Worship in our garage, Altamira, June 17, 1996. Each Sunday, we pushed our truck outside, swept away the red mud, set up homemade benches, and welcomed people in. This is where the first Altamira Vineyard church began gathering.
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If I Had Known How Good It Would Turn Out
During our first year as missionaries in Brazil, our leader died. He was our friend and our connection to the mission. Then suddenly, he was gone.
There was no clear Plan B.
A leadership team emerged, but I often felt overlooked. I was trying to care for our young family, learn a new culture, and understand the calling that had brought us to Brazil.
I wanted direction, encouragement, and someone to notice. When that did not happen, I became deeply frustrated.
Looking back, I can see that those leaders were grieving too. They were improvising, carrying pressures I did not understand, and making imperfect decisions with incomplete information.
They had their limitations. I had mine. Thankfully, they were patient with me, and I kept showing up. By the grace of God, we found our way forward.
Recently, we celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the first Vineyard church planted in Altamira. It is now a thriving city church, forming leaders, planting churches, and serving the surrounding region.
Had I been able to see that future, I wonder how differently I might have carried my frustration.
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Thirty years later, Altamira Central Vineyard is a thriving city church, forming leaders, planting churches, and serving the surrounding region.
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The Pattern Repeats
That was not the last time I felt overlooked, misunderstood, or unfairly treated.
Sometimes I was disappointed by leaders. Later, as a mission leader, I became the person who disappointed others. Missionaries came from Canada, the United States, and Brazil to work alongside us. Some felt they did not receive the attention, clarity, or support they needed from me. Sometimes I forgot something important. At other times, I was carrying several urgent responsibilities and making imperfect choices.
From their perspective, my actions may have felt personal. From mine, they were part of a much larger picture.
That humbled me.
Pain may be real while our interpretation of another person’s motives remains incomplete.
Some experiences have become testimonies. Others are still tender. But I have come to believe that some leadership wounds may become invitations—not to deny harm, tolerate abuse, or restore trust without repentance, but to grow into a higher form of leadership.
Some wounds do more than test us. They reveal what kind of leaders we are becoming.
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Deanna with Elk beside a wall of testimonies celebrating thirty years of God’s faithfulness and the multitude of people who helped the movement grow. Elk and her husband, Athila, are the senior pastors of the Altamira Central Vineyard.
Rescue Me—Into Your Hands
Psalm 31 is a meditation on this kind of vulnerable leadership.
David feels trapped. A net has been secretly laid for him. People speak against him. His strength is failing, and even his friends avoid him. He names the danger and asks God to intervene:
“You will pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me, for You are my strength.”
Trusting God does not mean that we stop asking for protection. We may need to speak clearly, seek help, establish boundaries, or step away from danger.
But when wounded, we instinctively look for refuge somewhere. Sometimes we retaliate. More often, our refuges appear respectable: emotional cutoff, rehearsing our case, gathering allies, triangling, or using “prayer requests” to spread our interpretation. Pain can become an identity that protects us from examining ourselves.
David chooses another refuge. He does not deny the wound, but neither does he grasp for control, vindication, or life on his own terms. It is the ancient choice again: seize what we believe will save us, or wait to receive life from God.
David asks God to become his rock, fortress, and shelter. Then he prays:
“Into Your hands I commit my spirit.”
Centuries later, Jesus invoked the larger prayer of Psalm 31 with these words from the cross. The whole movement fits: betrayal, slander, isolation, a plea for rescue, the feeling of being hidden from God, and the decision to trust nevertheless.
Later, David admits:
“As for me, I said in my alarm, ‘I am cut off from Your eyes.’ “
From the cross, Jesus also invoked Psalm 22:
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Jesus spoke honestly from the darkness. Yet while no rescue was visible, He refused to seize the ending or turn His suffering into accusation. He entrusted Himself to the Father:
“Into Your hands I commit My spirit.”
Higher leadership begins when God, rather than our strategies for self-protection, becomes our refuge.
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Woundable Love
To be vulnerable is to be woundable.
Jesus was not spared betrayal, accusation, humiliation, abandonment, or death. Outwardly, He was overpowered. Yet those who wounded Him could not determine His identity, possess His spirit, or write the final chapter of His life.
The cross looked like the failure of divine protection. The resurrection revealed that it was not.
God does not always spare us from harm. Sometimes He carries us through it. Ultimately, He carries us beyond it.
Vulnerable leadership means speaking when silence feels safer, entering courageous conversations without controlling the response, and refusing to build an emotional fortress because love has become costly.
Vulnerability is not reckless exposure. Jesus sometimes withdrew. Joseph tested whether his brothers had changed. David refused to kill Saul but kept a healthy distance from his spear.
