Leadership Can Feel Lonely

January 27, 2026

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In this episode of the Red Letter Leadership Podcast, hosts Ben Hunter and Jordan Ames delve into the theme of loneliness in leadership, drawing insights from their experiences and the lessons outlined in their co-authored book. They discuss how leadership can often feel isolating, especially when faced with criticism from peers and even family. The conversation emphasizes the importance of communication and connection, particularly with loved ones, to combat feelings of loneliness and prevent isolation. They also highlight the significance of recognizing that feeling lonely does not equate to failure; rather, it can be a sign of carrying a significant burden as a leader. The episode encourages listeners to seek community and maintain a Christ-centered approach to leadership, reminding them that they are never truly alone in their journey.

Takeaways

Leadership can often feel lonely, especially when facing criticism.
Communication with loved ones is crucial to combat loneliness.
Feeling lonely doesn't mean you're failing; it can indicate you're carrying a significant burden.
Isolation is a dangerous territory for leaders; it's important to seek community.
Christ-centered leadership reminds us that we are never truly alone.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Red Letter Leadership Podcast

06:20 The Loneliness of Leadership

10:36 Distinguishing Loneliness from Isolation

20:10 The Importance of Communication in Leadership

29:11 Practical Steps to Combat Loneliness

#leadership, #loneliness, #Christ-centeredleadership, #communication, #isolation, #spiritualgrowth, #community

Episode Transcript

Leadership Can Feel Lonely

Ben Hunter (00:02.071)
Hey everybody, welcome to the new Red Letter Leadership Podcast. This is our second episode. Last episode, Jordan did a really good job of setting up our inaugural podcast with some really strong questions and conversation about being selective and what does Jesus say about that?

Jordan Ames (00:02.505)
to the end.

Jordan Ames (00:21.655)
Thank

Ben Hunter (00:30.414)
how we can imply healthy selective-ism, if that's a word, into our organizations and teams to ensure that we have the people we need and to be able to accomplish the mission that we feel called to do or what our organization is really trying to do and accomplish. So this podcast, the purpose is to really use the entire gospel and take

the Red Letter Leadership book that Jordan Ames, myself and Eric Albright collaborated and co-authored to help guide leaders like you out there and how to become more of a Christ-centered leader and use leadership lessons learned through the life of Christ. So Jordan, thanks for joining me.

Jordan Ames (01:19.178)
Thanks.

Jordan Ames (01:23.573)
Thanks.

Ben Hunter (01:27.97)
Thanks for really kicking this thing off and coming up with a plan to do this. And really I'm excited about the opportunity to reach as many folks as we can. One, to just talk about Jesus, right? It's funny, when I talk to people about the book, I start to talk about it I feel like I'm trying to, I start to turn into a salesman, but then I kind of really recenter myself and like, look, I'm not trying to market myself for this book. I feel like I'm marketing Jesus.

Jordan Ames (01:35.915)
You need to.

Jordan Ames (01:41.973)
Yeah, that's good.

Ben Hunter (01:57.665)
So, I don't know if you've gotten into that a little bit, talking to people about the book.

Jordan Ames (01:58.155)
Bye.

Jordan Ames (02:03.211)
Oh, yeah. It's very easy to get into. And I've done that from the from the business perspective is like focusing too much on the revenue that I'm looking to gain or whatever, then the value that I'm here to provide. And that's what that's what the whole purpose of the book is. And that's what any business is for. Right. It's a good value.

Ben Hunter (02:27.831)
Sure. Yeah, I think something we've all learned here, just to be completely transparent, is authors don't make a lot of money off of books. Being self-published and what we've gone through to, and you've carried most of the weight, so I got to give you a lot of credit there. Learning, and this is our first time authoring a book, self-publishing, and putting out a lot of money to do all that, and then you come back and talk to these companies and Amazon and businesses about...

Jordan Ames (02:54.461)
Please.

Ben Hunter (02:56.673)
Publishing and you realize like that's all we get per book like a dollar two dollars It's real folks out there. So we ain't making any money off this book. We want you all to Be centered with Jesus and that's that's what it's all about

Jordan Ames (03:00.415)
Yeah.

