Silas Achu is a leadership practitioner, writer and ministry leader based in Cameroon. He is the founder and lead consultant of Lead from the Heart, a leadership formation and organisational development practice that helps leaders, teams and institutions build healthier cultures and more sustainable ways of carrying responsibility.

His own journey through the pressures of leadership led to the development of the Leadership Heartbeat™, a rhythm-based methodology that helps leaders move from grinding and depletion towards wholeness, renewal and faithful stewardship. His wider work includes leadership retreats, coaching, transformative learning experiences, writing and long-term institution building.

Silas also serves within Bethel Atlanta Cameroon, the local Buea expression of Bethel Atlanta Africa, where many of his convictions about identity, community, discipleship and spiritual formation are lived out in practice. At the heart of his life and work is a desire to follow Jesus faithfully and help people discover who they are, grow into their calling, recover strength and lead with wholeness.

He is the author of Dreams to Reality and Marketplace Shift, with The Leadership Heartbeat and Built to Lead forthcoming.

Connect with Silas:

• https://www.silasachu.com
• https://www.leadfromtheheart.co.uk

Hi, I'm Angel.

This mission starts right in our home.

So for my wife and three sons, thank you for standing with us.

As we continue the mission of the 12 Minute Converse with Jesus Believers podcast, we invite you to help us share more stories of faith, hope, and transformation.

Your donation helps us produce new episodes, reach more listeners, and continue meaningful conversations with Jesus Believers around the world.

Every donation helps.

Hit the donate button at 12minuteconverse.com.

That's one, two, M-I-N-C-O-N-V-E-R-S.com.

God chose for us to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Silas.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

I actually am in Canada right now.

How did you meet Jesus?

I had a cousin who was really, you know, full of Jesus and she was always an opportunity to meet up and I was the person that was more like, yeah, I'm not into this, I'm into this spirituality thing, you know, because I was very intellectual in my thinking, but I think what drew me to Jesus was when I felt the love that emanated from my cousin.

At some point in my life, I felt like I need that and then he launched me into a journey of just studying and exploring and then one of my birthdays, I just decided, you know what, I need a different direction in my life and I was reading a devotional and because of that devotional, I just decided to surrender my heart to the Lord.

I'm following the salvation prayer that was in it and that began the journey that became the defining thing of my life until today.

Would you change it if you could?

Make it different if you needed to?

Any part of that story?

What would I change?

I don't know what I'd change because I'm much more appreciating how far the journey has taken me.

I guess maybe I would have, if I could change something, the only thing I would have changed was to focus, just focus on the intimacy with God much more than even doing for God.

Because I felt like the more I get intimate with God, the more effective whatever I do for him becomes.

Very interesting.

So you talked about the intellectual side of your life that you were functioning in.

How did God use that as part of your evolution?

Oh yeah, in fact, I don't think God only used that.

I think God has been using that as the way, in fact, that's the way God has used me a lot.

Intellectually, I don't mean, you know, a praying eye person, somebody who likes to book work or stuff like that.

It was more of the analytical part of me.

That's the word I'll probably use.

I like to analyze things.

I like to synthesize information.

So I always want to see two and two connect, one and two connect before I make a decision.

So if I don't see like, how does this link to this?

How does this connect to this?

It doesn't work.

It doesn't really work for me.

And it felt a bit strange because as I got much more, grew my relationship with God and I started learning about supernatural experiences and stuff like that, it became funny because sometimes those experiences don't make logical sense.

And then it became like, I'm not sure about this.

But then as I've grown with intimacy, like I said, I realized that there's such a thing as an anointed reasoning where God is using your reasoning now to help make sense of things that people originally could not make sense of.

So that's what it has been for me.

So I find that I can explain spiritual things to people in a way that makes sense to them, because I also have realized that that's how I came to know the Lord.

And it now became part of the assets that I have.

So my walk with God is the reasoning part of me is no longer a hindrance to my walk with God.

It's actually an asset.

So he uses it.

He flows through my reasoning to show me things that normally I won't.

So sometimes when I have a very smart idea or a smart thing, I'm like, hmm, that's just not me.

That's always people taking advantage of discipline that's given me to do things.

So yeah, that's what it has been for me now.

You talk about helping other people as a result of that.

How do you help other people as a result of that?

One way that I help people, for example, now, I have a lot of people that come to me and they say, oh, I have this vision.

I have this dream.

I have this goal.

I need help on how to go about it.

Sometimes I'm not sure whether I should do A or B.

I don't know whether the Lord wants me to do this or that.

And somehow, I don't know, my conversation with them, I take, I have a way of taking all of that messiness and help them begin to distill it in a very systemic way.

So I just find myself being that coach and guide for people now on their spiritual journey.

So if somebody comes to me, I have this vision.

I say, okay, give me, just, just throw everything that you have in your mind to me.

And by the time the other one is okay, I feel that, okay, this is where you should start.

I think this is where the Lord will have you start.

And they'll be like, yes, I think what you're saying is from the Lord.

But then that's not my reasoning.

I just feel that it's just the Lord saying that I gave you that because I want you to use it.

I want to use, walk through you to help people.

So that's how I used to help people, which has influenced me in the work I do on the website.

So now I'm a pastor.

I teach.

I'm also a consultant.

I coach.

I train.

I help both individuals and organizations take complex ideas and make it simple for them to implement and stuff like that.

All of that is just the way the Lord has used me.

The story that's pinging in my mind is the story of the talents, specifically the one where the talents are given.

And as a result of the talents being given and how they use the talents, they're given property.

They're given more to manage.

