173 - Discipleship: Robby Gallaty Interview

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, my RFP friends. This is Mark Milioni from Springfield, Missouri, with some important news. We are excited to announce that Baptist Bible College is becoming Mission University. We are proud about who we are in what we do, and we're experiencing a new season of growth and interest from all over. Parents and students today are very concerned about the culture of secular colleges, and they desire a college that has a strong biblical worldview, a safe and fun atmosphere, and high academic quality. Many have found us here on campus and online. Our name may be changing, but our belief in God's word, our doctrine, and our commitment to reach the world are not changing. Mission University is the right name, and now is the right time. For more information, go to our new web location, mission.edu be sweet. Sorry, Brian. [00:01:17] Speaker B: Well, hey, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to the Recovering fundamentalist podcast. We are your host, Nathan Brian. I'm JC. Fellas, it's been a minute. How are you doing? [00:01:27] Speaker C: Good, man. Miss you guys. [00:01:29] Speaker D: Yeah, I miss you, too. I'm doing fantastic. Off to a great start in 2024. [00:01:35] Speaker B: We are already 18 days at the time of recording in January. It's going to be 2025 before you know it. [00:01:43] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:01:44] Speaker D: You know the bad problem about getting older? By the time you finally get used to writing 2024, the year is almost over. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. [00:01:56] Speaker D: We write in 2023 all the way in July. It just takes me a little while to acclimate. [00:02:01] Speaker B: At least we don't have to write checks anymore, so it's not really that bad. I really think I forgot how to write a check. [00:02:07] Speaker D: We don't write checks anymore. I'm kidding. [00:02:10] Speaker B: Pull out the old credit card machine where you slide it back and forth on the pink slip. [00:02:14] Speaker D: Yeah. I even use Apple Pay now. I'm up to date, guys. [00:02:18] Speaker B: Nice in the world. I love it. Well, we are right here at the beginning of a brand new season in the life of the recovering fundamentalist podcast. This is twelve and 24, and we're going to be hitting twelve episodes in this new year. And we're excited. Tonight to start off, we're going to be talking about the subject of discipleship. And we have a great guest on the podcast with us tonight, Robbie Gallady, the pastor of Long Hollow in Hendersonville, Tennessee. He's going to be on with us tonight sharing his story. And then we're going to get into a conversation about discipleship. So we hope you stay tuned. And we're excited. Twelve and 24, this is number one. You all ready? I'm ready. Let's go. [00:03:18] Speaker E: The recovering fundamentalist podcast starts in three. You know what makes women stupid is. [00:03:23] Speaker F: Calling Jesus was not a bartender. Long tongue heifers have given me a. [00:03:32] Speaker E: Lot more trouble than heifers wearing bridges. [00:03:34] Speaker F: And you know that. Say amen right there. [00:03:36] Speaker E: One. [00:03:37] Speaker F: Let me tell you something, bozo. They'll be sending frosties in hell for this. Boy puts on a pair of pink underwear. Amen. I suck my thumb till I was. [00:03:45] Speaker G: 14 years of age. [00:03:47] Speaker F: Hi, man. [00:03:50] Speaker B: My goodness. Well, thanks for listening to the recovering fundamentalist podcast, Robbie. Is that the first time you've heard that intro? [00:03:57] Speaker E: Yeah, I've heard a bit. I've heard the past before when you hear it live like that. Amen. [00:04:03] Speaker B: A whole new level to it, doesn't it? [00:04:05] Speaker E: Oh, my God. [00:04:06] Speaker B: Oh, goodness. Well, it's good to have Robbie Gallady on the podcast with us tonight. And Robbie, introduce yourself. Just let us know who you are right up front. [00:04:15] Speaker E: Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Excited to be here. I am a pastor right outside the Nashville, Tennessee area, Long Hollow church. Been here now going on my 9th year, which is really crazy to think about. Followed a pastor who was here 17 and a half years. He just an amazing pastor. David Landreth. Church grew exponentially in spite of the location. People visit Long Hollow day and say, this is Long hollow, like in the middle of nowhere, as you guys probably have been to. He was amazing. Pastor Church grew, got cancer unexpectedly, and no one, including him, thought he was going to die. I mean, he really believed he was going to beat it. And we met with him six, seven months before he passed and unexpectedly had a brain bleed in September and died in November. And so I came a year after that. And if you know about how churches work, not only did the people not want to lose their pastor, they didn't want a new pastor, and they certainly didn't want me. And so my first two years, if we have time, we could talk about. But it was difficult, to say the least. And I think a lot of it, as you know, I mean, church folk, they don't know how to grieve properly, and so they took it out on me. So any change I made, any change of sermon, any decision I made, was an attack at the past. But by God's grace and our hard headedness and the Holy Spirit working, we're still here, and we're in arguably the best season since I've been here and arguably the best season of the church life. So it's really a good season. And it says something just for those listening about longevity and ministry. Right. You just stay and you shepherd the people, you love the people. And eventually you move from preacher to pastor. That's how it works. You know what I'm saying? You move from preacher to pastor, Brian. You know that. I mean, when you first hear your preacher, then you become pastor. So it's been a fun ride, man. [00:06:05] Speaker D: That's awesome. I'm glad you stuck with it. I think a lot of times guys give up so soon when there's issue. And I followed a really difficult pastor. He made message that it took me years to clean up. And the only problem is, it was me. I planted the church. The younger me was an idiot, and I made all those mistakes that I had to lead out of. But the great thing is, I think the trials make you grateful for the opportunity to serve Jesus. Because when you survive trials and Jesus is faithful, you understand he's the shepherd that we look to. And while we're trying to lead people and he's leading us, in the end, he's a great shepherd. [00:06:51] Speaker E: Amen. [00:06:52] Speaker C: Well, Robbie, I'm excited about having you on here tonight, and I would love for you to share your backstory. It's a very exciting story, and I think all three of us have heard it, but I would love for you to share that with our listeners. [00:07:08] Speaker E: Yeah, I forgot to mention I have an amazing wife, Candy, who is a speaker and author as well, and loves the Lord, loves discipleship, which, when we met, we both were passionate about investing in people. So that really was a God thing. And we have two boys whose names are rig and Ryder. And somebody told me after we named them, they said, you realize you named your boys after trucking companies, and they're all boys, so that fits perfectly. But I wasn't always a pastor. In fact, I was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, right outside New Orleans, in a small town called. You know, when I grew up, I went to the Catholic Church, and we were pretty committed Catholics. We weren't nominal. We went to church every Sunday. We missed church on Sunday. We went to confession on Saturday. Forgive me, Father, for I've sinned. It's been six months since my last confession, so I was pretty religious, but I didn't know much about the Lord as far as a personal relationship. For me, God was like, which, similar to IFB, overbearing, domineering father who was out to get me every time I got out of line and I couldn't please him, I couldn't do enough. And so that's my relationship with the Lord. Went to a private catholic high school, all boys Catholic High school. In the 7th grade, I got asked to leave the school ADHD back in. The parents didn't put me on medicine, which they probably did, should have done, but went to an all boys catholic high school and got a scholarship to play basketball. So six six back then, probably 220, and got a scholarship to UNC Greensboro and literally signed the papers. I was going to go to the school and the girl I was dating at the time was going to LSU. And she said, robbie, there's no way you're going to go that far to college. Know, we've been dating a year in high school. We're in know, obviously it's going to work out, which it didn't. But I said, sure, you're right. I shouldn't be going that far away. And so I literally opened. JC, this is crazy. I literally opened the phone book up and found back then the phone book, William Kerry College in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Now, are you guys familiar with that school? [00:09:20] Speaker C: Yes. [00:09:21] Speaker E: Okay. JC, that. No, I wasn't either. I didn't even know the school existed. I didn't even know who William Kerry was. Right? And so I called the coach up, coach Knight, and I said, coach, can I come try out for the team? He said, what are you talking about? School starting in two weeks? And I said, well, at least let me try out. I have a d one scholarship. And he hesitantly let me try out. My mom drove with me up there to the school and looking back, that was like the greatest tryout of athletic performance of my. Like, I had Michael Jordan like reflexes. I was dunking the ball backwards. And my mom told me years later, she said, son, I have to be honest. She said, you've never played that good before that day. And frankly, I've never seen you play that good since that day. But on that day, but on that day, it was like the providence of God. And the coach called me two days later. He's like, we're going to give you a full ride to come play basketball. Little did I know what God was up to. I had no idea. So I get to the school two weeks in, two or three weeks in, the girl I'm dating at the time thinks I'm cheating on her and breaks up with me. And I find myself stuck as a Roman Catholic on a Southern Baptist college campus. And you guys know what that means? That I was the target of every evangelism class on campus. Right? Who do we tell about Jesus? It's Robbie. They had a game called convert the Catholic. I was the deer in the mean everybody was. I was a number on a page. I was a person to send to the convention. And I even knew. I didn't know much about evangelism, but I knew what they were doing, and it turned me off. I knew they were trying to convert me. It wasn't until my second year. I'm a second year student. I have a guy come up to me who becomes my friend, and he does something really crazy. It's a novel way of evangelism. He befriends me, and we have the same interests in mind. We both like guitar, we both play basketball, and he becomes my friend. So he earned the right later that year to share the gospel. And I would repeat a prayer. Man, I didn't want to go to hell. You don't know. I don't want to go to hell. Repeat a prayer after me. And for about two weeks, I thought I was a Christian for two weeks. But I realized I wasn't when I went back to the same lifestyle. Tuesday