hesitant leadership

Mentoring has always been a weighty concept to me; it seems and sounds so important, the practice of guiding and molding a person to help them reach their full potential. Leadership in general carries a lot of the same connotations in my mind.

So what do you do when you don’t feel/think/act or believe you could ever be a mentor or leader?

I have not had many people that I would consider a mentor in my life until quite recently, so I would never have thought that anyone would consider me a mentor or leader. In fact, my stance has always been that I just don’t want to be in charge of things; let someone else take on that pressure.  Coming to Torch Church, though, has kind of forced me to take on both of those roles.

The second Torch small group that I was part of, my leader announced on the first night that she would be needing some people to volunteer to take ownership of a few things the group would doing during our time together and people should volunteer as they felt led. This happened at the very beginning of the first meeting. And I spent the rest of the time there mentally fighting with the Holy Sprit.

It looked something like this:

“You should volunteer to be the group apprentice”
“But I don’t want to lead a small group some day”
“You should volunteer to be the group apprentice”
“But I don’t know how to lead a small group”
“You should volunteer to be the group apprentice”
“But I don’t have anything to say”
“You should volunteer to be the group apprentice”
“Nobody wants to see that happen”
“You should volunteer to be the group apprentice”
“No, seriously, I don’t want to”
“You should volunteer to be the group apprentice”
“I’m not kidding, I have no interest”
“You should volunteer to be the group apprentice”
“Just, no.”


Seriously this went on for an hour. And then before I walked out of my leader’s house, I pulled her aside and told her I wanted to volunteer to be her apprentice and lead a couple sessions of the group.

Skip to the next small group semester that summer; my new leader pulled me aside after group the second week to ask if I would be interested in being her apprentice. My first thought was, “Who put you up to this?”

These leaders apparently saw something in me, in the stories I shared and the way I interacted with the other people in my group, that told them I could be a leader.

By the next semester I was leading a group of my own. And a couple semesters later I was leading another. I’m leading my third group right now.

I had also been serving happily in LIT (Living In Truth – our children’s ministry); serving was primarily a response of gratitude for all the ways those people had shown love to my little boy and made him love going to church. So when my director called and asked if I would consider apprenticing for her so I could take the role of the campus director when our church started a second location, I was terribly confused. My first thought this time: “Are you calling the right person?”

I’m still not exactly sure what these women saw/see in me.

But here’s what I am learning.

When people you love and respect come to you in combination with nudges from the Holy Spirit, you just listen. You do everything in your power to learn and grow and prepare to be the best leader or mentor you can be. And you PRAY. You pray hard. When you feel like there is nothing useful you could possibly have to teach people, you pray that God will give you the right words. When you just don’t feel like being responsible for things, you pray and keep pushing. God puts other people in our lives sometimes to show us things about ourselves. So listen. Trust the people around you, trust that God equips the called. And believe that YOU ARE CALLED.

© 2014 Sara Rendall

Sara Rendall is a Jesus Girl and mom to the most adorable and awesome 4 year old boy; writing has always been her therapy of choice, but enjoying a good night at the theatre is a close second. When she isn’t being a mom or putting pen to paper, she prefers to be knitting or reading anything she can get her hands on and thanks God daily for the internet and all the ways it provides a constant stream of amazing reading material right to her pocket. Her current blog obsessions include Jen Hatmaker, Sarah Bessey, Glennon Melton and of course her dear friend Happy.

Sara writes sporadically about Life, As It Is… at lexicaltherapy.blogspot.com.