Episode Synopsis
Benjamin Reese and Jeffrey Sherrod join Institute President Gregg Garner for a vital discussion on cultivating leadership skills in college. This episode examines how traditional college approaches may fall short in nurturing leadership qualities, essential in today's world and job market. The trio delves into the necessary changes colleges must adopt to effectively foster leadership among young people. It's an insightful episode for students, educators, and anyone interested in the evolution of higher education to meet contemporary leadership challenges.

College Conversations Season 1, Episode 12: Building Leaders - Is College the Secret? (Podcast Transcript)

Jeff Sherrod 0:04

Hey everyone, and welcome back to College Conversations. I'm Jeff Sherrod. And today we're digging deep into the world of leadership development in biblical higher education and what does leadership development look like for students that are at school, and they want to develop their leadership skills or capacity as leaders. In this episode, I'm joined by my co host, Gregg Garner, who was the president of the Institute for God in Nashville, Tennessee, and by one my fellow professors at the school, Benjamin Reese.

Together, we explore the process of developing leaders during college, we talked about leadership crises, the impact of technology, even on mentorship and that process of becoming leaders, the timeless relevance of Jesus's leadership model. It's a conversation that goes beyond just simple leadership maxims, I mean, really touches on those kind of authentic connections, the need for personal growth, and the integral role of experiential learning, even as we're learning to follow Jesus along the way. So before we jump into these conversations, just reminder, your support fuels our mission. If you enjoy College Conversations, remember to subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback means the world to us. Now let's get into the episode. This is College Conversations.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to College Conversations. My name is Jeff Sherrod, I'm joined with President Gregg Garner and today, we also have with us Institute Professor Benjamin Reese. Hey. And today we're talking about leadership development in biblical higher education, and the role and responsibility that colleges have in developing leaders talking about leadership development, I mean, this isn't a novel idea. It's an area that a lot of Christian colleges and universities focus on in terms of the things that they want students to have when they graduate, you know, by the time they graduate evidence, leadership skills or leadership capacity.

But I think it is an important area because many people perceive our society to be in a leadership crisis. Research from the Barna Group notes that four out of five, people affirm and nearly half of them strongly affirm that society is facing a crisis in leadership because there's just not enough good leaders right now. And this is mostly young people saying that these studies also note that large percentages of students feel like they don't have good leaders themselves who model or mentor or even are accessible. And this is true, especially like in church settings.

So I guess my question, Gregg, and I wanted to throw this out to you, just as question of like, you know, do you think that we're in a leadership crisis? What's the role of Christian higher education? If that crisis has real to do something about it? You know, one of the quotes I was looking at earlier was someone was talking about how the youth of this generation you know, are their their tyrants. They don't listen to their parents, but then you read who it's from, it's like Socrates, 400 BC, you know, is like, Is this one of those things that we're saying? Kind of, it's always an issue, the leadership and crisis and we just, we always make it something or do you think there's really something happening when we're talking about a leadership crisis, especially in a church? I mean, it is heartbreaking when people are like, I don't have leaders who are accessible and mentor me, and that model leadership.

Gregg Garner 3:23

Yeah, wow, that's a lot to think about. I yeah, I I don't think it's a new problem at all. Yeah, I think it is something that every generation has to contend with. But I doesn't. I don't think that minimizes the issue, right. It's funny, because we do have history and information that recounts to us a version of that history. And when we evaluate history, we sometimes can feel like we are more a part of that history than we actually are.

There is like this aggregate wisdom over the course of time that we've been able to proverbially step on the shoulders of giants and advance and yeah, certain areas, I think, most notably for us, it's like technology and, and maybe other other systems that required some kind of like, knowledge that someone needed a boost on in order to advance it. Yeah. And that's why schools of thought have existed, you know. But for Jesus even he saw a leadership crisis in his day. Yeah. He observed that the people were helpless and afflicted, and they were like sheep without a shepherd. And so he told his disciples that they should engage God in prayer in such a way that laborers could be sent out so that they could harvest what it is that God is doing with people. So you got two analogies there and yeah, kind of couple of them, right? So the laborers would be the shepherds. So Jesus wasn't just asking for people to develop capacity to harvest something.

He was highlighting that people are like sheep and sheep are like, wheat. And yeah, they need harvested, they need lead. He describes their condition as needing help, because they're helpless, needing protected because they're afflicted. And that it was going to be through the course of discipleship and prayer, that the kind of leadership would be developed in a person so as to participate with God in the harvesting of those sheep crossing. Yeah. So I think it was a concern for Jesus in his day. It but it was also a concern for the prophets and their days. And then it's going to be a concern for every generation. In that case, I don't think we have to feel like it's an emergency. Or that it's something anything more than something that could be put into our anticipatory institutions that attempt to resolve foreseeable problems. Yeah. So for example, we have to make sure our kids have a number sense and can read coming out of school, because that will be a problem when they're an adult if they can't do that. Right.

