Episode Transcript
Well, Dale Sellers, I just want to welcome you to the Revitalize My Church podcast. Thanks so much for agreeing to hang out with me for a while today. Well, it's my honor. I love what you do. And it's cool that we've become friends for, I guess, three or four years now. And we've never actually met in person. Yeah, we have the same heart and same passion, especially for the small and mid-sized church. And so anytime I can serve you, it's a privilege. Yeah, I really appreciate you being a guest on our show for really on some levels, kind of a maybe it's a little bit of a selfish reason, although you and I probably only been connected online for. I think three to four years, as you mentioned, I've been kind of following the work in the ministry of 95 Network for probably upwards of maybe six years or so. When did you step into your leadership role in 95 Network? This July, which we're recording now in 2024. So this July will be my sixth year I've been doing it. Six years. So yeah, I think that I started kind of tuning in around the time that you took the mantle there and began leading the organization. And, you know, although you and I've never actually met in person, I jokingly referred before we started recording that it's kind of like modern day pen pals here. These days we get to zoom a lot and we podcast pals, podcast pals in the old days, we would have just been written, writing letters to each other. But I will honestly say, I've never said this to you before. So don't blush too much, but you know, your ministry, your leadership has really made a significant impact on a lot of things that I do the way that I lead. And, and, you know, you've even just spoken some wisdom and the truth and some truth into me as a leader that you probably don't even know that you have, but I've reflected on some conversations that we've had over the years and recounted those. And I said, you know what, Dale, Dale's a great guy. And you know, you don't necessarily always get to see the impact that you get to make on people in ministry, whether you're a pastor or a ministry coach or whatever it is. But you, you, you have influenced me. I know you've influenced countless of other leaders of across the country. And it's a privilege to have you on the show. And we're going to talk a little bit today about some of the things that you have done in ministry, some of the things that you're doing in ministry. And ultimately, I want to get to your heart, your heart for pastors and how we collectively can help pastors be the best that they can be, especially those that are leading their church and through a season of renewal and so let's let's start dale by just kind of uh I know your story very well I've heard it many times we've talked about it a bit but why don't we share with our audience uh your background your story of ministry and how you ended up where you are today Well, thanks for all the kind things you said. And it really is encouraging to hear that something you do matters. Because for most of us, and I think this is true for even the audience listening today, we help and we do and we serve and we pray. And oftentimes you don't ever hear anything back. So it's always encouraging to hear back that you're actually helping somebody. I'll turn 62 in June. I think we're recording this today in April. And so I've been in ministry for 42 years. My wife and I went to college together. we traveled the first 10 years of our marriage with a college music group and then we had our own music group. This is back in the 80s when Christian music was just huge and we did concerts and stuff. And so the first 10 years we were married, we did about 1100 concerts in churches all over the country, all denominations, all sizes. and noticed even back then in our 20s that it seemed like pastors and music directors and and even youth pastors all seem to be very discouraged and I couldn't understand it what's wrong with these guys where's their passion because I'm not I'm mr wide open and go get it done and I'm like what happened to their fire what happened to their zeal where are we what's going on with these guys and uh when I came off the road started working in a local church and in about three weeks I knew exactly what happened to those pastors they had to put up with people and and so my passion has been to serve and encourage the church but specifically church leaders our whole lives and so We've done that. Like I said, I've served at a church for a while, but then I pastored a church for 12 years. And that's where a lot of the lessons that I have today came from, because I was in the era when Bill Hybels had just come on and John Maxwell was growing it. And all the church gurus were out there telling how to grow a megachurch. And so I just assumed that when I did the things they said to do, that I would grow a megachurch. When I went to our church, we had 30 people the first Sunday. which was very shocking to me because I had more people than that in a class that I taught at the larger church that I worked at. And so we went from 30 to 300 back to 150 because in the eighth year, we had a terrible split. And I tell everybody, I didn't have a moral failure, but I had a leadership failure. I didn't lead well