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More to the Story with Dr. Andy Miller III is a podcast exploring theology in the orthodox Wesleyan tradition. Hear engaging interviews and musings from Dr. Miller each week.
Transcript:
Welcome to the Morator story. Podcast I'm so glad that you all have come along for this episode which is, gonna challenge your thinking, those of you who love to have everything in just the right spot. I have some ideas for you, for the ways that we can think about, who God is calling our institutions
Andy Miller III: to be, and even who He's calling us to be, as people who are ready for the opportunities that he puts in front of us. But before I do that, you know, this, podcast comes to you from Wesley Biblical Seminary, where we are developing trusted leaders for faithful churches. We serve a host of denominations, including the one of the newest denominations that exist in the world. The global Methodist Church. We have more than 400 students
Andy Miller III: from the global Methodist church
Andy Miller III: at Wbs, right now, we have bachelor's master's and doctoral degrees certificate programs, lay initiatives. We'd love for you to check it out. Check us out at Wbsedu. I'm honored to serve as a president of this institution. I've been doing so for just a couple of months and excited about the future God has for us. Also. I'd love for you to sign up for my email list at andymillerthird.com. That's Andymiller.
Andy Miller III: And if you sign up for my email list I'll send you a free tool called 5 steps to deeper teaching and preaching. It's a video and a 8 page Pdf document that you can use in your own sermon preparation. I'd love for you to check that out. And when you go to my website, you'll see some other things there. For instance, I have a short course for Sunday School classes on the book of Jude. There's also another course on heaven
Andy Miller III: that's available there. All of that you can find at andymillerthird.com, or at Wbsedu. All right. I am so glad to welcome the Podcast my new friend, Dr. Roger Parrott. Roger Roger serves as the President of Belhaven University. He's been there for a couple of decades, Roger welcome to the Podcast.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Well, thank you, and it's been 3 decades, and I haven't aged a bit. You can tell.
Andy Miller III: Oh, man, I'm sorry.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: The higher education is the easiest job in the world, so.
Andy Miller III: Not sure.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah, yeah, I am so glad you're at Wesley Biblical Seminary, you know, as we've gotten acquainted just a little bit. I am, boy. I'm just so thrilled about you and your future. You are one of the bright, shining stars of the future Christian, higher Ed and seminary world. So what a treat to have you in town, and and just to be my friend.
Andy Miller III: Amen. I'm with you. That means so much coming from somebody like you, and you have the scars and the experience and the buildings and the vision, you know that you've had, and that truly means a lot. And you have an interesting perspective, because I've never met anybody who who comes from a line like yours. Tell us a little bit, I mean, when I came in and saw your office you even told me about some of that. I'm trying not to give away the clue as to what it is.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Tell us about your.
Andy Miller III: Your legacy.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah, it is unusual. I grew up in the church of the Nazarene, and I continue to. I think I'm technically retired in their records, but retired Nazarene minister, and I've been president of Presbyterian colleges for 36 years, so it's all worked well, and the church came together in great ways, and I love the Presbyterians, and I love the Nazarenes and the
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Wesleyan Church, and we've got so much more in common than we do in different. And
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: that's core of our focus. Because I've done a lot of work through the Lausanne Committee for World evangelization. I was the Us. Director of that leading up to the 89 Congress, and then raised the money for 1989 in Manila. And then we just had the 4th Congress, and I've been part of that for 25 years. So it's been a important legacy. But the family legacy is out of the higher Ed world. My grandfather and my father were both college presidents, and
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and I work at my grandfather's desk that he had made back in the 19 thirties big partner's desk.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and so kind of great to have that legacy is not something I set out to do. I mean, you know, I wrote some stuff about not planning, and I did not plan this. I never plan to be a college president. We can talk about that if you want to, but but God has led that way, and it's been a great journey, and I feel like I'm just getting started. We got so much more to do, and Belleven is a great place to do it.
Andy Miller III: Amen. It's so interesting that, like you, there has to be things that you just learned around the dinner table the Thanksgiving table that people just don't have those experiences. And as I've been in this role for a couple of months now, I just realized there's and being around your table
Andy Miller III: was very helpful to me when we went to lunch together, because I realized in that moment, oh, man, there's so much experience here that I just can't. There's very few people have been in these seats, but you sat around a table with a father and grandfather who are doing exactly what you did. Tell me about that.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: I did, but you know everybody assumes well, they taught you so much about how to run colleges. They didn't teach me anything about how to run college, and I think that was part of Dad's genius especially he never brought it home
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: ever I I found out after I mean I was. I was in high school while he was college president and then attended the school. I never knew the problems. He had, the number of
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: reorganization people they had to let go difficult. I never knew that stuff until after I was gone, and he was gone, and I read in the history because he would never talk about it. He, the family, was separate, and when he came home the family was not going to be in college business, so I think I did learn that from him to try to separate that out, and that's been important. But he only taught me he did teach me 2 very specific things about college.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: he said. 1st learn to live with ambiguity.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and you know there's so much as leaders we want to PIN down. But you can't, and you've got to learn to live with a certain level of ambiguity and be comfortable with it. And if you're always fighting against some ambiguity, I think the leadership fights awfully hard.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: because, especially the farther you go in leadership, the bigger the organization, the more complex the organization. You know it. Just it. Just you can't get there. And Dad always said, there are only 2 problems, money and people aren't any other problems. Those are the 2. And you know, those problems are ambiguous. So he told me that, and the second thing he told me was.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: which was really good advice. He said, wherever you go, assume somebody knows you
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and and you know you and I live in a town where where we are known in this city. And so, you know, I go to the grocery store and get recognized, and that kind of stuff. And that's okay. But I saw you on the news. But you know any place, I remember great illustration that I was on an airplane a number of years ago, and
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: it was one of those flights were delayed, delayed, delayed, and finally got off, and everybody's pushing the aisles, and I was about to go crazy. And you're trying to get the suitcase and all, and somebody was shoving in front of me, and you know you wanted to just
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: say something, and I remember Dad's word, and I did it. And so we started move, and pretty soon I get a tap on my shoulder. Hey, Dr. Parrott, I'm in a llama bell haven from behind me.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and so, you know, that's pretty good advice for everybody. Because the Lord knows us wherever we go. So.
