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.
On The Rise: Your congregation’s race to the bottom?
Published 9 days ago • 3 min read
Welcome to the On The Rise newsletter, where I feature fascinating, helpful, and sometimes curious content that caught my attention this week.
Today, a piece on how contracting has become a race to the bottom (and what you might do about it), what you should try before your next hire, how to read a P&L, and a quote I’m pondering about consequences.
How Home Construction Became a Race to the Bottom
Christians need to take vocation and work seriously.
Every week you speak to professionals, tradespeople, service industry employees, and people who go home to the ordinary jobs that fuel your community.
This NYT article (you should be able to view it as part of your free quota this month) profiles one contractor trying to do things with integrity when the rest of his industry has mostly become a race to the bottom.
Imagine if Christians were known for the excellence of their work? Not for being the cheapest, but for being the best? This article demonstrates how counter-cultural that argument might be right now. BTW, the lessons apply to your leadership too and it will give you new empathy for the struggles the people you serve in your church face every day.
Reclaim Your Time, Energy, and Focus (Monday!!)
Give yourself the gift of clarity, energy, and a better way to lead
If your productivity is slipping... ...you're as stressed as ever... ...and your energy doesn’t bounce back like it used to...
It's time to stop waiting for the weekend (or the summer vacation) to rescue you, and it's time to start building better rhythms.
The truth is, time off won’t heal you if how you’re spending your time on is what’s breaking you.
On Monday, I'm hosting the 60-Minute Summer Reset—a practical (live) workshop designed to help you build more effective leadership habits.
In just one hour, I’ll walk you through a proven framework to help you:
✅ Reclaim your time, energy, and focus ✅ Beat burnout before it starts ✅ Set yourself on a new trajectory—at work and at home
Give yourself the gift of clarity, energy, and a better way to lead—before burnout takes over, all at the 60-Minute Summer Reset.
While I don’t love the idea of eliminating humans in the workplace, I do know that many churches have more vision than they have budget for staffing.
That $20 a month ChatGPT, HeyGen, Church.Tech, Claude, or Perplexity subscription might solve more than you think.
Clarifying Giving Theology
Why your church must talk about money.
Many churches struggle to communicate a biblical theology of giving clearly.
Unpack how to define and articulate your church’s beliefs in a way that fosters trust, transparency, and spiritual growth—without confusion or compromise.
What…you ask, a book on profit for church leaders? Well, yes and no.
One of the challenges of being a church leader is needing to understand profit and loss statements and cash flow.
This simple business book will help you understand cash flow in fresh ways and show you how you can keep ‘profit’ (think of it as surplus in church budgets) so you have the money you need to fuel your mission. It helped me.
Sooner or later, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.
- Novelist Robert Louis Stevenson
By the way, this is true for both positive and negative consequences.
Cheering for you,
Weekend Watching
Kyle Idleman
This week, Kyle Idleman talks about why it's easier to admit to a fault on stage than it is to a friend in real life. He discusses the times you feel like you want to punch a hole in the wall and what to do about it, vulnerability, insecurity, and the spiritual gift of disappointing people.
Leadership Is Better Shared. Invite Your Friends!
Know someone who would benefit from The Art of Leadership Academy? Invite them to join by visiting your Invitation Hub.
Carey Nieuwhof Communications, PO Box 160, Oro Medonte, Ontario L0L 2X0
Carey Nieuwhof
Where 100,000+ leaders get top insights to thrive in life and leadership.
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.
