Living with Diabetes and Overcoming Tragedy - Dr. Kent Ingle[00:00:00] Steve Gatena: Our lives are a gift from God. He entrusted us with this gift for a reason, and he has a divine destiny in store for each of us. A divine purpose for how our lives will unfold. And while we can always trust in God and his plan for us, we also have a special responsibility, and that's to be good stewards of these lives for the glory of God.
[00:00:34] Steve Gatena: God calls us to be good stewards over our health, our time, our talents, and our skills, and he calls us to be good stewards of our resources, our money, and our spiritual gifts. God calls us to be good stewards of the environment of animals and other people in our lives.
[00:01:01] Steve Gatena: All life, including each of ours, in this world ultimately belongs to God. He has simply entrusted us to be good stewards of his beautiful creation, and by being good stewards, we show God just how much we love Him, and how grateful we are to Him for every gift and every grace He has delivered to us.
[00:01:34] Steve Gatena: This week on Relentless Hope, Dr. Kent Ingle, President of Southeastern University, teaches us about becoming good stewards of our lives.
[00:01:48] Steve Gatena: After being told by his doctor that he had sugar diabetes, Kent was determined and committed to becoming a better steward of his own life, including his health, his resources, his time, his skills, and his family.
[00:02:07] Steve Gatena: In part one, our life segment, we learn how Kent embraced self-discipline, which he says is the same as stewardship, and how he learned to systematically manage his life.
[00:02:21] Steve Gatena: As Kent says, when we become good stewards of our lives, it prepares and positions us to live the divine design God has in store for us. In part two, our leadership segment, Kent teaches us that to be a good leader, we must be good stewards over our lives, other people, and our calling, and he teaches us some of the key disciplines we can use to become better stewards and better leaders.
[00:02:57] Steve Gatena: In part three, our legacy segment, we hear how Kent is working to leave a legacy with everyone he meets, by helping them to know in their hearts that God has created each of us and wired us to do something very special with our lives. Nothing that we've been given in this life is really ours, not our homes, not our money, not our health, not our children, not even ourselves.
[00:03:27] Steve Gatena: Everything in this world belongs to God and he has entrusted us to take great care of everything. What an awesome responsibility he has given to us. It's one to never take lightly, but to honor, cherish and respect as God's good faithful stewards.
[00:03:53] Steve Gatena: One of the most traumatic events in Dr. Kent Ingle's Life came when he received a call about his sister and her husband after a local event.
[00:04:02] Dr. Kent Ingle: Both were youth pastors at a church. They had taken a group of students to a local event and had dropped them off at the church, and were on their way home, and before they turned off the highway, a drunk driver hit them head on and killed them instantly.
[00:04:17] Dr. Kent Ingle: My sister was my only sibling, and it was a, it was a terrible tragedy. I had just come home from the television station where I, uh, had anchored the 11:00 PM sports segment when all of a sudden I received this horrible phone call about my sister and her, uh, husband and their catastrophic deaths. It hurt worse than anything I had experienced up to that point in my life
[00:04:44] Steve Gatena: On part one of this three part series, we learn about the stewardship of life from Dr. Kent Ingle, the President of Southeastern University out of Lakeland, Florida. After spending 10 years as a television sports anchor for NBC and CBS, Dr. Kent Ingle now educates students for Christ-centered life. He talks about the importance of preparation, exhibiting courage, and how he makes a difference in people's lives.
[00:05:19] Dr. Kent Ingle: I remember a major incident in my life happened years ago. I had a wake up call. I remember my doctor sitting me down and saying, Kent, you have sugar diabetes, and it's bad. And that's not what I expected to hear. I, I knew I was overweight, but I never thought my health and my life were in danger. My blood sugar count was over 350 milligrams per deciliter, and as a reference, the normal range before meals is around 100 milligrams per deciliter.
[00:05:45] Dr. Kent Ingle: I was 252 high, and I'll never forget the doctor's words kind of rippled through my mind. I was a ticking time bomb. According to the Mayo Clinic, high blood sugar can cause heart attacks, stroke, vision problems, nerve damage, kidney problems, gum disease. I mean, I was on a fast track to one or more of these debilitating conditions.
[00:06:05] Dr. Kent Ingle: How did I get there, and what was I gonna do about it? I knew there were short-term solutions to the problem, but I wanted more than that. I, I didn't want to become dependent on medications to manage my irresponsibility. I needed to become more self-disciplined if I was going to win the battle against my own bad habits.
[00:06:23] Dr. Kent Ingle: I was kind of stuck in a dangerous cycle that could eventually kill me. Something had to change, and the change had to be permanent. So my aha moment, I'll never forget, had far-reaching repercussions. I started thinking about the stewardship of life and how it was my responsibility to really manage everything God has entrusted to me.
[00:06:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: That includes my health, but also my time and my talents and resources and influence, leadership, family, and so many other components of life. You know, I never planned to be irresponsible regarding my health. It kind of just happened over time when I failed to pay attention to what was really important.
[00:07:02] Dr. Kent Ingle: And here's the thing. You know, life can't be separated into disconnected silos because the parts are all linked together. And that might not seem like a deep spiritual truth, and honestly it's not deep, but it is foundational and life really is interconnected and we all have the responsibility to manage it according to God's divine design.
[00:07:22] Dr. Kent Ingle: And leadership is all about faithfully exercising our minds, bodies, influence, in fact, all that God has given us. Nowhere in the Bible does God command a lack of discipline. Nowhere in the Bible does God tell us that we are better able to serve Him when we let our habits take control of our lives.
[00:07:39] Dr. Kent Ingle: That's not in the Bible, but it's how many of us live. And I know because I've tried it. You know, when we understand how interconnected life is, we recognize the importance of discipline, and I really consider discipline to be the systematic management of your life, to preparing and position you for your divine design. Discipline and stewardship are one and the same.
[00:08:03] Dr. Kent Ingle: You see, discipline brings order to life, and it's absolutely required if we're gonna be good stewards of the call to leadership. But here's what we have to consider. You know, we have to pay a price to get to the next level in any pursuit in life. I think about millions of high school students, they, you know, they participate in sports every year, but only a small fraction of them ever make it to the collegiate level or to the professional level.
[00:08:25] Dr. Kent Ingle: You need more than just natural talent.
[00:08:28] Dr. Kent Ingle: Now, making it to the next level requires dedication. It requires determination. It requires discipline. For leaders, this truth is always present. When my whole life is in order, things come into alignment, and if I'm learning and growing, I'm gonna have to fear getting stuck.
[00:08:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: I'll experience the truth of Romans 12:2 where Paul says: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, and it will be good, pleasing and perfect." And the Greek word translated, renewing, actually, I think, derives from the word that means renovate.
[00:09:08] Dr. Kent Ingle: If you watched, you know, a home improvement show, you've seen renovation at work. Professionals go into a home and they decide what to keep, what to reuse, what to replace. I think God does the same thing. God begins transforming our thought processes. We allow him to renovate our lives. He shows us what to keep, what to reuse, what to replace. That's how the Holy Spirit works.
[00:09:29] Dr. Kent Ingle: When the notion of becoming more self-discipline hit me, though I, I didn't need to add something to, to my to-do list, I needed a complete renovation. I needed God to change the way I thought because every action is proceeded by a mental process. When my thinking is aligned with God's principles, my actions have a better chance of aligning with Him.
[00:09:49] Dr. Kent Ingle: And that's what I wanted. But I knew it wouldn't, you know, happen if I didn't take action. And this wasn't the first time I encountered my own faulty thinking. And honestly, it won't be the last. I think faulty thinking is at the core of many things that we accept as normal today. If we aren't allowing, you know, the Holy Spirit to continually renovate our minds, we're gonna follow, you know, what's going on in the world. We're gonna follow cultural trends to co- to compromise our, really, our unique divine design and our calling.
[00:10:19] Dr. Kent Ingle: Now I can tell you this, I don't claim we have all the answers, but I knew, I do know what God has been doing in my own life, and I know his divine design for each of us is to live amazing lives that give us a sense of meaning and purpose, while drawing attention to his grace and to His love.
[00:10:36] Dr. Kent Ingle: You can't fulfill God's destiny without discipline in your life. I'll talk a little bit more about discipline, uh, a little bit later, but I can tell you this, no matter how much internal discipline you have, there will be circumstances that you find yourself in that you can't manage or control. And I can honestly say that the most difficult situation I have ever endured wasn't scare of diabetes, but the death of my sister and her husband.
[00:11:06] Dr. Kent Ingle: Both were youth pastors at a church. They had taken a group of students to a local event and had dropped them off at the church and were on their way home. And before they turned off the highway, a drunk driver hit them head on, killed instantly. My sister was my only sibling, and it was a, it was a terrible tragedy.
[00:11:25] Dr. Kent Ingle: I had just come home from a television station where I, uh, had anchored the 11:00 PM sports segment when all of a sudden I received this horrible phone call about my sister and her, um, husband and their catastrophic deaths. It hurt worse than anything I had experienced up to that point in my life. And I can tell you this, this tragedy began a deep process of self-reflection.
[00:11:49] Dr. Kent Ingle: I began to think about investing in people. Specifically, I wanted to come alongside people and help them grow in their faith. So nearly 10 years after I began my journey in sports television, I felt I needed to leave my, behind my career in that and begin maybe a new journey in ministry leadership. It seemed that ministry leadership would give me an opportunity to make a difference in people's lives more than even what I was doing in the sports industry.
[00:12:19] Dr. Kent Ingle: At this point in life. I fi-, found myself kind of in the need of additional education. Specifically I needed to pursue, um, leadership training, theological training. So, I began to pursue a degree that covered those aspects, that covered kind of, you know, church history, uh, Biblical studies, um, you know, covered practical leadership.
[00:12:43] Dr. Kent Ingle: Uh, and that helped my journey, again, to, to step into this next role of what I believe God put into my life, that divine design, um, so that I could grow as a leader and step into what he had for me next. Um, I can tell you my learning even now in the role that I have, hasn't been limited, you know, it's not limited to just formal education.
[00:13:07] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think it also has to do with mentors. And so I remember when I became president of Southeastern University, I sought out manners like John Wallace, the president of Azusa Pacific University. And, you know, he began to help me understand, what it's like to lead a, um, a university and, and to lead a setting where you're, you know, coming alongside, providing higher education that integrates faith, learning and life to students.
[00:13:34] Dr. Kent Ingle: Uh, begin to help me understand, you know, the potential for organization and leading transform, uh, motivational change. Um, I remember when I was young in, in, in high school, my pastor, um, took time to mentor me. Uh, pastor Fred Cottrell, he guided me through the discovery of my divine design and so many others that played important roles in my education.
[00:13:58] Dr. Kent Ingle: I remember years later, I was pastoring a church in Chicago when I first was approached with the idea of moving into higher education, a path I had never thought about up to that point. Things were going extremely well, you know, where I was pastoring at the church I was leading. Uh, when I had arrived at the church, it was in desperate need of a turnaround.
[00:14:17] Dr. Kent Ingle: And after years of hard work and determination, things had finally be began to change and the church was growing. We were in a good place. I had no reason to look for another ministry opportunity when I received that unexpected phone call. When I picked up the the phone, the person on the other end had ex, you know, explained that my name had been given to him as a possible candidate for the role of the Dean of the College of Ministry at Northwest University in Seattle, Washington.
[00:14:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: The one who had recommended me was actually on the search committee. He also happened to be a part of my doctoral committee and had overseen my completion of that program. This individual told the committee he knew a particular person with the right gifts, skills, passions, interest to do what was needed to be done at Northwest University. University wanted to turn around their college of ministry and everything I had done up to that point in my own ministry and my own leadership had been about turning difficult situations into opportunities for growth and expansion.
[00:15:15] Dr. Kent Ingle: So there was an element of this opportunity that was, you know, very familiar to me. And as I considered this move, I, I realized just how much it fit my divine design. Higher education wasn't on my radar screen, yet it seemed like a natural step, uh, that would be next in my life. And, uh, after much consideration and prayer, my wife and I decided to accept the opportunity. We left Chicago and moved Northwest to take on this new leadership assignment.
[00:15:42] Dr. Kent Ingle: You know, these peculiar moments happen to everyone, but not everyone recognizes them for what they are. Many simply see them as passing fragments of a puzzle rather than seeing them as an opportunity embedded in possibility.
[00:15:57] Dr. Kent Ingle: You know, they rec, they, what they do is they redirect their attention to the task and obligations at hand. There's several reasons why many, uh, choose to just walk away from life's invitation to really an adventure that God has. And I can tell you this, doing so always will take you further from what God does have planned, the way He designed you, the way He created you, the way He made you.
[00:16:23] Dr. Kent Ingle: When I became president of Southeastern University, I knew I was stepping into an entirely different culture, and grown up and lived the majority of my life on the West Coast, you know, California was my home. If you've ever spent time there, you know, It's a unique place and no, you won't find places like the Sierra Nevada Mountains or Venice Beach, anywhere else in the world.
[00:16:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: Southeastern isn't on the West coast. No, it's on the opposite side of the country, and I knew I was in a different place from the moment I arrived. Experiencing something different always creates a certain level of anxiety. There are new customs, new pronunciations, new traditions. I also knew that by stepping into this role at Southeastern, I was following a, a giant personality who had achieved significant things for the school.
[00:17:07] Dr. Kent Ingle: Former president had been extremely successful, well liked, respected. To be honest, it was a little intimidating. It's never easy for a leader to follow someone like my predecessor. I would've to cut my own path, but I would also have to work through the established expectations of others. This transition also came with a great deal of confirmation.
[00:17:27] Dr. Kent Ingle: Walking into that office for the first time, I could see how all the dots in my life had connected and prepared me for this new role. But it would never have happened if I hadn't stepped out to accept this opportunity. One, I hadn't been looking for, but it, but it would've been a mistake not to consider it.
[00:17:45] Dr. Kent Ingle: Every transition, I think, in life requires several things. I think it requires faith, requires courage, conviction, requires preparation. As you're on your journey, I think one last thing that's very important that, that I mentioned is, is this value of preparation.
[00:18:06] Dr. Kent Ingle: People who are on a journey have a deep restlessness within their souls. They're usually not satisfied with the the way things are. Instead, they're reaching for something that is yet to be. We have to push ourselves to do our very best in everything, and I call it the stewardship of life. I'm not suggesting people on a journey are necessarily unhappy. In fact, I think oftentimes the opposite is true.
[00:18:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: I have yet to meet someone who lives with a sense of purpose and mission, who doesn't also have a healthy view of life. Life is exciting when you watch every day unfold to reveal another aspect really of the masterpiece God is creating from your life. Preparation helps us gain the skills, disciplines, perspectives we need to complete, I think, the next phase of our journey.
