Part 5: When We Lead From Fear

THE AIR WE BREATH Part Five: When We Lead from Fear

This is hard to write, because once again, I'm in it. At times I've been led in ways that carried fear. But there are times when I've led from it too. So this isn't written from an objective distance, it feels very up-close-and-personal to me.

This isn't coming from any bitterness or negativity towards leadership or authorities in general, or towards particular leaders I might know and relate to in some way. The church doesn't exist without people willing to carry responsibility, often at real personal cost. I know many leaders who are sincere, generous, and sacrificially faithful over long years. All of us are imperfect. What we're describing here is something that can happen to any of us within the context of carrying responsibility.

I’ve found that fear in leadership doesn't usually feel like fear. It often feels more like responsibility. Like needing to hold things together. Like being responsible to protect something that really matters. That's genuinely part of the story. But somewhere along the way, the care for something can morph into something else, it can become the need to control it. Control is a strong word. It might present like the need to manage everything well, to keep it all in good order. But when that becomes an undue weight of responsibility, even a holy commission, voices that might potentially help can start to feel like threats.

When fear stirs up like this, it tends to inform and misalign a few core things: identity, when what I do becomes who I am; isolation, when there's no one I can be fully honest with; and investment, when what I've built starts to feel like it belongs to me. None of these are unusual, or sinister, they're part of what it’s like being human. But they do shape how we respond when things feel uncertain, and they can be genuinely hard to see when we’re inside them.

But when fear shapes leadership, it narrows things, makes everything feel a wee bit awkward, difficult. The community can become more careful. Honesty and simply being candid can seem to cost more. Leading can become more measured, confined, less spacious and trusting. Communication can become less honest and more carefully crafted to produce a desired response. Noone really flourishes in that kind of environment, even if things still look good on the surface.

The scriptures are honest about these dynamics. Saul shows how fear can slowly close a person in. David shows how failure doesn't have to. The difference isn't perfection, but whether there's still a place to be honest before God. And then there's Jesus, who carries authority without being guarded, defensive, or precious. People question him, misunderstand him, even walk away, and he doesn't scramble to hold things together. There's a steadiness in him that doesn't depend on how others are responding. He doesn't need to control people to lead them. And that is what makes him so safe to be around.

If you're a leader and recognising something here, welcome to the club, but I offer two questions that I have found helpful: What am I actually afraid of right now? Not to fix it immediately, just to be able to see it clearly, and be honest with myself and God about. And: Who am I when I'm not leading? Not as a loss, but as a return to something more grounded and innate than role or response.

For me, freedom and ease result from coming home to myself, not in trying to fit myself into some role. I find in coming home to myself , just as God made me, that I also come home to Him in a way that brings deep and wonderful relief. An even relief better than I felt as a school kid who sometimes found that I was “in” and not “out”.

The One who leads the church, God our Father, is not subject to our human frailties, but he’s compassionate towards us in our struggles. And he is still lovingly and intentionally forming his people - including his leaders – to reflect his own image. This is very good news. It means that when we’re in times of realignment and adjustment, that it isn't the end of the story. The best is yet to come.