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Secrets of Storytelling (with Shane Wood) · The Daily Writer

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome creative geniuses.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode 93 of the Born to Create podcast.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Kent Sanders, and this is the show where we explore the mindset, habits, and skills to help you make a bigger impact in your life and creative work.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can find previous episodes, my free ultimate toolkit for creative entrepreneurs, and much more at Kent Sanders.net.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: When you hear the word storyteller, what do you think about?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the first image that comes to mind is a group of people sitting around a campfire with a wise old sage telling an ancient tale.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you think of a novelist, a screenwriter, a movie director, or maybe even somebody giving a TED talk.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my guest today is a gifted storyteller, but he's also a theologian, college professor, writer, and speaker.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Shane Wood, and I'm excited to share this conversation where he reveals some of his secrets for storytelling and engaging audiences through writing, speaking, and teaching.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'll share the conversation with Shane in just a couple moments, but first let's dive into our Ask Kent segment.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is the part of the show where I answer your questions about creativity, mindset, habits, or writing.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this question was sent in by my friend Craig Harmon.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Craig is a worship pastor and a writer, and you can find his website at churchmusicmakers.com.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of great stuff there.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you're not a uh pastor or a church musician, you're gonna find a lot of helpful stuff there for your creative life.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure and check it out.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Craig sent in this question.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: He says, How do I build or rebuild habits that keep me consistent and being creative?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Craig, this is a fantastic question.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the place to start is by defining what we mean by being creative.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Many times, at least this is the case with me, I think about creativity as something that is sort of ethereal, it's sort of fuzzy in my own mind.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I oftentimes need to get a lot more specific about what I mean when I talk about being creative.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the place to begin with this question is by getting specific on what it is that we want to accomplish creatively speaking.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know that you're a musician, so let's put it in those terms.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you want to write a certain piece of music by a certain date.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Here's some thoughts on making it happen in a concrete way and getting it done.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I've just thought of seven simple things that we can do to help reach our creative goals in more of a systematic way and in a way that ensures that we can actually get it done.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in here real quick.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, get clear on your vision or goal for the project.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: My good friend Eric Elder gave me a great idea a couple years ago.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: He said whenever he has a goal that he wants to reach, he simply puts a picture of that goal right in front of him.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It might be on your refrigerator or on your wall or on a bulletin board.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is put a literally a picture of that goal somewhere where you can see it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now you may not have to put necessarily an actual picture of it somewhere, but I think that actually really does help.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Putting a literal picture of it somewhere that you can see it on a regular basis or even several times a day.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is getting clear on your vision or your goal for your project.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: When you plant that vision in your mind, it really helps create some momentum toward going forward on that goal.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, visualize yourself as a person who is committed and creative.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: James Clear uh is the author of a book called Atomic Habits, and in that book he talks about the need to change our identity.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, many times we think about ourselves as somebody who is not committed or somebody who doesn't follow through or somebody who maybe isn't really assertive in reaching their goals.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got to change our identity from that kind of a person to someone who does reach our goals and someone who does achieve great things and someone who does create great art on a schedule.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, establish a time and a place to create.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you do it in the morning, afternoon, evening, whether you do it at a kitchen table or an office somewhere or the local library or a studio or a sanctuary, wherever it is that you need to create, it's important to pick a time and a place where we create consistently.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, put it on your calendar.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: I literally have a a planner where I write things in my calendar.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I also keep a calendar on my MacBook and that calendar syncs with my phone.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I use Google Calendars.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's very handy.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I also sometimes will set a timer on my iPhone if I need to work on something, just as a reminder.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever you need to do to remind yourself and to get it on the calendar, do that because the technology is there to serve us and to help us to be more productive.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, decide what you're going to say no to.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a show on Netflix, maybe it's reading a chapter of your favorite novel, maybe it's uh something else that you enjoy, or maybe something else that you don't enjoy.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's putting things on hold so that we can make room in our schedules and in our lives for our creative work.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Number six, have an accountability partner.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Having someone that you can check in on a daily or a weekly basis with can really be helpful toward achieving our most important creative goals.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of years ago, a friend of mine and I were trying to both get up a lot earlier and establish that habit.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we would text each other.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think at that time we were trying to get up at six in the morning, which for a lot of people that's not that early, but for that season of my life, I was trying to get up earlier, and six a.m.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: was the time that we chose.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we would text each other at six, and I knew that he was going to text me, and he was confident I was gonna text him, and we did.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And having that accountability partner really helped to get us into a better rhythm.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then finally, number seven, give yourself a reward for getting it done.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's buying a certain book or watching a TV show, maybe it's visiting a certain restaurant or a bookstore or something that's meaningful to you.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Having a reward that we give ourselves after we accomplish an important goal, I think can really help to motivate us.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, Craig, those are just seven simple things that have helped me.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully two or three of those will be helpful to you as well.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I would also recommend that you check out the book that I mentioned.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's Atomic Habits by James Clear.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: He talks a lot about how to develop better habits in our lives and gives step-by-step really simple processes for making that happen.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: A great book, and I'd really encourage you to check out.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So pick a few of those and let me know how it goes.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you sending in the question, Craig, and I'll be shooting you uh links to download the ebook and audiobook of my previous book, The Artist Suitcase.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And for everybody else listening, if you have a question about the creative life, uh, habits, mindset, productivity, or writing, you can shoot it to me by going to Kent Sanders.net slash podcast or you can shoot me an email at Kent at KentSanders.net and if I use your question on the show, I will send you a free copy of my book, The Artist Suitcase.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as I mentioned earlier, I'm really excited today to have Shane Wood on the podcast.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Shane Wood is the professor of New Testament Studies and the Associate Academic Dean at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: He completed his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in the UK, and his dissertation is entitled The Altar Imperial Paradigm Empire Studies and the Book of Revelation.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Earlier this year, Shane published the amazing book Between Two Trees, Our Transformation from Death to Life.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was also a featured scholar in The Armageddon Code, One Journalist's Quest for End Times Answered by Billy Hollowell.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Shane's other publications include Dragons, John, and Evergrain of Sand, Essays on the Book of Revelation, and God's Triumphal Procession, Rexamining the Release of Satan in the Light of Roman Imperial Imagery, which focuses on Revelation twenty, seven through ten.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that was published in Currents and British Research on the Apocalypse.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So as you can tell, Shane is a widely recognized expert and is very interested in the Book of Revelation.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, whenever you hear academic credentials like that, you might imagine that I'm talking about somebody who is some kind of a dry, dusty, crusty scholar type.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: But you would be totally wrong about Shane.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's one of the most engaging, energetic, and creative speakers and teachers that I've ever heard.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: In our conversation in this episode, Shane gives us some behind-the-scenes peeks into the making of his new book, Between Two Trees, which masterfully blends storytelling, biography, and theology into a compelling journey.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Shane also talks about his writing and book marketing process, his unique approach to speaking, and lots more.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you're not a teacher or pastor or perhaps not a person of faith, there's a lot to learn from Shane's wisdom.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: After the conversation, make sure to check out the show notes at KentSanders.net slash zero nine three for all the links and other info.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get right to the conversation with Shane Wood.