Embracing Risk and Letting Go of Control: Mike Baer's Leadership Lessons

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I have this deep passion to see other people released, taught,

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developed, Encouraged, comforted, whatever, so that they are becoming

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what they were meant to be.

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I think if you ask me what makes me tick.

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on my good days, that's it.

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It is awesome to welcome Mike Baer back to the seat.

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Go create podcast.

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Mike was our guest in February, 2020.

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now he's joining us again as we celebrate our 302nd episode.

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Mike is a veteran of the modern business's mission.

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We're going to call it BAM throughout this conversation movement.

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He's an experienced pastor, entrepreneur, theologian is actually

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attached to his name and executive.

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He's led and taught BAM on nearly every continent, well traveled.

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He's also a prolific author, speaker, and the founder of Third Path

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Mike, welcome back to SeekGoCreate.

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Hey, Tim, it's good to be back.

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I can't believe it was the February of 2020 we had our first interview.

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That's staggering to me.

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So, it's great to see you.

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so we're releasing this.

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It'll probably be released in March of 2025.

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We're recording it towards the tail end or middle of February

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to put a timestamp on it.

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So it has been right at five years

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It's amazing.

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And we just keep getting better looking, brother.

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I tell you what, for those that are listening to the audio, you have got

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to go over to YouTube and for, you know, 30, 45, 60 minutes, check out,

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what's amazing is that we gave up all that money doing all the modeling

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and acting and things we could have done to, to serve the kingdom, right?

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We sacrificed.

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We paid a big price, man.

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And the world is better for it.

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Absolutely.

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Well, I shared with you, Mike, this is kind of fun.

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You know, our episode 300, we interviewed AI and had a long conversation with that.

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last episode was 301.

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We had Jim cook, who was originally in January of 2020.

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Valley veteran and, you know, great conversation with him.

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And, now you're coming back and I love the conversations we have.

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The biggest challenge we have is that we can't do the three and a

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half hour, you know, Joe Rogan style.

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We've got to keep it to, you

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We should, but no one would listen.

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I mean, if anybody's listening in and they're like going, you know what?

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love to hear these guys talk for two or three hours.

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Let me know.

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I could arrange it.

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I could do it.

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I'd love to do it.

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we'll do it live.

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How about that?

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We'll do it live.

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I bet your guests don't remember that we actually worked together

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almost, what, 30 years ago?

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And we got really close and we had incredibly fun conversations about

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business, about God, about the kingdom.

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And yes, we can do it.

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We can go for three hours without a problem.

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Yeah.

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One thing we'll do, we probably won't circle back to some of those topics

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from February of 2020, but we're gonna include a link back to that

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episode down in the notes on YouTube.

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And, so one of the things we wanted to do here, this is what I was excited

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about when I looked back and said, what do we want to do to celebrate?

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300. I say, you know what?

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going to, I'm going to go back to some of my favorite conversations.

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They did well, downloads, all that kind of stuff.

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But I want to just kind of catch up, and let people listen in.

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So let's, let's put a mark on what was going on in February of 2020.

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Do you recall what was happening with

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yeah, the day the music died.

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Yeah, that, of course, we all know that February, March, 2020 is when

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the world came to a standstill.

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Over COVID and just probably, probably two weeks after we had our podcast interview,

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I was on my way to Jamaica to host a company celebration trip and got turned

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back mid trip because of the pandemic.

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we didn't even know what we were dealing with, but that, I'll tell you

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one quick memory from that day, and I know we don't want to go back there,

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but I can remember in the early days, none of us knew what was going on.

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I was on my trip home, and I was in a Delta, Sky Club, we used to

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call them Crown Room back in the day, but a Sky Club, and I sneezed.

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And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, everybody had these spray bottles of

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stuff, and it's like an old Western movie where everybody pulls out

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their six shooter, you know, it was like, what in the world's going on?

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And we didn't know at the time, the fear and the anxiety and the

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lack of knowledge that would drive our world for two or three years.

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So, yeah, that's when this was.

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Yeah, we, we had, we were in Colorado, our first granddaughter

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was born, early February.

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Glory had come back from a trip to Berlin that she just sort of collapsed

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in my arms with some sickness that we weren't quite sure what it was.

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Probably she had, she had her company and had an all hands from people all

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over the world, Asia and everywhere.

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And then, and then, I'd gone to a podcasting, PodFest conference

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weekend of March, like, 7th, 8th.

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And then, a bunch of us, me and my son and my son in law, they were with me.

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We went to, Disney World on March 9th.

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We went to the Star Wars experience at the, it's not MGM anymore.

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It's whatever the studios is down there.

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And we were there packed in, you know, grabbing the rails, which

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is massive numbers of people.

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No one had a clue then March 13th, that Friday, the 13th, of course,

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is when the country shut down.

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Yep.

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And I think we're clear.

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all of that situation now, but when, when you look back on it to two

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learning points, what did you learn about yourself, about Mike as a leader,

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business person, man of God, whatever.

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And then second, what did you learn about the world and organizations,

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leadership, whatever, just so

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Wow.

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micro learns and then macro learns,

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no, that's a great question.

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The, the, what I learned, it was a very sort of, simplistic

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answer for me, but it, it stuck.

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It was powerful and it was life changing.

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I can remember when this first hit, you know, and everybody was, I, you know,

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people were starting to get sick and we were beginning to see hospitals fill up.

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And I can remember saying in a very childlike sort of prayer, like, Lord,

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I don't know how to deal with this.

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So here's what I'm gonna do.

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If you want me to get it, I'm gonna get it.

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If you don't want me to get it, I'm not gonna get it.

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If you want me to get it and die, I'm gonna get it and die.

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If you want me to get it and survive, I'm gonna get it and survive.

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Point being, I can't, there's nothing really I can do.

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Not that you shouldn't, choices, I'm not, you know, not being a magical

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thinker here, but that was what Took me very quickly from the potential

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panic to peace that I'm going to walk.

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I'm going to make wise choices.

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I'm going to do what I need to do, but I'm gonna do it in the

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context that my father in heaven.

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Is all powerful loves me and I can rest in that that was my personal

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learning and I will tell you Tim That truth guided me for the next two or

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three years Not just in the pandemic world, but in it became a north star

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That's why I say it's childlike, but I do kind of remember jesus saying You

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become like a child you're going to understand the kingdom a whole lot better.

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So it was a that was a real personal revolution for me on a on a more macro

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level What I saw and and I think this holds true today even you know, it's 2025.

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We're dealing with a new administration we could get all political we're

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not going to but We're seeing the same tendency of the sheep to panic.

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And you know, the term that came out during the pandemic

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was the term sheeple, right?

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And, and I'm not slamming anybody.

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I'm not being critical or negative here.

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I just saw how easily frightened the general public, all of us at some

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days, or on some days, all of us at one point or another are easily frightened.

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But I saw how quickly masses of people, Can fall victim to fear and if you're

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a dune fan like I am Frank Herbert wrote in there Fear is the mind killer

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And it is it just freezes your brain.

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It freezes your ability to think and choose John put it in First

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John, fear has torment, right?

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Fear is a terrible thing.

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And so I just came to grips with the, the tendency of human beings

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in bold relief to, to be fearful.

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Translate that into leadership.

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I saw that what people need is not dictatorial, strong men.

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They don't need, but they don't also need a bunch of fear mongerers.

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You know, what they need is people that know who they are.

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they know their purpose.

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they can.

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Articulate that purpose in a way that other people can begin to find

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some stability and when the normal human being begins to find stability.

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Their fears start to subside and that stability becomes

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theirs and not mine any longer.

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Does that make any sense?

