And these men began to just listen, care, love me in that place of just being so despairing
and maybe even depressed at the time. They began to open up about stuff in their life
and they saved my heart.
Hey everyone, I want to share a story of something that happened to me many years ago.
I was pastoring a church that I had started. I planted it and had pastored it for 20 years
and it was a growing church. It was a church that was into the thousands in growth. I thought
everything was just going great. We had another campus that we had planted that was also doing
super well. We were looking at maybe doing a third campus and I had just done a seminar
up in a portion of the church, kind of in the upper part of this church, and I built three
buildings, multi-million dollar buildings, had a multi-million dollar budget, had 40 staff
on the team. Again, everything looked successful on the outside and I just finished this spiritual
warfare, which is ironic with what I'm going to share, spiritual warfare conference, and I
came down, went down the steps and there was an elder of our church with this grim, sort of
grim reaper looking face and he said, hey come with me Steve, and he said it in such an
abrupt way I was like shocked because I came down smiling, I was excited, joyful, just finished a
three-hour seminar, and then this, you know, and then I said, what? What's up man? And he said
something's happened, something we need to talk to you about, and when I heard that I thought maybe
Liz, my wife, had been in a car accident or one of our kids had been in a car accident or something
related to death might have happened, and so I was super concerned. I walk in to my office, so
everybody's in my office there at the church and they began to open up to me that I'm being put on
a forced six-month sabbatical because of my leadership style and various sundry items that
were mentioned, and I'm like shocked, I'm like what are you talking about? I just, I just couldn't,
I couldn't conceive of this level of pressure and even this level of discipline for what had nothing
to do with sex, it had nothing to do with money, it had nothing to do with heresy, and those are
kind of my three biggies I've always felt like are in the categories of areas where you really,
you come in and have to bring major discipline or even have a pastor step down, heresy,
sexual infidelity, embezzlement of finances, those kind of things, but leadership style? So I was
pretty shocked when I got home and I shared with Liz what these men had shared with me,
she was incensed and one thing I can tell you about my wife Liz who's raised seven kids
and now we have seven grandchildren, she doesn't take a lot of BS and so she was not happy and she
was not in agreement with the things that they had said, but it centered around my being a poor
leader in relation to collaboration with others, it had, I was, I remember one of the points was
he's an ADD leader, attention deficit deprived leader, you know, and I agree with that and I
agree and I have sometimes can be an ADD leader and under the circumstances that we had been under
over about a year, year and a half was the launching of this other campus and it had been,
it had been difficult, we had gone through two other pastors for that campus and it related a
lot around the idea of doing a video campus or doing a live speaker campus and back in those
days the satellite campus model was fairly new, there were probably about 25 or 30 noteworthy
multiple campus churches in the United States, there were more than that, but I'm talking about
those that, you know, are sort of on the radar and I would say out of that there's probably only
like two or three that were very successful at it. Because of that we're just kind of learning
and growing and we actually have a consultant helping us and I'm almost weekly on the phone
with the consultant.
And we were convinced that doing a recording,
recording me and then systematically transferring that
and transporting that to the other campus
was the best model and the results were very positive.
So things were going well.
But within that campus there were issues,
within our team there were issues mainly related
to the really being stretched out as far as our resources
in relation to the campus.
So it was a fixable situation.
It was one that needed to be fixed.
We had already been in discussion about it.
Well, that's not my point.
My point is that I felt a real deep sense of betrayal
by my elders and then the way in which they had worked
behind the scenes with some of the pastors.
Now it was conveyed to me that every pastor
was in agreement of these issues
and then I would later find out
that others had not been consulted.
So there was just one thing after another
that created doubt in my heart
as to the veracity of what was being shared.
I share that because for you as a listener
to understand the deep sense of betrayal
that I felt at the time and I felt so lonely,
I felt so kind of ripped off.
I had started the church in our home with nobody
20 years before and grown it into a multi-thousand
member church in a multi-million dollar budget
with buildings and a really good staff team.
If you look at the record of the 20 years,
very few people had been laid off.
We had a pretty cohesive team.
But there was no doubt that over that year
because of some of the issues I just mentioned,
it had been difficult.
