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The Crucibles That Shape Us: Navigating the Defining Challenges of Leadership
We often see setbacks and disasters as events that keep us from our best life. But they're really opportunities to grow in leadership. The problem of suffering is a spiritual hurdle for many that disorients us and those we lead. Gayle D. Beebe tackles the existential crisis head-on, revealing that, although we are bewildered at first, these situations ultimately prepare us. Previously viewing these challenges as insurmountable, he has come to recognize them as essential passageways in our relationship with God. Beebe identifies seven crucibles―powerful catalysts for transformation―that, when embraced, shape us on this profound journey. Each chapter of this book delves into one of the crucibles, which Beebe intimately understands and has personally faced. Amid the realities of life's suffering, use this illuminating guidebook and find how colossal setbacks become a bedrock for a better, richer faith.
- GenresNonfiction
152 pages, Hardcover
Published May 7, 2024
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June 17, 2024
This book wasn't as bad as I was dreading it would be, but that still doesn't make it good.
So I was given this for free at a conference and I fully planned to put it in a stack of things I'd never read until the writer gave a keynote session that thoroughly misunderstood Simone Weil right after I had read "Gravity & Grace," and then it was on sight. But despite going into this as a spite-read, I'm kind of just coming out with the sense that the author is a bland writer.
I'm going to start with the Simone Weil of it all and unpack the thing that set my teeth so on-edge before actually moving to the rest of the book. So to start, it was really this very "hoo-rah Evangelicalism" approach to suffering that sees every mishap as a God-given opportunity for growth and meaning that immediately turned me off in Beebe's keynote speech. There is certainly a fair amount of that in here, and it is probably the thing that warps Beebe's reading of Weil; sure, she advocates for a death-of-ego mentality that slots well into Evangelicalism, but she advocates for it through the utter and entire death of self, through actively taking on suffering rather than just meditating on misfortunes. This is the woman who chose to work in the factories for a year in slavish conditions just to overcome her own sense of privilege, this is not a woman who is going to be in easy conversation with the rich president of a Californian Bible school. It's clear that Beebe is wrestling with some things here, and that's fine, but to come out with the standpoint where all hardships are "divine pathways" (7) is to miss most of the picture. You don't need to find meaning in all of your suffering. Full stop. The Evangelical drive to derive meaning out of every hardship is A) a-Biblical. Read Lamentations. Read Job. Read the prophets. There's a suspicious lack of Old Testament quotes in this book and it's because they go down a lot less easy than pithy quotes about God being there for you.
B) It's abusive. A central point in the prophetic canon is that you can't always justify suffering. And you shouldn't have to. Sometimes it's simply incomprehensible. Trying to force people to see the good in inconceivably bad things is a form of abuse, of emotional control. I've had a comparatively easy life, but I have been through senselessly despicable things. I don't want there to be a greater meaning to that, there is no way to render that "meaningful" or "ordained" without it becoming divinely cruel. While Beebe cites a few survivors of the Holocaust who were able to find their own light within horrific events, he comes dangerously close to suggesting this could or should be a universal praxis. The Holocaust should not be considered a "divine pathway" to God. It should not even be in the conversation. And to try to read that into Weil is to kind of miss her entire context? Weil is not a "look on the bright side" sort of woman. She is a "fully destruct the self as brutally as possible and then maybe you will be able to see another human" sort of woman.
Those are my Bone-Deep responses to Beebe's writing. It's hard not to see it as Yet Another weapon of American Evangelicalism's enforced happiness mindset. That's what drove me to read the book in full - did the rest of his discussion fare any better? Well... yes and no. I found the rest of the book less personally engaging than his attempts to discuss suffering, but by reading the rest with a similarly analytical lens reveals that the book is just... lazily written.
