# PDF Text
0:00 - Participant 1 We had the privilege to host it. It's cool to be back. Chip, thank you for that. Chip's a dear friend. I don't know if you know this, but COVID-19, it gave the American church a national test on discipleship. You didn't even know you were taking the test. I mean, people didn't know. And by and large, what happened to the American church? We failed. We failed. And I'm not even putting us excluded from that equation. What happened was, it was really cool, because then you get to watch church at home. First day when you're online only, and you're on the couch with your whole family, and take a selfie, and hashtag pancakes and preaching gonna get in there. I mean, that's what happened. And it was cool. Uh, week two, you're threatening your kids. You better get in here. The sermon started. Dan, I don't want to watch you. I don't want to watch me either. And by week four, if we're honest, you'll be lucky to catch the sermon in passing, if at all. And here's what happened to the American church. We assumed that our people could own the mission. We assumed that fathers could disciple their kids. We assumed that mothers knew how to invest in their children. We assumed our people knew how to read their Bible, knew how to pray, knew how to... They couldn't. What happened was they gave us the wake-up call, I think, that we needed. I teach leaders this question, right? This damn, this lie, I want to give this to you. The line is this, and you can take this back to your church. The greatest problem in your church and ministry right now is that you don't know what your greatest problem is, and that's a problem. Say it again. The greatest problem in your church and ministry right now is you don't know what the greatest problem is, and that's a problem. Now I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's not the problem with the Disciple First crowd. Why? Because you're here because you're passionate about making I don't have to teach you that making Jesus' final words should be your first work, amen? You know that. Here's the challenge for you, and it was the challenge for me, I'm speaking to myself here. The challenge for you is, you have the passion to make disciples, but some of you don't have the grit to keep doing it. You're gonna leave this conference all excited, you're gonna go back home, you're gonna say, guys, we are changing to a discipleship first church, and the deacon's gonna come up to you, a cantankerous choir member, a precious soul for whom Christ died. Can I get an amen? And they're going to come up to you. You can take that with you, right? Precious soul. And they're going to say, you want to sit in a room and read the Bible and memorize scripture? What about evangelism, Pastor? And you're going to say, no, I don't want to do that anyway. I have a wake-up call in my life, and I'm way too low on power. I'm going to show you my personal story. Some of you know my background. I'll try to truncate that, but I'll just share my personal story. About God. It's not only changed our church and saved our ministry, but it actually changed my life. I was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Anybody from New Orleans? Okay. Shelmette. I don't say that a lot, but if you don't know Shelmette, it's like Nashville. Can anything good come from Shelmette? But anyway, y'all know. He don't know. I was raised in Shelmette. Very religious family. Catholic upbringing. Weren't CEO Catholics. We didn't go to church on Christmas, Easter only. We went every week, and I expected peace of God to come over us as we had to confession on Saturday. I got a scholarship to play basketball at UNC Greensboro in North Carolina. The girl I was dating was going to go to LSU, and she said, you're never going to leave me to go that far away, or are you? And I know I'm dating myself, but I opened up a phone book. Anybody remember those? Young people, there's names and addresses, and a phone book. And I found a college. By the name of William Carey College. Anybody heard of the school? Neither did I. I mean, I didn't know the school. But I called the coach up and I said, can I try out for the team? And he hesitantly let me do it. By God's grace, he gave me a full ride. I had the best try out of my life. My mom went with me. She told me years later, she said, son, I have to be honest, I have never seen you play that good prior to today. And frankly, you've never played that good since that day. But on today, man, it was like the stars were aligned. You don't know what God's doing, and I didn't know. I went to college. The girl that I was dating at the time breaks up with me two weeks into the semester. I'm not making this up. It's a true story. Jeremy, if you went with me, you could prove it. And I'm stuck now at a Southern Baptist college as a lonely cat. I don't know if you know what that means, but I was the target of every evangelism class on campus. I mean, Chip, I was the one for everybody there. I was the pity man. And I was cruising through the campus wearing the unedited version of Tupac Shakur for my two 10-inch bazookas in the trunk. I mean, I was lost as lost indeed. And they tried to share the gospel. I mean, bless those guys' hearts. They tried to share the gospel. But my second