Sometime in early 2004 I planted a church. I was twenty-four years old, newly married, fresh out of seminary, and carrying the particular combination of ingredients that makes young church planters simultaneously dangerous and necessary: genuine passion, a healthy dose of naivety, and just enough self-righteousness to believe I could do it better than everyone who came before me.
We planted in the Tower District in downtown Fresno, California. One of the most unchurched and spiritually restless corners of the city. We met in a rented space above a bar that was, thankfully, closed on Sundays.
The work was hard and it was alive. People came to faith. Lives genuinely changed. I thought I was watching the beginning of a spiritual revolution for my city.
What I was actually watching was the beginning of one of the most fruitful and painful chapters of my life. I just didn’t know it yet.
The Book I Should Have Read
Before I launched, the church planting organization that gave me the green light had one condition. Read Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud.
They told me directly: you have a tendency to take on too much, and you are not good at saying no. I nodded, agreed happily, and did not read the book.
Looking back, that single act of avoidance cost me years.
I think people who struggle to say no are usually dealing with one of two things, and if they’re honest, they’ll recognize themselves in both. The first is a subtle, mostly unconscious belief that you are better at God’s job than He is. That you can rescue people from their pain if you just work hard enough and care deeply enough. The second is that helping others has become the primary way you feel loved and valued. Not loved freely, as a child of God. Loved as a transaction. Earned. Conditional on what you produce.
I had been doing both my entire ministry life. I just hadn’t named it yet.
What Church Planting Culture Does to You
There is something in church planting culture that valorizes suffering. The harder you grind, the more you sacrifice, the more willing you are to bleed for the mission, and the more serious you are about the calling. Burnout gets treated like a badge of honor instead of a warning sign.
I believed that story. I told that story. I was the guy quoting Spurgeon about the furnace and the refining fire while quietly running on nothing.
The problem with the badge-of-honor version of burnout is that it gives you a spiritually sophisticated reason to ignore what your body and soul are trying to tell you. It sanctifies depletion. And depletion, left long enough, becomes destruction.
When the Tank Hit Empty
Four years in, the church was healthy. I was not.
I was exhausted in the way that goes deeper than tired. Burned out and quietly becoming bitter toward the very people whose needs I had given everything to meet. The pastoral calling that had once felt like the most alive thing in my life now felt like a weight I was no longer sure I could carry.
It didn’t look like a breakdown at first. It looked like a pastor who was slightly more irritable than he used to be. A little more sarcastic. A little less present at home. Still preaching. Still meeting. Still grinding. But something hollow had moved in behind the eyes.
I stopped looking forward to Sundays. I started resenting the people who needed the most from me. I was praying less and performing more. And I had no categories for any of it because I had never been taught that this was even possible.
Nobody told me the church could be thriving while I was drowning. Nobody told me that the drive that makes a church planter effective in the early years is the same thing that destroys him if he never learns to manage it.
What I Know Now
I finally read Boundaries after I stepped down. It changed my life. I have read almost every book Henry Cloud has written since, and I have spent the twenty-plus years since then working on the things I refused to work on before everything fell apart.
If you are somewhere in that story right now, I want you to hear this clearly: what you’re feeling is not weakness. It is not lack of faith. It is what happens when you give everything to something without ever being taught how to receive.
You are allowed to get help. You are allowed to be a person, not just a pastor. The church needs you healthy far more than it needs you heroic.
If you recognize yourself in any of this, I’d love to talk. I work specifically with pastors navigating burnout, identity, and the exhaustion that comes from giving everything to ministry without ever being taught how to care for yourself in the process.
Your first conversation with me is free. Book a discovery call here.