night, Monday Night Football at the bar. Tuesday night playing pool. Thursday night at the Pratt houses. And I left college in 98. Now, here's what's cool. I would remember that conversation seven years later. And so I like to tell people, don't underestimate the power of sown seeds of the gospel and the hardened hearts of people, because I was that guy and I wasn't receptive at the time, but I would store that away for seven years later. So I get out of college, and before I graduated, I got into a network marketing company, which is kind of like amway, if you guys are familiar, pyramid kind of deal. And I got in. I didn't have the money to get in. I asked my dad, who was a small business owner, he had a collision center. I said, dad, if you put up the money, I'll work the contacts. And we did. And so this thing blew up in, like, a short time. Six months. We broke every record in the city, my father and I, with his contacts. Within six months, we were making money in this business, and I knew this is what I wanted to do. And so in one year, right before I graduated, Ted Turner's son. This is a crazy story. Not many people know about Ted Turner's son. Ted Turner is starting a new network marketing company, and he is pillaging all of these other high level leaders to leave their downline and come join him with the promise. Are you ready for this? Netflix. Before it was out back then, this is late 90s. He's promising Netflix. He's promising Facebook, interact. He's promising FaceTime, all from a desktop that connects to your computer. And so basically I was selling, not to use a word, you guys know, hope Marketing. It was hope marketing. We had nothing, but we had the hope. And this thing guys blew up. So within a year, I went from just a couple of hundred people in my downline to over 2000 people who were in the business, work in the business. I got out of college at 21. By 22, I was test driving ferraris. They called me the Wonder Boy. I was speaking and doing all these public business receptions. Little did I know God was preparing me to preach one day. But I didn't realize this. And so I was at the height of it. And then big crisis happens in my life, right when I turned 22, the business actually went belly up. And the whole company, we found out, was a pyramid scam. The FCC shut it down, you could look it up localnets the company. And I was not prepared to deal with that. So went through this season of depression, and I basically decided I didn't want to do anything with the business world. So I decided I want to do. What does a guy has a new college degree in business experience do? He goes into MMA fighting, right? Like, that's the right idea. I'm six six back then, I'm 285 pounds, and I'm like, you know what? And this is the early stages of the UFC, guys. This is like the Money you're making today. So the guys I'm training with at the Dojo, they would fight in fights and they wouldn't have the Money to pay from the Winnings for the doctor bill at the Know. It was just Insane. So I'm doing this new thing called Gracie Jiu Jitsu. Guy walks up to me one night at a restaurant, his name was Gino, good italian name. And he said, hey, man, would you be interested in being the head bouncer of my club downtown New Orleans in the middle of Mardi Gras? I was like, let me get this Straight. You're going to pay me to fight. I'm in, right? Like, this is the opportunity I've been waiting my whole life. So did that for three months. I mean, the wildest three months of my life you can imagine, downtown New Orleans. And then I realized I needed a Career change. I was escorting two guys to the parking lot who were saying things we probably can't say here. And I met him in the parking lot, and a guy pulls a gun on me, me and my buddy, and he says, hey, now tell me what to do. And I was like, okay, I need a career change. So made a lateral move, went to Gino. I'm like, hey, man, I need a move out of bouncing. Made a lateral move from bouncing to bartending, which seemed like the right choice. I did that for about three more months, and I'm coming home from work. This is when my whole life changes. I'm coming home from work. November 22, 1990. 918 Wheeler comes across two lanes of traffic, slams my car in the guardrail. 65 miles an hour, and herniate. Two disc in my back, two disc in my neck. My seatbelt locks. The seat actually broke from the hinges. And I went to the hospital. Now, keep in mind, I'd never taken drugs before. I'm an athlete. I'm not into drugs, but I'm in pain. And so I go to the hospital. The doctor sends me home with four things, oxycontin, valium, soma, and Percocet. And you know the story, right? Like, I'm in legitimate pain, and I'm taking the drugs every four to 6 hours, and within three months, I'm addicted to pharmaceutical drugs. They say now, with oxycontin, it takes six days to be a full blown addict. Your body is addicted. It needs the drugs, and so start taking the drugs. And I just have to find a way now to fulfill this insatiable desire to get high. I'm running through the 30 day script in two weeks, and I meet a guy in the city and a friend I knew from high school and back in the day, and he's like, hey, man, why are you filling with pharmaceutical drugs? Well, you could buy street drugs. I know a guy in the projects. His name's the pimp. I can hook you up. And you could buy heroin and cocaine. You could buy it in bulk, baggy it, sell it, and make money. And so I took this. You ready for this? This business knowledge from the network marketing world and just brought it into the drug world. Now, I was hanging with a bunch of guys who were drug heads and didn't want to make money. And so I would say, hey, you all want to make money? And they said, no, we just want to get high. And I said, but if we make money, we can get as high as we want. And so I just started working my way up the upline, and I was dealing with this guy. His name was the pimp. He called me slim. And I just built this by the world standards, this drug enterprise that lasted about two and a half, three years. And I'll just say at the mean times were great. I mean, I had tons of money. Ecstasy, thousands of ecstasy pills. We were trafficking GHB, special k, which is not a cereal. I tell people marijuana, and I don't tell you this to impress you, but if you're listening, just to impress upon you just how far the Lord has brought me from times were good. But like any addiction and sin takes you further than you want to go, costs you more than you want to pay, keeps you longer than you want to stay. And so there I was. I was a full blown addict. Didn't know what to do. I ran out of money. My addiction was too overpowering. So I decided to do something that was unthinkable. Strong italian family. My dad's half italian, and so real strong, tight knit family. I took my dad's credit card when he wasn't looking. And he had a business charge a lot of money so he wouldn't see it, I thought. And I just started systematically charging things on the account that I would buy and sell at a pawn shop or sell for drugs, and did that for about three, four months. I never forget the phone call. It was the week before Mardi Gras. My mom called me. She said, son, dad found out about what you did. We cannot believe what you did to us. Your father is furious, and I'm disappointed. Don't you ever come to this house again. You're not wanted here. And in the prideful, arrogant person I was, I said, you know what, mom? I don't need you. I never needed you guys. I don't need you now. I hung the phone up, took the little bit of money I had, blew it on drugs. And for the next three months, guys, it was living hell on earth. I mean, I live without gas. First, the Gas got turned off. So no hot water, no hot air. It was still cold at the time. We mastered the art of the cold shower. I tell people we would get in freezing cold water. Still don't even know how I was doing this back then. Get out. Lather up freezing cold water, and to get out to a freezing cold home. They turned the power off. We lived by candlelight. The bill collectors called, so the phone was turned off. And I got to a breaking point. Didn't know the Lord at this time got to a breaking point. And by God's grace, I went to my parents. Long story. My grandfather had 80th birthday party. My sister begged me to come. I wasn't going to go. But that morning, something I believe is the Holy Spirit, prompted me to go. I snorted two oxycontins, went to the party and saw my mom, first person in the room, and she said, how are you doing? And for the first time, I got emotional with a tear down my cheek. I said, mama, I'm not doing good. Can I come talk to you tonight? And my parents said, yeah. And they extended the grace of God to me, in a way as unbelievers. Both of them were unbelievers. That was just unbelievable. They took me back in. They took me to rehab, of all places. Tijuana, Mexico, which is long story, another story for another day, but went to Tijuana, came back, moved cities to Birmingham, Alabama, I'm sorry, to mobile, Alabama. I was in Mobile. I'm putting my life back together. I'm now off of drugs, still not a believer, but I get a job at powerhouse gym. Everything's going great. Working out with a power lifter and squatting, trying to squat 500 pounds. I blew my back out again. And here's what I think. I'm going to go back to the same doctor. And I thought, this time I'm not going to sell the drugs, I'm not going to use the drugs. I'm just going to sell them in order to just get Christmas presents, because around Christmas, and I'll just have a few on hand. Well, you know how that works. I'm in the parking lot of the pharmacy and I'm back again. And here's what's crazy about a drug addiction. When you return to drugs, and this is the reason people die when they, you don't start over from ground zero, you pick up where you left off. So I'm a full blown addict again. Through the time, again, I'm back on drugs for another year. I have back surgery, and through the time, here's what happened. I lost eight friends to drug and alcohol related deaths. Six went to jail. And I realized my life was, there's an expiration date on my life. And after the second rehab treatment, I come home November twelveth, 2002. I'm sober for about a week or two now. I'm in my room, and literally, this is what happened. Remember, I don't have a dad that's a pastor. I've never been to church outside of the catholic church years before. I remember the gospel that was taught to me years before. And I thought, you know, might. It's what I thought, I might as well give Jesus a try. I mean, I tried everything out. Like, what do I have to lose, right? And so I tell people, I took the little bit of faith I had and I put it in as much of Jesus as I knew, which wasn't much, but by God's grace, it was enough to radically save my life. And so I had this 24 hours paul like conversion with the Lord that the next day I didn't know what it meant, but I knew God was calling me into some form of ministry. And so now I'm a Christian born again, trying to navigate life. And a girl calls me up from college. Her dad was a professor at New Orleans seminary and she hadn't talked to me in like three, four years. And she's literally calling to ask me if I'm alive, Brian. She's like, hey, are you still alive, Robbie? And I said, julie, not only am I alive, but I'm a Christian. And I think God's called me to the ministry. Julie, you still there? She couldn't believe she didn't have a