- Starting price
- Free
- Free tier
- Yes
- Platforms
- Web - Apple Podcasts - Spotify - YouTube - Amazon Music - Audible - RSS
- Developer
- Art of Leadership Network (Carey Nieuwhof Communications Limited)
- Launched
- 2014
- Updated
- Aug 5, 2026
The verdict
A twelve-year, 828-episode archive of long-form leadership interviews that costs nothing and requires no account, aimed squarely at people who run churches: staffing, giving, volunteers, preaching, succession, attendance. Take it if you are a lead or executive pastor and you want the operational conversation rather than a sermon. Skip it if you want Bible teaching, short episodes, or a resource with no commercial layer, because every episode routes toward a $17-to-$57-a-month membership, a $597 conference and a book pre-order.
Try The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast ↗Opens careynieuwhof.com
The listing that sent us here points at Apple Podcasts and describes an app. There is no app. The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast is an audio show with a web home at careynieuwhof.com, distributed through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music and Audible and hosted on a plain Libsyn RSS feed. Nothing about it is installed. That is why this is filed as a website rather than an app, and why the rating below is editorial: there is no App Store aggregate to publish, because there is no App Store product.
What exists is substantial. Apple lists 828 episodes with Years Active given as 2014 - 2026 and the frequency label "Updated Weekly", under the copyright line "2026 Carey Nieuwhof Communications Limited" and the network name Art of Leadership Network. Apple also shows a listener score of 4.8 from 2,234 ratings. Episode numbering had reached CNLP 814 by mid-2026. The show's own page puts the archive at "760+ episodes" and total downloads at "37M+", which is the first of several places where Nieuwhof's numbers do not line up with each other or with Apple.
Carey Nieuwhof is a former lawyer turned pastor who has been in ministry since 1995 and served as founding and lead pastor of Connexus Church, north of Toronto, until 2015. He is unusually candid about why he stopped: he burned out at 41 in the summer of 2006 after a speaking engagement in Atlanta, told Premier Christianity he was "basically under house arrest by God" for that summer, and says he had been "beholden to the grift of church growth - at the expense of his character, marriage and relationships". That story is load-bearing for the show. A large share of episodes are about the cost of leading, not just the mechanics.
The honest framing is that this is two things at once. It is a genuinely useful free archive with a large audience - Premier Christianity cites more than 36 million downloads and reach of over 1.5 million people a month - and it is the top of a commercial funnel that ends in a paid membership, a paid conference and paid books. Neither fact cancels the other, and a review that reported only one of them would be misleading.
✓ The good
- Twelve years of archive, free and unwalled - Apple lists 828 episodes across 2014 to 2026 with no login, no subscription and no paywalled back catalogue.
- The guest list crosses over out of church world - the show page and feed name Jim Collins, Seth Godin, James Clear, Adam Grant, Simon Sinek, Cal Newport, Patrick Lencioni, Michael Hyatt and Michael Bungay Stanier alongside Tim Keller, Andy Stanley, Craig Groeschel, N.T. Wright, Christine Caine, John Mark Comer, Henry Cloud, Gordon MacDonald, Francis Chan, Jo Saxton and Lysa TerKeurst.
- The subject matter is operational rather than abstract - the site's own topic index is Leadership, Communication and Preaching, Productivity, Generosity and Giving, Personal Growth, Organizational and Cultural Trends, Church Growth and Change Management.
- Nieuwhof discusses his own failure on the record - the 2006 burnout, the loss of a finish line ("no matter how well our church did, or how well I did as a preacher, I wanted to do better"), and the need for friends "not impressed by you".
- Distribution is deliberately wide - Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music and Audible are all listed on the show page, and the underlying Libsyn feed means any podcast client works.
- The paid product has a real $0 tier - an Art of Leadership Academy free account gets community access, curated articles and videos, practical downloads and per-episode discussion threads without a card.
- Cadence has held for over a decade - Apple's own frequency label is "Updated Weekly", and the show was still publishing new numbered episodes in mid-2026.
