Changing My Mind: Leadership Lessons for Ministry and Nonprofit Leaders

Bishop Will Willimon is a renowned United Methodist bishop, pastor, professor, and one of the most widely read and respected voices in Christian ministry and leadership today. With a career spanning more than five decades, he has shaped the thinking and practice of clergy, nonprofit leaders, and faith-based organizations around the world.

Willimon served for twenty years as Dean of Duke Chapel at Duke University, where he became known for his compelling preaching and his ability to connect faith with real-world leadership challenges. He also served as Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School, mentoring generations of pastors and leaders in the art of preaching, leadership, and faithful ministry.

Following his time at Duke, he was elected bishop in the United Methodist Church and appointed to the North Alabama Conference, where he provided visionary leadership to congregations navigating cultural change, institutional challenges, and evolving ministry contexts. His work as a bishop further deepened his commitment to helping leaders adapt while remaining grounded in mission and purpose.

A prolific author, Will Willimon has written more than 70 books on preaching, worship, pastoral leadership, and theology. His works are widely used in seminaries, churches, and leadership programs across denominations. Known for his clarity, wit, and theological depth, he brings a unique ability to challenge assumptions while offering practical wisdom for leading in complex environments.

His most recent book, Changing My Mind: The Overlooked Virtue for Faithful Ministry, reflects on lessons learned over a lifetime of leadership. In it, he explores the critical importance of humility, adaptability, and the courage to rethink long-held assumptions in order to lead faithfully in a rapidly changing world.

Through his teaching, writing, and speaking, Bishop Willimon continues to inspire leaders to embrace change, listen deeply, communicate clearly, and lead with both conviction and openness. His insights resonate far beyond the church, offering powerful guidance for anyone leading mission-driven organizations in today’s dynamic and uncertain landscape.

Interview Summary

In this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange, I had the pleasure of welcoming back Will Willimon, a United Methodist bishop, pastor, professor, and prolific author. We discussed his latest book, “Changing My Mind: The Overlooked Virtue for Faithful Ministry,” which reflects on his decades of experience in ministry and leadership.

Willimon emphasizes the importance of humility, adaptability, and lifelong learning for leaders, particularly in the nonprofit sector. He shared insights on the necessity of changing one’s mind and approach in response to the evolving needs of the community and the mission of organizations. We explored how leaders often cling to familiar methods, but true leadership requires recognizing when change is needed, especially in a rapidly changing world.

Throughout our conversation, we touched on the significance of active listening as a leadership discipline, the challenges of over-functioning, and the importance of creating a culture that encourages risk-taking and innovation. Willimon also shared personal anecdotes about his leadership journey, including the lessons he learned about delegation and the need for honest communication within organizations.

As we wrapped up, we discussed the hope for the future of the church and mission-driven organizations, grounded in the belief that working towards good aligns with a higher purpose. This episode is packed with valuable insights for anyone in a leadership role, especially those in nonprofit and faith-based organizations.

I encourage our listeners to check out Willimon’s book for a deeper understanding of these concepts and to reflect on their own leadership practices. Thank you for joining us on this enlightening journey! 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou

This is the Nonprofit Exchange, and I’m Hugh Ballou. I’m the founder and president of a nonprofit called SynerVision Leadership Foundation. As a lifelong musician, I created Synergy in Groups. We call it Ensemble and we do the same thing with the organizations we lead. We have a vision. It’s a God-given vision for me. We’re clear on that vision, and we lead people with that vision. Therefore, we create the synergy, which we can’t do alone. We’re responsible for the synergy. I have a prolific author, a friend, and a very experienced leader here for the second time. He’s been on the show before, but it was time to come back with a new book. So, Will Willimon, welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange and tell us, we’re going to talk about your book, Changing My Mind. So, tell us a little bit about, I want to tell people a little bit about you before, but I want to welcome you to the show. So, thank you for being here today.

Will Willimon

Thank you, Hugh.

