Alabama Pastor Says "Roll Tide"

This is Hans Schile from the Finishing Well Podcast. On Finishing Well, we help you make godly choices about Medicare, long-term care, and your money. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. And I know he's big into football, and I know he loves Jesus, and he is Pastor Travis. Pastor, what have we walked into here?

Talk to me. Stu, I walked into a cultural landmine because you completely mispronounced mobile. M-O-B-E, long-e, long-e-l, mobile. Like a mobile phone? It's really actually, no, like a mobile phone, but it is very confusing when you're looking for a mobile phone repair shop in Mobile.

Like is it Mobile repair phone or is it mobile phone repair? But tell everyone about the meme you put on your Instagram, Pastor Travis. Alabama won a big game and you posted immediately. You seized the moment as a pastor. I had to.

I had it tuned up on the last play, right? Because you're always in it until it's over, right? So, Alabama, Auburn, Iron Bowl. I hate preaching, but following the day after that because half of my church is upset, right? Well, actually, the Alabama fans make up the crowd. The Auburn fans make up the offering.

So, we're like wrestling around on that. So, when the fourth and 31 happened, we got the touchdown, then I Facebooked out, Instagrammed out. What was it? No excuses. Dear Alabama fans, no excuses. Oh, come on, help me out.

Help me out. You better be in church tomorrow. God came through for you.

You need to come through for him. Yeah, it was a moment. It's not exactly what I said, but you get the idea. I love it.

So, some people call him a mega church pastor. We are actually in the bookstore. My daughter's videoing us right now.

There's Joy. She is a student here at this Liberty University. We just had a high powered meeting here. But tell us, pastor, how did you come to know the Lord? And I wanted you to share your testimony a little bit with these young people.

These are future leaders of America. We're in here broadcasting from this cool on campus coffee shop. I love it. And my pumpkin spice latte half sweet with oat milk is about to come up.

You've got your caramel macchiato. You've got a head start on me. But talk a little bit about who is Pastor Travis Johnson? Tell us a little bit about who you are, your testimony. Okay, so I grew up in a pastor's home. So I was a PK.

So all of the pastor's kids. Are you a PK? Okay, so I was. Hey, my, my dad.

I still am right. But my dad on the first Sunday of a pastor when I was 13 years old. I climbed on the roof of the church with another kid I just met in the church.

He fell off broke his arm. That was so pastor. Yeah, pastor's kids.

You got stuff. Okay, so, but I grew up in grew up in church. And I love my dad had a mom and dad that they live their faith the same in the pulpit as he did at home. So that really helped you grow up where I grew up in Miami, Florida.

Okay, I grew up in Miami homestead, South Miami. And so I actually came to faith for myself. When a friend raised questions about Jesus, he was he was a Jehovah's Witness. So I have began to have questions about did Jesus exist. So I did what I did. So I did what any 17 year old would do.

I started I started researching. And then when I realized it, it's of course, Jesus is a historical figure, actual historical figure. Then I had to say, Is he who he said he was? And then also had to settle some questions he raised in my mind about the New World Translation, you know, Jehovah's Witness.

So I also did what any 17 year would do. And I bought a Hebrew, a Greek Hebrew interlinear Bible. And I began to look and I saw well john one.

Their interpretation is, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was a God, I noticed there is no, that was a missing mistranslation. So I dispatched with that, started looking for myself, I saw how the disciples had, you know, in reading the scriptures, how the disciples had denied Jesus. But post crucifixion, how they all but john had died as a martyr, Peter crucified upside down in Rome.

John, he got off easily by being boiled in oil and exiled to the isle of Patmos. So for me, I said, Okay, Jesus is real. And I think he is who he says he is. And then that's around the time where I began to own my faith for my for myself, I went to college, I didn't know I was going to go into ministry, I ended up working as a marketing director for a Carlyle group company, when electronic bill presentment payment was starting. And I had previously asked the Lord, I was like, you know, Lord, what do you want me to do?

I don't hear anything from you, I just need you to make it obvious. So this is while I was in college, just getting ready to leave. And my pastor, pastor of a large church, came up to me said, Travis, I want you to come see me, I'd like for you to be my young adult pastor, I thought that was pretty obvious. I just went from there. I took my degree, worked in that field that I was telling you about paid the bills started a church in Chicago.

And that's good. And that's kind of how our route took you. Now you're pastoring Pathway Church, right church in Alabama. And check this out, you guys, during COVID, which was a real tough time for the church. You were telling me earlier, your church actually grew to tell the Lord tell folks what the Lord's been doing at Pathway Church in Alabama, if you're anywhere down near Alabama, I guess, Mo Mobile, Alabama, Mobile, Mobile, Alabama is down near Pensacola down near the panhandle, right? We're in between Pensacola and New Orleans.

Okay, so it's a little, you know, it's a little French little redneck little coastal five months. It's like heaven. I tell people, you can't get to heaven, get to mobile.

It's pretty great. Go to heaven. You need to go to heaven.

