Latest / Mission SONlight CHATT / Mission SONlight Chatt Ep.1 with Steven Grabiner
Transcript
- 0:00Music
- 0:22Welcome to Mission Sunlight from the Media Missionaries of Network 7 Media Center.
- 0:27We are in our world headquarters studio located here in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the United States of America.
- 0:33And wherever you are listening around the world, welcome. We're glad you're with us.
- 0:36My name is Christopher Beeson and with me today is Dr. Stephen Gravner.
- 0:41We'll talk to Stephen just a little bit through the program today about his credentials and what he is and what he does and a bit about his family and his history and past.
- 0:51But before we do that, I want to also introduce our director of production and engineering today, Jordan Wagner down there hiding in the darkness.
- 0:58So we'll chat with him a little bit as we go along as well. But he's making sure that the program stays on track.
- 1:04So Mission Sunlight Chat is a nonprofit Christian media production.
- 1:09So if you'd like to know more, visit us at MissionSunlight.org. And if you want to give, you can click donate there.
- 1:15Thank you in advance for whatever you're led to give your prayers, your money or any combination of these.
- 1:21We're truly grateful for you. We appreciate whatever you would like to do for this work.
- 1:25Now, just one more thing before we get into today's program. We need to grow.
- 1:30We want to touch more lives for Jesus to share the story of Jesus, to spread the truth as it is in Jesus.
- 1:36So please, if you can give your time, if you can't give your time, you can't give your prayers, you can't give monies, would you please please share the link to today's program?
- 1:46Send it to a friend. Send it to an enemy. Posted on your social media. Text it to a friend right now.
- 1:52Even snail mail if you want. Share Mission Sunlight Chat today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
- 1:59And again, welcome to our guest, Dr. Stephen Gravner. I'm just going to call you Stephen.
- 2:04That's perfectly good. Stephen, will you open us with a word of prayer as we begin?
- 2:08Yeah, it'd be my privilege, Christopher. Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity to talk about how you transform lives, how you call us into service,
- 2:20how you use each one of us, and we invite your presence to be with us.
- 2:25And we pray for all the listeners that something shared today would touch their hearts as well. In Jesus name. Amen.
- 2:33Amen. Thank you, Stephen. And thank you for joining us today. My privilege.
- 2:37I appreciate you sharing your time with I really didn't think about this as being the world headquarters, so I'm really honored to be here.
- 2:43Well, we're talking to two individuals in ministry. I don't want to say leaders because some people are just everyday missionaries.
- 2:56And you have been a leader in ministries around the globe. And yet today you're I would say you're just a sidewalk missionary,
- 3:08just meeting people here in our community. And I'm sure I've met with you before through Zoom and so forth.
- 3:14But your your experience has been broad and not to diminish it, but rather simple as well, depending on where you are.
- 3:25And so I like that flavor of experience you bring. So before I get ahead of saying too much about the experience you bring,
- 3:32tell us a little bit about about yourself. Tell us about your present. What are you doing?
- 3:36But then about your family, your work, your business. Well, my family is totally fantastic, tremendously loving and supportive wife.
- 3:44Three kids, two of them are married, six grandkids. Totally fantastic time and really amazing.
- 3:51We all like to be together for periods of time, but it's it's really great.
- 3:57So I'm so I like to hear you mention the six grandkids because I have a couple and I have a couple more on the way.
- 4:02So I'm pretty excited. I'm not going to get to six this year. Just four. It's it's amazing. Totally.
- 4:09That's right. They're a lot of fun. So I've got the one more child that means to get married and have kids.
- 4:15But yeah, so about three years ago, I stepped out of my full time employment, which actually was a couple of major jobs.
- 4:27I was president of a nonprofit organization called Outpost Centers International,
- 4:33where we served and networked about 200 ministries in about 85 different countries.
- 4:39So that involved a lot of leadership training, coaching, a lot of travel.
- 4:45And I was also a pastor of the church. And three years ago, I stepped out of that.
- 4:50And now I do leadership coaching. Pretty much.
