Formed to Lead: Spiritual Formation and Leadership Now

Blog by the Unhurried Living Team

Spiritual formation and leadership are not two separate tracks — they are one. When Alan Fadling, co-founder of Unhurried Living, sat down with Jason Jensen, vice president of spiritual foundations for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA and author of Formed to Lead, the conversation turned quickly to a question many leaders carry quietly: what happens to your soul when leadership and formation get pulled apart? The way we lead is always an expression of who we are becoming, and a life rooted in communion with God produces a fundamentally different kind of leadership than one driven by pressure, anxiety, or control.

What Do We Lose When Formation and Leadership Get Separated?

Jason Jensen has spent nearly four decades walking alongside leaders, beginning as a campus missionary at UC Berkeley and growing into his current role guiding the spiritual foundations of one of the largest Christian collegiate ministries in the United States. His book, Formed to Lead, emerges from that lifetime of watching what happens when leaders try to outpace their own formation. His answer to what we lose when the two get separated is blunt: everything.

Leadership, as Jason frames it, is not limited to executives or people with large platforms. It belongs to anyone called by God to make culture and have influence in the world. And if that is what leadership is, then who you are becoming matters more than any strategy you adopt. God does not call people and then simply use them up. The calling and the forming happen in the same process, and when they fracture, something begins to go wrong beneath the surface long before it shows up in behavior.

The Gospel of Luke, Jason suggests, makes this contrast visible early and deliberately. In the opening chapters, the Evangelist lists the powerful: two Caesars, Pontius Pilate, Herod, prefects, and tetrarchs. Then he sets them beside Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah, Anna, and Simeon — people of obscurity, responsiveness, and prayer. The contrast is not accidental. The powerful rulers turn out to be footnotes in God's unfolding story, while the humble and attentive become central to the most revolutionary thing God has ever done in the world.

Spend a few minutes today sitting with that reversal. Ask yourself honestly: which group am I more drawn to resemble in how I lead?

If you want to go deeper into the integration of soul and leadership, the resources at Unhurried Living are a good place to start here.

How Does the Wilderness Actually Form a Leader?

The story Luke tells does not move from baptism to fruitful ministry. It moves from baptism to wilderness — and Jason Jensen believes Luke is being entirely intentional. Immediately after Jesus is anointed as Messiah at his baptism and hears the Father's voice of delight, the Spirit leads him not into influence but into forty days of fasting, temptation, and isolation in the desert.

This is not a detour. It is the path.

Jason describes the wilderness as functioning in two ways for leaders. The first is suffering: the hard seasons of isolation, grief, and loss that come not because something has gone wrong but because God uses precisely those places to shape what cannot be formed any other way. The second is temptation: the testing of the identity that God has spoken over us. The enemy pushes on the same places the Father has just named as beloved. And in that moment, what holds us is not technique — it is the word, the community, and the disciplines we have practiced before we needed them.

Jason notes that Jesus enters the wilderness not only fasting but meditating on Deuteronomy 6 through 8, the word God had spoken to Israel about faithfulness in their own wilderness. He comes to the moment of temptation having already been formed by the text. That is a pattern worth taking seriously. Fasting and meditation on Scripture are not popular leadership disciplines, but perhaps they should be.

This week, consider returning to a passage of Scripture not for sermon prep or study but simply to sit with it. Let it form you before it has to defend you.

Do you feel the weight of a season that isn't resolving the way you expected? The spiritual directors and coaches at Unhurried Living hold space for exactly that; connect here to find someone to walk alongside you.

What Does It Actually Mean to Lead with Discernment?

Most leaders, Alan Fadling observes, come to their work with a "what" question first: What do we need to do? How do we do it? Who does it with us? Discernment is the step before that question — and it is the one leaders most often rush past.

Jason Jensen describes discernment not as a technique for extracting God's full map for your life in one sitting of listening prayer but as a matter of orientation. He draws on the Camino de Santiago, the 450-mile pilgrimage he and his wife walked across Spain. The first question each morning on the Camino is not "how far will I get today?" It is simply: am I facing in the right direction? Toward Santiago de Compostela, the pilgrimage's destination. If you are facing the right direction and walking, you will begin to see the yellow arrows and shell markers along the path. But if your fundamental orientation is off, those markers will be behind you on the other side of the fence.

