Category: Faith

Ep. 57 Jesus as Mentor

Ep. 57 Jesus as Mentor

Before leadership frameworks, there was a rabbi calling twelve ordinary men to walk with him. In this episode, we look at how Jesus mentored the Twelve: how he called them, walked with them, corrected them, and sent them out.

Carson, Chuck, and Ingrid unpack what that relationship still teaches leaders today.

Three lessons carry the episode.

  1. Be present, the way Jesus was fully present with the Twelve.
  2. Empower others, the way he equipped ordinary men to carry his mission forward.
  3. Model vulnerability, the way he did in Gethsemane, letting them see his humanity and not just his authority.

Chuck presses the harder edge: empowerment requires presence, not a hand-off. Mistakes are part of the process, not a failure of leadership. Guidance isn’t micromanagement.

And it’s rooted deeper than technique. Carson ties it back to Jesus’ own relationship with the Father, the source he mentored from. Ingrid reminds listeners that mentoring well doesn’t require being perfect. It requires being willing.

Who’s walking with you like that?

Ep. 56 Biblical Leadership

Ep. 56 Biblical Leadership

Jesus didn’t call himself a CEO. He called himself a shepherd. And if you’ve ever spent time around actual sheep, you know that’s not the flattering image we tend to make it.

The Mentored Podcast is built on a biblical leadership framework and a servant leadership model, so this episode sits close to home. Carson, Chuck, and Ingrid dig into what biblical leadership actually looks like, not the version with a platform and a title, but the kind that shows up in a parking lot in a yellow vest because it needed doing. No audience. No credit. Just a lead pastor helping cars find a spot.

That’s the picture Scripture gives us. A servant leader isn’t the one with the most impressive title. It’s the one who says nothing is beneath them, who steps in when nobody’s watching, and who builds systems that lift other people up instead of pulling everything back to themselves.

Shepherding was never clean work. Neither is leading the way Jesus led.

Where in your leadership have you been waiting for someone else to notice, when what’s needed is just someone willing to step in?

Ep. 55 Joy in Uncommon Work

Ep. 55 Joy in Uncommon Work

Ask a pastor what they do for a living and watch what happens. Either an awkward silence, or someone jokes about a one-day work week. Ministry is uncommon work. Not because people misunderstand it, though they often do, but because it asks something most jobs never ask: your whole self, on the days you have nothing left to give.

This episode is for the pastor who loves the congregation and still ends most weeks running on fumes. The one carrying sermon prep, counselling, conflict, and administration, who feels guilty for not feeling joyful about a calling they know is good. That guilt is common. So is the exhaustion underneath it.

Carson, Chuck, and Ingrid sit with that tension honestly. They ground the conversation in Galatians 5:22-23. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. It was never meant to depend on your circumstances, your calendar, or how the last elders’ meeting went. From there, three practical shifts: reframing hard seasons as formation, setting boundaries that protect what matters, and celebrating the small wins that rarely make it into a sermon illustration.
Here’s the question underneath the whole episode. If joy in ministry doesn’t come from your circumstances improving, where does it come from? And when did you last go looking for it there instead?

Ep. 51 The Prayer of Indifference

Ep. 51 The Prayer of Indifference

 

Most of us walk into our biggest decisions already knowing what we want. We just want God to agree.

That’s not prayer. That’s lobbying.

The Prayer of Indifference is an ancient spiritual practice rooted in Ignatian tradition and the Quaker pursuit of surrender. At its core, it’s the willingness to say, “Lord, I don’t want what I want. I want what you want.” Simple to say. Genuinely costly to mean.

In this episode, Carson, Chuck, and Ingrid unpack what holy indifference actually looks like in the life of a working leader. Not apathy. Not passivity. But a deep enough trust in God that you can set aside your attachments, your fears, and your preferred outcomes long enough to actually hear Him.

If you’re a business leader weighing a decision that affects your team, a pastor navigating competing loyalties, an executive who suspects their ego is doing more of the talking than they’d like to admit, or a parent at home trying to discern what faithfulness actually looks like in the daily grind of family life, this conversation is for you.

Most leaders don’t lack information when facing a hard decision. They lack freedom. Freedom from the fear of what others will think, from the pull toward comfort over calling, from the quiet pressure to choose the path with more applause.

This practice won’t make hard decisions easy. But it may make them honest.

So here’s the question worth sitting with before you press play: What would change if the outcome truly didn’t matter to you?