Eenigenburg, Sue, and Robynn Bliss. Expectations and Burnout: Women Surviving the Great Commission. Littleton, CO: William Carey Library, 2010. 238 pp. $13.99.

Sue Eenigenburg and Robynn Bliss, who were both missionaries with the Christar organization, work together to describe how unrealistic and unfulfilled expectations can lead to burnout in missionary women. These women, however, are not their only target audience. In Expectations and Burnout: Women Surviving the Great Commission, the authors, more traditional in their perspective and focus, primarily address issues of married female missionaries, although they also mention single female missionaries along with the roles of different groups, like sending agencies, churches, and other missionaries.

The book’s title highlights the principal message: women who wish to avoid burnout while being a missionary must confront unrealistic expectations placed upon them. The introduction and first two chapters address the gap in research regarding the psychology of women missionaries—especially that written by women—and the specific needs of women missionaries, along with how to help them. This lack of research and material led Eenigenburg to conduct her graduate research on the correlation between expectations and burnout, which included a 323-person survey. She then joined with Bliss, who herself had experienced burnout after being a missionary in South Asia for 13 years, to create this book. The book centers Bliss’s story, interweaving quotes from Eeningnburg’s surveys. Though combining Eenignburg’s research and Bliss’ personal experience, the result is a book that leans more toward personal narrative than research. This makes sense, given their intended audience is the general population. Unfortunately, the authors rely on sharing qualitative data (survey quotes) that do not always align with the information they are covering. They include quantitative data only twice, sharing two charts (Chapters 3 and 10), and in Chapter 10, they leave the values provided undefined, making the chart essentially useless. My greatest issue is that in transforming research into a book for public consumption, the authors make claims without providing evidence to support those claims. For example, in Chapter 10, the authors claim missionaries experience burnout more than people in the United States, be they full-time ministers or lay people (180). Such is to support how unrealistic expectations lead to burnout in missionaries, but for this claim the authors cite no research or offer evidence about how they came to this conclusion. Some may not care about such, but given that they take time to quote from other authors connected to Eenignburg’s research, their inconsistency in citing evidence is troubling.

The next seven chapters of the book discuss those who have expectations of missionaries: the missionaries themselves, sending agencies, sending churches, co-workers, host cultures, and God. The authors point out that often the reality of missions does not meet the expectations that women have of themselves, especially married women who spend more time at home and with kids than doing mission work. Though such role expectations are still true today in many parts of the world, they are becoming less of a widespread supposition. The authors assume married women will fit those roles and that they want to have children. Today, this is certainly not true of all women, however.

The authors move from discussing personal expectations of missionaries to expectations of sending agencies and churches. They found that many sending agencies are often unclear about their expectations of these women, and many women feel undervalued, under-prepared, and underutilized. Sending churches feed into unrealistic expectations with their fanfare of missionaries, which makes it hard for missionaries to share their struggles with churches back home.

Both veteran and new missionaries can also cause harm to themselves in the mission field, as all have expectations of each other that can lead to judgment rather than support—support that is needed given the hard nature of adapting in a host country. Host countries will have their own expectations of the missionaries, some of which may be financially based. The authors point out the need to avoid a savior complex, although they don’t use that terminology. They remind missionaries to stay humble and learn to listen and adapt to their new home. The last subcategory Eenigenburg and Bliss cover is the expectations missionaries can have of God and what happens when God does not do what they expect; the answer is to let go of those expectations (the repeated answer from previous chapters) and trust in God.

While most of the book focuses on expectations, Chapters 10 and 11 discuss burnout. According to the research and experiences of the authors, the common causes of burnout are unmet expectations, stress, overdoing work, and not getting help or rest when needed. Bliss’s missionary staircase analogy describes how these conditions lead to burnout for some individuals. The solutions they provide for burnout are more preventative: a missionary should know herself, evaluate how close she is to burnout, understand her limits, and set boundaries. In the book’s final chapter, Bliss shares her recovery journey as a message of hope moving forward for those already experiencing burnout.

The book’s overall message is that missionaries need to confront unrealistic expectations and communicate with those involved to move past them and avoid burnout. Staying physically healthy and focusing on God are keys to avoiding burnout. These suggestions are timeless, even if the rest of the book might not be, given that expectations for missionaries are always shifting. The book can seem repetitive, given the memoir style and overlapping groups. Regardless, Expectations and Burnout: Women Surviving the Great Commission is an important addition to research and literary works on women missionaries. Moreover, it has identified the connection between expectations and burnout in missionaries, an important fact that all missionaries must recognize to guard against it. It is the closing message, however, that makes this book worth reading: burnout is not a failure, and there is more after recovery. For broken-hearted, worn-out missionaries everywhere, that is something that needs repeating.

Ariel Marie Bloomer

Associate Minister

Saskatoon Church of Christ

Saskatoon, SK, Canada