Rhythms of Leadership: Recent Episodes
Markus Watson
Ministry leadership is hard. It’s exhausting. It’s overwhelming. And sometimes we just want to quit.That’s why it’s so important for you and me to develop healthy rhythms that will strengthen and nourish our leadership. Rhythms of learning. Rhythms of community. Rhythms of mission. Rhythms of spiritual formation.I’m Markus Watson and my hope is that each of these short episodes would serve as just a single beat in your Rhythms of Leadership.
"To be deeply formed for racial reconciliation means we must open ourselves to the truth that things we hate in others we also find in ourselves."
--Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life, p. 87
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
“How come pastors do not often deal with the 'issues beneath the issues'? They do not because they are pastors and because they are people. Pastors do not deal with the real issues because they are pastors, and they do not deal with the real issues because they are people."
--Michael MacKenzie, Don't Blow Up Your Ministry, p. 71
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
"Spiritual leadership is the power to change the atmosphere by one’s presence, the unconscious influence that makes Christ and spiritual things real to others."
--John Oswald Sanders
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
“Jesus desires for his church to faithfully fulfill the call he has entrusted to them--even in a changing environment."
--Mark Strong, Who Moved My Neighborhood?: Leading Congregations Through Gentrification and Economic Change, p. 17
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
“David's story reminds us that shepherding leaders are forged on the anvil of obscurity and refined in the crucible of visibility."
--Tom Nelson, The Flourishing Pastor, p. 40
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
“False self is an identity based on what you have, what you do, and what others think about you. I am not what I do. I am not what I have. I am not what people think of me."
--Basil Pennington (Trappist Monk)
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
"In a post-Christian culture, we need less training on how to speak the gospel and more training on how to listen for the gospel longings in those around us."
--Jon Ritner, Positively Irritating: Embracing a Post-Christian World to Form a More Faithful and Innovative Church, p. 64
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
"Christianity in the Western world is often marginalized as a life accessory rather than the means of powerful life transformation." (p. xiv)
--Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus, p. xiv
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
"Telling creates resistance. Asking questions creates relationships."
--Andrew Sobel, Power Questions: Build Relationships, Win New Business, and Influence Others
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
"My level of perfection doesn’t determine my expertise.”
--Jeff Holmes
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
“It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.”
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
“Spiritual guidance in our day is a complicated subject and discipline that we seemingly have little time to consider. We are distracted by the frenetic pace of technology and the wide range of promises, from whiter teeth, better bodies, and faster cars, to more money, passionate love, and of course, a happier, more fulfilling life than our current everyday existence.”
--Robin T. Jennings, The Door to Renewal: Spiritual Growth Through the Mind of St. Paul, p. 37.
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
"Overcoming adaptive challenges requires shared leadership and 'sounding together,' because no single leader is smart enough to figure everything out alone."
--Bryan Sims, Leading Together: The Holy Possibility of Harmony and Synergy in the Face of Change, p. 11
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
“Good reflection leads to action, and action is not completed until it has been reflected upon.”
--Robert Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies, p. 92
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
“It is important that when others are opening their griefs to us we discipline ourselves to be quiet.”
--Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
Click HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
“I’m learning to participate with things as they unfold, to expect to be surprised, to enjoy the mystery of it, and to surrender to what I don’t know and can never know. I was well trained to create things – plans, policies, events, programs. It hasn’t been easy to give up the role of master creator and move into the dance of life.”
--Margaret Wheatly, Finding our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time
"The default by so many Christians toward earning their salvation by good works and dutiful church service has to be halted, and indeed, resisted. For this reason, the followers of Jesus need to be re-gospeled on a regular basis." (p. 178)
--Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, ReJesus: Remaking the Church in Our Founder's Image, p. 178
"A man who is travelling in a wrong direction, has all the trouble and gets none of the good."
--Conferences of John Cassian
"It is time for those of us who are professional leaders in the local church to be humble enough to decenter ourselves from the life of the church and take up the call to equip every member to operate out of their gifts and calling."
--Jon Ritner, Positively Irritating: Embracing a Post-Christian World to Form a More Faithful and Innovative Church, p. 48
"A good leader is the cultural architect. Leaders don't change everything in these complex contexts, but they do create the culture (environment) in which transformation becomes possible."
--Bryan Sims, Leading Together: The Holy Possibility of Harmony and Synergy in the Face of Change, p. 14
“St. Peter grew in this grace and knowledge, and he was given the keys to the kingdom of heaven. One key that Peter holds out is the key of spiritual growth. This key is designed to fit and unlock our own hearts. It is the key that turns our life in Christ into a blessing—right now.”
--Robin T. Jennings, May You Live in Christ: Spiritual Growth Through the Vision of St. Peter, p. 121
"We must admit that both of us are somewhat obsessed with mission and what it means to be missional people. But we both remain convinced that it is Christology that remains even more foundational and therefore the primary issue."
--Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, Re-Jesus: Remaking the Church in Our Founder's Image, p. 4
“Many capable people are kept from getting to the next level of contribution because they can’t let go of the belief that everything is important. An Essentialist has learned to tell the difference between what is truly important and everything else.”
--Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
"Death reveals the self-annihilating quality of poverty in all its fullness. We slip away from ourselves entirely. Our freely fashioned destiny is concealed and taken out of our grasp. In the obedient and suffering acceptance of these depths of powerlessness, we are left with only the power of self-abandonment. At this point poverty comes to full achievement. Its meaning comes to full clarity in the cry of Jesus on the Cross: “Abba, into your hands I commit my Spirit” (Lk. 23:46)."
--Johannes Baptist Metz, Poverty of Spirit, pp. 44-45
"Kenosis is the means for Christian poverty alleviation."
Rob Gailey, Development in Mission
"Refusing to take the social location of the 'expert,' they rightly suggest that we think of ourselves as 'participant witnesses' rather than 'participant observer.'"
--Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Lived Theology, pp. 118-119
"When I was a young adult, I joined the Beatles in singing 'All you need is love.' For me, the words of the Beatles song have mellowed over the years, and I no longer sing but reflect on the words 'All you Need is God.'”
--Robin Jennings, A Letter to the Church and the Next Generation: Spiritual Growth Through the Witness of James, p. 61
"Subsequent religious tradition has by and large encouraged us to take the Bible seriously rather than to enjoy it, but the paradoxical truth of the matter may well be that by learning to enjoy the biblical stories more fully as stories, we shall also come to see more clearly what they mean to tell us about God, man, and the perilously momentous realm of history."
--Robert Alter
"Sadly, many majority culture Christians have lost the sense of strangeness inherent in their identity and called for by the Gospel message; they rather like their surroundings and want to keep the strangers out!"
--Daniel Carroll
"We argue that the ultimate aim of transformational development is to participate in the life and mission of God, and we contend that we do this by following the way of Jesus."
--Rob Gailey, Development in Mission
"Like a muscle that can be strengthened, we can train to see with eyes of compassion. I try practicing this when I am walking down the street or am ina crowd. I look into the face of each person and silently whisper, 'Child of God, may you be well.' This interrupts my normal tendency to label and judge."
--Mark Scandrette, The Ninefold Path of Jesus
''Live a life to engage others, not make it all about you. We are not the hero. Jesus is the hero."
--Bob Goff
"I have found that when it comes to people's brokenness there is often a core belief (lie) that drives everything else. It is like their thesis statement."
--Michael MacKenzie, Don't Blow Up Your Ministry, p. 119
"You can surely get through life without a developed sense of wonder, but you would lack certain sensibilities that enrich the texture of human existence."
--Robert C. Fuller
"People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right."
--Albus Dumbledore
"All transformation begins with story transformation."
--Ian Morgan Cron, The Story of You
“There are no formulas—no definitive how-tos—for growth in the inner character of Jesus. Such growth is a way of relentless seeking. But there are many things we can do to place ourselves at the disposal of God, and ‘if with all our hearts we truly seek him, we shall surely find him’ (Jeremiah 29:13 PAR). Or as the prophet Azariah said, ‘If you seek Him, He will let you find him’ (2 Chronicles 15:2). We can count on his goodness.”
--Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 94
"The first task for any group that is immersed in an adaptive challenge is to discover for itself that change is necessary…."
--Richard Pascale, Mark Milleman, and Linda Gioja, Surfing the Edge of Chaos
"When a Christian leaders' identity is grounded in the love and the call of God, secure in believing that, even in this challenge, God is completing the good work within us and in our organizations, then identity, security, purpose, and meaning are assured even when we face failure, resistance, and rejection."
--Tod Bolsinger, Tempered Resilience
"Develop the discipline of losing arguments… In a discussion where you are about 60% convinced, intentionally side with the 40%… why?… because when your leaders see that you don’t have to win every singe battle, they will see that the church matters more than you."
--Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer, A Church Called Tov
“When we are alone and quiet we are afraid that something will be whispered in our ear, and so we hate the silence and drug ourselves with social life.”
--Friedrich Nietzshe
"Proud people focus on the failures of others. Broken people are overwhelmed with a sense of their own spiritual need."
--Nancy Leigh DeMoss
“Yes, we have to find the courage to embrace our own brokenness, to make our most feared enemy into a friend, and to claim it as an intimate companion. I am convinced that healing is often so difficult because we don’t want to know the pain.”
Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved, p. 93
Related Rhythms of Leadership episodes:
- Ep 29: Believe the Truth About Yourself, with Brian Russell
- Ep 31: Embracing Your False Self, with Markus Watson
Related Spiritual Life and Leadershp episodes:
- Ep 10: Meeting God in the Darkest Places, Sermon on Jonah 2:1-10
- Ep 11: Discipleship and the Twelve Steps, with Kaye Schneider
- Ep 38: You Are God’s Beloved, with Markus Watson
- Ep 121: Rewrite Your Story, with Ian Morgan Cron
“The impostor must be called out of hiding, accepted, and embraced. He is an integral part of my total self.”
