What does redemptive leadership mean? As Christians, we have a unique calling: not just to lead, but to serve. What does this look like in today’s culture, and how can we serve as leaders and foster an environment of abundant grace and joy wherever we are?

Christianity Today’s Dr. Nicole Massie Martin helps us to understand how we can nail outdated models of leadership to the cross, and what it will take to replace them with Biblical ones:

“We need to nail to the cross what is a very secular understanding … of [power, ego, and performance], so that what is resurrected through Christ might be redemptive and bring glory to God and good to the people that we lead.”

This conversation is from an Online Conversation recorded in May 2025. We hope this conversation will inspire you to identify the ways you lead, and how you can step further into leading with grace, humility, and joy.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

• Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Peter Scazzero
• Killing Comparison: Reject the Lie You Aren’t Good Enough and Live Confident in Who God Made You To Be, Nona Jones

Go deeper into the issues discussed in this episode with these Trinity Forum Readings:

• How Much Land Does a Man Need?; Leo Tolstoy
• A Man Who Changed His Times; William Wilberforce
• Letter from Birmingham Jail; Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Who Stands Fast?; Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Frederick Douglass