The Rusty George Podcast

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Intro/Outro
Welcome to Leading Simple with a Rusty George. Our goal is to make following Jesus and leading others a bit more simple. Here's your host, Rusty George.

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Rusty George
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Leading Simple. I'm your host, Rusty George. And today we get to talk about a question that a lot of pastors are wrestling with. And that is, you know what? I'm leading a church, but it's really hard to connect with guys. You know, women seem to be so much more spiritual than men. They read more books than men.

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Rusty George
They listen to more podcasts than men. They're just more spiritual than men. But how do I connect with the guy? Well, man's man himself, Bryan Tome is a pastor out of Cincinnati. This guy has had a motorcycle show on Amazon Prime. This guy has had wild horses literally on stage that have been broken. This is a guy that's done some crazy things in order to really connect with guys far from church.

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Rusty George
You're not going to want to miss this. In simplifying how churches can reach men and what Pastor Brian tell them, As always, we are on a mission to sponsor kids through Compassion International. You can go to Compassion International dot com slash rusty and you can sponsor a child today. I want to make sure you do that because there are so many kids that have been left in the queue that never got sponsored because of COVID.

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Rusty George
So please take a moment today. The holidays are over. You're beginning to pay off your credit card. Take 40 bucks a month and change your child's life. It will drastic change the way you view the stuff that you have and the blessings that you receive. Today, we now get to have a conversation with Pastor Brian Tome. I'm so excited for you to hear this.

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Rusty George
O'BRIEN For our listeners who don't know, you tell us just 90 seconds. You know, Brian, tell in a nutshell, who are you.

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Brian Tome
By and by time? I was born at a very early age, and then I was adopted and I came to know Christ, came to an open relationship with Jesus around the age of 15, 16, and went from there. I went to college and I started a church in Cincinnati known as Crossroads that's then branched out in a couple of different states.

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Brian Tome
And I feel a I feel a real burden to continue to grow the people who are inside the church and grow people grow the church with new people come to the church, but also in the last three years have really held into a sense of calling around men, of helping men in our country. So I've been having fun putting some energy towards that while I've got three kids of my own and two grandkids.

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Speaker 3
Wow, that's fantastic. Now, you and I met years ago. I'm thinking it's going to be 20 years ago when I was in Lexington. You had just started in Cincinnati. I remember being at one of your schools for church. Go into that and then obviously seeing the building be built out. The legend of Bryan Tome is that and tell me if I'm right here.

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Speaker 3
You guys tried to do a capital campaign to build the building and you wanted to raise, I think, $4 million and you raised ten. Am I getting that right?

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Speaker 4
I think it was 9.6 or something like that that we raised.

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Speaker 3
Okay. Yeah, we'll get the.

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Speaker 4
Preachers out there. We've done we've done four campaigns. That was our first one.

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Speaker 3
I mean, how did you do that? How did you. Because you had primarily unchurched people with no church passed decide to jump into that level other than the act of God. I mean, what did you see going on there?

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Speaker 4
Oh, man. Well, it certainly was a thing of God, no question about it. It it just it just was. And is campaigns, they just stretch you to to your capacity. And as the young pastor, I, I just put myself into it entirely. It was endless meetings with people and less contact meetings with people. And you're just talking vision over and over and over and over again.

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Speaker 4
And I thought we had enough folks who were tired of being in a rented school and setting up and tearing down and believed in a vision of what God was calling us to, that people just really came out. I also think Rusty, when I look at it, is one of the reasons why campaigns can be so effective and successful or at least appear to be, is because most churches are not really intentional and aggressive around giving unless it's a campaign.

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Speaker 4
So we did a series a couple of years ago, 18 months ago, something like that, a couple of years ago called The Blessed Life of. Have you heard of that series?

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Speaker 3
Absolutely, yeah.

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Speaker 4
Robert Morris from Texas. Mm hmm. And we just it's a first series that we we actually copied the we did the outlines, copy the outlines word for word. And we work with Gateway on it. And Robert, he's a really good guy. And that six weeks, six week thing that's based about tithing and offerings and all that stuff and mean it jacked up our giving skyrocketed and stayed there.

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Speaker 4
Hmm. It actually was so influential on our people's personal spiritual development and in what our church could do. I just thought, Man, do we miss the ball in all these campaigns? What would have happened, you know, 20 years ago or for our first campaign, if we had just tried to get people tithing and we just had a church that was going into that waters where we'd be right now.