- 4:54That's my main focus with some writing that I'm doing as well.
- 5:00So you were a layman kind of doing double time.
- 5:05Well, actually, I'm an ordained minister. And so I went I had been a pastor for many years,
- 5:13took a break when my family and I moved to Africa and then came back.
- 5:18And then we started a church plant and I was, quote, the lay leader, but actually an ordained minister.
- 5:24So when your family went to Africa, are you saying you went there to serve as an ordained minister?
- 5:30I went as a mission director for a project. And when I was there,
- 5:35I was given my local credentials from the local conference and did a lot of baptisms and had a district that I oversaw as well.
- 5:43Where was that?
- 5:44A country of Zambia. Great place. Very friendly people.
- 5:48So that was when you worked with Riverside Farm.
- 5:50That's correct. I was the director of Riverside Farm for just under 10 years.
- 5:54So is that always a ordained minister position?
- 5:57No, no, no. I was actually the first director who was also an ordained minister.
- 6:03So a little unusual. Very much unusual. And that's part of my background is
- 6:11I grew up in a Jewish family and had a conversion when I was in my 20s.
- 6:16And at that point, I was involved in lay ministry where I felt like I was called to get involved.
- 6:25And then later on, I went to school and I became an ordained minister and eventually got my doctorate in theology.
- 6:32With Mission Sunlight, Jordan and I have had a slightly different perspective and experiences with mission work.
- 6:40Jordan also has been a missionary with his family living in where were you, Jordan?
- 6:45We were in the Congo.
- 6:46OK. Which one? I can't remember.
- 6:49The Republic of Congo.
- 6:52OK. Is that Kinshasa or?
- 6:55Brazzaville.
- 6:56Brazzaville. OK. Remembering your experience there too.
- 7:01It's a unique experience to work in Africa. Different culture, different, just different.
- 7:06Lots of different dynamics. And Congo is very different than Zambia.
- 7:11OK. So you you find yourself do you consider yourself retired now in the work you're doing?
- 7:22No, goodness, no. Self-employed is the word I'm still using.
- 7:27Tell me about the work you're doing. What's it called?
- 7:30And my organization is Percepta Perceptor Leadership Coaching.
- 7:34So I do coaching for pastors, ministry leaders, organizations. I work with organizations to develop OKRs, objectives, and then key results to help them move forward.
- 7:49And personality assessments, 360 evaluations for a variety of different leaders.
- 7:55OK. How broad is that scope? Are we talking global? Are we talking here in the local Chattanooga area?
- 8:01So I have had overseas pay overseas clients, leaders of ministries that were involved with OCI, quite a number of them overseas.
- 8:13Currently, most everybody's in the United States. Currently, everybody is in the United States.
- 8:18OK. Actually, except for one person who wrote me this morning from Zimbabwe.
- 8:23What are some of your favorite aspects of the work you're doing? What drives you?
- 8:27So I look I look at what I'm doing as being an electrician or like an electrician to help people rewire their brains so that their lives are more impactful and fulfilling.
- 8:41And to to help people do that rewiring in a conversation, you can see when somebody gets like, oh, I never thought of that before.
- 8:53So they get one of those aha moments and they look off to the side and they're really trying to figure something out and then something clicks.
- 9:00That's tremendously rewarding.
- 9:04And to see leaders, I had a leader that I have a leader that I'm coaching who took something that came out of our recent experience and texted me a couple of days later said, you know,
- 9:18I have the same problem with this other leader as I do with my daughter, and now I'm applying the solution with my daughter and it's making an amazing difference.
- 9:26It's kind of personality issues. So it's just tremendously rewarding to see people move forward and to realize more of what their thinking is.
- 9:38Full disclosure, you and I have done some coaching together as well.
- 9:43But it's neat to hear about that one leader with kind of the double aha moment of the double application of the principles they're learning and perceptive.
- 9:50That's great. I know you don't just do lay ministries.
- 9:55I know you don't just do coaching. I know you don't just do pastoring.
