Flourishing Leaders: Caring for the People Who Lead
September 18, 2026
Hey Pastors and Ministry Leaders,
So, we’ve been talking about where we believe God is leading us as a family of churches. A few weeks ago I introduced what we are calling our Three Gears: Flourishing Leaders, Thriving Churches, and Church Planting & Missions. Last week we talked a little about cooperation and why we believe we can do more together than any of us can do alone.
This week I want to come back to the first of those Three Gears, Flourishing Leaders. There is a reason we put leaders first.
For most of my ministry, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the health of the church. Is the church making disciples? Are we reaching people? Are we developing leaders? Are we financially healthy? Are we moving forward? Those are important questions, and we should be asking them. But somewhere along the way, I think we also have to ask another question: How are the people leading the church doing?
Not just, “Are they getting the job done?” or “Is the ministry growing?” But how are they doing in their walk with Christ? How are their marriages and families? Do they have friends? Are they healthy? Are they carrying things that no one else knows they are carrying?
That’s one of the reasons we changed the name of this gear from Flourishing Pastors to Flourishing Leaders. We absolutely want to care for pastors, but we also want to care for the men and women serving alongside them. Before someone is a pastor, worship leader, children’s minister, student minister, administrator, or ministry staff member, they are a follower of Jesus. They are a husband or wife, a mom or dad, a friend, a person. And God cares about the person, not simply what that person produces.
When we talk about Flourishing Leaders, we aren’t talking about leaders who have everything together or who never struggle. Ministry is hard. There are seasons of discouragement, conflict, loneliness, exhaustion, and uncertainty. Flourishing doesn’t mean those things disappear. We are talking about leaders who are growing in Christ, nurturing healthy relationships, developing friendships and support, becoming more resilient, and increasingly leading from a place of health rather than continual depletion.
Maybe one of the most important things we can say is this:
Flourishing doesn’t mean you never struggle. It means you don’t have to struggle alone.
That care for all of our ministry leaders doesn’t diminish the unique challenges pastors and their families face. One of the things Wes Hughes and Tim Howe have been helping us think about is the isolation that can come with pastoral ministry. A pastor can spend his life surrounded by people and still have very few people with whom he can simply be himself. People who know him, pray for him, encourage him, and sometimes ask the questions no one else is asking. And that weight isn’t carried by him alone. His wife and family often experience the pressures of ministry in ways the church may never see.
That’s part of what we want Flourishing Leaders to be about. It is why we invest in things like Shepherd-to-Shepherd groups, counseling for pastors and their families, Soul Care Retreats, Oasis, and other opportunities for ministry leaders to develop meaningful relationships and receive encouragement and care.
We are also continuing to think about what else it might look like to care for leaders and their families. Our Flourishing Leaders team is working toward and developing additional opportunities like marriage retreats, parenting conferences, and financial workshops. Some of those ideas are still being developed, but I love the direction. We aren’t just asking, “How can we help you lead your church?” We are also asking, “How can we help you flourish as a follower of Jesus, in your family, and in the ministry God has called you to?”
We also recognize that NWBC staff can’t personally care for every Sunday School teacher, small group leader, greeter, children’s worker, or volunteer serving in nearly 500 churches. But we believe that when pastors and ministry staff are flourishing, they are better able to create a culture where the people they lead can flourish too. In other words, flourishing leaders help develop flourishing leaders.
All of this is really at the heart of something we have already said in our Guarantee: “We will walk with you, encouraging you and working with you to identify and take your next step for yourself, your family, and your church.”
I love the order of those words: yourself, your family, and your church. We care deeply about healthy churches, and next week we’ll talk more about that as we look at our second gear, Thriving Churches. But healthy churches and healthy leaders aren’t separate conversations. They are deeply connected.
Pastor, we care about the church God has entrusted to you, but we also care about you. And to the men and women serving alongside your pastor, we care about you too. We want to be the kind of family of churches where none of us has to do this alone.
Lisa and I count it a privilege to serve alongside you as a family of churches on mission together.
by Faith,
Lance Caddel
Executive Director/ Treasurer
Northwest Baptist Convention