Navigating Unexpected Pregnancy With Grace and Truth - Sam Wheatley

00:00 - Speaker 1
How do you extend grace to people who know they're damaged, they've fallen short and have tried everything they can do morally, religiously to correct it, and can't. They are hungry for relief of a Savior who really genuinely loves and cares for them and who looks at them with truth and grace. Hi, my name is Sam Wheatley. I am the Director of Digital Services for Avail NYC. Avail is an in-person and online platform for people facing difficult decisions, specifically around pregnancy, past abortion and relationship difficulties, and so I manage the digital department, which includes marketing, content development and IT support. And this is my Faithly Story.

00:48 - 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 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.

01:29 - Speaker 3
How did you get involved with AVAIL?

01:33 - Speaker 1
So I've been involved with AVAIL since its very founding, because my wife was one of the original founding board members of AVAIL. Back in the early 90s, we were here in New York, at a church plant at the time that grew called Redeemer Presbyterian, with Tim Keller, and Tim was being pressured at that point to talk about the issue of abortion. And so, instead of talking about abortion, tim and his creative way began to talk about what he called the doctrine of carefulness, and he showed throughout scripture how life, how God treated life with care at every stage. And so, whether that is life in the womb, the life of those that are disabled, the life of those at the end of life, care at every point. God treats people with carefulness, and he also calls us, as his church, to treat people with carefulness. And so we had a situation at the church with a couple who were unexpectedly pregnant. They went ahead and had abortion without talking to anybody, and they started having problems afterwards, and so they came to the diaconate and started asking questions about what do we do, where do we go, and I just asked my wife if she would research and find some answers of places we could refer these folks to, and she and a group of friends started looking and realized there was not really any resources then for somebody in that situation and especially somebody wanting a grace-filled way to process and move towards wholeness.

03:13
And so, um yeah, in the early 90s, about seven women founded what was then called the pregnancy the midancy Support Center, which then became Avail in the 2000s. And so, yeah, we've been involved as a family with Avail. My wife was a founder, we've been supporters the whole year, and then, about two years ago, I came on to lead the development of a digital product that Avail was producing called Better Clarity. Digital product that Avail was producing called Better Clarity, and Better Clarity was a self-guided online platform for people facing these issues, because our research had told us that people were looking online not wanting to talk face-to-face to people about these sort of intimate issues, and instead wanted the anonymity of the online experience to be able to process, and so we took our model of care, developed a strategy for how to model that on a platform, and I came on to help build that project and then launch it, which we did this past spring, and now, six months in, we're seeing pretty incredible results with it.

04:30 - Speaker 3
What is that digital product and how is that different than the in-person?

04:35 - Speaker 1
So the in-person?

04:36
Well, actually, since COVID, in-person means on Zoom, like this, 90% of our appointments are on Zoom.

04:44
Like this, 90% of our appointments are on Zoom for the convenience and also the anonymity Somebody can blank their screen because what we've seen is the whole dealing with these kind of issues is a journey of trust, building trust, and it takes time for that trust to be developed. So our digital product recognized we needed to build trust from the get-go, and so people were distrustful. Also, in this space, people were feeling extremely cross-pressured that a lot of folks, both on both sides of the political spectrum, were pressuring people to make hasty decisions rather than wise, thoughtful decisions that were in line with people's own core values and their own future desires. Whole emphasis was in creating a digital platform to build trust, help people slow down and to provide them with the tools that they needed to process and make wise decisions, and so I think your original question, danny, was like how do we do that? So we have sort of short sessions, so a session is like four or five tiles that deal with one specific issue.

06:12 - Speaker 3
What do you mean?

06:13 - Speaker 1
tiles. Well, it's almost like a carousel, you know, like a carousel where you'd flip through online. These tiles are maybe a specific question or a prompt or something for somebody to think through, but it's one discrete topic that somebody's processing through in that.

06:34 - Speaker 2
It's not the whole project.

06:38 - Speaker 1
It's just one little piece and so like for a decision making. One of the sessions might be something like how do I just breathe? You know how do I slow down my racing thoughts? And so there might be five simple ways to begin to slow down your racing thoughts. Then the next tile that would be prompted, or the next session that would be prompted, would follow up on that.

