Finding Emotional Health : Nicholas & Sheila Rowe

Full-Text Transcript

As ministry leaders, how can we better understand those underlying emotional struggles in our lives that impact the way we serve?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Nicholas and Sheila Rowe. Nicholas is a professor of Leadership at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Sheila has over 30 years of experience in counseling and spiritual direction with trauma survivors. They’ve recently released a book entitled Healing Leadership Trauma. Together, Nicholas, Sheila, and I explore how to identify some of the often-overlooked emotional and relational baggage we have in our lives. Nicholas and Sheila offer some pragmatic steps and meaningful practices to help us find healing so that not only do we flourish ourselves, but we can help those around us flourish as well. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Welcome to those who are joining us for the first time, and welcome back to those of you who hang out with us every week here at FrontStage BackStage. I am your host, Jason Daye. Each and every week, I have the privilege and the honor of sitting down with trusted ministry leaders, and we tackle a topic all in an effort to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you embrace healthy and sustainable rhythms so you can truly thrive in both life and leadership. We are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network. Not only do we have a conversation every week, but our team also creates an entire toolkit to help you and your team at your local church dig more deeply into the topic that we discuss. Now, you can find this toolkit at PastorServe.org/network for this episode and for every episode. Within that toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. In there, you’ll find insights that we pull out from our conversation, as well as some questions for reflection, for you to work through and for you to work through with your ministry leaders. So be sure to check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Now, our team at Pastor Serve loves walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders, and if you’d like to learn more about how you can receive a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, you can find that information at PastorServe.org/freesession. If you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We absolutely love getting to know our audience better, and we’ll be praying for you and for your ministry. Whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe and follow so that you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. I’m excited about today’s conversation. At this time, I’d like to welcome Nicholas and Sheila Rowe to the show. Nicholas and Sheila, welcome.

Sheila Rowe
Thank you.

Nicholas Rowe
Thank you.

Jason Daye
Yes. So good to have you with us. Really excited about our conversation today. We’re going to tackle a topic. Well, let’s say this: we’re going to be helping leaders, and that’s what you, Nicholas, and Sheila do. We’re going to be helping leaders, but there are a lot of resources that help ministry leaders tackle a lot of topics, right? Those are a lot of the frontstage topics that we talk about, but you guys go backstage into the personal life, and you go below the surface. Your most recent book is entitled Healing Leadership Trauma. The premise, as I’ve been reading through the book, is the idea that we, as ministry leaders, need to make sure that we are ministering out of our healing and not out of some of our hurts. In order for us to have others flourish and thrive, we need to make sure that we have experienced healing for ourselves. I think this is an important topic, obviously. Something that a lot of ministry leaders are wrestling with. But in the very beginning of this book, you challenge us, kind of, to think through a question about what is really driving us. In ministry, oftentimes that answer, the quick answer is, well, Jesus, right? Our calling to serve in ministry. That’s what’s driving us. But you go below the surface again. So, Nicholas, can you talk to us a little bit about this question and what you’re inviting us to dig into when you ask the question, what is really driving us in ministry?

Nicholas Rowe
Yeah, thank you again for the opportunity to share with you. The things that we talk about are the places of formation, particularly when we were young, in our families of origin, but also in the current circumstances which we find ourselves, particularly in the context of leadership, whether it’s the cultural environment, the political environment, or just relationships within your context of ministry, as well as a significant fear about success in the future. We call this three-prong thing here leadership trauma. That’s what we define as leadership trauma, and in our book, we basically say that this is a really powerful driver in terms of how people operate, in terms of their leadership. As you’ve mentioned, sure, there are lots of works out there that talk about techniques and strategies for getting the most out of your team, etc, and so forth. But there are not many works that really look at the person of the leader and particularly how they’re shaped and formed by these three different contexts and how it affects, for good or for ill, how well we are able to lead.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s super helpful, Nicholas. Sheila, as we look at this leadership trauma, as Nicholas has shared, what are the ways that this really impacts us? What is it that is underneath what we experience that we probably don’t pay as much attention to when it comes to how we are leading and how we are serving?

