Pastor Grant Castleberry

This is Rodney from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we explored manhood within Jesus Christ. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Sit back, enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. Pumpkin spice latte in hand, hot chocolate chip cookie in front of me, and a pastor to my right who is about to do something historic. The first time today, I had no idea this was the day, Pastor Grant Castleberry, your radio show launches in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is the triangle area for those of you who are outside of North Carolina. God bless you.

We love our country. There's something special happening in Raleigh, and at 2 30, which is in an hour from when we're recording, you're going to be on, and I believe the show is called Unashamed Truth. Welcome to the radio waves, brother. Man, I am honestly just excited and humbled for this opportunity, Stu. Just thank you and just honestly just couldn't be happier and just want to really lift up a God centered approach to Christianity and really reorient people to the fact of God's honor and God's glory.

So that's really the theme of the show. Wow. And there's some nice ambient noise around our lattes and our hot coffees and Mark Reed, our Raleigh Truth Network surrogate here, great man of God.

He's excited to have a hot chocolate. Mark, isn't it awesome to work with godly pastors? So many godly pastors that are still preaching God's word.

They haven't bowed their knee to bail yet. Unashamedly, you can proclaim the truth. We're excited to have Pastor Castleberry on the air with us. Our goal is to spread the gospel of Christ and to help build his kingdom, and please give Pastor Castleberry a listen. I think you'll enjoy his message, and we're just blessed to have you with us, Pastor. Pastor, I am also having my first pumpkin spice latte of the season, and you're having, you're on the radio for the first time today, and I want to talk to you about, maybe a little bit about your testimony.

Quite a story, man. You're a marine. You're a trained theologian.

It wasn't the direction you were going. You know, you've been on all kinds of podcasts. You're pastoring a church here, Capitol Community Church, I think here in Raleigh, but tell us about who is Grant Castleberry. Tell us about your journey to come to know Christ and to where you are today. Well, my story is obviously marked by the Lord and his providence, just like all of ours is, but I especially saw the providence of God early on in my life. My father, I should say my first father, was killed in a marine corps plane crash when I was two years old, and they actually never found his body. They did a massive search and rescue operation, never found him. They found his fighter pilot helmet, which in Ephesians chapter six is the helmet of salvation, which in God's providence was almost like a message to my mom and myself that my father was in heaven with the Lord.

But God used that event in my life, my father's death, to save me because I started asking all these questions as a kid. You know, where's my dad? Where is he now? Okay, he believed in the Lord.

He's in heaven. So it gave an opportunity for my mom and Sunday school teachers to bring the gospel to me at an early age, and I really legitimately trusted Christ as a young man. And then later on, the Lord used my father's death also to lead me to my wife because I went back for the first time to visit my father's memorial marker in South Carolina, and that's when I met my wife. So if my father hadn't have died while he was stationed in South Carolina, we probably would have never gone back, would have never met my wife. So the Lord used my father's death to bring about the two most important events of my life, which is my salvation and meeting my wife. So pretty cool to see how God really does take things that are tragic and devastating for the believer for your good. Something else, you grew up in Texas going to a secular college, you know, being involved, and tell us a little bit about that journey. So, you know, you say secular. I went to Texanem, which is basically almost a Christian college.

Open the bonfires, right? The famous Aggies, right? Yeah, so I went to Texanem and just had a great experience there. I was actually Aggie yell leader.

I don't know if you knew this about me. So A&M has never had cheerleaders. They've always had yell leaders because it started as an all-male military school. And basically every year the student body elects three seniors and two juniors that are men, that are guys, to lead as yell leaders. And basically they do a big event before every home football game called Midnight Yell Practice. And the yell leaders lead 40, 50,000 students at midnight that show up the night before the game and go through all the yells and basically talk some smack about the other team that we're playing the next day.

So it's a lot of fun. So I did that two years at A&M and then went into the Marine Corps. And I went into the Marine Corps knowing that God had already called me to ministry. But I received some great advice before I went in because I was really struggling.

Okay, what's God's will? Do I go straight into ministry or do I go into the Marine Corps? This was when we were over in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I was talking to a guy actually at the master's seminary named Ray Marringer. And he was like, do both. He said, go in the Marine Corps and then go to seminary.

And it was really, really good advice. And part of his rationale for that was the Lord's going to teach you a lot about leadership, a lot about evangelism in a different climate. He's going to teach you about the world and you're going to be so much better equipped and prepared for ministry. So that was really my journey as I went into the Marine Corps, knowing I was going to do pastoral ministry after the fact.

But I really saw my time in the Marine Corps as a missionary opportunity, you know, to learn leadership, but also to evangelize and reach my Marines for Christ. Well, I tell you, the Jubila coffee shop here in North Raleigh at the Northfield shopping center is a lot safer now that we have established that this man is a Marine. Mark, we can enjoy our coffee knowing, hey, we got a guy with deadly hands, but he loves Jesus. And now you're pastoring here in Raleigh.

You've got this new radio show launching. It's just an honor, just how God would bring us together at this moment here. It wasn't very well planned, and I'm not a very good planner. I thought you planned this. God's a good planner.

Thank goodness you connect to God and suddenly you are connected to an amazing planner. But Pastor, what is your passion for? Talk about your passion for God's word, your passion for the local church, your passion for making disciples. Why is that so important that we have a really a famine in the land? A lot of guys just aren't preaching the word. They're not studying the word.