and it all eventually blew up in my face and then four years later we actually closed the church it wasn't healthy enough to hand off to someone and then I went through five years of just I went back into I grew up doing construction I went back into construction just trying to get my head screwed back on I served volunteered at a church actually I was a parking lot attendant for a youth ministry it was just like I mean I went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows And just, you know, I felt like a big failure, to be honest with you, because I could not do the things that the gurus of the day said, you know, if you do this, your church will grow. And, you know, Bart, they used to make this statement, and I've heard this statement my whole life. And the statement is healthy things grow. And so the implication is if you're not growing, you're not healthy. Well, I want to tell you something else. Unhealthy things grow too. I learned that when I was in Iowa. And so there was some unhealthy things in my leadership, within our church leadership, that all culminated in a terrible split. And so for a while, I thought God had kind of put me on a shelf and wasn't going to use me anymore. And then back in 2014, one day in prayer, he just spoke to me and said, it's time to start your leadership company or leadership business or whatever it is. And so I went on a journey and that's kind of what's led me to where we are today with 95 Network. Okay. Yeah. You know, the first thing that comes to my mind and I, you know, I've heard the same thing and I've said the same thing that healthy living things do grow, but there are unhealthy things that grow. The first things that come to my mind are things like fungus, cancer. Like cancer. Regret, disdain. I was confronted about this by a pastor in Iowa. And I had not made this statement, but he was pretty intense. And he just looked at me and he said, you know, I get so tired of hearing pastors say healthy things grow, healthy things grow. He said unhealthy things grow too. Don't go tell farmers in Iowa that healthy things grow because they'll tell you the opposite. And I thought, boy, that's a... That's a total different, that's a shift right there, man. That is a total different just paradigm of looking at leadership. And again, so much of the American model of church growth and all it was doing was pulling people from one church to another. But I'm sure we don't want to talk about that today. No, that's not the focus of our conversation, but it is true. And at the same time, our goal, and I want to emphasize this in pretty much every episode that we do, and I think it's going to be obvious in this episode, this conversation with you, that our goal as we're working with churches and walking alongside them to help them find a new day and find a new way forward is is not to turn every church into a mega church but to help churches get healthy and be healthy we leave the growth to god god's the one that brings the increase but we do have a stewardship responsibility to number one make sure that the church is as biblically founded and healthy as possible. And the biblical foundation is ultimately what brings the health. Now, granted, we're always dealing with people and they're always going to be unhealthy people. And so that's another conversation. And maybe we'll slide into that here in just a little bit. Actually, we are going to slide into that. We're going to talk about pastoral health today. Before we do that, though, I want you to just kind of give a framework for what 95 Network is, who you serve, and how pastors might be able to actually tap into the resources of 95 Network. Well, the name 95 Network comes from the fact that of the 300,000 churches in America, 95% of them are less than 500 people attending, 87% are less than 200 people attending, and 75% of all the churches in America of the 300,000 have less than 100 people attending. so the small and the mid-sized church is the majority of the churches in america but to me it's the most underserved and under-resourced group because it seems like all the materials the conferences everything is for the larger churches and I do want to make sure people understand I'm not I'm not a big church hater I'm not a mega church hater I love the church there's only one plan for jesus that jesus left in the world and it's the church so I love all churches but but to to go to your point Our focus at 95 Network is health first. We want you to grow numerically because that means you're reaching people. But if you're an unhealthy church of 50, we don't want you to become an unhealthy church of 200 because it's just a bigger mess. And so at 95 Network, we created what we call the five C's of just things that we provide to help serve the church. The first one is content. We do a weekly podcast. We do some articles and things like that. but just things that are specific to the small and the mid-sized church. And we do conferences, and we'll talk more about that in a minute. One of the big conferences we're doing right now is actually called Soul Care Essentials. We've got a coaching track that we do, several different tracks in coaching. We provide a lot of connections. So today, let's say you had need for