Nicole Martin: A Different Kind of Leadership

Published by Outreach Magazine | August 13, 2025

Nicole Massie Martin is chief operating officer at Christianity Today and founder and executive director of Soulfire International Ministries. Her book released this past April is Nailing It: Why Successful Leadership Demands Suffering and Surrender (IVP). She is also a main session speaker for the upcoming 2025 Amplify Conference, October 21–22 at Wheaton College, in partnership with Outreach magazine.

In the following interview, Martin talks about how Christianity Today is navigating the tough cultural waters for Christian media, her new book on leadership, the value of quiet faithfulness, and how Christian leaders can model evangelism for everyday disciples.

It’s a challenging environment for magazines and global media companies [today], and especially for Christianity Today. You’re trying to maintain a big tent and that tent is getting bigger. You’re not always going to make everyone happy. So how do you see leadership happening in that environment?

You are absolutely right that this is a challenging time for media organizations across the board. I was at a journalism gathering, and I was very grateful [to hear] from other people that this is just a tough time. But also, it’s not a hard time for the story. I would say we’re in a time when the appeal of storytelling is greater now than it’s ever been. Everyone wants to tell a story. They want to get their picture out there. They want to get their voice out there. They want to write their stories.

One thing that I have appreciated about CT is the focus on this idea of elevating the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God. So, for me personally, but I would say also for us organizationally, there’s a very clear sense that our goal is to elevate God’s Word, God’s story through the stories around us.

I think the challenge for us is how do we tether ourselves deeply to God’s story while also looking for those redemptive, witness-bearing stories that illuminate the God that we serve. What I’ve heard a lot from people is, You guys don’t always tell a happy story. You tell the bad story. That is true. And if you’ve actually read the Bible, not every biblical story is a happy and they all got along [story].

The key is how do we tether ourselves to God’s stories so that the stories that we share are redemptive and push us, drive us to get to know and become more like Jesus every day. That’s what we’re trying to do.

I feel like people are looking for greater depth and maybe they don’t know that they’re looking for it. So how do you challenge people without alienating them?

Yeah. Isn’t that the call of … I think even the church, capital C, right now: How do you captivate people with a narrative of Scripture that is neither [skewed] to resurrection, light and fluffy and everything is great, nor to crucifixion, come and die because this is the only thing our faith is about. I wrote about this in my book: [There] is a danger, I think, when you go too far to either side of a deep crucifixion life (all you have to do is die) or deep resurrection reality (all you have to do is live) because you cannot have a resurrection without crucifixion. And if you only stay in crucifixion without resurrection, you miss the glory of God. I think the tension is to recognize that there must be that tension.

Our editorial team at CT reminds me all the time that good journalism isn’t about telling people what to think. It’s about giving people pieces and tools that shape the way that they think. At CT, we’re not a church. We’re not trying to [dispense] doctrine. We want to equip pastors to do that. I feel like a broken record right now, but there’s a way to tell the story that illuminates and glorifies God.

So that’s the challenge. I don’t have a full solution for that, but recognizing the importance, the critical nature of that tension for the gospel, I think that’s the key.

That’s the perfect transition to your new book, Nailing It. It’s really funny because the whole theme of the book is all these ideas that we have about leadership, we need to crucify those ideas. And the funny thing is if you did a rundown—I think you have seven of them—speed and all these kinds of things, they’re the things that are celebrated in leadership. So I think your book is very timely and speaking to a real tension that there is in Christian leadership.

When I wrote the book, I wrote it out of a desire to stop customizing leadership. What I meant was I have been a student of leadership—and still am—most of my life. Some people grow up and they want to be astronauts or they want to be whatever. I’ve always known that I’ve had this push to lead even when I didn’t want to.

My challenge has been I would read books about being a strong, faithful leader and I’d have to say, Well, but I’m not exactly leading on the team, so I have to pull out my little spiritual scissors and trim a little bit of that and Well, that doesn’t quite fit who I am, who God made me to be. Or I’d read a Christian leadership book that was like, It’s all about humility and you have to lower yourself and you have to be nothing, and I’d be like, Yeah, well, I already struggle with that, so I have to take out my spiritual scissors and tailor a little here and hem it here and drop the sleeves a little.

After a while, I started to realize—and I do believe it was a push from the Holy Spirit—like you’re tailoring, but you can create something “custom made.” You can create a leadership paradigm that comes from the Word that isn’t just for you, but might just be exactly what someone else needs. So I started that journey in 2019. And I thought, Oh, 2019 is a wonderful time to write a book. And then 2020 happened, and then my father was very ill and he passed in 2022. I thought my writing time was over. I was like, Well, that was a fun exercise, because I was kind of wrestling with [a] contemplative view of leadership and a more tactical, aggressive like, Let’s just do something. But I figured, Well, maybe it doesn’t work. And maybe this is a sign that I don’t need to write this book, and it’s not the right time.

