Empty Vessels & the Outpouring of the Spirit : Zach Meerkreebs

Full-Text Transcript

Are our lives and ministries truly being shaped by the Spirit, or are they shaped perhaps by our insecurities, disappointments, our own ambitions, and our other baggage?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Zach Meerkreebs. Zach had a unique experience on February 8, 2023, when he preached the sermon at the chapel service at Asbury University. This led to a 16-day spiritual revival, now known as Asbury Outpouring, which had ripple effects across the country and even around the world. Zach now serves as the Pastor in Residence at Asbury, and his most recent book is entitled Lower. Together, Zach and I explore how we can invite the Holy Spirit in to help us assess our feelings, whether negative or positive, that surround our ministry activities and how we engage in serving others. Zach also shares from his personal experiences of grief, loss, vulnerability, and humility and provides some essential spiritual practices that can help us empty ourselves as we prepare to serve. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of FrontStage BackStage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each week, I have the privilege of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we dive into a topic all in an effort to help you and ministry leaders just like you embrace healthy and sustainable rhythms so you can really thrive in life and leadership. We’re proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network. Not only do we have a conversation every week and bring you an episode like this, but we also create an entire toolkit that compliments the conversation we’re having. You can find the toolkit for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. Now, in this toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including a Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. Now that growth guide has questions, insights, and an opportunity for you to reflect more deeply upon the topic that we’re discussing. We really encourage you to use this with ministry leaders in your local church so that together, you can process through this topic and prayerfully contextualize it for your local ministry setting. So check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Then, our team at Pastor Serve absolutely loves walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders. We’ve been doing this for 25 years now and if you would like to learn more about how you can receive a complimentary coaching session with one of our experienced and trusted ministry coaches, you can find information for that at PastorServe.org/freesession. Now, if you join us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and drop your name and the name of your church or ministry in the comments below. We love getting to know our audience better and we’ll be praying for you and for your ministry. If you have any questions, thoughts, or comments that come up during this conversation, go ahead and drop those in the comments below as well. Whether you join us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please subscribe or follow. We do not want you missing out on any of this great content, any of these great conversations, or an opportunity to hear from any of these amazing guests. As I said, I’m really excited about today’s episode. At this time, I’d like to welcome Zach Meerbkreebs to the show. Zach, welcome, brother.

Zach Meerkreebs
Hey, bro. How are you?

Jason Daye
I’m well. So good to have the opportunity to sit down, chat, and really just hear from your heart, which has been fantastic. I’ve been reading through your new book, Lower. Excellent stuff here, brother, and really getting a sense. This is the first we’ve met. We’ve had a little time off camera just talking and getting to know each other a little bit better, but it’s the first time we’ve met. But through reading this book, I really just want to tell you, Zach, I feel like my heart resonates with yours. So thank you for having expressed yourself. I certainly appreciate it.

Zach Meerkreebs
Well, that’s my part. My prayer was that it felt like we would be grabbing coffee. Like whoever gets to read the book that I wish I would be drinking coffee with them. So it’s flattering that you would spend some time reading it.

Jason Daye
Yeah, brother, exactly. That’s exactly the sense I get as I read through this. So it is crazy, Zach, because today, the day we’re recording this, we are almost two years to the day, only a couple days off from an experience that kicked off what is known as the Asbury Outpouring, and that was a 16-day just incredible outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the campus there at Asbury University. Zach, you had a front-row seat, to say the least, because you actually were a guest preacher preaching at the chapel where this all kind of came out of, where the whole outpouring kind of came out of. So, let’s jump back two years in time. Tell me what was going through your mind as you were preparing, leading up to the opportunity for you to get to preach at chapel there at Asbury, and what kind of transpired? I’d love to hear the story.

