Sermons That Serve - Josh Read | Faithly Stories

00:01 - Speaker 1 We had to notify the US Embassy, where we were located, that we were probably going to have to leave during COVID because the airports were all closed down. There was one flight left out of the country. We had no money so we had to get on that flight. We wiped out our entire house, just called our church and said we have these six bags in this corner but everything else literally has to leave our house today. 00:37 - 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. 00:57 - Speaker 3 Well, Josh Read, welcome to the Faithly Stories podcast. It is such a pleasure to have you here. 01:04 - Speaker 1 It's great to be here, Alicia. Loved meeting up with you earlier, so, yeah, I'm really honored to be here. 01:10 - Speaker 3 Awesome. Well, here is, of course, in a virtual space, but just so folks know where we are. I'm in New York, you're in St Louis and we've already established it's rainy and stormy where I am, but okay where you are. 01:24 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it's wonderful weather, love it. 01:28 - Speaker 3 Yeah, great. Well, so, Josh, you oversee digital properties at Outreach, which I think a lot of people know as Outreach Magazine, and it includes sermoncentral.com, which we'll talk a bunch about today. But it's been a long journey for you to get to this place. You ran a successful graphic design and web development company. You've served as a self-funded missionary in South Africa for many years. You've done product design at a startup, but let's start with this. So in our last conversation, Josh, you told me that you were blowing up in a good way, right as an entrepreneur running your own design firm, when the Lord told you to give it all up. Can you tell me what like? What was that moment like and what did you hear from him? 02:45 - Speaker 1 Yeah. So you know the way that I have always tried to describe walking with the Holy Spirit to my children, to friends. It's almost like, because the Holy Spirit is a gentleman, it feels like the smiling elephant right it just he's leaning on you, leaning on you, leaning on you, directing you, and eventually it's like, oh yeah, now I know where I'm supposed to go. For us it felt like three years of preparation, possibly even longer. A friend of mine in South Africa painted this painting that I have hanging here to remind me of. Just this was his visual representation of how walking with the Holy Spirit feels. Like there's fog, you can kind of see further down, but you can't really see the end goal. 03:16 Um, my wife Rebecca and I had been feeling the Lord pressing on us, that we were supposed to go international. We couldn't really quite feel what it was like until the end of 2009. There was a season where my business was. I was getting a lot of verbal agreements for contracts in 2010 that would have made my company very, very profitable. 03:47 And, uh, at the end of 2009, we felt very clearly that the Lord was saying would you give all of this up, that I've shown you, that I've kind of given you gospel and um, we said yes and ended up selling our house, giving all of our stuff away, and my wife was pregnant with our younger, our fourth, child at that point and once she had the baby, I remember sitting there going. It was in January, we were putting the house on the market and we were trying to determine when we were supposed to go and we felt middle of May and so that was two months after our child would have been born, and it ended up being that we sold our house on May 5th. So it was just wild and we ended up leaving Tacoma, washington, where my company was based. We left there the middle of May and with nine suitcases Nine suitcases and four kids. 05:04 Yeah, wow, a two-month-old, a two-year-old, a four-year-old and a seven-year-old. And so your family moved to South Africa. First we moved to Sweden just to get a break from all the stress of running a company and building a company and the transition of uh, handing all of my clients off to my employees, and then, um, yeah, just me running it. We moved to Sweden for three months. There was a kind of a miraculous story that could take way longer than this for the podcast, but we ended up going to Barcelona for three months and then from there ended up moving down to South Africa, and at that point we were had been trucking for very small children around in suitcases through metropolitan areas that are not made for a family of six. And so we got to South Africa and I was like, let's stay here for a little bit, let's not do this anymore. And yeah, it was crazy. 06:18 - Speaker 3 Well, so you eventually made it to South Africa, after taking a couple of pit stops, now you were self-funded missionaries in South Africa. After taking a couple of pit stops, now you were self-funded missionaries in South Africa, but you weren't doing conventional missionary work, like you weren't digging water wells right, tell us what you were doing there. 