Leaders Do It Together - Joseph Mattera | Faithly Stories

I think it's a mistake if somebody is not sent from a local church or a 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 so many years and walked an integrity befriend them ask them to be part of the extra local elderboard 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. Dr. Joseph material welcome to the Faithly Stories podcast. Well it's good to be with you thanks for doing what you do. Appreciate it. 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 on right with you I'd love to go back to the beginning where it all began how did God call you to ministry. Yeah well I was on my way to making a good living in music and the Lord got ahold 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 at disappointment 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 and as an aside I wanted to make a lot of money to also build homes for old people I had a hard for older people and I wanted to be able to put people seniors in homes for free and take care of them so that 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 you know I'm reading the Bible six eight hours a day sharing the gospel all the time and I organized an outreach for my old friends use the follow me and hear me play the guitar and we organized an outreach for my youth the youth group I was going to to minister so we had about 70 of my old friends in a school yard on Fort Hamilton and East Fifth Street in Brooklyn you know wins the terrace and the unfortunately the people in the church who preached didn't know how to relate to them and the event was almost over and at a desperation because I was going to organize 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 come forward and out of the 70 about 16 of my friends ran forward some of them that I know of is 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 so then I started going on the New York City subway trains and I took one guy with me and all 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 give my testimony to 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 ferry going from 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 have been a thousand people who would listen maybe it was more because of the whole you know whole ship I don't know how many it fit and and then so I just had such a burden to share the gospel so I was not trained in preaching in school I never took homiletics I was trained by doing it in the streets of Brooklyn and and then one up going away to Bible school for about a year fundamentalist back to his Bible school in upstate New York that's now not open anymore Elohim Bible Institute and from there 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'état of Ayatollah Khmerni who overthrew the Shah Iran and that caused very military 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 drawn machine guns almost every block as 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 a long story short wound up marrying my wife Joyce and then we went to the Soviet Union in 1980 took out wedding money about three thousand dollars 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 with that point it was called Lenin grad and so for six weeks we were constantly sharing the gospel dodging KGB offices and seeing God do miraculous things 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 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 that who I was and had me give a testimony a church he started giving us a little bit of money like twenty five dollars a week so we worked under their auspices and just evangelized especially Sunset Park eventually in 1984 a pastor Ben Krandel sent us out to start the church to work in Sunset Park and as you noted I passed your 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 what happened well I think it's very very hard to capture over four decades of ministry so thank you for for taking us on a bit of your journey so over four decades of 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 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 so the mistake the youth pastor was making it our first event I was talking about I think it was August of 78 was that he was preaching Christian ease to a bunch of street kids who were laughing out of smoke and pod drinking beer and he was saying you know using words like perpetuation righteousness imputation justice all these things that they had no clue who's talking about and I knew that as a new question 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 reasons with them from the scriptures with Gentiles he pointed to creation he pointed to the unknown God using stuff that was right there on my cell so what I learned is you have to adopt you never changed the message but your methods should always change and in New York City every 10 years there's another major group that is 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 and so we had to constantly do that in sunset park started off Norwegian Dominican and Puerto Rican and then the Norwegians left and Chinese came and then a lot of the Puerto Ricans might have left and then Mexicans came and 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 it in some places especially in urban contexts like New York City every 10 years it's it could be a different community almost so that's one thing the method changes the message stays the same yeah well and I can't if I'm really struck by how the challenges there they're different but the scene right from your missionary experiences the hot spots that you went to we're talking about a lot of the same hot spots today you know the integration of new people and ethnicities new nationalities that it's a little bit different but kind of the same right Joe oh yeah 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 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 now 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 even our small group we called it home groups in those days there's like 30 of 40 young people who's in a haydave to Jesus revolution all these young people getting saved coming to Christ or as charismatic movement as well and many Roman Catholics are coming to Christ to the charismatic movement and coming to evangelical churches because they wanted more and 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 started seven you ended 830 it was started seven and you go to midnight you know with praying with seeking God we're praying over each other we're doing life together and we had two groups a week and I was 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 weren't rushed 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 teacher who is all discipling discipleship 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 plan is is in scripture I don't see church planning I see disciple making Paul never tried to plan a church but he made disciples when you plan a church you may and may not have disciples but when you plant disciples you will have a church and it'll be a strong church with the proper DNA so we we had that disciple making kind of cultured we just read the book of Acts and said okay this is how it should be we were too stupid to know that they're you know theological seminaries it actually would refute some of that we just dumb enough to believe the Bible so we just mimic the Bible the gospels the book of Acts and so we had a lot almost like primitiveism first century model of the church and that's how I was brought up basically with that atmosphere well it sounds so simple but it works right your ministry was rooted in prayer is rooted in prayer and you did what you saw in the Bible it really is that simple now you mentioned that 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 well I think one of the challenges that depends on what denomination depends on are