Brave Men S2E26: Robert Barriger - How To Manage Crisis

It's Brave Man with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. Here with my close friend, Robert Berger, who is locked down in Lima, Peru. You guys are literally locked out, haven't seen your kids. In fact, I got one of the last planes out of Peru right before you got locked down. What's it like? Tell me what's going on right now in Peru. You're right. You guys left on Saturday and on Sunday, our government made radical, hard decisions. They put the entire country under quarantine with military on the streets and then curfew. In other words, you're actually in where you live. You can't go out. We cannot leave our houses. Nobody is allowed to leave their house. There's a government like a hashtag. I'm staying home and it's everybody in the country is using that hashtag. And for the most part, people, they're following the orders. Of course, we can't go out on the street. The military is out there. You can go out if you need to go to a pharmacy or with permission. If you need to go to a store, but you can only walk. You can't drive. So we're under very, very strict with the mask. Yeah, that keeps me in a particular area then. If there's like where we live, there's no grocery stores so we cannot walk to a store. So this is the way it is. It's a 15 day quarantine. 15 and as of now, we are on day six goodness. You know, how do you know, Robert of all my friends and you're one of my closest in the world. It's not my closest friend. I don't know anybody who's had more brushes with being killed or shot at or had terrorists come after you or church is closed down two days before your service. I can't think of all of the calamities earthquakes and mudslides and terrorists and I don't know anybody has had more stuff than you in the world. I don't know. Maybe it makes today a little bit better. Yeah, we're just kind of numb, I guess. No, no, no, how do you, how do we deal with this? You know, help us who haven't experienced something like this. You've got military on the streets before you've had guns in your face. How do you handle this as a follower Christ as a leader? Two things I can answer. I remember you just happened to be with me until so close home at a restaurant. I got that phone call and I came back and I said, man, why does it have to be so hard? And I've just come to realize, okay, it's hard. Do it anyway. Yeah. People are worth it. We, I use the example when we built that house for we call the Grace Home to rescue young women. It was hard. It was way more expensive than I thought. Still is way more expensive to run than I ever thought it would be. Took longer than I thought. And at times I thought, why is it so hard? Why is it so expensive? But when the first girl walked in there and said, I didn't know God loved me this much. Wow. So it was hard, but she was worth it. And sometimes the gospel ministry is hard. There's sacrifice, but do it anyway, because the person on the other side is worth it. I remember that. In fact, we were at a barbecue place. Wasn't, I think Taylor was with us and we were up there at Willie George's meeting. Yeah. And you're coming back to the table and they had closed your church, the building. Literally two days before you're supposed to meet with thousands of people coming through. I think coming up, let me just give background to people who don't know you. You passed your commina divita. Through the grace of God, you guys went down there 36 years ago. 37 years now. 37 years ago, you and your beautiful wife from the beaches of California to the beaches of Peru, sort of. Actually, you went to the jungle, didn't you? Everywhere. Mountains jungle. And many years traveling this country. And you've built an amazing church called commina divita. And you are now one of the leading voices for the kingdom in all of Latin America. A commina divita is one of the largest churches in the Western hemisphere. And very significant. You lead pastors, round tables all over the Spanish speaking world. You have, how many churches have been part of the round tables that you've been leading? Right now, there's 1300 churches that we mentor through the round tables. You mentor over 1300 churches, helping them grow, helping them re-engineer or pivot. The way they do ministry. And has that been fruitful? What have you seen happen out of that? Yeah, it actually has churches just tend to get stuck. And we can come in there and help them to give them new ideas, new strategy. We tell them we're not going to give them a how. We're going to give them a why. Well, because a lot of them have the idea, well, we're small, but we're deep. And I just come back saying God loves more than the 50 people you have in this city. So let's reach him. So the average growth that we see in the church after about a year and a half is 61%. So we've actually seen churches, some doubles, some triple in size. But the average growth is 60%. So the average is 61% in 81% of those 1300 churches. Wow. What's it now? What's it called because there's going to be some friends who want to access us? Is it all in Spanish still? No, we what we do is we've written a curriculum. We've taken the experience we have of 37 years of ministry and the experience of other friends like Deilo Shields and dark. And we've taken some of their systems, put it into a curriculum. And I find a pastor that I'll say here, I'm going to give you 100 churches. Here's the curriculum. Take this curriculum and go mentor these churches. It's a three year commitment. But just stick to the curriculum, teach this stuff. Like the men's curriculum works for men. That was partly where I got the idea we need to get this down into a way where somebody can take it and reproduce it. So we've written a curriculum. Guys are going in there. The average about 100 churches per mission trip. And they themselves are coming back excited because they're the ones saying, hey, this really works. Yeah, so Pierre Dupelci and a number of great friends. Charles Neiman. Of course, Deilo Shields has been, you have co-written this with pastor. Yeah. Yeah, some of the pastors that have actually trained with us. Willie George has gone with us. The case he treaked has gone with us. I'm representing this is Mike Kai's hat. Mike Kai is our great trainers. Yeah, take care of Argentina. And I'd be, I'd be wearing a communal divita hat if you had to give me one. Oh, we don't have enough money to make hacks. We do things hard