[00:18:56] Dr. Kent Ingle: Sometimes the situation and complexities you face today are hard to understand or connect to a larger purpose, but nothing happens in life by accident. Every experience good, bad, is really part of how you're shaped, molded, crafted into a force of change in the world. We must never forget that we are always on a mission that God has designed for our lives.
[00:19:20] Dr. Kent Ingle: Formal education is one of the basic types of preparation. I think it includes primary, secondary, college, graduate, postgraduate studies. While I, you know, would be the first to admit that our natural, um, you know, and, and kind of, well, I, I guess it might be even a national approach to formal education could be improved.
[00:19:42] Dr. Kent Ingle: There is something to be said for maintaining the integrity of the classical process. The primary objective of classical approach to education is not so much to teach a skill as to train the student to think critically, to write effectively, to communicate persuasively. The world is changing faster than most institutions, I think can, can adapt and this is a glaring reality that plagues not only the academic community, but also the business community. It, it plagues really our culture.
[00:20:10] Dr. Kent Ingle: To achieve agility, we must be able to pivot in a variety of directions, adapt quickly to change, and this is what education has done so well for so long. I think another type of education that helps us in preparation is real world experience. Nothing can replace the skills, expertise, and perspective gain from achieving results.
[00:20:32] Dr. Kent Ingle: Even if our efforts result in failure, I think we can still learn from all these valuable lessons in our lives. Various jobs I've held over the years have provided an insight I wouldn't have had otherwise. They've connected me to networks of people I might never have met. They've opened doors that would not have been accessible to me.
[00:20:52] Dr. Kent Ingle: Personal disciplines are a, are very much a part of preparation. If we don't exhibit good financial management debt might prevent us from saying yet to an, you know, yes to another exciting opportunity. If we don't take care of our bodies, poor health might prevent us from completing a transition or taking on a demanding role.
[00:21:13] Dr. Kent Ingle: If we don't prepare our hearts and minds through spiritual disciplines, we might not understand the significance of the subtle shifts in our lives. You know, a final type of preparation I, I think is so important in life is mentorship. There was a time in our culture when being an apprentice shadowed a professional and learned knowledge and skills of a trade or a profession while gaining on, on, you know, on the job experience.
[00:21:41] Dr. Kent Ingle: And this type of preparation can't be transferred to a classroom. Variety of people have mentored me over the years and I'm grateful they took the time to pour themselves into my life. And those mentors made me realize how important it is to invest in others. Currently, I get to come alongside students at Southeastern University and I wanna provide a context for their education that will, you know, help them transfer valuable classroom lessons into the professional world and beyond.
[00:22:07] Dr. Kent Ingle: For me, you know, preparation, like the process of discovering your divine design, doesn't have a defined beginning and an end. But it's always gonna be perpetual. Moving through this phase doesn't mean we take a time out from life until we're ready to jump in again. I think that would severely undercut the balance of theory and practice needed to prepare us for what's ahead.
[00:22:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: You know, when I graduated from high school, I had a good sense of the things I was passionate about. I loved communications, I loved investing in people, however, I had no idea how this would play out in my life. I remember, I, I had decided to attend the local community college to get some general education courses out of the way, and of course, to save some money.
[00:22:49] Dr. Kent Ingle: I hoped to find a little bit of clarity about what, you know, university, uh, you know, I should attend, what major I should pursue. And while I was at that community college, I, I took a, a, a course after my, um, it was a speech class, after my first speech in front of the class, the professor asked me to meet, meet, uh, uh, in her office.
[00:23:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: And, and in that meeting she said, Kent, I I, I, you did a great job on your speech. And, and she said, in fact, it was so well done I, I really believe you have a gift for public speaking, and she, uh, she wanted to help me get exposure in the communications field. Um, and so she, she said, I think I can help you, and if you're interested in possibly, uh, making this as a career, um, uh, I can begin to help chart a course for you.
[00:23:42] Dr. Kent Ingle: She told me about an internship opportunity at a local television station. It was an easy decision in my mind, uh, because what she told me is, uh, this was the local NBC affiliate and, and, uh, they had an internship availability and, and, uh, I can help you get it. And so she did. I landed the internship position and the news director asked me about that particular assignment where I would like to, uh, focus, and I said, well, I love sports, so, you know, uh, I'd love to work with the sports anchor.
[00:24:13] Dr. Kent Ingle: And, and so the news director put me right with the sports anchor, and, and I began to, uh, learn from him, I, he, he taught me how to write scripts, capture video, edit, prepare, uh, um, produce each broadcast. He taught me everything I needed to know to be a great sports anchor.
[00:24:31] Dr. Kent Ingle: I'll never forget about three months into the internship, the, uh, he was offered another job in the San Francisco area, and he accepted that job and all of a sudden his position was vacant and I saw an opportunity and I, I immediately went into the news Director's office and, and I said, hey, uh, you know, you've been watching me, you've been observing me, in fact, you've been my teacher in many ways, and, and so I just said, hey, would you give me a chance to, you know, try out for this job? I explained that I feel like I knew everything I needed to know to do the work.
[00:25:06] Dr. Kent Ingle: Sure enough, he gave me an opportunity to produce a segment, deliver it on camera, use the set there in the, in the studios. Um, it wasn't live television, but it was as close to being live as it gets. He observed the entire segment, hired me on the spot, and that began my 10 year career in sports television.
[00:25:26] Dr. Kent Ingle: You see, my preparation had positioned me for that opportunity. When I started to work in broadcasting, I was just 18 years of, of age, didn't have a lot of experience, but to tell you the truth, I had a lot of rough edges, but I was willing to learn to do just about anything, to try everything at least once.
[00:25:46] Dr. Kent Ingle: I absorbed as much as I could from interactions from a wide variety of people and preparations. This positioned me to make my next move. And then I remember when I transitioned into ministry, I needed more knowledge in things like theory, church history, biblical studies. So I went back to, to pursue, again, more formal education in these areas, again, helping me, uh, prepare to lead a congregation.
[00:26:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: Our preparation to leave local church ministry and move into academic, um, you know, into an academic environment, looked different once again, and again I remember seeking out various university presidents to spend time with them, to learn from them and to use what I learned from them to shape my ideas and vision.
[00:26:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: I've learned the value of mentoring others because people have mentored me, and that's why even today I have a group of people who mentor me, who advise me and guide me through the twists and turns of life. As you can tell from my story, preparation is not limited to what happens inside the four walls of a classroom or a home or even an office.
[00:26:48] Dr. Kent Ingle: It's a combination of various factors that, you know, begin to provide a cumulative effect that, you know, make a huge impact on our individual designs. There's something you need to know if you haven't already picked up on it. Every phase of the decision making process in our lives require that we have something behind that we have to leave.
[00:27:12] Dr. Kent Ingle: Our minds are powerful instruments that can cloud the way we see the world around us. We filter out what we don't want to see, hear or believe. This often functions as a coping mechanism to various stress points, and make no mistake about it, change is stressful. Preparation phase will reveal that we must leave behind before we can continue on our journey, and we're gonna have to discover what we need to leave behind so we can move forward.
[00:27:39] Dr. Kent Ingle: Some may need to leave behind faulty assumption, assumptions about other people, ways of living, or even ideas about what's impossible or what's possible. We tend to gravitate towards what is familiar and known, and this is heavily influenced by how and where we grew up. Sometimes our assumptions about people and situations will hold us back from possibilities that we can't see.
[00:28:01] Dr. Kent Ingle: Some may need to leave behind the sting of failure. We, we aren't very old when we learn that a red hot iron will burn our hands if we touch it. Same is true in life. It's possible to reach out and touch a red hot iron without necessarily knowing we did so. That burn can leave deep scars that prevent us from moving forward on our journey.
[00:28:19] Dr. Kent Ingle: Some may need to leave behind the, you know, the actual glory of success. It's amazing to watch leaders walk away from successful situations to pursue new opportunities. Why would they do that? Perhaps because they understand that to rest in the success of today is to place their hope and faith in a period of time instead of circumstances that it's constantly changing.
[00:28:42] Dr. Kent Ingle: Our security comes from remaining actively engaged in the process that is shaping us today. There's no part of preparation that doesn't ask us to leave something behind in order to take something new. It can be an idea, an assumption, a skill or perspective. We wanna grow. We have to break free from what is today so we can embrace a new way of thinking.
[00:29:04] Dr. Kent Ingle: Preparation is the glue that will keep you grounded through the chaos of change. It's also gonna keep you from losing sight of who God designed you to be. You're a specific solution to a unique problem in this world, and moving through the preparation phase will always ensure you're ready to live in your divine design.
[00:29:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: As a leader, you have to take time to sharpen your acts. You must continually hone your skills, steward your gifts, expand your thinking, increase your resources, empower your team, search for new trends to avoid, you know, plateauing, declining. Um, a well-prepared leader develops new growth before prior success runs out.
[00:29:53] Dr. Kent Ingle: And learning how to steward yourself through the disciplines of self-awareness, self-management, self preparedness, I think, you know, they're foundational for leadership. Discovering or reinforcing these ideas is really the beginning of reaching your next level as a leader. And again, leadership will always start with you.
[00:30:15] Steve Gatena: On part two of this three part series, Dr. Kent Ingle explains that becoming a true leader first starts with leading yourself. He explains the three areas for stewarding your life and achieving next level leadership. We learn about the significance of taking advantage of our gifts, sharpening our skills, and how to complete our divine destiny.
[00:30:45] Dr. Kent Ingle: You know, at the end of the day, leadership, I think, is all about stewardship. We have all been given a divine design, the God ordained purpose for our lives, and realizing this purpose as a leader, I think requires proper stewardship of our lives. Uh, your divine design is God's gift to you, and how you steward your life when you think about it, is really your gift to God.
[00:31:09] Dr. Kent Ingle: The tools for stewarding your life are known as disciplines. Discipline is any systematic management of different spheres of your life to prepare and position you to really capture how God made you. The most successful leaders in the world don't try to accomplish everything, instead they discipline themselves to steward the right things.
[00:31:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: And I've always believed true success in leadership is found in learning what to say yes to and really what to say no to. And I think there are three key areas for stewarding your life that, that I think help you to be the leader that God calls you to be. And I know in my own life, these have been profound, um, areas that have helped me in in life stewardship, the stewardship of self, the stewardship of others, and the stewardship of calling.
[00:32:01] Dr. Kent Ingle: Stewardship of these areas, I think are absolutely essential for reaching next level leadership. And I truly believe that prop by properly stewarding these areas, and by implementing these disciplines, I think you'll be well prepared to continue pursuing that divine journey that God has for you, that divine destiny that is ahead of you.
[00:32:22] Dr. Kent Ingle: When you think about the stewardship of self, that's the first one that I think is important. I'm, I'm a firm believer that you can't lead out of what you don't have. Leaders who project well-roundedness yet neglect inward flaws will in inevitably, I think, slip up without self stewardship. It's a matter of time until you run out of steam.
[00:32:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: Authentic leadership stems from healthy stewardship of self, in fact, leadership always starts with you. First person you must be able to lead is yourself. I think this involves taking care of your body, your mind, your soul, your relationships. I call this the discipline of self-management.
[00:33:04] Dr. Kent Ingle: As I have shared over and over, uh, in my life, uh, uh, an incident that has occurred. I, I remember again, uh, the doctor startling me with the words that you have sugar diabetes, and it's bad. And I still remember those words as they ripple through my mind. Uh, I, blood sugar again can cause heart attack, stroke, vision problems, nerve damage, kidney problems, other serious issues.
[00:33:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: And basically I was that ticking time bomb. I had two choices. Either continue being a one-dimensional leader or introduce self-management into areas that I was ignoring. I needed to win the battle against my own bad habits. I needed to get out of, you know, that dangerous cycle that could eventually kill me.
[00:33:46] Dr. Kent Ingle: And this realization transformed more than my diet and workout routine. It challenged me to approach my time, my talents, resources, influence, leadership, my family, through a disciplined lifestyle. And if any part of our self-management is out of sync, it can have a drastic consequence, you know, on other aspects of our life.
[00:34:04] Dr. Kent Ingle: Life balance is key to, I think, well-rounded, enduring, and effective leadership. I think another area of of life stewardship is this area of, of the discipline of self-awareness. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "Experience is the best teacher, but you can't learn anything from an experience unless you're aware."
[00:34:28] Dr. Kent Ingle: An awareness comes by disciplining ourselves to reflect on our experiences, whatever those experiences might be. Good, difficult, bad, you know, ministry, spiritual. I think some key self-awareness questions that you have to ask yourself when reflecting on the experiences you go through life are how, how challenging, uh, has this experience been in my life? You know, what was the impact of the experience on my life, on the people around me? And then what, what did I learn from this experience?
[00:34:58] Dr. Kent Ingle: I, those, those questions seem to help me really, truly reflect on what's going on in my life. The answer to these questions, I think give you a, a awareness of your most important asset as a leader. Your giftings.
[00:35:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think inspection of what gifts you have working with within your gifts allows you, and those I think you lead to work together better. We work outside of our gifting. At least two people suffer, you and the person who really should be doing that task. As a leader, you have the responsibility to take advantage of your gifts, to empower those you lead, to use theirs as well.
[00:35:33] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think another great discipline in, in, in the stewardship of life is the discipline of self preparedness. Future always favors those who are prepared. I like the story of, um, uh, of a young man who once approached a logging crew foreman, and he, he asked, he asked for a job.
[00:35:51] Dr. Kent Ingle: Uh, let's, uh, you know, see you chop down this tree, the foreman said to him.
[00:35:57] Dr. Kent Ingle: The young man stepped forward and took down a large tree and impressed the foreman said, you can start on Monday.
[00:36:04] Dr. Kent Ingle: And so the young man reported to work faithfully each day. But on Thursday afternoon, the foreman went to the young man and said, you can pick up your paycheck on the way out today.
[00:36:13] Dr. Kent Ingle: Young man was surprised and asked, don't we get paid on Friday?
[00:36:18] Dr. Kent Ingle: Well, yes we do, replied the foreman, but, but I'm letting you go because you've fallen behind. Our productivity charts show that you've dropped from first place on Monday to last place today.
[00:36:31] Dr. Kent Ingle: Well, I'm the hardest worker here objected, you know, young man. I, I arrived first, leave last, and even worked through my breaks.
[00:36:40] Dr. Kent Ingle: Foreman could see the young man's sincerity and see how passionate he was, hesitated for a moment and asked, and have you been sharpening your ax?
[00:36:52] Dr. Kent Ingle: The young man stood quietly and said, well, no sir, I've been working too hard to take time for that.
[00:36:59] Dr. Kent Ingle: Well, that story reminds me, as a leader, you have to take time to sharpen your ax. You must continually hone your skills, steward your gifts, expand your thinking, increase your resources, empower your team. Search for new trends to avoid, you know, plateauing, declining. Um, uh, a well prepared leader develops new growth before prior success runs out. And learning how to steward yourself through the disciplines of self-awareness, self-management, self-preparedness, I think are the, you know, they're foundational for leadership.
