#3- Take risks.

I cannot tell you how many directors I’ve seen in the past year who are paralyzed. For different reasons, they’re frozen. They don’t know if the board is going to dislike something they choose to do. If they do like it, they may want more of it, so the director is fearful of more work, fearful of success. Often, the concern is, “What are my volunteers going to think?” I think the enemy is just smiling and laughing and having a heyday. “I can’t get them off mission, but I can get them to pull over on the side of the road and sit there.” My advice? Just do something.

A pastor friend of mine in California had an invitation to be the executive director of the Northwest Baptist Convention—Washington state, Oregon, and California. He was trying to decide if he should stay at the church and continue pastoring or accept the invitation. A week went by, and he’d written down the pros and cons of each one. That didn’t work, because they were about even on each side. He’d gone back and forth about it until one night his wife looked at him and said, “Just do something.”

If we’re seeking after God and trying to do the right thing, do we really think God’s going to come down and zap us into pillars of salt because we stepped out and risked something? Leaders risk. Here’s the deal: sometimes we’re going to make mistakes. It’s okay, as long as we learn from them. But take risks. Ray Dalio says, “Create a culture in which it is okay to make mistakes and unacceptable not to learn from them.” Our non-profit will never grow until we are willing to take risks as leaders. It’s never going to grow. We’re just going to sit there. And while we sit there trying to figure out what we’re going to do, the donor dollars are just being spent. Be willing to take a risk. Albert Einstein said, “A ship is safest at the shore. That’s not what it was built for.” So, get out on the water. Pray, seek God, then step out in response.