The Rusty George Podcast

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;23;06
Rusty George
As a pastor, I'm constantly concerned about how to create connections beyond just the weekend services. And one of the valuable tools that we have found for achieving this at our church is our app powered by Subsplash. It's one thing to have an app. It's another thing to have an app that has the ability to allow your community to access messages, resources and even give and Subsplash created that for us.

00;00;23;06 - 00;00;55;17
Rusty George
It's become our go to platform for connecting with our congregation in ways we never could have before. Subs, splashes so much more than just a platform or even just an app. It brings people together, empowers giving and transforms lives. If you're interested in learning more, I encourage you to visit their website at Subsplash.com. That's Sub-S-P-L-A-S-H dot com Subsplash dotcom.

00;00;56;04 - 00;01;05;04
Rusty George
Following Jesus isn't always easy, but it's not complicated. Join us each week as we work to make faith simple. This is simple Faith.

00;01;08;13 - 00;01;25;23
Rusty George
Hey, have you ever wondered, Boy, I'm trying to lead this church and the technology side of things, even the worship side of things seems to be getting out of hand. I mean, we've got lasers, we've got lights, we've got music. We've got people standing up, sitting down, raising hands. People are complaining about it needs to be louder. Other people are complaining.

00;01;25;23 - 00;01;52;05
Rusty George
It needs to be quieter. What does God want? Well, today, my conversation with Darren Whitehead, we get right into that. What an incredible thinker, author, speaker and leader in the church today. I can't wait for you to hear my conversation with Darren Whitehead. This is simple faith. Darren Whitehead. I think our audience is going to figure out really quickly from your accent, you ain't from around here.

00;01;52;08 - 00;01;54;09
Rusty George
So tell us a little bit about yourself.

00;01;54;14 - 00;02;33;11
Darren Whitehead
Well, hey, Rusty, thanks so much for letting me come on today. Yeah, I'm originally from Australia, moved to the United States 25 years ago, actually came over to work in radio, work in Christian radio, and I was in Melbourne, Australia, trying to get a work visa to come to Nashville. Had some Aussie friends who worked in the music industry and I was going to come and live with them and was going to come work at this radio station and the the I.N.S. officer in the consulate, American consulate made a mistake when, when they were reading my file and they ended up getting me a pastor's visa, a religious visa.

00;02;33;23 - 00;02;52;22
Darren Whitehead
I'd never been a pastor before. I had no plans of ever becoming a pastor. But when I came to America, if I wanted to stay, I had to become a pastor. And true, true story. Sometimes people ask me, How did the Lord call you into the ministry? And I say, The US government called me into this and out of fear of deportation.

00;02;52;22 - 00;03;07;20
Darren Whitehead
I just keep preaching. So that is actually my story. That is how I've been a pastor for 25 years. And that is the the serendipitous story of how I came to be in church ministry.

00;03;07;23 - 00;03;09;19
Rusty George
Were you a Christian at the time?

00;03;10;05 - 00;03;31;07
Darren Whitehead
I was a Christian. I was going to come work at a Christian radio station, which is some of how they kind of got this confused. I was I was working at a Christian radio station in Australia, and I was coming to work at a Christian radio station in Nashville. And for whatever reason, as they were reading through the file, they were just kind of like, Yeah, we need to give him a religious worker's visa.

00;03;31;07 - 00;03;36;13
Darren Whitehead
It's called an hour one and it is a pastor's visa and so awesome.

00;03;36;21 - 00;03;41;28
Rusty George
So I would assume you were going to work with the newsboys, right? Because all, all you Aussies know each other, right?

00;03;41;29 - 00;04;06;00
Darren Whitehead
Yeah. Actually, the the Aussie community in Nashville is thriving. And and I do know those guys. Several of these guys are in that church, but it was actually the family that I knew was Rebecca. St James's family and her two brothers are in a band now called Fucking in Country. Oh yeah. And I lived with their family for the first two years that I lived in America.

00;04;06;00 - 00;04;17;24
Darren Whitehead
And the boys, Joel and Luke, who were fucking in country, were about 11 and 13 at the time. Hmm. So, yeah, that's how I came to the U.S..

00;04;18;10 - 00;04;37;18
Rusty George
That. That is awesome. Yeah, well, a lots of connections there. We can get into another time, but that. That's incredible. So you come over here and the United States government basically calls you into ministry. How long between that moment and you deciding? Yeah, I think I probably do need to be a pastor. How long did that take?

00;04;38;18 - 00;05;00;24
Darren Whitehead
Well, what happened was I immediately started working as an intern at the church, and I basically had to like the the church that the Smallbone went to. Turned out to be my sponsor. That was like my passport. You have a sponsor if you're an immigrant coming to the U.S. And so the church was my sponsor, so I immediately had to get involved.

00;05;00;24 - 00;05;22;24
Darren Whitehead
And what happened was I was a youth pastor, intern, and then the head youth pastor decided to resign and leave. And the church came to me and said, We want you to be our new youth pastor. And I said, You know, I don't really want to do that. And they said, Well, we think the God's told you to it and we're not going to interview anyone else.

00;05;22;24 - 00;05;50;29
Darren Whitehead
We're just going to wait for God to speak to you. And over the course of the next several months, honestly, my my heart just moved towards these students. I honestly, I fell in love with with working in a church context and teaching the Bible. And this is not what I expected to do with my life. I'm sort of a reluctant pastor, but it's it's I mean, it was pretty soon in moving over here, I was an intern, and then within a year I was on the staff.

00;05;52;03 - 00;06;09;10
Rusty George
So at some point in this journey, you discover you have a teaching gift because you clearly do. I've heard you speak multiple times and it's evident that God is a gift to you that gifted you that way and is using you that way. When did you know? I mean, it's one thing to say, Oh, I can do this.

00;06;09;10 - 00;06;20;24
Rusty George
I don't, you know, vomit on myself. When I stand up in front of people, I can actually communicate to a room. But it's not the thing to say. I think I'm gifted to do this. I think I have a spiritual gift of teaching. When did that click for you?

