Fears about my life naturally arise at 5am on a Thursday morning that are near impossible to get rid of. Fears don’t keep me awake at night, they prevent me from going back to sleep------especially when it comes to an upcoming deadline.

This experience is more common when I am responsible for an event, a project or something where I am the authority figure. When I am the leader, then the fears start and they can be hard to shake.

For myself, I often wrestled with certain fears while leading the Young Adult ministry at One Harbor Church. I served at my church in this role for 7 years (2017 to 2023). That is seven years of seeing a lot of incredible things happen while serving at my church. But it is also seven years of getting out of my comfort zone. As high as my hopes were during this experience, the fears associated with leadership in the church came to mind.

To make sense of those years that I led, I’ve found that articulating the fears associated with leadership would be the best way to reflect on this experience. Since I am the kind of person who has to relearn the same lesson more than once, I’d like to reflect on the types of fears I experienced so that in future leadership roles I will know how to face a challenge.

Let me start off with some backstory about One Harbor Church. This is the church I love and has given me so much life.

In 2017 my pastor Bryan Hart approached me to ask me if I’d like to help create a ministry at our church aimed at helping connect with to people in our 20’s and 30’s. I’d been attending One Harbor Church for two years at the time and I felt deeply connected to what our church was doing in our city.

Bryan said he trusted me to start a ministry like this because I’d already been working towards the goal of gathering people in this age demographic. It was clear that the idea was still being formed for what exactly this ministry would look like. And from my conversation with Bryan, he seemed open to letting me have input on what this ministry would look like.

So I said “Absolutely.” I believed in our church’s mission of building a gospel-centered community. I wanted to serve my church.

Fear #1: “I Am Afraid I Will Be Micromanaged.”

After Bryan and I met about starting the Young Adult ministry, I said “So what’s next?”
Bryan told me “Donnie wanted to help you guys brainstorm for this. Come up with some ideas about what you’d like this ministry to look like. And then meet with Donnie sometime next week.”

“Alright, sounds good,” I said, but I was nervous. Internally I started to hesitate.

Bryan said “Donnie is good at helping people think about a vision.”

Donnie Griggs was the lead pastor of the church. At the time, I had no reason to distrust Donnie. I admired him deeply as a person and was thankful for his leadership. However, despite this, my brain translated this as “Donnie will probably tell us how he wants us to do this. We likely won’t have much freedom.” I expected to be micromanaged in some fashion about how this ministry should and would be done. It wasn’t anything against Donnie as a person, it was just my brain went on high alert. The excitement somewhat wore off as I walked out of the church that day.

A few days later I walked into a room with Donnie. He introduced me to a recent college graduate named Mary Frances Hartley who also would be joining our team. My friend Mike Caputo also joined us. So it was the four of us in a room sitting around in a circle and I was preparing my mind to defend my ideas. I had my guard up that day.

Donnie stood in front of a whiteboard and said “If this ministry had no limits, what would this ministry look like for yall? Think really big.”

I told him “I think there are a lot of young professionals coming to our church on Sunday morning who need to be connected Monday to Saturday. I want those people to feel welcome and to feel connected. I think it would be great if we could have a summer cookout where people could feel welcome.”

As I said these things, Donnie vigorously wrote these things on a whiteboard. Over the course of about 10 minutes, he’d drafted out a plan for us.

I slowly realized that Donnie was invested in our idea. Donnie’s input was focused on helping us get ideas verbalized and then putting those ideas into practice. He also knew exactly what steps to take in order to put this into practice.

It became apparent that Donnie trusted us. And it felt foreign to me that I was being trusted as a leader.

My assumptions were wrong. And I was so glad.

This was the case for the next 6 years that I volunteered in this role. Even though I would often need approval from some of the pastors at the church for our ministry, I was consistently met with support and encouragement from our pastors. They delegated a task to me and they believed in me 100%.

