A Man of Many Talents

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Now, the devil's nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of It's Time to Man Up. Today, in studio with me, what a joy, what a privilege, what a pleasure to have this man of God here.

Bill Coleman, welcome to the Man Up Show. Thank you, Nikita. It's good to be here.

Well, it's great to have you here, Bill, and excited to have you, I mean, author, pastor, man of God. You wear a professor. You wear a lot of different hats. A lot of hats.

You know, for our listeners out there, of course, because you wear a lot of hats, but tell us, you know, a little bit about Bill Coleman. Tell us about your story. Oh, man. I mean, my mother was three months pregnant when my father passed away from heart disease, basically, and she chose to keep me despite a doctor telling her that he knew she didn't plan to be a single mom, and there was still time. They were in the window, and she saved my physical life and raised me as a single mom until I was five years old. At five years old, two life-changing events happened in my life. First, I gave my life to the Lord. As much a five-year-old can understand the theology of salvation, I can say the first time it really all clicked for me, I responded to it, put my faith in Christ. I'm not saying every five-year-old do that, but it was, for me, it was real.

I still remember it. And then also at five years old, my mom fell in love with a man who became her husband and adopted me into his family. The name I have is his name.

Coleman. And yes, sir, he adopted me. And so my mom saved my physical life. My dad saved my social, relational, cultural life. And my Lord saved my life.

So by age five, I'd had a lot of saving going on. Wow. And I mean, that, just to interject right there, that in itself is just a full story.

And you know, it's interesting about that. So we're going back many, not to age you, but we're going back many years ago that a doctor was, in a sense, encouraging your mom to have an abortion. Yeah. And whether he was pushing her or not, I don't know, but I know that he was saying, here are your options. You got options to this grieving widow. And yeah, I mean, she was, she was hesitant to get pregnant anyway. My biological father wanted a child, but she knew he was sick. Yeah. And, and she, she told me later, actually not too long ago, that she actually, she had prayed, you know, okay, Lord, we won't use any protection, but like, how about you protect him?

Cause I, you know, he's just sick. Like she, it wasn't that she didn't want a child, but she knew his, his life was uncertain. And so, but she's a woman of faith and a submissive to, to his will. And so whatever happened, so when she got pregnant, she, so she was loving the Lord and living for the Lord all the way back then. And so, yeah. And I thought about this recently, you know, and whatever the number currently is, you know, hear the different numbers thrown around, whether it's 65 million abortions, you know, over the course of 50 plus years or however many years. Right.

And, and, and that's just like, I think in America, if you incorporate, incorporate the world into that, millions and millions and millions and millions, right. That's listening to a sermon recently. And, and of course I have preached out of Psalm 139, talking about, you know, about how, how, you know, the Lord kind of has our, our life story kind of written out and then we get to pursue that. Right. And, and hopefully fulfill that life story that, that, and then I'm reminded of the prophet who, he said, I knew you before you were even in your mother's womb. And if you pause for a moment, just pause on that and think about that.

Okay. Wait a minute. The creator of the universe, universe knew me, knew you, the listener out there before you were ever in your mother's womb. And then you enter into your mother's womb. And Bill, I was just thinking recently about all, all those who've been aborted. God knew every single one of them before they were ever in their mother's womb, had a plan and a purpose for them. And, and in a sense where I just want to say this way, kind of cheated out of that opportunity, so to speak, for whatever reason, for varieties of reasons, why, why, why women decide to do that. Right.

Or the world was cheated out of the opportunity to have them do whatever they were going to do and pursue. Be here to do right. Whether it's, whether it's like yourself, authoring books or teaching others now and pastoring at church and, and, and, or whatever else you do in this, in this life that you've been given, that your mom made a choice to give you life and here you are, the impact you're making now. So, so brothers and sisters growing up or only child? Only child. Okay. My, my dad, when they married, when I was five, of course, my mom was like, you know, we can have enough, we can have a child and, you know, you're, and he told her, no, I, I missed out on the first five years of Bill's life.