Hugh Ballou

It’s great to be back. So you’re a United Methodist bishop, pastor, professor, and a prolific author. You’re known for your work on preaching, pastoral leadership, and the theology of the church. You’ve served as dean of Duke University Chapel and professor of the practice of Christian ministry at Duke Divinity School. In your recent book, Changing My Mind, this is one that really caught my attention, read a number of your books, it’s Changing My Mind, The Overlooked Virtue for Faithful Ministry. you reflect on lessons learned over decades of ministry, highlighting the importance of humility, adaptability, and lifelong learning. While the book is written primarily for clergy, its insights are highly relevant to leaders of nonprofit organizations, associations, and mission-driven enterprises. who must lead in this rapidly changing world. So I really relate to this book. It covers a lot of the concepts that we teach in Certification Leadership Foundation. So start with what inspired you to write this particular book?

Will Willimon

I think it was from the conviction being an old guy looking back on my own life and the missions I’ve been involved in, a sense that the ability to say, okay, I’ve been going in this direction, working on these tasks for a while now, but now I need to change. And that move can be challenging for us. I mean, for one thing, I dare say most of us find something that works for us as leaders, some skill set, some set of behaviors that we’re comfortable with and seem reasonably effective. And we stick with that. We go with that. Trouble is, you use that word mission, And when your mission involves the mission of Jesus Christ and participating in that, Well, it means that the mission at times demands that you change. You change your mind. You change your ways of doing things. In the church, I find we talk about, oh, the culture’s changing, and what are young adults thinking now, and what is the market? What are Americans buying into now? What are their needs, their desires? Yeah, those are all appropriate questions. However, Maybe as a theologian, I would say, remember, we think we’re working for a living God, and a living God is on the move. And so sometimes we need to change because that required change is induced by a Holy Spirit, a living God on the move. And So, I stress that changing as a necessary virtue for those who want to lead, particularly leading in the name of Christ. Aristotle says somewhere that a mark of intelligence is the ability to see the differences in each situation, the unique quality of each situation we encounter. And I think that’s hard for leaders because it’s maybe just natural for a leader to say, when faced with a challenge, a situation, to say, oh, oh, oh, I’ve been here before. Aristotle says, no, you haven’t. Intelligence involves saying, no, this has its own unique qualities. So therefore, it can be perilous to say, oh, I’ve been here before. And when I was here before, what I did was this, and then this, and this, and this, and it worked. So leaders are often in the situation of saying, wow, This is new. We haven’t been here before or our organization. I’m thinking about you working with nonprofits. I’m thinking about somebody was in a nonprofit working with women who had been abused physically and emotionally in their marriages, and providing safe space for those women. That involved raising a lot of money and all. It was telling me that the business, and it is a business, I guess, of raising money to support her mission, her ministry, that she’d been impressed how it had changed over the last 10 years. And I said, how has it changed? And she said things like, you gotta put a face on it. You gotta not be tender about asking people for their money. You’ve got to get your organization presented in the unique way that that potential donor you give them the optimum opportunity to respond. So therefore, call it adaptability, adjustment, suppleness, change is required of those who lead

Hugh Ballou

it’s paying attention in some sense. So what we bring to the table, some of our flaws, which often are blind spots, and also an inaccurate assumption that we’re the leader, we got all the right answers, and it’s got to be done this way. So how do we, do this without feeling like it’s showing weakness, when it’s really showing a sign of strength, and it’s a dialogue with the teams that we lead. So when I first met you before that, I served the church in North Alabama when you were bishop there, and Larry Dill was a great leader. He had a really good staff, and he’d throw out an idea. and then said, I’m thinking about this. And then he would let us talk about it. And then after a while, you say, yeah, OK, I heard it. This is what I’m going to do. And he changed his mind because he heard some different data. So how do we get rid of those things we’ve learned and open our minds to new things?