00;06;21;02 - 00;06;52;07
Darren Whitehead
That was probably about within the first year or so of I mean, I started speaking regular early and I think probably a year, maybe a year and a half into this. I certainly felt affirmation from people. People seem to be responding. The mystery was growing. I found myself being quite energized by it. I often describe preaching for me as a little bit like, if you try to write with your wrong hand, you're not like, for me, it's left handed.

00;06;52;07 - 00;07;11;27
Darren Whitehead
So I try to write in my left hand. It's it's it's a bit of a challenge when I start writing with my right hand, it's almost like something natural takes place and it's like my effort is combined with the natural dominant hand that that I have. And all of a sudden it's like there's a synergy that takes place.

00;07;11;29 - 00;07;40;29
Darren Whitehead
Wow. And and so preaching for me was almost like, Oh, I think God's wired me to do this. I would recreationally read theology books and, you know, like, I just I love to talk theology. I love to deconstruct what makes a great talk and illustrations and the use of humor and it just became my just my natural interest.

00;07;41;21 - 00;07;46;17
Darren Whitehead
And so pretty early on, I really just sense that God was leading me to do it.

00;07;47;05 - 00;08;08;11
Rusty George
Who's some of your favorite communicators right now? I know it changes over time. It may be they might not be a pastor. They might just be a stand up comedian. But you think that person can really communicate and you like the way they structure things, their their thought, cadence and and delivery humor or insight. Who do you like right now?

00;08;08;22 - 00;08;17;16
Darren Whitehead
I love that question. So a guy that has just started attending our church recently and started to become a friend is a comedian by the name of Nate Buck SC.

00;08;17;16 - 00;08;18;19
Rusty George
I love that guy.

00;08;18;20 - 00;08;42;14
Darren Whitehead
And yeah, so he's in Nashville in and, and so when he's in town he joins us and I remember last time he was at church was at Easter because he's been traveling a lot. But I'm preaching and then I see Nate in the crowd and I'm completely thinking about the way that I'm speaking and, you know, seeing if he's smiling at anything.

00;08;42;14 - 00;08;44;06
Darren Whitehead
I've said this remotely funny, you know?

00;08;44;06 - 00;08;45;06
Rusty George
Right, right.

00;08;45;06 - 00;08;55;25
Darren Whitehead
I, I respect how he the way he uses humor is just it's truly top shelf genius as far as I'm. Yeah, it.

00;08;55;26 - 00;08;56;29
Rusty George
Is. It is.

00;08;57;20 - 00;09;24;20
Darren Whitehead
And the mechanics of it, I've taught him a little bit about, you know like when you're developing a joke and the number of ways that the story unfolds and you get like lots and lots of little laughs before you get some big payoff laugh in the way that he has such a deadpan approach. Right? You know, he barely cracks a grin and and spending time with him is just like you would expect.

00;09;24;20 - 00;09;52;26
Darren Whitehead
He's just like he is on the stage. His voice inflection, the way he tells stories, everything. So he's certainly one of my current favorites. My closest friend of 30 years is a guy named John Tyson, who is in New York City. And I, I love his communication. And he has kind of been my my confidant over the last 25 years of doing this.

00;09;52;26 - 00;10;01;12
Darren Whitehead
He was doing it at the same time. And he's the guy that I would talk to for hours and hours and hours on the out of communication is this couple.

00;10;01;17 - 00;10;17;24
Rusty George
He is certainly brilliant. And I was going to ask you if you guys are connected in any way because you're both Australian and you both have churches called Church of the City, correct. In different cities. Tyson teaches for 50 minutes. A lot of times, yes. Do you teach that? Long as well?

00;10;19;02 - 00;10;31;06
Darren Whitehead
Rarely, sometimes. I did a talk just recently that that turned into 50 minutes, but not intentionally. I'm usually shooting for about 38 to 42 minutes. Okay. Okay. What about.

00;10;31;06 - 00;10;34;03
Rusty George
You? Yeah, because I'm closer to 30.

00;10;34;04 - 00;10;34;12
Darren Whitehead
Yeah.

00;10;34;24 - 00;10;51;26
Rusty George
I find that. I find that it's obviously, if you're good, it doesn't matter how long it is. I find that I can hold people's attention for about that long. And soon after that, our children's ministry begins to come out and get me and tell me to shut up. So, yeah, at some point I got to land the plane.

00;10;52;25 - 00;11;17;03
Rusty George
But I'm a little bit envious that you actually have met Nate Benghazi. I feel like he is he is as good as it gets right now. And having lived in the South, you know, being from the Midwest, I totally get a lot of those instances. He's talking about. And I just think he's phenomenal. And you're right, his style is so good and I can't imagine being on stage looking out and seeing him and thinking, oh, my gosh, could I make him laugh?

00;11;17;03 - 00;11;18;12
Rusty George
Would that be possible?

00;11;19;06 - 00;11;40;24
Darren Whitehead
Oh, I totally was. You know, at Easter, we did six services, six identical services on Saturday and Sunday. And so, you know, after I'd done this talk so many times. Yeah. And so I'm looking at night in the crowd and I'm speaking, but I'm thinking about something completely different. I'm just on autopilot. Oh, yeah. And I'm thinking to myself, I've got a funny story coming up.

00;11;40;24 - 00;11;41;25
Darren Whitehead
I want to see if you love.

00;11;43;19 - 00;12;02;08
Rusty George
You know, we had Andrew Stanley on the podcast, you know, months ago and he talked about how what what makes comedians laugh is usually not the same thing that makes us laugh. It's usually the, you know, the people, you know, crashing and burning on stage that makes them amused. And I thought, you know, pastors are a little bit like that, too.

00;12;02;08 - 00;12;02;25
Rusty George
You know, that's.

00;12;02;25 - 00;12;06;18
Darren Whitehead
True with this whole documentary called Comedian. I don't know how.

00;12;06;29 - 00;12;08;13
Rusty George
Many times I loved that.

