You Can’t Lead Alone
by Jennie Allen (as told to Bronwyn Lea)
Sophia is the Greek word for Wisdom, and Propel Sophia seeks out the voices of truly wise women and asks them to share worked examples of how they express faith in daily life. Pull up a chair at Sophia’s table, won’t you? There’s plenty of space. Learn more here.
The night before meeting my publishers for the first time, I was nervous. What if they were expecting me to be something—someone—I wasn’t? I didn’t feel smart enough, important enough, ready enough (just enough, really) to meet the expectations I imagined they had. My husband sat me down and shared wisdom that has stayed with me ever since. He said: “You can go into that meeting and try and be a fancier version of yourself, or you can just go in and be exactly who you are, and trust God that if he wants to raise you up and use you - who you are - then you’ll know it was always YOU he meant to use. Not a version of yourself.”
I have come back to his advice many times as I’ve been staring down new leadership challenges, fully aware of my limitations. You’ll never stop getting to a place that is beyond your current capacity. It’s our growth cue. God is ALWAYS stretching us beyond where we’re at, and calls us as followers to keep showing up and growing, no matter how far along we are on the journey.
Good leaders are good followers
Good leaders have to remain good followers, and that starts with a realistic and sober view of who you are and what you bring to the table. We can only be *really* good leaders if we’re sober learners, knowing what we’re good at and need to grow in, and what we’re bad at and need help with. I’ve learned to see this sobriety is my friend, not a curse of insecurity. In fact, acknowledging the places I need God and places I need input has helped me fight insecurity. We all have these weaknesses, and this has made me increasingly curious about those with different strengths.
The more I read the Bible, the more I’m convinced that we shouldn’t do anything in isolation. Whether it’s solving a problem an everyday life problem, dreaming of ministry directions, or writing or creating content… I pull in helpers for EVERYTHING. I do this not only because we’re better together—pooling our strengths and helping one another in weaknesses—but because community is woven into the fabric of God himself and the people he’s called us to be. God has existed in community since before time: we see God talking to other members of the Godhead in Genesis 1. God himself creates and works in community! So it is no surprise that God commands those made in his image to create and work in community, and speaks to his people as a community throughout the pages of scripture.
Being a co-learner and a co-follower in community is not an optional suggestion: these are concrete commands. God built our brains to need feedback from other people: from infancy to our prime in adulthood - we’re designed to live and work together, listening to and learning from each other.
Leadership and community
The difficulty with leadership is that it builds a deeper world of isolation if you let it. People will put you on a pedestal if you let them. And if we want or crave or get comfortable with the kind of attention and praise that separates us from living-and-growing in community, we remove ourselves from the one thing we need to keep growing, which is the input and feedback of others. We need people to know our sin, keep us from evil, and speak truth to us so we don’t lose courage. Open any one of the books of the Bible and this pattern is clear: churches are made up of people in individual relationships, living life together. Philippians, 1 Corinthians, Colossians and more: the theme of each of these books—the way the gospel is lived out!—is centered on regular not-fancy Christians showing up and living together in relationship, humbly helping one another to grow.
Mentor for a Season
God may bring different people into our life in seasons and situations where we might need specific support or growth. There was a time when I had various mentors and leaders in my life, but I specifically needed to grow in the area of courage. I had always thought I was pretty courageous (I was doing scarier things than most of the people I knew), but when God introduced me to Christine Caine, he was leading me towards courage, which was an area I needed to grow and I needed someone who was light years ahead of me. And as I have been near to her life, my capacity for courage has expanded.
Again and again, the way God builds strength into my life is by putting me next to someone who has a strength in an area where I have a weakness, or who radically outpaces me in an area where I may not have thought I was weak, but I need to grow stronger anyway. It helps for me to name these growth needs, so I can ask questions and learn from them. When I got to sit down with Chris over dinner, I’d ask her to tell me stories about being courageous.
It doesn’t help me as a leader to try to be a more impressive version of myself. I’m sober about my shortcomings and my strengths. I’m just me. And if I start with that knowledge, I can seek out the places I need to grow and find other believers in the family of God to learn from. From beginning to end: we need each other.
Jennie Allen
Jennie Allen is an Arkansas native but Texan forever, Bible teacher, author, and the founder and visionary of IF:Gathering. A passionate leader following God’s call on her life to catalyze this generation to live what they believe, Jennie is the author of Restless, Anything, and her most recent book, Nothing to Prove. Her Bible studies include Stuck, Chase, Restless, and Proven. Jennie has a master's in biblical studies from Dallas Theological Seminary and lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband and teammate, Zac, and their four children, Conner, Kate, Caroline, and Cooper. Read more about Jennie here.
Bronwyn Lea is an author, speaker, and editorial curator for Propel Sophia.
