ChristiTutionalist Politics | Christian Perspectives on Constitutional Issues

CTP (S3EJanSpecial3) Journalism, Faith, And The Grit To Lead

• Joseph M. Lenard | Christian Activist & Author in Politics • Season 3

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CTP (S3EJanSpecial3) Journalism, Faith, And The Grit To Lead
Exploring more of the fascinating intersection of Activism, Community Engagement, Faith / Religion, Human Nature, Politics, Social Issues, and beyond   
We trace Ahmad’s path from small-town Texas writer to minister and coach, linking journalism’s rigor to leadership, faith, and practical steps that dismantle excuses. The talk challenges entitlement, clarifies real charity, and offers a framework to move from stuck to steady.
• early love of writing and journalism fundamentals
• first speaking gigs and lessons from failing forward
• Texas campus ties and building community roots
• journalism versus media and source standards
• ministry with teens and young adults
• equal love from God versus unequal gifts
• charity with accountability not dependency
• practical framework from Now What for hard leaps
• leadership through delegation and mentorship layers
• personal responsibility and realistic next steps  
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SPEAKER_01:

Hello, welcome to another episode of Pristitutionalist Podcast. I am your host, Joseph M. Winer. That's L-E-N-A-R-D at LeFrench. It's not without an O. Thank you for tuning in. As Graham Norton used to say on his show. Let's get on with the show. Hello, everybody. I just wanted to let you know this brief intro. I'm gonna double up two a week for the rest of January. They get caught up on a few interviews I've recorded lately. They're kind of piling up. They're going a little too far in the future. I don't want to keep people waiting that long. So for the rest of January, I'll do two during the week rather than one midweek drop on Wednesday. So Tuesday and Thursday, the rest of January. Anyway, let's let's get some guests on, as Graham Norton currently says, and I'm borrowing. Joining me today, and before I hit record, I tried to make sure I would get the name right. It's Ahmad the Tal. It's spelled though A-H-M-A-R-D, V R silent in there, V-I-T-A-L. And I'm sensitive to name pronunciation because as you can see, Joseph M Leonard. It looks French. It's not Lenard. It's Leonard without the. So I'm a little touchy when it comes to names. Welcome to the show, Ahmad. How are you? Hey, thank you, Joseph, for having me on, man. Looking forward to it. So before we get into you as motivational speaker, ministry leader, coach, author, recording too late for you to be part of Books Authors Weeks for October 2025. But hey, you're here nonetheless. Better late than never, right? Give us the nitty-gritty on your background. Where were you born? Where were you raised? Where are you now? Any significant places you've been in between, that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, well, it's not that complicated, but thank you again for having me on. But man, I'm just a young man from a small town in Texas known as New Caney. And man, I just was a young man to a two-parent household, and I had a pen in my hand and a dream. I always say the greatest gift God ever gave me outside of the word was my pen. And so you can list off all the things that you see me going on now, whether it's ministry work, whether it's speaking, whether it's coaching, whether it's consulting, any of those things. Everything starts right here with my pen. And so that's that's something I've been doing my entire life. I wrote my first book at 11. I was writing for professional newspapers by the time I was 14. I was the editor of my newspaper. Went on to college, majored in journalism, came out of college, went back into journalism, and so it's just kind of gone on from there. And then somewhere along the way, I decided, like, hey, life has kind of kicked me in the face a little bit, and I've kind of made some mistakes. So let me write a book. And so then from there, I had a mentor at the time, and he looked at me and I was like, Hey, I got this book, so what do I do now? He's like, Well, most people when they write a book, they go speak, and I was like, Oh, okay, I'll go try that out. How about that? And so my first uh my first speaking engagement was to uh coach out here in the Houston area. He bought 80 copies of my book for his football program, and so I said, All right, I'll come speak to your guys. And I had no clue what I was doing. I'm just kind of piecing together what I saw online and all those things. But um, it's interesting because obviously that was one of my first ones. My first pay speaking engagement was in a small town in East Texas, and there were two young men on a park bench in Tyler, Texas. I got paid$300 to speak to a football camp, which was reduced down to two players, parents and coaches. There were more coaches and parents than student athletes, but I always look back at that time and say, you know, five years later, I went back to that same location and I said, Man, by that time I'd already spoken in a couple of countries. I'd been in multiple schools, multiple high schools, multiple colleges, some small businesses and different uh organizations. And so I'm grateful for where I started. And, you know, we are where we are right now, but you know, that's really just the simplicity, man. Just a guy trying to trying to keep his pen moving and keep his, you know, keep inspiring and keep serving, man. That's pretty much what what we got going on right now.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, most people who speak, what comes to mind is by the time this airs, most people will forget about it. But as we record now, the movie Soul on Fire is still in theaters. I saw that very good movie. Oh, you know, also about some someone who was caught in a fire, uh actually started the fire, burns over most of his body when he was young, later became, you know, was asked to speak, didn't know what most of us when we start to speak aren't natural-born charismatic speakers, right? The the the slick con scammer types, we don't want to be like them, right? It takes us time to learn to be better speakers, uh, but yeah, that soul on fire movie comes to mind. And for those watching the behind the scenes video, we can see you're wearing, and the benefit of the transcript and audio now, we can see you're wearing a Texas Tech, what is that, red Raider shirt? Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Tell us about that. Well, the interesting thing is that I when I get booked to speak, I typically am, if I'm not at the campus, wherever, whatever town I'm in, whatever school is there, I typically hit the local sporting goods store and pick up a shirt from there. But if I speak at a particular school, of course, they give me all of their gear. So I've not spoken at Texas Tech, but I have clients in Amarillo, which is the closest town to Lubbock, where Texas Tech is obviously doing quite well this season. Um, but I have I have I have shirts from man, if you pulled out my closet, there's so many college shirts there.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's kind of hopeful thinking you're putting out into the world, hey Texas Tech, hire me to speak, right?

