Shaping Leaders in Shifting Times

The Hendricks Center Website  

 

Kymberli Cook: 

Welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the Assistant Director of the Hendricks Center. And today I am sitting amidst every single director of the Center that there has ever been. So it's not intimidating for me at all. Welcome. 

I'm actually very excited for this day. We've been trying to plan this for a long time and it's the first time, I believe, that everybody's been together, right, in one general sort of virtual place. So it is an honor to be able to be here and to be hosting and to introduce each one of you. So going in chronological order of their leadership of the Center, here we go. We have Andy Wileman, who was the first executive director of the Howard G. Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership. He was also the long-time senior pastor at Grace Bible Church here in Dallas, and he is now the principal officer of the Cornerstone Center for Economic Opportunity. 

We are also joined by Brad Smith, who originally worked with new programs from the very beginning with the Center for Christian Leadership. And he is now the Chancellor of Bakke Graduate University and the director of Alliance Engagement for the World Evangelical Alliance. And with Brad we have Bill Lawrence, the founder of Leader Formation International. He was the past executive director of the Center for Christian Leadership and a former professor of Spiritual Life and Preaching at DTS here. 

Yes, there are two pages of introductions. And then we have Andy Seidel, who served as executive director of the Hendricks Center. He was also the senior pastor of Grace Bible Church in College Station, Texas and now serves as the chairman of INTRUST. And then we have my current bosses. And I think this is Darrell and I's third podcast in two weeks. So we got to quit meeting here. 

We have Darrell Bock, the executive Director for Cultural Engagement here at the Center and research professor of New Testament at DTS. And Bill Hendricks, who is the son of Howard G. Hendricks, the executive director for Christian Leadership at the Center as well as the president of the Giftedness Center here in Dallas. 

Thank you gentlemen, everybody, for being here. It's going to be fun. Clearly a lot of people have thought you all are worthy of being a part of a lot of organizations, so it's really good to have you here. So the Center is thirty-seven years old this year. So let's start back in 1986 with the first executive director, Andy Wileman. How did you end up being the first director? 

Andy Wileman: 

I served in the president's office for the seminary for six, seven years. Started out with Dr. Walvord and normally most associated with Dr. Walvord, but then also transitioned the presidency to Dr. Campbell. And so I was working in a lot of things related to marketing, fundraising, strategy in the president's office. And there were two real issues that brought it up. One was Dr. Campbell wanted to make sure his very close friend, Howie Hendricks, was happy. And that was not a small act of conversation in the president's office. 

And the other one was in all of the research we were doing for marketing and strategy, what we kept hearing was our alumni knew the Bible amazingly and theology amazingly, but when they failed, they failed in the area of leadership. And so honestly, I went to Dr. Campbell and said, "How about we start a center and put Prof over it and study leadership," because Prof, he was lightning in a bottle. He spoke to leaders in an amazing way. And I actually recommended Bill Lawrence be the executive director. And then one day between Chafer Chapel and Davidson Hall, Dr. Campbell looked at me and said, "I want you to be the executive director." And to this day, the only reason I can think is they didn't want to take Bill Lawrence out of the classroom and they figured I was expendable. 

Kymberli Cook: 

You'll be all right. 

Andy Wileman: 

Go sit with Howie and keep him happy. So that's how it started. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Okay. So you were here from the beginning. Bill Lawrence was at the Center from the beginning. And Brad, you were here from the beginning as well, correct? 

Brad Smith: 

Almost. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Brad, when did you come in? 

Brad Smith: 

So I came in after they had started it at the end of 1986, and Prof Hendricks called me. I had actually worked with his son, Bob Hendricks in Washington D.C. And Andy, I think, had asked him to call me. I was running a congressional campaign at that time, that was ending in the early part of November. And he said, "I understand you run political campaigns." And I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "Would you like to come to Dallas Seminary and work and run a political campaign here? The politics will be much worse " And so then I met with Andy, and Andy explained it and I jumped in at that point. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So the hope or the vision, was a place to keep Hendricks happy and having a little bit of a playground that he could do what he wanted to and talk about leadership, right. So what was the hope for the Center to accomplish? Was there anything, any goals originally? 

Andy Wileman: 

Yeah, I think when we kept hearing our students, our alumni, are failing in the area of leadership, then Prof and I started a class that then other people took over. I only did it twice with him on leadership for our students, but we wanted to elevate the issue. Leadership wasn't even talked about. It was not a subject. We were told during that area, just preach the word and everything else takes care of itself. Andy, was that your experience as a pastor? 