Andy Miller III: Yes.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: If we live that way it usually comes out better.
Andy Miller III: Absolutely what? Yeah, what an interesting thing to be able to have that perspective that maybe helps you think about your behavior going forward. Well, I'm really interested in this book. You gave it to me when we were together for lunch. It's published by Moody. It's called Opportunity Leadership. Stop planning and start getting results. Well, talk about ambiguity, Roger. I mean there it is.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah.
Andy Miller III: People normally say, if you fail the plan, you plan to fail. But I mean, that's just you're going a completely different direction, which is a.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah, I would say, if you, those who say, if you play fail to plan, your plan to fail are planning for mediocrity.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: So that's what they're planning for, and and you'll hit it. And so congratulations. And that great, because that's part of the problem of planning that there are many pitfalls to planning, but and and when I talk about planning, I just put the caveat at the very beginning. I'm talking about long range planning what I call destination planning, you know. People will say to me, Well, what do you expect Belhaven University to be 5 or 10 years from now.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And my answer, which I've even said on television is.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: I have no idea.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: But what I do know is that the best plan we could come up with on whiteboards sitting around conference tables is pale in comparison to the plan that God has for us. So we're gonna watch for his opportunities. We're gonna capture the moments that he brings. And we're going to go where God leads us. Go. Now, that's
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: long range planning. Some people call it strategic planning a lot of consultants who make a lot of money on that. That's fine. But what we do is we do operational planning. I know I'm going to have a football team this fall, which is done pretty well, and I know that we're going to teach English, and we're going to
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: have students living in residence hall. So we plan how to do what we know God's given us. We don't plan where God might take us in the future that's in God's hands. And so that's probably the difference. And so 2223 years ago, I gave up planning. I did it the other way before I did the long, typical long range plan you appoint the Blue Ribbon Committee, get all excited, and you know you go through everything, and you make a list of all this stuff, and and for most especially for
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: colleges and seminaries. But even for churches I could probably give you, and you could, too, the the you know the 5 goals that they're gonna come out with at the end. You already know what they are, and you know.
Andy Miller III: Dean would.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Andy Miller III: More staff.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Increase the enrollment. And we're going to build this, and we're going to make it a better experience. And so, you know, it's all pretty predictable and then you put some numbers around it that are nice round numbers, and then, you know, it doesn't do anything. It takes a lot of energy. But there are a lot of downsides to it as well.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: you know, and that's where I'm concerned is that we get so caught up in our plan, our dedication to a planning model. Because as leaders, we think that's our job is to plan a future.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And you know, it's it's harder to help build a culture that
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: captures opportunities than it is to plan a future plan. A future is kind of easy in comparison. So creating a culture. This will in your organization, church.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: educational institution, nonprofit, even business. I mean the President, Krispy Kreme read the book and he said, this is exactly what we did to turn around.
Andy Miller III: Loud.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: you know, we get so caught up in that process, we miss God's opportunities because we think we're doing God's plan.
Andy Miller III: Right? Well, right?
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: What is the doing of God's plan? God is, you know. We pray at the beginning God please guide us to make a plan, and then we go sit in conference rooms for 6 months, and we come up with a plan, and God ask God to bless it at the end. And you know I'm not sure it's a very dependent posture for the future for
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Christian leaders. So we don't have a plan. If you come to our website. There's no Bellhaven 2030 that lays out where we're going to go. What we're going to be. We look for opportunities, and we have a culture that captures. But but
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: you know there, there are
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: really 8 reasons. I I feel like planning is not only
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: planning for mediocrity, but it's really detrimental to what you're doing, because, 1st of all, we aim for targets. We know we can hit.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And you know you put in a target, and whether that's your Sunday school growth or your enrollment growth, whatever you put it in target. Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch, but you're fairly sure if everything works well, we can do it. And so that's what you aim for. You hit it. You celebrate in that great.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And so, you know, I did a little experiment. In fact, I wrote about this in the book, and then, after the book came out, I thought I need to do that again. I did it again, and the results were even more dramatic. But the one I wrote in the book was
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: that we were into it about about
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: 15 or 16 years with no planning.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and I took to the board a piece of paper.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and it said, 5 Year Plan.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and it said, 5 year plan. We're going to increase the enrollment.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: 43%. We're going to raise 21 million dollars in new gifts. We're going to build 30 plus 1 million dollars in new buildings. We're going to start 7 undergraduate programs of which one was nursing. We're going to start 8 graduate programs. This is the plan. And as I walked through it. I used language carefully when I got to the end of the illustration to say, that's not the plan for the next 5 years.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: That's what we actually did the last 5.
