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In this episode...

Growth, Trust, and the Problem of Personal Distance

https://faithfulontheclock.com/growth-trust-and-the-problem-of-personal-distance

Episode 148 of Faithful on the Clock offers guidance on what to do when success and growth create distance that crumbles trust in a leader.

Timestamps:

[00:04] - Intro

[00:41] - How distance develops between a leader and their audience and why it damages trust

[03:04] - The woman with the hemorrhage and how Jesus collapsed the distance by publicly calling her out of the crowd

[04:39] - The Canaanite woman and how Jesus removed the distance she had as “the other”

[07:45] - The leadership lesson — trust erodes when distance becomes silence, so we must intentionally create spaces where people know they are not invisible, as Jesus did with the bleeding woman and the Canaanite

[09:58] - Prayer

[10:41] - Outro/What’s coming up next

Key takeaways:

1. Growth creates distance. That’s inevitable in leadership.
2. Trust erodes when distance becomes silence and people feel unseen.
3. Jesus shows us that leadership doesn’t require eliminating boundaries — but it does require collapsing distance intentionally.
4. In both Mark 5 and Matthew 15, Jesus allowed someone to press through protocol, stopped, engaged, and restored dignity publicly.
5. People don’t expect unlimited access — they expect to know they matter.
6. As your influence grows, your intentionality must grow with it.
7. Don’t let your platform become a wall. Build visible moments where people are seen.

CTAs:

1. Take inventory of your distance. Where has growth created space between you and the people you serve? Identify one intentional moment this week where you can stop, turn, and let someone know they’re seen.
2. If leadership has felt lonely or overwhelming lately, spend a few quiet minutes in prayer asking the Lord to show you where He sees you — and where He’s inviting you to see others more intentionally.

What’s coming up next:

Need stress relief? In Episode 149 of Faithful on the Clock, special guest Pat Welsh offers his best tips for keeping anxiety under control.

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Welcome, welcome, welcome, listeners to Episode 148 of Faithful on the Clock, the podcast for Christian professionals where every cloud floats in the sky to get your faith and work aligned. As always, I’m your host, Wanda Thibodeaux, and today, we’re looking at growth — not at how to get it or do it faster, but at how the personal distance that happens with growth influences trust in leadership. If you want people to stay connected to you no matter how high you might advance, this is for you. Here we go.

So, a while back, I was trying to get some feedback on some writing I was working on. And I was just trying to contact some of the people whose work I was quoting to let them know that I was leaning on their materials and expertise. This isn’t all that uncommon in the writing industry. It’s actually a fairly common courtesy note that people send. And sometimes experts or authors will — you know, they’ll just quickly write back and say thank you, or just kind of acknowledge that you’re sharing their work. But it’s fairly rare. What’s way more common instead is that they use different tools to filter the messages, they’ll do automatic replies, or sometimes they’ll hire an assistant to look through the inbox.

Now, I’m not trying to say these leaders have any poor intent, OK? Many times, they genuinely want to respond as much as they can. But the reality is the more fame or legitimacy they gain and the more responsibility they have, the better the leader is doing, the more distance starts to appear between them and the audience. They might really be connecting with that audience in terms of their messaging, there’s emotional depth and empathy there, that’s why people want to reach out, but it’s just — it’s logistically impossible to connect personally with everyone. That’s just what happens.

And the problem here is that, at some point, no matter how good the messaging is, that distance starts to erode trust. The leader becomes what I’ll call an unreachable other, because it’s just so hard to get a response that a person can be like, “This guy or gal, they talk a good game, I like what I hear, but at the end of the day, they’re over there, and I’m over here. I can’t trust them to really see me.” And once a person feels that, it’s really — this wall just goes up, because they lose the hope that they’ll ever be able to really engage with that leader and contribute meaningfully to the conversation on whatever it is the leader’s talking about.

And so, the question becomes, OK, how do we address this? Because, the last thing a leader wants is to have their success create this wall between them and the people they’re trying to help, right? And interestingly, we see this tension — distance, access, protocol — show up around Jesus Himself.

So, I wanna take us first to Mark 5. And in this story, which we actually covered more in depth in Episode 134, we see this woman who has been suffering, she’s been hemorrhaging for 12 years. And because of the law at that time, if you were bleeding like that, you were considered unclean. So, this condition meant she physically was separated from other people. She was socially invisible — you know, an outcast. And she’d spent all of her money trying to find a cure. But her last hope was to come to Jesus and have Him heal her.

