Latest / What You Have Seen and Heard / Interview with Rev. Mike Morgan

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Interview with Rev. Mike Morgan · What You Have Seen and Heard

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone and welcome to What You Have Seen and Heard.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: The name comes from the story where the delegation from John comes to talk to Jesus
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: and asks him if he is the one that they have been waiting for or
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: if there's somebody else to come.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus tells him after doing miracles just to go back to John and
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Travis Stevick,
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: and I am a pastor of Grace Methodist Church,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: which is a congregation in Marcus,
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Iowa in the Upper Midwest Conference of the Global Methodist Church.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: And this is just a start of a new podcast where I'm trying to talk to people
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: from around our And so this is the very first episode of the podcast.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're figuring things out as we go.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew that one of the folks that I want to talk to as I work through
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome Mike and thank you for being here with me.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's my privilege and I'm glad to be the first guest on your podcast and let's see how it goes.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It should be fun.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I think why I want to start with everybody is I want to know part of one of
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: the things I think that we need to do more of is just get to know one another.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was just curious if you could tell us a bit about who you are,
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: but like even with special attention to you,
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: how did you become a Christian in the first place?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Or if you've always been a Christian, how did God grip hold of you?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: And can I tell you some of your story of becoming a Christian and your call to ministry?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's good.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for me, I was blessed with two parents that I'm going to say were very serious Christians.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a baby boomer.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: You can see that probably by looking at me.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was of the generation where education buildings were being built.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: The education building I went to was large enough that my sister went
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: to eighth grade in it while they remodeled her junior high.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: But my folks were serious about reading the Bible and about serving in the church.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I used to always say this, though, Travis,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: about my growing up in the church is that I had a drug problem in relation to
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: the church because I was drugged to Sunday school,
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: drugged to church and drugged to youth fellowship on Sunday nights.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And even though it was the baby boom,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: so lots of us were around and there were some cute girls and all that kind of stuff
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: that really didn't nourish my life.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Great understanding of the faith.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So again, my parents were very faithful.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: We prayed with regularity in our home several times a day.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: But then when you ask the question of like, how did I actually become a Christian?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: How did I claim that for my life?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that Wesley really has this, or at least it's been attributed to Wesley.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: You would probably know if this is Wesleyan or not,
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: that there's two types of conversion, gradual and immediate.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I experienced both.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a product of both.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: The people that were planting the seeds for the Holy Spirit to reap at the right moment.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I remember we were rowdy.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember my fifth grade Sunday school teachers,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: they were the kind of Sunday school teachers that Churches recruit,
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know, they're new married people.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: They had long hair because it was the seventies and people,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: the kids love,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: they thought the kids would love them because they didn't have any kids
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: or anything like that.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we were horrible to them.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: We were absolutely horrible.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: They were called the Snyders.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember asking them like later,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: like when I was in eighth grade, I'm like, why did you guys stay?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you just throw your books up in the middle of the year?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they said,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: you know, uh,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Mike, um, Whether you're gonna learn it or not at that moment, we're gonna teach it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna at least teach you a good example of what a Christian marriage could be.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, man, that dug in as an eighth grader.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was blessed with Stephen Karen Troxell.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: They led the youth ministry at the Marian Methodist Church there.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: For all the years I was there, they took us to some really cool places.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: But that was a time in the 70s where most of what you did was about ethics.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what were the ethics of feeding the poor?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: What were the ethics of human relationships?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: What were the ethics about all the things in the public?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: So they gave us a lot of time and talent.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: But then I guess,
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: maybe it was my,
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: kind of who I was,
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: what's indigenous to my personality,
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: that there were three or four men that really influenced me.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll come to the preachers later.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: But most of my direction coming up was lay people, including my parents, of course.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: But there were a couple of guys,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn Garian and Maury Barnes,
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: who were ages of parents of a couple of generations of kids ahead of me.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: But they acted when we were in high school.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: They talked to us like we were adults.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: They encouraged us to go to things and listen to what was going on.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then I find I actually, Travis,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: had Fantastically,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: both Methodist,
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Christian football coaches in both high school and college,
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: which kind of set the table.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of the gradual part of my claiming Christ as my Lord and Savior and
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: the leader and only leader I'll ever need in my life.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I was at Iowa Wesleyan College and I cared more about sports than anything.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it was Easter Sunday.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when I preach this, it's 45 minutes.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you the capsule version of that.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: But one of my teammates and his little colleagues in the Fellowship
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: of Christian Athletes went around on Easter Sunday morning.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was playing a spring sport,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: baseball,
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: and there was nobody on campus,
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: on a small college campus on Easter Sunday,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: except sports people and people that were from far away.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So they banged on the doors with these pots and pans.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Came around three times on the third time, you know, they were calling my name out.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like,
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: all right,
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'll get up and go to this 630 in the morning thing,
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know, and it's Easter Sunday.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's outside.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's Iowa.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's wet.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: We don't sit down.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this dude named Sterling had put up together a cross of two pieces of barn wood
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: and he gave it a talk.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so arrogant because of what I said before about growing up in the church
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: that when he was given the sermon, I was thinking to myself, yeah, I could.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know this story better than him.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I can do I can do this better than him.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that I wanted to be a preacher.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was just arrogant.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end, it was a foundational shift for me.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sterling was a big man, a big African-American from Chicago.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: He went to Phillips High School in Chicago, Illinois.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he went up to this barnwood cross,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: and he would just, with his hand, just bust off a piece of it.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he went around to every person,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: one at a time,
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: and he put a piece of that cross in your hands and say,
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: what are you going to do about Jesus?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: He went all the way around.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's only 20 of us there.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're soaking wet by this time.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Water's working up our sweatpants to our knees.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: My feet are soaking wet.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he got to me and he put that in my hand.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I wish I still had it because it's so important to me.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I probably threw it away on the way home.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: But he grabbed my hands and because he weighed about 100 pounds more than me,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: he said, Mike, what are you going to do about Jesus?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I sort of back up like all the rest of them did.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: But then he repeated it again.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I felt the Holy Spirit was working through him.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's in retrospect in the moment.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to get loose.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: But he said that about six times and he kind of dropped in that,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Mike, you know, what do you do about you?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so and he was just a dude.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's 20, just like me.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he finally let go of me.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know what to think about all that.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I had like four hours before I had to be anywhere.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I went home, changed clothes and the warm clothes because it's freezing.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then I did something, you know, my parents, we would pray sitting down or in bed at night.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never done the whole other than organized communion,
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: which basically when I was a kid was just waiting in line until it was your turn,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: not really careful for me.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I got down on my knees and contemplated that question,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: what am I going to do about Jesus in my life?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: I just said, I'm going to receive you as my Lord and Savior.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I started crying like a six-year-old child and snot and all that kind of stuff.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew then,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: this was not like Aldersgate or anything like that,
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: but I knew then that I was a forgiven person, that I had to change my way.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: I quit smoking all that weed,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: quit running around chasing girls and drinking all the beer that was available
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: in Los Angeles and Iowa.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And really, that's where those back...
