013 Please Don't Let Me Break This! | Christianity Today President & CEO Nicole Martin

Nicole Martin is five and a half months into leading Christianity Today. The prayer she keeps coming back to: "God, please don't let me break this!"

She began leading a 70-year-old organization founded by Billy Graham, and found it trying to be five things at once on one budget with one team. It was a philanthropy, a media company, an investigative journalism outfit, an external presence for the church, and a pastor. Something had to give.

In her second month, she gathered her leaders and wrestled for hours with one key question: What are we? 

The answer redefined the budget, the editorial direction, and the culture. And it meant admitting the organization is one thing, and it is not the other four.

This conversation is about inheriting something significant and then reshaping it without destroying it. Nicole talks about the daily discipline of building a new culture inside a legacy institution.

Rev. Dr. Nicole Martin is President and CEO of Christianity Today. CT reaches 41 million people annually through its journalism, podcasts, and publications, with a third of its audience outside English-speaking contexts.

Transcript

Introduction to Christianity Today and Leadership Journey

Adam Jeske 0:05

Nonprofit CEOs are constantly making consequential decisions, often under pressure or in isolation. I'm Adam Jeske, the Nonprofit CEO Advisor, and this is the Nonprofit CEO Podcast, where CEOs talk about the decisions they carry. Today our guest is the Reverend Dr. Nicole Massey Martin, president and CEO of Christianity Today. Nicole, welcome to the show.

Nicole Martin 0:24

Thanks, Adam.

Adam Jeske 0:26

For those who are not familiar with Christianity today, tell us about your organization and how long you've been leading there.

Nicole Martin 0:32

Christianity Today was founded in 1956. In October of this year, 2026, we'll be 70 years old. We were founded by Billy Graham along with several of his contemporaries. And the goal at that time was to create a flag to follow for people who didn't want to be on either side, but just wanted to be in the biblical center. And that's what we're trying to do today.

Strategic Priorities and Organizational Culture

Adam Jeske 0:55

And how long have you been leading at CT?

Nicole Martin 0:58

At this moment, a whopping five and a half months.

Adam Jeske 1:04

Great. So lots of fresh leadership insights for Oh my gosh.

Nicole Martin 1:08

Yes. Lots of fire hose.

Adam Jeske 1:12

And uh one more question around this. Give us a sense of scale, footprint, audience for uh for the different aspects of Christianity today.

Nicole Martin 1:21

Absolutely. I'm really proud of our footprint, actually. We reach around 41 million people every year. And that's through our podcast, through our online content, our magazine content, um, and our video content that's soon emerging. We reach people around the world, and about a third of our audience is outside of uh English speaking uh contexts. So by God's grace, our footprint has expanded, mostly Christian, but not all, and mostly people who want to make sense of the world because it's kind of a crazy world.

Adam Jeske 1:57

So in these first pivotal months of your leadership journey there at Christianity today, I know you came from other roles there uh over the past few years. I'm sure you've made a bunch of consequential decisions already. Can you tell me about one? Unpack one of those for us.

Nicole Martin 2:16

Absolutely. I think the most important decision was the decision to prioritize a strategy. Part of that is my personality. I need a roadmap, I need a general direction, where are we going and what's it gonna take to get there? But organizationally, um, CT had gone through quite a bit of change, and it was important for us to reset a North Star. So the first decision was we're going to prioritize strategy. Followed by that, we will prioritize the culture and explore what it means to be a congealed, nimble culture that's fully remote. And then after that, we would focus on the budget. And what we learned is you can do all three at one time, but you have to have clear strategy.

Adam Jeske 2:59

And what were the steps to start to define and start that process?

Nicole Martin 3:07

Yeah. We had so I was I walked into this role in November of 2025. In December 2025, we had our first strategic planning session. We got our key leaders together in DC. And the question is, what do we do? And what would happen to the world if we didn't do it? Well, we realized in that moment is that we were doing five different things. We were running five different organizations on one budget with one team. And that was causing a ton of stress. We were trying to be a philanthropic organization. We were trying to be a media organization, we were trying to be an investigative journalism organization, we were trying to be um, you know, an external presence for the church and consulting, and we were trying to be a pastor. I mean, we were literally trying to do everything. And in that meeting, we recognized, hey, guess what? We can only do one thing.

