Spiritual Life and Leadership

Matt Tebbe and Ben Sternke are the authors Having the Mind of Christ: 8 Axioms to Cultivate a Robust Faith and pastors of The Table in Indianapolis.  So often the Christian life generally and Christian leadership specifically is oriented toward performance.  But in this conversation, Matt Tebbe and Ben Sternke remind us that our spiritual life and our leadership is bathed in grace. THIS EPISODE&ap...

Eric Hoffman said, “To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.”  In this episode, we’re going to talk about the state of disequilibrium that so many of us find ourselves in—what used to work in church leadership and ministry doesn’t seem to work anymore.  And we’re going to talk about why that disequilibrium is actually a gift. THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: We live in a...

In a time of immense change, how should churches do ministry?  How should pastors and leaders lead their churches and organizations?  Should we set a BHAG--a Big Hairy Audacious Goal?  Should we set one-year, five-year, and ten-year goals? Or is there another way?  Could it be that what we need are not big, enormous goals, but simple to take small steps and achieve short-term wins? THIS EPISODE&ap...

Kevin Nye is the author of Grace Can Lead Us Home: A Christian Call to End Homelessness , and Housing Director of a non-profit youth center.  In this episode, Kevin helps us understand some of the misconceptions about homelessness—what’s really going on—and what we can do about it.  Specifically, he helps us understand why the first thing we should do is provide housing for those who need it, not...

Todd Hall is the author of The Connected Life and professor of Psychology at Biola University and faculty affiliate at the Harvard Human Flourishing Program.  In this episode we discuss a key component of healthy leadership: secure attachments.  Healthy leaders more likely grew up with safe and secure attachments (primarily with their parents or key caregivers) or have worked to develop safe and s...

Allen Hilton is the author of A House United: How the Church Can Save the World and founder of the non-profit, A House United .  In this episode, we discuss the rise of political divisiveness that has invaded our churches.  And we address what we can do about it. THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Allen Hilton is the author of A House United: How The Church Can Save the World . Allend Hilton...

Amy Sherman is the author of Agents of Flourishing   and a Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute .  In this conversation, Amy is going to help us understand six “community endowments”—six arenas of life—that need to be strong in order for those communities to truly be flourishing communities.  And then Amy gives us some great starting points to help us discern how God may be calling us to contri...

Scott Sabin is the Executive Director of Plant with Purpose , an organization that works with people in poverty all over the world to restore the land where they live so that they can become self-sustaining.  It’s an organization that recognizes that they are not the saviors of the poor, they are partners who work with the poor. In this episode, Scott shares about the work of Plant with Purpose . ...

Mark Roberts is the former Executive Director of Fuller Seminary’s DePree Center for Leadership .  Mark now leads the Third Third Initiative at the DePree Center. In this episode, Tod Bolsinger and Markus Watson discuss three clips from a recent webinar by Mark Roberts on the topic of nostalgia.  We learn about the difference between historical nostalgia and personal nostalgia.  We discuss the pos...

What is a digital silent retreat?  In this episode, Laura Murray, a pastor and spiritual director, will tell the story of how she began to use Zoom to lead digital silent retreats while people were quarantining due to Covid, as well as offer insight into how to lead your own digital silent retreats.  THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDES: Laura Murray is a pastor, a spiritual director, and regul...

Nicholas Pearce is the author of The Purpose Path .  He is also Clinical Professor of Management & Organizations at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and Founder & CEO of The Vocati Group . In this episode, Nicholas Pearce discusses what success really is.  Spoiler alert—it has nothing to do with bigger, better, and more.  It has to do with faithfully following the purpo...

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch are the authors of ReJesus: Remaking the Church in our Founder’s Image . In a world in which the church has in many ways lost, not only the image of Jesus, but also the centrality of Jesus, how do we once again become the church we were meant to be?  The church that the world needs us to be? In this episode, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch discuss how we can recalibrate...

