When I'm around my best friend, I can be however crazy I want, however silly I want, and they remind me that I don't have to change because they love me just the way that I am. So my best childhood friend really shows that they care for me by reaching out and asking how I'm doing, and they just don't want the simple, I'm fine, but they want really a true, deep answer. The best part of my best friend is the fact that no matter how long in between visits, it's like we just left. We giggle, we laugh, and we're still there for each other all the time no matter what. Well, I wonder if you have a friend like that, somebody who obviously cares for you and wants the very best for your life. That's our topic today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and thanks for joining us.
I'm John Fuller. John, today we're going to hear from an unlikely friendship between two men that has spanned more than 20 years now. One at that time was an atheist, the other a pastor, and somehow God intertwined their lives and their families into this remarkable story of friendship and encouragement and tenacity, unconditional love, redemption. So this story definitely reminds me of Proverbs 17, 17, which says, a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
I always thought I got two older brothers. I thought it meant they were born too tedious. Well, there could be some of that.
Today I think we're going to learn a new spin on that. I think the Scriptures sum up this friendship perfectly, and I'm eager to unpack those details with our two guests. Yeah, we've got Walker Hayes, a Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter. He has sold millions of copies of his songs and albums, and he and his wife Laney are the parents of seven children. Craig Cooper is a Bible teacher and storyteller who speaks at churches and men's retreats and other venues. He's formerly one of the founding pastors of Redeeming Grace Church in Franklin, Tennessee, and he and his wife Laura have four children. And together, Walker and Craig have written a book about their friendship, and it's called Glad You're Here, Two Unlikely Friends, Breaking Bread, and Fences. And we have copies of that book for you.
Check the show notes for the link. And not only are they good friends, but they're also neighbors. Now let me say hello to both of you. Hello. Welcome to Focus. Hello, hello.
Thank you for having us. Let me ask you, the book talks about this moment where you guys tear down your fence, and you've never heard that fences make good neighbors? Yeah, that was, we were sitting outside on your patio, and Walker said, hey, why don't we surprise the girls, our wives? That's not a good thing.
Right there, that's not a good thing. What was happening was the kids were jumping over it and going back and forth between each other's houses over COVID. And when he said that, I was like, I didn't hesitate. We just jumped up, and we ran straight to the fence, and we started yanking it down.
It took us about 45 minutes or so to get here. And your wives were calm watching this. I mean, they've known us long enough.
They weren't surprised, and they were smiling the whole time. I mean, our kids had already kind of carved a path, you know, in the grass, so yeah. So that was good. Let me go back, Walker. Let's go back to the beginning and kind of fill in for the viewers, the listeners.
Where were you at? You wanted to be a music star. Just give us a feel for where you were at 20 years ago and what was going through your head.
Oh, shoot. I mean, 20 years ago is when I got married. You know, Lanny and I were engaged on a whim. I played a gig in Mobile at a bar, and I loved it so much that I stopped selling real estate that night, literally.
Just quit and had a dinner with her parents and said, hey, you know, change of plans. I think I want to go to Nashville and try, you know, try songwriting. So yeah, that's where music kind of started for me 20 years ago. That's what got us to Nashville. But yeah, Lanny was up for the adventure, and we moved. I mean, it literally drove from our honeymoon in a U-Haul and got an apartment.
I mean, it was amazing. So you're thinking, okay, I'm good enough. I'm going to become a musician, and someone's going to notice me. I'll get signed to a label.
This will be great, and we're going to have our kids, and everything will work out. But it wasn't quite like that. All that stuff you thought would have been smart. I just was thinking, let's just go and figure it out. I didn't know what a label was.
I had no idea how many kids we were trying to have. I just wanted to sing, just wanted to write songs. It's pretty amazing, actually. It was. So how long were you a waiter? I actually was a waiter at Macaroni Grill in college. So yeah, I sang.
Got some experience there singing Happy Birthday in Italian for tips. But yeah, man, I did that. I've done all kinds of jobs. When I met Craig, I was struggling. I had just been dropped. This was 15 years into my journey, maybe 13 to 15 years into my journey, and I had just been dropped from my second record deal, and I was into my third publishing deal.
So not making any money at music and was about to apply for a job at Costco. I mean, in that moment, I mean, so often we have people on here, it's perseverance, but it probably doesn't feel like it at that moment. You're going, OK, I'm sure Laney's going, you sure you want to keep doing this because we got to eat? Yeah.
No, no, no. I mean, oddly enough, my wife never. It's astounding, and it's probably unbelievable to hear, but she never, that's one blessing. Laney never once said, hey, do you want to get a normal job? I mean, she was always extremely happy and joyful in times of extreme poverty. Maybe we should publish your marriage book. Coming out soon from Focus on the Family.
