By: Christian Swails on March 15, 2025
The ego is our dominant personality. The ego is not a bad thing, in fact it is part of our survival and protection. It is our persona (Latin for mask worn by an actor) that has been formed over years and decades, to get us what we want and need out of life. The ego…
By: Ivan Ostrovsky on March 14, 2025
Simon P. Walker’s concept of undefended leadership highlights how authentic leaders foster growth in others, even when self-doubt arises. My experience playing soccer in seminary serves as an excellent example of this. When I first joined the team, I was eager to play with my fellow seminarians and test my skills. Even though I knew…
By: Joel Zantingh on March 14, 2025
In The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America, Coleman Hughes calls for an end to racial identity as a primary marker for people, because it has not produced a more flourishing and equal society. His argument is “that colorblindness is the wisest principle by which to govern our fragile experiment in multiethnic…
By: Julie O'Hara on March 14, 2025
An acquaintance recently shared that she left a mutual group because it was too white. Her perspective was that it was a “sea of white faces.” I experienced the same group as wonderfully diverse. I thought the group looked less like me than the typical Oregon demographic. At over 30% non-white, it was easily twice…
By: Daren Jaime on March 14, 2025
Race has been a factor in my life since my childhood. I remember interacting in multiple cross-racial settings and feeling like everything was peachy. I believed race was just a differentiation of skin color, but as time progressed, I found it to be the source of controversy and conflict. Growing up as a child in…
By: Noel Liemam on March 14, 2025
Introduction What is ‘race’ to me personally? Well, I am a Micronesian from the Pacific Islands which has a certain geographical location on this planet. Race to me refers a group of people with a certain likeness, way of living, same or at least similar language and history or backgrounds. This is not based on…
By: Elysse Burns on March 13, 2025
I grew up in Los Angeles, California, in a pastor’s home where the vision for a multicultural church, united by faith in Jesus, was central to our community. It wasn’t until I was in junior high, attending a school where I was one of the few white students, that I began to understand what it…
By: Jess Bashioum on March 13, 2025
Reading Leading Out of Who You Are[1] by Simon P Walker was life changing. I found myself moving through reflecting on profound truths, tears, self-awareness, inner healing and my identity in Jesus. The undefended leader, who has deliberately chosen weakness and true self-sacrifice,[2]is the kind of leader I want to be. To become an undefended…
By: Judith McCartney on March 13, 2025
Leadership is often defined by strength, empowerment, control, and authority. Have we wondered what leadership might look like through the lens of authenticity and vulnerability? Hello. My name is Judith, and I want a world where leadership strength is about vulnerability, transparency, self-awareness, openness, and emotional intelligence. These are wonderful tools for building trust among…
By: Michael Hansen on March 13, 2025
In 2010, I entered a new senior leadership role with an organic produce distributor in Portland, Oregon. As part of my onboarding and development, the Board of Directors requested that I attend a 3-day class with Josh, our CEO. It was called “Speaking with Conviction.” We were introduced to our instructor and a dozen other…
By: Rich on March 13, 2025
Edwin Friedman says differentiated leaders should expect sabotage.[1] That does not sound encouraging. Over the past weeks, several members of the DLGP04 cohort have shared stories where their leadership efforts had resulted in undeserved personal attacks. The hurt is enough to prompt a now familiar question of whether accepting a role is worth the effort.…
By: Diane Tuttle on March 13, 2025
What I believe about race and why. When I was in elementary school the first time I saw children whose skin was much darker than mine I questioned my mother about it. She responded by telling me that skin color was God’s gift to help people whose generations of ancestors spent thousands of years living…
By: Alex Mwaura on March 13, 2025
While the entrance of diverse knowledge, technology and information has its good aspects, the same can affect culture and the workings of a modern organisation. I’ve had great interest in the topic of organisation culture because I think it does a lot not only to the success of an organisation but also to the local…
By: David Weston on March 13, 2025
I remember the time when I was a young man in my mid-twenties, and I experienced an epiphany. This was a significant moment for me because it was when I came to the conclusion that not all failure was bad. I discovered that the worst leaders I knew, in Walker’s words, had substantial frontstage presence…
By: Ryan Thorson on March 13, 2025
“I have a dream that one day my children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The topic of race has always been something that I’ve been aware of for as long as I can remember. Even though I have…
By: Betsy on March 13, 2025
In 1992 I read the book ‘Improving Your Serve: The Art of Unselfish Living’ and it changed my life and motivation. The author Swindoll says that to have a decent heart we need to have “a non-defensive spirit when confronted” and his phrase that has accompanied me as a life motto is, “genuine humility operates…
By: Debbie Owen on March 13, 2025
What I knew about racism prior to this week’s assignment can be illustrated by this story: I was attending a Renovare week-long residency a few years ago. One of our leaders for the week was an Anglican priest with a DMin. He is a deeply thoughtful man with a great sense of humor; he’s a…
By: Jeremiah Gómez on March 13, 2025
Starbucks is a strange place to have a threshold experience with the dynamics of power. But on a November day in 2023, at a café in a town you’ve never heard of, meeting with a courageous leader you’ve never heard of, that’s what happened for me. For a long time, I held a pretty unnuanced…
By: Robert Radcliff on March 13, 2025
This week, I read Leading Out of Who You Are by Simon Walker. Walker situates leadership as power and trust. A healthy leader has the power to take responsibility while they trust beyond themselves, ideally in God. In the first section, he presents Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgy and his front stage and backstage to explain what…
By: Darren Banek on March 13, 2025
I don’t get the opportunity to travel much, but when I do, I love to start conversations with people I run into. These conversations are intentional as I aim to share the Gospel at least five times while away from home. Several years ago, I worked logistics for an outdoor event in Hermiston, Oregon, when…
