Getting Traineeships Going
By Pete Hughes
“The sin of empathy” is a phrase attributed to family systems psychologist Dr Edwin Friedman. Matt Waldock of Manchester City Church explores why empathy is unhelpful in ministry and compassion is a better way of thinking.
TOOLBOX:
Lauren Errington’s Seminar on Ministry
311: How can my help get in the way of my caring
Leadership Anxiety by Steve Cuss
CREDITS:
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TRANSCRIPT
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Good day.I’m Scott Sanders.Welcome to The One Thing, a podcast designer give you one solid practical tip for gospel centre ministry every week.Now The One Thing is brought to you by Reach Australia.We want to see thousands of healthy evangelistic multiplying churches.And so you’re probably going to be listening to this podcast thinking, why have we got an English person on this podcast?
Aren’t you guys about reaching Australia?Well, as a network, we want to be a network that actually learns and we think we can learn from people overseas, even people from the UK.So I’m really excited about our guest on today’s podcast, and I’m going to introduce him to you in a moment.But for now, you press play on another episode of The One thing the Sin of Empathy.
Today’s podcast is brought to you by EA Insurance.Need insurance for your church or charity?Contact EA Insurance.For best cover and a competitive price, head over to WWW DOT.EA.Insurance.com dot AU and now back to the podcast.
Now, Matt, welcome to the one thing.Thanks for having me.Really good to be here.Good to good to join you again Scott.I thought you were going to What’s the word pom?Do you not?No, I wasn’t gonna No.Look, I, I, I don’t use that because it’s pejorative and that’s, I don’t want to get cancelled.
We don’t use that.Word anymore.I appreciate your cultural sensitivity.That’s nice, that’s good.I feel very welcomed, warm and safe.But let me for those who don’t know who I’m talking to, I’m talking to Matt Wardock who is lead pastor of City Church Manchester.
He’s also got other things, but I I just want to lead into that briefly because it’s interesting.You have two lead pastors and you know, and I’ve, I worked, I, I met Matt last year.We did a concert with, with his wonderful, great church in, in the City of Manchester.And I had a wonderful time with, with he and Ralph, the lead pastors and his water team.
But it was interesting.You guys are both lead pastors and you both planted a church together.And I called it a bit of a Unicorn experience because I haven’t seen that work well, but you guys have been doing that well for 10 plus years.Yeah, yeah, it’s I, I think it’s a bit of a Unicorn experience as well.
And I would never say to guys, oh, you must find a Co pastor or go out there and find someone to kind of share the responsibility with with total parity like that.But I would say if the Lord is generous and happens to put you in a context with someone who you can work with like that, then it’s great and it’s been a great 10 years.
It’s not necessarily been straightforward, but the longer we’ve worked together, actually the more we appreciate each other’s differences and each other’s strengths.And I think our combination in Manchester means actually, I think we achieve more together than we would apart, certainly for this season of of ministry.
So yeah, very grateful.And I, I just love how you summarise it beautifully.His strengths, you know, his weaknesses, your strengths, your weaknesses and they and they work together.It were it, you know, I was able to see that.And it is a, it is a wonderful thing.Now, Matt, the other role that you have is as the UK Gospel coaching director.
Tell us a little bit about that and why it’s so passionate.Yeah, really passionate about gospel coaching.For us here in the UK, gospel coaching is restoring leadership clarity, one gospel shaped conversation at a time.We connect men and women who are in ministry leadership positions with gospel coaches so that they might thrive and be healthy, have a sustainable ministry.
We’ve been doing it for about four and a half, five years.We’ve trained around about 105 coaches and they’ve gone on to coach over 120 different men and women in leadership positions across the UK.And we’re in an environment, I think right now, which is incredibly hostile to those in leadership positions.
It’s very difficult to see the wood for the trees.It’s very difficult to retain clarity and perspective.We’re seeing huge numbers of burnout, huge numbers of people quit the ministry.And I’m passionate about gospel catching because I think it is a tool, a really helpful tool to help people thrive, sustain and be fruitful.