someone to help you, I don't know, get a sound system. We've got a list of contacts on our website that we call Connections to help churches to find somebody to help them specifically who understand the need of the small church. You know, we can't be all things to all people. We can't be gurus in every area, but we've got lots of strategic partners and folks in those arenas that will help churches. And so we've got to collaborate that way. And so and then, you know, With all of these things that we have, it's just designed to serve and come alongside and support the small and the midsize church pastor. Okay. And you have a website. It is 95network.org. And it's the numbers nine and five. So it's not the word 95. So 95network.org. And all the things that I just mentioned are laid out right there for you. Okay, 100%, we're gonna link to that in show notes. Now, another resource that you have available for pastors and church leaders is probably, it's a bit of a pet project, I'm sure. And that is the book that you wrote a few years ago called Stalled. I might pick up the book and go, well, this doesn't sound very uplifting and exciting. It's kind of negative, Dale, like stalled. Why do I wanna read this book? Tell me about the book. Tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write it and what is your hope for those that read it? You didn't do the tagline though. It's stalled with the subtitle is hope and help for pastors who thought they'd be there by now. That's true. if you don't know that part it's like and honestly I i wish we could have named it something differently but it was it's it's where so many leaders are they're just stalled out it's not they're not they're not they don't have a hadn't had a moral failure they're not necessarily out of ministry but they're not going anywhere and so uh I was having a conversation with there's a there's a ministry called the unstuck group and the leader of that is called tony morgan and tony and I were having a conversation one day And just in that conversation, I just said to him, I said, well, I said, Tony, I want to tell you something today that I've never told anyone. This is after I'd pastored the whole deal. I said, I feel like a complete failure because I thought I'd be there by now. He's like, what are you talking about? I said, well, I just feel like Jesus is disappointed with me because I haven't built a large church. And we talked through some of that. And as we talked through it, Tony said, you know, I think this is fascinating. Why don't you, if you will, write an article and I'll publish it on the unstuck of Tony Morgan, Tony Morgan live website. And let's just see if you get any traction. So I wrote an article in April of 2014. It was called I thought I'd be there by now. Confessions of a small church pastor. And I heard from pastors all over America going, that's exactly how I feel. And so that was the seed that led to a couple of years later, I signed with David C. Cook and wrote the book. And it just talks about, it breaks into three sections. The first one is, why can't I get there, wherever there is? The second session is, what will I find there? And then the last section basically just talks about the fulfillment of living there. And I had so many misconceptions about ministry. And honestly, Bart, it was just my own personal insecurity. uh thinking that you know that because I hadn't built a big large mega church that somehow that I wasn't worth much to jesus I felt like I was gonna get to heaven but it was gonna be way over the corner somewhere Yeah. I've, I've shared this even, you know, within the confines of my own ministry circle from time to time. And even, you know, some of the people that are part of my very small fledgling church plant that I have the opportunity to lead now is that, you know, I'm, I'm a relatively competitive person and I've never, I've never served in a large church. I've served in what, you know, Tom Rainer refers to as the normative size church, the 95 church. And I, I, I'll be honest with you, you know, and most people outside of the church world don't recognize this, but, you know, you go to a pastor's conference or an event that's, you know, built for church leaders. And, you know, in the marketplace, in the secular world, you know, you meet a parent of a kid that your kid plays baseball with or whatever. One of the questions that always comes up is, so what do you do, right? People want to know what you do for a living. And that's, you kind of judge each other based on what you do for a living. Well, in the church world, pastors walk up to each other and they use this phrase. So what are you running? What are you running? And that basically means how many people are showing up on a Sunday morning to listen to you preach. And the bigger the number, the better you feel. The smaller the number, no matter what the context, there is something very humbling about that. And nobody, I mean, the reality is we're all fighting the same battles. We're all trying to get over the same obstacles, the same hurdles. We've all got the same goals and same objectives. But there is something humbling. I think it's just hard. It's just a hard place to be. I'll be transparent with you. So, so let's just say you