Confession of a Tired Leader

Let’s be honest, leadership is hard. If anyone ever tells you it’s easy, you need to run far, far away from them. All Christians are called to a life of excellence, living a life displaying the love and grace that has been given to them by the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, but Christian leaders are called to that while also having every one examine their every move. Leadership is really hard. There isn’t much room for error, and that gets exhausting.

Many know, I have been “leading” now for a quite a while, though there are definitely people that have been leading much longer than me. I remember getting my feet wet for the first time by being an assistant in the 2-year-old Sunday school class.  That would, several years later, give way to me helping in AWANA, which led to me doing a bunch of other stuff in Children’s Ministry (I must say that I had a blast, and have a million stories from those years!), which led to me getting involved in leadership of youth (where there are a bunch more stories), which led to SWAT (where there are even more stories), which led to everything I do now. The thing is, I have been doing this pretty non-stop for a while.  I still lead youth/DNOW’s, I lead at work, I lead just in life, which is what I am called to do.

Here is my confession though: I am tired. Morgan, the girl who never stops, has gotten tired.

I have realized this over the past weekend. Last Sunday night, I called my best friend (God bless Kayla for listening to me.) and I just ranted. I probably ranted for a good 20 minutes straight. The next morning, I read an email from her (because we have a 1998 type friendship where you email each other when something is important.). Her email stopped me in my tracks, woke me up in a sense, and has caused me to realize just how tired I have become.

To be honest, looking back at the last two weekends that I have led, I rather regret leading them. I don’t hold these regrets because I did something wrong or had a rebellious group of students, quite the opposite actually. I regret leading because I didn’t do it with excellence. I was so tired of teaching on “salvation” and these basic concepts of Christianity. They all seemed so elementary and basic and honestly, rather boring.

Salvation was boring. And there lies/lied the problem. The love of God is so great that there is always something new to learn and something new to teach. Salvation, the cross, the Love of God, should never ever ever being boring. It should always keep us on our toes; it should always push us on to striving toward new heights.

Our Christian walk should never be comfortable; it should never be boring. If the cross is so offensive to the world as the Bible proclaims, my Christian walk should never be comfortable. There are new heights to achieve, but those heights are only achieved through much work and struggle. They aren’t achieved in our comfortable little bubbles.

Here is my plea to you: Don’t let your faith get comfortable. We are all called to be leaders whether you view yourself as one or not- the world is watching all of us because of our faith, so live your life with excellence. If you are a SWAT leader or some other kind of leader, do it with excellence and allow God to renew you. Salvation should never be a boring subject or one that we get tired of hearing.

Our lives should be filled with such passion for the Gospel, that it is impossible to not share it. There should be so much passion bubbling forth that we constantly moved to action, and that passion will keep the Gospel from seeming boring or mundane.

There are people that will replicate your example. What will that replication look like?