Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Before you recruit someone to fill that next opening in your organization, I’ve got a resource that you should definitely check out. The resource I am referring to comes from the book Recruiting to Releasing by Jim Wiegand. I had a chance to sit down with Jim to talk about this eye-opening book.
Purchase your copy of Recruiting to Releasing on Amazon here, or on Apple Books here.
If you would like to check out when Jim interviewed me about my book When Sheep Bite, check out that video here.
Fellas, the godly superwomen in our lives have unlocked our leadership potential. What are you going to do with that? You have only two choices: steward it or squander it. We only honor these godly women when we steward that potential well. Watch the full Father’s Day sermon here.
I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.
Dan Reiland addresses an important topic for busy leaders: busy work vs. real work. “Doing the easy stuff makes us feel good, doing the hard stuff helps other people live better. When we focus on our real work over busywork, we see intentional progress toward a focused vision or goal, rather than just checking things off a list.” Check out the four things Dan calls leaders to focus on.
“Because of what Jesus did for us through His life, death, and resurrection, we are no longer the worst things we have ever done. We are now the best thing God has ever done for us! That’s what God saved us from.That is our history. Now the question is, what has God saved us for? That is our destiny!“ —Jim Wiegand, in the Everything Begins With Purpose reading plan on YouVersion
A good reminder for pastors. “Call your own soul often to account; examine the temper, the frame, and the motions of your heart with all holy severity, so that the evidences of your faith in Jesus, and your repentance for sin, and your conversion to God, be many and fair, be strong and unquestionable; that you may walk on with courage and joyful hope toward heaven, and lead on the flock of Christ thither with holy assurance and joy.” —Isaac Watts
“The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does.” —Herbert Brocknow
“‘The fear the Lord.’ This refers to an awesome respect for God, which is a good thing. Without it, people are presumptuous before God. Those who do not fear God fail to respect His awesome power and righteousness, and they do not recognize the infinite distance between their sins and His holiness.“ —Quest Study Bible commentary on Psalm 128:1
“Our Lord did not ask us to give up the things of earth, but to exchange them for better things.” —Fulton J. Sheen
“Abortion advocates have long labeled humans in the earliest stages of development as ‘nothing but’ clumps of cells. This description is like calling Michelangelo’s David ‘a clump of marble.’ The only difference is that while art historians know every detail of this statuary masterpiece, scientists are still unlocking the secrets of the embryo.” John Stonestreet shares some astounding new research about the ways that the cells of a baby develop in a way that can only be attributed to an All-Wise Creator.
The unrighteous always seek to pull down those who hold to God’s righteous standard. How sad that they think it easier to pull the righteous down than to repent of their own evil. God sees this: He rewards the righteous who do not compromise and He punishes the unrepentant unrighteous who try to force the righteous to compromise.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
I want to make sure there are no misunderstandings on this, so please stay with me! I realize that the title of my newest book—When Sheep Bite—may bring a picture to your mind that I never intended.
Check out this episode of The Podcast.
Here are some helpful resources from this episode:
If you would like to watch the full interview I did on the Converge Coaching podcast, check that out here.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
As I was being interviewed on theLeading From Alignment podcast, Jim Wiegand and John Opalewski were asking me about back-to-back chapters in my book Shepherd Leadership where I discuss how a leader’s confidence and humility should be in a healthy tension with each other.
There is an alter-ego superhero I created to help me learn this lesson—his name is Plungerman!
In my book Shepherd Leadership, I talk about the simple three-word phrase that has helped me maintain this balance: God chose me. The fact that God did the choosing should give me the confidence to cast vision, but the humility that God chose me—out of all of the other people He could have chosen—should bring an appropriate humility that allows me to involve other leaders on my team.
If you would like to watch this full interview on the Leading From Alignment podcast, please go here. And if you would like to check out other clips I’ve already shared, please click here.
I’ll be sharing more clips from this interview soon, so please stay tuned. Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter is available in print or ebook, and in audiobook through either Audible or Apple.
These co-hosts wanted to discuss two back-to-back chapters in my book Shepherd Leadership where I talk about the balance between leading confidently and leading humbly. Most of us are wired to lean toward one of these poles, but godly leaders are learning how to find the healthy tension between them.
In this part of our conversation, we talked about leaders who haven’t learned to add confidence to their humility.
I’ll be sharing more clips from this Leading From Alignment interview soon, so please stay tuned. Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter is available in print or ebook, and in audiobook through either Audible or Apple.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Check out a snippet of this conversation I had with John Opalewski and Jim Wiegand on the Leading From Alignment podcast. If you want to watch the full 30-minute interview, check out this link.
As one of my friends commented to me this week, “Your timing on this is incredible—I was just thinking about self-awareness this morning. It’s probably my biggest fear as a leader: am I accurate in my own self-assessment? am I who I think I am?” These are questions that all leaders should be asking regularly.
I’ll be sharing more clips from this Leading From Alignment interview soon, so please stay tuned. Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter is available in print or ebook, and in audiobook through either Audible or Apple.
Jim pastors a very large church, I pastor a small church, and John coaches pastors who pastor every size church in between. We are all in agreement that when it comes to the vitality of both the church and the pastor, the size of the church or its budget is not the best metric to monitor. Take a listen…
None of us are anti-growth when it comes to the church, but we are pro-health. Jim said it well: We will get what we focus on. If we just want numbers, the numbers may explode, but people may explode (or implode) in the process. But if we focus health, we will get healthy—both the pastor and the congregation.
This idea is the reason behind my book Shepherd Leadership, especially the subtitle “The metrics that really matter.” I am so grateful to hear that my book is helping pastors and church boards realign their thinking along biblical practices, and that Shepherd Leadership is even being used as a textbook in a pastoral training school. I believe my book can be of assistance to you too.
I’ll be sharing more clips from this Leading From Alignment interview soon, so please stay tuned. Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter is available in print or ebook, and in audiobook through either Audible or Apple.
Craig T. Owens 