Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What do you think the number one question people ask me when I go to a church conference with other pastors, how big is your church? And I would ask back, can you tell me why that matters? And no one could really give me an answer like no one sitting and go, oh, well, here's what matters. If my job is just to make this bigger and have more campuses, I don't think I'm interested in that.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: How in the world did you go from being an architect to being this pastor? Like, what was that calling or process? Because your dad was a music minister.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: My dad was a music minister.
So because of that, I did not want to be in the ministry at all.
And architecture was. I kind of fell in love with it really late high school and into college. And I felt this tension because I'd grown up in a great youth group as an intern and wanted to.
Felt like I might want to be a youth minister. But again, the resistance of just not wanting to work in a church was probably greater than anything. And when I started in architecture, I got a job working part time.
And then that kind of morphed in and learned more about the industry and just fell in love with it. And honestly, the more I went into school, I was still volunteering, intern, involved in ministry. But I was almost like, how could I take that aspect to do ministry and fit it into this box of pursuing architecture was my aim. And the long story short is I got a great job out of college. I had just gotten married, loved my boss, we were designing super cool stuff.
But every day I went to work, the only thing I could hear was God saying, you are not doing what I've called you to do.
And it was just.
It became torturous. It was only months, but it was torturous. And I finally, I went back and I actually interviewed at Chick Fil A, their corporate headquarters. I grew up working at Chick Fil A as well.
And my boss, we were corporate owned stores. He was a vice president at Chick Fil A. And he said, hey, we got an opening for an architect at the Chick Fil A headquarters. It's in the real estate acquisition and development. You want to come and interview? I was like, yes, how much more Christian can you get than that, right? It would take both of them. And when I went into interview, I think I was probably a shoe in just because I had become recommended by Tim. And when I went in to interview, this is back in the day before the computers, he had paper applications, like 16 pages long essays, and I was ready. He was going to ask me, why do you want to work at Chick Fil A? And I was going to tell him about values and all those things.
And when I sat down, he said, he goes, what do you think God wants you to do?
I remember in my mind, it's like time stopped. And I thought, what does that have to do with anything? You're supposed to ask me why I want to work at Chick Fil A.
And the words that came out of my mouth just felt like they weren't my own. I said, I think God wants me to be in the ministry.
And he's like, well, what are you doing here? And I'm like, I'm actually running. And so my interview turned into therapy.
And he told me, he said, go back in and wait on the Lord.
And so I went home and told Julie what happened. So I didn't get the job. And I kept working at Aiken Associates for the next little bit.
Long story short, I was at a camp. I was volunteering as a youth pastor. I was at a camp with my kids. There was a camp pastor who was there out of Wilmingtons looking for a youth minister. He asked if I'd come up and interview.
I told him I would only because I wanted to come up to see what it was like to be in his church or kind of a mentoring opportunity. I interviewed.
I think there was three candidates interviewed. I was the third choice and the only one who would take the job.
And so I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, in March of 1993 to be a youth minister.
And that was my journey into ministry. And after that, I think I fell in love with.
It's taken a long time. I take that back.
I enjoyed the kids. I loved ministry. It took me a long time to fall in love with the church.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: And you were in. So 1999.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: 99 is when this started.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: You had about 30 college students and decided in a home, we're going to launch a church.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: This church.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: It came out of, you know, a lot of my interactions. We had some scandal at the church that I had been at.
And that makes it hard on everybody. You know, kind of have your crisis of faith and all these things. I was 20, 27, 28, 29 years old.
And when we got ready to start Port City, I'd been in student ministry for six years. And most of the kids, like, they just had really honest questions, and most of their parents didn't go to our church. And I would say, why don't your parents go to our church? We're not Baptist. And it just never really dawned on me that because we were affiliated with something, people who weren't already affiliated just didn't feel like they could go. I never experienced that before.
And so a lot of their kids. And what I found was that most people who weren't churchgoers or involved in church, they weren't atheists, they were just busy and they had questions that maybe no one bothered to answer. They had, you know, just a variety of reasons why. So we, when we were thinking about Port City, we were like, what if we could just be a place where people could come like they were, and we couldn't necessarily answer their questions, we could certainly be willing to walk with them as they ask them. And that really gave way to the mission that we kind of set from day one of the church, which is to reach people and help them walk with God. We never were trying to build a big church or even grow a church. We were trying to be helpful to people in ways they could connect with God and learn how to take steps of faith with him so they could experience something of what God intends. And that was the genesis of how we started. So everything was, was designed and created around that.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: So in a way it was like anyone was welcome to come. And in a sense, as they did, you were meeting where they, where they were.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Which was actually strange because growing up and in Southern Baptist Church and then even being in a Southern Baptist church here, a denominational church, you attract a lot of the same kind of people.
And when we opened the doors at Port City and we were a community church, which most people not really heard of in this area, people came like they were.