category for that. And so she says, hey, why don't you come with me to a Bible study that I go to? It's at the University of New Orleans dorm rooms, and it's led by a guy named T Bone. I'm like, t bone? This is my kind of guy. Know, these are the guys I used to run with. And so I show up at this seminary field Bible study, and I walk in to meet Tony Marita, who is a pastor. You guys know Tony, actually, not Mago day. Oh, man. So Tony's leading this Bible study in his sweet spot, Philippians. And number one, I'd never heard preaching like this in my life. And number, he walks up to me after and he says, hey, I want to bring you to my church Sunday, and I need to introduce you to a friend of mine who's a seminary student named David Platt. I was like, okay, I'd love to do that. So I go to church the next week. I start going to this church, and David Platt, about five months later, comes up to me. He says, hey, man, God's put it on my heart. I'd love to meet every week to study the Bible, memorize scripture and pray. He said, I'd love that. I said, when do we start? He said, pray about it. And I said, when do we start? He said, let's start next week. And this is why I'm so passionate about discipleship. For the next two years, I met with David every week. We started with General Sal's chicken at the China Inn, and then we moved to the pizza place. And then eventually I went to seminary and I became David's assistant. I traveled the world with him, traveled the country with him. I was in the office with him and just invested in my know. People always ask me, what was it like to be with know, did you talk about and break down the finer points of eschatology or soteriology? And I say, yeah, I'm sure we did all that. And I can't remember a lot of that. But I tell you what I remember. I remember the way the man lived, because David lived in a way where he emulated before me what he expected from me. So David was unapologetic about preaching the gospel. David was evangelistic with a zeal that was contagious for me. And so a lot of the things I do, even today are things that were caught by Platt, not necessarily taught to me personally. [00:24:58] Speaker D: Guys, I don't know about you. I'm sitting on the edge of my seat, like, going, this is, like, a full episode. [00:25:05] Speaker E: Yeah, it's crazy, man. To think back, that's 21. I've been sober for 20 years. 21 years. And I left one part out. That's kind of a big deal. Before I started getting discipled by David. And this is really the conviction in my heart for discipleship. I wandered for about seven, eight, know. I didn't have someone to tell me how to read the someone. I didn't have someone to teach me how to encounter God or to hear the voice of God. I didn't have someone to teach me, hey, you need to spend time with God, and you need to press in for more of God. And so I wandered, and so I started the ministry. Right after I became a believer, I was called in the ministry. I called the only christian I knew, which was, you know, the guy led me to Christ. I'm like, hey, bro, God's put in my heart for us to start a ministry. Jeremy's like, first of all, who is this? And secondly, God had told me any of. But, uh. But we started this ministry, and we started preaching right away. Now, this is the thing. I didn't know how to preach, but in high school, I learned how to do magic tricks. Okay. Card tricks for the church. [00:26:10] Speaker C: Nice. [00:26:11] Speaker E: Magic trick. Yeah, I got the deck of cards, right? But anyway, I'm not going to do any tricks, but I learned how to do card tricks from a magician from Vegas. I mean, New Orleans. Go figure. But I knew how to do card tricks. And back in the 90s, early 2000s, if you could do card tricks or magic tricks at youth events, bro, you were book solid, right? So Jeremy played guitar. This is my sermon. I would do a trick and then isogetically build in, text around it, do another trick. And I did that for a couple. And this is how it ended. This is a crazy story. I'm in, of all places. I'm in Kaziesco, Mississippi, at a fifth quarter event. You guys remember these events, right? And I'm doing this huge show. I do this trick where I have them pick a card, write the card on a postit note, like the suit and the value, crumble it up. They take a lighter, they burn the postit note. I walk up after, take the ashes, I rub them on my wrist and burned in my arm. It's a David Blaine trick, is the suit and the value of the card. And normally the crowd goes nuts. And they did go nuts. And right in the back, this girl yells out, might have been an IFB girl. She yells out. She yells out, that's of the devil. And I knew this invitation is not going to go well tonight. I thought I was invincible. Here's the point of this. I thought I was invincible. I'm a Christian, I'm preaching. I mean, look at the crowds. I'm getting paid for this. It's unbelievable. I thought I was invincible. I run into a friend of mine from the drug world and I basically see him on the street and I'm like, hey, man, do you mind if I come tell you what God's done in my life? And he said, sure, come on in. He said, do you mind if I roll a joint while you do it? I was like, no, I'm a Christian. We talk about that. It's not going to bother me. And so I'm telling him about Jesus and I can't remember how it happened, but within two weeks, I just come to my senses and I realize where I am. I'm walking on Bourbon street, I've got a butt ice in my right hand. And we're going back to his apartment in Jackson Square to snort an eight ball of cocaine as a christian preacher at the time. And I'm back on drugs again as a christian preacher. Relapsed again, and this stint was only two and a half months. Long story. I won a lawsuit from the car accident. So I had a lot of money in the bank and I had about 28 grand in my bank account at the time. I bought a Cadillac. Long story. Black on black Ccs, chrome rim. I thought, man, God's bless. My theology was prosperity. So I thought, man, God's blessing. Look at me, I got everything. And so I had this money, and so I'm back with him doing drugs, and I'm preaching. So, JC, I'm like, going to events. Crazy. God didn't just strike me down. The mercy of God. I get high and preach. And here's what's crazy. People still got saved in spite of me. But you know how the Lord works. You can only play with God for so long. And then the events started, stopped coming in, and the preaching opportunities dwindled down. And eventually the ministry broke up. And I find myself back on drugs. And I remember the day I went to the ATM and took out the last bit of money I had and realized I had just blown $28,000 in two and a half months. That's a sick feeling. And I go to the Daiquiri shop. This was my routine. Every morning I'd wake up around ten, 3011, because I'd be up all night. I would go to in New Orleans, 24 hours liquor store. So I'd go to the Daiquiri shop, get the strongest drink. They make the 190 octane. And there was a girl named Christy behind the bar. She was the bartender, and I'd always order, and she was baffled. How's this guy at 1030 getting the biggest drink we have? Strongest drink we have. And then I would head to the projects to score drugs, and I would share Christ. And I'd say, hey, I like the 190 octane. And I'd say, do you know that the Bible says if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, jesus, you'll be saved? I'm like, preaching the gospel. And eventually she leans out the window one day, and this is the turning point. She says, you know, robbie, for someone who knows so much about Jesus, you sure don't act like it. And Nathan, that was like the shot across the bow of my heart where I left there. And I thought, she's right. Long story short, I eventually lead her to Christ. She gets saved. A guy at the gym I was working out with, he gets radically saved. Cool God story. Both of them got married. They're church planners in Miami. It's kind of a cool God story. But God used a pagan pot smoking at the time. Atheist upbringing. Girl who is a bartender at the dacry Balaam's donkey to bring me back to the Lord. And then two months later is when David Platt meets with me. So here's the point of that. I realized, number one is no one is immune from the effects of sin. [00:31:05] Speaker C: Amen. [00:31:06] Speaker E: Right? Our testimony, I mean, the reality of all of us is what took a lifetime to build can be blown in a moment, right? I mean, in a moment, we know that. And number two, I realized I needed to be discipled. And if I needed to be discipled, there is a whole world out there of robbies like me who are just wandering aimlessly in the faith, begging and waiting for someone to come invest in them. So that's why I've given my life to discipleship and replicate, and the rest is kind of history from. [00:31:36] Speaker D: Incredible. So it's incredible that God, by his grace, put David Platt and Tony Marita in your life. I mean, there's so much grace throughout your story, but for God to place men of that quality in your life. The first time I ever heard Tony, guys, I was at a big conference. I won't call the name of the conference or the other speakers, but all of the famous speakers who were there, none of them really just. It didn't seem like it was their day for any of those guys. One of the main speakers happened to be sick at the last minute. They had this guy named Tony Marita who would get up, and he shared the message of the older brother of the prodigal son. Guys, it was the greatest message of the entire conference. I sat on the edge of my seat. He told one of the best stories ever. He talked about adopting the children from, I think it might have been Ethiopia, and they had adopted two other children from Romania. And so he said, they adopt these children from Ethiopia. He can't wait to have dinner. And he said, so that night, they passed around the vegetables, and the two romanian kids didn't want the vegetables, so they passed them over to the ethiopian kids, and they looked down at the vegetables, and they passed them on. And when they did, one of the kids that they had adopted from Romania said, see, daddy, you've been telling me all these years they would eat anything. They don't want the vegetables, either. [00:33:05] Speaker E: And the whole child started. [00:33:08] Speaker D: But, man, that's just the grace of God, that God put men of that quality in your life. [00:33:15] Speaker C: Yeah. I never get tired of hearing people's salvation stories. I love hearing stories of conversion. And the power of the gospel in your life is amazing. And it really doesn't matter if it's the story of a drug dealer or UFC fighter or someone who was raised on a church pew like we were. And I didn't have a drug addiction, but I needed to be saved just as much. But think about your story and how you led into discipleship. We're wanting to really talk about what discipleship, because I think what it is, because I think there's a lot of confusion, especially in the independent baptist world that we grew up in and that we're speaking into. [00:34:00] Speaker H: We have a men's home. It's typically the largest of any home for men with addictions in independent baptist circles in the United States. I can brag on that because I'm not the pastor. And we call it transformed through God's word. We call our addictions program the bridge. It's a bridge of addictions recovery ministry. And we'll have guys that come say, I want to get in the discipleship