BraveMen S4E140: John Crossman - Building Bridges

Most often, when we're talking about building bridges, we're talking about people in conflict, when we're trying to bridge the gap that separates them. It may be, if you live in different parts of the Western culture, in particular, the left and the right, and you try to build a bridge. John Crossman is a specialist in building a bridge from where you are to your destiny. That is a remarkable thing. And John Crossman, what you're going to hear today is a man who not only talks about it, he not only coaches it, if you will, but he's done it. He's put his life, his family, his legacy, finances, time, effort into helping young men and women move from where they are to a new place of destiny. He's done that across the United States and encouraged people to do it around the world. He has done endowments at major universities, he is a motivator, he is, here's what he is, he's a solutioner. I don't know if that's a word, but it is now because we just did it on Brave Men. He's a solutioner, that's John Crossman, and I am so, I'm really fired up that John's with us today on this, on this podcast on Brave Men. When you need discipleship tools to help disciple your son, to help disciple your children, to help your church, your parish, move into a place where men are finding their faith in their center in Christ. We have all of that at Christian Men's Network, cmn.men. Brave Men is sponsored by Christian Men's Network. cmn.men or Christian Men's Network.com will take you there and you'll find tools in over 50 languages from around the world, tools that you need to help the disciple men, maximize manhood, strong men and tough times. For your church, men's groups, small groups, we now have 7,200 small groups in the nation of Brazil in Portuguese. Unbelievable. I mean, amazing what Marcos and his team are doing in Brazil. I was just in Argentina where over 4,000 churches are using the majoring in men, maximize manhood, the majoring in men, curriculum to help disciple men. How do you change a nation? You change a nation, one man at a time. And that is the secret of John Crossman. John helps change people's lives, one person at a time. I'm thrilled for you to be able to hear this man of faith, man of courage and a man of strength, a man who helps others find their destiny. Today, I'm brave men. You'll meet John Crossman. It's brave men with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. Finally, John Crossman, and John Crossman, you've got a radio program, you've got, you've had an amazing career, working with Tramble Crow, Crossman and Company, real estate, all of these things that you've done. We could go on and on through the whole bio. The thing I find fascinating about John Crossman is, as an Anglo man, you have become an advocate of historic black colleges. You become an advocate of racial diversity. And you've done it from a framework of legacy. This has been going on for decades in your life and in your family's life. And how did this become yours, though? Your father was very involved, civil rights. How did this become yours, John? So, my dad was a Methodist minister and we moved around a lot. That's what Methodist ministers do. And so, my dad, when he was early in his career, became friends, really close friends with a guy named Dr. Oswald Bronson, who was the president of the Thune Cook University. And if you think about it, Dr. Paul, like old-school Crossman churches, you have big pulpit and little pulpit, right? And so, big pulpit's were a guy and little pulpit's bake sales. And I remember my mom for all my child. She never went behind big pulpit. That's a big deal, right? And pastors don't give up their pulpit, especially if they're in town. You don't give it that up. So, my dad started a thing in the late 1960s where once a year he would give up his pulpit to Dr. Oswald Bronson. So, think about being in Florida and the South, all white congregation and also having this black man as the pastor of the day. And, you know, for most of those white people, they never been under the authority of a black man before. And so, that people that know this get at how risk-taking that was for my dad and how powerful it was. The other part is my dad always had to bring in their concert carouse. So, it was this black gospel choir up there singing during the service. So, I was born in 1971 and every single year in my life, you know, for 1971, I went to my dad and retired around 1994. I would see the Thune Cookman despreach and then their concert crowd. So, we moved nine times in my childhood, right? So, you know, like somebody might say, oh, you know, I know I'm home when I see that street or I see this or whatever. I have thriller siblings. I think we all feel like we have a different city as our hometown. Right. Usually high school would anchor it, right? Yeah, exactly. So, there's that kind of thing. And we all graduate from different high schools. So, the thing that is though is, the Thune Cookman was the consistent. So, when I see it, the Thune Cookman license plate, I, that really resonates with me. Like, I feel a connection with it. So, that's part of it. I think the other thing I'll tell you is that is a child and then growing up, that gospel music was the best Christian music I ever heard. You know, like, you know, 52 Sundays, 51 is kind of okay, but that 52 second when they came in. Yeah, it has no life to it. Yes. Yeah, I'm telling you, I can still think about a song they did. And it gave me goosebumps when I'm nine years old. I think I