Navigating Change in a Legacy Organization

Nicole Martin 4:04

And if we could only do one thing, what would that one thing be? And how would that one thing set us apart from everyone else?

Adam Jeske 4:12

And I imagine you've articulated that. Can you share what the one thing is?

Nicole Martin 4:18

So the one thing is we make credible content. And our short sentence is we help people make sense of the world through a biblical lens. Now we've figured out how we do that. We do that through credible content. We do that through courageous convenings online and in person. And ultimately, we will do that through catalytic communities of people who do something as a result of what they've seen, heard, read, or experienced at CT. But in short, we've decided our strategy is to help people make sense of the world through a biblical lens.

Adam Jeske 4:50

Wow. And I imagine as a legacy organization coming up on 70 years, there are some deeply held commitments and feelings and long, long-tenured folks.

Nicole Martin 5:03

Yes.

Adam Jeske 5:04

How did you navigate that from a from the you're talking about strategy, but you also said after the North Star and after your strategy, uh you had to think about culture and building culture in this new era of how you get the work done. But talk to me about that seam between landing the strategy, getting to that point as a legacy organization, and then starting to define how you live out uh toward that one guiding purpose.

Nicole Martin 5:32

The only thing I would reframe is not how did we, but how are we trying to figure out right now? The joy and trepidation of this process is recognizing that everything is still unbaked. I don't, we don't have a fully baked process. We're literally going through it now. So one of the things we're trying to do intentionally is dramatically increase our communication. The irony for us is that as a communications organization, we had actually very low internal communication. So we had to think once we left the room, the leadership room of sorting through our strategy, which by the way took several weeks. The next step is how do we communicate that? And I know this is your sweet spot. Like, how what's our change management communication plan? So we started once-a-week meetings with the entire staff. We started quarterly meetings with our managers, which actually started out as once-a-month meetings and then kind of petered out to about uh once a quarter. We started more regular encounters with our finance team, meeting with our culture teams, meeting with our leadership team, because it's one thing to come up with this beautiful statement, but it's another thing if nobody knows about it and no one's on board. So that's the part that's unfolding. How do we communicate this? And not only that, how do we communicate it in a language that each of the teams would uniquely understand?

The Big Tent Initiative and Polarization

Adam Jeske 6:57

Oftentimes a new CEO, especially an internal candidate, comes in, uh, you know, steps up into the CEO role, the top seat, and has some ideas of where to steer the ship, so to speak. Were there particular um pain points or like in film inciting incidents that um showed you, yes, we need, we do need to make a leap here, we do need to make a change here. Um, or was it patently obvious to most people that a bunch of changes needed here as we're stepping into a new era of the organization?

Nicole Martin 7:35

Yeah. The change that I sensed most clearly was in what we would call a big tent strategy. So prior to taking on this role when I first came to CT after being a board member, I was a chief impact officer. And I oversaw our three initiatives: the Big Tent, the Global, and the Next Gen initiative, all of them requiring both a shift in the way we do our content, making sure that we have content that reflects what's happening globally within next generations and within a wider variety of diversity within the kingdom, but also strategies and ways to reach new audiences that fell in those categories. So instinctively, I knew prior to taking on this role, we're going to have to institutionalize the initiatives. We're going to have to make it so that being global, being big tent, and being next gen are not extras, but they're core to who we are. So I knew instinctively we're gonna have to do this in a way that's a bit more collective, a bit more institutional, a bit more, uh a bit easier for everyone to understand this is all of our jobs. Um when I got into this role, I realized the hardest of these is the big tent. We are so polarized. And we have, if we're not careful, a tale of two cities. There are some who feel like CT is just not conservative enough. We don't go far enough into the biblical issues that affect our time. There are others who feel like CT is not justice-oriented and culturally grounded enough, that we're aloof from some of the issues that affect people. And while that is an external reality, that's also an internal reality that we have to face. We're not two sides, we're one side. And what does that look like? So it's an ongoing shift, but I'd say the big tent is probably the hardest and most essential initiative that we have to fold into what we do.