It starts with Beebe's insistence on finding dictionary definitions for every term as if he's writing a freshmen paper - and he always does this badly! The entire book is structured around various "crucibles," but his definition of a crucible is... "a high degree of heat [...] that creates a severe or significant test [...] to catalyze growth, refinement, or change" (8). To start, he gets to this definition through Miriam-Webster, where he would have to have skipped over the very first definition! A crucible is not just a metaphor for change, it's an actual thing! The entire point of the metaphor of the crucible is that a crucible is an actual vessel that fundamentally breaks down what is inside it under severe pressure, to produce something brand new. This would actually align with Weil's philosophy, but just like his interpretation Weil, Beebe settles for a less intense perspective that wouldn't need to challenge anyone. Reading through the book, it's clear that whenever Beebe says "crucibles" he really just means "challenges." When talking about his university's reaction to the George Floyd protests (which he feels the need to dismiss as too violent (77)), he mostly discusses their initiatives to increase diversity and have better brand representation. This is not the sort of fundamental death-and-rebirth the word "crucible" implies, this is a mildly interesting example of corporate change. A true crucible would suggest the university went through a fundamental reckoning with its identity, with the sort of forces that encouraged a one-side approach to diversity to begin with. Nothing in Beebe's reflections here suggests that took place. Maybe they did! That would have been a more interesting topic.
Perhaps it seems like I'm making too much of the author's misuse of a single word but I have to stress that he composed his entire book around this lazy definition, and he continues to do this sort of misdefining throughout. My favourite is when he defines "schadenfreude" as "envy that seeks to destroy another" (112). He never cites this definition, and he won't find one, because every source I can find (and the popular parlance) always use schadenfreude more as - at worst - a sort of passive sadism. Never the active destruction Beebe leans on to make his points. Other times, his word choice is simply bizarre. He describes Winston Churchill's success as stemming from a "reservoir of restlessness and bias for action" (31). This is exactly the sort of phrase I'd flag as an editor - I can sort of understand what a reservoir of restlessness could refer to, but it reads as a very mixed metaphor. What the hell is a bias for action? Elsewhere, he describes Frederick Douglass' emancipation from slavery as enduring "enormous setback and challenge" (33). Reducing slavery to a "setback" feels extraordinarily in bad taste. Like his penchant for relying on definitions, the majority of Beebe's writing feels like a first-draft freshmen paper; it's not technically wrong, but it certainly looks bad in an official publication, and it continually obfuscates meaning.
Unfortunately, I think that's the point. Why use the word "crucible" if you really just mean "challenge"? Why cite a powerful writer like Weil? Why lean on definitions and use such bizarre and flowery language? It all reads like a writer fundamentally self-conscious that their writing is not "powerful" enough, that it should be bigger, say more. And this is why I wound up being so disappointed by this book - rather than find a hotbed of juicy Evangelical theology to debunk, I simply found a writer vastly overreaching his aims. The points where Beebe seems most confident, both as a writer and as a speaker, are on reflecting on the personal challenges he has overcome and finding advice within them. This should not be a sweeping maxim on how to be shaped by crucibles, this should be a personal memoir on how Beebe grew through his difficulties. He buries the lede with his efforts to be pastoral, this is just a business and leadership memoir. And it's probably a fine one, I don't know, I find that a boring genre. But by trying to seem bigger, higher, more important, Beebe sacrifices the things he can write well to an altar of misaimed fame. Beebe's core failing isn't his theodicy, it's that he just doesn't have that much to say.
I was really tempted to give this two stars. At the end of the day, I have a lot of sympathy for a writer just trying to do too many things. But, this is also a far wealthier writer than me, with presumable access to a whole team of editors who could have salvaged this thing. Fundamentally, Beebe fails in his endeavors, and I can't bring myself to grant a second star to a book that doesn't even succeed in having an accurate title. Sorry, Beebe.
A couple of other loose notes:
- The weight of this book and Beebe's keynote lean on his experience with a few natural disasters that ravished the city his university sits in. I don't doubt the personal harm this did upon Beebe and his university, it just always sits poorly with me when people take a tragedy and use it to publish books and inevitably profit off of them. That's a very mercenary reading of all of this, and I certainly don't deny Beebe the room to reflect on personal tragedy - which is part of why I think this would all work better framed as merely memoir.
