The Rusty George Podcast

0:00:00 - Rusty George
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Leadership doesn't have to be hard and leadership can be for everybody. On this podcast, we want to help you make leading simple. I'm your host, Rusty George. How do you follow a legend and how do you leave a legacy? Our guest today did both, and he makes it simple for us. For 30 years, Dave Stone led one of the largest churches in America Southeast Christian Church and today we will laugh a lot. We'll learn a lot like why he kept the folder of his hate mail and how he dealt with life-altering events with his kids and how he convinced his dad that Alice Cooper attended their church. You're going to love this. My conversation is with Dave Stone today. I want to say thank you to Subsplash for their support of the podcast. Here we go. Can't wait for you to hear this Dave Stone. Well, Dave Stone, thank you so much for being on the podcast For our listeners that don't know you and I can't imagine there's anybody out there that doesn't know Dave Stone by this point but tell us a little bit about yourself.

0:01:58 - Dave Stone
Oh hey, Rusty, thank you so much for letting me be a part of this. I'm honored to be here with you and it's a great opportunity for me to get to catch up with you but also to get to share some thoughts. So, as far as my life, I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. My dad was a preacher, so I was at infamous PK and really grew up with a good taste in my mouth about church. My parents were very honest and up front about some of the challenges of church life and ministry, but grew up in a great home a awesome mom and dad and brother who still to this day is a huge encourager to me and my ministry Went to Cincinnati Bible College and majored in preaching practical ministries, did a youth ministry, played basketball in my first two years of college and then took a ministry on weekends in Louisville, Kentucky, at a church called Shively Christian and I drove back and forth every weekend to Cincinnati and then I went full time when I graduated and right before that first youth ministry I did my internship at Southland Christian, which you know quite well.

Absolutely, I did a hybrid. You'll appreciate this. It was an internship with Wayne Smith and Brewster McLeod, so that explains a lot about how I turned out the way that I did and they love people extremely well. They are crazy and they go, go, go until evening time. I get home at 10 o'clock seemed like every night of my internship and I just kind of thought that was normal. After that youth ministry that I had over in Louisville, Kentucky, then I ended up going back to work at Cincinnati Bible College and did recruitment and spoke for a lot of youth conventions. From there I went to Southeast Christian, was hired to share the preaching responsibilities and work with Bob Russell. I worked with him for 17 years at Southeast Christian in Louisville and then was a lead pastor for 13 years. Little after 30 years of being there. I passed things off to Kyle Eidelman and Kyle has done an incredible job of leading, and I spend my time preaching, mentoring, serving on three boards and trying to pour into my family and my kids as well.

0:04:40 - Rusty George
That's fantastic. So many questions come out of that timeline right there. I'd love for you to tell our listeners the story of you and your brother growing up as pastors kids and how you would fill out the roll call cards back in the day. We did that with names of rock stars because you knew your dad wouldn't know them. So tell our listeners that great story.

0:05:03 - Dave Stone
When we lived in Cincinnati, there was one stretch. My dad was a dean of Cincinnati Bible College and he was the interim pastor at the church where we were attending, and they had this habit Rusty of if you were a first time visitor, you filled out one side of the card. It was a different color and so head name, address. You know something about the family. So at the end of every service if you can imagine this, I don't know why they don't still do it it was.

It was such a warm welcome to people. He would get up, he would read their name off, he would have them stand. Everyone would turn around and stare at them, making them feel awkward and saying inside their hearts I will never set foot in this church again. And so my brother and I got this brilliant idea let's start sliding in the names of rock stars and all the youth groups. It was strange we all sat up front on one side of the of the church and so they were kind of in on it. But we said we are limit is one per week and sometimes people would leave early. So it wasn't strange when somebody's name would be called out.

You know, but usually it was you know the Davises. Where are the Davises? Stand up. Oh, good to have you, good to have you, Bill and Maurice, good to have you guys. Thanks, come back again. Okay, where are the Thompson's? You know? So the first one we did was was Peter Frampton. Okay, I think we softened it to Pete Frampton. Okay, we had a fake address. We had a zip code that matched with the street. You know all this. Where, where are the Frampton's? Where are the Frampton's? Well, all those kids are dying from behind. You can just see our shoulders shaking. The second week we did Alice Cooper and it's still, to this day, one of my favorite. I can't wait to get to heaven to watch this part back, because we put Alice Cooper in. My dad says is she here, proving the point that he had absolutely no idea? Well, all of us high school kids still laughing like crazy. But it was the third week when the trilogy came to an end because evidently my dad had heard of Ozzy Osbourne.

