It doesn't seem like Ryan's gonna be a long-term fit
and we need to find a short-term exit strategy.
And there I sit in my chair.
I feel like I go to ground zero.
We talk about being alert and oriented times five.
And you've referenced this too.
And I go to a zero and I'm kind of spun out.
I'm going, oh my gosh, what is this?
Why do I have access to this email?
And why now?
And my world's confused and I'm shocked and I'm disoriented
and I don't know what's going on.
So welcome to the Empower You podcast.
And I have Pastor Ryan Steyer,
who has been with me since the beginning of the Road Church,
which is the church that we kind of together planted
10 years ago here.
We're in the studio here of the Road Church.
And Ryan was a part of Mountain Springs Church,
the church that I pastored before,
but we didn't really know each other.
But when I resigned from Mountain Springs,
Ryan and his wife Mandy came along
and probably been with us almost every day for 10 years.
That's true.
Even when you weren't on staff or anything,
we were always together.
We hunted together, we fished together,
we've been by the fire and had cigars together
for so many years.
Probably smoked hundreds of cigars together,
probably caught hundreds of fish.
You, not me.
Definitely, I don't know about that,
but we caught a few.
Shot elk together, cleaned elk together.
I think, was I the first one
to kind of show you elk hunting?
Did we do that for the first time?
Yeah, big game hunting for sure.
And then Sam, his oldest son has come with us too.
That's pretty fun to see him grow up
from being just a little squirt.
No doubt.
Yeah, adventuring from the beginning,
just kind of starting to start to do life together
from the early days of the road.
It's kind of surreal sitting here now,
filming and talking about this journey
that's evolved over the last 10 years.
Some of you may know this, some of you may not know this,
but when I resigned from Mountain Springs,
I felt super lonely.
I felt really betrayed and hurt.
And some guys sort of gathered around me
to comfort me, to be a friend to me.
Some I knew, some I didn't know,
but that's where Ryan came in.
Ryan came in during that time.
And because of that relationship of vulnerability
and brokenness that I was going through,
then it was sort of a setup that we didn't expect
that Ryan was gonna go through within the year of my thing.
So I think it's kind of an interesting spot
to start with, what were you going through?
What was happening in your life
and how did all that come down?
Absolutely.
Well, God had been drawing us to Colorado
out of our life in Phoenix,
where we had started our family and life together,
Mandy and I.
We have four kids ranging from Sam, the oldest of 18,
down to Sawyer, seven, Sophie and Sadie in the middle,
our girls, so bookend boys.
Got the cutest kids in the world.
They could be models on the picture of any magazine.
Very gracious.
We have their mother to thank for that, for sure.
That's true, I have to admit that.
Absolutely, we married up.
I would say the journey that God started us on
into Colorado, that's where the story starts
for really you and us,
even though we weren't maybe that close together
in those early years,
when we moved from Phoenix in 2010 that summer,
Mandy was, we were checking out some churches,
checked out Al's church here in town,
and then Mandy caught you in the afternoon on the radio.
And she's like, we should go listen to,
we should go over and check out Mountain Springs.
And I like, I think you'll like how this guy communicates.
And I said, absolutely, let's go check it out.
And so Chuck went, visited September, jumped right in.
And from the very beginning of my first introduction to you,
how you communicated, teaching verse by verse,
we felt at home.
And I said, this, Steve's gonna be my pastor.
And just the spiritual growth
that we got to go through together,
coming into a community with no family,
we moved here not knowing anybody,
came on kind of what I would call a bank scholarship,
in that a promotion brought us into Colorado out of Phoenix.
And the next several years,
we're just sitting under your teaching,
your leadership at MSC.
And we got involved in community groups
and really had a great growth season in our lives
with community, with biblical teaching.
And that's where things started to shift then,
where we're picking up now.
And.
I got a call, I think Liz contacted Mandy and said,
hey, would you be interested in coming to a very close,
just community group of people?
We wanna just pray together about what's happening
for our future.
And I think there was about seven couples
in your living room, and that began the journey
of what God was starting to write in both of our stories
about the planting of the road,
where he was leading you to pastor,
and then really where our two stories
were starting to converge.
