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The Weight: Finding Grace in the Crucible of Leadership

 

If you’ve spent any time in leadership—especially within the church—you know about ‘the weight’.  It’s the invisible burden carried by leaders who feel that, ultimately, "the buck stops here." I've felt this weight acutely in my years serving as a pastor at Don Valley Bible Chapel (DVBC), particularly as we navigated a series of intense, community-shaking trials.

My tenure at this small North Toronto church has included the profound tragedy of an eight-year-old girl’s murder, a wound that cut to the soul of our community and tested our faith to its core.  We then faced a devastating fire that displaced us for many months, forcing us to redefine what "church" looked like without a physical home.  And, of course, the communal challenge of COVID-19 demanded constant, high-stakes decisions with no clear playbook.

In moments like these, leadership scrutiny is immense.  Every decision is analyzed; every word is weighed.  Even when we are doing our best, we can experience the heartache of being severely misunderstood, judged, and even betrayed.

This pressure is compounded by a growing tension between God's vision for His church, as taught in the Bible, and the expectations and demands of modern-day churchgoers.  The Church, Biblically, is called to be a resilient, self-sacrificial household focused on Christ.  Yet, many expectations today are consumer-driven, demanding efficiency,  convenience, and institutional ‘success’  from its leaders.  This gulf between eternal vision and contemporary demand makes the "buck stops here" moment agonizingly lonely.

One of the most painful parts of this process has been watching people I thought were deeply committed suddenly abandon their involvement in the church when things got difficult.  These were people we had served alongside, laughed with, prayed with,  and believed would be with us for the long haul.  Their departure—often rooted in a failure to reconcile the difficulty of ‘real church’ with an idealized expectation—added a layer of profound personal grief. 

The unseen toll of "Soldiering On" isn't just external pressure to ‘perform’; it's deeply personal and often involves profound relational wounds.

Many leaders, including myself, have moments when we may feel disillusioned—about ourselves, the human condition, and sometimes the church we serve.  Our experiences can leave us questioning our effectiveness, our vision, and sometimes even our worth as a person.  The betrayal, the departures, and the constant balancing act between Biblical standards and human expectations compound this, leaving us lost in a fog of self-doubt.

We often become experts at "soldiering on," repressing our grief and anger to maintain a 'professional' exterior.  Beneath that veneer, there is so much that is unresolved.  Almost all leaders carry something—some deep pain, some character issue, some spiritual question, some failure—that they have never talked to anyone about.  And we often lack a safe place to simply be human, flawed, and honest.

In those moments of deep isolation or intense pressure, I often feel a kinship with spiritual voices from history.  I’ve found myself praying, like the medieval mystic Hildegard, feeling timid, inadequate, insecure, and undereducated.

The truth is, no leader is perfect.  We are all deeply mixed-motive people.  We cannot afford to worry too much about our own mixed motives, or the changing motives of others.  We must keep our eyes on the calling—the unchanging vision of God for His Church.

My prayer and my deepest conviction for myself and my fellow leaders is this: courage.

"Like Hildegard, I often feel timid, inadequate, insecure, and undereducated.  Give me courage today, I pray, to stand up, speak out, and to do what you have given me to do."  

It’s in yielding to God’s calling on our lives—not because of our strength, but by God's grace—that we find the power to continue in leadership.  We are called to serve wholeheartedly, not despite our weaknesses but with the quiet understanding that His power is made perfect in them.

If you are a leader carrying this heavy mantle today, know you are not alone.  The weight is real, but so is the grace that sustains us.


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