Zach Meerkreebs
So yeah, February 8, 2023, I was the guest preacher at Asbury. I had been a church planter and pastor, and at that time, I was helping work within a missions agency but I had missed pastoring like hands-on. You know, when you move to a more administrative role, you don’t have your normal crew every week, week in and week out. So I volunteered as one of the soccer coaches at Asbury University, and it just gave me an opportunity to be with 30 college dudes and introduce them to Jesus or things like that. When the school had found out that I had been a pastor, they had invited me to do a couple of retreats and speak in chapel. So this was, I think, the fourth time I had spoken at Asbury. I had actually spoken on the first couple of verses of Romans 12 the week before. I thought that sermon was way stronger than the one on the eighth. But on the eighth, we preached on Romans 12:9- 21. It’s a beefy passage. It’s ultimately about authentic love. Then it breaks down to almost, I think, 30 statements on what makes love without hypocrisy. I only had like 21 minutes to do that in chapel before everyone bounced to lunch or class. I think some people can relate to this probably. I didn’t feel something like sparkles or like the Holy Spirit giving me a high five. It was just kind of exegeting through scripture, encouraging, exhorting, and I prayed that the Lord would do something new. I challenged the students to stay until they experienced the love of God because we couldn’t love horizontally to one another without experiencing it vertically from God. I told them, Hey, I’ll be here till about 1:30. I can stick around for probably an hour and a half until I need to run to coffee. I got offstage, and I texted my wife that it didn’t go very well and that I would be home soon for a nap. Then, like, 20 minutes later, I send another text, and it was honestly like, kind of frustration. Hey, the students aren’t leaving. I don’t know if I’m gonna make it for a nap. Then, like an hour or so later, I texted her, God’s really moving. I think I’m gonna stay and skip my meeting. I actually told that student, hey, instead of coffee, come to the chapel and bring your guitar. He just started leading worship because the room had gone from, you know, the room was probably like 12,000 students. They all left. About 19 students stayed. But over those next couple hours, it probably grew back to about 100-200 students, and people were flooding in. You know, every 30 minutes, every hour, more people are coming. Then, at about four o’clock that afternoon, I still get chills listening to it, but I have a voice memo that I sent to my wife, just like, couldn’t hold it together, crying that it felt like Jesus had, like, enthroned himself in the room. I said, get the girls as soon as possible out of daycare and get them here. We were there for about 16 more days and it really did feel like Jesus was in the room. His humility, kindness, and character. In his kindness, people were repenting. In his love, people were coming to saving faith. College students were being called to the nations, and then the nations started arriving. Roughly, the safe estimate was between 60,000 and 70,000 people came during those days. I think we’re seeing something really unique in the world today, especially among the young and college campuses. I don’t know if Asbury launched any of that, but maybe it was just the first sparks of what God wanted to do. I don’t know.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s awesome. Now, Zach, I’d love to back up on that story because you shared something that, honestly, I resonate with, and I’m sure every single person listening or watching who’s ever preached multiple messages in the course of their ministry probably resonates with as well. That is you prepare a message, you share a message, the message winds down, and you might feel like, hey, what happened there? Sometimes disappointed in ourselves, disappointed in whatever, we might think I should have prepared better, or whatever. If circumstances would have been different, if the music would have been better, maybe we would have been fired up a little bit, or whatever it is. But we feel as preachers, sometimes disappointed when the message is over. You know, that’s why Mondays they say is the day that more pastors turn in a resignation letter than any other day of the week because it’s the day after a letdown. So I’d love to hear a little bit, Zach, about how you process your feelings after speaking and maybe how that has changed in the last two years, right?