And it was like, I was like shocked at how not just diverse, but how bizarre the spectrum of what people believed and thought and expected of the church was. So it was a real. I was very naive. And so it was a real eye opener to try and get used to, like, oh, we have to welcome. We can't just dismiss people because they don't think like me. And again, this is in 1999, 2000. So it was just a very.
It was that soil was being tilled to really, I think, set a foundation for what we've become.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: And it went from. It did grow somewhat rapidly. And you ended up in a middle school.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: We did.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: I know you had. That held like 700 people.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: And you outgrew that. And then you're thinking about, okay, what's next? And as you're, you know, hoping people will tithe and you can, you know, you can get Paid to serve. You know, all that. And then I know this bizarre story. You get. You get a call one day from Pastor Jackson, this minister in Kenya. Kenya, who you never met. He wants to talk to you.
And you're like, well, where are you? And he's like, I'm in Baltimore. And he's like, I want to come see you. And so then he did.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: He called me. We had just finished unloading at Roland Grice. We had, like, trucks and trailers, and we loaded in. And it was after. After services. And someone said, mike, there's a guy on the phone for you. I picked up the phone and I said, you know, hello, this is Mike. And he said, this is Pastor Jackson Wangi, and I am from Kenya, and I've come to see my people. That's exactly what he said to me.
I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about. And he kind of told me about, you know, I've come to Kenya to see you. And I said, where are you? He said, I'm in Baltimore. I'm like, well, you're not even close.
He said, I've got a bus ticket to Wilmington tomorrow. And I said, give me a number. Let me call you back. And so I can only imagine he's traveled to, you know, to America.
We put him in a hotel, so I had to get some people. We had nothing, you know, and I have two. Two daughters. I'm like, I'm not putting this guy in my house. I don't know him from Adam. And so we got him a hotel. We had to borrow a church member's card, a credit card, because we didn't have any money or the availability to do that. So we borrowed a church member's card to book a few nights in a hotel. We put him there, and we just kind of entertained him for a couple days. We weren't really sure what to do with him. In the meantime, people called us, like local pastors said, don't give them any money. These are always scams. People come here doing this all the time.
Again, there's no Internet, so the Internet's just starts. You can't find anything about them.
So, you know, again, long story short, it's a pretty involved story. But we got our board together, and I remember this building. We were still pretty small as a church, maybe 200 people.
And we got our board together. We had $12,000 in our bank account. I know this because I remember this exact thing. Our board got together.
We had him come and present our board.
And he did. Gave US his proposal. And he was asking for money, which we all kind of named for an orphanage school.
And we didn't know what to do with it. So we got our board together. I thought, surely they'll put a stop to this. They're all smart people. And we prayed about it. And they said we need to send him back with a good faith offering. And we wrote him a check for $6,000, actually wired $6,000 to his orphanage. And we sent him a video camera back so he could mail us VHS of what the work that he was actually doing because there was no other way to verify.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Hoping this was all legit.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Hoping this was legit.
And we sent a team over about three months later and kind of investigate him. Some guys who had mission experience and also business experience sent them over and kind of verified some things we actually built. We actually bought 14 acres in Kenya long before he ever had any hope of a permanent home in America. Yeah.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: And that was kind of the beginning of our posture towards things. We didn't know it at the time, but it led to so many other things that just kind of became DNA for who we are as a church. Again, you don't know these things when they're happening because you're just kind of. I remember thinking, this is the dumbest thing we've ever done.
But it turned out to be one of those pivotal moments that really defined
[00:10:27] Speaker B: us as a church and your faithful. Yes.
God used to bless a huge community there.
As that church in Kenya starts growing simultaneously, the spirit is moving here, the church is growing here.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: We exploded. And I don't, you know, it's hard to go. Is that the thing? But it certainly was a marker in time. When our church began to a trajectory of particularly numerical growth. A lot of curiosity, a lot of people showing up.
And then it was just kind of, you know, starting to hang on at that point in time.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: And now you're here, maybe several thousand people, you're realizing we. You can't meet in the school and do 10 services or whatever. We've got to find our own property, real estate. And there's a lack of it.
And so then this piece of property comes available. You hear about it. $4 million. They want a hundred thousand.
Pick it up from there.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: So we had gotten this property, a potential to buy 32 acres to get this 32 acre tract here.
And it was a miracle that it even came open. And I went to meet the guy who owned it. He said, I'll sell it to you on three conditions. I'm not going to give you a deal because he said, I want people calling me and asking me for money. Just going to sell it to you for market value.
You can't make it public until you close, but I'll give you 180 days to close. We're like, perfect. So we get there, we have to put $100,000 down because we don't have this much money anywhere close to it. So we put $100,000 down. We actually ran a board meeting, and one of our board members were like, we don't have $4 million to buy this property, and we can't, like, raise money without telling people, so we can't tell anybody. We're trying to raise money.