And I remember sitting around the fire pit,
and as we were thinking about and hearing
what was in your heart about a church plant,
here in Colorado Springs, and then deeper in that still
was this message of how do we go after the masculine spirit?
How do we restore and recover guys?
Something that was very passionate for me as well.
The energy, the enthusiasm,
the excitement around that was great.
And just the conversations were rich and full,
and just the future was a blank canvas
of rewriting essentially how a local church
can go after the masculine heart.
It's pretty cool.
That's true, and for Ryan and I,
we had never done that before.
He actually had more life experience
in men's ministry than I did,
because down at First Assembly, down in Phoenix,
you'd been a part of and exposed
to a really good program down there,
and Ed Cole and all that stuff.
I didn't have much of anything.
Maybe read a few books, sort of Christian men's books.
That was about it, but yeah, it's true.
We started thinking about what,
well, let me backtrack a little before I talk about that.
So then tell us what happened to you
in the banking world where you were a trust officer.
You'd spent 14 years in that after college.
So this is your career, but then something happened
that was pretty traumatic.
Yeah, interesting, true.
So went to college, got a history degree,
realized that that wasn't very useful in corporate America,
was on a military track through ROTC,
and through just some life events,
God changed that trajectory and ended up
in corporate America and in the world of finance.
And then specifically in the private bank,
helping people with wealth management,
estates, and those things.
And it was fulfilling, but I didn't feel
like I was really living out what God had put in my heart.
And I felt, I'd shared this with Mandy,
and I know that I've shared this with you as well,
just sitting in the woods or shooting birds.
It's just that I felt like I was this wild kind of lion
with a wildness or a heart in me
that was starting to die in the corporate structure
of America, working in the banking world.
I would just start to say this simple prayer,
and all this was happening simultaneously,
that the road was being planted,
and then God's stirring my heart.
And I start to say this simple prayer,
and given this testimony in a lot more detail
at our men's conferences, but it's this prayer of,
God, father me today and reveal the work you have
for me to do this side of eternity.
Like, what am I here, what's my purpose,
what have you put in my heart that is not alive right now,
and I need you to father me today.
And I would pray that on the way into work
and on the way home from work.
And then as he does, God starts to shift things
in the heavenlies and in the physical,
and things beyond my control and even understanding
start to deteriorate in the banking world.
I'm losing favor with management,
peer relationships are falling apart,
and I can't even understand why.
And I would come to find out that there was some sabotage
happening behind the scenes,
and that there was some people working pretty actively
to see me removed from that organization.
And I go to bed one night, I have this very lucid dream
of a conference room happening,
and everybody, peers are at the table,
and clearly I wasn't invited to the meeting.
And I come in, and I kind of go to my office,
leave the door open, I can hear them talking.
And then there's some specific language about,
some of my peers asked where I was,
why I wasn't at the meeting,
and the manager running the meeting says,
well, we need to find a short-term exit strategy for Ryan,
it's not working out.
And then I woke up from my dream,
and I kind of was a little flustered,
went into work, kind of day started,
this is real time now, and I'm at my desk,
kind of have the day, a lot of things happen
in between my dream and the end of the day,
just business and life, and clients, needs, et cetera.
And then at the end of the day,
I'm kind of shutting everything down,
and I see this email, check my email one last time,
and then there's this email from the manager in Denver,
and it has my name in the subject line,
but yet I'm getting a copy of it by accident,
and I open it up, and I start reading it.
And one of the last messages or lines in the email, and this went to HR as well as my direct supervisor in Colorado Springs, it said,
doesn't seem like Ryan's going to be a long term fit.
We need to find a short term exit strategy.
And there I sit in my chair.
I feel like I go to ground zero.
We talk about being alert and oriented times five.
And you've referenced this, too.
And I go to a zero and I'm kind of spun out.
I'm going, oh, my gosh, what is this?
Why do I have access to this email and why now?
And I and my world's confused and I'm shocked and I'm disoriented and I don't know what's going on.
I leave that email there and I come home and I spend the night kind of processing that situation.
I called you.
I remember calling you on the way home and just talking through that.
And then I God brings back the the revelation of the dream I'd had the night before.
And it's all coming together.
And I'm going, oh, my gosh, Holy Spirit CIA working behind the scenes.
And I have information.
Intelligence.
Yeah, that's right.
