6/26/24 - 2048: Where Science Falls Short

Jim: Hey, welcome to a special edition of iWork4Him. Normally Martha and I do interviews with folks who have a story to tell, and we get the short form of that story today. We're going to capture Nick Cinelli's whole story in a few episodes. Nick and I first met on October the 31st, 2013 at a BNI group in Seminole, Florida. Nick's a consummate salesperson and a tremendous networker. And Nick brings laughter to every room he walks into. But today, Nick's going to share the account of how his life was turned right side up. Nick Cinelli, welcome to iWork4Him.

Nick Cinelli: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Jim: I'm glad to have you. Nick, normally at the beginning of every interview that we do, I ask people to tell us their Jesus story. However, today this whole interview is going to be about your Jesus story. So let's just start off with this question. What was your life like before you met Sue?

Nick Cinelli: I considered myself a scientist who knew it all and always felt that science could explain it all because I grew up in an electrical and electronic background and communications and so on. So full of myself, as I would say, not knowing any better at the time.

Jim: So how did you actually meet Sue?

Nick Cinelli: We met Sue because I belong to a dance club with a friend of mine, Tom Dixon, and once we found out that they were having like rock and roll dances all over the state, from Jacksonville down to Miami, we decided to check it out. And after a series of dances at different cities, we found out, we both came to the conclusion that we liked the Daytona Beach dance the best. So Tom and I would take turns driving to Daytona Beach, and just hang out for the weekend and have a good time dancing, meeting people. After a while, you got to know them.

And as it turned out, one year Tom was not able to go. He told me that him and his daughter were going to attend the Gasparilla parade in Tampa instead and couldn't go to Daytona. And as it turned out, Sue, who would later become my best friend and wife had the same experience with her girlfriend. Her girlfriends that she usually would go to the Daytona dance with were not available that weekend. So she drove up by herself and I drove to Daytona by myself because I didn't want to miss the dance.

Jim: So are you really that good of a dancer, Nick? Come on. Really?

Nick Cinelli: I'm not that good of a dancer, but I'm that, that good of a showcasing the woman, as they say. At least in my mind. In other words, you, Hold her out and let her get all the applause and so on. That's what was expected, I think. We just had a good time. A lot of it was going from table to table talking to people you might not have seen in a year and, bringing up what's happened, what's going on, that kind of thing.

Jim: It was a social gathering for you.

Nick Cinelli: Social gathering, which had dancing in it.

Jim: Nice. Nice. I've never been able to put my two feet together in any normal wise direction. So my wife just says, let's just not do that dancing thing. All right. So you and Sue one day ended up, you had to take her back to Miami. And you were having a long conversation as you were driving her back to Miami. Talk to us about that conversation when you first realized she believed in God.

Nick Cinelli: At that point I thought, and I hate to say this, but I thought that she was dumb and stupid basically. Because at that point in my life, I thought everybody knew that there's really no such thing as God because science explains everything. And as, as you probably are going to lead to it was in trying to prove her wrong that there is no God that I came to realize that it was actually science that's been wrong millions of times.

Jim: Let's not jump ahead to the story. Let's talk about that drive you had with Sue. You had a really deep conversation with her.

Nick Cinelli: The really deep conversation I had was in trying to convince her, in my mind anyway, I was thinking of all the different ways that I could prove her wrong, given the opportunity to talk to her. So from what I remember, I think that whole, which was back in the early nineties, was made up of me trying to convince her that there is no God and that science explains everything.

Jim: And when you had those kind of, those conversations with Sue, was she receptive? Did she get angry at you? How did that go? Cause, cause you liked her. You already started liking her. You loved dancing with her already, but you already had the sweets for her, didn't you?

Nick Cinelli: Actually at that point when we first met, we hardly had paid attention to each other although we'd been at dances and I had seen her. It's like one of those things where you say, Oh yeah, I think I've seen her at other dances before and I might've danced with her once or twice. So it wasn't, she wasn't one of my regular dance partners, so to speak.

Jim: So what did you really believe? What did you really believe about science?

Nick Cinelli: I believed that science could explain everything, and I also thought that science was never wrong. And little did I know, it has been wrong billions of times and continues to be wrong as new things are discovered. If you go back just to the atom itself, we thought that the atom was one particle that could not be a split. We've since learned that not only is it not one particle, it was three particles, then later on they found out it was many particles, and you can split it. So much for science being perfect. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Jim: Yeah, we could go way back to when science said the Earth was flat, Nick. And that the moon was made of cheese. You know we've come a long ways from there. Alright, so you decided to do some scientific research to prove that Sue believed a fable. Talk to me about that research that you did, and how'd that work out for you?

Nick Cinelli: As you've alluded to, it didn't work out too good, because the more I dug into it, the more I found out that in essence, if you were to write a book, on the errors of science or the corrections of science, it would be the biggest book in the world because there's, since the beginning of time, there've been over 1 billion corrections.

In fact, one of the things I stumbled on in doing my research, Wikipedia happened to come up with a thing that said, when I was saying, has science ever been wrong? My whole screen lit up. Yeah, these are the top ten science mistakes, twenty mistakes, hundreds of mistakes. So I said I'm really on to something here, because to me it was shocking.

I always thought it was perfect. But then it made sense. It can't be perfect if it's constantly changing. And unlike, for example, the Bible, which doesn't change. From the beginning to end, it's talking about the creation and the love that God has never changes.

Jim: So before this research though - Let's not get ahead because we want to keep people on that cliffhanger. Before this research, did you think the Bible and science had anything to do with each other?

Nick Cinelli: I thought science was absolutely true and I thought the Bible was a fable, just a story that somebody made up.

Jim: But in reality, what did you find?

Nick Cinelli: I found that if anything, the Bible is true and without error, and science has been full of errors since the beginning of time.

Jim: But did you find the Bible and science having any relatability? Anything that, were they tied together, science and the Bible?

Nick Cinelli: They are tied together because the Bible explains science with that popular statement that most people know, whether you're a Christian or not. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And nothing else explains the beginning in true provable items than that statement.

Jim: Yeah. Science is still, they got their big bang theory and there was that TV show too, but they still don't know what caused the explosion or where all the matter came from. They still have a really hard time with that. So they're still making that up. All right. Going back to something you said a second ago. You said, when I was reading your book, and you have a book that you put all this stuff into: The True Lies of Science that you wrote. When I was reading your book, you said you used Wikipedia for your research. I thought you said you were doing real research. Cause Wikipedia is like, is that really research?

Nick Cinelli: Yes. Because it wasn't only Wikipedia because I Googled basically, in my search engine "science mistakes" and so on. That's how it started. And there was hundreds upon hundreds. And one of the topics that struck me was it said, Wikipedia superseded scientific theories.

So to me, I says, wow, this might be interesting because it's going to show a progression of a scientific research that has been proven wrong and superseded by something else. That's why I quoted Wikipedia, but that wasn't the only one I used. I used everything you could imagine that would come up if you Google "science mistakes."

Jim: All right. So what were four or five of the significant things you first realized about science when you were doing your research? Four or five big things where you're like. Oh wow.

Nick Cinelli: The creation, which you can't really explain just by science. And also the long time that everybody talks about, the billions and trillions of years that it took for evolution. Evolution to me is the biggest lie and mistake in science that there ever was. But that's a whole other chapter, which you're probably going to get into later. I don't want to get ahead of myself. But basically, again, if you just count the mistakes, there are so many that if you put it in one book, it would be the biggest book in the world, the mistakes or reconsiderations or reworkings of science.

Jim: In other words, a scientist in the 1800s may have said, here's my theory. Here's what I'm going with. And then in the 1900s, somebody else goes, yeah, but now I've taken the scientist's idea from the 1800s, and I've proven him wrong. And this is what I've realized. Just like we just said about the atom, they thought the atom was a singular item. And then we found out it was part of, it had electrons and neutrons and could be broken apart in pieces. That kind of thing is what you're saying that the things are constantly developing, right?

Nick Cinelli: Right. Constantly changing. And that was the biggest thing because basically what we're saying is that science today is not done changing. It continues to change. And there've been many people who've now have come to realize - you have to remember that one of the things that has influenced mankind is the Darwin theory of evolution. He thought everything began from a simple cell, which we now know it doesn't exist because every cell is complex with the prozoa and nucleus and cells and so on. There is no such thing as a simple living cell. But Darwin didn't know that at the time because DNA had not been discovered, and they didn't have electron microscopes. But with electron microscopes, and the ability to see DNA, nothing could be further from the truth. In terms it could never, ever have started by itself because every cell is unique and completely working.

You don't have to sit there with your arms folded and say, okay, so let's grow and see what you can do. No, if you're looking at a living cell, it's a living cell from the beginning and it works from the very beginning. It doesn't need an orchestra. It doesn't need some guy hitting it with a prong in a petri dish or whatever. A living cell is a living cell from the beginning and the only thing that would explain that is everything was created according to its kind, which means fully functional from the beginning.

Jim: All right, so let's talk about when you're doing all this research, and you talked about these superseded scientific theories, constantly getting superseded, what did you find was behind all of the false narratives and the false facts? You call them lies in the scientific community. Did you find what was behind all of that?

Nick Cinelli: First of all, I think the nature of man is wanting to deny something that supposedly is bigger than him and that he would have to answer to. And it's not anything new. If you look at, for example, without getting into politics, communist countries and so on and so forth, socialists, they all want to deny God.

Why? Because the dictator wants to be treated as a God, and he knows that if people believe in somebody else or something else, they're not going to follow him, and that's basically the story of why God is continuously denied by many leaders because the leaders think they are God, and they don't want to compete.

In other words, they don't want to tell you to do something, and then a Christian or somebody who believes in God finds out something different just by reading his Bible. Hey, this is not right. You shouldn't be doing that. You shouldn't be saying this, okay? This is how we were created. And that's why they try to deny him at every turn. You can't have two supreme beings. Because as the Bible says, by the way, you will love one and hate the other. You will hate one and like the other and so on.

Jim: All right. So in your book, you go on to say in the next pages that follow the conversation that evolution is a hoax. I thought the theory of evolution had been proven. What do you mean it's a hoax?

Nick Cinelli: It's been proven false. It's a hoax, meaning that even Darwin himself, in his book, if you read his book, it'll say, I believe in evolution. However, I can't explain evolution compared to the human eye. He said the human eye had to have been created because that's the only way it explains that you could see something from the very beginning.

In other words, you don't see one strand and then come back a million years later. Oh, there's another strand and then a million years later. Oh, wait a minute. There's more to this cell than I thought. No, the cell was complex and created from the beginning. It didn't evolve. It can't evolve. Okay? And so basically that's why I used the Darwin thing. He himself admitted the eye is so great and perfect that it had to have been created by a creational method.

Now, here's the rest of the story. But his followers says you can't say that. Because if you're saying that, that means that evolution is not true. And we can't have that, Mr. Darwin. You're gonna mess us all up. So you better say that the eye could be evolved. Then he admits this in his book. He says, okay, all right, I'll go along with you guys, because I don't want to leave evolution out in the cold. So I'll say, okay, it is possible for the eye to have evolved even though he didn't believe it. You can read that in his book. I'm not making this up.

Jim: That's unbelievable.

Nick Cinelli: The average person doesn't know that by the way. They've never read Darwin's book.

Jim: No, most people don't know that Darwin questioned his own theory. And most people don't know that there's a million nerve receptors in one eyeball and there's no way that could happen. I understand. But you found seven major errors in the theory of evolution. What were those seven major errors that you found?

Nick Cinelli: Basically that there is no simple cell. And by the way, one of the things I stumbled on is the fact that if you look at scientific research there's certain rules that it has to abide by. In other words, it has to be able to be proven in the lab, has to be able to be made, other scientists have to agree with it, so on and so forth.

And I found out, not only am I the only one who doesn't believe in evolution and know that it's impossible, but there's hundreds of scientists. And that came up also in my Wikipedia research, by the way or let's just leave it as Google research. Okay. And that is that there've been so many changes that from day one. Remember, he didn't have, again, he didn't know DNA existed. Which is correct from the very beginning and he had no access to an electron microscope Where you can actually look at these particles.

Jim: So what about the laws of thermodynamics? That was something else you also saw that a major error in evolution having something to do with the laws of thermodynamics.

Nick Cinelli: Yeah, if you look one of the law says that nothing can be or everything that is, you can see. And that was an old theory, by the way. And that's not true, because there's a lot of things that we know exist that are invisible. Not only the atom, but a lot of other particles are invisible, and we know that.

Jim: All right, so I want to take a pause here and ask this question, since you didn't prove Sue was wrong after doing all this research, what happened to you?

Nick Cinelli: I became a believer. And one day I had to look at myself and the research I had done and said, wow, was I wrong! And in fact, one of the statements that just prior to that, when Sue realized that I was an atheist, so to speak, at that point she decided that she really didn't want any part of that part of me.

And she says, and this I still remember from 20 years ago, she said one day to me, I don't care if you believe in God or not, but I'm going back to church. I'm tired of this dancing, every weekend, just living for dancing and so on and so forth. I miss not going to church and being with my fellow Christians and friends. And I says, Hey, if that's what you want to do, go ahead. And that's how we started to go back to church.

Jim: You didn't just let her go. You went with her?

Nick Cinelli: Yeah, I went with her.

Jim: So did you ever apologize to Sue that you were wrong?

Nick Cinelli: Besides every day? Of course.

Jim: Yeah. Besides every day.

Nick Cinelli: I didn't want to admit it at first. Remember I was trying to prove her wrong. And this was many years of research. By the way, I'm not alone. There's a lot of famous atheists who became Christians and they became Christians somehow almost to what I went through and trying to prove something that wasn't true or whatever or trying to convert somebody into being an atheist like them.

They found out that they really were the one that was wrong. I'm not alone in this quest. It's been done since the beginning of time, because again, man wants to think he's the ultimate being and he should have to answer to nobody. He doesn't want an ultimate creator that tells.

Jim: Yeah, I always have a theory on that. As long as you deny the existence of God, then you deny the existence of good and evil. And therefore you could do whatever you want to do and have no guilt. But if you admit that there's a God, then you have to admit that there probably is good and evil. And then you have to admit that what you do can be wrong. And then all of a sudden there's guilt. And then you have to deal with how do you deal with that guilt? And that's where Jesus comes in. But that's always my theory is that as long as you deny God, you can do whatever you want to do.

All right. So the theory of evolution. Do you think it's ever been tested truly against the typical scientific method that they always tell us you got to believe the science? Or is do you think that there's some evil political agenda behind pushing evolution as a fact?

Nick Cinelli: Yes. See, if you can convince people that everything began on its own and grew on its own and came from nothing, then that means we are nothing and we can do whatever we want because there's no Ultimate truth. So that's one of the reasons why evolution is pushed. Do you think a communist leader wants to admit that there's a God? No, because his people would rebel. First of all, God tells us we have freedom. He created us with freedom of mind, freedom of choice. The government didn't give us that. God gave us that.

That's why we're able to think what we think. But the government has different ideas for us. They want us, one group, they want to be slaves. One group, they want to do something else. One group, they want to be the workers. One group, they want to be the ones who feed off the fat of the land. And that would work fine if there was no God who says everyone is created in his image and we are all free. Okay, again, we didn't get freedom from the government. We got freedom from our creator.

Jim: So going back to the beginning of that question, though, do you think the theory of evolution has ever truly been tested against the scientific method?

Nick Cinelli: Yes, over and over. And it's proven wrong because it's impossible for evolution to be and to was. In other words, you'd have to start with what was the first thing that happened for evolution to begin. And you're dead right there. Because whether you say the Big Bang, this, that, and the other thing, aliens, where do they come from?

"Okay, I believe in the Big Bang. I believe in evolution. I believe..." okay. All you have to do to stop that person in their track, where did it come from? Where did that first simple cell that you think existed come from? Where did the first particle come from? Where did the first planet, wherever you say it was first, how did it get here? And if you say came out of nothing, you're violating the laws of science because science says everything comes from something.

Jim: Right. All right. You state right after you, you go through those very valid points about testing the theory of evolution, you state that evolution is the biggest deception, lie, and evil ever perpetuated on the human, really the population of humans on this planet. So if it's such a sham, why does it keep getting pushed on us?

Nick Cinelli: Oh, very easily. Okay. Because they think that by pushing evolution, you don't need a creator. And if you don't need a creator, then you don't need someone to tell you what's right or wrong. Do you think the government, look at today's government, do you think they like to be told that they're right or wrong? How many times have they been told they're wrong, but they still do it and fund this and fund that? Without getting into things that they fund, the average person knows the government is pretty corrupt, no matter what side you're on. Whether it's a Republican or a Democrat or whatever. We all have to admit that government is not perfect. It tries to pretend it's perfect. And that's where it gets its power from.

Jim: You said earlier, Nick, that in your research, that you found tons and tons of scientists. And in your book, you say you found 900 scientists that don't agree with evolution. Where are those scientists and why don't we ever hear about them on the news? Why don't I ever hear from those guys?

Nick Cinelli: Because remember in the early days, if you didn't go along and tow the line, so to speak, for the government, they could have you thrown in jail. You could lose your job. Remember, you always had to go with the flow, so to speak. You were ostracized. Even today, if you are on one side of the political spectrum, as an example, the stuff that's happening with Hamas and Israel, okay, if you're not on one side or the other, people will think that you're either very hateful or dumb or whatever.

This is humankind. Human nature always wants to disallow, so to speak, opposing speech. It doesn't want to be told it's right or wrong. It doesn't want to be told that you have the same freedoms as I do. Government wants to say the freedoms you have is because I'm giving them to you. The left has given them to you or the right has given them to you. They don't want to say God gave them to you because that would mean there's no need for government. Except to protect us and our borders, and that's a whole other thing.

Jim: Okay. All right. As we finish up this segment of your story, because your story gets so much better, in your expertise, what's more reliable: the scientific community behind evolution or the biblical community of scientists behind creation?

Nick Cinelli: Behind creation without a doubt. And in fact evolution fizzles. And the hundreds of scientists, by the way, almost a thousand scientists from all walks of life, many from places like Harvard and so on. Believe it or not, many of them were Christians. Now, over a period of time, some might've changed their views. Just like atheists become Christians sometimes and Christians become atheists sometimes, depending who they listen to and who they're following and so on. It works both ways.

But there's literally a thousand scientists who have gone on the record. Those are just the ones willing to go on the record. And you can look those up just by Google, okay? Scientists who believe in evolution or scientists who don't believe in evolution and you'll get a list.

Jim: We're gonna hit pause right here in Nick's story and pick it up in the next episode labeled Nick Cinelli Part 2. Thanks for tuning in to iWork4Him. And thank you, Nick Cinelli, for sharing your story. You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host Jim Brangenberg. I'm a Christ follower, and my workplace, it's my mission field. But ultimately iWork4Him!

6/19/24 - 2047: A New Type of Legacy

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of Collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.

Martha: And we are your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: When you retire is it just 30 years of vacation? Do you just to get to just up and check out for the rest of your life? Or is there more? On our iRetire4Him podcast we say when you retire your calling doesn't retire. If you have a pulse you have a purpose. If you're not dead you're not done.

There are 50 million christian retirees out there who have been lied to. They've been told that the american dream of retirement is biblical. Wrong! Retirement is just another phase of life where God gets a chance to continue to invest himself in you so that you can make an impact on the world around you for him. Sandy Wheeler is one of those retirees who figured out the lie and is living his life to his fullest in his retirement. After leading companies like Nautilus, Bowflex, and Schwinn Fitness, Sandy could have easily coasted down the highway of retirement. But no, he's developed a new company that really is a biznistry that all of us can utilize. Sandy Wheeler is here to tell us the rest of that story. Sandy, thanks for being on iWork4Him today.

Sandy Wheeler: Thank you. I appreciate it greatly.

Jim: Sandy, before we get talking about this biznistry that you're launching, what is your Jesus story?

Sandy Wheeler: Mine came after Vietnam. I was raised in the Lutheran church, but literally this didn't relate and had never asked Jesus in my heart. So took off to Vietnam to do a little vacationing over there. And fortunately I survived and ended up meeting my wife in college, which is not unusual. And Diana became a Christian before me, about a year before. I was busy playing softball and drinking beer. I thought it was great. She went to church and I'd go play softball tournaments.

But then one day she asked me to go. The church she attended had a phenomenal youth choir and I went and the first time I didn't really like it because the pastor said, all those that love Jesus, please stand up. And my buddy and I were the only two sitting, I think, in the entire place. And then the next time she invited me, it was like, I don't even remember going down front and asked Jesus to come into my life. And it was starting of a journey that, now that I'm older, I appreciate it way more than I did when I was young.

Jim: I love that, that the Lord rescued you. Like you said, preserved your life in Vietnam. Many guys didn't get to come home. And we're going to hear the rest of that story today. But go ahead.

Martha: Sandy, you have lived a very storied life in business. Was your faith then always front and center as you led the different companies?

Sandy Wheeler: You mean after, out of desperation? Or just truly that kind of thing? Cause I look back and I go, people always thought Bowflex was an overnight success. And I go where were you during the 10 years I was building it? I spent many a night out in a pasture with my horses praying. Literally, I was the only Christian in the group. I'd raised all the money. The thing wasn't, I hadn't figured it out. So it wasn't that my brains could get there. And I look back on those days and they were so precious because God truly intervened, truly gave me wisdom in areas I had zero expertise in.

Jim: But isn't it always true though, Sandy, that those overnight successes are often 10 years in the making?

Sandy Wheeler: For me, it definitely is. So I think some of these others, they can have overnights, but for me, it truly was 10 years of working and I even thought about the amount of money I raised which was around 4 million at that time. And this is back in the eighties and nineties. So that was real dollars. And we came within 25, 000 of not making it. So

Jim: Oh

Sandy Wheeler: that's phenomenal.

Jim: All right. So you got a chance, you have this opportunity to look backwards on quite a few years. What would you tell your younger you today based on all that you know about life and running businesses? If you could tell your younger you, that's a Mercy Me reference. Mercy Me has that song, Dear Younger Me. What would you tell your younger you?

Sandy Wheeler: Oh man, to seek after God with all my heart way earlier in my life. Mine, probably not unlike others, was, I would say, a rocky road when I look back. I used Jesus as a convenient Jesus, and not as really my Lord and Savior and guidance in everything I do. That's where, as we get older, we're hoping to pick up wisdom, right? And that wisdom comes from God. There's no question, if I could go back which I can't, I would have hungered and thirst for His righteousness way earlier in my life.

