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aggressive life dirt today's gonna be a good day I can't wait you know today's gonna be a good day I do know it's gonna be a good I'm wondering if even if our pre banter discussion you were wanting to put that in because that was some good stuff there. It was some good stuff. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. We're going to go, we're going to go, uh, premium. That's like premium. You're not allowed to talk. You're not, this is my time. Then you have your time. Matt Chandler always got to be the captain talker. Wherever he is, he's got to have the first and last word just because he thinks he's the best communicator in the room. And he probably is, but just shut your yap or tell him ready for you. All right. I think anybody that listens to this is probably as jigger as that. You still can't shut your yapper! Shut your yapper! I just told you to shut your yapper! I am in control! Okay, yes, well, Matt Chandler's on. He's become a friend of mine over the last couple of years. Even though I invited him to the church that I started and pastor and he kicked my ass in terms of people liking him more than me, people wonder when I'm gonna retire and hopefully Matt moves up from Texas to take over Crossroads, he's a really, really good guy. And you're gonna see if you don't know him. This is not a, this is not a PasserCon podcast. It's not a theology podcast, though I am, all of those things. So it comes up every once in a while, but... I just like having people on who I find interesting. I find Matt really interesting. Let me tell you why I find him interesting. It's not just because I think he's probably, he's one of the greatest communicators in our country, period, he just is. He's a fantastic communicator. I find also his story is very compelling to me. And we're gonna just bleed the lines from our intro into you and I talking, Matt. So, wait, let's, welcome. To the aggressive life, Matt Chandler. Woo! Now am I allowed to talk now or is this the apper? The apper can open now. Yeah, that's great. Hey, it's good to be here. I think we're both aggressive, so that makes sense. The aggressive life. Absolutely is. I always thought that you and I were very, very different from one another until we started going the same past retreat. And I was like, come on, man, we have a lot in common. We enjoy each other. It's really, really good. So let me tell you what I'm really impressed with you on, not just your communication skills, maybe we'll get into that, but I've been really digging into and talking a lot about my favorite verse these days, 2 Timothy 4-5 that says, "'Be sober-minded, endure suffering, "'do the work of an evangelist and fulfill your ministry.'" And that second piece is what I'm really intrigued with, suffering, Matt, everybody's seemingly deconstructing these days. Sure. And, you know, I'm not talking about deconstructing. Well, I was told that I had to wear these clothes or God isn't going to like me, so I ought to deconstruct. I was told that I have to, this is my specific view of what the second coming is going to look like. Well, there's certain things we can deconstruct, but I'm talking about saying I'm not a Christian anymore. The one thing I found that everybody... who deconstructs permanently, leaves the faith, has in common, do you know what it is? Yeah, it's some kind of disappointment, some kind of hurt or suffering. See, that's why I like you. You're always right because you'd almost always agree with me, yes, exactly. I found that's the safest place to be. Yeah, said another way, they don't like their life. Yeah, I think that's fair. I thought if I did this, then I would have that. I thought if I went to church, then my mom wouldn't get cancer. I thought if I tied, then I would be doing better financially right now. I thought of this. And your story really intrigues me, because when I first heard about you, you were dealing with brain cancer. Take us back to brain cancer, if you don't mind. Yeah. Well, 14 years ago, I mean, king of the world, I mean, that's how I felt. Everything I touched had turned to gold. I'd been in the hospital. Got to this church, we had grown by a thousand a year every year for, I mean, we were closing in on year six or seven at that point. We're seeing a ton of people come to know Jesus. It was super grimy. I mean, like finding a guy in the bathroom who OD'd on heroin kind of grimy. And man, I was, my marriage was incredible. We had three kids and just had, you know, Nora was six months old at the time. Sweet Reed was four years old. Audrey was six. And Men, life was just sweet. And on Thanksgiving morning, 2009, I woke up to my wife preparing dishes in the kitchen. She had let me sleep in. We'd been running pretty hard as we tend to do. And she was like, I'm gonna let him rest. So I get up, she asked me to feed Nora. I get a bottle, feed Nora a bottle, burp her, put her in her Johnny, jump up. Because if there's anything a baby with a belly full of formula needs. it's to get put in a janky death trap of a swing that bounces up and down. And so put her there. I was walking back to my chair, and then I woke up in the hospital. And the only memory I have of what happened next was given to me by Lauren, because I had no memory of it at all. I apparently had a grand mal seizure in front of Audrey and Reed and Nora. They were on the couch watching TV. And I had hit the fireplace mantle with my face, bit through my tongue, and slammed onto the ground next to the fireplace tools. And Lauren had heard the crash, and she was waiting to hear me say, it's OK, sweetie, or it's all right. I'll get it. And one of the kids had done something. And instead, she heard Audrey, my six-year-old, go, mom? And so she came into the room, and there I was on the floor. So she turned me on the side, called 911, and the ambulance showed up. I started kind of coming back to. Apparently, I took offense to being strapped to a gurney and punched one of the medics. And they popped me with some sort of drug to knock me out, which is what happened in my memory. And woke up in the hospital. They had done. a CT scan already, showed a mass in my right frontal lobe. And that started the process of went to a neurosurgeon. They were super concerned about what it looked like. And I know he was trying to encourage me when he said, hey, I had a patient who had a glioblastoma and lived like a decade. Well, gosh, man, I'm like, I'm 36? Like, that's not. So what, I get to live to be 46? Thanks. I mean, that's how he tried to encourage me and scheduled surgery that Friday. So I had the seizure Thursday. And then the following Friday, had surgery. They removed a golf ball sized tumor from my right frontal lobe. It ended up being anaplastic or malignant. And that started 18 months of chemotherapy and other treatments. I had to do radiation for six weeks and then 18 months of high dose chemotherapy. And every other month MRIs and then every other month MRIs. And everything was bad news at first. And then it just started to be no news, which is very good news in the brain tumor world. And so 18 months later, no sign of anything. They kind of cancer it was. Aligodendroglioma, which is a... primary brain tumor. Did you just speak in tongues right there? I didn't know you spoke in tongues. Well, it sounds a lot like Louie Giglio's name, oligodendroglioma. But I always just thought, oh, it sounds like Louie Giglio. But maybe I'll name the tumor Louie, but I didn't. And so, yeah, that is a non-curable malignant brain cancer. that was supposed to kill me in two to three years. That was the prognosis we got, two to three years. So we were super aggressive in treatment protocols and that was 14 years ago. this past Thanksgiving. 