“Even if you sweep the streets…”
As I wrapped this up and read it back, noting the limited number of endnotes, I realised it leans more towards a devotional tone, quite different from my other blogs. Maybe that’s intentional. Perhaps this one was written especially for you.
When Nicholas Rowe and Sheila Wise Rowe wrote Healing Leadership Trauma, [1] they weren’t theorising. Both bring years of ministry leadership, counselling practice, and academic rigour. Nicholas Rowe, PhD, has worked extensively in pastoral ministry and academic leadership, while Sheila Wise Rowe, MA, is a counsellor, spiritual director, and the author of Healing Racial Trauma. Together, they combine research-based insight with pastoral compassion. Their motivation for this book is clear: leaders everywhere carry hidden wounds, often rooted in family experiences, and unless those wounds are named and healed, they resurface in toxic leadership patterns and fractured identities.
One of the most striking sections appears in their discussion on the different types of “blessings”[2] children often receive, or fail to receive, from their parents. They list seven: the good enough blessing, the scapegoat, the invisible, the idolised, the helicopter, the cold one, and the narcissist. Each represents a parental interaction pattern that shapes a child’s identity. For instance, the scapegoated child grows up believing they are always the problem; the idolised child feels they must perform endlessly to maintain parental approval; the invisible child lives as though unnoticed, etc. The Rowes demonstrate that the way we are blessed, or the blessing withheld, becomes the basis for our adult identity, leadership, and faith to either flourish or fracture. If the blessing we received from our parents was distorted, we may spend our lives living under a shadow, mistaking ourselves for someone we are not.
In Matthew 3:13-17, when Jesus is baptised, He receives the Father’s blessing before He performs a miracle, preaches a sermon, or calls a disciple. That’s the pattern: identity before activity and beloved before performance.
Contrast that with how so many people live. Like Joseph’s brothers, we grow up in families where a spotlight blessing falls on one child and leaves the others in shadow. Or, like Esau, we do not ache for wealth or inheritance, but simply for the father’s blessing. Without it, we carry unfinished business into adulthood, desperately seeking affirmation from performance, possessions, or power.
The Rowes’ seven blessing types are modern echoes of this biblical idea. The child of the cold one lives with emotional frostbite, constantly questioning their worth. The narcissistic parent offers attention only when it benefits themselves, training the child to live on eggshells. The helicopter parent suffocates independence, while the idolised child feels the crushing weight of expectation. These patterns become the “shadow of the father” in our lives, a shadow that doesn’t touch us physically, but still shapes how we feel about ourselves.
Research confirms it: many fathers stop hugging their sons before the teenage years,[3] leaving boys to be affirmed only through performance. The Rowes remind us that those early gaps or distortions in blessings continue to echo into our leadership. We may strive for success not because we love the work, but because we are still chasing Dad’s approval.
So how do we recover? How do we step out of the shadows of our earthly fathers and receive the Paternal blessing of our heavenly Father? The Rowes’ book and Scripture together point us to three truths.
First, God made us. Psalm 139:13-14 declares that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Every aspect of our design, from taste buds to muscle fibres, speaks of intentionality. Our worth does not come from what our earthly fathers said, or failed to say, but from the fact that the Creator knit us together.
Second, God paid for us. John 3:16 isn’t about performance but love. He gave His only Son not because we were good enough but because we were worth the price. I once heard a sports spectator tell His team, “I didn’t come all this way to watch you lose.” That’s the gospel. Jesus didn’t pay such a high price to watch you fail.
Third, God is shaping us. Romans 8:28 reminds us that all things, even distorted blessings and unfinished business with fathers, are worked together for our good, conforming us to Christ’s likeness. Gold is purified in fire until the refiner sees his own face in it. Likewise, God uses our past pain to shape us into the image of Jesus.
Healing leadership trauma begins with finishing our business with our fathers, whether they were present, absent, abusive, or simply human. As a Pastor, I have often encouraged people to write a letter of release: “Dad, you did what you knew. You had a father, too. I want you to know, it’s okay. I’m okay. God is my Father now. He loves me, blesses me, and I’m ready to live without regrets.” That simple act can break the shadow’s hold.