Jordan Ames (03:17.067)
Yeah, if I could just add to that too, Ben is like this this book and one of the things that we were all three of us were eager about when publishing it is getting our own copy. Because although we're the authors, like it speaks to us still, right? Like it is a library of leadership lessons for us to look back and be like, oh, I wrote that or oh, that was Ben's right. That's really good. Like I'm still convicted.

I know by some of the stuff I wrote and even while I was writing a lesson, I was like, I know this is the right answer and I know I don't do it well. So I like, we're not the experts. We just have experience, have the understanding and put it on paper so that we can learn just as much as the reader.

Ben Hunter (03:56.254)
Thanks.

Ben Hunter (04:06.068)
Wow, that's so good. know, and I want to we're in a really good topic right here. So, you know, I definitely have a pre-planned topic and some questions to talk to you about, but I don't want to walk away from this just yet. know, we were all all three of us were so completely surprised when you were contacted by Liberty University and

the Divinity School, graduate school there, wanted to use our book as a required reading source for their Divinity School. And we're just like, whoa. You know, we just self-published. We still have no idea how they found the book. We still don't know who this professor is that's using the book in his course. And I know, Jordan, you've sent out some emails and asking some folks so we can connect. But I mean, what an exciting moment for an total

Jordan Ames (04:45.213)
Yeah, for sure.

Ben Hunter (05:03.05)
God moment for him to take that. But you know, to your point, like we are not experts at leadership. What we are are Christian men who have gone through a lot of lessons in leadership through our military career that are somewhat unique. And we've applied what we have learned in our unique military experiences and put those with

Jordan Ames (05:11.051)
your skin.

Ben Hunter (05:33.159)
the biblical gospel experience of jesus christ and kind of this is what we are pulling as we went through into your point man every time i did one one of the topics that i i i did or any of the ones that you're eric did you know it's just like wow it's like i even when i go back there's another lesson there that i didn't that i didn't initially pull from and so

Jordan Ames (05:59.114)
Yeah.

Ben Hunter (06:02.067)
yeah, it's what an experience that was for us. And I'm just excited about anybody and everybody that has an opportunity to kind of read through that and they'll pull some more stuff that we didn't, probably, see. So yeah, it's, it's been a ride.

Jordan Ames (06:18.781)
Yeah, for sure. It's going to keep going too.

Ben Hunter (06:22.259)
Yeah, man. for this episode, the topic that we have for everybody today is really how leadership can feel lonely. the lesson that I did in the book really pulled from Mark chapter three. And the story is when Jesus is preaching and really sharing

who he is, about the gospel, and what he's doing, and his purpose, and he's doing it in his hometown. And he begins to get ridiculed, obviously from the teachers, who have obviously kind of questioned Jesus all along the way. But, you know, kind of a step even further during this chapter, you see where Jesus' own family

is questioning what he's doing, what he's saying and ridiculing him. And so, you know, when I wrote that piece, it was really just kind of like, gosh, when I look at that, like, how would that feel? One, like everybody's telling you you're wrong or, you know, you're not who you think you are or who you're saying you are. Why should we listen to you? And, you know, a lot of leaders will get that throughout.

Jordan Ames (07:33.641)
You

Jordan Ames (07:40.171)
Thank you.

Ben Hunter (07:49.45)
their time in a leadership position. then you get to a step where you have your closest confidants, your family or close friends who are saying, I'm not sure you're doing the right thing or you're who you say you are or questioning decisions and things that you're doing as a leader. I just was like, that's lonely. We as leaders, as folks

Jordan Ames (08:14.507)
Yeah.

Ben Hunter (08:19.722)
Find themselves moving up in the maybe the corporate ladder or in rank in the military and they find themselves you go from this You know your teammates in the cubicle or in the team room to then you know as you move up you find yourself in the in the office Where everybody else is in the ready room or team rooms or in the cubicles and you're in the office, right?

Jordan Ames (08:42.974)
Yeah.

Ben Hunter (08:45.329)
And you're having to make decisions and get people to do things. then, you know, there was definitely a point in time for me where I got, you know, in company command as a, you know, brigade operations officer, you know, where you are making all the decisions and you kind of look around and you're just kind of like, man, I am, maybe I'm tired, man, I'm confused.

