hurt piece.

I think a lot of what we confuse for burnout is bitterness.

But I do think it feeds into the emotional side of our health,

which then leads to burnout also. It’s like compounding.

It’s all these different factors.

What are some of the things you did to heal?

Because I think that will help the worship leaders listening

to know what they can do.

Not everybody is called to step away from their church, and I would encourage

you, worship leader, to not.

However, I think that it’s important for us to figure out what we can do to heal.

During that year where you were healing, what was that for you?

Yeah, that was a really important year of my life because I had to do a lot

of detaching identity-wise.

Because what I’d realised, and it took me to being removed from it all,

I built my around being a worst leader.

Leading on a college campus is an animal.

It’s interesting because so many people will see you, but you

don’t necessarily know the people.

That creates a weird relational dynamic.

But all of a sudden, people have this view of me.

I have this reputation And so I always was having to uphold it.

I realised, and this is one of my favourite

and least favourite stories to tell. We were in chapel.

I had dreamt up this transition.

We were going to stay in the same key.

We were going to switch time, Signatures.

And I thought it was going to be amazing.

And we did it three times in rehearsal in this arena,

and it was perfect every time.

And then we go to do it, and the MD is supposed to count us into 6, 8.

So one, two, three, four, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, six.

I hear one, two, crap.

We pause, we all break, but the vocals were weird, and it was a train wreck.

And I came off the stage, and I was so mad.

That was when the alarm bell started going off because I was

really angry that it didn’t go right.

That was when God started to pick me apart and show me, Man, as much as I believe

I’m doing this for you, there was a lot of my own identity and reputation that

was wrapped up in how people viewed me.

That continued on into this role.

That year of taking off, God just showed me your identity is

wrapped up in this thing, and that’s bad news because all it takes

is for you to have a hard Sunday, for you to not feel trusted in your

ministry role, for somebody to give you some criticism.

That’s all it takes.

Now, instead of you being able to process that in a healthy way,

your world’s falling apart.

God just showed me in that year all of this instability that I had built

because I had let myself get wrapped up in my role as a worship leader.

Yeah, the identity piece is huge.

It sounds like the identity mindset shift helps you go into ministry in a way

that doesn’t become a burden and doesn’t burn you out and doesn’t bear you down.

What is the mindset that we should carry into ministry that changes the whole

thing, that flips it on its head?

Yeah, I was processing this yesterday with the leader, and it’s going

to sound cliché, but you have to get back to and stay at your first love.

People say that all the time, but there’s the paradigm of coming into ministry

of saying, How could I make this great?

How How do I make my name great?

Versus, How do I wake up every day and ask these two questions, or at least

remind myself of this, that I exist actually for God and not for me?

Some of us think like, Okay, I become a Christian,

and so God then comes into my kingdom and makes it really good and makes my life

work, when in reality, I become a Christian and I enter

God’s Kingdom, and now I exist and serve his purposes.

That’s a big paradigm shift now because all of a sudden, the goal

of my ministry is his glory.

I think that’s where we all need to keep getting ourselves back to.

Culture pulls us out of that.

Culture tries to make this about me.

When I make it about me, I rise and fall based on how well I do.

Now, all of a sudden, Sundays are anxiety-inducing because I feel like

I have to uphold my reputation with the quality of the music every Sunday.

Fyi, that’s not sustainable for anybody.

That’s one paradigm shift of like, okay, I wake up today and I exist for

God’s glory and his purpose.

Boom.

The second one is just learning how to be content and be present.

I think this thought of waking up every day and reminding yourself,

I get to partner with the God of creation towards his end.

That’s incredible.

To be honest, most days of ministry, that’s not

a thought in my mind, but I think we think we’re bigger than we are sometimes.

Continuing to get us back to this place of feeling really small before this really

big God, that allows us to see all of the ministry

as a joy and a wonder and an opportunity that we don’t deserve to be thankful for,

but it also right-sizes our expectations of what needs to happen in the day,

to remember that this is God’s work, this isn’t my work.

I just get to partner with him.

So I think mindset-wise, those are two really big paradigm shifts

that we need to make of like, Hey, this actually doesn’t serve me.

This serves God.

And then coming with a thankful heart of even the opportunity

to serve the King of Kings who’s actually doing all of the work.

Yeah.

It really takes a load off to be like, This is not up to me.

This is not not the Alex show or the Josh show or the Phil and your…

It’s just like, I get to let go and chill out and just show up and

be available to the Lord.

And like, Lord, who can I love and serve today?

Yeah. You wake up every day.

You wake up every day.

