Surrendering Your Plan for Your Great Joy

0:00 What's up, everybody? It's Mike Kelsey, one of the pastors here at McLean Bible Church, and I'm so glad you're joining us for this kind of mini podcast series that we're doing. Many of you know that our five-year vision as a church is called Let Down Your Nets. It comes from Luke chapter 5, where Jesus told Peter to put out into the deep and let down your nets. It was an invitation to participate in his mission, and we've summarized our five-year vision in four responses. So if Jesus is inviting us to participate in his mission, the way we are responding is summarized in 1, 5, 10, 20. So we want to reach one person at a time. We want to be a part of starting five new congregations in the D.C. metro area over the next five years. We want to disciple the 10,000 people who call McLean Bible Church home. And by God's grace, we want to help impact 20 million people around the world with the gospel. And so today's episode is focusing on that start five, starting those five new congregations.

0:59 And we're open-handed. We don't know if that's gonna be some more NBC locations. We do know for sure that we wanna be a part of helping to plant churches and help support and revitalize churches. And so today we got a great interview with Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile from Anacostia River Church in Washington, DC. And listen, you gotta hear this. Yes, we're going to talk about church planting. We're going to talk about ways that you could participate in supporting church planting. But, fellas, we got something here for you about dating and pursuing the woman you're interested in and what it looks like to discern God's will in your life. So check out this interview with Pastor Thabiti, and I hope you enjoy it and benefit from it. all right pastor t uh it's so good to have you uh with us man this is our first time uh doing this and uh just to kind of catch everybody up who's uh watching and we've talked about this we are in the midst of a church of really embarking on this five-year journey. It's a vision that we call Let Down Your Nets. And a part of that is just the core of the Great Commission and the core of our mission as a church, which is to make disciples and to multiply churches among all nations beginning here in Washington, D.C. And so a big part of that is church planting. And so I was thinking and praying like, man, who could I talk to to help us understand church planting?

2:32 And I was like, let me talk to the OG, the bishop himself. So everybody else said no. So Pastor Thabiti, Anya Bwile, you have been in ministry for a very long time. And I've been following your ministry for a really long time. And I've said this to you over and over again, privately. I want to say it publicly. You, in many ways, in addition to my grandparents, my parents, other mentors in my life, but you became a mentor from a distance before you became a friend and a mentor up close. And so I'm just thankful for your ministry. And we'll get into the ministry stuff, man, but just introduce yourself. Tell us about yourself. Tell us about your wife, your family, where you live, all that stuff. Well, thank you for that, brother, for those kind comments. And it's mutual, brother. You've been doing this for a while yourself, from evangelistic associations to local church pastoring. Man, they tell me I'm not young anymore.

3:27 I refuse to believe it The only opinion that matters in that is your wife So listen to your wife But yeah Christy, my wife, will be married This year will be 35 years We've got three kids, two girls Who are married with their husbands And living in other parts of the country And one son who's going to be a sophomore In college this year We call Southeast D.C. home We were blessed By the Lord to come back from eight years of ministry in the Cayman Islands to plant a church in southeast D.C. called Anacostia River Church. We have just celebrated 11 years. We have just, in God's kindness and this marvelous story, acquired our first building. And so new firsts, new opportunities, all those kinds of things. It's over in the Benning Ridge area neighborhood, still in southeast D.C. there, Ward 7.

4:23 so yeah we're plugging along I happen to serve as the president of the Creek Collective as a church planting organization that specifically focuses on planting churches in neighborhoods not adjacent to but in neighborhoods that are defined by majority minority populations and poverty and the issues that come along with poverty we think that's the hole in the donut when it comes to church planting and we feel like the Lord has called us to be part of pioneering some work in that area and seeing the gospel go to places that need fresh work to join the work that's already there. So yeah, that's me, man. Yeah, man. One quick question. You say Southeast with a T-H or with an F? No, it's with an F, bro. It's with an S. It's with an F. I'm just putting it all in. Not from the area. It's not Southeast. It's Southeast. It's Southeast. That's a shibboleth. You come over there with a T-H. We know you ain't around here.

5:19 All right, so I know, and we'll get into some of the church stuff and church planning stuff, but your wife, Christy, she's a legend, man. And I say that from a public standpoint. The books that she's written, the stuff she's written about literature and the literary nature of scripture. But I say that also offstage. The women I know personally who have been invested in by her, discipled by her, she really, really, really is a legend. So how long have you been married? Tell me, what's a couple things? I'm just trying to help you out. I'm trying to give you some cool points real quick. I appreciate it. Thanks for that, Lou. Tell me a couple things you love about being married to her. Oh, God. I love my life. And the reason I love my life is my wife has taught me to live. She's taught me to be generous. She's taught me to be kind. She's taught me to walk in faith. She's easily the best Christian in our home, easily the best writer and Bible teacher.

6:16 in our home. She has just been an extraordinary wife and mother and partner in the gospel and in the ministry. I love her laugh. Angels laugh when she laughs. When she get a good belly laugh, heaven laughs. I love her laugh. I love her eagerness to care for others. We could do this whole podcast on what I love about my wife. A couple things I love about my wife, man. She's an extraordinary woman. I knew I would marry her the first time I met her, first time I saw her. She took some convincing.

6:51 But 35 years later, man, by God's grace, we're still plugging, man. Wow, man. This, man, this wasn't even in the notes. But speak real quick to young men who want to be married. They're trying to figure out how do I position myself to be a godly husband and how do I look for and pursue a godly wife. Maybe some young men who are interested in ministry or just want to be just godly men who are married one day Any tips you can throw out there? Let me ratchet it up a little bit and then ratchet it down. I'm going to ratchet it up by saying who you choose to marry is the second most important decision you make in your life. The first was following Christ. The second is who am I going to spend the rest of my life with as one flesh partnering, laboring together with. And so you want to make that decision prayerfully. You want to make that decision intentionally. You want to make that decision with counsel in that way. Now I want to dial it down a little bit though, right?