Adam Jeske 9:25

Let me step out for a moment from the specifics of what CT is discerning around living out that big tent value,

Cross-Pollination and Civil Dialogue

Adam Jeske 9:38

institutionalizing that. And you sit in a very interesting seat through your previous roles and now in this one. You have the theological backbone that I want to like learn from you in terms of what do you see today? How are you discerning the times and understanding the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country? Where are we? How is the US church? Um, where is the spirit moving? Uh, I heard you speak at Urbana and talked about like welcoming the activity of God through uh through the wind to kind of blow fresh upon people, which I thought was a really powerful, beautiful uh picture of uh it was resonant for me of wanting good things for the people around me, for the church, for our country, for the world. Um what are you seeing? How are you thinking about that polarization and and the the building of or the welcoming into that big tent that you described?

Nicole Martin 10:34

Yeah. I'm seeing that we have forgotten the cost of not being in the room together. It seems just on a large level, we have created so much benefit to homogeneity that we've forgotten the benefit of cross-pollination. And what I mean is we've created systems and circles and institutions and groups that say if we all think alike, by and large, we'll help each other in this space. So if we can all um be on the same page about I don't know, about immigration, if we can all think alike on that idea, then we'll all make sure that we take care of each other. The challenge with that view is God is often most at work in the places we least expect it. This, I think, is the real challenge of Matthew 25 when Jesus is giving a parable about where I was hungry and where I was thirsty, and and you know, the difference between where you think you're located and where I'm actually located. The challenge of polarization is we might miss divine activity, divine mystery if we only stay in homogeneous circles. So the challenge for any person who really wants to grow is who in your life is least like you and how can you learn and grow with them from them in a way that doesn't just help you, but helps the organization. Did I even answer your question? I found myself going off in a whole tangent there. Like I was in a whole, you know, world of mystery. Yeah.

Adam Jeske 12:12

Um that's great. Well, uh yes, and I want to talk more about it. Yeah. Uh the what I first of all, what I wrote down out of that was cross-pollination, which is probably the title for your next book. Sort of

Catalytic Communities and Convenings

Adam Jeske 12:29

the the way in which sitting in the same room is really good for uh people, particularly within our Christian faith traditions, to see one another, speak with one another, and then to go out from there to people with other worldviews. Um that one's for free. Uh there's your marketing presentation for today. Um do you you mentioned something else caught my ear as you were speaking earlier that comes back up here? You mentioned um convenings and catalytic communities, which sounds like a lived out reality, some programmatic steps that step from your content into creating some spaces where some of this good stuff happens. Can you tell me more about what is happening or what you envision happening uh in in that way?

Nicole Martin 13:16

Yeah. It does relate to this idea of cross-pollination because there's a sense that we are afraid of being in the room with someone whose beliefs are different or views are different from our own. And this applies regardless of your faith background. I can't be in the room with Muslims because then I might become Muslim. I can't be in the room with, you know, someone who's another ethnicity or another religion. And that is not the case. What actually happens is when we personify the ideas against which we think we we have, you know, where we hold ourselves against certain ideas, when we are in the room with a person who holds those ideas, we actually become more aware, we soften to the idea, and we allow ourselves for this ancient process that I think we have all forgotten called civil dialogue. So when you have a convening, you take an idea from an article or an idea from the world in which you live, and you put that idea in the mouths of people. And now we're having dialogue. Now we're be able to say, well, I don't necessarily agree with you on that, but we can still go to dinner after. That, you know, if I had one thing where I want to apply my life to that, I want to apply my life to a space where people can debate ideas and not demonize people. Can we please, please, Adam, let your show get us there, please. That's all. There's your free task.

Adam Jeske 14:42

Um, great. So um as you are in this season of discerning the what do we do and what is our particular sense of calling for this moment, what is needed around us in the sector, in the country, in the world, as you know, the footprint outside um our immediate US context continues to grow for uh Christianity today. Um, talk to me about the personal leadership journey within that. Often there's a moment or a series of moments where a CEO, especially a new one, uh hits some skid, some like moment of uh friction with the team or with individuals or stakeholders outside the team. Talk to me about the emotional landscape of this process for you personally.

