Welcome back to the Christianity of Business Podcast, an initiative of the RTW Dunham College of Business at Houston Christian University. I'm your host, Darren Sheer, and this is a show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On today's episode, we're joined by Dr. Roger Perrot. Roger served as, he has served as president of Bellhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi since 1996. So uh he's as you said, he's just getting started. Uh Bellhaven was named in 2021 to the best university to work for list by the Chronicle of Higher Education. And Roger was named, uh, recognized as one of the 10 most visionary education leaders of 2021 by Education Magazine. And for a quarter century, he served as a board uh in board roles with the Lazanne Movement and the Mission America Coalition, and was chairman of the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization. He's the author of The Longview, Lasting Strategies for Rising Leaders, and his latest book, Opportunity Leadership. Stop Planning and Start Getting Results, which is going to be the theme for our conversation today. Roger, welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast.
SPEAKER_01That's a real treat to be with you, Darren. Appreciate all you do to help uh business leaders think through the genuine deep integration of theology and faith into their work. And uh for Houston Christian, I think it's a great school and so glad to connect with them as well.
SPEAKER_00Yes, sir. Well, opportunity leadership. It's a it's a great title. Uh, what is what do you refer to as uh what you call a new model for ministry leadership? What is this about?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's new, but it's not new. It's a biblical model. And really what I'm calling leaders to challenge is this idea that we are committed to developing long-range plans to predict our future and our destinations rather than letting go of that level of planning and trusting God to bring us opportunities and to capture those moments where we can go where God wants us to go instead. And I think the Christian world has bought into this model of long-range planning, strategic planning, whatever you want to call it, whatever is trying to dictate what a future may be. And then we idealize a future five or 10 years and in out, and then we set goals around that, then we work backwards. Well, how do we achieve that? Instead, I'm saying let go of that, don't do it. There's a there's good reasons not to do it, and I can share some of those with you, but let go of that and instead of a long-range plan, trust God to bring opportunities that bring you into the places of most significant uh service and impact as uh God um leads you. And um, we have been doing that here since um uh 2003. We gave up long-range planning. Uh, this uh Bellhaven University does not have a long-range plan. If you come to our website, there is no Bellhaven 2030 plan with five goals that easily could be predicted before the committee ever met, but um uh it doesn't exist. We don't do that. We spend a lot of energy into what I call operational planning, which means we want to be good stewards to get the most out of what God has already given us. So we're gonna plan very, very well what we have already been given, but we're not gonna put an ounce of energy into projecting a future beyond what God's already entrusted to us. And so it's been probably the most significant decision I've ever made in leadership and the most freeing. Uh, it has been absolutely marvelous.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So when you uh so you replace that with with something else, a different approach. Uh, can you just give us maybe for for Bellhaven, um, what does what does the planning look like?
SPEAKER_01Well, the planning looks like, again, operationally, so we know we're gonna play football, we know we're gonna teach English, we know we're gonna run the dining commons. Uh, so we're gonna plan very well how to do each of those that God's already given us. But what we're not going to plan is is what that future of the institution may be, what those new initiatives may be, where we may go that we don't expect to go. And uh that's what a lot of schools and ministries and businesses spend a lot of time doing because we have all been uh uh sold on this idea. If you don't have a long-range plan as a leader, you're not providing direction and and uh guidance to your entity. And I just don't believe it's true. I don't also believe it's it's really the biblical model. Why does God want to be sovereign in all that we do, except when it comes to our long-range plan, we're supposed to somehow figure it out? No, I I found that what happens is when businesses, entities, schools have a long-range plan, they miss seeing God's opportunities because they're so focused on achieving their plan. So we can't do that because it doesn't fit in our plan. Well, what if God wants you to do that? How about an openness to it? So this is not really a um a new structure, it's more of a mindset, it's an outlook of how you see the future and God's leading in the in what we do. It's building a culture within uh the community uh where my faculty and staff and and board and donors are comfortable with that. It really comes down to theology. You either trust God or you don't. And if God is sovereign in everything, why are we trying to project a future? And so I you know, I often get the question well, what's Bellhaven University going to look like in 10 years? And and my candid answer is, I don't know. I don't know if we'll have more students, I don't know if we'll have less students, I don't know what degree new programs we'll do, I don't know which ones we'll draw. I don't know what that future is, but I do know, absolutely do know, that God's plan for the future of this university is far greater than the blessed plan we could come up sitting around conference tables and drawing out on whiteboards. And so we don't put energy into that kind of planning. We put lots of energy into good operational planning, which is stewardship of the resources God's already given us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I was in business school about uh say 12 years ago or so. And I guess it was about the time when they were doing away with these, you know, 30, 40, 50 page business plans and uh going more for like a three-page or even a one-page business plan. Is this is this kind of what you're talking about?