Christ Intelligence Agency.
That's right, brother.
So then I go in.
I said, you know what?
I'm going to be the owner of my destiny.
I'm not going to let them let me go.
I'm going to go in and I'm going to resign on my own terms.
So wake up the next day, write the email, send to my supervisor, go in.
He goes, I saw that you also received that email, too, and apologize for the awkwardness.
I said, all good.
So I think we all understand kind of what needs to happen here and then move on.
Give the two week notice.
Now, the road had already been established for about a year at this point or was about to have an anniversary in May.
This all happened at the end of March.
And I tell you that I resigned.
And you go, well, sounds like we should probably go clear our minds.
And we went out and did some pheasant hunting that day.
And that was great.
And on the road, I just remember we're driving and then what was crazy.
And this is where God's telling stories and converging stories together.
And this was pretty wild because we realized together that it had been exactly a year to the same date that you had submitted your resignation to MSC.
And I had resigned a year later from the bank to the day.
And God was just starting to orchestrate and do some deeper things.
Yeah.
So we're driving out to Rocky Mountain Roosters and talking about it.
Yeah.
And we were like, whoa, this is the same day, a year later.
Yes.
That's crazy.
It was crazy.
Yeah.
I mean, only God, only God can orchestrate those kinds of things.
And then we started praying about what the future could look like.
And then it would turn out that I would be, you know, your first full-time, you know, hire for the road.
That's right.
And then, man, what he's built in the last 10 years here.
It's crazy.
I'm sure we'll get to that, but yeah.
So Ryan and I now have, um, how many staff do we have?
We have nine full-time pastors.
Nine full-time pastors.
And then supporting staff.
Um, between part-time and full-time about 42 staff.
Wow.
Yeah.
So there you go.
And that was just Ryan and I, just me for a year, then Ryan and me for the next year.
And then as, as the church grew, we added.
What do you think for you, Ryan has been the biggest surprise about being in full-time pastoral work?
What's the biggest surprise?
You didn't expect this.
And it it's been surprising to you.
Well, sitting in guidance counselor's offices, even as a young man, thinking about what career path would look like, what was in my heart, explored a lot of different opportunities.
Even at one point had an offer letter to continue the process of employment for Colorado Springs police department was considering fire department for Phoenix, um, went pretty far in the application process with the FBI.
I didn't know.
I mean, God's writing a story in the background and I'm, and I'm kind of like throwing darts at the target that I think is going to meet what's in my heart.
And the biggest surprise is over the last 10 years, what he's been so consistently revealing to me is I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else.
The life, the joy, the adventure that being in this full service of the kingdom of God, being a professional Christian, as you often say, um, yeah, I don't mean that positively either.
It's because it's kind of like, wow, it has a projection out there of being a poser, right?
Yeah.
I think, I think we've really tried to battle that and tried not to fall into those traps, typical traps.
Absolutely.
And, and I've said this to Mandy often and many times over the 10 years and she was here, she'd echo it too, is just to say, you know, babe, if I wasn't working at the road with Steve, I couldn't see myself in ministry anywhere else.
You know, I, I just, I believe wholeheartedly in what God's put in your heart, the vulnerability that you practice, what's offered here.
It's unique.
I mean, it's been unique even from anything from the corporate structure, but some of the surprises have been naively when you kind of put the Jersey on the target increases.
And I think in the early years I was naive to.
to the increase of maybe spiritual and demonic attacks
just in our personal lives.
And the intentionality that it takes to walk this out,
as our light's expanding,
as God's using us to break darkness,
be the tip of the spear in some cases for men's hearts,
for men with their son's hearts,
in the case of like the middle school Forge program,
and trying to change some generational things
and just realizing like, okay, I'm not like his only target
or even his sole target,
but my target's increased for the enemy's camp.
That's on the negative side.
On the positive side, I would say
that going through the church merger
was just a very beautiful process.
Yeah, it really was.
I've had a concept and a construct
of what it looks like in corporate America,
but walking through that with just beautiful hearts
and minds of, you know, Chapel Hill's Baptist elders,
our elder team at the time,
and the kindness, the gentleness,
the love that was in the room
as we were just really trying to search God's kingdom
for what do you have here?
It was just an amazing process.
Really was.