So we created an education system that foresees that issue, and then in advance attempts to provide the tools to solve it. Yeah. So I think that maybe the variability of leadership has to do with the diverse constructs within our cultures to even accept the social games that create our leadership concepts. So one of the things about Gen Z, is that they haven't been exposed to mass media on the social media side of things are used to saying things and not being responded to. Right like they can follow like an influencer. Ed Sheeran posts a new song like love you, Ed, that was so heartbreaking and healing at the same time. Edie may never read that. Yeah, right. But I bet that person feels like their voice was heard, right. And so there are these mediums that exists now, where you have large constituencies of people, quote, unquote, having their voices heard. But there's actually no one on the other side of the phone is yeah, there's nobody there. There's no construct, to require a response.

Even— shoot— today, you could program your chat GPT to be your auto responder. Yeah. So that someone puts a review on Yelp. And immediately it's like, well, thank you, Mr. Shared for your feedback here. We're always doing our best to accommodate our customers. And it's unfortunate that you had cold food served at your table. But next time, if you come in, just remind us of this post, and we'll make it right. We strive to do the best for our customers. And unfortunately, sometimes food comes out cold for various reasons, I look forward to seeing you and then not even be a human being right. But for our generation, that might have sounded like great leadership. That was a robot. Yeah, it was artificial intelligence. So I think that there, the every generation is introduced with new considerations that are related to whatever's emerged in that lifetime, that require people to especially those who are involved in the training of leaders, which should be schools and churches, right. They now have to take into consideration those new facts. So as to more effectively train.

Jeff Sherrod 9:37

Yeah. Leaders. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's an interesting, almost like the professionalization of leadership or just boiling it down to because there is pretend let's just call it fake or pretend access or imagined access to the best leaders in the world and you can, you know, directly DM them or whatever you can do. are, you know, you're not getting a response back, but you felt like you did. Or you can watch a video of the best teacher in the world? You know, I wonder if, like, one of the things I was I came across recently and other statistics, they were saying, like a 99, to the average age of a pastor was, what was it 4050 47 and 1992. And then 2017, it was 57. So I'd gone up, you know, 10 years. And that time, probably for a lot of reasons, there's churches that are closing down. And so you know, maybe it's just the ones that are left have older leaders, because they've been in the game longer. But it made me also wonder, like, you know, maybe because of that, even with churches closing down, there's just people that are less accessible than maybe they they were, and so people are finding leaders that maybe don't have, they don't really have some form of real access to, but they do have an imagined access to them, whether it's through online church, or through social media, you know, all those kinds of venues, but they're not actually mentoring them in any kind of productive way. Follow me there.

Gregg Garner 11:07

So you're saying that one of the responsibilities of leadership is to, particularly church leadership is to mentor their congregation? And because the average age of pastors is now 10 years older, after 15 years? You're putting together that there is a lack?

Jeff Sherrod 11:33

It made me I mean, I don't know all the reasons for that. It made me wonder like, you know, probably there's churches that are closed down, you know, the churches that have not closed down.

Gregg Garner 11:40

Sounds like nobody added to the pastoral census, they just aged. (Right.) It's been 2002 to 2017, or just say 92? (Right.) So over 25 years, the median went up 10. You know, that just that just says that maybe probably, I don't know. There's so many reasons. Yeah. Right, churches, churches decided, hey, we're going to implement a retirement program and create pensions, and we're going to adopt what we've seen in corporations, because now we have the finances to do that, because we have some stability. Maybe the the mega church phenomenon that burst on the scene in the early 2000s. Had a lot of guys retiring out of the business world and moving into the pulpit. Like with Willow Creek and in the those other types of Saddleback, those models of churches, maybe? I don't know, there's so many Yeah, it's hard for me to make any kind of conclusory trajectory as a result of a stat like that. So I guess I just wanted to know, like, what is? What is it that you're you're wondering,

Jeff Sherrod 12:49

My guess my question is, and this is what spurred my thought when you're talking about that people might find some form of leadership and social media that they don't actually have access to.