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Speaker 4
So. Right. I think campaigns have been good and effective for us. We've done five of them. Every one or four of them, every one we've done has had less and less payback. So I think our first our first campaign we did, we had, oh, what was it like seven times our annual giving over three years? Our second campaign, I think was five or third one was four.

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Speaker 4
And I, I think our last one was three or something like that. So yeah, we've seen decreasing effectiveness with them.

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Speaker 3
Yep. Sounds about right. One of the things I remember from one of our first meetings were sitting in your office and you had on your wall and I don't know if you still do this about nine pictures, small pictures of people, and you refer to it as your wall of gratitude. I never forgotten that. And I've thought about who would be on my wall of gratitude besides you, of course.

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Speaker 3
Of course. Of course. Brian. Who? Who? Who's on that wall? Give us just one or two people that make the wall of gratitude for you.

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Speaker 4
Oh, man. Eye to eye. Something you're just trying to get me cry, Rusty, is that you're trying to try to get me.

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Speaker 3
From early in the show to do that, but we'll see.

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Speaker 4
I took that. I took those pics down. I probably should bring them back up on my wall where people like Denny Patten, he led me to Christ. He brought me into ministry and he's dying of cancer right now. I had my podcast a few months ago and at that point I thought he had only weeks to live. God's give him a second wind and he's he really I'm here.

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Speaker 4
Anything has ever happened in my life or through my life is all through him. It's all his downline. Anybody Crossroads been baptized? Anybody who's come to faith, any ministry. It's been helped financially. It's all because of him seeing a 15 year old on a bench at Franklin Regional High School on in the football game and trying to build into me and reach me.

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Speaker 4
So he's on there. I also have people on there like Joan Driscoll, Sharon Hindman, These are mothers of kids who were in my student ministry when I was in Pittsburgh, and those mothers actually ended up mothering me. They ended up giving me meals, endless meals and give me support. They, they were they were phenomenal folks for me. So but John Guest is another one.

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Speaker 4
First person I learn how to preach from Anglican Episcopal priest, you know, used to say he was an Englishman and this is how he talks just like that. And and he said every time I go up in the pulpit, I take a two by four with me because I want to whack people in the head every time I go up there.

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Speaker 4
And I heard that and thought, that's exactly what you do. You whack me, you do things that keep me awake and hit me upside the head. And so that's a method of preaching. I've tried to emulate taking a two by four, not just good concepts that are on a pillow. Yeah. So those kind of folks have altered the factor in my life.

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Speaker 3
I love that imagery with the two by four because that that sums up your life really, really well. I didn't know that story, but now I look back and go, Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because you do a lot of things to push people. You've got a great podcast called The Aggressive Life. You have some controversial people on there that push people.

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Speaker 3
You have a men's devotional, which we'll talk more about later. That pushes guys. You also have you have a limited series on on Amazon Prime, I believe, Phantom Lake. Yes. Where you take a bunch of people on a motorcycle trip totally different than what most pastors are doing with the use of television. You have so many great ideas.

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Speaker 3
How do you decide where you're going to leverage that to buy for? How do you decide what you're going to do, what you're not going to do?

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Speaker 4
Yeah, it just came off of Amazon. That series called Phantom Lake is Amazon Re re organized all their shows. So ours didn't make the cuts. They took it off. It could still get on YouTube. I think there's the old line that a guy used to work on staff for Crossroads named Tod Henry clued me into. He said he said Cover bands don't change the world.

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Speaker 4
And that's true. But when it comes to ministry, when you start off probably in anything, you need to be a cover band. There's there's the basics you have to do in ministry and you can't innovate too much, like you're going to start church. You got to learn things like, How do you preach? Maybe you might want to take somebody out, outline, maybe you want to just look at what's that, what's what's a standard inspirational service for 65 minutes.

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Speaker 4
There's standard things like how do you break the 200 barrier? How do you structure cells for breaking the thousand barrier? These things are just basic cover band moves that you have to be able to do. And I'll eventually, once you master those basic chords, if you will, or once you master, well, I'll put a little cloud up in the sky.

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Speaker 4
You know, Bob Ross, you know, he a bunch of people start painting because they start doing little birds and stuff. Like Barbara say they copied him like a cover band. They everybody who pick up the guitar, they copy U2 songs. Once you get good enough to copy that and do something half decent, then you're qualified for the next level is where you start to innovate and go beyond that.