Zach Meerkreebs
Yeah. I’ve actually had a lot of time to think about this and I want to make sure it’s not being cheeky or poking fun at it. That feeling is so real, right? That those first moments right off stage are so vulnerable, you know? What’s been interesting is, in the last two years, really the last part of the year and a half we’ve started traveling and telling a story. This has been probably one of the greatest points of ministry to pastors. I’m a chubby, Jewish, white kid who used to sell weed and gave his life to Christ and I don’t think preaching is my number one gift. I think hospitality and encouragement are probably my two highest. But God will use people. So there’s one passage that I now really cling to. It’s not permission to stink unto the Lord, you know? It’s Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 2: 1-5. I read this every time I preach, before I preach, and it’s, When I came to you, I did not come with security of speech, a worldly wisdom, and my testimony of God, but I forgot everything besides Christ crucified with fear, trembling, and weakness, not the sophistication of speech so that there would be a demonstration of the power of God so that you would have confidence in God and His power, and not in man. That kind of reorients this. It consecrates my notes, consecrates my gifts, it consecrates the 25 minutes, or whatever you got, and it says, God, I have been faithful. Hopefully, I can honestly say I’ve been faithful and done my best. Now, God, I don’t want them to be confident in Zach by the end of this. I want them to have experienced a demonstration of your power by the end of this. What I’ve been convicted of is, if you reverse engineer that passage, it’s a warning, I think, that when you come with all the sparkles and pizzazz and the superiority of speech and worldly wisdom, and you try to blow people’s hair back, you could maybe read that passage that the cause and effect would be that they would have confidence in you. Does that make sense? That we as pastors should be excellent in what we do and sharpen our craft. But I really want the young people I preach to or the churches I preach to to have experienced God and be greatly impacted by him. So that’s one passage that helps me a ton. The second one is, I used to pray a lot and sit in my study or sit in the room and pray before preaching. I still do that, but I now really prioritize a strategic time of prayer, confession, and handing it back to God right after preaching, before I jump into lunch, shaking hands, or figuring out what we’re doing with the kids. That is inconvenient because people might want to immediately connect, but I have this picture of I confess and I hand him any crowns. I preach using a lot of humor. Maybe it’s my insecurity, I don’t know, but I’ll hand him back every time that they laughed. Or if I get all the amens at the right times, I’ll hand him back that. Or if I just think it’s awful and no one was with me, I’ll hand him back that. So I wouldn’t be distracted by the last 25 minutes of preaching while someone comes up to me and asks for prayer because I’m not able to be fully engaged in a moment of ministry or prayer If, in the back of my head I’m like, Well, I’m so embarrassed. I’m dreading to preach next week. I just need to hang up my boots, you know? So those are some things that have helped me.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that Zach because it goes both ways. Sometimes we can get a little big-headed. We can be like, Man, we crushed that. That illustration hit, right? Those people were engaged. They were hanging on every word. So we can go to that extreme, or we can go the extreme of that stunk. Like, what was I even doing? All that time I invested in preparing for this and I get up and I do that? So both of those extremes can be dangerous. But I love, Zach, what you’re talking about. That prayer right after you’ve preached and just giving it back to God. The good, the bad, the everything, and just trusting him with it. I think that’s a huge nugget that we can all take away. Thank you for sharing that. There’s a soul care exercise I often help guide people through. It is reflecting back across kind of your spiritual journey, and looking at God’s fingerprints all over, but looking at some of those moments, those events, and those experiences where you’re like, man, God really showed up, and because of God showing up, my life is markedly different, right? There has been a shift of perspective that may be just an internal thing. It may be an external thing. But I would have to think, Zach, that again, two years ago, being a part of experiencing what you had the opportunity and the blessing to experience of Asbury outpouring had to be one of those things that you reflect back upon and go, Wow, lots of things changed. I would love it if you could kind of unpack a little bit of what God has taught you through that experience, as a minister of the gospel, but also as a husband, as a dad, and as a friend, what did you learn from God? Was God maybe continuing in the spirit and continuing to shape you from that experience?