Great.Well, I’m going to put a link in the show notes to City Church Manchester and also and also your work with, with, with CMM gospel coaching in, in Europe as well.Yeah, be good, be good.If you are listening here in Australia, be good to pray for our brothers and sisters in, in the UK and, and pray, you know, pray for the work that is, is happening with a whole bunch of ministries over there as well.
Now I want to just jump into this topic because, you know, the, the title is not kind of catchy.The the Sin of empathy is a talk that you gave a couple of years ago at A at a ministry conference.Yeah, in, in the UK And, and I was, you know, as I heard that I was a sin really like, you know, and it was, it was provocative.
But, but what’s wrong with empathy in pastoral ministry?Yeah, yeah, yeah.Well, let me say now, before, before kind of like you get lots of emails and I get fired.The Sid of empathy actually was a quote from a theorist, a leadership thinker called Edwin Friedman.
And he was making the point that empathy itself is distinct from compassion.And empathy actually is a significant cause in not so much loving our brothers and sisters when we’re in leadership positions, though that’s what we intend it to be, but can actually hinder our ability to care for them, support them and enable them and our churches or our organisations to thrive.
And freedom was was talking about it in a time which is similar to now really, where everyone’s talking about empathy.Everyone’s saying, actually, if you want to be a healthy leader, you’ve got to be empathetic.Empathy is something that we all have to kind of saturate ourselves in.
And what Friedman was trying to do was say, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, just let’s slow down a little bit.Let’s actually unpick what this means.And let’s reflect a little bit on the consequences of just going totally down this rate in an unreflective sense.
And so he used this provocative term, the sin of empathy.And that’s what the the the talk was picking up in and sharing it with the UK.Leaders So so you’ve just talked about compassion.What?What’s the difference between empathy and compassion?Yeah.
So compassion is the idea of suffering with someone.It’s the understanding of it’s the feeling of concern, sadness or discomfort.When you see another human being go through a time of stress, trauma, suffering, whatever problem, it is a concern that you have that that will ideally lead you to want to help and support them.
So it’s the kind of idea of, you know, suffering with someone, so you’re alongside them.What empathy, what empathy does is, is it’s slightly different.And I think actually we often get confused between the two because empathy is the idea of suffering in someone, not with them.
So it’s the idea that you actually feel the pain of your friend who is in pain.You don’t just recognise their pain, you don’t just feel concerned for their pain, but their pain becomes your pain.
Their perspective becomes wholly adopted by you.And and the issue of, of empathy with that is actually that connection or that bond with the other person.There’s there’s nothing wrong with that per Southeast.
But the issue is if you totally take on board the perspective of the other person at the expense of your own, if you take on the the pain of the other person and you lose your own perspective off the back of that, that doesn’t enable you to help the other person.
That just enables both people to be in a crisis situation.Let me give you an example of that.If I break my leg and the paramedic comes, you know, ambulance blue flashing lights and they come and the paramedic comes to me with my pain, I’ve got kind of, you know, tears rolling down my cheeks because I’m just in absolute agony.
I do not want the paramedic to go, oh, you look like you’re in a massive pain.I can see that you’ve broken your leg.I can see that it’s severed at the bone.I do not want the paramedic to take a sledgehammer and break their own leg and go, yeah, I, I’m totally feeling, literally feeling what you’re feeling because that means we’ve got two people in acute agony and pain.
Neither is able to help and support the other person.I need the paramedic to have compassion on me.I need them to be sensitive to the what I’m going through.But I need them to retain their perspective because what pain does is it it, it will cloud your perspective on things.
Sometimes it can give you clarity, but often it will cloud your perspective and cause you to make a set of decisions that actually, from the bigger picture, aren’t necessarily the wisest or the most helpful.And I need the person supporting me to retain the clarity of perspective.What empathy will tend to do if they’re suffering in me, if they’re suffering exactly the same level, you know, all of that.
They cannot support me as I need to be supported, which is why actually I would encourage us to be sharper on our language, that we want to encourage leaders to be compassionate.Absolutely.Yeah.But I think we want to be cautious, to go all in with.We have to be totally empathetic.
