4/30/25 - 2092: 365 Days of Impact

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of Collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement, and our mission is to inspire every workplace believer to recognize their workplace as their ministry place where they work with God every day. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

World changer. When Blake Mattocks was growing up, that was not the way he would've described himself with a quiet, sensitive demeanor and a pastor's heart for people. That's who God has transformed Blake Mattocks to be, literally a world changer.

Seven years ago, Blake launched a brand new ministry called 365 Christian Men. Five years ago we covered it here on this podcast today. The reach of the daily inspirational and challenging videos of 365 Christian Men have a reach that spans the entire globe with 8 to 10 million people interacting with these videos every month.

Unbelievable for a guy who just wanted to serve and make a difference. 365 Christian Men is at a crossroads. Will it go forward [00:01:00] or leave a legacy for someone to pick up and run with it? Either way, Blake Mattocks is here to tell us his story and inspire us all. Blake, welcome back to iWork4Him.

Blake Mattocks: Jim, can you do that again? That was so good. You should be on the radio.

Jim: It's recorded. You can listen to it as many times as you wanted to.

Blake Mattocks: Man, that was something else.

Jim: Blake, when you shifted from pulpit ministry to running a business called 365 Christian Men, what were the thoughts going through your head? Besides, what the heck am I thinking? Besides that one.

Blake Mattocks: That first and foremost, that was it. I had no idea. Construction background, pastoral ministry, had no idea what this was gonna look like. So it was a complete step of faith. Trust God. You have to lead, God. You have to show me every step of the way.

Jim: Were you a finished carpenter?

Blake Mattocks: No, I was a brick layer.

Jim: Ah, okay. So the attention to detail, that's where I was going. Because a general contractor who's a framer, that's one thing. You've got an attention to detail that I [00:02:00] rarely see because 365 Christian Men is such a detailed ministry and a brick layer makes sense because a brick layer needs to make sure everything is square, plum, and level at every level of brick. Because otherwise, as things get off, that's how you get the leaning Tower of Pisa.

Alright, when you shifted to 365 Christian Men seven years ago, were you ready for the challenges and the victories that you've experienced?

Blake Mattocks: Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know. I think I was ready for the challenges because I like to take on a challenge, but I think I had no idea because the learning curve for me was pretty huge. I was stepping into something I've never done before. So along the way of trying to figure this thing out, I had to learn and teach myself a whole new skillset.

Jim: So let's talk about 365 Christian Men. There's a lot of people that weren't listening to iWork4Him five years ago, and they're listening today. They wanna know, what is this all about 365 Christian Men? Give it to us in a couple minute summary.

Blake Mattocks: Yeah I [00:03:00] think starting with the vision is important. Hebrews chapter 12:1 says, we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses that have run their race. We know in fact that today we as believers are running our race. And so the man that had the vision for this, he and I sat down seven years ago and he said, I want to inspire my four sons to run this race and I want to do it through the power of story. Let's do that.

Let's dream about what that would look like, and I wanna write short stories about real men, primarily historical, but also modern day men. And I want them to be short. I want them to be single event stories. I don't want them to be autobiographies or biographies. So that's where we started in June of 2018. That's what we started. That conversation started it all.

Jim: And we picked up that conversation in 2020, covid year, as you were still putting together the 365 videos, and now you've gone, how many individual stories have you written up today?

Blake Mattocks: We have one story for every day of the year. We have a few others [00:04:00] that are compiled that have not been launched yet, and we have a hundred stories of women that have been recorded and written but have not been narrated yet. So we have quite a, we have quite a library. We have a story for every day of the year, and we have a brand new challenge for every story, for every day of the year. So that's brand new content, 365 days a year.

Jim: And that's what's been fun. So not only as iWork4Him had the privilege of covering what God has been doing through you, you invited me to start recording a challenge or two a month. So in other words, we listen to the video for the day and then some guy like me gets to put an opinion afterward or just share a little bit of perspective on that story to drive it home a little deeper.

Blake, the stories that you have chosen and the challenges that you guys deliver, talk about impact. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? Actually, probably it's what are you hearing?

Blake Mattocks: Yeah, how much time you got? Seriously, the impact of these stories - what we did is we hired professional ghost writers [00:05:00] to write these stories, and what we said was, we want you to find a single event in a man's life that will inspire men. Our tagline is inspirational stories of real men. And we didn't want the polished stories. We wanted the stories with the bumps, the bruises, the scars, the warts and all, everything in between.