7:45 Because I do think this is probably a generation that's given to anxiety about everything, right? And so what I want to say is relax. Relax, but still be intentional. You know, I find that a lot of Christian men, in the effort to be a godly Christian man who conducts a relationship well, actually de-skill themselves socially. Actually become socially awkward. You don't know how to say hi to a woman. You don't know how to have a casual conversation. Men and women are thinking, okay, if he asks me to go get coffee, then he's going to propose next week. It's kind of like, chill out. Chill out. Be natural. Be yourself. If you are socially awkward, fine. Then be your socially awkward self. But otherwise, I think a lot of this is down to providence. And so trust God.

8:39 Be sensitive to the Spirit. be sensitive to counsel in the Christian community, and then take intentional action. I think the thing I want to say to a lot of men is you have to relinquish your passive approach to friendships and relationships. I think I see a lot of men just kind of waiting for it to happen. Meanwhile, a lot of women, particularly in evangelical and conservative spaces, are waiting for a guy to initiate. And so as a consequence, nothing happens. and so I just want to say to brothers you've got to relinquish passivity not only when it comes to dating but then for the life of the marriage itself you're going to have to step forward, lead be the kinds of things that the Lord calls you to be as a man of God and that's going to require some intentionality so move forward, being who you are relax, God is working in his providence be intentional and then make those kinds of decisions in the community, trust the community.

9:39 And I think that's important. It may sound disconnected from church planting, from ministry. Part of the reason why I wanted to ask that is because I do think we want to be leading from the overflow. We have a leadership value here at the church, lead from overflow. And that's certainly spiritually leading from, you know, John 15, abiding in Jesus and bearing fruit out of that relationship and intimacy with him. But we should also be leading out of the overflow of who we are, which includes if you're married, it includes your marriage. And so the health and vitality of your ministry is tied to organically tied to the health and vitality of your of your marriage. And if you're single, leading out of your singleness in a healthy, God honoring way. So I think your marriage and family is a foundation of of your ministry. And I know from observing y'all and getting to spend some time with you that you live from that place.

10:42 And I'm sure you haven't always gotten it right, but that's a whole other podcast. I would love to record. That's a whole series podcast of things I have not gotten it right. All right, so let's talk about just spiritual life. Just quickly, and then we'll get into some church planting stuff. But before you were a church planter and before you were a pastor, you were a Christian. But you weren't always a Christian, and none of us are. And so how did you end up coming to faith in Jesus? What that journey looked like for you? Yeah, I grew up in a nominally Christian home in North Carolina. Did not understand the gospel. Didn't really know who Jesus was. A very vague sense of who Jesus is. And got arrested after my sophomore year in high school. I'd been an A student, you know, athlete, you know, all that sort of popularity in small southern towns that came with that. All that then just sort of vanished when I got arrested. that just was really uncertain about what the rest of my life would be. And the pastor who served our church at the time, Reverend F.D. Betts, who's 55 years the pastor of that church, came to mind.

11:43 You know you're OG when you go by initials. That's right. That's right. Reverend F.D. Betts. That's exactly right. That's a real OG, right? But he appeared in the courtroom on my behalf, man, and the judge beckoned him to the bench. I mean, we were in the middle of proceedings, and the judge says, Reverend Betts, is that you? He called him to the bench, and Reverend Betts goes up and talks for a couple of minutes and walks by and smiles at me and my mom and just keeps going. He was an old man at the time. And the judge dismissed the case. The next thing you know, the judge said, you know, we're dismissing the case and all that good stuff just on the strength of Reverend Betts' faithfulness and ministry over five decades in the community. And that was a second start for me. Now, I didn't use it well. I go off to college. I convert to Islam. And so I was a practicing Muslim for my undergraduate years and a year or so after, really zealous for Islam.

12:35 Because in that little nominal setting, I had come to think that Christianity was for little blue-haired women. It was for older folks, pie-in-the-sky stuff, not really making contact with real life. It had become my attitude. My dad had left the family. I didn't know it, but I was angry about that, just sort of roiling on the inside. So when I come to campus and see these clean-cut black men talking about marrying your women, raising your kids, caring for your community, et cetera, I was drawn like a moth to flame. I'm not seeing men like that. It's Muslim men. So I converted my sophomore year, practicing Muslim for several years, zealous for Islam. And then one year during Ramadan, I'm early for the fast, and I'm reading the Quran, and I'm reading Surah Maryam, which is the surah on Mary and the virgin birth. I'm like, why is this in the Quran, right?

13:31 This is, this is, why is this in the Quran? Because if Christ is virgin born, then how can he not be God's son? Yeah. And as I'm sitting there wrestling with that, other passages from the Quran come flooding into mind. The number of times that Jesus is referred to as Isa Amasi, the Messiah. So Messiah is a very Jewish conception. We know what the Messiah is supposed to do, or the references to the Holy Spirit, which, you know apologists try to explain away as references to Gabriel or one of the angels but just syntactically and semantically that just can't be true in any of those passages and so Islam began to unravel right and that that sent me into a year of bouncing between agnosticism and atheism when at the end of that year my wife and I we miscarried our first child and the Lord humbled us he humbled us in that miscarriage and I was sitting at home and a fellow who's going to be with the Lord now, Pastor John Cherry from over in Temple Hills.

