Love Fort Wayne Podcast
The Love Fort Wayne podcast amplifies the stories of everyday people who are loving and leading in Northeast Indiana to spark imagination, root inspiration, and ignite transformation.
Love Fort Wayne Podcast
Building Resilience in Ministry with Glenn Packiam
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Glenn Packiam - pastor, author, lead researcher for Barna Group’s Resilient Pastor Initiative, and special guest for our upcoming Resilient Pastor Summit - as he shares his journey into ministry, the realities of today’s ministry climate, and faith-rooted strategies to sustain resilient ministry leaders. Drawing from his book The Resilient Pastor, Barna’s groundbreaking national study on pastoral resilience, and his personal journey, Glenn unpacks practical wisdom for navigating burnout, cultural shifts, and the unique pressures of spiritual leadership.
Pastors and church leaders, you can hear from Glenn at Love Fort Wayne’s Resilient Pastor Summit on Wednesday, November 5th in Fort Wayne, Indiana! This event will equip pastors and ministry leaders with tools rooted in Scripture and research to strengthen their leadership, deepen spiritual resilience, and find rest for their souls as they serve. Register now at lovefortwayne.com/resilient.
So many pastors they go, oh, I can't change anything. You don't understand. I'm stuck. And I want to say, you're not stuck. There may be a lot you can't control, but there are actually a lot of places where you can exercise your God-given agency and recalibrate your life so that you can actually grow stronger through the challenges that you're recovering from.
SPEAKER_03:Glenn, thank you so much for joining us for this podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much, Jeff and Mitch. Excited to talk to you guys today.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's gonna be great. And as always, I'm joined by my my friend Mitch Cruz. Mitch, how are we doing today? Wonderful. I got my Jeff King starter kit going on up here. I went the whole way. So uh for those who are listening and not watching, we're talking about our our twin bald heads. Oh yeah, there we go. So this is great, man. We uh Glenn, again, we're so glad that you're you're with us. And um uh for context for folks that are that are tuned in, you'll you'll be here in Fort Wayne at the beginning of November to equip and encourage our pastors as part of the Resilient Pastor Series and just the book and the series has been a blessing in my life and in the years that I've pastored and um and a blessing to many. And so thank you again for your willingness to to be here in just a matter of weeks to uh to bless our community and extended of Northeast Indiana.
SPEAKER_01:Uh it's a privilege.
SPEAKER_00:It's a privilege, and I'm so looking forward to the time together. I love pastors and I love these citywide uh gatherings. I think there's something really special when church leaders get in a room together, listen to one another, pray together, pray for each other. So I'm really looking forward to our time together.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's gonna be an amazing time. And I, you know, for folks that aren't familiar with you or or maybe are, can you can you talk a little bit about just your journey and you know what led you to pastoral ministry and worship and authoring and even encouraging pastors?
SPEAKER_00:I I grew up in Malaysia. That's where I'm from originally. And um, by the time my sister and I were born, my parents were both following Jesus. My dad actually started out as a Hindu. That was the kind of home he was raised in. He became a believer when he met my mom at the University of Singapore. And uh and early on, at an early age, I was profoundly moved by these stories of missionaries who who gave their whole life to follow the call of God. And so even while I was a child, like in children's ministry at our church growing up, I felt the sense of God's call, saying, Will you surrender your life? Will you follow me? And I'm I knew that meant not just in terms of follow him in discipleship, but actually in terms of my own vocation. And so I would say my first kind of sense of vocation was, yeah, I'll be a missionary, God, you know. Well, eventually our family would move to America for three years. My parents went to Bible college in the Pacific Northwest. We moved back to Malaysia, but I knew after my high school years, I was gonna come back to the States to go to college. And so when I did, I was studying for the ministry. I started started studied theology, but got really involved with the worship ministry at the uh Christian school that I went to in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And uh, and I kind of, you know, had the sense that, yeah, we're gonna do something. Um, but it was after those years that I got the invitation to join the team at a church in Colorado, Colorado Springs. And after a lot of prayer and discernment, said yes to that and began working and serving at that local church, primarily in the area of