Andy Seidel: 

No. 

Andy Wileman: 

So it was a weakness and frankly, historically that probably was more true, but the world was changing. Leadership mattered more. And Brad's background in student government at the school and College Station helped because he knew how to work with students. And so student area, on campus, and then alumni, which Bill Lawrence was strategically related to. And then the other area we wanted to work on was laity. And that was actually my interest. And so during my time we did some things related to emerging lay leaders. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So from the beginning it's always been students, alumni, and the people out in the pews. 

Andy Wileman: 

And each one has a little different need. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yes, absolutely. Okay, so Bill Lawrence, can you tell me a little bit about what your work with the alumni was? 

Bill Lawrence: 

With? 

Kymberli Cook: 

With the alumni. 

Bill Lawrence: 

With the alumni. One thing I failed to mention that I need to say was my experience as a pastor. I was the founder and pastor of South Hills Community Church in San Jose, California for 12 years. We started from zero and the Lord used us to build it to 800. It was an amazing time and it totally formed my whole view of seminary and leadership, and that is very defining. 

Now, my experience with alumni grew out of all of the opportunities I had to connect with students who then graduated. And the moment they get their degree, in reality, what they know changes from classroom to the street. Because when they enter the pastorate, they're on the street and they are dealing with people who are living struggles, people who are dying, people whose marriages are falling apart, people whose children are suffering, people whose teenagers are rebelling, people whose businesses are going in multiple directions. And those are the kinds of things that I had to face constantly. I had World War II veterans who were relating to me as navigators coming out or walking across the Philippines behind MacArthur and teaching me what I did not know and that no seminary professor was capable of teaching me. As good as they were, as great as they were. And I learned that's what you need to have before you get into the pastorate so you can really be useful. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And that was the vision of the Center. 

Brad Smith: 

So he was a pastor, but he also taught preaching, taught spiritual life as well as worked with alumni and pastors that were alumni. So he was uniquely positioned for both character development, preaching, which had been a lot of Dallas Seminary's history, as well as a practitioner pastor. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Wonderful. So what was one of the first obstacles? So this is the beautiful vision that I'm hearing for the Center, was the need to address this hole that people were seeing when especially men at that time were out in the pastorate and they were struggling like you were just saying, Bill, to really put the boots on the ground of theology. This is what it looks like to apply. And so I see the vision. What was one of the first obstacles that the Center really faced that it had to tackle? 

Andy Wileman: 

We picked a horrible time. We were in the middle of the eighties savings and loan recession in Texas. And so budget was almost non-existent. And that limited. I look how many employees Darrell has and I am a little jealous. We had Brad. And he was worth several, but that was it. But budget really was a major issue. And then the other thing was I think there was a little bit of institutional distrust of the idea of leadership. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Talk to me a little bit more about that. And Bill or Brad, feel free to hop in as well about an institutional distrust of the concept of leadership and perhaps even wider than that at that time, wider than the institution. 

Andy Wileman: 

I think incorrectly, obviously leadership is abused a lot and everybody has experiences of that, and that's absolutely legitimate. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding what servant and leadership mean together with each other. And a lot of people felt like talking about leadership eradicated the servant aspect of it. And anybody who knew Prof knew that wasn't what he was teaching. But I think people jumped to assumptions until it just took time to see, okay, what they mean is absolutely positive and legitimate. And Bill and Andy, as it grew over time, and you had men who had more experience than I did, I think that helped too. I was thirty-two when we started it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Wow, really? 

Andy Wileman: 

Yes, I was 32. 

Darrell Bock: 

Wasn't one of the challenges, the fact that here you had this entity that was attached to a seminary? We know what a seminary is, but we're not sure what a Center is? 

Andy Wileman: 

Yeah. And we intended for it to not be absorbed by the academic. I called it para-academic because we felt like it had an opportunity to bring things to the campus without the limitations of academia. For instance, we wouldn't have to make sure everyone was a pre-trib dispensationalist to involve them. And I mean that respectfully. I worked for Dr. Walbert. Protecting the doctrinal statement was a major issue. But to bring in something like leadership, you want to broaden that circle. So we wanted outside of the academic, but informing the academic. And people wondered why in the world do y'all want to not be in the academic? 

Kymberli Cook: 

Bill or Brad? 

