Is the Weight of Leadership Crushing You?

Hosts: TJ Freeman, Joe Wagner, and Josh MacClaren

Summary: In this episode of Rural Church Renewal, TJ Freeman discusses the heavy burden and opposition faced by church leaders, especially in small, rural congregations. Sharing personal experiences from his ministry in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, TJ offers practical advice on enhancing leadership culture through unhurried prayer, relational intimacy, and strategic decision-making. He emphasizes the importance of elder retreats as a powerful tool for fostering deeper relationships, investing in shared prayer time, and making wise, pressure-free decisions. TJ encourages leaders to view these challenges as opportunities for strategic growth rather than insurmountable obstacles.

Connect with us:

• Website: brainerdinstitute.com
• Email: contact@brainerdinstitute.com
• Facebook: Brainerd Facebook

Chapters

• 0:00 Section A

Transcript

[00:00:00] You really do love your church and you want to see them grow in the Lord and do what they're called to do. But for so long, it's been like the, the burden of leadership has rested on your shoulders alone. And besides the people who are supposed to be helping you are often working against you. And the, the weight of what you're carrying almost feels like it's gonna crush you.

And you're wondering how much longer you can lead like this. If you're feeling like that, you are not alone, but there are some things you can do to help encourage a healthy leadership culture. Yes. Even in your church. So stay tuned to this episode of Rural Church Renewal. Well, hello, my name is TJ Freeman and I am a rural pastor.

I serve a congregation in North Central Pennsylvania, a little town called Wellsboro, and it's a place most people have never heard of. And [00:01:00] everyone's happy to think of as the middle of nowhere. But here in this community, by God's grace, now is a healthy church, a church that has been renewed, that has moved from declining and having some negative witness in the community and kind of being inward focused.

To really leaning into a pursuit of God, of demonstrating the fruit of the spirit, of using their spiritual gifts, of sharing the story of God's grace in their lives with the people around them, of stewarding everything that the Lord has entrusted to them. Everything God's given them in their lives as a way to make Christ known. I am so thankful to be able to look at where our church is today and be able to say, Hey, this has nothing to do with my leadership. It has everything to do with the kindness of Christ and his own pursuit of his glory, but also recognizing that we did have to find a way to [00:02:00] transition from a less healthy leadership to a more healthy leadership.

And that was really, really hard, frustrating work. And I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. It's not perfect and it's probably never going to be, sometimes it's still frustrating for everyone on our leadership team, but I don't at all feel anymore like I'm carrying the weight by myself or that the people who are supposed to be helping me are working against me.

And I wanted to share one way that the Lord helped us work through some of those challenges that we faced early on that you may be experiencing right now. When I came to our church, we had three elders. One of them moved away almost immediately. I tried not to take it personally. He retired and went somewhere sunnier, and I'm still jealous to this day.

And that was just me and one other elder. And for the longest time we were going through our membership roles, going, who do we get to help? [00:03:00] Who do we get to help? Man, we're not finding any qualified men. There's nobody interested in this. Some of the leaders who are in the church are thinking a different way, and they're kind of pushing back on the direction that we're trying to take as elders.

On top of that, that other elder was an emergency room doctor, and in a small town er doctors are a hot commodity. So he was a busy man and it was also right after a season where he had to carry most of the load of church leadership himself with that other elder who moved away. And they were, you know, people were tired.

It was a hard season in the life of the church, and I was bearing a lot of the weight. I remember sitting by myself. In my study, just feeling the pressure of, wow, I am not sure how I can keep pressing on. And you've probably felt like that. And you know what? I'm probably gonna have more moments like that.

So I'm not trying to say, you know, everything is just easy and rainbows and skittles after you, you [00:04:00] know, reach some threshold or whatever. Church leadership is always gonna be challenging. But I really do think there are some things that you can do to help cultivate an environment of healthy leadership in your church.

And the one I want to kind of like zoom in on today is the elder retreat. So just saying, elder retreat, you may have just like rolled your eyes and thought, yeah, that's not likely to ever happen. And here's why I want to argue that you should fight to make a leadership retreat with male leaders in your church a priority, and you're gonna have to start strategizing now if your eyes rolled a little bit because you may be facing an uphill battle, but it is so worth fighting.

