Why Gifted Pastors Still Crash: Four Honest Conversations About the Inner Life of a Leader

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Leadership failures rarely happen overnight. More often, they begin with unseen pressures, unresolved pain, and unhealthy patterns that slowly erode a leader from the inside out. In this special compilation episode, we bring together four candid conversations with experienced church leaders who openly share the personal struggles that nearly derailed their ministries.

Rather than focusing on leadership strategies or organizational systems, this episode explores the inner life of church leaders. From burnout and unprocessed grief to stress management, character formation, and radical honesty before God, don’t miss the lessons that can help you build healthier, more sustainable ministries. Use these conversations as discussion starters with your teams, asking not simply how the ministry is doing, but how the leaders themselves are doing.

Unprocessed Loss Eventually Takes Its Toll

Bob Riedy reflects on the burnout that brought his ministry to a halt and the painful realization that decades of accumulated loss had never been properly grieved. The death of a family member, staff transitions, declining attendance after COVID, fractured relationships, and personal shame all compounded over time because he kept pushing forward instead of processing what he had experienced. His story is a powerful reminder that even successful leaders are vulnerable when they ignore the emotional weight of ministry.

Key Takeaway // Pastors experience constant loss, but simply “moving on” isn’t resilience. Healthy leaders intentionally process grief with God before it silently grows into burnout, anxiety, or shame.

Listen to the Full Episode // Burnout, Breakthrough, and the Road to a Healthier Ministry with Bob Riedy (May 29, 2025)

Simple Practices Build Long-Term Resilience

Charles Stone shares practical neuroscience-backed habits that help leaders reduce stress and remain emotionally healthy. Rather than offering complicated solutions, he begins with something every leader can practice immediately: intentional breathing. By slowing the body’s stress response through simple breathing exercises, pastors can create space to think clearly, regulate emotions, and respond wisely during difficult seasons.

Key Takeaway // Resilience isn’t built during a crisis. It’s developed through consistent daily practices. Simple rhythms like intentional breathing can help pastors lower stress before it becomes overwhelming.

Listen to the Full Episode // Leading Through Stress Without Burning Out with Charles Stone (July 3, 2025)

Crisis Reveals Character

Allen Holmes explains that gifted leaders often reach a defining crossroads when crisis exposes weaknesses beneath their talent and experience. Every leader eventually faces a moment when they must decide whether to hide behind their abilities or allow God to shape their character through hardship. Churches that embrace this perspective create cultures where leaders remain, grow, and mature instead of running from difficult seasons.

Key Takeaway // Leadership development isn’t primarily about improving skills. Rather, it’s about allowing God to form character. Crisis often becomes the catalyst that moves leaders toward deeper maturity and lasting influence.

Listen to the Full Episode // Why Gifted Leaders Still Fail: Lessons from 25 Years of Ministry with Allen Holmes (March 5, 2026)

Honesty Before God Leads to Healing

Scott Landry vulnerably recounts one of the darkest moments of his life after personal failure left him isolated, angry, and questioning God. Rather than meeting condemnation, he encountered God’s presence in the middle of his raw honesty. His story illustrates that true healing begins when leaders stop pretending, acknowledge what’s really happening inside, and allow God to meet them in their deepest pain.

Key Takeaway // God doesn’t meet the version of us we project to others—He meets the person we truly are. Healing begins when leaders stop hiding and bring their deepest struggles honestly before Him.

Listen to the Full Episode // Leading After You Lose Everything: Redemption, Honesty & The Fight with Scott Landry (December 18, 2025)

This compilation reminds us that leadership health begins long before visible success or failure. Healthy churches are built by healthy leaders, and healthy leaders cultivate habits that address the condition of their hearts, not just the effectiveness of their ministries. Whether you’re leading through growth, challenge, or personal struggle, these conversations invite you to slow down, examine your inner life, and take intentional steps toward long-term faithfulness in ministry.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary Podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. You know, the subtitle of our podcast is Stuff You Wish They Taught in Seminary.