I'm not, you know, you may be questioning some of the things that you're being asked to do and you kind of look around and you, you feel like you don't have a lot of people to kind of talk to and come fight in. you know, one of the things I really want to kind of dive into you with Jordan is, while it feels lonely because you don't have the typical, you know, large team and people around you.

you don't have to be isolated. And so there's a super important distinction between feeling lonely and then moving into the dangerous place of isolation. And man, that speaks to my heart and my spirit a lot from my experiences and where I have in multiple seasons throughout my life isolated myself.

And that gets us into dangerous territory, right? And we are not in this alone. Now there may be times when we don't have lot of other men around us or friends or family, but we are never alone. Jesus, the Holy Spirit is with us. you know, it unfortunately has taken me a long time to get to a point where I can kind of, I have really bought into that and I really feel it. And so,

Jordan Ames (10:39.113)
Yeah.

Ben Hunter (10:40.776)
I hope that this discussion really speaks to a lot of folks around there. So I'll just kind of kick this off with a kind of question to you, Jordan. What responsibilities for you as a leader in your experience created distance or even unintentionally kind of you started to distance yourself?

you start to kind of get into that isolation territory and a lot of our fellow military buddies can find themselves even in the depression and isolation during certain times like that where we don't almost know you're slipping into that isolation as a leader. Can you kind of speak to that a little bit?

Jordan Ames (11:20.095)
Yeah.

Jordan Ames (11:32.873)
Yeah,

So we started writing lessons for this book in January of 2024. And I love telling this story when I share that we're doing something that we feel God is leading us to do. We will face opposition, like expected spiritually, the enemy is going to attack. And I even was talking to some people, I think within the past several weeks that

We live in a fallen world. So if we're comfortable in a fallen world, if we're not experiencing opposition, the enemy's not attacking, then there's something wrong there. Like we are the body of Christ, we represent Christ in a fallen world, we're going to face those attacks, the opposition. That doesn't mean that we're going in the wrong direction and we should stop. That might often mean that we're going in the right direction.

Ben Hunter (12:23.738)
That's good.

Jordan Ames (12:35.657)
and we need to learn how to handle that opposition. So I just want to share when I started writing the lessons at the beginning of this book, January 1st, 2024, within those first seven days, the enemy started attacking. And 2024 ended up being probably one of the roughest years for my family that we've had, despite all my deployments being away beforehand. And I won't get into the details.

Ben Hunter (12:41.095)
. .

Jordan Ames (13:05.195)
There were things done, things said, that weren't just good for all involved. We all made mistakes. Everybody involved made mistakes. Looking back in hindsight, where I felt lonely was within, shortly after those attacks started coming,

Ben Hunter (13:11.239)
. .

Jordan Ames (13:31.787)
And I was already starting to write these lessons. And I have this business brand, Red Letter Leadership. People started telling me within my family, started saying, hey, you're doing this leadership stuff. You need to make sure you're leading kind of thing. And it wasn't that I had done anything specific to show that I wasn't leading. was like, hey, things are going to get rough. You need to make sure you're leading kind of thing.

Ben Hunter (13:40.199)
people.

Jordan Ames (14:02.459)
And where it felt lonely was looking back was my failure to communicate. Communicate with my own wife, mainly, my thoughts and make sure I was taking care of her and her emotions that she was dealing with, as well as communicate clearly to the other people involved.

Ben Hunter (14:11.515)
Hmm. .

Jordan Ames (14:32.107)
So I think if I would have handled the situation better from a communication standpoint, which has always been full transparency, think communication has been one of my struggles. And it's funny because I took the disc assessment several years ago and my style comes out as one of the more reserved passive. I'd rather just tell you one thing and walk away.

You know, it'd be like, why do we have to have a full conversation about it? But I understand the learning and God's shown me like, yeah, communication is something that needs my constant work. So that's a situation where I felt lonely. And again, I believe it was because of my lack of communication in the situation. But then another time I'm thinking of when I felt lonely,

Ben Hunter (15:14.726)
Hmm.

Ben Hunter (15:24.644)
Man, that's.

Jordan Ames (15:31.211)
but it really wasn't my fault. Looking back, I don't necessarily see where I was at fault. So I was a lieutenant. I was the first lieutenant. were kind of already done, one deployment as a second lieutenant. We were in a workup, getting ready for another deployment. And I was doing well as far as performance-wise as a lieutenant was expected. Of course, I had a lot of prior enlisted experience.

