Embrace the Race - Chad Williams with Five Q

On this episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast, we hear a talk given by Chad Williams fromthe 2022 Digital Ministry Conference held in Nashville. Chad is the founder and CEO of Five Qand gave this talk on the opening night of the conference based on the theme of theconference: Embrace the Race.Chad used the story of his son Josiah’s high school running career to teach about somedeeper principles. Since Josiah started cross country his freshmen year, he grew to love thesport and really wanted to push himself to improve and become a better athlete. One year heran 1,000 miles in just one year as a part of his own personal training and throughdetermination and perseverance, Josiah completed his goal even when it meant runningoutside in below freezing temperatures. He put in the effort to accomplish the goal which is alarge part in what it means to “embrace the race”.Another aspect of embracing the race is having a character of integrity to do the right thingeven when no one is watching. In Josiah’s case, when his coach would tell the team wherethey would be running for that day, many of the other runners would take shortcuts so theywouldn’t have to run so far. Even though the coach would have never known, Josiah still choseto run the assigned route and even began leading others to do the same.The third part of embracing the race involves measuring success by God’s standards ratherthan by the world’s standards. Throughout his entire running career in high school, Josiahwanted to make it to state. He worked hard, put in the effort, did the training and pushedhimself to do his best, but in the end he was seconds away from achieving a fast enoughqualifying time. Although the world might view that as a failure, Josiah character and leadershipabilities grew during his running career to a point where he eventually became student bodypresident at Moody Bible Institute. He achieved success in much more important areas than astate qualification.To hear more about embracing the race, listen to the entirety of episode #65 of the Ministry atScale podcast.