It is January 1st, 2020.
Kurt Bush and his family have just moved across the state to a town where they do not know anyone. He is an associate pastor, and he is there to launch a second campus of a church in a building where the previous church had just died.
It is a massive undertaking.
And then, the pandemic hits.
Suddenly, Kurt is not just planting a church. He is navigating a global crisis, political division, and a congregation full of fear. He is helping his leaders manage their own anxiety so they can still show up and lead when the world feels like it is on fire.
It is the hardest season of his career.
But by 2023, the culture he was building had taken hold. The leaders were healthy. They knew how to coach themselves. The crisis was over, and the church was ready to drive forward.
And that is when Kurt realized something that most leaders never have the courage to admit.
He did not want to drive it forward.
He realized his actual gift—the thing God had wired him to do—was not running an organization. It was coaching leaders through the hardest moments of their careers. And when the culture he had built was finally healthy enough to run without him, he made the decision to step away.
Not because anything went wrong.
Because his work there was done.
That is the story Kurt told me when I asked him about his transition from pastoral ministry to co-founding Brimstone Coaching Group. And it is a story that challenges almost every mental model we have about leadership, success, and calling.
But let me back up.
The Grief of a Good Departure
When you step away from a role that is failing, people understand.
When you step away from a role that is thriving, people get suspicious.
Kurt told me that when he announced his departure, the questions started immediately. Did the church do something wrong? What did the church do to you?
When he told them the truth—that the church had done nothing wrong, that he loved the staff, and that he was simply stepping into the next season God had for him—a lot of people did not believe him.
We have this mental model that a good leader is everything to everyone at all times. We believe that if you are good at something, you are supposed to stay there forever. But Kurt recognized that the skills required to build a culture and navigate a crisis are entirely different from the skills required to run an established organization.
"There is something beautiful about being able to say, 'My work here is done. And now, if I hang on, it's going to make things worse.'"
Sometimes the most loving, kind, aligned thing you can do is step away.
I know this firsthand. When I left clinical practice and stepped away from being a nursing professor, people did not understand. They looked at my skills and my talents and asked if I was sure I wanted to walk away from all of that.
But just because you are good at something does not mean it is the thing that fully lights you up. Just because you have the capacity to do it does not mean it is the assignment God has for you in this season.
And yes, there is grief in that.
You can know with absolute certainty that you are walking in God's will, and you can still grieve the people, the place, and the season you are leaving behind. Both of those things can be true.
Holding the Beach Ball Underwater
When Kurt started coaching leaders full-time, he noticed a pattern.
Pastors, nonprofit directors, and executives were coming to him completely depleted. They looked successful on the outside, but they were exhausted, stuck, and snapping at their families when they got home.
Kurt uses an analogy for this that I absolutely love: the beach ball.
Imagine trying to hold a beach ball underwater in a pool. You can do it for a little while. But it takes a massive amount of work. And the deeper you try to hold it, the harder it is to control. Eventually, that beach ball is going to rush to the surface and splash everyone around you.
That is what happens when we try to suppress our stress, our anger, our sadness, or our burnout.
We push it down because we think a "good" leader or a "good" Christian is not supposed to feel those things. We hold the beach ball underwater until we literally cannot hold it anymore.
And when it finally slips? That is when you see the catastrophic moral failures. That is when the pastor walks away from the pulpit, or the CEO burns their life down.
Nobody wakes up and decides to have a catastrophic life failure. That is just the beach ball coming out.
The Exiles in the Basement
In trauma work, we talk about this using a different analogy.
Imagine you have a house.
Inside that house, there are parts of you that you do not want to look at—the parts that hold your pain, your fear, your anger, or your shame. We call those parts the exiles.
What most of us do is take those exiles, put them in the basement, chain them to the wall, and lock the door.
We pretend they do not exist.
But those exiles are part of you. They want to be connected to you. And eventually, they are going to break out of the basement and light the couch on fire.
The answer is not to build a stronger door.
The answer is to bring the exiles upstairs, sit them on the couch, hand them a glass of lemonade, and listen to them.
Kurt experienced this himself in 2022. He was angry at God. He was sad. And every part of his training told him that a "good" pastor does not feel angry or sad. But a mentor finally asked him: Have you allowed yourself to feel it?
When he finally let those parts out of the basement, the situation did not magically get easier the next day. But something else happened.
He had preached for years that God is our Comforter. But he had never actually allowed himself to be comforted.
When you finally let the exiles sit on the couch, you give God the opportunity to show up as the Comforter He actually is.
Why We Hate "Two Things Are True"
If there is one theme that ran through my entire conversation with Kurt, it is this: two things are true.
It can be true that a church is wonderful, and it can be true that it is time for you to leave.
It can be true that you love God, and it can be true that you are angry at what is happening.
It can be true that a situation is terrible, and it can be true that God will use it for His good.
We resist this. We want absolute certainty. We want to encamp ourselves in one position and cast off the rest.
Why?
Because if two things are true, it makes it a lot harder to play God.
If two things are true, we have to remain curious. We have to admit that we do not have the full picture.
We have to surrender our need for control and trust the One who actually holds it all together.
What Kurt's Story Is Really About
Kurt Bush went to seminary late in life.
He took his first call as an associate pastor.
He moved his family across the state to plant a church.
He navigated that church through a global pandemic.
He built a healthy culture.
And then, he walked away.
He walked away because he knew the difference between what he was capable of doing and what God was actually calling him to do.
So now, as always, I invite you to consider 2 questions—
- What is the "good" thing you are holding onto right now simply because you are capable of doing it, even though you know your season there is done?
- What is the calling that God has been whispering to you that you have not had the courage to step into (yet)?
Always Rooting for You,
Dr. Lee
P.S. You can learn more about Kurt's work at Brimstone Coaching Group at brimstonecoachinggroup.com or listen to his podcast, Live Fully, Lead Authentically.
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