06:37 - Speaker 1 Yeah. So I arrived there to be with a group of people. They didn't have necessarily a goal in mind other than just to serve, and so I realized real quick that my skin color was not necessarily gone. People didn't want to hear what an American white person had to say. What they wanted was the money, the US dollars. So as I was walking into the township which is where the poorest of the poor live in South Africa as I was walking into the township one day I saw a woman dropping off a battery powered little Jeep that little kids have, and the little kids were so excited they were celebrating. Well, electricity costs a lot of money and people in township are not going to charge the battery of this thing, so the battery was dead before I came out that day. The next day I went in and the children were pushing it around, and then by the end of the day it didn't have wheels on the front and so they were dragging it. And then the next morning they were dragging it and as I was leaving on Wednesday afternoon it was just on the pile of trash Made me really sad as I just was pondering, like what am I supposed to learn from this situation? 08:11 It was that when you're in poverty to that level, grasping value is a difficult thing to hold on to. And so that and it's not just value of things, it's value of self-worth. And I was sitting in shacks that with I brought tea bags and a Ziploc bag and I would sit in these shacks with people and just say tell me your story, because their story had value. So they personally didn't feel like they had any value, but their story at least was valuable, and their stories were so heartbreaking that I ended up just calling it my hugging and crying ministry, because I would just hold people and weep with them. 09:03 And that was all that I did for two years and my heart just completely shattered because of it, because of hearing just the stories of hardship of people. A lot of the people that I worked with they were illegal foreigners who had come from Zimbabwe, come from Malawi, and so they had literally walked to South Africa through areas where there are lions, roaming and everything else, and they had walked there and come illegally into the country just because that's where they could make a little bit more money. But they were treated horribly because they were illegal foreigners and so just that level of poverty that we as Americans don't see. Often. It just would break your heart so, and it broke mine. 09:58 - Speaker 3 Yeah. So you got your heart broken in your hugging and crying ministry. You did that for a couple of years when did you become an auditor? 10:19 - Speaker 1 So, yeah, after, after two years of doing that, they in South Africa they have what's called uh, xenophobia, where it's the hatred of illegal foreigners. So, um, a lot of the south africans will want more money. But then the jobs are taken by people who are taking them under the table. So the foreigners are taking cash payment and and so then it becomes very dangerous at certain levels in the township. And a friend of mine brought me to the chief of the township that I had been working in. He brought me to his house after two years of being in the township and the chief came out and he was like, hey, I can't protect you anymore. And I was like, oh, I didn't even know that you were protecting me. But apparently he had been telling people in the township of 70,000 people like, don't touch this guy, he's a good guy. And that goes into a whole lot of story. 11:21 With my wife walking around, having learned how to tie a head wrap by a friend of ours, we didn't realize that that head wrap actually represented some certain things about me. So when she was walking with me through the township, that represented some things and I like it. Just you know, we were so naive, we had no idea what we were doing, and yet the Lord was with us to the point where I was being protected by the chief of the township, you know. So it was uh, after two years he said I can't protect you anymore, don't come into the township any longer. And so it was like, okay. Well, all the people I had been meeting with I then had to meet outside of the township at coffee shops or other places. 12:05 Right at that same time, a friend, a South African friend of mine, got asked personally by the mayor of Cape Town, patricia DeLille, to audit the city of Cape Town for corruption. So he needed some programmers. Because I had programming background, I was able to step in and function in a particular language that I did that for a few years. Because of that, the Lord ended up opening a door for me to go to school for my doctorate of strategic leadership. That ended up opening the door to me working for the national government of South Africa on an audit campaign. It essentially was Doge, like what we now understand as Doge. 13:15 I was doing that in South Africa, so it was crazy how the Lord like weaved this whole path of me going there having my heart completely shattered and then putting me into Doge where I was having this effect on 60 million people every day. You know some of the stuff that we were doing, so it was crazy. 13:39 - Speaker 3 Wow, what a way to be used by the Lord on such scale, right To have that kind of impact. I mean, what did that feel like to you? I mean, I think looking back on it, you can make sense of the journey and you can make sense of like here's how he used you, but in that moment, like, did it feel surreal to you? 14:00 - Speaker 1 In that moment it really didn't. In that moment it really didn't, it was more of a I'm so like just I don't really recognize some of the stuff that's taking place in my life until I sit and look backwards. And so in that moment it just felt like I'm doing everything I possibly can to hear and obey, like I've always tried to live my life like that. I was raised to live my life like that literally just hear and obey. And so, yeah, I'm a simple guy. I have really sometimes I think that they gave me a doctorate as a joke because I don't feel like I'm that intelligent, but here I am, so yeah, yeah, and there you were, planted in a place where the Lord wanted you and your family. 