Andy Miller III: Interesting.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Now here.
Andy Miller III: Without a plan, without a long urge plan.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: That if I had brought those goals to that board 5 years previously, yeah, we would have cut them all in half.
Andy Miller III: Wow!
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Easily, and we would have hit them, and we would have said, Isn't this great? We're doing wonderful?
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Well, no, we missed half of what God had for us, because we didn't have a plan. So we aim for targets we can hit. Secondly, we homogenize our strength. You cannot, as a church or as an organization. Educational institution, have a plan and leave some group out it. Just you'd have World War 3.
Andy Miller III: Let me jump in there so like, so homogenize your strengths. Is that what you said.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Right. It homogenizes your strengths.
Andy Miller III: Oh, it's by by not putting, not investing too much in long range plan.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: It? No, you.
Andy Miller III: God.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: You don't put the investment in the things that are your real strength because you're trying to make everybody happy. So you put a little bit of investment in everything, and your strengths go under, supported. And and you know, we're really big in the arts, very big in the arts. We're one of only 38 schools in the entire
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: country, nationally credited in all 4 of the major arts, music, theater, visual art and dance. Those are very hard to get. They're really hard to get for a Christian college, because they don't necessarily like our behavioral standards.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And we're the only Christian school that's doing that the only one.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: If we had had a plan we could not have put the money, the emphasis, whatever in the arts.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: when at the same time the soccer team was playing on a cow pasture, and you know the the stem folks didn't have the right equipment, but we put it in the arts because God kept opening doors in the arts.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: If we'd had a plan we would have put a little bit into everything, and nobody would have made any progress.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And so in planning, we homogenize our strengths. Rhythm, build on those things that we can do the very best.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and opportunities lead to that. So I think the 3rd one's a really important one to me is that's
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: the long range planning primarily focuses on deficiencies.
Andy Miller III: Hmm.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: There's nothing in the plan
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: that celebrates what we have.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: we celebrate what we, we look, focus on what we don't have.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And in focusing on what we don't have. It makes everybody discontented with what we do have. Well, God gave us what we have. How about we just be thankful for that.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and rejoice in that, and then say, You know, Lord, if you want us to have more great, if you don't, we'll be good stewards of this, and that's okay. But but we planning is all about what we don't have. Can we get that in the plan.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: etc, etc?
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: You know I just real quick. I was taking too long but empty productivity. Spend a lot of time in planning that really doesn't accomplish anything. I had a Dean the other day. Write me, and said, thank you for not having planning meetings on this on this campus, he said. My last institution. I spent so much time in planning, and it didn't matter one bit, and it really does. So.
Andy Miller III: Yeah.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Now they they do plan for mission coalition. That's different from planning.
Andy Miller III: And what's mission coalition.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Well, you've got to know what your mission is. What are you called to do that nobody else can do. And and, in fact, in the book. I got a bunch of hard questions about mission, and the 1st one is, what difference would it make if you went out of business?
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Sure what difference would make your church closed if your school closed? If my school closed, what difference would it make?
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And and you build back from that? And another lot of questions to see really get agreement on mission. Because if you don't have a plan, you know, the question I always get is, well, how do you know what to do? Which which opportunities.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: because opportunities don't come? I mean, you know, they say opportunity knocks. No, it doesn't. An opportunity very quietly sneaks up on you.
Andy Miller III: Interesting, yeah.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And it's you know it's it. We use a model here of of sailboat versus powerboat, and and opportunities come as a very, very gentle breeze at the beginning.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and if you're not sensitive to them, you don't even see them.
Andy Miller III: Hmm.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And and they come by somebody. You meet some, some door that gets open, something that comes you you can't make happen.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and and then you see God working it, but.
Andy Miller III: Let me interrupt you there, so I want to. I'd love to get an example of how it stinks up on you. So, for instance.
Andy Miller III: it's very obvious to me the 1st time I drove through the Belhaven neighborhood that came on the the Belhaven campus to see like just
Andy Miller III: I didn't know you at the time, I thought, well, somebody has been has had a plan. That's right. And I thought, Look, look at this beautiful football stadium lodge right in the middle. Here my boys were participating in a basketball camp in your gym. So I went there, and I saw that, and everything just seems so well laid out. But I imagine that's all happened probably in the last 20 years or so so, or obviously, you've been there more than 30. If this has been a part of this time
Andy Miller III: where you've been dependent upon finding these gentle breezes of opportunities. Tell me about one of those that happened like what was an example of that.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Oh, there's so many of them! But let me tell you about one that that relates especially to my Methodist friends. We we were growing in the arts. As I said, it's a big deal for us, and the arts were taken off like crazy. And and so I met with the architect and said, You know, we need to build an art center, and we've got this music. We got theater. We got dance. We got visual art. And we've added film and creative writing since then. But
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: they just need talk mostly, which is good. We did so. They gave me a plan, and it was like $2530,000,000 for phase one.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Well, I've been around Christian world long enough to know that if you get phase one, you're never getting phase 2 or 3. That's it. So phase one is all there's ever going to be. I mean, how many churches have built phase one, and never built 2 or 3.