Gregg Garner 12:58

Oh yeah, I definitely think that happens. I was I met a gentleman who came to our church Saturdays from India, sweet guy. And he was actually appreciating my my teaching in church. And he just said he'd never heard anything like that. But he was like, it was a great teaching. And he's just excited to keep coming back and hearing teaching like that. And I said, Well, you know, growing up in India and having your teachers who were your teachers, and he goes, Oh, yeah, I had, I had some great teachers. One was TD Jakes. And then the other one was forgetting who it was. Oh, Kenneth Copeland. Yeah. And he taught, he talked about them as though they came to his church. Right. But they were, as you. You know, I continued to inquire they were on YouTube. Yeah. So I have seen evidence of people feeling like they've been taught. And I have also heard people talk about, like, being mentored by these virtual mastermind groups, where you get into like, Facebook group. Yeah. And a mask course. And you have some influencer or, or person of notoriety. Who is now teaching you and then you say, I was taught by that person. Yeah. So we, even when we talk about networks and grouping, the social media nomenclature uses the same vernacular. Right? Join our group. Yeah. Be a part of our network. Come into our room, or vert, you know, their virtual rooms, virtual groups and virtual networks. We just dropped the virtual Yeah. These days. Yeah. And I think it just translates over people just say, Yeah, I'm in a network with named influencer. Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Reese 14:46

I wonder like, in thinking through that, you mentioned that it's the responsibility of the church and schools to train leaders, thinking from the perspective of a young person thinking about going to a Christian school and Do you think that going to a Christian school is necessarily a an education and leadership? Or what about the young person who's like, I don't know, leadership doesn't seem like my thing is following Jesus? Does it require an interest in becoming a leader one of oneself?

Gregg Garner 15:20

That's a great question. And I think because we don't define leadership too often. And because our culture, depending on what social game we're in, yeah, usually makes a leader, the either the person on the top or the person with the most responsibilities, or the person with the most authority or power. And I would say, maybe even like extroverted gift sets. That question arises, yeah. Where I believe that a biblical definition of leadership would be more inclusive of varying personalities, including the more introverted types. Yeah,

Benjamin Reese 16:06

Cause I know, when I went to go to college, I knew I wanted to get into ministry, but I was like, not a pastor. I just the that idea of being a leader in that capacity was of very little interest to me, just from my personality, I didn't like standing in front of people, or like, the idea of leading people was just sort of frightening. So, but I didn't know where that placed me but I was like, I'll try to figure it out when I get there. Yeah.

Gregg Garner 16:35

And you know, there were a couple things going on. One was you were young. And in that case, you were pretty fluid. Because we know for a fact now you do just great standing in front of Yeah,

Benjamin Reese 16:45

Teaching and talking. I got tricked into it.

Gregg Garner 16:48

But but it can be discouraging, right? Especially if you don't have the kind of leadership that can push you beyond your own station, right? Like you believe yourself to be something as a young person going into college, you need that other person to lead you into who you can become. And even that person's belief in you helps you get there. Yeah. Today, I know that people are looking for that. That's why they pay for those Instagram tick tock programs to be mentored by someone, right. But that transactional experience, they're kind of de authenticates the more organic, visceral and proxemic relational development that seems to be necessary for a person to really receive the benefit of having learned from someone otherwise, you're just like hacking processes and thoughts and ideas.

I was talking to a group and just my previous meeting before this podcast, and it was it actually came from a preacher that I had when I was in high school, and I, my formative years junior in high school, I went to a predominantly African American church, and had some awesome pastors, and they were pretty dynamic and always had like, really, like catchy ways of communicating a concept or an idea. And he communicated that when it came to Jesus's disciples, one of the reasons why they need to be around him, and one of the reasons why he needed them around them, is because while everyone else could hear him teach things, not everything can be taught, something needs to be caught. Either this is one of those things. I don't know if he came up with it. Maybe you heard it for someone else. But it's that. And I think there's some truth to that. That if you're if you believe that leadership development is only on the other side of a curriculum, or some kind of process thought consideration. You really are programming AI at that point.

Yeah. But we are not an artificially intelligent entity or or biologic, were a biological life form that that is, is legitimate in and in variable and variable at the same time, like we were paradox. And there, there is something about the human soul that does catch things, just because it's in proximity. Like right now, we're talking and everybody hearing this podcast, they will only benefit based upon our ability to articulate, yeah, our ability to articulate even if we were to put it into categories of like, how performative are we in that case are entertaining are we? How profound are we in that we are reaching heights of thought that are outside the scope of what they've been able to reach? And then, and I guess proof Alan would be deep, you know, it makes my metaphor again, how deep we're trying to go. And then finally, how culturally relevant are we when the choice of words that we have in appealing to a broader audience that have mainly merely an academic one, but it's only thoughts and words. Were right now, us sitting here in this room, you're seeing my hands waving in the air.

