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Rev. Dustin McEwen (New Mexico, West Plains) Interview · What You Have Seen and Heard

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello again and welcome back to another episode of What You Have Seen and Heard.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: It comes from when John the Baptist had a delegation to Jesus to ask if he was
0:07
SPEAKER_00: the Messiah or if they should wait for somebody else.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus doesn't tell them yes or no.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: He just says, go back and say what you have seen and heard.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I've been having conversations with folks across Welcome
0:16
SPEAKER_00: the Upper Midwest Annual Conference.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: My name is Travis Stevick.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm a pastor in Marcus, Iowa, in the Upper Midwest.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: But I've been expanding these conversations across the connection
0:26
SPEAKER_00: to make connections with folks that I met and connected with at General Conference.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: And so today,
0:31
SPEAKER_00: my special guest is Dustin McEwen,
0:34
SPEAKER_00: who is the pastor of the Community Methodist Church in Ruidoso in New Mexico,
0:38
SPEAKER_00: which is part of the West Plains Conference.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: So welcome, Dustin, to this conversation.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for having me this morning, Travis.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Glad to be here.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: So the first question that I start with everybody is,
0:49
SPEAKER_00: can you tell us a bit of the story about how it is you became a Christian in
0:52
SPEAKER_00: the first place?
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Or if you're the kind of person who grew up in the church and you've always been
0:54
SPEAKER_00: a Christian,
0:55
SPEAKER_00: can you tell us a story about how you came to take your faith more seriously?
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks for the question.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: My story, I think like everybody's, is unique.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm the youngest of three sons.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: My parents are Christians.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: I've come to found out that I'm the third of five generations to be a Methodist pastor.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: That's when I actually started ministry, though.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: But my middle brother, Doug,
1:20
SPEAKER_01: was born with some difficulties and my parents were told by
1:23
SPEAKER_01: the doctors they shouldn't have any more kids.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: So my parents spent some time in prayer trying to discern what God wanted.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: And lo and behold, here I am.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: So I really feel like the grace of God has been with me before I was born.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: I remember at the age of six,
1:38
SPEAKER_01: knowing that God loved me and my parents read us Bible stories and prayed.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: But it really wasn't until I hit about 14 or 15.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: We made several different moves in our lives.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: And I remember thinking to myself, nobody knows who I am.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: And if I'm going to follow Jesus, I'm going to have to do it myself.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm at the age where my parents aren't going to do it.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm at the age where the church isn't going to do it for me.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: And so it was probably around the age of 15 that I said,
2:01
SPEAKER_01: you know what, I'm going to take this Jesus thing seriously.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: And that's when I would say I really devoted my life to him and just started seeking
2:08
SPEAKER_01: the Bible and praying.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: And I had this small rural church pastor challenge the church to read through the Bible.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: And so at 15, I started that challenge and completed it by the time I was 16.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: All right.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, always been part of it.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: Always loved Jesus, I think.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's been amazing having these conversations because you say everybody's got
2:29
SPEAKER_00: a unique story.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: And one of my ulterior motives,
2:32
SPEAKER_00: I think,
2:32
SPEAKER_00: about asking that question of everybody is because I think sometimes people imagine
2:36
SPEAKER_00: that pastors,
2:37
SPEAKER_00: especially in other leaders,
2:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
2:38
SPEAKER_00: that we had some kind of special connection to God our whole lives and
2:42
SPEAKER_00: that they never would understand.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: But I think that the fact that we have the same kinds
2:47
SPEAKER_00: of stories everybody else does, I think, is a really encouraging thing.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: I actually hope it's encouraging to those who are not pastors anyway.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: But you are a pastor.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: And so can you tell us a bit of the story about how it is that God called you into ministry?
3:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: So we were at a stage in our life where we were actually not going to church when I was 17.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: And I was dating the wrong girl, honestly, at the time.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: And I thought I needed to graduate from high school early and have this life planned.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: And so I spent months and months and months just praying,
3:18
SPEAKER_01: God, what do you want me to do with my life?
3:20
SPEAKER_01: And it was when I was reading through the words of Jesus in the Gospels
3:24
SPEAKER_01: that I really felt like after reading some of Jesus's sermons that Jesus said,
3:29
SPEAKER_01: I want you to be a preacher.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: And like I said,
3:32
SPEAKER_01: when I started off,
3:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm the third of five generations now that have been Methodist pastors.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm dating back to circuit riders, but I knew none of this.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: My parents were administrators in the school districts.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: My grandparents were farmers.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: And so that was the story that I knew.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, when I was in high school,
3:51
SPEAKER_01: applying for college applications, being a pastor didn't sound good on scholarships.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: So I convinced myself that I could follow my brother's footsteps and be a doctor.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: And it was really when I was at Texas Tech University that I felt that for
4:03
SPEAKER_01: the first time in my life, I didn't enjoy math or science or studying.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: And God used that season of discontentment for the first semester and a half.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: No, I was just going to say, so I mean, I think for me, it's always been a continual calling.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: But one of the things in my life is I've never wanted to be a pastor.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: I've always wanted to do something else.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
4:46
SPEAKER_01: whether it was a doctor or when I was in seminary,
4:48
SPEAKER_01: be a missionary, or even now I'm like, man, McEwen is Scottish.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to move to Scotland and you can buy old church buildings there for super cheap.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Be a church planner.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: That's what I've done in the past.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: But I think at the end of the day,
4:59
SPEAKER_01: God keeps just calling me back to being a local church pastor.
5:02
SPEAKER_01: So.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, as people who know me personally know, I also have a connection to Scotland.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: I did some extra schooling in Scotland after seminary.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: And then also, I also felt that call early in life.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: I went to college to be a math major, to be a math teacher.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: And God kind of pulled me out of that after the first year.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: I stayed in the math department because I had a scholarship that I would lose
5:26
SPEAKER_00: if I didn't stay in the math department.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I moved into pastoral ministry relatively young as well.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: So it's been fascinating because So I've noticed that,
5:35
SPEAKER_00: so these kind of conversations I'm having with folks when I met
5:37
SPEAKER_00: at General Conference,
5:38
SPEAKER_00: we met and we talked about things and various things that presented themselves.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: We didn't get into our biographies.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's been really interesting talking to some folks now after the fact
5:46
SPEAKER_00: and hearing resonances with my own story and some of your guys' stories.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's just, again,
5:51
SPEAKER_00: I hope that by doing some of this,
5:53
SPEAKER_00: we're getting this notion of we are really all in the same boat.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: We're all people who have been loved by God, called by God.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: You mentioned that you had done some church planting.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: Can you share a little bit more about that?
6:04
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
6:05
SPEAKER_01: So during my second charge when I was in Shallowater,
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Texas, I really felt God placed a heavy call in my heart to be a church planner.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: It was something that Timothy Tennant talked a lot about in his classes that I took
6:18
SPEAKER_01: with him while I was at Asbury.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: And it was something I prayed about just continually.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: And literally, it was almost like a divine moment.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: In the middle of the night one night, I woke up.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: And I just had the stirring on my heart.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, God,
6:31
SPEAKER_01: if you really want me to be a church planner,
6:33
SPEAKER_01: like I just need I've been such a Gideon.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: I just need some sort of sign.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: And I kid you not,
6:39
SPEAKER_01: within 15 seconds of me praying that prayer,
6:41
SPEAKER_01: like lightning and thunder shook our house.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, OK, I think I got it.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: And so I talked to conference leadership at that time and was able to convey
6:53
SPEAKER_01: the call of God in my heart.
