Unity After Hours

This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk podcast, connecting current events, pop culture and theology. And we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network.

It's about to start in just a few seconds. Enjoy it and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network.

Coming to you from an entrenched barricade, deep in the heart of central North Carolina. Masculine Journey After Hours, a time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here now.

Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours and we are on a very cool topic this week. It's hard to believe that Danny's the one that originated in this. No, Danny has some really good ideas. We just don't give him credit for them most of the time. Well, you give me credit for cutting a clip the wrong way, but anyway.

Yeah, well, you just don't sell them. Oh my gosh. Maybe a great topic, but I'll be glad when the show's over. It is a great topic. So Danny, will you tell us a little bit more about the topic? The topic is unity and it comes from a buddy of mine from Australia sent me an email about unity and talking about current climates and stuff like that. And I just thought the topic was kind of neat to what we do here because without unity, things are all over the place and people try to do different things all the time and it takes unity to function as a body, as a ministry, as a family.

And so I like the topic, so. I'm good. So you want to go to Rodney's clip? Yeah, Rodney's clip.

Rodney, you want to tell us a little bit about your clip on setting it up? Sure. Thank you. So topic brings unity, so maybe that's why we need a topic. Yeah.

The long-lost question that we always wanted to know the answer to. Yeah, I just wrote that one off altogether. Yeah, I know you did because you weren't here. Right.

Which was good. Yeah. Thank you. Anyway, go ahead. Tell us about your clip.

This is from the Dirty Dozen. The thing that came to my mind when I started to think about unity was what gets accomplished through unity. You guys have talked about the leadership aspect. I think that's very key to it because as a leader, that's what you want to bring is that unity, that common vision, goal, purpose. You look at across businesses and everybody, all these places that can come and help you figure all this stuff out. There's just a huge industry of people that are out there to come in and help you figure out purpose and bring people together and drive a different culture. And most of it is just some scheme to kind of, oh, I got the five-step program to get you there.

And it's like, no, it just usually doesn't work. It has to be spun up from leadership from somebody really, truly having something in common and going somewhere. And there's all kinds of great things that happen during war. And then you start thinking about politics. And it doesn't matter what your side you're on, what you're for, but you just look at whether it's for good or for evil, when there's unity, a lot of things happen and it pulls people together.

So that's where I end up going with the Dirty Dozen. And you've got Major Reisman who is in charge of these prisoners that were on death row. And they're basically being pulled together for what is basically a suicide mission. And that's why you've got a bunch of men that are kind of ragtag bunched. They're all a bunch of individualists.

They only care about themselves. And yet you've got to pull them together and unify them in order for them to go complete this mission, which is very important for what they're trying to do. And as a soldier, you have to fight for the guy on your left and on your right.

You're not just going to be able to go out and fight just for yourself. So you've got a big buildup coming in here to try to get these guys together. And it's really kind of like a mission impossible kind of thing. But this clip is when they're in their barracks and they're trying to come together and they're in a little camp that they made for them. And they're all revolting because they don't want to shave in cold water. But this is the event that kind of unifies them.

The Major notices it, and you can kind of see this play throughout the clip. All right, Franco, what is it this time? How am I supposed to share in cold water?

It's your problem. You're in the field now. Where are you going to get hot water in the field? God's got hot water? You got hot water? You're in the field, right?

That's tough. That's right, Byron. How come you guys have hot water and we don't? No, you keep quiet.

You keep your big mouth shut. We ain't shaving in cold water! No, you want us to shave in cold water. Why don't you shave in cold water? That's right.

Franco told them he means it. We ain't shaving. We ain't washing anything but in cold water. Is that right?

That's right. The God's got hot water. We ain't going to use cold water. And you can't make us either.

You're going to get yourself into hot water, Franco. Now, what are you going to do? You're going to hang us? What can I do? I can't do nothing. What are you going to do? Nothing.

You know, I think Franco might be right this time. Yeah, shaving in cold water won't make us any better soldiers. Excuse me, sir. We got some trouble outside. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I hear. All right, Pullen. On your feet. Hold on right over here, Posey.

Come on, thrust it up there. Get in line. What's this about refusing to shave? Who is refusing to shave? We are. Who is we?

We! All those refusing to shave take one step forward. So you want to stink, huh?

And maybe yes, too? Well, that's okay with me because I don't have to smell you. All right, Sergeant.

There will be no further issue of shaving equipment or the use of soap. And there will be no more hot meals. Just KRASH, courtesy of Mr. Franco. Hey, I really think we got something there. Yeah, that's what the Navy calls mutiny. No, no, no. Remember what I was saying last night about working individually, 12 rugged individualists? So? Well, you heard him. It was all, we ain't going to do this and we ain't going to do that. When I asked him to step forward, even Posey joined him.

