Leaders Do It Together - Joseph Mattera | Faithly Stories

00:01 - Speaker 1 I think it's a mistake if somebody is not sent from a local church or denomination. So if you just you really strongly believe God called you to start a church, but you're not connected to either a denomination or a church, you need to pray immediately and ask God to show you people who have done this for many years and walked in integrity, befriend them, ask them to be part of the extra local elder board. 00:30 - 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 Brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders. Learn more at faithly.co. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired on the Faithly Stories podcast. 00:58 - Speaker 3 Dr Joseph Mattera, welcome to the Faithly Stories podcast. 01:02 - Speaker 1 Well, it's good to be with you. Thanks for doing what you do. Appreciate it. 01:08 - Speaker 3 Yes, thank you. So we know lots of people in common. I've heard so much about you, I've read so much about you, Joe, and so I'm really excited to dig in today. So you, of course, are the founding pastor of Resurrection Church. You've written many books, you've led many organizations, but if it's all right with you, I'd love to go back to the beginning, where it all began. How did God call you into ministry? 01:36 - Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I was on my way to making a good living in music and the Lord got a hold of me at 19. Within about eight months I gave up playing in my bands. I had three bands. We were recording something we were going to submit to Atlantic Records all originals and I just got bored with everything outside of seeking God. Once you met Jesus, everything else was a disappointment. 02:04 And I found out that music even though I loved it and still love it it was more of a way to carve out an identity for myself and prove I belonged and prove I could contribute to also build homes for old people. I had a heart for older people and I wanted to be able to put people, seniors in homes for free and take care of them. So I was going to use a platform for that. So it was a noble cause, but the reason was to satisfy need for identity. Once I came to Christ I just got. I experienced joy for the first time. I had happiness a lot of times and not joy, and I just started digging into the scriptures and started praying. And next thing, you know, for my old friends who used to follow me and hear me play the guitar, and we organized an outreach for my youth group. I was going to to minister, so we had about 70 of my old friends in a schoolyard on Fort Hamilton and East 5th Street in Brooklyn, near Windsor Terrace, and unfortunately, the people in the church who preached did not know how to relate to them. And the event was almost over, and out of desperation because I was the one who organized everything, put months of time into it I took the mic and just started giving my testimony and as soon as I did that, the Holy Spirit fell on everybody and I asked people who wanted to receive Christ to come forward, and out of the 70, about 16 of my friends ran forward. Some of them that I know of are still serving the Lord maybe all of them. And then a mini revival broke out in the community. A lot of people started getting saved, coming to Christ, and I had such a burden to share the gospel I didn't know I had the ability to speak and that showed me I could speak. 04:21 So then I started going on the New York City subway trains and I took one guy with me and all I did was I'd get up and I'd say, hey, I'm not a preacher, I'm a professional rock musician and I just found something that's so great I have to share it with everybody. And so they would have my attention. I would have their attention and then I'd give my testimony. The Spirit of God would fall on the trains. Many people would run up walk tracks, come to Christ. And then, after doing that for a few months and I literally just went boldly from one train to the next the Spirit of God was moving so powerfully. Then we started going on the Staten Island F, going from, uh, brooklyn to Staten Island, and it took 22 minutes. So I shared the gospel for 20 minutes, gave my testimony. Same thing happened. The spirit of God would fall on. You know, might've been a thousand people who would listen, maybe it was more, cause it was a whole, you know, a whole ship, I don't know how many it fit. And then so I just had such a burden to share the gospel. 