Will Willimon

It ain’t easy, I’ll admit. I mean, one thing is that you’re probably, if you’re working as a nonprofit leader, church leader, you’re probably a person of strong conviction. You really, really care about some things, and that care is non-negotiable. However, that conviction, that strength, that determination, can sometimes be your enemy when it comes to saying, yeah, I know we’re committed, this is our mission. However, the ways of accomplishing that mission are going to have to change for the following reasons. I know you’ve stressed synergy, that we work in concert with others. It’s death to try to do it all yourself. and all, yeah. Well, I found how helpful it is to work in synergy, to be in synergy with like people from business. I know on college, I’ve been on a number of college and university boards. And on that board, I notice when you come to some crisis in the life of the institution, the clergy, the academics types on the board, the professional types, doctors on the board, lawyers and all. We tend to be kind of conservative and we tend to be, we panic when it comes to a radically different situation. The business guys on the board though, just by nature of capitalism, business, they say, How do we need to change? How do we need to scrap what we’ve been doing before and launch out into new way? And I told one guy, I said, it kind of surprises me that you are a leader in the Republican Party. And he said, why should that surprise you? And I said, because you are a wonderfully successful business person. and therefore you are radically innovative.” And he said, are you calling me a liberal? And I said, well, you know, it fits you in some ways. And he said, stop it. And I said, you and I both know that you cannot be fundamentally traditionalist, fundamentally conservative, rigid, and stay in business. You have got to be willing to scrap and to risk and try something new. Those are the only people who make money in business. Well, I’m just saying that having those partners, that synergy in a nonprofit or church, it can really be wonderful because they can maybe teach us, hey, here’s how you refashion yourself better to lead the mission in the present moment.

Hugh Ballou

In the writings of a psychiatrist, Murray Bowen, who created the Bowen family systems, he talks about overfunctioning. And one of the ways we overfunction is we think we know how it goes and we do it because we only do it. And so the culture, as I experienced many years as a musical conductor, the culture is a reflector, a reflection of a leader. So part of what we’re talking about is we’re influencing the culture that we lead by being flexible, by being open-minded, by putting our ego on the back burner.

Will Willimon

Yeah. Things like in that culture that you’re in, do you punish people when they take a risk and it doesn’t work? Or do you reward them, praise them for taking the risk? The example you gave with Larry Dill, are you open? I know I had a management coach when I was Bishop, retired business executive. I learned so much from him, but he would accompany me to meetings of my cabinet, bishop, district superintendents, around the table. And then he would help me evaluate my performance at the meeting, after the meeting. And he would say things like to me, this won’t surprise you, Hugh, but he would say things like, well, once again, you did too much talking. You didn’t spend enough time giving them room to talk. And he said one time to me, he said, you know, you were more effective in your first year in these meetings than you are in your third year because you’re asking far fewer questions. In your first year, you kept frequently saying, wait a minute, explain that to me, or why do y’all do it this way, or are you getting the results you like from doing it this way? This doesn’t make sense to me, help me understand this and all. In the third year, you really think you know something, and you think you know better than they know a lot of times. And you, you’re kind of making, you’re pushing decisions that you don’t know as much about as you think you know. And so, it’s that you need to ask more questions. And, which maybe is to say, you shouldn’t be leading without somebody looking over your shoulder, somebody coaching. I bet for some listeners of this podcast, that’s been Hubeloo. who has gone in and been an appreciative critic, but still a critic who said, you know, this has worked for this organization wonderfully well, and I know you’re proud of your achievement here, and this has been great. However, I think you’re probably gonna need to change some things. And sometimes that’s, easier to do when you’ve got a respected coach to say it to you.

Hugh Ballou

And back to what you were saying earlier, that’s so, so spot on. You know, if you look at the most successful people in any industry, they’ve got a coach, whether it’s golf, it’s the Olympics, it’s a singer, the opera singer. Absolutely.