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Five or six years, those ethical training came in because Christianity does come with ethics.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I lived with that my whole life.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: My parents were incredibly ethical people.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: One was a music teacher, one was a high school principal.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: But then I just made them real.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of where I came from.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you notice that,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to church all the time,
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: but not a single one of those people that gave me a winsome testimony that pulled me
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: into Christianity.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Was my pastors, who I respected greatly, but they weren't as impressionable yet.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: That comes a little bit later on in my story.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's interesting,
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: you know, you think about how many people are in the church every Sunday.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the one thing that I sometimes when we get into that habit,
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder how much of it is we're there almost because if we're
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: in church every Sunday,
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: everyone's going to give us a break and they're not going to ask us
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: about what we're going to do about Jesus because we're already there, you know.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: I heard at one point that someone said that the last great hiding place from God is the church.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I sometimes wonder if people sometimes become pastors to say, boy,
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: if I become a pastor,
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: they'll finally get off my back about what my relationship with Jesus is.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe I'm more cynical than
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I should be.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, Travis.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Over on my bookshelf,
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a 1964 book of worship,
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: and the last thing in every worship was the invitation.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't be a bad idea to bring that back and put that –
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: and make them – I think it's really important for anybody
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: who may end up watching this,
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: if they are a member of a church, it's so easy
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's easy,
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: to think of pastors as kind of having a fundamentally different experience
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: than everybody else's.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: That pastors are somehow exempt from the same struggles and all the rest.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And my experience has generally been that God takes people,
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: there are some people that God makes and they have incredible Gifts of compassion.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And there are some people who have incredible abilities to speak the word of
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: the Lord in a way that can be received well.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And just a vibrant and deep prayer life.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then God takes everybody else and makes them pastors because,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know, we need it to be driven into our lives in a professional way.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Fair enough.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: When I share that,
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: I find lay people really find that interesting and pastors don't tend to like
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: that very much.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I do want to also know that the thing that pastors have in common or should have
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: in common is that there's also been another moment or a period of time in their life
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: where they felt God has been calling them into a special kind of service,
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: vocational ministry and oftentimes to ordination.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So what was that journey like for you?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I'm dumber than a box of rocks, right?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So all this happened to me receiving Christ my sophomore year.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I happened to be the captain of the football team all the years that I was
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: in college except my freshman year.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so it started to come out elsewhere that my behavior was different.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what I would say in the huddle.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And my college coach used to always tell me, you know, cursing is just uncreative.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really help anyone.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really impactful.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I started thinking about that a lot and changing some of that.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I read the Bible.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can't read this fast as you,
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: but I read the Bible three times through during the second half
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: of my college career.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, senior year, you know, that direct question is like, what's the moment?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to say it's a bunch of moments that led to some big moments.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: it's farther down the line than I think laypeople would love to hear about that
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: when I really became convinced that I was to be a pastor.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we're sitting around the dorm like guys did back in those days.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Senior year, everybody's talking about where I'm going to go here.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to work there.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we go around the circle.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's saying somebody said, well, what are you going to do, Mike?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, I don't know, you guys.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is like spring of my senior year.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I'm thinking about going to seminary and being a preacher.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they're all like, well, we all know that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's about time you came into that understanding.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: so that was like a pretty much shove off the cliff because when you're in the,
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: at least in the, that was the early 80s, you know, you're out.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Once you say something like that.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're out because it is like the one or two things that I never wanted to do was be
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: a pastor of the church.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you why.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because I thought church,
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: actual worship service,
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: not all the stuff around it,
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: but I thought worship service,
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: the way they did scripture was just mind deadening dull.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I spent a lot of my life.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Seeking to make sure not just worship, but other programs for that.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: then that's when my pastor became important to me because I'm like,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: well, what do I do?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so Dr.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn Lamb,
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: bless his memory, was fundamental in the next couple of years of helping me through.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because one thing about Dr.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Lamb was he was profoundly concerned with the poor,
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: those that had not enough things in their lives.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: In the Marian Cedar Rapids area,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: and during the last, well, all of my ministry, that was important to me.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that was,
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: so I didn't necessarily dig his sermons,
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: but the ethos or the spirit of Dr. Lamb was, we need to tend to the poor.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: We need to care for those that are the least of God's children,
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: or at least have the least things.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: then I had,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Incidentally,
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: become a religion major at college under the tutelage of a guy named Dr.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: L'Amour,
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: George L'Amour,
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: who was in a period of time,
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: just really,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: he produced voluminous articles and preached at like hundreds of baccalaureates
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: and all that kind of stuff.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So he was a thing.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And all along there, you know, there's that nebulous push of the Holy Spirit.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's really when my senior year,
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I started just finding, you know, that I was getting channeled that way.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then Having that experience with Sterling out at Crane's Pond down
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: at Iowa Wesleyan really led me to,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: unfortunately, probably the most liberal seminary that we have.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: My seminary choice, I didn't know about left, right, middle, theology, all that.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew about how God had saved me, and so I figured...
