So you're going to be live at the conference this year. Why don't you tell the guys a little bit about what you're going to be speaking on, but also why you focus and love to speak to men. What gets you excited about speaking to men? I would say

the Bible gets me excited to speak to men. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that we are to stand firm and act like men. And in that passage, he tells us how to do that. And so a big part of what I'm going to be talking about is what are some of the things we need to be on the watch out for? Because he says, watch out. We've got too many men that are too comfortable, too lazy, that they don't have their head on a swivel. Peter warns men, he's actually talking to the elders of the church when he says to pay attention because the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. So I'm going to try to help our men know what are four or five of the things the Bible says that we need to most often look out for as men. And it's just right there in the text. I'm a Bible preacher. We're just going to walk through. There's going to be very little ideas from me. There'll be some illustrations from me. There'll be some commentary from me, but these ideas are not my ideas. This is just, when we get men walking in line with the Word of God, then we can walk in a different set of strength than when we walk in our own strength. God has given us a great, high, holy calling as a man, and with that comes strength, but that strength is not for you. It is to defend, to provide, to protect, and so that's what we'll be talking about. Great.

You have a very active ministry to men at your church, but you also speak at various conferences and retreats and places all over the world to men. Why that focus? How did that get started in you? You know, when did that sort of be birthed as far as this such an emphasis on ministry to men? I

would say it was unintended. I just said yes to God to teach the Bible when I was 19. Virtually every week of my life, I'm 51 now, so for all of that time, 32 years, almost every week I've stood in front of people with a Bible and opened it and just taught God's Word. And I just teach it for what it is, and I just am who I am. But a lot of the requests I get to teach the Bible are to teach it to men in the way that I teach the Bible. So it's not like I sat down years ago and I said, all right, here's my strategy of what I'm going to do in the Christian world, and I'm going to have a big man focus. That's not it at all. As a pastor of a church, I think, man, we've got a real manhood crisis. And so that has been the focus of pastoring this church for a long time. And so that's probably how I popped up on some people's radars in regards to teaching men. Joey, there's a couple of things I'd like to drill down on.

I know because all I do is work with pastors and help share the vision and the benefit of working with men, sort of awakening that sleeping giant in the church. a senior pastor, what are some of the benefits you have seen of speaking truth into that man's life and seeing them come alive to the truth of the gospel? We're talking to maybe some pastors who said, you know, I don't know if that's really that

important. I'm

just going to talk to everyone. What have you seen happen at your place? And why is it so important?

I think it comes all the way back to God's creation order. I

don't

know why. As a reflection of who he is, he created male and female to be representatives of the character and nature of God. And while we are equal in value and equal in worth, he gave Adam and Eve different assignments. And in the church and in the family, he gave different assignments to complement one another. And so as goes the head goes everything. I'm sure people listening to this know all the statistics around it. Like if you reach a man with the gospel, the percent chance of his whole family coming to Christ are infinitely higher than if you reach. Now, listen, man, the Church of 1122 is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus. So we're not neglecting anybody, but there are seasons of our church, like actually this entire year, our whole year is focused on men standing firm and acting like men. So all of the sermon series that we do, obviously women are going to learn from it too, and students and kids, but all of our sermon series are aimed that way. We've got a few special events. And again, man, when dad loves and leads well, everyone flourishes. And so I think oftentimes in society, the pendulum can just swing too far one way or the other. And what we're trying to do is not just be in a course of overcorrection all the time, but we're just trying to stay down the fairway the way the scriptures have called all of us, men and women too. But again, when men, when the head of the house leads and loves well, everyone flourishes. When they don't, then everybody else in the home is already operating at a deficit. So a big part of what we're going to talk about is in that passage from Corinthians, Paul says, let everything you do be done in love. There's a lot of men that have swung too hard the other way. They think manhood is about tires and trucks and hunting and camo and muscles and power. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, when I was a child, I acted like a child. But when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. The context of that verse is about what love is, so there's a bunch of men pounding their chest saying, well, I'm a man because of what I do, and Paul's like, no, you're not tough. You're acting like a toddler because you're making it all about you, and the definition of love there is patience and kindness and not easily angered and doesn't have to get your own way and always hopes and always perseveres and and so that's we're trying to call men to be godly men and again for some of them it's get off the couch put down the xbox controller get a job take care of your family jesus says from the day of john the baptist until today the kingdom of god has been forcefully advancing and forceful men take hold of it. So some people need to get off the couch and go. And then other people need to throttle down on the machismo a little bit and pick up a towel and serve. Dress yourself as a servant and wash your disciples and your wife's feet. And so that's what Christ is calling us to, is to be the kind of man he is. Not some kind of caricature of manhood that we've seen in movies. Yeah.

And I think so often it seems like every 10 years or so, culture portrays a different thing of what a man is. And it just, it's changed from the fifties on. And then we have to take guys back to Jesus and say, here's our model. And what does that look like? So that'll be great. I'm glad you're doing that. That'll be super. Well, I know you've just recently, a new book came out the last few months, run over by the grace train. How did that come about? And what's the big idea of the book? Yeah,

I think grace is an often misunderstood idea in the church, maybe in two extremes. Some people think they're too far gone for grace and they don't realize that there's more grace in Jesus than sin in you and that whosoever believes can become a child of God. But then the other extreme is the people that think grace means I can do whatever I want. And so this is a bit of an anti-cheap grace book. The title is an illustration that I've used countless times here at 1122 that, like Steve, if you were late for our meeting and then you showed up and I said, hey man, where you been? And you said, I just got run over by a freight train. I would look at you and go, I don't think you did because your glasses are still there, your hair looks good, your collar, you got your eyes and teeth. It does not look like you've encountered something as powerful as a freight train. And yet there are countless people in the church that say they've encountered the power of Christ in their life, but their life looks no different. So when you get run over by the grace train, it changes everything about everything about everything about all of your life. And so we establish what grace is in the first two chapters by studying Ephesians 2 and Romans 3. And that's basically, I'm just a Bible teacher. And then the whole rest of the book is the implications of grace in our life and some places in the scriptures where Jesus encountered people and his grace changed their whole life. Like the woman called the act of adultery, the woman at the well, people like that.