Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
First Person is produced in cooperation with the Far East Broadcasting Company, who rejoice in the stories of changed lives through the power of Jesus Christ. Learn more at febc.org. We are His workmanship, made by Him and in His image and for His purposes. And it's a beautiful thing to see people come into their giftedness and really lean into it and take hold of it.
Welcome to First Person, where you're about to meet Bill Hendricks, who loves to help people find God's calling for their life. I'm Wayne Shepherd, and I hope you'll stay with us now for Bill's perspective on your giftedness. Before we start the conversation, though, a quick reminder that these First Person interviews are not only available on radio, but also streamed online and available as a podcast.
You'll find us at FirstPersonInterview.com. And for the podcast, just use your podcast app and search for First Person Interview with Wayne Shepherd. For comments and feedback on what you hear, please join us on social media. You'll find us at Facebook.com slash First Person Interview. Our guest, Bill Hendricks, is the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary and President of the Giftedness Center.
You'll learn more about these programs as we talk with Bill. I've enjoyed reading his books through the years, but as we spoke recently, I reminded him that it has been 36 years since our last interview. Oh, you don't need to apologize. I probably have made myself too scarce, but it is great to reconnect, Wayne. And just I want to thank you for all of your diligent work over the years. I do keep up with you.
and Facebook. Well, you may not realize it, but you've had an impact on my life. The book that you wrote all those years ago was Your Work Matters to God. You co-wrote that book with Doug Sherman. And you wrote an inscription in the book back in 1988, the last time we spoke. I want to read that inscription. You have no remembrance of what you said, but you put this in the book. You said, Wayne, Doug and I pray that the message of this book will have a profound impact on you and many, many others through you
Bill, that has happened. I have kept this book. I'm holding it right now all these years. I've referred to it often, a theology of work, and it really had an impact on me many, many years ago. Well, frankly, Wayne, not only am I gratified to hear that, I can assure you over the years I've heard countless people tell me amazing stories about that book and how it sort of changed their understanding of theology.
really their purpose for being here and why God put them here. And again, that's very gratifying. And frankly, I'm continuing to bear out that message and beat the drum and remind people that their work does still matter to God, and if now, even more so. Pete And you are hopefully revising the book, you indicated maybe? Pete Yeah, I mean, after all these years, I decided, you know, it's time I write something again directly related on work and
There's always still a basic theology that's needed for everyday Christians out there in the workplace who wonder as they go to work every day, you know, does this, does anybody notice, does this matter? You know, earning a living, hopefully. And, but I mean, the work itself, why should God care about that? And there's just so much rich,
goodness of God and even giving us work that people, His people need to know about. Well, you have a lot to teach us, and we'll get to your own personal story here, but tell me about your work today with two organizations, the Giftedness Center and then with Dallas Seminary. Tell me about that first of all. My work at Dallas Seminary began in 2014 when my listeners may be aware, my dad, Howard Hendricks, taught at Dallas Seminary for 60 years.
I mean, he was an institution there. He was legendary because he was a brilliant teacher. But finally, his body just wore out. And in 2011, he retired. The seminary gave him a great send-off. And in 2013, he went home to the Lord. In the mid-'80s, my dad had established the Center for Christian Leadership. He was exercised that seminarians were graduating with all of the languages, the tools, the theology, the history, all that.
and even could preach, but they were ending up in organizations, churches, and parachurch ministries where they had to exercise leadership, and they just didn't know what they were doing. And so he went to work on that, and the Leadership Center has developed all kinds of tools and resources for leaders. But then, as I say, he went home to the Lord in 2013. In 2014, the seminary came to me and said,
Bill, would you consider becoming the executive director for Christian leadership there at the center? And I prayed about it, talked to a lot of people. And at first I said, no, I didn't think the Lord was leading me in that direction. And they were disappointed, but they came back a month later and said, well, if you're not the guy, would you at least be the acting director and help us figure out who is going to do it and do some other things in the meantime?