When someone asks me now whether I want to volunteer to do something I no longer fear I will be micromanaged. Where did my guarded fear of authority figures come from? I’m not sure. But I know that now when I ask to do something at my church, I feel a sense of freedom. Even more, this has translated to my job at the community college where I am more willing now to take on leadership roles. The way I’ve been treated as a leader at my church has profoundly impacted how I perform at my job.

Fear #2: “I have a flawless vision and other people will derail it.”

This fear might also be called “I have a vision from God and I know the best way to accomplish all of this.” As you just read that sentence, you already know there can be pitfalls to this approach. But I’ll give one example of how I dealt with this thought in my own head.

After our team met with Donnie, I had confidence. But I was about to uncover another fear in the next meeting.

We’d decided to meet at the local coffee shop to discuss how we would start planning a summer cookout aimed at people in their 20’s and 30’s. Two other friends were helping with the Young Adult Team, Mike and Mary Frances. We were also working with Scott, another pastor at our church, to discuss the cookout we’d be planning.

We were sitting at the back of the coffee shop around a circular table beginning to discuss the details of the cookout. That’s when my friend Mike said “Why do we have to target this ministry towards people in their 20’s and 30’s? Why can’t it be aimed at any single person in the church?”
It was like an alarm going off in my head. Wasn’t it obvious from the previous meeting that we needed to target people in their 20s and 30s? Wouldn’t including anyone over the age of 40 create some unnecessary awkwardness?

Mike continued and said “I know multiple people in their 50s and 60s who would like to develop more friendships in our church.”

I was angry and likely my tone of voice became defensive: “I don’t get it. Anyone over the age of 40 needs to find their own way of meeting people. I thought we had agreed to have a space for people who were in their 20s and 30s to meet other people their age. That just seems like an awkward mix of people.”

Mike still disagreed.

So there we were in this small local coffee shop and thankfully our pastor Scott Beierwaltes was there. Scott, in an impartial tone of voice, said “I can see how both of you guys see it differently. It seems Mike wants people to feel welcome and Nate wants to focus on the younger crowd.”
We continued to discuss it. We eventually decided that it would not be a “singles” group but a group aimed at young professionals in their 20’s and 30’s group. We’d voted on it and Mary Frances felt the same way I did. All in all, I got what I wanted. But somehow Scott had said handled the tension in a way I have never forgotten. I saw in Scott a skill of handling disagreement in a meeting in an objective manner. Scott did the following in this moment: (1) identified what the differing opinions were, (2) accurately articulated both perspectives to everyone, (3) helped the group to continue the discussion regarding the pros and cons and (4) then asked for everyone to take a vote.

It was at that moment I realized I did not understand how to handle disagreement in meetings with my peers. Scott had this special skill that I’d never seen before. Was it a gift? A skill? A mixture of both? Whatever it was, I started to pay attention to how Scott behaved in our meetings.

By the end of 2017, I was leading the meetings for our Young Adult ministry. I’d like to say that I quickly learned Scott’s way of being open to new ideas when I took the lead. But that’s not the case. This was the beginning of my process of “learning how to find consensus and not lose my cool when challenged.” During this time, I still could sometimes see other people’s ideas as threats to my own. It was a process of not holding onto my own ideas so tightly.

Soon thereafter, Rob Thompson joined our team. Rob had a similar skill set as Scott in terms of finding consensus regarding new ideas and decision making. Thanks to Scott and Rob, I had two examples of how not to get too locked into my own vision for our team. They showed me how to integrate other people's ideas into our meeting. God gives other people gifts and perspective.
When leading in the church(or anywhere), I try to constantly remind myself of the passage in I Corinthians 12. It is the familiar passage where Paul uses the analogy of the body to be a team to point out each person’s unique gifts:

“If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable…”

When I lead a team, I desperately need other people. Even if it is my vision that I feel God has given me, I need other Christians to accomplish the task. I have detected within myself a feeling of seeing other people as threats to “my vision.” But instead I must try to see what gifts others have or see how their feedback might improve the execution of the vision.