And so these stories, when men listen to them today, they can identify with those stories because we're all running the race and we're all messy people and we all struggle. And so these stories, whether it's a story about addiction or whether it's a story about some kind of anger issues or any other number of things, men relate to these stories.

Jim: They do and every story, and they range in time but from five to seven minutes, they get emailed out to you, they get texted out to you. They are on your website. They're powerful stories, and it is just about one event that transformed that guy's life. Talk about transformational. I don't know, Blake, have you checked out the US [00:06:00] Christian Chamber yet?

Blake Mattocks: No, I have not.

Jim: I wanna invite all of you, including Blake Mattocks, to check out USchristianchamber.com. The economy of this country should be under the influence of Jesus Christ and the US Christian Chamber is there to inspire marketplace focused people to make an impact on their local community by doing their work for the glory and honor of God. That's what the US Christian Chamber is all about, getting together with other people across the country that wanna glorify God with whatever work they're doing.

That's really "iWork4Him" so they can say iWork4Him every day. I encourage all of you to be become a member of the US Christian Chamber online at uschristianchamber.com. Talk about transformational - there are now 21 local Christian Chambers in 21 different cities across the country now and more in the upcoming years. So it's a lot of exciting stuff going on.

Blake, as we talk about 365ChristianMen.com, I wanna encourage everybody to get out there and get signed up. How do they get signed up to get the daily text like I get? I don't [00:07:00] even remember. I've done it so many years ago. How do they do that?

Blake Mattocks: Yeah, great question. Probably the simplest way to get the text is have a friend share it with a friend, share it with a friend, share it with a friend. But we've got a QR code that people the scan.

Jim: so along the lines of heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who...

Blake Mattocks: yeah. I'd sing it, but I'm not a singer, but we got a QR code people can scan. Some people prefer the text. They get a daily text. What they don't get with that, they get the daily story and challenge. The app offers a little more content, tells a little bit more about who we are.

Jim: Wait a minute. There's an app for this? Unbelievable. And it's just 365 Christian Men, both Apple and in the Google store? Wow, that's fantastic. So now you've got no excuse. If you wanna inspire the men in your life, 365 Christian Men, there's an app for that.

That's unbelievable. Okay. All right. I'm excited about this. You guys, I've been able to be a part of this personally, which I love. And I've also walked alongside Blake as a friend for several years, and I've seen how God has just continued to do incredible things. We're gonna talk about that in a minute.

Blake, what's been the biggest [00:08:00] challenge for you personally for running this 365 Christian Men organization?

Blake Mattocks: I'd say probably a couple things. It's very demanding. It takes a lot of time. We hire contractors when we have specific work that we need done, but it's a lot of work. All of this content is created new monthly, and it all has to be uploaded. It all has to be worked into the program. So there's a lot of work.

And then obviously we are, I shouldn't say obviously, but now we're a 5 0 1 C3, we're a nonprofit, and so we're trying to figure out how to create an economic engine so we can feed this machine. And I think that's been personally a big challenge for me because I'm doing this full time and without resources. You know how that is.

Jim: You're not without resources. You have the cattle on a thousand hills. You serve the God who owns it all, so you're not without resources. Those resources just currently aren't being directed to 365 Christian Men, which I would encourage anybody that gets - check out 365 Christian Men in the App Store online. Get this in the [00:09:00] hands of the men in your life and you will see a difference because we are all, the reason iWork4Him even exists, Blake Mattocks, is because I kept hearing stories of God doing miracles and incredible things in the lives of believers out there in the marketplace and the workplaces of America.

And I'm like, we need to share those stories because we're all inspired by faith stories. 365 Christian Men is all of those stories delivered on a daily basis. It's a daily podcast just with somebody else talking, not Blake Mattocks, although Blake Mattocks does some of these.

Alright. If the biggest challenge has been raising money and really working really hard to get it all done, all the moving pieces, and you're working with translators and how many different countries are you working with different people right now?

Blake Mattocks: We're translating into four different languages, but we're in over a hundred countries.

Jim: But as part of your team, like where are the people from? Like, how many different countries are, is your team in?

Blake Mattocks: Specifically right now, five. Five to seven?

Jim: Yeah, five to seven. There's a little different cultural differences maybe on five to seven different people. All right, so the biggest challenge is some of that organizational [00:10:00] stuff and the money thing that God's already got taken care of and saying, Blake, would you just chillax, seriously? If I want this to move forward, I'm gonna give you the money. And I'm thinking it's maybe a big partner that says, holy smokes, this is incredible. I'm gonna take this to the next level.