05:31 So I was not trained in preaching in school. I never took homiletics. I was trained by doing it in the streets of Brooklyn, of Brooklyn, and then wound up going away to Bible school for about a year Fundamentalist Baptist Bible School in upstate New York that's now not open anymore Elohim Bible Institute and from there I was exposed to Operation Mobilization. So I went with them for two months to go to Belgium, got trained and then we went to Turkey in 1979 during the coup d'etat of Ayatollah Khomeini who overthrew the Shah of Iran, and that caused a very militant response all over, especially in Turkey. That was the most radical nation, islamic nation at that time, before the revolution. So I had to go door to door in Turkey trying to get Bibles to them, get their names and addresses, and they were drawing machine guns on almost every block because it was martial law because of what happened in Iran. Guns on almost every block because it was martial law because of what happened in Iran. To this day, probably the most oppressive situation I've ever been in, and I wasn't even saved. A year and a half, I think. At that point Came back. 06:55 Long story short, wound up marrying my wife Joyce and then we went to the Soviet Union in 1980, took our wedding money about $3,000, which was a lot of money in 1980. And instead of buying furniture and settling down, we financed a six-week trip right after the Olympics to share the gospel with university students. So we were in Kiev, ukraine, for two weeks. We saw God move powerfully there, moscow, st Petersburg, which at that point it was called Leningrad. And so for six weeks we were constantly sharing the gospel, dodging KGB offices and seeing God do miraculous things. 07:42 When we came back, I had left music so all I was doing was working in a restaurant for some money to support my wife. And the Lord showed me not to go back to work but just to preach full time. So we had a few people who would support us. Pastor of the church finally found out who I was and had me give a testimony at church. Now he started giving us a little bit of money, like $25 a week. So we worked under their auspices and just evangelized, especially Sunset Park. Eventually, in 1984, our pastor, ben Crandall, sent us out to start the church, the work in Sunset Park, and, as you noted, I pastored Resurrection Church for 40 years and a few years ago I handed it over to my son, justin, because I was just traveling too much and leading other organizations and it was very difficult to manage my time. So that's a quick snapshot of what happened. 08:52 - Speaker 3 Well, I think it's very, very hard to capture over four decades of ministry. So thank you for taking us on a bit of your journey. So over four decades in ministry and all different kinds of capacities, from street preaching to missionary work to pastoring a church. How has your understanding of what ministry means evolved through all those experiences? 09:25 - Speaker 1 Well, you know, you have to contextualize your community. The gospel is in a pluralistic society, so you have to know the language of the culture. I think it was August of 78, was that he was preaching Christianese to a bunch of street kids who were laughing at him, smoking pot, drinking beer, and he was saying, you know, using words like propitiation, righteousness, imputation, justice, all these things that they had no clue what he was talking about. And I knew that as a new Christian. So I've learned to relate to my audience. As Paul said to the Jew, he became as a Jew. He never used scriptures when he was with Gentiles, but when he was with Jews he reasoned with them from the scriptures. With the Gentiles he pointed to creation, he pointed to the unknown God, using stuff that was right there on Mars Hill. So what I learned is you have to adopt. You never change the message, but your methods should always change. 10:41 And in New York City, every 10 years there's another major group that has immigrated into most communities. So you have to constantly reinvent yourself, recontextualize, based on, you know, the ethnic population, the languages and what they value, what they don't value, uh, and so we had to constantly do that in Sunset Park. Uh, started off Norwegian, dominican and Puerto Rican, and then the Norwegians left and Chinese came, and uh, then a lot of the Puerto Ricans might've left, and then Mexicans came and uh, you know, and so at first we couldn't get Mexicans in the church because the people in our church didn't have friendships with them. So then we had to work on ways to befriend Mexicans. So it's, you know, I found that in some places, especially in urban contexts like New York City, every 10 years it could be a different community, almost. So that's one thing. The method changes, the message stays the same. 11:53 - Speaker 3 Yeah, well, and I can't. I'm really struck by how the challenges they're different, but the same, right From your missionary experiences, the hotspots that you went to, we're talking about a lot of the same hotspots today the integration of new people, new ethnicities, new nationalities. That it's a little bit different, but kind of the same, right, Joe? Oh yeah, yeah, it's a little bit different, but kind of the same Right, Joe, oh yeah. 12:25 Yeah, it's super interesting. So again, over four decades of ministry, of dedicated service, can you talk a little bit about the spiritual disciplines that have kept you grounded and kept you serving for so long and kept? 12:43 - Speaker 1 you serving for so long? Sure, well, I was fortunate to have a man who discipled me who had a prayer life. That was you know. He used to pray three to five hours a day. So I teach people. If you want to learn how to pray, go to a good prayer meeting or be with someone who prays or a group that prays, because you can't be taught prayer. You could learn some of the fundamentals of you know coming by faith through the blood of Jesus, in the name of