Martha: Those are some powerful words. And yes, we can't go back, but we hope that what we have learned can help someone else. And that's, I think the key nugget of that question is so that listeners can hear what you would tell yourself and you're telling that to them.

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Jim: Sandy, God's laid a new vision on your heart for another business. It's actually what I would call a biznistry. Where did the idea come from?

Sandy Wheeler: I can truly look back - I mean it came to me over the last few years in reality. You know how you can go back in life and realize that even when you weren't serving God, he had his hand on you?

And for me, it started the day I left Vietnam, I spent 18 months in Vietnam, top secret clearance, dealing with just intense operations. And the very day I left, which was April 5th, 1970, I had a long flight home and I had arrived on April 7th only to discover that my best friend from high school was killed on April 5th.

The part that was most devastating to me was that he had a wife and he had an unborn little boy who would never hear his daddy say, I love you, nor touch him. And it truly threw my life sideways. I told you, I didn't know God, but I sure knew how to curse him and be mad at him, though none of that was his issue.

And that little boy would go on to carry that hate towards God and just tore me up inside. And as a result, you learn in life that time comes. And for me, that time was really a planting of a seed that I can undoubtedly look back and say, that was the day.

Jim: Let's talk about it. What is the heart behind your new vision? What are you calling it?

Sandy Wheeler: It's called Life's Thoughts. And it deals with Life's Final Thoughts and Life's Thoughts. And it really addresses, it's a precursor to two words that we're familiar with, bereavement and grief. Every one of us that's born will be subject to bereavement and grief and most of us multiple times because that happens every time we lose someone who's really close to us, and especially let's talk about family, right? That's a deal.

And then I go back, because Martha was mentioning God in history and what happens to us, and I think about Deuteronomy 4:9. And in that passage, God says to the children of Israel that he just brought out of Egypt, he said, make sure you don't forget these days, what your eyes saw and what happened. And make sure you tell your children and your grandchildren. And to me, that is such an important point that he brought, because our children and our grandchildren, as long as we don't lie to them in life, they are most likely to trust our word. So just like how Jesus gave us the Bible, and that we have to believe that he was real, and that the Bible was the word of God it's the same way with my Children and grandchildren.

So I have five Children, 12 grandchildren, three great grandchildren. So when I tell them something, as long as I haven't violated that confidence, they will believe me. And that's my heart with this is that we're a precursor because everyone, 100 percent of us will face bereavement and grief. And this is a precursor because it can definitely have a positive impact to lessening the period in which the bereavement takes place and the levels of grief in which a person will experience.

And I don't know about you guys, but for my children and grandchildren, I want to help them out the very best I can. And one of the biggest things for me is bringing home and pounding home that part. Don't ever let Jesus escape from your life. Because we run a race and it's really the final lap in which that is most important of the race that we're running.

Martha: So Sandy, you've set this up so beautifully, but you haven't actually told us what it does. So give us this understanding of what Life's Thoughts and Life's Final Thoughts, what it actually is and how it's being accomplished.

Sandy Wheeler: Yes, thanks for pinpointing me on that. Yeah, it deals with archival video recordings. So what I have done is I have made video recordings for my wife, my children, and my grandchildren that go to them at various times in life, and it's just special messages. I start all my video messages with a picture and I show them the picture of a memorable event. And that's the first thing I talk about in it is how much I enjoyed and was given the opportunity to share that time with them.

And then after I tell that story of relationship and memory, because they'll instantly come back and remember that. Then that's when I remind them at the end that the most important relationship in the entire world is Jesus. And I hope to see him one day in heaven. So you make these video recordings, they go into an archival vault. And at the appropriate time that you have selected, into the future, they will be sent to them and they'll have that video appear on their email. So for example, Life's Final Thoughts, every one of the videos I prepare in that particular platform, they'll all release on the day I die.

So we all know that there's a time to be born. And a time to die. And that's not to be morbid. That is how God created this earth. So the idea is to soften that bereavement and that grief by the fact that the very day, or maybe it's two days after I die, here this video is setting for them with a very specific message to each of them. And then Life's Thoughts to be real quick on that has either events into the future or various states in which it can be released.

And my example is I have created a video message for every one of my grandchildren's weddings, even though my chance of being around, especially for the younger ones, it's not very good, but I already know today what I would say. We've been to enough weddings. So again, I start with a story about them and tell them how much I love them and how great it was to be involved.

So that point is to say, grandparents, if you're not involved in your grandkids life, you might want to start and today would be a good day because the recounting of the story is vital to the aspect.

Jim: What I love about this is it this is an unusual topic, you know for iWork4Him because this is a business but it's about legacy and every one of us wants to leave a legacy that's positive. But yet, Sandy, so many of us live lives that don't leave much legacy. We leave assets, but we don't leave legacy. And you're giving people an opportunity to leave a legacy that's digitally preserved for the future, which today is super easy and positive.

When I was preparing for the show and when you and I first talked, Martha's parents had the wisdom to do something like this, actually recorded six or seven hours that are on DVD, which for those of you young people, that's a circular disc that you can store information on. But you have to have a certain player in order to be able to play it. And we don't know whether DVD players, we know the VHS players are now $ 500 because you can't find them anywhere. We need to be able to have this access to those thoughts, those words, and how much I would love to hear my own grandfather's voice, who died when I was three, or my other grandfather died when I was seven to be able to hear their heart. Any of their story would be so valuable.

And Sandy, what you've done with Life's Final Thoughts and Life's Thoughts is you're giving us a chance to have a second chance to speak into people that we may not necessarily have gotten that chance to speak into very often. I love it.

Martha: Let me just say this, because one of the things - and thank you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for following God's lead to use all of the business experience you've had over the years, but to do something with meaning, because on those momentous days in life, our hearts are the most open. And I think especially when you said to always be sure to include that the relationship with Jesus is most important because at that moment in time, that may be the time when that grandchild or that great grandchild who never really met you or remembers you gets that challenge to dig deeper into the faith that has been your legacy. And I'm just so excited for our listeners to hear about it. So how can they get connected to learn more about these apps?

Sandy Wheeler: Yeah, I think the real easy part is just go to a website. We happen to be redoing ours right now. But we'll have it fully functioning very soon, but it's www. lifesfinalthoughts. com.

Martha: And we'll put that in the show notes for everybody, but I just want to make sure that they know where to go to take those next steps. I can think of several people that have recently lost a loved one, and this is the time when they see, oh, the value that this could add to their family's future generations for those that are still remaining.

Jim: It's huge. It's going to take some time. It's going to take some time. But if you're going to leave a legacy, it's worthwhile taking that time and Sandy, you're rolling out apps with this on the app store for Apple and on Google, in the Google store, what is the app going to be called?

Sandy Wheeler: So the one app is Life's Final Thoughts. That's already approved on Google and Apple. And the next one's going to be Life's Thoughts. So very easy to remember the names. And yeah, we're looking forward to those days when it's really there, I might interject one more thing, Martha, that you just brought up. So one of the other things I've done on Life's Final Thoughts is make a provision so you can make a recording for your own funeral or Memorial.

And that came from the death of a Navy SEAL friend of mine that was killed on a helicopter called extortion one seven. And unknowns to me, I had shared with the guys, Hey, why don't you just make a video just in case anything should happen? And they're the toughest fighters. So most of them did not, but this one guy, he did. And we didn't know it until the end of his funeral. And at the very end, the whole room went dark and up pops Lou. And for six minutes, he talks to his wife. And for four minutes, he talks to two little boys who were five and seven at the time.

And that kind of stuff, I realized that also all of us have friends who are both Christian and not Christian. And it gives you one last opportunity in a time that you have their total attention and their total respect. And you get to tell them the words of your life that you want them to hear. I can hardly wait. I already have mine done and I can hardly wait for people to attend my funeral when that day comes. It'll be great.

Jim: Why is it, Sandy, that the recorded word has so much power? What you're talking about doing, there's so much power here, especially from those gone before us. We have very few video recordings that go past the fifties, maybe the forties is a couple of really rough stuff, but why is recorded word so powerful?

Sandy Wheeler: Well, the finale on how God made us was that the moment you lose a loved one, the most difficult thing is you can't hear their voice anymore. You can pull up pictures and you can talk about memories and all that kind of stuff. But it's hearing their voice that means something. And you just think about a baby to a mom relationship, right?

That baby is just something amazing when dad speaks, but then it's truly amazing when mom speaks. And it's just that same thing. I want that to be with them, not in the form of a recorded phone message that says, Hey, I'll be home at six. And they keep that because it's the only voice they have. I wanted the voice that says, I love you so very much and here's the most important things to remember.

Jim: Speaking of powerful things, iWork4Him has several powerful resources available on our website just for you. Go to iWork4Him.com and check it out. We even have the iRetire4Him podcast, which I hinted at in our opening today. If you're close to the end of your paid career or know someone that is just feeling empty in their retirement, check out the podcast iRetire4Him and the resources that go along with that on our iRetire4Him page, which is part of the iWork4Him website.

Sandy, you're 75 years old, you've had successful businesses. You've been involved in Nautilus and Bowflex and Schwinn Fitness. Why didn't you just check out and go on a 30 year vacation when you retired?

Sandy Wheeler: I think lack of fulfillment and. I'd only know that by God speaking to my heart and quite honestly, me wanting to finish the final lap of my life, making a difference in people's lives, including and very specifically my children and my grandchildren. We have five Children, but two of them were adopted. And if they were to die today, it would not give me peace of mind. And so with that, I just say, I just pray I have the opportunity, who knows when that might happen, but maybe to retap that heart and remind them because I don't want anyone not to make heaven their home.

It's going to be, they get one shot at this thing regardless of what they think, because we live out our life right here. And then when that final day comes. We're going to have one of two doors that we're going to go through, and you want the door that leads to Christ and eternal life. And so I'm praying that my job's not done. Whatever I can do, I'm hoping we'll reach millions because 100 percent of the world's population goes through bereavement and grief. And we have the opportunity to leave a legacy.

Jim: Yeah. Before we ask our final question, there's one story that really you've shared it with me when we were talking and you've shared some pictures with me, but there's a story of how God spared your life and the life of your family that really shaped your future and impacted who you are because God uses adversity in our lives to take us from who we are to who he can use more effectively, and it evolved a truck and a camper. Tell us a little bit of that story.

Sandy Wheeler: Yeah. We live in the Pacific Northwest and my wife and I, whether you like hunting or not, we happen to bow hunt and every year we'd go up and then the last day before I would break camp, basically a trailer, I would take Diana back home and I'd pick up our two little girls and I'd take them up and do the things like to hike through the forest and do all that kind of stuff.

This particular year, we're normally 70 to 80 degree temperatures at 6, 000 feet, and that night a storm rolled in, and by morning we had probably four or five inches of snow on the ground. I got real nervous, because my van was only two wheel drive, and I had to go down a logging road and up a fairly steep one to get to a ridge top to even begin the descent down to the highway.

And on this particular time, we did pretty good going up. I was praying I'm telling you like no other. And I got up to the one part and we started down. I thought, okay, this is going to be good. And it was really both snow and ice and the wind was blowing. It was bitterly cold. And we start down and I'm in this little part just before I come to an area that's cliffs on both sides.

And God said stop the van and have your little girls get out and walk. Now, in the world of common sense, that would make zero. And that's exactly how I responded. I thought that is the stupidest thought a guy could ever have. What dad would have the little girls get out and walk in a snow and ice storm, especially a quarter of a mile around cliffs on both sides?

So I went maybe 10 feet, maybe 20 feet, and I felt this hand grab me here, pull on me and he said, I said, stop the van and have your two little girls get out and walk. That was a Samuel moment for me. I'm all alone. There's no one else but me and the little girls. I stopped the van, get it tucked into the side of the hill so it won't slide.

I get them dressed. I tell them what to do. They got down to the one spot. Fortunately, they didn't follow my instruction and they kept walking. I was bringing the van down. I'm praying. I'm binding the enemy and thanking God. And I get to this one spot and in a millisecond, the van and the trailer go over a cliff.

I jump, catch the edge of the cliff, the Jeep who was following me, that I didn't know was behind me thought I went over with the entire rig. As it was, I was laying on the side of the road and I watched the thing actually tumble down and hit, destroying the trailer completely. And it required two off road wreckers 12 hours to get it back up to the top.

The thing was, I survived and these guys gave me a ride down. We picked up the little girls. About a week later, I was just devastated emotionally thinking about it. and thinking, what if? And I said to God, I said, I just don't understand God. Why didn't you just get me off that mountain? I was praying, giving you praise, binding the enemy. Just don't get it. Said, Sandy, that van and that trailer can be replaced, but I wanted you to know in the midst of any storm, you will be able to hear my voice. And that was powerful as it played out in my life, not knowing what life was going to deal with me. But later, and knowing that God never, ever let me down with those words of promise.

Martha: Powerful. And that, I can imagine, is a story that you have told to your family through time, and maybe even recorded it for future generations to hear. It just ties it up so nicely. This is a part of how God showed up in your life and he can do the same in future generations.

 What an amazing pivotal moment in your life. And I love this whole idea of the life thoughts. Life's Thoughts and Life's Final Thoughts. My family, Jim, you alluded to it, for a couple generations. First, we did the video with my grandparents over multiple times, but there was so much effort involved in getting production, even though it wasn't really production, but they had to think about what they were going to say and stories they were going to record.

And we do have that but in a format that is harder to watch because it's old format. So I love this new technology, this new way of doing things and the specialness of releasing it at a certain time. So Sandy, again, I'm just grateful for you following God's lead on that and using your life experience so that we all can benefit from that and really follow what Scripture said about telling future generations.

Jim: Boy, if the Israelites had only listened to their elders and the stories they passed on, we might not be having some of the problems we're having today in this world.

Sandy Wheeler: I think even for us, Jim, we need to listen. And that instruction was for every one of us, not just the children of Israel, right? There's a reason God put that in the Bible. And it is vitally important for us to be able to encourage the next generation and the next generation. They're going to go through some tough times that we've never witnessed. And I think it's your words of comfort, my words of comfort, they'll help them through that process. And that's what we do. My goal is that to make sure they make heaven their home and that I get to see them and spend eternity with them.

Jim: Sandy Wheeler with Life's Final Thoughts. com and in the app store Life's Final Thoughts. Check it out. Download it. Start using it today because you don't know when your last day is going to be. Sandy, thanks for being on iWork4Him today.

Sandy Wheeler: You bet. Thank you.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.

6/12/24 - 2046: Contentment vs. Complacency

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: And we are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: They say that hindsight is 20 20. It is that backward looking perspective that gives you clarity on how to move forward. But what if you could get a high level overview? What if you could get a view from up above? A View from the Top? Would that help you know the landscape that you're playing on? Would it help you to know the direction you're heading? As a leader, you have a View from the Top, but is it clear or is it hazy?

Whatever it is, our view needs to be brought into alignment with our father's view for our lives, and Aaron Walker can help you get a clear View from the Top. View from the Top hails out of Hendersonville, Tennessee, and helps men get a, gain a clear perspective and define success and significance, great Halftime words there, in their personal, spiritual, relational, professional, and financial pursuits.

What does all this mean? I'll let Aaron " Big A" Walker explain. Aaron, welcome to iWork4Him.

Aaron Walker: Hey, Jim. Hey, Martha. Good to see y'all today. I'm so excited to be your guest. Thank you for having me.

Martha: It is our pleasure. And Aaron, one of the things we always love to do at the beginning of our show, especially with a new guest, is to find out what your Jesus story is.

Aaron Walker: Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. I was raised in a Christian home. I don't have a, I was under the bridge story and God saved me miraculously. I was raised in a Christian environment. My mom really was the spiritual leader of our home and at nine years old, I accepted Christ and I was mentored and coached and taught all along the way.

Had great mentors in my life. And yeah, I was one of the fortunate few that had an experience like that, that wasn't a radical experience, but it was just the normal course of my life. And accepted Christ. And I'm grateful for that story. And yeah, that's my Jesus story.

Jim: It's fun to hear those incredible turnaround stories, but you don't have the collateral damage in your life. You don't have the baggage that you're carrying. So that's way better if you just come to be a Jesus follower and stay that way and not stray off the left or the right because those stories, yes, they're incredible. However, they also have lots of things you got to work through. Aaron, why does everybody call you Big A? You're a small guy. I don't know why they're calling you Big A.

Aaron Walker: Yeah, small, yeah, 6'4", 240. I'm pretty small. (laughter) But there was a guy named Herb Berry that I worked for when I was 13 years old and I started working just I was in junior high school and I walked in one day and he goes, I'm not going to call you Aaron. I'm going to call you Big A. And that just stuck. And now everybody. It's funny. My second to oldest grandson recently was asked what my name was. And he said Big A. And I said, No. Owen, what is my name? And he goes, I don't get it. He goes, It's Big A. And I said, No, my real name. He had to think, like he hasn't called me that his entire life. So he goes, Oh, it's Aaron, isn't it? And I said, Yes, it's Aaron. So everybody calls me Big A.

Martha: That's awesome. So those of you, especially watching on the video would not necessarily know that you were six foot four. And so that was pretty prophetic that you ended up being a good size there.

Jim: I'm just kidding with the fact that I got to call you Aaron, not Aaron, because I don't know if that's the Tennessee pronunciation. I know I'm not saying Tennessee the right way either. You got to say. Tennessee and Big Aaron. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. I'm going to work on that.

 (laughter)

Aaron Walker: I go through this all the time and nobody messes up Big A, that way I don't have to go through this babble of Aaron or A-run. And someone said, why do you say it A-run? I said, because that's what my mom said. And whatever my mom says is the way we're going to pronounce it.

Martha: That's right. Mom is right. That's exactly right. So you have quite a lengthy business history. What does God have you doing?

Aaron Walker: Yeah. This is the irony and you not even aware of this, we're recording this on May the 28th, 2024. Today is my 45th anniversary of being a small business owner. I started my first business in 1979, May the 28th, and so today is the 45th year of my anniversary. The irony of that is this is the 46th anniversary of me meeting my wife, Robin, and it's the 10th anniversary of View from the Top, all May the 28th. And so today's a really special day.

Jim: It's a busy day! So talk to us about your business history.

Aaron Walker: Yeah. So I started my first business when I was 19 years old, started working at a local pawn shop when I was 13 years old. And when I was 19, I went out on my own. I found a couple of guys that had a lot of money. I didn't have any, so I needed a partner, and God really blessed that venture. When I was 27 years old, we were able to sell it to a fortune 500. And it allowed me to do some things that I otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to do. It was the catalyst to a number of businesses, and hopefully we'll make this part very short because I don't want to focus on myself.

I want to help teach other people how they can accomplish their dreams and goals as well. But 14 businesses in four and a half decades is what we've been privileged to steward over. And today, we're helping ordinary men become extraordinary in every area of their life. We've got just under 150 men in five different countries around the world that we train, teach, and coach in masterminds called Iron Sharpens Iron.

Jim: You're jumping way ahead, Aaron! We gotta establish just a little bit more before we get into the whole View from the Top ministry. Something incredible happened. Life changing event happened during your business career that really helps shape where you are today. What was it?

Aaron Walker: Yeah, good question. Yeah, that was August 1st, 2001. I go to my church every Wednesday morning and did for about 10 years, prayed with our pastor and for other businessmen, and we would just simply pray for the church. We would pray for our families and pray that we were better stewards over what God had entrusted us. And August 1st, 2001, my wife was on a missions trip with our two daughters. And I'd left the church at seven 30 in the morning, normal Wednesday morning, just like every Wednesday morning. And I got within a mile of my office and there was a gentleman crossing the street.

There was a four lane major highway called Gallatin Pike right outside of Nashville, and he was crossing to catch a bus, and I was driving a brand new Lincoln Navigator, 2001, Candy Apple Red. I was so enjoying the ride in that morning. It's hot in Nashville in August, so the windows are up, and I got the A. C. on, just enjoying my time, and he crossed the road in front of me and unfortunately didn't look my way. And I ran over him. His name was Enrique. He was 77 years old. He was from the Philippines.

And I couldn't believe what just happened. You're taking me on a journey this morning. So I couldn't believe, Jim, really what had just happened. I pulled over to the side of the road and I was scared to turn around. I was like... it was an out of body experience, quite honestly, it was very surreal. And I was like, that didn't just happen. And I was nervous and I finally turned around and there was an older gentleman laying face down in the street.

I picked up my cell phone and I tried to dial 9 1 1 and I couldn't, my hand was shaking so hard I couldn't even dial the phone. And finally cusped the phone between both hands and held my hand steady enough to dial 9 1 1 and within a minute there were ambulance, police cars, fire trucks. They were coming from everywhere. And I got out of the truck and I walked over and identified myself as the person that had struck this individual. And they took me back and put me in a police car. That was another surreal kind of experience. It was like, this is like really happening. And this is a major highway. There's probably 40, 000 cars a day go down this highway.

They stop traffic, they start getting this yellow tape out and they're marking it off like this crime scene. And I'm scared to death. And I, at this time, didn't know the severity of, the injuries. The policeman came back and he interviewed all the people that had seen it and he said, you're very fortunate. I've gotten testimonies from everybody that saw it and you're not at fault. Of course the court will determine that, but best I can determine he ran out in front of you and that's exactly what happened.

And I said, how severe are the injuries? And he said, um, his head had hit the front of my truck, spun around, hit my rear view mirror, spun around, hit my left corner panel, walked down the side of my truck. And he said, they're severe. So they put him in the ambulance and I said, could someone please call me and let me know how he's doing? Where are they going to take him? They said, we're taking him to Vanderbilt University. And so Saturday morning - there's a lot happened between Wednesday and Saturday. Obviously my wife came home, brought my daughters and guys from the church came over, my pastor came over and, needless to say, it was very upsetting.

And I, Saturday morning at 9 30, I get a phone call and it said Vanderbilt Hospital on my phone. So I knew that's who it was. And I picked it up and answered it and they said, are you Mr. Walker? And I said, yes. And they said they asked us to call you and let you know how the gentleman was. And I said, thank you for calling me. And they said, he didn't make it.

And I'm like, what? And they said he died this morning of head trauma. And so that really put me in the tank, needless to say. Obviously I own the business, so I didn't have to go in. For a few weeks I didn't go in. And I didn't really know how to deal with that. And this interview is not going to be long enough for me to work through everything that I had to go through, but a couple of weeks later, I was at the office and had a really bad experience where I erupted on a customer.

I just went off on a customer, and my partner walked by and he goes, Big A, he said, we need to talk. And so we went to dinner that night and I said, I can't handle the stress. I said, I've been chasing money my entire life. We built successful companies. I've got enough to take it easy. And so I sold him the business and over dinner that night, we worked out the terms and conditions and I sold him the business and I took the next five years off. I didn't do anything. I didn't start a company, traveled extensively, built a new home. I just had to stay busy.

