A Breath of Fresh Air - Pastor Dan Underhill | Faithly Podcast

(0:00 - 0:26) I met with the first man on Wednesday. By Saturday, I had $100,000 in checks in my hand, and God's like, do you have any more questions on who's going to provide? You haven't even told the public you're launching, and you have $100,000 in cash to start. This is The Faithfully Podcast. (0:28 - 0:41) Welcome to another episode of Faithly Stories Podcast. My name is Pastor Adam Durso, and I am sitting here with the one, the only, the man, the myth, the legend, Pastor Dan Underhill. Say hi, man. (0:41 - 0:49) Hey. Great to be on here with you guys, and honored to be able to be a part of it. Pastor Dan, you and I know each other for 25 years. (0:49 - 1:04) As I remember the story correctly, I had a huge youth ministry in New York City. That's true. You were in upstate New York and did not like waiting on the line of young people trying to get in the building, and so you bribed me with Stewart's Orange Cream Skull Soda. (1:04 - 1:11) Why don't you tell that story a little bit? It is true. You know, the Word of God tells you your gift will make room for you. 100%, my friend. (1:11 - 1:16) And I knew the Word, and I used the Word. Yes, you did. I was living in upstate New York. (1:17 - 1:45) I was a youth pastor in there, and sometimes in ministry, you just need clean air to breathe. And one of the things that I had that was a gift from God was the encouragement to come down and see what Adam was doing in New York City and Queens and said, hey, I think you might like this guy, Adam. And when I showed up and I saw a line of teenagers around the front of the church on a Friday night, there were hundreds and hundreds deep. (1:45 - 2:25) I was like, what is this? Then when I got inside, I found out why they were lining up around the block was because the presence of God was there, the power of God was there, and it gave everybody clean air where they felt like they could breathe and go again. And so I said, how do I get in here, and how do I connect better? When I heard that you loved Orange Cream Skull and Stewart's Soda, I said, well, I can bring a case of that. And that somehow managed to get me through the lines a little quicker, and it also seemed to get me into the back rooms where all of a sudden we were going out to eat together. (2:25 - 2:41) Yes, we were. As a matter of fact, I think it actually is the fruit of the seed you originated. So we have certainly been to many a dinner and many a hang, and the relationship extended beyond just your youth ministry and my youth ministry. (2:41 - 3:09) We were serving youth pastors, we were going on trips together. And really over those 25 years, I count you as a brother. Do you want to speak a little bit to all of those years of us knowing each other and the development of our relationship? One thing that it's so critical, no matter who you are in ministry, that you have somebody who you're tethered to that can speak truth in your life. (3:09 - 3:29) And they are not just there to get something from you, they want something for you. And you were the living, walking, breathing embodiment of that for me. I had a desire to lead, and in the context I was in, it was suffocating, quite honestly. (3:30 - 4:00) It was a suffocating context where I had to get out to be able to get a breath of fresh air, and had a vision for leading on a different level, and you just said, come with me. It was a time where if I wanted to have $30 for pizza, I had to do a car wash, raise $30 so we could give pizza to the kids. You were giving me the opportunity to go to, at the time, leadership conferences around the world with the top names doing it in the industry. (4:01 - 4:40) And you said, fly with me, stay with me. But you were doing it in a way saying, look, I'm not going to travel alone for your own personal integrity, which was pure of heart, but then second, you also encouraged me to read a book, Never Eat Alone, and you were living that out, saying, I'm not going to fly alone, I'm not going to stay in a hotel room alone, I'm not going to go get leadership alone, I'm going to bring someone alongside of me, and your investment gave me such air in my lungs to say, I can keep doing this, even though the context that I was serving in was suffocating. The relationships God gave me was a breath of fresh air. (4:40 - 5:09) We're sitting here in Austin, Texas, and you're the lead pastor at Cornerstone Church, ATX. But before we get to that story, I believe there genuinely have been multiple seasons for you where you knew that where you were leading, although you were faithful to the call and season that you were in, at the end of the day, it was squeezing you. It was difficult to lead in those seasons. (5:09 - 5:29) To a leader that might be sitting here, listening to this podcast, watching this podcast, and saying to themselves, I know what it is to feel squeezed, I know what it is to feel like God's got more for me, but I'm still in the current season I'm in. How do you lead while feeling squeezed, Dan? I think that's when you find out what you're really made of. Yeah, man. (5:30 - 5:45) You find out in those moments what's really in you when you're squeezed. We've heard every preacher give the illustration, if you squeeze an orange, you should get orange juice out of it. When you squeeze a Christian, you should get Christ out of it. (5:46 - 6:08) That's the moment where Jesus submitted himself to the Father and humbled himself and took on the role of a servant, so should we. In those moments, I would encourage every leader, you're there to serve God, not man. You are going to serve a man that leads there or a woman that leads there. (6:08 - 6:24) You're going to serve, but you show how honorable you are by whether or not you honor those in authority over you. Not whether or not they deserve honor. That has nothing to do with the context. (6:24 - 6:36) Whoa, whoa, whoa. Go back for a second. When you honor those above you, when they're not honorable, all you do is prove that you are honorable. (6:37 - 6:45) Yes. God never tells you to only honor those that deserve honor, right? He tells you to honor those who are in authority. Yes. (6:45 - 7:10) If we believe Daniel, the book of Daniel tells you the kingdoms of this world are the Lord's and he gives them to whomever he wills, then God put them there for a reason. And even though you think you don't deserve to be in that situation, God could bless you and sharpen you. I remember one day, 6 a.m. on the steps of a church, the lead pastor asked me to scrub the front doors. (7:11 - 7:39) Now, at this moment, my youth ministry is running matching numbers to this congregation on Sunday mornings, right? My education level superseded his. And as much as I sat there scrubbing those front doors, I could have taken that one of two ways. I could have said, why should I do this? But I remember one of the admins walked up, unlocked the door, what are you doing? I said, I'm passing a test. (7:39 - 7:59) It's best if you go inside. Because that was a moment that I needed to be as a young youth pastor, humbled to find out like, can you serve? Can you serve regardless of what the context is? And that was a moment because, man, I was full of pride. I was full of a whole bunch of stuff that had nothing to do with Jesus. (8:00 - 8:12) And I needed that moment for me to be sharpened and me to be honed a little bit better for the work of Christ. I don't hear a ton of that being taught right now in leadership development. I needed to be humbled. (8:13 - 8:40) The scenario that I was in was actually, although it felt insulting, was for my benefit. When you go back through scripture, you look at Joseph like, hey, I know you've meant it for evil, but God used it for good. I think every one of us as leaders have those moments where we have to stop blaming the people around us and have enough self-awareness to know that I'm a grown adult. (8:41 - 9:02) I can now make a choice whether I choose to see this as a toxic environment or allow this environment to need the supernatural indwelling of the Holy Spirit to get me through it and the grace that can lead me through it. But guess what? The grace doesn't lead me when I leave that situation. That grace is still going to flow through me and develop me as a leader. (9:02 - 9:25) You know, when I think about relationships, I tell people that when they're transactional, there's an end date to the relationship. But when they are authentic, they're transcendent. So in our relationship, you're a guy born in New Hampshire, raised in the Northeast, leading in upstate New York. (9:26 - 9:42) I'm leading in Brooklyn and Queens in urban New York City. We've got this friendship. At times we were ministering to hundreds of bivocational youth pastors, youth directors, 90% of youth pastors in New York City were bivocational. (9:42 - 10:06) They're working a full-time job and volunteering, and we're serving them. And then you feel called to go to Texas and lead here in a space around youth ministry. And then God puts on your heart to leave that church to now launch what is now Cornerstone Church ATX. (10:06 - 10:22) Walk us through that leaving season into what was the birth of CCATX. So it's got to be said, I never wanted to be a church planner. Full transparency, I used to make fun of them. (10:23 - 10:35) I would make fun of church planners or youth guys that wanted to climb the ladder and become a big boy pastor now. And it's like, hold on, just get underneath the man of God that he set over that house and serve him. Make him successful. (10:36 - 10:50) I didn't buy into that normal, oh, I'll do this until I can get to here. And so when God came to me and started talking to me about, hey, I want you to plan a church, my response was there are better men. Now ironically, he didn't disagree with me. (10:51 - 11:03) He's like, yeah, there might be better men, but I chose you. And so I had to go, okay, now how you choose to walk through that season is critically important. Yes. (11:04 - 11:13) Because just because God tells you something doesn't mean it's time for you to act on it. Yes. And you still run under authority and you act honorable. (11:13 - 11:24) Yes. And so, you know, I went to the three men that are in my life, still in my life today to say, hey, this is what I believe God's saying to me. This is what he's calling me to do. (11:24 - 11:36) What do you think of this? And so when the word says all truth is confirmed by two or three witnesses, I still believe that for today. Yes. And I checked that because there are men in my life that are authorities. (11:36 - 11:52) That means I put them in a place and I give up my authority. I say, I trust you that if I'm not seeing this correctly, you have every right to call me on this. You know, leader, you know, authority is never taken. (11:52 - 11:54) It's always given. Yes. That's true. (11:54 - 12:03) And so, you know, I put those guys in that place and said, you have this authority. All of them said, Dan, we know you're supposed to play in a church. We're just waiting for you to realize it. (12:03 - 12:20) Yes. And I was like, oh, okay. And so I went to my pastor and at the time, you know, that was a pretty scary moment because the precedent before me was, okay, we'll turn in your key card and your laptop, you're done. (12:20 - 12:27) Right. To this man's credit, he just looked at me and said, yeah, we know. We were just holding on as long as we could. (12:28 - 12:52) That's pretty amazing because most of the people listening to this podcast right now are thinking to themselves, we don't do that transition really well in church today. I mean, we just, the idea of, you know, somebody under saying, hey, I feel like God's calling me, send me. What does that mean? I mean, you know, to your point, it's handing your keys and your laptop and I don't ever want to see you again. (12:52 - 13:00) And he didn't. And I will say that I think that moment was set up by the multiple moments prior to it. Sure. (13:00 - 13:11) Living under authority and with integrity. Yes. And so when you continue to stack those dominoes of integrity, there's compound interest in blessing coming back. (13:11 - 13:17) That's good. And so in that moment, he just said, yeah, we know. Absolutely. (13:17 - 13:40) Who have you told? The beauty of that moment is, and I was like, my wife, he goes, okay, but like, who else is going with you and when's your date? And I looked him stone in the face and I said, whenever you give me permission to go. And he goes, oh, so nobody else knows? I'm like, no, I don't have a. You haven't already started recruiting from my church? No. With a due date, a launch date. (13:41 - 13:44) Yeah, exactly. No. That is the most vile thing. (13:44 - 14:03) And I was just like, no, that's not what we do. Yes. It took four years from that conversation before he gave me permission to go, you know? And so I think that if you're in that position right now, number one, operate with the highest amount of integrity possible. (14:04 - 14:10) Now's the time to ratchet your integrity up, not down. Yes. And those are the moments where you honor up. (14:10 - 14:18) You heard it before, honor down, honor all the way around. Because how you leave will set up your next season. Absolutely. (14:18 - 14:30) How you leave one season is how you enter the next one. And now you're entering this next one and you launch Cornerstone Church ATX in. 2019, September 15th. (14:30 - 14:39) Which is approximately six months before. COVID. COVID-19 happens after you planted the church six months earlier. (14:39 - 14:40) Yeah. Okay. Walk us through that. (14:41 - 14:49) So we planted in a way I would not recommend for anybody. We had no sending church. We had no funding. (14:49 - 15:00) We had no team. I literally put a Facebook message out and said, hey, God's called me to plant a church. If you'd like to hear more, we have an interest meeting on this date. (15:01 - 15:07) Come out and check it out. About 60 to 70 people showed up for the first one. Sure. (15:07 - 15:15) We had planned three of them. We did three of them in a row. No less than 75 people showed up to each one of them. (15:15 - 15:24) And then we just said, all right, well, let's just go ahead and keep going every Sunday night in the community center and just teach our basic core principles. Get our launch team. Cause I didn't have a launch team. (15:25 - 15:46) Right. Like I was like, all right, well, maybe this is my launch team, you know? And here's the difference. Some people plant a church because they do the research and they find the demographic in the area that'll be successful because they're professional Christians or professional ministers. (15:48 - 15:59) I planted because God said to, and when God tells you what to do, that means he's responsible for it. Not me. And I think that that's a key difference. (16:00 - 16:06) And I remember having one conversation with a gentleman. I didn't even ask for it. I was not recruiting. (16:06 - 16:22) I was not looking for funding and he just said, Hey, what are you going to do? And I said, God's called me to plant a church and he goes, who's in. And I was like half of my family. He goes, which half? I said, my younger two kids are all in my wife and the older ones are totally out. (16:24 - 16:45) And he goes, I'll give you $50,000 to start. And I was like, oh, and then he said, the next gentleman you meet with, you tell him my name, you tell him how much I'm in and you challenge him to do the same thing. What he didn't know is that I was meeting with probably one of the most successful CEOs that turned around a major fortune 500 company and was known in the area. (16:45 - 16:53) And we were doing a discipleship meeting and I said, Hey, this is what this gentleman asked me to do. So I'm just putting it out there. I met with the first man on Wednesday. (16:53 - 17:09) By Saturday I had a hundred thousand dollars in checks in my hand. And God's like, do you have any more questions on who's going to provide? You haven't even told the public you're launching and you have a hundred thousand dollars in cash to start. I'll provide. (17:09 - 17:18) That's amazing. Oh, he's good. So COVID comes, which, uh, contrary to popular opinion did happen in Texas. (17:19 - 17:23) It did. It was almost a full 30 days. Almost a full. (17:24 - 17:41) So you guys go online and then you basically, you know, then almost like a relaunch in person. And that's four years ago. We're now in two campuses, three services on a Sunday. (17:41 - 18:25) What is Cornerstone Church ATX to the person that is thinking, what does your church look like? Oh man, we have a very diverse church. What I mean by that is it's multi-generational and it embraces almost every ethnicity or nationality, you know, to it. Now we're on the West side of Austin, so we have an eight 30 service and you can find somebody there who's a young family in their late twenties, early thirties, all the way to people that are in their late seventies, almost actually mid eighties that are there active and serving, you know, um, it is an intergenerational church. (18:25 - 18:36) Um, one thing that God has put in my DNA is from over 20 plus years of youth ministry work. You're always a youth pastor. Once a youth pastor, always a youth minister. (18:36 - 18:47) Yup. That doesn't go away. And I've been blessed enough that my son, thank you to you, Pastor Adam and Pastor Jamal Bernard, both for speaking into it, going, your son's got a gift. (18:48 - 18:57) Put him in. Yeah. I was always so anti family in church cause I've seen it just go roughly in the past. (18:58 - 19:08) And I was like, look, let's not do the nepotism thing just because my son, and it was both you and Pastor Jamal that said, Hey, you're denying a gift on this kid. He's got an anointing. He's got a gift. (19:09 - 19:14) Put him in. Yeah. And so he's doing a phenomenal job, uh, with our student department. (19:14 - 19:22) But even beyond that, our young adults, you know, there's a, there's a guy who works for me. His name's Dylan Robichaux. Phenomenal human being. (19:22 - 19:41) Shout out to Dylan. He is, he is brilliant. He was a young guy who went to college and college was not his thing, right? But he's so brilliant that he designed a website so that that way he could fake his parents out and make them think that he was doing well in college. (19:41 - 19:57) Right? Dylan is so- We're not, um, endorsing that by the way. In case you're sitting here thinking I should create a fake website so that I could fake my parents out and really like drop out of college. That's not worth saying, right Pastor Dan? No, it is not worth saying. (19:57 - 20:02) But yes, it does indicate his brilliance. He is an incredibly brilliant young man. And the best hair. (20:03 - 20:05) Strong, strong, strong hair. Strong hair. Yes. (20:05 - 20:33) Uh, but he just got involved and really started surrendering his life to Christ. Now in his thirties, leading our young adults ministry and leading them in such a way where he's going after the hard issues that their hearts are facing and doing it in a way that is sometimes counter-cultural, you know, he's just, he's, he's giving them hard truth. And this generation seems to be craving hard truth. (20:34 - 20:43) Because they've had enough of the superficial Christianity that wasn't working. Yes. And now they're like, tell me the truth because this doesn't work in my life. (20:43 - 21:11) And so we are definitely an intergenerational church that is definitely moving the needle when it comes to the next generation of leaders. And thank you for the privilege and the honor to be one of the overseers of Cornerstone Church ATX. I don't take it in any way for granted and for being my brother, you know, not only am I an overseer here, but you're part of my personal presbytery and one of my brothers that holds me accountable. (21:11 - 21:24) We're mutually accountable to each other. I want to shift gears here for a second. You have a tagline, it shows up on your social media, Passion and Pursuit. (21:25 - 21:49) So when we're looking to find Pastor Dan Underhill, there's obviously Cornerstone Church ATX, but there's also Dan Underhill and then there's Passion and Pursuit. What does that mean and where did that come from? Yeah. I think it really originates out of, you know, Luke chapter seven when it says, those that have been forgiven much, love much. (21:49 - 22:11) And when I genuinely look back at what God has saved me from and where I was, how do I give him less than everything? Yes. Like, how dare I give a half-hearted effort? Yes. Into him sacrificing it all for me. (22:11 - 22:26) You know, my life verse, when people ask me that, is one of the weirdest life verses. It's 2 Timothy 3.5. It says, they had a form of Godliness, but they lacked the power. Stay away from these people is what this portion of scripture is talking about. (22:27 - 22:54) And for me, I never want anybody to interact with me and wonder if, did that guy know God or did he not know God? Was that guy real about God or was that not real about God? To me, it's about Passion and Pursuit. And if you go back to the number one commandment, when they nailed Jesus down, what's the number one commandment? Love the Lord your God with our heart, soul, mind, strength. That's Passion. (22:54 - 23:03) That's Pursuit. I'm not always going to get it right, but I'm going to get back up and I'm going to passionately pursue him. I don't have to be perfect, but I must be honest. (23:03 - 23:20) And that honesty includes integrity and integrity means you're the same all the way through. And you know what? I'm going to be just as passionate today as I will be tomorrow until the last day when he calls me home and I hear, well done, good and faithful servant. That's what it means to me. (23:22 - 23:27) Thank you, Pastor Dan. My name is Pastor Adam Durso. This is a Faithly Stories podcast. (23:27 - 23:34) I'm sitting here with Pastor Dan Underhill, the Senior and Lead Pastor at Cornerstone Church ATX. Thank you for watching. I'll bless you. (23:35 - 23:35) God bless you.