Embracing Grace and Authentic Discipleship: A Journey of Courage and Identity with Robbie Angle

00:00 - Speaker 1 Men like you, who I've got to know, that are living from the position of grace, you never worry about the overflow of the abundance of receiving what Jesus did in their life. The fruit of that looks like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. Goodness, if I'm spending more time trusting or receiving who he is in me and what he made possible, guess what the fruit of that is? The Bible tells us it looks like love. 00:36 - Speaker 2 Hi, this is Paul Cole and you're listening to the Brave Men podcast. Hey, I'm fired up that you're here. You're about to meet one of the most fascinating men you've probably never known. The name is Robbie Angle, and Robbie has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years. I've seen the work of the ministry he heads up over the years. It's fantastic. It's called True Face. 00:59 He's the president and CEO, but you know, and there's the LinkedIn bio and all that sort of thing, and he's got eight children, lives with his wife, Emily, outside of Atlanta, a little bit of property and you see, okay, he's gone to school, got a master's in community counseling from Appalachian State University of Florida, Dallas, Theological director of adult ministry environments at a megachurch, which I think means sitting around having coffee going. What do you think? I don't know what that means, Robbie, but he got dropped off. He's in his mid-20s, gets dropped off by a helicopter to do charity work in the middle of Pakistan and on the roof of a house in Masafraabad, Pakistan. Has an existential crisis of faith Because the recipe for his life and basically, like his, here's my path, here's my deal, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do more for God and sin less, and it became a crisis in his life. And then, a moment, something happened to him that is going to challenge you. Well, it challenges me. It challenged me in the conversation, but it's going to do the same for you. Right now I get to sit and talk to Robbie, maybe just ask questions and just listen to his answers all day. Well, maybe not all day, maybe part of the day, but part of it. It'd be really the best part of that day. And so Robbie Angle, president, CEO of Trueface, and I get fired up about this stuff. 02:41 I was talking with Mark Matlock recently and he turned me on to something about how we're feeling in the Western Hemisphere in particular. Now we've got ministry with Christian men's network and over 100 nations, so I'm very tuned into what's happening in Asia. We've got our Lions Roar Asia. Now they've got over a million men that have gone through Maximize Bandhood, our flagship book in Indonesia alone, 26 nations coming together in the Lions Roar Asia Summit coming up in a few days, and then ministry happening in different parts of the world. But where I live is in the United States, and so I'm tuned in to wanting to know what happens with our culture. 03:27 What's happening with men? Because we think in the United States, we think, ah, we're okay, yeah, we're doing pretty good, but we're not. And the underpinnings of America are, if you will, there's a crisis, and I don't want to overuse that word, we kind of use it a lot, but there is an urgency to coming back to a standard of morality in our nation that we need to jump into. Okay, here's what Mark told me about masculinity. Here's the word that Barna Research, the words of Barna Research four things that men are feeling in our nation about being masculine. Number one we feel threatened. Number two we're endangered. Number three confused. Number four in crisis. That is why, at Christian Men's Network, we do what we do. 04:23 Cmnmen, CMNmen, Go on there. What you can do is punch on there somewhere. There's a place for this. I know there's a drop down. Look for it. The brave men motivational email comes out three times a week. That'll help center you. There's a book we have identity. That's coming out. That'll help center us. It's why we do strong men in tough times. The books, materials, resources for discipling men. Robbie's in the same ballpark. He true faces about discipleship. He explains it so well in this time, in this conversation together. Go to CMNmensignup for that Also, wherever you're listening to the podcast. 05:06 And, by the way, if you're listening on iHeart, what's the other one? Amazon Music, Alexa, some other platforms we've just gone on. Thank you, Brian Boyd. I'm excited to be able to announce that we're on multiple platforms now around the world and getting a tremendous response. But the key thing is this is that we, as men, have to go to a place of character and courage that the world sees there's something different about followers of Christ. 05:43 And listen to this and it's attractive. And it's attractive. In other words, there's a guy and you go hey, dude, I would like to hang with a guy, I'd like to walk with this man. I see the way he treats his children, I see what's happening here. That is what I want to be and that's why we do what we do at Christian Men's Network, so that all of us would become, as my friend John Tyson says, fully formed as followers of Christ. And the world sees a difference. Hey, this guy, Robbie Angle. What a remarkable man. I love the fact that God's brought us together and you're going to love this conversation Today. 06:26 Robbie Angle on Brave Men, the podcast. Talking with Robbie Angle, president of True Face and Robbie and I've known each other for a couple of years now maybe just a little over a year or so and Robbie always tweaks me with some of the coolest phrases of anybody I know. It's like here's one. I think I wrote this down Dynamic tension of ambiguity and I don't know if that's a True Face thing or I don't know if that's a True Face thing or if that's a Robbie Angle thing. 07:05 Who knows who knows. Oh yeah, they're all merged. Yeah, so you headed up men's ministry for a major megachurch for years there in Atlanta, north Point, and so the whole ministry to men thing is part of your personal DNA. 07:24 - Speaker 1 Yep Right, oh yeah. 07:27 Yeah, so then it started as a counselor. I mean, I was a licensed professional counselor practicing in an office 30 women and so I gladly had a caseload of men. And so, yeah, I had a caseload of men. So I went from counseling men into working with men in groups at a church and experimenting with what are the environments that are conducive for growth, you know. And in those spaces of from counseling to groups, you know, we are just, if God's designed us to grow through the context of relationships, what, what is the art in the science of relational dynamics that actually lead to us growing as men? Well, there's a lot of overlap between small groups, life groups, cell groups, whatever us gathering together for the sake of growth and counseling, group therapy sessions, you know. So I lived in that space for a while. 08:26 - Speaker 2 Yeah, wow, and in one sense you still do, because Trueface is a discipleship based ministry to local churches. Is that basically where you work? 08:35 - Speaker 1 That's right. We we're. We're a small, 28 year old nonprofit and we develop grace based relational discipleship resources to help equip churches, individuals, to go deeper in their relationship with God and others. 