Honestly, Laney should write a book. But yeah, I definitely questioned myself as a father chasing the dream. Like, would I be a better parent by giving up my dream and getting a normal occupation that fed my kids better food and got them better clothes and X, Y, Z? But I definitely doubted myself then. In that state, you were also battling with alcohol and you're drinking and probably medicating through that.
I don't know, but describe it for yourself. I mean, I started drinking when I was 13 and didn't stop until I was 35. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was just kind of how I coped with any hardships of life or, I mean, just life in general. But I was a functional alcoholic and definitely relied on it to perform. Well, I mean, there are many, many people in that spot.
So you're talking to a large swath of folks that are in that spot even now. Let me ask you, spiritually you weren't a Christian. Maybe you had an interest. But describe for yourself what faith or no faith you had at that time.
At that time, when I met Craig, I had zero faith. I mean, I grew up, my dad was a music minister before he was a realtor. And so I grew up and I was in church.
If the doors were open, I was there. And then, you know, as I got older, I went the other way. Wow, okay. And so, yeah, when I met Craig, yeah, I was an atheist. I mean, I didn't believe any of it. I was cordial, you know, with my wife who was a believer. And honestly, that was really one of the only arguments we had in our marriage because it was like, what are we going to teach our kids?
We didn't fight about money because we never had any. And so our marriage was, you know, pretty peaceful. But, yeah, when I met Craig, I was not a believer. Let's get Craig into this. Craig, welcome in. Thanks for having us. Okay, so you're the neighbor.
You're watching this. I don't know what you're thinking and where you're at, but tell me a bit about your background, how you grew up, and how you ended up next door to him. Yeah, a little bit like Walker. I grew up in a church setting, you know, if the doors were open, I was there. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, ended up becoming a leader in a youth group there. And I would say I was very familiar with the idea of Jesus, but I didn't know him. I didn't have a relationship with God at all.
I didn't realize it. It was all religion to me, and, yeah, that's what was happening in me. And it was about college, sometime in college? Yeah, college, freshman year of college.
The Lord kind of bang. Yeah, so I had, when I was 17, working as a bag boy at Red Food Store in East Tennessee, I had a wooden cross that would hang on a rope necklace. And I remember the first really spiritual conversation that I had was this lady kind of stopped me after I had helped her unload the groceries, and she said, you're such a kind young man, do you mind if I ask you a question?
And I said, sure, shoot, what's up? And she said, that cross around your neck, and she pointed to the wooden cross around the rope necklace, and I said, yeah. She said, is it decoration or is it real?
And I had never really had anybody challenge me on that before. That's kind of right between the eyes. Yeah, I kind of looked down, and I smiled and laughed and said, a little bit of both, I guess?
And then I walked off, and I couldn't get that question out of my head. You know, that cross around your neck, is it decoration or is it real? And for me, what I realized is it was decoration. And freshman year of college, I went to the University of Tennessee, and I was invited to a campus ministry where I heard the gospel.
And I realized the cross is not decoration, it's a declaration of God's love for us and sending his own son to live the perfect life we could never live and then die as a substitute in our place so that we could be forgiven and have eternal life. And that night I was just born again, my life completely changed, and the campus ministry director said, hey, Champ, what's God doing in your heart? And I said, I want to give my life to Jesus, and I want to do what that man's doing. And I pointed to the guy who had just shared the gospel with me, and that kind of put me on a trajectory of ministry, towards ministry. And yeah, went into ministry, got let go from the first ministry position, really broke my heart, and the Lord used it to draw me to himself. And we bonded over that, actually. When Walker was telling me about how he had been released and dropped from a couple of record labels, I could relate, because I'm like, yeah, dude, I got fired from the church, where I had heard the gospel, came to faith in Christ, and went and served the campus ministry and got burned out.
And we bonded over dreams, and we bonded over brokenness. Both of them happened, and the Lord just created this friendship that was like the smile of God. You mention in the book that your church upbringing or orientation kind of gave you this sense of prudishness. Either you observed it in other people, or you had it within yourself.
Speak to that element, and then even reaching out and looking at people differently. Yeah, I think God had to break my own heart, you know, to give me a tender heart for the broken. I think that's what happened. So one of the hardest things I'd ever gone through was being let go from that ministry position. It was also one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. That's interesting.
You feel like it's the bottom of the moment, though, that you're at the bottom of the barrel. Yeah, God used it so much in my life to draw me to Him, and also to show me He didn't need me. That church did really well after I was gone, and it was helpful to just watch. So I had this sense of, okay, the Lord doesn't need me, and I just took long walks on Sunday afternoons and poured my heart out to God.
