All leaders know this feeling.

Someone you have poured into walks out on you or doesn’t keep their word. A staff member, boss, or board member lies to you. You open up to someone about what is happening in you, and they don’t keep that. You share an audacious dream or calling, and someone starts out supporting you but then stops.

Betrayal.

Being personally let down.

Gossip.

Every leader knows this feeling too well.

Even those who aren’t leaders know this feeling. But I want to focus on what to do when you are a leader.

A simple response is to pull back. To never trust again, to not open yourself up to the possibility, and many choose this path. I know I have several times in my life. It feels more comfortable, and in the short term, it is. It keeps us walled off and allows us “just to lead.”

In the long term, though, it stunts our leadership and their leadership.

First, you.

You must wrestle with a few things in this moment and situation.

1. Where do you hurt? Locate what hurts. Where in your body does this hurt? What does that tell you about what is going on in you? Too often as leaders, we simply push through things and not articulate where something hurts. Does your heartache? Stomach? Head?
2. Why do you hurt? Understanding this gets into the narratives of our lives and the family that we grew up in, but you need to engage this. Once when I felt let down by someone I trusted, I had to articulate that it hurt because of never feeling like older leaders believed in me and the mark that had made in my life, the jealousy I had felt towards other leaders who had mentors. While I was letdown and had reason to be upset, it had more to do with me at that moment. Sometimes figuring this out will take a trust counselor or friend.
3. How do you protect against bitterness? As bitterness grows in your heart, joy leaves. Bitterness also makes it incredibly difficult for you to see things as they are because you will simply see everyone and everything around you through that lens.
4. How do you trust and hope again? I think hope is the battleground for every leader and one we must engage with daily, but don’t lose hope. You must put practices into place that keep you hopeful, that keep you in the place of dreaming, that keep you refreshed as a leader so that you can lead well and not from a place of cynicism.

And second, what about their leadership?

This is where the difficult conversation comes in. None of us like hard conversations, but they have to be had, especially in leadership. I think having healthy, hard conversations, is one thing that separates leaders in life.

If someone has betrayed you, someone has stabbed you in the back, not kept their word, lied to you, bailed on your dream, or simply let you down. You need to say something to them.

What happens after this moment for you as a leader will determine a lot. I have watched my leadership stall out because of being weighed down by hurt and bitterness. This doesn’t mean that you pretend it didn’t happen or didn’t hurt, but if you have been wired as a leader and called to lead, fulfill that. Know that hits are part of the road. Difficulties will come. Don’t be surprised by them, and don’t let them take you out of the game.

I want you to pull out a piece of paper. Not your phone. I want to invite you to set some time aside to look at your soul, to see what’s happening in you. 

2020 is not normal. What you are walking through, what you are leading through, no one has led through a pandemic with the access to technology that we have. That adds a layer of complexity, and if we’re honest, exhaustion. 

To see what’s going on in you, I want you to write down how you have felt over the last several months. What is going on in you?

For me, in the last few months, the best words to describe it are deflated and sad. Like there is a huge cloud hanging over my year. The guy who led me to Christ died from covid. We’ve had friends lose their job. If you’re a pastor, you are carrying all kinds of weight about your church and leading them through this season. 

According to Barna, let’s see if other pastors said what you wrote down. According to Barna, when they asked pastors how they are feeling: 

• 51% said tired
• 41% are exhausted
• 39% are panicked 

I talked a pastor this week who leads a church of 400, and he said: 100 people want us to require masks, 100 people don’t want masks, 200 people don’t care. He said I feel like my church is splitting at the seams right now. 

31% of pastors say they are struggling with their well-being. 68% say they feel overwhelmed by the task of leading right now. 

Not only are we facing a pandemic, but a difficult economy, racial tensions that many have ignored for too long, and an election on the horizon.

The reason I say this and have you write it down is that as people, as leaders, we must name what is going on in us. 

Naming things takes away its power, and until we name it, we can’t change it, because we can’t take responsibility for what is false. 

The other reason naming things is essential, is until we do, we don’t know where we are asking God to meet us. Are we asking God to meet us in our exhaustion, hopelessness, sadness, depression, depletion, are we asking God to meet us in our hope, our joy?

But we also can’t lead our people forward without naming them. 

And right now, our people need our leadership. Those stats are true for your people as well. They are tired, exhausted, panicked, they are struggling with their well-being, and feel overwhelmed by life right now.

Maybe for you, you need to name losses you have experienced this year. We aren’t very good at experiencing loss and grieving those losses, but they are a crucial part of our maturity and becoming more like Christ.

To re-evaluate, refocus, and realign, you have to look at where you are. Until you do, you can’t move forward. 

So here are some questions to help you meet Jesus in this place and care for your soul:

• What is God teaching you as a leader right now?
• What is God revealing to you about your church? A crisis has a way of showing our cracks, as well as our strengths. What strengths and weaknesses have been revealed in you or your church during this season?

