80 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY AN ETERNAL WEIGHT OF GLORY: EXPLORING SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES AS POTENTIAL PREDICTORS OF RESILIENT PASTORAL LEADERSHIP Shay Wood Shay Wood is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Cook School of Leadership and is founding lead pastor of MercyHill Church in Fort Worth, Texas. Resilience as a topic of leadership has grown exponentially in the last twenty years.1 Much like a marathon runner hitting mile thirteen, the world has reached unprecedented levels of fatigue.2 The pertinence of resilience in church leadership reveals itself through the growing number of pastors who are considering walking away from vocational ministry.3 The levels of burnout experienced by pastors are significant.4 Feelings of stress, loneliness, and anxiety are regular.5 Therefore, resilience is needed. Luthans and Avolio clarify that resilience has both trait-like and state-like qualities.6 This means it is already present as well as something that can be developed and enhanced through training. Resilience in its modern application has its origin in Norman Garmezy’s studies of children of schizophrenic parents.7 Since that time, various studies in resilience have been conducted across children, youth, and adult groups.8 Beginning in social psychology, applications have crossed disciplinary lines to include business, management, and organizational leadership.9 Individual capacities present in those displaying resilience is not limited to only one or two descriptive variables in these studies. Resilience has been correlated with the ability to form attachments to others, the presence of talents in individuals, a higher than average ability to enlist the help of others, “possession of a psychological inner space,” and a “plastic shield” comprised of multiple attributes which may enhance resilience.10 This suggests that resilience is not traced to only one or two personal resources of an individual,
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