Sheila Rowe
Oftentimes, for leaders, it’s almost as if we’re on autopilot in some ways, and we don’t see the connections between the past and the present. A lot of what happens is that we are reacting to people, whether it’s the people we’re working alongside or the people that we’re leading, and we may not be in touch with why. Why is it triggering, as it were? But if we take the time to really begin to step back a bit, to pray, and to listen, and that the Lord does put his finger on what the issue is, but it does require this stepping back a bit. Otherwise, we do operate on autopilot. I mean, it’s just part of human nature. It’s just like, well, that’s just my personality. Or there are ways in which we can excuse each other’s behavior or even our own. But just this notion that our minds are being renewed. So that is one of the promises that the Lord is giving and wanting to do in us. So it should never be that we’re just the same people. You know, we really should be growing and changing. Also, being aware of kind of like taking the temperature of the teams that you’re on, etc. What’s happening there? Are people feeling like, you know, the tag line for our book is about helping others to flourish. Are they feeling that? Are you getting the sense that they are being encouraged to flourish? If not, then we’ve got to look at what’s going on. How is my leading affecting my team?

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. Now, I do want to ask this question because this has been raised. I’ve had conversations with many people who talk about this idea of trauma, and it goes something like this. They say trauma, everyone’s dealing with trauma now. Everyone’s talking about trauma. You know, back in the day, we just got up, we did things, we didn’t hash out this whole trauma. It’s almost a sense of, it’s being talked about too much. It’s given too much sway in people’s lives at this point. But as I’ve read through the book and the way that you guys address trauma, I’m just curious what your response would be, Sheila, to a question like that. If someone says trauma, why are we talking about trauma again? Why did you publish a whole book on leadership trauma? As a leader, do I really have to think about my trauma? All those questions. Sheila, how would you respond to that?

Sheila Rowe
You know what? The reality is, if we are not dealing with our past and not dealing with our trauma, it will bleed onto those around us. Whether it’s only your household, your family, or it’s in your church, it’s elsewhere. But it will, I guarantee you. I’m speaking from the perspective of being a therapist and having practiced for over 30 years. I have seen the carnage. I think that any therapist will tell you that, and not even any therapist, a lot of people who are sitting in the pews will tell you that they have witnessed that, and we’re seeing that. We’re seeing that and we’re seeing very public kinds of falls, things are coming out, and in many ways it’s shocking. But that’s what I’m talking about, the bleeding. The bleeding is happening, whether we see it or not. Eventually, it becomes evident.

Jason Daye
Therefore, trauma is something that we need to think about. We need to reflect. Look underneath the surface to see how the way we’re leading, the things we’re saying, and our behaviors are impacting those around us. Because, I think, Sheila, as you mentioned it, this idea that we see moral failure in the church and in ministry, we see these things happening. One of the things that was really helpful, Nicholas, that in your book, in kind of the first couple of chapters, introductory chapters, was that you kind of talked about some different ways that we categorize leaders. Like a leader might be narcissistic, right? There’s the narcissist and these different things. That really, oftentimes we just think, oh, that’s, as Sheila mentioned earlier, personality. It’s people’s personality. Yet, what you guys are helping us to see is that the reality is, the reason a leader shows out in that particular way is because of things underneath the surface. Trauma, you know, things that they haven’t dealt with, that they haven’t even paid attention to. So Nicholas help us kind of think through some of those, maybe what we consider a leadership personality, and how that relates to these things below the surface that we are probably ignoring or not really paying enough attention to.

Nicholas Rowe
Yeah, listen, I tell my students all the time, leadership is a relational function, okay? Leadership is first and foremost about how well you relate to those for whom you’re responsible and those whom you report to. It’s all about relationship and quality of relationship. If something in the past, particularly during the early years of formation, has impaired our ability to relate to others well, it will affect our leadership. As a matter of fact, many of these different types of leadership styles, whether they’re healthy ones or unhealthy ones, are usually connected to something that has happened earlier in life, something that we really fundamentally didn’t receive. Ideally, within our families of origin and our early years of formation, we were supposed to receive the types of inputs from our parents and other sorts of contexts that helped us to understand a fundamental thing about life. That we are people who are loved well, and therefore we can love others well, right? Jesus’s great commandment. Love God from top to bottom. Love others from top to bottom. All our early years are about learning how to do that well. If our parents or the context that we’re in have suffered, and again, we’ll use that word trauma, it impairs their ability to love well, therefore, in terms of the next generation, there are gaps within us. The ways in which those gaps show up in terms of the way in which we’re in leadership. A narcissistic person, of course, is just a deep, bottomless pit of need for affirmation of some sort to say that I’m okay as a person. A passive aggressive type of leader, the type of person who has anger issues but doesn’t allow them directly, may have learned early in their lifetime that it was very unsafe to be honest about how one was feeling, particularly if they were angry. They learned that if they showed anger, it was unsafe, and so they do it indirectly. I could go through the entire list because literally, I’m preparing a lecture for this next week for students about putting a lot of these things together. But, you can look at each one of these different dysfunctional leadership styles, and you can directly connect it to an area of a clear need for the young person that they did not get and where it was not met, and so they acted out when they’re old, they use leadership to get something that they should have gotten earlier in life.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. So, Sheila, if we look at that, I mean, all of us want to think we’re good leaders, right? But all of us have some dysfunction to some degree because we all grew up in families that weren’t perfect, right? Some may be to a greater degree than others. But all of us have things that we can work on and better understand. So, Sheila, as we’re looking at this, one of the things you touch on is this idea of attachment and detachment, and how that really funnels into the way that we, as Nicholas was saying, relate to those that we’re serving and to those that we’re leading. Help us understand why a better understanding of attachment, detachment, and those things, how does that help us really become healed as a leader?

Sheila Rowe
Yeah, there’s this whole notion around attachment and so in our really early years, and Nick talked a little bit about this, but depending on whether we had a secure attachment with our parent, like we knew our parent was there for us, even when this whole thing about if our parent leaves, we knew that eventually they would come back, and there was a consistency of care. So there are some of us who had more secure attachments in our families, and it may have been with one parent or both parents, but for others, that was not the case. What would happen is that we would have just a sense of that, whether it’s organized attachment, where we’re anxious, we’re kind of fearful, and yet we also pull away. So we think about these ways in which we’ve come from being a child to being an adult, and we’re engaging with people in a way that is very similar, and that we’re fearful in our jobs. We have people who are, as you talked about, different kinds of leaders. So you have leaders who are very, very passive. There may be some anxiety, they’re anxiously attached, and they think, okay, if I do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, then I’m going to get in trouble. I’ll lose my position. There’s a lot of fear that’s connected with that. Again, these are things that we think, oh, you know, the person’s avoided attachment. It’s just that they’re going to kind of avoid intimacy out of fear and that plays itself out in the way we lead. So we’re looking at our team. It may be that within the context of our team, we’re either anxious or we’re avoidant, or there’s a disorganized way in which we engage with them, and all of this is because, in some ways, we’re unconsciously replicating what it is that we experienced before and unconsciously hoping that it’s going to be different this time, but at the same time fearing that it won’t be and so we start to see this. And we’ve got to pay attention to that.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. The title of your book is Healing Leadership Trauma. So it’s one thing to identify it, and I think making it a little bit normative, which I feel like you do. Like saying, hey, all of us have gaps, right? It’s not like there’s this little subset where you guys have issues and everyone else gets it. All of us have gaps. So when we can start there and say, Okay, we all have places that we can grow and improve. But then the idea of identifying it versus Okay, now what? Right? Like, okay, so we’ve identified it now. We don’t want to just feel like, Oh, so you know, we’re lacking, but there’s this healing that we have the beautiful gift of the Holy Spirit that can bring this healing in our lives. So I’d love to get really practical in the rest of our time together. What are practical ways that, once we understand, accept, and say, okay, there are gaps, there are things that can be worked on? What are some practical ways that we can begin to actually receive this healing and go on this journey so that we can be more effective in the way we relate to others, in the way that we lead?

