Guardrails of Grace for Healthy Ministry Leaders : Joby Martin

Full-Text Transcript

As pastors and ministry leaders, why is it often easier for us to preach and teach about the concept of grace than it is to live in the fullness of God’s grace?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Joby Martin. Joby is the founder and lead pastor of The Church of Eleven22 in Jacksonville, Florida. His most recent book is entitled Run Over By The Grace Train. Together, Joby and I look at some of the challenges we have as ministry leaders when it comes to experiencing God’s grace. We look at issues such as comparison traps, performance mentality, and others that often trip us up. Joby also shares some biblical insights and some ideas and practices that can help us truly experience the fullness of living in Christ as we serve His Church. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of Frontstage Backstage. I am your host, Jason Daye, and each and every week, I have the privilege of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader. Together, we dive into a conversation in an effort to help you, pastors, and ministry leaders just like you embrace healthy and sustainable rhythms for both your life and ministry. Our hope is that we can help you flourish in both your life and leadership. We are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network. Each and every week, not only do we dive into a conversation, but our team also creates an entire toolkit for you to use personally and with the ministry team at your local church so that you can really get more out of the conversation. There, you’ll find a ton of resources, including a Ministry Leaders Growth Guide, which includes insights and questions that you guys can wrestle through to see how this content really applies to your specific context. So be sure to check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Now, at Pastor Serve, we absolutely love walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders. If you want to learn more about how you can receive a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, you can go to PastorServe.org/freesession. So be sure to check that out as well. If you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We love getting to know our audience better, and our team will be praying for you and your ministry. So be sure to do that. Whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe or follow so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. We have a great one for you today. At this time, I’d like to welcome Joby Martin to the show. Joby, welcome.

Joby Martin
What’s up? How are you?

Jason Daye
I’m doing well. How are you doing, Brother?

Joby Martin
Great.

Jason Daye
I would love for you just to share a little bit about your ministry and kind of your journey, if you could, for those who may not be familiar with you, Joby. Let’s hear.

Joby Martin
Yeah, man. I grew up in the South and got radically saved at church camp. So I love me some church camp. Went to college thinking I was going to be a doctor. I don’t know why I thought that, but that’s what I thought. I just want to be rich and respected. Then God called me to ministry and I ended up preaching for the first time at the camp I got saved at. Then found myself called into ministry and did student ministry for about 15 years. Thought I’d do that forever. I thought little kids don’t know what’s going on, and old people are stuck in their ways. So I would go where everybody gets saved. So I did that, loved it, and never had any idea that I would do anything else. Then moved to Jacksonville to do that, worked at a church called Beach Church, and they let me start a service to kind of reach that gap generation between 18 and 35 or so. We called it Eleven22 because that’s what time the service started. I’m not a very creative person, so we just called it what time people were supposed to show up. Then, in a couple of years, it had outgrown the whole church. So my pastor, Pastor Jerry Sweat, the best Christian I’ve ever met in my life, said, You should plant a church. I didn’t even know what that meant. So we googled it, figured out what church planning was, and launched The Church of Eleven22 here in Jacksonville back in 2012. So we just celebrated our 12th birthday. So I’ve been the pastor of this for the last 12 years, and as long as God will allow me to do it. I hope you’ll do this for as long as I can.

Jason Daye
Awesome, Joby. I love that. Great story. Just really quickly, as you’re sharing that, it was a big thing for your lead pastor, your senior pastor, to see this in you, to see you take a ministry that outgrew what he was doing, and to say, Joby, I see what God’s doing in you, and to encourage you in that. That’s a great story, Joby. I’d like to touch on that just a little bit because that’s not always the story, right? Oftentimes, there’s a senior leader who feels threatened by someone else on their staff. So talk to us just a little bit. I’d love to touch on that if we could, Joby. Talk to us a little bit about that experience.

