160- Lessons from a Reporter Turned Pastor (with Joey Crandall)

160- Lessons from a Reporter Turned Pastor 
with Joey Crandall

Welcome to Strength for Today's Pastor, conversations with current senior pastors and leaders which will strengthen and help you in your pastoral ministry. And now, here's your host, Bill Holdridge of Poimen Ministries. Welcome to Strength for Today's Pastor.

This is episode 160. In this podcast, our hope, our goal is to provide encouragement, sometimes instruction, sometimes ministry tools to current pastors and teachers so that the churches they serve might also be encouraged, strengthened, and equipped. So for that purpose and to that end, today we have with us Pastor Joey Crandall who is the senior lead pastor of Calvary Chapel Carson Valley located here in Gardnerville, Nevada where I actually am right now, and Joey and I are in the same building during this conversation.

So it's really great to be able to have this conversation with you, Joey. Welcome to join us today. Thank you so much for having me on, Bill.

I've really enjoyed getting to talk with you already and looking forward to this conversation moving forward. Yeah, thanks for traveling all this way to come into this interview. This is great.

Yes. So you, Joey, have been senior pastor for four-ish years plus. Correct.

Here at Carson Valley. You've got an interesting story about how you ended up in this senior pastor role, and I'd like you to tell that story because when I heard it the other day, I said, this is really a cool introduction into the senior pastor ministry. Sure.

I would say it is an atypical path, most likely. My dad was an assistant pastor here really through most of the history of the church. The church was born in 1981, and I believe we moved into the valley in 1982.

So he was a minister here the entire time I was growing up. And I went off. I went away to college and became a newspaper reporter.

And the Lord, through a variety of different ways, called me back home to work at the newspaper here in our town. And over the years, I became involved in ministry at the church just through the college. We had a college career group.

I helped out with the worship team for a period of time. And then as my wife and I had kids, the Lord kind of directed us into different things for a while and then came back to the worship team after my dad passed away and went home to be with the Lord. So about eight years ago now.

And in the time following our pastor here, Dan Steen, he had asked if I would serve on the board. And over that span of time, the Lord was beginning to lead on Dan's heart that it was time to think about stepping away and retiring and turning the ministry over to the next generation. And it came to be that he ended up saying, it's time, we're going to be making this transition in the coming year.

And he pointed across the table at me and said, I think Joey's the one that's going to lead the way forward as far as the next pastor. And that was a sobering moment. That was a very humbling moment, literally sitting at the table.

I remember I was sitting at the end of the table in the board meeting and I remember wanting to turn the other direction to see if anybody was sitting beyond me, that he was pointing at somebody else. But that's not the way that that went. And I prayed over it, went home, talked with my wife.

We prayed over it together. And I really asked the Lord, show me something unmistakable in this. This needs to be a calling straight from you.

Because it was entirely outside of anything I'd ever thought for myself. And I remember sitting in my car at my job, I believe it was the following day, and just asking that tangibly, Lord, show me, what is this going to be? Is this what you have for us? And I turned on the car and on the radio there was a song from Phil Wickham on the radio station that I'd really never heard before. And the refrain in the song as it came on was, The time is now for letting go.

The time is now for lifting souls. And that was a very important moment for me that I've had to return to repeatedly. God called me into this.

And you can't just leave that calling behind. So I started the first of that particular year, January 1st, and that year was 2020. So the world shut down about 12 weeks later with the lockdown.

And that was my entry into ministry. Baptism by fire, brother. Baptism by fire.

Very much so. And you and I had discussed about this before. It was unique for me in the sense that the Lord left me in a spot where there was nowhere else to turn.

There was no playbook for a season like that. He very much tailored that to where I needed to be looking to him for every moment because he had to show us the way through. And that's where we were.

So just to rewind the story a little bit. So you're sitting there in that board meeting. Pastor Dan lets the board know that it's time for a transition.

Was that the first time you heard that you were going to be the guy in his mind? That was the first time I heard that it would be me, for sure. He had mentioned over the preceding years that it could be a number of different guys within the leadership team at that time. In my mind, I thought for sure it was going to be one of the other two guys he'd brought up.

