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May 1, 2024

Off the Cuff | Love Like a Hurricane w/ Gene Krcelic | Episode 47

Off the Cuff | Love Like a Hurricane w/ Gene Krcelic | Episode 47
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Join us as we sit Across the Counter from author, speaker, and President of Premier Arts Collective Gene Krcelic.

In this OTC Episode:


• His narrative stretches from the untamed wilderness of pre-statehood Alaska to the momentous Apollo 11 mission, where his father played a critical role. Through his eyes, we traverse the landscapes of the Cold War and the space race, while also navigating the terrain of personal faith and the rigors of education. 

• Venture with us through heartfelt conversations that explore the vast spectrum of spirituality and belief. We grapple with the challenges of navigating religious diversity, raising a family amidst varying faith traditions, and the moral quandaries posed by the distribution of resources within the American church. Gene's spiritual awakening serves as a touchstone for listeners who have faced their own questions about faith, prompting a deep dive into the transformative power of mission work and the life-altering visions that steer us towards our true calling.

• The episode doesn't shy away from the hard-hitting issues of global justice and the ethical dilemmas that confront believers today. We discuss the stark contrasts between worship in resource-strapped Cambodia and the opulence of American churches, examining the implications of our choices and the responsibility to act with compassion. 

Connect with Across the Counter:

Instagram: @acrossthecounterpod

Website: www.atcpodcast.com

Support the Show.

Chapters

00:00 - Life Journey Through Faith and Education

11:32 - Journey to Faith and Transformation

26:23 - Navigating Religious Diversity and Beliefs

39:16 - Impact of American Church Practices

50:04 - Navigating the Gray Areas of Faith

01:01:52 - Global Impact of Christian Acts

01:06:18 - Church Planting and Missions Discussion

01:09:44 - Defining Church and Book Publishing

01:20:25 - Media, Music, and Personal Reflection

01:26:54 - Sharing Moments of Humanity

Transcript
WEBVTT

00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:07.846
Pull up a chair across the counter your one-stop shop for a variety of perspectives around Jesus and Christianity.

00:00:07.846 --> 00:00:15.468
I'm Grant Lockridge and I'm here with my co-host, logan Rice, and today we have on the podcast Gene Kraselik.

00:00:15.468 --> 00:00:25.208
He is the president of the Premier Arts Collective, which is a nonprofit where actually Logan works, so I'm going to pass it off to Logan for the first question over here.

00:00:26.221 --> 00:00:27.285
I'm excited about this one.

00:00:27.285 --> 00:00:33.948
Me too, boss, mentor, friend, known Gene since I was a wee lad.

00:00:33.948 --> 00:00:44.470
All right, so tell us about Gene and where you're born, origins, your story.

00:00:44.470 --> 00:01:01.527
I know your story to an extent, but tell us a little about what growing up was like for you and maybe your journey to faith, and then I think that'll probably just that sentence alone will probably guide the rest of the podcast and all of our conversation.

00:01:02.689 --> 00:01:04.882
No, question Logan Grant.

00:01:04.882 --> 00:01:06.340
Appreciate you guys having me here.

00:01:06.340 --> 00:01:14.575
I tend to go down rabbit holes and you can dial me back at any time.

00:01:15.521 --> 00:01:16.262
We'll just cut it.

00:01:17.043 --> 00:01:18.424
Yeah, that'll work.

00:01:18.424 --> 00:01:27.495
You know, my parents were born in Chicago and were children or grandchildren of immigrants from Europe.

00:01:27.495 --> 00:01:40.143
And just a challenge when people went to a city like Chicago or New York, I mean you're just trying to get by, you're in that particular city because there's some nationalities that ultimately have somebody that they know when they're there.

00:01:40.143 --> 00:01:49.641
My dad was really a guy who he wanted to learn and the circumstances of his family life wasn't the best.

00:01:49.641 --> 00:01:53.010
Circumstances of my mom's family life wasn't the best.

00:01:53.010 --> 00:01:56.046
They found each other, got married when they were 20 and 18.

00:01:56.046 --> 00:02:00.662
My dad wanted to go to the University of Illinois, cost about $200 a year.

00:02:00.662 --> 00:02:01.304
My mom didn't.

00:02:01.304 --> 00:02:03.768
My grandmother didn't have the money to send him a year.

00:02:03.768 --> 00:02:05.230
My grandmother didn't have the money to send them.

00:02:05.230 --> 00:02:15.986
So he went to DeVry Institute, studied, got an associate's degree and, as the story goes, my mom saw an ad in the newspaper about this opportunity in Alaska, a job.

00:02:16.769 --> 00:02:33.424
And if you know about Alaska in the 50s it was very closed until like 1956, 1957, where there was a road that was forged between Washington and Alaska where people could actually drive there.

00:02:33.424 --> 00:02:39.723
But in this particular instance they were I like to call them pioneers.

00:02:39.723 --> 00:02:41.907
It was still a territory wasn't a state.

00:02:41.907 --> 00:02:44.734
They moved up in about, I think, 56.

00:02:44.734 --> 00:02:49.242
My sister was born in 1958 in the territory of Alaska.

00:02:49.242 --> 00:02:52.849
I was born in 1963 in the state of Alaska.

00:02:53.691 --> 00:02:56.020
My dad worked in his late 20s.

00:02:56.020 --> 00:03:02.221
He was the manager of a small site that monitored air traffic control between the Soviet Union and the US.

00:03:02.221 --> 00:03:07.048
So if you know that time you put those things in context, in the 50s it was a Cold War.

00:03:07.048 --> 00:03:09.010
It was an interesting time.

00:03:09.010 --> 00:03:17.768
I'm two years old in 1965, and there's an opportunity for my dad to go work at NASA in Florida.

00:03:17.768 --> 00:03:32.141
Again, 1965, florida, nasa Put the things together in context and that was a few years after John F Kennedy said you know, we will put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the decade.

00:03:32.843 --> 00:03:37.426
It's a perfect mission statement Tells you what you're going to do, when you're going to do it, and that's what happened.

00:03:37.426 --> 00:03:46.603
My dad worked on that program and he was a communications engineer on Apollo 11 that put the first man on the moon and he was a communications engineer on Apollo 11 that put the first man on the moon.

00:03:46.622 --> 00:03:46.962
It's pretty cool.

00:03:46.962 --> 00:03:47.522
Yeah, that's sick.

00:03:47.522 --> 00:03:53.504
We'd go down to the Indian River and feel the ships launch and you'd be able to watch them.

00:03:53.504 --> 00:04:02.487
Or even if you're at your house watching on a little black and white TV, you could see it, and then the pictures on the wall would be rattling because of the force of those rocket ships leaving.

00:04:02.927 --> 00:04:08.810
It was a really cool time, really blessed so he would know if the moon landing was fake or not.

00:04:08.810 --> 00:04:09.849
Right yeah.

00:04:09.949 --> 00:04:15.032
He definitely would know that, whether it was fake or not, or he was just burning a lot of time.

00:04:15.051 --> 00:04:18.812
So he would say that the moon landing was a real thing, correct.

00:04:18.812 --> 00:04:20.553
I would say that it's a real thing.

00:04:21.694 --> 00:04:23.314
But what is real?

00:04:23.314 --> 00:04:25.755
This could be the Matrix, I don't know.

00:04:25.755 --> 00:04:31.216
So from that point in time 1970, I'm in first grade.

00:04:31.216 --> 00:04:43.625
At that time I go to first grade in Florida put the man on the moon and then, all of a sudden, nasa changed.

00:04:43.625 --> 00:04:45.920
They laid off a vast majority of their employees because the goal was achieved we had already beaten Russia.

00:04:45.920 --> 00:04:48.985
Had Russia actually landed on the moon first?

00:04:48.985 --> 00:05:00.473
And there's a really cool series, I think, on Netflix or one of the networks, about what if Russia had landed on the moon first, nasa would have been different, because we would have continually changed them.

00:05:00.473 --> 00:05:03.062
Okay, then now we've got to put the first woman on the moon.

00:05:03.062 --> 00:05:04.064
Now we have to do this.

00:05:04.064 --> 00:05:05.107
There has to be a first.

00:05:05.107 --> 00:05:17.620
Since we won, I was like, oh, okay, so they laid off the majority of their workforce, we moved to Kansas, then we moved to Virginia, then we moved to Maryland and back to Virginia.

00:05:18.362 --> 00:05:26.115
So my first five years of school, kindergarten through fourth grade I went to five different schools.

00:05:26.115 --> 00:05:33.473
Had a long run at Brookville Elementary School, went there three years.

00:05:33.473 --> 00:05:56.444
Interesting thing about Brookville Elementary it was adjacent to the property of the old Brookville Middle School, which was the first home of Lynchburg Baptist College, which was the first home of what became Liberty Baptist College, then Liberty College, then Liberty University.

00:05:56.444 --> 00:05:58.971
We lived in the neighborhood right across the street.

00:05:58.971 --> 00:06:12.886
We're right across the street from Jerry Falwell's first college and we know Liberty now as the behemoth that they are with the number of students and the transformation around the world and the impact that they have.

00:06:14.201 --> 00:06:15.326
But it was a little different for me.

00:06:15.326 --> 00:06:18.079
I'm going to take you through the education.

00:06:18.079 --> 00:06:23.413
I'm going to come back to Lynchburg because that was a formative time in my life.

00:06:23.413 --> 00:06:29.423
So at Brookville Elementary, three years, I finally have some friends, consistent friends.

00:06:29.423 --> 00:06:32.769
Otherwise it was a new friend every single year.

00:06:32.769 --> 00:06:35.603
You're the new kid and it's tough.

00:06:35.603 --> 00:06:37.990
You're either going to be introverted or you're going to be extroverted.

00:06:37.990 --> 00:06:42.588
And fortunately my mom made these experiences beautiful and wonderful.

00:06:42.588 --> 00:06:43.812
So I became extroverted.

00:06:44.860 --> 00:06:46.084
My dad thought you know what?

00:06:46.084 --> 00:06:47.129
Maybe we have a little more money.

00:06:47.129 --> 00:06:48.485
I'm the youngest of four.

00:06:48.485 --> 00:06:54.572
Let's send Gene to private school for junior high, seventh and eighth grade formidable years.

00:06:54.572 --> 00:06:58.370
Catholic school in Lynchburg interesting.

00:06:58.370 --> 00:07:00.206
You probably didn't think that any existed.

00:07:00.206 --> 00:07:03.389
Went there for a couple of years was way over my head academically.

00:07:03.389 --> 00:07:06.723
Then let's put gene back in public school.

00:07:06.742 --> 00:07:09.975
So I went to heritage high school, my freshman year high school.

00:07:09.975 --> 00:07:13.264
Well, dad's getting transferred with general electric up to maryland.

00:07:13.264 --> 00:07:14.387
So we moved to maryland.

00:07:14.387 --> 00:07:17.184
So my second year of high school is at a different school.

00:07:17.184 --> 00:07:20.456
Oh, dad's getting transferred back again to lynchburg.

00:07:20.456 --> 00:07:22.461
I'm like sweet, I'll be able to hang with my friends.

00:07:22.461 --> 00:07:26.589
Well, we just were on the other side of the county line so I was at a different high school.

00:07:27.411 --> 00:07:32.088
Dad, is there anything you can do to get me to go back to the other high school where all my friends are?

00:07:32.088 --> 00:07:36.285
Couldn't do it, it just it wasn't as easy as it is today.

00:07:36.285 --> 00:07:42.744
First three years of high school, three different high schools it's not an easy ride.

00:07:42.744 --> 00:07:46.370
And then, ultimately, I graduated from that high school, spent two years at school.

00:07:46.370 --> 00:07:52.863
We were in Virginia get accepted to the University of North Carolina, go there, get a couple of degrees.

00:07:52.863 --> 00:08:06.290
But Lynchburg when I talked to people and let them know that I spent a lot of time there or was from there for the most part, because, although I went to various schools, I was there.

00:08:06.290 --> 00:08:11.387
We're Catholic, all right, I don't know the Bible as well as you guys do.

00:08:11.387 --> 00:08:13.286
Certainly don't know it as well as Logan.

00:08:13.668 --> 00:08:15.345
Yeah, what's this, you guys?

00:08:15.565 --> 00:08:20.564
Yeah, logan lets me know, and I appreciate that I am.

00:08:20.564 --> 00:08:22.110
I'm a sponge.

00:08:22.110 --> 00:08:25.829
I love to absorb information, I love to know what people think and why they think it.

00:08:25.829 --> 00:08:36.816
But as a Catholic, in a place that is really run by one particular individual that city, that town what they were buying?

00:08:36.816 --> 00:08:39.477
They were buying up 7-Elevens because they sold beer.

00:08:39.477 --> 00:08:42.830
So they would buy the 7-Elevens and create something else.

00:08:42.830 --> 00:08:45.548
The Falwell name was huge in Lynchburg.

00:08:45.548 --> 00:08:51.289
Jerry Falwell said if you're a Catholic you're going to hell.

00:08:51.289 --> 00:08:53.013
That's simple.

00:08:54.400 --> 00:08:59.673
So for me there's two things you really couldn't say in our house.

00:08:59.673 --> 00:09:01.345
You could probably say anything else.

00:09:01.345 --> 00:09:05.288
One was Christian or born again Christian.

00:09:05.288 --> 00:09:06.971
Those are two things.

00:09:06.971 --> 00:09:08.746
So there's actually three things, those two things.

00:09:08.746 --> 00:09:11.825
And then the other thing was the N word.

00:09:12.366 --> 00:09:14.191
You didn't say it, you wanted to get beat.

00:09:14.191 --> 00:09:15.413
That's not beat.

00:09:15.413 --> 00:09:17.980
It's not like I'll go to your room, spend some time out, it's.

00:09:17.980 --> 00:09:19.366
You know you'd get strapped.

00:09:19.366 --> 00:09:22.149
Dad, pull that strap out, he'd handle his business.

00:09:22.149 --> 00:09:26.682
I didn't have any problem with that.

00:09:26.682 --> 00:09:28.167
I did then because you know I would get strapped.

00:09:28.167 --> 00:09:30.782
But you know I look back on him like you know what that was proper.

00:09:31.524 --> 00:09:35.482
And especially, you have to understand the context of when my dad grew up and what he had to deal with.

00:09:35.482 --> 00:09:40.897
And you know it takes generations for change.

00:09:40.897 --> 00:09:46.201
And then, when we're at a cusp of change, are we making the right decisions on the change?

00:09:46.201 --> 00:09:47.485
How to raise your children?

