Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / From Adversity to Influence: Chris Widener's Journey to Personal and Spiritual Revival

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From Adversity to Influence: Chris Widener's Journey to Personal and Spiritual Revival · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  In today's episode, we welcome Chris Widener, a renowned motivational speaker, accomplished author, and member of the Motivational Speakers hall of Fame.
• 0:11
  Chris shares his incredible journey from overcoming a tumultuous childhood filled with personal loss and instability to finding faith and purpose as a youth minister and later transitioning into a successful career in motivational speaking and writing.
• 0:29
  With 25 books translated into 14 languages and collaboration with iconic figures like John Maxwell, Jim Rohn, and Zig Ziglar, Chris provides insights into his experience and the turning points that shaped his path.
• 0:46
  He also discusses his latest book, the Coming American Revival, which examines the need for spiritual revival in America and its potential impact across various facets of life.
• 0:58
  Tune in for an engaging conversation that delves into Chris's life story, his views on current societal issues, and his dedication to coaching and mentorship.
• 1:08
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:14
  Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment Podcast.
• 1:19
  I'm your host, Dave Goulis, and this week, my guest is bestselling author, member of the Motivational Speakers hall of Fame, and author of the new book the Coming American Revival, Chris Widener.
• 1:34
  Thanks for having me, Dave.
• 1:35
  I appreciate it.
• 1:37
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:38
  We appreciate you taking the time to be here.
• 1:40
  So, Chris, for those that may not know, you've had quite an illustrious career, worked with some of the biggest names, legends of personal development.
• 1:49
  You've written 24 books.
• 1:51
  You're one of the most successful speakers of all time.
• 1:55
  Can.
• 1:55
  Can you just give us, like, an overview of.
• 1:57
  Of your career and how this all started?
• 2:00
  Yeah, I think.
• 2:00
  And I'll go back even a little further than that, because part of what's interesting about the career is how my life started.
• 2:06
  I was born into a family that was.
• 2:08
  I wouldn't say wealthy, but on the way to wealth.
• 2:11
  My dad was the fifth partner at what is now one of the largest architecture firms in the world.
• 2:16
  And in 1969, he made $90,000.
• 2:19
  And we the 1969.
• 2:21
  Like, there's a lot of Americans today.
• 2:23
  I'd love to make $90,000.
• 2:25
  And unfortunately, in 1970, at the age of 41, he got cancer and died over the course about six months.
• 2:32
  And.
• 2:33
  And he made one big mistake.
• 2:35
  He.
• 2:35
  He had no life insurance.
• 2:36
  He had $30,000 worth of life insurance.
• 2:38
  And when you're making 90 grand, you should probably have at least, with four kids, you should probably have at least three or four million.
• 2:43
  So I always, whenever I'm on business, podcasts, whatever, I'm like, guys, ladies, do your do your due diligence, have a one hour meeting with an insurance agent because it'll make a lot of difference to the people to happen.
• 2:56
  That began a downward spiral.
• 2:57
  We were living in a country club, the one of the nicest country clubs in Seattle.
• 3:02
  But my mom, we were living in this house which recently sold for $3.8 million.
• 3:06
  But my mom couldn't afford the outrageous mortgage payment of $400 a month.
• 3:11
  So we moved to a two bedroom condo and life got really crazy.
• 3:15
  I was quite angry as a young kid, you know, lost.
• 3:20
  Started drugs in the sixth grade, smoked opium in the eighth grade, started alcohol in the sixth grade.
• 3:25
  Made most of my money growing up as at the racetrack.
• 3:28
  It used to be called Longacres.
• 3:30
  They tore that down and did another one just south of Seattle.
• 3:32
  My whole life was, was in Seattle.
• 3:35
  50 years in Seattle.
• 3:38
  But now they have a new one called Emerald Downs.
• 3:41
  Never been there but when I was growing up I was betting the ponies and making a couple hundred bucks a weekend as a seventh grader and, and so 10th grade I was kicked out of class 47 times, 47
• 3:52
  written referrals to the principal's office.
• 3:55
  And I know that because on the last day of school, the principal called me into his office, he showed stack of papers, he said let's try to do a little bit better next year.
• 4:03
  Somewhere between my junior and senior year, I became a Christian through a local youth group.
• 4:07
  And I had no religious upbringing.
• 4:09
  I had gone to two churches, church services ever and I'd gone and they were both Christmas Eve services.
• 4:16
  My mom kind of got nostalgic and took me to Christmas Eve, sir.
• 4:18
  So I knew nothing about God, nothing about purpose, nothing about those things, which is why I was just so lost.
• 4:24
  And I had a great mentor as a youth minister who taught me that God loved me and taught me that I had a plan for my life.
• 4:30
  And so ended up going to Bible college and became a pastor for 14 years, from 88 till 2002 and three years in New Jersey, the rest in Seattle.