Joby Martin
Yeah, as you say it, it’s really, really sad to say that Pastor Jerry Sweat is such a unique shepherd. Yeah, so, I mean, I was his youth pastor, his kids were all in my youth group, and we were just kind of doing our thing and it was incredible. They let us run this service, and just gave me free reign, like, do whatever you want to do as long as it’s glorifying to God. So I just thought, what if we just did adult camp every week? Like every service was the last night of camp. So it’s just me and my friends doing it. We didn’t know it was going to work. Then God breathed on it, and it exploded. Man, he was just so gracious and so humble and never compared. Actually, we were at a denominational church. They have since left that denomination because that denomination left the Bible, so that church stepped away from it. But he leveraged all the things and all of his clout for his denominational church to launch a non-denominational church and let us live in his church for almost two years while we raised money, put together a staff, and did the thing. Just to let you know how awesome he and his family are and how incredible our relationship is, his son is now my kid’s youth pastor. His son was in my youth group when I moved here back in the day, and his son now works here at our church. Worked at his church for a long time and then moved over here to work for us. So it’s just an incredible move of God’s grace, and it’s not original to him. He didn’t say this, but he will often say that in God’s kingdom, maybe success isn’t just what you do but who you raise. So around here, we call Pastor Jerry our like Grand-pastor. If he walks in the room, we all stand up and give him honor because, without him, there is no Church of Eleven22. So, 10s of 1000s of people have come to know Christ because of the faithfulness of that man. I’m just standing on his shoulder. So, I have nothing but mad respect for Pastor Jerry. I mean, I worked for him for like 10 or 12 years, too, and I promise, he just got up every morning, did his quiet time, read the Bible, and then acted like it. That’s what he did. So, yeah, it’s one of God’s great graces in my life that I got to know him. Also, we’re very different. We have very different wirings. I’m very loud, I’m very aggressive, and all the things. I lean very much on the prophetic, apostolic kind of leaning of this role. He leans very much towards a teacher and shepherding, and God knew exactly what he was doing in me to put me under Pastor Jerry for 10 years to file off a whole bunch of rough edges that I probably still need a lot of work in. But Pastor Jerry helped a ton.

Jason Daye
Joby, I love that. I love it. That’s an incredible story. As you said, I wish it wasn’t, I mean, it’s an awesome story. I wish it wasn’t such a unique story in the church, you know what I mean? That’s heartbreaking in so many ways but so exciting. We love to hear whenever there’s someone who’s faithful to God’s calling to shepherd someone, to be humble, to pour into them, to release them, to bless them, and that’s such a great story. I love to hear how not only instrumental he was early on in your ministry but how instrumental he seems to continue to be. But also for the church Eleven22, as you said, would not exist without him and his obedience to God, and what a great story that is. I absolutely love that. You referenced grace a few times as we’re talking about that, and that’s really the topic that we’re going to dive into. You’ve recently released a new book, Run Over by The Grace Train. Grace is one of those things that we, as pastors and ministry leaders, talk about, we preach it, we teach it, and it’s one of those keywords in our vocabulary, but we don’t always fully understand it. Joby, I would love for you to spend some time with us, walking through some questions from the perspective of a pastor and ministry leader. Why is it you think, Joby, that sometimes we, who should know better, struggle so much with the concept of grace?