6:54
SPEAKER_01: We moved into Lubbock, Texas.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: And started a church plant that at the end of the day didn't take root, is kind of what I say.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: We did several things majorly wrong, probably from the get-go.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: My ideal always was to take maybe the upper middle class,
7:11
SPEAKER_01: that's more my affinity group,
7:13
SPEAKER_01: and help reach the east side,
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SPEAKER_01: which was the more impoverished African Americans of the community.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: And we changed frequently locations.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: We had a major conference leadership change in the process as well that changed
7:27
SPEAKER_01: the scope and vision of our church plant.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the things that's really helped me as a pastor since then is
7:33
SPEAKER_01: that it took 18 months for our DNA to become established as a church plant.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: And this is who we believe God has called us to be.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: And we didn't pivot fast enough to make it successful in the end.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's really important for us to keep that,
7:48
SPEAKER_01: just our agendas on the line and keep them before God,
7:51
SPEAKER_01: because it's when we get so stuck in our own ways that things start to fall apart,
7:54
SPEAKER_01: I think.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: But church planting also had some of the highs and lows in my life.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: We went to this park ministry and I talked to a student at Texas Tech
8:05
SPEAKER_01: that was literally from China, grew up agnostic atheist.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: And I Through some conversations he had with another person,
8:13
SPEAKER_01: they came up and were like, hey, Dustin, this kid wants to give his life to Jesus.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what?
8:17
SPEAKER_01: And so we sat and we talked for,
8:18
SPEAKER_01: you know, five or 10 minutes and I could feel the call of Christ in his life.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: We went to a pool in an apartment complex and baptized him right there on the spot
8:26
SPEAKER_01: with all these people that had no idea who Jesus was.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: And so more people were able to experience the goodness and grace of God.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: You know,
8:34
SPEAKER_01: me and one of my buddies,
8:35
SPEAKER_01: we were the only Anglos in a certain neighborhood and we would go to basically
8:42
SPEAKER_01: the places that nobody else would go and the cops would hang out to because that's
8:46
SPEAKER_01: where all the prostitution,
8:47
SPEAKER_01: the drug deals went down and people would give us their kids.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: We would pray with people on the streets and we saw them come to Christ.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: We had ministries that impacted thousands or hundreds of people each week.
8:58
SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, it just wasn't financially sustainable.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: So learn things about the business side of the church that I didn't necessarily have
9:05
SPEAKER_01: in my back pocket before then.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing the things that you learn in seminary and the things you don't learn
9:09
SPEAKER_00: in seminary that you need to know.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: So you're in New Mexico right now.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: How did that come about?
9:18
SPEAKER_01: So it was through that season of the well-not-succeeding That we knew,
9:25
SPEAKER_01: my wife and I had taken a week with my kids away from us.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: And we honestly knew within about 24 hours that it wasn't going to be financially sustainable.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: And we had given it our best shot.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: And that was in January.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: And in the UMC that we came from, appointment season was February, March.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: And so we kind of were like lame ducks for a little bit, if that makes sense.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: And so I filled the pulpit and I was at a...
9:52
SPEAKER_01: Bishop's School on Lake Texoma when I got the call to come to Mexico,
9:56
SPEAKER_01: and I thought they were crazy.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm a West Texas kid.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: First job was on a farm,
10:01
SPEAKER_01: showed pigs throughout high school, but we've always loved the mountains.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: And so Ruidoso is at 6,800 to 7,100 feet, depending on where you're at in the community.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: I have a mountain view that's 12,000 square feet, or the mountains at peak is at 12,000 feet.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: And when the conference called and said, Hey, we want you to move to the mountains.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: My family had vacation in the mountains.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: My wife and I had actually come to this town for our honeymoon and for a baby moon.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: So we were very familiar with, I mean, it's a little touristy town close to Texas.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: And when we had the chance to move here, we're like, why?
10:34
SPEAKER_01: Actually, my wife was like, why not?
10:36
SPEAKER_01: I had a long laundry list of reasons why I shouldn't move here.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: And because of her love and discernment and my determination,
10:44
SPEAKER_01: Don Boren,
10:45
SPEAKER_01: one of my former district superintendents at the time,
10:48
SPEAKER_01: because of my love and trust for him, I was like, let's just give it a shot.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: And that was over eight years ago now.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we're grateful to be here.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: So tell me a little bit about, so you grew up on a farm.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: You're doing farm stuff anyway.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: First job was on a farm.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to remember the conversation because we talked a little bit
11:06
SPEAKER_00: about your community in person, but I'm blanking on some of the details now.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: And so you said it's a bit of a touristy town.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Tell me more about Rodoso.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I mean it's a tourist town to a T.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: The first summer I moved up here from Lubbock,
11:20
SPEAKER_01: I actually heard a commercial on the local radio station for a business in Lubbock
11:24
SPEAKER_01: because we have so many people from West Texas that come up here.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, at 7,000 feet, the West Texas heat can get 105, 110 degrees on occasion.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: Our highs are typically in the mid-80s and usually in the mid-70s.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have skiing in the winter.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: We have cool temperatures and lakes and lots of trails in the summers.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: So it really is just a nice little mountain community.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: Now, something that's really impacted us over the last four
11:53
SPEAKER_01: or five years is we've had Two major natural wildfires
11:59
SPEAKER_01: that have greatly impacted our community.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: And because of the wildfires, we've had consecutive years of flooding in our community.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: And so what once was this beautiful mountain landscape,
12:09
SPEAKER_01: it's still beautiful and gorgeous, but we have some mountain issues now.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: So even last night,
12:16
SPEAKER_01: school got canceled a little bit early because there was potential flooding because
12:20
SPEAKER_01: of heavy rains.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: And so it's just this continual state of living intention for a lot of people on occasion.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: So you have to excuse my ignorance.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the connection is between wildfires and flooding.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: Can you help explain why those two things are connected?
12:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
12:36
SPEAKER_01: so with the Salt Fork and South for the Salt and South Fork fires that happened
12:40
SPEAKER_01: in 2024 here,
12:42
SPEAKER_01: the temperatures of the fires got over 3000 degrees and they crystallized
12:49
SPEAKER_01: the surface of the mountain for parts of it.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: So one,
12:53
SPEAKER_01: they burned all of the plant life that was their roots were absorbing the moisture
12:57
SPEAKER_01: and two, they hardened the surface even harder.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: And so when you're on a mountain slope like this, all the water runs downhill.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: And so if you don't have the absorption to take it up, It just washes downhill.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: And because of that, last summer in 2025, we had the worst flooding this community's ever seen.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: And one of my members that lived outside of a 500-year floodplain,
13:22
SPEAKER_01: you know, so they did projections in 500 years, this is the worst flood possible.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: Your house wouldn't be flooded,
13:28
SPEAKER_01: like her house flooded,
13:29
SPEAKER_01: because it was just worse than anybody could have ever imagined.
