Surprise. Coming in 2027, I will be leading a small group at my church. We call them squads, and if you have been reading here for a while you know I have written about how to choose a Bible study and how to keep a group going. What I have not told you is that I have been on the other side of that table for a while now, and that somebody recently decided it was time for me to move seats.

I want to walk you through how it happened and what I am learning on the way in, because I think a lot of you are one conversation away from being asked to lead something, and nobody prepares you for how that actually feels.

Three squads, three leaders, three different rooms

Since I joined this church I have been in three squads. Each one gave me something different, and none of them looked alike. The leaders were different women with different personalities. The atmosphere was different. One felt like a living room, one felt like a classroom, one felt like a kitchen table where you could say the true thing. The way they structured the study was different too: how much was teaching, how much was discussion, how much room there was for silence.

At the time I thought I was just showing up on Tuesday nights. Looking back, God was giving me an education. I was watching three women lead, and I was quietly filing away what made a room feel safe and what made it feel like homework. That is the first thing I would tell anyone who thinks she might lead one day. Pay attention now. Every group you sit in is training you for the group you will hold.

She saw something before I said anything

My last leader is the one who changed things. About a month ago she came to me and said, plainly, that she wanted me to start my own squad. She saw something in me and she named it. I did not apply for this. I did not campaign for it. She just looked at me across a room I had been sitting in for months and said, I think this is yours.

I keep coming back to that, because I think a lot of us are waiting for a feeling of readiness that never comes. Readiness is usually someone who has walked the road seeing it in you first. Scripture is full of this. Moses argued with God about his own mouth. Jeremiah said he was too young. Timothy was told not to let anyone look down on him because of his age, which tells you he probably felt looked down on. The call almost always arrives before the confidence.

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms.1 Peter 4:10

It was not nervousness, it was something else

People assume the first feeling is nerves. Mine was not. What I felt was a kind of seriousness. I want to lead this right. Not perfectly, right. I have led things before. I built On The Healing Journey from a kitchen table and a stack of journals. I am a creative person, an ideas person, and I know what it looks like when I am fully myself in something. I wanted to be sure that the woman who shows up to lead that squad is that same woman, not a watered down version of me trying to sound like a leader.

So the question I have been praying over is not, can I do this. It is, how do I do this in a way that is faithful to God, faithful to my church, and faithful to how He made me. All three. Not two out of three.

Being trained by someone who already did the work

Here is the part I did not expect and am most grateful for. She did not just hand me a room and a start date. She has been preparing me. Training me. Walking me through what the next season will ask of me before I am standing in it. We are not starting until 2027, which means I have months of being poured into before I pour out.

If you are ever asked to lead and nobody offers to train you, ask. Find the woman who did it before you and sit with her. Let her tell you what went wrong in her first year. Let her tell you what she wishes somebody had told her. Leadership in the church was never meant to be a solo project. Paul had Barnabas before anyone had Paul. Timothy had Paul. You are allowed to have someone too.

Honoring the curriculum and still being me

My church gives squad leaders a curriculum. I was glad about that, because I want to be true to the Word and true to the direction the church is going. I am not interested in building my own thing inside somebody else's house. The curriculum is the guardrail, and guardrails are a gift.

But I also know that a curriculum on paper and a curriculum in a room are two different things. The paper does not decide whether women feel safe enough to answer the question. The paper does not decide whether the quiet one in the corner gets drawn in or left alone. That is the leader. That is where who I am gets to show up: in how I open the night, in the question I add that was not on the page, in the way I handle it when someone starts crying in the middle of verse twelve.

So my goal is both. Stay on the Word. Stay on the plan. And lead it like Autumn, because that is who God asked to lead it. If He wanted my last leader to run it, He would have kept her in the chair.

Leading while your own life is full

Now let me say the thing nobody says out loud. I am not stepping into this from a quiet, settled season. I am building a ministry. I serve with three nonprofits I want to show up well for. I am in school full time. I work full time. I am trying to be the best mother I can be. And I am in a long distance relationship, which comes with its own calendar and its own prayers.

So when she asked me, one of the first things I had to get honest about was this: am I taking on one more thing, or am I stepping into something God has been clearing room for? Those feel the same from the outside and they are completely different on the inside. One more thing is you saying yes because you cannot say no. Stepping in is you saying yes because the invitation came from God through a person who had no reason to flatter you.

I also had to let go of the idea that a leader is someone whose life is in order. Read the Bible again. The leaders in it are grieving, running, doubting, arguing, failing, and getting back up. You do not lead from a finished life. You lead from an honest one. The women in my squad do not need me to have it all together. They need me to be real about how I walk with God when I do not.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."2 Corinthians 12:9

What I am holding onto going in

Sit with this

Who has seen something in you that you have not said yes to yet? Write down what they said, as close to word for word as you can remember. Then write down the real reason you have been waiting. Pray over the gap between those two things this week.

If you are stepping into leadership of any kind while your own life is still full and still healing, The Becoming Girl workbook was written for exactly that woman. It is about walking into what God is calling you to without waiting to feel finished first. I am working through it again myself before January.

With you on the journey,
Autumn