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“Rejoice and be glad for your reward will be great in heaven”
-Matt. 5:12
This verse is used as a half-hearted joke by many laity who work for the Church. Most will never be appreciated or paid enough for the amount of service given to the Church, at least in this life. But, there is a seriousness behind it as well.
I started working full-time Catholic ministry in 2002. If that sounds like a long time, it is. At least for a lay person who works full-time in ministry. While there are no hard and fast statistics I can find on how long someone lasts in Catholic ministry, I did find that Protestant youth ministers last about 18 months or so. If we use that as a standard for lay people in Catholic ministry, I am WAY beyond the average. Add that to the fact that every year there are more folks working in Catholic parishes, and you have a lot of turnover and burnout.
I have seen hundreds of folks I know burnout in ministry. I also have had many conversations with former ministry workers who no longer go to Mass. While it is neither cheap nor efficient to have turnover, sometimes we can’t control the fact that people move on. Is there anything we can do about it? Some. While each person in ministry is in control of their own well-being more than any other person, we can certainly help lower turnover, if we change some of the culture in our parishes and dioceses. Still, we each have control over the choices of only one person - ourselves. Still, I hope that you might find the measures below a help:
12 Reasons for Ministry Burnout & How to Prevent It
-Matt. 5:12
This verse is used as a half-hearted joke by many laity who work for the Church. Most will never be appreciated or paid enough for the amount of service given to the Church, at least in this life. But, there is a seriousness behind it as well.
I started working full-time Catholic ministry in 2002. If that sounds like a long time, it is. At least for a lay person who works full-time in ministry. While there are no hard and fast statistics I can find on how long someone lasts in Catholic ministry, I did find that Protestant youth ministers last about 18 months or so. If we use that as a standard for lay people in Catholic ministry, I am WAY beyond the average. Add that to the fact that every year there are more folks working in Catholic parishes, and you have a lot of turnover and burnout.
I have seen hundreds of folks I know burnout in ministry. I also have had many conversations with former ministry workers who no longer go to Mass. While it is neither cheap nor efficient to have turnover, sometimes we can’t control the fact that people move on. Is there anything we can do about it? Some. While each person in ministry is in control of their own well-being more than any other person, we can certainly help lower turnover, if we change some of the culture in our parishes and dioceses. Still, we each have control over the choices of only one person - ourselves. Still, I hope that you might find the measures below a help:
12 Reasons for Ministry Burnout & How to Prevent It
- CAUSE – Start to compare your work to others and/or look at objective numbers as the sole source of measuring success. This may start from a pastor who wants to track how many people are coming to the events you plan or how many people are coming to Mass. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with tracking metrics - we cannot rely on these kinds of numbers alone, to tell us if we are successful. These objective measurements don’t tell us how many hearts have been converted! Our goal is always conversion - to "make disciples".