• 4:41
  And then in 2002 I started writing and speaking full time.
• 4:45
  And in the next seven years I ended up getting connected with John Maxwell, who I ghost wrote for Jim Rohn, who I spent all seven years working with and wrote his last book, a book called 12 Pillars, and
• 4:55
  then co hosting a television show with Zig Ziglar.
• 4:58
  So when people say, you know, what's the secret to a successful speaking career?
• 5:01
  I say it's just a three step process.
• 5:03
  First have John Maxwell call you, then have Jim Rohn call you then have Zig Ziglar call you.
• 5:07
  Once that happens, your career's, you know, pretty well taken care of.
• 5:10
  But I jest, obviously, but God just really opened up a bunch of doors for me by, by putting me into that realm.
• 5:17
  And of course, when I started working with those guys, I, I was positioned next to them.
• 5:21
  And, and, and a lot of people heard about me who would have never ever heard of me before.
• 5:26
  So that was probably the biggest years.
• 5:31
  And so I've continued doing that, speaking, writing books, 25 books in 14 languages.
• 5:36
  And, and I've continued ministry as well.
• 5:41
  Do a little bit of coaching with executives who, who want to take their life to the next level.
• 5:47
  And writing books, giving speeches and, and coaching people is really what I do.
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• 6:43
  Okay, well, appreciate all that context.
• 6:46
  So just hearing your upbringing right, you know, makes sense.
• 6:51
  You get it.
• 6:51
  You lose your dad very early on.
• 6:53
  Tumultuous upbringing, moving from house to house.
• 6:56
  Yeah.
• 6:56
  28 homes.
• 6:57
  And I didn't mention this.
• 6:58
  28 homes in 11 different schools.
• 7:01
  Yeah, so, so clearly, right?
• 7:04
  Behavior problems.
• 7:05
  Just angry.
• 7:07
  Angry at the world.
• 7:08
  Yeah.
• 7:08
  My mom shipped me off to live with relatives twice.
• 7:10
  Once in the fourth grade, she sent me to live with my aunt Rochelle and my uncle Paul.
• 7:14
  And then the second time was in the ninth grade she shipped me off to live with my older sister who's like 12 years older than me.
• 7:20
  So, you know, it was, it was pretty bad upbringing.
• 7:22
  My mom had borderline personality disorder.
• 7:24
  I beaten with anything long and flexible.
• 7:27
  I always say the best and worst Christmas of my life growing up was when I got a big giant Hot Wheels set.
• 7:33
  You know, it came with like 12 cars and this.
• 7:36
  And then I looked in the box and I saw these 3 foot long plastic strips.
• 7:41
  I thought, oh boy, how long until I get beat with one of these?
• 7:44
  It wasn't long, Dave.
• 7:46
  Wow.
• 7:47
  I mean, electrical cords and spatulas and switches Anything long and flexible.
• 7:54
  Okay, so tumultuous upbringing.
• 7:57
  And then you say before between junior and senior year you become a Christian and then you end up going to Bible college and thereafter you become a pastor.
• 8:07
  But, but just like, and then you know, like you said John Max, you hook up with John Maxwell and career really takes off.
• 8:15
  But how do you go from that type of upbringing and just that type of anger to be, you know, just be this prolific speaker and to be on stages with these legends and giving this message about being successful.
• 8:29
  Like how did that transformation take place?
• 8:32
  Well, I think first and foremost, you know, God transforms us.
• 8:34
  That's, that's the really great thing.
• 8:36
  You know, there's a passage of the Bible that says that the old is gone and the new has come.
• 8:40
  And, and so I certainly wasn't perfect.
• 8:43
  In fact I got into a little bit of trouble in Bible college.
• 8:45
  I was always the mouthy one and you know, my teachers didn't all like me because I was always challenging them and I, I never got into real trouble or whatever but you know, my mouth still got me into
• 8:54
  trouble.
• 8:54
  But I was always kind of involved in the talking industry.
• 8:59
  So like, do you remember in high school the, the home, home bell buzzer rings, you know the homeroom buzzer rings and everybody sits down and then the guy comes on over the loudspeaker.
• 9:09
  Let's all rise and say the pledge of allegiance and then they all sit down.
• 9:12
  It's like lunch today is fish sticks and tater tots and you know the JV football team.
• 9:17
  Your bus will be ready at 4:00 outside the gym.
• 9:20
  I did that in high school and I've gone on to do not only speaking but in college I was the in house college.
• 9:26
  I, I did three years at Bible college, I did one year at a small college in Minnesota to get my non biblical study stuff, math, science kind of stuff.
• 9:34
  Well, they had, it was about, it was probably 7,000 people at that college.
• 9:39
  Well, I was the in house college basketball announcer, the guy that sat courtside and announced who was shooting the free throws and who the starting lineups were.
