Speaker 2: 0:11

Scott, this is the uncommon path where we take a deep dive into people's past with the Lord and, in a nutshell, what we're looking for is what the Lord has done in the past, in the present and what he's currently doing, what he's highlighting for your future, and we don't have to strictly go down past, present, future, um, we always want to leave room for what God wants to camp out on. Um, I love those sunglasses. I can't even remember my script.

Speaker 3: 0:44

Retro sci-fi.

Speaker 2: 0:49

Basically, we can camp out on anything the Lord wants you to camp out on, but we just want you to share your story. I love and I don't know you nearly as well as Chris does, but I love and I don't know you nearly as well as Chris does, but I love your humility. I think that marks you, and when you came to speak at our men's retreat, I took a picture of you and I told guys at the end, when everyone was leaving, we still had several hours to the whole camp and you were kayaking with a lot of the other guys and I was like I love that you didn't peace out, because that's what I would have done, but you instead just hung out, and we're just one of the guys for a lot of the younger men just hung out, and so I love that about you, but give us a little snippet of what you do, who you are, how many kids, how many grandkids?

Speaker 3: 2:02

Yeah, sure, many kids. How many grandkids? Yeah sure, yeah, uh, husband to one wife, becky, been married 48 years, next two weeks. Uh, four grown kids. Uh, now they're weird to think mid30s to 40. That's crazy. Nine grandkids last count. And yeah, born in Virginia, raised in Indiana, returned to the Blue Ridge and to the Piedmont red clay country in the 90s and yeah, that's me. I've probably. Uh, what's that? Master of none? Jack of all trades I think I'm. I'm the ultimate kind of generalist and you're.

Speaker 2: 3:01

You're the lead pastor of antioch boone correct.

Speaker 3: 3:04

Yeah, planted six plus years ago.

Speaker 1: 3:07

Yeah well, we had on um tj johnson and he called himself well he, it's true, it's in his bio a polymath. Remember that ryan, yes, which was like a generalist but x like excellent at all of the general things that you're good at. It's like being a generalist on steroids.

Speaker 3: 3:29

Wow, I don't want to be in the room with that guy.

Speaker 1: 3:31

So maybe you should upgrade your introduction to polymath.

Speaker 2: 3:36

Just as a suggestion. I'm striving polymath.

Speaker 3: 3:39

That's it. I'll be the Renaissance guy. I'm the Renaissance guy.

Speaker 2: 3:43

That's me Kind of a Renaissance polyissance polymath that's it that, that yeah what would you mind taking us um kind of on the journey of when your walk with god started, um kind of when you owned your own faith, and if it was kind of just tell us if it was a process or if it was like an instant thing or um, and then just miracles or situations that really defined the experience there?

Speaker 3: 4:17

Yeah, let me kind of I'll kind of tough top water surf that and you guys can take it where you want from there. Yeah, raised in a greatest generation home, born in the 50s, mid-50s, we were on the success path of what was happening in corporate America. I was a DuPont brat was happening in corporate America. I was a DuPont brat, my dad was a, the GI Bill had gone back and he had his doctorate in chemistry hired by DuPont, which was kind of the high-tech wonder world of the day, then upperly mobile, then a little bit aware of that, and then he died in a plane crash in uh, when I was 10 and uh, I think my first even concept of of the lord of god other than kind of having to sit through services and as a little kid um was the day he died. I remember I just wanted someone to play with to make life normal, and I remember clearly sitting under an oak tree in our front yard which is still there and hearing a voice hearing God say it's going to be okay, and hearing a voice hearing God say it's going to be okay, and as a 10-year-old knowing that that's the voice of God, which is, and then I just very studiously for the next 14 years, took that for granted and avoided anything other than having that as my backstop and excuse to do. Anything that I wanted to do and that's pretty much everything from then until I was 24 was either people-pleasing or finding my level in culture. And I went to three different elementary schools and three different high schools and so learned how to hop cultures and communities and cliques and all that finding the right spot and clicks and all that finding the right spot and avoiding anything that had to do with anyone having authority over me and managing every situation.

Speaker 3: 6:57

I became a chronic liar and a little petty thief, but I wanted everyone to be happy and that's kind of my defining early life. I think. Um and then uh did that through college. I just never had to work hard. Everything came easy. And if it didn't come easy then I could finagle it and finesse it and manage people kindly and nicely. I was always considered a nice guy. I wasn't a bully. I picked fights with bullies as one of the smaller kids everywhere I lived. So people saw me as a champion and a nice guy and I was just a self-centered manipulator that kept things smooth. Mom remarried when I was 13. I did not like my stepdad and it was 10-plus years before we reconciled at any level. And then met Becky in college and was sober enough for enough back to grab a hold of me and lost my first job out of college in the mid-70s because I lied. I tried to manipulate things and make everyone happy and unfortunately I was lying about federal funds. So I didn't cheat or rob, but um.

