Church leaders often approach Lent with a familiar script: add a devotional practice, give something up, host a midweek service. But what if this season called us to something deeper? In this special Pivot Podcast Lenten reflection, the Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson invites us into four transformative Lenten practices for church leaders that meet our exhaustion head-on. He offers: 1. sacred honesty about what hurts; 2. holy slowness as resistance to constant rushing; 3. embodied compassion in places where people are hurting; and 4. courageous imagining that refuses to let harshness shape our vision. Willis doesn’t turn away from the brokenness around us—he teaches us to stick with it instead.
From ashes to service, from truth to tenderness, from fear to faithful love—this is the Lenten trajectory Willis traces through the season. He reminds us that Ash Wednesday is not an ending but a true beginning, that the ashes on our skin clarify rather than humiliate, and that we don’t walk this journey alone. Whether you’re navigating congregational exhaustion, naming systemic injustice, or reclaiming power that looks like service rather than control, these Lenten practices for church leaders offer both challenge and hope for the season ahead.