We were shocked by that
because all the stories that I'd ever read,
all the pastors that I'd ever known
who had tried to do mergers usually failed
or somebody got all of everything
and the other guy get ripped off,
and I just didn't want any of that.
And I wanted us to stay pure,
but we couldn't have done it, honestly,
without there being the integrity
and the honesty of the Chapel Hill's church people
and just how that was navigated by them.
And Bobby Lingo was the pastor.
He really made it happen.
He really pressed in on that.
And we had to work out some things
as far as how to bless him
in the interim process of the merger,
but even that wasn't any more
than some prolonged conversations.
Nobody ever was upset at each other.
I know Bobby's told me he felt really blessed
by how we took care of him.
We really wanted to do that.
So for any of you out there
that are considering a merger with another church,
give us a call if you want any wisdom
because we didn't really use any consultants.
We did for a short time, but not very long.
We really figured it out on our own.
And everything, I think, boiled down
to the integrity of both sides
and this passion for the kingdom of God expansion
that we were gonna look past some of our differences
in order to move forward with.
I know one of the guys who was an elder for them,
he echoed what I felt from the other group
that we just want this building to be used, man.
We just wanna see it full of people.
It once was, but it's not now,
but we wanna see that happen again.
What a sweet spirit.
It was sweet.
And I mean, I think my takeaways were
what I saw demonstrated with a great group of minds
was that people checked egos at the door.
They really did enter into the room with humility.
And that was so pressing on me,
probably being the junior in the room
by easily 20 years with most of everybody.
I'm watching these, I mean,
they were champions of God's kingdom,
essentially, on both sides.
And just saying, being open-handed with,
God, what are you designing here?
You're the architect.
Let us just be open-minded and open-handed
with this process.
And then walking that out, it was just beautiful.
It was one of the most God-honoring and glorifying things
I think I've been a part of as it relates to church.
And you're right, statistics are pretty dim
as to the general success
of how those things often don't work out.
Yeah, that's right.
So Ryan, take me back to a little bit about your family,
where you're from, your walk of faith,
your first encountering Christ in your life.
Absolutely.
Yeah, grew up in the church.
Mom was the bookkeeper, grandma ran,
was the receptionist, ran the bookstore.
Uncles, dad, grandpa were all deacons and elders,
grew up Assemblies of God.
Tommy Barnett's original church plant in Iowa,
Davenport, Iowa, West Side Assemblies of God,
is where my formative years were spent.
They had a Christian school
that I went through to in the very beginning,
and then grew up in that church.
We would later catch back up with Tommy
when we transitioned to Phoenix and moved to Phoenix
and was a part of Phoenix First Assembly down there.
And then simultaneously, Mandy grew up Assemblies too,
and had the same background.
And so growing up in that, I guess, in that environment,
It was interesting because, you know, you just know what you know, and you don't know what you don't know,
and how other people walk out their Christian faith.
And I think, you know, I was blessed by really good spiritual leaders,
had great pastors along the way, caring people that were active and helping grow our faith, growing my faith.
We were that family that was there every time the doors were open, serving behind the scenes.
And I saw my parents model kind of a life of servant leadership.
And it was often that our family was one of the last to leave on Sundays,
because my dad had to say hi to everybody in the church.
And that was formative.
I came to know around my high school years, I was—my parents had separated,
and I was in a little bit of turmoil and turbulence.
And my dad had the idea to say,
why don't you take the summer between your junior and senior year off,
go live with your sister in summer in Phoenix.
Be good for you to get out of town, maybe clear your head, you know, separate from your friend group.
And he was spot on about that.
And it was that summer where I got really intentional.
I think I discovered a very true and authentic relationship with Jesus, asked Him into my heart,
and kind of from that day forward started that sanctification process of just kind of the daily walk and relationship.
It's also the same summer I met Mandy, who would later become my wife.
She was down there visiting her sister for the same reasons, different reasons,
but just down there visiting her sister for the summer.
And so that was really cool.
And God was starting to write our story together.
That would be the early years of kind of coming to faith, our family's background,
and even meeting for the first time in Phoenix.
So Mandy's right by your side.
She's now our assistant.
So she's super—she's kind of a superwoman.
She's an assistant to you and me,
and she's homeschooling two of the four kids, overseeing the other two, and Sam's just starting college.
