Humility and Forgiveness as a Leaders - Ellen Dykas

Leadership invites a particular kind of wounding. A friend who turns her pain into accusations. A colleague who breaks your confidence. A congregation that critiques you in ways you can never fully respond to. A mentor who abuses their power. Ministry doesn't protect you from being sinned against — it often puts you directly in the path of it. And then Scripture asks you to forgive.

In this recorded teaching, Ellen Dykas — director of equipping at Harvest USA and 18-year veteran of ministry to women in some of the most painful relational circumstances imaginable — opens up the biblical anatomy of forgiveness specifically for women in leadership. She shares her own recent, still-unfolding story of being wounded by a close friend inside her church community, and walks through what it actually looked like to forgive faithfully without pretending it didn't hurt.

Drawing on Tim Keller's framework and Ken Sande's Peacemaker, Ellen unpacks three movements at the heart of forgiving well:

• Identify with the wrongdoer — forgiveness breaks down when we exclude the offender from the community of humans and ourselves from the community of sinners; identifying with Christ means identifying with both
• Inwardly pay the debt — releasing the offense to Jesus as an act of faith, refusing to weaponize it, and making specific commitments about how you'll carry it forward with God's help
• Overcome evil with good — not letting sin have the last word; prayer, movement toward the person, and genuine care are all forms of the gospel having the final say

The session also includes a rich Q&A on: how to receive criticism without letting it either feed your ego or poison your soul, when to confront versus when to overlook, how to distinguish being sinned against from simply being disappointed, the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation and restoration, what to do when you genuinely cannot pray for the person who hurt you, and how to walk someone toward forgiveness without minimizing their pain.