What do you think the biggest victory's been, Blake?

Blake Mattocks: I think the biggest victory is the testimonies that we hear of transformed lives. I got an email two weeks ago from a pastor in Africa. He is from Mombasa. Near Kenya. And every day he gets up, he came across 365 Christian Men on Spotify. We have 33,000 followers on Spotify. He must be one of them. And he found that on Spotify, started listening to it, started letting his sons listen to it. And now every day before they go to school, they listen or watch a 365 story. The testimonies, hands down, are the most impactful thing.

Jim: And even if it was just one person being impacted, but it's not just one person - at a meeting we were recently in, you shared that on a monthly [00:11:00] basis, how many people are being impacted by 365 Christian Men?

Blake Mattocks: On a conservative level, 8 to 10 million.

Jim: That's unbelievable. And that's eight to 10 million men, probably almost all men. So then think of the families. That could be eight to 10 million families, which quite literally could be somewhere between 40 and 50 million people that are being impacted because of 365 Christian Men.

Did you ever even think seven years ago, gosh, I think we wanna impact about 50 million people or so. What were you thinking? What did you think your reach would be?

Blake Mattocks: Now we, we thought that this would be a US based thing. We thought we would check the box, we would do an ebook or print on demand. And we'd have a little bit of a footprint, somewhere in the USA. That is where we, that was the extent of our thinking. And then it started to take off. Really, the project was planned to be a two year project. We're gonna start in 2018, be done in 2020. But because of the tidal wave, we kept [00:12:00] riding the wave and kept watching God do more and more.

Jim: So that's clearly one of the miracles is God just did way more than you could have asked or imagined. There is a Bible verse like that. All right. No, I have not had that much Mountain Dew. This is just me. I'm so excited. All right, so talk about miracles. Is there a specific miracle that has spun out of 365? And I'm not gonna talk about you personally and you and your bride personally, those miracles we're gonna talk about in a second. A miracle that you've heard about because of this ministry?

Blake Mattocks: I'll tell you about one that I heard about. About six weeks ago a woman in India was in her home and the video was being broadcast into her home through Hosanna tv in her native language of Tamil.

She was getting ready to kill herself. She was being abused in her home and she was getting ready to take her own life. The story came on, and I know this because the woman who oversees the ministry knows this woman personally, shared this. She was [00:13:00] getting ready to take her life. She watched the 365 story.

She got on her knees, recognized that the God who created her, loved her. She gave her heart to Christ, and now she works for that ministry in Southern India. That was just six weeks ago. In her native language of Tamil, she watched the story, gave her heart to Christ.

Jim: Unbelievable. And that makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it, Blake?

Blake Mattocks: Oh, that is it right there. That's what it's all about.

Jim: You and Melinda have walked together for how many years now?

Blake Mattocks: It will be 42 in June.

Jim: 42 years. How have you kept your marriage strong while you're working your butt off for 365 Christian Men? You were a pulpit pastor too, so that's also one of those sort of demanding jobs. And you're a bricklayer. That was probably demanding, but that you went from bricklaying to being a pulpit pastor now to 365. You've had some demanding years. How are you keeping your marriage straight?

Blake Mattocks: [00:14:00] I think your bride better be your best friend, and if they're your best friend, you're gonna wanna spend time together. It's not about having to spend time, you're gonna wanna spend time together. You gotta prioritize that. Eventually the kids are gone and it's you and her. Or you and him, and you better have built something that's gonna last.

Jim: For those of you listening that still have your kids living at home, when they're in their twenties or thirties, you heard what Blake said. Eventually the kid should be gone. They're not supposed to still be living at home. Help 'em get into a house or out of your house is one of those things. Or start charging them rent and they'll leave naturally. It's just one of those things.

All right. Speaking of things you should do naturally, you should protect yourself on your computer, shouldn't you, Blake? SaferNet is like the best tool ever out there. It's got a VPN, so it keeps you from being able to be seen on the internet. It's got web filters to keep you from looking at stuff you shouldn't look at. It's got antivirus to keep the bad guys from putting garbage on you. And what I love best is this console, so you could put it in a whole company and watch what everybody's doing and keep people from going places they shouldn't go.

[00:15:00] And the miraculous thing is, if you click on a link you shouldn't click on it, it takes you to a place that you don't want to go, Safernet will stop it. Get it on every one of your computers. It's super reasonably priced. It's super powerful. SaferNet.com.

