True leadership—the kind that honors the living God—should look a lot like our National Parks. We need to be wide open to people showing up, stepping in, and actively participating in the wild terrain. The alternative is the modern, plastic church culture, which desperately wants you to be consumeristic, predictable, and entirely passive. They want you standing in lines, filling out multi-page liability waivers, and waiting and waiting and waiting to ride “safe” pre-programmed rides, and purchase their grossly overpriced concessions. But the Kingdom of God is not an amusement park. It isn’t governed by endless layers of bureaucracy and pedantic policies. It is an adventure wonderland. It is perilous, it is deadly, and it is good.

We want you hiking and climbing in the high, steep, perilous and beautiful places. Our strategy as leaders is to get out of your way; we refuse to fence you in or clip your wings in the name of risk management and liability. True leaders lead by happily, joyfully LETTING you take risks. We aren’t here to sell you conventional religious concessions; we expect you to pack your own lunch, bring your own grit, and let us joyfully guide you into the wilderness. We don’t police your faith or prescribe a rigid, one-size-fits-all route that you must climb. We simply warn you of the genuine risks, point out the crags, and then step aside so you can take on the beautiful burden of responsibility for the path you joyfully choose. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:24, we don’t lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy. And we expect you to let us lead you in this low-profile, hands-off way so that we can do it with genuine joy (Hebrews 13:17), not with a heavy sigh, which would sour the spirit of adventure.

If you come to the leadership and say, “Build it for us! Organize a program for us!” we will look at you and say, “Y’all blaze and build it for yourselves.” It’s exactly what Joshua told the house of Joseph in the seventeenth chapter of his book when they complained about not having enough room: the hill country shall be yours, for though it is a forest, you shall clear it and possess it to its farthest borders. For you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have chariots of iron, and though they are strong. We will make sure the park is open, and we will do the heavy lifting to ensure the main trails are blazed and clear enough to find. But we expect you to pioneer. We want to be like the Yosemite park rangers who stood back and watched in awe as Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson spent years establishing a completely new route on the sheer face of the Dawn Wall.

And that brings up the big point: leaders must lead by joyfully acknowledging that the absolute best kingdom initiatives will not be the result of officially ordained, appointed, and installed “park rangers.” Some of the most stunning routes will be established by people who do not receive a paycheck from the institution. We are entirely, unapologetically hardcore about not being hardcore bureaucrats, policy makers, or gatekeepers. We harbor a heavy-duty commitment to letting you run hard after what God puts on your heart. We aren’t going to waste time sanctioning, monitoring, and micromanaging.

Our leadership exists to let you take risks, take initiative, take chances, exert raw energy, and feel the burn for yourselves. You have to feel the weight of responsibility, which means giving up the modern urge to find people to blame when things get messy or painful. Like park rangers, the best leaders are mostly unseen, unglamorous, and uncelebrated. We don’t exist to be elevated on a pedestal or esteemed by institutional norms. Our job is simply to keep the gates open, transparently lay out the risks, and look you in the eye to sincerely encourage you to take those risks. That is where you experience true freedom, childlike wonder, and real adventure. We will offer a measure of meaningful safety, but we are not going to sweat liability or freak out about being blamed if tragedy strikes. We are not primarily promoting safety, we are promoting goodness.