Jesus. You know you can learn that, but I had to be with somebody and it's caught more than taught, and eventually I was praying several hours a day with him. 13:23 Even our small group we called it home groups in those days there was like 30 or 40 young people it was in the heyday of the Jesus revolution, all these young people getting saved, coming to Christ or his charismatic movement as well, and many Roman Catholics are coming to Christ through the charismatic movement and coming to evangelical churches because they wanted more. And so I was in a small group where they prayed together for two hours. I mean it wasn't like what we have today. You start at seven, you end at 8.30. It was started seven and you go to midnight. We're praying, we're seeking God, we're praying over each other, we're doing life together and we had two groups a week and I was brought to Christ in that kind of environment. You know we didn't have all the distractions of having a family and children and the distractions today of video games and, you know, cell phones. So, hey, what better thing to do than to stay in this group? And so we were in a rush to get out of there and it was incredible. So I was fortunate enough to have a community of sold-out Christians who were young. They were my age and they had a prayer life, they knew God, they knew how to get through to God and the teaching it was all discipling discipleship. 14:50 Unfortunately, a lot of churches know how to build crowds but they don't know how to make disciples. Even one of the mistakes of church planning is in Scripture. I don't see church planning, I see disciple-making. Paul never tried to plant a church, but he made disciples. When you plant a church, you may or may not have disciples, but when you plant disciples you will have a church and it will be a strong church with the proper DNA. So we had that disciple-making kind of culture. We just read the book of Acts and said, okay, this is how it should be. We were too stupid to know that there are theological seminaries that actually would refute some of that. We just are dumb enough to believe the Bible, so we just mimic the Bible, the Gospels, the book of Acts, and so we had a lot of. It was like primitivism, first century model of the church, and that's how I was brought up, basically with that atmosphere it in prayer and you did what you saw in the Bible. 16:09 - Speaker 3 It really is that simple. Now you mentioned the Jesus Revolution, so I want to switch gears a little bit into culture and the kingdom, because that's something that you've written a lot about is the intersection of church and culture. From where you stand, Joe, what do you think is the most urgent challenge that's facing the American church today? 16:28 - Speaker 1 Well, I think one of the challenges that depends on what denomination depends on are they charismatic, are they evangelical, are they biblicists? What are they? I mean, it all depends on who you're talking to. In general, you have the, a disciple-making movement. It just systems cannot replace interacting with people. A lot of these churches burn their staff out because it's all about performance. There's a lot of demands and a lot of times the pastor you know they love reading the biography of Steve Jobs, but you know they don't know the church fathers. They don't know the desert fathers, they don't know, you know, about some of the people that have had encounters with the living Christ in church, history and contemporary life and they're modeling a CEO and unfortunately, a lot of these churches and pastors don't even have a prayer meeting. They don't even pray personally that much. I think there was a survey when I was in the ministry, when I was in my twenties the average pastor prayed 20 minutes a day. Now I think it might even be less than that, depending on what genre or expression of the church you're in. Of course, and as I'm not trying to cast aspersions on pastors, I think it's the hardest job in the world. But if our model is the corporate model. We're going to put more importance on strategy. You go to some of these church grow to grow seminars. You go to some of these church grow to grow seminars. Their excuse for not talking about fasting and prayer is that they assume you're doing it already. Well, unfortunately, young pastors are impressionable and if you don't say that that's the foundation of how to build a church, then they're going to think that it's not important and they're looking to use a successful megachurch pastor. If you don't bring up fasting and prayer, spiritual disciplines, corporate prayer you know all these different things, the daily office, if you don't bring all these things up in addition to the strategies, the budgets, the practical things, the logistical thing, then these pastors and many have try to build, build and many have built strong or large churches without the presence of God and without God's strength and spirit, or even without God's wisdom and sometimes outside of God's will, driven by human ambition. And that's why there's a lot of scandal, a lot of burnout. I'll tell you right now. 19:28 I mean my spiritual discipline began with seeking God early in the morning. I used to tell people