Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:06 Welcome back to the Grace House podcast. Brian Phillips with you here today, we are a band of brothers being trained by grace to conquer darkness and to empower the world to live upright. We're building a culture. We're resourcing this culture, building all kinds of on-ramps for us to be inspired, to be motivated and to dig in and do the hard work that God has called us to do in our lives. And one of those is in our cultures, we talk about how we were being trained by grace, understanding the power of God's grace and not letting it be this soft water down concept that somehow grace excuses, the pathetic lazy side of ourselves, but rather it's like the opposite. Grace is a trainer. That's why we call it grace ops. It's the operations of God's grace. And we want to build a culture that actually motivates that people can actually get connected to build their band of brothers, where they can inspire their friends.
Speaker 1 00:01:10 They can inspire people by the way they live, that you'll actually be producing in your life. What you're going to produce from our culture is you're going to produce a life that's actually engaged in right living. It's engaged in living upright. Doesn't mean you're going to be perfect and you're probably never going to nail it a hundred percent, but that's the beauty of it. We've created the five-star charge, honor, affection, Liberty worn valor. And that's the beauty of it. We get to fall on this Advil, what we call and be forged by the virtues and the values that we've extracted from scripture and built it into the grace ops culture to train a generation of in the grace of God. The, the, the tough, robust ballsy version of like God's grace, right? Like we've made it so watered down and we can pathetic that nobody's attracted to it.
Speaker 1 00:02:05 And in grace God's grace saves us. God loves us. Yes. And amen to all that. And amen is a real churchy word, but, you know, yes. And yes, to all that stuff, the God wants to actually get into the nitty gritty parts of our lives and encourage us and train us to unleash us, to be these like pretty amazing beings that he created us to be. And to be on point with our assignment and to actually have peace and fulfillment and contentment from his heart and from his power so that we can live, uh, live a powerful life. And I want to share a story with you today about my personal life and leadership. Um, some of the things I've survived in leadership, and I, I want to talk to this topic today. That valor is a choice we choose to be courageous. It's not an emotional thing that we feel it, then we're going to do it when we feel it it's actually a preparation.
Speaker 1 00:03:02 And when we're prepared. So I want to talk to you a little bit about a story from my own life. And some of the preparation that went into, um, uh, an outcome that many would say is filled with valor. And we'll go back into my life. Uh, well, a little over a decade ago, uh, I've been on this assignment for 14 years now. God, my wife and I got called us to start a church from scratch. And we chose to do that by his leading it literally in the middle of nowhere, we're in a town called Poplar Grove, Illinois. It's a kind of a bedroom community community between Rockford, Illinois, and Chicago, Illinois. So we, we set out to plant this church and we knew God wants to do it. And I'll talk about that in a little bit, but we got into it and I've never really done well, and this might be a rabbit hole, right?
Speaker 1 00:03:56 All the shoots here, but I've never done well with like church growth culture. This concept of grow, grow, grow, grow as fast as you can. I get so annoyed with conferences like church conferences and you go to them and it's like, Hey, you know, welcome so-and-so to the stage because they took their church from 30 people in their basement to 3000 people in two years. And you know, he's going to come and share with us and blah, blah, blah. So you listened to the guy shares and, and they might have some good stories and they might even be good people, but I, I kind of reject the whole foundation that they build upon. So I don't really necessarily want to Jack them as people and devalue them, but I do reject the entire, most of the processing of how they think and what they build upon.
Speaker 1 00:04:41 So it kind of puts me in a strange category of a thinker. And I really believe I'm in the earth, in the church realm to actually kind of rethink church and to decentralize some of the things we've made center points and not to just do it, to be feisty and worn. And Don, I actually want to build something that might be a model for our entire country. So I want to share with you a little bit of that journey just to just a small portion of it, because, and here's why, because I've had so many leaders, so many leaders tell me that this is what they say. They say 99.9% of the people we know would quit. What you're doing. They would quit. They would have never even made it through the gnarly terrain that you had to navigate. So then they look at me like I'm crazy and they don't understand me.
