EP004: Tyler Sansom and Church Anywhere (Small Church, Micro-Locations, and Church Online)

Welcome back to From Text to Testimony. I am Andy, I'm one of your hosts here, and this is episode four. Uh, we have reached four episodes by golly, by golly, we've made it. Uh, John and I are diving into really a two-part episode this time around. Uh, and this one will feature John and I. In the next one will feature our good friend Megan and I, and uh, we'll talk a little bit more about that one next time. But the topic of mental health obviously has been all over the place for good reason. It's something that we need to concentrate on. It's something we need to focus on, and within the Glue ecosystem and really for a bunch of spiritual explorers, mental health is top of the list for a lot of these things. Uh, and John and I are going to kind of dive into and just really scratch the dirt off of the surface a little bit now. A disclaimer: neither John nor I are licensed mental health therapists or coaches or counselors or anything. We're just pastors. We've been doing this for a lot of years. Like, I think almost thirty years combined between the two of us. But we're just pastors. We don't have the actual mental health answers. And so John and I are going to talk a little bit about that. We're going to talk about where we fit in, where we can kind of show you the pastoral ways of doing things, and more than that, how we have seen God moving through some of the texts and testimonies that we've been finding from the explorers in Glue. Uh, it's been really cool to see so far. I know he's going to bring a couple stories. I've got a couple of stories, and as always, we're going to laugh and just really have a good time. So all of that being said, this is really in partnership with Glue. I am part of Digital Church Network, and Glue and DCN have partnered up together to really bring you this show. If Glue is something that you are interested in looking at, if you're coming to either YouTube channel, uh, a one of our audio podcasts, or any number of mediums that you're watching this video and you're going, wait a minute, what is all of this about? I invite you into the links below. You can uh sign up for Glue and kind of start looking around. You can log in over at DCN as well and really start to meet the fam and and be encouraged and be strengthened and be guided in your digital ministry, in your digital propositions for uh really talking about Jesus. But okay, all of that out of the way, sit back and relax and get ready for episode four from Text to Testimony.

Well, we're back uh for episode four. John's doing his happy dance or his prep dance. Um, you know, here's something interesting. Uh, usually podcasts start off with a little bit of banter, uh, and so we're just going to go with this today. Um, I do. So, you know, John Mark Comer, right? Yeah, author, speaker, all that that dude. Um, I was at—I was listening to something with him or no, I was at a conference uh that he was at, and I was kind of working the conference called Exponential Conference, really fun conference, y'ada y'ada, church planters, et cetera, et cetera. John Mark Comer said that when he gets ready to speak, he routinely will walk backstage and do a series of yawns for about five minutes. And he's like, I'm not tired. I'm not stressed. But yawning apparently wakes up the brain. Yawning is is a way of getting more oxygen into your brain. And so he's like, I'm not tired. Usually I've had my double venti triple quasi. Yeah, so look at suggestion. Yep, just a suggestion. Got me going, dude. And that's the thing, like, cuz so my the where I was going with that story was so he's talking about this thing. I went, huh, that's fascinating. And I was doing—I was like taking pictures of something, and I looked back this way, and I looked at the crowd. Half of them were yawning. It had to be at least half. And I got a picture of it. I'll try to find it and and post it in the show notes if I can. I got a picture, and it was just it looked like uh like Charlie Brown, you know, when just all the mouths are wide open singing. That's what it looked like right there. Do you have any do you have any like pre-ing rituals that you get into?