As I'm talking. I'm looking at your eyes raised eyebrows nodding heads, we have all these nonverbals. But not only that, there's like an energy to Sure, yeah, we're literally passing frequencies to each other when I talk. You're not just hearing the frequency, you're feeling the frequency. And it's coming in so many, like nuances that we can't capture through the digital medium. Yeah. And so we're not just merely being programmed, when we're in the room with each other. There is an actual, authoritative experience that is shaping us, because we're sharing the same air that because we are literally having all of our faculties exhilarated by one another's presence, in some form or fashion. In and in that case, Jeff, I, I don't think that Jesus intended for us to develop virtual leadership that then could mentor us into the kind of people that harvest humanity, which should challenge our concepts of discipleship, even in an online forum chair, which I know we do an online Yeah. Yeah. A model.

Jeff Sherrod 21:38

Yeah. For students. And we've talked in thought and prayed a lot about it. Yes. Because of these reasons. Yeah.

Gregg Garner 21:43

And we recognize that this is the culture, this is where we're at. And people need that. But it's definitely a stepping stone you you've got to get with somebody that you're ready to follow. Right. And, and I think even that is tricky. I think now, because the internet has made it like in the 90s. Yeah, like really spiritual people, even early 2000s sheath around the day, but I don't hang around with him as much that I remember covering up that there were these people had a direct channel to God. And so they didn't need to talk to anybody else. Yeah. Because God told them, right. And it gave them a confidence. But I often viewed the confidence as an arrogance, right? Because they didn't need to have a conversation. I had questions — How is this rooted in Scripture?

And what do you do about the way you're going to impact a bunch of people through making this decision, like, but for them, they had the direct line, because they were mentored and led by the Holy Spirit, God himself, and then they would give me their little proof texts. And that was so hard and confusing. I think people will do the same today, yeah, with our new virtual gods, or mentors, or virtual writers. And they're gonna be like, and I read the book of so and so went to his clinic, sat under his teaching, and I feel good about what I'm going to do next. Now, recognizing that there, there's something missing there that God intended for us to have as human beings. Yeah. How can you say you love God? And you don't see when you don't love your brother, who you do? See. So the test there is that you actually have to have some kind of contact with the person, right? Yeah, of course, they weren't seeing each other at that time through zoom. They're seeing each other in person. And so like, there's your love for God is going to even be developed through your capacity to love the people, you're in communion with every, like, I feel sorry for the person who's being mentored or led by a virtual personality or disconnected personality, because they're never going to get the wonderful experience of having that person fail them. Having that person let them down in expectation, having that person having to apologize because they said it wrong. Right, having that person introduced to them the concept of a learning curve, because even though they had all the confidence in the world, they weren't right. Because they were still learning. And they were just a few steps ahead of that person. Like you don't get all of that intensity. Yeah. And you become a weaker person as a result. Right? You know, like, you become now a person who's who is being programmed for the automated ideal, rather than being a part of God's creation where human beings are all fall short.

Jeff Sherrod 24:37

Yeah, because you have to be able to, and I think that's part of, you know, that modeling as well as that, because, you know, Jesus does that so well. Throughout it, there's so in touch with his life. But if we're only accustomed to what people post, which is typically successes, or what they write about in their books, which is their idea that they've tested, but then they never get to see the things you're talking about like these That's also a form of leadership development because people are gonna fail all kinds of times in their life and they're just gonna be disqualified because they're gonna have their feelings hurt so badly that someone disagree with them. Yeah, that they can't actually, you know, function like, you know, I think that's another thing is that the they have to develop some kind of toughness to be able to see someone get knocked down and still going, Yeah, and you have to be around that to see that and see that someone can say, that hurt my feelings. And that's still that's okay to say so someone hurt my feelings or, you know, just being being human. And the way that God made us is, is, it's fine. It's who we are.

Benjamin Reese 25:35

I think that many young people don't even think that leadership includes a element of mentorship. Like even in the cultural metaphors that we use, like you're a sheep, or you're a follower, it all has negative connotations, because we think that being a follower is my diminishment of a part of ourselves rather than an opportunity for somebody to teach us how to think through things that could following somebody could actually be increasing our capacities, which I think most people think of following as some sort of negative thing now. Related to Yeah,

Gregg Garner 26:14

right. Even though we again, the nomenclature exists in our virtual mediums, like you follow that influencer. Yeah. Like literally that's the term right. But if I was to tell you guys Hey, guys, follow me. You'd be like, What a weird. What a weird who's he think he is Jesus? Yeah. But but if I if I send the, I don't know. Put a YouTube out there and say, subscribe below or follow me on my instagram or follow me on Tik Tok. Yeah, people were just like, yep, we'll do. Yeah, sounds good. Yeah.

