The Hidden Barriers to Fruitful Leadership By Andrea Leigh Capuyan

The Hidden Barriers of Debt, Sin, and Trespass

It is often easy to miss the hidden barriers that derail us, while multiply is an apt descriptor for an effective leader’s mindset. It invites us to set our intention on others, on the future of growth. We wish to multiply our influence and expand our impact, inviting others to explore possibilities with us. It reminds us that our time in our role, in ministry, on Earth is finite, so we must entrust our passion and our work into others’ hands. We are wired to “be fruitful and multiply” and to reach “the ends of the earth.” It is inherent in our calling and our greatest commission from God. Yet a subtle danger can derail our best intentions if we do not examine what the Holy Spirit wishes to implant in our hearts, minds, and souls.

When Multiplication Becomes Proliferation

I grew up in Alabama, where kudzu abounds. Along the highways and back roads, it spreads in a blanket of green, covering trees and native species, choking out everything in its path. It is invasive and exploitative; a drive focused on growth at the expense of everything else. If our ambition to multiply is devoid of love and humility, then like kudzu, our leadership devolves into power grabs and pride. It blinds us.

Know the Danger

Considering this danger, it is no surprise that Jesus’ prayer includes the words, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive those in debt to us.” On the heels of asking God to advance His Kingdom and multiply His will, Jesus orients us to the Holy Spirit’s work of pruning. Depending on your tradition, you may have heard this part of the Lord’s Prayer use three different words: sin, debt, or trespass. All three words offer insight into the hidden barriers in our relationships with God and others. I hear Jesus inviting us to examine the devastation wrought by our selfish resistance. He challenges the deceptions of false empowerment, relational enmeshment, and grandiosity.

The Hidden Barrier of Sin

We think of sin as missing the mark. To miss the mark assumes you were aiming at a goal, but too often we discover we are aiming at the wrong target because we decide what the goal is rather than submit to God’s mark. Sin speaks to false empowerment. It’s a quiet usurpation of authority over your own path and direction. I’ll decide what the mark is and how I achieve it. The self becomes our reference point instead of God. Sin misdirects. It can look like faithfulness for a very long time. While it may look like fruitfulness, it can feel like calling. The result is that we lead ourselves and others astray.

The Hidden Barrier of Debt

Debt speaks to enmeshment. It’s relational entanglement, an unpaid ledger between ourselves and others. Enmeshed systems run on invisible debts. You owe me. I sacrificed for you. We’re bound by what hasn’t been settled. Debt creates fusion and co-dependency. We are created for relationships, and this hunger for connection is not wrong. Yet if we are untethered from God, our true anchor, we expect others to meet all our needs for belonging. We are left craving increasingly. For every unmet need and failed expectation, our ledger grows, and we remain unsatisfied. Greed sets in, yet we remain starved. We keep a running tally of all that others owe us and how we’ve been taken for granted.

What God Reveals

God exposed this ravenous appetite in me through a relationship where money had truly created a debt. Looking back, I was driven by two motivations: I wanted to be helpful and to be the hero. This created false expectations. Instead of considering what was in their best interest, I wanted them to be dependent on me and grateful for what I could supply. The relationship deteriorated, and all I could see was the emotional debt I owed. I blurred the reality of who they were and the fantasy of who I wanted them to be.

My way out of this entrapment was grief. Through grief, I was finally able to see the relationship clearly, accept the person for who they were, and release them from the image I created for them. Grief makes room for the hope of resurrection and renewal. Otherwise, the only way to be “free” from entanglement is to write off others entirely.

Our need for connection must be rooted in secure attachment to God, the only source who can truly supply the needs of our hearts. That is how we cultivate healthy interdependency where “love keeps no record of wrong.”

The Hidden Barrier of Trespass

Kudzu spreads with little hindrance. It is pervasive and persistent, strangling all other plant life around it, becoming the perfect hiding place for predators to lie in wait. Kudzu doesn’t seek to trespass. It overruns and overtakes. Trespass speaks to grandiosity. Like kudzu, it is boundary-violating and most insidious. While the concepts of sin and debt can be subtle and deceptive, trespass requires action, intent, and motion when we drift from our principles. We choose to cross a line. We assume the right to occupy space that was never ours. Grandiosity doesn’t just drift; it advances.

The Root Cause

A trespass, at its root, is a failure of ownership. It’s the moment we collapse the boundary between what is mine to steward and what belongs to another, whether that’s another person’s emotional space, their decisions, their consequences, or their relationship with God. A trespass signals a belief that we have access that we were never granted. That is the very nature of arrogance, not just thinking highly of myself, but acting as though the boundary doesn’t apply to me. Thus, humility is of utmost importance for our freedom and maturity. If we wish to imitate Christ, then we “must empty” ourselves, becoming less to make space for others. We step back to our proper place, carry our own responsibilities, and resist the temptation to assume others’ responsibilities. Humility attunes us to God and, rightly, to others, keeping their best interests in mind.

Taking the Next Step

Before we can multiply what matters, we must surrender what hinders. True fruitfulness is never self-generated; it multiplies only when we release our debts, relinquish our self-directed aims, and step back within our proper place, making room for God to advance what only He can grow. We wish to multiply, so the work begins with and continually returns to the Holy Spirit’s invitation to unearth, pare down, and cut out anything in our heart, soul, and mind that impedes. Consider these questions:

• Who or what has my affection and attention?
• Who is in charge? What is fueling me today? Where is my course set?
• What is driving my motivation to be fruitful and multiply?

The most fruitful leaders are not the ones who advance the furthest. They are the ones who have learned to yield the deepest

Andrea Leigh Capuyan serves on the board of the Center for Steward Leader Studies and is the executive director of the LPC. This local ministry helps individuals impacted by unintended pregnancy, reproductive loss, and post-abortion recovery. She also provides coaching and consultation, assisting others to experience abundance as leaders. Andrea is a Credentialed Christian Nonprofit Leader (CCNL) with the Christian Leadership Alliance and holds a Master of Arts degree in Organizational Leadership from York University.