[00:37:33] Dr. Kent Ingle: Discovering or reinforcing these ideas is really the beginning of reaching your next level as a leader. And again, leadership will always start with you to go to the next level in your leadership, I think you, you also have to you know, steward well, the people that God has placed in your life. I think it's important to look at disciplines that will help you develop what I call the stewardship of others.
[00:37:59] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think first of all, that's important when you steward others, is the discipline of character. You know, while self-management, self-awareness, self preparedness dictate the person you are becoming, character depe- d-,
[00:38:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: Really, when you think about it, character determines the person you are. Many people think character affects only themselves.
[00:38:18] Dr. Kent Ingle: The truth is bad character kills your influence with others. Where a strong character gives you credibility to begin leading. People expect leaders to have impeccable character, and if there isn't an underlying foundation of integrity that governs a leader's thoughts and actions, a life failure isn't too far off.
[00:38:38] Dr. Kent Ingle: This initial failure may not be the embezzlement of thousands of dollars, but it may begin as something as small as falsifying travel reimbursement requests. You know, people think I, you know, I wasn't caught with this small step of dishonesty in a slippery slope ensues.
[00:38:54] Dr. Kent Ingle: To engage in this discipline, you must continually ask yourself, who am I really? Examine the things you think about, talk about, dream about, and act on. One thing to watch for is self-gratifying thoughts and actions. I think the dark side of leadership begins when we think we deserve something that isn't ours. You know, David, for example, in scripture, enjoyed close fellowship with God, yet he gave into so much self-gratification.
[00:39:23] Dr. Kent Ingle: Indulging one's selfish thought, ultimately led him down a path towards adultery, deception, murder. David's failure of character not only damaged himself personally, but it almost cost him his right to lead the people of Israel. The lesson of David is obvious. No one, absolutely no one is immune to temptation.
[00:39:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: So we have to protect our character at all cost. I think when you steward others in your life, uh, it's the discipline of relationships that are absolutely important. You can't fulfill your divine design without relationships. God created you for relationships. It's the job of leaders, not only to know the people they lead, but to empower them to embrace their divine designs.
[00:40:08] Dr. Kent Ingle: As a leader, you must be willing to discipline yourself to really step out of your comfort zone, and then begin developing ways to grow relationships with others. Again, I'll never forget Pastor Fred Cottrell he was my Pastor at Bakersfield, California First Assembly when I was a teenager. Pastor Cottrell was a true investing Pastor, a servant mentor.
[00:40:32] Dr. Kent Ingle: I remember, one Sunday morning after a church service, Pastor Cottrell told me that he had been observing my life. Pastor Cottrell believed God had placed gifts, talents, abilities in my life for future ministry Leadership wanted to invest the time to mentor me. So at the age of 15, I began spending one day a week with Pastor Catrell, took me on hospital visitations, newcomer visits, even taught me how he crafted weekly sermons.
[00:40:59] Dr. Kent Ingle: Remember, God created you to give love and serve others just like Pastor Cottrell investing in relationships is what it's all about. Years later, when God opened the doors of ministry to me, what Pastor Cottrell had poured into my life actually made a huge difference in my ability to handle that call of God in my life.
[00:41:19] Dr. Kent Ingle: I still benefit from what he gave me through our relationship. Pastor Cottrell emphasized repeatedly that God designed each of us with intentional purpose. You know, as a leader, always be intentional in setting the tone in your dialogue and relationships to focus on others. Empowering others means you're not the object of the relationship at all.
[00:41:42] Dr. Kent Ingle: Don't design the conversations with the end goal of receiving praise, but instead remember to genuinely pour to people for their betterment, for their growth. I think the degree of trust others have in you dramatically affects the quality of your relationship. Relationships are the prerequisite for empowerment.
[00:42:02] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think also when you think about stewarding others, you have to understand the discipline of generosity. Generosity matters because God's blessings are not meant to flow to you. They should flow through you. If you're not prepared to be generous, you're gonna miss out on the blessing of investing in others.
[00:42:23] Dr. Kent Ingle: A story about the results of generosity comes from the life experience of my wife's father. Like many others at the time, the Grace family, they were adjusting to life following World War II. Fortunately, a 16 year old, by the name of Glen Grace, landed a job as a soda barista at the Walgreens drugstore in Southside Chicago neighborhood.
[00:42:45] Dr. Kent Ingle: He had exceptional, you know, interpersonal skills. He worked hard, showed promise far beyond the ability to make the perfect chocolate malt. And, and, and the store manager noticed Glen, he noticed, um, you know, a lot of things about Glen's life. He had discovered Glen's family probably wouldn't be able to pay his way to college. And although Glenn had applied for college the summer after he graduated high school, a few weeks before Glen was to start, his parents did tell him that he would not be able to attend because the money wasn't there.
[00:43:18] Dr. Kent Ingle: Then one week before he was to start college, Glen received a postcard in the mail and it said tuition room and board had been paid in full, and it was signed by the Walgreens drug company. And in fact, for the next eight semesters, he received a postcard in the mail saying the same thing. Glenn went on to earn his undergraduate degree and then graduated from the University of Illinois Pharmacy School.
[00:43:47] Dr. Kent Ingle: And all through college, Glenn worked at Walgreens and eventually decided that since the company had been generous to him, had invested in him, he would commit his professional life to the company. Glenn rose to the ranks over a 50 year career from soda jerk to manager, to district manager to regional manager and senior vice president, and then he spent the last 21 years with the company as the executive vice president of all store operations.
[00:44:18] Dr. Kent Ingle: You see, God created you to give love and serve others. His generosity should inspire us to be willing to give away everything we have and are, and that's hard to do in a culture that tells us to hold onto everything we get, but we must be disciplined, uh, to release the things that God entrusts to us. We can do that when we realize everything belongs to God.
[00:44:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: If you allow your character to guide you, the relationships you develop will make you a stronger, more trustworthy leader. When you discipline yourself to give mercy, forgiveness, encouragement, wisdom, and even finances to those with whom you've developed a relationship, your leadership will blossom. As a leader, the disciplines of character and relationships and generosity are how you steward the people God has placed in your life.
[00:45:12] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think a final area of stewardship that I think is so important in our life is the stewardship of calling. You know, once we've learned how to steward our lives and our interactions with others, we then begin to see our, how our lives are aligned with the calling that God has placed upon our life.
[00:45:31] Dr. Kent Ingle: A a as we'll see, only once, um, uh, our lives are brought under proper alignment personally in relationally, can we fully then begin to embrace that call that God has for us. You know, earlier I discussed how the discipline of self-awareness and self-management and self preparedness, you know, resulted in proper stewardship of our own lives.
[00:45:53] Dr. Kent Ingle: But the second area, I think the second area of stewardship, the stewardship of others blossoms when we discipline our character, manage our relationships and be, you know, it's when we're generous with people. But again, once we've done these things, we can focus on, I think the disciplines that make up the stewardship of calling.
[00:46:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: And I think one of the key disciplines, um, in the stewardship of calling is the discipline of learning. I think the discipline of learning is the foundation for following our calling. A posture of learning allows us to live, you know, in a way that adapts to what's going on in our context. If we aren't intentional about lifelong learning, we will lose our relevance and squander the opportunities God places in front of us.
[00:46:37] Dr. Kent Ingle: As the 21st century moves at a dizzying rate, if we, you know, refuse to a, a, adapt to the changes around us, uh, we lose the ability to reevaluate our lives and leadership skills in the context in which we live. And I think furthermore, we fail to improve in personal and relational areas in our life. We must cultivate an appetite to constantly learn in order to approach life's challenges in ways that, you know, address the needs, uh, uh, around us.
[00:47:07] Dr. Kent Ingle: When, when we are prepared, we notice the opportunities to engage in the ever-changing world that we live in. I think another great discipline is the discipline of opportunity. Discipline of opportunity is where personal stewardship, relational maturity, and learning intersect. When you stay aware of what could be next, you're gonna resist the natural tendency to grow stagnant and complacent.
[00:47:34] Dr. Kent Ingle: Years ago when, when he first went to Southern California, um, I remember Rick Warren was considered by many to be a kind of a renegade. Uh, though educated in a traditional environment, his entrepreneurial approach to ministry at that time was very controversial. In fact, some people resisted Warren's approach because they always resist anything that doesn't resonate with the past.
[00:47:57] Dr. Kent Ingle: Others resisted because they didn't want Warren to prove that a different way to do things might not only work, but might be widely successful. So some people, very few cheered him on, and ultimately, Saddleback Church was born and of, of course has become a standard bearer and game changer in the church community.
[00:48:16] Dr. Kent Ingle: Uh, I think his passion, his perseverance, his resourcefulness, open-mindedness and awareness enabled him to respond to the opportunities of his context. And I think in the same way, these entrepreneurial tendencies will prepare you to recognize and respond to the aha moments that I think come your way.
[00:48:35] Dr. Kent Ingle: An active entrepreneurial approach will help you connect the dots and see opportunities as they develop. The more you do this, the more you will see your God-given divine design in action. And such, leaders I think, are prepared to engage the opportunities that arise.
[00:48:54] Dr. Kent Ingle: And then I think last, uh, is, is the discipline of missional living. The opportunities you act on should naturally mesh with your sense of mission and purpose. And this is the discipline of missional living. The more clearly you understand your mission, the better prepared you will be to make decisions. One Word That Will Change Your Life, a book written by John Gordon, Dan Britton, and Jimmy Page is a, I think, a valuable resource to help focus on the on, on, on one element of your life.
[00:49:27] Dr. Kent Ingle: I've used their One Word process to help me live, I, I know in my life mission. It was in fact in 2011, my One Word mission was listening. I was determined to position myself, to truly listen to God, my family, my colleagues, and so forth. Listening was important because there were so many things in my life that needed God's direction and clarity.
[00:49:51] Dr. Kent Ingle: Out of that process came many of the principles and values that still guide our organization and my life today. In 2012, I actually had two words, courage and conviction. People who live with courage and conviction will see God do great things. In fact, the Bible's full of stories of people who had conviction and took action.
[00:50:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: Paul faced hostile situations, yet he never backed down. Jesus was stalked by the Pharisees and knew their power, but stuck to His convictions. Um, in the Old Testament, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood up to Nebuchadnezzar while realizing the king had the power to put them to death. The more I focused on courage and conviction, the more those qualities began to, you know, develop and grow In my life.
[00:50:35] Dr. Kent Ingle: In 2013, um, it was all about intentional living. You know, everyone lives, but how many people live with a sense of purpose? And this was the question that motivated me to be more intentional, required a keen sense of awareness and purpose. And I, I, I couldn't go through the motion of just doing life.
[00:50:52] Dr. Kent Ingle: I had to understand the value of the things I was doing. You know, we have to pay attention to the moments we have each day. We have to pay attention to the people in our life, to the whispers of God. You know, this is self-awareness, a discipline from the stewardship of self that enables us to live missionally every year since God has given me a word for that year.
[00:51:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: And, and again, it's all about living with purpose. And here's what I'm really trying to emphasize with all of this. Discipline keeps you on target. If we don't keep awareness of our context, we may end up living out someone else's mission.
[00:51:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: I love the book Chazown, written by Craig Groeschel, uh, Groeschel. It shares the story of what happened in the 2004 Summer Olympics with Matthew Emmons, um, one of our American athletes.
[00:51:43] Dr. Kent Ingle: He was on track for the gold in the 50 meter, three position rifle final, and Emmons was up for the, his final shot. He was so far ahead of the other competitors that all he had to do was, you know, fire a bullet, send that bullet anywhere through the inner ring of the target to seal winning the gold medal.
[00:52:03] Dr. Kent Ingle: So when that final shot came, he stepped up. He prepared himself mentally. He paused his breathing. He took aim. Pow! He fired the final shot. The bullet passed right through the bullseye, and he's ready to celebrate. He's got the gold, but he was puzzled when the tone indicating a hit didn't sound. Emmons then realized that the bullseye he had hit was on the wrong target, and he dropped from winning the gold medal to eighth place in the competition.
[00:52:45] Dr. Kent Ingle: The right shot hit the wrong target
[00:52:52] Dr. Kent Ingle: Bottom line, one day all of us, we're gonna stand before the greater judge, the greatest judge of all greater than any who was officiated at the Olympics. What will you say if he tells you that in your life you hit the wrong target? What if he says you weren't a good steward of his divine design?
[00:53:18] Dr. Kent Ingle: Hopefully, you have disciplined your life well and hit the bullseye on the right target so that you can hear the words "well done, my good and faithful servant." If you're more interested in learning about these disciplines, feel free to check out the book, Nine Disciplines of Enduring Leadership, Developing the Potential of Your Divine Design.
[00:53:38] Dr. Kent Ingle: And, and in that particular book, I go into much greater detail about these disciplines that will absolutely take your leadership to new levels, um, really fulfilling the call that God has for you in the context that He's placed you.
[00:53:58] Dr. Kent Ingle: He says this, he says, the place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger coincide. The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger coincide. Basically, they come together. I wanna help people discover that place where their specific passions can meet the world's unique needs.
[00:54:27] Dr. Kent Ingle: The only way they can do this is by learning how to create a framework for their life and having the discipline to live that framework out.
[00:54:38] Steve Gatena: On part three of this three part series, we learned that in order to build a great legacy and a great framework for your life, you have to clarify your goals.
[00:54:48] Steve Gatena: Dr kent Ingle explains how he used unique listening exercises to understand what people want and ultimately what they really need. He tells us that everyone carries the imprint of God and how legacy has to be lived out by everyone we touch.
[00:55:10] Dr. Kent Ingle: Wow, when I think about legacy and, and how I want people to remember me, it all goes back to this idea of divine design. I'm so passionate about understanding how God, you know, made you, created, you, wired you. I, I want every person I come in contact with to learn this one simple idea that God has uniquely made you to do something special.
[00:55:33] Dr. Kent Ingle: I firmly believe that every person carries within them the imprint of God. Just as God is creative, you are creative. Just as God has a story to tell, so do you. You are put on earth to make a difference. What I want leaders to realize is that each one of you carry a central organizing principle, and as you discover and develop it, while you begin to build a framework for accomplishing the vision God has placed in your heart.
[00:55:57] Dr. Kent Ingle: And if you can learn how to use your unique leadership framework, you'll always have complete control of your context that God has placed you in. I think you know, the first step in developing your leadership framework is really to listen. Uh, as a leader, I wanna be marked as a careful atentive listener. I think too many leaders wanna be known for what they say.
[00:56:17] Dr. Kent Ingle: I wanna be known for what I hear. I'll never forget when I first met the faculty of Southeastern University, I was in the final stages of my interview process to be the president of the university. It had been a long grueling day of interviews and, and, uh, meeting the stakeholders.
