Resilience can sometimes be mistaken for indifference, unaccountability or emotional disconnection but in reality, resilience is the complete opposite of these things. It is the ability to truly face reality, to be responsible for our actions and to be emotionally vulnerable, if necessary. It is the inner strength that enables us to bounce back after facing unexpected challenges or setbacks. Resilience can be equated to mental fortitude and it lives in the small moments, as well as the large ones.

Resilience Isn’t Endurance

It can be easy to think that resilience and endurance are alike but they’re not really the same thing. While they both require mental or physical fortitude in moments of crisis or challenge, endurance simply hunkers down and waits for the worst to pass. Endurance is employed somewhat momentarily – once the crisis or challenge is over, things return to normal. Resilience, however, says, “I will get through this and come out the other side stronger, perhaps wiser and having gained something of value. Things will have changed, because of this experience.” Resilience sees the challenge or crisis is an opportunity for growth and moves confidently towards it.

We don’t get to decide if we will deal with life’s challenges; they arrive whether we want them or not. But we do get to decide how well we’ll get through them and what lessons we’ll learn from them. Learning to be resilient means learning to be open, resourceful and accepting of those challenges or changes as they come.

It would be very easy to endure all kinds of trouble and yet learn nothing from it or remain unchanged by the experience. Resilience is what develops from these experiences, if we allow it. We all have the capacity for great resilience yet, like every acquired skill, it needs to be practiced and challenged in order to grow and develop.

The idea of growing resilience is commented on by James, the brother of Jesus, when writing his letter to the believers in his time.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” – James 1:2-4, NIV

James confirms that challenges are not meant to be just endured; they are meant to change us. We’re being developed into our authentic selves in Christ and these challenges form part of that process.

Resilience Is The Enemy Of Fear

Learning to be resilient actually means learning to be unafraid of things like failure, rejection, embarrassment or abandonment. At the core of resilience is the ability to be realistic about the potential for things to go wrong, coupled with positive optimism that things will go right. It’s being grounded firmly in the here and now, in reality, but hopeful of better things. It’s learning to deal with all the challenges we encounter with a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset. Resilience is the difference between “I can’t do this”, and “I can’t do this yet“. Resilient people don’t just endure challenges, they’re proactive about moving through them and coming out stronger. Where resilience lives, fear cannot flourish.

Resilience And Faith Are Friends

Hebrews 11 is known as the great chapter on faith. Yet it’s also a list of a great number of individuals who, in essence, had developed resilience in their life and, because of that resilience, were able to undertake great things.

“And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.” – Hebrews 11:32-34, NIV

We realise from reading Hebrews 11 that resilience and faith are intrinsically linked. When we choose to believe in God’s existence and His plan for us, we choose to put our faith in something greater than ourselves. This faith forms a large part of accepting God and embracing what He is doing for us. It also gives us a great of comfort that we are not alone and that God is working in our lives to bring about our good. Perhaps one of the best ways to start growing resilience, or at least begin our pursuit of it, is to acknowledge that we have worth to God and that He has a purpose for our lives. Continually reinforcing to ourselves how much God really loves us and that our lives are infinitely precious lays down a positive foundation for beginning to build resilience.

“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.” – 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, NLT

How To Build Resilience

There are certainly many practical ways to grow resilience and learning those skills and developing inner strength doesn’t happen overnight. Here’s some ways to start developing your inner strength and learn to face your challenges with confidence:

Get Friendly With Failure – your ability to cultivate resilience relies on your ability to acknowledge failure, without allowing it to cripple you. We all make mistakes, we don’t always get things right the first time. But learning from our mistakes and growing through them is a key aspect of developing resilience.

Use Empathy – taking the time to consider another person’s life or situation can really help when dealing with difficult situations or experiences. Instead of reacting in emotional ways, we should try to see things from their point of view and work to support and encourage them. Learning to deal with these people or situations, despite the challenges, develops our own level of resilience and inner strength.

Exercise Forgiveness – forgiveness allows us to move fully beyond a setback or disappointment and leave it in the past. It doesn’t mean that we forget the situation. However, instead of feeling victimised or indulging in bitterness or self-righteousness, forgiveness give us an opportunity to learn from the experience and constructively try to resolve the setback. Forgiveness is first and foremost a gift to ourselves. Coupled with learning to forgive is also learning to apologise to those we’ve hurt or mistreated. This is a crucial aspect of developing our own sense of accountability for the choices we make in our life.

Don’t Compare – remember that we are all created as unique individuals and, despite what we may see on social media or how we perceive other’s lives to be, everyone has their good days and their bad days! Not only that, we all have different talents and skills, different personalities and different cultural backgrounds. God doesn’t require us to be as good as someone else – just the best version of ourselves.

“I know how to live humbly, and I know how to abound. I am accustomed to any and every situation—to being filled and being hungry, to having plenty and having need. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:12-13, BSB

(Not a reader? Take a listen instead ⇓)

Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands, whether real or perceived. Eventually, you find you literally have nothing left to give, either emotionally or physically. This state often leads to a range of issues including anxiety, depression, insomnia, anger and ill health.