Speaker 1 00:05:38 So I F I feel like I'm, uh, in a very rare category as a person. And I think because of the feistiness I have and the, the devotions of my heart and the assignment that I've been so faithful to, it does give me a place to speak from a very powerful place to speak from, into your life. And even into your assignment, I don't know all the ins and outs of what you are doing or not doing, but I do have good leadership skills and principles to help you navigate gnarly terrain and to actually do successful things. Things that are filled with valor. And to me, valor is a choice. It's a preparation I'm prepared. Therefore I don't have to think about being, you know, being brave in the moment because I'm prepared to be brave in the moment. So, uh, and, and, and so it's kind of like a chain that we build in our lives.
Speaker 1 00:06:34 It's a way we think it's the way we live. It's the way we're prepared for every single day, every single obstacle, um, no matter what we're facing, whether it be trial or great success in great victory. So I want to talk to you about a story here. I'll throw a little story out there. So in the first couple of years, we started church in 2007 and the first couple years in the middle of nowhere, I mean, I had so many people get offended by, they got people got offended. Leaders got offended at me because of the geographic geographic place that our church is actually located. I had leaders get mad and say, oh man, you know, you've got such great skill. And if you did your church in a place that was a more populated, you could have a church of a thousand or 2000.
Speaker 1 00:07:16 And I'm like, yeah. Okay, cool. You know, thanks for banks for that feel great now. And it's just kind of funny the stuff we've heard and been through through the years and been through probably more pain than I've ever been through in my entire life, in these 14 years, but pain that actually produced very powerful things in my life and extracted things like it's pain that I would never have. I wouldn't treat for anything else. If I could go, if someone came to you right now and said, you know, if you could go back and change your path or change AB I don't, I really honestly don't think I would change anything about it because the pain that was produced in this, uh, journey, uh, has extracted out of me the leader I am. And I even have a phrase that kind of summarize it.
Speaker 1 00:08:05 I say that I set out to plant a church, but the church planted me. And, and that, that means a lot to me personally, that statement means a lot to me. So, so two years into this church plan in 2009 in the middle of nowhere, our church, and I'm not a big numbers guy, I've already told you, I reject the whole church growth thing, but churches do grow and numbers and money is a part of the organism of the body of Christ and the community of Christ. If you know, all the small families that make up the big family of church, we all have budgets. And so it's all part of it, right? So, you know, whether it's at a small singular house or it's at the bigger all collectiveness of all of us. So it, it, so, but here, here, here, here, it is 250.
Speaker 1 00:08:51 People were coming two years in, at a high school or something turned down, setting up and tearing down every week. That's brutal. Uh, and then all of a sudden a shift happened, a shift, a change happened in our culture. It, to me, it was actually awesome. It was beautiful to the people. It became an opportunity for those 250 people to decide, are we going to go with this shift or are we going to do something else? Because the essence of what I did is I had this time with God and God kind of confronted me with this question. Here's the question? Why are you jaded to the gifts of the spirit? He didn't say, why are you jaded to the holy spirit? Very key to point out. And, and I started to rattle off, you know, uh, re responses like, well, I've seen this person and that person, and just all do abuses.
Speaker 1 00:09:47 I've seen of the, the gifts of the holy spirit. I've seen abusive things happen and just manipulative things and things I'm like, I don't know about that. That's weird. And, uh, I just, I don't like God's question was great, cause I didn't, I wasn't against him, but I was jaded. And then God said to me, well, none of your excuses, excuse you. You're, you're a man after my own heart and you need to understand these things. So I got humble really fast and I realized all, man, I feel like I failed God. And I took a couple of hours. I was weeping. And just kind of just in my heart and just saying yes to God and a thousand different ways like, Hey, I'm in, I'll learn, I'll grow, I'll do whatever. So I kind of had that message at the church that next Sunday, I just kind of put it out there real wrong.
Speaker 1 00:10:33 I was like, Hey, here's what I kind of told them what I just told you guys. And I said, I'm not going to make that mistake anymore. I'm going to go after God's heart and let's do this as a church and let's go and thought everybody would be excited about that. It was really simple as like, we're just going to be open to the gifts of the holy spirit. That's that was kind of the essence of it. Well, that day I had a board member quit. The next day I had a couple more board members quit. I had, uh, some, some wealthier families that were helping us, um, a lot financially, you know, running our churches really expensive and starting one from scratch. Literally started it from scratch. It's a lot of hard work and, and, and having some extra funds help does help you do more things and helps you be able to accomplish some of your goals.
