If you’ve been a leader for more than a minute, you know the pain of someone leaving. Someone uno longer able or willing to follow you. Someone in disagreement with your ideas, your practices, your decisions, your new haircut, your whatever. It stings every time—even those times when the sting of loss is mixed with a sigh of relief.

Sometimes people leave your leadership because you messed up. Own up to that. Learn from it. Process it internally; make changes externally. Move on.

But sometimes people leave precisely when you’re doing your best.

One of Jesus’ most poignant and classsic teachings in the gospel of John comes in chapter 6: After miraculously feeding thousands of people using only a little boy’s lunch, he sees a teachable moment and says, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” And what was the result? Being Jesus, we might expect that there would be thousands of converts after such a display of power and a powerful sermon. But no. Whatever credibility his food services had gained him was quickly lost as the conversation turned to cannibalism.

Sometimes we have to get out from under the shadows of our mothers and fathers in order to do what our Heavenly Father is doing.

There comes a point where what was done in the past no longer serves the present. There comes a point where must reckon with the fact that our emulation has become parody, to the loss of our true selves that God has created us to be for the sake of the world.

Our mothers and fathers were themselves for their world; we must be ourselves for our world. We cannot be them for our world. That is an impossibility because it is based in non-reality. The only reality we have in which to walk in the light of God is now. Not in the past. Not in the future. Now.

That is, in the present and tangible world. In real times and real places. In the here and now.

God is not encountered in the past, although our memories can perhaps recall where he was close to us in times and places that we did notice his presence or activity.

God is not encountered in the future, although we can anticipate his presence with us.

God is not primarily found in the interior world. If we ignore his presence to us in the outer world of creation, people, seasons, circumstances, and even our own bodies, we are in danger of missing him and also of making our own thoughts and emotions into our gods.

Are a decent sign that your ego has been oversized. Or overactive. Or in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe all of the above.

Ego, sense of self, is not evil. It’s an integral part of what it means to be human. It serves as a sort of dashboard for our life: when a warning light comes on, pay attention.

A gut punch is a sign that some humility and contentment are needed, like symptoms of a serious illness. A re-clarification of exactly who you are (and are not), of what your activity ought to be be (and ought not to be), of where your place is (and is not).

What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.

The Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 14:15)

What if we said the same thing about leadership? “I will lead with my mind, but I will lead with my spirit also.”

In my experience of church leadership, observing both my own inner dynamics and in working alongside dozens of other leaders, I have seen this tension. There is a spectrum that we all move along. Some leaders tend to stick firmly towards one end or the other. Some are chronic over-thinkers, astute and business-minded, evaluating their ministry with SWOT analyses and strategizing their next steps. Some leaders tend to over-spiritualize everything, living in the heat of the moment, moving forward with little fore-planning and calling it being Spirit-led, conflagrating their whims and moods with discernment.

And yes: by “some leaders,” I mean “me.” The struggle is real. We are complicated and nuanced creatures.

The mind and the spirit are not opposed to one another. At their best, they complement each other as each potential question or decision exists along a continuum between the two.

The trick comes in having the wisdom to know to lean more on the mind or the spirit. It is quite tempting to run to one extreme or the other. (And, quite, frankly, easier and faster). Some decisions that are very practical and logical are over-spiritualized, and others that are more mystical in nature are over-systematized or over-debated. Some things are best approached as a “spiritual” decision while others as a “thoughtful/logical” decision.

Most decisions require a delicate blend of both. Good leaders welcome this tension.

Just say it.

Say it at the right time.

Say it in the right medium.

Say it to the right people.

Say it within the right time frame. Not everything needs to be a novel. It might need to be an essay, or a blog post, or a tweet, or a bumper sticker. Know the difference.

In saying that the kingdom comes like a mustard seed, or like yeast, Jesus is gently and somewhat indirectly inviting us to rest in the act that God works even through death. Not in spite of death, but with and through death.

As Jesus himself points out elsewhere, the only way a seed can fulfill it’s purpose is by dying. By being literally buried underground, then breaking apart and decomposing into the earth. A seed’s full seed-ness is reached in it’s death.

In the same way, yeast completely disappears when it is mixed—or, perhaps better, “buried”—into the flour. Not only that, but it gives its life during the baking process. It suffers under a heat which it cannot survive, yet which also solidifies the tiny pockets of air it has created in the risen dough. Yeast’s full yeast-ness is reached in its death.

In the parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast, one not-named but ever-present element is an invisible one: Breath. That is—speaking literally in terms of the parables—carbon dioxide.

The air that we breathe out is the air that plants “breathe in.” Once the seed has begun to take root, and the first tiny little shot of green peeks through the soil, the plant begins to take in carbon dioxide. That—mixed, of course, with water, sunlight, and other nutrients from the soil—is what keeps the plant alive. Makes it grow. Enables it to eventually bear fruit.

In the baking process, the way that yeast causes the dough to rise is by producing carbon dioxide. That’s what the tiny bubbles are filled with in the early stages of activating the yeast. What the yeast “breathes out,” simply because it is alive and active, gets trapped in the gluten that was formed during the kneading. And thus the loaf lifts.

If you don’t know what the target is. 

In leadership, it’s easy to become disappointed in those lead for failing to perform well. But it’s quite possible that the leader has created the right conditions for disappointment.

Did we clearly express expectations up front? Did our people know the rubric they would be graded on? Did we involve our team in that process so that they had input and ownership and understanding? 

Is not in itself a clear indication of calling. To bake that cake you need a lot more ingredients than just heat.

Innate gifts and learned skills. Perseverance and grit. Passion and patience. Love and compassion for others. Love and compassion for yourself. Humility and experience. Trial and error. Risk and planning. People who will give you their thumbs up and lay their hands on you in blessing.

A burning heart may indicate something that excites your imagination, but that doesn’t automatically translate into reality.

Yet a burning heart is crucial, make no mistake. Without that flame, there will forever be just raw cake batter. Keep that fire burning as consistently as you can for the long haul while you stay busy with the hands-on, real-world business of turning your dreams into goals.