[00:56:34] Dr. Kent Ingle: And now we're at a point where I was sitting in front of the entire faculty of the university and, um, search committee made their introductions of me and I gave my opening comments, same routine I had done countless times already that day. Then they opened the floor for questions from the faculty. Right off the bat, I got hit with the question that everybody actually was asking all day long. What is your vision for the university? I had no idea at the time that my answer would mark actually my entire presidency and propel SEU to become, you know, one of the fastest growing universities in the nation.
[00:57:07] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think too many leaders wanna lay out immediately what the vision is, they wanna start out with "here's the vision." They feel that before they can start leading, they already have to know what to do and where to go. Problem with this mindset is that most of the time reality falls short of their expectations.
[00:57:24] Dr. Kent Ingle: What a leader thinks their people need and what they actually need can be, uh, totally different. And this is why all good leadership ha that you have to start, you know, your process of leading with listening. The potential of every organization lies in the potential of its people. Your people have hopes and dreams for their lives and for their roles in your organization. They also see threats, opportunities that you as a leader may not see.
[00:57:50] Dr. Kent Ingle: One key ideal I, uh, want people to learn from my legacy is this, that good leadership will always start with listening to the people. And as I stood in front of the faculty during the interview, the question continued to hang in the air.
[00:58:03] Dr. Kent Ingle: What is your vision for the university?
[00:58:05] Dr. Kent Ingle: And of course my answer might surprise you, but I looked at the faculty in that moment and I said, honestly, I don't know. I knew that I couldn't answer that question until I had done my job. As a listener, I could not shape my role as a leader. Before I could understand the vision, I would have to listen to the people.
[00:58:24] Dr. Kent Ingle: So that's what we did. We enacted what would become one of the largest, most in-depth listening exercises the university had ever conducted. From that listening exercise, we began to understand the culture of organization as well as the vision for the future, and that's why leading through frameworks always starts with listening.
[00:58:41] Dr. Kent Ingle: As leaders, we listen to our people, we begin to lay the foundations of trust on which we build our influence. That's why all leadership must start with listening. I think the next step in building a framework for your life is to audit the context. I learned pretty early on that leadership is contextual in what you do and how you do it is largely determined by the circumstances you're in.
[00:59:02] Dr. Kent Ingle: When I first came to Southeastern as president, our university was two enrollment cycles away from really shutting its doors. Two years prior, it had been a campus swelling with over 3000 students led by a dynamic charismatic leader. But after two years with no leadership, Southeastern was down by almost 1000 students and shrinking.
[00:59:23] Dr. Kent Ingle: And I knew right off the bat that we had to do something to change the context of the university. And that meant not only taking the time to listen to the people, but look to understand what are the factors affecting the situation. Auditing the context means understanding the urgent issues that matter to your people, and innovating ways to meet those needs.
[00:59:43] Dr. Kent Ingle: As leaders, we must always remember we're not leading assets, we're leading people. And as I begin to listen to the people, I begin to understand the urgent issues that matter to them. From auditing the context of the university, I saw what our people were good at, and, and then I also saw what they didn't have and what they needed, um, and, and, uh, and, and how they can approach, you know, the, the, the slow march to, you know, a way to make this university healthy and and strong again.
[01:00:13] Dr. Kent Ingle: Um, that season of auditing our context made it readily apparent that what our university needed to climb out of enrollment decline was a lot of, um, need oriented education or need oriented programs. Uh, a couple of things that we found out that, um, you know, met those issues and really felt could propel the university to, to growth in health was to start a football program, to start a nursing program.
[01:00:40] Dr. Kent Ingle: While those two things may not seem all that relevant, uh, revolutionary in the context of SEU, which began as a small, you know, Bible teaching school for pastors in the middle of an orange grove, football and nursing, you know, absolutely revolutionary. Naturally, there was, you know, there were a lot of people that kind of resisted to some of these ideas.
[01:01:01] Dr. Kent Ingle: Many people thought that by bringing these two programs online, we were fundamentally changing who we were as a community. But because we had started this change process by listening to our people, and then we developed these initiatives through auditing our context, we were able to meet that resistance head on by demonstrating this was the best decision for our community, and through our framework, we were able to take control of our context.
[01:01:27] Dr. Kent Ingle: What I want everyone to learn from my experience is that leadership is contextual. If you will, take the time, have the patience to audit that context, then the road ahead will always be clear.
[01:01:39] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think another step in building a great framework for your life, uh, and legacy is to clarify your goals. What I hope everyone learns from my legacy is that you will never accomplish anything great if you don't have clarified goals.
[01:01:53] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think the biggest threat to your life is not external competition or shifts in the marketplace, or even failing at trying something new. The biggest threat to your life is when your mission gets blurred and you're, you're not right on target. You know, I will never forget one of my first days on the job as president of SEU, I was right in the middle of conducting one of the most extensive listening exercises university had ever performed.
[01:02:20] Dr. Kent Ingle: And after weeks of interviews and surveys, I, I had to get out into the campus and just take a walk around. As I was going through the campus, I made, you know, my way to one of the mini garden beds around, beautiful, if you've seen our campus, just beautiful. It looks like a resort. And I saw one, one of our groundskeepers working in one of the gardens, and I stopped him and, and I said,
[01:02:40] Dr. Kent Ingle: Hey, you know, I just wanna let you know thank you for the incredible work you're doing, keeping our campus looking beautiful.
[01:02:46] Dr. Kent Ingle: Um, he said, well, that's really not, you know, he thanked me, but he says, that's really not my job. He said, my job is I'm, I'm actually helping give students a world-class education.
[01:02:59] Dr. Kent Ingle: You can see this kind of clarity of goals in the words of of, of that groundskeeper. He understood everything he did was a part of giving our students a world-class education that integrated faith learning in life.
[01:03:10] Dr. Kent Ingle: For him, the goal was clear. You may have had a particular job in that organization, but he understood what the goal was for every student that, um, uh, uh, uh, was accepted and attended, SEU, um, it unified his actions with our community. Clarity brings unity for leadership. After listening to the people and auditing the context, we had a pretty good idea of the urgent issues we needed to tackle as well as the culture we wanted to create.
[01:03:37] Dr. Kent Ingle: Those frameworks were already moving the needle, you know, for our organization, uh, to growth and health, but everyone was beginning to run in different directions. So what we needed, you know, were clear goals, a functional framework that would guide all of our actions and unify our efforts. So we did, we developed actually a functional framework around the goals of affordability and accessibility.
[01:04:00] Dr. Kent Ingle: We recognize that everything we do needs to unify around the goal of creating affordable and accessible education. And I think once we clarified, you know, those two goals, everything began to change at our university. The team now had clear intentions to unify around and people who were very different regarding, you know, the gifts and their personalities begin to collaborate and innovate together in a way that, you know would bring change.
[01:04:26] Dr. Kent Ingle: What will you accomplish when your goals are clear?
[01:04:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: Wow, I mean, that's a great question and what I've realized in my life and what I hope people pick up from my legacy is that when you are clear on the goals for your life, there's nothing, absolutely nothing that will hold you back from what God wants to do.
[01:04:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think the final step in developing a framework for your life is to achieve visionary alignment with the people around you. Legacy isn't owned by one person. A legacy is created through the network of relationships that we all share. What I hope to lead behind through my leadership is this idea of being a good steward of your relationships.
[01:05:08] Dr. Kent Ingle: None of us do this life alone. We are all part of a network of connections that inform how you think, show you how to act, and empower you on your journey of self-discovery. I wanna be remembered as a person who stewarded the connections of my life well.
[01:05:24] Dr. Kent Ingle: What I've discovered through my experience is that when I steward and serve the people around me, all of a sudden conflict reduces and everyone begins to align around a common vision.
[01:05:35] Dr. Kent Ingle: After so many years of planning and preparing the day of our first football game, finally came. We had listened to our people, we had audited the context, we had clarified the goals, and now we had the chance to sit back and enjoy what we worked so hard to build.
[01:05:50] Dr. Kent Ingle: And it was an incredible day, for a school that had never had a football team. You would've thought we'd been doing football for years. Everybody was working together. From the athletes to the coaches, to the game day experience team. There was complete alignment across the board. If you've ever been to any kind of collegiate sporting event, you know what it feels like to experience the energy of a crowd of students cheering on, you know, the team.
[01:06:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: It's addicting. Watching the team move in perfect alignment, having the crowd cheering them on you know, willing them into the next touchdown. Psychologist calls this the effect flow. In that inaugural football game, our team reached this state of flow and looking at them on the field, they seemed to be operating almost as a single unit, as if no real thought were involved.
[01:06:34] Dr. Kent Ingle: And you see, alignment is the final step in the process of developing a framework of legacy for your life. The principle benefit of good alignment, of course, is that it brings about a sense of flow. An environment where people are operating at high capacity with without need for lots of managing or instructing.
[01:06:51] Dr. Kent Ingle: This is the way we know our frameworks have be, you know, began to take shape when we experience this state of flow. An aligned organization doesn't have to figure out how to respond. It just responds. It can be tempting to ignore, I think, this final step.
[01:07:08] Dr. Kent Ingle: Takes effort to create alignment with the people around you. But I've, you know, what I've learned is that the alignment is the, is the moment when your framework becomes real. Your legacy has to be more than a good story. It has to be lived out by everyone you touch, everyone that you leave behind. I want my life and legacy to be marked by people. As I started off that, you know, at the beginning, I, I, I want to re, I wanna be remembered by the fact that, um, I helped every person I came in contact with discover who God has made them to be.
[01:07:46] Dr. Kent Ingle: The only way to do that is through a framework, only by listening, auditing, clarifying, aligning, can you accomplish the mission that God has placed on your life. There's one quote that has defined my life and I hope will define my legacy, is, uh, is the quote that comes from the american theologian, Frederick Beaker.
[01:08:06] Dr. Kent Ingle: Uh, he says this, he says, "the place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger coincide. The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger coincide". Basically, they come together. I wanna help people discover that place where their specific passions can meet the world's unique needs.
[01:08:35] Dr. Kent Ingle: The only way they can do this is by learning how to create a framework for their life and having the discipline to live that framework out. I want to end with this story, and I love this story about the famous pilot, Chuck Yeager. You know, when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in his Bel X One on October 14th, 1947, no hard engineering data existed on the flight characteristics of an aircraft traveling at supersonic speeds.
[01:09:02] Dr. Kent Ingle: Some thought it was possible that no aircraft could physically withstand the buffeting that would occur as it approached supersonic speed. Captain Yeager was literally flying into the unknown at more than 1,100 feet per second.
[01:09:17] Dr. Kent Ingle: Well, how did he do it? How did he fly his plane into the unknown? He did it through a framework.
[01:09:24] Dr. Kent Ingle: Experienced pilots have a mantra: fly the airplane. That's their mantra. And what they mean by this is that no matter what happens during a flight, there are certain physical principles that govern an aircraft's behavior. The pilot's job is to engage those principles as effectively as possible no matter what else is going on, until the aircraft is safely back on the ground.
[01:09:48] Dr. Kent Ingle: And if you get into a patch of rough air, fly the airplane until the things smooth out. If an engine cuts out, fly the airplane until you can find a place to land. And Yeager did just that. He trusted his framework and kept flying the plane. By the 1950s, uh, aircraft were routinely flying faster, you know, than the speed of sound.
[01:10:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: And by the 1970s, the Concord was carrying passengers across the Atlantic at supersonic speeds. If you can learn how to build a framework for your life, you'll never be lost even when you venture into the unknown. Well, when I think of legacy, I want my legacy to be that I kept flying the plane, trusting the framework of my life into the unknown that God has called me to go.
[01:10:39] Dr. Kent Ingle: My hope is that as I do that, other people will be inspired to discover and live in the divine design of their own lives.
[01:10:52] Steve Gatena: Everything that we see, touch and feel was created by God. The world is God's world, and every living creature is God's, including each of us. Yes, God gifted us our lives and how we use them and how we steward them is our gift to God. And God so wants us to be good stewards. He so wants us to take good care of all his gifts.
[01:11:26] Steve Gatena: He wants us to be good stewards of our bodies and our health of our minds, and our hearts of all the resources and gifts and talents that he's bestowed upon us.
[01:11:37] Steve Gatena: God wants us to steward the relationships and connections in our lives too, to love and serve everyone. By becoming good stewards of all of God's wonderful gifts, we show Him how much we love Him, and how thankful and grateful we are for all that He's given us.
[01:12:04] Steve Gatena: This week on relentless hope, Dr Kent Ingle, president of Southeastern University, taught us all about becoming good stewards of our lives, and why it's so important. As Kent explained, God has placed a divine design in everyone's hearts, and he intended for us to live amazing lives that give us a sense of meaning and purpose,
[01:12:33] Steve Gatena: while also drawing attention to God's grace and love.
[01:12:38] Steve Gatena: In part one, our life segment, Dr Kent Ingle, explains how we can't fulfill God's divine destiny for us without first becoming good stewards of our lives. Everything in life is interconnected, so if we allow bad habits and faulty thinking to take control of our lives, then we will mismanage the gifts that God has given to us. And if we mismanage our own lives, then we won't be able to serve God the way he intended.
[01:13:17] Steve Gatena: In part two, our leadership segment, Kent taught us about the power of self-discipline, and he shared some of the most effective disciplines we can create in our lives to become better stewards and better leaders, such as the disciplines of self-awareness, self-management, self preparedness, relationship building, generosity, learning, and missional living.
[01:13:46] Steve Gatena: In part three, our legacy segment, we learned Ken's powerful four step framework to help us become good stewards of our lives and our legacies when it comes to leaving his own legacy. Kent shared how he's also passionate about being remembered for delivering the message that God uniquely made, created and wired everyone to do something special.
[01:14:18] Steve Gatena: As Kent explained, everybody carries within them the imprint of God. Just as God is creative, we are creative. Just as God has a story to tell, we have a story to tell. And we're put on this earth to make a difference, to make a difference in this world, in other people's lives, and to live God's divine design for our lives.
[01:14:50] Steve Gatena: This means we must do our very best at the stewardship of our lives. By taking care of our lives, we take care of God's precious creation. And we set up ourselves to better fulfill God's plan and purpose for our lives. Everything in this world is a gift from God. Everything matters. Everything is meaningful, everything deserves our respect, protection, love, and care.
[01:15:23] Steve Gatena: It's through our great stewardship of life that we show God just how much we love, respect, and care for Him too. The one principle that surrounds everything else is that of stewardship, that we are the managers of everything that God has given to us. And if you feel that we've given to you an inspirational episode of this podcast today on Relentless Hope, I want you to give it to someone else. So if you've enjoyed this podcast, please share it with someone you love. Remember, you have the opportunity to give hope a voice.