- It really must be noted that Beebe spends an entire chapter talking about a Henry Kissinger book. A book where Kissinger lavishes on the leadership styles of Churchill, Nixon, and Margaret Thatcher. Beebe glosses over the bloody foreign policy of these leaders and their laundry lists of war crimes, instead emphasizing their faith-led leadership and the strength of their convictions. Beebe makes some efforts elsewhere to prop up a non-partisan ethic that overcomes political divisions, but he thunderously fails by showing his entire hand here. You cannot talk about ethical Christian leadership while also propping up a list of war criminals.
- Seriously what is going on with his writing style? I don't want to outright assume a writer is using ChatGPT, but given how much of this conference was plagued with tech companies trying to prop up their various AI presentations, I can't eliminate it as a possibility. If not, then please at least have a shrewder editor go over your book before publishing it, this is a mess, sir.
So I was given this for free at a conference and I fully planned to put it in a stack of things I'd never read until the writer gave a keynote session that thoroughly misunderstood Simone Weil right after I had read "Gravity & Grace," and then it was on sight. But despite going into this as a spite-read, I'm kind of just coming out with the sense that the author is a bland writer.
I'm going to start with the Simone Weil of it all and unpack the thing that set my teeth so on-edge before actually moving to the rest of the book. So to start, it was really this very "hoo-rah Evangelicalism" approach to suffering that sees every mishap as a God-given opportunity for growth and meaning that immediately turned me off in Beebe's keynote speech. There is certainly a fair amount of that in here, and it is probably the thing that warps Beebe's reading of Weil; sure, she advocates for a death-of-ego mentality that slots well into Evangelicalism, but she advocates for it through the utter and entire death of self, through actively taking on suffering rather than just meditating on misfortunes. This is the woman who chose to work in the factories for a year in slavish conditions just to overcome her own sense of privilege, this is not a woman who is going to be in easy conversation with the rich president of a Californian Bible school. It's clear that Beebe is wrestling with some things here, and that's fine, but to come out with the standpoint where all hardships are "divine pathways" (7) is to miss most of the picture. You don't need to find meaning in all of your suffering. Full stop. The Evangelical drive to derive meaning out of every hardship is A) a-Biblical. Read Lamentations. Read Job. Read the prophets. There's a suspicious lack of Old Testament quotes in this book and it's because they go down a lot less easy than pithy quotes about God being there for you.
B) It's abusive. A central point in the prophetic canon is that you can't always justify suffering. And you shouldn't have to. Sometimes it's simply incomprehensible. Trying to force people to see the good in inconceivably bad things is a form of abuse, of emotional control. I've had a comparatively easy life, but I have been through senselessly despicable things. I don't want there to be a greater meaning to that, there is no way to render that "meaningful" or "ordained" without it becoming divinely cruel. While Beebe cites a few survivors of the Holocaust who were able to find their own light within horrific events, he comes dangerously close to suggesting this could or should be a universal praxis. The Holocaust should not be considered a "divine pathway" to God. It should not even be in the conversation. And to try to read that into Weil is to kind of miss her entire context? Weil is not a "look on the bright side" sort of woman. She is a "fully destruct the self as brutally as possible and then maybe you will be able to see another human" sort of woman.
Those are my Bone-Deep responses to Beebe's writing. It's hard not to see it as Yet Another weapon of American Evangelicalism's enforced happiness mindset. That's what drove me to read the book in full - did the rest of his discussion fare any better? Well... yes and no. I found the rest of the book less personally engaging than his attempts to discuss suffering, but by reading the rest with a similarly analytical lens reveals that the book is just... lazily written.