SPEAKER_01Well, again, I would I would I would separate it more between destination planning and operational planning. So if we're predicting destinations, no, I don't do that. I don't encourage it. Uh, I encourage uh this other model of letting go. If it's operational, we do it. But but I I I used a model in the book, I think it's starting chapter four about a about a fictitious uh uh CFO of a fortune top company who um called the stockholder meeting and went in and and uh everybody was high in anticipation of of what the plans were gonna be for the future, where they're gonna go. And every year they had new plans, and and everybody whispered they usually didn't hit them, but they were excited this year was gonna be different, they were finally gonna get it, etc., etc. And he got up and said, you know, essentially, um, you know, I'm gonna we're gonna trust God for the future. We're not gonna have a plan, we're gonna be open to opportunities, we're gonna serve the best we can, but we're not gonna project where those new places are gonna be, etc., etc., etc. And as the tweets went out, the stock price went in a tank, and he was fired by the end of the day. So I would not encourage anybody to jump into this head first. You don't walk away from what has been a structure around which people are comfortable for a long time and go into opportunity leadership. It's a process, and and the book details how to go through that process, but it is a dramatic change from where we've been because I don't wake up worried every day about what the future is going to be. I trust God for that future, and I have been amazed time after time after time how God has provided. Let me give you let me give you a quick example. Um and this this comes into some of the delinquencies of long-range planning. One is we aim for targets we can hit, and uh everybody does. Uh, they're a little bit of a stretch, but we can hit it. So we were a number of years uh into not having a long-range plan. And I went into my board with a document that was titled Five Year Plan. And um, of course, they wondered what that was. And I started to read this, and I it had 72 points, but here are the here are the major points. The first one was we were gonna grow the enrollment 43 percent. We were going to raise $21 million in new uh money, which was a big number for us. We were gonna build $31 million in in new construction, we're gonna add seven undergraduate programs and eight graduate programs. That was a five-year plan. And then the kicker at the end of the illustration was that is not the plan for the next five years. That's what we actually did the previous five years. Now, the difference being, if previous five years ago I had brought to board that plan, we would have cut it all in about half, or maybe two-thirds, to what we knew we could manage, a little bit of a stretch, what we could knew we could manage. We'd pray for God to bless it, we would have hit those goals and we all would have been happy. Instead, by not having a plan, we were able to do so much more than what we would have anticipated by trusting God for opportunities. So when the book came out a year ago, I thought, you know, I better test this model again and see if it's true. And so I did the same thing with my board, and there was not one item on that fictitious five-year plan, again, looking back five years, that would have been there five years before. Not one, not one topic that would have even been on anybody's radar of thinking. That's how God brings opportunities when we're responsive to them.
SPEAKER_00So, so what do you do with the the biblical precedent of, for example, Moses guiding the people into the promised land? Like there is a there's a a fairly clear uh objective of of where they're going. Um, and then you know, I think about like in Habakkuk, um, write the vision, make it plain. Are you are you talking about doing away with vision statements and just kind of focusing on managing what what you've been entrusted today? Um, or what is well again?