Forgiveness does not automatically restore trust. Wisdom and boundaries matter. But self-protection cannot become the ruling purpose of our lives.
We remain woundable before people because our deepest life is held by God.
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Name the Wound, Leave the Motive
Not everyone who wounds us is our enemy.
Often, those who hurt us sincerely love God and see the situation differently. They may carry information, pressures, and responsibilities we cannot see. From inside the wound, we are in no position to judge their motives. We can say:
“That decision wounded me.”
But not:
“I know what was in your heart.”
The action may have been wrong, partly right but poorly handled, or even necessary while still causing pain. Usually, the truth is larger than the story we first tell ourselves.
We can oppose a decision without contempt, tell the truth without slander, seek counsel without recruiting allies, and refuse bitterness without pretending everything is resolved. We must also consider that our anxiety, expectations, reactions, or blind spots may be part of the painful system. Being wounded does not make us innocent of every part of the conflict.
Joseph was betrayed, yet God used him to preserve lives. David was pursued and formed in the wilderness. Jesus was crucified—and through that path, God brought salvation. This is one of leadership’s hardest tests:
Can we remain truthful and woundable without surrendering our spirits to bitterness, slander, cutoff, retaliation, or the need to control the ending?
Christian maturity names the wound, examines the self, and leaves the motives of others in God’s hands.
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My Times Are in Your Hands
Halfway through Psalm 31, David reaches a turning point:
“But as for me, I trust in You, LORD, I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in Your hand.”
The circumstances have not changed. The rumors have not stopped. No one has apologized. But David has relocated the center of his life. His future is not in the hands of those who misunderstand him. His reputation is not controlled by those who speak against him.
My times are in God’s hands when leaders notice me, and when they do not; when people understand me, and when they misinterpret me; when the path opens quickly, and when the story remains unresolved.
What others misunderstand may affect our path, but it does not own our future.
David then describes the shelter of God’s presence. This does not mean that nothing painful reaches us. It means there is a place within us that remains under God’s government. People may control the meeting, the vote, the organization, or how others perceive us. They may even control the nails and the cross. But they do not control the final meaning of our lives.
The secret place is where we bring pain before it becomes poison, anger before it becomes accusation, and fear before it becomes control.
God may not always protect our position. He protects the person we are becoming.
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The Invitation Hidden in the Wound
Leadership wounds can make us suspicious, controlling, and isolated. We can spend years rehearsing the injustice and gathering allies to prove we were right.
But the wound may also become an invitation.
An invitation to release our need to control the narrative.
An invitation to discover that our identity, calling, and future were never ultimately held by an organization or leader.
An invitation to walk past the ancient tree of grasping—our need to pronounce the final judgment and determine how the story must end—and receive life from God instead.
An invitation to place ourselves in the Father’s hands and say:
“I belong to You. Spend my life however You choose.”
Thirty years ago, I could not see the church that would rise from those uncertain beginnings in Altamira. I could not see the leaders who would be formed, the churches that would be planted, or how my frustration would become part of my formation. All I could see was the immediate confusion. We mistake the present chapter for the whole story.
God is always writing farther ahead than we can read.
Some barriers became part of the road that carried us forward. Others exposed places in me that still needed healing. Some feel unfinished. Yet even unfinished stories can be entrusted to God.
All five guest speakers at the thirtieth-anniversary celebration, Rick, Deanna, Elba, Angelita, and Clenildo, were young leaders when the church first met in our garage. Steve, pictured here with the group, joined the movement later. God was already writing farther ahead than we could read.
Psalm 31 closes:
Love the LORD, all His godly ones! The LORD watches over the faithful But fully repays the one who acts arrogantly. Be strong and let your heart take courage, All you who wait for the LORD.
God sees.
God preserves.
God judges rightly.
Because the ending belongs to Him, we do not have to secure it through arrogance, accusation, cutoff, or control.
We can be strong enough to wait.
Perhaps this is how God prepares us for faithful leadership in the age to come.
The invitation hidden in the wound is not to seize the ending, but to become the kind of leader who can entrust it to God.
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A Prayer
Lord Jesus,
When we are wounded By people we trusted, Teach us to take refuge in You.
Give us courage to speak truth, Wisdom to establish boundaries, And humility to leave The motives of others in Your hands.
Keep pain from becoming poison. Free us from bitterness, Slander, cutoff, And the need to recruit others Into our anger.
Save us from grasping For judgment, control, Or the ending we think we need.
When rescue is delayed, Make us strong enough to wait.
When we are overpowered, Keep our spirits secure Within Your hands.
Our times belong to You, The healed places, The still-tender places, And the stories that remain unfinished.
