The Travails of Christian Leadership

I have flown home many times with inner turmoil about disappointments from the trip. People didn’t resonate with our mission. Crucial meetings were canceled. The trip felt like a waste of my time away from family. My mind turned over and over with things I could have done differently. Temptations invited me to be angry at the people who had rebuffed me. I wondered whether I was enough for the task. Haunting inadequacy and insecurity encroached into my consciousness like dark shadows.

As Christian leaders, the Lord calls us to break into new territory, drive critical improvements, and build united teams. This work is often thrilling and full of reward. We so often see the multiplying impact we are making on our organizations, in the lives of our staff members, and upon the world. Inevitably, however, people don’t respond as we hoped they would. Ideas don’t materialize in the way we envisioned. Efforts to inspire fall flat. We fail in so many ways along the way.

During these times, we feel acute isolation and loneliness as our best efforts fail to create and inspire. Feelings of rejection roll over us. Hopes for unity seem doomed. Despairing thoughts flicker and tempt us to latch onto them. Thoughts like,

“Maybe I should just give up.”

“This isn’t worth it.”

“Someone more compelling, more articulate, more knowledgeable should take over for me.”

“I am holding everyone back.”

We doubt our effectiveness and competence. We question our plans. We wonder if we are enough for the task as we go to sleep. We wrestle with alternative scenarios when we awake.

People turn us away, grumble behind our back, work against our hopes. We feel alone and forsaken. We feel like we are on an island with our convictions. Everyone seems to have abandoned us. There is no way through the maze in front of us.

As Christian leaders, the purpose and effectiveness of our leadership flows from the center of who we are. Falling short feels like an indictment on the very core of our being, a rejection of our deepest identity. We hold no stronger conviction than that for which we lead (Jesus). This causes failure to burn even more. Christian leadership is full of travail. But, paradoxically, this travail is full of hope.

In the lives of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and St. Paul, we can derive hope from experiences of travail. Both Mary and St. Paul travailed in order to give birth to Jesus in the world. As Christian leaders, our travail is united with theirs as we seek to give birth to Jesus in our organizations and in the world. Travail, offered along with Mary and St. Paul, is the precursor to the birthing of His Kingdom. “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done.”

Mary, the mother of Jesus, travailed as she carried baby Jesus to term. The great 20th Century theologian, Hans urs Von Balthasar, writes,

What Mary underwent during her Advent were above all mental and spiritual sufferings: every pregnancy that is lived in a genuinely human way includes a certain intercession, a certain suffering on behalf of the child on the way that is given to him at his birth as an invisible present of grace to take on the journey of life.[1]

How would Mary not experience feelings of inadequacy as she considered mothering the Messiah? It is easy to imagine her being tempted by doubts about her place in this plan. How would she, a simple Jewish girl, teach the Blessed One? What knowledge and wisdom would she have to share? How would she inspire Him? Every day closer to the birth, the gap seemed to widen between her capabilities and what must be required to be mother to the Savior of the world. She knew she was inexplicably central to the divine plan, but how was she possibly enough? She was so young, inexperienced, lowly in worldly stature, poor, and helpless.

She patiently surrendered to her mental and spiritual trials as Jesus grew within her. These were her travail. They drew her into prayer. They invited her to recall the hope she had in God. They refined her love. They inspired her to think of the joy it would be to look upon Jesus’ face.

St. Paul’s travails are even more directly correlated with the travails of Christian leaders. He travailed to bring Jesus to life in new communities. In Galatians 4:19, he writes that he travails for the Galatians as if in childbirth. Paul had established the Galatian community, but they were wandering away from unity with him to a competing group. This was personal. Paul had lived among the Galatians. He had poured his life out for them. He loved them. After so much time with them, how could they reject the message he formed in them? I am sure he questioned his competence and gifts in comparison with the competence and gifts of the other group.

Have we as Christian leaders ever been tempted by the travail of comparison?

Paul also experienced rejection and dissension with the Corinthian community. In Second Corinthians he explains,

“For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears…”[2]

His temptation to lose heart is seen in chapter four when twice he writes,

“we do not lose heart.”

The rejection of communities, rumors of them disparaging his authority, even personal insults—it all felt like a death to Paul. But he knew this death, this travail had an eternal purpose:

“So death is at work in us, but life in you.”[3]

St. Paul knew that his travails were mysteriously producing new life. They felt like dead ends, but they were actually gateways to new life. Spiritually, they were a participation in the loving travail of Mary to bring Jesus to birth in the world. Even more, these travails were a participation in the primordial travail of creation. In Romans 8, he writes,

“For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves…”[4]

These are actually groans and travails of hope, travails for unity, travails for order.

If our work as leaders is going to be spiritually fruitful, we will share in these travails. Mary’s travails prepared her to be Jesus’ mother. Jesus was birthed out of these travails. The travails strengthened her faith. Offered as a prayer, God used them to increase her love for Jesus and the people of Israel. Likewise, St. Paul’s travails were a means of grace for the communities and in his own life.

Jesus will be birthed in our work through our travails. Lately, I have found great consolation in uniting my feelings of failure, inadequacy, and doubt with the travails of Mary and St. Paul in the hope that our faithful God will make my leadership fruitful. These travails are a participation in the travails of a creation that has been subjected to futility.[5] But the great promise of God is that

“in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”[6]

St. Paul writes,

“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”[7]

As we embrace these travails, letting them wash over us out of love, these “momentary afflictions” prepare us to experience “an eternal weight of glory” through our leadership.

I believe this is the ultimate call of Christian leadership. As believers, filled in Christ with the gifts of faith, hope, and love, we surrender to travail. Yes, we learn from our mistakes and relentlessly struggle to improve. Yes, we grind and do everything in our power to expand territory for the Gospel and for our mission. Yes, we examine ourselves and work to further purify our motivations and ego.

But in the end, as we travail through failure and disappointments, like Mary, we say,

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to they will" (Luke 1:38).

I will travail with Mary, St. Paul, and the great saints of the Church. I will travail for something new in the world. I don’t need the accolades of the crowds. I don’t need the esteem of every potential benefactor. I don’t need every pastor to want to partner with our work. I don’t need to be perfect. In fact, this was a lesson God delivered in a very personal, direct way to St. Paul:

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” [8]

Therefore, I embrace travail. I embrace hardship. I embrace rejection. I embrace my feelings of inadequacy. I embrace disappointment.

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”[9]

I will travail in order that my work will be eternally fruitful. I say yes to these travails, in faith that You, Jesus, will be birthed in new ways through them. You will conquer through them. They are an opportunity for deeper, spiritual victory. In you, we are more than conquerors through all these travails. These light and momentary afflictions will give birth to Jesus in a new way in me, in my work, and in my team.

“In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33, ESV).

“Wait for the LORD; be strong, take heart; wait for the LORD!” (Psalm 27:14, ESV).

[1] Von Balthasar, Hans urs; Mary for Today (Ignatius, San Francisco, 1988) 24.

[2] 2 Corinthians 2:4, ESV.

[3] 4:12, ESV.

[4] Romans 8:22-23, ESV.

[5] Romans 8:20, ESV.

[6] 8:37, ESV.

[7] 2 Corinthians 4:17, ESV

[8] 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, ESV.

[9] Philippians 4:11-13, NIV.