Talk about that and maybe challenge our listeners in that little bit. Well, I think God's, you know, it's a dark day in our country and you're seeing that everywhere you look. But I'm also encouraged because I see God at work. And I personally have experienced God's work in my life. And I think one of the primary ways that God works in the lives of believers and in bringing lost people to salvation is through the preaching of the word of God. And God's word, God promise promises never returns void.

It's living and active and sharper than any two edged sword. And so when I preach the word of God, I am approaching that moment of preaching in faith that God, the Holy Spirit is going to use the word as it's proclaimed to change the lives of my hearers. My confidence isn't in myself. My confidence is in the ministry of the Holy Spirit that he is going to use the word. And so that's why I have a confidence that when I preach the word of God, it will change lives. It will save people and people will encounter God.

So there's that expectation. And I think a lot of Christians need to approach their church with that expectation that when they're going to church to hear the sermon, they're going to experience an encounter with God himself in the word, because that word is a, it's not a dead word. It's a living word. And that's the uniqueness of the Bible. That's why it's unlike any other book. It's a living book.

It's God's book. And that's the voice of Pastor Grant Castleberry, Pastor's Capital Community Church. There's a little noise because we're in a big coffee shop in Raleigh having pumpkin spice lattes. You're having pumpkin spice lattes.

I'm having black coffee. He's behaving like a Marine should, right? He's preaching the word of God from the pulpit of Capital Community Church. And it's just an honor to interview him. And as the Lord would have it, at the time of this recording, we're just about a half hour before show launch time or so, maybe 45 minutes, I guess, right?

Till 2.30 Eastern time. You can listen to him on, obviously from his church's website, just Google Capital Community Church in Raleigh. You can also listen to him. If you're in the Raleigh Triangle area, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Durham, this whole corridor, Wake Forest area, you can listen to him on the Truth Network's Triangle Station. They're great affiliates of this show, Truth Talk.

You can go to the Truth Network app and you can pull up the triangle. And every day at 2.30, you can hear him right then and there. And I'm sure the show's going to be made into a podcast and so people can download that. But look, congratulations on the launch, Pastor, and your testimony is remarkable. The impact of losing your dad at a young age in this bizarre airplane crash, you followed in his footsteps, became a Marine. Now you're a pastor of a church. How is the legacy of your dad, do you sense is living on or impacting you today, especially as you look at, you have small children, you know, wonderful wife here in your family.

Talk about that as we wrap up. Yeah, I think for a man, you know, you train your kids, you disciple your kids, all of that's important. But I think just as important is your legacy. And for me, I didn't get that experience with my dad of the raising, you know, the learning obedience with him because that crash happened when I was two. But what my father did give me was a Christian legacy. And that has just been massively impactful in my life. And after he died, my mom remarried another godly man and my grandfather, my first dad's father was also instrumental in being an impact in my life and setting a godly example. So I've been given godly legacies, but a godly legacy is massively important, right? Paul says, First Corinthians 11, follow me as I follow Christ, so imitate my faith.

So that is something that my father has given me, which has just been just as really God's used to carry it through for me in my life and just my walk in holiness and, and striving to be a man of God. We'll have you on the show. Again, we're all excited to listen.

And it's kind of neat. Our coffee time will end a little bit before your show starts. So I'm going to get in my truck. And I'm going to turn until the name of the program one more time and tell everyone maybe how to find you know, how to find more about your ministry online. Yeah, so the program is called unashamed truth. And I don't even have a website yet.

So I'm trying to build a website at unashamedtruth.org.org. So we should have that up pretty soon. But right now, as Stu said earlier, that you can listen to the to the broadcast on the truth network website, and then at capital community church.com. God bless you.

Congratulations. Yeah, make sure everyone downloads the free truth app. And thank you, by the way, to all of our awesome affiliates, because as your program grows, God may want it to be on a fr get a carry true truth talk.

Wilkins radio carries truth talk some Salem stations carry truth talk. So we're just honored to be talking to you. And one other cool little thing about when you went to, to your, you know, to go revisit and celebrate where your dad, you know, went to heaven, you and you met your wife, well, you happen to marry a daughter of a radio pioneer, brother Carl. So I mean, it all came together, didn't it?

Yeah. So my father in law, if you're in the South Carolina area, is Pastor Carl Brogi at Community Bible Church of Beaufort, South Carolina. And he started his own radio station wagp down there, which is actually dedicated in memory of my father. So that was part of the connection that brought us together as the radio Christian radio is what helped bring all this together years ago. So yeah, the station was dedicated in memory of my dad, because he had been part of that church when when they were stationed there. And there's a legacy piece because your dad's voice is heard through his son on the radio station dedicated in his honor.

And when all that happened, there was no notion that you'd be a, you know, you'd be a pastor on the radio. So I hope that at some point, we get your show on that station too. That would be really cool. That would be really special. Yeah.

Well, you got a great legacy, a great, great mom, and then a great, I guess, you know, stepdad and then have been a great father in law, mother in law and family. And Carl can still put the way the he can still put the plates in the air. That guy's that guy's a machine.

I saw him squatting all this weight. You said that that guy is something else. He's a strong radio guy. So I tell you what, what a blessing. Thank you for your ministry. Thank you. Just humbled and honored to be able to, to move forward with this show. So thank you. This is the truth network.