The Strong Way with Cathie Ostapchuk: Recent Episodes
Cathie Ostapchuk
The Strong Way often means coming face to face with giants, experiencing defining moments and coming out stronger on the other side.
The Strong Way is the best way – because it’s your way.
Each week, Cathie has incredible conversations covering topics such as success, strategy, transformation, resistance, resilience and more than enough wisdom to inspire you to stay in the game.
We believe you have it in you to find your strong way forward.
Welcome to Episode 11 of The Strong Way with a brave modern-day pioneer offering wisdom learned from decades of launching and building.
Like most women, Holly Wagner wears many hats. Hers include wife, mom, pastor, teacher, author and cancer survivor. She grew up in Venezuela, Indonesia and England and eventually moved to Los Angeles where she worked as an actress in films and television for over 10 years.
Holly and her husband Philip are senior founding pastors of Oasis Church – a growing, multi-cultural, multi-generational church they started in 1984 in Los Angeles. And in 2019, just before the pandemic hit, they made the bold move of handing over the leadership baton of Oasis Church to younger leaders. And in this conversation we go there – and tackle the subject of ageism and what is possible in this significant season of impact. How to offer sage wisdom, and how to not hold on to power but give it away.
If you want to hear someone speak who is both culturally relevant and culture transforming, it’s Holly. She is passionate about seeing the Church be relevant to the culture surrounding it, and in particular to see women become who God has designed them to become.
If you want to learn strategies on how to rise from adversity – lean into Holly sharing how resilience has been a key move for her.
If you are in a season where you are feeling the weight of the world, or the weight of your years – whether you are 18 or 60 – you have to know that you have more wisdom to offer those that are coming behind you. And they are looking to you to lead the way, to teach them, to give away lessons you have learned on the journey. Ageism is only a thing if you let it be a thing. Be a sage – there is someone who needs what you have to give.
This conversation with my brilliant guest Paul Burns, the Managing Director of Twitter Canada, was a surprise to me. I am not sure what you are expecting from this episode but I wager you will not only be surprised but pleased that he is not who you would expect him to be in his position – a leader overseeing a platform with such wide influence.
Paul is part theologian, part academic, part philosopher, part business strategist, but mostly he brings wisdom in the ways that leave a real impact. He is concerned about the human soul over the rhetoric and opinion that come across the Twitter feed every second of every day.
As you hear Paul share in this conversation, Twitter, as the largest repository of human thought with over a billion tweets analyzed has insight into the human condition and what is important right now. I hope you listen with interest to Paul’s view on the social media platform and the opportunity he feels exists for there to be more good to come from people’s expression than negative outcomes.
Paul Burns is a believer, builder, maker, dreamer, husband, father as well as being a senior executive at Twitter. At Twitter, he helps brands, businesses and people see the power of conversation to change the world. Paul believes that when we begin to have more open, healthy and loving conversations, especially about the things we disagree on, we are one step closer to looking more like Jesus.
When he’s not at Twitter, Paul helps lead a non-profit organization called Matthew House where he helps inspire hope, restore dignity and empower independence for refugees around the world. He lives in Toronto with his wife Olivia and two boys.
I’m going solo on this episode – and I’ll tell you why! This is an unusual seasons of uncertainty – struggles within and wars all around.
If you have been listening to The Strong Way, I envision you as someone who is somewhere and perhaps is wanting to move somewhere else. You may be either stunned but all that is going on, stuck for longer than you had thought possible or feeling stranded on an island of insecurity and uncertainty.
You are in, for all intents and purposes, transition. That word. That word that describes so many of your journeys but that word that often is accompanied by shame and disbelief. You think you should have had it figured out by now. And then life hit. You may be stunned, stuck, or stranded – or all three.
This episode is for you. There are ways of thinking and tools to grab on to that can get you on your strong way forward and keep you moving in the way you were meant to – from strength to strength.
For anyone who is leading, male or female, in the home, in ministry, in the marketplace or as an entrepreneur – my conversation with my guest, Jenni Catron, does not disappoint. When we first met at a large conference in Dallas, we sat with my coffee and her tea at a high-top table and talked circles around leadership and probably could have hosted our own gig – the conversation was that good.
I have always felt that life-changing, unchanging principles that make you strong – can always be applied on multiple levels. Leadership principles can be applied to your own personal journey of self-awareness and self-leadership and staying healthy. The same principles can be applied to any team that you are leading now – your family, your work team whether virtual or live. And of course, if you are an organizational leader the principles that you will hear Jenni share in this podcast are invaluable if you want to elevate your organizational culture and get clear on your purpose.
One of our challenges, as Jenni unpacks it for us, is that the pandemic has resulted in many of us former brave, action-oriented and pro-active leaders becoming reactive. We have let the world disorient our sense of call and purpose. Of course – we are fatigued from being in survival mode for so long.
What will keep us going and make us stronger is reminding ourselves we still have agency and that being proactive – even in something as simple as bringing some fun to the culture of the team you lead – can make a huge difference.
Jenni is one of those friends that I truly wish lived next door. So I am so happy that Wisconsin, where she lives now, is not far away. I have brought her up to my world for personal coaching and for organizational expertise and she does not disappoint. And now, my conversation with the very inspiring leadership mind that is Jenni Catron.
