Today's episode will be the introduction, my purpose for the podcast, and how it can help you. So let's get started. Here's how it all happened. I've always had a burden for training and wanted more training, and I still have a burden for training. If you ask those that attend my church and help me on my ministerial staff, they'll tell you I'm big on training.
If you ask those that attended my youth group when I was youth leader, At Harden New Life Apostolic Church, they'll tell you I'm big on training. It's my burden. Back when I had the privilege of serving as sectional youth leader, which was many moons ago, I tried to start a sectional training program where the, all the young ministers would get together and, and the pastor, pastors of the section could bring in someone or one wherever could train us.
And we could do this monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, or whenever. I just, I wrote an actual resolution, submitted it, and tried to get it started. It didn't come to fruition, obviously. When I started pastoring, uh, the church in DeWitt, Arkansas, it was one of the first things that came to my mind. Well, now I can start my own.
Sectional thing. Well, you know, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be a section thing. It just would be a thing that I'm doing and I can open it to the section the way I'd always envisioned. It didn't have to be open to the section. I just didn't have enough people in my own congregation. You know, I was trying to get more bodies in to make it, try to make it, I don't want to say worthwhile, but you know what I'm trying to say, trying to get more people involved.
And then I talked to some pastors about it and they were excited. They said, yeah, you do it. I'll send my guys. I felt good about it. I had folks in my congregation that were, that could benefit from it. And now I was working out the details of how often. You know, was I going to do it? And I had all these notes I've been taking over the years, ever since I first positioned it to the, to the section, I've been keeping notes on thoughts that I thought would be helpful.
And yeah, we're going to do this. And then COVID happened, shut everything down, you know, we were quarantined. And then when we came out of that. The dynamics have changed. People came and gone and it just wasn't the same. And nor was my faith, my confidence in it and my feeling for it. It didn't feel right.
Not right now. So I kept taking notes. So, and then I started thinking about it again. Okay. I got to bring this back. I, I feel something I've got to do maybe instead of doing it. Monthly or I definitely cannot do monthly. I knew that that was not realistic. I needed something tangible, something that was actually obtainable.
So monthly is not going to happen every two months. I was trying to think something realistic for everyone else. You know, who's going to commit to that and quarterly. Yeah. Okay. So I really didn't feel comfortable with that. What about a one day workshop? What if could I put all my notes together and make it one long workshop with lunch?
You know, maybe I could do pizza for lunch. I don't know. But who would come? Could I scheduled on the day where most people would come when I get enough interest? Did I have anyone that was interested? Anymore. I don't know. It just it didn't feel right. So I kept thinking about it and I kind of put it back on the back burner and said, ah, that just don't feel right.
Maybe it's not God's will. It's just something. I don't know. Just let it go. And then one of my idiot friends and I say idiot jokingly. He's one of he's very brilliant, very sharp, a good friend of mine. Pastors in Rockwall, Texas, happens to have a cattle ranch, and he had this vision that the world needed better beef than what they could find at the grocery store.
So he was going to start processing his beef and start providing healthy, farm raised beef. No hormones. No, none of that rip rot beef. I'm not here to tell you about beef, but he started a podcast about it because he owned a restaurant that was successful and he's now written a book. And anyway, he started a podcast.
About beef as if people want to listen about beef. Well, you know what they do. He just reached 6, 800 followers, the ranch and the table podcast. Go check it out. Lee Wells. It's, it's interesting. Believe it or not. I listened to it and I cannot believe I'm listening to it. He talks about other things besides beef.
He makes it. Where it applies. This does a really good job. I'm impressed. I hate to give him credit because I would rather make fun of him, but he does a good job. And then my wife got wind of it. Cause you know, he's our friend, not just my friend. And she told me in her very ministerial voice. You need to do a podcast.
And I said, sweetheart, what in the world would I talk about? I don't know. That's for you to figure out. I just gave you the idea. You need to do a podcast. Hmm. You know, cause that's how women do. So I obviously, I seriously, I give my wife a hard time, but I do seriously value her input. So I chewed on that and believe it or not, it did not register my mind.