• 9:46
  And I've done drive time radio in Seattle and you know, TV show was Zig.
• 9:50
  So I remember when I started getting a lot of money for my speeches and my mom found out how much, how much people will pay you to give a speech and she said I can't believe people pay you
• 10:01
  to do the very thing that I kept telling you to stop doing your whole life.
• 10:08
  So I think it was, it was on one hand it was just God's transformation.
• 10:13
  I really, you know, and I realized I had a purpose for my life.
• 10:16
  I finally had something to live for.
• 10:18
  And.
• 10:19
  But I also think the other thing, and this is why I love the business coaching and the spiritual coaching that I do is, is I had a lot of great mentors.
• 10:26
  My first job was as a youth minister in northern New Jersey in a very wealthy town.
• 10:31
  In fact, I think According to the 1990 census, the average household income in that town was $200,000 a year, like $208,000 a year.
• 10:39
  And our church was loaded with these titans of industry who worked out of New York or, excuse me, Newark.
• 10:48
  And so one of my first mentors, his, his children went to my youth group and he took me under his wing.
• 10:54
  At the time he was the senior vice president of, of Mars Candies.
• 10:58
  And so they, they're based in McLean, but they also have big, big operation out of Hackettstown, New Jersey.
• 11:04
  And so he took me under his wing when I, when I left to Seattle to start churches.
• 11:08
  He, he helped fund the ministry.
• 11:10
  He left there and he became the president of Calcan, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of, of Mar, was the CEO of Mars Candies back down in McLean.
• 11:20
  But you know, to have those kinds of people in your life, it was really, it was really transformational to have older men who've gone through that, they've been there, done that, you know, they've raised their kids, they, they've
• 11:34
  seen it all, they've done it all, they've had successful businesses.
• 11:37
  And you know, when I was, I'm 58 now, I'll be 59 next month.
• 11:41
  And about a year ago, I was shaving one day and I was looking at myself in the mirror and I just had this thought, you're the old guy now.
• 11:49
  You're, you're the mentor age now.
• 11:51
  And it really just made me design and craft and, and launch a, a ministry based coaching program for people who want to take their life to the next level.
• 12:02
  And, and they, they just want somebody that they can talk to about their marriage, about their children, about life, about money, about faith, about all those kinds of things.
• 12:12
  So, so that's what I, that's one of my big portions of my, of my ministry now.
• 12:18
  Okay, so you, so in your, your ministry, you're in Tennessee right now, right?
• 12:24
  Chattanooga, Tennessee.
• 12:26
  Okay.
• 12:27
  And so you have, you have a church is that currently?
• 12:31
  No, I have a 501C3 that houses my speaking and my coaching stuff.
• 12:36
  Ah, okay.
• 12:36
  Okay.
• 12:37
  So your ministry through that way.
• 12:38
  Okay.
• 12:38
  Yeah.
• 12:39
  Yeah.
• 12:39
  All right.
• 12:40
  So to go.
• 12:40
  And I'll tell you, I don't know that I'd want to be a pastor.
• 12:43
  Folks, those of you who go to church, just being a pastor is one of the hardest jobs in America.
• 12:49
  You're underpaid, you're in a spotlight.
• 12:52
  You got people griping about the color of the carpet in the sanctuary.
• 12:55
  I mean, I'm telling you, it's not worth the money they get paid, plus the spiritual attack and just, you know, all that kind of stuff and the pressures.
• 13:03
  It's a tough job.
• 13:04
  People say, you know, do you ever think about being a pastor?
• 13:06
  I'm like, God would have to drop a manila folder in my lap with directions signed by him to go be a pastor.
• 13:12
  It's a.
• 13:12
  It's a tough, challenging job.
• 13:15
  Okay, so your.
• 13:18
  Your min.
• 13:19
  Your ministry today, then, I guess involves speaking and your life coaching and then this new coaching program that you're starting.
• 13:26
  Yeah, yeah, that's the primary.
• 13:28
  Okay.
• 13:29
  So now when you.
• 13:30
  When going back to the story.
• 13:31
  So when you get on these stages and you're writing books with Jim Rohn and you're hosting the show with Zig, I mean, that.
• 13:38
  That opened up a whole new level of career success and opportunity.
• 13:43
  And, you know, coming from just being a pastor prior to that, like, what.
• 13:47
  What was that transition like to where you go from being relatively unknown and ghostwriting to being in the spotlight with.
• 13:54
  With all those.
• 13:55
  Those personal development titans, what was that like for you?
• 13:58
  It was fun.
• 13:58
  It was a lot of fun.
• 14:01
  And, you know, as long as you keep your nose clean, it.
• 14:03
  It's a lot of fun.