00;12;08;13 - 00;12;30;14
Darren Whitehead
The thing that I thought was amazing is watching. I think it was like Jay Leno and someone else. And they were like writing material and they're writing it and none of them are grinning or smiling or laughing. They're just going. Yes. And that what that's funny is like, it's completely the tactics of humor, but they're not even smiling.

00;12;30;14 - 00;12;31;13
Darren Whitehead
And they go, Oh, that'll work.

00;12;31;13 - 00;12;54;29
Rusty George
That's it was it was Leno. And it was that guy that was on SNL for a long time. Colin Yeah, I can't think of his last name. Yeah, I totally remember that scene. And they're all just kind of workshopping things and it's like, you know, it's like they're fixing a car. It was awesome. Okay, so we sidetrack there, but I would love for you to talk a little bit about you play at a church, Church of the City.

00;12;54;29 - 00;13;11;10
Rusty George
You're already in Nashville. You've decided to become a pastor. You're working at a church. You decide to plant a church. What made you decide Nashville needs another church or I need to plant this church or this is going to be a different type of church. Give me some of the thought process behind that.

00;13;11;10 - 00;13;40;19
Darren Whitehead
So I was a youth pastor from 1998 to 2004. I got married to an American girl from Tennessee in 2002, and then 2004 moved to Chicago and joined the staff of the church. Good Willow Creek. That's right. And I was there for eight years. So all my children were born during that era, and I was sort of spent almost all my thirties working at Willow.

00;13;40;19 - 00;13;46;16
Darren Whitehead
And that's how Gene and I got to be close and Bro and many of the others from from that that era.

00;13;46;20 - 00;13;47;21
Rusty George
But that's right.

00;13;48;18 - 00;14;14;24
Darren Whitehead
I started out as the college pastor at Willow. I was leading a ministry called Axis. Yeah. And then I had added to my responsible ease, leading that the student ministry. And I did that for a year or two. And then actually when Gene, Mike Breau and Randy Frazee left, it was all during around about the same time. That's when I essentially took one of their jobs.

00;14;14;24 - 00;14;43;20
Darren Whitehead
I became the teaching pastor there and did that for the following six years or so. Mm hmm. So then I decided that I really wanted to plant a church. I was 38 years old, and I was just ready. I felt like this is what God had wanted me to do. And we chose Nashville because it was the second fastest growing market for millennials at the time.

00;14;44;27 - 00;15;13;29
Darren Whitehead
There was 150,000 college students in town and 50% of them stayed after they graduated. So it was just exploding with with millennials and so I thought, well, this is the the least churched age group in America at the time. And I really wanted to go plant churches in the center of where these folks were living and really try to reach millennials, which sounds like it.

00;15;14;06 - 00;15;43;01
Darren Whitehead
You know, that's just we just crossed ten years as a church. So not a lot of people talking about millennials as much as, you know, Gen Z, Right. But that's what we set out to do. We planted two churches in the same day, one in a poor area of town and one in a wealthy area of town. And so we were kind of multi congregation from the first day and we set up chairs and everything in one place in the morning total down, drove across town, set it up again and then did church again.

00;15;43;16 - 00;15;46;05
Darren Whitehead
And so we did it like that for the first two years.

00;15;46;26 - 00;16;04;14
Rusty George
No, explain that to me. Why would you do that? Because that sounds like a lot more work. It's hard enough to plant one church, let alone two. Was it just this missional mindset of let's do for both groups of people, let's let one pay for the other, just have, you know, scaffolding crew of people that were from both areas?

00;16;04;14 - 00;16;05;20
Rusty George
Give me the thought process there.

00;16;05;20 - 00;16;31;05
Darren Whitehead
That's what it was. It was actually all of the above, all of the things that you just mentioned. Definitely from a missional standpoint, we were able to use the resource from the wealthier community to to parlay that resource into reaching an under-resourced, poorer community, but also the power of the mission. This is to communities that people that wouldn't ordinarily ever interact or know one another.

00;16;31;23 - 00;16;57;00
Darren Whitehead
And and so, you know, one was in an area that was more of a red community politically and one was more of a blue community politically. And so some of the jokes only work in one space and didn't work in the other, you know, But, you know, I would say at the time, planning to churches is not twice as hard as one.

00;16;57;15 - 00;16;59;29
Darren Whitehead
It's about one and a half times as one.

00;17;01;02 - 00;17;02;17
Rusty George
Okay. Okay. Because, you know, you're.

00;17;02;24 - 00;17;18;26
Darren Whitehead
In the same talk and then you doing it in both places and. Right. We had some degree of critical mass in in each of these particular areas. And so we found a good location to start gathering. And we built a launch team, a core team in each one. And and so that's how we started it.

00;17;20;16 - 00;17;40;19
Rusty George
Every church planner knows it. It takes a while for you to feel like you are acclimated to the area and that the area has accepted you. I know when I moved out here to California, it took a while before I felt like, okay, they're overlooking my my accent. They they overlooking the fact that I'm not from here. You have a very thick accent.

00;17;40;19 - 00;17;55;07
Rusty George
You haven't lost it in 20 plus years. Kudos to you for that. I'd keep it to. But how long did you think it took before the people from Tennessee could connect with you or relate to you? Or felt like, okay, he's not from here, but he's one of us?

00;17;56;03 - 00;18;20;08
Darren Whitehead
Well, you know, the first time I lived in the Nashville area, so, you know, 98 to 2004 was one era. It was the era of Christian music was highly lucrative because people were buying CDs and before streaming and and iTunes and all of that kind of stuff. So there was there was a big Christian music scene. The publishing industry.

00;18;20;08 - 00;18;46;29
Darren Whitehead
Christian publishing industry was big country music was a little bit more fringy. So fast forward ten years and I'm back in town again. But it's really a different era. Nashville country music had exploded, faded and been, you know, one of the the fast growing music genres in the world. Christian music had shrunk and largely become sort of the church worship scene.

