How To Prevent Leadership Burnout with Megan Butler (Part 1)

Navigating leadership responsibilities in a Christian context can sometimes feel like walking a tightrope, with the constant pressure to avoid mistakes, the weight of past traumas, and the challenges of a potentially hostile environment. Burnout, a state of emotional and physical exhaustion, can creep in when these pressures become overwhelming. As a Christian leader, finding ways to prevent Burnout is crucial for maintaining a healthy balance in your life and effectively serving others.

 In this first part of the episode, I am joined by Megan Butler, a Christian leader dedicated to helping other leaders navigate, overcome, and prevent Burnout, exploring simple strategies to help you steer clear of Burnout, allowing you to lead with resilience and grace. She talks about the three scales of Burnout, the impacts of dysfunctional and hurting leadership, and how the baggage everybody brings to the ministry contributes to Burnout. She also shares the internal and external factors that contribute to Burnout. Tune in to learn more!

Timestamps

[00:37] Megan Butler’s background information

[01:54] Megan’s story leading into ministry and helping Christian leaders

[06:26] The impacts of having a dysfunctional and hurting leadership

[07:24] Megan's Burnout from church and how it impacted her faith

[08:56] How the baggage everybody is bringing to the ministry contributes to Burnout

[09:16] The three scales of Burnout by Christina

[12:22] Tips to work through your Burnout as a Christian

[13:24] Why Megan got into both a nonprofit and for profit

[16:26] Why Christian leaders have difficulties in acknowledging Burnout

[19:35] Burnout is a systemic issue and hardly an individual issue

[23:45] The internal factors that contribute to Burnout

Notable Quotes

●      [09:40] “If you are already struggling with feeling like you don’t have value and that you are not worth being protected and not owning your reality and identity, you will struggle with all the three scales of burnout.”

●      [11:00] “As a pastor, it’s never good enough, and you will always have people questioning your decision, and it’s overwhelming.”

●      [19:05] “Burnout is a systemic issue and hardly an individual issue. There are things that individuals can do to help prevent Burnout, but if the environment is bad, there is not a whole lot you can do.”

Connect with Megan Butler:

Website: https://desertroadministries.org/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/desertroadministries/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/desertmin/

Connect with Texas Leadership Summit:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/texasleadershipsummit/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/texasleadershipsummit/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/txldrshpsummit

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hello everyone, my name is Tim Webb and I am the founder of Texas Leadership Summit and where we want to encourage Christian leaders with courage, tools and hope to stand for their faith. And so today I am with Megan Butler and I'm really excited about our topic today. Megan is someone who's very passionate about this and passionate about leadership, and in our conversations it's been great to hear her journey and just her part experience of this. And so a little bit about Megan she has her own nonprofit and that's Desert Road Ministries and I can't wait for people to hear more about that. But also you have a for-profit which is Mid River Okay therapy, and so in hearing your story and just what you've been through and some of your experiences, I understand why you're very passionate about this.

Speaker 1: 0:58

But what our desire is is, in these podcasts, we want to encourage Christian leaders. We want to address issues that people have in leadership. We know leadership can be a very lonely place and sometimes it's hard to work through that, and today's topic is burnout. We're looking at walking through that burnout how do you even find yourself in burnout? And then we hope to move forward from there with the how to prevent it, because we want to give people tools, leaders tools to walk through this issue. I think everyone Megan would, if they're honest has experienced some form of burnout. But today, let's start off with you. Just tell us a little bit about your journey, how you just I don't think you just woke up one day and found yourself doing this and so share with us, if you would, just some of your journey in ministry and then finding yourself passionate about helping Christian leaders and then your own burnout. But how'd you get here?

Speaker 2: 2:02

That's a great question.

Speaker 2: 2:05

I don't want to scare people because sometimes they go well, it started when I was in college and they're like, oh no, they don't want to hear the whole story. But it did start when I was in college. So I went to North Texas and Denton and while I was there I went to a church called Denton Bible Church and they just really cultivated my heart for God, for the Bible, for doing ministry. And so I say I went to North Texas and got an English Literature degree, but I really went to Denton Bible Church and got a passion for doing ministry.

Speaker 2: 2:36

When I graduated I did the Women's Discipleship Training Program that they have there and it's a nine month program and by the end I was like I want to go to seminary, like I want to do ministry full time, like I just want to be in the church, and so I had to go back to Houston for some other reasons. A few months later I still wanted to go to seminary. So I applied and got into Dallas Theological Seminary and went to their Houston campus. So when I started there my first semester I got offered an internship at a church to do youth ministry. So I was the girls' student ministry's intern for the summer. So I did that.