Yeah, yawning is a good one. Um, cuz sometimes I'll I'll hit a yawn, and like the person that's next to me or the stage manager is kind of like, are you bored? Like, is this? But no, yawn. Um, I have like a little like prayer ritual when I'm speaking at church. Uh-huh. Of just like, I hold my hands really tight together, and then like kind of pray to release like this. Like, oh, like fists, like fists, like like, and so I'm just holding them like this, and then I let go, flatten them out. Uh-huh. And release, and then receive, flip them over, and then receive and receive what's going to happen, whatever that is, and just a little prayer ritual. The other thing that I find, and this is not nearly as spiritual, is that I often like burp a whole bunch before I'm about to go up. Hey, man, you got to release whatever's inside, you know? Well, and it just feels like, oh man, I have to do it now because otherwise I can't do it while I'm up there. And so it just feels like if there's any gas, it just gets all released like right before. And so the way our church functions is that there's usually like a bumper video right before I'm about to come out to speak. And so I've got like thirty seconds on dark stage, and I'm just like, and it's just it's just kind of coming out. And that's when you reach back and turn the microphone off. You hit that little mute button back there. Uh, trust them, trust them. Yeah, you got to trust. And also you got to trust that your online guys know like not to pipe the sound through as well because sometimes online is a little bit ahead. Uh, we've had that happen. My my pre-ing pregame ritual in that doesn't have anything to do with any of that. What I end up doing is we have this like, so at our church, it's um, the stage, the main platform, our broadcast platform is you know, it's a fairly large platform, whatever, and then there is like a, it's like rounded at the back. And so I will do two or three laps. Like, I'll start in one, and I'll sprint down, and then I'll sprint back, and then I'll sprint back until like I'm out of breath. And what I have found, and this is like comes from working out and all that, if I get my heart rate up really quickly and then it it let it drop back down naturally, the second I walk out under that platform, I no longer have that like that spark of, oh, I'm super nervous now. Cuz, you know, and not—I've been doing this for for a while. You've been doing this for a while. But even, you know, even every time I get in front of a group of people, I'll get that little momentary like, oh yeah, oh, I can screw up. Yeah, and that means it means something, you know? That that means it's like you're you're treating it well. But what I have noticed that is if I get my if I artificially get my heart rate up and let it just slowly come back down, that nervousness just turns into the energy of the speaking woman. That's really cool. There's a tip for all the perspective preachers and speakers and group leaders out there. Doesn't matter if you're in business meetings or if you're a head pastor. Uh, come to sprint J with yeah, come to From Text to Testimony. I'll send you uh send me nineteen ninety-nine. Uh, I'll put my my cash app and my PayPal below. Uh, yep, and there we go. I'll give you training advice. Hey, uh, we're going to be talking today about an interesting kind of topic, something that's been in the zeitgeist for a while, uh, and something that I think all of us as church leaders and really spiritual responders inside of Glue need to talk about. Uh, and that is mental health. And it is this big buzz word. And I think mental health encompasses a lot of things. Uh, it encompasses anxiety and depression. It encompasses suicide. It encompasses broken hearts. It encompasses I just lost my job. But I also think it's it's turning into a little bit of a catchall in a good way. And so as we roll directly into kind of this segment here, John, I want to start with you. When you hear that word mental health, you know, you've been a pastor for a while. You've been caring for people for a while. What do you immediately think of when you think mental health in the church?

Well, I think I used to think of it as kind of like you said, a catchall for psychological distress. Like that includes trauma. It includes all these things. Uh, as I've kind of grown in my own mental health journey and in seeing the mental health journeys of others, I'm starting to think of it more like our physical health. Just a mental health. And so like physically, you don't have to be diagnosed with a huge problem to go see a doctor or get physical help, right? It's like, hey, my cholesterol is a little bit up. I got to do this, or maybe I need to eat a little bit better, or maybe I need to work out. Like, it's an encompassing system. And so I started to think of mental health in a similar way of just the emotional system of our body and how we keep that um as healthy as possible.

