From the outside looking in, Amy Stork had all the facets of a good leader. Working in Christian education and camping ministry, she was passionate about people, driven by purpose and deeply invested in helping others grow. As Assistant Director at Scripture Union Australia’s Camp Coolamatong, Amy was leading teams, mentoring young adults and navigating the intensity of living and working in a close community.
Despite these progressions in leadership and notable achievements, Amy describes a quiet ‘unsettledness’ nudging at her persistently.
“I would have said I was unsettled,” Amy reflects. “I thought maybe God was shifting me or calling me to something else.”
Amy had always been inquisitive, striving to understand how things work and why. Eventually this mindset started filtering into her leadership through asking questions about how people work, how leadership worked and how God was working. Beneath this desire to understand Amy started to experience an internal restlessness.
“When you’re wired to understand how and why things work, it can actually create in you an unsettledness,” Amy shared.
At the time, Amy assumed that tension meant she needed a new opportunity or a different leadership path. Instead, what she would eventually discover through Arrow Leadership was something much deeper: she didn’t need a different role, she needed peace.
A Desire for More
Before joining Arrow’s Executive Leaders Program, Amy already valued emotional intelligence and intentional leadership development. She had experienced the impact of mentoring and leadership investment as a young adult and was passionate about helping people flourish. But leadership in ministry had also stretched her.
Living and working in a campsite community meant leadership was constant. There was little separation between work, relationships and responsibility. Amy describes it as an “intense and fast” learning environment.
She knew she wanted to grow, but Amy wasn’t looking for management strategies or leadership formulas. What drew her to Arrow was its focus on personal formation.
“I was really excited about the personal and practical nature of applying the learning,” Amy remembers.
Alongside a colleague from Scripture Union Australia, Amy stepped into the program hoping to better understand leadership, herself and the way God was shaping both.
What she didn’t expect was how deeply Arrow would challenge the posture she was leading from.
A Place for “Contented Dreaming”
One of the most transformational concepts Amy encountered during Arrow came through the book Leading from the Second Chair. The idea was simple but confronting: leaders are called to hold vision and contentment at the same time.
“For me, a phrase that kept coming back was: what does contented dreaming look like?” Amy says.
She realised much of her internal tension had come from believing that frustration with her circumstances must mean God was calling her elsewhere.
“But actually having to surrender peace to Him changed everything.” she says.
Through exercises such as mapping her life timeline, and developing a Personal Vision Statement, Amy began to see God’s faithfulness woven through every season of her story. She recognised the people God had placed around her in moments of challenge and the consistency of His guidance through each stage of leadership.
Those reflection exercises became a turning point, aligning Amy even more in God’s faithfulness and helping her to gain clarity about what she needed most.
God’s peace.
“The Bible refers repeatedly to us receiving God’s peace, rather than labouring for it,” Amy says. “To experience this gift is phenomenal.”
Rather than constantly striving to figure out the next step, Arrow taught Amy to continually reorient herself toward God and learn to trust His timing.
That shift transformed not only the way she saw leadership, but the way she saw herself.
The Impact of Leadership Formation
Amy is passionate about seeing leaders use their gifts to shape those around them. That is why she believes the investment made into leaders through Arrow multiplies far beyond a single individual.
“If we’re seeking for God’s church to be shared to all ends of the earth, we need change that is Spirit-led. We need people to step up in a Godly leadership space, not just a management space. Organisations and opportunities like Arrow Leadership are showing they’re willing to see change happen.”
What’s clear for Amy is that an investment into Arrow leaders is an investment in the shaping of churches, schools, ministries, workplaces and families.
To those still wondering whether leadership formation is really worth investing in financially, Amy can only say a resounding yes.
“We put our money where our heart is. So if our desire is for people to honour God through the way that they’re leading, then giving them the opportunity to explore that in a structured, deliberate, and relational way means that more people will be impacted in different areas.”
If you would like to give a gift this End of Financial Year that will help shape the next generation of Christian leaders, visit our website and invest in Christian leadership.
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