14:33 Yeah. Yeah. He used to come on BET on Tuesday mornings. And he came on BET and he was just preaching systematically through Timothy about the life of the Christian mind. And it was like someone had rewritten the Bible and God began to draw me by his word. And we, long story short, came to D.C. one weekend to visit some close friends and their family and to go to that church. we're told to get there early because it was packed out and it was like my wife and i were the only ones in the building man he preached from exodus 32 a sermon called what does it take to make you angry wow um and there i was sitting out there this angry young man had had been in a in idolatry in islam um and he's talking about the golden calf and idolatry and he preaches jesus and the cross and the gospel from that text and in god's kindness he saved my wife and i both that Sunday morning under the preaching of the gospel.

15:27 Come back to North Carolina, get involved at a little Baptist church there. And about a year later, one of the assistant ministers go out to plant the church. And my wife and I, we join that team of folks to plant the church, Church on the Rock in Raleigh, North Carolina. Pete Rochelle is a pastor, served there for a couple of years as a lay elder. And then the Lord brings us to D.C. and get involved with Capitol Hill Baptist Church and join the staff there and then go from there to the Cayman Islands for eight years before coming back to plant Anacostra River Church. Yeah. Man, praise God, man. Yeah, God's been good to me, brother. He has been good.

16:03 Something I want to just double click on for a minute. Was it Reverend F.D. Betts, you said? What was his name? He showed up in the courtroom to testify on your behalf. That's right. Now, I grew up in a traditional black church. You know my dad is a pastor in D.C. Grandfather was a pastor in D.C. That doesn't strike me as odd. But I think for some people, they hear that as almost disconnected from pastoral ministry. But a lot of times in the black church tradition, those are not separate things. Him showing up to that courtroom was actually pastoral ministry for him. So help us just understand a little bit, because this kind of overflows a bit, I think, into the ministry that you're doing at Anacostia River Church. help give us some theological categories for how pastoral ministry is connected to that type of outreach, that type of justice work, that type of standing in the gap in the community.

17:03 Yeah. Well, particularly in a marginalized community, as the African-American community has been historically, historically, there have been very few positions of leadership that shepherd the community and the pastor being one of them. Teachers, sometimes, as well, et cetera. And so you can't exist in that community with this kind of docetic era where you're separating spiritual things from physical things. Those things are intertwined as they are in real life. And the call to the ministry really can't be separated between I'm called to preach or I'm called to pastor. And I think this is one of the errors. I think a lot of people today contract a call to pastoral ministry to preaching. This is why when a young man comes to me and says, I feel like I'm called to preach, I'm like, that's great. Where do you plan to do that?

17:58 I was thinking in the church, well, here pastors preach. We are pastors who preach. We're not preachers who sometimes pastor. And so I want to give them a bigger sense of what the scripture is teaching. because the scripture in the pastoral epistles and everything we see has this broad concern for the whole person. So we think about if we journey through the book of Acts, for example. Sure, Acts 2, Peter stands up and preaches the gospel and people get saved, but you're not two chapters later, and they're doing things like selling their possessions and distributing to each person as they had need. They're taking care of the physical needs of the body. Acts 6, you get the rise of those seven, perhaps prototypes for deacons, and what are they appointed to do? To distribute the daily food to the widows. And you see that same concern just through the book of Acts. You see that same concern in the pastorals.

18:51 So when Paul writes in 1 Timothy 5 to take care of widows who are truly in need, he's not referring just to teach them the scripture, although he has alluded to that early in 1 Timothy and in Titus when he talks about teach the older women, the younger women, et cetera. He's not just talking about teach sound doctrine. He's also talking about teaching what accords with sound doctrine, the life that grows out of that, which has a lot to do with the whole person, which has a lot to do with the social connections of the whole person and the kinds of social values that the Bible holds for, justice, mercy, truth, all those kinds of things. And so all of that in the historic black context is what a pastor is concerned with, right? And concerned with it to the extent that he's getting involved in it and doesn't see that as leaving the ministry of the word to go wait tables.

19:54 He is concerned with it to the extent that he is mobilizing his congregation in various ways to engage the community, etc. Concerned with it to the extent, and I think they have to be careful here, but to the extent that sometimes there's an overlapping of the church and the community in its concerns. There's not always a clean distinction between being a part of the body of Christ and being a part of the body politic. Again, there's healthy and unhealthy stuff in that. But that is just simply to say that there's no way to pastor with integrity in a community of need while ignoring those needs. Yeah. That just doesn't look like how Jesus moved. Doesn't look like how the early church moved. It doesn't look like the best examples from church history. Yeah.

20:46 And that's a big part of why I wanted to interview you, because you have planted a church. You're now pastoring a church that's in a different part of the DMV than we're in here in McLean Bible Church. So we're in five different locations in Maryland and Northern Virginia. And, I mean, you know some of the history of our church. We've helped support a lot of ministry around the DMV and in D.C., in particular, even in Anacostia. We've funded, we've catalyzed. But there are some dynamics that we need to be aware of and opportunities that we need to be aware of to be able to help lean in and and just put our hands to the plow, be shoulder to shoulder with brothers and sisters who are doing real work. And I know a little bit of the backstory, but you were pastoring in a couple of different contexts, but you started to feel just a tug from the Lord in your heart. And I don't know if it was specifically for Anacostia at first, but I know it was to plant and pastor in the type of community that you're serving in right now.

21:49 Talk about that journey. Like, what was that journey like where you began to be aware of the desire and then just the call from the Lord to just to plant a church in general? And then I love to ask you, all right, how did that get more specific in terms of location? Well, I was serving in the Cayman Islands. I feel like the Lord had called us there. We had a wonderful eight years there, a beautiful people there, and a wonderful church. And across that eight years, my wife and I were kind of like on a seesaw. Sometimes she would feel like, oh, this is where the Lord has called us for the rest of our life. And I would be like, I'm not really sure about that. And then, you know, a year later, I'd be like, this is where the Lord has called us for the rest of our life. I could see why that would be where you'd be for the rest of your life. And then my wife would be like, I'm not really sure about that. You know, and that happened until there was a conference in the States that had ignited some controversy. And not being able to keep my mouth closed, I wound up in the controversy.