But I was an executive officer for a company, an infantry company of Marines, came back from my first deployment and they put me as a company commander until a senior captain would show up and take over and then they'd put me somewhere else. So I was a company commander for two months. Early on the workup guy showed up and then I got sent over to weapons company, which is like the senior company in the infantry battalion to be their exo.

Ben Hunter (16:12.006)
.

Jordan Ames (16:32.171)
That was going well. I was going to deploy Xerox. And the CEO for the company, his plan was to deploy and then after deployment, resign and move on with life. Resign and get out. But he decided to resign before deployment. And so he was put as the RBE commander, the Remain Behind Element commander.

And so they put me as the company commander for weapons company, the senior company. And I'm a first lieutenant and all the other companies are senior captains, know, like it's kind of lopsided. But my company commander held me in high regard. You know, he gave me one of the best evals I've ever gotten. So I was the company commander for that company all the way up until two days before he deployed when the senior captain showed up and took that company.

And then after we deployed, was kind of, I was moved in the middle of deployment. I was moved to another company because the battalion commander thought there was some leadership issues going on and he wanted me to come in and kind of help iron things out. When I get there, didn't seem like it was as he thought. We were spread out across Europe. So things were kind of like word of mouth. But nonetheless, long story short, I was kind of bounced around as a first lieutenant for

for like a year and a half. Worked with some good leaders, some others weren't as good, but I left that assignment after three years as a lieutenant. And for listeners, I left that assignment. I went to Fort Benning, Georgia for a school and that's when I met Ben Hunter there in the summer of 2015. But yeah, so I left that assignment and was not presented with any award.

My eval said I was one of the top lieutenants, but I didn't get any sort of like metal ribbon type of award, which is kind of standard for you do a good job. They award you when you're. And yeah, so I didn't get any. There's there's lieutenants that were only platoon commanders. I had a much, much higher responsibility. So there's guys were only platoon commanders and got these Navy combination medals or Navy achievement medals, things like that. I got nothing. And so I was like.

Ben Hunter (18:32.268)
Right. Yeah.

Ben Hunter (18:52.26)
Yeah.

Jordan Ames (18:53.631)
Well, I guess it was just lonely where I was just because I was getting bounced around. No specific person took me on as like, you know, I think all the other company commanders kind of saw me as a peer as I was being bounced around. So, yeah, so in some cases, loneliness as a leader, it's that we need looking in the mirror and maybe we're doing something wrong and that's why things are lonely. That's why we're feeling lonely.

And other times it just may be how the rocks fall, to speak.

Ben Hunter (19:30.446)
Yeah, that's good, man. I appreciate you sharing a lot of that. you bring up a really good point. And we speak to this in the book on a couple of occasions. not only are we to be leaders in our organizations, but being leaders in our family. And so often we can hyper focus on our career or job.

special military because it is created just creates this atmosphere of like hypertension and you know deployments and being away so much that you know a lot of times are our spouses our families are kind of left as a is sad to say but almost like an afterthought because we have to you know we put so much attention on our career or military and things that are going on and taking care of

our soldiers and making sure they come home safely that you know we guys like you and I you know you speak to me man when you say like you know communication especially with our spouses and learning how to do that well you know we get really good at doing it with our soldiers but that doesn't necessarily equal good communication with our spouses or for me my my three my three daughters right

Jordan Ames (20:43.763)
It's not. No.

Ben Hunter (20:48.879)
not the same level of communication needed between my soldiers, coworkers in the military and my beautiful family. yeah, that speaks to me, man. I appreciate you kind of going that route with it. It's super important for us to one, you know, look in the mirror as leaders. I, know, this isn't, this is, I mentioned this book in our last podcast and undoubtedly it'll come up more.

Jordan Ames (20:49.213)
Yeah.

Ben Hunter (21:17.229)
But the book Good to Great, he talks about being a leader and being able to look either through a mirror or look through a window. And when things are going wrong, looking in a mirror is probably where we need to be looking at first. When things are going well, we should probably look through a window and look at all the people that got us the success that we...

Jordan Ames (21:38.432)
Yeah.

Jordan Ames (21:46.707)
Wow, that's weird. Yeah.