meet God before you meet man, and that's what kept me through a lot of suffering, betrayal, pain was my prayer. You know, being in the presence of God early in the morning, I didn't care what had to be done. First and foremost was my time with the Lord and I tried sometimes impossible, especially when you're leading multiple organizations but I tried at first not to have, when I was just pastoring at one church, not have any appointments before 12 o'clock so I could pray and seek God and study and do all the things I wanted to do. As I began overseeing multiple networks and other things, I tried to do it. No meetings before 10 am. You know, of course sometimes you had to not do that and so you know you can't be legalistic, but always the key is always trying to. You know, spend that time with the Lord, walk in the presence of God, abide in Christ. 20:35 And in 40 years of pastoring I never took one sabbatical and I'm not saying that that was right, but I never experienced burnout. Probably came close a few times. Burnout probably came close a few times, but I think one of the main reasons why pastors suffer burnout is they don't get refreshed in the presence of God. They're always running from one meeting to the next. They think activity is productivity, they just go by counting nickels and noses on Sunday, but eventually you're going to not have the oil in your lamp and you're going to burn out, basically. 21:13 So you have to practice spiritual disciplines, not just individually but corporately, and I think that's the key to being effective in this church world today. So that's one of the challenges is the corporate CEO model. So that's one of the challenges, is the corporate CEO model. The other challenge is for independent charismatic types. If they're not in an accountable group. 21:51 Like you know, what I say to people is, if you don't have somebody who can remove you from ministry, you're already out of order. You have to have a presbytery that oversees you, even if you have an independent church. You have to have a board of elders that you're accountable to. You have to have trustees that do vote on budgets and before you spend a lot of money on anything, and so I believe that you have to have systems in place, especially when it comes to decision-making and financial processes, and if you don't do that, if you don't have that in place, you're an accident waiting to happen, especially as we represent the body of Christ. We have to walk in integrity, transparency and all that. So there's a lot of challenges right now in the body of Christ. Our network tries to address a lot of that and a lot of my teachings tries to address some of that stuff. 22:57 And just having other leaders that you could talk to, that you could do life with. A lot of pastors are lonely, they have nobody to talk to. They may be in a denomination, but unfortunately a lot of denominations, even if they have presbytery or even if they have sectional meetings every quarter, a lot of it has to do with numbers, it has to do with strategy, it's not doing life with them, and so you have to have a community that you're doing life with Peers, spiritual mothers and fathers, that kind of thing, friends, spiritual mothers and fathers, that kind of thing. Friends, spiritual sons, daughters. You have to do life with these kind of people or, man, you'll dry up, you're going to be in trouble if something like that doesn't change. 23:45 - Speaker 3 So there's a lot that you've just said, a lot of wisdom with decades of experience, I'm sure, some mistakes, lots of successes underlying that advice. Maybe we can unpack some of it in a really practical way. I want to go back to what you said about prayer and your ministry and the longevity of your ministry really beginning and being rooted in prayer. For the pastor out there that is that pastor that you described, not even praying for 20 minutes a day, I think that pastor probably knows that he ought to, but I think it was Paul in Romans who says why do I not do the things that I know I want to do? What really practical advice do you have for that pastor other than just you got to do it? 24:36 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean again the same advice I'd give to a person who just comes to Christ If you want to learn how to pray, you got to be with people who pray. Yesterday, for example, I was part of a prayer gathering with pastors in the Bronx, even though I don't live in the Bronx. I helped initiate it with one of my friends and I wanted to come. And they know how to pray. So we had an hour and a half of powerful prayer and if there was a pastor who didn't have a prayer life, he would say, oh my God, this is incredible. Let me keep coming every month. And not only that, almost all of them have great prayer meetings. Let me go to their prayer meeting, let me send my prayer team there and learn how to pray, and then let's start something here in our church. So I would say the only answer is you got to be with people who pray, who know God. You know God is spirit, and those who worship must worship him in spirit and truth. It's not just about I went to a press seminar all day right when I was a new Christian because I had a hard