- 9:59You and I have talked about some of your worldwide outdoor adventures. You're not afraid of getting outside.
- 10:05So what are some of your hobbies? What do you like to do when you get out?
- 10:10Biking, a little less hiking now than I'm used to.
- 10:14Kayaking, actually, this summer we were supposed to be kayaking the inside passage, which goes from the Alaska-Canada border up to the till you run out of water in Alaska.
- 10:27Unfortunately, some things came up and we had to postpone the trip till next year.
- 10:31But so that's on the docket for next summer, hopefully.
- 10:34And that's not just your traditional kayak.
- 10:36It's about 24 days, pretty much self-contained. Not entirely. There are some small towns.
- 10:43Re-stock along the way. And you have to have a different kind of kayak for that kind of work.
- 10:47Yeah, I have a 17-foot sea kayak.
- 10:52Maybe we'll get out and see that sometime.
- 10:55All right. Anything more about your family, you and your wife. Your wife's been along on this journey.
- 11:02She has. She retired early. She retired when COVID hit and she loves it.
- 11:11One of her real strengths is helping people.
- 11:14So she's able to take lots of chunks of time and go help some of her friends.
- 11:20Well, Stephen, thank you for sharing that part. We're going to take a break.
- 11:25Just a reminder to our audience, you can visit missionsunlight.org.
- 11:29It's a place where you can learn more and you may give there, too.
- 11:33And I want to remind you, share the link to today's program or the entire show podcast platform with a friend.
- 11:38You can do that by text, social media, even by email.
- 11:41Take a moment right now during the break and share it with someone.
- 11:44We'll be right back with more Mission Sunlight Chat.
- 12:14Welcome back to Mission Sunlight Chat.
- 12:39Our guest today, Dr. Stephen Gravner from Percept leadership, Percepta leadership coaching.
- 12:45Thank you for getting that straight. Percepta leadership coaching and Jordan Wagner, our engineer today.
- 12:52Stephen, tell us a bit about how you got here. You've described your life and experiences today.
- 12:59How did you get here? What were your experiences growing up? Your influences?
- 13:02Just give us a little picture of your journey.
- 13:04So as I briefly mentioned earlier, I grew up in a Jewish family.
- 13:08I was bar mitzvahed, went to Hebrew school, had a tragedy when I was young.
- 13:12My father passed away when I was 10.
- 13:16And so it really impacted my life and picture of God.
- 13:20So in my teenage years after my bar mitzvah, oh, it was the 60s and 70s.
- 13:27And we got into the lifestyle that was there, a lot of experimentation with drugs.
- 13:33And then when I was in my early 20s, had a situation where three, it's hard to even call them prayers,
- 13:46but they were like thought prayers, like, OK, God, if you're there, do this.
- 13:53And the three were I had a girlfriend who was an atheist.
- 13:59I said, OK, God, if you're real, work in her heart. That seemed safe and distant.
- 14:04And secondly, I prayed, I just want to know if Jesus is the way, the truth and life.
- 14:10I need to change my life.
- 14:13And the third prayer had to do with an article that someone shared about Orion's nebula.
- 14:20So I was with some friends. It was Christmas Day.
- 14:24Everybody was imbibing of some illegal substance.
- 14:30I wasn't because I had a sore throat.
- 14:32And on the way home, my girlfriend started asking, why would Christ hate Satan?
- 14:39And then before I could give any kind of an answer that I'd learned from my other friends,
- 14:45she started talking about the war in heaven and just opened up like, oh, yeah, there was this war in heaven.
- 14:51And Satan was jealous. And I just had like chills.
- 14:56Then we got back to my house and I started sharing something that my Christian friends had shared with me about Daniel nine.
- 15:06And as we walked through it, it was just clicked.
- 15:12Canaan Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Sanctuary Service, Isaiah 53, Daniel nine, Jesus as the Messiah.
- 15:20And I surrendered.
- 15:23Just went to bed that night, surrendered, woke up the next morning really excited.
- 15:27I couldn't remember what I was excited about. But then I realized, oh, yeah, Jesus is the Messiah.
