Unsexy Church
Unsexy Church
Season 3 Episode 4 : Interview with Mike Edens Part 1
Today we have the honor to have a interview with Mike Edens former IMB Missionary and Seminary Professor at New Orleans Baptist theological Seminary
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Unsexy Church podcast, season three episode four.
Speaker 2:You sure about the name of the podcast? I am sure you ended the last podcast with a different name.
Speaker 1:I messed it up. You did. I think it's this music. We're going to change this theme song.
Speaker 2:Is it too sexy for the podcast? It's way too sexy for this podcast.
Speaker 1:We need some organ music.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:Something unsexy.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:I guess it depends on what kind of organ it is and who's playing it?
Speaker 2:Synthesizer Right, bring that up, nice so today we've got a special guest.
Speaker 1:But before we get there, I just want to say, man, we had a great night last night. We're recording this. On Monday afternoon, the 15th September 14th, we actually had a churchwide family trivia night and, man, that was a lot of fun. It really was. Yeah, I've learned that our church is actually really smart. I mean, there was a lot of almost perfect sheets given yeah, a lot of. And the questions weren't gimmies either, they were pretty difficult, or maybe we just have a lot of useless knowledge loaded into our brains.
Speaker 2:That may be more accurate. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1:But, man, we had a great time. We had I don't know 150-ish people there last night in our gym and they all brought food we all ate well, good, old-fashioned potluck.
Speaker 2:It was good. It was good.
Speaker 1:It was very good Speaking of unsexy what's more unsexy than a potluck?
Speaker 2:What's more unsexy than a Baptist potluck dinner? Not much, but it was fun. It was a good night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did have a good time, man. We just we had a. You know, we had a great turnout and people seemed to really enjoy just hanging out with each other, and we're going to try to do more things like that in the future, so so be on the lookout right, that was the whole point of the night.
Speaker 2:It was just that community, just the connection and fellowship within the body.
Speaker 1:So it was fun. I just also want to remind folks that coming up at the end of this week are Dermott mission teams going out on mission to Dermott, Arkansas, leaving Saturday morning. Is that right Saturday morning? Saturday morning, what time are you guys leaving? Oh dark o'clock.
Speaker 2:I was going to come pray over you, but if it's oh dark o'clock, I was going to come pray over you, but if it's oh dark o'clock I may not make it. No, it's not, we're leaving at 6 am which isn't too bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very good.
Speaker 2:We've got a long drive ahead of us. Nice, for sure, yeah that's a great trip.
Speaker 1:We've gone the what?
Speaker 2:This is our third year.
Speaker 1:This is the third year right this in a row, just lots of opportunity. We get to talk into some. In some correctional facilities we actually get to share the gospel in a public school setting, which I don't know where you do that in the United States.
Speaker 1:I don't either, other than Dermott Arkansas man and just you know lots of community projects that we'll do just to love and serve that community and just lots of opportunities to share the gospel, and senior centers and nursing homes. So just would ask our church or anyone listening to the podcast, just be in prayer for our team as they go out and share the gospel in a variety of ways.
Speaker 2:Please do. We'll be leaving on the 20th and coming back the 27th, and so please bathe that in prayer the whole time.
Speaker 1:You bet. And then one last thing just remind folks about we've got a picnic coming up October 5th. That's put on by our deacons. That's another great time to just hang out with folks that you may not normally get to see every Sunday and just make some good connections, make some good friends, eat some good food. And I think we played some touch football last year and and last time it's been really, really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the weather's usually great that time of year.
Speaker 1:Well, we go to the TBBA Tampa Baptist, tampa Bay Baptist, tampa Bay Baptist Association.
Speaker 2:Campground, yeah, the conference center, conference center.
Speaker 1:And that's a great place, man. It's super nice out there right by Lake Magdalene and that's always a lot of fun, so make plans to be there for that as well. We've been talking, we've started. We talked about our mission at First Baptist Church to connect others to a thriving life in Christ and just started talking about some of our measurements, or our measures. How do we know we're doing this? How do we know that we're connecting people to a thriving life in Christ? How do we know that we are in a thriving relationship and life in Christ? And so last week we talked about just. Is my character a reflection of Christ? I'm going to interrupt that series today because we do have a special guest. I don't have a fun fact, but I do have a special guest. You have a fun special guest.
Speaker 3:I have a fun special guest. I like it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh, today joining us. We have uh, I don't know what the proper title is um, because we don't do show prep here.