Does that make sense?Yeah.Yeah, it does make sense.And in some ways I’m, I’m feeling like you’re letting me off the hook.I I don’t think I’m someone that is very empathetic.You know, I’m, I’m quick to rush into a solution.Like I have to remind myself to go to ask a question.How are you feeling?
You know, I’m, I’m, I’m straight to the task.That level of self awareness has been useful for me to, to, you know, to reflect when I am, you know, hearing someone and hearing someone story that I do ask, you know, that that feels terrible, you know, like that’s not correct.
I have to, I have to go to remind myself.Now, the interesting thing is I reckon most people can see that I’m faking it, you know, in the sense that it’s not kind of how I’m wired.You know, like I think most people would say you’re not the most empathetic person.So, you know, in some ways I’m feeling like you’re letting me off the hook and, and often, you know, the I’m feeling conversation for me is often a way into, you know, to go deeper with someone or to open myself up.
You know, so I’m feeling like you’re kind of chopping off one of my, you know, one of my legs in my, in my arsenal for, you know, working alongside someone and getting alongside someone and, and, and breaking down some of the barriers.But I think, yeah, so I don’t know, reflect with me on on my on my lack of empathy.
Yeah.And and maybe.Yeah, yeah, I, I don’t think there’s an issue with saying to someone like how you feeling about this?I, I, I really don’t think, I think that’s actually a caring posture because what you’re trying to do is it’s a diagnostic because a proportion of the challenges that we face will be obvious to see.
They’ll be on the surface.You can see from that circumstance or that situation that’s going to have that impact on that person in that way.But there’s a number of other variables actually internally that you can’t see when you’re interacting with another human being.You don’t know what happened when they were fighting with their wife in the in the morning.
You don’t know what happened with a kind of relationship breakdown with their kids the week before.All of these things contribute to a person’s situation, how they handle a given crisis.If you just play what you see on the surface, you’re going to try and help or solve a problem that actually potentially isn’t even the real problem, which is why the diagnostic is saying, well, how do you feel?
What are some of the things that have contributed to that?Even?Like at what level, you know, how bad is your pain?You know, are we talking you’ve sprained your ankle and can hobble on.Are we talking about the fact that you actually need to tap out entirely and get rest recovery and it’s going to take weeks out.
See, I think appreciating the humanness that we’re we’re physical beings.We’ve got emotions.All of those things make us, you know, human in the kindness of the Lord.We want to reflect that in our conversations are at in our relationships of the people.What we don’t want to be is purely reactive to someone’s emotional state.
And this is where I think Christians often struggle.I think we often have a, a naive view that within a Christian community, within Christian relationships, nobody should be in pain, nobody should be in any form of discomfort because we’re all Christians and therefore everything should be great and we should love each other and there should always be total unity and total unity looks like we we’re all absolutely happy with everyone’s decision at any point.
That’s just naive.That’s just just naive.And So what that naivety looks like, I think in lots of leadership situations, is you hear someone’s pain, you hear their anguish, and you basically zone into that and you think to yourself, I must do everything I possibly can to shrink that person’s pain so that they are no longer in pain.
And that is the one thing that I must leverage all of my authority, resources, energy and time today.Now that is a kind of empathetic response because like when I’m in pain, the only thing that I can think of is getting rid of the pain in any way, shape or form.
The shortest course of action to getting rid of the pain I will take.But actually, if you’re in a leadership position, your greatest gift to that person, that organisation isn’t necessarily to shrink their pain.It is to be there with them.
It is to support them.If there’s something that you can do to help alongside, then yeah.But actually you have other responsibilities are the key leadership decisions that you have to make that are much bigger than simply shrinking that person’s pain.
And so if you prioritise their pain being the single thing that you have to have to reduce and shrink, then you’re likely to be like the paramedic who breaks their own leg in order to demonstrate connection and bond with, with the with the patient.
It’s it’s, it’s foolishness.So, so Matt, I’m interested to kind of see how this plays out.Like you’ve helpfully given us the the lens of the whole church, but how does this play out actually in ministry, ministry teams?You know, how do you see this overemphasis on empathy versus compassion playing out in ministry teams?