Speaker 3: 8:46

But I spent a couple months in front of taking lie detector tests in front of like federal agents and and and national authorities in in housing and urban development and that was no fun and that pretty much gutted me, was very humbling, it broke me and we jumped cultures and Becky and I were married at this point and stepped into the Peace Corps, did a stint in the Peace Corps.

Speaker 2: 9:21

There was a real quick was this before you met Jesus. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 9:27

I was attracted to Becky. I knew there was something special about her and, for lack of a better word, I would have called it pure. There was something clean about her and we went overseas long ago ago.

Speaker 3: 9:46

Jimmy carter was president and jamaica was uh where we landed, in the cane fields of jamaica in the 70s, uh, during the middle of the beginning of the what the now you call them the ganja wars, they were just starting to trade pot weed, gange for guns, and so it was a weird time to be in country. Bob Marley was still around, so I was a real Rasta fan and I was a closet hippie in my youth. And it was there. One morning I would, I, I would tell Becky quit praying for me so loud and she wasn't loud, but I knew she was praying for me.

Speaker 3: 10:34

Um, we were isolated, completely out, um, in an area called a hippie land, called Negril, um, living in a little shed, a little shack, and her prayers were being effective. And so one morning I just got up and I read in a living Bible that that green texted, or green covered, read the Gospel of John, and at the end of it I just closed that gospel and said, hey, I think you are who you say you are. I'm kind of desperate and here the door's unlocked, I'm leaving it open. But all the faith I have is to say if you're real, then come in. I'm leaving it open.

Speaker 3: 11:24

but all the faith I have is to say if you're real, then come in. And the next morning I woke up and it was just different and I knew it was true and I knew I wasn't alone and I knew this was going back to the 10-year-old sitting under a tree lonely, that I would never be lonely again. And um, yeah, and from then it was a, so it's kind of a re-estate. Um, as a 24 year old then, just kind of walking, we never met another christian. For the next year that we were in jamaica, not not another believer, but we came back to the US as 25-year-old 24, 25, got involved in business in a great young adult group that really discipled well and walked well and read the word, and so, yeah, we just grew there in leadership and began to find our place in the community of faith. Can I back you up?

Speaker 1: 12:35

for a second. When you say you were desperate in Jamaica. There, what were you desperate for?

Speaker 3: 12:46

and Jamaica. There, what were you desperate for? I think and I would have described it as, in the way only a self-centered college student idealist could probably say my desire was to have as little in my backpack as possible. I wanted to travel light and I had grown up in almost a transcendentalist kind of culture. I read Emerson and Thoreau was my hero and that was kind of my youth, as a reading kid. I think the desperation really was I can't keep all these balls in the air, I can't manage and I'm weary of withering on the inside, even if I'm prospering on the outside.

Speaker 1: 13:55

These balls being like actual materialist things or more like emotional expectations.

Speaker 3: 14:04

Yeah, it was emotional I honestly I don't know that I've ever doubted. I've never seriously. Although we were worked with in in poverty settings right out of college we were in becky, worked in the projects and I ran housing projects and then a Section 8 program I don't think I have ever worried. I mean, with kids there have been worries about how are we going to pay the bills. I assume every dad thinks that way.

Speaker 3: 14:39

But I don't think I've ever felt desperate as though I'm not going to eat or there's not going to be a roof over my head. I don't think I've ever had more than a couple moments, other than in daddiedom, of thinking of that. I don't think poverty has ever entered my spirit in that regard. But desperate in there just has got to be. More, there is more. I know there's more and with that hearing the echo of oh and now, I would say it was the spirit of the Lord saying remember, remember, kind of remember, when the pieces were fitting together, remember when I carried you, remember the desperation that goes. I know there's more. I've tasted of more, I've leaned into more, I've abused more, I've presumed on more. I've got to have it. I've been avoiding it but I just always wanted it on my terms.

Speaker 1: 16:00

So you had. In Jamaica you became in touch with your lack.

Speaker 3: 16:08

Yeah, yeah, it became crystal clear and we were living in paradise. I mean that, yeah, rastafarian world is just. You know, it's this unrealistic tropical.

Speaker 1: 16:23

I love that you're like as a guy that was like a waldenite yeah, yeah. Or a Thoreau-ite, walden-pond, walden's pond and like this, and you're in the Peace Corps in Jamaica. That's like the pinnacle of if you're trying to live the Thoreau experience. Yeah, we live, and that you, but yet you felt the lack.

Speaker 3: 16:41

Yeah, I'm sitting on a beach.

Speaker 1: 16:43

I mean it's idyllic, it's idyllic it's 30 yard walk from our shack by the guy that raises chickens that we eat and you basically had walden's pond at the at the pinnacle level and then felt this is actually not what I want.