00;18;47;17 - 00;19;20;24
Darren Whitehead
So that was all really, really different. But what had happened in Nashville is a really become an entertainment town. So it was it was really a music center. And so you had lots of people moving from the West Coast and a lot of people moving from the East Coast. But it really became like this international city. And so me not being from anywhere in the U.S., but being from Australia, kind of, as it turned out, played pretty well with the international, you know, the eclectic scene.

00;19;21;14 - 00;19;39;03
Darren Whitehead
And instead of people putting me in a box of like, well, you don't understand because you're from New York or you're from the West Coast, it's like a completely third way. And I'm from another country entirely, right? And so it actually turned out to be a bit of an advantage. People were generally interested in just an international voice.

00;19;39;06 - 00;19;39;17
Darren Whitehead
Hmm.

00;19;40;02 - 00;20;05;09
Rusty George
I could see that. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, so I want to go back to something you said earlier. You wanted to reach millennials, which obviously at the time was the largest unchurched people group. Now we've got Gen Z. Why this group? And obviously because of the lack of church. Are you a millennial? And did you you know, you went and got this doctorate of millennial engagement, which I did.

00;20;05;10 - 00;20;13;28
Rusty George
You know, that was a degree. That's fascinating. What did you learn then that you think, Oh, that's not really applicable now? I mean, what are you seeing? And with millennials.

00;20;14;19 - 00;20;22;21
Darren Whitehead
Well, I'm not a millennial and Gen Xer, so Gen X very small in comparison to boomers and millennials.

00;20;22;21 - 00;20;23;10
Rusty George
Absolutely.

00;20;23;16 - 00;20;39;19
Darren Whitehead
But millennials is still the largest unreached group, Millennials, much larger than Gen Z anyway. But yeah, I it wasn't it wasn't so much a degree in my doctorate, but it was my my area of study for my dissertation.

00;20;39;22 - 00;20;40;02
Rusty George
Okay?

00;20;40;29 - 00;21;03;01
Darren Whitehead
And so what I was doing is noticing in my own church a lack of engagement from millennials in terms of serving and, and, and, you know, so we had this big crisis where we had all of these children that were, you know, in our children's ministry, but we couldn't get anyone to to be serving. So this is this is the the origins of the study.

00;21;03;01 - 00;21;32;09
Darren Whitehead
What I what I found, though, is that there was millennials and boomers were sort of disengaging with serving at the church and so I wanted to do a study on millennials and on boomers and why they were disengaging and what could we do to reengage them. And so one of the things we did in the in basically in the thesis is the idea of of getting millennials and boomers together and actually pair them together and have them do a study together.

00;21;32;09 - 00;21;58;26
Darren Whitehead
And the outcome of that was engagement on both groups. So you had all of these boomers who boomers are healthier and living longer than than any generation in history. And so they would finish their careers and retire and then they would like buy an RV and travel around the country rather than staying and serving in that church. And the millennials just have never really been taught to serve faithfully in the church.

00;21;58;26 - 00;22;08;20
Darren Whitehead
I'm generally speaking, of course. But they just wouldn't they wouldn't engage. And so that was what the the dissertation was, was research that was centered on those ideas.

00;22;09;13 - 00;22;29;13
Rusty George
So that's fascinating to me because I was always taught or always assumed maybe that the way you reach the millennial generation is you provide ways to serve your community. But you saw something entirely different. Has it remain that way or have you seen any kind of a change, or is it different now in Nashville than maybe it was in Chicago when you started thinking about this?

00;22;30;02 - 00;22;50;29
Darren Whitehead
Well, what's interesting is that the profile of the millennials has changed. Millennials are now young adults with kids. Right. And and so their needs are completely different. You know, I mean, Gen Z, you know, when I was studying the millennials, it was really like this new group. And we're trying to understand the distinctiveness in the nuances of this particular group.

00;22;50;29 - 00;23;10;24
Darren Whitehead
Well, everyone talks about Gen Z like that now and their addiction to screens and all of that kind of stuff. But millennials were just sort of a punch line about being entitled and, you know, basically wanting to make 250 grand a year since they get out of college. So there were all of these sort of punch lines and and and stereotypes about millennials.

00;23;11;20 - 00;23;30;07
Darren Whitehead
The millennials that we were trying to reach ten years ago are now 32 years old and married with three kids. And so it's a it's a different game then. Now, the ones that are populating our kids ministry. So and they're you know, they've started to get traction in their careers. It's really a different scene.

00;23;30;07 - 00;23;47;13
Rusty George
Yeah, it is interesting. All the work we've all done and read on Generations kind of comes down to a lot of stage of life, doesn't it, At some point to get married, have kids, and you're like, Oh, the house, church down the street isn't quite as cool. When I got to children's ministry, the other side of the street that can take care of my kids, right?

00;23;48;09 - 00;24;02;20
Rusty George
Okay. So I want to talk to you about a book that you wrote. And this might I don't know if this is your only book or not, but it's certainly the one that I I've read the most recent, and that is Holy Roar. Tell us a little bit about this book and why you chose to write it.

00;24;03;06 - 00;24;30;22
Darren Whitehead
So the origin of this book was a sermon that I did, and I was preaching a sermon about the topic of worship. I guess worship has played such a big role in my life. Personally. When I was 19 years old, I grew up in a in a small Baptist church in the country where, you know, people didn't engage too much in their expression of worship.

00;24;30;22 - 00;25;01;04
Darren Whitehead
You know, I mean, if they were feeling quite moved and passionate, you couldn't tell from their faces, you know, that, you know, So they it wasn't an engaging environment. And the consequence for me, just as a kid growing up in that environment is that we would just sing and sing hymns and yawn and look around the place. You know, when I was 19 years old, someone invited me to a much more charismatic church where I was just ambushed by the engagement of these people and how they worshiped.

00;25;01;25 - 00;25;32;28
Darren Whitehead
And so that was a big theme in my life. And I was teaching a sermon series years ago, and one of these talks I gave was doing a wood study on the word praise and in the in the Psalms and learned that there were seven Hebrew words for praise that are all conflated into the English word praise. So we have one word, it's translated.

00;25;33;11 - 00;26;04;20
Darren Whitehead
But in in the Hebrew scriptures, they're seven different words and they all mean something completely different about an expression of of what worshiping God is. So that was the that was the outline for my talk. I was I was breaking down the seven Hebrew words for praise and worship leader who is a member of our church. Chris Tomlin was in the room and when I was done he walked up to me and said, Dude, that that may be the best talk I'd heard on this topic, you.

00;26;04;20 - 00;26;06;26
Rusty George
Know, And that's saying something I.

00;26;06;26 - 00;26;26;09
Darren Whitehead
Know well. And he was very kind and he was like, How is it that I've never heard this before? Wow. And that turned into a discussion and about like he's like, you need to write a book and like, people need to know about this. This could be a resource for worship leaders and Christians and such. And he said, you need to write a book.

00;26;26;09 - 00;26;46;09
Darren Whitehead
And I said, Well, why don't we write it together? And he said, okay. And so we wrote it together and we released it. And I ended up doing three tours with Chris, did almost 100 cities together sharing this story, and and Chris and I got to partner up and releasing this these ideas to the world.

00;26;46;09 - 00;27;11;22
Rusty George
Hey, let me interrupt for just a second. If you're a church leader and your church does not have an app or your app seems to be a little bit limited, check out subs, splash Dotcom as a great resource to really give your app all the horsepower that it needs. You can connect people, You can help them get access to messages and you can help them set up recurring giving, which is a game changer when it comes to resourcing your ministry.

00;27;12;00 - 00;27;35;05
Rusty George
Subs Flashcard Okay, back to our episode. Okay. Let me ask you about that. You go on tour with a worship leader. It's one thing to go on tour with the newsboys. Okay, same set list every night. We're going to rock the house and it's going to be fun and be a little crazy. But with a worship leader, yeah, there's probably a set list, but I mean, I've seen Chris many times.

00;27;35;05 - 00;27;55;14
Rusty George
There's a lot of Let's see what God's doing here and let's follow his lead. What did you notice from backstage watching the audience that maybe the audience doesn't see from their perspective? How was God moving in a way that maybe was different from city to city? Or what surprised you during that time?

00;27;55;14 - 00;28;01;13
Darren Whitehead
A couple of things come to mind about like different areas of the different areas of the country are just so different. Right?

00;28;01;19 - 00;28;02;02
Rusty George
Okay.

00;28;02;08 - 00;28;37;13
Darren Whitehead
So what happened in Florida in an arena versus what happened in Atlanta versus what happened in Baltimore or we played Hollywood Bowl one one night, like what happened? Hollywood Bowl, You know, like it was it was all very different in different parts of the country. But what stands out to me is in the in the Northeast, where they don't have a lot of Christian concerts come through or worship nights come through, the the amount of hunger in in Boston was just amazing.

00;28;37;24 - 00;28;48;18
Darren Whitehead
And and collectively hearing the crowd seeing in Boston, you know you're a good you are there you know it's like it's just the best experience ever.

00;28;49;09 - 00;28;50;13
Rusty George
Do they change it to wicked.

00;28;50;13 - 00;29;13;04
Darren Whitehead
Good Wicked good wicked witch. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it was it was an authentic worship night that was different every single night. And depending on where it was in the country, made a huge difference on how it all felt. It was it was honestly one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life, touring with Chris and his team.

00;29;13;24 - 00;29;24;04
Rusty George
The Hollywood Bowl. I love that place. I've seen multiple shows there. I've never seen a bad show or had a bad night or a bad experience there. It's beautiful. Yes. What's it like to lead worship in that place?

00;29;24;04 - 00;29;49;02
Darren Whitehead
I mean, that that's one of the standout memories of my life, I think, getting to preach in the Hollywood Bowl. Chris sold it out. So it was sold out. Absolutely packed. You know, And as you know, everyone's up in front of you and you're kind of down low looking up and everyone, man, it was breathtaking. Wow. I mean, to take such a such an iconic, famous venue.

00;29;49;09 - 00;29;57;06
Darren Whitehead
Yeah. And just to be proclaiming the gospel and to be turning it into a church was was something that I would cherish forever.

00;29;58;01 - 00;30;15;23
Rusty George
That's a little different than me seeing the Dave Matthews Band there. So, yeah, amid both groups was good. Both groups were high just in different ways. So yes. Okay. Well, I want to talk about the book then. Seven words give us I don't I don't want to give it all away because I want people to go get the book.

00;30;16;04 - 00;30;22;19
Rusty George
Give us three of them that you thought. Wow, that I hadn't thought about it that way.

00;30;22;19 - 00;30;41;07
Darren Whitehead
Okay. Well, in the book, the first word we talk about is the word you're dar means. And you're dar means to throw one's hands up. And it's the same words is used to like throw a spear or throw a stone. And, you know, I grew up in a tradition where no one lifted their hands when they were worshiping.

00;30;41;22 - 00;31;01;08
Darren Whitehead
And if someone did, I kind of thought that was silly or they wanted to use the restroom or something, you know? And I remember the first time that I ever did. I remember the first time that I was in an environment where I wanted to lift my hands. I couldn't help myself anymore. And I was aware that there were other people around me who were non hand raises.

00;31;01;08 - 00;31;20;07
Darren Whitehead
And I kind of thought to myself, like, I'm not sure if I want to do this. Something overcame me where I couldn't help but reflecting on the goodness of God in my life, in my heart, and I just thought, I don't care anymore. I'm just going to lift my hands. And that is really the natural instinct of human beings.

00;31;20;07 - 00;31;50;01
Darren Whitehead
You know, like you go to a football game and they score a touchdown, you involuntarily lift your hands. There is something that is baked into the human experience where we die. We just lift our hands. And so in my own personal story becoming someone that just really loves to be in the presence of God and to worship God until and to lift my hands, that the word get became an important word.

