Rod Loy
Bio: Rod Loy is Senior Pastor of First Assembly of God, North Little Rock, Arkansas. Under his leadership, First Assembly has seen significant growth in all areas including missions, attendance and outreach. His wife Cindy and two boys, Tyler and Parker, share his passion for missions and people. They live and teach the principle "Every Soul Matters to God."
Church: First Assembly of God, North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Leadership Blog Interview Questions
1. What gives you the greatest joy in being a leader?
Rod: “I thoroughly enjoy seeing guys I've mentored wildly succeed! Sunday afternoons, I get emails and text messages. Nothing thrills me more than when one of them have a huge altar response, their biggest crowd or their best offering. It's fun to think that in some really, really small way, I have a part of that.”
2. Rod, What is your biggest pet peeve as a leader?
Rod: “My biggest pet peeve is when people mistake traditions for essentials. The gospel message is essential and unchanging. However, our traditions and our methods must continually change. When traditions are made essentials, conflict is inevitable.”
3. Who made the biggest influence in your life as a leader?
Rod: “Alton Garrison has been (and continues to be) a huge influence in my life. His quest for excellence and zeal for learning is unmatched. He spent hundreds of hours sharpening, preparing, coaching and correcting me as I prepared for the next phase of my leadership journey.”
4. What books have changed your life?
Rod: “The Search for Significance was a huge influence in my life - learning to be candid and honest with God about my insecurities and learn to replace them with the truth of His word. All leaders (and everyone else) have insecurities. I want to deal with mine proactively instead of letting them dictate my reactions to people and situations.”
5. Rod, What's your biggest challenge as a leader?
Rod: “My biggest challenge is to make sure I am around and in relationship with lost people. Leading and managing a church pull you towards church relationships. It's so easy to get caught up in the church bubble - meetings, conferences, speaking, etc. That's my job, but my assignment is the same as all Christ-followers: to be salt and light - representing Jesus in a lost world. I just got back to my office from volunteering with a first grade class at a public school. It's hard to stay disciplined to do that instead of "working" at the church.”
6. What goals do you have as a leader?
Rod: “I want to know lost people and point them to a meaningful relationship with Jesus and then help them to share their new found faith with others.”
7. Where do you see yourself in ten years?
Rod: “I don't set ten year goals. Life moves too fast! I know this: I want to still be growing as a Christ-follower. I want to be a life-long follower of Jesus Christ.”
The Leadership Blog Interview: Rod Loy
The Leadership Blog Interview:
Dr. Randy Valimont
Dr. Randy Valimont
Bio: Dr. Randy Valimont, Senior Pastor of First Assembly of God in Griffin, Georgia. During Pastor Valimont’s ministry at Griffin First Assembly, more than twenty thousand souls have dedicated their lives to Jesus Christ through the ministries of the church. The church has grown from 400 to over 4,000 in Sunday morning worship attendance.
Pastor Valimont has served on the World Missions Board of the Assemblies of God and is currently an Executive Presbyter of the Georgia District Assemblies of God and General Presbyter for the General Council of the Assemblies of God. He is also on the Board of Regents at Southeastern University, his alma mater. In addition to these responsibilities, Pastor Valimont serves on the following boards: CIS Bible School Board of Regents Chairman, International Media Ministry, Asian Compassionate Touch Foundation, Georgia District Missions Director, Cutting Edge International, and Northwood Assembly Board of Overseers.
The Leadership Blog Interview Questions
1. What gives you the greatest joy in being a leader?
Randy: “My greatest joy is the ability to see people improve and grown in their personal & professional lives. This is multiplied when it affects the Kingdom of God and the local church. I get a lot of energy out of mentorship. (I mentor 3 groups – approximately 3 times per month – Pastoral Staff, 100 business leaders in the church, 10 leaders that I mentor in their business & personal lives.”
2. What is your biggest pet peeve as a leader?
Randy: “My biggest pet peeve: In our church culture we value 3 things: passion for God, teachability, and work ethic. It appalls me when people aren’t teachable. I despise lazy people. They hurt the organization, drag people down and cause others to work harder to pick up the load.”
3. Who made the biggest influence in your life as a leader?
Randy: “Other than Jesus, my Pastor Fred Richard, has been and continues to be the biggest influence on my life as a leader. As I teenager I watched our church grow from 50 – 1500 in 4 years. He was John Maxwell before there ever was a John Maxwell. Out of his ministry alone (1 local church in Charleston, SC) he has produced dozens of pastors and 4 of them pastor churches of 2,000 or more.”
4. What books have changed your life?
Randy: “Books that have changed my life are: Good to Great and Built to Last by Jim Collins. He presents a wonderful concept of why mentoring is so important. They inadvertently put Kingdom principles in each book. After reading and taking our board and staff through them, it changed our philosophy of successorship and enhanced our mentorship position. Recently, The Tipping Point – it’s a great read and shows how God used different things to create energy.”