they charismatic are they evangelical are they bibl assists what are they I mean it all depends on who you're talking to in general you have the church growth model that in my opinion mimics the CEO model and doesn't mimic the biblical model of leadership there's a lot of good principles and strategies but you can't franchise churches and have you know a disciple making movement it just systems cannot replace interacting with people a lot of these churches burn their staff out because 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 and 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're 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 20s 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 it's I'm not trying to cast dispersions on pastors I think it's the hardest job in the world but if our model is the corporate model we're gonna put more importance on strategy you go to some of these church grow to grow seminars they're excuse to 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 gonna think that it's not important and they look at a use a successful mega church pastor 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 and these pastors and many have tried to 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 what is a lot of scandal a lot of burnout I'll tell you right now 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 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 that 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 want to do as I began overseeing multiple networks and other things I tried to do it no meetings before 10 a.m. 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 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 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 gonna you're gonna not have the oil on your lamp and you're gonna burn out basically 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 the other challenges you know for independent charismatic types if they're not in a an accountable group like I lead Christ covenant coalition and we do have accountability for our members if you're just independent and you're not part of a denomination 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 prosperity 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 an 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 is tries to address some of that stuff and and just having other leaders that you could talk to that you could do life with a lot of pastors lonely they have nobody to talk to they may be in a denomination but unfortunately a lot of denominations even if they have prosperity or even if they have sectional meetings at recorder 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 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 gonna be in trouble if if something like that doesn't change 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 ministering the longevity of your ministry really beginning and being rooted in prayer for the pastor out there that is that pastor that you described like not even praying for 20 minutes a day I think that pastor probably knows that he ought to but I think it was Paul and 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 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 was 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 you know 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 true this not just about I went to a press seminar all day right when I was a new crush because I had a hard time I was already developed intellectually I was somewhat of an intellect before I came to Christ even I was a musician it's constantly reading I'd read books history you know study philosophy a lot of different thing then read fiction like the Hobbit the similarly in 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 twelve hours a day I deviled 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 press seminar and they taught us to create a pie charts 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 to 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 yeah and one day my friend who taught me how to pray later his hands on me said I could be filled with the spirit and I had an an ecstatic experience that I started speaking in other languages in that experience opened up the portals in my soul where I was able to pray for an hour a day right right away with no problem because the bypassed my mind I was praying in this language and next day no within a week it was two hours a day three hours a day next 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 it my spirit is so full I could just you know just go right into session praise again it I could go in and out of 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 were my age remember to the Charles Atlas advertisements where it 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 a credit my my dear friend Anthony DeSantis who laid his hands on me prayed for me model 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 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 is difficult I think people need to hear that especially from someone who is you know now a prayer warrior like you or and what I heard from you is that it's a progression that it's a practice that you have to put certain cases into place I love what you said about the pitch of every five minutes that reminds me of my toddler you can't go tell her and to do something for an hour her activity has to broken down and do much smaller increments yeah and that's how we are as we learn and then of course the supernatural and you know and then doing and all of that being done in community with others thank you for sharing all that's really powerful 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 press this year 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 respiratory issue or an independent church and you don't have that kind of thinking place hadn't gift don't know it's amazing 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 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 so 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 elderboard that could meet with you on occasion and then hold you accountable put it in your bylaws and make sure your elders know or your leaders know who to go to if there's ever an accusation that's serious enough and in the bylaws it has to be in the minutes or you know a menu of menu your bylaws would minutes you have to have a 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 it's a minor scandalous things people say about past is all the time elder could deal with it somebody could do it but I'm talking about if someone accused you of sexually abusing them or a financial malfeasance 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 accuses and let them come up with the the summary of what they are belief and their recommendation is and it passed to be foolish not to have that end or foolish not to listen to them you know I've had friends where they were wrongfully accused but they never understood prosperity 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 you know they find they can continue the ministry and never had that in years later they're paying for it and so when you're in a situation you have to let others who mature speak for you otherwise you don't have the credibility as your word against somebody else so what I'm hearing from you is that a yes it's mission critical to how it's not just about removing a pastor it's about covering to and it's about protection and in certain circumstances absolutely an hour network it's called Christ to cover the coalition we lead with relationship not with you know legalistic structures even though people do pay money and help support it with 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 know we're talking about people 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 