07:04
You know how do I identify what I'm feeling. You know what are the emotions that I'm having, how do I recognize those? And it can be through several different ways. It's not always just journaling is one, but there's also image selection, so there's different types of images that somebody might select. Oh, this image seems to jive with what I'm feeling or processing. And then they're able to explore that and clarify, like on an emotions wheel, what that feeling exactly is. And then the next session would prompt them. Okay, well, how do you process feelings of loss or feelings of anxiety? And so it's guided, sort of the algorithm guides people through the process, but they have their autonomy and place to be able to choose how far they want to go, how long they want to go, whether they want to remain anonymous or whether they want to create an account to enhance their experience or not. It's totally private. We don't collect information other than just helping people guide through the platform.

08:17 - Speaker 3
So it sounds like it's like a more of a self-service kind of thing where I guess you're helping them to be more introspective. But when does the touch point of like connecting them to either a counselor or someone to guide them happen? Or is that usually like you wait for them to be comfortable to like reach out?

08:39 - Speaker 1
Well, one of the things is, we realized the challenge of scaling. So there's about 2.6 million unexpected pregnancies in the US every year. We identified that about 87% of those people don't talk to anybody or don't want to talk to anybody. So that's really our target is the 87%, and so that's roughly a little over 2.2, 2.4 million people out there. So in order to scale for that audience, we realized that we could never.

09:14
A these folks don't want to talk to anybody. B they're never going to walk into any sort of counseling center or any sort of traditional service provider, and so we wanted to create a platform that was totally self-directed. And then also, ultimately, we know that they do need to be connected back into community, but the community that they need oftentimes they already possess. Again, about four years ago, we did a very quantitative, qualitative research into the experience of abortion by people who experienced it, both male and female, and what we saw is that when people experience an unexpected pregnancy, they change their circle of trust, and so, even though they have, oftentimes, people that could help them or that care for them, they isolate from those people, and so our ultimate goal is not for us to be the solution to their problem. Our ultimate goal is to equip them to be able to go to the resources they already have and be able to capitalize on those for their resilience and future. And yeah, I mean that's. Ultimately the scalability is that we want people connected to their own communities.

10:37
Now we want to also develop national partnerships with other organizations who could offer and provide help and support and aid and those kind of things, and we're actively engaged in that project as well to be able to offer that service. Also because so many of our in-person appointments here in New York City are virtual appointments or Zoom appointments. You know we have capacity eventually to link those that are most in need to somebody who could actually help them.

11:15 - Speaker 3
How do people find out about you guys?

11:19 - Speaker 1
Marketing. That's a big part of what we're doing. It's a big part of what we're doing. It's a startup, so we have a big marketing budget in order to understand what's the SEO that people are using to search for these issues. Who are those people? How do they connect with the personas that we've identified from our own research? And then so, yeah, we develop ad campaigns based on what people are searching for and need.

11:46
Ad campaigns based on what people are searching for and need. For example, we know men oftentimes search for she's pregnant. I don't want it. And so that's one of our ad campaigns is around the idea of what happens when you're as a guy. You find out your girlfriend's pregnant and your initial response is I don't want it. And so that ad campaign directs them to a landing page where they're able to go through one of these tiled sessions of identifying their own emotions. And then how do you talk to your girlfriend about your emotions? How do you both express? How do you not process necessarily in the raw with her, but how do you find ways to think through this issue so that, when you do speak with her, you're in a much better headspace?

12:38 - Speaker 3
Is this specifically for Christians, or is it just anybody?

12:42 - Speaker 1
No, it's for everybody. It's for everyone. Yeah, I mean, we are coming from a faith perspective. We are not amoral about the issues, but the way we think about it is that we're not acting moralistically, that we want to respect people's agency but also provide the appropriate tools that they willingly, can, actively, can use to make decisions that their future selves will be happy with. Because, again, we know, again, we started with research. Everything is driven by research. No one in our experience saw abortion as a positive thing. It was often the end result of a lot of unresolved dilemmas, and so we identified that if we could help people in the process to resolve those dilemmas, to figure out pathways through them, they inevitably ended up making choices that were healthier, that were better, that were more wholesome and life-giving for everybody involved.

13:56 - Speaker 3
Could you give me some examples of what those dilemmas would be and how it shaped their decisions?