could, I'm not going to, but I think I could sing it right now. I mean, that's how powerful the memory, it's like hard, hard, wired. So, you have that as part of me. And then, I was a sprinter off from high school and I went to Fort State and ran track. There was a sprinter. And B.M.U., which is a historically black college, it's blocks away. So, there's always been this close relationship between universities. So, all four years of college are in the family relays. And when you run the family relays, FSU is the only white school there. It's all the major black colleges plus FSU. So, I just grew up in this environment that I had a lot of exposure to different black leaders, black, you know, contemporaries, black friends. That was very, very part of my life. Sometimes I don't know if you have friends, you meet people and say, I never met a black person. So, what the college is like that, my life experience was the exact opposite. So, then when I made the movie to working professionally, also my whole world became all white. And that was weird. And then, as I started really researching, as I got older and more successful, you know, real estate is an example of institutional racism. And sometimes, I say that people get uncomfortable. I'm not saying that the institution needs to be burnt to the ground. And what I'm saying is that the institution needs to get tweaked. So, there's 107 historically black colleges across America. They were created programmatically at the midst of a war to educate the black population. And until I got involved, zero were teaching real estate. Absolutely no. Really? So, yeah. And so, I actually wrote a white paper that I did for both the Obama and Trump administrations. And when I did that, white paper, I talked about how was a gap in the civil rights movement. So, in civil rights movement, housing was part of the conversation. But it wasn't housing you and I would live in. We didn't teach the black population to live in housing like we would. Like, you know, save money for deposit by a home, build equity, that kind of thing. That didn't happen. So, it's a modern day issue that we can fix. You know, we can partner. If I told you I wanted to build a medical school every black college in America, you'd say, gosh, I didn't raise, you know, billions of dollars. When I tell you, I want to make sure I'm frying real estate education at every black college I can. We could do that for for three million dollars. We could do it for all hundreds of. Wow. So, it's a completely achievable thing. It isn't achievable thing. And to me, it's, when we talk about institutional injustice, Jesus wept over Jerusalem when he saw spiritual blindness and he wept over them. But when he got mad, it was when he tipped over the tables in the synagogue, that was institutional injustice. And I think for us, as men and women in the United States, or any country in the world, we have to have that same mindset. If we're followers of Christ, it should be unacceptable, where I live in the four-worth area. We have now in four-worth, I think it just dropped to 11. There's 11 food deserts in the four-greater four-worth area. So that's, you know, no fresh produce within three miles of someone's home. So that's unacceptable. It should be unacceptable for every follower of Jesus Christ who believes in the dignity of humans. And so it takes radicals like yourself. You wouldn't call yourself a radical, but what you are. Well, and you dress up well, and you clean up well with, and your power is going to tie on it, and all that kind of stuff, but you're one of those radicals. And that's why it's changed. And you know, that's the way things change. When did Jesus become real to you, John? You know, one of the things I'll tell you that I always respected my dad. I mean, obviously, we didn't get along in normal issues like fathers and sons, too, but I always felt like he was really good at his job and good at a pastor. But when I went to college, my freshman year, when the first time I could choose to go to church, I did not go to church one time. I had a perfect panning average of... You went your whole life and then... Yeah, I blew my up college and then go. But then in my sophomore year, I started having my own interest in faith, and I can remember vividly having this dream, and it was this piece of wood that looked perfect, and then as I look on the back, it was completely rotted. It was going to be rotted. And then the second part of the dream, I was trying to get into this really big mansion, and the door kept closing, and finally, I was like, you know what, it's a pastor, and they were like, reluctantly, they let me in. And so when I woke up, I was 19 years old. I really felt the sense of like, I looked good in the outside, but I'm rotted on the inside. And that I really could not get into the mansion because my dad was. And around that time, I got invited to an FCA meeting at FSU, and Ron Miller, who's still a friend of mine, he's actually still a pastor in Tallahassee. It was a great, great three-point shoot about the way he was there, and they didn't alter call. And that was the first time in my life that I stood up, and I accepted Christ as my Savior. So as 19 years old, and that really, that was a major trajectory moment for me. The second part I would tell you is that, in 2014, I had had a lot of different experiences my life, and I was trying to get back in shape. I was running a lot. I used to be a spreader, and I was doing distance because you could hold or change it up. Boy, I ran a race, and I