13:32
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for making that connection with me, because I find when...
13:37
SPEAKER_00: Things happen for a reason.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't mean like the fires happen for a reason.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the fact that the fires led to the flooding happens for a reason.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: And I always find myself fascinated.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: And it's something that once it gets explained, it makes perfect sense.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: I remember one time I was out in a combine with a farmer harvesting corn.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: And I said something about one of Jesus' parables never made sense to me.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: And that was when he says there was some seed that gets scattered and it falls
14:00
SPEAKER_00: and it has no depth of soil.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: And so it springs up quickly because it had no depth of soil.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: I said, that doesn't make sense to me.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: He said,
14:06
SPEAKER_00: it makes perfect sense because the top of the soil gets warm before it's ready
14:10
SPEAKER_00: to really sustain it in the long term.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: I went, ah, what a surprise.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: He just knew what he was talking about.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: So thank you for that because I always find that interesting.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: So you say it's a tourist town.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to lay out some of my baggage of why I have said to my wife out loud,
14:25
SPEAKER_00: which is a terrible thing to do because God may someday challenge me on that.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: But when I've ever been in touristy towns,
14:35
SPEAKER_00: My gut has been I don't want to be in ministry in a tourist town because there's
14:40
SPEAKER_00: so much turnover and there's so much different.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: And so for me as an outsider who does not live in a community like that,
14:46
SPEAKER_00: I see so many downsides to being in a tourist town as far as making relationships
14:51
SPEAKER_00: and planting those seeds.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: But I imagine that my outsider's perspective is probably,
14:57
SPEAKER_00: even if it's partially accurate, it's probably not completely accurate.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: So I'd be really interested to hear about what you have perceived as being both
15:02
SPEAKER_00: the blessings and the challenges of being in a tourist town.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: We're probably one of the few churches in the connection that,
15:11
SPEAKER_01: at least in North America,
15:13
SPEAKER_01: whose average attendance increases by 40 to 50% every summer.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: Right.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: And so we have all of these people from Texas,
15:20
SPEAKER_01: Arizona, Oklahoma that have their summer houses up here.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: And each week,
15:24
SPEAKER_01: sometimes we've got a family that joins us one week every July
15:28
SPEAKER_01: and they've been up here for the last 25 years.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: And every July it's like, we're back again, Dustin.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, and my joke is, well, I'm still here.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: I've been the longest.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm the longest tenured pastor in this congregation's history.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: So that's one of my running jokes with people.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: It is difficult because sometimes you see people for one to two to three weeks at a time.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: And like, I know that I know them and I know part of their story, but I don't really know them.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes names escape me because when you don't see somebody for 11 months,
15:56
SPEAKER_01: it's like, oh, I'm just so glad to see you again.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: So grateful you're here.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: And so that can be very challenging.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: And also with the people that are here,
16:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you're familiar with maybe some small town ministry in your context.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: Being an outsider in a small town,
16:13
SPEAKER_01: it's really taken us five or six years to feel like we're not as much of an outsider
16:17
SPEAKER_01: as we used to be.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, I think part of that's I've got a senior and a sophomore right now.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: So they started when they're in fourth and second grade when we moved here.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: So we know a lot of people that are parents.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: And so it's really taken us a while to feel more localized.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: But with the impacts of the fires and flooding,
16:39
SPEAKER_01: it's really impacted our whole community because tourism is down a little bit.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: We had a major racetrack that closed down.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: And so...
16:50
SPEAKER_01: It's a tourist town that's in pain.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: And I think the reality is it doesn't matter where you live, people are in pain.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: And when people are in pain, they need somebody to turn to.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: And what we have to offer is that somebody's Jesus, right?
17:06
SPEAKER_01: And I feel kind of guilty sometimes because while the community has been suffering
17:12
SPEAKER_01: over the last three or four years,
17:13
SPEAKER_01: our church has actually been in a time of flourishing.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: Our average attendance is higher than it's ever been since I've been here.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: Our finances are better than they've ever been.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: We've launched a new ministry in a neighboring church,
17:26
SPEAKER_01: kind of with my church planning background.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: The community is hurting,
17:32
SPEAKER_01: and I think what I've seen is that it doesn't matter where you serve at,
17:36
SPEAKER_01: people have a common desire to be a part of a community and
17:39
SPEAKER_01: to know they're not alone.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: The name of our church is Community, so I get us to try to live into that.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: And as we've done so, I mean,
17:46
SPEAKER_01: we just had a great impact on the community and seen lots of people respond to that.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: So it's been good stuff.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: So here's what is, what is life like in a tourist town off season?
17:56
SPEAKER_00: Cause what I mean is,
17:57
SPEAKER_00: so when I've been to some of these other touristy towns,
17:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's always been in the middle of the season.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: And so like, and this is my in-laws used to go camping up in a place, um, in Southern Minnesota.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this whole like series of towns on this river
18:10
SPEAKER_00: that just have all this tourist stuff.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: And I, I am struck by the fact that so much.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Of what I can see about the town.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: Now granted,
18:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm a tourist,
18:18
SPEAKER_00: so I'm only seeing probably the tourist areas are the front facing tourist shops,
18:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:24
SPEAKER_00: which I can imagine probably don't do an enormous amount of business on
18:28
SPEAKER_00: the off season.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just,
18:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm really curious about what it's actually like to live in a town that's
18:33
SPEAKER_00: so based around tourism when the tourists aren't there.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll tell you about one of my favorite games to play with my family.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: We call it restaurant bingo.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, because at any given time,
18:45
SPEAKER_01: especially during non peak season,
18:48
SPEAKER_01: these families that operate the local stores and local restaurants,
18:51
SPEAKER_01: just, well, we're going to take a vacation because it's not peak season.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: And so you show up to a restaurant that's supposed to be open.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: Everything online says it's open.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: Traditionally they're open and they're closed because they left town.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that's pretty common.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean the slower seasons, um,
19:05
SPEAKER_01: and which we're entering into like for us or October,
19:08
SPEAKER_01: November and, um, Like mid-March when the snow stops.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Like the community just, for me,
19:17
SPEAKER_01: it's my favorite time of the season because like this is,
19:21
SPEAKER_01: we live in the beauty of God's creation.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: And we don't have to worry about an extra 10,000 people getting from place to place.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Now, I do know from the church's standpoint, like that's one of our slower financial times.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: And so we have to build that in the life of the church.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And I know a lot of our local businesses have to do the exact same thing.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: Some of our local business owners, they just know.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: We can't employ people during this time.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: So it's just going to be the mom and pop type owners that are working the stores
19:47
SPEAKER_01: or they have less hours.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: And so life just really slows down, which I think is really a healthy rhythm for most people.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: You know, coming from Lubbock, it was go, go, go all the time.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: Right.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: And it's good to have seasons in your life where you intentionally slow down
20:02
SPEAKER_01: because it causes you to focus on something else besides the busyness.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Right.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: Right now, we've had rain almost since we got back from Africa.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: If we didn't have rain that whole time,
20:14
SPEAKER_00: we have farmers who would absolutely be at harvest right now,
20:17
SPEAKER_00: but they haven't been able to.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: There's one or two fields I've seen that have been pulled out,
20:20
SPEAKER_00: but most of them are not,
20:21
SPEAKER_00: and they just can't get out there,
20:23
SPEAKER_00: which has been good, actually, for charge conference preparation.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Because usually we have to work around all that.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: So I find myself in the harvest season having a really interesting combination of feelings.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Because on the one hand,
20:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm profoundly grateful for the fact that this season is what allows this community
20:40
SPEAKER_00: to exist.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Because there wouldn't be a community here if it weren't for all the farms around.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: Even though the town itself has been more diversified since then, still,
20:50
SPEAKER_00: if the farms and all the farmers were to go away,
20:53
SPEAKER_00: and all that from the economic point of view, this would not be a viable town.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: So I'm very grateful for that.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand,
21:00
SPEAKER_00: I also know that you have people who,
21:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:03
SPEAKER_00: would never miss church ever, who,
21:05
SPEAKER_00: depending on how harvest is going and depending on how pressed they are for time,
21:08
SPEAKER_00: you know, you're not going to see them, you know, for a big chunk of time.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: And I find myself annoyed by that while at the same time being grateful for,
21:18
SPEAKER_00: you know, the fact I'm praying for their safety and all the rest.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: And so I would imagine that in the peak season,
21:23
SPEAKER_00: I would imagine that that also has an impact on church.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: The people you would normally see throughout the year.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Is that accurate?
21:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, without a doubt.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: You know,
21:35
SPEAKER_01: we have people that leave town when everybody else comes into town
21:38
SPEAKER_01: that are here year round because they know that that's a good time to get out.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: And also that's a good time to put your house on the market for Airbnb and stuff like that.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: Right.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, but also like it does like the seasonal impact really creates, um,
21:55
SPEAKER_01: seasons of joy in our congregation,
21:56
SPEAKER_01: just because when,
21:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:58
SPEAKER_01: everybody's going to be coming back home or at least like for us,
22:01
SPEAKER_01: this is home and everybody's going to be coming to your home.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: Like we want to be the best host that we can be.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so instead of like kind of ignoring the tourist season,
22:09
SPEAKER_01: like we embrace it and we welcome people and, um,
22:13
SPEAKER_01: I think my first or second summer here,
22:15
SPEAKER_01: I asked people,
22:15
SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay, if you don't live in Ruidoso full time, raise your hand.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: And on that Sunday morning, we had like 45 to 50 percent of our congregation raise their hand.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: And so I just said, so I want you to be gracious.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: If somebody doesn't welcome you, that's why.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: It's because they're new here, too, and they don't know who comes to church here.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: And we've kind of grown into that.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: But what it's also create as the people that are here,
22:38
SPEAKER_01: you know, year round is we've gotten a deeper community.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: And now we're able to easier recognize these people coming in and coming out.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: And that creates just a better sense of that loving community that we're hoping to create here.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Great, yeah.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, there's something else that came to my mind that I was going to ask you about.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, so you have a question.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: So you said you are the longest senior pastor at this congregation,
23:02
SPEAKER_00: which at eight-ish years is not an outrageously long time.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm in my seventh year at my current appointment and a year from now,
23:09
SPEAKER_00: I think,
23:10
SPEAKER_00: maybe a year from now, I'll be the longest senior, maybe it's a year after that.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things that's,
23:16
SPEAKER_00: What's different in your life and mine now is that we are not subject
23:20
SPEAKER_00: to just be picked up and thrown somewhere else in the way that we used to be.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: I want to use that as the way in.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: If there's nothing interesting to say about that, then that's fine.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: I tend to not talk about former eras of our lives just because it's not helpful,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: but what have you found to be different, good or bad, about So I'm a
23:50
SPEAKER_01: sports fan.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm always have been probably always will be.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: And I equate it to like you have in certain sports, you have one season of trade.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: You can only make trades during this one season.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't get your trades done, then that's when your players are set.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where we came from is there was one season of your life during
24:11
SPEAKER_01: the year where you could be moved.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: And we had a manager that could tell us we had to move whether we wanted to or not.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: But now what I've seen here is that trade season lasts all year long.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: And so at any moment you can be called by a supervisor or sometimes a friend
24:29
SPEAKER_01: from another conference reminding you,
24:31
SPEAKER_01: hey, we've got this amazing opportunity for you.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: And for me, it's created a sense of where does God need me the most?
24:41
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a Wesleyanism.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to say it's an exact Wesley quote,
24:46
SPEAKER_01: but where is God calling me to do the most good?
24:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh, sure.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: Is that a close to a Wesleyanism?
24:54
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I can quote it either, but I remember being really struck by it.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: So this is why I'm so confident that it is a Wesleyanism.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: And I remember reading the line of thought anyway,
25:04
SPEAKER_00: being essentially at any given moment in your life,
25:05
SPEAKER_00: you have a handful of things you could do.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: Look around and see in which of those can you do the most good for the most people.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: That's what you should do.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: Unless the spirit tells you otherwise, that's what you should do.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: And so I know that's definitely a Wesleyan conviction.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, even though I at the moment also could not put my fingers on it.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how we've lived our life is where can we do the most good for
25:39
SPEAKER_01: the most people?
25:40
SPEAKER_01: And for me, my dad was a principal.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: And so I went to seven different schools before I graduated from high school.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: While it formed and created the character in me,
25:49
SPEAKER_01: and I'm very grateful for that,
25:51
SPEAKER_01: my wife,
25:52
SPEAKER_01: she graduated from the same high school that her mom and dad graduated from,
25:56
SPEAKER_01: that her grandparents moved to when their kids were little or had been there for
25:59
SPEAKER_01: a couple of generations.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things we talked about,
26:03
SPEAKER_01: especially in the transition,
26:05
SPEAKER_01: is now we have the ability to stay in a place until our kids can be grown.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of the hope and the prayer that we've had.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: At the same time,
26:17
SPEAKER_01: one of the things that I've always tried to do is when I was 17,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: giving my life to Christ and saying I was going to start being a preacher,
26:24
SPEAKER_01: one of my prayers then was,
26:26
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, I'll go anywhere you want me to go from Alaska to Antarctica.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: And my joke was at the time,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: I was like, as long as I don't go bald, because I got a pointy head.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: But I've taken that condition away later in life.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: And so I think one of the things that I continually pray is,
26:41
SPEAKER_01: God, I'll go where you want me to go.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: And my caveat the last couple of years is as long as I get to stay here,
26:48
SPEAKER_01: and I think in the last year he's really trying to take that caveat away.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we don't have any plans at this point,
26:53
SPEAKER_01: but we want to be faithful to God first and foremost.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: So I want to highlight yet another parallel that I'm hearing in your life
26:59
SPEAKER_00: and mine is that I moved seven times before graduating high school,
27:04
SPEAKER_00: and my wife was born and raised in the same house her whole life.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: So we have another similar thing there.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's also really interesting because I remember –
27:12
SPEAKER_00: When our congregational vote was coming up,
27:14
SPEAKER_00: I was trying to keep my kids in the loop.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: And I was trying to be really upfront to say, look,
27:17
SPEAKER_00: because they were young enough at the time that I said,
27:20
SPEAKER_00: you may grow to the point where you think that our congregations made
27:23
SPEAKER_00: the wrong choice.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: I hope at least you will understand why we made the decision.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to give them the freedom to pursue God and their understanding
27:32
SPEAKER_00: while also giving the guidance.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: And one of the questions was getting ready for the vote.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: And my older son said to me, if this vote passes, does that mean we have to move?