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I saw the ability of a leader to share their confidence in a way that wasn't

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controlling, wasn't manipulating, but it was liberating and comforting.

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so there's a word interesting, it came up last week when we were in Episode

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301 talking to Jim Cook, sort of in a different way when we were talking

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about the Silicon Valley culture, the word that kept popping in my head

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was the word risk, and, you know, you talked about it personally, you had

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some fear initially and you weren't through it and I think that I did too.

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I have this weird personality that I, maybe it's delusional that I, I

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wouldn't admit it, but I was probably facing it too because we had traveled

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and we were in an RV and it's like, man, a lot of weird stuff was going on.

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But I've often wondered if we have become an incredibly risk averse culture.

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And how that feeds into us individually, personally, and then

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also into business and and government.

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one of the things that came up last week, I think I recommend people

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go listen as Jim was talking about.

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When you bring in a Silicon Valley, high risk, culture into Washington DC, which

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is what we're seeing with Elon Musk.

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It's like, boy, there's going to be a clash.

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Yeah.

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have to get off on talking about that.

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talk about the word risk in relation to what you just shared with all that we've

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been through over the last five years.

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Yeah.

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I, and I think you just connected the past and the, Present

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beautifully because risk is life.

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Life is risk.

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And we cannot take a step.

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We cannot get in a car.

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We cannot go to a restaurant.

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We cannot marry somebody.

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We cannot have children.

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We cannot get a new job.

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Show me a way to remove risk from any of those things and it

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doesn't it's not there, right?

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So the first thing you have to grasp and this is what I dealt with for the

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Lord's like look there's risk I could die here So I'm gonna deal with risk

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the best way I know how and that is take my hands off of it go forward Trusting

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you and I think that when I think about risk I'm not a big risk taker.

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I'm not like I'm not going to skydive.

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I'm not going to mountain climb.

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Maybe I'm a wimp, but for me Risk is not something you take.

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Risk is something that's simply there and you cannot avoid it.

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So how do you learn to deal with it?

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comment on the political scene.

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this is a non partisan critique of government I am a libertarian at

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heart my t shirt says underneath this says I love Rand Paul.

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I love Ron Paul his dad, right?

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I mean I'm going to Argentina in a few weeks, and I'm really hoping I

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get to meet the president down there, the ultimate, the uber libertarian.

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But these are people that recognize that you can't govern risk out of life.

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You can't legislate risk out of life.

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You can't executive order risk out of life.

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Quick analogy, when I used to work in France, I discovered that the

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word bureau, from which we get bureaucracy, means desk, right?

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And so a bureaucracy is government for people who sit

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at desks, a nice, safe desk.

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And so they're trying, and I think most of them are well intentioned,

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deluded, but well intentioned.

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They are trying to legislate and regulate risk out of life.

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At which point they take life and turn it into death.

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Remember C. S. Lewis in the Four Loves book he wrote?

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He said there is a place where you can be free from the fear of losing through love.

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It's called a casket.

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Lewis, classic, you know, but what a point.

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so yeah, to me, I have to recognize that I'm going to live.

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I now see it in my kids.

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You have kids.

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I have seven grandchildren now.

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One of them's about to graduate high school and go off to college.

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and I'm wavering because I can't control the risk that these kids will face, but

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I'm having to go back to that, Okay, God, I've got to give it back to you.

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And call me simplistic, many have, they would be probably right.

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My response to risk is to want to control.

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And control is one of the ultimate illusions.

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What are you really in control of?

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What are you and I in control of?

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Nothing, pretty much.

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And so, I learned to live, I deal with risk by keeping my hands open.

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If we go back five years, I've put some thought into this and it's kind of

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feeding off that control word you just brought up, which all this is kind of

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weaving together really beautifully.

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I like it.

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I know I have a high degree of desire to control.

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Maybe a lot of humans do.

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I think there's some people that just have a natural child likeness,

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you know, and in some ways might, those could be people we call sheep.

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and so I don't criticize them.

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I actually have in the past and I need to repent of that.

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Because there is something to.

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Just saying Now I think you need to, whatever Lord should be that instead

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of whatever government, whatever boss, whatever, you know what I mean?

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you need to align yourself with what you're going to follow as

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a sheep if you're doing that.

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And I, I think I need a little more sheep ness in me than, than

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shepherd because I'm trying to control and monitor and all that.

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If you look back years ago, and kind of where you were on the

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control scale, you know, 10 out of 10, nine out of 10, whatever.

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then five years now look at where you are on the control scale.

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You mentioned grandkids and you know, you probably used to be able to kind

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of keep, know, your arms around your family and now they're spreading out.

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is your control gauge changed over the last five years?

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Mine has

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Yeah, that's a good question.

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So I think about it.

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Remember an exchange I had with my oldest daughter when she was a

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teenager, and she was mad at me about something which was Pretty normal.

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she said, you're such a control freak.

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I said, I am not.

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Go to your room.

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And that was the, because I was, and I've discovered that by habit, that

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whatever, the world, the system, my own frailty, control is what I want.

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And it's, it's what I, that prayer with God was giving up control.

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I had no control, wasn't giving up something.

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It was really acknowledging the reality.

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So I would say the last five years for me, you know, and I'm pushing 70.

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I turned 70 in two weeks.

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And so I think part of it comes with age, Tim.

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Honestly, there's the longer you live, the more you realize there's

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very little you can control.

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And then you start to realize you really had no control over even that.

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so part of that is that, but I think for me, the need to control it's no less.

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It's, I don't think that, that habit of wanting to be in control is gone away.

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I think what has changed is the, the speed with which, or maybe the

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comfort with which I'm being able to bring it back to God and say, all

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right, Jesus, here's another thing.

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That you're in control of and I'm not so I think that yes, it's been a journey and

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I know you and I were both wired that way.

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We're both achievers.

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And 1 of the things that drives an achiever is control because it's this

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belief that once I achieve ABC or X, Y, Z, I will finally be in control.

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And of course, that's not true.

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So I, I'm looking and learning about achieving without being

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driven by the need to control.

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Achieving for achievement's sake.

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Achievement for the sake of the person, You know, I'm

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serving Versus this unconscious.

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Hey, I'm in control now That's you know, I learned that every

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time I get on an airplane, right?

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And you recognize the moment you walk through the TSA window You are no longer

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in control You are in the matrix and you are no longer in control But when you

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step on a plane and for me you look into the cockpit as you walk past and you see

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these two children sitting in controls, you realize I'm not in control here.

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And, I'm actually enjoying the journey of giving up control.

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It's not easy.

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, but there's a certain healthy enjoyment to it.

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And I think that's part of our journey, you know, one of our

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subtitles here is the leadership

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Mm-hmm

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specifically leadership in a little while, but I think leadership starts

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with, you know, us sitting in the seat and what we able to learn.

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Have you.

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Have you ridden in one of these driverless cars yet?

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I was, my son was taking me to the airport last week.

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I was going, we were in Phoenix and I looked over in one of

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these Waymo cars with all the,

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Yeah.

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dome on top and all.

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Yeah.

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took a picture of it in the video and I couldn't see anybody in the back seat

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because the windows are kind of tinted.

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And I was just thinking to myself, Hmm, I wonder, I wonder if I could do that.

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And then, and then I thought, this is where I connected the dots.

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one of the things that happened for us, and I think I'd share this

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with, you know, my father passed, had some cognitive decline, went

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down fairly quickly during COVID.

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We believe COVID sped it up because they were isolated, a lot of things going on.

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But, my father grew up in a shop in middle of nowhere, North Mississippi,

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cars were important to him.