So she's juggling a lot.
And you guys are juggling a lot with young ones coming a stair step down.
Sam would be 18, and Sawyer would be about—
Seven.
Seven, yeah.
So, again, I'll just say this to all the listeners out there.
Cute is family.
Sawyer's a riot, Sadie—I mean, the whole family is just a riot.
So I've seen Sam, Sophie, Sadie, Sawyer come up, seen you guys navigate some stuff.
So it hasn't been a bed of roses, all right?
So this journey together has not been a bed of roses on either side, my side or your side.
So you've wept with me over stuff, and I've wept with you over stuff.
Tell us a little bit, Ryan, that you feel like you can share, because you don't know the audience here.
You went through a dark time a few years ago, and we were navigating it together.
About seven years ago, I would say, yeah.
Seven years ago, God started to kind of knock on my door, kind of started to deliver some mail.
And it was this conversation I started to have with Him of Him as the loving, gracious Father,
because God's a gentleman in how He always approaches us and our hearts,
and even some of our brokenness in our story that He knows exists.
And the desire there, His true and holy desire, is to make us whole and complete
to the degree that we're willing to be obedient and open our hands.
And seven years ago, He started that journey with me, and it's a sweet invitation to say,
there's more that you can be experiencing.
There's more work that I want to do through you if you'd be willing and open.
But for you to do that, for me to work through you, you've got to really kind of unblock
and get healed from some things that you haven't dealt with.
And that began kind of a negotiation on my side with Him, and that is,
all right, God, I'm all in. I'll work with you on this.
And fully laid everything down, probably the deepest place of repentance and confession I've ever experienced
at that time in my life of really just wanting to come open-handed.
And then fast forward two years later, so now five years ago, God's like, well, we're not done.
Now we need to take this as to its impact in your immediate family and around people around you.
And I really want to deal with maybe some broken areas in your life and heart that you've not dealt with.
And it was a big risk because I could see where, you know,
the discovery and disclosure of these things that had happened and I had done in my past,
you know, could wreck my future here, could wreck my marriage, my family.
It could really bring things down.
And God just offered the sweet invitation.
I just can remember Him so consistently in the sweet ways that He does and deals with us.
It's just, if you'll trust me, if you'll just trust me, like what I write, what I say is true.
it's true for you. You believed it's true for others, but now you need to trust
and believe it's true for you too. And I stepped into that and I came to you,
shared with you what was on my heart and where God was leading me and the work
that I needed to do. And you were very gracious, you were very intentional with
us in that time. And then I shared with Mandy the work that I needed to do and
the impact that it was gonna have on our relationship and the work that we were
gonna have to do together to recover, to heal, and God in his sweet ways. And my
wife is dynamic. She's awesome. We talk about being a worshiper warrior to the
men, but in so many ways it's not exclusive to the masculine gender.
I mean, I see her model that every day of her life. She's a warrior, she's a,
she works for our family, and she's a worshiper of Jesus. And just because of
that, I mean, I can't stress enough that because of my awesome life choice, and
she accepted the task to be my spouse and bride, that we had a, we had a journey
together with the Holy Spirit. And from that place, deep healing, deep restoration,
a love that I didn't even know I could experience this side of eternity. God
manifesting his love through her and through blood-stained allies like
yourself, you know, coming along and helping that restoration process and
kind of, yeah, becoming wholehearted, as we say. Yeah. What do you think happened in
that initial stage where you had to come clean with Mandy and you also had to come
clean with me? How long do you think it was, explain to me how long you think it
was where you began to not be thinking about it every single day? You feel like
you'd gotten to maybe a place of healing? Well, we jumped in and were very
intentional right out of the gates with, I think, reforming new habits, new
processes. We talk about building neuropathways, new grooves in the mind.
All that was happening simultaneously. God doing his miraculous work in the way
that he's built us physiologically and experiencing that firsthand. It's amazing.