I just, I just want to invest in him. Wow. And so, yeah, I'm an only child. Only child. And so, so I know recently, was it recently that you celebrated an anniversary? We fast forward your marriage. Yeah.

Let's talk about your, it's coming up this month, 29 years, 29 years. And you have a family of your own. Yep. Yep.

Tell us about them. Yeah. My, my wife and I met in college and we're best friends and, and fell in love. And then we now have a 26 year old son who's pursuing a degree in Christian counseling, a master's, and we have a daughter who is 23 and she is working in the fashion industry, the fashion industry.

And congratulations on 29 years. Yeah. And, but most importantly, they, they are, they are both still engaged in church. And so as, as kids growing up as pastor's kids, that is one of the things I'm most grateful for. Yeah. You have, in fact, you were very, I'll use this word, very intentional with that, right? Cause of course, you know, a lot of people, there's lots of stories out there about, you know, the, the pastor, the, the PKs, as we call the pastor's kids who waver off, you know, down, down, find themselves in a ditch or rebel, right? A lot of rebellion. I mean, we, we all experienced that in some point in our life.

At least I'll speak for myself. I have, but I say all that to say, you were very intentional with your children. Talk, take a minute and talk about how intentional you were for them not to go down the path of rebellion. Yeah.

I mean, we, we did things intentionally. So I knew the history of, you know, a lot of pastor's kids and, you know, the ministry requires a whole lot of time. I mean, it just, there's a lot of expectations. So you have to really be guarded and you can't go 100% family. You can't go 100% ministry. I mean, there's, there's a balance there.

And so but it does require time. And we wanted to one, make sure that when I was home, that I was home, that, that they, they got investment in a two, we want to make sure that as a church, they, that they were treated the same as any other kid, which means kid messes up and needs to be called on it. They get called on it, but never, I made it clear to my congregation, like from the pulpit, you, you're not going to discipline my kid by saying, now you're the preacher's kid, right?

You're just not going to do that. And we, we kind of built that wall up around that. And then, and then just, just try to treat them like normal kids and, and give them the time and not letting them feel like they were, they were second. None of those were guarantees, but they were stuff that we could do on our part for my daughter. You know, I could never guarantee that she would not, you know, give, give herself up to guys and stuff like that.

But what I could guarantee was that she wouldn't do that out of not getting affection from me, you know? Right. So as parents, we, and I've seen, I've seen parents who have done seemingly all the right things and their kids still rebel. So, I mean, your, your, your kid still has choices to make, and they're still accountable for those choices, but we're accountable for the parameters we set up and how we structure and what, as a parent, what we prioritize. Right. As a parent. Right.

Absolutely. And yeah. And now, you know, I'm reminded just quickly, I'm reminded of, of the, the show that we, our family was a part of back, you know, seven, eight, nine years ago called Preacher's Daughters. And my youngest daughter, Colby, the whole family was on there. I think they saw him kind of as the Christian Kardashians, actually. Somebody said, your girls are, look like the Christian Kardashians. Right.

Anyway, but the point of the original intent of the show was to show how pastors kids were just regular kids and, and how unfairly the church does put them under a microscope or put them in a glass house. Right. And, and, and, and I know Colby had voiced many times, you know, look, I'm just as human as you are, you know, why do you crucify me?

Because I made a mistake. Right. To your point. So, well, and so, so, okay. So, so you, you have an understanding of salvation at the age of five.

And, and of course you've got a godly mom raising you, a loving dad that comes in your life and dodes and loves you. What, what an amazing story that is to say, no, I just want to focus on, on raising Bill. And so at what point, Bill, did, did you feel, or no, as so in some circles, they say that you were going to be called into ministry or led down the path of getting involved and engaged in ministry.