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: One Methodist Seminary was the best, you know, as good as the other.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I applied to three seminaries,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: one in the east, one in the south, one in the near west in Denver.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this very spiritual matter of how I picked my seminary was
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: that it started latest and I had just met this girl named Teresa.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I had only dated her for about four months.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, so I can...
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not have to go out there until Labor Day rather than middle of August.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to Denver, which I found very, very, very hard.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not academically.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was hard academically, but I was working full time and all that.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I really struggled with
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: the way things were happening in class.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where the podcast wants to go,
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: but Denver was a very, very liberal place in every way.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Our seminary was the home seminary of the Metropolitan Community Church as well.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are things that we've been talking about recently in our church
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: that was just part of life back in the 80s in Denver.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And people would say stuff in class and be like, Whatever.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then realized in five or six weeks,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: they were serious that they were talking about that there was no need for
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: a virgin birth, that Christ's resurrection was actually not.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was a spiritual thing, not a physical thing.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And at the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 was actually just a miracle of sharing.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we all opened our backpacks and gave things.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like, wait, this is just blowing my mind and I'm frustrated.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were in quarters.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So and I apologize if this is longer, but you asked the question.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to give you a true answer.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we were in quarters.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: So after the second quarter, I was done.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to go home,
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: work for my brother in a construction situation for a period of time and
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: then figure out what God wanted me to do.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: But this ministry stuff, if this is what it was, then it was not for me.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I was mistaken about the leadership of my life in the Holy Spirit.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I packed up my car on Saturday night and Sunday I'm waking up.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: I only had a pair of jeans.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Back then you didn't wear jeans.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's up to church.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can go like a hobo off the street.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: But back then you dressed up and we went to the same church where all
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: the professors went across the street from the college,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: which was next door to the headquarters of the conference there.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And standing in my bed, What do you call them?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: An efficiency apartment.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had a roommate in there.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's standing there dressed at 730 when I wake up.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul Garvin,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: who spent his life in Missouri in the Methodist Church,
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: he's standing there dressed too.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you guys doing?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: You never go to the early service.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, you're going to church before you go home.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, I got like a 12-hour drive.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And back then the speed limit was 55.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, I'm going home.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, no, just come to church.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't got any clothes.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I went, you know.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this guy, Travis, this pastor, Dick Vickery, Dr.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Victory, he preaches this sermon.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the title of it, I have no idea of the content, none.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: The title of the sermon was When the Bottom Falls Out.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well, this ought to be interesting.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end was communion because it was whatever day of the month that was.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I went forward for communion.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And seminary students,
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: because we were trying to make good impression on all of our professors and whatnot,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: we sat in the front row, which meant community, you were first.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I go up there,
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I take communion like I've done,
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know, hundreds of times, probably that point in my life.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, I feel these feet above me, you know, like on the chancel.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he starts talking and I'm like, why is the pastor talking right now?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I opened my eyes and I looked both ways, ain't nobody there at the rail.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it happened, that moment of time happened that I was first and last at the communion rail.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So apparently he probably had more services, so he had to get us out of there.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I went back to my seat and my roommate looked at me and said, so what happened to you?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: He says, you don't even look the same.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what had happened to me was I received the message.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: probably if I was in a different tradition,
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I would say I was slain by the Holy Spirit,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know, that the Holy Spirit just communicated to me, you're not going anywhere.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're exactly where I want you to be.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're here to, your mission is to be here and you're never going to give up.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, I never did, you know, so that was, you know, my first year in seminary.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then during my second year of seminary back then,
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And molded into this, I've got the youth ministry job at Colorado Springs St. Paul.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I started in August of like 82, I guess, down there and was going back and forth.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would spend a weekend and a day down there and be the youth minister,
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: which eventually,
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know, I parlayed into a five-year appointment, full-time appointment.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: But during that time,
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: we were doing,
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to call it,
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: depending on who you're,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Our listenership is the preliminary or the deacon's orders of the church.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I walked through that.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe I walked through unscathed, to be honest with you.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think my seminary had, there were 24 of us at our interview day.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Eight of us were selected for ordination, and I was one of them.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I cannot believe that they read my stuff.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know they did, but the questions they gave me.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it was because of where I went to seminary,
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: because all four of us went through, four out of eight.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: That they just said, well, he's going to be great.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's one of us.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what happened then was that summer when we came back to Veterans Coliseum
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: in Des Moines, when Bishop Wayne Clymer said my name and put his hands on me.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Back then, we didn't have 50 people putting your hands on you.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he pronounced, you know, Mike, my name.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then he said, take authority to do the work.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I felt a blast of the Holy Spirit.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: I thought the bottom of my shoes were going to be knocked off.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that, you know, Jesus says you must be baptized by water and the Spirit.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: That was Spirit.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got up from that day and I'm like, let's go.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I didn't want to finish seminary because I just wanted to do ministry at that point.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: I still had two quarters left.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I did that.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I had these great Mentor is just the last piece of,
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: how do you get called into ministry that during that time when I was
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: at Colorado Springs,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was blessed with the mentor I try to be,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: quite frankly, a guy named Gene Yonkin and all the senior pastors.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was a big sub-district.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Colorado Springs at that time was 350,000 people.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a lot of sizable Methodist churches,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: and they would do what we should be doing now, quite frankly.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: What I endeavor to do now is every Monday morning,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: They would meet, we would meet as clergy from nine to 10.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And at 10 o'clock,
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: those of us that were new in our careers would be shuffled into
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: the senior pastor's office.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he had this desk with one of those big conference tables on it.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he would have a different pastor come in there and for a half hour period
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: of time,
