I’m not sure if there’s a more helpful and accessible voice for church leaders than Carey Nieuwhof.
His podcast is on point and his newest book, Didn’t See It Coming: Overcoming the Seven Greatest Challenges That No One Expects and Everyone Experiences distills some of his greatest insights into an easy to read book for all church leaders.
You’ve probably seen his book around, but if you haven’t had time to dig into it yet—or if you need a refresher—here are my favorite quotes.
- “Cynicism begins not because you don’t care but because you do care.”
- “What starts as self-preservation soon morphs into something more insidious. You become a bit jaded.”
- “The problem with generalizing—applying on particular situation to all situations—is that the death of trust, hope, and belief is like a virus, infecting everything,”
- “As you grow older, you become more of who you already are.”
- “I realized that left unchecked, cynicism would win.”
- “Cynicism is actually a choice.”
- “Hope is one of cynicism’s first casualties.”
- “An incredibly effective antidote to cynicism is curiosity. Yes, simple curiosity.”
- “Feed your curiosity, and it grows. Starve it, and it withers.”
- “You can’t wonder and discover when you’re in a hurry.”
- “As young leader, I was convinced that competency was the key to success in life. My formula went like this: Competency determines capacity. The more competency you are, the greater your potential. The greater your potential, the greater your capacity…But a few years into my adult life, I began to notice highly competent people who became disqualified from leadership.”
- “If competency doesn’t determine capacity, what does? Character does.”
- “All the competency in the world can’t compensate for your lack of character. Ultimately, your character is your lid.”
- “Character, not competency, determines capacity.”
- “No matter how hard you try, you can’t escape you.“
- “Compromise is in you, and life brings it out of you.”
- “We judge ourselves by our intentions and other people by their actions.“
- “There’s a certain point when you compromise regularly enough that you decide to stop apologizing and instead start justifying. There’s a reason you are the way you are.”
- “When you start justifying your bad behavior and decisions, you begin to believe your condition is inevitable.”
- “Any value system worth having is focused on others, not self.”
- “Character development for the most part doesn’t happen in some monastery with stone walls and dank cellars. It happens in the grind of everyday life.”
- “The antidote to compromise is simply this: work twice as hard on your character as you do on your competency.”
- “Every time you blame others, invent justification, or craft a fresh excuse, you evade responsibility.”
- “Of all the lies we tell, the lies we tell ourselves are the deadliest.
- “People won’t think less of you when you’re honest. They’ll think more of you.”
- “It is not selfish to put yourself first when it comes to personal growth.”
- “Solitude is a gift from God. Isolation is not—it’s a tool of the Enemy.”
- “What we’re facing is not a technology problem but a human problem.”
- “You won’t address what you don’t confess.”
- “Our lack of confession disconnects us from God, from one another, and even from ourselves.”
- “The challenge is not to resist change but to learn how to thrive in the midst of it.”
- “When are your past circumstances going to stop defining your present and future?”
- “You can make excuses or you can make progress, but you can’t make both.”
- “Unchecked, most of us live in the decade where a lot of our tastes, knowledge, and experiences were shaped. We pick na era we love and, for the most part, stay frozen there.”
- “Change is the only thing that bridges the gap between who you are and who you need to be.”
- “The greatest enemy of your future success is always your current success.”
- “To be successful in life, methods need to serve your mission.”
- “Whether you agree with the culture or not, understanding it is a prerequisite to being able to influence it.”
- “One of the best ways to earn the affection and buy-in from a younger team is to listen as much as you speak, to learn as much as you attempt to teach.”
- “The key to seeing transformation take root is to keep changing, keep experimenting, keep risking.”
- “The change you don’t implement often becomes something none of us wants—regret.”
- “Unimplemented change will become regret.”
- “Pride is, in many ways, the master sin. It’s the root of our rebellion against God, against others, and even against what’s best for us.”
- “Nothing kills pride like humility does. Only humility can get you out of what pride got you into.”
- “A second possible (but not desirable) way to learn humility is actually through humiliation.”
- “Humiliation, by definition, is involuntary humility.”
- “Scarcity creates gratitude, and most of us live in relative abundance, globally speaking.”
- “Humility always keeps its notebook open.”
- “Pride is like a weed, and humility is like your lawn.”
- “If you’re healthy, you feel things. You experience highs and lows. When I burned out, I couldn’t feel either properly anymore.”
- “Burnout numbs your heart.”
- “Treating small things like big things and big things like small things are both signs that something deeper is wrong.”
- “Cynicism never finds a home in a healthy heart.”
- “Some days, simply avoiding stupid is a win.”
- “People who are burning out almost always choose self-medication over self-care.”
- “I believe the very heart of the problem of burnout is spiritual. If you leave Jesus out of the cure, you leave out much of the potential healing.”
- “If God wants to go deep, it’s because he wants to take you far.”
- “The emptiness so many people experience in life is more intense in success than it is in failure.”
- “A long time ago, someone shared with me a progression to success and accumulation…You start with more, move to better, and end up at different.”
- “Workaholism is the most rewarded addiction in America today. You may get fired for drinking too much, but working too much usually gets you promoted. It will also get you a raise.”
- “Underneath the constant pursuit of more (more work, booze, pills, food, sex, or things) is an appetite. And appetites are strange things.”
- “If you don’t know what’s driving your addiction, you’ll get driven back to it again and again.”
- “What do I need to do (or not do) so I can live today in a way that will help me thrive tomorrow.”
- “If you want to beat emptiness, find a mission that’s bigger than you.”
- “God as a vending machine is bad theology, especially when you drop your dollar in and the candy bar doesn’t come out.”
- “Prayer is not a button to be pushed; it’s a relationship to be pursued.”
- “The alternative to living for yourself is dying to yourself.”
- “Humility will win you what pride never will: the affection of others.”
- “The Kingdom of Me is a sad kingdom. And one that leaves you feeling so empty. Die to it.”
- “The more self-aware you are, the more likely you are to see it coming.”
- “Self-aware people understand not only what their own emotions and actions are but also how their emotions and actions affect others.”
- “When you stop using your emotions as the only filter through which you process your attitude and actions, you grow as a person.”
- “If you regularly do what you were created to do, the likelihood of growing cynical, disconnected, proud, or irrelevant diminishes.”
- “Self-aware people know what they’re best at but don’t brag about it. They just do it.”
- “One of the deadliest mistakes you can make is to ignore your limits.”
Next Steps:
- Listen to Episode 186 of Carey’s podcast where he interviewed me on what’s wrong with discipleship, false maturity, and bi-vocational ministry.
- Share your favorite quote from this article!