Personal Leadership Journey and Adaptability

Nicole Martin 15:33

I actually thought about this. I'm glad you asked the question. I thought about it yesterday because I plan my ingredient list out before I go grocery shopping on Sunday, and I base it on what I'm gonna make that week. So um this week I was gonna do chicken noodle soup and I was gonna do chicken enchadas because it's single de mayo here. And um, I was gonna do um what else? I was gonna do something else. Either way, I get all my ingredients, I get working, you know, that week, and I realized yesterday I don't have time to make the meal I had planned. And because I don't have time to make the meal I've planned, I've now got to think of what I can do with the ingredients I have. So instead of doing chicken noodle soup, I did a chicken teriyaki. And yes, it was unconventional and it wasn't what I planned, but that's what I had time for. And it was different, but it was exactly what I needed. I am making the same internal shifts as a CEO. I am trying to, I, you know, there's a part of us that we walk into these roles and we're like, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm going to make this vision happen. I'm going to do this mission. I'm going to reorient the team in this direction. And then you get going and you recognize you have a time barrier, you have a financial barrier, you have a cultural barrier, you have a, you know, a communications challenge. So we're in the process of using the ingredients to create something new. And I am convinced that what we will make together will be better than what I had planned for the week, so to speak. Yeah. But it is a shift internally for me to release the things that I thought were absolutely necessary and to hold on to what is really true. And that's it's an internal and external shift I'm making.

Adam Jeske 17:13

As you went about this process, you were obviously engaging certainly your immediate team, maybe much or all of the organization. I assume conversations with board members, outside folks. Did you talk to peers in other organizations? Or um, like give me a sense of the constellation of perspectives you sought as you were discerning what do we do?

Nicole Martin 17:37

Yes. Um there are so many perspectives. Um, as a Christian, it is vitally important for me to start with God. And that looks like prayer. That looks like discerning from scripture, that looks like making sure there's room, uninterrupted space to really hear from God. And that's an imperfect process. I mean, we are imperfect people. Um, but that is at least a part of my process. It was a lot of prayer. It still is a lot of seeking God and trying to figure out, Lord, where do we go? What do we do? The second is I have a fantastically wise and talented leadership team. And part of my remaking the meal with these ingredients requires getting their perspectives and views in the room.

Seeking Perspectives and Feedback

Nicole Martin 18:22

There is absolutely a time and a model, and I think there's a context where I'll have to go in a corner and just come up with an idea and come out and tell the leadership team, here's where we're going. Now doesn't seem like that time. Now seems like the time to say, I think we're going in this direction. What do you think? What's missing? What is necessary if we go in this direction? What are the implications? So I've been leaning heavily on my leadership team. And I do have several friends and colleagues who are other CEOs where either by text or phone, we vet ideas and mostly I'm just making sure I don't destroy things. Like, I mean, it it is the most daunting, you know, sense of failure. God, please don't let me break this. I just want to make sure, according to them, that I'm I'm not gonna break it.

Adam Jeske 19:06

Yeah, that that's good. Uh at least a sense of I am not facing imminent demise or running this organization off a cliff. Um Thank you.

Nicole Martin 19:17

Please tell me that at least what if we go in this direction, would I be making a severe mistake?

Adam Jeske 19:23

Yeah.

Nicole Martin 19:23

So that had that perspective from others has been really helpful because you can put your head down and you're you're only in your own world, but you do need outside perspective.

Adam Jeske 19:32

Yeah, it's fundamentally it's the question of am I crazy? And it takes someone who's been in something qu quite comparable or has seen this thing before in a lot of places, which is kind of unique to be able to access. Yeah.

Nicole Martin 19:50

I would add the board to that. Um, I I've been really trying to solicit a lot of feedback and support and wisdom from the board, and they've been very helpful as well.

Adam Jeske 19:59

Let me turn us in another direction. Um was there information that you wish you had as you were processing this or discerning this?