Rich Birch — And today I wish there was like a big underline under that word wish. I wish this conversation was a robust conversation when I was in school. Today we’re listening in on four senior leaders talking about really stuff that was going on on the inside when nobody was watching.

Rich Birch — This is a good time of year for you and I as executive leaders to pull back and to think deeply about the kind of structures we’re building as an organization that really create a flourishing environment for our people. You know, we asked earlier in the year what your greatest fears were for this year and 24.8% of you indicated that staff health, structure, morale, succession were your top fear this year. And so today’s conversation, what we’re doing is listening in on four senior pastors who get really honest on the show about what was happening on the inside of them.

Rich Birch — One of the churches that I was an executive pastor at, about a decade after I left, the senior leader made tragic decisions in their own personal life that ended up burning the church down, literally to the place where that organization doesn’t exist anymore. And from my understanding, actually the building is going to be demolished. Literally there’s nothing left.

Rich Birch — A ministry that impacted tens of thousands of people doesn’t exist today because of the decisions of a senior leader. And so at this time of year, in the summertime, I want to challenge us to listen carefully to some leaders that have been through some horrific moments and have come out the other side more healthy. And I want us to learn from these moments and say, hey, what can we do to structure our ministry so that we can be the healthiest possible environments we can possibly be?

Rich Birch — So up first, we’ve got Bob Riedy at Church of the Open Door, who hit a wall on a Sunday morning a few years ago, and he learned about ungrieved losses that took 40 years of ministry to see. So let’s listen in to Bob and see what you and I can learn as we think about the future.

[Clip 1 Begins]

Bob Riedy — I really do think that loss, and especially not properly processing and grieving loss, was a big part of what was behind all of this. In 2018, I lost my brother, my younger brother, who was really my wingman in so many ways. That was a loss that I think in some ways I’m still wrestling with.

Bob Riedy — During the pandemic, we lost, pick a number, a lot of loss as far as attendance and stuff. At first, we were off for about four months, but then when we came back, people began to trickle in, and it was clear to me that we lost hundreds of people as well from our church during that time. That was probably a profound thing for me.

Bob Riedy — We lost some key staff members as well during that time. We lost some friends because of the politics and some of the difficulty of that. And so I think loss was a big part of that.

Bob Riedy — My counselor has really helped me a lot with that, not properly grieving loss. Terry Wardle is one who said that ministry is a series of ungrieved losses. And I found that I really wasn’t doing that good. I was shaking it off and just moving forward, shaking it off and moving forward, and not really grieving it and bringing God into it and surrendering it to Him.

Bob Riedy — And I think part of what happened with that as well was I was concerned about what people thought. We were this powerhouse of a church, growing like crazy, and all of a sudden, like every other church, we were struggling.

Bob Riedy — And I remember the day that I burned out. That afternoon my children all came to our apartment. My wife and I were living downtown, and my daughter reminded me of this the other day. And she said, Dad, do you know what you said to me that day? And I said, no. She said, Dad, you said to me, what are people going to think of me that this happened to me?

Bob Riedy — And that was a loss that I wasn’t able to really properly wrap my head around. I was more concerned about how this was going to look with me as a Christian leader in our community. And then I think one of the places that the anxiety came from as well was shame.

Bob Riedy — One of the things the enemy, I think, came after me with was like, you’ve been telling people here in York how to live for the last 15 years, and you let this happen to you. And wow, I wrestled with that as well. So I think that loss and worrying what people were concerned about or what they were thinking of me, and then the shame of wrestling through that as a senior pastor whose church had been top 100 churches.

Bob Riedy — I taught church leadership and biblical preaching at Lancaster Bible College, and this happened to me. And so I really wrestled with just the fallout of all that.

[Clip 1 Ends]

Rich Birch — What are people going to think? Bob’s daughter quoting him back to him is a part of this thing I just will not shake. Ungrieved loss, it compounds.

Rich Birch — Loss is a part of your role. It’s a part of my role. But what Bob learned the hard way is that shaking it off and just kind of moving on will cost you more in the long run than sitting with it and processing it.

