The Five-Day Leader

Chapter 1: Overwhelmed and Underresourced

In the airplane seats beside and behind me were the ten players of Palm Beach Atlantic University’s (PBAU) basketball team. These young men ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-one, not that much older than my own children, and I felt immense responsibility for each one of them.

As the flight attendant began the preflight safety briefing in Spanish, I did one last count to make sure everyone had made it onto the plane. Most of them were already asleep, and I planned on joining them shortly.

Every other year, we took our college team on an international trip. This particular year, we’d gone to Bolivia, a landlocked country between Brazil and Chile. We’d been in the capital city of La Paz for a week, practicing and playing against Bolivian university teams. The trip was also a service opportunity, so we’d worked with Centro de Vida, a boy’s orphanage. We ate there, slept there, and whenever we weren’t playing basketball, served the boys of the orphanage by playing games, completing repairs at the facility, and going into the city at night to bring food, blankets, and socks to children living on the streets. In fact, we’d ministered in the city straight through our final night, ensuring we’d sleep through the nonstop, ten-hour flight back to Miami.

Suddenly, I was woken by a rough landing. I was confused, certain the flight had passed too quickly. Checking my watch, I saw that we’d only left La Paz a few hours before. Something was not right. When I opened the window shade and saw we were approaching an unfamiliar terminal, my heart started to race, and I wondered if we’d gotten on the wrong plane. As we pulled into a gate, I received some startling news—we were in Brazil, not Miami!

I was nearly in panic mode as we exited the plane into a country that I knew very little about. I was a basketball coach, not a seasoned traveler. I knew how to create game plans and motivate twenty-year-olds, not how to navigate customs and international travel.

I needed information. Hoping my four years of high school Spanish would be enough, I approached the gate agent. First, I tried English. No response. I tried Spanish next. No response. Then I remembered Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking nation, and I didn’t know a word of Portuguese.

Stuck in a foreign country, unable to communicate, without proper visas for Brazil—and I was supposed to be in charge. I was as frightened as I’d ever been. My players were looking to me for answers, and I had none to give them. Looking back, I’ve come to realize I was overwhelmed and underresourced!

I didn’t lack motivation—my entire heart was to protect my team and to provide for their needs, immediate and long term—but I lacked the skills, tools, information, and resources I needed. I didn’t speak Portuguese. I was in a chaotic airport with no sense of direction, and I had no idea where to go for information (this was long before iPhones and Google). I lacked any understanding of why we had landed there, let alone of international travel laws and customs. I didn’t have any Brazilian money, only US dollars and a few bolivianos we’d kept as souvenirs. It was a horrible feeling, bearing that much responsibility to my boys and their parents but feeling completely overwhelmed and underresourced. All I could do was pray in the middle of that crowded terminal.

I eventually found an airline agent who provided me with the clarity I needed—in English! Our plane had simply been diverted because of Hurricane Charley’s arrival in south Florida. We would need to spend several hours in the airport, but she directed us to a place where we could buy some meals and relax until the flight was able to continue safely to Miami. When you travel with college athletes, you must feed them every couple of hours!

Have you ever felt overwhelmed and underresourced as a ministry leader? You want to lead well, but you just don’t feel completely up to the task. Consider these statistics:

· Only one out of ten pastors will stay in vocational ministry until retirement.¹

· Every month in the US alone, 1,700 people leave vocational ministry.²

· Within the next five years, 45 percent of nonprofit employees plan to find a job outside the nonprofit sector.³

The statistics themselves don’t tell the whole story. God calls many pastors and ministers out of vocational ministry to build his kingdom in other ways, myself included. But I’ve spent years working with churches and nonprofit organizations, and I’ve known many leaders on the verge of quitting because they were exhausted and lacked the resources, internal and external, they needed. I know from experience that ministry leaders frequently find themselves in uncharted or unfamiliar territories just like I did in that Brazilian airport. They want to lead and love those they’re called to serve. They have a heart to protect them and provide for them. But the challenges of leadership keep coming—limited resources, increasing demands, and social changes that complicate ministry.

If that’s you, my heart aches for you. You don’t just need a leadership pep talk. I’ve given more than my share of pep talks, but motivational speeches alone never won a game, regardless of what Hollywood tells you. The reason my players were successful is our pep talks flowed from a well-defined development program. To stay in the game, ministry leaders need more than inspiring quotes—they need new skills and refined leadership strategies.

If you’re a ministry leader who wants to love and serve your people, to protect and provide for them, and to build the kingdom of God together with your team, The Five-Day Leader will be your insanely practical guide to relentless growth, ridiculous routines, and resilient relationships.