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Shane, it's really great to have you on the show today.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you taking time to chat with me.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: My pleasure.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for having me on.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was really fun to see you a few weeks ago when you were at St.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Louis Christian College to do our spring lectureship.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so happy to see that we were going back to doing a lectureship format.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most people when they hear lectureship, they think, okay, it's going to be a snooze fest.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: But but um it was so much fun to have you come and do sessions for us on revelation and you know biblical interpretation and just thinking critically about scripture.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I really, really had a lot of fun catching up with you then and appreciate the great content that you brought.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: Man, it was my pleasure.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: I had a really great time, and it was good to reconnect with uh a lot of old faces and friends.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, and spaces that I've never I I haven't I haven't even been in like over a decade.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: That was the first time I'd been in the chapel since I was in high school.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's amazing.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: It was awesome.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: It does look a little different now.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: It is, it does look a little different.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that you were there to promote, well, you know, the main thing that you were there to promote um was your new book called Between Two Trees.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to dive into that here at the beginning of our conversation.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Can you give give our listeners a sense of what that book is about and what you hope their readers take away from it?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the book the book is uh really about an observation that I had several years ago that basically the Bible ends the way it begins.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it ends in a garden and it ends with the tree of life.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but then as I began to dive into the implications of that, I I frankly uh the book really is birthed out of my own frustration that we're not sitting under the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, and we are, it feels like we're light years away from the tree of life in the New Jerusalem, um, that all of our life is lived between these two trees.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: And frankly, this life between two trees is stinking hard.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so what the book really does is it it wrestles with the questions like what happened in Eden?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I I come to the conclusion that we've actually kind of abbreviated the problem in Eden.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, that I think the problem is worse.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: We did have we did break a divine infraction, but I think it's worse than that.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: I think we become one flesh with death.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um and if we've abbreviated the problem, uh I think we've also abbreviated the solution.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: That the beauty of our transformation in God is not just that we move from guilty to innocent, uh, but that but that true, complete new creation transformation is possible uh through our union with God, the giving of the Spirit, and the movement of Christ.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so this book wrestles with those theological uh those uh kind of parameters or those guardrails, uh, but it's also a very autobiographical book.
• 12:01
  unknown: Yeah.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I dive, I dive pretty deep into my story and my own wrestling.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: I put my own wrestling of this world between two trees on display, um, in a sense where I even told my wife, I was like, it's kind of weird to have my journal of the last five years be in print.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little a little unnerving, but see when I read this when I read your book, I I think this is how theology ought to be.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not a critique of anybody else or of any other approaches, of course.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: But what I loved about it, and I would say, you know, I didn't really sense this until you you were just mentioning this, but what I loved about it is how you blend great theology, great writing and storytelling, but that's also very personal and autobiographical.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's normally when people think of theology books, they think of something that is a very cold and detached and emotionless and kind of like a systematic approach to the Bible or whatever.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: But yours was exactly the opposite.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's very personal, but yet it's also very I guess the term that I think of is responsible in the way that you're approaching interpretation and and scripture and looking at it in in a very teacherly sort of context, you know, not just sort of, oh, here's my random thoughts on it, but it's a very practiced, a very deep approach, and I loved that blend of all those elements.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I appreciate that.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: And and in in some sense, that's the way I view theology.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: I I I don't see theology as dead and void.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: I do believe it is living and moving and vibrant.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I don't understand studying theology in a way that doesn't actually uh challenge and it forces to look into a beautiful mirror that's also frightening.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so it actually uh it's my even my love for the church fathers with you know Augustine and a lot of the ways that they used to wrestle with theology.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think some of it, uh like his confessions, that's incredibly personal.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I think that is where if theology is done well, it really does get down to the marrow of your bones.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, that is so true.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, of course, we both we both had Dr.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Lowry as uh professor in grad school.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I was telling my brother, so my for those who are who are listening to this who don't know who my brother is, he's his name is Don Sanders, he's a pastor at Harvester Christian Church in St.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Charles, Missouri.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, uh Shane, you know him very well.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we've known you know, our family's known your family for many years.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: He was my youth minister when I was.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know, it's crazy.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I was telling him right after you were at St.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Louis Christian College doing our lectureship, I said, Man, Shane reminds me so much of Dr.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Lowry and his approach and storytelling, and I don't know if that's intentional on your part, but it really comes through, and I was like, I it's so cool to see that because it's like you're carrying that whatever that mantle consists of, you're you're carrying that like a torch, and I just love that so much.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: Man, that means a lot to me.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Dr.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: Lowry, um uh I had whenever I was up there, I I remember the first week I got there, I went into his office and I said, Hey, just let you know.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, I'm not a stalker, but the only reason why I came here is to be near you.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, you're a revelation scholar, and that's where my heart is.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: And um, and uh he he was very gracious with me and uh and got to spend some significant time with him.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: And and I I think that's how education uh is done best.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um education is done best whenever you you study under someone you want to be like, uh because education is not just a transferring of information, it's a transferring of an identity.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so, in a very real sense, I I matter of fact, I over here I wrote most of the book.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: I have a picture of the last time Dr.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: Lowry and I uh were hugging before he passed away.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so all of my scholarship and all of my writing is is done with him in the shadow, or me and his shadow is probably the best way to say it, and I'm very thankful for that.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that that's really cool.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let me dive into the way that you wrote this book for a little bit, if we can.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a lot of people listening to this podcast who are writers or are aspiring writers, and uh I really try to encourage people to not use the word if I write a book, but to use the word when I write a book because I want to plant that seed in people's minds of yes, you can do this.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is a lot of work, but it is really, really worth it.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about your process of of writing a book and how you go about it, and just particularly in mind of people who haven't done this before but would like to write a book?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, no, that's super uh I'm glad you asked that question because there's a part of this where um even though the book is the product I'm excited about, the process is really what I loved more than anything.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um there was there was an unearthing that occurred in the process that I I think was intentional in that um I needed something unearthed in order to have something to say.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um I think it was Anne Lamotte that says writing is um you know cutting open your veins and letting it bleed on the page.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and there's a part of that where I think she is trying to communicate the difficulty and the toil, but I think there's also a part of it where it's saying there's a very part of my lifeblood that's being transmitted into this.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so so for me, the process was putting myself in a um a spiritual and a mental posture as well as a physical space um that can elicit the very the very lifeblood um of my story.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so the way that I did uh this book, and it was definitely different than what I meant for it to be.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I think that's one of the key things is you you are creating something, but in a very real sense, you're watching something being created right in front of you that's great that you have control of, but you really don't.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so true.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's so true.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: Every phase of the process for me, the book, the book continued to take on a different personality.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I write this in the introduction.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I actually set out to write a book on how to read the book of Revelation.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: That was my goal.