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Speaker 4
Because if you all you're doing is the basic brushstrokes of ministry, it's not going to change the world. So eventually you get to a place of, you know, I'm pretty good motorcycles here and I've seen guys come alive and I've been on a motorcycle trip with them. And I like watching Amazon series. Why don't we do one of those?

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Speaker 4
Let's do an Amazon series around motorcycles and let's tied into Crossroads. No one ever done that before. Never heard that before. Let's try that. Yeah, I'm really liking camping and God makes something come alive with me when I'm camping. What if. What if. What if we went out and rented land and and had 2000 guys come out and poop all over the land?

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Speaker 4
And we had and we had fires and we had games, and then we had some worship in a tent. What if we did that? Oh, okay. And what if we go buy 350 acres of forest? 25 acres doing our own? What if we recently I was in Alabama and there was a I was struck by the I can't hear what's called basically, it's the National Lynching Museum Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, where they list everybody who was lynched, every African American or before they were allowed to be American, every black person in America who got lynched.

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Speaker 4
And I went to another museum. I was like, oh, my goodness. And then I went to this great oyster house for dinner and it was great. And I thought we should do a mission trip down here. Have people come down here, go to the lynching museum, learn about racial history here, do some service projects, and then slam some beers and do some oysters at night at this place.

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Speaker 4
We should do that. So we got hundreds of people are going down to do that in a couple of weeks. We're starting that off. You don't build a good church that way because that's kind of the next level. But where I am right now is just trying to be sensitive to what God's whispering to you, what God's doing in you, because that's probably what He wants to do.

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Speaker 4
And your people, if you're a shepherd, a shepherd takes people where he's recently been because where he's been, he knows that's where the grass is. You don't just wander around to you find grass, you find out is is a pastor hall. Wow, I got refreshment here. Maybe God led me to this patch of grass so I could bring other people here.

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Speaker 4
So that's kind of the phase of ministry I'm into right now. But that wasn't the way it was in the early days.

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Speaker 3
Well, that's so good, because, yeah, in the early days it's just survival now. It's about significance. What you're you're moving ahead into. Right. Tell me about some other fresh ideas that you're pondering. I mean, obviously, your online campus just exploded, of course, through COVID, but you took it in a different perspective. It wasn't just a camera in the back of the room.

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Speaker 3
I mean, you're you're going and you're filming in Shawshank. You're you're filming out in the desert. You're interviewing Lecrae and Amy Grant. I mean, you're really pushing the boundaries there as far as thought process, What are some other things you're thinking through?

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Speaker 4
Well, outside of online stuff, are you want me to elaborate on the online stuff? What are you.

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Speaker 3
Anything you want, buddy.

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Speaker 4
Oh, man. Well, you know, the online stuff is a tough one. People say, Oh, your leaders are doing really well. You're always running. So I don't know that we are. I we're trying to figure it out like everybody else's where we're a little bit further ahead and casting off old paradigms and other people are. But the success that we're having in online is not commensurate with the money we're spending on online, yet we are having success there.

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Speaker 4
But, you know, we'll see what happens. It's a different thing if you want to give people who are in your church an online experience that's really easy to do. You take what you have on the weekend and you just make sure it presents really well. If you're trying to reach people who are not in your church or not in the country and can never are not in one of your cities, and they're and will never be able to come inside of one of your buildings.

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Speaker 4
That's an entirely different thing because people don't want to they don't want to we've learned they don't want to watch something that's in a building that tells them you'll never be here and this isn't created for you. Yeah, they want something that says you're the primary audience and we want to meet you where you are. So that's why we do all the online stuff and all that stuff.

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Speaker 4
So we're trying to figure it out there. And honestly, we've not figured it out. We've made some we've made some advances, but it's still a it's still in an innovation mode. As far as other things I really feel like we're doing right now. I don't have any I wish I had some big new sexy project to tell you about.

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Speaker 4
Rusty I feel like Crossroads is more restarting. Right now. We're fighting aging. We're a church that's large and doing well financially, doing at least. Okay, financially. And guess what? That's exactly what happens when churches start to age. Hmm. Because you have people in their prime income earning years and they're developed enough spiritually to understand tithing. So you can be doing really, really well financially as a church.

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Speaker 4
But right around the corner, pain and dangers coming because you're not reaching younger folks and you're not expanding your ministry's reach. So that's what we're doing right now. I'm calling it we're relaunching Crossroads. I'm trying to look at where we are now. When I came to Cincinnati in 1995, there was 11 people, $15,000 in the bank. And those 11 people guaranteed my $40,000 salary for a year.

00;15;57;27 - 00;16;19;03
Speaker 4
And we said, Let's see if we can make it work. I said, Based on that, I'll leave Pittsburgh and come to Cincinnati now. Now I'd go, okay, we got I got 12 campuses. We've got, you know, we've got what do we have? We have four weeks cash on hand in the bank. We've got a $27 million and change mortgage.

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Speaker 4
We have 370 staff members. I make great money, as most megachurch pastors do. If I were to come and start Crossroads right now with all those assets and all those liabilities, would I do it? And I very clearly, yeah, I would do it. But then the difficulty is, okay, you're starting it. So these are all assets resource sources you have.

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Speaker 4
It's not like keep the machinery going, right? It's based on all of this. What would you do right now to restart Crossroads? Because culture is so tumultuous, we need to restart our churches and that's that. That's all of my creative energy right now.

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Speaker 3
Where do you think? Because, you know, I've listened to you talk through the pandemic and we've all lived some awful situations of people that we thought were with us. Turn against us the comments that are made, that the sheer lies that people believe. Where do you think we go as a church, big C church from here, rather than just try to rekindle the past, you know, kind of what's next to try to?

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Speaker 3
Are we beyond just trying to repair the problems that we've seen in the church and in our country? Where is it? We've got to go take new ground and forget the past.

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Speaker 4
The church is fractured, incredibly fractured. It's always been fractured. You know, you've had mainline denominations, you've had liberal churches, conservative churches, megachurches, house churches, Calvinist churches, Armenian churches, Baptist churches. I mean, it's always been fractured, but it's fractured now in a way that none of us thought because we used to think, well, basic evangelicalism, whatever that is, that group is kind of together with that group is now fractured.

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Speaker 4
It's fractured along political lines, covered lines, race lines. I mean, Crossroads, I thought we were pretty darn pretty darn cohesive in terms of race. And we've had a lot of we got a lot of diversity in our place and a lot of diversity in leadership and multicultural church, all that, all that kind of stuff. But man, you know, we haven't been people want to see more race discussions.

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Speaker 4
People want to see less race discussions. People don't want to say what you're saying, people to say, you see you saying more things. People would it's it's it's incredibly, incredibly difficult. I was just with Ed Stetler yesterday is basically the the pope of evangelicalism. Right. And and he said he thinks that we are in for another three years of this.

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Speaker 4
Mm. That this is like it was four churches in the sixties with MLK and the Vietnam War and all the civil unrest that was a long, long, long, long deal. And he thinks that's what we're in for. Another three years of this, which I actually I was actually encouraged by that because three years tells me, okay, there is light at the end of the tunnel because this is what the rest of my life of ministry is really going to suck.

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Speaker 4
Yeah, right. Which I hate to say that because, you know, you and I, Rusty, we're not getting burned at the stake for our faith. You know, we're not going hungry like missionaries are. And, you know, wherever Pick your third world country. We've got pretty comfy lives. Our level of suffering and difficulty is nothing like the early apostles. But for us, it's never been worse.

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Speaker 4
Being in ministry, you're always the bad guy. People you brought to Christ and and have mentored for literally decades don't like me anymore. And I'm not their friend because I said this and they disagree with that or I'm not saying this. Yeah. And they don't they they think I'm just weak and I've lost my testicles. Right. That's just the way it is right now.

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Speaker 4
And it's awful.

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Speaker 2
Hey, let me pop in here for just a second and remind you, make sure you sponsor a child. Go there right now. Compassion dot com slash rusty sponsor a child today for the price of about two lattes. You can change your child's life. Love for you to be a part of that and go to compassion dotcom compassion international and sign up compassion dot com slash rusty and sponsor a child.

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Speaker 2
Okay back to our conversation.

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Speaker 3
Yeah I've heard Stetson talk about that before. The 60 year cycle that we go through and I'm like you And he said three years. I thought, okay.

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Speaker 4
I'll just oh, you were the same way.

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Speaker 3
Buckle up. He thought.

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Speaker 4
That too.

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Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. I was like, Okay, well, that sounds better than what I what I thought it was.

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Speaker 4
Right.

00;20;48;12 - 00;21;13;29
Speaker 3
Hey, tell me about Leading Men, because this is certainly a passion of yours. And if you listen to your podcast, if you read the devotional, which the devotional is great and I hesitate to call it a devotional, it's a reader for guys. It's short. It's a black. Everything about it screams man. And you know the stats. Most men don't read another book after they get out of high school, and all men have a stack of books on their bedside table that their wife has given them with a bookmark two pages in.

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Speaker 3
But this one, this one's great. What are we missing? What's the church missing when it comes to connecting with guys?

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Speaker 4
I think that the average leader in the American church is like a fish in water. Fish don't even think about water. They're just in it. It is what it is. And I don't think we recognize how oriented our churches are to women. It's just the water that we swim in and the way it's been forever. And we're just not thinking things through in a different and fresh way.

00;21;57;14 - 00;22;16;14
Speaker 4
These things, I must say, a lot of people have been saying a lot of these things for a long, long time. But in Islam, the most ardent adherents of Islam are men. In American Christianity, the most ardent followers of our churches are women. That there's there's certainly good men who are early in their lives, that there are some.

00;22;17;03 - 00;22;36;14
Speaker 4
But we all know that the bulk of the ministry and everything is getting done by women. We had recently a women camp experience, but just last weekend. Are women around having women camp? We Women camp man camp, couple's camp, vet camp, father son camp, daughter, gerbil camp. I mean, all kind of all kind of different camps and like our volunteer ranks for decimated.

00;22;36;14 - 00;22;56;24
Speaker 4
They were utterly decimated. Yeah. Because an and in order to amount of our volunteers are women. Yeah that's, that's where we are as churches and it, and you see it in our music you know the, the nice love songs that we have that guys scratch their heads about. Like I like the song What a beautiful name it is.

00;22;57;15 - 00;23;15;17
Speaker 4
The name of Jesus Christ, my Lord, what a beautiful name it is. I heard that. And I like that song, by the way. I worship the song like a lot, but I. I don't want anyone calling Brian a beautiful name. There's just what they were calling his name. A beautiful name, too. Did the male disciples ever go to Jesus?

00;23;15;18 - 00;23;33;04
Speaker 4
A boy? Jesus? I got to tell you, your name is just beautiful. I wish they would have led with what a powerful name, which is also in that song. What a wonderful name. But that's the lead song. It lead. It's just something that that guy's disconnect. We don't we don't want to sing songs about gazing into your face.

00;23;33;08 - 00;23;54;00
Speaker 4
The disciples never song sang songs to Jesus. I want to gaze in your face. I want to touch your face. I know that's that, that's that speaks to women. It doesn't speak to men. Our songs tend to not speak to men. Our events are people sitting in a living room with a book on their lap or so our small groups are come to the living room.

00;23;54;00 - 00;24;11;16
Speaker 4
It's at a book on our lap and talk concepts. You and I might be okay with that, Rusty, because we read way more than the average male does, but the average male doesn't read books and it won't sit in a freaking circle with a book in their lap and talk about it. They want to do something and out of something they're doing, maybe something will pop out of that.

00;24;12;10 - 00;24;32;29
Speaker 4
So there's just a lot of things that we're not doing to speak the language of men that that we that we need to do are most, without question, the best thing we've done a crossroads for a long time is we just recently broke a wild horse on stage. Did you see about that one or two going up?

00;24;34;07 - 00;24;34;22
Speaker 3
No.

00;24;35;15 - 00;24;44;07
Speaker 4
Yeah. So? So I met a buddy of mine. The buddy of mine, Todd Pierce. You. You really find that funny heart?

00;24;44;07 - 00;24;49;20
Speaker 3
Yeah, I do. I just. This one, I think I can't hear anything new. Okay, let's do that.

00;24;49;20 - 00;25;08;09
Speaker 4
Yeah. So, Todd Pierce. Todd Pierce. He's in. He's in Idaho. He's got this ministry. He goes to prison stuff and he breaks a wild horse, and he's got spiritual things about it. And as I was hearing when he said, I like to have Cup of Crossroads and do that, and he said, churches always say that, but no one ever does.

00;25;09;01 - 00;25;23;14
Speaker 4
I said, Well, we will. And I said, All right, I'm telling you, churches say they want to do it, but as soon as they look into the legality of it and this and that, they're just they don't do it. So if you do it, if you actually follow through, be the first like we will follow through.