Joby Martin
The old school definition, grace is unmerited favor, or even the acronyms that you’ve heard, right? God’s redemption at Christ’s expense. They’re very good definitions. I mean, they really are. It’s hard to improve upon those things, but grace is so countercultural to everything else you and I have ever experienced in our daily lives. One of the ways Tim Keller defines grace is that the verdict comes before the performance. Well, when else in your life or what other area of your life do you get “well done” before you do the thing? So I think we believe it. So we’re talking to church people here, right? Preachers, pastors, and shepherds. So, I think we can kind of get our mind around it a little bit in regards to our salvation, especially if you have a high enough view of God. If you have some kind of understanding of the otherness, the holiness, the majesty, the perfection, the justice of God, and the utter depravity that I am. It’s not just that I break the law of God. I can’t even keep my own laws. How are you doing on your New Year’s resolution right now, right? So, when we see that kind of gap, and we go, okay, well, that’s only by grace that He could allow me into His heaven. I think we get it when it comes to our soteriology. But man, when it comes to our vocation, it’s still, what other area of your life does the performance come after the verdict? Everything else is performance first. I mean, all of the training you went through to get to be in ministry was the other way. No seminary class said, Well done, good and faithful servant. Now here are some things you should learn. It’s absolutely the other way. When you’re getting recruited to work at a church, or if you planted one man, I mean before you even open the doors, there’s so much work, and we can fall into that so much. I mean, one of my great struggles as a pastor, I think I probably struggle with it because as far as the church world would go, Eleven22 is about as successful as you could be. Boy, our weekend starts on Thursday nights and then a couple on Sunday, and, man, I get the whispers of the enemy so bad. I get it. I can preach so many sermons on Romans 8:1, therefore now there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and condemned is a building term, which means unfit for use. The enemy is trying to tell me that I’m unfit for use because of my past. Jesus is trying to tell me, nah, the enemy can’t define you by your scars. You’re defined by mine. I get all that, and yet, every single week, because it’s going so good, I feel like I don’t deserve to get to be the lead pastor of it. So I have to constantly preach the gospel to myself. So on my mirror in my bathroom in my office. So the way I’m sitting in my office, the stage that I preach on is like on the other side of that wall. So on the third song, it’s kind of Pavlovian for me. This is very insider baseball here. I have to come back here, use the bathroom, make sure my zippers up, and all the things. Then I walk up on stage. I have written on my mirror in my bathroom the words that God the Father spoke over Jesus at His baptism. I think this is really important for pastors and church leaders to understand God’s grace. Everybody knows this, but the heavens open up. Jesus has just been baptized, and God the Father, who God the Son has been somehow disconnected in a way that he never has been before in all of eternity past, I mean, it’s just different. So from eternity past to the moment Jesus is born, there has been God the Father lavishing love onto God the Son, this perfect, unified, throw the Holy Spirit in there, too, love relationship. Now he’s walking around on Earth. Jesus comes out of the water, the heavens open up, and God says, Behold my son in whom I am well pleased. Then I wrote the question, how much ministry had Jesus done at this point? I mean, he got lost in the temple. You know, that happened. The incarnation is a thing, but at this point, he hasn’t done any of the things. He hadn’t preached, he hadn’t done any miracles, he hadn’t died on a cross, and he hadn’t been resurrected. So before the ministry, God’s grace, the word upon him is, really proud of you, kid. If we’re in Christ, another thing I’ve been mulling over in my mind. In the New Testament, I think we’re only called Christians three times, and one of them’s a jab, making fun of us, like we’re a little Christ. 216 times the phrase “in Christ” is used. So the the message for me is that before I ever walk out and preach, whether it goes good or bad, God the Father looks at me his boy, and says, Behold my son in whom I’m well pleased. Hopefully, that frees you up. If you ever played sports, you typically play way better when you play free versus playing tight. So hopefully that frees you up in ministry to minister to people out of a place that God has put his approval on you, as opposed to trying to earn your way to stay in the kingdom. I mean, a lot of us feel like, honestly, a lot of us in ministry, we have the same attitude that the prodigal son had, like, Hey, Dad, if I work hard enough for you, Can I at least stay on the ranch? Like, I know we don’t think that theologically. We can pass theological exams. That’s not the point. But do you actually live like a son? Do you Pastor like a son? Or are you working like a slave? Very different things.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s excellent, Joby. So, help us out. If a pastor or ministry leader is struggling with receiving that grace, that they are a beloved child of God before they do anything, and they’ve sensed themselves caught up in that performance piece. Not that they even want to be, but they just feel the weight of, am I living up to the calling that God has called me to? What are some things, Joby, that we can begin to process through or maybe invite into our lives, some practices maybe that can help us move from that performance, that weight, or that feeling, into this idea of of grace?