Meanwhile, the Rowes remind us that our parental blessing, or lack of it, explains our shadows. Scripture reminds us that God’s blessing restores our light. Nicholas and Sheila Wise Rowe have given us a gift in Healing Leadership Trauma. By naming the different ways parents bless or curse their children, they help us connect the dots between childhood shadows and adult struggles. But the gospel offers even greater news: whatever blessing you did or didn’t receive from your earthly father, your heavenly Father has already spoken. You are His child. You are loved. He is pleased with you.
So let’s finish our business with the past, step out from under the shadow, and live as people who have heard the only blessing that matters: “You are my son, my daughter, whom I love. With you, I am well pleased.”
(As a side note, I remember the day my Dad blessed me. He sat me down when I was 18, and I was nervous about identifying what my future “job” was to be. My Dad said, “Glyn, whether you sweep the streets or preach to millions, it makes no difference to me. Do what God put in your heart. I will always love you and be proud of you.” I was blessed.)
[1] Nicholas Rowe and Sheila Wise Rowe, Healing Leadership Trauma: Finding Emotional Health and Helping Others Flourish (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2024).
[2] Ibid, 39-40.
[3] Joe Mellor, “Dads Stop Hugging Children by the Time They Turn 10 Years Old,” The London Economic, August 26, 2015, https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/lifestyle/dads-stop-hugging-children-by-the-time-they-turn-10-years-old-19643/.
About the Author
Glyn Barrett
I am the founding & lead Pastor of !Audacious Church in Manchester, England. I was born in Manchester, but moved to Australia at the age of two. My wife and I were married in Australia and began married and ministry life in England 29 years ago. After serving as youth pastors for 12 years, we moved to Manchester to pioneer !Audacious Church. As a church we now have 7 locations. 3 in Manchester, Chester, Cardiff (Wales), Sheffield, and Geneva (Switzerland). In 2019 I became the National Leader of Assemblies of God in Great Britain. We have over 650 churches in our movement and have planted 98 new churches since May 2022 with a goal of planting 400 new churches between May 2022 and May 2028. I am the Global Chair for Church planting for Assemblies of God which currently has 420,000 churches and also chair Empowered21 Europe. I'm happily married to Sophia, with two children, one dog and two motorbikes. I love Golf, coffee and spending time with friends. I love to laugh, make friends and create memories!6 responses to ““Even if you sweep the streets…””
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Glyn, you are truly blessed with both a Father in God and the one He gave you on earth. When you are preaching, how do you address the barriers to recognizing and receiving God’s blessings that may vary widely throughout the congregation?
Thanks Diane. Yes my Father was a wonderful man. Sadly he died about 30 years ago, but he left us so much.
When preaching, I name the barriers gently yet directly: performance, comparison, father wounds, and distorted childhood “blessings.” I frame them as shared human experiences, not individual failures. I acknowledge that some grew up idolised, others invisible, and others wounded by cold or narcissistic parents. Then I shift the focus: God’s blessing is spoken before our performance, just as it was over Jesus. I emphasise that healing begins not with trying harder, but with hearing the Father say, “You are loved, you are mine.”
Glyn,
How often have you wished you were simply sweeping the streets? You are in the right role that God has created for you. Thanks for the encouraging pastoral words. One thing I think that the modern church doesn’t do so well is the act of lament. How might lamenting help us see the Father in a proper role?
Thanks Adam. Yes many times. Ministry can be brutal at times, but so can life in certain seasons. Lament helps us see the Father rightly because it gives us permission to name what was missing, distorted, or painful in our earthly stories without pretending it didn’t shape us. Lament creates space to grieve the blessings we never received and the shadows we still carry. In that honest place, God is no longer confused with our fathers’ failures. Instead, He becomes the One who hears, holds, heals, and re-speaks the blessing we were always meant to receive. The book of Lamentations gives us some great patterns of how to lament. It’s biblical; Christians and churches should learn the art of lament.
Glyn! You are truly the man for the assignment God has given you! I appreciate you sharing the beloved perspective. Why do you think it is so hard for people to accept the relational blessing we have been bestowed upon by our heavenly Father?
Thanks so much Daren. I honestly believe it’s hard for people to receive the Father’s relational blessing because most of us learned early that love must be earned, managed, or chased. Distorted parental “blessings” become internal scripts; perform to be seen, behave to belong, succeed to matter. When God speaks unconditional love, it feels unfamiliar, even unsafe, because it contradicts the identity we’ve lived with for years. Receiving His blessing requires unlearning those shadows and trusting a Father who doesn’t love us for what we do, but because we are His.