14 years. So you're beyond the timeline that you should be living. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I am on what they call the long end of the tail. It's like a bell curve in regards to when people die of this. And I am on the very long end of the tail, which means I'm starting to be an anomaly among. The math of it, right, is I'm an anomaly. We would use the word miracle or healed. They would just use the phrases long end of the tail, anomaly, something we can't really explain, even though my doctor is a believer, is like, this is a miracle. Wow. So do you live then not thinking about this, thinking that you are healed? Or do you have things that back your mind like, hmm, that fireplace could come up to my face any time now? No, probably not now. I mean, not at 14 years. But certainly for that first decade after, any weird kind of sensation would create just a second or two of panic. Like anybody listening to this or watching this right now, every once in a while your hand will tingle. Or you might get dizzy for a second. And almost all of you aren't going to think anything about that. Well, for a decade, if I had anything like that, I'd be like, oh, shit. And then I would start to wonder. like, oh, when was my last MRI? Or I wonder if it could come on that quick. Or I would get a little anxious about it. But here now at the 14-year mark, I don't think much about it at all. I still have to go in and get scans annually. But. I think the Lord healed me. And I think the data is that the Lord healed me. They were very aggressive in the surgery and very aggressive in the treatment protocol. So a lot of times with primary brain, they can't get all of the tumor. But in my case, they felt like they really did. Now, there were still tumor cells in my brain wall around the resection wall, because those things are like, they would cut the bulk of the tumor, but then these little strands would still be going into the brain. And so that's why the treatment after surgery, to radiate the wall of the resection and then to put me on the low dose key or the chemo to kill anything else that might be fast growing. And so that's been the journey. That first decade, I could get real nervous often. But at 14 years now, I'm just like, you know what? The Lord healed me. That's just my hands tingling right now. There you go. What was the... most difficult part of it emotionally and spiritually. I think we've all heard the stories of folks. Fortunately, I don't have any of my personal stories to throw in right now, but we've all heard the stories of how people have reacted to chemo and radiation and all that stuff. I'm curious for you as a seasoned believer, a spiritual leader, what was the most emotionally or spiritually difficult part of it? difficult thing for you to go through that in the early stages? I assume was the early stages. Yeah, so there were two things. One was my kids and the thought that my kids might hate Jesus or grow bitter towards the Lord because of what they saw happen to me was a, and then in all honesty, all I saw was loss. I know a little bit about your story, Brian, like my... I don't come from the best of places. In a very real way, there's a lot of generational stuff that's going to die with me. And I very much wanted to walk my daughters down the aisle at their wedding. I very much wanted to participate in Reed becoming the kind of men that I want Chandler Men to be moving forward. I want to be the guy that turns the bloodline. And I wanted to be there to see it and be there to participate in it. And And I ask God for those things. I know in my guts to die is gain. I know that. And yet I wanna grow old with my wife. I love her. She's my best friend. I wanna, I want those latter years with her. I wanna, like I said, I wanted to walk my, I don't want some other man to walk my daughters down the aisle. I didn't want some other man speaking into my son. I wanted that. And so I asked the Lord for that, and I told the church I wanted those things. I wasn't gonna be, you know, like play the good boy and be like, here's what the right answer is. I know the right answer. To die is gained. Had I died, would I be full of regret and remorse? No. Would I still be like, oh, I still wanna walk my, no. I mean, I would just be mesmerized in the presence of Jesus. I know that. And yet I wanted it. And anyone who's watching or listening to this, okay. Like God knew I wanted those things. So to like give the church answer and not the honest one didn't help me, didn't help my wife, didn't help anybody in my congregation. So I just said, I want these things that I'm asking for. And here's what's cool, Brian. Man, I just walked my oldest down the aisle two weeks ago. I was just going to ask you what I mean. First one. Did you fall like a baby? All day. Oh my gosh! Unbelievable! Here's God's kindness. And I'll text you this picture after we get off this. But as I'm... As I pull up to the venue, there is a full rainbow across the horizon over this little facility that we had her wedding in. And man, I was all ready. So I just sat and I mean, I just ugly, out loud wept for like 10 minutes in my truck before I even got it. I had a friend that goes, you look a lot uglier if you try to hold it in, so you should just let it go. And so it was just such a great day. But man, that was a. I was blown away because the weekend before or two weeks before, Reed had turned 18. And we had kind of had his rite of passage like, hey, I'm telling you, you don't have to wander. You're a man now. And here's what that means. And we had his little rite of passage thing at 18. So Reed's 18, walking Audrey down the aisle, Sweet Nora's 14. And so the Lord's been so kind, so generous. But that was the hardest part is my kids. To look at them was to feel and see loss. And so that was brutal for me. And then the other part, and this is probably more grimy, is I found a kind of gross self-righteousness in me. And what I mean by that is it all happened around Christmas time, right? I had the seizure at Thanksgiving. I have. a craniotomy. And then I'm in inpatient rehab for a week and a half, learning how to work again. And then I get home, and it's in Dallas. It's a white Christmas. I mean, like two foot of snow, which I mean, up there, you're like, great. But