00:09:47.485 --> 00:09:49.109
Does anybody know how to raise a child?

00:09:49.109 --> 00:09:53.125
You do your best, man, with all the information you gathered.

00:09:54.246 --> 00:10:12.221
So for us it was really, really hard, because we were a minority in this community and my parents loved, they loved everybody black in this community and my parents loved, they loved everybody black, white, jewish, didn't matter.

00:10:12.221 --> 00:10:29.243
So I'm very fortunate that my family showed me that love and it really shaped me into the man that I am today, with very few prejudices and I only say very few because we would be lying to ourselves if we would say that we don't have prejudices in some sort to ourselves, if we would say that we don't have prejudices in some sort, and I don't just mean in terms of a color barrier.

00:10:29.243 --> 00:10:34.924
So it shaped me significantly and I'm now running a Christian organization.

00:10:34.924 --> 00:11:02.274
It's hard to believe when I look back over my life and how it was shaped, but as soon as I realized that God had been pursuing me my entire life, although I wasn't pursuing him, and when we, I say we, me and God, like we're buddies, when I say we came to that realization, that collective realization, it has formed the rest of my life.

00:11:02.274 --> 00:11:04.614
Next question, please.

00:11:05.654 --> 00:11:06.455
Next question.

00:11:06.475 --> 00:11:11.277
please Next question please, because I can riff, I can go down like I said no, I'm into it.

00:11:11.317 --> 00:11:12.456
That's awesome.

00:11:12.456 --> 00:11:18.698
So what would you say like when you became a Christian?

00:11:18.698 --> 00:11:27.500
Is there like a line in the sand of like I was lost and now I'm found, or was it like a hard struggle of a couple of years?

00:11:27.500 --> 00:11:29.988
Describe to me a little bit more about that.

00:11:29.988 --> 00:11:31.472
That's a great question.

00:11:32.657 --> 00:11:38.471
I almost default to what anybody would default to when you talk about religion if they're not believers.

00:11:38.471 --> 00:11:40.260
I'm a good person.

00:11:40.260 --> 00:11:42.284
I was always a good person.

00:11:42.284 --> 00:11:44.570
I wasn't a devious person.

00:11:44.570 --> 00:11:46.854
I didn't ever try to hurt anybody.

00:11:46.854 --> 00:11:56.471
The things I did was good for the most part, but I was a kid, I was still growing up, so if there was a heaven I figured I'd probably be going to heaven.

00:11:56.471 --> 00:12:11.926
There came a time in my journey I'm 60 years old, so when I was probably in my 40s I was just really curious.

00:12:11.926 --> 00:12:14.431
I'm living here in South Carolina.

00:12:14.431 --> 00:12:16.214
Obviously, religion is very big.

00:12:16.214 --> 00:12:25.032
I've had some friends try to get me involved in I think it was the Timothy Project or the Christian Businessman's Luncheon and I would go because they're my friends or business associates.

00:12:25.032 --> 00:12:27.748
But I mean these guys are praying in public.

00:12:27.748 --> 00:12:30.809
I'm like these fools are praying in public.

00:12:30.809 --> 00:12:32.138
I'm not going to do that.

00:12:32.138 --> 00:12:37.927
It was just the whole thing was a lot for me and I did it because of relationships with friends.

00:12:37.927 --> 00:12:39.846
But there was something there.

00:12:39.846 --> 00:12:43.029
There were seeds that were planted all along the way.

00:12:43.029 --> 00:12:45.623
There were seeds that were planted all along the way.

00:12:45.623 --> 00:12:52.773
In 2005, I'm at church A friend of mine asked me to go on a mission trip.

00:12:53.913 --> 00:13:03.407
Man, I've never been on a mission trip I'm 42 years old at the time Because in the Catholic Church we weren't doing mission trips really.

00:13:03.407 --> 00:13:07.446
Back then we weren't really studying the Bible, we were listening to whatever the priest said and then that was it.

00:13:07.446 --> 00:13:13.692
So the fundamental knowledge of the word I was void.

00:13:13.692 --> 00:13:18.123
I just didn't have it Along this whole path.

00:13:18.123 --> 00:13:27.323
In connection with that mission trip, but prior to it, there were a few people who had invested and were partners within the company that was running before this.

00:13:27.323 --> 00:13:29.909
They seemed like normal guys.

00:13:29.909 --> 00:13:36.628
They weren't like the Christians that I was knowing my whole life.

00:13:36.628 --> 00:13:39.352
Right, they were normal guys.

00:13:39.352 --> 00:13:47.806
They may have a drink, they swear every now and then Not that I advocate that, but there was something about them.

00:13:47.806 --> 00:13:49.985
What was that it?

00:13:49.985 --> 00:13:51.504
I wanted the it.

00:13:51.504 --> 00:13:59.028
I didn't know what it was until we started talking and you know this isn't a mystery in the story.

00:13:59.028 --> 00:13:59.931
What is the it?

00:13:59.931 --> 00:14:06.169
It was their faith, you know, and I wanted to know more.

00:14:07.201 --> 00:14:12.109
So I started some Bible studies with these guys and, listen, I'm really curious, seeking.

00:14:12.109 --> 00:14:14.769
I really need some advice.

00:14:14.769 --> 00:14:17.629
So we start some Bible studies.

00:14:17.629 --> 00:14:35.549
We would meet up at Sobeys corporate apartment and we'd have some Christians, non-believers, we'd have, I think, some Jews, people of the Jewish faith, participated Catholics.

00:14:35.549 --> 00:14:42.221
I mean, there was just a lot of people, because I wanted to try to get an encompassing understanding of what people believed.

00:14:42.221 --> 00:14:49.208
So I'm going to tell you one of my early questions on an early Bible study, with all of these people that were much smarter than I was.

00:14:50.392 --> 00:14:55.820
This is going to make me sound really stupid, but I'm a transparent guy and you can think whatever you want to think of me.

00:14:55.820 --> 00:14:56.541
I'm ready.

00:14:56.541 --> 00:14:57.160
It was this.

00:14:58.201 --> 00:15:00.605
Could Adam and Eve been fish?

00:15:00.605 --> 00:15:01.946
We merge evolution with creation been fish?

00:15:01.946 --> 00:15:04.048
We merge evolution with creation.

00:15:04.048 --> 00:15:06.389
Could they have been fish in some form?

00:15:06.389 --> 00:15:10.995
I mean, it's hard for me to believe Eve was made from a rib.

00:15:10.995 --> 00:15:35.606
I don't put anything beyond God, but that just seems like a fantastical story to me, because some of the stories in the Bible are like what Really and I know people who were so dialed in, they're fundamentalist or they are literalist or what, whatever you want to call that truly believe everything there and it just blew me away when I was on this journey and I just didn't understand.

00:15:35.606 --> 00:15:41.645
But I wanted to understand, not in a combative manner, but I want to know why you think what you think.

00:15:41.645 --> 00:15:42.768
Because?

00:15:42.768 --> 00:15:48.504
Because, if I can hear that from a human being, it will form who I am and it'll make me better.

00:15:48.504 --> 00:15:53.638
So these Bible studies were really instrumental for me.

00:15:53.638 --> 00:15:57.955
We never resolved if Adam and Eve were fish, by the way, in case anybody's interested.

00:15:57.955 --> 00:15:59.520
We didn't resolve that.

00:15:59.520 --> 00:16:02.346
However, I learned a lot.

00:16:03.710 --> 00:16:05.312
Then one of my buddy asked me on a mission trip.

00:16:05.312 --> 00:16:07.886
Yeah, man, let's go.

00:16:07.886 --> 00:16:10.866
Nervous, didn't know what to think.

00:16:10.866 --> 00:16:18.750
It was all about Hurricane Katrina, a very interesting storm, a devastating storm that hurt so many people.

00:16:18.750 --> 00:16:20.886
I wanted to help and I wanted to give.

00:16:20.886 --> 00:16:24.144
So he asked me.

00:16:24.144 --> 00:16:42.563
I said yes, but at the end of August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina was dissipating somewhere over the pines of Canada, I had a meeting the next day with our company some of the investors.

00:16:42.563 --> 00:16:43.785
It was a normal night man.

00:16:43.785 --> 00:16:44.225
I went to bed.

00:16:44.225 --> 00:16:45.607
Company some of the investors it was a normal night man.

00:16:45.607 --> 00:16:45.889
I went to bed.

00:16:45.889 --> 00:16:46.769
I couldn't fall asleep.

00:16:46.769 --> 00:16:50.894
But then there was a level of anxiety came over me.

00:16:50.894 --> 00:16:59.142
Heart started beating real fast for no particular reason.

00:16:59.142 --> 00:17:00.884
Mission trip wasn't even asked at this point in time.

00:17:00.884 --> 00:17:02.206
It was right before I was asked to go on it.

00:17:02.225 --> 00:17:04.249
It's just man, oh man, laying in bed.

00:17:04.249 --> 00:17:05.990
I couldn't move.

00:17:05.990 --> 00:17:11.643
Literally, my heart starts hurting, my arms are feeling numb.

00:17:11.643 --> 00:17:19.681
I thought to myself and this is what it's like to feel like you're dying.

00:17:19.681 --> 00:17:26.413
So once you say that to yourself and you have those feelings, this is what it's like to die.

00:17:26.413 --> 00:17:32.653
And it was almost a certainty for me that this was it.

00:17:33.180 --> 00:17:36.386
I got two young daughters, 42 years old.

00:17:36.386 --> 00:17:39.433
Thought my wife is sleeping next to me.

00:17:39.433 --> 00:17:42.865
She hadn't been sleeping well, I don't want to disturb her.

00:17:42.865 --> 00:17:45.804
I don't want to wake her up, right, it's not like you're dying, right, it's not that it could.

00:17:45.804 --> 00:17:46.027
And I don't want to disturb her.

00:17:46.027 --> 00:17:48.069
I don't want to wake her up, right, it's not like you're dying, right, it's not that it could.

00:17:48.069 --> 00:17:48.978
And I don't know what it was.

00:17:48.978 --> 00:17:52.871
It's fine, this might be my imagination, or this could have been real.

00:17:52.871 --> 00:17:54.346
Who knows what the reality is.

00:17:54.346 --> 00:17:55.806
But I'd never gone to sleep.

00:17:55.806 --> 00:17:57.221
I was stone cold awake.

00:17:58.303 --> 00:18:05.393
There was a vision that I had during this time and I was freaking out in my mind because I couldn't move.

00:18:05.393 --> 00:18:11.433
I had this vision there's an ambulance at the end of our driveway.

00:18:11.433 --> 00:18:19.115
My wife and my two daughters are standing at the top of the driveway and they're bringing out on a gurney a body in a black bag.

00:18:19.115 --> 00:18:23.686
That body was me and there was something that happened.

00:18:23.686 --> 00:18:26.488
I don't want my kids to grow up without a dad.

00:18:26.488 --> 00:18:28.785
I'm going to have to wake up.

00:18:28.785 --> 00:18:31.817
My wife have her call 911.

00:18:32.280 --> 00:18:33.306
Reached over and I touched her.

00:18:33.306 --> 00:18:38.471
Soon as I touched her, he said Gene, you couldn't move.

00:18:38.471 --> 00:18:39.625
How could you reach over and touch her?

00:18:39.625 --> 00:18:48.089
It was everything that was within my being to say I've got to do this Kind of like Leonardo DiCaprio in the Revenant.

00:18:48.089 --> 00:18:50.306
You know, he just had to make that move.

00:18:50.306 --> 00:18:52.111
I did it.

00:18:52.259 --> 00:19:01.111
As soon as I touched her, everything dissipated Any anxiety, any perceived paralysis, whatever it was.

00:19:01.111 --> 00:19:02.413
She said what, what's going on?

00:19:02.413 --> 00:19:03.916
And I had this realization man, I'm fine now.

00:19:03.916 --> 00:19:04.397
Oh, what, what's going on?

00:19:04.397 --> 00:19:06.342
And I had this realization man, I'm fine now.

00:19:06.342 --> 00:19:09.489
Oh, nothing, everything's good, everything's good.

00:19:09.489 --> 00:19:12.221
She said, no, no, what you know?

00:19:12.221 --> 00:19:15.290
Just go back to sleep, thought I was dying, but I think I'm good now.

00:19:15.290 --> 00:19:20.224
So she didn't sleep the rest of the night I slept like a baby man.

00:19:20.224 --> 00:19:20.925
I was straight.

00:19:21.566 --> 00:19:22.748
But it was that moment.

00:19:22.748 --> 00:19:29.455
In that moment, in that vision, I knew what eternity would look like for me.

00:19:29.455 --> 00:19:32.689
You know, was it instantaneous?

00:19:32.689 --> 00:19:40.992
As one of my mentors said to me, it was like Jean filling a balloon, because up until that time my balloon was being filled.

00:19:40.992 --> 00:19:50.169
I began to understand sin and the nature of sin, heart and the nature of the heart, the relationship between us as individuals and Jesus Christ.

00:19:50.169 --> 00:19:54.446
I began to understand what those things meant for the first time in my life.

00:19:55.691 --> 00:20:05.614
And all of that culminated in that night where and then from that point on, before that point, if there was turbulence on a plane I'd be freaking out.

00:20:05.614 --> 00:20:07.527
I'm like man, I'm never flying again.

00:20:07.527 --> 00:20:11.049
But from that point, for the rest of my life, I enjoy turbulence.

00:20:11.049 --> 00:20:13.146
Now I know it's not within my control.

00:20:13.146 --> 00:20:22.307
So to control the things I can control, I try to really understand that, believe it, try to affect those things.

00:20:22.307 --> 00:20:30.517
And the things I can't control like whether or not that pilot had too much to drink last night and he's got the shaky hands this morning I can't control that.

00:20:30.517 --> 00:20:31.784
There's nothing that I'm going to do.

00:20:31.784 --> 00:20:33.430
That's going to make this good or bad.

00:20:33.430 --> 00:20:35.326
So just enjoy that ride.

00:20:35.326 --> 00:20:40.028
And from that point on my life was absolutely transformed.

00:20:41.049 --> 00:20:51.773
Went to New Orleans, came back or went to the Gulf Coast, did a lot of work in Biolabatry, alabama, which was the home of Forrest Gump, saw some really interesting things.

00:20:51.773 --> 00:20:59.019
I came home one day, literally looked at myself in the shower we're representing at this point in time.

00:20:59.019 --> 00:21:02.762
Musicians, professional athletes got a recording studio, a radio network.

00:21:02.762 --> 00:21:04.765
Musicians, professional athletes, got a recording studio, radio network.

