How can church leaders overcome burnout? In this interview, Callie Swanlund discusses her book, From Weary to Wholehearted, exploring burnout and its unique challenges. She introduces the SPARK practice—Soma, Preparation, Awe, Retreat, and Kinship—as a holistic approach to overcoming ministry burnout. Callie emphasizes the importance of recognizing burnout signs, creating supportive environments for clergy and other leaders, and taking incremental steps toward restoration and wellbeing.
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Jessica Anschutz: Callie, give our listeners a little bit of background on your book From Weary to Wholehearted: A Restorative Resource for Overcoming Clergy Burnout. What inspired you to write it?
Callie Swanlund: Some of it comes from an autobiographical place of finding ups and downs in my own ministry and finding myself moving from different full time parish leadership positions to beginning to grow my own ministry, where I companion people, often church leaders lay and ordained, in what I call finding your spark, helping people find their greater purpose and meaning. It’s a topic I’ve wanted to write about for a while. I was waiting for the Holy Spirit to be clear with me, and she was clear with me that it was time to write my book—I sat down and wrote a different proposal on a different project for a different publisher. And while I was working on that, my current publisher of From Weary to Wholehearted reached out and said, “Would you like to write a resource for us for weary faith leaders?” They’d clearly done their homework on me. Cause I was like, “Yes, that’s something I care deeply about.” It was just one of those things that you couldn’t ignore. I was like, this book is already written. It’s already on my heart and I would be glad to write it.
Jessica Anschutz: Congratulations and thank you for writing such a helpful resource. Now, I know your focus is clergy, but you reference lay ministry professionals and people who have experienced burnout in other professions. How do you hope the book will bring restoration to anyone who is experiencing burnout?
Callie Swanlund: Clergy burnout is such a hot topic right now in the media and other places that my publisher wanted to make sure that we highlighted clergy burnout, but I was clear from the beginning that this was for ministry burnout and beyond. All the little ladies at my church who have read it who are not in active ministry of any sort have said, “Oh, there’s wisdom in there for me too.” And I said, “Oh, good! I hope so!” At the very base level I want people to read this and say, “I recognize part of myself and I’m hearing that others are experiencing something I’ve experienced.” We are in such a state of isolation and loneliness, that sometimes we forget that plenty of others are on parallel journeys, if not the same journey as us. And so, even if someone has zero capacity to implement even the most accessible of tools that I introduce in the book, if they get through the introduction and say, “Oh, I feel less alone.” People write to me after they finished the introduction and they say, “I’m in tears. I know I’m in the right place.” Of course I’d like them to dig deeper too, but the first step is having a name for what you’re experiencing and knowing that other people understand it.
Jessica Anschutz: Let’s talk about that a little bit, how would people know if they are experiencing burnout?
Callie Swanlund: So, there are a few reactions when someone hears the topic of my book. A lot of people sort cover their eyes like, “You’re not talking to me, are you? How’d you know that I’m burnt out?” Or some people just pass it by quickly and they say, “I’m not burnt out.” And I think, “Lovely. I hope that’s true. First, I hope that is true. And second, I still think there’s something to reading a resource that helps us prevent burnout.” So even if you’re not in it now, how do you continue this good path?
Sometimes the people who are in burnout already know. They might be the one who is resisting getting up and going to their job in the mornings, not finding joy or purpose or meaning where they once did. A lot of my client base grew in 2020 when a couple of things happened. One of those was that pandemic ministry, nursing, teaching, or any of those vocations didn’t feel the same as before. And people said, “Wait. Is this what I signed up for? Is this even making a difference?”
And then we had we had a big racial reckoning in the United States with the murder of George Floyd. I honestly think that had as much of an impact as the pandemic itself on people saying, “Am I doing something that actually makes a difference?” So, I think a lot of people are asking themselves those questions still five years later, “Are we are we doing something that uses our gifts and makes a difference in the world?” Some of those questions can be an indicator of burnout. Feeling like we have more drains than fills. I learned this from my friend, Jenn Giles Kemper, who does Sacred Ordinary Days. It’s an exercise where you can go through your calendar and write a D or a F next to everything that is scheduled in your week, a drain or a fill. If you identify your week as having more drains than fills, you’re either probably already in burnout or are on your way. Our week in balance should have more things that give us life, than suck our soul.