program, the men's program. Now we have an organized program and we have a curriculum. We have things they have to go through and things they have to do to graduate. But we tell them it's not about a program, it's about a person, and his name is Jesus. And you can do all the stuff and check all the boxes. And if you don't have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, you're not going to make it. But they come in at home, want to get in the discipleship program. They find out that for 30 days they cannot call anybody on the phone, can't have a cell phone. They find out that when they work and they all have to work, they give us their paycheck we put in the bank and we give them gift cards to Walmart in order to buy their necessities. They find out they have to get up at, I think it's 615 in the morning. They have make their bed. They have to go to chapel twice a day. They can watch about two channels on the television and some sports and some news, and that's about it. They find other good jobs to do around the house. And after a while someone say, I am tired of you being. Treating me like I'm a child. I came here for the discipleship program, not for all this discipline, discipline, discipleship. Wonder if those two words connected at all, they're the same word. A disciple is one who puts himself under the discipline of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we say to them, getting up at 615 is discipleship. Making your bed is discipleship. Turning in your paycheck is discipleship. Not having a phone for 30 days is discipleship. And I'm here to tell you, when the preacher says the singing, the choir got to dress a certain way to teach a Sunday school class. You have certain standards to live by. To be involved in this ministry. There are certain things that you need to do. That's discipleship. Christian life's a life of discipline. [00:36:14] Speaker A: And it's very interesting here he said that, so shall ye be my disciples. A disciple is a disciplined one. It takes discipline to get on his path, sailor. It takes discipline. You've got to have discipline. That's how you're a disciple. Not for any other reason other than you're disciplined in the work of God. You've got to be disciplined. [00:36:36] Speaker F: So first, stay close to the Lord. Number two, don't ever be ashamed to be an old fashioned, independent, fundamental, bus running, standards believing, King James Bible, door to door, soul winning, church planning, bible honoring, music believing, gospel preaching, unashamed Baptist. Maybe we ought to put that on our tracks. It's time for you to show this generation that you and I do not need to compromise to reach this lost and dying world. We've never had a drum set on the platform. We've never brought in a contemporary christian. [00:37:09] Speaker E: Group for a concert. [00:37:10] Speaker F: We've never watered down the gospel. We never sugarcoated sin. Because, honey, the RV and the ASV had began to get a foothold in America, and people rejected that King James Bible. And we're the stinking mess we're in today to the point where you can call yourself a fundamentalist and not believe in this book at all. You got men preaching revival meetings today as we speak that don't believe this father's word of God. And they talk about the move of God and the Holy Spirit moving and the souls being saved. I don't believe a word of that. God's not going to work through a Bible corrector. Amen. This is the first and great commandment. I think it was in the seconds like under thou shalt love thy neighbors, thyself. But he said, the first one is loving God. By the way, this is a quote from deuteronomy 65, which is known as the pivotal passage in the Bible. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with what? All thy heart, all thy mind, all thy soul. Everything is what he's saying. All means, all. Everything. That's how you're supposed to love. How am I supposed to love God? Love him enough to show up on Wednesday night. Love him enough to go soul and tell people how to keep out of hell. Love him enough to throw that tithe in the offering plate. Love him enough to get on a bus ride or get involved in gyms. And Jose. I love him more than anything else. With all my heart and my mind and my soul. I love him that much. How much you love God? I love God enough to come Sunday afternoon. I love God enough that I'll get in the choir. I love God enough that I'll do the things he requires me to do. I'll obey his word. I love him enough to pray. I love him enough to give. I'm just saying we love him enough that we go beyond the call of duty. Amen. Loves God. That means he tells God, I love you, Dr. Jack Hiles, and God bless his name. He would take 5 minutes every day and write down things that he loved God about. And then he'd take 25 minutes, and he'd praise God about those things. He'd take another three by five card, he'd write down for 5 minutes things he wanted to thank God about every day. Now, every day he prayed 20 hours a week. Folks, how's it going for you? Amen. If it hadn't happened yet, you haven't prayed enough yet. Amen. How do you get things from God? He'd write down things he was thankful for for 30 minutes. At 25 minutes, he'd write down, he would praise God and thank God for things he was thankful for. A child of God that loves God. Now, you're here on Wednesday night, and many of you have to be here because you're college students. I guess I could just hear it now. [00:39:47] Speaker E: Three to thrive, three to thrive, two to survive, one to backslide. [00:39:53] Speaker F: The person that loves God is a person that comes to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and is here for soul winning time or bus soul winning time or visitation time or whatever you got going on here. That's a person that loves a God. Oh, listen, God. [00:40:07] Speaker G: My heart is fixed on my King James Bible. My heart is fixed on door to door soul winning. My heart is fixed on old fashioned preaching. My heart is fixed on a bus ministry and reaching poor people. My heart is fixed on a local church. Jesus said in Matthew 1618, on this rock, I will build my church. I believe in the local church. You all are here on a Sunday night, but I think you ought to build your life around the schedule of the local church. I mean, I decided back when I was a student at Tennessee Temple under Dr. Lee Robertson, he used teach three to thrive. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. This is it. That's right. Straight down the line. Never vary. I thought, you know, that'd be a good rule for my life. He used to say, I've never known anybody to seriously backslide. That was in church Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Since then, I think I've found a few examples of people that have, but not many, most everybody that seriously backslides. You say, well, I can think of. And the reason you can think of two or three is because they're unusual. Most people that backslide, they quit coming to church Sunday night. They quit coming Wednesday night. They start missing every other Sunday morning. I mean, I just decided I'm going to build my life around the local church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. I think you ought to come to church faithfully again. You're obviously here tonight. You're probably three to thrive type people. That's one of the best decisions you'll ever think. You say, brother Joyce, what about when I'm on vacation? You ought to go to church. [00:41:48] Speaker E: Yes, sir. [00:41:49] Speaker G: And I found some weird churches sometimes in traveling, pulling off back in the day, pulling off the highway a half hour early, looking in a phone book and finding one. No phone books anymore. But Brother Howell said to me, you know, Brother Jorgensen, I was telling him about one of those. He said, you know, brother Jorgensen, some of our better members plan their vacations so they can be in good churches on Sunday. I thought, ouch. I thought, you know, that's right. And so now when we go on vacation or something, I mean, we're going. [00:42:24] Speaker A: To church, all right, so he's sitting home, obedient or disobedient, success or a failure. Failure. Now, this is what we want down here. So he decides to get on this path and he goes. Obedient or disobedient, success or failure. But had anybody saved yet? But he's success because he's what? Obedient. So he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and comes back. And nobody gets saved, successor or failure. Because he's what? Now you got it. Now you got it. God has a wonderful way of humbling us. If you went out today and the first 21 people you talked to, all of them got saved. All of them got baptized. All of them joined the church. All of them started tithing. All of them want to go to Bible college. All of them want to go to Afghanistan as a missionary. We couldn't live with you. Your stinking ego would be so big. Your head would be so big, you'd have to grease it to get it. [00:43:24] Speaker B: In the back door. [00:43:25] Speaker I: I have $300 in $20 bills right here. It's not a massive amount of money, but we'll use it for the illustration today. When Christ saved me and he saved you, he gave us salvation. Now, we can never lose that. So, Austin, I'm going to give you $100. All right, you go ahead and put that in your pocket, all right? I can't take that. I can't touch that, and nobody can take that. That's your salvation. That's something that's eternal. It lasts forever. It cannot be taken away. But can I tell you today that as a Christian, you can add to your value or you can diminish it. I'm going to give some Austin some money today. And, Austin, when you get saved, you get some value add to your life. You leave that other money. You leave that in your pocket right there and just keep that. All right, so now you got $20, okay, that you get saved, you go to church, and you live for the Lord. You read your bible, you add some more value to your life. [00:44:14] Speaker F: You. [00:44:14] Speaker I: You choose in your life to live purely and to wait for the right mate, and to live purely for that mate. There's some more value that's added to your life. Oh, I see. You've been praying and you've been asking God to help you, and you've been leaning on him for strength, and there's some more value that's added to his life, and you want to go out solely. You want to lead people to the Lord. Oh, thank you for doing that. That's value added to your life. God looks at us and says, look, they're adding value. They're doing what I said. They're obeying my word. Oh, my goodness, Austin, you've got some money there, and you're adding some value to your life. And now you're a teenager, and you might want to do some things on your own, but you still decide to honor and love your parents and there's some more value. Yeah. The bible says, honor and love your parents. [00:44:53] Speaker C: Honestly, I don't know that I ever heard the word discipleship used in the IFB in the way that we use it. I don't know if I ever heard it used at all. But the focus is on conversion, which, praise God, people need to be saved. But it's almost like that's the end. You pray this prayer, which easy believeism is another thing we could talk about, but you pray this prayer, and that's the win. And I think if we had to really flesh out what a discipleship track looked like in the IFB, it would have been. They love to say three to thrive. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, show up. Show up for visitation. You're just going to pick it up by osmosis. You'll learn it. If you're here at all these events, but there really wasn't, or maybe even Sunday school, they would have possibly said that that was a part of it. But talk to us about what discipleship isn't. [00:45:55] Speaker E: Yeah, I love we're talking about this. Obviously, you've nailed it. I think discipleship isn't sitting in the room singing songs, memorizing scripture, us for and no more. That's what some people think. And so I've had. You got to remember, replicate is a ministry I started 16 years ago. When I started this ministry and JC, I was in Chattanooga. We were around each other, pastoring in the same town at the same time. People thought I had, like, a three headed monster on my neck. I mean, they didn't even know, like, discipleship. I had a lady at Brainerd come up to me when I was in Chattanooga. She said, I've been a Christian all my life. I'm 65 years old. She said, you're the first pastor who's ever said the word. I was like, really? I was like, you know, it's in the Bible, right? She's like, yeah, I don't know. So I think that the fact that there's ambiguity in the church world shows us that obviously our people have no clue what we're talking about. What I'll say about this is, and here's the line I tell people all the time, jesus didn't just save us from something. He saved us for something. And baptism is never the finish line. It's the starting line. If we just leave with those two things and just begin thinking, processing what that means, then we realize for years we've got caught up in what I call escalator evangelism when I was at Brainerd. So my second pastorate, I'm a Christian now for five years. I still don't know. I still think. What were they thinking? Right? Former drug addict, alcoholic, Roman Catholic. They're going to take a chance on this guy. I did have David Platt in my corner. I did have some seminary, although I didn't know what I was doing. And they bring me in and I got up. I remember one of the first few weeks I was there. I get up and look at this congregation, which is way larger than I was used to, and these people were staring back at me. And I felt the pressure, like a lot of pastor leaders, to grow a church. Like, I got to get people in the door. And so you want to get caught up in pack a pew Friday, bring a friend Wednesday, potluck on Sunday, just whatever you can. And the guy before me, who is a great brother, we both know him, JC served with him at one time, believe it or not. Great brother, dear friend of mine, he always had this goal to grow the church to a thousand. Like he had this vision, if he could get a numeric value and then it would be kind of a pinnacle of success for him. And so brainerd at times would hit it. They could bring enough friends, they could have Christmas cantata and they would hit. But it was never sustainable. And so I come in, I feel the pressure that, and I call escalator evangelism. I define it this way. It's trying to get you to come to church. So, Nathan, I want you to come to church. I'm so glad you're here after the service, man, so glad to meet your wife. Do you have a friend that you can invite next week? And I wouldn't say this to you, but subconsciously I'm already overlooking you to get to Brian. And next week you bring Brian. I'm like, man, so glad, Brian, great you're here. And by the way, do you have a friend you can bring? Oh, yeah. And then next week you bring JC. And what I've done is already overlooked, Nathan, to get to Brian, to overlook JC. And what I've realized is most churches, most pastors know this. People go out the back door as fast as they come in the front door, escalator evangelism. They're just getting on to get off. And that bothered me. And the Lord just spoke to my heart. As I was preaching one Sunday, I looked over the landscape of my church and here's what the Lord spoke to my heart. You have all the people you need to impact Chattanooga. Presently in this building, they are the undiscipled christians in the pews who are an army of ready to be trained believers to go out and impact and be a light to the city. Now, we didn't do extraordinary things at Brainer, but man, I felt like we had a great ministry. We mobilized people. The church grew, obviously numerically, but when I left, I felt like not only they grew numerically, but they grew spiritually. And here's the line he left me with. You focus on the depth of your ministry and I'll grow the breadth or you focus on the depth of your people and I'll grow the breadth of your ministry. Yeah, that's what he showed me. You focus on the depth of your people and I'll grow the breadth of your ministry. That's not what they teach in seminary. Seminary is you grow at church, the people grow who care. So anyway, that's something that I realized I needed to teach my people. They didn't know what discipleship was. So here's my definition, just to kind of make sure we're on the same page, because I think the terms mean something. And discipleship. I had a conversation just this week about a guy, and he said, man, what do you mean by discipleship? Because I hear a lot of definitions. And I said, you know what? Discipleship, I love the energy and excitement toward it, but it's honestly become like a junk drawer term, right? It's like that junk drawer. You just throw everything in and nothing means anything, because everything means something. And so here's what I mean. So we're on the same page. There are three terms. Disciple making is the overarching term. That's a biblical term, make disciples disciple making. But under that term, there are two legs that hold up the mantle of discipleship. Evangelism and discipleship. And obviously evangelism, we know, leading someone to cross the threshold of faith, to be dead from being dead to life and death or darkness to light. So that's evangelism. Discipleship is walking with someone intentionally to equip them in order to replicate their lives into the life of another person. And here's the key thing about discipleship. The discipleship process is never complete until the mentee becomes a mentor or a player becomes a coach. Because so often we have lecture, student information, consumerism, where it's just preaching to and not empowering people. And so that's the key thing. I tell people. People say, man, I have a lot of people in discipleship groups. Great. How many are making disciples? Because until they feel equipped and confident to replicate their life, they're just listeners, they're consumers, they're not coworkers. [00:51:51] Speaker B: That elevator evangelism, you just described student ministry to a t. Because that's kind of the whole goal of student ministry. Thinking back in that world, that's where I lived, it was always who's about to come. And I think when you start focusing on who is there versus who's about to be there, then your model changes to, these are the people that God has given us. These are the ones that we need to learn and to grow and to see them become followers of the way. I think a lot of times, especially in the world that I grew up in, discipleship looked like a program. Like if we could have a program, if we could do a system, it's a, you do this, this and this, and you're discipled now go and do faith and all these things where discipleship, until I really started figuring out what it was way after college, was a checklist. If I can do these certain things, I'm a disciple. [00:52:44] Speaker E: Yes. [00:52:44] Speaker B: It's not the growth process in that. Talk a little bit about discipleship versus program mentality. [00:52:50] Speaker E: Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. We want to programize it because we're pragmatic and I get it. I mean, as pastors and leaders of organizations, we are serving people who come with a business bent. And the challenge for us is, and I felt that way, too, we have tried to gauge spiritual maturity with business metrics. Right. The problem with discipleship, you can't count it. You can't really touch it and taste it and log it. You can't send it to a convention. You don't get a plaque for it. You won't get a name and a magazine for it because it's something you can't really see. But the reality is it's got to be process driven, but it's not a program. So what I would say is I had the same struggle because I realized that particularly men, and we'll resonate with this, we play best when the scorecard is the clearest. [00:53:43] Speaker B: Right. [00:53:44] Speaker E: I mean, this is just the way we're wired, and particularly men. And we got a men's conference coming up next week, and I was talking with some guys, say, about men's ministry. We realized that if men don't know what the scoreboard is, two things happen. Number one is they won't play if they don't know a clear scoreboard, like how we score. And number two is, if they don't think they can win, they won't play. [00:54:05] Speaker B: Right? [00:54:05] Speaker E: Like if there's no winner, we don't have to play for the sake of. So what I realized is we have to have a scoreboard board. I was in a group years ago with a guy, was a contractor and very successful businessman, and he said, okay, what is the goal here? What are you trying to do with this? And I was like, wow. He's like, what's the mark? What's the bullseye? And I didn't have one. And so it sent me back to the drawing board. And so since then, JC, I've developed what I call the marks of a disciple. Now, what I'm going to show you is not a program driven process, although I do have some practices. But I have more of a scoreboard. This is more of the art board you're trying to hit. And so it's five things. Here's what I realized. This is a growing disciple, a person who's growing in their faith. A program is person is replicating their life. Number one is the person is missional. This is a person, a believer who is living on mission, right? So it's a person who doesn't need a stamp passport to share the gospel, a person who Platt used to call it transformation by aviation, right? Like, we all become the christian we want to be. When we go overseas, we're sharing the gospel. We're hearing from God. We're in our bible. But the moment I come back to the states and they stamp me back into the country, I go back to being know. It's like, wow, what happened? So what we try to teach people is be a missionary. Where you live, work, and play. Like, if you woke up every day and looked at your job, looked at your community, looked at your hoa as a mission field, just that would be life changing, right? So be a missional disciple. Number two, the a is accountable. Now, when people have accountability, they think of, in your face, you didn't do this, you should do that. And here's what I want to change that. It's not calling people out. We call people up. Up to the expectation of the God given talents and abilities that God has given you. We're really big at replicates on what we call disciple story. We bring people through this process. It's a six week process where we try to figure out through your suffering and through your struggles and through your highs and lows and education and background and schooling, church hurt church high. And we try to say, what has God uniquely created you to do for the kingdom? And we get that from Ephesians 210, which that word, there we are. God's workmanship. If you guys know that word, is poema in the Greek, where