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And one of the biggest challenges and struggles we had in his life

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was wanting to get in the car.

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And my mom was saying, he keeps wanting to drive and we're not sure if he can.

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He doesn't even know who any of us are.

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And so we'd ordered some wings at a place.

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It was two or three miles from the house.

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And he was kind of arguing about I'll drive and all that.

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And I said, you know what?

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Hop in the driver's seat and drive.

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I jumped in the passenger seat with him and my wife and my mother were

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like going, what are you doing?

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What are you doing?

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I say, you know what?

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The only way we can know kind of what's going on is if someone rides along.

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And I was sitting here thinking to myself, Hey, what's the

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worst thing that can happen?

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But you know what though, he drove like a champ.

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Now he didn't know where he was going or where to get back to

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or any of that kind of stuff.

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But the muscle memory was

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Mm-hmm

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the reason I bring all that up is to kind of ask, have you ridden

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in one of these driverless cars?

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I mean, because those kind of things, we have a desire for control, but

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yet I am pretty confident that some of these driverless cars is

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better than the other person that's sitting beside you driving their car.

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yeah.

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So, so answering in reverse number one, I agree with you Totally.

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you know, the chances of a human being next to me looking at

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his or her phone while they're driving and swerving into me.

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They're much higher than a glitch in the software or the

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sensors of a driverless car.

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I agree with you on that.

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I have not driven in one yet, but I have wanted to.

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I haven't been anywhere where it was an option.

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Would I get in one?

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Absolutely.

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and it would be an adventure.

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I could either live, you know, like, oh my gosh, what am I doing?

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Or, this is kind of cool.

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I'm one of those weird guys that, would go to the space station in a heartbeat.

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You know, 70 years old and they asked me, heck yeah, I'd go if, if Elon Musk

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came and said, hey, you want to be the father figure on the flight to Mars.

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Yeah, let's go now.

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Don't get me wrong.

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I'm not some hero pioneer, you know, but in those areas, things like that.

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yeah, I think, I think I, I, now I could do it.

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I think I would enjoy it.

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I love, this is a discipline I, and I keep, because this is a theme, this

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control and letting go of control has a lot to do with leadership, by the

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way, but it's a theme of my own growth.

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Over the years and those around me is that I remember I used to do it I still

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do but it used to a lot of international travel and I would watch people Just

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freaking out on a nine or ten I think the longest flight ever took was 14

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hours and they were freaking out They just couldn't handle it and I learned

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of course, they would drink and all you know I'm not saying I did neither but

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for different reasons but I learned how to, people say, how do you handle it?

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I said, I go to my happy place.

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And it was a mental place for me to go to and say, there's nothing within

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the realm of possibility I can do to change anything at this moment.

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I can, nothing I do, or say, or drink, or watch, or anything is

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going to get me there faster.

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So where do I go?

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I go to my happy place, which is I'm not in control.

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It's amazing to me, Tim, how happy I can be when I'm not controlling.

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and so what you're

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I say,

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is

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Yeah,

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what you can control.

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that's exactly right.

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There's a one of my favorite t shirts I saw one time on the front.

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It said there are two immutable truths in the universe on the back.

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It said number one, there is a God number two, you are not him.

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And whenever I can get to that place, I'm much happier.

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When I'm not happy, it's usually an indicator.

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But I'm denying those two immutable truths.

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Yeah, I've done.

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Mike at your, by the way, happy birthday.

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a good chance that I won't send you a text or anything and wish you a happy birthday.

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I don't do that with anyone.

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but happy birthday now.

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my wife keeps up with everyone's birthdays and she

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Yeah.

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Good.

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Good for

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Good for them.

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I hope they have a good day.

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happy birthday.

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Thank you.

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you know, that's sort of a milestone.

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you know, I guess you're a little over halfway, I think, depending

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on how you measure it and all that,

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Maybe we'll find out.

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how are you measuring, gauging, thinking about success this stage, you know,

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seeing what we all went through the last five years, what you're looking

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ahead to and all, what is just.

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Talk about what success means to you now.

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Yeah.

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So, and I've listened to a lot of your podcasts over the years and I know you

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come back to this with almost everybody.

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and I would tell you my definition has changed.

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and I'll tell you my definitions at the moment seemed pure and

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godly with the perspective of time you realize they weren't.

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there were things like never make a lot of money.

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That was never a big motivator for me.

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It's always just, I want to have enough problems.

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Of course, there's enough as a moving target, but for me, it was

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typically around recognition or recognized impact in the beginning,

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over time, it became more impact.

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recognition still matters.

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Don't get me wrong.

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I still believe I should be on center stage, you know, at the opera.

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But.

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it's more just knowing I've made a difference.

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And recently over the last five years, I've begun to start

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loosening my grip on that as well.

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because even that's vainglory, you know, even that comes back to, you

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know, Mike's at the center, right?

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And so I've begun to think, and this is fairly recent, I've begun to think

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about what really matters to me.

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what is success is.

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to fulfill that for which I was created.

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Right.

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Paul talks in Ephesians two about we are God's workmanship and the Greek

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can be translated into we are God's masterpiece, work of art, you know,

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we are his magnum opus and we are, created in Christ Jesus to do good work.

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That this is really important and so does it matter that.

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Even I know that that's happening and I think and I'm not there yet.

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Hear me clearly.

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I am not there yet But what I'm wrestling with now is you know what lord?

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I don't even I don't even need to be aware What matters is that the

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purpose for which you made me?

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Is is happening and if you choose to let me in on a little glimpse

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of it great if you don't great And and that goes back again that

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childish prayer childlike prayer maybe childish too but that childlike

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prayer during covet is It's, it's his.

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A guy said something to me years ago.

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He said, look, we have a 20 second walk on in God's cosmic drama.

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Which means our part, which to us is all consuming, in the big

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scheme of things, is not that much.

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Now, it doesn't mean we're not important, right?

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We are created in the image of God.

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We are incredibly loved by God.

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We are redeemed by the death of Jesus Christ.

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I mean, we are incredibly important, but to Him.

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And so that's, that's kind of, I guess that's kind of what I'm

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being exercised on right now.

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So related to that, because, you know, you and I would probably use similar

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words like, you know, impact and I do have a craving for recognition.

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You know, it's not just that I want to quietly go about doing things.

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I, and I'm okay admitting this now.

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I like for people to acknowledge that I've done some

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Mm hmm.

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So it kind of helps me keep it hopefully tempered at times, do you have at

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this stage of your life, Do you have an awareness of your superpower or

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you know what he created you for?

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are you more, do you have more clarity in that or less clarity at this stage?

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Yeah,

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I actually could recognize and probably spout some of your

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superpowers maybe as well as you can.

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But what do you believe are your

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yeah,

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what he instilled in you at the beginning?

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So, so let me, let me, let me roll back just to clarify something because you

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said something that triggered for me.

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I don't want anybody listening to this to think somehow I've gone

Speaker: 00:28:50

totally Zen and I have none of these, none of these passions.

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all that is still there, but it's moved out of the center.

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I still want to achieve and I still want to be recognized.

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it's not the total drive

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Exactly.

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in me, it's like, and I'm not, I don't like walk in a room or get on the

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phone with Mike I'm about what's in it.

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This sounds a little selfish, but it's, you know, what's in it for me, how

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does this, how does this impact me?

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Yeah,

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get me on his podcast so I could get out of, I don't think about that anymore.

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And you knew me years ago, I did, I thought about that years

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ago and wasn't good or bad.

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It was just where I was at, at that point,

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yeah, and that's why I don't want anybody to think somehow you outgrow these things.