00:21:04.765 --> 00:21:07.747
What am I doing, driving Range Rovers, man.

00:21:08.407 --> 00:21:08.647
What am?

00:21:08.748 --> 00:21:09.428
I doing.

00:21:09.428 --> 00:21:11.269
It didn't make any sense.

00:21:11.269 --> 00:21:13.731
I just wanted to help people.

00:21:13.731 --> 00:21:20.856
Went to talk to a mentor and he said hey, gene, looks like you got a lot going on.

00:21:20.856 --> 00:21:21.278
I said yeah.

00:21:21.278 --> 00:21:25.131
I said you know, I really just want to actually be in mission work.

00:21:25.131 --> 00:21:26.384
I just want to do mission work.

00:21:26.384 --> 00:21:27.268
I just want to help people.

00:21:27.268 --> 00:21:29.487
He said, gene, you got a lot of investors in this company.

00:21:29.487 --> 00:21:31.627
You got a lot of people depending on you.

00:21:31.627 --> 00:21:42.205
You can do those things, but people are depending on you, so hung tight with the company I was running it.

00:21:42.205 --> 00:21:42.847
I founded it.

00:21:42.847 --> 00:21:45.027
That was 2005.

00:21:45.027 --> 00:21:50.211
But during between 2005, 2008, I continued.

00:21:50.339 --> 00:21:52.027
I started to put together mission trips.

00:21:52.027 --> 00:21:56.039
I'd been on one in my life and then I probably led a dozen mission trips afterwards.

00:21:56.039 --> 00:22:02.105
Men in my church, families in my church, the youth of our church we would just friends.

00:22:02.105 --> 00:22:03.546
We would go down and we would serve.

00:22:03.546 --> 00:22:07.607
We got a hurricane here, let's go, hurricane Ike in Texas.

00:22:07.607 --> 00:22:08.210
Let's go.

00:22:08.210 --> 00:22:13.165
Beaumont, Texas, orange Texas, new Orleans, it didn't matter, let's go.

00:22:13.165 --> 00:22:18.942
And I would put groups together and that was my passion just to help people.

00:22:20.204 --> 00:22:23.309
2008 rolls around, tough economic year.

00:22:23.309 --> 00:22:24.551
A lot of businesses failed.

00:22:24.551 --> 00:22:30.710
So I could say, well, you know, we were just one of many that failed or business didn't make it.

00:22:30.710 --> 00:22:35.205
Fact of the matter is it failed After 10 years, after a lot of success.

00:22:35.205 --> 00:22:49.051
It was failure and that's tough to deal with as a man who's trying to provide for their family while still following your heart and understanding the reason why God put you here in the first place.

00:22:49.051 --> 00:22:51.385
It was transformational.

00:22:51.500 --> 00:23:00.119
2008 happened, wrote a book, did a little bit of a speaking tour, then ended up working with a company called Premier Foundation.

00:23:00.119 --> 00:23:04.145
It was the nonprofit arm of the world's largest Christian music promoter.

00:23:04.145 --> 00:23:11.056
Premier Productions own Winter Jam and so many other great events that they've produced.

00:23:11.056 --> 00:23:15.509
You know five 600 events a year for a couple million live bodies.

00:23:15.509 --> 00:23:22.126
So I'm now in this group running their charity and it was like a blank sheet of paper.

00:23:22.126 --> 00:23:26.174
Figure're going to raise money and figure out how you can give it away, which is all fine.

00:23:26.500 --> 00:23:28.346
There were challenges at the beginning of it.

00:23:28.346 --> 00:23:35.172
There's always challenges but I did realize that this is where I'm meant to be.

00:23:35.172 --> 00:23:40.252
I could have made a lot more money going and doing other things, but money didn't matter.

00:23:40.252 --> 00:23:43.922
Not that I'm independently wealthy, I'm not but money didn't matter.

00:23:43.922 --> 00:23:45.103
Not that I'm independently wealthy, I'm not.

00:23:45.103 --> 00:23:56.692
It's that money didn't matter, because in the end, if we can all discern why God put us here in the first place, what reason?

00:23:57.114 --> 00:23:58.775
I think there's a reason for all of us.

00:23:58.775 --> 00:24:01.517
We can say family, we can say this, encourage others, blah, blah.

00:24:01.517 --> 00:24:19.852
We can go down that path, but there are talents and traits that every single one of us have that God gave us, and if we can dial into that and use that to glorify him in our path, then I think that is the right track.

00:24:19.852 --> 00:24:20.713
We need to be on.

00:24:20.713 --> 00:24:24.085
One more caveat Get another question.

00:24:24.085 --> 00:24:43.050
The caveat to that is you don't have to just go and be in ministry like me and running a Christian organization and a charity, because the reason I came to Jesus Christ in the first place was because of two guys that were running successful businesses that are for-profit, secular businesses.

00:24:43.050 --> 00:25:01.944
They put into those businesses what their heart was and they had that transformational effect on me to be able to walk down the path that I believe I was set to be on and understand those things that I think God wanted me to see for the prior 42 years of my life.

00:25:03.185 --> 00:25:03.906
That's beautiful to see.

00:25:03.906 --> 00:25:05.248
For the prior 42 years of my life, that's beautiful.

00:25:05.248 --> 00:25:13.056
So I want to take it all the way back to that little Catholic and what's the you know where Adam and Eve are fish kind of thing.

00:25:13.056 --> 00:25:14.576
That cracked me up pretty good.

00:25:17.160 --> 00:25:22.313
I'm not saying that's a Catholic tenant or anything, I'm just saying that I just want to ask some crazy questions and see a reaction sometimes.

00:25:22.539 --> 00:25:27.853
Well you're talking to the king of dumb questions over here, so I'll tell you what.

00:25:27.853 --> 00:25:43.423
But I think that that's just a really cool thing of having Catholics and Jewish and all different denominations and all that stuff all together in one room talking about the same stuff in one room talking about the same stuff.

00:25:43.423 --> 00:25:49.535
I'm curious on kind of how you got that together and how, like, how did you meet all those people?

00:25:49.535 --> 00:26:07.493
Like, because I was talking to a guy actually at 11, I had a previous podcast and he was talking about how he like got a bunch of pastors together and nobody really like got along and he basically blew a hundred grand on this idea where he tried to get, you know, people in the church unified.

00:26:07.493 --> 00:26:16.633
So I'm curious that cracked me up pretty good, but I'm curious how you like pulled that off of one getting them all together in the same room.

00:26:16.633 --> 00:26:20.490
And two, how did they respond to the fish question?

00:26:21.099 --> 00:26:22.385
Yeah, that's a great question.

00:26:22.385 --> 00:26:28.027
I think one of the great blessings in my life is to have grown up the way.

00:26:28.027 --> 00:26:39.489
I grew up, in a secular environment as opposed to a Christian environment, and I was giving air quotes on secular and Christian.

00:26:39.489 --> 00:26:44.183
Catholics are Christians, that's the mother church man.

00:26:44.183 --> 00:26:46.009
They believe in Jesus Christ.

00:26:46.009 --> 00:26:49.190
If you're a follower of the way, you believe in Jesus Christ.

00:26:49.190 --> 00:26:53.269
So then we do have a lot of splinters.

00:26:53.269 --> 00:26:57.652
We do have a lot of dissection throughout denominations.

00:26:57.652 --> 00:27:01.729
Because of my secular background, I run with a lot of people.

00:27:01.729 --> 00:27:05.338
Because of my secular background, I run with a lot of people.

00:27:05.338 --> 00:27:28.445
I've run in my day with friends, acquaintances, legitimate business people, drug dealers Not that I've ever dealt drugs, but I really didn't meet somebody who couldn't be a friend and there are commonalities between us all and I love people's stories.

00:27:28.465 --> 00:27:38.836
I've got a lot of friends, a lot of people I knew, and so when I went on this path, I didn't want everyone with the same opinion, because what does that do?

00:27:38.836 --> 00:27:41.768
It doesn't really help shape me.

00:27:41.768 --> 00:27:57.011
It pushes me down a path that I may or may not want to go, and I have always encouraged my children to make their own decisions, gather as much information as you can and make your own decisions on things, not just what I say or what I believe.

00:27:57.011 --> 00:28:02.930
I do want that to frame who my children are and how they live and what they believe.

00:28:02.930 --> 00:28:12.502
But I want them to make their own decisions, Because my dad said to me one time he said, gene, you know, your children have to live their own lives.

00:28:12.502 --> 00:28:16.531
Whatever I want, do I want my kids to live in Greenville, near me?

00:28:16.531 --> 00:28:19.403
Sure, I got a daughter who lives in San Diego.

00:28:19.403 --> 00:28:20.924
Do I want to live in San Diego?

00:28:20.924 --> 00:28:26.515
No man, I want her to live so we can kick it all the time, but I want her to live her life.

00:28:26.515 --> 00:28:32.826
If that's a dream and that's a journey and a challenge, I want her because it's her life.

00:28:34.190 --> 00:28:50.787
So when I have relationships across the board, I don't want everybody in the same track to gain information from, so I intentionally sought friends who might've been seekers or non-believers.

00:28:50.787 --> 00:29:04.048
One of my buddies got a tattoo of a cross upside down on his back and because the dad was a traveling pastor, I think if the story holds true, I think his dad might've beaten someone to death with a baseball bat or something.

00:29:04.048 --> 00:29:06.173
Just it was a crazy stuff like television stuff.

00:29:06.173 --> 00:29:15.704
But I want that guy in there because I want to know what, why he was formed, the way he is and his thinking is very brilliant man.

00:29:15.704 --> 00:29:24.415
But I did want people who had a absolute sound Christian belief and stance, because that's the path I was on.

00:29:24.415 --> 00:29:26.182
So I wanted their perspective.

00:29:26.182 --> 00:29:27.586
But I also wanted these other people.

00:29:27.586 --> 00:29:29.531
So it was just a lot of people that I knew.

00:29:29.531 --> 00:29:36.468
And then somebody would invite somebody else and I mean we would have I mean, you know Bible study, I've done Bible, I've put together Bible studies.

00:29:36.468 --> 00:29:41.868
You might have two people there, me and one other guy, or you might have 25 people there.

00:29:41.868 --> 00:29:44.073
Some people come in, ask other people.

00:29:44.073 --> 00:29:49.181
They come in and then they hear some of it and some people leave because it's not what they're feeling.

00:29:49.741 --> 00:29:54.352
I was invited to a Bible study a couple of years ago and I went, really enjoyed it.

00:29:54.352 --> 00:30:09.421
But then some guy came into the group and how he presented himself and his stances on things and he was the loudest voice in the room, which tends to be me, but I'm in a new environment so I was trying to be a quiet voice man.

00:30:09.421 --> 00:30:22.853
I don't know if I can come back to this Bible study Just because of how dogmatic he was and it wasn't really caring about what other people think.

00:30:22.853 --> 00:30:28.683
It was more vanity driven, ego driven by one person.

00:30:28.683 --> 00:30:31.431
I'd been to a number of Bible studies before this person even came.

00:30:31.431 --> 00:30:36.028
And then he came and his voice was so loud and I should have stuck that one out.

00:30:36.028 --> 00:30:52.861
But I just, oh I just had so many fundamental differences and it brought me down so much that if I'm getting up at 530 to drive from Greer to Greenville for a Bible study, I don't want to be brought down first thing in the morning.

00:30:52.861 --> 00:30:56.814
I want to be uplifted, I want to be challenged, but not like that.

00:30:56.814 --> 00:30:59.481
So that never really took place.

00:30:59.481 --> 00:31:07.113
With what we were doing, everybody respected what the other person said, even if it was an outrageous question like the first one that I brought.

00:31:07.113 --> 00:31:10.102
And I referenced that one because it is so outrageous.

00:31:10.102 --> 00:31:24.794
I wanted to hear what people thought, and of course, everybody denounced me straight up, which they should have because it's an absurd statement or question, but I thought it was one that should be asked.

00:31:25.319 --> 00:31:28.025
Let's start this at the basics, 101.

00:31:28.025 --> 00:31:34.803
So when my wife was born Methodist, born and raised I was born and raised Catholic.

00:31:34.803 --> 00:31:37.290
Her mom was Methodist, her dad was Catholic.

00:31:37.290 --> 00:31:40.686
Her parents, her family, never went to church together.

00:31:40.686 --> 00:31:42.451
She went to church with her mom.

00:31:42.451 --> 00:31:44.424
That's why she was Methodist.

00:31:44.424 --> 00:31:47.618
So when we got married, then we started to have kids.

00:31:47.618 --> 00:31:52.842
We didn't go to church when we got married, but when she got pregnant we were like you know, we need to start going.

00:31:52.842 --> 00:31:55.971
We need, we need to find a church because we want to raise our children in a church.

00:31:55.971 --> 00:31:59.565
And this was before I was 1940.

00:31:59.565 --> 00:32:03.150
This was before I was 42 years old, but we at least had that consciousness.

00:32:04.551 --> 00:32:05.873
So where are we going to go?

00:32:05.873 --> 00:32:07.395
It's not going to be Methodist.

00:32:07.395 --> 00:32:10.022
It's not going to be Catholic, sure as heck.

00:32:10.022 --> 00:32:12.666
It's not going to be Baptist that's on the other side of Methodist.

00:32:12.666 --> 00:32:16.973
It's not going to be denominational, non-denominational, because I don't even know where that is.

00:32:16.973 --> 00:32:26.105
It's not going to be Episcopal that's too much like Catholic.

00:32:26.105 --> 00:32:26.467
Or Lutheran.

00:32:26.467 --> 00:32:27.130
They're too much like Catholic.

00:32:27.150 --> 00:32:28.034
So where are we going to go?

00:32:28.034 --> 00:32:29.279
That's thing called the Presbyterian church was sweet spot.

00:32:29.279 --> 00:32:40.371
It's kind of like the Methodist church, kind of like the Catholic church, the formality of the Catholic church which I was familiar with, but at a level of informality, and it was the sweet spot.

00:32:40.371 --> 00:32:42.768
So we started going to Presbyterian churches.

00:32:42.768 --> 00:32:51.948
But in that Presbyterian church then you begin to realize there's PCA, pcusa, pc, this, pc, that, and it continues to splinter.

00:32:52.599 --> 00:32:59.953
And within the Presbyterian church, just like most denominations, there are such a variety of beliefs.

00:32:59.953 --> 00:33:05.641
So what are you supposed to believe of beliefs?

00:33:05.641 --> 00:33:06.683
So what are you supposed to believe?

