It was a long week. I felt sniped at by a handful of complaints from congregants. I was fighting for a spirit of gratitude as frustration grew in my heart. I stepped into a meeting and did my best to be present, but the inner critic’s voice was loud. I asked a simple question to kick things off: “Where is God growing you?” Tears welled in the eyes of the woman across from me. “New Life is my safe place, my growing place. New Life is my healing place. Every time I come to church, it feels like a hug.”

“Gracious words are like honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body” (Prov. 16:24).

A psalm of lament for those low in the trenches of local church leadership.

A Psalm of Benjamin While Resting in a Cave. To the seminary choirmaster. To the Tune of Do Not Destroy.

You see it, don’t you? A co-worker quietly losing their battle with alcoholism. A cousin whose marriage and family are unraveling. A friend struggling under the weight of a debilitating eating disorder. Pain is everywhere. People are hurting all around us.

If we are able to glimpse even a fraction of the world’s pain, can you imagine what Jesus saw? For any one of us, such suffering would be overwhelming. Yet, what was Jesus’ response to a world filled with the “harassed and helpless”?

Similarly, we are often blind to how others experience our leadership. Have you ever met someone who thinks they have a gifting they clearly don’t have? Or, is unaware of a strength they possess? I think back to my first round of pastoral interviews as a new seminary graduate and reflect on not just how little I knew about the content of the job, but how little I knew about myself.

If we are going to be the leaders God calls us to be, we need to grow in awareness of what are our leadership strengths and weaknesses are. Until we know our superpower and kryptonite, we will never be the leaders God has called us to be.

Free Webinar: Moving Your Staff Values Off the Wall and Into Your Team. Thursday, November 13, 9:00 a.m. PST.

Every Sunday at the front entrance of New Life Bible Fellowship on you’ll see my Co-Lead Pastor, Greg Lavine. If you have a child, then you’ll enter through the side gate where I will meet you. Regularly, first time attendees will express surprise after the service, either to myself or another New Lifer, that a pastor greeted them at the gate. Churchgoers often say they’ve never been to a church where a pastor serves as a greeter.

What do you want for dinner tonight?

What do you want to watch?

What do you want to do this weekend?

Do you ever feel exhausted by making decisions? More than a few times, Angel and I have come home from hard days at work and looked at each other, “Would you please make a decision about what we are going to eat for dinner?” Researchers note that “by the time the average person goes to bed, they’ve made over 35,000 decisions and all of those decisions take time and energy.”