It’s very common for pioneer founders to hang on to the reins of a project or company beyond our sphere of competence.  Since our first Habits pilot course in 2008, we have taken well over 100 people through it.  While I was away on sabbatical, the team launched courses in Central London and Central Birmingham aimed at people in the workplace, and on my return we began another in Yardley Wood Baptist Church.  We are on the verge of getting the course accredited by the Institute of Leadership and Management, and we are developing a more rigorous process for training new facilitators and mentors.  It’s been a blessing to be able to hand over operational leadership to Sarah Patel, a young leader on my team, who is now responsible for everything in the diagram below, and the job of quality control and support of course leaders to Judith Miller, an experienced leader, teacher trainer and business consultant.  Both these women are far more competent than I at “getting things done”,  It’s a blessing to have such committed, skilled and insightful people helping to release me from a level of operations for which I am not best suited, along with a whole team of people already working to make Habits of the Heart the best it can be.  My own working title for now is “spiritual leader”, and will focus on guarding the ethos and values, thinking prophetically about the future, mentoring the staff and developing new connections.  I quite like this title, because one of the things I feel passionate about is helping people in senior leadership in business and education to perceive themselves – and work out their vocation as – spiritual leaders.  Giving up control is not always easy, but it seems to me that Jesus did this sort of thing all the time.