✗ Watch out
- The show is the widest end of a funnel and every exit points at a product - the Academy, The Art of Leadership Live, the newsletter or a book pre-order.
- Episodes carry read advertising and there is no ad-free option at any price - the CNLP 814 notes name a Ministry Brands 2026 Annual Church Giving Report, a Church Salary compensation tool and a free Sermon Prep Challenge, and nothing Nieuwhof sells removes the ads.
- The published figures contradict each other - "37M+" downloads and "760+ episodes" on the show page, "30+ million podcast downloads" on the home page, "more than 36 million" in Premier Christianity, and 828 episodes on Apple.
- The conference page argues with itself - the 2026 Art of Leadership Live in Nashville, 21-23 September, is stamped SOLD OUT while the pricing block shows 29 tickets remaining at $597 each, non-transferable and non-refundable, admitted by application.
- The frame is broadly evangelical and church-growth-oriented, which decides what counts as a leadership problem - attendance, giving, volunteer pipelines, preaching, staff culture and succession are treated as the central issues, and questions a liturgical, confessional or non-growth-oriented tradition would raise get little airtime.
- Audience size is stated two ways in two places - the home page says "100,000 email subscribers" for the On the Rise newsletter while the about page says "80,000+ Leaders" subscribe to the email list.
Best for
- Lead and executive pastors of growing churches
- Church staff who own giving, volunteers or communications
- Christian nonprofit and business leaders who like long-form interviews
- Anyone auditioning the Art of Leadership Academy before paying
Avoid if
- You want expository Bible teaching or sermons
- You want short episodes you can finish on a commute
- You want denominational or confessional theological depth
- You want a free resource with no commercial layer attached
What The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast is
It is a long-form interview podcast about running a church, published since 2014 and free to everyone. Nieuwhof hosts one guest per episode - sometimes a megachurch pastor, sometimes a secular management author, sometimes an author on habits or productivity - and the conversation stays practical: how a giving campaign was structured, why a staff hire failed, how a succession was handled, what changed in attendance patterns. Apple files it under Management rather than Religion and Spirituality, which is an accurate read of its content.
Around it sits a business. The Art of Leadership Academy sells courses and coaching from $17 to $57 a month or $497 a year, The Art of Leadership Live sells conference tickets at $597, five trade books are for sale including AI and the Future Church dated 15 September 2026, and the free On the Rise newsletter arrives every Friday. The podcast is the front door to all of it.
The interview list is the product
Most church leadership media talks to church leaders. This show books both sides. The same feed that carries Andy Stanley, Craig Groeschel, Francis Chan and N.T. Wright also carries Jim Collins, Seth Godin, Adam Grant, Simon Sinek, James Clear, Cal Newport and Patrick Lencioni - people who have never had to fill a Sunday service and whose frameworks arrive without church-world assumptions attached. CNLP 814 is a good sample of the register: Michael Bungay Stanier on seven questions for a better one-on-one, on networking without the awkwardness, and on self-publishing and viral marketing. None of that is denominational and all of it is usable by someone managing eight staff.
It sits inside the Art of Leadership Network, a group of eight shows Nieuwhof runs including H3 Leadership with Brad Lomenick and Lead Culture with Jenni Catron, and Apple files it under Management rather than religion. The effect for a listener is an archive that works as a management library with a ministry accent, which is rarer than it sounds.
The archive, and what is actually in it
Apple lists 828 episodes and Years Active 2014 - 2026; the numbering had reached CNLP 814 by mid-2026, the gap accounted for by trailers, bonus drops and unnumbered specials. Episodes are long. This is not a ten-minute devotional format, and the interviews are structured as full conversations rather than clipped highlights.
The topic spread is published on the site itself: Leadership, Communication and Preaching, Productivity, Generosity and Giving, Personal Growth, Organizational and Cultural Trends, Church Growth and Change Management. In practice that means episodes on preaching a sermon people remember, building a generous congregation, navigating a staff conflict, handing a church to a successor, and reading a shift in attendance. That list is the working definition of what this show means by "leadership".