leading worship. And so then it was almost like the lens of calling got clicked one more layer into focus. It wasn't just serve me vocationally, but serve me vocationally via the local church. I I believe we served the Lord in a variety of different contexts and containers, but I began to fall in love with the local church in my early 20s. Um, and then it was, you know, by the my by my late 20s, and really in a weird way, it happened as the founding senior pastor of that church had a really public moral failure. And in the wake of kind of the scandal that rocked our church, I was in my late 20s by that point. It it shot me into this season of saying, God, what does it even mean to be a pastor? What does it even mean to be a local church? And so that set me on this beautiful, my wife and I on this journey of discernment of saying, you know what, we want to actually be um pastors in the fullest sense of it. We want to give our lives to caring for people, teaching, preaching, all of that. And so that that that you know fast-forwarded us through some other uh seasons of preparation, training, development, uh opportunities that I had at that local church, ended up planting a congregation from that church, which we led for about 10 years. And uh it was still connected. It was sort of part of the larger family of that church, family of congregations. And then from there, about three and a half years ago, God called us to Costa Mesa, to Orange County, to take the helm of this amazing church here called Rock Harbor Church. So that's the nutshell of the pastoral journey. Um, the the journey of caring for pastors kind of came somewhere along the way there, about five years ago, via the partnership with Barna of being invited into this resilient pastoral project. And what a privilege that's been. My doctoral research work involved, you know, kind of analyzing situations and then thinking theologically about what we've what we're seeing. And so I was able to apply, loosely speaking, apply that kind of approach to this uh uh calling to help pastors. We we did some deep dive data on the state of pastors, on the challenges pastors and church leaders are are facing. I got to have multiple conversations, and that all became part of writing the book, The Resilient Pastor, which is, you know, one part data, but like maybe five parts wisdom from the church history, from church history and from the church around the world and from the scriptures themselves. And so the last five years have been amazing because when the book came out in 2022, it's allowed me to be in several rooms with pastors all across America, Canada, the UK, Australia. And I'm I'm seeing so many of these same patterns and and trends and uh am even more passionate about this work that than before. It's beautiful.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I feel like we're in royalty here. You're a worship leader, you're a pastor, you're an author, you're a professor, and you have this amazing ministry to encourage other pastors. Can you unpack the resilient pastor movement for us and what you saw at Barna as the need?
SPEAKER_00:You know, Barna has been doing some great work for many, many years now, you know, studying the state of faith, but also the state of the church and the state of pastors. And one of the trends uh they began to observe is that there's a dip in some of the pastoral health stuff. And it first showed up in a kind of shakiness to uh to what they called vocational confidence. In other words, as people go on in ministry, you know, you you would like for them to feel more sure of their calling, not less less sure. Instead, they were discovering the opposite. People were becoming less sure about their calling, and it was decreasing from the earlier data in 2015 to the research that we did in 2021. And then that began kind of a multi-year kind of dip in, or I would say rise in pastors being so discouraged that they actually had given serious consideration to quitting. And of course, it was the pandemic, it was political tensions, it was racial hostility, there were so many dynamics that were pulling at churches, and pastors were not equipped for it, or maybe they were kind of the um, you know, collateral damage in the in the midst of divisions and disunity. And so the the discouragement crisis among pastors peaked around 2023 when 43% of pastors said they'd given serious consideration to quitting vocational ministry. Now, it doesn't mean that they did, and so oftentimes people go, well, but they didn't quit. And I go, No, that's true. That we don't have a resignation crisis, we have a discouragement crisis where a lot of pastors are saying, Look, I don't want to abandon my post. And and frankly, some of them maybe that they're like, I don't know what else I would do. But nevertheless, I feel like I'm the walking dead. They don't know how to get their soul back, get their love for the Lord back. And so this work has been about helping pastors understand what resilience is and how we can activate our own agency in order to cultivate resilience.