And I was, you know, that was more along the lines of things that I'd been doing. So I agreed and I realized it is after all my dad's legacy. So I started in and that went really for a couple of years. And finally I realized I was having fun and a lot of opportunities had opened up that I hadn't bargained on and
Finally, I just said to the seminary, let's just take acting off the title as long as you're happy with me. You know, that's kind of a shrewd strategy, isn't it, to get you in the door? I've seen that happen in other situations, and it always seems to work out that way. Yeah, well, they haven't kicked me out yet, but it's really been a lot of fun and just incredible opportunity, particularly among my sort of life messages, life commitments as mentoring. And so I get to work with lots and lots of students.
and really enjoy that a great deal to see the future leaders coming out. And then for the last 25 going on 30 years, my main bread and butter, I guess you'd say, has been my consulting practice called the Giftedness Center, in which I help people discover what we call their giftedness, that is what they're born to do, and then the implications of that for their life and career directions. So
I guess in popular terms, you could say I've been a career guidance counselor, but it's so much more involved than that. I don't just give people lists of occupational titles to consider. We actually go into the way that God has put them together and designed them and shaped them for unique and particular purposes in this world.
And in that time, I've worked well in excess of about 2,000 individuals over the years. I think that's fabulous. I really do. And you are definitely following your calling. And I want to talk about some of those principles that you pass on to people. But I also want to hear your own story of faith. I mean, you grew up in the Hendricks home, right?
Howard and Jean Hendricks. And your mom's still with us, by the way, right? Yes, she is. As of this recording, she's 97, still going strong, has all her faculties, and still goes to church every Sunday and has women in her house to talk with and so forth. So she's really very much with us. Yeah, I mean, I like to say I've been going to church since nine months before I was born. You know, there's...
And I say that somewhat in jest, but I got to be honest, Wayne, I have thought over the years, you know, I think I'm the kind of person who, if I had not grown up in a Christian home where I could see modeled out in front of me faith in Christ, not by perfect people, but by…
people with genuine faith. I just don't think I would be a believer today. I know in myself, as well as I do, I think I just would have partied my way through life. I'd be very selfish. But I saw that and it really left a mark on me. And so at age four and a half, I actually was listening to
what at the time were called LPs, records. I've heard of those, yeah. And it was around Easter time, and mom would put on these LPs of Charlton Heston, you know, the voice of God, reading the Passion of Christ story. And I just remember one night hearing about that, and I just was beside myself with sadness that this good man, that they were beating him and they were
killing him. And I just went across the hall to my mom and said, you know, what's this about? Like, why would they do that? That's such a good guy. And she gave me the gospel. She told me why Jesus had died and had died for me. And let me just be clear, you know, mom didn't need to convince me that I was a sinner. I knew what sin was all about. But I mean,
Yeah, with a four-year-old's understanding, but this man who was God, whatever he did on that cross, it took my sin. And I was like, I'll go with that, man. I'll thank him. And that led into where I have been all these years, following Christ, certainly not perfectly, but I've never been one of these people that walked away from the church. And I've had plenty of...
reasons why I might, but I've always been part of a church and very involved in leadership and teaching and, of course, ended up going to seminary and getting some formal training. And so that really was a heritage that stood me well to have grown up with mom and dad and the family. I will say after my time in seminary, it was my second master's degree and my wife, Nancy,
She took me aside and said, look, I'm tired of putting you through school. I want to start a family. You get out there and make some money. In parliamentary terms, we'd call it calling the question. I had to make a decision. The problem was I did not know what to do, and I was really scared about it. And people are going, oh, but Bill, you went to Harvard. You've got a couple of master's degrees. You can do anything you want. I'm like, well, that may be, but I don't know what I want to do. Hmm.
And it was about that time that a very respected friend said, hey, I got this consultant working with my company who's got this really different way of helping people figure out what to do with their lives, which was my friend's polite way of saying, because you obviously don't know what you're doing with your life. But because it was my friend, I agreed to meet the guy and go through it and, and, uh,
The problem was it cost, I think, like $750, and I didn't have $750. And this consultant said, well, if the money part we're taking care of, would you do it? I said, well, sure. He said, well, leave that to me. Well, I found out later he'd just charge it off to my friend's company. But it was the best $750 investment that guy ever made because when I got to what we call the reveal, the feedback session where he explains what my giftedness is about,
It was as if I'd been in a pitch black room, falling over furniture, stumbling around, bumping into the wall, getting hurt. And somebody just reached over and flipped the light switch on. And I mean, almost instantly, I was like, oh my gosh, now I get it. And that led to just a series of better and better and better job fits. And about 10 years into it, I essentially reinvented my consulting practice, which is what I'd started.
around this whole phenomenon of giftedness, and that's now the Giftedness Center. And that has truly become a life message, a life work. And we'll continue to explore that with Bill Hendricks, our guest today, on First Person, coming up in just a moment.