Nicole Martin 20:10

Information I wish I had. You know, I I hesitate because there's a part of me that said, if I really had that information, I might not have said yes. Yeah. There's there's a kind of unnecessary naivete that happens when you take on a role like this and more information wouldn't have changed my posture. I wish I had known things are going to take a lot longer. I'm five and a half months in and I'm trying to figure out when am I going to feel quote normal? When when are when am I going to start seeing the changes that I've implemented? We have a strategy, y'all. Why can't we just run with it? And you I wish I remembered that change takes time. And change for a 70-year-old organization, no matter how old the staff is or how long people have been there, takes even more time. So anything else beyond that, I think I would have been like, I don't know if I need to do that.

Adam Jeske 21:08

Were

Reflections on Change and Organizational Identity

Adam Jeske 21:09

there strong alternatives to that like summary of your purpose? This we're going to produce credible content, we're going to help people make sense of the world. Yes. And then it leads into it kind of not splinters, but it uh refracts into like through a prism into a few different programmatic elements or ways of being in the world as an organization. Were there other strong ones? You said there were a whole bunch of things that CT was and that CT was doing. Were there other things where you thought it could be that, that it was, or was this like head and shoulders above the rest as you went through this process?

Nicole Martin 21:46

No, it took us three hours on one question. That one question was Are we a spiritual formation organization that creates content? Or are we a content creation organization that helps? Helps people to make spiritual decisions about their fate. Yeah. Yeah. It took us so long because our team was divided based on what we've done. And the motive was so unclear. Once we decided collectively,

Defining the Organization's Purpose

Nicole Martin 22:17

no, we're a content creation organization, then it makes other decisions a little in some ways easier because they become more clear, but harder because they become distinctly different. If we really create content, then we got to sell content. We can't just be okay with the 99 who walk away and the one that we delight in having because that one is not going to financially sustain a content creation organization. So that was probably the biggest decision. We are not a creator of devotionals because we know that's going to form you. We are a creator of journalistic content that we believe will form you ultimately, but we create the content.

Adam Jeske 22:57

Yeah. Now, sometimes there are these uh knock-on effects or second-order ramifications of the a big decision being made. Yep. So I imagine that defining that the organization exists to create this credible content to help people make sense of the world.

Nicole Martin 23:16

Yes.

Adam Jeske 23:17

There were probably different uh decisions about how you run this editorially, given that it's principally a media organization. Yes. I don't usually try to get through a second decision in our interviews, but give us just a little picture of the downstream effects of discerning and deciding we are this kind of organization. Therefore, what starts to change in terms of the other decisions that you make throughout the strategic life of this particular organization?

Nicole Martin 23:46

So in the case of the decision to, let's say, if we had decided to become a spiritual formation organization, then we would have amped up our purely biblical content. The advantage of purely biblical content in our day and age is that it is it is more apparently apolitical. It's just faith and it's just going to help you grow. And it actually might have been an easier financial model. However, the decision to create content that helps people grow was a decision to make room for a multitude of voices. It was a decision to say what doesn't make sense in the world and what kind of journalism do we need that might help people at least begin to ask the right questions, if not come to a conclusion. That is still a hard decision right now. Every week we will have an article where we've upset someone. Someone is not happy because what we have articulated as a problem in the world is either not a problem to them or they don't agree with the way we framed it. And because people don't like to be in the room with someone who's not like them, the instinct, the knee-jerk is this isn't my institution. This isn't my space. I feel like I don't belong. So we're trying to shape culture, to create a culture where people can belong even when they disagree, and shaping content where we're not telling you what to think, but we're providing you with vantage points on how to think about things that are hard to understand. This is something we're still working through. I again, I wish I could tell you we've arrived. We've in no place arrived, but at least we're aiming to figure it out.

Adam Jeske 25:25

Yeah. It is such an interesting moment to be leading an organization of this sort. Um, a great need for wisdom and conversation and strategy.

Nicole Martin 25:38

Yes.

Adam Jeske 25:39

Who are we? How do we show up? How do we uh help people by producing this content? Um you're five and a half months in as of today.

Lessons in Decision Making

Adam Jeske 25:52

What are you learning about decision making generally from these months?