And one day Robin walked in and I was getting in the bed in the middle of the day. And she said, Listen, you've gained 50 pounds. You're not doing anything that's beneficial or helpful for anybody. Our kids need you. I need you. This is not what I signed up for, and we've got to move forward. And so I did. I was able to work through that. To show you God's providence, a gentleman here, a local businessman, asked me to join his mastermind group right when that happened.

And I did, they walked me through that. There's another story around how they helped get me out of that ditch. And what I learned through that whole process was that I was a very poor kid when I was young. And I had made a little bit of money, and I had great financial success, but no significance. And that's what God really showed me through that process is that if you were to have died today, your legacy would have been poor kid from Nashville, Tennessee makes enough money to retire at age 27. And nobody cares.

And it really struck me that nobody really did care that I had a nice home and nice cars and a little bit of money. But what I wanted was my legacy to be, Hey, Jim and Martha's life is better as a result of having known me. I've been an encourager. I've challenged them. I've helped them. I've connected them. I've given them resources. I've walked with them through this journey. I want my life to mean something rather than just having a little bit of money. I wanted a measure of success, and that was the catalyst that kind of started us on the journey that we're on today.

Jim: I really appreciate you sharing that. I know that dredged up some things, but I think it's so important for people to understand the paradigm shift that God took you through. We often talk on our show, Big A that God uses adversity in our lives to take us from who we are to who he can use more effectively. And that's essentially what God did in that moment in your life.

I want to take a moment to talk to our listeners about aligning your values with your dollars. When you spend your earnings with companies that support values that don't align with your values, it's like supporting a cause and then giving your money to fight the cause you're trying to support. Think about it. Companies today use their earnings to support agendas that are good and bad. Choose wisely where you spend your dollars.

Patriot Mobile is a great choice. You get wonderful cell phone service and support faith, family, and freedom. Just go to Patriot Mobile. com forward slash iWork4Him and make the switch. You could talk to US based customer service representative to ask your questions, just tell them iWork4Him sent you.

Alright. Talk to us about your ministry that God placed in your hand. How are you helping men to live their fullest life and live out their faith all 24 hours?

Aaron Walker: Someone asked me when I started this View from the Top organization, they said, did you ever see what's materialized as a result of it? And I said, I not only didn't see it, but I didn't want it. And he said, what do you mean you didn't want it? I said, it takes a lot of effort, a lot of energy and a lot of work to really dive into somebody's life in every area of their life.

We're an organization that doesn't touch just the professionalism, but we deal personally, relationally, professionally, spiritually, financially, all five pillars of your life we are involved in. And it takes a lot of effort and a lot of energy in order to do that. The reason that we do that is because I almost lost my family as a result of pursuing just the financial gain. We had the big house. We had the vacation home. I had a place on the beach and fancy cars and things like that. And at the end of the day, it didn't scratch the itch like I thought it was going to. And I thought if I just reach this milestone financially, I'll be set. I'll be good and I'll be happy.

And none of those things were true because the elusiveness of it, the bar keeps moving. It's okay, now that made me this happy. If I make another X amount of revenue that could really set me up, it would be a sense of security. And I even coach people today all over the world that have businesses that are nine figure businesses and they don't have any more of a set of safety feeling that I have, or that you might have, because we can't place our confidence and trust in material possessions, the things that moths destroy and rust eats away is going to be gone. And we know as a result of COVID how we never saw that coming and how people that thought they were very secure and safe never anticipated COVID and it wiped them out.

That's the reason not to make this over spiritualized, but the truth is the only thing that we can place our confidence and trust in is Jesus. And that doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but when we start placing our confidence and trust in the wrong thing... so here's the thing. I really want men that are focused on doing well, scaling their businesses, but they have their priorities prioritized.

And that's with having Christ at the center first, then having their wife, and then having their children, and then having their business. And when you get it in the right order, things seem to go much better. And then you don't lose your family as a result of focusing primarily on the financial gain and do it at an expense that the relational capital that you're going to spend, you can't get back.

I can start more companies. I can make more money, but there's only one Robin. There's only Brooke and Holly and then my grandkids. And I just want people to focus on the right thing in the right order so that you can sustain your life and live it in a way that's pleasing to God.

Jim: Big A, you said something I want to go back to it. I'm interrupting Martha. Her question was going to be next, but you said that you thought that if you would just get to that next level it would scratch the itch that you had. Didn't you find that the more stuff you had, the stronger the itch became, and the burden that came with that itch? I know a lot of people that have a lot of stuff, and it just never seems to make them happy. They never seem to be content.

Aaron Walker: Yeah, the reason there's two, let's play on words there for a second, there's a big difference in contentment and complacency. I want to learn to be content in all circumstances, right? Just like we're taught in scripture, but I never want to be complacent because God's given me a talent and the skills and I don't want to hide it under the bushel, right? I want to use that. So I never want to be complacent, but I want to learn to be content in all situations. The thing, the reason is because it's such an elusive what word am I looking for? When you are striving for fame or riches it never ends. There's always somebody with more.

There's the comparison game you start playing then, and you start up leveling your game and challenging yourself even more. And the thing that you've got to recognize is these are talents and skills that God has given us. There's a reason that he's given us these. Now, I want to make it perfectly clear, and I do this on all interviews. I don't want to be the guy with a little bit of money and it says, oh, money's not important. That's just not true. Money is important. Money's very important. Go try to pay your mortgage or buy food without money.

Like I don't want to minimize it. I don't want to be that guy that says, ah, focus on godly things and forget. No, you can do both. You can focus and provide for your family, and you can do well. I like to have a nice boat, a nice house, and a nice car. I love those things, but they're not my God. God is my God, and I'm going to focus on them in the right perspective. And so I think as long as we get it in the right order, you can do both.

Martha: I love that we've established quite a few things about your own life, Big A, and the business history that God has allowed you to live through, the adversity that he's allowed you to live through, and the pursuit, the desire inside of you to help others to have those right priorities.

So you have several different pieces of View from the Top that helped to establish that. What are those different things? Cause I'm that practical person. Tell me what are the different things that you offer to people within a View from the Top?

Aaron Walker: Yeah, thank you. We're a very focused program here. I created a program called Come as You Will Be. And what that means is aspirationally picking five audacious goals in five areas of your life and focusing on those because if you're an inch deep and a mile wide, the shiny objects syndrome is going to get you every time. So we need to be an inch wide and a mile deep and really focus on key areas of your life that you can accomplish the things that you want.

We do that through a very structured program called Come as You Will Be. We need updates and highlights from the other participants in the group. So we created the success and significance scorecard where at any moment, I can look at your life and tell if you're in balance or out of balance. We do an accountability digital worksheet every week. It's sent out to you on Thursday and you highlight areas that you need improvement places that you're focused. And so you present yourself accountable to your group each and every week.

We do man in the middle programs each week. So we're hyper focused on you and your challenges and what it is that you're trying to accomplish. And then we wash, rinse, and repeat that weekly. A lot of people meet with groups once a month, once every six months. I don't know about y'all, but a lot of life happens for me. I need people that have contact and what's going on in my life on a weekly basis to help me make a decision. So we get involved in every area of your life, with your relationships, with your business, your personal life, your finances, we know everything about someone so that when we do need to help you with situation, we have contextual information in every area of your life to help you make a decision. And so for us, it's doing a deep dive in every area of your life.

Jim: So everybody can find out information about View from the Top online at View from the Top dot com, View from the Top dot com. It'll talk about your iron sharpens iron masterminds groups. You've got individual business coaching. You got some events that you hold as well. What kind of events do you guys hold?

Aaron Walker: Yeah, twice a year. We do an event for the members and then once a year we do what's called the summit It's an invitation only There's an application and then we reach back and, we have eight guys that come together for a two and a half day event, but the events that we do twice a year or for the members, we also do open up about 20 spots for people to come that are not members as guests. And so those are in April and October every year here in Nashville.

Jim: But do I have to live in Tennessee in order to be able to participate?

Aaron Walker: Oh no. No, not at all. It doesn't matter. We have people from Australia, from Germany, from Canada, they fly in from all over to attend these events. And at the event, we'll do deep dives, we do TED talks, we do breakout sessions. We eat all of our meals together. For the members, I pay for everything. All you've got to do is get there. For the guests there's a nominal fee that you pay in order to participate. And yeah, the guests historically fall in love with the guys. They love the organization and many of them will join the organization and stay for years and years and continue to grow in every area of their life.

Martha: And again, you can learn more about that information at viewfromthetop. com.

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Jim: Aaron, where do you see View from the Top going over the next several years?

Aaron Walker: Yeah, we've already created the succession plan and we have new partners that are in place and we've built the systems and the processes now to scale this to hundreds, if not thousands more. We have facilitators that are paid in our organization. We have a staff of 8 people that work full time in developing the new systems and processes, the new curriculum. I see this being a household name in the next 5 years.

Martha: That's exciting and that you're thinking forward. And so are there any final thoughts of encouragement or challenge that you want our listeners to hear from you?

Aaron Walker: Yeah, used to people would say to me, you seem to be very adventuresome. You will go out and take a risk. And I just say, be more fearful of missing an opportunity than you fear failure and have a can do attitude. When I was a child, my mom would say, can't couldn't do it, but could did it all. And I've adopted that as my life mantra. And so everything that my core values stand for: relationships matter most. Make it amazing. Everything's figure outable. Truth before opinion. These are things that we live by each and every day. And I think the vast majority of it is mindset. And if you believe you can as well. So " fear missing an opportunity more than you fear failure" and "develop a can do attitude."

Jim: All right. Say mama saying one more time. Can't couldn't do it.

Aaron Walker: And could did it all.

Jim: Yeah.

Aaron Walker: Can't couldn't do it. And could did it all.

Jim: I love that, Aaron. I know we didn't get a chance to go through all of what you wanted to go through today, but sharing your story and how God just really used significant adversity in your life in order to shift your direction to focusing on helping men to not make the same, some of the same mistakes you were making, and to help thousands of men to be the leaders they were meant to be in their homes and their marriages and in their businesses. It's fantastic.

I encourage everybody listening to check out viewfromthetop. com and you could talk to Big A when you get out there. He's got a great staff that responds, but Big A, thanks. I keep wanting to say Aaron. I know you want me to call you A-rn and I will do that. Someday I'll get that down in my head, but Big A, thanks for being on iWork4Him today. Thanks for sharing a little bit of your story and thanks for introducing View from the Top to everybody listening on iWork4Him.

Aaron Walker: Yeah, it was fun. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Martha. I appreciate it. iWork4Him. What a great organization. Thank you for having me as your guest.

Jim: You bet. You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him!

6/5/24 - 2045: "Flowers that Empower"

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of Collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.

Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: Since I was a little kid, most of America has known that the south side of Chicago has been a pretty rough and tumble area with high crime and lots of poverty. A lot of government programs just not working all in one place. Jim Croce even wrote a song about the south side of Chicago in 1973, being the baddest part of town. 51 years later, the South side of Chicago is still an area that is in dire need of help. But in spite of all the negative publicity, God is on the move on the South side.

In 2017, we covered a story from the Woodlawn neighborhood about HopeWorks Chicago. Today, we head back to the South side where God is on the move more than ever before. Quilen and Hannah Blackwell moved to the South side with intentionality to bring jobs, healing, hope for transforming lives and rebuilding neighborhoods. Talk about putting your faith into your work! Quilen and Hannah are on fire for Jesus and passionate about their neighborhood. Quilen and Hannah, welcome to iWork4Him.

Quilen Blackwell: hey, thanks for having us.

Jim: Quilen and Hannah, we want to hear your Jesus story first. So Hannah, ladies first, tell us your Jesus story.

Hannah Blackwell: So I actually grew up in a strong Christian home. My mom was a daughter of missionaries, is the daughter of missionaries and got to know, Jesus at an early age. It was really a big part of my parents marriage. I remember accepting Jesus in my heart, watching a thunderstorm sitting on top of my car, which is what you do in Kansas. So from there, it just, I built on that and, I never felt like I left my faith for a period. It was always just a really important part of who I was and who I am. And really led me to, what I'm doing today.

And always looked really different, but it was probably in high school when I first really latched on to the verse that talked about all of the words of the prophets and the basically all the writing up till Jesus time hung on loving God and loving your neighbor. And I just felt like that I really connected with that and I felt that if really sums up the Bible and that's what my life needs to be about.

So they're on It looked really different. I did submissions after high school in Northern Ireland. I moved to Chicago. I worked at a church. I went to Bible college. And I'm, now I'm doing this. So it's always looked really different. But it's really the core of, I feel like, who I am, but also what I feel like God has called me to do.

Martha: And Quilen, how about you? What is your Jesus story?

Quilen Blackwell: Yeah I did none of that. Growing up, I was pretty agnostic. Did not grow up in the church whatsoever. I was the kind of guy who would slam the door in the face of missionaries coming passing out tracts just for fun.

Yeah I really had zero interest in God or anything like that. It really wasn't until I was 17, where, when my mom was sick and God healed her miraculously that I became interested in Jesus. And when I did finally give my life to Christ at 18 for me, it was really more about, okay, God, if I'm going to do this, I'm gonna go all the way, I fought him my entire childhood. And there's just something about just seeing, the tangible work of God in my mom's life that really brought me to faith. And, ever since then, I've kept that vow that, no matter what I do, I'm going to never quit. I'm going to give it 100%.

And, coming in early to the faith as I guess an adult I really felt insecure about the fact that everyone around me went to Sunday school. They knew all these songs and all the Bible stories. The competitive side of me really got churned up and I just went to the Word and started reading it for myself. I was like, okay let me try to see what the Bible says. Let me try to figure out these stories and you know that really has been one of the key ways that I've really grown my faith is just really learning the word of God, just by reading the scriptures as they are. And then I end up discovering there's a lot of things in there that people don't always preach about on Sundays.

Jim: A lot of those, a lot of those inconvenient truths is what we like to call them, Quilen.

Martha: Oh, that, you know what? I love that because you're, honestly, there are so many things that somebody that grew up in a Christian home, we really take for granted that everybody's going to be up to speed on, automatically. And I love that you dug in yourself and just said, I'm going to learn this and see for myself. And you're not the first person who has actually said to us, Hey, I saw a lot more in there than what I'm hearing about. So we'll share some of those favorite stories with you off the air, but our listeners have heard them quite often.

Jim: Like one of them, I'm going to - let's just soapbox for a minute. What are some of the things we never hear from the pulpit? Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, long before it says wives, submit to your husbands. Yeah, that's a sermon. The fact that Jesus was a business owner before he was an itinerant preacher. Sure. Yep. Never heard that sermon. Abraham's corporation was so big, he had 300 armed guards. Yep. Never hear about Abraham as a business guy.

 (laughter)

Martha: Okay. We know time is limited So I'm going to go. And I know that this could go on for quite a while, but the truth is, and this is really, we joke about it, but the truth is we need to read our scriptures, right? And we need to look at them through the lens of who we are today and where God has placed us, which is why we have the show iWork4Him, because we're seeing where God has placed missionaries in their work, fully funded, doing the work that they're good at, which we're going to talk about a little bit later in the show when we talk about what you guys are doing at Southside Blooms.

But, Hannah, I think I'm going to throw this one to you. Tell us your love story. Where did your lives intersect that led you to today?

Hannah Blackwell: So I'm glad I get to share this because we have a little different view of how our first meeting went, and I have proof that I'm right. (laughter)

Martha: Of course you do.

Hannah Blackwell: So I was, I had moved to the west side of Chicago, similar situation to South side, I felt. I'd been living in Chicago for many years and I really felt I needed to put my money where my mouth was if I really cared about sort of the segregation of the city and the poverty. I needed to move in to understand it for myself at a relational level. So I moved to the West side. I've been living there a couple of years. And I went to a wedding in Tulsa and my original ride fell through. So I rode back with a bunch of grooms friends.

So it's an 11 hour ride. So you just have to talk about everything because it's so much time together. And I was talking about why I was on the west side, and unbeknownst to me, one of the guys was texting Quilen, Hey, I met a girl that I think you would have a lot in common with. But of course, to me, all he said was, Hey, I have this friend and he's doing work in Inglewood, and, essentially maybe you guys could talk about your similar work together. I was like, oh yeah, that sounds great. So they connected us via email, and I suggested the place to meet up. And I just went after church.

I had my like church frock on because I would walk to church and I would wear like kind of loose clothes because I would get a lot of cat calls on the way and I had my hair in a bun. I had these like really goofy like blue glasses. In no way, it was not in my mind at all that this was some sort of blind date, which is what he likes to call it. But so we met up at this place and you know, Quilen's a pretty intense guy. We're like trying to walk around and he's so this is your live mission, right?

Jim: As Quilen sits there being completely silent letting you tell the story, but you're the intense one, Quilen. I just want, I want to note it for the audience.

 (laughter)

Jim: So if you're not watching the video, seriously, go to our YouTube channel, iWork4Him, and check out this video.

Quilen Blackwell: I've learned how to compose myself.

 (laughter)

Hannah Blackwell: Marriage is political! He's, just playing politics here.

Finally I'm like, we need to sit down, because this we're walking in single file, and I'm trying to answer his questions, and he's This is your life mission, right? This is your? So anyway, we sat down on the bench. We ended up talking for a couple hours. We had really good connection. Obviously, we talked about our different work and our passion and our mission. And then he asked me out to dinner. I was like let's be friends, cause in my mind I was thinking let's be friends for a little while before if we would date, and in his mind he's I'm not wasting time, like, so then, he was like ready to go and get out of there and then I, in the days afterwards, I had to think of all these reasons to email him, cause I was like, oh no, I think he's not, he's he's out of here. I'm like, that's not how it was, gonna play out in my brain. But anyway, we did meet up again. We talked all night and got engaged six months later. And been married for how long?

Quilen Blackwell: Nine years as of this past Friday.,

Jim: Wow. Congratulations. All right. Now, we love the love story. Next time we're getting, we're letting Quilen tell his side of the story since he totally showed you respect during all that.

All right. Quilen here's the deal. In some inner city neighborhoods, people are planting vegetables on vacant lots. But you two decided to plant flowers. Where did the idea come from?

Quilen Blackwell: Yeah, our whole mission is to use sustainability to alleviate poverty in the inner city. From the very beginning, we were looking for a way to really bring industry into the south side because you don't notice surveying it that's one of the things that became pretty obvious. There's not an anchor industry, right? When you think of silicon valley you think of tech. You think of napa valley you think of like the wine and the vineyards. When you think of the inner city, there's nothing right? Other than like maybe like the dark economy and that kind of thing.

You know, for those of you who aren't familiar with Chicago there's about 30 to 50, 000 vacant lots that are predominantly located on the south and west sides of the city.

Jim: Woah woah woah. Don't say stuff like that so fast. You are kidding me. 30 to 50, 000 vacant lots?

Quilen Blackwell: Yes. Yeah. There's a lot of empty space that adds up to about almost 5, 000 acres of vacant land, just in the city proper. So you're seeing all this vacant land, you see these dilapidated buildings, you see the youth who need something to do, so we're looking at agricultural solutions, what can we grow here? We did look at food at first, however, the economics didn't really make sense. The big story of that is really competing with big ag as a small farmer just is not a, a viable strategy when you're, trying to work with nothing, like we were.

So we landed on flowers because flowers is about 35 billion dollar a year industry. But 80 percent of the flowers that you see in this country actually come from overseas. So there isn't like a big flower industry that we have to really compete against. And most of the money in flowers, you know is being spent in big cities like Chicago. So it just seemed like a natural fit, where if we grew flowers, it's something that other people weren't doing, so we wouldn't have a lot of competition. It's something that we figure our youth could be good at, because a lot of our youth are artistic, and floristry is inherently an artistic endeavor. And there's real money in it, so it's something that could really grow beyond just supporting a small business and a few jobs, because we really wanted to try to pursue something that could be a game changer.

Jim: I love that. Having a business like Southside Blooms takes a lot of coordination, and I can imagine that our guests rely heavily on their computers to keep track of everything. That's why we believe that the services provided by SaferNet are so important to our listeners.

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Martha: All right. So Southside Blooms is a business that's operated by you two under the winds of Chicago EcoHouse. What is Chicago EcoHouse all about? And I just want to say for those not watching the video, they are donning their t shirts.

 (laughter)

Quilen Blackwell: Yeah. So Chicago EcoHouse is the nonprofit umbrella of our organization. So, it's a farm side. So we do our own farming. We have about 10 acres of vacant land that we've converted into solar powered flower farms.

Jim: How many empty lots is 10 acres?

Quilen Blackwell: It adds up to, I think it's in total, it's about 12 lots that we have. Some of the lots are bigger than others, obviously. We basically, yes, we take these lots, we turn them into farms, we hire youth to work the farms, and then we will process those flowers in our Southside Blooms, which is also staffed by youth. So we're a vertically integrated farmer florist and we deliver all our own flowers as well as we just recently started shipping our flowers nationally.

Martha: So I made sure to tell Jim that. I said, you do know that they now are shipping flowers all across the nation? So I'm just going to put this little plug in.

Jim: So why do you think she would bring that up?

 (laughter)

Jim: Why do you think she'd bring that up five days before her birthday? Or, 17 days before our wedding anniversary? I just can't. Why? Why is she doing? I

Martha: just might say I've checked out the website and I want to encourage all of our listeners to do the same. We'll have the link in the show notes, but man, you guys are doing such great stuff. And yes, we're talking about the mission and the philosophy and all that you are accomplishing, but you're doing it with passion, excellence. And that is something that really sets you apart. So the website is southsideblooms. com. Super simple. Anybody can go there, check it out, and shop away.

Jim: Hannah, I want to know this. How can running a florist business on the south side of Chicago help transform lives?

Hannah Blackwell: So, there's a lot of reasons that we've seen flowers bring about life. And I feel like when we moved here and we did a lot of research and we just try to become a part of the neighborhood and even when I was over on the west side, you just tell that the poverty was really at the base of so many of the issues that was going on. And we just felt if we can attack the poverty and give people that ability to meet their needs and to have what they need, they're going to be able to breathe and they're going to be able to think about everything else that they want to accomplish and do and stabilize their family.

At the base, just being able to provide some money and helping people sustain their lives, that is gonna relieve the stress, you know, on the first layer. Second just working with something beautiful, being out in the flower farm, being in the flower shop, you know, you're around beauty around stuff that smells really good and you're creating beautiful pieces for really significant moments, when people make a bridal bouquet and then they're able to deliver it with us to the venue and hand it over to the bride and know that this is a really special moment in her life. That's transformative. You feel like you belong.

