The Neighborhood Church, Bentonville, AR

Wisdom Unveiled: Leaving a Legacy That Matters

• theneighborhood.church • Season 2025 • Episode 43

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Join Pastor Joe Liles and the Neighborhood Church team as they explore the profound journey of wisdom, legacy, and faithful living. Discover how to build a life that truly reflects God's love, navigate generational insights, and find purpose in serving others. This episode offers practical wisdom for living authentically and leaving a meaningful impact.

Key Takeaways:

  • Understanding the progression from knowledge to wisdom
  • The importance of faithful service over perfection
  • Building households of wisdom through prayer and love

Quotes:

  1. "God loves you because of who God is, not because of what you have or haven't done."
  2. "If we really love God, it will be visible in our love to those around us."

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Pastor Joe Liles:

Welcome to the TNC podcast. We are recorded in studio in the worship center. You know, it was interesting. The other day, people came through and they were talking about our campus, and it's hard for me to think of this like a campus, because it's not a large church, right? We are, you know, we have about 200 seats in our worship area and but we do have other parts of our campus, but that's really close together. So we're not technically, like, walking across, it's two buildings. It's two buildings, right? Yeah. And so I look at it, I'm like, Oh, but I look around and I'm like, Oh, we do have the, you know, gather building, and we do have the preschool, and we do have the barn over there, and we do the basketball courts. And I was like, in the mission, I was like, Oh, we got a tiny, we got a tiny, little, cute campus. Is what we got here. So a campus set. It's a campus set. Yeah, it's great. So So we're here in the worship center and and we're gathering today to talk about the last part of our message in the series of dear younger me talking about wisdom throughout all the years. And so we got two hosts joining us on the podcast today. Myself. I am Joe Liles, pastor of the neighborhood church and planter of the neighborhood church, and the youngest one here. Oh, you know what we did? Just talk about that. Wow. Wow. Not Not by much, though, not by much. Tom, when do you turn 50? In March? Be 50. This is amazing. 42 I'm 42 or two? Yeah. 42

Tom Helmich:

Yeah. So you can say you can wave bye to Dear younger me. So bye, bye, younger me.

Roseann Bowlin:

So you'll be 43 your birthday in December,

Pastor Joe Liles:

I will be 43 this is true. Yeah, 42 is 42 I thought would be a really good year, and it's been a really good year. It's been fantastic. Bring new people on the team. It's been incredible. For some reason I wanted to use, like, dating language when you said you're going to be 50 and like, oh, I always wanted to hire always wanted to hire pastor older than me, you know, or something like that. I always want to date someone older me. This is going to be fun. 50 in March. 50 in March. We also have another decade birthday happening in the preschool on Tuesday. So Andrea is turning a decade. We won't say what decade. We won't say what decade she's turning a decade on Tuesday, so we'll have to celebrate her also, which is great. So we're in a wisdom. Tom, can you share what your role here is at the neighborhood church, care

Tom Helmich:

and education care in it. What does that mean? And throw her away of junk.

Pastor Joe Liles:

You know, you love to throw away things. I think I've been doing really well lately. I've unleashed Sean Bush, who is stepping in for like, just quarter time or at the church to help out with projects, and I've just released him into

Tom Helmich:

areas, and he asked me once, he's like, so I'm like, no, no, don't worry about it. If you don't think he's ever gonna notice, send it.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, Tom doesn't think I noticed everything. I just accepted a reality that Tom is making good choices. We're helping, happy. We're helping, helping. These are things I can't do on my own. These are things I can't do on

Roseann Bowlin:

my own. The person that has three refrigerators, one of them, okay, none of which were,

Pastor Joe Liles:

wow, hold on. No, my garage fridge is fine. That just tried to but everyone has that garage fridge. It's not gonna make it back into the house, you know? And, I mean, I get to the

Tom Helmich:

point where, like, I don't know how much longer we're gonna really need the garage fridge. Yeah, you might not need an need it. We needed it. But the last time I bought a gal a milk, I didn't buy a gal about a half gallon, yeah, and we got half of it left. I bought it just because Connor was

Pastor Joe Liles:

coming home for the milk is a big thing, dude, you've talked about milk four times because left. I was traumatized by milk,

Tom Helmich:

because when I had three small kids, yeah, great, yeah, we were buying two or three gallons at a time, that's crazy. Every week that's crazy, yeah, okay, a lot of milk. That's what. That's why we got the garage fridge. Was the milk fridge.

Pastor Joe Liles:

This is true. This is very true, yeah. Okay, so

Tom Helmich:

four years, you might not need the garage fridge either. We

Pastor Joe Liles:

might not need the garage for this is great. Okay, so we will definitely not need that. So with that right now, all it holds is our all it holds is our drinks. That's all it holds, right? That's 100% of the thing that's going on. So and then all of our stickers. It's our sticker fridge. So we just put a whole bunch of stickers wherever it traveled. So it's great. And then to my left, joining us as the host of the segment on the podcast Roseanne, notes it is the wonderful director of operations,

Roseann Bowlin:

Roseanne, bowling the oldest one. Oh, the hostess with the

Pastor Joe Liles:

most and the hostess with the most. Roseanne, what is it that you do here at the neighborhood

Roseann Bowlin:

church? I'm the director of operations. So if people want to use the space at the gather building, I'm the person they contact. I also help in the preschool. So pretty much yesterday was in the classrooms. It was so much fun. I got to use my grandma

Pastor Joe Liles:

eyes. Oh, nice. What does that? What does that mean? Well, this little

Roseann Bowlin:

girl stole a little truck from a boy, and he protested, and I gave her the grandma look, and she pouted, and I still gave her the grandma look, and she pushed it back

Pastor Joe Liles:

to me. Oh, that's really nice. You gave some grandma love, Grandma love. That is

Roseann Bowlin:

grandma love. That's great, because then I became her best friend, and we played with some

Pastor Joe Liles:

toys. Absolutely, yeah, Conscious Discipline, right? Like the Conscious Discipline

Roseann Bowlin:

is just a look. Oh, it was conscious. It was That's great.

Pastor Joe Liles:

So multi. Roles you take on multiple realities. Here she answers the phone. You know what? We got the phones fixed. High five. Boom, yes, we got the phones fixed. No. That means every phone now rings the Roseanne, yeah. And can I say that I did have it set up correctly, like we were wondering, why didn't it work? And I called caught. We had to go all the way drilled down, all the way down, like Cox support for business to figure out why our phones were not simultaneously ringing on things. And he got it on there, and he's like, You know what? You have everything set up correctly. And I was like, it makes me feel good, because that makes it important that we've called you because I can. And I'm like, Look, I think I've never there, so it was a win, but we sat together for, I think, like, an hour to actually

Roseann Bowlin:

get these phones fixed, yeah, and it was that the wrong unit was in my office and it was in your office. Yeah, the phone, but it had

Pastor Joe Liles:

my name on, because VoIP is yes, and they are dedicated to the hardware. Oh, man, that was but we figured it out. Yeah, got it all handled, which is amazing. So let's jump in. We're talking about wisdom in an incredible way. And when we're talking about wisdom. What we really need to understand is that we've been moving through a whole series from the beginning. And the series from the beginning has gone from knowledge and wisdom, right, learning about God, studying God, having a theology, the study of God, right, moving to understanding, right, which is moving past the superficial knowledge, right, into an understanding, but then into wisdom, which is applying that knowledge and understanding to your life, right? So you're moving that into action. And this whole series about movement to action. And so we've gone through kind of all these years in this last Sunday was really about leaving a legacy that matters, right? It was wisdom from really those who are older than 60 and coming through. And so I'm wondering, um, Tom, you're not over over 60. Your wisdom came from last week. So Roseanne, I'm gonna start with you. Roseanne, what wisdom do you have for us, right? As the oldest one in this group, not over 60, but over oldest one in this group, what wisdom do you have for us,

Roseann Bowlin:

that we blessed? Be a blessing.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Be blessed, and be Oh, nice. Could you unpack that for us?

Roseann Bowlin:

So my sister, my younger sister, and I started this. Well, she started it as a greeting. When I leave for work, she would say, be a blessing. Be blessed. Be a blessing. And then I would respond, always, always nice. So, so when we first, when she first started doing that, I would, I would think about that, meditate on it, on the way to work about how can I be a blessing? And I'm always blessed, but sometimes those blessings are hidden, and I have to kind of uncover them, unpack them so and then I want to be blessed always, and I want to be a blessing in all ways that I can

Pastor Joe Liles:

that's beautiful. And you and your sister do that every single

Roseann Bowlin:

day, every single day, wow, unless she's sleeping, unless you see, there's no blessing. I usually walk out going, always, always,

Tom Helmich:

it's beautiful. That'd be a great poster for our new dedicated prayer area over there. I'm just saying, like it

Pastor Joe Liles:

like, big, yeah, yeah. I like that. I like that a lot. What do you mean dedicated

Tom Helmich:

prayer? Oh yeah. The the area in the back, the so the the recessed cross area came from the old building our original worship not very many people here probably remember that that was just kind of some chairs kind of shoved into the very back, kind of awkward. So we've turned that into the prayer wall that's beautiful, a place people to go to prayer with, to meet prayer partners, to perhaps somebody pray with them if they want. We're going to set up some dedicated spaces back there for people to go there and lift up their prayers. Certain times of the Church year, there may be candles there for people to light, to lift up their prayers, and some we're working on getting to some little nuggets of wisdom and prayers that people can, you like from the Psalms and stuff like that, where people can take a little card as a bookmark, and when they don't know they can't bring the words to mind, they maybe can get inspiration from one, from script, prayer, from Scripture. Yeah, it's nice. I love that. That would be what Roseanne just said. It'd be great, like, on a poster on the wall, like a reminder of, like, Hey, this is how we need to live our Christian life.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's beautiful. That could be a great poster over there, right? Just going to continue that build up of the prayer area. So, and prayer was one of the foundations I gave towards wisdom in this last Sunday. Actually, I was kind of talking about household wisdom. And I said that really, there's four areas of household wisdom that bring wisdom into your household. And this was if you're thinking generationally from the top down, like we're creating generations of households. And I was talking about like, Hey, we've brought wisdom forward from our parents and their generation from them. Maybe not all the wisdom, but some of it is made into our household, and we're imparting wisdom to our kids, right, and our families as they go on to make their own households. And so hopefully you see this household of wisdom. And there's really four parts that I talked about in wisdom. And it was, the first part was the word is wisdom. And I was saying, Look, you get to have the Bible available and ready to read, and they're in the house for and I called it a fixture. I don't think that was the right word on Sunday. And I said it out loud, and I was like, fixture doesn't make sense of. It just seems like

Tom Helmich:

it can mean by fixture, yeah, right. We're not thinking of like a light fixture, but like, it has to be something that's, that's set, dedicated, permanent, always there, has a fixed place. Yes, it is not something that's readily available, readily available, and not something that's, that's optional, like, it's just an automatic that's just always there. See, Tom,

Pastor Joe Liles:

that's what I was trying to emote out of people, right? When I said fixture, and then I heard fixture when I said it, and I was like, man, it's an inanimate object in the

Tom Helmich:

house, but it makes sense. But to younger people, like, word, meaning of words change. Yeah, it's true. Like, that's very true. Like, Urban Dictionary,

Pastor Joe Liles:

it's a little insider pastor, like, like, turmoil I had on Sunday, and I was like, fixture, come on. You can have such a better word use your vocabulary. But then that point, I'd already moved on in my message. So I was just struggling in the middle of the message, which was great with that word use. So I said, one, have the word available, right? And when you go through situations, open the Word in the morning, have a devotion, right? Readily use the word. And I said, secondly, introduce your family to prayer, right? And so this was really interesting. On Sunday, I said, How many of you pray in your families, in your house? And a lot of people raised their hands, which I really appreciated. And then I said, Okay, how many people pray at dinner in their households? And that's the prayer. And everyone I said, How many of you pray like at breakfast when you wake up and no one raised their hand? I was like, why would you pray at the end of the day instead of praying into the day? And I was like, You need to pray into that. And you should have seen people go. I should pray. And, like, there was a collective like, that's not a bad idea, like praying into the day, like, and I was like, What a novel idea. And I was

Tom Helmich:

like, it's, it's hard to build those out, because I still try. That's, you know, I got reminders on my bedside table, and I get up, I still, like, kind of stagger in and my ankles popping the entire way to the coffee maker, and I'm like, Oh, I forgot, yeah.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Like, hard to do, yeah? Like, I woke up this morning to get Kay up, and that was the whole goal. Like, there was no devotion time. There was no anything else, right? So I said, make prayer a household, you know, household wisdom, right? Always turn to God in prayer. Learn to talk to God in prayer, right? Ask for prayers. And I said, so now that we have looking to wisdom from your household in the Scripture and the word, and then prayer. And then I said, in worship, right? Teach your family what it means to worship and see them worship, right? So let them see you worship and find your personal form of worship. And then lastly, I said, serve you. Know out humble one another in serving, teach everyone around you that serving is meant to be something that is done through, through really your identity of a deepened relationship with God, and you should never see yourself above someone else. So we've really gone through a lot of great wisdom. I pulled up a couple great scriptures when we were starting just in a fun way. And I don't know if people have heard these before, but let me just open them up real quick. So in this scripture, I was talking about proverbs again, but there are some gray hair scripture which I absolutely loved. And it was from Proverbs 16. Was the first one said, gray hair is a crown of glory. And but I said it emphatically, incident. I said gray hair is a crown of glory, like that is great. And people were hooping intolerant. They

Tom Helmich:

loved it, especially if you have, like male pattern baldness, outside than it is a crown. You

Pastor Joe Liles:

know what? I did say that I did say, for those who are bald, we're imagining you with gray hair, that you've already had your righteousness, and they loved it. Thank you very much. This is great so and then we also went to Proverbs 20, which said, The glory of youth is their strength, but the beauty of the aged, the beauty of the aged is their gray hair like and I love that. And so I decided to look up all the gray hair texts that were happening, and those were the only two who use gray or platinum. Ooh, platinum blonde.

Tom Helmich:

That's nice. No, not like, is like, you know the value is a precious metal. Oh, nice. Okay, I see what you're saying there, because Amy's aneurysm repair has platinum coils in it. Oh, so if you start getting Gray, it's just her coils coming

Roseann Bowlin:

out. I say my gray hair is my wisdom highlights. Oh, lots of them now.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Well done. Well done. That's great. Okay, okay, so let's, let's read through some scripture and kind of open up a little bit on wisdom and see just truly, kind of where the Scripture is guiding us to talk a little bit more about this. So we're going to be in Proverbs, Chapter 24 verses three through seven. And Roseanne, if you want to start us off, I will

Roseann Bowlin:

by wisdom a house is built and by understanding, it is established by knowledge. The rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.

Pastor Joe Liles:

And then continuing in that, in verse, five wise warriors are mightier than strong ones and those who have and those who have knowledge than those who have strength.

Tom Helmich:

For by wise guidance, you can wage your war and an abundance of counselors, there is victory. Wisdom is too high for fools in the gate, they do not open their mouths.

Pastor Joe Liles:

So we use this scripture to kind of root us in, really verse three, and I kind of stayed in verse three, but I love the wisdom narrative that went through all of these talking about because in the previous weeks, we've talked about being established, and we've talked about strength, and we've talked about all these different things that are not wisdom, and it kind of works through these. But that verse three by wisdom a house is built, is why I talked about a household, right? Because. Because we're not in wisdom, we don't build our own relationship with God and wisdom. We share that with others in order to build households. And I think we should think of our household, one is our primary household, but two, there are other households around us that we continually build. If you understand a household as a grouping of people that have a shared kind of identity together, you mean, like the church, oh, what Tom, look at you. This is amazing, right? It's true. Like, we have the house of God, right? And if you start to break down this household, it really exists in a way where we can see other house. So part of my question to you all is, what other households do you have that you would look at and say you're building wisdom from or into? Right? If you think in your life, like, what are the other areas that you're building this into

Roseann Bowlin:

the women's group for me. Tell me more. Well, we just met last night. Great. It was wonderful. We had a fiesta taco bar. That's great, and just we had new people that joined us. And it was just uplifting. We had food fellowship fun. We did a bingo game to get to know each other better. So we were running around. Did you go to retreat last year? Yes, I did. Okay, I'm putting your name down. So that was a lot of fun to get to know the new people, and we had more spots than we had people that were there. So, you know, you had to run around and find a person maybe twice. You know, that's awesome, yeah. And then they would tell their stories, like, I have a cat. Okay, tell me about your cat. So it's a lot of fun. And then we had a devotion that kind of cycled back to Sunday's sermon and really talking about that wisdom and how we gain wisdom. And it was just open for talking, questions, discussion. And it was lovely. That's great. That's great, lovely.

Pastor Joe Liles:

That's awesome. So that you would call that a house that's a large household, right? Yeah, is there? Is there a, oh, my sisters, all your sisters, is great. Is there a part of that household that you relate to more like it? Do you see yourself as a whole household that's imparting wisdom on everyone, or do you feel like you're getting more wisdom from a few of those people that are pouring into you specifically. How does that work?

Roseann Bowlin:

I it's that road goes both ways that's great, because sometimes the younger people can say something that it's an aha moment for me, and then there aren't many people older than me, but there, there was one or two and, you know, and then they, they say something that's an aha moment for all of us. And so, you know, it was just a two way street. Yeah, that's great conversation, and that's the way family should be. I like that. I like that a lot.

Tom Helmich:

What about you? Tom, you know, Friday morning lift comes to mind. Yeah, it's guys just looking for that kind of mutual accountability and uplifting, and people they can, you know, get other perspectives from and more information from, and lean on in times of need and stuff like that. And it's obviously working, because otherwise that, I mean, we get anywhere from eight to 12. Yeah, it's people at six in the morning on a Friday right show up for coffee and and the other ones, like the Tuesday night, these kids that I teach to play the pipes, because so much of it, I mean, they're, they're going through this lanky phase of, you know, beginning be a teenager, and, yeah, growing faster than they can, their brain can keep up with, and just trying to learn how to, how to study, how to lean into something, and, you know, something that applies a little bit of discipline, one of them's homeschooled, and his, that's his music credit for his homeschooling stuff. So probably unique in Arkansas, and so getting to see that mentor the the youth of just trying to apply themselves to something, yeah, that's great. How that works in their in their life, there's a little bit of an aspect of that,

Pastor Joe Liles:

yeah, I like that you named wisdom as mentorship, right? Because I do believe, like mentorship is specifically that we're imparting knowledge that we have onto others, and wisdom and wisdom, it really is right, because we want to help them gain in something that they don't not have yet, or don't even know to gain yet, right? And I think that's a beautiful space to be. Yeah, it's interesting as I think about the groups that I run, there's a there's new groups that I'm embracing right now Brian Fenton, who's in our church, he, he's a creator, right? I would call him a creator. He's in creative space, and so I relate to that really well. Like, like, we immediately saw that we're, like, two peas in a pod, right? This is great, I believe, for the same Enneagram, like, like, we just, we hit it off, and so, but he has this really cool space that I'm not necessarily in in our community, right? That's this creative kind of leadership space, networking space that's out there, right? And so he throws me these incredible invites that are just like, hey, this is happening in Bentonville. And I'm like, one, how do I not know about the like, like, these things are happening every single day in Bentonville, in this incredible community. And I'm like, I and I realize I crave wisdom. Them. That's that networking aspect. It's a networking Absolutely, and I crave wisdom. I mean, it's one of those realities where I just want to sit in the space of others who are leading and have led, and just want to impart that and share their gifts. And it's a desire of my own to share that too with how we planted the neighborhood church and gone through that. And so when I sit in these spaces, I'm just, I think Roseanne, you used the word yesterday in our staff meeting. I'm just grateful. Like you're just sitting this base and you're just hearing these things. And it's not that every piece is mind shattering, and I realize that I've missed out my entire life on this nugget of wisdom, right? But I realize it's reinforcing a lot of the things I have learned, and it's imparting wisdom to places I can go. I think the wisdom comes from knowing if those are places that I should go right like, should I embrace this route? Should I take this on? Should I begin here? Yeah,

Tom Helmich:

because it's like, if, if you don't see anybody ahead of you in something, then you don't ever know if you're going in the right direction, correct. So you don't, you don't really know where you're going if you don't have a forward point of reference. Yep, absolutely. And so being able to be around people that you see as being ahead of you in something lets you know, okay, that's the direction I need, I need to be going. So we can, we can see. It makes it a little little easier to, you know, feel a little bit assured that we're doing what we need to be doing.

Pastor Joe Liles:

You know, that's one of my biggest fears. On my ultra marathons. My ultra marathon in October is an overnight ultra marathon. So I run, I run 10 hours through the darkness. I literally pitch black that sounds in the mouth. Incredibly safe. It's not because there's bears. Like, I'm in California with bears.

Tom Helmich:

I'm not as worried about bears as I am, like stepping on a rock and rolling. So there's an issue too.

Pastor Joe Liles:

So you have lamps, you have everything else like that. But there's two things happen at that point in the race. One, I've probably been running for 10 hours already, so this will be hours 10 to 20 that I'll be running in the dark. Well, at that level, by probably like 16 to 20 hours in the dark, you start to hallucinate. And then I realized that the other day, when I was running, I was doing some night runs, these last couple nights, that the light on the top of my head creates this really kind of mysterious glow in front of my face that my mind is not used to. So the light being on, all of a sudden you start to get them, like, this haze, because, like, you have this beacon, like, that's on top of your mind. Don't go to the light. Oh, my God. So the fear for me is that, like, out there, like at that part of the race, you're not necessarily near other people, right? Because everyone's

Tom Helmich:

so if you do break an ankle, you're gonna be there by yourself. You gotta have

Pastor Joe Liles:

a whistle. Like, you gotta blow your whistle. You gotta whistle. You gotta have a whistle cell phone on your outside. But the other part is getting lost. Like people get lost often in these races, because they have no one in front of them. They don't and they don't know default. And now there's markers on the way, but you can easily get turned down another trail, turned out

Tom Helmich:

another place, for that long of a race, like you can't have every marker was in sight. You'd, I mean, that'd be a ton of markers.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Look, I've been in day races, where I look around and no one's around me. I'm like, I think I'm off course. It's like, I don't think. And then someone pops over the home, like, Oh, praise God, I'm still the guards. Okay, here we go. And but it's a real fear, and I think you shared this in the right way with wisdom. Is that in wisdom, right? We do need someone in front of us. And I continually remind myself I love the neighborhood church. I think the neighborhood church is incredible. I think where we've grown to is incredible. I think we've taken steps forward in faith throughout all the years. I think we continue to see God working here. I also very much realize that we are not unique in the kingdom of building churches like this is not something that's innovatively a crazy idea. Churches have done this before. Us. Schools have happened with churches before. Preschools have happened with churches before. Right? It's not this thing that hasn't been done, but I think as part of our feelings that we have to go at it alone. And I think what we read in building wisdom in a household is there are households around us. If you're in a space, find the household that's around you to build wisdom in. And so we had this wisdom by by wisdom, a house is built, and by understanding, it is established. So we've talked about established in week two, right? It means to raise up this being established. So it means to have a strong foundation and raise up from that foundation to be established. So we think of established as rooting and in Scripture, established as being raised up. But understanding was interesting, because that's kind of a new phrase that came through in Scripture and understanding was saying you're taking knowledge, and by understanding, it meant you're taking it deeper than surface level. So it's almost this path that you see is like, Hey, you start with knowledge, right by wisdom, a house is built. You start with knowledge, then you get to understanding. So not just knowledge, you're starting to go, hold on a second, I think I understand what I'm learning like I can regurgitate it, but now I'm actually understanding it, right? And then from there, you get to establishing it, which is now that I've had the knowledge and I've understood it, I can raise it up, right? And I can actually raise up the things that I'm talking about with authority, right? With an understanding, with a confidence, right? You start to get to these levels. And so there's this really neat kind of movement that we do. And then it says, by knowledge, the rooms are filled with precious and pleasant riches. That's beautiful, that's not material things. That's the people, that's the people, right? It's the people in our life that are feeling that, that continue to impart that so really kind of an incredible part of what we are moving. Through in the text. But Roseanne, someone who's sitting in listening to the message, seeing what's going on. You had some notes, which we call in a segment. You ready? Tom, we're gonna do this with me. Right, right? 123, Roseanne notes.

Tom Helmich:

Roseanne's notes. Ah, man. Tom,

Pastor Joe Liles:

this is not new information. Joe, not new information. Joe's not new information. He just stared at me the whole time. Ah, but I appreciate you saying Roseanne notes at the end. That was very nice. Okay, that's great. That's all I got. That's all you got. Yeah, okay,

Roseann Bowlin:

so you asked a couple questions in the Bible app for the event. So what does leaving a legacy mean to you? Leaving a legacy means living now so that people talk of you in high regard after you're gone from the earth, always reflect God. Then your legacy becomes God's reflection. That's

Pastor Joe Liles:

beautiful. And

Roseann Bowlin:

then I would tell my younger self to be strong and courageous. Do not grow weary, for God is with you always and always

Pastor Joe Liles:

1l or 2l yeah, this is great, okay.

Roseann Bowlin:

And then I just took this quote from you. God loves you because of who God is, not because of what you have or haven't done, or who you are, yeah, that

Pastor Joe Liles:

was a piece of wisdom that we pulled right and, and I think that was a great foundational part of the message is to say, if we're thinking about a relationship with God, it's because of of who God is, right? Like we can think of all the things that we can do in this relationship, but because of who God is in our life, we are loved, right? And that's

Tom Helmich:

a great contemporary worship song also, oh, yeah, it is. That's

Pastor Joe Liles:

great. I was gonna ask you to sing that, and I realized that's not gonna

Tom Helmich:

go wisdom is knowing not to ask that.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, exactly that dude. See, I didn't do that. I was like, no, stop that one right there. Like, I have this knowledge in my head. Let's apply it right now. What other notes did you have Roseanne

Roseann Bowlin:

from? Well, just that. What's the last thing I want people to know about me, that I truly, deeply loved God and that I loved my family and I served the Lord through it all.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, that was the end of the message, right? And I posed a question at the end of the message, and it was this. I said, if you were to get to the end, so let's imagine generational wisdom, right? You've started off as a child. You've gotten wisdom from your parents. They've gotten wisdom from their generations before them. You've imparted wisdom to your family, right, whatever that family structure looks like. You've imparted wisdom to friends, family, families, to the house, right, multiple systems, whatever that may be. And then now let's imagine that you are at this end, right? You're you're kind of in this generational wisdom now that at the end of the series, at the end of your life, and you are now coming to the space where you can look upon all of your life, what do you want people to say about the wisdom that you imparted? What do you want people to say about you? And I let people kind of dwell on that for a minute, just kind of let them sit there. And I'm going to have us answer this question too, and I'll just kind of share where you guys are thinking of this, but what would you want people to say about you at the end of life? Like, if you imparted your wisdom and you did that throughout all of your life, like at the end of your life, what would you want people to say? And I kind of shared that, you know, I've worked really hard to be and just be honest, right? And there's some hypocrisy in this, and I just own that at the start, I've worked really hard to be a perfect husband, and I continue to work hard at it, and I can tell you that I will continue to work harder for the rest of my marriage, like it's there's and never get that journey. Realize this,

Tom Helmich:

especially the husband part, because most women are gonna say, bless your heart, you're only a man. Yeah, that's right. I get that

Pastor Joe Liles:

a lot, yeah, right. And I was like, I get this, like, I'm not gonna be a perfect husband, right? I will try every day. I will work hard on my marriage every day, right? And this is what I promise right? It's gonna be. I have tried to be a perfect father in so many ways, and I recognize often, the ways that I fail at that, often the ways that I can grow in that. And there are some days when I feel like a man I won today, like it does matter any other day, but today I won. And there's, there's there's hard choices, like last night landing 930 is like, I got to do math homework. And I'm like, out of all the years, I keep on telling you don't come to me at 930 telling me you have to do math homework, and then we have to learn advanced algebra together, right? You know? And I'm like, Okay, let's get after this, right? But he loves that time. It's very important to him. So I can. I've told myself, do not be frustrated. You are a math major. You've been gifted with this, sit with your son, enjoy to do math. I just get frustrated at 930 at night on the day before it's due, and so, so I'm like, don't do it. Which

Tom Helmich:

reminds me of my, my piece of wisdom. Well, what? And I just forgot that, yeah, yeah. What's your piece of wisdom? If you don't, if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. Oh yeah, absolutely, 1000 times over, and I've done that before, like, night before, Saturday night, 10 o'clock. Oh, I'm so guilty. Do the next do the next day? And I'm like, and my dad just looked at me like, really?

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, I will. I will add to that piece of wisdom that your your crisis because of failing preferred does not indicate my crisis.

Tom Helmich:

Yeah, your failure to prepare does not come. Student emergency. Yeah,

Unknown:

exactly. So, so I just sit

Pastor Joe Liles:

in presence, right? And everything else. So Lane and I were having fun last night, doing math until late, and then he finished that project, and then opened up his second project that he had do. And I was like, boy, you and I are going to be talking, and that's what's going to happen. So, so we had this moment, and I just said, you know, I'm not a perfect father, right? I even went as far as to say, I'm not a perfect pastor, like I love people fiercely, I love this church loyally, and I will continue to work on that every single day that I serve here and but it's not perfect, and I recognize that, and no one is. And I was just kind of sharing with people that you don't have to strive for perfection. No one's perfect in that way, right? I've come to that conclusion. I've tried to lead a perfect church. It's just, it's not that. It's not possible. I believe with Christ as the head, that could be possible, it's just not here, and we're going to be beautifully and is it possible with people in it? No, no, the church is people. We deal with people every day. We're in the people business who get it. So I went through all this and I said, you know, so I don't see anyone at the end of my life going, man, he was a perfect father, he was perfect cousin, he was a perfect pastor. Like, I just don't see that being a reality, right? No matter how hard I try, and I'll continue to try. And so I said at the end, I said, what I would love for people to look at my life and say, is that, Oh, he did love God, though. Like he loved God, like, had a joy for God in his life. And I think the reason as I was discerning the wisdom in that statement myself, as I was preparing for this message, the wisdom in that is that if they can say that at the end of my life, that I loved God, then it had to permeate in other areas. It had to show through as a husband, it had to show through as a pastor, as a friend, in my households, as all these different areas, as a father like that, had to be true. And if it's true, then it means, at some levels, like I was doing the things that God asked me to do, and I was showing through to be faithful in my call, and I was being loyal husband, you know, like in all these areas, if I left God deeply at the end, right? And they saw that. So it was kind of a neat moment. So yeah, just kind of open it up to you too. What do you it up to you too. What? What do you hope at the end is the wisdom that you

Tom Helmich:

have that people would say about you when, after that, you kind of set us up for failure. That message, it's close, right? So I'm like, I was thinking when you first posed the question of, you know, how would I want to be remembered by like, my family and my kids is like, I would hope that their remembrance would be that I always put the people first, yeah? Because I think that's part of the message. You know, when Jesus asked Peter said, Do you love me, as you know, Tend my flock, Feed my sheep, right? You know, if, if we really love God, it will be visible in our love to those around us. Yeah? And if we're not loving those around us, then that's the litmus test. We're obviously not loving God, because if we love God, we'll be obedient to, you know, through loving the people around us, not necessarily liking them, because they're gonna be plenty of people we're not gonna like. Yeah, right, we just have to love them, which isn't necessarily the same thing.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, that's very true. It's very true. What about you? Roseanne, well, I

Roseann Bowlin:

picture picture this. I picture my grandson saying, move over. Rosie and Roseanne. She was the funniest lady on Earth. But also because I don't always try, but sometimes I'm funny. Okay,

Tom Helmich:

I love your weekly email, like, just the intro to it. Like, I look forward to that every week.

Roseann Bowlin:

So good, Rosanne,

Pastor Joe Liles:

you're funny. I mean, I told you this right away, because you're sneaky funny, like in the hiring process, like Roseanne was very professional, right there. We had some fun in the hiring process. We talked through everything. You had great interviews, different things like that. And then as soon as you start on staff, you were like, sneakily funny. And I was like, Oh, I dig your humor. And then it got kind of like, snarky funny. And I was like, Oh, I dig your packets of aggressive humor too. And then I was like, Oh, I dig all parts of this joint. Those

Roseann Bowlin:

Rosies need to move over. But truly, what I want people to say about me is that she served the Lord with all her heart.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what sustains us like, if we can get to the end and realize that we serve the Lord right? And I think too, you have to. And this is something I do often. And I tell people this often too, and often people who are struggling with identity, I share this with right in pastoral care situations, you have to check your faithfulness and you really do, right? Because the world will constantly pull against you, right? There are things that will draw you away from God. There are people that will challenge you with God. You have to check your faithfulness often. And what I mean by that is you have to check your heart, like, Are you serving in a faithful capacity first here, because you will know honestly if you've denied that, if you haven't served faithfully, if you're denying your call, right, if you're walking away from God and you're trying to profess that you're stronger than you are, and you've done things right, and you're trying to get you can check yourself first, right? And if you learn to check yourself and be honest with yourself that, no, I did this faithfully. I stepped into this and, you know, I 100% was here faith. Really, and I believe this, then, then great rest on that, right? I find peace

Roseann Bowlin:

in that, even if you make mistakes in that human capacity, you're still faithfully serving. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I could be faithfully 110%

Pastor Joe Liles:

one direction, and it doesn't go perfect, that's all right, but I entered into that 100% faithful,

Tom Helmich:

and I think that's the difference of the goal. Like, if your goal is to be perfect, you'll you'll always fail, yeah, right. Whereas, if your goal is to be faithful, yeah, then you can always succeed, yep, you know. And just the goal should be to be just to be faithful,

Pastor Joe Liles:

yeah, you know, part of the reason so I'm running my longest race this weekend, right? It's 50 miles, and in been training for it, I feel great for like, I'm not nervous for

Tom Helmich:

the race, and I'm proud of you for training, because I remember the Joe Liles show up with no training and then not be able to walk to the front. Yeah, yeah. Weeks

Pastor Joe Liles:

like last night, I ran seven miles. Yeah, it's so much growth. Those are last night around seven miles, and just went out and seven mile run, you know, it was fine. You know, that's great. I've run 12 miles last week, like, it's fine. I'm in great training, right? And that's great. But part of the reason I've done this is because there is a point when you need faithfulness here, like you just need to faithfully endure, right? The race is not going to go perfect, right? It's not going to be exactly what I hope it to be, and I know that, and it's been a really neat journey over the last three years to start to understand these things about it. Like, the beginning, you think, Oh, I can beat all these times, and I can do all this, and you had this kind of competition, right? And then you settle into, like, this beautiful space of like, Hey, I'm gonna expect some unexpected things. I don't know what those are yet, but I'm gonna expect them. I'm gonna learn some tools and some things that'll help me that I didn't know at the beginning, because I've been training, and as I get into it, I'm going to surround myself with some people that I need to see some support in. I'm going to refresh myself halfway through the race, right, because I want to feel refreshed on the journey, right? And I know that at some point also my body will fail me, like at some point my mind will fail me, and it's going to be a deep conversation with God going, Whoo, I still got 18 miles left. Where are we going from here? Like, what are we doing? And it's going to be a faithful endurance and it's not going to be perfect, right? And a part of it that I love about these long endurance events, which I treat the church as, it's just a faithfulness towards not a goal, but a faithfulness towards my relationship with God. I am uniquely called in my relationship with God. I get the joy of serving that with others around me. That's beautiful. If we can raise that up in others, and I can teach that faithful endurance beautiful, right? That is 100% the reality that we need to serve in. So there's, I think there's been a really incredible series just for breaking down wisdom of the church and understanding more about the wisdom of God. I would love to do a part two of this series where it was talking about wisdom is like a spirit narrative, right, that also has right named, right? That wisdom is spirit. And so I would love to kind of break into that, but we're switching in this next series, and Tom, you're leading starting off the series because it's related to life groups, and it's really left group kickoff. Yes, it's life group kickoff. This Friday. You got a study going on that we're gonna kick off into Sunday. So Tom talk to us more about what's happening Sunday. How is it related to your life

Tom Helmich:

group study? Yeah. So the kickoff Friday is for the book that the life groups are reading the a week in the

Pastor Joe Liles:

life of Rome. Nice,

Roseann Bowlin:

which is very interesting, by the way. I think

Tom Helmich:

it's pretty I like the I like the author. It's historical fiction, so it's all plausible stuff, just to help us understand what life was like in the first century Rome for Christian, not unlike, not unlike, like the chosen now, or something, yeah, and it's not there,