I would say probably that there was a pretty tumultuous six months. And then
light at the end of the tunnel started to increase. The distance to the end of the
tunnel shortened. And I would say, you know, within 18 months, we had put down a
very...we'd done a lot of hard work to get to that place. And it was about a year and
a half after everything came out and the work that had started to...well, the way I
like to think about it, actually, I'll reframe it this way, kind of had to leave
that field and get fresh soil and start putting seed into the new soil of our
life, of our marriage, of our relationships. And it took about 18 months
before some of the harvest came. So Ryan, what would you say has been the most
important thing that you've tried to bring into your marriage that's kept it
together, enable you to make it? Because in my opinion, you've got a very
victorious, a joy-filled marriage. You guys do. You're a great witness to everybody
that meets you in the whole church, that you have that. What's been the key to that,
especially going through this deep kind of valley of the shadow of death?
It speaks, I think, to God's heart for all of us that if we're willing to enter in
open-handed...and I mean, it's terrifying. It's terrifying. Like to think back, I can
still touch the hot iron of emotion and the fear of what a reality could look like.
And projecting an outcome or predicting an outcome, that was in my mind, that was the
flesh man-made outcome and what God's outcome is. And thank you. I agree with you
just God's generous love, capacity to restore, resurrect. I think we both
recognize, Mandy and I today, that we have first and foremost a complete and total
reliance on Jesus, our relationship, our connection to Him. And from that, He's the
headwaters from everything else that flows. And even to the place where we've tried to
replace Him with each other, we can't put each other on pedestals. Sometimes I've
tried to sit in God's seat in her life and vice versa. And I think there's awareness
around that, just to say...and we've both done that too. Just post-healing, God, baby,
I'm taking a place in your life right now that I think is only designed for Jesus. And
lovingly and kindly encouraging each other where we need restored, we need refreshed.
Even post all the healing where we just need to be...
moments of refreshment and I think it's awareness around that and just us being consistent and we're
just very we're very intertwined. I think probably grabbing a hold of this oneness concept that the
scriptures say that we cleave from our families of origin and we become one flesh and it's this
discovery of how we've continued to intertwine our oneness over the last five years. She's my best
friend. She's my primary blood-stained ally. I rely on her. I trust her judgment, her discretion,
her discernment. It's such a resource and a gift and that I'm trying to be aware of and I think
you've stated this in a previous podcast. It's just where we step in and enter our bride's worlds
and risking that. That's right. And so I think it's just it's awesome. It could be fearful and
intimidating for guys initially but once you get the rhythm and the muscle memory, the beauty that's
unlocked, the resources, the relationship, it's amazing. Well Ryan, I know you guys have some
some rituals that you've developed as a result of some of these dark times. What are a few
of those rituals that would be helpful to other married couples? There is something that's unlocked
in the kingdom when we are unified in pursuing the kingdom of God in the areas of specifically
prayer. Fasting's been amazing. We've had moments and periods where we fasted together for the same
purposes and goals. Those have just been precious. Really seeing God's kingdom move in our lives,
bring us answers. That's been huge. I can't stress that enough. And then worship. I mean we try to
bring in things that we enjoy where we can kind of experience God's kingdom in our lives with the
area of worship. And so we call it Soaking Saturdays and we invite the family down and
there's no agenda. We just play. We ask the family to add songs to playlists and we'll just kind of
go and leave it open-handed. If there's some prayer requests at the end, that's great. But really just
setting the table to come and kind of Sabbath with God and just be restored through worship.
There's that and then trying to be as intentional as we can going through the scriptures together.
I mean I think Mandy and I for the last five years have always been in at least one Bible
study together, if not a couple going on with the kids, each other, and other people. So you can't
stress enough and you have a great statistic on couples that read the word of God together and
how that divorce proofs your marriage. And I can't stress that. That's absolutely accurate. It's
amazing the glue that holds us together in studying God's word as husband and wife. Amen.
So men and women, there was a survey done a number of years ago that found that when a couple reads
the Bible together and prays together, their chance of divorce is one in 1019. So it's
virtually non-existent. Less than 1% get divorced. And with the high rates of divorce that we see,
even in the church, it's obvious that couples are not doing that. So you guys really intentionally
made that happen. It's just, it's one of those new, those new grooves. It's a new neuropathway
that we're both finding together. And it's been awesome to the point where I think God's put in
our hearts that what he's given us is no longer, it's not ours to keep. We want to give it away.