SPEAKER_00:

That would that would be nice, no doubt about that. But uh the college up the street, West Texas AM, was uh is a client of mine, and and I've and I've bounced around to a couple of places. But the interesting thing is whether I it's either I speak there or one of my youth goes to college somewhere. Either way, I get the clothes. And so there's about that's 12 different colleges, maybe 13 or more different colleges in my closet right now. Yeah, I've spoken there. Either I had a youth who goes there, or they're the nearest town to where I was speaking. Because I had the last show I did, I did I had UT, University of Texas on time before I had Abilene Christian. So all of these different schools, I'll I'll represent them all. I'm a Texas guy at my heart, you know, because you know, the state of Texas, we we we we move different down here, and so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you mentioned journalism. I took journalism in high school, wrote for the school, high school paper and all that stuff. And I'm I'm glad you mentioned that because journalism versus reporting, big difference. Any moron can stick a microphone or or go up and ask, oh, you know, hey John Doe, what do you think about X? And then report. John Doe said X about Z. Journalism is well, is John Doe full of shit? Is what he said Z complete delusion about X, right? What are the facts, not just what someone wants reality to be perceived as, yes?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah, this is it's funny you put the difference between the two. I've always said that that when we came up, obviously it was it was from a journalism standpoint. I wrote for newspapers, but I did actually get in on the early wave of the uh online, uh, were online articles, you know, they called them blogs back then, but for the most part, it was just the newspaper written online. That's all it was. But original journalism to where I came up and my late my late teacher from college, you know, I came up at a time when you had to verify and have two sources before you could write anything. That's how now it's all anonymous.

SPEAKER_01:

Anonymous, like you made it up. Don't I mean if you can't quote somebody, uh, we I'm I'm at that point believing you just made it up and you're pretending you had sources.