Speaker 3:Professor Emeritus Just Mike.
Speaker 1:Mike Edens who, just for those of you who don't know Mike Edens has been an IMB missionary on the field. He's been a professor at New Orleans Baptist Seminary and we're going to let him tell us his story a little bit. But also he's been a pastor and for the last few weeks here at our church he has led us through a short class on Wednesday nights, an equipping class on just how to engage with our Muslim neighbor, how to engage with the Muslim community, and we just have gotten a lot of positive feedback about that. That's been a really good. That was a good experience.
Speaker 1:It was a great class, I think every class I walked away with two or three things that I just didn't realize, and maybe even a paradigm that was busted for me personally, even. And so we've really, I don't know we really enjoyed it. We really benefited from it, I think, as a church. And so we've really, I don't know we really enjoyed it. We really benefited from it, I think, as a church. And so we thought, man, let's. We were talking and we thought let's get Mike on the podcast.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Let's get Mike on the podcast. How are you doing, Mike?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great, great Thanks for the invite. Glad to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're so glad that you're here. So I don't have to do all the talking If you want to do some of the talking.
Speaker 1:Bob, you're doing pretty good right now.
Speaker 3:You haven't taken a breath yet. I'm almost. I'm almost out of words. I don't think that's possible.
Speaker 2:No, I would echo. Uh, I really enjoyed sitting in the class with Mike leading. Uh, I enjoy sitting under others teaching, cause I normally am the one doing the teaching. So it's always nice to just walk in and and and just absorb. But uh, just the conversation and then your experience in it, mike, was just such such a breath of fresh air and just uh, an encouragement, uh, and, and you and your beautiful wife Madeline have been the same thing to us as a church since you've since you guys have moved here and what a blessing to have you guys.
Speaker 3:We really feel like God gave us a new home here in Tampa. Our daughters are here in Tampa, that's what brought us here in retirement, and so we were looking for a church home, and through the web and through visits, we found this family, and we love everything that we've experienced at first and so we're glad to be here and that was one of my questions.
Speaker 1:I mean, how did you, how did you find out about First Baptist Church, like what you said, through the web and through a few of us? Like I know, I look at our web stream and you want to talk about unsexy. That is about as unsexy as it gets our stream, and so I'd be interested.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, in a previous iteration of Mike Eden's, I was a strategy advisor, consultant, coordinator we called it for about 200 mission units, and so we had discussions about what is. We're all engaged in church planning. Well, what does your first church? You know, we can have a great idea. Oh, we want to have this network of churches, and that's an easy question to answer. Yeah, I want the network to look like this and do like this. What does that first church look like?
Speaker 3:And that was always a question that drove the missionary families that we worked with a little bit crazy. We had a traveling team, mike Barnett, who's home in heaven and looking down on this, so he's probably checking on this, but Mike Barnett and I and he was Big Mike and I'm Old Mike, we know why the old came in, anyway, but we would ask questions, and so you know. You ask questions about your website, you ask questions about the thriving community that is here connected to Christ, and one of the things we always ask is how are you going to center what you're doing day in and day out on Jesus Christ? Not Christianity, not the history of the church, not the doctrines of the church, even, but on Jesus, not the doctrines of the church even, but on Jesus, because, especially in the Muslim world, the Muslim world needs to see the biblical historical.
Speaker 1:Jesus.
Speaker 3:They need to see him in us, they need to hear him in us and they need to understand his love. And they're not going to get it if they don't get it from us. So we always began with what do you want the church to look like? And and that's what this church looks like. It looks like a variety of cultures, a variety of colors, a variety of of birth experiences, all melded together in this birth experiences.
Speaker 1:Is that like? Is that like a fancy word for age?
Speaker 3:Generations, yeah, generations.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a sexy word. I don't know if we can do that. Okay, we won't do that. We won't do that.
Speaker 3:Doc one time in our core group.
Speaker 3:Doc says I said something he said that's got to be the most politically correct thing I ever heard anybody say which was not a compliment Anyway so yeah, being the church and being a follower of Christ and encouraging others to follow Christ and be the church is it has to be an intentional thing. It doesn't happen accidentally. I love the verb in the motto of the church thrive. I've got a little kumquat tree on the north side of our house on 11th Street, north 11th Street, and I'm really interested in that tree thriving, right, right, and you do things to help a newborn tree thrive, you know.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's what I thought he was going to say. You know, hey, I looked at that unsexy website. I thought those guys could use a guy like that these guys need some help.