Andy Miller III: Yeah.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And so, and we didn't have place for parking. There was all kinds of issues, and we sure didn't have that kind of money.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: So.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: I really didn't know what to do. I thought, you know, do you know, God kind of picked us out to start this thing? The arts
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: we just celebrated 30 years of dance, and when we started in dance nobody in the Christian world was doing dance, which is kind of funny, for, as I told the alumni on Saturday for former Nazarene to be.
Andy Miller III: Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Who got a note to get out of dancing in 7th grade. Yeah, class. So we didn't know what to do. Well, as I, I was near our campus was a large.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: independent Methodist church.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: right? Riverside, yeah, on Riverside, and that church had established there when things kind of changed downtown at the church, and and they came there, and they built a sanctuary for a thousand people.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and by the time I got
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: inspired to go talk to them. They were down to about 25 people, so it was quite a facility.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: But I don't operate this way. I mean, my theology doesn't operate this way over my emotions. But I was driving home one day about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I was frustrated with the Arts Center, and I saw that building. I hadn't. I drove by it every day, but I never really noticed it, because we couldn't have it.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and and I pulled in the parking lot, and I drove in. No announcement, walked in. I found the fat pastor, who, I found out later, was part time, so he usually wasn't. There happened to be there, and I said, I introduced myself. Let's say I don't know you, and you don't know me, but I want to buy your church.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And he said, Not for sale. And I said, Well, I haven't got any money, so we're starting together.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And he said, Would you like to see it? And I said, Yeah, I've never seen a facility so perfectly designed as a collegiate
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: arts facility
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: ever. It had beautiful auditorium stained glass windows with acoustics to die for for musicians. It had a gym which we made into Black Box Theater. It had all these 19 seventies Sunday school rooms, which you know, are too small for Sunday school now, but they work great as faculty studios, I mean, on and on. So we started discussion, and they thought
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: maybe in 7 years. We could buy it because they had people in the church who wanted to be buried and have their funeral there.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and long story short, but I think they had a comfort in me because of my Nazarene background, and and who we were, what we were doing 7 months later. We own that facility.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: They didn't want the money all at once, which is interesting because they're afraid they'd spend it all so they wanted it over time.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: But here's the really fun part of this story.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: So we take the thing over. We put, I think we bought it for 1,000,008. We put about 3 million in it. So for 5 million, less
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: for less than 5 million, we got an equivalent of a 30 40 million dollar building that we would have had to build
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and so we had the 1st chapel. We have a required chapel, and I was preaching that day, and the place was packed for the rafters, I mean. Every seat was filled with students sitting in the aisle. We had students sitting every place.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and I invited the church board to come. At the end of that service I came down the chair of the Church Board's got tears in his eyes, he said. Every day for 30 years I prayed God would fill this church.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: he said. I never expected it to happen like this.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And so it was our answer to prayer, and it was their answer to prayer, and that church has moved, and it's flourished since and done very well, you know. That's that's 1 of the ways in which these things just happen. You can't plan that. It just happens as you're responsive to God's will. But if we had had a plan that said we were going to spend 8 million bucks for an art center, because that's what we could afford.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: We never even would have taken the moment, never even would have sensed the opportunity, because we'd be so focused on the plan.
Andy Miller III: Wow! Thanks for letting me interrupt. I know you're kind of on point 5 there, but.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Oh, really.
Andy Miller III: Helpful to hear what you're doing. I got you off track, but it's.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: No.
Andy Miller III: An idea, because you can think about these moments that come. And they're they're around the corner here and there, and if if you're too locked in to a strategic plan. Long range plan, you'd say, no, that's not what we're doing, and you'd missed a chance for that for that sort of whispered.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Well and as leaders. We box ourselves in because we appoint this plan. Whether that's in the church or the university, we appoint a plan. We announce it. Here's what we're going to do.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And then, you know.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: we come back. Say, no, we're gonna do something else. Well, who who's leading? Who's in charge.
Andy Miller III: What you said.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: We're doing this now, we're not doing this. And I have real life example, that when I 1st got here we were doing traditional planning, I appointed the Blue Room. I did the whole thing. We had the plan. The plan came out, and I was at my second commencement, and I was in the lobby at the end, you know, seeing students, and whatever the guy walks up, who I had hired as a football coach at my other institution where I was present before I got here.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and he came in. I said, What are you doing here? I said I thought you were in Kansas, he said, no, they fired me, and I'm back in Mississippi. I said I didn't know you were from Mississippi. He said. Yeah, from right up the road.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and we talked for a couple minutes, and I said, How would you like to start a football team
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and and that was in the plan? But I knew it would scare everybody to death, so I had buried it down like 5 levels, you know. So someday we'll think about whatever it might be, and and we got going. And we we start a football team
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: problem is leaders box themselves in with plans. So you can't do other things. You get the other problem to follow is the planning builds unrealistic expectations.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: because in a plan everything looks great, everything looks perfect. The world doesn't work like that. And and all the growth track graphs are are smooth and they all go up. And it's all gonna be great. And they use a slow at the beginning, because we want to give ourselves a couple of years, and it goes up, and it all looks great, and nothing works out that way ever, ever ever. And
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: you know it. As you said, you drove to the campus, seen a lot of new stuff in the odd bill. I think 21 buildings. I'm not sure it's a bunch.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: I don't do. Architectural rendering renderings anymore. Haven't.