5. What's your biggest challenge as a leader?
Randy: “My biggest challenge as a leader is to continue to grow because sometimes success can breed complacency. There are so many demands in a growing ministry that I need to keep my priorities focused, and stay fresh and up-to-date with paradigm shifts taking place in the church and in America.”
6. What goals do you have as a leader?
Randy: “My goals are to continue to expand the ministry and influence of the local church, to continue to mentor more young pastors and leaders as the opportunity presents itself, to stay relevant yet continue with Pentecostal passion and purpose, and to know and remain in the Will of God.”
7. Where do you see yourself in ten years?
Randy: “In 10 years hopefully, I’ll be pasturing this church and pastoring pastors and leaders.”
The Leadership Blog Interview: Brad Powell
Brad Powell is the Senior Pastor of NorthRidge Church in Plymouth, MI and a frequent conference speaker. Brad has an adventurous spirit, loves a challenge, and passionately believes that the Church is the hope of the world… when it’s working right. He has devoted his ministry to being a catalyst for change in the church, knowing when it comes to the church, failure is not an option.
Brad provides leadership resources and encouragement to leaders, churches and organizations through NorthRidge Ministries Association and an annual conference, Change Without Compromise. He is a strong communicator drawing on real life examples, inspiring stories and his own experience with leading transition in ministries of various shapes, sizes and philosophies. His passion is steadfast – to see all churches become what God has uniquely called them to be by helping their leaders understand and successfully manage the principles for positive change.
He writes a regular Q&A column on transition for pastors and leaders in Outreach Magazine and is author of the recently released book “Change Your Church for Good: The Art of Sacred Cow Tipping” (Thomas Nelson).
The Leadership Blog Interview Questions
1. Brad, What gives you the greatest joy in being a leader?
Brad: "Seeing positive change. When my leadership is engaging people, I love seeing life change. When my leadership is engaging an organization, I love seeing the organization change... from static to dynamic, irrelevant to relevant, declining to growing, aimless to focused."
2. What is your biggest pet peeve as a leader?
Brad: "Those who seek or hold positions of leadership for personal benefit rather than to further the purpose. Nothing ticks me off more than so called spiritual leaders that serve as anchors rather than engines; consumers rather than contributors."
3. Brad, Who made the biggest influence in your life as a leader?
Brad: "Ultimately, as is true of all leaders, I am a product of so many who have gone before me. However, I think the biggest influences come early in our leadership because they set us on course. Because of this, I would have to say the person who most influenced me as a leader was John Maxwell. The reason...until I met John I couldn’t relate to anyone else in ministry. I was a pastor that didn’t identify with or relate to pastors. Because of this, for the first six years of my ministry, I was constantly struggling with the idea of leaving ministry. The way I led, the things I did, how I thought and communicated didn’t match anything out there. Though God was using it, I felt very misplaced. John, who was a pastor at the time, was the first one I could identify with and relate to. It was like breathing for the very first time. God used my exposure to John to clearly confirm that He had called and anointed me uniquely for ministry."
4. What books have changed your life?
Brad: "Honestly, other than the Bible, books don’t change my life. However, there have been some books that I have greatly benefited from...especially books on leadership. Because I believe leadership is all about change and so few spiritual leadership books ever addressed this reality, I benefited a great deal from two of John Kotter’s books: “A Force for Change” and “Leading Change.”
5. What's your biggest challenge as a leader?
Brad: "Transitioning my own thinking, style, strategy, and practice of leadership as the world and my ministry challenges change. For Example: As time has gone by, I have had to go from intuitional leadership to intentional leadership. Intuitional leadership, which is much easier, was all about leading people to myself. Since I was young and at the center of the culture, I just had to follow my intuition and lead people to myself. As I’ve matured and moved away from the center, I’ve had to learn to lead people away from myself. This demands intentionality and a lot of work."
6. What goals do you have as a leader?
Brad: "My goals flow off of my clearly defined purposes and my experiences. Personally, I want to be a man of God who reflects, reveals, and represents Christ in every area of my life. Professionally, I want to be a man of God who is a force for Christ in leading the church to prevail."
Generally: My prayer is to keep growing, keep creating, never become an anchor, make better everyone who knows me, and finish well.
Specifically: My prayer is that God will continue to use my leadership as a catalyst for NorthRidge to continue being a relevant, effective, and growing church and that He will use me as a catalyst for transitioning other leaders and churches to relevance, effectiveness, and growth both in the United States and around the world.
7. Where do you see yourself in ten years?
Brad: "At this time, I see myself doing the same things...in very new and different ways. However, I do believe the balance of my investments will tip more and more toward leading through and investing in other leaders as well as the producing of resources that can help to challenge, encourage, and strengthen other pastors, churches, and believers. Having inherited a church that failed to invest in and release younger generational leaders as genuine stakeholders in the ministry, I have a growing passion to facilitate this at NorthRidge and beyond."