Yeah, So I guess a, a, a key quote that Friedman is is just really useful for is, is when he says that the most anxious person in the room is the most powerful.And what what he’s saying there is he’s saying actually, we tend to think that the most anxious, the most distressed person is the person with the least power.
And therefore power ought to bow itself to help that person.Isn’t that a kind of gospel shape?But what Friedman’s actually pushing back on is to say, no, no, no, no, no.Typically what happens, the person who is most distressed, most unhappy is the person who gets what they want in the end because nobody else wants to upset them.
And we again, it goes back to that naive idea that in a Christian community, no one can be upset.No one can be in a in a state of unhappiness about a decision.So let me give you an example.I’ve been in a number of team meetings, elders meetings, congregational gatherings where we’re gathering to solve a ministry problem, you know, and we’re talking about it, we’re discussing it, and someone comes up with an idea to make a particular change.
It’s it’s not going to be an easy change.Perhaps it’s changing something that had been a long standing way of doing things or method.But actually, they’ve made the case that actually, if we change this, we could see this ministry become more fruitful, You know, three times more, five times more, even 10 times more.
It’s not going to be easy, but I think we should do it.Everyone around the the table is kind of looking at that, listening, weighing it up, wrestling.And they’re kind of going, yeah, they’re nodding their heads.Yeah, we should do that.It’s going to be hard, but we should go for it.And then one person, one person will, you know, will say they might clear their voice and go, excuse me.
Can I just say before we go any further, I am really uncomfortable with what we’re talking about here.I am actually really distressed by the way that this discussion is going.And I personally can’t believe we’re even thinking about this.
And they might talk about, well, it’s a slippery slope or actually that’s the most unloving thing that I, I, I’ve ever heard people in church ministry discuss.And all of a sudden the tension in the room goes through the reef.Everyone kind of kind of freezes with a sense of I feel the stress of it.
And then suddenly the kind of collective mood of the room is yet.Well, we shouldn’t do it.We shouldn’t do it.Yeah, you’re right.We should, we should wait.We’ll, we’ll, we’ll pause or we’ll, we’ll, we’ll do something that is less radical.And, and that’s what Friedman’s talking about, that the health of the wider organisation, the health of the wider church, the health of the wider team is sacrificed because the most anxious person in the room has leveraged their power, which is the power of anxiety.
So, so the natural question following for this is, well, how do we, how do we stop someone’s anxiety setting the agenda for, for ministry and and I guess church growth and church movement?Yeah, it’s, it’s a great question and I don’t think there’s any one thing to do.
I think actually there’s a variety of tools that are worth reflecting on and say the first tool is as a leader, you’ve got to be able to observe it.Most leaders I think, don’t recognise when their teams or congregations have become chronically anxious.
I’ll give you an example of that.I think a lot of ministry leaders will feel stress in going into a meeting.They will feel the sense of anxiety themselves, but they won’t necessarily recognise actually how that anxiety has affected the team.
And what research has demonstrated is when anxiety grips the whole team and anxiety is contagious and anxiety is is worth defining here, a working definition that I find really useful is anxiety is a felt.
Real or perceived need or deficit of something that you think you have to have in order to function or thrive or be safe.So it could be real, but it could just be perceived.What a leader needs to do is they need to recognise that if one person in the team is anxious, it will be contagious.
It’ll spread like COVID around the whole team, and suddenly that anxiety will cause the whole of the team to start behaving in ways that are not conducive to clear, decisive, and courageous leadership.In fact, when anxiety grips A-Team, their decision making doesn’t just fall off a little bit, it falls off a Cliff edge in terms of quality.
Say if you have a leader, he doesn’t recognise that it just makes them far more vulnerable to pull back on hard decisions.You know, oh, we’re all really struggling with this.Therefore we we shouldn’t push in that direction when actually pushing in that direction may be exactly the right thing to do.
And so the first tool is to observe and let me give you a couple of things for a leader to look out for in a team.One would be black and white thinking actually teams that have who are low in anxiety, who have clear clarity, they look at the nuances.
You don’t hear non anxious teams say this is all brilliant or this is all horrendous.Anxious teams say that.Non anxious teams say, well actually that decision has some good things.
It’s got some bad things.But on balance, we should go over here, anxious teams go, this is all good.This is going to be our saviour.This is going to be the best thing that we’ve done ever, or this is the worst thing that we could possibly do.This is going to bring total disasters, is going to shut the church.A key one as well is to observe overly serious teams.
When a team loses its playfulness even in the face of very serious situations.And I’m not talking about flippant larking around.I’m talking about actually a sense of inherent playfulness in the team.Having fun, having fun.
If I can translate through an Australian audience, just having fun.Yeah, exactly.Having fun, having fun.If I’m in the team and the team stops laughing, if I see the team stops smiling, I’m noticing that.And then the second tool, I think what you have to do when you’ve observed it is actually you can talk to the person who is the perhaps the most anxious person kind of Ground Zero.
You can have a conversation with them aside and sensitively work that through with them and somewhat protect the team by having that conversation.But the biggest single difference that you can do, and this is what Friedman was, was teaching, the biggest single difference to a team’s anxiety is the leader.
So a leader in a team either can ratchet up the anxiety of a whole team, or they can ratchet it down.And they will do that by their conduct, by the way that they’re able to manage their own feelings, their own stress.And so is this the?Yeah.
Is this the calm?Is this the calm non anxious presence?You know, so in the midst of a crisis, you want to be the calm, non anxious precious, but you want to be that kind of all, you know, all the time.You know, in some senses we are in a crisis.People are going to people are going to hell all around us and we need to do something about that would be urgent about it.
Yeah.You want to be the calm, non anxious presence in the midst of that.Yeah, exactly, exactly.And I think it’s that it’s that discipline of the leader to be able to recognise the urgency and the seriousness of the situation.And we’re in that, aren’t we?With so many people who don’t know the Lord Jesus.
And he’s coming back sooner, you know, sooner today than it was yesterday.We don’t know when, but he’s coming back.That is an urgent situation.But we need leaders who can keep their heads, retain clarity and make those courageous decisions.We’re currently in a culture where the next generation, I guess is pushing back against, you know, driven, you know, clear leadership.
You know, what does what does that mean for being the calm, non anxious presence?What does that mean for being the leader who, you know, may be accused of actually not having any empathy?Yeah.And not being someone who shows compassion.Yeah, yeah, totally.Well.I appreciate you bringing up the context that I’m currently pastoring in because actually we’re getting to Rd test this stuff all the time in terms of managing my own anxiety in a situation where this is the biggest change that our church has gone through since we planted the church 10 years ago.
And actually what we’re seeing here in Manchester is there are a group of people, those who particularly find change difficult, are wanting to say, actually pull in, let’s go smaller, you know, pull up the drawbridge, let’s just consolidate, let’s huddle.
And maybe, just maybe, just maybe the Lord will help us survive until perhaps we can move back into this building that’s been refurbed.And then there’s another group of people who are saying, actually, we need to kind of push on even more.We need to really run fast.
We need to, you know, tear up the playbook and go in a totally different direction.Both of these to an extent are anxiety responses.So the wise leadership course of action is somewhere in between.It’s neither pull in nor is it let’s Chuck everything out that our 10 year vision, let’s bonfire it and and and get on with something completely different.
And holding those two groups together that are very persuasive, that are very passionate actually is a is a hard thing to do.And I think all of us in ministry will face those types of things all the time.Someone helpfully said, it’s not that people don’t like change.
What they don’t like is loss and change always brings a sense of loss.And so as a leader, you’re having to look at the changes that you’re going through.We’re looking at the change that we’re going through and saying, actually, where are people legitimately lamenting a sense of loss here?
Things that they cherish, things that they really enjoyed, rhythms that they used to have, that they can now see it going?Where can we actually acknowledge that and recognise that and be with them?You know, we’re not going to change course.We’re not going to bunker down, but I will be with them as they lament that and grieve that pain.
But I think the big.Thing that is the takeaway, and I think this is hard to stomach, but I think it’s just the reality of leading in the, in the current ages you’ve talked about is that there is no way around courageous leadership in our current season of life without receiving criticism, without receiving accusations that you are this or you are that.