08:50 - Speaker 2 Man, that sounds fantastic. Where did Trueface start Start with some guys, some writers and people, families that got together right. 08:58 - Speaker 1 Yeah, bruce McNichol and Bill Thrall started it 28 years ago and they have been for 28 years writing, teaching, consulting, coaching behind the scenes, a lot of time with leadership teams of national ministries to help them understand how this theology of grace how we see God and how we see ourselves, our theology and our identity affects how we can experience horizontal relationships that are high trust environments, authentic community, and there's an interconnectedness of view of God, view of self and how we interact with others. That they have specialized in and so working with a lot of teams to understand the yeah, how, how to create these high trust environments that are conducive for spiritual growth. 09:51 - Speaker 2 Well, if anybody needs to is an expert at creating high trust environments, it would have to be you. You have eight children. That's right, man, I got a group too big of a group, you get your own group. How many boys? 10:09 - Speaker 1 We have six boys, two girls, 14, four. Yeah, 13 to four 13 to four. 10:16 - Speaker 2 My goodness, it's a party. 10:19 - Speaker 1 Every day, paul, our dance parties are off the chain, Like you put on Lil John, you know, or some like 2000s hip hop edited, you know, like radio version and it's like our dance parties are legit. That's awesome. And you guys live on a little bit of property north of Alpharetta somewhere yeah, yeah, up on the edge of the suburbs and the country, I found that line. 10:46 - Speaker 2 You found that line. Hey, bro, that line's moving. Oh yeah, I just got to tell you, pretty soon, hey, pretty soon, we'll just be a waffle house, there'll be a Home Depot. So yeah, it's on its way. That's just kind of the way those things go, and then they depopulate the areas that everybody wants to live in but we can't live there because we have to live close to something that that's where everybody works. So when you, when you worked at, so you worked at, you've done a couple of different, really interesting ministry things. You've done relief work into Pakistan and places like that, right With with Samaritan's purse. So, and now and then, ministry to man, appalachian state, got it, masters. Yep, right, that's right. 11:33 So, all of this I found out on the usgov website, so you're listed with the CIA. I didn't know if you knew that, but I'm not talking about that, but keep going. No that's right. And then you move into this discipleship piece. Where did this, how did this, all this convergence, come together? And what does that allow you to do in helping people be discipled and what does that mean? What does that even mean? Hey, we're going to disciple people. What does that mean? Sit around campfire. 12:05 - Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a good question. Well, there's two questions in that I'll follow whichever one is. The journey in convergence of how is unique in my story, of how God has been weaving this passion and this gifting together. And the second one is okay. So what is discipleships we are forming following? Well, the first started with my dad. He was an attorney in Greensboro, partner in a law firm. Four kids in high school and middle school, and he left it when I was in eighth grade to go into young life staff Wow, and so I watched him. 12:45 - Speaker 2 Which is a Christian ministry. 12:48 - Speaker 1 Yep, to go work at a Christian ministry and make no money. And so I watched my dad go from money to no money and got him going. You spend what you make, no correlation between money and contentment. And I'm a pretty entrepreneurial, high drive, high achiever. So my name is Robert Bruce Angle III. I'm a firstborn son. I'm off the charts, unhealthy when it comes to high drive, high achiever. Eight enneagram I'm like off the chart a whole on all that type A stuff. And so my dad's a stud. He's like okay. 13:22 God's the only thing that matters, his model. And so Robbie in high school is like high drive, high achiever God's the only thing that matters. So let's go. God, what do you care? Anything. What do you want to do? And so I thought it was. The business world is the toughest ministry field, because that's where. Satan's greatest tool of money has captivated men's hearts. 13:41 So I'm going to go make millions, give it all away. That's the toughest ministry field. It's easy to get paid to be a Christian. Right those guys in the business world, that's cool. So study business finance at Florida thinking I'm going to make millions. Then I ended up in Pakistan out of the blue for over a year in O five with Samaritan's purse. Oh, you were on the ground, yeah. 14:04 - Speaker 2 You weren't just directing that from you know a safe place in Raleigh, north Carolina, at a cafe. 14:10 - Speaker 1 That's right. No, a helicopter dropped me off in Muzafrabad and I hiked up the hill to the UN compound, pitched a tent, started going to sector meetings. I was like, what's a sector? Water and sanitation, education, food for work, whatever? Hired a translator and said how do we get some grants? Build a team, do work. And so that went really well. I got some grants and they like you at headquarters when you get grants. And so I built a team and I give you this context to because I have been an awesome Christian my whole life, paul like FCA president in high school, young life students, staff at Florida, missionary in northern Pakistan leading a team. By time I'm 25. 15:00 And so you know. But? But let me tell you where God wrecked me in. This underpins what I think of when I think of discipleship. Okay, I, you know, high drive, high chief, or God's the only thing that matters, so let's go. And in the back of my head was like, if you really love Jesus, you're either going to be Billy Graham, paul Cole or a missionary in Africa, right. And so I'm like, okay, I'm fast forward a couple of years. I'm a missionary in northern Pakistan, al-qaeda territory, doing amazing stuff. I'm like God, thank you, thank you, thank you. Like I wouldn't think this. But Africa, missionaries in Africa are lightweight compared to me. I'm like special forces for Jesus. And so all of this, you know, I'm like I'm ahead of schedule, praise God. This is all my hopes and dreams of being a badass for Jesus, right? So I'm not allowed to say that it's brave men for men, that's right. 