That was too far and Rusty, we saw him look at it it became the highlight. We, the tenants, picked up significantly during the three weeks. Okay, of course, because we wanted to see what was going to happen.

Well, we see our dad going through the cards and he reads one after another. Then he comes to this one, he stops, his face turns red. He turns and looks directly at us and puts the card in the back of the stack and I leaned over to Jeff and said I think he's heard of Ozzy Osbourne, that was. That was when it stopped, but it was a good run. I've got a lot of peeks, oh, that's so good.

0:08:05 - Rusty George
Okay, so you mentioned Wayne Smith. I had a chance to intern a couple years with Wayne and then work under him for two years. In just two years I've got more stories than I can tell about Wayne, but I would imagine you've got several as well from having worked there, but also with Southeast and Southlands close connection. Can you give us one good Wayne Smith story that you just you appreciate?

0:08:29 - Dave Stone
Oh gosh, they actually told this one at his funeral. Well, wayne and Marge, they never locked their door. And so it's right down the street from from the church at that time where they lived. And so Brewster came to me, youth master, when I said hey, wayne and Marge, you're coming home. Wayne and Marge, you're coming home. Let's go over there. We'll get inside their house and we'll scare. Well, this is a 1980. Okay, so put yourself in 1980. So, sure enough, we parked on past his house, we ran back, went in his back door, of course unlocked, watched and waited for them to come home. This is like an 830 at night. This is terrible. Please, kids, do not do this. All right, and so we hid in his bedroom closet and we could see through a little crack. Well, it comes in. He and Marge had what I call Fred Flintstone beds. Went for Fred, went for Wilma.

So, all of a sudden he comes in and he sits down on the bed and he starts taking his shirt off. So we're looking at each other like this is going to get really bad if we don't do something quickly. So we threw up in the closet door, jumped out and screams, scared him to death. Marge was in the hallway, scared her to death. We're fortunate that we didn't give him a heart attack. All right, we had stayed. We got dessert. We laughed our heads off about it. We thought we had gotten the last laugh. But the next day in Sunday morning, church Wayne gets up and tells the story and we're so proud of ourselves. But he wraps up the story with these words he says in church family.

I just want you to know. I am so glad that Brewster and Dave have finally come out of the closet. It's 1980 to say that phrase, to think that we got him, boy, he got us and totally caught us off guard. And you can hear him saying it, can't you?

0:10:36 - Rusty George
Oh, I can. He was a larger-than-life personality. His laugh was infectious and I remember I had the great honor one time of driving him to Louisville to meet with Bob and with you and others. As you wrote your messages, he he laid in the back seat and slept. He woke up at one point and said there's a piece of candy in the glove box. Can you hand it to me? I'd offer some to you, but I'm afraid you'd take it.

And then yeah, oh yeah, so one of my favorite Wayne stories was when you know he would often take Bob Russell's messages and not even read them before he'd take them, you know, to the pulpit and he's up there preaching through it. I don't know, he's halfway through it and he goes. You know, I don't even believe this and he stops, but, but he just keeps going. So who cares? So, boy, those were the and you know, it's not that story, it was.

0:11:39 - Dave Stone
it was the second service that he preached it.

0:11:44 - Rusty George
That's right, the one on television.

0:11:49 - Dave Stone
He preached it the first hour, it's a.

0:11:52 - Rusty George
Yeah he was fine with it the first day, he had a matter of theological conviction between the two services. Oh my goodness. Ok, so I want to. I want to ask you this, because I always like to ask preachers, kids, this there's a moment you're a Christian because of your parents. There's a moment you're morally good because you don't want to disgrace the family, but when did your faith become your own? Did that happen when you were still at home, or did it take college? Or even after? I mean, when did it become? Yeah, I believe this because I believe it, not my parents.