Benjamin Reese 26:45

It is funny to think about that meta- social media metaphor being applied to discipleship terms. I'm just like, imagining young people being follow Jesus, I check in with them every once in a while, see what he's up to? Or, like, I don't know. That's what?

Gregg Garner 27:02

Yeah, yeah, like, nomenclature is so fun. And vernacular is so funny, because the subsequent generations typically don't know the etymology of the words that they're implementing right into their daily use. So for example, one of the things I love talking about is saying, like, Hey, man, where's that file on your computer? Oh, it's okay, I have it on a file on my desktop. The person does not actually think about a would desk that existed when the programmers first created the nomenclature for the software. Right? And, and they don't picture that there were files in manila folders that are shaped just like the ones that are iconically graphics onto our computers, even though they're blue. Right? Right, or whatever color we can design them as they don't, they're not making those connections in their mind. There's no visceral connection to the word. So they, they think desktop, and it's a it's goes to the computer. Yeah. And it's, it's like a concept with no grounding.

Benjamin Reese 28:03

Yeah, I saw an instructional manual that was trying to teach people in a long time ago, how computers worked. And they were trying to explain the concept of scrolling to them. So they have like a visual with a roll of paper. And they're like, it's like pulling down a roll of paper and seeing more of the paper, to try to get them to conceptualize what scrolling on a document is. So you know, just what you're saying. We've totally lost touch with the physical connection of what these these technological things are.

Jeff Sherrod 28:36

Yeah, with, with the result. And this is with result that if we're not careful, that same kind of nomenclature, when you come across following the Bible, yeah, we just we just don't sort

Gregg Garner 28:44

of trying to communicate, if you don't, if you don't get that the terminology that's being just a Gosh, thrust upon you through the very popular social media mediums. If you're not being conscious, and critically analyzing them, they can carry over into how you hear that same word used in another context. Yeah. So that when Jesus says, Follow me, we're not getting like a first century context for the concept. We're instead getting a 21st century, which, gosh, there are people out there who follow 1000 people, yeah. But in Jesus's day to follow him. He's pretty personal about you know, he's like, he's like, if you follow me, then here the conditions are following me. And they include some pretty extreme things as some of us know about picking up your cross daily to now yourself, but also that you're gonna gather with him and not scatter against him. Yeah, that you're going to take on his mind. Like there's so many things that wouldn't work. The way we use the term follow because today follows little like, like, there's no commitment to it. Right, because I can unfollow you at any time just as easily. Yeah. We're in his day. Gosh, to unfollow him. It's betrayal.

Benjamin Reese 30:09

Yeah. Right. can't follow multiple people in this metaphor that Jesus wants to use. You can on social media. Yeah. Maybe like steal something from this guy, like what he's saying here, but not this and you choose to follow this guy's Well,

Jeff Sherrod 30:23

Yeah. And I think that along with that we're only following people insofar as they benefit us in our world, right? It's like we're saying, like, I'm getting something from you. It's a new piece of knowledge or something interesting. But as soon as that stops happening, we're like, I'm kind of out on this right now. Yeah. And that's where, you know, when we're saying pick up your cross, you know, deny yourself, you know, this is not this is not the kind of following Jesus is talking about. There's gonna be something different in there. You can't just be like, Well, Jesus is, you know, I used to do that my younger years, it's not the thing anymore.

Gregg Garner 30:49

And let's be let's be direct about this if we're going to create a model for leadership as people who follow Jesus than he's it. Right. So it's not like we have to synthesize one. Right? Yeah, right. Like you were talking about the piecemeal thing, I follow this. And I like what they have to say here, and I follow this one like with us, like he is the image of the invisible God, He is the good shepherd. And we have to allow God through His Son to give us the model. That becomes the curriculum for leadership development. Yeah. And if we if we are doing what I see so often happening in leadership curriculums, which is deciding based upon data, studies, that these are the needs that exist in communities, and this is the way in which people have had the most success addressing those needs. And now we're a Christian school. So we're gonna take these texts and tell you, here's the Christian way to make that happen. Right. We're missing the greatest gift we've ever been given. Yeah, we know Jesus. Right. And so I think any effective leadership curriculum is just going to get people to know Jesus. Yeah. All the more and then to get them to love them so much. They want to be like him. Because they're, they're, you know, you emulate what you love. Right? Right. They're things you're just not ashamed of when, when you're actually you feel good. If someone goes, Man, you, you kind of like, you see, like Brian McKnight, man, I, I follow him. Someone told me that, you know, I'd be like, Oh, my gosh, the best I've ever got was Michael Jackson.

