Growth is exciting. At CLDI, we have watched God expand the places, programs, partnerships, and opportunities through which we serve our community. More people are being reached. More needs are being met. More lives are being invited into transformation.
Growth always brings a question we cannot afford to ignore: Are we growing deep enough to sustain what is growing around us?
The reality is that external growth will eventually expose internal limits. More properties mean more to steward. More programs mean more complexity. More people means more relationships, decisions, communication, and leadership. As an organization grows, the leadership capacity required to steward that growth grows with it.
Systems, structure, strategies and how to manage them all need to grow with the organization. But it doesn’t stop there. Our own capacities and roots need to grow. If CLDI is going to continue the work of transformation in the lives of the people we serve, we must be willing to experience transformation in our own lives as well. We must become healthy leaders.
We Can’t Give What We Haven’t Received
Ministry is deeply personal work. We aren’t simply managing programs or operating buildings. We are walking alongside people who are often navigating brokenness, hardship, addiction, poverty, trauma, isolation, and profound questions about their future. That kind of work requires endurance and perseverance. It also requires healthy people.
We can teach what we know. We can organize what needs to be organized. We can lead teams and develop programs. But ultimately, we cannot consistently give what we have not received ourselves. If we want to cultivate hope, we need to be people who are rooted in hope. To extend grace, we need to be people who have learned to receive grace.
Ultimately, to create healthy environments for transformation, we need to be willing to let God transform us. That is why investing in our team is not separate from CLDI’s mission. It is part of the mission.
The Roots Have to Grow With the Tree
Jeremiah gives us a beautiful picture of what it looks like to remain healthy in difficult conditions:
“They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water.” — Jeremiah 17:8
The remarkable thing about this picture is that the tree isn’t promised a life without heat or drought. The heat still comes. The drought still comes. What makes the difference is what is happening beneath the surface.
The roots are deep and they are planted specifically near “living water.” That is the kind of health we want to cultivate within our team. We can’t just plan to build an organization that can only thrive when circumstances are easy, staffing is plentiful, decisions are simple, and everyone has plenty of margin. Ministry doesn’t work that way. Life doesn’t work that way.
We want to become people who are increasingly rooted, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and physically. We want those roots to reach deep into our source of life. It’s not just a good idea, it’s God’s idea. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. We recognize we need to allow the Holy Spirit to develop the capacity to meet them and walk actively in faith to be transformed.
An important leadership principle we often learn in growth is that our leadership capacity will eventually become the ceiling for the growth we are trying to steward. The more God entrusts to us, the more intentional we have to become about who we are becoming.
Creating Space to Grow
This year, CLDI has been intentional about creating and expanding that space for our team. Our team has participated in DISC assessments, giving us greater insight into how we naturally communicate, make decisions, respond to conflict, and work with one another. We’ve also gathered for a staff retreat, creating space to step away from the daily demands of ministry and invest in our relationships, our culture, and our shared vision. And we’re taking another important step: bringing in a leadership coach to help our team practically identify areas of personal growth and then walk those areas out over the coming year through accountability and mentorship.
This isn’t about finding everything that’s wrong with us. It’s about asking a better question: Who do we need to become to faithfully steward what God is asking us to carry? That requires humility and self-awareness. We have to have a willingness to receive feedback, confront blind spots, develop new skills, and sometimes allow God to work in places we’ve been too busy to notice. It also requires committed, consistent time. Healthy leaders are not created overnight.
Transformation Takes Root Before It Bears Fruit
We often celebrate the fruit of ministry and we should. We celebrate a person finding stability or when a family is reconciled. We get excited about Genesis Process graduates and Youth Works kids attending camp. We love building and renovating beautiful buildings that tangibly create the space for internal restoration. These properties are more than buildings, they are a place of belonging and new beginnings. But fruit is the visible result of something happening beneath the surface. Roots take time and intention. The same is true of healthy leadership. The conversations we have today may shape how we lead five years from now. The blind spots we identify today may prevent future conflict. The habits we develop today may give us greater capacity when the organization becomes more complex.
We are investing in the unseen because we know the unseen eventually becomes visible. This isn’t just “investing in employees” to us. It’s an investment into the people CLDI serves. It’s an investment in the health of our culture. It’s actively stewarding the resources entrusted to us. And it is an investment in the long-term sustainability of the mission.
What About You?
There is a leadership lesson here for all of us, whether or not we work in ministry. Growth in your responsibilities doesn’t automatically mean growth in your capacity. A promotion doesn’t automatically make you a better leader and a bigger team doesn’t automatically make you better at relationships. I think we’d all agree that more influence doesn’t automatically mean more wisdom. Sometimes the greatest threat to our next season isn’t that we aren’t capable of doing more. It’s that we haven’t yet become the person who can sustainably carry more.
So maybe you can ask some of these deeper questions alongside of our team at CLDI: Where am I being invited to grow?
Here are some areas God is often after: emotional maturity, communication, learning to receive feedback, boundaries, conflict, delegation, spiritual disciplines or simply slowing down long enough to allow God to show you what is happening beneath the surface.
You don’t have to wait until something breaks to begin growing. Healthy growth can happen when we choose to develop before we’re forced to.
Growing Deep for the Long Haul
At CLDI, we know the work ahead will require endurance. We don’t want to simply grow bigger. We want to grow healthier. We want to build an organization whose roots can support the weight of its fruit. We want our team to be continually transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit so that the transformation we hope to see in the lives of others is flowing from a people who are being transformed themselves.
We can’t operate in a way that simply allows us to survive the next season of growth. We are called into a life of being firmly planted enough to flourish in it. When our roots go deep, we can withstand the heat, endure the drought, remain green, and, by God’s grace, keep producing fruit. Not by might, not by power, but by His Spirit.