Bill Hendricks: 

I wasn't around the Center, but I was around. So I was very aware of what was going on and I was actually working in the faith and work space from the beginning of my career. And at that time there was quite a bit of entrepreneurial activity that had taken place in the United States. And out of that came a lot of research on leadership in the business world. And companies were trying to figure out new ways of managing people. And the works of Peter Drucker became quite read and there was a whole movement. And so understandably, a lot of those ideas began to get studied and imported into churches. And unfortunately that created some problems of acceptance of the concept of leadership. The idea that, wait a minute, you're telling us we're going to go out into the world and let the world tell us how we should be doing ministry? And so there was that sacred secular dichotomy in play that the Center had to fight. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Bill, what did you want to add? 

Bill Lawrence: 

That relates directly to what I want to say about academia because I believe in academia. I believe in academics. I have always believed in academics. I came to Dallas Seminary because of academics and I pursued what I did at Dallas Seminary because of academics. But the reality is academics are incomplete. Reality is not academic. The issues of life are not academic. They are not theory. They are deep, unknown, un-understood realities that a leader has to guide his followers through. And that's what the Center had to be about. When we had this theme in front of us, shaping leaders in shifting times, you better believe it. That's what Matthew 28 18 through 20 is all about. All about forming leaders, taking followers and forming them into leaders. That's what Jesus did. And we are doing what Jesus told us to do. Make disciples. 

Andy Wileman: 

And Bill is still preaching. 

Darrell Bock: 

And what's interesting is nothing's changed about that. 

Brad Smith: 

So when I was brought on, Andy told me a few things. One thing he said is that the board had changed the mission statement of Dallas Seminary back in the early eighties from a preaching-based mission statement to a leadership-based mission statement. What Andy told me is that then about a year or two later, the board asked the staff, "So now that we've changed the mission statement, how has the program of the seminary been changed?" And so that was part of the idea behind the Leadership Center because it hadn't really been changed much. And that was a good question. 

Second thing is Prof Hendricks would say that the school was kind of at a crossroads and had been for quite some time. Is it going to be the Princeton of the south, conservative Princeton of the South, where it was really an academic and scholar leadership for the world and training professors that would influence seminaries around the world, or was it going to be a practitioner school for pastors? And obviously Hendricks, Prof Hendricks had been more on the practitioner side for years. There was a lot of people on the other side and that was still in the works of being a crossroads. 

Thirdly, Andy asked me to interview board members and faculty and staff about what the Center could be. And one of the things that came back from quite a few is that the Center for Christian Leadership could be the skunk works and the idea behind that phrase, it goes back to one of the examples would be the Apple Macintosh versus Apple, that we could try out new things in leadership development without having to move the whole ship. That we could be an example, a positive example, that people could look over and say, "That makes sense. Let us try that." And so a lot of the ideas behind it was to be a skunk works. And then the last thing is Bill did a good job because there was some degree of questions about the Center of having brown bag lunches with faculty. And talk a little bit about how you were building relationship with the people that perhaps had some of these challenges. 

Bill Lawrence: 

Well, I wanted to do the best I could to have the most positive relationship so that academics could realize that what you do is phenomenal. What you do really matters. What you do is not just theoretical. It's actual. It's real. What I say to somebody on a deathbed is something that had its foundation in what I heard in the classroom. That is essential. And I needed them to know that we were not trying to replace them, we were trying to complete them. That's the difference. The academics don't always understand that, but that's what we have to communicate. And I'm saying that that's just as essential today, even more so in the twenty-first century, than even it was in the late 20th century. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I'm hearing you, especially Brad and Bill, talking about the obstacle of this conversation might be a nice word between academics and practitioners. And that also was one of the things in addition to the finances, just on a really practical level and the concept of leadership being new and questionable, especially in the midst of the eighties and the corporate conversation happening as well. 

Andy Wileman: 

And I came out of fundraising, and faculty didn't trust us fundraisers either. Truthfully. 

Kymberli Cook: 

That's fair. 

Andy Wileman: 

Because we manipulate people to pay their salaries. 

Darrell Bock: 

And I'm getting nervous sitting here as a faculty member. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I was thinking that. Okay, so Bill, you actually, and Brad, you introduced it. And Bill, you told us a little bit about one of the ways that you responded to that meeting with the academics. How else did you all respond to those early obstacles, especially the leadership dimension, the questions around leadership? 