Speaker 2: 3:18

It was horrendous because you have to like build rapport with high school students.

Speaker 1: 3:23

And sometimes it's like.

Speaker 2: 3:25

it's a rough road and I'm not an outdoorsy person and the first thing we did was camp and you know I'll just jump in wholeheartedly there yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:34

So it was a rough go, but I was like I'm going to do ministry and this is, you know, my opportunity. So at the end of the summer they hired me on as their girls' student ministry's director, and so I was excited because I didn't think you could get a ministry job before you finished seminary. I thought you had to, like, get the degree first. So I was really excited and a month into being a director in the youth ministry, the church I was working for had a split.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 4:04

So the senior pastor resigned, and then the rest of the pastors left.

Speaker 1: 4:11

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 2: 4:12

And it was just me and another ministry intern that was still in seminary left on the pastoral staff and I was like what do I do? So I I didn't really have much rapport with the kids yet, but I didn't want to leave them with you know leadership Right.

Speaker 2: 4:30

And so I decided to stay on, but it definitely gave me an experience I never had before working for a church. The church had always been the safe place for me. Okay, you know, even growing up I would go there to get grounded, to learn about God, to be encouraged, and, you know, now is in a place where church was not.

Speaker 1: 4:50

So you're seeing the backside of staffing administration behind the scenes that most people don't see. Sounds like it would kind of open your eyes to reality.

Speaker 2: 5:04

This is really broken. And I think the hardest part during that time was everybody was grieving and All kind of going through that shock, the sadness, the anger, trying to sort things out, and so there just wasn't much capacity from anyone to Be present for each other.

Speaker 1: 5:24

Okay.

Speaker 2: 5:24

And so you know I would have these weekly staff meetings. I'd be saying I'm not doing well, because you know I had my own expectations for what ministry was gonna look like. And then you know you have, like, the lack of support Because everything's falling apart and they got these teenage kids that don't really care much about what you're trying to share with them. It was all very discouraging.

Speaker 1: 5:45

So how long did you tough that out?

Speaker 2: 5:46

I did it for four years.

Speaker 1: 5:48

Wow, okay.

Speaker 2: 5:49

So we went through this and then, four years later, yeah, so we did, like the pastor search committee, for the senior pastor, for the youth pastor, we did all the demographics of trying to grow the church. You know who's around us, who are we serving, how do we get our church to grow, because we lost about half the congregation through that split. So it was it was a really difficult look into church ministry and kind of seeing behind the scenes. You know what happens when you have dysfunctional, hurting leadership.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Yeah and you're in the impact of that and that I guess the the ripple effect Goes a long way. So in your own personal life at that at that juncture, being there for four years, so you went to Dallas seminary. I guess you finished seminary while you were there I did All right.

Speaker 2: 6:43

So seminary was the light in the darkness for me. Okay, I'm really glad I was in school while I did that, because I'd be doing work at the church and it'd be very dark and depressing and discouraging, and then I'd go to class and be like God is amazing.

Speaker 1: 7:00

This is all worth it, you know.

Speaker 2: 7:03

So I do believe that seminary helped me, like maintain my faith, because by the time I graduated seminary I was like I do not want to step into a church ever again. Oh wow, and I have this Christian education degree that I don't know what I'm gonna do with Right, because you're done with church because I'm done with church.

Speaker 1: 7:21

Yeah, you were really burned out from church. Okay, yeah, but then you didn't stop there in your education, that when you looked at therapy and your license okay.

Speaker 2: 7:32

Yeah. So the semester before I graduated I started seeing a counselor and she started walking me through what was going on and I Ugly cried for like Four sessions.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Okay.

Speaker 2: 7:51

But just like having somebody see me and listen to me and just be present with me for what I've been feeling for that long. It was a start, and so you know, finally having somebody that I felt could help me Work through what I was working through and so I learned that it wasn't just what was going on in the church that was impacting me, it was also all the stuff that I brought into it as well, before I even began. And so she and I went on a journey where we started working through my burnout, how it impacted my faith, and then we started looking at my family of origin stuff that I brought to the table.

Speaker 1: 8:30

So would you, based on your experiences I'm just kind of I'm gonna jump over some of that time of your training and then you obviously went into Serving in ministry and starting your own nonprofit. But would it be safe to say that, basically, ministry, everyone's bringing their own baggage and their junk into ministry and so how do you see that contributing to burnout?

Speaker 2: 9:01

in a big way.

Speaker 1: 9:03

I'm like how do I put this?