14:02 - Speaker 1
Sure how it shapes their decisions. Sure, someone's in college and they think they can't graduate if they have a child, and so we provide ways of thinking through that, like here's how you could talk. You know, this is sort of more in person at the moment, but we're actually developing on our online platform a partnership with an organization that works with women in college, and so one of the things is like how do you talk to your you know student affairs office about special, you know cases for being pregnant in school? You know how do you work with your professors to solve? You know, maybe your due date and your finals are the same week. You know there are a lot of those kind of practical ways.

14:54
The other thing is like well, how do I apply for childcare support? How do I find resources? A lot of those, you know questions are out there, but buried in a lot of other information, so we became sort of a one-stop shop for somebody facing that particular dilemma. Another dilemma is oftentimes, interestingly, faith communities. Faith communities can actually force people to feel a lot more shame about being pregnant, and so it actually isolates people from the people who could actually provide support, and so one of the things is how do I talk to maybe my parents or my faith community about being pregnant? You know, what can I expect? How do I identify safe people to be my advocates? How do I navigate this process of dealing with shame and guilt and coming to a place of forgiveness and acceptance?

15:58 - Speaker 3
Do you guys reach out to churches to try to partner with them as part of your marketing campaign, or is it always?

16:05 - Speaker 1
just no, I mean again our audience. I mean we're not opposed to that, but it's not our primary strategy. Our primary strategy is the people facing these issues and so, um, we just haven't. You know, we? There's a partner organization we do work with called ProGrace, and their whole mission is equipping churches how to welcome and understand the issues of pregnancy and abortion for folks in the church, and so that's their lane and we love them, them and we think what they do is great, and but we just have a slightly different lane.

16:49 - Speaker 3
So you've been a pastor for a really long time too, and I saw you went to Westman. Yeah, You're like my alumni and you mentioned like with church it's tricky because there is a moral aspect to it and the Bible is really clear about life. However, you were talking about not being moralistic about this issue. So how do you think churches can better approach this sensitive topic with people to create that space for grace where the people going through it they don't feel more shameful than they do?

17:25 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean. What's interesting, danny, is that oftentimes the church camps out on issues that people already know. You know, like I'm pregnant, you know, hey, yeah, I knew that probably wasn't wise decisions that I was making, and they're already self-judging. You know what they need is help and support and encouragement, you know, and they feel like the church is not going to give it to them, and so that's one of the reasons they isolate from the church. They're like I'm just going to hear more of that internal critic from people around me. The other thing is, like people know this is a child, you know, like there's no questions, and yet a lot of the pro-life movement has spent a lot of money and effort and ink on this is a baby. Well, everybody knows it's a baby, it's not a nobody gives birth to a lawn chair. You know, they know. They know what it is, they know where it came from, they know how it got there, and so the question is oftentimes deeper than that issue you know, like okay, what was you know?

18:41
what they need is the support of like yeah, okay, this is life. Life is complex. You made a mistake. You probably already know you made a mistake. How do we move forward from here? What's the pathway? How do we, how does the gospel equip us to deal with our own self-shame over sin? I mean, we're all in the same boat. We confess our sin every week, so how do I process this? That's a more public thing than you or the rest of the church who's dealing with similar issues that just are able to be more hidden easily. And so how do we recognize we're a community of people who step out of line, and yet God is still gracious and kind to us. He doesn't give us what we deserve. Instead, he gives us grace and empowers us by the Spirit to make better decisions for our future.

19:44 - Speaker 3
But the pushback is how much grace is too much grace? You know, it's always that in the back of people's minds.

19:51 - Speaker 1
I mean theologically. The question is how gracious is God? Is he gracious 80%, or is he gracious all the way through?

20:02 - Speaker 3
I mean, I'm actually recently switched camps on this issue of being gracious because I've already seen it like in real life in my relationship with other people where I've given them way more grace than I would in the past. And it's a funny thing where a softer touch over the course of like decades it compounds to a better relationship. And, yeah, people still make the same mistakes. But sometimes and looking at my own life I can't even stop myself sometimes. You know when you're in the moment but, yeah, when god finally changes your mind and your heart, you realize the people who are the most gracious to you. Those are the people that I tend to run back toward, you know.