For Jason, facing the right direction as a leader means asking a handful of prior questions: Am I repenting and turning from idolatry? Am I submitting to the leadership of Jesus? Am I telling the truth with a community of friends? Am I seeking the Lord's will in the broad shape of my life today? If the answer to those is yes, the Spirit's specific leading tends to become recognizable over time, through patterns and glimmers of grace that accumulate day by day.

Alan adds a complementary image: Jesus offers himself not as a map to pocket and execute but as a guide who holds the map and walks with us. The relationship is what makes the discernment possible.

To grow in this kind of attentiveness, try ending one day this week with three questions from the Ignatian Examen as Jason describes it: Where did I notice grace today? Where did I miss it? What do I most want?

Hurried Leadership vs. Formed Leadership: What's the Difference?

There Is a Place for the Quietly Exhausted Leader

The leaders who find their way to this conversation are rarely in crisis. They are more often the ones who have been faithful for a long time and have begun to notice something quietly diminishing inside. Jason Jensen describes recognizing in 2023 and 2024 a slow erosion of emotional energy. He was not depressed. He was not in obvious desolation. He was simply losing reservoir faster than it was being replenished. It was only in honest conversation with prayerful friends and accountability partners that he began to name it: some trauma in his leadership history had not been fully healed. He had done enough to move forward and be helpful, but not enough to be well.

He eventually took a sabbatical. He found a therapist. He received healing prayer. And his conclusion is not shame but freedom: it is not shameful to recognize brokenness. The leaders who last a lifetime and continue to love and influence well are not the ones with the sharpest techniques. They are the ones who have learned to bear pain faithfully and stay in the game.

This is also, Jason and Alan agree, where spiritual authority actually lives. Not in charisma or the ability to speak compellingly, but in the quiet accumulation of righteousness and humility under suffering. The saints who have lived faithfully through hard things have more to offer in the end than those who have simply learned to talk well.

If this resonates with you, you are not alone in it. The Unhurried Living community exists for exactly this kind of leader.

The Formation That Carries You to the End

Spiritual formation and leadership are not competing demands on a leader's limited time. They are the same work. Jason Jensen's hope for every reader of Formed to Lead is simply this: that they might believe it is possible to integrate who they are becoming with where they are called, and to follow Jesus faithfully for a lifetime without being destroyed by the doing of it. There is a deeper way. It does not require less faithfulness. It requires a different kind.

The weekly email from Unhurried Living carries reflections like this one into your week with room to breathe; sign up here to receive it. And if you are ready for something more sustained, the 40-day Unhurried Daily Email offers a quiet beginning; get started here to begin that practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the connection between spiritual formation and leadership? A: Spiritual formation and leadership are not separate disciplines — they are two expressions of the same calling. Jason Jensen argues that who you are becoming by God's grace is inseparable from how you lead. When formation and leadership get disconnected, leadership begins to erode the soul rather than express it.

Q: How do I practice discernment in Christian leadership decisions? A: Discernment begins with orientation, not information. Before asking what you should do, ask whether you are facing the right direction: repenting of idolatry, submitting to Jesus, telling the truth with a community, and seeking God's will in the broad shape of your life. From that posture, the Spirit's specific leading tends to become recognizable over time.

Q: What does leading from rest instead of pressure actually look like? A: It looks like taking Sabbath seriously as a rhythm of trust rather than a productivity strategy. Eugene Peterson described the Hebrew day beginning at sundown — rest first, then work — as a picture of a people who believe God is already at work before they rise. Leading from rest means beginning with that conviction and letting it shape how you carry your work.

Q: How do I know if leadership is deforming my soul? A: Some warning signs are subtle: a slow erosion of emotional energy, a body that tightens in conflict, a growing need to get something from your work that your work was never meant to give. Jason Jensen recommends paying attention to your body and your heart, and asking honest questions with trusted friends who can help you discern whether what you are experiencing is normal fatigue or something that needs deeper care.

Q: What does the wilderness season in leadership formation actually do? A: The wilderness tests and establishes the identity God has spoken over you. It is where the affection the Father declared at your baptism gets pushed on by temptation, suffering, and isolation. Jesus entered his own wilderness with fasting and meditation on Deuteronomy 6 through 8. The disciples he most wants to form are not the ones who avoid the wilderness but the ones who learn to depend on the word, community, and spiritual disciplines while they are in it.