Pastor Appreciation

Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network.

This is kind of a great thing and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together. Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Energize Ministries. For those of you that may not have heard me on this program before, I am the Executive Director of Energize Ministries. Our ministry provides encouragement, refreshment, and recreational retreats for pastors and their families.

We provide that all over the nation. And it's Pastor Appreciation Month, so at some point today we're going to be talking about that. And for all of you listening right now, if you get a chance to call in and tell us a story about how you have already encouraged your pastor, we'd love to hear it. The call in today is 866-348-7884.

866-348-7884. We'd love to hear your stories about how you are encouraging your pastors, not just in October, but throughout the year. But that's one of our topics today. Another topic we're going to talk about is what's happening in western North Carolina.

That's our home state here. So we're going to give you some updates on that. And then also I have in the studio with me today Mr. Mike Dillon. Mike Dillon is the Vice President at Richard Childers Racing.

Been in racing his whole life and he's got a special event. But Mike, how you doing today? I'm doing great, man.

Been loading trucks up today for the folks out west. Well, I am thrilled to have you on here. You guys don't know it, but Mike's become one of my best buddies here. He has been pursuing the Lord the last several years like a tornado. And he's just a great encouragement.

So he's got a special thing coming up we're going to talk about. But right now we're going to talk about pastor appreciation. It's October, pastor appreciation month, 866-348-7884. If you've got a unique way that you've encouraged your pastor, either this month or throughout the last year or even over the last several years, we'd like to hear it. In our ministry, I mentioned earlier, we specialize in what we call preventive care and prayer support.

And it's an easy thing to do. It's just something we don't often think about. Our pastors are dealing with all kinds of behind-the-scenes stresses that most of us never get to see except for 9 to 12 on Sunday. We see them preaching and then we see them go home or maybe go out for lunch. And a lot of people think maybe that's the toughest part of their week.

But really, our pastors are called, anointed, appointed to serve by the Lord. And there's a lot of behind-the-scenes things that goes on. So we'll talk a little bit about that. But really, if you get a chance, we'd love to hear from you. In the meantime, Mike, what's coming up in your world? We've got a lot going on. The big thing is October 15th, which is next Tuesday, we have our second Hometown Men's Fellowship up at RCR at the Race Shop.

Hang on a minute. I want to hear about it. But you've got to tell me, what is the purpose of Hometown Men? It's to help men to understand their role as a man in the family and what we're supposed to do. To get on our knees, first thing, start your day and pray. And get in your Bible. Read your Bible. And if you start doing that, your life will change.

Well, you started Hometown Men's for that exact reason. Why don't you just give us a brief little testimony, anyway, of how you got from, I'm going to say, the old Mike to the new Mike? Well, it's God.

First thing about it all. Someone sent me a note saying, hey, I wrote this book. I hope it can help you as much as it's helped me.

It's changed my life. I looked at it and it's called The First Hour From In. Mark Cook wrote it.

Didn't know that, but he's the one that sent it to me until I got into it a little bit. Anyway, long story short, it's a boot camp. Basically, a 30-day challenge for you to get up in the morning and pray, be thankful to the Lord. And then pray teaches you how to pray, in my opinion, and reading your Bible. And once you start reading that Bible and you get into it, you find out why they call it the living word and why it's the truth.

And it's something special that unless you do it, you probably don't understand what I'm talking about. So you've experienced the statement that the Bible changes lives. Reading the Bible changes lives. Reading the words of our Lord changes lives.

Reading the Bible will change your life if you do it daily and you allow the Holy Spirit to take over and guide your steps every day, because every day is a new one. Tomorrow, nothing's promised. We don't know what tomorrow brings. We've got to worry about today. And by getting up and starting your day that way and just trusting in God, it's just a different life.

Made enough of a difference in your life that you, at some point over the last years, you felt like the Lord's called you to share that. And listen, you guys that are NASCAR fans, you know the Dillon name, right? I'm in the studio here with Mike Dillon today. I mentioned earlier he's the Vice President of Richard Childers Racing. Got connections to Richard Childers through family.