We have these organizations around that they'll do tours downtown with youth from the neighborhood, but it's empty. They don't give this bridge to participate in those places. It's just Hey, this is cool. And now you're going to go back and I'm not going to show you any way to connect with these other beautiful affluent parts of the city. But when we're giving them a role and we're bringing them along and helping them to be, have some belonging there, it's a very different experience for them. They can feel like, I'm contributing, I'm a part of this, I belong here. And we've seen that go back into their own confidence about themselves, about what they can do. And these are young people, they need that encouragement. They need somebody to be like, Hey, you're awesome. Look at this skill you have. Look at what you're doing. So that they can start believing that in themselves and that it can really be a foundation that they can build on for the rest of their lives.

Martha: So it is so huge in the fact that you are building, you're giving them confidence that leads to less stress because they get money. Is it just a job or is it Jesus too?

Quilen Blackwell: Oh no, this is 100 percent Jesus. This is a common question we get. People are like you do all these good works, you're creating jobs, et cetera, et cetera, but what about the gospel, right? And for us, this is really an evangelistic ministry. Like it says in the good word, it's the goodness of God that draws men to repentance. And that's what this is really about. It's about first showing God's goodness to people. And that's one of the misconceptions that people have of our community. Like a lot of people already know the gospel. There's this assumption that just because you're poor and you're down and out that you somehow, aren't Christian or you somehow don't know the Gospels.

Like a lot of people here already are believers. They just don't see how God's showing up in their life, so people walked away. So there's a lot of people backslid because they're like, okay my grandma went to church or my mom went to church, but what did that do for us? So we've actually seen a lot of people's faith get restored and inspired again because they're seeing the goodness of God. They're seeing God show up in a way and in a place where people thought that let's just be honest, people just thought it was like a godforsaken place. But here, here's this miracle of a flower shop that's creating an oasis in the desert, so to speak.

Jim: It's incredible. And you know as we're really continuing on the conversation, when you look at the gospel, it's all of the gospel. Jesus came to set the captives free. And poverty, it's like captivity for people, and the jobs, you're giving people the freedom to flourish again in an area that hasn't seen a lot of flourishing. And it's so powerful to be able to see that. So you're taking all these empty lots and you've got flower farms on them, and if you haven't been in Chicago, some of you listening, haven't been to Chicago. In the winter time it's a miserable, terrible place to be.

 (laughter)

Jim: It's known as the Windy City because it is windy, but also because of politicians, but it's a cold, damp place. Quilen, just look up your history and just so you know, Mayor Daley's the one that named it... yeah, anyway. How is creating all these jobs going to help rebuild these neighborhoods so that it attracts other businesses back into town so that it's not a food desert anymore? You got, you're eliminating the flower desert. How do you, how is this going to help eliminate the food desert area?

Quilen Blackwell: Yeah, that's a great question. That's actually something that people criticized us on in the beginning. People are like, okay, you're trying to grow flowers, but it's a food desert. You can't eat a flower, right? But going back to the idea of this being an anchor industry, right? If you have an anchor industry, then you have trailing industries that will support it, right? Looking at tech in Silicon Valley, because tech is thriving there as that primary industry, that means trailing industries like housing can now thrive, right? Retail, restaurants, movies, etc. Because people now have disposable income that they're getting from those good paying jobs at tech to spend on these other sectors of the economy.

So that's the way we're looking at it is okay flowers, which is bringing in, a good amount of money - and just so your viewers know within 10 years, we went from 0 to 2 million, so we're definitely gaining a lot of traction, we have a lot of growth. We currently, we have almost 60 people on our total payroll, so you know, the organization is growing pretty quickly.

Jim: Hang on, you're doing that fast again. We're celebrating here. 60 people on your payroll, which means you're blessing 60 families, and those 60 families are blessing their neighborhoods. That's monstrous. That is fantastic. God is doing such incredible things.

Quilen Blackwell: Yes, yep, exactly. So now those are people who are now spending more money at the local restaurants, right? That support those businesses. So yeah, this is how people are able to address the food desert issue because you get more money in your pocket, then hey, you want to go shop at Whole Foods? You want to go shop at Aldi, wherever? You can do that. You have agency, right? You have freedom. Whereas, not to get into some political stuff here, but you look at say food stamps and stuff like that really does control where you can eat, what you can buy. But in this case, you basically are, you're learning how to work.

You're learning how to add real value to the community, add real value to the marketplace. And now you can go, and you can decide to live wherever you want. You can decide to eat whatever you want. You don't have to live within the restrictions of a government program, which a lot of our families find very free.

Martha: And I love the fact that you did the research to find an industry that was a thriving industry that wasn't marginal that Chicago has a high demand for flowers, right? So very smart.

Jim: Apparently, Marionville, Missouri does as well.

 (laughter)

Martha: Apparently now it does, right? And the fact that your neighbors don't have to be the ones to buy your product in order for it to survive. So I think there's some brilliance there, too. They may then get some income so that they can spend it on different things. So I just think it's a brilliant thing to be celebrated.

In John 10: 10, Jesus said that he came to give life and give it more abundantly. And Jim, today's guests are showing others how to have abundant life right in their own neighborhoods. And if you're looking for how God wants you to act on your faith, check out the iWork4Him Nation. You can find that on our website at iworkforhim. com forward slash join the nation to find some simple steps to help you become a workplace missionary and show others around you abundant life.

Jim: All right. So Hannah, the South side of Chicago, still a troubled area. You guys decided, you and Quilen decided to move into that area and have your family live there, grow up there. What kind of sacrifice has that been for you two?

Hannah Blackwell: So like you mentioned, that was an intentional thing for us. We knew that if we didn't sort of commit our lives, commit our families show that we trusted God in that way, it was going to be hard for people around us to really take us serious. And also it wasn't going to send the right message to our kids. Someday we knew that, we wanted our kids to live on mission. And we knew that if it was just something we said, but didn't show it with our lives, that it would be, empty. And when we first moved in it was definitely some very trying times with issues on the block and the neighborhood.

Quilen Blackwell: A lot shootings. Lot shootings.

Hannah Blackwell: We were looking for houses to buy and we walked down a block, and as we look back, we watched a drive by shooting happen. Like just we had just been there. And it was very real, but it was also a way that reminded us why we were there. And it was something that would continue to remind us. If you're not faced with it every day, and we still are. We're still faced with what the youth go through, and it pushes us every day to not give up, to continue to be here. Jesus was sent, was God incarnate. He was sent to walk among the hurting and to be there as a human. And I feel like in the same way, we need to be amongst it to really continue to pray for it, to continue to show Jesus in the way that we can.

Quilen Blackwell: If I could just quickly add to it, I think looking back on it, I see it less as a sacrifice and more as an investment. It definitely was harder in those first days, but I also think, because we didn't really understand what God was trying to do. Like I said, in the good word, His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways.

Because, really it set us up as a family to be more resilient, more autonomous. And frankly, I was thankful that we said yes to God and came to the hood. When COVID hit and we were able to pull our kids out of school, we didn't have to like be forced to do things we didn't want to do because we're working for a corporate employer or that kind of deal, and that's when I really became thankful.

Okay, in the beginning, it did feel like, okay, God, I'm having to give up a lot of these, let's be honest, like worldly comforts. And what am I getting a return? I'm just going doing this for you. But then you fast forward 10 years and some of the things that we've been through as a society, and it's really been setting us up for success. It's okay, God, I see what you were doing. This was really more of an investment. Now it's starting to pay off. Like nowadays, we're able to run our ministry and homeschool at the same time. It's a huge blessing to be able to spend like almost all day with our kids, like they're in the business. We're able to teach them in real time. This is massive.

Martha: I just wanted to switch that around. So what do you then see as being the impact of you living in your neighborhood? Like, how is it impacting your neighborhood by having your family right there?

Hannah Blackwell: Okay. Yeah, so I think just I feel like, early on too, it was, really helped them to believe that we were there for them. It wasn't just Hey, we're going to come in and work and then leave again. Or we're going to have our own little life outside of you guys, and we were outsiders, like obviously, I'm like, you look at me and I don't match everybody else. But even Quilen, he grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. There's no,

Jim: Oh, wait a minute. Oh, I should have asked this question. You're a cheese head?

 (laughter)

Jim: Sorry, we don't allow cheese heads. We don't allow cheese heads on iWork4Him. Sorry, this conversation is done right now. I should have asked that ahead of time. You're from Kansas and he's from Wisconsin?

Okay. But seriously, when you look at the impact that your marriage and your kids are having on your street, have you seen a change? Have you guys been able to impact the culture on your street?

Quilen Blackwell: Yeah. Yeah. We employ some of the youth who live on our block. As a matter of fact just share a quick little story. There's this young man named Deontae who works for us. His mom, actually when we first moved on the block, she was like part of the block club that we helped to organize. And, like as the organization has grown we were able to get to a place where we were able to hire her son at a time when he needed a job. He got caught up in the gang life, he was in jail for six months and things weren't looking very good for him.

It's been a refuge for her family and for him, and now we hired her, her sister, her daughter as well. We're able to actually employ people right here on our block because of the work that we're doing and because us basically just saying yes to God and sticking with it.

And it's even going beyond our block, right? Like we're in four different neighborhoods at this point on both the south and west side of Chicago. We're actually in the process of opening up a second flower shop on the west side. So this is really just growing and expanding so that we can reach more families and touch more lives.

And it's gotten a lot more peaceful in our neighborhood. Like it's actually been a long time since we've actually had shootings on our block. I really contribute that to really just prayer and that we do look at that more as a spiritual issue. You can live in a very to do neighborhood and still have shootings that could happen. So I look at that as like just like that prayer covering right? And then I were every morning we have devotionals, we're always praying for our people. We fast, right? Don't discount that spiritual component.

Jim: Your very presence on that street has made an impact. That's what I was getting for. I didn't know the answer, but I had a feeling, because the two of you are living there, that your presence and Jesus in you, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is impacting your neighborhood.

And everybody listening, understand that's your role in your neighborhood too, no matter where you're in, you don't have to live in the South side of Chicago to impact your neighborhood or your homeowners association or your townhouse or the apartment complex. You can be that impactor.

All right. Final question. Maybe you two are mission preneurs. You're entrepreneurs on a mission. Is there room for more Jesus followers to join you in the mission on the South side?

Quilen Blackwell: Yes, totally. 100%. We're looking to grow. If you're in a community that's similar to Chicago, you're Detroit, St. Louis, whatever, definitely reach out to us because we are looking for new communities to expand into, new cities to expand into. Of course you could volunteer with us. You can always support us by buying our flowers. But yeah, we definitely are looking for ways to partner with more Believers and more, like minded christians. Because we really do think that we have something to offer the larger body of Christ and we're here to help.

Jim: Are there some synergistic businesses though that you would love to see come join you on the south side?

Quilen Blackwell: That's a good question. Never got that question before. Huh? Yeah, sure you know Let's say there's a complimentary business, if we do flowers, let's say you have a very robust honey business, for example, right? If you had distribution, something that we're always looking for. If you have some sort of business that can distribute candles, because we do like beeswax candles, our flowers could be distributed all across the country. So we're definitely partnering with a Distribution business would really help us grow. So yeah, there's definitely I could see like some synergistic partnerships with other kingdom aligned businesses.

Jim: Well, and I love that and that's why I want to bring up that conversation because Quilen and Hannah can't do this on their own. They've laid the groundwork There's room for synergistic missionpreneur minded people to join you guys on the south side. Get a hold of them on southsideblooms. com. Southsideblooms. com. Or how do you want the people to get a hold of you?

Quilen Blackwell: Yeah, just go to Southside Bloomers. com and then you can reach us there. Worked for Jim. He went and did it too.

Martha: He used the contact page. We tested it out and we know they answer their emails.

Jim: That's right. All right. Quilen and Hannah, what a great story. What a great example. Love what you guys are doing. Hope we get to visit you guys someday when we get a chance to get back out on the road, we're not too far from Chicago. We spent a lot of time in Chicago, plus the food and the pizza. Chicago's fantastic.

 (laughter)

Jim: Chicago dogs and serious deep dish feet, pizza. Quilen and Hannah, thanks for being on iWork4Him today. You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him!

5/29/24 - 2044: Redemptive Technology

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: And we are your hosts Jim and Martha Brangenberg and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now

Jim: You know, there's no more behind the scenes job than the jobs offered in the tech world. Each of these jobs is essential to our economy But most of the tech geniuses operate in relative or purposeful obscurity. Do these jobs matter to God? Of course they do! The tech world has been absolutely critical in getting the gospel around the world to translating the Bible rapidly into thousands of different languages and to getting Bible teaching online so that billions can observe and learn.

So what happens when a bunch of tech people gather together to worship God and collaborate? Of course, there's Mountain Dew involved, but you may find them online at faithtech. com, faithtech. com. Today, two Faith Tech members from Kansas City joined us to tell us about Faith Tech and how God is using their tech skills to be a blessing to their communities and our world. Al Wilkinson and Joe Hollowell, welcome to iWork4Him.

Al Wilkinson: Thanks guys.

Joe Hollowell: Good to be here.

Jim: We're excited about, but before we get into the whole Faith Tech world and again, faithtech. com, Joe, what's your Jesus story?

Joe Hollowell: Gosh, 40 years ago, when I was 27, I had a Damascus road experience. At that time, I had been heavily into the occult. I was antagonistic towards Christianity. I was into divination, incantation, spirit guides, all the New Age theology, and it was a TV show that my wife had insisted that I watch called Something Beautiful, where a darling little old lady was teaching us how to crochet and bake goods, but she had interviews, and the interview she had happened to be a person who practically spoke directly to me and what I was going through. The Holy Spirit used that, opened my eyes, and ever since then I've been growing in grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. It has been just a joyous life.

Martha: Wow, that's so amazing. Thank you for sharing that with our listeners. And Al, what about you? What is your Jesus story?

Al Wilkinson: So I accepted Christ in fifth grade, as part of a class that all of us kids at the church I grew up in were encouraged to go through. And I was, after that, I was a good kid. Never got into a whole lot of trouble. But my faith wasn't really real to me. So as I went off to college, I had this notion of, I was going to go seek truth. And so I, I got a chance to explore some other religions a little bit on the surface level and explore no religion, but God kept putting these believers back in front of me and around me.

And they kept just Kindly asking, Hey, come check out this thing with us. Yeah. So eventually going into the second year of college, I decided that, maybe I should consider my faith that I grew up with. And so got connected to a church in the college town I was in that had a great college group with just a lot of people who just wanted to share. And during that time, God showed me that He'd taken me at my word even though I didn't know what it meant, and I started to learn about that relationship with Jesus, and it grew from there.

Jim: Joe, my question for you is this, did God give you your technology skills?

Joe Hollowell: Oh, he absolutely did, and he still does. I still rely on him to help me through every technical challenge I get. Again, at college I had, this was back in the mid 70s, I had truly believed that computer technology was the destruction of civilization. I had nothing to do with it. I didn't even have a pocket calculator. I used a slide rule for all of my mathematics classes. It was during economics, where I was taking an econometrics course, teacher challenged us to do linear regression. That was the closest thing to the voice of God that I had known at that time, and he gave us 20 of those problems to do with what for the end of the week, which was impossible with the way I was doing with pencil and slide rule.

He said, Don't worry, I've got a, I've got a account for you with the lab using a newfangled statistical analysis program called Shazam. You'll be able to knock these out pretty quick. After struggling to even find the computer lab, logging on, I discovered that, wait a minute, there might be a use for computers after all, as it was able to knock out those linear regression problems so quickly.

Ever since then, I could go on story after story of how God has revealed his design in code, in networking and team building and project management. It's all from God. A Wise man once told me if you've got 20 minutes to do something, you better spend 10 minutes praying about it.

Jim: So true Al, what about you? Your technology skills? You're a little younger than Joe so you didn't start on a slide rule. You probably started on a texas instrument, Ti 110 or whatever those, 115, whatever those deals were.

Al Wilkinson: Yeah that and the Apple 2C, it was first grade when I first wrote code. But the moment that I always jump to on this question that was really defining for me was about 15 years ago. Michelle and I, my wife and I, were accepted with a ministry to go do international missions work. And it was Bible translation in particular, and a good close friend I'd been in accountability group for two years with at that point, were sitting down at breakfast and he says, why would you want to learn Bible translation? God's gift to do with these tech skills. Why aren't you using that?

And I tucked it away at the time, and said now I'm supposed to do this translation stuff. About six years later God sent us to Kansas city and I've been involved in a ministry connecting churches and I felt like I was supposed to be doing something else because I kept seeing this problem or this lack of community for people that love Jesus and are tech people.

And it just, God brought that conversation, that comment from that friend back to the front of my mind just clear as it just happened. And that really stuck with me, God telling me, I've gifted you with these skills, I've gifted people with these skills, and there's a community that needs to be brought together.

Martha: That's such an important conversation, because we have so many listeners that, their eyes are being open to that idea that God gifted us with skills to be used for Him, but in a way that helps solve problems, and that helps create flourishing, whatever it might do to propel us forward. And so I love that.

And that's a perfect segue into this question. I want to know then, Al, you start this one. How did you get introduced then to Faith Tech, which really then we'll dig into what it is, but how did this progression of God opening your eyes to using your tech, how did that lead you to finding Faith Tech?

Al Wilkinson: Yeah. So there's a little bit of a crossover in those two questions there. In 2016, a buddy and I started, we called it Cross Tech Casing, and the same year Faith Tech started in Canada. And so we'd run across it at the time, but it was new group, didn't have any size to it. It was in Canada. We're here in Kansas city.

So there was another ministry in Kansas City that connected churches that had been involved in, and seeing a model there of churches of different denominations working together to do ministry, to share God's word, was this model that, in the midst of it, I'm feeling like there was something else I was supposed to do.

Seeing this lack of faith in tech community, God saying, remember this comment. I've given you these tech skills and now I've given you this model of connecting people that don't necessarily want to be connected and talk with each other and work together. Go build this community.

Jim: It's not that they don't want to be connected, Al. They don't want to talk to each other. That's probably true, but I remember in my programming days I would always pray when I couldn't solve a problem. I would always pray and say Lord, I gotta go to bed. Could you please help me solve this problem in my sleep so I can wake up the next morning and finish the line of code that I needed or whatever? And never failed! I always came up with a solution. That's why I think technology is amazing. We don't even realize how much we spend on it until something goes wrong.

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Martha: So Al, you're saying that you had this crossover between what God was stirring in you, finding out there was another organization. Joe, how about you? How did your life intersect and you get introduced to FaithTech?

Joe Hollowell: That's interesting too. I got introduced to Al at Crosstek through Rick Boxx from Unconventional Business Network.

Jim: Another free plug right here and iWork4Him.

 (laughter)

Joe Hollowell: And his mission, his ministry, really trying to encourage business leaders to reorganize, restructure their businesses for Christ. I had been consulting with Rick about another kind of startup business that I was working on with a colleague down in Orlando, God IT. And Rick said at one of his summits, one of his forums, he had the cross tech table with Al and Ben. He said, Joe, you need to go meet Al. And he walked me over, introduced me, and within a few weeks, Al and I were communicating. I started going to the meetups.

We've been with CrossTech now through that FaithTech transition over the past six years. And it was Al's focus on this whole concept of communication, the community, that got us in touch with and in contact to start up that transition to FaithTech.

Martha: So Al, let's talk about that just for a minute. So I just want to know what is FaithTech all about then? We've alluded to where God was leading you, but what actually is FaithTech for our listeners? Tell me what we're actually, you guys are involved in.

Al Wilkinson: FaithTech is an organization built around, there's a couple of phrases I want to throw in. One of the driving mission statements or goals, value statements is to awaken a Jesus revival in and through technology. And so a way that we often talk about walking that out as part of Faith Tech is having regular meetups quarterly, once a month, very city by city. But during those we, we focus on three, three aspects. We have a meet, a learn, and a build.

The idea is that we build community through spending some time, usually sharing food, with each other. Getting to know each other, what we're interested in, what God's doing with us, where we're struggling, where we're thriving. And there's a time to learn. So it might be about a specific technology. It might be about a faith at work type of topic. It could be about anything, but we all need to continue learning and growing and expanding who we are because God's built us to be that way.

And then we allocate some time for building and it might literally be break out the computers and write some code. It might be sharing an update from a labs project that's being worked on in the community, or it might just be a time to brainstorm ideas. But that's the basic structure of a meetup that we aim for.

We always stray a little bit from it cause we, Joe and I in particular, we like to be a little less formal. But that's some of the driving of what is it that we do, what are we about. And all of that just leads to the goal of building community and then how can we deploy that community to use tech skills and business skills, entrepreneurial skills of all sorts to meet needs of the kingdom and to make God's name known, to make disciples and share Jesus throughout the world?

Jim: All right. Let's talk about that meet part first. Joe, why is it so important for Jesus following tech people to gather and know each other? Why is that important? Can't they just go to church on Sunday?

Joe Hollowell: They can, but what you learn in church, boy, if you have a relationship with Jesus, you better have relationships with those around you. And in the tech world, like you had mentioned, people don't want to talk, or there's such an easy distraction to compartmentalize that technical work, the technology focus from the Jesus focus, from the Jesus mission. So bringing the tech heads together at least once a month, if not more often, on some of the lab opportunities that Al was just mentioning, brings not just some of those skills to be used in advancing the kingdom, but it also advances our relationship with each other and Jesus. That is the key to what we do.

Martha: Al, what kind of things have been accomplished when these Jesus centered tech geniuses get together? Give us a couple of examples of things that you guys have done in that build realm to help advance the kingdom, like you said.

Al Wilkinson: So I'll give one from Kansas City and one from FaithTech as a larger one. One of the things that got FaithTech, the larger organization started in Waterloo, Canada, was around someone had a few people close to them who had committed suicide, and they said, we can do something about this. We've got this whole internet thing, this whole world wide web. Surely we can do something with technology.

And they started looking into it because a part of that story was that at least one of those people had visited websites that talked about how to kill myself. How do I kill myself? And so this person started looking at those and thinking I can put up a website that responds in Google searches and instead of in response to those kinds of searches, but instead of talking, instead of giving them those answers, what if I put up a website that points them to Jesus instead as an alternative?

And that's what they built. That was the, I believe that was the first official Faith Tech labs project. And it had amazing results. I didn't get a chance to find the numbers, but there were many people who came back and shared stories of, I found your website, and it saved my life. And so that's one that I just love because that's a great use of technology to change the tide.

