Hi, my name is Pete Scuzero. I want to welcome you today to the emotionally healthy leader

podcast. Great to be with you. Our topic today is discerning God's presence and apparent failure.

Discerning God's presence and apparent failure. We're living in a very unique season with so much of life

and leadership and church and work as we know it, having experienced such an upheaval in the midst

of this global pandemic. So many leaders I speak with and talk with feel like failures, like we're moving backwards and are out

there trying very much to hold things together. Now, so many trends that were already present have

accelerated, that makes us quite dizzying. It can be everything from things moving online to hybrid

workplaces to, again, social media zoom uh in fact

many churches uh are down in attendance uh by 30 percent 40 percent some 50 percent or more uh and not just

here in north america but other places around the world people have moved away some have simply

disappeared others have moved to other churches.

Some have stopped going altogether, and people are out of their rhythms. And for smaller churches

or church plants, this is particularly disorienting. And one worries about the future. As one

pastor said to me recently, he goes, I feel like I have a whole different church. They were about

25, 300 people. And he goes, we've lost about half of them, and at least, and maybe another 50 new ones

have showed up. But he was just so discouraged because, as he said, it's hard to build up energy

to build all over again. And another, again, pastor leaderleader said to me, it's just, it's so difficult.

You know, we don't touch in church any longer.

People are wearing masks.

I might as well just go back online because the services don't have the same level of warmth

that they used to, at least at this point.

And it's just, it's a, it's a,

...