I've got two kids that are in the top series of racing in NASCAR. And so you're in this world, high pressure, fast paced, lots of pulls on your time and influence. But for some reason, Lord called you to do something special with what he's done in your life.

What does that look like? You're talking about the hometown? Yeah, the reason you started Hometown Men's. It's just, you know, I've been blessed with a platform and, you know, I didn't think of using it this way until, you know, I was reading one morning and praying and say, hey, you know, I want to tell some people about this. I mean, it's just it's that way. You can't hold it in.

You can't. And Richard Payne, who I call preacher at shop, he's been with us for 25 years. Richard has allowed us. He's had a preacher on staff for 25 years at RCR and he's allowed us to do this. Joytime Ministries just had a big event at RCR.

You know, who would have thought that a race shop would be a church, you know, and bringing people in to worship the Lord. So it's a it's a it's a it's an awesome place and he allows us to do it. And that's that's a blessing in itself there. But we got we just got together and you're a big part of it. You know, Energize Ministries brought in all the pastors that brought their their men in. And it's just a blessing. Then you get to hear back from these guys that are saying how much what it's doing for them. And it's the same way is the same thing.

Yeah. So so what Mike's talking about is next week is coming Tuesday night. If you're in North Carolina, you're in the in the sound of my voice here on our home state. Come on out October 15th. We're going to have a men's event at Richard Childress Racing. We're going to talk more about it after the break.

But in the meantime, check it out. Come visit with us and we'll be back soon. You're listening to the Truth Network and Truth Network dot com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live today. My name is Andy Bowersox. I am your host this afternoon.

I'm in the studio with Mr. Mike Dillon. And we're talking about a couple of different things today. The first thing right off the bat, we're talking about pastor appreciation and how you show your pastor appreciation. If you've got a story to share with us, I'm going to give this number twice.

And for two reasons. Number is 866-348-7884 or 86634 truth. We want to hear your story about how you show pastor appreciation. But if you're somebody out there and let's just say you often sit on the back row at your church and you're studying your pastor. And you think, you know, my pastor, all he does is hang out up here half a day on Sunday.

And then he sits down at the biscuit shop and and sucking on biscuits all week. If you think he really has it easy and he doesn't need your appreciation, I'd like to talk to you, too, about that. We run across all sorts of people that some understand what the lives of their pastors are like, but some don't. And so whatever you think about your pastor, I'd like to talk to you. I'm either going to encourage you or I'm going to help educate you a little bit today.

So 866-348-7884 or 86634 truth. We want to hear your stories about pastor appreciation and how you're caring. But also, Mike Dillon's in the studio with me and Mike actually just came back from a disaster relief site up in North Wilkesboro.

So western part of our state. And we want to get a little report on what's on what he's experienced there. So, Mike, tell us the last couple of days. Have you been involved with this? Well, you know, everybody, we jumped right in up at the race shop and had a drop off site for folks in our area to bring bring stuff in. And we had a couple of tractor trailers there to load. You mean somebody, somebody came in with a trunk, a trunk load of paper towels? Was that what happened?

Oh, yeah. We had a we had a gentleman named Matt Myers out of Pennsylvania calls and said, hey, I got 14 tractor trailers. I'm bringing down new generators, all kinds of stuff. I'm like 14 tractor trailers. I was like supplies from Pennsylvania, from Pennsylvania, 500 miles away. Ohio.

They're coming from everywhere. You know, it's unreal. And so we didn't have this.

Well, I didn't know what to do with it. So we went to called Ronald Queen up at North Wilkesboro Speedway. And Marcus Smith is letting them use that place to drop off. There's National Guard up there. Everybody's up there.

Samaritan's Purse. They're up there working out of there. They've got stuff. The whole speedway is covered in supplies. So we took these trucks up there, unloaded them.

And then we're still having to drop off at RCR. And it's incredible what the people everybody's pulling in and bringing stuff. You look, God's at work, man. It's just awesome.

And I can't tell you how many times I've heard that statement made. So let's come back to that statement in a minute, because we've got Ann on the phone here and Ann's got a comment about her pastor appreciation. So, Ann, are you with us?

