ANCHORMEN Ep42 w/Craig Misewicz Pt1

John,Bob,and Todd sit down with Craig Misewicz for a great conversation about how Craig has been blessed just listening and watching our Anchormen bible study group meetings. He tell about how he shares the meetings with his family and loves to listen twice just to take notes and dig deeper into scripture.

Even though Craig is not present every week at group meetings, He has been impacted by the fellowship and teachings about God's grace and even how he has begun to unlearn some of the things he was taught growing up believing, but never taking the time to read scripture and get to know who Jesus is and all that He has done for us.

Many two part episodes summerize in part two what happened in part one but we encourage you to listen to part one right here so you won't miss the important points that Craig makes here in this episode.

Reach out to the Anchormen by emailing us at anchoredbygrace@duck.com.

Listen or share our website to help spread the good news of being Anchored by Grace

https://anchormenanchoredbygrace.buzzsprout.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

In our walk with God, we often experience moments when our faith is tested. It's in these times that we truly discover what it means to be anchored in faith. Our faith is like a sturdy ship anchored in the harbor. It keeps us grounded when the waves of life toss us around. When we lean on God in His Word, we find the strength to persevere and trust in His plans. The anchormen remind us weekly that Jesus is our anchor, providing stability and assurance in the midst of uncertainty.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

Together, let's dive deeper into the powerful words that encourage us to hold fast in the faith of Jesus alone and not rely on our good words to be righteous. Three-time Orange County watermelon seed spitting champions.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Well, welcome to another Anchorman Anchor Five Grace podcast. Ahoy there, Madies. Good afternoon, everybody. Good to see you guys all.

SPEAKER_03 1:52

Bob's here, Todd's here, I'm here, and Craigs Mizowitz. Close enough, better than my mother-in-law says.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Not as good as the coach's dead wife knows.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Glad to have you here, Craig. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Finally got a chance to get out here and uh if you're listening in Arizona, you probably know our guest. Or even California. Who knows?

SPEAKER_03 2:16

My mother's probably at the dinner table waiting.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Our culvert. Craig knows a lot of people. And a little people know Craig, too. So well, good to have you here, Craig. Thank you. Yeah. I want to start off really quick by just asking question. Uh who's going to pray? Well, you want to do that? No, is that what the question you were going to ask? Well, I was going to just demand a prayer from somebody.

unknown 2:45

All right.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Bob just pray. Bob's well rested. You're one of the only voices I can pick out consecutively when I'm listening. Yeah. And Chuck Mud. And then the fact that you guys make Chuck read everything, my mom's like, is that a recording? Like that guy's voice is perfect. I mean, it's Chuck Mud. And so I played her the commercial. He, you know, he the 30-second thing. She goes, Oh, you need to put that on TV right now. I go, Mom, these guys don't even have a building yet. That was just a kind of a you know. Well, Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Thank you for Craig being able to drive out here and meet with us and talk with us and Bob and Todd and I all get together. We don't get to do this too often in the summer, but we are together, and it's awesome. And uh thank you so much for arranging things and making things happen. And Panero Bread. And Pan for Panero Bread for being close by. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Good night. Alright, I'm gonna start off by just asking our guest, Craig.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

Um, you don't you're not physically here every week, but you watch us weekly on our Facebook page. So my question to you is after you've been watching us for what, about a year now? Longer and a half. A year and a half, maybe? Almost two years. Almost two years? Okay. How has just being part of the Anchorman group has it affected you at all? Oh yeah. I I I think uh I'm not different than anybody that's in there. I think we all need community. And for me, this has become my church, and I I'll be forever grateful for Todd to reach out to me to go on the you know the disaster trip and found a group of people that I had a lot in common with, even though we're from different churches. And you know, I get made fun of a lot by Mr. Clark because I am a Catholic still, and he's a Reformed Catholic, so you know that stand-up, sit-down, neo-religious. As you all three of us are all yeah, everybody's a reformed Catholic, right? Um but the only thing that I miss by listening is I don't always hear all the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