0:12:26 - Dave Stone
Yeah, that's a great question. I personally think it happened in my life, probably in my sophomore year of college, and I can remember we had a Wednesday night service called Family Reunion at the Bible College and I really came face to face with the fact that my sins were just as bad as someone who was in the rebellious camp. And, yes, I committed my life to Christ. I've been baptized. At a younger age I'd recommitted my life. I feel like I you know I made a huge move when I recommitted my life in ninth grade of high school, but to really say it was mine and not maybe so much just to kind of fit in with the PK crowd or with my parents. I think it was really my sophomore year of college, just wrestling with the fact and realizing that being good is not being, as being good enough is not not good enough, and the Christ had to make up that difference and and that was, I don't want to say, eyeopening, but I think really that when it became my own, that's really when I embraced it.

0:13:42 - Rusty George
Yeah, I think for a lot of us that that happens almost in stages. You know, you've heard the old phrase there's a time you make him savior, there's a time you make him Lord. And it kind of becomes this progression along the way. And I'm always surprised how many of our stories where it happens, sometimes in Bible college, sometimes even after, when you come to that realization that hey, this is real.

0:14:02 - Dave Stone
Yeah, I think it's a process. I think you said it really well. It's, and it does happen in stages, and I could I could think of different points, even in adult life and in married life, where there have been spiritual deep inings. It's crazy to sound sometimes the capital campaigns that our churches, church was involved in at different times, that really caused you to take a introspective look of is my faith real and is Jesus really the most important part in my life? And I'm certain there are seasons where where God would look at me and say I wasn't even your top top two at that time. And so it's a it's a constant journey, but it is something that's a process.

0:14:51 - Rusty George
So true. The other question I'd like to ask pastors kids is the question what's your dad do, right, you know, obviously we're both fathers. We tried to model this faith for our kids. Well, we tried not to put the expectations on our kids of what we felt and being a pastor. But you had a great father You've mentioned that already Obviously a bit of a sense of humor, didn't know the rock stars like the rest of you, but what did he do? That was that you're still kind of reflecting on or so grateful for, or you tried to do that and model that for your kids.

0:15:27 - Dave Stone
Yeah, I would. I could summarize it in a nutshell just by saying that my dad was the same person when he was at home, that he was in the pulpit, and that's not always the case. And so my brother and I were both very blessed to see a man who was steady, consistent, and he was very upfront with us that there were challenges and pressures in ministry, but he also always turned to the Lord. So even when he went through difficult times, we always knew where he was going to run to and who he was going to run to. Prayer was a mainstay to him. Reading God's word was an important way for him to start his day. But for the bottom line would be the consistency that we saw, and it wasn't like there was a person who was in the pulpit and then there was a person that was at home. He was the same man both places, that's so good.

0:16:21 - Rusty George
Okay, I want to shift gears a little bit to your time at Southeast. You told us a little bit about how you got there, but you get to work with this living legend at the time that only became more legendary, bob Russell, who grew the church tremendously and had just an incredible way of communicating as well. I was an author, a preacher, a mentor. Give me a few things that you still take away from your time with Bob Russell, a few things that you learned from him, maybe three practical ministry things that you thought, boy, that served me well to do that.

0:16:58 - Dave Stone
Well, the first thing, that kind of my mind would be when.

I came to Southeast, I was not manuscripting my sermons and I was preaching from an outline. More, I've been used to doing a lot of youth conventions and hiding a few scribbled notes in my Bible and kind of knowing my route and actually playing off of just my ability to wing it, which is a blessing and a curse. And Bob Russell really challenged me on that and so he challenged me to undergo the discipline of each week writing out a manuscript, writing more than you need and then pareing it back to get the cream of the crop, and that was a very healthy discipline. I still do that today. I have ever since, for the last 34 years, a manuscript out everything, and it's been a healthy practice for me. I probably would be a more effective preacher if I wasn't at times so tied to it and I looked at it more as a glorified outline. But If you practice it enough times, people don't know. They don't know I've got 16 pages of notes up there with me and I don't use the iPad. I'm kind of old school, you know, but my goal is for them to think I have two or three pages. My dad taught me a trick where all you do is you have your notes in two stacks there, and on your left side is the one that you're finishing up reading on your right side. So when you're going to, and so what I would do is, whenever I would get ready to slide a page over the top of it, I would just look up with my left hand, put my left hand up high, look that direction, or do it with my right hand to the other side, and as I look up there, all I'm doing is just sliding the paper over. So my goal is that out of 16 pages being slid, they might only see two or three of them. And so, anyway, I learned how to manuscript from Bob Russell.

The second thing that I would say is that he taught me how to be quiet in elders meetings and just listen. We used to walk back to our offices together after elders meetings and it'd just be he and I and we'd kind of debrief as we would walk back. And one night we'd been in a three hour meeting and I said dude, you didn't say hardly anything. I said you know, your report was actually about two minutes and I don't think you said anything else the rest of the meeting. And I said why is that? And he said well, he said everything was going the direction that I wanted. And he said why would I want to waste my breath in just to talk if everything was going the way that I intended for it to and wanted it to go? And then he gave some examples of some people on our board who weigh in on every single topic and every situation and he said do you think I have more credibility when I speak up, if I talk less or if I talk more? So that was very eye opening and helpful for me.

And then the third thing, I think you asked for three. The third one would be the value of critique. Here was, just, like you said, living legend that I was 27 years old and had never held a preaching ministry in my life, and yet he hired me to share the preaching with him, which was unheard of back in at that time in 1989. There was one other church that had a preaching team, and so he and I would. On Saturday nights after the sermon, we would critique the other person, and not only were other people reading through our sermons when we got them done. We got his done on Thursday at noon and finished up on Friday at noon in his final draft, but you would read through it, but then also after the delivery, you would critique one another.

So I learned that you can be the best, which he was, and yet you can still get better if you invite more eyes rather than just your own to read it and more ears rather than just your own to hear it. Because there are things that people hear out in the audience that's sometimes in a large room you don't hear. And so sometimes my wife will say, after a first service, or if I'm preaching at CCV in Phoenix on a Saturday, they have two Saturday services and someone will say oh yeah, that quote really connected with people, everybody around me.

Just there was an audible noise. Well, I couldn't hear that on the stage and so I might have been thinking about dropping that. But they caught something and they heard something and they sensed something in that moment that sometimes we can't sense. I used to measure the effectiveness of my sermon at times by the noise that I got back at me, whether that was a amen or applause or laughter. But the longer I've preached, the more I've started to measure them by the silence, because when that silence is there is when you know they are leaning in and that they are with you.

0:22:29 - Rusty George
That's really good. 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 subsplash.com 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 subsplash.com. OK, back to our episode.

Speaking of noises coming from the audience. One Sunday night I was preaching and it was silent out there until I heard somebody snoring, I kid you, not so loud that people began to laugh. I actually had to address it because it was so. This guy was in rim stage. I thought, boy, there's ever been proof I'm failing. Here it is.

0:23:27 - Dave Stone
No, no, we all have our different gifts. That's right. Maybe the best sleep tech I've gotten in a long time, you know what He'd been praying and he showed up and I helped him.

0:23:35 - Rusty George
I've put a lot of people to sleep.

0:23:36 - Dave Stone
No worries.

0:23:39 - Rusty George
Hey, we've talked about this offline many times, but humor is such a part of your communication, it just comes natural for you. For some people it just comes easier than others. But there are times that you've had this before when you've taught and you thought, boy, I think I'm stepping over the line here, and I don't mean you're offending people, but it's now becoming a comedy club rather than a church service. How do you walk that balance? I mean, is there a mental game you play of we're going to laugh first, we're going to cry second, or how do you structure that to? Are there no more than three funny bits in the message? Just give us some of your thinking when it comes to humor and a message.

0:24:24 - Dave Stone
Yeah, let me give a few different thoughts. First of all, I think there is low risk humor and there's high risk humor. So for the person who says, oh, I can't tell a joke, oh, I'm terrible, I don't use much humor because I'm scared of it, well, that person needs to camp out in the low risk humor category. And the person who thrives on it or enjoys it or likes kind of going out on that limb, they might risk it more with some high risk humor. Low risk humor might take on the form of, let's say, quoting author and pastor John Orkberg facetiously writes I'd like to be humble, but what if no one notices? So you can't box that up, even if you read it. You can't box it up unless you don't know what the word facetiously looks like when it's written. But there's different things that you can say. I have what are called guaranteed jokes. So the person who needs a guaranteed joke they need that joke. I know this is going to go. Take it, use it, just say these four lines. Read it if you have to. It's going to be funny. Where the high risk humor person some of it is putting in a pause at a key place and having the guts to just sit there and let it go out, and that pause goes for about two seconds and then all of a sudden, the laughter comes in and your heart starts back again.