Zach Meerkreebs
Yeah, it’s a good question. A lot of people have asked, what was life like before, and what’s it been after because my vocation has changed so much since. A huge part of my story, if I were to do that soul care practice right now is I really point to two very prominent moments in my life prior to Asbury. The first one I would bring up is that I had been hired at a large church that was really kind of like it was a ginormous Church, and people really, really honored the pastors and the preachers, and I was the youngest guy on staff. I was preaching and loved it, and my insides just were not doing well. My soul was not doing well. In that season, over 18 months, we had five pastors removed from moral failures. And that was my first job. It was two years into vocational ministry and at the very end of those 18 months, I just crumbled in insecurity and intimidation. I had grown comfortable in my sin of exaggerating and lying. Like numbers, because I was so insecure and intimidated, I would fudge numbers, or I would say, oh yeah, I did that, and then I would scramble and take care of that. I found through prayer and counseling that it was really this place of deep insecurity, intimidation, and brokenness from home, the origin story. But in that moment, there was so much formed. God used those moments to teach me so much about the deeper walk with Him, and not just competency, opportunity, and charisma. Then probably the most predominant one thing that’s been heavy for me to carry, and I think a conversation like this, and a person like you in a ministry like this would understand, is most people think Asbury is the craziest thing I’ve experienced. The most significant thing I’ve experienced. But really the craziest, most difficult formational thing I’ve ever experienced that’s a huge part of our story is we lost our middle daughter almost four years ago. Why I bring that up is not to have a pity party, but to share that those two moments really crystallize priorities and practices. They are both crises, but really, Asbury was a crisis as well. It just was a more positive one. This image of kind of digging this riverbed, digging and strengthening your capacity that when it’s just a trickle, you’re good, and when it’s a flood, you’re already prepared with godly friendships, spiritual practices, a good counselor, and big brothers and fathers that will poke and prod and confront you. Those were established before because I wouldn’t have been able to stay upright after losing Esther without those. So to do that work now, not so that you can steward an outpouring, but unto the Lord. That’s something I’ve learned now of like, Oh, thank God that I did things in hiddenness that is now carrying a more public ministry with hopefully some integrity and Godly sincerity I believe. So that’s something that’s been huge. But since the outpouring, I’ve just learned a lot about how we hold ourselves and how we say things, not just what we say and what we do. The ‘how’ in our career, in our vocation as pastors, might be even more captivating, counter-cultural, and compelling to those we lead than the ‘what’ we say. So how I show up on a podcast, or how I show up when I’m going to Waco this weekend to speak at something. How I arrive and carry myself will probably be more impactful than even the sermons I preach, and that’s Jesus, right? His teaching is, of course, the best. But you also see people just interacting with him and as compelled and as impacted as his teaching. Even if you read the gospels, what percentage is just him living and what percentage is his teaching? So if we’re only concerned about how we teach and then our how we live, how we walk through streets, how we show up at grocery shops, how we show up at coffee shops, and how we show up at our kids don’t correlate, we might miss out on quite a bit of the actual ministry that God has for us. So I think that was crystallized in the moments where I really had no public ministry and I was just grieving and processing my own failure or my own loss, and God formed how I showed up in those moments. So when there is an opportunity to be on a stage and open my mouth, it correlates with how I act at a coffee shop or at my kid’s soccer game, you know?

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. I love that integrity of life, which is so key. I think that’s one of the things that culture or society has been really pushing back against the church at large over, is that lack of integrity, of what we say versus what we do, who we are, how we show up, and how that all matches up or doesn’t match up, right? Zach, I would love if you’d be open to it, to kind of step back and talk a little bit about, you said that kind of the work was done in your soul. There are some things that were done within, that internal work that helped you, obviously, navigate Esther’s passing, and then that, in turn, also those things have helped you with some of the other grief that you’ve experienced, as far as ministry and different things that didn’t maybe work out the way you had hoped, anticipated, or thought it might be. Can you talk to us a little bit about What are some of those things that you saw God, or experienced God building into you that helped prepare you for navigating grief and navigating loss?

Zach Meerkreebs
Yeah, I think it’s so interesting. I think God does these things often. He specifically points out something that’s been broken in you and redeems it to be the very thing that helps. So, my biggest sin struggle, which ended up impacting my first church, was the stretching of truth and a lack of honesty and authenticity in these moments. I’m not proud of that at all. I’m not glorifying that. But when I realized that intimacy comes from honesty, not being impressive, like our God is not someone I have to impress with a resume so I can get into the club like a bouncer. He’s a father that the more honest I am, the more intimate I am. Does that make sense? So really, through loss and failure and grief, specifically Esther. It wasn’t until I realized I didn’t have to pray politely. I needed to pray honestly. I didn’t have to open up. I didn’t have to prepare and clean up so I could encounter His presence. I needed, actually, to bring all of me to him, and he would minister to it. It was kind of this moment that, through those moments, if he grew closer to me, even though I said those things, even though I asked those sorts of questions, even though I went that raw and vulnerable and he was actually nearer to me those times. Then why would I ever hold back, you know? Not in irreverence, but just in raw honesty. I have an eight-year-old at home named Eden, and our saying at home is, Meerkreebs don’t hide. That’s when we have an opportunity to do something courageous, let’s try not to hide, and let’s go. Let’s get after it. But also, when we do something bad, don’t hide. Just come talk to Dad. Just come talk to Mom. I think that’s been the most profound thing in the grief, the cost, and the difficulty of this season is that I will not hide from God all of my feelings and all my insecurities. I won’t hide the ways that I’m taking myself too seriously, and I need him to humble me. If I don’t hide, he can work with whatever I bring, but if I just tidy up and give him the highlights, then he actually, many times, will just wait for me to start being honest. I think that’s helped to steward moments if I can bring my full self to it.