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: teach us on what it's like to raise a church budget,
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: how it is you do expository preaching,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: how do you do, and they would just pour into us.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then once a month,
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: One of them would call us and say,
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: now we had to pay ourselves,
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: but they'd say,
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to meet at Trail Dust Steakhouse,
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: which was kind of like a Ponderosa kind of thing, Golden Corral.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they would just pour into us.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: We couldn't always make it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us had funerals and whatnot, but they really took time with that.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: But then I would also say that the lay people at that particular church were so,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: because so, so, so into ministry that they would help me all the time.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and help me understand how people are.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I got to tell you,
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Travis, this guy named Dick Phillips asked me to be co-chair of the financial drive.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing he said to me,
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: he says,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I know you just finished seminary and I know you're a new married,
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: but you need to see how people give here because it's not what you think.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I would look at doctors and lawyers and I'm out giving them because I'm tired.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I He walked me through a financial campaign because I knew nothing about that stuff.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I've been blessed throughout that.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that call to ministry, I think that a lot of people need to know that it's a long process.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Very few of us say, oh, you know, I knew a guy named Glenn Sadler.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: He got up one day and said, oh, I'm going to ministry.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he never turned back.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us have this longer process where there's affirmation.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: it's not this line that just goes like that,
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know, like that, where we're up, down, down, around something.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that's the long answer to your question.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: I can give a shorter one, which says, God called me and I became a
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: minister.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think those details are really important though,
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: especially because we're in a situation where we're trying to establish a culture
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: of call,
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: where whether or not the call is necessarily to pastoral ministry,
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: to vocational ministry,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: that there's this call that God has called each of us to be involved in
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: the ministry.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that...
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't grow up in the church.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't shared anything in my story.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things that I think is interesting about that is I didn't grow up in the church.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that what I've seen over the years is people have this kind
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: of assumption of, oh, you're a pastor.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: You must have already known.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: You must have had the Bible known since you were a little kid.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, I didn't know anything about church when I was a little kid.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I came stumbling in, you know, in high school, you know, and God grabbed me there.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And, but I think it's so important to realize that the people who are
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: in pulpits are just people, you know, they came from the pews.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's not a pastor factory out there somewhere that,
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know, that creates people, you know, to serve.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's people that God calls out of wherever they are.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so part of why I want to also share these stories
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: about how people are called is I hope to kind of build up a database almost
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: of examples of people who are being called in different ways,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: who have different kinds of experiences in the hopes that
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: that will help people recognize when God's calling them to not necessarily be
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: a pastor,
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: although God may be calling them to do that too,
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: but to be thinking about how is God calling them into ministry where they are or
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: if God's calling them to pick up and go somewhere else.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've always said this little alliteration.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've been Mike longer than I've been a minister.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've been a Christian longer than I've been clergy.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've been a person longer than I've been a preacher.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And as I shared throughout that,
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: the most effective pastors, ministers in my entire call and ministry.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the life I've been in have been persons that were not called the vocational ministry.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that most of us aren't,
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: but yet I think the stories,
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: and I hope we get to stories of people that when we did this thing a few weeks ago
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: with 22 kids that are called to have a call.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I said through that,
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: I said to the leadership,
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: I said if five of them become pastors, it's going to be a win.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: But the most important thing for the students,
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: these are upper high school kids,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: was when we had three different persons,
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: a speech pathologist,
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: a massage therapist,
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: and a A teacher come in and share how they are not vocational pastors,
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: but how they work out their call,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: both in their vocation,
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: whatever it is, and in the service to God through his church.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's more important because it's a simple math question.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: At Grace Church, there's more ministers in the pews.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: That has to be the way it is.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we're the ones that Don't stay for, I mean,
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: when you're in a farming community,
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in Iowa,
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know, so a lot of people have farms, they don't move their job like I did.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can't really move their soybean fields, you know, so.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I've seen that.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I live in a rural community.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the things about that is that there was one person who there was
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: a school bond issue a couple years back.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I found out after it all passed and everything
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: that this one particular person was one of the community leaders.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I was struck by the fact that at that time he wasn't married, didn't have any kids.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, why is this guy?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad that he was supporting it because I had kids in school,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: but why is this guy supporting this so much?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: It should have hit me immediately, but it was, oh, because he's not going anywhere.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Any kids he has in the future,
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: and now he has two,
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: and I think he has a third one on the way,
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: any kid he has is going to go to this school.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Even before he ever had a specific return on his investment, he saw how important it was.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's really super important that When we are where we are,
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: we are paying attention to what God's doing and not just assuming there's going
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: to be somebody from far away who's going to swoop in and save the day,
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: that we all need to be part of what God's doing here.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I just think it's a vitally important situation.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: We need to have,
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: if the majority of ministers in the congregation are not in the pulpit,
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: that's a good thing.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if somehow that's not the case, then the church is probably in trouble.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right, I should say, if you have the first, our churches will flourish.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I was blessed throughout my ministry with both some that pre-existed me
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: and some people that had supple hearts that were willing to say,
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: oh yeah, I can go farther in my ministry as a lay person than maybe I thought I can.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: because showing up on church,
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know, just coming to church doesn't make you a Christian.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've proved that in my life any more than,
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Being in a garage makes you a car, staying at McDonald's makes you a french fry.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I think you have to do the work.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Good for you.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, I want to kind of give you to share a little bit about what you have learned about ministry.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, what have you done?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, I guess I'm trying to figure this out as I go, right?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm trying to think about,