Joby Martin
I know you guys are big on ministry coaching, and so when I first started, man, I still don’t feel like I know what I’m doing. I’ve just been doing it for a long time. But I didn’t know anything about church planting. So I met this guy at a conference, a guy named Dave Page, who is a West Coast guy, I think he currently might be on staff a Saddleback or something. He coached me for a couple of years and it was incredible. I was 38 when we planted the church. He’s probably 20 years older than me, or something. Anyway, one of the things he had me do was walk through this exercise of writing out my story of being called to ministry. I was 19 years old. I’m at my church. I had just preached my first sermon the summer before. God led me to Christ and is saying all these things about me that I didn’t believe. Now I’m just serving in the student ministry where I went to college, and I just had this overwhelming experience that was very, very similar to my salvation, where I was like, Oh no, I think God’s calling me to not go to med school but to go into ministry. This is crazy. Then my pastor invited me to an internship because he said, Look, all you’ve been doing is the fun stuff, and camp is fun, but you’ve never set it all up. So let’s see how the sausage is made. He said God will always confirm when he calls. So as I’m writing all this down, what is not in my mind is like Easter numbers, or did we make budget? Or what did this article say about me, good or bad? Nobody had any idea when you go into ministry, that anybody would care about you at all, good or bad, right? Or people would invite you to be on podcasts, or you’d write books. None of that. If you get back to what your heart was like when you said yes to the Lord to begin with. It was nothing but grace where you were like, I cannot believe God of the universe would invite me into his work, and to the thing that matters the most to him on the planet, which is his church. I think that is a part of how you preach the gospel to yourself in ministry is sort of, a little warning I would give is sort of like the church at Ephesus, like Jesus’ warning is like, Hey, man, everything’s great. Doctrinally, you’re great. You hate the Nicolaitans, whoever they are, I don’t like them either. That’s cool. You’re doing good work. Just one problem, you don’t love me anymore. So go back and do the things you did at first. That’s a really good ministry idea. What were the things that were in your life in the beginning when you were so confident in God’s call in your life that you risked it all to say yes to Him? I’ll bet none of those things are the things that you’re so worried about today. What did somebody say about you on Twitter? What did that mean lady in your congregation email you about? You didn’t care about any of that stuff when you said yes. All you knew is that you love Jesus, you thought he was calling you into this work, and you believed and trusted him enough to say, yes. Go back to your first love and see what kind of ministry oozes out of that.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that man. That’s excellent. That’s a great word. In your book, Run Over by The Grace Train, you dedicate, actually, a whole chapter to the idea that grace cleanses, right? As I was reading through that chapter, I was reflecting on life in ministry and the challenges that we have. Again, it’s one of those things, that grace cleanses, we think of that, oftentimes, the pastors and ministry leaders, in terms of the people we’re serving and the beauty of grace to cleanse them from everything. But when we turn inward, sometimes, again, we struggle with this whole concept. I’d love for you to unpack, Joby, a little bit just as a reminder to us, brother. Preach to the preachers a little bit here about this idea of grace and the power of grace to cleanse us, right?