Ben Hunter (21:47.112)
are seeing and the reward. yeah, you you spoke to it, man. And it's important that we first look in the mirror and see what, what, what am I doing wrong? What can I do differently? And gosh, you know, you're in the leadership business long enough, you'll figure out that you're going to fail more than you succeed. and yeah, and communication is a key part in, leadership of our family.

And that's huge. No, I appreciate too the reference of, you get, you feel like you are doing everything right. And then you don't feel, you know, there's times when we don't feel like we are getting the recognition maybe that we have worked and not necessarily, you know, it's not that, you know, our human instinct is like, I did this, so I should get this.

Jordan Ames (22:29.963)
Yeah.

Ben Hunter (22:44.768)
But as we move into Christ-centered leadership, we're not doing it for the reward, more so as doing it for the calling, the purpose of leading others and doing it well in a Christ-centered way. But we can't help to get to a point where you work hard and you're told you're doing a great job and then you get to a point where in the end there was no

Jordan Ames (22:52.811)
you

Jordan Ames (23:06.315)
Thank

Ben Hunter (23:13.518)
recognition. So then how do we handle that? And that is absolutely going to get us into this point of feeling lonely and even putting ourselves into isolation because nobody cares about me. Nobody recognizes what I'm doing. So that's good. You know, my next question was kind of, think, you know, maybe we've already answered it, but where have you seen loneliness lead leaders off course, right? So

Maybe you've seen others who have kind of gone off into the isolation as opposed to just feeling lonely and where that has kind of led them off course. you, maybe your personal life or have you observed other leaders get to a point where it led them off course?

Jordan Ames (24:04.235)
Um, well, before I answer that, toward, the end of your, your last, um, before you asked that question, I was thinking of the danger of when, when, when you feel lonely and you're not being recognized or awarded appropriately. And if you're not prepared to just move on and be like, well, I know I did well, whatever. I only recognize.

I know I'll serve them well, serve my calling, my purpose. That's most important. So I'm just going to move on. Like, it's very easy to now have animosity with peers who did get recognized, right? And I mean, like, how often does that destroy relationships, teams, organizations, because your peer got recognized and you think you did better and now somehow you don't like them or whatever. sounds very, you know, whatever.

middle school or whatever, that happens in adults so much. yeah, to talk about this question, I don't have any specific story that's coming to mind. I do know, I just can't think of a specific example, but I do know it's affected, it's probably affected me to make comfort-based decisions before. What I mean by that is,

When leaders are feeling lonely, regardless of it's their fault or it's not their fault, whatever the case, we as humans, we want to have healthy relationships. We're designed for that. We're designed to have relationships with God. We're designed to have relationships with others, and we want those to be healthy and enjoyable. So when they're not, we feel that loneliness. It could cause us to react in certain ways to restore whatever

Ben Hunter (25:58.853)
. .

Jordan Ames (26:01.673)
whatever loneliness we're feeling, to try and restore that relationship. from a leadership perspective, whether it's in the family, you know, like you, you know, you need to discipline a child. Like, you know, you need to have a hard conversation with them, whatever, teenager, may need to ground or whatever you need to do. Like, look, what you did was wrong. And here's the consequence.

And you know it's going to cause some friction, some loneliness. You hate it because you feel like now there's some sort of divide or barrier with your child. And if we're not prepared for that, it could cause us to just not want to have the conversation, to just brush it under the rug. And really, by biblical definition of love, that is not love. So we...

Ben Hunter (26:46.98)
Yeah.

Jordan Ames (26:58.591)
When we focus on restoring those relationships because we feel lonely and we don't like that feeling.

It can cause us to fall into the trap of a comfort-based decision for the purpose of restoring a good feeling when what needs to happen is to hold accountable, hold the standard, have a tough conversation in love, and maybe just, despite the loneliness we feel, maybe we feel hate.

Ben Hunter (27:09.761)
.

Jordan Ames (27:38.995)
from, again, from a child or something, our love is unconditional, right? Certainly a father's love for children must be unconditional, but even for our teammates, like if we're focused on mission success and the welfare of the team, we should be okay with periods of feeling lonely when we know that we are doing the best, making the best decisions for everybody, for the mission.

even if it means we have to discipline, have a hard conversation. So I think that's where a lot of leaders get off course is because they just, it's that natural tendency to just want to make feelings better. Just what we want, this society, right, wants immediate gratification. We want that with happy feelings, you know. I think one of the lessons I wrote in the book, I think is,

Ben Hunter (28:10.624)
.