Will Willimon

And the Winter Olympics, you know, here’s this skater getting ready to be, the skater’s always in the middle of two coaches. Yeah.

Hugh Ballou

So my question comes from one of the most underutilized leadership skills is relevant to what you’re just talking about. And as a musician, that skill is listening. So there’s different types of listening. And you also talked, when I put together planning teams, I want people to think differently. And so it’s a challenge to open up and listen. And because we listen, we don’t have to accept what they take, but you know, we get some fresh ideas. So talk about listening as a discipline, a leadership discipline.

Will Willimon

Well, you know, throughout my career, this will not come as a surprise to you, I have been criticized for not being a great listener. And I said, well, I’m a preacher. However, the truth is, great preachers are always great listeners. They’re busy constantly listening for ideas and for the way people talk and for what people are talking about. I like the phrase active listening. We’ve all been victim of going into a situation where someone says, I want to hear what you have to say. Start talking. And the person sits there impassively as we talk. And when I’m in a situation like that, I just become nervously talking, talking, talking. And I remember a dean who allowed me to go on for like 20 minutes and she said, Do you have anything else to say? And I said, No, what would you like to talk about? She said, I’m here to listen. Goodbye. Thank you. Active listening, I think, It reminds us too, sometimes people that you listen to say things to you that say more about them, their own caughtness, their own prejudices, their own safety, their own self-protectiveness. So therefore, active listening is important to say just things like, I know when I’ve learned and I think it’s something you can learn. But I’ve learned like when people say something negative to me or critical to me, I’ve learned to kind of immediately say, wow, thank you. I’d like to hear more. Can you say more about that? And it becomes an invitation to them. But also, active listening involves challenging people to say, you know, to say, you know, I’m not, I’m not understanding you here or it, you’re being, I can’t, I don’t know what you’re advocating here because you seem just sort of unhappy and negative, but I need you to be more specific. What is it that’s bothering you about what we’re doing here? So I think active listening is important. asking a lot of questions along the way, engaging, pushing back, often helps your interlocutor, helps them to get better at expressing themselves. So somebody comes out of church and they say, you know, that wasn’t a good sermon. And you say, oh, thank you. Could you say more? Well, you know, it just didn’t seem like your heart was really in it. Oh, well, how do you mean? Or how did that come across to you that way and all? And the person then says, well, it just seemed like something you were told to say by the bishop, you know, the latest denominational program. And you can say, oh, Well, let me show you, this is really something I actually care about. I’m sorry I didn’t confess. Anyway, active, I like the phrase active listening. I remember a book that I read, a management book you may have read, called Fierce Conversations. And this book really argued, you’re not gonna get much out of your listeners unless you really engage your listeners and jump in and really get good at pressing them to give you all the wisdom they can give you.

Hugh Ballou

I love it. So Arthur Brooks wrote a book called From Strength to Strength, and he talks about people in our generation having crystallized intelligence because, in fact, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I’ve learned from those. So you talk about reflecting over, what, four decades of writing and ministry work. So coming at decisions now, what have you decided differently? What do you do differently? How do you listen differently than you did 40 years ago?