The trends report and the free hub
Once a year the podcast turns into a trends package. The 2026 edition names seven shifts - a Gen Z attendance surge, a gender divergence in participation, bolder evangelism, worship moving toward encounter rather than presentation, algorithm-led discipleship fragmentation, a pastoral succession crisis with average senior pastor age given as 58, and AI readiness. It is delivered as a free 2026 Church Trends Hub with a leader guide, a webinar, a podcast series and a community chat.
This is the funnel working exactly as designed and worth watching for that reason. The report is free and the research is specific enough to argue with, and the hub requires an Academy account, which is also free, which then sits in front of the $17 and $57 tiers. The content is real. The mechanism is a lead magnet. Both descriptions are correct.
The perspective, stated plainly
Nieuwhof writes from a broadly evangelical, church-growth-oriented position. That is descriptive, not a criticism: he founded and led a multi-site church in Ontario, his course catalogue is titled Art of Church Growth, Art of Reaching and Art of Building a Generous Congregation, and the metrics he treats as diagnostic are attendance, engagement, giving and pipeline. A leadership problem, on this show, is usually a problem of growth, retention or capacity.
What follows is a matter of fit rather than merit. A listener in a liturgical, confessional or intentionally small-church tradition will find the diagnostics assume a model they may not share, and sacramental practice, catechesis and denominational polity are largely outside scope. Nieuwhof criticises the model's excesses from inside it - the "grift of church growth" line is his own - so the show is not uncritical, but it argues within a tradition rather than across traditions.
Pricing
The podcast
Free
All 828 episodes Apple lists, with no account, no trial and no paywalled archive. Funded by sponsor reads inside episodes - CNLP 814 alone carries Ministry Brands, Church Salary and a Sermon Prep Challenge - and by the paid products the show promotes. There is no way to pay to remove the advertising.
Art of Leadership Academy - Free Account
$0
Community access, curated articles and videos, practical downloads and discussion threads tied to podcast episodes. No courses. This is the tier that converts listeners into accounts.
Art of Leadership Academy - Starter Kit
$17/month
Everything in the free account plus five on-demand workshops - listed as the Sticky Sermons Toolkit, 30-Minute Meeting Makeover, AI For Ministry Workshop, 20-Minute Productivity Reset and Top-Tier Volunteer Blueprint, each under 30 minutes - a monthly plug-and-play leadership training kit for staff, and a premium discussion feed. No full courses and no coaching calls.
Art of Leadership Academy - All-Access
$57/month or $497/year
Unlimited access to all eleven named courses, monthly 60-minute live coaching calls with Q&A and recordings, priority support and a 30-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. The annual plan adds an onboarding call and, per the page, course completion transferable toward a master's degree. Annual works out to $41.42 a month against the $57 monthly rate - $57 x 12 = $684, so paying yearly saves $187.
The podcast is free, and free means free: 828 episodes on Apple with no account, no trial window and no locked back catalogue. What funds it is sponsor reads inside the episodes. CNLP 814's notes carry three - a Ministry Brands 2026 Annual Church Giving Report, the Church Salary compensation tool, and a three-day Sermon Prep Challenge with daily one-hour calls - and nothing Nieuwhof sells buys an ad-free feed.
The Art of Leadership Academy is the main paid product and has four tiers as printed: $0 for a free account, $17/month for the Starter Kit, $57/month for All-Access, and $497/year for the annual plan, which the page also renders as "$1.36/day". Doing the arithmetic on the vendor's own figures, $57 x 12 = $684, so the annual plan is $187 cheaper than twelve monthly payments and equates to $41.42 a month. The All-Access tiers carry a 30-day money-back guarantee described as no-questions-asked.
The Art of Leadership Live 2026 is priced at $597 for a single tier, held 21-23 September 2026 at Cannery Hall in Nashville. Registration is application-based, non-transferable and non-refundable, and Academy members are told they get priority access and better rates - the improved member rate itself is not published. The page simultaneously reads SOLD OUT and shows 29 tickets remaining, which is the sharpest contradiction on the site.
