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Investing in People - Tom Herbert
What if a career in retail management could evolve into a fulfilling path of ministry and community leadership? Join us as we explore this …
Oct. 28, 2024
Investing in People - Tom Herbert
What if a career in retail management could evolve into a fulfilling path of ministry and community leadership? Join us as we explore this transformative journey with Tom Herbert, National Field Director for Harvest Network and lead pastor at Freedom Community Church. Tom shares his inspiring story that begins with his Catholic upbringing and the profound family crisis that led him to develop a personal relationship with Jesus. Discover how this pivotal moment, coupled with the influence of a nurturing local church and dedicated mentors, ignited Tom's passion for ministry and building a supportive faith community.
We journey alongside Tom from his successful career in retail management to answering a pastoral calling that reshaped his life. With insight, he recounts the challenges and triumphs of transitioning into vocational ministry, guided by a wise mentor and supported by his family. Tom's experiences in Jacksonville, Illinois, illustrate how embracing faith can lead to profound personal and professional fulfillment. Through his story, we gain valuable perspectives on the significance of mentorship and adaptability in navigating life’s unexpected turns.
Tom's narrative also extends into his vital role within the Harvest Network, a non-denominational organization devoted to empowering Christian leaders. As a member of the Board of Elders and National Field Director, Tom emphasizes the essential role of community and networking in today’s ever-connected world. Learn about the network’s mission, its origins during the Charismatic Renewal, and exciting initiatives such as Faithly, a platform to enhance engagement and communication. Throughout the episode, Tom's journey embodies the transformative power of faith, mentorship, and community in shaping a life dedicated to expanding the kingdom.
(00:01) Faith Journey and Mentorship Impact
(09:23) From Business to Ministry Transition
(24:04) Family's Faith Journey and Church Network
(31:22) Networking Within the Kingdom
Website - https://faithly.co
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/faithly.co
Tom Herbert
https://faithly.co/profiles/tomherbert
Harvest Network
https://harvestnetwork.live
Chapters
01:00 - Faith Journey and Mentorship Impact
09:23:00 - From Business to Ministry Transition
24:04:00 - Family's Faith Journey and Church Network
31:22:00 - Networking Within the Kingdom
Transcript
00:01 - Speaker 1
It was a guy who, literally twice a month, would pick me up before school, bring me back to his house and I would sit at their breakfast table while they were getting their kids ready for breakfast for school and he would just be like, hey, tom, what's going on in your life? You know how can I pray for you? And it just made such a significant impact, you know, because he took the time to invest in me. Hi, this is Tom Herbert and I am the National Field Director for Harvest Network, also lead pastor at Freedom Community Church in Shrewsbury, pennsylvania, and this is my Faithly Story.
00:40 - 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.
01:22 - Speaker 3
Could you share with me how your faith journey started?
01:25 - Speaker 1
Could you share with me how your faith journey started? Yeah, I was raised Catholic and always had a reverence and a love for God Alter boy Catholic elementary school and then my parents went through a very public divorce and it just shook our entire family. And when my mom went back to work after the divorce, she met a lady who told her about a personal relationship with Jesus, and my mom gave her life to Jesus and then, one by one, each of us kids followed suit. So when I was in seventh grade, I gave my life to the Lord at a chapel service at our Christian school that I was attending, and my life has never been the same since.
02:18 - Speaker 3
So I actually have a question about your Catholic experience.
02:22 - Speaker 1
Yeah, your Catholic experience?
02:23 - Speaker 3
Yeah, because you mentioned that your mom and you accepted Christ in a Christian context or in a Protestant context, but do you feel like that wasn't something you did in your Catholic church and your Catholic upbringing?
02:40 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a good question For me. I had a reverence of God, a fear of God. I would say a love for God as well. I just never heard the message of a personal relationship with God in that context. I knew that God loved me. I just didn't know that I could love him back in that way, if that makes sense.
03:04 - Speaker 3
Yeah, it totally makes sense. Could you actually elaborate on that?
03:08 - Speaker 1
It was seventh grade and you know, going through the trauma of a divorce and a broken family and the healing that God did in our family, I came to know him more, as someone that I could have a relationship with.
03:28
I came to realize that the sacrifice of the cross was not some theological concept, but it was a personal invitation to me. And so, you know, I was tremendously blessed to be able to go to a Christian school, go to Catholic elementary school and then go to a Christian school as well. And just in hearing the messages over and over again in chapel about, you know, the invitation that it's not just about a religion, it's about a relationship. It's not just about a religion, it's about a relationship. It's about a relationship we can have with the God of the universe, with a living God. That just softened my heart and I came to realize that this is what I was created for to walk in relationship with God. And even as a seventh grader I really came to know him as my father, my spiritual father, my heavenly father. And it's not that my dad was, you know, vacant, but there was brokenness there. But I came to know God as my heavenly father and he's not broken, he's perfect and he's holy, and he was what I needed.
04:48 - Speaker 3
So what did that look like in seventh grade? And moving forward for a seventh grader, yeah.
04:55 - Speaker 1
I was very blessed to be in a very healthy local church and the beauty of that was that I was surrounded by families and especially for me because my dad was absent men who were truly serving the Lord.
05:14
All of us kids had a spiritual father or a mentor that took us alongside of them, would take us out to breakfast, would meet with us and just disciple us in the ways of the Lord and what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. And you know all the ups and downs of high school and emotions and relationships and dreams about your future and all of these things. And so not only did we have an amazing mom who was following the Lord, not only were we seeing the healing and the restoration of what God was doing in our lives, but we also had these godly examples who would mentor us and spend time with us and just let us process. And it was such a healthy, life-giving environment and, honestly, one of the reasons why I wanted to go into ministry, because I saw the power of a local church walking in community, following Jesus and helping others to do the same. And I just said, man, I want to be a part of that.
06:22 - Speaker 3
Is there anyone specific you can remember in your youth years where they were kind of a role model for you, especially as a pastor?
06:30 - Speaker 1
Yeah Well, not specifically as a pastor, although there were some pastors that made a big impact on my life. But there was a guy who, literally twice a month, would pick me up before school, bring me back to his house and I would sit at their breakfast table while they were getting their kids ready for breakfast for school and he would just be like, hey, tom, what's going on in your life, how can I pray for you? And it just made such a significant impact because he took the time to invest in me. Impact, you know, because he took the time to invest in me when it came to pastoral ministry. There were a couple of pastors that just showed us really how to love well, how to lead well, you know, and so they were definitely role models when it came to pastoral ministry.
07:22
But when it came to just being a disciple, a follower of Jesus, you know, I went to this Christian high school and the teachers were all invested in the students. They weren't just teaching math or history or you know, whatever it was, they were really invested in the students. And I was a part of a choir in high school and we would travel and we would go on tour. And those tours were just so monumental because you had the choir teacher. But then you also had all these adults who were chaperones, right, and we'd jump onto a big tour bus and we would go to Washington DC or go to South Carolina or go to wherever we went, I don't even know. We went all over the place. And just those moments, those moments living life with these dedicated followers of Jesus who loved God and loved people and nobody's perfect, but they were certainly a role model, that's for sure yeah, something recently, like this week, uh, I've been being convicted of.