22:47 You've been in some controversy. And so but as the controversy is going on and as the dynamics are playing out, it became clear to me that some things that I thought were happening in predominantly black neighborhoods, in inner city neighborhoods were not actually happening in those neighborhoods, but at best people were hood adjacent, right? Yeah. I'm old enough to remember when the term urban meant inner city, right? And so I had those categories, but then I came and discovered, I was like, oh, all this urban church planting is actually happening primarily in gentrifying and redeveloped parts of cities, right? And it's urban hipster more than it is inner city, depressed, dysfunctional, hurting neighborhoods in that way. And so that's when I began to sort of stir to come back stateside. And my wife and I had a relationship retreat one weekend.

23:44 We had a hotel on the island. It's 2 o'clock in the morning Saturday. I'm falling asleep. She's still talking. She said, yeah. She said, I see you falling asleep. She said, I got one more question for you. and I let you go to sleep. I said, okay. She says, if you finish the rest of your life and your pastoral ministry here in the Cayman Islands and God kept you faithful to the end, but you never were in a predominantly black neighborhood, planting churches, trying to train pastors, do things that you feel like you also have a passion for, if you never did that, would you regret it? And I sat up in the bed wide awake. It was the question that broke through. It was the money question. And I said, you know what? if the lord kept me faithful here in the cayman islands i would be eternally grateful for him i would love to be here i said but yeah i would i would regret not giving the remainder of my life or some portion of my life in a context that is predominantly african-american that is mostly poor betting our lives on the gospel to impact the community the people in the community yeah in in rich ways and so that began the process of talking with my elders in the cayman islands about whether I should stay there or whether I should transition.

24:56 And that was a question that I had always promised to them would be an open-ended question for me. I wouldn't make a decision, come announce it by fiat and be gone two weeks later. I'd actually say, hey, help me discern where the Lord wants me to be. So we spent about 10 months, 10, 12 months praying, talking, thinking about what it would look like to remain there, what it would look like to come to the States and plant a church. And at the end of it, they said to me, brother, we don't detect any sin in your motives. We see the need. We would rather you stay here. But if you feel like the Lord is calling you and Christy to go, plant your sin will be supportive. And so that's how we made the transition back in 2014, back to the States to plant an intercourse. I don't know if that's rare. I do know even in my own heart, there's that very individualistic impulse that we're supposed to go into a corner by ourselves, discern what's in our hearts and what we want to do or what we feel like the Lord has called us to do. And then we come and we inform our friends, our family, our church family, our elders, our pastors.

26:09 I've seen that a lot, younger folks in ministry who kind of get that clarity on their own. And there's not a process of discernment in community, much less under pastoral authority. And it can create, I think, some tension. And so do you see that? Yeah. Help us understand why, from a biblical standpoint, but also just practically. if you got somebody who's desiring to be maybe in full-time vocational ministry, plant a church, or for that matter, it could be anything. You're just a Christian who's trying to discern what the Lord has next for you. Why slow down and invite all these people to get in your business and tell you what to do? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And sadly, I think that that kind of process is rare. I've been blessed.

27:03 when I left from Capitol Hill Baptist Church to go to First Baptist Church in Grand Cayman, that was not just a conversation between me and the search committee. That was a conversation between our elders and their elders, right? Parts of which I wasn't even involved in. Now, let me just ask this. Were you on pay staff at Capitol Hill Baptist? Yes. Okay, so if I'm hearing that and I'm hearing normal people, they're like, so you want me to go to my employer? It's a church, but if you work at a church, for example, you want me to go to my employer and tell them that I'm thinking about leaving. I'm not sure yet. I know some people will be afraid that, oh, the clock starts at that point. So what kind of environment did they have there that enabled you to be able to do something like that? Yeah, that's a great question. One, they have a teaching environment. It's a bit of a teaching hospital for pastors. And it's in that context that you learn something like a genuine calling has two aspects.

28:02 It has, yes, an individual subjective aspect if a man desires to be an overseer, he desires a noble tax. But then it also has an external corporate aspect where the church is meant to sort of confirm or not that sense of calling, qualification, and preparation for the ministry. So it's a context that's really clear on what calling means and how you arrive at one. It's a context that has open hands. This is a church that gives a lot, right, that sends a lot. So people are coming and going all the time. And what you learn is that any kind of possessiveness with God's people is at the root somewhere going to be sinful. You know, that staff person doesn't belong to me as their boss, right? They don't belong to our church. They belong to Jesus. and Jesus has been really clear about his desire that people go, that we're sending, that we're investing people in the work of missions.

28:58 And so this was a congregation willing, as the saints in Acts 13 were with Paul and Barnabas, to set me aside to go do work elsewhere and saw that as a win for Team Jesus, even if it meant a short-term loss for Team Capitol Hill. So it was that kind of environment. And I think it was the kind of environment that really does prize gospel growth over church growth. That we want to see the gospel grow. We want to see the kingdom grow more than we are just longing to grow as an individual congregation. So if revival breaks out across town, that's a win for us, even if it doesn't touch our church, even if it doesn't come here. And so it's a church that really inculcates that kind of perspective. And I think the other thing that's in that environment is a sense that that church and its leaders are working for the health of that church, but also the health of other churches. And so it would partner to send one of their pastors for the church that's struggling and has been without a pastor for a couple of years.

30:05 And to work for health and reform in that church is very much a part of their desire and DNA. And I think part of why people may be fearful to process that with a leader is because what they're really feeling is the unhealthiness in that congregation around those issues. They may not have the categories or to be able to formulate it, but God's not giving us a spirit of fear, right? So we're processing with our shepherds in fear rather than, you know, faith, hope, and love or love and power and a sound mind. That's a telltale sign that something's probably not quite right in the culture or at least in that relationship, that interaction between those two persons. But I would say you should still do it. Yeah. You should still do it. It's integrity. In the multitude of counselors, there's safety. Purposes are established with counsel. a lot of folly and a lot of hurt have happened to a lot of churches and a lot of Christians because people have said, I'm called to do this, and they moved without any input from anybody else.

31:09 And it's just, that's one of the things that culturally in the church across the country, it's one of the things I pray changes. Yeah, I agree. There's a leadership value we have in our churches for our staff and for our leaders to champion the Big C Church. And we have a saying, the kingdom of God is bigger than McLean Bible Church. And so I love that framing of gospel growth over church growth. And I'll be honest, that hasn't always been a core value of a McLean Bible Church. Our former senior pastor, Lon Solomon, he passed it for 37 years. We were one of the largest churches in the area. We had a big vision to reach the whole D.C. metro area. And during Lon's last couple years, honestly, it was probably one of the most impactful things I've been able to see as a young leader. I got to watch him like front row seat, watch him begin to feel convicted about partnering with other churches in the area. And we call it his apology tour. And a lot of people don't know this, but I mean, he I mean, you remember some of this.

32:08 I mean, he went to individual pastors around the D.C. metro area and apologized and said, I have not been a team player in the DMV area, just been kind of cloistered in our own world. And that was so instructive for me. Now, I come from a background that's very collaborative, different churches connecting together. But as a young leader here at McLean Bible Church, that was so instructive for me. And we want to be that kind of church that cares more about gospel growth than just our local church growth. We also want to be the kind of church where if it's young men and women in our congregation who are wrestling with a call to ministry, whether it's church planting, whether it's to be a missionary, whether it's to be on staff in some way at a church or some nonprofit ministry, that this is a safe, healthy, supportive place where they can process. They don't have to feel guilty like they're leaving us, and they don't have to worry that our instinct is going to be, no, we need you here.

33:09 But we want to be a part of, man, stir up the gift that is within you. Whatever the Lord is calling you to do, He's calling us to be a part of. And so it's exciting. I would say it's so much joy that comes from that. It's so much joy that comes from seeing the Spirit of the Lord move in a person's life. From Lon Solomon to, you know, that person that is not yet named who wants to go to the mission field, right? To see the Spirit of the Lord move in a person's life, to give their life to the work of the Lord. That's meant to be celebrated, right? Absolutely. And then to see how, for those who may be struggling with that possessiveness and that selfishness, to see how the Lord sends more people to a church who gives people away. To see how the Lord sends new faces, new gifts, new talents, continues to provide for the church and to grow the work. It's faith building.

34:03 It makes you hopeful to be open-handed that way with God's people and to watch him move the chess pieces. Man, it's, yeah. And so it's one of those things where it's kind of like if you're nervous or you feel, just do it. Somebody comes to you and says, I feel like I want to serve the Lord. Tremble at the thought that you're going to stand in the way of that, right? But rather rejoice that you get to shepherd and shape that, right? Now, they may not even know completely what they're saying when they say, I'm called to this thing or that thing. And so you've got some stuff to give them, right? You've got some resources to give them. And what a privilege it is to walk with people and to shape people as they are looking to do that. Yeah, it's one of the sweet things of ministry is to see in sports. You talk about coaching trees. Yeah. Right. You talk about a Bill Belichick and his coaching tree, all those coaches who are his assistants who have gone on to be head coaches elsewhere or whatever. And so I think there is a coaching tree that we should be developing as pastors, people that we have poured into who have gone off to minister elsewhere.

35:07 who have hopefully far exceeded anything that we have done for the sake of the gospel and the name of Christ. And we get to rejoice in that. We get to take delight in that. Well, shout out to Pastor Mark Dever out at Capitol Hill Baptist for Mylonette. Shout out to Lon Solomon for Mylonette, for me, and for our church. Let's get into some of the nuts and bolts, just church planting. Help us understand because part of this is helping us understand, one, the journey of a church planter, and then two how we as mcclain bible church can come alongside well for one we've been talking about it raise up uh and bless and support uh a church planter but come alongside church planters to help in that work what does it look like for us as a church but then also just as individual christians who want to help with stuff like that but feel like man how do i how i do that so you talked a little bit about the process of discernment of kind of confirming that call from the lord you did it in community with the leadership there at the church that you were leading. Obviously, your wife, Christy, was a big part of discerning that process. She asked you that question at 2 a.m., which they'd be asking them questions late at night. And so community is a big part of that discernment process. It became clear to you that the Lord was really inviting you to step into this called a plant a church there was a desire a passion because of your own experiences to do that and majority minority communities uh and in areas where there's a lot of poverty you just the lord started to line those things up so a mix of obviously god's clear word uh community like discernment desires in your own heart that maybe shaped a little bit uh specifically what that would look like or where that would be uh take us from there so you you decide to move back y'all ain't got no place you don't have no people you don't have no money like what how do you that used to shake you okay so you you got that you know this is what god's called me to do

37:13 now what yeah oh my gosh um there's providence and there's planning right um you're going to do what you need to do to try to lay a plan, right? So we didn't know, even when we were clear that the Lord was calling us back stateside to plant, we didn't initially know where. It was in God's providence that he made that clear, right? So we had, as a young man that I performed the wedding for he and his wife, Chris and Tessa, and lived in the Cayman Islands when I come back stateside. I always say, y'all come visit us, man. Doors are always open. They were one of those couples that took us up on that. Most people did, but Chris and Tessa would come down every couple of years. Yeah, I didn't get that text message. It was fine, it was fine. It was fine, it was fine. And so he's this guy from England, kind of posh British accent, very soft-spoken. I'm in the breakfast nook. We just had breakfast, and we're talking.

