A Vision for Leaders Following Jesus
A Review of
Nailing It: Why Successful Leadership Demands Suffering & Surrender
Nicole Massie Martin
Paperback: IVP, 2025
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Reviewed by Ann Byle
Nicole Massie Martin can preach—and teach, lead, and write. I heard her speak recently at a publishing conference and thought I wouldn’t mind attending any church where she preached. In reading her new book Nailing It, I realized she is an effective leader, confident teacher, and a winsome writer as well.
As chief operating officer at Christianity Today, founder of an international ministry, and member of several boards, her leadership is clearly on display. She writes specifically to Christian leaders in Nailing It, saying, “How can we bridge the gap between the lack of strong leadership and the overabundance of needs? The only way to solve this is to shift the way Christian leaders think about leadership in order to shift the way they lead”(1).
The problems, she says, stem from an abundance of personal stress (19), America’s bent toward its own exceptionalism (36), the church’s bent toward triumphalism, as in “God saved us!” (38), and trauma both personal and church-wide.
The solutions, however, are not more work, stronger spines, or better leadership skills. The solution to misaligned leadership is reframing it through the “lens of crucifixion and resurrection,” says Massie Martin. “The only way that we can bring healing through our leadership is to lean into the cross” (47).
Massie Martin addresses seven areas that merit crucifixion in order to lean into God-centered leadership: power, ego, speed, performance, perfection, loyalty, and scale. Each chapter addresses the struggles inherent in each one at both business and personal leadership levels, plus hands-on advice on exchanging that area for God’s plan. She uses examples from ministry and business, as well as from Scripture, to make her points.
For example, in the chapter of crucifying power and control in exchange for surrender to God and others, Massie Martin says, “Whenever Christian leaders recognize the sources of their power (restoring it to God) and then give it away (empowering others), they tap into a triune power with divine force that is unlike anything in this world.”
Her discussion on perfectionism defines it as “an absolute fixation on a vision of perfection and an unwillingness to rest or settle until that vision is realized. The obsession with an extreme version of excellence is so subversive, so cunning that leaders may not even recognize its possession until it’s too late.”
The solution, she says, is crucifying ideals and sacrificing them to the Savior. “The greatest gift you can ever receive is the gift of knowing you are loved by God, not because of what you’ve done but simply for who you are,” she says. “God loves you, flaws and all, and the invitation to crucify perfection is the invitation to become immersed in God’s unfailing love” (138).
There are risks to sacrificing these leadership idols, of course. Losing a job; losing the respect of peers; losing donors; losing the results that elevate you. But God’s economy is different, His leadership is turned upside down, the results he looks for are so different from the world’s definition of success.
She ends Nailing It with this: “With regular rhythms of letting things go and letting things come, of dying to the world and learning to live for Christ, we might finally find a way to lead with healing and fulfill the wonderful dreams God has envisioned for his world” (200).
Yes, Nicole Massie Martin can preach. Leaders will learn much by listening.
Ann Byle
Ann Byle lives in West Michigan with her science teacher husband, Ray. Their young adult children are in and out regularly. Ann writes for Christianity Today and Publishers Weekly, among other publications, and is author of Chicken Scratch: Lessons on Living Creatively from a Flock of Hens.
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