08:29 - Speaker 3
Is that like? Because I grew up in new york and in new york like everything's bigger and like?
08:34
grander and you know, um, so like there's this like urge to like be this big thing for god, but he like literally, spiritually, mentally, smacked me in the head. He's like God is great, I just need to be good wherever I am. Because I don't think we realize, like you said, because I've done so many podcasts now the same story resonates over and over. It's like at a certain time in a certain place, the moment was when I was young. I saw this person just love me and care for me, and now they've become pastors and leaders and entrepreneurs. And it's just like I don't think we realize the impact we can have just by being good to the people around us, because we don't see the ripple effects that God's going to do years from now.
09:23 - Speaker 1
You know, I just literally, this morning we listened to one of the sessions from Exponential. It was the session I don't know if you remember it, if you were in the room, but it was the pastor from the Ukraine and he was telling the story, of course, of the war and the devastation of the war and how the things that he was pursuing before the war quite honestly just don't matter and how we have to change the scorecard. It's not about being big, it's not about being, you know, you know, significant in the world's eyes. It's about the people right in front of us.
09:58 - Speaker 2
It's about investing and that's what happened with me.
10:00 - Speaker 1
People invested in me happened with me. People invested in me Men and women, you know, moms and dads. They invested in me, invested in my siblings, and that's what made all the difference. It wasn't the grandiose thing that we think is so important.
10:20 - Speaker 3
So how did you get into ministry? Did you go to seminary after undergrad?
10:24 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I went to Bible college. I have a non-traditional route into ministry. My wife and I met when we were 20 years old and I was actually a student at the time at Cleveland State University. I'm originally from Cleveland Ohio and I was a student at Cleveland State University and the Lord really spoke to me about taking a season away from pursuing my degree, which I was pursuing secondary ed, history and social studies. You know teaching. Take a season away, go to Bible college and then go back and finish my degree. And so I did, and I stepped away from Cleveland State.
11:06
I attended a small Bible college in Cleveland Ohio Unfortunately, it doesn't exist anymore and that's where I met my wife. I knew of her before that, but we spent more quality time together there and so we ended up getting married, you know, after two years of dating and it wasn't that we, you know we weren't serving the Lord we just never went into ministry. I went back to Cleveland State, got my degree, we started a family, I worked in the business world for a little over 15 years and then right around the age of 40, we transitioned into vocational ministry.
11:51 - Speaker 3
Could you elaborate what did you do for 15 years in business?
11:53 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I was in retail management with JCPenney and with Macy's it was called Kaufman's back in the day which is a regional store, you know, in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, but then Macy's bought everybody up. So I just tell people, jcpenney and Macy's, but yeah, I loved it, I absolutely loved it. I loved working in retail management. I tell people, you know, I manage pretty much every part of the store except for women's lingerie, and that's a good thing. And you know, I loved working in retail. Man, it wasn't that I was trying to get out of it, it wasn't like the Lord just got a hold of Judy and I and said hey, do you remember that pastoral prophetic call on your life? And we were serving the Lord. We, you know, we were leading small groups in our church, we were involved in leadership in our church, we were involved in regional stuff in the regional church of Cleveland, very active, you know. But the Lord said you've got a call on your life, don't forget about that. So that was about, let's see, we got married in 1990. And around the year 2001 is when the Lord started sort of knocking on the door and saying hey, don't forget 2002 maybe. And so we went to our pastor at the time, who was one of these guys I talked about earlier, who was a very significant role model for us of pastoral ministry. And we said, listen, we've been out of Bible college for 10 years. We're hearing the Lord say this, we've got four kids. You know, we just had our fourth little one, and how in the world are we going to do this? And so he said well, why don't I just mentor you in real life ministry? You know, you've got the theological stuff, you've learned all that, but let me mentor you in real life ministry.
13:55
So he's another one. He took the time. We would meet with him on a regular basis, but quarterly. He would block out an entire afternoon and we would just sit with him for three and four hours at a time and he would just talk about. This is what I'm dealing with. These are the relational conflicts I'm dealing with. This is the church politics stuff I'm dealing with. These are the things that I have in my heart for the church, and I'm trying to figure out how to lead the church in that direction All of these things that are so real life ministry.
14:30
And so he did that for us for several years. So then in 2007, we heard about a church that was in our network that was coming open. The pastor was retiring and we had had several other churches that had kind of come along the path and just didn't feel at peace about it. But we felt, like the Lord said, to go ahead and submit our resume, and so we did. It was a church in Jacksonville, illinois, which now remember we were living 10 miles outside of downtown Cleveland and this was in the corn and bean country of Illinois.
15:04
It was almost like going to a foreign country, but not quite. I mean, it was like total culture shock. But the Lord opened the door and we went through the interview process and, even though we'd never been a lead pastor before it's, you know, just like in the book of Acts, it seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit and we accepted the call. When they called us to come, we picked up our family and moved to the middle of the corn and beans of Illinois, a little college town just 30 miles west of the state capital, Springfield. And that was our first experience leading a local church and vocational ministry.
15:44 - Speaker 3
Was the culture shock because they were more rural. Yeah, rural. But like I don't know how else to call it. But were the values like similar too?
15:56 - Speaker 1
Yeah, small towns, you have to adjust to small town dynamics. You know, you know everybody knows everybody. Unless you're new to town, like us, you know Different, just different thought processes, not that one's better than the other, it's just different ways of thinking. Every region of the country has different cultural stuff.
16:17
Every region of the country has different cultural stuff, but you know, same Holy Spirit, same gospel works across every kind of cultural boundary there is, and so, but it was. I remember we woke up, we had gone out there for our second interview, we're staying in this hotel. We looked out the window and all we could see was corn and beans and we're like where are we? What happened, you know and this is something I've talked about when we were there. So it's not like it's you know, but it was just when we lived. I mean, our house was literally you could go to the end of the street, the end of our street skyline of downtown Cleveland, to the end of our street. Corn and beans, you know, for as long as you can see. So it was just a lot of change, but it was good. It was good.
17:10 - Speaker 3
What was one thing that was really different in the way they thought that you were like oh, that's interesting. Or a different perspective, oh that's interesting or a different perspective.
17:19 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm trying to think here.
17:22
I think, well, we homeschooled all of our kids and in Ohio the laws are really strict for homeschooling and in Illinois if you don't enroll your kids in the school district they don't care, I mean. So we were like, okay, this is different, you know, um, and so you know, with that brought just a different thought process, a thinking process for homeschooling. In ohio, because there were all these laws and because it was a little bit more accepted, homeschooling was. In Illinois, it was a little more foreign, it wasn't you know. So it was just we had to figure out how to navigate it as parents, but also trying to explain it to people why we're homeschooling. And so that was, you know, that was part of it.
