Two bodies of work
A newsletter on faith in the marketplace, and an article series that teaches project management through characters everyone already knows. They come from the same instinct: take something people think they understand, and read it closely enough that it says something they did not expect.
God @ Work
For professionals who believe faith belongs in the marketplace. Scripture read carefully, then brought to bear on the decisions people actually face at work.
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Beyond the Leaders: The True Test of Organizational Legacy
3 min
Written after an anniversary celebration where every tribute named the leaders. Asks the harder question: what has the organization changed outside its own walls, and what remains once those leaders step aside?
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Location, Position, Alignment, and Direction: Lessons from the Prodigal Son
3 min
Reads the prodigal son as a framework for career decisions. The son’s first misstep was not his spending but his relocation, which reframes workplace culture as the location that shapes who you become.
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Choose This Day: The One Decision Every Leader Must Make
3 min
On Joshua’s charge at Shechem. Turns on the Hebrew verb abad, which carries “to work,” “to serve,” and “to worship” at once, so that every organization already serves something. The only question is what.
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Calm in the Chaos: Philippians 4:5–7 for the Marketplace
3 min
Philippians 4 applied to deadline pressure and relentless competition. Makes the case that gentleness, usually mistaken for weakness at work, earns more trust under stress than a combative posture does.
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Lifted or Lifting: What Four Friends on a Roof Teach Us About Marketplace Ministry
3 min
The four friends who tore through a roof in Mark 2. On the relational trust that makes the impossible reachable, and on knowing whether you are currently carrying the mat or lying on it.
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Where Are You? Rediscovering God’s Presence in the Marketplace
3 min
God’s first question in Genesis, asked in the garden its keepers were charged to tend. Argues that your field of work is that garden, and that the instinct to keep part of your working life hidden is as old as the story.
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Marketplace Ministry and Evangelism: What Comes First?
3 min
Separates two things often treated as one: living faith visibly through conduct, and speaking the gospel outright. The difference is visibility versus verbalization, and the first lays ground the second needs.
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Where Is God and Your Ministry When the Pink Slips Come?
3 min
Written for people in the middle of layoffs and dedicated to them. The most personal issue of the newsletter, naming three of the author’s own unplanned exits and what each one cost before it clarified anything.
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Welcome to the first issue of God @ Work
2 min
The name carries two meanings: placing God in the marketplace, and recognizing God already at work in a career that feels exhausting or overlooked. Opens with Joseph, who ran grain reserves in Pharaoh’s palace rather than serving in a synagogue.
Project Management Articles
Fundamentals taught through familiar characters: risk and culture, scope creep, communications, earned value, root cause, and role clarity. The premise is a hook. The content is the curriculum.
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The Watermelon Effect: Why Projects Report Green While They Turn Red
2 min
The watermelon effect is a project that reports green while the work underneath has turned red. Why teams underreport, what it costs, when to go red, and how to raise bad news without losing standing.
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From Donuts to Deadlines: Why Every Project Manager Lives in Springfield
4 min
Springfield read as a project team: Homer’s tolerated risks, Marge’s influence without authority, Lisa’s ignored warnings, Bart’s disruption, and Mr. Burns as the sponsor who funds the work while poisoning the culture. Argues that culture management is part of risk management.
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What Felix the Cat Knew About Project Management (Before We Had a Name for It)
5 min
Felix’s Magic Bag as an argument against methodological doctrine. The best managers tailor and blend waterfall, agile, and hybrid to the situation rather than treating one framework as scripture.
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The Surprising Project Management Wisdom of Casper the Friendly Ghost
4 min
Makes the case that emotional intelligence is a strategic skill rather than a soft one, and that sound decisions still fail when stakeholders read them through fear and misperception.
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Feathers, Fortune, and Forecasts: Tales About Earned Value and Cost Management
5 min
Uses Scrooge McDuck’s expedition funding to work through cost-benefit analysis and earned value management: what it costs, what it might return, and how you know mid-journey whether it is still worth finishing.
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Thing 1, Thing 2, and Scope Creep Too
3 min
The uninvited stakeholder who arrives with his own plan, and the goldfish nobody listens to. On identifying stakeholders early and what it costs to run a project with no risk register at all.
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What the Pink Panther Can Teach You About Project Management
2 min
Adaptability treated as a necessity rather than a luxury, with Inspector Clouseau as the cautionary tale: relentless pursuit of the goal while blind to what anyone else wants.
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What Calvin and Hobbes Can Teach Us About Project Communications
3 min
On the assumption trap of believing stakeholders already understand and want the plan, and the case for Hobbes-style listening over Calvin-style charging ahead.
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What Godzilla Can Teach Us About Project Management
3 min
Godzilla as the black swan that testing awakened: what happens when long-term risk goes unidentified, and why every stakeholder sees the same monster differently.
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What Snoopy and the Red Baron Teach Us About Project Management
3 min
Vision, preparation, and resilience, drawn from a beagle who geared up in full flight kit for every mission on a doghouse that never left the yard.
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He-Man and the Power of Role Clarity in High-Stakes Projects
3 min
Argues that projects fail from role ambiguity rather than from lack of effort. Clear ownership of decisions and deliverables is what turns a group of capable individuals into a team.
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Project Management Lessons from Snoopy: The Beagle Who Leads Without Barking
3 min
On leading without a title: holding a vision from a modest position, influence in place of authority, and setting the tone for a team you do not formally run.
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What Does Tom and Jerry Have to Do with Project Management?
1 min
Elaborate plans undone by an unpredictable stakeholder. A short piece on iteration and resilience, and on why brilliant design without risk mitigation still fails.
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The Jetsons and the Illusion of Automation
1 min
A push-button future still running on unclear expectations. More tools do not produce better results when the team is not aligned on the problem it is solving.
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Scooby-Doo and the Case of the Project Root Cause
2 min
Surface problems as disguises. On root cause analysis and asking why past the easy answer, with Velma as the model for the manager who refuses to settle for “the sprint just went bad.”