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: And as I was writing it, it turned into how the book of Revelation is reading me and how the whole New Testament and the whole Bible is reading us.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um and the way I would do it is I actually I took about three weeks or so up in up in um the northeast.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: My brother lives up in Rhode Island.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so I went up to the northeast and we stayed there for about three weeks, and I would I would uh go to a coffee shop, I'd walk around the city, and when I would find a coffee shop, I would just sit.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then I would have either a passage or a quote or a thought at the very top of the screen.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then what I would do is I would actually close my eyes and begin pray uh prayer writing as I would be writing about the topic, but it was also like me having a conversation with God as I'm writing, allowing him in his spirit just all kinds of space to bring stories to my mind, other passages to mind.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: So really the the passages at the top became prompts to unearth me.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I would do this in spaces I knew also would really invigorate me.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: So I went to the Athenaeum Library for a couple different times where Edgar Allan Poe composed some of his very last writings.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, just to try to get into a space that that already has creativity embedded into the stones.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um it just changes.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: When you're walking through a city and there's a bunch of of energy, uh when you're walking through uh, you know, places like the Athenaeum Library and you're doing it in kind of a contemplative prayer-like state, it it unearths stuff that I I had no idea was gonna come out.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: So being in a specific geographic place for you has been an important part of the book writing process.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the book writing, uh the editing, I could never have done it in the same settings.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because actually what was interesting is whenever I came back from Rhode Island, I had about 40 or 50 different essays.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then the over the next about four months, I wove those essays into 16 chapters.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: So the editing phase really also fleshed it out in a whole different way.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: But that initial creative place, uh, yeah, I had to be in spaces that would invigorate.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So can you talk for a second about what your process was like?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, once you had your first complete draft, you took it as far as you could take it.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then what happens in your experience from you get that done to the finished product?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: How does that go through the phases of editing?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: What actually happens, how much of the book changes from your first complete draft to the finished product, and so forth.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: See, I this is where I think a lot of the times the the the writing um the the almost the romance and the beauty of it uh it clouds out the reality.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, that's so true.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and that's where I'm like, man, you know, the the three weeks I spent up in Rhode Island was romantic and it was beautiful.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but really the book was written in the editing process.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: It was um I probably I mean on average, each chapter I would say it went through about 15 to 20 revisions, and that's me reading over every word, a lot of times out loud.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: That's me also handing it off to um other people, multiple people in my community.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then once I got theirs back, I would re-edit it.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um it was it was it was brutal.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that to me is really where the the the toil comes.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that's where the Anne Lamotte quote, I think, takes on the pain aspect most accurately.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: But it was, and it was uh it was laborious.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I actually did go away for a weekend because my wife was like, You're you're kind of freaking out.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, I know the deadline's coming.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I went I went away for a weekend and just um would reward myself with every chapter I would get somewhat edited.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: But there wasn't there wasn't a single chapter I read by myself, and there wasn't a single chapter that was only read ten times.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um the whole book was washed over at least twenty to thirty times.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is a really important point to make is the idea of you create something the first round you create the first round of something.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: By yourself.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think by nature it has to be that way in writing, probably, unless you have a co-writer who you have a good working relationship with.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: But then the rest of it is done in community with getting feedback from people and having the humility to step back and say, Okay, I accept your feedback on my precious darling that I have spent all my life blood creating, you know, and that whole process, which can be very boring and laborious and painful and all that stuff.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: And all kinds of all kinds of insecurities can come up.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: You have to just keep reminding yourself, especially when it comes to the editor, because that's all before it made it to the editor.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like the the editor is actually your friend.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: The editor wants you to sound good and to sell your book.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: And if you just are constantly spending your time with your community or your editors fighting, uh that then you're not you're not embracing the the the gold that's in the process.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: The gold that's in the process is different eyes, different opinions, and and differences of opinions coming together on certain words and phrases, and and there's beauty in that.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: To me, that's that actually reminds me of the church itself.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or at least what it should be.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly right.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: What has been your approach to launching your book?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um now when I ask you that, I'm gonna put a little caveat in there.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: So anytime that I ask this of someone who is getting ready to publish a book or they've they've recently released a book, to a T, everybody always feels like I haven't done enough, I'm not doing everything that I would love to do, or I'm missing you know, nobody ever feels like I'm doing this exactly perfectly like I want to.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's actually kind of refreshing because there's no perfect way to do this.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we can all learn from what each of us is doing with our books.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: No, and I think that's exactly right.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm actually, it's even a good reminder and kind of a yes, misery does love company in the and as you know, as somebody that even struggles with being a perfectionist, I I felt that way the whole time.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm not doing enough.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: But that that's where the part of this too, especially kind of the spiritual aspect of it, it's like I have to just trust that this will go where it's going to go.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: However, there's certain things I can do.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so I I've read um some some really important books for me on some of this.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: Is uh Tim Gral's book, The First Thousand Copies.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Great book.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man, really good, super helpful.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: And he he actually did a free webinar, and so I asked him a question because at the time I'd already had a publisher, and I said, Hey, how how much do I trust the publisher with the marketing?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: And his response was interesting.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: He said, You don't trust them with it at all.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_03: He said, You need to go into your book launch pretending as if you are the only one doing it.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and and anything that they add, it's gravy.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and anything, but but but as a result, there's a part of it where there's I I realize too, the creative process um doesn't end with just writing the book and getting it to the publisher.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: There's there's creativity and also exploring unique ways uh to market it.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I've really enjoyed it.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: I've I've I've been I'm also an experimenter, so with social media, I'm like, hmm, I wonder if I, you know, put up a book trailer and and what would it do?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: So I did do a book trailer, uh, which I found to be very helpful.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: I loved the book trailer, by the way.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's really genius.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, well, and it's a shout out to um uh a guy here in Joplin named Derek Hamickey, who is incredible with videography.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but yeah, he uh we also shot um videos here at Ozark of uh of Between Two Trees.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's a free kind of uh small group, eight weeks, eight weeks of it.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: So using, I've been just trying to think of different ways to package the message.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I also had my buddy sit down with me that that's that's a professional interviewer.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like he's done multiple um uh what are those called um documentaries.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I just said, hey man, 25 minutes, just ask me whatever you want, and we're gonna film it and we're gonna give it out to uh anybody that pre-orders it.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so and so now it's out on YouTube and stuff.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: But I just thought, what are the different fun ways we can talk about this in different settings?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: And um, and that's that the way I've been marketing it is just of just thinking of a new and fun way.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's the beauty of technology.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: If if we leverage it in what in fun, it can be incredibly fun and productive for the kingdom.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so really just talking to talking to students and saying, hey, whenever you're looking at a book, what do you what do you look for?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: Or you know, the last five books you've bought, how did you come across them?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I love that question.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and so just using those as kind of launching book launching pads and just doing a lot of it myself.