Must Leaders Be Lonely?
Ben Patterson
The upside of loneliness is that it puts me in touch with my own needs — my need of God, my need of love, my need of other people.
— Ben Patterson
We were gathered in my living room, and the committee meeting had just started when Cliff, one of our board members, took me aside and asked if we could talk privately. We went into my study. My desk lamp was the only light in the room, so a shadowy gloom surrounded us. As it turned out, the gloom was entirely appropriate to what Cliff had to say.
"I don't believe in mincing words," he began stiffly, "so I'll just come out with it. I'm resigning from the board, and I'm taking my family out of the church."
"Why?" I asked, stunned.
"You and I haven't agreed on much since this church began," Cliff continued. "We just keep stepping on each other's toes. I need to be where I can support the pastor and the direction of the church. And you need to have people on your team who back your leadership. This is for your good as well as mine."
That hurt. Cliff was the third layperson in the previous two weeks to resign from leadership. The first had given me the sandpaper side of his tongue on the way out. The second had been gracious. Cliff's style was all business, blunt and to the point. Despite the differences in their styles, all three gave the same reason for resigning: me.
It was my first pastorate, and it was a new church development to boot. We didn't even have a church building yet. I was green, I was scared, and I was exhausted. The fact was, we were all exhausted. It's tough work trying to jump-start a church, and the laypeople involved were just as burned out as I was. As always when a new church is getting underway, there was tension — both creative tension and some that was not so ...
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