Starting a new job or stepping into leadership? This episode breaks down how to start strong, take initiative, and grow in your role. From asking better questions to understanding context and building trust, we’re sharing practical advice for early-career leaders and anyone navigating a new season of work.

Episode Summary

David Robbins, President of CRU (Campus Crusade for Christ), shares how God shaped his leadership through weakness, dependence, and deep intimacy with Christ. In this powerful conversation, he reveals why lasting fruit doesn’t come from strength—but from surrender—and how that truth is shaping a global vision for evangelism, discipleship, and leadership multiplication.

What You’ll Learn

⏱️ Key Moments

✨ Key Quote

“If dependence is the goal, then weakness is actually an advantage.”

Why This Matters

In a culture driven by performance, this episode reframes leadership through a biblical lens—showing that God multiplies impact through surrendered lives, not self-sufficient leaders.

Share this episode with a leader who needs encouragement

Follow for more conversations on faith, leadership, and multiplication

Episode Summary

David Robbins, President of CRU (Campus Crusade for Christ), shares how God shaped his leadership through weakness, dependence, and deep intimacy with Christ. In this powerful conversation, he reveals why lasting fruit doesn’t come from strength—but from surrender—and how that truth is shaping a global vision for evangelism, discipleship, and leadership multiplication.

What You’ll Learn

• Why weakness is a leadership advantage
• How dependence on God produces fruit that remains
• The role of stillness, journaling, and community in leadership health
• How to lead authentically without posturing in new roles
• A global vision for raising next-generation leaders
• Why being a lover of God is the foundation of everything

⏱️ Key Moments

• 00:00 – Introduction & podcast overview
• 01:15 – David Robbins’ role and mission at CRU
• 02:30 – Life-changing moment: grief, family, and surrender
• 04:30 – “Weakness is an advantage” (2 Corinthians 12)
• 06:00 – Leadership rhythms: community, counseling, stillness
• 08:00 – Journaling & “zero-entry mornings”
• 10:00 – Leading without posturing
• 12:00 – Vision: first love, evangelism, and discipleship
• 14:00 – Building leaders for 2050 and beyond
• 17:00 – Personal leadership priorities
• 18:30 – Final encouragement: be a lover of God

✨ Key Quote

“If dependence is the goal, then weakness is actually an advantage.”

Why This Matters

In a culture driven by performance, this episode reframes leadership through a biblical lens—showing that God multiplies impact through surrendered lives, not self-sufficient leaders.

Christian leadership, David Robbins CRU, Campus Crusade for Christ, leadership development, spiritual growth, evangelism and discipleship, Christian podcast, faith-based leadership, biblical leadership principles, multiplication in ministry

Share this episode with a leader who needs encouragement

Follow for more conversations on faith, leadership, and multiplication

What You’ll Learn⏱️ Key Moments✨ Key Quote Why This Matters SEO Keywords Call to Action

What happens when leaders stop guessing about culture and start listening to what their teams are actually experiencing?

In this episode of Called to Flourish, Brad Cooper, Lead Pastor of Culture and Direction at NewSpring Church, shares how honest feedback and engagement surveys helped their leadership team face cultural blind spots, respond to a season of challenge, and build deeper trust across staff. Instead of relying on assumptions, they used data to clarify reality and strengthen alignment across the organization. This conversation offers practical insight for pastors and ministry leaders who want to build healthier teams through transparency, shared ownership, and intentional listening.

You'll gain insight into:

• Why facing the truth about culture is essential for building trust

• How engagement surveys help leaders see what they might otherwise miss

• What team-based leadership looks like in a healthy church culture

• How consistent listening strengthens staff alignment over time

Subscribe to Called to Flourish and share this conversation with a fellow leader. Access full show notes, resources, and transcript at: https://workplaces.org/podcast/data-driven-leadership-how-facing-the-truth-about-culture-builds-trust-and-strengthens-your-church

If success feels heavier than it should, something’s out of place.

In this episode, Dave Ramsey and Harvard professor Dr. Arthur Brooks share how to move from empty achievement to a life grounded in purpose, connection and meaning.

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Your dad makes you come to church, but he can’t make you listen. At least that’s what you’ve always muttered to yourself. But this morning you listen because the preacher speaks of a God who loves prodigals, and you feel like the worst sort of one.

You can’t keep the pregnancy a secret any longer. Soon your parents will know. The preacher will know. And the preacher says God already knows and you wonder what God thinks.

Could you use some grace? You know, grace is God’s best idea. Rather than tell us to change, he creates the change. Do we clean up so he can accept us? No, he accepts us and begins cleaning us up. What a difference this makes! Can’t forgive your past? Christ can, and he is on the move, aggressively budging you from graceless to grace-shaped living. A forgiven person who forgives others. This is grace. Grace is everything Jesus!

Read more Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine

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“It’s not my fault!” So says Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back when his ship is attacked and there seems to be no escape, only because a repair was not made. When he says it, you wonder if he bears at least some responsibility for his predicament but doesn’t want to admit it.

I’ve been there. Sometimes it’s easier to find someone (or something) else to blame rather than accept responsibility myself. Scripture shows us that this tendency is as old as sin. Adam and Eve both did it (Genesis 3:11-13), and so did Aaron. When Moses was with God on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, God told him that the people He’d just released from slavery had turned away to worship an idol. When Moses returned and confronted Aaron (whom he’d left in charge), Aaron responded, “You know how prone these people are to evil” (Exodus 32:22). Then he rationalized about the idol he himself cast, saying, “They gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” (v. 24).

Despite our willfulness, God offers us forgiveness when we admit to Him we’ve done wrong. He assures us that He’s “faithful and just and will forgive us” (1 John 1:9). Forgiven and received by Him, we can be open about our brokenness to the God who took our blame on Himself on the cross, all because of His perfect, sacrificial love.

At one hundred dollars, Loretta’s utility bill was much higher than usual. “But the Lord will provide,” she told her son. That same day she received a text from her youngest brother. “Loretta, you’re always encouraging me, and I want to thank you. Look in your mail for something from me.” That afternoon in her mail, she found a gift card from her brother for $100. A miracle? Not to some perhaps. To Loretta, however, the “coincidence” felt miraculous. She always expects the living God to provide for her.

Her outlook highlights a lesson in the resurrection story of Jesus. After the Sabbath, three women bought spices to anoint Jesus’ body in the tomb. But walking there after sunrise, the women expected not a miracle but a problem: “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” (Mark 16:1-3).

Embedded in their question was a curious doubt, especially from these women—including Mary Magdalene—who had traveled with Jesus and witnessed His power. All of them, however, were looking that morning for a dead Jesus.

Instead, “He has risen! He is not here,” they were told (v. 6). That declaration explains what we can expect from the living Jesus: His miraculous resurrection power. He is alive. When we face “heavy stones” that need moving, He will be with us and help us. He’s not in a tomb. He is risen, indeed!