So we do an annual elders retreat, and it is a highlight at this point for all of our elders. But when I first started talking about doing something like this, I got a lot of pushback. Why would we go sleep in some uncomfortable place when we could just [00:05:00] meet and then sleep in our own beds? Why would I give up an afternoon of my work schedule? I'm a busy man. My family depends on me. How could I possibly find time to get away for a day, half a day, whatever, during the week? Or I can't give up my Saturdays. It's the only day I have to get the lawn mow and you know, do all the stuff around the house. And there's just, it's a huge uphill battle. Plus.

Dudes don't really like having to plan. I'm gonna go out and figure out how to make the meals and pack all my stuff, and then I gotta sleep with a bunch of other guys around me. And it, you're gonna find it to be an uphill battle, but I, I think it will be one of the most helpful reorientations that you could introduce into the life of your leadership team for a number of reasons.

Now I wanna spell some of those out [00:06:00] for you right now. Number one, how often have you been able to find unhurried time with other men in your church To go before the throne of God in prayer? Praying name by name through your entire church directory. Praying for all the missionaries that your church sup supports. Praying that the Lord will help you grow as a healthy church in your community.

Praying for people in each other's circles, like lost people in each other's lives, and your evangelistic efforts just as elders or leaders with each other in the community. Praying for, you know, God's long-term, helping guidance. 

Praying for the direction of the church over time. Praying for the overall witness of the church in the community, praying for the kind of people that would help you through the gifts that you're missing, praying that God would bring those kind of people into your church. I mean, to spend unhurried time.

Praying for [00:07:00] a flock is not common. Church leadership teams, and it's one of the reasons that leadership is so frustrating. You probably are carrying a lot of the weight alone because you haven't found ways to invest in men who you can get on your knees with before the throne of God and shepherd the congregation just through prayer.

And these guys don't have to have the official title of Elder. This could be elder qualified deacons. This could be, maybe you have just something called the board. This could be elder qualified guys on the board. It could even be guys who for some reason, you know, maybe they're not as mature as you'd like right now.

Maybe they're growing in their theology. Maybe they're starting to, you know, for the first time, take some ownership and things, whatever they could be developing guys. But you need to find a way to spend unhurried time laboring in prayer. At our most recent elders retreat, if you totaled it [00:08:00] all up, we spent hours of time together in prayer.

There was a really sweet time where we just gathered around, we put a picture of every member of the church on the wall, and we read all of their names, and we just spent time praying over things going on in the lives of these people. And our congregation needs that kind of shepherding because the Lord has given gifts to his church, one of them being the pastors, the leaders of the church, the elders in the church, and that part of that gift is.

Because here are men who are gonna shepherd them, who are gonna care for the flock of God among them, in part by laboring in prayer. We spend a lot of time laboring over some issues that we're facing. There's challenges with our building. There's challenges with relationships. There's challenges of all sorts in our church, just like there are in yours.

But we got to spend focused time praying for those things specifically for a long time. That you can't [00:09:00] replace? No. Like quick hit board meeting is going to ever replace that kind of investment in prayer for the life of your church and the ownership that the guys who are praying these things feel understanding their role in it really significantly helps them lead.

Coming out of something like that with some renewed energy. And conviction around those kinds of things. So unhurried time and prayer is probably my number one reason that I think a leadership retreat with men in your church who are elder qualified or could be is really important. The second reason is relational development. You to elder well or to lead well alongside other men.

You need a high degree of relational equity. You need to be able to trust each other. You need to understand each other's personalities and think about how you speak to someone in a way that they actually understand. These kinds of things are learned over [00:10:00] time, and again, if you're just in and out on Sundays and in and out of a leadership meeting, once in a while, you will never develop the relational depth that you otherwise could, and you might not naturally be as inclined to hang out with certain guys outside of the church.

But bringing these guys together for a retreat where you can spend time just knowing each other better. I'm gonna use a word that's gonna sound weird to our ears because of the culture we live in, but intimacy is the word, and I know like I'm wearing a flannel right now, and like I'm supposed to be burping and grunting and you know, shoveling stuff in the barn and shooting deer.

That's what a man does, right? Well, actually in scripture, a man knows how to love really well, and to develop a kind of relationship that would go to the level of being intimately acquainted with one another. There's nothing sexual about that. Just get that notion out of your mind altogether. But to care for someone on a deep level and to be cared for [00:11:00] them on a deep level, to know somebody and to truly be known, that's just part of what it means to be a Christian.

And if you're gonna lead a church, you're trying to do it on your own, you are gonna get crushed by that weight. And if you're not investing in relationships to the point where you have relational intimacy with one another, then you're gonna have a really hard time. Moving together in the direction that the Lord's called you to, because he means for us to have deep relationships like that.