SPEAKER_01I think yeah, I think so often we get, you know, everybody's terminology of what a vision statement is, a strategic plan is, it's all different. Uh yeah, vision probably captures mission. We know what our mission is, we're not gonna budge on that mission. How we're gonna accomplish that, what the vehicles are, what the the the process is for that future, we're gonna trust that to God. And like Abraham, who was told to go and did not know where he was going. So, you know, for every little illustration we can pull from the Bible about a plan, we also pull a lot uh that that are not about a plan. Lilies of the field, and look at how they bloom. And uh, you know, so I again I think as you read the scripture and you watch the heroes of faith over time, more often they were capturing opportunities than they were going on a specific plan that they had had a perspective in developing. Now, in those times, God would give a vision to his leaders because they didn't have scripture, they didn't have some of the other things we have now, and so yeah, they they communicated with God in a little bit different way, but um, yeah, I I just I just think we are discounting ourselves because it we're so focused on our planning model and what we think we can accomplish. And and the the you know, I think two things. One is planning doesn't work, it doesn't work. I mean, anybody who had a five-year plan five years ago doesn't have one now because nobody had COVID in their plan. I mean, that's a softball illustration. Not one person had COVID in their plan. So, you know, it doesn't work because we cannot predict the future with any level of reliability. But more importantly than that, to me is we're settling for less than God's best because we're aiming at what we think is God's best, and we're not really reaching for what God brings to us because we're so focused on the plan, we can't see the opportunities. And um, you know, the the model I use on my campus to explain this is the difference between a powerboat and a sailboat. And um, you know, I I think that um I if you come to my campus and you talk about opportunity leadership, most people won't know what you're talking about, but they will know powerboats and sailboats. Everybody on this campus knows powerboats and sailboats. And the difference is that we want to be a sailboat prepared to catch the wind of God and go wherever God's wind takes us, rather than a powerboat that goes where we think God wants us to go, but is able to ignore the wind. And so we think in those terms, and we detail that out quite a bit in how what that means in your focus, in your preparation, in your teamwork, in your structure, in your culture, in your in your relationships, in your control, your demands, lots of different issues related to so differently to be part of a sailboat rather than a powerboat. And I think part of the challenge, especially for Christian ministries and businesses who want to run with Christian principles, we've gotten really good at building some powerboats that are very impressive. And we can run and ignore the wind. And when we do, you know, it just doesn't work over time. Because in the long run, a tired, worn-out, poorly crafted sailboat will outdistance a powerboat every time because eventually powerboat's gonna run out of gas. And God's wind keeps blowing. So, but what we found is that through the years of doing this, God's wind usually blows very gently at the beginning. And if you're not sensitive to it, you're not gonna hear it, you're not gonna see it, you're not gonna feel it. And that's why letting go of planning allows us to have um this sensitivity to opportunities and to really capture them when they come.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So as the as the president of the university, do you have certain goals for the the organization where you're tracking progress toward those goals? And if so, what what are they?
SPEAKER_01Uh again, they would all be operational. We want to get the best out of everything that we're doing. So they would be, if God's sent us students, we ought to be able to retain as many of those students as we can. If we are playing intercollegiate sports, we want our students to have a great um uh uh college uh sports experience. If we're teaching the classroom, we want to deeply integrate with faith and we want to um uh teach from a biblical foundation and everything that we do, and we hold faculty accountable to that. But we're not trying to project what new programs might be, what new opportunities might be. I mean, I had one come to me this week uh and and uh kind of out of the blue for a master's in data science, and it makes a whole lot of sense. But we didn't go sit out and say, well, let's make a plan and figure out four new masters we're gonna start. No, it came along, it came through relationships, it came through connections, and all of a sudden, boom, there it is. It makes a lot of sense. We'll detail it out. If it looks good, we'll go. And if not, uh, we won't go. And um, you know, I think that's part of the challenge that we have in in leadership is that we make these plans, we ask God to bless them, and then we don't, if if God's wind blows a different direction, we don't back up. And so we push so hard through some of the roadblocks uh because we think that's where God wants us to go. When, you know, I mean, I got a chapter in the book called Learning to Love Roadblocks, because God sometimes is using roadblocks to prepare us or protect us from something, and we need to be careful. So, yeah, we we we're gonna get the most out of what we've got, but we are just again, there's a freedom of trusting God for that future. I don't have to worry about higher education is in a lot of turmoil right now. There are a lot of Christian colleges that are getting ready to close and other kinds of pressure. I'm not worried about those kinds of things if we'll be good stewards of what we have. I know God will bring the right opportunities for us going forward.