Keion Henderson on Listening, Preparation, and the Speed of Trust
Leadership · From Student of the Game
Keion Henderson on Listening, Preparation, and the Speed of Trust
Brad Noll admits he was nervous to ask this guest to come on Student of the Game. Keion Henderson is the founder and pastor of The Lighthouse Church in Houston, an author, a speaker, and an entrepreneur. He is also Brad's former college basketball teammate and roommate, and to Brad's kids, he is Uncle Keion.
Keion preached his first sermon at 13 or 14 and recently celebrated 30 years of preaching. He has pastored since he was 21. His aim, he says, is to sit at the intersection of faith and culture, to show people "that you can be theologically sound and still be culturally relevant." In this conversation he shares the habits that have shaped his life and leadership, and Brad says he is recording it as much for his own kids as for anyone.
Listening as a Superpower
Keion says the people he has gotten to know, from Clyde Drexler to Bishop T.D. Jakes to Deion Sanders, all say the same thing about him: he listens. "I found out that my superpower in scaling is listening," he says.
He did not have a lot of teachers growing up, so he learned to turn life into a classroom. "I think a student is a person who sits in life as a classroom and then creates a curriculum out of every circumstance," he says. Every loss is a lecture. To get a yes out of life, he adds, you have to accept the no's.
That classroom started in Gary, Indiana. Keion was not heavily recruited, and his high school coach drove him to Fort Wayne for a look at IPFW, where Brad's father was coaching. After one-on-one games with Brad and another recruit on that first visit, all three were committed. "It was basketball that brought me here," Keion says. Looking back, he adds, "it was bigger than basketball."
“I measure success by the impact I have on people and the longevity of the relationship after they know who I am.”
Keion Henderson
The Fundamentals: Believe What You Believe
When Brad asks what is fundamental to running a church, Keion says you have to really believe what you believe. Otherwise, competing ideas will change you like the wind. "Skills without foundation typically causes things to fall apart," he says. He has fallen in love with practicing the fundamentals, not the outcome, because "repetition builds tolerance."
People usually come to church at the end of some rope, he explains, and his job is to help them believe they can win again. Failure is not the end, but an opportunity to begin again with more wisdom. He compares it to the conditioning drills they ran in college: just when you think you are done, you find out you can go again. "You gotta master showing up to practice," he says.
Brad sees a parallel to real estate, where his team meets people during life transitions like marriages, divorces, and moves. Keion adds that every delay can be a lesson, using the image of a bow and arrow. The further you pull it back, the further it goes.
Study Yourself Full, Think Yourself Clear
Keion still gets butterflies every time he speaks. For business owners nervous about a presentation or a proposal, he shares a process he learned from Bishop Jakes:
- Study yourself full. Most people are nervous because they are not prepared, and preparation takes care of half the fear.
- Think yourself clear. Decide which part of what you learned is for your audience and which part was only meant for you.
- If you are a believer, pray. It humbles you and reminds you there is a power higher than you.
- Let yourself go. Like pulling the plug on an old bathtub, trust what you put in and let it flow.
He connects it to golf, a game he has fallen for. He heard a golfer describe a think box behind the ball and a performance box at address. Most players blur the two. The best pick a target, then commit. Small business owners, he says, need to pick their target and then let themselves go.
He also warns that something will fill you either way. After a heavy Houston rain, he saw an open recycling bin filled to the top with water. "Whatever you're open to is going to fill you," he says. Knowing what belongs in you acts like an alarm system for what does not. Brad's response: "I just forgot I was hosting a podcast for a second."
People Are the Business
Asked what he loves about his work right now, Keion says it is still the people. "I think people are the business," he says. He tells of a woman who crossed the street to tell him that the women at the shelter where she lived watch him almost every Sunday.
When Brad walks through his Relationships Win framework, a baseball diamond of connection, conversation, introduction, and finally a sale, Keion says the strategy is the same. In 30 years he has learned that people who come only for him will eventually leave because of him, so he connects every newcomer to relationships outside of himself. People stay where they have relationships.
He also points to The Speed of Trust, which taught him that when trust is high, cost is low, and when trust is low, cost is high. "It is too expensive for people not to be able to predict you," he says.
How Do You Know You're Winning at the Game of Life?
Keion knows he is winning because he met a guy at 18 and they are still as close as they were then. He knows it when his wife asks how she can help him and when his 13-year-old daughter comes to him for advice. "I measure success by the impact I have on people and the longevity of the relationship after they know who I am," he says.
To fill his own tank, he treats rest as a strategy, hires the right people and gets out of the way, inspects what he expects, studies, prays, and keeps moving. "Gratitude is a life hack," he adds.
Keion also shares a memory Brad never knew about. After graduating, Brad came back to see the team before a road trip, wearing a black trench coat and driving a gray Lincoln. Watching from the bus window, Keion says, was "the day that inspiration woke up in me and said, you can do it too." Years later, Brad helped him buy the building where he started his first church, at about 23. Keion calls stewardship before scale the lesson he learned: be faithful over a few things first. He sends flowers to his mother, to Bishop Jakes, to his younger sister, and to his wife, then closes with a challenge for anyone making a move: "The biggest adjustment that has to take place in all of our lives is not our address, it's our mind."
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Listening, Leading, and Creating Lasting Change with Keion Henderson, on Student of the Game.
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