16:01 - Speaker 2 We're all here, we can do that. 16:04 - Speaker 1 So I'm six months into Pakistan, sitting on my roof in Muzaffarabad and I'm I'm the most disoriented I've ever felt in my life. On paper, Everything is everything I'd hoped for to be an awesome, you know, do awesome stuff for Jesus, because he's the only thing that matters in life. Sure, Cool stuff. Internally, I was the most disconnected, broken dry and I had no idea what was going on. And I was sitting on a roof and I felt like God's and I was like what is happening, God? And I felt like him saying, smiling at me as a loving father, saying Robbie, I love how I made you, I know how I made you High drive, high achiever, but I'm good, I got this. I love your heart, but I'm okay, Like I've got rocks to turn into bread for people Like it's cute, Love your effort, but I would rather you go back to the States and be a janitor in a high school and receive my love for you for 10 minutes a day as my son. I would rather that than you spend 15 hours being an awesome Christian a day. And, Paul, that nanosecond after this, that was the thought. The nanosecond after that, everything in me was like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, God, please, I will do anything except nothing for you. Please, please, please, don't ask me to do nothing for you. 17:21 And in that nanosecond after that, I felt like a loving father saying Robbie, that is the ceiling of your experience of grace, of love, because you can't receive it, you have to earn it, and I know I made you this way, but this is my hope for you and this is. This is where you're missing out on grace. You're missing out on what the gospel is, and I have been spending 15 years unpacking the depths of that truth in my life and in that moment, the depths of my pride. My pride says I can. Humility says I can't. I need you guys. 17:57 My pride, all of my drive was out of fear of looking back at 90 and saying I wish I should have, I could have done more. So my pride of I can earn, deserve, do more, be better in order to address my fear of not living a life of purpose had permeated so much of my religion that I couldn't differentiate doing and relationship, or earning and receiving in love. And so that is grace I mean. That is to me the awakening to grace, which which has unlocked what the gospel actually means what Jesus did for me, which is everything, shifts the equation of what it means to follow Jesus as a disciple from earning doing more, learning more. It's over here, old Robbie, often where I start my days. 18:57 It's still is more right behavior plus less wrong behavior equals godliness. 19:05 - Speaker 2 Equals equals like crushed it. 19:07 - Speaker 1 That's right, do more for God, sin less and read the Bible and pray more, and that equals godliness. That is, that is not the gospel. What the gospel is is I did, you are redeemed, trust in me and receive my love for you, which is a posture of humility, of receiving Right. That is hard for me and so and so that that is the theology that underpins true face, which is the soil of discipleship, which is a different way rooted in my story than a lot of discipleship effort. So I'm not a disciple ship. Well, I smell it from 20 feet away. 19:48 Is there an underpinning of ministry philosophy that says more right behavior plus less wrong behavior equals Godliness, or is it no, no, no. We are made right, redeemed, righteous saints and we get to receive his love, that spending more time in that camp, in that security of that identity, in that posture of humility, receiving what he's done. But as I mature, I want to spend more time over there. And how we help each other do that is through relationships, reminding trust. So that's what true face, that's the underpinning of true face, of which we help people live in the town and your journey towards that. 20:27 - Speaker 2 That's right. How does that not result in into you know, a Calvinistic passivity? 20:35 - Speaker 1 Yeah Well, just to be clear, grace is not opposed to effort, it's opposed to earning. So I like that, and I think Willard said that Don't put his name next to that one. 20:51 - Speaker 2 Well, you know what? Everybody said something that's right. We're on amalgam of all that. 20:58 - Speaker 1 That actually I think that was you. That was Paul Cole. Grace is not a fan. 21:01 - Speaker 2 We're a mashup. We're a mashup, we're all a mashup of the things that have permeated our little bubble. 21:11 - Speaker 1 I think that is a fear or perspective of people still living out of the room of good intentions, yeah, Of earning, but because that even that question indicates a position which you're speaking on behalf of the general person. That's the go-to question of cheap grace, you know. But that is from a principle of more right behavior plus less wrong behavior, plus knowledge equals godliness, that we have something to do to make right a broken relationship with God. Men like you, who I've got to know that are living from the position of grace, you never worry about the overflow of the abundance of receiving what Jesus did in their life. The fruit of that looks like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, Like Christ in me living into the like. If I'm spending more time trusting or receiving who he is in me and what he made possible. Guess what the fruit of that is? 22:15 The Bible tells us it looks like love, which is always others focused, which is, which is, which is like that is an active overflow. You, you, I've never seen a passive which indicates selfish, protector, comfort, Comfort, protection. Selfishness is about me. That is opposed to Christ in me, which looks like the fruit of the spirit, which is others focused. So those don't job, yeah, yeah. 22:47 - Speaker 2 This is see, now everybody's hearing why I like hanging out with you, Cause I just learned cool stuff. I mean, frankly, it's just, it's awesome. So now here's a here's a little sidebar, little sidebar on your LinkedIn. It says that you have two great desires in life. Do? 23:08 - Speaker 3 you remember? 23:08 - Speaker 2 putting this in there. 23:10 - Speaker 3 No, I'm not. You desire a? 23:11 - Speaker 2 Lamborghini and you want to visit North Korea? Oh yeah. And I thought you want to visit North Korea in a Lamborghini. 23:22 - Speaker 1 No, I their road systems terrible. I mean they have a couple of miles of paid, paid drugs in Pyongyang. 23:28 - Speaker 2 They photograph, and that's it. 23:29 - Speaker 1 I'm not taking my coontosh to Pyongyang, I just thought that was. 23:37 - Speaker 2 You know, I, no, seriously, I just thought, all right, okay, so now you work, you're in Pakistan, you're a family therapist, appalachian state, florida, dallas, theological. Now you're a true face and you didn't know what else to put on LinkedIn, so you just go lamborghini in North Korea which man if there's like, when it like. 23:59 - Speaker 1 I don't understand why I love cars, but there's a sexiness to cars that the epitome of like, the perfect like, the sex appeal of a car is in the Lamborghini coontosh, like the 80s, 90s coontosh that we had on our wall as a poster. You know my generation, I'm 40. So I'm like a ex millennial bubble guy. We had we had the Michael Jordan wingspan poster and we had the Lamborghini coontosh Like that was anybody in there for you. 24:32 And that coontosh and I have lusted after that car and North Korea. North Korea is just like the I love. 24:42 - Speaker 2 The adventure, the thing. Yeah, that would be an adventure. You don't want to go there, necessarily at the wrong time, when somebody's upset, hey. So how does this stuff, how does this stuff translate, all the things you're telling me? How does it translate into navigating eight children, and some were not. They're all your children, but not. Some were not biologically born into your family, but they're all chosen, yeah. And so how does that? How does that all weave into being a dad Like these are really cool things. Now, you know, somebody just threw up, somebody else is something that they weren't supposed to do. Somebody else just dragged the dog's poop in from the backyard. Yeah, how does all that work together in real life? 25:33 - Speaker 1 With. Well, there's a principle underpinning that. That's the deep level. But the real answer is also like, just with difficulty, I mean it's like all of life is managing tensions. Not, it's like I've had expectations of solving tensions and I think I'm at a point now I'm like I just that's wasted effort and unnecessary expectations that I could solve it. So I had a hour conversation with an executive coach today who's helping me figure out these things, because I'm feel like I'm doing poorly at it, because leading a ministry if I do that well, it requires travel to a degree that is not conducive for having eight kids, 13 to four, and so one is going to lose. Like that is attention. That cannot. There's not a middle way. One of those will lose and if I'm going to make true face lose, is the board okay with that? 26:35 - Speaker 2 Like what is that? Okay, so let's dive into that. Is it when lose? Or is it 85% and 65%, you know? In other words, you see what I'm saying. 