Speaker 2: 9:06

So Burnout one of the pioneers of burnout research is Christina Maslach and she came up with three scales for burnout One's emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and then personal accomplishment so how you feel you're being effective in your work. And if you're already struggling with feeling like you don't have value and that you're not worth being protected and you're not owning your own reality and your own identity, you're going to struggle with all three of those because you're already going to be struggling with, maybe, perfectionism, where you're taking on too much because you're the only one that can do it well and you know anti-dependence, I got to do it all myself so you're going to give yourself too much of a workload and then also feel like you're not doing a good job at it.

Speaker 2: 9:52

And then you know there may be some skepticism or cynicism about the work environment or the people that you're working with. So that's going to create that depersonalization where the job starts rubbing you the wrong way. And then, with the personal accomplishment, if you feel like with burnout, if you're in an environment where it's spiritually dead or, like I was in, you know, the church is kind of going through a divorce of sorts you're not going to feel like you're being effective because where's the fruit or where's the growth you're looking for. And so you know bringing those things already into the job is going to give you a recipe for burnout.

Speaker 1: 10:31

I can say just from a pastor's experience on the pastoral side of that. You may just be one church that's small enough for one pastor to shepherd, but when you add pastors to the staff, you have that lead pastor and the pressure grows and builds to perform, and so in that environment you're not allowed to be wrong and some of the things for pastors I know I'm sure if we have, you know, the pastors that are listening, they can relate to this it's never good enough and you will always have people questioning your decisions, and so it's just, it's overwhelming, like when can I get a break from this? And then, on top of that, you're living in a fishbowl.

Speaker 1: 11:13

My wife used to say you know, I'm okay living in a fishbowl I am now, at least she would say but there's a process of even how do you manage that? Where you're always in view of others, always available for criticism, and so I think maybe you and I've talked about this, but when you have issues that you bring in from your childhood, teenage years, abandonment issues, if you come from a divorced family, it may be really intense, and abandonment issues Like I had early on where my dad left when I was one. So I had this anger built up over the years, and then God puts you in a role where you have to serve and love unconditionally and people are able to leave and criticize, and so these things just kind of build. And so, as we've shared before, it's not until you really address your own issues and walk through that Do you have the freedom then to serve in the capacity that God desires for you to.

Speaker 2: 12:18

And I'll tell you one that I had to practice because I did go back to the church that I worked at there was healing there. But the time I returned my counselor gave me an exercise and she said walk into the space and assume that everyone's thinking the best of you. Oh, and I was like okay, didn't work. I did Okay Because she was saying you know, a lot of times we have a distorted thinking about what people are thinking about us, because we've got that inner critic going on and so she's like you're not a mind reader, so you might as well assume the best and then if someone has a problem with you, they can tell you about it and you can have a conversation.

Speaker 1: 12:58

Good.

Speaker 2: 13:00

And it's okay.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Great, great. Well, now let's let's move forward a little bit on your in your journey with, of course, you have your non, your nonprofit and your for-profit. Why to? Why for-profit and nonprofit? What? What really caused you to, to engage that way with leadership?

Speaker 2: 13:23

Um, I think that came through working in ministry, as I didn't want money to get in the way of God's plan, if that makes sense. Okay, In a way that I didn't want the nonprofit to be the bill payer. Okay, Um, because for me I was like I don't want to be in a desperate place where I'm making decisions to get money in.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Well, it costs to live, Right yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:50

Um, I kind of wanted to see what God was going to do with it, mm-hmm, and I wasn't even sure, like if it would be a thing, and so, okay, uh, I knew I wanted to do counseling. Um, when I took a break from the church and after I graduated, I kept doing my own counseling journey, recovery journey, mm-hmm. And during that time I worked a bunch of odd jobs and just gave myself a break.

Speaker 2: 14:13

Uh, and during that growth period, um, I was working as a receptionist, okay, and people were coming up to me that worked there and were sharing with me what they're going through, mm-hmm, and I would talk to them about what I was doing in my recovery and they were like that was so helpful. I was like, maybe this is a job, yeah, I don't know. Okay, um, so I went back to Dalseological Seminary for a counseling degree, mm-hmm, and during that time God kind of started putting an image in my head of a recovery center, okay, and it narrowed down to a recovery center for ministry leaders, mm-hmm. And then, uh, someone that I went to school with there in the counseling program, she had a passion for family systems, okay, and so it was like, oh, we could do ministry leaders and their families. There you go. And so Deseret Ministries kind of came to fruition while I was in school, okay, um, and so after that my uh co-student and I created Mid River Therapy together and then Desert Road Ministries so they have the same birthday.

Speaker 1: 15:16

Okay, so Mid River pays the bills.