Will Willimon

Well, I hope I’m better. One thing, it helps to be looking at 40 years. It helps to be this old. Someone said to me the other day after I spoke at a meeting, you’re more bold than you were. You’re more direct. And I said, wow, did I have a problem with boldness? No, no, no, but you, you’re, it seems like being at your age, and I’m 79, being at my age, and I thought, you know, that’s probably true. Age has one advantage. It has, you’re not busy worrying about your advancement and tomorrow, you know, that’s behind you. And maybe you are freer to say, well, let me be candid about this and direct. So I think maybe that’s different. Another thing, and this is a matter dear to your heart, but I think some of my greatest mistakes, leadership mistakes, were that I really wanted to do it my way. I had a good deal of self-confidence. A lot of things had worked for me in my leadership, and so I tended to take on a lot of projects, too many. I tended to get engaged in oversight of too many people, which meant that I did not give any of them, you know, good oversight. I think I tended to, so like one, I remember as a relatively young pastor, after I left the church, I ran into someone from that church, a year later, and they said, you know, our church has never gotten over your leaving. And I said, oh, well, thank you, taking that as a compliment. And then they said, we had the best youth program in town because, of course, you ran it. And I tell you, we didn’t have any financial problems because you kept stressing finances and pushing us on that. But now all that’s just gone away when you left. Well, it turned out that was a searing, devastating criticism of my leadership. It was a sign that I had taken on jobs that should have been delegated to others. I should have trained others to do them. So when I left, it all dissipated with my departure. So that’s one thing I hope I’m better about saying, can anybody here do this as well as I can do it or better? Is God calling somebody else in a way that God is not calling me to do that? And just one final thing and to say that I hope I’ve gotten more clear about the mission and to be able to say yes and no to things on the basis of the mission, to say, I think it would be wonderful for us to have a grief counseling group in our church. I don’t know anything about that kind of group. Is God calling you to get that ministry together? I’d like to assist you in getting it together, but I’m not gonna do it. I’m actually working full-time myself and got plenty to do. So I hope I’ve gotten better about that and better, to put it in a Christian church context, to say, you know, I’m sorry, Jesus Christ, appears not to have called me to do this. I wonder if Jesus Christ is calling you to do this. Well, let me encourage you to do it. And let me, can I be of any assistance? And you’re doing it. But I’m not gonna take over ministry that Jesus Christ intends to give to you itself.

Hugh Ballou

So I want to remind our audience that if you want to get some of these great comments there and these soundbites really, but great ideas, the full transcripts on our website, thenonprofitexchange.org. So the first two thirds of this interview I probed you, what’s helped you change? So let’s pivot and talk to the younger leaders, the new leaders, maybe people that are still old, but trying to shift, the culture is shift rapidly. So you mentioned something, I’m gonna go back to Murray Bowen, talking about over-functioning. So at this point in life, that’s a common trait with all leaders. So I think first, we need to realize whether we’re running a local charity or a church, it’s a business. We have to generate revenue. We have to be good stewards of all the resources. And so in the most proper way, we have to have good business principles. It’s very different and it’s more difficult. So reflecting on leaders who are finding their way, you know, it’s the culture is, My wife and I read the Daily Lectionary, and the Old Testament is like current events. So there’s nothing new under the sun, Ecclesiastes, but it’s new for us. So let’s talk about communication. As a person, you’re the preacher, you’ve got the command center preaching, but communication is a two-way street. So what have you learned about communications, and what advice would you Everybody communicates and we are the leader and people hear us differently. So what advice would you give leaders about being very clear with your message, being very clear on what you’re asking people to do?