- 15:32And my life took a dramatic change ever since then.
- 15:36So the Holy Spirit studied you right into it.
- 15:39Yeah. And I'm the kind of person that would study things out when people would tell them to me.
- 15:46So I did a lot of research. I kept studying with my friends and with other people.
- 15:52And obviously, the Sabbath was very clear to me because I had grown up Jewish.
- 15:59I found a tract many years ago that talked about what happened when people die.
- 16:03And I used to use that in arguments with other Christians that death was like a sleep.
- 16:10And everything fell together for me.
- 16:14Wow.
- 16:17Growing up Jewish, were you practicing pretty consistently?
- 16:22So we were reformed. We would go to temple on holidays.
- 16:27When I was younger, my mom would ship me off to synagogue on Sabbath.
- 16:32But she wouldn't come. But she made sure I went.
- 16:36And I went to Hebrew school Sunday afternoons and Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons as well.
- 16:42And I remember jumping forward to your early 20s, this young lady that began to discuss theology.
- 16:47That's not my wife.
- 16:49So get us there.
- 16:52So through my conversion, I knew that Jesus was the Messiah.
- 16:57I knew that Saturday was the Sabbath. And I figured he must have a people someplace.
- 17:02I had some friends that were Seventh-day Adventists.
- 17:05And I moved away to a college and studied with a dozen religious groups.
- 17:12And my two tape measures that I would compare everything to were the Sabbath and what happens when a person dies.
- 17:21And I just became convinced that Seventh-day Adventists had the clearest understanding of Scripture.
- 17:27So eventually I was baptized out there, began to work in ministry,
- 17:32and eventually was led to work in a restaurant in New York City, 48th or any place, vegetarian vegan restaurant downtown near Wall Street.
- 17:42And my wife came down there to work. She was a great cook, very modest and helpful.
- 17:50And we got married.
- 17:52Was she raised a Seventh-day Advent?
- 17:55She has been.
- 17:56So her journey was totally different than yours.
- 17:58Totally different and still is.
- 18:01Wow, that's powerful.
- 18:04And so how do you end up pastoring in the Seventh-day Adventist Church?
- 18:13So I was involved in restaurant ministry for quite a number of years.
- 18:16We ran a restaurant, three restaurants in New York City.
- 18:20And then we moved to the Boston area to help start another restaurant.
- 18:27And while there, the Conference Evangelist asked me to help him raise up churches.
- 18:31And so working with him, I began pastoring one of those churches.
- 18:38And that's when I finished my bachelor's.
- 18:41And then I got a call to the ministry.
- 18:43And that's when I finished my master's, went to Yale University, which was a bit of a drive from where I was pastoring.
- 18:51And then ultimately, as I said, I got a doctorate in theology and the Book of Revelation.
- 18:57Okay. And then the jump from Boston to Zambia?
- 19:04So I got called to be a pastor.
- 19:06And while I was pastoring, a friend of mine had been in Zambia and asked me if I would consider coming.
- 19:14And years ago, years previously rather, I had made a list of things I want my family to experience.
- 19:23And one of those things was I wanted my children to have the opportunity to grow up in a third world in another country for their own breadth of experience.
- 19:36And so my wife and I went over for a visit and loved it and packed up the family and moved over.
- 19:46Remind me what the makeup of your family is.
- 19:49So I have a daughter that's the oldest.
- 19:51And she lives in Arizona.
- 19:53She lives in Arizona, her and her husband and their two kids.
- 19:56Pardon me.
- 19:57And it was most difficult for her.
- 20:00And then I had the second child as a son, and he was raring to go.
- 20:08And then the third child is the youngest.
- 20:11And he what did he care?
- 20:12Because he was just four or five.
- 20:16They probably had the idea that there were, I don't know, monkeys and giraffes in Africa.
- 20:21So that'd be for lions and.
- 20:22And so he lived there until he was like 14.
- 20:26So he's very fluent in the local language and very acculturated.
- 20:32Are the both boys here in the Chattanooga area?
