THE UNHINDERED LEADER - CHARITY BYERS, PH.D. & JOHN WALKER, PH.D

dr. Charity byers, Ph.D. & dr. john Walker, Ph.D.

the unhindered leader

“God is willing—no, he longs—to edit your story, to replace fear with faith, doubt with confidence, and resentment with love. The astounding truth is that God will heal your deepest wounds and turn them into your greatest strengths—they become the source of your genius.” - Byers and Walker, Unhindered: Aligning the Story of Your Heart Leaders are positioned right now to do a lot of reimagining for the church and shift and reshape the landscape for how we invite and disciple people into a meaningful life with Jesus. The instinct for many leaders is to go into strategy mode and dream big about how we can do things differently to make a bigger difference. That’s a great thing. But that strategy is incomplete. In his book, Future Church, Will Mancini predicts that in 2020-2040 the identity for the church will be a “training center where disciple making is expected of everyone.” He adds a prediction that future ministry philosophy will be “to be is more.”

The future focus of the church is expected to be a pervasive culture of disciple making. But we can’t just make any kind of disciples. We have to make healthy disciples. Here’s the strategy you need to lead your church into its optimized future: Become a healthier leader who can make truly healthy disciples. You’ll have to get your “self” out of the way to do this well. Becoming a healthier leader means pausing the excitement about how we can get where we want to go to pay attention to what’s inside of us that’s getting in the way of the church’s future. There’s going to be little room in the future church for unhealthy leaders who are getting by on leadership skills alone that aren’t coupled with emotional and spiritual health to produce things like sound character, authentic care for others, and surrender to the lead of the Holy Spirit. There is so much within your heart that is competing with the leader you want to be and with the goals you have for your future church. You may not have even known that you had some competition because it can be a sneaky adversary. It may come in the form of things like whispers of selfdoubt, nagging shame that keeps you holding your cards too close, fear of failure, jadedness with others, or a subtle need for control that leaves your team feeling unheard and unimportant. You may not even be as healthy as you think. Acting like a healthy leader doesn’t exactly mean you are a healthy leader. A recent article put out by Harvard Business Review gives us a powerful wake up call. This article titled, “Is your Emotional Intelligence Authentic or SelfServing” exposes the reality that even leaders who look good on the outside, may have the wrong motivations on the inside. It says, “It’s possible to fake emotional intelligence. Similar to knockoffs of luxury watches or handbags, these are emotions and actions that look like the real thing but really aren’t. With the best of intentions, I’ve seen smart leaders charge into sensitive interactions armed with what they believed was a combination of deep empathy, attuned listening, and self-awareness but was, in fact, a way to serve their own emotional needs. It’s important to learn to spot these forgeries, especially if you’re the forger.” Too often we are blinded by our normal and don’t stop to examine how healthy we really are. Some of us mistake leadership skills for emotional and spiritual health. Others justify the hindrances within them as “This is just who I am.” There’s more we’re being called to as leaders. More ease. More empathy. More surrender. More impact. More cooperation with the Holy Spirit. In essence, more emotional and spiritual health.

All of the things that stand in our way of health (like selfdoubt, selfishness, a need for control, or a reliance on people’s approval) are called our hindrances.

Imagine what would happen to a seasoned marathon runner if you asked them to run their next race with weights strapped on each ankle. Despite their training, well-defined muscles and deep grit, they’d probably not get very far before saying, “This feels too hard!” The extra weight would hinder them too much to get even close to the intended finish line.

We’re leading hindered too. We’re held back. Weighed down. Burdened. Even paralyzed sometimes. We can’t make truly healthy disciples around us when we aren’t healthy ourselves. Why? Because our hindrances make us better at telling the Holy Spirit “no” than we realize. Hindrances have made a home in our heart simply because we’ve lived and seen things in this imperfect life that have taught them something that God doesn’t recognize. Hindrances then show up as leadership lids that thwart our impact. Here’s a few examples: • Abuse may teach a heart to fear. Fear may create a desperate need for safety. A desperate need for safety might then show up in a leader as riskaversion or as a need to manipulate outcomes. • Having people close to you burn you may leave rejection in your heart, which may teach your heart not to trust. Mistrust may show up in a leader as not investing into the team well because they’ve become too self-reliant.

• Being overly affirmed for your performance in life may leave your heart with performance insecurity.

Insecurity may teach your heart to work incredibly hard to outdo yourself every time. That may show up as a burned out leader who is exhausted from trying so hard or as a leader who is following more of his or her own agenda than God’s. • Having something to prove may leave your heart with self-centeredness and arrogance. Arrogance may teach your heart to dominate and “take no prisoners.” That may get disguised as or mistakens a leader’s passion and power. Hebrews 12:1 calls us to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” This verse is clear that sin stands in our way. We must get the blatant things out of our life that bring darkness, secrets, and damage to our lives. But we also have to “throw off everything that hinders.” There is so much in our hearts that doesn’t separate us from God as sin does, but doesn’t reflect God either. Take just a moment and think about this question, “Who is the hardest person you’ve ever had to lead?” Does the face of someone from your past come to mind? Are you taking a deep breath just remembering what that took from you? No matter how hard it was to lead that person, the hardest person you will ever have to lead is yourself. Leading yourself means managing your heart before it manages you, and that’s not an easy job! It takes curiosity and “want to” to begin unhindering our hearts. We have to choose to no longer settle for our normal and get curious about the hindrances in our hearts and how they get in the way. It takes courage to take God’s invitation to submit our hindrances to His healing and growth processes. It takes intention and daily investment to learn how to say “no” to the pain and imperfect learnings of our pasts and “yes” to God’s alternatives that lead to greater emotional and spiritual health. Healthy leaders aren’t defined by their team building skills, capacity for innovation, and ability for vision-casting alone. They are distinguished by how free their hearts are from all that holds them back and weighs them down. If hearts are unhindered, lives and leadership will be unhindered too.

Emotional and spiritual health may seem like a luxury, but they are a necessity. We don’t get where we want to go without them. Or at least we don’t arrive without being drained by hindrance that’s been resisting us at every step or without leaving a wake of devastation behind us in the hearts of others.

When you first lead your heart into more emotional and spiritual health, you lead your church into the future it’s meant to have: a community of healthy disciples produced by healthy leaders. Make this challenge yours: Throw off everything that hinders you from running the race before you with perseverance (Hebrews 12:1). To read more about unhindering your life and leadership, look for the book Unhindered: Aligning the Story of Your Heart at availleadership.org/unhindered or amazon.com.

Drs. Walker and Byers have served Christian Ministry leaders for nearly thirty years through Blessing Ranch Ministries which seeks to restore and renew Christian leaders and their families for effective Kingdom service.