That's that's that's interesting. The the physical thing, I think a lot of people uh can can relate to, especially you know, watching sports in the United States and all this other stuff. It's such a it's such a huge thing. Uh, it's very interesting to me though. There was a basketball player named Kevin Love, and this was what, eight or ten years ago? Well, maybe it was a little bit less than that. He was one of really the first athletes to come out and start saying, hey, I've been struggling with this stuff. Yeah, and I remember I'm I'm a huge sports guy, you know, and you know, both both of us we kind of get down on on some sport stuff. And and I remember watching uh some show at the time, and they were ridiculing him for it. They were saying, you know, you get paid millions of dollars, a big crybaby, go out there and perform. And there was a part of me that was like, yeah, that guy gets paid more than me, shut up and go do your job. We all struggle with some things. But then I started—I got older, like you, like you rightly did—and and I stopped looking at it as the catchall and started looking at it more as really a driving force behind minory. Um, and and I think it's something that Glue uh as responders we can we can almost lay into a little bit more. Uh, and the reason I say that is because I'm going to pull up one of the texts that I got. Um, and so this was from a uh where did it go? This was from a woman named Ashley. Uh, now Ashley texted us, and it says that she came through the church's care campaign. And she texted this back in May of twenty twenty-three. She says, I'm a longtime sufferer of depression and anxiety. I'm completely alone, and the loneliness has become far too much. And so you see that you immediately go, okay, I've got some steps that I can kind of work through. Uh, we'll get to in the testimony section. We'll kind of get to our responses there. I did want to bring up one more uh email or one email, excuse me, text. Uh, and this was from Patricia. Uh, she said, and this this also this came in in January of twenty twenty-three. Uh, and it she said, I'm Baptist. I'm depressed. I don't like fake people. I'm sixty-eight years old. So I like a little bit of the old type of music, and I love family. That's like a that's a dating profile. I that's exactly. So I remember telling our the guy who I used to work with, Austin, I said like, huh. And So I responded back, and I will talk more about this, and I and I said, um, we're a digital church and a digital community devoted to really seeking God, finding the kingdom, and talking about Jesus in any way we can. Plus, we don't like fake people either, smiley face. I'd love to get you connected into a community that we can pray for you more regularly. A grace place to start is our digital community. Here's the link to the group. Da D. How can I be praying more specifically for you today? That was at nine oh five a.m. At nine oh seven a.m., I got wrong number. Like, thanks, Patricia. Oh no. And then I didn't hear from her since. Uh, so what about you? Do you got any texts that you can share in the mental health journey?

Yeah, I think uh, oh, honestly though, here's what I'll say, and I think you you

Set the table for this really well when it comes to people that are reaching out to Glue. I think there's a mental health component to almost all of these texts. Interesting. Um, because, and I say that because unless somebody's like, "Hey, I just found Jesus and I need help," for the most part it's people going, "Something is not right."

Yeah, and my best articulation of this is, and whatever they put in the text, uh, you know, don't have my boy do that sound again. Yeah, it is. Okay, I'm going to try to clip that, just use it for later. It just come. But it's whatever comes out. And so if you've been in ministry, you know that sometimes people will tell you something, but there's a pain and a problem behind it, but it might not be the symptom. It's excuse me, this is just the symptom that they're reporting. And so they go, "Hey, I'm lonely. Hey, I don't like this. Hey, I don't like fake people." So immediately I'm like, "Okay, what friendship or relationship conflict got there?" And so any of the ones that I'm receiving of, "Hey, I've been alone. Hey, I'm isolated in a city," and so we got one from a woman named Rachel who was just sharing that she lost her daughter. And it was just, you know, it was pretty simple. Uh, here I'll read it for you. She said, "What did she say? My daughter just died. I don't know how to do what I know what to do." Like, it was just, it's just like, "I don't, I don't know what to do." And so in responding, we had a couple texts back and forth. And you know, after exchanging condolences, uh, our conversation kind of shifted to how to help. And you can have all sorts of mental health kinds of things, but I think if you're putting that, like, anything you're receiving is probably coming from some emotional distress. That's just, that's the pain that makes you go, "I need to reach out to somebody," and they chose to reach out via, you know, via Glue, via text.

As you were talking, I pulled another text up here, and uh, this is going to be something we could talk about in the testimony section. This is from a woman named Carol, uh, and this also came in right around that same time of the beginning of May. She said, "My daughter died of sepsis complicated by Parkinson's in July of 2022. I moved to a city that I'm not going to name and need help with depression. I took care of my daughter for twelve years and it was difficult and I need help. Thank you." And that's one of those like, "Woof, woof," like, "How, how do I do that?" Uh, and so I want to, I want to move into our testimonies section here. And with that, you know, you were talking about the text you read, how, how did you help? Like, what were your, what were your steps? How did you, how did you elicit a conversation? 'Cause one of the things that we've been talking about in "From Text to Testimony" is not only just receiving text, because anybody can receive a text. You can shotgun approach an advertisement out there and then get a bunch of texts and then send some stuff out and then flatline silence. But it's that creation of that back and forth engagement that's really huge. So how did you get that conversation going?