• 14:04
  You know, we all see these gurus who are big and famous, and then you find out, you know, they got six mistresses and 12 kids and they're stealing money and all this, and they go down the tank, you
• 14:15
  know, and so as long as you keep your nose clean and you deliver good value and those kinds of things.
• 14:19
  But no, it took me all over the world.
• 14:21
  I mean, I've given 2500 speeches to crowds as large as 25,000 people all over the world.
• 14:26
  It's allowed me to travel, you know, Russia, China, Singapore, Spain, Italy, Australia, Germany, Egypt.
• 14:35
  Twice I've given two speeches in Cairo, which was pretty fun.
• 14:39
  Interesting to see new cultures and to talk to new people and eat new kinds of foods and see different parts of the world and, you know, all those kinds of things.
• 14:46
  So I just enjoyed it.
• 14:48
  I enjoyed the.
• 14:49
  I enjoyed it.
• 14:50
  Okay.
• 14:51
  And so you go through that process.
• 14:54
  You've written all these books and then, like, what.
• 14:58
  What happens next thereafter?
• 15:02
  You mean going back a few years or from here?
• 15:04
  Yeah, yeah, going back a few.
• 15:05
  Because eventually you got into.
• 15:07
  You got into politics.
• 15:08
  That I did.
• 15:09
  My best friend ran for the governor of the state of Washington in 2004, and he came to me.
• 15:15
  He was relatively unknown, but when you're a Republican in Washington, there's not.
• 15:19
  There's not a deep bench.
• 15:20
  He was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and he and the Democrat governor produced the first balanced budget in, like, 40 years.
• 15:28
  So in terms of Republican candidates, he was kind of the guy.
• 15:31
  And so he said, look, you're the professional speaker.
• 15:34
  Would you be my speech coach and help me write my speeches?
• 15:36
  And so I got involved in politics that way.
• 15:39
  And then in 2010, I ran for the US Senate in the primary.
• 15:45
  I ended up dropping out.
• 15:46
  There were so many people, and I didn't see a pathway to victory, so I ended up clearing the bench a little bit.
• 15:53
  But it was interesting because I ran for about eight months, and it was great traveling the state, meeting people, meeting concerned citizens, dealing with the issues that we were dealing with at the time and all those kinds of
• 16:05
  things.
• 16:05
  But I've ended up doing speech coaching for people, everybody running for president, all the way down to city council.
• 16:13
  So I've.
• 16:13
  I've coached people running for president, governor, senate, house, local, Local things, you know, and.
• 16:20
  And it.
• 16:21
  The whole career has just been fun, hasn't been without its setbacks and failures and things like that.
• 16:26
  But I'm.
• 16:28
  I'm just kind of the guy.
• 16:29
  I'm.
• 16:29
  I'm by nature optimistic, probably to a fault, I'm optimistic, but I've always just enjoyed it.
• 16:37
  I've.
• 16:37
  I've tried to take one day at a time and.
• 16:39
  And enjoy every event I'm at, enjoy every person I meet.
• 16:43
  You know, it's really neat when somebody.
• 16:45
  You meet somebody 15 years later and they say, I read that book and it changed my life.
• 16:50
  You know, those are the kinds of cool things that.
• 16:52
  That happen still to this day.
• 16:55
  Okay.
• 16:57
  And coming back to now, so you've got this new book.
• 17:01
  It's called the Coming American Revival.
• 17:04
  Yeah.
• 17:04
  Can.
• 17:05
  Can you just walk us through what that's about?
• 17:07
  Sure.
• 17:08
  Yeah.
• 17:09
  I was writing my 25th book, and it was going to be called the capitalist.
• 17:12
  I'm 40% of the way through.
• 17:14
  And the books that I write are typically short fiction books.
• 17:18
  And so the Story of the Capitalist was going to be about a billionaire whose grandmother asked him to host a family reunion at his estate in Jackson Hole.
• 17:26
  Wyoming.
• 17:27
  Well, his sister brings her very, very, very, very liberal daughter to the weekend.
• 17:34
  And she's in college at, you know, an Ivy League school.
• 17:37
  And she hates capitalism and so she dreads even having to spend this time with her uncle.
• 17:44
  But the whole book is the conversations between him and her and, and how he explains to her sort of some misguided ideas about capitalism.
• 17:53
  And, but about 40% of the way through the book, I felt like I was supposed to write a book on revival.
• 17:59
  And so I dusted off my old pastor's hat and I did a bunch of research.
• 18:03
  I studied the five great revivals of American history.
• 18:06
  And I wrote a book about why we need revival in America, Spiritual revival in America.
• 18:12
  And what it would look like, what would revival look like in education, what would it look like in marriage, what would it look like in politics, what would it look like in the media if we really, truly had
• 18:23
  a spiritual revival?
• 18:24
  And the premise of the book really is this.
• 18:28
  Most people say, oh well, at least, well, most people who voted for Trump, not, not the others.
