God as Father - Kristian Hernandez

The body was rejecting an organ for a while, like, no, this can't be true, no, of course you have to perform for it, you have to earn this, don't you? And God just was very patient and gracious and just kept wooing me back through His love. And eventually there was a pivotal turning moment where I could look back and say the gospel began to actually permeate my life. And I began to increasingly see God as as Father, not just any kind of Father, but a loving, approachable, accessible Father. Hi, my name is Christian Hernandez and I am a follower of Jesus, husband, father, fore and a pastor in Astoria Queens, as well as I'm the senior director of catalytic partnerships at City to City, New York City. Lifetime New Yorker can't imagine a better city and this is my faithly story. 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 Faithly.co. 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. Could you tell me how your faith journey started? Well, yeah, that's a tricky thing to answer because I feel like when I think back, I wasn't aware that God was pursuing me for quite some time before I finally came to a place of realizing that Jesus is Lord and professing my faith in Him, but I can think back to a significant moment. There was a guy named Alex in my neighborhood. He was known by everybody as Ducky and he was a professional skateboarder and at that time, that was a big deal in the 80s and early 90s and he was sponsored by skating companies and at any given moment there'd be just a flock of people around him because he was quite extraordinary and Ducky comes to faith and he uses his influence and his notoriety and he begins to host Bible studies in his apartment which really wasn't his apartment, it was his grandmother's house and so we would just gather there and he would just teach us stories from the gospels and I remember when he invited us to profess faith in Jesus, there was a lot of sincerity, a lot of folks I remember friends of mine, we all prayed but then there wasn't really much instruction afterwards. Looking back I can tell that something definitely took place in my heart because I was one of the very few that did say yes to them inviting me to come to them, come with them to church on a Sunday and I was about 12 years old at that time but again not much in way of like ongoing discipleship and kind of was not given much instruction beyond that but for some time after I remember I would just get the spur of the moment desire to read my Bible, I had a small little Gideon's Bible and sometimes I'm reading the Bible as a kid, unfortunately I started to get like high and drink and all sorts of stuff at a very young age, like from the age to 10 to 14, I felt like I lived on the adult lifetime and I would just open the Bible and read it but it wasn't until I was 14 and and unbeknownst to me my the church that I came to Christ, came to faith in, they had been fasting and praying for many years that God would reach young people in sunset parkript and they targeted specifically this one block that was very very drug infested and crime was just insane on this block and there was this one family called the Fred family Robert and Maritza Fred, they came to faith and they have a crazy story of how God reached them and what he's done through their life since but their next door neighbor was this young man his name was Peter Carryon and he was the most popularly gone on neighborhood, house music was very big at that time and he was an incredible dancer and there was always people just flocking to him begging him to teach them how to dance and he shared a backyard fence with the Fred family and over the summers they would just talk with them he was interested in DJ music and they would just spark conversation he comes to faith eventually and he single-handedly led about 30 of my friends to Christ and overnight our church had a youth group and yeah that that's that's where it all really began at the age of 14 September 26 1994 was the day I profess faith in Christ and Peter Carryon's basement he's 18 year old kid leading a bunch of 14 year olds and and other ages to Christ and yeah that's where it all began yeah when you hear about young people um getting into drugs and alcohol I say that's just growing up in the 90s in Queens or a lot in Brooklyn I like I had a lot of friends who did that but I did it but it's only because I was afraid of my dad beating the crap out of me so he instilled a fear of God in me so was your family going to church? no no they weren't I grew up in a single parent home my mom raised my sister and I she's 18 months older than me on her own yeah kind of crazy circumstances she one of nine siblings came from Puerto Rico to New York City on her own trying to figure out life and she meets my dad and unfortunately he was married and so they got into an adulterer's affair and my sister's born and caused a huge scandal and at which my mom said hey this was a mistake but let's this relationship is over I'll raise our daughter by myself and I don't need anything from you but my dad wasn't about to hear that he was quite the broken man he was into drugs and a big counterfeit money ring that was happening in the 70s that he was involved in and so yeah he said now this relationship is over when I say it's over and so he'd break into her apartment wait for her at the end of her work shift and sure enough I'm conceived and he's like hey this isn't gonna happen and so he took her to the abortion clinic three times and in between when he realized she didn't go through with it he would beat her could try to force a miscarriage and the third time she went to the abortion clinic someone stopped her in the parking lot and said don't abort this child God has a plan for this child and she went got on a plane that day once Puerto Rico gave birth to me you know six months later and then shortly after my dad passed away then grow up with him they didn't know him and so she raised us in sunset park Brooklyn by herself just nominal Catholic kind of family we would go big holidays and that's about it and so I was the first of