Episode 200 - Leaders On Leadership With Dr. Rick Rhoads
Doing the inner work and always being open to change are marks of an impactful and responsible leadership. Dr. Rick Rhoads ensures that he remains an effective leader by undergoing constant spiritual formation. In this conversation with Dr. Tracey Jones, he shares the vital role of spiritual directors in helping him perform his role well as the president of BCM International, a global Christian ministry. Dr. Rick explains how aligning his leadership with God’s purpose allows him to remain disciplined and committed to his everyday goals despite the many hardships along the way. He also delves into the crucial act of saying no, how to replenish your own “tank,” and creating your vision with the people around you.
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Leaders On Leadership With Dr. Rick Rhoads
Welcome to the latest episode of the show, where we pull back the curtain on leadership and talk with leaders of all ages and stages about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I am extremely excited to have Dr. Rick Rhoads as my guest. Rick, welcome.
It's great to be here. Thank you for having me on.
You're welcome. Rick and I go way back to our Lancaster Bible College days. He is my hero. He is a person I hope to grow up and be 1/10 as tremendous as he is. I'm so excited to talk and unpack the price of leadership with him. I want to tell you a little bit about Rick's background so you understand where he's coming from.
He's going to talk about this. We'll cover this a little bit at the end. Rick is President of an organization called BCM International, which is all about reaching children, strengthening the church, and empowering leaders. He and his wife, Naomi, have been married for 28 years. They have two adult children and two grandchildren. Rick and Naomi have served in the areas of student ministry, pastoral leadership, Christian education, and global leadership for many years.
During his tenure, Rick has served with Lebanon Valley Youth for Christ, LCBC Manheim, Calvary Baptist Church, Lancaster Bible College, Capital Seminary and Graduate School, and BCM International. Rick holds a degree in Bachelor of Science and Christian Education from Lancaster Bible College, a Master of Arts in Leadership for Evangelism and Discipleship from Columbia International University, and a Doctor of Global Leadership from George Fox Evangelical Seminary.
Rick has a wealth of international experience in the development of global Christian education campuses on four continents, researching and equipping Christian leaders on five continents, and having worked to strengthen the church and global leaders in over 35 countries. There you have it. We're going to unpack all these incredible experiences that you have had.
It's an honor to be here with you. When I even listen to what you said, I get tired of listening to it. I'm grateful for the gift that God has given in my life and the things that He has allowed me to be a part of. Many of those pieces are great experiences and memories. I know God is refining me. Every one of those experiences teaches me valuable lessons, chipping away at the ego and the old self, and prayerfully making me more like Jesus every day. I am so honored to be a part of it and share. Whatever I've learned is yours and anybody else's who's tuning in to this show as well.
Finding Transformation In Loneliness
I appreciate that. Let's get right into it. Leadership is one of the most talked-about and written-about topics. Our dear friend and fellow president, Dr. Teague, wrote a book called Jesus Leader. There is no better leader. Let's unpack what it takes to be a leader. My father did a speech called The Price of Leadership many years ago. This is the framework for the show that we do.
He talks about four things that you are going to have to be engaged in, exposed to, or come through to truly be a true leader, and not just a LINO, a Leader In Name Only. The first of those is loneliness. We've heard it's lonely at the top, or heavy is the head that wears the crown. Can you unpack what loneliness as a leader has looked like to you throughout the different stages of your life, and maybe some words of advice for the readers who may be experiencing that?
The value of what your dad wrote so many years ago is so powerful as well, because many leadership books don't address this issue. If they do address it, it's a quick chapter in a bigger leadership book. This is one of the most significant pieces that anybody who's called into leadership, particularly higher levels of leadership, will experience on significant levels.
Even as I thought about our time together, there was a phrase that stood out to me that I wrote down. The phrase is, “Known by many, but known by very few.” That's something that's captured my heart. The more leadership I've been a part of and the larger the organization or the larger the responsibility, I continue to grow my following throughout my years. That can be a healthy thing, and that can be an unhealthy thing. It's all about how you hold it.