26:53 It's something because I deal with this a lot. I dealt with it in my own business because I was in business most of my life and I traveled a lot. Our 40th anniversary, my son Brandon, stood up you know everybody's saying stuff from whatever he stood up and he said celebrate my parents, he said. He said dad traveled a lot, he said, but I never felt unloved, uncared for or unsafe. And so there's that thing that a father provides. 27:29 You know, aside from identity, is security. In fact, when Isaiah 3, when it describes the presence of God, he says I'm going to take from Israel, you know three things security, bread and water. Those describe water, the Holy Spirit, the bread, christ. But when he described himself through Isaiah talked about security, father. So I do think that it's a, because when lose to me is like, it's like I was talking with somebody the other day and it, oh, I was talking with Ken Canfield and he ran for governor of Kansas and he came in second and he goes. You know what that means is lose and I'm like, okay, that's a win loss. Yeah, you know the Rangers won the World Series, arizona lost. But is it really that black and white in life? 28:23 - Speaker 1 Yeah, that that I would agree. That's bad language. It is, I think, is tension to manage the right language to think about, like these are always going to be in tension, so you just try to manage them with wisdom. 28:37 - Speaker 3 Yeah. 28:38 - Speaker 1 Is that because I'm too heavy out of tension to work the past three months, my family's cracking, my wife's saying, hey, this, that we need your, your strength or presence more than we've got it? Because I've traveled eight nights a month the past two months, which is beyond our baseline of trying to do four nights a month max, and so each family is each different. And Emily has said, 10 years from now, take your eight nights a month, you know. But right now, like, this is my window of what I think is best for our family If I, if I actually keep four nights a month, which is what we think with wisdom is ideal for our family. Ideal is zero, but let's let's call it attention to manage. 29:27 - Speaker 2 No, ideal is at least two. 29:32 - Speaker 3 You got eight kids come on. 29:34 - Speaker 1 That's what I said. But it her ideal is your right, my ideal definitely. 29:39 - Speaker 2 Yeah, well, she would be with you now on those two, that's true. 29:43 - Speaker 1 That's true, but if that's the case and it's like we're a little, bit out and so I need to pull it back, and in pulling it back I'm saying no to a couple of things. That is a cost to the ministry, because there are conferences that I'd speak at, churches that speak at things that I would do. So I'm missing things that would help the ministry. I just I don't do well. 30:05 - Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe, maybe having a healthy president of an organization is better than having a president that's on everybody's Instagram. 30:16 - Speaker 1 Yeah, which is a long-term gain for short-term pain. 30:19 - Speaker 2 Long-term gain, right, so, but you have to play the long game. We have to play the long game. It's like I was talking with somebody the other day and they were talking about you know, there was some prophetic thing about year 2024, something whatever. And I go yeah, you know, that guy has that chart for 2024, started that 5000 units to do Daniel's 70 weeks. He started it 5000 years before Christ, right, and in order to arrive at we're in the 7000, it's critical time. 30:55 There's two things about the arriving. Number one Jesus said. Jesus said hey, you don't know when I'm coming back, nobody knows, nobody knows, so we don't know. So that just takes away that tension. We don't know, so okay, we don't know. The secondly is it's really convenient to start the number of 5000 years before Christ? What if the number of 7000 years started at the advent of Christ? What if we got another 5000 years? 31:29 Everybody's like, ah, you know, population, this and that I don't know. You know they said Chesapeake Bay would be dead for 100 years. Right, all the pollution, all that stuff they say, the blue point, muscles or whatever they're called, oysters, we're never coming back. All this sort of thing. 20 years into the reclamation of Chesapeake Bay. All that stuff's back. All that stuff's back. If we can just hold our hand back from screwing stuff up badly, god created this amazing self-healing planet. It's absolutely. 32:09 I mean, there's still studying this, right, Scientists are still studying this. So I look at all these things and say, okay, what's the long game on this? And I don't mean, like you know, 10 years from now Okay, you know, it's hard to think of that, but even three or five years from now, you know. And what, if? What if Robbie trains these speakers that are better than you? Yeah, right, because that's what you want to do that actually go to that conference and crush it, right, and then you sat with them for however many months? You would have to do that twice a month at your offices. I mean, I'm just being real life, like we're doing this in front of everybody. 32:58 But I'm just thinking, isn't that in some ways better? And then isn't it also important for you to go do some stuff? So here's a guy starting a new company and he says he says in fact it's in my book just a bartender about identity. Which is this guy's like, I'm going to start a new company. We're sitting with him. The wife just got flipped out. She goes there's no way. I'm living through that again. You know you'll be gone for at least the next three months. And my thing to her was what if that three month investment meant next level life for you guys after that? You know? In other words, there's an ebb and a float, all these things. And what if there's a few times that you're gone a lot and a couple of times when you're just home a lot, you know, maybe because I would rather have somebody you know working in an organization that could do things at 80 to 90%, then 100% all the time, and then they just keep burning out. Yeah, and every three months you got to rescue their butt. 34:10 - Speaker 1 I don't know how to do that well. 34:15 - Speaker 2 And I think that's a good answer. 