I sometimes use burnout interchangeably with the word “overwhelm.” Burnout is specific to our job and overwhelm can be the same set of feelings but in various areas of life. When we’re in a state of overwhelm, we’re immobilized. We are not able to come up with a good or healthy solution. So, if you recognize that you’re thinking “I know something needs to change and I have no idea what it is.” That’s probably an indicator that you’re in a state of overwhelm and/or burnout. And honestly one of the antidotes is to not decide in that moment. That’s hard because people want to push through and people around you might say, “What do you need? What do you need?” And you might say, “I don’t know.” And what you need is to step aside, whether that’s for a day, a week, or a month, I don’t know because I don’t know the acuteness of one’s burnout. But it does require you to step aside before making the next decision. I’ve watched so many people, especially in ministry, have their judicatory leader say “Let’s get you on leave. Let’s get you some time off. Let’s get you one, two, three months away.”
Jessica Anschutz: Let’s stay with clergy for a minute. How and why is clergy burnout different from that of other professionals?
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Callie Swanlund: There are a lot of things that do overlap, especially for people who are in outward-facing professions and service professions like medical, therapists, teachers, etc. Clergy by nature have an around-the-clock, on-call job, which is not the case for all professionals. For those who are parish-based clergy, one of their primary communities is their workplace. So, for a lot of people of faith, their faith community is a pillar of strength for them and a source for their social interactions and things like that. Clergy have their foot in that world as leader in that world, but they don’t get to reap the benefits fully because there are boundaries and power dynamics to take into consideration. And so, while their congregants often want to take care of them, there’s this illusion that they don’t want to see their clergy leader as “weak.” So, we hold ourselves to a certain standard and try to make sense of the world in real time for ourselves and for a whole bunch of other people, too.
When a news flash comes across about a school shooting or warring countries or whatever it might be, we’re almost not able to sit with our own feelings before we think “How do I make sense of this for others, because others are going to be looking to me for some comforts, for some meaning making.” It’s exhausting. It’s a lot. If you are someone with a spouse or kids—or even if you’re not—I feel like your social life is somehow scrutinized and on display. And so having this place where you can bring your family as part of your vocation and career also feels a bit like a fishbowl to have all of that on display. It’s just such a unique vocation.
Jessica Anschutz: It is. There are wonderful aspects of it and then (as you’ve highlighted), challenges as well. In the book, you introduce a five element SPARK practice to address burnout or weariness. I don’t want you to give away all the secrets of the book, but I would like for you to introduce those five practices and give a brief description or example of each in hopes that it will interest people in studying them more in depth and buying the book.
Callie Swanlund: Finding your spark is already deeply important to me and my ministry. I talk about your spark as that little divine light within you. Some of us have a flourishing tended spark and some of us have something that’s been built on wet wood and is really burning out. I looked at the work of psychologists, the Nagoski sisters who wrote the book Burnout, Brené Brown in whose work I’m trained, and scientists and other wisdom bearers like our indigenous siblings. I put together five components that would make a holistic approach to moving from weary to wholehearted.
The S in spark is Soma, which means body. In the Greek New Testament, it appears 144 times. Some of those times refer to celestial bodies like the sun and moon and star, which connects our body to God’s greater creation. In my somatic practices, I remind people that our body is already with us. It’s the thing we sometimes think about last, but it’s with us right away. So, if we find ourselves spiraling, we can do a breath practice or practice putting our feet on the ground for some grounding. So, I give lots of things that are already with us all the time that require no extra space or tools.
P is preparation. I call this the least sexy spark of these because some people are like, “Ugh, I don’t want to prepare,” especially an Enneagram seven. They’re like, “I got this. I can jump right in.” I tend to think of our Jewish siblings who don’t just arrive on Saturday and say, “Oh, it’s a day off. It’s my Sabbath day.” There are entire TikTok accounts devoted to people preparing their meals during the week to be able to rest fully on Saturday. Whereas soma is the bodily part of this practice, preparation is the mental part. It includes intention setting and claiming mindfulness to be present in the moment.
