Leah sat in her first leadership meeting as General Manager wondering if everyone else could see it too.
She was overwhelmed by a mounting sense of pressure and uncertainty, feeling increasingly out of her depth.
After more than a decade serving at Youth Dimensions, she already knew how to work hard, care deeply for people and carry responsibility. What she didn’t know was how to carry leadership without it carrying her.
The organisation was navigating significant change. A long-standing founder had retired. The ministry was facing cultural shifts and increasing challenges in school ministry. Volunteer numbers were declining. Staff were uncertain about the future. Leah suddenly found herself leading many of the very people who had once mentored her. Adding to the tension was the reality that the organisation’s CEO was also new to leadership. Leah respected him deeply and cared for him personally, but she could sense the strain of an organisation trying to find stability while both leaders were still learning how to carry the weight of their roles.
Team members started looking to Leah for reassurance and direction, quietly wondering whether leadership knew how to navigate the challenges ahead. “I felt like I was this piggy in the middle,” Leah reflects. It was at that moment that Leah herself came to the growing awareness that she didn’t have all the skills she needed either.
Recognising Static Leadership Tendencies
Up until that point, Leah describes herself as an instinctive and pastoral leader. She loved people and naturally inspired vision, but she recognised there were major gaps in her leadership toolkit. Strategy felt unfamiliar and conflict made her uncomfortable. The more responsibility she carried, the more she realised that instinct and passion alone were not enough to sustain healthy leadership.
Beyond her own internal realisations, Leah’s perspective shifted during a meeting with an external consultant, where she observed a clear contrast between leaders who remained static and those committed to growth. Observing the way the consultant led, she began to see the tangible results of professional evolution. “I remember looking at her and thinking, ‘Oh… you can be that,’” Leah recalls. “There is a certain level of training where you can become the person in the room helping people gain clarity about where they want to go and who they want to be.”
The experience exposed something Leah had already been feeling. If she was going to address the leadership challenges in front of her, it required far more than the instinctual leadership framework she operated from.
“I want to make sure I honour this new role God has entrusted to me,” she explains, reflecting on her decision to grow. “It’s time to level up my skills.”
God used this shifting mindset and Leah’s newfound outlook as a catalyst, prompting her to investigate a different approach to her leadership journey.
An Investment For God’s Kingdom
When her friend Michelle first mentioned Arrow, Leah hesitated. Michelle’s conviction was compelling. But the practical reality was hard to ignore.
Leah and her husband had long ago traded the promise of lucrative careers for ministry, and money was tight. Beyond the financial strain, the thought of leaving her young children for three residential retreats felt genuinely hard
Yet, in the midst of this tug-of-war, a voice of unexpected grace broke through. Cath Tallack, from the Arrow team, didn’t just offer an invitation; she offered a bridge. As Leah remembers, “Arrow made it clear I was more than welcome, and in fact, they would accommodate me further because I was a mother and a woman in leadership.”
The memory of that moment still lingers for Leah, the sense of being seen and supported. In the flexibility offered to her, she found a newfound strength. “Cath’s confidence gave me courage,” she recalls, “to say, ‘I can find a way to make this work.’”
When she first stepped through the doors of Arrow, Leah’s goals were practical, her eyes set on the mechanics of leadership: strategy, organisational direction, and the gears of complex systems. But as the days unfolded, she discovered that the program held far more than just a curriculum. It became a safe space where God began a powerful work in helping her critically look at her strengths and weaknesses. “It felt like God was smacking me around the head about areas in my leadership that needed improvement.”
As she continued to immerse herself in the residential sessions, Leah began to reflect on the frustrations she was experiencing as a General Manager. She was struggling to understand the decisions senior leadership were making at Youth Dimension and growing uncertain about her future. This tension forced her to confront a personal weakness that was driving her frustration – the realisation that her default setting was “thinking I am always right” and a lack of compassion for those who had come before her.
Later, in the session on integrity, the internal noise of Leah’s frustrations began to settle, replaced by a gentle truth from God. While she had always strived for honesty, she realised that true integrity reached deeper into the hidden corners of her heart. She was confronted by the sobering reality that her constant striving was, in fact, a symptom of a lack of confidence in Jesus. “It was a profoundly humbling realisation,” she reflects. “I understood then that I am not the saviour of my organisation. I am simply there to be who God wants me to be. By His grace, I have been given this position, and my task isn’t to be more or do more on my own strength, it’s simply to be diligent with the work He has placed in my hands.”
This conviction became the foundation of Leah’s two-year journey with Arrow. Leah started to learn a different model of leadership, one that was shaped by trusting in God’s plans.
Serving in Leadership
Today, Leah stands in the lush expanse of Victoria’s Yarra Valley as the Site Manager at CYC Adanac, overseeing a team of thirty. But her leadership is now characterised by a rhythm much deeper than mere management.
It was at Arrow where Leah first traded the noise of traditional “work retreats” for the unsettling beauty of intentional silence. She recalls the shift from surface-level conversations to a complete digital fast.
Through the wisdom of mentors and challenging encouragement of her Arrow cohort, what was once a tiny spark of desire became a roaring conviction. Her peers didn’t just listen, they pushed her to act, asking her why she hadn’t yet stepped into her calling.
Fueled by this newfound confidence, Leah reached out to CYC with a bold request to help her create a space for Christian women leaders to engage in silence, solitude, and spiritual formation.
The rhythms and spiritual practices Leah first encountered at Arrow, bolstered by the insights of Ruth Haley Barton’s book Sacred Rhythms, have become the foundations of her current retreats. Today, she passes on these transformative disciplines to other leaders, helping them find spiritual formation through Christ-centered leadership.
“I truly believe any team or organisation rises and falls on the health of the leader,” Leah says. “Leadership formation isn’t optional if you want to lead for the long haul.”
After Arrow, Leah began to see that leadership under God requires deep humility and trust in His provision. Today, she leads with a newfound freedom, no longer feeling the stress to be perfect but instead focusing on facilitating the wisdom of her team.
“The health of a leader is so much more than the ability to write a vision statement and understand strategy or how to execute a budget,” she explains. “Arrow highlighted that if the foundations are rotten, the rest just falls apart… if you and God are not okay, if you in yourself are not okay… it’s eventually all going to fall apart and the ripple effects can be massive.”
It’s why Leah believes the Arrow program matters so deeply for God’s ministries across all sectors and communities.
The impact of Arrow’s formation in Leah’s life continues to ripple outward. Today, she invests in the 30 staff members at CYC who collectively serve 12,000 young people every year. Through “Retreats With Leah” she mentors 100+ women leaders, empowering them to go and form others in their own spheres. A single donor’s investment in Arrow has translated into an exponential impact for God’s Kingdom.
Your gift forms leaders like Leah, who then form teams, who then serve thousands, who carry that formation into the next generation. One investment → exponential multiplication.
This EOFY, join us as we form the next Leah.
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