The good, the bad, the ugly. One of my favorite verses is Psalm 62, 8. Trust in Him at all times, O peoples.
Pour out your heart before Him, for God is a refuge for us. I felt like the Lord was just welcoming me to come and share whatever was in my heart. In that moment, it was the brokenness, and it felt at times like a neglected milk carton that had been curdled, and I was pouring out nasty stuff as I was praying and walking with the Lord. He just healed me. Then the church hired me back five years later and said, we want to send you to help plant a church.
I kind of got trained to do that. Then we moved to Nashville in 2012, and we met the Hayes family January of 2014. All right. Now, we've set the background up, and I think it's important knowing where you're coming from, Walker, Craig, where you're coming from. You end up next door. I believe your wife asked your wife, Walker, to church, and you didn't want to go. Yeah, and just for factual, we were not neighbors at this point. Okay, so they knew each other. My wife met Craig's wife, Laura, at a doTERRA oil party, which I guess is like a Tupperware party but oil, you know?
Essential oils. That girls do. Which we don't even do. I don't even know what you're talking about. You know, I do now. I'm very familiar with the oil world. Well, you're creative. Yeah. No, no, no, no.
There's some good oils. But anyway, they met, and then they saw each other again at an upward basketball game. So our kids played basketball at the same church, and Laura invited Laney to church. And honestly, at this phase of our life, I thought we were finished with the church hunting phase. You know, my wife, honestly, had gotten quite comfortable with no, you know, services on Sunday. I mean, for gosh sakes, we had five kids, and that's a lot, you know, getting up. And so she had stopped by then bugging me about, hey, let's try this church, or I want to be a part of this community. But so when Laura invited Laney, I was devastated.
I mean, I was like, I don't know. Your plan was ruined. Oh, man, I was like, this Laura Laney. Why?
Why did this Laura Laney appear? Hey, we met on Saturday nights. You didn't have that.
They did. So they met on Saturday nights, which was during football season, which was pretty terrible also. But she drags me to this church one night, and I've had a good amount.
This was prior to me quitting. So, you know, I'm drinking Saturday, football day, and I'm riding in the shotgun seat. And as we approach the building, there's no lights anywhere, and they're sharing a building with a really old church. And I have no idea where we are, and I made the joke of I feel like I should call someone before this cult, you know, kidnaps us. And even Laney, my wife, she cracked. She laughed. The kids laughed.
Everybody thought it was funny. But, yeah, man, we walked in this church, and, you know, when you walk in with five kids, everybody, you know, everybody turns around to look at us. And I looked like this. You know, my hair was probably a little longer, and I probably looked a little shaggier, and I reeked of whatever I was drinking that day. And I'm sure we had a baby.
We always had a baby. And Craig beelined for me. And he just came straight up to me. He shook my hand super hard. He made awkward eye contact, you know, just would not look away for me. And he said, I'm glad you're here.
I mean, any minute. I mean, he kept saying it, as you can imagine. You know, you've met the guy. Glad you're here, dude. I'm so glad you're here. And honestly, I just thought, oh, you know, he's probably the greeter guy, you know, of this church. And that's where it all began. I didn't love the church.
You know, I didn't go home, and nothing really changed. I just was intrigued. There was something about this guy that said, I know what you don't believe.
I even know you're probably a little tipsy tonight, but I'm still glad you're here. And that, I don't know, that information shocked me, you know, in a little way. You felt accepted. Yeah, I did. That's what it sounds like. And I'm not even sure I liked it. Right. As I'm telling you now, I'm reliving it thinking, I was probably a little agitated, and probably going, what's the catch here? Yeah, all of it at one time.
Is this true? Exactly. Yeah, I could imagine that. Yeah, and Craig, earlier you were talking, just a few minutes ago, about kind of brokenness and how God was working through you to understand grace. So go back to that moment. What were you thinking as you encountered this new family and a guy who might be drunk?
Yeah, oh, I mean, I was just blown away. They came, you know, it was the church plant meeting on Saturday nights. We were in the winter when the sun sets in Nashville around 4.30.
Or noon. Yeah, and there's a lot of hurdles, you know, to overcome for somebody to come. And also, I'm familiar with outreach and everything where you end up, sometimes people will say, yeah, we'll come, but they don't show up. And Laura had told me about, you know, that moment where she had invited Lainey, and then Lainey said they would come and all that kind of stuff. I think I was just genuinely elated that they overcame all of those hurdles and walked in the door.
And so, yeah, Walk says, I said, glad you're here, and he felt it. Your marriage can be redeemed, even if the fights seem constant, even if there's been an affair, even if you haven't felt close in years. No matter how deep the wounds are, you can take a step toward healing them with a hope restored marriage intensive. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face challenges together. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.