00;31;50;01 - 00;32;31;02
Darren Whitehead
Another word is the word told to and told our means to to thank God for things that have not occurred yet. So it is it is thanking in faith. So you are you are praising God for things that have not yet happened. And when people are in difficult times or they're praying for someone who is sick or they are in between and anticipating God moving in their lives, the kind of praise that is thanking God for his faithfulness even before it has happened, is captured in this in this word hilltop.

00;32;31;14 - 00;32;57;25
Darren Whitehead
And I think it's a really beautiful word. And that's what the Christian life is supposed to be, right? It is. It is praising God, trusting his faithfulness, even before we have been assured that what we're asking for is actually going to come to pass. The third word that I'll share with you is the word Shabak. Shabak means a shout of praise.

00;32;57;25 - 00;33;30;13
Darren Whitehead
Shabak is the idea of a of a roar. This is this is where the title Holy Roar came from. But there are times to be still before God God. It says in Zephaniah, He sings over us. There is like this quiet kind of of of singing. Shabak is the idea of a shout. It's a shout of praise. It's the idea of in in someone 45 it says one generation shall praise your works to the next.

00;33;30;29 - 00;33;46;16
Darren Whitehead
That's the word Shabak. One generation will shout a holy roar of the faithfulness of God to the next generation. So, you know, all of these words mean something slightly different and they inform a different aspect of what it really means to be worshiping God.

00;33;47;04 - 00;34;08;20
Rusty George
It's a great read. It's a great message. I've heard it now a few times for every pastor out there and especially every worship leader out there that's thinking, Oh, I wish our people could get that. You've developed a worship culture at your church. I mean, it helps to have Chris Tomlin, you know, on the rotation. Yeah, but not just that.

00;34;08;20 - 00;34;21;17
Rusty George
There's a teaching element too. And I got to imagine there's a modeling element of it as well. How would you coach a church into developing a worship culture at a place where maybe it's not it's not that common?

00;34;22;13 - 00;34;59;14
Darren Whitehead
Well, you do have to teach a theology of worship. You know, people don't accept that like a culture doesn't accidentally change. You've really got to teach people what the scripture says. The Psalms like, apart from the seven Hebrew words of praise, the Psalms are filled with expressions of people who who are lifting their hands, who are dancing before the Lord, who are, you know, like, I think it's possible that when we get to heaven, we're going to realize that we were underwhelming.

00;34;59;14 - 00;35;22;27
Darren Whitehead
Many churches were pretty underwhelming in their lack of of engagement. There, their emotion. And, you know, we stream over football games and we lose our minds over March Madness. And then we come into the House of the Lord and we are very somber or maybe even bored. And I think you've got to teach people that, yeah.

00;35;23;08 - 00;35;26;19
Rusty George
Not so good. Is there another book on the horizon for you?

00;35;27;05 - 00;35;48;15
Darren Whitehead
I'm actually working on one right now because we are doing a series that has been a surprise to me. So we start out the year every year with 21 days of prayer and fasting and some people kind of like, Well, I'm not going to fast from food. I'm going to fasting technology. And I'm like, that's, that's a good thing to fast from.

00;35;48;15 - 00;36;32;27
Darren Whitehead
That's not what biblical fasting actually is. And fasting may be the most neglected spiritual practice in the modern world. And so but similarly to food devices cover up the way we are actually feeling when numbed out and distracted and as much as as much as anything else. In fact, devices have seeped their way into our lives and we barely have discretionary thought anymore because everyone has that, their heads buried in their phones and it's affecting people's personal mental health, it's affecting their relational world and interactions with their kids, and it's affecting our spiritual lives.

00;36;33;02 - 00;37;00;14
Darren Whitehead
We Don't have capacity to hear from God anymore because we have our heads buried in devices. And just about everyone says, I don't feel great about my relationship with my device. I'm on my phone too much. So I decided that we were going to lead our church through a digital fast, and I kind of taught several messages on, you know, John 1010, the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.

00;37;00;23 - 00;37;30;05
Darren Whitehead
And is it possible that one of the primary ways that the enemy is stealing and killing and destroying is through these glowing rectangles that we're carrying around with us? You know, the the correlation between suicide and depression and the invention of the iPhone is it's like this perfect parallel. Mm. And, and the research is in people's lives are more depressed, more lonely, more disconnected, more sense of comparison.

00;37;30;28 - 00;37;57;02
Darren Whitehead
And, and, and depression and suicidal ideation when it's correlated with the use of social media and devices. So we've been talking about this a lot. And the month of May, our whole church is in the middle of a of a digital media fast 30 days of taking your phone, making it dumb to take a smartphone and you got to look at every app through the lens of is this a distraction or a utility?

00;37;57;19 - 00;38;16;14
Darren Whitehead
And so anything that is a distraction, things like email and social media and news apps and games get get those all off your phone. Or you can use what I've been using. And this is called a light phone. And this is about the most unattractive phone that you will ever see. And there is nothing interesting on at all.

00;38;16;14 - 00;39;05;01
Darren Whitehead
But you can text and you can make phone calls. I'm telling you, Rusty, this is a better life. Yeah, my my mind is clearer. I am more present with my family. I am discovering all kinds of things about what is going on inside of me that I've just been burying underneath Doomscrolling on a phone. Hmm. So I the question I am writing a book right now that a church could use as a resource to be leading to, like, take the aspects of biblical fasting, applying it to digital technology and saying what can we extrapolate from that in terms of preparation, how you would do it, what you do, and then provide a guide for churches

00;39;05;01 - 00;39;33;22
Darren Whitehead
to actually lead an entire congregation or small group or school to go through 30 days where you are unplugging from digital media and see what happens inside of you. One really interesting thing, and I have not heard of another church that's doing this, and maybe there are, but what's so fascinating is that anyone who does a digital media fast, 100% of them have a positive experience.

00;39;34;12 - 00;39;54;04
Darren Whitehead
100% of people are glad they did it. They don't look back and they go, Gosh, man, I really I really miss all of the hours that I could have spent looking at Instagram reels. Yeah, no one says that, right? Everyone's life is better and they're glad that they did it. But instead of doing it on your own, you're doing it with an entire community, right?

