There is a dark and uncomfortable reality to leadership that never makes it into the glossy brochure. It's a reality that every leader experiences; it's hidden deep down in places leaders don't like to talk about at parties. That reality is this: leadership can be excruciatingly lonely.
The ministry I lead is in the midst of challenges. Energy is lagging. The group is tired. Attendance has gotten lax. Pressure is mounting. Momentum is a fondly remembered feeling of the past. And everyone is looking to me to re-energize the team, encourage attendance and commitment, and alleviate all the pressure. And the reality is, that place is a very lonely and challenging place to be.
Loneliness, whether real or imagined, can be discouraging, alientating and destructive to any ministry, but it's up to you (as the leader) to determine how to handle it. Leadership (in any capacity) is great when everything is going well, but it gets lonely blindingly fast when challenges are introduced. (For those of you who have ever led anything in your life, you know that challenges are introduced after about .018 seconds, and so you know that loneliness can set in pretty quickly.) You try to give it your best effort, to lead during the good times and during the challenging ones, but you know that you're only human and there's only so much you can do. Your group members seem to expect that you have unlimited energy, unlimited resources, and unlimited ideas.
So you're left with a choice: Keep up the charade or admit that you're a broken, limited human. (And believe me, I didn't like the choices much either, even while I typed those words.) But either way, the decision is entirely yours (and mine, as the case may be), and that's a very lonely place to live.
James put it this way: Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Wow. This is definitely one of those verses that's a lot easier to read than to apply. But sometimes, when you find yourself in the depths of loneliness, all you can do is trust God to apply it for you.
The flip side of this is in examining our own relationships with those who are leading us. We begin to see how easy it is to expect our own leaders to know when we're struggling and when we need help. Those that are leading us, though, are often stretched themselves... and can only do so much. We expect our leaders to have the answers, and we feel a deeper sense of loneliness when they don't. We feel lonely when they issue challenge instead of encouragement. We feel lonely because we're doing to them to very thing that others are doing to us. We expect our leaders to have all the answers the same way that those we're leading expect that we can solve every problem.
Being a leader is hard. A lot harder... and sometimes a lot more... than we thought we signed up for. And it can be lonely. Excruciatingly, devastatingly lonely. We think that people are going to line up and applaud us, but more often than not, they're lined up with more problems, more complaints, and more needs. But even with these challenges, leadership (in any capacity) is a deep and holy calling. So stay the course. Finish the race. Consider it pure joy.
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