Speaker 1 00:11:14 So all of a sudden, two years in, I think we had about $80,000 in the bank and the black, and then all of a sudden this one Sunday in, in, I believe it was in March during a spring break, all of a sudden the church begins to turn on me. A lot of them, a lot of the people who liked us and were helping us turned and turned hundreds of people away from us. So the church actually, I don't know how long it took if it was six months or I don't really remember all that. It was so painful. I don't remember a lot of those details. Um, but within about six months, I think to eight months, the church went town to literally, like, it seemed like 30 people, 40 people, it just, boom, gone. Finances went from about 80,000. I think it took us about a year. Um, maybe a little more than that. We got down to about 50,000 in the red, 30, 40, 50,000 in the red, just, and that wasn't because we went and had steak every night. It was just weird, just surviving. And I did survive off of her credit card. And I'm sure that was, most people will say that was dumb. Um, I probably would say yes, I agree with you. Um, but it was literally the only way that we could survive. So I that's the only option I had.
Speaker 1 00:12:31 Okay. So there's some of the pain, um, people are turning on me calling me all kinds of things, cult leader, um, you know, my name was just basically trashed and, and I, you know, going through that terrain, I was like, God, okay. Uh, your name is greater than my name. Your name is higher than my name. I don't care about my name. You can have it. You can, you can trash it. You can put it in the trash. Can, I don't care what you do with my name. It's yours. Take it. I don't care if this whole town thinks I'm weird. I don't care if everyone around here thinks I'm a call leader, that's fine. I don't care. I don't need my reputation either. Just you it's all yours. God, I'm your man. I'll do whatever you tell me to do. Even, even if it makes me look that way.
Speaker 1 00:13:14 So that lasted, we call that the, that was like the beginning of like our wilderness years, that literally lasted four years, four years, very hard to ring. I have tons of miraculous stories of God's provision during this time. Maybe I'll make that another episode just sharing some of the testimony and some of the essence of the financial provisions of all this, but focusing on how valor is a choice, I kind of want to get to, I want to work through the story a little bit more. So God would provide for us in really powerful ways. And one of those ways was a building. So when we got down to that, like 40, $50,000 in the red, and I was like, Aw, man, we can't even, we wouldn't even bill Ford to keep paying the credit card bill off of that. I was at that point, literally, I was like, it was like the week I was, it was I've been at, it's been on my mind for awhile.
Speaker 1 00:14:09 But that week I was like, okay, I got to learn how to shut the church down. What will w how do we take care of this debt? Do I have to pay it back? There was so many questions I had and, uh, I just thought, well, okay, God brought me here to, to, uh, to fail and to kill me and to humble me and to maybe bring me into something else. That was my mindset. And that same week, the building we're in right now used to be a bar in it. It had foreclosed that week. And I was in the parking lot. I drove in the parking lot and I was like, oh, this is interesting. The buildings for closed and what the heck's going on. And I, I just sat there and I had some worship music on, in my truck and it was snowy.
Speaker 1 00:14:47 And I remember the Lord really clearly speaking to my, he said, I'm going to give you this property for this church. And I instantaneously believed it. That sounds very crazy. Right. But I instantaneously believed what God was telling me in that moment. I believed I instantly just went ignited, boom. I was like, man, all these encouraging things I've heard that God wants to do with his church. And these people, this community we're building, I'm like, man, he must actually really want to do these things. So I got really excited. I went back to the church of like 30 people or so that next Sunday and told them, and they all kind of looked at me like I was little crazy and I'm not sure, I'm sure that there was a good number of them. They believed, but it's still that look on their face like, whoa.
Speaker 1 00:15:37 And it took, you know, from that time it took another year, ish year and a half-ish for us to even, uh, maybe even close to two years to us first, even get the property. So it all happened, you know, but you know, offerings didn't go up. It was hardcore, gnarly terrain. I mean, it was just insane, difficult. Um, the church really wasn't growing there wasn't really a lot happening other than when we would gather on Sundays though, I will, I will say this from the time that I spoke, that first message I mentioned earlier about, you know, the day they all turned on me or whatever, our good number of them turned on me from literally on our Sunday gatherings, there would be such a powerful encounter with the holy spirit and with God, it was just mighty. So you'd get into this like powerful Rome on Sunday and then boom, you go right back to like this warfare, Monday through Saturday, Sunday would come home.