Speaker 3:They just need a lot of help. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:That's pretty encouraging man, actually that's good.
Speaker 2:Well, you have both been such an encouragement to us since you've been here just worshiping. She's part of the worship choir now now and she's a really good alto man. She is, she's, she's solid, but she, just she, she sings with joy, she worships with joy and um. And just from the first time we met just you stopping by the pastor's tent, I could just tell you were a genuine spirit. And so we, we are blessed that you guys are, well, that you guys are here.
Speaker 3:We are blessed to be here, so we're glad that that's beautiful. I'd just say too.
Speaker 1:Just kind of going back to thinking of my first meetings with Mike and Madeline. They are probably some of the most encouraging people that you'll ever meet. If you've not met them, you need to meet them. They'll just encourage you in your walk, and in your faith for sure.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, we all have seeds planted in us and if I'm an encouraging person, it's because my parents were encouragers. They moved from Oklahoma to South Louisiana. My dad was in the oil industry and built and planted two churches as laymen, and my dad didn't have a lot of words. He was of that John Wayne school. Don't talk a lot, but make sure they know where you are.
Speaker 1:Jordan. Did you hear who he just said? John Wayne?
Speaker 2:Jordan has no idea who that is.
Speaker 1:What's so funny about that is Lizzie used to come over to our house. Jordan's wife would come to our house for a Bible study and I would always give her the John Wayne coffee mug and she would always say who the heck is this?
Speaker 3:Josh Wayne.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So yeah, people have encouraged me, they've put encouragement in me, and I know I didn't become a follower of Christ until after I graduated from high school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just tell us about your dad, your family. I mean, this sounds like it's in your blood. I mean they were lay church planters, man, that's amazing. And then, yeah, just tell us about who Mike Edens is. Well, I'm weird.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the club Unsexy podcast the perfect place. I have a media friend. He's my media consultant, van Payne. A little shout out for Van, and Van has a quote of me on his screen. His screensaver on his computer, mike Eden, sees things differently.
Speaker 2:Is that a compliment? Well, yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 3:It might be a backhanded compliment, it's not always best to have you know, you have a group of missionaries, are great group thinkers, you know but you have a contrarian like me that's in the middle of that and you're like everybody says, yeah, let's do this. And then I ask a question, you know, and mess up the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that's good.
Speaker 3:So yeah, dad was born in Tennessee, brought up in Oklahoma, married an Oklahoma girl and I was born in Oklahoma and then brought up in South Louisiana in the oil patch in the 50s and back a long time ago, fifties and uh, back a long time ago and uh and um, dad was a deacon. Dad, mom and dad planted churches. I went to church all the time because they took me to church. I knew I didn't want to go to hell. At at uh, five years old, I walked down an aisle in tears. The guy had preached about hell. I knew I didn't want to go. It was a million more and 54. There's a Southern Baptist reference for you.
Speaker 1:That's a Southern Baptist campaign.
Speaker 3:And the country preacher said we can dunk this guy and that'll be one more. But he didn't lead me to Christ. And through my years of coming up, I had various times that the Holy Spirit convicted me that I needed Christ, but no one thought that I wasn't a Christian and they didn't take time to ensure that I was following Christ. And so summer of my high school graduation I got mononucleosis. My summer job went by the wayside. You know, vietnam was raging. I knew I was going to be drafted, all that type stuff. Vietnam was raging. I knew I was going to be drafted, all that type stuff.
Speaker 3:Got in the hospital because they thought I had hepatitis and I was isolated in the middle of that hospital room. I was like God, if you just don't let me die, I'll go back to church, because I knew that's all God was interested in. Right, go to church. So I started back to church and got confronted with a guy in the Sunday school class who knew the Bible better than I did and he was Methodist. Well, for those of you listening, wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Speaker 2:Is that possible? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's really you know. And I was Baptist. The byline for Baptist is people of the book, yes, and so I was like this is just wrong. But I knew how to solve the thing. It wasn't that I didn't know how to study the Bible, I just didn't study the Bible. And so Sunday night I read John, chapter 1, took my notebook out and did cross-references and ran all those references and closed my Bible. I said God's got to be happy.