Jordan Ames (28:38.219)
I forget the title, it's like holiness more or less is a priority over happiness. Like sometimes, again, we live in a fallen world. We're not always going to experience happiness, but God does call us to be holy and to live right in accordance with His will. So yeah, I think that's where leaders get off course. They just get sidetracked from what the true purpose assignment is.

Ben Hunter (29:07.167)
Yeah, that's good Jordan. That's so good. So kind of trying to wrap this up in a way of kind of takeaways here. I think about, so we've gotten to a point where we've identified that being a leader can get us in a place where we feel lonely and why that is.

and we get to a point where there's not a lot of folks directly around us and then acknowledging that we're never really alone, that Jesus is always with us, and then talking through different ways where we have found ourselves kind of drifting into loneliness and then observing where we have potentially isolated ourselves or see what that is kind of the danger zone of going from

feeling lonely to isolation, know, and even like you said, you know, getting to a point where we feel lonely and being ridiculed maybe means we're doing the right thing and we're being obedient into our calling and being able to manage the life of a leader. You know, kind of wrap it up with kind of practical ways of helping us, helping our viewers, our readers.

understand you know what are what are some practical ways to help prevent us from getting into the space of isolation you know for me the way I have found to help me one is develop better communication skills with those that I love most and trust most like yeah like you know learning that hey I can talk to my wife about this and she

She wants me to talk to her about these things. And it's something I'm still working on. the more as we find ourselves outside of the military or in a job in the military that maybe we're home. Like for me, I've been operational for 24 years and now I'm in a job where I'm not operational and I'm almost working banker hours and I'm home in the morning.

Ben Hunter (31:29.434)
You know for breakfast and I'm home at by five o'clock for dinner and my wife and I are and we're almost pretty much empty nesters. So now my wife and I are looking at each other like How do we talk? How do we communicate? What is this married life thing? Like, you know Yeah We've married for 22 years. We were just now figuring it out Because i've been gone so much and she's just been doing everything But you know one identify that your spouse your partner your helper as the bible calls it

Jordan Ames (31:41.803)
Who are you? Why are you here so much?

Ben Hunter (31:59.427)
is there for a reason. God created woman for man as a helper to be there to walk through it with you. So that's one way for me and I'm still learning that one. Another way for me too is really setting up my day with quiet time with God. that reading the Bible, there's no substitution. And I used to think there was, but there is no substitution. know, don't get me wrong, our book

Jordan Ames (32:21.289)
Now.

Ben Hunter (32:28.261)
And devotionals are good, but nothing substitutes the breath of God and the Bible. And so for me, it's coming into that habit and that rhythm of quiet time with God, reading my Bible, underlining verses that really speak to me, talking to God in quietness about what that verse

Jordan Ames (32:37.995)
Yeah.

Ben Hunter (32:56.112)
with that section of the Bible that I underline, what is it speaking to me, how can I apply that to my life, and just really the rhythm of quietness to hear God and know that I'm not in this alone has been hugely impactful for my life as a leader of an organization and a leader of my home. I don't know, is there anything there that you could share as far as ways that you've helped navigate?

Jordan Ames (33:07.563)
Thank

Ben Hunter (33:25.464)
loneliness and leadership.

Jordan Ames (33:28.55)
I'm thinking more of from you, Sharon, and the practical application, I'm thinking more of like preventing loneliness and leadership, which arguably those same things can help, you know, help you get out of the loneliness and leadership. one of the big things when I when I joined the Maxwell leadership team a few years ago, one of the first books I read and really

was very eye-opening and probably the biggest lesson that I learned in that first year was how important establishing a relational connection is before communicating. Whether that's communicating, vision. I think the last episode we mentioned how people buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. So there's that connection there before people are like, okay, I see where he's going.

I get it. I want to follow that direction. yeah, having the connection before we really communicate. And it was convicting for me because my, have three older boys communicating with them, I think has been easier than communicating with my daughters. And then I have four younger daughters and teenagers now. A couple of them are over 18, but.