20:49 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean it's, you know. I think it's a fundamentally a view of what produces change. You know, are people changed by sort of finger pointing? And I don't think so. I think people are changed by, like what you're talking about, the people who have shown me grace, who have been kind, who I knew I screwed up, and yet they knew I screwed up, and yet they still treated me with compassion, even when they had to say challenging things to me.

21:22
I mean, I think the gospel combines things that oftentimes we think are uncombinable, like truth and grace, like we tend to pit truth against grace instead of understanding it is truth and grace welded together. They, you know, that's what produces change. It's like, hey, I'm not ignoring the situation, I'm not ignoring and pretending, you know, but I'm also not ever, I'm not ever going to abandon or leave you. I mean, again, you hear echoes of scripture here you know, I'll never leave you or forsake you, you know, forsake you, you know. And so that's the hard, what we would call kind of the third way approach of a lot of times, sort of on any issue, we can get caught up in the ditch on the right or the ditch on the left and think the only option is switching camps from a ditch on one side to a ditch on the other side when there's like a six lane highway in between.

22:27
Sometimes we just need to switch lanes.

22:29
You know we don't need to drive into a ditch and so with people on sort of these issues of like pregnancy or abortion, to realize like, okay, you know, the Bible is clear, people's conscience is clear, people know these things, I don't have to camp out on it, you know, I can say, hey, how do I help here in the middle? How do I, how do I help this process so that you make good decisions, so that you make wiser future decisions, so that this thing that happened you're able to learn from, grow from and move into a healthier space in the future? And how do you help other people with this? How do you excuse me? How do you encourage people going through the same thing you're going through?

23:20 - Speaker 3
How did you come to faith in Christ and how did you come from your pastoral experience to what you're doing now?

23:29 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so I became a Christian. Well, I grew up in the South in the seventies, and so, there's, you know, as Flannery O'Connor says, the South is Christ haunted. You know, there's. No, you can't avoid issues of faith. But, and we went to church regularly as a family and all that, but I don't think I had it.

23:49
Sort of a turning point in my faith was in high school where I realized, hey, I can't shake sin, it just keeps getting at me and no matter how much self-effort I put into it, it's not going to change. And so that really brought me to the place of I need some help. And I was in a gracious relationship with a youth pastor who, in a small group Bible study, was just consistently pointing every issue back to the person and work of Jesus and began to see man. This is a compelling figure, you know. He is different and profoundly gracious. And so it was in the context of that small group Bible study I placed my faith in Christ, began to walk as a Christian, tried to align my life to Christian values. How old were you? 15, 16.

24:53
Okay, Then went to college, had a great Christian community, did a couple of summer projects in different places and then, after college came on staff of the Christian ministry full time, which brought me to New York City in the late 80s working in inner city ministry and that was really eye-opening too christian ministries that what was success and what was not success and is oftentimes, you know, not what was touted wasn't always what was actual for ministries in places of poverty and began to see there was a need for this kind of third way approach. Could you give me an example? What I used to call drive-by ministries that would pop up at Christmas, give away a lot of gifts, claim a lot of success and then they're gone in February and the neighborhood's not changed at all. And yet there were also, on the flip side, sort of lots of little mom and pop ministries that were faithfully present doing all kinds of stuff that was far more effective and yet got far less praise.

26:28
Or you know, notoriety for those things, and so I began to realize, like what's behind the story is most important, and so, yeah, so started. We were part of Redeemer as it first got started, and so that was really transformative, seeing what we felt like at the time was a church that really embodied a gospel stance of this third way, neither sort of right wing or left wing, but tried to hold truth and love together in a fresh way, which then led me to go to westminster I started.

27:08
They were offering extension courses, um, at the time, and so I started, you know, taking greek and introduction and ministry and those kind of things here in the city while we were working in Washington Heights, and then ended up matriculating to Westminster, graduating then sort of a typical church journey. I went on staff at a church for three years in Atlanta and then moved to Salt Lake City and planted a church there for 16 years and then came back here to New York in 2016 to help on the executive team at Redeemer as Tim Keller was stepping down and helped sort of re-manage how we were going to divvy up the congregations and ministries in ways that made sense. Then I went to Dallas for a few years in pastoral ministry but was really thinking through like what's next?