Many of us are feeling off-kilter, or even excited, because God is revealing some areas of weakness in our churches, he is showing us some new things.

It is difficult to lead when you are tired, exhausted, panicked, but here we are. Many of us are don’t have a full tank or even a half-full tank. 

How would you rate your spiritual practices? On your paper, let’s evaluate ourselves:

• How is your prayer time? Your Bible reading?
• How’s your sleep?
• How are your eating habits?
• How are you doing with exercise?
• If you’re married, how’s your marriage? Your intimacy with your spouse? I’ve had countless pastors tell me their struggle with porn is stronger than before. 

What is one thing you will change to experience renewal in the next week?

Don’t shoot for three things, just one. Look for one way to care for your soul and meet Jesus in a deeper place this coming week.

Every leader knows that they are the chief visionary of their team, church, or organization. Vision is one of the things that energizes leaders the most. We love to think about vision and strategy. We love to dream of the future, the things that don’t exist yet. We can see them, and we can’t wait to bring others along.

But there is a flip side to this coin.

We move on to the next thing quickly.

What starts as a vision series at a church, ends up becoming a few pictures on the wall. What starts as a building campaign, slowly gives way to programs. Eventually, a church looks up and can’t remember why they began that program or ministry. They can’t tell you why they do what they do on Wednesday night. No one can remember why they started that camp or that outreach program, they just do it.

Most leaders think, if it is clear to me, it is clear to everyone. If I know why we do something, then everyone knows why we do something.

The reality though, tells us this is not true.

I remember sitting with a group of leaders from a church, and we were talking about why they did what they did, what their vision was. In that conversation, no one once recounted the mission of the church. The statement that “their whole ministry was built on.” Instead, they talked about how they did things, what they did each week.

It wasn’t that they forgot why it just didn’t matter as much as how or what.

Here is what leaders can’t forget: The moment that you think everyone knows the vision or why is the moment you need to share it again. 

I know what you are thinking. You are tired of talking about it. It is ingrained in your head, so surely it is ingrained in their head. And besides, not only do you do a vision series every year, but it is plastered on the wall, with pictures and catchy slogans and verses!

Amid ministry and life, it is easy to forget. While planning new programs and recruiting and training volunteers, we get focused on what we are doing and how it needs to be done. This is hard for the leader who didn’t think of the vision or wasn’t there when it was created. Yes, they signed up for the vision, but you need to help them know it and care about it as much as you do.

You do this through stories, showing how this person’s life change or this opportunity for your church connects to the vision. Pastors need to continually say, “Because we are about ______, we are doing _______.”

This becomes especially important as a church grows or as it hits a crisis like we did this year.

As a church grows, new ministries get started, and slowly the pastor who was involved in many decisions is no longer in those meetings, so the clarity of vision becomes even more critical because it is being multiplied. Do your staff members have the vision embedded in them so that it influences their decisions?

Here’s a simple way to know: Do you and your teams use your vision to evaluate anything? Often, when we talk about an event or a church service, we talk about the number of people who showed up or how we felt about it, etc. But your vision is where you should start. Did we accomplish it? Did this event or service help us to move that forward? To accomplish why we exist?

Too many churches miss what is right in front of them when it comes to their vision. It not only helps you to make decisions, but it helps you to know if you are accomplishing things and are on the right track.

This is why this is the one thing every leader needs to remember and remind themselves and their teams.

If you are a pastor, you need some kind of accountability. You know it. You also need friends, people who care for you, shepherd you and walk with you and your wife. This is becoming even more and more obvious as pastors fall out of ministry, burnout, or also take their own lives. It is all tragic.

As pastors, we stand up and talk about the need that people have for community and accountability. The problem is that it can be challenging for a pastor to find community and accountability. Who can they turn to? Who can they trust? Some of this comes from the culture of a church but also your own experience as a pastor. On a deeper level, it shows up in your family of origin.

For pastors, the people who are most eager to be your friend or your accountability partner are usually the last people you want to fill those roles. They typically have agendas or are expecting things you won’t be able to deliver.

Here is the rub for a pastor. Men can vent about their bosses or someone at work. But, if a pastor opens up in their small group  and says, “I’m frustrated at work right now.” Or he says that to an accountability partner, the game has changed. Who is the pastor talking about? Are there sides to take? Who got on the wrong side of this leader?

The same goes for a pastor when they need accountability for purity, integrity, want to talk about their marriage, their kids, or their struggles. Not just anybody can fit this role.

Here are a few things to look for in an accountability partner or someone to walk with you as a pastor:

Someone you trust. If you can’t trust your accountability partner or friend, you are off to a bad start. You won’t be honest, and the relationship won’t bring about the goals it sets forth. You have to trust the person completely. This is why many pastors don’t have an accountability partner or close friends.

Someone who understands your role. Being a pastor is different than being a doctor or a landscaper. The person who walks with you through life or holds you accountable has to know this. They have to understand the spiritual and emotional side of ministry. All work is hard work. Ministry work is just different hard work. Not harder, just different. The people closest to us have to understand this.

