# Working With God > Faith-based leadership coaching and community from Dr. Eliyahu Lotzar, Ed.D., MSW. > The practice teaches leaders to work WITH God rather than only FOR Him, using the > Ten Modes of Elevated Leadership from his book of the same name. Dr. Eliyahu Lotzar is an executive coach, group facilitator and organizational consultant based in Reston, Virginia. He holds an Ed.D. in Executive Leadership and an MSW, is a licensed clinical therapist by training, a former business owner, and is certified in the Adizes methodology, DiSC and Arbinger. He has been coaching, counseling and facilitating leadership groups for over 30 years, and has worked specifically with CEOs and owners for the past seven. ## Core pages - [Home](https://workingwithgod.live/) - [about](https://workingwithgod.live/about/) - [book a call](https://workingwithgod.live/book-a-call/) - [contact](https://workingwithgod.live/contact/) - [events](https://workingwithgod.live/events/) - [roundtable](https://workingwithgod.live/roundtable/) - [services](https://workingwithgod.live/services/) - [speaking](https://workingwithgod.live/speaking/) - [the book](https://workingwithgod.live/the-book/) ## Writing - [Working with God, not just for Him](https://workingwithgod.live/blog/working-with-god-not-just-for-him/): Most faith-driven leaders work for God. There is a different posture available, and it changes what happens on a Tuesday afternoon when a hard decision lands on your desk. - [What actually happens at the Roundtable](https://workingwithgod.live/blog/what-happens-at-the-roundtable/): A plain description of the monthly Working With God Roundtable in Northern Virginia: who comes, what we do for two hours, and why it is not a webinar or a sermon. - [The Ten Modes of Elevated Leadership, briefly](https://workingwithgod.live/blog/the-ten-modes-explained/): An introduction to Modal Leadership: what a leadership mode is, why agility between modes matters more than mastery of any one, and how to tell which mode a decision needs. ## Key concepts - Working With God: leading in real-time dialogue with God about strategy, hiring, budgets and timing, rather than making a plan and asking for it to be blessed. - The Ten Modes of Elevated Leadership: a Biblically-founded framework for identifying which operational mode a decision calls for. - Modal Agility: the skill of shifting between leadership modes as the situation requires, rather than mastering a single default mode. - The WWG Roundtable: a free monthly in-person gathering for owners, CEOs and senior leaders near Chantilly, Virginia, third Wednesdays, 8:00 to 9:55 a.m. ## Contact - Book a call: https://workingwithgod.live/contact/ - Email: Eliyahu@WorkingWithGod.live --- # Full text of all posts ## Working with God, not just for Him URL: https://workingwithgod.live/blog/working-with-god-not-just-for-him/ Published: 2026-08-04 Author: Dr. Eliyahu Lotzar, Ed.D., MSW Most leaders I meet work for something. For a mission. For their people. For their family. And the faith-driven ones, almost without exception, tell me they work for God. That is a good place to stand. It is not the only one. There is a qualitative difference between working for God and working with Him, and it shows up in the smallest moments of a working week. Not in the prayer before the board meeting. In the middle of the board meeting. What "for" looks like Working for God usually sounds like this: you make the plan, you build the strategy, you pick the hire, and then you ask God to bless it. The prayer sits on either end of the decision. It rarely sits inside it. There is nothing wrong with that. It is honest, and it is how most of us were taught. But it quietly assumes that the strategy is your department and the blessing is His. What "with" looks like Working with God moves the conversation into the decision itself. You are not asking Him to sign off on a plan you already made. You are asking what He actually wants to do through your leadership, in this situation, today. That is a harder question, because the answer is sometimes no. It is also a more useful one. A leader who can genuinely ask it has a source of perspective that no advisory board, no consultant, and no framework can give them. Why this matters for a plateau Leaders do not plateau for lack of effort. In twenty years of this work I have almost never met a stuck leader who was not trying hard. They plateau for lack of perspective. They are solving the problem from inside the same frame that produced it, with more energy each time. Working with God is, among other things, a way out of that frame. Where to start You do not need a new devotional practice for this. Start smaller than that. Pick one decision this week that you would normally handle entirely on your own competence. A hire. A price. A