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Whatever your particular habits are, are driven by needs that were

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imprinted on you probably when you were two, three, four years old.

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Those don't go away, but you learn to live with them.

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You learn to live beyond them.

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And I think that's the point.

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So my superpower, it's funny.

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I'm constantly coming back to the question.

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Okay, Lord, what is the call on my life?

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I think there are many calls, but I think there's a core

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call the way he made you right.

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And for me, this is what I would land on.

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I think the heart of Mike is I have this deep passion to see other people

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released, taught, developed, Encouraged, comforted, whatever, so that they are

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becoming what they were meant to be.

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I think if you ask me what makes me tick.

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on my good days, that's it.

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have a, some people say, well, you're a pastor.

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I, yes, but I don't like that term because what it means in American, you know,

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Christianity, it's a job with a pulpit.

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It's like, no, a pastor is a shepherd, who equips, who, who helps others learn.

Speaker: 00:30:49

Better how to do what they're gifted to do.

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That's what really cranks my tractor as we like to say in

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the mountains of North Carolina

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agree with that.

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And the word Sherpa came to mind, you know, someone who's a leader, a guide,

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And, but kind of like the follow up question, this is where I've been putting

Speaker: 00:31:07

a lot of thought in myself because I think self awareness is probably a

Speaker: 00:31:12

power that a lot of us need more of.

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It's huge

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And that's part of the journey.

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You know, when we subtitle this, the leadership journey, part of the

Speaker: 00:31:19

journey is to be aware, but with a superpower to use the Superman analogy,

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it can often become kryptonite.

Speaker: 00:31:28

What are some downsides that you see to that calling gifting superpower,

Speaker: 00:31:34

whatever language you want to use that you've sort of had to either come

Speaker: 00:31:38

to terms with or adjust or whatever.

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I think the kryptonite that's built into my desire to see others prosper is

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taking responsibility for the outcome.

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I cannot, if I coach you and I love you and serve you and try to bring

Speaker: 00:31:54

you the best insight I possibly can, and you don't use it, that's on you.

Speaker: 00:32:00

But the kryptonite is no, no, no, wait, Tim, you didn't do what I said.

Speaker: 00:32:05

so we're kind of back to control.

Speaker: 00:32:07

I think that's part of it.

Speaker: 00:32:08

Or the alternative to that would be taking the glory.

Speaker: 00:32:12

Wow.

Speaker: 00:32:12

Look at Tim.

Speaker: 00:32:14

I developed that boy.

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Well, you see every superpower has a kryptonite.

Speaker: 00:32:18

and I think frankly now for the job pastors of the world, I think that's their

Speaker: 00:32:23

kryptonite very often is they're trying to live on the outcome of what their service

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creates and then they can't do that.

Speaker: 00:32:34

one of the things you and I discussed this, I think in depth five years ago was.

Speaker: 00:32:40

because you'd been a pastor, you left the pastoral role of church

Speaker: 00:32:45

planner and running a church.

Speaker: 00:32:46

And, you know, everybody thought you had backslid and all, I highly

Speaker: 00:32:49

recommend people go listen to that.

Speaker: 00:32:50

It was a great conversation about the state of

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Yeah.

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and things like that.

Speaker: 00:32:55

And it's interesting that you don't want to use the word pastor, but truthfully

Speaker: 00:32:59

maybe disciple, you know, cause we, I think as a coach today's world, we

Speaker: 00:33:05

might be the closest thing to truly, you know, spending time discipling people.

Speaker: 00:33:10

And some people might be upset about that, you know, whatever.

Speaker: 00:33:14

But you and I will often discuss issues with what we call the church

Speaker: 00:33:21

in our current culture, et cetera.

Speaker: 00:33:22

What have you seen either positives or negatives over the last five years

Speaker: 00:33:28

with what general call the church and sometimes I'm wondering if we

Speaker: 00:33:33

call the church the wrong thing.

Speaker: 00:33:34

I don't even know if what we see these buildings dotted all across, you

Speaker: 00:33:38

know, first world 501 c threes and all that, you know, shady acres, whatever.

Speaker: 00:33:44

I don't even know if that technically the church now, but anyway, just,

Speaker: 00:33:49

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:33:50

a few thoughts on that

Speaker: 00:33:51

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:33:52

on and talk leadership

Speaker: 00:33:53

Yeah, a couple of quick thoughts.

Speaker: 00:33:55

there's a friend of mine here in North Carolina that we, we're very, very close,

Speaker: 00:33:59

and we will, we'll talk to each other.

Speaker: 00:34:02

We'll text each other on a Sunday morning.

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He'll say, hey, are you going to the building today?

Speaker: 00:34:05

All right, and we do that on purpose, to make the point, sometimes we

Speaker: 00:34:10

say, no, let's meet for coffee.

Speaker: 00:34:12

sometimes, my wife and I'll stay home and, watch some guy on TV because it's just she

Speaker: 00:34:16

and I, but we need Cindy and Mike church.

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So, let me go back to when we all closed up.

Speaker: 00:34:21

Or most churches closed up, and ours did for a while.

Speaker: 00:34:25

We didn't panic, but everybody was trying to do what they thought

Speaker: 00:34:27

was right, and trying to save each other as best they could.

Speaker: 00:34:30

So we closed up for a while, and I remember during that time, I was on

Speaker: 00:34:33

the board of elders, and I asked the rest of the elders, I said, guys,

Speaker: 00:34:36

are you listening to what God may be saying to the church right now?

Speaker: 00:34:41

And they said, what do you mean?

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Well, that's a problem right there.

Speaker: 00:34:43

But I said, are you sensing that there's a message to the church right

Speaker: 00:34:47

now that we need to hear we've been given this beautiful pause, right?

Speaker: 00:34:53

It's halftime and we get a chance to really, look at the game plan.

Speaker: 00:34:58

they weren't, but I kept going around.

Speaker: 00:35:00

This is what I did.

Speaker: 00:35:00

I kept asking people when we weren't meeting, what do you miss?

Speaker: 00:35:07

Invariably, 80 percent of the people would say, you know what?

Speaker: 00:35:11

I just miss being with other believers.

Speaker: 00:35:15

I said, well, what about the sermon?

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Yeah.

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Yeah, I do.

Speaker: 00:35:18

Not really.

Speaker: 00:35:19

How about the music?

Speaker: 00:35:20

Yeah, kinda.

Speaker: 00:35:22

I mean, you see the point?

Speaker: 00:35:24

And so, I heard over and over and over what we miss is the being together,

Speaker: 00:35:29

the interaction with other people.

Speaker: 00:35:31

So what I've seen coming out of COVID is the church, most churches

Speaker: 00:35:35

just went on their merry way.

Speaker: 00:35:37

They just reopened and did literally everything that they were doing before.

Speaker: 00:35:41

They did not listen to whatever I think God was saying.

Speaker: 00:35:45

What I've begun to see is a, not a drifting from the Church, the

Speaker: 00:35:49

organized building church, but a movement, a conscious movement away

Speaker: 00:35:55

from the formalized and whatever.

Speaker: 00:35:58

You can be in high church, low church, whatever, but the programmatic thing

Speaker: 00:36:03

we do in the building, When we're supposed to do it to a, I'm seeking

Speaker: 00:36:08

out an authentic relationship with another brother or another three or

Speaker: 00:36:13

four brothers or a couple of couples,

Speaker: 00:36:15

Don't hear me just now.

Speaker: 00:36:16

You're talking small.

Speaker: 00:36:17

I'm talking about something that's a revolutionary and it goes

Speaker: 00:36:20

back to my roots like you, Tim.

Speaker: 00:36:23

I was not converted in a church setting.