my whole family to come to faith in Christ and then eventually my sister my mom my niece and other family members over time and so yeah it was it was a quite the radical thing that took place in my life and then as a result my family but my mom was also she was very moral and she had really incredible standards and ethics and that was a that was a saving grace for me because even though I was doing crazy stuff for a young kid I knew there was always a line that I knew that she would always love me but there was things that she would never be a piece with she would never just accept and that kept me out of going really really too crazy she also threatened me quite clearly she said hey if you ever get arrested I'm getting arrested too because they're gonna I'm gonna beat you in the prison and I'm gonna have to peel me off of you and I know she was telling the truth and so yeah but that was essentially my upbringing man that's a beautiful story and yeah I'm a big believer in tough love especially kids because that's just how I grew up we need to find out about your dad you know I still have this personality trait I I persist and so I just basically like nagged the details out of my mom she knew that she wasn't gonna win that fight and so she yes she she shared she gave me the the details and then over time I was able to find out from other family members the same exact details aunts and uncles and cousins and stuff and so yeah I'm trying to remember the exact age but definitely before the age of 14 I had come to learn some of those details of my upbringing and yeah just what she had went through she it always struck me why she she chose to remain as a single parent because you know she was attractive and she had a lot going for her she eventually went back to school got a college degree worked in the board of ed for many years even though we grew up on public assistance when I came to faith I was able to really like encourage my mom like hey we don't have to live this way you're smart you have agency and she went and finished her degree and eventually she bought a home and sat in island but yeah as I nagged her and got all the details I came to realize because of some of the trauma of that experience she just made the choice that she did not want to threaten our safety by bringing someone into our home that that wouldn't love us the way she loved us and so yeah that was some of those dynamics there man it sounds like God was pursuing your whole family and it just happened to be through you absolutely yeah there's no doubt about it my sister an incredible journey of faith for her to come to a place of faith in Jesus my niece as well and and my mom I still remember the day that you know she she was very happy over time at first she was very apprehensive she thought I might have joined the cult or something she was scared she was like what's my son this is too radical of a change I went from hanging out late at night and doing who knows what it's a coming home late because I was at an all night prayer meeting and she was like I don't know you know what's better or whatever but then over time when she realized no this isn't a fleeting thing this is this is his life he's gonna follow Jesus for the rest of his life I think something set in and then she began to explore the faith and ask tons of questions and she was able to see that it was real as I would bring other folks around my family and she got to see other people that were equally transformed by Jesus and I'll never forget the Sunday where there was an invitation at our church after the message for people to come and profess faith in Jesus and to repent and turn to him and my mom walks down the aisle really proud woman for her to do this in front of everyone I was like oh man this is real and so yeah God's been very very faithful how did learning about your dad um influence you in your faith but also like becoming a man and I said yes profound question because there's probably nothing more core to my faith journey and that it was interesting when I found out the details and then kind of reflected on my experiences realizing that even before I knew the details of what took place but I had had multiple experiences of where rejection felt so profoundly heavy whenever I experienced it it was like if rejection showed up in somebody else's body as a cold for me it showed up as the flu you know like it was just so heavy so intense um and so when I came to find out the details it it was kind of a connected moment and say man it's probably probably has something to do with the fact that from the very womb I was being rejected I wasn't wanted and so now fast forward when I come to faith in Christ learning to see God as my father was a profound experience because one my only frame of reference of a father was one who would reject one who wouldn't want me and so for many of my first seven or years as a Christian there was this ongoing difficult experience of believing the gospel that actually I'm accepted by God through Christ and what he's done that this is an identity that I received that I don't have to achieve or perform for that it was like my body was rejecting an organ for a while like no that this can't be true no of course you have to perform for it you have to earn this don't you and God just was very patient and gracious and just kept wooing me back through his love and eventually there was a pivotal turning moment where I could look back and say the gospel began to actually permeate my life and and I began to increasingly see God as as father and not just any kind of father but a loving approachable accessible father invites me into his arms and isn't like rejecting me when I don't get it right or is in lovingly based on my performance and so yeah it's been a profound experience for me and then even more intense the as we began to have children of our own my wife and I we have four kids our oldest Alexis 15 and Lucas 12 Michael's nine and Briella's four and and Briella was born with Down syndrome and so like the experience is apparent in four different kids different ages different stages but also like for me