So one of our board members said, God's not asking us for $4 million. He's asking us for 100,000.
And he said, $100,000 is the next step. So we said, okay. So the next day I took the contract and checked for $100,000, and I faxed the contract over, and I had actually our video guy come and take a video. And I said, this could be the last act of Port City Community Church. And I faxed it over.
And now all of a sudden we have. We have to raise $4 million, and we can't announce it. We can't tell anybody.
So I got about. There was like 13 people. We did a dinner and had an architecture background. So me and a buddy who was a landscape architect, we got together and this whole property with, like, apartments on the front, you know, some office space, some condos. And we're going to build the church building in the very back.
Drew it up, made it all nice, gave all the numbers and how much money these guys can make and how much, you know, how much they could generate off the apartments and rent and all that. And I pitched it to this group. They were all business men and women, investors, developers. Just this kind of a group in our church that I met. And at this time, our church was, you know, growing. We were. We were getting. We were out of space. We were, you know, the school was pressing us to get out of the. You can't use our building anymore. You're too much on it.
So I got them together and I said, here's what we can do. And they said, well, Mike, how much land does the church want? We're like, we want all of it. They're like, why are you going to subdivide it? I'm like, because we don't have the money. We can't Raise it. And so we ended up meeting. You'd be a great developer. I'm like, yeah, I should have been an architect, because this is about to be done.
And a week or so later, this group got together. They put up their own money, formed a corporation called Next Step and secured a loan for $4 million to purchase this property on behalf of the church.
And so what the church did is we put in a little bit of money and bought the rights to the property. So we own the rights. They own the property. We got an offer to purchase after. As soon as we close, we announced it at the church. The church was like, oh, this is awesome.
We get an offer to.
For a group to purchase the property for $8.8 million.
And we took that offer to the bank, subdivided the property. The note was held on the north side, and we took the 16 acres free and clear.
And that's how we started and got the building going. Wow, this is a miracle.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: It is a miracle. And I know there were two details that I'd heard along the way. One was when you, in faith, again, gave the $100,000 the next Sunday, the offering ended up being 100,000 more than
[00:14:40] Speaker A: you've ever received the next Sunday. There was actually a check.
We used to pass offering baskets. This is before digital offerings, these little baskets, and they would always be, like, cash and some checks. There was a crumbled up check for $98,000 in the offering the Sunday after we'd written the $100,000 check.
No one knew.
No one knew that we had done this. It was a very, you know, tight conversation just because of the implications of that. But, yeah, it was one of those things where we were like, oh, God.
God sees what's going on here, and he's gonna provide for us. And we've held that even now we keep thinking, oh, we'll have all. And God still provides what we need when we need it. And we just keep. So we just keep going. You know, it's that kind of posture.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: And not only does he provide, but he does immeasurably above and beyond anything we could ever ask, hope for or imagine. That being said, I know that you're a man of prayer, and prior to what we just discussed, you decided to come out to this property, and you laid prostrate in a ditch and prayed.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not a very charismatic person in that sense, but I was reading. We were desperate because we had been told by the schools, you can't do this anymore.
We had lost about a quarter Million dollars on a project out up north in North Wilmington.
And so we really thought we had killed the church. We did not know what we were going to do. And I'm reading 1st Samuel where Hannah is praying for a son. And she's praying with such fervency that they think she's drunk. You know, if you remember that story. And she says, lord, if I found any favor in your sight, would you grant me a son?
And so I thought, okay, if I go out here to this property, what would it be like if a police officer pulled up and saw me? What would make him think that I was drunk? I said, well, if I'm laying in the ditch. So I just literally laid in the ditch. And I said, lord, if we found any favor in your sight, could you please give us a piece of property that we can. That will give us a way forward?
And then I added this tag. I actually wrote it in my journal. I said, could you let me know by Friday?
Because I have a board meeting Sunday night, and I would really like to preach with a clear, like, without this being on my shoulders on Sunday morning.
And so that was on a Tuesday. I prayed that prayer. On Friday morning, I was heading to the office. I got a phone call and said, you got to get to the office. This real estate agent's here. And that's what prompted the conversation that found this piece of property. So that board meeting that night, I had this information to share with our board, and that's where all that began to transpire.
It was literally. You know, it's so funny talking back through that. I forget how, you know, how desperate. I mean, because it reads like a funny story, but I remember just thinking we were really gonna not make it as a church.
And those things were just. They just unfolded.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Perfectly.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: So I guess, you know, if something gets crazy again, you need to go
[00:17:40] Speaker A: back to the ditch. You have to go back to the ditch. And you have to remind yourself of that a lot, because you forgot.
I think when things get a little more stable, you forget that you're really not.