Will Willimon

Well, one might say, and this may be a prejudiced comment from a preacher, but it’s kind of all words. I mean, for instance, say I have people uh, who say, uh, I said, what, what’s kind of work you do? And they said, well, I work with a homeless. And I said, Oh, uh, you said, yeah, we’ve got a, we’ve got a budget of about, uh, $500,000. And, uh, uh, I’ve got to raise that. And I see after that, and then we work with a homeless and I try to provide safe housing for them and all. And, uh, I guess I could say, no, you don’t. You’re not actually working with a homeless, you’re working with words. If you’re at the top of the organization, particularly, you ain’t out there providing the homeless with blankets and food in the middle of the night. Somebody else is. But that somebody else is only there if you’re able to talk them into it and give them a rationale for being there and encouragement and support. And you do that through words. I remember a textbook on counseling, and it said counseling is the attempt to care for people through words. Well, I think leadership, it’s kind of words all the way down. Therefore, in my book, I encourage preachers to realize what a powerful thing it is to have, on a weekly basis, you get to stand up and you talk. How is your preaching reinforcing the leadership that needs to occur in that? And my son-in-law got his MBA at Fuqua School of Business at Duke. He had two public speaking classes and I said, wow, wow, I want to see those books now. But he said, business is the attempt to talk people into things, to talk people into giving you money, to talk people into working for you, to talk people into. So being articulate, use the word, I think, concise, direct. I know my management coach told me, is, and I think it was like growth, church growth, congregational growth, more members. Is this really a priority? And I said, yeah, yeah, it’s a conference priority. He said, why don’t you talk about it more? He said, I want you to kind of say that you’re never in front of a group large or small, that you don’t talk about this priority. In some way, work it in. And we’ve all heard that thing about you gotta talk about something at least eight times before the organization hears it. So repetitive talk. And one of my problems was I don’t like repeating things. I’m fascinated by new ideas. I’m energized by new concepts. Well darn it, if you’re the leader, you gotta repeat stuff. And you’ve got to keep focusing, keeping the main thing the main thing. And you do that through words. So speaking, articulating is so important. And I love those encounters with people working in a non-profit sector, or working in a church, who maybe speaking, public speaking, conversation, wasn’t their gift. They were kind of introverted. And I remember saying to a student who spoke up in an argument, a conversation was happening in a classroom and all. And after the thing, I told him, I said, wow, you’re really good at making the case for your point of view. That’s really good. He said, by the way, I wrote down every single word that I said in that discussion and I memorized every word. I was repeating from memory what I’d written down because I’ve learned I’m not good at staying focused and I’m not good at spontaneous speaking. Wow, that’s leadership. that where I craft myself and my presentation according to the needs of the organization.

Hugh Ballou

That’s profound. Last year, I don’t know what it is this year, but last year in America, we had a college closing every week. All around us, in the Virginia Conference of the Methodist Church, I’ve seen several churches decommissioned and there’s some more coming. Mainline churches, I see a third of the non-profits that are founded will close every year. So the numbers are staggering and the burnout rate with, I know what it is for non-private leaders, it’s gotta be more for clergy. So we’re doing it to ourselves because we’re not willing to think differently to change our minds. We’ve talked about the leader being able to change their mind. How does the leader work with an organization that’s resistant to change?

Will Willimon

You know, I guess as a preacher, I enjoy watching preachers. It’s as if effective preachers have a whole bag of tricks to try to convince you to agree with them or go along with them or change if that’s necessary. And I think it might be fun for each leader to say, what are the gifts I have for helping people change? The comment about, you know, I believe you want to do better than this. the kind of person you want to be. That can be an invitation to change. Or to say to them, you know, I’m concerned about this problem. What do you think about that? Are you concerned too? Let’s think together about ways that we might do things differently. I think Though every leader encounters people who, for whatever reason, seem to can’t change. They just don’t have a change-oriented personality. And I think then the leader is in a situation of saying, well, is this person functioning well enough to stay in this organization or not? And those can be hard decisions. But they must be made by respecting the mission of the organization. I remember a layperson saying to me that he was in a church, an officer in the church, and he said, we had a person who may have been an effective youth minister 20 years ago. but she had clearly aged out of youth ministry and appeared to have lost interest in youth ministry. So basically she was just biding time till retirement and the youth program had gone to nothing and all. So he said, I’ve raised this with the board. And the minister immediately said, this church has been her life. She’s given most of her life to this church and all. Well, the layperson was a business person, kind of a tough guy. And he said, OK, oh, so well, then I move that we pay her pension starting now. We retire her, but we retire her full salary and pay for her because she’s not doing the work. And I don’t believe she’s capable of stepping up and doing the work or wants to do it. So let’s just take her on as a welfare case.” And the board said, what? We can’t do that. And the pastor said, I just, I don’t want to see her hurt. And the layperson responded, you know, I know in your mind you’re presenting yourself as more caring and sensitive and sympathetic and empathetic than I. I know that’s what you want to be. But I’m telling, the way it comes across to me is the youth of this church, the mission of Jesus Christ to our youth is as not as important as keeping on this utterly unproductive employee. Wow. So to say that, you know, I think a leader is under an obligation if you have an employee who for the survival, the good of the organization, appears not to be able to change. and change has got to come, then I think you’ve got to say for the good of the organization about what we’re going to do in relationship to this employee. I don’t know why I got on to firing people, but sometimes it’s necessary. I guess, too, you know, I think I kind of enjoy adaptation and innovation and change. But I need to be reminded there are other people who are very frightened by that. There may be even people who the reason they’re working in your organization, the great appeal of working for a low salary in this charitable organization is they’re never faced with having to change. So that can be an added challenge.