Well, I, it just started with the condolences. And I think it's, we want to move people, right? We want to move from text to testimony really fast. Um, and so uh, but it was just like, "Hey, my sincere condolences. I'm so sorry for your loss." And it starts, it just started there.

Yeah, and then it was, you know, kind of a, "Hey, thank you for that," and then just a check in a couple of days later of, "Hey, how you doing?" And then she was like, "I'm not doing well." And then some more back and forth around, "Hey, what's going on? What are you doing?" And she's like, "This," and then she tells me where she's at and that there aren't a lot of resources for mental health located where she is. Hmm. And so in this conversation, the solution to me wasn't, she's about an hour away from our church, and so it's not really commutable um to any kind of program. And so what I was able to do, I reached out to a mental health professional that I happened to know, a licensed professional counselor, and I said, "Hey, this is somebody who's in a small town about an hour away from the city. Like, what can we do?" And she recommended kind of a, a database. It wasn't a database, it was a place to find online mental health providers or people who will be able to reach you virtually or who are near you. And so I just connected her to a larger resource because there's not a lot without a relationship. And as a, you know, and you mentioned this, we're not mental health professionals, right? And so uh, we can offer something very valuable in terms of spiritual guidance. Um, but in this case, this was somebody processing a very serious grief, and she really needed to get hooked up with somebody who could help her one-on-one. And so in this case, it was just sending a link and kind of hoping and praying she found the right person.

We'll uh, we'll include that National Database. There's a couple of them. Uh, we'll include that in the show notes in the links below. Uh, like John said, we are not mental health specialists. We are not counselors. All we are are pastors. We're essentially the front line. Uh, and we are the first responders, you know? We are the EMTs. EMTs are not doctors. That's us. We're not the, we're not the ones that are trained in this. Um, the conversation that I was having with, let me pull it back up, with Ashley was just that uh, "Hey, my name," and I responded back, "Hi, hi Ashley. My name is Andy. I'm on the digital ministry team here at Be Hope Church. I'm also the digital pastor. Thanks so much for filling out the form. I'm so, so, so incredibly sorry to hear you're continually wrestling with depression and anxiety and loneliness. How can I help you today?" And so we've sent millions of those texts out. About an hour later, I've got a response back from her, and I was extremely pleased. She told me about her boyfriend of three and a half years that I'd left her via text, which kind of sucks. Uh, and he, I guess he told her that uh, when she could make him a priority, then they'd be together, which is a whole other form of narcissism that I didn't want to deal with. Um, she said her heart is completely shattered. She's alone. She doesn't have anybody for her to rely on. She then said this thing: "My depression and anxiety got in the way of me living the life I wanted. I just wanted the pain to end." And that's scary. Um, when you see that, because that's, that's one of those buzzword, a red flag. That's a red flag where this person could be harming themselves.

Exactly. An immediate red flag. And so the testimony portion of this show always is either how God is working or how we're trying to move God in and around this process. And uh, I was able to first get her connected to one of those national databases, but more than that, she's not local to me. She was about three, three and a half hours away from where we live in Tampa. And I was able to actually get her hooked up with a church in that area. Uh, and the only reason I was able to do that is by the grace of God was that I knew a local pastor up there. And so he was able to reach out to her. He was able to kind of connect with her. He got his women's ministry care coordinator to get in touch with her. Uh, I haven't had any followup in the last couple of months, but as of like August, end of August, beginning of September, she had actually started going to uh, uh, one of their small groups. And it was kind of a singles group, but it was also kind of one of those, not single.

Yeah, I know what you mean. You and I both know like singles groups, what that is. Uh, it ain't one of those, it ain't one of those like nifty fifty type groups. Um, it is, it's definitely, you know, one of those things that's actually helping her. And she had been plugged in. She had been plugged in. And, and you know, I'm friends with her on Facebook, and from time to time I can see some posts, and it, and it looks like she's doing better.