I was speaking at a church in 2023, and this woman came up to me and said, “God told me to tell you it’s time to get your book over the finish line. It’s time to do this.” I know a lot of people hear from God in different ways. For me, it’s a sleepless night. I could not sleep that night. I was like, Please, Lord, just let me sleep. Leave me alone. But I couldn’t sleep. I woke up the next morning and I reached out to friends at IVP and said, “I think it’s time. I have to do this.” And that started the process of writing out my own tensions. How do we balance the cruciform life to which we are called with this resurrection, glory and victory that is ours? And that’s what the book is about.

So how do leaders start thinking in that paradigm shift? How do you help pastors and church leaders walk that line, that tension, in leadership of their churches?

I would say the key to walking that line is all about motive. It’s the condition of our hearts. And this is what we’ve always known. We serve a God who calls us into intimate relationship, who knows our thoughts before we think them, our hearts before we even speak a word. God is not concerned with our outward displays of leadership. He’s not impressed with how many followers you have or how [few]. He’s not impressed with how much time you spend in your fasting and prayer or how little. God is concerned about the condition of your heart, and the leader who can set your heart and your soul on the principles of Scripture … then you can hear from God and know when to lean into power and when to pull back, when to lean into ego and when to pull back, because in no situation is it ever static.

Someone said to me the other day, “I like your book, but it seems like every chapter you’re talking out of both sides [of your mouth].” I was like, “That’s right, because if we were to think that leadership is a silver bullet, [that] you’re supposed to be the bull in the china shop every single time, every place you lead, you would miss that we serve a contextual God who will speak firmly and call the Pharisees a brood of vipers, but also speak to children and say, “Come to me” and “Don’t hinder them from coming to me.” So leadership’s contextual. It’s never static. And this is where we have to say, God, help my heart to be so centered on your Word that what happens as I lead will be a result of listening and hearing and discerning, and not just a result of some outward motion.

Let’s speak to the small church pastor. The pastor who’s either convocational or is in a rural context, feels like Moses tending sheep for 40 years in the desert, and [is] like, What am I even doing with my life? I went to the best seminary. I spent all this time studying and learning God’s Word, and now the most important thing I have to figure out is how I’m going to get to the hospital to do a visitation while I’m trying to do my full-time job. Speak to that pastor who’s maybe discouraged or needs to have fresh vision for leadership.

I love that profile because that makes me think of my dad. My dad was a pastor for most of my life, and one of his first senior pastorates was St. James AUMP Church. I don’t even know what AUMP is [Author’s note after a quick Google search: African Union Methodist Protestant]. It was probably the size of some people’s living room. The church itself had a parish next to it that my sister and I called “the creepy house” because it was really creepy and creaky. I mean, like they didn’t have central air. And I remember my dad would allow us to fold programs on Sunday morning, and we would always fold more programs than people showed up. We folded maybe 100 programs, and we always had leftovers.

I remember every Saturday night, my dad with his head on his desk praying, seeking the Lord for this small congregation in an unknown denomination with the creepy house connected. And every Sunday he would get up there and preach and sweat and pour out his heart for the two or three families, mine included, that would show up every single Sunday.

Right before my dad passed, I remember him reflecting on that and saying, “I just felt like it was never enough. It was never enough. It was never enough people. The building was never enough.” [Then] he pivoted and said, “But I believe I was faithful to what I was called to do. And I pray God finds me faithful.”

I would say to pastors who may be pastoring congregations that look small in number, let us not be deceived into thinking big numbers mean big impact or that big crowds mean greater significance. We know biblically God can work through small groups and small crowds to have the greatest impact ever. To quote David Platt, Jesus is the best mini church pastor ever with 12—and one of them left. Let us not underestimate our impact. I would say, let the last words that you breathe be words of faithfulness to God. May God find you faithful in the study and the discipline and the teaching and the preaching and the evangelizing and the hospitality and the care of the sick where you are. Because bigger can sometimes be a sign of swelling, a sign of infection. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a sign of growth.

Thank you for asking that question and giving me space to reflect on the amazing ministry of my dad. I told my dad, “I am where I am because you were faithful there. You were faithful every Sunday there, and that is the ground that allowed me to say yes to Jesus.”

Yeah, and now his legacy is continuing in you. It’s really cool that that faithfulness is bearing fruit, and a good reminder for everyone. So switching tack a little bit here, I think oftentimes people look to leaders to be the evangelists. How do leaders start to change the conversation about evangelism and make it about the body of Christ living their 24-7 lives in their different vocations reaching out to their neighbors and seeing themselves as disciplers?

I think that last part of the question is it: seeing themselves as disciplers. I remember when I was younger, I was a very, very, very zealous evangelist. When I was in middle school, I heard a girl crying in the stall next to me, and I stood outside and washed my hands for 55 minutes until she came out. And I was like, “Do you know that Jesus loves you? Do you know that Jesus is available to wipe your tears and take you to a better place?” I was the one who, you know—I’m ashamed to say this, but this is what it is—I encouraged people to burn their CDs and secular books in college because I was like, “This is not what the Lord wants for you. And if you were to die today, would you go to heaven or hell?”

When I was in seminary, I was the director of evangelism, and we did door-to-door ministry. We knocked on the doors, we prayed, we were like, “Do you know where you’re going?” I was handing out The Four Spiritual Laws packets, and I loved that. It was an important season in my life.

