『unSeminary Podcast』のカバーアート

unSeminary Podcast

unSeminary Podcast

著者： Rich Birch
無料で聴く

【Amazonプライム会員限定】今ならプレミアムプランが4か月 月額99円。

10月19日まで。※適用条件あり
stuff you wish they taught in seminary.© unSeminary & Rich Birch キリスト教 スピリチュアリティ マネジメント マネジメント・リーダーシップ 経済学 聖職・福音主義
エピソード
  • Why Gifted Pastors Still Crash: Four Honest Conversations About the Inner Life of a Leader

    Why Gifted Pastors Still Crash: Four Honest Conversations About the Inner Life of a Leader
    2026/07/30
    Leadership failures rarely happen overnight. More often, they begin with unseen pressures, unresolved pain, and unhealthy patterns that slowly erode a leader from the inside out. In this special compilation episode, we bring together four candid conversations with experienced church leaders who openly share the personal struggles that nearly derailed their ministries. Rather than focusing on leadership strategies or organizational systems, this episode explores the inner life of church leaders. From burnout and unprocessed grief to stress management, character formation, and radical honesty before God, don’t miss the lessons that can help you build healthier, more sustainable ministries. Use these conversations as discussion starters with your teams, asking not simply how the ministry is doing, but how the leaders themselves are doing. Unprocessed Loss Eventually Takes Its Toll Bob Riedy reflects on the burnout that brought his ministry to a halt and the painful realization that decades of accumulated loss had never been properly grieved. The death of a family member, staff transitions, declining attendance after COVID, fractured relationships, and personal shame all compounded over time because he kept pushing forward instead of processing what he had experienced. His story is a powerful reminder that even successful leaders are vulnerable when they ignore the emotional weight of ministry. Key Takeaway // Pastors experience constant loss, but simply “moving on” isn’t resilience. Healthy leaders intentionally process grief with God before it silently grows into burnout, anxiety, or shame. Listen to the Full Episode // Burnout, Breakthrough, and the Road to a Healthier Ministry with Bob Riedy (May 29, 2025) Simple Practices Build Long-Term Resilience Charles Stone shares practical neuroscience-backed habits that help leaders reduce stress and remain emotionally healthy. Rather than offering complicated solutions, he begins with something every leader can practice immediately: intentional breathing. By slowing the body’s stress response through simple breathing exercises, pastors can create space to think clearly, regulate emotions, and respond wisely during difficult seasons. Key Takeaway // Resilience isn’t built during a crisis. It’s developed through consistent daily practices. Simple rhythms like intentional breathing can help pastors lower stress before it becomes overwhelming. Listen to the Full Episode // Leading Through Stress Without Burning Out with Charles Stone (July 3, 2025) Crisis Reveals Character Allen Holmes explains that gifted leaders often reach a defining crossroads when crisis exposes weaknesses beneath their talent and experience. Every leader eventually faces a moment when they must decide whether to hide behind their abilities or allow God to shape their character through hardship. Churches that embrace this perspective create cultures where leaders remain, grow, and mature instead of running from difficult seasons. Key Takeaway // Leadership development isn’t primarily about improving skills. Rather, it’s about allowing God to form character. Crisis often becomes the catalyst that moves leaders toward deeper maturity and lasting influence. Listen to the Full Episode // Why Gifted Leaders Still Fail: Lessons from 25 Years of Ministry with Allen Holmes (March 5, 2026) Honesty Before God Leads to Healing Scott Landry vulnerably recounts one of the darkest moments of his life after personal failure left him isolated, angry, and questioning God. Rather than meeting condemnation, he encountered God’s presence in the middle of his raw honesty. His story illustrates that true healing begins when leaders stop pretending, acknowledge what’s really happening inside, and allow God to meet them in their deepest pain. Key Takeaway // God doesn’t meet the version of us we project to others—He meets the person we truly are. Healing begins when leaders stop hiding and bring their deepest struggles honestly before Him. Listen to the Full Episode // Leading After You Lose Everything: Redemption, Honesty & The Fight with Scott Landry (December 18, 2025) This compilation reminds us that leadership health begins long before visible success or failure. Healthy churches are built by healthy leaders, and healthy leaders cultivate habits that address the condition of their hearts, not just the effectiveness of their ministries. Whether you’re leading through growth, challenge, or personal struggle, these conversations invite you to slow down, examine your inner life, and take intentional steps toward long-term faithfulness in ministry. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    21 分
  • Your Bench Is Empty: What Growing Churches Do Before the Role Opens Up

