Letting Peace Set the Pace of Our Leadership

Blog by Alan Fadling

Most of us don’t wake up each day intending to live or lead from anxiety. And yet, if we’re being honest, that is the way many of us function. We lead with a tight jaw and a hurried pace, carrying a quiet sense that too much depends on us. We feel the weight of outcomes, the fear of missteps, and the pressure to hold things together in a world that feels anything but steady.

What if peace isn’t something we finally reach once things calm down or get resolved? What if peace is something we learn to receive—and to lead from—right in the middle of troubling times?

Earlier this year, my most recent book, A Non-Anxious Life, had its two-year birthday. When I look back, what stays with me most isn’t the book itself so much as the conversations it has opened—with pastors, leaders, caregivers, and fellow travelers who are honest enough to say, “I didn’t realize how much anxiety was shaping the way I lead.” That realization is not a failure. Often, it’s the beginning of freedom.

We are living—and leading—in troubling times. Our days are marked by cultural tension, institutional fatigue, relational fracture, and spiritual exhaustion. Many leaders today are no longer asking whether anxiety is present in their lives. They’re asking whether it’s possible to lead faithfully without being quietly driven by it.

Jesus was quite honest about the world in which we live. On the night he was betrayed, in speaking to his closest friends, he didn’t promise that things would soon get easier. He acknowledged that great trouble would be part of their lived reality. And yet, in the same breath, he spoke of peace—not as denial, not as wishful thinking, but as something rooted in relationship with him.

That distinction matters, especially for leaders. Many of us keep searching for peace in resolution: once this conflict settles, once this season passes, once this decision is behind us. But peace that depends on our circumstances is fragile. New problems arrive faster than old ones resolve. And when our inner steadiness depends on outer stability, we remain perpetually vulnerable.

What Jesus offers is something sturdier. His peace is not situational; it is relational. It flows from communion, not control.

Over the years, both as a spiritual director and as someone who trains leaders, I’ve noticed a consistent pattern: Anxiety becomes most influential when leaders confuse responsibility with sovereignty. We try to carry what only God can carry. We attempt to manage outcomes that God has not entrusted to us. And slowly—often invisibly—our inner world constricts.

One of the most freeing shifts I’ve made is this: Peace is not the elimination of anxious thoughts or feelings. Peace is learning to practice the presence of God in the middle of those anxious dynamics. Peace is learning to not let anxiety take the lead any longer.

For many of us, anxiety began as an attempt to take care of ourselves. It was a way—however limited—of staying safe, prepared, and ahead of what might go wrong. The problem isn’t that anxiety exists. The problem is when it takes the wheel—when it sets the pace, shapes the tone, drives the urgency, and leaves us depleted.

A counselor once said something to me that I’ve never forgotten: You don’t need to get rid of your anxiety; you need to relocate it. Not in the driver’s seat. Not locked in the trunk. But acknowledged, named, and seated in the back.

This matters deeply for leaders. Anxiety that is denied tends to leak out sideways—through impatience, defensiveness, overfunctioning, or withdrawal. But anxiety that is brought into the presence of God can be transformed. Not erased but redirected. Its energy can become attentiveness. Worry can become compassion. Hypervigilance can become prayerful discernment.

This is where abiding becomes more than a spiritual idea. It becomes a leadership practice.

Jesus speaks often about remaining, staying, and living from union rather than from striving. When leaders abide, they stop sourcing their worth from outcomes, approval, or performance. They lead from a steadier center, and their presence itself becomes formative. Presence matters more than we think.

A non-anxious leader is not someone without feelings. They are someone whose inner life is anchored in a place deeper than the turbulence of the moment. Leaders like this can enter conflict without becoming combative, face resistance without becoming rigid, and sit with uncertainty without rushing toward false clarity. Peace, in this sense, is not passive. It is resilient. It has roots.

One of the most persistent distortions anxiety introduces is the quiet assumption that God is disappointed—or irritated—with us. Many leaders carry this unspoken belief: If I were more faithful, more disciplined, or more effective, God would be more pleased with me. But the God revealed in Jesus is not standing over us with crossed arms and quiet frustration. He is tending, watching, guarding, and present. Formation is not performance. Spiritual practices are not impersonal tests. They are places of encounter where love does its slow, patient work.

So perhaps the invitation is not to become a different kind of leader overnight but to begin noticing where anxiety has been quietly leading—and to let it step aside, even briefly, for something deeper. The peace Jesus offers is not fragile. It does not depend on outcomes going our way. It is steady, relational, and available right here, in the midst of what feels unfinished or uncertain.

You don’t have to carry everything. You don’t have to resolve everything. You are invited to lead from a place of being held, not from a place of holding it all together. And as you learn to receive that peace—not perfectly but honestly—you may find that your presence itself begins to change the spaces you inhabit. Not because you have mastered something but because you are learning, little by little, to trust the One who is already at work.

For Reflection:

• Where is anxiety most present in my life and leadership right now? (Focus more on noticing than fixing here.)
• As I sit with that place, what might God be wanting me to know about his presence or his posture toward me? What is true here that anxiety may be obscuring?
• What would it look like—very simply—to let peace set the tone in one small moment this week?