By: Jer Swigart on April 8, 2021
Power. It’s a remarkable force. In the word of The Lord of the Rings character, Gollum, power tends to be that “Precious” entity that is worth contorting body and soul to attain. It seems that once we get it, our bodies and souls have already been reshaped in order to protect the power at any…
By: Greg Reich on April 8, 2021
Stories of success of leaders who overcome adversity and succeed against great odds are inspiring. Whether it is the story of Abraham Lincoln overcoming political failure, after failure, to become our 16th president. Michael Jordon overcoming childhood awkwardness to become one of the greatest basketball players of all time. According to Wikipedia “success is the state…
By: John McLarty on April 7, 2021
What happens when a good person finds themselves in a situation where the expectations of the leadership position they occupy do not match their leadership style? For one, you get the Jimmy Carter Presidential Administration. Carter’s “Serving” strategy, as described by Simon Walker[1], may be an idealistic and honorable way to lead, and can be…
By: Darcy Hansen on April 5, 2021
There was a time when I was a “double barrel shot-gun” kind of leader. In my home, it was “my way or the highway.” God, scripture, and faith were to be understood through a fundamentalist viewpoint. Our home was to be an external reflection of our internal reality: tidy, orderly, simple. Nothing was to be…
By: Shawn Cramer on April 5, 2021
While power and control are key elements within leadership, understanding the ego is key to seeing the route to undefendedness. In his leadership trilogy, The Undefended Leader, Simon Walker connects the ego, power, control, and conversely empowerment. While there might exist a temptation for the leader to minimize their insecurities or believe the lie that…
By: Dylan Branson on April 4, 2021
One theme that has popped up through my time in the LGP is that of imagination and dreaming. When I first began the program, I started with several questions: Why does my church not feel like a community? What is missing from my experience of church? Why do I feel so alone in the midst…
By: Chris Pollock on March 21, 2021
Everyone was after me; I felt targeted and alone. The weekend is not a quiet time at the Church. On Fridays we had Youth Group, Saturdays an afternoon jam session followed by a Saturday dinner and Sundays, street church with an evening café called the Urban Hermit. The scenes changed numerous times over the weekend,…
By: John McLarty on March 17, 2021
*the title of a U2 song written for the 2013 film “Long Walk to Freedom,” based on Nelson Mandela’s book. We can’t fall any further if We can’t feel ordinary love And we can’t reach any higher, If we can’t deal with ordinary love When we think of “front stage” leadership, Simon Walker’s description of…
By: Greg Reich on March 16, 2021
I didn’t grow up in a perfect home. My parents weren’t perfect parents. Despite that, I have many fond memories, many of which are oriented around items of restoration. I always enjoyed being part of seeing old things brought back to life, whether it was an old farm tractor or a piece of furniture. To…
By: Dylan Branson on March 15, 2021
In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, he writes a striking phrase: “God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.”[1] I remember the first time I read this sentence was in the middle of my “church crisis” where I was questioning what the function of the church was and what, to me, I felt…
By: Jer Swigart on March 15, 2021
This past week, I had the opportunity to introduce one of my mentors to a cohort of North American faith leaders. This particular group is an ecumenical, multi-ethnic collective from the United States and Canada who are seeking to grow in their capacity for peacemaking and reconciliation. They are women and men who have been…
By: Darcy Hansen on March 15, 2021
We like to gloss over the hard parts of life, move quickly through them, or avoid them at all cost. We focus on the successes, forgetting failures, disappointments, and deaths mold and shape us just as much as the successes. This reality is evident when high school students apply for college, as applicants are encouraged…
By: Shawn Cramer on March 15, 2021
I’ve been spending a lot of time meditating and studying one of Cru’s seminal texts, Ephesians 5:18, as I review Simon Walker’s thoughts on leadership and power in Leading with Nothing to Lose. I humbly offer encouragement to how I see it shaping the Innovation department within my organization. I have been guilty of previously…
By: Chris Pollock on March 13, 2021
The genuine article is a kind of person who exhibits a nature that does not need to be defended. Henri Nouwen, mystic and servant of the disabled-forgotten, writes of the surrendered life, of those who’ve been set free from shame to love, in his book ‘With Open Hands’. He encourages the prayerful life as one…
By: John McLarty on March 10, 2021
Over the course of this semester, I have looked at four US presidents through the lenses of leadership style and emotional intelligence. As I return to Simon Walker’s “The Undefended Leader” trilogy, I decided to continue with the thread of his different leadership strategies by looking at a former British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill…
By: Greg Reich on March 10, 2021
The book The Undefended Leader was written by Simon P. Walker as a product of a course he developed and taught at Wycliffe Hall at Oxford University. He is an ordained Anglican Vicar, professor and an executive coach. His book is made up of three smaller books, Leading out of Who You Are, Leading with…
By: Darcy Hansen on March 9, 2021
I’ve been working toward advanced educational degrees for seven years. Life has changed in many ways. My daughter was 14 and my son was 10 when I began my seminary journey. With a large measure of God’s grace, my daughter is now 21 and in her last year of college; my son is 17 and…
By: Jer Swigart on March 9, 2021
There is a cave on a farm in the hills just outside of Bethlehem that is among the most transformational locations for me in the world. It’s a cave that has been hand dug by a family of Palestinian Christians because they were denied permission and permits by the Israeli government to build structures on…
By: Dylan Branson on March 8, 2021
There’s an old saying that goes, “Don’t ever meet your heroes.” The theory goes that the moment you actually meet the people you admire most, you’ll come to find they aren’t what you always thought they would be. This is a common trope that has made it into various forms of media – that moment…
By: Shawn Cramer on March 8, 2021
My attention has been captured by the research around social capital. As Robert Putnam painstakingly and thoroughly popularizes the use of the term in Bowling Alone, leadership scholars like Simon Walker also find it helpful as they address a way forward in the future. I’ll briefly address Walker’s use of the term and investigate social…