34:17 - Speaker 1 I mean, I love redlining everything in my life. It's just more fun to be redlined and I feel like this is part of this season of opportunity for what God has for me, because I feel like he's calling me to run a marathon. I don't know how to pace and so it's like I'm built as a sprinter. I don't even know how to train how to pace to make it a marathon, because the past 15 years it's been on two to three year S cycle sprints. I go to here major problem, opportunity, redline start over, and this one for the longterm game of what God could do through True Face. This is awkward for me to figure out what is conducive for a longer horizon, which is short term pain, even when it comes to the time sunk cost to invest in communicators that could free me up for longterm balance in order to make it 20 years. 35:17 - Speaker 2 So this is fantastic, because what I love about this is we're processing stuff that we all have to process, and True Face is TRUE. So it's true, you didn't leave out any vowels like friends of our students would be cool, but TRUEFACEORG, True Faceorg, and on there you've got tools. The cure is a really well known one. There's some others that. What's the one about? Hang on, I'm looking it up because I didn't write it down. Stand the cure. There's one about Taking a drink the place. What am I thinking of? 35:59 - Speaker 1 Bose Cafe, bose Cafe, oh yeah. 36:01 - Speaker 2 Yeah, which is the one I've read, so that's why I couldn't think of the title. 36:08 - Speaker 1 Bose Cafe. Yeah, we have great resources About small group studies, discipleship frameworks, one-on-one conversational tools all to help equip us to apply these truths of what God has made possible in our lives in the context of depth of relationship and just to close the loop on what we're talking about in the long term. 36:30 - Speaker 2 See, those are the things you say, man, that are so cool, Like the closing the loop thing. I, you know, I'm probably going to make that part of my lexicon, my etymology of my life. Let's go, let's go, let's close the loop on playing the long game. Yeah, so there's no? 36:49 - Speaker 1 feedback. 36:50 - Speaker 2 That's right. I know that one, the feedback loop, we don't want that. 36:53 - Speaker 1 So what you just said of like playing the long game, like I think, I think that is clear to me on the long game. 37:03 It is what is eternal, and then right below that is family, a media family, and below that is brotherhood. Who are the? Who are the guys carrying my casket around my bed? Wow, the sunk cost and time into both of those buckets is is such those get squeezed out for because the short, the short term gain of opportunity to go speak at another conference squeezes out the squeezes out the sunk cost of just quality time with my family and front and brothers in my life to to which will be the foundation for if I actually make it, you know, as a marathon runner. But I think all of that's captured in a principle that a mentor of mine shared, that a mentor of mine had arranged his life he passed away a couple of years ago around the principle that more time with fewer people equals greater kingdom impact. Now, I think this was modeled by Jesus and I watched this guy organize his life around that principle and he had incredible platforms to reach multitudes. But but he organized his life around the principle that more time with fewer people equals greater kingdom impact. 38:20 And I think that is the, the vehicle for discipleship and formation and the capital C church, the body of Christ, the Ecclesia, as he has said. The body of Christ, not Sunday morning being the church, but like my, like Christ in me, gathering together in community where they're known and loved, and living into and working out this way of following Jesus. We're not doing that alone, and so this pulls it full circle to me. In regards to God has designed us to grow through the context of relationships. Relationships that lead to growth are hard to come by. Most of that in most of our churches in a spiritual setting, look like small group, live group, sell group, and that is just because the small groups are not the answer. Most small groups are terrible, which is another problem in the capital C church. But it's not the small group that's the problem, because small groups are just an excuse for intentional and consistent relationships, which is the right soil for discipleship. 39:21 And and Reggie, my mentor, would tell me he goes well, you got to wrestle with two things, robbie. You agree with that principle? And if you do agree with that principle that more time with fewer people equals greater kingdom impact Then the second question is well, does your calendar reflect that priority? So it's as simple as that, robbie. Like you can, if you either. If you don't believe that, then keep taking the gigs, the opportunities growing wide, all that stuff. But if you do believe that, then your calendar is going to reflect it, if you actually believe it. And that's the tension we have to manage. 39:59 - Speaker 2 It's not so good. 40:01 - Speaker 1 But my family and my close my brothers are are in that more time with fewer people. Therefore, it's got to be reflected on my calendar, which means I have to stay noticed stuff. 40:12 - Speaker 2 This is so good and I hope you know if you're, if you're working out listening to this, watching this, you know, take some notes, or if you're working out or driving in a car or whatever you know, just get get back on this. Onto Brave Men. You're listening to Brave Men Podcasts sponsored by the Christian Men's Network. My name is Paul Cole and I'm with my friend, Robbie Angle, and that was. This is a deep truth right here, and I'll tell you why. It's really cool. 40:41 In fact, one of the people you used to work for years ago talked about something that's repeatable and transportable. How powerful that is and that's a. That's a repeatable, transportable truth that I can use in my life. Really super important because we have a Tennessee. Instagram is all about collecting followers. You know. Facebook's all about getting whatever the thing is. You know the button, the like, the thing, Twitch, you know, whatever. All these different things. They're all about gaining this big thing and we get caught up in that. We get caught up in those numbers when really, in one sense, if that numbers, your total satisfaction. When that number goes down or Instagram cuts you off because you said something about whatever, something godly, you know. Then all of a sudden. That's, that was your basis for your identity, Right, that's right. So when you talk about lifting, you know, here's the deal. 41:52 It's talked about Jesus was a friend of sinners. So I get guys all the time will say to me Paul, hey, I need to hang out with these guys because Jesus was a friend of sinners, Right, but I don't think he hung out with them all the time. I don't think he made a pattern of that Like, hey, the reason I go to this bar every night is to make sure I'm a friend of sinners. Yeah, and the problem is they're your only friends right now. Yeah, you know. So he spent most of his time with a key group of men. Unpack that for me, just a little bit. 42:28 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and that's interesting. I've never thought about that, but the sinners were drawn to him Exactly Because he was such a light in the darkness of which they were hungry for. He wasn't, yeah, he wasn't hanging out. I mean he, he hung out with the Samaritan, like he went to where they were, sometimes like the woman at the well and different stuff, in a missional way, but they were. He hung out with them as they were drawn to him. Not, he wasn't, he wasn't loitering around the, the, the temple prostitution area, or like the they were showing up where he was yeah, Because of that attractiveness, so I think that might be. 43:09 Yeah, that's probably a pretty weak. I need to go to the bar every night because that's where sinners. That's probably pretty weak. But yeah, that was a tangent, I was, it went down there. 