Andy Miller III: Oh, interesting!
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Well, 1st of all, I found out they charge you for them. They're expensive. I didn't know that my 1st few buildings, I thought, well, that's nice. They did that for us. Yeah, here's a bill. But the bigger problem is, there is no building in the world that can look as good as the drawing.
Andy Miller III: Right.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Possible. So when the actual building comes out, people are disappointed.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: looks so good. So I don't. I don't do them just because that same thing with new employees. I tell new employees, the only thing you can do is disappoint us
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: because we have it so built up in our mind that you're going to finally be the solution to whatever problem we have. And as soon as we hire so and so, and as soon as they get here. And this, this, this is going to be fixed. Nobody's that perfect, nobody can do it. So we build up this expectation of who people are. They can't perform at that level because nobody can, and then we beat them up for doing it. And it's not their fault.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: you know. Again unrealistic, you know. Number 6 real quick. It delays decisions
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: because you're doing this planning process and go well, we got this opportunity to do this in Sunday school. Well, let's wait till the planning process comes through. We'll see how that fits in. So you delay everything down the road, and you don't get it done. I think people say, well, if you don't have planning
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: process, how do you have the dialogue? I think planning limits the dialogue
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: because it limits it to those who are put in that group.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And so you know, I mean, my campus knows. Pop me an email. Stop me on the sidewalk, share one of the Vps an idea. Some of our best ideas come from the folks who are doing this stuff every day. And for students as well. And and then, lastly, it focuses on contrived numbers.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: you know, why does everybody have a fundraising campaign for a million or an enrollment goal of 250, or whatever it may be. Those aren't plans. Those are marketing tools, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with marketing tools. But let's call them what they are. And you know. I mean every those who have plans right now are all got a plan for 2030. What we're going to be in 2030, right?
Andy Miller III: Right, sure, sure.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Got a plan for 2029, or 2031? Why? Why? 2030? Because it's a round number, and it it's.
Andy Miller III: And.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Wait!
Andy Miller III: Yeah, yeah.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Not planning. That's marketing, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with marketing. I'm a big marketer, but you know, I think we got to get a realistic picture of planning. And here's the thing. I think there is a great alternative. I call it opportunity leadership, and to get away from planning to trust God for opportunities
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: to look for them, to build a culture of people who expect that and respond to opportunities, who are okay with starting stuff. And if it doesn't work to stop it.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and all that goes with that, because as leaders, we live under this enormous pressure, that the only way I can show. My leadership is that is, through planning, and that is not at all true. When the book 1st came out I had a college president. Call me.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: he said. I stayed up all night reading your book, he said for the 1st time. I don't feel guilty.
Andy Miller III: Oh, yeah.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Guilty that I'm not planning because it doesn't do any good. And now I've got something to substitute, and I've had so many people say, this is what I'm trying to do, but they don't have the language
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: to put it out there. And so, you know, for a lot of pastors, educational leaders, nonprofits. And again, corporate people. I've had a lot of corporate people really interested. It's so different. Nobody else is talking about this. But it works. And that's the whole thing we know long range planning doesn't work.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: There's no question. It doesn't work, but worse than that, I think we settle for less than God's best, because we get so stuck on our plan. If you let go of the plan, and you trust God for the future, I mean, if God wants to close this institution. That's his choice, not mine. If he wants it to thrive, that's his choice, not mine. I'm going to be a great steward of what he's given me. He's given me a responsibility to get the very most out of what we have.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and that's what I'm going to do, and if he wants to do something different, that's all good.
Andy Miller III: Amen. You know, when we met I was
Andy Miller III: working on my inauguration address at that point, and I and I had. I had a little section I hadn't quite completed, and I figured people want to know my goal. My long range plan is this, the time 2 months in for me to announce my long range plan. You know, I think I've been at this institution, but I'm still trying to figure out. You know, where all the doors are, you know, they're still trying to figure.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Right, exactly.
Andy Miller III: But I ended up because I got you handed me your book. In part, I said. We're I'm not announcing that we're going to get to 3 or 4,000 students, though I think it's very reasonable. Given our model that we would get there. I'm not going to say that this is. This is our goal. But I just want to acknowledge this publicly. Now is the Roger Parrott moment where? I said, but we will be ready for the opportunities.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: My pleasure.
Andy Miller III: And if if that opportunity means, like as Wbs started in a double wide trailer in Florence, and we're gonna do that, we're gonna go. We're gonna hold to our convictions, to our mission. But I think, and I think everybody could sense in my desire is that well, there's more people for us to serve. There's more students for us. So let's be ready ready to respond.
Andy Miller III: Roger. I'm interested. Why, how is it like you working with donors in this case, because I've already had. I've had a donor say to me, well, once I see that long range plan. Once I see that master plan let me know, and then I'll know where you're going, so I'm sure you've heard that same sort of thing.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You have to retrain the donors. Boards are the worst on that, because boards come out of a corporate world where planning is their measure of success. So you have to retrain and help people to understand. This is different. This is not just a structure. This is a theology.
