Mark Wessner is President of MB Seminary in Abbotsford, British Columbia, where he helps prepare pastors, chaplains, and ministry leaders to serve well. His own path to seminary leadership was not a straight line. Before theological education, he spent 13 years in senior roles with the British Columbia provincial government, and 10 years as a local church pastor, learning how organizations and ministries actually work and how leaders either grow or stall.

Mark holds a PhD in Biblical Hebrew, and his research focused on the life and leadership evaluations of specific biblical characters. His master's research explored the theme of "face to face" encounters with God throughout the Old Testament.

He is the founder of Leading Well, an executive coaching practice, and the author of The Four Languages of a Leader. Whether he is teaching a seminary class, coaching an executive, or writing, his question is the same: what does it look like to lead in a way that is faithful, humble, missional, and genuinely good for people?

Mark is also an ultra-marathon runner and Spartan Race finisher, so he has a few hard-earned opinions about endurance and finishing the race. He and his wife Jennifer live in Abbotsford, British Columbia.

Links:

• www.mbseminary.ca
• www.leadingwell.ca
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/markwessner/

Welcome to 12 Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Mark.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

Yeah, I'm in Canada in a little town called Abbotsford, which is near Vancouver on the west coast of Canada.

It's one thing to decide that your life is going to be a life where you're serving others.

It's another thing to then be the coach for others who've either just decided or have been doing what they're doing.

Where did that come from, that decision that you were going to do the work you're doing?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So I have to backtrack a little bit in my life.

I was raised in a strong Christian home, and so my mom and dad were always involved in various forms of ministry.

And so I just grew up in a context where you were always serving others, you were always investing in the lives of others.

And so that just is who I was, right?

And then when you're young, you don't really know what that means, and you do what you think or whatever.

But as you get older and you acquire more experiences, and God directs your paths here and there, you start to have more opportunities to speak into the lives of other people.

And then so for me personally, as my own leadership journey grew, and I ended up taking on more responsibilities in different organizations, and people would coach me or mentor me, even if it was informal.

Then as time passed, just got a growing sense that God was saying, okay, Mark, you've got all these experiences and expertise and everything that you've been able to experience over the years.

I want you to actually take that and invest that in the lives of others, not because you know everything, but because I'm going to use you.

And I love walking on those journeys with people, whether they're students, whether they're CEOs of organizations.

I've been so blessed to walk along so many people in so many different contexts, and just see them grow as people, but also on their walk with God when it's another person of faith, right, or someone exploring faith.

And so once you start doing that, you just, you love doing it, and God working, and you want to do more of it, and it becomes, it just becomes part of who you are.

So I've been very blessed in this journey that I've taken in my life.

How do people even know you exist though, in terms of the service that you offer?

Yeah, so part of that, there's two layers.

One would be just relationships and networks and context that I've just built over time, because one of my roles is I'm the president of a national graduate school here in Canada.

So I travel a lot across the country, and so you just build relationships with people when I'm speaking at an event, or whether I'm teaching a course somewhere, or I'm part of some leadership team or whatever.

So that's one way, just those in-person relationships.

And then the second, surprisingly, is actually LinkedIn.

And so I've built a bit of a presence

on LinkedIn, and it's actually fascinating how just me sharing things, whether it's faith-based

or just solid leadership principles or experiences or whatever, different times people reach out to

me and we'll have conversations, and then those conversations turn into something else, and then

word of mouth spreads, and next thing people are wondering about how they could maybe do executive

coaching with me.

And it's fascinating though, and this is not what I expected.

I would say the

majority of executives that I coach, the majority of those conversations turn into some conversation

about faith and following Jesus, which is fascinating to me, because I think a lot of

people at higher levels of leadership feel lonely and don't necessarily have context to talk to

somebody who understands that level of leadership, but is also a person of deep faith and puts those

two things together.

And then so then just people start talking, right?

And networks grow.

And then I find myself again, having more of those conversations.

It's just, yeah, it's amazing watching God work.

You've done the time, right?

You've done the time, you've been doing the time, you've seen the work, now it's simply showing up and consistency, right?

So it hits, am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing?

Yes, that's exactly right.

And that's a key question.

Different people have different personalities.

And for me, I've always wanted to know that I'm making a significant difference in what I'm doing.