18:15
When it came to you know the church, when it came to you know the work of ministry, I would say, you know, just having a bigger view of like reaching the lost. It's not that they didn't have a heart for the lost, but when you're in a small town in the Midwest it's pretty well saturated with the gospel. It's not like New York City right, where you have all these different worldviews and all these different Midwest, it's pretty well saturated with the gospel. You know Cleveland, very multi-ethnic community same not as big much as New York City, I'm sure, but still very, you know, multifaceted when it came to faith.
19:06
In the Midwest small town, you know, pretty much everyone's a Christian. I just don't know, we weren't confident. Everyone had a relationship with Jesus and that was one of the hurdles we had to overcome and by God's grace, you know, we were able to do that, you know, by just teaching on what it meant to be a follower of Jesus, and so we actually started the Alpha course there for the first time. Many of your listeners will be familiar with the Alpha course, and when we first did the Alpha course we said listen, this could be for somebody who's never heard the gospel before, or you've been in church your whole life and you don't know why. I would say the majority of people that went through the Alpha Course for the first time were people who had been in church their whole life and they just didn't know why. And it made such a dramatic difference in their life to see and hear what it meant to be a follower of Jesus.
19:55 - Speaker 3
Were there any transferable skills from your business background to what you're doing as a pastor?
20:02 - Speaker 1
100%, 100%. My wife has said you know, every pastor should work in the business world before they step into ministry. Yeah, and it's not that you're taking—I think people misunderstand it. The church isn't a business. No, it's not, but it is a people. The church is all about people and relationships, and business is all about people and relationships as well.
20:28
As you know, I was in management, so a lot of. When it comes to leading a church, you are, you're managing teams, you're managing their volunteer teams. Obviously, it's different. You're not paying them an hourly wage, you can't put the demands you put on. But when it comes to leadership, when it comes to managing teams, when it comes to setting goals, you're not setting goals financially, necessarily, but you're setting goals for the ministry, for the church, necessarily, but you're setting goals for the ministry for the church.
20:59
What do we want to do? But at the end of the day, you know, it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. And, man, I tell our church all the time we have to be the kindest people on the planet. It's just like in customer service, right? Like in order for the customers to keep coming back. They want to know that they are valued, and so the church needs to be the kindest people on the planet. So that whole customer service mentality we've really brought into ministry as well, and to just teach on kindness and treating people with value and respect and that's what opens their heart up to the gospel.
21:39 - Speaker 3
And that's what opens their heart up to the gospel. Yeah, it's actually very recently that I realized, as a Christian or even people knowing that I'm a Christian I'm unintentionally carrying the name of Jesus, and how I act and treat others matters a lot. And if you even asked me, like five years ago, I'd be like you're crazy, you're just like this over-spiritual, like hippie Christian, but I'm like, oh man, it matters a lot because I can actually build walls for people from coming to the gospel because of me. And so if I'm going to say I'm a Christian, I need to take this more seriously. And it wasn't until, like, I spent a lot of alone time. And it wasn't until I spent a lot of alone time it convicted me a lot to be who I am today, which is more of this kind gentler soul that I don't think anyone would have believed. So I'm totally with you. How did you find your current church?
22:36 - Speaker 1
Well, it's sort of a God story. My brother is a pastor as well and he has pastored in York, pennsylvania, for 20-some years. So we would come on vacation here to York and visit with them and made friends with his friends and that type of thing. And we came one year it was probably during that season I was telling you about when we were knowing the lord was transitioning us but paul was mentoring us as well. So it's probably I think it was maybe 2005, 2004, right in that range and so my brother asked us to come and do a worship conference at his church that he was leading here in york and uh, so we, uh, we, we came, planned a vacation around it, but we came and we did a saturday, friday night and a saturday, and we had our own worship ministry at the time. So it was one of our passions, it still is, and um so um, one of the people that was at that worship conference was a pastor in southern york, which York County is. I believe it's the biggest county in the state. If not, it's one of the biggest. It's about a half a million people, but it's over about a 30-mile, 40-mile range. It's very spread out. So southern York County is right at the bottom of the state of Pennsylvania, where Maryland and Pennsylvania come together.
24:04
And so this pastor and his wife came to the worship conference 2004, 2005, I think and at the end of the worship conference on Saturday, they said we just got a new building and we were wondering if you would come and just do a worship night in our new building. So we were planning to be there anyways, because we had planned this vacation around it, you know. So we said sure, so we came down the next day. It was Sunday night. They had just moved into this new building that they had bought from a denomination, and we just did a worship night and I never talked to him again.
24:43
We were pastoring in Illinois and we felt like the Lord had told us to get our church ready because he was going to transition us out and that there was a new assignment coming for us. So we were praying into this and we were beginning to you know where the church would need it if we left. And I get this phone call out of the blue from this pastor I met in 2004, 2005. It's now 2016. And he says, hey, do you remember me? This is Peter. And I'm like, yeah and he goes. I'm getting ready to retire and I was wondering if you would be interested in moving here to Pennsylvania to be closer to your brother and taking over this church. Yeah, I was like wow, didn't see that coming.
25:33
So we began the process of talking with them and after several months of, you know, talking with their leadership team, we just felt like, yep, this is the Lord's next assignment for us. So our family, of course, had grown. Our son had just gotten married in Illinois, so the hardest part of the decision was that he felt like he was supposed to stay in the Midwest. Him and his wife moved down to St Louis, which is about an hour and a half south of where we were, and they helped a friend of ours plant a church in St Louis, and then we took our other three kids and moved to Pennsylvania. So usually, when your kids get older, they leave you. We left our son. That was one of the hardest, hardest acts of faith we've ever done, honestly. But when you know the Lord is speaking, you have a choice to be obedient or to do your own thing. So we were obedient. We heard the Lord say yes and we moved here to pa in 2017 yeah, what did your son end up doing?
26:42 - Speaker 3
uh, as he stayed yeah, he stayed.
26:45 - Speaker 1
they moved from jacksonville down to st louis. They helped our friend plant a church and they were the worship leaders. Um, and you know, with any church planting teams, the worship leaders. And you know, with any church planting team, it's the worship leaders plus everything else, right, but they had a great experience there. And now he is the. What is his title? He's the operations director for the Gateway House of Prayer in St Louis, which many people might be familiar with the House of Prayer Network, not network House of Prayer Network, not network House of Prayer Movement, which is worship and prayer, raising up worship and prayer in the cities of the world. And so he is the operations guy for the House of Prayer in St Louis.
27:28 - Speaker 3
Is that IHOP or is it different?
27:29 - Speaker 1
It's familiar. Well, IHOP is in Kansas City, but this is actually. It's like IHOP, but they're not like networked. They're individual houses of prayer, but it's the same concept. They're running close to 40 hours a week of worship and prayer, staffed by the Church of St Louis coming together to staff this House of Prayer. My son is the operations guy for the building and keeping everything running, the schedule, everything flowing. So they're thriving there.
28:07 - Speaker 3
So what is Harvest Network?
28:09 - Speaker 1
Yeah, harvest Network is a network of churches and ministries.