Here's Ed Cannon on the vision for FEBC's weekly podcast. The primary purpose of Until All Have Heard, of course, is to share the experience that FEBC has because we have staff on the ground in so many oppressive places. But in addition to that, we're trying to speak to you in a way that only the kind of testimonies you'll hear from around the globe can do.
Discover how the gospel is making a difference around the world. Search for Until All Have Heard on your favorite podcast platform or hear it online at febc.org. ♪
My guest is Bill Hendricks, and it's a great delight to have Bill with me today to tell us his story and to talk about how do we find God's calling in our life. I know you speak on this quite often. You've helped hundreds and probably thousands of people with that very question, Bill. And it's always, it's been a question that's always fascinated me. In my situation, I had no idea what it meant, but I always, even as a kid, I knew I had something to do with radio. I didn't know what it would be.
I don't know if it was ham radio or fixing radios or what it would be, but I always had that seed in my heart. But it's not always that way with people, is it? It's not because people live inside their skin. I mean, think about this. Each of us lives inside our skin.
Which means it's a physical impossibility to see our own face, right? We see every other face in the world. The one face we'll never see is our own face. Yeah, we can look at a mirror or a video camera, but even then, it's a reflection. We can't have this out-of-body experience to see ourselves. Well, the same thing is true with our giftedness.
We live inside our skin, and we see other people use their giftedness, and oftentimes it looks pretty impressive. But when we use our own giftedness, we don't think about using it. We just use it. And for that reason, it can prove a bit elusive. And what we most need is somebody from the outside to come along and hold up a mirror and say, oh, here's what you're doing, and celebrate it. Here's the value of what you're doing. And that's really a problem right there because oftentimes people
Believe me, the giftedness is there, I believe, from birth. Like God shapes people and puts them into the world with their personhood, which is where the giftedness resides. And as they're growing up, they're doing things that actually accord with that giftedness and express it. But oftentimes, it just looks like play. It just looks like pretend. It just looks like…
You know, oh, that's silly. You know, you're never going to get paid to do that. I resonate with that completely, yeah. You're playing like you're a sportscaster. That's a dream job. Nobody gets that, you know, except a select few. That's not going to happen for you. And so those little sort of dreams and notions often get squashed.
And what I'm doing is to say, oh, no, those are actually the seeds of greatness. And that giftedness starts to operate, and there's really a pattern. And the way we discover giftedness, therefore, is not through psychometrics so much, but through stories, stories from people's lives, their lived experience.
And the giftedness expresses itself in activities where you gain energy from the doing of the activity. So you go back and you get stories about things people did that they enjoyed doing and felt they accomplished something. And you exhaust their memory, get all the detail of what they did and how they did it. Not why they did it, just the behavior.
And then you look across those stories and you can't miss it. There's a very distinctive pattern that always leaps out from the stories. Well, even though you may not understand completely, you've got to put yourself in situations where the opportunity presents itself, right? Correct. You know what I mean? If you just subjectively, you know from your own experience and feedback from others, I hear a lot of people go, well, I'm a people person.
I don't put a whole lot of stock in that. I mean, what does that mean? You work with any people anywhere for any purpose under any circumstance. There's more to it than that. But let's just go with it. I'm a people person. And then I'm like, well, then how come you're working with numbers and equations? Why aren't you working with people? You got to put yourself in an opportunity that would take advantage of those strengths.
Or over here, somebody says, well, I like to work with my hands. Well, then you need to do a job that works with your hands. In other words, play to your strengths. But I think people are often somewhat afraid or intimidated to own their strengths as if they'll somehow look
you know, like they're boasting or they're arrogant for owning what in fact God has given them. And we're also impatient. You know, we want things to pan out now. I don't want to put in the work. I don't want to put in the time. I want things to click now. Yeah, exactly. You're absolutely right. And that's where I learned a lot from my dad. I mean, people who sat in his classes, this is their testimony, not just mine, but they would say he was
was spellbinding. Like he, you could not, you could not, not listen to him. I mean, he, he would just, it was like a tractor beam for gaining your, your attention and then taking it somewhere. But I can assure you, even though that was a very powerful gift, um,
The man worked at that gift, and I know because I was at home when he was working on it. Most people, they'd hear these polished presentations that would roll off the tongue, and they'd think, this is the most natural thing in the world. And in one sense, it was, but I watched hours and hours and hours of preparation and polishing and working on his craft over many years. We honored your dad back last fall on this program. It's in the archive. Anyone who wants to listen to it –
Prof. Hendricks and Joe Stoll and others joined me for that program. It's in the archive at firstpersoninterview.com. People might say, well, it's just simply a matter of prayer and reading the Word, and God will reveal what you're supposed to be doing. Is it that simple? I certainly believe in reading the Word, prayer, and listening to godly counsel.