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: what are things that you either learned in ministry or you experienced in ministry
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: or were unexpected in ministry in some capacity that you've seen God at work doing?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think, again,
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think that You know,
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: one of these I hear in my experience has been things like, oh,
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: once we know the Bible well enough, then all of a sudden revival will happen.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know,
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: that when we hire,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: when we bring in the right pastor,
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: when we get the right pastor appointed, then we'll be successful.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've been to enough churches that they'll tell their story as a church
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: and they'll say something along the lines of,
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: you know, oh, When things were good, it's because so-and-so was the pastor here.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: When things were bad, it's because this other person was the pastor there.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that that's not totally accurate.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm curious to know about how do people learn and see God at work?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: And again,
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: the hopes are trying to show that there's a lot to this that may not necessarily be
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: the way we think about it naturally.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: But if we can see enough examples of God at work,
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: maybe that'll help us to open our eyes to what God's doing in our midst too.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: you say that and I don't know when I look backwards
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: if people were feeling like called to do things in the church or to do things around
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: the church.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to tell you, I think I'm going to answer your question.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll do the best I can.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: So first I'm going to tell you about,
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: you think things that you've kind of learned in a long career of ministry,
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: you know, and Again, I'm still in it.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just, nobody pays me now.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the most, which also means I don't have a board that can fire me.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I like that part too.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to start with pastoral care.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: The most important facilitator of pastoral care was a fellow named Morris Jones.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Morris Jones was a colonel in the United States Air Force and he was dying of cancer.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I would go weekly to United States Air Force Academy Hospital and visit him.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And in the last probably week of his life, he's just stopped me.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: because I'd taken,
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: what, four or five classes in seminary and pastoral care and all that kind of stuff.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Mike, I'm going to die in the next week or two.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he was right.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, but I need to tell you three things.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they're going to all hurt your feelings.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: He says, first, and I'm going to use his language, so I apologize if you have to bleep this.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Mike, you come out here, you stay too damn long.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a dying man.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: From my pastor, 15 minutes is a long enough time to be in my hospital room.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to sit here for an hour.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: And second, he says, don't come in here and talk to me about the Dallas Cowboys or Chicago Cubs.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not here for that, and that part of my life is over.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: And third,
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: he says,
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: there's been twice over the last six months or so when you've come in,
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: and my friends have been here,
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: and you had a great opportunity to pray or share the gospel.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you ever leave a hospital room without doing those two things.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Slaughtered me, absolutely slaughtered me.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the most important things I learned is you preach the gospel, Always.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Andrew Happ always tells me, he's a pastor in our conference at Preside and Elder.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: He says,
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: I followed a guy that was the longest serving pastor of my church,
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: but he got ill while I was at that church.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like a kid, you know, 18 year old kid when this happened, Andrew was.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I walked into Stan's, you know, he was just renowned in ministry.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: I walked into his hospital room and Andrew always says,
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: I will never forget,
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: you got down on one knee and you started sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: With this guy who had brought all these people in Christ.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because,
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: you might say you're preaching the choir,
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: but I've never believed the choir didn't need it, right?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that idea of,
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: it's easiest to say,
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: what's the most important thing I've learned is in every situation,
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: be ready to share the gospel and be ready to share it that's appropriate to
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: that particular person.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't matter to me if you're a lay person,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: because certainly people have shared the gospel with me.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or a clergy person, but I think that's absolutely important.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly,
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really important to listen to,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I'm gonna say the vibe of the people of your congregation.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was with a guy once, he was a middle school, no, little kid, elementary school principal.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was picking on my daughters after school and he went to my church.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, it was a three-day weekend.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Chuck, this is a good break for you.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I hate these things.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, wait, what?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: You hate getting a day off?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: He says, no.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he pointed to a couple of kids getting on the bus.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: He says, they're not going to eat a decent meal again until school breakfast on Monday.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: It just slayed me.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And from that,
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: and I asked him to share that in a couple of other situations,
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: and a couple of other people that were teachers felt the same way.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: The pastor would have never done this, Travis.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: I always had an affinity for the poor and serve the poor and that sort of stuff.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: But they started serving lunches.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in 2008, we served lunch every day at the church I was at that they didn't have school.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I was 82 days a year, concluding spring break.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Lunch every single day, nutritious, tasty, all that kind of stuff.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: No government funds, no none of that.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we developed, you know, last year I noticed that they served, I think, 25,000 lunches.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's not just a few kids.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they go to 11 places and they hand out these bags.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, they have weekend bags.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think,
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know, that's a great story about attacking a ministry, a need in your community.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: But that started with there and a couple other times,
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: I could give you some other instances where I think that the church has to listen to
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: the passion that people already have, that kind of ministry.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the churches, we had some, we had a prison nearby.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we started a ministry of helping people.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's more formal things now because it was 25, 30 years ago.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Of helping prisoners re-assimilate into a community.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we'd get them a six-month job.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: We'd help them with an apartment.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: We'd help them with, get them to church and stuff like that.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Did they all stay in the congregation?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Did they all stay outside of incarceration?
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: But...
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Did more than half of them,
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: which is way better than the normal recidivism rate,
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: stay out and be able to get factory jobs.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them had skills,
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: their mechanics or something like that, but some were just drug dealers and stuff.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought,
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: listen again to the passion of the people that we've got to help these people
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: because they just show up with nothing and they say, good luck, you know.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: So those are things.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I should,
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know, Bill Hybels used to always say to me the obvious is, People matter to God.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: I did not preach to be brilliant.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't preach for followers, especially after my first few years in ministry.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's part of the human thing.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be really, really good.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I...