Someone who loves you. They must love you as a person and want what is best for you. This doesn’t mean telling you what you want to hear, but it does mean wishing to see you succeed and become the person God created you to be. Loving you means saying hard things to you sometimes.

Someone who isn’t begging for it. If someone is begging for this role in your life, it is usually not a good idea. When people want to get close to a pastor or his wife, there is typically an agenda you want to avoid at all costs. Not always, but you need to have wisdom in this.

Someone who is a big fan of yours, but not too big. They must cheer for you, but can’t be over the top. All of us need cheerleaders in our lives, and pastors are no different—people who celebrate when you celebrate, who get excited when you get excited.

Someone who might not attend your church. They might be outside of your church. At the very least, you should have another pastor, you can vent to and get advice about things you can’t get from someone who attends your church. If you want to share frustrations about your church and something you are walking through, it is often best to have a person who is outside of your church.

Someone you are not married to. Your sole accountability partner should not be your wife. Period. You should be open and honest with your wife, keeping no secrets, but someone else should hold you accountable. Too many men, of all jobs, their only friend as they get older is their wife, and that places too much of a burden on her and creates loneliness for you.

The last idea, some of the best people I have found for this in my life, have been other pastors. They know what you walk through, the challenges you face, and the hurts you carry. They have a unique perspective that can be helpful. They know what your wife and kids experience and how to pray and encourage you and them.

A crisis does many things.

It clarifies things; it creates stress and anxiety; it pushes us to do things we have been putting off and a whole host of other things.

One thing that a crisis does, though, is magnify reality, what is wrong and right in our teams, relationships, and organizations.

Here’s what I mean.

If your church was growing and had momentum, there is a good chance you kept that. If your church had a strong leadership pipeline and discipleship strategy, that has continued if your church had a clear win, why you exist as a church, that continued.

If your marriage was healthy, yes, this has made it hard and brought stress into your life, but you had a foundation to continue to build on.

If your marriage was on the rocks before the crisis, before Covid-19 hit, your marriage is most likely continuing down that road.

If your church did not have a clear win before the crisis, the crisis only magnified that lack of clarity.

What often happens in a crisis is we simply continue to do what we did before, whether it worked or not. And the reason is that it is what we know, it is what is comfortable for us.

At this point, in this season of quarantine, we see what we spent our lives building. We see it in our relationships and churches and teams. That doesn’t mean you can’t pivot if things aren’t going well. It doesn’t mean you can’t come out of this stronger, but it does show you what you have to work on.

One of my favorite books that I always quote to my kids is The Compound Effect. In it, the author makes the point that our life becomes the sum of our choices. Like compounding interest in a bank account, each decision build towards something when things are stripped away, when the world shifts, like right now, we see what we have built towards.

Having a schedule is excellent. Nothing changes in our lives without a change to our schedule.

When it comes to emphasizing your health, whether that is physical, emotional, spiritual, or relational, you have to look at your schedule. If you don’t schedule when you will workout, spend time with your spouse and kids, when you will grow and read books, it won’t happen.

But, what if a schedule was only part of the battle?

I mean, you can change your schedule and only marginally move the ball forward. Meaning, you can make a schedule, but what if it scheduling the wrong things?

More important than a schedule is a plan, a strategy.

Too often, though, we confuse a schedule with a plan or a strategy.

A schedule is not the same thing is a plan, and in leadership terms, it is not the same thing as a strategy.

Just because you schedule emails or social media posts, does not mean that you have a plan or a strategy.

A strategy is the “why” that influences your schedule.

How do you know the difference?

Here are two simple questions:

1. What do you hope to accomplish?
2. What will it take to accomplish that?

When I weighed 300 pounds and wanted to lose weight, I went to the doctor and told him that I wanted to lose weight. He said, “That is a terrible goal. Make being healthy your goal and do that for the rest of your life,” and it changed everything.

So I set out to be healthy. It changed my mindset on things, and that strategy, that plan shaped my schedule. It affected my sleep because many people attempt to lose weight without doing anything with their sleep. But if being healthy is a goal, then sleep matters.

In your work, life, and relationships, what do you hope to accomplish? Write it out; be clear on that. A month from now, six months to a year from now, what will be successful? Be clear on that, so you know what you are trying to accomplish. Is there a number you can attach to it so that it is even more explicit in your mind? Too often, I don’t think we clarify what it means to be successful in life and leadership.

Second, what will it take to accomplish that goal?

Ten years ago, Katie and I looked at our marriage and realized that we didn’t have the time for each other as we wanted, and we found ourselves not being on the same page, which created easily avoidable frustrations. So we laid out what we thought would be a success for our marriage and family and some things it would take for us to accomplish it: weekly date night, weekly calendar sync, discussing finances once a month, to name a few. Now, we don’t always hit those each week and month. We have something to shoot for and have a way to know if we are moving towards our goals.

A strategy and a plan form your schedule in life, leadership, and relationships. It creates the way forward for you.