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know one of the things that you do a lot is speaking, which is obviously the way to promote books and and other things.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And to promote Ozark Christian College, of course.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh because you work there and you want to support that as well, and you're excited about the things that are happening there.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to take a few minutes to ask you specifically about some things related to speaking, because that is something you're you have a lot of experience with, but you're also really, really good at.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious to pick your brain with this because even though I've been a college professor a long time, in some ways I think if you're something like a pastor or a college professor uh where you have a job that is speaking, in some ways that can actually work against you because the things that can help you be effective in those settings don't necessarily translate when you're out speaking to different groups.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when you were at St.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Louis Christian College a couple months ago before our our lectureship series, um I I I have probably heard you speak somewhere before, but I I can't recall if I did or not.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna assume that I didn't.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I found so fascinating with the way that you speak is that it's it's sort of indirect and it's almost circular in some senses.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: And let me explain what I mean by that for those who are listening.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: So in your first talk, you you spent probably half of your talk not talking about uh the actual topic.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you were there to talk about Revelation, you started out talking about uh Matthew and Philippians and some passages from those books of the New Testament, and you got about thirty minutes or so into the talk, and literally I was thinking, where in the world is he going with this?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's supposed to be talking about Revelation, he's gotta be going somewhere with it, but I have no idea.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so genius because then a few minutes later you brought it back around and you made the point that okay, how you read those passages and some biblical interpretation principles, you can take those, then we're going to then apply those to Revelation.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very intentional, but very I don't know if you would call it you know inductive per se, but it it was it was kind of a backdoor approach.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious, is your approach to speaking very much like that?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like do you do you tend to go down a side road and then come in the back door of the main topic, or is that intentional, or how do you structure those talks?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: No, that is an awesome question, and it's actually one I love to wrestle with.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um I i it's really more uh it's more like a story.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: I a lot of my talks, even my book, uh but my sermons, I uh Eugene Lowry's book, uh The Homiletical Plot, which is my absolute favorite preaching book.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um and what I loved about it is that he remind he reminds me, and I and it's actually been about a decade since I've read it, but uh so this if he's if it's not in the book, I'm this is my remembering of it.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but but he reminds me of the fact uh that we're storied beings.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like we we have this incredible desi uh latching on to whenever a story begins, you know, a preacher begins to tell a story, you know, like well, whenever I was 15, I and immediately everybody in the pew kind of sits forward, like, oh, I wasn't listening until you started telling us a story.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um but but we've always we we're all story building uh beings.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: Every civilization is centered on stories because stories they give us our identity.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so for me, what I loved about Eugene Lowry is he says, and stories have have an arc.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, for him it's a loop.
• 30:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, and there's certain elements of every story that we know, like upsetting the equilibrium, creating conflict, that it creates uh some levels of intrigue.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then eventually you get to kind of the aha moment, and then you're able to kind of unlayer it.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: And um, and what I loved about that is he was basically taking my love of story and taking didactic type preaching moments or teaching moments and making them into the form of a narrative, even if I'm not telling a story.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so a lot of my preaching and a lot of my speaking follows that arc.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um I intentionally uh will uh uh upset the equilibrium or create the intrigue.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and depending upon the topic, is if I need to backdoor, I will backdoor.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and with Revelation, you have to.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: If you come straight at that sucker, you're gonna you're just gonna make enemies to the point where they can't even hear you.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um and that and that to me doesn't really get us to accomplish anything.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: My first 30 minutes is just trying to say, let's just, can we have a conversation?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's really what I was asking.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I just want to sit down and talk.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I know this is an explosive book, but so for so the back door was really like, there's already enough tension in the room with Revelation that I don't need to create more tension at the front.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: If if anything, I need to alleviate the tension and get you relaxed and then bring it in once we feel comfortable together.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but with my sermons, my sermons usually I try to create some uh dis uh disrupting the equilibrium up front, uh trying to create a dissonance, uh, which is what all sitcoms are based off of.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: If there's no conflict, we're not interested.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: Which maybe tells us something about us more than even just about stories.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: We love conflict.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um but a lot of my preaching, a lot of my teaching, uh, which does lend itself towards inductive somethings.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it's more it's more based off of a narrative arc than merely just an inductive-deductive structure.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you would say there's some value in speakers, teachers, leaders, pastors in studying story structure, maybe even breaking down sitcom story structure, you know, all those kinds of things, because that's that's really how we learn and process information the best.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where uh honestly that there's a couple of backgrounds that I accidentally had that they're now really paying dividends in in areas of speaking.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_03: One was a theater background.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh in high school I did theater all over the place, and I and and I and I tell students, I was like, if you want to be a good preacher, I said it's not about performing or pretending.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: But but what theater teaches you is number one, it teaches you how to communicate a story effectively that can engage the audience, their whole being, not just their mind, but their emotions, their experiences, their mind, everything, and to be able to read the room.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and it it helps you to really be disciplined in narrative arcs.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know where the intensity parts are going to be coming in the narrative uh on on stage.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: The second one is I've just always had a natural love for reading classics.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so when you read the master storytellers like a Dostoevsky or uh a George McDonald or uh you know John Milton, you're you're you're naturally uh going to be um or even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I I just finished all the Sherlock Holmes books, and and just watching the way that they use this tension, uh it's it's masterful.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: And if you can put that into sermons and into a teaching, you don't have to do a bunch of dog and pony shows to get people's attention.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: They're actually tapping into the arc that's intuitive to what we all crave anyway.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's always struck me as funny that so much of the Bible is in narrative form, but so much of the way that we approach teaching and preaching in the Western mindset is not narrative form.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Which is like there's a such a natural disconnect there.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I I honestly think that um that that that's why my my studies, scholarship, and uh in revelations really helped me in this area.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: It is you have to know narrative.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: If you're gonna study revelation, you have to know narrative.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: But you're right.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, and that's not an accident.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's also not an accident that, you know, at every Passover feast, part of a major part of the meal was to retell the story of the exodus.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because we're storied beings.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, there's a part of stories that what it is, it's a connection with others.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's a connection with ourselves, and that's that's the very Trinity itself that we're created in the image of.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, you're right.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: We we do we do tend to lean more towards didactic, even though it's like Yeah, we really do.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: Stories is the way to go.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was listening to, and and I won't name who it is, but I was listening to a uh sermon recently um in a non-church non-church setting.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um and literally about halfway through the message, it it was kind of long.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was just thinking, please tell me a story.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Please tell me a story, please.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm begging, please tell me a story.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was like such a didactic focused thing.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but it drove home the point that I tend to do the same thing sometimes, and maybe we're all we all tend to do that, especially if we come from a teaching background, because there's so much stuff we want to share.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and sometimes we forget to share it in a way that is actually compelling to the listener.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: People people will always gravitate towards what has flesh on it.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: And stories is what gives the didactic teaching flesh.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, such a good approach.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you're enjoying the conversation, and we'll get back to it in just a minute.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: But first I want to take a second to mention that this episode is brought to you by Convert Kit.
