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And these men began to just listen, care, love me in that place of just being so despairing

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and maybe even depressed at the time. They began to open up about stuff in their life

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and they saved my heart.

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Hey everyone, I want to share a story of something that happened to me many years ago.

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I was pastoring a church that I had started. I planted it and had pastored it for 20 years

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and it was a growing church. It was a church that was into the thousands in growth. I thought

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everything was just going great. We had another campus that we had planted that was also doing

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super well. We were looking at maybe doing a third campus and I had just done a seminar

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up in a portion of the church, kind of in the upper part of this church, and I built three

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buildings, multi-million dollar buildings, had a multi-million dollar budget, had 40 staff

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on the team. Again, everything looked successful on the outside and I just finished this spiritual

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warfare, which is ironic with what I'm going to share, spiritual warfare conference, and I

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came down, went down the steps and there was an elder of our church with this grim, sort of

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grim reaper looking face and he said, hey come with me Steve, and he said it in such an

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abrupt way I was like shocked because I came down smiling, I was excited, joyful, just finished a

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three-hour seminar, and then this, you know, and then I said, what? What's up man? And he said

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something's happened, something we need to talk to you about, and when I heard that I thought maybe

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Liz, my wife, had been in a car accident or one of our kids had been in a car accident or something

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related to death might have happened, and so I was super concerned. I walk in to my office, so

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everybody's in my office there at the church and they began to open up to me that I'm being put on

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a forced six-month sabbatical because of my leadership style and various sundry items that

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were mentioned, and I'm like shocked, I'm like what are you talking about? I just, I just couldn't,

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I couldn't conceive of this level of pressure and even this level of discipline for what had nothing

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to do with sex, it had nothing to do with money, it had nothing to do with heresy, and those are

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kind of my three biggies I've always felt like are in the categories of areas where you really,

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you come in and have to bring major discipline or even have a pastor step down, heresy,

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sexual infidelity, embezzlement of finances, those kind of things, but leadership style? So I was

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pretty shocked when I got home and I shared with Liz what these men had shared with me,

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she was incensed and one thing I can tell you about my wife Liz who's raised seven kids

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and now we have seven grandchildren, she doesn't take a lot of BS and so she was not happy and she

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was not in agreement with the things that they had said, but it centered around my being a poor

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leader in relation to collaboration with others, it had, I was, I remember one of the points was

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he's an ADD leader, attention deficit deprived leader, you know, and I agree with that and I

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agree and I have sometimes can be an ADD leader and under the circumstances that we had been under

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over about a year, year and a half was the launching of this other campus and it had been,

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it had been difficult, we had gone through two other pastors for that campus and it related a

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lot around the idea of doing a video campus or doing a live speaker campus and back in those

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days the satellite campus model was fairly new, there were probably about 25 or 30 noteworthy

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multiple campus churches in the United States, there were more than that, but I'm talking about

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those that, you know, are sort of on the radar and I would say out of that there's probably only

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like two or three that were very successful at it. Because of that we're just kind of learning

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and growing and we actually have a consultant helping us and I'm almost weekly on the phone

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with the consultant.

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And we were convinced that doing a recording,

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recording me and then systematically transferring that

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and transporting that to the other campus

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was the best model and the results were very positive.

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So things were going well.

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But within that campus there were issues,

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within our team there were issues mainly related

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to the really being stretched out as far as our resources

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in relation to the campus.

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So it was a fixable situation.

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It was one that needed to be fixed.

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We had already been in discussion about it.

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Well, that's not my point.

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My point is that I felt a real deep sense of betrayal

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by my elders and then the way in which they had worked

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behind the scenes with some of the pastors.

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Now it was conveyed to me that every pastor

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was in agreement of these issues

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and then I would later find out

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that others had not been consulted.

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So there was just one thing after another

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that created doubt in my heart

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as to the veracity of what was being shared.

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I share that because for you as a listener

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to understand the deep sense of betrayal

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that I felt at the time and I felt so lonely,

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I felt so kind of ripped off.

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I had started the church in our home with nobody

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20 years before and grown it into a multi-thousand

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member church in a multi-million dollar budget

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with buildings and a really good staff team.

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If you look at the record of the 20 years,

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very few people had been laid off.

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We had a pretty cohesive team.

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But there was no doubt that over that year

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because of some of the issues I just mentioned,

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it had been difficult.

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I felt sort of kicked out just in one day.