Jason Daye
I absolutely love that, Zach. Thank you for sharing that. That really, obviously, aligns with the whole idea behind your book, Lower. This idea of humility, vulnerability, what that looks like, and how that shows up in our lives. One of the things I really appreciated as I was reading through the book was your conversation around empty vessels. This idea of emptying yourself. I would love it if you could kind of walk us through that concept, and then give us some practical ways, thoughts, or ideas on how we go about emptying ourselves. Because I think this is something that as pastors and ministry leaders, we can sometimes be challenged. We can sometimes struggle with this because we’re trying to be really full oftentimes for the work we do, the ministry called to. We think that we’re having to show up really, really full. But you talk about this idea of emptying ourselves. Can you walk us through that?

Zach Meerkreebs
So ultimately, the pinnacle of that idea comes from Philippians 2:5-11, where we hear it. In the early church, it was called a kenotic hymn, and it was that word kenosis, which is that Greek word for emptying. It’s talking about the pinnacle of humility, I believe, which is kind of the spine of this book is this Philippians 2 passage because humility and emptying go hand-in-hand. Jesus, though he could have clung to his deity and clung to all of his rights, reputation, his agenda, his entitlement, and all those things, he releases it and takes the form of a human. Not only human though, one who would serve, not only one who would serve, but one who would die, and not only one who would die but one who would die a criminal’s death on a cross. That’s how we get this idea of emptying. But this story in the Old Testament has also been really meaningful to me in this season where a widow is about to lose her sons, the next generation, and the prophet comes to her and asks what she has, and she only has a little bit, she only has a little bit of oil. Elijah says, go and gather empty vessels for as much as when you pour out the little bit of oil, you’ll fill the empty vessels, and then you can sell that to save the next generation, your sons, from slavery. Then her kids go and get the empty vessels and the oil starts pouring miraculously filling these empty vessels. Then the oil stops miraculously multiplying and pouring out when they run out of empty vessels. It feels like in this day and age, the oil seems to be kind of miraculously pouring out in places. Like there is just a move of God in many places and I would just hate to run out of empty vessels. So those two concepts have kind of helped me. There are some really practical ways, like praying through Philippians 2: 5-11 has really helped me, like the first one. I ask that question. I really do. I read Philippians 2:5-11 and 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 before I preach anytime. 5 through 11. What am I clinging to right now? Am I clinging to the fact that I got a book out and clinging to and flexing that I was a guy at Asbury? Jesus help me peel my fingers away from that. That’s emptying myself of reputation and entitlement that I maybe would bring. So maybe you’re a lead pastor and you have to just release yourself from all at that entails. Yes, we all know you’re the lead pastor. In the same way that Jesus didn’t stop being Jesus. He just didn’t flex what he could have flexed on. He left the throne to become a man. How can I live in my humanity and authenticity right now? I don’t need to be a superhero on stage. I have to be a son. I don’t have to be Superman. I get to be human. So man, then serve. Okay. How can I use the unique gifts I have and these unique minutes I have to serve the people in the room? Not to impress them, not to prove a point, but to serve them. Then not only serve, but can I live Galatians 2:20? I’ve died to self. I am crucified with Christ. So whatever gain I have for these next 30 minutes of preaching, leading this board meeting, organizing this discipleship system, or whatever, can I crucify that? That’s a very simple prayer through Philippians 2. Empty. Another thing that I’ve done, and we could do right now if you’re listening to the podcast right now, I’ve done this often. I just cup my hands. I look and I just kind of do this contemplative practice of like, what am I filling myself with and I ask Jesus to reveal, am I filling myself with, it could be sin. It could be just something absolutely that I need to get rid of. Or it could be a good thing, but not the best thing. That’s a contemplative practice. Then something that’s also helped me is, I’m not saying we need to empty ourselves of all our gifts, or not go to school and become more intelligent. The image that I have is we want that to fill us when what if we saw that as just an expansion and strengthening of the vessel? So, like most people are listening to this, but I have a cup of water. We want all that stuff to be inside the cup, but what if that stuff is on the outside of the cup and fills our capacity for more of the Holy Spirit to fill us? Does that make sense? Because what I would like if I go get my doctorate, I just see that as the outside of the cup growing stronger and bigger. If I pastor a church that’s making a great impact. That’s the outside of the cup. I don’t want that to fill me. You know what I want to fill me? The Holy Spirit. The less of me, that means more of him. It’s like I have a cup of coffee on my desk, and it’s 50% full of cold old coffee. So if you come with a refreshing, warm pot of coffee, you know how much coffee I can get? Only 50% right? Well, what I would love is a fresh, new cup. So if I empty myself, I empty and vacate space that he can fill, and the outside of the cup is my giftedness, my degrees, and my leadership capacity and competency, and that just maybe expands my capacity to steward more of the spirit inside me. It’s a pithy phrase, but I’ve said it often. It’s hard to be filled with the Spirit if you’re full of yourself, right? So those are kind of three things the Philippians 2 passage, praying through that, the contemplative practice of cupping your hands, or even if you’re like holding a coffee cup. Can you imagine taking the things that you want to fill you and using them as the outside of your cup, like coils to a clay pot? So it just gives you more capacity to receive more of the Holy Spirit because that’s what I want to be full of.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love it. That’s fantastic. I love the imagery of the clay pot and the strengthening on the outside and being careful what we’re tossing on the inside because so often we do. Our accolades are whatever we’re feeling good about we’re tossing on the inside, whoever we’re distracting ourselves with, we’re tossing on the inside. The more we do that, the less space there is for the spirit. So what does it look like to sincerely empty ourselves? What does it look like to do this, not just theoretically as Yeah, this is what we’re called to do, but as you said, on an ongoing practice, praying the prayers before we go up and speak, present, share, or minister in some capacity. What does that prayer? I think that’s a beautiful prayer to walk through for all of us in ministry. So appreciate that, Zach, this has been a fantastic conversation. As we’re winding down a couple of things. I want to give you an opportunity just to share words of encouragement. You have the eyes and ears of pastors, ministry leaders, men, and women who are serving. What would you like to share with them?