SPEAKER_00:

But Joseph, sources said, sources alleged, which like you said, can be your cat or you know, your you know, your pet outside, you know. Uh but I I I came up during that time and and and really because I always tell people there's a difference between journalism and what we call now media. Journalism requires is an art, is a craft. You go to school for it, you learn from um other journalists how to you know put together, not only put together a sentence. I remember when I started who, what, where, when, why, how yes, when I went to J When I went to J School, I kid you not, our first lesson was parts of a sentence. Like, I ran. What else? That's it. And then we would add, and then and then slowly we would start adding on, adding on pronouns, adding on particycles, adding on uh gerunds, and all of these other things. And it was like, man, like we really were breaking, we really went back to basically second grade and build back up to where we would, you know, be writing at a level to where we're starting at the fundamentals of the fundamentals, like yeah, literally a two-word sentence. Yeah, oh, absolutely, and so that was that was major for that was major when we were coming up because you know, once once the internet started coming in, and obviously I was part of it, but I still kind of kept my same journalistic type of ways because I had a high school um um he was over the newspaper, he was the I can't think of the name, he was a teacher, but he was over the newspaper, he ran the newspaper that I was the editor over. And then of course when I got to college, I had a professor, and every time I would write something, I would think about those two men, and I was like, Oh, I can't put this out. They wouldn't approve of this. And so that was that was always my kind of my my my guardrails. It was like, okay, did they say it's off the record? Okay, it's off the record. You can only use it for context, but you can't quote it. Um, if someone says, you know, um, you know, I don't, I don't want, I don't want to be named, but you can you can put the likeness of me or something along those like all those little things.

SPEAKER_01:

Like I said, a person in the industry, or right, at least some sort of qualifier so we have an idea that it's someone of merit and note that knows what they're talking about, as opposed to, yeah, just some random schmuck on the street said and grammar, yes, matters. Two sentence, two-word sentence, all right? Normally a G-rated show, people, I'm going PG 13 ish here, right? There is a difference between John Doe said nice ass. Is it nice comma ass as in a sexual reference, or is it nice space ass or nice comma ass as in uh nice sarcasm, you you know what, right? You ass bleep, or nice space ass, which would be the sexual connotation reference, right? Those two are two different things, and the comma makes all the difference in the world and understanding it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, and and the thing is that when I started jumping into the online world, it was it was baffling to me because I had colleagues who would just make up like these stories, and it was all it was the rumor mill, and it was like, well, this person said this, and sources close to the situation, or uh a contact in the principal's office. And I'm just like, okay, like I I didn't even know how to use unnamed sources because all of my journalism professors were like, that's a no-go, you never do that. So I didn't even know how to like fake that, like I didn't I didn't know how to do it, so I had to be just kind of on my straight and narrow. And I was like, even when I'm doing online blogs with athletes, I'm like, the father said, assistant coach said, or this assistant coach's name said, but at least I had enough people backing to where no one ever came back and said, I never said that. I never had that happen. Because for one, I had a pocket recorder, which lo and behold, it's it's still sitting here next to me. I have a pocket recorder because you remember the days when you had to go back and transcribe by hand and write it on a pad, and then transfer it over and then start typing it. Like I I I've seen some things. Uh obviously, I'm a I'm a young Gen Xer, but I my internship, I'll give it to you like this. This this is how this is how interesting my journalism journey was. In high school, we were one of seven newspapers in the state of Texas in high school to have a digital newspaper, meaning we we did everything on what was called PageMaker back in the day. I'm sure you remember that program.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Adobe page maker, and it was slow. We was we and and we had a we had a uh a photo scanner. That thing took 30 minutes to scan one photo, and it was slow, and the photo and it would load into the computer, and the pictures just coming down slow. I mean, you're talking about half a day to just give you a like 50 dpi quality. Megabytes didn't exist. Yeah. It was it was megabytes, and it's these large screens, and we're laying the new, and we had a digital newspaper, and so obviously, we were printing from a digital newspaper. I went to college, I came home and did my internship at the local newspaper at a town up the street from New Caney called Umble. I was working for the Sun newspaper. They were cutting and pasting. So I went from I went from having the the the newspaper that's revolutionary in high school going to college and coming home and learning cut and paste. But I tell you what, you will not appreciate journalism until you until you do cut and paste. That exact that exact oh knife, and see I was an intern, right? You know what my job was uh uh uh some of the time to do the classifieds. You gotta cut at the edges so you get a smooth box and you gotta start all over the the gummy paper and laying it out and the only thing we did digital was the front page. I'm like, you know, you can do the rest of the paper in there too, right? But we're we're on these big old light boards, and um and nothing is more liberating, and I use that word very loosely, and I'm using it very sarcastically as well, is to put together the classified section with gummy paper, with them small pikes and that Xacto knife having to catch it. Like, it's just like wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I would dare say though, there are less mistakes with that because it's so exacting, you have to be really careful with what you're digital. Now there's all kinds of mistakes get past because it's all thrown together and the the automated word and grammar checking doesn't catch it all. Uh I've got a digital recorder here, but even back in high school in the 70s when I did interviews for the school paper, I had one of those big old clunky cassette recorders that I recorded with. But anyway, since we've talked about journalism now, let's move on to ministry leader. Tell us a bit about that.