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm preaching down at the Mission in Colorado Springs very early in my ministry.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it was cool.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was like fall but wet outside, you know.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they sat in this kind of arena and the pulpit was kind of in the middle.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I start preaching and they don't get to eat.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Until the worship's over.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, we had Gladys on the organ singing, you know, horrible songs or whatever.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got up to talk.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't horrible.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: She was great.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: She just, whatever, she was singing and she couldn't hit it.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it sounded good in here, but out here it didn't go so well.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I started preaching.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: And behind me was this guy, a lot of guys, but he just kept saying,
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: shut up.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Shut up.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're hungry.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, you know, in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, you got to eat.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, people matter to God.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I understood then and that, you know, kept going throughout my ministry.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't fill their bodies, you don't have a chance at them hearing the gospel.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're just there because that's the prelude to dinner.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, later we changed the mission.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: So worship was after, you know, lunch or dinner.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And during the warm weather months, there'd be, you know, 50.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: When it was cold, there'd be a couple hundred because it was warm, you know.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Others probably a lot more, but,
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: since I'm gray-haired or no-haired, a lot of my pride, you know, they don't come.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's, you know, those were kind of, those were key moments.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest, I could tell you a lot about church strategies.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And to that,
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would say people are more,
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: People matter to God, and they matter way more than any program.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: And for the majority of people in churches,
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: what they want to do is,
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: it's really simple, is I believe they want to bless and be blessed.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: They want to receive some sort of blessing when they come to worship.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: They want to be challenged enough to go and live out their faith so that they can bless others.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things,
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: as you know,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: that the church did over the years is probably when You know,
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: we became more seminary trained and stuff like that is people forgot
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: to do evangelism.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: People let the pastor be their, the spiritual goods that they were going to consume.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: And, um, it's proven itself to be really ineffective, really ineffective.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Churches are closed in everywhere,
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: and, um, in the early, if the church can be incarnational rather than, you know, um,
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a show or attractional or whatever you want to call it.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's how,
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: churches like mine and yours are successful is that you have people actually caring
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: for others.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is,
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: it was snotty because I was young when it first happened,
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: but then it became my standard operating procedure.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: I had a lady call me,
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was probably 27 years old,
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: and she said, hey,
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: somebody in the congregation,
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know who they were, is down in the hospital.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, 15 minutes away.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, okay, thanks for telling me.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me how she is when you get back and I'll get down and see her?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, she was, she was incensed, but she did it.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then about six months, not that week later, she said, you know, everybody should do that.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well, we're working on here, Marge.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Something I should have made more clear at the beginning,
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: just in case anybody stumbles upon this,
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: is that this is not in any way, shape,
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: or form an official publication
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: of any officially recognized Global Methodist Church thing.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is just me as a guy doing this,
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: and the reason why I say that is because I'm going to ask a question.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think, if you could name...
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you made a comment earlier in this conversation where you don't have a board
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: who can fire you.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: No one's firing me from this either.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: So my question is something along the lines of like if you were to name like
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: an epidemic difficulty faced by churches or like a sickness
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: that all too often affects churches, you know, what would that be?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Might get us both in trouble here.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's all right.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're moving past the first part, I'm going to say.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think pastoral ineptness was part of it, but let me say it a different way.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Pastors are often the bottleneck preventing explosive life-giving ministry.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because we, by nature, or we've been trained to be managers of risk.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're like insurance agents.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we become, I don't know if it's right to say we're risk averse.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: But we spend so much time making sure there's peace in the valley.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: Making sure the congregation's pleased,
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: not inspired,
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: not challenged,
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: not Understanding that,
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know, they say, oh, you know, this church moved in or they've got all these.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no,
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: the simple math is no matter what town you're in,
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: less than half the people are Christians and going to
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: a worshiping congregation that's life-giving and that sort of thing.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess I don't mean that pastors are inept.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: I probably said that wrong.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: There are some,
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: and you're aware of some of them,
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: but that we're the bottlenecks so often because we're trying to make things orderly.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the best ministries I've ever had were absolutely chaotic when they were happening.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't like chaos,
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: even if it's organized, even if it was our idea, because it's just crazy.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can't contain it all.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we also are profoundly afraid of failure.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: My best ministries, I would say, One of them was a profound failure.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: We started a young adult ministry in Webster City, Iowa.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: It went on for a long time, a long time in that, you know, it's like six months.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: and the church was behind it and they didn't have that kind of volume of people
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: to do young adult ministry.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we had some mentors and stuff.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then it came to a time when The three mentors that were part of it couldn't be there.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they were profoundly Christian.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they weren't my age now, but they were in the neighborhood, right?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: They were in their 60s probably.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so these young adults went to the bowling alley.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's what young adults did in small town Iowa.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: And a few of them drank more beer than necessary and made a couple of passes at women.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that was it.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: That was it.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Next week, we've gone from 24 to 4, 24 to 4.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt that, and the congregation was just so disappointed.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: I said, listen,
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: this was a magnificent success in the implosion because we put our hearts into that.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: We told the community that they mattered to us.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that behavior that happened was the fault of adults, not us.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: But,
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know, that wasn't the case of feeling from The supervisors of the denomination.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: How could you let this happen?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, dude, I had a funeral.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't even there.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: And my others had to, you know, I don't know if it was Harvest or what.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it was that they couldn't do there because I spent a minute.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that idea of it was from outside looking in,
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: from spending money,
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: from time,
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: from all that horrible,
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: tremendous failure and implosion at every level except In the messaging that was,
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: you matter to the church.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so I call it a win.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think in helping a lot of different communities,
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: we need to shoot with a fire hose because we will hit our target,
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: even though a lot of them will ignore it or sometimes lie to us,
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: cheat to us, whatever.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: I learned in some ways that the need for the pastor to not be
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: the bottleneck fairly early as a pastor myself.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was the first pastor that this congregation had had that was less than full time.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went in there kind of with this assumption of everybody is primed.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: They are ready to try new things.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're ready to, you know, take a step forward.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in my personal life, I was really growing in my faith and understanding of God.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I thought people, what people need to do is they need to do things the way I do them.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: They need to think the way that I think.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I learned very quickly that if I were to actually have success in making
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: the church in my own image,
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: with my own idiosyncrasies and my own quirks,
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: I said I would kill the church dead in a very short period of time.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because I only see things the way that I see them.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I've learned that I need the people in the congregation
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: to show me what they're seeing and how they're thinking about things.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: And not to say I always get it right,
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: but I try very hard to not be that bottleneck Because I've seen,
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: work and I've heard stories at least of other pastors who just love saying no,
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: love saying no.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: If it wasn't their idea, answer was no.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: And for what purpose?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: But what I saw was that it was demoralizing to the church.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course,
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: because we have to give permission within,
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: and I think that's always important, within whatever stated church mission we have.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: because I remember one of the things I've never been sad about was A couple
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: of people that were probably generically your age coming into my office
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: in another church saying, this is what we're going to do.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have an adult prom.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, you're not.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to what end?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: How does that serve?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have mission trips.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: We'll have Bible studies.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: We'll have whatever.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you just said,
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to have a kid's dance because the ones at the high school are so vulgar,
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Okay.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that would be a different thing.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: But for a bunch of 35, 40-year-olds saying, we need a prom.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, just go dancing with your wife and whoever your friends are.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we need to not be no-centered.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have to be yes-oriented,
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: but understand that at some level you do have to say,
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: that doesn't fit with the mission of the church.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know when we were back and forth on email,
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: there was this one question that I'm kind of longing to answer,
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: so I'm just gonna do it.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: How's that?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this question you asked was, and I'm a pastor, so of course I'm not gonna have one thing.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: He says,
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: what is one thing that made more of a difference to effectiveness in ministry
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: that you learned from experience?