Speaker 3:Monday night, john, chapter 2. Tuesday night, nicodemus and I met Jesus in John chapter 3, and Nick had some really great questions. And in the middle of that Jesus said, hey, boy. And overlooking a cane field on a July night, crystal clear night, green, fresh-planted cane coming out of that rich Louisiana soil. I gave my heart to Jesus and then I was going to get drafted and join the Navy instead, ended up out in Norfolk, virginia, and one March night, in the middle of working with RAs and doing all sorts of things in the church I was going to on the weekends and working with the chaplain on the ship, god called me to preach in the middle of the night and I had all sorts of reasons and excuses why he didn't want me to do that.
Speaker 2:Don't we all yeah, or didn't we all yeah?
Speaker 3:And he's like preach the gospel, just preach the gospel. And I said I can do that, got up from my bed in the middle of the night, went over to the nightlight Ships have red lights, so that nightlights, so you can keep your night vision and I started writing a letter to this girl that I'd never met back in Louisiana, who was a friend of my sister and part of a Christian singing group. But she and I had been writing for about six months at this point, and I'm writing this letter to her, telling her what just happened to me. And it was like the Holy Spirit whispered to me son, you're not paying attention. You're writing a letter to somebody you don't know, you've never met, about something that has changed your life. Wouldn't you think this is significant, a significant relationship that I'm trying to build for you? Oh, no, it could be. And that was Madeline, all right. So that's, that's a better part of my story, right there, right on, right on. Man.
Speaker 3:Anyway, kids, you have kids. Yeah, we have two daughters. They are not kids anymore, 54 and 51. They're young. They are young, but I'm old. And we have one grandchild. Trajan plays hockey here in Plant. He's on the JV Plant team. Plug for that team, go.
Speaker 1:Panthers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Great. It's great to watch these kids play hockey in Florida Tampa.
Speaker 1:Florida.
Speaker 3:I had no idea that was going to be part of my life Anyway. So yeah, they are here. They are why we decided to retire from my second career of teaching. We were at New Orleans Seminary. I thought we were going to be there for the rest of our lives and ended up selling that house. And then the girls both settled here and were like I think Florida is a good place for us to be. It's a nice spot. Here we are.
Speaker 2:So, mike, how do you get from there to being on the mission field as long as you were? And then, specifically, where did God put on your heart to go to the Muslim people? Okay, that's a good question.
Speaker 3:I was a pastor. I always think I'm going to be wherever I am, whatever I'm doing the rest of my life. So I was pastoring this church. I was coordinator of chaplains for Louisiana State Police, had a volunteer chaplains ministry across the state, worked with 22 local chaplains across the state. Great, it was a great ministry, a great opportunity to share the gospel and be in people's lives. And we got to go with troopers as they had to share bad news with people. Troopers as they had to share bad news with people. We got to be with troopers as they were engaged in a shooting event and you know it was really a life-changing event for me Anyway so I was pastor of a church, had been there about five years and just getting started.
Speaker 3:You know, it takes you three years of burying people and marrying people before they say hmm maybe, maybe you know.
Speaker 2:We'll give this guy a shot for a while. Maybe you know that's right.
Speaker 3:And so I'd been there about five years and I had a circuit out in it's north of New Hope. Baptist Churches is in the country north of Lake Pontchartrain, and so people would go to local hospitals and then be transferred to Baton Rouge or New Orleans and I would do a tour twice a week, once to the Baton Rouge area and once to the New Orleans area, usually to visit people in the hospital. And you would know well, maybe Jordan is the only one who doesn't know but you go to a city to go to the hospital. The first thing you do is you go by the office and you check the registration, because people go to the hospital and they don't tell the pastor that they're going to the hospital. They don't tell the pastor that they're going to the hospital right, I've heard of that yeah it happens sometimes now the people listening to this broadcast.
Speaker 3:Of course they would tell you. Of course, of course yeah but anyway.
Speaker 3:So you do that just to be sure. I mean, you're going that distance. You don't want to get back to to the 60 miles back to to the church and find out that aunt susie is in the hospital in new orleans. You just got back from new orleans, so I'm at the hospital and and I was visiting at what was then baptist hospital, now memorial hospital, new orleans, and I was checking through the the roles, and one had graduated from New Orleans Seminary a couple of years before that with my master's degree, and one of the chaplains came by. He said hey, mike, what are you doing for lunch? I said, well, I don't have plans, but I'm going to be in town. I've got two other hospitals to see. He said, well, the president of the International Mission Board is speaking at chapel over at New Orleans Seminary and you know they got a great salad bar. Why don't we go here and preach and then we'll go to lunch? I said, yeah, sounds great, royce.