My idea was Minister training that did not come to, um, come to my mind. I was literally at a loss of what I could contribute to a podcast, but my wife seemed confident that I needed to do one. So I was chewing on it while I'm not good at video stuff. I am tech savvy enough that it intrigued me. Well, I guess I could figure it out.
It doesn't, I don't know. Yeah, I'd like to try that. Okay. So I chewed on it for a while and one night driving home from work, I asked my son in law, son in law, if I were to host a podcast. What subject do you think that I would be good enough or that I could host for a lengthy time period to actually make a podcast out of?
And without missing a beat, he said, young minister training. And then it all came back to me. That's right. I have been wanting to do young minister training. So instead of scheduling a workshop where people You know, hit or miss, you know, now or never, instead of scheduling these intermittent training sessions, where again, it's hit or miss if you don't make it now, you never do, I could do podcast episodes and it could stay there on my podcast channel and you could tune in when you want to and pause it when you want to and come back when you want to, and it could give me a release of all.
These burdens and ideas that I've been trapped up in my mind and my heart for so long. And yay, you are here with me in this journey. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That is the introduction for the podcast. That's where the idea has come from. It is my way of sharing years of ideas. Of things that I wanted to know, I'm not looking to pastor anyone.
I am not going to debate doctrinal issues. Yes, I am apostolic to the core. I believe in one God in Jesus is our God. I believe that baptism in Jesus name with being filled with the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues. I believe in living a holy life. However, and I will speak as if I, as, and I, as if you believe that with me, but I don't believe that's required for what I'm going to share.
I do not believe. That the tips that I, and the things that are on my mind are only good for apostolics. I believe they're universally helpful. So please send a word out to whoever. Just know that I'm not here to give Bible studies on the oneness of God. I'm not here to give Bible studies on baptisms. I'm not here to give Bible studies on inward or outward holiness.
That's not what I'm here for. I'm not here to encourage you to go to church or I'm not here to pastor nobody. If I do say something that by chance goes against what your pastor teaches you, please defer to your pastor. Of course, I always seek out thy own salvation with fear and trembling. So look it up, you know, don't just blindly follow any pastor and.
You know, I tell my saints the same. Don't trust me. Cause just cause I say, you better have your own Bible. You will be judged by your understanding. Not my understanding, but still, um, you know, if it comes down, you've got to make decisions when you meet your pastor, choose your pastor. But what I'm saying is I'm not here to pastor anyone.
I want to be ethical. These are just my thoughts that I've been wanting to get out to somebody for the purpose of encouraging. The elders in my life, and when I say elders, I'm using the little E, not the ones that actually cared and invested in me, but as a whole, a lot of the elder ministers had a habit of bashing the younger generation with a lot of do nots.
And a lot of things that we were doing wrong, but I never saw a lot of do and a lot of things we were doing. Right. And so I wanted to speak positive and I wanted to be encouraging to you and and that's not a knock. Okay. I just again, I have a different vision of what training should be. And we'll talk about that in a minute.
Uh, to give you an introduction to the podcast and how it's going to be. Every, I plan on launching every week tonight. I'm running late. We had technical issues. I don't know if it was just the enemy or not, but I am a computer technician and my computer was not working. I know what I'm doing and it was not working and I didn't do anything different, but just breathe and pray and wait and all of a sudden it's working again, anyhow, so I plan on launching every Friday, every other Friday will be just me.
That's the plan. And the alternating Fridays, I hope to have a guest host with me. Who knows, maybe I'll fail at that and it'll be just me a lot, but that's the plan where they will see, I have a guest host plan for next week already. I've already recorded the guest host for week four, and I'm, I'm lining up the guest host for week six right now.
And I've got several guests hosts already committed. I just got to work out the schedule. So. Man, I'm really excited. And that's what it's going to be. I thought I was going to do 10 minutes by myself and 20 minutes with the guest host, but as I'm getting more and more familiar with recording, I'm not going to really worry about the time.