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I was not allowed to ever go back to the campus

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at least during the six month sabbatical.

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I soon began to realize that the six month sabbatical

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was just kind of a setup for other things

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and I realized that there was another plan

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involved in all of this.

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And so anyway, I became frustrated,

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I became angry for about a week or two.

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This anger kind of boiled up in me.

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If you've seen Forrest Gump, you may remember

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the part in the movie where Forrest Gump

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has been reuniting with Jenny, his love since childhood

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and then he wakes up the next day and finds out

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that she's left and abandoned him

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and kind of betrayed him, left him.

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And he doesn't know what to do.

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In the next scene, you see him sitting on the porch

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in his Nike shoes with his Bubba Shrimp hat on,

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I think it's a red hat, and he just gets up

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and the way the narration goes, it's something like this.

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I just got up and for no particular reason,

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I just began to run.

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And I ran in my driveway and I just kept on going

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and I ran to the county line, I just kept on going

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and I ran through the state of Alabama,

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I just kept on going until I just had no more place to go.

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And then it shows him on, I think it's the Santa Monica Pier

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and he's in California now, from Alabama to California.

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He turns around, he said, I just turned around and ran back.

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And then it shows him in Maine and he just ran

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and ran and ran and ran.

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And so one day, I got up in the morning

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and I just began to walk.

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And I put on some hiking shoes and just began to walk

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and walk and walk and for the next five years,

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almost every day, I walked.

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I walked sometimes a mile, most of the time,

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five or 10 miles, I walked and I walked and I prayed

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and I sought God, I asked God for wisdom,

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what in the world is going on in my life.

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And one day, about three or four weeks, I think,

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into my walking, I came home and there was a guy

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at my fire pit in the back of my home.

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He was just sitting there and we started to talk

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and he asked how I was doing.

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And I began to share my heart and began to weep

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and he began to weep.

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And then the next day, there were two guys.

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Then a few days later, there were three guys.

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And then over the next few weeks,

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there began to be more and more men.

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They kind of timed it where they'd be at my fire pit

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when I came back from these long walks that I would do.

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And these men began to just listen, care.

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Love me in that place of

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Just being so despairing and maybe even depressed at the time. They began to open up about stuff in their life and

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They

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Saved my heart. So if I were to describe it today, I would say that Jesus saved my soul

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But this group of men around my fire pit

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Saved my heart and we began to coin a term blood-stained allies

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And that's what I'm going to be talking about in these sessions. What is it to have some men?

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Some women for women men for men. I think it should be most cases same gender

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Individuals in your life who care about you and love you and and become a community of

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People you don't need a lot

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You don't need a lot but a community of men and women that really have your back and that's what these men

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Did in my life and all of them are still in my life

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Most of them still are part of the church. Some have moved away, but of that original

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Probably a dozen guys almost all of them are still at the church here that I pastor the new church that I

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Established after these events called the road that relationship has kept

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Liz and I strong it really kept me sane

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During a deep sense of betrayal a deep sense of hurt and pain

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I think it's important to realize that the points

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That these men these elders brought to me

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Were all true. I mean, I don't think anything was made up. I think everything was true

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About me. It's the process that was so painful and so hurtful

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It wasn't the what it was the how but here's the beauty of it

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Is that I wouldn't be here talking to you right now

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I wouldn't even have ever even known the term blood-stained allies since God gave me that term

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I'd never thought of that before I didn't have any

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close

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male

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Friends in my life at the level I do today

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Dozens and dozens of men in my life today

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Here at the road as well as our Tuesday morning breakfast with wholehearted men that we do. I mean just so many

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beautiful wonderful powerful

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caring loving men in my life

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I wouldn't have that if I hadn't gone through the deep pain and hurt that I went through a decade ago

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And so I don't know about you. I don't know if you have that in your life

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but I hope that you'll stick with this these episodes coming up on blood-stained allies because I

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Think it might be

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One of the most important areas of growth in your life if you can begin to develop and I'm going to show you how

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I'm going to show you what to look for in a blood-stained ally, but if you can begin to grow in

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having

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nurturing and

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maintaining

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Some blood-stained allies in your life men with some other men women with some other women that

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God's gonna just empower you so much more

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exponentially more

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than you could

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alone and

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in my next episode, I'm going to talk about why I think that's important and also look at

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Men and women in the Bible who had blood-stained allies so stick with me hang with me. I think this could be a

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life-changing message for you