Joby Martin
Yeah. So the whole chapter is about David being restored after his debacle. Man, there’s so much there. First of all, David got way too comfortable in his life. When the kings are off to war, he’s on the couch. Bro, if you’re at war, you’re not eyeballing Bathsheba, right? Then he begins to think that the rules don’t count for him. There’s so many because, Jason, here’s what I know, bro. Today, when you see the headlines of another pastor falling… 20 years ago, it might as well have been Madonna and Chewbacca. I didn’t know those dudes. Today? They’re all on my phone, right? I’ve had lunch and dinner with them. I’ve been at the conferences with them. I’ve heard the messages about confession and repentance and brothers sitting right next to me. They somehow think, well, this doesn’t apply to me. Luckily, David had some people in his life who would love him enough to call him out. Every single one of us needs a king’s table. At our king’s table, you better have a Nathan who can say, Hey, man, what you do think about this? There’s this guy, he’s only got this one little sheep, and this other guy’s got them all. The big guy picks on the little guy. He’s like, How dare he? Nathan would love David and God enough to go, you’re the guy I’m talking about, right? So a part of where it starts, pastors, is do you have some brothers in your life that would love you more than they love what you think about them in that moment? The list is long of brothers and sisters. Honestly, it’s mostly all brothers that we could list right now. If they had some people who knew about their lives, maybe the Spirit of God could’ve helped them prevent the catastrophe that happened. So first and foremost, I would say, I mean, listen, Peter says the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. If you ever watch The Animal Planet, he always picks off that lone antelope. He can’t get the one in the herd. Pastors are the worst about being isolated and isolation is a key tactic of the enemy to take you out. So people fall into this dumb stuff. They’re like, well, you know, nobody understands my life. You dummy. Ministry does not have to be isolating. If you’re doing this by yourself, first of all, who do you think you are? Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane was like, Hey fellas, I need you to come pray for me, please. So if Jesus needed some brothers to go to war with him, then who do you think you are to think you don’t need some brothers praying for you? You’ll never learn to be free until you learn to be honest. If you fight the devil in the dark, he’s going to kick your butt. So your ministry is not worth sacrificing your whole life over for the success of your ministry. So it starts with authenticity with the Lord and then surrounding yourself with some brothers, or if you’re female, with some sisters that care more about you than what you think about them. That you have invited them into spaces in your life, like Nathan to David. Let me tell you this. Once you’ve invited that person in your life, the dumbest thing you can do is, the moment they do the thing you ask them to do and say, Hey, man, I think you might have a speck in your eye, is for you to stiff arm them and say, Don’t talk to me like that. You’re done. So I think I’m calling every ministry leader. Or how about this? In Mark chapter two, there’s a guy paralyzed on a mat. The Bible literally said he’s got four friends. Each one picks up a corner. Alright, pastors and ministers, write down your four mat-carriers right now. That when you need it, they carry you to Jesus. if you can’t write down four names, you’re not doing it right. These kinds of friends, man, it’s like a retirement account. If you wait to build it, when you need it, it’s over, you’re screwed. It’s over. You’re done. You’re just gonna be dead on the mat out there in the yard somewhere. So hopefully, I mean, I was listening to your podcast weeks ago when Steve Carter was on there. I mean, God, that guy’s been in church after church. It explodes, right? It’s just evidence after evidence of an isolated pastor who didn’t have some people around him who could point out some blind spots before it was too late.

Jason Daye
Yeah, without a doubt. What’s interesting Joby, is that sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking we have those people around us because we’re engaged, I mean, we’re active, we’re doing things, and we’re talking to people. But talk to us a little bit about that deeper, you know, buddies versus those people who can carry the mat.