Living with Diabetes and Overcoming Tragedy - Dr. Kent Ingle[00:00:00] Steve Gatena: Our lives are a gift from God. He entrusted us with this gift for a reason, and he has a divine destiny in store for each of us. A divine purpose for how our lives will unfold. And while we can always trust in God and his plan for us, we also have a special responsibility, and that's to be good stewards of these lives for the glory of God.
[00:00:34] Steve Gatena: God calls us to be good stewards over our health, our time, our talents, and our skills, and he calls us to be good stewards of our resources, our money, and our spiritual gifts. God calls us to be good stewards of the environment of animals and other people in our lives.
[00:01:01] Steve Gatena: All life, including each of ours, in this world ultimately belongs to God. He has simply entrusted us to be good stewards of his beautiful creation, and by being good stewards, we show God just how much we love Him, and how grateful we are to Him for every gift and every grace He has delivered to us.
[00:01:34] Steve Gatena: This week on Relentless Hope, Dr. Kent Ingle, President of Southeastern University, teaches us about becoming good stewards of our lives.
[00:01:48] Steve Gatena: After being told by his doctor that he had sugar diabetes, Kent was determined and committed to becoming a better steward of his own life, including his health, his resources, his time, his skills, and his family.
[00:02:07] Steve Gatena: In part one, our life segment, we learn how Kent embraced self-discipline, which he says is the same as stewardship, and how he learned to systematically manage his life.
[00:02:21] Steve Gatena: As Kent says, when we become good stewards of our lives, it prepares and positions us to live the divine design God has in store for us. In part two, our leadership segment, Kent teaches us that to be a good leader, we must be good stewards over our lives, other people, and our calling, and he teaches us some of the key disciplines we can use to become better stewards and better leaders.
[00:02:57] Steve Gatena: In part three, our legacy segment, we hear how Kent is working to leave a legacy with everyone he meets, by helping them to know in their hearts that God has created each of us and wired us to do something very special with our lives. Nothing that we've been given in this life is really ours, not our homes, not our money, not our health, not our children, not even ourselves.
[00:03:27] Steve Gatena: Everything in this world belongs to God and he has entrusted us to take great care of everything. What an awesome responsibility he has given to us. It's one to never take lightly, but to honor, cherish and respect as God's good faithful stewards.
[00:03:53] Steve Gatena: One of the most traumatic events in Dr. Kent Ingle's Life came when he received a call about his sister and her husband after a local event.
[00:04:02] Dr. Kent Ingle: Both were youth pastors at a church. They had taken a group of students to a local event and had dropped them off at the church, and were on their way home, and before they turned off the highway, a drunk driver hit them head on and killed them instantly.
[00:04:17] Dr. Kent Ingle: My sister was my only sibling, and it was a, it was a terrible tragedy. I had just come home from the television station where I, uh, had anchored the 11:00 PM sports segment when all of a sudden I received this horrible phone call about my sister and her, uh, husband and their catastrophic deaths. It hurt worse than anything I had experienced up to that point in my life
[00:04:44] Steve Gatena: On part one of this three part series, we learn about the stewardship of life from Dr. Kent Ingle, the President of Southeastern University out of Lakeland, Florida. After spending 10 years as a television sports anchor for NBC and CBS, Dr. Kent Ingle now educates students for Christ-centered life. He talks about the importance of preparation, exhibiting courage, and how he makes a difference in people's lives.
[00:05:19] Dr. Kent Ingle: I remember a major incident in my life happened years ago. I had a wake up call. I remember my doctor sitting me down and saying, Kent, you have sugar diabetes, and it's bad. And that's not what I expected to hear. I, I knew I was overweight, but I never thought my health and my life were in danger. My blood sugar count was over 350 milligrams per deciliter, and as a reference, the normal range before meals is around 100 milligrams per deciliter.
[00:05:45] Dr. Kent Ingle: I was 252 high, and I'll never forget the doctor's words kind of rippled through my mind. I was a ticking time bomb. According to the Mayo Clinic, high blood sugar can cause heart attacks, stroke, vision problems, nerve damage, kidney problems, gum disease. I mean, I was on a fast track to one or more of these debilitating conditions.
[00:06:05] Dr. Kent Ingle: How did I get there, and what was I gonna do about it? I knew there were short-term solutions to the problem, but I wanted more than that. I, I didn't want to become dependent on medications to manage my irresponsibility. I needed to become more self-disciplined if I was going to win the battle against my own bad habits.
[00:06:23] Dr. Kent Ingle: I was kind of stuck in a dangerous cycle that could eventually kill me. Something had to change, and the change had to be permanent. So my aha moment, I'll never forget, had far-reaching repercussions. I started thinking about the stewardship of life and how it was my responsibility to really manage everything God has entrusted to me.
[00:06:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: That includes my health, but also my time and my talents and resources and influence, leadership, family, and so many other components of life. You know, I never planned to be irresponsible regarding my health. It kind of just happened over time when I failed to pay attention to what was really important.
[00:07:02] Dr. Kent Ingle: And here's the thing. You know, life can't be separated into disconnected silos because the parts are all linked together. And that might not seem like a deep spiritual truth, and honestly it's not deep, but it is foundational and life really is interconnected and we all have the responsibility to manage it according to God's divine design.
[00:07:22] Dr. Kent Ingle: And leadership is all about faithfully exercising our minds, bodies, influence, in fact, all that God has given us. Nowhere in the Bible does God command a lack of discipline. Nowhere in the Bible does God tell us that we are better able to serve Him when we let our habits take control of our lives.
[00:07:39] Dr. Kent Ingle: That's not in the Bible, but it's how many of us live. And I know because I've tried it. You know, when we understand how interconnected life is, we recognize the importance of discipline, and I really consider discipline to be the systematic management of your life, to preparing and position you for your divine design. Discipline and stewardship are one and the same.
[00:08:03] Dr. Kent Ingle: You see, discipline brings order to life, and it's absolutely required if we're gonna be good stewards of the call to leadership. But here's what we have to consider. You know, we have to pay a price to get to the next level in any pursuit in life. I think about millions of high school students, they, you know, they participate in sports every year, but only a small fraction of them ever make it to the collegiate level or to the professional level.
[00:08:25] Dr. Kent Ingle: You need more than just natural talent.
[00:08:28] Dr. Kent Ingle: Now, making it to the next level requires dedication. It requires determination. It requires discipline. For leaders, this truth is always present. When my whole life is in order, things come into alignment, and if I'm learning and growing, I'm gonna have to fear getting stuck.
[00:08:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: I'll experience the truth of Romans 12:2 where Paul says: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, and it will be good, pleasing and perfect." And the Greek word translated, renewing, actually, I think, derives from the word that means renovate.
[00:09:08] Dr. Kent Ingle: If you watched, you know, a home improvement show, you've seen renovation at work. Professionals go into a home and they decide what to keep, what to reuse, what to replace. I think God does the same thing. God begins transforming our thought processes. We allow him to renovate our lives. He shows us what to keep, what to reuse, what to replace. That's how the Holy Spirit works.
[00:09:29] Dr. Kent Ingle: When the notion of becoming more self-discipline hit me, though I, I didn't need to add something to, to my to-do list, I needed a complete renovation. I needed God to change the way I thought because every action is proceeded by a mental process. When my thinking is aligned with God's principles, my actions have a better chance of aligning with Him.
[00:09:49] Dr. Kent Ingle: And that's what I wanted. But I knew it wouldn't, you know, happen if I didn't take action. And this wasn't the first time I encountered my own faulty thinking. And honestly, it won't be the last. I think faulty thinking is at the core of many things that we accept as normal today. If we aren't allowing, you know, the Holy Spirit to continually renovate our minds, we're gonna follow, you know, what's going on in the world. We're gonna follow cultural trends to co- to compromise our, really, our unique divine design and our calling.
[00:10:19] Dr. Kent Ingle: Now I can tell you this, I don't claim we have all the answers, but I knew, I do know what God has been doing in my own life, and I know his divine design for each of us is to live amazing lives that give us a sense of meaning and purpose, while drawing attention to his grace and to His love.
[00:10:36] Dr. Kent Ingle: You can't fulfill God's destiny without discipline in your life. I'll talk a little bit more about discipline, uh, a little bit later, but I can tell you this, no matter how much internal discipline you have, there will be circumstances that you find yourself in that you can't manage or control. And I can honestly say that the most difficult situation I have ever endured wasn't scare of diabetes, but the death of my sister and her husband.
[00:11:06] Dr. Kent Ingle: Both were youth pastors at a church. They had taken a group of students to a local event and had dropped them off at the church and were on their way home. And before they turned off the highway, a drunk driver hit them head on, killed instantly. My sister was my only sibling, and it was a, it was a terrible tragedy.
[00:11:25] Dr. Kent Ingle: I had just come home from a television station where I, uh, had anchored the 11:00 PM sports segment when all of a sudden I received this horrible phone call about my sister and her, um, husband and their catastrophic deaths. It hurt worse than anything I had experienced up to that point in my life. And I can tell you this, this tragedy began a deep process of self-reflection.
[00:11:49] Dr. Kent Ingle: I began to think about investing in people. Specifically, I wanted to come alongside people and help them grow in their faith. So nearly 10 years after I began my journey in sports television, I felt I needed to leave my, behind my career in that and begin maybe a new journey in ministry leadership. It seemed that ministry leadership would give me an opportunity to make a difference in people's lives more than even what I was doing in the sports industry.
[00:12:19] Dr. Kent Ingle: At this point in life. I fi-, found myself kind of in the need of additional education. Specifically I needed to pursue, um, leadership training, theological training. So, I began to pursue a degree that covered those aspects, that covered kind of, you know, church history, uh, Biblical studies, um, you know, covered practical leadership.
[00:12:43] Dr. Kent Ingle: Uh, and that helped my journey, again, to, to step into this next role of what I believe God put into my life, that divine design, um, so that I could grow as a leader and step into what he had for me next. Um, I can tell you my learning even now in the role that I have, hasn't been limited, you know, it's not limited to just formal education.
[00:13:07] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think it also has to do with mentors. And so I remember when I became president of Southeastern University, I sought out manners like John Wallace, the president of Azusa Pacific University. And, you know, he began to help me understand, what it's like to lead a, um, a university and, and to lead a setting where you're, you know, coming alongside, providing higher education that integrates faith, learning and life to students.
[00:13:34] Dr. Kent Ingle: Uh, begin to help me understand, you know, the potential for organization and leading transform, uh, motivational change. Um, I remember when I was young in, in, in high school, my pastor, um, took time to mentor me. Uh, pastor Fred Cottrell, he guided me through the discovery of my divine design and so many others that played important roles in my education.
[00:13:58] Dr. Kent Ingle: I remember years later, I was pastoring a church in Chicago when I first was approached with the idea of moving into higher education, a path I had never thought about up to that point. Things were going extremely well, you know, where I was pastoring at the church I was leading. Uh, when I had arrived at the church, it was in desperate need of a turnaround.
[00:14:17] Dr. Kent Ingle: And after years of hard work and determination, things had finally be began to change and the church was growing. We were in a good place. I had no reason to look for another ministry opportunity when I received that unexpected phone call. When I picked up the the phone, the person on the other end had ex, you know, explained that my name had been given to him as a possible candidate for the role of the Dean of the College of Ministry at Northwest University in Seattle, Washington.
[00:14:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: The one who had recommended me was actually on the search committee. He also happened to be a part of my doctoral committee and had overseen my completion of that program. This individual told the committee he knew a particular person with the right gifts, skills, passions, interest to do what was needed to be done at Northwest University. University wanted to turn around their college of ministry and everything I had done up to that point in my own ministry and my own leadership had been about turning difficult situations into opportunities for growth and expansion.
[00:15:15] Dr. Kent Ingle: So there was an element of this opportunity that was, you know, very familiar to me. And as I considered this move, I, I realized just how much it fit my divine design. Higher education wasn't on my radar screen, yet it seemed like a natural step, uh, that would be next in my life. And, uh, after much consideration and prayer, my wife and I decided to accept the opportunity. We left Chicago and moved Northwest to take on this new leadership assignment.
[00:15:42] Dr. Kent Ingle: You know, these peculiar moments happen to everyone, but not everyone recognizes them for what they are. Many simply see them as passing fragments of a puzzle rather than seeing them as an opportunity embedded in possibility.
[00:15:57] Dr. Kent Ingle: You know, they rec, they, what they do is they redirect their attention to the task and obligations at hand. There's several reasons why many, uh, choose to just walk away from life's invitation to really an adventure that God has. And I can tell you this, doing so always will take you further from what God does have planned, the way He designed you, the way He created you, the way He made you.
[00:16:23] Dr. Kent Ingle: When I became president of Southeastern University, I knew I was stepping into an entirely different culture, and grown up and lived the majority of my life on the West Coast, you know, California was my home. If you've ever spent time there, you know, It's a unique place and no, you won't find places like the Sierra Nevada Mountains or Venice Beach, anywhere else in the world.
[00:16:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: Southeastern isn't on the West coast. No, it's on the opposite side of the country, and I knew I was in a different place from the moment I arrived. Experiencing something different always creates a certain level of anxiety. There are new customs, new pronunciations, new traditions. I also knew that by stepping into this role at Southeastern, I was following a, a giant personality who had achieved significant things for the school.
[00:17:07] Dr. Kent Ingle: Former president had been extremely successful, well liked, respected. To be honest, it was a little intimidating. It's never easy for a leader to follow someone like my predecessor. I would've to cut my own path, but I would also have to work through the established expectations of others. This transition also came with a great deal of confirmation.
[00:17:27] Dr. Kent Ingle: Walking into that office for the first time, I could see how all the dots in my life had connected and prepared me for this new role. But it would never have happened if I hadn't stepped out to accept this opportunity. One, I hadn't been looking for, but it, but it would've been a mistake not to consider it.
[00:17:45] Dr. Kent Ingle: Every transition, I think, in life requires several things. I think it requires faith, requires courage, conviction, requires preparation. As you're on your journey, I think one last thing that's very important that, that I mentioned is, is this value of preparation.
[00:18:06] Dr. Kent Ingle: People who are on a journey have a deep restlessness within their souls. They're usually not satisfied with the the way things are. Instead, they're reaching for something that is yet to be. We have to push ourselves to do our very best in everything, and I call it the stewardship of life. I'm not suggesting people on a journey are necessarily unhappy. In fact, I think oftentimes the opposite is true.
[00:18:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: I have yet to meet someone who lives with a sense of purpose and mission, who doesn't also have a healthy view of life. Life is exciting when you watch every day unfold to reveal another aspect really of the masterpiece God is creating from your life. Preparation helps us gain the skills, disciplines, perspectives we need to complete, I think, the next phase of our journey.
[00:18:56] Dr. Kent Ingle: Sometimes the situation and complexities you face today are hard to understand or connect to a larger purpose, but nothing happens in life by accident. Every experience good, bad, is really part of how you're shaped, molded, crafted into a force of change in the world. We must never forget that we are always on a mission that God has designed for our lives.
[00:19:20] Dr. Kent Ingle: Formal education is one of the basic types of preparation. I think it includes primary, secondary, college, graduate, postgraduate studies. While I, you know, would be the first to admit that our natural, um, you know, and, and kind of, well, I, I guess it might be even a national approach to formal education could be improved.
[00:19:42] Dr. Kent Ingle: There is something to be said for maintaining the integrity of the classical process. The primary objective of classical approach to education is not so much to teach a skill as to train the student to think critically, to write effectively, to communicate persuasively. The world is changing faster than most institutions, I think can, can adapt and this is a glaring reality that plagues not only the academic community, but also the business community. It, it plagues really our culture.
[00:20:10] Dr. Kent Ingle: To achieve agility, we must be able to pivot in a variety of directions, adapt quickly to change, and this is what education has done so well for so long. I think another type of education that helps us in preparation is real world experience. Nothing can replace the skills, expertise, and perspective gain from achieving results.
[00:20:32] Dr. Kent Ingle: Even if our efforts result in failure, I think we can still learn from all these valuable lessons in our lives. Various jobs I've held over the years have provided an insight I wouldn't have had otherwise. They've connected me to networks of people I might never have met. They've opened doors that would not have been accessible to me.
[00:20:52] Dr. Kent Ingle: Personal disciplines are a, are very much a part of preparation. If we don't exhibit good financial management debt might prevent us from saying yet to an, you know, yes to another exciting opportunity. If we don't take care of our bodies, poor health might prevent us from completing a transition or taking on a demanding role.
[00:21:13] Dr. Kent Ingle: If we don't prepare our hearts and minds through spiritual disciplines, we might not understand the significance of the subtle shifts in our lives. You know, a final type of preparation I, I think is so important in life is mentorship. There was a time in our culture when being an apprentice shadowed a professional and learned knowledge and skills of a trade or a profession while gaining on, on, you know, on the job experience.
[00:21:41] Dr. Kent Ingle: And this type of preparation can't be transferred to a classroom. Variety of people have mentored me over the years and I'm grateful they took the time to pour themselves into my life. And those mentors made me realize how important it is to invest in others. Currently, I get to come alongside students at Southeastern University and I wanna provide a context for their education that will, you know, help them transfer valuable classroom lessons into the professional world and beyond.
[00:22:07] Dr. Kent Ingle: For me, you know, preparation, like the process of discovering your divine design, doesn't have a defined beginning and an end. But it's always gonna be perpetual. Moving through this phase doesn't mean we take a time out from life until we're ready to jump in again. I think that would severely undercut the balance of theory and practice needed to prepare us for what's ahead.
[00:22:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: You know, when I graduated from high school, I had a good sense of the things I was passionate about. I loved communications, I loved investing in people, however, I had no idea how this would play out in my life. I remember, I, I had decided to attend the local community college to get some general education courses out of the way, and of course, to save some money.
[00:22:49] Dr. Kent Ingle: I hoped to find a little bit of clarity about what, you know, university, uh, you know, I should attend, what major I should pursue. And while I was at that community college, I, I took a, a, a course after my, um, it was a speech class, after my first speech in front of the class, the professor asked me to meet, meet, uh, uh, in her office.
[00:23:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: And, and in that meeting she said, Kent, I I, I, you did a great job on your speech. And, and she said, in fact, it was so well done I, I really believe you have a gift for public speaking, and she, uh, she wanted to help me get exposure in the communications field. Um, and so she, she said, I think I can help you, and if you're interested in possibly, uh, making this as a career, um, uh, I can begin to help chart a course for you.
[00:23:42] Dr. Kent Ingle: She told me about an internship opportunity at a local television station. It was an easy decision in my mind, uh, because what she told me is, uh, this was the local NBC affiliate and, and, uh, they had an internship availability and, and, uh, I can help you get it. And so she did. I landed the internship position and the news director asked me about that particular assignment where I would like to, uh, focus, and I said, well, I love sports, so, you know, uh, I'd love to work with the sports anchor.
[00:24:13] Dr. Kent Ingle: And, and so the news director put me right with the sports anchor, and, and I began to, uh, learn from him, I, he, he taught me how to write scripts, capture video, edit, prepare, uh, um, produce each broadcast. He taught me everything I needed to know to be a great sports anchor.
[00:24:31] Dr. Kent Ingle: I'll never forget about three months into the internship, the, uh, he was offered another job in the San Francisco area, and he accepted that job and all of a sudden his position was vacant and I saw an opportunity and I, I immediately went into the news Director's office and, and I said, hey, uh, you know, you've been watching me, you've been observing me, in fact, you've been my teacher in many ways, and, and so I just said, hey, would you give me a chance to, you know, try out for this job? I explained that I feel like I knew everything I needed to know to do the work.
[00:25:06] Dr. Kent Ingle: Sure enough, he gave me an opportunity to produce a segment, deliver it on camera, use the set there in the, in the studios. Um, it wasn't live television, but it was as close to being live as it gets. He observed the entire segment, hired me on the spot, and that began my 10 year career in sports television.
[00:25:26] Dr. Kent Ingle: You see, my preparation had positioned me for that opportunity. When I started to work in broadcasting, I was just 18 years of, of age, didn't have a lot of experience, but to tell you the truth, I had a lot of rough edges, but I was willing to learn to do just about anything, to try everything at least once.
[00:25:46] Dr. Kent Ingle: I absorbed as much as I could from interactions from a wide variety of people and preparations. This positioned me to make my next move. And then I remember when I transitioned into ministry, I needed more knowledge in things like theory, church history, biblical studies. So I went back to, to pursue, again, more formal education in these areas, again, helping me, uh, prepare to lead a congregation.
[00:26:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: Our preparation to leave local church ministry and move into academic, um, you know, into an academic environment, looked different once again, and again I remember seeking out various university presidents to spend time with them, to learn from them and to use what I learned from them to shape my ideas and vision.
[00:26:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: I've learned the value of mentoring others because people have mentored me, and that's why even today I have a group of people who mentor me, who advise me and guide me through the twists and turns of life. As you can tell from my story, preparation is not limited to what happens inside the four walls of a classroom or a home or even an office.
[00:26:48] Dr. Kent Ingle: It's a combination of various factors that, you know, begin to provide a cumulative effect that, you know, make a huge impact on our individual designs. There's something you need to know if you haven't already picked up on it. Every phase of the decision making process in our lives require that we have something behind that we have to leave.
[00:27:12] Dr. Kent Ingle: Our minds are powerful instruments that can cloud the way we see the world around us. We filter out what we don't want to see, hear or believe. This often functions as a coping mechanism to various stress points, and make no mistake about it, change is stressful. Preparation phase will reveal that we must leave behind before we can continue on our journey, and we're gonna have to discover what we need to leave behind so we can move forward.
[00:27:39] Dr. Kent Ingle: Some may need to leave behind faulty assumption, assumptions about other people, ways of living, or even ideas about what's impossible or what's possible. We tend to gravitate towards what is familiar and known, and this is heavily influenced by how and where we grew up. Sometimes our assumptions about people and situations will hold us back from possibilities that we can't see.
[00:28:01] Dr. Kent Ingle: Some may need to leave behind the sting of failure. We, we aren't very old when we learn that a red hot iron will burn our hands if we touch it. Same is true in life. It's possible to reach out and touch a red hot iron without necessarily knowing we did so. That burn can leave deep scars that prevent us from moving forward on our journey.
[00:28:19] Dr. Kent Ingle: Some may need to leave behind the, you know, the actual glory of success. It's amazing to watch leaders walk away from successful situations to pursue new opportunities. Why would they do that? Perhaps because they understand that to rest in the success of today is to place their hope and faith in a period of time instead of circumstances that it's constantly changing.
[00:28:42] Dr. Kent Ingle: Our security comes from remaining actively engaged in the process that is shaping us today. There's no part of preparation that doesn't ask us to leave something behind in order to take something new. It can be an idea, an assumption, a skill or perspective. We wanna grow. We have to break free from what is today so we can embrace a new way of thinking.
[00:29:04] Dr. Kent Ingle: Preparation is the glue that will keep you grounded through the chaos of change. It's also gonna keep you from losing sight of who God designed you to be. You're a specific solution to a unique problem in this world, and moving through the preparation phase will always ensure you're ready to live in your divine design.
[00:29:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: As a leader, you have to take time to sharpen your acts. You must continually hone your skills, steward your gifts, expand your thinking, increase your resources, empower your team, search for new trends to avoid, you know, plateauing, declining. Um, a well-prepared leader develops new growth before prior success runs out.
[00:29:53] Dr. Kent Ingle: And learning how to steward yourself through the disciplines of self-awareness, self-management, self preparedness, I think, you know, they're foundational for leadership. Discovering or reinforcing these ideas is really the beginning of reaching your next level as a leader. And again, leadership will always start with you.
[00:30:15] Steve Gatena: On part two of this three part series, Dr. Kent Ingle explains that becoming a true leader first starts with leading yourself. He explains the three areas for stewarding your life and achieving next level leadership. We learn about the significance of taking advantage of our gifts, sharpening our skills, and how to complete our divine destiny.
[00:30:45] Dr. Kent Ingle: You know, at the end of the day, leadership, I think, is all about stewardship. We have all been given a divine design, the God ordained purpose for our lives, and realizing this purpose as a leader, I think requires proper stewardship of our lives. Uh, your divine design is God's gift to you, and how you steward your life when you think about it, is really your gift to God.
[00:31:09] Dr. Kent Ingle: The tools for stewarding your life are known as disciplines. Discipline is any systematic management of different spheres of your life to prepare and position you to really capture how God made you. The most successful leaders in the world don't try to accomplish everything, instead they discipline themselves to steward the right things.
[00:31:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: And I've always believed true success in leadership is found in learning what to say yes to and really what to say no to. And I think there are three key areas for stewarding your life that, that I think help you to be the leader that God calls you to be. And I know in my own life, these have been profound, um, areas that have helped me in in life stewardship, the stewardship of self, the stewardship of others, and the stewardship of calling.
[00:32:01] Dr. Kent Ingle: Stewardship of these areas, I think are absolutely essential for reaching next level leadership. And I truly believe that prop by properly stewarding these areas, and by implementing these disciplines, I think you'll be well prepared to continue pursuing that divine journey that God has for you, that divine destiny that is ahead of you.
[00:32:22] Dr. Kent Ingle: When you think about the stewardship of self, that's the first one that I think is important. I'm, I'm a firm believer that you can't lead out of what you don't have. Leaders who project well-roundedness yet neglect inward flaws will in inevitably, I think, slip up without self stewardship. It's a matter of time until you run out of steam.
[00:32:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: Authentic leadership stems from healthy stewardship of self, in fact, leadership always starts with you. First person you must be able to lead is yourself. I think this involves taking care of your body, your mind, your soul, your relationships. I call this the discipline of self-management.
[00:33:04] Dr. Kent Ingle: As I have shared over and over, uh, in my life, uh, uh, an incident that has occurred. I, I remember again, uh, the doctor startling me with the words that you have sugar diabetes, and it's bad. And I still remember those words as they ripple through my mind. Uh, I, blood sugar again can cause heart attack, stroke, vision problems, nerve damage, kidney problems, other serious issues.
[00:33:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: And basically I was that ticking time bomb. I had two choices. Either continue being a one-dimensional leader or introduce self-management into areas that I was ignoring. I needed to win the battle against my own bad habits. I needed to get out of, you know, that dangerous cycle that could eventually kill me.
[00:33:46] Dr. Kent Ingle: And this realization transformed more than my diet and workout routine. It challenged me to approach my time, my talents, resources, influence, leadership, my family, through a disciplined lifestyle. And if any part of our self-management is out of sync, it can have a drastic consequence, you know, on other aspects of our life.
[00:34:04] Dr. Kent Ingle: Life balance is key to, I think, well-rounded, enduring, and effective leadership. I think another area of of life stewardship is this area of, of the discipline of self-awareness. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "Experience is the best teacher, but you can't learn anything from an experience unless you're aware."
[00:34:28] Dr. Kent Ingle: An awareness comes by disciplining ourselves to reflect on our experiences, whatever those experiences might be. Good, difficult, bad, you know, ministry, spiritual. I think some key self-awareness questions that you have to ask yourself when reflecting on the experiences you go through life are how, how challenging, uh, has this experience been in my life? You know, what was the impact of the experience on my life, on the people around me? And then what, what did I learn from this experience?
[00:34:58] Dr. Kent Ingle: I, those, those questions seem to help me really, truly reflect on what's going on in my life. The answer to these questions, I think give you a, a awareness of your most important asset as a leader. Your giftings.
[00:35:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think inspection of what gifts you have working with within your gifts allows you, and those I think you lead to work together better. We work outside of our gifting. At least two people suffer, you and the person who really should be doing that task. As a leader, you have the responsibility to take advantage of your gifts, to empower those you lead, to use theirs as well.
[00:35:33] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think another great discipline in, in, in the stewardship of life is the discipline of self preparedness. Future always favors those who are prepared. I like the story of, um, uh, of a young man who once approached a logging crew foreman, and he, he asked, he asked for a job.
[00:35:51] Dr. Kent Ingle: Uh, let's, uh, you know, see you chop down this tree, the foreman said to him.
[00:35:57] Dr. Kent Ingle: The young man stepped forward and took down a large tree and impressed the foreman said, you can start on Monday.
[00:36:04] Dr. Kent Ingle: And so the young man reported to work faithfully each day. But on Thursday afternoon, the foreman went to the young man and said, you can pick up your paycheck on the way out today.
[00:36:13] Dr. Kent Ingle: Young man was surprised and asked, don't we get paid on Friday?
[00:36:18] Dr. Kent Ingle: Well, yes we do, replied the foreman, but, but I'm letting you go because you've fallen behind. Our productivity charts show that you've dropped from first place on Monday to last place today.
[00:36:31] Dr. Kent Ingle: Well, I'm the hardest worker here objected, you know, young man. I, I arrived first, leave last, and even worked through my breaks.
[00:36:40] Dr. Kent Ingle: Foreman could see the young man's sincerity and see how passionate he was, hesitated for a moment and asked, and have you been sharpening your ax?
[00:36:52] Dr. Kent Ingle: The young man stood quietly and said, well, no sir, I've been working too hard to take time for that.
[00:36:59] Dr. Kent Ingle: Well, that story reminds me, as a leader, you have to take time to sharpen your ax. You must continually hone your skills, steward your gifts, expand your thinking, increase your resources, empower your team. Search for new trends to avoid, you know, plateauing, declining. Um, uh, a well prepared leader develops new growth before prior success runs out. And learning how to steward yourself through the disciplines of self-awareness, self-management, self-preparedness, I think are the, you know, they're foundational for leadership.
[00:37:33] Dr. Kent Ingle: Discovering or reinforcing these ideas is really the beginning of reaching your next level as a leader. And again, leadership will always start with you to go to the next level in your leadership, I think you, you also have to you know, steward well, the people that God has placed in your life. I think it's important to look at disciplines that will help you develop what I call the stewardship of others.
[00:37:59] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think first of all, that's important when you steward others, is the discipline of character. You know, while self-management, self-awareness, self preparedness dictate the person you are becoming, character depe- d-,
[00:38:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: Really, when you think about it, character determines the person you are. Many people think character affects only themselves.
[00:38:18] Dr. Kent Ingle: The truth is bad character kills your influence with others. Where a strong character gives you credibility to begin leading. People expect leaders to have impeccable character, and if there isn't an underlying foundation of integrity that governs a leader's thoughts and actions, a life failure isn't too far off.
[00:38:38] Dr. Kent Ingle: This initial failure may not be the embezzlement of thousands of dollars, but it may begin as something as small as falsifying travel reimbursement requests. You know, people think I, you know, I wasn't caught with this small step of dishonesty in a slippery slope ensues.
[00:38:54] Dr. Kent Ingle: To engage in this discipline, you must continually ask yourself, who am I really? Examine the things you think about, talk about, dream about, and act on. One thing to watch for is self-gratifying thoughts and actions. I think the dark side of leadership begins when we think we deserve something that isn't ours. You know, David, for example, in scripture, enjoyed close fellowship with God, yet he gave into so much self-gratification.
[00:39:23] Dr. Kent Ingle: Indulging one's selfish thought, ultimately led him down a path towards adultery, deception, murder. David's failure of character not only damaged himself personally, but it almost cost him his right to lead the people of Israel. The lesson of David is obvious. No one, absolutely no one is immune to temptation.
[00:39:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: So we have to protect our character at all cost. I think when you steward others in your life, uh, it's the discipline of relationships that are absolutely important. You can't fulfill your divine design without relationships. God created you for relationships. It's the job of leaders, not only to know the people they lead, but to empower them to embrace their divine designs.
[00:40:08] Dr. Kent Ingle: As a leader, you must be willing to discipline yourself to really step out of your comfort zone, and then begin developing ways to grow relationships with others. Again, I'll never forget Pastor Fred Cottrell he was my Pastor at Bakersfield, California First Assembly when I was a teenager. Pastor Cottrell was a true investing Pastor, a servant mentor.
[00:40:32] Dr. Kent Ingle: I remember, one Sunday morning after a church service, Pastor Cottrell told me that he had been observing my life. Pastor Cottrell believed God had placed gifts, talents, abilities in my life for future ministry Leadership wanted to invest the time to mentor me. So at the age of 15, I began spending one day a week with Pastor Catrell, took me on hospital visitations, newcomer visits, even taught me how he crafted weekly sermons.
[00:40:59] Dr. Kent Ingle: Remember, God created you to give love and serve others just like Pastor Cottrell investing in relationships is what it's all about. Years later, when God opened the doors of ministry to me, what Pastor Cottrell had poured into my life actually made a huge difference in my ability to handle that call of God in my life.
[00:41:19] Dr. Kent Ingle: I still benefit from what he gave me through our relationship. Pastor Cottrell emphasized repeatedly that God designed each of us with intentional purpose. You know, as a leader, always be intentional in setting the tone in your dialogue and relationships to focus on others. Empowering others means you're not the object of the relationship at all.
[00:41:42] Dr. Kent Ingle: Don't design the conversations with the end goal of receiving praise, but instead remember to genuinely pour to people for their betterment, for their growth. I think the degree of trust others have in you dramatically affects the quality of your relationship. Relationships are the prerequisite for empowerment.
[00:42:02] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think also when you think about stewarding others, you have to understand the discipline of generosity. Generosity matters because God's blessings are not meant to flow to you. They should flow through you. If you're not prepared to be generous, you're gonna miss out on the blessing of investing in others.
[00:42:23] Dr. Kent Ingle: A story about the results of generosity comes from the life experience of my wife's father. Like many others at the time, the Grace family, they were adjusting to life following World War II. Fortunately, a 16 year old, by the name of Glen Grace, landed a job as a soda barista at the Walgreens drugstore in Southside Chicago neighborhood.
[00:42:45] Dr. Kent Ingle: He had exceptional, you know, interpersonal skills. He worked hard, showed promise far beyond the ability to make the perfect chocolate malt. And, and, and the store manager noticed Glen, he noticed, um, you know, a lot of things about Glen's life. He had discovered Glen's family probably wouldn't be able to pay his way to college. And although Glenn had applied for college the summer after he graduated high school, a few weeks before Glen was to start, his parents did tell him that he would not be able to attend because the money wasn't there.
[00:43:18] Dr. Kent Ingle: Then one week before he was to start college, Glen received a postcard in the mail and it said tuition room and board had been paid in full, and it was signed by the Walgreens drug company. And in fact, for the next eight semesters, he received a postcard in the mail saying the same thing. Glenn went on to earn his undergraduate degree and then graduated from the University of Illinois Pharmacy School.
[00:43:47] Dr. Kent Ingle: And all through college, Glenn worked at Walgreens and eventually decided that since the company had been generous to him, had invested in him, he would commit his professional life to the company. Glenn rose to the ranks over a 50 year career from soda jerk to manager, to district manager to regional manager and senior vice president, and then he spent the last 21 years with the company as the executive vice president of all store operations.
[00:44:18] Dr. Kent Ingle: You see, God created you to give love and serve others. His generosity should inspire us to be willing to give away everything we have and are, and that's hard to do in a culture that tells us to hold onto everything we get, but we must be disciplined, uh, to release the things that God entrusts to us. We can do that when we realize everything belongs to God.
[00:44:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: If you allow your character to guide you, the relationships you develop will make you a stronger, more trustworthy leader. When you discipline yourself to give mercy, forgiveness, encouragement, wisdom, and even finances to those with whom you've developed a relationship, your leadership will blossom. As a leader, the disciplines of character and relationships and generosity are how you steward the people God has placed in your life.
[00:45:12] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think a final area of stewardship that I think is so important in our life is the stewardship of calling. You know, once we've learned how to steward our lives and our interactions with others, we then begin to see our, how our lives are aligned with the calling that God has placed upon our life.
[00:45:31] Dr. Kent Ingle: A a as we'll see, only once, um, uh, our lives are brought under proper alignment personally in relationally, can we fully then begin to embrace that call that God has for us. You know, earlier I discussed how the discipline of self-awareness and self-management and self preparedness, you know, resulted in proper stewardship of our own lives.
[00:45:53] Dr. Kent Ingle: But the second area, I think the second area of stewardship, the stewardship of others blossoms when we discipline our character, manage our relationships and be, you know, it's when we're generous with people. But again, once we've done these things, we can focus on, I think the disciplines that make up the stewardship of calling.
[00:46:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: And I think one of the key disciplines, um, in the stewardship of calling is the discipline of learning. I think the discipline of learning is the foundation for following our calling. A posture of learning allows us to live, you know, in a way that adapts to what's going on in our context. If we aren't intentional about lifelong learning, we will lose our relevance and squander the opportunities God places in front of us.
[00:46:37] Dr. Kent Ingle: As the 21st century moves at a dizzying rate, if we, you know, refuse to a, a, adapt to the changes around us, uh, we lose the ability to reevaluate our lives and leadership skills in the context in which we live. And I think furthermore, we fail to improve in personal and relational areas in our life. We must cultivate an appetite to constantly learn in order to approach life's challenges in ways that, you know, address the needs, uh, uh, around us.
[00:47:07] Dr. Kent Ingle: When, when we are prepared, we notice the opportunities to engage in the ever-changing world that we live in. I think another great discipline is the discipline of opportunity. Discipline of opportunity is where personal stewardship, relational maturity, and learning intersect. When you stay aware of what could be next, you're gonna resist the natural tendency to grow stagnant and complacent.
[00:47:34] Dr. Kent Ingle: Years ago when, when he first went to Southern California, um, I remember Rick Warren was considered by many to be a kind of a renegade. Uh, though educated in a traditional environment, his entrepreneurial approach to ministry at that time was very controversial. In fact, some people resisted Warren's approach because they always resist anything that doesn't resonate with the past.
[00:47:57] Dr. Kent Ingle: Others resisted because they didn't want Warren to prove that a different way to do things might not only work, but might be widely successful. So some people, very few cheered him on, and ultimately, Saddleback Church was born and of, of course has become a standard bearer and game changer in the church community.
[00:48:16] Dr. Kent Ingle: Uh, I think his passion, his perseverance, his resourcefulness, open-mindedness and awareness enabled him to respond to the opportunities of his context. And I think in the same way, these entrepreneurial tendencies will prepare you to recognize and respond to the aha moments that I think come your way.
[00:48:35] Dr. Kent Ingle: An active entrepreneurial approach will help you connect the dots and see opportunities as they develop. The more you do this, the more you will see your God-given divine design in action. And such, leaders I think, are prepared to engage the opportunities that arise.
[00:48:54] Dr. Kent Ingle: And then I think last, uh, is, is the discipline of missional living. The opportunities you act on should naturally mesh with your sense of mission and purpose. And this is the discipline of missional living. The more clearly you understand your mission, the better prepared you will be to make decisions. One Word That Will Change Your Life, a book written by John Gordon, Dan Britton, and Jimmy Page is a, I think, a valuable resource to help focus on the on, on, on one element of your life.
[00:49:27] Dr. Kent Ingle: I've used their One Word process to help me live, I, I know in my life mission. It was in fact in 2011, my One Word mission was listening. I was determined to position myself, to truly listen to God, my family, my colleagues, and so forth. Listening was important because there were so many things in my life that needed God's direction and clarity.
[00:49:51] Dr. Kent Ingle: Out of that process came many of the principles and values that still guide our organization and my life today. In 2012, I actually had two words, courage and conviction. People who live with courage and conviction will see God do great things. In fact, the Bible's full of stories of people who had conviction and took action.
[00:50:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: Paul faced hostile situations, yet he never backed down. Jesus was stalked by the Pharisees and knew their power, but stuck to His convictions. Um, in the Old Testament, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood up to Nebuchadnezzar while realizing the king had the power to put them to death. The more I focused on courage and conviction, the more those qualities began to, you know, develop and grow In my life.
[00:50:35] Dr. Kent Ingle: In 2013, um, it was all about intentional living. You know, everyone lives, but how many people live with a sense of purpose? And this was the question that motivated me to be more intentional, required a keen sense of awareness and purpose. And I, I, I couldn't go through the motion of just doing life.
[00:50:52] Dr. Kent Ingle: I had to understand the value of the things I was doing. You know, we have to pay attention to the moments we have each day. We have to pay attention to the people in our life, to the whispers of God. You know, this is self-awareness, a discipline from the stewardship of self that enables us to live missionally every year since God has given me a word for that year.
[00:51:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: And, and again, it's all about living with purpose. And here's what I'm really trying to emphasize with all of this. Discipline keeps you on target. If we don't keep awareness of our context, we may end up living out someone else's mission.
[00:51:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: I love the book Chazown, written by Craig Groeschel, uh, Groeschel. It shares the story of what happened in the 2004 Summer Olympics with Matthew Emmons, um, one of our American athletes.
[00:51:43] Dr. Kent Ingle: He was on track for the gold in the 50 meter, three position rifle final, and Emmons was up for the, his final shot. He was so far ahead of the other competitors that all he had to do was, you know, fire a bullet, send that bullet anywhere through the inner ring of the target to seal winning the gold medal.
[00:52:03] Dr. Kent Ingle: So when that final shot came, he stepped up. He prepared himself mentally. He paused his breathing. He took aim. Pow! He fired the final shot. The bullet passed right through the bullseye, and he's ready to celebrate. He's got the gold, but he was puzzled when the tone indicating a hit didn't sound. Emmons then realized that the bullseye he had hit was on the wrong target, and he dropped from winning the gold medal to eighth place in the competition.
[00:52:45] Dr. Kent Ingle: The right shot hit the wrong target
[00:52:52] Dr. Kent Ingle: Bottom line, one day all of us, we're gonna stand before the greater judge, the greatest judge of all greater than any who was officiated at the Olympics. What will you say if he tells you that in your life you hit the wrong target? What if he says you weren't a good steward of his divine design?
[00:53:18] Dr. Kent Ingle: Hopefully, you have disciplined your life well and hit the bullseye on the right target so that you can hear the words "well done, my good and faithful servant." If you're more interested in learning about these disciplines, feel free to check out the book, Nine Disciplines of Enduring Leadership, Developing the Potential of Your Divine Design.
[00:53:38] Dr. Kent Ingle: And, and in that particular book, I go into much greater detail about these disciplines that will absolutely take your leadership to new levels, um, really fulfilling the call that God has for you in the context that He's placed you.
[00:53:58] Dr. Kent Ingle: He says this, he says, the place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger coincide. The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger coincide. Basically, they come together. I wanna help people discover that place where their specific passions can meet the world's unique needs.
[00:54:27] Dr. Kent Ingle: The only way they can do this is by learning how to create a framework for their life and having the discipline to live that framework out.
[00:54:38] Steve Gatena: On part three of this three part series, we learned that in order to build a great legacy and a great framework for your life, you have to clarify your goals.
[00:54:48] Steve Gatena: Dr kent Ingle explains how he used unique listening exercises to understand what people want and ultimately what they really need. He tells us that everyone carries the imprint of God and how legacy has to be lived out by everyone we touch.
[00:55:10] Dr. Kent Ingle: Wow, when I think about legacy and, and how I want people to remember me, it all goes back to this idea of divine design. I'm so passionate about understanding how God, you know, made you, created, you, wired you. I, I want every person I come in contact with to learn this one simple idea that God has uniquely made you to do something special.
[00:55:33] Dr. Kent Ingle: I firmly believe that every person carries within them the imprint of God. Just as God is creative, you are creative. Just as God has a story to tell, so do you. You are put on earth to make a difference. What I want leaders to realize is that each one of you carry a central organizing principle, and as you discover and develop it, while you begin to build a framework for accomplishing the vision God has placed in your heart.
[00:55:57] Dr. Kent Ingle: And if you can learn how to use your unique leadership framework, you'll always have complete control of your context that God has placed you in. I think you know, the first step in developing your leadership framework is really to listen. Uh, as a leader, I wanna be marked as a careful atentive listener. I think too many leaders wanna be known for what they say.
[00:56:17] Dr. Kent Ingle: I wanna be known for what I hear. I'll never forget when I first met the faculty of Southeastern University, I was in the final stages of my interview process to be the president of the university. It had been a long grueling day of interviews and, and, uh, meeting the stakeholders.
[00:56:34] Dr. Kent Ingle: And now we're at a point where I was sitting in front of the entire faculty of the university and, um, search committee made their introductions of me and I gave my opening comments, same routine I had done countless times already that day. Then they opened the floor for questions from the faculty. Right off the bat, I got hit with the question that everybody actually was asking all day long. What is your vision for the university? I had no idea at the time that my answer would mark actually my entire presidency and propel SEU to become, you know, one of the fastest growing universities in the nation.
[00:57:07] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think too many leaders wanna lay out immediately what the vision is, they wanna start out with "here's the vision." They feel that before they can start leading, they already have to know what to do and where to go. Problem with this mindset is that most of the time reality falls short of their expectations.
[00:57:24] Dr. Kent Ingle: What a leader thinks their people need and what they actually need can be, uh, totally different. And this is why all good leadership ha that you have to start, you know, your process of leading with listening. The potential of every organization lies in the potential of its people. Your people have hopes and dreams for their lives and for their roles in your organization. They also see threats, opportunities that you as a leader may not see.
[00:57:50] Dr. Kent Ingle: One key ideal I, uh, want people to learn from my legacy is this, that good leadership will always start with listening to the people. And as I stood in front of the faculty during the interview, the question continued to hang in the air.
[00:58:03] Dr. Kent Ingle: What is your vision for the university?
[00:58:05] Dr. Kent Ingle: And of course my answer might surprise you, but I looked at the faculty in that moment and I said, honestly, I don't know. I knew that I couldn't answer that question until I had done my job. As a listener, I could not shape my role as a leader. Before I could understand the vision, I would have to listen to the people.
[00:58:24] Dr. Kent Ingle: So that's what we did. We enacted what would become one of the largest, most in-depth listening exercises the university had ever conducted. From that listening exercise, we began to understand the culture of organization as well as the vision for the future, and that's why leading through frameworks always starts with listening.
[00:58:41] Dr. Kent Ingle: As leaders, we listen to our people, we begin to lay the foundations of trust on which we build our influence. That's why all leadership must start with listening. I think the next step in building a framework for your life is to audit the context. I learned pretty early on that leadership is contextual in what you do and how you do it is largely determined by the circumstances you're in.
[00:59:02] Dr. Kent Ingle: When I first came to Southeastern as president, our university was two enrollment cycles away from really shutting its doors. Two years prior, it had been a campus swelling with over 3000 students led by a dynamic charismatic leader. But after two years with no leadership, Southeastern was down by almost 1000 students and shrinking.
[00:59:23] Dr. Kent Ingle: And I knew right off the bat that we had to do something to change the context of the university. And that meant not only taking the time to listen to the people, but look to understand what are the factors affecting the situation. Auditing the context means understanding the urgent issues that matter to your people, and innovating ways to meet those needs.
[00:59:43] Dr. Kent Ingle: As leaders, we must always remember we're not leading assets, we're leading people. And as I begin to listen to the people, I begin to understand the urgent issues that matter to them. From auditing the context of the university, I saw what our people were good at, and, and then I also saw what they didn't have and what they needed, um, and, and, uh, and, and how they can approach, you know, the, the, the slow march to, you know, a way to make this university healthy and and strong again.
[01:00:13] Dr. Kent Ingle: Um, that season of auditing our context made it readily apparent that what our university needed to climb out of enrollment decline was a lot of, um, need oriented education or need oriented programs. Uh, a couple of things that we found out that, um, you know, met those issues and really felt could propel the university to, to growth in health was to start a football program, to start a nursing program.
[01:00:40] Dr. Kent Ingle: While those two things may not seem all that relevant, uh, revolutionary in the context of SEU, which began as a small, you know, Bible teaching school for pastors in the middle of an orange grove, football and nursing, you know, absolutely revolutionary. Naturally, there was, you know, there were a lot of people that kind of resisted to some of these ideas.
[01:01:01] Dr. Kent Ingle: Many people thought that by bringing these two programs online, we were fundamentally changing who we were as a community. But because we had started this change process by listening to our people, and then we developed these initiatives through auditing our context, we were able to meet that resistance head on by demonstrating this was the best decision for our community, and through our framework, we were able to take control of our context.
[01:01:27] Dr. Kent Ingle: What I want everyone to learn from my experience is that leadership is contextual. If you will, take the time, have the patience to audit that context, then the road ahead will always be clear.
[01:01:39] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think another step in building a great framework for your life, uh, and legacy is to clarify your goals. What I hope everyone learns from my legacy is that you will never accomplish anything great if you don't have clarified goals.
[01:01:53] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think the biggest threat to your life is not external competition or shifts in the marketplace, or even failing at trying something new. The biggest threat to your life is when your mission gets blurred and you're, you're not right on target. You know, I will never forget one of my first days on the job as president of SEU, I was right in the middle of conducting one of the most extensive listening exercises university had ever performed.
[01:02:20] Dr. Kent Ingle: And after weeks of interviews and surveys, I, I had to get out into the campus and just take a walk around. As I was going through the campus, I made, you know, my way to one of the mini garden beds around, beautiful, if you've seen our campus, just beautiful. It looks like a resort. And I saw one, one of our groundskeepers working in one of the gardens, and I stopped him and, and I said,
[01:02:40] Dr. Kent Ingle: Hey, you know, I just wanna let you know thank you for the incredible work you're doing, keeping our campus looking beautiful.
[01:02:46] Dr. Kent Ingle: Um, he said, well, that's really not, you know, he thanked me, but he says, that's really not my job. He said, my job is I'm, I'm actually helping give students a world-class education.
[01:02:59] Dr. Kent Ingle: You can see this kind of clarity of goals in the words of of, of that groundskeeper. He understood everything he did was a part of giving our students a world-class education that integrated faith learning in life.
[01:03:10] Dr. Kent Ingle: For him, the goal was clear. You may have had a particular job in that organization, but he understood what the goal was for every student that, um, uh, uh, uh, was accepted and attended, SEU, um, it unified his actions with our community. Clarity brings unity for leadership. After listening to the people and auditing the context, we had a pretty good idea of the urgent issues we needed to tackle as well as the culture we wanted to create.
[01:03:37] Dr. Kent Ingle: Those frameworks were already moving the needle, you know, for our organization, uh, to growth and health, but everyone was beginning to run in different directions. So what we needed, you know, were clear goals, a functional framework that would guide all of our actions and unify our efforts. So we did, we developed actually a functional framework around the goals of affordability and accessibility.
[01:04:00] Dr. Kent Ingle: We recognize that everything we do needs to unify around the goal of creating affordable and accessible education. And I think once we clarified, you know, those two goals, everything began to change at our university. The team now had clear intentions to unify around and people who were very different regarding, you know, the gifts and their personalities begin to collaborate and innovate together in a way that, you know would bring change.
[01:04:26] Dr. Kent Ingle: What will you accomplish when your goals are clear?
[01:04:30] Dr. Kent Ingle: Wow, I mean, that's a great question and what I've realized in my life and what I hope people pick up from my legacy is that when you are clear on the goals for your life, there's nothing, absolutely nothing that will hold you back from what God wants to do.
[01:04:44] Dr. Kent Ingle: I think the final step in developing a framework for your life is to achieve visionary alignment with the people around you. Legacy isn't owned by one person. A legacy is created through the network of relationships that we all share. What I hope to lead behind through my leadership is this idea of being a good steward of your relationships.
[01:05:08] Dr. Kent Ingle: None of us do this life alone. We are all part of a network of connections that inform how you think, show you how to act, and empower you on your journey of self-discovery. I wanna be remembered as a person who stewarded the connections of my life well.
[01:05:24] Dr. Kent Ingle: What I've discovered through my experience is that when I steward and serve the people around me, all of a sudden conflict reduces and everyone begins to align around a common vision.
[01:05:35] Dr. Kent Ingle: After so many years of planning and preparing the day of our first football game, finally came. We had listened to our people, we had audited the context, we had clarified the goals, and now we had the chance to sit back and enjoy what we worked so hard to build.
[01:05:50] Dr. Kent Ingle: And it was an incredible day, for a school that had never had a football team. You would've thought we'd been doing football for years. Everybody was working together. From the athletes to the coaches, to the game day experience team. There was complete alignment across the board. If you've ever been to any kind of collegiate sporting event, you know what it feels like to experience the energy of a crowd of students cheering on, you know, the team.
[01:06:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: It's addicting. Watching the team move in perfect alignment, having the crowd cheering them on you know, willing them into the next touchdown. Psychologist calls this the effect flow. In that inaugural football game, our team reached this state of flow and looking at them on the field, they seemed to be operating almost as a single unit, as if no real thought were involved.
[01:06:34] Dr. Kent Ingle: And you see, alignment is the final step in the process of developing a framework of legacy for your life. The principle benefit of good alignment, of course, is that it brings about a sense of flow. An environment where people are operating at high capacity with without need for lots of managing or instructing.
[01:06:51] Dr. Kent Ingle: This is the way we know our frameworks have be, you know, began to take shape when we experience this state of flow. An aligned organization doesn't have to figure out how to respond. It just responds. It can be tempting to ignore, I think, this final step.
[01:07:08] Dr. Kent Ingle: Takes effort to create alignment with the people around you. But I've, you know, what I've learned is that the alignment is the, is the moment when your framework becomes real. Your legacy has to be more than a good story. It has to be lived out by everyone you touch, everyone that you leave behind. I want my life and legacy to be marked by people. As I started off that, you know, at the beginning, I, I, I want to re, I wanna be remembered by the fact that, um, I helped every person I came in contact with discover who God has made them to be.
[01:07:46] Dr. Kent Ingle: The only way to do that is through a framework, only by listening, auditing, clarifying, aligning, can you accomplish the mission that God has placed on your life. There's one quote that has defined my life and I hope will define my legacy, is, uh, is the quote that comes from the american theologian, Frederick Beaker.
[01:08:06] Dr. Kent Ingle: Uh, he says this, he says, "the place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger coincide. The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger coincide". Basically, they come together. I wanna help people discover that place where their specific passions can meet the world's unique needs.
[01:08:35] Dr. Kent Ingle: The only way they can do this is by learning how to create a framework for their life and having the discipline to live that framework out. I want to end with this story, and I love this story about the famous pilot, Chuck Yeager. You know, when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in his Bel X One on October 14th, 1947, no hard engineering data existed on the flight characteristics of an aircraft traveling at supersonic speeds.
[01:09:02] Dr. Kent Ingle: Some thought it was possible that no aircraft could physically withstand the buffeting that would occur as it approached supersonic speed. Captain Yeager was literally flying into the unknown at more than 1,100 feet per second.
[01:09:17] Dr. Kent Ingle: Well, how did he do it? How did he fly his plane into the unknown? He did it through a framework.
[01:09:24] Dr. Kent Ingle: Experienced pilots have a mantra: fly the airplane. That's their mantra. And what they mean by this is that no matter what happens during a flight, there are certain physical principles that govern an aircraft's behavior. The pilot's job is to engage those principles as effectively as possible no matter what else is going on, until the aircraft is safely back on the ground.
[01:09:48] Dr. Kent Ingle: And if you get into a patch of rough air, fly the airplane until the things smooth out. If an engine cuts out, fly the airplane until you can find a place to land. And Yeager did just that. He trusted his framework and kept flying the plane. By the 1950s, uh, aircraft were routinely flying faster, you know, than the speed of sound.
[01:10:11] Dr. Kent Ingle: And by the 1970s, the Concord was carrying passengers across the Atlantic at supersonic speeds. If you can learn how to build a framework for your life, you'll never be lost even when you venture into the unknown. Well, when I think of legacy, I want my legacy to be that I kept flying the plane, trusting the framework of my life into the unknown that God has called me to go.
[01:10:39] Dr. Kent Ingle: My hope is that as I do that, other people will be inspired to discover and live in the divine design of their own lives.
[01:10:52] Steve Gatena: Everything that we see, touch and feel was created by God. The world is God's world, and every living creature is God's, including each of us. Yes, God gifted us our lives and how we use them and how we steward them is our gift to God. And God so wants us to be good stewards. He so wants us to take good care of all his gifts.
[01:11:26] Steve Gatena: He wants us to be good stewards of our bodies and our health of our minds, and our hearts of all the resources and gifts and talents that he's bestowed upon us.
[01:11:37] Steve Gatena: God wants us to steward the relationships and connections in our lives too, to love and serve everyone. By becoming good stewards of all of God's wonderful gifts, we show Him how much we love Him, and how thankful and grateful we are for all that He's given us.
[01:12:04] Steve Gatena: This week on relentless hope, Dr Kent Ingle, president of Southeastern University, taught us all about becoming good stewards of our lives, and why it's so important. As Kent explained, God has placed a divine design in everyone's hearts, and he intended for us to live amazing lives that give us a sense of meaning and purpose,
[01:12:33] Steve Gatena: while also drawing attention to God's grace and love.
[01:12:38] Steve Gatena: In part one, our life segment, Dr Kent Ingle, explains how we can't fulfill God's divine destiny for us without first becoming good stewards of our lives. Everything in life is interconnected, so if we allow bad habits and faulty thinking to take control of our lives, then we will mismanage the gifts that God has given to us. And if we mismanage our own lives, then we won't be able to serve God the way he intended.
[01:13:17] Steve Gatena: In part two, our leadership segment, Kent taught us about the power of self-discipline, and he shared some of the most effective disciplines we can create in our lives to become better stewards and better leaders, such as the disciplines of self-awareness, self-management, self preparedness, relationship building, generosity, learning, and missional living.
[01:13:46] Steve Gatena: In part three, our legacy segment, we learned Ken's powerful four step framework to help us become good stewards of our lives and our legacies when it comes to leaving his own legacy. Kent shared how he's also passionate about being remembered for delivering the message that God uniquely made, created and wired everyone to do something special.
[01:14:18] Steve Gatena: As Kent explained, everybody carries within them the imprint of God. Just as God is creative, we are creative. Just as God has a story to tell, we have a story to tell. And we're put on this earth to make a difference, to make a difference in this world, in other people's lives, and to live God's divine design for our lives.
[01:14:50] Steve Gatena: This means we must do our very best at the stewardship of our lives. By taking care of our lives, we take care of God's precious creation. And we set up ourselves to better fulfill God's plan and purpose for our lives. Everything in this world is a gift from God. Everything matters. Everything is meaningful, everything deserves our respect, protection, love, and care.
[01:15:23] Steve Gatena: It's through our great stewardship of life that we show God just how much we love, respect, and care for Him too. The one principle that surrounds everything else is that of stewardship, that we are the managers of everything that God has given to us. And if you feel that we've given to you an inspirational episode of this podcast today on Relentless Hope, I want you to give it to someone else. So if you've enjoyed this podcast, please share it with someone you love. Remember, you have the opportunity to give hope a voice.
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