In the first days after a flood, help arrives in waves. People take time off work, bring trucks, and stay late. Then, somewhere around the third week, the waves get smaller. The work doesn't. The same handful of people keep answering the phone, organising the shifts, and sitting with families who are still overwhelmed. If nobody is watching, those are the people you lose.
Caring for the carers isn't a nice extra. It's how a church stays present for the long road instead of burning bright for ten days and disappearing.
What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone.
What tiredness looks like before it becomes burnout
Most people don't announce that they're struggling. They show it. Watch for:
- Someone who used to say "I'll ask the team" now says "I'll just do it myself."
- Short tempers over small things, or unusual flatness from someone who's usually warm.
- Skipping meals, sleep, or their own family to cover one more shift.
- Talking only about the disaster, or not being able to stop replaying a hard visit.
- A leader who hasn't had a full day off since the water came in.
None of these mean someone is weak. They mean someone has been carrying weight for a long time. Elijah, after one of the most dramatic days in the Bible, lay down under a tree and asked to die. God's first response wasn't a sermon. It was sleep, food, and more sleep (1 Kings 19:5–8).
Build rest into the plan, not around it
Rest that depends on people asking for it rarely happens. Put it in the structure:
- Set shift limits. Four to six hours of physical work is plenty for most volunteers. Nobody should be on every day.
- Rotate the coordinator. Name a second person who can hold the phone for a day each week, so the first one can switch it off.
- Cap the week. Decide in advance how many days a week the church will send teams, and protect a day with no response activity at all.
- Make stopping normal. Tell volunteers plainly: "Doing two shifts well is better than doing ten and quitting." Thank people when they step back.
- Plan the handoff. Recovery lasts months. Decide now who carries the next season, so today's team can finish well.
Small things that genuinely help
- A meal dropped at a volunteer's home — the people feeding everyone else often stop feeding themselves.
- A two-minute debrief at the end of each shift: "What was hard today? What was good?" Then let it go.
- Someone whose only job that week is to check in on the helpers.
- A short prayer time for the team that isn't a planning meeting.
- Permission to say no — out loud, from a leader, more than once.
Pastors need this too
A pastor in an affected community is often preaching on Sunday, visiting families all week, coordinating volunteers, answering media or municipal questions, and grieving with their own congregation. They rarely have anyone checking on them. Elders and church councils: give your pastor a real day off, cover a Sunday if they need it, and ask directly how they are sleeping. Neighbouring churches that weren't affected can offer something concrete, like taking a preaching slot or covering a hospital visit.
Keeping the long road in view
The goal isn't the busiest church. It's a church that's still there in the spring, when the last families are moving back in and most of the help has gone home. That kind of presence is only possible if the people doing it are cared for along the way. A simple shared task list — something like TaskSimply — can make it easier to spread the load so it doesn't sit on one person's phone.
For more on staying present, read After the First Week and The Long Road. If your church wants to share the load with others, the volunteer roster helps match people to the right work.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.