• 18:32
  But they say, oh boy, Trump won.
• 18:35
  Okay, our country's going to be great.
• 18:37
  And I'm glad that Trump won.
• 18:39
  I'm a Trump supporter.
• 18:40
  I used to put on Trump seminars for a while, a few years.
• 18:43
  But here's, here's what I tell people.
• 18:45
  Trump isn't going to save America because our problem in America is not a political problem.
• 18:51
  Our problem in America is, is a spiritual problem.
• 18:54
  And we might be able to do all sorts of good things with a different president and different agendas, but the reality is, is that God is more concerned with our spiritual life than our political life.
• 19:06
  And even though I think politics is important, it's not the thing that's going to save America.
• 19:12
  So I really believe that, you know, America was built by Christian people.
• 19:17
  And let me say this.
• 19:18
  I, I do not believe in the idea of a Christian nation because I don't believe nations can be Christians, Christians or not, and, and people of faith.
• 19:27
  I mean, our, our country has a 250 year history of, of operating out of what most people call Judeo Christian values.
• 19:35
  So even take somebody like Thomas Jefferson.
• 19:38
  Thomas Jefferson was a deist, but he operated from a Judeo Christian worldview.
• 19:43
  He believed that there was a maker and that the maker was involved in, in history and in the lives of the people of the earth.
• 19:51
  You have some people that they call, they, they believe in what they call a clock means he sort of made the clock and then he pushed the pendulum and now it runs on its own.
• 20:01
  He kind of backs off.
• 20:02
  Well, most of the people who were involved in the foundation of America through, you know, basically 1970 when we had the God is dead movement, the free sex, free drugs, you know, all that kind of stuff, the, the
• 20:15
  country operated under Judeo Christian values.
• 20:18
  And so what, what I believe, and people will say to me all the time, you know, can we ever overcome how polarized we are?
• 20:24
  And I say, no, we're never gonna, unless there's a revival.
• 20:27
  We will never overcome the polarization in America.
• 20:30
  And here's why.
• 20:31
  Up until 1970 and then it's drifted further and further apart into these two separate worldviews.
• 20:37
  We all used to operate under a Judeo Christian worldview.
• 20:40
  Even if you weren't Jewish or Christian or, or even a person of faith, maybe you're an atheist.
• 20:45
  But we all kind of operated under the same capitalistic Judeo Christian values, right?
• 20:52
  Well now we have two competing worldviews.
• 20:55
  We have the traditional Judeo Christian, capitalistic, freedom loving kinds of folks.
• 21:01
  And then we have, Starting in the 1970s, a secular humanist, socialistic God is dead sort of, of mentality.
• 21:10
  And here's the real problem.
• 21:13
  Both of those worldviews view themselves as having a moral imperative.
• 21:19
  So we've always had Democrats and Republicans, but in the 1950s they, they, they came from the same worldview and they were just arguing on the strategy or the target or the tactic tactics or the techniques or, and they
• 21:32
  would disagree, but they were still all on the same page.
• 21:36
  Now you don't just disagree when you view yourself as having a moral imperative.
• 21:41
  You now see the other side as being evil and you're the good guys.
• 21:46
  And so when somebody sees the opposition as evil, it's hard for them to make concessions or to compromise because I can't compromise my own morals and values.
• 21:57
  And this is why I think we see such a hatred from both the right and the left toward the other side.
• 22:03
  Because it's not just, well, you, you disagree on this with me, but we'll remain friends.
• 22:10
  Now it's you're evil and how dare you do that and how dare you think that.
• 22:15
  And that's why I think we are almost permanently in a standoff between these two worldviews.
• 22:22
  Wow, that's fascinating.
• 22:24
  And hearing you explain that, it makes a lot of sense given how polarized and just the, the, the level of vitriol that you see politically.
• 22:35
  Right and again, right, like a lot of, I mean when you're saying like I, I wasn't around in the 50s, but when you're saying that people could just agree to disagree, and it was if they had the same
• 22:46
  worldview.
• 22:46
  It's certainly not like that.
• 22:49
  You know, today with.
• 22:50
  Yeah, I, I think there's two instances in our lifetimes that I think are really fascinating to look at politically.
• 22:55
  One was when Ronald Reagan was president and Tip O'Neill, probably the strongest speaker of the House we've ever had, complete polar opposites in terms of their politics.
• 23:05
  But America was great during the 80s because you had a Democrat and a Republican who worked together to make America better.
• 23:14
  And then I would say shortly thereafter, you had Clinton and Newt Gingrich.
• 23:19
  Again, very different political ideas, but you had a strong speaker of the House and a strong presidential leader, and they had to work together.
• 23:28
  And so right now, I mean, we saw it recently with Trump's speech to Congress where the, the Democrats are so dug in against Trump that there were a couple instances during that speech where I would think everybody in
• 23:42
  the audience should be standing.
