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“Leadership is comprised primarily of influence and decision making.”
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“A leader is defined by his second decision. A real leader knows how to make a second decision when his first one was the wrong one.” (Quoting John MacArthur here).
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“Every one of you guys at some level and in some dimension are influencers and decision makers.”
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“If you don’t lead yourself, someone else will. And that leadership of yourself has to be attached to the Lord.”
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“A spiritual leader is first and foremost attached to God in his dependence.”
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“The women who are in your life will have the most spiritual influence on who you are.”
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“The way that you use your money defines your spiritual leadership.”
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“You’re going to die with nothing–spend money on people, spend money for ministries.”
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“Humility is the signature of spiritual leadership.”
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“True spiritual leaders are a tremendous minority. And I’d like to see this group change that equation.”
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[Open for question & answer]
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“Do you guys understand how few people in the history of the church have gone to seminary?”
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“If you’re pulling hard at the oars of your character, you’re going to have influence and make good decisions. It doesn’t matter how old you are… There’s a great illustration I heard a long time ago that it’s not how long you’ve been sitting in the boat that determines how far you are across the lake; it’s how hard you’ve been pulling at the oars.”
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(Question: “How does a guy in practice—for the people pursuing normal jobs, normal careers—to what level should they be pursuing church involvement, church leadership?”)
“That’s a great question, and the answer is: As much as you can possibly give. Give your free time to the Lord and to the church. Put away with childish things, turn the video games off and disciple somebody.”
“Give your singleness to the church…give all of that extra energy to serving in the church. You have credibility in giving leadership in the church that even full time pastors don’t.”
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(Question: “Practically, what do you do with your wife in leading her—do you go through books together…?”)
“We’ve done a lot of things. We’ve gone through books together, we’ve gone through books of the Bible together, we’ve gone through things with our kids together, we’ve gone through things with our kids apart. All those things are helpful, but–this might shock you a bit–Kim and I rarely have devotions together… When she’s walking with the Lord individually, and when I’m walking with the Lord individually, we don’t have official devotions, but everything becomes devotional. We’re always talking about ministry and the things of the lord and the things she’s learning…”
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(Question on timing for daily reading of the Bible)
“Please don’t fall into the mythology that ‘I’m a morning person, I’m an evening person.’ That’s physiologically impossible. How do I know that? I was just in England this past weekend. When you’re in another place and you have to sleep at different times, and you’re forced to do that, you can. If you chase time zones your body can adjust to anything.”
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(Question on how discipleship works)
“It was Barnabas and Paul, Barnabas and Paul…and then it [became] Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Barnabas, and then Paul. Barnabas had a tremendous influence on Paul in the beginning of his faith… Spiritual friendships are discipleship.”
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(Question on making the decisions in a household)
“A leader is not the guy who makes all the decisions—he’s the guy that’s responsible for the decisions that are made.”
“The best leaders I’ve seen give away the successes of a decision (if it’s successful) and they own all of the responsibility if something goes bad.”
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“Ultimately the test of your leadership is in what the people under your influence are becoming like, and that’s humbling. Which tells you, by the way–on discipleship, I don’t believe in this whole ‘I have one disciple.’ I think you should have a few people in your life, because you’re going to adopt their strengths and weaknesses, and you want some overlap of those strengths and weaknesses between different people.”
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“We all live in this myth that to be a leader, you have to have a position of leadership.”
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“The guys who I’ve eventually seen become the best leaders were always good followers, because a good leader knows what it’s like to have people following you, and knows what it’s like to be treated well and treated poorly under oppressive and servant leadership.
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“You guys should be leadership factories. You’re chewing it all up, you’re saying ‘I want to do that. Oh I don’t want to do that. I want to talk like that; I don’t want to sound like that… always processing. Pick the flowers and leave the weeds in the leadership opportunities that you see in front of you.”
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(Question on how young men can avoid pride that comes with leadership)
“Pride is always the consequence of observing yourself and not observing Jesus. If you keep your mind on Christ, it’s going to mitigate and control your pride. If Jesus is part of your life and not the point of your life, I don’t know how you could ever check pride. Pride is always, always crushed by a healthy view of God, and there’s no better view of God than of Jesus.”
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“If you don’t think Jesus is great, you will think you’re great. There isn’t room for two great people in your life. Either you, or God. So make it simple.”
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(On spending time with his young sons)
“Our Monday Man School is entirely devoted to doing man things. I’ve taught the boys how to tie a couple of knots on ties—here’s what you use if you have a thick fabric, here’s what you use if you have a thin fabric. We have ‘How to Dress’ night—if you’re dressing up your belt has to match your shoes. Your pants and shirt need to be ironed… We did how to shave… we have a book we’re going through that’s an old book on chivalry—on how to treat a lady… sometimes Kim [Rick’s wife] comes in and talks about how to treat a lady…”
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(On doing activities with his children)
“The last time I took Mark out—and I think this was a spiritual moment—we played ‘Dots.’… And you know why? Because Mark said ‘Dad can we play Dots?’ And I said ‘Yeah, we can.’ I heard Sinclair Ferguson say one time through Eric Bancroft that it’s important to tie as many strings to kids heart as you can—spiritual and in general interest—so that if they ever struggle spiritually, you have other roads that are attached to their heart, other strings to their heart. If my son is struggling spiritually, I know he likes long boarding so we can talk about long boarding.”
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(Question on receiving criticism)
“I think godliness begins to say ‘What can I find in this criticism that’s true, and recognize that their perception—are you ready for this—their perception of you is their reality of you. And so you have to deal with that perception realistically.”
“Your first response to criticism is rarely going to be a good one.”
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“I’ve come to believe I love sovereignty. Sovereignty is way up there, God is on the throne–praise God. Sovereignty is easy. Providence is what’s hard. Providence is when sovereignty gets in your life. And he orchestrates things in your life that mess with your peace, and mess you’re your character, and mess with your sense of well-being.”
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(Question on how Rick stepped up during a difficult time in his life, specifically his newborn son’s staph infection bringing them to the Intensive Care Unit)
“They had IVs in his head, his feet his arms. We had to go up with masks and gowns to even be with him for the ten days he was in the hospital. The first two days we thought he was going to die. I remember writing him a letter saying goodbye to him. So Kim was a greater help to me than I was to her at that time, but I think the only thing we knew to do was pray. That was a problem I couldn’t solve, no matter how much leadership I had, I couldn’t fix that.”
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Download the full audio of this interview through the website for Grace Community Church’s ministry at College of the Canyons (in Santa Clarita, CA). Audio file listed online under “Leadership – Rick Holland – 4/27/11.” Full audio length: 1 hr 17 minutes. A big thank you to Rick Holland for speaking on this topic, while continually striving to live out what he speaks about. Rick Holland has a new book called “Uneclipsing the Son,” releasing this summer from Kress Biblical Resources.
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