It starts with Beebe's insistence on finding dictionary definitions for every term as if he's writing a freshmen paper - and he always does this badly! The entire book is structured around various "crucibles," but his definition of a crucible is... "a high degree of heat [...] that creates a severe or significant test [...] to catalyze growth, refinement, or change" (8). To start, he gets to this definition through Miriam-Webster, where he would have to have skipped over the very first definition! A crucible is not just a metaphor for change, it's an actual thing! The entire point of the metaphor of the crucible is that a crucible is an actual vessel that fundamentally breaks down what is inside it under severe pressure, to produce something brand new. This would actually align with Weil's philosophy, but just like his interpretation Weil, Beebe settles for a less intense perspective that wouldn't need to challenge anyone. Reading through the book, it's clear that whenever Beebe says "crucibles" he really just means "challenges." When talking about his university's reaction to the George Floyd protests (which he feels the need to dismiss as too violent (77)), he mostly discusses their initiatives to increase diversity and have better brand representation. This is not the sort of fundamental death-and-rebirth the word "crucible" implies, this is a mildly interesting example of corporate change. A true crucible would suggest the university went through a fundamental reckoning with its identity, with the sort of forces that encouraged a one-side approach to diversity to begin with. Nothing in Beebe's reflections here suggests that took place. Maybe they did! That would have been a more interesting topic.
Perhaps it seems like I'm making too much of the author's misuse of a single word but I have to stress that he composed his entire book around this lazy definition, and he continues to do this sort of misdefining throughout. My favourite is when he defines "schadenfreude" as "envy that seeks to destroy another" (112). He never cites this definition, and he won't find one, because every source I can find (and the popular parlance) always use schadenfreude more as - at worst - a sort of passive sadism. Never the active destruction Beebe leans on to make his points. Other times, his word choice is simply bizarre. He describes Winston Churchill's success as stemming from a "reservoir of restlessness and bias for action" (31). This is exactly the sort of phrase I'd flag as an editor - I can sort of understand what a reservoir of restlessness could refer to, but it reads as a very mixed metaphor. What the hell is a bias for action? Elsewhere, he describes Frederick Douglass' emancipation from slavery as enduring "enormous setback and challenge" (33). Reducing slavery to a "setback" feels extraordinarily in bad taste. Like his penchant for relying on definitions, the majority of Beebe's writing feels like a first-draft freshmen paper; it's not technically wrong, but it certainly looks bad in an official publication, and it continually obfuscates meaning.
Unfortunately, I think that's the point. Why use the word "crucible" if you really just mean "challenge"? Why cite a powerful writer like Weil? Why lean on definitions and use such bizarre and flowery language? It all reads like a writer fundamentally self-conscious that their writing is not "powerful" enough, that it should be bigger, say more. And this is why I wound up being so disappointed by this book - rather than find a hotbed of juicy Evangelical theology to debunk, I simply found a writer vastly overreaching his aims. The points where Beebe seems most confident, both as a writer and as a speaker, are on reflecting on the personal challenges he has overcome and finding advice within them. This should not be a sweeping maxim on how to be shaped by crucibles, this should be a personal memoir on how Beebe grew through his difficulties. He buries the lede with his efforts to be pastoral, this is just a business and leadership memoir. And it's probably a fine one, I don't know, I find that a boring genre. But by trying to seem bigger, higher, more important, Beebe sacrifices the things he can write well to an altar of misaimed fame. Beebe's core failing isn't his theodicy, it's that he just doesn't have that much to say.
I was really tempted to give this two stars. At the end of the day, I have a lot of sympathy for a writer just trying to do too many things. But, this is also a far wealthier writer than me, with presumable access to a whole team of editors who could have salvaged this thing. Fundamentally, Beebe fails in his endeavors, and I can't bring myself to grant a second star to a book that doesn't even succeed in having an accurate title. Sorry, Beebe.
A couple of other loose notes:
- The weight of this book and Beebe's keynote lean on his experience with a few natural disasters that ravished the city his university sits in. I don't doubt the personal harm this did upon Beebe and his university, it just always sits poorly with me when people take a tragedy and use it to publish books and inevitably profit off of them. That's a very mercenary reading of all of this, and I certainly don't deny Beebe the room to reflect on personal tragedy - which is part of why I think this would all work better framed as merely memoir.
- It really must be noted that Beebe spends an entire chapter talking about a Henry Kissinger book. A book where Kissinger lavishes on the leadership styles of Churchill, Nixon, and Margaret Thatcher. Beebe glosses over the bloody foreign policy of these leaders and their laundry lists of war crimes, instead emphasizing their faith-led leadership and the strength of their convictions. Beebe makes some efforts elsewhere to prop up a non-partisan ethic that overcomes political divisions, but he thunderously fails by showing his entire hand here. You cannot talk about ethical Christian leadership while also propping up a list of war criminals.
