A thought on burnout...

So I just got back on Sunday from a HECTIC week attending an awesome youth summit, and when I walked into church that evening, Doug (our crazy student minister) promptly invited me to a training day the next on the subject: Burn out or rust out? As he suddenly went into a bout of 'wide-eyed, focussed looking' and 'nodding', I finally clicked that this sudden attack of physical movement wasn't because he was undergoing a minor epileptic fit, but because he was trying to subtly hint that I was a prime candidate for attending this meeting. As if I was in danger of burning out like other minor mortals, pschaw. Puhleeeeaassee. So last year.

But as I thought about it, it's actually something we should be seriously considering as people who live for Jesus. It doesn't matter whether we're in full time ministry or not- we are all called to serve in our own contexts. And because the implications of being in ministry and serving others in the name of Jesus are so huge, wonderful, eternal, and great, we tend to push ourselves more often than not. I'm not going to type out the notes from the 3-part series here now, as I'm actually supposed to be packing for another conference (yeah, yeah, so maybe Doug was right to be hinting so violently), but there's definitely food for thought here about how we're going about in our ministries, and whether we're doing too much or not at all..