as someone who when it comes to being a father I it's a blank canvas I'm drawing from and and so God has been very gracious to meet me in that and my faith journey as well as just in my life as a father how did you meet Duckie you know he was just in our neighborhood everybody if I was in to skateboarding at least attempting to try to to master some of those some of those tricks and so they'll make it too far I had a few tricks up on my my sleeve but if you were skateboarding if you were a young person that was into skateboarding at that time you knew him because he was in all the popular magazines for the skateboarding culture at that time and and also just so happened I lived on 47th and 4th avenue and he lived on 47th street between 3rd and 4th avenue and so it was impossible for us not to have met I'm given the fact that we'd lived right around the corner from each other yeah I feel like one downfall of like the technological age is like when I grew up like we didn't have computers so like we played with our neighbor kids right and like we would play street hockey in one night and be like hey you free we need an extra I'm like right yeah so I kind of just followed along just for playing with friends yeah not absolutely it's now with our own kids like it's such a weird experience where now legit like giving my kids consequences for their actions is one of the consequences that they don't want to hear me give them is you can't stay in your room and no screens you have to go outside and it's like you know it's it's so different man so different you know I've never heard of that before because you're just like staying in your room like no go outside in nature with nothing on now it's different now but when we were kids the consequence that you didn't want to hear was you have to stay inside and that was like life was over but now it's the opposite it's like no screens go outside go go kick a ball outside go play go ride a bike so it's pretty funny so how did you go from this 12 year old that like got radically saved by a skateboarder to bin pastor yeah you know it very early on in my faith journey I didn't have the language to really flesh it out and I certainly didn't know all the details of the journey that I was gonna take but very early on I had this sense that I think I'm supposed to spend my life helping people to follow Jesus and I didn't know how that was going to be fully expressed for a little bit and then over time it got clearer of like I think I'm called to pastor people I'm called to evangelistic work and share the gospel with people that haven't heard of good news and and so yeah before I knew anything about seminary or anything of that nature just there was this burning passion to share the gospel with anyone that would stop to listen and so as a teenager me and my friends we didn't even check with our pastor we during our school breaks like presidents week and such we would just we would be some of those annoying people in New York city subway trains and we would just preach and share the gospel I think people tolerated us because we were like you know cute teenagers and we're like we'd rather teenagers doing this than some wild stuff on a train but yeah there was just a burning passion inside of my heart and and so I was just curious like if this was what I was supposed to do what how does one prepare for that and so yeah just it made me really passionate about the scriptures and so as a teenager I just consumed the Bible I just would just consume scripture I'd listen to hours and hours and hours and hours of sermons if I whatever sermons I can get ahold of I'd listen to them and these were during the days of tapes you know not not see these and so just my mom was sick of all these tapes that would just stack up because yeah what I was told is hey if you're called to preach then you need to be a student of the word and so memorize scripture study scripture read commentaries on scripture and so and then yeah fast forward when I got clarity on like oh I think this is what I'm supposed to do I had the sad realization of the cost of seminary when I looked it up and then also at that time in New York there was some fledgling schools but they were there in essence if you wanted to go to a more reputable school it meant you probably was gonna you're we're gonna have to move out of New York and also you're gonna have to pay a lot of money and so that was a discouraging moment where I was like I don't want to leave New York I feel call to be here and also I don't want to get into that kind of debt you know especially for a profession that doesn't pay a whole lot and also a profession that has been riddled with financial scandals as like this doesn't make sense let's saddle the leaders of churches with insurmountable debt and so you know being from the hood you learn how to survive and hack and so I got friends to send me their syllabus from seminary and so I would get the books and read them but not paid a tuition and so that was kind of my journey toward preparing for future in ministry and and then God just opened just kept opening opening opportunities and to share the gospel in various settings whether it was churches youth groups and that just kept building over time and thankfully my pastor was really mentored me and just a spiritual father to me Bishop Joseph Matara he took me under his wing I lived with him and his family for my my formative years during college and and it was in that kind of like intense discipleship context that yet just more and more clarity around my sense of calling and also outlets and experiences that were afforded to me to be able to learn and grow and over time this clarity of a sense of calling really like burn deeper in my heart that's funny because I always tell people don't go to seminary I have a hundred K piece of paper that says I went somewhere because that's all we did or that's all I did I just read the books and syllabus I like never went to class I was just really bad student but I just had this knack to just consume lectures and like 2.5 feet and so during finals I would just cram and like get by but yeah