time. 25:50 I was already developed intellectually. I was somewhat of an intellect before I came to Christ, even though I was a musician, I was constantly reading. I'd read books, history, study, philosophy, a lot of different things, and then read fiction like the Hobbit, the Cimmerillion, the Lord of the Rings. I read that numerous. I just loved the Hobbit especially. So I came to Christ, my mind was already developed so I could read. I read the Bible, I read doctrine, I read eschatology. I read six, eight, sometimes 12 hours a day. I devoured the Bible, but when it came to prayer I could not pray more than five minutes without getting bored. It was very laborious. So I went to a prayer seminar and they taught us to create a pie chart. So I created a pie chart of 60 minutes. For five minutes I waited on God. Five minutes I read the scriptures. Five minutes I sang the Psalms. Five minutes I interceded Five minutes. I did this Five minutes. So because I was convicted, I said I got to pray at least an hour a day. So I prayed an hour a day, but it was still labor. 27:00 And one day my friend who taught me how to pray laid his hands on me so that I could be filled with the Spirit and I had an ecstatic experience that I started speaking in other languages and that experience opened up the portals of my soul where I was able to pray for an hour a day, right away, with no problem, because it bypassed my mind. I was praying in this language and next thing you know, within a week, it was two hours a day, three hours a day. Next thing, you know, I could pray five hours a day and it felt like it was five minutes. And so my friend laying hands on me, and you know, you can't just depend on one experience, you have to be filled with the spirit every day. And then, after a while, I didn't even need to depend on praying in that language. 27:50 My spirit was so full. I could just, you know, just go right into session, praise again it, I could go in and out or whatever, but but that experience opened my spirit up. So you know, intellectually I was very developed, but my spirit man was like a 98 pound weakling, as those who are my my age remember the Charles Atlas advertisements where he was a 98-pound weakling and he found out how to build his muscle and then, you know, he's able to take care of the bullies. Well, I felt like my mind was like very developed, but my spirit was very weak, but my prayer life built it up, whereas my spirit began to be stronger or as strong as my mind, and so I could easily read, but I could easily pray. But again I got to credit my dear friend Anthony DeSantis, who laid his hands on me, prayed for me, modeled prayer on me, prayed for me, modeled prayer, and opened up the portals of my soul in a way where I could reach out to God beyond my natural mind. And that was really what did it. 29:02 - Speaker 3 Wow, thank you so much for sharing that, Joe. Firstly, for just sharing that. You know, in the beginning it was really hard for you. It was labor, it was labor. It was difficult. 29:13 I think people need to hear that, especially from someone who is, you know now a prayer warrior like you are. And what I heard from you is that it's a progression, that it's a practice, that you have to put certain practices into place. I love what you said about the pie chunk every five minutes. That reminds me of my toddler. You can't go tell her to do something for an hour. Her activity has to be broken down into much smaller increments, totally, yeah, and that's how we are as we learn. And then, of course, the supernatural and all of that being done in community with others. Yes, thank you for sharing all of that being done in community with others. I think we're sharing all of that. That's really powerful. 29:58 I want to dig into some of the other things you said as well. You said something that I thought was really, really important for pastors to hear. You said that you have to have a presbytery. You have to have people who can remove you from ministry. I mean, I think, especially for young pastors or pastors who are maybe not haven't been in their roles for all that long, that that really sounds quite scary. But if that pastor is listening right now and that's sort of you know, ringing something in them, how do you get started on that process if you don't have a presbytery, if you're an independent church and you don't have that kind of thing in place? 30:41 - Speaker 1 How do you get started on that? Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's a mistake if somebody is not sent from a local church or denomination. So if you just you really strongly believe God called you to start a church, but you're not connected to either a denomination or a church, you need to pray immediately and ask God to show you people who have done this for many years and walked in integrity, befriend them and ask them to you know, once you build relationship and you have trust to be part of the extra local elder board that could meet with you on occasion and then hold you accountable and put it in your bylaws and make sure your elders know, or your leaders know, who to go to. 31:36 If there's ever an accusation that's serious enough, and in the bylaws it has to be in the minutes, or you know, or men, your of men, your bylaws with minutes. You have to have it written down or doesn't mean anything and your elders need to know about it. They need to know who will then come as your equal if you ever have a serious allegation against you that merits them to be called Like if some minor scandalous things people say about pastors all the time, elder could deal with it, somebody could deal. But I'm talking about if someone accused you of sexually abusing them or financial malfeasance, um fraud, whatever that kind of stuff. You have to have a team that could come in as your equal work with the elders and then, if you are innocent, let them tell the world you're innocent, don't you claim innocence. Let them meet you, meet the accusers and let them come up with the summary of what their belief and their recommendation is. 32:45 And a pastor would be foolish not to have that end or foolish not to listen to them. I've had friends where they were wrongfully accused but they never understood Presbytery, they never understood ecclesiology, they never understood why it's important to be accountable, and when they had certain situations arise, they thought they dealt with it just with the individuals. But they never had a board render a decision or say they were innocent or say they should step down for six months and then come back or say they're fine, they can continue to ministry. They never had that, and years later they're paying for it. And so when you're in a situation, you have to let others who are mature speak for you, Otherwise you don't have the credibility to use your word against somebody else. 33:49 - Speaker 3 So what I'm hearing from you is that a yes, it's mission critical um to have, but it's not just about removing, uh, a pastor, it's about covering too, and it's about, oh, absolutely protection and, in certain circumstances, absolutely in our network it's called Christ Covenant Coalition. 34:10 - Speaker 1 We lead with relationship, not with with, you know, legalistic structures, even though people do pay money and help support it and all that. But we do life together. We meet every week on Zoom we have about 50 to 70 every week, sometimes 80 or more, and we do it every week for an hour and a half because we just love being with you. Now we're talking about people who have a lot of influence, people who lead their own networks, who have strong churches, that kind of thing, and we meet twice a year. But we also have whole executive board of nine people that could step in and doesn't have to be all nine, you know, I would say, okay, we need two or three here or whatever. But and we've had to work as arbitrators for churches and we've had to step in with crises. 35:10 We're 26 years old now, almost, and we've had to step in many crises. We're 26 years old now, almost, and we've had to step in many times. And woe to the pastor who doesn't at least have a relationally driven collective like ours, and there's others like ours are better, I'm sure, but if you don't have something and a crisis comes, man, I don't know You're on your own. It's very, very bad. It's very bad. So there are many good networks out there. You should look for them. 35:42 - Speaker 3 That was going to be my very next question for you, Joe, which is if a pastor or an industry leader is not part of one of these networks. It sounds like you would really encourage them to go looking for one, and you know you said something about denominations and I think denominations sometimes can serve this kind of a role. Maybe sometimes it's not so effective. How would you suggest that a pastor go about looking for the right network to be a part of, to do this in community? 36:13 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean the denominations have some strengths that some of these recently developed networks don't have. Like they have old money, they have some systems in place, they have resources, they may even have retirement plans, they may have different things, but a lot of them lack real personal touch in doing life with people. I mean, I know some pastors join some denominations because they were getting money for their church plant but they couldn't take it anymore. After three or four years it was so dead they just couldn't do it. The weaknesses of some networks is you don't have a lot of money but you do have enough relational capital that you can resource each other with free advice, expertise, presbytery Sometimes you know we take offerings and I remember we helped raise $100,000 for a guy who didn't have insurance and his building burned down in 2004,. But it wasn't just Christ covenant. I was able to galvanize a lot of the pastors in the city. So it's not just our network, it's having good relationships in your city. No way do we build silos with our network, even though I oversee it. I mean the pastors I was with yesterday, the 15 pastors only three of them were in our network, the others weren't. But I'm committed to the kingdom of God. So you have to find networks, whether it's formal or not, pastors, other pastors that you're relating to, and a lot of times they could come in in an emergency because they love God and they could help you. 37:52 But