But mobile is pretty great. So yeah, we we were just pastoring and you live in a mobile home. I don't have anything to say no. Sorry. I just kind of roll.

No, no. So during COVID, we just started meeting needs. We started meeting needs.

One of the cool things that happened for us is I'm in my backyard, everything had just happened. I'm talking about Facebook live, talking about what we're doing in ministry, we had started, we started putting food in people's trunk trunks. We had people coming to church, we were given away about groceries for about 34,000 families a week. So they would come in lines, we just put the groceries in their trunk. We pray for people. And so while I was in my backyard, just talking about this, I said, You know what I'd love to do, I'd love to feed all of the doctors and nurses in our city. And so we just started meeting needs.

So what ended up happening is, during COVID, we went from two campuses to doubling that to four campuses during those couple of years there. And God was just really faithful. Well, there's a lot of turbulence today, a lot of folks, a lot of attacks on the church, a lot of gender confusion, a lot of crazy stuff, and a lot of temptation for pastors to kind of get away from the true teaching, gospel center teaching of the Word of God. And just to kind of go into the pop culture stuff and to get popular or get too political or get too woke, whatever.

That's really what's happening. to kind of get away from the true teaching, gospel-centered teaching of the word of God, and just to kind of go into the pop culture stuff and to get popular or get too political or get too woke, whatever. Give us a challenge in what God's put in your heart, Pastor Travis, Pathway Church. What's your word to pastors out there about holding forth the word of truth? I would say preach, preach the Bible. Actually, it feels like there's been somewhat of a revival of preaching the scriptures and fall in love with the Bible again.

It really is everything. How are people going to be saved if we don't give them the scriptures? How will they be saved without the gospel? So we probably need less therapeutic preaching, more gospel preaching, more Bible preaching. But what I have definitely, definitely seen, what I have definitely seen is I have seen people coming to Christ during some of the most challenging moments, Pride Month, different attacks on the church when the church is shutting down. I'm thinking about when we were forced out of the church and we're passing out food. I remember on one particular Wednesday, there were two families in the line that had had an immediate family member either commit suicide or overdose. And there are just needs throughout the community. It's just an incredible opportunity for the church to step up and love people, serve people, and preach the gospel. That's pretty amazing. The church being the church, isn't that cool, y'all, adopting a whole hospital?

You know, during COVID, we're going to go feed the medical people, the ones that are putting up with us, the ones that are risking their lives to save our lives. What's the best way for folks to hear your preaching to find out more about Pathway Church in Mobile. Oh, I like it. Mobile, Alabama, from Mobile, Alabama, at linebacker, Pastor Travis Johnson. You can check us out at pathwaychurch.us or of course on Facebook, Instagram, that sort of thing. Catch us on YouTube.

We'd love to have you pipe in. Go to his Instagram page. I just followed you and we're really friends.

By the way, he followed me before I could follow him, which is kind of cool. But I saw that meme and I just had to laugh. I'm going to screenshot that and shoot it to all my Alabama fans.

Maybe someone will go to church town. I did another one after the Alabama-Georgia game, right? So that was great.

So you got one coming up in the big championship. So I lost my voice. I lost my voice after the Alabama-Auburn game. I'm sitting out back. We live on the river and I'm like yelling.

I can hear people in the neighborhood yelling. I lost my voice at the end of that game. So for the Alabama-Georgia game, I was very quiet, very well behaved. Fourth quarter, I'm repeating over and over, goose frabba, you know, just really just trying to chill out a little bit.

It's interesting he said that because, you know, his whole meme was, you know, your team won the game. You have no reason not to go to church. Well, he had a reason not to go to church. He's the preacher.

He has no voice. So, hey, thanks for bringing the word, brother. Thanks for being a blessing, man.

Thank you so much. This has been really great, Stu. We're on the campus of Liberty University in the coffee shop here with a bunch of Liberty University students. Hey, let's make a little noise, Liberty students. Let's make a little noise, Liberty students. Come on, let's make a little noise. Live national radio. Awesome. This is big ratings.

93.7 FM, our big station here. Hey, we made some noise, didn't we, preacher? Yeah, we did, we did.

We could get them to do better. Hey, hey, come on, you guys, give it up, let's go. Give it up, give it up.

Live national radio. Awesome. All right. We're still waiting on my coffee. It'll be here any minute. God bless you, man.

Thanks for being on. Let's all read it, read it. Go ahead, read the thing. He's pulling up, he's pulling up. There's two memes.

There's two memes. I'll close with this, Stu. This is after the Alabama-Georgia game. Announcement from my church. You may say, quote, amen, or, quote, roll tide while I'm preaching tomorrow. That is. So you gave a mic drop moment from the word someone yelled. Instead of amen, they yelled roll tide. It is basically like that anyway, so it didn't take any encouragement. Check out the podcast, share this, and connect with Pastor Travis online at truthnetwork.com and download and subscribe to our podcast network. This is the Truth Network.