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Church Burnout

Burnout, particularly in relation to church life, is a subject that doesn’t get as much discussion as it should. Perhaps it’s because we tend to think that ‘doing lots of stuff’ and ‘attending lots of events’ is a requirement of any conscientious church member. We dutifully fill our calendars with copious church events, often to the exclusion of personal time, family time or, most importantly, time with God.

We curate an ‘all-or-nothing’ mentality in relation to church service; and any spare time we do find ourselves with is spent wracked with guilt, thinking about all the things we “should be doing”. Frankly, if we’re not dying from exhaustion, we conclude that we lack any kind of serious commitment.

After all, church life is supposed to be all-encompassing, exhausting, limiting (of our ‘own time’) and (between you and me) somewhat boring, right?

Wrong!

A church is like the human body, a living thing – made up of real people (1 Corinthians 12:12). Real people have their limits, emotionally, spiritually and physically. Not only that, our levels of limitation will fluctuate during different stages of our lives.

We cannot be the same person once we have a partner or children as we were when we were single.

We don’t have the same strength or ‘spring-in-our-step’ in our older years as we did when we were younger.

Our capabilities and energies ebb and flow, along with the ups and downs of our lives, and we can only give what we can give in the very moment of right now.

And church life should be rewarding, fulfilling, energising and motivating! Being at church should feel like being part of the family – comfortable, welcoming and with a real sense of belonging. The minute we stop seeing the value in what we’re doing is the minute we need to stop and rethink the why of what we’re doing!

“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household” – Ephesians 2:19, NIV

A Church Is Only As Healthy As Its Members

It’s important to remember a church will only be as healthy and balanced and energised as the sum of all its members – those real people who make up the congregation.

If, individually, the members are exhausted and overloaded, the church will display signs of exhaustion too. It will become unbalanced, unhealthy and stunted in growth. It’s also important to remember that we don’t grow our church – God does the growing. Sure, we all have our part to play but no single person is responsible for, or indispensable to, God’s plan for the growth of a church or community.

“The key issue for churches in the twenty-first century will be church health, not church growth.” – Rick Warren

What Does Church Burnout Look Like?

Have you heard yourself saying this recently?: “I’m so exhausted”, or “I just can’t go to another thing this week”. Maybe you’ve found yourself thinking, “I’m never at home” or “Why can’t someone else do this for once?”. If you have, you may be suffering from church burnout.

Here’s what church burnout looks like, in real life:

1. You’re always busy, at everything, constantly in motion. You find yourself overcommitting and double booking.
2. You have idealistic standards about what a ‘real church’ should look like.
3. Your day always seems to arrive with constant low-grade stress and periodic crisis.
4. You often decline offers of help and assistance.
5. You feel a strong sense of responsibility, even when others don’t.
6. You feel extremely guilty about not attending church events or activities, even if you’ve already attended several that week.
7. You feel a strong sense of expectation from other church members.
8. You have an inability to say no and if you do, it’s with reluctance and guilt.
9. When you think about church, you feel suffocated, resentful, despondent and angry.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30, NIV

Church life – life with Jesus – is for those who are weary and burdened – because in Jesus we find rest.

Church life becomes a natural extension of the peace and fulfilment that we’ve found in Jesus. It’s designed to enrich our lives, ease our burdens, and provide supportive relationships for hard times. It develops character growth and maturity so that we can support others, when needed. And service within our church should be something that fills us with joy and deep personal fulfillment.

Church life is the natural outworking of a life based on being a certain kind of person, not doing certain kinds of things.

Tips For Preventing Church Burnout

• Emphasise grace over works in your personal life. Concentrate on who you’re being rather than what you’re doing. Remind yourself that we don’t earn God’s blessings by the amount of work we do. He wants us to lead healthy, balanced lives where ministry service is a joy, where giving becomes as simple as doing because it has been done for us.
• Make time for regular recreation. These are the times when you can pause, reset and renew. Without recreation, burnout is inevitable.
• Know your limits and set reasonable, achievable boundaries for the work you take on. Giving of yourself is a valuable and worthy service, but sometimes giving isn’t always possible or profitable. If you need to say “no”, then do so, with no guilt attached.
• Remember that the work is God’s, not your own. Seek His guidance and help when you consider your responsibilities and commitments within your church.
• Learn to put first things first. Being involved within your church community is a valuable part of a fulfilling spiritual life – but never at the expense of your time with God or your family. Set priorities and look for ways to involve your partner or family in church activities. Be willing to occasionally say no to low priority church activities when they conflict with quality family time.
• Listen to your body’s warning signs, such as headaches, backaches, dizziness, insomnia, and unexplainable fatigue. Learn to slow down and be less anxious. You can only do what you can do, right now – nothing more.

Ultimately, you are in control of you – your decisions, your motivations, your attitude and your abilities. You, alone, can gauge whether a task or event is too great for you to take on or attend, or whether it’s something that you can fit into your life.

The most important part of church life is focusing on who you are being, not what you are doing. Focusing on your ‘being’, rather than your ‘doing’ will bring things into perspective and make it easier to see what’s important and what’s not so important. When being becomes your focus, rather than doing, you will go a long way towards avoiding church burnout.