Speaker 1 00:16:31 You'd just be in this place of just like, oh man, this is good. And I think a lot of the Sundays were like that. I, you know, I'd like to say they were all like that, but that might be a little bit too much. But I think most of them pretty, pretty powerful, pretty intimate with God. It was cool. So long story short, we, we did get a property. Um, that property, we got that same property went up for auction. No one bought it at auction. It went to, uh, it got on the MLS listing and we, we put a contract and the bank didn't like our offers and you know, so long story short, we got the property. We, I w w w they wanted one, uh, $600,000 of this property. Um, it's a two acre lot of land, just under two acre, lot of land with a 5,000 square foot bar on it, which is a pretty big bar.
Speaker 1 00:17:18 And, um, we've got to set up now as a really cool, uh, church. It's a fellowship it's, it's, uh, it's a really intimate place. It looks like a big, huge living room when you walk in, just has that feel to it. It's just really cool. And I don't know, God's done a lot and the place is growing as plus and out of the seams, we're probably running 300 people at our church now. So it's really powerful and exciting times, but we had an navigate this gnarly terrain for many, many, many years, and it's very, very, very difficult. And I did put on display a lot. I lived valor. I've lived to valor. I live it it's and it's not because of it's it's valor is a choice. It's not an emotion. And it was something I was prepared for. I'm going to tell you why I'm going to tell you why right now.
Speaker 1 00:18:05 So it goes all the way back to something that I've loved for over two decades now, and Proverbs 24, there's this little phrase with wise advisors, you can wage your war. Did you hear that with wise counsel with wise advisors, you can do these things. You can wage your, your war, your assignment, think about that. Yeah. Your assignments so critical for you to understand your assignment. And I teach this all the time. You've probably heard me say this before. You'll never understand your assignment. I believe in the full context of your personal assignment, until you see the power of what God's doing in his collective people, what is God's grander vision? What is God's vision for his people? And then how do I in a singular way fit into that? And when you start to learn those answers, you'll naturally start to learn, um, how your gifts work, what gifts you have.
Speaker 1 00:19:02 And you'll, you'll see how those apply to the marketplace, where you can actually produce wealth and build with your leadership skills and with your gifts. So with wise counsel, you can wage your war, huh? Oh, did I make it through the gnarly terrain? And I haven't even shared with you the story. I actually did a podcast with a good friend of mine, Brian Chambers. And we, this podcast was like three and a half hours long. So, and it's actually the full, almost the full story of, of our, of our story. So, um, I'll have to get that and maybe put that on our podcast. If I haven't done that, I don't think I have. So I'd like to share that sometime, but valor is a choice and here's how we made it through the gnarly terrain. Here's how I continue to live with valor is, is that one I'm prepared?
Speaker 1 00:19:52 I, I spend time in the word of God. I study the word of God. I, I learn from multiple people. I learn from people who I have high esteem for high regard for, I mean, I'm a very open-minded person, which is what gives me the ability to come in and kind of disrupt and decentralize some of the things I'm so excited about. Some of the stuff we're working on, uh, in that part of my life and my team, uh, in that part is going to be really cool stuff. Um, but valor is something that you prepare for. You choose valor everyday. You choose the scripture, says be strong and courageous. It doesn't say, if you feel good, be strong, or if the heavens align and all the stars and planets align, you can, you can live a certain way. No, it says no matter what you're up against, it says be strong and courageous. And there's a reason why is because you know who your God is and you know, his heart, his character, you begin to love what he loves and hate what he hates. And that's what the grace of God trains us in.
Speaker 1 00:21:08 So how did I make it through the gnarly terrain? Why did I believe so quickly when I heard this little, uh, it wasn't even a whisper. It was, it was an inner, I've never heard God audibly speak to me, but as an inner, like moving, like I knew God was going to do this. I knew my father's voice. And the reason I could make it through the gnarliest of terrain in a town where people, people got offended because I obeyed God to come to a small town and it's just been crazy. But why do leaders say 99.9% people would quit? It's not because I'm just a pure idiot. And I just want to kind of sacrifice my family on the alter of me trying to do something great. No, cause I've seen people do that. I've seen too many people do that. Actually. It's actually a sad thing.