to remember. It's hard. We don't have hats. No. That's amazing. When you live in Hawaii, you need a hat. Yeah. You're in Jane. There's so many great guys. There's so many black training. Shouldn't have been black if it was for white. Anyway. Yeah, Mike Kai, what a legend. That guy is, man. And great friends. And I've met so many great friends because of you. And the things that have happened in the ministry. And you watch this church grow. And you've got so many young people. You have a Sunday night service. It's basically all millennials. By the way, I heard a great joke today because of the coronavirus. The, the kids are going to be born. We're going to have a ton of kids next Christmas. Babies, right. They're going to be called coronials. Oh, that's a good name. It's not a good name, but it makes sense. And the corona means crowns. So they're going to be crowned with righteousness. Amen. But man, you've got so many young people. I absolutely knocked out, you know, 20 somethings. How many usually do you have on a Sunday night? Just at your facility, much less all the churches you mentor. Well, in our campuses and our main campus, we went about six thousand a Sunday night on an average Sunday sitting in the fuse or in this chairs. this chairs. If you're at an average Sunday all day, it's a little over 10,000. Yeah. You know, and it's cranked up. It's absolutely cranked up and it's amazing what you've done. And God has been so good to us. We're thankful. Yeah. You know, God has been good, Robert. But it's sort of like my pastor Phil Pringle said, a man was walking through his facility there. They were walking together through Oxford Falls. And the man said to a man, it's amazing what God's done here. And Phil said it not being it, you know, irrespectful. But he said, well, you should have seen it when God had it by himself. And in other words, there's a lot of hard work involved. That didn't just happen. 6,000 people didn't show up. In fact, you can't even put, you don't even have signs of your building. Even today, you can't put signs on. So how do you navigate the stress? How do you how do you sleep at night? Wake up in the morning and say, this is going to be a good day when you know it's going to be hard again. Well, the wake up part is easy. It's called coffee. Yeah, it's we've just learned to navigate. Like I said, it gets hard. Do it anyway. I go through what I call filters. And one of my main filters is don't do what's convenient, do what's right. And that oftentimes means sacrifice. But we do what's right because that's what it is. So we rescue girls because it's right. We keep going forward in the church because it's right. We haven't been able to buy a building yet, but we can grow. So we just keep renting more space and keep growing. Yeah, you've rent a theater. In fact, because they were trying to close down your building and it's a series of circumstances, but it caused you to go out and get other venues, which ended up, you still ended up with that place of your meeting now, even on a temporary lease situation. And yet in the middle of all, that's for the church grew out of crisis. Yeah, it's I think a lot of that our church has learned to be flexible. They've learned to follow us on social media. So when we give a church, we can't meet in that building on Sunday, something came up. We will be over here. They follow us over there. So when we had to put out a notice that, hey, we can't meet this Sunday, follow us online. We didn't have anybody show up in church on Sunday. We're talking about thousands that were immediately online. So it trained us for a moment like this. So you built a culture of connectivity. You've built a connectivity and being flexible. Hey guys, we don't know what's going to happen. So be just stay tuned. We will get in touch with you when we know. Yeah. And I think it prepared us because when this coronavirus came and we couldn't meet on Sunday, you know, it wasn't easy, but it was right to close the service. Yeah. My friend, Deilo Shields, and I were talking about this together. And we decided at the same time, basically, him to close his Sunday service in DC. And us to close, come in, and they've been Peru. And he actually said, you know, it took more faith for me to close it and to keep it open. And I think the faith that we need to walk through these times is what's going to keep us going. And I think some of the hard times that you've mentioned that I've been through have just prepared me for today. So how do we use this going forward? Here we are. We're in the middle of this crisis. I've been absolutely knocked out by a lot of our friends, our peers, if you will. And then all of the young pastors who are there are guys who have built studios in seven days. You know, it's and come up with creative things. I'm watching children's things be put online from people's homes for for children who might be home. We can't go to school and on and on and on and on. So people are doing that. But how do I navigate going forward? How do I continue to build not just a response in the crisis, but how do I build strength for the journey forward? Yeah, creativity. We don't know what's going to happen, but our creative God will put the thoughts and the ideas in our head. Creativity, you know, it's that old saying that lack is the birthplace of creativity. So there's going to be some churches lacking. There's going to be some financial hits for us when they closed our church down all of our gear. And it's not great gear, but it's nice enough is in church. So we're meeting with iPhones and on Zoom and on Instagram and our team has been phenomenal. And I'll say this, it's so phenomenal that tomorrow Christian TV station for all of Latin America is going to be putting us on live and I'll be preaching from my iPhone in my house live to South America. Well, don't mess up. Let me just help you. No, I can't. Actually, I can't. I do it all the time. They wouldn't they would expect nothing different. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, don't be too, don't be too smooth. No, but creativity. Wow. Yeah, lack is not an obstacle. Wow. That's so huge. Lack is not an obstacle. It's just in just five. Yeah, James one five asked for wisdom. It's Hebrews 10 that don't lose your confidence, but go after this thing with endurance. It's yeah, all the things, you know what? It is a Passover. It is the things that we've told other people as we counsel them over the last few years. Let's say you're watching right now and you've helped a friend go through an issue and you help the loved one go through a loss of a job. Whatever you told them is what you have to repeat to yourself right now, isn't it? Yeah, it's no fun, but I gotta practice what I preached. Yeah, you know, and I want to mention also on AchieveLab AchieveLab.org, AchieveLab. Your message of it's difficult to do it anyway is on there. And I watched your message the other day. Oh, it was one decision can change everything. And that was I watched that in my devotions on Wednesday. And I watched your message. And I thought, man, this is so good. And I know this guy. No, every now and then it comes out okay. Yeah, every now and then there's a good one. Well, those are the only ones we use just so you know, yeah, the two of me. You got that's good. We've known each other for 20 years. So you got two good messages. Shoot. Well, you know, Dale Galloway, who ran the Beeson program at Asbury Theological for many years. Dale did say a number of years ago in a teaching session for pastors. He said, basically, every pastor and every leader has within them about three life messages. And everything they share and speak is a variation of that. And so I've often thought I think of my pastor Phil Pringle whose core thing is faith. And so we just got 17 hours, 17 different messages we just put on AchieveLab or Phil. And I asked, I said, give me the give me the ones he's done on faith. And the guys go, you sure you can use 185? Okay, just 17. And because that's a core thing for him and others are encourages and others are, I think, you know, the blessed life, let's say the pastor, Robert Morrison. And you know, you have such an incredible gift in terms of encouraging people to just get up and go after it because what you just said, the filter you have, it's the right thing to do. And so we just do it. You know, you talk about going through hard times. One of my key filters, it's a William Kerry father of modern day missions. And it was interesting when William Kerry wanted to go to what he called the heathens to India and preach the gospel. The American church said no and they resisted him. And finally, I don't know if it was because William Kerry wasn't very charismatic. One of the pastors said to William, Kerry, what can you do in India? And his answer was I can plot. And often that is what keeps me going. It's just I can plot. I can not stop. Wow. I can put one foot in front of there next. Okay, there's opposition. Okay, we just had that thing happen. As you know, I've been held hostage. I've been held up at gunpoint at things that have happened with the terrorists where they tried to kidnap. What keeps you going? Is there fear? Yes. But I can plot. I can get up again the next day and just put one foot in front of the next. And after 37 years of plotting, we built this church. Magnificent church and an incredible and highly significant ministry. I shared something the other day on a Facebook live. And I'm writing it, you know, it's going into a book on endurance. I climbed a mountain a few years ago called Handys Peak is 14,240 feet and with my friend Bob Andrews. And the thing I learned in that is I looked back on it and thought about right now is that I had to focus on where I was headed. And and focusing on where I was headed meant I couldn't just get distracted or sidetracked with minutia. I had to also look at where my my foot was going because if I missed the step, I could roll down this particularly when we got up in the dangerous parts up higher. And so what I had to do is I had to watch my foot in front of me, but I also had to keep my eyes and Bob. And it's sort of like take a step, where's Bob? Take a step, where's Bob? In other words, where where am I headed? Because if I lost track of him, I could take a step, but it's the wrong direction. And we were talking on a podcast yesterday with my co-host Brian Boyd. And Brian said there's story after story after story because he's a runner of marathoners who were watching the person in front of them rather than the direction of the race course. The person in front of them got off track and that person just followed them. And then the five people behind them followed them. And some of them were elite runners. They had a chance to actually be in the final of this race. And yet they got off track because they didn't lift their eyes to see where they were going. So I've been thinking about just where's Bob? And where's our focus? And man, it's so good. I can get up and I can get up and walk again. And I'll say this to everyone watching this right now. One of the things I do know about you is you do get up. No matter what has happened, you get up. You have your coffee. And it's a espresso followed by a double espresso. And then that's just the start. But you get up and you just go. And whatever it is, it needs to happen. You get up and go. And that's what you've done on this. And that's what I would encourage everybody right now. There's a final encouraging word that you could give us to our friends that are watching right now. What would that be? Just what you just said. Don't stop. Get up and go. Follow Jesus. Take the next step. Just keep taking step. Go slow to go far. Don't try to run too fast. Don't try to get ahead of things. Don't compare yourself with somebody else who's doing things farther and faster. Just take a step. Take the next one. Take the next one. And after time, you'll have made it where you wanted to go. And to me, the reward is, I'm not following Bob. I'm looking at the people I can help. The next one. And then the next one. The next girl. The next kid in the orphanage. Yeah. The next person that just gave their life to Jesus. The next man that we sent back to his family is a maximized man. Yeah. It's just step by step. Step by step. Go slow to go part. That's awesome. I love it. Great word. Thank you, Robert. Camino de Vida. What's the website? In English, life missions.com, life missions.com, in Espanol, the language of heaven. Camino de Vida. Punto.com. Camino de Vida.com. Yeah, I got that. I got that. I knew them. I just didn't know if you knew it. Punto.com. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for taking the time. Thank you, everybody, for being with us. You've just experienced Brave Man with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian Men's Network. Connect with Paul at cmd.man or write to him at Paul at cmd.man.