Jeff Sherrod 32:30

I feel pretty awesome. Yeah.

Gregg Garner 32:34

But it’s like we should feel great to imitate. And the problem is, if we just don't know, how we lead or what that look like, yeah, then we don't we don't answer the question appropriately. Right. So I think an effective effort by the church or by Christian schools, is going to have Jesus as the one who helps us to understand leadership. And it can't be the secondary effort. You can't be like, Hey, everybody, we're gonna open up class today, with a 10 minute reading on Joshua, who's a great leader. And yeah, here's Josh was great leadership, he said, because me and my also gonna serve Lord. So as leaders serve Lord with your household. Now, let's get into the good stuff. It can't be like that. It has to even challenge that good stuff. Yeah, as to say, Hey, this is the most this is what's most relevant right now in the business world with respect to organizational leadership management. And this is the model and this is all implemented. And this is, these are their ideas. Now, what is what is it like in Jesus? There's a conflict here, Jesus, Trump's, we can't be doing things like this. Yeah. It should be the, the filter by which we take in any of these concepts, right. But if we're not spending a sufficient amount of time, because we feel like we're hacking the system by getting the best leadership tips, I think we're really doing our job poorly as a Christian institution.

Jeff Sherrod 34:05

Yeah. If students were let's say, we have this kind of goes back to Ben's question here a little bit. But if the students coming in, we might have one students like, you know, hey, I want to be a leader and I want to serve the Lord. And, you know, I want to be high impact for God's Kingdom me, let's say a freshman persons coming in saying that, but then, you know, we might have someone else's like, like Ben said, I have no interest in leadership at all. But I definitely want to serve the Lord. I'm interested, Greg, how are you hearing? Are you hearing both of these as I mean, everyone needs to learn, right? Like, regardless of whether you're gonna be the person that maybe is more naturally inclined, or has personality to want to be in charge, or you're the person that's like, I don't ever want to be in charge of anything. I just want to help out. You know, what's the what is the room within Christian colleges for both of those, is it I guess I'm saying that both of them need to be challenged, right, because no one everyone needs to learn. But then I I guess my other sort my own preference here, and I'll see what you think. I do want people to come in with some sense of not come in, but have some sense of ambition, like and recognize, like if they start with a position that says, I'm not interested in being a leader, I think I want to challenge that and be like, yeah, maybe not in all traditional senses. But if we're following Jesus, Jesus was a leader. And there's going to be a leadership capacity that you're gonna be part of, but also an individual responsibility to be a leader, you're not gonna be able walk away.

Gregg Garner 35:28

So I said earlier, like, we have to define terms. Yeah, right. And our culture usually defines them for us. And which requires us sometimes to redefine them. I think, a real low hanging fruit definition of leadership would have us identifying the tearing of responsibilities and like the scope of influence that a leader would have. And in that case, everyone leads at some point, right, and has some way of leading but when we're talking about it, with respect to Jesus's calling, and his own vision, for what society needs in a shepherd, to protect protecting guide people, helpless and afflicted, then we have to implement a conscious effort to figure out what role we play in that. So as Americans, we're individually inclined to think about responsibility. Where in the Bible, and for Jesus, His teaching leads to Paul the Apostle, creating the metaphor of the Body of Christ, that there is a group effort in the implementation of the response to these kinds of things. And where the head is Christ, who is the Good Shepherd, we now together, as a body can respond to the needs of people being helpless and afflicted. So then you can be a part of a team that leads Yeah, though, you yourself may play a supportive role, right can now effectively say, and people do it sometimes, right? We're the leading school in terms of innovative communications for K through 12, or whatever it is, right? You can now be a part of leadership. Now again, let the Bible to find it. Well, of course, did Jesus have the kind of leadership that he wants to produce through his discipleship is one that is made available not to the increasing of revenues not to, or merely the, because it could have something to do that, but it's focused on people? Yeah. And it's focused on helping people feel safe. And, and, and secured, and, and also to be guided into how it is they can experience life in its fullness. Yeah. So you, you want to be a part of a team that that's that's the aim, right? If you're going to be a part of Jesus's trajectory for that. But then again, you can lead in other arenas that have nothing to do with Jesus. Sure. And God's not mad at you. Unless, of course, it's like, evil. But there are some very neutral things that people lead in that have nothing to do with following Jesus. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like I can be the I can I can lead in the manufacturing business for certain widgets. And those widgets have nothing to do with with Jesus, maybe the widgets have more to do with like, the beauty industry. Yeah. And you can be a Christian doing that. And God's the love you just don't say that you're, you're leading in the model that Jesus had as the Good Shepherd. Yeah. Right. Be realistic about and humble yourself. But I know our culture has a tendency to, to be motivated by a sense of guilt rather than a sense of truth. So it's like, so it's very mad at me for that one. Yeah.