I bet you he's been shaving in cold water since he was a kid. Boy, do I love that Franco. You got a situation where the rebel rouser Franco is creating a big disturbance, but it's something that at least the men that are with him in the same circumstance can rally behind and get behind and come together on to have a common enemy in the major and his staff and what they're trying to do with them. And that, you know, gets at least us instead of a bunch 12 mes, they've got now become we. And they can actually come together under this, which then the major now has to get them not only as an enemy with him and the rest of the, you know, regular soldiers, is that you got to unify them so that they can go fight the other common enemy, which is Germany, because they're going to go to France and try to blow up someplace and, you know, kill a bunch of people, which is what happens in war. But you have all this happening and you still, you start looking at, you know, we're about run an election cycle here again. And you look at people kind of rallying and coming together and saying all kinds of things to try to unify their party or their votes or whatever. And it's just impressive what can really happen, again, for good or for evil when people unify and unify behind a leader.

There's some great things that can happen in the world and there's some awful things that have happened in the world. Yep, agreed. So, Danny, this is your topic.

Any idea what you want to do next? I think you want to go to Wayne? I think we're going to try Wayne's clip again. Well, you see, these people that's listening to this show may not have heard the last show, didn't know that we messed up on the clip. They need to go back and mess up. Yeah. So, we probably just need to go and mess it up again just so they can experience the full, you know.

The fullness of messing it up again. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Wayne left, though. He's gone. He's out there. This is Keith. This is a different guy.

No, this is, what was it? Cheer Wayne. Cheer Wayne. Cheer Wayne.

Cheer Wayne, yeah. So, yeah, this video is, again, it is Avengers and the Age of Ultron. It's the end of the movie where, you know, Ultron is basically trying to push a button to destroy everything.

And for me, it was a really great clip from a spiritual point of view of how we kind of come together and need to be in unity. But I'll let you play it and we'll come back to that. What's the drill? This is the drill.

If Ultron gets a hand on the core, we lose. That's advice you have to do. You had to ask. This is the best I can do.

This is exactly what I wanted. All of you against all of me, how can you possibly hope to stop me? Like the old man said, together.

Yeah, so there it is, right? We have to do this together. And so many of us, especially as men, you know, like you said, we walk as long rangers, right? We try to do things on our own. You know, we don't ask for help. Asking for help is a hard, hard thing.

Doesn't matter how much others know you. There are still things that are involved with that. You're coming together in unity. The enemy, again, great clip of the spiritual war that's going on that most people don't even realize is going on, right? Is that, you know, we try to fight this battle. Well, we've got an enemy and he has a lot of minions and we're over here fighting alone and we get worn out. We get tired and we need our brothers to hold us up, right?

Even Moses needed people to hold up his arms. And that's where I was going with this was, you know, we need one another. Yeah, and the enemy likes to let us think that, well, you know, you're a failure because you can't do it on your own, right?

You should be able to accomplish this without help and, you know, throws all these things at you to try to keep you from reaching out and saying, hey, I need some help here. I need somebody to have my back in this situation. Yeah, it was pretty awesome this morning.

Even before knowing what the topic was for the day, right? This morning, I was having a hard time with work and I went down and, you know, to my wife and my kids. I was like, hey, dad's having a hard time.

I need some prayer. And she paused the TV and they come together and we prayed together and it was awesome. They got better, but it was a big deal for her because she's seen me walk and not asking for help.

You know, I constantly tell her, no, this is something that I've got to deal with. I've got to deal with this. And so involving them was a big step for me.

Yeah, it was great. Thank you. That would lead into, I think, where I want to go is, personal stories of, you know, we talk at boot camp a lot about wounds and stuff and a lot of that comes out of lack of unity if you think about it. And, you know, I mean, I grew up in church and I've seen the ugly side of it at times. And I can remember several things, but, you know, where I thought that my personal project or something like that wasn't being heard or I was being overlooked or something and the enemy takes that stuff and runs. But, you know, what Paul says in Ephesians 4 about, you know, burying each other's burdens and love and patience and that kind of thing to understand the guy sitting next to me and not necessarily just on my harold.

He is sitting next to me. But understanding that all of our, like you mentioned earlier, Sam, all of our journeys are different and we see things differently. And as y'all have given me a hard time, we say things differently.

Sell. Oh, yeah. We do give you a hard time to learn a little bit about that. You know, those sounded like the same word though when you said it. It did. Well, it did.

It sounded very similar. Yeah. Well, you want to play Andy's clip? Well, I don't know.

I just didn't know if you're going to dog him. It's the only clip we didn't play. Well, we played it. Well, I won't go there. Not this week we haven't played it. We haven't played it, no.