And what Scripture tells us is that, when Jesus was near this woman, the crowd was just really pressing in on Him. There were tons of people there with Him, right? And so this woman, it wasn’t easy for her to get close. She wasn’t even supposed to be around other people. You know, she didn’t have any connection or an appointment — nobody’d recommended her to Him. And yet, she believed that if she could just touch even the hem of his garment, she’d be OK. So, that’s what she does. She reaches out, and just like she had hoped, she’s healed. Now, Jesus could have kept walking. He could have just allowed that to be just this private blessing on the woman. But instead, he intentionally stops. He turns to her and he intentionally draws her out. He collapses the distance.

Now, let’s go to Matthew 15 — or Mark 7, depending on which Gospel you’re reading. This is the story of the Canaanite woman. And what’s happening is, this woman’s daughter is demon-possessed. And so, she comes to Jesus because she’s desperate to have Him heal her daughter. But here, the distance looks different. Because she’s not just physically separated, the way the woman with the hemorrhage is. Remember, she’s a Canaanite. And if you read the rest of the Old Testament, you see that the Canaanites did not serve God. They worshipped foreign gods, and they engaged in some really corrupt practices, even child sacrifice. So, this is a people that has traditionally been the enemy of Israel. And this woman, she’s ethnically and spiritually outside the covenant line. She is the very definition of “other.” But she’s persistent to the extent that the disciples, they want to send her away. And Jesus Himself finally tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” And so He’s really clarifying what the priority in His mission is.

But even after He tells her this, she comes and kneels in front of Jesus and begs for help again. And this time, He says, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” And what’s really interesting about this is, at that time, the Jews would routinely refer to the Gentiles as dogs. But Jesus doesn’t use the harsher word most Jews used. Instead of saying kuon, which was harsher and associated with wild or unclean scavenger dogs, He uses the Greek word kunarion. The word Jesus uses there is actually a diminutive form for “dog” — something closer to “little dog” or even “puppy.” Scholars debate what that means. Some argue He was deliberately softening — even reframing — a cultural trope, not insulting her at all. At the very least, though, the statement reflects the mission priority He had already articulated: Israel first, then beyond. But she picks up the metaphor rather cleverly, and she says, essentially, even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.

Now, what matters for us in this conversation about distance is what happens next. He engages her. He lets her speak. He honors her faith publicly. And then He heals her daughter. Again, just as it did with the woman with the hemorrhage — the distance collapses. Not because Jesus removed all boundaries. Not because He eliminated mission priorities. But because when someone reached through the wall in faith, He responded in a way that restored dignity and visibility.

That’s the leadership lesson. Growth will always create distance. Authority will always introduce protocol. Success will always reduce direct access. But trust erodes when distance becomes silence. Trust erodes when people feel unseen, when there is no visible pathway for their voice to matter.

Jesus never eliminated distance entirely — crowds still pressed in, priorities still existed, and not everyone got private time. But He built moments where people were seen. He left room for visible collapses of space.

That, to me, is what we as leaders have to learn to do. You don’t have to answer every email personally. You don’t have to dismantle structure. You don’t have to be endlessly available. In fact, we see Jesus retreating from the crowd and delegating to his disciples multiple times because He needed to rest. But you do have to create spaces — visible, tangible spaces — where the people you serve can see that access is possible. Because people don’t expect unlimited access. They expect to know they’re not invisible. If your growth is increasing distance — and it will — then your intentionality has to increase, too. Where can you stop? Where can you turn? Where can you draw someone out publicly and say, “I see you”?

Success doesn’t have to make you unreachable. But it will — unless you deliberately collapse the distance. And if Christ Himself, carrying the weight of divine authority, paused to restore trust across protocol and crowd, then we, as leaders, can do the same. Don’t let your platform become a wall. Let it become a place where people know that, even if access is structured, dignity is never out of reach.

So, with that, I’ll close us out in prayer.

Lord, the feeling of being invisible is one of the most destructive feelings to the spirit that we can experience. And so, I thank you, Lord, that You always see us, that no matter what’s happening or where we are, we’re visible to You and You understand what we’re reaching for. Lord, help us see where to build those moments of intentionality in our own leadership so that, like You, we can build hope instead of walls. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

Well, listeners, as we wrap up today, I’ll just say, God sees you. He loves you. He’s about as high up as it gets and we’re still His priority. If you need encouragement — and we all do sometimes — please, use the rest of the content on faithfulontheclock.com. That’s what it’s there for. But if you’re still feeling stressed, you’ll definitely want to tune in to our next episode. I’m welcoming national speaker and leadership trainer Pat Welsh. He’s got decades of experience in law enforcement, so if anybody can give us pointers about dealing with stress well, it’s him. Join me for that in two weeks, and be blessed.