28:13
It was started toward the end of the Charismatic Renewal back in the 80s, and, for people who are familiar with church history, there was a move of the Holy Spirit that swept across the United States called the Charismatic Renewal.
28:31
What happened was there were a lot of denominational churches that, when the Holy Spirit came, the denominations weren't really on board theologically with it, and so these churches and pastors were forced with a decision stay in the denomination or leave. Well, harvest Network was started back, I believe I don't know what year exactly, maybe 87 or 88. And it was started by several Lutheran pastors who could no longer stay within the Lutheran denomination of the time. I think it was called the ALC, I think it was called the American Lutheran Church or something like that, and so they left to form this new network of churches and ministries. Now we're coming up on, you know, 40 years later it's not Lutheran at all. I mean now it's basically a group of kingdom-minded pastors and leaders, local churches, ministries, missionaries, churches, ministries, missionaries who are on a journey together, you know, to grow the kingdom and to plant churches and to start ministries that are making a difference in the world.
29:46 - Speaker 3
Wait, so how did you get involved? I'm sorry, how did you get involved?
29:50 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a good question. The founding church was our church in Cleveland. So our church in Cleveland, I told you I was raised Catholic. My mom was led to the Lord by a Bible-believing, spirit-filled believer who went to a Lutheran church, and so my mom enrolled us in the Christian school of this Lutheran church and we started attending there and we didn't. Obviously we were just coming into faith, but we didn't know all of this. All the politics was going on theologically and we never heard of the charismatic renewal or anything.
30:30
But when I was so, I was in seventh grade when we first started attending and I gave my life to the Lord when I was in 11th grade is when they left the Lutheran denomination and held the first ever conference. That became what's now Harvest Network. So, yeah, my brother my brother jokes he says, yeah, I ran sound for the very first Harvest Network Assembly. So you know, we just kind of were in it. You know, by default, obviously, many years later, 2006 was when I was ordained through Harvest Network. But it's just always been a part of who I am as a young man all the way through today.
31:22 - Speaker 3
So your association with Harvest is just that you are part of the network, I'm a part of the network.
31:29 - Speaker 1
I also serve now as an elder on the Board of Elders and then a couple of years ago I was asked to step into a new role that we created called the National Field Director and my responsibility is to help the network network Because, how many of you know, you can have a name that's not really right, and so we felt like, especially now, especially as the church enters into an age where we need to be in community, we need to be networked. You know that my role is to help the network network and, coming out of COVID, the whole, what we're doing right now. The Zoom world opened up to everyone, so we've created several Zoom cohorts that people can network together. We have seven regions now of the country where we have regional gatherings, regional partnerships happening across the country, happening across the country, and then we have our ongoing annual gathering as well, where we gather once a year. We invite the whole network to come together once a year for encouragement, support, equipping, training, all of that.
32:48 - Speaker 3
So are you guys officially non-denominational?
32:50 - Speaker 1
We are. We are officially non-denominational, we're just kingdom. We're just a kingdom group of people, leaders that love the Lord. We want to expand the kingdom. We want to fulfill the Great Commission, help the body of Christ fulfill the Great Commission. We want to build a community of leaders who are not trying to do it alone. We know the statistics right now of Christian leaders. It's horrible of the burnout rate that's happening. So, building a network where people are supported, encouraged and equipped, but non-denominational.
33:31 - Speaker 3
How do people join your network if they want to get involved?
33:34 - Speaker 1
Well, harvestnetworklive is our website. That's the best way to go. Look around on the network. There's a tab on the top that says join the network, and so they can join. We are a 501c3, but we are a licensing organization, so we offer credentialing of ordination and general license, special license, and so if they're looking for credentialing, we offer credentialing. There's a lot of churches now that have become disassociated because of the landscape of what's happening in the church in America, and so we also have church partnerships that people can join the church family as well, family of churches as well, even if they're leading a missions organization. We have counseling agencies, ministry, you know. Inner healing ministries you name it, you know you can. If you're advancing the kingdom and you're looking for a partnership of people who are like-minded, who are trying to grow the kingdom of God, walk in relationship with one another, fulfill the Great Commission, then that's what we tell people, that's what we're all about.
34:49 - Speaker 3
What's the process like, because I'm sure there's a vetting process to be accepted. Part of the network, yeah.
34:55 - Speaker 1
We have streamlined our process. It's a lot less than what a lot of denominations are, but we do have an online application. Just click on the Join the Network and if you're looking for your individual as an individual, just click on Join the Network as an individual. If you're looking for your church or ministry, click on that icon and then the once the application is submitted, we require, you know, letters of recommendation. We have then a zoom interview that is set up with one of our interview team members and then we have a board that looks at the application. If there's further questions, we'll get back and say can you clarify this or answer this? And then a decision is made at that point.
35:50
Sometimes, you know, we don't require you know higher education degrees, but sometimes we may say, you know, based on what we see, we would encourage you to go and finish your degree. Or, you know, we'll offer you know sort of a pathway pathway. But if somebody has been in ministry, they have a lot of life experience in ministry, but they don't have the diploma. That is certainly not going to withhold anyone from receiving a license. It's based on life experience as well as education.
36:30 - Speaker 3
Thank you. I have one last personal question how? Did you meet your wife I have one last personal question.
36:36 - Speaker 1
Yeah, how did you meet your wife? Ah, we met in Bible school actually. But we were going to the same church at the time. But it was a pretty large church, it was close to 1,000 members. So we didn't know each other, we just knew of each other. But once we started going to the same Bible college, we spent a lot more time together and started dating. And then, you know, things got more serious and I'm like I think she might be the one. So we got married in 1990. Who liked who first? Oh, I'm sure I liked her first. She's beautiful.
37:16 - Speaker 3
Okay, okay, that's enough. I have no more questions because, for guys, that's just a beautiful.
37:20 - Speaker 1
So I'm sure, yeah, okay, uh, last I definitely leveled up. Let me say she's a gift.
37:30 - Speaker 3
Uh, last two questions. Uh, what are you hoping for at Faithly?
37:34 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm so excited about Faithly. Actually, we have been talking as a leadership team about, again, how do we network the network, and this is Faithly I see as an amazing opportunity for us to start from scratch. Members group. It's sort of gone off, you know, into nowhere land, very limited activity. Um, we have, uh, we have a weekly prayer zoom call and so I love the prayer tab that's on there.
38:06
We are always looking, as everyone is is, how do we communicate over the loud noise of everybody else trying to communicate? And so just the ability within our own do you guys call it a group or within our own? We developed a Harvest Network group on Faithfully so to be able to communicate in that group as well. What's happening in the network updates, where people can update on their own lives, but also as a network we can communicate what's coming up, and so it's just. It's like this is exactly what we need a fresh start, a fresh template.