Andy Miller III: Of total.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: On God, and it takes that to do it, and it takes an understanding of your mission, gifted and capacity. And when you understand that that's when you can fit in the opportunities as they come along. But boards push for planning, but donors do as well and absolutely. Do you have to help them see the way you help them. See, as you look back, look back at the good things that happened to Wesley Seminary. Did they come through a plan? Or did they come through an opportunity.
Andy Miller III: Right.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Where did they come from?
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Almost every time they came through an opportunity that did not come through a plan.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And the opportunities is where God moves and works. And so you have to help your donors to understand. I don't know what's ahead, but we want to be ready for those opportunities. One here that I was facing a couple of years ago was that I knew that with the regulations of the city of Jackson we can't get any bigger if we didn't have more parking. It wasn't an option.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And so I talk about that with the board. I talk about that with donors. I said. I don't know what the solution is. Parking garage is way too expensive. It costs way too much. We haven't got the money for it. We can't do that. Nobody wants to give to a parking garage. I don't know what we do. We just say what we've got where God wants us, and God put that limit there, because part of plan this model is to learn to love roadblocks, and that may be one of those.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And so during during Covid, one of my dear friends of the school called me, and she said, Roger, do you still need that parking garage? And I said, Well, yeah, I would need it like crazy. And she said, How much is it?
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: I said, it's probably 8 to
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: look 8 to 9, maybe 10 million.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: It's real quiet.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And she said what else she got.
Andy Miller III: Goodness.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Looking for something cheaper. And so we looked at.
Andy Miller III: That.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And as I mentioned a couple of things, you know. Yeah, as a present, you've always got ideas in your head of things you'd like to do if you ever.
Andy Miller III: For sure.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: That's different from setting out to do them and putting the stake in the ground, saying, no matter what we're gonna get this done, and so I told her. I finally said, Would you like me to get your price? So I got our price. It was 10 million bucks.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and she thought about it for a few days and prayed about it. She said, Let's build it.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And so and then the final price was 12 million. She made up the extra couple of 1 million bucks. So you know, again, donors. I've had more gifts through no plan than I've ever had through a plan, and usually those plans are done for donors.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: What you have to give donors is credibility, and a plan does give a credibility. So it's a credibility. And the credibility can be. Here's our strengths.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Here's the kinds of things we do really. Well, here's a clarity of our mission.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Here's what we could kinds of things we could do if God opened the right people the right doors, whatever it might be, and then dream a little bit with the donors rather than taking them. Here's the one thing we're going to do. Give up or down a little bit, find out where their interests are, and sometimes those opportunities come through donors.
Andy Miller III: Yeah. And I think that invites them to be in on the journey.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Absolutely. Yeah.
Andy Miller III: You know, somebody said to me, kind of a seasoned
Andy Miller III: fundraising person said, and I think this is true, that if you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money, and so like I.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Oh!
Andy Miller III: And what that does I mean is like, I mean, and I've seen it work work out that way, like if I say, Hey, I really need a half a million dollars to do what I want to do? What do people tell me? Well, why do you need a half a million dollars. I'll get that cheaper for you. You could do this, this and this. But if I say, how can I make this happen? Well, that then invites them to be a part of the solution.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah, right? Exactly. Yeah. I've got a a CEO that I'm doing some executive coaching with now on his fundraising. And you know your communication with major donors has to be inside.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Don't, don't send them brochures. Don't send them Pr stuff.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: They're going to get that, anyway. There, your communication with them has to be the inside. Look, make them part of it. People want to belong. Here's a you know, with with donors.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: We so often think we're asking them for money, and and we've got this institution need, and it's unequal. It's not at all. We got a lot more to give them than they got to give us I got. I got one of the greatest.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Did I do press a button.
Andy Miller III: No, you're good. You're good, can you?
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Oh, okay, yeah. You know, I got one of the greatest Christian institutions in the country that they can be a part of, and all they've got is money, you know. So it's it's more than an even matchup. And but we go into fundraising too often, thinking that that we are somehow begging we're somehow they're in the driver's seat and all. No, if they don't want to give
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: kick the dust off, go down the road.
Andy Miller III: Wow, yeah, I mean, it's just moving on to the person who God has in store.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yep, and the Lord has to be. Yep.
Andy Miller III: You use a great analogy. I don't want to get ahead of you too much, but you say we should be more like baseball ball managers than football coaches. What do you have in mind with that.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah, that you know, that's been an interesting one. And it really does work. I mean a football coach. We kind of emulate that, especially in the Christian world. Unfortunately, we emulate them as the ideal leader. They're all in charge. Everything's pre-planned down to the second, you know, Nick Saban. Nobody leaves a shirt untucked. Everything happens. He's on top of the whole, you know, and and they're just
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: the focus is on them
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: in opportunity leadership. I think it's more like a baseball manager who's back in the dugout knows everybody's strengths and weaknesses, knows when they come on strong, and when they've got a challenge, knows how to mix that right mix of players at the right time in the right place gives them a lot of flexibility to do their gift in their way, which is different from somebody else's way, but is still in charge enough to mix it up when they need to, and be strategic
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: when they need to or stay back when they need to. And here's the illustration that to me is really important when you're watching a
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: football game and the pressure's on
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: at the end. The camera always goes to the coach.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah, you're watching a baseball game, the World series and the pressure's on the camera goes to the player.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And as leaders, we need to turn the cameras on the players, not on ourselves.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: but we like and are drawn to that football model because it does center everything around the leader. And I'm not sure that's very Biblical.