Books are sold through retail and no price is published on Nieuwhof's own pages. AI and the Future Church, subtitled Make Your Ministry Irreplaceable in a World of Artificial Everything, is dated 15 September 2026 with pre-orders at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Bookshop.org and a 35-plus-page executive summary as the pre-order bonus. The On the Rise newsletter is free every Friday.
The ladder is legible: free podcast, free account, free trends hub, $17, $57, $497, $597. Stating that is not an accusation - it is what a listener should know before weighing a recommendation made on air.
Where The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast falls behind
No transcripts or search promised anywhere on the show page. For an 828-episode archive that is the single biggest usability gap. The site lists platforms and topic categories but publishes no searchable episode index, no transcript library and no per-episode chapter markers, so finding the one episode on pastoral succession from four years ago means guessing at a search engine.
Its own statistics cannot be reconciled. Downloads appear as "37M+" on the show page, "30+ million" on the home page and "more than 36 million" in a 2024 Premier Christianity interview; episodes appear as "760+" on the show page against 828 on Apple. These are not rounding differences on the same base, they are stale copy left in place on pages that are still live. Report both, never average them.
No ad-free tier at any price. A listener paying $497 a year for the Academy still hears the same sponsor reads as someone paying nothing. Plenty of independent shows offer a premium feed for a few dollars a month; this one does not, which means the advertising is a permanent feature of the product rather than a free-tier limitation.
Episode length is unmanaged. Interviews run long by design and no short-form cut, digest edition or highlights feed is published. If your listening budget is a 25-minute commute, the format offers no accommodation.
The conference is functionally closed and the page will not say so cleanly. SOLD OUT next to 29 tickets remaining at $597, admission by application with results ranging from immediate pre-approval to a 30-day review, and no team or group rate published. For a $597 non-refundable purchase that is more ambiguity than a buyer should have to absorb.
Carey Nieuwhof vs. Preaching Today vs. RightNow Media
These three answer different questions for the same person. The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast is about running the organisation - hiring, giving, succession, attendance, staff culture - and it is free, ad-supported and audio-first. Preaching Today is about the sermon itself: illustrations, structure, delivery, exegetical craft. RightNow Media is a licensed video library a church buys for its whole congregation to use in small groups, which is a budget line rather than a personal subscription.
If you are the person who has to decide whether to add a service, restructure a staff team or plan a handover, this podcast is the closest free thing to a peer conversation about it, and the crossover guests - Collins, Godin, Grant, Lencioni - give it a management range the church-only resources do not have. If your problem is that Sunday is coming and you have nothing, Preaching Today is the better tool. If your problem is that ninety small groups need content next term, RightNow Media is the only one of the three that solves it.
The distinguishing cost is not money, it is independence. Preaching Today sits inside Christianity Today and RightNow Media licenses to churches; both have commercial interests, but neither is built to move you up a ladder of the host's own products. Nieuwhof's show is. That is a reason to weigh on-air recommendations differently, not a reason to skip the archive.
The bottom line
Twelve years, 828 episodes, no paywall, and a guest list that runs from N.T. Wright to Jim Collins - as a free resource for people who run churches, this is close to the top of the category, and the operational specificity is what makes it useful rather than inspirational. It is also unmistakably marketing: a lead magnet at the front of a $17-to-$497 membership, a $597 conference and five books, published from a broadly evangelical church-growth perspective that decides in advance what a leadership problem looks like. Listen freely, take the frameworks, and read every on-air recommendation with the funnel in view.
Alternatives to The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
RightNow MediaA licensed video library a church buys for its whole congregation, including leadership training tracks. Solves the small-group content problem this podcast does not touch, but it is a church budget line rather than a free personal subscription.