14:54 - Speaker 3 And then COVID happened. 14:56 - Speaker 1 Right. 14:57 - Speaker 3 Right, so tell me about what that was like being in South Africa, having this huge role, and then COVID happening. 15:04 - Speaker 1 COVID happening was, my goodness, south Africa was the strictest lockdown globally. So we were. We were not allowed to leave our house, we were not allowed to step foot onto the sidewalk outside of the fence of our house. If we were, they had um, they had their South African national guard patrolling the streets and if they caught you on the sidewalk you would get put into a containment camp. And that was that was it. You were arrested, so it was the strictest lockdown globally, and because of that, every two weeks we were allowed to go to the grocery store and buy groceries. We had to have a letter of how many people were in our household, and then you would stand in a line for eight hours, which was so dumb. But anyways, the South African national government ended up not wanting oversight because there was a lot of money coming into the government from COVID relief, and so our contract got shut down, which meant that I was a foreigner, I was a US passport holder, even though I'm also a South African ID holder. 16:30 As a white person, in South Africa, and with their BEEE systems, it's very difficult for me to get a job in that nation. And so here we were, out of money and no ability to get a job. My stress levels were going through the roof, you know, trying to. We were having attempted break-ins into our house during that period of time and, yeah, it was just all around a really, really stressful moment. In that moment I don't know if this is going to answer your question or not, but I just need to tell you this part of it In that moment, we watched the movie Voyager, where it's about them shooting the satellite out in the 70s and then it goes all the way past every one of the planets and then they had it turn around and take a photo of the entire solar system. And then Carl Sagan, in the I think it was the 80s where he he says that little blue, that pale blue dot, that whole um, that speech that he gives the pale blue dot. He's talking about how, like all of history is in that pale blue dot. 17:51 And for me, I was watching that stressed out of my mind and I I ended up having to go into my bedroom and just I'm sitting in my room overwhelmed by the fact that we have no idea how huge the Lord is and how he's the alpha and the omega, and the fact that my life is this vapor. You know and it's. Yet he knows my name. And so I'm sitting on the other side of the earth from anyone who could help me. And even as I'm crying out, you know that the psalm that says I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? And I'm sitting there, going there is. 18:48 I have no one on earth who can help me in this moment. I'm stuck in a third world country. I have no money even to get out of the third world country. I have no money to take care of my family. I have people trying to break in and kill my family. I'm in this terrible situation and there's no help. In the hills. Where does my help come from? And it was like my help comes from the Lord, the creator of heaven and earth. And it was that moment where it's like the creator of everything, the creator of the beginning and the end, and he knows my name. And it shatters fear and anxiety and everything else. When you can actually hold on to that, when you can really truly hold on to the sovereignty of God. 19:41 And that's what I've been able to walk away from Africa with. Is that it's so difficult to hold on to? I almost have to remind myself every 20 minutes or so of like no way God is so big and he knows me. 19:58 - Speaker 3 Wow, wow. It's incredible to hear how the Lord used your time there. He broke your heart there, he gave you this significant role and then he gave you revelation. How did he close that particular chapter for you and your family? How did you find yourself back here in the States? 20:16 - Speaker 1 We had to notify the US Embassy, where we were located, that we were probably going to have to leave during COVID because the airports were all closed down. And so we got an email from the US Embassy on July 31st. There was one flight left out of the country, so if we needed to leave before February of 2021, we were going to have to get on this flight on August 16th 17 days from then. We had no money, so we had to get on that flight. So it ended up costing us a small fortune. And we called our church up and we were like, hey, so again my wife had to give everything up up. And we were like, hey, so again my wife had to give everything up. We wiped out our entire house, just called our church and said we have these six bags in this corner, but everything else literally has to leave our house today. And so we left South Africa with six bags. So we started this whole adventure with nine bags. We ended up going down to six bags and then we left South Africa within 17 days. 21:32 So it was a really painful like my children had to leave all that they'd ever known their life. You know, 10 years of their lives and now all of a sudden they were upended and we were standing in the United States going. What is this Like? Talk about culture shock. It literally took four years for my kids to kind of go. Oh, Americans are weird. I don't understand it. My kids look American, my kids look American, they sound American, but they are 100% South African. So it's a strange, it's very strange for them. 22:11 - Speaker 3 So, Josh, you and your family were in South Africa for 10 years 10 years. Were there any moments? 