28:00
I felt like I'd kind of come to the end of my pastoral phase of ministry, and then that's when Avail reached out to me to come on to help with building this platform and so, yeah, I've enjoyed that work. A lot of it is, you know, I wasn't necessarily a marketing expert or IT expert, but I've learned a lot in the last two years and you know, what I feel like I do do well is manage people and listen and sort of keep the user journey at the center of what we're doing, which is, I think, helped guide me through this transition.

28:42 - Speaker 3
What was your time at Westminster like? Because I think you were like maybe the last class with Pete Enns and the whole turnover, right yeah.

28:52 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, I was there what I would call kind of the golden age of.

28:57 - Speaker 3
Westminster. I thought that was it.

29:02 - Speaker 1
You know again, it kind of keeps going back to the same thing I keep talking about. Claire Davis was a professor at Westminster and Claire used to say all of church history is really a pendulum swing between extremes and it's this kind of truth and grace.

29:18
You kind of swing from one extreme to the other and you sort of have truth driven phases of church history where it's very dogmatic and very doctrinal, and you have very grace driven periods of time where it's very everything's okay and now it's all flowers and butterflies. But that's, claire's really the source of this idea of like the third way for me, like how do you? But the power of the church is always when those two are combined, when there's truth and love, when the church is clear about its moral direction and its moral convictions but it's also incredibly gracious and outwardly facing at the same time. And so, um, you know, I'd say I felt like I was at a time at westminster that was like, um, that pendulum in the middle where where I saw the truth and the doctrinal side but, I also saw a lot of grace and outreach and mercy and missional vision um at at the same time, and you know a lot of ways.

30:27
It helped make sense of my redeemer experience in the early 90s of like, okay, tim's great, but he's just borrowing from you know kuiper here, or he's just you know stealing from you know lluyper here, or he's just you know stealing from you know Lloyd-Jones or you know like oh, in fact Lloyd-Jones actually preached the sermon I just heard Tim talk about last week.

30:47
you know those kinds of things, so it was helpful to sort of see the Redeemer experience wasn't a one-off. It was really connected to a thread line through the church's history of times when the church, regardless of its tradition, had really embraced both truthfulness and love as its dual calling.

31:09 - Speaker 3
Where in Atlanta were you? Because I was there for two years actually. I just came back.

31:14 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I was at a church called Christ Church in Buckhead for three years.

31:18 - Speaker 3
Okay Were you the senior pastor there? Yeah, I was at a church called Christ Church in Buckhead for three years. Were you the senior pastor?

31:22 - Speaker 1
there. No, I was right out of seminary needing a job, so I was just their first assistant pastor hire Nice, okay.

31:30 - Speaker 3
And then you were in Utah for Salt Lake for 16 years.

31:38 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I moved to Salt Lake in 2000 and we left in 2016. So I say church planting, but it was really a replant. The church had started, the original planter had had a moral failure, the church was really in disarray, about to close, and so I moved there you know green and unwise, you know, at the time, but nonetheless I moved there in 2000. And yeah, so I turned around in a church that moved to healthiness, and so we left in 2016. Our wife and I were both 50 and felt like it was the end of one chapter.

32:17 - Speaker 3
I have two questions about that. One what was it like turning around a church, and I guess, how big was it? And then two, what is church like in Salt Lake when Mormons are very prominent?

32:31 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, a church turnaround is the worst of all possible worlds. There's no money and all problems, and so it's really only by God's grace that it happened. But it's, replanting a church is like performing a wedding and a funeral at the same time, because there's people are coming. They're like, hey, it's a wedding it's a party, let's get excited and move on.

32:58
And then there are other are coming there like, hey, it's a wedding, it's a party, let's let's get excited and move on. And then there are other people who are like no, we still need, we've got this dead body in the back, We've got to grieve. And so there's always these two groups of people in the first three to five years of that project, and the funeral always wins, and the funeral always wins. Unless you really do a good job of laying to rest the old, you can't move forward to the future, and so I didn't know that at the time. So it probably took a lot longer. Took having to sort of honor the past and recognize what God had done in the past and not just pretend it hadn't happened even the bad parts and be able to grieve it before we could move on. But I think in the early days I tried to move on too quickly. I tried to let's just talk about the party and it made people who needed to grieve mad.

34:02
And how do we live missionally in a context that says a lot of Christian things but may not be quite as Christian as it seems to be on the surface? And so this got into how do we talk about our faith in ways that connect to the heart and don't get sidelined by um grammatical issues? And so it was very much a missional experience of like how do we, how do we affirm good things that are part of this culture and how do we, you know, take a different point of view without becoming just finger pointy and angry, you, without becoming just finger pointy and angry again, kind of going back to similar themes of like how do people change?