Yes. Tell us your story about pastor appreciation today. Well, I was a pastor for 17 years in the early part of this decade, of this millennium. And I appreciated the gifts that were given to us. And before the 2000s, many times pastors were taken for granted.

But since then, many are driving very fine homes, very fine houses, cars, whatever. And what about the rest of the body that, first of all, the volunteers and many, many, many hundreds of churches who are taken for granted and not paid at all. Yet the man at the top is getting the bonus. I don't know what they do with those bonuses. I know what we did.

We gave them to our helper and we did not drive a Lexus and we did. But I think we should get real about the needs in the world. And even what's happening, you know, in our state that the guy doesn't need another Starbucks card. He needs you to be the body of Christ. And if he's a real believer, he will be thrilled about that. Well, there's parts of your statement, Ann, I absolutely agree with and parts I'm not sure about. Only because I think a lot of the things we see, it's so subjective on our part, right?

I mean, listen, no matter what kind of car you drive or what kind of house you live in, at the end of the day, there's always somebody that's got something nicer or maybe something that doesn't seem as nice. And it all belongs to the Lord anyway, right? I mean, our pastors are human, just like the rest of us. And we all have struggles and issues. But what does the Bible tell us?

The Lord is the judge of the heart, right? And so a lot of that I do agree with. And I appreciate your call about showing appreciation to the rest of the staff and team because there's a lot of laborers out there. And so our ministry specifically, we specialize in supporting pastors and their families. But so many times, you're right, there's janitors, there's staff people, there's children's volunteers, they all need our appreciation.

So I appreciate you calling in. In the meantime, let's get back to Mike and what you were telling us about the Wilkesboro experience and what's happened with all these goods and services. Like, you know, are the needs really that great, Mike, from what you've seen up there? Well, there's all kinds of different things that I've heard and have not personally witnessed past the area of North Wilkesboro. I've got friends who've been on up into the mountains and further out. And I mean, there's truly things wiped out and gone.

Land's been moved, you know, where things were, they're not there anymore. So there's a lot of a lot of things changing as far as I'm you know, I can't speak as far as what are the needs and how severe they are. I do know there's there's people even in their homes don't have power. I've heard that there's still 40 days or more before some people will get power on up above Banner Elk and those places way out.

So I think the needs are going to continue for a long, long time. So but but what you see everybody pulling together and these these people that just jumped on it and and taking their personal vehicles, vehicles that they're going to take to get up there and go do the work. And then these contractors, I've got several friends who are contractors that came in.

I have a friend from South Carolina who owns a paving business and he brought 4500 gallons of diesel fuel up like two days. They were the things that they were needing quickly. Yeah, I think you bring up a good point. I mean, the the monetary value of what people are giving and doing is astonishing. Yeah.

And it's a great thing to see. I actually was up there. A small portion of our of our pastor care ministry does disaster relief specifically for pastors. And so last week we had a team up there and yours truly was laying on his back in the in two or three inches of muddy water underneath this pastor's house, pulling down flooded and rotten insulation.

Probably one of the grossest things I've ever had to do, but it made a huge difference in his life. And so, you know, many, many of you know what's going on. By all means, keep your prayers up. But let's go back to we got we got just a minute before next break for Hometown Men's Foundation. And I want to brag on a local restaurant chain here, Daria Restaurants. They sort of stepped up to help out with this thing.

Get it, get it produced, get get the publicity out there. And so you think they make a good hot dog for those of you listening in the triad area? Everything. Anything you think of.

Hamburger and hot dogs and stuff like that. But Daria's milkshake is probably the best. You're a milkshake man. Well, I get this. I get the scoop too. I don't get the soft serve. I want the scoop.

You want the real thing. Well, we appreciate Daria Restaurants for sure. And Tuesday night, if you're just tuning in, is the Hometown Men's Fellowship with Michael McDowell going to be our keynote speaker.

