Have you seen Julie’s new book: God, Love and Marshmallow Wars? This book contains 365 daily challenges for couples to strengthen their relationships to each other and with God. Couples will complete activities such as Scripture memory, conversation starters, relationship builders, learning about Biblical marriage, romance builders, personal reflections, and date ideas. Click here to purchase your copy. (This link will open a new widow and take you to Westbow Press’ bookstore.) It is also available at Christian Book Distributors, Amazon, and Barnes & Nobel
Looking for a speaker for your next ministry event? Julia is now booking for 2019 and 2020 Christian events for women’s and couples’ ministries for both small and large events. Book with us now.
Julia is CEO of Wellspring Christian Ministries, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people and couples develop a passionate relationship with God. A public speaker, conference trainer, event planner, and blog writer, Julia is a two-time graduate from Grand Canyon University with a bachelor in Psychology and a masters in Professional Counseling. Saved as a child and raised in church and in a Christian home and private Christian School as a Pastor’s kid, Julia has taught Sunday school, led music, played the piano, served as Children’s Director, and engaged her gifts in many other areas of church life. Previously employed with the Florida Baptist Convention, Julia organized events and led conferences for church ministry assistants.
Julia enjoys sharing her journey as a growing Christian with others looking for a deeper connection with God. Through Bible study and her own life experiences, God has given Julia a passion to help couples understand God’s design for marriage while they learn to place God first in their marriage, cultivate meaningful relationships, build intimacy, and address the tougher issues that come in every marriage so that they can experience a marriage that honors and glorifies God. Julia also loves mentoring, teaching, and working with women to help them learn to live as Godly women.
With her history and experience growing up in both small and large churches, Julia enjoys bringing top level quality events to churches of all sizes. Her father largely pastored small churches and therefore she understands that these vital parts of the believing community need to be good stewards of the resources God provides them with. This knowledge inspires her passion for being available with a fresh perspective for those who want to provide their congregations with meaningful spiritual growth opportunities.
Therefore, God’s chosen ones, holy and loved, put on heartfelt compassion, kindness,
humility, gentleness, and patience.— Colossians 3:12 (HCSB)
Everywhere Jesus went, He compassionately met the needs of the people He encountered. He healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons, forgave sins, and performed miracle after miracle. Why? Because He loved them. He had a deep sympathy for their illnesses and sorrow for their hurts and pain. For every misfortune He encountered, He had a strong desire to help those who were suffering. This is exactly what it means to have compassion on another person. You encounter them at their time of need and because you are able to both empathize and sympathize with their situation, you want to help them and ease the suffering they are experiencing. Empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s state of mind. It’s the ability to put yourself in their shoes and walk where they are walking. An anonymous quote says, “It’s not the load that breaks us down, it’s the way we carry it.”
Because we have been called to minister to others, we often encounter those who are sick, hurting, and lost, just as Jesus did. We hear their stories of brokenness, their fears, and their hurts. Sometimes their stories include trauma such as domestic violence, serving our country in a war, or being a victim to a crime. They come to us, expecting us to help them, encourage them, and even fix what is broken in their lives. At times, we begin to take on their burdens as our own and their stress becomes our stress. We vicariously relive their trauma through their stories and internalize it into our own lives. This stress that comes from caring for others is known as compassion fatigue. It is caused by the empathy that we have for others and is a natural consequence of helping those who are hurting, traumatized or suffering. Therapist, psychologists, doctors, nurses, family members who care for another family member who has a medical crisis, and those of us in ministry are all susceptible.
Like other people in a helping profession, people in ministry often tend to take on the weight of everyone they minister to so that the world can be a better place. We know that doing so will have a cost, but not really expecting the high price it brings. After I while, you begin to notice that things are starting to get to you and your passion for ministry and compassion towards others is changing. You feel so drained that even the smallest need someone brings to you feels like the weight of the world piled on top of all the other weights you are already carrying. You feel numb, yet also feel as if you can’t do enough. You feel like you’ve needed a nap since before last year’s Christmas program. Some of the decisions you’ve been making are beginning to raise the eyebrows of your ministry partners, deacons, church council members, and even your congregation. Still, more needs are piled on and when the phone rings, you choose not to answer it. Your mind feels blown and your spirit feels broken. Your body also is responding to the stress of it all and you notice more physical ailments of your own. You have forgotten why you wanted to help in the first place. Your well is completely dry, and you have nothing left to give anyone.
If this description sounds like you, then you could very well be experiencing compassion fatigue.
Take a moment to watch this brief video on YouTube about Claudia.
Poor Claudia! She is so compassionately fatigued that she robs a bank just so she can have a nice quiet cell to herself and let someone else care for her husband. While the cartoon provides a few laughs, there is nothing funny about compassion fatigue. Maybe you can relate to Claudia.