    Your Bench Is Empty: What Growing Churches Do Before the Role Opens Up
    2026/08/27
    Most churches don’t start thinking about leadership development until a key person resigns. By then, the only real option is to post the role and hope someone qualified applies. In this special compilation episode, we’ve pulled together four conversations with leaders who have built the habit of developing people long before the seat opens up. The churches growing fastest right now are rarely the ones with the best job postings. They’re the ones who already know who’s next. Don’t miss the four critical lessons every church should consider as they head into fall hiring and budget planning. From the leadership model that quietly keeps benches empty to a mindset shift about where leaders actually come from to a challenge you could give your team on Monday to the structure that produces people you can genuinely put on payroll, each conversation offers a practical step forward. The Model Nobody Names Out Loud Tim Foot explains what he calls hero-driven leadership: the habit of relying too heavily on standout individuals to carry the mission. It produces short-term results, but it creates burnout, unrealistic hiring expectations, and fragile systems. What makes it so hard to escape is that it feels good. It feels productive to be the person who solves the problems and holds the answers. Foot also names the “shiny object trap,” where churches chase talent from larger organizations only to discover that the leader arrives with a playbook that doesn’t fit and no systems to support them. Key Takeaway // Hero dependence is a staffing strategy, whether or not anyone chose it on purpose. Healthy teams are built when leaders get comfortable saying they don’t know what to do next, because that’s what opens the room for collaboration. Listen to the Full Episode // Hero Dependence Is a Terrible Growth Strategy with Tim Foot (June 18, 2026) The Leaders Are Already in Your Building Spence Shelton draws a parallel most church leaders have never made. We all agree that growing a church by reaching lost people beats growing it by transfer from other churches. Then, when it comes to leaders, we reverse the logic and look for someone who’s already trained elsewhere. Shelton makes the case for the shoulder tap: intentionally asking someone whether God might be calling them into ministry. At Mercy Church, both executive pastors and two of three campus pastors came out of the marketplace, from banking, plant management, and physical therapy. None of them would have applied. Somebody had to ask. Key Takeaway // Many future ministry leaders never consider vocational ministry because no one ever raised the possibility with them. Developing from within takes longer than hiring from outside, and it produces leaders shaped by your church’s culture rather than someone else’s. Listen to the Full Episode // Stop Plucking Talent, Start Developing It with Spence Shelton (August 6, 2026) The Challenge That Costs Nothing Chris Vaught faced the constraint every growing church knows well. Connection Point was growing fast, but budget always arrives last, and southeastern Missouri isn’t a place people relocate to for a ministry position. So the church started looking at its own congregation and treating volunteers as unpaid staff with real roles and responsibilities. The starting point was a single challenge to every staff member: go find your Timothy. One person you invest in deeply enough that if you were out on a Sunday, the ministry would still run. Key Takeaway // A leadership pipeline doesn’t have to begin with a budget line. It can begin with one question asked of every staff member about who could carry their ministry if they weren’t there next weekend. Listen to the Full Episode // From 300 to 2,500: Building a Leadership Pipeline That Fuels Growth with Chris Vaught (September 25, 2025) Training Is Not Development Dave Miller draws a distinction that reframes what most churches call leadership development. Churches are excellent at training: the sermon, the class, the book of the month, the small group discussion. All of it is content delivery, and content has never been more available. Development is something else. Miller’s team identifies seven ingredients: training, spiritual formation, soft skills, ownership, mental wellness, and developmental conversations. He also challenges leaders on where accountability sits. When a sports team wins, we talk about the players. When it loses, we replace the manager. Church leaders should apply the same standard to the people they’re developing. Key Takeaway // If content were the key ingredient, leadership development would already be solved. What emerging leaders need is proximity, ownership, and someone willing to slow down and have the conversation. Listen to the Full Episode // Who’s the Next You? Building a Gen Z Residency Pipeline with Dave Miller (September 11, 2025) These four conversations form a ladder, and you don’t have to start at the top. ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    21 分
  • The Myth That’s Quietly Stalling Your Disciple-Making with Vick Green