Rich Birch — Charles Stone is up next. He’s a friend, a pastor, a counselor, and did his PhD on stress while he got diagnosed with three serious conditions in the same year. And we’re going to focus on an easy kind of habit that he has installed or practiced that he has installed that I think you could use in the midst of your processing, of dealing with even those kinds of ungrieved losses. Let’s listen in on what Charles has to say today.

[Clip 2 Begins]

Charles Stone — Well, I kind of get thematically. One involves how we breathe. These are practices that can help us develop resilience.

Charles Stone — One has to do with how we breathe. Two have to deal with our emotions. One has to do with our thinking. One has to do with contemplative practices, spiritual practices.

Charles Stone — One has to do with something called certainty. One has to do with gratitude. One has to do with relationships. And one has to do with sleep. So any of those, I’m game for any of those that you feel like we ought to touch on one or two of them.

Rich Birch — Well, what about maybe breathing? Why don’t we start right at the top where you started? And then, you know, we’ll scratch the surface. There’s a ton we could, obviously, we want people to pick up a copy of the book, but let me start with breathing. That might be kind of interesting.

Charles Stone — Yeah. Well, actually, this ended up being the first one because it’s very easy to do. Now, I think around 75 times plus, you’ll find the word breath or breathe in the scripture.

Charles Stone — And Genesis, God breathed into Adam. He became a living being. I think his early part of Acts, Jesus breathed on the early church, the Holy Spirit came.

Charles Stone — And then David, the psalmist wrote, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Now, here is the interesting neuroscience insight. Deep breathing activates a key set of nerves that come directly from my brain, just come from my spinal cord. But these are these are key nerves that they’re in pairs.

Charles Stone — One of them is called the vagus nerve, comes from the word vagrant. What does a vagrant do? He wanders around. So this nerve wanders around our hollow organs, our heart, our lungs, our stomach. So there’s a lot of communication back and forth.

Charles Stone — Scientists have found that deep breathing, especially on the exhale, when you exhale a little longer, it actually engages this nerve, which lowers the stress response. And here’s here’s why you practice it. I call it the sniff breath.

Charles Stone — Now, the actual term is “a psychological sigh”, but here’s how it would work when you’re facing some stress. Just breathe in, you know, a little more and then breathe out through your mouth. Now on the out breath, you want to be a little longer than the in breath, doing that three or four or five times.

Charles Stone — Labs all around the country found it lowers the stress response. So that is a simple, a portable tool you can take. Anybody can use anywhere.

Charles Stone — So yeah.

[Clip 2 Ends]

Rich Birch — I love Charles. He’s such a practical leader. Listen, I’d pick one of those practices this week and really try to install it.

Rich Birch — I love that he started with breath work because it’s really the easiest one to start with. You can install it today. Literally, he gave you everything you need, but maybe look at the other ones. Pick up his book, “Stress Less”. Got a bunch in there.

Rich Birch — Well, coming up next, we’ve got Allen Holmes. He’s been the senior pastor at Definition Church in Greensboro for 25 years. He has watched gifted leaders crash long enough that he’s built a framework around this to understand it. Let’s listen in to what Allen has to bring to this conversation.

[Clip 3 Begins]

Allen Holmes — It’s interesting when I, one of the other real key moments for me is I went back to do my doctorate of ministry degree at Gordon Conwell in redemptive leadership. And so much of what we were studying is how God works in the crisis, in these pressure moments to expose the unfinished places in our character so that we can grow and become more like Jesus and therefore maximize our kingdom impact in the world.

Allen Holmes — And one of my professors, Dr. Powers, he actually wrote a book called Redemptive Leadership. It’s a simple little book, but profound, where he describes leadership development in five stages. And stage one is a skilled leader where you get a leadership role just based on your skill. So maybe the ability to preach. And so they call you to be the pastor.

Allen Holmes — That’s how I became the pastor of my first church. I could preach. I hadn’t done anything else, but they let me be a pastor because I could preach.