Speaker: 00:36:25

I grew up in the building, but I never heard the gospel.

Speaker: 00:36:28

I was converted by myself in my dorm room at the University of Tennessee in 1974.

Speaker: 00:36:35

And immediately there were three or four other people who had come

Speaker: 00:36:40

to Christ about the same time.

Speaker: 00:36:42

And they came from similar backgrounds to mine.

Speaker: 00:36:44

They'd grown up in the church, but they didn't know anything about

Speaker: 00:36:47

church, didn't know Jesus at all.

Speaker: 00:36:49

And I can remember one night we were sitting around and it was early.

Speaker: 00:36:53

I mean, brand new babes in Christ.

Speaker: 00:36:56

And one of the guys says, it's Friday night's coming up.

Speaker: 00:36:58

What do we do?

Speaker: 00:37:00

and what he was getting at was, we knew what pagans do on Friday night, but we had

Speaker: 00:37:05

no idea what does a follower of Jesus do.

Speaker: 00:37:07

So we began to meet together to read the Bible, to pray, and to play cards.

Speaker: 00:37:12

That soon became this gathering of college students just meeting together.

Speaker: 00:37:18

Now it turns out to do all kinds of wonderful New Testament stuff.

Speaker: 00:37:23

But we wouldn't have dreamed of calling it a church.

Speaker: 00:37:26

And those are my roots.

Speaker: 00:37:27

And I feel like I'm kind of coming back to my roots of these deep, very accountable

Speaker: 00:37:34

relationships in faith, growing together.

Speaker: 00:37:38

And that, that I think is what I'm seeing.

Speaker: 00:37:41

And I find it refreshing and to punctuate that, I'm seeing what

Speaker: 00:37:46

looks like a rerun of the 1970s Jesus movement in America today.

Speaker: 00:37:51

On college campuses, thousands and thousands of kids are coming to Christ.

Speaker: 00:37:56

They're being mass baptized, which is freaking out the church

Speaker: 00:38:00

hierarchy, because that can't be real.

Speaker: 00:38:02

And I think they're searching for this thing that I'm talking about,

Speaker: 00:38:05

this authenticity of relationship with another brother, and of

Speaker: 00:38:10

course with Christ who is with us.

Speaker: 00:38:13

I've often wondered, and I think you and I've had this conversation.

Speaker: 00:38:16

If, our structure was wrong, you know, I'm a systems and

Speaker: 00:38:21

structural guy at a Georgia tech.

Speaker: 00:38:22

So I'm like going, you know, I wonder if we're, first of all, this kind of

Speaker: 00:38:26

leads into a leadership conversation we'll have in a minute, but I've wondered

Speaker: 00:38:29

if we've put people, mostly men in roles and it's almost an impossible.

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success opportunity.

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I met with a guy last week in Sarasota that has been attempting to help pastors

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get side gigs so that they're not poor all the time so that they could eat.

Speaker: 00:38:51

Mm-hmm

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he says it's one of the hardest things he's ever done because they think,

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you know, number one, that God will be mad at him if they something,

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you know, to chase after that, you know, filthy lucre, whatever.

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And then number two, they also, some of them have boards that they

Speaker: 00:39:07

truthfully want to keep them poor.

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so I do wonder if we've got a wrong structure.

Speaker: 00:39:12

Gloria and I are very similar.

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Don't usually go to a lot of these structured, you know, building situations

Speaker: 00:39:20

and I still love some of the music to me.

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It's a little bit more entertainment in a lot of the ones we pop into.

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I mean, I would love to hang out.

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I think you're probably talking about Jonathan a second ago.

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I would love

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Yeah.

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be able to hang out with you and Jonathan.

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He visited us in Rapid City, by the way.

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I don't know if you heard that

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Oh, Awesome.

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Yeah, he told me that.

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I didn't know where you were, but I knew he, yeah.

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sat on the back of, yeah, the RV there and visited and had church.

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Truthfully, we had church, for, you know, a couple of hours, just the four

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of us, you know, his wife, Lori and him.

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But something that I've, I saw, I heard this term recently and it was

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called the church industrial complex.

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what I see, and this is maybe a little bit looking forward, predicting,

Speaker: 00:40:00

and I don't like making predictions, but I'll just ask you about this.

Speaker: 00:40:04

actually see some large church, either organizations or what we'll call

Speaker: 00:40:09

megachurches, that are beginning to form up, and a lot of the smaller disappearing,

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and it's almost like what we see.

Speaker: 00:40:18

the large corporations in our country with, you know, large military.

Speaker: 00:40:23

I mean, we're starting to get some extremely large

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organizations and then there's not anything kind of down below it.

Speaker: 00:40:32

what do you think, what are you seeing with some of the, as things are moving

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forward, does that make any sense or is there some different things that

Speaker: 00:40:39

Yeah.

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I think there's, it's funny you talk about being an engineer by training.

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I'm a historian and theologian by training, so it colors my

Speaker: 00:40:45

thoughts, but I do think when you look at history, you see.

Speaker: 00:40:49

The constant bifurcation of every civilization, right?

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You see, we talk about the haves and the have nots.

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we talk about the empowered and the marginalized.

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I mean, this has been going on from the beginning and we're seeing it today.

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this story plays out again and again where it's a little bit of

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the, Dialectic of, you know, the one point second point synthesis.

Speaker: 00:41:15

Right.

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And so I think that's what we begin to see in sociological development is

Speaker: 00:41:21

that there's a bifurcation companies.

Speaker: 00:41:24

economies.

Speaker: 00:41:26

church.

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The church is an industry.

Speaker: 00:41:28

I don't like to think that way, but I do think that the evangelical

Speaker: 00:41:32

industrial complex, it's very real.

Speaker: 00:41:34

And so we're seeing, again, we're seeing the big churches and we're

Speaker: 00:41:37

seeing the little churches are kind of dying, but, the dialectic says.

Speaker: 00:41:41

That a new life will come out of this tension.

Speaker: 00:41:44

And I think that's what we're seeing today.

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I hope that's not too philosophical for folks to think about, but I

Speaker: 00:41:51

do think that's what's happening.

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And I think, you know, we're seeing no disrespect to pastors, but I

Speaker: 00:41:57

think we're putting men into a role, primarily men, they cannot succeed.

Speaker: 00:42:02

Even the ones who are wildly successful by what standards, congregational

Speaker: 00:42:08

size, how many sub campuses they have.

Speaker: 00:42:10

I don't know what metrics you use.

Speaker: 00:42:12

But even those, they're falling apart on the inside.

Speaker: 00:42:16

There's the horrible moral failures, but there's also just the bad insides

Speaker: 00:42:22

of guys who go to bed at night weeping over They know they're missing the mark.

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It's terrible.

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I've told people for years.

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I said guys, this is an unnatural role the church has never been meant to be

Speaker: 00:42:35

built on one person and you can say well We have a plurality of elders

Speaker: 00:42:39

look all all animals are created equal But some animals are more equal than

Speaker: 00:42:43

others to quote George Orwell, right?

Speaker: 00:42:46

I think we've created a non sustainable Dynamic and we're beginning to see

Speaker: 00:42:52

it run its course and by the way, I'm not discouraged by that Tim

Speaker: 00:42:56

I'm encouraged that what comes out of it will be new and fresh and

Speaker: 00:43:00

vibrant and living once again Okay,

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ago, Wayne Previtt, I think I might be interviewing him next week.

Speaker: 00:43:10

He's from Canada.

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He now lives in Virginia.

Speaker: 00:43:13

he did some things with chaplaincy programs up in Canada and he, he's done

Speaker: 00:43:18

like 4, 000 burials and things like that, but had an interesting conversation about,

Speaker: 00:43:24

was talking about what it's like living in a post Christian country, which Canada is.

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And he says that what took 15 years in Canada took five years in the U S and

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we're, we're heading that direction.

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Maybe it's slowing, maybe it's speeding up.

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I don't know.

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I think that the place that people are going to get the connection to the

Speaker: 00:43:45

father, their spiritual nourishment, whatever, more in environments like

Speaker: 00:43:52

business as mission and places like that.

Speaker: 00:43:56

think this is a good kind of transition into.

Speaker: 00:44:00

What all went on with business's mission over the last five years and what are

Speaker: 00:44:04

some things happening now and maybe what are some things in the near future

Speaker: 00:44:09

that are going on with that movement?

Speaker: 00:44:11

So, I think to understand what's happened the last five years in

Speaker: 00:44:14

business as mission, you have to go back a little bit further to

Speaker: 00:44:17

where the modern movement began.

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It began as a strategic attempt to reach people in unreached people group

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areas, restricted access countries where traditional missionaries couldn't go.

Speaker: 00:44:30

Business people could go, not fake business people.

Speaker: 00:44:33

not what we call business as visa, but real business people doing real

Speaker: 00:44:37

business, but also on real mission, right?

Speaker: 00:44:40

This integrated view of, of life and faith and so forth.

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And it, it grew, that was kind of the late eighties, early nineties, it grew

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and grew and then the pandemic hit.

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What we discovered was, it was a beautiful thing because up until that

Speaker: 00:44:57

point, I would call that the, that first part, you know, multiple chapters, but

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the first section of the book would be called from the West to the rest.

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Right.

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It was, it was us lighter skin guys for the most part.

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taking business into the hinterlands to reach people for Christ.

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And it was good.

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It was a beautiful thing.

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what we discovered when we said, all right, we're, we're going

Speaker: 00:45:19

to go virtual for this Congress.

Speaker: 00:45:21

We, you, nobody knew how long the pandemic would last, of course.

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And so we're going to go online and instead of having everybody flying

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to Chiang Mai, which has been maybe Three or four or five hundred people.

Speaker: 00:45:34

we're going to go virtual.

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Well, what we discovered is suddenly it's like wow We're everywhere

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and we're all different colors.

Speaker: 00:45:43

This is not a light skin help the dark skin America help the other country.

Speaker: 00:45:50

This is like it's literally everywhere and these folks are as different as

Speaker: 00:45:57

I know diversity is a hot word these days, but we were as diverse as you

Speaker: 00:46:01

could possibly imagine that people from pretty much every kindred tongue

Speaker: 00:46:06

tribe and nation to quote the scripture were already engaged and they weren't

Speaker: 00:46:11

doing it because we went there.

Speaker: 00:46:12

They were doing it on their own because God called them into it.

Speaker: 00:46:15

So we had this massive online celebration of the true international, multi

Speaker: 00:46:22

ethnic, quality of the business's mission movement is beautiful.

Speaker: 00:46:27

It was kind of like one of those things where God was just looking at us and just

Speaker: 00:46:30

kind of wagging his finger with a smile.

Speaker: 00:46:32

Like, see, I did know what I was doing the whole time.

Speaker: 00:46:36

And so that now has given, that's about, that was sort of the

Speaker: 00:46:40

pandemic era of lots of virtual work, which then proved two things.

Speaker: 00:46:44

One is, We're truly diverse and international, which is beautiful.

Speaker: 00:46:49

And the other is you don't have to get on a plane to fly to Chiang

Speaker: 00:46:51

Mai, Thailand to get blessed.

Speaker: 00:46:53

God is using the virtuality of technology, in ways that I don't think any of us

Speaker: 00:46:58

would have ever believed possible.

Speaker: 00:47:00

that's changed the dynamic of how we teach, how we mobilize, how we

Speaker: 00:47:04

equip, how we fund, how we coach.

Speaker: 00:47:06

everything.

Speaker: 00:47:07

We're still hopping on planes.

Speaker: 00:47:09

I mean, you still need to be with people.

Speaker: 00:47:12

I love seeing you on screen.

Speaker: 00:47:13

This is fun.

Speaker: 00:47:14

You and I are close enough.

Speaker: 00:47:15

We can do this, but 10 times rather be sitting outside Theo,

Speaker: 00:47:19

you know, by the fire and just enjoying time with you and glory.

Speaker: 00:47:22

I mean, I'd far rather do that.

Speaker: 00:47:24

So, but we discovered that we can go further faster by, you

Speaker: 00:47:29

know, all these different means.

Speaker: 00:47:30

So that, that's, I guess, the second piece.

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The third thing.

Speaker: 00:47:35

Which to me is really exciting is that it is time for the

Speaker: 00:47:39

next generation to take over.

Speaker: 00:47:41

This is not me retiring.

Speaker: 00:47:42

This is not the, you won't have Mike bear to kick around anymore.

Speaker: 00:47:45

this is me recognizing as an older brother that the young

Speaker: 00:47:51

guys are no longer just kids.

Speaker: 00:47:53

They are young men, women, that God is prepared and it's their turn.

Speaker: 00:48:00

And so I think that sort of transitions from what I'm seeing to what I'm

Speaker: 00:48:05

looking at in the future is that this is time for the next generation to step

Speaker: 00:48:09

up and they're doing it and they're doing it in the most respectful way.

Speaker: 00:48:14

Somebody said the other day, he said, we're standing on your shoulders,

Speaker: 00:48:17

which is the most honorific thing I think I've ever heard.

Speaker: 00:48:21

You know, they're not saying you did it, man.

Speaker: 00:48:22

You're the man that that's hollow.

Speaker: 00:48:24

But when they say we're standing on your shoulders, like, That's as it should be.

Speaker: 00:48:29

And someday somebody should be standing on their shoulder, just

Speaker: 00:48:31

like I'm standing on the shoulders of a guy named Richard Barr, who was

Speaker: 00:48:35

instrumental in me coming to Christ.

Speaker: 00:48:37

And so this is, the great transition I see, beginning and, I see in the

Speaker: 00:48:43

near future, it really excites me

Speaker: 00:48:46

Yeah, it is interesting because I recall you have never been one to shy away from

Speaker: 00:48:52

jumping on a plane and going somewhere,

Speaker: 00:48:54

too much.

Speaker: 00:48:55

So I think

Speaker: 00:48:56

Mike, you, you know, you, Delta, there's probably a plaque somewhere that Delta

Speaker: 00:49:00

has with your name on it, I believe

Speaker: 00:49:04

I used to think there should be.

Speaker: 00:49:06

there should be, but somewhere along the way, I don't know if

Speaker: 00:49:09

it was before then or right after then you started doing a podcast.

Speaker: 00:49:13

That obviously is part of this, I'll say digital communication or this new

Speaker: 00:49:18

media or whatever words we may want to

Speaker: 00:49:21

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:49:22

Tell me about that and how that formed up.

Speaker: 00:49:24

was that a pandemic project?

Speaker: 00:49:26

it was.

Speaker: 00:49:27

so the, I got the idea, we call it, we originally named it BAM Stories,

Speaker: 00:49:32

but it became the Business's Mission Podcast and it's now, you know, like

Speaker: 00:49:36

you, it's on every platform out there.

Speaker: 00:49:38

It's not, here's a commercial we do not have near the listenership you

Speaker: 00:49:42

have, so if you're doing something, I love your podcast, but it was

Speaker: 00:49:45

a pandemic initiative, and it was another attempt to just Keep leaning

Speaker: 00:49:50

into what we felt like God was doing.

