Preventing Compassion Fatigue Amongst Pastors: The Influence of Spiritual Intelligence and Intrinsic Motivation

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether spiritual intelligence and intrinsic motivation can act as antecedents to compassion fatigue. This study will prove useful to pastors who wish to lower the levels of burnout and secondary traumatic stress that stem from their work in ministry. The study reviews a sample of 273 South African pastors across four denominations and demonstrates partial support for relationships between spiritual intelligence and intrinsic motivation with not only compassion fatigue, but also its factors of burnout and secondary traumatic stress. The two factors of compassion fatigue do, however, both relate positively to critical existential thinking and negatively with personal meaning production, therefore suggesting that different elements of spiritual intelligence play varying roles in reducing or aggravating compassion fatigue. Burnout can be reduced through increased intrinsic motivation to work in the ministry, and so this study provides recommendations to assist pastors in overcoming compassion fatigue.

Literature Review of Clergy Resilience and Recommendations for Future Research

“…This study concluded that clergy significantly experience secondary trauma in ways that impact their emotions, behaviors, and physical well-being. Over time, experiencing vicarious trauma can have a cumulative effect on pastors, including some symptoms not as common in direct trauma, such as guilt, over-responsibility, compassion fatigue, and spiritual depletion (Hendron et al, 2014; Snelgar et al, 2017).…”

The Intelligence of Spiritual Intelligence: Making the Case

“…Therefore, it may only be that in some domains SI "acts as a moderator in many situations but is not directly influential" (p. 15). Their findings might explain a lot of the more equivocal results in other studies (e.g., Oyewunmi et al 2021;Giannone and Kaplin 2020;Moafi et al 2021;Snelgar et al 2017).…”

Clergy and Compassionate Leadership: A Tightrope of Fatigue and Satisfaction During COVID-19

“…CF, BO, and STS have been studied among the clergy. Several studies have shown that the levels of BO and STS are low–moderate for clergy (Jacobson et al, 2013; Noullet et al, 2018; Snelgar et al, 2017), but the levels are higher when more time is spent directly with victims of trauma (Flannelly et al, 2005), or family and friends of victims (Stewart, 2012) and lower for the clergy with an intrinsic motivation orientation (Snelgar et al, 2017) and when the clergy are supported by training (Flannelly et al, 2005; Noullet et al, 2018; Taylor et al, 2006). Galek et al (2011) examined the number of hours spent counseling patients separately for BO and STS and found that the hours were positively correlated to STS but not BO.…”