38:05 He's asking me what next questions. And I said, well, I think the Lord has called us back to plant a church. He says, where? I said, I don't know. And he says to me in this British accent, have you thought about Anacostia? And I'm looking at him like, what you know about Anacostia? What you talking about? What you know about Anacostia? he's an architect and he had worked on a bid for redesigning Anacostia High School so he got to know the neighborhood very well and he says he thought about Anacostia and I said to him I said Chris I said I had not thought about Anacostia but hearing you say that bells are just going off in my heart that sounds right and man when I tell you that for the next several weeks I would be sitting at my desk working on a sermon and then find myself Googling Anacostia and looking up stuff. I mean, the Lord just kept taking my heart, taking my mind there. And that sense just grew.

38:58 And when I shared it with the elders there, they joined me in that sort of discovery process. And so we then sort of began to think, okay, Anacostia, Providence. I'm in Australia, preaching at a conference in Australia. And who's across town at a different conference? Mark Devon. We learned that we're there. And so he says, I'm going to come over there to where you are. We literally, we're in this church at the conference where I'm speaking. We go up in the attic of this church. It's the only place we could go get quiet. And he said, I hear you talking about coming back states out of planting a church. I said, yeah. He says, you think about Anacostia? I said, yeah. He says, well, if you come back and plant a church in Anacostia, we will support that work. And so you come back, join the staff at CHBC. Your whole job will be to plant the church. We'll send people out with you. We'll send resources out with you. and they were true to their word. They just had an open heart and an open hand toward us. Of course, in some ways, that was like our coming back home for a minute.

39:54 But God began to sort of fill in the plan providentially in that way. And so we came back. We got a place here in the city, apartment in the city, landed at Capitol Hill, had a job, et cetera. And then God just providentially again just began to give us people and through those people resources. So one of the first guys to commit to plant with us as an elder is a gentleman named Matt Schmucker. And Matt, you guys may not know Matt's name, but you probably have been influenced by Matt's ministry with Together for the Gospel and Nine Marks Ministries and other things. Matt said, hey, me and my family are coming on the plant and began to be one of the founding elders. And he did some fundraising early on, and God began to supply for us financially. Now, let me just put a little asterisk on that. mad as a white dude that's right who's like i'm gonna come over to this church plant in anacostia that's right and like actually really be a part of this church plant and put my shoulder to it and investment in it uh that's a that's a big decision especially knowing he was very settled right at capital baptist been there his family established there so that's a big shift before mark okay yeah yeah he was in some ways you know using the duct tape to hold the church together before before mark yeah right and they bought a house in the neighborhood moved into the neighborhood they were they were all in his daughter had already was already teaching at the high school over there again providence god arranging things etc and so part of what i want to say say to those church say to churches and pastors or planters who are thinking about this is you you got to do some planning but you don't have to have everything figured out yeah yeah what what you want is faith and trust and to trust God's providence and to learn to read his providence when he provides and to sort of move in those directions.

41:44 But that was kind of how we got to Anacostia, got established. We were 10 months on staff at Capitol Hill Baptist Church before we began to have our preview services and to have our official launch service April 5th. It was an Easter Sunday, 11 years ago. And so, yeah. Now, beyond that, it's also a matter of getting to know the neighborhood that you're moving to. So I think what's essential to good church planting before you plant a church is pastor planting. The pastor has to root themselves in that neighborhood, walk those streets, get to know people, develop some habits and some rhythms in the neighborhood, go to the same restaurants and eat. right? Meet the wait staff there, build relationships there, go to the same coffee shop or two or three coffee shops, meet people, et cetera, attend the high school basketball games and football games and, and be present. Meet the, meet the people who are leading the nonprofits in the community and, and other churches, go meet other pastors and labor, et cetera. Um, you, you've got to first plant yourself there as a pastor, and then you've got to help members of your team plant and root themselves there as well, right?

43:03 Now, behind that for me is a particular conception of the church. I actually think we need to move back to sort of parish models and neighborhood churches with a lot of our plants, right? I think a lot of plants are planted as commuter churches, right? They're just sort of drawing people from a large region, which is fine. People got to have churches, et cetera. but then what that means is it's actually more difficult to have a visible sustained presence an embodied presence in that neighborhood so you're going to need I would encourage a strategy of trying to get the bulk of your people to root themselves in that neighborhood and then to build their lives in that neighborhood to get their work life their play life, their social life their worship life in the same sort of circle there in that way and that's you can do that many kinds of ways but that sort of exegeting of the neighborhood and walking the neighborhood and being present in the neighborhood is vital to healthy church yeah i think what i love about what you just shared is uh so our vision really grew out of luke chapter five and i mean really grew out of it it was just a a passage that uh was on my heart i just shared it during a devotional time me and some of our pastors and executive team are processing that and just really sensed, man, I think this is a unique word for us in this season to put out into the deep, to let down our nets. We're a legacy church. We're standing on the shoulders of leaders who have come behind us. It's easy to just kind of settle in. But a big part of that story is Jesus telling Peter, after he had been fishing all night, I want you to put out into the deep and let down your net. And Peter is like, we already been doing that. There's nothing out here and what i love about that is he did not know the whole story all he knew was that next thing that jesus commanded him to do and and he did it he could not have known that he the on the other side of casting a net he would be the apostle peter that he would be one of the first to preach

45:11 the gospel uh and and uh and so i just i love i see that all throughout your story sitting up in the bed two o'clock in the morning to having a conversation you know with pastor mark in australia to all the little steps you took that were just small we say like small obediences just these little steps of faith uh it's proverbs three you know five and six you know trusting the lord in our with all your heart and acknowledging him and he will direct your steps brother i'm amening that because it's just the honest truth nothing i've planned and thought would be effective has lasted it's lasted it's lasted yeah and almost everything that seems to have borne fruit and remained um were as a consequence of trying to follow the lord and being faithful and god providentially doing what he does right you know the the first books that i I wasn't an author.

