The Strong Way with Cathie Ostapchuk

S1 E11 | Why Being Resilient Makes You Strong with Holly Wagner

Welcome to Episode 11 of The Strong Way with a brave modern-day pioneer offering wisdom learned from decades of launching and building. Like most women, Holly Wagner wears many hats. Hers include wife, mom, pastor, teacher, author and cancer survivor. She grew up in Venezuela, Indonesia and England and eventually moved to Los Angeles where she worked as an actress in films and television for over 10 years. Holly and her husband Philip are senior founding pastors of Oasis Church – a growing, multi-cultural, multi-generational church they started in 1984 in Los Angeles. And in 2019, just before the pandemic hit, they made the bold move of handing over the leadership baton of Oasis Church to younger leaders. And in this conversation we go there – and tackle the subject of ageism and what is possible in this significant season of impact. How to offer sage wisdom, and how to not hold on to power but give it away. If you want to hear someone speak who is both culturally relevant and culture transforming, it’s Holly. She is passionate about seeing the Church be relevant to the culture surrounding it, and in particular to see women become who God has designed them to become. If you want to learn strategies on how to rise from adversity – lean into Holly sharing how resilience has been a key move for her. If you are in a season where you are feeling the weight of the world, or the weight of your years – whether you are 18 or 60 – you have to know that you have more wisdom to offer those that are coming behind you. And they are looking to you to lead the way, to teach them, to give away lessons you have learned on the journey. Ageism is only a thing if you let it be a thing. Be a sage – there is someone who needs what you have to give.

S1 E10 | Why Living an Undistracted Life Makes You Strong with Paul Burns

This conversation with my brilliant guest Paul Burns, the Managing Director of Twitter Canada, was a surprise to me. I am not sure what you are expecting from this episode but I wager you will not only be surprised but pleased that he is not who you would expect him to be in his position – a leader overseeing a platform with such wide influence. Paul is part theologian, part academic, part philosopher, part business strategist, but mostly he brings wisdom in the ways that leave a real impact. He is concerned about the human soul over the rhetoric and opinion that come across the Twitter feed every second of every day. As you hear Paul share in this conversation, Twitter, as the largest repository of human thought with over a billion tweets analyzed has insight into the human condition and what is important right now. I hope you listen with interest to Paul’s view on the social media platform and the opportunity he feels exists for there to be more good to come from people’s expression than negative outcomes. Paul Burns is a believer, builder, maker, dreamer, husband, father as well as being a senior executive at Twitter. At Twitter, he helps brands, businesses and people see the power of conversation to change the world. Paul believes that when we begin to have more open, healthy and loving conversations, especially about the things we disagree on, we are one step closer to looking more like Jesus. When he’s not at Twitter, Paul helps lead a non-profit organization called Matthew House where he helps inspire hope, restore dignity and empower independence for refugees around the world. He lives in Toronto with his wife Olivia and two boys.

S1 E9 | Why You Can Be Strong in This Season with Cathie Ostapchuk

I’m going solo on this episode – and I’ll tell you why! This is an unusual seasons of uncertainty – struggles within and wars all around. If you have been listening to The Strong Way, I envision you as someone who is somewhere and perhaps is wanting to move somewhere else. You may be either stunned but all that is going on, stuck for longer than you had thought possible or feeling stranded on an island of insecurity and uncertainty. You are in, for all intents and purposes, transition. That word. That word that describes so many of your journeys but that word that often is accompanied by shame and disbelief.  You think you should have had it figured out by now. And then life hit. You may be stunned, stuck, or stranded – or all three. This episode is for you. There are ways of thinking and tools to grab on to that can get you on your strong way forward and keep you moving in the way you were meant to – from strength to strength.

S1 E8 | Why Wrestling with Ambition Makes You Strong with Jenni Catron

For anyone who is leading, male or female, in the home, in ministry, in the marketplace or as an entrepreneur – my conversation with my guest, Jenni Catron, does not disappoint. When we first met at a large conference in Dallas, we sat with my coffee and her tea at a high-top table and talked circles around leadership and probably could have hosted our own gig – the conversation was that good. I have always felt that life-changing, unchanging principles that make you strong – can always be applied on multiple levels. Leadership principles can be applied to your own personal journey of self-awareness and self-leadership and staying healthy. The same principles can be applied to any team that you are leading now – your family, your work team whether virtual or live. And of course, if you are an organizational leader the principles that you will hear Jenni share in this podcast are invaluable if you want to elevate your organizational culture and get clear on your purpose. One of our challenges, as Jenni unpacks it for us, is that the pandemic has resulted in many of us former brave, action-oriented and pro-active leaders becoming reactive. We have let the world disorient our sense of call and purpose. Of course – we are fatigued from being in survival mode for so long. What will keep us going and make us stronger is reminding ourselves we still have agency and that being proactive – even in something as simple as bringing some fun to the culture of the team you lead – can make a huge difference. Jenni is one of those friends that I truly wish lived next door. So I am so happy that Wisconsin, where she lives now, is not far away. I have brought her up to my world for personal coaching and for organizational expertise and she does not disappoint. And now, my conversation with the very inspiring leadership mind that is Jenni Catron.

S1 E7 | Why Good Enough is More Than Enough with Kate Bowler

My brilliant guest today, Kate Bowler, is way ahead of us on the journey to understand that we don’t control much of what happens in our life, and yet there is still hope. Stunned with a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, she brought all of us who follow her into the complexity of challenging the everything happens for a reason myth. Kate has opened wide the conversation, accompanied by full out permission to explore our humanity – the finiteness of it, the rough edges to it, the suffering and beauty, the hard and the good of it all. Do I also love her because she is Canadian – and a prairie girl from the west, as I am? Absolutely! In Kate Bowler’s bestselling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason, readers witnessed the ways she, as a divinity-school professor and young mother, reckoned with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis; in her instant New York Times bestseller and follow-up memoir, No Cure for Being Human, she unflinchingly and winsomely unpacks the ways that life becomes both hard and beautiful when we abandon certainty and the illusion of control in our lives. Now, in their first-ever devotional book, Kate Bowler and co-author Jessica Richie offer 40ish short spiritual reflections on how we can make sense of life not as a pursuit of endless progress but as a chronic condition. We can rest in the encouragement to strive for what is possible today — while recognizing that though we are finite, the life in front of us can be beautiful.