When I was 21, I could walk into a Kmart or a Walmart, and nobody knew who I was. You could walk around in anonymity. You could buy your stuff and leave. These days, I'll say to Naomi, “Do I have to go into Target? Do I have to go there?” It captures this piece because you can't get out of Target or Walmart without running into multiple people. Those conversations have to happen. You want to honor people well, but many people, the deeper you go into leadership and the higher you go, know about you.
Many people know you. Maybe it's from a time you spoke or your social media sites. They assume they know you, but you're truly known by very few people. In that place, this idea of loneliness can set in, where you realize that there are few people who truly want to be around you just for being with you. I often say it this way. I say, “How many people want to be around Rick? Not Dr. Rhoads or President Rhoads.” You can name all your titles. I say, “How many people want to be around Rick? How many people know Rick?” For me, that has been a significant lesson that I've been learning throughout the years and continue to learn.
How do you navigate that season of loneliness well? For me, there have been some intentional pieces I've had to put in place to offset that because I'm not going to know everybody well, however many thousands of people that is, whatever that is. I'm not going to invest in all of those relationships at the same level, but I do need a couple of people who know me deeply and are willing to be beside me, enjoy time together, and be in a relationship where you can trust and know you can say anything to them.
Over the years, I've added a couple of key pieces. One is a spiritual director. I'm very intentional about seeing a spiritual director. I typically will see one every 2 to 3 months. I grab somebody who's not a part of my network, and somebody with whom there's no dual relationship, to use a counseling term. They're under my leadership or in our organization. This is somebody completely separate. I often say to them, “I don't want you to know anything about me. I want you to be fully honest with me, so that I can hear what I need to hear.”
I have a spiritual director. I also am very consistent about keeping spiritual mentors in my life. These are usually individuals who are maybe somewhere 15 to 20 years in front of me down the road. The way I select them is I often see leadership, humility, or something in a person where I'm like, “Whatever it is they have, I know I don't have that yet.”
I need that from individuals where I can learn about what's going on in their lives. I can see how they navigated maybe family issues, marital issues, or even work-related issues, and how they handled them in their spiritual formation in life. To learn and grow from them and have somebody who's praying for you consistently, you can share on deep levels, and you know they've got your back, regardless.
The other thing I do is select friends, having a couple of key friends who are go-to people. I have three, and they're lifelong friends. I'm always investing in time with them. We give each other the freedom to go back and forth and be ourselves. You're not holding a role. You're not having to watch your words, but you have the ability to have life-on-life relationships. Without some of those pieces in my life, the loneliness is real.
You can't share everything that's going on in your life with everybody. I've seen leaders who do that and say, “I'm an authentic leader.” Yet, they're oversharing. It creates an unhealthy dynamic in the organization. It can create unhealthy codependency. Even though I would say I'm an authentic leader, I share the right amount of authenticity. I have had to learn that over the years. Being authentic does mean that you share a part of yourself with people, but you can't share everything. There is this key loneliness that can set in.
For me and my history, and this is probably a key piece when I think about J. Robert Clinton's work in the past, The Making of a Leader, I can look back and see that when I was diagnosed with bone cancer at seventeen, I was given a terminal diagnosis of one to two years. I went from playing sports, going to homecoming, and living the high school dream, or whatever it is, to all of a sudden, I'm in the hospital. I had my right leg amputated as part of the treatment plan. I started chemotherapy immediately. I'd spent over a year in the hospital from diagnosis.
The Making of a Leader: Recognizing the Lessons and Stages of Leadership Development
At the age of seventeen, you go from being in the midst of all these people who know you and all these friends you're spending time with to lying in a hospital bed with very few people coming to visit you. It was in those early years of transformation that God taught me a lot about loneliness, what it meant to be in that space by yourself, and to recognize how deep and how important those times are to be present with him. It's this transformational piece. I offset it with these key relationships I need, like a spiritual director, mentors, and friends.