A is the anchor at the center that stands for making space for awe. Dacher Keltner wrote a book on awe from scientists’ and psychologists’ perspective, which tell us what people of faith have known for a very long time. That feeling small in the face of something bigger, feeling connected to something beyond us and sometimes even beyond our understanding, is very good for our health and wellbeing. It lowers our heart rate. It helps us want to be connected to others. And it even releases the love hormone oxytocin. If you think about how negative emotions start to take over if we’re ranting, and someone else joins in the ranting, and then we up the ranting, and we all have a negativity session, the same thing can happen with positive emotions. Awe begets awe. The more we recognize and name awe, the more likely we are to experience it and to slow down enough to see the little ladybug crawling across the ground.
The fourth spoke, R, is for retreat. I chose that instead of rest because retreat goes to an even deeper level than rest. Retreat means time set apart, as a noun or as a verb, it means to pull away. We often think that a retreat needs to be something far away or expensive or time consuming. While I would love for everyone to take a four-day retreat somewhere, we need to start in small increments. Retreat can happen in 15 minutes. It can even happen in five minutes. I was on a work trip to lead a retreat, and I rented a Jeep. I’ve always thought maybe I would be a Jeep girl and so I tested this theory. I talked them into renting me a Jeep Wrangler, took off the roof panels, and drove down the road with the wind blowing in my hair. And I thought, “You know what? I think I just turned a car rental into a retreat.” I had an hour on the way to my destination to have time set apart that was holy and sacred. So, retreat is deeply important.
And the last one is kinship, K. Kinship is that connection we have with others. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about this in Braiding Sweetgrass. She’s an indigenous writer and botanist. Another indigenous writer and theologian Kaitlin Curtice writes about it in Living Resistance, and she calls kinship the invisible string that connects my heart to your heart. It’s not just about human-to-human connection. Our kinship is also about all of God’s creation, the earth as well.
If you go through S-P-A-R-K, soma is body, preparation is mind, awe is spirit, retreat is time set apart, and kinship is time in connection with others. I use these principles when I’m planning my own personal retreat. I use them to assess the balance of my week. Am I engaging in these things? And when one is missing, it’s an invitation for me to say, “Why is that missing?” And is that something I can incorporate into my week.
Jessica Anschutz: So, building on that a little bit, if folks think, “Oh my goodness, I’m not doing one or more of these.” How might you advise them to get started?
Callie Swanlund: Really honestly the things that are already available to us. When I lead retreats, I often talk about pocket practices. So, I’m going give you a couple of examples that you could do right away. When I’m working with my clients, I often teach them somatic practices. Things that often regulate us, bring down our heart rate, and our blood pressure, and can connect us to the divine within us.
You can soothe yourself with a small gesture. So, I might put my hand on my heart while I’m listening to someone. And that other person doesn’t even notice because I’m not putting my hands up in the air, but it might indicate to me, you are safe here.
If you can’t bring yourself to read the book, you don’t have enough time, you feel overwhelmed even by that idea, or implementing practices feels like too much, I’m going to give you the retreat on-ramp. Everyone needs retreat. Plenty of people haven’t been on retreat in years—or ever. And so, I talk about the retreat on-ramp. I want you to take out your calendar and look at the next week and find one hour to claim retreat, to claim time set apart. Could be going and sitting at the water’s edge, taking yourself on a walk in the woods, or locking yourself in a room while your kids [safely]take a bath. Having some sort of retreat. We could all find one hour in the next week. And while we’re looking at our calendar, look and see what is one half day that you can clear in the next month. And then what is one day or overnight that you can clear in the next six to 12 months. I think a lot of us really need retreat right now, and if I tell someone to find a two-day block in the next month, a lot of people are going to tell me that’s impossible. So, I tell them what is possible and that is starting with the smallest increment. If you want to make it even smaller, what’s 15 minutes today, what’s an hour in the next week, what’s a half day in the next month, what’s a two-day period in the next year. In so doing and taking that time set apart, you can begin to think about the other practices.