Allen Holmes — And then the second stage is a principal leader where you begin to understand why you do what you do. But the third stage, which is so important, is the character stage. And in order for a leader to go through the character stage, God always uses a crisis to bring him into that stage. But when he comes into that stage, he has a choice. In that stage, he can open his heart and allow God to do that deeper work, or he can go back and hide behind his skills and principle.

Allen Holmes — And that’s what pastors do. A lot of times the reason you see this turnover every, you know, depending on what statistic you read, every two to four years, pastors are leaving churches is because they come into a church and they have this honeymoon season. And then all of a sudden there’s a crisis that exposes some things and they start floating their resume and hiding behind their skill rather than allowing God to deal with their character so that they can advance and become a transformative, redemptive leader.

Allen Holmes — So I think one of the things that’s been so true for us is we’ve just tried to say to people when there’s a crisis, don’t panic, don’t run away. See it as an opportunity.

Allen Holmes — In fact, I ended up doing my dissertation on the idea that if we could teach this model to leaders, that it would cause them to respond differently in the crisis instead of running from it, they would run to it and open their heart. And God could use that to really propel them into their redemptive future. And the research said that was true.

Allen Holmes — And so we’ve tried to really work that in our culture to understand when something goes wrong, don’t run away and don’t hide. Let’s run into it and trust God to meet us there so that this thing God works redemptively to use it for your benefit and to launch you into your future.

Allen Holmes — And because that’s been our culture, people have stuck around. I mean, my lead team, Rick has been here 25 years. He was he’s actually here two Sundays longer than I’ve been here. Eric’s been here 24 years. Jonathan’s been here 19 years. Chelsea’s been here almost this year will be 14 years. Steve’s been here 10 years.

Allen Holmes — I mean, so they’ve just been here a long, long, long time. And that but that’s why they’ve seen these moments and we’ve helped them to find God in it so that it actually works for us instead of against us.

[Clip 3 Ends]

Rich Birch — Allen walked us through the five stages. The third one he talked about is character. And that’s really where I think you and I, our greatest test is at. And this is where we meet our crisis. You should go back and listen to Allen’s episode. Super helpful.

Rich Birch — Coming up next for our last part of the conversation today is a friend of mine, Scott Landry. He’s the senior pastor of The Bridge near Ottawa. He’s been on the podcast before.

Rich Birch — Next is a clip from a book that was coming out or that has come out called “The Fight”. And it’s the moment that he lost everything and that he was alone in a house in the Northwest Territory. The reason why I wanted this on is because I think Scott models for you and models for me an open transparency with ourselves, with our people.

Rich Birch — That is something that I think you and I should live with our live with and should think through. How can we be this transparent with the people around us? Heads up. This is a heavy clip and it’s worth every second of your attention to lean in and hear what Scott shares.

[Clip 4 Begins]

Scott Landry — I hope that’s a powerful moment in the book because it was it’s genuinely the most powerful moment in my life. And this was this was kind of at the crescendo of my my breaking point. So after my marriage and my life specifically falling apart and I kind of lived in a place of isolation.

Scott Landry — I was living in the North, Canadian North, and I was yeah, I was lost. I was I was angry like I had so much anger. And it was so, yeah, I talk about in the book and I was angry and ultimately I was angry at myself, but I was also angry at God.

Scott Landry — And because even after, again, making a mess of my own life, he didn’t make a mess of my life. Nobody made the mess in my life. I made the mess in my life.

Scott Landry — And but then after that, I was trying to do everything right. And I was trying to do the right thing, do the right thing. And I was like, God, when are you going to start intervening on my behalf?

Scott Landry — And so, you know, being the preacher that I am, I was like, I got all the Bible verses that tell me that you’re going to like now is you’re going to do the redemptive thing. You’re going to show up. You’re going to move.

Scott Landry — You’re going to fix. You’re going to redeem. You’re going to restore.

