If we believe we can bring about the outcomes we desire, we will blame ourselves when those outcomes don’t actualize. God doesn’t need us to bring about good outcomes. He’s got that part. He calls us to pursue faithfulness. That’s something that, by his grace, we can handle.

My two fellow pastors and I recently self-assessed our leadership in navigating a thorny situation within our church. The outcome we preferred failed to actualize, so we took some time to evaluate our decisions. Should we have done something differently? Did we miss anything along the way that might have changed the outcome? Was the less-than-ideal outcome the fruit of our poor leadership?

We have these kinds of conversations frequently. In fact, all leaders probably resonate with this line of questioning. My wife and I have had similar conversations regarding parenting. Hindsight is 20/20, they say. If we knew then what we know now, we probably would have done things differently.

The problem, of course, is that we never know the outcome while we are in the trenches making decisions. That information is not available to us. Only God knows how a situation will turn out. Only he knows the full consequences of a human decision, and he does not typically let us in on that secret. Good leadership, therefore, must be process-focused leadership. Since the leader can never guarantee any outcome, wise leadership focuses on improving the process so that good outcomes are most likely.

In other words, since we cannot always produce the exact outcomes we prefer, we should at least make sure we are pursuing truth, acting virtuously, following wise habits, and prioritizing faithfulness to God along the way. If our process is righteous, we can rest in the knowledge that the outcome resides in the loving hands of God.

We see Paul model this approach in Acts 20:26 when he declares to the Ephesian elders, “I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” In other words, Paul rests in the rightness of his process—he declared the whole counsel of God. He did what he was supposed to do. Since he was faithful in the process, the outcome, whatever it turned out to be, would not be his responsibility.

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