Well-Being and Burnout Among Dutch Religious Leaders in Times of Transition

• In Event: The Future of Religious Leadership in Turbulent Postmodernity

Short Description

Dutch pastors — many of whom do not like the word leader — on average struggle less with burnout than other workers, but they are also less enthusiastic about their work than other occupational groups. This presentation will explore what this and other data from a large-scale empirical research project suggests for leadership development within churches.

Detailed Abstract

Since the late 1980’s, the professionalization of pastors has taken its roll (Brouwer, 1995; Schilderman, 1998). The growing complexity, differentiation and specialisation of Western society creates new demands for religious leadership. The rise of technology generates new tensions concerning professional ethical codes. These developments give rise to uncertainty of the role and functioning of religious leaders. Fields of work are difficult to delimit, hours of work increase to 55-60 hours on a regular basis, and the work-life balance is increasingly challenging. As a result, initial research is conducted to investigate symptoms of emotional exhausting and burnout among Dutch pastors (Evers & Tomic, 2003; Tomic, Tomic, & Evers, 2004). The role of professionalization is double, on the one hand working towards better training of competencies and a better professional delimitation of responsibilities and fields of work. On the other hand, the church decline and other societal trends continually put religious leaders under stress.

In recent years, a large-scale empirical research project among Dutch pastors has been conducted with hundreds of respondents to further investigate the incidence and experience of burnout within the group of professionals. In addition, the level of ‘passion’ or ‘inspiration’ was measured. The results were compared to statistics available from other occupational groups. It was found that Dutch pastors, on the average, struggle less with burn-out than other workers in similar professional fields (like health care of social services). On the other hand, their level of inspiration and vision for their work was lower than that of other comparable occupational groups.

These data are now analyzed and interpreted to determine the extent to which they influence how religious leaders do or should function in their leading positions and how leadership development should be guided and coached within church communities.

Participant

• Sake Stoppels, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam