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
From Famine to Fulfillment: Ruth's Leadership Insights
Can leaders truly transform their teams by working alongside them? This week on the Biblical Leadership Show, we continue our exciting series exploring leadership insights from every book of the Bible, and we're continuing with the Book of Ruth. Set against the backdrop of famine and tragedy, Ruth offers a redemptive and uplifting contrast to the intense narratives of Judges. Join us as we uncover profound lessons on leadership, redemption, and divine involvement through the lives of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz.
Discover how Boaz exemplifies the principle of active leadership by not just overseeing his workers but getting down to the nitty-gritty alongside them in the fields. We'll dive into personal stories, such as learning the ropes of construction hands-on, and explore how this approach can positively impact morale and company culture. Through the lens of modern examples like Doug Conant from Campbell's Soup, we highlight the significance of genuine engagement and accessibility in transforming a workplace.
Finally, we emphasize the power of one-on-one time in building relationships and fostering loyalty. Through the touching story of Boaz and Ruth, we illustrate how personal engagement can create lasting bonds and a legacy of character and loyalty across generations. And to keep things light, we sprinkle in some of our favorite dad jokes, with a special call-out for listeners to share theirs for future episodes. Get ready for a thought-provoking and entertaining journey into the heart of Biblical leadership!
Hey, hey, everyone, welcome to another exciting episode. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome To another exciting episode of the Biblical Leadership Show. My name is Tim Lansford, and with me is the famous Do we have a guest host today the infamous, the legend.
Speaker 2:Biblical Leadership Show. My name is Tim Lanceford and with me is the famous. Do we have a guest host today? The infamous, the legend? Legend in my own mind, in his own mind.
Speaker 1:With a face for radio. I do have a great face for radio.
Speaker 2:I have a great face for radio too. Yeah, but you used to be on the radio.
Speaker 1:I did used to be on the radio but that's all right.
Speaker 2:Now we're on the podcast. I did used to be on the radio, but that's all right. Now we're on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Now we're on the podcast.
Speaker 2:I like the location of this one instead of having to drive to the studio in Dallas all the time. I bet you do. Wow, this is like in your own backyard.
Speaker 1:It is almost in my own backyard, and it's not in my own backyard, it's in my office.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is, but it's a great office and very comfortable settings here. So I appreciate it yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, hopefully you've been hanging out with us, and if this is your first time, great. But stop and go back and listen to a couple of days ago, right, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:Because we're doing a new series, and this new series is we're taking every book of the Bible and we're going through all the leadership lessons. We're doing cliff notes of how each story is, some of the highlights of each story, and putting them together and then throwing some dad jokes in there for the heck of it. So we received a couple of dad jokes, so hopefully we'll maybe have some better ones this week. So you just, we don't know.
Speaker 2:You know, we just never know how you guys are going to do it, so I do want to read this from one of our listeners yes. Okay, he was so excited he got a new job.
Speaker 1:He got a new job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at McDonald's farm, he's the new CIEIO.
Speaker 1:Nice, I won't. I won't do the buttons yet so. I'll just throw it out there.
Speaker 2:You were so tempted to do the buttons.
Speaker 1:I was so tempted. It's been a week since I've done the buttons you know so.
Speaker 1:I want to push some of the buttons, but I'll hold them off for a little bit longer and then we'll throw them out there. But yeah, I love this series. I've had so much fun and this one's a fun chapter. I mean, last week was a little bit of a stretch, you know, because some of the stories of it, I mean I think it had a very good importance and stuff. And then this is like flipping a switch going to this week and from going from Judges to Ruth this week. It's lighthearted and a totally different feel of the Bible, and especially when they're backed up chapter to chapter, I think that was really a huge one for us, you know, because it's like so dramatic and then so dramatic the other way.
Speaker 2:So redemptive.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Here in the book of Ruth. I mean it's only four chapters long. Yeah, in the middle of the Old Testament, which lots of the books are 20, 30, 40 chapters long. So here we have four chapters and it starts out during the time of the judges, so it's in the same period of time as what we read talked about last week, but it really talks about God redeeming people and God being involved in every little simple aspect of life. If we allow Him to be that involved, and we just need to recognize His involvement, and so it's just a beautiful story about an incredible woman named Ruth and an amazing man by the name of Boaz.
Speaker 2:Just an incredible love story that really sets the stage for stories later on in the Bible about King David. So it's just—and we can learn some valuable leadership lessons from this within just four chapters. So if you have not read the book of Ruth, I encourage you to. You can sit down and literally read the book of Ruth in 15 minutes Tops. But it is a book that is so well written from the first word to the end. Written from the first word to the end starts out with tragedy that ends in redemption of not just the family but the beginning of redemption for the country. And it's just beautifully written and just a timeless story.
Speaker 1:And one of the things they say is it's not wrote from a perspective where it mentions the characters. The story mentions God a lot you know through, but a lot of their stories is pounding on God and through that, this is just a beautiful story that runs about redemption and the characters actually mention God other than the lessons behind it throughout. I thought that was very interesting the way it was wrote.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's not a lot of God talk from the author of the book, but if we look in between the lines, we can see the fingers and the heart of God involved even in the midst of tragedy. Not that God causes tragedy, but God works within the tragedy to bring about new life and redemption. So, just great, great story.
Speaker 2:So it starts off there was a famine in that right, the famine which is interesting because the word Bethlehem means house of bread, and this family was living in Bethlehem, but there was a famine in the house of bread which is kind of ironic, but there was and so this family moved to the country of Moab, which is like next door, but they wanted to feed themselves. And so you have Naomi and Elimelech and his family move to this other country, and then the husband Elimelech, dies, so Naomi's with her two sons, and the two sons have married women from the country of Moab. Well then, the two sons die, and so you have Naomi, who is the mother with two daughters-in-law, and Naomi knows that, if they go back with her to Bethlehem, that a foreign woman who's a widow in that country is going to have a very, very difficult time surviving in that country, is going to have a very, very difficult time surviving. And so she says just go back to your home, get married again, have a family. You know, do those kind of things, and one of the daughters named Orpah does, and we never hear from her again.
Speaker 2:Ruth, though, shows an incredible amount of loyalty to her mother-in-law, which to me is a great leadership lesson. We might not consider Ruth the leader, but she has incredible character, and this leadership principle of loyalty is right there in the beginning of the first chapter. And so Ruth says something that you might have heard. Some of our listeners might have heard, some of you might not, but to me it's one of the most powerful sentences in the entire Bible, which is interesting because just a few sentences prior to that, at the end of the book of Judges, we see one of the most tragic stories, are the sentences in the Bible about there being no king and everybody did what was right and no one dies.
Speaker 2:And then here we have, right there in the book of Ruth. We read these things and Naomi says you know, go home. And Ruth says no, she's very humble. She says where are you going to go? I will go, your people will be my people and your God will be my God going to go, I will go, your people will be my people and your God will be my God. So the reason I mentioned that is because talk about loyalty. But also Diana and I had that printed on our wedding invitation.
Speaker 2:Oh nice, and we have our wedding invitation frame next to our bed in our bedroom, and just a reminder about mutual loyalty. For a good marriage it means mutual loyalty, and so— that's, we've lived that out in our lives and Ruth lived that out in her life. So I think the leadership principle is how loyal are we to our people? Are we loyal to them? Do we stab them in the back? Do we talk bad about them? Do we what? What do we? How is loyalty lived out in our life? You know, and so that's to me is a is a really, really good question, and I would think that same thing would be true with you. You have customers who rely upon you to build quality homes for them, and what if you were not loyal to your customers? Or they, or you build a house and they don't pay you? I mean. So loyalty is important, and not just loyalty to the people, but loyalty to the vision. Are we going to be loyal to the purpose of the company or loyal to the?
Speaker 1:vision or the commitments would be a good word too.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly right. So that's just in the beginning of the chapter one. Then Naomi and Ruth go back to Bethlehem. Then they have to figure out where are we going to eat, what are we going to do for a food? And so it just happens to be at the beginning of the harvest, and so Ruth goes out and she happens to be in a field who's owned by the man named Boaz, and she goes out and gathers grain over this, goes back home and tells Naomi.
Speaker 2:Naomi's excited because of a Hebrew tradition that some people might not be aware of, called the kinsman redeemer, and that law just summarize it real quickly if a woman had a husband who died, so the man dies, then the question is, who would take care of the woman and the kids? And in the Hebrew culture back then the closest relative would be called the kinsman-redeemer, and so that man-relative would actually marry the woman and raise the children as his own. And so Ruth and Naomi realized, oh, naomi, oh my gosh, this man, boaz, was related to my husband, he is a kinsman redeemer and he might be able to provide for us. And so we see that in chapters 2 and 3, and the story goes along. And so let's talk about Boaz for just a minute.
Speaker 2:The man was a brilliant businessman. He owned all these fields. He had workers in his fields. But we see there in, really in chapter three, that he was out there working with his workers. He was out in the fields harvesting the grain doing the work workers. He was out in the fields harvesting the grain doing the work, and to me, what a great leadership principle that he was willing to get his hands dirty. He was willing to. You know, not just talk about it but walk the talk. And so you know you talk about that in your leadership classes, about the importance of the leader actually living out. You know, not just talking but actually being involved in the company and the different things. So could you just talk a little bit about how important it is for the people that you teach to be involved in what they're doing.
Speaker 1:No, I'm not in the mood You're in the mood for a dad joke?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, here we go. I've got one ready.
Speaker 1:You give him a little bit of a gap and he's got the emergency dad joke cards in his hand, ready for that I do I do so?
Speaker 2:did you hear about the guy whose lamps were all stolen? No, I did not. He was delighted.
Speaker 1:That's what you get. I got you. That's what you get. I'll get you that one. What was the question? I don't even know.
Speaker 2:No, here's the thing is you've got to be part of it, right, you have to be part of the worker.
Speaker 1:There's a time and place. That's how I learned construction business. I didn't grow up with a hammer in my hand. A lot of these builders have come from four generations of builders and all they grew up being on a job site. I was a businessman that sort of fell into an opportunity to get into the construction business. But the way I learned the construction business is I would write a check to my plumber and say, all right, on one caveat before I hand you this check, that you have to treat me like an employee for this entire week, because that's the only way I learn.
Speaker 1:If you want me to carry things to your truck and go get your coffee, whatever it may be, but just, I want to learn the plumbing business and I would do that with electrician, I would do that with a framer, I would do that and I would work side by side with them. And you know it meant a lot for me getting the knowledge. But it meant a lot for my guys that I was out there as well. You know on the job site, and you know my guys know that I would. If we got in a bind, I'd be out there with them in a second. You know it's not a big deal for me. I would actually enjoy if I could just be out in the field with them all the time.
Speaker 1:But you know, running corporations and stuff that adds a lot to your plate, so I don't get to get out and be in the field as much as I wish I could today. But I mean that's one of those things that I still do. It. I still put on that If we have a lack of a person, I just tell them I can come out for a couple hours and see if I can help you out. And you know, and you know, or I'll spend the day out. It's what you have to do to get the job done sometimes.
Speaker 2:But it's the willingness to do it, it's the willingness to be out there. You know, put on the work clothes, get your hands dirty and be and be with your people, Right.
Speaker 1:And I think that's the way to do it. I mean, then, and here's the thing, a lot of my guys have worked for me for 25 years. So if I did, you know, if they know that I would do it. Even if I'm not doing it every day, they know that I would be there and and, uh, you know that that goes a long ways as far as setting up your company for success. It's a way to show people that I don't put myself on a pedestal. Everybody here is equal. I'm equal to all my guys that work in my company. We all have different titles. A lot of times I don't tell people I'm the boss of the company. I just say I work for one time I say I work for a you know one of my guys. If, if, if they, I don't need to know, they don't need to know who I am. I just say I work for him and let him handle all the stuff that day.
Speaker 2:So so just think about if you are the foreman for a big warehouse distribution center. Let's just say that for now. Okay, so your job is not to be out on the floor pulling product, right, right. But so the question is, how do you apply this principle to your people that are pulling product and filling orders? And I would say, maybe you get down there one day and you do that with them, or you go down there and you learn everybody's name, you learn what's going on in their life, you spend time, you know, maybe on a break just getting to know your people, so they know that you care about them as a person, not just as an employee whose outcome objective is to put something in a box.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I've mentioned on some of our podcasts before that Doug Conant from Campbell's Soup is spot on with that. No matter where he was at, he would always take an hour, go put his tennis shoes on, go walk around the floor and just shake hands. You know he would block out everywhere board meeting, board meeting, board meeting. I got one hour. He would go spend time with his people and walk around, greet them, ask them how their weekend was, all this stuff. And that went a long ways to changing the whole environment of the company, because that image of somebody just sitting in a boardroom and never being out and doing that that can go south a lot of times. And he changed the whole culture of Campbell's Soup actually just by doing some of those things that he did. He wrote probably 30,000 thank you notes over different things in his career, walked around everywhere he went, shook hands and told them good job, and it really was. It's a good thing.
Speaker 2:Yes. And so let's just take that same principle and relate it to family. So say you've a family, maybe let's just say you have a family and you have three kids. Let's just say that, how do you apply that leadership principle to your family? And I would say you make sure you spend time with your spouse and you spend time with each child it might not be every day with your spouse and you spend time with each child.
Speaker 2:It might not be every day, you know, but you schedule a time to say, okay, on this particular day, me and my oldest child are going to do this. Okay, now they might get to decide what to do, or I get to decide what to do, but you make sure that each child feels special and you make sure that, above all, yes with or work for you, work under you whatever you want to call it that they're valuable. You don't just treat them as objects to fill an order. You don't just treat them as you know, people that you know you don't care about. No, you care about them because they're people, not just because they're making you a profit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you bring up a good point with the kids because I mean, I've got twins and you know that one-on-one time is very, very important and you never see a light up. If I like, you know, on a weekend or something, whoever gets up first, usually my boy gets up before my girl and I'm like, come on, hey. I said, come on, go get dressed. We're going to sneak in there and we're going to go walk around the block or we'll run over and get some donuts and surprise everybody before they get up, some kolaches and stuff. And Ami just lights up because that's one-on-one time with dad right driving around and bopping around the truck and doing stuff, and that really lights up and same thing. You know my daughter will do the same thing. She lights up, you go. Well, is he going to go? I'm like no, it's just us All right, I'll get dressed right now.
Speaker 1:You know and they crave that you know. So it's one time you can take that into a corporation, into your company. You have to have that one-on-one time, you know. If you're always just having you know, sales meetings or this meetings and, and you know the boardroom meetings well, no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Correct and I know that in my last church I didn't have a good size staff. They were great people. I didn't have time in the week to meet one-on-one with every person, but some of the let's just say the more seasoned staff or some of the senior staff, I met with them every week at least 30 minutes, sometimes 45 minutes to an hour, just depending on what was going on.
Speaker 2:We had staff meeting with everybody once a week. Everybody got to go around the room and share. We had a limited time, so it's not like you can take an hour to talk, but we gave everybody an opportunity to share because we wanted to make sure everyone felt valuable and their input was important. And so the question is how do you do that with whatever you're leading?
Speaker 2:You know, you want to make sure that the people that you work with feel special, that they feel valuable in your eyes not just saying the words, but actually spend time doing that.
Speaker 1:And that's the ring of a good point. You know, some people have large corporations. They don't have that time to make the one-on-one with everybody. Then then you need to. You know, if you've got four senior staff members, as far as that, make sure that they understand. You know, like, say I, I, my, my supervisor that works for me, my, my one, he's been with me for 26 years, right, so he thinks like, he acts like me. I have no problem with him representing me because I know exactly what. So at that point, maybe take four of your staff members that you feel like represent and then delegate three or four people under them and have that one-on-one time. It might not be with you as the president of the company, the pastor of the church, but delegate that out so at least somebody has that one-on-one time and have that hierarchy in place.
Speaker 1:And you know, there's all kinds of fun stuff and one of the biggest things that we do as a promotion and stuff is a lot of times we'll have different things that will leadership games and some different things in there, and or you have to submit things and one of the biggest things that we raffle is a to spend the day with the CEO and that is one of the top ones that gets that people strive for, because they want to just spend the day with the CEO, go to the board meeting, see what they're talking about, go to the lunch and just have one on one time, see what his desires of what, what is you know, hobbies are, and then go through the afternoon to see what his daily routine is.
Speaker 1:And that is always a huge draw on some of the raffles and some of the people trying to, because that's number one thing they want to do. So never lose sight that just because you're up in the boardroom, that people aren't looking up to you and trying to get to the point where they can be friends and talk to you more.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so by doing that, let's just say go back to what you said just a few minutes ago. If you have a large staff and you're spending time with, say, your four or five senior staff people, you're not just doing that for them. What you're also implying and you might have to actually say this is that you're modeling what you want them to do with the people that work under them, and so it is really something that you're doing and you have an expectation that they will do the same thing. So, hopefully, everybody in the organization, no matter how big or small it is, has that one-on-one time. That could be five minutes, it could be a stand-up meeting in the hallway, but it's planned. That, to me, is the key. If it wasn't on my calendar, normally it wouldn't happen, and so you've got to put it down, you've got to schedule it and make sure that it happens. So those are some great lessons from the book of Ruth.
Speaker 2:Now, at the very end of the book, we see that Boaz and Ruth get married, they have a child, and the very last part of the book is a genealogy that goes down to King David, and we see that Boaz and Ruth were the great-grandparents of King David. So we think about King David and the early part of his life. He was a shepherd, he was chosen to become the king and in the midst of all of the trials and tribulations he had running for his life and those kind of things, the one thing that was a constant in his life was he stayed loyal to God. Now, he did make some mistakes and made some bad decisions later on in his life, but in those early years he was very, very loyal to God. And I can't help but think the way he learned that loyalty was to look at his ancestors, his great-great-grandparents of Boaz and Ruth. He had to have heard the story about them.
Speaker 2:The Hebrew people were fantastic about telling stories from one generation to the next. So my guess is he heard that story. He learned that story. He heard about the loyalty of Ruth to Naomi. He learned about the loyalty of Boaz to Ruth and Naomi and he learned about being loyal to God. And then what we see throughout his life is he was loyal to his people. He was loyal to Jonathan, his friend. He was loyal to the king, even though the king was trying to kill him. So there was a significant lesson he learned, and so one of the things that we can get from that is we never know how many lives we're going to be touching for generations by good character and by loyalty and by actually doing what we say we're going to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I was just trying to think about a story. One thing that struck me throughout the story is that when Boaz because Ruth was basically saying, you know, marry us, you know, be the Redeemer, and she was basically saying marry me, you know a lot of times, and that was discussed between her and Naomi and stuff and then when the other kinsman redeemer came up and he saw that he couldn't marry Ruth and he had to marry Naomi, he sort of went nah, I'm out.
Speaker 2:I'm out, I don't want to. What am I going to tell my wife? I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I thought that was very weird. And then Boaz says no, it's right, because I mean that was the lineage to marry Naomi and he didn't worry about you know that. So I thought that was a very you know twist in the story because I just assumed, you know, the young daughter-in-law would sway Boaz and you know that was the draw. But it really wasn't. It was all about the consistency and the loyalty of going. This is the way we do things and this is the way it should be done. So right.