Andy Wileman: 

I was here a very short time with the Leadership Center. So really in fairness, Brad and Bill and later Andy did the hard work with that. I was just trying to get us started. It was just the very beginning. And frankly, I ignored the faculty, not because I didn't value them. I cannot communicate how much I valued what the THM here gave me. But because we were fighting for survival. We didn't know what we were going to be, what we were going to do, and we were trying to write the… 

The biggest mistake we made in my opinion, and Brad and Bill are welcome to disagree, but was that we started it before we had a full-blown plan. And the reason we did that is Dr. Campbell wanted to go public that Prof was staying. And as soon as Prof agreed to it, they did ads of Prof and Dr. Campbell and me in Christianity Today and in Movie Monthly announcing Howard Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership. 

So it got approved, but we had no plan. So literally. And they just said, "Trust us. We're all for you." And so Brad and I spent a lot of time together. I would talk and then Brad would write it down and come back with something that was legible and made sense. And we tried to develop that plan on the fly, literally. And the first several months of the Leadership Center, I was still in the president's office working full-time there. 

Brad Smith: 

So one of the things that Andy had found in the research, because you notice he talked about the marketing research and the alumni research, is that the alumni said that they also needed character development. And what happened is the school had always been focused on academic development and skill, but they were saying we need character as well. And so what Bill walked into, what Andy had walked into, was a lot of the faculty said, "Obviously they need character development, but that's going to happen in the local church." That is not the role of the seminary to do that except by example, prayers in the classroom. 

But in terms of specifically intentionally adding things to the curriculum for character development, that was a new concept and that was something that Bill had to spend a lot of time on talking about that yes, it is the job of the local church, but the seminary should also be involved in intentional ways. That's where the spiritual formation program came from is from that conversation coming from the research that Andy had done in the president's office. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Bill, did you have anything you wanted to add to that? 

Brad Smith: 

So you were teaching spiritual life and the intentionality of adding spiritual formation. Any thoughts? 

Bill Lawrence: 

I came from the pastorate and I saw… When I was a student, we had a spiritual life course that had been dropped. And I said, well, to me, I said to myself, I don't want that missing. So when I added electives, I included some significant things on the spiritual life that were very significant for me when I was a student. And then out there it really made a difference. So the students took this course, these courses from me, and they got spiritual life from me, and they began to talk about it. And when they began to talk about it, the president, Don Campbell, heard it and he finally decided we're going to have the spiritual life. Why did we ever drop spiritual life? We want it back into curriculum. And so I was the guy who was talking about it. 

Everybody knew it. The faculty knew it. The faculty practiced spiritual life. That was not a problem. They just didn't… They saw it as a one hour classroom lecture and not a course and not something that really formed life. That's where spiritual life, I ended up teaching it, and then it expanded and became very much a part of what it is, has been. And that's where the Center came. All of it came out of that. 

Darrell Bock: 

Then that's where I actually had my first contact with the Center is that I was brought in, I guess because I was an academic, to help with the biblical discussions about the New Testament and the spiritual life and helped with the team that was designing what was going into spiritual life. Think through, I used to do the opening lecture that they would have for the leadership team on the New Testament background to the spiritual life and that kind of thing. And Bill talked to me about… He said he had two pillars that he wanted the Center to be built around. One of them was the academic and the other was the practical. You've heard him talk about it here. You talked about being the token person. I was the token academic in that conversation. 

And we developed a really good relationship because the seminary was making a very important decision, which was we were going to serve the church. And I actually think that that's one of the most important decisions that the seminary made in its hundred years of existence. When that move was made, clearly made in the late 1980s with the Center being an example of what it represented, that made a statement that said we care about what's happening in the pews and we care what's happening with the pastors, and we want to do it from a pastoral angle. We want have substance, but we want to do it with a pastoral angle and with a relational thrust. And we've never lost that heartbeat. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And it made us unique. So that's a good example of the seminary in general reading the winds of change and trying to figure out how to lead in the midst of it. And you gentlemen were part of the landing party that the seminary sent out to do that. So then we have Andy Seidel over here. When did you get pulled in to the work of the Center? 

Andy Seidel: 

Well, I went to Dallas Seminary, but that was much earlier than that. I got pulled in 1998. And I got to become the director of the Center largely because of Bill Lawrence and Brad Smith. And you got to begin on the basis of the two of them and Andy Wileman and what they had created. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So between 1986 and 1998 and even as you were stepping in 1998, what were some other key moments that you gentlemen, when you look back, you say this was a time when it felt like there was a really clear obstacle or there were different needs all of a sudden presenting themselves that the Center kind of had to figure out how it was going to address? 