Hugh Ballou

Well, I had to change my mind about thinking about things like that. And in my 40 years of music ministry work, when I fired volunteers, most of the time, they were happy because they didn’t know how to tell me that it wasn’t a fit. And everybody knows it affects your culture when you’re not dealing with it. People perceive you as being a poor leader.

Will Willimon

And I think I could demonstrate that you came to the point of, in your words, firing a volunteer. and I love that expression because that’s, yeah, that you came to that point because you respected, honored, and submitted to the music. I’m sorry, it would be nice if you could stay in the choir, monotone that you are, because you enjoy the fellowship of the choir, but I’m sorry, we’re singing Handel next weekend. And you know, Handel will not tolerate this. Sadly though, and maybe this is purely a pastoral thing, sadly a lot of pastors reduce Christian ministry to simply one-on-one positive relationships. I like you, you like me, let’s keep it that way. Let’s not endanger that in any way. Well, that’s killing a lot of churches.

Hugh Ballou

It is. In Murry Bowen’s teachings, again, he talks about guiding principles. What are our principles that we abide by? Yes. And that’s the cultural principle. So the name of your book, just so people remember, is Changing My Mind, colon, subtitle, The Overlooked Virtue for Faithful Ministry. So there’s a lot of people here that aren’t in official ministry, but those of us that serve communities as non-private leaders, we are in a ministry of some sort. So why should people read your book?

Will Willimon

Well, I think it’s got some hard-earned wisdom over 50 years plus of ministry and leadership and academia and work in various contexts. Also, there’s a sense in which, you know, Don’t expect good advice from anybody under 80, in the sense that maybe the book has a kind of honesty to it, things that need to be said that might not be said by younger speakers. Also, you know, I’ve been privileged to get to serve God in a number of different contexts. And I think that has given me some things to say. The book, for instance, kind of, sort of, you know, goes along with First and Second Timothy scripture, which I read to be the advice of one old guy talking to a younger guy about leadership in the church. Well, I take that as a kind of a template and try to work from there to say, what are the leadership lessons we can get from 1st and 2nd Timothy for today? I hope people would find that fruitful.

Hugh Ballou

Let me end with a couple of rapid fire questions, if I may, just to get some short answers. Is that OK?

Will Willimon

Yeah, you can try to get short answers.

Hugh Ballou

It’s a challenge, come on. What is one leadership lesson that you wish you’d learned earlier?

Will Willimon

Delegation, empowerment, authorization of laity in my church.

Hugh Ballou

What gives you hope about the future of the church and mission-driven organizations in general?

Will Willimon

I truly believe Jesus Christ is the truth about God, who God is, and what God’s up to. So, if you’re in the church, or you’re in a non-profit mission-driven organization, you’re kind of working with the grain of the universe. You’re kind of working with reality, otherwise named Jesus Christ. that the good that you’re doing is the good that he wants done and he intends and promises to bring to one day to fulfillment. So I hope that’s the encouragement you need.

Hugh Ballou

Will Willimon, thank you for being my guest today on the Nonprofit Exchange and sharing the wisdom from decades and about your book, Changing My Mind. Thank you for being my guest today.

Will Willimon

Thank you, Hugh, and thank you for your work among us. Very helpful.

Hugh Ballou

Thank you.