So I don't, and I don't always know who's talking, so I don't know how to process some of that. Okay. So what I've been doing the last probably since grass cutting season came, I listen to it again while I'm cutting the grass. Okay. And that sometimes you pick up something that you didn't hear when you were there, or because it's there's no other noise going around, and your mom's not there, or the phone's not ringing, or your wife's not doing something, you catch all of the conversation. And the one that sticks out in my mind is it started out very political, and Todd was smart enough to cut it off and start it again. Um but that I was in Arizona and my mom was like, Well, I thought this was a religious group. Why are they talking about politics? And I, you know, you it's hard to explain to your mother, but that kind of conversation in here is good, and any conversation that we can have in these walls or you have in these walls that helps somebody else or resonates with somebody is a benefit, even if it's just one. And and I go back to what Bob said about he and his wife at the first retreat. That might have saved my marriage. It's a little rocky right now, but at the time it was worse than Rocky. So um, you know, women think we all don't communicate well, and I think this group's helped me communicate a little better. Um, I've never studied the Bible before, I've never really even read the Bible before. Sure, I've got three of them, but like Bob said, you know, we buy them, we just don't read them. Yeah. So um this has been a great experience for me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Has it changed your life? I mean, because you you think it's changed your life.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Uh yeah, I could say it definitely has because I can sit in peace now. Uh, I mean quiet, which I never used to be able to do. Um, I can laugh at you all with you not knowing it at something you said or did, or like I I and I I hope I don't see, I mean, I hope I see the guy here today, but there was one guy. I kid you not, probably shouldn't be on this podcast. He was itching himself. And I'm thinking, my mom is watching the screen intently. She's giving me that look like, are you sure this group of guys is okay?

SPEAKER_02 7:01

I would say that your mom is the only female we've ever let in to the increment.

SPEAKER_03 7:07

No, my my wife listens once. When I'm home, my wife will listen. Okay. Although lately she hasn't, we've gone in separate.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

They're not on the accounts. They listen through his understood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I'm in the pan woman hater club with the little rascals we've been.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Absolutely. Um then, you know, the other part that factors in is, you know, Todd, I knew of Todd, but we didn't really know each other. Um, and this has been a good experience for me because all the things that I've ever heard about him, half of them are true, and the other half are what makes him a stupid.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

He still drives way too fast because road raids.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

Yeah. Um, but those kind of things, I resonate with them because of where where we came from. Uh, and I resonate with you because of what you said. And I re I mean, there's people that I resonate with. And then there's I didn't realize I knew Gordon's grandfather. He still doesn't know I know his grandfather. Really? Yeah. So that's why I think I had reached out to you that one day I'm like, you know this guy. You know who this guy is. I know this guy. It's Gordon's grandpa. Interesting. Uh you know, I still, and I won't be doing it tonight because my phone's about dead, but I listen to Todd every night at midnight. I set my alarm and I wake up to listen to him singing on that bus or that van when we were going to and from North Carolina. Did that create or prevent uh nightmares? No, it's in the midnight hour. More, more, more the rebel yell. Until until recently, my my nine to five job was I went to bed at nine and I got up at five. But when you go to bed at nine, there's at some point, you're gonna a couple days you're gonna wake up at three, and what do you do? Well, I write or I sit in quiet.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

It's you know what I you brought up now, and and and I want to ask you a question now. So now I get to be the interviewer like John Gildin always is. So we won't be as good, but this is gonna be a killer. So my question is this you are awesome at writing and sharing whatever his thoughts are coming across your brain and then making it out almost into a really cool story to get people think. But the one thing that I when I read it, and I always question it, is how come he's never talked about God or Jesus? John's already asked me that.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

Really? Yeah, uh, and I, you know, a lot of the stuff I do is implied grace uh throughout the message because I don't know if you remember me in the grace coupons. You guys remember that story about here about how I um got chastised by my neighborhood because I was passing out grace coupons? No. That's the other thing that you know why I resonate with this group, it's about grace. And and why I don't talk about it is my first boss was a guy that said there's three things you never talk about in public sex, religion, and politics. So he must have lived before the talked about. That's all it is, and I you know I used the term uh in a piece I wrote the other day. The referee jumped in the arena a long time ago. And the arena is everywhere. So we've become a 24-hour society. We I and I what really pains me, and I should, and right after John uh said that, I wrote a piece. Remember, and I sent it to you, and you're like, holy cow, wow, why don't you do more of this? Well, I don't know. I I I think I'm afraid. I think that's the easiest way to say that. I'm afraid that I'm gonna offend people.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Or is it or is it, are you afraid that people might think differently of you? I don't really care.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Like, oh, he's a Bible thumper. I don't care. So if you don't care, then why are you happy?