Joby Martin
So when I preach on Mark 2, and in one of my previous books I wrote a chapter on this, and a part of what I encourage anybody around the Eleven22 world to do is I encourage them to send this sermon to those four friends and then say, this is what I’m talking about. I’m inviting you to be one of these four people in my life. Now this is beyond buddies. We’re not just golf buddies and hunting buddies and hangout buddies. What I’ve done with my mat carriers is we have been honest with each other, and I’ve said, If I were the devil, here’s how I would try to take me out. Here are the things I need you to ask me about. If you’ll notice, when Jesus is tempted, he’s in the desert, he’s hungry, he’s isolated, and he’s tired. So I will even say, too, here are some of the triggers for me. Like when I get really busy, when I get hungry, when I get tired, or if I haven’t seen my family enough, these are some things, man. Then also, I’ve put some serious guard rails in two primary areas of my life, honeys and monies, because guys in my position have been taken out by those two. So that’s actually not, although a lot of people still fail, I’m a Pharisee about those two things. My elders have my tax returns. I’m just wide open with what money comes in and goes out, and I have a group of men who make decisions about it. It’s great. So if I get in trouble, we’re all in trouble, I guess. 1 Corinthians 6 says, Flee sexual immorality. So around here, I mean, I’m the boss, so I set the rules, and so we’ve got rules to prevent that stuff. But then when it gets to things like how I treat my wife, pride, and those things are really, really hard to put external guard rails on to protect you from that. One of the big problems with pastors, man, is they just run around with other pastors who aren’t actually in their lives. So I got famous pastor friends like, you know, JD Greer, Matt Chandler, Matt Carter, are some of my buddy buddies. They don’t get to see, they don’t hear my tone of voice towards my children in my regular week-to-week life. You better have some brothers that are in your life, you know? So I would just tell them, This is what I’m inviting you into. The best way to find those guys is to offer that to some guys. Go first. I was raised in the weirdest time to be trained as a pastor. I actually had a seminary professor, I won’t name his name because this is the worst advice I’ve ever heard in my life. He would talk about the pastor’s mystique, you are a shepherd and they are sheep, so there should be this healthy distance, and maybe you should live somewhere else. I thought that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. No wonder you people fail all the time. I do it the exact opposite. My life is so immersed with a few friends and my wife’s friend, you know it’s just all mixed up together, man. They have all access to my life. So, Jason, if you called me and said, You know what I just found out about you? I would go, I know at least eight other dudes know everything. You couldn’t have found out something that everybody else doesn’t already know. So, yeah, man, gross things grow in the dark. You need some brothers to help you. It’s way before it’s too far. like in regards to sexual sin. If you read Proverbs 5 and 6, there are two whole chapters about avoiding sexual sin. There’s this one line, the old guys telling the young guy, Hey, man, watch out, alright? You’re not unique. I’ve seen this happen over and over and over. There’s this one line where it says and he turned the corner, and then several verses later, it says, all at once, he was led to the slaughter. That’s a joke. That “all at once” was way back there at the corner. You need some brothers that before you turn that corner, tap you on the shoulder and be like You fool. She does this to everybody that walks down this street, or he does this to everybody that’s walked down this street. You think it’s all at once, but it’s a series of decisions. You get some friends, some brothers that would love you enough to grace you with that kind of accountability, and realize, according to Romans 1 and 2, it’s God’s kindness that he would point out pitfalls in your life that you would turn to repentance.

Jason Daye
Yeah. I love that, man. Joby, this is rich stuff. This is great stuff. Appreciate you opening up and sharing. Ss you have the ears and eyes of pastors, ministry leaders, men and women on the front lines serving, what kind of words of wisdom, if you were to have an opportunity to say, Hey, I just want to share some things. I’m just going to be straight up with you. What would you speak into their lives right now?

