We guide Kingdom leaders through the deep work of formation so that in every season they can make significant contribution from a place of personal and relational wholeness.
A Hurting world, Needs a Flourishing Church
The task of leadership is not the same in all seasons of work and ministry. Each moment requires a new deepening of the inner life.
With rising levels of anxiety, stress, and burnout, many Christian leaders today are hitting a wall because they haven’t sufficiently tended to their inner life—the roots of who they are. Character that needs forming. Trauma that needs healing. Their roots are too shallow to meet the rapidly changing and intense demands of leadership. What’s more, shallow roots continue to show up in different ways at each stage of our leadership.
As we encounter the edges of our growth, we must return to the foundations of our inner life. The places we’ve addressed, in part, but must reconcile in a deeper and more permanent way. Only from that place can we begin to holistically address the means by which we excel in our roles, our craft, and our work. Because leadership is a way of being before it’s a skill to be learned.
“A leader is someone with the power to project either shadow or light onto some part of the world and onto the lives of the people who dwell there. A leader shapes the ethos in which others must live; and those as light filled as heaven or shadowy as hell. A good leader is intensely aware of the interplay of shadow and light lest the act of leadership do more harm than good.”"
— Parker Palmer
The Need for this Moment
The challenges of these last few years have revealed the desperate need for transformed leaders. While we have lived in truly extraordinary times, these crises have not necessarily caused the breakdown in Christian leadership; if anything, this period of struggle has been an unveiling. It has shown the deep lack that exists in our lives and leadership. We must rediscover the paths to flourishing inner-lives and deep intimacy with Jesus.
The weight cannot just be on individual pastors or church leaders because there are systems and powerful cultures at work too. There are unrealistic expectations from leaders, organizations, broader culture, and from those we lead. There is a tendency to say, “just keep going.” An echo that hints that if we just keep striving, we’ll find our way into some model that can fix the problems and make it okay. We are a culture that wants to fix the issues “by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good,” as the poet T.S. Elliot warned.
But the answer is not that simple. The answer to this challenge is not merely “do better,” the answer is met in the recovery of soulful living. We do not just need more rest and more vacation. While we advocate for sabbath, sabbaticals, vacation and rest, these will not be enough. They will not heal us, grow us, and meet the demands for transformation that our churches, our organizations, and our world are aching for. We need more.
This requires Guidance. Patient. Intimate. And Challenging.
This requires Friendship. Loving. Committed. Deepening. Willing to travel into the trenches and onto the mountaintops.
This requires a Path. Steady and Tested.