You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

This week, Dan is joined by Abby Wong Hefter to talk about some of the dynamics and challenges of leadership.

Whether you're pastoring a megachurch, leading an organization, or simply living with some level of influence in your family or community,

what can we learn about caring for those, including

ourselves, who live with the expectations and assumptions of others?

Every leader, every leader needs care.

It's just such an obvious, inscrutably obvious point.

And that's what we're going to be talking about over this series.

We've got two weeks where we're going to be talking about care for leaders.

And then we're going to spend two weeks. Same basic topic, but addressing the issue of the

kind of sexual entanglements that often occur for leaders. Now, before we go much further,

let me just say, Abby, Wong Hefter,

it's so good to be with you on this podcast. It's so good to be with you. And you're a leader.

Indeed, I am. And I am a leader. You are. But I think we need to underscore every person

listening to this podcast has influence in somebody's life in some form,

whether you're a coach, whether you're a teacher, whether you're just a good friend in the

neighborhood. It really, if I be very honest, I want to step back and say, this is not really about how to care

for leaders, is how to care for people who lead. And everyone in some form, some way, is leading

and influencing others. But on the other hand, people who have more formal leadership context,

that's where we're going to be spending a bit more time, particularly in our last two weeks, because if you're a leader in any formal sense,

then you're an object of projection of people's sensual and sexual, often unconscious desires, needs, fears, and past trauma.

Ain't that quite a sentence?

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