22:22 - Speaker 1 where you just wanted to give up. There were three, three moments where I was absolutely done, broken, couldn't do it anymore. The first was a year into it. We ended up man praise the Lord, a very close friend of mine that I had made while we were in Sweden. For those three months, he felt from the Lord. He just called me up one day and said I need to buy you tickets and fly your whole family up here for a few weeks to Sweden. You need out of South Africa, you need a break. And it was just like, oh man, we needed that break and the Lord provided. Without me, it was a miracle. 23:07 - Speaker 3 Wow. 23:07 - Speaker 1 We came back the first year in South Africa, I thought was the worst year of my life. Then the second year actually was the absolute worst year of my life that I've ever experienced. The end of the second year, something horrific happened and uh, I won't go into that, but I remember at that point I was running a lot and so I was like Lord, I'm going to go for a run. I had been training for a half marathon. So I was like I'm going to go for a two and a half hour run. If you don't show up, if you do not talk to me on this two hour run, like that's it, I'm going to come home. I don't care about anything in the house, I'm just going to get everybody into the car and then we're going to drive to the airport and I am done with this country, I'm done with this. 24:02 Like I was just shattered. So I'm on this run and three miles in, just you know, you know how it is when you're just angry, you're frustrated, you're like God, where are you, where are you? Just crying out. And so I was like I'm done, I'm not going to say anything more. Lord, this is a two-way relationship. It has to be like it. You know, just me talking to the creator of the universe, like this is just so silly. Now, looking back, it's like a little kid throwing his toys. But like I just was throwing a fit and I was like I'm going to be quiet. Now you show up and I'm running, running, running, just angry running. 24:41 And uh, I came a couple miles into the run and as I was turning a corner I know the corner very well uh, I heard that still small whisper and it said I know your name, one of the 11 national languages in south africa. There's a greeting that's so deep and it says I see you. That's the literal translation of the greeting. And yeah, it was like the Lord was saying I see you, I know your name. And I just I was laying on the side of the road just weeping, like oh, like, okay, the Lord knows my name, okay, go a year. The next time where I was just like I can't do it anymore, the third and final time I had been walking a sidewalk to and from work for three years or for four months, year three. 25:44 And like at that point I'm again having this dark night of the soul. It's been a year since the Lord has spoken to me. It's been a year since he said I know your name and I'm just it's so heavy being out on your own, feeling like there's no one around you. It's just you and the Lord. You know, like I'm out on the mission field just kind of broken, and I'm walking to and from work and I'm just depressed, and so when you're depressed, you're walking with your head down. 26:14 And so I know this wasn't there on Wednesday night when I was walking home from work, but then, as I was walking to work on Thursday morning, I was still having that conversation with the Lord. Like last thing you said to me was you know my name. Last thing you said to me is that, yeah, but I'm standing here so far away from everyone I know, so far away from any support, I'm just freaking out, overwhelmed by stuff and, God, I don't even think you know where I am in the world, let alone that you know my name. I'm going to be quiet. I need you, I need you, I need you and I'm just walking and about 30 feet in front of me was a streetlight on the sidewalk and as I approached the streetlight from the dark, like uh, this was on the sidewalk. 27:12 Oh, my gosh Painted on the sidewalk and it is not a South African name at all. I don't know why someone would have painted that on the sidewalk, because it's not like I'm the only person ever walking on the sidewalk, nobody. It just was one of those things where I was like, oh, the Lord sees me. 27:30 - Speaker 3 The Lord knows my problem. Wow so beautiful. 27:34 - Speaker 1 Ten years later, when he did say like I see you, yeah, it's just, it's one of those things that I can hold on to. 27:41 - Speaker 3 Absolutely, absolutely, and you had the wherewithal to take a photo. I mean, you kind of have to. 27:49 - Speaker 1 I was painted on the sidewalk especially like in the middle of the night, right when I'm sitting here crying out like Lord. You said you know my name, but I don't even think you know where I'm at. And then now, like Josh, is painted on the side. 28:05 - Speaker 3 And I would thank you for repeating that for those who are just listening and may not see the audio. Our friend, Josh held up a photograph of what he saw on the sidewalk in South Africa, which was his name painted right there on the sidewalk where he walked every day for three months, for four months, and it hadn't been there before. Wow, so powerful. If that is not a testament to the power of crying out to the Lord, just crying out to the Lord, I mean, it's just such a reminder. I think sometimes we forget to. You know, even in our pain and our desperation, we forget that we can cry out to him. But look what happens when you do he puts your name on the sidewalk. Thank you for sharing that, Josh. 28:49 - Speaker 1 Of course. 