About Me
I am a humble Christian, a proud conservative intellectual, and a sinner in need of grace. I was born before World War II and, I hope, still have several years to go. My life story is published in my memoir, Frail Web of Intention: A Spiritual Memoir (WinePress Books, 2010). I am happily remarried, and have, in the form of a blended family, eight children. My wife is a physician, and we live in central Oregon. I have written and published some poetry, favoring the sonnet. I hold a BA in History (University of Oregon, 1967), An MA in Slavic Studies (U of O, 1968), A Master of Divinity from Princeton Seminary (1974), and a PhD from Regent University (2006). My doctoral dissertation has to do with theology and is titled, “Incarnational Leadership: Towards a Distinctly Christian View of Leadership” (2006).
Though I consider it my greatest accomplishment to bring other sinners to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, I am also passionate about turning people away from the spirit of the times that blinds them to the truth of the gospel. This would include a backslidden and carnal church, on the one hand, and a merely spiritual church, on the other. My blog posts will usually have this as their purpose. Like William F. Buckley, I envision myself standing athwart history crying “Stop!” Yes, it is a bit quixotic, but it keeps this Christian gentleman off the Enchanted Ground of the golf course and in the maelstrom of history.
I hope I can occasionally pique your interest, elicit your curiosity, engage your intellect, awaken your admiration for language and ideas, and, if necessary, save your soul. All I ask is that you show courtesy to me and my readers and demonstrate thought in your responses.
Jack Niewold's Blog 
Good Evening Dr Niewold,
I came across your name whilst researching “Servant Leadership” for my theology degree course here in the UK: I agree with you!
I confess to struggling with the current module “Leadership and Teamwork” as it is predominantly based on Bill Hybels, emerging church and general business marketing concepts that I learnt in the secular world in the 1980’s. Sadly though (I attend a Church of England/Methodist church but study through a Baptist College) that is the way our mainstream churches are headed; desperate to revive falling congregations (and bank balances). I too shout “Wake Up!”; but the church zeitgeist has secular ears.
“Stand firm” Jack; Paul would be (and I am sure is) proud of you.
Yours in Christ from Devon, England.
Gareth Jones
PS. I have “borrowed” some of your comments for my course work (and referenced them); hope you don’t mind?
Dr. Neiwold,
I am currently working towards my PhD in Leadership (business concentration) at Dallas Baptist University. I believe your are definitely on target and I plan to use much of what you built upon in your dissertation as an application within the business context. I have not found much on anyone using your work and I am curious if you are aware of anyone how has.
Claude Hungerford
Dear Mr. Hungerford, I have had two inquiries in recent years from individuals wishing to use parts of my dissertation for their own writing projects. If you are able to follow the previous postings in this context you will see one of those. I don’t know the progress of those projects. Thank you for your encouraging comments. May the Lord bless your work! Jack Niewold
How fun to read comments and see another Dallas Baptist University student searching for truth. I found your dissertation and other publications while researching incarnational leadership. I enjoyed them which is why I came to check out the blog. Looking forward to reading more! Barbara – Ed.D. in Education Leadership with a ministry concentration student at DBU.
Thank you, Barbara. So nice of you to send the comments along. It makes my day to hear that other scholars are at least reading what I have written. The Lord bless your efforts!
What a lovely intro to your blog. Look forward to reading more from you.
I’ll try not to disappoint you, Titania. Thank you for these encouraging words, and sorry it has taken me so long to respond. Jack
Jack, I finally after all these years I finished the dissertation which was just published on ProQuest last week. It is titled Pneumatological Incarnational Leadership: The Life of Charles Grant. It heavily relies upon the strong foundation that both you and Ross Langmead laid. Hopefully, I have positively contributed to the concept of incarnational leadership. I have added the Holy Spirit aspect to incarnational leadership as the key to the relational aspect of leadership extending from God, to the leader, to those who are led. Thus, the intimate personal relationship with the Father being the single-most important aspect of leadership. Subsequently, I added the importance of integrating personal spiritual disciples (prayer, bible reading, fasting, silence, and solitude, confessing of personal sin, journaling), in helping to establish an intimate relationship with the Father.
I am convinced incarnational leadership should be the natural model of leadership that Christians should embrace, regardless of vocation. Anyway, thank you for an amazing foundation. I really think there is a book in this model, one that is conceptual and practical for the general Christian public, rather than for the academic community.
By the way, since writing you in 2015, I have returned to full-time vocational ministry as an associate pastor at a church outside of San Antonio.