43:21 - Speaker 2 Well, it makes me think of my friend, joel Osteen, who, who I I watched. I was at Yankee Stadium a couple of years ago and he did a night of hope and I watched 54,000 people there and I watched 24,000 people stand up to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Now, he didn't have heads. This was this. This was crazy. He did a prayer and he said okay, everybody, raise your head, look at me. Now all of those who prayed with me stand up. 43:54 So it wasn't like walk to the front with 5,000 other counselors, so you felt anonymous. It was pretty. It was extremely upfront. I watched entire entire families stand up and then they get handed a packet. They get, they get asked to be into a local church or a lot of churches involved that they sent the names to us Pretty amazing. But I think of Joel, who you know. He he doesn't hang out those places and go to those places, but people who are unchurched, as we would say, yeah, that's right, arrive at him. You know who likes that guy. You know who really likes that guy the most People who don't go to church. It's hilarious. 44:36 - Speaker 1 That's why I'm really optimistic as we shift into a post-Christian society. Especially as a guy in the South, it is really hard to for for general people to differentiate in Southern Christian context or cultural Christian environment. 44:54 - Speaker 2 Cause we're. We're born Christian. 44:56 - Speaker 1 Yeah, what? What is the kingdom of God? What does it look like Christ in me when everybody's a Christian but that that that is very different than people who look and walk like Jesus, who are followers of Jesus, and so that that has been so difficult for discipleship and I'm that's one thing I'm super excited about. As we shift into post-Christian, where it's not cool to just wear the name tag of Christianity, I think we have an opportunity to look like Jesus with greater clarity and shine a little bit differently. 45:31 - Speaker 2 It's really good, you know, so maybe ambient light is out of the way, right. Yeah, boy, that's really good. Yeah, the ambient light yeah, Because now it shines brighter in the dark. So so maybe where we're at is postmodern, pre-christian. So maybe the rhythm is we've gone back to what it was like in the middle of the Roman Empire to be a Christian. Yeah, right, which was more pre-Christian, yeah, so maybe some of the best days in the history of the church are ahead of us. 46:14 - Speaker 1 I am expectant of that, and let it be so God. 46:19 - Speaker 2 Because I think that's you. I think at your age, men like my sons and other remarkable 30-something leaders you know, take Harper, you guys are the same age. Chris Harper was better man, right yeah. And Breck Klemmer, who's a younger, younger-ish guy. To me that's like that's it, man, you guys just crushing it for the next 20, 30 years. And I have this amazing hope for the nation I live in and the nation that many listening live in, because I feel you know my sensing. 46:57 I remember the Jesus people movement and there was a movie out, you know, recently Jesus Revolution. But I remember being there. I remember being at Calvary Chapel when there were 300 people. I remember Lonnie Fisbee teaching. I remember one night when he was teaching and people began screaming in one part of the room because this girl got totally healed of something. And she starts telling everybody around her and everybody says, yeah, there's a big buzz and there were miracles happening. You know, like God's breaking out, doing stuff Without the professional institutional thing attached to it. Right, there's yes. So that's why I get fired up about that's why I get fired up about podcasts and AI and all this stuff. And I know people misuse it. In the same way, people misuse the printing press and printed pornography For sure. 47:53 Come on, we're gonna throw away printing presses. 47:56 - Speaker 1 Just a story about this. Heavenly man is a book by Brother Yun. Brother Yun spent decades planning churches in China. I think he's still alive, but he spent 40, 50 years planning churches in China and in the book Heavenly man he said everybody from the West always says man, we're praying. He spent years and years of his life in jail, persecuted, beaten near death. And Westerners would come to him and say Brother Yun, we're praying that the oppression of the church by the government, less lessons. And he said I don't pray that. And they say what? And he said I've been through enough cycles of watching the government and societal oppression go high, the abuse, the difficulty for Christians, and then I've seen it lessened. And when it lessens, the church stagnates. And when it rises the church comes alive. He goes. I don't pray that. I don't pray that the government lessens. It's an opposition, because I see the church explode during this time. So there is hope in this season. 49:05 And and you had a guest, I was listening to one of your podcasts. He was a great insights about next generation, developing the next generation, and he talked about a stat of the average age of Muslims versus the average age of Christians. And if you play that out, then you know, muslims will be the predominant religion. And I'm like so I had an emotional reaction real quick. I was like, oh, that's heartbreaking. And then immediately after that I was like, no, it's not. I'm like Wait a minute, that's a made up statistic of nominal Christian Christianity, which isn't the kingdom of God, of the body of Christ. Because if we had half of our country, half of the world, being part of the body of Christ, we would not look like we are. I mean, how many of those are just like yeah, I'm a Christian? Like we would have. I mean, literally one out of every two people were a disciple of Jesus, a follower of Jesus. We would be. That means Christ in me and the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace. We would have no problems in the world. 50:06 But, like we all know, like went to close up, go back to discipleship. Discipleship is this way of like, like learning from becoming like Jesus, following Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and that is not knowledge plus behavior, learning doing more, sinning less. That is, he has done everything. He has made me a new creation. With Christ in me, I get to trust and receive and mature into who he already made me to be as a son of the king, as part of the kingdom of God, with Christ in me, of which I have full access to the throne. That is kingdom abundance type partnership as he is, as he is doing what he is doing, that we get to partner with him in. So I am hopeful, I am expectant. 50:53 And just to give one more transferable adage that's here connected to what I just said, which we could we could talk five hours on that theology. I just breezed over in 30 seconds the the. What I would want to leave your listeners with is the difference as Christians is rooted in a theology of grace that's captured in a statement in the cure that says do we see ourselves as sinners striving to be saints, or do we see ourselves as saints who occasionally sin Just to? To pull that back to where I started this in Pakistan, that as a Christian, we function, we live out of an identity and when, if we see ourselves as sinners trying to no more be better, do better, which has been most of my life, and I wake up wanting to start with that be my starting point, because it keeps me in control of what I can do in humility, though. 