And you say, God, thanks for the breath in my lungs today because that’s your doing.

And I’m going to give you my best.

And then I’m going to ray my head at the pillow and trust that you’re going

to cover all the bases and all the gaps.

And I’m going to wake up and do it again.

And then eventually we’ll to reach the end of days to where we’re together again.

But it sounds so simple.

But personally, I don’t spend enough days operating

out of that paradigm in ministry.

And because of that, I feel weight that I’m not supposed to feel.

Yeah.

And I think what you shared about the reputation and the identity piece,

that’s a huge deal because if you’re trying to prove yourself, then

you always have to look good, and you’re trying to get what you want

instead of just letting God do what he wants to do.

At my The last church I came in and I really wanted the ministry

to look like this or sound like this or be like this, or I had

all these grand ambitions and visions, and I wanted to squeeze it into my mould.

At my new church, after I’ve chilled out a little bit, at my new church,

I’m like, Whatever it’s going to be, it’s going to be.

Who’s here?

Can I bring all these different people together and build something beautiful

with them and let them speak into the vision?

If he has an idea and it’s not what I thought, that’s okay.

Who cares?

And genuinely, at the end of the day, who cares?

We’re going to collaborate and we’re going to have fun and we’re going to chill out.

That’s a very different mindset.

You’re right, it’s a lot lighter of a load to carry.

Yeah. Definitely.

Ashley says, Sometimes we just need to take a chill pill.

Thanks Yeah.

And by the way, if you guys are watching live, we’re going to be doing

a Q&A at the end, so make sure you save some questions for Josh and I.

Josh, talking about the mindset shift, when you see a leader who’s healthy

and who’s operating out of the right paradigm, what does their look like?

What does their day-to-day feel like?

Can you just describe it so that people have something to aim at?

When you do see a leader who’s healthy, what does that look like?

I think about the healthy leaders in my life.

A couple of things come to mind.

There’s this fresh dependents.

So they’re all faith-filled.

I think that’s the mark of a healthy leader because when I

was unhealthy, I didn’t operate in faith.

I felt like I had to control everything, mainly for the reasons we were just

talking about, because I had to make sure that I could curate my reputation

or image or the sound and the quality.

So there wasn’t a lot of faith in that.

The healthiest people I know are faith-filled, and they have

this fresh dependence on the Lord.

They’re able to wake up every day and say, Okay, God, what do you want to do?

I’m up for whatever, help me do it.

Then the healthiest leader, as I know are resilient.

They’re able to have that thick skin.

They don’t ignore anything, but they’re able to process, whether that’s criticism

or challenge or when things don’t go well, they’re able to actually

think through those types of things really well and in a helpful way.

And then adventure is a big thing.

The healthy people, when you’re leading out of the overflow,

you’re ready for adventure.

You view the day of God, what do you want to do?

Versus, what do I have to do to get through it?

That’s also a way different way to approach your day of ministries.

God, what do you want to do today and how can I just be a part of that?

Versus, okay, I got to get through these meetings and get through

this rehearsal, and then I can go do the things I actually want to do.

That’s a big difference.

Then the other thing, too, is when When you’re leading from an overflow, you

can tell in all of your relationships.

Not that they all go well, but your relationships

with other people are healthy.

That was one big thing I noticed when I was in an unhealthy place

was that I was on edge with a lot of people, and I just wanted to isolate.

I’m naturally introverted, so that’s not super abnormal for me, but to an extra

degree, I would lock myself in my apartment or whatever.

When your relationships are healthy, that is also a sign

that you’re leading out of an overflow.

You have time for people.

People don’t feel like another thing on your to-do list.

That’s a good way of saying that.

People don’t feel like another thing on your to-do list.

You actually just enjoy being with people.

Yeah, it sounds like a much lighter way to live.

I pray that we can all get there.

Early on in the conversation, you mentioned three seeds of burnout.

Can you talk about the three seeds?

Because you said sometimes we’re trying to fix the wrong area, and that’s not

the reason we’re burning out.

Yeah, I mentioned that if we’re feeling those symptoms of burnout, the first

thing we want to look at and blame in the scapegoat is always the rest piece.

Am I working too many hours?

I haven’t had a weekend off.

And all those things are legitimate, and all of those things

are absolutely contributors to burnout.

But there’s also two other areas that I think are worth exploring for everyone.

You have the first one, which is rest, right?

What are my rhythms like?

Do I keep a sabbat?

Do I have a 24-hour period where I shut everything off?

Ask yourself questions like, Am I able to turn ministry work off when I get home?

Am I able to be present with those that I love, my family or those that are close

to me when I get home from work?