came across the finished line, I ran a half marathon, and I saw an ambulance, and I thought, maybe I should walk over to that ambulance because this didn't feel right. I didn't do it. I waited a couple of days, and I went to my doctor's office, and I got diagnosed with clinical depression. And I really blew my mind like me of all people getting diagnosed with depression. And it was the greatest journey to hell I've ever been through. I really thought I was going to die. I lost 25 pounds, because I couldn't eat. I could barely function. I was on Zooloth and Colotopin for a year. It's all psychiatrists. My main doctor and my wife was really helpful. But during that time, I really on boarded something. I remember I told one friend of mine, my wife was going on, and they started laughing. Like, why are you laughing? And they were like, God's going to on board things into you through this. Wow. And what I think I learned is, I think I spent a lot of my 20s and 30s kind of speaking Christianese, like if you say, hey, God, how are you doing? I'd say, well, I'm blessed. I'm good and blessed. Highly favored. And I kind of pushed down to a real feeling. Is it God gave this feeling for a reason? You read the song. It's like, man, David's talking about feelings. Old Testament Joseph when he sees his family starts to improve. Jesus was right. So I then went through a whole journey of relearning and learning how to feel my feelings. And that was kind of what I think about the second half during for me. That's on boarded a whole different ball game, resources and empathy and really being able to help relate. And I find now a lot of my closest friends are people into recovery. People struggle with addiction. People struggle with all kinds of major things because those folks, those are my people. They, we speak the same language now to find that very helpful. You know, struggling through things. As a follower of Christ, when you begin to struggle with whatever that may be and it may be an addiction, it may be a sense of self-worth or negative self-worth. The struggle, the fact that we're struggling actually means that we care. So if you're a man listening right now and you're struggling with and dealing with an identity thing or whatever, the fact is the reason you're struggling is because you actually care about who you become as a follower of Christ and who God designed you to be, right? What was the, what was the, what were some of the takeaways? And this is fast things. This is a little sidebar thing. I didn't expect John. I know with John Crossman and with Crossman conversation with radio program and then you're an investor and philanthropist, former owner of Crossman and company. But the, what was it, what would it be a couple of the takeaways in that journey where you had these aha moments, John? Well, I think a couple things, a first one would be, I said it was 2014, it was actually 2013 and I want you to really visualize this. I'm a huge football fan. I'm a huge college football fan. That was a season four state won the national championship, won undefeated. Here we say this, I could care less. Like when that depression hit me, I didn't care about eating. I didn't, if you gave me a hundred million dollars cash, I wouldn't care. I really tried to spend some time with my kids, but I felt really disconnected with them. But I was, it was, I was stripped, stripped, stripped, stripped. And you know, I could show you my journals from then. It was just me in Christ. It was just me in Christ. When you get to the point where you're like, I have nothing, I want nothing. And you're just lying at the feet of Christ, right? So I think that the first to take away was, I wish I could tell you I could have got to that point without going through the depression, right? But I, but I don't think I could have, right? So I think that take away of like learning about being totally, totally stripped down to just mean Jesus. The second thing is I'm grateful for, I went from sympathy to empathy when people that struggle with depression, right? That's fascinating. From sympathy to empathy means what? It means, like if somebody says, I'm struggling with depression and I'm like, oh, I'm sorry that you're going through that. When it becomes empathy, it's like, oh, me too. I feel that. I feel that, I feel that. And I tell, listen, let me say something. I don't drink. I didn't drink at all. But I wanted to. I used to, I remember thinking of myself, what, I wonder if I knew something, I don't know if I was a weak guy out there. And, but I will tell you, if I start, if I started drinking, I think I'd be there. I think it would have killed me. I really do. And so, you know, learning, learning that from it. And then the final thing was I kind of got a reboot of life, right? And really, organized Christianity is awesome. And there's so many things that I get from it and give to it. And I love it. There was this other skill set I had to get around. I tell people like, sometimes we expect too much of that pastures. We don't go to our pastor when we have a toothache or, you know, we blood a tire in our car, right? We have a, we have a mechanic with a dentist. Well, sometimes when we're going through different issues, we need specialized people. That's why we might need a Christian counselor or a men's group that's specialized in whatever issue we're struggling with. I, I, I, I went to Allen on for a little season during that. And it really helped me. It really helped me. And while my dad never drank around me when I was growing up, I