My solos will be shorter than the duos. I know that much, but if I go 15 minutes by myself for 20 minutes by myself, I'm going to say what I feel like I need to say. If it takes 10 minutes, great. I'm not a long winded preacher. I don't believe in, I don't believe every sermon has to be 40 minutes. Okay. I don't believe every sermon needs to be an hour.
Uh, say what you need to say, get done with it. So if you get bored, as my friend told me, they'll turn it off. That's your call. But if you like it, you'll stay and listen. Same thing for the duos. Uh, 20 minutes may not be long enough for some conversations, depending on how deep we get. We'll see. But again, I'm not long winded.
So most likely they'll, they'll go 30 to 40 if I had to guess knowing my taste, but it may get good and you never know. So these thoughts that I present to you on this podcast are in no particular order. Uh, I tend to go by the guest host. If they're bringing their own thought, if I'm providing the thought and the thought fits them and their talents or what I feel led to that week, but they're in no particular order of importance.
So don't try to weigh out that. This is like, these are just things that I wanted when I was starting out, uh, throughout the journey, we're going to talk about biblical principles, lifestyle mindsets. We may even get to speaking tips and strategies. Not that I am a Joel or Sean or anyone of great caliber, but there are certain things you learn from experience that maybe you need to know or haven't learned yet.
I don't claim to have learned or mastered anything. I'm just offering to share what I feel may be helpful and encouraged. Now that said, let's talk again, more of what I started to talk to earlier about the way things have been or used to be and why I feel there's a need for my podcast. And why I feel it'll help you.
There's a mindset has always been a mindset and still is a mindset. But the only way to really train a young minister is to make them clean the toilets and not just clean, not just clean a toilet, but to make them clean the bathrooms or toilets for years. Don't give them a pulpit, give them a scrub brush for years.
This will test their spirit. This will test their humility, their dependability and their endurance. Once they can be consistently trusted with the lowest of jobs, then they could be trusted with something else. While there is merit to that, there is a flaw in it, and it's time. Time is indeed the greatest teacher, but it kills all of its pupils.
We don't have time to spend years doing what could have been taught in shorter spans of time. Now, I am a believer that every buddy needs to be able to clean a toilet. And there are some things that only toilet cleaning can teach them. And I'm all for that by all means, give them a scrub brush. And if anyone thinks they're too good, too good to scrub a toilet, then they have no business in the ministry.
My point is not about the low job. It's about the lack of hands on training. Time does not teach them to be a better minister. Mistakes teach them to be a better minister and they make mistakes because they were not taught how to do it right. We learn what to say right because we've said the things wrong.
We learn what does work because we've tried things that does not work. And we try things that does not work because we were not taught to do the things that do work. We were not taught to do things that do work because we were taught time. You'll learn with time. But we don't have time for that. The military, the United States has one of the best militaries in the world.
In the world, I can no longer say the best because there are different things that we're not that we are not the best at. We're not, we do not have the best fighter pilot pilots for example. Israel does, but that's another story. We are one as a whole. We may be the best military force as a whole, but, and you know what they do?
They expedite the training. They don't give anyone anymore in a, in a panic in back in the days of the war and the panic of drafting, they would hand them a gun and wish them best of luck. But now. In the, in the time when we have time of peace, we send them to training. We teach them and we expedite that training and we teach them hard and we teach them quickly and we teach them some more and it's all about training.
And not only do we train them, but the Navy teaches you that you fight like you train. Practice does not make perfect. Quit teaching your kids that practice makes perfect. It does not. Practice makes permanent. If you practice lazy, you will fight lazy, but if you don't train them at all, then they will not know how to fight at all.
I've been blessed without, with an outstanding team at the church I pastor. Man, I love the Sanfords and the Rankins. They are so sweet and loyal and hardworking to me. I can count on them. I can be as honest with them and I can trust them. I love mentoring them. Mentoring them is without a doubt my favorite part of where I, of my level of ministry right now.
