Tending the leadership garden

In 2024, we moved into a 30-year-old two-story home with a beautiful garden in a suburb of Sendai. Last winter, we contacted a landscape gardener for advice. Our front porch steps were cracked and a few trees were dying. He gathered all the broken pieces of tile, dismantled the steps, and rebuilt them several times until he was satisfied. His craftsmanship was stunning. He restored them to their original appearance without a visible trace of repair work.

Then the trees. We asked the gardener if we should uproot them. “No, those trees have been growing for a long time. Let’s try and save them! We will dig underneath, add compost, and seal the holes in the trunks to prevent disease.” Last spring, the garden burst forth with verdant growth. The gardener’s labor brought transformational change.

There is a leadership garden as well. Just as a neglected garden can be restored through intentional care, leaders and ministries flourish when we cultivate conditions that promote healthy growth.

This garden consists of a gardener (missionary/pastor/leader), soil (relational context), and vegetation (those we influence). God invites us to go deep with him and cultivate relationships. A strategic outcome is the multiplication of new gardens.

In my 42 years of ministry, I have found seven organic nutrients that can help the gardener and the garden thrive. They are space and time, empathy, resilience, trust, discernment, asking and listening, and encouragement. I will examine the first three in this article (and the remaining four in an article in the next issue).

Space and time

Psalm 18:19: “He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me” (ESV).

Space is a place to belong, where we can embrace our true selves. Building blocks for space include boundaries, identity, and margin. It is about room in our hearts for God and others. It should be safe and secure. For David, it was a place of victory—not cornered in but enjoying the open spaces of God’s care. Space is where we find that God delights in us.

Space is paired with the nutrient of time. We need time to cease work; we need time to rest, worship, play/create, and fellowship. Do your resources outpace the demands on your life? If so, you have margin. If not, stress builds over time and can lead to burnout or depression. Stress and burnout often occur when time and space are compromised. You can increase your resources and reduce your demands. Giving away ministry to others also leads to margin.

Empathy

Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus (John 11:35). In doing so, he powerfully demonstrated empathy. Empathy is a set of three interpersonal and emotional skills:

• Mirroring: accurately catching the emotion of the person in front of you
• Mentalizing: answering the why question, which comes from relying on our own experience and memory
• Caring: being effectively kind¹

Empathy can revitalize another person when present and crush them when absent. We were involved in church renewal for nine years in Fukushima. At our farewell luncheon, I was shocked when a deacon said, “Every Sunday you asked me, ‘How are you?’ You listened as I reviewed my week. I truly felt cared for!”

Resilience

Jude 24: “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.”

The recovery process from extreme dehydration (during a marathon), burnout, compassion fatigue, vertigo, falling during runs, prostate cancer, and a heart attack all taught me about resilience! I learned so much from resilient pastors in Kobe, Tohoku, Nepal, and Kumamoto through post-disaster interviews: “They processed their experience redemptively, developed life-giving practices, and adapted well to their new environment.”² Who is a resilient person? It is someone who has the emotional and spiritual resources to find a new equilibrium when life and ministry get out of balance.³

As our gardener refused to give up on our cracked porch and the trees that seemed to be dying, God does not abandon leaders or ministries that have become weary. Through intentional cultivation, neglected gardens can flourish again. As you reflect on your own leadership garden, which areas are flourishing and which require attention? JH