think he was kind of what we would find out was a dry drunk. And so he still had some of those it did this, the tendencies of something that struggled with that. So when I went through Allen on it was a different skill set. So a lot of those different skill sets helped me be in a better place. I, I will tell you, friends of mine and my, you know, probably late 20s, 30s, you know, the 40s would tell you that I really had some anger issues. And I don't get as angry as I used to. I feel a lot more calm. And part of that is getting getting down to the root thing. I also want to say this to you, you were listening at some of my accolades. And when you were doing that, I kind of mentally was trying to push that off a little bit. And what's really going on there is my addiction, my heroin, if you will, was success. Yeah. Like I would have something bad happened to me. And instead of calling a buddy and being like, man, I am just so sad about this terrible thing. I just kind of ignored it. And then we'd go after another deal or another promotion and other than that. So when you look at my resume, it's impressive. But part of what you're looking out is, is my unhealed wounds. God is part of what you're looking at when you look at that long resume. Man, that is, that is so vulnerable, John, but it's so healing for so many of us who are listening right now, because the pushing away or pushing down, if you will, the denial of what reality is in order to get another deal, buy another thing, make another sale. And we use that, basically, as a coping mechanism, and not deal with reality. Yeah, yes, yes. Story of 45 years in my life. Absolutely. And so now out of all of that, and the beauty of this journey, the John that you've gone through, the beauty of the journey, every man has a journey, and every man has a story. But out of this came this empathy that put new fuel into something your father had done years ago. Yeah. Right? Now all of a sudden, you've got a whole new fuel, speaking life into this whole vision of putting real estate programs into every historic black college is huge. I mean, the minute you say it, I can just, I can see it. I can see how it could change things. Well, I'll tell you something even weirder than all of that on, absolutely true. A couple of years ago, my mom and I got a, we did DNA test together to prove what we had a theory about, and that is my mom's dad was black. And so remember, I told you I spread in the college, and I would always be the only white guy out there on a four by four hundred team. I have the Nigerian sprinter gene, because I'm part Nigerian. Right? And so I don't, I don't lead like that. I don't want to come across Elizabeth Warren E, you know? Right, right. But it, but what I will tell you is that, you know, when you think about the possible power where he's like, I'm a Jew, I'm a Roman, he's able to connect to people. I think that I'm able to say to people like, look, I'm white. And yet I have this story that connects me to the black community where I can talk about certain things. Let me, let me also say this to you. I think it's really important point is that I've lectured over 30 different universities across the country as have you. And people ask me sometimes about all these liberal universities. And I've never had that experience. Now, I have an occasion when I'm lecturing a state university, something might say, John, you're sounding a little preachy, right? Little churchy. So that sometimes it happens and I try to be mindful of it. That never happens at historically black colleges. Never. One of the weirdest things is that there's lots of good conservative Christian folks out there who might look at black colleges and think, that's not a place for me. And I'm like, man, you're still wrong. It's the perfect place for you, right? And when we talk about race, I was on an interview recently with myself and three black women. And I thought, man, how am I going to have credibility and talk about this different part of subjects? One of the women's mentioned trauma. And I said, I told a story about me having trauma and dealing with trauma in my own life. And the rest of the interview went great because when we're able to be vulnerable about our own pain, right? When we're able to, when you're able to say somebody, hey, tell me, tell me how you felt. How did you feel when you saw George Floyd be murdered by a cop? How did you feel? And what stirred up in you? And then when somebody says, my uncle, I had an uncle that got killed by a cop. Like, and also you're like, wow, like, how would I feel? And we're getting that feeling language. And then we can't simply be an empathy and then connect. Well, then we can really solve problems, right? Yeah, we saw that based on mutual respect, right? And so if I feel that, if I feel it in my heart, then I've got to respect for you as a human, as a person, as a man. And that's where we lose the human dignity, mutual respect, which is another way of saying love. Yeah, right? Absolutely. And that's what Jesus wants us to have as men and women. Now, thinking about, how did you run a business? Because you became very, very successful, but we're going to travel crow. Your own company became very successful in the real estate world. How do you run a business and be able to call yourself a Christian, follow Christ, integrity, and yet work the business world? I mean, because sometimes, to a lot of us, we feel like it's two different things. Well, I've got my business, but then I'm also on Sunday, I'm a Christian. Well, I can look, I'll say a few things about that. One is, they look, man, if you and I open up a tent making company, those tents better not leak, right? Like, first things first, right? You know, we're fishermen. We better catch that fish. You know, so when you start off, like we all have to run our business as well as a business, period and a story. You've got to have a quality business and we need to pursue education and mentoring and do business in a first class way, right? So you got to start and end with that. I think the second thing this one's going to blow your mind is they are your bills. They are your bills, period. They are bills. So hey, you know, if you're listening right now, you write that one down. But well, you're so right. We kind of tend to, as far as Christ sometimes in this church world, if we're not careful in this little bubble, we're like, ah, well, you know, we're doing this for the Lord or something. Well, listen, honestly, I paid every bill every time, everywhere, 30 years, a couple of years ago, I linked in a lady connected to me and she went off on me and she said, you stiff me on a $300 bill, an interior decorator, 30 years ago. And I never forgot it and you'd say you're a Christian man and you didn't pay me, blah, blah. And I responded back and I said, I am so sorry. And it turned out it wasn't me. It was another family member, okay. But I said to her, I said, what are your rates now? And she said, I still charge is $300 for a consulting thing. And I said, well, you know what, I could use some to your decorating. My wife would love to get some advice. She could come out and I said, frankly, I'd like to pay you for two. She got it. She came to my house and I paid her 600 bucks. She did a nice job. She was just a consulting thing. But you know, I really felt like, man, I want to do, you could tell brother, it's been 25 years. You could tell it was right there, it was right there. You know, we look at so many big issues, John. We look at the politics or government. And we forget it's each person we touch, each little moment. It's on there, forget there was a man who wanted to help us with some things we were doing in another country. And myself and a couple of my friends went, now we had dinner together. And he treated the weight staff with such degradation. And we looked at, and we looked at each other afterwards. And we, in fact, during the dinner, we looked at each other like, yeah, we're not going to work with this guy. We're not going to work with this person. You know, he, and, and it's, and it's that sense of love, respect, empathy. And then we've got to have pain in your bills is pain in your bills is because you love people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you simply went through your whole career and you paid every single bill on time, the right amount. Yeah. That puts you in this life super high percentage. And then I say the last thing, just as far as top things, I'd say is being aware. It's being aware of the place going through a time or things in your community. I'll give you an example. My old office was just blocks away from the pulse nightclub. And, but it could have been, it could have been in Mongolia. I mean, like I, like when I heard the news about this pulse nightclub shooting, I didn't, it's not my demographic. And so I didn't know where it was, but it was two blocks away. And I didn't know what to do. And so what it did was, I sent a letter to the owner of the nightclub, just expressing my grief, just saying I'm so sorry for your loss. And you know, when you went through, man, she and I have stayed in touch. I saw her at that reason. She came up and hugged me. And I thought, you know, I didn't know what to do, but I did something, right? And so I told people all the time, like when somebody has something terrible happened, man, if you could just do some little thing. And I would say it like this, as Christians and business, we must be relevant in a time of crisis, right? So like if the big deal closes and all these guys want to go to the strip club, lose my number. Don't call me. Don't call me. Don't think about me. But man, if you're, if your son got arrested and he's in jail and you don't know what to do, I want to know. I want to know. And I want to come, I have visited people in prison and that's been one of the most biggest, biggest blessings in my life. This isn't people in the hospital. But we need to be aware whether it's in the community or around us and then be relevant to the situation. Yeah, I'm talking with John Crossman, John Crossman with Crossman conversation radio program and then philanthropist investor. And you've been in real estate industry. You've got this, this vision of putting in real estate programs, education and historic black colleges. But I've read some of your things. I've read some of the things you've said about institutional racism. And it really is there still. And it's one of those things we can't just say, oh, this is a political deal. Or it's going to be solved by government. It really has to become us as brothers, brother. Yeah, yeah. It's like this. If you, if you called me and said, John, I got a nephew that's moving to Orlando and they need some advice. What is the advice I would tell your nephew about being successful, right? If I, you know, I've got two daughters, if they were in Fort Worth, what would you tell them, right? And so when we think about segments of our society who've been historically marginalized and haven't received the information and been treated like members of