Still Tethered

When faithful leaders remain bound to systems that no longer hold

By Josh Singleton | Founder, serving as Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

What I often observe as resistance in other contexts is not outright refusal. It is something quieter and more complicated. People remain tethered to a system while pushing back against it, usually because they do not yet have another anchor or a viable way of working. They continue doing what is asked, sometimes begrudgingly, sometimes faithfully, not because they believe the system works, but because there is no other place to stand.

This posture shows up most clearly among Executive Directors I have encountered. Many are doing genuinely faithful work. They care deeply about the mission in front of them. They advocate, protect their teams, absorb pressure, and carry weight that is rarely acknowledged. There is real passion there. There is often real sacrifice.

And yet, they remain tethered to the wrong system.

For many, the work functions as a job with added moral urgency and emotional motivation. It is meaningful, but it never fully lands as calling. Vision exists, but it is often inherited, maintained, or adapted to fit external demands rather than revealed and stewarded. The system sets the pace, defines success, and quietly governs imagination.

That tether creates tension. They push back while complying. They name dysfunction while sustaining it. They critique the structure while keeping it operational, not because they lack integrity, but because leaving feels irresponsible. The system still provides income, legitimacy, and answers to the daily question of what must be done next.

At the end of last year, I had a good and honest conversation with one Executive Director from this group. She spoke openly about her frustrations. The strain. The sense that what she was sustaining no longer matched what she was being asked to carry. In that conversation, I offered a clear way out. Not an escape, and not an ultimatum, but a viable alternative. A place to stand that did not require constant justification or self-betrayal.

Since then, there has been silence.

No decision has been named. No direction clarified. Only the quiet that often follows when a possibility becomes real. Silence, in these moments, does not need interpretation. It usually means that the tether is still holding, even if it is fraying.

That is not failure. It is the weight of discernment.

Letting go of a system is rarely a single decision. It often requires grieving what it once provided, facing the fear of uncertainty, and acknowledging how much of one’s identity has been shaped by the role itself. Exhaustion has a way of finishing the conversation that clarity begins. When the system finally reaches its limit, the choice becomes less theoretical and more embodied. Until then, faithfulness often looks like waiting, not convincing.

What makes this posture possible for us is not restraint or discipline. It is location.

The Neighborhood Garden Project is rooted in soil. And soil is the most honest environment I know. Soil gives feedback without commentary. It responds to what is actually happening, not what we intend or hope. Compaction shows up. Neglect shows up. Overreach shows up. But so does care, patience, and right timing. The consequences are real, but they are not shaming. They are instructive.

There is no way to dominate soil into long-term fruitfulness. Control always reveals itself eventually. You can force growth for a season, but the ground will remember. Soil requires presence. It requires observation. It asks us to notice rather than manage, to respond rather than impose.

That posture reshapes leadership. Instead of leading through pressure, we lead through attention. Instead of enforcing outcomes, we stay close enough to see what is forming. Instead of controlling movement, we name what we observe and let people choose their response. The ground does the convincing. Our role is simply to remain faithful to it.

This is why the work feels lighter, even when it is demanding. The soil does not ask us to pretend. It does not reward performance. It does not respond to urgency. It tells the truth, and it tells it early enough that correction does not require collapse.

In systems built on abstraction, consequences are delayed and often displaced onto people. In soil, consequence is immediate and shared. Nothing is hidden, but nothing is weaponized either.

This rootedness is what allows us to offer invitation without control, clarity without coercion, and presence without pressure. We trust that when someone who has been tethered long enough steps into an environment where truth is given without shame and feedback arrives without threat, they will recognize the difference.

Not because we persuaded them.

Because the ground spoke for itself.

This is not an elevated or neutral posture. I have been graciously humbled by the soil over and over again. It has corrected me more than it has affirmed me. Every time I have tried to rush it, manage it, or extract from it, the ground has answered honestly. Not harshly, but unmistakably. The soil does not flatter leadership. It forms it.

Rootedness in soil does not leave me standing above systems or people. It places me under formation. The feedback is constant. The consequences are real. And I am included in them. When something fails, the ground does not ask who is to blame. It simply reveals what is misaligned.

That kind of honesty does not produce neutrality. It produces responsibility.

The soil always bends us toward what is best for humanity, not through ideology, but through alignment. When the ground is cared for, life follows. When life is tended rightly, communities are nourished. When rhythms are honored, abundance becomes shared rather than hoarded.

This is why the work cannot be reduced to preference or philosophy. Alignment is not passive. It is active, demanding, and costly. It requires presence. It requires patience. It requires letting go of control and allowing truth to surface without defense.

The world is not changed by good intentions layered onto broken rhythms. It is healed through alignment that restores what has been fractured. Soil teaches this without shaming and without shortcuts.

That is the ground we stand on. Not because we have figured something out, but because we have been corrected enough times to trust it.

In leadership, there are many opinions and many beliefs that float without anchors. Conversations quickly become what I believe versus what you believe. Positions harden. Language sharpens. Leadership becomes a debate rather than a discernment.

That is not the posture I am offering.

I am not offering my way, my framework, or my conclusions. I am offering a way that has been entrusted to each human uniquely, a way that must be discovered rather than adopted. No one can walk it on someone else’s behalf.

What I offer instead is presence. A willingness to walk with you as you learn to recognize the anchors already placed within you. A willingness to stay close as feedback emerges, not to interpret it for you, but to help you notice it. A willingness to remain when the process becomes slow, uncomfortable, or disorienting.

This kind of leadership does not remove responsibility. It deepens it. There is no outsourcing discernment. There is no shortcut to clarity. Belief alone is not enough.

Anchors are revealed through lived alignment, through consequences that teach rather than punish, through rhythms that restore rather than demand.

The work is not to convince one another of what is true. The work is to walk far enough into truth that it begins to hold us.

And that walk, while deeply personal, does not have to be taken alone.

Not as rescue.

As a place to finally stand.