Zach Meerkreebs
Yeah, my biggest prayer since Asbury has been kind of this imagery from Numbers 13 and 14. There’s 12 spies that went into the land and 10 spies came back, telling a totally different story than the two, Joshua and Caleb. I feel like as pastors, we often hear and we’re often tempted to believe the 10 spy’s report. But for some reason, for 16 days, I got to see something profound. Over the last year and a half or so, I’ve been around the world seeing similar movements. I just want to be like one of the two spies and say, the land is good, the giants are huge, the walls are fortified, but the land is ours. God has promised it. He will come. He will come move in our midst. I’ve been praying Galatians 6:9, that we would not grow weary in doing good, for in due time, we’ll reap what we sow if we don’t lose heart. So if you’re listening and you’ve lost heart, you’ve grown weary, I hope that a two-spy report would just remind you that, yeah, the giants are big, the walls are fortified, but the land is ours. If you’re listening to this, you’re already connected to a network and a friend, a new friend to me, Jason, that are here to help your weariness, and here to meet you if you’ve lost heart. So there are resources out there. Don’t hide. Be known. But we only listen to the 10 spies. Let’s listen to the two.

Jason Daye
I love that. It’s a great word, brother. Thank you for that. Then, Zach, if people want to connect more with you, the ministry you’re engaged in right now, or learn more about the book Lower, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Zach Meerkreebs
Yeah, I’m on social media at Zach Meerkreebs. The book is everywhere you can buy a book. Amazon. Then I have a website, which, I cringe at, but it was just a way that I could create a funnel to connect with people. So that’s just ZachMeerkreebs.com, but I’d be honored to connect, pray, and encourage and those would be the easiest ways.

Jason Daye
Awesome, brother. I appreciate that. For those of you who are watching or listening and can’t jot all this down, links to Zach’s social, his website, and links to his new book, Lower, are all available in the toolkit for this episode. You can get that at PastorServe.org/network, and that way you’ll know how to spell Zach’s last name, right? We’ll have those links so you don’t have to guess and so you can’t connect with Zach. Zach, it has been an honor, brother, to have you on the show, to hear your heart. As I said, I had the opportunity to hear it through your book but to hear your voice has been a blessing for me. So thank you for making the time.

Zach Meerkreebs
Yeah, I’m super honored, Jason, and we’ll be praying for this network and the work you’re doing.

Jason Daye
Thank you, brother, I appreciate it. God bless you.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.