Speaker 3:And so, sure enough, went to the other two hospitals. Wheeled by, picked up Royce, we went to New Orleans Seminary. Went by, wheeled by, picked up Royce, we went to New Orleans Seminary and in the middle of the message, baker, james Cawthon said 96% of all evangelical preachers are preaching to 6% of the world's population, here in the United States and Canada. If God called you to preach, what are you doing here? That voice came to the back of my head and said this is for you. And I went down to the front and a guy named Cunningham was down in the front Hal Cunningham, and it wasn't Hal, it was another Cunningham was down in the front Hal Cunningham, and it wasn't Hal, it was another Cunningham. But Mr Cunningham was down at the front. I counseled with him, prayed with him and went home after all the hospital visits, told Madeline we're going to be missionaries, we're going to go to the Middle East.
Speaker 1:I say it this way, which I'm sure that she was so glad to hear she's she's what she actually said.
Speaker 3:She had a baby, unarmed, and one at her knee, and, and what I say she says it didn't happen like this, but but she's not here. I can say it my way. She looked at me after I'd given her a kiss on the cheek and made this announcement. She said you and who?
Speaker 1:God has not called me to the.
Speaker 3:Middle East has not called me to missions. Well, she was more missionary-oriented than I was. She was in WU, all that stuff, and so for about six weeks we had this back and forth. It ended one night. My parents were visiting. They were in the master bedroom, we were sleeping on the couch and we were arguing. You know, face to face, and I don't whisper.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't whisper well, and finally she turned her back to me and made as if she had gone to sleep. And so in my mind I'm yelling at God, this woman that you gave me is you know. And again that little voice seemed to come into my mind and say why are you trying to do my job? She told you I haven't called her yet. Shut up, and it was like Star Wars had just come out, and it was like that thing in the yeah, I don't see far away, you know, and it was going up, like that it was.
Speaker 3:it was like this whole list of things that I had on my plate for the kingdom and and that I was supposed to be doing. It was like, when you get done with all that, then you can do my job. And so I shut up and, uh, as it would happen, various churches would come and they would say, look, we want you to be our pastor. And I said, look, I can't. I know where my next assignment is and I can't do it. Well, she knows these churches and no offense, but every church, even this church, every church has problems. And she knew these churches. And so this church would come and she'd say, well, he didn't because of this.
Speaker 3:And finally, a church in Nashua, new Hampshire, contacted me and they said, look, we want you to come, this is what we're doing. This is what we're doing in the city. We have a Bible study in the, in the, in the technology, uh, sector of our city, and and guys are coming to study the word and and we see what you're doing, and we have this and that and the other, and and she just she listened to it and you know we were on the phone talking to these people. This is what he's been trying to do. And I said, no, I can't come. I would only be an interim pastor because I know where my next assignment is.
Speaker 3:And we hung up the phone from that and had they said look, okay, you're not called yet, but let us fly your family up. I said, no, I won't. I won't do that, it'd be a waste of kingdom resources, we're not going to do that. And so, uh, we hung up the phone and she looked at me and she said do you still feel like we're going to be missionaries? I said, yeah. She said but this is what she says today, but for three years it had been three years by this. You have been silent about it. You have not nagged me about it. And so she said okay, we will go through the International Mission Board process.
Speaker 3:For those of you who are Baptists, you need to know that your International Mission Board is very, very careful. They don't want to send anyone that God hasn't called. And so they have all of these processes. They have a psychiatric evaluation, they have a testimony where you tell your story, they have a doctrinal statement where you state your doctrinal beliefs, they have interviews and they have physicals. They do the whole thing. And we went through that whole thing and Madeline said God will close the door on it, we're not going. And in our last interview, the same guy who I'd prayed with three years before was charged with having our last interview with us and all those people had picked up. Madeline's not called, we're not sending them, but the second to last meeting he's over in his office stewing. Oh man, I've been praying with Mike for three years and I got to tell him he can't go. But we went into the office of JD Huey, who had arrived 30 minutes before from a trip to the Middle East, and he said you're the Edens, god's calling you to Egypt.