Another one in Kansas City somewhere during maybe a year or two in, a church where we met at regularly, on that particular night, there was a different ministry that had a prayer meeting in the sanctuary to the right when you came in the main door, and we were meeting in the community room to the left.

And this one guy happens to walk in, didn't know there were two different groups, follows some people, goes to the left, sit, grabs some pizza, sits down, starts talking, and he's thinking he's out of place, and about that time one of the leaders comes in and grabs him. The guy, as it turns out, had started a ministry to fight pornography addiction, and he was looking for people to build an app.

They talked with software shops and was getting estimates of 100 to 250, 000 dollars to build a mobile app. And he says guys, I can't even pay myself, let alone pay to build an app. And so the leader says, yeah, let's get you guys connected. We shared the idea. We had him come and talk about it. And we had a few people who, some had struggled with pornography addiction. Some just felt a nudge to say, I can help build something like this. And they built a proof of concept app that got used by several hundred people for a few years and did that at helping draw people out of pornography addiction, help them work through that recovery. And yeah, those are just a couple of examples of what God can do with tech skills.

Martha: We often say, Jim, on iWork4Him, that each of us has our own lanes that we're driving in, even when we're headed down the same road. And it seems like our listeners might be in a different industry or work environments, but we all are on mission, living out our faith in our work.

And the Awaken podcast network is filled with podcasts from over 135 different hosts that are sharing just a little different take on their own faith and work journey. So I want to encourage our listeners to go to awakenpodcastnetwork. com and learn more about other podcasts that might help you grow in your faith and your boldness with the Lord.

Jim: Joe, what kind of projects have you been working on as part of Faith Tech?

Joe Hollowell: The most recent one that I'm focused on right now, is to take a book that FaithTech spent a couple of years developing. It's called the Redemptive Technology Playbook from FaithTech, which offers a Jesus focused, Spirit led way of delivering solutions and building technology redemptively, that both offers solutions that redeem the world, but also redemptive to the people who are building it.

That playbook, I'm actually working with another group called Sync with God, you know the blog, that takes that content, takes that book, puts it into a discipleship platform that allows small groups to go through this step by step, learning the different methodologies, the different theology, the different applications of how to build technology redemptively, and disciples that, inculcates that into this, into these small groups. So we're putting that together on this platform and getting ready to launch that right now, it's targeted for 2025.

Jim: People are thinking right now, Joe, how can technology be redemptive? But I think we need to understand the kingdom if we're gonna understand that sentence, because God told us as believers to allow our faith to impact the work that we do and to be a blessing to others, whether they believe in Jesus or not.

And so we're supposed to be bringing healing to the land and technology can do so many things today. It can feed cattle. It can, it can water crops. It can tell a farmer how it would fertilize over here this much, but over here don't fertilize as much. And technology is so incredible. It also has some creepy sides too, but we're not going to talk about that today. What I want to know, Al, why should somebody get involved with Faith Tech? Why should they join FaithTech today?

Al Wilkinson: Why wouldn't they want to? (laughter)

So reason reasons I like to encourage people. One is the community aspect of it. For a lot of tech people getting a good size corporation, even some small companies and it can be hard to find other believers inside of tech spaces. That's another aspect of what got started with CrossTech and FaithTech was running into individuals a decade ago who, multiple people at a company who had no idea that there were other believers there. And making people more comfortable with that idea of how can I share my faith in the workplace, if for no other reason than to be different, to look different and get people curious enough to ask why are you so nice? Why don't you ever yell? Why is your language always clean? Any of those kinds of questions.

So having that community to support but then also that opportunity for a lot of us as tech people we might, it's common to find that feeling of, I'm just working to make a bunch of money for someone else, or I'm just working to make a bunch of money, which is great. But, It's not always enough.

Jim: No, it's never enough. It's not always enough. It's never enough.

Al Wilkinson: It's never enough money. We always want more, no doubt. But part of what Faith Tech and the community offers is an opportunity to use those tech skills or the business skills or design skills or any related skills to help build software that has a more direct impact on the kingdom.

So whether it's working on, an X iteration of how do I not kill myself website? Or another app to fight addictions or engaged discipleship or prayer life. Those are opportunities where anyone who has that time and capacity can use those tech skills in a way that can be more directly life giving, which for an individual can be really encouraging and make a job that they don't love be a lot more bearable because that full time job lets them work on this, maybe it's five hours a week, but this project that can have a different kind of impact.

Jim: You could check out Faith Tech online Faith Tech. com That gets you to the main one up there in Canada, eh? And if you really want to get in touch with these guys at Kansas City, faithtech. com forward slash city forward slash Kansas dash city. That'll get you to these guys, Joe and Al. Joe, before we're done, what kind of, what project are you working on right now for Faith Tech?

You said you're working on getting that manual out there. So people do small groups. Are there other projects you guys are working on in Kansas City that you could use some tech help with Jesus followers that are looking for a project to do on the side? You got one that you, that people could get connected to?

Joe Hollowell: Oh, there's a number of them. First off, on that same main page of FaithTech, there's a section called Labs that outline a whole catalog of all kinds of projects that are being worked on across the world. And that's one of the advantages of some of the current technologies that we can have virutal, locationless groups, teams that come together to work on those projects.

Jim: Okay.

Joe Hollowell: We're working on a project to build a mentoring community that introduces resources to people that need to understand different skill sets, especially international students, people graduating from college. We had a great discussion with Kyle Smith, a friend of yours that you introduced.

Jim: Right out of Marionville, Missouri. That's right.

Joe Hollowell: There you go. That's the kind of mentoring community we're building and putting together a platform and interaction ability just in our area to start with.

Al Wilkinson: The other thing I'd throw out there is that yeah, like Joe mentioned there's over 100 labs projects being worked on by different cities, and they all need help. And so whether it's something we're working on directly, or if anyone is interested in working on something, go check out that page and let us know. We'll get you connected because we want to encourage anyone who has that time and desire to work on anything. And if there's not a project there, we'll help you get one started.

Jim: You want to get in touch with these guys. You can always get ahold of Martha and I, and we'll connect you up with Joe or Al, or you go to the Faith Tech website and just go to communities and find Kansas city. And you'll find Joe and Al there.

Martha: It's amazing. There are many different locations. And like you said, technology is really limitless anymore. There's not really boundaries around a lot of things. So I love what you guys are doing. And I would just imagine that we have listeners that are really interested in this because of how God has gifted them. So this is such a great thing we're getting to expose our listeners to.

Jim: Yeah. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Al, from Faith Tech Dot com forward slash city forward slash kansas city. Thanks you guys for being here today.

Al Wilkinson: Thank you guys for having us.

Jim: You bet. Faith Tech. com. Check it out. You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Chrsit followers. Our workplaces our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him!

5/22/24 - 2043: Meet Global Ministry's Matchmaker

Jim: ​You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of Collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.

Martha: And we are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: For the last 11 years we've told you that your workplace is your mission field. And that in that mission field, that's your assigned place of ministry, that you'll use your job and your job skills to bring glory to God through the excellence of your work and use your love for your workplace neighbors to show them the power of Jesus in your own life.

That you don't need to quit your job and go overseas as a missionary in order to be on the mission field. But what if God is calling you to move your job to a foreign country where typical missionaries and pastors really aren't welcome but people with your job skills, those people are welcome and you can get paid too? We call that here at iWork4Him a fully funded missionary. Both staying here and being on the mission at work and going overseas to be on mission at work are valid ways to live out your faith at work. What is God calling you to do?

Maybe God is calling you to take your work and take it somewhere else. Maybe he's calling you to the foreign mission field of California. You never even know! All right, but today we introduce you to a ministry called Compel Global. And we got Josiah " JJ" Harling here to tell us all about it. Compel Global is there to help you match your job skills with a place not here in the states that needs those skills and your Jesus. JJ, welcome to iWork4Him.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: Hey, thanks so much for letting me hop on the podcast with you guys. It's a pleasure to be here.

Jim: We're always excited to introduce new resources to our listeners. And we've done that a couple thousand different times over the last 11 years. And we're excited to hear all about Compel Global. But before we do, we always start off with, tell us your Jesus story.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: It's a good question, Jim, again, thanks for letting me be on the podcast. And I just want to share a little bit of the history. So I come from a ministry family. My parents were actually missionaries overseas when I was born. And then we came back to the States when I was really young and dad was in the pastorate and pastored tiny churches, major mega churches, everything between. .

Jim: So you're a pastor's kid. You're one of those.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: I have all of the stereotypes, Jim, all of that. Pastor's kid, missionary kid, all of it. But so faith was always a part of my journey, but I remember being in college, there was a particularly challenging season for my parents in ministry. And I just had a front row view where the church was crumbling around, around my dad and he was getting attacked from many different sides and his character was being attacked and slanderous rumors and lies spread about him.

And as a student, as a college student at the time, I concluded I love Jesus, but hate his church. I want nothing to do with church. And I remember actually taking a jog on the beach and telling God that, which is a fun conversation. And almost audibly, he reminded me what he thought of his bride, what he had done for his bride, and specifically called me into serving the bride and helping Christians have their eyes on the harvest.

That was the unique calling that God really put on my life. And that's not just for the nations. That's not just for the neighbors. It's both, and God really burdened me with helping be a catalyst within local churches to get their eyes out.

Martha: Wow, I love that. You can just transparently say, you know that you loved Jesus, but not the church, because I think a lot of our listeners, at one time or another, have had some church hurt. And to see the redemption that can come out of that is a beautiful thing. Tell us, then, about why Compel Global? Why are you working there? What is it that God has you doing, and why are you there?

Josiah (JJ) Harling: Yeah, absolutely. I started working in ministry, and particularly in mobilization. Which if you're not familiar with that term, it's basically helping people figure out where they fit, right? We all know that we have a role within the mission of God, but helping people find the right seat on the right bus. And started doing that about 20 years ago for one organization, and then I worked for another one and I realized pretty quickly that my wiring is to be able to do that for a wide variety of different ministries, many different skill sets. And I don't want to be boxed into one particular niche.

So we actually started Compel Global to kind of function like the eHarmony in the world of global ministry and help people find roles, find opportunities with many different organizations, ministries, all over the world. And I get to be a bit of a matchmaker.

Jim: Do you do 29 compatibility test questions?

Josiah (JJ) Harling: True story. I met my wife on eHarmony. So it all comes full circle.

Jim: We had one of our foster daughters and one of our kids met their spouse on eHarmony. So it's okay. We just just so Compel Global doesn't go woke. That's what we don't want to go. So Compel Global - really lay it out for us.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: Yeah, so we are a organization that coaches individuals to find where they fit and how to use their unique skill sets for kingdom impact all over the world. One of our foundational verses is Ephesians 2 10. This says, we are his handiwork and a better word for handiwork is actually poetry. We are his poetry, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he prepared in advance for us to do.

So the idea is that we want to help people uncover their unique skill sets, their unique perspective, and to find a way to use that for kingdom impact all over the world. And so we've been trained by many different organizations, many different ministries, on all of their opportunities, and we get to help people find where they fit.

Jim: But you're like an outsourcer, though. You're not sending.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: It's an outsourced recruitment.

Jim: But okay and we're gonna get into details, but these are taking people, taking their real job skills and taking those skills to another place where those job skills are necessary, right? Where they're really needed?

Josiah (JJ) Harling: Absolutely. Yeah.

Martha: I love this idea because so many times people feel called to do something, but the something isn't necessarily their gifting. And so we have seen several people over the years, feel like a failure in their calling because they were trying to do something that God had not wired them to do, but they weren't doing the thing that God had wired them to do. So does that make sense?

Jim: What we've seen is a lot of our friends who have gone on the foreign mission field, they have to fundraise, they have to speak, they've got to go be evangelists and then do a job or whatever it may be. And nobody has all those skill sets in one.

It's like we ask pastors to run a business, run a church, to fundraise, to preach, to teach, to run committees. And people don't have all those skill sets in one. So what you're trying to do is help them to do that stuff. We're going to have lots more with JJ Harling, but I would just want to say, our listeners have so many different jobs, just like having the ones that we're learning about.

We're just learning all about Compel global today, but I can think of something most of us have in common: cell phones. Our listeners probably use more than a dozen different providers for their cell service, but what does that company support? What do those companies use their profits to support? Likely they're not supporting biblical values. Imagine having an excellent cell phone service and paying for that service to an organization that actually supports your conservative Christian values! That's patriot mobile. It's the only christian conservative wireless carrier out there. Learn more and switch today at patriot mobile. com forward slash. iWork4Him. Be a blessing to your country, be a blessing to yourself, and be a blessing to iWork4Him at the same time. PatriotMobile.com/iWork4Him.

Martha: JJ, I have a question. Because our listeners have heard over the years that our workplace right where we are is our mission field. And for most of us, that's already in the United States. So why should someone connect with you at Compel Global and go to a foreign country to do their work? Explain that to us.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: Yeah, no, it's a great question. I think it's very easy for us as followers of Jesus to have this either or mentality, right? And I am either caring about my workplace and my neighbors, or I'm caring about the ends of the earth. And scripturally, I don't see that distinction. I'm reminded of that passage that we talked about this morning that says Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth, and there really is a a place for that holistic burden.

And so I think part of it is just looking at the opportunities where can your skill sets be best used and have the most impact. Many people don't know that there are entrepreneurs internationally that are in desperate need of the wisdom and experience that you've built as an entrepreneur. You might even be able to shepherd them virtually without having to go anywhere, just to share your expertise as a volunteer. It's my job to know about those types of opportunities and help people really get connected because your skill sets, the tangible skill sets you have, can have a tremendous kingdom impact all over the world.

Jim: So when people contact Compel global, you evaluate their skillset and then try to match them up with a sending organization. Are these paying jobs or are these volunteer jobs or are they typical missionary jobs where they go to say, Hey, we've got a place for you, but you've got to go raise 80 grand a year in order to be able to go talk to me about this. How's this working?

Josiah (JJ) Harling: All, any and all. So we have, we've placed people with about 20 different sending agencies at this point. And there are no shortage of opportunities, both to go long term and live and raise your kids overseas, do all of that. There are opportunities to volunteer without ever having to leave your home or your computer and still have a global impact. We have placed people both with support raising roles, as well as volunteer roles, as well as paid to do roles. With international firms it's our job to know who's doing what, where, and to find those opportunities.

Martha: So let's just talk to the listener for a minute. So if somebody's listening, they're going, why does this matter? Like, why would I want to make a change? Talk to me about the people that you are working with when they call you, when they reach out to you, when they connect with you, what's going on in their hearts? What's stirred them to come to you and start this conversation?

Josiah (JJ) Harling: I love that question so much. What I hear a lot is JJ, I feel like I'm made for more. I feel like I'm made for more impact, more. There's this dissatisfaction in my soul with where I'm at now. I feel like God has something else. That's where I want to interject into the story. And I begin my coaching work. Now I've actually developed a coaching framework. It's a six part framework that follows an acronym and the acronym is STRIDE.

All right. So I want to help people find their STRIDE. And so we walk people through this coaching curriculum to do exactly that. All right, real quick. I'm just going to rattle those off. So the S is your story. Okay. Most of us think that our resume qualifies us for the future. Your story is so much more. What have you endured? All right, T is for your triggers. What are the things that make both you and God angry? We want to pay attention to that. R, what are the things you got to release that you're clinging on to that are really not healthy? I, your identity. What are the strengths and gifts that God has given you? D is your sense of direction, and e is your sense of endurance. And through a coaching relationship, we're gonna really get a picture for how God may be designing you for that more, right? Whatever the more is, we're actually gonna help you to realize that and bring that to fruition.

Jim: All right. Hang on. Okay. Watch out for the soap box! Alright, so here's the deal. 95 or 96 percent of believers who are working today have this angst inside of them that they just want to make a difference. And most of them think they need to quit their jobs and go to work in a church or go on the foreign mission field in order to make a difference. When you get those people, do you ever have the conversation saying, where does God have you right now? Are you sure He wants you to leave? Are you sure that you're not called to where you are, but just need to shift the paradigm in your mind to recognize that your workplace already is a mission field, but you're not treating it like a place of ministry? Do you ever have those conversations?

Do I need to go on staff at Compel Global to help you out?

Josiah (JJ) Harling: We have those conversations all the time, but you're welcome, Jim.

 (laughter)

Jim: I don't want to raise, I don't have to raise my funds to do it though. Okay.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: No, I think it really is about helping people figure out those key opportunities for impact. And we tend to think about, we tend to think about destination, and I don't think that's necessarily how God leads. The image that comes to mind is a path, and we think about God's word being a light unto our path, and we imagine this floodlight where the whole thing is illuminated, and we have clarity on exactly what our, final destination is. But I think a better picture is a lantern where God illuminates the next step and it's Intentional because it requires our trust for everything after that. So your next step is the immediate impact you're gonna have in your workplace today, right?

You may end up moving to Tajikistan and doing something, you know, beyond your wildest imaginations down the road, but God is leading you one step at a time. Always with the invitation to trust him deeper and to be more courageous with your steps.

Martha: I love the way you articulated that. I think historically people have been doing a job, feel a call to something more, and then just jump in and this whole idea of coaching and saying, let's actually find out where God wants you to be and what he wants you to be doing.

And knowing that applies in their daily life before they ever get to the end of the coaching time is going to have such an impact on life. I just, I'm very excited to hear this, and I hope our listeners are too, because I think that even if they end up just saying, Okay, I now understand that my gifting as a CPA is a gift from God. Some people might think it's a curse, right? And say, I want to do something. Oh, okay. But, I just I love this approach because you really are dealing with their heart and identifying how God's wired them and then helping them in that process. I'm so excited that we're sharing this with our listeners.

Jim: Do you have Seasons where you have, you have a whole bunch of people come in and you're working them through that whole STRIDE process and then you're trying to figure, you're weeding them out? Do you have a season like a group comes in and they start and you weed them out.

And some of them, you send them, some of them you just place. Maybe iWork4Him should be part of that process to make sure that we're activating every one of them. Because God says in the scriptures that first, you have to prove that you're trustworthy with little before you can be trustworthy with much. And being trustworthy with your own workplace where God's had you already, that's a starting place. And if you can't live out your faith vibrantly there as an excellent worker and loving on the neighbors and sharing the gospel when you're given that opportunity, you're never going to be able to do it overseas if you can't do it in your own place.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: Absolutely. Wholeheartedly.

Jim: Just one of those conversations you might want to consider, we might want to consider a deeper partnership. I know I'm pushing myself right now. All right. So I know, JJ, that some countries are just closed. They're closed to gospel missionaries, period. End of story. If you're a white person coming here to preach a gospel, we're not interested. Go somewhere else. Why is the mission of Compel Global online at compelglobal. org so unique and so necessary?

Josiah (JJ) Harling: So what we do is we are committed to helping the individual figure that out. A case study, just a few weeks ago, someone came to me and said, JJ, I've got a really particular unique skill, said I'm a helicopter pilot and my wife's a nurse. And I feel like God has uniquely equipped me with that skillset and wants me to use it. Now that is not an easy skill set to place. Because, there's one organization that does aviation, and it's flying planes, it's not helicopters. So I said let me see what we can do. Long story short, and I'll spare some of the security details, but we actually found him an opportunity to serve in a for profit company training helicopter pilots in a country where it is extremely illegal to be a missionary. He's readily able to disciple these other helicopter pilots who are all coming from a Muslim faith, and he's getting paid to do it. All right, pretty cool.

Jim: What about his nurse wife? Wait a minute, you missed out the wife.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: Yeah! She's gonna engage too! Right now she wants to prioritize the kids, but she's got a path to engage as well. But I think what we realize is sometimes it's not leading with a particular opportunity that we have to go fill, but rather it's recognizing who is God bringing to us? What are the unique skill sets that are coming to us? And then we're going to do the work of finding how can we use those in kingdom work. God rarely - Actually, God never disappoints in helping us find those opportunities. Somehow they emerge.

Martha: It is absolutely amazing. But what I'm guessing is because of having gone through your coaching process with the STRIDE model and everything, he is now prepared mentally, spiritually, emotionally, to be on alert as a disciple maker in his position. So it's such a beautiful thing.

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All right, JJ, as we close out the show, we got to have a story. You just told us a helicopter one. I want another story. I want a story of somebody came to you and said, I want to quit my job and go on the foreign mission field and where you started off with, are you sure? And then you found a place to put them through Compel Global.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: So good. You know, the one story that comes to mind right now is actually this couple that I connected with a while back, and the wife really wanted to go overseas. They were late career, actually retired. The wife really wanted to go. The husband did not. So this isn't a perfect match for your question, but the husband did not. And I got into a conversation with them and we're talking about all these different things. And he sat down and put his arms like this and a really serious a demeanor.

And he said I used to be a business administrator for a dairy farm, and you're not going to find that in missions. I'm pretty sure God is ruling this out for our future. Two weeks later, I had a job description for a business administrator in a dairy farm in Costa Rica on the mission field with one of our partner organizations. I dropped it in their inbox just with a little bit of a smirk. Now, I think that's, again, that's just the way that God works. Oftentimes our excuse is my skill set is so niche. And we have this narrative of what missions normally looks and so it's our way of weeding ourselves out.

And God's like, no, actually I wanted to use that unique skill set that you have. I want that in the nations.

Jim: And if you have to serve in Costa Rica... the Lord is calling me.

 (laughter)

Martha: That's fabulous.

Jim: Suffering for the Lord in a tropical paradise.

Martha: I just one thing that I just really want to emphasize as it's coming to my mind is the fact that there are organizations don't run without the administrative side. So people that are good at administration, at computer work, at IT, there's all these things that help organizations to run. And that every one of those talents that God has gifted us with can be used for his glory, no matter where we work, whether we're working at the local dairy farm or the dairy farm in Costa Rica, our world is full of lost people that need to meet Jesus.

And no matter where we are, this is what I hope our listeners hear today, is that no matter where, we are to be on mission, sharing the gospel, being the light in a very dark place - and looking for those opportunities, Jim, where we can befriend people and eventually lead them to Jesus.

Jim: All right. Perfect candidate that should be dialing up compelglobal. org, compelglobal. org. Who should be checking you out?

Josiah (JJ) Harling: I think it would be anybody who has that heart for making disciples who's already doing it. In the workplace, it certainly could be somebody who's in vocational ministry as well, but if you're in the workplace and in your 9 to 5, you can already tell me stories of those individuals that God is using you to have an impact on. That's the heartbeat that we want to capture.