Yeah. I was at a youth camp when I was 15 years old. And through that, God just really impressed upon my heart that he was calling me into ministry. At that time, I thought it was music ministry, probably because I just love music and love to sing and all that. And so I surrendered 15.

Well, at 16 and I camp the next year summer camp, I just got kind of knocked down and by, by the spirit and it became, is crystal clear to me that, that the Lord was impressing upon my heart. I did not call you to surrender to music ministry. I called you to surrender to me and to lay your yes on the table to say, whatever it is, God, whatever that ministry looks like, I just belong to the Lord and I'm, I'm called.

I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I'll just surrender. You're listening to the truth network and truthnetwork.com Nikita Koloff here, and I am excited. Did you hear the huge announcement, the big announcement?

Well, maybe it's a minor announcement. Anyway, Facebook, go look up my new fan page, Nikita Koloff fans and like it and follow today. If you would like to support Koloff for Christ Ministries for a gift of $25, Nikita will send you his two CDs, Adoration and Declaration. For a gift of $50, Nikita will include his book, Wrestling with Success. And for a gift of $100 or more, Nikita will include a signed copy of his newly updated life story, A Tale of the Ring and Redemption. Go to www.koloff.net and donate today.

You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. And I did a 16th, you know? Okay. And then at 18, freshman year of college, I was on a revival team and they had revival teams that went out and did youth revivals at different smaller churches. And, and we were doing that and they, they were giving us the service and the leader of that team said, do you want to preach this week?

I was like, sure. And I preached and it probably was horrible, but it made a tremendous impact on me, Philippians 2, 5 through 11. And when I did that, whatever ministry God's calling me to is going to include preaching.

And he just sealed that up at 18. Wow. And so that's led you down this path. You've, you've all authored a book. We're going to talk about that. The Eternity Lens, Living in the Real World with an Eternal Perspective.

We'll talk about that. And perhaps another book that's really impacted you. You've pastored a church. You're co, you're currently co-laboring at He's Alive Church in Kannapolis, North Carolina, right? I did over 20 years of lead pastor and church planting. I did some, I went from a hundred year old church to, into a brand new church, you know, to church planting. And so I've kind of done it. I've done it all, you know, I mean, as far as, you know, the minute pastoring. And then about six years ago, my best friend from college has started He's Alive Church and was asking me to come be with him.

I was in church planting and things were finally going well after a lot of rollercoaster ups and downs, you know? Right. And I was like, yeah, I can't leave now.

And he goes, that's fine. Just pray about it. I was like, well, I'm required to pray about it, you know?

Right. And so, and so I did, and I could not, I just could not get away from it and shake it. And so God led me here. I'm one of the elders there, but also on staff, I'm associate pastor. We tag team the preaching. Cause again, that's, that's just gotta be part of what I do. And then I'm over all the missions. I do some administration.

I do quite a bit of the counseling. It's a, as you say, a lot of hats. Again, a lot of hats.

And what's amazing is sometimes everyone, anyone ever wanted to visit, He's Alive in Kannapolis, North Carolina. You're not only, when you say tag team, no pun intended there. Right.

Well, you liked that. Were you a wrestling fan growing up? Oh yeah, buddy.

Oh yeah. You were, I might have to get one story out of you about wrestling, but what's unique too is, is not only do you guys kind of, cause say, you know, some churches might alternate, you know, I'll pastor this week, I'll minister this week, you minister next week, but sometimes you actually been on stage together and in one sermon have tag team. It's very much like a tag team. And we, we do, we've done that quite a bit actually. And it's not something that I would automatically recommend to just anybody, but we have a chemistry. It works.

And it's like, as one person's finishing, I mean, we do sermon prep, we know who's got what, but we don't practice the back and forth. It just flows. It just works. It works. He's alive.

See, we're all these different hats there with He's Alive. And, and of course you have a heart for overseas ministry. You've been to how many countries so far, how many mission trips have you been? I've led 30 international mission trips. And this month I go to Nicaragua and next month back to Vietnam.

