Mad Church Disease

The dreaded burnout has hit all of us at some level or another at some time or another in whatever we’re doing. But this problem seems common in ministry as it’s not a nine to five job. It’s usually 25 hours or so a day for about eight days a week and 367 days a year. You never seem to be done with anything, and there’s always the need to help the next person or do the next big event. I had been warned about burnout from friends that had been around a while, but about three years or so ago, it got me, and I’m wishing now that I’d had Mad Church Disease to walk me through that time.

I just finished reading  a pre-release copy of Mad Church Disease by Anne Jackson (follow Anne on twitter @flowerdust), and my first reaction was this: Dang it. I’ve got a lot to work on.

Anne, who grew up a PK and has worked for several churches knows full well the burnout that can affect any one of us and she chronicles the experience she had growing up in a ministry household, and then her own experience in ministryin her new book Mad Church Disease. I felt myself identifying with several key areas of her story, which I’m certain that many could.
So, as if it wasn’t blatantly obvious (which I need 99% of the time), Anne compares the burnout factor to Mad Cow Disease. While I won’t give away everything, I will say that the comparisons were dead on.

I usually spend a lot of time underlining and drawing arrows and writing comments when I read a book. I usually joke about how it’s difficult to read a book after I’ve read it. And the first several pages look like that, but I gave up when I ran across a few statements from Anne that went something like this, “I had simply forgotten how to be me” and “I wanted to prove I loved Jesus more.” These two statements that characterized much of my ministry and my life had crept all the way down into the style in which I read a book.  So I quit doing that. I just read the book and breathed a new easy breath.

You see, Anne didn’t just spend an entire book writing about the comparisons of burnout in ministry to Mad Cow Disease, she offered several principles and helps to walk you out of it (and she said them several times, which is something else I need, repetition).

So, I recommend. This is definitely going on your “I’ve got to read that list.”

For me, walking away from this book, I decided it was more important for me to stop “…spending time doing things for God to replace spending time with God,” to “remember how to simply be me,” and to quit trying “to prove I loved Jesus more.” I just want to love Him, and love people.

I may not be doing the best job at it, but I can honestly say I’m working on it.

You can pre-order Mad Church Disease here, or here, or here and maybe other places too. And then go tell Anne how much you enjoyed it.