Andy Wileman: 

I want to say in fairness of the seminary, because of being at the president's office, I'd gone back and read historical documents and all of that. I think DTS really has always tried to adapt. And it's easy to look back and say, "Well, they didn't do this." But when you know the history and where they came from, you respect a whole lot more how they adapted. Dr. Walvrood and I talked a lot about those things. And I think in fairness, throughout the time of the Leadership Center, the seminary has been adapting too. When we started teaching dynamics of leadership, some of our best students were women. But when I'd started seminary seven years or 10 years earlier, there were no women. So the seminary was constantly trying to adapt. And I think it was hand in hand with the Leadership Center. I don't think it was one against the other. There was misunderstanding, but I think they both were trying to get there, but it was in fits and starts, because our society's in fits and starts. Does that make sense? 

Kymberli Cook: 

Absolutely. So I guess what I'm trying to surface are what were some of those fits and starts? 

Andy Wileman: 

I'm trying to be real careful. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I know. So am I. 

Darrell Bock: 

The structure of what was going on was you're used to being an academic educational institution, and now you're going to put something around it that's going to try and be something more than that in one sense and be connected with input from people who are outside the classroom. That is logistically a challenge. And so I think that's part of what the struggle was. We were doing something innovative. And innovation takes practice. And practice sometimes doesn't make perfect, and sometimes it takes time to figure out and get your bearings. And that's I think what was happening. 

Kymberli Cook: 

It sounds like there were a lot- 

Brad Smith: 

There's two things that come to mind. So two things come to mind. One is, given what Bill Hendricks had said earlier about trying to engage the marketplace, we were working hard to bring in more marketplace speakers in chapel and also in the classroom so that that way pastors in training could see kind of the end product and hear the language and the ideas behind that. That was a new concept. But that was a major emphasis. And a lot of people responded to that in a very positive way because these are often very good speakers, very wise people. 

The second piece was based upon what Andy and Bill worked on is the seminary asked us to do the two large pastors conferences. And normally that had focused more on perhaps what's happening academically at the seminary. So an alumni can come back and see that. They asked us to start doing pastors conferences that were more leading. What are the cultural issues that are happening? What are the challenges that are happening, including two very large pastors conferences. And we were given freedom to bring in speakers that might push a little bit, might create a little bit of tension, but in ways that would clean that up well. 

Bill Lawrence: 

They take care of that. 

Brad Smith: 

[inaudible 00:30:55]. It was good. But I think that was a huge element of trust from Dr. Campbell to say, "We want you to actually produce the showcase of how we showcase Dallas Seminary to our alumni and donors as well." And I think that was also a place where we could begin to show a little bit about the future, engaging faculty, of course, but having more talks, not on the latest academic research, but perhaps on what's happening in culture and how pastors are dealing with that. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So how did you- 

Bill Lawrence: 

You know that ninety-eight 98% of all that's done to expand the gospel is done by non-seminary trained and non-professional leaders. Our graduates need to know that before they get out, because that's their whole life. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So what I'm curious is, around the table or at the lunch tables that you all were sitting at, and as you were talking through all these things and saying, "Okay, here's where we're at. Here's where we're trying to go. Here are the realities we're seeing," even like you were just saying, Bill, that this is the reality of even the movement of the gospel and what's happening. How do we get this out? And we have this opportunity with these pastors conferences. And just talk to me a little bit about those conversations and how you all got to the point where you had some of these ideas and you know what, we're going to bring in marketplace leaders. That's what we're going to do. Just talk to me a little bit about that. 

Andy Wileman: 

Marketplace was my thing. My degree's in business. I'd owned a business. I'd worked in financial services while I was in seminary, and the president's office is a business office. So I had that bias. The only doctorate I started was actually a business doctorate before I decided to leave. And then for instance, Prof and I went to a conference at Center for Creative Leadership, and it was of educators from all over the world speaking on leadership. 

And what you found it was, there were two groups that had done the most in leadership. Business because it was all about making money, and the military because it was all about saving lives. And that's why Andy was such a great hire. He came with that military. Because the academies were hands down the best leader trainers we met, not even close because people die if you don't lead well in the military. So we would be talking about military and business and those names and Search of Excellence was hot then by Peters and Waterman. And those were the kind of conversations we were having. 