27:41
SPEAKER_00: And I said, on the contrary, it actually means we probably could stay longer.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: He says, then we should do it.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: Which I thought was interesting to see how different people evaluate different things.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: But I say that to say,
27:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:51
SPEAKER_00: what I started to realize a couple years into it was I had always operated on
27:55
SPEAKER_00: the assumption of I'm not really in charge of where I live and where I'm
27:59
SPEAKER_00: in ministry.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty much at the mercy of bishops and cabinets.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: And so the question about do I want to stay or do I want to go is irrelevant because
28:06
SPEAKER_00: that decision will be made without without me.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: And that was all fine until one day I got a call from a friend of mine
28:14
SPEAKER_00: who invited me to consider going to succeed them at their church.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: And it was fascinating to me because all of a sudden this idea of I have a voice
28:25
SPEAKER_00: in this process became very real.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: And I realized that, oh, I could say yes.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: Or I could say no.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: So now all of a sudden, I have to take the discernment a lot more seriously.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: And I said no.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, so I've stayed here.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: And that's been my,
28:38
SPEAKER_00: in many ways,
28:39
SPEAKER_00: I've told my congregation folks when it's come up,
28:41
SPEAKER_00: I said, this is not just an abstract concept.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: I have deliberately chosen to remain.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a really interesting, we're in a different situation when it comes to that.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: Because I think...
28:52
SPEAKER_00: Whether it was always true or not,
28:54
SPEAKER_00: I heard stories that people would blame the annual conference and the bishop
28:56
SPEAKER_00: for moving them, and now we can't do that.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: We have to own whatever discernment we do.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, without a doubt.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: And that's something that gives the pastors,
29:07
SPEAKER_01: I think,
29:07
SPEAKER_01: a lot more accountability because I know several
29:09
SPEAKER_01: of my pastoral colleagues would always,
29:12
SPEAKER_01: their MO was they'd be in a church for two to three years and then they'd move to
29:16
SPEAKER_01: the larger church and be like,
29:17
SPEAKER_01: oh, well, this is just what the conference is making me do.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean, even in my latter days, the conference never forced me to leave.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: They would say, hey, we think this is a great opportunity for you.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: And we'd ask you to consider it.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: And I was reminded once it was the scariest 24 hours of my life
29:34
SPEAKER_01: because they asked me to go to a place and I told them I don't believe
29:37
SPEAKER_01: that God's calling me there.
29:39
SPEAKER_01: And the DS at the time said, well, the bishop has the final say.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: And they forgot to call me back later that day.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: And I called them the next day.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: I was like, so am I moving or staying?
29:47
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, oh, yeah, we moved on and found somebody else.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh, ha ha.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: But now,
29:52
SPEAKER_01: like in the system we have,
29:53
SPEAKER_01: like we as pastors have to take the onus and saying,
29:55
SPEAKER_01: hey, it's my responsibility to be where God calls me to be at.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: And that is, it takes a lot more discernment.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: And honestly,
30:05
SPEAKER_01: sometimes I wish it was easier in the older system because like it took
30:08
SPEAKER_01: the ownership off of us.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: But for me, it's created just a deeper sense of prayer and calling in where God has led me to.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: And so one of my prayers right now is just, you know, that Right, right.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah,
30:21
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a fascinating situation that we're in now,
30:23
SPEAKER_01: and I think that it's interesting.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: I think it's also interesting that every system has its good and its bad,
30:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
30:45
SPEAKER_00: and one of the things I think some, I don't know how rural your conference is.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: My conference is extraordinarily rural.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: And I'm wondering if there are some churches who said we love the ICP.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: And what I think some churches are finding, in my new conference at least, is
31:22
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's hard,
31:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:24
SPEAKER_00: if you are,
31:24
SPEAKER_00: if you are a small church that can't support someone on a full-time basis
31:28
SPEAKER_00: and you're not near another church that also needs to share a pastor,
31:32
SPEAKER_00: the number of really,
31:33
SPEAKER_00: you're not going to necessarily have 15 high quality part-time candidates to choose
31:37
SPEAKER_00: from,
31:37
SPEAKER_00: you know, and,
31:40
SPEAKER_00: and there's not the same level of obligation to require,
31:45
SPEAKER_00: you know, a pastoral appointment in quite the same way.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: And I think that it's,
31:49
SPEAKER_00: it's one of those things where I think there's some things that we said we wanted
31:53
SPEAKER_00: And then now that we have them,
31:54
SPEAKER_00: we start to see, oh, the grass isn't always greener on the other side.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: But I think also it's good because it forces us to have conversation
32:00
SPEAKER_00: about what does it mean to be in leadership and who's God raising up
32:02
SPEAKER_00: within your own community.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: And so I think there's also a good side to the bad side.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's just it's interesting to see how things play out in practice.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: That isn't always necessarily what you'd expect.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I 100% agree.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: One, the grass is never greener on the other side.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: But two,
32:21
SPEAKER_01: I know in our context,
32:22
SPEAKER_01: we're pretty rural as well, that we don't have some of the pastors that are needed.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: And I know I'm talking to RCS Rick Enns,
32:29
SPEAKER_01: there's a small church of about a dozen people,
32:32
SPEAKER_01: and they're doing the best they've done in about five to six years
32:35
SPEAKER_01: because they've raised up a layperson to lead them.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: One of the opportunities that our system gives us now is I've got a 25 year old man
32:46
SPEAKER_01: who recently married,
32:47
SPEAKER_01: has his first baby,
32:49
SPEAKER_01: but he was a blue collar worker before in the workforce here in Redoso
32:53
SPEAKER_01: and called him to ministry.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: And through the Asbury online program,
32:57
SPEAKER_01: he's taking his first classes online and he's working
33:00
SPEAKER_01: on my staff now is our associate in charge of our new campus that we started down
33:04
SPEAKER_01: in Roswell.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't have to go through the layers of appointment to get him there.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: I just called my PE and said, hey, this is what we're hoping to do.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: And he said, that's great, do it.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: And he's getting some really good practical experience.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: And honestly,
33:18
SPEAKER_01: in our old system,
33:18
SPEAKER_01: like I started as a student as well,
33:20
SPEAKER_01: like I didn't really have anybody over me and I'm helping to give him
33:24
SPEAKER_01: that oversight.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I mean, there are pros and cons to any system.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: We're humans.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: We screw things up.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: We do things well.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's really interesting because one of the things,
33:35
SPEAKER_00: so there is,
33:36
SPEAKER_00: and I mentioned in a different conversation,
33:38
SPEAKER_00: but I think it's especially true,
33:40
SPEAKER_00: the more rural the conference is, I think the more trepidation we have about it.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: There is a faction within the Global Methodist Church,
33:47
SPEAKER_00: who I'm not mad at, but I disagree, that wants to say to be called to...