Nicole Martin 25:58

I'm learning that I don't have to make every single decision. There are some decisions that are absolutely reserved for the CEO. And I'm learning to lean into that part. But I'm also learning that sometimes when the team is pushed to make the decision, and when the team brings me the decision that they've made, I achieve a whole lot more buy-in. And actually, I get more perspective when we can make decisions that way. And again, you know, not every decision has to be a team exercise, but I am learning I don't need to make every decision. I can empower others to make decisions that are necessary once we've set the path of where we're going. I'm I'm also learning that there's no such thing as a perfect decision. There's a part of my perfectionism that says we're gonna make this decision and it's gonna be the best decision we have ever made because we've vetted everything, and this decision is gonna be the best decision for the next five years. So I'm learning that's not true. It might be the right decision for today. And next week, we might have to pivot a little. So I'm learning to hold decisions a bit more lightly.

Navigating Leadership Challenges

Adam Jeske 27:09

Yeah. Let me move us into some quick response, lightning rounds sort of questions.

Nicole Martin 27:14

Yeah.

Adam Jeske 27:15

What do you wish someone had told you before you took this role?

Nicole Martin 27:21

As a Christian, I wish someone had told me if God has put you there, God's gonna keep you. Psychologically, I think I think God put me there, and then I'm like, oh my gosh, I have so much work to do. No, no, God put me there, God's gonna do the work.

Adam Jeske 27:34

Is there a book that has been particularly helpful during these startup months? Um bonus points if it's an uncommon title.

Nicole Martin 27:44

Well, it is uncommon because it hasn't been released yet. I got an early copy of Barry Corey's book, Necessary Burdens. Oh my gosh. The first few pages, I I've started it this week and I'm already changed. And, you know, quiet as it's kept. I like leadership books, but I don't like to read them. I can write them, but I can't read them. There's just such a weird thing. This is a leadership book I love. Highly recommend.

Adam Jeske 28:12

Yeah. Uh I also got an early copy of that and have been reading it. Got to talk to Barry a bit a bit about it, and it's fantastic. Um for listeners, it goes through 14 uh ways in which uh CEOs, top dogs are are isolated and and yeah, things that have that you might not know if you haven't sat in a seat like that before. And I I find it really great. And and Barry comes from a literature background. Yeah, he's a great writer, great storyteller. So yeah, very rich. I believe it's coming out in September. Awesome. Um, so we'll we'll I don't know when this episode will release, but at some point, September of 2026, Barry's book should be available on Necessary Burdens. Um okay, that's a great one. And is there a piece of conventional leadership wisdom that you ignore or a way in which your leadership is a little bit weird to people who encounter it?

Nicole Martin 29:12

I choose to ignore what the critics say, unless it comes to me more than once from people that I trust. I cannot. I know that there are people who lean into that and they try and figure it out. I cannot afford to be distracted by people who aren't mad because our times require that someone is mad all the time. Yeah. And their anger fuels who they are as their identity. So I just I've decided not to pay attention to that. Yeah.

Adam Jeske 29:39

On a related note, potentially, is there a practice or habit that helps sustain you in the work?

The Importance of Margin

Nicole Martin 29:47

Margin. Underscore margin. I am trying to learn how to get it and keep it. But it's so easy to fill margin with you know, immediacy and meetings and but it is one thing I'm learning is essential to what I do. It's that first hour of the day, just reaffirming who I am, who we are as an organization, and where we're going.

Adam Jeske 30:10

Nicole Martin, what do you love about your work?

Embracing the Hard Truths

Nicole Martin 30:14

Oh. I love that it's hard. I love that it's truth telling. And I love that I get to be part of a team that's not afraid of hard things.

Adam Jeske 30:30

Yeah. Nicole, thank you for joining us on the Nonprofit CEO podcast.

Nicole Martin 30:35

Thank you so much, Adam. It's just fun.

Adam Jeske 30:38

Everyone, if you know a nonprofit CEO who's carrying something significant, send them the show. And if you want more of the patterns that I'm seeing across hundreds of CEO conversations like this, you need the nonprofit CEO briefing delivered weekly, available at nonprofit CEO.com. I'm Adam Jeski, the Nonprofit CEO Advisor. Thank you for what you're leading.