Scott Landry — You’re going to repair. You can do all the R words. And and nothing was happening like it was like and it was almost as if I and I literally heard nothing. And I’d like to say I didn’t feel anything, but I did.

Scott Landry — It was just this this anger that was welling up inside of me like a like a pot boiling and eventually it just I just became unhinged. Like I was alone and I was completely isolated. I was in this empty house and I just started crying out like and yelling out and I threw through things.

Scott Landry — I I used words I’ve I’m ashamed to admit I used. Like I mean, I was as unhinged as could possibly. I was like, I God, if I saw you face to face, I would give you the…like I told him all this stuff.

Scott Landry — And and what I found in that moment was like and I again, I talk about in the book, but like I yelled, God, I don’t even believe in you anymore. I’m done. Like I like I don’t I don’t believe. You’ve promised me that you would never leave me. You would never forsake me. And that’s exactly what you’ve done. I’ve told people that you would never leave them and forsake them. And yet you’ve done that to me. You are you are dead to me. I don’t believe in you anymore.

Scott Landry — And I even now I still feel this and I’m just talking about it. But like this is and this is I know some people are going to roll their eyes at this. But like genuinely, when I heard myself say that, I felt this…like over me, over my house. It was like this eerie like pause.

Scott Landry — And I heard if I’ve ever heard the voice of God, I heard a voice say, well, then who are you yelling at? And it was like this, like…

Rich Birch — Beautiful.

Scott Landry — And in that moment, it was like my anger was it wasn’t my degree. It wasn’t my Bible. It was it was my anger was my evidence that God was present right then and right there. And because my anger was directed at him.

Scott Landry — And he knew that I was angry with him and he met me at the place of my anger and he was waiting. And this is the part that I still, I can’t do this, what’s in my head and in my heart justice. But it was God was saying, I’ve been waiting for you at this place your whole life.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Scott Landry — You you have been hiding from this anger from your childhood, from your young adulthood. And I’ve been waiting for you to meet me here at your anger. And I’ve I’ve wanted you to know that I would be here waiting for you.

Scott Landry — And if you met me on the top of the tallest mountain and if you look me face to face and if you were to give me the finger, you would find me there waiting because I am waiting at who you really are, not who you’re pretending to be.

Scott Landry — And everyone around you, you’ve got them fooled. And you’re a used car salesman and you can spin the Bible verses and you can do all that other stuff. But I know who you really are. And I’m waiting for you to finally be honest with yourself about who you really are.

Scott Landry — And now that you finally are, now we can do something about that together. And that was the moment that God truly revealed himself to me. And that’s when I, for the first time in my life, truly discovered who I was.

Scott Landry — And yeah, that’s the moment that I hope anybody who ever meets me or talks to me or listens to me or reads it, like that’s the part that I long for people to have before it costs them, like it cost me.

[Clip 4 Ends]

Rich Birch — I love that moment when Scott said he heard, who are you yelling at? Man, that sticks with you.

Rich Birch — Listen, four different stories. What I’m trying to do is raise for you the question about the inner life of what’s going on at your church with the senior leaders around you.

Rich Birch — What if you were to go back and look at these four conversations and maybe say, OK, this one might be the best for us to lead a conversation with, and send them one of those, send your team one of those episodes. And say, hey, I’d love for us to take some time this summer.

Rich Birch — Maybe you go and relax on a back deck somewhere or jump in somebody’s boat or spend a little extra time at the office. Because there is a little bit of slack at this time of year. And ask the question, hey, what’s going on on the inside of us as leaders at the church? How are we developing and how could this conversation help us ask some different questions than we normally do in our team meetings?

Rich Birch — All the links to those four conversations are down below. Thanks for sticking through this this entire conversation. I know there was a lot today, but we’ll see you next week with our regularly scheduled programs, kind of back to what we normally do here at unSeminary.

Rich Birch — Thanks for being a part of the podcast. Thanks for doing what you’re doing, including the hard work of the inner life to lead your people in a way that makes a huge difference. Thanks for being engaged in the local church. Take care, friends.