And I've always been the person who loves doing lots of things and multiple things.

So if you were to look at my resume or my CV, you'd see all kinds of things on there that you're like, how do those things fit together?

How did you go from here to there?

And they don't, it's not necessarily a nice linear career path, but part of that is just seeing opportunity and stepping into things, being a hard worker, wanting to make a difference everywhere.

And then God just puts you in different places.

And so whether it was land development, developing websites, chaplaincy in a prison or a hospital, a sports chaplaincy, I've done that.

13 years of land development, like industrial, commercial, residential land development, all of these things that you look at, I used to look at and go, they're all over the place.

What is God doing?

I think part of it was me just trying to figure out what God was doing.

But then it all came together when the opportunity or the invitation to be the president of the seminary came up about 10 years ago.

The search team approached me and told me that.

And I asked the question, so what do you think you see in me that I would be a good president?

Because I had never, ever thought about that.

I was never on my list of things to do, right?

And so I wanted to know what they thought.

And so they said one, they said a very specific thing.

They said, Mark, you look at your career, look at how God has directed you as you've been following him.

You've got a PhD and you've taught in university.

So you understand academics.

You've got a decade and a half of business experience.

So you understand organizational leadership and you've been in a pastor for 10 years and you understand what ministry is about.

Those three things come together perfectly in this role.

And when they said that, it was like, they clicked for me and I'm like, oh, of course, God had a plan all along.

I didn't necessarily see it at the time, right?

Every time I prayed about, okay, God, what should I be doing with my life?

I kept on hearing, Mark, just be faithful where you are, be faithful where you are.

So I would try to do that.

And then within this conversation with that search team, it all came together.

And I'm like, huh, of course, all these decades have been part of God's plan.

And so that was so encouraging to me, right?

Because we do this dance as followers of Jesus.

We want to be faithful where we are, but we want to make a difference.

And we don't always see the bigger picture, but we trust that God is at work.

And then we get to, did it make sense?

Was it?

Oh, 100% worth it.

I absolutely love what I'm doing.

Sometimes I actually feel a little bit guilty because it's like, why am I having so much fun doing what I'm doing?

Leadership is hard, it's not like, leadership is hard and executive coaching is hard.

And so it takes a lot of work, but it's when you're in that spot where you go and you feel that you're supposed to be, because God is saying, hey, I'm taking all that stuff that's been accumulated over the years, and it's all coming together now.

And I actually want you to invest in other people, whether it's through organizational leadership or through its executive coaching.

And you see that happen, and lives being changed by God, and you got to play a bit of a role in that.

That's when you go, okay, all that hard work, all of the energy, all of the hard decisions, all the sacrifice, it was 100% worth it.

Because you see the kingdom difference that it makes.

I always go back to when I was back in Bible college all those years ago, there was a person, one of the denominational leaders, his saying was M-I-F-G, like the letters M-I-F-G, maximum impact for God.

And he would always say, if you've got a whole different options in front of you, or you're trying to figure something out, look at all the options and go, which one has the maximum impact for God?

Go after that one.

Now, I think sometimes we can make that maybe a little bit too performance based and it could be unhealthy, but in general, I think that's a good way of looking at it.

And so that has stuck with me for decades.

And so now I go, yeah, was it worth it?

100% it was worth it, because that impact for God, you see it all along, but I really see it now.

Yeah, just the way that everything has come together, right?

God calls us to be faithful, but of course, he's even more faithful, right?

And so it's just amazing.

Five years from today, you're listening to this conversation because I said, hey, Pastor Mark, I need you to get back on the podcast.

You don't remember exactly what you spoke about.

So you go listen to the conversation as a reminder, and then you hear this part.

What is a message you'd leave for future you?

Don't overthink things, Mark.

Just be faithful where you are.

Serve the people I bring across your path.

Lead the things that I ask you to lead.

Don't overcomplicate it.

Just follow me.

This has been a great pleasure, a great honor to have this conversation with you.

In closing, is there anything else you'd like to share with our amazing audience?

I would just, the most important thing is remember that it's not about you.

It's about God's kingdom and God's mission.

But God loves you deeply as he uses you.

And when those two things come together, amazing things can happen.

This has been a pleasure.

I treasure.

Thank you for being on what is inspired by Twelve Minute Conversations.