There's three things that make something funny. Every time you laugh, it's because of one of three reasons. It's either because of surprise, it's because of exaggeration, or it's because of truth, and sometimes it might be two of the three. I think there are some situations where it might be three for three, but those are the things. Listen to any comedian, watch any sitcom, listen to any story. Every time it's going to come back to one of those three things Surprise, truth or exaggeration. Sadly, my kids could tell you that they're not really good at quoting Bible, but I did teach them that at a pretty early age. But so knowing what is funny helps you also as far as how much to use. That's why you have other people listening.

A constant thread that I would hear Bob Russell say after every Saturday night to me was this you don't need that joke at the opening. You've already gotten that point across and conveyed it through what you said in the other story. Or you don't need to say that joke because they're already with you. You've got them already leaning in. But then he would say this Rusty. He'd say but if you need it for you, then I understand and I keep it. Hmm, and what he was saying was there are sometimes.

She knew that just to relax myself. I needed that laughter and I needed to feel like they're with me. But he would say to me you know, you went three minutes over. You could shave a minute and a half by not telling that opening joke or that funny story, so you don't need it. I'm just telling you you don't need it. But if you feel like you need that, then keep it in. And the value of critique is you picking and choosing what you choose to honor and listen to, and Sometimes you go with what's said and sometimes you don't. But he made a great point in saying if it's free, if you needed to relax and get out of the gate, would say get out of the gate Then, then keep it there.

0:28:09 - Rusty George
Of course you did. Being a Louisville Churchill downs out of the gate Around the stretch they come.

0:28:15 - Dave Stone
And there are.

0:28:17 - Rusty George
Let me ask you this the the critiquing. I totally agree. I have found that it's one thing if you're, if another pastor, critiques you because they're, they're prepared, they know what to look for. It's another thing if your wife critiques you because you know she's gonna do that anyway. But I mean, when you want to elicit feedback from people in the audience, are there a couple questions you use so that it's not just hey, did I do a good job or hey, did you like that, but it really gets that? Help me know if I connected with the audience in this. You know, steve.

0:28:52 - Dave Stone
Carter, I'm preaching willa creek for a while does a whole lot in the mentoring field. I heard him say one time that he would pass out four by six index cards out in the lobby afterwards sometimes, and you know, people come up so hey, that's really good. Sure, that's really good for me to say, hey, tell me what my sermon was in one sentence, tell me what you got out of my sermon. And he would just hand that out in the first service to random people. He just said, no, just, just, just write it down. There's pins right here. Just write down what, what you got out of this sermon, it's good. And Then you can kind of measure to see if what you were gunning for and what, what you were trying to drive home, is actually what they walk away with.

Now the unique thing is that the Holy Spirit is so personal. I can be talking to someone after a service and they come up and they say, oh, that story. You know what that meant to me, because have you been listening? Have you been living? Are you living in our house?

0:29:51 - Rusty George
Are you is?

0:29:52 - Dave Stone
our house bugged, you know, and I try to be honest if it is or is not. But you know, that's one of those things that see, they're surprised right there. Uh, so that that person tells me what they got out of it. I walk 10 steps. Somebody else comes up, says the exact same story and says if you only knew, and I'll say what, what, what did, how did that speak to you? And they tell me a totally different takeaway. They heard the same thing. But that's the power of the Holy Spirit. So, yes, the Holy Spirit will convey his message in his way, through the same words in different manners to different people. So I I want to get feedback, but I also want to know if I'm belaboring the point. And that's where Sometimes a ccv I preach there a number of weekends each year we have a critique right after the first hour and it's got about six people in the room and sometimes they will say to me you know, you've got two stories Driving home.

This one point or this might feel awkward to this particular group. Why don't you change the wording? Or this would sound softer. You came across a little harsh and so this is your baby. You know, rick rees all says that's a tough part about preaching you. You it's like giving birth every sunday and waking up monday morning and finding out you're pregnant again you know right.

So, uh, that's truth, by the way, is why you're laughing. Yes, I can relate to that. So painful truth, yes, yes. So what happens is You're you're trying to come up with fresh material. This is your baby and now somebody takes a shot at it and they're critique. So I always tell people be very wise about the people you choose to critique you. You, you want a person who has a gift of encouragement to critique you, but you also want a person who can be honest and can be forthright and say this is my take on it.

0:31:53 - Rusty George
That's so good. I've run the risk. Well, I've fallen prey To the idea of asking people to critique it who I'm trying to impress or trying to make happy, and I end up writing the message for them and inevitably they never show up that weekend. Or, you know, they give me the wrong feedback or say, yeah, it wasn't quite good enough, and I'm back and counseling you know, okay, so what? What is it that? You know, because we've all had that moment where you're not a lead pastor and you think, well, I don't know what that guy's thinking. You know, if I had that chair, here's what I do. And then you get the job. And now you see it from a whole different perspective. What are some things that you learned after you became, you know, the successor to bob russell that you didn't know before that?

0:32:41 - Dave Stone
Yeah, I didn't realize the pressure being turned up. You know, it always felt like there was somebody else On the org chart that had had those stresses and worries on their mind when they would try to fall asleep at night. And there's nothing that can prepare you as much as I was prepared in preaching and Criticism and all these different things that already had experience. It just goes to another layer and another level when, when you become the lead pastor of a church, and.

What I found through a really rough first year, was it? It drove me to more desperation, independence in my relationship with christ and my prayer life improved. But it was tough because you know, we'd grown Uh, 39 out of 40 years during bob russell's years there, 39 out of 40, and then in my first year we we dropped a little over a thousand and uh so you know, not only is, that a punch to your gut and to your ego.

You know, no one was celebrating, saying hey, dave solved the parking problem. Where'd it go? What's better parking spots now. No one was saying that. Instead it was. I just felt the weight of the world on me and I felt like I had blown it, like I'd been placed in charge of this church and now all of a sudden it's not growing and it's going the opposite direction. But to look back, I saw God was sharpening, refining me during that time and he was increasing my dependence and desperation for him. And had we not gone back a thousand or 1,200 or 1,500 people in that next two years?

we never would have been able to grow to where it was, because this way I had the people on the bus who needed to be on the bus and the people who were fighting against any new directions I would take. They stopped coming and they went somewhere else, and so it was a blessing in disguise, because it allowed us to really stick with the vision that I had on my heart.

0:35:02 - Rusty George
Was it tough in those moments to not go. What would Bob do? I got to be more like Bob. How do I get Bob to come back and preach more those kind of things of the me versus the old regime? How did you kind of battle that?

0:35:19 - Dave Stone
I was very blessed. I have a great wife Beth and Kyle was a huge encourager to me in that time. Darren Walter was our executive pastor. He was a huge encourager. And then our elder board. There are conversations that they had with people that I'll never know about where they just tried to run interference when people would take shots and they just stuck with me. I'll never forget we dropped over a thousand and they gave me a raise the next year and said that they believed in me.

You know that this was the right move. And to hang in there, and it's crazy how something as simple as that communicates. We're with you and I'll never know, all the things that they did to help me out, but they certainly made it crystal clear that you're not alone in this.

0:36:13 - Rusty George
I heard you say recently when I'm out of my comfort zone, that's when God gives the increase. Talk a little bit about that.

0:36:22 - Dave Stone
Yeah, you know, I feel like when we become so familiar with Jesus or so familiar with Christianity or ministry, we kind of we know what to expect, we know what to do. If we do this we'll get that. But when we go out on that limb of faith and we really are just kind of out there saying, okay, god, you're going to have to do this and I'm going to have to really depend on you, that's when I feel like he shows up and does his best work, because it's like, okay, he's just not taking it easy, he's not just sticking with the status quo, but he's willing to take risks. You know that Simon Peter got made fun of by the other disciples because of the fact that he fell when he was out in the water. But Simon Peter will always be able to say but I took a couple steps, how many steps did you all take? And I think God blessed him because he took that risk.

And of course we all know when. You know he saw the wind in the waves. That's when he fell. You can't see wind, but you're going to tell that to a guy who's walking on water, you know. So he sees all that and he takes his eyes off of Christ, and that's when I get in trouble. And Southeast blessed me in so many ways, and one of the greatest ways was just by causing me to take risks in my faith, in my giving, in my leadership. And so I think it was one of our elders, russ Summie, who said we want to try something so big that if God's not in it, it's destined to fail. And the idea is, if we just come up with our own well, let's try to do this Then we run the tendency of operating in the flesh and not in the spirit. But when we actually take those steps of faith and go by the spirit, that's when God shows up in a big way.

0:38:24 - Rusty George
Tell our listeners a little bit about how you decided to deal with negative mail that you've got. You know it turned into email, but in the old days it was letters that would come in, many of which were anonymous. Yes, and they didn't like your style, they didn't like your hair. When you changed it, I remember that was a big thing, yeah, you know, and just I get those and I shred them, or you know, there I never look at them again, or whatever. You had a different approach. Tell our listeners about that.

0:38:53 - Dave Stone
One time I was at a banquet, I was sitting next to Cal Thomas. Cal Thomas is a Los Angeles Tribune journalist and he's a Christian.

I think he covers a lot of political stuff and lives actually on the East Coast. But I was talking to him one time at a banquet about some criticism and he said well, tell me what. What did the person write? And I told him and you know, to me it just seems so nasty and so mean for a church member to write this. He said oh, that's nothing. He said hey. He said go to my website, go to my website. And so I went to his website. He said I got a whole section on a hate mail that I get.

And he said I post them, I post it. You know, one of them was you know, slap some barbecue sauce on yourself, cal, because you're going to roast in hell for all eternity. You know, he's just laughing away telling me all this. And so he embraced it. And so what I started doing was I didn't post it, but I started saving. I started saving critical letters that I got. I've got a file folder I actually had to pare it down because it's several file folders and it is. It is big, and the point of saving it is it seems so monumental at the time, so monumental at the time.

And my dad always taught me if somebody is willing to sign their name to a letter, even if they're ugly and mean and what they write, you write them back. And so I always wrote people back, you know, if I felt like it warranted it. And in the opening paragraph he taught me to say thank you so much for signing your name and for telling me your thoughts. Then go to the heart of the matter and then at the end, thank them again for writing. And he said sometimes you win them over that way, right?

But I saved those critical letters because it really helped me to be able then, if I was really down on the letter, I'd go back and read a few years before and something that bothered me so much for so long. Oh, now it's like oh, that's nothing, you know, that doesn't throw me off at all. And so what I gleaned from that was what used to bother me for a week and mess me up for a week. I eventually got to the point where it only bothered me for a day or whatever reason. That's healthy for me.

0:41:22 - Rusty George
That's such good wisdom, because I've tried to avoid those things, but now I'll embrace them. Okay, so tell us a little bit about the transition then. When you passed the baton to Kyle, I mean this is such an amazing thing that happened, where I don't know if it was Bob or you, and Bob decide what would it look like to have a hundred year run at a church? And Bob was there, 40, you were there, obviously as the lead guy for, I think, 13 or 17. And now Kyle's been there for many years. You know just this legacy of constant baton passing. You know, what did you do or feel like you needed to do to set Kyle up and how did you feel like you needed to take the backseat once he took over? Because this is where a lot of transitions fall apart is when the guy stays around too long or maybe leaves too soon.

0:42:12 - Dave Stone
Yeah, so I tried to make a gradual. I'm actually pretty early on after Bob left and.

Kyle was sharing the preaching with me. I put him on the radio the very first month. I got him on as a preaching elder, as one of our elders. In the next year I started giving him sermon series rather than just hopping in and out of the series. There's a lot of things that we could do. I gave him more freedom. I tried to play to his strengths.

People asked me what was your greatest accomplishment at Southeast? Was it the multi-site campuses? And I said no, the greatest accomplishment was keeping Kyle Eidleman for 15 years, because he was going to stay for three to five years just to help me through the transition into light and the preaching load. And so I think if you give the person more and more responsibility and it's a gradual passing of the baton and we didn't know that it was going to for sure go to Kyle at all, but as time went on I sure wanted that to happen and so I think the way to keep a person is to give them more responsibilities, to stretch them and also to allow them to be in their sweet spot.