SPEAKER_03 11:00

I don't I don't care what they think because I I those things that I write are to clear my mind for the day. My my time with my and my walk is private. That's how I look at it, which is why I love this. I get to share, I get to listen, I get to interact. I can't always comment. I mean, there's times I'm pushing that button like, hey, I'm raising my hand, I'm raising my hand, but yeah, nobody can see me. Uh and there's been some really crazy discussions, and I mean some some stick out, but others, when I listen to it again when I'm cutting the grass, um it changes what happened the night before. Because I'm not always paying perfect attention when I'm sitting here like this, but when I got that headphone in and I'm just pushing that more, this earpiece has my undivided attention. So I learn more re-watching it than I do watching it. And I'll talk to myself when I'm cutting the grass, like I wanted to ask a question or I wanted to do this, and um yeah, it's been good. I mean, I understand your question because it's the first thing he asked. Um and I think it's just uh, yeah, I already get enough credit for some of the stuff I write, and people think I'm a Trump hater. I'm not. If you read today's, you you can clearly see I'm not a Trump hater. Um but I I when I write, and if you know me, I want you to feel what I'm telling you. And I do a Sunday sermon, and it's always, if you look at the underlying message, it's always grace. It just doesn't say it. And I could stack them in front of you, and you've never read one, and you would go, break this down to one sentence, grace. Break this down to one sentence, grace. And you do that for the first 30, and then you might see, do unto others. Or the platinum rule versus the golden rule.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

So what about because in the Catholic religion, if you did that and you weren't doing your works, you may not go to heaven. And so through the grace message, obviously, there's a totally different message. So my question to you is is have you and Maureen looked at potential other churches where they're like non-denominational or not Catholic? Or is that a no-holds barred for you because it'll tick off mom and don't want mom to be upset? Or is it this is the way that I grew up, this is who I am?

SPEAKER_03 13:41

No, we uh it's really interesting. We have gone to church in probably 30 cities, and we'll always try something different, and we I we do that because it's something I did when my travel when I was traveling. I my first wife was a Jack Mormon, but she went to class to become uh Catholic or to learn so we could get married in the church. Jack Mormon means she was baptized but non-practicing, so that was an interesting start.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

I just to add a side note, I thought it was a little bit different because I had an experience with Corey McCamin and Ron Izinski. We went into a a Mormon church, and when we found out that it was based on the stuff that we were doing, we hit the road. Yeah. So it was, I thought you meant Jack Mormon meant hit the road, Jack Mormon.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

And so that's what I No, it means non-practicing, but she was really good about it, and she was pregnant. So it was yeah, forget about all that stuff. But uh, and that's the one that just had triplets. Gotcha. That's the firstborn Nick. But when we traveled, if I'm in Minnesota and I'm riding with or staying with a guy that's a Protestant, and he's going to church on Sunday, guess where I'm going? I'm going with him. So I've I've sat in every kind of mass you can imagine. And in Culver, we go to the Methodist Church, we go to the Baptist Church, and we go to the Catholic Church on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

It sounds like a Jack Mormon is a uh fallen away Catholic. Might be. You know, a lot of fallen away Catholics were Catholic, were raised Catholic, and they've fallen away from any church.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

Sure. Well, the testament to that is, or the sadness of that is the fastest growing religion right now is people that believe in no religion. Yes. So, you know, at 28% of the population, uh, that's a big number. And I and I think that's part of what's wrong with what's going on right now is too many people don't have look. Well, many of them are longing for community. Yeah. You can get it a number of ways. You can get it at Stitching Bitch, you can get it at, you know, wherever you can get it at the basketball court on the gym on like Adam Smith and all those guys still all play basketball together. That's their church. Even though I go to those different churches, and some one's a Tuesday night, one's a Wednesday, one's a Sunday. Well, the early this is my church. The early church didn't have a building.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Well, the first church did not have a building. Absolutely not. Community. It was community. And you can relationships and community.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

That's more important than a building. Well, and the other thing, Craig, I think you mentioned was you know, percentages and in a and the large number. And I think that goes back to Jesus' many and few. Many will fall away, and few will follow. Right. And so I think he knew that 2000 plus years ago. And so he's not surprised. It's just in our culture, it's occurring right before us, so it seems to be a trend, but it's certainly not, I imagine, a surprise to him.

