3094 Preventing Burnout – Keeping Active Leaders Active

Harlan Limpert, UUA Director of Lay Leadership Development

In a very entertaining and informative session, the UUA’s Director of Lay Leadership Development, Harlan Limpert, gave important techniques for congregations to use to prevent burnout among the lay leaders in their churches.

“The issue of burnout is an absolutely universal challenge right now,” Limpert said. “Every denomination in America is talking about it.” He explained that burnout of a church’s leaders not only affects the persons themselves, and the clergy, but entire congregations and the health of the whole denomination. Limpert has been serving the UUA in his current directorship for nine months, and he said the creation of the department was, in part, a response by the UUA to the serious issue of burnout.

Limpert said that when lay leaders and ministers were asked about the greatest challenges they faced, their number one response was developing leaders and preventing burnout. Along these lines, they listed the following related challenges concerning lay leaders:

How do we involve our people?
How do we recruit more effectively?
How do we keep them involved?
How do we ensure continuity?
How do we help them be effective?
How do we gain their commitment instead of losing it?
How do we provide development?

He asked a few participants to define burnout in their own congregations and received the following comments:

• “If I’m asked to do one more thing, I’m walking out the door.”
• “When a newcomer walks in the door and we ask that person to assume a major
  leadership role, we know we have burnout in our congregation.”
• “When leaders say ‘I never again want to take a leadership position.’ ”
• “Our leaders leave positions angry and in tears.”

Limpert gave a definition of burnout given by someone who worked with drug addicts in the 1950s in California: “Burnout is a state of depleted physical and mental resources. A burned out person becomes fatigued and frustrated by striving to reach an unrealistic goal or by devotion to a cause, a way of life, or a relationship that failed to produce the expected reward.”

He offered another definition: “The body is doing the work, but the spirit is not present.”

A burned out person can be affected in one or more of five major areas: physical, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual. And each has its own symptoms: exhaustion and poor health (physical); cynicism and dullness (intellectual); depressed, aloof, distant (emotional); withdrawn and self-absorbed (social); and lacks meaning and a purpose for living (spiritual).

Limpert asked that participants consider this question throughout the workshop: “How is burnout affecting the health of your congregation?”

He followed with a Power Point presentation that explained the problems of and possible solutions to burnout among lay leaders.

Participants also offered the following techniques for alleviating and preventing burnout:

• Turn committees into communities (hold a chalice-lighting and/or check-in before meetings begin).
• Limit the group’s number of goals and different objectives.
• Create term limits for leaders.
• Limit the number of simultaneous leadership roles a person can have.
• Share problem-solving with the entire congregation.
• Create a covenant for each committee and, if appropriate, a covenant group.
• Have all committees meet on the same evening or a couple of evenings a month to limit over-participation by any one person.
• Have 2-term co-chairs, in which one person rotates in and another rotates out each year.
• Have a contact person for each group, and rotate the role of facilitator at each meeting.
• Share a meal during each meeting, to encourage fellowship.

Limpert reminded participants to contact his office (hlimpert@uua.org or 952-903-0707 ) with any questions or for further help.

Reported for the web by Jeanette Leardi; Web Design by Julie Albanese

Unitarian Universalist Association
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