A huge focus of our ministry is on leader health. We talk about it, write about it, lead retreats about it, design programs around it, and so much more. One of the greatest challenges in emphasizing leader health is making sure we also pay attention to our own health as leaders. To lead and serve others and avoid intentional hypocrisy, the emphasis on leader health starts with us.
This initiative has been both a challenge and a gift to me personally. In some ways, I wish I focused on my health as a leader much earlier in my career. I would have saved myself and my family some pain for sure. When we discuss leader health, we focus on seven categories of leader health: spiritual health, emotional/mental health, physical health, intellectual health, vocational health, relational health, and foundational/miscellaneous health. It is a long and daunting list.
As I have worked to grow in my health in each of these categories, I have discovered that I am playing whack-a-mole. You might know the game. You have a hammer or mallet, moles pop out of holes and you try to whack as many as you can, hopefully all of them.
Do you ever feel like you can’t whack everything all at once? Just when I get one category of health in a good place, such as spiritual health, I discover another is lacking, such as my physical health. As I make improvements on my relational health, I might find my intellectual health has taken a back seat. I am playing whack-a-mole.
To be fair, it is impossible to be perfectly healthy in any one of these seven categories, let alone all of them at the same time. Perfection, while ideal, is never reality this side of heaven, and so we need to show ourselves some grace. The good news is that the more we work to find greater health in each of these categories, the more we play whack-a-mole, the better we get at it. To the best of our ability, we see and attack the moles a little more quickly and anticipate the need to stay on top of all aspects of our health as leaders.
We may never achieve the perfect score at leader health whack-a-mole, but we can continue to improve and continue to be formed more and more into the image of Christ as we serve and lead others. Playing leader health whack-a-mole may be exhausting, but it is worth it. The stakes are high, perhaps now more than ever. Our health as leaders has a tremendous impact on our effectiveness and longevity, but perhaps most importantly, it greatly impacts those we serve and lead.
Rev. Dr. Marcus J. Carlson, Executive Director, Preparing for
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