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'm wondering, you know, is the problem I'm thinking about Isaiah 32, uh, uh I believe it's verse eight, where it says that a noble man makes noble plans and on noble plans he stands. Is is the problem so much with the the planning and then uh you know, kind of edging God out of that, or is it that the planning is done just without God uh seeking the counsel of God? You know, because God God may reveal, for example, like uh you know, of course, there's all sorts of proof texts we could go to on either side, but you know, I'm just thinking about Noah, if he didn't have a clear um understanding of how to build that ark or Moses how to build the tabernacle without those clear, but they received those down, those divine downloads from the Lord. So is the is the problem that we're planning too far out, or that we're just not planning with the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_01I think every Christian leader wants to plan with the Holy Spirit, but I think to pull out those examples uh uh of Moses and uh Noah, I mean, God spoke to his leaders in different ways then than he does now. And in fact, leaders now who say, I heard from God and none of the rest of you did, I would say are very dangerous. And we've seen them crash and burn over and over and over again, especially in some of the megachurches, where they feel like they have an insight into God's understanding for the future that nobody else has. I would be very cautious of somebody like that. Um, and so God spoke to those leaders in different ways, but let's look at the life of Jesus. How often do we read that Jesus was going one place and all of a sudden somebody pulled him a different direction? And somebody touched the hem of his garments, somebody said, Somebody's hurt over here, you need to come. Somebody said, Go across the lake here instead of across, instead of going this direction. We see that over and over and over again. And that's because Jesus was responsive to opportunities. He did not have an itinerary and say, we've got to cover these places in the next three years, guys. It's all we've got, and we got to go to these places on this itinerary. No, his ministry was very free-flowing by responding to opportunities, and that's where his ministry could be the most significant. So that's more the model of what I'm encouraging leaders to do. But it's it's a it's a it's a risk, it feels uh scary. It um it um, you know, I mean, for leaders, we have used um long-range planning as our backbone for where we bring uh uh uh uh you know value added to where we serve. And you take that away, and all of a sudden, what are you gonna do as a leader? Well, uh, you know, if you're nonprofit, all you got left is raise money, or uh, you know, so so it scares a lot of leaders. But again, when you break it down, it just doesn't work, or at least it works minimally compared to what God might do otherwise. It it it, you know, I talked about that we aim for targets he can hit, but we also homogenize our strengths. Um, you know, who could put together a five-year plan for a university and not include every aspect of the of the university? Uh, you know, at the same time, Bellhaven, we are we are the one of only 34 universities in the entire country of any kind who are accredited in all four of the major arts, music, theater, visual art, and dance. We work at the top level in the arts. No other Christian college does. And we could have not accomplished that if we'd had a five-year, 10-year plan that said, you know, we're gonna put a whole bunch of money in the arts. Well, our STEM program still is lagging and our football team's playing on a sand lot. You can't do that. But by capturing opportunities, we can do that. I think that long-range planning also focuses on deficiencies. Um, I mean, I've never seen a long-range plan, which is simply not a list of things you wish you had that you don't have. And by focusing on deficiencies, the whole entity becomes more negatively focused on what we don't have, on focusing on opportunities. We're celebrating all the time God's goodness to us and the great things that He's brought us. And so, you know, those are completely different ways. I think it delays decisions, you know, so often. Long-range planning, somebody has an idea and they say, Well, we'll get that to the planning committee. Well, the planning committee is going to make it for 18 months and it never comes out. I mean, over and over and over again. But there's again, when you capture opportunities, you can do things you can't do otherwise. And, you know, I mean, we saw this during COVID. I you know, I hate COVID for what it is. It's a horrible disease. My my daughter suffers with long COVID. She's been in bed for three and a half years. Uh, she's one of the first people in the country to get COVID. We got it in China, unfortunately, uh, when we were we were there in November of uh 19. And um uh, but she's been in bed. So I understand the the horribleness of COVID, but at the same time, COVID freed up leaders from their plans. Schools are pivoted to online overnight and and um and and and conferences and webinars and and things like we're doing right now have been accepted at a level they never would before. Churches could meet without people actually in a building, restaurants could operate without a dining room open, um presidential inaugurations could happen without a crowd. We found out all kinds of things we could do when we got rid of the plan. But unfortunately, when COVID's over, everybody's swooping right back to their long-range plan as the way to operate. I mean, I had all kinds of creative things come out of COVID. Uh, for us, one that we did, I was so worried the second year about students being down and discouraged. I said, we got to do something to help get their heads up and think about the future and not just the tragedy, the present. And so we put in place for all our traditional students who come and are part of our campus program to give them a free master's when they graduate. And we love it, and we're still doing it. We're doing it for all of our graduates. They get a free master's degree, and which they can do online, they can do it anytime, any place. And so it's been a huge plus for our