- Seriously what is going on with his writing style? I don't want to outright assume a writer is using ChatGPT, but given how much of this conference was plagued with tech companies trying to prop up their various AI presentations, I can't eliminate it as a possibility. If not, then please at least have a shrewder editor go over your book before publishing it, this is a mess, sir.
August 11, 2025
This book is not light reading. The content and style both demand careful attention and reflection.
The author’s suggestion that “life is a perpetual gauntlet with challenges on one side and opportunities on the other” is a truth that one is not always in the mood to hear.
But it is well worth the effort.
A series of relatively short, dense chapters explore challenges that leaders, and likely most people who take their Christian faith seriously, may face during their careers.
The book’s seven chapters examine seven crucibles: missed meaning, enduring challenge, human treachery, awakened moral conscience, social conflict, human suffering, and personal choice.
Beebe, president of Westmount College, a Christian liberal arts institution in Santa Barbara, California, has much to say about the importance of endurance and resilience.
He has had to work through many of the difficult challenges he examines.
The book provides good advice for guiding principles for learning, life, who to work for, and why.
The book sometimes reads like a literature review, which is no criticism. Beebe draws on significant sources of wisdom from modern literature, spiritual and secular.
He finds noteworthy and praiseworthy ideas from leaders from across the political spectrum, from social justice warriors to archconservatives.
And Beebe provides a useful framework for thinking about difficulties. He writes: “dealing with crucibles requires embracing life as a quest rather than seeing hardships as unnecessary intrusions or complete disruptions.”
There is a lot of wisdom to chew on in this tome, reflections from a seasoned and thoughtful shepherd.
The author’s suggestion that “life is a perpetual gauntlet with challenges on one side and opportunities on the other” is a truth that one is not always in the mood to hear.
But it is well worth the effort.
A series of relatively short, dense chapters explore challenges that leaders, and likely most people who take their Christian faith seriously, may face during their careers.
The book’s seven chapters examine seven crucibles: missed meaning, enduring challenge, human treachery, awakened moral conscience, social conflict, human suffering, and personal choice.
Beebe, president of Westmount College, a Christian liberal arts institution in Santa Barbara, California, has much to say about the importance of endurance and resilience.
He has had to work through many of the difficult challenges he examines.
The book provides good advice for guiding principles for learning, life, who to work for, and why.
The book sometimes reads like a literature review, which is no criticism. Beebe draws on significant sources of wisdom from modern literature, spiritual and secular.
He finds noteworthy and praiseworthy ideas from leaders from across the political spectrum, from social justice warriors to archconservatives.
And Beebe provides a useful framework for thinking about difficulties. He writes: “dealing with crucibles requires embracing life as a quest rather than seeing hardships as unnecessary intrusions or complete disruptions.”
There is a lot of wisdom to chew on in this tome, reflections from a seasoned and thoughtful shepherd.
January 15, 2025
Life is full of beautiful mountain-top experiences, tough challenges and everything in between. The Crucibles that Shape Us helps us to see that painful times have a high purpose.
This book is full of lessons in endurance and gratitude. Gayle Beebe weaves in fascinating stories from his own life, from important mentors, and inspiring historical figures. You'll feel hope reading this book. We can do hard things! We persevere, it's what we do. We see strength, health, and beauty result from the challenges we face and we are not alone on the journey. I cannot recommend it enough. There's a golden nugget of truth and encouragement just waiting for you!
This book is full of lessons in endurance and gratitude. Gayle Beebe weaves in fascinating stories from his own life, from important mentors, and inspiring historical figures. You'll feel hope reading this book. We can do hard things! We persevere, it's what we do. We see strength, health, and beauty result from the challenges we face and we are not alone on the journey. I cannot recommend it enough. There's a golden nugget of truth and encouragement just waiting for you!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews