SABA Leader Connect
Connecting leaders to leaders.
SABA Leader Connect
Leader Connect S2E14: Larry Hyche
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This week on Leader Connect, we talk to Larry Hyche, State Missionary in Global Missions for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
Larry will be speaking on anxiety in Gen Z on May 18, 2026, at the SABA Office. (Flyer at the end of the video)
Register for that here: https://churchteams.com/m/b/Register.asp?a=dDU3UlVkQVg0YU09
Hi folks. Welcome to State and Next. Uh this year we're going to be focusing a little bit different than just our association of ministers, but we're going to be reaching out across the state of the Baptist Convention to bring others into this opportunity for you to get to know them a little bit and find out how you might confuse them in ministry in your local church. So we hope you enjoy this episode.
SPEAKER_01Hi folks. Welcome to this episode of Leader Connect. And we have special guests with us, Larry Heich. He's from the Office of Global Missions at our Alabama State Board of Missions in the area of men's spiritual development. And Larry travels around the state helping churches and leaders do better, men's ministry, focusing on that. And he we're going to get to know Larry a little bit today. So, Larry, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much, John. Appreciate it, buddy.
SPEAKER_01As we've said, we I love your background and love that you're able to chill out a little bit and I understand you're trying to finish up your doctrinal dissertation.
SPEAKER_02Yes, so that's why I need the chill that's back there. I hear you. I hear you. Take care of all the stuff that's going on in here. So yeah, today is uh I've got to get my edits done today and get it all turned in.
SPEAKER_01I hear you. I appreciate you taking the time to meet with us for a little while and uh getting ready for what's coming up May the 18th with you. But tell us about Larry. Tell us uh where you're from and uh how you came to be where you are.
SPEAKER_02All right. Well, I was born and raised here in Alabama, just north of Birmingham, uh in Jasper, or the or the suburbs of Jasper, you might even say. Out out in the country. That's why I live out in the woods. It just feels like home. That's great. Uh so I have uh I've served four churches uh in the state. Two of those churches, one was where I grew up, very small country church.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh so I have a heart for those small uh churches out in the sticks, you might say. Um great the the first full-time gig that I had was at first Baptist Selma.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02And uh that was that was quite an adventure, I would say. I enjoyed it. Yeah, sweet people there, yeah. And then moved over to First Baptist Decatur in North Alabama, thoroughly enjoyed being there, and that was just before coming to the state board. Um so growing up, man, I'm I'm one of those I was fortunate enough uh to be raised by um one boomer and one silent generation. So they have incredible stories, crazy stories. Oh wow, so I have a lot of appreciation for you know other generations' stories because yeah, all those crazy stuff. My great-grandmother, I loved hearing my great-grandmother's stories of like riding the horse and buggy into Jasper and having to tie it up and then walk into town, you know. Yep. Like that stuff just fascinates me. Absolutely. So anyway, I'm as far as like hobbies and stuff, dude. I love like photography, old cars. Uh I've got an old project car that I've not touched because of school, but I've got a 56 Oldsmobile.
SPEAKER_01All right.
SPEAKER_02Um, so if I could live at Cracker Barrel, I would live at Cracker Barrel. I'm kind of annoying.
SPEAKER_01Like all their decor that they have. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Uh good. So yeah, and I I've my heartbeat has been um student ministry and discipleship for for years. And so that's that has been what I've brought to the state board. When Scottie Goldman asked me to join the state board in this role, it was because of the focus of discipleship. Gotcha. In in ministry.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_02And that has led to me going back to school and digging into the topic that that we'll discuss in just a moment. Yep, yep.
SPEAKER_01Well, tell us about your family. Uh, kids, grandkids, any of that sort of thing? No.
SPEAKER_02Actually, I was called to singleness. Oh, okay. So never married. Never married, all right. No, and if you want some crazy stories, try and be a single dude in a Southern Baptist church.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Some sweet ladies have tried to fix me up many times, you know. So but and and the Lord may change that one day.
SPEAKER_01That's okay, absolutely. And that's funny. I did not realize that about you. So I learned something about you today. So I'm I'm sure in in many ways it uh it enables you to be a little bit freer in your travels around the state and doing ministry and for sure, not having to worry about family back home.
SPEAKER_02And yeah, I only have to worry about my dog. District dog. What kind of dog you got? Uh he's a little mutt. He's like a uh some kind of terrier mix. Okay. He might even pop up in the screen back in the background there. Yeah. I had to put him on the back porch because he'll start barking at squirrels or neighbors or something. Yeah, I bet. But uh so yeah, this is actually it's giving me the opportunity. I get to be Uncle Larry to a lot of folks around the state. It's kind of fun.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's cool. Good deal. Good deal. Now you've been at state board how long? Nine years. Nine, okay. Nine years ago. Longer than I thought. That's awesome. Yeah. Good deal. Well, you you hang out with the likes of uh Mark Ganey and Daniel Edmonds and some of those guys. And I was uh listening to one of your older podcasts today that you did on uh leadership. Um you were a repeat interviewer on one of their podcasts due to some comedy that you brought about. Well, have you lived that one down yet?
SPEAKER_02No, I have not almost until you brought it back up.
SPEAKER_01Um I like to keep things stirred up a little bit.
SPEAKER_02That's okay. Someone has to, dude. That's part of our family. We grew up laughing a lot, and I'm so thankful for that. Absolutely. And so you just kind of carry that with you wherever you go. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, you you said you uh went back to school to uh further your education in an area. Tell us a little bit about how that came about and your heart for that uh that generation or those generations.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So being a student pastor, I started working with students uh when I was a student back in 1993. Okay. It's funny to think about, you know, back in the 1900s. Um so I was 17 and I started teaching. I was at a small country church, and you know how it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh if you get volunteered or if you volunteer for something, they'll continue to add more to your plate. And the more I served in that little church, the more I loved it and knew that God was calling me in the ministry. But I've noticed I served in student ministry for uh 20-something years, okay, and just noticed a major change in as the like the millennials were graduating out of the student ministry and Gen Z was moving in, they were different. Um, millennials were different than Gen X, and I'm Gen X, and so millennials were different, but Gen Z, which right now Gen Z would age around 14 to 29, yeah, they were so different. And so you see the cases of like anxiety and depression and loneliness at an age where they should be having fun, like they should be exploring and hanging out and being somewhat carefree. Um, but that's not the case right now. So went back to school to focus on two major issues, like what's going on with our teenagers and young adults, okay, and and what about that the discipling relationships with older people, older generations than Gen Z, which would be millennials and up, and seeing like how does that actually help with the emotional and spiritual health of the younger generation.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02And man, John, it was um, I've learned so much through this. Uh, it just to see how different they are, uh, not just in like you know, how older generations will say, gosh, those kids, they're crazy, you know, they're out of control, yeah. Which there may be some truth to that, but every generation has you know, the generation ahead of you probably said you were crazy. That's right. That's right. That's the generation uh uh ahead of me said we were crazy. That's just what that's just what adults do. Yep, yeah. But there's some yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, they're so different, they're crazy, they're insane. Um, which by the way, if you really dig into that, like if you look at every generation's uh music, like we've all had some crazy songs and crazy lyrics, and just every, I think every generation in the last hundred years has their own flavor of crazy. Oh, sure. Um but with Gen Z, we're seeing not just the the bad stuff, but the good stuff is very encouraging. The the things that they're showing, the interest that they have, the return to like the church that they're starting to show in the last three or four years. Yep. So there's a there's a lot of positive stuff. So I just wanted to see and kind of prove to churches in Alabama, because that's what I focused on was churches in Alabama when a uh when an 18 to 28 year old is discipled, is mentored personally by someone of a different generation. How does that affect their spiritual health and their emotional health? Okay. And so it was uh it was pretty exciting to to see the the results of the of the the research project that I got to do.
SPEAKER_01I hear you. And if they want, if they want to learn some in-depth information about that, they can join us in May and uh you can unpack that a little bit more for them, right? That would be great. I would love to.
SPEAKER_02Because look, it really points to I think we all, most of us in the church who are over the age of 40, we recognize there's something going on. And I think we all have uh enough care and empathy in our heart to say, gosh, I really wish there was something I could do for this generation, or you know, tell me how to pray at least how to pray for them. Well, it it's really exciting to see they're open to hearing from some older folks and and the implications of how the church can be a part of helping this younger generation. Oh my goodness. Uh, that to me is the most exciting part of this whole project.
