Currents Shaping My Soul: A Once and Future Emerging Leader
What happens when you realize your emergence is behind you?
Ben Patterson
July 1, 2003
Once I was an emerging leader, I think. I was young, and I was in on the beginning of a satirical, cutting-edge magazine that got a lot of national attention. We were fresh, creative, and bold, my friends and I. Before that, within the circles I had grown up in, people often commented on the great things they believed God would do through me one day. The saying "There is no burden like a great potential" was not my experience of emerging. I liked the attention and thrived on the optimism and expectation. Though they were legion, my many faults were excused because my trajectory looked good. What could be better than to be more highly regarded for what I might be than for what I actually was? My potential trumped my actual over and over again. Emerging was a good deal. I have emerged, I think. I don't know what the cut-off age is, but it's been a while since I could meaningfully be called an emerging leader. What you see is probably all you're going to get. Unless there are some big surprises ahead, it appears I have found my level, which is pastoring college students. Bravo for God's little ironies. I now spend a lot of time with a bunch of fresh, creative, and bold emerging leaders. They are precious to me. What do I pray for them? I pray God would be gentle and show them the same mercies he has shown me. Father, do not hold against us the sins of our youth! But as I pray, I know it wasn't his gentle mercies that were the best; it was his severe mercies, the things that drove me to my knees, that made me pray. It was the six weeks unable to get up, recovering from a painful back injury, with nothing to do but pray. It was being 50 and hating my job, but having a family to raise and a mortgage to pay, and nothing left to do but ...
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