The challenge for me is the more I got into the professionalization of ministry, the less I started to think that that way of being was an actual way of being. I started to look back on that previous version of myself and think, How silly, how presumptuous, how overly zealous. We should tone it down because God will call who he will call.

I think when we start to professionalize ministry, then we do assign roles: You’re the doorkeeper, you’re the preacher, you’re the evangelist. And the moment we start to categorize a ministry in the church as evangelism, then we’ve already lost. We’ve lost the battle.

So one thing that I have taken from those very, very zealous times is praying when I get to a specific place where I know I will see people I don’t know, praying a very simple prayer, God, open the door for your word if that is your will. And it has never failed. I could be in an Uber and pray that small prayer. Mostly it’s preceded by, Lord, I’m so tired and I just want to get home. If this is your will, open the door for the gospel to be shared. And it’ll be something like, you know, the Uber driver’s talking about, My child is really sick and after I drop you off, I got to get to the hospital. And that becomes a door to the gospel.

If we as leaders can start to pray that prayer and remember that evangelism is not a ministry group, it is a part of our discipleship, then we can start to teach our congregation what it looks like to have everyday evangelism, not necessarily knocking on doors and asking people, If [you] were to die today … though if that’s your cup of tea, I’m all for it … but to see their lives as an example, a witness of what God has done. Because when I start to see that God has made me a miracle, God delivered me, God saved me, then it’s an easier thing. It’s like telling somebody your favorite restaurant.

How do you help people to start thinking in those terms? We have a way of bifurcating our lives [between the sacred and secular in our daily lives] not really knowing how to connect those dots.

What I’m gonna say might sound kind of super-spiritual, but I do think it is about getting closer to Christ for ourselves so that we can get a case of the “can’t help its.” What I mean is, when I get a great massage, it actually annoys me when they send out the survey, How did it go? Because it was so great, and if it was so great, I’m actually not even waiting until I leave. I’m gonna call my sister right away and be like, “Girl, you need to go and get a massage from this place.”

When I go to a great restaurant and it’s really good, no one ever has to tell me, “Could you let other people know?” I cannot wait to tell other people, first of all, that I’ve been, and second of all, how good the food is.

I think we have lived our Christian lives on the periphery of God’s grace and goodness and favor for so long that we don’t know how good the food is for ourselves.

If we can really tap into a deep abiding relationship with God, then it’ll be like Bernard of Clairvaux said, that we should be not like canals that simultaneously pour out what we receive, but we would be like reservoirs waiting for the overflow. I think God wants to give us an overflow of just how good and amazing and wonderful he is. And when we get that overflow, then we can’t help it. Then it’s natural. Then it’s like, “Let me tell you about this God.”

Then, of course, the second very practical part is building courage in [our] contemporary society, meaning building courage in a time where people will own their own truths and not accept anyone else’s truth as theirs. Building courage to believe that Jesus Christ is still powerful and still saves in the midst of Buddha and Hare Krishna and, you know, New Age science and crystals, that the blood of Jesus still matters more than burning your sage or getting to your [animist] Native American practice. That is where the courage comes from. And I do think that’s the responsibility we have.

Let’s dig a little bit deeper into that. Contemporary culture is all about subjectivity and identity. How do you call people to a countercultural way of thinking that may feel like the antipathy of what our culture is ascribing to right now?

I have found it helpful to remind myself that some of the cultural things we’re facing right now are not new. The fight for identity is not a new thing. If you look at the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, you see Jesus being tempted by the Enemy, and Satan says to him every time, “If you are the Son of God …” It is an attack on his identity. If you. Because what happened right before that? The Holy Spirit descends like a dove, the voice of God speaks, This is my son, my beloved, in whom I’m well pleased. So right after God says, You belong to me and you’re mine and you have value, then Jesus is pushed into the wilderness by the Spirit of God to be tested on his identity.

So I find it very comforting to say to people, “Your identity has always been an issue for the Lord.” But I’ve also found it important to remind people that we are not in a benign state of being. There is no good and good. There’s good and evil. Even Marvel Comics knows that. Even DC Comics knows that. Even children’s books understand there is an evil present in our world. If I’m talking to people who are not Christian, I try not to go too deep into a scary language, but to remind them, “You’ve felt it. You’ve been in spaces where you felt evil. You have felt the presence of wrong. And that presence, that evil would love nothing more than to destroy who you are.”

So how do you hold on to the truth of who you are, the good of who you are? This is where we have to hold on to Christ. It would warm my heart if pastors and churches would begin to teach on identity. Sometimes we think [that] because culture uses the word first they own the market on that. But no, identity belongs to God. And I love the way you framed the question, because that’s kind of the answer. We have to help people to see a countercultural way of being, that identity is not political, it’s not even as much racial and gendered as you think it is. Identity is about belonging in Christ.

To hear more from leaders like Nicole Martin who are helping churches mobilize everyday Christians to reach their communities with the gospel, register your team now for this year’s Amplify Conference in partnership with Outreach magazine, and join us in advancing the kingdom of God.