38:50
But also I'm excited about interacting with the larger body of Christ unfaithfully, not only for myself personally, because I love to network with people, I love to hear what God's doing. I'm excited to find people here in Pennsylvania or people you know we're not far from you guys in New York City, you know, but this whole Northeast corridor. I'm excited to just see what's happening in the Northeast and what God's doing in the various streams of the body of Christ, and I think Faithly is going to give us a little bit of a bird's eye view on that. And then, of course, just helping people to find out about Harvest Network as well. I think Faithly will be a great tool for us to share with all the Faithly community what's happening in Harvest Network. So lots of different ways that we're excited about utilizing this great new platform. I keep saying new. It's new to me. I don't know how new it is, daniel, but it's new to me.
39:48 - Speaker 3
No, just keep saying new, it'll be new every year. But that was great. Thanks. How can we be praying for you and your family?
39:56 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a good question. We, my wife and I, are now entering into empty nest. Our kids are getting married, married off, and so we're in a transition, but our middle son is actually on the mission field right now with YWAM, so we can be praying for Josh as he serves the Lord overseas.
40:21 - Speaker 3
All right, this was great. Thanks for coming on.
40:24 - Speaker 1
Yeah, god bless you, daniel.
40:27 - Speaker 3
God bless you, Daniel. Thanks for having me. That's it for the podcast guys. Bye.
40:45 - Speaker 2
Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. For the podcast guys Bye. 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. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.
It was a guy who, literally twice a month, would pick me up before school, bring me back to his house and I would sit at their breakfast table while they were getting their kids ready for breakfast for school and he would just be like, hey, tom, what's going on in your life? You know how can I pray for you? And it just made such a significant impact, you know, because he took the time to invest in me. Hi, this is Tom Herbert and I am the National Field Director for Harvest Network, also lead pastor at Freedom Community Church in Shrewsbury, pennsylvania, and this is my Faithly Story.
00:40 - 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.
01:22 - Speaker 3
Could you share with me how your faith journey started?
01:25 - Speaker 1
Could you share with me how your faith journey started? Yeah, I was raised Catholic and always had a reverence and a love for God Alter boy Catholic elementary school and then my parents went through a very public divorce and it just shook our entire family. And when my mom went back to work after the divorce, she met a lady who told her about a personal relationship with Jesus, and my mom gave her life to Jesus and then, one by one, each of us kids followed suit. So when I was in seventh grade, I gave my life to the Lord at a chapel service at our Christian school that I was attending, and my life has never been the same since.
02:18 - Speaker 3
So I actually have a question about your Catholic experience.
02:22 - Speaker 1
Yeah, your Catholic experience?
02:23 - Speaker 3
Yeah, because you mentioned that your mom and you accepted Christ in a Christian context or in a Protestant context, but do you feel like that wasn't something you did in your Catholic church and your Catholic upbringing?
02:40 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a good question For me. I had a reverence of God, a fear of God. I would say a love for God as well. I just never heard the message of a personal relationship with God in that context. I knew that God loved me. I just didn't know that I could love him back in that way, if that makes sense.
03:04 - Speaker 3
Yeah, it totally makes sense. Could you actually elaborate on that?
03:08 - Speaker 1
It was seventh grade and you know, going through the trauma of a divorce and a broken family and the healing that God did in our family, I came to know him more, as someone that I could have a relationship with.
03:28
I came to realize that the sacrifice of the cross was not some theological concept, but it was a personal invitation to me. And so, you know, I was tremendously blessed to be able to go to a Christian school, go to Catholic elementary school and then go to a Christian school as well. And just in hearing the messages over and over again in chapel about, you know, the invitation that it's not just about a religion, it's about a relationship. It's not just about a religion, it's about a relationship. It's about a relationship we can have with the God of the universe, with a living God. That just softened my heart and I came to realize that this is what I was created for to walk in relationship with God. And even as a seventh grader I really came to know him as my father, my spiritual father, my heavenly father. And it's not that my dad was, you know, vacant, but there was brokenness there. But I came to know God as my heavenly father and he's not broken, he's perfect and he's holy, and he was what I needed.
04:48 - Speaker 3
So what did that look like in seventh grade? And moving forward for a seventh grader, yeah.
04:55 - Speaker 1
I was very blessed to be in a very healthy local church and the beauty of that was that I was surrounded by families and especially for me because my dad was absent men who were truly serving the Lord.
05:14
All of us kids had a spiritual father or a mentor that took us alongside of them, would take us out to breakfast, would meet with us and just disciple us in the ways of the Lord and what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. And you know all the ups and downs of high school and emotions and relationships and dreams about your future and all of these things. And so not only did we have an amazing mom who was following the Lord, not only were we seeing the healing and the restoration of what God was doing in our lives, but we also had these godly examples who would mentor us and spend time with us and just let us process. And it was such a healthy, life-giving environment and, honestly, one of the reasons why I wanted to go into ministry, because I saw the power of a local church walking in community, following Jesus and helping others to do the same. And I just said, man, I want to be a part of that.
06:22 - Speaker 3
Is there anyone specific you can remember in your youth years where they were kind of a role model for you, especially as a pastor?
06:30 - Speaker 1
Yeah Well, not specifically as a pastor, although there were some pastors that made a big impact on my life. But there was a guy who, literally twice a month, would pick me up before school, bring me back to his house and I would sit at their breakfast table while they were getting their kids ready for breakfast for school and he would just be like, hey, tom, what's going on in your life, how can I pray for you? And it just made such a significant impact because he took the time to invest in me. Impact, you know, because he took the time to invest in me when it came to pastoral ministry. There were a couple of pastors that just showed us really how to love well, how to lead well, you know, and so they were definitely role models when it came to pastoral ministry.
07:22
But when it came to just being a disciple, a follower of Jesus, you know, I went to this Christian high school and the teachers were all invested in the students. They weren't just teaching math or history or you know, whatever it was, they were really invested in the students. And I was a part of a choir in high school and we would travel and we would go on tour. And those tours were just so monumental because you had the choir teacher. But then you also had all these adults who were chaperones, right, and we'd jump onto a big tour bus and we would go to Washington DC or go to South Carolina or go to wherever we went, I don't even know. We went all over the place. And just those moments, those moments living life with these dedicated followers of Jesus who loved God and loved people and nobody's perfect, but they were certainly a role model, that's for sure yeah, something recently, like this week, uh, I've been being convicted of.
08:29 - Speaker 3
Is that like? Because I grew up in new york and in new york like everything's bigger and like?
08:34
grander and you know, um, so like there's this like urge to like be this big thing for god, but he like literally, spiritually, mentally, smacked me in the head. He's like God is great, I just need to be good wherever I am. Because I don't think we realize, like you said, because I've done so many podcasts now the same story resonates over and over. It's like at a certain time in a certain place, the moment was when I was young. I saw this person just love me and care for me, and now they've become pastors and leaders and entrepreneurs. And it's just like I don't think we realize the impact we can have just by being good to the people around us, because we don't see the ripple effects that God's going to do years from now.
09:23 - Speaker 1
You know, I just literally, this morning we listened to one of the sessions from Exponential. It was the session I don't know if you remember it, if you were in the room, but it was the pastor from the Ukraine and he was telling the story, of course, of the war and the devastation of the war and how the things that he was pursuing before the war quite honestly just don't matter and how we have to change the scorecard. It's not about being big, it's not about being, you know, you know, significant in the world's eyes. It's about the people right in front of us.
09:58 - Speaker 2
It's about investing and that's what happened with me.
10:00 - Speaker 1
People invested in me happened with me. People invested in me Men and women, you know, moms and dads. They invested in me, invested in my siblings, and that's what made all the difference. It wasn't the grandiose thing that we think is so important.
10:20 - Speaker 3
So how did you get into ministry? Did you go to seminary after undergrad?
10:24 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I went to Bible college. I have a non-traditional route into ministry. My wife and I met when we were 20 years old and I was actually a student at the time at Cleveland State University. I'm originally from Cleveland Ohio and I was a student at Cleveland State University and the Lord really spoke to me about taking a season away from pursuing my degree, which I was pursuing secondary ed, history and social studies. You know teaching. Take a season away, go to Bible college and then go back and finish my degree. And so I did, and I stepped away from Cleveland State.
11:06
I attended a small Bible college in Cleveland Ohio Unfortunately, it doesn't exist anymore and that's where I met my wife. I knew of her before that, but we spent more quality time together there and so we ended up getting married, you know, after two years of dating and it wasn't that we, you know we weren't serving the Lord we just never went into ministry. I went back to Cleveland State, got my degree, we started a family, I worked in the business world for a little over 15 years and then right around the age of 40, we transitioned into vocational ministry.
11:51 - Speaker 3
Could you elaborate what did you do for 15 years in business?
11:53 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I was in retail management with JCPenney and with Macy's it was called Kaufman's back in the day which is a regional store, you know, in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, but then Macy's bought everybody up. So I just tell people, jcpenney and Macy's, but yeah, I loved it, I absolutely loved it. I loved working in retail management. I tell people, you know, I manage pretty much every part of the store except for women's lingerie, and that's a good thing. And you know, I loved working in retail. Man, it wasn't that I was trying to get out of it, it wasn't like the Lord just got a hold of Judy and I and said hey, do you remember that pastoral prophetic call on your life? And we were serving the Lord. We, you know, we were leading small groups in our church, we were involved in leadership in our church, we were involved in regional stuff in the regional church of Cleveland, very active, you know. But the Lord said you've got a call on your life, don't forget about that. So that was about, let's see, we got married in 1990. And around the year 2001 is when the Lord started sort of knocking on the door and saying hey, don't forget 2002 maybe. And so we went to our pastor at the time, who was one of these guys I talked about earlier, who was a very significant role model for us of pastoral ministry. And we said, listen, we've been out of Bible college for 10 years. We're hearing the Lord say this, we've got four kids. You know, we just had our fourth little one, and how in the world are we going to do this? And so he said well, why don't I just mentor you in real life ministry? You know, you've got the theological stuff, you've learned all that, but let me mentor you in real life ministry.
13:55
So he's another one. He took the time. We would meet with him on a regular basis, but quarterly. He would block out an entire afternoon and we would just sit with him for three and four hours at a time and he would just talk about. This is what I'm dealing with. These are the relational conflicts I'm dealing with. This is the church politics stuff I'm dealing with. These are the things that I have in my heart for the church, and I'm trying to figure out how to lead the church in that direction All of these things that are so real life ministry.
14:30
And so he did that for us for several years. So then in 2007, we heard about a church that was in our network that was coming open. The pastor was retiring and we had had several other churches that had kind of come along the path and just didn't feel at peace about it. But we felt, like the Lord said, to go ahead and submit our resume, and so we did. It was a church in Jacksonville, illinois, which now remember we were living 10 miles outside of downtown Cleveland and this was in the corn and bean country of Illinois.
15:04
It was almost like going to a foreign country, but not quite. I mean, it was like total culture shock. But the Lord opened the door and we went through the interview process and, even though we'd never been a lead pastor before it's, you know, just like in the book of Acts, it seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit and we accepted the call. When they called us to come, we picked up our family and moved to the middle of the corn and beans of Illinois, a little college town just 30 miles west of the state capital, Springfield. And that was our first experience leading a local church and vocational ministry.
15:44 - Speaker 3
Was the culture shock because they were more rural. Yeah, rural. But like I don't know how else to call it. But were the values like similar too?
15:56 - Speaker 1
Yeah, small towns, you have to adjust to small town dynamics. You know, you know everybody knows everybody. Unless you're new to town, like us, you know Different, just different thought processes, not that one's better than the other, it's just different ways of thinking. Every region of the country has different cultural stuff.
16:17
Every region of the country has different cultural stuff, but you know, same Holy Spirit, same gospel works across every kind of cultural boundary there is, and so, but it was. I remember we woke up, we had gone out there for our second interview, we're staying in this hotel. We looked out the window and all we could see was corn and beans and we're like where are we? What happened, you know and this is something I've talked about when we were there. So it's not like it's you know, but it was just when we lived. I mean, our house was literally you could go to the end of the street, the end of our street skyline of downtown Cleveland, to the end of our street. Corn and beans, you know, for as long as you can see. So it was just a lot of change, but it was good. It was good.
17:10 - Speaker 3
What was one thing that was really different in the way they thought that you were like oh, that's interesting. Or a different perspective, oh that's interesting or a different perspective.
17:19 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm trying to think here.
17:22
I think, well, we homeschooled all of our kids and in Ohio the laws are really strict for homeschooling and in Illinois if you don't enroll your kids in the school district they don't care, I mean. So we were like, okay, this is different, you know, um, and so you know, with that brought just a different thought process, a thinking process for homeschooling. In ohio, because there were all these laws and because it was a little bit more accepted, homeschooling was. In Illinois, it was a little more foreign, it wasn't you know. So it was just we had to figure out how to navigate it as parents, but also trying to explain it to people why we're homeschooling. And so that was, you know, that was part of it.
18:15
When it came to you know the church, when it came to you know the work of ministry, I would say, you know, just having a bigger view of like reaching the lost. It's not that they didn't have a heart for the lost, but when you're in a small town in the Midwest it's pretty well saturated with the gospel. It's not like New York City right, where you have all these different worldviews and all these different Midwest, it's pretty well saturated with the gospel. You know Cleveland, very multi-ethnic community same not as big much as New York City, I'm sure, but still very, you know, multifaceted when it came to faith.
19:06
In the Midwest small town, you know, pretty much everyone's a Christian. I just don't know, we weren't confident. Everyone had a relationship with Jesus and that was one of the hurdles we had to overcome and by God's grace, you know, we were able to do that, you know, by just teaching on what it meant to be a follower of Jesus, and so we actually started the Alpha course there for the first time. Many of your listeners will be familiar with the Alpha course, and when we first did the Alpha course we said listen, this could be for somebody who's never heard the gospel before, or you've been in church your whole life and you don't know why. I would say the majority of people that went through the Alpha Course for the first time were people who had been in church their whole life and they just didn't know why. And it made such a dramatic difference in their life to see and hear what it meant to be a follower of Jesus.