year, I met a man who happens to be with me today. We both love guitar. We both love basketball. We both love music, and he earned the right over that year to share the gospel with me. Now, I would repeat a prayer, and Jeremy would tell you, I wouldn't repeat the prayer because I didn't want him in hell, but I wasn't born again. The reason I knew I wasn't born again is because my life did not build a church. To prove my salvation. Here's the line I tell people. Jesus said you can tell a tree by the fruit it lives. Write this line down. The root of your heart is revealed through the fruit of your life or the lack thereof. The fruit of your life reveals the root of your heart. My fruit, there was no fruit in my life. I got out of college in four years, and I wanted to do something in the world, and I started to train MMA fighters. Now this is not the way. In fact, the guys I was training with and fighting with, we would make less money to win the fight than to pay for our medical bills, and no one had insurance. Anyway, not a smart idea, but that's what I did. I was 6'6", 290 pounds back then. I'm at a restaurant one night. The guy asked me, would you be the head boxer of my club, downtown New Orleans, in the middle of Mardi Gras? I said, you're going to pay me to fight? I mean, I was like, that's a job of life, right? And I did it for a couple months. I got a gun on me, long story short. I made a career move from bouncing to bartending. Seemed like a logical step. At the time, I was coming home from work, November 22, 1999, 18-wheeler, comes across two lanes of traffic where battery and I-10 come together, and sandwiched my car in the guardrail, 65 miles an hour. I herniated two discs in my back, two discs in my neck. I went to the doctor. They sent me home. This is the front end of the opioid crisis, 1999, Purdue Farm. Sent me home with 90 Oxycontin, 90 Valium, 90 90 Percocet. If you saw that movie on Netflix, The Pharmacist, that was the doctor that destroyed my life. And I was in pain. You know the story. Within a few months, I'm addicted to pharmaceutical drugs. They say seven days in there, you're full addict on Oxycontin. And I'd run through the 30-day prescription in two weeks. I had to find a way to get high, this insatiable desire to get high. And I moved to street drugs, started selling ecstasy, GHB, special pay, heroin, cocaine. And like any sin, I'm not telling you any of this to impress you, but just to impress upon you how far the Lord brought me from I had a lot of money and I'm very successful, but like any sin, you know this, it takes you further than you wanna go, keeps you there longer than you wanna stay, costs you more than you ever wanna pay. Sin is manageable until it becomes unmanageable. That's the end of how it works. And I went to two rehab treatments, long story short, short, I'm in my room, I don't have a dad that's a pastor, never read the Bible in my life, but I remember, be ready for this, what Jeremy told me seven years before. I was desperate. Just to sidebar here, I love what Chip said. Do not underestimate the power of the sown seeds of the gospel into the hardened hearts of people. I was desperate. And I tell people I didn't know much about Christ, but I took the little bit of faith I had, and I put it in as much of Jesus as I which wasn't a lot, but it was enough to be radically saved. Amen? Changed my whole life. November years. Changed my whole life. But here's what happened. Like many of you, and like many born-again believers, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to read the Bible. I didn't know how to memorize scripture. I didn't know I should. I didn't know how to pray. I'm at Edgewater Baptist Church. This 15-year-old-looking guy I say that to, and you know it's a joke. By the name of David Platt, there's a church, and I go up to David and we become friends. And David says, hey, do you want to meet once a week to study the Bible, memorize Scripture, and pray? And I said, David, I'd love to. And he said, pray about it. I said, I already have. When do we meet? And for the next two and a half years, I met with David every single week. So I tell you that back story to tell you I'm the product of discipleship. That's why I'm so passionate. David said, this is how you ride the discipleship Christian life. This is, you memorize Scripture, you read your Bible, and you pray. And that's how you ride the bike. And I thought everybody did that. Went to my first church. I'll tell you context, a number of specific context. Went to my first church, South Louisiana. 