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

This week, I'm excited to be joining Dan to talk about the binds and complexities faced by

many pastors and Christian leaders.

As a teacher and leader myself, I've seen the effects of burnout and unhealthy expectations

in my own life and the lives of others.

Together, Dan and I will invite you to consider what it might look like to live as an honest, authentic, and human-sized leader.

Well, I have the pleasure of being with my dear friend, colleague, Rachel Clinton.

And I've introduced Rachel before when she and Kathy join me on a podcast. But today, Rachel and I are going to begin a process of engaging

how to enter the bind of ministry, how to enter the fact that we set leaders up to be perfect,

and yet there's some almost relief when they fall.

If you've not owned that, it will sound cynical and cruel, to put it that way.

But we create the necessity for our

leaders to be superheroes, and yet no one can bear that for very long. And so we put people

in the bind of expectations, and then when they fail, there's a certain relief, if not pride, that we are at some level better than they.

So the bind that we are in as leaders is one topic, but there are many of you who are not pastors, who are not in positions of overt Christian leadership. And so in part, what we're hoping to accomplish

is to also engage how to come alongside of those whom you respect and love who are in this

bind because it's just part of the hierarchical insanity that we often create in ministry settings. So that's

kind of the task. Rachel, so lovely to have you with me. Yeah, it's great to be here. So jump in.

What do you know and what have you suffered as a leader and sort of walk through your bona fide as to why I would

at least say you're a very significant leader?

Well, you know, I've found myself in leadership roles pretty much from the time I was a small

child.

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