the family, what advice would we give them? What would we tell them? And it's funny because a lot of advice is very conservative advice, but it's advice that's helpful to make them, you know, experience life in a way that we would want all of our members of family to live. Listen, when we talk about black and white in America, first off, there's the wealth gap, the average black family, average white family, the wealth gap. I promise you the biggest percentage of that is real estate ownership, right? And then when we connect that to real estate, you know, the lack of real estate education. And some people say to me, well, what percentage of blacks today go to his sort of live out colleges versus not? And I'm like, well, obviously, majority go to not his sort of black colleges, but the influence where their parents went, you, you know, you, Emmett Smith, you're familiar with Emmett Smith, obviously, you know, or with Dallas guy, I did a fundraiser for him for the fan you college of law and he went to University of Florida. I went to Florida State, but he knows his history and he knows how important is having black law schools. And by the way, black schools don't leave out whites. Anybody can go to a black school. Anybody can. In fact, the power wasn't first black law schools and a lot of white women got their law degrees there because they couldn't get them from white male law schools, right? So they have, and some people say, like, what do we see? Do we still need black colleges? And my response is, like, well, do we still need the military academies? Do we still need the NYU? Do we still need, like, you know, what, I have one daughter starting college in next month and another one going to her high school. And you know, kids need to find the right place for them. I have one guy said to me, he had to repeat this, like, I just don't get this whole black college thing. And recently he said to me, well, John, what about these black kids coming up and they don't have fathers in their home? And I said, well, that's a real problem, or isn't it? I said, well, what do you think that that kid going to black college where they had lots of focused black or old laws would help them? He goes, yeah, I said, well, you finally got it. And you know, like, well, it's time, like, we need black colleges. But, but they, again, they're not necessarily a different political or a worldview. A lot of times they're very open and welcoming. But we have to lean in. And that's the point. It's, yeah, and community service. And when we talk about that, and you've been very active in your community and, and really poking people and modeling for men across the nation, these are these, these are the things you do. If you're a follower of Christ, you're outward looking. And for too long, the churches look inward. Yeah, man. And with, you know, it's a frozen chosen and we got a little thing and we're going to heaven and too bad you're not. We just have to look at our communities. For some of us, like you were talking about two blocks away, was that post nightclub. For some of us in the church we attend, and a lot of us may drive over to it. But within two blocks of that church, is somebody needs help? Yeah. Right? Well, listen, how about if there's an assisted living facility in your community? You know, that a lot of people retire and end up in an assisted living facility and throw it at you know, the average number of days a person assisted living in the state of Florida gets visited per year. No. No. Yeah. Yeah. My my day I was in this final days, you know, we were in there every day. Yeah. Dr. Cole, I would walk past, you know, bed, bed, bed, bed, bed, people all alone. You wouldn't blame on people pass away all alone. I'll tell you this one. I haven't reached your head. I went to the same convenience store all every, every couple of days. I go there, get up something as the way to work. And I became friends with a guy, a military veteran, a little guy, he was a marine, and we came up and I bought him a Christmas gift. Yeah. Yeah. One day I went in there a couple of years ago and there was a woman there and I said, hey, where's Gunny? She's like, oh, Gunny died. I was like, what? And so when I went back in the next week, I'd say, when's the funeral? What's going on? Would you believe Gunny was one of 152 residents of Warrant County that died and went unclaimed? Can you believe that? No one claimed him. I claimed him. And we got him buried over in a military, you know, cemetery in central Florida. And they were so kind, they invited me to the service. I went to the service and there was all these people there honoring the people there. But there were 17 veterans that were honored that day. I was the only person that shown up. Gunny had me, the other 16 were all by themselves. No one else showed up. Can you believe that? And so my point being is that, you know, look at your heart, you know, like whether it's assisted living or prisons or hospitals, you know, Christ gave us the book, right? Like Christ said to us, when you're visiting these people, you're visiting me, right? Listen, when people are hospitalized and they get visited by the church, those people will change. When they get visited when they're in prison, their lives are going to change. And, you know, it's hard, wealthy people, many times, I think they never hit rock bottom. And so it's hard for them to ever come to a point of submission. When we talk about it's easier for a camel to get through, I have an edel and a rich person to have it. To me, that's