down here, that doesn't happen. And so the kids are outside playing in the snow, and everybody's having this gay old time. And I can't. I mean, I'm sitting on the couch. And so I'm sitting on the couch, and the kids are playing. outside in the snow and I'm kind of looking out the window. And everybody sends those kind of Christmas cards with them and their dog dressed up as one of the family members. And I saw a card, they were a couple at the church, and he had been like just a serial adulterer, just a real piece of crap. And I mean, cruel to his daughters, unfaithful to his wife. And I just remember thinking, really, Lord? You're gonna... put me through this? Like I've done nothing but say yes to you at every turn. You're gonna put me through this and not him? And then the spirit caught me real quick and reminded me I'm sounding a lot like the older brother in Luke 15, you know? And so I needed to repent of that. And that was actually, that was a part of my journey. And I think part of what the Lord did in the deeper parts of my heart in that season was to kind of crush and put some of that to death in me. And so those were the two things that were most difficult for me. One was the loss of. what I thought was, you know, participating in the life of my children and family, the thought of some other man marrying my wife, you know, and then, and then this, this self-righteousness that I was finding me, this lack of grace towards others, because I felt God was being unjust towards me. Now, did you see- Those would be the two things. You mentioned the self-righteousness. You it sounds like you noticed it snapped out of it repented immediately or that linger for a while or that keep happening off and on you had to keep turning your back on it. Yeah it just kept happening. Yeah it just kept happening off and on so if it wasn't something like that it would be it would be like this moment where I'm on an airplane and I see this guy that's 300 pounds overweight with his whole hand in a giant bag of M&Ms. And he's pushing him in his face, and M&Ms are falling all over the ground. And again, I'm like, really? Me, Lord? I have eight clean. I have worked out. And me? You're letting this happen to me? And so, man, I wish I could tell you that it was just a one time. And I'm so godly that as soon as I was made aware, I didn't struggle at all. But it was a. I think the whole 18 months and the more I hurt, the more apt I was to do that. So the sicker I felt on the chemo or the weaker I felt, or if I missed something because of chemo, like if I was unable to go to something with my family or unable to participate in something because I felt too weak or too sick. That's when I would get nasty inside. And the Lord was so kind, right? Here I am despite all that. He didn't just go ahead and kill me and bring me home. I mean, he was so kind. We have a friend of mine who leads worship here at our church at Crossroads. And he said he's had more than his share of pain and difficulty with his family. He's lost his sister to cancer who's younger than him, lost his mother to cancer. miscarriages, just any, and he said, once I heard him say once a small event, he said to God, seriously, God, aren't there any family benefits here? Yes, there's not anything on the other side of this. Yeah, I thought about that. I thought, yeah, if I had that too, I would be thinking the same thing. I'm I've had my difficulties, but I've not had any cancer scares. I've not had any. illnesses from my kids. I haven't had any untimely deaths from my family. So at this point here, I'm feeling like I'm relatively charmed. And I would have thought though, if I was you, I probably would have thought that like, come on, guy, don't get a gimme here. You have asked me to give up three or four pretty significant things. And I quickly laid those things on the altar. I would remind him. I laid my Isaac down. What were those things? Yeah. What were those things? I mean, they'll probably sound silly to others. But to me, they were significant. I really wanted to go to Texas A&M, to college. I had been accepted. I had roommates lined up. I knew what I was going to major in. I had strong Christian friends. There was dynamic ministries there that I was connected to that I wanted to go serve in. And I was, it was middle of the night and I was reading a book. I hadn't been a Christian, but probably a year, maybe a year and a half at that time. And in the middle of the night, the Lord was just like, yeah, that's not what we're doing. That's not where we're going. And so then, of course, He didn't want to tell me what we were doing or where we were going, just that I wasn't to do that. And I felt it as strongly as I've ever felt anything in my life. the next day and by the way I'm not I'm not growing up in a house where my parents are like you should hang out here for a little bit longer they're like come what's the plan and so I called A&M the next day canceled coming called the guys I was gonna roommate told him I wasn't coming of course everybody's got questions so now why well and then I've got the terrible answer of well I just feel like the Lord's telling me this is where he wants now what's interesting is that's a great every that's very everything I love I'm at my wife because of that decision. I'm at the village church because of that decision. The ministry that God's given to me came out of that decision. And so, but it was a thing where I said, I choose you. I choose you, Lord, I don't choose me, I choose you. And so there was that and a couple of other times where I just said, no, if that's where you're going, I want to be with you. So I'll say no to all the desires of my heart because you're my biggest desire. And I was just kind of reminding the Lord of those things. I felt like I had seen that in the Bible, where you look at Moses going, oh, no, these are your people. This was your idea. This was your. And I felt like, OK, Jeremiah's praying like that. So I just thought, hey, I have said I have laid these things down. I don't feel like I deserve this. Not that he was the one giving it to me as some sort of punishment, right? But that. It would just happen to me when I felt sickest or I felt like I was missing out or, you know, there were games I couldn't go to that my kids played in like significant ones. There were vacations that the kids are all out at the beach and I'm laying on the couch trying not to, you know, throw up anymore. And it was just that, those were dark times. Yeah. And so those were the two big wrestles. Yeah. Can you get that verse in Romans eight? God causes all things to work together for those who are called according to his purpose. And it's, I think it's that all that gets us tripped up. All things. God causes things to work together for, yeah, I get that all. It's really hard, I would have thought if it was you, to believe that verse that, hey, my cancer and living 10 years, this is gonna be good. That's, that'd be a tough stretch, but here you are in your situation 14 years later, and that's absolutely what's happened. Oh, there's just no question that I look back on that season, never wanting to go through anything like that again, and can see that God did significant things in the deeper places of my heart. And I can look back now in all honesty and go, man, I'm grateful that the Lord rooted me with that season. And so it has worked together for good. And at the time, I did not wanna hear that from anybody. Don't throw that verse at me. And I've even counseled others. The best thing you can do to someone who's in that situation is what Job's friends did at first before they opened their mouths. And that's just sit there and cry with them. Be present and weepy without kind of the spiritual platitudes. You mentioned that you wanted to turn your back on your bloodline. You had a difficult background. I don't know much about that. Tell me about that. Well, mom grew up in backwoods of Missouri, and her daddy was a director of missions for the Southern Baptist, but kind of a real fundamentalist kind of almost snakes and poison kind of background. Man, he grew up rough, rough. And so dad was, you know, drank too much and had a temper. And so I grew up in this really strange home where you weren't supposed to listen to secular music, but dad might beat the hell out of you. You know, it was a weird kind of, I think very early on, I was like, I don't want what dad has. So I don't want the party scene world thing. But in my mom's explanation of why we were in this house, Jesus was keeping us in the house. So I certainly wasn't interested in Jesus either. He's the one that's keeping us in this. Right. You know? Like why in the world would Jesus put us in this house with this man? And now by the grace of God, he has moved profoundly and beautifully in both of their lives. You should be concerned about that cough, by the way. Coughs generally precede issues with your brain. That's funny. It doesn't, trust me. I know it's a cold from last week. Alright, back to Jesus in your mouth. It's a cold that's been lingering for two weeks. Both of my parents have had profound encounters with the Lord. with are not the parents that I know now. In fact, my dad is tender and soft and kind. And I wrote him an email recently, just he's getting up in age. He broke his hip about three months ago. He's got COPD. And I sometimes wonder what kind of man my dad would have been if any man in his life would have been able to see what was good and right and beautiful in him and call it out of him. But he didn't get that. and so then he put on like a gruff exterior to protect himself. But he's not gruff, he's super tender and you could crush him with a word, but you'd be scared to look at him. He's a big man and thick and put off like I'll whip your ass vibes. But he wouldn't, he really is a tender kind spirit and I've often wondered. what would have his life been like, and my mom's life been like, and me and my sister's life been like, if there had been just some man when he was a boy, or some man when he was a teenager, or some man when he was in his 20s, that just began to call out of him the good stuff that God put into him. And I think about that even as I have opportunity to see students in our student ministry, or kids in our kids ministry, or young adults in our young adult ministry, specifically I mean, even elementary, I walk in what we call KV2, which is our third, fourth, and fifth graders. And I'm going to that side of the room with all the boys on it. And I'm dapping them up. And I'm looking them in their face. And if I see something I can compliment or call out, I'm doing it. Because who knows what could change, generationally could change, just for one quick. Right. confident, man, you're going to be incredible. I can see there's strength in you. I mean, that'll that changes everything. 100% does. And so yeah, that was that was my upbringing, then got saved because of a friend in football. So you going around with your church reminds me of another thing I want to talk to you about, you know, this is called the aggressive life, and the rest of life doesn't mean it's always the most. bombastic forward thinking thing you could do. It's just a very intentional thing where like, you could have just let it drift it along, but you went, no, I'm not gonna do that. Sometimes stopping doing something is very aggressive. You've heard me sing your kudos right now, you got a good sized church, you could have a larger church actually, you got great communication chops. And you made the decision a number of years ago to go against the grain of what a lot of us have done. And that is to not have different sites church, for those of us who are not in the quote unquote church awareness game, you know, one of the things that we've many of us have done as used to be your church. Like if you got past 200, it was amazing. Then it was have got back past 1000 was amazing. Then it would be saying, well, it's sell your building and go open up something else that's bigger and then eventually it's like you're done, you're done. And so what people started doing was saying, well, let's open up another campus, another site, a facility, beam the message in there, because normally it's a top-notch communicator who can do that, and the church stays online in the same vision, and you can go do bigger and more fun things together. And a lot of us have kind of gone that path. Matt has gone that path too, because he had all the normal things to be able to do that. Because you can't do that if you're just an administrator. You can't do that if you're just a counselor. You've got to have some level of... I might even say showmanship. You've got to be able to create some level of engagement and enthusiasm, people being around you for 60 or 70 minutes you're in your church. Anyway, number of years ago, you had it going and you said, you know what? I don't want to do multi-same way. We're not going to do that. We're going to spin these off to separate campuses. And I just don't feel like doing that. That was a really aggressive mood. Lead us through that. Cause some... Being aggressive doesn't always mean you do more and more. Sometimes it's like, no, I'm going to chop something off. I just don't want to. So for you, why did you choose to do that move? Yeah, that's a great question. There were probably a lot of different streams that came together leading up to that decision. If I could, for the sake of the podcast and the length of the podcast, I saw in the future two endings. One was I could have this giga-monster church, you know, we were five sites, closing in on 20,000, and I'd have to find someone uniquely gifted like I am to step in here and lead it, or I could put my energy into creating a thousand biblically serious, spiritually alive, zealously missional churches. all over the place. And so what I wanted to do is take the resources, both the financial resources and the resource of influence, and put it towards planting churches as opposed to planting campuses. And so the idea in my head was, I've got another 15, 20 years. Do I want to, at the end of it, try to find someone who's gonna be like a needle in a haystack, or do I wanna look out and see, maybe they won't have the same anointing I have, maybe they won't have the same gift of gathering I have, but they'll be, and here's my little phrases, they'll be biblically serious, they'll be serious about the book, they'll be spiritually vibrant, it'll be a place where there's life and conversion and joy and gratitude and gladness. and they'll be zealously missional. They'll be serious about the mission of God to seek and save the loss. And if I could think about whether my life had been successful or not successful, which those are bad terms for a Christian anyway, right? It's obedience or disobedience. God gives the increase, not us. We can work ourselves to the bone and never hit these metrics. But for me, it was, do I want... to have, oh, look at this empire that I've built with my own little branded, well-manicured, well-built-out ecosystem? Or did I want to let it be a little messier and let's plant churches that plant churches? I mean, I'm already in that game. I've been the executive chairman of Axe 29, the president before that, for well over a decade now. And so the idea at the village, though, was I feel like with Five staffs, five locations, each location was good sized. I was always shuffling the deck and I felt like even in my own heart and in preaching, I became more and more focused on like managing this organization rather than being at the missional edge, which is what I feel like I was born to be in. I'm most happy when things are grimy and messy and people are becoming Christians. And I'm OK that the church looks a little immature because of that. And it just felt like it was getting real clean and real polished. And so I was like, no, no. Let's just give all the energy and resources we're putting in. And we became, really for three years, I think became the fastest shrinking church. I don't know if they keep those records. But we intentionally became the fastest. We gave away half a million dollars. Well, gosh, I think we gave away $11 million in real estate. And then we gave each campus that rolled off half a million dollars to make sure they weren't worried about paying their staff for the first year or two. And they could just go get it. And they are thriving. And then they have planted churches of their own. Well, you know, part of rolling them off was, let's give them the summer to do localized preaching. And then what we realized is even with my gifting, when you turn the video back on in the fall, they were like, OK, who's this guy? Why isn't Jamin preaching? Or who's this guy? Why isn't Neil preaching? And even as gifted as the Lord's made me, there was something about that localized incarnational guy that was visiting them in the hospital and doing the pastoral shepherding things that endured or endeared them. together and knit them together in a unique way. And so that's kind of the high level. We've done it. I've got zero regrets. Now, one of the things that we're doing right now is the building that we're in. We were in because we built it as like a broadcast suite. When we designed it, we weren't thinking, this is a local church too. We were thinking, this is where we're going to shoot and push out to these campuses. But now what's been really fun the last couple of years is to dream for and think about Flower Mound as a local church that has global reach. And so that's been fun. So we're in a campaign right now to retrofit the West Side. We're in a shopping center, much like you guys are, except we couldn't build the ad on like you guys did in the sanctuary. So yeah, so we're in the middle of all that right now, and that's been a lot of fun. Yeah, one of the things I liked about your, I saw one of your interviews back before I knew you on that decision, which I was appreciated and impressed by, is you were not going to allow people to grab you and bring you over as their anti-multisite spokesman. That's right. You were very clear like, no, this is something that I don't want to do. That's right. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, no, multi-sci was amazing. We saw a lot of people become Christians. We raised up a lot of pastors and discipled a lot of people. It wasn't the model. It was, yet again, it was obedience to the Lord. This is what you have for me? OK, let's do it. Because it didn't make any sense. I mean, gosh, the first time I presented it to the elders, it was voted down nearly unanimously. They were like, that's insane. You would be giving away tens of millions of dollars and these amounts of resources. And how would you, you've got this massive central staff. What would you do with that? And my thing was like, if we get greenlit by the Lord, we'll figure all of that out. But it, I mean, it got shot down in the elder room completely. And then, two years later, all of a sudden it was revisited. And that's when the elders were like, yeah, we think the Lord's saying, yes, let's go. And so- I'm always looking to demystify things. Did it start as obedience or did it start as this is just not the kind of ministry I want personally to be involved with? So I think it always starts with some sort of What's a good word for it? Just a check. So I don't think I've ever just kind of had a blatant like, thus saith the Lord. I've had a check in my spirit that leads me to pray and consider and think and create some space to do that. And then I tend to loop in a couple of people, kind of inner circle people. And then we start to pray. And then I think I'm almost always wanting to get to what I'll just call robust dialogue, which who disagrees with this, I want him to convince me that I'm not right, I'm not hearing from the Lord, that this doesn't make sense. And then even in the doesn't make sense, if we're in the doesn't make sense robust dialogue, right? We're arguing in a way that we're arguing about an idea, it's not personal, I don't dislike you, I just think what you're saying's wrong. And that's to me where I'll start to feel, no, I think the Lord wants this. And it's been a rare thing in my 21 years at the Village to play that card. In fact, I didn't play that card for this. They, in their own arguments, started to go, well, actually that might be better, not worse. And actually, maybe that is what the Lord's. And it was that kind of coming to consensus two years after there was no consensus. that we took as the Lord green lighting. This is something I'm asking you to do. Because the board was, we should do this. That's cool. I just had my exhaustive annual physical that I have every year. And it was crazy. The doctor looked at my blood work from this year versus last year. And he said, what are you doing? He said, your numbers have always been great on cholesterol and triglycerides and all that stuff. He said, but they've actually gone down. He said, we would never see that happen. And he said, what are you doing? I went, I don't know, but they had dawned on me. It could be two reasons. is Flying K Ranch. They're producing some of their most mouthwatering, healthy burgers, steaks, roasts I've ever had. They're in Finley, Ohio. Flying K raises their beef with no hormones or antibiotics. So you know you're getting the most natural product. It's a family business, partnering with state national certification boards to ensure both cattle and customers are happy. Find out more, place your orders at flyi That's flyi I'm liking it a lot. 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Try AG1 and get a free one year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkag1.com slash aggressive life. That's drink AG1. dot com slash aggressive life. Get yourself some. Well, I love that, gosh, maybe God was leading you to spin off the administrative challenges of having different sites and all that is. It's very, very challenging to free you up to unleash your teaching ministry more across the broadcast. Yeah, like even coming up and speaking at Crossroads, which was so fun, which was so incredible. Like that couldn't have happened before. That was I want to create space to do things like that and serve a guy that I love and see where he is And like it was so fun to come up. I mean your team loves you And that says something to me, you know, they don't they weren't haggard or beat up or bull. They they were like so love the work of God in that place. And that means for a guy to be there as long as you've been there and to be beloved by those who are putting in the time to make it happen. It's the worship team and the production team and the guys that, man, they better be on and better be. And man, they just so loved it. So all that to say, I love that. I love getting to do that. I love one of your things that you said before about what overcoming brain cancer taught you. As you said, it taught you to not take yourself so seriously and to not be as rigid in your thinking. Yeah. Gosh, it almost makes me wish that we all got brain cancer. Because we got a bunch of us who take ourselves too seriously or just too darn rigid. Yeah, I think so. I certainly was that way. And partly it's, I think it's... Maybe it's particularly how you get discipled and what stream you fall into. And I mean, I was just in a stream where there was like, everything was a gospel issue, it felt like. So everything, you know, had heaven and hell on the line. And that's not true. There are secondary issues and then there are tertiary issues. And I wanna be a guy. who celebrates the work of Jesus in places that I wouldn't do it like that. But man, praise God that he's working that way because I have a preference. And I have a, you know, I wrote a book called Creature of the Word and I wrote it with Eric Geiger and a guy named Josh Patterson. And it was kind of a church leadership book. And we talked about kind of theology, philosophy and practice are kind of the three pieces really present in any church and they kind of flow out of each other. is almost tied to what you believe about God and what he wants. And then your practice flows out of your philosophy. So you make an argument that everything goes back to theology. But man, I just know way too many guys who see things differently than I do, but who still deeply love the Bible. And they really want to see people become fully formed followers of Jesus Christ. And there was a season in my life. where it was easy to vilify a guy around a secondary issue because I could tie it back to. he sees the scriptures and it's going to lead to, you know, whatever him baptizing cats and whatever. And, you know, so it, yeah, that I think I'd just been on a journey. And during that time, the Lord was kind to, to loosen my grip a little bit on things that I think are important, but secondary. I was just on the podcast with Ian Crone. You ever hear him? The Enneagram guy, do you know him? Yeah. I know who he is. Yeah. Very good guy. And he got on this whole thing of, as we're younger, younger men, everything's got to be black and white. And I'm like, yeah, I was there too. I'm just seeing more gray right now. And I actually think in many ways, you have to see it in black and white as a younger man, or else you're never going to move. And you certainly won't build much. Right. I know this is, what the hell did she build? Right, I mean, Jesus, all of his disciples were young men. You know, there's only one, Peter, who was over 18. We know that because he, Jesus did the miracle of having a coin and a fish that paid the temple tax for Peter and Jesus, because they're the only ones who were of age. Old men, yeah. All the rest were younger. So Jesus puts his time into young guys who are black and white thinkers, because they're the builders. He didn't put his time into rehabbing. older religious people who were sold in the Jewish faith. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. And that's why the, I mean, and the disciples were exhausting and never quite figured it out. And oftentimes would say really stupid crap and just such patience from Jesus. And I mean, I'm super grateful that, well, what will happen now is when I see those young guys, I'm like, yeah, I remember that. I remember that. And again, like I said, more father than brother now. Well, it's also part of our ministry family of origin. You know, your family of origin impacted you big. But I also think the very first ministry that we're involved with as an attender or a volunteer or whatever, that first one's our ministry family of origin. And if it's whatever their theology is, whatever their practices are, like we're in on that, that's just it. And we've got to exert a high amount of energy to come out of it on the other side and to change. And eventually you can't, but it's there, man. It is. Yeah, and the Lord graciously, and that's one of the things I think suffering of all kinds does, is purifies that stuff. Right. And you were saying earlier, you haven't had this, you haven't had this, you haven't this, and that's fine because it really is, suffering really is kind of relative. And what I mean by that is, Like people have often said, well, man, that's nothing compared to what you've gone through. But I'm like, well, OK, how does, but it's still, this is a significant loss for you. This is a significant fear of yours. So sure, it's not brain cancer and death, but it's this thing, and this thing's very real for you, and it's very disorienting for you. And so I think suffering of all kinds does that work. That's what the book tells us, right? That it's producing in us something. believe that. So about a year ago you had another kind of suffering. Sure. Yeah, sure, you know, this is going. You had another kind of suffering that led to, gosh, some embarrassment, some humiliation, some, I don't want to get all into it here and there, but I'm just curious from your, it wasn't a form of suffering that wasn't physical. It was more personal in nature and things that are true, things that aren't true. We're not going to get all