- 20:34No, one's in Chicago.
- 20:36The younger ones in Chicago.
- 20:37Well, that's a jungle, too.
- 20:38That's a different.
- 20:39You have totally different last night.
- 20:41He lives in a nice area.
- 20:42Yeah, good.
- 20:45So what else can you tell us about your journey?
- 20:47What is there a story or something that you can share that was specifically to your ministry?
- 20:53Two. Two interesting stories, if I can.
- 20:59Neither one of them are glitzy.
- 21:02I was doing Bible work for the Conference Evangelist and was kind of just wrestling with my call.
- 21:10And so I remember praying, Lord, you know, give me success or get me out of this.
- 21:15And that week I had seven Bible studies going that week.
- 21:19Every one of the Bible studies told me they didn't want to study any longer.
- 21:23So I just prayed, give me success or get me out of this.
- 21:29And then that week they all canceled.
- 21:32And, you know, I was just confronted with, oh, is this an answer to prayer?
- 21:38And then I thought, you know, God's not going to answer that prayer by having people turn away from him.
- 21:46And so I stuck with it and the Lord's blessed my ministry in lots of different ways.
- 21:51So it gave you some sense of understanding God's character.
- 21:55Things don't always go smoothly.
- 21:58You know, you could pray for smoothness, but just because you hit a rough patch doesn't mean God's not still working.
- 22:07It doesn't mean it's not part of God's plan.
- 22:10So that was a lesson there.
- 22:11And then later on in my ministry, I would imagine this happens to every pastor, probably a lot of Christians,
- 22:19where I was struggling internally.
- 22:26It was difficult to pray. It was difficult to study.
- 22:29And I remember taking a shower and this thought really came distinctly to my head
- 22:35that God is more interested in saving me than I wasn't being saved and just trust him.
- 22:43And I didn't have to manufacture anything.
- 22:46I could just trust him.
- 22:49And obviously he got me through that period as well.
- 22:53I've had lots of other nice stories, 400 people baptized and, you know, things of that nature.
- 23:00Churches raised up through evangelistic series.
- 23:03But those were two very particularly meaningful ones for me.
- 23:08Okay.
- 23:10We're going to take a break again.
- 23:15Come back.
- 23:16I want you to tell a little bit maybe how you would encourage others and give us a little bit of what your dreams,
- 23:25what your hopes are and how you might encourage others to move forward with God at the center of their hopes and dreams as well.
- 23:33We certainly hope you've been encouraged and blessed by listening to the program today.
- 23:38We have more to come, but we need to take a break.
- 23:40Remember, you can give it mission sunlight dot org and you can share this program with anyone right now.
- 23:45Thanks for doing both or either.
- 23:48We'll be back with more mission sunlight chat.
- 24:00Our salvation is a day to day matter, isn't it?
- 24:05The real principle of the Sabbath is reconnecting ourselves with the Creator.
- 24:14We must learn to abide in Jesus' name.
- 24:18We move ahead with our mission objectives, recognizing that we are serving together the Most High God.
- 24:37Welcome back to mission sunlight chat.
- 24:39We are talking to founder of Percepta Leadership Coaching, Dr. Stephen Grabner.
- 24:46Stephen, thanks for being with us.
- 24:47Our engineer Jordan Wagner is with us today.
- 24:50Jordan, as you've been listening, if you've got anything you want to ask or jump in with, be glad to hear from you as well.
- 24:56Stephen, you talked a bit about where you are today and your history, how you got here.
- 25:05Where do you want to go?
- 25:06What are your dreams, your hopes?
- 25:08Do you have any hard plans of forward motion for you, your family, your ministry?
- 25:13Just what's ahead?
- 25:16Well, several can go in several different directions.
- 25:21Obviously, with my ministry, the great desire there is to help leaders learn some lessons that a lot of leaders don't learn until much later in life.
- 25:39I don't know if that's really even a possibility, but at least to give them the opportunity to hear, to challenge their thinking, and to perhaps try new ways of changing.