We want to encourage marriages. If they're hurting, if they're struggling, man, like our
story is not unique. It's unique in that we both accept it and we're obedient to God. But if we
take that posture, I think every marriage can discover restoration, healing, vibrant life
together. Amen to that. That's so awesome. How has parenting been affected by being in the pastorate?
So you're in the pastorate now, now Mandy's been your assistant for a number of years. She hasn't
been an assistant to me, but she has been to you. So you guys, not in the first couple of years,
I don't think, I don't think we could afford it, but when we could, it seems like Mandy's
been by your side. I know Liz has been by my side, but you guys have little kids. We don't,
our kids pretty much out of the house, Charity's there, but she's, she's very self-sufficient.
She's 19, but you've got little ones that are very dependent on you. So for all those future
leaders, as well as current leaders that are in the church, how have you and Mandy just flown
that plane with being parents, but also pastoral leaders? Absolutely. No, that's a good question.
While it was unique and new, I don't think, you know, until you experience it, but there is this
kind of fishbowl experience that you enter into with a life of public service, so to speak. I
think that one thing that we've been intentional with in the last couple of years, more giving
more intentionality, is really trying to guard family time. Now we get older kids and they're
wanting to spread their wings too and expand their social circles, but
Again, prioritizing stuff like Soaking Saturdays, you know, we really are pretty intentional
with family trips, family time together.
We reserve Friday nights at the house for just fun activities and hangout.
And I think that's huge.
Mandy's been so great about choosing the next right curriculum with homeschool.
You know, currently we're using a program called a Becca and seeing our kids really
flourish in that.
But I think as parents, whether you're inside full-time ministry or outside, the responsibility
and stewardship of our children is our responsibility.
And I think that oftentimes culture currently is placing that responsibility outside the
home.
So I think having the mission of our home is our church and it's our first mission
field and we're going to pour into our kids.
We're going to try and teach them biblical truths.
We're going to model that in relationship with each other and encourage them in the
same ways.
And I mean, I know that's probably kind of maybe the expected response of a pastor, but
I would say that we, we really do take it serious that, you know, they might not be
the best at long division, but you know, if they know the word of God and the scriptures
are in their heart, then I trust everything else is going to fall into place.
Well, I think that the part that is most remarkable about you guys is that we, we observe with
you strong work ethic, very hardworking.
I've never felt like you take advantage of my generosity if I'm going to extend it on
any situation.
Whereas I know some pastors and staff in the past at other churches have, you know, they
feel like sometimes that they have pastors or staff that take advantage of some of the
flexibility of the church and aren't there enough, aren't working hard enough.
And that's never been true of you or Mandy.
So I feel blessed to, you know, have you next to me cause I always felt like you keep that.
And then you've, you know, you've like yesterday, I mean, yesterday was kind of a hard day for
me and I was going through a lot of emotional stuff and it was just hard.
And you said, you know, I don't, why don't you think about reevaluating your schedule
tonight with that other thing that you have, when I literally hadn't even thought about
it till you said it.
And I went, Oh yeah, that's exactly the perspective that I needed to hear.
So I canceled that event and went home to be with Liz and then everything that came
down, it was, it was perfect because she needed me to be there.
Amen.
But that's why we need each other.
Right?
That's why we need it.
We need a teammate.
Yeah.
We need a, we need friends, bloodstained allies.
Well, I've appreciated, you know, the pace and ethic that you set here too.
I mean, like I said, it'd be hard for me to imagine following anybody else because one,
your intentionality and leadership, the way you pastor, the way you coach, it's, it's
a joy to serve God's kingdom under that umbrella and just what's, what God has been building
over the last 10 years at the road with just the development of the staff, uh, processes.
Um, I've, I've joked about kind of the Pinocchio story, like growing, like we're a real boy
because we were building the plane as we flew it for a while, right?
Just being tenants.
Totally.
Absolutely true.
And then just how, yeah.
I mean, the covenant of harmony part, it's just a whole nother podcast on that.
What we do in the covenant of harmony at the road is we require all of our staff to have
to follow Matthew 18 in relation to working through any issues, any kind of, um, relational
problems, theological problems, whatever it might be to go to the person and talk about
it.
And we have some processes and procedures that people use.
And that was because of some past stuff where we felt it was kind of unfair.