SPEAKER_02:How'd you pick resilience?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's good. Yeah, it's a great question. You know, it's funny because Mitch, we wrestled on the title, and I had something a little bit more benign uh as an idea, you know, something about shepherding and all that. And it was my wife that was like, that doesn't seem to get at the urgency or even the grit of what you're you're trying to name. And and resilience, you know, Barna has used the phrase resilient faith to talk about resilient disciples in the midst of a digital Babylon and all of that. And so as David Kinneman and I were talking, I just thought, you know what, resilient pastor is really the idea. And it's been it's been kind of providential. I think the Lord was really helping us in this because the more we've dug into this, uh, what I this is how I say it in kind of a simple way. There's two parts to resilience. One part is recovery. There is this, there's a, you know, you think of the word resilient, you think bounce back, right? Um, when we talk about our physical health, resilience is about returning to a state of health. And I I think of the story of the the the late Jewish rabbi, he was the rabbi of the entire British Commonwealth, Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sachs. He tells this story of going in for his physical and and running on a treadmill, you know, in his 50s or 60s. And and they put the sensors on him and had him, you know, running on the on the thing. And and he goes, Man, what are you testing? Are you testing how fast I can run or how far I can run, how long I can run? They go, No, no, no, no. We're testing how quickly you return to your resting heart rate. Wow. And and Rabbi Sachs, reflecting on this, says, Health is not just the absence of sickness. Health is about the rates of recovery. And that's when we began, I began to realize as I was talking about this with pastors, this is what we're getting at. People experience discouragement. People experience uh, you know, even depression or dysregulation and anxiety and fear, all this stuff. That doesn't make you a bad leader, that just makes you human. But what we want to try to improve is how do you, how well are you returning to your resting heart rate, quote unquote. And then the second part of resilience is recalibration. You don't just bounce back or return or recover. The idea is how can you retool the the pieces of your life so that you're better equipped for the challenge the next time? Uh, how can you be like metal that's gone through fire that now you're stronger as a result of these trials? And so when we when I talk to pastors about recalibration, I talk to them about specific areas of your life, specific um rhythms in specific areas of your life, your rhythms of rest or renewal or prayer or relational connection or work. Very practical thing. So so many pastors they go, Oh, I can't change anything. You don't understand, I'm stuck. And I want to say, you're not stuck. There may be a lot you can't control, but there are actually a lot of places where you can exercise your God-given agency and recalibrate your life so that you can actually grow stronger through the challenges that you're recovering from.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. That's fascinating. I was gonna say that applies so much to any relationship that we have. That's good. And then Jeff has trained professional athletes. Jeff does that that preaches, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it does preach, yeah. The the recalibration, the re getting back to a rest where your body is the parasympathetic versus sympathetic state of your body and your mind and uh the realness of that, not only connected to an athlete, but uh the the well-being of a person. That's I mean, that's real. You can't do it when your body is constantly in fight. It does need to get back to a place of rest where you can go and make the impact that you're you're called to physically. It's the same with us in ministry and outreach as well. It's beautiful. It's thoughtful. You know, I I think about there's this clip, Glenn, where you talk about um all the additives that have um found their way on the resume of a pastor, right? You know, from I I got into this to be a shepherd and a preacher and a teacher, perhaps, but now I have to be a therapist and a a cultural analyst and I have to understand all of these different things. Like the the question in that is what are based on all the things that are stacking up in a pastor's life, like what are the trends like as you meet with the pastors, as you've always spoke uh, you know, spoken with the pastors? What what are people still dealing with? What are the troubles and the heartache still?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, that's exactly it. You know, so you we could map this and go back to, you know, maybe in earlier decades, it was like, man, you just need to be the Bible answer person, you know, that has it all your theology sorted on every tricky question. And then it was like, no, actually, you need to be an ace-level CEO type, you know, um, brilliant visionary leader. Then no, you need to be an incredible fundraiser. And no, no, you need to be a trained therapist and then, you know, cultural. And it'd be one thing if these expectations swapped out. Um, but they stacked. And one of the things that compounds the way these expectations stack is the social media world that we're living in. And and I don't, I'm not one of those people that tries to make that the big bad boogeyman that to blame for everything, because really all social media is doing is amplifying the best and worst parts of who we are as human beings. But the the compounding factor is we're able to hear it, see it, feel it at a scale and at a rate that we actually