Brad Smith: 

So Andy, could you share a little bit about the boost we got when Bill Hendricks wrote Your Work Matters to God, how you put together the advisory group that included Ford Madison, Jack Turpin, Bob Buford at one point. And then you had a younger leaders group, Bill Biesel, Russ Miller, some of those people. They became a huge part of how we were shaped and the ideas that we learned as we talked to them. Tracy Taylor was part of that. Maybe some of your thoughts on why you did that and what we learned from them. 

Andy Wileman: 

Well, again, it was to get outsiders in. But there were outsiders who loved Dallas Seminary, that believed in Dallas Seminary. I always said some of our donors believed in the seminary more than some of our faculty because they were so passionate about what the seminary had done in their lives. So we brought those kind of people, and Turpin and Madison and others, and had a conference out at Tracy Taylor's Ranch and ruminated on it, talked about it, and they were excited and helped with it. 

And then we did the Emerging Leaders. I went to some old friends, Vern Garrison, whose dad had been on the seminary board forever and others, and said, "Introduce me to other people our age who are going to be leaders." And so we brought in a group of men who still in Dallas Fort Worth, we're all old now, but are exercising leadership in a great many ways. And so that was my emphasis because I never had any pastoral experience. That was for me, the safe spot. And then Bill came in and cleaned it up for pastoral experience. 

Brad Smith: 

Andy, at that point, Lhe leadership Center was asked to raise money for its work. It was given freedom to do that. That's how we got the Bill Seay library and other things. Can you talk a little bit about why that was important, at least at that stage of the Center for Christian Leadership, for us to have the freedom to do that? 

Andy Wileman: 

Truthfully, that was always attention, honestly about could we go out and raise money and could we talk to people that were already giving money? And so there was always a struggle with that, but we wanted the autonomy. We wanted that ability to not, especially given the fact that the seminary was in a bind financially, a committee. I sat on a committee of six people and we went through and cut 5% out of the budget by going through every line item of the seminary's budget in a week. I mean, it was that ugly. And so bringing in additional money was what freed us to do other things, but it also to Brad's point, gave us some autonomy and some freedom. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So Andy, what did you feel like when you came on board? What was your vision? What were you hoping to accomplish in continuing where the Center had begun from and what was your vision for the next phase? 

Andy Seidel: 

Well, there were a couple of things that we had similar experiences of. One was we started a ministry called Leaderboard to business leaders. And that became a really, really good thing. And thanks to Bill Lawrence encouraging that and being supportive of that, we had really all kinds of very interesting leaders that came and spoke to business leaders. 

And these were of course, Swindoll and Hendricks and Mark Bailey spoke, but also we had all kinds. Ken Starr came and spoke. Ozzie Enes, Dave Ridley, he gave a marvelous thing about Southwest Airlines, how the first flight after 9/11 and how they let all the people of Southwest Airlines out to the fences to cheer the plane along, the first one that left. Dan Reeves, who was the head of the Dallas Cowboys, Tom Leppert, who was the mayor of Dallas, and a lot of other business leaders came and encouraged them. And it was a seminary event. And so it was really a good thing in connecting some of these business leaders with the seminary. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And was that partially your heart was to continue building that, not just connection, but the bonds between the business world and the seminary world and the church world and pulling it all together? 

Andy Seidel: 

Absolutely. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Okay, wonderful. Andy's the one who hired me, so it's really good. It's really nice for me to even be here. 

Andy Seidel: 

It was a good hire. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, thanks. That's very kind, Andy. And I just have to be careful with time. So then we end up adding Darrell into the mix, right? So Darrell, how did you end up in the game? 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, what had happened is the society had moved miles. It had gone from a Judeo-Christian backdrop that you could assume to a culture that was becoming pluralistic and was raising all kinds of questions for the church, practical questions that demanded a wedding between academics and really deep serious Bible study and discernment and practical application. And so what happened was is that I had a conversation with Mark Bailey. You need to know the podcasting started at the seminary apart from the Center. And the day the iPod was announced, I was in Germany on sabbatical, and I sent an email to John Grasswick and Mark Bailey saying, "This is a great way to stay in contact with alumni and to pull them into the work of the school without asking them for money, where we can minister to them and serve them and keep them up to date with what's going on, connect with them." 