we get the word poem. So God's writing a poem, a story with everyone of our lives. Sadly, the greatest tragedy in life is to get to the end of your life and not realize why you were here and what you were called to do. So we do that. And one of the ways we do that is to call them up. Now, we do that through d groups. We do something called discipleship groups. Three to five, sometimes six, seven men with men, women with women. They meet once a week, normally twelve to 18 months, sometimes longer, for the purpose of this, just to hold them accountable. And accountability is really holding you to do what you said you wanted to do in the first place. Right? The r is reproducible or replicatable. And that is what I said earlier. It's this idea of replicating your life. Now, we don't just do this with men in our life or women, if you're listening, but we do this in our home. And one of the problems I see a lot in discipleship ministries is that we're quick to walk past our kids in the home to the church building and neglect the first church of our home. And so God's called us first to invest in our kids, and God's really challenged me with this more recently. And then the c. I wish it was k. If it was k, I could probably do it on this podcast coin, and it's a c for the layman. Communal. You're living in a communal relationship with people who you're transparent with and confidential with. And sadly, guys don't have this. Guys today don't have what I call a 02:00 a.m.. Friend. They don't have someone. There's a difference between a 10:00 p.m. And a 02:00 a.m.. Friend. I can call a lot of guys at 10:00 p.m. But the 02:00 a.m. Guy is a guy that will get up and be there for me because we're in community together. And then the final one is the s. And I hate to have to say this today, but the reality is you do the s scriptural. You're a man or woman of God who gets into the word to the word, gets into you. And we do this a couple of ways. One, we're reading the Bible daily. We're journeying the Bible consistently, and we're memorizing the Bible weekly. So those are the long answer. But that's the guardrails we put in place. Now, what that looks like for you could be different. Some people read a Bible reading plan, which we've created, f 260 plans. We've created those. Some people have books they read through. Some people do studies. Those are just a means to an end for gathering together and living life alongside of one another. [00:59:02] Speaker D: Robbie, I'm really glad to hear you mention about the importance of discipling your family. I think the lack of discipleship in my life, intentional discipleship in my life growing up, led to me not even understanding discipleship is happening. Whether you want it to or not, whether intentionally or unintentionally, you are constantly in the act of discipling. And for so many years, even as a pastor, I was a poor discipler of my wife, a poor discipler of my children. Church was something I did with the congregation. Church was something I did with the building. And we had God conversations, but there was very little intentional discipleship with my children. And I was reading, I think it's Joshua 24, when Joshua said, ask for me in my house. We will serve the Lord before he said anything about his house. As for me, and I was reading through that, and I realized, this is my responsibility. I can't contract this to the church. This is not the children's ministry responsibility. And the title pastor doesn't make me a great discipler of my children. And so that really changed the conversations that I started having with my daughters. And there was actually a night when I sat with all of my daughters and in tears, apologized for having not repented, literally, of having not invested in them intentionally. So this Sunday, it's just really interesting that you would bring that up, because this Sunday, I'm talking about discipling our children, because very few of our children, if any, will be professional athletes, and very few, if any, of our children will be multimillionaires, and very few, if any, of our children will be famous social media influencers, but all of our children will spend eternity somewhere. What advice would you give to parents on the discipleship of their children or husbands? The discipleship of their wives? What does it look like for the program to disappear, for the process to disappear? Because, let's just be honest, home is real, and everybody goes home and closes the door. What does discipleship look like behind the closed door of a home? [01:01:44] Speaker E: Yeah. As I said, this is near and dear to my heart and something the Lord had to do a course correction in my own life. Here's how I really got convicted about this. I was preparing to speak to our men last year, and the Lord drew me to Genesis, chapter three, two and three, when God created Adam, and Adam and Eve fell, and I came to the command that God gave to the man in the garden, which was to cultivate or to work over the field and watch over to work and to watch over the field. And so basically, the garden for Adam is like the home. I mean, that was his home. You're supposed to work and watch. And so I started to unpack that word, and I realized that word. A better rendering of watch is to cultivate, to amplify, to increase, or to multiply. And so what that means is when you cultivate something, that means it prospers. You cause something to prosper. So as a man, just the command from God. To every men who are listening, the command is to make something prosper, to multiply, to amplify. And so a man is expected to, when he arrives on the scene, whether it's at work or at home, to make it better. Are you making. And I would just challenge those who are listening. Are you a maximizer of that or you're a minimizer? Like when you show up that people say, man, thank God JC's here. Something's good is going to happen, or he's going to make this better. And so I started to think about that in my own life. And I realized the problem with Adam in the garden is he delegated responsibility to Eve. That was his. And so he was supposed to take responsibility to protect the home, to care for the home, to lead the home, if the garden's like a home. And the Lord really spoke to my heart and said to me, robbie, the one thing you cannot delegate as a man husband is the discipleship of your family. Like, we could delegate a lot of things, right? We can delegate emails, we could delegate calendaring. We could delegate a lot of things. If you're a dad, even a mom. But if you're a dad, you can't delegate the discipleship of your kids. I remember a friend of mine in the church, very successful, very prosperous businesses he's led. I think he's retired three times as kind of a joke, and now he's a coach for men. He said this to me. He said, robbie, at the height of my career, he said, I was making so much money, I didn't know what to do with. He said, but here's the problem. He said, I was come home and I was successful, but I would come home with a pocket full of money to a house full of strangers. I came home every night with a pocket full of money to a house full of strangers. And so I would just challenge you. How are you actively spending time with your kids in discipleship? Now, don't hear what I'm not saying, because I've tried the traditional discipleship model with my boys, just like you're saying. I mean, I tried to meet with them, and I'm like, man, we're going to do this, and we're going to read the Bible every day, and we're going to do the scripture memory, and they're going to know the word. And then after a while, I realized, after two failed attempts, that ain't going to work. I even called candy. I said, they're a bunch of heathens, those kids. They won't learn. They won't listen. I'm not doing it. And so finally I realized it looks different in the home. And here's what I realized. The main thing with my boys. So now we meet every week. It's real casual. They do read a Bible reading plan. One's militant like his mom. One's more like me growing up. So he's casual. I kind of looked at it, dad. But here's the reality. That's just a means to an end for communication. What my kids need the most from me is presence. Think about the word present. I thought about this word present. It's an interesting word in the Bible. Obviously in the dictionary, it means present, like to be present, but it also means a gift. To give someone a present is a gift. And so many kids are screaming with the way they act and the outburst and the things and the grades of school and the way they talk back, because what they're saying without saying is, I just want you present. And you think you're present, but you're not present. I learned this when I was meet with them when they were real little, probably five and three or six and four. I was up there and we were hanging out. We're playing toys, and we had buz lightyear figures out. And I always had my phone with me at all times. Because God knows on Tuesday night at 08:00 I could get a call and need a text. And by golly, I got to answer the text immediately. Surely I'm a pastor of a church. Surely. And so I remember meeting with them. We're stacking up action figures, and all of a sudden a text came in and I said, hold on, I'll be right back. Hold the battle, daddy. Be right back. And I picked up the phone and I started looking at the phone and then I got carried away. And then eventually I put the phone down and when I looked up, they stopped playing. And I went over and I said, man, guys, I'm sorry. Daddy's finished. Let's get back and playing. And my older son rig, said, don't worry about daddy. We're used to it. You do it this all the time. And I thought, wow, are my kids going to grow up seeing my face or the back of a phone? Because, Sally, in the day and age we live in, that's what our kids see. So I would just say, set a time if you're a parent, particularly a dad, if you have kids. I mean, obviously the mom could do it too, but it's normally I have boys, so it's us I would say set a time, put it on the calendar, don't miss it, and open up that for just hanging out and talking and bible. And at first, they don't talk, but then you start to realize what your kids like. My youngest son loves to eat. He's big football guy. He loves to eat. So I started something with them called Saturdays. It's every Saturday, standing appointment. We go eat breakfast every Saturday morning. One's an early riser, one's a late sleeper. We got to normally wake him up. But every Saturday morning, we go and I let him pick. Now, the problem is, my youngest one loves the Waffle house, which I love the waffle house, too. But I think we went last year to the Waffle house 36 times, right? We know everybody at the waffles. It's awesome. But here's the thing. Over food and in the car. Listen to me. They talk about things with me they would never talk about at a dinner table or looking across from them or sitting on a couch, but they will do it in the car and on the way. And yes, I got to navigate through Dragon Ball Z updates and action figures and funko pops and everything else. But when one of them, you know, dad, I just don't understand why people pick on me at school all the time. Or, dad, I talked to this girl, and she told me this, and then I've used those teachable moments. I'm just opening up lines of communication. Here's the thing. I heard Ralph Waldo Emerson say this quote. It's a great quote. He said this years ago. He said, who you