00:33:06.683 --> 00:33:16.547
Okay, so this particular denomination just included this particular word, based on the elders or Louisville or wherever this church was located, and it's got, let's say, 2,000 churches.

00:33:16.547 --> 00:33:21.000
Well, you know, 700 of the churches don't like the word you just inserted.

00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:23.042
So they're splintering off, starting another church.

00:33:23.042 --> 00:33:26.586
You know, look at First Pres and Fourth Pres in Greenville.

00:33:26.586 --> 00:33:29.470
They were both PCUSA.

00:33:29.470 --> 00:33:33.894
Well, one of the churches wasn't happy so they left the denomination, did another thing.

00:33:33.894 --> 00:33:37.503
Well, who's right, who's wrong?

00:33:37.503 --> 00:33:38.808
Which church is right?

00:33:38.808 --> 00:33:41.162
Which church is wrong?

00:33:41.162 --> 00:33:45.069
Not only within the Presbyterian denomination, but all denominations.

00:33:45.069 --> 00:33:46.773
Who's right?

00:33:46.773 --> 00:33:51.142
We got this church here pointing a finger at this church, saying you guys are sinners, you're going to hell.

00:33:51.142 --> 00:33:52.748
How can you believe this?

00:33:52.748 --> 00:33:57.141
How can you believe that you don't even know what sin is?

00:33:57.141 --> 00:33:58.969
Who's right?

00:33:59.873 --> 00:34:25.608
And that is how you blow $100,000 to try to bring people together I don't know if you know this, but the the way that I started this podcast was I was so confused about the so many different denominations and all that nonsense that I was like gonna go through every single one of them, like starting with catholicism and work my way up to the.

00:34:25.608 --> 00:34:33.847
You know, whatever the craziest, most ridiculous, god is the mother situation, church and love it.

00:34:33.847 --> 00:34:36.561
You know there's some God, the mother people.

00:34:36.561 --> 00:34:37.280
You should check them out.

00:34:37.280 --> 00:34:38.521
No, I'm just kidding.

00:34:38.762 --> 00:34:49.226
And so, yeah, that's how I started doing that, because I just got so absolutely frustrated with kind of like, who's right, who's wrong, does it matter, does it not?

00:34:49.226 --> 00:34:50.166
What's the deal with that?

00:34:50.166 --> 00:34:56.128
So I just want to let you know that I am very much on team.

00:34:56.128 --> 00:35:05.072
What to every single?

00:35:05.072 --> 00:35:10.094
Like you know, talk to three different Greek Orthodox and they all say the same thing about theology.

00:35:10.094 --> 00:35:20.197
And then you talk to, you know, a Baptist person and they say a very similar thing, but they're different on this, a couple different issues, and it just it wasn't for me.

00:35:20.197 --> 00:35:26.840
There was too much, I don't know, wasn't super fun but continue.

00:35:26.860 --> 00:35:28.304
But yes, yes, I'm on that team, I understand believe me.

00:35:29.184 --> 00:35:41.313
So I know that when you started at premier foundation, you know your, your uh, your exposure, if you will, went from mission trips to new orleans and alabama and texas.

00:35:41.313 --> 00:35:45.349
And now you're doing, now you're going international and seeing different things.

00:35:45.349 --> 00:35:57.746
How have, how have some of those experiences and rooms that you've been in and people that you've intersected with, how has that shaped this, uh, maybe newfound faith or faith?

00:35:57.746 --> 00:36:00.692
That is the balloon, is the balloon is expanding right.

00:36:00.692 --> 00:36:13.153
And then you, you're in this new job, working for this nonprofit, and you're going to all different countries and doing missional work for Christ, but it's a little different than Alabama.

00:36:14.155 --> 00:36:40.657
Yeah, man, that's a great question, Logan, when you spend time internationally and you dig deep into the churches internationally churches that believe in Jesus Christ you find yourself in a cave somewhere dug out up underneath formerly a monastery or whatever it is in Israel.

00:36:40.657 --> 00:36:42.166
This isn't hypothetical.

00:36:42.166 --> 00:36:43.545
Nothing, I'm telling you.

00:36:43.545 --> 00:36:44.228
It's hypothetical.

00:36:45.601 --> 00:36:47.887
It seems like a boots on the ground type of guy.

00:36:48.228 --> 00:36:51.409
And and you look around and you know there's a bunch.

00:36:51.409 --> 00:37:05.380
There's me and a bunch of Russians in a room and they're Russians because the pastor who came from Russia into Israel tells me there's these guys are all just recently came from Russia and they just got released from prison.

00:37:05.380 --> 00:37:14.706
And you're in this room, you're looking around and I was just trying to really get a grip on what the Christian church was like in Israel.

00:37:14.706 --> 00:37:27.242
And there's a moment when I'm there and I'm looking around, there's no exits other than that one exit, because it's all carved out of stone under the building.

00:37:27.242 --> 00:37:30.516
It's getting like a Liam Neeson flashback.

00:37:30.516 --> 00:37:31.244
You know what I mean.

00:37:31.244 --> 00:37:33.103
You know just thinking.

00:37:33.103 --> 00:37:33.668
And I'm not.

00:37:33.668 --> 00:37:36.387
You know I don't know any martial arts.

00:37:36.387 --> 00:37:40.226
I've seen enough TV to where I know the moves that I'd have to make on.

00:37:40.226 --> 00:37:43.989
Somebody Didn't want to, but I just started freaking out a little bit.

00:37:43.989 --> 00:37:47.690
A bunch of Russian convicts here just released.

00:37:47.690 --> 00:37:49.306
I got this pastor who says he's Russian.

00:37:49.306 --> 00:37:52.309
Is he really a Christian leader, is he not?

00:37:52.309 --> 00:37:53.170
What's he doing here?

00:37:53.170 --> 00:37:55.527
And you start thinking these things.

00:37:55.527 --> 00:38:01.742
Then you find yourself up in an upper room somewhere in a different part of Israel and it's clandestine.

00:38:01.742 --> 00:38:06.327
I pull my phone out to take a couple pictures and they're like no, no pictures of anything or anybody.

00:38:07.489 --> 00:38:09.471
And I talked to the pastor and I asked the pastor.

00:38:09.471 --> 00:38:12.614
I said why are you doing this?

00:38:12.614 --> 00:38:13.556
I mean, who's funding you?

00:38:13.556 --> 00:38:18.059
How do you guys even survive in some nondescript building outside of Tel Aviv?

00:38:18.059 --> 00:38:21.443
Because he wants to share the gospel of Jesus Christ?

00:38:21.443 --> 00:38:25.067
I said well, are you guys raising any money?

00:38:25.067 --> 00:38:26.128
I mean, who's funding you?

00:38:26.128 --> 00:38:32.554
Well, there's a church in Texas who sent us some money and I said well, how do you get paid?

00:38:32.554 --> 00:38:39.958
I said you get paid for being the pastor, right, and he looked at me.

00:38:39.958 --> 00:38:43.876
I said of course not.

00:38:43.876 --> 00:38:47.782
Why would I get paid to share the gospel of Jesus Christ?

00:38:47.782 --> 00:38:49.063
I'm thinking, I just want to think back to my church.

00:38:49.063 --> 00:38:55.652
I'm thinking, man, I know how much the pastor and the staff and everybody's making of the retirement and the housing allowance, so I'm thinking of all of them.

00:38:55.652 --> 00:38:59.356
I'm like my gosh, it's not just my church, it's all the churches.

00:38:59.356 --> 00:39:05.121
And then you think you were scrambled.

00:39:05.121 --> 00:39:07.206
Then your mind really starts getting scrambled about any pastor making any money.

00:39:07.206 --> 00:39:08.610
Well, I'm not making money from this.

00:39:08.610 --> 00:39:11.646
I wrote this book and that's how I'm living off this book.

00:39:11.646 --> 00:39:12.869
The church isn't really paying me.

00:39:12.869 --> 00:39:15.085
Well, how do you think you wrote the book in the first place?

00:39:15.085 --> 00:39:16.027
Who's buying the book?

00:39:16.027 --> 00:39:23.451
There's people sitting in your auditorium buying these things and it becomes so convoluted.

00:39:23.471 --> 00:39:25.795
It's in Cambodia.

00:39:25.795 --> 00:39:33.563
I'm in Cambodia, I'm watching this church service and they're throwing some visuals of the words of the songs on the screen.

00:39:33.563 --> 00:39:38.653
They're singing in Khmer and I'm trying to dial along and figure it out.

00:39:38.653 --> 00:39:41.623
And looking at this screen, it's those old screens.

00:39:41.623 --> 00:39:44.789
You pull up from the roll right and you got a hook on the top and you got an arm.

00:39:44.789 --> 00:39:59.494
Look at the screen it's rusty, it's cut, it's all jacked up right, but they're praising harder than anybody I've seen praise and then I start to get angry.

00:39:59.494 --> 00:40:03.067
Not the first time, it's every time I start to get angry.

00:40:03.067 --> 00:40:05.172
You see this screen.

00:40:05.880 --> 00:40:07.927
Probably some church that threw it in the dumpster.

00:40:07.927 --> 00:40:11.027
Somebody might have pulled it out said hey, we can use this on a mission trip, we can give it to somebody.

00:40:11.027 --> 00:40:12.681
It's kind of like donating.

00:40:12.681 --> 00:40:22.990
Hey, I got a bunch of t-shirts I'm going to donate to Triune Mercy Center for the homeless, but all your t-shirts have massive yellow stains under the arm.

00:40:22.990 --> 00:40:24.434
But you want them to go to good.

00:40:24.434 --> 00:40:31.382
Why in the world are you going to give dirty, stained t-shirts to some homeless people so they can just look more homeless?

00:40:31.382 --> 00:40:38.789
How about providing some dignity and go to Walmart and buy a pack of three shirts and give them some new shirts.

00:40:38.789 --> 00:40:44.110
Take those other shirts, cut them up and use them as rags for your next garage project.

00:40:44.110 --> 00:40:45.985
But what are you doing?

00:40:45.985 --> 00:40:48.248
You're giving these people leftovers.

00:40:48.248 --> 00:40:51.469
They're grateful to have it, but doesn't make it right.

00:40:51.469 --> 00:40:54.588
Doesn't make it right from our perspective.

00:40:55.039 --> 00:41:01.494
And I start to begin thinking of the screens the screens we see in churches.

00:41:01.494 --> 00:41:03.449
I've been to a lot of churches in the United States of America.

00:41:03.449 --> 00:41:06.947
I've been to a lot of churches in the United States of America, been to a lot of churches around the world.

00:41:06.947 --> 00:41:21.764
I've participated in more churches in more different languages than I probably would say, than anybody I know Maybe a couple people, but there's not many.

00:41:21.764 --> 00:41:25.268
The screens really jammed me up.

00:41:26.420 --> 00:41:28.369
I'm the first flight back from Cambodia.

00:41:28.369 --> 00:41:36.152
I'd also been in brothels with an undercover SWAT team with little girls who were sold into sex trafficking by their parents.

00:41:36.152 --> 00:41:39.228
And you go in like a candy store.

00:41:39.228 --> 00:41:44.179
Of course you have to walk by the armed guards with machine guns to get in there store.

00:41:44.179 --> 00:41:48.929
Of course you have to walk by the armed guards with machine guns to get in there and I'm with an undercover SWAT team that rescues these girls.

00:41:48.929 --> 00:41:51.833
I'm thinking, man, this is crazy.

00:41:51.833 --> 00:41:58.887
And then you see the scene of this plate glass window and there's like 10 floors of this.

00:41:58.887 --> 00:42:08.036
They might be 20 feet wide, 15 feet high, these plate-class windows, with 30 girls behind the window.

00:42:08.036 --> 00:42:16.153
They've all got numbers and all you have to do is call the number and for $20, you can go and spend all the time you want to with the girl.

00:42:16.153 --> 00:42:19.329
The world is just upside down.

00:42:19.329 --> 00:42:24.349
Then I'm dealing with the jacked up screen on top of it.

00:42:25.550 --> 00:42:32.512
Then I'm on the plane back home, sitting next to this Asian lady sitting on the window and I just everything came to a head.

00:42:32.512 --> 00:42:37.668
I'd start to cry and I'm crying and it's not, it's not your.

00:42:37.668 --> 00:42:38.891
You know.

00:42:38.891 --> 00:42:41.242
Nice, simple, oh, that's nice cry.

00:42:41.242 --> 00:42:48.867
It's some ugly, ugly, gnarly crying on this plane and I started thinking well, what's this woman thinking of me over here?

00:42:48.867 --> 00:42:51.661
Because I looked, I was on the cusp.

00:42:51.661 --> 00:43:13.460
But we're doing this for Jesus Christ and the things that I saw wrecked me and what we hold dear and privileged, like a multimillion dollar setup in your sanctuary if you can call it a sanctuary which is just an glorified auditorium, but it does touch a lot of people.

00:43:13.460 --> 00:43:15.043
We do broadcast around the world.

00:43:15.043 --> 00:43:16.407
We do get into people's homes.

00:43:16.407 --> 00:43:38.657
All of that didn't make any difference because I'm just thinking about those girls and that projector screen and how much money that goes into the screens here, that if employed around the world in these places that I've been and seen how much life-changing effects would take place.

00:43:38.657 --> 00:43:43.701
So those things are hard, they're really really hard.

00:43:43.701 --> 00:43:48.485
The most impactive church service I ever went to.

00:43:48.485 --> 00:43:50.467
So those things are hard, they're really really hard.

00:43:50.467 --> 00:43:51.789
The most impactive church service I ever went to.

00:43:51.809 --> 00:43:53.690
I was in Jordan, went with this guy in a group.

00:43:53.690 --> 00:43:55.592
We're sitting in this church group.

00:43:55.592 --> 00:43:59.016
We're staying in some interesting building.

00:43:59.016 --> 00:44:06.007
It was like six of us sleeping in a room and quick, funny story, I would wake up in the morning like everybody be out of the room.

00:44:06.007 --> 00:44:07.414
There'd be mattresses in the hallway.

00:44:07.414 --> 00:44:11.632
People would take their mattresses and go and sleep in the hallway because I snored so bad.

00:44:11.632 --> 00:44:15.065
They were like man, I couldn't even sleep in the room.

00:44:15.065 --> 00:44:18.402
All that being said, just a little levity on this, really quick.

00:44:18.402 --> 00:44:21.992
So then I'm at the service and we're dealing.

00:44:21.992 --> 00:44:24.177
There's a bunch of people in there.