• 35:45
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• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: And now let's get back to the conversation.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one thing that I want to make sure to ask you about is the way that you market yourself, the way that you market your content and connect with people.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you have a website that is super great.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love the design of your website.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: I always am interested in aesthetics and design.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: It looks great, but you also put out a lot of free content for people.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: You send out a weekly email with uh video teaching and tons of free sermons and teaching stuff on your website.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about your approach to that?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why you, you know, I guess first of all, why you have a website, the value that that has brought to you, and what you hope to accomplish with all that outside of your your teaching ministry in a college setting?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um man, you know, I I I grew up in small churches, and my first uh my first ministry here at Ozark was a church, and the first Sunday there was eight of us.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and then my first full-time ministry uh was at a church in High Hill, Missouri, and there was about 55 of us on the first Sunday.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that always um was heartbreaking is whenever I would go to a conference or I would go to uh you know something to get new ideas, and then we would come back, and it's like we don't have a budget for anything.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we don't, we don't, I mean, like I'm like, you know, it doesn't matter, even if it's like really we'll reduce the price.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, can you reduce it down to negative five dollars?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like, can you because we just don't have any money.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh for me, my my initial the initial impetus of my of my website was to say this um if I ever find myself in a position where I feel like the Lord is calling me to do it equipping of the church, which is what I do here at Ozark, I've got to be able to do significant portions of it for free because I know what it's like to not have the money in the churches, but to crave it and to want it.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so I Ozark has been so gracious to allow me to record every single lecture at Ozark that I teach to students.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: I record and put it up online for free uh so that people can continue education after uh they graduate too, because that's one of the things that we mistake is that we think, oh, I graduated, now I don't need to keep learning.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, no, but at the same time, keep learning can be expensive.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um the the uh the weekly videos was a different approach.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: There was a part of me where I was like, I want I I love teaching, but they're overhearing a conversation.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_03: I want to look at the people that come to my website and I want to be able to share an experience with them eye to eye.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so, but the problem is is I can't be in all of their settings, you know, in all of their churches.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: So the the scripture study community is this six to eight minute video where I literally take my Google Pixel phone and then I put it up on a little tripod I got for like$25 on Amazon, and I just flip open my Bible and just start wrestling with the text.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: And my favorite part of it is all the emails I get back.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um is, you know, oh, this one really hit me hard and this is why.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then I have a chance to write back to them and pray over them.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, it's trying to leverage technology as a way to equip the church and as a way for us to feel united.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so uh even even with uh even with the book, that's why I love I'm like, hey, I'm so thankful.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I know it's a book and you have to pay something for it, but I'm like, but those eight small group videos with Ozark, those are totally free.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was like, okay.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a part of it where that if they can't afford the book, they can still get the message for free.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that that means a lot to me because honestly, I just I'm just I'm not I'm not in this for um for the monetary value or the fame.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's just to build the kingdom.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: So the website to me is purely a tool uh to help expand the kingdom the most efficiently and economically that I can using technology.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think there is a really important principle here for everybody who's listening to pay attention to this because the principle is putting out your content, you know, having one basic message, but that's delineated in a bunch of different ways through speaking.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you have your your teaching ministry in the college, but that's limited to the students who actually are taking your courses there.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you have an email list where you're sending up videos and other content, you're speaking, you have a book, you're doing stuff on social media.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the principle, in other words, of people want to receive your message in different ways.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody wants to read a book, but not everybody also wants to watch videos.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody will get to hear you speak, but through those different means of getting your message out there, you can impact a much broader range of people.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that and that's even the way the book on uh with the publisher, when we were unrolling it, you know, it was like they're like, Yeah, we'll definitely do the Kindle version and we'll definitely do the printed version.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: I said, but I said, but what about the audio version?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, sorry, we don't yeah, they were like, we don't do that.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, well, and so basically to negotiate, I was like, I have to do that for two reasons.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: Number one, not everybody has the time to sit down and read a book, but they can when they're driving in the car, they can.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: I said, but number two, I have like a half dozen seen impaired friends like in my life, and I'm going, they they they're not gonna be able to read with their I mean if they read through their magnifying glasses, literally, their significant magnifying glasses, it's exhausting.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, so so they gave me my publisher was wonderful and was like, we'll just sign the rights over to you for the for the audio book.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so so I recorded it all myself um uh with working to some of my my video engineering friends, but they I mean audio engineering friends, but I I love doing it too because you can hear my emotion.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um like whenever I start talking about my story of being a sexual abuse victim, um, it was it was a very emotional thing to be reading what I it's one thing to have it in black and white, it's another thing to be audio booking it because it's a uh But it's it's the different modes.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's going, okay, I want if I believe in this message and it's actually going to be powerful, I want to be able to package it in whatever way people can get their hands on so that we can create a conversation and a connection.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that is that is so true.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because the audio, people experience audio in different ways than they experience reading, because reading is is a little bit detached because you can't really sense emotion as much in the written word.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: But when you hear somebody talk about it, or you especially when you hear somebody speak live and see them and you can interact with them live, man, that emotional component is such a key part of it.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: And that it reminds me also, too, and this this was also a theological something, but Revelation 1.3, you know, blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecies, and blessed are those who hear it.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I told my students, I said, that's the way these letters would have been received in the first place.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: So I said the best way you can read the book of Revelation is to have it on audiobook and close your eyes and let the images explode.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one thing I want to ask you about, uh, because I'm really curious about how you approach this.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: So probably it was sometime last year, we were talking about who could we get to come and do our lectureship?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody in our among our faculty said, Hey, what about Shane Wood?