That'd be my fourth time in Vietnam. Wow. Incredible. And I'm sure there's many, many, many stories. There's so much we could talk to you about many stories there. There's a lot in the book as well.

A lot of missions throughout that book. Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

And we're going to get to that. And then in addition to all of that, you're a perfect, you teach an online course. You teach online course.

Yeah. I'm an assistant professor for pastoral ministry at Luther Rice College and Seminary. And I've been, I've been doing that for several years and I love it. I teach, teach preaching. I teach their practicum, their internships.

Some on the bachelor's level, teach administration, teach pastoral ministry, bachelor's level, master's level and doctoral level. That in itself is, again, we could do, I think we could do 10 shows with you, Bill. I guess we're just going to have to have you back some time.

Okay. So, so with all that said, and that boy, that's, that's a lot of people right now are like, whoo, I'm going to, I'm, they're pausing and taking a, catching their breath right now. So with all that, I do want to just speak for a minute or two to this. You, you're wearing a Man Camp t-shirt in today. And cause with all of that, you were invited to the, to the Man Camp. Of course, listeners have heard a lot about Man Camp over the years in listening to the show, Q and A with Koloff here at the Man Up show. You chose to, why did you choose to come to Man Camp?

With all you have going on, why did you choose to come to Man Camp? Yeah, I'll, don't you hate it when people say, well, let me be honest. Cause you're like, do you have to tell me that you're going to be honest? Shouldn't you always be honest? Does that mean either you're lying to me?

Yeah. When did you lie to me? But I, I probably, even though it always intrigued me and I, for, for a couple of years, since you came and did a Man Up day conference at, at our, at He's Alive, you know, I've like, man, that sounds cool, but fitting something else into my schedule is just very difficult. And so I had two guys in my life group who, when you came and spoke on Sunday and you, you spoke about Man Camp, they said, we're going well, if they're going to go, I need to go, you know? And so, and even the week of, prior to, I called you, right. And basically I was like, I don't know if I can go, man.

There's just too much going on. And you, you taught me off the ledge and, and I went and it was, it was incredible. It was so needed.

I can't imagine not going to take that week to disconnect. I needed it. I needed it. And I'll never forget that first night when you said, you said, you're going to find out when you go back, that life went on without you and that people are still living and still okay. Right.

Even without needing bill. And that does just impactful, but time alone with the Lord, the teaching was good. The fellowship was great. The, the you know, the mercy seat and all that stuff was phenomenal, but what stood out above all was just quiet, peace, solitude with the Lord with, with no other responsibilities. Yeah. I remember you said to me, bill, you, you said, and for those listening out there, obviously as you're hearing Bill's story and all that he's involved and engaged in that, that in fact, at first, I think that first, that first time we, after breakfast, we sent you out for a quiet time, what we call quiet time, an hour and a half of just quiet time. You said it had been, if I correct me if I'm wrong, it had been a long time since you'd had, let's just say an hour and a half undistracted quiet time like that anyway, with the Lord.

Is that accurate? For sure. And then I know you said the day in the wilderness, we won't reveal too much of the camp, but the day in the wilderness, again, you said just having that time alone out there, spending that time alone out there, spending that day with the Lord again was very impactful for you, right? Would your company, business, or you personally like to partner with me in supporting Kolof for Christ Ministries, the Man Up Show and Man Up Minutes, go to kolof.net and click the donate button.

You can give monthly, annually, or one time. God bless you for making a difference around the world. Awesome. Well, before we run out of time, I do want to talk about, let's just talk about just briefly the eternity lens and why you wrote the book. I know you said a lot of it come from experiences overseas and missionary trips, but give us just a synopsis.