Speaker 1 00:21:59 I've seen people who I knew weren't skilled to do churches or start a church. It's, it's very difficult. Especially if you reject the whole notion of like church growth, come on, man. And you don't want to like do the whole, oh man, I've been to church growth seminars and it's just, they base everything on culture. The mall people go to the mall, people go to the NFL, stadiums, people go the name of all these entertainment things. And your church has to look like this and resemble this and, and be like those places. And they will come. And you know, you build your church with like mall are like more of like a mall mindset, build their cafe and, and build, uh, build a coffee shop and, you know, just to build a Starbucks right in your church and they will come. And it's just all this stuff and silliness.
Speaker 1 00:22:43 And when I look in the Bible, I'm like, why are you basing your church strategy on culture? Aren't we supposed to be a counter-culture movement? Isn't that the problem on why we're so watered down and filled with so many pansies. I mean, people who don't have backbone, people who don't know how to lead people who do quit, why do you know, why do everybody, you know, why did 99.9% of the people, you know, would quit because they're weak and they might be pathetic leaders. Sorry. I know that's really harsh language doesn't mean I'm great. Doesn't mean I'm all that. God knows my issues. I talk about them all the time, but, okay. So here's the preparation. I know. I spend time with God. I study the word. I spend time in prayer and I build wise advisors into my life. I let them speak into my life when I make big decisions.
Speaker 1 00:23:44 I've always, I'm always doing that with a team of, of wise advisors or many months, maybe even a year out from big decisions. I make I'm building relationship with these people. How you, you know, how's it going? How are you, what do you think about this? And what do you think about that? I'm constantly throwing stuff. Other keep, keep me in prayer and let me know if anything you get good or bad, let me know. And they do. So when I moved to plant a church, I had a counsel wise advisors helped me seal that decision if you will. And then when, so kind of like when all hell hits, right? When the darkest hour comes and in 99.9% of people would quit. The reason I wouldn't quit. I mean, think about it. 50 grand in the red, I've got kids to feed, I've got a mortgage to pay. I've got a church of 30 people, got what? $800 offerings coming in a week that doesn't pay for anything.
Speaker 1 00:24:41 So how do you make it? How do you valor? How do you be bold and strong and courageous in those moments? How do you live with valor and bravery? When nothing makes sense around you? I can tell you right now, it's because of the wise counsel I had the three years, four years prior to this timeframe in my life. When I knew that, Hey, God's calling me to this town and to this place, and he's going to do a, B and C, and he wants us to do this and that and make the site really what we're doing is we're making disciples bottom line period. As we're doing, we're building a community, people follow Jesus. Do we do it perfectly? No, because not every leader has everything that they need. I have one, a few things I'm really good at, and that's all I'm committed to. And then I've done the hard work of waiting and allowing our culture to be weak so that other things can come in and make it strong. It's a different way of leading it's different leadership style.
Speaker 1 00:25:41 But I survived all that. And I was able to have the optimistic mindset in the place I could live from valor because I knew that I knew that I knew that the God had called me to do this. And I was going to go to the very low, the last breath I had to be faithful to that assignment period. That's it. So there you go. Valor is a choice. It's you? It's a preparation. It's a way of living. I choose valor. I choose to be strong. I choose to be courageous now because I'm all that because I know my father in heaven is all that I know as heart. I know his ways. I know he's never cowered before the enemy. I know that he's sovereign. And I know that he's given me an assignment and he's given his people on assignment and I'm in tune with both of those at very high levels.
Speaker 1 00:26:34 So because of that, I can go out into the darkest gnarliest condition of the earth and I can live with valor and I can put Bray, bravery on display. And you know what? We need a lot more of that in this hour. That's why we started grace offset. That's why we started the T2 12 culture. That's we want to champion of a life of valor. We want to champion men, equipping men, uh, resourcing men, give me men, men, this culture. I mean, we have a whole, I mean, our apparel is going to be sweet, man. We're working on some really cool apparel stuff. That's coming out. If you've got our logo apparel, I know you love it. It's got the motto on stuff. And if you don't have it, ask me how to get our apparel. Cause it's not on our website right now. Um, we went through one avenue and we decided all their stuff was trash. So we went, we went down another avenue and now we've got really sweet, sweet apparel. So it's not on the website yet, but if you want some apparel get ahold of me, uh, get ahold of us on our social media, um, platforms. And we will make sure you get some apparel. That's it though. Remember that valor is a choice and it's something that you prepare for. So until next time, be strong, be courageous and live upright. <inaudible>.