That's just where I'd always been. But when he brought that up, I think it was one of those where every other guy in the room was also praying over it, and the Lord led us all to the same spot. And the other two guys are still a part of the leadership team here and have been integral in what the Lord is doing here.

Yeah, absolutely. So these things were taking place, and so you're now moving into the ministry. Now, Pastor Dan has been really well known in Northern California and Nevada.

Probably most guys that are in the Calvary Chapel Camp know him through the South Lake Tahoe conference that was at Zephyr Cove for so many years. Sure, yeah. And he oversaw that.

So his decision to turn to you and sense the Lord's hand on you, that has a lot of street cred to it, just because of who he is. Yeah. That's a pretty cool thing.

He's got a good reputation, and he's still in the fellowship, right? Yeah. No, he's still a part of the fellowship here. He's still ministering with the Sheriff's Office in a chaplaincy capacity over the past couple of years.

And that's been neat to see how the Lord has used him in that sense, too. Ministry never really stops. He just moves us into different avenues over time.

So you were functioning as a board member. You had been leading worship, doing other things in the church over a period of years. What do you think there was in you that Pastor Dan saw that made him be convinced that Joe is the guy? He's going to move forward with the church.

I think he saw the same thing that I did, is this guy can't do anything on his own. All right. Fair enough.

But, I mean, he had to see some kind of a gifting or gift mix or something like that. I think really what we look for in any minister ever is one who's going to be surrendered to the Lord. One who the Lord is going to use.

Without that one piece, the gifting itself matters very little. If you can't be directed by the Lord in every step, you're going to go the wrong direction. And I'm very well acquainted with my own incompetency.

And I think that, as we were talking before, we serve a God who's omnipotent. And omniscient. He knows all things.

And I serve that God. And that God leads us through whatever we run into. And I'm proud to be a member of the ones who are entirely unqualified, but equipped by the Spirit of God.

A couple of weeks ago, when we were chatting, we were talking about the office, if you will, of pastor-teacher. And how that's part of the equipping mechanism that the Lord has called to equip his saints for the work of the ministry. So we talked about the pastor role, the teacher role.

How those things mix together sometimes and whatever. So how did you develop in your self-concept or in your understanding that you were called as a pastor-teacher? How did that happen for you? Sure. Well, and it's a funny thing.

Again, I think the Lord puts us in places where we are unable to function on our own. And my greatest fear in life is public speaking. It always has been.

And that's why I became a writer. I never, ever wanted to be in front of people. Even in a meeting of three or four people, it would make me nervous.

And what I knew when I came back to church here after college was I knew I wanted to be a part of ministry. And I told Pastor Dan at the time, I really feel the Lord leading me to host a college group, but I do not want to teach it. And that lasted for about three months before the guy who did step up to teach asked me to help him teach.

And over time what I found is the word speaks for itself. And God's word has all of the power, and it depends very, very little on the composition of the person, the fortitude of the person. You just let the word of God speak, and it does the work that he intends for it to do.

And I loved that. And that love continued to grow as time has gone on. And so in that, I believe the Lord gifts those who simply surrender to the way he wants to lead them.

And he developed within me a thirst for his word and a love just for the... There is no better word to speak than what he has spoken. And that's a truth that you carry into every situation you have as a pastor, is his word will do the work here. I'm just here to share that word.

And it's good. He never fails in that. Well, you're describing something that makes a case for expository preaching and teaching.

And it's always surprised me, and you and I were talking about this too, of how this is not as common as it ought to be. Yeah. That we're just going through the word.

I mean, where else are we going to get a sense not only of this is how the work is going to get done, the spirit of God taking the word and putting it on people's hearts, but this is also our authority. How can we possibly stand in a pulpit before God's people without that sense of authority that comes from knowing this is the word? This is the word of the living God that we're here to try to unpack and let it say what it actually says. No, absolutely.

And it's one of those where, again, you let God speak what he wants to say through his word. And you get to watch miracles happen in that. It's a tremendous blessing that not near enough in the current church culture take advantage of.

You just let God speak, and he does the work. And it's good. Yeah.