You don't have as much control as we think that we do. Those stories help, and they've shaped us the way we are. Organized instruction, our executive pastor, even the way we do a lot of our finances. There's still that element of, like, lord, we trust you, and we're going to make decisions not based on this information, but based on what you're saying. We're not going to be reckless, but we are going to be faithful. And that's Been in our DNA since those early days. I'm super grateful for those days because of that.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Well, and when God shows up like that in such a miraculous way, not just did you receive what you prayed for, but above and beyond. Sometimes that's overwhelming.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: It's overwhelming. You think it makes you more confident, but you still get a little skin.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: And if I'm not mistaken, as the property is here, the building is.
It's been built, and you drive around and you park outside here near the office, and you have this kind of feeling of being overwhelmed. What was that like?
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Yeah, so I had actually been at an event. Wilmington's an interesting place because for the longest time, it just sat in isolation. I mean, it was, you know, we're two hours away from any population centers, really. You know, Raleigh is two hours away, you know, Myrtle Beach. But then really it's not until Charleston or even up towards Virginia Beach. So you really kind of insulated here.
And we were here for a long time, and our church had grown. When the building was built, people started to notice, so they start calling and people were asking questions. But I got invited to this lunch with a lot of prominent pastors who I'd read their books, and I'm going, oh, my gosh. I'm sitting at this table with people. I've read your books, and, you know, you're kind of enamored. And when I came back from that, I drove around this building, I parked right there, and I literally had a panic attack.
And it was because I remember exactly the emotion was all these people come to our church, and they think that I know what I'm doing and I don't.
And, you know, it's one of those moments where you just want to run away or quit.
Because for the longest time, you know, everything had been chasing this vision we had in our head. And again, I don't think this is wrong. We were just young.
But when you think about a church, it's always like, especially we come out of the 80s 90s, where it's auditoriums and people singing. And so the picture in my head was very tangible.
People, you know, and all of a sudden I'm going, the vision that we had when we started this is now realized.
And I don't know what's next.
And what was so powerful in that moment, once I got through the panic and I kind of was able to share that with a couple of people. And there was a really good friend of mine who was here that helped me kind of navigate that.
But I realized it gave Me the freedom to start asking again. Because when you need a building, you know, you need a building. So you say, lord, would you give us property? You're asking very specific things because you know that you need them. When you get in that place and you don't know what you need, and you have to start saying, God, can you show me what I don't know. I don't know how to do this. Could you show me and that. That prayer? Because you still have to preach every week, you know, but there's. There's thousands of people coming. Like, we back in this. This day. You couldn't have enough services.
We were one of the. You know, we were one of the few churches like this in our area. So it was just. It was just packed all the time, so you still have to do that. But in the back of my mind, I'm always like, lord, you know, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?
And what was happening. And there's two kind of things going on at the same time.
God's doing something in us pretty deeply that we're unaware of. And then our church is becoming a machine because we just have to manage the crowds.
And, you know, and again, all the indicators of success are just up and to the right. Money people, you know, we're hiring staff, but we are running at a million miles an hour. And it feels like we're on this treadmill that's just speeding up a dangerous place to be. It was. And so I remember in 2012, I got our staff together and I asked them a question. I said, how, you know, tell me stories about people in our church who you think, man, these people get it. They're the kind of people we want in our church. And they began to tell me stories. I wrote all their names on this flip chart and I just put them on the board and we talked about it. And listen, I said, at the end of that, I said, probably 10 or 12, 13 names up there, 15 names.
I said, how confident are you if someone walks into our church today that they're going to become like this? Because they were here and it was crickets.
And I remember going like, no, like, really? On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that people who come to our church today will end up like this? And the consensus was a 2.
And I realized our mission is to reach people and help them walk with God. And we have lost confidence in our capacity to do that. We can put on a good show. We can crank a bunch of people through an auditorium.
And the thing was, you know, there was no indicator of something wrong like there. You know, people still call you and say, mike, will you come speak at this? Or can I interview you for that? People still ask all this question. I remember just having this real crisis. Like, we. We're not imploding, but. But this trajectory is not good, not sustainable. And nobody. But nobody. Everything rewards it, right? Everything rewards it. And so it took. It took, you know, four years before we could really get the right conversations, the right people, you know, because even, you know, to start doing that. And so that was that crisis, that kind of secondary crisis for me, because I was even asking, like, if my job is just to make this bigger and have more campuses.
I don't think. I don't. I don't think I'm interested in that.
And that was a tough thing to admit.
Well.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: And sadly, you and I both know there are churches across the country where that has been the motivating factor, or at least they continue to measure success, God's favor, based on the numbers, the money, the growth, whatever, as opposed to the spiritual health.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: I don't know that people have another alternative. That's what I. When I would go to conferences and stuff. And again, I even asked our churches, what do you think? The. What do you think the number one question people ask me when I go to church conference with other pastors, and you know what the answer is, of course. How big is your church?
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: And I would ask back, can you tell me why that matters?
And not. Not in a condescending way. I'm generally trying to understand why does it matter if my church is 3,000 or 5,000 or 8,000 or a thousand?
And no one could really give me an answer. Like, no one sitting and go, oh, well, here's what matters.
And I remember kind of thinking, I'm like 35, 36, 37 years old, so I'm kind of coming into my own midlife crisis. Right. You know, that's when you're supposed to. When you're.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: But you still look like you were 20.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I did. I looked pretty young. I've only aged in the last few years, but I remember really. And I got about 2015.
I just started asking, what if there were other ways to measure our church other than attendance and what it. You know, and everybody looks at you like you're crazy. Well, how do we measure it? I'm like, well, that's our job to figure out, because I think, you know, you are right, that we don't measure Churches by things that give us insight into the kind of work that is important for churches.
But the reason we don't is because there really is.
The easiest ones to measure are money and people in seats or number of people in our programs. And then it creates these really wicked systems. I mean, wicked in the sense of, like, I think they're dangerous because then we start playing for those metrics. So you get baptisms and a lot of things that are designed to attract and deploy, pull people into these things that do give the illusion of success or a movement of God, and maybe, maybe not.
And so that's the thing that's probably troubled me more than anything, especially kind of coming into a church like this and being a part of this, recognizing how easy that is and how available it is and how tempting it is because there's just nothing else.
And, you know, so we jammed a wrench in the spokes.
2017, 18, a lot of stuff happened those years. We weathered that storm. We thought 2020 was going to be our year.
And of course you get the pandemic.
And it was terrible. We had a number of people who did a lot of funerals through Covid, a lot of both overdose funerals. A lot of. We had a number of people in our church who died of COVID But as horrible as it was, what we had resolved, the gift that it was, was that we had already started talking about what if we didn't measure attendance, what if we had to find other ways to measure. So we've been talking about connection, engagement, participation, and we didn't even know what it meant.
And so all of a sudden 2020 comes and you have zero people attending your church.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: It doesn't matter anymore, right?
[00:27:37] Speaker A: But I looked at our, you know, I looked in that camera, right? Because that's what we were. And I told our staff, we got our staff together.
I said, as soon as this thing started shutting down, I said, everybody's gonna start talking about going back to normal. And that's gonna be the language you're hearing. We can't wait to get back to normal. I said, we're not going back anywhere.
We're going to hold fast and see what might be available for us in the future. But we're just not going to go back. And we just stayed laser focused on praying in that direction. Like, we started when we brought people back into the building.
We did events for or we did food drives, we did tutoring centers because a lot of kids were having to work at home. So we opened up our building to Bring people in. We had adults and volunteers come to help kids navigate online learning when their parents couldn't. We found a lot of people who just had trouble with the language. So it was like more of our Hispanic community.
We did a lot of those things. But what it did was everybody was in the building to give or to serve someone else.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: So outward focus.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: So there was never any.
No one's coming in to get something from the church or they were all coming in to offer.
And so even when we started our services back, it was reservation only. We're going to do it slow. We're going to build culture.
And there's a backstory to a lot of this because in 2018, when we had finally kind of resolved, our direction was like, lord, we want to be outward facing. We want the church to be measured by her beauty, not simply how many people come.
And we didn't know what that meant. We had a terrible hurricane here in 2018, Hurricane Florence, and it destroyed the city.
And we were just at the front end of trying to re, retool ourselves and we weren't there yet. And I remember when the hurricane was coming, I'm thinking, we're going to be exposed as a fraud with this big church in this town and we're not going to be able to respond.
And we get a phone call, it's already started raining places, kind of starting to get a mess. And Convoy of Hope calls us. They're like, we're 20 minutes out. I've never heard of Convoy of Hope.
Can we use your parking lot?
It's like, sure, absolutely. This convoy literal of trucks, shower trailers, food trailers, supplies, forklifts, you name it, pull in. And they set up an entire Sam's warehouse in our parking lot.
And they were able to mobilize our church. I mean, the next morning, thousands of volunteers are coming through, serving almost every area of this region, delivering supplies.
And I remember that moment, I was like, you know, because my prayer had been, lord, can you turn us outward? That was kind of the image in my head, can you turn us outward?
And he answered that prayer in 12 hours.
And that's what set us on that, you know, 18, 19 and then into 20 and then, and then what's been the last five years I'm at our church is sort of the fruit that's starting to come from that, the soil that was cultivated and tilled during that three year window, 20, 18, 19 and 20. And so much prayer, so much prayer and desperation and soul searching. And I mean all of them, it was a Very. You know, I used to joke, I said, you know, our standard for the first three years was like, if I don't die, and the first three years, they'll be a success.
And then, you know, I talk to church planters all the time. I said, you know, the first three years are brutally hard.
I said, and then years three through eight are really hard.
And then years, you know, eight through 15 are really hard.
And years 15 through 20 are even harder than, you know. And it's funny because every season has had its own challenge, unique challenges. And it's the gift of being in a place for a long time, because the learning curve never stops. And the challenges.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: And don't you think without the tension or the challenges, you would really need to evaluate what are we doing?
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Oh, 100%.
But I think that the. That's why the machine philosophy is so appealing, because there are levers you can pull and get people to do certain things and get them to participate and get them to attend.
But that's not spiritual formation. That's not helping people walk with God. That's a different thing.
And that's what we had to get back to and get real clear on what we mean by that. What do we mean by spiritual?
What do we mean by God's kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven? What does that mean and look like?
And we got real aggressive about those initiatives.
And then what you start to ask is, what does it mean to our church? What then does the church mean to the city?
And that's been a profound shift in how we think about the way we mobilize our church into the places that are easy to overlook.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: You know, Mike, something that I appreciate you so much. I'll never forget the day that we met in person. We had, you know, been on the phone in Zoom and all that. But you literally drove to Raleigh, to my house.
We sat there for a couple hours and talked. And my youngest son, you were in our big, you know, our library. And, you know, he's never forgotten that day. And just to say, and, dad, he's a pastor of a church with thousands of people.
And he sat there and I was the only person in the world and wanted to know what I thought about all these topics and books I've read and why and wanted to hear me sing a song.
And I just thought, I can see.
I was just watching you guys interact. And I realized that's why God is using Mike Ashcraft in such a mighty way, is because, I mean, you're just a normal guy.
Serving an extraordinary God. And you've remained humble and prayerful.
And I know just through all the conversations we'd had, you know, over time, you keep. The main thing. The main thing.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: I try to, but you make it sound like it was heroic for me to drive to Durham to your house, because we were actually going to a Duke game that you were inviting me to. So I'm honored.
And I do, you know, I am grateful for you saying that to me.
And it's because one is when people give you their time or entrust you with anything, whether it's your son.
Plus, he liked 80s music. That was always an immediate connection with him.
But it is that capacity to just say, lord, what this is about is not trying to build a platform.
It really is about people and what God longs to do in the hearts and minds of people and communities and then ultimately in the world. And so I just, you know, all I have to say is I receive that. I'm really honored, but it's not something that I try to like, oh, I got to do this, because it's.
I think it's just one of those things that that's what it really is about.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: And that being said, you've mentioned the challenges, the churches, the obstacles that have been faced. There's also a lot of distractions.
And I think in our culture today, in this, the inflammatory rhetoric, the hot, you know, hot button topics that are there and very real and do matter.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: Sure they do.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: But I think oftentimes, if we're not careful, the main thing does not remain the main thing. And we start to major on the minors.
Talk about that a little bit.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: You know, I think that people. One is. It's interesting, you know, the attention economy that we live in now, which is where everybody's vying for it. And I think I read a couple weeks ago that there's only one thing more powerful than sex to grab people's attention. That's outrage.
And so we just live in this constant flow of being provoked constantly, and everything gets escalated to an existential threat. And so you have to defend your position. And then I think what happens is that the church becomes a means to an end. It becomes a way for.
It gets sucked into all of these, you know, culture wars and what I would call unnecessary distractions and what we've tried to say. And I credit Rick Schaefer, who's one of our pastors. He's like the mark of a church is its distinctness.
And one of the things, and I tell our congregation right now the bar is so low, like you can just be remotely kind or reasoned or measured.
And you're going to be really distinct. And not only, not just for the sake of, like, let's just be different, but what you're doing is you're actually creating a different way. I mean, part of the thing that what Jesus came to do when he says I'm the way, the truth and the life, it wasn't just an apologetic to say, oh, this is the way to heaven. It was. No, this is what Jesus has created is a way for us to be with him, with, with ourselves and there and with one another.
And what that way with one another does is it creates for us or it creates a real way for us to live together that bears witness that, oh, the kingdom is here. Which I think is what Jesus meant. Right. Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand and learning. You know, I'm so. I think we're talking about books, but one of the, you know, like N.T. wright, I mean, you gave me one of the books that has probably changed my life, which was Stanley Hauerwas. Jesus Changes everything, which gave language to a lot of things that have been like, wrangling out here.
And the thing that's helped us as a church. And I'll speak for us because it's tempting to. I have to weigh in on this and I have to weigh in on that. And this event happens in culture and how are we going to weigh in on these things, whether it's on social media or anything else. And I just tell our church over and over again. The call of the church is local and personal.
It's local and personal. And when people come to me about issues and say, mike, can you tell me about this issue? I will always ask them the same question or say the same statement. I'll say, tell me a name and tell me a story.
Tell me who you're talking about and tell me their story. And then we can talk about that. Because when issues become these sort of problems to solve, they become dehumanized. And then we begin to treat others in inhumane ways, which is the antithesis of what Jesus came to restore and to bring about in this new creation that he intends for us to experience.