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: What taught you?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of things I would say,
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: and they're probably pretty vanilla,
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: but the first one,
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: and I was blessed,
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: like I said about the pastors in Colorado Springs, is listen to experience.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: When you're young, it oftentimes feels like judgment, but it's not there to judge you, usually.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's there to help you.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the...
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: I told you I had this boss that was a great mentor,
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: and I'd say, hey, Gene,
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: with the youth group,
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about doing this and that, and he'd say, okay, listen.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do you want to hear about the three times I tried that or do you just want to do it?
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, yeah,
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: let's do that first one because I want to know what why it was either good or bad.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: So listen to experience if other pastors of people, but also I think.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of brushed into this earlier,
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: but really listen to the pews or seats or the people that are there
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: because I have found,
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: especially in this new expression of Methodism,
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: and I've been in a dozen or so congregations across our real estate,
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: The people in the pews sometimes are more excited to grow the Church of Jesus than our pastors.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're very excited.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: For this Methodist thing to work.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important for us as both lay people and clergy people to listen
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: to what's out there.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last,
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: and I've been blessed with a couple of congregations that really articulated this
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: in their lifestyles, is listen to young Christians.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's not always young people,
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: but people that are new to the faith because they have the red hot fire of
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: the Holy Spirit.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: That all of us love so much we love having that in our life we when we when we have
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: that you know some of us had it when we're young some of us is spread out along but
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: when people are red hot with the faith are some of their ideas things
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: that have been tried a long time ago yeah but listen
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: because sometimes they'll say well why can't we do this and
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: the real answer sometimes is we can we just don't want to right right
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: and we should do some of that so you know that was
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: the exciting question I was like man Boil that down to one.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do that.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it really does boil down to generically listen to everything.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say listen to your community, but that's important too.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is the vibe of your community?
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because if they need something,
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: oftentimes the church can step into that if they have a wealth of brokenness
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: or some sort of gap in services somewhere.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: People can see that in their own communities.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: Easier in a small community.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because in a large community,
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: you really either have to look Globally are in a very narrow thing,
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: but I've served in small communities and sometimes you can,
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: three people and passion.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: We had a lot of migrant workers when I lived in Western Colorado
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: because they picked apples in that town.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we had this passionate group of people that put together a thrift store
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: where it's kind of funny, people have pride, doesn't matter about their ability.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: The first year they did it, they had all these clothes and they're free.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: Not a single migrant would take any of it.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: But if you put 15 cents on a pair of jeans, the women raised $10,000.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was just like, hey, and that was just seeing what your community was.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to be nice.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: And in that case,
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: the people from In that neighborhood,
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: mostly Spanish-speaking, said, yeah, you don't get us.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: When you actually show that you care for
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: us, not just about us, then we're there.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: And in relationships form, because the same people come back year after year.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things I also want to make sure I give you an opportunity to share
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: a little bit about is that the church you are currently primarily attending is
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: a church plant, correct?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: Would you be willing to tell us anything about what God's doing there?
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I would love to.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for, and all of you that are in Metro Des Moines, we certainly want you to be invited.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: The church is called 1927 Church.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a small group right now.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: We are doing what we call founding gatherings,
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: which is worship that are open to anyone that kind of gets the message to come,
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: that has an invitation, which you just got.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: We met at the VFW in the north end of Des Moines on Sunday mornings prior
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: to our launch of public worship on August 2nd.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is an incarnational model church.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the name is, well, I think it's kind of, okay, it's fine.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're millennials, I get it.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: 1927, the heaven-born vision of this church came to our pastor while he was actually
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: with his family in Korea for several years.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: And Psalms is the 19th book of the Bible.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the driving force for him in his revelation of this was the 27th Psalm.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: So 1927, you know, seek the face of God.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, God is my stronghold, you know, all that kind of stuff.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: So read Psalm 27.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: But we're doing an incarnational worship thing.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: So do we have a really good praise band?