Speaker 3:And God called her right then right there and we sat down with him and he shared three job descriptions, two of which Mr Cunningham and I had prayed for developing in Gaza and in Jordan with discipling, new believers and Muslim evangelists. That didn't exist all that time. We had prayed those things into existence. And so we went into Dr Cunningham's office and we had these three job descriptions and we're talking. He's trying, he's very empathetic. Mike, I need to talk to you. There's something very important and I'm like man you won't believe. We've got stuff we've got to talk with you about and we're up here and he's down here. And finally he says, look, what I have is very important, but you think what you have is more important, so why don't you go? First? I said great. Showed him the Jordanian job description. He read it. He said we prayed for this. You're going to go to Jordan and disciple new Muslim believers. I said no. He said you're not going to go to Jordan.
Speaker 3:Showed him the Gaza Muslim evangelism. He said we prayed for this. You're going to go to. I said no. Showed him the Egyptian request. There had never been missionaries to Egypt and he said we don't have work in Egypt. I said yeah, but we're going to Egypt. And so God called Madeline and that was it. You know, that was it. So that's how we got from doing whatever God had for us here to doing whatever God had for us there, here to doing whatever god had for us there. And it's just one day, one night, we were driving back from a christian worship service in in cairo, and cairo is um. Anybody who tells you the population of cairo is going to lie to you, because nobody knows. Nobody knows.
Speaker 3:it's millions of people and it is a bustling dirty place, but it is great, it's our hometown and we're driving across town and 9 o'clock at night and just bustling, and it's like that small voice in the back of your head and God said you do know you're a country boy, don't you? And don't you realize you're in the middle of a huge city and you're right at home. Don't you give me glory for anything. And so, yeah, cairo Madeline said for a long time, yeah, cairo Madeline said for a long time, the government tried to deport us and make us an export product. A couple of three times and, as she would share with prayer requests and in our email newsletters, if they send me out of here, they're going to have to take my fingernails out of the tarmac. And so then God called us into leadership in the IMV with these mission couples around the region and we left Cairo and she kept her fingernails.
Speaker 3:So obedience is not. You know you were sharing about John the Baptist Sunday and his obedience. You know we look at public figures today who walk with Christ, and obedience is easy and hard. It's just one step at a time. So would you?
Speaker 2:say, during that three years where you were convinced that you were called and you. I would imagine there was a few things going on there. There was prayer still going on there. And then you were just being to alliterate, you were being persistent in what God called you to do where you were, why you waited for him in that process, right, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and God did a lot of wonderful things. The state police had a camping program in the summers, with each of the 11 troops across the state having 40 boys that they brought out into the wilderness and camped with them. Six troopers with 40 boys, and you know they drove up in their squad cars in uniforms, they got out of their cars and put on cutoff shorts and roughhoused with the boys for a week and at the end of the week the boys many of them disadvantaged boys would say I didn't ever know that a policeman was a man and we got to work alongside of them and we found out that those men, many of them, had broken marriages, many of them had children who were in addiction, problems like that. So we got to see that ministry blossom. The church did some really fabulous things and yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just be faithful where you are until.
Speaker 3:God moves you.
Speaker 1:I think that's a good, just real quick, just a good lesson in leadership. Yeah, I think sometimes, as leaders men who are called to lead, and every man who has a family is called to lead we want to lead our families and we want them to come on sometimes, and sometimes in any kind of leadership situation, you need to be prayerfully patient and continue to do things you're called to do, but then just being very, very patient as God brings people along sometimes Be present where you are right.
Speaker 2:So, whatever ministry role God's got you in, if it's not the one you want to be in, be faithful in the one. You're in Right, and then God's not moving you somewhere else. If you're not faithful, where? He has you so be patient, be persistent and faithful in that while you're there, so it's good. Persistent and faithful in that. While you're there, so it's good.
Speaker 1:Hey, gang, we are so glad that you joined us this week on the Unsexy Church podcast. As you can tell, mike Edens has a wealth of knowledge, wisdom, stories and just some good conversation that we just want to continue. So we didn't want to just cut him off and make this a short episode. So we're't want to just cut him off and make this a short episode, so we're making this a two-part episode. Make sure that you join us next week to hear the rest of the conversation with Mike Edens. And, as always, don't forget, if you have a question for us or you have a question you would like us to answer, or a suggestion for a show topic, we'd love to hear from you. You can click on the link on whatever platform you're listening on. Make sure you check us out on the socials Each and every week. We put that out there as well. You can DM us on the socials. As always, remember to stay unsexy. Thank you.