19:55 - Speaker 3
Were there any transferable skills from your business background to what you're doing as a pastor?
20:02 - Speaker 1
100%, 100%. My wife has said you know, every pastor should work in the business world before they step into ministry. Yeah, and it's not that you're taking—I think people misunderstand it. The church isn't a business. No, it's not, but it is a people. The church is all about people and relationships, and business is all about people and relationships as well.
20:28
As you know, I was in management, so a lot of. When it comes to leading a church, you are, you're managing teams, you're managing their volunteer teams. Obviously, it's different. You're not paying them an hourly wage, you can't put the demands you put on. But when it comes to leadership, when it comes to managing teams, when it comes to setting goals, you're not setting goals financially, necessarily, but you're setting goals for the ministry, for the church, necessarily, but you're setting goals for the ministry for the church.
20:59
What do we want to do? But at the end of the day, you know, it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. And, man, I tell our church all the time we have to be the kindest people on the planet. It's just like in customer service, right? Like in order for the customers to keep coming back. They want to know that they are valued, and so the church needs to be the kindest people on the planet. So that whole customer service mentality we've really brought into ministry as well, and to just teach on kindness and treating people with value and respect and that's what opens their heart up to the gospel.
21:39 - Speaker 3
And that's what opens their heart up to the gospel. Yeah, it's actually very recently that I realized, as a Christian or even people knowing that I'm a Christian I'm unintentionally carrying the name of Jesus, and how I act and treat others matters a lot. And if you even asked me, like five years ago, I'd be like you're crazy, you're just like this over-spiritual, like hippie Christian, but I'm like, oh man, it matters a lot because I can actually build walls for people from coming to the gospel because of me. And so if I'm going to say I'm a Christian, I need to take this more seriously. And it wasn't until, like, I spent a lot of alone time. And it wasn't until I spent a lot of alone time it convicted me a lot to be who I am today, which is more of this kind gentler soul that I don't think anyone would have believed. So I'm totally with you. How did you find your current church?
22:36 - Speaker 1
Well, it's sort of a God story. My brother is a pastor as well and he has pastored in York, pennsylvania, for 20-some years. So we would come on vacation here to York and visit with them and made friends with his friends and that type of thing. And we came one year it was probably during that season I was telling you about when we were knowing the lord was transitioning us but paul was mentoring us as well. So it's probably I think it was maybe 2005, 2004, right in that range and so my brother asked us to come and do a worship conference at his church that he was leading here in york and uh, so we, uh, we, we came, planned a vacation around it, but we came and we did a saturday, friday night and a saturday, and we had our own worship ministry at the time. So it was one of our passions, it still is, and um so um, one of the people that was at that worship conference was a pastor in southern york, which York County is. I believe it's the biggest county in the state. If not, it's one of the biggest. It's about a half a million people, but it's over about a 30-mile, 40-mile range. It's very spread out. So southern York County is right at the bottom of the state of Pennsylvania, where Maryland and Pennsylvania come together.
24:04
And so this pastor and his wife came to the worship conference 2004, 2005, I think and at the end of the worship conference on Saturday, they said we just got a new building and we were wondering if you would come and just do a worship night in our new building. So we were planning to be there anyways, because we had planned this vacation around it, you know. So we said sure, so we came down the next day. It was Sunday night. They had just moved into this new building that they had bought from a denomination, and we just did a worship night and I never talked to him again.
24:43
We were pastoring in Illinois and we felt like the Lord had told us to get our church ready because he was going to transition us out and that there was a new assignment coming for us. So we were praying into this and we were beginning to you know where the church would need it if we left. And I get this phone call out of the blue from this pastor I met in 2004, 2005. It's now 2016. And he says, hey, do you remember me? This is Peter. And I'm like, yeah and he goes. I'm getting ready to retire and I was wondering if you would be interested in moving here to Pennsylvania to be closer to your brother and taking over this church. Yeah, I was like wow, didn't see that coming.
25:33
So we began the process of talking with them and after several months of, you know, talking with their leadership team, we just felt like, yep, this is the Lord's next assignment for us. So our family, of course, had grown. Our son had just gotten married in Illinois, so the hardest part of the decision was that he felt like he was supposed to stay in the Midwest. Him and his wife moved down to St Louis, which is about an hour and a half south of where we were, and they helped a friend of ours plant a church in St Louis, and then we took our other three kids and moved to Pennsylvania. So usually, when your kids get older, they leave you. We left our son. That was one of the hardest, hardest acts of faith we've ever done, honestly. But when you know the Lord is speaking, you have a choice to be obedient or to do your own thing. So we were obedient. We heard the Lord say yes and we moved here to pa in 2017 yeah, what did your son end up doing?
26:42 - Speaker 3
uh, as he stayed yeah, he stayed.
26:45 - Speaker 1
they moved from jacksonville down to st louis. They helped our friend plant a church and they were the worship leaders. Um, and you know, with any church planting teams, the worship leaders. And you know, with any church planting team, it's the worship leaders plus everything else, right, but they had a great experience there. And now he is the. What is his title? He's the operations director for the Gateway House of Prayer in St Louis, which many people might be familiar with the House of Prayer Network, not network House of Prayer Network, not network House of Prayer Movement, which is worship and prayer, raising up worship and prayer in the cities of the world. And so he is the operations guy for the House of Prayer in St Louis.
27:28 - Speaker 3
Is that IHOP or is it different?
27:29 - Speaker 1
It's familiar. Well, IHOP is in Kansas City, but this is actually. It's like IHOP, but they're not like networked. They're individual houses of prayer, but it's the same concept. They're running close to 40 hours a week of worship and prayer, staffed by the Church of St Louis coming together to staff this House of Prayer. My son is the operations guy for the building and keeping everything running, the schedule, everything flowing. So they're thriving there.
28:07 - Speaker 3
So what is Harvest Network?
28:09 - Speaker 1
Yeah, harvest Network is a network of churches and ministries.
28:13
It was started toward the end of the Charismatic Renewal back in the 80s, and, for people who are familiar with church history, there was a move of the Holy Spirit that swept across the United States called the Charismatic Renewal.
28:31
What happened was there were a lot of denominational churches that, when the Holy Spirit came, the denominations weren't really on board theologically with it, and so these churches and pastors were forced with a decision stay in the denomination or leave. Well, harvest Network was started back, I believe I don't know what year exactly, maybe 87 or 88. And it was started by several Lutheran pastors who could no longer stay within the Lutheran denomination of the time. I think it was called the ALC, I think it was called the American Lutheran Church or something like that, and so they left to form this new network of churches and ministries. Now we're coming up on, you know, 40 years later it's not Lutheran at all. I mean now it's basically a group of kingdom-minded pastors and leaders, local churches, ministries, missionaries, churches, ministries, missionaries who are on a journey together, you know, to grow the kingdom and to plant churches and to start ministries that are making a difference in the world.
29:46 - Speaker 3
Wait, so how did you get involved? I'm sorry, how did you get involved?