and I grew up together, went to school together. We both went off to pastor and your church takes off. And what I mean by that is, you know, you've got three, four, 500 people coming and my church is still under a hundred. If I went out to eat with my wife and I saw you and your wife at the restaurant, if you didn't see me, I would leave. Because I was embarrassed and I was ashamed. Because see, here's the problem. I felt like a failure on the inside. It didn't matter what you thought of me. It's what I thought of me. And there have been over the years, there have been some of the larger, more successful pastors that I do think kind of have a look down their nose attitude at small church pastors. But the majority of them don't. You know, pastoring a small church is difficult because you've got to do it all. And part of what you have to learn how to do is raise up leaders. And when that doesn't work or your training fails you, which I think a lot of your listeners would say that they weren't trained to do what they do. It does something to your psyche on the inside, which is the reason that we have the need for soul care today. Yeah. So we've already established the fact that, you know, our goal ultimately is not to make small churches, big churches, but to take churches that maybe are not as healthy as they could be or should be and help them find their best way forward to represent Jesus well, and to be as healthy as they can. And I think you and I would both agree 100% that, It's very difficult to have a healthy church if the pastor himself is not healthy. And a lot of times the pastor's health isn't necessarily a result of personal choices. Sometimes it is. Sometimes pastors make poor choices. are unwise and can find themselves in a difficult situation. Sometimes it's just a matter of circumstance. It's a matter of the difficulties of leading a small church. Why don't let's talk a little bit about the pastor's soul and the pastor's personal health, spiritual health. I want you to start by talking a little bit more about just your own personal journey with mental, emotional health, spiritual health, and how all those things have played out for you in your life. Because I think your story is very relatable. Well, I think the thing I have to acknowledge is, and I've already mentioned that I grew up building houses with my dad. And my dad and I worked so well together. But my dad was not verbally affirming. And my dad told me, I love you three times basically growing up. And all three were church services where they made him. Now, I knew he loved me, but I needed to hear it. So one of the things that happened as I was growing up was when we would do building, I mean, Bart, when I was 16 years old, I was the guy that did all the oak stairways and all the fancy spindles, all that stuff. And I would do it. And I wanted my dad to say, you did a good job or I'm proud of you. He never told me that. He would tell you that if we did the work for you. And so people were always like, your dad's always bragging on you. I'm going, not to me. Well, somewhere in my life, I shifted that toward my relationship with my heavenly father. and so I felt like I could never do enough I never could if you know if we did something if we're on the road if we did something you know and 20 people came to christ at the concert I would be sad because it wasn't 25. and so I never ever felt like I was doing enough or good enough now I grew up believing that you're saved by grace it's free gift free gift free gift free gift but then I also learned I caught if you will that uh you prove how saved you are by what you do And I just got in a cycle, man, and I was not healthy whatsoever. And once our church split happened, it actually did something to me physically. At 52 years old, much later, I had quadruple bypass surgery because I had a widow maker. I had one artery blocked 100% and three arteries blocked 90% and didn't know it. And I asked my surgeon, how did this happen to me? And he said, hypertension and high blood pressure because of your vocation. I said, are you saying the ministry almost killed me? He said, that's exactly what I'm saying. And I made the dumbest statement. I said, but my stress is good stress. I love what I do. He goes, Dale, your body doesn't know the difference. Well, that's kind of ingrained in so many pastors. You know, again, I'm 60 years old. So I grew up in the era where pastors have been taught and caught that we're supposed to be above the fray that you can't let them see you sweat you can't let people see the cheeks in your armor and so so we're supposed to be the exception to the rule so we don't deal with soul care because that's a sign of weakness and I'm just going to tell you there to me there's only two reasons that the majority of the churches in america are smaller mid-sized one of them is that the pastor feels insecure so they have to do everything and to feed their emotional tank. So they don't raise up leaders. They don't, you know, they don't hand off ministry. And that's a whole nother conversation. And the second reason is, is the governmental structure of the American church is not biblical. It's American. So most small churches look at the pastor as a hireling. And so they put expectations on them. Well, when you can't meet the expectations, either what you have personally or what the congregation has of you, It just creates stress. And, you know, one of the things that pastors don't do is they don't take care of themselves because they think that's part of the job. And it's not. It's somewhere that we caught along the way. And some seminary professors even make this statement. Well, if you'll take care of God's family, he'll take care of your family. And they may sound really spiritual, but that's just hogwash. But, you know, you've got to take care of your marriage. You've got to take care of your family. You've got to take care of yourself. And this is foreign to most pastors. They're not used to hearing that kind of conversation. Yeah. So I'm just going to go on a limb here and just expect that a number of our listeners can relate to you as you kind of paint this picture of pressure. It's just, it can be, what's amazing to me is In the context of some of the sweetest people on the planet, in a community of people that love Jesus and want to do nothing more than please Jesus, the pressure on a small church pastor can be paralyzing at times, especially if he's never really been trained, equipped, or coached on how to handle those things. And obviously, you know, I know that I've fallen victim to this in my life as a pastor and as a minister where I overemphasize another person's spiritual growth and personal relationship with Jesus. emphasize my own. And so I neglect myself and my own walk with the Lord because I feel this responsibility and this accountability for others. Um, and so I think the pastors feel that weight. And so let's assume that those are the pastors are feeling this weight. One of the things that you guys have done at 95 network is, is, Really, from an outsider looking in, I saw sort of a shift in the focus of your ministry a few years ago when you went from really saying we're going to help churches cultivate vision, develop a vision for their future to go, hey, you know what? We need to help pastors get healthy. And you develop this soul care thread within the context of your ministry and ultimately these soul care events, soul care essentials events. Talk to us a little bit about what some of the key tenants are of the soul care essentials and what you're working to help pastors overcome. We developed it because you're exactly right. Our entire focus has had been and we still have this is to provide how to do leadership development and mission and vision and all the things to help a church. But here's what we came up against specifically right after the pandemic. We would hear pastors say, listen, I don't want to come to a conference and learn about mission or vision. I'm trying to get through the day. And when I hear a pastor make that kind of statement, we met as a team. Our whole team came together and we spent about four months developing what we call soul care essentials because we're like, OK, if they're not healthy, then they're not. They're not going to even if we have good material or good, good resources, they're not going to use them and I'm going to follow through. One of the big things about small churches is this. We don't follow through and there's no accountability. So we say we're going to do something and we don't do it and nothing happens. Well, with soul care, there is accountability. It's going to come out somewhere that you're not healthy. So when we created the conference, we have three specific things. First of all, we made it a half day conference because people are busy. The second thing is three sessions. The first session is your private life. And it's just what, and this is all practical stuff. What's going on on the inside of you? You know, how are you really doing? And we talk about the need to have accountability, not like in the promise keepers type setting, but just have someone that loves you that you can be honest with. We talk about the need for coaching. One of the biggest issues that we get pushed back on in that session is we talk about that God expects you as a leader to Sabbath. You'd be shocked at how many pastors are like, I don't have time to Sabbath. You don't have that option. Sabbath was instituted in creation. And so this is to me has been the most telltale sign of all the things we talk about is that the majority of pastors don't Sabbath and they don't even think they need to. But again, because they think they're supposed to be above the fray or as a pastor, you're not like a regular person. And it's just not true. And so we spend some time talking about just what how are you really doing on the inside? The second session is about your personal life. We talk about your marriage, your parenting, your grandparenting, your friendships. You know, the statistics still comes out. It's been around forever that almost 80 percent of pastors don't have one close personal friend. And again, when you hear that, you think, oh, how noble the pastor that he doesn't have any friends. That's hogwash. You need friends. I specifically want you to get friends outside of the church. I'd like for you to have friends that don't even know Jesus just so you can begin to share your faith. And in the last session, we talk about your professional life. We talk about the training and things like that. But one of the things we really spend some time on is talking about the fact that that there are more pastors today who are bi-vocational than are full-time. And this is not going to be just a trend. It's going to be the way it's going to be from now on. And so you've got to get that balance in your life where you can't do it all. You can't pastor a church 40 hours a week, work a 40-hour-a-week job, and then maintain your family. Something's going to give somewhere. And as we've done this conference, the response to it's been pretty amazing. And as I said, everything about what we do is very practical because if I can say it this way, I think sometimes we talk so spiritual all the time that we never get real honest. And in the church world, we have just a whole language of ourselves of how we can dodge talking about real stuff. Yeah. Really powerful stuff. And I know that a lot of pastors bristle when they even think about talking about these things, making themselves vulnerable, exposing what they're wrestling with and what their challenges are. But I don't know any pastor... who goes into the ministry wanting, expecting, or hoping to burn out before he's actually, before he's gotten there, wherever there is, right? Let me give you a thought here, Bart. I think some pastors actually, it's a badge of honor. I think because I think pastors say things like, well, Jesus, I did this for you. I remember John Maxwell used to tell this funny little joke that he said, we talked about this pastor who went and wore himself out, just, you know, did all this ministry. And he dies at 50 years old. He gets to heaven. And when he gets to heaven, he walks up to Jesus and Jesus goes, what are you doing here? He said, you weren't supposed to be here for 30 more years. No, I burned myself out for you. And he goes, I didn't ask you to do that. Obviously, it's a joke. But there is this badge of honor, I think, that we silently wear that, man, oh, I don't have time to take a day off. Or I don't have time to go on a vacation. Like that's honorable. And it's not. Does that make sense? Yes, very much so. Now, I was out for a walk this morning before we sat down to record this, and I was thinking about the conversation that you and I were going to have. And this thought came into my mind, and I'm going to share a statement with you. And I want you to, in light of what you just said, I want you to respond to this statement. The vast majority of people that are listening to this podcast are pastors or church leaders that are leading their church through a revitalization, through a season of change, which is a hard thing to do. Absolutely. A church revitalizer or a pastor leading a church through change must have thick skin, but cannot have a hard heart. Can you respond to that statement? What does that make you think when I say that? So we start the Soul Care Essentials Conference talking about the fact that you can be hard-hearted in ministry. In the book of Mark, after the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000, he goes walking on water and all the dialogue. But at the end of it, Jesus goes, it says they didn't understand about the feeding of the 5,000 because their hearts were hardened. And then if you just go two more chapters down in the same book and read about the feeding of the 4,000, once again, they don't understand. And Jesus says, are your hearts still hardened? Now think about the implications there. Here are the people who are with Jesus day in and day out. They see all the miracles. They get to participate in some of them. They help feed the 5,000, but they had a hard heart. And the point of that is it's easy in ministry to develop a hard heart doing the right things. And I think we see that more than from the hard heart of doing the wrong things. I have met hard-hearted pastors who, again, were just disappointed with themselves for the result of their ministry, that they almost can't stand people. But that's seldom. But what I do see is people who've got hard hearts and don't know it. because they don't Sabbath. They don't rest. They don't take care of themselves. They sacrifice their family. They sacrifice their health. And there is this mentality out there that somehow we're doing this for Jesus. And it's just not true. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I was going to ask a follow-up question, but I think you actually already answered my follow-up question in that. And so I don't want to add to it too much more. Um, so, uh, you've talked a little bit about the soul care essentials, uh, conferences, the events, uh, how frequently do they happen? Where do they happen? Um, if, if somebody is like, man, as much as I don't want to show up to one of these things, I probably need to show up to one of these things. How, how can people find out more about them and what is, what does it look like? Well, we do them all over the country. Basically, we have a host church or a host leader who will bring us in. And if we have 25 to 30 people there, that's a great conference. We don't want a mega conference. We just we try to keep it more intimate. But we do them all at just different places all over the country. And you can look at the website. It says upcoming events to see where they are. But also, we also have the Soul Care Essentials Conference online. online now you can you can purchase it where you it's the literal conference and you can watch it yourself and we also created a six-week follow-up to it a cohort if you will that's keyed to the conference that so so what we want is we don't want you just come to a conference and go wow that was great and forget about it which is what I've done my whole life when I go to conferences and I buy all the materials and all the books and take all these notes and never look at it again we the six-week follow-up is is hopefully you'll go through it with the people you went to the conference with Or if you watch it online, you can go through the follow up with those folks as well. One of my teammates on the 95 Network team, Jason Allison, helped me develop that. And so we have those available as well. So we have you can see it online if you just you can't get to a conference or just keep checking. Or either you can host one if you'd like to in your area. We'd love to. We just we go all over the place. So we'd love to come to any area to do the conferences, especially if you're connected to a group of pastors that you could get enough people there. If I were wanting to host an event at my church, what are sort of the parameters? What do I need to provide? What does that look like? We ask you to provide lunch. There's no cost to you. Compassion International has happened to underwrite the cost of the conference. So usually it costs $45 for people to attend. We take care of all the registration. You don't have to do anything except get people there. But because of Compassion, they give a $20 discount. So you can come to the conference for $25. And that includes a copy of my book, Stalled. hoping up for pastors who thought they'd be there by now, a conference handout. So there's no other cost involved for the host other than we do ask them if they would provide lunch. It starts at nine in the morning and it's over at 1230 in the afternoon. Okay. Is Jason at the conferences? Does he do those with you? You mentioned Jason Allison. Jason has done, well, we've done one together, but he actually is doing the entire conference himself. He's doing some, he also works with Converge Mid-Atlantic in the church strengthening department. And so they've got him doing conferences all over the Mid-Atlantic area of the country. I know Jason and in all likelihood, he will be a guest on this show at some point as well. We are kindred spirits in the church revitalizations. The cool part about Jason is I actually met Jason when I was coaching, when I worked at the unstuck group and Jason was a coaching client and he was so discouraged when I first met him. And now and I'll let him tell you the story. But but now to have him as a partner who's actually doing conferences, he does vision days as well that we do with 95 Network. It's really cool. Actually, I've been talking. I was talking to this morning. So it's just it's really cool to see what God has done in his life. And he was a very discouraged pastor at one point, but he had to come clean. He had he had to get some coaching. He had to get some help. You're not going to get if you're listening right now and you're like, I know I need to do this. You're not going to get better on your own. You're going to have to help have help. In fact, you know, in the book of James, he says, confess your faults to one to another. You may be healed. I don't think it just means physical healing. I think, you know, you've got to get somebody you can be honest with and transparent with that, you know, that loves you so that you can get yourself on a healthy pathway. Yeah, for sure. So, Dale, over the course, I'm sure of a lot of your ministry life, you've had a lot of people influence you. A lot of people speak into your life. You mentioned Tony Morgan earlier today. Who are some of the people that, you know, that are that you're listening to? Maybe people that you're reading, people you're learning from. How are you continuing to sharpen the saw as a leader to be all that God has called you to be? I would say the person I listen to the most right now is Dan Ryland. Dan used to work with John Maxwell. I've had him on the podcast twice. My wife and I have gone down to Atlanta, had dinner with he and his wife. Anyone who's still here doing it, that's been doing it for a long time, who hasn't had a moral failure, I'm listening to them. Because they're hard to find. But Dan by far is, he puts out a weekly letter and we correspond back and forth. I listened to some other, Andy Stanley, I like to follow him from afar because Andy really does have great content, but he's always, it seems like every time he makes a statement, it's controversial now. It's a fire, yeah. Yeah, but honestly, older pastors, some that you would not have heard of, just older pastors who, who have run the race well, who've kept their marriages, who have a good relationship with their kids. And the reason I say that is because those are few and far between. Yeah. Yeah. I'm preparing a message for my church that I'm sharing this Sunday. And we've been talking about