We were talking about the ministries that Calvary Chapel Carson Valley supports, and you mentioned that you support intensive care ministries and Dan Finfrock. And I remember when I first was exposed to inductive Bible study as Dan teaches it. This was back in the mid-'80s.

And I realized, you know what, there's some holes in my approach. I'm basically doing it, but there's some definite holes in my approach. And my hole was that I was doing observation, and I was working really hard at interpretation to see what the text said in its context, what did it mean to its primary initial listeners.

But where I was weak was my application column was almost empty. I needed to do a better job, you know, figuring out in my own life, what is this saying to me, and how does this change me and equip me? But then I realized that that very thing is going to be what the people need. But when I'm listening to people that are saying that they're teaching the Bible, sometimes I'm hearing that they're observing or reading a text, and then they're jumping right to application.

And I'm not hearing any of the thinking or the reasoning or the contextualizing of that particular passage. So by the time they get to their application, I'm not convinced that what they said is right, because they haven't convinced me through the hard work of interpretation. So you're a thinking guy.

You are a journalist. You write. You think.

That's what you were paid to do in your career, and that's what the Lord has called you to do now. So how does that all work with you, the OIA thing? No, as a journalist, and again, I haven't been a journalist at this point for going on seven years. But before that, I was a journalist for 17 years.

The industry itself has changed very much, I think, when you look at any news organization now. There's a lot of almost eisegetical application as far as I'm going to tell the story I want to tell when you look at today's news. The way I was trained and the way that I studied through school is you let the story tell it for what it is.

You let the sources tell their story. You let the facts speak for themselves. And so I have always throughout my career, it was hammered into my head, you cannot write this story.

You tell the story that is there. And you tell it by finding out what's there in the documented evidence. You let the experts, the sources speak to that evidence.

You don't put yourself in that story whatsoever. You let the story tell it from what is there foundationally. And that's been a very natural transition into teaching a Bible study.

And the difference here is the Bible never lies to you, or your sources might. So that's been a very freeing thing as far as you know when you go into Scripture, you're going to get exactly what the truth is. Your job is not to put your story into that Scripture.

Your job is to let that Scripture speak the story that God wants to tell. And that comes with, as you were saying, both an application sense and an interpretation sense. You need a basic understanding of what that text is saying.

And then you let God take that understanding and apply it over the person's life. The idea at the end of the day is that people are able to assimilate Scripture not just as a good life lesson, but as their very process of thought. And when they are able to think through Scripture, when they are able to think by the definition of Scripture, they begin to live a godly life, a life where the Word of God is applied over it.

And so it's really very much, it's taking only what Scripture says and then letting that Scripture tell the story of that particular study. And I think that's, I come at it from a different angle than a lot of guys, but most guys who are raised and grown up through the Calvary Chapel movement, that's what we always received was you got the interpretation of the text and then that text became an application for how you live life through that particular scenario. And that's been, that's always been who we are and it's something that I love about who we are.

But for me, it's more just taking the reporting skills and telling the story of the text through what the text already says. And that's something I have a great amount of joy in. Yeah, I remember sitting under Pastor Chuck for all those years and then after we left Costa Mesa, still listening to his cassette tapes.

You may remember those, what those were. Yeah. And then in all the other ways now with digital.

But I always thought that his primary benefit to us, aside from just who he was and as an example and the way he was accurate with the Scriptures, he taught us how to think with the Bible. Because there was always the three elements. There was always observation, there was always interpretation, there was always application.

And so I'm getting trained on how to think the way I'm supposed to think in approaching the Bible or having the Bible approach me. How important is that? I mean, my goodness, the people that are sitting in our congregations that are listening to us teach, they're going to be getting the same thing. That's absolutely imperative.

It is an absolute necessity as to translating anything of worth to the people who come to our fellowships. The Bible has to be the standard by which we think. And when they see a life given over to that, they see, hey, there's fruit in that life.

Everything that is written within those pages of Scripture is real and tangible and valuable. And when they see somebody surrender to that, they see, hey, this is something you can actually live your life by. And it's absolutely imperative.

The word for the teacher must be inerrant. They must believe that it is infallible. And they must believe that it is the way with which they proceed through the course of life.