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not like Lutheran Church of Hope,
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: but we have two leaders that came from a different kind of church
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: that are leading us.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we sing some of the hill songs and stuff,
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: but we always have hymns as well because this is kind of an ancient future church.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're drinking in the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing some liturgy.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing a very intimate time of confession where you actually,
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: this will be the invitational moment where you have a chance during worship
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: to actually sit with another human being and work out,
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: say out loud that which you're confessing and pray.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: We take about five minutes to do that.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: The first time you do it, you're like, whoa, I'm not so comfortable with this.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: But then as time goes on, and yesterday when we had worship, it's very life-giving.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we have sermons and communion every week.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the engine that runs that church,
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: for those of you that are Westland scholars,
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to say that it's a Westland class meeting.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a cool term.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we call them chapters.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: So right now we have four chapters that meet.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the chapter is really for people that want an authentic relationship
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: with Christ that can really do soul work.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's not there's no curriculum.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a Bible study.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: We get together.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're never longer than 90 minutes long.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: you kind of do the how you doing and all that kind of stuff the first 10
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: or 15 minutes.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: But then our leaders and I'm not one of them.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: But we've got trained leaders.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: I do that.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I do the training part.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: They have a fidelity of focus, men's groups, women's groups.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we sit down with and really talk about how our walk with God is.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we originally started with that's all we're going to do.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're finding is we're accumulating people that were not part of the faith
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: or only faith adjacent to During most of their lives.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're starting with all the, you know, why do bad things happen to people?
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: What, you know, why aren't the dinosaurs in the Bible?
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of thing.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're working that out in the envelope of, you know, how is your life with God?
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just great for now that we have a couple men in my group that say,
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, I'm just new at this.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: I found out of this because my wife went to camp where you preached, Mike,
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: and She said,
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to this place or we came here because we know Joe from Motorcycle Club.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's very kinetic.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's very exciting.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very small.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like yesterday, we felt like we had a pretty good compliment and there was 30.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're looking for a group,
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: you know, our hope is we're now researching You know, places to go.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: We can stay at the VW as long as we want.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: But one of our targets is to move as infrequently as possible.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're renting or something, you have to do that.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we actually interviewed another space yesterday, a church that's struggling to stay going.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they really want us until you ask for some flexibility.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll see what happens there.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, you're really invited.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty sure we're probably on Facebook,
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: but I know look up church 1927 or 1927 church on Instagram and feel invited.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: they've got a lot of cool stuff and we probably have a webpage, but I,
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: it's probably all the same,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: but I think Instagram because of the age group we're dealing with,
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: because honestly, Travis, there's nobody within 30 years of my age.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: There was one guy there yesterday that was 45,
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: but he was mostly there to see the guitar player, but he really loved church.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully we'll,
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if you really are interested in a church that's intimate,
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: really seeking authentic relationships, not being programming.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and then one seriously different thing is we believe that parents are
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: the main disciples of their children.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think maybe going back 40 years or 50 years,
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: our children are with us in worship the whole time.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do they have little busy bags?
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have little things for them to interface to?
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: But we have really found that that's a positive experience for the families.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's really kind of my growing up.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: my mom and dad were at ends of the pews and there were a few little heads in
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: between them.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: And did we listen all the time?
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, not really.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: those three real differences,
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: we're small,
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: we're intimate,
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: we're not trying to be Hillsong or Lutheran Church of Hope or Summit Creek
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: or something, those are churches in Des Moines.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeking to have these authentic small groups called chapters
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: where we don't really,
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: Have a curriculum at all other than a couple of questions and the fact
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: that children are definitely integrated into every single thing we do,
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: including,
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: what the pastor says,
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: because sometimes I served a church for many years that the children for
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: the most part were down the hall.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so some of your adult illustrations or conversations could be
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit more adult pointed.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we, we, uh, We understand that our children are there and they are listening.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I would suggest to you that if I went to one of my really good friends that were
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: at church yesterday and my seven-year-old grandson that were there and asked him
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: to outline the main points of the sermon,
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think the seven-year-old would probably do a crisper job of,
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: here's what he talked about, boom, boom, boom.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's kind of fun.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really exciting.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we're in North Des Moines now.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: We hope to rest in the Highland Park,
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oak Park neighborhood of North Des Moines.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: So between 235 and Interstate 80 is our real target.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: Technically,
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: at this exact moment,
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: you are the only global Methodist church in the greater metro area, right?
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Or are there others?
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, it's English-speaking.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, English-speaking.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, Matthew.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: We have the Mabon congregation that is pretty vital and they're moving on.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we're actually the only organic church plant in our congregation.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: Most of our newer congregations were remnants from a church that left
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: and have built their own thing.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: So in Iowa, we're the only brand new church plant.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not a fundraising thing.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: But we've asked for no funds from the annual conference.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're allowing people and churches to do that.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: We've accumulated some nice equipment and some solid giving that way.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: But please, that's not it.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's just a matter of fact.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not an appeal, although I'm not naive to the fact that I said it.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, right, right.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: So Mike,
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: I want to thank you again for kind of being willing to be on this first trial run
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: with me.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to thank you.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: And part of my whole goal with all this is that,
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: and if you know somebody who's doing some really exciting ministry out there,
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: people who are leaders in denominations, they get enough airtime as it is.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really interested in talking to folks who are quietly doing faithful work
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: that is making a difference in their community.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: So if you are watching this and you're like,
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: my goodness, Do I know somebody who's got a story for you?
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to talk to them.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let me know.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: You can send me an email at pastortravisatmarcusgrace.com.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'll see if I can put that information somewhere where we can get to it.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope I'd have a bunch of these conversations to just get people
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: to know one another, know what God's doing in our midst.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: So Mike, I did not ask you this in advance, but would you please give us a closing prayer?
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: Of course I will.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: Lord God, you are the one and only God.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're the creator of all that is and ever shall be.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're the creator,
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: of course, of anyone that might participate in listening or watching this podcast.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you're the one that has called both Travis and I to ministry.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: And for that, we offer you all praise and honor.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks and pray that this Thank you, sir.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.