Speaker 3: 16:56

It's not it was walden pond with dreadlocks. It was it's yeah and, and I wasn't using weed anymore, but it was like. This is like ganja heaven. This is, you know, iry. What can be more iry than that? Anyway.

Speaker 2: 17:17

And then you had an encounter with Jesus and no other Christian people you met.

Speaker 3: 17:23

Yeah, and the encounter was he just snuck in the back door, he just kind of filled the space while I was sleeping. He just moved in and I, you know to my mega evangelical friends. I can't tell you that day, but I know the rheostat went on. It wasn't Damascus Road, it was. But the light came forth.

Speaker 2: 17:53

Have you ever been able to process with the Lord? What took you? What, in the 14 year period, was keeping you from submitting to the Lord?

Speaker 3: 18:09

I think it was every single distraction that I could find submitting to the Lord. I think it was every single distraction that I could find. It was everything that you don't want your child to experience. When you ask, say hey, yes, college is an educational experience. I was purely recreational. I mean, that was what it was. It was like how can I leverage everything to satisfy an immediate need People, product, circumstances and always land on top but not have to act like I'm landing on top? I don't have to dominate, I don't have to be the A guy, I just want to manage my world. And I think God just takes those things that are natural, that we turn into skills, and says I can circumcise that off of you, but I can also take that and redeem that.

Speaker 3: 19:27

And so I would say I hope this doesn't upset anybody I think that, redeemed, we call that pastoral call you develop the skills early and God says that which was meant for evil and for your own self-aggrandizement when I move on to the throne. I haven't forgotten what your wallpaper looked like. I'm going to take it and I'm going to turn it to me and I think, yeah, I would say that's maybe the functional definition of humility, of just going. I did this, but you've remodeled completely and um, and my taste isn't really good taste.

Speaker 1: 20:18

So how did um, how did you go from somebody who was people pleasing to to being like Jesus pleasing, wow, asking for a friend.

Speaker 3: 20:33

Yeah, I would say that's a work in progress.

Speaker 3: 20:36

I mean it would be nice if I could do the oh, I've arrived. But I think that's what. When we talk about transformation, I mean it's kind of like saying, oh yeah, I've read the Bible. Well, I've read it once. But I mean, honestly, that is Jesus is the only one that's pulled that one off Purely, and so I'd say that doesn't, that doesn't die. That Graham Cook would say die, you know, just die quietly. And I think you can get quiet. But it doesn't.

Speaker 3: 21:18

Some people are pure and clean and crystalline and I see Jesus in them, in what I see of them, but they're not Jesus, they're still a work in progress and I think we call I mean frankly I'd say, crystallized. That's exactly what his church is supposed to be, is that I can present. But the purity of that is I'm supposed to be walking with people that are helping me, remember and remind me, and that's going to happen because that yuck is getting pulled up and it's coming up to the surface. Someone's growing that grace in me, making a little nuts, and so it's gotta die fresh anyway. Yeah, so get kind of back to it's about me. Um, so that was 20s. Then second half of my 20s till the second half of my 30s I I was in the business world, all, all in. I'm in, all in.

Speaker 2: 22:34

Was it? Was it something the Lord led you to, or was it just something you were like, all right, I just think this is the next place or next step. It was the next step.

Speaker 3: 22:44

It was, it was I'm, I'm becoming. We didn't use words like discipleship back then, but navigator's material, intervarsity material, and I was in an informal environment in which we were in a very, very reformed worldview, a Presbyterian worldview. I was inhaling guys like Oswald Chambers and Oswald Guinness and RC Sproul and True Blood and Brother Lawrence and very I mean you know CS Lewis and all that crowd and it felt very real and very growing. But you know now I would say it was also very cerebral. You know now when I'm looking back at it but it was so foundational Bonhoeffer and stuff, he's not just cerebral, but I was growing that muscle, those muscles, and I was involved in business and I liked the business world. I still like the business environment. I was not an entrepreneur at any level but I liked that interchange of the marketplace. I really, and I still do.

Speaker 3: 24:07

And then a couple things happened at work. We were a union shop and I was a white hat and you went through some really hard times in the business world and the day came at one point in time and I guess I was about 35. I was going through some depression, some pretty serious depression. We just had our fourth child, you know, jesse Jellicorse, jesse jellicors, um and um. I felt very frustrated, both at work and I flooded and um, and so that idea of driving home and I was, I was working crazy hours and didn't see an end to, you know, 80 hour work weeks. You know I could only do that for so long. And there's a story inside there. But not today.