And you may need to lead guys that way. So here's another way. We did this on our retreat. We went for lunch at a dive bar. I'm not saying that the dive bar was the thing to do, but we did that because we have a heart for that community, which has no church, but it does have a bar. So we went to the bar together and we're thinking and praying about how can we evangelistically reach out to this community while also enjoying something I didn't even know existed.

Sweet potato tots. And I'm just, let's just be honest. They feel [00:12:00] like diet tater tots to me, but they were pretty good. I had chicken wings and they were just glorious, but I digress. And then we went on a hike. Not everybody likes hiking. Some guys love it. We had guys in our seventies all the way down to, we have some interns right now who are in their twenties, and here we are together traipsing through the woods.

And when you have shoulder time, meaning you're not sitting down at a table staring at each other in the eyes, but you're walking next to each other, hearing turkeys off in the distance, looking at the little mushrooms that are growing up, 'cause it's been damp and in a certain area, and just you're talking about these things.

You're honoring God for the things he's done, and you're also developing some relational equity that lets you move to the next thing. I'm really struggling with this. What do you think about that? How do you feel about this issue? Are you and your wife doing well and I mean, you just get into this place with guys that you wouldn't naturally go, especially.

On an in and out on a Sunday morning and an [00:13:00] In-N-Out and a leadership meeting. So unhurried prayer time number one, relational equity, second. Thirdly, you get to give some attention to some matters. That you might not make good decisions about if you didn't have time. Boy, could I say that anymore confusingly?

My point is in a leadership meeting, the urgency of the clock sometimes leads to not the best decisions when you have unhurried time. There's not pressure on you of the clock. You're not forced to make a decision by a certain time. You're not trying to get home. You're just there together and you're processing through an issue.

You're likely to exercise greater wisdom. So I always save some of the bigger issues we're facing for the elder retreat, and I, I intentionally trickle little things about that out throughout the year so that we're ready to make. To have wise conversations about these things. And so what you're getting a little peek of behind the [00:14:00] curtain is you need to have some strategy in your leadership.

You might be feeling like you're carrying this thing alone, 'cause you are. You might be feeling opposition because you are. And I don't care how hard your situation is. If God's called you to shepherd the flock of God among you, then you have a responsibility to be trying your hardest to strategically lead from whatever unhealthy thing you're facing toward a healthy thing.

You can pray that the Lord will bring the right people. You can pray that God will shape the people who are there, but you also have to strategically lead, and I think part of your strategy needs to be guys. Let's get away together for 24 hours. That's all. My first one was 24 hours. Now we're up to, we go Thursday night through Saturday at lunch, usually.

That took time. Like I said, guys, look forward to it now. But that, that really took a lot of effort on my part. And I'm not saying that to exalt my leadership. I'm just saying you are a pastor [00:15:00] and you're in a certain flock and you're gonna have to not complain about where guys are at, or tell me that you hit a brick wall and you just can't get any further.

Or in your situation, it won't work 'cause X, Y, and Z. You've gotta be solution oriented. You've gotta work around these things so that you can accomplish those kinds of goals that I laid out. Unhurried time, deep relational equity. I use the word intimacy and wise decision making about big issues because you're not making them under any kind of pressure.

Elders retreats are also a good time to deepen your theology together, to listen to podcasts, to watch videos, to laugh. We played this game this last time. I did so bad. It was a word game. I'm, Hey, I'm a preacher, right? I should be good with words. I blew this one. And one of our elders led the game and all the losers had to have consequences, like eating something really spicy. And you know, silly, dumb, whatever.

But there's, we're gonna remember [00:16:00] that forever. There's relational equity built around those things. So this is my challenge to you. If you're feeling the weight of leadership, you're feeling some opposition, pray that God would help you, and then come up with a way to meet with your leaders. One guy, two guys, five guys up and coming guys, whatever, and work toward those goals.

Unhurried, time in prayer together. Relational intimacy and wise decision making, and then whatever bonus things like greater theological depth or whatever it is you want to introduce in those things. Ask for God's help. Don't make excuses. Don't feel this like a heavy burden. See this as a puzzle that God has called you to be part of the solution toward, and go serve him for his glory.

Well, thanks for listening to this episode of Rural Church Renewal. Can't wait to see you back here again next time. Have a wonderful, God honoring day. [00:17:00]