can't handle. And so, for one, pastors are hearing other pastors talk about certain things or function in certain modes. And then we go, oh my goodness, would like should I learn how to do that? I don't know how to do that, you know? So that's on you know, us internalizing that pressure. But there's an also an external way that pressure shows up, and that's because people, people are consuming this kind of content, and then they're going, hey, my pastor didn't talk about this. And and you guys, I mean, this is something I feel really passionate about. I don't believe that the voices that are trying to tell people, hey, if your pastor didn't talk about this, or if your pastor doesn't say this, then it's time for a new church. Those are not helpful voices to the kingdom of God. Um, those are divisive voices, those are voices that take um secondary, tertiary, way lower down issues and elevate them to the core of our faith. Uh, it's kind of parallel to in the the New Testament epistles where they go, oh, stay out of the way of people who are going on these squabbles and endless divisions about genealogies or whatever, whatever, whatever. We take these non-essential things and we make them essential and central. And then we've told millions and millions of Christians, if your pastor doesn't say these exact things, it's out, you're out. And I think for pastors, when we hear that, I mean, anytime I see a clip like that or a tweet like that, I go, oh no. I'm I'm checking on my pastor friends right away. Because all of a sudden, you know, pastoral authority and pastoral trust is already uh lower than it's been in our kind of recorded memory. And some of that, I want to be humble about this and make sure people hear me say this, some of that is well deserved. We've shot ourselves in the foot, we've eroded our own trustworthiness and credibility as church leaders. I say we in the collective sense of the people who have held that office, um, but it is not helped by by people who create these external pressures on us. That's good.
SPEAKER_02:Um, what would you say to a pastor who would ask, what are the essential rhythms and practices that I need to implement in my life to be resilient?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, there's there's some deep work required here, and I think I think it's hard to give a quick answer to that. We will talk about this at the Love Fort Wayne event, and we will take our time um through it. I I think the first thing, if there could be a kind of keystone habit, something that would kick you into, you know, kick off a uh a kind of series of reflections, I think the first thing you need to build in is space for prayer and reflection. And I don't just mean devotional time, and I don't even just mean Sabbath. Uh, I think both of those things are great. I need a daily lifeline with God, and sometimes it's more on the go than it is uh, you know, in my chair, right? Um and I need a Sabbath with my family, even if it is eight hours, twelve hours, can't get the full 24. I understand all of that stuff. But I think what I'm referring to is something like a once a month day to just go and journal and think and pray, or maybe a once a quarter, um, two-day kind of retreat. So we we've implemented this here at Rock Harbor where every staff member gets a complete day in your work week that's your personal retreat day. Wow. Um, your personal retreat day, and you you don't answer, you know, your your Slack messages, your emails, your text messages, you know, you're you're there to sit with the Lord and to journal and to reflect and to be a child of God in that moment, you know? And I think that's absolutely essential. I find returning to that place where I'm not on, I'm not having to produce, to create, to persuade, um, but to be able to just be with God uh and it's built in. You know, all of us know we need that, but if it's not built in, it ain't happening.
SPEAKER_02:I had a guy uh ask me one time, do you ever just sit and listen to God? And my answer was, Well, I've tried it a couple times. He said, What was it like? I said it was one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had, each time. And he looked at me and said, Me too. And then he asked us, Why don't we do it more often? So I love what you said about building it in. Yeah, prioritizing it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you have to make it a priority. Um, yeah, how can you uh even know what something is unless you're actually in it um and take the time to invest in that particular thing, especially time with the Lord who's so invitational. Um, you know, Glenn, I wanna I wanna kinda come back to something you chatted about in the uh or talked about as it pertains to the social media thing. But uh in the grand scheme of it all, that fits within this polarizing culture, changing culture. We're in a tide of change uh again, and they come and flow they come and go in ebbs and flows, but we're in a tide of change. You know, what are some things that you know a pastor can do in a you know to um to stand firm, you know, in this cultural climate and be resilient within this cultural climate, and not even really with the dangers that are out there in our cultural climate, but there's opportunities as well.