35:04
you know, people change when you recognize there is a problem and you provide an alternative solution that actually works, um, and so, yeah, we began to see, I began to see my, my, my role as a pastor in that context was just helping my church act like good, um, missionaries, like they were the ones that had name. We all did neighbors, friends, coworkers, family who believe things very differently, family who believe things very differently. So how do we act as christians not just argue as christians in those contexts? How do we recognize people's bruises and tend to them? Because a very moralistic culture like Salt Lake has a lot of people who fall off the back of the turnip truck. You know, they make a sharp turn, there's a lot of fruit that rolls off the back of the truck, and so our job was just kind of going around picking up bruised fruit.

36:26
You know people who were going through divorces. You know people who were going through divorces, people who you know we're not doing well economically. You know, because Mormonism has a very clear progress track and if you fall off that, then you're somehow spiritually damaged goods. And so again, it's this issue of grace. How do you extend grace to people who know they're damaged, know they've fallen short and have tried everything they can do morally, religiously, to correct it, and can't, and so they are hungry for relief of a Savior who really genuinely loves and cares for them and who looks at them with truth and grace. And so you ask how big we weren't huge, I mean, when I left the church was maybe 150-ish people, which in Salt Lake was a pretty good sized congregation.

37:39 - Speaker 3
Actually that's a good question for you Because you've been to. I mean, you were pastoring a church of 150 and you were at Redeemer, which I'm guessing is in like maybe the thousands.

37:52 - Speaker 1
Well, yeah, when I was there, 2016 was sort of, the peak was maybe 6000,000-ish people between all the congregations.

38:02 - Speaker 3
Yeah, so I've actually read Tim Keller's article on church dynamics and he goes through progressions of church sizes. But more and more I think about it. I personally don't think. I think there's far less benefit for a megachurch than the positives, and I don't know what, what your views are on that.

38:22 - Speaker 1
I I sort of see it as an ecosystem. You know like in an healthy ecosystem there's a variety of different life forms. You know that that exhibit and they work together in a positive way. And so, like in salt lake, there were some very large churches that grew there while we were there and there were some medium-sized and a lot of small. Now I think that um small searches, struggle, you know they are.

38:52
They're always struggling financially.

38:54
The model is difficult to replicate in this modern era. Essentially, the model is difficult to replicate in this modern era where people don't automatically give or tithe like they used to, and so it's hard to sustain a full-time pastorate in a smaller church model. And so I think, and then in large churches there's lots of obvious problems anonymity, people feeling lost, not connected, but on the flip side, other, because we were all kind of small, I mean relatively to the larger culture, and so people were much more able to say well, if we're not looking for what? If we're not what you're looking for, try my friend over here or try this church. And there were periods of time where people would kind of rotate because they had different needs at the time, like, hey, my high schooler is going through a lot of stuff and I need some specialty help with that area. Okay, well, we don't have that, but this church does. And I think when there was more of an open-handedness about the people are the Lord's, the people aren't ours, the people are the Lord's, the people aren't ours.

40:19 - Speaker 3
Then those churches can work well together. I totally agree. Maybe it's not much of church size but just a mentality of the church itself.

40:31 - Speaker 1
Yeah, attitude is yeah, definitely, Danny. Attitude is everything. You know there's a lot of places where every church is trying to be a cathedral. You know it just doesn't work. You know, there's a need for parishes and there's a need for cathedrals. Like you know, a 150 size congregation can't put on an orchestra and a christmas pageant that, uh, you know at the same way a 3 000 member congregation can you know, there's no shame in that, it just is the fact. And they different, different strokes for different folks.

41:10 - Speaker 3
Different congregations attract different kinds of people yeah, but my mentality is more like a uno reverse, because if someone says, oh yeah, they have an orchestra, I was like, but why does?