conversation you have been putting off. Before you decide it, ask a different question than usual: not bless this, but what do You want to do here? Then sit with the answer long enough to hear something you were not expecting. That is the whole method, in miniature. Everything else is practice. --- ## What actually happens at the Roundtable URL: https://workingwithgod.live/blog/what-happens-at-the-roundtable/ Published: 2026-07-21 Author: Dr. Eliyahu Lotzar, Ed.D., MSW People ask me what the Roundtable is before they come, and I have noticed that the usual descriptions do not help much. "A faith and work meetup" tells you nothing about whether it is worth your Wednesday morning. So here is the plain version. Who is in the room Owners, CEOs, and senior leaders. People who actually run things and carry the weight of other people's paychecks. Usually eight to fifteen of us. Some have been coming for a year, some walked in that morning. Everyone in the room has authority somewhere, which changes the conversation. Nobody is performing for a boss. The two hours We start with coffee and introductions, and that part is not filler. You cannot talk honestly with people you have not met. Then we take one leadership challenge. Agility, hiring, kingdom economics, sales, whatever is live that month. I open it, but I am not lecturing. The value is in the room, and my job is mostly to keep the conversation useful and to bring the Ten Modes to bear where they help. We open scripture on it. Not as a devotional bookend, but as a working text on the actual problem. And we pray. Over the real things. The cash flow problem, the partner who is not pulling their weight, the decision someone has been avoiding for six weeks. What it is not It is not a webinar you watch. It is not a sermon. It is not a sales pitch for my coaching, and I would rather you came for years and never hired me than felt worked on. The part that surprises people Most leaders arrive expecting to learn something. They usually do. But the thing they mention afterwards is different: it is the relief of saying the hard thing out loud in a room where nobody is going to panic, and where the response is going to be prayer rather than advice. That is confidential, by the way. What is said at the table stays at the table. Practical details Third Wednesdays, 8:00 to 9:55 in the morning, near Chantilly, Virginia. There is no charge and there are always refreshments. Come once and see. That is genuinely all I would ask. --- ## The Ten Modes of Elevated Leadership, briefly URL: https://workingwithgod.live/blog/the-ten-modes-explained/ Published: 2026-07-07 Author: Dr. Eliyahu Lotzar, Ed.D., MSW Leadership advice has a habit of telling you to be one thing. Be decisive. Be a servant. Be visionary. Be data-driven. The trouble is that every one of those is right, and each is right at a different moment. The leader who is decisive when the situation calls for listening does damage. So does the listener who will not decide. What a mode is A mode is a way of operating that a situation calls for. Not a personality type, and not a strength you were born with. Something closer to a gear. You already switch between them, mostly unconsciously and mostly badly, because nobody taught you the map. Modal Leadership is the map. Agility beats mastery Here is the part that surprises people. The goal is not to become excellent at your favourite mode. Most leaders who plateau have already done that, which is precisely the problem. They have one superb gear and they drive everything in it. The goal is modal agility: noticing which mode the situation in front of you actually requires, and being able to shift into it even when it is not your natural one. That is a learnable skill. It is also uncomfortable, because the mode a situation needs is often the one you are worst at. How this connects to faith This is where Working With God differs from the general leadership literature. If you believe God has something to say about your business, then the question "which mode does this need?" has a place to be asked. You are not guessing alone. The dialogue about the mode is itself the practice. That is what I mean by real-time conversation with the Creator about spreadsheets, budgets, teams, and opportunities. Not being holier at the office. Being in conversation about the actual work. Trying it once Take a decision you are sitting on right now. Ask yourself what mode you have been operating in on it, and be honest, because it is almost certainly your default. Then ask what mode the situation itself is asking for. If those two answers are different, you have just found the reason the decision has been stuck. The full framework, with stories from CEOs and concrete steps, is in the book. But the question above works on its own, today.