And that’s OK so long as you’ve got two things in play.Number one, that your identity as a leader is rooted in who you are in Christ first and foremost, and not in the approval of the group of people that you’re currently leading.
And #2 you’re supported by a wider leadership team who are able to be as non anxious as possible in the face of these wider criticisms.Because actually what I’m saying often, and this is often through the coaching piece, it’s not always that the leaders are crumpling in the face of the most anxious people in the room.
It’s often that their boards are, it’s often the leaders surrounding them that are actually saying we need to panic, we need to go into total crisis stations as emails come through, we need to hold the whole process.And so I think leaders who want to be courageous, you can’t go it alone actually.
You have to be continuingly investing in the leaders around you to similarly have that non anxious mindset, similarly understand these things, which is why one of the things that I’ve slightly changed tack on doing is training our leaders to spot the signs of anxiety in teams, spot the signs within themselves.
If we can train each other to have a vocabulary and spot, you know, we’re losing our playfulness, we’re losing our sense of fun.Or I’ll have leaders say to me, I, I came out of that meeting feeling we were just doing a lot of black and white thinking that, you know, they’re using that vocabulary back to me.
That’s really helpful because that gives me confidence that actually they have a higher immune system.And, and this is Friedman’s language, that our emotional immunity to the anxiety of others is higher, not only me personally as a leader, but the wider leadership team.
And if our immunity is higher, that’s not to say we’re not listening, but if our immunity is higher, that we’re less likely to be infected by the panic of others, then we’re going to be in a healthier place.We’re able to make more courageous and sustainable decisions for Gospel 3.Matt, I just want to.
Ask that that really helpful and appreciate you opening up about, you know what’s currently going on for city church Manchester as well.I guess the the final question I want to get your thoughts on is is how do we remain connected to people without taking on their anxiety?
You know where when there is such a push for the, for the leader who is alongside and the leader who gets me, You know, the leader who’s my father or my mother.You know that I that I didn’t have.How do we remain connected to people without taking on their anxiety?Yeah.
I I think that’s.Really hard and I would get back to that tool that I was mentioning about.You’ve got to you’ve got to be observant of your own anxiety and you’ve got to be able to manage it first.So if let me be really practical here, if I’m going into a meeting where I know there’s going to be a whole bunch of very anxious people in the room who there’s going to be a sense of panic, they’re going to be catastrophizing situations, you know, they’re going to be throwing.
Well, isn’t this exactly the problem with the liberal church?And aren’t we just kind of bringing that into into our church if we do that, Well, don’t do this.I know that I.Actually need to prepare for that a little bit like an athlete.I need to give myself space in my own diary to not have a crazy day beforehand.
I know I need to make sure that I’m in the best spiritual and emotional health to go into these things.So I don’t want to be doing back to backs.I want to be taking time to pray.I want to be time to recognise actually how I’m doing, how I’m feeling.I would say want to have a clarity about what would I think is the a strong outcome from that meeting that will give me a kind of Plumb line going into into the conversation.
But the other thing that I see leaders make the mistake of a lot is.We.We say feel that we cannot handle any more stress.We often feel like we’re at the total margins of our ability to cope.
I know a lot of leaders who feel like that.And so if you have a anxious person who’s often a critical person.The temptation.Is to basically say as a leader, well, now I’m just going to stay out of their way.I’m just not going to talk to them on a Sunday.
I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that our paths don’t cross.And I’m just going to kind of speak to new people.I’m going to connect with, you know, men and women who I know actually are going to be positive and supportive in conversation.But that person, I’m just going to give them breath.
The issue is if you do that, that separation with the anxious person, so the leader in the anxious person, that separation will increase in anxiety the longer that separation goes on.And actually what you want.
To do as a leader for your own sake as well as theirs is you want.To be really.Intentional by going up to that person on a Sunday or at the meeting midweek, whatever it is, and talking to that person, not necessarily about these things.
You don’t want to be dredging that all of this stuff all the time, but just how’s your day, how’s your week been?How’s this going?How’s the family?And just keeping in a light connection going on there.Even though you’re not necessarily talking about the big stuff that you know that they’ve said to other, you know, actually just remaining connected with them lowers the anxiety, which means that when you do come to have those more significant conversations, your anxiety will be lower.