And we did that for about five years. And the whole purpose was when everything hit the Richter scale that Mark and I both reacted to, and our schedules would allow us to be in the same room at the same time to do it, we'd do a podcast. We went to the Lausanne Conference, the global conference in South Africa in 2010, met with alumni and we asked them, "How can the seminary best serve you?" And without any hesitation, and almost to every person, they said, "Keep those podcasts coming to us. They're like a lifeline for us in terms of thinking about where we are theologically," et cetera. 

I walked out of that meeting and said to Mark, I said, "You realize we do this so ad hoc. There's no plan to it," et cetera. We do it when it's necessary, et cetera. But I think there's a way to do it, and I think it makes sense to put it in the Center. And I think that will help the Center complete the loop of you've got to have your character, you've got to understand what leadership is, you've got to understand how to run an organization and how to lead people. I said, "But if the leader doesn't know what's going on around them, they're in trouble, particularly in changing times." So that became the mandate. We ran that by Prof and he said he thought that was a great idea. He signed on. And you've been dealing with me ever since. 

Kymberli Cook: 

About the same time actually. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so we started the podcast. We took a year to plan what we were going to do before we did it. We spent six months deciding what we were going to call it, that kind of thing. Spent that much detail, and then we launched. And this next year we will hit our 600 episode of the podcast. So the podcast has been a major part of what we've done. And then we came alongside that and said, "We've got to help churches wrestle with the fact that Christianity is now having to adjust with being in a pluralistic environment." And at least in the United States, it's not in the majority position that it used to have, etc. That changes the way you interact and dynamic and lead out of it, etc. So that's what we're working on. So now we're working on what is the theology of cultural engagement that we can give to leaders that will help them lead well? And so those are the spaces that we're in now, and that's what we've brought in. But some things have never changed. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Oh, no, no, no. That's my last question. But I need to get Bill Hendricks in here. Stop. So Darrell, you brought this sense of, okay, so the leader, again, like we've talked about, needs to be connected to the wider world, the business. That was all from the get-go pulling in the business community and addressing character issues, addressing the spiritual life like you were bringing in Bill and Brad. And then Darrell, you have the bearings of the cultural swirl around the leader. And then we also have Bill Hendricks who in this most recent iteration, at least in directorship, has brought in how the individual leader can find their bearings in the midst of just the swirl of opportunity in life and all of that. So Bill Hendricks, can you talk a little bit to that and what brought you to the Center and got you excited about joining this decades-old effort? 

Bill Hendricks: 

I actually started this journey one night at dinner. Andy Seidel and his wife Gail invited me and my wife Lynn to dinner. And halfway through dinner, he says, "Bill, can I ask you to pray about something?" And I'm like, okay, how do I answer that? No? I said, "Sure." He said, "Would you pray about succeeding me as the executive director for Christian leadership at the Center for Christian Leader?" And I didn't really see that coming, but now I was committed. So I spent a summer praying, talking to people, trying to decide is this what God has from me or not? And believe it or not, at the end of the summer came to the conclusion, no, I don't think the Lord's really leading me into this direction. So I said no. And Dr. Bailey and Darrell were disappointed. And I thought that was the end of it. 

And a month later Dr. Bailey calls me back and said, "Well, would you consider being the acting director? If you're not the guy to take over for Andy, help us figure out who is. And meanwhile, would you put a board together, a advisory board, and would you help think through some vision?" And so now I had another season of prayer, but this time I thought, okay, this is a little more along the lines of what I'm doing and been doing. And it is after all my dad's legacy, so maybe I should take a second look. Finally, I agreed as long as I could keep doing my consulting practice, the Giftedness Center. And so the first year I just spent talking to people. What is this thing called the Center for Christian Leadership? Where does it fit in this bigger thing called Dallas Seminary? So that's a thousand conversations. I came back to Dr. Bailey that spring and I said, "I don't have a candidate for you yet." And he was like, "Oh, no hurry, no hurry." 

And so then the second year goes by and by now I'm starting to have some fun. I'm seeing a little bit of influence and things are happening and getting excited. But by the end of that year, I realized, Bill, you're going to have to make up your mind because it's very difficult for the seminary to raise money for something that they don't quite know what the leadership's going to be. So finally one day, again, after lots of prayer and searching my soul, I went to Dr. Bailey and said, "Listen, let's take acting off the title of director. As long as the seminary is happy with me and I'm happy with the seminary, let's just keep this going." And so that was almost a decade ago. 