Blake, what are you facing today? 365 Christian Men is at a crossroads.

Blake Mattocks: I'd say we're at a crossroads for this reason. So in July of last year, we transitioned from an LLC to a 5 0 1 C3. So we're trying, as I said a few minutes ago, to feed this machine. I felt like going into 2025 that the vision God gave for this year was reach more, write more, and transform lives. And so we had been praying, our board has been praying into that vision.

And even more recently, in the last five weeks, I felt like the Lord challenged me to put together a 500 people challenge. And that is, that's where we're at right now. Reach more, write more, transform lives. And this 500 people challenge that's going to help us [00:16:00] to generate some revenue so we can create new content, give stories away, and translate into more languages.

Jim: And impact instead of eight to 10 million, 800 to a hundred million, 800 to a billion people. That's my goal.

Blake Mattocks: Yep. Get this Jim. In India, the majority of the people in India speak the language of Hindi. About 80%. Our ministry partners that translated our videos into Tamil can translate our videos into Hindi. Forget ai. We're gonna use local people on the ground so we can support people for $30 a video. $30 a video, we can translate it correctly into the language of Hindi. The audience in the Hindi language, including India, Europe, and Australia, is 40 to 50 million people, and that's just one language. We can translate those videos for $30 a video. [00:17:00]

Jim: It's unbelievable. And I'm just, on this show, we don't ever ask for money. But what I'm saying is I believe there's somebody here in the iWork4Him audience that's been looking for a challenge, and when you see the material that 365 Christian Men's been putting out there, they need a partner. They need a business person that's saying, I wanna get behind this challenge. I wanna help get this impact to more people.

Blake, we know people around the world and we know that there is a huge move of God all over the globe, not to mention our own country, which is actually gonna celebrate easter. I know the show's gonna come out just after Easter, but our country celebrated Easter from the White House this year. Praise God. Unbelievable. So you need, if somebody wants to partner with you, if somebody wants to talk to you personally or somebody wants to just get ahold of you, the best way on 365 Christian Men, is there a Contact us page?

Blake Mattocks: Yeah, there is a Contact us page on the website. My email is there, Blake, at 365ChristianMen.com. We're on all the streaming platforms. We've got an app, we are reachable, [00:18:00] we're on LinkedIn, we're on all the, all those platforms. So I'm pretty easy to reach. We have a YouTube channel.

Jim: Nice. And it's just unbelievable. Blake, when you look at where God is taking you from and through a step of obedience seven years ago where God has taken you to, what blows your mind the most?

Blake Mattocks: Oh man. I would say what blows my mind the most, if I could answer it with a short answer, would be the faithfulness of God. We know scripture tells us that God, when we delight ourselves in him, gives us the desires of our heart.

A lot of times we don't even know what those desires are, but when we focus our attention on God, he will align his plan with what our desires are, whether we know them or not, and you'll get in the flow of what God is doing in your life, and you will find that sweet spot of what God's created you to be and to do.

And I think that's where I'm living today is just saying, [00:19:00] God, I wouldn't have picked this. You could ask me to do 500 things. This would not have been anywhere on that list. I. And yet I get to hear every day about lives being changed and transformed. It's hard to put into words.

Jim: It is hard to put into words and it is amazing that you just summarized your biggest need to just continue to rely on the faithfulness of God. He always delivers when he's called us to do something, but it doesn't mean that it's not gonna stretch us. You often hear, Blake, that well, God never asked you to do something that you're not capable of doing.

Oh no, he does it all the time. That's where faith comes in. And Blake, he's put before you a vision that is absolutely impossible for you to do. Impossible. But with God, all things are possible. Again, another song I think would be great. All things are possible. Okay. Wow. Great song.

Blake, I love that you brought this to our audience today. I'd encourage every one of you listening, get 365 Christian Men onto the iPhone, an Android phone, or whatever you got. I don't think those are the only two kind of phones you got out there. Get the app on [00:20:00] there, get it delivered to 'em on a daily basis. Watch their lives start to be impacted by stalwart men of faith who have screwed up, some of 'em have just screwed up and then became Stalwart Men of Faith. It's just super inspirational.

Blake Mattocks, do not give up. Keep praying for that person that's got a bigger vision than you to join alongside of you and those 500 people that are gonna be a part of changing the world. Blake Mattocks, thanks for being on iWork4Him today.

Blake Mattocks: Thank you, Jim. So good to be with you, my friend.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim Brangenberg. I'm a Christ follower. My workplace, it's my mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.