So we decided to institute that here at the road to really help people not only work through
problems that they might have, which is the immediate issue, but then it's also training
them to be a problem solver in sideway, you know, side angle, sideway relationships where
a lot of times we just run away and we don't want to deal with it.
That's right.
Especially in marriage.
We do it.
Guys do it all the time.
Whether you're Christian or not.
I mean, you'd be saved and going to heaven and you still have bad relationships.
I like to say that just because you got saved one day, it doesn't mean you're good at math.
So cancel culture doesn't help, right?
Right.
It doesn't.
You got like ghosting is a thing now where people just dip if it's hard and they don't
want to confront.
Yeah, what's all that? I mean, like, I've seen that with my own kids, you know,
like they get mad at each other, or they get mad at me. And then it's like, they don't want to talk
to you for like a week or two or a month or two or something. It's like, I mean, it's a baby boomer,
okay? You're not a baby boomer, but I am. But we just didn't blame people. I don't know, in my
generation, I mean, we got blamers. It goes with the fall. Eve and Adam blamed each other. So I
know it just goes with being human. But it does seem that the younger generation now, really,
maybe through psychology that they hear, you know, kind of, I don't know, junior psychologists that
are out there doing podcasts, two counselors, whatever. Sure. It's like you're always a victim,
right? Seems like a lot of victimology going on. Yeah, I've seen it even transcend. I don't know
that we can even target one specific age group anymore, because I feel like it's threaded through
and more people are picking up on it. It's not even gender specific anymore. It seems like there's
permission to avoid ownership and find your place in the victimology of the latter of how victimized
have you been? And then that's your size of the trophy you get. Yeah. And it's kind of like,
well, how many right-handed people do you have on staff? You know, you like right-handed people
better than left-handed people or something. And so we're going to have a lawsuit against you
because you don't have the quota of left-handed people that fits the percentage in the culture.
So it's crazy. Well, conflict is uncomfortable. I love the covenant of harmony and the processes.
And you're right. I mean, that could be its own podcast altogether, but pressing in and challenging
at every stage of life, how do we healthfully, how do we with health approach conflict
for the objective of restoration of the relationship and even growth in ourselves?
And when it's done and modeled, when it's modeled and done God's way, as he writes in the scriptures
of Matthew 18, growth happens in all of us and we mature. And I like the idea of, you know,
we're only ever as mature spiritually as we are emotionally mature. And so those things,
there's a correlation between both of those. And I think that in the process of conflict
resolution under the umbrella rubric of covenant of harmony, both of those are leveling up at the
same time. We're growing emotionally and we're growing spiritually in our maturity. And it's
uncomfortable, but I think when it's done the right way and in a healthy way, it honors God.
And then we grow and benefit and the relationships healed. So I'm a big proponent of it.
And I don't do it perfect. And just for you guys out there listening to this, Ryan and I've had to
do that too. I mean, we've had, I don't know, probably a dozen times over 10 years where
Ryan comes to me because maybe something I said or didn't say or something I did or didn't do
that I needed to hear and I didn't want to hear it. But I did because I trust Ryan and then we
work it out and then I try to grow, you know, and so. And conversely is true. There's aspects of,
you know, um, you know, areas of my life, my, my work life and stuff where you've spoken into it
and things that I need to hear and grow too. And, uh, it's good short accounts kind of, right?
Yeah, that's right. Yep. When we go, when we go hunting together or we're fishing together,
whatever, um, we joke a lot, but when we're at work, you know, we have a lot of fun at work.
There's no doubt about that. We laugh a lot there too. And, uh, the time to be serious and the time
to be funny and time to cry, time to weep, time to ask for forgiveness has sort of characterized
our life. And, uh, so I love working with you, Ryan, looking forward to another decade, maybe
or two together with you and Mandy, Liz and I love you guys so much. And you're always there for us.
And hopefully we're always there for you. Definitely appreciate it. It's mutual brother.
And, uh, just the invitation to join you on a road less traveled and pursue the kingdom of God
for a revolution that he'd want to bring and manifest for our time and place in his history
is just, it's exciting to be here. It is. It's really cool. So, so thanks everybody for listening.
And this is Ryan Steyer. This is his life. This is who he is. And we have a lot of fun together.
Amen, brother. Thank you. God bless you guys. Thanks for tuning in.