Brennan Manning, Abba's Child
"Christians are reticent about telling God things that God presumably knows, though they are then oddly unrestrained about itemizing what God should do even though they recognize that God could work this out… [The Psalms] imply that if God can be provoked to act, God can be left to work out precisely what to do."
--John Goldingay
"Oh, God, help me believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is."
--Macrina Wiederkehr
“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”
--Mother Teresa
"For who hath known the mind of the Lord that we should instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ."
1 Corinthians 2:16
"If there is one practical idea that encapsulates grace it's the belief that people are doing the best they can with what they have."
--Kirsten Powers, Saving Grace
"We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete."
2 Corinthians 10:5-6
“Why is it often easier for us to acknowledge our sins before God than before another believer?… God is holy and without sin, a just judge of evil, and an enemy of all disobedience. But another Christian is sinful, as are we, knowing from personal experience the night of secret sin. Should we not find it easier to go to one another than to the holy God?”
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
“Language... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone.”
--Paul Tillich
"Most of the time innovation emerges when the status quo is no longer tolerable?"
--Tom Sine and Dwight Friesen, 2020s Foresight, p. 193
"The path to liberation in a changing world of work comes through wholehearted grief."
--Michaela O'Donnell, Make Work Matter
"Makarios is the Greek word Jesus uses, which means something like incredibly fortunate, favored or godlike. It's a term we might use to describe the most privileged and admired star athlete, celebrity or billionaire."
--Mark Scandrette, The Ninefold Path of Jesus
“Our first and foremost task is faithfully to care for the inward fire so that when it is really needed it can offer warmth and light to lost travelers.”
--Henri Nouwen
"The ripping and writhing of a body on a cross, the bizarre and metaphysical maneuver of using death to defeat death, the urgency of the summons to human beings to ally themselves with the events of Christ and with the person of these events, and then to make that person and those events the center of their lives—these things tell us that the main human trouble is desperately difficult to fix, even for God, and that sin is the longest-running of human emergencies."
Plantinga, Cornelius, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, p. 5.
"Manipulative leaders have learned to fake vulnerability--to seem exposed to risk and thus committed to flourishing. But, in fact, they use their ostensible vulnerability to shore up unbalanced authority."
--Andy Crouch, Strong and Weak
"The 'Beloved Community,' as Rev. Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. envisioned it is not just one where people love and care for each other; it is a community rooted in equality and justice for all people."
--Kirsten Powers, Saving Grace
“Sin is disruption of created harmony and then resistance to divine restoration of that harmony.”
--Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin
"Regardless of what you have come to believe about God based on your life experience, the truth is that when God thinks of you, love swells in his heart and a smile comes to his face."
--David Benner, Surrender to Love
"I am not on a solo mission from God. I am part of a larger collective of people who get to join in on God’s big mission of redemption creatively working in anticipation of all that God is doing to make us new."
Michaela O'Donnell, Make Work Matter
"To simply speak the name Jesus is not sufficient to encompass a vision of God’s mission and kingdom. One must ask, 'Whose Jesus?' and 'Which Christianity?'"
--Phuc Luu, Jesus of the East
"Shalomic action in the world breeds worship, yet Christendom worship systems may not breed mission."
--Tom Sine and Dwight Friesen, 2020s Foresight
"Flourishing requires us to embrace both authority and vulnerability, both capacity and frailty--even, at least in this broken world, both life and death."
--Andy Crouch, Small and Weak
“In any type of institution whatsoever, when a self-directed, imaginative, energetic, or creative member is being consistently frustrated and sabotaged rather than encouraged and supported, what will turn out to be true one hundred percent of the time, regardless of whether the disrupters are supervisors, subordinates, or peers, is that the person at the very top of that institution is a peace-monger.”
--Edwin Friedman, A Failure of Nerve
"But the real challenge of leadership is not tactical or strategic, but emotional."
--Tod Bolsinger, Canoeing the Mountains
"People do not resist change, per se. People resist loss. You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime. You place yourself on the line when you tell oeple what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear."
Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line
Rhythms of Leadershipis a brand new podcast designed to help you develop a healthy inner life of union with Jesus so that you can lead in a healthy way in your outer life.
Each episode will:
- Be released every Monday and Wednesday starting January 24, 2022.
- Run on average only about 6-8 minutes.
- Focus on a single quote, with the intent of offering just one or two pieces of wisdom that will help us grow in our leadership and spiritual formtion.
I hope that Rhythms of Leadership will be a great blessing to you as you live out your calling both as a leader and as a beloved child of God.
--Markus Watson