Do you? Yeah, they're trying to get back in at me because I'm doing a rerun. And so I'll go ahead and set it up. So it's from Braveheart. Imagine that.

Wow. That was pretty high pitch. And it was on two weeks ago, the last show that we had that we were actually using clips. So I'm sorry, the topic seemed apropos. And I didn't really bring out the point on that other show.

So I figured I'd go ahead and use it. But this is the Braveheart clip of you've got the clans, the families fighting together with each other on how to defeat England or capitulate to England and not fight. And so this really gets into Wallace talking to Bruce and trying to really get him as a leader to inspire him to bring the clans together. This time our only option is to negotiate.

Now, that's what he is on the race to the ground. My army has marched for more days than I can remember. And we still have preparations to make.

So I'll make this plain. We require every soldier you can summon, your personal escorts, even yourselves. And we need them now. With such a force of raid against us, it's time to discuss other options. Other options?

Don't you wish at least to lead your men onto the field and barter a better deal with longshikes before you tuck tail and run? Sir William. We cannot defeat this army. We can't.

Sir William. And we will. We want it sterling. And still you. We want it York and you would not support us. If you'll not stand up with us now, then I say you're coward.

And if you are a Scotsman, I am ashamed to call myself one. Please, Sir William, speak with me alone. I beg you.

Now, you've achieved more than anyone ever dreamed. By fighting these odds, it looks like rage. Not courage.

It's well beyond rage. Help me. In the name of Christ, help yourselves. Now is our chance. Now, if we join, we can win.

If we win, well, then we'll have what none of us have ever had before. A country of our own. You're the rightful leader.

And there is strength in you, I say it. Unite us. Unite us. Unite the clans. So that whole unite the clans.

I mean, to me, they're trying to establish or preserve Scotland as a country. And, you know, that's being attacked by the enemy. And to me, it's whenever I look at this as the church. And we have a lot of divisions within the church. You have it within individual bodies of particular churches or congregations. And then you have it in broader things like in denominations we were talking about. And, you know, I think it's just so important. We have a common cause. We're in a common family that we spend so much time fighting one another that we really need to... I mean, the kingdom, the family that we're trying to build is not our own.

It's God's. And, you know, I think we need to determine who the enemy really is and unite the clans to come together. I remember when I first got serious with God in my 20s, 30s, and it took me about a year. And I really just was just, you know, feeding on the word and learning and growing so much. But I began to see that there was still... There was... You know, I'd been out of church for a good while, but I just saw that there was not a lot of unity in the body.

And I think that's improved over time, over years. But it's just so important. I mean, the scripture, I share this. When Danny brought this up, I had to share this scripture. But bold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. And we're all brothers in Christ. And, you know, what's cool about this group is, like we were talking about earlier, we all have such different backgrounds. But I mean, I believe it does God's heart good to see us dwell in unity like this. And we're not the only one. There's many others, and we've joined with others like the group from Ohio.

There's just so much there that we can glean from being unified. You know, I work with food pantry. And the other couple weeks ago, we had so many families come through. We were just out of food. And so social media sometimes can have some really negative impact. But just through something out on social media saying, hey, you know, we need some help. We need some help here. And reached out to a couple other churches and just said, hey, we need some help. And between Facebook and some people we found in High Point, they're like, hey, we've got some extra food. We can help you. You know, in those two churches, we were able to bring in about 1,500 pounds of food in a few days.

You know, and get us through the Saturday, you know, and it'll help us get through this Wednesday until we can get our next allotment from Second Harvest, and that'll help us there. But without that support, you know, the community would have been so negatively impacted. And so in unifying the clans, you know, one of the things we've seen sometimes with ministries is if someone does a similar ministry to yours, they feel like it's competition, and so they don't want to help you. When there's so many people out there that need help that we could never cover the masses that need it, you know, if we could unify, we'd be so much stronger together.

Yep. You know, and it's very important on that. I had the privilege of being a part of a ministry for a long time, Piedmont Ministeal. We had eight different chapters at one time, and we were as diverse. When we had a men's retreat, it was like, at times, 70-some guys there, and just as diverse of anything, but never had an issue, never had an argument, or that kind of thing, and it was just to see that. And, you know, that taught me a lot.

And also, I think we need to hear from our residents' age. Well, this is a topic that can go on and on and on if we so choose to do it, but the thing that's on my mind is that Jesus wanted us to be one so that the world would know that he was who he was, and he also pointed out that a three-stranded cord is hard to break. One of the things that I have loved reading about in quite a few years now is World War II stuff, and Winston Churchill is my favorite character from history other than Jesus Christ himself. And the unity that he brought about when Germany was just bombing London to smithereens, Churchill held those people together in spite of the turmoil that they were facing, and there was no way the RAF should have beaten the Luftwaffe, but they did. And as I read back through the history of World War II, I see God's hand through it everywhere. There's just so many things that went on that under normal human circumstances would have gone a different direction, and yet because of the unity of pulling different nations together to fight against Germany, Hitler was defeated. And so to me, the power of unity is wonderful.

The flip side is, as a high school football player, I was frustrated to death because we did not have any unity in that team, and we won three games out of nine, and I saw the bad side of this unity. We had to talk about you wanted to share stories. One of the stories from work that was really cool for me that I saw good leadership step in. Work construction is my normal job, right, and build houses, that kind of thing, and I was with the company, and at the time I was in leadership of the company, and there was a group of us in the construction leadership side, and then there was a group of them in the supply chain side, and so they would hire the trade partners and train them, and we were supposed to use them.

You know, there was all this finger-pointing all the time. Well, if you would just train your people better, then we wouldn't have the issues we'd have, and if you'd just do your job better, they wouldn't have their issues, and just a week after week after week, and somewhere along the lines, the leadership above us said, we're going to build a habitat house, and we want you guys to do it, and we're like, okay, whatever, not a big deal. And they said, well, we're going to do it in six months, but you have to do it in a day.

We're like, what? From start to finish, in a day, you have to figure out a way to build this house from foundation, the foundation would already be there, but from foundation, through SADA installed, they can move in in one day, and we had to sit in a room and talk with trades and try to figure out a way to do stuff, and the unity that that project brought, and we were able to do it within 12 hours. We had a 12-hour day that we went in and we built this house in a day, and the shared accomplishment, you know, we still had things that we needed to work through, disagreements or things that we saw differently, but because we had this shared victory together, because we had this shared mission that we went on, everything was different, and it remained different. I still talk with those guys once in a while, and once in a while, I'll still go back and talk about that, but it was just great vision from the leadership or luckiness, I don't know which, but I think it was vision, and it changed the dynamic of the company. It really did, because when you have those two major parts of a company that's not getting along well, it can run the company in the ground if you're not careful.

David, do you have anything you want to add to the topic? Yeah, so kind of the play off of talking about leadership, it was kind of funny. I work in the retail industry, and the company I work for, I have the opportunity to go work in several locations quite a bit, and to really just start to unify the team, I was actually asked this by somebody very high up today of what do I do in my location to build that culture and have that, and ultimately it comes down to, I really didn't put it together until just now, the unity of it, and it starts with the leader. Just like we talk about churches, break down everything like that, they're not putting the leader first, and the leader in the church is God, and then they have ministers that are the leadership of the church, and if they're really going more into a politics type of thing, then it's going to definitely divide it, but in business world, if the leader is building that culture and showing that they're united front with their colleagues or their teammates, then it ultimately builds a structure that's a force that they'll be reckoned with, and I know in my profession, I can tell you right now the location that I currently manage is a force to be reckoned with because of the culture that I built and unified that team from the ground up, turned over everybody, and that's completely a team that we built together, and that's exactly what we are as a team. Unity is a team. You're together as a team.

It's not everybody for themselves. Yeah, it makes a big difference when you have leadership that understands that and they enter into that, that numbers are one thing, but culture is what's going to get you there long term. Yeah, I mean, one of us, so the very top leader of our company, one of the biggest things he says all the time is, I'm never going to talk about profits.

I'm never going to talk about what the company makes as profits because if we do everything we're talking about with the servant leadership, we treat our people well, and we're a united team, then profit's going to be there while I even have to talk about it, and that kind of plays off of what you just said, so. And a lot of times it's forced because some leader sees something down that, like, this isn't good, that we're not going the right direction, we're dis-unified, we're not getting things done. The numbers or the culture or what people are saying, and we have some consultants in our facility right now, the same consultants that were in another facility in our company a few years back, the manager that was down there with that, when it was forced upon him, and in three months they really did nothing.

The consultants told the higher ups that sent him in there, nothing's happening, well, they had a come to Jesus meeting. You know, it's like, everybody's on board, you're with me, or you're against me kind of thing, and that started changing that culture. Now he, years later, is the boss over at our facility and has told our facility, this is what you're going to do, and they're in there, and it's forced, but it's starting to change how people see things and bring people together for one common direction. Yeah, one common goal. A few weeks ago we did a show on King, being a king, and we talked about everybody has something they're king over. So the challenge for you this week, whatever you're king over, are you bringing unity to the people that were with you, or are you having disharmony amongst the group? Go to masculinejourney.org to register for boot camp, November 17th through 20th. We'll talk with you next week. This is the Truth Network.