29:50 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a good question. The founding church was our church in Cleveland. So our church in Cleveland, I told you I was raised Catholic. My mom was led to the Lord by a Bible-believing, spirit-filled believer who went to a Lutheran church, and so my mom enrolled us in the Christian school of this Lutheran church and we started attending there and we didn't. Obviously we were just coming into faith, but we didn't know all of this. All the politics was going on theologically and we never heard of the charismatic renewal or anything.
30:30
But when I was so, I was in seventh grade when we first started attending and I gave my life to the Lord when I was in 11th grade is when they left the Lutheran denomination and held the first ever conference. That became what's now Harvest Network. So, yeah, my brother my brother jokes he says, yeah, I ran sound for the very first Harvest Network Assembly. So you know, we just kind of were in it. You know, by default, obviously, many years later, 2006 was when I was ordained through Harvest Network. But it's just always been a part of who I am as a young man all the way through today.
31:22 - Speaker 3
So your association with Harvest is just that you are part of the network, I'm a part of the network.
31:29 - Speaker 1
I also serve now as an elder on the Board of Elders and then a couple of years ago I was asked to step into a new role that we created called the National Field Director and my responsibility is to help the network network Because, how many of you know, you can have a name that's not really right, and so we felt like, especially now, especially as the church enters into an age where we need to be in community, we need to be networked. You know that my role is to help the network network and, coming out of COVID, the whole, what we're doing right now. The Zoom world opened up to everyone, so we've created several Zoom cohorts that people can network together. We have seven regions now of the country where we have regional gatherings, regional partnerships happening across the country, happening across the country, and then we have our ongoing annual gathering as well, where we gather once a year. We invite the whole network to come together once a year for encouragement, support, equipping, training, all of that.
32:48 - Speaker 3
So are you guys officially non-denominational?
32:50 - Speaker 1
We are. We are officially non-denominational, we're just kingdom. We're just a kingdom group of people, leaders that love the Lord. We want to expand the kingdom. We want to fulfill the Great Commission, help the body of Christ fulfill the Great Commission. We want to build a community of leaders who are not trying to do it alone. We know the statistics right now of Christian leaders. It's horrible of the burnout rate that's happening. So, building a network where people are supported, encouraged and equipped, but non-denominational.
33:31 - Speaker 3
How do people join your network if they want to get involved?
33:34 - Speaker 1
Well, harvestnetworklive is our website. That's the best way to go. Look around on the network. There's a tab on the top that says join the network, and so they can join. We are a 501c3, but we are a licensing organization, so we offer credentialing of ordination and general license, special license, and so if they're looking for credentialing, we offer credentialing. There's a lot of churches now that have become disassociated because of the landscape of what's happening in the church in America, and so we also have church partnerships that people can join the church family as well, family of churches as well, even if they're leading a missions organization. We have counseling agencies, ministry, you know. Inner healing ministries you name it, you know you can. If you're advancing the kingdom and you're looking for a partnership of people who are like-minded, who are trying to grow the kingdom of God, walk in relationship with one another, fulfill the Great Commission, then that's what we tell people, that's what we're all about.
34:49 - Speaker 3
What's the process like, because I'm sure there's a vetting process to be accepted. Part of the network, yeah.
34:55 - Speaker 1
We have streamlined our process. It's a lot less than what a lot of denominations are, but we do have an online application. Just click on the Join the Network and if you're looking for your individual as an individual, just click on Join the Network as an individual. If you're looking for your church or ministry, click on that icon and then the once the application is submitted, we require, you know, letters of recommendation. We have then a zoom interview that is set up with one of our interview team members and then we have a board that looks at the application. If there's further questions, we'll get back and say can you clarify this or answer this? And then a decision is made at that point.
35:50
Sometimes, you know, we don't require you know higher education degrees, but sometimes we may say, you know, based on what we see, we would encourage you to go and finish your degree. Or, you know, we'll offer you know sort of a pathway pathway. But if somebody has been in ministry, they have a lot of life experience in ministry, but they don't have the diploma. That is certainly not going to withhold anyone from receiving a license. It's based on life experience as well as education.
36:30 - Speaker 3
Thank you. I have one last personal question how? Did you meet your wife I have one last personal question.
36:36 - Speaker 1
Yeah, how did you meet your wife? Ah, we met in Bible school actually. But we were going to the same church at the time. But it was a pretty large church, it was close to 1,000 members. So we didn't know each other, we just knew of each other. But once we started going to the same Bible college, we spent a lot more time together and started dating. And then, you know, things got more serious and I'm like I think she might be the one. So we got married in 1990. Who liked who first? Oh, I'm sure I liked her first. She's beautiful.
37:16 - Speaker 3
Okay, okay, that's enough. I have no more questions because, for guys, that's just a beautiful.
37:20 - Speaker 1
So I'm sure, yeah, okay, uh, last I definitely leveled up. Let me say she's a gift.
37:30 - Speaker 3
Uh, last two questions. Uh, what are you hoping for at Faithly?
37:34 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm so excited about Faithly. Actually, we have been talking as a leadership team about, again, how do we network the network, and this is Faithly I see as an amazing opportunity for us to start from scratch. Members group. It's sort of gone off, you know, into nowhere land, very limited activity. Um, we have, uh, we have a weekly prayer zoom call and so I love the prayer tab that's on there.
38:06
We are always looking, as everyone is is, how do we communicate over the loud noise of everybody else trying to communicate? And so just the ability within our own do you guys call it a group or within our own? We developed a Harvest Network group on Faithfully so to be able to communicate in that group as well. What's happening in the network updates, where people can update on their own lives, but also as a network we can communicate what's coming up, and so it's just. It's like this is exactly what we need a fresh start, a fresh template.
38:50
But also I'm excited about interacting with the larger body of Christ unfaithfully, not only for myself personally, because I love to network with people, I love to hear what God's doing. I'm excited to find people here in Pennsylvania or people you know we're not far from you guys in New York City, you know, but this whole Northeast corridor. I'm excited to just see what's happening in the Northeast and what God's doing in the various streams of the body of Christ, and I think Faithly is going to give us a little bit of a bird's eye view on that. And then, of course, just helping people to find out about Harvest Network as well. I think Faithly will be a great tool for us to share with all the Faithly community what's happening in Harvest Network. So lots of different ways that we're excited about utilizing this great new platform. I keep saying new. It's new to me. I don't know how new it is, daniel, but it's new to me.
39:48 - Speaker 3
No, just keep saying new, it'll be new every year. But that was great. Thanks. How can we be praying for you and your family?
39:56 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a good question. We, my wife and I, are now entering into empty nest. Our kids are getting married, married off, and so we're in a transition, but our middle son is actually on the mission field right now with YWAM, so we can be praying for Josh as he serves the Lord overseas.
40:21 - Speaker 3
All right, this was great. Thanks for coming on.
40:24 - Speaker 1
Yeah, god bless you, daniel.
40:27 - Speaker 3
God bless you, Daniel. Thanks for having me. That's it for the podcast guys. Bye.
40:45 - Speaker 2
Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. For the podcast guys Bye. 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. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.
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