00;25;24;01 - 00;25;25;05
Speaker 3
That's all you needed to hear.

00;25;25;05 - 00;25;39;28
Speaker 4
That's all I need here. So I came back, I told all of our financial folks, our community pastors, they said, Look, this weekend is happening. It's going to happen. I don't know if you want to tell insurance or not. You're going to tell the insurance carrier. And they shut us down there. We're just going to break the law.

00;25;39;29 - 00;25;59;17
Speaker 4
We're going to do it so you can figure out whether we're were with health insurance or not. But we're going to do this. So we have three service on a Sunday. They brought a horse corral and we had to find three different wild horses for each service. And Todd comes in and there's sawdust on the floor and the band plays along with it and he can break a wild horse in under 60 minutes.

00;26;00;14 - 00;26;30;19
Speaker 4
Here's the thing. What is so stunning about this Broken horses are healthier than wild horses. They live longer than wild horses and they're stronger than wild horses. One guy on the back of a broken horse can outrun and corral an entire herd of wild horses, because when it's been broken by a powerful human being, his capacity increases. That's what's like with God in us.

00;26;31;02 - 00;27;04;23
Speaker 4
When we get broken by God, our capacity increases, our strength increases, and what Todd does when he brings people these horses in, all these horses have pain and they have difficulty and he tries to find where that pain is, where they were hit, where they've been club, maybe where they were branded multiple times or something like that. And when he finds that pain area that represses into because that's the thing that if he can get the horse to trust him with that pain, that's the thing that's going to unlock it.

00;27;05;08 - 00;27;27;15
Speaker 4
Hmm. That was like one of our best attended services weekends ever, and people are just booming all over the place. I did that in large part because that was going to be a straw man move. Yeah. Now women love that as well. In fact, we're going to do it again next year that we did on Father's Day. I realized Father's Day is not the right time for a couple of reasons.

00;27;28;11 - 00;27;42;24
Speaker 4
One is, if I did Father's Day again, the women start to feel slighted. They way out. You don't care for the women don't care that we do care for women. We just thought Father's Day be a cool thing. We could do a mother's Day once the women know that we are as equal equally for mothers as we are for fathers.

00;27;43;22 - 00;27;59;12
Speaker 4
Secondly, Mother's Day come sooner. I want to do this again because I think we go really big. And thirdly, Mom could tell her husband, I want you to come to church with me this weekend. Yeah, well, Father's Day, he gets to do whatever the heck he wants to do. Yeah, but Mom says I want you to come to church, man.

00;27;59;12 - 00;28;21;24
Speaker 4
You never come to church, or you got something for him. So great idea. That's kind of one of those aggressive things like, Yeah, what are we going to do that's beyond Standard Church? Because guess what, Rusty? If you want Standard Church and by Standard Church, I mean great music and great preaching. We know we need that. But that's just the table stakes that just gets you into the game.

00;28;21;27 - 00;28;28;16
Speaker 4
Yeah, but we've got to be doing things that are churches that are outside the norm in order to stoke the imaginations of men.

00;28;29;02 - 00;28;48;18
Speaker 3
That's fantastic. All right. I got to get Todd Pierce's number. Yeah. The craziest thing we ever did with an animals. We had a lion outside for kids to see. Hilarious, Brian, because, I mean, this these are working actors out here in L.A. So, you know, the lion rolls in and a in a motorcoach, you know, air conditioned cage.

00;28;49;07 - 00;29;04;20
Speaker 3
They put him out in this pen. And all I'm thinking is, if that thing gets loose, I'm on CNN, you know? Yeah, right. And all these kids have surrounded the cage to see the lion. And what's a cat do when he gets into a new territory? He just walks around and sprays everything.

00;29;06;10 - 00;29;07;09
Speaker 4
That's good.

00;29;07;09 - 00;29;08;10
Speaker 3
It was awesome.

00;29;08;18 - 00;29;13;10
Speaker 4
That's great. Yeah. Jon Acuff, you know, he had the book stuff Christians like.

00;29;13;11 - 00;29;13;25
Speaker 3
Oh, yeah.

00;29;14;08 - 00;29;17;23
Speaker 4
Oh, so he says, What a Christian. Christians love live animals.

00;29;17;24 - 00;29;18;07
Speaker 3
They do.

00;29;18;22 - 00;29;27;01
Speaker 4
It. There's nothing that's going to drive the church down the street out of business faster than you have in a live camel. You do that. Your church is growing.

00;29;28;27 - 00;29;47;21
Speaker 3
Listen, I love that podcast you had with him and I had him on our show, too, and we talked about worship leaders and things gone wrong on stage. And it was it was really, really fun. Yeah. Okay. I don't I don't want to waste your time. So we're going to go right to the lightning round, which is something that's known for from the Aggressive Life podcast of Brian.

00;29;47;21 - 00;30;03;07
Speaker 3
Tom, I'm going to give you a variety of questions. You get one or two sentences to answer. I've tipped you off to some of these, so I think you kind of know where I'm going. But here we go, 2 to 3 guests that you've loved on your show.

00;30;03;07 - 00;30;21;12
Speaker 4
I loved Danny Patton, who I talked about because I cried a lot in that on that show. And other people did as well. I loved I loved Francis Collins from National Institute of Health. And I'll just go with the easy one and say, Matthew McConaughey.

00;30;21;12 - 00;30;25;15
Speaker 3
All right, All right, All right. Okay. Who outpaces you?

00;30;26;02 - 00;30;29;19
Speaker 4
You mean personally? Professionally? What?

00;30;29;29 - 00;30;33;15
Speaker 3
You name it. Who do you look ahead and go, man, I want to keep up with them.

00;30;34;06 - 00;30;58;18
Speaker 4
Mm. That answer would have changed over the years based on where I was. It's. That's an easy answer. I'd just say. Tim Keller. Okay. Not because his ministry is anything like mine, it's not. But we got him and Billy Graham for people who ended their public ministries and ended well. So at 55, that's the kind of pacing I'm looking at right now.

00;30;59;04 - 00;31;04;25
Speaker 3
Well said. If men could do one thing to improve their marriage, what would it be?

00;31;04;25 - 00;31;06;00
Speaker 4
Go on double dates.

00;31;06;19 - 00;31;08;05
Speaker 3
Okay. Why double dates?

00;31;09;12 - 00;31;12;00
Speaker 4
Okay, good. So I can get off the lightning round. I can. Yeah.

00;31;12;01 - 00;31;13;17
Speaker 3
Yeah, I'll let you have that one.

00;31;15;06 - 00;31;29;06
Speaker 4
When you're married. First of all, when your marriage is in a is in a difficult spot, you don't need to be spending one on one time with your spouse is just going to get worse. You get into more fights or you're going to be more bored. And the more bored you are with one another, the more you're going to second guess your your marriage.

00;31;30;02 - 00;31;58;21
Speaker 4
When I've been really tough, boss, it's time to dial up like it's get out with other couples because then conversation flows more freely. It's less pressure them. You can maybe fall back in love with one another. It's like the key to virtually every problem a man has is anti loneliness. The loneliness epidemic is massive for men, so the key spiritual formation tool for men is picking the right friends and spending time with those friends.

00;31;58;21 - 00;32;23;20
Speaker 4
That's more important than reading the Bible or praying. I know people would want to defrock me for that, but that's what I believe. And and then when it comes to your marriage, it's leaning back in that friend thing, you know, hanging out with your wife, with a with a guy friend and his wife or friends that you have in a in a dating situation can just be a safe thing for your marriage and and maybe stoke it to the next place.

00;32;23;20 - 00;32;28;17
Speaker 3
That's a great answer. I'm glad you expand on that. Okay. What would you tell your younger self?

00;32;29;27 - 00;32;34;15
Speaker 4
Your family relationships are the only relationships they're going to matter long term. Hmm.

00;32;35;06 - 00;32;39;28
Speaker 3
It's good. Last mistake. And what you learn from it. Just in ministry.

00;32;41;01 - 00;32;57;18
Speaker 4
Uh, I had an outsider come to Crossroads and talk about transgender, and it was the worst mistake of my ministry. First time broaching that very sensitive, divisive topic should have been done by me and not an outsider.

00;32;58;15 - 00;33;05;19
Speaker 3
Okay, One book that everybody should read besides move. Uh.

00;33;06;04 - 00;33;18;22
Speaker 4
Everybody. I'm the Bible. That's what the Bible doesn't count. You're not counting. The Bible is the book. That should be. That should be read.

00;33;18;22 - 00;33;23;19
Speaker 3
Oh, my. Yes. Besides the best, the bestselling book of all time, what would it be?

00;33;24;26 - 00;33;27;13
Speaker 4
Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh.

00;33;28;18 - 00;33;29;11
Speaker 3
Let's just.

00;33;29;12 - 00;33;58;15
Speaker 4
Some of the books are like, books are like I'm accused of being the goldfish. That's they call me because I have a really bad memory. I have very short term memories is what I have. And so I'm tend to be really hot on the most just sort of recent book that I've read. But as you say that I think I think I would probably go with the classic by Donald Miller, Blue Light Jazz.

00;33;58;22 - 00;33;59;24
Speaker 3
Oh yeah. Okay.

00;34;00;04 - 00;34;08;09
Speaker 4
I think it I think it just puts the basics in a very fresh, moving way.

00;34;09;05 - 00;34;20;22
Speaker 3
Good answer. All right. These last two are simple. You live in Cincinnati, so is it Skyline or Montgomery in Montgomery.

00;34;20;22 - 00;34;20;27
Speaker 4
In.

00;34;21;13 - 00;34;26;12
Speaker 3
Mm. Okay. And you're from Pittsburgh. So Bengals are Steelers.

00;34;26;14 - 00;34;51;28
Speaker 4
Steelers, not even close Plus, Yeah, you expand on that one. I can expand on that one. I can't. I move from Pittsburgh saying, I'm going to become a Bengals fan because I'm called to Cincinnati. And that's just the way it is. About year three, when the Bengals played the Steelers, I was shocked that I spontaneously celebrated when the Bengals had an interception.

00;34;52;01 - 00;35;14;26
Speaker 4
I was like, Wow, okay, I switched here. That was that was really good. The problem is the problem is the Steelers have a history of making decisions to win and serve their fans. The Bengals have a history of wanting to make money and screw their fans over. That's just that's just the history of it. And so, yeah, you won't you just won't find rabid fans in Cincinnati.

00;35;14;26 - 00;35;36;24
Speaker 4
You'll find some people go to the games, but it's not like in Pittsburgh where the entire city shut down. It's not like in Pittsburgh where it didn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat. Gay, straight, rich, poor, live in the city, live in the suburbs. The Steelers were a unifying element to that city and to come to Cincinnati and see that not be the case is just kind of a bummer.

00;35;36;24 - 00;35;46;18
Speaker 4
So yeah. Yeah, I don't I don't I don't fault I don't follow steel the Steelers games I haven't watched a full Steelers game forever but you know talk about what brings you more joy It was definitely the Steelers.

00;35;47;10 - 00;35;50;11
Speaker 3
Yeah that's so good. All right Brian. Working people find you.

00;35;51;11 - 00;35;53;27
Speaker 4
You find me Brian. Tom dot com.

00;35;54;21 - 00;36;03;21
Speaker 3
Awesome man. Buddy, This has been so fun. Thank you so much for pouring into our audience and just keep, keep breaking wild horses, man. I love that.

00;36;03;29 - 00;36;04;20
Speaker 4
My pleasure.

00;36;04;20 - 00;36;32;03
Speaker 2
Rusty Wow, that was exciting. I just. I'm just overwhelmed with some of his ideas. And even though I recorded this a few weeks ago, I have really been chewing on some of these concepts for a long time. And I just loved his insightful method, his passion and his vulnerability. So make sure that you check out Brian's resources, his devotional called Move is so great, especially for guys to get a man in your life who doesn't read anything and you want him to read something about the Bible.

00;36;32;08 - 00;36;51;02
Speaker 2
Get this vote for him simply called Move. And it's really short, really short reads for each day. And it's it's winnable and it's doable and it's great. So make sure you share this podcast with somebody else. Let them know how helpful this was to you. And if you get a moment, give us a review or a rating. That would mean a lot.

00;36;51;08 - 00;37;10;00
Speaker 2
Next week, we're back with a guy that decided to start a non. And some of you out there are thinking, Boy, I'd like to lead simple by starting a not a nonprofit. This is a conversation you're going to love as we talk with Charity Waters, Scott Harrison It's going to be really, really helpful. So make sure that you're with us next week.

00;37;10;08 - 00;37;13;09
Speaker 2
Make sure to share this with a friend. And as always, keep it simple.

00;37;14;02 - 00;37;37;01
Speaker 1
Take a moment and subscribe to the podcast so you get it delivered every week and subscribe to the Rusty George YouTube channel for more devotionals, messages and fun videos. Thank you for listening to Leading Simple Lessons.