So he was doing Bible studies that were incredibly successful. He did a series called Not a Fan and I went to him and said hey, you need to turn this into a book. This would make a great book. He said I've never written a book. I said why don't you give it a try? Well, he wrote it and Poor Guy became a New York Times bestseller for his first book. That ruins you and he can't spell better than your eighth grader, you know so that's the one weakness that's shaking his armor that we found.

But you keep giving a person responsibility and letting them know how valuable they are to the team and I think God does something in those settings because they fall in love with the church. They fall in love with how God's using their gifts and that's what we tried to do. And then you have to step out of the way. So he made an impassioned appeal for me to keep worshiping there. But I didn't worship there, I think, for eight months, and he had me back to preach at about the eight month mark. And that's tough when you've been a part of a church for 30 years and so so much a part of it, then to not be there. But that's the healthiest thing for the incoming person, so they're not looking over their shoulder. There's got to be that break.

0:45:08 - Rusty George
Right, I want to ask you a little bit about your family. You raise three great kids, have a great marriage and you know life has been hard over the last few years. Your kids have been through some difficulties. How did that impact? You know your faith, you and Beth, as you try to not just you can't, you're not really parenting them. You're more of a friend or a coach to them at the season of their life. But they went through some difficult journeys and you had to be there from a different perspective, rather than just the dad that steps in to fix everything. Now you're there to walk with them through difficult days. Tell our listeners a little bit about just where your faith was through that and what God did through those difficult times.

0:45:51 - Dave Stone
Yeah, it was a little bit of everything. It was a medical health situation. It was pretty dire for one. It was an employment situation where they'd done nothing wrong but they got caught in the crossfire of someone else who had done a lot wrong, and then it was my daughter going through a divorce from her spouse being unfaithful, and so we had all these different things happening within about a one year window, and coupled with that, my dad passed away, so we had a lot going on then, and I think what I've learned through all that is just the faithfulness of God.

You don't anticipate, when you dedicate a child to the Lord at a very young age, that there's going to be heartache or there's going to be pain. But you dedicated him to the Lord. They belong to him, and so I always say that having adult children is one of the toughest things, because now you pray constantly for those grandkids. You still continue to pray for your kids and reach out to them. It's a fun stage because it's a friendship stage now with the adult children, but you know, I'd much rather go through the pain for them. I can remember when I was a kid.

One time I got hit by a bicycle and had to have a bunch of stitches in my knee and you know, I was pretty out of it and that night, every time I woke up, my mom was right there sitting by my bed and she'd have a wet washcloth and she just would wipe my forehead and she said I wish it were me, I wish it were me and I didn't. You can't understand that when you're a kid, but then all of a sudden, when you have adult children or grandchildren it.

You would much rather something happen to you, then something happened to them. But the beauty of it in all these painful situations has been we have seen God show up, we have seen God's faithfulness in every single one of those situations. And so, you know, we have to realize Romans 8.28 is true, and while we would not wish some of the things that have happened on anyone else, we also are quick to realize that God has helped us to grow through it and we've seen his faithfulness.

0:48:32 - Rusty George
That's beautiful. Well, I thank you for sharing that with us, dave. As always, it's such a pleasure to talk with you. I laugh, I cry. It's better than cats, it's just amazing. So, thank you, thank you so much.

0:48:46 - Dave Stone
Hey, I want you to know I appreciate you so much. I love your sense of humor, but I've always loved your faithfulness in ministry, whether you were at Southland, whether you were at real life, everywhere you've been. God continues to use you in great ways and you are a great ministry friend, but you're a great encourager to younger pastors as well, and so I'm so glad you've got this podcast, because I know you're pouring into a lot of people and you're doing a whole lot of good.

0:49:18 - Rusty George
Well, thank you, dave. It means a lot. I appreciate you, brother. I look forward to seeing you next time we're in the same city and maybe we can play golf together sometime. That'd be a lot of fun. It'd be a blast. Love you, buddy, thanks, thanks again. Love you.

Well, next week we're going to hear the grueling story of a man who lost his teenage son to fentanyl. How does your faith move forward when that happens? What is the deal with this epidemic? Is it just for drug abusers and they just OD? How is it such an epidemic for people that we never thought even used drugs, let alone would mess with fentanyl? Well, he's going to get into all that. So make sure you subscribe and share, leave a review of the podcast. We'll be back next week with that conversation and, as always, keep it simple.