Speaker 3: 25:17

And Becky asked me, sat me down one day and we were praying good prayers, but the prayers in our fellowship were all about, I mean, they were like a Lord's prayer and we were starting to hang out with people that were praying good prayers. But the prayers in our fellowship were all about, I mean, they were like a Lord's prayer and we were starting to hang out with people that were praying expectant prayers, like he's in the room. And the day came where Becky said hey, if money didn't matter and you could do anything you wanted to do for the rest of your life, what would that be? And you could do anything you wanted to do for the rest of your life, what would that be? And I said, just not even thinking I'd be a pastor, and we didn't even use words like pastor much, we were ministers. And she just said well, I've known that for a while and I hate that about my wife.

Speaker 3: 26:12

And the next month I went to the guys and said look, um, we're writing budgets for next year. Um, I just need to let you know, even though it's four months out. Um, you know, write me out, and if I need to train somebody to be my replacement, great. But I don't know where I'm going, don't know what that's going to look like, but I need to get equipped to be in a pastor. And so I'm heading to seminary, probably, and don't know where, don't know, but.

Speaker 2: 26:41

But you know, no, no plan, just had a fourth kid. Yeah, wow, yeah.

Speaker 3: 26:54

Unreal. So, uh, no plan, just had a fourth kid, yeah, wow, yeah, unreal. So, uh, 36. I went to seminary, four kids worked full-time and miraculously god gave me a job in the industry that I was in, which is a rarefied into weird industry, rare industry and um. So for the next four years I worked full time and then two days a week I would travel to St Louis and study and, do you know, market our product concrete, precast concrete to engineers and architects and developers and then study at covenant seminary in st louis, which is very reformed, frozen chosen stuff, and francis schaefer institute, and then to do three days a week back to springfield, missouri, pentecostal assemblies of god seminary certified, I mean, it's accredited, but holy roller stuff and um, that was part of like that was my four-year experience oh my goodness and it was a wonderful, amazing mutt and the faith kind of experience and we loved it, I loved it.

Speaker 3: 28:03

I'd never been around holiness people, never been around Africans who get up at three every morning and pray for three hours and it was amazing, wonderful. It was the best and the worst. And then our last 18 months. Then we also pastored a little church up in the Ozarks, a double wide, where our claim to fame is.

Speaker 4: 28:37

We painted the outside and I brought water into the toilet.

Speaker 3: 28:38

Wow, the outhouse disappeared. It was weird, it was wonderful. And then I jumped from there into. We came and moved to Cary. So mid-30s to mid-40s was pastoring, to late 40s and early 50s were pastoring, planting a couple churches and pastoring another in the Ozarks, and 50s were pretty much spent overseas and sixties have been mid sixties. Uh, we replanted, we planted again, uh, but up in Boone and who knows what's next.

Speaker 2: 29:22

Has it has. Oh, there's several questions I want to ask. I don't know what to ask. I'll ask this one. So, along the journey of okay, I don't know what I'm going to do with four kids, but I know I'm going to be a pastor to now tell, give us a snippet of your first experience with the Holy Spirit, in a way that just kind of took you down a whole trail of wow, this is, this is something that was in the Bible, that I've read in the Bible, but now this is like this is. I'm experiencing this stuff now.

Speaker 3: 30:07

Sure, Um, yeah, okay, like this is, I'm experiencing this stuff now, sure, um yeah, okay. I'll preface it by saying we, we were deeply affected by the renewal movement um in in in the night. Well, yeah, what is?

Speaker 3: 30:24

and that was that was the uh, toronto outpouring, the, brownsville outpouring the this is crazy stuff, I mean. And it was crazy stuff I mean we had people in our church healed during, like we're practicing how to pray for healing and while we're practicing someone's tumors like disappear. I mean crazy stuff healings. We were involved in an authentic move of God in the country of Paraguay where we visit and there are 12 kids and a week later there are 2,500.

Speaker 3: 31:08

And then, two days later, there's a stadium of people coming to the Lord, and the people doing the prayer are the 12 kids who just came to Jesus, like five days earlier.

Speaker 1: 31:20

Wow.

Speaker 3: 31:20

And they're seeing healings. I mean those just authentic, we can laugh at them. But they're just so real moves of god getting clued to the floor that I mean stuff like that, that we didn't go chasing that, that that followed. But, um, I think the the day came in my faith, going back to depression days in my mid-30s not deep depression, but the holy mackerel. I've hit a wall here and I'm desperate. But I'm desperate for more. And my desperation isn't that I'm alone. My desperation is I don't know what to do with a roadblock in front of me. But you do.

Speaker 3: 32:15

And my desperation is and literally I can remember saying if you don't show up in my life the way you showed up in Paul's and Peter's, I'm going to die Because I am carrying the weight of responsibilities that you have drawn me into. What man can ever say I'm really ready to be a father and responsible for someone else's life? I mean we're well, I'm speaking for me. I don't know anyone who and I don't say this lightly and I don't say this self-deprecatingly, but I can say I don't I can be the most self-centered of all people I know, self-centered of all people I know. And to get to that place of going. I know there's more and my circumstances aren't going to determine the more, but I got to know the more, so then I can cope with my circumstances. That is't endurance, I would say, that's perseverance. I needed persevering faith and asking the Lord if you don't show up, I just I want to die. I mean, take me home. I know there's a home. I can't keep these balls in the air. And over the course of a couple months he did.