what that means, right? Because it's really hard. But when you're stripped of everything, right? And then Christians enter in and are helpful to you. Everything changes. But the big massive mega church and church political, whatever, I don't know that wherever we're going to be relevant or whatever, the Christ will always be relevant. Yeah, Christians will always. And we kind of do better when we're on the other side. You know what I mean? Yeah. We're kind better when we're in the minority and we're having to kind of like wink at each other and draw a fish in the dirt. And then we're doing things to change people's lives. You know, that's it. You, I look at all the things you've done. As you mentioned, that you push back on Orlando Business Journal CEO of the year, humanitarian of the year, African American Chamber of Commerce. But you know, of all the accolades, maybe a friend of gunning. Yeah, might be one of the greatest accolades. I'll tell you the end of that story. When I was at the cemetery, they fold up American flag and they gave it to me. Wow. And I felt uncomfortable with that. Yeah. I took that flag. I had to put in a shadow box. And then a friend of mine named Ray Watson, who served in the Vietnam War. And another gentleman who is the movie Black Hawk Down is based on him. Mike, he's the key curl from that. We went to a museum in the United Island, Florida, and we donated Gunny's flag. We went there. And so you can go to that museum today and it has his full name on it, Gunny. It's on the display. And it's an honor of all soldiers that that get, forget, right? Was it that a big deal? I mean, it was none of it was, it wasn't much of money, wasn't, but it started with just being aware and, and having a conversation with him and, and build a relationship. Yeah, we are our brothers keeper. And the world changes when we're willing to go across the street, most of us want to go across the ocean or across the nation. Yeah, but until we're willing to go across the street. My sister, Lois, there was a man sleeping behind the ice machine of the little, a little market that she was going to down on a corner from her house. And he would sleep there when it was cold and his name was Roland. So she found out that that Roland had special needs, but nobody was taking care of him. And, and so she's up an attorney. And she figured out all the ways that that it could be, you know, that somebody could come help. And she found help for him. And she brought Roland to church. And I made a role in sitting with her. And he was in any teeth and, and, you know, on and on and on. So she found the right place. And that was, that's a lot of it. People don't know how to access them. Yeah, sure, huge. So she found a right place. He could go found some place he could get in, filled out all the forms, filled out all the stuff. And, and Roland ended up there. And I got a photo about, I guess about two weeks ago for my sister. And it's rolling with this big smile. She goes, Roland has teeth. And it says, big smile. And harder, you wouldn't even recognize who this guy is. And it was because she said, Hey, she walked inside to the little mini mark. She said, who's the guy sleeping behind the ice machine? Because it's warm behind it. It was warm. Yeah, that's why he slept there. Also, and so she, that's Roland. He's a brother of those guys that live a couple blocks down. And he comes down here and sleeps because it's warm. And she's like, well, why doesn't he have warmth where, you know, finds out the story, not being taken care of, being marginalized. And she just took a moment. It, you know, she took a moment, picked him up, helped get him cleaned, got him to the right place. She and her husband, Mark, and Lois saved the life of this man. And you would say, well, but did that change the world? Yes, it changed the world. Why? Because one person at a time changes everything. And Jesus said, he said, it is, that's our true faith. James was a James 127 talks about those, those are things to take care of the widow in the orphan. Then if we'll do that, then all these other things that we tend to reach for and strive for, you know, to become really, they're just wood, hay, and stubble. The true riches of life or the flag that sits in that narrowed island, you know, museum. You know, a role of the picture of his teeth. It's awesome. You've seen the chosen, you watch that show. Yeah, yeah. I'm not an emotional guy. And there's all kinds of stuff out there that I don't really, you know, doesn't mean much to me. I cry in every episode. And in the first episode of the chosen, and it was the first of the verses when Jesus calls to Mary Maggle. Yeah. And he sees her. He sees her, told me who she is. Yeah. You know, and to be known by Christ, oh, we know. And so it's in me. It's like when we're able to see people for who they are and love them in that space. I mean, well, we're talking with John Crossman. Thank you, John, for poking us, for stirring us to good works. And thank you for sharing the vulnerability of your story because that really helps us understand, hey, all of us have a story. All of us have these things. And every single one of us has the spirit of Christ and us that can touch another man's life. Thank you so much for all you're doing. I'm inspired by you and I love your show. But thank you. Pleasant down. They've been looking. Thank you. You've just experienced Brave Man with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian Men's Network. Connect with Paul at cmn.man or write to him at Paul at cmn.man.