Joby Martin
Fight against the temptation and the trap of comparison with everything you’re made of. Because comparison kills ministry more than anything else in the world. There are five-talent people, one-talent people, and two-talent people. There just are. Five-talent ministries. And I have no idea why. Like, it’s hard, I feel like I love to do it, too. We just sing and talk like everybody else. But God just went, Okay. If you read the parable of the talents, the two-talent guy might actually be the hero. He spends zero time comparing. He doesn’t look down his nose at the one-talent guy and be like, Well, I’m better than him. He doesn’t be like, Well, I’m nothing, because I’m not five talents. Outreach didn’t write an article on me. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t care at all. He simply does what the master has called him to do and he gets the exact same reward as the five-talent guy. Well done, good and faithful servant. Because what can happen is that the one-talent guy is ruled by fear. So I think the other thing that kills more ministry than anything else is fear. The most commanded thing in the Bible is don’t be afraid, or fear not, or Be anxious for nothing. It’s like 366 times in the King James. So there’s one for every day of the year, including leap year because we need it. The reason God would tell Joshua, Be strong and courageous, strong and courageous, strong and courageous, three times in chapter one, it’s because he’s weak and afraid, weak and afraid, weak and afraid. Yet, Jesus equates the fear of the one-talent guy. He calls him wicked and slothful, and he’s so afraid of what might not happen that he doesn’t do anything with the one talent that he’s been given. Although I think if you were just observing the three guys from the naked eye, it would look like the one-talent guy was way busier than the other two guys because they just went and invested it and doubled their money. The one-talent guy digs a hole. So he’s gotta go to Lowe’s, dig a hole, and put it in there. It’s not like on a bank card. One of the things I see in ministry a lot, especially in people who are gripped by fear, is they get really busy with the comfortable so as to avoid the faithful. So take the risk, man. If you think God’s told you to start the ministry, launch the new campus, launch the church, or preach the sermon that you’re scared to preach. Whatever it is, if you can get your focus off of what everybody else is going to think about you and simply think about it, according to Hebrews, man, especially if you’re a lead pastor, you’re going to stand before the Lord and give an account. I’ll say it this way, Jason, I think the best advice in all of the Bible is John 2:5. Especially for ministry people, but it’s true for everybody. Wedding at Cana, they’re out of wine. Mary comes up to Jesus, hey, we’re out of wine. She’s like, okay, whatever. It’s not my time. Then she looks at the servants, and she says this, Do whatever he tells you to do. It’s the best advice in the whole Bible. Do whatever He tells you to do. Don’t do what the next conference told you to do unless he told you to do it and you learned it at the conference. Don’t do what I’m telling you to do unless he told you to do it. Just do whatever He told you to do. When you’re like, Yeah, but that doesn’t make sense. Perfect. Because what the servants did, none of it made sense. Little did they know that there was a miracle hanging on the other side of about five steps of obedience that they thought were going to get them in trouble. You mean, dip out the gross water and give it to the guy that can fire us. We’re still talking about water to wine? Okay. So I’m sitting in a room with Pastor Jerry Sweat 13-14 years ago, and he says, I believe it’s time for you to plant a church. Then he says, and I have a real peace about it. I thought, well, that’s funny because I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. So it’s weird how the Spirit of God manifests himself differently in each of us. However, here’s what I know. I trust that God speaks to you, and I have submitted myself to your authority, and I too, have this sense that that’s what I’m supposed to do, but now it’s been confirmed by my pastor, the person that was in authority over me. Now my question is not, but what if it doesn’t work? My only question is, am I going to be faithful to what God’s told me to do? Because what the master in Matthew 25 does not say, He does not say, Well done, good and fruitful servant. Because the fruit is all up to the Lord. So just do whatever He tells you to do. Then one day, whether you have a ministry like Billy Graham’s or a ministry that’s just faithful with a few, it doesn’t matter in the kingdom of God, man, because the fruitfulness is up to the Lord. You’ll hear the words that we all long to hear, and the reason we hear them is because of Christ’s good and faithful work on the cross. So be faithful to that, and you’ll hear those words, well done, good and faithful servant.

Jason Daye
I love that, Joby, so good. So encouraging, brother. Thank you for making time to hang out with us today. If people want to connect with you, with the ministry, and learn about your new book, Run Over by The Grace Train, or any of that stuff, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Joby Martin
JobyMartin.com has all the books, where I’m speaking, and all that. Then the church I pastor is The Church of Eleven22. That’s COE22.com. All of my sermons and all that stuff’s there.

Jason Daye
Awesome, brother. I certainly appreciate you hanging out with us. Thank you so much. For those of you watching or listening along, again, don’t forget about the toolkit, it’s going to compliment this conversation, and help you and your team go deeper into the rich words that Joby shared with us, and links to Joby, his ministry, the book, and all that fun stuff will be found in there as well. So check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Brother, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for making the time.

Joby Martin
You know it, man. Thanks for all you do.

Jason Daye
Thank you. 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.