the key is find a group. Whether it's more formal, we're in between a denomination and a real, just loosey-goosey kind of thing. We're not loosey-goosey but we're not a denomination. We consider it a structured fellowship, put it that way, and I think it's a great balance. We even have people in denominations, which I won't mention, that still need us because they're not getting anything from their denomination, but they stay because they get credentials that they want to keep or they'll lose. Most of the people I mean we can credential pastors and we have but some won't leave their denomination because they'll lose their property. So they stay with us, get all their feeding from us, but stay in the denomination so they won't lose their property. So yeah, there's something out there for everybody. You just got to look for it. 38:49 - Speaker 3 Yeah yeah. That's really good advice and it sounds like your network is in a real sweet spot in terms of what you can offer. That's really great. I want to ask you a few questions about leadership, Joe, from all your years of experience. So you've led through multiple seasons. Now You've started things, You've stepped away from things. How do you discern when it's time to step away from something into something new, perhaps? 39:21 - Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I believe there's several signs. One is you start losing your passion, but you have to discern whether you're losing your passion because you're distracted with something you're not supposed to be distracted with. Maybe you're not praying, maybe you're not in God's presence, but, assuming you're in God's presence, you're seeking God, you're walking with the Lord, but you're losing passion. And and then the second sign you don't have the grace anymore to have meticulous meetings with your staff, even if you delegate it to someone else. You just it's very hard to continue with overseeing certain processes. And then the other thing is you, just when you pray, you don't have vision for the future. Like a lot of times when I was leading our church man, I had vision when I was praying, I'd get God would lay things on my heart for the church and I'd extend the church and all the. And you know, after a certain point, most of the vision I was getting was for the whole city, not the local church, then for the nation, then nations, and I realized me I think, or might've been 52. I think in 2010,. I realized it was really hard, but I continued on. And you know, I had people I had raised up and but I had to bless them, as they felt led to start their own churches. So I was left in a position where I had to be a visionary, continue to meet with the elders, preach. I never had to preach every week. I developed a preaching team 20 years ago. I only preached 30% of the time so the church could get an expression of the Ephesians 4, 11 ministries Every week. They would hear from either a pastor or a prophetic person, or evangelistic person, or a teacher or someone who's apostolic, like myself, and so I felt like that was very healthy. They didn't depend on me. But it was getting harder and harder and harder. It would take another podcast to describe what I went through. But thankfully, three years ago, I was able to release the campuses we were overseeing to my son, justin, who's doing a great job. 42:05 But yeah, I knew my passions were somewhere else. The same thing happened. I started something, a coalition for leaders of movements in 2013. It was a United States-based coalition for those who led networks Built it up to several hundred leaders of networks almost 300. Had passion for it. I started a futures alliance where they would give me their top young people between 25 and 40 and meet with them on Zoom once a month, had annual conferences. We had a lot of Zoom meetings, but then I started getting a pull towards the globe and I felt like the grace was leaving me. For that, thank God, I have someone who's very, very capable that I put in there and he took my advice and started focusing on regions, not just annual meetings, and that's doing well, um, but uh, yeah. 43:05 So it has to do with your passion, your focus, and what are you getting vision for when you're dreaming, when you're praying, when you believe God is speaking to you. Are you getting vision for this or is it for something else? And if it's something else, what is it? Identify it and then have other people speak into you. I'm probably the most accountable person I know. 43:37 I always not only had elders, I had leaders in our movement, leaders in the other movements. 