Saturday Review: Mad Church Disease

At my belated birthday party, my aunt and cousin gave me a gift card to Border’s. I decided to use it to buy two books: one I’d been hearing a lot about in the ol’ blogosphere, and one my friend, Katie, had e-mailed me to say that I must read.

Katie’s recommendation was a book by Mark Batterson called In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. The other was Anne Jackson’s Mad Church Disease. I pretty much started reading Anne’s book the minute the package arrived at my house and didn’t put it down until I finished. (Okay, to be honest, there may have been a couple breaks for things like sleeping and working. But you get my point.)

Anne Jackson works at Cross Point Church in Nashville. She’s an advocate for Compassion International, and her blog is huge. (However, you may remember that I mentioned a couple weeks ago that she’s doing an online fast during Lent.)

Mad Church Disease is a book about avoiding or overcoming burnout in ministry. Anne has personally seen a lot of hurt in ministries, and she has experienced a serious, physical and emotional burnout herself.

Rather than just preach at the reader and give platitudes about not getting stressed out and learning to relax, Anne structured her message as a workbook, with probing questions to assess where the reader is and where he or she needs help. In addition, she doesn’t just rely on her own experience, though it is vast, especially for someone no older than me. Instead, she concludes each chapter with testimonies and insight from leading pastors and their family members.

In addition, the book itself – the physical ink and paper – is fantastic. The cover is a collage of notes from people all around the world who have shared their stories of burnout. The layout and typography of the book is edgy and appealing, making an already interesting book even more attention-catching and attention-keeping.

Overall, I found this book to be a great resource for anyone in ministry. And by “in ministry,” I don’t necessarily mean only the guy in the suit behind the pulpit. Anne grew up as a pastor’s kid, and she experienced great hurt during those years. So she doesn’t restrict her message just to the people receiving the paycheck or the recognition; she addresses the family members who support and love those serving as well.

And I would go so far as to say that volunteers can suffer the kind of burnout Anne discusses, as can professionals in other non-ministry industries. Personally, I’ve experienced serious burnout working in a non-profit (but not religious) organization, and I’ve been badly hurt working (on a volunteer basis) for a ministry. So, I believe there are a lot of people out there who could benefit from Anne’s message.

Certainly, there were parts of the book that didn’t apply to me. And honestly, as I neared the back half of the book, I started skimming a bit, thinking, “Not for me, not for me, not for – oh!”

It was Chapter 11 that got me – the chapter about processing through the pain. She shares the experience that hurt her the most, and then goes on to talk about handling those kinds of hurt with integrity, forgiving people who hurt you (whether they ask for it or not, whether they deserve it or not), and learning to trust again.

That chapter hit home. I can’t say that I handled either of my situations with the highest level of integrity, though I tried. And while I’ve finally managed to forgive the people involved in my working situation, it would not be honest of me to say that I’ve completely forgiven those in my ministry situation. And learning to trust? Well, that’s a whole other blog post in itself!

If you work in ministry, paid or unpaid, or if you hope to be highly involved in ministry in the future, I recommend this book. Perhaps for you it will be preventive medicine. Or maybe, if you’ve experienced some of the hurt that Anne and I have, it’s just what the doctor ordered. Either way, I give this one two thumbs up.