Speaker 2: 15:18

Yes.

Speaker 1: 15:18

And that's your ongoing therapy. Yeah, which is great. I've looked into it. But then the Desert Road Ministries now enables you to focus on Christian leadership.

Speaker 2: 15:30

Yes. So we wanted it to grow as God would have it, you know, and we wanted to be open-handed as to what he would do with it. And so that's kind of where we're at right now is, you know, raising awareness that we exist. So we're like we provide affordable counseling services for ministry leaders and their families, and we have all these other resources that we can offer as well, but my passion point within it is the burnout prevention and recovery program.

Speaker 1: 15:59

Okay, this is one that I think is can can tie back to a pastor or a Christian leader, feeling like I don't think it's true, I don't definitely know it's not the reality of this, but you can feel like it, which makes it seem like it's reality. But why do you? Why do you think some leaders, christian leaders, pastors have a difficult time acknowledging that they are burned out? I've got my opinion.

Speaker 1: 16:31

I know you deal with burnout, have dealt with burnout, so let me just jump into the pastor side of this. As I've already mentioned, they're never allowed to be wrong. You just can't be. You're supposed to be all-knowing, you represent God, that's part of it. And then obviously people are always questioning you. Just dealing with everyday pastor issues can be tough.

Speaker 1: 17:03

But I think one is that when you, when you acknowledge that you have burnout, it means you have to change something. And as a pastor you don't always have the resources, the time, the ability to make those changes. Because when we admit that we are in a bad place as pastors, we're fearful sometimes that we're going to get kicked to the curb. I mean, we still have to pay bills, just like you were mentioning. Hey, how do we pay the bills, those kind of things. But for pastors who have elders or deacons, if they're in a denomination where the deacons kind of act like the elders or fill that role, you have to they.

Speaker 1: 17:41

There are times where, okay, if I admit that I'm in burnout, will they kick me to the curb? I've got a family, I've got kids, and sometimes I think we can feel held hostage in that environment, and so you just keep going and going and going and then, and sometimes that from that standpoint then we end up really creating scenarios that are unhealthy. But that's just from the pastor side and as a Christian leader, someone who's not serving as a pastor but they're in leadership maybe have a nonprofit. I would love to hear your opinion on that. What do you think some of those difficulties in acknowledging that? What do you think happens to those individuals?

Speaker 2: 18:30

I would say a big one is am I going to lose my job? Okay, for anybody that's working in a nonprofit or ministry, where it's, you know, if I tell somebody I'm struggling, you know that's your boss. Yeah, and I mean with churches too. If you're on church staff and you tell your pastor, your pastor's also your boss. So it's like who do I go to whenever I'm struggling?

Speaker 1: 18:53

Where's a safe, where's a? Who's that safe person?

Speaker 2: 18:56

Right yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:57

Okay.

Speaker 2: 18:59

Yeah, but also, you know, I don't know if we'll get into this, but burnout is a systemic issue. It's hardly an individual issue.

Speaker 1: 19:08

Okay.

Speaker 2: 19:09

There are things that individuals can do to help prevent burnout Okay, but if the environment is bad, there's not a whole lot you can do, and so sometimes there can be a discouragement of like well, this is just the way it is.

Speaker 1: 19:23

So why, even you know, try and get help Explain that a little further. When you say systemic, we've used that in our culture today a lot for different in different areas. But what do you mean by systemic? Kind of walk that out a little further.

Speaker 2: 19:38

Yeah, so Christina Meslach has this image of a canary in a coal mine.

Speaker 1: 19:43

Okay.

Speaker 2: 19:44

And so she talks about. You know, if you put a canary in a coal mine and it starts having respiratory issues and it starts dying, they bring in a canary out and they're like, well, you know, what can this canary do to be better in the coal mine? And it's like, well, nothing.

Speaker 1: 20:01

The environment- is the change.

Speaker 2: 20:03

Yeah, you know. So if you're in an unhealthy environment, you can do some things to try and help yourself feel better, but ultimately you're still in this environment that's making you sick, and so you know it can be discouraging to try and do all these things to help yourself and to still be struggling every day because it's out of your control.

Speaker 1: 20:24

And we tend to look internalized and look in our own individual self what's going on, whether there can be those external. Are there any other external factors that play in that? We say environment, but things beyond our control?

Speaker 2: 20:39

Like I said, if you're working in an environment, what's out of your control?

Speaker 1: 20:43

Yeah. So I mean we say systemic or the environment's not healthy. There's no way you can get better if you stay in that environment when it's, you know that's beyond your control. So are there some other things, whether it be in the family, whether it be in lack of training and those kind of things, that might play into that?