• 23:43
  And, and, and like when they named the national park after that little girl who was murdered.
• 23:49
  Who's against that?
• 23:51
  Right.
• 23:51
  But because Trump did it, it.
• 23:53
  It's horrible, and we're not going to clap.
• 23:55
  And then the second one was when that young African American boy who had brain cancer, he beat brain cancer.
• 24:01
  He was given five months to live.
• 24:03
  He's now been past it six years.
• 24:05
  Like, I'm thinking, okay, Democrats will stand and cheer for the little kid who beat cancer.
• 24:09
  Right.
• 24:10
  But it didn't happen.
• 24:11
  And, and I'm not suggesting that this is.
• 24:14
  Democrats are bad, Republicans are good.
• 24:16
  I mean, I have my political positions, because it probably would have happened if it was the opposite as well.
• 24:21
  But you kind of just say to yourself, who can't clap for a little kid who beat cancer?
• 24:26
  It's not because they don't care about the little kid who beat cancer, but it's because we are so polarized, we are unwilling to give even one smidge of a victory to the other side.
• 24:37
  Yeah.
• 24:38
  Wow.
• 24:39
  Okay.
• 24:39
  And then speaking of Trump, too, he gave a wonderful endorsement to your book.
• 24:45
  And I guess I understand you gave him the very first copy.
• 24:47
  And was that endorsement on Election Day?
• 24:50
  Actually, it actually.
• 24:51
  And I didn't notice that I sent it to him before, you know, before Election Day, long before that, I sent it down there to him, and I kind of just forgot about it.
• 25:02
  I just wanted him to have the first copy.
• 25:05
  And about probably the middle of November, I got a letter in the mail.
• 25:11
  And it was a letter that obviously he wasn't writing and sending the letter on Election Day.
• 25:17
  You know what?
• 25:17
  Typically, what happens with presidents and people like that is they, they.
• 25:21
  They're told, okay, here's this.
• 25:22
  And they go, okay, write them this letter and tell them this.
• 25:24
  This is the other thing.
• 25:25
  Somebody else types it, they bring it back, and they sign it.
• 25:28
  Well, the cool thing is, is that he actually underlined a couple of the spots on as well before he.
• 25:32
  He signed it.
• 25:33
  But he said, this is a critical message for the times we live in.
• 25:38
  You know, people ask me, is Trump a Christian?
• 25:41
  And I know a lot of people say, absolutely not.
• 25:43
  He's a horrible human being.
• 25:44
  And I, you know, whatever you want to say about that, that's fine.
• 25:46
  And I don't know what his relationship with God is, but I will tell you this, that he's a friend of Christians.
• 25:53
  He believes that we should be free to worship.
• 25:56
  And that's freedom of worship, whether you're Christian, Muslim, Jew, Rastafarian, you know, whatever you are.
• 26:02
  That's what America was built on, was the freedom or the freedom to not worship, you know, to be an atheist or whatever.
• 26:10
  There's never been a more welcoming place in the world for religions of, of all kinds.
• 26:16
  I mean, there are certain countries.
• 26:18
  I, I follow a ministry called the Voice of the Martyrs, and every month a newsletter or a.
• 26:25
  Pardon me, a little magazine.
• 26:27
  And there are places all over the world where you.
• 26:30
  If you just even say you're a Christian, they'll burn your house down, kill you and rape your wife.
• 26:35
  And it's story after story after story, the political or the, the religious persecution around the world really makes you realize how amazing America is as a melting pot of people who want to be free.
• 26:49
  And, and so.
• 26:51
  And the freedom to worship was one of the main reasons why the Pilgrims came here, right?
• 26:56
  They wanted to practice their religion.
• 26:58
  It was still Christianity.
• 26:59
  They actually used to.
• 27:00
  They divided just from the Church of England.
• 27:02
  And, and they just.
• 27:03
  They were, you know, Congregationalists and, and some of those kinds of.
• 27:07
  Of denominations.
• 27:08
  But, you know, even in early America, there was some.
• 27:13
  Some conflict because in early, in the early colonies, they wanted to establish an actual like.
• 27:21
  And in some states, you couldn't get elected unless you were a Congregationalist.
• 27:25
  And of course, we all heard separation of church and state.
• 27:28
  Separation of church and state has never been codified.
• 27:31
  It's never been written into law.
• 27:33
  The actual term comes from a letter, a personal letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote.
• 27:39
  The Baptists up in New England wrote to Thomas Jefferson, concerned about this idea that you had to be a particular denomination in order to be elected.
• 27:49
  And he wrote back and said basically no, there's a separation of church and state.
• 27:54
  It's, it's not that the state shouldn't allow school prayer or, you know, those kinds of things.
• 28:00
  It was exclusively around this idea that you had to be a particular religion in order to be elected.