And then the move overseas is just a change in address. That's all it is. There's nothing magical about the ocean. We've already talked about that. Instead it's just getting you into another pool where the light can continue to shine. You can continue to have an impact.

I think it is just natural we talk about that. What's the reason to go overseas? Why should I do that? For those that God really is calling towards that decision by going overseas, oftentimes these are darker cultures, right? There are less believers and that is a tangible reality. And part of that is your light is going to continue to shine and potentially even illuminate at a greater level just because it is a darker culture. And so we see that for sure.

Jim: You got any final thoughts before we end the show? People dial up Compel Global. org.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: The only thing that I would say as a final insight is that it's easy for us in the world of church and in America to put missionaries on a pedestal, to put international service on a pedestal, and to even say he who suffers the most must be the most spiritual. And I just want to put that to bed.

That is not at all an accurate statement at all. Whether you are in your nine to five as an accountant and you're in Colorado Springs and you're living your faith out loud there, or you're doing it in Indonesia where there's less than 2 percent evangelicals in the country, it doesn't matter. It's literally just a change of address. I want you to live your faith out loud. It's a big deal.

Jim: JJ Harling, thanks so much for being on iWork4Him today.

Josiah (JJ) Harling: Yeah, you got it guys. Thanks for having me.

Jim: Check them out online Compel Global dot org. Compel Global dot org. You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, and our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.

5/15/24 - 2042: Created to Strike His Mark

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: You've heard a million one liners about lawyers, like, why did God make snakes before lawyers? To practice! Or God decided to take the devil to court and settle their differences once and for all and satan heard this and laughed It said where do you think you're gonna find a lawyer?

All joking aside, as Christ followers, we naturally think that Christians should not be lawyers or politicians because those are dirty businesses and if we keep up that kind of thinking, they're going to always be dirty kind of businesses. Where do we ever get the idea that certain professions are acceptable to God and others are not?

It's false theology. When God places a calling on your life, he intends to use it for his glory and for your provision. When God does this, he intends to use it in order to impact the community. We need a ton more lawyers who love and serve Jesus in their practice. But what does that even look like? Today we head off to Tampa Bay, Florida, our old stomping grounds, to the offices of Boltz Legal.

Brooke Boltz is a 20 year attorney with a story to tell and an example to share. We welcome her to iWork for Him. Brooke, do you know any good lawyer jokes?

Brooke Boltz: I've heard so many. Do I know any off the top of my head? I think I block them out.

Martha: And I don't blame you.

 (laughter)

Jim: I don't understand. All right, Brooke, what's your Jesus story?

Brooke Boltz: I am, I like to consider myself a lifelong Christian because when I try to think back to the first time that I ever believed in God or Jesus. I can't remember that very first time. My father was a pastor. And so I was in church hearing about the Lord weekly since I was born. And of course, I had moments in my life where I rededicated myself or times where I strayed away and came back. But my belief has been there in my heart for as long as I can remember.

Martha: That's so good. And, fast forward to today, or maybe, in that journey of life, how did you know that God was calling you to be an attorney for your career?

Brooke Boltz: Sure. When I graduated college, I majored in political science and I was burnt out on school. I just, I had no intention of going to law school or going to any further school because I just wanted to take a break. I did not want to attend school any longer. And so I got a job as a probation officer. It was my first job after college. And that led to a job as pre trial services is the name of it, but it's very similar to probation. It's still monitoring and supervising people with criminal cases.

And that was my first exposure to being in the courtroom where I got to see attorneys and judges in a criminal context making decisions. And in my role as the probation or the pretrial service officer, I was supposed to be neutral and wasn't supposed to take a side or really have any opinions on what came of the case.

And over the course of time, I realized that as much as I enjoyed working with the probationers, which I really did. That was my first time in my life where I got to meet people who were addicted to drugs and have that kind of conversation with them and hear their stories on how they got to the places that they are and really saw that even the professional businessman would test positive for cocaine in the same way that the stereotypical person would be testing positive for cocaine.

So it really opened my eyes to how widespread the drug epidemic was and I got to talk to people and hear how they got to their place in life and realized that everybody had a story. And who am I to say that had I not had those same circumstances in my life growing up, those same traumas ,that I may not have ended up in the same position?

So I very much wanted to try to help people in that role, but I was really limited. I had to be neutral. The only services we could offer to these probationers were the court approved services. And so it was just very limiting on what we could offer to people. And so through that experience, I decided that I wanted to go to law school because I wanted to have a voice. I wanted to be able to interact with these with clients on a deeper level and guide them in whatever, opportunities I'm aware of that may be of service to them.

So it was really that experience in the courtroom and being a probation officer that led me to bite the bullet and go back to school for two and a half more years.

Jim: Wow. We know it was intense. So have you ever been questioned about your calling, that it was from God? You're an attorney. Not many of them are God glorifying, are they? Sarcasm intended for the audience. Have you, has anybody ever said, how could you be a Christian and an attorney? Has anybody ever said that to you?

Brooke Boltz: I think you'd be surprised actually how many Christians are attorneys. In fact I just, I know several. So I think it's maybe misperception or misconception about attorneys that they're not Christians. I do think though that we tend to be quiet about it in our profession because it's not something that Is discussed openly in attorney circles, unless you are in an attorney group that is specifically designed for Christian attorneys.

It's probably not going to be much of a topic of discussion. And so I think there are more Christian attorneys than people may realize, but we just don't talk about it that much. I think it's not something that's super comfortable for us to talk about in the workplace.

Martha: I love that you're, the path that you were on, your work experience led you to become a lawyer because you saw that you could maybe do more. So let's talk about that for just a minute. What kind of law are you actually practicing at Boltz Legal?

Brooke Boltz: Sure. I practice injury and insurance cases. So the personal injury type cases where I represent injured parties and then homeowners insurance. For example, in Florida we have a lot of hurricanes. So if a hurricane damages your home and your insurance company denies you or underpays you, I help those homeowners to get paid correctly from their insurance company so they can make the repairs necessary to their homes.

Martha: So why is that where you ended up landing?

Brooke Boltz: So initially, when I graduated law school, my plan was to go into the criminal court, to become a state attorney or public defender. However, when I applied to the office of the state attorney and public defender in my hometown, there was a hiring freeze at that time. And so they weren't hiring anyone in those roles. And so I had to look alternative places and a friend of mine's sister happened to reach out to me and worked at a large firm in Tampa and asked me if I'd be interested in interviewing.

And It just turned out to be the best offer that I had available to me at the time I graduated. So the door, I think the Lord just opened that door for me. In fact, when I went in my first day of work, I did not understand what I was going to be doing. When I went to the website of such a large firm that it literally listed everything on it, there was probably a hundred practice areas listed on the website.

So I didn't know what in the world I was going to be doing. I just knew that I was going to have to start paying those student loans soon and that I'd been out of work for a while taking the bar exam and that I needed a paycheck. And so I showed up and found out the first day that, oh, it's car accidents. I understand that. I can do that.

So I was on the defense though at that point representing the insurance companies and their insureds. And so it wasn't until several years later, I think nine and a half years later that I switched sides, started my own law firm, and started representing the injured parties as opposed to the insurance companies.

Jim: I love that. I love your story, Brooke. We're so grateful for it. Many of us have a why it could be that our businesses started out of a need for our own family or to meet the needs of others in a certain way.

I'm grateful that Patriot Mobile has a why that is in response to faith, family, and freedom, providing cell phone service while keeping the dollars in line with the things we believe in. Check out patriotmobile.com/iwork4him. Make the switch today. Move your money. Stop supporting companies that support the other side of the argument, away from Christianity. Patriot mobile. com forward slash. iWork4Him.

Martha: So One of the things that I love is that, Brooke, your legal firm embraces family. And I understand that your mom actually works for you. So what does that dynamic look like, and how does that enhance you to be able to live out your calling?

Brooke Boltz: Sure. My mom has been instrumental in my practice. She was a legal assistant since before I was born. And so when I moved to Orlando, which is closer to where my mom lives, she started working with me at the firm that I was with at the time, which was that same large law firm that represented insurance companies.

So I started in their Tampa office, then transferred to Orlando, and my mom started working for me there as my legal assistant. And it's funny because they had an HR rule that moms and daughters were not supposed to work together, but they made an exception in our case and it worked for us.

There are people in my family that I probably could not work with in that relationship. My dad being one of them. He and I, our personalities are too similar. We would butt heads and that would not work, but my mom is just, has a servant's heart and she wants nothing more than to have my back and make sure all of the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted. And so having her in that role always gave me the peace of mind that I had someone I knew and trusted and loved who was supporting me in that supportive role.

And actually, we just scheduled her retirement party. It's going to be in July. So she's been with me since we started the firm and she's finally getting to the point where she's going to retire and probably help my sister who's a chiropractor, who's just starting out. My sister's 15 years younger than me she can't afford anything yet for her first help. So my mom's gonna switch roles, switch daughters, to going and being a support system for my sister.

Jim: I have to get your mom a copy of iRetire4Him. get it online. iRetire4Him.com.

All right. You're also married Brooke and you also have three kids. How do you balance being a wife, a mother, and a business owner? How do you protect all three from each other?

Brooke Boltz: People ask me this probably more than any other question just in my day to day life because they see my social media and they see all the things that I'm doing and they think how do you do it all? And I say, I just say yes. And then I figure it out.

 If I feel like it's something that I should be doing or that I want to do, then I say yes. And then I delegate other things so that I can make the time for it. I am blessed to be at the place in my career now where I have a team of 16 ish employees. And so they have been with me now, most of them for several years, and they know their role. They know their responsibilities. And so there's not much of a learning curve. In fact, they know their jobs really well, and they rarely make any mistakes because they've just become so accustomed to their position and their role.

And so that has really freed me up to be able to do other things in terms of building the business and even doing other family responsibilities by having a team who is just phenomenal. And every single member of the team is very self motivated and does their best every day. With regard to being a mom, I've also had to bring on some help. I have two daughters in middle school right now, so they each have a tutor who helps them with their schoolwork.

Jim: That just makes me laugh. Two daughters, middle school. Wow. That's a full time job just there, dealing with the drama.

Brooke Boltz: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes. Just figuring out who's going to sit in the front seat is World War Three sometimes. It is, the emotions are real. They're one year apart. They're one year apart. They're sixth, seventh grade. They're 12 and 13. And I like to say they are best frenemies.

Martha: There you go. Someday they will love each other to death.

Jim: Oh my, that is awesome. 12 and 13 year old girls. Oh yeah, it'll be good. 10 years from now they'll love you. They will. And you won't be near as dumb.

 (laughter)

Brooke Boltz: And then I have a four year old boy who is a ball of energy and just is so much fun. But he requires a lot of attention too. He's still at the age that he wants mommy with him. And so I try to spend as much of my free time with him as I can as well. That's another reason why I brought in the tutors because I was spending all my time after hours studying for their quizzes and tests with them. And I really, with two of them being in middle school now, it was just impossible. So I brought in the tutors to help, and now I can spend time with the four year old while they're tutoring, and then spend time with the girls when they finish.

Martha: So I'd like to talk about the faith aspect of your practice. Cause you've been, you've had your practice for how long now? How many years?

Brooke Boltz: Six years.

Martha: Six years. So has your faith always been an element in the practice and how, what does that look like?

Brooke Boltz: Sure. When I started my business, I incorporated a couple of things like a Bible verse into my website and onto, I have it on my conference room wall. And I did that intentionally because when I worked for the big firm, although no one ever told me not to share my faith, I just felt like it wasn't the right place and it wasn't comfortable for me to share that. And so when I started my own business, I thought this is my business and I need to be comfortable here being who I am.

And so I put the verse in those places as an accountability for me because I knew I might be tempted to go back into those same ways, which is basically keeping quiet about my faith and by putting that verse on my website and in my conference room, it just made me always have to remember who I am and have that as an outward sign of who I am.

And sometimes there are people in my conference room and I'm thinking to myself, they're looking at the verse behind me. Are they getting offended by it? Are they, what are they thinking about the verse? And so it does sometimes still make me uncomfortable, but that was the purpose. I put it there is because I didn't want to hide who I was. I wanted to be open about it. And so I did those things to hold myself accountable.

Jim: What verse do you actually have in your conference room that would offend people? Do you have the one that if you if your right hand causes you to sin cut it off?

 (laughter)

Brooke Boltz: It's a verse in Job and it says, it goes along with my brand. My last name is Boltz. And so it's a lightning bolt verse that says he closed his hands in lightning, commands it to strike its mark. And I also saw that it ministered to me that verse too, because as an attorney we, I feel like I'm an instrument of God's lightning. We are filing lawsuits. We are, in some ways, striking the mark. And I'm being an instrument of Him in the same way that lightning is in that verse.

Jim: And you live in Tampa. where there's lightning all the time, all summer long. And the lightning which have won many Stanley cup championships.

All right. So prayer, how does prayer play a part in Boltz legal?

Brooke Boltz: I pray for my staff. I pray for my clients. I pray for the guidance of the firm. I pray for the next steps. I pray for, I'm always in prayer. The Bible says to pray without ceasing. It's just become a natural part of my life.

And whatever I'm doing, whether it be work or otherwise, I am in prayer for those things. Also, I'll say, nowadays since COVID, all of our hearings and things are done, most of the hearings are done remotely through zoom. But back when I used to have to drive to the courthouse to do a hearing, it's like preparing for battle.

It's a win or lose. It's really not like many other professions where you're going to win or you're going to lose. And so I took it very seriously. And on my drive, I would rehearse my argument out loud, and then I would turn on worship music, intense, intense spiritual warfare type worship music to pump myself up and pray that God's will would be done in the outcome of that hearing.

And so then having done that preparation, whatever the outcome of the hearing was, win or lose, I had peace about it because I knew that I had done my part both in preparing legally, but also preparing spiritually for that battle.

Jim: So intense worship music. Come on, give a plug. Who's your favorite intense worship music group?

Brooke Boltz: So my favorites, I have more than one. I really like Crowder.

Jim: Ah, nice.

Brooke Boltz: Higher Power is one of my very favorite songs. It just gets me pumped up every time I hear it. I really even yesterday I pulled this up. It is Third Day Our God is a Consuming Fire is another one that is one of my go tos.

I really like even just, what's the name of that song? The King of My Heart is a different style of worship song, but it really speaks to me. And I like Toby Mac a lot. His music gets me, like, more energized, I think. And so those are some of my go to favorites.

Martha: Awesome. I love that. You can put together a playlist on Spotify to help people with that. That getting, preparing for battles.

Jim: Preparing for court list.

Martha: I love how our faith actually should play a part in everything that we do. And If our faith is real, it is part of every decision that we make in every conversation that we have. Our sponsors at iWork4Him are all companies that align with our faith and can help each one of us as we live out our calling in a more effective way.

So check out our sponsor page today at iWork4Him. com forward slash sponsor. Not only do they make it possible for us to share amazing stories like this one that we're hearing today with Brooke Boltz. But their services are also vetted by us and we know that it's something that you will want to take advantage of. So I just encourage you to go to, iWork4Him forward slash sponsors to learn more.

Jim: Brooke, when you're negotiating for clients, with the insurance companies, you're doing your job. How does your faith come into play in those negotiations in the actual day to day? What's that look like?

Brooke Boltz: Sure. When we are negotiating on the day to day, my first priority is my client, putting my client first. And that is a biblical principle to put others before yourself. But I think it's a temptation in our role not to do that. There are times where we may have a temptation that if we settle, if we need money in the bank now that maybe we settle a case for less money because we don't, because we need money now versus fighting longer to get more money for the client and because we as an attorney also get paid out of the settlement. And so we want to settle now versus later.

I've heard people who've been represented by attorneys before say that they felt pressured one way or the other by the attorney on what decision to make, and when they feel pressured that sometimes has to do with the attorney's interest is tied into the outcome of the case and so attorneys sometimes will do the opposite.

The offer that's being made won't put enough money in the attorney's pocket so they encourage the client to delay the case longer so that the attorney can get more money as well. So because our interests are intertwined with the client's interests, attorneys can influence the outcome of the case for their own best interest. And so I try very hard not to do that. I try to put my client's interest above my own and put myself in their shoes. If I was in their shoes, what would I want to do as the client? And not only that, but the client is the decision maker.

And so I say to them, here's the options. We can settle now, or we can settle later. We might get more money if we settle later. But if you need the money now, then we can settle now. I lay out the options for the client and let them make the choice, and I try to do it in a neutral way.

Sometimes they will ask me, what would you do? And so I will give them my honest opinion on what I would do, or they ask me for my recommendation and I will provide that. But generally speaking, I try always to be neutral in terms of not pressuring them to make a decision one way or the other, but also informing them of the pros and cons of either decision they may make.

Jim: Do you ever get a chance to pray with people about those decisions? Hey, we got a big decision to make. Hey, do you want to pray about this together? Do you get a chance to do that?

Brooke Boltz: I can't say that I've done that, but that is a good idea. I probably should do that, especially if I know that they are a believer. Occasionally clients will disclose that to me. Many times I don't know, cause it's not something that comes up in conversation all the time. But if they do disclose that, sometimes they do. I love that idea.

Jim: Something like, hey, listen, I'll be praying about this, the advice I'm going to give you. Do you want to pray about this together? That's one of those things you need to bring up. I've never had people tell me no. When people are at a desperate situation, I've never had people tell us no.

Martha: So Brooke, I am very curious if there's a ministry that has impacted your life, if something that is encouraging you or helping you to live out your faith in your work.

Brooke Boltz: Sure. I've been inspired by a number of ministries, even going back to my teen years. Crossroads Youth Camp, which is Clayton King's ministry, was really impactful to me as a young person. I went to the summer camp a few times in North Carolina, South Carolina, and I was a counselor, a camp counselor one year there, once I got a little older, and even sent my kids there last year for the first time.

They were finally of the age that they could go to camp there. And so I sent them last year and signed them up to go this year. So that's a ministry that very much impacted me as a young person. As an adult, there are many local ministries that have been impactful. Sean Feucht and his ministry has also, the Let Us Worship ministry, was also something that was very encouraging to me, how he stood out for his faith in the midst of COVID, when governors were saying you can't sing in church. And so he took worship outside and then started traveling the country with outdoor worship services. Sean Feucht really, I really admired his boldness for his faith and have participated in his ministry a little bit and got to know him a little bit.

Jim: All right. We only have a couple minutes left, but I want to make sure we plug your podcast. Ms. Biz podcast. Tell us about this. But you do this with your sister, right?

Brooke Boltz: Yes, my sister in law Rachel. She's my husband's sister. And Rachel's been working with me for a long time as a paralegal and she started her own business as well called Boltz media. And so we started Ms. Biz close to a year ago. And it was really just motivated by the fact that when I started Boltz Legal, I had no business experience and I was learning as I go and reaching out to different people and mentors and coaching programs and things like that to try to learn how this business stuff worked.

And over the course of time, I just developed a passion for helping other business owners, especially those who were newer in their business. And taking the things that I had learned that had worked or not worked for me and sharing my experiences with people. And so we turned that passion into a podcast and it has really turned into just one of the favorite things that I do each week is recording the podcast. And just using my experiences now to help others who may be in similar situations.

Martha: Let's talk about that because that's really where I wanted to go for this last question, is if you have any advice that you would be giving to a listener that might be either a newer lawyer or thinking about becoming a lawyer or starting their own firm, what would you say to them about making their faith center to what they're doing in that trajectory where that, like you said, it's not very common in that field?

Brooke Boltz: Sure. My advice would be to be who you are. It is, sometimes we feel like people of different faiths or different beliefs are, they are so comfortable being who they are. And sometimes as Christians, we feel like we're not comfortable and we need to hide it. But I think that, and I'm speaking to myself too because I struggle with this as well, that being who you are, being comfortable with who you are, is first and foremost and will be blessed by the Lord If you are true to him and you honor him in everything that you do.

So I would, the number one advice I would give is to read your Bible every day. I haven't always done this. It was my new year's resolution this year actually, in january, and i've been faithful to it since then. But for years before that, I was just, didn't read very much. I would read devotionals before I would read the word itself. And so since I've started doing that each day, it has really increased my faith. It has really allowed me to hear from the Lord more often to see, hear his direction. And so that would be my number one recommendation is just get in the word every day.

Jim: Brooke Boltz, thanks so much for being on iWork4Him today. Thanks for sharing your story. Appreciate you being here.

Brooke Boltz: Thank you.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.

5/8/24 - 2041: From Pews to Politics

Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: And we are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: It is time to clear up an absolute lie that most of us have been hearing in our lives. The lie is Christians should stay out of politics because it's dirty. It's a dirty messy arena fraught with fraud and immorality. No duh! Politics is just that today because Christians have stayed out of politics, and not only politics, but government too. In fact, there are over 570, 000 elected offices in this country, and less than 10 percent are occupied by Jesus followers, and who knows if those 10 percent know that being in politics is okayed by God?

This is a touchy subject. But we know that the Lord commanded us to cultivate the earth as a blessing for everyone. He called us to reach the lost and bring the kingdom to the earth. We certainly cannot do that if we avoid politics. Today, we bring back to iWork4Him Danita Bye.

Danita is a mentor and a thought leader regarding millennials in the workforce. Danita and her husband, Gordon, got involved in politics when they realized the world was going to hell on a freight train, and mostly because we Christians were standing on the sidelines, because politics are dirty. Is it okay for you to serve in a political office or to serve in your government? You can bet our guest Danita Bye has strong feelings about this. Danita, welcome back to iWork4Him.

Danita Bye: Welcome back. What else do we have to say and discuss after that opening?

 (laughter)

Martha: Oh, I think there's a whole lot more.

Jim: I have no idea. I have no idea what it could possibly be. All right. So I intentionally inflamed a little bit because I know we don't agree right away on that political versus civically, but we're going to get into that in a second. Danita, it's been a while since you've been on iWork4Him. Tell our listeners how you first became a Jesus follower.

Danita Bye: Thanks for asking that question. For me, I believe as I reflect on it, that it was a whole journey. I believe that there was some decision I made as a three year old in Sunday school. So I'm a huge fan of ministry to young people. The first time I went to Bible camp as, I don't know, maybe an eight or nine year old, Sunday night first altar call. I found myself the first one to the front on my knees. And then for me, one of the huge life changers is when I was in seventh grade everything looked wonderful on the outside, my mom says. On the inside, it was dark I had been working so hard to try gain approval from people and my approval from God, and it was one night, one in the morning I cried out to God with this crazy prayer, God, if you are there, I need you now. Explanation point. And if you're not, then go away and leave me alone.