28:50 - Speaker 3 Okay. So you came back home. For your children it wasn't didn't feel like home for a while, but you came back home, I think. You worked, you led marketing at a chemical firm for a while and then eventually, if I remember correctly, you joined a faith tech startup which you helped to sell to push pay for hundreds of millions of dollars. Did that feel like a full circle moment for you? You know you were an entrepreneur, the Lord asked you to leave it and then here you are, doing something not quite the same, but like sort of in the same realm. 29:32 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, it's amazing to be a part of a faith tech, honestly, like it's where my heart is at and, like I was saying, just the simplicity of hear and obey, hear and obey. It's interesting how the Lord has weaved this path of always being able to go into faith tech and then out of faith tech into corporate and then back into faith. So when we left South Africa, I ended up starting at Rezzy, which got sold to. Pushpay Got it. 30:08 - Speaker 3 Okay, so I got that. I got that a little bit reversed, okay Got it. 30:13 - Speaker 1 But then I ended up going to the corporate world again and going into working at that very large chemical company as the director of marketing. And then, yeah, about a year ago is when the Lord pulled me back out of the corporate world and back into faith tech, and so it's a wonderful thing. 30:38 - Speaker 3 Okay, so now you're at Outreach and you're overseeing I think it's 40-plus digital properties, is that right? And you spend probably half your time, if not more, with SermonCentralcom. That's your key focus right now, right? 30:55 - Speaker 1 Right now, at the moment, yeah. 30:57 - Speaker 3 So tell us what is Sermon Central. 31:01 - Speaker 1 Sermon Central is a collection of sermons. I mean really. It started, I want to say, in 2002 by a pastor who just wanted to. It was almost like a Reddit for sermons. If you will, at the very beginning, you know like hey, post your sermon. If you will, at the very beginning, you know like hey, post your sermon, everyone will read it and kind of rank it and give notes and have more of a collaborative environment for pastors to be able to become better at communicating. It's grown and grown and grown since then. So I would say, at its most base level, it is a resource for pastors to be able to be better at communicating their messages. 31:50 - Speaker 3 So 2002, so let's see, it is over 20 years old now and sometimes some of the simplest ideas, done with consistency and persistency, like they lead to the biggest results. How many sermons are in this database today? 32:13 - Speaker 1 Easily over 240,000 messages. 32:16 - Speaker 3 Over 240,000 messages from all kinds of preachers, all different denominations, different styles, from the last generation of preachers, from this current generation of preachers. Like that's the database that you have at Sermon Central. 32:33 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's an incredible thing. So. 32:37 - Speaker 3 That is incredible and I know from our last conversation that, as you think about the next chapter for Sermon Central, as you think about your priorities and what you hope to do with it, ai is a part of that. Tell me how you're planning to incorporate AI into this database. 32:55 - Speaker 1 You know it's really fun. As I've been to answer your question, I'll go kind of roundabout. Sorry, like I have been influenced by living in Africa, so my, my answer is kind of. 33:10 - Speaker 3 And you're the son of a preacher right, and a preacher yourself. So, yes, tell, tell us the full story. 33:20 - Speaker 1 Yeah. So I have been watching and looking into the fact that, if you remember, a few years ago, everyone was like, oh, millennials are going to be the largest part of the workforce pretty soon. And that was like the shocking number Like, and now we're at what? 36% of the workforce is millennials. You look at the demographics of pastors and it's still very large portion of pastors in the US are baby boomers. And that, like, whereas 50 years ago the lion's share of pastors were under the age of 45. I want to say it was like 55% in the 60s were under the age of 45. 34:06 Now, all of a sudden you've got this. You know, void of pastors my age or younger. So we're trying to look at how do you develop these younger pastors who are probably dealing with a lot of imposter syndrome. They're dealing with a lot of just struggling with am I doing the right thing? Am I preaching the right thing? How do I know that? How do I validate what I'm trying to communicate? How do I even communicate better, All that stuff. And that's the tool that we're trying to build with Sermon Central next that is going to be launching later this year. And, yes, AI is a part of that, but we're not trying to replace the Holy Spirit with AI. It's more a tool, that we see AI being a tool more than the Holy Spirit, if you will. 35:08 - Speaker 3 All right, so let's get really practical. Josh, tell me what's the profile of the pastor that you have in mind. You're talking about the next generation of pastors, right? Your age or younger? Is this pastor a full-time pastor? Is this a bivocational Like? Who is the pastor that you have in mind as you're building this innovative new technology? 