Speaker 3: 34:02

One of them and I say this kiddingly is we started hanging out with people that were praying expectantly like god really is in the room and he really is going to be, and those tended to be poor people because they needed something. They their comfort zone. There was no comfort zone, you know. They, they were worried about the next meal and they their kids, didn't have clothes and they didn't have a place to stay and they're living in their car kind of stuff. And I did. They were carrying a faith that I knew was real, not just authentic but real and um, and so we're hanging around them. I'm coming home depressed, becky, sending me with pastor rogers who drove everything I didn't like. He drove a Cadillac, a turquoise Cadillac, and it's like I want to be a Beamer guy. This is the 80s and 90s. We wanted Beamers, not Teslas and stuff, and Mavericks, and Mavericks.

Speaker 1: 35:11

Ford.

Speaker 3: 35:11

Mavericks. To Warren Bristol.

Speaker 3: 35:17

And he was probably about my age that I am now, and he would lay down in the back seat and sleep. This was like 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock at night and we would drive. He'd make me drive him to the hospitals and we would. In those days, you could pray for anyone and we would just go down to hospital halls praying for healing and ministering to people. And I'd never been in that world I never. It was so unselfish and so poured out and so that was a different world. I didn't. That was not my comfort zone. The imagery of that is amazing.

Speaker 1: 35:55

Yeah, in my head A guy sleeping in his own turquoise Cadillac. While I'm driving him, while you're driving him to the hospital so he can pray for people.

Speaker 3: 36:03

Yeah, that's crazy, I mean it was like, okay, this is my wife's not going to like this. It was like living the movie the Apostle. It was like living with that guy, and that's where I mean that movie came out of. Uh, what's his name? Um, who's the actor out of his life?

Speaker 1: 36:35

robert duvall.

Speaker 3: 36:36

Robert duvall he knew that guy and that's how he made that movie. And I knew that guy and he was the one made me hungry for more. So the Sunday came. This is so off the table.

Speaker 3: 36:50

So the Sunday came where they said if anyone would like to be filled and baptized in the Holy Spirit, come forward. And I was just desperate and I didn't like the culture. I was uncomfortable with the people. It was not my class, it wasn't like the culture. I was uncomfortable with the people, it was not my class, it wasn't upperly mobile, it was everything I didn't like in church. And I ran forward and a little Jewish lady prayed with me and I was so self-conscious and she just said man, you just got to release. Just begin to raise your hands. I didn't raise my hands in church we don't do that. Raise your hands and just begin to give him praise and then give him your tongue and give him that and give him, you know, just give him worship. And I was so self-absorbed that I said and I was so self-absorbed that I said uh, uh, uh, uh, ting, tang, walla, walla, bing bang, and uh cause I didn't know what other non-English to speak.

Speaker 1: 38:00

That's literally what you said.

Speaker 3: 38:03

Are you? That's literally what I said. And she said well, you got it, and, um, and, and, and I didn't get it.

Speaker 3: 38:12

I just was so back in a self-absorbed, self-centered self. But that's where I was. I was just self, it's about me, it's all about me. And and I walked away just going this is so bad, this is so wrong. There has to be something to reconcile this. And I went away and I took I was working 80 hour weeks and somehow carved out a weekend and just went away and got in the woods and opened my Bible and read the book of Acts and read Corinthians and read, and it just kept reading and reading and in the end just kind of came back to this um, I know you're not going to leave me and I know there's more, and um and in in. I don't know what you do with your theology of definition of baptism in the Spirit, but I knew he had taken me to a new place of depth in him.

Speaker 3: 39:24

Over time. The gift of tongues came, but that wasn't the defining purpose for me. It was. There was just a vibrancy of, there was a hum in my spirit that was abiding and fresh and a hunger for the word. And the union guys that hated me at work hated me more, but I loved them more. I mean stuff that just was not me was happening.

Speaker 3: 39:57

And now I would go back to both my Pentecostal and my Presbyterian friends and say I was filled, and you can spell that however you want, but the gifts are flowing and I'm just amazed. This is more than me, bigger than me, it's not about me. And moving from that place of thank you, jesus, for what you've done for me, which is the salvation experience internally to now, I'm in a place can I do for you, what can I do with you, instead of what have you done for me? And to move from a self-conscious, self-centered salvation mindset into a spirit of what are you doing in the earth and how can I be a part? Can I join you in this? Uh, which was a major shift for me. That was a big deal, that was the big deal, that's a big deal.

