Small Shifts, Big Calling: Cynthia D. Horton on Leadership, Service, and a God-Given Heart for the Nations

Some people build careers. Cynthia D. Horton has been building something harder to quantify — capacity in people, institutions, and communities that didn’t have enough of it. As the founder of Shift to Grow Company in El Paso, Cynthia has spent decades working across nonprofits, corporations, and community organizations. The thread running through all of it is, as she puts it plainly, God.

In a recent conversation on the 323 Podcast, Cynthia talked about what it actually looks like to work as unto the Lord, why leadership is a privilege and not a platform, what it means to have a calling to the nations, and how more than fifty foster kids shaped her understanding of service. I walked away from this conversation with a lot to think about, and I think you will too.

The Name That Almost Wasn’t

Shift to Grow almost had a different name. Cynthia was ready to call her company CDH and Associates when a friend pushed her to think about the essence of what she actually does. Her answer came quickly: she helps people shift their thinking, because it’s those small incremental changes that create lasting transformation.

“We all have to make those little shifts and changes,” she said. That’s the whole philosophy. No prepackaged program, no one-size-fits-all methodology. Every engagement is built around what the client actually needs: motivational, instructional, and strategic in whatever combination will move the needle.

Cynthia’s approach is countercultural at its core. So much of the consulting world runs on packaged deliverables. Cynthia’s approach requires her to show up genuinely curious about each client, willing to be shaped by what she finds rather than fitting them into a framework she already built. That kind of humility is actually a discipline. It takes more work, not less, to resist the urge to lead with what you already know.

Leadership Is a Privilege

Cynthia believes that leadership is a privilege.

That framing comes directly from her years working with vulnerable populations. At-risk youth, underserved communities, people navigating serious hardship. When you’ve watched decisions affect people’s lives in real and immediate ways, you don’t take the weight of leadership lightly. You feel the responsibility of it.

It’s the posture described in Luke 12:48 — to whom much is given, much will be required. J. Oswald Sanders wrote in Spiritual Leadership that the truly great leader is the one who serves, not the one who is served. Cynthia has lived that out across every sector she’s worked in.

Her first contract with Shift to Grow was helping a human trafficking recovery organization find new leadership, secure funding, and identify a facility for survivors. One of those survivors was a woman from Hungary who had been in detention for six months and spoke no English. Through a chain of events that included a dubbed 700 Club video and a Holocaust survivor who spoke Hungarian, Cynthia was able to connect that woman to someone who could speak with her and share the gospel in her own language. “That was to me one of the most remarkable things,” Cynthia said, “because she heard messages about the Lord she probably never would have heard from the most unlikely source ever.”

That’s not a strategy. That’s a sovereign God using an obedient person.

Working as Unto the Lord

Colossians 3:23 is the anchor scripture for the 323 Podcast, and Cynthia’s answer to what it looks like in daily practice was honest and practical.

She works from home. Her office is next door to her bedroom. When she wakes up, her sanctuary and her work are the same space, and faith is inseparable from it. But she also talked about the challenge of getting pulled into task mode — that feeling of pushing and pushing without pausing. Her rhythm looks like noticing a beautiful sunny day and choosing to close the laptop and go outside with her Bible.

“Be still and know that I am God,” she quoted from Psalm 46:10. Not as a platitude. As an actual practice.

This is one of the hardest things for driven people to do. We tend to measure our days by output, and stillness can feel like falling behind. But there’s a difference between being productive and being fruitful. Productivity is about what we accomplish. Fruitfulness is about staying connected to the vine. As John 15:5 puts it, apart from him we can do nothing. The discipline Cynthia describes isn’t a productivity hack. It’s an act of surrender.

For those who work traditional hours, she offered a different challenge: when you get a break, what do you do with it? Scrolling doesn’t refresh your soul. A few minutes of quiet before the Lord does.

A Border City and a Window to the World

A few years ago, Cynthia joined the board of the El Paso International Museum of Art. What she didn’t know at the time was that she was stepping into something that would connect directly to a calling she’d been carrying for over a decade.

The Sue Koenig Window to the World collection has over 10,000 artifacts from 110 countries, assembled by a Colorado schoolteacher who spent her life traveling the globe so she could bring it back to her community. Pakistani wedding chairs. Traditional clothing from hundreds of cultures. Musical instruments, jewelry, household items. Things El Paso has never seen in one place. The first gallery opened in the spring of last year, and the team is now building a mobile museum to take the collection into schools across the region.

About ten years ago, Cynthia said, God started speaking to her about the nations. Her Bible study began tracking persecuted believers, studying Bible translations, learning about cultures around the world. When the opportunity to help bring this collection to El Paso came along, she recognized it immediately.

“Everything about us getting that collection is about God’s hand bringing it here.”

The Temple of Heaven in China, which many assume is a standard religious site, was actually built for the God of heaven and has no idols. Exhibits like this open people’s understanding of Scripture and of God’s presence in places they assumed he wasn’t.

Acts 17:26-27 says that God determined the times and places where people would live so that they would seek him and find him. El Paso sits at the intersection of cultures by its very nature. It’s not an accident that a collection like this landed here.

Fifty Kids and What They Taught Her

Before Cynthia started Shift to Grow, she was a foster parent. Over the course of more than seventeen years, she fostered more than fifty kids — most of them coming out of juvenile probation, most of them the ones everyone else had written off.

She understood them because she had been one of them. Her pitch to every kid was the same: “Give me five minutes. If I don’t hold your interest, you can walk away and never see me again.” She said she’s never had a kid walk away.

What she took from that season is something she carries into her work now. The people God puts in front of you are not accidents, and sometimes solving their problems forces you to work through your own. God often heals us through the people we’re trying to help. Cynthia is living proof of that.

The skills that make a good foster parent — seeing potential where others see a problem, staying curious instead of prescriptive, meeting people where they actually are — those are the same skills that make a great leader. Cynthia didn’t get that training in a classroom.

What Unashamed Faith Actually Looks Like

Near the end of our conversation, Cynthia said, “I’m not going to compromise to get [success], because whatever you compromise to keep, you’re going to lose.”

She was talking about her faith and her business. If a potential client walks away because she’s a Christian, she’s okay with that. That kind of conviction is rare, and it costs something to hold onto it.

Proverbs 11:3 says the integrity of the upright guides them. The word integrity comes from the Latin root for wholeness. It means your private values and your public actions are the same thing. What Cynthia describes isn’t just a moral stance. It’s a way of leading from a whole and undivided self, which is exactly what the people around us are hungry to see.

Additional Resources

If Cynthia’s story resonates with you, here are some additional resources to check out:

Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders — A foundational read on servant leadership rooted in Scripture. Sanders makes the case that true leadership influence flows from character, not position. 

The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni — Lencioni argues that organizational health, built on clarity and trust, is the greatest competitive advantage a business can have. A great complement to the kind of values-based leadership Cynthia models. 

The El Paso International Museum of Art — If you’re in the Borderplex, visit the current Window to the World exhibit and follow their work on the mobile museum initiative.

The 323 Podcast  — More conversations with Christian business leaders in El Paso, Las Cruces, and Albuquerque on connecting Sunday faith to Monday work.

Learn More About Cynthia D. Horton

Cynthia is the founder of Shift to Grow Company, a leadership development firm based in El Paso that works with nonprofits and for-profit organizations across strategic planning, staff development, and organizational change. She also serves on the board of the El Paso International Museum of Art and has been inducted into the El Paso Women’s Hall of Fame. You can reach her at Shift to Grow Company or connect with her on LinkedIn.