Yeah, that's the cool thing um that happened with her. The other woman that I was talking about with Carol, uh, who her daughter had died of sepsis, uh, I never heard from her again. And I had texted her a couple of times, and that was very frustrating to me. Um, that's very, I don't know, uh, as it's, it's disheartening to me. Uh, my question back to you is, as a care kind of guru that you are, as a caring, empathetic man, how do you deal with that when somebody tells you that they're dealing with mental health issues and then they never talk to you again? How do you, how do you do that?

I, I try my best, and it, it's hard because it feels personal. Yeah. Um, but I try my best to lead with grace. Um, and leading with grace to me means I, I will find a generous explanation in my head for why it didn't, why it's not working. And a generous explanation isn't like, like sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. It's just like, "Man, probably took a lot for this person to reach out, and maybe they just don't want to engage now. Um, and maybe that's not what they need. Um, or something along the lines of maybe they did find another avenue for help." I'll bet this isn't the only place that they reached out. And as somebody who works at a church, I get to see the back half of so many people's stories that started somewhere else. And so a lot of people's frustration of, I'm sure there are tons of pastors who are like, "This person never got back to me and they ghosted me, and I haven't seen him in years," and then I'm baptizing them this past weekend. Oh yeah. And it's like, "I don't know the first half of the story. I don't know how all that happened because we haven't had a chance to like sit down and go through it." But it's just the planting of the seeds, right? And all we can do is plant some of those seeds. And you know, Jesus talks about it because Jesus is awesome. But right, like, it's not our job to harvest. Like, the God of the harvest does that. We plant seeds the best that we can and know that at some point it can be redeemed. Sometimes the next week, sometimes the next month, sometimes it's us, but more often than not it's somewhere else. And sometimes it's ten years in the making.

You know, it makes me think of something that happened at our church where a man uh, finally got baptized. Um, and he was in his thirties, forties, and then I talked to his dad, and dad was like, "We've been praying for this for forty years, and we thought it went wrong in the teenage years, and we thought he was gone, and we thought he wasn't going to make it, and we, you know, dot dot dot dot dot," and then it comes back around later. And you never know what's going to happen. And we believe in the arc of the universe is towards God's side. And so you just hope that when these people don't message you back that they're headed in the right direction.

That is awesome. Uh, the pull quote for this entire episode is going to be "Jesus Is Awesome." Uh, so I appreciate that. Now, I, I think there's some wisdom there. Uh, and that's starting off the tip section now. I, I think there's some definite wisdom there in that we will probably never know the end of the story. And so I guess one of the first tips that I would counsel is be patient. Be patient with mental health. Be patient with those things. Um, I'm going to be diving in in our next episode with an actual licensed mental health counselor uh, named Megan. Megan, absolutely, one of our favorite people. And she's going to help us through this series because she's going to have actual, you know, gritty, nitty-gritty, fingernails-deep type of tips. But for me, that patience thing is huge. Uh, because I want to solve things, things now. And mental health is, is not, and it is not solvable right now. With my own mental health, I have struggled with anxiety and depression for years. I'm actually currently on a medication, and I'd be willing to talk about that with anyone. Um, because of the same struggles that I see people going through, the same kind.

Of depressive almost chaotic moods that just kind of blow through and that's been me and the medication has helped kind of stabilize those things. It's not a crutch. It's actually like there's imbalances in my life, but the point of all of that is that that never cured that impatient side of me. That never cured that side that wants me to hurry up love, that wants me to hurry up a relationship because that's what I want to do. I want to solve it and then move on to the next problem and solve that and then move on to the next problem. And that's my very nature.