Here is my vision for them. I believe if we pastors invest in our younger ministers. That when they are in our positions, they will be so much better than we are now. But if we don't invest in them, if we treat them the way that we were treated, letting time train them because time trained us, well, that's the way my bishop trained me, he made me scrub a toilet for three years before I could preach, then we will only be as good as our bishop.
I want my kids. To be better than me. I'm not looking to raise the standard 50 year old elder. I'm looking to raise better 50 year old elders. If we will invest in them, then there'll be so much better than we are now. And then they will invest in their young ministers and how much better will our kingdom improve through every generation.
If they learn to invest in each. Others, children, when I say children, I'm not referring to their own offspring, but to their ministerial offspring. But if we only pass down the same hands off, let Tom teach them, then we're doing both them a disservice and the kingdom of disservice, but my podcast is not here for the pastors.
They're welcome to listen. If they want, I don't consider myself an expert or anything that would help them though. They're my, they're my peers. As a matter of fact, I actually consider myself the least of them. I want to speak to the new minister. I'm I'm want to help you expedite your training. I want to show you the things that I learned the hard way so that you don't make those mistakes.
So that when you are where I am, you're a better minister than I am at this point. That's my goal. So let me ask you, you're called, but so what? Realistically, so what? Who isn't called? What are you going to do about it? You need to ask yourself, what are you going to do about your calling? Your calling does not qualify you.
There's an old message out there that says God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called. That's great. We can run the aisles. We can shout. We can feel good with just that sentence alone. It is incomplete. He does not automatically impart knowledge into their head. He does not take someone unqualified and all of a sudden, Boom, you're qualified.
He does not do that. Jesus told the disciples in the book of Luke that the Holy ghost would tell them what to say in certain situations. People take that and they use that as an excuse to build up their faith, but not their knowledge. The context of the Bible shows. That is not what he meant. He never meant that he would use, that he would ever use scripture that they didn't know.
When Paul was converted, he had to relearn. He spent three years under Gamaliel. Now why would he do that? He spent his whole life learning. He did that because his calling did not qualify him. You must work on yourself. If you want to be better, if you want to grow, if you want to expedite your learning, you have to work on yourself.
Don't be lazy. Don't try to wing it and don't make excuses for failing at learning. Don't make excuses for being lazy and trying to wing it. You are not too busy to learn. I don't care how many hours at the factory you work, you are not too busy. You know how I know it? Because God called you. He would not have called you to something you are unable to do.
And he would not have called you to do it half heartedly. If he called you to do it, he called you to do it right? So get to it. Am I telling you that you've gotta study for hours every night? No. I've ne I've not laid down a standard of expectation, um, but I am raising you up to a higher level of expectation.
Do something more, read more, study more. When I say read, I don't mean just the Bible. Reading the Bible is helpful. But I would dare say, and I believe I could almost make a case for it. It's not enough to be a good minister. You can be effective. You can get a job done, but there's so much more to make your brain smarter by reading good books to help you understand what the Bible is also saying.
Can the Lord, can you build up a conversation between you and God? Absolutely. But it'd be realistic if you had that kind of conversation between you and God, you wouldn't need my podcast. You would already be rocking it.
So for the rest of us humans trying to do the best we can with our P brain, you need. Other resources, good books, read, and by reading, I don't mean just only a physical book. If that's your thing, you knock yourself out, but if you need an e book, get an e book. If you need an audio book, get an audio book.
But uh, I get distracted. You can learn how to listen. You can train yourself. Trust me. I know it because that's how I live between my out, between my drive to work, my drive to church, I've learned how to soak in an audio book. My point is you cannot make excuses for not. Learning. This is the purpose of this podcast to help you grow in the ministry.
I hope this has been helpful already to teach you in expectations, to motivate you, to do more for the kingdom, to explain that I want you to be better than me. I want you to be better than your pastor. And that is not sacrilegious. Thanks for joining me, please follow or subscribe and let me know what you think of this podcast.
Let me know if you have any questions about it or any questions in general or requests for more hosts or someone in specific, thank you for your time. I am the Mike beyond the mic.