students. Um, uh, you know, other kinds of things that you can do when you get outside the norm of this plan and you see opportunities. I mean, just before COVID, I started to see our our um uh arts numbers, enrollment start to go down. And I thought, why are they not coming? And talk to many parents, and my daughter was a theater major, so I kind of get it anyway. And it's this whole fear. Well, I, you know, my my son or daughter really wants to be in the arts, but what are they really going to do for a living? How are they gonna really make uh ends meet? And I thought, you know, if we could give them a double major so they could do uh um theater and business, or they could do music and communications, and mom and dad felt comfortable, they had a backstop for a a um career, then they would be comfortable going ahead with the arts. And we thought, well, let's do that. And as we looked at that for a week and we said, well, why not do it for everybody? And then we went through this process that everybody does. Well, let's institute it a year from now, whatever. And this was in late July. And I said, why don't we just do it this fall? Let's just do it for everybody right now. And we did, and it's been hugely popular, and so we've gone from a handful of students who are not doing who were doing a double major to probably a fourth of our student body now doing a double major because what we provide for them is if the double major pushes you into the fifth year, you can come for free. Now that wasn't done around planning tables with a long range plan and how we've scooped that out and everything. That happened over a couple of three weeks as God gave inspiration, opportunity came and we captured it. It's because we built a culture that's comfortable with capturing opportunities rather than being wedded to a long-range plan.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So when it comes to because obviously we want to we want to hear from God, uh, we want to we want to stay in tune, stay in step with the spirit, like you know, Paul, uh, Paul talks about. Um and and so would you say that the way that we hear from God is to recognize opportunities, uh essentially circumstances that are going on around us and recognize that that is the wind in the sail, as opposed to um we're we're sort of um there there doesn't really seem to be an opportunity, therefore, God must not be asking us to do this. Um, what do you do in circumstances where you might really sense that the Lord is leading you to do one thing, but the circumstances don't line up? But you know, for example, obviously with Noah, that was the case there, where there's no rain, you know, people are laughing at him. So how do you how do you reconcile that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, you know, it it this whole thing is built around a theology of trust. You have to completely trust God for the future, and in that trust, if he opens doors, that's great. But so often we celebrate when God opens doors, but we don't celebrate when God closes doors. But God's no is just as good as God's yes. And because all we want is God's desire and will for us. We don't want to go where he doesn't want us to go. I think all of us, everybody can agree to that. The challenge is how to get there. So let me give you a very specific example. Uh, about a year plus ago, we um it came on my radar that there's an opportunity for for uh um helping to provide degree education for uh um uh prisoners uh through an online format that makes it doable and affordable. Online education inside a prison is very expensive to do if you have to physically go there. There's a new technology to allow us to do it by online. So we explored this thing, we loved it. At the middle of looking at that, I got a I got a note from a dear longtime friend said one of my mentees had just moved to Mississippi, doesn't know anybody. Would you reach out to him and say hello? So I called the guy and came in, found out he was head of education he came to Mississippi to be head of education for uh the prison system. And uh he's working for Burl Kane, who's a dear friend of Bellhaven, who used to be the the, he was the famous uh warden of Angola prison in Louisiana, came to Mississippi a couple of years ago, 82 years old, to turn around our prison system, loves Bellhaven, strong believer. And we started to look with them at this prison idea. And we we loved it. All the doors seemed to be open, and they gave us the top four prisons in Mississippi as our place of service, including Parchman, which is world famous for being one of the toughest, hardest prisons there is. And we were ready to go, so we made application to the uh to the um uh federal government for uh you have to be specially approved to provide prison education. We thought we were ready to go and we got turned down. And when we got turned down, of course, we looked at each other and and there was a disappointment. And my response was God's no is as good as God's yes. And if God doesn't want us to do this, he's either preparing us for another time to do something different or something else, or he's protecting us from a problem it would have caused for us. And so we celebrated having the door closed in the same way we would have celebrated having the door open. Now, I think that takes a culture within the entity that you have to build over time. That doesn't happen overnight. We've built that over time, but that's how you build this theology of trust so that you really can be comfortable when God opens doors and when God closes doors. And there have been, back to your question, many times I've sat in this office at the start of a school year after we got it started, and I thought, what are we gonna do new this year? We don't have anything on the horizon that's new. And within weeks, the agenda is full. It's just amazing. If you expect God to bring opportunities, and I think that's probably the key. Most Christian leaders don't expect God to bring opportunities. They think they have to go make them with God's blessing. And that's the difference. We expect God to bring opportunities, we just don't know what they're gonna be.