I also realize that this space in this place is important to recognize that Jesus went through this as well. Throughout the New Testament, we see Him engaging and withdrawing. He's always engaging in the mission of God, but immediately after that or before something significant in the New Testament, He was always withdrawing to a lonely place, to a hillside, or to the wilderness to be present with God. To add the last but most important relationship, it's been a space where I've very intentionally said, “In this place of loneliness or this place of being alone, I'm not alone.” To see it as a time to be present with God, to notice him on new and deeper levels, and to be invited into that space.
Differences Between A Mentor And A Spiritual Director
When you go off as Moses did for 40 days or as Jesus did, and we see examples all the time, that's where a lot of leaders will go into prayer and fasting for a certain amount of time to separate themselves. There is a good aloneness or loneliness to be present. I liked your differentiator between a mentor, which is a word we use a lot. It’s a supporter. Your spiritual director is more like a steward who's going to tell you what you need to hear. Can you tell me how you hone in? What are your qualifiers for that, other than God bringing them into your life? What's the difference between those two levels? This is something a lot of people could benefit from, myself included.
A mentor is anybody you know, a friend, or a person that you simply recognize and see that they have something to offer that you don't have. Often, these are untrained people. They come through your family networks, your friend networks, or even somebody who's recommended to you. A spiritual director is somebody who has gone through training for spiritual direction. Some people would liken it to that of a person who's a counselor. Spiritual directors will often function as counselors as well.
A spiritual director will often go through a 2 to 3-year training for spiritual direction, where they are guided and go through a process of helping someone to notice and discern the will of God. Often, it's set up like a counseling appointment where you seek a professional, a network of spiritual directors. You go meet with them and find the right fit. You can meet once a month or once every two months, but you'll go in for an hour. You'll share parts of your story. They'll help you discern through it and notice what God is saying and what He is doing in your soul.
They'll also help point out the hubris or the ego in you. All of us struggle with that to some extent. A spiritual director who does their work well won't shy away from confronting you directly or asking you the hard questions and helping you notice whether that was God prompting you into that, whether that was your own will trying to make something happen, or whether it was your ego trying to deliver something significant.
I love it. A counselor who has a Christian background, would that suffice, or do these people go through a certain training for this?
There's a specific training for it. It would be different than a Christian counselor. They go through specific training for it.
Combating Weariness With Discipline
Thank you, in case our readers are wondering that, because I'm like, “This is very exciting.” I always learn so much from you. Thank you for sharing that. The next thing that we talk about is weariness, and that feeds what you talked about. One of my favorite books, and you know this, is The Master Plan of Evangelism. Jesus had his three. You have to have leadership theory and leader-member exchange. You have your ingroup. The more you try to be for more people than that, the more you work against yourself as a leader.
We then fall into weariness. You get a lot of, “I've got to be there for the people. I got to be present.” We talked about this before we started recording about reproducing other leaders. That means you have your core, and then they start off shooting like little spider plants. Talk to me about weariness and how you stay on top of the game. You are in a lot of different countries. You're seeing a lot of things that spiritually make you weary, let alone physically, and all that other stuff. How do you stay in top form to finish that race strong?
For me, it comes down to my disciplines. I had a mentor in seminary. I was in my late twenties. The mentor said this to me. We were sitting down, talking through something. He said, “You're a gifted person, but you have no discipline.” He came at me and said, “Almost everything you've accomplished at this point, whether it's your accomplishments or even in ministry, a lot of that has been on God supernaturally going before you, or you've gotten by on giftings and talents.”
He said, “The place God wants to take you in life is going to stall out quickly if you continue to do things the way you’re doing them.” What keywords from God through a mentor, to listen to and to hear that. Those are the types of conversations you walk away from where you’re like, “I think that was good for me. I don't think that was good for my feelings.”
The place God wants to take in your life will stall out quickly if you refuse to change your ways.