Speaker 1: 40:54

period A lot of people don't make that shift in their entire life.

Speaker 3: 40:58

Yeah, it stays. What is all about them? And I still my wife is still the one that is the most un-self-centered I mean, she's still Becky and my hero in so many areas. But I began to lead better because I knew what it felt like to serve, because I was serving and loving him, serving and loving Him. And so, instead of having to figure out how to make people submit or trick people or get them lined up or to do that, it's like, hey, I don't have to be anything, I just have to be who I am, where I am, and I don't have to come up for air.

Speaker 3: 41:55

Anyway, Does that make sense. Yeah, and so they're just. You know, hard isn't bad, hard's just hard. And he's in the hard thing, hard's just hard. And he's in the hard thing. Um, he's not in the bad thing except making it make, making it as something that's hard, so he can work that into me and work that out of me. And then, and I think, over time just either, I'm kind of ADD about my career path, the dots of all, that I can connect the dots. But I think now, what has the Bible say Once I was young, but now I'm old. I don't want to be old, I want to be vital and vibrant, I want to be Caleb. I'm praying for that, even as things are getting weird physically, but it's just recognizing they're just seasons. I love the seasons I've been given squandered um family. I love, uh, I love building community. I love the seasons and I would just say the life's full of seasons and I'm in a season in, in entering into a new season.

Speaker 2: 43:23

So I would like, I would like to ask cause with when JJ shared kind of her story. One thing I really loved about what she said was that she had a wonderful upbringing, according to her words, and I asked her a question in the podcast that she kind of hit it on. But I want to, I want to hear it from you how did you do ministry and raise your kids on mission to not get burned out?

Speaker 3: 44:04

Wow, uh, I think on one level it was. You know, becky said something to. Uh, I remember her saying something when we, just going back into our late 30s, had a bunch of guys over for dinner who were all in seminary with me and they were talking about when they did this and when they get their degree and when they graduate and what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. And I mean really, you know, good, good, godly guys, as they eat the meal she's prepared. And I remember Becky just kind of kindly and gently saying something to the effect of hey, ministry, is what you're doing already. Hey, ministry is what you're doing already. And to think that you're going to wait for something to happen is just a false construct. And if you're not doing it now, what makes you think you're going to do it when you've changed your geography?

Speaker 1: 45:07

That doesn't work like that.

Speaker 3: 45:10

It just doesn't. That's great. And to think that ministry is different than life is an artificial construct. It just doesn't. You can't do that. That's like. I knew guys in business that were just jerks at work. They were about squeezing the last penny and having the last word and then they would go home and think they were going to be like super dad or super husband and I'm sorry, that's, you can't do that. I mean you can, but you're just heading for a crash and it's either your crash or God's going to crash you and say what he had to say to me um, that's thinking recreationally and and I think I think that idea of building the house of cards and thinking that's ministry is uh, yeah, I, yeah, I, I, jesse used it and he and I heard you guys bring the word up is.

Speaker 3: 46:15

I think we raised our and I give Becky credit for it we really tried to approach life is, is, this is an adventure, it really is. And you, you live somewhere like you could live there forever and you invest in people. But if he says, pack up and go or do or try something different, you can actually say it's not that I've not invested here, it's that I've so invested here that I can walk away and go. I have had this experience in the fullness of what it's supposed to be and I think for us it looked like we'd go to the beach. We loved the beach, but then we would go to Guatemala or we'd go somewhere, and we would be the same attitude and approach.

Speaker 3: 47:14

It was just we were with an orphanage or we were going to Africa or we were doing something. It's just the location was different, but the attitude of being together and experiencing and enjoying it wasn't any different, whether we had swimmies on or we're handing out plates of food at the Raleigh Rescue Mission or something, and I give my wife credit for that. It's an incorporated concept, it's an incorporated life. It all fits, it's not? Is that it at all?

Speaker 2: 47:59

yeah, no, it does. What is some advice you would give to other pastors who have maybe experienced their kids not owning their own faith because of burnout or deconstructing, or maybe before that happens, what are some practical implementations they can do, or is it a heart issue?

Speaker 3: 48:24

Well, I'd say one is the reality is that pastor's kids end up seeing the brokenness and the artifices of people before they should have to. That is taken away from pastor's kids and you hear more conversations than you ever should have to hear. And that's just the reality of it. You are pastoring as a 10-year-old adults that just don't show up when they say they're going to show up.