Yeah. The seeds of it were really planted back when I was 17 years old and God did a work in my heart and life. I was standing at the point of having to make a decision after my junior year of high school and trying to figure out some stuff. And I was very stressed. And as I was reading the word, I came across this passage of scripture, take heart. Synchronies 4, 16 through 18, take heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs at all. So we fix our eyes, not on what is seen, but on what is unseen for what is seen is temporary.

What is unseen is eternal. And God through that scripture just directed my heart and gave me peace. And one thing that I've seen over the years is that, you know, we talk about spiritual gifts and I think one of the spiritual gifts that God has given me is faith. And I see that in a lot of the counseling I do.

I mean, the just trust in the Lord through the temporary circumstances with an eye on this all is enveloped by eternity. And I help a lot of people in that direction because they have trouble seeing the unseen. And so with that, because I've helped a lot of people in that, my heart for the book was just to spread that more, to try to help more folks just to see. And so the book takes the word of God and it takes my experiences and kind of molds them together.

But the goal is not for people to learn more about me. It's for them to begin to see their own experiences in the real world. We don't deny the stuff going on in the real world or the difficulties or the struggles or the great, the joys, but seeing those through an eternal perspective. Well, and, and I've read the book, I've got it in my hand and I've got, I was just thumbing through it, looking at all the different things I've highlighted underlined and, and how, how it's impacted me just to one, one, well, I'm just, well, your story is not about you. It's about God. Never, never forget that life principle. Your story is, you're hearing about Bill's story today, but every one of our stories, you know, our story really isn't about it. It's really about God, right? And never forget that life principle. There's another book that impacted you. You only got a couple minutes left, but what's the title of that book and why did that book impact you so much? Yeah, I actually had a guy give me a book and a lot of times, man, with all, with everything I got going on, I need to read more. Okay.

Right, right, right. But it's, it was called positively irritating. And I created a doctoral class at Luther Rice called innovative pastoral ministry. And so this guy gave me this book and I was looking at it and it looked like it kind of fit. So I wanted to make sure I want to see actually required as a textbook now, but it's called positively irritating. And it's, it's really about embracing the postmodern culture for purposes of the gospel.

That's my own paraphrase of the subtitle, but it's by John written her. And as I read through our required in that, in that class now, not with any book we recommend, we may not agree with every single thing in there, but, but it comes out of the analogy of a grain of sand, a grain of sand in a person's eye is very irritating, actually can cause damage, but a grain of sand and an oyster will actually develop a Pearl. And there's a lot of things that are irritating to us as believers in, in our culture. And there's certainly things we need to take a stand for, especially those things with which the Bible speaks of it. But when we take a stand, we still do so with, with grace and gentleness and respect love.

Yeah. And so, but how can we use the, the things of culture as bridges to the gospel? And ultimately that is, that's, that's what that book talks about, you know, and, and how we, he goes in one area, he calls going from a restaurant mentality to a food truck mentality, meaning restaurant mentality is we're set in one place. Y'all are welcome to come. You like the flavors we offer here, then come on to our church food truck goes where the people are.

And yeah, there are different flavors. There's different, different types of ministry, but they're actually going into the neighborhoods. They're going into the parks. They're going to where the people are. And we are in a different scenario of in our culture of it's not as much come and see it's go until dr. Bill Coleman.com.

How can people find out more about he's alive? You got a he's alive church.org is our, is our website bill. Thanks for being on the man up show today. It was great. Thanks for having me. Great to have you here. And thank you for tuning in once again to the man up show. Have a God blessed God filled day. This podcast is made possible by the grace of God and your faithful prayers, support, and generous gifts. May God bless you for your continual contributions. Go to koloff.net and donate today.

Hi, Nikita Koloff. Be sure to check out the man up show now available on television, broadcast, and podcast. Go to morningstartv.com or the truth radio network. Check out your local listings or better yet download the truth network app today. If you are enjoying the man up show, would you help us spread the word? Tell your family, tell your friends, tell your neighbors to download, subscribe, and leave a comment. Nikita Koloff here.

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