By: Christian Swails on January 31, 2025
In a spiritual direction session, the only posture that allows me to remain open to the Spirit and the person seeking direction is a posture of love, a visceral ‘willing the good’ toward the person in front of me. That may sound obvious, but for a chronic self-preservationist like myself, it is one of the…
By: Daren Jaime on January 31, 2025
In a world marked by uncertainty, division, and rapid change, and societal turbulence, the need for strong, principled leadership has never been greater. People are searching for leaders who inspire trust, uphold integrity, and can bring clarity in times of confusion. A claim that Karise Hutchinson echoes in her writing Illuminaire, people want leaders who…
By: Ivan Ostrovsky on January 30, 2025
For most of my life, I was a people-pleaser. It was hard for me to say “no” to others. I wanted to be liked and hoped that everyone around me would view me positively. As a freshman at Pacific Union College in California, I found this school to be much larger than the high school…
By: Chad Warren on January 30, 2025
In today’s fast-paced world, we are often told to push forward, strive for progress, and never settle. The mantra, “Winning in the Margins,” embodies the sentiment to use every available opportunity in our lives to advance and succeed. However, the drive for success can lead us to overwork, overload, and overlook one crucial element—margin. But…
By: Jess Bashioum on January 30, 2025
It has been uncanny how many areas of my life have been overlapping. The concepts from Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders Through Coaching[1] have been contemplated on in both my work and my personal life. Therefore, I will be talking a whole lot about myself more than I normally feel comfortable with. I work for…
By: Judith McCartney on January 30, 2025
This IS GOLD! I was all bright eyed and bushy tailed as an 18-year-old that just entered bible college. I had such aspirational dreams of being a missionary in Indonesia. I did not find myself in my family’s place of origin Papua, New Guinea rather I found myself in the urban setting of Toronto. While studying…
By: Julie O'Hara on January 30, 2025
I fondly recollect the Shape-O toy by Tupperware. Yellow shapes fit through corresponding cutouts in a blue and red pull-apart ball. I remember the satisfaction of putting all the pieces in, the rattling noise, then being able to empty the container and start over. At one time, it must have been difficult to execute…
By: Alex Mwaura on January 30, 2025
The other day, I was reading the “Future of Jobs Report 2025, by the World Economic Forum (WEC) which provides highlights on skills that will be required for the future. Of course, Generative AI featured as a disruptor in different sectors, but I was mostly intrigued by leadership and social influence as a skill that…
By: Debbie Owen on January 30, 2025
“The only constant in life is change.” We know this is true. Our bodies are constantly changing (not always in the ways we want them to), our external circumstances shift, our relationships evolve, and even our perspectives can change over time. In my own experience, I’ve been on a leadership team in three churches that…
By: Jeremiah Gómez on January 30, 2025
And it saved me for ministry. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s true. I was neck-deep in the stuff of a turnaround ministry environment, and I was lost. I was young (with three whole years of vocational ministry under my belt), newly married, and overwhelmed. The little church on the brink of closure…
By: Kari on January 30, 2025
“Don’t let your desire to serve others lead you to burnout like I did.” – An OB-GYN who worked in Asia “I was so busy working for the Lord that I forgot the Lord of the work.” …
By: Betsy on January 30, 2025
When I was four, I hid under the table to avoid being told off and found the tiniest book with a pretty pink and blue watercolour image on the front of it that I can still picture. It was the book of Matthew, and so I read the Bible out loud for the first time…
By: Elysse Burns on January 30, 2025
Four years in the desert have given me a deep appreciation for greenery. I love watching the number of potted plants in my entryway grow, despite the harsh climate. The aloe’s hardiness—thriving with a shallow root system and self-propagating abilities—is incredible. Meanwhile, the fairy lily’s delicate bloom is always a delightful surprise. Despite their resilience,…
By: Darren Banek on January 30, 2025
I had a goal and a plan, and it was all starting to come together. I knew I wanted to internalize this week’s material and write better than last week, hoping that last week’s blog post was slightly better than two weeks ago. All that needed to happen was to start typing out my introductory…
By: David Weston on January 30, 2025
Sir Francis Bacon once posited, explaining his quote above, that “much like the sun’s heat, it has the ability to transform and reveal the underlying qualities of people and things, making them pliable and firm and exposing inherent characteristics.” [1] Tom Comacho’s Book, Mining for Gold: Developing Leaders through Coaching, is a wonderful treatise on…
By: Graham English on January 30, 2025
As we start a new chapter of life and leadership in 2025 and the second half of the DLGP, I am aware of the complexity of leadership in our ever-changing world. Leadership is about context. While there is certainly timeless leadership wisdom, the field of leadership study has evolved significantly, with the recognition that what…
By: Mika Harry on January 30, 2025
I’ve not been a good coach in the past. As a strong one on the enneagram, justice is my word, and doing things “correctly” is my high priority. So, it may be no surprise that I find it incredibly frustrating when someone asks for my advice and then doesn’t do what appears so obviously correct.…
By: Joel Zantingh on January 30, 2025
This week’s foray into Illuminaire: Bringing Life & Light to Leaders Across The World gave me a gift in the phrase, “the journey of becoming” [1]. It was not long ago, in 2021 to 2022, that I was in a major transition in my leadership journey for a year and a half, and what I experienced…
By: Robert Radcliff on January 30, 2025
This week, I read Tom Camacho’s Mining for Gold. It is a primer on coaching to help leaders draw out the God-given talents from their team so people can flourish. I want to extend an idea that Tom Camacho developed in his book that he didn’t fully develop. Camacho says that our Sweet Spot is…
By: Rich on January 29, 2025
I come from a long line of teachers. My grandfather taught languages on the high school and college levels. My dad earned a D.Ed. and was a high school principal. My mom and sister taught elementary school. My sister was born to teach. She taught me to read when I was three. She was five!…