41:21
Why do we need it? I mean, once in a while, great, but like every week, because the other side of it is, like you mentioned, like there's a higher operating cost for bigger churches, right, and when I think about like and this isn't just churches, they're just like ivy league schools and their endowments, where they have like $60 billion just sitting, you know, on cash, I'm just it's mind boggling to me that there's just so much money stored yet not being utilized, because people are like trying to preserve something in the future. Sure, and even for churches, like I don't know what the budgets are, but like, yeah, I used to work at a big church and we're spending a lot of money on things and a lot of times they don't even like itemize everything. It's just like a general estimate of like this is how much we're spending, and I'm like mind boggled. Um, when, yeah, when, when, like specific needs for like people, the budget's a lot smaller, um, so I don't know.

42:19 - Speaker 1
That's something I still struggle with of yeah, I mean, it's sort of like the book of proverbs, right, like you know. You know, don't give me too much or don't give me too little. You know, help me to have just enough. And uh, most of my church experience has been the Lord is always faithful, but he's never early and he's never overly abundant in his provision. It's always exactly what I need. Other people may have different experiences.

42:54 - Speaker 3
My joke is he always gets more than enough. But the more than enough is like a penny more or a dollar more, it's like okay. So what made you kind of transition out of pastoral ministry? Because that kind of happened to me too.

43:13 - Speaker 1
I think, a lot of factors. One is, I think, just personally I was ready for a different challenge. Second of all, I think that the nature of the church currently has gotten extremely hard to manage, of the political cultural environment is putting pastors in a no-win situation that you know, no matter what you do, no matter how much you say one thing or the other, it is hard to stay a third way leader in a right ditch, left ditch world. And so you know, there's certainly some of that. Third, I think just I was wanting a place where I could be a little more innovative and try some new strategies, because I was seeing sort of a radical shift in the nature of people we were trying to reach.

44:21
I often joke that I'm a perfectly attuned pastor for the 1990s, like if you could just can me up and send me back to the 1990s, I'd be awesome.

44:32 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I hear you. I mean, that was my childhood, so I totally get you.

44:41 - Speaker 1
So I think there's, you know, I just feel like there's some age and stage issues. There were some desires to have a different challenge for the next, last phase of third phase of my career, and there is. I think there is a missional challenge, that drive that was behind it all, that the world really is fundamentally changing and there needs to be some creative innovation on thinking about what does it look like to reach and genuinely care for and show people a gospel approach to life that we haven't tried before.

45:23 - Speaker 3
So what advice would you give to pastors who feel like you know, I went to seminary, I went to Bible school, this is the only thing I know and there may be like gun shy, maybe leaving the pastor to go to another, like a history.

45:41 - Speaker 1
Yeah, don't, don't feel that you're not pigeonholed. Um, I think people, people in the church, have this strange way of shackling the pastor, um by saying you're doing God's will, um by being our pastor, and oftentimes that's a way of keeping them from actually considering the call to something else. I mean, I would have people you know as a pastor would come to me and say we're going to another church and it would always hurt.

46:11
You know, like, ah, what did we do wrong? But over time you're gonna realize like the Spirit blows where it wills. You know, I can't control people. It's not my job. I can bless them and so the more I could bless people and help them feel like they were sent and they were encouraged, the more those relationships developed over time, the more people would come back. The thing they thought was the shiny, glittering goal didn't turn out. They're like, oh well, we should just go back to where we were loved and cared for. And they showed us we were loved and cared for by how we left. So I kind of think that with ministry like it's not a life sentence, you know it is God calls people into the pastor and he calls people out of it. There's no shame in that. What else would I say?

47:12
Under recognized and all Christian ministry folks are under recognized in the skills that they develop that are transferable to business or all kinds of other fields. They have to deal with competing demands. They understand how to do a lot with a very little bit of budget a lot with a very little bit of budget. Generally they're often very good at communication and speaking and taking complex ideas and making them understandable to everyday folks. They're good at collaboration. They're good at creative thinking. They're good at all kinds of things that the modern marketplace demands. You can have any sort of degree, and I can tell you in three years it's going to be a totally different field than what you started, and so you've got to be able to be swift on your feet to think about implications, and so I think ministry folks do a very good job at that.

48:15 - Speaker 2
And.

48:15 - Speaker 1
I wish more folks in the marketplace understood that and were willing to give them off ramps from ministry.

48:23 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean primarily me. Asking you is like I already have people in my mind that are pastors and you know, talking to them it's been like COVID has been really difficult and just transitioning out of that. But they all feel stuck because this is all they know and like for me, like, yeah, I've worked before seminary. I went to seminary, I went to church, I thought I was going to do that all my life. Then I got into coding and, like all these steps along the way, I was always put in a position to do something brand new and it was hard, but that's normal.