Speaker 3: 49:04

There's just no getting around that and walking with your kids through. That, I think, is because, I mean, people are gonna disappoint, they're just and and I think that either really hurts a kid and wounds a kid. Um, yeah, I can remember jesse and rachel and and nathan and j all having to deal with the fact that their parents decided this wasn't their community anymore and their best friends ghosted, to use the term just were gone. And it wasn't the kids doing, it was the parents doing. And I'm not saying the parents were wrong, but I'm saying my kids had to pay for that. And, without getting bitter, in working through the hardness of heart and the heartbreak of that in it, there better be a heartbreak, or you're not really in, but but doing that? Look, if I'm in for the dime, I'm in for the dollar. Either I'm in this thing of faith or I'm just playing with it and it's just trying to create good Americans, moral people. Just give them pizza and make them not do drugs or have premarital sex or, if they do, have it safely.

Speaker 2: 50:31

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 50:34

And I think that for pastors, kids, I just say I would say to the parents be careful of artificial constructs, that because they let you, they help you do your job better or keep things at arm's length better or keep the hurt from hurting deeper or the workaholic thing from working itself into you, just back up and realize. You know. I would say sojourners, and our experience has been, you know, just be a follower and let him build the church I think that's so good we're running out of time to get you where you need to go, but I have.

Speaker 1: 51:25

I have one question that's been on my mind since the beginning. I have one question that's been on my mind since the beginning. Um, you lost your father at 10 in a plane crash. What I see when I see people that are hurting or struggling through issues or or hitting brick walls and maturity, and it's sometimes easy for me to see an incomplete revelation of the father in them, or not just complete, but like a wrong or something.

Speaker 1: 52:03

As a guy who at 10, lost his father and then didn't have the best relationship with his stepfather. How did that work for you and what? Would you just enlighten us a little bit on how that went with the Lord, Because you seem like you have a pretty good grasp on who Father God is and you're a good father yourself.

Speaker 3: 52:24

Well, you know, I can remember my dad was 40 when he died and it was the week after Father's Day and he had bought me my first three-speed bicycle, a Schwinn Black three-speed. But he didn't get a chance to give it to me and that was kind of like you're now a big kid if you get something with three speeds and handbrakes. I can remember all those little hurdles. I mean, my mom can remember it because she went out the next year and bought a brand new. Second year they made them a Mustang 289 with a V8 in it as kind of her liberation of grieving has led me to a next.

Speaker 3: 53:24

I think I had an ideal. I remember being disciplined by my dad. I remember wrestling with my dad. I remember being challenged to read more, to become a better student and swim faster me, pick out which baseball card, who was playing shortstop then that I wanted to be the next Louie Aparicio or play for the White Sox, or I wanted to be the next Ernie Banks, or, and I can remember so. So I had an ideal of dadhood that was not realistic, but it was in my heart when I lost him and I really believe that I had a much better foundation then to step into and understand if God is father than someone who's been through a divorce, someone whose dad is just absent, someone whose dad I mean I had.

Speaker 3: 54:33

I would never say I had it easy, but I didn't have to have something broken in my concept of father. I never had to have something. I never had to have something redeemed and reconciled and restored from a broken side. I just had this amazing capacity to go. I had a good dad and I don't expect that from my stepdad.

Speaker 3: 55:08

I could see, even as an 11-year-old, 13-year-old. I could see his brokenness. I could see and I probably took and I took advantage of it. I could see his insecurities. I could see his really dysfunctional childhood in the 40s and kind of intuitively could read him and I took advantage of that. That wasn't fair and I've told him that and I've repented of that and I'll tell him again in heaven. So in many ways my issue was I don't know how to be a dad. Once I suddenly hit 40, and my kids are little and my son is older than 10. And now my grandson is older than I was. I'm the same age my granddad was when he stepped up and into a kind of a father figure. My life I kind of had. I had an easier time. So God as father was something that I could grab ahold of. I know what those holes feel like. But I don't have a wound there, I just know. Does that make sense? I don't have something that has to be fixed.

Speaker 3: 56:26

I just have something that hasn't been filled. Yeah, that makes sense and and so healing and restoration there. Um, I don't think that was easy for him. If that makes yeah, it makes perfect sense yeah so that was god.

Speaker 1: 56:48

His father is yeah, yeah, you're like I get it yeah, I yeah, yeah, I've been yeah I think I think kids start to see the, the. Oh, my father's not perfect, he's not. You know this unblemished hero figure at 12, 13, 14, 15.

Speaker 3: 57:13

Yeah, and I had great coaches. I mean honestly, there's a lot of stuff. I quit at 10. I walked out of a piano recital and said I'm done in the middle of a recital In the middle of a recital.

Speaker 1: 57:26

In the middle of a recital I just said I'm done no-transcript I just said I'm done.

Speaker 3: 57:28

I mean I acted out and I started stealing and I started lying and I knew I was lying and I knew that people were being suckers for falling for it. But if I acted cute enough and smiled sweet enough, who could not believe this little boy and I was? I mean mean I had that down, I knew how I, I knew how to act like I was in the back row but sit on the front row and, um, you mean I was. I mean I had, I had people, I zeroed in, I knew I knew people, I could read people and if I had gone on, you had an unredeemed pastoral gifting.