Speaker 2:And so the other kinsmen Deamer, which really had the right to do that said no, I'm not going to do that Um. And so Boaz said, okay, I'm going to do that. He married Ruth, um, obviously he, uh Naomi came along, you know, because she was like the mother-in-law now and she was like the mother-in-law now. And so when and think about Naomi lost her, of her uh kin uh, right there in front of her and probably you know, just help raise that child its whole life and until she passed away, and what a great influence that she had on that young man in his early years, and so just passing down from one generation to the next, you know, the commitment of loyalty, character, matters. We can always rely upon God.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I think I got that ending twisted, but you know where I was going with it.
Speaker 2:You got it twisted. I know where I was going with it, you do, and I think Ronnie said too yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got you, so I see you looking over there.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, just got to finish this out with some dad jokes.
Speaker 1:Dad jokes, yes, dad jokes.
Speaker 2:So why was the robot so tired after the road trip?
Speaker 1:I don't know After the road trip.
Speaker 2:Why was the robot so tired after? Because they had a hard drive.
Speaker 1:I can't reach for it fast enough. What is that? That was a good one. I don't know about that one.
Speaker 2:What do you mean? You don't know about that one.
Speaker 1:I don't know, maybe it just didn't have the nuts and bolts or something.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Well, how do you qualify a dad joke? Then I think that was a good one, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, my daughter. She was making dinner last night and she dropped a grape on the floor and I stepped on it. You know where that one's going to go. Right, I'm not going to even comment on that one. Oh no, they let out a little whine.
Speaker 2:Yes, I need a reacher to hit those buttons.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, I got thrown in there. For you, that's a good one.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you know we're into school now. It's been about six weeks since school started for most people, so where do math teachers go on vacation? Oh wow, this is an interesting one when do math teachers go on vacation?
Speaker 1:Math teachers go. I do not know they go to Times Square Nice. I don't know what to give you on that one.
Speaker 2:I think you should give me an applause for that one. Oh, not that. Oh wow, Okay, just one more.
Speaker 1:Then we've got to hang it up for the week we do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh no, I'm not going to say that one. That's just so bad.
Speaker 1:What has a tongue, but never talks. Has no legs, but sometimes walks.
Speaker 2:Don't know.
Speaker 1:A shoe, what has a tongue but never talks. Has no legs but sometimes walks. A shoe, there you go. That's all I got.
Speaker 2:That one was horrible.
Speaker 1:I need to get that moan thing.
Speaker 2:You need to get the moan thing.
Speaker 1:I had a busy week so I didn't get the moan. I thought about it, I was like I need to do that, but I have not been able to download the Moan thing. Well you got one more.
Speaker 2:No, I don't have another one.
Speaker 1:You don't have, one, I do have another one.
Speaker 2:But I don't want to have our audience think, oh gosh, oh, they've already, they're already out, so they've got us down.
Speaker 1:They out, so they've got us down. They're like okay, they're done, they're going in a dad joke segment, we're out.
Speaker 2:I'm going to continue my work out at the gym. Here we go, here we go.
Speaker 1:What do you need?
Speaker 2:to make a small fortune on Wall Street.
Speaker 1:I don't know A large fortune.
Speaker 2:It's sort of like why the outlaw robbed the bakery.
Speaker 1:Because he needed some dough. He needed some dough. Okay, there we go.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:This is applause, not because it's a joke, because we're done, we're done, we're done. All right guys, hey, all right guys, hey. Thank you for listening. Check us out. Biblicalleadershipshowcom Send us some dad jokes, as every week we ask you and we do get some, but we were lacking this week. We didn't get any, so we've got to get some.
Speaker 2:I mean, we usually get our listeners. Send them every week.
Speaker 1:Apparently we need some, all right, other than get our listeners send them every week. Yeah, apparently we need some, so all right. Other than that, guys, you guys have a great day and we will talk to you next week when we're talking about.
Speaker 2:We're talking about Samuel next week. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one, that guy was brilliant.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So all right, that checks out Biblical Leadership Show. Dr Posey, take us out, make it a great one.