46:08 I didn't know any publishers. I was just working on some books and some ideas. And I come to evening service one night, and Mark Devers says, hey, go over there and introduce yourself to that guy. I didn't know this guy for a minute. And I'm an introvert. He's quietly in the back. I'm not going over there and messing with him. He said, just go over there and introduce yourself. I said, well, who is it? Just go over there and introduce yourself. I said, man, why you play too much? Just go over there and introduce yourself. So I go over there and introduce myself. He says, hi, I'm Mark. I said, hey, Mark, what do you do? He said, well, I'm in town. I'm at the Library of Congress. I'm working on some books. And probably five minutes into the conversation, he's like, oh, you're Mark Noel. Right? He's like, oh, snap. Like a historian. That's exactly right. That's my dude as it relates to evangelical history. I'm like, oh, snap. So we started talking. And he asked me about what I was doing. Because I said something about I love being at the Library of Congress. He said, well, what are you working on? So I told him about a book I was working on. He's like, you should send me, if you've got a couple chapters and an outline, you should send me what you have.

47:05 And I'd love to give you feedback. And if it looks good, I'd love to introduce you to some publishing. Wow. I didn't plan that. I didn't have some great plan. First of all, I love that he said, if it looks good. That's right. He wasn't just blowing smoke. He was like, this is trash. I can't help you. And so, yeah, and that's how the beauty of the writer got published and got started. It was Providence, right? It's God's working and doing things that were for my good and I trust the good of his church, but weren't down to some master plan that I have. And I think sometimes what I observe in church planning is people are overly committed to strategy and under-committed to just walking by faith. Man, that's so good. Right? It's just sort of under-committed to just doing the next thing that God said do. Cast your net in the book, right? Because Peter's like, Lord, I ain't nothing out here, right? He doesn't even think that's rational, right?

48:01 And yet the Lord instructed it. And so I just want to encourage folks to be like, yeah, okay, we're going to follow the Lord. We're going to plan. We're not going to be without a plan. But we're not going to grip our plan as if that's the source, right? We're not going to trust our plan as if our plan is going to deliver us. It's the Lord who does that. It's the Lord who builds his church. And we're going to start and keep in step with his spirit. So we're in a different concept. We're a large suburban megachurch. you're in the inner city Anacostia, very different context.

48:36 As we're thinking about helping to raise up and support church planters, helping to catalyze gospel ministry in the DMV area and Lord willing, you know, among all nations all over the world, but specifically church planting here, what do you need or church planters like, I mean, y'all are in a little bit of a different place now, more established as a church. What do you need from churches? No, I keep telling my people, we're still a plant. You've got to keep that for as long as you can, man. Yeah, well, so, okay, that brings up a good point, though, because a lot of church planting models and the funding structures, they break down when it comes to planting in impoverished communities and under-resourced communities. So we'll give a church planter a runway. We'll say you've got three years of funding. But when you're trying to plant a church in a community like Anacostia, and Acostia, sometimes those models, we're just talking about the funding, I mean, not to mention the strategy.

49:33 And so help us understand, like, some of those nuances and differences, even some of your experiences for that type of support. You're singing our song for the Creek Collective now, right? Yeah, talk to us about that because you mentioned it, but, yeah, explain that to us. So in 2021, 2020, 2020, God and His Kindness allowed several of us as pastors, John Onwachequa, myself, Louis Love up in the Chicagoland area, several of us to launch an organization that's dedicated to trying to plant and revitalize churches at that intersection we talked about before. Predominantly minority neighborhoods that are marked by vulnerability, that are marked by neglect, poverty, etc. because we had had a retreat, several of us, all the elders from Cornerstone Church in Atlanta with John and Tripp and those guys, all the elders at ARC, the elders at Risen Christ in Philadelphia, Shai Lynn and Brian Davis.

50:33 We'd gotten together in the living room because we all launched about the same time. And we were like, well, let's get together and encourage each other, et cetera. And we discovered we were telling the same story. We were going into neighborhoods, feeling pretty alone with our theological and missional convictions. Our denominations and the groups that were supporting us didn't really have resources tailored to that. And we were in a church planting model that just wasn't, it wasn't calibrated to those realities, right? So it's a model that's honestly calibrated to suburban kinds of churches and growth, right, where you give a planter three years, maybe four of declining support over those three or four years and say, hey, your goal is to become self-sufficient in that time period. Now, the reason that doesn't work for the inner city, of course, is for a church to become self-sufficient in that time period, it's kind of got to grow somewhat rapidly, made up of people with disposable income, right?

51:33 Because the outside sources are going to be declining. Well, that's not what you find in the inner city. You don't find people with a lot of disposable income, right? and you find a lot of barriers that you have to cross economically, et cetera, to even have relationships with people that you're trying to reach. So what you need is a much longer runway to get to self-sufficiency. So as the Creed Collective, we say to churches that we fund, we're going to fund you at least four years. And if we can raise the monies and have the funds, we will be committed to at least grow to 10 years with that and just keep doing the work until it's done. So what we want to adopt is the same kind of mentality that many Christians have when it comes to international missions among unreached, unengaged people groups, where we talk about sticking with the ministry until the church is established there.