SPEAKER_03 16:45

Well, I can tell you this.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

There's a lot of people that their religion is something other than God, obviously. And that's that's the part is I save my Sundays for X, whatever it might be, and I don't go to church because I do this, and so they don't substitute that. They do. Their equivalent of church is something that they are obedient to. They go weekly, think about a lot, and it just happens to not be church, it happens to be some activity or function or something.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Well, we we talk over and over again that, you know, um church for us, if we happen to go, is basically 20 minutes. It's a 20-minute sermon of whatever the pastor has put together. Um, my and our learning is from this group and all the stuff that we do on our own. Whether it's diving into the Bible or listening to somebody else teach, like Andrew Farley or whomever, that's that's where our growth has come from.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

It's interesting to me that um men in our group that go weekly or go occasionally typically come back and put a text out on how what the pastor said that was wrong or different than the grace message. And so it's almost like you're going there in anticipation of hearing something that's not gonna take you forward but more frustrates you or have you look around like these poor people aren't getting the real message.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

So when we do focus on the grace message here and we send it during the week to each other, it seems to me that we're getting a deeper, a deeper dive than some pastor can give in 20 minutes on some try to make everybody laugh and try to have everything, you know, work or even in their individual studies that they do, because they usually will do books, and it's usually a lay person from within the church that'll you know lead it, and so um, yeah, it's it this this group has evolved twenty-fold, you know, from when we first started, and it's it's just it's just a reprieve and it's it's nice.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

It's when we started calling Todd Father Todd that I knew that we were transitioning into a new type of group where he was kind of an ordained. He doesn't wear black all the time anymore.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

He's trying to be one of the new and he has a white-collar worker, so we are gonna have to cupcakes.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

I was looking for small milks because I've stopped at three places looking for small milks like we used to get in the cafeteria.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Well, I'm just using the uh padding, the uh one that I just had that he brought. Yeah, the peppermint padding.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

We'll wash it down. Well, you know, Bob, here's another thing that I think is important about this group. And I say this about kids I watch on the baseball field. You can tell who has the passion and who doesn't. And Brad has such a passion for leading this study. Yeah, it shows. You can feel it, you can see it. And sometimes when you guys are questioning each other, I'm looking at his face and he's like, Like, wait, what is what are they saying? And I can't remember the guy's name, but he doesn't come anymore. You and him got in this big Well, that doesn't narrow it down.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

He's still a good guy, but yeah, he the way that it was He didn't he didn't present his his approach very well.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

He kind of came in and tried to take over and try to persuade as opposed to just describing his beliefs, and he was trying to get people to come to his group, and it's not some I mean, it's like going to the Catholic Church and trying to get everyone to become Baptist or Jewish, you know. It's like, hey, come to the synagogue and here's why. You guys are doing this all wrong, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Well, you know what's really interesting about this thing, and that's going on in Culver, is Maureen and I decided that if we were going to be back here full-time, there had to be some way to get back to the community and and create community. And because there was a history years ago, there was only one Methodist church, now there's three. And it's because of LGBT and all that. I mean, they split, right? Um the the uh Baptist Church has been the food pantry for forty forty two years, and they always did something once a month. So we've got all these churches now doing something once a month, and it's really funny who goes for the community or the free meal or whatever, and who won't go because they think they're gonna get recruited. So instead of going for the fellowship and all the other things that they might learn or meet a new person, or the person might sitting right next to them might be a living farmer's almanac, and they learn how to take care of their yard, when to plant their tomatoes. I mean, there's so many things that we've learned just by starting that up again, that we're we're trying to figure out a way to do it in a central location, like renting the depot for a hundred bucks for six hours and serving the monthly meals, or instead of it being, uh oh, come to Grace Church, come to the depot.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Well, sorry folks, but this is where I've got to cut it off. We're gonna end up in picking this up next week with part two with Craig Mizowitz. Thanks, Craig, for joining us. Thanks everybody for listening this week. We'll be back next week with our next episode with Craig.