Their anxiety will be lower in any community if you leave an anxious person.To their own.Devices actually, that anxiety will grow and it will normally morph into resentment, gossip and even louder, louder criticism.
And so I would always encourage leaders to manage your own anxiety and then have a response where you just remain in in contact with that person.Don’t give them more time then then you won’t take because that’s another anxious response for a leader is just devote all of your time to that person.
That that’s a temptation that I have in pastoral leadership.I get way disproportionately involved in pastoral situations that that’s an anxious response not to do that, but I am to remain just, you know, touching distance continually.Is is that helpful?
That that is, that is.Really helpful.You know, my last question, as everyone who listens to the podcast knows, is what’s the one thing you want to say about?And in some senses, I, I feel like, yeah, that last two sentences is a great summary.So, but I I will ask, you know, what’s the one thing that pastors should know about the sin of empathy?
I think the.One thing that pastors should know is that.We have to stop.Blaming other people in our churches or organisations or variables or things going on in our circumstances for the reason that we feel stressed.
Those things are.True, and those things contribute, but the biggest single impact that we can make to all of those things is the way that we handle ourselves.And say.The one thing I would want leaders to know is stop.
Chasing.Solutions.To the fires that you see in a lot of these highly anxious circumstances that you’re in.They will always be there and actually divert that time, energy and resource to working on yourself, whether deepening your identity in in Christ yourself, whether it’s actually making sure that your rhythms are healthy in terms of flourishing in mind, body and spirit.
Whatever it is, actually stop just saying if only this would change, then I could thrive and actually recognise that God has been generous to equip us for what we need to make the tough decisions and be the courageous leaders.But actually starts it starts with us spending time deepening our relationship with him.
Well, Matt, it’s been.Really good picking up this conversation that we had in in Manchester months ago.Great to hear your reflections on this and also great to hear your passion about actually helping leaders not only in the UK, but hopefully some of our listeners as well, understand more about themselves, but also more about their responsibilities as leaders of God’s church.
I was gonna dive in the toolbox really quickly.I’ll I’ll put a link in the show notes to Manchester City church.Be great to be praying for for that city and praying that there be more churches that are planted in in Manchester.I’ll put a link in the in the show notes to, to the coaching network as well.
And I’d love Matt if possible, if I can find the link, I’d love to give it.But if I can put the, the PDF of your talk, obviously you’re going to have to have Matt’s beautiful English voices.You, you go there.But as I read it, I was like, I wanted a gruff, angry person kind of pushing me hard.
So it might be better, it might be better to get the, the original talk.And then the last, the last two resources got a great workshop that Lauren Arrington from FSI.So Family Systems Institute in, in Sydney’s done just on, on thinking about this in the context of reciprocity and responsibility as a, as a leader of God’s church.
And if you’re after a shorter one, there’s I’ll, I’ll put a link in the show notes to the episode that she did on the one thing as well.And then finally, there’s a book by Steve Cuss, Managing leadership anxiety.I think he’s an Australian, does a lot of stuff in America.But if you’re wanting to go deeper, then then jump into that book as well.
Now, now, Matt, I’d love to just pray for you, you know, and pray for, pray for your church, you know, just as we as we finish it.Oh, great.Thank you.Love that heavenly Father.Heavenly Father, we just give thanks for your love, your goodness.Thanks for this opportunity to to think into our our own response as as leaders, but also to think in the responses of the the people in our churches.
You give us a privilege of serving and loving and caring for.I want to pray particularly for Matt and Ralph and the wider team at City Church Manchester just as I go through this change process over the next 1218 months.Pray that the fruit of it might be a church more courageously taking the gospel out to the City of Manchester.
We pray that you’d be pleased to bless them with loads of people coming to you and that you continue to build your church in this city.And we pray that in the mighty name of Jesus, Amen.Well.If you’ve got a topic that you’d like us to cover up, please email us at [email protected] AU I’m Scott Sanders.
Chat soon.