Sheila Rowe
Yeah, you know what, actually, at the end of every single chapter, there are reflection questions, there are prayer prompts, there’s material that guides us through each chapter, which helps to really unpack that and to invite the Lord to be present in that. But I would also say that we don’t want to also minimize the importance of relationship. Nick talked about that. And that of having trusted others, and I think that’s a huge piece of this. When we see people who have fallen in major, spectacular ways, there was an issue around accountability, but not even in some instances, people did share what was going on. But there was another step that was missing, and that is in terms of, okay, well, then what are you actively doing about this? So having not only just yes, we can go, pray, and ask the Lord for help, but who are the people that God is calling to come alongside us, to help us to heal? So in a very practical way, it’s really looking at the early formation issues, and it’s confronting pain and grieving because there’s a lot of grief around that, where what we didn’t get then, what we’re not getting now, and what we’re fearing will continue in the future.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s helpful. Nick, what are some other ways that we can practically lean into the healing?

Nicholas Rowe
Yeah, so I’m going to lean on the practical side of things. I think just be prepared. There are sometimes failure is a gift, right? There are a lot of biblical examples. Moses is a classical example, right? Moses’ first foray into leadership was when he saw a fellow Israelite being beaten up by an Egyptian. So there was a sense in which he was going to sort all this out, he killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. Then, the next day, he saw a couple of his Israelite brothers fighting. He told them, Why are you doing this? One says, Why, are you going to kill me like you killed the other guy the other day? So clearly, this was not the way to lead. So, maybe this whole question starts with an assessment of how well we are leading. Are we paying attention to signals and are we paying attention to places of confrontation? Are we paying attention to things that are not working well? Are we beginning to ask ourselves the question, okay, what is going on here? Why are people hesitant to talk to me? Why are people hesitant to speak the truth to me? Why am I being reported all the time for abusing my followers? When you start getting these types of reports and things, then that might be the beginning of trying to take a look at what is going on in you that is causing so much distress among relationships around you. Okay, so in grace, if you’re the type of person who’s not afraid to look at yourself, and you can ask those whom you lead to give you feedback, that’s fine. I know that some of us may not be particularly good at that, and so sometimes the Lord may have to intervene and turn on the red light, and usually that’s by some type of incident or failure that allows one to see that, okay, not everything is cool right now, and I need to get some help. So I don’t want us to overlook the fact sometimes that failure, troubles, or things like that are things to blow off or things to ignore. Or, you know what, these people just are not working hard enough. Blaming it on everybody else, right? Sometimes we are the problem. So, to be on the lookout for signals that the Lord is giving that it’s time for us to look within ourselves to see what is taking place.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. So as we’re leaning into this practical way of healing. Sheila, you did mention the exercise at the end of each chapter, which I really appreciated, because it’s not only questions for reflection, but it’s also, as you said, some spiritual practices, some ways to lean into prayer, reflection, meditation, and different things. Then the really practical things, Nick, that you shared about. Being aware of what’s going on around you, right? That goes back to the relational aspect of this. But if you were sitting down with a pastor, and the pastor said, Hey, listen, I know I don’t have it all dialed in. I know there’s probably some baggage from earlier on, but I just don’t know what to do. What would you recommend as the first step? What do you really need to lean into to begin to address this and receive the healing?