33:52
SPEAKER_00: Ordained ministry is a call to have a master's degree.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that I agree with that in principle.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: And I certainly don't agree with it in practice.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Because in principle, I mean, the disciples didn't have a master's degree.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, Paul didn't have a master's degree.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, you could argue Paul had a world-class education.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, so there are people who have that kind of background.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: But...
34:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't think you always realize that when you've got somebody
34:14
SPEAKER_00: and you said this guy's 25 in blue collar work, I mean, well, that's great.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: He could theoretically then go get his undergrad, then go do a master's degree.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: But if someone's in their 40s or 50s when working blue collar,
34:26
SPEAKER_00: they don't actually have a college degree, a bachelor's degree.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: So are we saying,
34:30
SPEAKER_00: and we have a time limit about how long you can be a supply pastor before you have
34:34
SPEAKER_00: to be ordained or step out of the pulpit.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: And I just, I think that the desire to have a higher education is laudable.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: But I think that sometimes those ideas get put forward
34:43
SPEAKER_00: without having sufficiently thought through how that's going to ripple out,
34:46
SPEAKER_00: especially in the furthest flung areas of our conferences.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: And I think that it's a great service that we have,
34:53
SPEAKER_00: that we have seminaries that are providing opportunities to be where you are and get
34:57
SPEAKER_00: the training that you need, even if it's not a master's degree.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: You know,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: and specifically with Wesley,
35:06
SPEAKER_01: like I would love for him to get his bachelor's and to eventually get his master's,
35:11
SPEAKER_01: but he's at a stage of life where he has to provide for his wife and his son,
35:15
SPEAKER_01: um, and potentially child number two that's coming relatively soon.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: Like he has a,
35:20
SPEAKER_01: he has to have a job and he can be a,
35:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's a three quarter time pastor for us right now while he's taking classes.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know that it's the same level of education I got my master's program.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: But I know right now I'm helping walk him through the doctrine of original sin and
35:39
SPEAKER_01: the doctrine of the incarnation.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: And what does this mean practically?
35:44
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I'm not going to say that I'm anywhere like David Watson.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm not near the theologian that some of our professors are and some of our great leaders are.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: But as a local pastor,
35:54
SPEAKER_01: it's a joy in my life to get up and to have some of these theological discussions
35:57
SPEAKER_01: with somebody that wants to push me and challenge me.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's making me a better local theologian,
36:02
SPEAKER_01: and it's going to make him a better local pastor as well, I hope.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think there's a great value.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, so I served in church as I was going to seminary as well.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: I was half-time, so I could be a full-time student.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: But I think there's a value of taking what you are learning
36:15
SPEAKER_00: and applying it right now and seeing the connections right now in ministry.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying you can't make those connections if you have stepped totally out
36:23
SPEAKER_00: of ministry now.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: To spend a season in education,
36:27
SPEAKER_00: but I just,
36:28
SPEAKER_00: I wonder,
36:28
SPEAKER_00: I think there's definitely a value to,
36:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:31
SPEAKER_00: having a really incarnational embodied ministry,
36:35
SPEAKER_00: even as you're connecting those dots,
36:37
SPEAKER_00: because I've known too many people who are,
36:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:40
SPEAKER_00: that They're engaged in ministry,
36:42
SPEAKER_00: but then the moment you ask them a theological question,
36:44
SPEAKER_00: they immediately revert to textbook language.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, they go back to, this is the right answer.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: This is what I studied in seminary.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: This is the correct way to say this.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: And I kind of want to be like, okay, well, that's great, but how do you actually preach that?
36:54
SPEAKER_00: How do you actually communicate that, you know, to your people?
36:57
SPEAKER_00: How do you actually,
36:58
SPEAKER_00: like, is that just a thing you know, or is it a thing that you live in the light of?
37:02
SPEAKER_00: And what does that look like?
37:03
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if being,
37:07
SPEAKER_00: doing the educational training while we're Engage in the ministry may be part of
37:12
SPEAKER_00: that.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously speaking in generalities is always a dangerous thing,
37:15
SPEAKER_00: so I don't want to get too far into that, but I wonder about that sometimes.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, me too.
37:21
SPEAKER_01: And I kind of did both worlds.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: I started off seminary while I was a student pastor in Seagraves,
37:26
SPEAKER_01: Texas, and then I moved up to Asbury for our final year.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: Just because it got to a practical point where if I didn't do that,
37:32
SPEAKER_01: it was going to take me three to four years to finish all my in-person classes at
37:36
SPEAKER_01: that point.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: And I loved my time preaching and being a husband and dad and being in school
37:43
SPEAKER_01: and being able to put it in practice.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: But I also was deeply formed in my time on campus.
37:48
SPEAKER_01: And just,
37:49
SPEAKER_01: you know, for me,
37:50
SPEAKER_01: it was a very unique season in life where we're at,
37:54
SPEAKER_01: where you have people that are your same age,
37:55
SPEAKER_01: same stage of life, and you're just desiring nothing else than to know God better.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: And so I think both of them were equally formative for me.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: But I also, and that's where I hate to say, like, I think one is better than the other.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: I think both are needed.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: And that's where it comes to that individual calling.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: And my desire at some point would be for,
38:12
SPEAKER_01: to send Wesley,
38:13
SPEAKER_01: this 25 year old,
38:15
SPEAKER_01: to Asbury eventually, because I still have, you know, I mean, I've got Asbury socks.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: I love the seminary so much.
38:22
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, it may never be practical for him.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Right.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: So one of the questions I ask everybody is to ask if you can identify a sickness
38:43
SPEAKER_00: that you see in the church.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: And I always try to make sure I'm clear.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: So in case anybody stumbles on this one,
38:47
SPEAKER_00: it's their first video, that they understand what I mean by that.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: Because it can sound like that's judgmental.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: But I'm not asking us to be judgmental.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: And that's not the intention of this conversation.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: Because if somebody is sick, what they need is not judgment.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: They need diagnosis and medicine and therapy and cure.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, wholeness.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: So I want to be clear about whenever I ask a question about You know,
39:05
SPEAKER_00: a sickness you see in the church.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean,
39:07
SPEAKER_00: let's pick on somebody,
39:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
39:08
SPEAKER_00: but I mean,
39:09
SPEAKER_00: is what is something that is ailing the church that needs healing for the church
39:14
SPEAKER_00: to be all that it can be.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: And you've been in more than one congregation.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: I hope nobody, nobody watching this should assume they're talking about you.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: No.
39:22
SPEAKER_01: And I think for me,
39:22
SPEAKER_01: I want to speak to maybe our larger culture for this issue around the West Texas,
39:27
SPEAKER_01: New Mexico area.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, We grew up in a heavily influenced area where you say the sinner's prayer
39:35
SPEAKER_01: and you're saved and you're done.
39:40
SPEAKER_01: I literally cut out at one point during my pastoral ministry a coupon from
39:43
SPEAKER_01: the Yellow Pages,
39:44
SPEAKER_01: if you remember those days,
39:45
SPEAKER_01: and it was a get out of hell free coupon,
39:48
SPEAKER_01: and it had the sinner's prayer on the back of it.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, pray this prayer, you won't go to hell.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: And I think for me,
39:54
SPEAKER_01: that's been a great sickness in the church because we have a lot of people
39:58
SPEAKER_01: in our area That think that,
40:00
SPEAKER_01: well, I said a prayer, I gave my life to Jesus, and now I'm going to go to heaven.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't matter what I do here and now.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: And I think this is one of the reasons I'm a follower of Jesus first and
40:13
SPEAKER_01: a Wesleyan follower of Jesus second.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: In our Wesleyan heritage, that's not enough.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying those people aren't saved.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to debate that here.
