Margaret Diddams, an industrial and organizational psychologist who studies leaders and leadership failure, and Shirley Mullen, a historian and the former president of Houghton University, wrote Tried and True together. Using the life of John Wesley as a tutor, they describe the virtues that help Christian leaders last for the long haul.

THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Why John Wesley's failure in Georgia emptied him and prepared him for Aldersgate.
• Why leaders are ridiculously in charge but not in control.
• The difference between surrender and sacrifice, and how sacrifice can be a controlling form of surrender.
• Why leaders burn out when they are so busy doing for God that they forget to be with God.
• What it means to steward a role rather than embody it, and why leaders should take the initiative in bringing closure to their work.
• Why accountability with peers who tell the truth is critical, and where Wesley fell short.
• Why servant leadership means serving the mission, not avoiding tough decisions.
• How charisma serves a mission or turns into a brand.
• Why hope is different from optimism: optimism looks to the future, hope looks to eternity, so leaders keep working toward shalom (wholeness: joy, purpose, character, good relationships, justice, and spiritual well-being) even if they never see it, like medieval cathedral builders.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• Margaret Diddams and Shirley Mullen
  • Margaret Diddams on Amazon
  • Shirley Mullen on Amazon
  • Christian Scholars Review (Margaret Diddams, editor)
• Books mentioned
  • Tried and True: The Countercultural Virtues of Christian Leadership

RELATED EPISODES:

• The Light and Dark Sides of Power, with Nicole Massie Martin, author of Nailing It
• Leadership That Smells Like the Gospel, with Jason Jensen, author of Formed to Lead
• Letting Go in Leadership to Move Forward in Life, with Adam McHugh, author of Blood From a Stone

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Click HERE to get my FREE online course, BECOMING LEADERS OF SHALOM.

Sandra Glahn is professor of media arts and worship at Dallas Theological Seminary and author of A Woman's Place Is in the Story: Seeing Women in the Biblical Narrative. Sandra and Markus talk about the ways we skip, vilify, cameo, and domesticate the women of Scripture, and how reading them in the context of the larger story changes what we see.

THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Four ways we tend to get women in the Bible wrong.
• Why the women in Matthew's genealogy are not there for immorality, and what Matthew is doing with them instead.
• What the woman at the well looks like when John 3 and 4 are read together and our assumptions about her past are set aside.
• What levirate marriage was and why it matters for Tamar, Ruth, and the woman at the well.
• Why Jezebel's real sin was idolatry, and how the setting of Jezreel shows God keeping a promise.
• What it means when women are unnamed or silent in a story, from the midwives in Exodus to the woman at the end of Judges.
• Why reading bigger sections of Scripture, even on audio in the car, helps us see the story.
• Why pastors should learn from women who have studied these texts and stop segregating Scripture.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• Sandra Glahn:
  • Website
  • Substack
  • Instagram
• Books mentioned:
  • A Woman's Place Is in the Story: Seeing Women in the Biblical Narrative, by Sandra Glahn

RELATED EPISODES:

• Empowering Women in Ministry, with Tara Beth Leach, author of Emboldened
• Against a Culture of Abuse, with Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer, authors of A Church Called Tov
• Leadership Through the Lens of Hebrews, with Amy Peeler, author of Hebrews: Commentaries for Christian Formation

Send me a text! I’d love to know what you're thinking!

Click HERE to get my FREE online course, BECOMING LEADERS OF SHALOM.

Marcos Canales is the pastor of La Fuente Ministries, a bilingual, intercultural congregation in Pasadena, California, and a PhD student at Fuller Theological Seminary. In this conversation, Markus Watson and Marcos talk about ministry in a community reeling from both the Eaton fire and ongoing ICE enforcement, why Marcos describes it as an enforcement of terror, what a robust theology of suffering looks like, and how churches removed from the front lines can stand in solidarity without centering themselves.

THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Why Marcos describes current immigration enforcement as an enforcement of terror, and how it echoes the violence many Latin American families fled.
• How the Eaton fire and ICE operations compounded trauma in Pasadena and Altadena within a single month.
• Bilingual ministry as a daily practice of rehumanization.
• Why theologies that rush people toward superficial hope end up wounding them more.
• Gustavo Gutiérrez's reading of Job and the call to keep talking to God in the midst of suffering.
• The risen Jesus who never hides his wounds, and what that means for wounded leaders.
• Grief stations, gratitude, and building a congregational culture where lament is a spiritual practice.
• Resistance and re-existence, from prayer vigils to letters for people detained at Adelanto.
• Four concrete steps for majority-white churches that want to stand with immigrant neighbors.
• Marcos closes the conversation by praying the Immigrant's Creed.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• Marcos Canales:
  • La Fuente Ministries
  • More about La Fuente Ministries
• Giving opportunities for migrant solidarity:
  • Clergy Community Coalition
  • La Fuente Ministries Compassion Fund (choose "LFM Compasión-Compassion Fund")
• Books mentioned:
  • On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, by Gustavo Gutiérrez
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander
• Other resources:
  • The Immigrant's Creed / El Credo del Inmigrante, by Rev. José Luis Casal, director of Presbyterian World Mission

RELATED EPISODES:

• Episode 143: How the Church Can Respond to Immigration, with Karen Gonzalez, author of Beyond Welcome
• Episode 268: Borderless Faith, with Seth Clark, lead pastor of The Border Church
• Episode 287: Leadership and Lament, a Quick Conversation with Tod Bolsinger and Markus Watson

Send me a text! I’d love to know what you're thinking!

Click HERE to get my FREE online course, BECOMING LEADERS OF SHALOM.