Sheila Rowe
I think that one thing is that there are assessments. So there are assessments that are online that you can take around attachment. So to kind of see, okay, this is my attachment style. The one who, Bowlby, was one of the initial people who talked about attachment, talks about how we have this internal working order, and that’s how we navigate through life. So those kinds of tests will help us to see, well, what is our internal working order? The reality is that, in terms of the practical piece, I mentioned relationships, but science has shown that positive relationships and positive experiences can then counteract some of the trauma and negative experiences in the past. So it’s actively seeking and deepening our relationship with God, and deepening our relationships with other people as well. As you said, these spiritual practices. We talk about even incorporating things like the cross, oil, water, or anointing. We talked about accountability. There’s a whole list of ways in which we can engage and allow the Lord, the Holy Spirit, to do that healing work in terms of healing our hearts. Then I think the reality too is one of because the load is so heavy that one wonderful, important discipline is really that of gratitude and of really looking every day for where is God? Where do I see the hand of God moving? Where is he? Where is there light? Where is love coming through and not just coming towards me, but how am I also being a vessel of that to those around me? So in a very practical way, when we start to do that, we actually start to kind of rewire our brain because our brains are skewed towards focusing on the negative and what’s missing. So the more that we are also looking for how God is blessing me in big and small ways, but how can I also bless others in big and small ways? And we begin to start to see some shifts in that way.

Nicholas Rowe
I’ve got two thoughts, and both of these are super practical. They’re just a dictum that we are hurt in community, therefore, we need to heal in community. Alright, so you set up a hypothetical of a pastor coming to me, and the first question I have is, do you have a safe place where you can be totally honest with somebody about everything that you’re dealing with? It’s a running joke with me now, with friends, and my students. Do you have your own Jedi Council, right? In other words, do you have relationships? I actually think, practically speaking, as a man, do you have four or five other men with whom you have a relationship where nothing is off the table, where you trust them totally? You know they are people who take God seriously and to whom you’ve given permission to ask, anytime, anywhere, and any place, how you are doing, with the caveat of Don’t lie to me about this? Don’t just tell me you’re fine. I know you. This is the other thing. Is there a place where you are known, where your stuff is known, where your history is known, and your experiences are known? So that when you are engaging with this Jedi Council, they know the things to ask because they know the pattern. In addition to this, there are places, there are some, obviously, denominations, where this type of structure is built in, right? So there’s a local bishop or a local superintendent, or somebody for whom there is that type of function. In other words, is there somebody, and it could be a therapist or spiritual director, where you have the same type of relationship? In other words, they may be somebody totally disconnected from your context, so that you are free to speak honestly about people, relationships, and everything else like that, and it won’t go around back to where you are because, with pastors, I mean, you’re technically an employee some places and that can be very, very vulnerable to do that. But there must be some places where you are totally real, totally honest, literally naked, so that we can see the spots, and we can see the symptoms, right? To be able to have somebody be with you, but also intercede for you and with you, and you doing that for somebody else as well. I think that it’s a mutual place where one can serve. To be honest, without that type of vulnerability, it’s very, very hard to experience healing. That’s the number one requirement and if that’s difficult for you, this is where you really need to ask God to help you with that. It’s really hard to move forward if there’s not a context or a place where you can be safe and open about what’s going on on the inside.