Benjamin Reese 39:04

It is striking that the fat passage where Jesus notes, the affliction of the people and how leaders for him as defined by people who can address those needs, because I think that's just so different from how our culture views a leader, which is really somebody who can rise to the top as an individual as an individual, and usually create some sort of new market for himself some sort of new source of wealth for himself, and then maybe the people, people under him that join him in that enterprise or whatever. Yeah, kind of an I don't know, like an entrepreneur doing something different and new. But if we're following Jesus, we can't do something that's completely different or new we have to follow, which I don't think many leaders would want to say, but I'm following Jesus and doing this…

Gregg Garner 39:57

And then when people do say that followed Jesus, it's important to test that. That's right. Yeah. The test that like, it's not a hard test. What did Jesus do? Is the test? Yeah, I know that, for me that there's that movement in the 90s based on the book and his steps, which was the What would Jesus do? Which I thought was folly at the outset? Because it's just like, imaginations? What would Jesus do? And depending on my version of Jesus, if he's like, uh, you know, Santa Claus is gonna help people or not even nicer as a boy scout who's just gonna help old ladies cross the street. Whatever my image of Jesus is, I can just imagine it yesterday, why imagine he would.

Benjamin Reese 40:36

I remember a t shirt that had WWJD. And then it was Jesus, like a cartoon of Jesus hang gliding. And I mean, I think that captures the absurdity of it like whatever you want to imagine.

Gregg Garner 40:48

Yeah, what would he do? He’d hang glide. But really, the Gospels have been given to us that we knew we know what he did. Right? So it really does get back to what did Jesus do. And when we're able to evaluate his life and look at it and learn from it, it gives us the way. And he said that to us, he was the way. So now we know the way in which we're supposed to lead. And everybody can develop that capacity, because we've all been given the Spirit of God. Now, again, moving away from individual models, we think about that as a body. How are we part of a body that's leading? Yeah. And then when you think about leading, not in the way our culture defines it, but the way Jesus does, where you are actually attending to the needs of people at large, who are helpless and afflicted, afflicted, and in your harvesting them into that life in abundance that Jesus wants them to have? I think that just changes things so much, yes, that even many schools of thought out there with respect to leadership development would be disqualified. In terms of their efforts. Yeah, they'd be developing a different kind of leader. Yeah.

Jeff Sherrod 41:58

Yeah, I'm thinking, Gregg, as you know, we have had graduates that have gone on and be been part of leadership teams that are definitely, you know, doing wonderful things for the kingdom of God and, and are leading industries and companies and education and health care, all kinds of stuff. Like, what so when you're when you're, you know, for the institute, when you're thinking about designing, leadership development for the college, what are some aspects that like, you know, that are intentionally going into a student joining this school, and being part of that trajectory to, to get them to develop some of those leadership capacities,

Gregg Garner 42:35

Step one really has to be putting them in the room with Jesus. Yeah. Getting to know God. Like, there's, there's just no better way to put someone on the right path to leadership than getting them to spend time with the world's greatest leader in history. Yeah. And we do that through our Bible courses. Second, is to make sure that they are exposed to people who are on that same trajectory, maybe just a few steps ahead, at least spend time with them. They get to listen to them. And a lot of what they're going to observe, they won't be able to apprehend consciously, and it falls under that caught. Yeah. Right. Because they, you know, sometimes we we can't absorb information without having the ability to label and articulate what it is that we're identifying. Otherwise, we're, we're sensing it more than we're thinking about it. Yeah. And then I'd say another another step is that we, once people are given a decent enough Foundation, with respect to their knowledge of Jesus and their experiences with others who are following that way, we help the student become conscious of it. And it's typically in contrast to their culture. Because there are so many axioms that we implement, as stewards of our culture, even unwittingly, that need challenged by our relationship with the Lord that opened our eyes and fulfill Jesus's mission to take us from blindness, the sight so that we changed. So maybe, in my culture, being a leader meant being in charge. And maybe over the course of time through those classes, I get in a discussion where I find out that I feel like a failure because I'm not in charge. And then, in the class, we evaluate that up alongside scripture and yeah, and find out maybe, maybe charge is not a direct indicator of success. And we find new terms that we care about like Stuart Ship servanthood and building one another up. And then we see certain stories different rather than wanting to be Moses who's whose arms are outstretched and leading the whole people, you realize that Moses couldn't keep his arms up without a couple of guys help, who were standing there next to him and, and and you stop coveting who it is that you're not. And I gosh, if people learn the word, and they really get the fruit of the Spirit in them, their leadership contribution will emerge. Yeah, it'd be, it'd be a natural thing. But there is, at a certain point, a conscious journey one has to take to again, sift out the culture, sift out what's been axiom in there or unexamined in their idea about leadership, and then consciously apply the, the word of God, which gives us freedom. Yeah. And I think it makes room for all kinds of people. And it's so exciting to me. Yeah, because we did not make ourselves right. practical example. I know, guy, he's indeed a leader. But he's so soft spoken, even when he tries to yell, you can't hear him. So he's not going to be a leader on the field. Right? He's the, you know, in a live moment where you're trying to implement projects, you can't even hear him, yeah, over the noise of traffic. You can't hear him. But if you give him a pen and a paper and and he can create a plan, and then you give him a venue where people have have that plan, and he can walk them through the plan, he can implement a very complex project. Yeah. But if the model for him of leader requires him taking a class, where we're going to teach you how to be loud, and extroverted, and, and to be improvisational, there, there is one of our classes where we go through this and talk about leaders. And I know that the students are actually in the course right now, because I saw them reading the shanton compound, which evaluates a story that has community building as a necessity and you have the natural ascendancy of certain characters, some of them based upon their previous lives and experience others based upon their their current gift. gifting. Yeah, and you have to ask the questions, you know, what, what makes a person emerge in these types of positions, and then you realize, Wow, there that the natural ascendancy into these positions does require a certain amount of intellect. Quick wittedness energy, to a certain degree, like,