And so I've tried to, you know, and what I mean by that, you know, local is not like local versus global. We still do a lot of global efforts. I mean, local as opposed to general, like anesthesia. Right.
Local is to say we're going to get really specific of things. Because when things are Generalized, they just become these ethereal ideas and philosophies and we don't ever get them down to really humanize them and say, this is something that matters to this person for this reason. And when you understand that, it changes the way you interact, it doesn't maybe change your conviction about an issue, but it certainly changes the way that you participate or address someone in that issue. And then of course, personal is just the opposite of impersonal. It's just to recognize that these things matter to real people and we just need to be respectful of that. I just think we've lost that capacity in so much of our conversation.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: I agree wholeheartedly. And Jesus does change everything. And only the Lord can help us to understand what these challenges or struggles are about and even how to work through them in a way that will lead to not only our own well being, but human flourishing.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: That's exactly right.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: You know, I'll give an example. I have a friend that struggles with his sexual identity for years. And I'll never forget he had had this encounter with some people and he had heard a sermon and he called me in tears and was really having a hard time. And he just said, todd, I need you to be honest with me.
He said, am I an abomination to the Lord?
And I said, no, the Lord cherishes you and he loves you more than you'll ever love yourself. And I said, he has a plan for your life that's better than anything you can come up with on your own.
And if you'll seek the Lord, he'll help you. And whatever we're struggling with, it will.
And he said, let me ask you another question.
He said, am I going to go to hell?
Because I'm struggling with some of these issues, one being these sexual preferences. And I said, look, I'm not going to heaven because I'm heterosexual, married, okay? And whatever you're dealing with, I just said, that's the wrong question.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: It's the wrong question.
[00:41:06] Speaker B: And I said, I think what's happening in our culture, back to the inflammatory rhetoric, the polarization, the rage, we're talking about real people with real struggles.
And if the church can't be that place where you can truly come and be who you are as you are and ask questions and wrestle, wrestle, wrestle with it. And if we can't be available to help people with their struggles and just know that, hey, it's okay to not be okay. That's one thing I love about.
I've got a lot of friends who are in aa And I've had the privilege of going and speaking and hanging out with them. And when you walk in the door of aa, you're saying to everyone there, I need help.
Everyone in here needs help.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: That's true.
That's true everywhere.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: It is.
But sadly, I think in some cases of congregations and churches, when people walk through the door, they don't feel that way. They're not made to feel that way.
And that's a shame.
And unless those people are welcome to come here, warts and all, I mean, without our wounds, where would our power be?
[00:42:17] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: And I think why God has blessed this church in so many ways as a result of your leadership, and I've heard this from numerous people, is you meet people where they are.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: We try.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: And you let the gospel, you let the truth of the scriptures, do that work in people's minds and hearts.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: And I think people ask me, they'll come by and they'll say things when they're asking for help. And their assumption is, I shouldn't need this much help or I shouldn't need. They always assume that I'm like, what makes you think that we all have received more than we deserve from not just God, but from a lot of people and from others? Because that's what we're.
One of the myths. The two things I try to address is that one of the most beautiful parts of how God created humans is one of the things we try to eradicate, which is we are made to be dependent on each other.
And we think relationships. Yeah. We think it's a bad thing. And it's not. It's like we're made to be dependent on each other. No, one isn't.
And two is that. And I tell our Congress a lot, too. I said, do you think that because you acknowledge something is true that it should be easy to believe?
And it's not. I mean, one of the things that Jesus said right when they come and they're asking him about his mother and his brother, I think this is the right story.
And he said, who is my mother and brother, but he who does the will of God, he does the will of my Father. And I think he says in the same passage, it's. I think it's in John 6 or 5, 6. And he says, the will of God is to believe the one whom he sent. I mean, sorry, the work of God is to believe the one he sent.
And I'm like, Jesus tells us that it is actually the work. Like that God's work is for us to Believe like this is, this is not, it's not purely intellectual. It's not, here's a fact, here's well reasoned arguments. And so therefore I'm certain about these things. It's learning how to put our whole selves into a state of dependency and trust to say, God, I need you to do these things. I need you to be here in these moments and to sustain and to give cause to what's about to occur. And when we learn how to do that, we recognize that we do need to be encouraged. We need one another in all these places to look, learn how to believe what the gospel actually makes available to us, which is extraordinary.
That's how I think about it.
It's simple, but it's not easy and we can't lose sight of that. We all need other people with us in this journey.
[00:45:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. So for the person that's struggling with God, the veracity of scripture, maybe they've had a really bad encounter experience with someone claiming to represent God.
Maybe they're burned out.
What would you say to that person?
