(upbeat music) - We are back one last time with Dr. Albert Moeller, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and author of the book, "The Conviction to Lead, 25 Principles for Leadership that Matters." Dr. Moeller, you have a prolific output when it comes to content in print, digital, broadcast, social media, video, audio, the whole spectrum.

In your book, you read this, quote, "Although I write books and articles, speak all over the country and appear in the media, nothing comes close to the reach of my blog," end quote. What has most surprised you about the leadership potential of the digital age? - You know, Tony, this is something that didn't exist when I assumed my current post of leadership and I'm about to complete 20 years.

When I came into this office as president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and all its related institutions, there was no worldwide web that business thought of on an hourly, moment by moment, instantaneous basis. We had a web address very quickly, but it didn't matter. And then along came different facets of the digital world, including blogging.

I was one of the very first to start because it struck me that this is the instant way, the almost universal way that you can reach people without buffers, without barriers, without needing a massive platform that is under the stewardship of someone else. As you know, I was a newspaper editor.

I spent a lot of time in the media world. I do a lot of work in television, but someone else owns all those channels. I had for about a decade a nationally broadcast daily radio program. I enjoyed doing that immensely, but that was someone else's platform. The blog enables you to have your own platform.

And it's amazing that the quick response you're able to do in a blog is often, I think, the secret. And one of the things I hear on a daily basis is someone saying, "Look, I went to your website because I had a good hunch you'd be talking about this today.

Something happened yesterday. Something happened this morning. We wanna know how to think about this." And that's an incredible stewardship, but it is something that is new. And for the sake of Christchurch, it is an incredible opportunity. Because just remember, almost all those platforms we've been talking about that we were previously dependent upon are in someone else's hands.

And the fact is there's a huge democratization of this with the digital world, and there's just a huge opening. And one other thing from a Christian perspective, you know, we get to leap over barriers that those other platforms don't leap over. There's a great wall of China, and there's even a great firewall of China.

But I hear constantly from people behind that firewall that they're reading my stuff. And, you know, that's an incredible stewardship. - It sure is an incredible stewardship and a great leadership opportunity. One of the major themes in your book is that leadership is bound up and tied up with words.

Leaders cannot lead without words, and therefore leaders must be skilled with them. Expand on this point. - What I say in the book that I think is really important, and that is where you find a leader, you're gonna find a reader, a speaker, and a writer. Because words are the most important tools of our craft and the most important means of conveying leadership by conviction.

And so leaders need to lean into words. And obviously those words have to be the right words. They have to be well-seasoned words, and they have to be words of authenticity, and they have to be words that lead to action. But just try doing that without words. And so one of the things I think we face is that we are in a linguistically impoverished age, an age in which many young people are barely literate.

That doesn't mean I'm insulting their intelligence. They're incredibly intelligent. They're incredibly digitally adept. But when it comes to the tasks of reading and writing and speaking, they've got a lot to learn. And leadership, wherever it's found, even now in the digital age, whether it's, you know, Steve Jobs getting up and personally introducing a new product as he did for Apple, or it's, you know, the political candidate on the campaign trail, or it's the principal of the school, the headmaster, gathering everyone together and saying, this is what it's all about, or the pastor preaching.

It's still about words. - Yeah, it sure is. Part of the reason why I wrote my book, "Lit," a little book on reading, was because I was surprised by the number of young men who approached me who seemed completely unskilled at book reading, many of them who had no examples of dads who had read.

You were gracious to endorse "Lit," thank you. How do we get young men to read? - Oh, it's a great book. I think it was particularly good coming from you because, you know, you were able to get at some things given your own experience. I thought we're just fantastic.

Here's the thing. I think we need to get men reading in order that they can learn how to not only to read, but how to use the skills that you learn as a part of that discipline and be able to apply them in other arenas of life. And it has to be a seductive process.

And, you know, I get to see that every single day. I get to see people who probably never read a book through who are now avid readers. And it's because reading, as you well know, as you have so well described in your own book, is something that becomes more powerful in one's life once you begin to understand how it changes your thinking, how it feeds your soul, how it hones your mind, and how it gives you the ability to turn around and to convey to others what you wouldn't have had the tools to accomplish that by if you weren't a reader.

- That was Dr. Albert Moeller from his office at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he serves as president. Dr. Moeller is the author of the book, "The Conviction to Lead, "25 Principles for Leadership that Matters." And this little series of episodes over the past three days was taken from my 2012 interview with him.

Tomorrow, John Piper returns to tackle a really important question from a podcast listener. Why will God not show his eternal love by tolerating even those who will not believe in him? Hmm. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and I'll see you tomorrow on the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Piper.

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