EnableLight Blog

Topic for May Post:

“Are Religious Interpreters held to the same Standards as Other Professional Interpreters?”

I’m sure many of you have heard the term, “Oh, she’s JUST a church interpreter.”, or “He’s not a professional interpreter, he’s a religious interpreter.”  Those beliefs have had a crippling effect on religious interpreters over the years. Sadly enough, some have earned the label, but for the most part, religious interpreters are interpreting in the court room, the hospital, the class room, major conferences, for the city, state for federal government, and more. 

Fact of the matter is there should be no difference between the professional interpreter and the religious interpreter with the exception of the information being interpreted and the setting.

On the contrary, religious interpreters are held to a HIGHER standard. That standard doesn’t come from RID or NAD, but from the Lord, our God. The Holy Bible dictates our Code of Professional Conduct and Behavior.

Please share any experiences you may have had with the blog. One might be able to benefit from your experience.

Topic for April Post:

“How do I handle Ministry Burn-Out?”

Defining Burnout

Burnout is a psychological term for the experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest. Musicians, authors, teachers, athletes, engineers, emergency service workers, vocational rehabilitation counselors, soldiers, reporters and high technology professionals seem more prone to burnout than others. General practitioners seem to have the highest proportion of burnout cases (according to a recent Dutch study in Psychological Reports, no less than 40% of these experienced high levels of burnout). Burnout is not a recognized disorder in the DSM

The most well-studied measurement of burnout in the literature is the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Maslach and her colleague Jackson first identified the construct “burnout” in the 1970s, and developed a measure that weighs the effects of emotional exhaustion and reduced sense of personal accomplishment.^[2] This indicator has become the standard tool for measuring burnout in research on the syndrome. People who experience all three symptoms have the greatest degrees of burnout, although emotional exhaustion is said to be the hallmark of burnout.

Many theories of burnout include negative outcomes related to burnout, including job function (performance, output, etc.); health related outcomes (increases in stress hormones, coronary heart disease, circulatory issues), and mental health problems (depression, etc.).

Although burnout is work-related, most responsibility for burnout currently rests on the individual worker in the United States, as well as the individual company, as it is in a company’s best interest to ensure burnout doesn’t occur. Other countries, especially in Europe, have included work stress and burnout in occupational health and safety standards, and hold organizations (at least partly) responsible for preventing and treating burnout.

Source:  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coping with Burnout

There are a variety of ways that both individuals and organizations can deal with burnout. In his book, Newton (1995) argues that many of the remedies related to burnout are motivated not from an employee’s perspective, but from the organization’s perspective. Despite that, if there are benefits to coping strategies, then it would follow that both organizations and individuals should attempt to adopt some burnout coping strategies.

Ministry Burnout

How do you handle ministry burnout? How do you know when it’s happening? How can you prevent it?

Please post your comments. To learn more about Ministry Burnout and how to deal with it, attend Diane Fowler’s workshop at this year’s IMPARTATION ‘09 conference in Montgomery, AL. Visit http://www.enablelight.com/htmls/conference.htm for more information.