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: I forget who it was.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then Uh we had somebody from our faculty, I think, email you and then you replied back with, Yeah, let me think about this, but uh but I have a group of people who help me make these decisions about what commitments that I accept, which I thought was so interesting.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to ask you about that.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: How does that work?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you have that in place?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Could the average Joe have something similar in their life?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um you know, it it has a lot to do with self-exploration.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um several years ago, uh it's been about about a decade now, I I came to this conclusion.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um I can't be trusted with my own schedule without it hurting me and my family.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I feel that I mean like everybody should should have areas in their life where they know what they can and cannot handle.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, whether we're talking, you know, finances, like it's like I genuinely believe, um, especially in my 20s, if I became a millionaire, it would have cost me my soul.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like I knew for a while, uh, and it's changing now, but I knew for a while there was a threshold.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: If I made more than this money, uh my heart started to teeter.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's it's knowing who you are.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: And honestly, whenever the schedule was in my own hands for my first seven years of ministry, um, I was I was a workaholic and it was it was it was damaging to me and my family.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_03: So um in in the process of simplifying my life, uh, because at the time I was planned three years out, which I don't do that anymore.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I was booking that far out, and it was so intense that there was I was looking forward to months and months passing so I could get a break.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: So knowing that I I have a problem, I need accountability.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um I have a group of people that in any speaking event, however small, however big, they receive it, they pray over it, and they give me their answers individually.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: They don't know what the other people are saying because I want to hear the collective wisdom without anybody influencing the other.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then I take I take their responses and the request to my wife, who then gets to make the final say.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because for her, she's gonna have a perspective inside the home that even however close my community is, they may overlook.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so if she is weary in a way in which she hasn't been able to express before, um, I want to give her the opportunity to give the final yes or no.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then during that whole process, my job is to simply be praying.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then once I receive all of their word, then then then I get to make uh I get to have a say, kind of a kind of a point.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but um yeah, it it it took years to develop, but it was because of years of pain and and uh mistakes I had made with my schedule that hurt me and my family.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: So have there been times in this process where sort of internally you have disagreed with the consensus, like you really wanted to do something, but the consensus was you shouldn't do this, or they said, Oh, you should do this, but internally you were thinking, uh, I don't really want to do this, but the consensus seems to be that I should do this.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you deal with that?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, um there has been.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_03: Matter of fact, and this isn't so much a speaking event, but I I use my community for a lot of major life decisions like this too.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_03: So uh I whenever I whenever I ended up choosing uh University of Edinburgh as my PhD, where I went to go get it, I actually had taken it off the table uh because we were gonna have to move, my family and I were gonna have to move over there for six months.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I am not moving my family to Scotland for six months, not happening.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: So I just took it off the table.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was asking them about two or three other options that I would have been able to stay in in America.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_03: And uh one of my community members said, no, wait a minute, I thought I thought there was another option in Scotland.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: What happened to that one?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I told them, and they were like, That's not that's not okay.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_03: You can't take that off the table.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_03: As a matter of fact, then we started talking through Edinburgh, and basically the person in the community was like, Out of all the choices, that's mine.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, No, that's not on the table.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_03: And then I was like, all right.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: So then I took it to everybody else in the community, and everybody was like, Oh no, that's the option.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, No way.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_03: So then I took it to my wife and I was like, This is what everybody's saying.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't this stupid?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: And she goes, I think that's what we need to do.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I I was still adamant.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, no.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_03: And she and I said, Honey, we would have to sell our house.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: I said, we would have to, I was like, this is too much.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_03: And she just goes, I'm putting the house up on the market.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_03: I said, fine.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_03: I said, if if the house sells, and like before I needed to tell them, which was like three or four weeks away, I was like, then fine.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_03: And she sold it in five days.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that was a time where I, you know, where the it there is there is wrestling, there is struggle with it.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, there is a give and a take, there is a conversation.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: However, um I I also have prayed pretty um intensely about this community.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times when I'm praying, I'm asking the Lord to speak through their collective wisdom.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: And if I'm going to go against it, uh it's not that that's never happened, but I I do not take that lightly, and 99% of the time I don't override it.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I I love that concept.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard people talk before about a personal board of directors, which I think is the same concept that you're talking about.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've considered doing that myself.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've never really pulled the trigger on that, but I guess in some ways have that in place in my life, just not a collective group.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have several individuals who basically function in that regard, but sure.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that that takes a lot of humility and just the willingness to kind of uh put your own desires in the back burner in exchange for saying, okay, the wisdom of the group is better than my individual wisdom.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: Which is something that we all can learn from for sure.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I and I trust them.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I trust that even the things I've said no to because they said no to, that God brought the right person for that, and and it wasn't me, and that's okay.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because we can't do everything.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_03: Which is which is why he makes us have a Sabbath.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Despite our American male, you know, impulse of we're we're supermen.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, hyperactivity, right.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as we start to wind this down in the next uh few minutes here, I've got a couple of other things that I want to ask you about, as well as a lightning round, which is um something something new.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying in the podcast, and it may totally bomb, but we'll see where it goes.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I want to make sure and ask you about is uh if you had to pick one thing, I know it's impossible to pick one thing, but if you had to pick one habit or practice that has contributed the most to your success, what would it be?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_03: Whoa.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_03: Only one.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you want to do two, that's fine too.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, then I will do two, because the two that are competing are both very important to me.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_03: Number one, it's um it's having a consistent um uh practice of contemplative prayer.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I mean, i I had I I actually believe, and this is something that I I I'm looking forward to the Restoration Movement, um, you know, Christian Churches, Churches of Christ, but in the Protestant movement as a whole, exploring more is the rich uh diversity of ways of praying that have been present in the church for thousands of years.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so I actually have some like centering prayer that I do uh that that comes developed out of like a Thomas Keating um uh type strand, kind of your Thomas Merton type strand.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that to me has been essential because it it um it it's it's a practice of of emptying myself of myself so that I can receive the Lord.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's right, and I need that.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: I need to clear the space of myself so that he can fill in whatever it is uh that he wants to fill in.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_03: That's been essential.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but then also too, it's just showing up, not measuring the success of the day, uh showing up and doing something.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh telling my students uh, you know, a lot of times students they they make the mistake of they try to read their book report for the book report the night before.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't work.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm like, why would you ever sit down and read 200 pages at once anyway?
