Nailing It

Nailing It, Nicole Massie Martin (foreword by Carey Nieuwhof). InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514009741) 2025.

Summary: A challenge to nail “leadership as usual” to the cross, embracing Jesus’ way of suffering service, and the hope of resurrection.

“Nailing it.” Typically, the phrase suggests decisively achieving a goal, perhaps with a “take no prisoners” mentality. I think of the violent propulsiveness of a nail gun. It’s not uncommon to hear terms like this in corporate circles for hitting a target, closing a deal, or even in making an incisive presentation. Behind it are notions of power, performance, and perfection, reflecting the demands of traditional leadership. On a darker note, the term even carries a connotation of a type of rapacious sexuality.

Often, these notions carry over into the life of the church. It makes many corners of American Christianity reek with ugly triumphalism, even as leadership inflicts trauma on followers. In this challenging book, Nicole Massie Martin, the current president and CEO of Christianity Today, issues a call for a different kind of “nailing it,.” Specifically, she calls for us to nail our traditional, worldly notions of leadership to the cross of Christ. Through doing so, she invites us into a cruciform life of leadership that suffers, sacrifices, and dies. Then she invites us into the dream of our resurrection hope in Christ.

The cruciform life to which she invites us involves a seven-fold way of progress:

• Crucifying power. Moving from controlling power to surrendered power, in which we are empowered by God to empower others.
• Crucifying ego. A shift from leadership that is about us to leadership resurrected in the strength and love of Christ.
• Crucifying speed. From a culture that moves fast and breaks things (and people) to one that waits on God’s timing and reclaims the “sacramental slow.”
• Crucifying performance. Instead of performance-based leadership, presence-based leadership that focuses on who people are and not just what they do.
• Crucifying perfection. Rather than the casualties of unattainable standards, union with a grace-filled Christ who enables us to live vulnerably with those we lead.
• Crucifying loyalty. Exchanging assimilating and manipulating people to be in one’s inner circle for a unity in Christ based in truth-telling. People are allowed to disagree, to not be on the same page.
• Crucifying scale. Instead of the metrics of buildings, butts, and budgets, embracing a stewardship that understands the why, cares for human flourishing, and takes time for collective discernment.

But the end of all this crucifying is resurrection. Martin invites us to dream of what may come through the sacrificial leadership for which she casts vision. She reminds us of some heroes in scripture. For example, Esther, as she risks her power before the king. Or Paul, whose ego gives way to a thorn in the flesh and God’s power through his weakness. Then there is Moses and wilderness leadership that takes forty years to make an eleven day journey. Likewise, Jesus relieves Martha of performance pressures, commending the presence of Mary.

Then we have David, in his sin, learning to lay aside looking perfect for the treasure of being right with and in relationship with God. While Ruth would have been fully justified in embracing her loyalty to her own people, she crucifies that loyalty to go with Naomi, even embracing Naomi’s God, and finding him faithful. Finally, Peter dies to his dream of “scaling” the Transfiguration to listen to the Son and prepare for a far deeper and wider mission.

Nicole Massie Martin, drawing upon her own leadership journey offers a bracing challenge to Christian leaders weary of “American dream” leadership. With real-life examples, she shows what cruciform leadership looks like. In a time of infatuation with power dreams of sharing in some kind of “American greatness,” she speaks of a different dream, calling us to the way of the cross and caring for the least, the last, and the lost. But the question is: which dream will we follow?

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.