What I Wish I’d Known Before Saying “Yes” to Leadership
(This is a long post - but there was simply too much to say and cutting any of it would have seemed disloyal to my heart and journey of leadership - so, grab a beverage and read on!)
The title of this post is a little misleading. I’m not writing this as a warning against leadership, and certainly not as a cautionary tale meant to scare people away, especially from church leadership. I know some might expect that, given the very real abuses and failures in churches that have come to light in recent years. I understand that impulse. But that’s not what this is.
What I’m writing about is the gap, the space between what we imagine leadership will be like and the things no one prepares us to face once we’re actually in it. Those quiet internal shifts, the relational changes, and the spiritual tensions that don’t make it into leadership trainings or conversations about calling.
I have been in leadership before I even knew what leadership was. In my freshman year of high school, several teachers asked that I be placed into a leadership cohort the following year. It was an unexpected invitation, mainly because at my core, I was (and still am) an introvert. Every time I stepped into an “out front” role, I was operating in full fake it till you make it mode. My parents tried valiantly to make me less introverted; leadership simply required me to learn how to function anyway. This is probably a shocking revelation to some of you who know me.
During those early years, people kept saying the same thing: You set the temperature in the room. That always stunned me. I didn’t feel powerful or directive. What I did know, even then, was that I could read a room almost instantly: the mood, the friction, the unspoken dynamics. I still can. I didn’t yet understand that this awareness would become both a gift and a burden. It’s worth noting that this is part of who I am, not simply what makes me a leader. I would carry this sensitivity whether I ever held a leadership title.
Leadership roles followed me long before they were official. I don’t wish I had avoided them. What I wish is that someone had told younger Stacy what she would need to navigate internally, externally, emotionally, and spiritually, not to talk her out of leadership, but to help her enter it with eyes open and boundaries already forming.
This post leans toward church and ministry leadership because that’s where much of my story lives, but these lessons were shaped just as much in secular spaces. I have never said yes to leadership because I wanted power. Truly, attention is the last thing I want. I said yes because I loved God, loved people, believed in the mission, and believed that faithfulness meant availability, both inside and outside the church.
I said yes because someone asked.
Because the need was real.
Because I could help.
What I didn’t know then, what I wish I had known, is that saying yes to leadership doesn’t just shape what you do. It slowly shapes how you see yourself, how you relate to God, how you relate to others, how others relate to you, and how you understand responsibility, rest, and worth.
This is not a regretful post. It’s a naming post. One meant for the person standing on the edge of a yes, and for those already in leadership who need language for what they’re carrying. It’s about staying reflective, about learning how to be a servant leader without losing your humanity. Serving others requires learning how to serve yourself: through rest, growth, identity, and remembering where your worth actually comes from.
Saying Yes (Purpose & Price)
Saying yes to leadership rarely feels easy. Most of the time, I’ve felt underqualified, uncertain, and acutely aware of everything I didn’t know. And yet, looking back, I can say this with confidence: I was always equipped enough to begin. Not to master it—but to take the next faithful step. That is still something I tell myself often: just take the next right step.
For over 57 years, I’ve led in many arenas: both vocational and volunteer. It began in childhood family businesses, moved through managing retail stores, directing the infant wing at the church, leading high school small groups, becoming a subject matter expert in the Asia-Pacific region for pharmaceutical trials, supporting FDA approval committees, and eventually returning again and again to ministry leadership in the church.
These roles look wildly different on paper, but they required the same posture: presence, responsibility, and a willingness to learn as I went. Especially in vocational ministry, my ‘yes’ was rooted in a deep internal nudge: a sense that God was inviting me forward. I’ve always had a bent toward words, toward helping people make meaning. Once aligned with a mission, I can champion it with everything I have, even when the room is uncertain.
There’s a moment that happens in any direction shift (some use the word ‘calling’): a sort of reckoning place. After the pros and cons, the fear and doubt, the prayer and counsel, you meet the reality that God knows you better than anyone else. The voice that leads you isn’t frantic or coercive; it’s steady. You say yes, and even without clarity about what’s coming, there’s a deep knowing: This is right for this season.
Some of my clearest yeses came during the most fragile seasons of my life. When I stepped onto staff at New Life, logic and circumstances said I should have run. The church had been through a painful split. Our family was navigating unspeakable grief, new life, terminal illness, and devastating loss all tangled together. I should have been empty. Instead, I was held. Supported. Encouraged by leaders who trusted me as we let go of old patterns and dared to imagine something new.