an executive board and if any of our members ever had an emergency we have a 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 a work as arbitrators for churches and we've had a step in with crises where 26 years old now almost and we've had a step in many times and won't to the pastor doesn't at least have a relationally driven collective like ours and his others like ours are better I'm sure but if you don't have something in a crisis comes man I don't know I don't 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 and that was going to be my very next question for you Joe which is if I'm a pastor or an administrator is not part of one of these networks it sounds like you would really encourage them to go looking for a while and you know you let's you set something about denominations and I think denominations sometimes been served as kind of a role maybe sometimes is not so effective how would you how would you suggest that a pastor go about looking for the right network to be a part of to do this in community 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 four years it was so dead they 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 prosperity sometimes you know we take offerings and I remember we helped raise a hundred thousand dollars we're a guy who didn't have insurance and his building burned down 2004 but it wasn't just Christ's 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 I know way do we build silos with our network even though I ever see 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 a formal or not pastors other pastors you're 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 but the key is find a group whether it's more formal where in between a denomination and a real just Lucy Goosey kind of thing we're not Lucy Goosey but we're not a denomination where we consider it a 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 they want to keep or they'll lose most of the people I mean we can credential pastors we have but some won't leave the denomination because they'll lose their property so they stay with us get all their feeding from us but stay in the denomination today we'll lose their property so yeah there's something out there for everybody you just got to look for yeah yeah that's 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 that's really great I want to ask you a few questions about leadership John 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 on you from something into something you perhaps yeah well I believe there's several signs one is you start losing your passion but you have to discern whether you'll lose your passion because you're distracted with something you're not supposed to be distracted with maybe 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 then the second sign you don't have to grace anymore to have meticulous meetings with your staff even if you delegated 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 a church man I had vision when I was praying I gave God would lay things in my heart for the church and I'd extend the church and you know after certain point most of the vision I was getting with for the whole city not the local church then for the nation then nations and I realized man I I'm not the right guy for this job so I and that started believe it or not I'm I'll be 67 this week but started when I was 55 it took me I think or might have 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 a bless them as they felt led to stalk their own churches so I was left in a position where I had to be a visionary continue to move the elders preach I never had a 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 for 11 ministries every week they would get here for me they're a pastor or prophetic person or evangelistic person or a teacher or so when he's apostolic like myself and so I felt like that was very healthy they didn't depend on me but I just it was getting hotter and hotter and hotter 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 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 the 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 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 but yeah 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 I always not only had elders I had leaders in our movement leaders in the other movies I was constantly getting input constantly getting advice having people who are mentors in different areas having people pray for me you know never be so proud that you don't have mentors or I never made any big decisions never without either going today elders getting a consensus of what God's 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 season 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 man and women but people speak into you and tell you and pray with you and give you feedback on what they believe you they're hearing from you and what they believe the Lord would say as well 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 the most notable changing of the guard was the passing to Nutella 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 it was it was a really important one so that he can do it and I continue to hear from you Joe this theme of leading in community leading with races that can come from or can collect it sounds like it's one of the most important themes of we're learning in all of your years of resolution yeah definitely definitely walking in community okay so last question for you Joe since we are coming out on the top of the album 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 first thing I would say is you'll go in to suffer a lot you're gonna be betrayed you're gonna experience incredible 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 gonna realize that you grew the most during that time even if you experienced what some like Saint 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 that you could only humble yourself so much you can't get everything from a Bible study of prayer 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 us so we don't even know ourselves so God allows some real real tough circumstance not because he's mean not because he hates you and 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 and 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 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 committed being committed to someone else's success wash the feet of pastors wash the feet of others 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 have 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 it'll bless you as well it's like the beloved Apostle John said in second John he said beloved I have no greater joy don't see my children walking 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 well thank you for that Joe I think that blessed a lot of young pastors out there I think that's strengthened and built up a lot of pastors that is a great exhortation for finishing the news and thank you so much for your time today this has been really such an incredible conversation filled with so much wisdom and insight I know I've been blessed by it I'm gonna be taking a lot of this back to my own church where I serve as an elder and and I hope that many others do as well thank you for any time any time to get help I'm here thank you thank you for tuning in to the faithfully stories podcast we pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey the faithfully stories podcast is brought to you by faithfully an online community committed to empowering church leaders pastors staff and volunteers the faithfully 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 great 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 faithfully podcast stay bold stay faithful and never underestimate the 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