Speaker: 00:49:52

And so, and we built it around the idea of rather than teaching and

Speaker: 00:49:56

lecturing, we just tell people's stories.

Speaker: 00:49:59

I learned a lot from you in the early days.

Speaker: 00:50:00

and it's helped a lot to say, you know, let people tell their

Speaker: 00:50:02

stories, stories resonate.

Speaker: 00:50:05

And so that's going on.

Speaker: 00:50:06

We've got, we've launched a YouTube channel called Businesses mission with

Speaker: 00:50:10

Mike Bayer and it's picking up a lot of, a lot of followers, a lot of subscribers.

Speaker: 00:50:15

And so it is a, there's multiple things like this third path initiative, as you

Speaker: 00:50:19

know, is an online education platform.

Speaker: 00:50:22

And it's meant to give people a virtual place to go study and learn.

Speaker: 00:50:26

They don't have to go to a university.

Speaker: 00:50:28

They don't have to go to a conference in London.

Speaker: 00:50:30

they can at least begin to grow and hone their businesses mission skills.

Speaker: 00:50:34

But.

Speaker: 00:50:34

Tim, this plays into something that to me is really becoming important

Speaker: 00:50:39

and it's a leadership lesson.

Speaker: 00:50:41

It's a life lesson.

Speaker: 00:50:43

I feel like there's a transition that we as men, as people, I should say, because

Speaker: 00:50:50

I'm sure it's true for women also, that we move from being the doers to we go,

Speaker: 00:50:55

we start becoming the advisors, right?

Speaker: 00:50:59

But I think there's something beyond that where we start becoming the B ers.

Speaker: 00:51:04

And what I mean by that is there's a time when you're out there doing it.

Speaker: 00:51:07

That was the me, you know, paying Delta's bills, flying millions of

Speaker: 00:51:12

miles with those guys, literally, to now advising, trying to share with the

Speaker: 00:51:19

younger generation what I've learned, particularly where the landmines are.

Speaker: 00:51:22

Don't step there.

Speaker: 00:51:24

Then I kept thinking what's beyond that and a guy introduced

Speaker: 00:51:27

me to this about six months ago.

Speaker: 00:51:28

It's called being just being in it And I don't think this is for kids.

Speaker: 00:51:34

I don't think this is an early stage I think it's a later stage

Speaker: 00:51:37

where just the who you are.

Speaker: 00:51:40

All right, you're talking about leadership I think the who you are begins to eclipse

Speaker: 00:51:45

the what you say And what you do and so that's To me where I, for me personally,

Speaker: 00:51:52

and some of the other senior guys in the band movement, that's what we're beginning

Speaker: 00:51:55

to learn is let them run with it.

Speaker: 00:51:58

They need us, but they don't need us to do, or they don't even need us to teach.

Speaker: 00:52:03

They need us to be who Jesus has made us.

Speaker: 00:52:06

one thing that's interesting about that, I saw an article, this Wall Street Journal

Speaker: 00:52:10

is one of these articles where I saw the headline, but I didn't read it, I'm sure.

Speaker: 00:52:14

People never do that, it got me thinking about things in the article

Speaker: 00:52:18

headline went something like this.

Speaker: 00:52:19

There was an investor tapping into 50 and 60 year olds to lead startups

Speaker: 00:52:26

and businesses and stuff like

Speaker: 00:52:28

That was just the last couple of weeks.

Speaker: 00:52:30

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: 00:52:30

and it got me thinking, I think it feeds into this.

Speaker: 00:52:33

I think this is kind of how we'll move towards landing the plane here.

Speaker: 00:52:36

But I was just thinking about, and especially in, you know, talking

Speaker: 00:52:41

with you and then last week, Jim, and you just brought it up.

Speaker: 00:52:45

And I think this is a good, valuable thing to discuss here.

Speaker: 00:52:50

How do we, as we'll call it mature, leaders, business people, men of God,

Speaker: 00:52:57

whatever, whatever term or title we want to add, I don't think any of

Speaker: 00:53:00

us are hung up with titles really.

Speaker: 00:53:02

How do we, support the generations behind us?

Speaker: 00:53:07

How do we raise them up?

Speaker: 00:53:09

How do we allow them to stand on our shoulders?

Speaker: 00:53:11

Yeah, I don't, I don't even know what the right terms are, but it seems as

Speaker: 00:53:16

if that's kind of one of our callings.

Speaker: 00:53:22

I don't even know if I have a question around that other than a statement.

Speaker: 00:53:25

So respond.

Speaker: 00:53:26

What, what say

Speaker: 00:53:27

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:53:28

it's a hard thing to put into words.

Speaker: 00:53:30

I think the hardest thing for the more mature leaders out there is learning.

Speaker: 00:53:39

Not when to retire.

Speaker: 00:53:40

I don't believe in retirement.

Speaker: 00:53:41

I mean, I'm still working probably as much as I ever did.

Speaker: 00:53:44

I love what I do, doing it for different reasons, but I,

Speaker: 00:53:47

so don't think of retirement.

Speaker: 00:53:48

I do think there's a place for handing off the baton, for, letting

Speaker: 00:53:54

the next generation take the baton and run the next leg of the I

Speaker: 00:54:00

don't think we do that very well.

Speaker: 00:54:01

Even guys like me at almost 70, it'd be very easy for me to think about running

Speaker: 00:54:08

things, leading things, being the CEO.

Speaker: 00:54:11

I think that's the first lesson we need.

Speaker: 00:54:15

You know, if we've done a good job of modeling the way, if we've done a good

Speaker: 00:54:18

job of inspiring a shared vision, if we've done a good job of communicating values

Speaker: 00:54:23

and, Teaching them what leadership is and how to lead and they've begun to see it

Speaker: 00:54:28

and grasp it Getting out of the way and letting them do it becomes a big part of

Speaker: 00:54:34

this process the other is knowing, you know, when do you stop even advising?

Speaker: 00:54:39

When do I shut up and stop advising because that's just another form

Speaker: 00:54:43

of bossing It can be when do I?

Speaker: 00:54:47

You know what?

Speaker: 00:54:48

They need me around.

Speaker: 00:54:50

They need my presence.

Speaker: 00:54:52

They need to know I'm there and they need to know they can come when they

Speaker: 00:54:57

need encouragement, when they need to be listened to, when they need

Speaker: 00:55:00

a safe place to kick around ideas.

Speaker: 00:55:02

I think that's my next challenge.

Speaker: 00:55:05

And I'm just literally, I'm just beginning to enter this phase of, Lord, show me

Speaker: 00:55:10

the difference Between even being a good advisor and just being a good man and

Speaker: 00:55:17

letting them come and get what they need.

Speaker: 00:55:18

Maybe that's a grandpa on me.

Speaker: 00:55:20

I don't know.

Speaker: 00:55:20

You're you're a grandfather.

Speaker: 00:55:22

You know, maybe that's the, you know, let them come and ask for what they need.

Speaker: 00:55:26

But I do think.

Speaker: 00:55:28

This, this article that you're referring to in the Wall Street

Speaker: 00:55:30

Journal is a great article.

Speaker: 00:55:31

It reminds me a little bit of the silly movie called The Apprentice with

Speaker: 00:55:35

Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway in it.

Speaker: 00:55:38

if you haven't seen it, I would encourage your listeners to watch it.

Speaker: 00:55:41

It's silly, but it makes a really good point.

Speaker: 00:55:44

And part of it is this old guy who'd been in the role comes back as a temporary

Speaker: 00:55:49

employee and no one knows who he is.

Speaker: 00:55:52

But he's there and he turns, it's a great story and a good ending.