That is such a crazy prayer. It doesn't even make sense. And the Holy Spirit showed up in a mighty way. And I became an ardent follower of Jesus at that time. Now, like all of us, we got ups and downs and doing little arounds, but that was really an important point for me.

Martha: That's such a beautiful story, and I love the fact that you make sure to interject that, we love the ability to have places as children to be learning about Jesus and having that constantly influenced into our lives. So thank you for sharing that story.

So we had the pleasure of meeting you for the first time face to face back in 2017, and at that point, we just had such a delightful introduction to each other, but, we thought my goodness, maybe you might even be the governor of North Dakota someday. But God has had some amazing plans for you. What path has he taken you on over these last several years as you have been serving North Dakota specifically?

Danita Bye: I want to back up a bit and talk about what God was doing to form me and even get me interested in serving. One of the first ones was a I'll call it a video series by Del Tackett called The Truth Project. And that, for me, helped to give me a framework about, a biblical framework about how family, church, government comes into play and what their spheres are and very clearly what happens when one sphere wants to take over the other spheres.

So that was a high impact for me. About that same time I was also listening to Eric Metaxas' Bonhoeffer book. And I'm like going, wow, there are some things here that are becoming strangely familiar. And am I going to sit on the sidelines? So those, so those were a couple of things.

And then the other thing that happened is I was, I took a course for conservative female voices. I was still in Minnesota at the time. I took a course and I found out, Oh, there are others who have the same passion as me that want to serve. That was a 12 month class. And the last class was something that finally sparked in me, and I can do that.

And I think this is Important for all of us to know. The instruction was look at the boards and commissions in your city, your county, your state. They are always desperate for people to serve on boards and commissions. And that's a place to get your feet wet to be able to learn the system, learn the people.

So I moved to North Dakota. The first thing I did when I got my computer set up was look for boards and commissions, found the one that fit for me, and went for it. And then, once you get in and begin serving and begin knowing, then other doors open.

Jim: We've had a little controversy between you and me, because, I say, Hey, we need more Christians to get involved in politics, and you say that people should get engaged civically. What's the difference? It seems like semantics.

Danita Bye: Thank you for your pushback, Jim, because

 (laughter)

Jim: it was so much work to find some way to push back...

Danita Bye: because I've been thinking, I've been thinking about the word. Is it civic engagement? Is it community engagement? Is it government engagement? For me, it has become civic engagement.

And I look at Jeremiah 29: 7, where the prophet tells the people to help Babylon prosper, that they would also prosper. And statistics would say that we're, we are a post Christian nation. And in light of that, it is still our role, I believe the Bible calls us as part of our role and responsibility to be able to serve and to help our community prosper.

I was visiting with someone about this upcoming interview and they said, Danita, how can we help our neighbor unless we are involved and engaged in the civic and civic slash government around us? Which includes school boards, city council, park boards, starting there and then branching out to state and federal government. So I don't think that answers your question, but..

Jim: No, it was like a really circular answer. You must be in politics because I asked one question and you gave me a civics lesson.

 (laughter)

Jim: But the bottom line is you're saying that as believers, everybody around us should be benefiting from our faith, whether they believe in Jesus or not. And especially we should be bringing flourishing through our involvement in civic organizations, including politics, getting elected to offices. And we're going to get back to that in just a second. Martha?

Martha: Yeah, so we've been talking about Christians and this whole idea of getting involved in things, and it really brings up another thought about how we navigate as believers in a broken world. We know that there are a lot of companies out there that directly oppose our biblical standards yet we all continue to utilize their services because it's convenient.

So we have recently identified several services that our audience needs and have found kingdom solutions for them. And I encourage you to go to the sponsor page on our website to learn more about these solutions and to connect with these organizations today. Just go to iWork4Him. com forward slash sponsors to learn more about some of the things that God's revealed to us and we want to share with you.

Jim: All right. So Danita, is it okay for Christians to be involved in politics? To be involved civically, to be civically engaged, whatever you want to call it, just lay it out.

Danita Bye: Absolutely. Now, what I thought might be interesting, I'm going to pull up my notes on this are the yes, and there are different ways that people show up. And I also want to give God room that when people show up differently, that's okay. I have seven type of Christians that I have seen involved and all of these people are people who have run for an office and have won. So number one, someone who is a biblically grounded statesman.

Jim: Okay.

Danita Bye: And they typically, although they get hit by the media, they they often will have positive regard across the place.

Jim: Can you give us an example? That's nice. Can you give us an example in current today of a biblically grounded statesman?

That hesitation was pretty significant, by the way.

 (laughter)

Danita Bye: So obviously across the country at least, so we have legislative session every two years ago. You've got critical race theory that has invaded our schools, our educational system. And he sponsored a bill that put some boundaries on critical race theory. He didn't scream about it. He didn't holler about it. He presented facts.

Jim: Who was that? Who was that?

Danita Bye: It was not me.

Jim: No, i'm like give me a name. Come on! Okay, you don't want to give names. All right.

Danita Bye: I'm gonna go through these archetypes.

Jim: Okay, go ahead Give us the archetypes.

Danita Bye: Yeah number two is someone who's biblically grounded, but they can get shrill at times. And when they get shrill, I believe they lose their influence. Number three a guy who calls himself a Christian but is easily swayed and will appease anyone he's speaking with. They call themselves a Christian.

Another one is loud, brash, unspoken, outspoken, judgmental, unwilling to listen, learn. They call themselves a Christian but their entire testimony gets undermined by their behavior. Here's another one. The sixth archetype is someone who says church is for Sunday and I don't let it interfere with the rest of my week.

And then the seventh one is someone who calls themselves a Christian and believes that government has taken the place of the church and therefore government should be serving the poor. So it's when we talk about Christians and politics all of these people would call themselves Christians in politics.

I want to aspire personally to be the first one that I mentioned. Someone who's biblically grounded, who's full of truth and full of grace wise and bold at the same time.

Martha: You actually bring up a really great point, which is really the basis of iWork4Him in our conversation, Jim, on the radio, because when we started understanding that our workplace was our mission field, Jim would run into people that would be like I'm a Christian. You should do business with me. And he'd be shaking them and saying, don't tell people you're a Christian if you're going to act the way I saw you act in the parking lot with your customer that you were mad at or whatever. So you're exactly right.

Jim: It's true. I really did that.

Martha: To just say blanket, if you're a Christian, does it necessarily mean you're showing all of the godly characters characteristics that he wants us to have? And so what a great point. Don't just go into it. Don't just decide to serve and not do it in a way that's going to be God honoring. So let's try to be that number one as we have this conversation to be a biblically grounded statesman in all that we do.

Jim: So let me just come right at it, so we're saying it's okay for Christians to be involved in politics. Is it mandated by scripture that we be involved, civically engaged or involved in politics, involved in the government, the things that run our cities and our counties and our states and our country? Is it mandated by scripture that we get involved?

Danita Bye: I believe it. So I'm a little I don't know about the word mandate.

Jim: Oh, wait a minute. Do you not think it's part of the cultural mandate?

Danita Bye: But I do believe that it's an incredible stewardship responsibility of ours to help our nation flourish, to love our neighbor and to be able to serve in this way, to be a steward of the incredible gift that we've been given of a constitutional republic.

People have fought for the freedoms that we enjoy for at least 700 years before our country was formed. And for us to not appreciate the incredible gift that we've been given is I guess I don't know the right word for it, but it's an incredible gift. And that we need to step up the plate and steward that gift and so that we can pass it on to our nation.

And it is indeed a gift. If we don't have a constitutional republic, if we move to some other forms of government, you have Venezuela that had a flourishing economy and within 10 years is bankrupt, all because of the government. And this what government is supposed to be doing. And that takes me back in my mind as I say that I think about the truth project. And the different, how God has designed the family and the church and civic government and the other spheres of influence.

Martha: Okay so a couple things I want to let our listeners know as I take a little pause here. Danita, you have gone on an incredible learning journey that God has brought you to this point, and I want our listeners to know that I'm going to put a list of resources that you've given me in the show notes so people can dig into the Truth Project and the different things that you were referring to, and that we may not even get to, so that they can dig into this a little later on their own and say, Lord, what is it that you want for me to do with this information?

So I wanted to put that out there. So let's assume that we're going to talk for a minute about the biblically grounded statesman Christian. What kinds of positive things have you seen as a result of them getting involved?

Danita Bye: Some of the things that I've seen are for our Children. There's a movement going on right now: don't mess with our kids. That is a grassroots movement, and that energy, I believe, also feels our legislators. So we have protection for our children. We have protection for our families. Who owns our children? Does the state own our children? Or do the, the parents have the stewardship responsibility for the children? So that's a couple of places that I see. One of the resources that we'll be in a link is a book called well versed. Jim Garlow. Oops. I'm not sure I get this in.

Martha: If you're watching the video She's holding it up. But yes

Danita Bye: One of the things, so a well versed biblical answers to today's tough issues and he's got a section on what does the Bible say about religion in the public square? What does the Bible say about family and life issues? What does the Bible say about economics, law, and society? I actually have distributed this to many of North Dakota's lawmakers and it's actually been distributed around the world, as a place when you're struggling... what does the Bible say about issue? It's an encyclopedia.

Jim: And I'm sure that Jim Garlow thinks that religion in public square or anywhere else is useless, but the power of the Holy Spirit living inside believers, impacting the world around them, that's what we need. We don't need any more religion That's what we're dealing with right now in this country. We've got a progressive religion that is destroying our country. It's a religion that we're dealing with today.

We're talking about the positive and negative things we see in politics when christians get involved. It's such an interesting conversation and one we often need to have because Christians need to get more involved. We are all sinners saved by grace and one way to protect our nation in our situations is to really commit this nation and the people that we work with to prayer.

The iWork4Him Nation has some very helpful steps to help you put this into action and how you can be intentional living out your faith in your workplace go to iWork4Him. com forward slash join the nation and really get in touch with what changed our lives, which launched the ministry of iWork4Him.

Danita, we're running out of time. This is a conversation that could go on for a long time, but I really wanted to talk about christian nationalism. Because that's something that, some term the media made up about how evil christians could be in support of our nation, but we don't have time for that. You are currently a public servant that is serving in a role appointed by the governor of your great state of North Dakota and confirmed by the Senate. How else might you serve the state of North Dakota or the nation? How has God been using you in North Dakota and how else do you think God's going to use you going forward?

Danita Bye: The first thing is that I do believe my current assignment is in the current role that I am. So it's important to me to humbly hear and to courageously obey in this public sphere, which is difficult. And there's mounting and horrendous issues that we need to face. So that's number one. That is my current role. Number two is I'm starting to get involved in higher ed in more of a national basis. And so I'm exploring, where are the people of peace and where to, where do those relationships seem to be?

And then number three there's an incredible, for the last six months, an incredible resource that I've been involved in has been offered by the Heritage Foundation, and it's called Project 2025, and it's a series of classes that would help prepare people who feel like there might be a role for them in the future when there's a conservative president.

Martha: Which is so huge, and I want to make sure we get that information to our listeners as well, Danita. I'm just thinking about the listener right now that's listening, and I want you to speak directly to them about how do they discern? How do they know if they're being called to get civically engaged or to help in running this very country, the city, wherever they may live and whatever that may be, how do they know? Speak to them about that calling.

Danita Bye: There's lots of books and resources up on there about, how to hear what the Holy Spirit is directing and where it's leading. I think one is to look at yourself, to watch yourself about the things that you become interested in and then to be able to take that before the Lord. Also along with that is to look at the people, the believers, the Christ followers that are in your network. What are they saying? What kind of affirmation are you having? And then, one of the things that's been so incredible for me is to have a a prayer team and an intercessor team.

I was into serving on the North Dakota State Board of Higher Ed about a year. And I just, I was at my ropes end. Am I making any impact at all? And call this lady. I didn't know her very well, but I knew that she was a prayer warrior, a prayer intercessor, and I started to kind of unload, paint the scenario, and we're like 90 seconds into it, and she said, Stop, Danita. Has the Holy Spirit told you to abandon the ship yet? And I said, No, I'm frustrated. I don't feel like I'm really making a difference, but I haven't heard any clear word from the Holy Spirit.

She said, You stay there until you hear that word. So that was, that helped to clear some of the debris away. And so just to have that prayer support team that is with you and encouraging you along the way.

Jim: And just as Danita heard those words stay until you're told to go, many of you have been told to go and you've been staying. And we desperately need you, but do not kid yourselves listeners. As each one of us engages civically in this country, make sure you are biblically grounded and that you have prayer warriors around you because you want to be a number one on that list of seven that Danita talked about. And we have way too many two through sevens. We need people who are grounded, who cannot be moved by the enemy, who cannot be bribed into compromise.

We need to be serving the Lord. Get out of debt, live humbly, so that the money can't twist you. Danita, we're out of time, but I'm going to give you the last words. Any final thoughts for our listeners?

Danita Bye: The final thought is that I believe that our nation is at a critical crossroad. I would recommend reading Letters to the American Church by Eric Metaxas. When you take a look at what's happening on college campuses as well as throughout our country in many mountains, you realize that it's important for us to be salt and light and to make a difference wherever we are. My dad has a favorite comment, which is the rules are made by those who show up.

It's true. Isn't it? And then here's what I have taped to my computer. I'm gonna tear it. It says - this is not from the Bible. It's from Plato, but I think the Bible and Plato agree. It says, if you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.

Jim: Pretty sure he got that from Solomon. Pretty sure. Danita Bye, thank you so much for being on iWork4Him today, for sharing from your heart. Again, a lot of things in the notes today. Make sure you check out the show notes. We're so grateful. Danita, thanks for being with us today.

Danita Bye: Thank you for the invitation.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace is our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.

5/1/24 - 2040: The Christian Woman Resource You've Been Waiting For

Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.

Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: You and I may not even realize it, but we try to put God in a box and label it sacred. The creator of the universe does not neatly fit into a compartment that we've made. How silly it is for us to even try, but we do. We call the compartment sacred, but the truth is God doesn't live in that box. He lives inside each one of us that have committed our lives to him, and we carry him around with us everywhere we go, whether people want him there or not.

All of life is sacred when God is involved, including, and especially our work, or should I say on this show, especially our work. Our guest today is Peggy Bodde, founder and author of Sacred Work, which released just a month ago. Peggy Bodde, Welcome to iWork4Him.

Peggy Bodde: Thank you, Jim and Martha. It's awesome to be here with you guys, especially because we've had time in person together. That makes a huge difference.

Jim: It's a rare thing for us to actually have in person time with a guest.

Martha: Especially before we do the interview. It's just great. And we are really excited to have you on the show today. We want to start with you just sharing with us your Jesus story.

Peggy Bodde: I would love to share that. I think it's the best part of my story. So I became a follower of Jesus against all odds. And I say that because as a baby, I was adopted into an abusive home where we went to church at least three times a week and both parents were involved in church.

So on the outside, we were a very typical middle class family, no drug or alcohol use. Everything was neat and tidy on the outside, but the inside was a different story. So as you can imagine, Christianity was very confusing to me as a kid. What I was learning in Sunday school didn't match what was happening inside our home.

And I even remember being in fourth grade and having this argument with my Sunday school teacher because she said, God is your protector and once you accept Jesus as your savior, he's never going to leave you. And I just said flat out did not believe her. So it's only by God's grace that I never doubted that he existed.

I just didn't trust him. And I didn't believe that he loved me. So my adoptive parents put me out when I was 13. And there was no foster care involved. But God made a safe way for me through different families until I finally ended up with Jim and Kathy Brown. And I saw Jesus in them in such a big way.

They unconditionally loved me. They accepted me. They believed me. And they had nothing to gain by taking me in. They already had five kids. Yeah, so obviously that made a huge impression on me, but I wasn't ready to surrender and trust Jesus just yet. So the years went on and I continued to have these conversations with God about my childhood and he just faithfully pursued me and healed me from my past and he loved me into a personal relationship with him. So it was a long, messy process, but. I think that's the beauty of grace.

Jim: It is the beauty of grace, and I appreciate you sharing that story. And we're grateful for the Browns because their impact on your life, that's why you're here today. Huge. Peggy, you spent many years in corporate America as a leader and as a single mom at the same time, which that's two full time jobs at the same time. Tell us about the tension you felt about your work and your faith, especially when you looked at other Christian working women.

Peggy Bodde: I think the tension I felt about my work and faith as a Christian woman can be summed up in one experience, which happened at a social event with people from my church years ago.

And that event is when that tension you were just talking about, Jim, reached its peak for me. So like you mentioned, I was a single mom, corporate leader. And at these social events, I always felt uncomfortable because I just felt like I didn't fit in. And, the men and women congregated in different areas and the men would talk about work.

I could overhear their conversations and the women were talking about what was important in their lives. So many were stay at home moms or they worked part time or they volunteered at the church or they homeschooled. So all of those things are wonderful but that was not the space that I lived in. So when they were talking about homeschool curriculum and the latest outreach programs at church, I was way more comfortable talking about hiring challenges and supply chain issues. So there I sat, feeling like a square peg in a round hole. And on this particular day, I received comments like, I'm really sorry you have to work and you can't stay at home with your daughter, or I hope your job slows down so you can volunteer at church more.

And then there was the big one, God gifted you as a leader. Why don't you do something that matters like working in ministry or missions? None of these women had any bad intentions. But Satan saw my vulnerability and so my doubts flared and I just felt less than, as a mom, as a Christian and as a leader and that insecurity just kept replaying those words over and over.

So I basically left early from that social event and I had these big question marks around all the important parts of my life. So that scene is when the faith and work tension I felt throughout a chunk of my career really came to a head.

Martha: So how did you go about overcoming those doubts, especially in the space of you being a leader, which you are?

Peggy Bodde: God used that scenario that I just described because not long after that, I was praying. I was laboring in prayer, over these doubts because I couldn't shake them. They had stacked up and that feeling of not being enough in all the big areas of my life just weighed on me. So I was praying and I said, God, I know you're disappointed in me and my career choice.

Maybe people were right. How can I possibly make a difference for you? As a leader in the workplace, maybe I've even misunderstood my calling as a leader and then suddenly the Holy Spirit interrupted me and he said, Who are you listening to? Because it's not me. And that was my turning point.

And that's when I realized, like you said at the beginning, Jim, that God doesn't live inside a compartment labeled sacred. He lives in us. And we carry the sacredness that comes from him everywhere we go, including the workplace.

Jim: It is amazing how many times we've heard people express that perspective, that why don't you take your giftings and go use it for God in a church or on the mission field?

And it's false theology that everybody's been preaching. In fact, we just found out that the United States of America and that kind of false theology has impacted the world. Because we were talking to friends in Pakistan who were like that's what we learned from the Western church, that the most sacred thing is to quit your job and go work on a church. No. No. God gave you those giftings to impact the marketplace so that people who don't know Jesus can meet Jesus

Okay, Peggy i'm gonna step back off that soapbox. Thank you. I could preach it but this is your show, not ours. Peggy just shared about her doubts as a leader and we can all have doubts about things in our lives, but Martha and I want to point you to a resource that can take away doubt, especially the doubt about our cyber security.

We don't want to be doubting the quality of our protection. SaferNet's the tool that we use at iWork4Him and at home to help us know that we are protected with the power of a virtual private network, internet controls, website controls, virus protection - All in one app. Stay safe online. SaferNet. com. That's SaferNet. com.

Martha: Peggy, I am loving this journey as we just talk about how God has been intertwined in so many areas of your life. He led you to make a career change and actually then start a foundation. As a successful female leader, how did you handle that transition? Because that is a big one.

Peggy Bodde: That is a big one. And one of the things I love about God is that he doesn't waste any work experiences. He always builds on every one of those experiences to prepare us for the next big thing. So in my case, he gave me decades of business experience and opportunities to lead companies through big changes. So I was able to use those same skills and that same experience to change careers. And to start my foundation. So even though I was switching from corporate to entrepreneurship, the business basics, as you guys know, were the same. I followed a lot of the same steps, the basics like making a business plan, setting goals, establishing a budget.

And then to minimize risk, which is something I also learned about in corporate, I did freelance writing as a side gig for a year while I was still in corporate. And that was to make sure I could make a living at it. So God doesn't waste anything. He repurposes everything. So I was able to take those skills and experience from corporate and repurpose them to pivot careers and start my foundation.

Martha: So let's talk about that foundation. It's called Sacred Work. And what does that, what does Sacred Work even mean to you?

Peggy Bodde: To me, Sacred Work is a reminder that we are image bearers of a God Who works so of course our work matters to him. And I see us as a people set apart for his service and that service includes our work because God sees the whole picture and the whole person, and every part of us is important to him and used by him and that includes our work.

Jim: And that work is meant to bring about flourishing in our lives That's what the garden was all about.

We talk about this all the time, but the garden was about people physically flourishing the work that we got to do plus the eating that we got to do from all the trees. And then spiritually flourishing by walking with the Lord and the work brings fulfillment.

Peggy, when you meet people that don't, that aren't working, but they should be, do they seem satisfied to you? No, they seem just, they're a disaster! All right. So let's, okay. That was just a side little sermon right there again. So what's the role of the foundation that you're running?

Peggy Bodde: Sacred Word provides free leadership and career coaching for women. So unlike some organizations that have structured mentoring programs and curriculum, I help women deal with really specific problems and pain points that they're facing as leaders or in the workplace in general. So for example, a woman might come to me with a specific issue, like wanting to change careers like I did, or negotiating a raise, or she might be dealing with a difficult boss or coworker. So I help her get to the other side of that problem.

Martha: I love that, Peggy. With you as a writer, you are so concise, and you say things so beautifully, and I just, I love listening to you explain, because you really know what God has given you to go, to do, and walking out that lane.

When we met over two years ago, you were just headed to Moody Publishers to do a final pitch for your book. And I interviewed you for our podcast, sheWorks4Him, and we have really exciting news, because on April 2nd, your book, titled Sacred Work, was released. And Jim and I are both holding it up so anybody that's watching on YouTube can see the books.

So let's talk about that. Why did you write the book Sacred Work?

Peggy Bodde: So before I answer that question, I just want to thank you both for encouraging me through this book journey. You guys have been with me from the beginning, so I just want to say thank you. It means the world to me.

Martha: It's our pleasure and you have traveled that journey so beautifully. It's been fun to watch.

Peggy Bodde: Thank you again. And as far as why I wrote the book There is a pattern in my life where God calls me to be for others what was or is missing from my own life. So I remember seasons during my corporate career when I prayed so earnestly for Christian business mentors, specifically a woman who could understand my experiences at work, but also how it felt to be in the faith community as a female leader in the workplace.