wow my friends or my peers called me deformed and not reforms it's all good so that's interesting so you never went to like like seminary officially right well you know fast forward now I've actually enrolled in seminary and so I'm which has been really fun and that I'm just going for the joy of studying scripture you know like I'm it's an interesting experience being in a room with other students who for them they're they're hopefully preparing for one day being a pastor of a church and me being in the room and that question's answered for me but I'm just there just a study scripture and to be able to get the benefit of learning from biblical scholars and so yeah I'm in seminary now but when I get the degree whatever I'm just there to just enrich my own soul and so yeah it's kind of full circle experience so since you have both experiences so anybody who's like a young and up and coming in they feel like called to the pastor it like what would you advise them because something I'm always thinking about is like these guys like graduate undergrad have no life experience and then they go right in and then they get trained but it's more informational in everything and so when they get into that pastoral context they don't have like the soft skills and all the other intangibles that they kind of flounder and they think like oh no I just need to transfer this information and it's just like conflict between theory and practice so for you like looking back like you know what are like the trade-offs yeah I mean I think one thing that has become clear as I'm now in seminary but also as I've talked with people over the years who have gone that route and are living out exactly what you described is that you know seminary won't help you grow a walk with God if you don't have one going into it and so there's nothing that can replace like deep hidden intimacy with Jesus that you have developed over years seminary will help you be a better thinker and we'll give you tools and resources toward that end but it's no it's no replacement for you just actually walking with Jesus knowing Jesus yeah the other thing I would say too is that yeah to your point so many folks end up in pastoral ministry without any sense of business acumen and no real experience on how to lead an organization or lead teams or manage a budget hire people fire people you know cast vision you know an execute just basic things and stuff and so yeah they'll graduate and know how to interpret the Bible and apply it and preach it but there's so much more that is necessary for us to be able to lead healthy gospel center churches and so yeah I would say the more you confront load that stuff in your soul for you know strong walk with God robust life experience marketplace skills and then if you could add seminary training to that I think that really rounds you off in a great way and so that's what I would I would definitely recommend for folks to pay attention to all of that and realize that when you're missing some of those when you have some of those gaps it doesn't go away it shows up you know and so you're either going to figure that stuff out before early on in the journey or you're going to figure it out in the middle of it or toward the tail and none of us are really getting away with none of us against the service so yeah one thing I wish I did more in seminary is like read the Bible just read the Bible you know what like get through it just chug along because I think it would have helped me understand all of these theological points points back to what scripture says and I know in seminary class that's what they try to do but it's more focus on like these philosophical ideas more than anything and I think that made me more like get into debates about differences and whatnot rather than like oh let's just read what it says and then you tell me what you think you know and I've like never read the Bible more now at 40 in my entire life and I'm like wait I should just done this in the face I feel like you've got through the right track of like you're just consuming Bible understanding what other pastors are saying and then you got this type of I'm like oh then let me fill in these gaps of seminary yeah not I'm grateful that that was my journey I mean it there's gaps and brokenness in my journey as well it's not like it isn't without its flaws for sure but the other thing I would say is like I've always found that somewhat like weird and like kind of confounding that folks can go through seminary and not have much preaching experience and then just because they get to degree then now they're flung into a past oral and man there's something about preaching upwards of 40 times a year like and not having the legs under you it can be really challenging and so but not just repetition and opportunities to prepare to be able to have kind of that that fortitude to preach that many weekend and week out but also just the to be able to develop a process of preaching that doesn't divorce your own transformation from the work of preaching because like it's very easy to become performative it's very easy to learn some mechanics and but to also learn mechanics while sacrificing the mystery of it all and what it could look like to preach from a place of profound encounter with God yourself and so I would encourage anyone that is really feeling called to pastoral ministry to a life of preaching the gospel is to get as much preaching experience as possible whether that's teaching Sunday school class to kids and learning how to explain the gospel to young minds youth and young adult ministry teaching the gospel preaching the scriptures to seniors say yes to as many opportunities as come your way so that you have that experience but you have that experience not just for the sake of reps but you gain a depth in your soul so that when the time does come you're not just doing that from scratch at that moment yeah all those reps for me anyway help me find my voice like yes there is a preaching voice because you're not just speaking of what you're thinking you're trying to align your words with his words and yes you know a funny idea that's popping to my head is like I feel like we need more street preachers like teenage street preachers or even in Santa Maria like one of the whole work is like preaching the streets to what happens yeah now it 100% I think anything that will humble something that will humble any kind of growing aspiring preacher is especially as you're learning these heavy concepts is go teach a Sunday school class of like elementary kids and see what it's like to try to keep their attention and teach them or go speak to a youth group and man that'll humble you very very fast and so yeah those kind of repetitions would be really really transformative so who are some people that influence your voice and preaching well I mean my my pastor growing up he was his love for scripture his love for just learning he's a voracious reader and and you know I grew up in a charismatic penicostle church but it wasn't the typical charismatic penicostle church in that we weren't anti-intellectual my my pastor has multiple advanced degrees and is this that resurrection yeah yeah the church I grew up in resurrection church and so he so he modeled just a real love for the scriptures and also just like a learned learned man and so that that's still with me to this day just a thirst for learning but also just primarily a real fire and hunger for the word of God and then yeah as I got older and got exposed to more preachers and thinkers I would say probably Dr. Tim Keller is probably one of the more significant influences on my heart and my thinking and yeah I just think there's certain sermons that he's preached that I feel like no one else should preach that text you know just like leave it alone it's been done and I know he would he would have disagreed with that but yeah just I still can like quote some of his sermons almost verbatim just so so masterful yeah those would be probably two of my biggest influence as I would say a very humbly moment and seminary for me was my hermeneutics professor was talking about Tim Keller and how bad he was in the beginning to make us remind us we're all bad you know it's like a golf game like we start off the same and like yeah like he got like prominent in his later years and like it gives people hope of like hey you just got to put in the reps and God will be faithful yeah I mean he famously said you should expect your first couple hundred sermons to not be great and I was like really dang that's discouraging but sober and true it takes time to develop your voice so how did you get involved with city to city yeah wow that began for me where you know our church hope a story was part of the hope family of churches hope church NYC its hope church NYC has taken a few different iterations and so at this point hope church NYC is a consist of hope midtown hope these village and hope up a west side but at a certain point it was a total of nine churches and hope a story it was the first of all of these hope churches that were being planted from September 2012 right around the pandemic and and so all these churches were being planted out of hope a story and it was a wild experience in that like it really felt like we were building the plane as we were flying it because if you've ever been around Drew Hian he is one of the most dynamic leaders you'll ever meet and God was using him to just like apostolically go and I have the faith to go pioneer these works and to establish new churches and to find leaders that can go and plant these churches and so but fast forward as all these churches were being planted out of hope a story Drew had approached me about praying about leading hope a story because he was feeling led to go plant hope midtown and upon me leading hope a story it became evident very quickly that I was going to have to replant this church in particular the first year of me leading the church two churches were queued up to be planted out of our church and we weren't a large church by any means and so first year of me being a lead pastor I'm seeing 60 of our most committed people our leaders go out the door to go plant two churches and it was a really strange moment for me I was just like how come nobody told me what it feels like to be in the sending church seat and it's almost like you know the mother is on the birthing table and everybody's happy that children are being born but there was a real moment was like is the mom going to survive you know like the birthing of these children is the sending church going to survive the birthing of these churches and so I knew I had to get tools on how to replant this church so that I could faithfully lead it from my gifts and who I was and right around that time city to city had kind of created space for pastors to go through their training to replant churches at that point they were just really offering training to plant new churches but they had come up with a cohort and I was part of that cohort of one of the first ones and it was through that experience that really just fell in love with city to city and and that training was really seminal for me and that especially when it came to their modules on preaching always had a passion for preaching and I've always had a passion to help train preachers especially given my experience where it's like why do we keep putting training of preachers like at the top shelf and now you have the reach for it and if you can't reach for it too bad it's like why can't we take it from the top shelf and make it accessible especially for people and from circumstances like mine and so by that point I had read just about every book on preaching I can get my hands on and had come up with my own kind of content to train preachers and but now I'm being immersed in Tim Keller's writings and so essentially like I felt like this leading to kind of translate some of the stuff that he had written for people just like me that needed it kind of translated in a way that could be accessible and so it led me to write a book called Beholding and Proclaiming and it's kind of a pre-seminary primer to help churches train preachers in house and and that was as a result of my time in city to city and then fast forward they began to they really loved the book and they felt that it was useful for church planters especially for New York City context it was taking kind of the DNA of city to city and gospel centrality and translating in a way that was super accessible and so they've made it a core part of the curriculum for church planters that go to the training program and so just kept doing work with city and city over the years and then eventually was hired on to take on this role of catalytic partnerships around 2021 and it's been just beautiful to be on the team and to see what God's doing throughout the city that's also with the book I have a couple of more questions one internally because a lot of people even when you're going through stuff of like like in the church of like replanting or planting people see the outside but they don't really understand the internal turmoil and struggle and like you know so what were you feeling like and how were you dealing with that I'll tell you the first year of me being lead pastor I probably text my pastor I mean it had to be 30 60 times and the text some form of like hey I love you thank you but underneath that what I wasn't writing was I judged you so bad when I was in the second seat I looked at what you were doing and I thought why isn't he doing it this way and it could be done so much better and if I could do it and that was me like for sure having those thoughts and those sentiments while being like his number one supporter like I would have I would have journeyed with them for the rest of my life if God didn't push me out and lead us I never wanted to be in the first seat but it felt like God called us into that but yet that first year was very humbling realizing like man it's so easy to judge at the end of the day most people are just trying their very best and and yeah it was also like such a disorienting experience like realizing that everything felt different being in the first seat like there was very little things that I had not done before in ministry that now I was doing them but I was doing them as a lead pastor and it felt very different and for sure the thing that I had never done before in the second seat was I had never felt the pressure of like having to believe God to provide for our church financially and steward those resources and that other people's salaries would depend on that and that the pressure of that and the experience of that was completely new and it really humbled me to appreciate that so that was a lot of the internal dynamics and then I would say like right around the time where I became lead pastor is when I really began to lean into like spiritual disciplines that were not really part of my upbringing in particular practicing Sabbath because like that wasn't part of our language that wasn't part of our practice like we essentially worked seven days a week because it was for the Lord you know and and so now being in the lead pastor role and around that time just really trying to lean into that it was both like a detoxing moment where it was hard where it was very difficult to not just revert back into overworking and over trying to overperform and so there was this detoxing but also like this slow brewing of joy and and rest knowing that this is God's church these are his people and if if he worked six days and then rested who am I to think that it should be different for me and so just learning to really trust God with his church and with his people all of that was really profound to undergo that and grow in that last two questions what are you hoping for faithfully you know faithfully from what I know about it at the moment it seems like it's there's more I would like to learn about faithfully I'll say that way but what I what I think faithfully could bring to the Christian community is a space for connection a space for resourcing so that we can do more together go farther together a space where the the normal barriers that can kind of keep us distant whether it's just simply busyness and but that there's this space that exists that you can drop in when you're able to and when you drop in there's these connections that you can make in a community there that wants to resource you and welcomes you to resource them and so I'm hoping that faithfully continues to grow and I'm grateful that New York is benefiting from I hope you share a lot of content because I feel like you're such a valuable resource for young pastors like you have an amazing life story and experience and I feel like your life track tour being a pastor should be the track for everybody it's humbling to hear yeah I really do hope that faithfully just becomes a stronger presence in New York because I do think pastors both young and old would benefit from just more connection and greater community because it's as you know pastoral ministry can be very lonely it can be very isolating anything that can foster community in this way I say let's go for it let's get behind it and how can we be praying for you and your family yeah you know as is the experience of many pastors in New York you know I'm bivocational and if you count other things I do you might argue I'm quad vocational and so that's a challenge to make sure that I remain rooted in Jesus present for my family resting not over performing and over working but then also just helping my church and city to city navigate all the things that are before us as from the church standpoint as well as from city to city we're yearning to see the gospel renew New York City and so prayers to do all of these things faithfully would be much much appreciated thanks this was an amazing conversation I appreciate it all you're welcome and thank you you you really have a gift to interviews sincerely I've done podcast interviews and I don't take it for granted when someone does it well as I know it's not easy to do it well and so thank you you're making me blush thanks all right bye guys thank you for tuning in to the faithfully stories podcast we pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey the faithfully stories 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