My brilliant guest today, Kate Bowler, is way ahead of us on the journey to understand that we don’t control much of what happens in our life, and yet there is still hope. Stunned with a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, she brought all of us who follow her into the complexity of challenging the everything happens for a reason myth.
Kate has opened wide the conversation, accompanied by full out permission to explore our humanity – the finiteness of it, the rough edges to it, the suffering and beauty, the hard and the good of it all. Do I also love her because she is Canadian – and a prairie girl from the west, as I am? Absolutely!
In Kate Bowler’s bestselling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason, readers witnessed the ways she, as a divinity-school professor and young mother, reckoned with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis; in her instant New York Times bestseller and follow-up memoir, No Cure for Being Human, she unflinchingly and winsomely unpacks the ways that life becomes both hard and beautiful when we abandon certainty and the illusion of control in our lives. Now, in their first-ever devotional book, Kate Bowler and co-author Jessica Richie offer 40ish short spiritual reflections on how we can make sense of life not as a pursuit of endless progress but as a chronic condition.
We can rest in the encouragement to strive for what is possible today — while recognizing that though we are finite, the life in front of us can be beautiful.
Toni Nieuwhof has a voice that is increasingly amplified in this season in regards to staying faithful to marriage and family and encouraging all of us to do the work. In her book, “Before You Split – Find What You Want for the Future of Your Marriage”, she has shared with brave vulnerability her personal story of life with Carey Nieuwhof, as well as life-changing principles to create the relationships you desire.
Toni shares that finding her grace zone is sometimes messy – a circuitous route rather than a linear path. Toni shares in our conversation today the journey from ‘why is this so hard’ – when stepping bravely into new arenas of voice and presence - into accepting daily that this is a new grace zone of living fully herself. Toni is calm, steady, with a quiet assertiveness that transforms into fire when she speaks.
Toni creates amazing content for relational health – and through her Smart Family podcast. Her book Before You Split is a game-changer no matter if you are married 1 day, 1 year or 37 years like Stephen and I. The ‘throwing your wedding ring at the person you love’ story is no joke. Strong marriages create strong legacies.
In this conversation with Kadi Cole, a strong voice for church, ministry and corporate leadership, Cathie explores the circuitous path and challenging circumstances female leaders navigate in their journey to find and use their voice. Kadi reminds listeners that all leaders carry something of value - a God-given gift, an authority, a strength that, if called out could help an organization, a ministry or a church flourish.
Kadi Cole’s insight will open both male and female eyes to the reality many females experience – the resistance that comes into play when they seek to grow their leadership influence, and the reality that in 2022 the leadership table is not equitable.
Kadi Cole is a voice – an assertive voice which, if you read her work, is often the best choice over a passive or aggressive voice - that is declaring that although there are minefields in navigating how to best steward the leadership gifts of women in the church – there are also very practical ways to invite those gifts – and - unleash those gifts – with work and time. Your voice matters.
Almost everyone wants to be famous. Cathie’s guest on Episode 3 of The Strong Way Podcast had fame as a hockey player and legend – but found it to be lacking.
In this rare and candid conversation with hockey legend, Paul Henderson, Cathie explores Paul’s rise to fame and his turn to faith – and Paul’s life and leadership lessons learned in both spheres. Surprised by a cancer diagnosis, Paul shares how physical suffering has made him stronger, not weaker. Paul’s winning goal in the last game of the Canada-Russia Hockey series in 1972 was declared the greatest sports moment in the last century and Team Canada ‘72 was voted the Team of the Century. Paul offers wisdom learned from the game of life professionally, personally and spiritually.
This conversation is a game-changer.
In this episode of The Strong Way Podcast, Cathie, with her guest Sheila Walsh dig deep into mining the complexities of suffering – what it takes from you – but more importantly how it shapes, transforms you and makes you stronger.
Sheila Walsh is the author of more than 30 books that have sold nearly six million copies. A household name in faith circles most would be surprised to learn about Sheila’s battle with clinical depression—one that landed her in a psychiatric hospital alone and continues in many ways to this day.
In her new book, Holding On When You Want to Let Go: Clinging to Hope When Life Is Falling Apart, and in her conversation with Cathie on this episode, Sheila vulnerably shares the traumatic events of her childhood, the loneliness, anxiety, and depression that still creep into her life, how the coronavirus pandemic magnified and exacerbated her struggles and the source of the hope that keeps her holding on each and every day.
In this episode of The Strong Way Podcast, listeners will get a raw and honest dialogue with world-class leadership influencer, Carey Nieuwhof. Carey shares openly and with candour about why his success is partly a surprise, and mostly about owning his unique lane of bringing the best of faith into the business world and the best of business into the faith world. Carey is open about being at your best, about the people closest to you believing in you, as trumping the praise of the many.
In this conversation with Cathie, author, speaker, coach, dreamer, leader, entrepreneur, global advocate and chief balloon inflator Bob Goff shares his wisdom on the power of clarity. While success can come from both strategy and whimsy, true success is focusing on what is at the centre of your call - with a commitment to living the undistracted life.