48:59
I want people to know, like, when you go into anything brand new, it's normal. But the fact that, like you, can bank on your experiences because at the end of the day, we're just dealing with people, right, there's always problems with people. So, like, even with you talking to I just get this overwhelming pastoral sense and so, even though you're trying to figure out your job, I probably no doubt people who work with you probably love you to death because you're so gracious and you know that's so important. Like you said, it's about establishing trust in the beginning and then people will always give that grace back to you you know, give you the benefit of that of working through and learning.

49:37
Yeah.

49:38 - Speaker 1
I mean one practical thing I would like you said you you sort of took a coding class so you knew how to code.

49:43
I mean, do something if you're a pastor out there and looking, or ministry for folks and looking to make a transition go get a certification in something you know that interests you Maybe you design, maybe user experience and maybe coding it could be all kinds, but something that's really super practical, that people are actually looking for help to do and then parlay that into you know, who do you know that needs this kind of thing and just start networking.

50:12 - Speaker 3
you're you're experts at networking, so turn on that, turn on that skill set very minimum, people should just blog and write a book and then it'll help bring that exposure of what you know and then people will find you.

50:25 - Speaker 1
So, yeah, yeah, I mean again writing or blogging, or, you know, podcasting is a great way of just refining your voice. What is it that I say? Say, what are the topics that I keep coming back to.

50:42 - Speaker 3
I have some fun questions. I'm going to ask you. What was your best childhood memory?

50:50 - Speaker 1
My best childhood memory is I had an art teacher named Linnell Widener. So every Friday, every Thursday afternoon, I went to a group of us, to her house, and she taught us art and just that time of doing something with my hands creatively was the best part of my childhood. How often did you go? Every week, from about second grade through junior high school.

51:19 - Speaker 3
And what made you give?

51:20 - Speaker 1
up art. I didn't give it up, I just sort of it sort of went underground, but that's one of those things that's come back for me. In fact, I have an instagram account called more than cardboard that I take cardboard and I do projects on and then I release it like street art, and so you can follow me on Instagram at more than cardboard.

51:41 - Speaker 3
Nice, we'll put that in the description. You could be the next Banksy. Let's see what's one prayer request you would want answered instantly.

51:53 - Speaker 1
Instantly. Yeah, my wife's a nurse and she's looking for a new job and it'd be great if she could get a day job that is less stressful than working in a hospital.

52:05 - Speaker 3
What is her specialty?

52:09 - Speaker 1
She's been labor and delivery high risk obstetrics that kind of thing, Okay. What are you hoping for at Faithly? Yeah, it's interesting in this era of trying to create communities, right, like you're building a community and then seeking then to empower those people within the community to do or to thrive or to grow, and so it's interesting. I'm just curious about how this community could be used to help break down some walls between previously segregated parts of the church into maybe new avenues of collaboration and cooperation and innovation.

52:59 - Speaker 3
And how could we be praying for you and your family?

53:02 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean you could pray for just our health and our. You know we're, my wife and I make these kind of 15-year plans and we're at the start of this kind of probably last 15 year, you know plan. Maybe maybe there's two more left, but definitely within 30 years I'll be dead. So you know, the next 15 years of like, how do I, uh, how do we both sort of wrap up and empower, uh, younger leaders in the space of life is really my vision for how to listen to and care for and tend to and support and encourage those younger leaders who are going to be taking over. You know, I feel like I'm a Generation X, I'm between boomers and millennials, which are the two mountain peaks, and so I'm always my whole life, my whole career, has been translating between these two groups of people, and now boomers are slowly exiting the stage. But I'm trying to like, what is the? What do the Zs and the next generation look like, and how can I be a good mentor and citizen to them in that emerging generation?

54:18 - Speaker 3
All right, Well, this was great yeah thanks. Encouraging talking to you. Your voice is just very pastoral.

54:28 - Speaker 1
Well, thanks, danny, appreciate it.

54:30 - Speaker 3
Well, that's it for the podcast guys. Bye.

54:32 - 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. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. The Faithly digital platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the frontlines of ministry on the Faithly Podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.