51:49 In the gospel of grace that says you can't, he did and and he is fully in you and you are a saint who occasionally sins. That means I'm perfectly righteous with his righteousness and I've got a dad who isn't waiting for me to get my crap together, but he loves me and he likes me and I'm perfectly redeemed and right with him. I get to live into that and trust and receive what he is in me and through that, be a part of the kingdom, the, the, the ripple of Christ in me, through love. That is that is. As I'm mature, I want to spend more time living out of my identity as a saint who is who Christ says I am not as a sinner and that is the theology of grace and affects everything on how we live. 52:34 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so, uh, so there there is that dynamic tension of not every answer is answered, not every question is answered. There's there's, like, you know, what am I becoming? We got to be comfortable with. Hey, we're just going to color this in here, right, we're going to do this little thing we were talking a few minutes before we started this about, about Christian stage plays or Christian movies that feel compelled to close the knowledge loop, if you will, to use that language, to to basically kind of bludgeon us over the head without trusting the audience to kind of figure this out. 53:13 Jesus, jesus, jesus often, if not always, left his listeners going uh, what does that? What does that exactly mean? Like, what do I exactly do? What am I supposed to do when I wake up tomorrow morning at 6 30? What, what exactly am I supposed to do? And that's why we have a tendency to go after these. 53:36 Uh, there's, there's been a lot, trust me, a lot in my lifetime that will plan out your entire day minute by minute. Yeah, and they give you the whole thing here's you do this for five minutes, do this for 10, you do this for 10, this for five, and then and then, dude, if you miss that, so, like you do that eight days in a row and you're finally you're gritting your teeth and you miss one, you go oh crap, I gotta start over. And what is that? What is that in in as we do this that we feel like we have to? I don't know man. I was watching the thing the other day and it was like they just started. It was like this really awesome presentation of Jesus and then they had to like hammer me with well, here's the whole answer, rather than like well, yeah, I want to find out more about this. 54:28 - Speaker 1 That goes into this ministry, philosophy or way of seeing God in ourselves. Is it rooted in grace? What you just described is and the mega church, the church is an assumption of of being will lead sorry, doing will lead to being like. Know it, learn it, do it. Doing will lead to being. If you blah, blah, blah, fill in the blocks, then you will be the. What the gospel is is that Jesus said guys, you can't. That's why I did. This is what differentiates, why I am the center of all this. You are being, and out of being will come the doing, and that's the yeah, but what about? That's the cheap grace? No, no, no, if you like. If we are really being who Christ says we are, first of all, that is freaking hard. It is way easier for me to wake up doing in order to be yes. 55:24 - Speaker 2 To have a little risk Missionary in order to be. 55:27 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I like every day minute drink. Stop, stop looking at porn, whatever, like I can. It's way easier for me to be in control in humility, to be to trust and receive that he did it he is. What that looks like. In doing is a light yoke. It's peace, it's freedom. It's all this stuff that the New Testament alludes to, what we have access to, that we're missing. It's the gospel. 55:53 - Speaker 2 It's the joy of being alive, it's the beauty of loving Jesus. 55:57 It's the beauty of loving mountains and rivers and streams, and fishing and being feminine, if you're willing being masculine, and being you know the things that he created us to be and if I'll love that and love Jesus, then okay, here's just a little. I'm a guy, so I do the easy thing. I put it in the book on identity, which is who you are in your heart, is what you'll do with your hands. Yes, that's it, and what religion does and government is try to change our hands in order to somehow reshape our heart. That's it, and what Jesus did is reshape our heart and it comes out in our hands, because what you put in your heart is eventually what you'll do with your hands. 56:49 - Speaker 1 And for everybody listening, because I'm the first like, the tension of this is central to what it means to be a disciple, because for a couple thousand years we're pretty normal to struggle with that, because we can know that all day. But guess what? You foolish Galatians who bewitched you? Just like the Galatians, you started out in faith and then you went to work. Who? 57:11 - Speaker 2 bumped into you. 57:12 - Speaker 1 Yep, yeah, that that is so, it's normal, and that's why, normalizing this and going, oh yeah, this piece, this freedom, this message of grace, why am I feeling the pressure to do more, be better, do this stuff for God? We get to remind each other of grace every day and get hit. Grace is a new every day and we cannot do that alone, which is why we need each other to help us have conversation. 57:34 - Speaker 2 So there's, there's that tree, the tree of life. It's interesting because this day it wasn't the tree of life and the tree of death, because the tree of death wouldn't have been attractive. What was attractive was the tree of knowledge. That's right, right, dude, I could just know all this stuff, I could just do all this stuff, tree of life, I don't know. And then so what was attractive? And it was like somebody said recently, robbie, they said, they said, man, we just need to go back to where the church was, you know, in charge of stuff. I'm like, dude, we did that for 800 years. It's called the dark ages. 58:18 - Speaker 1 That's awesome, so sure. 58:19 - Speaker 2 It's like yeah, yeah, we did that. We had full control 800 years. And here's another one that we were talking about Rod Jones and we're talking about this recently. That stat that I saw recently is a stun me when the Constitution of the United States was written and maybe somebody pushed back on this, but this, I think, is pretty accurate when the Constitution was written the Declaration of Independence in the United States is where you and I live in America only 16% of the population went to church on a regular basis. 59:00 Really, yeah, so we have a tendency to go oh, yeah, man, everything in church was a center of everything. First thing you built. Well, why? Because the church was the center of culture, because not only was it a position of truth which, coming out of the Magna Carta days, was adhered to, but the fact is is that it was a place where people met, where they did school, where they had city meetings, where it was just the center of things, and it wasn't necessarily because it was religious institutions, because it was the one building, so there was a sense of that religion being there to kind of hold things together. Democracy is only held together because of people of good intentions. 