I felt sort of kicked out just in one day.
I was not allowed to ever go back to the campus
at least during the six month sabbatical.
I soon began to realize that the six month sabbatical
was just kind of a setup for other things
and I realized that there was another plan
involved in all of this.
And so anyway, I became frustrated,
I became angry for about a week or two.
This anger kind of boiled up in me.
If you've seen Forrest Gump, you may remember
the part in the movie where Forrest Gump
has been reuniting with Jenny, his love since childhood
and then he wakes up the next day and finds out
that she's left and abandoned him
and kind of betrayed him, left him.
And he doesn't know what to do.
In the next scene, you see him sitting on the porch
in his Nike shoes with his Bubba Shrimp hat on,
I think it's a red hat, and he just gets up
and the way the narration goes, it's something like this.
I just got up and for no particular reason,
I just began to run.
And I ran in my driveway and I just kept on going
and I ran to the county line, I just kept on going
and I ran through the state of Alabama,
I just kept on going until I just had no more place to go.
And then it shows him on, I think it's the Santa Monica Pier
and he's in California now, from Alabama to California.
He turns around, he said, I just turned around and ran back.
And then it shows him in Maine and he just ran
and ran and ran and ran.
And so one day, I got up in the morning
and I just began to walk.
And I put on some hiking shoes and just began to walk
and walk and walk and for the next five years,
almost every day, I walked.
I walked sometimes a mile, most of the time,
five or 10 miles, I walked and I walked and I prayed
and I sought God, I asked God for wisdom,
what in the world is going on in my life.
And one day, about three or four weeks, I think,
into my walking, I came home and there was a guy
at my fire pit in the back of my home.
He was just sitting there and we started to talk
and he asked how I was doing.
And I began to share my heart and began to weep
and he began to weep.
And then the next day, there were two guys.
Then a few days later, there were three guys.
And then over the next few weeks,
there began to be more and more men.
They kind of timed it where they'd be at my fire pit
when I came back from these long walks that I would do.
And these men began to just listen, care.
Love me in that place of
Just being so despairing and maybe even depressed at the time. They began to open up about stuff in their life and
They
Saved my heart. So if I were to describe it today, I would say that Jesus saved my soul
But this group of men around my fire pit
Saved my heart and we began to coin a term blood-stained allies
And that's what I'm going to be talking about in these sessions. What is it to have some men?
Some women for women men for men. I think it should be most cases same gender
Individuals in your life who care about you and love you and and become a community of
People you don't need a lot
You don't need a lot but a community of men and women that really have your back and that's what these men
Did in my life and all of them are still in my life
Most of them still are part of the church. Some have moved away, but of that original
Probably a dozen guys almost all of them are still at the church here that I pastor the new church that I
Established after these events called the road that relationship has kept
Liz and I strong it really kept me sane
During a deep sense of betrayal a deep sense of hurt and pain
I think it's important to realize that the points
That these men these elders brought to me
Were all true. I mean, I don't think anything was made up. I think everything was true
About me. It's the process that was so painful and so hurtful
It wasn't the what it was the how but here's the beauty of it
Is that I wouldn't be here talking to you right now
I wouldn't even have ever even known the term blood-stained allies since God gave me that term
I'd never thought of that before I didn't have any
close
male
Friends in my life at the level I do today
Dozens and dozens of men in my life today
Here at the road as well as our Tuesday morning breakfast with wholehearted men that we do. I mean just so many
beautiful wonderful powerful
caring loving men in my life
I wouldn't have that if I hadn't gone through the deep pain and hurt that I went through a decade ago
And so I don't know about you. I don't know if you have that in your life
but I hope that you'll stick with this these episodes coming up on blood-stained allies because I
Think it might be
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
I'm going to show you what to look for in a blood-stained ally, but if you can begin to grow in
having
nurturing and
maintaining
Some blood-stained allies in your life men with some other men women with some other women that
God's gonna just empower you so much more
exponentially more
than you could
alone and
in my next episode, I'm going to talk about why I think that's important and also look at
Men and women in the Bible who had blood-stained allies so stick with me hang with me. I think this could be a
life-changing message for you