Symptoms related to compassion fatigue can be very similar to burnout. The main difference is that compassion fatigue occurs as we deal with the trauma others face, which creates secondary traumatic stress for us. While burnout is more of feeling of being “worn out” and can affect anyone from any walk of life, the prolonged exposure from listening to their stories builds up and as a helping professional, we become susceptible to compassion fatigue as we carry around the emotional residue of their traumas and sufferings.
The impact of burnout is more easily identified since it is generally directly linked to the stresses in our lives. What we used to be passionate about and gave us motivation for serving God becomes tedious and an opportunity to serve God becomes more of a drudgery. Compassion fatigue, on the other had has an indirect correlation to the stress we feel because we are not living the actual stress itself, rather we live it through the person who is actually experiencing it. People who are “burned out” lose the ability to empathize but those with compassion fatigue still have a desire to help and they empathize with those who are hurting, but they become overwhelmed by their own thoughts and feelings to do so.
For further clarification let’s examine the signs, symptoms, and triggers of burnout, compassion fatigue and the vicarious trauma associated with compassion fatigue.
Take a moment and identify any of the signs, symptoms, and triggers above that indicate how you are feeling right now.
Having a few of the symptoms, doesn’t mean you have compassion fatigue, but the more symptoms you have, the more likely that compassion fatigue has struck you and both you and your ministry is suffering. The good news is people can recover from compassion fatigue quicker than burnout and there are steps you can take to protect yourself from compassion fatigue.
If we are to continue walking the path of our calling and come to the end our life to hear Jesus says, “Well done” when we give an accounting for our calling, then practicing self-care is a must. For the remainder of this blog series, we will look at what self-care is and the five critical areas of our lives that we need to carefully tend to so that we can avoid burnout and/or compassion fatigue.
God, Love and Marshmallow Wars: This book contains 365 daily challenges for couples to strengthen their relationships to each other and with God. Couples will complete activities such as Scripture memory, conversation starters, relationship builders, learning about Biblical marriage, romance builders, personal reflections, and date ideas. Click here to purchase your copy. (This link will open a new widow and take you to Westbow Press’ bookstore.) It is also available at Christian Book Distributors, Amazon, and Barnes & Nobel
Looking for a speaker for your next ministry event? Julia is now booking for 2019 and 2020 Christian events for women’s and couples’ ministries for both small and large events. Book with us now.
Julia is CEO of Wellspring Christian Ministries, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people and couples develop a passionate relationship with God. A public speaker, conference trainer, event planner, and blog writer, Julia is a two-time graduate from Grand Canyon University with a bachelor in Psychology and a masters in Professional Counseling. Saved as a child and raised in church and in a Christian home and private Christian School as a Pastor’s kid, Julia has taught Sunday school, led music, played the piano, served as Children’s Director, and engaged her gifts in many other areas of church life. Previously employed with the Florida Baptist Convention, Julia organized events and led conferences for church ministry assistants.
Julia enjoys sharing her journey as a growing Christian with others looking for a deeper connection with God. Through Bible study and her own life experiences, God has given Julia a passion to help couples understand God’s design for marriage while they learn to place God first in their marriage, cultivate meaningful relationships, build intimacy, and address the tougher issues that come in every marriage so that they can experience a marriage that honors and glorifies God. Julia also loves mentoring, teaching, and working with women to help them learn to live as Godly women.
With her history and experience growing up in both small and large churches, Julia enjoys bringing top level quality events to churches of all sizes. Her father largely pastored small churches and therefore she understands that these vital parts of the believing community need to be good stewards of the resources God provides them with. This knowledge inspires her passion for being available with a fresh perspective for those who want to provide their congregations with meaningful spiritual growth opportunities.
Jesus had just had the encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. If we back up to the beginning of chapter 4 in John’s gospel, we find the Pharisees had heard that Jesus and his disciples were making and baptizing more disciples than John so He left Judea to go to Galilee, but he had to go through Samaria on His way for His destined meeting with the woman at the well. In verse five we find that Jesus was weary from His journey, so He sat by the well, positioning Himself in the exact location for His destined meeting. The disciples don’t arrive on the scene until verse 27, marveling that He is talking with a Samaritan woman. In verse 31, they demonstrate their concern for Jesus and encourage Him to eat something. His response was, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” The disciples totally miss what Jesus is talking about and wonder amongst themselves who could have brought Him something to eat. So Jesus explains – “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” What was the work that Jesus was sent to do? Luke 19:10 tells us, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.” Ultimately, for Jesus, that meant dying on a cross and rising again, but for this day, it meant talking to an outcast Samaritan woman who would bring her entire village to Jesus.