40:23
SPEAKER_01: But I'm saying that when you accept that, It's almost like you get a flu shot, right?
40:28
SPEAKER_01: You get a little strain of the truth.
40:30
SPEAKER_01: It goes into you and it protects you from the real thing.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: Right.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: And for me,
40:34
SPEAKER_01: I think that's the sickness in West Texas,
40:37
SPEAKER_01: New Mexican Christianity is a lot of people have been exposed to enough to think
40:41
SPEAKER_01: that they have the real thing,
40:42
SPEAKER_01: but they're really missing out on the deeper life in Christ that he's calling us
40:45
SPEAKER_01: into.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I have plugged this book.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: On one of these interviews before,
40:51
SPEAKER_00: but what you just said about being vaccinated against the truth reminds me,
40:54
SPEAKER_00: there is a book I read,
40:55
SPEAKER_00: a collection of writings,
40:56
SPEAKER_00: it's by Soren Kierkegaard that I read right before Lent every year.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: It kind of gets me jazzed up for Lent.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: And I have two editions of it,
41:05
SPEAKER_00: and one of them is called The Attack Upon Christendom,
41:08
SPEAKER_00: and one of them is called The Moment and Later Writings.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: And it is the most sustained attack of Christian hypocrisy I've ever encountered in my life.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: And it's exactly that,
41:16
SPEAKER_00: where he continually makes this argument of,
41:20
SPEAKER_00: We're halfway towards something that might resemble Christianity.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: And then we say, yep, we're done.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: We're better off than we used to be.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: So that's enough.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: And I think about that idea of like, oh, yeah, you gave your life to Jesus.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Did you take it back?
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Because if you took it back, then it didn't matter what you used to do.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: And I love there's a passage.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: Gosh, it's in one of Wesley's early sermons.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, and he talks about,
41:43
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:44
SPEAKER_00: um, he says, you know, I don't, you know, are you, are you now a Christian?
41:47
SPEAKER_00: Like, have you now given your life to Jesus?
41:48
SPEAKER_00: And he says, I don't ask, were you baptized?
41:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't, I'm not asking what you did in the past.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying, are you right now, you know, a disciple?
41:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's the kind of question that we're not used to asking.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: We're used to asking, you know, oh, well, did you go up in the church?
42:03
SPEAKER_00: Were you baptized?
42:04
SPEAKER_00: Did you give your life to Jesus?
42:05
SPEAKER_00: I think that's, um,
42:07
SPEAKER_00: So we are less impacted by that as a general cultural background,
42:13
SPEAKER_00: but we certainly have that among those who are at least nominally Christian
42:17
SPEAKER_00: in our areas.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: That's an issue.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: I know that the stereotype of the Baptist tradition in the South kind of emphasizes that.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: And I think it goes back to something that Bishop Jones
42:29
SPEAKER_01: and both Bishop Greenway have really hit on.
42:31
SPEAKER_01: They both led our annual conferences.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I remember Bishop Jones saying is like,
42:35
SPEAKER_01: when did you give me your life to Christ?
42:37
SPEAKER_01: And he said, which time?
42:39
SPEAKER_00: Right.
42:40
SPEAKER_01: And he said, the last time I did it was this morning.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: And for me, that really resonated with me.
42:47
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that's something I've told our congregation because I'm a little hesitant.
42:51
SPEAKER_01: I think all of us have woundedness from the past moving into a new system.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: But after Johannesburg, I was fortunate enough to be in both Costa Rica and Johannesburg.
43:01
SPEAKER_01: I came home from Costa Rica excited,
43:04
SPEAKER_01: and I came home and what I told our church, I said,
43:06
SPEAKER_01: unless something insane happens, I will die a global Methodist clergy person.
43:13
SPEAKER_01: And I think because that's part of who our DNA is now,
43:16
SPEAKER_01: is we recognize that there is this process of sanctification that's going to lead
43:20
SPEAKER_01: to glorification.
43:22
SPEAKER_01: And we want more and more of God each day, and we're not satisfied with that status quo.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's that notion of continually laying down our lives.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: I had a professor who put it this way.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: He said, Paul talks about being a living sacrifice.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: The problem with the living sacrifice is it keeps crawling down off the altar,
43:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
43:39
SPEAKER_00: and that calling to,
43:41
SPEAKER_00: you know, to really belong to Jesus in a way that we're not used to talking about.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the thing, right?
43:47
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's,
43:48
SPEAKER_00: we have this interesting tightrope to walk culturally because I think on
43:53
SPEAKER_00: the one hand,
43:54
SPEAKER_00: I know that especially in the earliest days of the Global Methodist Church,
43:56
SPEAKER_00: one of the things we were talking about was, oh,
43:57
SPEAKER_00: we need to reclaim our Wesleyan heritage,
43:58
SPEAKER_00: reclaim our Wesleyan heritage, which I think we should.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: But to somebody who was skeptical,
44:03
SPEAKER_00: every once in a while you'd see somebody on the Friends
44:05
SPEAKER_00: the Global Methodist Church Facebook page,
44:07
SPEAKER_00: and they would say something along the lines of,
44:09
SPEAKER_00: well, why shouldn't we just reclaim the biblical heritage?
44:12
SPEAKER_00: Should we just reclaim the Christian heritage?
44:14
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that people would say,
44:17
SPEAKER_00: and I would say as well,
44:18
SPEAKER_00: is yeah, Wesleyanism at its best is simply biblical Christianity.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: But I've also had the experience where someone hears us say,
44:25
SPEAKER_00: oh, Wesleyanism is just biblical Christianity.
44:26
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, Wesleyanism is just what I already believe biblical Christianity to be.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: It's what I already understood it to be.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: Without grasping the fact that Wesley is doing something,
44:37
SPEAKER_00: is reading the Bible,
44:38
SPEAKER_00: I think,
44:38
SPEAKER_00: in a more holistic and full way that does justice to a much wider section of
44:44
SPEAKER_00: the Bible.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: He was accused once of pitting Paul and James against each other
44:49
SPEAKER_00: because Paul says we're saved by grace through faith and James says we're saved
44:52
SPEAKER_00: by works.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: And he has this marvelous little paragraph where he explains how
44:55
SPEAKER_00: the two can be naturally understood together.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think that he gets at a deep issue of That we sometimes just go right past
45:05
SPEAKER_00: in American evangelicalism.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's just a really,
45:07
SPEAKER_00: you know,
45:08
SPEAKER_00: I've heard David Watson say that if all we were going to do,
45:10
SPEAKER_00: if we weren't going to reclaim our Western heritage,
45:12
SPEAKER_00: then this denomination has no reason to exist.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: And I was really encouraged by the idea that we really do want
45:17
SPEAKER_00: to reclaim something distinctive and we really have to be proactive
45:20
SPEAKER_00: or it's not going to happen.
45:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, me too.
45:24
SPEAKER_01: And that's where,
45:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
45:26
SPEAKER_01: our mission statement, spread scriptural holiness, I think is vital for who we are.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I've actually suffered, you know, exactly what you're talking about.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: I had people and maybe rightfully so accused me of talking about Wesley too much.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, and they went to a more non to non reformed Calvinistic church.
45:45
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well,
45:46
SPEAKER_01: that's funny just because they don't say Calvin, they're quoting Calvin quite a bit.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: Right.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: Like at least, and that's what I told him.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I claim my heritage.
45:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, And so I think there is a danger that we make an idol out of Wesley and not Jesus.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Wesley was not our savior.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: Wesley saw the church in some new fresh lights,
46:05
SPEAKER_01: thanks to his Moravian brothers and sisters that showed him some of the things.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: But Wesley's not my savior, right?
46:12
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: I get the opportunity to...
46:17
SPEAKER_00: Wesleyan theology at United.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I do fairly early on, I always have a Wesley sermon for them to read.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: And I deliberately early on in the semester give what I would consider to be
46:26
SPEAKER_00: an awful sermon that he published.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I told my former Wesleyan theology professor that I assigned it.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: He said, that sermon's terrible.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: And I said, yeah,
46:33
SPEAKER_00: that's on purpose because I'm trying to,
46:35
SPEAKER_00: and I asked the question about how do you feel about the way he argues?
46:39
SPEAKER_00: And inevitably the students will say, this is fantastic.
46:41
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: Wesley's great.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: Isn't Wesley great?
46:43
SPEAKER_00: Great, great, great.
46:43
SPEAKER_00: Wesley's great.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: And I get to respond to say, okay,
46:46
SPEAKER_00: let's look at this again and try to say we can appreciate what he's done
46:51
SPEAKER_00: and we can absolutely want to walk in those footsteps
46:52
SPEAKER_00: without necessarily saying everything that he says is equally authoritative.
46:56
SPEAKER_00: I volunteered for one of the subcommittees in Doctrine and Sacraments
47:01
SPEAKER_00: where we would take up,
47:01
SPEAKER_00: there was a petition to say,
47:02
SPEAKER_00: let's make sure we're really being clear what we mean by saying that the sermons
47:05
SPEAKER_00: and notes are authoritative.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: You know,
47:07
SPEAKER_00: that we don't necessarily mean,
47:08
SPEAKER_00: like when Wesley says,
47:10
SPEAKER_00: obviously, obviously those who are not yet born have no sensory input whatsoever.
47:14
SPEAKER_00: Like, well,
47:14
SPEAKER_00: we know that that's factually wrong,
47:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
47:17
SPEAKER_00: and this idea of we need to understand what do we mean when we say we're holding on
47:21
SPEAKER_00: to this heritage where we can claim everything that is good and right and beautiful.
47:25
SPEAKER_00: Without necessarily packing ourselves into a corner of being strictly accountable
47:29
SPEAKER_00: to every wayward thing Wesley happened to say.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's – and I'm like,
47:34
SPEAKER_00: I want to be on that subcommittee because I really want to make sure we talk about
47:36
SPEAKER_00: that petition.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that that's – but my concern,
47:41
SPEAKER_00: I think,
47:42
SPEAKER_00: is oftentimes – Sorry,
47:45
SPEAKER_00: this is getting into more of my autobiography,
47:46
SPEAKER_00: but in my early days as a Christian,
47:48
SPEAKER_00: I always assumed that the people I knew who were in leadership in
47:51
SPEAKER_00: the church must know what they were talking about because they were so loud and
47:53
SPEAKER_00: so confident in what the Bible said.
47:56
SPEAKER_00: And I realized when I started reading the Bible myself that a lot
47:59
SPEAKER_00: of those people didn't have a clue what they were talking about.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: And I worry that sometimes we shout the name Wesley,
48:05
SPEAKER_00: but if we don't actually know what Wesley wrote and where he was coming from, Yeah.
48:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: I think it's a great point.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm actually preaching through the Beatitudes right now.
48:35
SPEAKER_01: And I have three texts that I'm using to help support me in addition to some commentaries.
48:40
SPEAKER_01: And one of them is Wesley's Sermon on the Sermon on the Mount.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 13 sermons on the Sermon on the Mount.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
48:45
SPEAKER_01: So I think- You know,
48:46
SPEAKER_01: and I mean,
48:46
SPEAKER_01: I just preached on meekness and like he has an amazing three-point definition
48:50
SPEAKER_01: of meekness and I never preach three-point sermons.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: Right.
48:53
SPEAKER_01: But I was like, this helps describe what meekness is in a way that I don't think I can.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I used it and I claimed it.
48:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: So- So is there anything else that,
49:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
49:02
SPEAKER_00: any question you wish I asked or anything that you want to make sure that you share
49:05
SPEAKER_00: with this public, however large or small it may be?
49:09
SPEAKER_01: No, I just hope we didn't ramble on so long that we bored people to death.
49:12
SPEAKER_01: But I know that I've really enjoyed it.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: And it's great to know who we are and get to know each other a little bit better.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: And also great to know where God's leading and calling us into.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: All right.
49:22
SPEAKER_00: So Dustin, would you be willing to kind of close us out in prayer?
49:25
SPEAKER_01: I'd be happy to.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: All right.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: Almighty God, we thank you for the goodness and the grace of Christ in our lives.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: I thank you for the story and the calling that you've placed on each person.
49:41
SPEAKER_01: And I pray that you would just continue to let us to have ears to hear what
49:46
SPEAKER_01: the Spirit is saying to the churches here and now.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Let us have ears to hear how you're speaking to us individually.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: Let us have ears to hear how you're speaking to us as we lead our churches.
49:57
SPEAKER_01: And let us have ears to ear as you're leading us as a new denomination
50:00
SPEAKER_01: the Global Methodist Church.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: Help us to not be like the living sacrifice that Travis talked about,
50:05
SPEAKER_01: but help us to stay on the altar and continually surrender our lives to you.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: Heart, soul, mind, and strength.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: We ask this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name we pray.
50:16
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
50:17
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
50:18
SPEAKER_00: So this has been what you have seen and heard across the connection with visiting
50:21
SPEAKER_00: with Pastor Dustin McEwen from the West Plains Conference.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to say that my general rule of thumb is I'm reaching out
50:28
SPEAKER_00: to some folks I actually met physically at General Conference.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: But if you know somebody who I should be talking to,
50:33
SPEAKER_00: honestly,
50:34
SPEAKER_00: the So I have a few folks I talked to before too long who have or
50:38
SPEAKER_00: at least have had positions of authority,
50:40
SPEAKER_00: but I'm really interested in talking to just the people
50:42
SPEAKER_00: who are doing exciting ministry.
50:44
SPEAKER_00: God's doing exciting work in there, even if nobody's heard their name before.
50:47
SPEAKER_00: So if you know anybody who fits that bill,
50:49
SPEAKER_00: you can send me an email at pastortravisatmarcusgrace.com.
50:52
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear from anybody who's got suggestions.
50:55
SPEAKER_00: And so thanks for watching or listening how you did this.
50:57
SPEAKER_00: And we'll see you next time.