John, what would another tip from you be in this? It's going to take a minute to get around my elbow on this one, Andy, but it's going to be worth it, I think. Let's go. And so as I was talking to other mental health professionals and other pastors, they helped me see something that I hadn't seen before. And that churches and pastors are often literally the front lines in the battle for mental health in our society. And because for counselors there's a fee to go see them and there's a lot of times people don't feel comfortable and they feel like they can't do that. And so a lot of times pastors were kind of on this battlefield and we're seeing like the worst of the worst sometimes and we're seeing it right away. And people come to us. And so it's almost like being an ER doctor, right? And people without insurance show up, people just show up and they just keep coming and they never stop coming.

So my tip in that is to remember that you're only one person and understand your personal boundaries. You can't help everybody and it's not your responsibility to. And you can only do what you can do. And because I know that in seeing, if you've ever walked through an emergency room or seen what that is, there can be a fatigue and a burnout that sets in of like I just keep stitching people back up but they just keep coming back and coming back and coming back. And I think for pastors it can be similar. And so when it comes to dealing with folks like this, especially through something like Glue, just know that you're limited. And that's not bad. You're not limited because you're not good at what you do. You're not limited because you're not making an impact. You're just limited because you're a person and you can only do so much. And so remembering your personal boundaries is important.

That's huge. The personal boundaries and the patience. The thing, those are kind of the two things that I think pastors tend to forget because we all have this Messiah complex. And not even just pastors, but I think a lot of church volunteers and frontline ably volunteers using something like Glue and being a responder, we look at explorers as projects, you know, that we can solve. And it's like no, that ain't how this whole, that ain't how life works.

Definitely not. The thing that I guess there's something else there that I wanted to touch on and that is how many times do you think people are just texting these things with fake problems? Like how many people do you think are texting in with Glue, excuse me, with fake problems? Is that an overwhelming majority? Is it a minority? What does that feel like to you?

Based on what I've seen, I feel like it's a minority, a pretty significant minority. Just because, you know, it would take a lot of time than I would think somebody would want to take. And then if somebody was going to do that, I would assume it would be like the version of a crank phone call. And so they'd want to follow up and do something ridiculous and lead me down a path. And that just wasn't the case. I haven't had one that I feel like I've been chasing my own tail around or one that's inappropriate or rude or anything like that. And I think it's more likely people send it and experience regret of some kind or embarrassment or just forgetfulness and just don't think to respond.

I haven't seen a lot of fake ones.

Oh, that's good to hear. I, as I was looking through our database over the last couple of days to kind of look at some of these things, some of them seem, I don't want to say fake, but I, some of them are a little bit out there. And so there's a very cynical part of me that has been doing pastoral ministry for close to fifteen years now that feels like I've seen every story. And I know that's a little bit of counterintuitiveness. I think when you're using a platform like Glue, when, let me phrase it this way. When you are dealing with problems that you think might be fake or that you are trying to sus out if they're real, then let's just go in a texting area. What are you doing with that? Or are you just blanket covering everything with a ton of grace and just treating everything as no, this is real?

If I suspected that something wasn't real, I would do something similar as what I would do in person. Because part of what I do is benevolence ministry in person. And that is one where you, and so benevolence ministry for anybody who doesn't know what that is, is that the church can provide some supplemental funds for people to pay rent, pay bills, things along those lines. And we have some really clear boundaries for that. But people have figured out how to go from church to church and get money without having to work or anything like that. And it could be a sob story or it could be somebody coming into town. A lot of people go to churches and believe it or not, this is I'm trying not to be cynical about it, but a lot of people go to churches and they kind of come up with the story that's like hey, I'm stranded in town. I've got my kids and my card got cancelled because somebody took my card. And so I just need a couple hundred bucks for the night. Do you think I could ask the congregation or do you think somebody could do blah blah blah blah blah? And then you know it's just like I need it now. Hey, get me going on my way. And I'm kind of impatient about getting it. And so that's a little bit of a sidetrack to go. I've gotten pretty good at spotting those kinds of things in the benevolence piece. I mean, I'm kind of a big old softy, so I'm one of the last people to get it. I'm one of the last people to get it. But if it registers with me, what I usually do is create a step for them to take that would require effort by them. And because of that, it's a reasonable step where I'm not trying to tell somebody that's grieving hey, you know, do these hundred things. It's more just the idea of the ball is in your court. And if you want to continue down this path, you're going to have to take a step. Because that weeds out a lot of the people that may not have the best intentions, but it's not too big of a wall for somebody who really wants help.