• 28:07
  Jefferson was essentially saying you can be any religion or no religion because in terms of being elected, there is a separation of church and state.
• 28:14
  But I think that that whole term has been misused in order to get particularly Christians.
• 28:20
  But I would say people of any faith from taking votes and making laws that are based on their own personal values.
• 28:27
  And so I, I definitely think that, you know, people ought to really do some research into this whole idea and concept of separation of church and state.
• 28:36
  For example, I'll give you an example.
• 28:37
  When I was a young pastor and started my first church in, in Issaquah, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, they didn't want to rent the school to us.
• 28:47
  And one of the ladies who was like the state representative or something like that, she said, well, there's a separation of church and state, state.
• 28:54
  And I said, well, you're actually, you're actually not correct.
• 28:58
  In fact, the U.
• 28:59
  S.
• 28:59
  Supreme Court in a 9, 0 decision, all Republicans, all democrats, all conservatives, all liberals, they all voted together, was called the equal access law, which says if a public facility rents their building to one group, they have to
• 29:15
  rent it to all groups.
• 29:16
  So if they rent to the boy Scouts, they have to rent to a church.
• 29:20
  If they rent to the local book club, they have to rent to the Ku Klux Klan.
• 29:24
  If, if you're going to put building up, you cannot.
• 29:27
  And this is a freedom of speech thing, right?
• 29:29
  If you're going to put your building up for rent, you can't stop the kinds of people that are going to rent it.
• 29:33
  And I remember I was on the phone, this was with a state representative of mine, and she said, well, Chris, the separation of church estate is, is in the constitution.
• 29:43
  And I said, she was on the phone, she was at home.
• 29:46
  And I said, do you have a, do you have a constitution near you?
• 29:49
  She said yeah.
• 29:50
  And I said, I'll make you a deal, I'll give you time to read it, I'll sit here while you, while you find it.
• 29:56
  But if you can find church, separation of church and state in the constitution, I will make a one thousand dollar contribution to your next political campaign.
• 30:05
  And she deal.
• 30:07
  And I could hear her, hold on a minute, hold on a minute, hold on a minute.
• 30:13
  And I said, it's not There it's just something that has been said so often that everybody thinks it's actually in the Constitution.
• 30:21
  It's not.
• 30:21
  It's rooted in that.
• 30:22
  Let from Thomas Jefferson to the Anabaptists in New England, telling them that, no, we can't say you have to be a specific religion.
• 30:31
  You can be any religion or no religion.
• 30:34
  So I think a lot of times we, we hear things and we believe they're true, and then we just operate as though they're true.
• 30:40
  Interesting.
• 30:41
  Okay, so this, this coming American revival, right, to where you say, I guess, like, you know, we're in trouble if we don't have God in our lives essentially as a country.
• 30:53
  Right.
• 30:54
  So what, what do you, what do you see that revival looking like?
• 30:58
  Well, you know, you talk about national revival, and in the book, I talk about the difference between personal revival, church revival and national revival.
• 31:06
  Revival doesn't start nationally.
• 31:09
  Revival doesn't even start in a church.
• 31:11
  Revival starts in the hearts of each individual human being.
• 31:15
  You know, the Bible says that, that our bodies are the temple of the living God.
• 31:19
  And so the reality is, is God doesn't live down at the local chur.
• 31:24
  When, when we have a faith, God lives in us.
• 31:28
  And, and so it really looks like individuals saying, you know what?
• 31:34
  I've tried to run my own life my own way for a long time, and I can't seem to get it right.
• 31:40
  I'm going to give my life over to the one who created me.
• 31:43
  I'm going to start living by the.
• 31:45
  The handbook, right?
• 31:46
  If you buy a car, what's the first thing you do?
• 31:49
  You look in the glove box and there it is.
• 31:50
  It tells you how the car runs.
• 31:52
  I view the Bible in much the same way that the Bible is handbook.
• 31:57
  It's, it's the way we're.
• 31:58
  We're gonna live, right?
• 32:00
  And, and I think that when we live according to the Bible, it produces an amazing life.
• 32:08
  So sometimes people say, well, I don't want to follow the Bible, or, you know, I'm against Christians in the marketplace or those kinds of things.
• 32:14
  I say, what exactly is it about the Bible that's going to make your life or your business or our country worse?
• 32:20
  Is it loving your neighbor?
• 32:23
  Is it do not lie?
• 32:24
  Is it do not kill?
• 32:26
  Is it to be patient with one another?
• 32:29
  Is it, you know, the Bible is filled with just very practical advice on how to live your life.
• 32:36
  And it's the kind of advice that makes our lives better.
• 32:40
  You know, husbands, love your wives.
• 32:44
  Is that.
• 32:44
  When did we start arguing that husbands shouldn't love their wives.