SPEAKER_01Well, uh, and part of the conversation that we were having yesterday in our uh coffee and conversations with several of our ministers, um, talking about some of these things and how do we how do we assimilate Gen Z N to the uh church? Uh they they do seem to be more spiritually minded than the previous generation is. Uh they're trying to figure out what that means, I think. And so I I like your approach of disciple making uh and par partnering them with another generation uh that they can they can learn from. And so many of them, um, I think it's maybe it's but and you'll know this probably far better than I do, but because of the mobility of our society, a lot of them don't live close to other family. And so they don't have the grandparent model uh to to hang around as we did growing up. Uh those kind of things that we were, you know, you were sharing how you love to hear your grandmother's stories uh about what it was like in those days, and so they don't have that take so much anymore. Uh and so I I I like the idea of the multi-generational disciple making.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, and that's something that I would say has been the beginning of kind of the tearing apart of the foundation of the intergenerational connectivity, the intergenerational wisdom was at the beginning, you know, we were very much uh a farming culture. Uh and in that rural society, there you you had grandparents who were living either next door or even with the family. And you had that intergenerational connection was built in. And now the church, I would say the church is most likely the number one place to experience intergenerational wisdom and connection. Because otherwise, these kids are gonna be hanging out with their peers at school uh or on a sports team, you know, places like that. So, yeah, because grandparents now live a hundred miles away or or more.
SPEAKER_01Yep. We've got to be intentional.
SPEAKER_02We've got to be intentional to have that exposure to intergenerational wisdom.
SPEAKER_01Well, let's let's give them one more nugget um about some things that might be conver in conversation on the 18th. One of the one of the things that that uh concerns me most about Gen Z is their um their loneliness aspect, their high anxiety, if you will. Is there a is there a thread that runs through that that church can help leaders can help uh them overcome?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. Dude, I love easy questions like that, John. Thank you. Um yes, there is. If you see, ironically, this is the most connected generation in human history because of electronics. Um, I mean, as I say that, I'm getting a text message right now. So, yeah, there's even though there's they're extremely connected, that connection is very superficial. Yeah, and it's very shallow. And so, in the church body, the way God has wired us, the way he established his church, if you look Old Testament, you have the the concept of the the Hesed, the the covenant community. And in the New Testament, that same idea is found in agape, love. And so, yeah, the church should be the place where they they find real, meaningful and deep connections because the loneliness that Gen Z is experiencing is is actually a predictor of anxiety. Okay. Like the more a person is isolated and they don't feel like they're connecting, they don't feel understood, then that leads to higher levels of anxiety. And and in the church, uh, we have a common thread of the gospel of Jesus Christ, of having our identity shaped by who Jesus is and who he says we are, yeah, uh, and our common mission of making disciples. So that in itself should help alleviate some of that anxiety due to loneliness. Got it. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01Good deal. Well, I don't I don't want to.
SPEAKER_02And with and with Gen Z, uh I was just gonna say, and with Gen Z right now, we're seeing that they are the most anxious and the loneliest generation right now across the board. And and so we actually can do something about that as a family of faith.
SPEAKER_01As you said, you know, the the church is certainly a great place to to connect and to have family. Uh and even though we're um we're trying to figure out this Gen Z generation and and it it in some ways we don't probably grasp why are they so lonely when they're so connected. And yet it's it's about the personal connection, not the electronic connection that's that they're missing out on. And uh and I but I think they're craving that, they're looking for that personal connection. And so uh 100% hearing more about that on the 18th. Well, is there anything else you want to share with our group before we uh kind of wrap it up to kind of whet their appetite for what they need to make sure they're here for on the 18th?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I think uh I think you'll be surprised. Okay. I will I'm not gonna tell you what I'm gonna share, but I will say this. I was sharing this with a group of pastors uh over in Marshall County. Okay, and some of this is so surprising that you could tell they didn't believe me. Yeah. Like they did not believe some of the the early stats that I was sharing in the in early in the meeting. Yeah. And uh but then some other folks, as we got deeper into the research, there were some guys in the room who had actually experienced some of this stuff and it confirmed the truth. But I'm telling you that it is really surprising to see you think you know something about Gen Z, but I think there's going to be some good news and some surprising uh news that you're gonna find very helpful for ministry.
SPEAKER_01Very good, very good. Well, Eric, thanks for being with us today. It's good to get to know you a little bit better and uh hear a little bit of your life story and uh appreciate that. Look forward to uh to being with you on May the 18th here at the uh SABA offices.
SPEAKER_02Looking forward to it, brother. All right, man.