are speaks louder so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying. Who you are speaks so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying. If you wonder why your kids don't have a love for Jesus when they get out of the home, they didn't see you with one in the home. If you complain about your wife to your wife that she doesn't love you as the bride of Christ, then maybe you should check if you loved her as Christ loved the church. So the way we act speaks louder than what we say, and we know. [01:08:50] Speaker B: That, and that's really good. And convicting. We've talked about that multiple times on the podcast. I got six kids and trying to. Something my wife and I talked about years ago was we do a lot of things in group setting. My three boys are the oldest, my three girls are the youngest, and I'm noticing that when I take them, it's all three boys we're going to jump in the truck and go. And I was like, babe, we really got to focus on doing one on ones, just getting that time with them, which takes a lot of time because there's six of them. My oldest son just turned 14 on Monday, and we jumped in the truck and went, had breakfast and come back, and we're driving around. I haven't had a conversation with him like this in a long time. He's just talking and talking and talking. Well, the next night, I had to run down here to the church. The alarm was going off, something like that. He said, can I go with you? It's like, yeah, normally he's just wanting to sit in his room and read. And we jump in the truck and drove down here, and he's like, dad. He's like, I've really missed this. I said, what? He said, just me and you time. He's like, man, here's this little boy, 14. He's got a mustache. He's growing. He's like, but I just missed this. I was like, dad, gum. We talked about wasting time, but redeeming the time and all this. And then we get in the truck, and he's like, how'd you know you were called to ministry? I was like, oh, okay. You asking those kind of questions. I was like, this happened years ago. And I'm like, you know, it's just the discipleship factor in our culture, especially robbie, discipleship. Parent, kid was, pray a prayer, get baptized. Now go know, do something like that. And pastors, kids, you just did church. There was no discipleship and none of that one on one time. And I get convicted every time I think about it, and I want to do more, and I want to make sure that we're pouring into them. And every time it's good accountability to hear this over and over again because that is our first ministry. And so many times we suck so bad at it being our main ministry because we focus so much on the secondary issues. But thanks for the reminder, man. It's the kick in the gut. I need it again. [01:10:59] Speaker C: Yeah, we all do as parents. And I think if the church needs a kick in the gut right now, it's discipleship, just as a rule, because that is the thing that Jesus told us to do. Go make disciples. And we can't get focused on another part of it because sharing the gospel, equipping the saints, Christ is the one who does the converting. The Holy Spirit is the one that saves, and we get the privilege of being a part of that process. But so much of discipleship has to happen one on one. We don't get to just say, oh, well, I believe in the sovereignty of God, so I guess it's going to happen. No, he commands us to make disciples. So I appreciate you having a conversation with us, and we've all been blessed by your ministry and your books and hearing your interviews and your story, I think is going to impact a lot of people. But the thing is, we want a whole lot more robbie galladies out there making more disciples. So I love what you said about the process isn't done until the disciple is making disciples. So I think the church needs to hear this. We all need to be reminded of this. And if there's anything that needs to be our focus, and I love that this is seeming to become the focus of the church and southern Baptist and other organizations, that this is coming to the forefront. So thank you for helping us walk through this tonight. [01:12:32] Speaker D: Man, that I'd love to ask. So often disciplers get discouraged. [01:12:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:12:40] Speaker D: Because you invest so much time in a person and so much energy in a person, and then they walk away or there's a failure and they seemingly disappear. And I've had so many people who discipleship, who live as a discipler from a place of conviction, but along the way they get really discouraged because discipleship is difficult. What encouragement would you offer a discipler who's encouraged or who's discouraged because they feel like their failure rate is so high? [01:13:22] Speaker E: Yeah, that's a great question. And it's a reality, too, I would say, too, just an encouragement. Before I share this, one of the things I know, and we know this from serving the Lord for any length of time, you're never closer to Jesus than when you're doing what Jesus commanded you to do. And the great commission is not an option. It's not a multiple choice test question. Like the only thing in the Bible, I know this will ruffle a few feathers, but the only thing in the Bible that we are authorized to do is make disciples. He never authorizes to plant churches and pastor and do. Those are all necessity things of necessity. But the only thing he's authorized, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Now go make disciples. Right. And so I would say, is it messy? Absolutely. I could tell you as many challenging, I mean, I've had to ask people to leave the group. I've had one guy threaten to fight me, his dad. I mean, you could go on and on about challenges, but at the end of the day, we know this. The only lasting ministry that will bear fruit is not going to be the sermons we preach or the podcast we do, or the books we write, or the blogs we post. Paul said, the love letter of my life is written on your hearts. It's on the hearts of the men and women. And the reality is this. There's only three things in this world eternal. Three things. God, his word, and the souls of men and women. And the first two we know, obviously, we have no part of. But boy, what an amazing challenge. We have to leave a lasting impact. So I would just say, one, if you go in knowing it's not easy, then the anticipation factor is set right. The expectation factor number two is, I would say, don't be discouraged. Just like with discipling your kids. I've had more failures than successes, you guys know. But I think that the goal is not perfection, it's progress. It's progress. And I'll just tell you, man, some of the greatest, most impactful spiritual markers of my life have been in those discipling relationships. When people call you years later or wives come up to you and say, I don't know what you did with my husband, but thank God it changed the course of our marriage, it changed the course of our family. Discipleship, I look at it as it's the tide that raises all the ships at port in your church. So when you really focus on discipleship, that is the opening of the floodgates to just raise the tide of the spiritual maturity of your church. Dallas Willard said it best. He said, at the end of your ministry, the success will not be determined by, when Jesus looks at your ministry, determines this not by counting the christians within, but weighing them. He doesn't count them, he weighs them. And it's kind of a funny little way to say he looks at the maturity of people. Now, I will say this, and we didn't say it, but before you can make disciples brother or sister, you have to be a disciple. And so don't neglect your own soul care. Right, like you have to press into God and do a whole episode on the revival and me just spending ten months on the porch and silence and solitude leading up to 2021 where we had this amazing outpouring of the spirit of God. We saw 1000 people, over 1000 people baptized in 15 weeks, this spontaneous baptism. And over the past two years, we've seen almost 2600 people baptized. And we're not a baptism fast. Get them in the water church. It's a genuine outpouring of the spirit of God. Well, what led up to that? It was ten months of me ready to throw in the towel, navigating through Covid, like a lot of you, listening and just getting to the place of spiritual burnout. And I was desperate. And a guy's like, man, you need to spend time with the Lord. You're not hearing the voice of God. You're not silent. So I had to go in the dark ages and learn silence and solitude. I didn't know much about it, and I started to practice listening to the Lord. Here's what I did. I started to bend my ear to the accent of the Holy Spirit, whom I didn't know much about. And so as I began to sit with the Lord and had to reintroduce myself to the third person of the Trinity, who I knew more about Jesus, who was here 33 years or 30 years, than the Holy Spirit, who's been here 2000. And I began to just lament to the Lord, like, hey, why are there so many problems in my church? Why are there so many problems in my staff? Why are there so many problems in this deacon body? And if you sit with the Lord long enough and you listen to his voice, the Holy Spirit has this amazing JC, you know, this, this amazing ability to put his finger on the pulse of the problem and really uncover the issue. And the Lord just spoke to my heart and, you know, kindly, Robbie, the problem's not with your church. It's not with your staff, it's not with your deacon body. The problem is you. And if you've ever been there, when you get that gut level honest with the Lord, man, it's pretty painful. And God began to reveal layers of pride and arrogance. I don't even know where they're, they were blind spots. And he began to show me, you're way too prideful, Robbie. You're the master of fishing in the pond of approval of other all you live on likes and shares, and you know how to ask a question about your sermon to get the right response that make you feel good. And here's the one that got me, and this is the one really was. He showed me how jealous I was, and I started to realize this is probably the prevailing sin in pastoral ministry is that I was jealous. Now, I wouldn't say it publicly, but internally I was jealous if you baptized more than me. I was jealous if the guy down the street had more salvations. I was jealous if they had a bigger attendance. I was jealous if you had more posts, if you had a bigger podcast. And the Lord said to my heart, Robbie, if you can't pray for the church down the street to be blessed in spite of Long Hollow. I'll never bless long hollow. And so it was a ten month breaking of me on the porch. God had to break me before he could use me. And here's the line I'll leave you with. And I know we're out of time, but here's the line I would leave you with. This is what I learned from that season. Every great movement of God begins by not moving. And I got to a place, guys, where I was so desperate for more. And I would say another thing, you have as much of God in your life as you want. And for years as a pastor minister, people would look to me and say, man, you're really doing it. I settled for surface level synthetic substitutes of the spirit of God, of the holy spirit of God. And I'm just telling you, there's so much more. And so I just sat there and said, God, I'm not going to move until you move. And I was desperate enough to press into God, and then God just