You’re like, “Thank you. It's hurtful, but it's not harmful. It's pay me now or pay me later.” How amazing. All these years later, you still remember that particular line.
He asked me, “How are you doing with reading? As a leader, you need to be reading consistently.” I don't fully remember what I said to him, but the gist of it was that I wasn't. He knew it. He's the one who turned me on to it. He said, “You need to discipline yourself to read one chapter a day in a book, and every 13 or 14 days, you're getting through another book. It's a discipline that you're being mentored by people who are out there that are alive and you're never going to meet, but you're also being mentored by those men and women who've gone before you who are already in eternity. They have valuable things to say. They're becoming mentors of you by extension.”
That piece was significant. That was probably the season between 28 and 33, 34. Five or six years of ministry and leadership, where I had multiple challenges from different directions from people to say, “God has used you a lot. There's something significant He has done in your life, but you're not going to go any further than your discipline.” I say that now at the age of 52 in the role I'm in.
I live and die by my calendar. It's a spiritual formation tool. My disciplines are so important because of the number of things that find me on any given day. Some of these can be large-scale crises from somewhere in the world, and some of these can be life or death decision events because we serve and work in countries like Ukraine and Myanmar. We're in other countries that I won't even mention here. There are some decisions and the weight that comes with those decisions that I don't take lightly. They're heavy. Some leaders have said to me, “You get 2 or 3 of those a year.” That could be true for certain positions. There are other roles where you find you have more.
For me, a part of how I combat the weariness is that there's a high level of discipline. It starts with getting good sleep. It starts with eating well. I get up early in the morning. I'd get a lot of work done before other people get to the office. I start my day with spiritual formation practice and the discipline of reading scripture, but I read it slowly. I might get through a paragraph, a verse, or even a sentence or two, but I read it slowly. This is a practice out of church history. You read it slowly, invite the Holy Spirit to speak to you through the scripture, and say, “What I'm reading, is it true of me? Is it true of my leadership? I'll start with that practice every morning.
My disciplines throughout the day are extremely important. I'll start by emailing. I might do whatever emails are needed for the day, and then I'll go into a time where I'm meeting with people. Throughout the day, I have these practices embedded. I usually keep half an hour to an hour between my scheduled meetings, where I can pause and shut the door to my office. I might sit in one of the chairs separate from where my computer is and take a time of silence and meditation. I'll take time for prayer, or I'll take time to sit, turn the lights off, wind down, and get re-centered for a few minutes before I re-engage with the next meeting.
At the end of the day, when I come to it, I often take a time to do a spiritual practice and examine where I ask the question, “Where did I see God show up today? What do I notice in what He’s prompting me or calling me to do with how I treat another individual or a decision I make?” I recognize with hands wide open, “This is a work God has called me to. I'm not just here to be about building the kingdom of God and transforming others. My work is actively transforming me.” I see it as a two-way street where God has called me into this to transformationally refine my soul.
The weight of all of this can be extremely wearying, so I always ask the question, “How can I fill my tanks emotionally, physically, and spiritually?” I'm giving out. When we're in ministry, we're serving what's called a high-touch field, where in every interaction with individuals, there can be an emotional expenditure and physical expenditure where we're giving out. There have to be these things that we're doing to fill our tanks back up. I've asked those hard questions, like, “What drains my tank? What fills my tank?”
I love to cook. When I leave here each day, I typically go home and have some meal I'm preparing for my wife and me. That fills me. I love that process of getting food and preparing it. I love my time with Naomi. She gets home, and we can have this great time for 45 minutes to 1 hour, lingering over some good food and catching up on our day.
I love to ride bikes. I've learned every night that I need to be on my bike. It's a great physical exercise time to be out on the bike, where I can think through and process significant issues that are going on. It's filling me. It's energizing me. I'm also getting that stress out on my body. I say all of this under the weariness. That discipline of having that every day can create a weariness that if you're not doing those things to fill your soul back up, you become very weary and tired quickly.