65 people, they were closing the doors. I think they took a chance on me, Robby, because what do they have to lose? You know what I mean? Three-year Christian. By God's grace, I went in there. They said, what's your five-year plan? I said, I'm going to preach the word expositionally, and I'm going to disciple men, and my wife's going to disciple women. By God's grace, the church grew to in two and a half years, and only God. And I left. I went to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Second church, six-year Christian. Larger church, about 850, 900, telling you for context. I went in there, and they said, what's your five-year plan? It's the same plan, the same song, I'm sticking to it. I wrote this horse in, I brought this horse out, right? I'm gonna preach the word, and I'm gonna disciple people. And by God's grace, Bill knows, Robby knows, that's how we were friends, they came to my church. God blew up that ministry of the discipleship. We actually had more people in discipleship groups of three to five, 1,700. More than we had in life or until I left. Now, that's a problem. We didn't fix it, but that's a problem. It's a lot of people in small groups. Then I went to where I'm at now, Long Hollow. It was three times the size, for context, of where I was. And I thought it was a church that was a huge evangelistic church. I thought they were ready for disciple making. So I went in with my suitcase, I unpacked my discipleship bag, and over the next three years, four years, it was the hardest ministry my entire life. We lost thousands of people. I'm talking thousands of people, and most were not getting involved in discipleship. And I tell people that the director of our ministry will tell you, when he was there, it was the greatest week of all my entire life. Because like you, you'll miss this, I went into 2020 totally unprepared. And I literally was ready to just say, God, this was it, I'm done. A friend of mine came to me in the church, and he said, Robby, you are gonna burn out. You're running out of frenetic days. You have to slow down and learn silence and solitude. As you can tell from the last 12 minutes, I'm not a silence and solitude kind of guy. I did be driven, ADHD, but I was desperate. I was desperate. So I started going into the dark ages. I didn't know much about this practice. In fact, when I would read those spiritual dissonance books, I would kind of go through that. I would say, what does an ancient practice of silence have to do with my 21st century life? And then I'd just skip past it when I was desperate. And so I started this practice. It started with five minutes a night. I'd go out to my porch. They moved it to 10. It went to an hour. Then it went to an hour and a half, two hours, every single night for 10 months. And I remember I had to learn, because I'm a big discipleship spiritual dissonance guy. It's unlike any other spiritual dissonance of discipline in the Christian life, meaning most of the time you get nothing out of silence, tangibly. Not that I wasn't looking for it. I'd sit on that porch many nights, and I'm looking in the sky for stars in the form of a constellation of a Hebrew word. I'm like, is that? I mean, I was listening for a global megaphone. Robby, dude. Nothing, nothing. And I remember walking in my house one day, and I was out there for an hour and a half. And I remember looking to the Lord pretty candidly, like, really, God? What was that? I was serving God for what he could do for me. You gotta understand that ministry is a seductive mistress. The greatest warning I came to give you all the way from Nashville is this. Don't ever do ministry for Jesus without intimacy with Jesus. Don't ever do it. It's very easy to do. You get really good at being a professional Christian. Let me remind you, Robby said, your first calling is that pastor, leader, preacher, ministry development person. Your first call is a Christian. To make disciples, that's it. And I remember six months in the Lord I was lamenting to the Lord. You got to fix the problems in my church because I've got problems and while you're at it fix my staff and fix the deacon body if you have time. And fix the country. Problem is not your church. It's not your staff. It's not the community. It's not me more. And if you're honest with the Lord, you have to be careful. He won't put his finger on the problems. He's good at that. I just want to be candid. I know my time's up, but I just want to tell you, the Lord showed me, Robin, you were way too jealous. You were way too proud. You know how to ask a question from a congregant in order to get a favorable answer. What did you like about my sermon today? I did that all the time. God showed me. I was a master of fishing in the pond, but I was addicted to the approval of others in my life. I get a hundred positive remarks. I get one negative email. It ruins my Sunday. I know that's not you, but I've heard of me. Robby, you're lying up for the platform of robbing the cause of Christ. So, brother, you don't even know. You think you're posting comments online and pictures for Instagram to show the church? You're doing it for you. Here's what I got. Robby, you're so jealous. I'm like, what do you mean I'm jealous? I've got a great church, I've got a great family, I've got a great ministry. Why would I be jealous of people like that? I wouldn't say it, but I was jealous of the pastor down the street baptized more than me. Internally, not vocally, but internally. I was jealous of a guy who wrote a book, and it got more traction. I was jealous of a guy who did a blog. I was jealous of a picture where I were more than mine. And the Lord showed me, and I'll leave you with this. If you can't pray for the church down the street to be blessed in spite of Long Hollow, I'm never going to bless Long Hollow. Let me remind you, big boy. Your church. This is my kingdom, and I will prevail. You surrender me. That was it. Time's up, but God spoke to me. December 15, 2022 spontaneous baptism. My church had declined to 3,400 people. I lost over half, and I don't like pastoring anything declining in my life, but God sent revival along all of them. When I offered spontaneous baptism, December 20, 2020, can look it up online. We would see You could pay people to get face to face, much less than a bacterial. And I tell you that I tell you that to say it is a God sent revival. And nobody had to leave. Why? Because God knows. Write this line down. Every three can move, God, again, but not three. What do I mean? Who in here is willing to say, God, I'm not going to move? So you move. God, I don't trust in. Convictional and loving and caring. Because God, you want to do so much more. God, I can't even tell these folks that we have settled for a surface-level, synthetic substitute of the power of God, and there is so much more for you, God, to have for us, and we've settled for so much more. The church is. 19:29 - Participant 3 I said to my wife, it's just like, oh, Jason, you look so cute. Listen, I'm a little 6'7". I'm not. And then I get put on the stage with these other giants, too. Great about myself for a lot of reasons. 19:48 - Unidentified Speaker You're like a mustard seed. 19:50 - Unidentified Speaker That's it. 19:52 - Unidentified Speaker We're the love of mustard seeds. 19:54 - Participant 1 They call me a mustard seed. We're the love of mustard seeds. 19:58 - Participant 3 All right. Man, it's cool listening to some guys who, you know, are out here doing the dark in different ways. And I'm really encouraged by that. 20:07 - Unidentified Speaker I found out beforehand that you guys are doing some cool stuff. 20:20 - Participant 1 I was blessed to have the position there with the Titans and looking for guys that could come, speak, and have a different voice than I had. And through one of our coaches, I learned that Robert was interested in coming over and had in our corporation. So I reached out. 20:42 - Participant 2 I knew his reputation and reached out and said, well, then we need to talk. I sat there and talked that first day and realized that, wait, wait, you're all about discipleship? I'm all about discipleship. And it was really, really a good click. So when we came together and had him speak to the guys, the Lord convicted him to product a little bit about discipleship, to assist and help. So the past three months, we've begun to partner together some of our players, and helping them get going. It's just been an awesome, it's only been a few months, but it's been amazing to see how guys respond. These guys are just in their 20s, from a world standpoint, have everything that you could imagine, but they're hungry, hungry to get going. 21:48 - Participant 1 Hang out. So I go. 23:03 - Unidentified Speaker Big news coming in this afternoon. 23:16 - Unidentified Speaker So, you know, let's just think about it for a minute. 23:23 - Participant 1 You know, most of us don't have, like, big ministers like of the U.S. Military. 24:57 - Participant 2 So I have to strengthen this because this is what I was trained in in my college. I would go to these big conferences, and I would hear the young man who is a let's say running back for our team in the NFL is no different than the young man who you. 26:55 - Unidentified Speaker All right. 27:43 - Unidentified Speaker you'll see exponential results faster. 27:46 - Participant 1 So if you're not in a discipline relationship, I would say the first step to the practical thing, you go back and you find three to five people, we had 700 or so earlier, but three to five is the ideal size. To meet once a week to study the Bible, memorize scriptures, pray, live life together, and you wait 12 months. 28:04 - Unidentified Speaker It's not a crock. 28:06 - Unidentified Speaker It's not a microwaveable recipe. 28:07 - Unidentified Speaker It's a crock recipe. 28:09 - Unidentified Speaker It takes time. 28:10 - Unidentified Speaker Seriously, look how long God's been working on you. 28:39 - Participant 3 The joy, actually, is in that one-on-one, a few people that we can name and know. And I've been a part of that. I dispel some myths for some people here. We have five minutes left. Let's take a couple of minutes of this and maybe get to the final question. Dispel some myths of people that, oh, the bigger the platform I have, the more enjoyable and fulfilling that ministry is. 29:22 - Unidentified Speaker One of my favorite rooms. 29:24 - Unidentified Speaker I think sometimes, too, we can even look at some people with bigger platforms and go, oh, they're not about the real world. 29:31 - Participant 3 Maybe just spill it. 29:58 - Participant 1 She's like this, you are that. 30:07 - Unidentified Speaker And I know an exact example of that right now. 30:11 - Unidentified Speaker And the impact that she has in that platform, there's a platform, right? 30:16 - Unidentified Speaker That's some random young lady who maybe didn't have a big presence on that college campus, had a college club you've never heard of 30:25 - Participant 2 But yet, the generational influence that she's going to have, let's not think that that's What's the moon? 32:12 - Participant 1 fire. No, nobody. 35:25 - Unidentified Speaker We got a second round, too.