35:31 - Speaker 1 So Sermon Central has been. A lot of bivocational pastors have used Sermon Central over the years, so they need more help than the average pastor. Yeah, I mean if you can imagine the stress that they're dealing with trying to run, trying to live a full-time job, you know, if you can imagine like burnt out Ben, if you will, that's one of the personas that we have Burnt out Ben, that's one of the personas that we have Burnt out. 36:02 Ben, 34 years old young guy, married, probably has two maybe three children, working a full-time job and trying to run a church. Trying to preach consistently good messages, communicate good, but also trying to deal with the natural issues that come up in a church. Trying to grow a church, trying to do social media. I mean, man, I've read through the list that I created and it gives me anxiety. I have to go back and remember oh wait, God sees me, God sees me. It's intense what bivocational young pastors are going through. 36:46 - Speaker 3 Yeah, okay, so Burnt Out Ben comes to SermonCentralcom. What kind of help can Burnt Out Ben expect? 36:55 - Speaker 1 Yeah, great question question. I think uh burnt out. Ben can come in and uh, eventually Sermon Central next is going to have the ability, somewhat like a medium where you can you can find sermons that you can bookmark, you can find pieces of sermons that you can highlight and put those into notebooks and from a notebook you would be able to generate a draft that you could look through, begin to edit. Powerpoint presentations come in like you could export PowerPoint presentations. You can export social media graphics, you can export all sorts of different questions from that using AI that they could then sit there and edit. So it really is a step forward for them to be able to make sure that things are communicated clearly, non-heretically. 37:57 - Speaker 3 That's important. 38:00 - Speaker 1 So it really will help kind of minimize the 20 hours of research and minimize all of that down to maybe preparing a well-thought-out, well-prepared sermon. Might only take five hours instead of 25 hours, if you will. 38:22 - Speaker 3 That's significant help for burnt-out Ben. Listen, we have a lot of burnt-out Bens listening to this podcast and I'm guessing that some of them are getting excited to have a tool like this at their fingertips. When can they expect to see Sermon Central next? 38:41 - Speaker 1 When can they expect to see Sermon Central next? We are going to be opening up applications for the beta, probably around the time that this podcast gets put out in mid to late August, and from there I would love to be in communication with all of the burnt out bins. I would love to be able to know exactly what you need so that we can be building it as we go so building in public is great. As you know, with Faithful, Building in public is difficult, but it gets the best product. 39:16 - Speaker 3 Absolutely so. Can they come to sermoncentralcom to access the application for the beta testing? 39:24 - Speaker 1 Okay, they will be able to come. There will be a very clear button apply for the beta. It'll be there. 39:30 - Speaker 3 Great, great, very exciting stuff. Let's go back to your doctorate. You know you had briefly mentioned that while you were in South Africa you had the opportunity to get a doctorate, I think you said in strategic organizational leadership, and you mentioned it was significant because it allowed you to have this even larger role doing audit for the national government. Do you feel like it's come into play in your leadership at outreach and in the other things that you're doing leadership? 40:00 - Speaker 1 at Outreach and the other things that you're doing. I think it changed me personally and so, yes, it comes into play on a daily basis. I had a friend ask me like, should I do a doctorate, should I go get my doctorate? And I was like I don't know that I would ever suggest anyone to go get their doctorate. But what? I am a completely different man after having gone through that process. It was a very intense process. It was, you know, I was I was still, at that point, running my company in the US, so I was running that remotely. I also was working full time in South Africa, in the US, so I was running that remotely. I also was working full time in South Africa in the audit and then I was doing the doctorate. 