SPEAKER_00:

I've been doing ministry at the church I'm at now, uh, about five years. I think I've I think I have eight years total, eight to ten years total in uh in youth ministry. Um I I I started realizing that most of what I do in almost every aspect of life was always dealing with a certain demographic, teenage through about young adults. Uh, whether it was even speaking in colleges, well, who's the age of college students? Speaking in high schools, working with athletes, because obviously at the core, I'm a sports writer. So I'm dealing with high school and college age players. I didn't do, I haven't done really anything in the NFL other than guys who I coach I dealt with before who are now in the NFL, but I never was an NFL writer at all. So I've always been in that demographic. And you know, like many of us, I've had a I've had a couple of rocky roads along the way, and uh I thought I had the way to be able to do things because I was successful. I you know had the American dream by the time I was 30 years old. So, you know, I had had it figured out until I didn't, and then it all came crashing down, and you know, then like you always say everyone says you had that that that night when you and God are you know wrestling with one another trying to figure out you know what are we going to do? And of course I gave up. I gave in and I said, All right, you wake me up tomorrow. I'll try it your way since my way doesn't work so well.

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, a door closes, not all not always another door opens, but there might be a window to climb through.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, yes, yes. And it might be the one that gets stuck halfway, so you kind of gotta squeeze and you know throw yourself sideways and turn into a leap.

SPEAKER_01:

But it's an opportunity nonetheless. So we've kind of covered coaching with ministry leader and motivational speaker. So let's go ahead. The book or books, is it several?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, there is three. The the latest one is now what the one that uh came out in 2023. Um that is my that is my latest, I want to say masterpiece, but we still got to start moving a couple more units for it to become a masterpiece. But it does, it does have a lot of great value to it. It was written uh in the middle of 2020. Uh maybe your audience was around and saw a few things that happened in 2020. Um, I think we just a few things went on in 2020. So I just I got Joseph, I got sick of just the conversations that were happening around 2020. I got sick of people saying that you owe me something, this is the you, this is this is my time, you know, the the the the re entitlement and yeah, the reckoning is here, and I'm like, the the reckoning of what you have a phone in your pocket that costs more than my first five cars. Okay, so like what are we talking about here? And it's just like you know, you owe me this, you owe me that, and it's like, okay, because a couple Misfortunate things happen. So now you're old from people who don't even know you. Okay, got it. And so I started talking to a lot of guys. Obviously, we were kind of pinned up into our little holes here and there. So I was, you know, dealing with a number of gentlemen, and some of them were kind of going through some really rough times. And I would go and I would coach them and I would help them through some things. And I remember running into a couple of guys, and they would tell me their scenario. And every time I had a solution, there was a roadblock or a pit hole or a cliff or this can't happen. And I was sitting there and I was just like, God, like, why did you put me here? I like everything I'm throwing out there, none of this is going to work. And so I say, you know what? How about I write a book for those who are in an impossible situation? Like when you hear, like when you hear someone's story, you're just like, man, it's they're never getting out of that. And it's like, well, let's find out if there's like, if you do all of these things, you maybe have a chance. And so now what kind of breaks that down from the standpoint of when you're trying to get from where you are to where you're trying to go in the in the leap you're trying to make is substantial. Like let's just say you're going from you know being a worker at a fast food joint and you want to become, let's say, a scientist. Well, obviously the gap between that and that is huge. Well, the book here breaks down how you baby steps, right?