wisdom, wise choices in life and relationships. And one of the things that I've challenged the people in my church to consider is well, it's essentially to do an inventory of the people that they have allowed into the circle of their lives that are influencing them the most. And I think pastors have a difficult time with this, we have a difficult time being intentional about crafting the right kinds of relationships that let people into our lives, who can speak into our lives, who can be the sounding board for when we're having challenges, who can reflect back to us what maybe they see in us that we're not so readily seeing ourselves. And I would say this, at the very least, participating in, showing up to a Soul Care Essentials conference would give you as a pastor confidence an opportunity to initiate some new relationships. Maybe you're a pastor who doesn't have the kinds of relationships that you need to have in your life. And you need some other pastors that are in the trenches that are walking through the same seasons, the same challenges, the same obstacles that you are. Not because, well, yeah, misery loves company to some degree, but because we need, we need, we need other people in our life. We're made for people, right? People are made for people. People need people. And I think it's one of the isolation issues. in my opinion, is one of the primary reasons for pastoral downfall, whether it's emotional failure, personal failure, moral failure. Isolation is one of the things we have to guard ourselves against more than anything else. Proverbs, I think it's Proverbs 18.1 says, a man who isolates himself seeks his own desire. So when your own desire is what you're seeking, you're probably off balance. And I want to say this, and this is probably a little controversial, but I think it's important to say this. I think you need to seek for friendships outside your own group. specifically if you're part of a denomination, because so much of the denominational relationships is just jockeying for position or comparison with each other. One of the larger denominations exists right now, it's just got a lot of problems. And part of the problem is because it's just everybody's slapping each other on the back and supporting what they're doing and they're not calling each other out. And so I think sometimes it would be really good if you could develop relationship with other pastors or other ministry leaders that are outside your group that can even challenge your way of thinking a little bit because you need to know what you believe because it's what Jesus and the Bible have led you to believe and not because you're just towing the company line. I'll leave that alone. Yeah. Okay. We'll drop that right there. Dale. we're, we're going to land a plane here. This has been a fascinating conversation for me. I'm always encouraged, uh, when I get to hang out with you and I hope, I believe that our, our audience here will, will certainly be encouraged. Uh, we're going to link to 95 network and the soul care essential stuff, uh, in our show notes, uh, we'll link to your book. Uh, is there, give, give us, give us a parting shot, just some encouragement for that pastor that's out there who feels like he's all alone, who maybe feels like he's stalled. Um, Just leave us with a word of encouragement here. I believe we're in a Gideon phase of ministry right now in America specifically. And what I mean by that is, is God doesn't need 20,000. God doesn't need 10,000. He's just looking for a few hundred. He'll do it the way he said to do it. So just be reminded of your calling. You know, nobody should be with true ministers. No one entered ministry for any other reason than knowing that we're called of God to do it. And, and, and, Your better days are ahead of you. Your best days are ahead of you, but you got to get healthy first. And so take the time that you need to take. I understand that maybe people in your congregation will not be so excited about it. It doesn't matter. Love your family. Love your marriage. Take care of yourself. Get healthy and understand that we've got some great days ahead. When there's great chaos, there's a great opportunity for great ministry. And I believe that's what's coming. And I believe it's coming for everyone who's listening to this podcast. If they'll just... Do what it takes to have a healthy soul. Thank you, Dale Sellers of the 95 Network team. This has been another episode of the Revitalize My Church podcast. If you've made it all the way to the end, Thanks. Congratulations. Hope it's been a real encouragement to you. Just want to remind you, if you haven't subscribed yet, wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, make sure that you do that. And if you haven't ever left a rating or review, you've been listening to this podcast for a while and have found the content that we're creating to be helpful for you. If you'll leave a rating and review, that'll help somebody else somewhere out there in the internet world find it, and maybe it'll be an encouragement to them. Or, man, just grab the link of this particular episode and email it or text it to somebody that you know that could use this type of encouragement. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.
