The Hidden Training Ground: The Young Leaders Chair

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There’s a chair in leadership that gets overlooked. It’s not the seat a pastor holds, or the chair people imagine when they think of influence or authority. It’s the seat that most leaders must sit in long before anyone else recognizes them. It’s the young leader’s chair.

This chair is not a waiting room. It’s a training ground. It's a place where there is always something to prove, where ideas must be defended before they’re spoken—where people don't hear your words, they only hear your age.

Words in this chair land like quiet evaluations.

Skepticism. Tests. Dismissal. Conditional encouragement.

Words to a young leader often land in extremes: they either fill them up and equip them, or they knock them down. Encouragement sounds different here—sometimes genuine, sometimes cautious, as if people are still deciding what they believe about you. Correction sounds different too. Though you try to receive it humbly, it can feel like proof people expected you to fail. Advice can feel like doubt, reinforcing the need to prove that you belong before you’re allowed to fully lead.

But that’s just from the outside.

Inside, there’s a quieter pressure, the constant nagging questions: Should I even be here at all? Why would they follow someone younger than them? While the outside voices can be loud, the loudest one for a young leader is their own voice. That voice sounds like self-doubt, the fear of not being taken seriously, and worst of all—did God really call me to this?

While people evaluate you, and you battle your own voice, Jesus is refining you.

The Training Ground

The tension of the young leader’s chair isn’t new. When Jesus stepped into his ministry, he faced questions and doubts. People didn’t just question his teaching—they questioned who they thought he was.

They dismissed him and all of his teachings, miracles, and service—forgotten in favor of the label they had already given him.

Questions aren’t proof God’s calling is wrong. It just means his plan won’t always make sense at first.

During my time in this chair, I wrestled with how to lead. I stepped in to lead a program at our church that mentored young moms, to walk alongside them through motherhood. I struggled with being the director because I was in the same season—a young mom with kids the same age! I didn’t have it figured out (and I still don’t!) What made me worth listening to? My kids would still act out. I was struggling as a mom. I was leading women older than me. Why would they seek guidance from someone almost half their age?

I pushed the questions aside and submitted. Okay, Lord, I’ll do it. I dove in headfirst with everything I had. I stepped in with big dreams for the ministry. It was going to be amazing, and I was going to be amazing. I wanted to prove young leaders can lead well. I believed everything would flourish through strong leadership and careful planning.

Oof. I was dead wrong.

Things did not unfold the way I expected. The weight of leadership felt heavier than I had anticipated, and the results I imagined didn’t come as quickly or as easily as I thought they would.

Everything fell apart.

I was devastated. I felt like a failure; I let my church down, these moms down, and I let God down. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Turns out I had forgotten a key ingredient when stepping into leadership.

I forgot to include God.

I had plans, ideas, vision, and expectations for how everything would unfold. But somewhere along the way I began carrying the responsibility as if it depended entirely on me.

In this unraveling, God gently brought me back to John 15:5: “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”

Not less, not a little, nothing.

I stepped into leadership believing I needed to prove myself to others, when all along I was supposed to stay connected to him. It was about God—the ground where he shapes leaders. He was forming me, quietly revealing the places I fell short—places only he could fill. That’s where the hidden seasons begin—the times marked by doubt, false confidence, and pride. It’s in these spaces that God strips away the parts of leadership built on approval, recognition, or the need to prove ourselves. What replaces them is far sturdier: confidence that is not rooted in praise, but in obedience. I wanted to prove I wasn’t too young and that I could lead well, changing lives the way Jesus changed mine.

News flash: only Jesus can do that.

As much as I loved those young moms and longed to see them flourish, the Lord made it clear that my season there was over. Obedience meant letting go, even when I didn’t want to or didn’t fully understand why.

Reflecting on this, I don’t feel angry. I feel joyful that God loved me enough to let me fall and pick me back up again. He reminded me that my part was only ever the part he had planned for me to play. Months later, I saw the fruit of that season. One of the young moms from the program gave her life to Christ. The seed had been planted, and that alone was worth it all.

I learned something I hadn’t understood before: the only voice that can define your calling is God’s. I was called to lead, but not in the way I expected. My role wasn’t to build something that depended on me, but to help connect these moms with other ministries that could walk with them in the season ahead.

For so long I felt the weight of needing to prove myself. But it turns out I never had anything to prove. My responsibility was simply to remain obedient and faithful to God and trust him to do the rest.

Trusting in God

If you have sat in another leader’s chair for a while, you may have forgotten the burn of this one. But the chairs you once sat in are still filled with people learning to lead under quiet scrutiny—what the seat feels like before recognition, where leaders are tested long before anyone notices.

The young leaders sitting there today are learning in ways only experience can teach. Sometimes the encouragement that lands hardest isn’t teaching them—it’s the quiet genuine words that say, I see you. I believe in you. That’s what helped ease the sting of the chair for me.

If you find yourself in the chair now, take heart and endure the pressure. This season is only temporary. Hidden growth is not wasted to God, even when we don’t fully understand it yet. Sometimes we never will. Refinement is uncomfortable and takes time—it will happen daily.

This chair is where confidence and doubt sit side by side, but it is also where leaders are forged long before anyone recognizes them as one. The young leader’s chair might feel hidden, but while others are still deciding what they think of you, God is already forming the leader he has called you to be.