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Faith in Flux is a collection of Christian leadership essays that frame leadership as a moral practice shaped by change, faith, critical thinking, and service. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Writing this book was important to me because it was an outlet for my reflections on my doctoral journey. I authored these essays while attending Liberty University’s School of Education, studying for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Educational Leadership. Postgraduate students can get overwhelmed by the volume of scholarly reports, peer-reviewed studies, and primary sources they must scrutinize before drafting their own academic prose. While reviewing and preparing for my dissertation, I decided to revisit my journey and share some of the leadership knowledge I had amassed, curated, and synthesized during my four years of study. I think education’s purpose is more than a simple knowledge transfer; it is knowledge shared to encourage deep thought and spark honest debate – a true collaborative effort.
Why do you believe listening is such a foundational leadership skill?
Listening is a foundational leadership skill because it builds trust, encourages diverse perspectives, informs decision-making, and mitigates potential conflict. As a child, adults told me that God gave us two ears and one mouth because we should listen twice as much as we speak. Although it’s commonly attributed to the ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, the quote “We have two ears and only one tongue so that we may hear more and speak less,” was written by Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of Cynic philosophy. The Cynics were a precursor philosophy to the Stoics; therefore, it makes sense that they share core beliefs. Likewise, Hellenistic culture influenced the Christian Bible. In the Old Testament, there are two references in Proverbs 10:19 and 17:28 advising to “hold their tongues.” Also, the New Testament has a similar quote in James 1:19: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.”
Mentorship feels central to the book’s worldview. What makes a mentor truly transformative?
Mentorship is a critical component of education. The mentee determines whether a mentor is truly transformative. As my favorite mentor once said, “I’m not training you to do your job, I’m training you to do mine.” Anyone can be a mentor: family members, friends, coworkers, classmates, neighbors, or authority figures. Mentorship is a relationship. Both parties are responsible for nurturing any healthy relationship. However, a good mentor inherently has the mentee’s best interest at heart. Mentorship is not a self-serving endeavor, and sincerity is difficult to fake in the long term. All relationships take effort and time. However, not all advice is prudent or actionable. Mentors provide guidance while allowing the mentee to make mistakes without achieving total failure. As General David Goldfein wrote, leaders share success but own failure. I think effective leaders are mentors, and good mentors are leaders.
What audience did you most hope would connect with this book?
I view education as a collaborative effort with educators as mentors. My intent is not to proselytize but to share academic literature from my studies and personal anecdotes from my military experiences. Although I wrote this book from a Christian lens, ethics and morality are human ideals. Ethics is a branch of knowledge focusing on virtues, obligations, and consequences. It originated from the Greek ēthos (character or custom). Morals are one’s particular values concerning right and wrong that inform one’s conduct. It is derived from the Latin word mōs (custom or habit). Culture, traditions, customs, and religion influence both societal beliefs. Anyone who wants to behave ethically and morally (in the classroom or the boardroom) is my target audience.
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In a world of constant change, this collection of essays distills four years of doctoral research at Liberty University into a practical, faith-grounded exploration of educational leadership, ethics, and modern pedagogy.
Author Michael W. Cook bridges the gap between rigorous academic scholarship and accessible prose, weaving in candid military anecdotes and a distinctly Christian worldview to make complex ideas both relatable and actionable.
From the timeless wisdom of Saint Augustine and the Founding Fathers’ vision of an educated citizenry to today’s most urgent challenges—campus ideological tensions, academic freedom battles, STEM integration with robotics and maker spaces, game-based learning, bureaucratic hierarchies, and technology ethics-—the essays show Christian leaders how to navigate constant change (life is flux) while staying firmly anchored in biblical morals and principles.
More than a scholarly exercise, this book serves as both an engaging narrative and a practical reference guide, equipping educators, administrators, ministry leaders, and professionals with biblical wisdom for faithful leadership in the classroom, boardroom, and daily life.
Ready to lead with conviction when the ground is shifting beneath your feet?
Faith in Flux shows you how.
Faith in Flux: Christian Leadership Lessons From Classroom to Boardroom
Faith in Flux is a wide-ranging collection of Christian leadership essays drawn from Michael William Cook’s PhD studies in educational leadership, moving from classrooms to military teams to higher education debates and organizational ethics. Cook frames leadership as a moral practice shaped by change, faith, critical thinking, and service. He writes about Heraclitus and “life is flux,” Augustine’s belief that education should form virtue, Jefferson and Rush’s competing visions of public education, Freire and campus speech, conflict resolution at work and home, mentoring in the Air Force, project-based learning, bureaucracy, STEM, technology, and the educational damage left by COVID-era distance learning. It’s less a single-argument book than a cabinet of essays, each one turning over a leadership problem under a Christian and academic light.
I liked how personal the book becomes when Cook steps away from the machinery of citations and lets experience do some of the teaching. His memory of Mr. Miller stopping trigonometry class to measure a basketball hoop, then a water tower, and a church steeple, has a lovely plainspoken power because it makes his point before he explains it. The same is true of the Air Force satellite exercise, where students worked with a transparent little box, test equipment, diagrams, and failure itself as a teacher. Those moments gave the book warmth. I felt the author most clearly there, not just as a doctoral student assembling scholarship, but as someone who has been changed by good teaching and wants to pass that change along.
Cook’s convictions are sincere, and I respected the moral seriousness behind his concerns about campus speech, leadership legitimacy, and education without virtue. Some passages land with more force than nuance, especially when discussing Marxism, Freire, and contemporary university culture. The writing can become compressed by its academic scaffolding, with names, theories, citations, and conclusions arriving in a steady march. I appreciated that the book doesn’t pretend to be neutral. Its best ideas are grounded in responsibility: leaders should listen before correcting, delegate without abandoning accountability, protect children, teach for mastery rather than mere grades, and treat authority as something earned through character rather than title.
Faith in Flux is thoughtful, earnest, and often thought-provoking, especially when Cook connects leadership theory to lived moments of mentorship, classroom discovery, and moral choice. The prose is strongest when it breathes, and the ideas are strongest when they’re embodied in stories. This is a passionate book about becoming the kind of leader who can stand inside change without losing his ethical center. I’d recommend it to Christian educators, school leaders, military mentors, and readers who enjoy reflective essays that blend faith, leadership theory, and practical experience.
Pages: 247 | ASIN : B0GWWNC92F
