The Pain of Leadership: The Pain of Disappointing People You Know

One of the recurring stumbling points I have seen in the process of leading churches toward health has very little to do with skill, strategy, or technical know-how. It has to do with pain.

More specifically, it is the pain of disappointing people you know.

I have been in many meetings where elders sincerely express their desire for things to change. They want to try a different worship time, rethink an approach to ministry, adjust the setup of the sanctuary, introduce new music, or have leadership take a more active role in the life of the church. Whenever elders are willing to try something they have not tried before, I want to be supportive. Experimentation is a skill like any other. The more it is practiced, the more it develops.

And when people are not used to stepping out, it is scary.

But the pain of leadership is not quite like the nervousness of public speaking. It is not abstract. It's relational. It's personal.

It's the pain of becoming excited about something new, only to have a decade(s)-long friend accuse the leadership of not caring about the congregation.

It is hearing people who have given their heart and soul to the ministry of a church become uncharitable and unkind because someone else is making decisions.

It is having someone you have worshiped beside for years — someone with whom you have exchanged the peace of Christ and shared family stories — corner you and insist that you have to do something about the pastor, the youth pastor, the other elders, or whoever else they believe is destroying the church.

And all the while, you may know the discussions and the hearts of the people being criticized. You may know that they are seeking God, seeking the good of the church, and trying to discern faithfully.

That is when leadership becomes painful. It is the pain of being caught between friendship and eldership and discovering that they are not the same thing.

In friendship, there are many times when we can gloss over the failings of our friends for the sake of peace or for the sake of the friendship itself. We can ignore harsh comments because they are not directed at us. We can overlook patterns because addressing them does not seem worth the risk to the relationship.

But when a friend becomes an elder, something changes.

An elder is not merely a trusted friend. An elder is a spiritual leader. Elders are called to look after the spiritual health of the congregation. (See my prior post on this.) That creates a dynamic many friendships have never had to carry before: the dynamic of spiritual authority.

Healthy and emotionally mature people can endure this change. They can live into the wisdom of Proverbs: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” But in smaller and mid-sized churches, where relational bonds are often deep and longstanding, the pain is amplified. Everyone knows everyone. Decisions are not made by anonymous people. They affect friends, families, memories, loyalties, and histories.

Part of the pain comes from the fact that both friends may keep trying to return the relationship to what it was before one of them entered leadership--or simply believing that nothing is different. But something has changed. If neither person recognizes that change, the pain often gets transferred away from the friendship and onto the leadership group.

A second source of pain is that many people misunderstand the role of an elder. In a representative democracy like the US, it is natural for people to assume that elected leaders represent the views of those who elected them. So, in the church, some assume that elders are supposed to carry particular viewpoints, complaints, or preferences to the elder board, especially to the pastors.

But that is not the biblical function of an elder.

Elders are not elected to be the House of Representatives of the congregation. They are not chosen to represent factions, preferences, or grievances. They are called to shepherd. They are called to discern. They are called to teach. They are called to look after the spiritual health of the congregation.

That means elders and pastors are not supposed to function as opposing parties. Elders are not representatives of the people bringing concerns to a pastoral employee. In Scripture, there is no distinction between eldering and pastoring. Pastors are elders, and elders are, in a real sense, pastors. They are called to be on the same team, seeking the same mission, discerning the same spiritual health of the same congregation.

A third source of pain comes when a friend expects an elder to vote, speak, or act in a way that is consistent with their friendship rather than through independent Christian discernment.

Often, people have known each other for years. They have had conversations about church, ministry, preferences, frustrations, hopes, and disappointments. In those conversations, it may feel as though certain issues have already been settled. Certain values seem shared. Certain conclusions seem obvious.

Then the friend becomes an elder. They pray, listen, deliberate, and discern with others. And they come to a different conclusion than expected. That can feel like betrayal.

Why did they vote that way? What were they thinking? Who influenced them?

But friendship is not uniformity. Nor should it be.

Faithful eldership requires independent discernment before God. Sometimes that means an elder will make a decision that surprises a friend. Sometimes it means an elder will disappoint someone who expected loyalty to mean agreement.

That is painful. But it is also part of spiritual leadership.

One of the great challenges of church leadership is that the pain of disappointing people can hold leaders back from making faithful decisions. When faced with the acute pain and uncertainty of change, we often choose the chronic, familiar pain of the present.

Even in pain, we like the familiar.

A church may continue running expenses too high because furloughing or releasing a staff member feels unbearable. A volunteer may continue doing work that is ineffective or even counterproductive because no one wants to disrupt the relationship. A spiritually immature person may be advanced into leadership because their gifts, resources, or professional skills seem too valuable to lose.

In each case, the pain does not disappear. It is simply transferred somewhere else.

The budget absorbs it. The pastor absorbs it. The elders absorb it. The congregation absorbs it. The mission absorbs it.

And over time, unaddressed pain charges compound interest.

Churches often do not avoid pain. They only choose which kind of pain they are willing to live with. Too often, we choose the chronic pain of dysfunction because we cannot bear the acute pain of faithful action.

Leadership requires something different.

It requires the willingness to name pain truthfully. It requires the courage to disappoint people without despising them. It requires the humility to grieve what is lost while still moving toward what is faithful.

Christian leadership is not painless leadership. It is leadership rooted in the One who has borne the full weight of human pain and remained faithful.

So perhaps one of the first steps toward healthier leadership is simply this: to admit that leadership hurts.

It hurts because people matter. It hurts because churches matter. It hurts because friendship matters. It hurts because the mission of God matters.

But if we are going to lead God’s people faithfully, we cannot be ruled by the fear of pain. We have to learn to carry it, name it, grieve it, and entrust it to Christ.

Only then can we help lead the church not merely toward what is familiar, but toward what is faithful.