SPEAKER_00I've noticed that so many of the the major debates throughout church history have hinged on this issue of uh I think of it like uh uh a continuum where that you've got fatalism on one end and then extreme presumption on the other end. And I think Christians, depending on their theology, will find themselves uh anywhere along that that continuum where you have some where if it's to be, it's up to me. And I've gotta, like you said, the power boat. Uh I've gotta I've gotta really power this thing. I'm not even really paying attention to what what God wants. Um, and then the the far other extreme is fatalism, where whatever happens is gonna happen, and there's not there's not necessarily like a sense of co-laboring uh with the Lord and and just sort of whatever whatever happens is just hey, God wills. There's a lot like Islam, inshallah, they say, you know, um, so the emergency responders are not quite as rushed in uh Muslim uh nations for that for that reason. Hey, if God wills that person's gonna make it, if not. So how do you uh how do you keep from just relying on circumstances to chart your course um as opposed to what others would teach at different points on that continuum, you know, perhaps um perhaps closer to the um the presumption side where we're gonna really get a sense that even though the circumstances don't really line up right now, we really sense um that this is where God wants us to go. And I I heard you make a statement earlier about you know, in the old testament, God kind of spoke to people that way, but in the new testament not so much. Like, do you do you believe that that as Christians that we can really hear from God for where God wants us to go today?
SPEAKER_01We hear from God, yeah, yeah, we hear from God, and and and I think a lot of times it's it's uh especially the closer you walk with the Lord, the more you it feels like intuition, but it's clearly God speaking and and encouraging our spirit and our voice in this. Um, you know, kind of that dichotomy you lay out. I guess I'd look at it a little bit differently. And in fact, I detail this in the book, kind of a ministry culture outlook of traditional planning, which is taking kind of a secular model and Christianizing it of that we have done within the Christian world. We take this secular business model of long-range planning, we put Christian principles around it and we've made it our own, versus what I opportunity leadership that I'm advocating. So, so I think it comes down to this culture dichotomy. And and and and one is not saying you don't trust the Lord, absolutely not. And the other is not saying whatever may be, uh, for sure, because again, you're a good stewardship of all God's given you. And so there's a great urgency to get the most out of what God has already given you. But you know, I mean, some of the benchmarks that I looked at, like an initial reaction in in traditional planning, the initial reaction is probably no. That's our initial reaction. Probably no to anything new because we're already committed to what we're doing. In opportunity leadership, it's probably yes. Uh, my my team and I have a process, uh kind of a benchmark that we say uh that we talk about saying yes until we have to say no. So any new idea, we're gonna say yes until it becomes clear it doesn't fit. Uh, future outlook in traditional planning tends to be cautious and analytical. Uh, opportunity leadership tends to be confident and expected. Um, you know, I think one of the challenges we have in the planning, traditional planning model is we want every contingency um uh dealt with before we ever take step one. And in doing so, we miss the opportunities. And part of the reason is because leaders don't want to say we're gonna go do X and then, oh, we didn't think of that, and then they get embarrassed later on. But I'll give you a good example of that. We started a uh we have a doctoral program with Xinhua University in China, which is the number one rated institution in China. They are the Harvard of China. They came to us and wanted to do a uh a doctoral degree. They had worked for two years with this major league flagship state university to do this degree. This the university couldn't get it done. They found out we were working in China and they called us. They called us 1st of December and and they said, Are you interested? And I said, Yeah, let's talk. I got three or four people on a Zoom the next Monday, and we said, um, we talked to them and we said, listen to what they had, and we said, Yeah, we'll get back with you by the end of the week. By Thursday, we called them back and said, This is all good, let's go. And we signed a contract for next week. Um, this was all in November, leading into December. We enrolled the first students in January. Uh, that's how fast we can move in this style. But what happened in that interim