Holding complexities: A reflection on Academic Leadership and Ministry- Rev Dr Paulet brown-Wilsher

There is a particular kind of weight carried by those who lead within institutions and serve within spiritual traditions. In my own life, these two worlds university leadership and ordained ministry have not remained neatly distinct, but have informed and complicated one another in ways that are both challenging and generative.

Academic leadership often demands clarity, decisiveness, and a steady hand in the midst of change. We are called upon to balance multiple priorities: student experience, policy compliance, curriculum design, staff development, and the shifting expectations of senior management. We hold the emotional labour of colleagues, respond to the pressures of league tables and audits, and navigate organisational structures that are rarely as linear as they seem on paper.

Ministry, by contrast or perhaps in parallel calls me into a different kind of attentiveness. Here, the pace is slower, the conversations more pastoral, the leadership less hierarchical. In ministry, one is formed through presence, through listening, through silence. There is rarely a quick solution or a performance metric for spiritual accompaniment.

And yet, the two vocations intersect. Both require the capacity to hold space for others without rushing to closure. Both demand ethical clarity, emotional resilience, and the courage to stand in ambiguity. And both, crucially, are grounded in relationship.

What I have learned over the years is that leadership in either sphere is not about having all the answers, but about remaining present in the midst of complexity. This is not a passive stance. It is an active, discerning posture: one that allows complexity to be named, rather than denied; to be carried, rather than controlled.

In academia, this might mean acknowledging the tensions between care and compliance, or between innovation and tradition. In ministry, it might mean sitting with the unresolved questions of suffering, hope, or spiritual fatigue. In both cases, the work is to remain attentive to resist the temptation to simplify or retreat, and instead to lead from a place of grounded integrity.

Coaching, for me, is one of the few spaces where this kind of complexity can be explored safely. It offers a holding environment, a reflective container where one can speak honestly, think deeply, and listen inwardly. It is not therapy, nor is it supervision. It is a shared practice of presence. It is, in its essence, a ministry of attention.

As someone who straddles the worlds of strategic planning and sacred ministry, I have come to believe that complexity is not something to be solved, but something to be stewarded. And in that stewardship whether in an office, a church, or a coaching session there lies the quiet possibility of change, not through force, but through reflection, alignment, and choice.