Speaker: 00:55:57

But it really is the idea that, you know, we, we need the old guys around.

Speaker: 00:56:00

Let's don't put them out to pasture.

Speaker: 00:56:02

You know, it's, it's not Soylent Green.

Speaker: 00:56:04

We don't send Edward G. Robinson into the room to listen to

Speaker: 00:56:06

music while he commits suicide.

Speaker: 00:56:09

I mean, we need the old guys around and we've never quite

Speaker: 00:56:12

figured out what to do with them.

Speaker: 00:56:13

And part of that is they've never figured out what to do with themselves.

Speaker: 00:56:19

So learning that I think is huge.

Speaker: 00:56:21

I'm gonna circle back to something we brought up at the beginning and I think

Speaker: 00:56:24

this will be a good ending point for us.

Speaker: 00:56:27

I think for me, maybe for the way you're wired too, I'll, I'll make the

Speaker: 00:56:31

statement and then you can respond.

Speaker: 00:56:34

I need to be okay.

Speaker: 00:56:37

With not getting credit.

Speaker: 00:56:41

And I think one of the things I've wanted, you and I brought, we discussed

Speaker: 00:56:45

it earlier, it might've been some different languages that, you know, we

Speaker: 00:56:47

need the impact we need, we need to, you know, if, if Mike mentored Tim and Tim

Speaker: 00:56:55

does something great, Tim's given the acceptance speech and need to say, I'm

Speaker: 00:56:59

here because of Mike bear, there's some degree of truth to that, but, but if.

Speaker: 00:57:05

If Mike needs that, and I, I, I will admit that I have needed that, I recognize when

Speaker: 00:57:12

I'm dealing with my grown children and others that if I am thinking about how

Speaker: 00:57:20

they're going to mention my name at some point, it, it,

Speaker: 00:57:23

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:57:24

across with the right Attitude and maybe it's that servant heart.

Speaker: 00:57:27

Maybe it's being a good steward.

Speaker: 00:57:28

I don't know There's probably some spiritual things here too.

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But I do think and it doesn't mean we just go out to pasture.

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I Think we're available and I think somehow there's this balance

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between we need to make sure they know we're available and we're

Speaker: 00:57:42

Yeah.

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but we're not crotchety about it.

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Like well, it's about time.

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You came and asked the question see you and What, what, what pops in

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your mind when I, when I go on that little mini rant that I just went

Speaker: 00:57:53

No, it's a great winning.

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And part of it comes back to guys, let's don't, let's don't live in a

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fantasy world where we're going to be suddenly delivered from all of these,

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you know, substandard motivations.

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They're not going to go away.

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Stop looking for that.

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You'll beat yourself up.

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Forever.

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the thing that comes to mind as you're talking about that is if I'm sitting in a

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cave on the mountain and waiting for the pilgrims to come to me, I think that's a

Speaker: 00:58:20

fool's errand to quote Shakespeare, right?

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I need to be engaged.

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I need to be among the people.

Speaker: 00:58:29

The word, even the word retire is like, you know, it's like leave

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the field, get out, go away.

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I'm not going away and I'm not going to come in and try to run

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things, but I'm going to be there.

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If I was a CEO of a company that was being handed over to my son, for

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example, I would not stop coming in.

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I'm not going to suddenly go away and, and play the, you know, if you

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want my wisdom, then you come to me.

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That's a, that's arrogance.

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Just remember the difference between advising is I'm waiting to be asked,

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or I'm seeking to be asked and being, it's just literally just that.

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But to be, I have to be present.

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Me being by myself in North Carolina, you know, The wise sage helps nobody.

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So I've got to engage.

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And I think that's the temptation.

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I'm being, I'm using too many words to express this.

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It's a fairly new thought, as you can tell, but the, the idea that

Speaker: 00:59:30

I'm, I got to stay connected.

Speaker: 00:59:36

Otherwise I'll die.

Speaker: 00:59:37

but the cool thing about that is that we can stay connected, you know, businesses,

Speaker: 00:59:41

mission, podcast, seek, go create here.

Speaker: 00:59:43

And I, and I do recommend people listening in here.

Speaker: 00:59:48

mission podcast is a great place to go you know, I know you listen to a lot of things

Speaker: 00:59:55

Mike, wouldn't you agree that audience has some similar characteristics, right?

Speaker: 01:00:04

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:00:05

They're all in different stages of their quest of figuring out, you know, if

Speaker: 01:00:11

I'm called to business, which is always the first principle, then Lord, why?

Speaker: 01:00:16

And that's what the stories are about.

Speaker: 01:00:18

That's people how they discovered their call and The different ways

Speaker: 01:00:21

that can express itself, but I think that's they all have that in common.

Speaker: 01:00:26

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:00:26

so check all those things out.

Speaker: 01:00:28

We'll include links so podcast player, go over and listen to a few episodes and

Speaker: 01:00:33

subscribe to businesses, mission podcast.

Speaker: 01:00:36

Last question for you, Mike, kind of forward thinking, you know, what kind

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of message do you have for, this is where we share the wisdom of the, I was

Speaker: 01:00:47

going to say old guy, mature guy, with,

Speaker: 01:00:49

It's all the same.

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we could talk about issues and challenges, but I know you're an

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optimistic guy, I know we're looking forward and excited about the future

Speaker: 01:00:57

and things like that, but, Just what's, a parting message you have

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for people that might be listening in.

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And most of them are probably in some form of a leadership role.

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what do you want to share?

Speaker: 01:01:10

Wow.

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so It's two words.

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We win if you're seeking in any way, form or fashion to know and follow Christ.

Speaker: 01:01:22

And I'm not going to prescribe what that looks like, because it looks

Speaker: 01:01:25

different for different folks.

Speaker: 01:01:26

But if you're on that continuum, we win, which is a optimistic statement.

Speaker: 01:01:32

It's a confident statement, but it's also, it's back to where we began.

Speaker: 01:01:35

It's me taking open hands and saying, I'm not going to win the game.

Speaker: 01:01:40

You're going to win the game.

Speaker: 01:01:41

And I'm going to win with you.

Speaker: 01:01:44

Yeah, that's good, man.

Speaker: 01:01:46

Mike bear, always good to talk to you.

Speaker: 01:01:48

see what we could do and get a, you know, three, four hour episode in at some point.

Speaker: 01:01:53

I think that would

Speaker: 01:01:53

Let's do it.

Speaker: 01:01:54

I think every listener knows they could do it.

Speaker: 01:01:58

It may not be good, but

Speaker: 01:02:00

do it.

Speaker: 01:02:01

But could do it.

Speaker: 01:02:02

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:02:02

I just listened to a five hour podcast with Dan Carlin on hardcore

Speaker: 01:02:06

history and He was talking about, Alexander the great for five hours.

Speaker: 01:02:11

well,

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incredible, conversation.

Speaker: 01:02:13

Thank you, Mike.

Speaker: 01:02:13

Thank you for helping us celebrate this,

Speaker: 01:02:15

you bet.

Speaker: 01:02:16

episodes for those that are listening in, make sure you jump down, make comments.

Speaker: 01:02:21

If you're on YouTube, love to hear your thoughts on some of these things

Speaker: 01:02:23

we've talked about, agree, disagree.

Speaker: 01:02:25

That's fine by us.

Speaker: 01:02:27

If you're on your podcast, listening, make sure you subscribe

Speaker: 01:02:31

and share and all that helps.

Speaker: 01:02:33

We appreciate it and are just thankful for 300 plus episodes now Thank you all.

Speaker: 01:02:39

So thanks for listening in and we'll see everybody next week.