of that. But I'm just curious, how you dealt with that form of suffering, was it the same tools that you dealt with when you had your physical suffering, or was it different tools? Well, I think some of those tools come into, the tool of resilience is one that I think everyone's going to have to develop if they're going to make it to the end of the long journey home. with gladness. But certainly some of those tools came in handy, but then there were other ones that were either formed in that season or that I had to tap into in that season. And more, I think the ones I had to tap into more frequently in that season was my understanding, and this is a theological thing, my understanding of authority, where it lied, and what God was calling me to. in letting him be my defender rather than let me be my defender. Because I'm fast with the mouth and good with arguments and man, I just. through the whole thing the Lord was asking me to be quiet. And what's funny in all honesty, I haven't read a single word about myself that was written at that time. I'm too petty for that, Brian. Very smart. I am too petty for that. And I've learned the people who love them, so Matt Chandler right now, they're probably on the clock to one day being disappointed in me. And when I let them down, they're gonna swing so quickly over to the group that thinks I'm the problem with Christianity. And so I don't want to believe the praise, and I'm not going to take most of the criticism. I have a very strong group of men and women in my life that I have no secrets from. I mean, they see my tax returns. I have no secrets. And they have corrected and rebuked and encouraged and spoke life into. And they know me so I can receive it the way it should be received. Because what I learned really in the last 15 years, really after the cancer, is that when all of a sudden I became more of a known person is that there's this group of men and women, they don't know me, but man, they love me. And if you had a video of me clubbing a baby seal to death, and you put that on in the video, they would be like, well, what happened right before then? Because Matt Chandler's not gonna club a baby seal, and it doesn't matter what happens with me, they're with me. And then there's this other group of people that no matter what I do, they're against me. They're smaller, but they're louder. And any little piece of humanity in me is going to get nitpicked and attacked. And then there's this new group of people. They're probably indifferent. But if I'm a schmuck, it certainly helps clicks to their website or sales of their, you know, rag. And the truth is that no one in that knows me at all. They don't know anything about me. But there's a group of men and there's a group of women who do know me. And that's where I'm going to receive the criticism. And that's where I'm going to receive the push. And that's where I'm going to receive the encouragement, because they see me day in and day out. I mean, behind me on that white couch were two of my elders earlier this morning. We call it a look back, look ahead. It's kind of a mid-year review. And man, they had some things they wanted me to work on. And they sang my praises. And I'm going to receive all of it from them, because they see me all the time. They've talked to my wife. They see and know my kids. So Darryl, who lives with his mom and is blasting me on the internet, I'm not overly concerned. I'm just not, and maybe Darryl doesn't live with his mom or maybe there's a good reason he lives with his mom. But I just don't want to care and I don't want to be resentful and I don't want to carry those things. So I don't, I'm not reading, I didn't read a single word of it. What happened to me is... Like other people would say, I mean, I had like six people apologize to me for Christianity today. And so apparently, they wrote or said something that was terrible. I'll never read it. But I had people apologize, or like the whole world was just pinging me going, praying for you. The Lord laid you on my heart. I'm like, oh, the Lord laid me on 1,000 people's hearts today. So I'm guessing the internet's pretty bad about me today. And so yeah, man, I don't. I'm going to. And then, man, I've been through brain cancer. I mean, I have. It's a different thing if you endure something like that to then just endure kind of the normal mob coming after you. And the people of the village know me. I mean, I've been here over 20 years. They know we're not a good old boy club. They know how we operate. They see me close up. So it was a different bag, I think. But it's hard to divorce that season am that was such a significant valley, that there were things down there that let me know it's going to be all right. And no given three week news cycle is going to define my life. And yeah, man, you bring up a really good point. We talk on this on podcasts a lot about loneliness, stemming the time of loneliness, try to get us to not be isolated. And anyone hears that, of course, everyone says, Oh, yeah, absolutely. No, no, I don't want to be lonely. Yeah, I need When you get into some of the logistics of it, it gets a little bit dicey, like you just mentioned. Showing people your tax returns. Yeah. Like, jeez. Yeah, yeah, that would do it. You showed some other people your tax returns, that would build some different relationships. I was in a conversation with a guy the other day, a couple weeks ago, and I just told him what my total net worth was. I've asked people, which is way beneath his, by the way. Way beneath. I figured you weren't having that conversation with someone who is making 25 a year. No, no, no. Grand, that is. No, no, no. I shared my net worth. He looked at me a little concerned, I think. But. He's like, you doing all right? Yeah, right, exactly. But it's not about that practice. It's just like, those are the ways you build relationships. That's how. you know that you really have a great relationship. I make a major purchase. I always ask my friends, I'm going to do X. Should I do X? What do you think? What buddy am I, Mark? Last truck I had, I bought cost $80,000. I said, dude, it's good. So trucks are these days, at least the ones I want, the one I want to get. It's 80 grand. It's crazy for a truck. It is crazy. It's pretty sweet though. But it's, yeah, it is crazy. And like, it was so crazy. Like I got to, I got to make sure that, you know, I'm thinking this right, seeing this right, just kind of opening up my life before people and you're doing that. And I just want to tell our listeners, Hey, this is the aggressive life. Isn't about. let's sell it all and go start a business. It's not always about that stuff. It's about these sort of aggressive personal decisions that other people aren't doing because they're too hard. It's too difficult. And if you want a life that stands above the other lives, you got to climb over the other lives, which is doing things that other people aren't willing to do, which are these kinds of things. And that's why I'm inspired by you and your story. It's