If you are not doing things that fill your soul, you will become weary and tired very quickly.
I also place in their Sabbath rhythms throughout the year. Every couple of months, I'll take a 2 or 3-day retreat away. I'm very intentional about our vacation time or our Sabbath time as a married couple. Our kids are adults. They're moving on, so we've got more time to invest. I'm always strategic about how we slow down, how we pause, how we rest, and how we continue to fill our bodies back up so we don't get into this place where we're so weary, which leadership will, in general, do to all of us.
The devil loves that, too. If he knows he can't do whatever, he'll at least make us tired and exhausted, or have chronic fatigue or burnout. It's real. We still have this mortal part of us for however long. I appreciate you sharing specifically how you deal with the expenditures and the importance of who's pouring back into you. We talk a lot about servant leadership. Even Jesus had people serve Him and said, “If you don't do this for me, you can't be part of the kingdom.” It's reciprocity. Thank you for those details.
Preparing The Top 10 Things To Do Each Day
We covered loneliness. We covered weariness. The next thing my father talked about was something called abandonment. It’s not like abandoning a pet or abandoning a marriage. His abandonment was that you have to stop thinking about what you like and want to think about in favor of what you ought to and need to think about. It’s focus or singularity, as I talk about in Spark. You alluded to it that you have people to help you get from your FOMO, your bright, shiny object, or the good to great distractions to the highest purpose. Any additional feedback on what you need to stay focused on?
There are a couple of processes I use in that. One is that I, like most leaders, have a running list of visionary pieces that we want to accomplish in the organization and mission. I also have a running list of “Here are some crisis management pieces that we're actively doing.” I then have a running list of “Here are tasks that need to happen.”
Probably on the most pragmatic level, part of my process every morning when I'm doing some of that scripture reading, sitting, and processing is I always say, “What's the top ten for today? What are those top ten items that if something is not done, the mission is not going to move forward and the vision is not going to be realized?”
In that top 10, there'll be 2 or 3 things that I'm going to do that are very vision-oriented. It's something that we want to bring about. Maybe it isn't reality yet, but we want to speak something new into existence. We want to move the organization forward. I put on that list, “We want to be in such-and-such a country next year.” There are great conversations happening on it, but I wanted people to actively hear in the organization that we are going to start moving towards this. People keep saying, “We're going to that country?” I'm like, “Yeah, it's going to happen.” People are excited about it. If I hadn't said anything, it wouldn't have moved. It wouldn’t happen.
I also realize from that list that there is going to be some crisis management. If you don't engage in something, it could go somewhere that we don't want. There might be something coming up in a country around the world or in some department in your organization where there's a crisis that is actively happening. You need to address the things we need to mitigate at this point, so it doesn't become something bigger and something doesn't get out of hand. How can you redirect it towards a healthy direction that it needs to move forward?
There are also these tasks that need to be done. Some of these tasks are items of administration that need to happen. If they don't happen, the organization is not going to move forward well. In this category, I also put key things. I'm going to write a thank-you note to a leader that maybe I haven't spoken to in a while, and it's going to be very intentional. It's going to be precise. It's going to be authentic to them. It's going to be a note that in a day or two, they're going to open it up, and there's a deeper connection that's felt there.
I'm always thinking about what those items are that ultimately need to happen. When you hone in or say, “These are the tasks I'm going to do,” there are other things you have to abandon or say, “They're not going to be done today.” Any and all leaders who've been in any leadership role you realize the issue isn’t that everything is ever going to get done. We can answer that now. It's not, and you've got to be all right with that. It's about giving the time you have in a formational way to the right things in the right space.
There's a people issue that comes out of this. When you abandon a task or say, “This one's not going to make the top ten today,” or whatever for your month, people can get hurt or people can get wounded. I try to be honest with people about that. I get back to them and say, “I know this is important to you. We're not going to be able to get to it for a month or two. I know that's probably what you don't want to hear, but that's the reality where we're at in the organization. I hope you can understand.”