Daytona 500 champion. It's a free event. Tell the men, tell your buddies and many of your church. Come join us and we'll be back in just a few. Truth Talk Live! You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live today. It's Andy Bowersox from Energized Ministries. As your host, I got my good friend Mike Dillon in the studio here with us today.

And we basically have been talking round and round about three different things so far. First is Energized Ministries. We provide encouragement, refreshment and recreational retreats for pastors and their families. We've been doing it 14 years now. We're coming up on our 15th year anniversary. But it's Pastor Appreciation Month.

That's part of the reason why we're in here. And so if you've got a story about how you've encouraged your pastor or how you'd like to encourage your pastor, share some ideas with others, we want to hear it. The number to call in is 866-348-7884.

866-348-7884 or 86634-TRUTH. Tell us your story about how you've encouraged your pastor, maybe why you think your pastor should or shouldn't be encouraged these days. But we want to talk to you about it. And then the other topics we've covered is updates on what's happening in western North Carolina. I just shared a little bit about how our ministry was serving a pastor, that his home was flooded. Tremendous amount of needs there. And certainly all of us can be praying for those needs if you can help support in other ways. There's a variety of great ways to do that and show your Christian love to our friends and neighbors. And then the third was the Hometown Men's Fellowship Foundation that Mike started here, because he's got a heart to share what the Lord's done in his life with other men. And if you're local and you're hearing this, there's an event coming up at Richard Childress Racing.

It'll be this Tuesday night, October 15th, 7 p.m. But in the meantime, I want to cover just a little bit more about why our ministry exists. And some of you that have heard me on this program before know a little background. But 14 years ago, I was just a layperson in our church. I was sort of minding my own business. And I befriended the children's pastor.

My wife and I have three children. And at that time they were little, and the children's pastor there was a guy named Pastor Dave. And Dave had seven children. Of those seven kids, six of them were girls. I don't know if you know this story, Mike.

You're looking at me in the studio here. But of those seven PKs, six of them were girls, and he had one son. And him and his son didn't often get to do guy-type, adventure-type stuff. So one day I just invited him to come over.

I have a small farm in Winston-Salem here. And I was taking my kids out to ride some ATVs and just goof around. And I called, I said, Pastor Dave, do you want to bring your son over? And he said, man, you have no idea how much I need that. And so he came over, and probably just three or four hours we spent goofing around, made a little campfire, you know, typical guy-type stuff. And at the end of that day, I've always told people he was overly grateful for that experience. And he kept calling me about it, and finally he said, Andy, he said, I can't get this idea out of my head, but I really feel like the Lord wants me to help you start a ministry to do what you do for other pastors. And I remember looking at him, and I'm like, well, Dave, what does that do exactly?

Because we were just out screwing around and having fun. And he said, well, will you just start praying about this with me, and let's see what happens. And I could tell you guys, like, from that moment on, I knew that God was calling me to spend my time encouraging other pastors.

I didn't know it was going to turn into anything else. I just knew it was something I was supposed to do. And so one thing led to another, and now here we are 14 years later, and our ministry, you know, works through Christian Radio. We have these bus tours.

We do special events. We do all kinds of things to reach a nation of believers. And in our world, we were building this army of believers that are committed to sort of refilling the pictures of their own pastors' lives. Well, the back story on Pastor Dave and these seven PKs, and I'll bet you there's somebody out there right now that either is a PK or certainly knows one, and sometimes they get a bad rap.

Well, these seven kids, you know, you can picture the scene. Go back 25 years ago, it was a very traditional church, and Dave and his family, his kids were expected to be sitting in the front row with their dresses down to the ankles and, you know, all three services. So what's a PK? PK is a pastor's kid. Oh, pastor's kid.

Oh yeah, sorry, I thought you knew that. So anyway, so here's a very traditional church, you know, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night services, and all these kids in the front row, a lot of pressure, and one of those girls got pregnant at 17 years old. And I wish that I could tell you guys that that church surrounded that family with love and grace in what was already a difficult situation.