good, brother. Come on. All right, man, so we're coming down to the end of our time. Is there anything you want to talk about that we haven't talked about? No, man, anything you want to talk about that we haven't talked about? Well, Dirt gave me a bunch of, Dirt always gives me these lightning round things, but it wouldn't be fun for you because you're such a master communicator. He would like, he would do- He would do too well. He would do like a one sentence response and have a memorized Bible verse for every single one. Yeah, right. I don't know if that's true. Yeah, yeah, that's true. It might be, but I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely true. No question it is. But- I don't know, anything else we should talk about here? This is a, we have the great Matt Chandler, it's only the first time. So what should people know going into the new year if their life is not perfect? Oh, there you go, here we go. This is where I wrote Matt's Alley. Captain Sermon on Demand, all right. I want you to, this is great. I want you to end our time with a little mini homily, like fire us up, get us ready for the new year. What should we be thinking? What should we be doing? Ready? Watch guys, this is going to be unbelievable. That's why this guy is here. You're like Pavlov's dogs right now. Put me in coach, put me in your slobbering. Okay, ready? Go. Man, I think what I would say to anyone, maybe especially in this moment of history, It's 2024, gosh, who knows what's coming. I think we know what's coming in the fall, which is just a train wreck of divisiveness and anger. Then, and here's what I'm saying to anyone who will listen right now. This is our moment of history. Like God has placed you and I here for such a time as this. And the Bible lets us know, like I think of Psalm 139, that you've been uniquely wired. that wonderfully made text, that's not just for women's ministry. That's, if you're listening to this, you have been fearfully and wonderfully made by God. And if you, after this, wanna open up your Bible to Psalm 139, what you're gonna see is that, like, he made you the way you are, according to the text, for the days that he has for you. That there are good deeds and good days that he has for you to live into. because of how he's wired you and how he's built you. And then, man, I always like to go over to Acts 17, where the apostle Paul in Athens is saying that God has allotted the boundaries and the periods of time in which we might dwell. And he gives the reasons why that we've been uniquely placed. And he says that men might seek him and find him, though he is not far from any of us. And so what the apostle Paul is saying is that the reason that we know God is not far from your neighbors and God is not far from your coworkers and God is not far from those men and women you see at your kids' games or when you're doing your hobby is because you're there. And so you get this picture of you, not guys like Brian and I, you. being uniquely wired and uniquely placed by God so that men and women might come to know him and see him as the beautiful, glorious king of everything that he is. And I would hate for you to be bored in 2024 or to shrink back in 2024 because of all that's gonna go on. And it's gonna be a mess. And yet, this is our moment. It's not C.S. Lewis's moment. He's gone, he's home, he's run his race. It's not Billy Graham's, it's not Martin Luther's, it's ours. Like we're God's big plan for this moment. And I would love for you to live into that because I think that some of you are gonna see friends and family members and people who are acquaintances now come to powerfully and profoundly know King Jesus because of your faithfulness to live into the life that he's given you. There you go, Dirt. Wow. That's what I would say. You did it. Great, thank you. That's awesome, man. Cool. Dude, is there anything else you want to, do you want to have any advertisements? Like worship people, find more? No, you had a new book? Well, you did have a new book that got canceled. Now it's coming out again, right? Or what's going on? It's coming out again. Okay, good. Yeah, so that's funny. You can, like I said, I'm trying to figure out like how to steward well. the platform God's given me. So I started, like I said, I caught up to 1998. I've got a website, past They've got a newsletter, both one for pastors and then one for men and women who aren't in ministry. They could sign up for that. And then I do have a book coming out on May 7th called The Overcomers, which is basically, it's a high-level study of the book of Revelation as a as a means of courage. in this current moment. So even some of what I just said is coming out of this book that I think has been profoundly twisted and stolen from the people of God for all its silliness. Like it is such good news. And it was written to people who were in far more dire situations than we were in order to encourage them and build them up, put steel in their spine and give them a ferocious zeal for the glory of God in their day. And so that comes out May 7th. And I think by the time this airs, that'll be public knowledge and we'll have things going on around that. So you're talking revelation about how barcode is the mark of the antichrist and COVID vaccine. COVID vaccine was then. Come on, Brian. That's so 90s of you that think barcode. It is. People always ask me about these things. I'm like, I always tell people, look, dude, I've been at this point, I've been around a long, long time. Isn't it funny? And you're like, I'm not gonna, I'll start telling you all the people who are supposed to be anti-Christ, all the people, all the things that were marked the beast. I'll just go through them one at a time and just, you know, calm your sack down. Just breathe. Just freaking relax, right. Yeah, if you really cared about it, you wouldn't be carrying around that iPhone like that. Yeah, right. No question. Yeah. Dude, this is great. I can't wait to see you in a couple of months. Our annual time's coming up. Pretty quickly. It's gonna be really, really good. Yep, looking forward to it. So. Yep, always. All right, folks. I'm thankful that you got to share some time with a friend of mine. He had some good stuff for us. I'm really challenged here, not just to think about what can I be going forward with, but also what needs to be canceled? What needs to be taken out of my life? So think about that here in 2024. This isn't called the interesting thoughts life. This is called the aggressive life. Let's get shit done. We'll see you next time on The Aggressive Life. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes and live events over at bryantome.com. My new books, a repackaged edition of The Five Marks of a Man and a brand new Five Marks of a Man Tactical Guide are open right now on Amazon. If you haven't yet, leave this podcast a rating and review. It really helps get the show in front of new listeners. And if you want to connect, find me on Instagram, at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.