So back to your journalism career. What an interesting career, 17 years. And it's fascinating to hear you describe your training as a journalist, that you were trained to let the story tell itself as it is.

Boy, I wish that would come back into our culture. So I was thinking as you were sharing, Joey, of Lee Strobel, of course, that we all know who he is. But that's what he was.

He was an investigative journalist. And that led him into a search as to whether the Gospels could be trusted. And so he let the historical and archaeological narrative tell itself, and he came to his conclusions.

It's pretty leak-proof. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

You cannot, if somebody enters into such an endeavor as he did, in good faith, you cannot come away with any other conclusion. But something that we tell folks in our congregation, too, is even if the apologetic evidence were not there, this is still a faith in Jesus Christ. And our God has been so kind to us in the volume of evidence he's provided us with.

He doesn't ask for blind faith. But on the same thread, if all he ever gave us was the word itself without the backing evidence, it would still be true. And our salvation would still be by faith in what he has spoken and what he has done.

And he hasn't left us hanging out to dry in that. But at the end of the day, it is faith and faith alone that leads us to the realization that these words are indeed true. There's so many accounts through Scripture where they didn't have the evidence.

You think about any of the prophets, they didn't have a guarantee that the word would come true except that God spoke it to them. And really, at the end of the day, that's all the proof that you need. As God spoke this, it will be exactly as he said.

And he will uphold it, and he always will. And that gives us faith for all the prophecy not yet to be fulfilled. It will be, because he spoke it.

And it's exciting to see in our day how that is coming together. Yeah, we have prophecy in the rearview mirror now. We see all the things that have been fulfilled.

And Peter writes in 2 Peter 1 that we have now the more sure word of prophecy. And even more sure than the eyewitness testimony of Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration is the word of prophecy. Fulfilled prophecy is the apologetic for the Bible.

You know, I think about Jesus' statement in the Gospel of John when he's telling his disciples that the Holy Spirit, when he comes, he's going to lead you into all truth. And then he said he's going to show you things to come. And, you know, there's this push back today from certain circles against the theology of Paul the Apostle.

And it's coming from certain quarters, of course, and some are trying to invalidate Paul the Apostle as a credible source and therefore invalidate the New Testament books that the Holy Spirit used him to author. Major problem there, obviously. But to me, since Jesus rose from the dead and Jesus knew that he was going to rise from the dead, he raised himself from the dead and he's the one that said to his apostles, I'm going to lead you into all truth and I'm going to show you things to come.

To me, that's all I need to know about the veracity of Paul the Apostle. The one who rose from the dead is the one who speaks authoritatively on these things. We don't need to be apologetic about Paul.

And the early church accepted him. The apostles accepted him. Well, I think there's a tremendous amount of irony in what you just shared, too, because he was dealing with the same detractors when he was alive, those who were trying to invalidate his ministry.

And we just went through on Sunday morning in Philippians chapter 1 where he talked about those who would add affliction to his chains in preaching Christ out of selfish ambition and not sincerely and how that man, how Paul was able to land on the idea that in every way, all that matters, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached because indeed, Christ is the one who leads you into all truth. We spent an hour on that on Sunday morning. As long as Jesus is preached, he's the one that we have the relationship with, not the false teacher.

He's able to straighten out the false motivation. He's able to straighten out the pretense because he himself is truth. He's the way, the truth, and the life.

And in that, if his name is being preached, that name has power. And Paul saw that. And I wish I had the humility of Paul.

I wish I had the endurance and the long-suffering, the ability to be absolutely absent of guile or envy and just care only that your Lord's name is spoken because you know that that name has the power to save. And it does have the power to lead people. Our Lord has the power to lead anybody into all truth.

And that's all that matters, just a tremendous thing. But what an ironic truth that even still today, they'd be trying to discredit his ministry. That's how it always was.

Yeah, it always was. And another bit of irony is that the very things that Paul wrote about and taught in the epistles are the very foundations of Western culture and have been the foundations of freedom throughout the world. Freedom for women, freedom from slavery, freedom of speech, all of these things would not have been what they have become in the free world apart from the writings of Paul.

So it's sort of ironic how that all works out that way. And it's one of those things, too. Paul, he never addressed slavery as an up or a down, an approval.

He just addressed the freedom of Jesus Christ. And that gospel produced a change in the heart for a slave owner to want to free his slaves. The power of the gospel is greater than the words that we can concoct on our own.

And it can create such change. The story of Philemon. Absolutely.

There it is. That's great. So you succeeded Pastor Dan Steen, as we had talked about.

We as a ministry are involved with a lot of different pastoral transitions. Yours was, as you said, about a year-long transition from the time of announcement to the time of resuming or assuming that role. How did that go? What went well for you? Well, it's one of those.

He had started talking about probably two years prior. He had effectively a five-year plan as to how the transition would go. And the Lord had other plans.

He kind of truncated the plan. He solved some unknowns for Dan on his own as far as how are certain things going to work. And how it ended up playing out, from the moment that he had kind of pointed across the table and said, this guy's going to be taking the helm next, to the moment that I actually stood in front of the congregation as the pastor, that was only a span of about 12 weeks.

And it may have even been less than that. It was probably closer to eight weeks. And in that, when the Lord moves, he moves.

And I think what went very well about it is that Dan, as we have been talking about throughout the conversation already, Dan was surrendered to how God wanted to do this. I think he had an idea in mind of what he wanted it to look like. And then God put something different together in time.

And it played out exactly as the Lord willed. And I think in that, it went very, very well because we were just receptive to the timing of the Lord, first and foremost. And it worked out in that sense.

Well, it's really interesting to me, Joey, to hear this because there are going to be men that are listening to this that, for lack of a better phrase, they got thrown into the fire of senior pastoral ministry. So how do you do this? You had been prepared by the Spirit in a lot of different ways. And part of the preparation you've talked about, the preparation of realizing that I can't do anything apart from Christ, which is probably the most important part of the preparation.

But anyway, you got prepared by the Spirit. So this is a word of encouragement for guys that are in that place. They don't know what to do.

It's like they went over the falls body surfing and they don't know where the bottom of the ocean is to get back up out of the water. And it can feel like that sometimes. So what helped you have a good foundation, a good grounding going into this? Because these were uncharted waters for you in many ways.

Sure. And I walked into a very blessed situation in that our leadership here, the board of elders, many of them had been around for most of my childhood. And that produced its own... It's a hard thing when somebody's watched you grow up from the time you were six or seven years old, and now you're the pastor, you know? But each of the men on our board here, humble, long-term, surrendered to the Spirit, servants of God.

And I was able to walk into a situation with men on my board, and they were all offering to resign. You should be able to pick your own board in this. And just as I prayed over it, the Lord was like, you got to keep these guys.

These are the guys I brought to be as part of the leadership team here. And we had a situation where there was no changes needed. And that was a blessing.

It was a blessing to be able to walk in and already have the institutional knowledge, the guys who've been through the battles and the wars already, the guys who had watched me grow up and knew, frankly, where I was weak and where I did have strong suits, and were able to come alongside me. Because, frankly, always you're in a situation where the guys around you, sometimes they're going to see things that you don't. And to be able to approach those situations in a godly manner and say, hey, you might want to watch out for this, or you might want to keep an eye on this.

That was a tremendous, tremendous blessing to me. And so I can't say enough about the leadership team that the Lord put together long in advance that I was able to walk into. And then for them to be humble enough to say, okay, you should be able to make this call.

I'm going to step down. And the Lord, of course, saying, no, you got to keep these guys on. It was a good thing.

It was a good thing. Back in the day, Joey, it almost felt like the conventional wisdom when a pastor of a Calvary would leave and then a new guy would come in, that the new guy was, I don't know if this was actually true, but it seemed like there was a strong, undercurrent ethos that said, get rid of the board. Start from scratch.

But you had a different kind of a situation. What you've just described is a situation where you should retain the board, absolutely. And these are guys, it's like a prophet is not without honor except in his own country.

Well, a pastor is not without honor except for when he grows up in the church. I mean, that could have been what it is, but it's not that way for you. They embraced you.

It was a perfect situation for you, it sounds like. Oh, it was a tremendous blessing. And I tell them all the time, I'm so thankful for them.