Speaker 2: 21:05

Yeah, so they call it like business hygiene. So that's the first thing you want to look at, and you know that's. Are we paying our staff members? Well, like, do people feel financially covered? Like, are the benefits helping them take care of themselves and their families? How do people talk to one another? You know somebody being bullied or picked on within the staff environment and it's causing added stress or microaggressions every day. It could even be the environment itself, like the fiscal environment, like you know. Are the facilities clean? Like, how's the office environment?

Speaker 1: 21:46

Yeah, mold and structures Poor. Poor heating and air.

Speaker 2: 21:51

Is it clean? Yeah, you know so. It's just little like small things every day that maybe go unnoticed, kind of form a collective feeling of discouragement or burnout in some way, and so sometimes those are like easy fixes in the sense of you know, a leader can just pay attention to the people that they're working with and just see like how are they talking to one another? Are they feeling well covered when it comes to finances? How's the office?

Speaker 1: 22:24

So really, you're talking about the leader, the main leader or the head of organization. What kind of culture are they creating in their environment? So there are some obvious things that we need to be aware of as leaders pay attention to, and so I think, as a leader myself and some of the things I watch, those are the things on our team, and I think we need to think of it in terms of a team, because we're all should be working towards that mission, mission and vision of our organization how we're working together, how we're fitting and what kind of culture are we building. And so I think that's one of the things that we can encourage our main leader to help in his leadership with other leaders, and so that's a great point. But internally so we've got some external factors that we need to be aware of.

Speaker 1: 23:11

As a leader, we need to make sure we're taking care of our people and look at the environment they're serving in. Sometimes it's beyond our control. I've worked with people in Tanzania and Brazil and other places. Sometimes you do the best you can and pray that God brings more resources. But internally, what are some things internally that you? Is there anything that you want to touch on before we move into preventive, but some things that you see are maybe triggers or things that contribute to that, that need to be addressed as well.

Speaker 2: 23:46

I have some really like. You know, there are obviously some basic things that you can do when we talk about prevention and recovery, but what can contribute to burnout with my counseling framework is codependency and you know, and it's essentially working with self-esteem, boundaries, owning your reality, experiencing it moderately. So if you struggle with things like that, it's going to make a work environment very difficult, even if you're in a good environment.

Speaker 1: 24:17

Rebecca, you and I come from a counseling world, but it's amazing how you know, I've used that codependent term in the past, but I still have people that look at me like what do you mean by that? Can you define that for our leadership?

Speaker 2: 24:30

Yes, I'm going to try and say it in a way that doesn't sound offensive, because it's difficult to say.

Speaker 1: 24:34

Don't worry about it. Just say it what it is. We need to stop worrying.

Speaker 2: 24:37

It's like being adult children.

Speaker 1: 24:39

Being oh okay, adult children.

Speaker 2: 24:42

So whenever we struggle with codependency, usually it has to do with childhood development. Okay, so if certain needs and wants didn't get met, then we struggle with am I valuable? Am I worth being protected? How do I utilize my emotions? How do I feel these things? When I'm feeling big feelings, If somebody says something about me or they think something about me doesn't make it true, and so you know, whenever we struggle with things like that every day, you know somebody can come up to us and say like, hey, you did a great job on that project the other day, and then a mind that's struggling with owning the reality, they may say like did they really mean that or did they point it out because I did something wrong?

Speaker 1: 25:22

Yeah, they just immediately go negative on it. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:25

And so when we have that inner critic and we have that false belief system about ourselves and we don't know how to manage the emotions that come with it, it makes relationship and work really difficult. So then throw in some stressors coming from your work environment and you're going to really struggle.

Speaker 1: 25:42

Yeah, it magnifies some of those things, and I like what you said about owning. It's really important for us to own. Yes, our lives are personhood, if you will, and not allow other people to direct that narrative in our head, and so and to do that, you have to allow yourself to be imperfect.

Speaker 2: 26:05

And if we struggle with valuing ourselves and we're looking to outside factors to give us that value, we're going to have a really hard time taking ownership.

Speaker 1: 26:15

Megan, not to cut it short, but we are going to do this in two parts, and so we've got this month. We're doing part one and then we're going to move to part two, and so I'm going to invite our listeners to join with us again to finish this conversation. But, megan, thank you so much for being with us today, excited to be working with you in the future and look forward to leaders who are either in the middle of burnout or those who are wanting to prevent it, and those who may be are in the darkest of moments in their burnout. I'm looking forward to them reaching out and us being able to work with them and help walk them to a good place. So thank you for sharing today.