You don’t even have to give lots of thought. All you must do is follow your soul cravings. We all have cravings. When I was pregnant, I learned that my cravings were things that indicated what my body needed more of. I wanted a ton of ground beef tacos when I was pregnant with my second. I realized that my body was really needing a lot of iron. When we have a soul craving, when we see someone’s picture on Instagram of the Bahamas and we have this ping of longing or jealousy, I think it’s telling us something. It may be telling us that we need to go to the Bahamas, but more often what’s the takeaway? It might be that we need time off, a vacation, to be near water—things that are more accessible than getting on a plane and heading to the Bahamas. So, when you’re on retreat, that 15 minutes or that hour or that half day even, what do you wish you had more of? “I wish I had more time. I wish I had enough time to drive to the ocean today.” Or what are you being fulfilled by? “I haven’t sat and listened to an album from end to end in months.” Pay attention to those things and then start to find ways to incorporate them one little practice at a time. Don’t start with the whole umbrella. Start with one practice and let that lead to another.
Jessica Anschutz: I appreciate looking at this in an incremental way. As we wrap up our time together, I invite you to think about the laity who are supporting their pastors and other church leaders who are experiencing burnout. How can those who are surrounding the people in leadership be supportive or attentive to those who are feeling weary?
Callie Swanlund: I’m so glad you asked. A lot of the clergy I talked to as I was prepping for the writing of this book said, “I am so weary because of the systemic pieces like oppression, sexism, patriarchy, heterosexism, racism, etc.” I touch on that in the book, but I also say that’s not on those who are weary to solve. Those are some bigger issues. While we’re weary, we can’t solve the oppressive forces that are over us. And so, it takes a community to notice where some change needs to take place and to have some deeper conversations about expectations of clergy. Simple things like asking, “Are you planning to use your vacation and retreat time this year?”
Make space for those things and be part of the solution when you bring up a problem. Often the head pastor, head of staff, rector, whichever denomination you’re coming from—that lead clergy person, is hearing lots and lots and lots of feedback and some of it is negative by nature. So, if someone comes up and says, “The sound system in here is awful” or “I can’t read how the small the print is in the bulletin” or whatever it might be, those things stack up. They might just be small, but they stack up. If you are presenting a problem, are you also willing to present a solution? Come alongside the person you’re presenting that to and say “I’m willing to come in the office and help reformat the bulletins or edit them each week” or whatever it might be. Recognizing the humanity that we all share. Clergy are no more divine than any other human. We don’t have a secret red phone that we pick up and talk to God in some special way. While we are leaders and often interpreters between God and God’s faithful people, remember that your clergy are people too, and that they are likely struggling just as you are struggling, and just give some compassion and grace with that. Let them know that you’re grateful for them, that they’re appreciated. Those are things that go a long way. I often have my clients keep a drawer or a folder on their email of positive notes to remember on the days when things feel negative and hard. There are many ways that you can support.
Your clergy person might not open up to you. Even if you are very well meaning and you go in and you say, “I’m here to listen,” there are sometimes structures in place. So don’t take that personally but tell them that you hope that they will find a supportive person to talk to or give them a certificate for a massage or something like that.
Jessica Anschutz: Thank you so much, Callie, for taking the time to talk with me today and for pouring your heart into From Weary to Wholehearted and for sharing it in hopes that folks who are experiencing that weariness or burnout may begin to take steps to being more wholehearted. So, thank you.
Callie Swanlund: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for this invitation and for doing this work to also help clergy know that they’re not alone.
From Weary to Wholehearted: A Restorative Resource for Overcoming Clergy Burnout by Callie Swanlund (Church Publishing, 2024). This book is available from the publisher, Cokesbury, and Amazon.
Related Resources
- How to Know When You Need to Ask for Help by Jessica Anschutz
- What Excuse Do You Have for Not Delegating More? By Mike Bonem
- 3 Questions to Preserve Energy and Passion in Ministry by Heather Bradley and Miriam Bamberger
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