00;39;54;11 - 00;40;15;09
Darren Whitehead
So my kids are doing it like and all of their friends are doing it. And so we literally have thousands of people who are doing a digital media fast all at the same time. So our expectations are different. I don't have the email on my on my son, and this is the first time I got a Palm Treo in 2005.

00;40;16;03 - 00;40;46;04
Darren Whitehead
And for the last 18 years I have had an email on my in my pocket for 18 years until the last two weeks, and I am now 15 days into not having email. And guess what? It's a better life. Yeah, it's a better life. Not pulling up at the lights and looking down and seeing I got three miles and I start scrolling through and maybe I delete one of them and maybe it was a mean email from someone in my church.

00;40;46;15 - 00;41;03;00
Darren Whitehead
Or there's some problem that someone is bringing on my staff and I just people have access to me all the time in that capacity or I'm a slave to my inbox, but not anymore. So that's what that's what I'm working on right now and I'm super passionate about it.

00;41;03;10 - 00;41;10;03
Rusty George
First person ever on this podcast. After nearly 300 episodes, not to mention the Palm Treo.

00;41;11;06 - 00;41;11;18
Darren Whitehead
Yes.

00;41;11;18 - 00;41;22;16
Rusty George
And can we just pour one out for that? Because it was amazing. Remember the day when you thought, if I could just get my email and calendar on my phone, that would be great.

00;41;22;28 - 00;41;45;19
Darren Whitehead
What's funny, since the Palm Treo and I only know this because I had to migrate all my contacts over to this phone. Uh huh. You know, like you get palm tree over to the iPhone. I bought the iPhone on the opening weekend when it was right. It was in June of 2007. And then as I've got a new iPhone, you know, year after year, you get a new model, whatever, you're always just migrating your contacts.

00;41;45;19 - 00;41;52;11
Darren Whitehead
So I have all of these contacts with date all the way back to the palm tree. I just keep importing them and accumulating.

00;41;52;19 - 00;42;19;23
Rusty George
Yeah, I have gone through the contact list and realize I don't even know half of these people. That's right. Some of which have died a long time ago. And here they are. Well, that. That is fascinating. I can't wait to see that and can't wait for our church to go through it, because I. I totally agree. And when you see when you see the graph that shows the use of social media and mental illness, it just goes hand in hand.

00;42;19;26 - 00;42;21;24
Rusty George
It's an epidemic in our time.

00;42;21;27 - 00;42;45;13
Darren Whitehead
Yeah. And technology like the iPhone has seeped its way into our life. In 2007, there were no downloadable apps, there was no social media. There was there was no news apps. It was this is all come you get a new update, new software, download, a new app. You know, it's taking out seeping in and taking over more and more and more of our lives.

00;42;45;13 - 00;42;46;23
Darren Whitehead
It didn't start out like that.

00;42;47;01 - 00;42;47;11
Rusty George
Yeah.

00;42;47;18 - 00;43;07;13
Darren Whitehead
So it's a little bit of a concept of what Marie Kondo says, right? You like clean everything out and then you only bring back things that spark joy, as she says. Mm hmm. So one of the apps that I'm going to bring back in the month of June, that spark joy and the rest of them, I'm not bringing them back now.

00;43;07;13 - 00;43;17;13
Darren Whitehead
Doesn't mean I can never be on social media. Just don't do it. Don't have it in your pocket all the time. Right? Go on social media on an iPad at home or on a desktop computer or something.

00;43;17;14 - 00;43;18;15
Rusty George
Oh, that's a great idea.

00;43;18;28 - 00;43;40;18
Darren Whitehead
So there's a bunch of third ways practices that that we are both learning from other smart people and some of that we are developing ourselves out of, just like we've got to push back on these devices a little bit and say like, what's happening right now is not working for me. And we're not saying you all become Amish and you throw everything away.

00;43;41;03 - 00;44;00;20
Darren Whitehead
But what we are saying is like, you got to have some guidelines here so that it's it's actually healthy and adding value and netting, netting a positive experience rather than a negative experience, which it just feels like in the last three years or so, people have moved when it comes to smartphones. It's just like this general pervasive sense.

00;44;01;03 - 00;44;06;20
Darren Whitehead
I'm not sure my life is better with this thing. Yeah, and it didn't used to be like that.

00;44;06;29 - 00;44;20;18
Rusty George
There is a growing trend of even, you know, students that are going back to the the flip phones or the dumb phones. Yeah, I'm trying to get away from it. Boy, I think that's such a healthy thing. Okay, So let me ask you, what's the app you'll bring back?

00;44;21;11 - 00;44;43;19
Darren Whitehead
Oh, I tell you, I don't know if there is anything that I'm going to bring back that I've got off right now, all social media is gone. I might bring a news app back. I'm definitely not bringing email back. Email has been emails. The thing I was most anxious about because I just sort of thought, you know what it's like when your email gets out of control, you feel overwhelmed.

00;44;43;19 - 00;45;09;15
Darren Whitehead
There's messages that are buried in your inbox and you don't even realize that. I've got people on my staff who are waiting to hear back from me on something, and they're just in a holding pattern until they hear back from me I feel anxious about servicing email. Yeah. And so I was really concerned that without visiting my inbox 65 times a day, I'm going to visit it one time and it's just going to be overwhelming.

00;45;09;25 - 00;45;11;15
Darren Whitehead
Yeah. And that just hasn't been true.

00;45;11;16 - 00;45;12;28
Rusty George
No, most of it's junk.

00;45;13;03 - 00;45;34;29
Darren Whitehead
Because what happens is, you know, like you get you get emails, you need to give a measured response to take a little time. You get that kind of email, you get emails, it's just informing you of something and you can delete it. You get a bunch of spam, you know, Amazon's delivered something and then you get, you know, maybe some some emails that are quite critical or they're sitting at the time or whatever.