Speaker 3: 58:15

Yeah, and honestly, if I'd become the lawyer and the senator and the judge that I projected I was going to be deep into my college experience. Projected I was going to be deep into my college experience, man, I would have been. You know, I'd be nasty. I mean, I don't want to be around that guy because that's what we're praying doesn't happen in leadership in this country. What we're praying doesn't happen in leadership in this country. We don't get people of character.

Speaker 3: 59:06

I had an unredeemed Lord of the Flies character, and that's why I'm man. Man, it's just about building character and letting the Lord do that. I just come around, I don't care what you got, just show me a character. Yeah, how do you love your wife? And I don't do it. All you know. I don't do it all. Room for improvement. Work in progress.

Speaker 2: 59:45

But yay, god. I have one final it's kind of a little lighthearted question. You married your Christian wife as a non-Christian.

Speaker 3: 1:00:00

Yeesh, I don't preach that. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:00:05

There's a lot.

Speaker 3: 1:00:06

I'm not pointing my church to this podcast guys.

Speaker 1: 1:00:11

You didn't tell your daughters to do that, did you?

Speaker 3: 1:00:12

Huh, guys you didn't tell your daughters to do that did you, huh, you didn't tell your daughters to do that, did you? No, I did not, yeah, yeah do as I say, not as I do. Yeah, I do that, daddy trick yeah, do you do you have.

Speaker 2: 1:00:25

Obviously, we all need to be equally yoked, but but do you marry people where they're not equally yoked? How do you feel about that? Was that something that was the Lord's grace and I would never recommend that to anyone? Or have there been situations where you're like he used me, maybe he'll use this?

Speaker 3: 1:00:46

No, I don't.

Speaker 1: 1:00:47

He married Andrea and I, so yeah, I did. I definitely will marry people unequally yoked. I don't married andrea and I. So, yeah, I did it. I I don't, definitely I don't marry people unequally.

Speaker 3: 1:00:53

I don't go to vegas and the I don't play odds and um, even at march madness time, um, I I would never. Okay, this is a bad peril. I would not recommend that as a uh it and I'm part of, I'm still part of. There are about 150 of us when we first came to the triangle in 93, um, who saw what was happening culturally and just said we will not do marriages unless a couple goes through six counseling sessions. And that still stands.

Speaker 3: 1:01:46

And I would contend, and the Parrots, I think, had a book called Saving your Marriage Before it Starts, in which they just pretty much said how do you expect to be two becoming one when you aren't one in things of the spirit, of the heart? And I would just land there and the Lord will test you there. I mean, the first marriage I did was an old high school friend who was just desperate, and then he and his wife neither one were believers and they didn't want me to use the name of God in a personal sense at all and it was kind of like God going. I've got a sense of humor too, and so be careful, what you say I'll never, or you always, because I told God, I know. I told him Lord, I'll follow you anywhere you want me to go, but please don't make me pastor in Dogpatch, which is a really old cartoon from the 50s, please, anything. And lo and behold, I pastor in the Ozarks. And I can remember telling the Lord I'll go anywhere you want me to go, but don't make me a missionary to Africa. And lo and behold, he just goes. Yeah, be careful.

Speaker 3: 1:03:15

And it's kind of like, and I will say to this day be careful what you pray for, because it's going to, not in a bad sense, it's just like God's going to take it and go. I'm going to answer that prayer and it may not look like you thought it was going to look, but I hear that and your prayer yeah, and that's the encouragement thing is, that's what comes when you say I'm not going to be alone anymore. He goes. I'm listening, listening and I'm with you. Here we go. It's an adventure, anyway.

Speaker 2: 1:04:01

Wow.

Speaker 3: 1:04:02

That's a random thought.

Speaker 2: 1:04:06

I love that.

Speaker 1: 1:04:07

Ryan, remember when you prayed Lord, I'll do anything, but don't make me a podcast host. That's it.

Speaker 2: 1:04:17

Lord, I'll do anything, I'll be friends with anyone, but don't put Chris Flowers in my life.

Speaker 1: 1:04:22

Don't let me host a podcast with Chris Flowers. It's an oddly specific prayer, Ryan.

Speaker 3: 1:04:30

And Warren's up on the side going. I think I'll be careful what I pray for, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:04:39

Yeah, oh man, scott, liking Good to be with y'all. Man of God, thank you for being here and sharing your story, some of your story.

Speaker 3: 1:04:48

I'm sure we just scratched surfaces parts of your story, but it was awesome. I hope there was something to you on, but I really appreciate absolutely thanks for being on the uncommon path and cut.

Speaker 2: 1:05:09

That's a wrap, that's a wrap, that's a wrap, you, thank you.