59:45 But I think about that and you think you begin to think about who settled the West, who those people were, what they were like, what St Louis was like when it was the wild days. You go back and you read all these stories. It was crazy Look at San Francisco that actually they had so many brothels and so many. There was so much demand. They actually floated a ship into San Francisco Harbor in the mid-1800s that had over 2,000 rooms for prostitutes. Geez, yeah, exactly. 01:00:20 So we think about all these things and then we do these little filter things. Oh yeah, you know what about Benjamin Franklin, man with his airbats in France. You know, it's like, seriously, these guys did that, they got away with it. Thomas Jefferson was pulling that and yet we know, because there was a remnant, because there was a group of men who fully committed their lives to Christ, it changed everything. So what we're looking at, what I'm looking at today, robbie, is if there's a group of men who fully commit to live, with reckless abandon, this life of grace, it changes everything, everything changes, and it doesn't have to be oh yeah, we've got 80% going to church or this sort of thing, or whatever. You know it is how many people have fully committed their lives to Christ? How many people who are coaches of sports leagues and coaches in colleges? And how many people who are attorneys and lawyers? How many people who are in the C-suite? How many people who are in politics and government, how many people in the arts and entertainment? How many of those people? If we got 10%, we got 5%, 10%. You just start taking 10% and it starts tipping over. That's right, and I'll tell you why. It's a first thing we talked about, which was not the first thing, but one of the first things, which was Jesus was attractive. Yep, I mean truth is attractive. 01:01:44 Trueface, truefaceorg is the organization talking with Robbie Angle and I know you've enjoyed this. You can go to truefaceorg, trueface, t-r-u-e-f-a-c-eorg. Find the tools and materials for the discipleship. We're in the same field, man. I root for you guys. I pray for you guys to be successful. I pray for you to this whole tension thing with the travel and all that I mean, I think, for me, robbie, thank you for letting me process that with you, because that's the process that so many of us need to walk through. 01:02:19 I've got this, I've got this responsibility and again I come back to it's not a win-lose. There's gray areas, it's a, and I think it's an ebb and a flow. It's kind of like with my calendar for next year. I've got my grandchildren's birthdays on it already, right. So my kids, grandchildren, my wife's anniversary, you know that's right and there may be times that business takes you out on that specific day, but you still make a day to celebrate, yeah, like as busy as my family is all the different children and grandchildren you know you have. You know it's amazing to me how busy everybody is. So we never we hardly ever get to celebrate on the exact day of somebody's birthday. 01:03:16 - Speaker 1 And it was a gift for you talking about your kids, saying like dad, this is the principal. Yeah, details are how many nights on the calendar are when in there, but the principal that is driving that for me is do I know and care for each of my kids' hearts? 01:03:33 - Speaker 2 Yeah. 01:03:34 - Speaker 1 Like that's the. I want to know each of my kids' hearts and I want to care for each of their hearts, and that takes more time than I've given it the past few months to do. Well, so that's where you go. 01:03:42 - Speaker 2 And I think that's a great place. Thanks for being with us on Brave Men. I want to ask just a couple of quick things to close it and wrap it, and that is what are you working on right now? What's your BHAG? Right, you don't have to give me the 10-year thing, but what are you guys working on at True Face right now in Robbie Angle? And then, what word would you have to kind of wrap this up for some of my friends that are listening right now, some of our and your new friends? 01:04:11 - Speaker 1 That's good. The BHAG is churches have a wrong ministry philosophy when it comes to discipleship formation because of what we've talked about, and therefore they do groups and go learn more, do better, and that equals growth. Why is it? Why don't we have good depth or discipleship happening? 01:04:30 It's the wrong question and the wrong approach. But we are building a consulting in a box for church leaders to wrestle with their ministry philosophy, which is the soil of discipleship, and then a plan for fertilizing and growing that, and so that's going to be coming out in six months and most of my time is into that and that's called small group strategy. It's not, it doesn't exist yet, but it's going to launch next September. But we're praying big and swinging big to go. What if we could help local churches move the needle into discipleship? And what I'd want to leave everybody with is that you are not a sinner striving to be a saint. You are a saint who occasionally sins and you have a father that loves you and he likes you just as you are right now. Today You're done. That's good and we get to live out of that, and that is the peace and the freedom of the good news of Jesus that we all get to remind each other of today and tomorrow and every day. 01:05:34 - Speaker 2 So good man, I love it. I've been talking with Robbie Angle, and what I love about your BHAG is there was a quote I was looking for it right now but a quote from a gentleman years ago who said this. He said small dreams do not inflame the hearts of large men, and so I love the fact that you're going after large stuff like swinging for the fences, like what other way is there? Yeah, right, I mean, come on, you know, I mean really that's the way the Rangers won the World Series. So there you go. So obviously. 01:06:11 - Speaker 1 Robbie Angle is a great point. 01:06:13 - Speaker 2 Yeah, truefaceorg, and I'm talking with Robbie Angle and Robbie is the president of that organization and man, I just pray this whole small groups strategy is highly successful, robbie, I pray it just goes. Really helps a lot of people. And you're going to put that in Spanish and some other languages. 01:06:34 - Speaker 1 We're going to work on it and in the meantime, thank you what y'all are doing at Christian Men's Network. Trueface is behind you. We love you, we use your stuff. You're amazing, thank you. You're awesome. 01:06:45 - Speaker 2 Love you, bro. Thanks for taking the time and thank you for being with us today on Brave Men. Remember hope is alive. Hope has a name. Hope's name is Jesus, Amen. 01:06:56 - Speaker 3 Brave Men is a production of Christian Men's Network, a global movement of men committed to passionately following Jesus on the ground in over 100 nations worldwide. You can receive the Brave Men motivational email, find books and resources for discipleship and parenting at cmn.men. That's cmn.men. Your host has been Paul Lewis Cole, president of Christian Men's Network, and if you haven't yet, please make sure you subscribe to the Brave Men podcast wherever your fine podcast, or download it. Thanks for hanging with us today. We'll see you next time on Brave Men.