40:46 - Speaker 3 So I didn't realize that. Thank you, thank you for mentioning it. See, you were burnt out, ben, in that season, right, like in a different way. Well, I didn't realize you were doing all of that all at once. 40:57 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it was incredibly intense. I could not have done it without my wife. You know, really she's amazing and I feel like both of our names should be on my degree because of it. But yeah, it was. You know, when you're doing a doctorate, you're having to read at minimum 30 hours a week. So I was doing that for three years minimum 30 hours a week of just reading. So it was like if I was awake and I wasn't working, I was reading. So it was a very intense three years, but drinking from the fire hose of all that and just the fact that I was able to do it. 41:49 - Speaker 3 Yeah. 41:50 - Speaker 1 Now there's so much more that's come out of that, out of my heart, out of my mind as well. 41:56 - Speaker 3 So yeah, so I want to dig into that a little bit more, because you said you're a changed man as a result of it. Is it the work ethic that you developed Like what about earning your doctorate? Changed you? 42:13 - Speaker 1 I think it shattered a lot of the imposter syndrome that we deal with. It wasn't necessarily the work ethic, but it really was more. I don't know if you've ever heard that where the Marines say, when you feel like you can't hold your and feeling that's actually only at 40% of what your body can take, when you start hitting with that, and so they have to go mind over matter and really hold like go the next level I think that's what the doctor really did for me was made me realize, oh, that's actually only my 40%. So when I begin to feel stressed out, when I begin to feel like, oh, this is so much work that's actually only 40. 43:25 - Speaker 3 Wow, so interesting. I wanted to circle back and ask this question because I do think that a lot of pastors and ministry leaders are always, even as they are immersed in their ministry, thinking about degrees and credentials and education. You know, I know some pastors who are leading sizable churches who are thinking about going back to seminary, if they never did to begin with, and so I think this question of education and what you get out of it and the experience is a really relevant question. 43:51 - Speaker 1 To really answer that question then. I would say is the smiling elephant leaning on you? Yeah, You'll know if you're supposed to actually go back and go to school. 44:04 - Speaker 3 Yeah. 44:04 - Speaker 1 Right, yeah, right. Like I feel really strongly that you will know if the Holy Spirit is leaning on you. So, for example, when I went to get my master's, like for three years, I felt like the Lord was saying you need to go, you need to go to seminary, you need to go to seminary. And I just was like I hate school, I never want to go to school. I barely graduated college, I barely even graduated high school and it was a three-year heavy, heavy weight on my heart before I finally said yes to it. 44:42 So I think you'll know. You'll know if it's right or not. 44:48 - Speaker 3 Well, before we started recording, you told me the funny story about how you wrote down your name as Josh Can't Read, and that was read out at your graduation. Well, it turns out Josh Can't Read can get a master's and can get a doctorate Somehow. Yeah, it's amazing. Well, if that isn't evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of God moving you into things and empowering you to do certain things like I don't know what is. 45:19 - Speaker 1 Yeah. 45:20 - Speaker 3 So good, so good. So you joined Outreach. I think last fall you joined Outreach. I think last fall You've taken on your first big project, sermon Central. You know blending innovation and relevance and theological integrity into everything that you're going to be working on at Outreach. Tell me a little bit about your vision as you look at all of these digital properties that you have oversight on and you think about the next chapter for these properties as a whole. What's your dream? What's your vision? 46:03 - Speaker 1 Well, I know that the vision of Outreach in general Scott Evans, the CEO when he started outreach, the whole drive of it was to help the local church grow. We've seen a need and we've built a tool that can help the local church grow in that little small way, and so that's always my vision, that's my heart as well. I think it's the heart of all the former pastors who work on Sermon Central or work at Outreach. I mean, you'd be amazed at my team. It's incredible. I have three former pastors myself and another former missionary. You know it's like it's just a dream to work with all these guys and they all have the same drive of how can we help the local church grow. So we are completely, 100% behind Burnt Out, ben and all the other people out there, the Strategic Steve, you know all rename all the personas that we have. 47:22 - Speaker 3 We didn't even get a chance to talk about Strategic Steve today. So that's a beautiful that's a very beautiful vision, yeah. 47:32 - Speaker 1 Love the local church. We love all the people that are out here, even listening to this podcast. We are here for you. Please get in touch with me. I would love to find out how we can serve you. 47:45 - Speaker 3 That's great. Thank you so much, Josh. It's been wonderful getting to know you and to delve even a little bit deeper still in this conversation. So thank you for spending the time. I can't wait to continue to follow along in your journey. If the first, I don't know how many years have you been serving now 20, Josh. If the first 20 or so years of your ministry, Josh, if the first 20 or so years of your ministry, which is everything that we talked about today, is any indication, the next 20,. I can't wait to see where the Lord takes you the expected and unexpected. It's going to be exciting to watch. Thank you, Josh. 48:22 - Speaker 2 Thanks. 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 front lines of ministry on the Faithly Podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.