• 32:48
  Right.
• 32:49
  It's, it's like, like, you know, and so I think that in the book, I talk about how what revival would look like in the media, what revival would look like in politics, what revival would look like in education,
• 33:03
  what revival would look like in church.
• 33:05
  Let's just take politics.
• 33:06
  Since we've been talking about politics.
• 33:08
  If, if all the politicians decided that they were living according to the Bible, well, it would stop their stealing, it would stop their arrogance, it would stop their lying to the public.
• 33:20
  And both sides do it.
• 33:22
  Republicans do it, Democrats do it.
• 33:23
  They stare straight into the camera on that TV ad and they say, if you elect me, I'm going to do this.
• 33:28
  And then we elect them and they go, got to rethink that whole thing.
• 33:31
  Right?
• 33:33
  What happens when, when, when a business owner has a renewed faith and he decides to stop operating in the shady edges and he decides to operate with integrity in his business?
• 33:45
  That's based out of a desire to, to live out his biblical principles as faith.
• 33:51
  And so I'm always baffled by people who argue against faith in the, in the, in the public life because I've just found that for the most part, faith is something that makes our lives better when we actually live
• 34:06
  it out.
• 34:08
  Okay.
• 34:09
  All right.
• 34:10
  And so, Chris, if people want to get in touch with you regarding the, the coaching program, this new coaching problem program that you, that you're rolling out or just, just learn more about, you know, the book and some
• 34:23
  of these principles that you teach, what's the best way that people can, can reach out to you?
• 34:27
  Yeah, and I would say this too, you know, if, if you're interested in having me come speak, if I speak in a secular situation, and I've spoken at thousands of them, Microsoft, General Electric, Cisco Systems, Harvard Business School.
• 34:39
  I don't do a sermon.
• 34:40
  I'm not coming in to try to win people to the Lord.
• 34:43
  You know, there's not going to be a sawdust trail and call people forward at the end.
• 34:47
  Most of my speeches, probably about the last thousand of my speeches were, are based on a book I wrote called the Art of Influence, and it's about persuasion.
• 34:55
  And so that's why I've been named one of the top 10 sales speakers in the world, one of the top leadership speakers in the world by Inc.
• 35:01
  Magazine.
• 35:01
  And then about two weeks ago, global gurus named me the 17th best sales speaker in the world.
• 35:06
  So I do very strong business presentations if that's the context of the audience.
• 35:11
  But for coaching, I love to coach younger people who are in, in the stages of life that I've always, that I've already gone do.
• 35:20
  It's.
• 35:20
  It's less.
• 35:21
  It's probably less of a coaching.
• 35:22
  It's more of a mentorship, confidant kind of thing.
• 35:25
  In fact, I just brought somebody into my coaching program, makes a million dollars a year.
• 35:29
  He's 40 years old, great shape, great marriage, great kids.
• 35:33
  And I did my, I did my call with him and I said, well, I may be cutting my throat on this, but I don't know what you need coaching for.
• 35:41
  And he said something that was really interesting.
• 35:43
  He said, I probably don't in terms of business and that kind of stuff.
• 35:46
  He said, but you know what?
• 35:48
  I've never had, had.
• 35:49
  I've never had a mentor who I could just ask questions about faith, about marriage, about family.
• 35:55
  I would love to do this coaching program with you as long as I can show up and just ask you any question I want to.
• 36:01
  And I said, great, let's do it.
• 36:02
  And he wrote a check and off we went.
• 36:04
  So it's really designed for people to, to take a holistic look at their life.
• 36:11
  You know, a lot of people have hired me for business coaching, and then we end up spending half the time talking about their marriage.
• 36:16
  Marriage.
• 36:17
  Because the real problem is their marriage.
• 36:18
  It's why they're unhappy, it's why they're upset, it's why they feel unfulfilled.
• 36:22
  And, and so this is a holistic approach.
• 36:24
  It deals with faith, it deals with business, it deals with marriage, it deals with children, it deals with your health, it deals with your, your mental edge and your mindset deals with how you handle your emotions, but all
• 36:36
  from a biblical worldview.
• 36:37
  And if anybody's interested, it's really simple.
• 36:39
  You can just email me chrischris widener.com chrischriswidener.com just shoot me an email and say, I heard you.
• 36:45
  I'd love to find out more about it.
• 36:47
  And we'll on a call and we'll, we'll talk about it.
• 36:50
  Okay.
• 36:51
  And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 36:54
  All right, well, Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to be here, sharing your journey and all this valuable wisdom that, that you have.
• 37:00
  We, we greatly appreciate it.
• 37:02
  Yeah, thanks, Dave, for having me.
• 37:03
  I appreciate it.
• 37:03
  It's been great.
• 37:05
  All right.
• 37:05
  And that is all the time we have for now.
• 37:07
  We will see you next time.