Sheila Rowe
I would also say that one thing just for pastors to be aware of is that it’s a two-way street. So what I mean by that is that it’s not just that okay, you’re needing to deal with your early formation and how that has affected you, but you’re also encountering another human being who also has their own baggage that is coming. So I think, oftentimes, we kind of miss each other because we don’t understand the hardships or the traumas that the other person has gone through, because we’re either focusing on our own, or the in leadership, things have gotta keep moving. Service is going to be in two days and, yeah, you’re secretary, she or he is just MIA. You’re not factoring into the realities that we are in a community, and so we have to be aware and careful that the people that we’re working with are carrying their own load. How do we, in just very, very practical ways, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff around emotional intelligence, which in some ways can just feel kind of wrote like, Okay, if you just learn these things. But it has to go beyond just ticking boxes to asking the Lord actually to have a compassion, care, and Godly love for those who are leading with you and who you are leading. So there are just very practical ways of showing love, care, and attention. So some of it is drawing from emotional intelligence, but it’s also asking the Lord to really make that real within you.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. Those are both, Sheila and Nick, great practical ways that we can kind of take that next step, and I encourage those of you who are watching and listening to explore this. This is one of those areas of leadership that has not been explored as much. I think our local churches and our ministries would be much healthier if we were willing to, in community, as both of you have iterated and reiterated again and again, right? Like within community, if we can find some of this healing, identify some of the baggage, identify some of the trauma, and some of those things that came along with how we were raised just in life. Identify those things and then find some healing through that. I think our ministries, not only would we be feeling better about ourselves, but as you said, Sheila, we’d better understand those we’re serving alongside. Help them to deal with some of these things and the people that God entrusts to us to serve. Our parishoners, our congregation, and the community at large, right? These are just resources and tools for us to be better at how we serve. So I love that. I mean the book as I’ve read through it, as you said, it has the different questions, the exercises, and everything, and it really walks you through from the very beginning. It starts with identifying these things, what does that look like, and where some things to think about that you’re not really thinking about, but then gives you ways to kind of continue to walk through. Lean on God. Let the Holy Spirit do that work. Address specific things that might be coming up in your work with the Spirit and with others that you’re processing, and then how to really find that healing. So I think it’s an incredible resource. So thank you for both of your minds and hearts and being obedient to God and putting this together because I think it’s a much-needed resource today. As we close down, I would like to give both of you, I’ll start with Nick, and then, Sheila, you can wrap up. I’d like to give both of you an opportunity just to speak some words of encouragement. We’ve got the eyes and ears of brothers and sisters who are serving in ministry. What would you want to encourage them with, Nick?

Nicholas Rowe
Sure. Look, God loves you more than you can ever imagine, and God has not put any of us in our positions just to kind of leave us to sort it out. His promise is real and sealed by His Son, that He will never leave us nor forsake us. He is determined to enable you to get well. He wants you to be well, not only for yourself, but also for those that you’re in connection with. So don’t give up. God hears the cries of your heart that are manifested in the places of brokenness and in the places of frustration. But don’t give up. God is at work. He is always at work. He’s not asleep. He is at work. Yeah, that’s the thing that really immediately comes to mind. It could be other things, but I think there’s just the need to let people know that they’re not alone in this, and that God is looking, he’s at work already saving right now.

Jason Daye
Amen, I love that. Sheila?

Sheila Rowe
I think that one of the main things that I would say is that when I think about Jesus’s baptism, and where we hear God the Father say, This is my son with whom I am well pleased, and also my daughter, with whom I am well pleased. But he said it around Jesus. But we need to remember that. That before Jesus did all these amazing, incredible things that God said, This is my son with whom I am well pleased, which is, wow, that’s pretty amazing. If we really could just grab hold of that reality, that it is not about centering our doing so much, and that’s when we get into trouble. But when we’re focusing on being, being with the Lord, and from there, just as Jesus did, he spent so much time just listening, hearing what the Father is saying. With us in the same way, what is the father saying in terms of how we are engaging with one another? Because the Father loves us before we did anything, and knows what is best as we lean into really listening, that’s going to transform how we engage people, how we think about people, how we communicate with them, and it’s that sense of like, you know what? God loves me so much, and it’s not just me, it’s other people as well. So I want to encourage you to lean into that reality that you are God’s love, whether you’re a daughter or son, God loves you, and go out there, and with that, you literally can change the world with God.

Jason Daye
Amen. Nicholas and Sheila, it’s been such a pleasure to have both of you with us. Thank you for joining me, and again, thank you for Healing Leadership Trauma. For those of you who are watching or listening in the show notes, in the toolkit for this episode, we will have links to Healing Leadership Trauma, the book by Nicholas and Sheila, as well as links to some other resources. So be sure to check that out. You can find that at PastorServe.org/network. It’s where you can find the toolkit for this episode. Thank you so much again for making time to be with us here on FrontStage BackStage, Nicholas and Sheila, we certainly appreciate it.

Sheila Rowe
Thank you for having us all right.

Nicholas Rowe
Our pleasure.

Jason Daye
Thank you. God bless you.

Sheila Rowe
God bless.

Nicholas Rowe
Keep well now.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.