00:44:24.177 --> 00:44:30.014
The praise and worship group is a Christian group from Egypt, pastors from Egypt.

00:44:30.014 --> 00:44:35.847
There are Syrian and Iraqi refugees there in the service.

00:44:35.847 --> 00:44:37.148
I was there with Troy Murray.

00:44:37.148 --> 00:44:41.903
These people had escaped ISIS.

00:44:43.047 --> 00:44:49.467
One of the guys staying with us in this house one morning was telling us a story and it was being translated.

00:44:49.467 --> 00:44:52.027
He's telling us this story.

00:44:52.027 --> 00:45:02.617
Isis came into his town I think he was from Iraq and they had raped his wife.

00:45:02.617 --> 00:45:06.601
They had taken him capture.

00:45:06.601 --> 00:45:19.014
They had raped his wife and killed her in front of him, raped his daughter, his daughter I got two daughters this becomes real.

00:45:19.014 --> 00:45:21.221
It's real, it's always real.

00:45:21.329 --> 00:45:35.161
But when you start talking about something that is even more intimate to you raped his daughter, raped his daughter, they tied his daughter to a chair, put his daughter in the house and they lit the house on fire.

00:45:35.161 --> 00:45:38.054
This guy can't do anything.

00:45:38.054 --> 00:45:38.836
He can't.

00:45:38.836 --> 00:45:40.141
You're not Superman.

00:45:40.141 --> 00:45:45.235
You're not going to be able to break from the constraints that they had you locked in on and they let him live.

00:45:45.235 --> 00:45:50.307
And he's telling me the story able to break from the constraints that they had you locked in on and they let him live.

00:45:50.307 --> 00:45:51.090
And he's telling me the story.

00:45:51.090 --> 00:45:55.447
I mean it's so over the top, the story that you're hearing that you can't even believe that that story is true.

00:45:55.447 --> 00:45:59.880
But that story is real and of course they let him live, right?

00:45:59.880 --> 00:46:10.164
What good is it if they kill him because they want him to know what happens, so he can tell other people?

00:46:10.164 --> 00:46:13.800
So the fear and the devil can live.

00:46:13.800 --> 00:46:22.184
So even us as Christians who go and try to fight those things, we should be scared by those stories, right?

00:46:22.184 --> 00:46:27.117
We should not want to engage with these people because they are ruthless murderers.

00:46:27.117 --> 00:46:29.000
They're the worst of the worst.

00:46:29.541 --> 00:46:31.302
I'm not attaching a religion to them.

00:46:31.302 --> 00:46:39.992
I'm not saying these extremist Muslims, I'm not attaching it because they are human beings and they are making those choices Now.

00:46:39.992 --> 00:46:52.130
They have been taught things, beliefs, from an early age on what they're supposed to do, and some go down an extremist path, what they're supposed to do, and some go down an extremist path and they splinter and then there's another extremist path.

00:46:52.130 --> 00:46:56.996
So those people did those crimes against humanity.

00:46:56.996 --> 00:47:00.119
Does that make every single Muslim bad?

00:47:00.119 --> 00:47:02.380
I know Muslims, man.

00:47:02.380 --> 00:47:04.282
I know some, not a lot.

00:47:04.282 --> 00:47:06.483
I know some Ones.

00:47:06.483 --> 00:47:10.367
I know break bread, man, I know some, not a lot, I know some Ones.

00:47:10.367 --> 00:47:12.489
I know break bread with great people.

00:47:12.489 --> 00:47:25.965
The extremist sect of any religion to me becomes heinous and murderous, whether it's murderous in deed or word or judgment.

00:47:25.965 --> 00:47:26.789
So those Thanks for the question, logan.

00:47:26.929 --> 00:47:32.139
Because those experiences in those churches, I'm going to say something that's not going to be popular.

00:47:32.139 --> 00:47:45.054
It makes me dislike the American church so much Because of what we place value in the TV screen, the projector.

00:47:45.054 --> 00:47:49.159
It's hard and I'll tell a story.

00:47:49.159 --> 00:47:55.751
Some people might get broken up when I tell a story or they might just be so shocked at my transparency on telling these stories.

00:47:55.751 --> 00:47:56.833
It's not my intention.

00:47:56.833 --> 00:48:04.679
There's a level of what happens when you do what we do and you see these things, you become desensitized to them and I hate that.

00:48:04.679 --> 00:48:07.251
I don't ever want to be desensitized.

00:48:07.251 --> 00:48:17.222
I don't ever want to say, yeah, these homeless kids here, yeah, yeah, I know that man's happening everywhere Getting sold on an auction block.

00:48:17.222 --> 00:48:23.418
Bodies, your organs are being harvested, put on the black market, rest of the body's getting chopped up and burned.

00:48:23.418 --> 00:48:26.784
Yeah, I know, man, that's tough, that happens.

00:48:26.784 --> 00:48:29.657
I should never react that way.

00:48:29.657 --> 00:48:37.724
I should react with anger and I should react with just a broken heart every time I hear the story.

00:48:37.724 --> 00:48:42.541
But it's hard not to get desensitized.

00:48:45.693 --> 00:48:46.896
So what do you do with that?

00:48:46.896 --> 00:48:48.418
So there is a lot of.

00:48:48.418 --> 00:48:52.672
You know it's easy, not easy, but it's.

00:48:52.672 --> 00:48:58.193
You look at the American church right, because we're a wealthy nation, by all means.

00:48:58.193 --> 00:49:07.614
You look at the American church and you're like, okay, we have big screens, we have mega churches, huge churches, pastors that are making 300 grand a year.

00:49:07.614 --> 00:49:08.293
It's insane.

00:49:08.293 --> 00:49:13.398
But what do you do with that?

00:49:13.398 --> 00:49:20.483
Because I've been really angry at that and I do think it's absurd for a pastor to make 300 grand.

00:49:20.483 --> 00:49:22.706
That's a crazy situation.

00:49:22.706 --> 00:49:30.177
But like, I've kind of landed and you tell me if this is a reasonable stance, but I've kind of landed in the place where it's.

00:49:30.177 --> 00:49:33.411
Like I don't, I don't even know where I've landed.

00:49:33.411 --> 00:49:35.655
Yeah, what do you do with that?

00:49:35.655 --> 00:49:46.110
Like, are you supposed to burn the churches down, cause I was on team burn them down like three years ago, right when I first became a christian, it was like this is all nonsense.

00:49:46.610 --> 00:49:47.554
yeah, and then what do you?

00:49:47.614 --> 00:50:00.898
do yeah, and then what do you do with the pastor who does make three thousand dollars a year but makes it his life's mission to actually take that money and move to a place like cambodia or jordan and do those things?

00:50:00.898 --> 00:50:03.451
It seems like a whole unique bottle of wax.

00:50:03.451 --> 00:50:04.052
I'm with grant.

00:50:04.052 --> 00:50:04.592
I'm with grant.

00:50:04.592 --> 00:50:05.034
Like what do?

00:50:05.034 --> 00:50:05.715
What do you do?

00:50:05.715 --> 00:50:09.844
How do you live within that tension of the good, the bad, the ugly?

00:50:10.510 --> 00:50:15.728
And it's something you said too, which is, initially, you think it's like black and white.

00:50:15.728 --> 00:50:20.762
You know, you're like, okay, the American church isn't doing it right.

00:50:20.762 --> 00:50:41.057
These places over there, you know, wherever you want to call it with discipleship, making movements or whatever you want to call it, are doing it the right way because they're on fire for the Lord that you do zero money and it's all spiritual, wonderful, so, but it's just like man it's, it's all gray, everything, at least to me.

00:50:41.057 --> 00:50:44.760
I mean, I'm, I live in the gray, so it's hard to my man.

00:50:44.760 --> 00:50:52.467
And this guy, I mean, you do a nonprofit, so your world's probably more gray than mine is, or you're team black and white, I don't know.

00:50:54.710 --> 00:50:55.813
There's no team black and white here.

00:50:55.813 --> 00:50:56.737
It's gray.

00:50:56.737 --> 00:51:14.731
And for me and Logan knows this I have my beliefs, I have my stances and I have my opinions, although I'm 60 years old, I'm older and I'm white.

00:51:14.731 --> 00:51:25.036
By this point in time, most people are locked into what they believe and they're not even going to spend the time or waste the energy on having their beliefs or their thoughts altered by outside information.

00:51:25.036 --> 00:51:53.177
But that's one of the things that I feel that I am proud of is that Logan and I can vehemently disagree on a topic, never Right, right Often and he and I can have a conversation that's very civil and respectful conversation that's very civil and respectful, and what he says to me I will accept and it may change the way I believe about something.

00:51:53.177 --> 00:51:56.543
That's the way our Congress should be right.

00:51:56.543 --> 00:51:58.735
Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?

00:51:58.735 --> 00:52:11.735
You go and hear an argument for somebody who has a good argument about something and you let it settle, and perhaps you are voting the wrong way on something, and maybe I should consider that, because it makes a lot of sense and the proof they're offering is solid.

00:52:11.735 --> 00:52:16.398
You know the American church.

00:52:16.398 --> 00:52:17.802
There are a lot of resources there.

00:52:17.802 --> 00:52:35.971
So what I like to do is I like to defend somebody that I have just perhaps cast a stone but I've made comment about that might be disparaging like makes me dislike the American church for the variety of these reasons.

00:52:35.971 --> 00:52:40.233
The amount of money they put into their AV systems All right, that's just, that's a basic.

00:52:40.233 --> 00:52:42.641
But I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna defend that.

00:52:42.641 --> 00:53:10.454
Those AV systems, people sitting there seeing it, and then where they are, perhaps being viewed around the world, somebody's life is transformed because of the quality of that and they were able to see it and hear it clearly and they are in awe of Jesus Christ because of what that how it was just offered, in awe of Jesus Christ, because of how it was just offered.

00:53:10.454 --> 00:53:12.617
Then the amount of money they spent on those screens, in my opinion, is justified.

00:53:12.617 --> 00:53:20.335
If that is the vehicle by which their salvation came in part, then yes, that's fine.

00:53:20.335 --> 00:53:22.498
So I defend that.

00:53:22.659 --> 00:53:27.746
If a pastor's making $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 a year, that's a lot of money.

00:53:27.746 --> 00:53:30.498
But what if they're running a $100 million church?

00:53:30.498 --> 00:53:39.143
You're going to get a CEO of any $100 million company or a $50 million company for $80,000 to run that company.

00:53:39.143 --> 00:53:45.492
The person needs to have the wherewithal, they need to have the tools in their wheelhouse to understand how to run a business.

00:53:45.492 --> 00:53:56.797
So it's not just about the ministry and the gospel, it's about running a business now and so many pastors get into it because of their love for the gospel and they want change.

00:53:56.797 --> 00:54:00.260
Then it exponentially grows.

00:54:00.260 --> 00:54:02.802
Now some of those pastors have that intention.

00:54:02.802 --> 00:54:04.242
We're going to plant this church, plant this church.

00:54:04.242 --> 00:54:09.324
I'm like man every time you turn around, you're throwing another $50, $100 million to build this building.

00:54:09.324 --> 00:54:20.170
We're not maybe $100 million, $20, $50 million, whatever it is to buy this property, build this campus?

00:54:20.170 --> 00:54:22.094
Well, you got one over here, just 10 miles down the road, and you got another one 15 miles.

00:54:22.094 --> 00:54:22.875
Why do you need all of these?

00:54:22.875 --> 00:54:24.516
There's other people that are serving that as well.

00:54:24.516 --> 00:54:26.420
Plus, you're already broadcasting it.

00:54:26.420 --> 00:54:32.335
Maybe there's that one person that needs that, but it just seems like a lot of money.

00:54:32.635 --> 00:54:43.715
And when you go to the places that I've been very fortunate to go to and you see how much money can change things, even in the ministry, I start equating.

00:54:43.715 --> 00:54:47.903
Well, I remember we built some widow's houses in Guatemala.

00:54:47.903 --> 00:54:53.481
You know basic dirt floor, man stove, four walls.

00:54:53.481 --> 00:54:58.201
Keep in mind they didn't have anything to live in.

00:54:58.201 --> 00:54:59.456
Now they're living in something.

00:54:59.456 --> 00:55:02.619
So $400, I think about $400.

00:55:02.619 --> 00:55:09.342
Shoot me and some friends went out last week and spent $400 getting some nice steaks.

00:55:09.342 --> 00:55:11.998
We could have built a house for widows.

00:55:12.871 --> 00:55:19.864
It's not to say that they're not also donating and giving to building those houses and they shouldn't be able to eat a $100 steak whenever they want.

00:55:19.864 --> 00:55:22.898
I can't tell them how to use their money.

00:55:22.898 --> 00:55:38.539
And some of these people that do live affluent lifestyles or have made a lot of money, some of those people are the most generous, anonymous, loving giving people and they give a vast amount of their wealth away.

00:55:38.539 --> 00:55:41.860
But if they want to drive a Lamborghini, drive a Lamborghini.

00:55:41.860 --> 00:55:47.835
But then I go to that place in my head man, do you know how many widows' houses a Lamborghini can buy?

00:55:47.835 --> 00:56:07.311
So it's a never-ending pit for me because I begin to get angry, although, on the other hand, I'm very, very thankful because without people willing to support not only what we do but other ministry, I used to.

00:56:07.311 --> 00:56:10.018
You know, ministries were all in competition with each other.

00:56:10.340 --> 00:56:11.914
All right, logan's got a hundred dollars.

00:56:11.914 --> 00:56:13.775
He's going to give to a ministry this month.

00:56:13.775 --> 00:56:14.579
Who's it going to be?

00:56:14.579 --> 00:56:15.954
Well, there's a bunch out there.

00:56:15.954 --> 00:56:16.878
Is it going to be his church?

00:56:16.878 --> 00:56:18.717
I know a lot of people that just don't give their church.

00:56:18.717 --> 00:56:26.932
I'd rather give it to other.

00:56:26.932 --> 00:56:30.751
I'm not saying don't do that, because I do think the church is important, but as long as you're giving I used to be I'd rather Logan.

00:56:30.751 --> 00:56:36.219
You give the $100 to us than grants ministry and he's doing great stuff, but you only have $100.

00:56:36.219 --> 00:56:39.336
You don't have $200 to give this month, you only have 100.

00:56:39.336 --> 00:56:40.460
So where's it going to go?

00:56:40.460 --> 00:56:41.081
50-50?

00:56:41.081 --> 00:56:41.771
That's great.

00:56:43.213 --> 00:56:49.612
I would be in that competitive mindset where we needed the money because we needed to be able to sustain and grow.