As Christians, each one of us has been given the same task: to seek and to save that which is lost and to make disciples. Jesus’ last words to the church before He ascended into heaven were, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20, HCSB). We all might do that in a different way. Some preach, some write books, some teach a small group, some tell coworkers, friends, and family about Jesus, some leave a gospel tract along with a tip at a restaurant, and some sing praise and worship songs. None of us are saved to sit in a pew. As long as we are still on earth, we have a task, an assignment to do. What assignment have you been given?
Jesus was committed to His task all the way to the cross. How committed are you? Jesus set His priorities by what His Father wanted Him to do. What do your priorities look like? Jesus was willing to go to Samaria, even though the devout, strict Jews avoided it due to fear of being defiled if they went through it. Instead, they would bypass Samaria and take much longer route around it just to avoid it. But God gave Jesus an assignment in Samaria – and He obediently went and won an entire village to belief in Him. Are you willing to go the places no one else will go?
For some who work in ministry, the question of commitment has not been about priorities or willingness – it is more about how much ministry takes out of person. Ministry is hard work. Not just because the task is hard, but also because people in ministry often invest themselves emotionally into the lives the people to whom they minister. If people in ministry do not practice self-care, they risk burnout and/or compassion fatigue. If this is you, then God is asking you, “Will you finish the work to which you have been called?” For Jesus it wasn’t enough just to do the work His Father sent Him to do – He also had to finish it. Imagine for a moment if Jesus developed burnout and compassion fatigue. If anyone ever deserved a burnout and compassion fatigue moment, it was Jesus! But if Jesus sat down one day and said, “I’m too tired to go on. I think I’ll quit this business of working out everyone’s salvation.” Where would that leave us today? Dear person in the ministry – pastor, music minister, small group leader, deacon, conference speaker, children’s worker, nursery worker, youth pastor…whatever your ministry field is – what if you sit down and say, “I’m too tired to go on. I think I’ll quit.” How many people would die without Christ as Savior because you quit? Like Jesus, it isn’t enough that we do the will of God – we must finish the task to which we have been called.
God, Love and Marshmallow Wars: This book contains 365 daily challenges for couples to strengthen their relationships to each other and with God. Couples will complete activities such as Scripture memory, conversation starters, relationship builders, learning about Biblical marriage, romance builders, personal reflections, and date ideas. Click here to purchase your copy. (This link will open a new widow and take you to Westbow Press’ bookstore.) It is also available at Christian Book Distributors, Amazon, and Barnes & Nobel
Looking for a speaker for your next ministry event? Julia is now booking for 2019 and 2020 Christian events for women’s and couples’ ministries for both small and large events. Book with us now.
Julia is CEO of Wellspring Christian Ministries, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people and couples develop a passionate relationship with God. A public speaker, conference trainer, event planner, and blog writer, Julia is a two-time graduate from Grand Canyon University with a bachelor in Psychology and a masters in Professional Counseling. Saved as a child and raised in church and in a Christian home and private Christian School as a Pastor’s kid, Julia has taught Sunday school, led music, played the piano, served as Children’s Director, and engaged her gifts in many other areas of church life. Previously employed with the Florida Baptist Convention, Julia organized events and led conferences for church ministry assistants.
Julia enjoys sharing her journey as a growing Christian with others looking for a deeper connection with God. Through Bible study and her own life experiences, God has given Julia a passion to help couples understand God’s design for marriage while they learn to place God first in their marriage, cultivate meaningful relationships, build intimacy, and address the tougher issues that come in every marriage so that they can experience a marriage that honors and glorifies God. Julia also loves mentoring, teaching, and working with women to help them learn to live as Godly women.
With her history and experience growing up in both small and large churches, Julia enjoys bringing top level quality events to churches of all sizes. Her father largely pastored small churches and therefore she understands that these vital parts of the believing community need to be good stewards of the resources God provides them with. This knowledge inspires her passion for being available with a fresh perspective for those who want to provide their congregations with meaningful spiritual growth opportunities.
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Have you seen Julie’s new book: God, Love and Marshmallow Wars? This book contains 365 daily challenges for couples to strengthen their relationships to each other and with God. Couples will complete activities such as Scripture memory, conversation starters, relationship builders, learning about Biblical marriage, romance builders, personal reflections, and date ideas. Click here to purchase your copy. (This link will open a new widow and take you to Westbow Press’ bookstore.) It is also available at Christian Book Distributors, Amazon, and Barnes & Nobel
To request more information or a booking, 
God, Love and Marshmallow Wars: This book contains 365 daily challenges for couples to strengthen their relationships to each other and with God. Couples will complete activities such as Scripture memory, conversation starters, relationship builders, learning about Biblical marriage, romance builders, personal reflections, and date ideas. 