[00:45:36] Speaker A: I would say one is, I understand, I'm a pastor and I live in church world. And we were joking earlier. I said I'm probably one of the most cynical, optimistic people you'll meet. Because there's just things about the way, people who claim the way or the image, allegiance to Christ, the way they misrepresent and betray who Christ is. It makes me crazy.
But what I would say is, you know, pursue Christ.
Like pursue him and really understand how you're pursuing him. A lot of people come to Christ or to God or to the Bible and they're trying to get like the fact, the silver smoking, the smoking gun, that's going to once and for all solve their doubt.
And I've been walking with the Lord for 30, almost 40 years. 40 years.
And like really intentionally and consistently and deeply for two decades, I have more questions and more doubts.
And you know, today it doesn't go away.
And the way I always kind of think about this is imagine, you know, if you're trying to figure out what's the litmus test for how you know if your wife loves you or is going to be good for you for your whole life.
The reality is there isn't one. There's not one.
It's trust.
It's trust.
And the beautiful thing about a relationship with Christ and the way I think God has created and designed this is that this isn't about intellectually figuring it out and making it make sense. It's about learning how to trust, which is the foundation of the life that everybody wants.
Everybody wants to know, to be known, to love and to be loved. And the currency of a relationship that's governed by love is always trust.
If it's anything else, it's no longer love, you know. And the way I try to illustrate this is like, if you ask me right now, where's my why?
I can tell you it's three o'. Clock. She's actually running errands today. So she is at a friend's house delivering a meal for a bridal luncheon.
I know that's where she is.
And he said, how do you know? Well, I know because that's where she told me she's going to be.
And I can look up on Find My Friends and I can verify that, but that's not the same.
I think that's. That's what a lot of us, we think that our culture, the water we swim in, is so devoid of trustworthiness and trust that we just all struggle with that. And the solution is not to try and arm ourselves with more information that makes us more certain.
The solution is, is to get in pockets of places with the phrase we use is trusted, formative community.
It's people that you can trust. And I tell our church this, the only thing that we hold with you is trust. And if we ever violate that, we lose everything that matters. Because what God has called us to do is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And. And the currency for that to occur has to be trust. And so, you know, we work with our staff, we work with our volunteer. You know, we want to be a people who learn to live worthy of what we are asking people, what we're asking of one another. And it's imperfect and it's hard and it's messy, but man, it is so worth it.
And, you know, if you're looking and searching, I would just say there are pockets of people out there and churches out there where this is real and it's happening.
And we would love to help, you know, you find one or, you know, connect you with someone who we know in an area or whatever, because it is happening.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Oh, it is. And I think when the scriptures are guiding those communities, they have to be. I mean, because Jesus is our example. And you look just at the scriptures themselves. If we were to take out the scriptures, stories of people who struggled, they'll be gone and failed mightily.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: Ten Commandments is about what you'd have, right?
[00:50:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
But it's amazing, though, the thing that's
[00:50:16] Speaker A: interesting, you know, Todd, I think you'll appreciate this because you read pretty wildly, but I used. I grew up thinking that doubt was bad, so I would try to convince myself that I didn't have doubts.
And way I did that was by trying to find more information. And I love apologetics. I get all that ST stuff. But what I've kind of grown to know is that my problem wasn't. It isn't doubt, it was curiosity.
And when I began to really, like, fan that flame.
And again, this is not willy nilly or free for all, but when I really began to say, lord, I want to know who you are. I want to see you, I want to behold you, I want to wonder and marvel at you.
I want to know. The gospel is in all of its vastness.
The world opened up to me.
[00:51:07] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: Like never before. I grew up with the adage of like, if you're not black and white, you're going to get gray and it's going to be this mushy middle. And what I always tell people, I said, if something isn't black and white, it isn't gray. If something's not black and white, it's color. And that's a much more beautiful picture.
And so I am, you know, I am all in on trying to keep pulling back and pulling back and letting people see the gospel's good news. And there's a beauty and there's truth and there's goodness that awakens the human heart. That only comes from what it is that God has done for us, made available to us in Christ. And that's why it's called good news.
[00:51:45] Speaker B: So I have one last question.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: When it's all said and done.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:50] Speaker B: How do you want to be remembered?
[00:51:52] Speaker A: I don't really have a great answer. I care about.
Let me think about this better. My mantra has been. And it's a book titled by Eugene Peterson, it's a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche.
And it's long obedience in the same direction. I want people who know me to go, oh, he stayed in for a long time and he was faithful.
And if that's what people would say, I would be totally.
That would be enough.
Most everything else, I don't really.
It's fun, it's exciting, but what I care about is can I be faithful in the small things consistently over a long period of time.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:52:49] Speaker A: Thanks. It's been a tremendous honor to become friends with you and to be able to be able to do this with you. So thank you.
[00:52:56] Speaker B: My pleasure. To be continued.
[00:52:58] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:52:59] Speaker B: Thank you.