I thought I was saying yes to a role I was already doing. God, apparently, had bigger plans.
There has been absolute goodness in the places I’ve led. Even when endings were painful or imperfect, there was growth and fruit. Naming the goodness matters; it protects our hearts and our stories from cynicism and reminds us that calling and cost can coexist.
Here is what I know for myself:
I didn’t say yes because I felt confident.
I didn’t say yes because I wanted to be known.
I didn’t say yes because I had a long-term vision.
God’s holiness showed up not in perfect outcomes, but in real formation. God met me in grief and still invited me to lead without rushing me out of my humanity. He formed me into someone who listens deeply, discerns wisely, and advocates courageously (stubbornly at times). He stayed present while I questioned, untangled, and rebuilt, knowing I would one day serve people standing in the same spaces. I learned to ‘burn the ships’: to release fear-based tradition in order to make room for life, growth, and those who had been overlooked.
Seasons of leadership have become a place where God met me: sometimes gently, sometimes persistently (like a dog with a bone!), but always honestly.
What No One Said Out Loud
No one told me that leadership would quietly change how people relate to you. Not all at once, and not always dramatically, but subtly, over time. Some people draw closer in sincerity. Others hold back. A few relate more to the role and what proximity might offer than to the person holding it.
No one warned me how easily being needed could replace being known. When people depend on you, it can feel meaningful, until you realize how little space there is for your own needs, doubts, or exhaustion. Appreciation begins to stand in for intimacy. Responsibility pushes out vulnerability.
Faithfulness, too, can slowly turn into over-commitment and over-functioning. What starts as willingness becomes expectation, often internal before it’s external. You step in because you can, because you care, because it matters. Over time, it becomes harder to tell where obedience ends and compulsion begins, sometimes fueled by pride or fear. Resentment slips in quietly.
And rest? Rest becomes conditional…something you earn after the work is done. Except that the work is never done. Leadership rarely breaks us through dramatic collapse. It wears us down through small, unchallenged assumptions.
The cost of leadership is rarely upfront and obvious. It picks up momentum quietly.
Emotionally, you carry more than you expect: people’s pain, expectations, disappointments, and unspoken needs, often without a place to set them down.
Spiritually, leadership can blur the line between intimacy with God and responsibility for God’s people. Prayer becomes preparation. Scripture becomes material. It takes intention to remember that God is not your employer.
Relationally, dynamics shift. Some relationships deepen. Others become complicated. You may find yourself navigating admiration, projection, distance, or quiet resentment without a clear explanation. (this has been one of the hardest places for me to navigate)
Most of this happens gradually. It’s erosion, not explosion, and by the time you notice, you’re tired in ways sleep doesn’t fix.
What I’d Tell My Younger Self
Dear Stacy,
You’re about to step into some wild opportunities of leadership and servanthood. Many of them will feel like places you don’t belong, but you do. You were made for these spaces, as long as you keep asking God to lead and asking yourself hard questions.
Remember, you are not God. Yes, you have a strong sense of what’s unspoken and broken, but it is not your job to fix everyone. You are not responsible for holding everything together. That was never your assignment.
You don’t have to earn belonging. You are cut from leadership DNA, but even when you are not leading, you still belong. You are still loved. Belonging does not need to be justified by usefulness. Don’t get small.
Remember that leadership is seasonal, not an identity. Stepping back is not failure. Laying something down can be just as holy as picking it up. Sometimes faithfulness looks like a pause.
Find your people. You will want to carry everyone and be close to all of them. That is not possible or wise. Your circle will form through loss, betrayal, and grace, and it will be better than you imagine. Guard your heart as fiercely as you guard those you love. Cynicism will tempt you. Fight it. Run to God every time it peeks around the corner at you.
Most of all, remember who you are: a beloved image bearer of God: redeemed, accepted, and held by grace, not by position.
Hold on to your hat. You’re in for a wild, beautiful journey.
Love,
Older You
If you’re standing on the edge of a yes, I pray you step forward with clarity: not fear, not fantasy, but courage grounded in truth.
If you’re already in it and tired, I pray you remember that rest is not a reward; it’s a requirement.
If you’re learning to lead without losing yourself, I pray you find companions who see you, not just your capacity.
Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash
