From Atheist to Church Planter - Justin Mattera

00:01 - Speaker 1
There's a kind of dilemma or a false choice that a lot of native New Yorkers will have that live in areas that I grew up in and live in now and it's do I go to, like Manhattan or downtown, to the church that I would feel comfortable inviting my friend? That's kind of more modern and up to date but I don't really feel at home. I don't have a lot of connection or friendships because it's so far away or, you know, it's very transient. Or do I go to like the church that I step in and I feel at home? These are my aunts and my uncles and lifelong friends, but I would never invite you know, one of my friends to, because I don't know what the pastor is gonna say or what's gonna happen during the service. Hi, my name is Justin Mattera. I am a father, pastor and entrepreneur in New York City. I have five kids, beautiful wife and this is my Faithly Story.

00:53 - Speaker 2
Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. Learn more at faithlyco. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry. On the Faithly Stories podcast.

01:35 - Speaker 3
Could you share how your faith journey started?

01:37 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I am a pastor's kid, so faith journey started really young, but really started when I turned probably seriously when I turned 16, where I read a couple of books that really contradicted what I grew up learning and went down the route of atheism for several years. But between high school and college I decided, you know, the question of whether God was real or not was a question that would define the rest of my life and needed time to explore, and so I took a gap year before going to college. I moved to a cornfield in Ohio to live with my uncle, who was also a pastor out there and just trying to figure out the question, getting away from friends, family, everything I knew if God was real and praise God that he met me in some incredible ways during that year. And I moved back to New York City, not as a home but as a mission field for what. I would kind of put roots out for the rest of my life and see what God wanted to do here in my city.

02:46
What was the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill? So I grew up a lot around Word of Faith and Prosperity, gospel, and what I realized was all this talk about Jesus was, from my understanding at the time, was no different than all these other ways of accumulating wealth in the world, and so why would I suffer with all these rules if I could just manifest it in different ways? And so that's what started that journey.

03:19 - Speaker 3
So what happened in Ohio that made you come back?

03:23 - Speaker 1
Well, I never intended to stay there forever.

03:28 - Speaker 3
I'm sorry, I meant like your faith, not like literally. So yeah, so, what happened in Ohio that made you come back to faith.

03:38 - Speaker 1
Yeah, honestly, I'm charismatic. So what happened was I just spent several months praying through John 10, that you know, if you are his sheep, then you will know the voice of the shepherd and asking God to hear his voice and to know that he was real and to know him. And I had felt like God had spoken to me throughout my life, but I was never abundantly sure you know whether that was me or not, and so you know I knew everything intellectually. My dad was very good at training me from a young age, making me read every apologetics, book, church history, everything you could imagine. But at this point I needed to kind of experience my faith to really know that God was real, and so I just kind of my fleece putting out before God was asking him to give me a prophetic word about somebody else that I had never met before and that I would know nothing about their life.

04:42
And so I prayed on this and as people new people were coming to church, I felt like God was, you know, sharing things with me to share with them. But I was too chicken to go up to them and share it. But one night at our youth group, the youth pastor had come up to me and he said hey, justin, you know, I think God is like putting something on your heart to share to somebody. And I did have something that I felt, and so I went up to that person and I shared it with them. You know, no miracle lightning or anything like that. But at the end of it the guy just kind of looked at me dumbfounded and said man, I was wrestling with that all night.

05:20
Last night I couldn't sleep and I came to church hoping to find the answer. And, you know, you just shared it with me. And I remember walking out the back door of the church and just kind of like screaming outside like, oh man, god, you're real. And then that just began to happen very often and built my faith from there. But at some point, you know, I think that moment was the moment of like okay, I'm not making this up, I'm not crazy, god is real and I'm willing to kind of go 110% in this.

05:53 - Speaker 3
So for those audiences, I mean, I honestly don't know who watches this, so like, but I do have, like you know, more charismatic friends and whatnot, and like, even recently, I'm learning like speaking from the heart is actually what God wants of us. It's not knowledge, right, it's understanding. And so for you, like, could you kind of describe what that's like to receive a word and to share it, so that you're not checking out and then you know that it's not you, that it's from the Lord.

06:19 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I think, ultimately, what I've learned is this comes down to obedience and, um, I would say my life is more journey of obedience than like great ideas and strategy or anything like that. I've just uh, kind of seeing what, what God is putting in front of me and taking those steps. And so, specifically for sharing a word with somebody that I believe that the Lord has put on my heart for them is it's hard to describe. I would describe it as you didn't have information a second ago and now you do, and you know I think I've learned over time to differentiate. You know what is my own feelings, what is the voice of God and what are outside voices, and God helped me kind of distinguish that. And when I was younger, while I was away in Ohio, just like showing me different times, he did speak to me in different times in my life where he did lead me and how it all kind of felt the same and sounded the same and looked the same. And now, as he was doing that with me about whether sharing with other people or making decisions for my life, it was, it was all in the same vein.

07:28
Um and I. It's different every time. Sometimes it's like, uh, it's a, it's a, uh, uh, almost like a. I cannot contain this, almost like a. I cannot contain this, this thing that is in me, uh, and I have to share it. Uh, there are times where I'm just I'm praying for somebody and, um, I don't know, I just I just know, uh, like I said, it's there, it's there one second. It wasn't there the minute before, um, and uh, you know, to this day, praise God. You know, whenever that does happen, it's, it is, uh, it seems like it has been God speaking and working. So I just continue to obey.

08:12 - Speaker 3
It's funny because for me it doesn't happen with people. It's like when I learned something new. It's like a like, a like the way, the best way I can describe it. It's like the big bang, something spontaneous thought comes and then it unravels and becomes this like comprehensive word yeah and it kind of flows, you know and I realize when I'm trying too hard to make these words make sense, it's me, but when it's just flowing, it's like from the lord and I'm like asanish.

08:38
So thank you for that yeah so, as you are going through your atheist rabbit hole, because I have a really close friend who's a so-called atheist but he's more agnostic, but he claims so adamantly but he has a really good heart, so he can't be an atheist. So for you, like, could you kind of explain for you your journey of atheism, like exploring being an atheist. And then what about being an atheist Like most people who find something else, they stick to it. But for you, like, something convinced you wait, I don't think this is it either. Do you know what I mean? So could you explain, like, your journey and then coming out of that?

09:16 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I think that is where the beauty of parenting comes into play. You know, in the scriptures in Deuteronomy, chapter six, we were told to parent our children, disciple them, train them, teach them, and my parents were very diligent in doing that with me throughout my entire life. And so I sat down one day on my bed and I realized, if I do follow this path of atheism, everything I dreamed about, everything I'd been taught, everything I'd imagined my life to be would be wrong, and I had to craft a new life, new thought patterns, kind of this entirely new worldview. That was daunting, but I also realized that it would be alienating for my family. It would be alienating from every dream I ever had since I was a kid. It would be alienating from every dream I ever had since I was a kid. It would be alienating from everything I knew.

10:08
And so that's what prompted me to explore more. You know, before I make this huge decision that will literally radically transform everything about my life, what I do, how I make decisions, how I act, how I treat people, all of this stuff I should probably figure out if this is the right decision. And so it wasn't a yeah, it wasn't a like oh. Maybe atheism is wrong. In a sense it was more of a I will have been wrong, my parents have been wrong, everything will be wrong, and so let me just make sure I'm making the right decision. And I chalked that up to good discipleship from my parents because I would have never had that moment if they didn't spend countless years and all of that and everything I'd learned and been taught it would have just flowed naturally into a new lifestyle and state.

11:12 - Speaker 3
Could you describe your experience of that discipleship experience, because it sounds like your parents were really patient with you.

11:18 - Speaker 1
Yeah, they did a great job. They also have five kids. We have a couple of adopted siblings as well, and they always took in children in the church. But, you know, my parents intentionally sacrificed parts of their career and jobs to help disciple us. For instance, my dad would make sure he always dropped us off at school and picked us up and during those times he would have conversations with us. We always had to wake up earlier to do Bible study in the morning. Our Sunday afternoons, after church, you know, we weren't allowed to go anywhere. We had to have family time where we did devotions and prayer. You know, we were at. We were never allowed to play sports that interfered with our Sunday worship gathering.

12:09
Um, whereas, like a lot of my friends would miss half the year. Uh, my parents instilled this. You know this is a priority and it is more important than anything else in your life, uh, to be with the saints and uh, my, my dad in particular made sure that I had a good stream of books, and so every night before I went to bed when I was younger, he would read books to me. He would read biographies of, like, john Wesley, spurgeon, whitfield, you know, like all these incredible people. And then when I got older, you know, he would just constantly feed me books to read.

12:45
So, starting like, by the time I finished eighth grade, I'd finished John Maxwell's entire library on leadership. Or when I was in high school, I was reading lots of books on science and scripture, interpretations of Genesis, interpretations of Genesis. In college, I was reading lots of how the canon came to be, how do we trust the scriptures, the historicity of Jesus, of the scriptures, all these things. As I debated with my professors, it was always a stream, and I think the greatest thing that my parents had taught me is that all truth leads to God and to never be scared of it, and that for anything a professor or a friend tells me, there's always an answer. And so to search out that answer and I did.

13:37 - Speaker 3
I love that. That kind of explains what happened to me a year ago where I kept coming into these confrontations between these two theologies I was so uptight about like right and wrong in this binary thinking instead of this comprehensive like, oh wait, it's just relational yeah, right what does it mean to us? So so you're not reformed anymore, is what you're telling me my theology is very reformed because I really think it's concrete, like the core things and not not the tertiary stuff yeah, I think we've like gone off the rails because we're trying to, we're trying to give an answer to everything rather than point back to jesus as okay.

14:18
How does jesus make this make sense, right? What convinced you to see new york not just as home, but like as a mission field?

14:25 - Speaker 1
That's a good question. I think, ultimately, it was the Lord. I don't think it was something I did on my own, but I am glad that God did this. You know, I always find it strange when, like, people from out of state or out of city come to New York and like, oh, it's our mission or we want to do.

14:43
You know, I don't disparage it, but I always think of, like, the most contextualization that you have is where you grew up and where you were born. And you know, you don't have to spend years to figure out the culture and the people. You know, we all know that the best missionaries are the indigenous missionaries and God has sent the nations to my city as my friends. And when I planted our church, one of the beautiful things about it is my childhood friends and my wife's childhood friends were a lot of the first people who came or told their family members about it, and these are people I went to middle school with, high school, with grammar school, with um. We met in the school I graduated eighth grade from, you know, uh, when we first launched, and so, uh, it was it's. It's beautiful to see God work where you grew up and um, I think you have the best context for it, but ultimately it was just a strong sense from the Lord that, while I was there that you are, because a lot of people wanted me to stay in Ohio.

15:50
I made a lot of friends there and me and my uncle just both discerned separately like God was calling me back to New York City and I felt strongly that I had to go back with this mindset that this was my lifelong mission field, rather than just going back home.

16:08 - Speaker 3
Okay, so did you plant right away when you got here, or what was that process like?

16:13 - Speaker 1
No, I did not plant right away. I was only 18 when I got back, so I went to Baruch, which is a business college in the city, studied finance. I got heavily involved in intervarsity, which I would say is like my first real experience with ministry, even though I'd always been a part of ministry in the church. I was the president of my chapter sophomore year and, like I, there's a different weight. You know when you're in charge and that you know since then it had been just non-stop ministry, and so after that, I became the youth pastor in my home church and then, after that, became the executive pastor there. After a couple of years of doing that, you know, I left there, took a year off to pray through church planting and then planted Zion. I believe in 2017, january, we had our first worship service.

17:13 - Speaker 3
So can you kind of unpack what planting to church is like? I'm honestly asking for myself now. So yeah, like, what are the steps to planting a church?

17:26 - Speaker 1
I do not encourage anybody to do it how I did it. I did not follow any of the models that was taught to me. So when I graduated college, a couple of weeks after, I did two things I got engaged and I started my first business. Engaged and I started my first business and I'd felt, like you know, I'd seen my parents struggle monetarily through ministry, you know, my entire life. I didn't want to see that happen, but I think God was just moving and doing something different, because planting in the city bivocational is like pretty much a must if you want to have a sustainable church plant pretty much a must if you want to have a sustainable church plant, um. And so my uh marketing business at that time was able to sustain me, um, where I didn't need salary for the first several years of the church, um. So essentially what I did was for that year off. What you were supposed to do in year zero is you're supposed to fundraise, um, you're supposed to fundraise. You're supposed to build a core team and you are supposed to look for a place to be, have interest meetings, small group meetings, all of this different thing. But that year God had spoken to me a couple of very clear things, which was I'm not to tell anybody that I'm planting a church, that I'm supposed to rest from ministry work, and that he wanted to do a lot of internal things in me before I did this work. And so I was actually in Redeemer City to City's church planting cohort at that point and you know, every month we're getting together and everybody's sharing about their core team that they're building and the funds and what network or denomination they joined and how much they raised and their small group meetings and their strategy plans. And I'm just like, yeah, I got nothing, I'm not doing anything. But I remember a morning and I would come to God regularly and say, like God, is it time? And God would just say no. But one morning I woke up and sometimes this happens to me where, like, I just feel like the first thing that happens when I wake up is the Lord speaks to me. And that morning I just felt like God, tell me it's time. And so, like any good millennial, I just opened my smartphone and posted on Facebook I'm going to plant a church.

19:44
But the next six weeks after that I got 30 people that joined to be. You know, were interested in being part of the plant, I was able to raise a little over $300,000. I joined a network and a denomination wrote a few blogs that had gotten I don't know, I think it was like five or 6,000 views and shares around uh me, so and so within those six weeks, you know, a year's worth of work was done and I think you know just God's timing. You know he just had everything mapped out. I had to be obedient, um and uh, he provided funds, he provided people and my wife was also pregnant with our second one at that point and so, again, not something I would recommend to be having.

20:39
So, between our first interest meeting and our second interest meeting, my wife gave birth to our second son meeting and our second interest meeting, my wife gave birth to our second son, uh, and a couple of months after that we found a space, um, and started doing you know, monthly uh preview services. But uh, yeah, within a few weeks, everything that I should have been planning a year for happened. And our first preview service, we had 50 people come and it was just kind of explosive from there for us.

21:16 - Speaker 3
What were some of your thought processes in joining a denomination and not just doing it independently?

21:23 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I had grown up non-denominational, so I, all of our friends and other pastors and churches and all that stuff were in the non-denominational world and even though I do think there's benefits to that, the major downfall I saw to that was the lack of accountability.

21:39
And I knew as good as my intentions are, you know, at the end of the day power corrupts and I needed to have a way to get fired and that would keep me honest.

21:56
It would, you know, keep the church healthy. And so when I kind of determined I needed to be fired if anything happened and I didn't want to have this kind of set man mentality, then I started looking into a bunch of denominations and what I looked for were generally, I wanted somebody that would, you know, strategically have the same vision I had, which was planting in urban areas, and two, would be relational rather than bureaucratic. And so I praise God was able to find somebody new of a denomination that wanted to plant in New York. They hooked me up with them and in our first meeting which is kind of wild thinking back, like there were no tests, there were no interviews At the end of the meeting he just shook my hand and basically was like yep, we're going to fund you. We had a three hour coffee meet, but after exploring you know it was. It was a God move and I'm thankful for it.

23:01 - Speaker 3
So could you describe the progression and the like? I guess, quote unquote explosion.

23:06 - Speaker 1
Yeah, man. So my heart for New York City is, you know, I'm a native New Yorker and we reach native New Yorkers, but native New Yorkers don't generally live in Center City, and so I want to plant congregations as far away from Manhattan as possible, but still in New York City. There's a kind of dilemma or a false choice that a lot of native New Yorkers will have that live in areas that I grew up in and live in now and it's do I go to like Manhattan or downtown, to the church that I would feel comfortable inviting my friend as kind of more modern and up to date, but I don't really feel at home, I don't have a lot of connection or friendships because it's so far away or, you know, it's very transient. Or do I go to like the church that I step in and I feel at home these are my aunts and my uncles and lifelong friends, but I would never invite you know, one of my friends to, because I don't know what the pastor is going to say or what's going to happen during the service. Um, and so I I wanted to kind of plant right in that sweet spot. Um, and so, yeah, we, by our third Easter we had 400 people.

24:23
Uh, that came to that service. It was a lot. We had 300 people regularly on a Sunday and this was in a few years. There was just a huge need, but we grew too fast and there were a lot of cracks. Our core values are community discipleship and prayer. And I didn't know half the people in the room and our leaders didn't know half the people in the room, you know, and with that came a lot of headache and hardship and we wound up having a Thanksgiving feast.

24:58
We were renting a public school and one of our volunteers made a mistake in how we did a cleanup and that prompted the principal to terminate our lease immediately. And so the day before Thanksgiving in 2019, I got a call from the principal saying we weren't allowed to be in the school anymore. I just begged her on the phone for one more week. She gave me it and you know I went through all the. I'm going to sue them, we're going to buy another building, we're going to find another space. But in prayer, I just felt God strongly say like you're not going to another space, you're not going to sue them, I'm removing you from this space, you're not supposed to be here anymore.

25:42
And so we wound up moving to a house church model in December of 2019. And, as you know, covid hit a few months later and so we're all. I'm just thinking like I'm an idiot. I didn't want to start a house church. You know, model God, why are you doing this to me?

26:01
But when COVID hit, it kind of all made sense at that point, like why we did what we did, um, and that helped us survive. But in COVID and coming out of COVID, uh, as a leadership team, we kind of reflected on what happened. Um, we never wanted to be a mega church. Um, we didn't feel like that was where we were being called to, especially if our value of community to do it well was where we were being called to, especially for our value of community to do it well. And so we decided our sweet spot would be about a church of 120 to 150 people, and as we grew beyond that, the hopes would be to plant in more neighborhoods that kind of fit, that model of being in New York City but where more Native people or immigrants lived, which was our you know, 99% of our makeup. And so we had about 50 people were coming from the North Shore in Staten Island. So we thought, all right, coming out of COVID, let's just plant another congregation in Staten Island and, you know, then replant essentially the one in Brooklyn. And so we did that and we, you know, kind of try to develop this model where we're not a campus but we're not another church plant either, so have some kind of backbone operations marketing thing where our congregation pastors can really focus on ministry but they have their own budget, own leadership team, own ministries, and our ministries will cross-pollinate as needed and help each other out. And so that kind of is what built out that model.

27:44
And so much stuff happened in between that. I mean I had just opened up a coffee shop six months before COVID started. Then me and Pastor James kind of co-founded Pray March Act in the middle of the George Floyd riots. And so coming out of COVID with all of this stuff, it was just more like we want to drill down to the basics. We don't want to build a large crowd, we don't want high production, we don't want like all of these different things that originally we were using to draw people.

28:18
But we realized we're not. You know, we're not drawing people that are interested in Jesus and Jesus alone. We're drawing people that are interested in concerts or production or nice music. So even that, like we had only a piano or a guitar and a singer, you know, for a year after COVID, intentionally. And we're just, you know, we want to be here for Christ and Christ alone. And we're just, you know, we want to be here for Christ and Christ alone. We have a third congregation now because I wound up, my parents wound up retiring and giving me their church, so we merged their church into ours and so our Brooklyn congregation is a bit bigger right now again, and they also had another staten island plant. So we have three, currently one in one in brooklyn with two services and then, uh, two plants out in staten island what advice would you give to people?

29:14 - Speaker 3
or maybe you can give like a case study or a situation of like the struggles so you were mentioning like the mistake? Um, yeah, because, like church planning is tough because it's like a startup and you don't know what you're getting yourself into and if you get an influx of people like you don't know what to do. Um, like, how did you kind of come to the those decisions as a team?

29:37 - Speaker 1
yeah, um, I wish I could take credit for it. A lot of it was prayer. You know we would pray together, pray through our struggles, what we're doing, and just felt like God was kind of leading us through it. You know we would also talk very openly as a team. You know our leadership meetings are very different than what most people are used to. You know there's no decorum and respect. It is honesty and discussion, and you know I'm combating my ideas and they're combating their ideas and we're just trying to get to the best stuff, and so there's no like uh, niceties of, oh, it's so great, or this is nice, or and, and people are kind of feeling like something isn't good. So if we're coming to the table and most of our leaders are saying like what's going on, we don't know half the people, how are we discipling these people? You know this is an issue. You know we would wrestle with that regularly.

30:43
Um, if there were people that were coming in that were having undue influence because we didn't have the infrastructure, you know, to kind of weed those people out and make sure they weren't. So there there were a couple of wolves that were able to get in that we figured out they were wolves a little too late before we kicked them out. When COVID kind of made us stop and just spend a lot more time reflecting, praying and talking it just. You know, I just felt like the Spirit used that as an opportunity for us to really change forces, redirect what our primary goals were. You know, I think, if you so, our kind of guiding verse is Acts 2.42, where they people gave themselves. I think, if you so, our kind of guiding verse is Acts 2 42, where they people gave themselves over to the fellowship, the breaking of bread, the apostles teaching and the prayers. And then after that you see all these great things, you see generosity, you see the church is growing daily. You see unity, um, and I think we chase the outcomes instead of chasing, like, the values. And so we really redirected. We're not going to chase numbers, that's not on any of our goal sheets. We're not going to chase generosity, that's not on our goal sheets. You know we're going to chase these values that we really believe is what centered the early church. And if we're doing well, if we're healthy, those outcomes are going to come. You know we're going to grow, we're going to see generous people, we're going to have united church and so the outcomes are we'll look at our numbers, we'll look at all of those things and we'll be able to determine how, what's our health at? And if those things aren't good, we don't put a new number on the board and say like let's hit that number. We go back to have we been developing good community? What is discipleship looking like? And so the thought around all of that is how do we build good frameworks? Because we don't.

32:50
You know, I talked to this one church planner and he had 30 people in his church for about a year or two at that point and he was looking and researching discipleship models. And he was researching discipleship models that he would could grow into 500. And my word to him was like you need to grow into 50,. You know, like stop worrying about you can't. And I think so many pastors get caught up in the scale Like I need to figure out the best home to build this model, where it's like you know you're trying to build an apartment complex and you haven't yet built like a correct foundation an apartment complex and you haven't yet built like a correct foundation for one family home, and we just get so caught up in that.

33:37
So for us, we wanted to develop good frameworks, and so frameworks are around our values and being missional with our values. And how do we have organic discipleship but also have some church structure to provide discipleship? And I always tell people we were never a small group church, because when I would ask pastors, how's discipleship going in your church, they would give me like, oh, 60% of my church is in small groups. That tells me nothing about how discipleship is going. It just tells me how good you are at getting people to a midweek thing. And anytime I ask a pastor, how have you been discipled in your life? They never tell me they went to a small group. They tell me about somebody who took them into their home and had dinner with them and confronted them and prayed with them.

34:20
And so, yes, we have groups, right, we have midweek groups, bible studies, life groups, whatever it is, but that is not discipleship. Discipleship is taking people into your home. Discipleship is praying with people. Discipleship is sharing is done over a meal, and so how we are defining these things as well is where we do have programs, but programs don't run the church right. There's lots of ways that people get discipled, lots of ways that people find community, and so this kind of simple church model really alienates a lot of people from finding that. And it's all about scale, and in scale we lose a lot of nuance, and I personally think we lose what it means to actually be a church. You know the family aspects, the chaos of being in deep community, the discipleship that is one-on-one, that is confrontational, that is convicting, the prayer that is not individual but very much corporate and with the body, and so, you know, everything that we do is trying to live into that.

35:25 - Speaker 3
How did you meet your?

35:26 - Speaker 1
wife. I met my wife in youth group at church. So when I had gotten back from Ohio I just kind of jumped right into youth leadership and she was kind of coming on and off and I just took it upon myself with a bunch of the different kids that were going to just like email them whenever they were not there. Or back then I was MySpace messaging all of them and so every week that she wasn't there I would just send her a message like hey, we missed you today, hope to see you next week. So we just developed a friendship through that and we didn't have feelings for each other in the beginning. It took a couple of years for that to happen, but once it did, you know, rest is history from there.

36:14 - Speaker 3
Did she like you back, like initially?

36:18 - Speaker 1
No. So neither of us had feelings for each other. And then when I started to develop feelings for her, she's three years younger than me, so I was 19. She was 16. And at that point it was like you know, she's too young, I'm just going to keep this under wraps and so I did not tell it to anybody, including her, for two years after that. So when she was probably midway through her 18th year and her first year of college, that was when I brought it to my brother, my older brother, chris, and he was like, yeah, you know, I think this, like this, could be good, so go for it. And so I asked her on a date in June and she said no.

37:08
And then it's funny, I went home and just kind of like prayed and I just felt like every other time I wanted to be with somebody, I felt God just say no, like stop pursuing. But this time I just felt a clear, you have to pursue, it's time to pursue. And so one month later of pursuing, and she said yes, she tells me. She said no because you know, I'd been preaching regularly in the youth group at that point and she knew my stance on dating to marriage. So she felt like she was saying yes to marry me, not just yes to date me, which she was, you know. There was no going back after that. I'm glad she eventually said yes, we dated for a year, we're engaged for a year and then we got married. She was still in college when we were married, so she she finished out her senior year in college while in our first year of marriage.

38:06 - Speaker 3
What's one thing you learned in marriage that you wish you knew while you were dating?

38:13 - Speaker 1
I think the one thing I've learned through marriage and kids is how selfish I am, and that was the kind of joke the first year of marriage between Heather and I is we didn't realize how selfish we were. And then, when we thought, we came to a good place, then we had a kid and then again didn't realize how selfish we were. If there's one thing I've learned, it is you know, jesus sanctifies us through the responsibility of sacrifice, and the more we sacrifice, whether that's for family, kids, the mission of the church, we are sanctified by it because we are doing what Christ did for the church and that's the greatest calling a sacrifice. And so, if there's ways, if you want to be married, if you want to have kids, I would. My hope or my word of advice is sacrifice for the mission and for the church, because there's no greater preparation. Yeah.

39:08 - Speaker 3
So when you had your first child, how did that change you as a man and a father?

39:14 - Speaker 1
Man, having my first child was rough. I always tell new parents you know the first three months of your first child will be the worst three months of your life, because you're not used to no sleep, you're not used to like. If somebody gets you mad, you can't have a discussion with them, you know. You can't explain and have them apologize, you know, and ask for forgiveness Anything that they do wrong. You just have to suck it up. You can't shake them, you can't hit them, you can't throw them. You just have to literally lay down every desire, every self-righteous attitude that you have. And you still have to do your normal life. I still have to work my job. There were many nights where I just had to leave at two in the morning because Heather and I were fighting about how to parent our baby at that time, uh, and take a walk around the block, cool down and then come back. Uh, it it was. It was extremely difficult and you know it's simultaneously the greatest thing that I had done. I always find it funny because, like you know, I just couldn't believe. They gave me this kid in the hospital and said to go home. You know, I just like I was 26.

40:40
Heather was 22 at the time, you know, and we just like, what are you doing, like? Why are you leaving this life in our hands? Like? What are you doing, like, why are you leaving this life in our hands? Um, but, like, you know, waking up to see my son love me and, like, want to cuddle with me, and uh, just smile every time I walked in the room like there was nothing more precious than that. Uh, so it was a profound impact. I mean, I'm not the same person and I never will be. I'll never complain about being tired again, you know, like, because I, that is true tiredness.

41:16
Uh, my first one was also just generally more difficult than all my other ones, in the sense of never wanting to sleep. Uh, it was a mix of we didn't know what we were doing, parenting and very strong-willed personality and there was no sleep training. This one, you know. So it was two years before we had him sleep through the night. But, yeah, I don't know, it's just. How do you describe what changes you? I mean, your whole life is thrown upside down. Nothing I thought I was good at. I was good was good at. You know, the fruit of the spirit seemed what I thought I was good at and or what I thought I had a lot of fruit in.

41:57 - Speaker 3
I realized, you know, I just had baby fruit, you know yeah, god's perfect, because he knows exactly what it takes to break us but not destroy us. Yes, oh, it's like the jacob wrestling. It's like he'll give you a limp, but don't worry, he'll be worried yeah okay. So I asked this in context because I know a lot of young parents, especially like nowadays um, they only want to have one or maybe two because I'm afraid.

42:24
But you have five now and I don't know if you're gonna stop, but like, like, like, like what gets you over the hump of like having too many, cause you know the world says you got to have this many money and like be this secure.

42:35 - Speaker 1
Yeah, for me children was a real theology change. For me. The world really does not like children. And we see it's not a different world than the world of Jesus. When the parents want to bring the children to Jesus, the disciples rebuke the parents because they don't think that children are worth the time of Christ. And right before this Jesus gives a parable in Luke 18 of the tax collector and the Pharisee who pray in the temple. And the Pharisee prays a prayer of pride of how great he is, and he leaves the temple unjustified. And the tax collector prays a prayer Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner, and he leaves justified. And Jesus says those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. And then the next order we get is these children coming to Jesus. And Jesus not only says to let them come to him, but he says that if we don't have faith like a child and become born again and act like a child, then we will not receive eternal salvation. And so not only does he welcome them, but he uses children as a model of salvation. And now we say born again because we literally become children again and to understand the preciousness of children in God's eyes.

43:59
I actually serve in our kids' ministry in our church, because I believe that is probably more important than teaching adult through my sermons and getting to know. Whenever I meet a parent, I also meet the child. I ask them their name, I ask them how old they are, I talk to them. I believe it is our duty to do that. And so children the world hates them because it is sacrifice. It takes away our independence, financial or autonomy of time. And yet these are all life Jesus calls us to live, financially dependent on him, to give up all of our riches, to give up all these things. And so when you think about what children produce in us, it is godliness, it is sanctification, it is holiness, and naturally the world and our flesh hates these things and to produce these things. And so who wants more children when it means less free time, less money, less autonomy? We don't want that.

45:20
And I think when you begin to change your theology around children and you realize that children are a blessing even though you know me and Heather will chuckle like these blessings are not the blessing. You know, when Jesus tells the two disciples that want to sit at his right hand and left hand and he says are you able to drink the cup that I'm about to drink? And they say yes, and he goes great, you're going to drink the cup, but I am not the one who can give you the right hand and the left hand, so you're going to get the suffering, but I don't know your position. Basically is what he says but the blessing is to be in fellowship, through suffering, with Jesus. And the more that we are able to do that, the more in Philippians 3.10, makes sense when Paul says to know Christ, the fellowship of the suffering, the power of his resurrection. We cannot truly know him unless we understand suffering, which is truly, as Jesus said, to lay down our life, to pick up their cross daily and to follow him.

46:28
And children are such an amazing way to do that. And I think the more you let go of your life and you realize I'm just going to lay down, the more you can see the blessing of children. And I can tell you, yes, it has been hard, but there is nothing better than having, like you know, all four of my kids snuggle me on a Saturday morning or having breakfast together. Like my life is not my own, my life is now to train them, to care for them, to teach them. And the fruit of my life is not in my paycheck. The fruit of my life is not in my career title, it is not in my resume. It is going to be these kingdom things. One of those kingdom things is raising my family well and training my children.

47:11 - Speaker 3
How can we be praying for you and your family?

47:13 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's an easy one. My wife is due in three weeks. It has been five years since we had a child, so we are just like getting right back in the ring. The end of pregnancy is very difficult, has always been very difficult for her. Just you know you can't sleep, uncomfortable pains everywhere. So just praying for peace over her body, joy in this process and as we go into this next season, just another measure of grace you know, from God to walk through well and be pruned of what doesn't belong and allow new fruit to kind of come into the vineyard.

47:56 - Speaker 3
All right man. It's been amazing meeting you. Thanks for coming on.

47:59 - Speaker 1
Yeah, man, thank you, I appreciate it. It was nice to meet you too. I'm assuming we're going to get together at some point in the future at this, point.

48:05 - Speaker 3
Okay, that's it for the podcast guys.

48:30 - Speaker 2
Bye, future at this point. Okay, that's it for the podcast, guys Bye. And volunteers, the Faithly Digital Platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly Podcast. More uplifting tales from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly Podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.