The two fears

If you’ve felt the pull to stay in a group longer than you should, under all the good reasons there are usually just two fears. Most leaders can name the first one easily. The second one takes longer to admit, even to yourself.

Fear one: they’ll get it wrong

This is the fear you can say out loud in a room full of other leaders and nobody will think less of you for it. What if, once I’m not there, someone teaches something false and nobody catches it? It’s a fair question — Paul himself warned that wolves would come after he left (Acts 20:29–31) — and it deserves an honest answer, not a dismissal.

The honest answer is that your presence was never the real protection. The protection is built into the process itself: the Bible stays at the center with nothing added to it, the guardrail question — “Where do you see that in the passage?” — belongs to every member, not just to you, the group has to obey what it reads and report back, which leaves little room for speculation to grow unchecked, and the Spirit teaches ordinary believers, not only trained ones. Four safeguards, built into every group, scaling as fast as the groups multiply — which a leader standing watch over one room never can.

Fear two: I’ll stop mattering

Here’s the one I’ve had to confess more than once. Under the worry about error is a quieter worry: if they don’t need me anymore, what am I for? I used to think staying close to a group was humility. Some of it was. But some of it, if I’m honest, was that being needed had become how I measured whether I mattered at all.

There is no technique that fixes that fear, because it isn’t a technique problem. It’s a heart posture — the same release mentality that sits alongside obedience and prayer and humility as something the Spirit forms in a person, not something a method installs. The only real answer to it is repentance: naming to God that I built some of my sense of worth on being necessary, and letting him replace it with his own scorecard instead of mine.

Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will lift you up. — James 4:10 (OTB)

Jesus never counted the size of the crowd that stayed close to him. He measured multiplying obedient disciples, not gathered audiences. That is the only scorecard worth wanting to matter on.

Recite this

One fear is answered by a question. The other is answered by repentance.

Try it this week

Name which of the two fears is louder in you right now, and say it out loud to one person you trust — not to fix it today, just to stop carrying it alone.

I will tell ________________ which fear I’m actually afraid of, on ________________.