Roseann Bowlin:

you know, just some of the side bars. It's like, this is not unique, yeah, our world right now

Tom Helmich:

different with different words, different topics, but same kind of situations, but it gives us context to understand when we get into Romans, yeah. And so the preaching series for October is kind of hitting a highlight main themes of the book of Romans, and between the context and the main themes to prepare us for after we come back from Christmas and we come back into the new year in 2026 and life groups reconvene to get into a deep dive study of the book of Romans, which is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the churches in Rome. Yeah, around 5556 ad, and so my hope is that that between the the book to understand the social and cultural realities in Rome that Christians are dealing with, and hitting, kind of those high themes that will come into that study in the spring, with a deeper understanding, to be able to to read the letter of Romans in the way that the Christians of The first century in Rome would have read it when they received it, yeah, and to understand what Paul was talking about. Because right now for us, if we don't have that context, we're trying to read that based on our experiences in Northwest Arkansas in 2025 which is not the audience Paul wrote it to. So we have to be able to get into into that frame of mind. Understand

Roseann Bowlin:

it. I think it's going to be very interesting that we're going to see the context of society there, and then I'm looking forward to reading Romans through that lens,

Tom Helmich:

because there's some stuff there that will I think most people will probably encounter something where they're like, oh, that's different than what I thought that was talking about, and challenge some assumptions. And there's some stuff in there. There'll be a little, a little, you know, unsettling of like, because we think of like Roman culture, we have a tendency in like history to kind of build it up as this, this, you know, great thing. And there were parts of it that were good, and there are other parts of it that we would find just completely abominable. You know, that that's the reality of what what the Christians were dealing with. I think we romanticize it. Yes, we romanticize

Roseann Bowlin:

because, yeah, we, we do. We do tend to make it glossy, and it's not, it's gritty

Pastor Joe Liles:

very much. So, I mean, the gospel is, I mean, like we take these stories and we make them childhood versions of stories that we can tell. But the gospel is a narrative that is one that is twisted, and it is betrayal, and it's there's a lot in there that we tend to like, try to take out into culture in a way that's uplifting and life giving, right? And it can be, but at the same time, we have to, we have to struggle through some things. I think there's

Tom Helmich:

uncomfortableness. Yeah, it's like, if you read like a letter that somebody writes to somebody else, but you don't know the context, you're not you're gonna understand it. And I think there's applications for that in, you know, in society now, but we have to understand what was actually being being said. So I think that'd be good. And for the folks listen to this, they're going to come to the launch on Friday, wear a toga, or it's a Roman party. It's a Roman party. Yeah, we're gonna leave out all the grittiness of Roman culture, and Chef Troy is gonna have some great food, beautiful. I've heard rumor there's some tiramisu stuff like that. So, yeah, a church appropriate toga. Yeah, yeah, with undergarments, because it's because it's just kind of like a half kind of thing party. But very well, I've started researching online, like, how to turn make a toga, like a bed sheet, yeah? And I'm like, oh, some of this is not appropriate. Oh, yeah, yeah, be warned when you search how to do that. It's great, but, yeah, it'll be, it'll be a good time. Food fellowship will be fun series.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, that's great. So we're kicking off with the Romans for the study for life groups. We're kicking off with Romans in a series, right? We're going to go through it like a Bible study. So you're opening up really Sunday on this kind of understanding of the book of Romans?

Tom Helmich:

Yeah, we'll get into the context of what's going on, what was happening in history that led up to Paul writing this great kind of the overview what's going on and why, and a big part of why it's important, because Romans, you know, Luther said that Romans was of the greatest of the New Testament writings. It was not a gospel, yeah? Because it's kind of like the first century, systematic theology, dogmatics, like an understanding of Christian theology of Christian

Roseann Bowlin:

in the first century. Yeah, that's beautiful, because we had the the Judeans, who were Christ followers. But then we have these Gentiles, Romans, who weren't. They didn't grow up in the traditions of the Judean culture. And so it's a it's a revolution,

Tom Helmich:

oh yeah. And it's a clash between cultures, even within the church, Oh absolutely,

Roseann Bowlin:

yeah. And they have to resolve that, because they are way followers,

Pastor Joe Liles:

yeah, etc, separating the civil right from the faithful right, and the civil from the

Tom Helmich:

follower and so and societal expectations from what God requires of us. We

Pastor Joe Liles:

I mean, we could do Romans for a year. Oh, yeah, it's great in that way.

Tom Helmich:

And there's some challenging stuff, of like, even this is what the Christians were calling for. And do we really think that's what God's requiring of us? There's some sort of challenges on our own of what would you do for your family situation? Yeah, that some of them will. I think we will be no way for everybody to be on the line with the same answer, yeah. But I think it might prompt. I think you could ask a question at the beginning and they would answer one way, and at the end of it, they might change your answer. Oh, which is always cool. It's great.

Roseann Bowlin:

That's great. So politicians never do that. So

Pastor Joe Liles:

as you see, Friday's gonna be a great launch, if you're thinking about life groups, and then also from there, Sunday is gonna be great leading into Romans, which will be an awesome start. Sign up in the church center. Sign up in the church center app, right? And we'll go forward. And all God's people said, Amen. You you.

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Pastor Joe Liles

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Pastor Tom Helmich

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Roseann Bowlin

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Tevo Christmann

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