    The Myth That’s Quietly Stalling Your Disciple-Making with Vick Green
    2026/09/24
    Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Vick Green, CEO of Replicate Ministries and co-author of Movement Ready Church. Replicate helps churches across denominations and sizes strengthen their disciple-making culture, clarify their vision, and mobilize people to make disciples where they live, work, and play. Is your church busy but unsure whether people are actually being transformed? Do you have a clear pathway for discipleship but struggle to see multiplication happen outside your programs? Tune in as Vick challenges several common assumptions about disciple-making and offers practical ways to measure transformation, mobilize people, and create a culture where ministry extends beyond the walls of the church. Activity does not equal transformation. // One of the most common myths Vick sees is the belief that participation automatically produces spiritual growth. Attendance, serving, small groups, and classes are all easy to measure, but they only tell part of the story. A person can be highly engaged in church activity and still experience little personal transformation. Churches need to keep measuring participation while also asking whether people are actually becoming more like Jesus.Build a clearer scoreboard. // Vick compares church metrics to baseball. If you only measured hits, you would miss the point of the game: scoring runs. In the same way, churches can overvalue attendance and engagement because those numbers are easy to track. Vick encourages leaders to develop a transformation scoreboard that measures not only what people are doing but who they are becoming. Incomplete scoreboards tend to produce incomplete disciples.Define your dream disciple. // Every church should be able to describe the kind of disciple it hopes to develop. Vick calls this the “dream disciple.” Rather than relying only on pathway language that tells people what to do, churches should paint a vivid picture of what transformed lives look like. One church describes disciples as having a mind of truth, a voice of hope, a heart of compassion, hands of service, and feet of purpose. That language gives people something meaningful to pursue.Focus on what you want for people. // Churches can unintentionally communicate that they primarily want something from people: attendance, volunteering, giving, or participation. Vick challenges leaders to shift toward communicating what they want for people. A healthy discipleship strategy should help people become better spouses, parents, coworkers, neighbors, and followers of Jesus. When people understand why transformation matters, they become more motivated to engage with the pathway that supports it.Let your discipleship picture shape the culture. // A dream disciple should not live on a poster or disappear after a leadership retreat. It should show up in sermons, kids ministry, membership classes, assessments, volunteer training, and everyday language. Vick highlights churches that use their disciple profile to guide sermon planning, build personalized follow-up, equip parents, and help people identify specific areas where they want to grow.Help people name their kingdom circle. // Vick’s second major metric is whether people can identify the individuals God has placed within their sphere of influence. Every person has a “kingdom circle”—neighbors, coworkers, friends, and family members where they can bring the kingdom of God. The goal is not simply deeper program engagement but helping people take ownership of disciple-making in ordinary life.Equip people for ministry outside the church. // Vick shares the story of a man named Austin who began gathering non-Christian neighbors around a backyard firepit. The church provided simple questions, encouragement, and resources, but Austin led the ministry himself. Eventually those men began attending church, growing in faith, and multiplying into further discipleship relationships. The church’s role was not to replace Austin’s influence but to equip and support him in using it.Clarify leadership and partnership. // To measure ministry beyond church programs, leaders need clarity around three questions: What do we consider a disciple-making leader? How will we equip them? And how will we partner with them? Without shared definitions and a unified approach, every ministry ends up operating differently. Clear expectations make it easier for people to take responsibility for disciple-making in their own context.Challenge the myths beneath your ministry. // Replicate’s Ministry Myths resource helps churches identify faulty beliefs that quietly shape behavior. These myths can create a gap between good intentions and actual impact. By naming assumptions like the engagement myth, teams can begin honest conversations about why multiplication is not happening and what needs to change. Download the free resource Ministry Myths: The 5 Assumptions that Stall Disciple-Making Movements here. ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    38 分
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
まだレビューはありません