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Yeah. There's always opportunities. And I think that's the that's where my heart needs to be reminded of what my heart needs is to when I get discouraged and I think, oh my goodness, this is uh this is not helpful or whatever, you know, or look at this divided moment, or man, our algorithms are playing games with us, you know. Um, I I I think you, you know, where my heart needs to go in all of that is to say, yes, but there are incredible opportunities. I I wrote a little um piece on my Substack the other day reflecting on the different challenges and opportunities when Christians are on the margins, and the different challenges and opportunities when Christianity is more front and center on everyone's minds and lips and a culture. And I don't think one is an unqualified good, and I don't think one is an unqualified bad thing. I think there are we we serve the God who raises the dead. So that means even the worst of times are not the worst of times, you know? And so, so I A, I have to ground myself in in the Lord because uh it's what Paul did in 2 Corinthians. He said we would have despaired for our own life, but we remembered that we served the God who raises the dead. So ultimately, resurrection is even better than resilience because resurrection doesn't come from within us, resurrection comes from beyond us, and that's that's what we have in Jesus. So that's number one. The second way to kind of stay grounded in this is stay connected to the real people in your church and in your community. Uh, I have had to be very um disciplined, and I have not always been disciplined, but I have to be um disciplined about how much I'm taking in from social media. And it's easy all of a sudden to go, oh, these conversations that are happening all over the country, and then I superimpose them on my own community and go, that's what's happening in my church. It may be, it may not be. And I think we need to get beyond the labels and the camps and the tribes, and we need to look people in the eye across the table and have real conversations where we're listening, we're learning, we're we're changing, we're, you know, that's the stuff. So I think at Rock Harbor, we're trying to put in the hard work of calling people to the table with one another. So all of our small groups, we call them table groups. Um, we we run a course that was developed by Pete and Jerry Sizero called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Healthy Relationships. Our team's actually taken that one and re-rewritten it a little bit. But we're we're trying to help people learn the skills and practices of non-reactive listening, uh and not sorry, non-reactive behavior with each other, but instead proactive listening, uh, empathetic, incarnate incarnational presence. So we're we're we're we have to be reminded that our work beyond preaching the gospel and pointing to Jesus, our work is to teach people how to fight for a unity that's grounded in Jesus above all else.
SPEAKER_03:Amen.
SPEAKER_02:Man, that's so good. That's powerful. Um, I'm really curious. Do you write out of your message series? Do you block a time a week where you write? Do you block a month a quarter? Like, how do you I mean I mean a week, a quarter? How do you do that?
SPEAKER_00:It's so funny. I mean, I I think it's different with with each project. I mean, the resilient pastor was interesting. I wrote that one during um the pandemic. So there was a lot of time at home and in my basement. And I actually went through a personal challenge during that time of writing that book where I had vocal cord surgery. So I was out of the pulpit, I was out of speaking, you know, for for three months. Um, so that was a very different experience, but it in a way turned out to be a gift. The Lord brought something good out of it because I had a lot of extra time for deep reading and deep writing. Um, my most recent project, What's a Christian Anyway, which again seems to be so timely again. Like, what is it that makes a Christian a Christian, you know? And and that came out of a series that I've done on the Nicene Creed. And, you know, I'm in evangelical, I've served in non-denominational churches my 25 years in ministry. A lot of people are like, we don't know what that is. Wait, what is this creed thing? And it's this is where, you know, it's so helpful for me to think about church history because most of our challenges, the church, in some way or shape, or form, has been through something like this before. You know, these questions are evergreen. And so What's a Christian anyway came out of a series that we did on the Nicene Creed here at Rock Harbor and watching the lights come on for people and watching people go, oh, it's amazing what's not in the creed, you know, all the things we thought was like super, super, you know. And then you go, but what is in the creed? Oh, it's about the father, it's about the son, it's about the Holy Spirit, it's about salvation, it's about the hope of resurrection, you know. And all of a sudden you go, that is the center. When I say the center we're moving toward, I don't mean the center as in uh the middle of left and right or whatever, whatever. No, when I say the center, I'm I'm thinking of like a wagon wheel where we move away from our secondary things and we move towards Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And just like the spokes on a wheel, the closer we move towards the center being who God is, the closer we end up moving towards one another as the people of God. So, so that book was you know, it was drafted out of those sermon outlines. Um, a lot of writing, late night hours, uh, some mornings uh on my on my day off. I I joke that I, you know, I I write a little bit in a car, you know, as I'm parked waiting for a kid to finish a soccer practice or whatever. You know, there's just been so many, you just try to seize the moments where you get them. And uh sometimes that's really hard, sometimes it works. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03:That's really insightful. Yeah, it's really good. I'm starting to get curious about like the intentional year and what was happening in the context of our our country when that was written. Like, and what what you know, what sparked that? Is there was there something internally that sparked that and or even nationally that sparked that?