SPEAKER_01:

You're not going to get from A to Z. You gotta go through B to X, Y, the fours. But Joseph, I'm old.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm old that because my my parents didn't love me and didn't give me enough hugs, right? Yeah, you know, right. So I think doesn't like my skin color or doesn't like my, you know, the way I doesn't like my face.

SPEAKER_01:

What or yes?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, all of those things, all those things, and all those things are just and I I'm with you because I think all those things are just excuses to condone mediocrity and failure. Like to just say surrender, yeah. Because it can't be me, because I'm awesome, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Like it can't, I can't, I can't be the problem. That's part of the problem with our school systems, esteem over substance. Everybody thinks everyone is unique, created by God, but we're not all special. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00:

No, the the parable of the talents made that very clear. Some got one, some got this many. Like, no, like I would have loved to be six foot six. Yeah, it would have been awesome. Guess what? I'm five nine. And I have to live with that. And you know what? There's no amount of books that's ever gonna get me to six six. Now, what I can do is I can be extremely altruistic, I can serve, I can be extremely wealthy, I can be extremely a giving person. All those things are in control. I can't change my eye color, my skin color, my height, I can change my weight, but I can't change my height. So I'm I'm saying all that to say that that no, we're not all created equal. We're all loved equally by God. That that we can go ahead and say, but guess what? Some of us got other gifts who that others didn't. You see those people, you see them people who who who make electric cars and who uh send rockets into space and things of that nature. That's not a regular person, right? They have some different level of intellect that obviously some of it can be learned, but some of that is just you have a brain that's specifically for that type of stuff, and so we're not equal. And so I wanted to be able to put together something for someone who's trying to pursue a worthwhile goal, and here's some steps to be able to get there, and yeah, like you said, in your in your pursuit to go and to get that thing, you may fall short.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, you you said some things that triggered a few thoughts, like, yeah, we're all given free will, we're not owed anything by God, God helps at times. But what worries me most is supposed Christians with the sin of hubris thinking God owes them something just by their existence. That's not the way it works. And the other thing is the Bible makes the distinction of charity being to help those who are unable to help themselves versus those who are unwilling to help themselves, and why Jesus said the poor will always be among you. That's not economics or governance, that's a human nature statement. Some people will do nothing, and especially if there's always somebody giving them things. Do you want to be well?

SPEAKER_00:

That was he can do everything, but he's like, hey, I'm not doing anything until you qualify the idea. Because you've been out here for quite some time, you know, and and have done nothing. But no, that that's that's absolutely the case. And and and yeah, the entitlement has gotten so out of control to the point where it's like you said, we didn't have these kind of programs, what, 150 years ago? Right.

SPEAKER_01:

Because charity, charity was in place, which is local, and the charities know who is unable versus those who are unwilling, versus the government, which just gives without qualification most time, and it got out of control. Difference between biblical community, which is free will and charity, versus worldly communism, which is theft and redistribution and force.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, now you just pull the scab off, Joseph. Thanks for that. Because because no, I because you because when people always say, Oh, so you don't want to help the poor, I was like, I help the poor more than all of you all combined. That's number one. Okay, go and I'm and again, this is not one of those like look at me type things, but you know what? I look to serve and give on a daily basis. That's what that's that's not even what I do, is who I am, right? But what I don't want is a nameless, faceless check coming from Pennsylvania Avenue to give to somebody who there's no connection, you know, because the thing is is that once the breakdown of the family happened, then all bets were off. That's when all this stuff started kicking in. Because what your first line of defense is I don't know, your aunt and uncle, your grandparents, your cousins, the family. When you have a family and it's not a bunch of broken pieces thrown against the wall somewhere, and then you had what? The local community, the church. Oh, shocker. Gee, shockingly enough, our church still does that. And people look at our church and say, Oh, y'all are so special. I'm like, no, this is what the church was meant to do. The church wasn't, the church is not there to hoard money and build cathedrals. No, the church is meant to be able to take care of the least of these, right? And we do that at our church. We have a we have a community service project we do every day called Serve Day. 47 different ministries going on, service projects going on at the same day. Over 500 people committing four hours, five hours of their morning to do those types of things.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, your church is supposed to be. Yeah, you're talking the difference. Dennis Kuwait coined, I coined constitutionalists in trademark. I'm a teeny bit jealous of Dennis Kuwait, who came up with the term churchianity, right? There's real churches versus humanist clubs that are just a building with a steeple that people go to, but the minute they walk away from it, they're stabbing each other in the back. It's not a real church.