52:27 And so that's what we're saying needs to happen in inner city neighborhoods closer to home. You've got to stick with that. That man is being faithful to preach the gospel, to evangelize the neighborhood, to engage the needs of the neighborhood. you got to stick with that work until it gets rooted you got to treat him like adnarm judson yeah not like the you know the slick poster boy that we just saw for church planting you know at a conference or something so that's what we that's the mentality we want to encourage in churches because what planters are going to need is not just an assessment and a residency for one or two years but almost all planters whether in the inner city or the suburbs are actually going to need mentoring and modeling and support until the church grows up. Right. Yeah. Until the church grows up. Because usually what we're doing with church planting is we're supporting younger guys with less experience to go do this hard work.

53:24 And one of the things I would love to see is for more seasoned pastors and saints to feel the call to go plant. Maybe you've been pastoring as an assistant or something for 20 years or 15 years, you're no longer that puppy gnawing on the furniture and chewing up the shoes. You're now a mature watchdog, right? You only bark when there's a problem kind of thing. You need to go out because it's just more ballast in your boat, just more steady. You've seen ups and downs in the life of a church. You've seen some mistakes made. You've seen some victories. That kind of wisdom, whether you loan it to a planter while you stay in an existing church or whether you take it as a member of a church planting team, that kind of support and wisdom is vital for the health of that planter, of that church, of gospel mission in that community. And so we need longer runways.

54:20 We need, I think, more support financially over a longer period of time. We need more people to relinquish a tight grip on comfort and be willing to be uprooted. and to move to another place. It may even be a place where you don't want to live. But for the sake of the gospel, you will go there and rejoice to be in God's will and to plant your life there and to do that work and to pursue a vision of the gospel spread in that place, in that way. So yeah, we're exiles here. And so we've got to have an exile mentality as churches, big large suburban churches and as Christians. Otherwise what we do is we just kind of keep pocketing things rather than investing things. And that's part of what I really want our people to see.

55:15 My dream, you know, and the Lord has blessed our church, I mean, way before I got here, way before David got here, before Lon even, you know, got here, although he was here for so long. But, man, I dream of the day where our giving, our generosity is so abundant that we just have all kinds of financial margin to be able to join the adventure of, you know, almost being like a little venture capitalist, you know, being able to help just invest in gospel work here in the DMV and all over the world. And part of the reason why I wanted our church to hear your story and the story of Anacostia River Church and the Creek collective is precisely because your church, the context is so different than ours. And we want to see the gospel and churches and disciples multiplied in immigrant communities and inner city neighborhoods and other suburban areas and all different kinds of areas around the DMV area and wherever the Lord is sending people to. But it does require that missionary mindset that we're not just growing bigger churches or expanding a brand, but we are actually helping to see churches grow out of the soil of neighborhoods and communities.

56:38 And it'll look a little different than ours. And God is calling some of us to go plant and to go lead. God is calling some of us to go participate and just be members of those churches and faithfully support and invest in those works. God is calling a lot of us to help fund and provide in-kind donations and our expertise and coming alongside and mentoring in these neighborhoods or however the Lord, whatever he's put in our hand to contribute to his kingdom work, we have a role to play, even if it's not necessarily a direct role. Man, and I want to say two things in response to that. One is I want to praise the Lord for the ways in which that's already been true of McLean. You guys partnered with us in planting Jeremy McLean at Mercy of Christ in Northeast D.C. You guys have supported ministries like Daybreak and other ministries in our section of the city.

57:36 So I think that's been part of the heritage of McLean in that way. So that's the first thing. I praise God for you guys and your partnership. The second thing I would say is the vision you're holding out to people is deeply biblical. Even that sort of investment analogy that you're using there, right? What does the writer of Ecclesiastes tell us? Cast our bread on many waters, right? What does Jesus tell us? Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it won't bear fruit, right? There's just so many ways in which that multiplication metaphor shows up in Scripture. I love it. And that's what you're giving your people here. And I hope the people in McLean, from the least to the greatest, embrace that, right? That idea that we are called to actually multiply. And God will take whatever little pieces we have, and he will do that, whatever we have to contribute, and he will do that. And I want to encourage further, if you let the Lord do that in your life, it will be for the quickening of your soul.

58:45 And it will be for your great joy. You will not regret laying your life down to serve Jesus. In church planting or evangelism or whatever it is, if God stirs you to go, go. Go. He's going to show you the place. like Abraham. He's going to show you the place. He's going to show you what it means. Not going to tell you everything in advance because if he did, you wouldn't go. You panic and chicken out, right? But boy, there's nothing like surrendering yourself to the Lord and his will and seeing him work and seeing him do more than you had even imagined and seeing that multiplication unfold. It's just, if you want to be a happy Christian, If you want to be joyful, serve the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness.

59:37 And he will multiply that. And so I love the vision you're holding out for people here. It's deeply biblical. It's going to be good for the whole, the big C church. And it'll be good for every individual Christian who will release themselves, give themselves to it with joy. Yeah. Well, we're honored to be co-laborers in the gospel, man. Likewise. And I said it at the top, you have been a catalyst for a lot of younger pastors and leaders and aspiring theologians and now church planters. And having grown up in the area and watching the work that y'all are doing, it's inspiring, it's encouraging, and it's a joy to be able to be a part of it. So thanks for taking the time, man. I know you got a lot going on, but I appreciate you investing in our church. Thanks for having me, man. Love what the Lord is doing here. Love you, brother.

1:00:29 I'm so grateful for you. Love you, dad. Saints at New Samaritan. Tell him I said hello, man. And keep doing what you're doing, man. Yes, sir. Thank you.