Using your Influence to Bring Systemic Change

This past week we celebrated the life and marked the one year anniversary death of one of my mentors, Paul Rhoads. 

There are mentors, and there are MENTORS. The mentors with the capital M are the ones who you can trace to key moments in your journey for healing, direction, counsel, and breakthrough. These types of mentors alter the course of your life because of their input. The mentoring of Paul Rhoads can be found all over one of the most significant decades of my growth.

Paul first came to our house seventeen years ago when we were exploring whether to join his member care team. I had three kids under four running around and we were talking about the difficulty of young parenting stages. He said, "You know it's okay to grieve what you gave up to become a mother, don't you?" The tears came then (and many more over the years!); Paul was one of the first men to give me permission to acknowledge the cost of motherhood.  

Paul saw me as a woman gifted for Kingdom work, not just as the wife of a high level leader or a woman who wouldn’t have much to contribute until her kids left home. I had value then and there. I needed development then and there. And he acted on it.

We went on to join CRM (now called NOVO), arriving at an interesting season in the organization. They had just had an independent consultant who determined the organization was (in Paul’s words) “too white, too male, and too old.”  Among the strategic initiatives of that season— to diversify their leadership and staff in age, gender, and race. No small task.

Alex and I were among the young leaders they were bringing on, and Paul invited me to be a part of addressing some of the structural tensions around gender at that time. His sponsorship and mentoring gave birth to a women’s training cohort called Women of Influence, that deeply shaped and changed our organization over the course of a decade. 

For Paul personally, the treatment of women in the church had become highlighted when he began to see his powerfully gifted 20-something daughter, Rebekah, be overlooked and underutilized while her equally gifted husband was being mentored and promoted.

But what made Paul so impactful was not just that he cared for the individual, he was also committed to using his position and influence to bring about change in the SYSTEMS.

There’s a lot of talk these days about systemic injustice, and it’s easy to feel powerless to change what is going on. Systems change because people who hold power leverage their influence to bring about change.  Paul did that.

Here are some practical actions that Paul did to facilitate systemic changes:

He weathered the painful and uncomfortable stages of healing.  In order to facilitate the healing process in our organization, Paul absorbed the stories and complaints about women’s experiences in leadership. He had the ability to look beyond someone’s anger in the moment to the hurt underneath, and not take it personally. He knew the anger needed to be expressed— a peeling back of the band-aid in order to clean out the wound.  He didn’t try to correct their perspective, he listened, comforted, and acknowledged the hurt.

But when one of us was stuck in victim mode, he graciously pushed her towards forgiveness and healing. There was a lot of listening before just saying, “You need to forgive and let go.”  He gave both space and guide rails to move us towards healing.

He repented for his part, and for the actions of others. Paul was a humble man, able to acknowledge when he had fallen short. He made things easier for us to talk about in the messy in between of change by assuming he had blind spots. He would ask, “How was that meeting for you? Were there things we could have done better?”

Even when he himself was not the offender, he repented on behalf of others in their stead.  At times, he facilitated the forgiveness process by repenting of the unknowing ways he participated in systemic discrimination. Other times, he would apologize for someone else’s insensitivity. Believe it or not, an apology from a person in power can bring healing to someone who has been marginalized, even if he/she is just a representative of the group in power.

He used his influence to open doors for women.  Every organization has what we call ‘power brokers.’  Sometimes they have literal positions of power and authority, other times that might just have the relational trust and influence that will lead others towards change.  Paul had both.

Empowering younger leaders is a risky venture. In choosing to endorse younger leaders, his reputation was on the line as well. Paul gave me responsibility before I had the experience to back it up. And of course, I made mistakes along the way.

At one particular juncture, he made a recommendation which I chose not to follow. That decision ended up being very costly for my leadership team in the long run. Instead of saying, “I told you so…”, he helped me ferret out what was behind the decision in the first place. He affirmed the core values, but pointed out where my own issues muddied the water. He even empowered in the midst of leadership failures!

He let the women craft the path forward.  Paul (and Sam Metcalf, the president of our organization), gave their blessing and just as importantly, their funding to create new pathways for women in leadership.  But they were not the ones to come up with a new plan for the women; they let the women have space to talk about the challenges and needs, and to present a proposal on how the organization might make changes. We, as women, had more than just buy-in to the new path forward, we had ownership. We were building a new way of relating together.

The leaders publicly blessed our gifts and role in the organization. This sounds so obvious, but is so frequently overlooked. When a leader of an organization speaks something publicly, they create an umbrella under which that blessing (or ‘curse’) flourishes (see my post here).  Paul and Sam read a powerful blessing over us as women, blessing our gifts, welcoming them to be used in our organization, and asking for a new release of God’s power through us.

Within a few short years, the fruit of that blessing began to be harvested organizationally. At almost the decade mark of Paul’s investment in bridging women into leadership, partnerships between men and women had become a place of strength in our organization. At our world conference that year, the planning committee was mixed gender, men and women both taught powerfully, two of the divisions announced a male/female joint leadership structure, even the emcee team was a man and woman sharing the role.  

Of course, there are still individual situations and bumps, but the system has overall has changed, allowing our organization to be ready for this Joel 2:28 moment in history, “And afterward, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy…”  

Although Paul will not be here on earth to see his granddaughter walking into a church more fully releasing both women to their God-given capacities, she will be living into his legacy.  As will my daughters and many other young women.

Thank you, Paul.  You brought hope, transformation, and healing to so many.  You are deeply missed.