That's good. How would you do that in Glue?

In Glue, it would be something like hey, here's my email. If you'd like to talk more about this, please send me an email. That's not a big deal. Like, that's, if somebody wanted help, they could copy and paste your email or just click the link. Like phones make it super easy to do that. They would do that. But generally, if you're just playing around or bored or trying to, I don't know, get back at the church for something, you might not take that step. You know, that's an example. Or even something like hey, this is a friend. You know, I have a friend who's, we know mental health providers in the city and we go hey, here's a list of mental health providers you can reach out to. Let me know who you've chosen, right? Let me know if any of these sound good. That's really good. And then it's like okay, then we can then we can have a conversation.

But I'm not doing all the work. That is really, really good. I actually want to pull that for a later use because I think there is something that you and I can chat about in another episode about kind of the, I'm going to say tips and tricks, and I don't mean it that way because it sounds very bad, but the tips and the tricks that we have for getting people to respond back to us in all circumstances. So that's good stuff.

Anything else you want to add to the tips section of our mental health conversation here?

No, I think that's probably it. But like you said, the patience piece, I think it takes patience not just in each interaction but patience overall. Because I found just generally with the conversations that are coming in, when I had time for them, I wasn't getting them. So I would like refresh the Glue engaged thing and be like okay, I'm ready. Like this is the time. This is the time that I want somebody to reach out. And they wouldn't necessarily do that. But on a week that I was going to preach or I had a funeral or I had a bunch of stuff coming up, there'd be ones that rolled in. And so I just be patient. It'll, like, be patient. Be faithful. Continue to respond to people even if it doesn't feel like you're making a difference because you are. That's also going to be another pull quote.

I feel like you and I should do a podcast about time management for pastors because gosh, I still don't know how to do it. I'm preaching this Sunday at our church from the main platform and I have all of these meetings. I have to record three podcasts. I've already had two people reach out that they need care. I have to do a hospital visit. I've got to go and do like three other things. And oh by the way, I've got like actual family things.

Where does that time go? That's always the case. And I have a terrible time manager. And so I think what would be good about our podcast is that it's coming from the perspective of we're not experts. We need help.

Yeah. And so we're not giving you the solution. We're surfacing the problem and we need you to help us.

Yeah. The thing that always comes up on sermon weeks for me personally with the like heart for everyone is it feels like it's so easy to prioritize the sermon. It's so easy to go I have something really big and important to do this weekend. I can't do X Y or Z. But every time I've taken care of the people, God takes care of the message.

Yep. And every time I just stop and go, you know what, whether it's my in-laws have a flat tire or whether it's I sit down with this person or whether it's I take the time to do X Y or Z, I'm always rewarded in that move. There's never been a time where God has left me hanging on the sermon.

Yeah, it's almost like he actually wants us to go and do the thing of caring for the people instead of just like oh look at me, I'm big bad preacher guy up here on a stage with a microphone. Who, it's crazy. It's so funny how God works like that, right?

Yeah. Anything you want to add to the conversation?

Yeah, this is going back to John Mark Comer. This is a tip specifically for John Mark Comer. If you're listening, John Mark Comer, every time you go to speak at a conference, you should bring a food truck called John Mark Comer and it's tacos and Spanish food.

Yeah, right. John Mark, yeah, this is we got to make this happen. We got to talk to his people and see if we can get this going.

I don't know if we can publish this then because I want to steal it and then sell it to him and we will be thousandaires.

Yeah, you know what you should do is you should say hey, this is a tip for John Mark Comer and then bleep what I said.

Oh, you have to subscribe below. Yeah, and then be like if you're John Mark Comer, if you're specifically John Mark Comer, reach out and we'll tell you the idea.

Links below. Yes, uh, that's uh John wheeling and dealing. John wheeling and dealer pile over there, ladies and gentlemen. Absolutely. Uh, John, thanks so much for joining in on this conversation today, man. I love you, buddy. Thanks for having. Love you.