What got me really excited was I saw that I could make a contribution in at least one way. I mean, from one point of view, Kym, you have to stop and think about with all that's been written on leadership, what new thing could I possibly bring that nobody's seen about leadership before? But I did see one possibility for how I could maybe make a contribution because I kept talking to seminary students who are spending lots of money and getting these degrees. And I'd say, "Well, what are you going to do when you get out?" They'd go, "Boy, I don't really know. I'm praying and I'm hoping the Lord shows me that before I graduate." And I'm thinking, wow, that's a risky proposition. 

And it was at that point I said, if I do nothing else while I'm here, I want to do what I've been doing, which is I want to create a robust set of resources to help future leaders have a sense of their calling and what God's purposes are for them. And I mean, their individual calling. We call that their giftedness, what they're born to do. And you're right in the middle of it. But since then, we've created a lot of resources now to help seminarians and others find out what God designed them to do and put them here to do, and what contribution they have to make. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So in a lot of ways, it started with this idea of the character and the spiritual life and making sure that the internal part of the leader was right. Goes all the way through all of these different professions in the business world and the wonderful things and culture that it has to impact and that the leader needs to be aware of and be able to navigate and speak into. 

And then at this point, we're actually back to the internal part of the leader, making sure that even their own calling and that they're in the right place. That in and of itself is actually an additional need that leadership and at least current leadership has. So in three words, three words, gentlemen, three words, what do you see in the Center that has remained constant throughout from 1986 or whenever you ended up on board? What do you see where you say there are different emphases now, there are different programs, but this I still see. Andy, let's start with you, Andy Wileman. 

Andy Wileman: 

Christ is central. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Christ is central. Andy Seidel. 

Andy Seidel: 

Leadership is necessary in all parts of ministry. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Okay. Brad, and Bill Lawrence. Brad Smith, Bill Lawrence, what would you guys say in three words? 

Bill Lawrence: 

I have a little more than four. Be a Matthew 28 seminary. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Brad. 

Brad Smith: 

Spiritual formation is core. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Spiritual formation. Bill Hendricks. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, my three words would be, what's not changed at the Center would be my father's heartbeat. My dad did his thesis on the book of James and the verse that he camped on and he camped on it throughout his whole career was be doers of the word and not hearers only. And he felt like if we did not demonstrate in practical ways the relevance of God's word to living out real life, just like Bill Lawrence was saying, then we have essentially, he used Tom Nelson's phrase, practiced pastoral malpractice. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Darrell, I gave you the last word. You're welcome. 

Darrell Bock: 

Compassion, show compassion, be connected to people. The second word is courageous. Be willing to speak out when the church needs to hear it. And the third is collaboration, to realize that ministry is never on one set of shoulders, but it's always on a team. And we need to be better at collaborating with one another. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Wonderful. 

Brad Smith: 

You have a global piece to what is being added to the Hendrick Center. Maybe could you share a little bit about the global piece you're doing for Lausanne, WA and other things? Bill has been a part of that as well. Because that's pretty important for shaping leaders of the future. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. We're asking the question and helping doing polling at a global level to define what evangelicalism is and what it isn't. We're trying to make clear the distinction between what I call theological evangelicalism and political evangelicalism and the difference between them. And we're helping with the World, Evangelical Alliance and through Kirby Lang in Cambridge, England, do this polling and get a sense of the world's voice into what it means to be a Christian who belongs to a body of Christ that's made of many tribes in many nations. 

And so in that effort, we are trying to help people appreciate the contribution that comes from outside our own context for what it means to be Christian in this world, because they all live in a pluralistic environment that's challenging, and we need each other to do that. That's part of the collaboration I was alluding to. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. Yeah. I was just about to pull that in. That definitely reflects and will continue to in the future of the Center, reflect the collaboration dimension. Well, gentlemen, we are so thoroughly out of time that we probably all just need to run out of the studio. But I just want to thank you each for being here, for the time it took to come in and for the time, quite frankly, that you have given to the Center. All of those conversations around all of those tables and trying to figure out how best to serve students here at Dallas Seminary and leaders throughout the world. So thank you so much for your service and for being here. We really appreciate it. And we appreciate those of you who have listened in on this conversation today and have learned a little bit more about who we are here at the Hendricks Center at DTS. And we would invite you to join us next time as we discuss more issues of God and culture.