Carey Nieuwhof
Don’t settle for an impact smaller than you’re called to make. It's time to unlock your potential and lead confidently into a future filled with growth — for yourself, your church, and your mission. Get access to some of my best leadership content, only published in my newsletters.
Are you about to lose the ability to preach?
Hi Reader, Almost 2 in 3 pastors are now using AI for sermon prep. While I'm not here to tell you that's wrong (I use it too), I think there's an important question nobody's asking. Are you losing the ability to preach? Not your desire or passion, but your actual cognitive ability to wrestle with a text, sit with God, and bring something forged from real work to your congregation on Sunday. What's happening on university campuses right now should be a warning to every pastor who's let AI do...
On The Rise: Trouble for Worship Leader Mental Health + Old People Monopolies and Products Google Killed
Welcome to the On The Rise newsletter, where I feature fascinating, helpful, and sometimes curious content that caught my attention this week. Today, a surprising report that shows your worship leader might not be all right, plus, the courage to kill what you started, how the elderly are monopolizing politics and economies, and more. Worship Leader 8.5x Less Likely to Report Excellent Mental Health Not a crisis, but definitely a concern Checked in on your worship leader lately? Only 3.4% of...
She made history. Then the backlash started.
Hi Reader, Dr. Nicole Martin made history when she became the President and CEO of Christianity Today, the first Black woman to lead the publication in its 70-year history. Sadly, she walked straight into a firestorm. If you've ever been criticized for your leadership, lean in. Nicole believes that leadership is designed to kill you. So we talk about that. She gets into the full story 👉 the opposition research on her, the critics who called her a diversity hire, and why none of it stopped...
What if you became spectacularly unavailable this summer?
Hi Reader, Summer's here. My fave season by far. But for a lot of us, the question becomes whether you will ever get any meaningful time off. If you're like a lot of leaders (and like me twenty years ago), you'll schedule a couple weeks off but you'll keep working quietly just a few hours in the morning or a few issues along the way that came up that you simply "have to deal with". Why does that happen? And why does it happen to leader after leader after leader? Well, here's an answer that I...
On The Rise: All About Burnout and Recovery. + Pastors are NOT Quitting. What?
Welcome to the On The Rise newsletter, where I feature fascinating, helpful, and sometimes curious content that caught my attention this week. Today’s kind of special. 20 years ago this month I fell deep into full-on burnout. It would be months before I got my energy, heart, and soul back. All I felt in the spring and summer of 2006 was numb, dead. I thought my life and ministry were over. This week I released two episodes on my podcast looking back on what I’ve learned in the last two...
Blank space in your calendar is a trap.
Hi Reader, Twenty years ago, I burned out. A few days ago, I told you the full story on my podcast—how it happened, why it happened, and what it felt like. Here's the link in case you missed it. Today, in a fresh episode, I give you the recovery playbook. It's everything I've learned in the last twenty years on getting out of burnout and staying out of it. In this episode, I walk you through seven strategies I've lived personally, that have kept me (and a lot of other leaders) out of burnout...
What the World Cup might mean for your church this summer
Hi Reader, Sometimes the world hands the Church a global moment with huge opportunity. One of those moments is coming. The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off on June 11th in North America. For weeks, a lot of people who don't usually talk to each other will be gathered around the same thing at the same time. What could that mean for the Church? Not in a complicated, launch-a-program way. More in a what if we just showed up way? What if we opened homes, had people over, and took conversations a...
The story I’ve never fully told. (Until now.)
Hi Reader, Twenty years ago this month, I burned out. I was 41 years old. I had just delivered the biggest talk of my life to 2,500 leaders in Atlanta—and when the plane landed in Toronto, I felt like I fell off a cliff into the abyss. For the next several months I went from numb to despairing to suicidal ideation. And here’s what made it harder: leaders with enough muscle memory can fake it even when they’re dead inside. I did that when I got back up to preach in August 2006. Nobody around...
Christians are contributing to the chaos. (Let's talk about it.)
Hi Reader, Let's be honest. If your social feed looks anything like mine, it's gotten more polarized, more angry, and frankly just more weird. The weirdest part is, Christians aren't exempt from that. If anything, we're contributing to it. I've been sitting with this for a while now, and I finally put it on camera: when Christians lose their minds, people lose their faith. I think about that a lot, because I don't think most of us realize what's actually at stake every time we post, share, or...
On The Rise: Why It’s Hard for People To Attend Church, Being Cheap and How to Not Be So Critical
Welcome to the On The Rise newsletter, where I feature fascinating, helpful, and sometimes curious content that caught my attention this week. Today, a perceptive article on why it’s hard for some families to attend church on Sundays, what being cheap really costs you, how to be less critical and how to finally stop procrastinating. Some Insights Into Why Weekends Don’t Work For Churches Some empathy for people who aren’t there every Sunday It’s easy to get pastors ranting about people who...
Don’t settle for an impact smaller than you’re called to make. It's time to unlock your potential and lead confidently into a future filled with growth — for yourself, your church, and your mission. Get access to some of my best leadership content, only published in my newsletters.