Durch einen Hinweis bin ich auf das Buch von Scott Sauls “From Weakness to Strength: 8 Vulnerabilities That Can Bring Out the Best in Your Leadership” gestossen. Sehr ehrlich schildert Sauls darin die Anfechtungen eines Pastors und Leiters (Hervorhebungen von mir).
For leaders and influencers, this inner conflict is especially common. As a leader, I am painfully in touch with my own restlessness, especially in the context of my work and goals. Though some would look at my work and label it as some sort of “success,” the truth is that—even in my best and smoothest seasons of leading, when momentum is there and goals are being reached and a mission is being accomplished—the disequilibrium is still there.
My most common prayer request these days is that God would give me consistent, uninterrupted sleep, because in the middle of almost every night, I lie awake for two to four hours wrestling. I wrestle with preoccupation, with self-doubt, with the dissatisfaction of unmet expectations and unrealized goals and dreams, with pressure that I put on myself or that I fear others will put on me, with the burdens of the day behind me and the day ahead of me, and with the sense that my work is never going to be satisfactory or complete. In other words, I wrestle over the unique calling of leadership—which is both an unspeakable privilege and a burden that must be carried, often alone. Because the world is quiet in the middle of the night without the usual distractions of checklists, schedules, deadlines, meetings, interruptions and screens and iThings, I also find myself wrestling with an inner disequilibrium in relation to God. For me, the presence of God is most palpable when the world is quiet. But the presence of God is not always comforting to me. Sometimes being in the presence of God, or just thinking about God in the middle of the night, is disorienting and disruptive. There are few things like the presence of God that remind me that I am not yet what I am meant to be; that I fall short of the mark; that I am more small than I am significant; that, one hundred years from now, my name will be forgotten by the weary world in which I now live. I will die, and the world will move on. Even in my own church, a hundred years from now, its members will have never heard of me. It is quite possible that not even my own great-great-grandchildren will know my name or care what I accomplished. Yes, my heart makes noise.
My inner life is a paradox of comfort and accusation, inner rest and inner restlessness, enjoyment of God’s grace and despair at my own lack of grace, awareness of my completion in Christ and knowledge of feeling incomplete. Added to this, and related to my calling to lead, you’ll find a feeling of simultaneous momentum and failure. In the middle of the night especially, God is my refuge on one hand, and the darkness is my companion on the other.
Barnabas Piper hat eine Anzahl Zitate des Buches veröffentlicht.
