Empowered To Lead: Examining A New Generation Of Spirit-Empowered Leaders
By Adam Palmer
Daniel Grothe knew ORU was where he wanted to be. A native of Tulsa and with parents who both attended, he was raised in the shadow of the campus.
Grothe (2005, BS in Theology, with emphasis on Pastoral Care; minor in Business) is now in leadership at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado as an Associate Senior Pastor.
"I grew up in a pastor's home and loved my life in the pastor's home," Grothe says. "So this is 2.0 for me. This is a natural progression. But I also feel like I'm living on and riding the wave of what happened to me at ORU. I was sent out! I have those words in me: to go where God's light is dim and His voice is heard small, to the uttermost bounds of the earth. There's a grace on ORU. It's a distinctive of Oral Roberts University—you go there to be sent out."
Grothe knew early on that he wanted to join the ranks of the full-time ministry, and that he would attend ORU. But he wasn't prepared for the surprise that awaited him when he arrived.
"For all the press ORU gets about the power of the Holy Spirit," he says, "while I was there I acquired a love for the life of the mind. The whole person thing is true. ORU helped me fall in love with the saints and the great theologians of our day and seek to peruse the treasure that's there. I had great professors who were world-class who challenged me and called me up and didn't let me mail it in when it came to the life of the mind."
It was that level of excellence in Spirit-empowered education that propelled Grothe into his life as a teacher and pastor; the same propelled Troy Powell into his life as a teacher in public education.
As the Director of Theatre for Union Public Schools in Tulsa, Powell (1998, BA in Comm Arts Education) leads a small army of students and staff, instilling pride and a sense of excellence in them, to the point where he and his students have won numerous state championships. Powell is also a two-time nominee for the Tony Award for Excellence in Theatre Education.
"When I was first getting out of ORU, there were two jobs opening," Powell says. "I went into interview and I laid out my plans for everything and said, 'Here's what I'd like to do.' And the principal told me I was working at 120 watts and they were a 60-watt school. So I gathered up my papers, stood up and said, 'This is not where I want to work.'"
Powell took his dedication to excellence instead to Union Public Schools, where he has since taken over the high school's program and taken it to stratospheric heights—something he is quick to put into a reflective context.
"We have a good program because our school is our fans," he says. "The kids in our program are our fans. They buy into our program because they see that we care. We're not just putting on a show; we're helping these kids become better people—and that's the key to all of it. I don't worry about the show; I worry about helping these kids. I hope I can help them not be afraid anymore. Or live in their own skin by the end of the year. We start with the base of the people and everything else works itself out. When we started caring about our kids, everything started to work."
Caring also came naturally to Sarah Roffler—it's why she became a nurse. Roffler (2001, BA in Organizational/Interpersonal Communication) is now an OR Nurse at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas who finds her chance to lead not only on the job but also on a boat.
Roffler spends her vacations volunteering for weeks at a time with Mercy Ships, a non-profit organization that staffs its mobile hospital with volunteer medical personnel, docking for months at a time in places that need great assistance. Roffler most recently returned from a two-week engagement with Mercy Ships in Cameroon.
"When I went on my first medical mission trip and was able to serve as an OR nurse," she says, "I realized that was a dream God had put in my heart before I was ever a nurse. It means the world to me that I have this skillset that translates anywhere in the world and that I can go and help people without some of the barriers that I would have without language. I can be in any operating room in the world."
Roffler found her love for overseas missions at an early age. 'I became a Christian when I was 17," she says, "and it was while I was on a missions trip to Siberia, so when I ended up going to college, ORU was very instrumental to my spiritual growth."
She continues: "ORU was a huge foundational part of my education. All the faculty and staff I had there were so wonderful. Praying in class and going to chapel, and being an RA and being in music ministry—all those parts were very impacting to me. I still have professors and staff who work there still to this day, so part of my heart is there and I'm very thankful for the education I got there."
Now Roffler leads wherever she goes, whether that's during her day job in Dallas or while on board a ship in a foreign port.
"As a nurse, I feel very privileged to work in a career that doesn't feel like a career," she says. "God has called me to do this and given me the skills to do it, so I'm on the mission field whenever I go to work. To be the hands and feet of God when I do that. It's never been a job to me! I'm thankful for the skills not only to serve a physical need but also to serve people as best as I can in the way that Jesus would. To be his hands and feet to the sick and the hurting. That's how I view my career."
Talking to this generation of leaders, there's a great sense of purpose, mission, and a desire to lead by serving everyone they encounter.
"ORU prepared me by giving me grace," says Powell. "There's no way I could do anything in public school without having God's grace and patience. My family prays together every morning and that's the last thing I pray. And not just grace for my students, but for everything that gets thrown at me from all over. I want that grace to permeate my program."
"And there's a level of kindness and love that wouldn't be there if I didn't have Christ's love in my heart," Powell continues. "I'm not there because I failed at acting; I want to be a teacher. This is what I trained to do. I'm right where God put me at this time and at this school, and kids are getting thousands of dollars in scholarships every year; they're going to school and not having to pay for it because of our program."
"It's a sense of wonder that the world is out there and the Holy Spirit is empowering us to go out and be a blessing," says Grothe. "I can't ever shake that. As much as some people want to be too cool for that to be true, I can't shake that stuff. So I'm leading every single day, praying the ancient prayer the church has always been praying: Come, Holy Spirit. If he's been brooding over the chaos from the beginning, surely he must be brooding today to make something out of the chaos of our world."