Have you seen that as a result of your experience managing your talents that you've gotten more because of what you've done with it?

Yes, I think so.

I think I've, and I'll give you a back story.

Before I used to feel inadequate.

I used to feel like, oh, maybe this is all I have, you know, and in this world of spiritual encounters and all of that, this mind does not be a good gift because people want to be able to prophesy and they want to heal the sick, pray for it and do lots of things.

But I'm like, I'm just this guy that just know how to do organizational stuff and structure things.

So at first I wasn't very embracive.

I wasn't embracing it.

Sorry.

Then when I embraced it, like you said, I started valuing the fact that God has given me a gift.

And the gift is to make sense of complex things and break it down for people and help other people with their own vision, give it structure.

The more I appreciated that gift, the more it has opened me up to so many things.

It has led me to start up a whole consultancy.

That is just the effect of honoring the gift.

It has helped me to take on all kinds of roles.

You know, I'm a leader within the ministry and my gift is being used to help plant structure.

It's being used to build people.

It has given me opportunity to travel out of the country in and out.

It has just given me so many things that it has given me the opportunity to write books that have really helped people.

And it's just the same thing, you know.

So, yeah, I can relate to that, that honoring that gift, you know, I've seen it multiply as I've honored it.

And it started with me not actually honoring it, to be honest.

I was like, I think I need to be somebody else.

I want to be the miracle working person who is doing all of that.

But then I realized that not everybody has to be like that.

What he has given you is what you need.

And the more I value it, the more I see it multiplying.

When I looked at your website and I saw the type of work you're doing, it is very deep, yeah.

You run very deep.

Understanding your identity, of course, I would imagine was the bedrock of you then helping others with their identity.

The aspect of the rhythm-based methodology though, where did that come into alignment?

What did that connect to from younger you?

Okay, the aspect of rhythm.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes.

That became very, very, that crystallized for me a lot last year.

Because my journey in 2019, that was the first time I traveled.

I went to South Africa for a program, a league.

And I was there.

And during that three-month program, I remember I was in a retreat and the Lord kind of reminded me that many years back, around 2011, he had given me a dream to be a leader.

But then I was, I didn't feel adequate at the time.

So I kept it.

And I was, just like I was saying, I was more, I was driven to perform.

I was trying to do ministry like every other person, you know, trying to do everything I was doing.

And in the process of that, I was burning out.

I wasn't being myself.

I was trying to be other people.

I was trying to be what maybe the other ministry leaders expected me to be, the other people expected me to be.

So I was trying to be everything else except myself.

And I was burning out in the process.

So I was grinding on two things.

Number one, in a calling that was not mine at a pace that was not sustainable.

By the time I went to this, I went for South Africa in 2019, I had the time to cut off, like to disconnect from all the work I've been doing for like eight years past, eight years plus.

I slowed down.

I was able to slow down to the point where I realized, wait a second, you've been running the race you've been called to run.

And you've been doing that at a pace that was not sustainable.

You need to pause.

You need to slow down and focus on that which is religious.

And that's what led me to go back when I came back to Canal Rise, and I'm going to focus on the gift God has given me.

That's what led me to start the leadership consultancy that I do.

That's what led me to write the books that I write.

That's what led me to focus on just identity, purpose, leadership, personal leadership, heart-centered leadership, which is about leading from your core, from your true identity, from your authentic self.

All of those things became like, this is me, I have to focus on that.

And then I was fought against in 2025.

I went back again for another retreat, and then the law was, okay, now you're in the right path, but you need to manage your pace.

You need to do it with depth, not breadth.

And that is where the whole aspect of rhythms comes to me, that the person doing the work cannot outpace the person doing the work.

You must stay in step.

You must grow at the rate average the work is growing.

And that means you must operate the way God designed you to operate.

So I realized that, okay, what does that look like?

Well, it's just the same way that a lot operates.

There's a time to wake up, there's a time to sleep, there's a morning, there's a day, everything is a rhythm.

There's no constant output.

And I picked that up and it became the modus operandi for me.

So I'm not just going to be running and running and running.

I have to run and retreat, run and retreat, because that is the way the Lord expects me to operate.

Because I've seen the two sides of that.

Number one, running in the wrong calling.

Number two, doing it at a sustainable pace.

And the Lord had delivered me from that by number one, bringing me to run the calling I was supposed to run.

And number two, helping me to do it the way I was designed to operate.

Like a living being, not a machine.

So that is the story for me in essence.

It parallels with the Bible as well, right?

Even God did the depth and breadth, yeah?

Where you're creating the earth and then you rest on the seventh day.

Even Jesus would run away from the multitude, yeah?

The depth and breadth.

I love that.

There's one part of your story we didn't cover though.

So the family aspect of who you are.

Did that evolve as well or you're a single man still?

Oh, that evolved.

Everything is, in fact, everything is connected to family.

I'm married.

I have two daughters and I've been married since 2013.

Wow.

And that's another story.

My marriage is such a blessing.

It has this whole story to it also.

I mean, for the first eight, nine years of my marriage, we had serious issues which I buried with my wife.

Lots of miscarriages and all of that.

But we did have a breakthrough four years ago.

I got a nice, beautiful baby girl.

And then not long after that, we also adopted another daughter who is also turned 16 this year.

So that's a quick summary of my family life, yeah.

Five years from today, you're listening to this conversation.

You would have heard the evolution of Silas, yeah?

What's a message you'd leave for future youth?

Stay in rhythm, stay in intimacy, move at the pace of the father.

I appreciate you.

Hey, this has been a great pleasure, one I treasure.

Thank you for being what has inspired my 12 minute converse.