SPEAKER_00:

Or the pastor's hustling all the money.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Because apparently God told them, like, you need the and it's always interesting, it's not always you you need a quarter million dollar whip like Bernie Sanders.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, the problem is, it's like when they say, Oh, God told me that we need$1,333 from 20 of you. It's like, did God tell you that? Because shockingly, and maybe you're at further along down the trough than I am, but God has never told me, you know what, Maud, I need you to give$67.38 to that man over there. He's never told me that ever in my life. And I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. Right. But the bottom line is, is you're right, is that the charity and us doing and doing for people, because like you said, and we don't have to get into the to the to the nuts and both.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's part of the free will. We are to want to be our brother's keeper and help widows and orphans, not forced to do it at the barrel of a gun. Yeah, let me do it.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't need, I don't need for you to take the money I've earned and put it in a pot and say, you know what, it's best to go here. No, no, we we decide that, right? Our own blood and treasure. Yeah. Well, and and and and and my and my charity is is moved by the fact that I enjoy giving. I enjoy serving. I enjoy the idea of servant leadership. I like I'm I look forward to it. I I'm looking to to find someone who is maybe in need, even if it's a word, if it's prayer, if it's if it's if it's a if it's a meal. I mean, I've I mean you've probably done it. I've done it. I've I've done it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, back in the days when I had a six-figure salary working in IT, yeah, I could help a lot of people. I myself am on disability now, and my disability budget, after the last four years of hyperinflation, to when I have to cut more and more corners, right? So yeah, I'm it because charity of one's own blood and channel treasure, not telling Steve to steal from John to give to Edith. That's not charity, that's theft and redistribution. But yeah, I and it's all cyclical. And yes, I gave because again, I wanted to help others, and while I could, I did. And yes, as you said, helping others helps yourself. Rick Springfield, the song Karma. You don't have to be a Christian to understand this the line, every bit of love I give to another, you know what I believe, it comes back to me. You get back some of what you put out. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

And we and we're always just well, my father, my father had a lot of sayings that I didn't realize until after he left, right? Of how it was just so simple. Like, you know, treat like the golden rule, treat us like you want to be treated. It's just like, you know, if you have the opportunity to do the right thing, you should. Like, and again, when people always talk about, you know, you know, putting the Bible on trial. We actually just had a uh uh a teaching on that recently in our youth, you know, the Bible on trial, as far as that's concerned. And you know, you'll have these people who aren't believers and they'll be like, Well, how do we do it? How do we know this, this, this, this? And I was like, Well, how do you know murder is bad? How do you know lying is a sin? How do you know that doing certain acts against other people? Like, if you you didn't make that up on your own, it ain't some regular people. I was like, it's all built on the biblical uh uh sayings in there, like like most of us, whether you're a believer or not, know the Ten Commandments, right? Okay, if that's if the ten if no one thought that the Ten Commandments weren't worth anything, then we could just be the wild west and we can just go out there and just start sleeping, and there will be no and it would be and there will be no wrong to it, right? We like, oh, that's just par for the course, but because we have uh a biblical worldview and because we have the foundational truth, the word of God with us, we move in accordance to it, and we live accordance to that, and so like you said, when we're talking about theft and taking all of these different things and and and giving to people and labeling it charity, and it's more of enabling it in charity because because there's no wanting to relieve yourself of that. Like, I mean, like you said, you're you're in a different situation, but there's people who are my age and younger right now collecting in as in a a large amount of money with with with absolutely no plan to discontinue that at any given time. Like how many people I'm and I and I don't know. I don't know that many people who have who have voluntarily gotten off welfare. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