Respectfully, Claude Hungerford
Thank you, Claude, and congratulations on finishing your dissertation. I so appreciate the comments and the complimentary nod to my contributions, however modest they may have been. For now, I will have to leave the book project in your capable hands, as I am getting too far along in years to undertake such a labor. The Lord bless your ministry, and do stay in touch. All my best, Jack.
I have to say your contributions were more than modest. Concerning the book project, would be willing for me to bounce some ideas your way for constructive feedback?
Is this your FB post?
FB says it is false info.
1/11/2021
“These are frightening times for evangelicals, Catholics and conservatives. We need to pull together and determine to resist with all our powers, human and spiritual, the Dark Age that may lie ahead.” A very good read!
Trump & The Great America
12 hrtSpioSndsorestlisdu ·
From a friend, who is a great writer and thinker
By Jack Niewold
I may be the only person who will offer an apology for Donald Trump. Most of the people I read can’t wait to grab a microphone to condemn him. I am not one of them, and I find their behavior foolish and hypocritical.
I do not think President Trump (yes: President!) was responsible for what happened Wednesday in Washington, including several deaths and the invasion of the Capitol of a bunch of wanabee Antifa lookalikes. President Trump’s tweets were not explicitly inciteful, nor was his cause in opposing the Electoral College results illicit or outrageous. Josh Hawley and other Republican Senators and House Members were within their rights to delay an accounting of votes and had planned nothing that Democrats have not already done several times, including in 2016.
What happened in Washington Wednesday is important mainly because it has provided the malevolent Left in this country an opportunity to disenfranchise you and me. Make no mistake: their ultimate aim is not to impeach Donald Trump and send him packing; it is you and I who necessitate their project of political extermination.
You may not be particularly interested in the loss of your liberties. Most people in most revolutions simply go along to get along. Lenin, after all, counted on this as he plunged Russia into seventy years of boot-on-the-neck misery. Even in our own American Revolution there were three roughly equal parties: the American founders and their partisans, the British loyalists, and the vast middle who didn’t care one way or another or were too afraid to take a stand.
Writer Rod Dreher has called the assault on the Capitol the Reichstag Fire of the Left. It was the burning down of the German Parliament in February 1933, possibly by communists, possibly by Hitler’s brownshirts, that provided Adolf Hitler with the excuse to unleash a reign of terror on his political enemies and launch Germany on its path of destruction and final suicide. We have already begun to see full-blown de-platforming of conservative voices by Apple, Facebook, Titter and Reddit. This is but the beginning of a much wider purge of unwanted voices.
A few crazies in an otherwise peaceful protest were the efficient cause of this response. You are supposed to get in line, believe proper things, and issue your ritual condemnation of Trump and his supporters. The formal cause, however, goes much deeper: It is the long and sinuous attack on American institutions, traditions and values by the progressive Left.
The barbarians of the Left seem to have the upper hand right now. The dominoes are falling quickly; perhaps even this post will be “disappeared” down the memory hole. I am saying things that seem to violate community standards.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes that the socialist malignities that characterized life in pre-1991 Russia were sui generis. That is, they were not like the crimes of the past. “Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble–and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short of a dozen corpses.” Even Dostoevsky’s villains, such as the man from underground, had remorse and a sense of guilt.
But the Bolsheviks were something different, he writes. “To truly do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.” And how is he to believe that? Does not conscience come into play? No. The magic potion that turns evil to good is Ideology. “Thanks to ideology,” Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago, “the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions.” His books chronicle that evildoing, and in turn became one of the most potent weapons against it.
The Soviet Union fell in 1991 in large measure due to Solzhenitsyn’s books.
We are embarking on another of socialism’s endless rebirths, where dreams of utopia lead to human degradation. Our enemies come clothed in indignation at our intolerance and moral backwardness. Their smiling, coiffed exteriors assure us that they really have our welfare in their benevolent hands. They mock and pillory the tragic figure that until last week stood alone between them and us. They remove from us the means of fellowship, support and encouragement among friends and compatriots. Their unctuous trainers and facilitators remind us of our privilege, guilt and fragility while they deprive us of means of either redress or deliberation. We must believe, support and promote their ideology, or else.
These are frightening times for evangelicals, Catholics and conservatives. We need to pull together and determine to resist with all our powers, human and spiritual, the Dark Age that may lie ahead.
Battle of the Republic
Myles Holmes Ministries
False Information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.