A lot of you can probably guess what happened. You know, the church leadership basically said, Pastor Dave, if you can't take care of your family, you sure can't take care of this church, and you're out. And the prevailing attitudes and actions of that congregation, while certainly not the only problem, it certainly contributed to sending those kids into a very dark path of running from the Lord, running from the church. That's a lot of background to the story of why I just asked Pastor Dave to come out without any kind of encumbrances, just to be a friend, just to be an encouragement to him. And that was the beginning of this ministry. Well, here we are almost 15 years into it, 22 years after that event happened at his former church, and I can tell you guys that basically all but maybe one of those kids is now back walking with the Lord again. Three of them have worked in our ministry, and it's been a redemptive story. So, you want to know about energized ministries, you've probably got a lot more detail than you're really bargaining for, but we want to hear your stories about pastor appreciation.

Call us, give us the ups and the downs, 866-348-7884. We'd love to hear from you. But I want to go back and talk a little bit more about how God called Mike, you, to reach out and share your story, share your influence, share your platform, to really turn men or help men turn back to their first hour, their first goal, their first commitment.

Give us a little bit of rundown. What's going to happen this Tuesday night? Well, we're going to talk about, I'm going to talk about what God, the Holy Spirit has done for me and my life. Michael McDowell is going to come in and give his testimony.

He's an amazing man, father, who lives in a sport that is pretty high pressure, a lot of travel, a lot of things, but his witness is unbelievable. And if you watch him, he comes to the racetrack with his family in tow, everywhere he goes, he drives the motorhome that he comes in. And I tell everybody, it looks like the Brady Bunch piling out.

He's got, I don't know, five or six kids. And they're amazing, every one of them. They're there every weekend, they're at the racetrack with him. And they have been since I've known him. For years. Well, the amazing story about him is everything's in God's timing. And you think that Michael McDowell won the Daytona 500 here in 21, but in 2008 he had a wreck in Texas that I was on top of the truck watching.

And when I saw it, it was one of those things that this might not be good. And some things changed. I don't know exactly how it went, but I do know how persistent Michael was after that. At that point in time, he was the next sliced bread. He was the guy, he was fast everywhere we went, but he had an accident. Everybody watching.

Everybody's watching. And when he had that accident, things changed a little bit. And then his career changed. And he came to RCR a couple of times.

We talked about trying to figure out ways to get him in a car and doing the things. And he just stayed with it, stayed with it. And then 13 years later, he's the Daytona 500 champion. And so it's an awesome story. But his priority was God first, family, and then his work. And you could see that the whole time.

And he kept on. And it was pretty awesome. It's pretty awesome to have been able to. I didn't even realize it until I was thinking about how I'm going to introduce him Tuesday night.

And I started thinking about it. I'm like, wow, God, this is pretty awesome to have somebody like this. I mean, there's just so many opportunities in the Bible to what he's done. Michael's one of those guys that, just like a lot of guys in your world, could be doing anything they want to during the week, during the weekend. And without fail, his priorities are to serve the Lord no matter how long he's in the sport, no matter if he's at the top of the sport or at the bottom of the sport. He has been a good challenge to me personally through the years and to many of the younger drivers in the garage area.

I mean, he really has his, what's the old ad, have your head on straight, keeping the main thing the main thing. And so, yeah, if you're local, when I say local, I'm talking about the Triad, Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Raleigh area. Come on over to RCR this Tuesday night. I think, Mike, there should be a website for signing up here. I'm not sure, listen, if you can't find it, Google it.

Go ahead, tell us. Hometown, you can just Google Hometown Men's Foundation. It pops up, there's a QR code there that shows you how to register. It's free.

If you don't want to register, you don't have to register. Just show up. The door's open at 6.

It's going to start at 7. We're going to try to be very prompt with our time, and we're asking people to come out, and it's going to be awesome. But you don't have to be just from around here. If you want to fly in, you can come on in. You come on.

I mean, last year, I think, was the first time we did this. Had about 600, 700 guys there expecting at least the same this Tuesday night. So, yeah, check it out, Hometown Men's Foundation. Just Google that.

You'll find the event at RCR, and you can download your free tickets to that, and just come on. Truth Talk Live! You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. It's Andy Bowersox again from Energize Ministries. I'm in the studio with my good buddy Mike Dillon today, and just a little recap.

