Biblical Leadership Show
The Biblical Leadership Show podcast explores timeless principles of leadership through a biblical lens, offering insightful discussions and practical wisdom for leaders seeking to integrate faith and leadership in their personal and professional lives. Join us as we delve into biblical narratives, lessons, and values to inspire and equip leaders to make a positive impact in their communities and organizations.
Biblical Leadership Show
The Book of Genesis: Embracing Change, Faith, and Strategic Pivots in Modern Life
Can embracing change later in life lead to success? Join us as we celebrate our 3rd season with a new 52-week series that delves into leadership lessons from each book of the Bible, starting with Genesis. We'll set the tone with our signature mix of humor and inspiration, including a couple of dad jokes to get things rolling. Get ready for an enlightening journey through the stories of creation, Adam and Eve, Noah, the Tower of Babel, and the lineage to Abraham and Sarah, where we'll draw fascinating parallels to modern leadership dynamics and the importance of adaptability.
In this episode, we take a deep dive into Genesis, focusing on pivotal figures like Abraham and Joseph. We discuss how Abraham's willingness to embrace God's call at age 75 offers valuable lessons about adaptability and vision in leadership. Through the stories of Dairy Queen and Jim's Apple Farm, we'll illustrate how small changes can lead to significant impacts, emphasizing the power of strategic pivots in both personal and professional life. Reflect on how Abraham's faith and decisiveness can guide us in pursuing our true mission and making bold decisions.
Our exploration of Genesis concludes with a focus on Joseph, whose resilience and strategic thinking in the face of adversity provide timeless leadership lessons. Drawing connections to challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, we'll talk about the importance of planning ahead, maintaining integrity, and motivating teams during tough times. We'll wrap up with some lighthearted dad jokes, reminding us of the crucial role humor plays in effective leadership. Don't miss next week's episode, where we'll uncover leadership insights from the book of Exodus!
Welcome. Welcome welcome, welcome. Hey everybody, another exciting episode of the Biblical Leadership Show. I am Tim Lansford and with me is Dr Dean Posey. Dr P, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:today I'm doing fantastic. How are you brother?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I am hanging in there, hanging in there.
Speaker 2:That is good. Hopefully it's more than a thread, right? Yes?
Speaker 1:exactly right. So we've been doing pretty good, can't complain. Pretty excited about our upcoming season, our upcoming year yes, we're almost at the year mark of the podcast.
Speaker 2:It's been an exciting year and we're starting a new series.
Speaker 1:Starting a new series.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a long series, but I think it's going to be good. Yes, I think it's going to be good.
Speaker 1:I love it. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through each of the books of the Bible and talk a little bit about the stories in there, how they tie into leadership some of the lessons that we can learn, and we're going to tie it into everyday life, if you're familiar with our show. So what we do is combine the biblical with the leadership, and there's a couple, and we're striving to probably put this into a 52-week series. We're going to combine a couple of the books of the chapter Uh 66 is the magical number. We're going to take it down to a 52 to try to tie it into a full year of content. Now, you know, never know. I mean, we we do different things. We get special requests from time to time of some different subjects, so we might have some interjections and throughout the course of the year. But this is sort of where we're going to go this year and you know we're just going to do straight content with no dad jokes, just kidding.
Speaker 2:That's going to last about a minute. Yeah, that ain't going to work out real well, okay, since you mentioned dad jokes, everybody was all excited.
Speaker 1:They're like yeah, no, dad jokes, no, no. And that's one thing about us. We throw dad jokes in. Why us we throw dad jokes in? Why? Because we can. It makes us smile. We have so much fun putting them together. I know there's some of them are cringeworthy and you guys are out there going why do they dad, dad jokes? Some of you like it, some of you hate it. We've heard all the comments, but you know what we like it. We're going to continue to do it, but you guys are speaking of that joke folks, here we go, here we go, just start right off here.
Speaker 1:Start off, tell us what you got why do the french eat snails?
Speaker 2:now I'll just tell you a story, back in the eighth grade. I think it was eighth grade, which was, you know, a long, long time ago yes and a galaxy far, far away but yes, yoda, tell us more. I was in the Spanish club and we had international day, and so people brought different food and the French club brought escargot I had never, eaten it. I still have, I've tried it that one day but I had no idea what that was, and so anyway. Anyway, why do the french eat snails?
Speaker 2:boy, I do not know because the french don't like fast food oh I was gonna say that got almost the groaner button right there.
Speaker 1:No, I'll do the little rim shot on that one. So yeah, it was, it was worthy of it. You know, just coming off the Olympics and all that stuff here a while back, you know. So it's all right, we'll go for it.
Speaker 2:Okay, do we want to do another one? Yeah, you got to throw one more in there before we get into this. I don't know if you heard about this. There was a prisoner that escaped from jail by putting a paper towel on his head and walking out of the jail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you see him there's a bounty on his head. Okay, I think they're going downhill, we better stop. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a sleeper All right.
Speaker 2:So don't listen to the show at night Unless you have insomnia. It'll put you right to sleep.
Speaker 1:Exactly One of our last episodes, you know, for this series. You know we talked about, you know, dumping all the thoughts in your brain to get you to sleep better. I mean, we should have mentioned just put this show on as a relaxation, you know, and we'll do an hour worth of dad jokes and we can add that in there, and when you can just log on to the hour's show of dad jokes.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. I used to tell people if they had problems going to sleep, just pick up a cup in my book and start reading a chapter.
Speaker 1:It works every time, works every time Two or three pages and you are out, and then the next night you start again.
Speaker 2:You haven't remembered what you read the night before because you were asleep and you just start over, so you might not ever get past chapter one.
Speaker 1:Right, there you go. It'd be a long book. And Noah's still be building his ark at that point, right, so he's still gathering lumber. What's the story of Noah about? I don't know.
Speaker 2:He's still gathering lumber. I'm reading this book.
Speaker 1:I'm only at page four so I know why it took him a hundred years. So this first book of the Bible.
Speaker 2:The beginning.
Speaker 1:Tell us a little bit about Genesis. If people aren't familiar with Genesis, give us an overview. What do we sort of? How does Genesis tie into it?
Speaker 2:The first part of Genesis if they're not familiar with the Bible. First part of Genesis, which is the very first book, is the story of creation, and you know there is some difference of opinion about was it really 724 days? Was it a day, a period of time? I don't think that's the purpose. I think the purpose is to focus on that. There was a creator, there is a creator and he continues to keep creating, and so he created all that we see, and he created humans as the kind of the pinnacle of creation. One of the gifts that God gave to humankind, adam and Eve, was the gift of free will, and we see there in chapter 3 that they use their free will to be disobedient, which we have the you know leaning to do, and so because of that, god kicked them out of the Garden of Eden. And then we see the beginning of the downfall of humankind because sin entered into the world, beginning of the downfall of humankind because sin entered into the world. And so you go on and then you see several, you know read about several generations there in chapter four, in chapter five, and then you come to the story of Noah and the ark, and we talked about that the very first year ago we talked about that. I wrote a book about Noah and the ark. So there you have Noah's ark, chapter you know, and chapter begins at end of chapter 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 is Noah's ark. And then you have the Tower of Babel and then you have in chapter 12, the introduction of a man by the name of Abram. Now he eventually turns into Abraham, so we're just going to call him Abraham and his wife's name was Sarai. Her name was changed to Sarah, and so we're just going to refer to them as Abraham and Sarah, just because that's the majority of the time in the book. That's what? The beginning of God calling out a person to be the head of a nation of people that God claims for his self, and those were the Jewish people.
Speaker 2:The story of the beginning, not just the beginning of the creation, like chapter 1, but beginning of the story of the creation of a race of people called the Jewish people. And so Abraham was the father of that. And so we see through chapter 12 and all the way through chapter 50, just generations of his descendants and what happened to them, and by the time that they were in chapter 50, we're now several generations later and the people because of a famine that happened. They're down in Egypt and we read in between the book of Genesis and Exodus. We might not realize this, but there is a 400-year period of time between those two books in which the Jewish people were held in slavery. So we'll get to that next week about Exodus, but today we're focusing on Genesis.
Speaker 2:So we're really going to focus on two individuals in the story of Genesis One is Abraham and one is Joseph, and so Abraham is the beginning, joseph is at the end. There are several generations in between those two. You have Abraham, then his son Isaac, and then you have Jacob and Esau, and then you have Joseph and his brothers, and so we're going to talk about all of them. We can learn lessons of leadership from, but we're going to focus on Abraham and Joseph, and so that's where we're going. If we had time, we could talk about all of them, but we don't have time to talk about all of those individuals, and so let's just talk about Abraham.
Speaker 2:In chapter 12, we see that God called Abraham to leave his home. He was 75 years old. We read in verse 4, chapter 12, verse 4, that he was 75 years old. His wife was 65 years old. They left their home, they traveled to a new place, so let's just talk about that. As far as leadership Now, tim, you talk to leaders every week, you do leadership classes, you go around the country teaching leadership principles, and it would seem that if someone is 75, or let's just say not even 75, let's just say 55, that they might be stuck in their ways. They might just be counting the calendar until they can retire. They're really not open to doing something new. And so how often do you come across that in your leadership classes that someone in the end not well toward the end of their career? They're just kind of stuck treading the water, just hoping to get to the time where they can punch their final ticket and leave.
Speaker 1:You know, definitely there's people out there in the world that like change more than others. But I do say that most people, when they cross over a threshold whatever that threshold is, I think, you know, like you said, they become a little bit more set in their ways. And I think this is an outstanding story because think of somebody 75. I mean we talk about 50s, but I mean really. I mean 50s. People are starting to settle down right, they're trying to go a little bit more, but I mean 70s.
Speaker 1:I mean they're ready to sit on the couch a lot of times and veg out and do nothing and that's play golf all day, and that to say we're going to go this whole different direction, we're going to pick up and to have the faith and the thought to do that, that's a huge, huge thing and I can see that from leadership in there. I mean, that makes a good leader is when you're able to see that we're heading down a path and we have to do a 180, right? Think of all the things that didn't. We've mentioned many times the blockbusters of the world, all these different, the codex of the world, that they didn't make that 180. They didn't like that change, they weren't able to do that.
Speaker 1:And then you look at the successful companies that did make the change, that had leadership in place. Now, if it's one person because we're talking one person that's creating this whole directional thing, that's a pretty tough thing. A lot of this is stirred by multiple leaders making a decision. A lot of times you know it's a multiple, you know board of directors or something like that.
Speaker 1:But I mean there's been instances that one leader has changed the direction. But I mean very far in between that somebody is going to be in their 70s plus, that's let's pick up and go do something new, correct.
Speaker 2:And so here's the thing it doesn't have to be a 180. You think about a ship in a harbor. Okay, you don't have to steer the ship 180 degrees necessarily to get out of the harbor, you might just have to do 10 degrees. But just 10 degrees over miles of distance can make a huge difference in the direction of the ship. And so it might not be a major change, even though with Abraham it was a major change. I mean, he left everything, traveled and then his father died and then he traveled some more. So it was a period of time that he was making this change from where he lived to where he, you know, went to, and. And so it's like sometimes we think we have to make these major changes.
Speaker 2:No, maybe we just make one simple change, like what if we started recognizing the employee of the month? What if we started writing notes to all of our employees once every year? Do something, get them a gift card. Do something, get them a gift card. Do something simple so that you start focusing on the person instead of the task. Maybe you do your evaluations different. Just think, okay, I need to do something different to help the company move in a different direction over time. It's not going to be instantaneous, abraham. It wasn't an instantaneous move. It was very intentional, but it took time. And so the question is what can we do? Little baby steps just to change just a little bit, to make the company different a year from now, and you deal with that. Just think about building a home. Okay, just a little modification on the paper before you start building can make a huge difference in the final product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%, we do that. And even another thought on that is I was thinking one of the best examples of change is Doug Conant of Campbell's Soup. If you want a good case study to look at it from a leadership standpoint that he's been an inspiration. You know, over his course of his tenure as the CEO of Campbell's Soup, I mean Campbell's was tanking, they were close to going bankrupt and going out of business and he came in and changed the whole company, the whole dynamic of the company, and he did it by talking to all the employees.
Speaker 1:He didn't just sit in his office, I mean, he would dedicate one hour of his time, no matter where he was at, where he was traveling, to go around and shake hands with all the employees. And you know, over the course of his career he probably wrote 30,000 thank you notes to his employees. And, uh, they wasn't just writing them, it was about specific things that he saw or they did, or or stories in the media. Uh, but yeah, if you want to, you want to check out a great case study or a good thing on leadership to see how to structure your corporation or your church or whatever. Check out some of the information that's out there on Doug Conant because he's a big inspiration to me and some of my leadership career, because some of the stories. I researched him a lot and it's amazing that some of the things that he strove you know he strived for changing the direction of Campbell Soup there for a while.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, just a little change like recognize your employees, thanking your employees. It takes time. It might not take money, but it just takes time. So the question would be what am I going to do different with the resources I have? What can I do different? And it could be with your family. What are you going to do different in your family to have your family more united, have more fun? It might be that, starting on Saturday, this Saturday, you just say okay, we're going to have every person in the family, we're going to do something that doesn't cost any money, we're going to have every person in the family, we're going to do something that doesn't cost any money and we're going to do it.
Speaker 1:What is that? Let's go to the park. What can we do for that? Okay, that's a challenge, but we have to buy food and food.
Speaker 2:I'm just having fun, but it's like, okay, what are we going to do? Let's walk around the mall, but let's not spend any money.
Speaker 1:Or if we do spend money, it's under $10. If we do spend money, it's under $10.
Speaker 2:So something creative, something you haven't done before.
Speaker 1:That would be creative, that would be it.
Speaker 2:Under $10 in the mall For all four of us.
Speaker 1:I'm just thinking my princess right yeah.
Speaker 2:So let me get back to this something different. Okay, just do something different. So we recently took a trip, like I talked about last week, with our family visiting national parks. We were actually up near Chicago and hadn't been to Chicago in about 10 years. I hadn't been to Chicago in about 10 years, and in researching the what to do around Chicago, there were several things that I'll talk about later, but one of them was we found in Joliet Illinois, the very first Dairy Queen. And yeah, the very first Dairy Queen. And so there was soft serve ice cream was invented in 1938. In 1938.
Speaker 2:And so the person that invented that convinced another person to have a store that served soft-serve ice cream, and so they thought, oh, why don't we do that? And so there in Little Joliet, illinois, just outside of Chicago, the first Dairy Queen. Now, it's not a store like we think of today with drive-in and counters—you know they had counterstops but it was in a building that was like a store, like you'd have a dress shop or a boot shop, and there was apartments above it. But that was the very first Dairy Queen. It started in 1940. And so they had something, and all they did was they had soft-serve ice cream. It had already been invented, which we could talk about in a whole different issue, but then they said, let's just have a store that sells it, and they started that. And now gosh, dairy queen is like everybody knows, dairy queen, whatever. And so, um, that was, uh, that was good, that was good yeah, and they, they, they did.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what it was. It was, it was round, but they decided to open this, this independent store, and that's where they came. They that's the dairy queen, is the queen of dairy, right, they, they had the pinnacle, they had the best stuff you know, and that's why that's how they sort of got their name.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's pretty cool and so here's another thing, and I don't remember the guy's name, but, uh, young guys about my age, anyway. I don't remember the name of the town, little town just outside of Chicago, but it's the state's largest candy store and also the world's largest puzzle store. Okay, so this guy wanted to be an apple farmer. So I don't know anything about apple farming, but it takes probably three to four years, once you plant the trees, to get your first crop. So he planted these trees. His first crop was coming up and had a big hail storm and ruined all of his trees. So he started again and he did this for like 10 years trying to be an apple farmer, and just wasn't working.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so I think it was his daughter that said dad, you know we have this store, we're trying to sell apples and apple products and things like that. Could you just put a little table with candy on it? Just put a little table with candy. Maybe some of our customers want some candy, not just apples. So he has this little table, probably like a card table. He starts selling candy. Well, the candy became more. I mean more.
Speaker 2:I mean more popular than the apples he added on to the store. He added on to the store Now the store 47,000 square feet of candy and it's the largest candy store in Minnesota and it's all yellow. But he just changed one little thing. One little thing he started selling candy and it was just a small table and over years of time now it is a booming business. We got there like 15 minutes before the store closed. The staff was phenomenal. I mean, they were so hospitable to the people even though we were in there late. Anything you could imagine candy-wise was in the store. And they have the end of the building look like a silo and that's where they keep all their international candy. And the ceiling of that store was painted with Star Wars themes and they had all these spaceships from Star Wars hanging from the ceiling. It was an absolute thing. But here's the leadership lesson. He did something different, just a little bit to start. Over time it made a huge and that's his business. Now he doesn't sell apples anymore, he sells candy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. Jim's Apple Farm, jim's Apple Farm. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:It was just like oh my gosh, what a lesson.
Speaker 1:I was just reading about it. So yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:And so the question is what can we do different? Just one little thing, maybe get up 30 minutes early and pray and meditate, like Maybe we need to get home early and take a walk with our spouse, do something to improve and enrich our lives or our family or our business, and over time it's going to make a huge, huge impact.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just baby steps. And look at this. I mean that's what I was reading about. This candy store, this Apple store. I mean look at it, it's phenomenal.
Speaker 2:They've got candies, they've got sweets at it. It's phenomenal. They've got candies.
Speaker 1:They've got, you know, sweets, they've got soda pop, they've got popcorns, pies.
Speaker 2:We bought some popcorn.
Speaker 1:Can't wait to try it, that's crazy, you know, just coming out of an Apple farm.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, and how many stories that you have, you know, have you thought about? And this you thought, well, I'm going to do this right. You know, there's many times in businesses that I thought, well, I'm going to specialize in this right, this is where I'm in real estate, I'm going to specialize in it. And then, lo and behold, you know I'm going to, I'm going to go after only listings, and then next thing, you know, I'm in the investor world. Cause that one thing throws you down this path of working with all these investors in the world in real estate, whatever it might be. How many times has that happened in your life? And, and you know, a lot of people fight it to the bitter end. Sometimes some people aren't roll with the flow, right, you know? And, and you know, think about if, if he would have still been trying to sell apples to this day, it would have not been the largest candy store in Minnesota.
Speaker 2:Right, so let's think. Let's think about something that we haven't talked about yet as far as this topic. We talked about making small adjustment over time In order to make a small adjustment, in order to start something new.
Speaker 2:many times we need to stop doing something in order to start something new, and many times we don't want to stop doing anything, we just want to add it to our plate. And so then we get stressed out. And so the question is what are we going to stop doing in order to start doing? And I think that is a really delicate and difficult issue for lots of people, because they don't want to stop doing anything.
Speaker 2:I know that in the church world that I was in for a long time, if you wanted to start something new, you only had a set group of volunteers, and you don't want to have the volunteers just keep doing more. So the question is what are we going to stop doing in order to start doing something different? And I think that's true for life, it's true for business, it's true for families, it's true for our personal self. If we're going to stop being lethargic, maybe we need to start exercising. If we want to start having a more or a deeper spiritual life, maybe we need to stop sleeping in every day. So I think it's a good question that we need to grapple with. Don't just start something new without thinking what am I going to stop doing?
Speaker 1:What do you think tying back to Abraham here? He had to stop what he was doing and just pick up and go.
Speaker 2:And go.
Speaker 1:And you know it was based on a promise, right, and he had to have the faith. You know he had to have faith in what his mission was. He had to have faith in the promises that God was promising. And you know, a lot of times people have problems with that and I think our human brain gets involved with that a lot of times where we fight some of the messages, some of the paths that we're supposed to be on.
Speaker 1:I know I've done it. I still had that thought this morning. I'm like you need to be doing that more. Why aren't you doing that more? I had that thought this morning. I'm like you know you need to be doing that more. Why aren't you doing that more? Life got in my way. I haven't done it. I should be doing it. I need to start last week, but I haven't started, so I need to start this week. Well, I'm busy this week. How about next week? I'll start next week for sure. And I had that thought literally driving here this morning over a subject and I'm like you've got to stop and you've just got to do it right.
Speaker 2:If not, you're going to keep putting it off? Yeah, but you've got to think in order to do that. What am I going to stop doing? And a lot of times we don't want to stop doing anything. We just want to add to our plate, and that just adds to stress.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to go back to this. I know we've got to get to Joseph, but let me just read from the scripture from Genesis, chapter 12. I'm just going to read the first three verses and then the first three words of verse four. So this, this is what we read Now.
Speaker 2:The Lord said to Abram go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now the next three words are some of the most important three words in the entire Bible. So Abram went. It didn't say well, he thought about it. He thought about it for months or years and it said no. So Abram went, and so the thing about it is sometimes we just have to process something. The thing about it is sometimes we just have to process something. Now, I'm not saying that we don't need to think about a decision, especially if it's going to impact our lives, our families, our businesses, but it's like okay are we going to make a decision or not?
Speaker 2:And sometimes you've worked with people, I've worked with people. They can't make decisions, and that's part of the challenge is they're stuck in indecisiveness. And so once we make a decision, are we going to follow through with that?
Speaker 2:And so that's another lesson in leadership that we don't have time to talk about is okay. We're the leader, we're the head of whatever and we make a decision. We're the head of whatever and we make a decision. Obviously it was challenging. I mean, they walked, they might have had camels, we don't know. They went, and so many times when things go they start becoming challenging, we second-guess ourself and think I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have done that. And then we think, well, maybe I should stop, maybe I shouldn't. It's like make a decision and move forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in leadership I mean you have to have the faith. You know you have to have the faith that this is the right decision, and then really you need the obedience to be able to carry it out. You know to be consistent in your actions to be successful.
Speaker 2:Correct, so let's skip.
Speaker 2:I know we're going to skip a lot of years in the book of Genesis. Let's skip on to the later part of Genesis. So we have Abraham, then we had Isaac, and then we had Jacob and then we have Joseph. Okay, so Joseph was the great-grandson of Abraham and Sarah, and Joseph had 11 brothers. They were jealous of him. They sold him into slavery when he was 17.
Speaker 2:And then he was taken into slavery down in Egypt. He was accused of raping this or trying to rape this woman. He was thrown into prison. He eventually, because of just things that he did and God did through him, he became like the vice president of Egypt over all of the food distribution, because there was going to be seven years of abundance and then seven years of famine.
Speaker 2:The Pharaoh had a dream about that. He interpreted the dream, so Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of all of that. Now the question is when we go through difficult times and for Joseph it was 13 years when we go through difficult times, how easy is it to lose our faith, to lose our integrity, to lose our patience? It's really easy to do that, and so one of the lessons I think we can learn from Joseph is we're all going to go through difficult times. The question is how do we sustain ourself during difficult times, and what we see from Joseph is the way he sustained himself was through his relationship with God, and he relied upon the strength and wisdom of God to sustain him during those difficult times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was thinking that I was like what a great leader in general, because you think if you have seven years of abundance, and you know you got seven years of famine, why you didn't go seven years and go, hey, this has been great, but I think I'm going to go into retirement.
Speaker 2:The next seven years. Right, I'm going to go hang out at the lake.
Speaker 1:You know good luck. You know and and uh. You know the resilience, you know the resilience part. To stick with it and and uh, persevere through the hard times is that's 100% a leadership quality that you know. Think of the people that went through COVID. Think of you know how you and the church went through and persevere through some of those tough times and some of the unknowns. I mean that's a true leader. A lot of times people jump ship and there are leaders out there you think are great, but they jump ships and, as things happen, I can cite many of people that have jumped ship and many of people that wrote it out and re-navigated to a better place.
Speaker 2:And I think that's one of the reasons why some people say leadership is lonely. Because during those difficult times like Joseph had seven years and now he was in charge of that he had to set up not just the collection but the distribution. He had to be thinking about that for the seven years of abundant harvest. He had to be thinking, okay, where are we going to put the food? Where are we going to store it? How are we going to distribute it? When it comes time for that, who's going to be in charge of that?
Speaker 2:He couldn't do it himself. He had to have people that were trained, they had to have a system of accountability. So he spent the first seven years not just gathering food but setting up a distribution system so that when those seven years of famine came, that could be done fairly. And so he used the times that were going good to set up for those times when they were not going good. I just think that's a great leadership principle that he was training, he was motivating, he was encouraging, he had his people ready. So when the downtime came now no one saw COVID coming okay.
Speaker 2:And it just kind of hit us, like you know, square in the face, like it did everybody else. But I had a really good team and we all worked together to continue doing what we needed to do as a church during that challenging time. And so let's just say you have just a mom and pop store. It's just you. You didn't have that resource of other people. You had to stick it out yourself and for some it was economically challenging for them during that COVID time. Some people didn't make it, tragically. But the principle is, are we going to stick it out during the difficult times or are we just going to say you know what I'm done? Yeah, joseph could have said you know what, I've done my piece, I've done it, I'm out of here, I'm just going to go retire. Sit by the Nile.
Speaker 2:River and just do it.
Speaker 1:I mean, he could have real easy right, Real easy.
Speaker 2:He had earned a right to do that, and he said no, I'm going to stick with it. Now, what happened during those seven years of famine wasn't a famine just in Egypt. There was a famine also in Israel. And so, eventually, what we read in the last few books, or the last few chapters of Genesis, is his entire family, his father, jacob, thought he had died that's what his brothers told him and his fathers thought he died, but his brothers came down to Egypt to get some food, because there was none in Israel. And on the second journey, he revealed himself as who he was, and so eventually, his entire family came down. So he wasn't just helping the Egyptian people. He eventually, without knowing it at the beginning, he eventually helped his own people. And so when we have integrity, when we have accountability, when we have focus, there's no telling how many people were effective in a positive way. Right.
Speaker 1:There's no telling how many people were effective in a positive way. Right, yeah, and the whole time I was thinking as we were going through that, the one that comes to my mind is strategic thinking. I mean, that's the utmost of leadership is to always be looking. What's out there, what's next?
Speaker 2:What's the next?
Speaker 1:step, and I mean the epitome of that is to be able to go seven years seven years, that's a long time and to forward think all that. So strategic thinking is a great one from the leadership.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a strategic thinker doesn't just think the next step. They might be thinking three or four or five steps down the road, and so they have a contingency plan for basically, if this happens, then we're going to do this, if this happens, we're going to do that. And so what a great example of leadership from the Bible, from the first book of you know, the Genesis, from Abraham and Joseph. So I think that's good. We could talk a lot more, but we're out of time today, except for dad jokes. Yeah, except for dad jokes.
Speaker 1:We always have time for dad jokes. We always have a lot more, but we're out of time today, except for dad jokes. Yeah, except for dad jokes. We always have time for dad jokes. We always have time for dad jokes.
Speaker 2:So you got anything off the top of your head?
Speaker 1:No, not at all. I hadn't prepared dad jokes. You had the emergency dad joke box right there. I do, I do so did your kids ever do.
Speaker 2:Where's Waldo, I mean our kids did the books. Where's Waldo, I mean our kids do the books, where's Waldo?
Speaker 1:And there's all these pictures.
Speaker 2:They did that a couple times.
Speaker 1:yeah, okay so why did Waldo go to therapy? He couldn't find himself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in order to find himself Nice. Hey, good job, you've got to push the blue button over there. That's really good.
Speaker 1:Let's see what do I got on that. There you go, what else you got for us.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you're a big Star. Wars guy, I am Okay. So what did Yoda say when he saw himself in 4K?
Speaker 1:I don't know this one.
Speaker 2:HD am I.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:I see, yes, I see All right you got one more, I got nothing.
Speaker 1:Well, I've got all these books here You've got dad.
Speaker 2:Joke books I've got dad joke books.
Speaker 1:I forgot. My kids left all the dad joke books here.
Speaker 2:I think I said this before, but maybe I didn't. If I did, I apologize to our audience. This is another groaner. Did you hear about the person who drank Invisible Ink?
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't hear it, no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's at the hospital waiting to be seen.
Speaker 1:No, I can't say that one.
Speaker 2:Wow, you were hoping you'd never hear that.
Speaker 1:yeah, no I went, I went through this one first, uh, um, and I was like I just opened the book, I'm like, really, this is in the kids book, um, and then it's like just saying that one.
Speaker 1:That was the first one I opened to him. I can't say that one. So this is not the kids the silly, I did the hundred and one. So bad. They're good dad joke books. I need to pick up the kid ones for our audience.
Speaker 1:Well, guys, I we appreciate you being here. Um, uh, check us out. Biblical leadership showcom. Uh, if you have any more questions on any of these books, the Bible that we're going through, please reach out and any of the stories you want us to expand on or anything, shoot us an email there and we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:Biblicalleadershipshowcom. Reach out to us, say hi, any prayer requests that you might have, send those over to it. We have a team of people that pray for you. If you would just check us out, like us, tell me, rate us on this podcast and have some fun as we grow. So we're slowly growing a lot of different things. I just saw somebody buzzing me there and, other than that, you guys have a great day and I'm going to tell Dr Posey to give us the official Make it a great day. Make it a great day and we'll talk to you next week. When we're talking about, we're talking about leadership from the book of Exodus Exodus. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks guys. The book of Exodus Exodus. Talk to you next week, thanks.
