The whole of what I do now was made out of the worst year of my leadership.

In 2018 I laid out a ten-year vision for the church I was leading. Two months later we had to remove a staff member who was also a close friend, and that decision split the church.

Then COVID came. I tried to fix it every way I knew: more vision, more preaching, relationally, pastorally. None of it stopped the bleeding. What kept me in the game was a handful of people who saw me where I was and wouldn't let me keep going alone. That's the whole of what I do now, made into a practice.

Teleos is an old word for completion, a person made whole, at home in what they were made for. It's the name because it's the point. Not a stronger leader. A leader who no longer has to hold it all to be trusted with it.