I think Chuck Smith had written in his philosophy of ministry, you don't want a board of yes-men. You want a board of men who are gonna seek earnestly after the Lord's heart. And we had that already.

And they have continued to be faithful in exactly being that. So, just a tremendous blessing. What a perfect environment to grow over the years as a senior or a lead pastor.

The Lord's really blessed you. Words cannot really quantify it. They have borne with me through watching me make mistakes.

And they have had the fortitude to let that happen and let the Lord carry us through. And that's been, I can't say enough about the guys we have in leadership here. That's great.

That's gonna be a great segue to my next question. But while I'm forming the question and whatever, I'm gonna spring something on you that is unscripted and I forgot to tell you about before the podcast interview started. I would like you to share something personally or directly to the senior lead pastors that are listening to this podcast.

Just something encouraging that the Spirit's gonna be bringing to your mind. And I know that you've got a lot there. But here's my question.

Since you've assumed the role of senior lead pastor and you've got the board that is able to speak into situations and is supportive of you and humble man, godly man, what have you learned that would help the new pastor of a church that has never been a senior lead pastor before? What have you learned since you assumed the role? Hmm. Do you have two hours? Okay. No, what I have learned concretely, I'll share an anecdote that really shaped how the ministry has been in the time since.

I had shared how I came in right before the COVID lockdowns and that was a situation where we really didn't, there was no playbook for that. And from my background, I was a reporter. I had studied First Amendment case law.

I knew my rights. And when we started seeing these governmental orders for everybody to lock down, my assumption was this is clearly why God brought me in during this season because of what I know already and what I've been through and what I've experienced. I can work the First Amendment system.

I know it probably better than anybody else in this seat. This has been my life. I love the First Amendment.

I felt I was tailor-made for that moment to fight for the rights of our fellowship. And in the interceding time, I remember specifically a conversation with our worship leader and assistant pastor where he said, you know, how we respond to this is going to shape what our church is going to be. And he said, we want to be very careful that we are not just the defiant church.

We need to be very careful that we continue to represent the heart of our Lord in this. And I so appreciated that simple check. Let's just make sure we know what the Lord is doing in this and what He wants us to do in this.

He may move differently for different fellowships. And as I prayed, the Lord really began to show to me it's not that I'm tailor-made you for this moment because of what you're bringing in. I tailor-made you to surrender to me in this moment.

And that means leaving aside everything that you think you know. And that was a humbling moment and a freeing moment and an eye-opening moment. And if I could share anything to anybody listening to this podcast is what you think you know, the muscle memory that you tend to run on, it is nothing compared to the wisdom and the will of our God.

And He led us clearly through that season. He led us through some very difficult situations, but in how He led us through, we continued to meet, but we didn't say you can't tell us what to do. We did it in the sense of make sure the Lord is telling you what to do and how to respond to this.

We're going to be here. We're not going to meet as we always have, but we're going to be here recording the message outside. You seek the Lord on how you want to respond.

You can listen in the parking lot over the radio station. You can listen in your front yard and let your neighbors hear the word the day of. What's important is that you seek where the Lord wants you to be today and that has been kind of the going motto for who we are as a fellowship.

Seek the Lord. Make sure where He has you, you are where He has you in what He's doing, and it's going to be the right thing. He's going to lead you clearly through.

It was a fascinating thing to watch unfold because people called and they said, what do you mean? What are you doing? And we said, we want you to seek the Lord for where He wants you to be this weekend. We're not going to turn anybody away for anybody who shows up. And that really began to form who we are now as a fellowship, as a church that is ready to follow where the Lord leads, wherever He leads, whenever He leads, and whatever He wants to do.

And that's been the thing. So really what I have learned is that for as much as I think I might know what to do, it's not necessarily what the Lord is going to want to do. And He has made us in these moments to surrender to Him.

And then He will do exactly what He intends to do. I love that. That is so awesome.

It reminds me of the proverb, the wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain to wise counsel. The wise man doesn't go into the muscle memories, you put it, and go into the archives of his past experiences and depend on that. He's thankful for it, but he doesn't depend upon it.