Jeff Sherrod
Not everybody has it. Yeah. resoluteness. I think there's another Yeah, just like, Yeah.

Gregg Garner
And if you don’t have that, so what? You have something else? Stop, coveting. Stop trying to be that other thing, right? Find out what you have. You were actually talking to me about this the other day, Jeff. And I was impressed because I know it's who I am. But it's paradoxical to people. And that is that while I am very fast, I'm also very slow. And you were the first person I've known he was able to mirror that back to me without me having to initially interface it. In you were describing the way I lead, actually, that there is this. Like, you know, I am quick witted, and I'm able to come up with things on the fly. But at the same time, I valued the timing of things, right. And sometimes that makes things slow.

Jeff Sherrod 48:43
Yeah, I was noting, I think one of your your your great skills that I've seen over the years is your sense of timing, like when things are ripe. It's a term that you've used in the past, like, when do we actually take it off the tree? And we're ready to say, Okay, it's ready to go. Yeah.

Gregg Garner 48:57

So it's like, for me to tap into the way God made me and to surrender into that has me as a leader, even though I have lots of pressures to pull the trigger all the time do this, we need this. Now we need this. Now. That's not the way God made me. And if you want a leader who's just gonna always do that, like, I'm not the guy, but the way that God made me and probably because he's placed me in this position for this season of time, in believing that I could be the right guy for it. Part of that includes me going hold on, let's step back. Why are we doing this? What's it for? How is this going to impact us over the next I asked those questions. Yeah. And I don't know. There are other leaders who are not like that there are other leaders who have like this kind of very clear vision for what needs to happen next. And they are just like, hammering it into existence. And I'm just not that like, Yeah, I'm not that. That's not the way God made me. I'm just interested in what everyone else has to say. I can or like, even recently, someone at church did a sermon in there. It was Parker, he was like, Greg frustrates me. Because I want to do things. Yeah. And just go questions

Jeff Sherrod 50:09
The question’s always like… well, what do other people think? Yeah.

Gregg Garner

And that's that's typically what I want to know, what are what are other people's perspective on this? Because I really believe that for eyes are better than two and eight eyes are better than four. It gets to be a mess in terms of efficiency if you get more than a certain amount of people, but nonetheless, that's just the way that I am. It's the way that God made me. Is there some way to grow? Yeah, there is. There's always ways to grow, but I'm gonna grow within that trajectory of the person. Yeah, God made me.

Jeff Sherrod
That's right.

Gregg Garner
You know, and so I think everybody is can develop leadership capacity. You've been creating the image of God. Yeah. So you have it. But again, don't let culture define what that leader is that you're supposed to become. Or you'll really hate yourself. I think, yeah, in the end.

Jeff Sherrod

Yeah, you'll waste a ton of time trying to be something that you're just not, God didn't make you.

Closing

Thanks for listening to college conversations. If you have ideas for the podcast, including topics or guests, or even just questions you might have, we would love to hear them. Contact us using the link in the show notes. Thanks and God bless.

Also see: 

Gregg Garner
The Institute for GOD 
Crisis in Leadership - Barna Research Group

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