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I told him, I say, if you read 20 pages a day, you can finish around a book a week.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: I said, it's it's not, it's not, it it the problem is is we try to take two big a chunks at once.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then every time so we sit down and we're like, I'm gonna I'm gonna sit down and read for five hours.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, why would you ever sit down to read for five hours?
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, but you know, if you're if you're showing up and then you you are chiseling, if you realize this is a marathon, not a sprint, uh having that type of template in place for me has been very helpful.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like, you know, I you know, people look around, they're like, You read all those books?
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: My res in my office, and my response is always not in a day.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, 10, 15, 20 pages a day.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's been a that's been a huge principle for me as far as accomplishing a lot, but doesn't feel like a lot.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's great.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: Really good stuff there.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: You've got some uh great tweetable quotes in there.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have to make sure and include those.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: So uh ready for our lightning round?
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is our creative lightning round.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it feels like a game show.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're getting ready to play Plinko when the price is right.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: It reminds me of I saw Satan fall like lightning.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a little scared.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: So Okay, so I've just got five quick things here.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is what's your favorite movie?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um I don't know because I don't really watch movies.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if that's gonna be a good answer.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_03: I can um I don't I don't know that I have one.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_03: Or TV show.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: TV show?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I I am an office fan.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_03: So I've I've got my Dwight Shroot bobblehead right up there.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my uh academic dean at the college, Scott Womble, has one of those in his office as well.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: Does he though?
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's hilarious.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you want me to publicly reveal that, but it's too late now.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's too late.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, favorite movie.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, favorite music group or solo artist?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh, yeah, that's easy for me.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh John Mayer is my favorite solo artist, and then the band Camino is my favorite.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Great choices.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: I love John Mayer.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: He seems amazing.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, unbelievable guitar player, especially live.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_03: I've watched him finish a guitar solo live with a drumstick.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, anyway.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: I came across a video of him just a few days ago where this was uh I forget what song it was.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a song from his new album, whatever it was.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he it was a video of him working through the guitar solo and figuring it out.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was like an eight-minute video, and he's just figuring it out as he goes along.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating because you see the finished product that these massive artists put out, but you don't often think about the fact that they're working through it to figure out what it is.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was so cool.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's actually a working at a craft.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't it doesn't come out romantically all the time.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, number three is your favorite book, and this could be fiction or nonfiction, or one of each.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Lilith by George McDonald is my favorite fiction book, uh, and my favorite book of all time.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh if I went to nonfiction, The Doors of the Sea by David Bentley Hart.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's only like 90 pages, but it is a powerful, powerful book.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, number four is what is a creative failure that you have experienced in your life and what did you learn from it?
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_03: Whoa.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_03: A creative failure that I've learned in my life.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, you know, we uh I was a part of a um uh of a traveling Christian band for about five years, and we've recorded two albums.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't they my first album I recorded myself and it was a train wreck.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I I realized that there's sometimes it does not matter how much time you put into something, if you don't know what you're doing, it still will not turn out well.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's a good principle.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was yeah, that was very learning for me.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the number five is what is the project you're most excited about working on right now?
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh, man.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_03: The project I'm most excited about working on right now.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_03: Problem is, is I usually like to work on like five things at once.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh because I I it's almost kind of like uh George Costanza in Seinfeld.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: He dresses by mood.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: I usually work on projects by mood.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm really excited about uh an idea of a book I'm writing.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: It I mean I've written like 50,000 words on it, but I it's nowhere near where I want it to be.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but it's on asking the question, how do I see the way the magi saw?
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh because I'm so fascinated by about the magi at the birth of Jesus, where they looked at creation and were able to know that God was moving.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um and that to me has always been the the Bible records this weird, they saw a star, but because they were so in tune with the creation of the creator, uh, they were able to know he was revealing something.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so so if we have the special creation of the Bible and we put it together with the eyes of the magi, how would that transform the way that we engage every moment?
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_03: So that's that's kind of the next book I'm wrestling with right now.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'm excited about it because of what it is that's unearthing in me.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's really cool.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and if you release that around you know October or something, you could get some major Christmas marketing out of that.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's a good marketing right there.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's yeah, I I love that.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's so is that for sure gonna be your next book project?
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's the one that's the furthest along down the trail.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: Gotcha, gotcha.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's captured my heart right now most prominently, but you know, you might might hit a roadblock to the point where I have to set it aside for a year or so and wrestle with something else.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's fascinating.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Shane, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me today.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh man, you've shared a lot of gems here.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is really good stuff.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's inspired me personally, and I know it's gonna add a ton of value and inspiration to listeners.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much, Ken.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: I really appreciate it.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: How can our listeners connect with you?
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: What's the best way?
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, uh my website, shanejwood.com.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's the best way to connect, not just with the material, but there's a contact page there that uh if they have any email questions, they can email it.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, all the information about the new books all on there and stuff, but shanejwood.com, that's the best.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks again for doing this and God bless.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Kent.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I hope you enjoyed this interview with Shane Wood.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here are my three biggest takeaways from our conversation.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, education is not just the transferring of information, it's the transferring of an identity.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on this point, I want to point you back to what he mentioned about Dr.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Lowry.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Lowry was a teacher that both Shane and I had at Lincoln Christian Seminary in Lincoln, Illinois.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: Lowry was probably the best teacher that I've ever had.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even all the way from the time when I was a kid up through when I graduated from seminary, he was a phenomenal teacher, a phenomenal speaker, uh, phenomenal communicator.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you had him as a student, you didn't go into a classroom where he just lectured and sort of dispensed information.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: You went into an experience and into a relationship with Dr.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: Lowry.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now he was a a scholar, he was a well-known expert on the Book of Revelation, a well-known Bible and New Testament scholar.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: But you got much more than just information whenever you had Dr.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: Lowry as a teacher.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: You went into an experience.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: An experience where you were going to be changed as a person because of his passion and because of his relationship with you.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the best educational experiences ought to be like.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Shane I I'm sure that he is doing that with his students.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly happens to me whenever I hear him speak.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that as a professor I am doing that for my students.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Shane mentioned that education is done best when you study under someone that you want to be like.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: That to me is a really profound insight.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: And for all of us who write or teach or speak or lead people, or if you're a pastor or uh CEO or a business leader, whatever it is that you do to influence people, we are transferring our identity to those that we lead and that we teach.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something really important to keep in mind.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: So really the question doesn't become what information are we transferring, the question becomes what identity are we transferring through what we're doing?