was that they were interested in their doctoral students taking two courses at a time. Now, we have worked in China for five years, and so we understand Chinese culture and the work ethic of Chinese students, and they will work extremely hard. And um, so we allow that in our master's MBA program, but we weren't gonna allow that in the doctorate. Well, my team said, you know, we just can't let them take two classes at a time. They're gonna fail, they're not gonna do well. And I said, you know, if we dig this line in the sand, this thing's not gonna go forward. Let's say yes, let's get started and let's work it out as we go down the line. So we went ahead, and it wasn't three weeks into the first class, they're calling and saying, could our students just take one class at a time? This is too much work to take two at a time. You know, so often in leadership, we want to be analytical, we want to be cautious, we want to have every contingency projected before we're able to take step one. And in doing so, the opportunity is gone. Opportunities are a river, they're not a lake. You can't come back to them later in the same waters there if you don't dip your bucket in when the time comes. So this is more of a culture difference, and and there are probably 10 of these kind of different characteristics I detail them in the book, um, of the culture it takes, um, you know, uh the the uh uh I I think in a in a planning uh environment, the risk of failure is embarrassment. People do not want to be embarrassed by failure, failing in opportunity leadership. Failure is very tolerable. We're comfortable with failure, we know everything will work, and that's okay. So you break that down, the differences between the two. One doesn't totally trust God and the other doesn't, so the other way around. It really is, yeah, we all want God's best, but essentially, did God throw us the keys of the car and ask us to drive, or is God still driving and we're part of the team that's um that's making it all happen?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I'll just conclude with this this question as we wrap it up here. Um, if if there was a scripture that really undergirds this approach and philosophy and culture that you're advocating, what what would that be?
SPEAKER_01Isaiah 55. My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, declares the Lord, for the heavens are higher than the earth, and my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. The best thinking we come up with is minuscule compared to what God sees, and we need to trust Him for the future.
SPEAKER_00Indeed, indeed. Well, this conversation I'm sure has helped uh it certainly helped me think, help uh, I'm sure it's helped our listeners uh to grapple with this issue of again, it's you know, rung throughout church history and from the beginning of time, you know, what is what is my role, what is God's role, and uh just partnering with God in the workplace and what does that actually look like and hearing hearing God's voice, you know, probably the most common question pastors get is how do I hear the voice of God? And so I think you've really um helped to provide some some uh fresh perspective for a lot of us today. So thank you for this, Roger.
SPEAKER_01Um is a treat for me, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and the book is Opportunity Leadership. Stop planning and start getting results. Um, people can go, I know, to opportunityleadership.com and uh check out bellhaven.edu. Anything else you want to say?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, one other thing they can do is my my previous book where this idea was first just briefly introduced, uh, the long viewed lasting strategies for rising leadership. They just took it out of print, which is a fabulous opportunity because now I can give it away. So if people would like it, I can give it away. And if you go to a website, it's uh uh gobelhaven.com/slash book. You can download the book, put it on your electronic device, and you can have that book for free uh instead of uh buying the last few copies that are on Amazon. So uh uh it's all still really relevant. It's about how to hire and fire, it's about evaluation, it's about uh this kind of operational planning, long-range planning, lots of different kinds of mechanical, more uh day-to-day stuff of how we lead within a Christian framework.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. Well, Roger, this has been fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing your time and uh may God uh bless you and your ministry and Bellhaven University and all of your students and community.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business Podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HSCU's Center for Christianity and Business, and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.