Tools for Healthy First Steps: Part One Getting Perspective

This is the first in a four-part seeries on helping young leaders get through the first year of ministry and helping them take the healthiest steps.

I learned from my long-time friend & Lp Board Member, Bart Rendel of Intentional Churches, that the best planning is done when in perspective. We must have a firm understanding of where we’ve been to determine where we want to go next. What’s true for organizations is also true for individuals, and Perspective is especially true for young leaders.

At the one-year mark, we got on-site with a resident and help them do a day of strategic planning. We help them identify gaps, determine what they need to do to close them, and discover their best next steps so that they can end their two-year residency highly desired and hirable.

We begin by getting perspective. In next week’s post we’ll share the actual diagnostic tool that helps them focus on the previous year, but for this post let’s drill down on why perspective is important for a young team member (in this case a resident).

Nothing is quite as dangerous as an incomplete read on a situation. We must ask ourselves why do so many young leaders quit too soon?

One theory might be that young leaders begin with such fury and “everything is new and great” for a season (the mountain point A on the drawing to the right) but then something goes wrong. The new is worn off, perhaps the first taste of failure occurs, but definitely, the honeymoon is over (point B) or perhaps the grind has set in (C).

Waking up on a random Thursday in any of these scenarios and making a life-altering decision could lead to a misstep. Helping a leader get perspective allows them to see that there will be highs, lows, dips, valleys, and grinds in life, but there is an equilibrium (the dotted line-- X) that can be lived in to. Expectations are set here.

This is why we coach for so much emphasis in the first 90 days and the inevitable awakening that not every day, week, or month is going to be a euphoric high. Ministry may be a vocation, a calling, or a positional job…we could debate that.

One thing we can all agree on is that ministry is a.) not easy, and b.) when it’s your first “adulting job” it can be blindingly difficult to get perspective. Young leaders are awakening every day that first year wondering if it’s always going to “feel like this” or not. Giving them tools and enough space to get above the daily work and get perspective will be critical.

Have you checked out the podcast?

The First Collection contains seven episodes, seven minutes in length, no guests, no hype-music.