00;45;34;29 - 00;46;10;03
Darren Whitehead
You have all of those things when you're working on your inbox and you've got 40 emails, you quickly categorize them into those sort of categories. And so I find myself highlighting 15 emails and hitting delete once and they're gone. Yeah. Instead of, you know, checking it all the time. Yeah. And for whatever reason, if I pull up at the lights and I'm looking at my phone, my phone doesn't notify me that I've got an email I don't have notifications on, but I certainly see like the little red one, two, three, four, whatever notification.

00;46;10;10 - 00;46;31;07
Darren Whitehead
Yeah. And I can't help myself but to, to look at it, who needs me. And I'll tell you, nothing I used to do, I used to wake up every morning and a lot of people do this, but my phone was my alarm. Yep. And so I wake up, I roll over. If I see that I've got unread email, I'm barely awake and I'm reading email.

00;46;31;07 - 00;46;43;08
Darren Whitehead
Like, that's not a good way to live. And yet I've done it for years and not email my my phone is no longer in my room. It's it's just a better way to live.

00;46;43;14 - 00;47;04;19
Rusty George
It is a better way to live. That's fantastic. All right. So for the benefit of the pastors listening to this podcast, because we all get negative emails and they're usually from well-meaning people that just want us to be a little bit more like a different church. They don't attend, usually one that they've left, but now they want you to become like it, which is always humorous to me.

00;47;05;07 - 00;47;05;17
Darren Whitehead
Right?

00;47;05;29 - 00;47;21;16
Rusty George
We look at a guy like Darren Whitehead, who has an incredible church, incredible ministry, incredible teaching gift, Chris Tomlin's leading worship. What in the world does somebody have to say to you, What's the critical email that you get?

00;47;22;23 - 00;47;47;18
Darren Whitehead
Well, I mean, you just named it, right? I mean, people import their previous religious experiences and they impose it on the new leader. You know, it's it's the technical term is transference. Right. But it's not it's not it's pastors. It's parents. It's school teachers that have harmed them in the past. I tell you what I have learned and I get criticized on all the same things.

00;47;47;18 - 00;48;10;19
Darren Whitehead
I mean, sometimes it's because I said something dumb. Sometimes it's because someone supposes to understand a motive that I may have, and they are imposing that on me. Sometimes they don't like the way I handled something that was controversial or political, or it was just a cultural moment that we found ourselves in. I had an experience, this is several years ago.

00;48;10;19 - 00;48;33;02
Darren Whitehead
This is back when email was on my phone, which is as recent as two weeks ago. It was my daughters. I have three daughters is my daughter's birthday, and we were in my dining room and like I did often, you know, like I just would involuntary really open my phone. I'm like walking from one room to another. And I just grabbed my phone and I just look at it.

00;48;33;16 - 00;48;59;17
Darren Whitehead
It's not even a conscious choice. It was just like a reflex. And I did that and I saw I had an email this is a Sunday, early evening on a Sunday, and I and I checked my email and it is like the meanest, scathing email that, you know, if you've been doing this a while, you get those. But it really hurt me and the rest of the night.

00;48;59;17 - 00;49;01;07
Darren Whitehead
I just was not present with my family.

00;49;01;09 - 00;49;01;19
Rusty George
Right.

00;49;02;05 - 00;49;36;07
Darren Whitehead
And my daughter was blowing out candles and instead of relishing the beauty of this moment that I'll never have back again, I was rehearsing what I wanted to say to that person in my in my mind. Hmm. And I was angry and I was hurt and I was defensive and I was not present with my family. And after that experience, I took the the general email account that everyone had for me.

00;49;36;07 - 00;49;54;02
Darren Whitehead
And I no longer checked that it goes to my assistant and my assistant sends me all out. So. So like, people didn't have access, the same degree of access of just hammering me. Now I've gone another step and I don't have email on my phone because, you know, it's just not good for my mental health. Yeah.

00;49;54;29 - 00;50;11;16
Rusty George
That's so good. Well, buddy, this was not the direction I thought we would go, but it's the direction we needed to go, because I know that a lot of us need to hear that. It's such a great word for us, and we confuse ourselves into thinking those of us who are pastors. I'm doing the work of God by keeping up with those people.

00;50;12;05 - 00;50;32;05
Rusty George
But come on, you know, at some point you got to shut it off and you got to be healthy and you got to be whole. I had that aha moment one day where I thought, is the church pay me just to handle email. This is ridiculous. Right? And when it consumes my entire waking hours, I know I'd be writing a message and answer an email at the same time.

00;50;32;05 - 00;50;45;15
Rusty George
And I thought, this is just unhealthy. So I'm with you on all of that and I look forward to all of us taking a fast together. Yes. And it's been awesome. It's been great to hang out and talk and I hope we get to do it again some time. I hope it's in person sometime.

00;50;45;15 - 00;50;46;13
Darren Whitehead
DO Yes.

00;50;46;26 - 00;50;59;29
Rusty George
Well, thank you so much for being on the show. And I won't tell everybody to go check out Holy Roar. If you're in the Nashville area, check out Church of the City and everything that they're putting out is fantastic. So thank you there and for being on.

00;51;00;09 - 00;51;01;10
Darren Whitehead
Thank you so much, Rusty.

00;51;02;23 - 00;51;23;12
Rusty George
Well, I was certainly blessed by that. I hope you were as well. Darren's an incredible guy, incredible communicator. Encourage you pick up that book, Holy Roar, he wrote with his friend and buddy Chris Tomlin. What a what a great, great resource. Next week, we're back with someone that's been on the podcast before. His name is Joseph Barkley. He's got the coolest middle name.

00;51;23;12 - 00;51;44;24
Rusty George
It's King. Joseph King Barkley. And so why wouldn't you go with that? He's going to talk to us about how transformation can happen in our lives. And he has done a lot of deep work on this and has even done some specific work in his area of coaching people to achieve that. So we'll be back next week with Joseph Barkley and simple transformation.

00;51;45;08 - 00;52;01;28
Rusty George
But until then, make sure that you share this podcast with somebody else and hit subscribe. Thank you so much for being with us. We will talk to you next week and as always, keep it simple.