43:43 I was constantly getting input, constantly getting advice, having people who are mentors in different areas, having people pray for me. 43:52 You know, never be so proud that you don't have mentors or I never made any big decisions, never without either going to the elders getting a consensus of what God's will was, or our networks leaders, always going to hear from mature leaders, because God operates through the body. I'm very leery of people who run around saying God said this, God said that and they've not vetted it through the voice of other seasoned leaders to give them feedback and critique. I'm very leery of that and that's why you also have people make foolish decisions, put churches in big debt with huge, massive building programs, and it's all because of the quote-unquote word they got from God when they don't even know if it was really God or their ambition. That's why you need to have people speak into you who, objectively, will be honest, not just yes, men and women, but people speak into you and tell you and pray with you, give you feedback on what they believe they're hearing from you and what they believe the Lord would say as well. 45:11 - Speaker 3 Joe, thank you so much for sharing all that. I think this is really important wisdom, I think, for pastors to hear right now. Joe, like over the last few years, it's felt like there's been a changing of the guard in New York right in so many ways. I think the most notable changing of the guard was the passing of Tina Keller, but there have been a number of other things in New York and outside of New York and I think this ability to really discern when the Lord wants you to step away, perhaps into something new, it was a really important one so that he can do something like that. 45:51 Mm-hmm, yeah, do something like that Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I continue to hear from you, Joe, this theme of leading in community, leading with resources that can control or can collect. It sounds like it's one of the most important themes of your learning in all of your years of relationship. 46:13 - Speaker 1 Yeah, definitely, definitely Walking in, definitely definitely Walking in community. 46:18 - Speaker 3 Okay, so last question for you, Joe, since we are coming up on the top of the hour. Joe, if you could go back to 25-year-old you and give 25-year-old you any piece of advice that might help you know, 25-year-old you to do ministry better, what would it be? 46:40 - Speaker 1 First thing I would say is you're going to suffer a lot, you're going to be betrayed, you're going to experience incredible pain, pain and keep going and keep seeking God and keep you know doing what God has called you to do. Because when you look back, joseph, after several years, you're going to realize that you grew the most during that time, even if you experienced what some, like St John of the Cross, would say the dark night of the soul you would find as you look back. God was with you. God taught you more during that time, you developed more discernment and, most importantly, you could only humble yourself so much. You can't get everything from a Bible study of prayer. 47:37 Sometimes God has to use circumstances because the human heart is so wicked that it takes life. Sometimes there's only so much we could understand the Bible and apply it to ourselves. We don't even know ourselves. So God allows some real, real tough circumstance, not because he's mean, not because he hates you, because his number one goal is to make you like him. And it's in our brokenness that, as Paul said, when I'm weak, I'm strong. In our brokenness we experience the most dependency on Christ and the most spiritual formation takes place in the midst of the cauldron, of the fires of life and I would say, Joe, don't quit, keep going. 48:29 I would say don't seek platform, seek God's presence, and all these other things will happen anyway. Don't try to build your own ego, logo or agenda. Seek first God's kingdom. Don't measure yourself by comparing yourself with others, because everyone has a unique calling. Just know what God has called you to do. And one of the last things I would say is the greatest success you will ever experience will be being committed to someone else's success. Wash the feet of pastors, wash the feet of others. 49:16 Jesus didn't say it was wrong to be great in the kingdom when they said they wanted to be great. He never said it was wrong. He said if you want to be great, be the servant of all. And I would say to my 25-year-old self I'd say be the greatest servant you could ever be. And the most mature people are the ones who are committed to other people's success. And once you're committed to other people's success, when they do well, you know, the tide raises every boat and he'll bless you as well. It's like the beloved apostle John said in 2 John. He said beloved. I have no greater joy than to see my children. Walk in the truth. And I would say, Joe, take the most joy in developing people, seeing them become everything God has called them to be, and don't worry about your own identity, your own success. Get success in the success of others, and that's what I would say to any 25-year-old. 50:30 - Speaker 3 Wow, thank you for that, Joe. I think that blessed a lot of young pastors out there. I think that strengthened and built up a lot of pastors. That is a great exhortation for finishing the race. Amen, amen, well, thank you. Much wisdom and insight. I know I've been blessed by it. I'm going to be taking a lot of this back to my own church where I serve as an elder, and I hope that many others do as well. Thank you. 51:04 - Speaker 1 Anytime, anytime. Good help, I'm here. 51:07 - Speaker 3 Thank you. 51:07 - Speaker 2 Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. 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