began to work in my life. And so I would say, if you're here today and you want to make disciples, make sure you're pressing into God as a disciple of Christ, you can expect from others, but you're not emulating yourself. [01:20:05] Speaker B: Did you read practicing the presence by the some of the language you were using? I just finished it again, that's one of my favorites. Hey Robbie, quickly, we have a lot of pastors that listen to this podcast, a lot of guys that have never been discipled. They grew up in an independent fundamental baptist world where it was pray a prayer, preach a sermon, go start a church. What would you say to the guy that is leading a church and you just hit on this, you have to be discipled before you can be a discipler. They can't stop doing what they're doing. They're a pastor. How can they start becoming a discipler right now while they're serving and leading a congregation? Because like Nathan said earlier in the podcast, discipleship was kind of a dirty word in the culture we grew up in. It was get, say pray a prayer, serve, volunteer, go pastor a church. And you didn't really know what discipleship was. I think there's even some that will listen to this episode that will kind of have their eyes opened a little bit to what discipleship is. What would you say to that man that is leading a church? They're pastoring, but there's no discipleship happening in their life right now. What are some things they can do to begin that process? [01:21:16] Speaker E: Yeah, that is another great question because the statistics show that on average, 70% of pastors listening have never been discipled in the first place. I'm not talking about this guy invested in me from a dead. I'm talking about intentional, systematic, biblical discipleship. And I know as a pastor it's hard to admit you don't know something. And we can't do that publicly because our people say we put this guy in charge, what is he doing here? Right? So I get it. We developed, not to plug our ministry website, but we have a whole website on replicate. You go to replicate.org where we have resources and tools and research that can help you in the journey. But I would say this, do not underestimate the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and the power of the word of God. And you know more than you think you know and you're longer further along than you think you are. I met years ago when I was researching for a book I was writing growing up. And it was one of the first books I wrote on discipleship. And I interviewed a guy named Steve Murrell. I don't know if you guys know that name. He's not really well known. He's in the assembly of God, pentecostal world. He wrote a book called Wiki Church. Interesting book about Wikipedia and Wikichurch. And basically he was a guy in Nashville, he was a layman in the church. I think he was mid thirty s and went on a mission trip to the Philippines. Just a mission trip. As a businessman, he saw the need there. He came back to the states. God spoke to his heart, said, you're going to go plant a church in the Philippines. As a businessman, he's like, okay. He goes to everybody he knows and everybody says, don't go, you're crazy. He goes anyway, goes to Manila, plants this church. And he says, robbie and I interviewed talking. I reached out to him. I went to Nashville. I was in Chattanooga. We met over lunch. I was blown away by this guy's story. And here's what he said. And it blew my systematic, compartmentalized theological perspective of discipleship out of the water. So I asked him, I said, tell me about your church. He said, I've been here now over 20 years. He said, our church is around 60,000 people who meet weekly. We have 48 different campuses. We have 19 different campuses, 48 different pastors who preach at these campuses. We do two things and two things only. We preach on Sunday and we meet in small discipleship groups through the week. And that's what victory is. I think that was the name of his church. And I said, okay. And my natural question was yours. Okay, well, how do you find people to disciple the new believers? Like, when somebody crosses the threshold of faith, how do you find them? He said, oh, it's easy. He said, they have the Holy Spirit and they have the word of God. And he said, so what we do is if JC just comes to the Lord, you're brand new in the faith. We say, well, great. Brian has been a Christian how long, Brian? Two months. Great. Brian, where are you at in reading the Bible while I'm at Matthew 17. Great. You have 17 chapters under your belt that you can now walk a brother through on a journey you've been on. I sat back over sushi, and I'm like, I don't even have a category for what you just said because that fits in none of the circles that I run. So I said, here's my line. It's so naive. I said, how do you manage that? That's what I asked. Here's what he said. I've never forgotten this. He said, robbie, how do you manage a revival? You don't. You just tend the fire. And I was like, wow, it reminds me of, quote, you know, you don't have to advertise a fire. It advertises itself when you get people set on fire for Jesus. I'm just telling, like, the world will come, watch them burn, and they'll say, what is going on? Because I want that in my life. So I would just say, if you don't know what to do, start with what you know and just gather together, be a lifelong learner. That's the thing I'm looking for when I'm investing in a guy. Teachable spirit. You can have all of the gifts and qualities in the world, but if you don't have a teachable spirit, we can't work with you. But you could have no gifts or talents to write home about. But if you're a lifelong learner and have a teachable spirit, you can work with anybody. [01:25:22] Speaker B: Good. You've mentioned it a couple of times. We kind of softballed it up there. Tell us about replicate. Tell us where they can go, some of the resources that are on there. Give us the website, all of that stuff. [01:25:33] Speaker E: Yeah, I appreciate that. Again, we started this ministry 16 years ago, originally as a resource ministry for the church. So there's a lot of resources. I've written books on discipleship. Recent book is called replicate. We talked about it earlier, which is really just a manual for walking through how to do this in your life and in your church. But the website is helpful. We pastor and shepherd pastors, in a sense, disciple pastors all over the country, different denominations, and just help them create a discipleship operating system. What we realized early on was that we were teaching people how to make disciples, but we realized they didn't have an operating system to sustain it. And so you can have a passion to make disciples, but if you don't change the way you do things, you don't change the operating system. You know, it's not going to be a movement. It'll be a ministry, not a movement. So anyway, you go online there. We'd love to help you. A lot of stuff's free. It's available. Replicate.org. [01:26:26] Speaker B: Replicate.org. [01:26:27] Speaker D: Hey, by the way, I wake up every day and I pray that God will help me encourage someone. And so I feel like I'm just supposed to encourage you today. I want you to know that if you stay faithful and you keep going to the gym, you can look like me. [01:26:44] Speaker E: I'm on the road, brother. [01:26:46] Speaker D: It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work. [01:26:49] Speaker B: Pretty sure his biceps the size of your thigh, Brian, I was watching one. [01:26:53] Speaker D: Of his sermons recently, and he did his arms like this. And so I made a commitment in that moment. I'm never doing this while I'm preaching again. [01:27:05] Speaker B: Brian's arms waved back at him. [01:27:07] Speaker D: Yeah, it's like, what's going on, man? I just wanted to let you know, if you work hard, you can get to this level. [01:27:16] Speaker B: Oh, man, I loved it when my grandma used to love grandma, because back when we were kids, we didn't have seatbelts, so dad would just throw his arm out and stop you from going out the windshield. But grandma, we loved it because she had all that skin under her arm, man. She'd throw it up. It's like an airbag, right? It's down. Comforter around your head. [01:27:35] Speaker E: Thank you, Brian. Old school airbag. [01:27:40] Speaker D: Keep working hard. You can get there, bud. [01:27:42] Speaker E: You really can. I got to go, man. I got a scorecard now. [01:27:45] Speaker B: Thank you for that, Bobby. Thank you so much for being on with us today. I'm going to ask you, we ask a lot of our guests at times to just close us in a word of prayer for those pastors that are out there, for those that are struggling to get discipleship started, for those that feel like they want to take the right steps, just for pastors in general, for our listeners, we just close us in a word of prayer today? [01:28:07] Speaker E: Yeah, if I can. I'd say two things that have always been kind of mantras in my life. Number one is a guy told me this years ago, you have no one to impress and nothing to prove. And that's a big thing I live by. And number two, and here's a big one I've learned from pastoring at Long Hollow. Don't ever receive criticism from someone you won't take advice from. Don't ever take criticism from someone you won't seek for advice. So that's helped me. Still learning that, but yeah, let me pray. Father, I thank you for your presence. You're always with us. God, we thank you for your holy spirit. You fill us and guide us, direct us. God, we thank you for those who are listening. I know they come from different backgrounds, different upbringings, different churches, different hurts. I know there's a real sense of some who have been hurt by the church, hurt by pastors they're distrusting. And there's a lot of pent up anger maybe, or animosity. I just pray God you show them that they don't direct that towards you. You're a loving father. You care for us. You love us unconditionally. You're kind to us. You're a God of second chances. Thank you for saving us, God, saving these brothers on this call. We know we didn't do anything to earn it. We don't deserve it. We weren't seeking you when you came after us, and we're grateful for that. Never let us get over being amazed by grace. God, I thank you for the salvation we have. And God, as we learned the gospel, came to us because it was heading to someone else. And we're either fumbling the handoff or we're running with passion and handing it off to the next generation. And so let the legacy of our life not be written on pages of books or sermons we wrote or blogs we posted, but on the hearts of men and women we've invested in. We love you, Jesus. We ask it in your name. Amen. [01:29:52] Speaker B: Amen. Thanks for being here with us, Robbie. Really appreciate it. [01:29:56] Speaker E: Yeah, of course. [01:29:57] Speaker B: RFP fam. Thanks for tuning in. Twelve and 24, we'll see you in February. Nathan, Brian, love you boys. [01:30:05] Speaker D: You too. [01:30:06] Speaker C: Have you guys. [01:30:09] Speaker D: Be sweet. [01:30:11] Speaker C: Peace. [01:30:12] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the recovering fundamentalist podcast. Be sure to stop by our social media, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Give us a follow. Also go to our website, recoveringfundamentalist.org. That's recoveringfundamentalist.org. 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