CNLP 808 | Why Leadership Is Designed to Kill You: Nicole Martin on Leading Christianity Today in a Divided, Rapidly Changing World
The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
Carey Nieuwhof
4.8 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2026
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nicole Martin made history as Christianity Today's first Black female CEO — and took the hits that come with it.
In this conversation: the backlash, Billy Graham's original vision, how the magazine is advancing and speaking into a polarized world, and why leadership is designed to kill you.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Art of Leadership Network. |
| 0:02.8 | You said Billy Graham's father-in-law was pro-segregation. |
| 0:06.6 | And he's writing new Christianity today. |
| 0:08.5 | Billy Graham's father-in-law was El Nelson Bell. |
| 0:09.5 | He was a very prominent missionary throughout China. |
| 0:14.4 | Ruth was his daughter. |
| 0:16.2 | And even though he was deeply immersed in Chinese culture |
| 0:20.6 | and did great things during his missionary career, |
| 0:24.6 | he also very much felt like the forced integration of races was not the choice that Christians should make. |
| 0:39.9 | Welcome to the Kerry Newhoff Leadership Podcast. |
| 0:42.2 | I'm so glad you joined us today. |
| 0:44.0 | We've got Nicole Martin on the podcast. |
| 0:47.4 | And boy, we're going to talk about why leadership is designed to kill you. |
| 0:50.8 | We're going to talk about business models. |
| 0:52.8 | She just took over as the new editor of |
| 0:55.1 | Christianity today. Is there even a place for middle of the road leaders and like, you know, |
| 1:01.4 | balanced theological thinking as the middle completely disappeared and now the dialogue is just |
| 1:07.2 | all extremes? How do you actually take a legacy ministry and make it financially viable |
| 1:13.2 | today and what you need to kill in your leadership? I think this is going to be a really good |
| 1:17.6 | conversation. Really glad that you joined us. We try to bring you the best conversations we |
| 1:21.9 | possibly can. Guess you know, guess you don't know. And the way we do that is we just have |
| 1:26.9 | long-form conversations every single episode on this podcast. So really glad if you're joining us for the first time, welcome. If you're a returning listener, I talked to a lot of you who say, hey man, I was there for episode one. Really glad you are. This is the remote studio. I am on the road. We do this podcast in season and out of season. And speaking of |
... |
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