Andy Miller III: Wow? Interesting. Yeah. When you're saying that, I can just see the image of a of a pitcher sweating it out.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah.
Andy Miller III: What they're working through as they're like, what what they're going to throw next. Interesting. So like, in that case, so the players who are the players in that analogy.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Well, I think in that analogy every player has a different set of abilities, and so they're all I mean. You line them up together, and they don't look that different for the most part. So how does the manager know which one fits? In which role at which time
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and I think that's the the skill of the manager to figure that out, not to go out and and have them just respond to the orders the manager gives. And so, yeah, there's direction. There's inspiration. There's all that kind of stuff. But it's really creating a a whole different dynamic of leadership
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: than thinking about football, which is, you know, very under, I mean, last weekend we had a big game on campus, a really important game, and we won. And so I went down. I was going to talk to the coach, like, you know, in the last 2 min, just before it was over we were up like by 2 touchdowns. And so I go down and I'm behind the team, and I'm trying to get through the players, and they're all slapping each other in the back and having a great time, I start to go up to the coach, and he is
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: screaming at the ref. He's fighting for every inch. He's he's frustrated. They didn't get this done. This thing done, this thing done, I mean good for him. That's what a football coach needs to do, but not a leader of a university, or a leader of a church, or whatever. That's not how we operate.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And you know, so it's a completely different model. But we have captured kind of that image in the church of this ideal, Tony Dungy, you know Nick Saban kind of total control as the ideal leadership. And I think it's it's completely wrong.
Andy Miller III: Yeah, that's really interesting. One of the things that
Andy Miller III: future plan or a long range plan does is it gives you a tool for evaluation like you evaluate yourself based upon that. So, for instance, I mean, I've had people tell me this. I mean, it's a regular thing for leaders have like, okay, you have your strategic plan. Then every step, every agenda item relates to that point in the strategic plan. So we don't talk about anything that's not a part of the strategic plan.
Andy Miller III: but at the same time like. But it does provide an avenue to say, All right. Here's how we've done. Now you talk about something called future focused evaluation. So how is it? What cause? Obviously, you have to evaluate what you're doing?
Andy Miller III: So how.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Excuse me.
Andy Miller III: Evaluation look in an opportunity of leadership, scenario.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah, well, there's a couple of different issues that let me just hit real quickly on them. Evaluation, I think, is is very important.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: But you know there's a whole bunch again. There's a whole bunch of consultants who make a whole bunch of money that says, if you can't measure it, it's not of value. That's not true at all. I can't measure the things that matter most on this campus. I can't measure the change in a student's heart. I can't measure the transformation. When a student gets a vision for what God's going to do in their life. I can't measure the stuff that matters most I can measure. Yeah, you drove through the campus. You can look at the buildings, you can look at the
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: at the enrollment. All that stuff's really nice, but that's not the measure of this place. So the stuff that matters most you cannot measure. So I do not believe in that. I do believe in evaluation with my team and with me. I just had my annual evaluation. We do it every single year, no matter what, no matter how good it's going or how bad it's going, because, as leaders, if you don't, then the pressure builds up until there's an explosion.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Somebody's going to get fired. There's going to be something nasty, happen. And so you've got to release that pressure valve periodically as a leader with your evaluation and with your team.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: And you know, but institutionally we do every 3 years a deep dive evaluation on every department of the school.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and so they run in a rotating basis. So we're not doing them all at the same time. And we're going to go deep, dive on everything. But you know, future focused evaluation to me is this concept of when somebody who works with us messes up. What do we do? We tell them they did wrong. They already know they did wrong. Probably we tell them how to do it differently. We put limitations on. We put
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: guardrails on. We put them under heavy, heavier accountability, and then expect them to perform.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: No, I think it's much better to say, look, here's you messed up. Let's talk about it straight. How could you do it differently next time? Help them to help create that solution and then say, how's it going to be different? Going forward? And my great illustration of that which is, I'm a kind of love history and and found that, you know when and in fact, it's a Mississippi story that when Us. Grant was here in Mississippi, leading the Western army, his father, who he did not get along with.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: tried to come and make money off the army, and brought a couple of Jewish guys with him to do it, and Grant put out an order to expunge all the Jews from Mississippi and Alabama, or whatever, and and Lincoln heard about it, and Lincoln said, No, we're not doing that. Lincoln apologized for him, made Grant apologize for him, and rescinded the order.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and it was about 6 weeks later that Lincoln brought Grant in and gave him control of the of the Army of Virginia, and gave him a promotion because of how he responded to the correction. So future evaluation to me is not, how do I beat somebody up because they messed up? Everybody's going to mess up. But how do I help them? Become better going to the future and then help them to create their own accountability structures for that. So that's.
Andy Miller III: Yeah, yeah, that's that's wonderful. Like, it has to be it. It have a direction to it, like there is. We're going somewhere. And even in this moment of correction, this is opportun opportunity, opportunity for us to take.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Absolutely correction. God uses correction to help us all be stronger, and you know, if we give up iron sharpens iron, and that's part of the reason. Organizations and churches and educational institutions get in trouble because they don't confront this stuff.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: I was talking with one of my team today who's having trouble with an employee, and I said, You know you want to take a step, and I said, You can do that, and then we'll take another one. We'll take another 1. 6 months from now we'll be in the same spot, or you just go ahead and get over with because it needs to happen, and sometimes you just got to take some hard action to help people. Everybody's valuable. The question is, are they in the right spot, and where God wants them to be, and once in a while we all need a crane to get moved out of spots where we're comfortable.