SPEAKER_00:That one was actually deeply personal, Jeff. That book came out of um when we wrote it, my wife and I, we had been living this for more than a decade for about 12 years. So I was actually pretty reluctant to write about it because I was like, it just felt so personal. And it began for us with uh older mentors suggesting to us early on in our marriage, when when we only had two of our four kids at the time, I think. And they said, You guys need to get a retreat every year as a couple. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, vacation, blah, blah. No, no, and they go, No, no, no, no. Time to pray, time to look at the calendar. And and so we started doing that, and then it started to take on uh more features. Um, my wife added this whole beginning piece where she applied an ancient prayer, the prayer of examine. It's an ignation prayer of reflection that that a lot of times people use just to reflect on your day. She used it to reflect on the whole previous year, you know? And so we're like, oh, that's a cool tool. And then we began to do something like the rule of life, but we put our own spin on it, calling it rhythms of intentionality in five spheres, these five spheres that I mentioned earlier: rest, renewal, um, prayer, relationships, and work. And in between, in between the reflection and then the the sort of rhythm planning, in between was a was a listening prayer, a way of saying, God, what season are we in right now? What's the work you're trying to do? And this became so important to us because I think as Christians, we jump from like, oh yeah, God, thank you for that the previous season, or oh God, that was a hard one. And then, okay, on to what I want to do. And we skip that middle step of God, what are you already doing in my life? What are you already doing in our family, in our church? And then how do we join you? Because, you know, my father-in-law was a farmer in Iowa in the Midwest for 50 years. And one thing you learn from farmers, you could do good work, but if it's in the wrong season, it ends up being bad work. You can't try to build fences in the winter, you can't try to chop down firewood at Thanksgiving. Like, there's there's good things you can do, but in the wrong season, it becomes bad work. And so the same is just so we began to do this, and and we would share with people that we were doing this retreat. And over the years, people were like, Oh, can you tell us how to do this? And we're like, I thought I was gonna write a pamphlet. And my wife was like, This is a book. And she was and she was right.
SPEAKER_02:Love it. Um, as you look toward the next decade, is there something that you hope this next generation of pastors and leaders will hold on to?
SPEAKER_00:Man, so many things, Mitch. I mean, I I think I love I I love, you know, um this new group of pastors that are coming in, a lot of them in their early 30s, and they're so much more ahead of the game than than many of us were in terms of awareness of their own pace, awareness of their own limitations. Um, but I I think one of the things we we we really I really would want them to hear is to prioritize the the kinds of relationships they have in their life. Um, I think there's still this tendency for pastors, you're supposed to know everything, you're supposed to be good at everything. And part of how we solve the stacking expectations dilemma that we named earlier is by having a team. Now, I do think your younger generation is more interested in collaboration than than before than previous generations. But I still think there's some work to be done to go, how do you actually do that well? How do you move into the place where you are really and I say this because maybe the the folks who are in it now and their theories are okay, but I look at future generations that are coming in. The more we are our interaction with people is mediated by a device, the less skilled we are at the soft skills, emotional intelligence of actually building relationships. And so we get more. Anxious, more nervous about critical conversations, about conversations of disagreement or challenge. And so what I fear for those in their 20s as they get a little bit older is that there'll be a sort of a, you know, the moment they have a disagreement, they go, Oh, I'm out. Maybe I need a different church. Maybe I need to not work with anyone. Maybe I need to, you know. And I think we we want to continue to help people to say, actually, um, what AI can never give you is the the gift of another person offering the comfort of their presence in the midst of their fear, another human being saying, I'm with you, I love you, I forgive you, I welcome you, you belong. Um, these are gifts that humans give one another. And to go a step further, these are gifts followers of Jesus give one another in Jesus' name. And and so the ability to go deep and to be committed through the challenges in a relationship, that's the thing that I see as a looming, a looming challenge. Because with so many things on our fingertips, you the moment you get dissatisfied, you go, Oh, I'm gonna go find a different church or different community or a different group, or we're gonna skim the surface and be quote unquote committed to two or three churches or three or four friend groups, and we're never actually getting rooted somewhere. But deep flourishing life only happens when we develop deep roots. So good.
