Ready for the Mission

An Outreach Magazine Article (Published on May 16, 2023)

I run a small business, T3 Leadership Solutions, Inc., where I provide consulting, executive leadership coaching, customized leadership development programs, and diversity, equity and inclusion training. My work is my mission field. 

Most of my clients are not Christians or their faith is not top of mind. However, on occasion, a client will make the importance of their faith known and invite me to share that perspective in my practice. With this invitation, I recently shared with a senior leader that managing people is ministry. He had never thought of leadership in that way before. His confession did not surprise me. I see it as a consequence of our limited discipleship practices. 

At church, we talk about the church, the Bible, perhaps some community, justice, relationships or service projects, but rarely do we focus on either leadership or our vocations as missional. When was the last time that you heard a sermon series or participated in a Bible study or small group discussion that specifically focused on leadership? After all, Jesus commanded his disciples to make disciples as they go about their days.

Read the FULL Outreach Magazine Article here: https://outreachmagazine.com/features/76226-natasha-sistrunk-robinson-ready-for-the-mission.html

Challenging Our Fears

An Outreach Magazine Article (Published on July 6, 2022)

This is a reality of life: How we approach our challenges will directly affect the impact and influence that we will have in the future.

The past few years have certainly been marked by political unrest, a decline in moral accountability, the rise in racial/ethnic injustice and violence against women and our most vulnerable populations both at home and abroad. COVID-19 also revealed cracks in the church’s unity and has specifically challenged the ways in which leaders respond when things are outside of their control; when the comfort of normal is out of reach, when their physical, mental or emotional health is ailing; when the sheep scatter, and the flock does not respond to their local shepherd’s call to come back home.

Disciples of Jesus and church leaders can respond to the challenges that they fear in several ways. One response is to retreat or focus inward. That’s what the disciples did after Jesus’ resurrection. They locked themselves in a room because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders (John 20:19). Jesus responds to this fear multiple times by proclaiming a blessing of peace upon them. He also invited them to receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). Today, our fears can rise if we do not align with this camp or that one, if we don’t support the “correct” political party or candidate, if we don’t read the “right” theologians, affirm the “right” doctrine or follow the “right” pastors.

Read the FULL Outreach Magazine Article here: https://outreachmagazine.com/features/discipleship/71732-challenging-our-fears.html

Reading Women

An Outreach Magazine Article (Published on March 10, 2023)

In addition to loving his offer of life and eternity with God, I love the intentional missional practices and kingdom leadership of Jesus. In the face of social and cultural norms, the biases of religious leaders and even his own disciples, Jesus set an open table to engage and invite “outsiders” into his kingdom. He offered new life to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:4–42), the Canaanite woman who was metaphorically willing to take scraps off of his table (Matt. 15:21–28), the man born blind (John 9:1–38), the disabled man who wanted healing (John 5:2–15), and the sinful tax collector who looked for him out of a tree (Luke 19:1–10). 

For “the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Therefore, it must be an essential practice of our discipleship and spiritual formation that we listen to the witness and testimonies of people on the margins—those who were once far off spiritually—and have figuratively been grafted into God’s Tree of Life. And some of those on the margins are women.

As we reflect during this season of Lent and the holy observances that lead up to Jesus’ ascension, we must remember the women…

Read the FULL Outreach Magazine Article here: https://outreachmagazine.com/features/74406-natasha-sistrunk-robinson-reading-women.html