Andy Miller III: Yeah.
Andy Miller III: yeah, I've had a few of those cranes. I'm thankful for them. I'm not time.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Exactly. Yup, they're they're painful at the moment.
Andy Miller III: So when you, when you hear somebody like, because this is almost like a major theme of your life and leadership, and it's so dominant that people are thinking about long range plans. I mean, imagine a few of my colleagues or people who are serving as leaders. Think, oh, how can I even get started with this, it just seems like it's so ingrained in leadership culture to have long range plans. What's the beyond buying your book and listening to this podcast another.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah, that's the main thing. That's the key. If you do that, every problem solved. No,
Andy Miller III: Do they start? Yeah.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: It is. It is a process you can't just jump in. In fact, I detail the process in the book, because if you just jump in if you stand up tomorrow, and you say we're not going to have a plan. You're going to get fired, it will. It'll happen you will get fired. You've got to. It's a it's you got to let the water boil in the kettle, and you got to be in there for a while with it to transfer over. But the best way to do it is by looking back.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: So you're brand new at the seminary. There. There are long range plans sitting on your shelf.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: But I guarantee you 95% of the stuff in those plans never got done.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: I guarantee you go look at them. Show that stuff to the board. Summarize that stuff, then what did get done? What were the good things? How much of that came out of the plan? How much of that came out of opportunity
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and start to see the pattern. And when you see the pattern, looking back, you got the courage to go forward. And you know it's it's to me, all of us in leadership. When we look ahead, we say, Yikes, how are we going to make it? You know, political world's changing, the culture's changing, the economics are so hard, the margins how are we going to make it? And then you look back
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: and you say, Wow! Look what God did, but the obstacles in the back look the same as the obstacles in the front. We just don't know yet how God's going to lead, so you can only really go forward by looking in the rear view mirror.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: You got to look back and see where God has led, and how God has helped, and as you do that, I mean, I got one school who really bought into opportunity leadership. But the Board won't let them do it, so that the headmaster of the school every year presents. Here's the strategic plan, and here's what we did. And then, along with it. Here are the opportunities we had. And here's what they did.
Andy Miller III: Oh, good!
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Over time. They're getting to the point to say, yeah, the good stuff comes out of the opportunities. It doesn't come out of the plan. And so it's not an all or nothing thing. You don't have to take this, and you know, say, I'm never doing plan. You don't have to be me to. You know I'm never doing planning again, which I'm never doing plan again. But
Andy Miller III: Sure.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: You know, but you don't have to do it all once, and you don't want to do it at once. But you don't even have to. You can hybrid it, but it's more a culture. Think about every time some opportunity comes having the culture. And you know I always look at mission gifting and and capacity, do we? Is it fit our mission and doesn't? We're not going to budge our mission one bit? Secondly, do we have a gifting. Do I have the right team, the right people?
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: So I hire people who have the ability to do a lot of different things or not high specialists. And then, thirdly, do we have the capacity? Sometimes we've got so much going on, we don't have the capacity to take on something else. Other times we got capacity. I just did one this week. It was real easy, a new program in Mba in China, because we had capacity 150 students and bang! You know, it was about a 30 min. Decision wasn't hard at all.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: because we had capacity. We've already been in China. We've already worked out. We worked the mission, so opportunities come and go sometimes in in the timing's wrong. But here's what I do know about opportunities. Speed wins.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Speed wins. You got to go fast. Christian organizationalizations are way, way, way too slow.
Andy Miller III: Right. Oh, I love it! This is so helpful, and I know people who are watching me. Listen to, you know, and if you know anything about me where I am at this phase of my life. This is exactly I feel like this is probably the most personal.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Podcast, interview.
Andy Miller III: I've had like of something like, well, Andy, you just welcomed us into exactly what you're you're I'm trying to. I needed this advice, anyway. So thanks everybody for joining my leadership, counseling session.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Hey? I when we got together I knew immediately you were gonna you're already there, and probably just don't have some language for it yet, but you're already there. This is what who you are, and you know I don't. But it's not a style thing. If any do this, it's not simply one style does it differently than another? Just build on style. But yeah, you're going to do it, and I can't wait to see what God's going to bring to you. I just.
Andy Miller III: And well, Roger, I always ask the question. The title of my podcast is more to the story, and I wonder. You know you probably had several interviews, dozens of interviews, probably, about this book. But is there something about you that people don't know a hobby that you have, or something? There's more to the story of Roger Parrott.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Yeah. Then I'd love to be a professional golfer. But it's not gonna happen. Okay? And and what I really job, I'd really like on this campus is to be football coach, but they won't let me near the field. They won't even call my special play. I send them my special play they never call it. I don't know.
Andy Miller III: Oh, man.
Andy Miller III: it is great! Well, Roger, thank you for your time. It's such a blessing to talk to. You. Appreciate being able to watch your leadership and to see what's happened at Bellhaven, and for you to distill that into this book is a real blessing to the Church and other institutions like Wbs.
Roger Parrott - Belhaven University: Thanks so much! What a treat!