Does it take a lot for me to get anxious?

Asking yourself those questions, that’s so important for the rest piece.

So that’s worth exploring.

But then outside of the rest piece, one of them is trust.

And so these are questions like, do I feel trusted by my leadership?

If you’ve been given a task and a role, do you feel like your leadership

trusts to accomplish that role?

Does your philosophy of ministry match up with your church leader’s

philosophy of ministry?

Just go back to my story real quick.

That was actually the biggest one for me.

I was leading five times a week for years.

I don’t think that’s what took me to the edge of burnout.

What took me to the edge of burnout was I had been given this worship team

to shepherd, this congregation to shepherd musically, but I wasn’t

allowed to do it in the way that I felt like God was calling me to do it.

And that’s a whole another conversation.

But for me, it was actually this trust piece that was grinding.

It was a slow grind over and over again.

I was questioning my own theology because I was at a disagreement with

the pastor, but I really trusted him. He’s an amazing Bible teacher.

So I was coming to terms with all these convictions that I had.

So asking those questions about trust.

And then are you trustworthy?

Does your volunteer team trust you?

That could be a source of friction over time that could lead to burnout.

So you have rest, you have trust, and then you have disciples

I hope not, but I would assume a lot of you will relate with this.

When there’s struggle in your life, whether that’s sin or whatever it is,

you’re not entirely sure who you can trust to go and talk to about that.

We’ve talked with so many leaders who, however big or small or grown

this issue in their life has become, they have to get up on Sunday mornings

and live up to how everybody sees them.

It just creates in us this temptation to just bury things inside of us.

You might be rested, you might feel totally trusted, but you know there’s

something in your heart that needs to come out and worked out with somebody,

but you don’t know how to do it.

That’s going to cause burnout over time when there’s a disconnect between who you

are on stage and who you are off stage.

Another thing in this realm of discipleship is, do you

sit with the Lord every day?

Are you in his word every day?

Those types of things, that’s just really simple life stuff.

But especially if you’re in ministry and those aren’t happening, it becomes way

easier to get your identity wrapped up in the things that are consuming your mind.

If you’re not in the closet in prayer with the Lord, if you’re not

having his word open before you, something else is going to shape you.

Those are the three key areas to look in.

I was talking with a leader earlier this week, and he says he’s experiencing

this tremendous anxiety, but he says his rhythms of rest are healthy.

He doesn’t think it’s that, but he cannot put his finger on it.

And there’s a lot of people like that.

And I think unless we start to ask the right questions, we’re going to just keep

trying to take more weekends off And that might not be your particular challenge.

And so I think it’s worth asking all these questions for sure.

That’s great.

I mean, this isn’t one of your three, but I wonder if a lot of the anxiety and

turmoil we feel is just from the amount of input that we’re taking in every week.

So everybody, stop listening to this podcast.

Stop listening. No, I’m just kidding.

But genuinely, there is so much input and especially so much bad news.

They say in the news industry, if it bleeds, it leads.

Bad news is good for them.

And We’re getting pumped full of anxiety-inducing information,

and we’re not letting our brains rest.

We’re not letting our minds wander.

We’re scrolling constantly.

As you were describing this worship leader who’s like, I don’t

know what it is, but I just feel anxious.

I wonder if it’s that he’s just getting too much input and not

letting his brain just be still and know that the Lord is God.

What are your thoughts about that? Yeah.

Whenever something blows up in the world, we hear about it.

But the problem is there’s nothing really we can What do we do about it.

So we’re constantly flooded with all of these horrible things

that are outside of our control to help.

Whereas before the Internet, before a cell phone, if the nearby village was burning

down, you could go grab pills of water and go help put it out.

But if the village across the territory, you would have no idea.

And so you wouldn’t feel the burden of that anxiety.

So I feel like that does have its place in us is we are aware

of all of these things that are happening, not just in our world,

but maybe even in our cities, in our churches, that we don’t feel like

we have the power to insert ourselves into or fix.

It’s like being given a problem with your hands tied behind your back.

And I think your point, the input in the scrolling,

I think that does happen to us a lot. Yeah.

Well, as we begin to wrap up the conversation, let’s get proactive

about what are the things that we can do?

What are the actions we can take as worship leaders to begin getting healthy?

Do you have any practises that you recommend to the worship leaders

that you counsel? What your practises?

I can share a couple of mine.

Not that I’m a very healthy person, but go ahead, Josh.

How would you answer that? Yeah.

So the first thing I’d recommend is just to gain some awareness.

This isn’t something where you want to throw the spaghetti

at the wall and hope that it sticks.

T