Fear #3: “Our event was a failure. We didn’t get the response I expected.”

In 2019 Rob Thompson came to me with a need he saw in our church. Rob was passionate about practical methods to promote discipleship within One Harbor Church. It started out as a conversation about a need in the church and eventually we started to think about how the Young Adult ministry might have an event where pastors could teach about discipleship in the church.

For the first 2 years, our focus was mostly on just giving people a space to meet one another and hang out. We also wanted our Young Adult ministry to have a space where we could integrate teaching from Scripture about specific topics. What did we do? We decided to have a mini-conference discipleship weekend.

We’d planned out a 2-day event where we’d have one of our pastors speak at our friend Daniel and Haley Chaney’s house on Friday night and then on Saturday night we’d have 2 speakers at the church on a Saturday night. We made a detailed plan, advertised on Facebook, told our friends and identified specific tasks to knock out.

The first night of our mini-conference was an absolute hit. Our pastor Bryan Hart spoke at the Chaney’s house. We’d made food and had people gather in the Chaney’s living room who had an incredible ranch-style living room. Their living room was like a mini-amphitheater packed full about 30 people.

Bryan spoke about how Jesus invested intensely into 12 disciples in order to change the world. Bryan challenged the idea that we should have a huge audience, but instead focused on mentoring and training a small group of people. It wasn’t like one person just leading all these people, but just one person who intensely focused on training a few men. I remember sitting on the floor, hearing Bryan teach and feeling like I was a part of a revolution.

Night 1 of our mini-conference experiment checked all the boxes. People showed up. It felt intimate and organic since it was not at church but in the Chaney’s living room. Afterwards people stuck around and discussed Bryan’s sermon. This exceeded all my expectations.

The second night of our mini-conference we had my friends Rob and Hilary giving presentations about what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Rob’s talk was titled “Personal Discipleship: Conforming to the Image of Christ.” Hilary’s talk was titled “Discipleship in 2019.” This was a Saturday night and we were holding this in a historic building in downtown Beaufort. Rob and Hilary gave solid presentations on their topics.

However, we had about 15 people show up. The room we’d reserved for this event could hold 60 people easily. Why didn’t more people come out for Night 2? If 30 people came out for the first night, why didn’t the enthusiasm carry over for the 2nd night? I left disappointed.

But should I have been disappointed? We had 30 people the first night and 15 people the second night. Would it be fair to paint this event as a failure? Looking back I realized that my own expectations had painted our work towards this mini-conference in a negative light.

The problem was my high expectations more than the reality of what happened. My own unrealistic expectations can cloud the reality of what actually just happened. My own unrealistic expectations can blind me from seeing a prayer that God just answered.

I’m not sure what the answer is on how to judge the success or failure as a leader. I’m sure it is different for every leader and for every situation. However, I know that I must be aware of my own tendency to fixate on what did not happen rather on what did happen. I have an ingrained tendency to ruminate on unanswered prayers rather recognize the answered prayer that God explicitly answered.

Trust and Delegation that Allows People To Grow into Leaders

I would have never become aware of my own leadership-related fears if it not been for three pastors at my church: Donnie Griggs, Bryan Hart and Scott Beierwaltes. I want to give credit to these guys for trusting me as a leader and giving me the space to grow. My central goal in this ministry was to help people in their 20s and 30s walk with Christ. These three men empowered me by allowing me to watch their example and giving me the space and freedom to learn from my own mistakes.
The reason I wrote this blog entry is so that I will not forget the fears I experienced when in leadership at the church. I must remember these fears. When I am in leadership positions in the future at work or at church I need to remember that anxiety and fear are part of the experience. Will I let my fears get in the way of doing what I think is right? Will I depend on God to help give me strength when I feel exhausted? Will I make a rash self-centered decision that forgets about First Corinthians 12?

Fear and worry are just part of the pressures of leadership. I need methods ingrained in my mind when that moment comes to press forward and find my way forward. Don't forget what you've learned about the normal pressures of leadership. Don't forget.