And oh I I actually do know uh a family that through us helping them grow while we were growing up. Our parents, you know, my sister's younger friends uh would come over for dinner because their mother couldn't provide enough being on welfare. And indeed, she turned her life around, got healthier, got a job, got off welfare. That's great and wonderful. But and back to something else you said, a big difference between teach the parable, the you know, the nursery rhyming, teach a man to fish, right? Versus just giving them a fish over and over. That's called creating dependency. That's not really charity, helping them to learn how to be able to feed themselves is the right way to go about it, as you're alluding to.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and the same thing, that same principle, not only teaching someone how to fish or teaching someone how to do for themselves, but it also works in leadership, right? Like I have a you know, a group of young men I work with over at the church, and some days I'll come in and say, Hey, come here. Here's what here's what here's what here's what the youth pastor told me needs to be done. And I'll give him the breakdown of what needs to be done, and I'll say, Hey, I want you to lead up and go get you a crew of guys and go get this done. And then I'll check in with you after you've checked in with your guys. So now I'm I'm putting another layer of leadership in. So why? So that when I move on to somewhere else, that young man can be like, you know what, Mr. Mr. Vital, Mr. Mr. Mars showed me how to do this. So now I can be a leader. I'm teaching him how to lead. And so then what he's going to do is when he gets to the young adult level, he'll be like, let me go find the 15-year-old and do the same thing. And that's how you that's how you build up leaders.

SPEAKER_01:

You got to building community versus a commune. Yes. Oh man. Now again, back to biblical community is different than worldly communism. I talk, I rant and rave on this show all the time about that. Well, speaking of time, it has flown. So uh just briefly mention your other books before we get to where to reach out to you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, uh, the first book, uh, 2011, is Awaken the Baller Within. That was the first book I wrote. It was a it was a book to help um athletes with their mindset, the preparation before you hit the field. I see your success. Now give me the backstory of how you got there. And so I basically did what Napoleon Hill did with Nikki Girl Rich, and I did that with Awaken the Baller Within with college football players. And so, guys, I had a connection with. So I did about a hundred interviews to be able to put all of that uh information together for that. That was one of my that was one of my more popular books. And then my second one was I Am More Than Enough, three steps to uh to overcome the fear of your own reflection. And yeah, that one, I was in a real interesting time during that time, and I was kind of I was kind of I don't want to say I was in between religions, but I wasn't all the way in on the Christian church at that time. And so um I don't look at that as lost time, I look at that as the journey, you know, not quite Damascus, but I'm I was going, I was coming from somewhere and I'm going somewhere, and uh, and God got me through that. But it really helped, really, the main thing is about taking um taking personal inventory for yourself. Like, every what I basically say, you look in the mirror, and all that and all that comes with it is on you. Like, that's where I look at the idea that, like, okay, well, my parents, my parents failed me. Okay, that's unfortunate, but you still have to live this life, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

That doesn't necessarily do life, right? That doesn't define the rest of your life. What are you doing versus what has someone done to you? And you're handicapped.

SPEAKER_00:

I get it, you are handicapped that they failed you, but you don't want to fail yourself. So you're that's again, remember we're talking about the equal thing. Some of us don't start from the same starting line because if your parents didn't give you no hug or they put you on the street at the age of seven, you got a whole different ball game than some of us growing up.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and and in this country, we're given equal opportunity, not the promise of equal outcome. And the latest book isn't WTF, it's now what?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, five steps to get up and create the most of life. That's absolutely what we have to do.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you, Ahmad, for coming on. Wait, do you have a website where people could find more information and reach out?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, just my name, AhmadVital.com. And it's Ahmad Vital, put it in any search engine. All my social media platforms will come up.

SPEAKER_01:

And again, there is an R in there, but it's silent. But in the behind the scenes video, everyone will be able to see it on the scroll at the bottom of the screen when I put it in and post show edit. Thank you, Amad. Appreciate your time. Take care, God bless. Appreciate it. You too. Like and subscribe to Christitutionalist Politics Podcast and share episodes. We need your help. Thank you for having tuned in to another Christitutionalist podcast show. I really appreciate that you stop by. Again, please like, share, subscribe. We need you to help spread the constitutionalist movement. Thank you again. Take care. God bless. Love you all.

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Joseph M Lenard

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