- 25:59One of the great problems with leaders is that we're painfully unaware of our own habits, we're unaware of our own tendencies, so we continue to make the same mistakes.
- 26:13And so helping leaders become aware is really important.
- 26:19And I suppose it's important to me because I've been through with many organizations where the leadership failed and it wrought havoc in people's lives and in the ministry and large collateral damage.
- 26:39So that's a particular concern for me.
- 26:45Thanks for sharing that.
- 26:46Can you give our listeners and our viewers a final challenge to things they're wrestling with and considering in just day to day sidewalk ministry, whatever they might be doing?
- 26:59What would you share with them?
- 27:00Well, one thing that comes to my mind, the first thing that comes to my mind is don't be afraid to walk into situations that might intimidate you, that you might not feel you belong in.
- 27:15I know myself and lots of leaders have, individuals have held back from thinking, oh, that's not for me or I don't belong in that room or something like that.
- 27:30And don't let that mindset keep somebody back.
- 27:36But move forward.
- 27:38And as it says in Scripture, you don't know what's going to prosper this or that.
- 27:43So have the confidence that God's leading and step forward.
- 27:50Yes, there's certainly a place for becoming equipped.
- 27:54But even when we become very equipped, there's this tendency called the imposter syndrome where we feel like we're just a fake.
- 28:05And if everybody knew how just a fake we were, you know, we'd be exposed.
- 28:12Nobody would trust us or want us a part of their.
- 28:14The truth of the matter is almost everybody suffers from that.
- 28:18We're all struggling.
- 28:20You know, we're all in the same boat. We're all part of the fallen humanity.
- 28:25If somebody has more talents than you do, praise the Lord for the gifts and skills that they have.
- 28:33But you have gifts and skills as well.
- 28:36And so to utilize those gifts and skills as God gives you opportunity is a very strong opportunity for fruitful ministry.
- 28:47So don't give up.
- 28:50Don't give up and keep moving forward.
- 28:52Don't hesitate to go into rooms you feel you're not qualified to be in.
- 28:57But go in there and see what God's going to do.
- 29:02Once I was going through a tremendous struggle, I remember my father gave me the advice of keep moving, Christopher.
- 29:07God can turn you to the right of the left as long as you're moving.
- 29:10You're moving. That's exactly right.
- 29:12Jordan, any closing thoughts for our program today before we wrap up?
- 29:15I'm reminded of something that I recently saw that said that when God calls us, he doesn't call us with who we think we are.
- 29:24But he takes into account who we think we are and he equips us with what we need to do to do what God calls us to do even before we think we can do it.
- 29:33So I think that's important to remember to go along with that.
- 29:37And if we move in him, then he'll he'll equip us and he'll move us to where we need to be.
- 29:42He is the great equipper.
- 29:44And the great caller. Yes.
- 29:46And faithful is he who has promised this and he will do it.
- 29:51Let's have a word of prayer and then we'll wrap up the program.
- 29:54Father in heaven, thank you so much for the time with Stephen with Jordan and hearing this word of encouragement.
- 30:00People everywhere every day just need to know that they they're called every one of us and that they'll find the encouragement of the equipping of the Holy Spirit and find it through other lay people like them.
- 30:13Thank you for hearing our program and hearing our prayer and please bless whoever is listening right now that might just need to have that encouragement from your throne of grace.
- 30:21We praise you and honor you for all that you've done and for the opportunity to share with missions and my chat in Jesus name.
- 30:27Amen. Amen.
- 30:29That's today's program from the media missionaries of Network Seven Media Center.
- 30:32This has been Mission Sunlight Chat with our guest Dr.
- 30:35Stephen Grabner. I'm Christopher Beason, your host and again today's engineer, our director of production, Jordan Wagner.
- 30:41We thank you for joining us. We thank you for sharing our show with your friends via text, email and on your social media platforms.
- 30:48We also thank you for your gifts and your prayers, especially, especially your prayers.
- 30:53That's all today from our studios in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
- 30:56This is Mission Sunlight Chat.
- 31:26Thank you.