Yeah, just that lesson of establishing a connection. And this past summer, I went out to a church conference with my church. I serve on the leadership board and part of my role was to attend this conference. And when we were out there, I learned this acronym that I never heard before, but man, it's so spot on. The acronym is BLESS. And at the church conference, it was

Jordan Ames (35:28.725)
they're using it as a way for evangelism, like reaching people outside the church. But it fits any sort of like just relationship building type of situation. So the B is begin with prayer. All right, pretty simple. Like you begin anything with prayer, anything you want to get into. But as we think of building a relationship, begin with prayer. And then the L is listen.

And then the E is eat, which is really like do life with them, like be a friend, do things together, share a meal, whatever. So again, this whole acronym process was based on evangelism, like sharing the gospel with somebody. Now, I personally think the church does a lot of like, you know, wanting to share the gospel, but there's no connection, right? They haven't actually made a relationship with somebody outside their laws.

Ben Hunter (36:18.299)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Ames (36:29.471)
We often tend to be like, I invited so and so to church. I'm inviting so and so to church. It's like, yeah, but is there a connection to where they actually want to go to church with you? But yeah, so begin with prayer, listen, eat, and then the first S is serve. But Jesus did that throughout the gospels. He just served people, sinners, whatever. He just served people. Somebody who was crying for a healing.

He broke away from the crowd and had some one-on-one time and healed them. But he just served. They didn't need to like accept him as the Messiah for him to heal them or do something to them, right? And then the last S after those first four steps, the last one is share. Like, so you go through all those before you even share the gospel. Before you even really, you know, it's almost like

Certainly there's verbal communication in the process, but you're almost on your part, your mouth is closed until that last step. You're praying, you're listening, you're eating, right? You're being a friend, you're doing things with them. You're serving, and it's only after all that the connection is made and now you're sharing them about Jesus. you know, communicating and in the team leadership.

construct communicating something. So I really love that and I think it fits right into what we've been talking about.

Ben Hunter (38:02.81)
That's good. That's good. Well, you know in closing and kind of reflecting on our conversation, know, I really think you know loneliness is a part of being a leader and If we're feeling lonely, doesn't necessarily mean that we're doing anything wrong And in fact, it may be confirming that we're carrying a lot of weight that God has meant for us to carry And you know, he has built us to be this leader to carry that weight

Um, but, uh, understanding that loneliness, unhealthy loneliness can, can get us into a dangerous place of isolation. And, and I think we've really, you know, uh, at least I hope we've helped our listeners, um, understand that there are ways, uh, to prevent. To get into isolation where, you know, really we need to learn how to pull in the people around us, our family, our spouse, um, our closest friends to.

Jordan Ames (38:41.578)
Yeah.

Ben Hunter (39:01.826)
you know, share life with and community. And then, you know, there are some actionable steps we can take to one, ensure that we're Christ-centered leadership, but really just, you know, God being with us and understanding that He is with us, He is sharing life with us. We just have to make the time to listen to Him, to read His Word and be

quiet and still so we can hear his presence and you know lead well in Christ-centered leadership. Well Jordan, this has been awesome brother. Number two in the books and so I'm looking forward to future episodes for everybody out there. We will put links in the below so you can order our book.

Jordan Ames (39:41.675)
Yeah, the books.

Ben Hunter (39:57.029)
or go to the Red Letter Leadership website where Jordan is doing some amazing stuff, webinars, leadership talks, things like that. Follow us on our social media, Instagram, LinkedIn. Let's connect. We'd love to hear questions. Tell us some topics. Maybe there's some readers out there that want us to talk about something that we spoke about in the book. We'd love to hear from the audience.

Jordan Ames (40:11.338)
Media.

Ben Hunter (40:27.029)
Ask questions, comment below, let us know what you want to hear. Let us know what you think about the podcast so we can continue to improve. We will promise you we'll be a learning organization and we will improve this based off of things that you guys want to hear and thoughts on the show. So we appreciate everybody. Jordan, I appreciate you, brother.

Jordan Ames (40:33.865)
Yeah.

Jordan Ames (40:48.555)
Appreciate you, Ben, for sure. Always good.

Ben Hunter (40:50.923)
Alright, we'll see everybody next time.

Leadership Can Feel Lonely

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