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that must begin with us.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: It must begin with our identity as a person.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do we want other people to become like us?
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that really kind of puts the the pressure on us and puts the onus on us to become a better and better person every single year.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, every time that we create something, it means we've got to become a better person if we want to teach other people in a more meaningful way.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: If we want to if we want to produce a more effective audience, if we want to produce someone who's more effective as we write and as we teach and speak, then we've got to become a better person ourselves.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: Takeaway number two, the writing process is filled with tensions and that is what keeps things interesting.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't think in this conversation Shane necessarily used the term tensions or referred to the concept of tensions, but you notice that several times he referred to to these things that you have to keep in balance in the creative process.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: For example, he mentioned that when he was writing the first draft of his book called Between Two Trees, which I highly recommend to you, that he went away to somewhere that was kind of this romantic, not like Hallmark movie romantic, but kind of a very um sensory kind of a place that that really appealed to your senses.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was a place where you would want to go and write and it appealed to you emotionally and and the geography of the setting was was a key part of him writing you know the first pass of that book.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then he also talked about the editing process, which tends to be grueling and tends to kind of grind on and you know, anybody who's ever written something and then had to have it edited, or you've been through that editing process, you realize that there's not a lot of romance involved in the the editing process.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just kind of sitting down and working through it.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just part of the process.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that tension between you know uh creating something and the enthusiasm and the excitement and the energy of making something for you know the first pass at it.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's the reality of going back and editing it and refining it and making and making it into the final form.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's also the tension between uh the need to get your book marketed and get it out there and get it in front of people, but then also needing to have fun and experiment with the process.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there's the tension between uh the creative process where you are making something, you're creating something, but then there's the flip side of it where uh in the process of creating something, it is also recreating you in that process.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just something where we remain static, we remain the same person as we create something.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: The process of creative work also creates us, it changes us within that process.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole creative process is filled with these tensions, and I think that's uh that's what keeps it interesting.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh why we're artists, because we love this process that's uh at times unpredictable, at times a little bit draining, and at times just kind of mundane, but that's what it means partly to be an artist and a creative.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: Takeaway number three, we are story-based creatures.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: I love the way that Shane structures his talks.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you've uh never heard him speak, go to his website, it's shanejwood.com and check out uh some of his talks and lectures.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's gobs and gobs of stuff there, it's just amazing all the stuff that he has there.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: So check it out.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll discover that uh as we talked about in this conversation, he has a very story-based way of communicating.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he talked about how he creates dissonance and conflict and disequilibrium within his talks intentionally almost to make the listener a little bit uncomfortable.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is is not because discomfort is good for its own sake, but because that discomfort is part of the it's part of the narrative arc that you have to experience as a listener when you're when you're uh reading or listening to a story.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_00: The character has to come to a point where they are uncomfortable and where when there's conflict and whenever you're not sure how things are going to turn out or where they're going, that's what creates drama, that's what creates interest in the story.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: And a talk should have those elements as well.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever way that you communicate to people, whether it's in sermons, lessons, writing, you know, fiction, nonfiction, giving talks, whatever it is, how can we introduce conflict and disequilibrium into our communication?
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just something to think about because after all, we are story-based creatures.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're always approaching our communication in a totally predictable and dry and boring way, then that means we're not really ungoing we're not really going to engage people on the level that we could.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a lot of value in understanding story structure and in breaking down stories.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for anybody who communicates and leads, you need to study screenwriting.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: You need to study story structure and and at least have a basic understanding of how stories work and then how we can use those concepts in our communication.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: Shane mentioned that he has a theater background, which I love because I have a theater background as well.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he uh he talked about how being in theater taught him how to communicate a story and to also read a room.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: And man, that is so valuable, particularly in public speaking, whenever you are reading the room and and every crowd is different.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now my background is teaching and pastoral ministry, and I'm I'm getting more into public speaking sort of outside those contexts, but have not done a ton of it up to this point, even though I I really want to and am working toward that.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: But for those of us for those of you who are listening who are in a church or ministry or teaching context, this can work in the same way.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: Just the ability to read a crowd and to sense the mood and to sense the spirit in a room, and then being able to respond to that.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last thing that I want to say about this issue of us being story-based creatures, you know, for those of you who are are are kind of thinking, well, that story stuff, you know, it it's nice, but it's kind of fluff and you know, there's not a lot to that.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's just kind of entertainment.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: I do want to remind you that the majority of the Bible is in narrative form.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jesus told lots and lots of stories.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he was a master storyteller.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was a master at teaching through the power of of narrative and story.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the Old Testament, you know, uh or at least a large chunk of it is uh stories.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: So God values stories and God communicated through stories in much of the Bible.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: So never ever doubt the importance of storytelling in what you're doing because it's key to who we are as people, it's key to how God communicated his word to us, and it's just a really powerful way that we can get our points across and engage with people.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my friends, those are my thoughts, but I'd love to hear what you think about this episode.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can do that in a couple of different ways.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: The first way is you can go to Kent Sanders.net slash zero nine three where you'll find the blog post that's associated with this podcast episode.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can scroll down to the comment section and leave a comment and let me know what you thought about this episode.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can also head over to Apple Podcasts, otherwise known as iTunes, uh, and leave a rating and a review for the show, which I really appreciate because it helps other people to discover the show as well.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, if you want to, you can do it the old-fashioned way and just send me an email at Kent at KentSanders.net.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear from you and uh would appreciate any comments on how I can improve the show or what you enjoy about it.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want to thank Shane Wood for taking the time out of his really busy speaking and teaching schedule to share in this conversation.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I would encourage you to shoot him any thoughts in this episode about what you took away from it.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: Just go to Twitter and send him a message at Shane J Wood.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, thank you for listening to this episode.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your support honestly means the world to me.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that out of all the podcasts in the world, you're listening to this one just really means the world to me, and I'm I'm very sincere about that.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to check out my free Ultimate Toolkit for Creative Entrepreneurs, which is packed with 24 amazing resources to help you write and self-publish your book, unlock your creative genius, grow your business, and be more productive.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can find the free toolkit at Kentstanders.net slash toolkit.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, before we close out this episode, I want to leave you with a quote from Albert Einstein, who said Creativity is contagious.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: Pass it on.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that you were born to create and designed to make a difference.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now go create something awesome.