So I kept praying about this, but there was no one. And I remember going to Barnes and Noble and asking the associate there for the section on Christian women in leadership. And the sales associate pointed me to this little tiny shelf with a few books on how to lead church ministries. So I went back and I said, okay, what about any books written by Christians on leadership?

So the sales associate took me back to a bigger row of books, all written by John Maxwell. I still have a lot of those in my collection. But as a Christian woman, business leader, I couldn't find myself in any bookstore, and over time that's changed, but progress has been really slow.

So when I had the chance to enter a book proposal contest three years ago, the Holy Spirit specifically called me to write the book I wish I would have had when I worked in corporate.

Jim: Oh, I like that. I like that a lot. That's good.

Martha: Knowing exactly that the Holy Spirit called you to do that. I love it. So it's exciting when we see a big project come to life. And God started working on the message of sacred work long before it ever became a book. You know that's much like it is with the products that we tell you about here on iWork4Him. Years ago, God started showing believers a need to do business differently than the world, and one of those resulted in Patriot Mobile. It's a cellular company dedicated to family, faith, and freedom.

We ourselves love Patriot Mobile, and I'm sure you will too, so just go to PatriotMobile. com Forward slash, iWork4Him and see how easy it is to switch your phones to a company that you can believe in and know that they are giving their profits to causes that you believe in, like iWork4Him.

It's simple. We made the switch and we have never looked back. That's PatriotMobile.com/iWork4Him.

Jim: Peggy, I want to go off track for a moment. .

Martha: Of course you do.

Jim: I do. Well, you're the one that said, Jim, I thought you were so serious. When we did that sheWorks4Him interview, I thought you were so serious. But I actually realized, yeah. All right. So there's a lot of women out there going, Peggy, that's my story. There's so many Christian working women out there who don't feel affirmed in their work, who feel like they're alone, who feel like, why do they hold all the women Bible studies at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday morning? I've got a job.

Martha: Do we sound like that?

Jim: Yeah. When you're frustrated. Yeah. When you're frustrated. Yeah.

Okay. So Peggy, this is something we need to help the church to understand. The church as a whole, the big C church. How have you done working with your local Body of Christ to help them understand what you do all day long?

Peggy Bodde: There's a couple of ways to, that I've approached that and one is what I was alluding to before in God calling me to be what's missing from my own life. So I have tried to be in a leadership position as far as Bible studies and speaking into the space of faith and work. For women. I think that's one of the things that can be tough, is that as women, it might be easy to sit back and say I wish the church would do something. I wish they would have a Bible study later. I wish they would do a Bible study that's about things that I'm interested in.

But what we have to do is we have to be pioneers. So what I've tried to do is step into that space and say, okay, this doesn't exist. What can we do to create it? How can we work together to serve the working women of the church? I would say that's my biggest recommendation. It's the one that takes women out of their comfort zone in a big way, but it's so worth it. Pray about it. And if it's missing and God wants you to fill that space, step up and fill it.

Martha: Such good challenge and encouragement. I want to talk about your book, Peggy, because I think the reader needs to, or the listener needs to become a reader of the book, but needs to understand a few things.

And one of the things that I want to highlight is I love your writing style. You are and I say this because it's so powerful, you are easy to read. Not that it's, not - it's deep, it's thoughtful, it has everything, but your style is just, I love it because it's not difficult to plow through and learn this stuff.

You also set your book up as a reference. I feel like it's you can go to the chapters and say, Oh man, there's a chapter called When You Fail. Okay. Wow. That sounds like something I need to read. So although reading the whole book is a very good idea, then later being able to go back and say, okay, what did Peggy say about, when I got passed over for a promotion? What can I go back to? So I love this. The way you've set it up, the way you've written it. Talk to the listener. Who did you write this for? Who are you hoping actually picks up the book and reads it and then keeps it on their shelf?

Peggy Bodde: Even though men have told me they benefited from reading the book, I wrote Sacred Work specifically for Christian working women and leaders.

And it's structured the way you described Martha, because I know that working women are pressed for time and that even though an in person mentor is ideal, that's not always available or accessible. So the book functions like a pocket sized mentor. It in those standalone chapters that you were just describing, they target the most challenging issues women face in the workplace.

So it mirrors what I do in the foundation. When a woman is faced with a challenge or problem, she can open up the table of contents and then flip to the issue she wants help with, She can go to the directly to that chapter. It saves her time. She can focus on solving the problem that she's facing at work right then.

Jim: I love it. I hope that this book inspires millions of christian working women out there to realize the significance of the work and that it's okay that they work and that their calling matters to the marketplace, that we need them out there living their faith out, at the same time being a mom, being a wife, whatever the situation may be. I'd like you to talk to these listeners, the ones that are listening to this interview, what's one thing you hope that they can hear from your heart today? And that they can hear from your heart inside the book sacred work?

Peggy Bodde: So, I want to speak specifically to the women, the working women who are listening, and say that even though people sometimes put us into categories and compartments, as our Creator, God does not need to do that. He sees you as a whole being created in His image and every part of you is valued by Him, including your work.

Jim: She does really good with those snippets, doesn't she?

Martha: She does. The sound bites. I've always said so. Little side note, Peggy writes textbooks, like that's her business. She is a writer for textbooks. And I've always said, if I could go back to school and know that I was going to get the textbooks that Peggy writes, that I probably would learn more.

Peggy Bodde: You guys are so kind. Thank you.

Jim: Peggy Bodde dot com. PeggyBodde.com. That's where you can find out more about Peggy. Probably, can you find out something about the book out there too, on PeggyBodde.com?

Peggy Bodde: Yes. Of course. There is information on the book on my website.

Jim: All right. Peggy Bodde, thanks for being on iWork4Him today. Thanks for sharing your story. Thanks for sharing your life with us and for being a friend. We're grateful. Thanks, Peggy.

You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, It's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him!

4/24/24 - 2039: Be the Answer to the Foster Care Crisis

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.

Martha: And we are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: When Martha and I launched iWork4Him in 2013. God launched it. Her dad, Ted Hains came up to me and said, Jim, I get the whole iWork4Him thing. I did that, but I don't iWork4Him anymore. iRetire4Him.

That one conversation launched a whole new brand that Martha and I steward called iRetire4Him. Over the last several years we've released over 110 podcasts under that name with my 82 year old co host Bruce Bruinsma from the retirement reformation. We have covered a host of topics related to living out our faith in our retirement. We say: When you retired, your calling didn't retire. If you have a pulse, you have a purpose. And if you're not dead, you're not done.

The whole premise behind iRetire4Him is recognizing that retirement isn't a 30 year vacation before you die. It's another phase in life where you have the freedom to pour your life into a place where you're passionate without worrying about the paycheck.

Today we wanted to draw your attention to our iRetire4Him podcast and to engage a whole new generation of workers to this idea and present a possible way you could spend your life energy and service to the kingdom during those retirement years. Cindy King comes back to us today from the Keystone Family Alliance.

She's here today to give us an introduction to retirement, to wrap around grandparenting. Welcome back, Cindy.

Cindy King: Thank you very much

Jim: You know when we got to spend time with you last year late last year and sharing time at your church and sharing time with people that are quote unquote retired at your church, we had so much fun. And we want to say thank you for hosting us. It was fun. Just to see all of those prepping for retirement and living in retirement going. I love this. There's purpose for us in retirement. And we don't talk a lot about retirement on iWork4Him because it's iWork4Him, but it's good for people to know. Hey, we're not done when we get to retire. In fact that retirement thing not biblical and it's pretty much an american thing, a western thing for sure.

But, Cindy, as we talked a couple of weeks ago about the state of the foster system in the united states and really the tough shape that it's in, why don't you just give a review for our listeners that maybe missed that podcast a couple weeks ago? What did you tell us about the state of the foster system?

Cindy King: So the state of the foster system is that first of all, the government does not make a great parent. So that, that should tell us a lot right there. Caseworkers, they're overworked, they're burnout, they're walking into some very difficult situations. We need our caseworkers to stay in the job. We need them to have consistency for the kids. But I think the biggest thing that we always talk about is the lack of families, the lack of foster families. And the fact that foster families turn over so quickly.

So we know that 50 percent of foster parents are going to quit before the first year. 90 percent will not continue past the second year. And that's not saying that these are bad people. It's not saying that they were not supposed to step into fostering. It's saying that this is a difficult calling as we talked about last time. And they feel alone. They feel unsupported. And they just can't continue.

Martha: Which is just so amazing because they actually spend a lot of time becoming foster parents. So this whole process to go out of it so quickly is so heartbreaking because they've invested a lot of time and their own energy in becoming licensed and doing all those proper things.

So one of the things that you really focused on was becoming a foster parent or adopting a child is an overwhelming effort. And not every day, but many of the days that is the case. And you mentioned in our previous podcast that there is one solution that could offer help and encouragement for those new families that might be entering the foster system. And we alluded to that a little bit. Tell us what that is.

Cindy King: Yeah, so I just said that 50 percent will not continue past the first year, 90 percent will not continue past the second year. We can flip that statistic if we can do one thing, if we can put a structured team of people around that foster family. Here in Pennsylvania with Keystone Family Alliance, we call them care communities. I know you call them wraparound grandparenting, but putting a team of people around to support, to pray for, to encourage and to actually do some work to help that family, 90 percent will continue past the second year.

Jim: All right. So tell us about the role of this care team. Like we said, wraparound grandparenting, that was the idea for the retired folks, but obviously the care team doesn't have to be retired or grandparent age. Tell us about that care team. What are some of the things that they do?

Cindy King: Yeah, so we use trainings and the system that has been created by an organization called Promise Serves, and that team has at least four to five people on it, and we really should say units because it can be an individual, a couple, a family, and the structured part of it is that one person on that team serves as the team leader, and the purpose there is that foster parents already have a lot of things they need to do.

They need to schedule extra doctor's appointments and therapy appointments, and they have to figure out the schooling situations. If a child has just come into their home, maybe from a different school district, they have to plan visits, and they have to coordinate how they're going to get to those visits, and As we talked about last time, because of the lack of foster families, sometimes those children's families are outside of the county or farther away, so they might have to travel.

So all the things that they already have to do. Then we're going to add, we don't want to add, having to stay in touch with the team. So the team leader's job is to stay in touch with the foster parent, connect with them weekly or every other week, and then go back to the team and say, here's how we can pray for this family, and here are the needs.

Somebody else on that team is going to agree to be a mentor to the child. So that can be as unique as the child and as the mentor. I have one care community that the mentor is an educator. So she shows up once a week for homework help and mentoring. Sometimes that person helps with transportation, but they also know that their role is, while they're driving to and fro, to be mentoring the child.

As we talked about last time, the research tells us it just takes one caring adult, but what if there's two or more? So there's the foster parent and now there's the mentor. We ask that somebody in the group do whatever they need to do to be able to provide child care for the foster children in the home.

So with some agencies, that might mean that they need to have their clearances. They might have to do some training so that they can be in the home and alone with the child. And then we ask that somebody on the team make sure that family gets one meal a week on the night of the family's choosing.

So if they say they want it on Thursdays, then every Thursday night that family is going to get a meal provided. It can be delivered, it can be homemade, it can be bought, it can be whatever that looks like. And what we tend to find is that the roles are not as distinct. It might be that everybody on the team takes a turn so that they're only making one meal a month, or maybe a couple people are providing child care together, or I know some situations where it might be a special event and the whole team shows up and they pay for the family to go out, for the parents to go out to dinner for a date night, while they all watch the children at home.

So it can be, there are so many creative ways to support a family, but it's that team leader who's making the connection and coordinating things. So if they call and they, and the foster mom says, you know what, we've had a really busy week with appointments and we've had a lot of challenging behaviors. We've not been able to get outside to mow. Then maybe that team might show up one day that week and mow the lawn for them. They can do so many things to serve the family.

Jim: What I love about that is that you're talking about the church being the church to the family And you're really, you're not putting that burden on one person. You're having a group of people, as you call them, a care team. What I love about the fact is we talked about a lot on iRetire4Him, and we do talk about this a lot on iRetire4Him, is that the reason we call it wraparound grandparenting is that retired people have time, when they're not playing pickleball and tennis and looking for seashells or golf, they've got time.

They've got time to come babysit. They've got time to provide an extra meal. They got time to do road trips, to take kids to appointments or whatever. They've got time and flexibility to make that life as a foster parent or a newly adopted parent a lot easier so that it's a doable thing. Cindy, when, a care team comes alongside somebody that's fostering, how did the numbers change from 50 percent getting out of the first year and 90 percent getting out by the second year? If you wrap a care team around them, how does that change the numbers?

Cindy King: So it changes that second year number at that 90 percent will continue past the second year.

Jim: It flips it on its head.

Cindy King: Flips it on its head. Yeah. And the other area where it's so important, then we're seeing this more and more across the country, and that is kinship care. Kinship care is a little different than foster parenting in that a grandparent might get a call one day saying, Hey, we have your grandkids here in custody. You either take them or they're going into the foster care system.

So here we have people that didn't feel a calling for a couple of years, and didn't go through the training, and they were not prepared for this. But it was a one day phone call. This can be grandparents, it can be aunts and uncles. I know here in Pennsylvania, across the state, 30 to 40 percent of grandparents are raising their grandchildren. So yeah. And we have, obviously some counties are a little higher, but that, yeah, that statistic was astonishing to me that it's that high. But there's two main reasons. And one is the opioid crisis and the other is incarceration.

And the amount of times that they'll come out and go back in, we just don't have good programs here to help rehabilitate so that they can come out and be able to parent so that, that population really has my heart because.... so they have a choice. They can sometimes go through the foster care system, which has its own pros and cons but if they're not through the foster care system, then there is nothing for them. And so we really need to wrap around them and support them and walk alongside of them.

Jim: So training, to be part of that care team, to be part of, be a wraparound grandparent or - Is there training? I mean does keystone family alliance provide that training? Or does the state provide? Who's providing that training?

Cindy King: So through Pennsylvania's Keystone Family Alliance, that training is, there's a couple different parts to it. Because we work mostly through the local church. We would, so let's say we have a foster family that is really struggling, or even they've just started their journey, and we say, great, we want to support you, we want to help you do this longer and stronger. So we're going to help get a care community around you.

So we'll go to the church and we will ask them to find somebody that we call the advocate. And that person is going to go through a training that it's several hours long. So there's some training they're going to do on their own at home, watching some videos, answering some questions. And then there's some training they're going to do that's virtually I think one or two evenings a week, and that gives them the skills they need to create the care communities and, help them continue, gives them access to resources and a website. Then under them, we have the care communities.

And so anybody that's going to be on a care community goes through a one hour training. And we either do them virtually through our website. You can register there. So we do them virtually, usually once a month, or if a county coordinator, so we work at the county level, if the county coordinator has several families that are ready to go to be on a care community, then they can just, they can go to the church and they can train them there.

So yeah, there's about, it's about a one hour and 15 minute training. Yeah, talks about the foster care system. It talks about some challenges and some behaviors you might see. Talks about confidentiality. Talks about what kinds of clearances you might need to have and that kind of thing.

Martha: I love that you've put together training that really, it sounds like best practices, things that you may not know, or you need to be aware of to just launch these groups into the right direction. And, when we speak of training, there are certain things that I love to utilize so that I don't have to do the training for the things, that there are experts already out there that I don't have to, so I can use my time to learn other things. And one of those things is that we use SaferNet to protect our internet.

And SaferNet, dot com is the place where you can go and learn more about what they do, but there's so much that they do behind the scenes to protect us in our work. It doesn't require us to do any training. We just need to know how to use their service and allow their program to do the work for us. So check out SaferNet today and let them do the work for you. That's SaferNet. com

Jim: Love that. All right. So tell us a story. We're running out of time, but I want to make sure we cover some stuff here in the next 10 minutes. Give us a wraparound grandparent or a care team story of a success story.

Cindy King: I have a particular church that has a number of care communities in their congregation. I love their creativity in caring for families. So they will do some things like during the season. So let's say Halloween. Carving pumpkins can be a mess. So they will call the family and they will say, you know what, we're not going to make you clean up the mess. We're inviting you to one of the homes of the care community. Come to our place. The mess will be at our place. You get to take the pumpkins home afterward. We'll clean up. We'll provide the snacks. We'll help wrangle the kids during the activity. We're going to do this together.

Christmas, either if you like to wrap gifts, we'll come and take the kids somewhere so that you can wrap gifts. If you don't like to wrap gifts, we'll show up and wrap the gifts, and we'll give you a gift card so you can take the kids somewhere else for the evening. There are just some really creative things like that. I also say to people, we're not asking you to learn a new skill to be on a care community. What is it that you're already doing?

And with the wraparound grandparenting idea, what I love with that is, you talked about having time, but they also have experience. What is it that you can bring to that mentoring relationship? Or, I know somebody who in his retirement, he enjoys doing yard work and so he's on his own found some, I believe he does this for a lot of widows. He will do their yard work. What a great opportunity for him to also do this for foster families. So what is it you're already doing? What is it you love to do? And bring that into a care community. Bring that into wraparound grandparenting.

Jim: There are so many ways to show God's love. And this wraparound grandparenting idea, being part of a care team for somebody who's, for a family that has decided to go all in to being a foster family, it's such a great way to show God's love.

Another way that we know, or have learned to share with our listeners, is it's hard just to share one resource. But let me point you to the iWork4Him Power Thoughts. Every day iWork4Him produces a one minute radio program, goes out across the airwaves, but also gets put on your favorite podcast platform. And on our Facebook page. We'd love to just invite you to check out our iWork4Him PowerThoughts.

I found out just the other day that one of my friends that I've had, friends for 40 some years, every morning that's the first thing he listens to, the iWork4Him PowerThoughts. It's a challenge for your day for living out your faith at work.

Martha: It's a fun resource. So Cindy, do you think if we could raise up an army of wraparound grandparents in the United States that this foster system could be alleviated of the pressure that you were sharing with us earlier?

Cindy King: Oh, definitely could alleviate pressure. I think everybody that steps up alleviates pressure for one person, and if we each did that, yes, what a difference we could make.

Jim: How can our local church set up this kind of care team mentality? The mentality of, let's encourage fostering, but not, let's just raise up a couple families to foster. How do we raise up a dozen families to support two families fostering? How do you get that started? Because we're not in Pennsylvania, so we don't have you to help us out.

Cindy King: You can look because there are more of us out there in different states, but I think that, first of all, it starts from the pulpit with messages on the biblical mandate to care for vulnerable people.

And so if we can start there and we can also have conversations about living like Jesus. What did that look like? What was his life like? How, what did it look like as he would approach somebody or as he would meet with somebody? He would walk into the mess. He did not expect them to come to him. He came into our brokenness at Christmastime.

I think that's a perfect time to be talking about it. Or Easter. The fact that he gave his life and so we can give our time and our resources and our energy and we can give that even when it's messy. And so I think it starts there and then once there is a culture of service and caring for the vulnerable, then I think we can start to have conversations and bring people in, bring caseworkers in to talk about the, what it looks like in the foster care system and start to break some hearts.

And what we have found is that not only do care communities help the foster parents, but it is not unusual for somebody to be on a care team for a year or more and then say, you know what? I think I could do this fostering thing if I had a care team around me. So I'm going to take that next step into being a foster parent.

Martha: Wow, that's awesome to see how that infiltrates their lives in such a deeper way. That's just amazing. I love that. So let's talk about that just for another minute, because for the care team, the wraparound grandparents, tell us some of the things they're saying as they get involved, and they're reaping some benefits themselves that they may not have ever imagined.

Cindy King: First of all, their eyes are being opened. I think a lot of us, if you're not in the system, you have no idea. You have no idea the challenges within the system. You have no idea what that looks like when a family gets a call and then an hour later there's a child arriving at their door. We have a story of a family that got the call, three or four children showed up at the door. About the same time the children showed up, the care community showed up with a meal.

And for this particular care team member, he was new to being on the care team, and he drove in and saw these three kids who, wide eyed because what just happened to them. They don't know. They don't understand. It doesn't make sense. Here they are in this place they've never seen before. New people, new things, new house, new everything.

And so as he watched that unfold, his comment was actually, I feel like I'm not doing much at all. I'm just bringing a meal, but the family was able to say, Oh, you don't understand. This meal says to us: we're gonna make it. We can make it through the night. But then he was also able to say okay, so what else can I do? And in that particular situation they now had three kids that all needed to go to three different schools the next day. And so yeah, he started to help with transportation and by the time that family was no longer fostering that child, that man and his wife were starting the process to be foster parents.

Jim: That's fantastic.

Cindy King: The blessings are the usual ones of serving others. You find that the blessing is more yours or as much yours but also the blessings of walking into that calling that God has for you. There's just such joy there and more blessing as well.

Jim: The reason... I'm speaking to our listeners for a second, the reason we wanted to bring this up, we wanted to spend a couple of weeks talking about the foster system right now, is that it is in such a mess. And this is the calling of the church. And when the church stopped stepping up, the government had to kick in and the government doesn't quite do things as good as us as individuals can do. And it costs 15 times more. There's a desperate need. There are kids out there in every state desperately needing to be placed with families who love Jesus, who can love on them and eventually love them to Jesus.

That's not a guarantee, but it sure is a possibility. And we wanted to make sure that you guys saw that it wasn't just that you had to be a foster parent or an adoptive parent, but that you could wrap yourself around a foster parent or somebody that's recently adopted because somebody that's recently adopted, whether they adopted a foster child or somebody just adopted a new child, they need the same kind of care because it's a journey.

We've seen it as all of our kids have walked along the side of that. We just want to encourage you to get involved locally, get your church to start asking these questions. And if you need to ask more questions, just talk to Cindy at Keystone Family Alliance, Cindy at keyfam. org. You can send her an email or you could always get ahold of us and we'll connect you to Cindy, but please consider this.

This is a serious need in our country. And every one of us can answer this call. Cindy, you get the last one minute of the show. Any final thoughts, things you want to share with our audience before we say goodbye?

Cindy King: I just want to reiterate that we at key fam like to say everyone can do something. What's your something? We're not asking you to learn a new skill. We're not asking you to be trained in something that you have no interest in so that you can help a child. We're asking you, what do you already have in your hands? What experiences do you have? What gifts? What joys? What passions? And how can you bring that into the life of someone else to help them on their journey? And you'll find that your journey is better for it as well.

Martha: What is your something? So iWork4Him listeners, this is a challenge. You probably know somebody who is fostering right now or in an adoption situation that you can support them and lift them up today. What are you going to do? What's your something?

Jim: Thank you, Cindy King at keystone family alliance. Check her out online keyfam dot o r g. You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, It's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him!