All I know is here I was having grown up with my dad in the presence of many great Bible teachers, and I'd heard the doctrine of calling my whole life, and there I was at age 30. And I was like the 60% of church-going Christians that Barna says believe in the issue of calling, but they don't have a clue what theirs is. That's a problem.
That we would tell people, oh, you've got a calling. God's called you. He's got a calling on your life. And you go, that's great. How do I find out? And we've had the same answer for over a century. If you went to any pastor and said, how do I find my calling? They say, well, read your Bible, pray, seek godly counsel.
And then sometimes they throw in a fourth one, which is, and seek the leading of the Lord, which is very subjective. And it's sort of like, you know, let you down easily that I don't really know what to tell you. I'm just giving you the answer. And so when I came across this process of storytelling, the thing that was so compelling to me
Was that the evidence that we were coming to some conclusions on was not some mystical thing that just kind of drops down from the sky, nor was it me having butterflies and somehow cooking up feelings in myself. This was from my own lived experience that was undeniable. And the evidence that, you know, like if we'd had a video camera capturing what I was doing, it's pretty much what I told the guy I was doing.
And I've now done that same process, as I say, with literally thousands of people. And we always find a pattern. And the remarkable thing is that when the person sees the pattern, it's like a truth-based
that is undeniable. And as a result, they feel a tremendous sense of calling. Like it was like, that's, that is, that's the thing I'd, I'd love to do that. You mean I get to do that? You mean God has a purpose for that? And they, they almost instinctively move forward with it and the direction that they get out of that and the confidence that they take away from that. There's something quite profound in that. And I, I,
I really think that, again, it's not like, oh, there's some, you know, nifty technique now that some guy invented. Actually, people have been telling stories their whole, you know, as long as they've been humans. Mm-hmm.
Nobody paid much attention to giftedness as we're talking about it now until about 120 years ago. Well, if we do what you just prescribed, it's going to change the way we pray. It's going to change the way we approach Scripture, isn't it? It's going to change the questions we ask of people as we seek that counsel. Absolutely. Because I believe that when you look at people through the lens of giftedness, you're actually looking at them much more in alignment with the way God himself sees them.
I mean, I don't want to get too deep into theology here, but just think about this, Wayne. For reasons that we don't really understand, we serve a God who delights to see himself in human form. For what else does it mean to be made in the image of God? He wants humans to image him. He keeps creating people, and every single one of them mirrors him in some unique way. So when he looks down and sees a person using their giftedness, he sees a little picture of himself in human form.
I call giftedness incarnational truth. When God designs a human being, he takes some dimension of himself that he does in an infinite way, and he fashions a human being to do that exact same thing, only in a finite way. And he takes great delight in us doing that, because as I say, he sees a picture of himself, and he's the only person worthy of his own delight. But we get to share in that delight, because when we do the thing that he's made us to do,
and contribute with us, there's a release of energy and joy and satisfaction. And giftedness makes us connect with God in a unique way that's so personal that God is no longer just a great old father guy up there in the sky somewhere. It's like, no, no, no. He's uniquely connected.
if you will, to you. Or maybe the better way to say it is you're uniquely attached to him. We are his workmanship. We are his workmanship. That's exactly right. Made by him and in his image and for his purposes. And it's a beautiful thing to see people...
come into their giftedness and really lean into it and take hold of it. Our guest, Bill Hendricks, has written a number of helpful books on this theme, and we'll put links to more about Bill and his ministry at FirstPersonInterview.com. Check out those links and learn more about finding God's purpose and meaning for your life.
I also invite you to share the program you've heard today with friends and family. Give them the same website, firstpersoninterview.com, or point them to our free smartphone app called First Person Interview to download programs for listening anytime. And I thank the Far East Broadcasting Company for helping bringing these interviews to you. You can say thanks to FEBC by visiting febc.org and praying for the ministry reaching millions of listeners with the gospel in some 50 countries. febc.org
Now, with thanks to my friend and producer, Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Thanks for listening to First Person.