Stanish, the Executive Director of Christians Friends of New Americans (CFNA) and husband and father of three, sat around a training table with fellow ministry leaders during the PLI Leadership Collective training in St Louis. He spoke candidly about the challenges of life and ministry.

“There are demands. You are busy. We all are.”

He explained how Beena, his wife, is swamped with her profession in healthcare. His daughters are busy with their education. The whole family feels stretched—finding quality time to connect and enjoy one another is challenging. 

Life is full for Stanish at work, too. “I’ve got to do all these things just to keep everything going. I’ve been caught up in that for quite a few years now. When you work with refugees and immigrants, the needs are so high that you tend to think that if you are not there, it can be a problem. You get fatigued by it, and you are always constantly called.”

You see, Stanish is an immigrant, too. He was raised in a Christian home in Mumbai, India. As a pastor’s son, he had no desire to become a pastor himself. But God had different plans. After studying for his degree and serving as a pastor in India, Stanish moved to the United States with his wife and daughter to further his education. He knows the hurdles refugees and immigrants face. 

As a pastor, Stanish knows the challenges ministry leaders face, too.

His time with other local ministry leaders and their spouses this August during PLI training helped Stanish see that he isn’t facing those challenges alone.  

“When a ministry appears good and strong, I get the impression that everything is easy for [those leaders], which is not true at all,” Stanish reflected. “Then I sit with them through a leadership cohort like this and they share their burdens and struggles—their challenges—and I realize it’s just a different picture. And so to be affirmed in this common ministry together, to realize that we are all in this together is something.”

Experiencing this sense of community brought Stanish joy. “It’s a feeling of relief…of being blessed in ministry presence together. It’s a feeling of affirmation in many ways that it’s not only [me] who is going through this phase of struggle.“

The challenges Stanish identified are echoed by ministry leaders around the world. 

We are Part of God’s Story

“We are so busy that we don’t realize we are part of something much, much, much greater, much bigger. We are part of a story that God tells through us.” Stanish paused and then continued on, “It’s not that we don’t know about it, but sometimes we forget it in the middle of ministry or in the middle of all the things that we are doing.”

Training alongside other leaders through PLI helped Stanish regain focus on the mission of God. This shift helped put the day-to-day challenges in perspective as he rediscovered the joy of being part of God’s story.

“One of the big gifts that came with attending the [St. Louis Leadership] Collective was the opportunity to sit back and reflect and see how God is in all of this and using us in all of this,” Stanish shared. “To be reminded of the larger picture. It is not our mission, but rather the Lord’s mission that we get to be a part of and how the Lord is shaping us as leaders in that context.”