00:56:49.612 --> 00:57:01.393
But I got to the point, running this organization, where I'm like you know, man, I don't care, give it to Grant, as long as you're giving it, logan, give If it's to us.

00:57:01.393 --> 00:57:02.936
If we're on your heart, great.

00:57:02.936 --> 00:57:05.601
If Grant's on your heart in his organization, great.

00:57:05.601 --> 00:57:08.112
But I'm just glad that you're giving.

00:57:08.112 --> 00:57:20.784
So you have to overcome certain mental roadblocks to understand the greater good of humanity and the greater good of what Jesus Christ has set us here to do.

00:57:20.784 --> 00:57:25.994
In the first place, because he doesn't want me and you, grant, fighting about that $100.

00:57:25.994 --> 00:57:30.780
In the first place, because he doesn't want me and you, grant fighting about that $100, because we'll go ahead and drag this thing out for months.

00:57:30.780 --> 00:57:33.001
Well, logan's got this $100 ready to give.

00:57:33.001 --> 00:57:35.483
Why are we going to be bickering?

00:57:35.483 --> 00:57:36.385
Give $100.

00:57:36.385 --> 00:57:37.626
Let's do good with it.

00:57:37.626 --> 00:57:42.380
Let's shine the light on him.

00:57:42.380 --> 00:58:14.018
So it's a gray area that I have to work on myself, because the church here in America has got so much opportunity for good and so many churches are doing so much good.

00:58:14.039 --> 00:58:15.583
Do you combat against the trap of planting more churches?

00:58:15.583 --> 00:58:17.327
How do you get beyond the trap of worshiping the pastor instead of Jesus Christ?

00:58:17.327 --> 00:58:19.693
Because a dynamic speaker, bro, I get caught up in a dynamic speaker.

00:58:19.693 --> 00:58:21.762
I'm like man, what do you need?

00:58:21.762 --> 00:58:23.628
This guy's an incredible speaker.

00:58:23.628 --> 00:58:25.072
This woman is an incredible speaker.

00:58:25.072 --> 00:58:28.661
You get caught up and into it and we're all just selling things.

00:58:28.661 --> 00:58:33.541
We're selling rescuing kids from slavery.

00:58:33.541 --> 00:58:37.260
We're selling feeding homeless people.

00:58:37.260 --> 00:58:50.514
You've got to have a good salesman to do that, or a saleswoman to do that, in part because you need people to get caught in a vision and the passion, and that passion being jesus christ.

00:58:50.514 --> 00:58:52.860
I can't recall the guy's name.

00:58:52.860 --> 00:58:55.914
You'll know who I'm talking about the guy that wrote the book radical.

00:58:55.914 --> 00:58:56.556
What's his name?

00:58:56.556 --> 00:59:02.452
David platt, alabama platt, so platt.

00:59:02.514 --> 00:59:10.996
I think he goes to new Orleans Theological Seminary, if I'm not mistaken, he has legitimately like six doctorates, so you're probably right.

00:59:12.291 --> 00:59:14.458
One of them is from there, so he comes out.

00:59:14.458 --> 00:59:15.614
This is what I know about him.

00:59:15.614 --> 00:59:23.976
Like my dad says, gene, what you say is not true, but there is truth in what you say, so I'm going to give you a little bit of truth that I know.

00:59:23.976 --> 00:59:25.521
So I don't know if it's entirely accurate.

00:59:32.730 --> 00:59:33.211
Oh, it's epic.

00:59:33.211 --> 00:59:35.621
And you know Platt starts his church, he's outspoken and I love Radical.

00:59:35.621 --> 00:59:36.063
What a great book.

00:59:36.063 --> 00:59:39.773
But if you want to read another book that's along those same lines, radical is.

00:59:39.773 --> 00:59:43.961
To me it's like elementary school level for Christians.

00:59:43.961 --> 00:59:50.983
I'm not saying that derogatory because I like elementary school stuff, because I've got ADD, sometimes tough to maintain attention.

00:59:50.983 --> 00:59:55.036
There's another book written called A Hole in the Gospel by Richard Stern.

00:59:55.036 --> 01:00:02.621
The guy that came to work from I think was a Corning and then he ended up running World Vision and transformed that organization.

01:00:02.621 --> 01:00:05.199
That's like a master's level course.

01:00:05.199 --> 01:00:12.038
The book's harder to read because it's bigger, it's thicker, the words are smaller, there's more words on the page, et cetera.

01:00:12.038 --> 01:00:16.021
So it's tough but it's phenomenal.

01:00:16.021 --> 01:00:19.318
Platt says the same thing, but in a very basic way.

01:00:19.318 --> 01:00:29.635
But he in his first book I mean he's fighting against the megachurch, he doesn't want a megachurch, he doesn't like the megachurch.

01:00:29.635 --> 01:00:31.596
But what happens?

01:00:31.596 --> 01:00:37.523
Because he's so profound and he's so epic in not being megachurch what happens?

01:00:37.931 --> 01:00:38.835
He gets a megachurch.

01:00:39.510 --> 01:00:40.735
A megachurch is created.

01:00:40.735 --> 01:00:42.036
I don't think it was intentional.

01:00:42.230 --> 01:00:43.414
I don't think he saw it coming.

01:00:43.434 --> 01:00:50.251
There's no way, that's intentional, and then he ends up creating.

01:00:50.251 --> 01:00:51.496
You probably know more about this than I do.

01:00:51.496 --> 01:00:56.170
He starts creating these clandestine meetings where only the people that know they go and Underground church, Underground church.

01:00:56.170 --> 01:00:59.759
Dude, I've been to an underground church back when I was in high school.

01:00:59.759 --> 01:01:00.300
It's awesome.

01:01:00.300 --> 01:01:01.523
Platt's the real deal.

01:01:01.523 --> 01:01:14.478
But he's a great example of somebody who, if you know nothing about it or if you don't take the time to kind of unpack that and you live in that black and white, you look at Platt and you say what the heck, dude, You're the problem.

01:01:14.478 --> 01:01:16.996
And then you hear him and the.

01:01:16.996 --> 01:01:19.778
Did you ever listen to any of the Elephant Rooms back in the day?

01:01:20.039 --> 01:01:20.621
I haven't heard it.

01:01:20.690 --> 01:01:23.757
Dude, it was like early 2010s.

01:01:23.757 --> 01:01:24.719
It was like early 2010s.

01:01:24.739 --> 01:01:34.494
Great idea Driscoll Perry, noble OG, furtick and Platt and Matt Chandler in there, and Platt specifically Platt and Chandler.

01:01:34.494 --> 01:01:39.043
They were getting railed by these guys because it's like McDonald, what's his name?

01:01:39.043 --> 01:01:41.875
It's all these megachurch guys, let's do these things.

01:01:41.875 --> 01:01:43.998
And then Platt was like absolutely not.

01:01:43.998 --> 01:01:48.603
So if you were to see Platt today and then go back and look at those, you'd be like this guy's a hypocrite.

01:01:48.603 --> 01:01:51.887
But knowing everything you just said, charismatic speaker, he's the real deal.

01:01:51.887 --> 01:01:57.760
You do get a following from those things and that's where the gray gets really hard, in my opinion.

01:01:57.760 --> 01:02:00.318
Sorry, that's just a little one-off tangent, but keep going.

01:02:00.318 --> 01:02:01.835
Underground church great stuff.

01:02:08.010 --> 01:02:08.510
It's church great stuff.

01:02:08.510 --> 01:02:08.931
It's interesting.

01:02:08.931 --> 01:02:09.373
Exactly what you said.

01:02:09.373 --> 01:02:09.653
I mean he.

01:02:09.653 --> 01:02:11.396
He creates this fighting against what he doesn't want to become.

01:02:11.396 --> 01:02:22.936
He ends up becoming that, but not intentionally, and then he spends I don't know what's happening with him now, because it's been years since I've read him that he's almost running away from what he created.

01:02:23.518 --> 01:02:27.023
But the good out of that radical is such a good book.

01:02:27.023 --> 01:02:43.300
It's such a good introductory book about how we should, how we should put our faith and our belief in Jesus Christ into action, man, and it's written in such a way that's consumable.

01:02:43.300 --> 01:02:50.539
So when I say it's elementary, I don't mean anything derogatory, I mean it's very consumable for everybody.

01:02:50.539 --> 01:02:56.757
I want to take it a step further mold the gospel, richard Stern, epic, epic.

01:02:56.757 --> 01:03:03.416
So yeah, it's a gray area that we're living in that we are struggling with.

01:03:03.536 --> 01:03:13.692
If you're not struggling with it as a Christian that we are struggling with, if you're not struggling with it as a Christian, then I probably would say you need to step your game up.

01:03:13.692 --> 01:03:17.318
If these things that happen around the world don't bother you, you need to dig a little deeper.

01:03:17.318 --> 01:03:34.800
And then the question or statement that always I just get a chuckle out of man is when people ask me about what I do and I tell them a story or two, like you guys heard, and then the response is well, that's happening right here in the United States.

01:03:34.800 --> 01:03:37.637
Girls are being trafficked right here in the United States.

01:03:37.637 --> 01:03:40.518
There are homeless people right here in the United States.

01:03:40.518 --> 01:03:43.938
Yeah, there's a lot of things happening here in the United States.

01:03:44.409 --> 01:03:45.231
But you want to know what?

01:03:45.231 --> 01:03:52.635
If I'm homeless and I'm hungry, I don't want to be in any other country than the United States of America.

01:03:52.635 --> 01:03:54.597
Really want to get out of your situation.

01:03:54.597 --> 01:04:15.351
Probably within unless you're out west, in some rural area there's probably within a hundred miles.

01:04:15.351 --> 01:04:27.045
There is an opportunity to get out of your circumstances and take the effort and try to become what you believe that you can become, because the resources are there Cambodia, they're not there.

01:04:27.045 --> 01:04:54.485
Syria, iraq, jordan, cuba, haiti man, if you're hungry and thirsty in Haiti, you know what's going to happen You're going to die of thirst or die of starvation, because it is not set up and the government isn't set up to where there's going to be that much care and effort put into the people who are the most disadvantaged.

01:04:55.289 --> 01:05:16.512
That's always something that really has bothered me is like you were saying the hundred dollars to me or Logan, which you know, or give it to somebody else because I don't have an organization, which you know, or give it to somebody else because I don't have an organization, but still, um, just the idea of like somebody having the audacity to be like you go on a mission trip, which I get.

01:05:16.512 --> 01:05:32.119
Like you know, there's some fun mission trips like we're gonna go to costa rica and chill and then build one thing and then leave, which I'm not saying that those are horrendous or anything like that, but just the idea of like you're doing something great overseas and then leave, which I'm not saying that those are horrendous or anything like that, but just the idea of like you're doing something great overseas and then they're like why aren't you doing that here?

01:05:32.119 --> 01:05:36.112
It's like we're on the same team, like he's.

01:05:36.112 --> 01:05:38.099
He's going over there.

01:05:38.099 --> 01:05:38.820
That's great.

01:05:39.369 --> 01:05:40.635
Why aren't you doing something over here?

01:05:40.635 --> 01:05:41.213
Why aren't?

01:05:41.213 --> 01:05:43.063
Why am I not doing something over here?

01:05:43.063 --> 01:05:43.987
You know what I mean.

01:05:43.987 --> 01:05:44.570
Right, right.

01:05:44.570 --> 01:05:45.498
Why am I not doing something over here?

01:05:45.498 --> 01:05:45.922
You know what I mean.

01:05:45.922 --> 01:05:46.829
Right, right, do something somewhere, man.

01:05:46.829 --> 01:05:56.420
Like whoever said that, you know it's like the correct response and not a like mean way, but just like as like a let's get each other fired up type of way.

01:05:56.420 --> 01:05:58.797
It's like yeah, I'll go do that.

01:05:58.797 --> 01:06:01.097
I'll help you start something over here.

01:06:01.097 --> 01:06:02.195
Like, you go do this.

01:06:02.195 --> 01:06:12.155
If you think that this is where it needs to happen and you think that homeless people need to be fed in greenville, south carolina, that's awesome, man, I will get you some resources, let's make that happen.

01:06:12.155 --> 01:06:16.559
I'm gonna go over here and build some houses for some widows, like right, I haven't that's sick.

01:06:16.701 --> 01:06:18.025
I have an inverse of that story.

01:06:18.025 --> 01:06:19.351
I was at a conference also.

01:06:19.351 --> 01:06:20.793
David platt spoke at that conference.

01:06:20.793 --> 01:06:35.041
And david platt in 45 minutes, can make you want to go back home, put a for sale sign in your yard and sell everything and like he's, it's just, he's incredibly captivating because it's very much a you know missions in action thing.

01:06:35.471 --> 01:06:39.338
But me and a buddy, andrew Hargett.

01:06:39.338 --> 01:06:48.036
So we're at this at the Gospel Coalition Conference, and we've always talked, like you know, at the time I don't, I don't know if I would do this now, who knows?

01:06:48.036 --> 01:06:58.695
But we're, we're toying around the idea of like, oh you know, one day we'll start a church or I'll start a church or whoever, and um, and so we're in this church planning like breakout session.

01:06:58.695 --> 01:06:59.677
It's like, oh, where are you from?

01:06:59.677 --> 01:07:03.501
It's like, ah, from you know, somewhere, indiana, somewhere in whatever.

01:07:03.501 --> 01:07:06.065
I'm from Greenville, south Carolina.

01:07:06.065 --> 01:07:12.664
And, no joke, the dude sitting in front of us turns around and says, why are you here?

01:07:12.664 --> 01:07:15.438
Aren't there enough churches in Greenville, south Carolina?

01:07:15.438 --> 01:07:21.170
And I was like one, I don't know you from Adam.

01:07:21.170 --> 01:07:22.335
So like chill.

01:07:22.335 --> 01:07:34.483
But then two is, I know people in Greenville, south Carolina who don't know Jesus and I know that there are communities that don't have churches.

01:07:34.483 --> 01:07:36.987
You can never have too many good churches.

01:07:36.987 --> 01:07:46.791
Know your your point about it's?

01:07:46.791 --> 01:07:52.851
It's set up here, even if you don't have a place to stay or even you don't have this thing for the most part you have organizations fighting on your behalf for those things.

01:07:52.851 --> 01:07:55.456
Um, and if not, start one?

01:07:55.456 --> 01:08:00.534
Um, one of the coolest stories I've ever heard is how the julie valentine's center got started.

01:08:00.534 --> 01:08:06.938
I mean, she was just like she watched a movie, realized that that domestic and sexual violence was happening in Greenville.

01:08:06.938 --> 01:08:11.110
I mean, obviously, and there's no resources, and so she ran it out of her kitchen.

01:08:11.510 --> 01:08:23.885
So like, do what is on your heart, but by no means should you come and say, well, don't give the person in X location any love, because there's the same person in Y location with the same situation.

01:08:23.885 --> 01:08:33.279
It's like, hey, what if we both did the same heart that I could have for planning a church in Greenville, south Carolina, even though what he said is true.

01:08:33.279 --> 01:08:34.721
It's what you said.

01:08:34.721 --> 01:08:38.818
It's not true, but there is an element of truth in it.

01:08:38.818 --> 01:08:40.735
There's a lot of churches in Greenville, south Carolina.

01:08:40.735 --> 01:08:52.993
There could always be more, and it is challenging to think about because man think about the per capita amount of churches we have here and then think about the per capita amount of Christian churches in Jordan.

01:08:52.993 --> 01:08:59.024
Maybe I should go to Jordan, or what I could do is, or there's so many ways.

01:08:59.331 --> 01:09:03.079
What about becoming a pastor who equips other pastors to send them?

01:09:03.079 --> 01:09:08.398
You can do a lot of things, but by no means sit around and say, well, isn't that stuff happening?

01:09:08.398 --> 01:09:09.600
X, y or Z?

01:09:09.600 --> 01:09:12.231
And I mean, if your heart's Greenville, let it be Greenville.

01:09:12.231 --> 01:09:16.823
If your heart's, you know, ontario Canada, let it be Ontario Canada.

01:09:16.823 --> 01:09:21.997
But don't be pointing fingers at nobody, because you know that drives me crazy.

01:09:22.818 --> 01:09:28.086
I have a fun question and then I'll let you say something to end this.

01:09:28.086 --> 01:09:29.774
But how many?

01:09:29.774 --> 01:09:35.136
Just take a guess how many churches do you think are in the United States?

01:09:36.139 --> 01:09:36.820
Do you know the answer?

01:09:37.322 --> 01:09:38.042
I'm going to Google it.

01:09:38.042 --> 01:09:40.679
I know that it's, I know ballpark.

01:09:40.819 --> 01:09:43.936
All right, I'm going to ask a really, really fun question.

01:09:43.936 --> 01:09:46.002
Define church.

01:09:47.251 --> 01:09:48.896
This is Christian churches.

01:09:48.896 --> 01:09:49.880
It can be any.

01:09:50.189 --> 01:09:51.676
I mean, are we talking about house church?

01:09:51.676 --> 01:09:54.219
Are we talking about established 501c3s?

01:09:54.219 --> 01:09:57.940
Are we talking about, like, what is the definition of church for America?

01:09:58.329 --> 01:10:00.109
We're not talking about your small group that meets.

01:10:00.350 --> 01:10:06.686
It would be churches that the US would know of Recognizes, tax-exempt YeahS recognizes Tax exempt.

01:10:06.707 --> 01:10:06.887
Yeah, okay.

01:10:06.887 --> 01:10:12.817
Yeah, not separate denominations, but it could be 2,000 within a denomination.

01:10:12.817 --> 01:10:13.298
Yeah, it could be.

01:10:13.298 --> 01:10:15.134
You know, I'm going with 400,000.

01:10:15.134 --> 01:10:16.878
All right, oh man.

01:10:18.002 --> 01:10:18.603
You think I'm low?

01:10:18.603 --> 01:10:19.806
I don't know.

01:10:19.806 --> 01:10:24.176
I'm trying to think about how many there are in Greenville, about 300,000.

01:10:24.176 --> 01:10:30.230
Bro, I how many there are in greenville?

01:10:30.230 --> 01:10:32.113
But 300 000, bro, I'm going, I'm I'll, I'll bet the over, I'll go six, I'll go.

01:10:32.113 --> 01:10:34.256
637, 152.

01:10:34.256 --> 01:10:40.182
There he is price is right 380 000 in 2021.

01:10:40.623 --> 01:10:42.685
Now you pretty much hit that number.

01:10:42.685 --> 01:10:43.292
I nailed it.

01:10:43.292 --> 01:10:45.279
It's almost like you're running a nonprofit or something weird.

01:10:45.619 --> 01:10:47.466
I'm really good at guesses, like that man.

01:10:47.466 --> 01:10:48.250
That is a very, very good guess.

01:10:48.250 --> 01:10:51.460
If this thing doesn't work out for me, I think I'd get on with the circus.

01:10:51.460 --> 01:10:53.296
I'm really good at age and weight.

01:10:55.511 --> 01:10:57.496
Okay, how old am I and how much do I weigh?

01:10:57.496 --> 01:10:58.197
Give it to me.

01:10:59.701 --> 01:11:02.693
Oh man, that's a tough question, man.

01:11:03.494 --> 01:11:05.599
I am sitting in a way that can accentuate.

01:11:05.618 --> 01:11:07.403
Can you stand up and turn around three times?

01:11:07.403 --> 01:11:09.583
Stand up, I'm sitting in a way that looks.

01:11:09.604 --> 01:11:10.189
Okay, You're 32.

01:11:10.189 --> 01:11:11.756
This way it's a little different 32.

01:11:12.951 --> 01:11:14.296
Okay, that's guess number one.

01:11:15.170 --> 01:11:16.296
Well, I mean, how close am I?

01:11:16.296 --> 01:11:17.835
Am I within a 10%?

01:11:17.835 --> 01:11:19.199
I'm 28.

01:11:19.199 --> 01:11:25.597
Well, roughly it's not 10%, but I'm almost 10%, so I'll take a 10%.

01:11:25.597 --> 01:11:27.159
Let's call it 28.

01:11:27.159 --> 01:11:28.181
So I said 32.

01:11:28.181 --> 01:11:29.463
It's not bad.

01:11:29.463 --> 01:11:30.404
I would have gone a little younger.

01:11:30.404 --> 01:11:33.332
Don't see any gray in your beard and whatnot, so stand up and turn around.

01:11:33.332 --> 01:11:34.055
Let me take a look.

01:11:34.234 --> 01:11:34.775
All right, here we go.

01:11:35.377 --> 01:11:36.119
How tall are you?

01:11:36.560 --> 01:11:38.832
Pretty short, Like 5'9" maybe.

01:11:39.171 --> 01:11:44.800
This is the benefit of in-person podcasts to do things like this the shirt does flow pretty nice.

01:11:45.039 --> 01:11:47.783
Yep, you're 195 pounds.

01:11:48.864 --> 01:11:49.445
That's not bad.

01:11:49.445 --> 01:11:52.311
I am 210.

01:11:52.573 --> 01:11:53.194
Really Mm-hmm.

01:11:53.194 --> 01:11:57.743
I'm much taller than you and I don't weigh that much more than you, but you hold it better than I do?

01:11:57.983 --> 01:12:00.275
I'm portly, I'm fat, but I carry it well.

01:12:00.537 --> 01:12:02.956
All right, I was closing the ballpark.

01:12:03.229 --> 01:12:05.573
But no, I just 15% maybe.

01:12:05.573 --> 01:12:15.916
Something I like to do at the end of these two is if there's anything that you want to share with our audience and Logan has a fun little question too, like what are you reading?

01:12:15.916 --> 01:12:17.175
I'll let you do that too.

01:12:17.194 --> 01:12:17.837
Oh yeah yeah.

01:12:17.837 --> 01:12:21.912
So go ahead and plug, pack but plug.

01:12:21.912 --> 01:12:29.479
Don't leave here without establishing the fact that you're a published author of two really good books.

01:12:29.519 --> 01:12:30.198
That I will read.

01:12:30.198 --> 01:12:31.539
By the way, written a couple books.

01:12:31.539 --> 01:12:34.582
I won't read both, I'll read one, ambassador International.

01:12:35.203 --> 01:12:36.604
The second one's a really easy read.

01:12:36.604 --> 01:12:40.886
Yeah, the third book I've written is the biography of George Rogers.

01:12:40.886 --> 01:12:51.493
A buddy of mine Got it on the Heisman back in.

01:12:51.493 --> 01:12:52.197
Was it 80, 81, um, 80?

01:12:52.197 --> 01:12:53.180
So, george, so that that book is not published.

01:12:53.180 --> 01:12:53.643
We've had a few offers.

01:12:53.643 --> 01:12:54.407
We haven't gone anywhere with that.

01:12:54.407 --> 01:12:56.092
But the first book is called loves like a hurricane.

01:12:56.996 --> 01:13:07.220
It was it's essentially my memoir and I was at a, an event to gather with some people and some guys tells another guy, hey, you should come over, you should go, you should go over and talk, go over and talk to this guy.

01:13:07.220 --> 01:13:09.613
So the guy comes over to me and says so-and-so, said I should talk to you.

01:13:09.613 --> 01:13:10.234
I said, great.

01:13:10.234 --> 01:13:11.981
So what do I want to know?

01:13:11.981 --> 01:13:13.427
Tell me about you.

01:13:13.427 --> 01:13:14.350
So we started talking.

01:13:14.350 --> 01:13:15.652
I said, well, what do you do?

01:13:15.652 --> 01:13:17.635
He said, well, I'm a publisher book.

01:13:17.635 --> 01:13:17.954
But I wasn't.

01:13:17.954 --> 01:13:27.872
I was always on my dad because my dad's so fascinating, my mom and dad.

01:13:27.872 --> 01:13:29.679
I was like, dad, write a book, write a book, write a book.

01:13:29.679 --> 01:13:31.717
I want to know all these stories, I want them written.

01:13:31.717 --> 01:13:35.734
And I was like, okay, you know what I should practice, what I preach.

01:13:35.734 --> 01:13:48.002
I should stop badgering him and write my own.

01:13:48.002 --> 01:13:49.664
So I would write a story.

01:13:49.664 --> 01:13:50.506
I'd put it away.

01:13:50.506 --> 01:13:59.095
Write another story, put it away just because I want one of my talents very few talents is ability to write.

01:13:59.095 --> 01:14:05.475
And so I started piecing it together and I was going to do a spiral bound memoir and give it to my family members, so that would happen.

01:14:05.475 --> 01:14:09.644
But this guy, when he said you're writing a book, I said yes, what's it about?

01:14:09.644 --> 01:14:23.162
I said, well, you know just about my faith journey, growing up Catholic and you know how God entered my life, to where I could see him.

01:14:23.162 --> 01:14:24.648
And he said, well, send me a chapter.

01:14:24.648 --> 01:14:25.149
So I sent him a chapter.

01:14:25.149 --> 01:14:26.279
I said, man, this is really really good.

01:14:26.279 --> 01:14:26.864
Can you send me some more?

01:14:26.864 --> 01:14:29.917
I was like, yeah, sure, and I think we might want to publish this.

01:14:29.917 --> 01:14:33.500
I was like, oh, man, I'm about three-quarters of the way through.

01:14:33.500 --> 01:14:36.729
I'm thinking, man, I'm not anywhere close to being done on this thing.

01:14:36.729 --> 01:14:42.363
So hammered it out and got it done, published it.

01:14:44.972 --> 01:14:49.063
It's called it is a hurricane like love.

01:14:49.063 --> 01:14:51.561
Man, you know you're in a tumult in life.

01:14:51.561 --> 01:15:03.246
And then let's say, you get that sweet spot, you accept Jesus and everything's right, but little do you know, that's just the eye of the hurricane right, because on the other side of that wall it just becomes gnarly.

01:15:03.246 --> 01:15:07.997
Then you have this faith and you love and you think it's going to be all right, my Savior, and all of this.

01:15:07.997 --> 01:15:13.328
But it's a lot easier not being Christian than it is being Christian.

01:15:13.328 --> 01:15:22.270
It's easier to not follow Jesus than it is to follow Jesus, because it's not like there's all these rules that are laid out in front of you.

01:15:22.270 --> 01:15:25.002
You just have a deep understanding of truth and what's right in the condition of the heart.

01:15:25.002 --> 01:15:32.618
So then, when you get onto the side of that hurricane eye wall ooh dog, it's wicked, it's wicked.

01:15:32.618 --> 01:15:45.043
Then, when you try to explain your faith and you really don't have the and you're not well-equipped to explain what just happened in your life, and then you feel like, oh man, it feels like I'm an imposter, I can't even explain why.

01:15:45.043 --> 01:15:46.484
So you have to dig deeper.

01:15:46.484 --> 01:15:51.346
You can just tap out or you can dig deeper, and so I just chose to dig deeper.

01:15:51.346 --> 01:15:55.288
And again, his love like a hurricane, hurricane, katrina.

01:15:55.288 --> 01:16:00.771
That's what the whole thing was about and I find it's exciting.

01:16:01.631 --> 01:16:02.453
Quick story on it.

01:16:02.453 --> 01:16:03.613
I don't want to keep us too long.

01:16:03.613 --> 01:16:05.918
There's a quick story on it.

01:16:05.918 --> 01:16:07.023
I was on a cruise the Caleb cruise.

01:16:07.023 --> 01:16:20.942
I think I was speaking for a group of people and my journey as a Catholic to being a Protestant I don't want to say a Catholic to being a Christian, because I believe Catholics are Christians Catholic to a Protestant.

01:16:20.942 --> 01:16:26.716
This person came up to me and there's, you know, whenever somebody speaks, there's always a line of people want to talk to the speaker, no matter who.

01:16:26.716 --> 01:16:27.939
It is right they're speaking.

01:16:27.939 --> 01:16:31.747
This woman comes up to me and she's totally distraught.

01:16:31.747 --> 01:16:40.921
She said you know, what you said was just so profound and there's a lot of people that are former Catholics who are now Protestants, by the way, a lot.

01:16:40.921 --> 01:16:44.127
And she said my friend is a Catholic.

01:16:44.127 --> 01:16:50.002
I just need to know is she going to hell First?

01:16:50.023 --> 01:16:52.587
of all, I'm so ill-equipped to answer that question.

01:16:52.587 --> 01:16:54.029
You know what I mean.

01:16:54.029 --> 01:17:02.029
It's like I had an answer because I told this beautiful story about my faith journey and it's written eloquently.

01:17:02.029 --> 01:17:05.042
I don't have that answer.

01:17:05.042 --> 01:17:09.521
You have to have the conversation, you know, and so I asked her if she would step aside.

01:17:09.521 --> 01:17:22.211
We had a further conversation about it, but it's interesting of how when you put something down and it gets published, then all of a sudden you become smarter than you actually are because you have something published and people look at you differently.

01:17:22.211 --> 01:17:27.787
But that book has been a blessing on so many levels, very thankful.

01:17:27.787 --> 01:17:29.662
The other book is a children's book.

01:17:29.662 --> 01:17:31.126
I love Dr Seuss.

01:17:31.126 --> 01:17:33.582
I love Seuss-ish type writings.

01:17:33.962 --> 01:17:37.002
That's not what I expected, although this wasn't a Dr Seuss book.

01:17:37.135 --> 01:17:38.381
It's a book called Go, god, go.

01:17:38.381 --> 01:17:46.341
It's about the seven days of creation, written in a very whimsical way, and I wrote a poem.

01:17:46.341 --> 01:18:08.234
I write a lot of poetry, wrote a poem about it and took each day, got deep into the Bible, wanted to make sure that I was biblically accurate on what I was saying, within a fun and whimsical manner, and then I wrote it, filed it away Years later, man, like five, six years later pulled it back out.

01:18:08.274 --> 01:18:10.256
I was like, oh man, this is pretty cool.

01:18:10.256 --> 01:18:11.618
Sent it to my publisher.

01:18:11.618 --> 01:18:14.002
He said man, wow, this is pretty cool.

01:18:14.002 --> 01:18:14.601
Sent it to my publisher.

01:18:14.601 --> 01:18:16.685
He said, man, wow, this is great, we'd love to publish this.

01:18:16.685 --> 01:18:17.546
He said do you have any illustrations?

01:18:17.546 --> 01:18:18.747
I'm like, no, I don't have those.

01:18:18.747 --> 01:18:32.970
So I knew somebody who had just graduated from college, allison Record, and she was a graphic designer and she took it and she made it beautiful, man, and made it beautiful for kids to look at the pictures, and it was just it's cool.

01:18:32.970 --> 01:18:41.600
Now this next statement is going to be kind of odd publishing a book that I do it for money no, it's not that I've really made any money off of either one of them.

01:18:41.600 --> 01:18:47.461
I give away more than I sell and you know they were at barnes and noble, you can buy them online, etc.

01:18:47.461 --> 01:18:49.426
I just think it's cool.

01:18:50.207 --> 01:19:01.337
Right, it's kind of cool I'm in in on a book, you know, and to be able to do that because there's so many people say, man, I should write a book, I've been meaning to write a book, I should write a book about this, because of the trauma or the challenges in their life.

01:19:01.899 --> 01:19:04.805
My comment is write a book.

01:19:04.805 --> 01:19:06.149
Heck, yeah, do it.

01:19:06.149 --> 01:19:26.305
It might be rough, and I just finished proofing in a book that just got published by Don Brewster, who's he started Agape International Missions Programs in Cambodia, gave his life to it and he asked me to proof his book and it was such an honor to be able to do that.

01:19:26.305 --> 01:19:47.568
And because I know I look at him as one of those Mother Teresa kind of characters who, he and his wife Bridget, have given their life to rescue these girls from sex trafficking in Cambodia, something that I would aspire to, having that level of significance in life, to go somewhere, like I think Logan referenced, and start something on the ground, somewhere to help others.

01:19:47.568 --> 01:19:50.539
You don't have to do it.

01:19:50.539 --> 01:19:56.481
The Great Commission does call us to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations, right.

01:19:56.481 --> 01:20:03.041
That's why we go to Jordan or Kenya or the Bahamas or Mexico.

01:20:04.204 --> 01:20:06.782
Or Anderson, south Carolina or Greenville.

01:20:07.194 --> 01:20:08.300
That is a nation within its own.

01:20:08.300 --> 01:20:14.659
That's why we do it, because people need to do it, and there's so many people that do great work here.

01:20:14.659 --> 01:20:22.136
So, oh yeah, that's that I think, logan, you had a question, and then you want me to wrap up something with a thought yeah, well, one final thing.

01:20:22.176 --> 01:20:22.979
This is this will be.

01:20:22.979 --> 01:20:23.461
This will be.

01:20:23.461 --> 01:20:24.385
It really quick.

01:20:24.385 --> 01:20:26.131
What are you reading?

01:20:26.131 --> 01:20:28.476
What are you watching, what are you listening to?

01:20:29.680 --> 01:20:34.328
okay, I I normally have simultaneous books going on.

01:20:34.328 --> 01:20:42.600
I am reading Paul that actually you gave me because you know I love biographies and you know you know I love Paul yeah.

01:20:42.801 --> 01:20:42.921
It's.

01:20:42.921 --> 01:20:45.867
It's a beast I resonate with.

01:20:45.867 --> 01:20:48.538
There's not a lot of people I can really identify with in the Bible.

01:20:48.538 --> 01:20:56.546
There's two there's King David, not because I'm a king, and there is Paul, not because I am saintly or anything like that.

01:20:56.546 --> 01:21:02.662
It's just because those were real cats and they were just wrought with sin.

01:21:02.662 --> 01:21:08.621
And they were wrought with I don't want to say deception, but their lives were wrecked.

01:21:08.621 --> 01:21:15.957
But God used them in a way to glorify him and bring other people to the light.

01:21:15.957 --> 01:21:21.956
And I can relate to those guys because if you say you're not a sinner, you're a liar.

01:21:21.956 --> 01:21:24.440
That's it, plain and simple.

01:21:24.440 --> 01:21:30.442
I know I am because I've done a deep dive on the nature of what sin is and it's written all over me.

01:21:30.442 --> 01:21:35.342
I'm not going to say logan's a sinner, you're a sinner it's not, I think it's not my place.

01:21:35.363 --> 01:21:39.421
Well, actually I do think that but I just want to download.

01:21:39.742 --> 01:21:45.957
I just finished, uh, I just finished elon musk, which was, uh, by walter isaacson, was just a phenomenal book.

01:21:45.957 --> 01:21:47.380
It's just epic.

01:21:47.380 --> 01:21:51.846
Um, there's a lot of smaller reads I'm reading.

01:21:51.846 --> 01:21:54.596
Finished a book by Eric Weir who's Eating my Pie.

01:21:54.596 --> 01:21:55.457
It's a financial book.

01:21:55.457 --> 01:21:58.162
He's a strong individual.

01:21:58.162 --> 01:22:09.478
So what I read, traditionally nonfiction, although one of my favorite authors is Paulo Coelho wrote the Alchemist, epic.

01:22:09.478 --> 01:22:11.100
If you haven't read it got to read it.

01:22:11.100 --> 01:22:14.265
So that's what I'm reading.

01:22:14.846 --> 01:22:15.868
What am I watching?

01:22:15.868 --> 01:22:27.145
You know, man, I know what you take in, what you give sometimes, but I watch a lot of stuff, not really watching a lot of Christian movies, necessarily.

01:22:27.145 --> 01:22:29.761
I love a great movie.

01:22:29.761 --> 01:22:31.045
I'll dial into movies.

01:22:31.045 --> 01:22:36.175
It's.

01:22:36.175 --> 01:22:36.936
I love a great movie, dial into movies.

01:22:36.936 --> 01:22:38.479
I loved this, the series suits, which was just epic in my mind.

01:22:38.479 --> 01:22:42.328
Love the characters in it, storylines, um, just recently watched a british movie.

01:22:42.328 --> 01:22:46.382
I had to pull up the subtitles because it was so thick gentlemen, that was great.

01:22:46.382 --> 01:22:51.523
Um, peaky blinders, just something that's compelling and is well done.

01:22:51.523 --> 01:22:52.845
I love documentaries.

01:22:52.845 --> 01:22:55.841
So I dial in because I'm just trying to learn and learn.

01:22:55.841 --> 01:22:57.445
What am I listening to?

01:22:57.445 --> 01:23:01.699
I get on Kix, as Logan will know.

01:23:01.699 --> 01:23:04.847
I'll hear a song and then I'm just crushing that song.

01:23:04.847 --> 01:23:09.445
I might listen 100 times in a week's span, consecutively, consecutively.

01:23:09.485 --> 01:23:10.657
You're one of those, ryan Ellis, is a.

01:23:10.676 --> 01:23:11.060
Christian artist.

01:23:11.060 --> 01:23:11.322
Love the guy.

01:23:11.322 --> 01:23:13.375
He's like in a week, consecutively, consecutively, one of those, ryan ellis is, uh, he's a christian artist.

01:23:13.375 --> 01:23:14.457
Love the guy.

01:23:14.457 --> 01:23:17.262
He's a friend, really loves music.

01:23:17.262 --> 01:23:18.185
I think he's powerful.

01:23:18.185 --> 01:23:19.948
But most recently, right now.

01:23:20.135 --> 01:23:24.904
Okay, I'm not, I'm not a beyonce fan man, I'm just gonna say that.

01:23:24.904 --> 01:23:27.048
But I love this new record.

01:23:27.048 --> 01:23:32.221
If she doesn't get the grammy for the record of the year, it is conspiratorial, it's not country.

01:23:32.221 --> 01:23:32.743
You say that.

01:23:32.743 --> 01:23:33.743
It is not a country.

01:23:33.743 --> 01:23:36.828
It is an authentic record of who beyonce is.

01:23:37.469 --> 01:23:41.038
The first song, the american requiem.

01:23:41.038 --> 01:23:46.506
Wow, I, I know people will look at me, think I'm out of my mind.

01:23:46.506 --> 01:23:49.859
It's maybe one of the in my opinion, I love music.

01:23:49.859 --> 01:23:51.228
It's got to be a top 25 song for me of all time.

01:23:51.228 --> 01:23:55.685
If it's maybe one of the in my opinion, I love music, it's got to be a top 25 song for me of all time.

01:23:55.774 --> 01:24:03.920
If it's not in the top 10, that song is so well done, the production, and they're going to say well, you know, it sounds like so-and-so, she's copying from this person, she's copying from that person.

01:24:03.920 --> 01:24:05.701
Yeah, it does sound like Prince.

01:24:05.701 --> 01:24:07.462
It does sound like the Beatles.

01:24:07.462 --> 01:24:16.479
It does sound like a variety of others the Beatles, it does sound like a variety of others, but who are we?

01:24:16.479 --> 01:24:17.981
We are reflection, as artists, of every artist that lived before us.

01:24:17.981 --> 01:24:23.983
So if you're not hearing those other artists in our work, then you're not listening deep enough.

01:24:23.983 --> 01:24:26.568
Logan's a phenomenal singer-songwriter.

01:24:26.568 --> 01:24:32.935
He's been influenced by so many artists and you know what, if you hear him, you're going to say well, I catch that influence.

01:24:32.935 --> 01:24:39.668
So don't bang on Beyonce, because this particular vocal riff sounds like Aretha Franklin or Prince.

01:24:39.668 --> 01:24:47.447
It is an epic record, and I'm not a Beyonce fan, but I've been on that kick with that song.

01:24:47.447 --> 01:24:52.027
So, that being said, I might listen to it on the way home, matter of fact.

01:24:52.435 --> 01:24:53.520
On a scale of one to ten.

01:24:53.520 --> 01:24:54.015
Where is her?

01:24:54.015 --> 01:24:54.759
Jolene cover.

01:24:56.123 --> 01:24:57.581
You know that's a strong cover.

01:24:57.581 --> 01:24:59.442
I'll give her an eight man.

01:24:59.442 --> 01:25:04.681
Willie Nelson's on there, I mean you got Post Malone's popping off on there.

01:25:04.681 --> 01:25:05.845
It's just, it's crazy.

01:25:06.234 --> 01:25:07.199
It ain't Texas, man.

01:25:07.199 --> 01:25:15.958
Ain this man ain't no holding, bro, it really it really.

01:25:15.979 --> 01:25:16.742
Yes, sir, it really is a good record.

01:25:16.761 --> 01:25:35.552
What a way to end rock and roll you did ask for a parting thought and I just want to give you something that is fresh in reference to somebody that I met years ago and we had an encounter young black man, an older white man.

01:25:35.552 --> 01:25:43.130
It was during a black lives matter rally and his voice was so strong and so positive and epic.

01:25:43.130 --> 01:25:53.261
I went in the sea of this rally in downtown Greville and I confronted him and and there were people all around sitting down and there's a lot of phones out thinking what is this, this guy doing?

01:25:53.261 --> 01:25:54.082
What's he going to say?

01:25:54.082 --> 01:26:00.666
I was there with my daughters and I went up to him and I just told him how proud I was of him, proud of his voice.

01:26:00.666 --> 01:26:04.668
I can never understand his life because of the skin that he lives in.

01:26:04.668 --> 01:26:10.764
He comes from a different environment, he's lived a different life, but I wanted him to know.

01:26:10.764 --> 01:26:15.632
I support him and I support his voice to keep doing it.

01:26:16.493 --> 01:26:17.476
Fast forward a few years.

01:26:17.476 --> 01:26:20.386
I'm having dinner at the Waffle House with this guy.

01:26:20.386 --> 01:26:26.766
We had engaged in a variety of things we had met, didn't even know it was him until my daughter was like one in the morning.

01:26:26.766 --> 01:26:28.716
You were there, right?

01:26:28.716 --> 01:26:34.167
Oh yeah, my daughter says you know, that's so-and-so from the rally.

01:26:35.288 --> 01:26:50.439
What I started thinking I was like, oh my gosh, I'd known this guy for a year in our acquaintance and I knew him and I didn't realize it was that young man that I confronted in the middle of this rally and we are friends.

01:26:50.439 --> 01:26:54.518
I love this guy and he's encouragement to me and I hope I am to him.

01:26:54.518 --> 01:27:08.342
And I saw him last night and he was telling the story to somebody and what he said in reference to that moment when we were face to face, he said you know, gene and I shared a moment of humanity.

01:27:08.342 --> 01:27:10.247
I thought about it.

01:27:10.247 --> 01:27:15.194
A moment of humanity, I thought about it, we shared a moment of humanity.

01:27:15.194 --> 01:27:39.707
If I encourage anybody who listens to this to do something today is to find somebody who's on a different side of the aisle, as you are religiously, politically, ethnically, racially why don't you reach your hand out and share a moment of humanity with that person?

01:27:39.707 --> 01:27:42.061
That's what I encourage people to do.

01:27:43.235 --> 01:27:45.463
That's a way better place to end the on-site.

01:27:45.463 --> 01:27:50.145
Thanks for listening to the Across the Counter podcast.

01:27:50.145 --> 01:27:55.466
If you enjoyed the show, please rate us five stars wherever you got this podcast.

01:27:55.466 --> 01:27:56.347
Thanks, y'all.