Relationship loss happens through some of those. Sometimes, people who used to be good friends can cool off and go through seasons. There is a loss with all of this that has to be realized that a leader takes on. When you choose to do one thing, you're actively saying no to two or three other things. The reality is we're not God. We don't have infinite capacity, so we have to always make the choice of what we're going to say yes to and what we're going to say no to.
Spiritual Formation: We do not have infinite capacity like God. We always have to choose which things to say yes or no to.
I love that you said that when I give you time, in what way? You said it's a formational way, a relational way, or a transactional way. I thought that was great because time is so important. Saying no to something is loss and death. It's done. Let your yes be yes, and let your no be no. You look at somebody and say, “I can't get to that right now. It's not going to be on my radar,” or, “It's not a good fit thematically or where we're going to go.” Anybody whose heart is in it will say, “I get it. Thank you for being truthful with me.” If they snark back, you probably dodged a bullet. They were looking for something from you. I appreciate that.
It is tough because it's counterintuitive. Are we here to bless everybody? Jesus said no to a lot of people. Of all the people He passed, did He heal all of them? No, very few. It's something to remember about what we do with people. You have to be very focused. You said you have your running list. You've got the visionary piece and the task piece. What was the second one? Was that the crisis management, the fire piece?
Yeah. For leaders who are tuning in to this, it's going to differ for each one of you. Some of you deal with more crisis management than others. In my role, that's a significant piece.
When I worked in defense contracting in a Fortune 100 company, it was fire central. I'm thankful I can focus more on the 1 in 3. For leaders out there, if you're in this a lot, some of it is the nature of where you're serving. Thank you. I love the amount of detail you're giving us. I'm almost done with my second sheet of paper, so I’m glad it's recorded.
Creating Vision With People Around You
The last one is vision. We hear a lot about vision. As a young leader, I used to think, “I don't have this touched frontal lobe that can see in the future,” but my father was always like, “Tracey, you see what needs to be done, but it's doing it.” It's this discipline aspect that you hit earlier. You can have all the vision in the world, but faith without works is dead. There's this in my heart, but in my hands. How do you hone your vision for BCM and what's coming next?
I'm a big advocate of looking at heritage and understanding the organization that you come from or that you're in. I’m coming up on three years in this role as president. I committed deeply for the first two years to studying the organization. I'm going to continue to study the organization. It's so significant, global, and large. It's going to be to the day I'm not president that I'm still learning, which should be true for all of us.
I look at it this way. There won't be an organization for me to even come serve at if the dear men and women who came before me didn't faithfully do what they did. I always say this. There is no one on the planet who's a self-made man or woman. There are people who have invested in all of us throughout our lives. It’s like that comment I made earlier about a professor who was direct with me. If he hadn't said that, I'd be a different person. There are many people like that in all of our lives that shape us, so we're not self-made.
When I come into an organization or you come into an organization, they're handing this good work. In this case, with BCM International, it's 88 years old. We're coming up on our 90th year in a year and a half. They're handing this deep level of almost nine decades of work globally. Prayerfully, after 8 or 10 years or whenever I stay in this presidency, I'm going to be handing this off to the next person to steward well.
I’m stewarding this thing for just a period of time in its much bigger season. I want to respect with dignity and humility that people have come before me because I couldn't do what I'm about to do in this season without them, and need them. I also want to recognize I'm a small breath in this bigger timeline of what God is doing.
When we ask the question about vision, I think about it that way. To understand where you've come from helps inform where we're going, how we refine that vision, and how we begin to look at what the needs are around the world that maybe shape our vision. A vision should always be something we're speaking into reality to be an answer for a question or problem that exists. If there's no problem that we're trying to solve, I often ask, “What are you doing with your vision? Are you aimlessly showing up to work each day?”
Refine your vision by looking at the needs around the world. Be ready to be an answer to a problem that already exists.