Bryan Sims is the author of Leading Together: The Holy Possibility of Harmony and Synergy in the Face of Change .  He is also a coach with Spiritual Leadership Inc. and a professor at Asbury Theological Serminary. In this episode, Bryan Sims discusses the importance of shared leadership.  As we lead through these challenging times, leaders need to be able to bring people together—to draw on all ou...

Jon Ritner is the author of Positively Irritating: Embracing a Post-Christian World to Form a More Faithful and Innovative Church .  In this episode, we discuss what it means to be the church in a post-Christendom world.  How can the church be the kind of church that a Post-Christendom world actually needs —and the kind of church that God is calling the church to be? THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS...

The church is experiencing what Brian Wallace calls a crisis of adult discipleship.  We have plenty of people going to church.  But that doesn’t necessarily translate into faithful, deep discipleship. In this episode Brian Wallace discusses how to address that challenge.  Brian is the Executive Director of Fuller Seminary’s Center for Spiritual Formation, and he helps us understand the critical co...

Tom Nelson is author of The Flourishing Pastor , as well as the senior pastor of Christ Community Church in Kansas City and the president of Made to Flourish . In this episode, Tom Nelson unpacks what it means to be a flourishing pastor --a pastor who lives and leads from a deep well of inner health and wholeness. THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Tom Nelson is author of T he Flourishing Pas...

Rich Villodas is the lead pastor at New Life Fellowship and the author of The Deeply Formed Life , in which he explores five values that help us live in union with Jesus. In this interview, Rich and I focus on two of those five values:  racial justice and reconciliation and sexual wholeness .  These are not values typically associated with spiritual formation, but they are incredibly important non...

Gentrification is a process by which a local group of residents are slowly pushed out by economic forces, making room for a new group of residents.  In his book, Who Moved My Neighborhood: Leading Congregations through Gentrification and Economic Change , Mark Strong helps local churches navigate that challenge of gentrification.  And in this episode, Mark unpacks, not only the effects of gentrifi...

Michael MacKenzie, the Executive Director of Marble Retreat and the author of Don’t Blow Up Your Ministry , has been working with pastors in crisis for a long time.  In this episode, Michael will help us understand not only the danger signs of an impending ministry blow-up, but also how to heal after we’ve blown up our ministry. THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Michael MacKenzie is Executiv...

Ian Morgan Cron is an Enneagram teacher, host of the Typology podcast, and author of the new book, The Story of You: An Enneagram Journey to Becoming Your True Self . Every person has a story.  You’ve got a story.  I’ve got a story.  And not just a story of what actually happened, but a story we tell ourselves to help make sense of our lives. In this episode, Ian Morgan Cron helps us understand th...

Leadership resilience is about maintaining one's core purpose and identity while the world changes around us.  It is especially important for those of us in ministry leadership as we navigate this rapidly changing and disruptive world in which we live. In this episode, Tod Bolsinger discusses three things we can do to grow our leadership resilience. THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Tod...

Saving Grace , by Kirsten Powers, addresses the challenge of leadership in a divided world.  How can we be people of grace when we are surrounded by so much ungrace? As a USA Today columnist and senior political analyst for CNN—and a committed follower of Jesus—Kirsten Powers comes at this challenge as someone who has had to wrestle with her own tendency toward ungrace. In this interview, Kirsten...

Dwight Friesen and Tom Sine coach and consult with churches in the area of foresight and innovation.  They are alo co-authors of 2020s Foresight: Three Vital Practices for Thriving in a Decade of Accelerating Change . There’s no denying that the world just keeps changing and it feels like the church is constantly playing catch-up. But here’s the thing.  We can’t keep playing catch up.  We have to...

It is really hard to be a church leader these days, isn’t it?  The world we live in today is not the world we prepared for as ministry leaders—especially in light of everything we’ve been through over the last couple of years. So, what do you do when you find yourself essentially thrust into a world for which you weren’t prepared?  What do you do when all the rules have changed?  What do you do in...

When Jesus told his disciples that "whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave," that was an incredibly counter-cultural statement. It's unfortunate that the church has often rejected this teaching and, instead, has sought to "lord it over' those around them. In this episode, Tod Bolsinger and Markus Watson re...