How to Keep Lay Workers from Burning Out
Virginia Vagt
Burnout victims start out full of fire and good intentions, but their efforts are not repaid in kind. The reality is that it is difficult to help people.
Paul Chance
And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.
Galatians 6:9
Faithful lay workers — the unsung heroes of every church, the people whose active participation makes ministry possible. We motivate them to reach out, to meet the needs of others, but sometimes these stalwarts run the risk of burnout. Our most reliable workers could be the next people out the back door if we neglect a few basic rules of lay ministry.
From her own volunteer experiences both good and bad, Virginia Vagt, a homemaker and active lay worker, describes the kind of ministry that led her to burnout and leaving one church, and the different kind of ministry in another church that proved fruitful and enjoyable and kept her excited over the long haul. The principles she learned from these vastly different experiences show how we can keep our unsung heroes enthusiastically active in the work of the local church.
I
don't want to go to church tomorrow, I remember moaning to myself Saturday after Saturday during my final months at Resurrection Church. It wasn't the pastor, his sermons, or a lack of warmth in the congregation that caused me to dread driving up the church's gravel driveway every Sunday.
Being 26 years old and trying to find my place in church life, my problem was that I was in over my head in a program called Women's Outreach. The founder of this program, Margaret Schiller, did lay mission work in Honduras every summer with her dentist husband. Her lifelong commitment to outreach was exciting. When she asked me to be one of her workers, ...
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