There are these meta visions, which are overarching, and then there are more of these micro visions that happen along the way that help us get to the meta vision. I'm a visionary developer. I know how God shaped me. I'm one who can look at the history of an organization, look at the world, and say, “Here's what we've been historically. Here's what the actual needs in this culture are now. How do we meet those needs?”
For BCM International, our big vision is reaching children and strengthening churches. It looks different in different countries. I had a teammate say a couple of months ago, “We're serving in Brazil. We minister in the Favelas, which are slums with children. There are public schools attached to them, so we're ministering in these public schools.”
Somebody asked the question, “Do you have any problem if a BCM missionary becomes a principal of one of these schools?” I'm like, “I have no problem at all with that. That's where the issue is. That's where the need is. Let's show up there.” They ask the question, “It's not attached to a church per se.” I'm like, “It doesn't matter. Show up there.” We have BCM International principals in eighteen different public schools in Recife, Brazil. They're feeding, ministering, and caring for almost 10,000 children a week in these schools.
When I was down a few years ago after this conversation, I got to go into two of these schools and meet their leadership team. The principal brings the vice principal in, and there are all these people around. I'm like, “Who am I talking to?” It turned out that the whole leadership team of this public school, which is run by a communist government, is all BCM missionaries. It was such a beautiful thing. They have all this Bible training and curriculum. They're feeding these children and clothing them. It was a beautiful thing. That vision is unique to Brazil, but it's a vision that was an answer to a problem that existed. It captures our overall meta vision of reaching children and strengthening the church.
I love that you talked about the meta and the micro. Like you, I am in a heritage business. I'm true to the ultimate DNA, but then the micro visions that extend out underneath that. That's great, as leaders, when we finally realize we have to be discerning about what makes the cut, but we don't have to be so rigid about it. There are many different creative ways that we can be in the ministry of our marketplace. That is always changing.
Isn't it true that some of those visions come from us as leaders, but a lot of those visions come from your great teammates?
Absolutely, or the marketplace. Spark is coming out soon for teens. Spark came out a few years ago, and Arthur Wood said, “I've got to get two copies. Can we do this for teens?” I was like, “I never would've thought of that. I haven’t been a teen in a long time.” Was it a good one? He was kind of a snarky person, but I was like, “Let's do that.”
You're out there. Even that person asking you the question almost in a push-up way against it, which I'm a proponent of, too, because it lets you answer, “I have thought about this, and here's why.” Sometimes, even those questions will get you to affirm or get clear on your stance, which is a great way if you're just open and listening.
God Always Cares About Us
Anything else? We've covered loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Is there anything else in your leadership journey or particularly going on with BCM? I know you've told me so many stories about it. I'm glad you got to share at least one thing about what's going on there. What is on your heart? For such a time as this, it seems like people, more or less, are realizing, “If it's to be, it's up to me.” I'm very excited to see so many people at any stage of life saying, “It's time for me to step into a more active leadership role.” Anything else you would like to share with our readers?
God cares equally as much about being with you as whatever you do for Him. We live in a Western culture that is very doing-oriented. I won't go into the history of that. Most of you understand that. We do a whole lot more than being. Rest Sabbath, and being present with God is not easy for any of us. I would simply say that God cares as much or more about being with us and actively transforming our souls. The work that He does in us is the outflow of that which will be a healthy ministry as He transforms others.
Spiritual Formation: God cares equally as much about being with you as whatever you do for Him.
I grew up in a time and space where you were taught to be active, engage the world, go after things, and probably didn't learn as much about what it looked like to be transformed by God, be present with God, and allow Him to transform your soul first. If there was one thing I would say about true leadership, self-leadership, allowing God to transform you, being present with him, and then your leadership being an overflow from that, is so essential.