SPEAKER_03:And this is priceless. Yeah, it is priceless. It yeah, it makes me excited for the weeks that are ahead when you're here in northeast Indiana. And uh we kind of want to wind down with a question we always ask. It's a fun question, we like to ask it, and then I would love for you after that maybe to uh share with those who are listening why they should come and join us uh November 5th. But first we'll start with this question. We always ask folks what would you tell your younger self? You know, as you think about your your life and your leadership, your ministry, your family. Looking back now, what would you tell Glenn back then?
SPEAKER_00:I would say your ambition is okay. It's uh you don't have to be ashamed of of a desire to do some some some good things, but your anxiety or angst is not. Uh and I would say you need to trust in the Lord, uh, you need to trust that it's never gonna feel like you're enough, you're never gonna feel like you're doing enough, um, but that you are already truly and fully loved, and that your belovedness is not connected to your achievement or productivity. And if I if there was a way for me to help my younger self have the same level of drive, but rooted in a healthier place of belovedness, that's what I would want. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:That's good. Belovedness, yeah. And and folks that'll join us, they'll hear a little bit more about what a little bit more of what you shared on the podcast. But why should they come out and and be with other pastors and ministry leaders?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think the first reason you should come is one, I want to meet you and I would love to hear your stories. But secondly, the the real gift is for you to be known and uh connect with other pastors in your area. Uh, one of the great lies of the enemy is that we're the only one, and that we we surely are the only one struggling, or the only one getting beat up by life, by parishioners, by your board, by whoever. And and actually there are loads of others who are in this with you, even not directly, but indirectly. And there's something about that moment of recognizing we're all in this work together. And then, and then thirdly, I really want to take time to unpack what resilience looks like in terms of recovery, how you can recover um your soul in the midst of this work, this work of giving of ourselves to others. And then I want to unpack what it actually looks like to recalibrate your life. I'm gonna give you some real practical steps. Um, we're gonna walk through some of the pieces of the intentional year and leave you with exercises and tools um so that you can actually begin to live differently. I I hope to give you not just inspiration um, but actual um practices to be to take with you. And again, I hope maybe you'll find a community of people to do these practices with uh so that you can become healthy and resilient together. So good.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's gonna be an exciting day. Brother, thank you so much for taking the time to join Mitch and I. Mitch, it was great, right? It's inspiring. Yeah, so good. Yeah, so good. Thank you, Glenn. Yeah, um, how how can we pray for you before we wrap up?
SPEAKER_00:Well, uh it's a it's a big month in October, and um my daughter is getting married uh in uh a few days from today. The morning recording this, you know, I know I don't. And uh so so uh, you know, you can pray for my heart. Uh I'm so happy, so happy, and so I feel the weight of all of it. Uh, you can pray for our church as we're stewarding the people that God is adding and the growth that we're experiencing, that we'll do this in a way that that um treats people with the kind of care that they deserve and that honors Jesus above all. I got another question. Go for it.
SPEAKER_02:You're walking your daughter down the aisle. Are you gonna officiate the wedding or is someone else?
SPEAKER_00:I am officiating it as well, Mitch. I know. She they asked. They won't they? I was happy for either, but they asked, and so yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I'm a girl dad, and three are married, and I did I did what you're doing. Bro, you're gonna have to send me an email with some tips.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just gonna pray. That's what I'm gonna be. Now you know how to pray for me.
SPEAKER_03:I hope you don't break down on the first line. Yeah, so good. Uh Glenn, thank you again, man. We appreciate it. Yeah, and folks, thank you for tuning in, man. We always say this. We hope that there was something that you could grab, something that you can instill into your personal life. If you're a pastor and ministry leader, uh uh hopefully the Holy Spirit nudged you in some type of way of encouragement that would even move your feet in your heart to join us on November 5th. And uh, for everybody else, again, thank you for tuning in. I hope that the Lord moved in your heart and your mind as well. And we look forward to joining you on the next Love Fort Wayne podcast. Until then, be well.