He needs fresh word from the Lord, fresh guidance, and that's what you guys did. You represented Christ as you exercised your First Amendment rights in a godly, Christ-like way. And that brings honor to Him.

Which I know a lot of folks did through that season. But for me it was just an eye-opener. I thought, a very prideful moment, I thought, this is why I'm here in the Lord very much.

Just saying, well, not so much. This is the part that you need to set aside and look to me. And that was a very freeing thing.

And then the Holy Spirit said, wait, there's more. So now you continue on in your ministry post-COVID, which is awesome. Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. Well, that's a great word. I think you've shared your word of encouragement to us pastors, Joey.

Praise God. And that is, don't depend upon what you already know. Go into this with a heart to learn and to know what the Lord wants to do freshly and right now to represent Him.

And I know, I speak on behalf of the guys that are serving employment ministries alongside of me. That's the way those guys approach things too, which I so appreciate. We're talking about 30, 40 years of pastoral ministry as a senior pastor, but they go into situations that they're not depending on all the things that they know.

They know this is a fresh and new thing. They're going to have to hear the mind of God. And it's great.

So that's what you're saying here in pastoring the church in Gardnerville. Yeah. No, absolutely.

Muscle memory is, I think, my greatest fear now. I had shared with you roundabout year two, year three, I started to, in the back of my mind, think, okay, I think I've got this figured out. And then years four, four and a half now, the Lord's been showing me, you don't have anything figured out.

And you're never going to. I think He gives us experience in the sense that we're familiar with, okay, I've seen this before. And He patterns you into turning to Him in those things.

And He knows, He will always know. And then He's the one who leads us through. I remember, and I'm going to, we're going to kind of wrap up here, but I'm going to share an anecdote of my own.

When I was at a pastor's, a shepherd's school in Costa Mesa back in 1976, the whole school was a one-week school basically designed to exhort men out of wanting to be in the ministry. I mean, they were sharing all the horror stories. So at the beginning of one of the sessions, the leader said, how many of you know John 3.16? And everybody raised their hands.

They know John 3.16. And then I got busy. My mind got busy. I was thinking about something else.

And then he said, he quoted from 1 Corinthians 8, if anyone knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. So he quoted that verse. And then he asked the second time, how many of you know John 3.16? Nobody raised their hands but me because I hadn't been paying attention.

So I had this huge egg omelet on my face because I hadn't been paying attention. And because I said, I know John 3.16, in the light of, if anyone knows anything, he thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. What a lesson.

I've never forgotten that. All these years later, we're talking about almost 50 years later, I have not forgotten that, how embarrassing and shocking that was. And I think that's what the Lord does, doesn't he? He puts that into our psyche.

He says, be afraid of depending on yourself. Be afraid of walking according to your own wisdom. And instead, open up your channels to me and let me give you my wisdom and I'll give it to you liberally.

Fair summary? Fair summary. I've got an Andrew Murray quote from his book, Humility, written in the front of my Bible. Humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all.

Oh, here we go. Can you read that again? That's so great. That's golden.

We're going to end the podcast with that. Oh, absolutely. It's an Andrew Murray quote written in the front of my Bible.

It says, Humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all. Oh, man. That's great.

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. Amen. Yeah, that's great.

Well, thanks so much, Joey, for being with us. This has been a really great conversation. And for those of you that have been listening to this podcast, this is sponsored by Poimen Ministries, which is a ministry to senior or lead pastors and leaders of Bible-believing Spirit-directed churches for the purpose of strengthening the pastor in order that the church might be strengthened.

If there's any way that we can be of service to you, then head to our website, poimenministries.com, and go ahead and respond to the Contact Us button, and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. May the Lord bless you. Again, thanks, Joey, for joining us.

It's been great. Well, thank you so much for having me on. All right, take care.

Strength for Today's Pastor is sponsored by Poimen Ministries. You can find us at poimenministries.com. That's spelled POIMENministries.com. If something in today's program prompts a question or comment, or if you have a topic idea for a future episode, just shoot us an email at strongerpastors@gmail.com. That's strongerpastors@gmail.com. May the Lord bless you as you serve Him His pastors and His church.