I listen to the Bible on our audiobook. You talk about reading at least a chapter. I don't listen to audiobooks, but the Bible, that's how it gets into me. I listen for at least an hour a day. Looking at Moses from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and even 1 Samuel, Moses was anointed, but what went on during all those years, where it's up and down, and he was like, “Why, God? Am I going to hit the Promised Land?” It's to show our walk with Christ.
When Saul messed up right from the beginning but was allowed to stay on the throne even though David was anointed, I'm like, “Why did God do that? Why didn't he put the new leader in?” It was for us to look at what walking leadership is and to submit to the leadership of God. Submitting to the leadership of God is what you said. It's being in a transformational relationship with him. It's almost like toying with a mouse, but he's letting us see, “I'm going to give you more chances, but I have a whole lot of work to do in you.” If the greatest prophet of all time and the first King of Israel went through it, as leaders, this is what our walk is going to look like. We have to pay a price for it.
There's an amazing book I had a mentor give me one time called A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards. You read the first third of it, and it's all on King David. You're like, “I have the heart of King David.” You read the second portion of it, and it's all about Saul. You're like, “I’m Saul.” You read the third portion, which is the last portion of the book, and it’s on Absalom. You read it and you're like, “I have the tendencies of Absalom.” You come to the end of the book and realize you have the capacity to be any one of the three. Humility is one of those things where God transforms us and strips us.
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That's why we talk to people like you. It's as old as time. It's part of His relationship with identifying and working on Himself in us. Thank you for bringing your perspective to this. Tell people briefly about BCM, where they can find out more about that, and how to get in touch with you. What's the best way to make that happen?
BCM International is eighty-eight and a half years old. It started in Philadelphia, PA, where a missionary from the Philippines named Bessie Traber came back to the States from furlough. She was playing with some children, and a child asked her, “What do you do in the Philippines?” She told them, and the child said, “Why can't you do that here?” 88 years later, 62 countries later, 17,000 churches later, 42 camps later in 32 countries, orphanages, Bible colleges, seminaries, disaster relief, and so on, God's at work all over the world. I am honored and humbled to be a part of this.
To check more out, go to BCMInternational.org. That's our primary website. Mission, vision, heritage, and all of those pieces are on there. That would be the best way to get connected. For myself, on social media, I'm on Facebook, Instagram, and also on X. You could reach out to me on any of those for a conversation or even to connect for professional reasons.
That's beautiful. Thank you again for sharing and for how you've encouraged and informed me. I'm a better person than I was at 9:00 AM when I first started. That's what Charles says. You're going to be the same person five years from now, except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read. Rick talked about that. He had a mentor who said, “What are you reading? Get into that every day.” You had that as one of your disciplines that you did every day. Read one chapter. What a difference that makes.
To the readers out there, thank you so much. If you were blessed, inspired, or informed by what you read, please hit the like. Give us a review. Reviews mean everything. That's how people find out about what is going on. Also, please be sure and share with somebody that you think could be blessed, encouraged, or informed by what you’ve read. Thank you so much again, Rick, for everything, and thank you to our readers for being a part of our tremendous tribe. Have a tremendous rest of your day. Bye.
Thank you for your time.
You're welcome.
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About Dr. Rick Rhoads
Dr. Rick Rhoads and his wife Naomi have been married for 28 years, and have two adult children and two grandchildren. Rick and Naomi have served in various areas, including student ministry, pastoral leadership, Christian education, and global leadership, for the past 32 years. During this tenure, Rick has served with Lebanon Valley Youth for Christ, LCBC Manheim, Calvary Bible Church, Lancaster Bible College and Capital Seminary and Graduate School, and BCM International. Rick holds degrees in Bachelor of Science in Christian Education from Lancaster Bible College, Master of Arts in Leadership for Evangelism and Discipleship from Columbia International University, and a Doctor of Global Leadership from George Fox Evangelical Seminary. Rick has a wealth of international experience in the development of global Christian education campuses on four continents, researching and equipping Christian leaders on five continents, and having worked to strengthen the church and global leaders in over 35 countries.