Preaching TodaySermon craft rather than organisational leadership - illustrations, structure and delivery, from inside Christianity Today. The better choice if the recurring pressure in your week is Sunday morning rather than the staff meeting.
The Gospel CoalitionA free, broadly Reformed publishing platform with articles, podcasts and courses on theology and pastoral ministry. More doctrinally explicit and less growth-metric oriented than this show, and with no membership ladder attached.
EdifiA Christian podcast directory and player rather than a show. Useful if you want to sample several leadership podcasts side by side, including this one, from one app instead of committing to a single host.
Center ChurchTim Keller's book-length theology of ministry, which argues for a gospel-centred framework rather than a set of growth tactics. Slower and denser than a podcast, and the natural counterweight if you want the theological reasoning underneath the practices.Frequently asked questions
Is The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast free?
Yes, entirely. All 828 episodes Apple lists are free with no account, no trial and no paywalled archive, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Audible or any client that reads the Libsyn feed. It is funded by sponsor reads inside episodes and by the paid products it promotes, and there is no ad-free tier at any price.
How many episodes are there, and how far back does the archive go?
Apple Podcasts lists 828 episodes with Years Active 2014 - 2026 and episode numbering at CNLP 814 as of mid-2026. Nieuwhof's own show page says "760+ episodes". We report both figures rather than reconciling them; the vendor page appears to be stale copy. Apple labels the frequency "Updated Weekly".
Is there an app to download?
No. Despite being catalogued elsewhere as an app, this is a podcast with a web home at careynieuwhof.com and an RSS feed on Libsyn. There is no iOS or Android app for the show itself, which is why it is reviewed here as a website and why the rating is editorial rather than a store aggregate.
What is the Apple Podcasts rating, and is it an App Store rating?
Apple Podcasts shows 4.8 from 2,234 listener ratings for the show. That is a podcast rating, not an App Store app rating, and the two are different aggregates measuring different things - so we report it in prose and stats but do not publish it as this review's score. The 4.3 above is our own editorial rating.
What does Carey Nieuwhof sell, and what does it cost?
The Art of Leadership Academy has four tiers as printed: a $0 free account, $17/month Starter Kit, $57/month All-Access and a $497/year annual plan, the last two with a 30-day money-back guarantee. The Art of Leadership Live 2026 conference is $597, held 21-23 September in Nashville, non-refundable and by application. Five books are sold at retail with no price on his own pages, and the On the Rise newsletter is free every Friday.
Who are the guests, and what do episodes actually cover?
One guest per episode, drawn from two pools: church leaders such as Andy Stanley, Craig Groeschel, Francis Chan, N.T. Wright, Tim Keller, Christine Caine and Lysa TerKeurst, and secular management and habit authors such as Jim Collins, Seth Godin, Adam Grant, Simon Sinek, James Clear, Cal Newport, Patrick Lencioni and Michael Bungay Stanier. Subjects are operational: preaching, giving campaigns, staff conflict, volunteer pipelines, pastoral succession, productivity and attendance trends. Apple files the show under Management.
What theological perspective does the show come from?
Broadly evangelical and church-growth-oriented. Nieuwhof was founding and lead pastor of Connexus Church near Barrie, Ontario, until 2015, and his course catalogue - Art of Church Growth, Art of Reaching, Art of Building a Generous Congregation - shows which metrics he treats as diagnostic. Listeners from liturgical or confessional traditions should expect the framing to assume a growth model, and topics like sacramental practice or denominational polity to be largely out of scope. He is critical of the model's excesses from inside it, describing himself as having been "beholden to the grift of church growth".
Sources & further reading
- The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast show page ↗
- CareyNieuwhof.com home page ↗
- Carey Nieuwhof about page ↗
- The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast on Apple Podcasts (episode count, rating, years active) ↗
- The Art of Leadership Academy membership tiers and course list ↗
- The Art of Leadership Live 2026 registration page ↗
- CNLP 814 show notes with Michael Bungay Stanier, including sponsor reads ↗
- Premier Christianity interview: Church leadership nearly killed me ↗
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