We've been talking about three different things. Pastor Appreciation Month, we still have time to hear your stories about how you've been the voice of encouragement to your pastor or how you've been an advocate for your pastor. That's something that our ministry is pretty passionate about is establishing training.

In fact, it's probably a good time to mention it. If you care about your pastor, if you want to figure out how you can be more of an encouragement and help support healthy leadership, our ministry provides monthly trainings. We call it Pastor Care Rep, PCER trainings, and the next one is coming up on November 16th.

If you're not local, you can certainly join us online, and there's information on our website about that, energizeministries.com. Just look for the PCER tab or Pastor Care Rep tab, and it's a free training. We'd love to get you involved and help be a catalyst and an advocate for care for your pastor in your own home church.

But I've been talking about that, and then we've been talking a little bit about what's happening in western North Carolina. I should probably mention again that our ministry, as part of Pastor Care, we do a very specific, we call it Pastor Disaster Relief, and we don't go for any other reason other than to help pastors or some of the smaller churches get set up, because as Mike was talking about earlier, the churches become the places where the relief supplies and the distributions happen. So we really believe that if we can help, as a ministry, help these pastors and get their churches that were maybe underwater or needed to be mucked out and restored, that's why we go. So probably a great opportunity if you're listening in the western part of North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia area, and your church needs a little help, please reach out to us.

It's energizedministries.com. There's the Pastor Disaster Relief tab there you can check out as well. But then we've also been talking about this upcoming hometown men's event.

And if you're on the west coast, you may or may not want to make it over to Richard Childress Racing for that, but you could certainly pray. But Mike, the sponsor we got for this thing, tell us a little bit about that and why are they helping us anyway? Well, Dario, they're a very faith-based company. They have a Bible study every Wednesday morning at their restaurants. You know, every eight o'clock every Wednesday morning, I went to Thomasville, the Winston-Salem one. They have a restaurant in Clemens. Archdale. If you're in North Carolina and you don't know Dario restaurants, you certainly should.

Old time, hamburger, milkshake, ice cream place. But yeah, I mean the Bible study. Wait a minute, does anybody get to go to the Bible study?

Anybody does. I got to go. Well, wait a minute. What if you're a woman? This is a men's Bible study we're talking about Wednesday mornings. Men's Bible study Wednesday morning and they're helping us with a men's event.

Okay. We're men. That's what we're talking about here right now. So the First Hour for Men book, there's more women getting it for their men. So we don't want to leave anybody out.

No. Well, I'm sort of just kidding you a little bit. But yeah, I mean Dario has been a great partner of this event. Dario has been a good supporter of our ministry through the years. And it's just coming up Tuesday night. Rusty LaRue is going to be there. Rusty LaRue is part of the leadership team and he will be at this hometown men's event.

Yeah. So this is like an all-star lineup. We got Rusty going to open it up. You're going to be there.

Some of your family. You got Michael McDowell. Guilford is going to be there to provide music. You know, it's worth coming out just to see Parker Webb's hair.

Have you seen it? I know Parker Webb. Parker is right out of GQ magazine. It's worth coming out to see his hair just to see that.

And his beautiful voice. So all this happening, what's it cost to come to the Hometown Men's Fellowship? Your time is free. No money.

No money. Just come on out. Here with testimony, sharing God's stories and testimonies of people's lives.

It's also a great way to bring, if you got a friend that doesn't know the Lord, that's what this is for. Yes. Right?

We want to introduce the relationship. Just that one. We get just that one. Just one.

Just bring one. That's right. And so I was privileged to be a part of this event last year, and I know there's a big push also after this that there'll be follow-up Bible studies.

Yeah. So what's the point of that, Mike? Why aren't we doing this? Well, to be honest, we felt like after last year's event, we probably didn't do that good of a job to follow back up with our churches and other men to see how, you know, where they were going and what directions they were in. Did they need help with reading the Bible, learning God's Word? So we decided to, for at least four Tuesdays in a row right after this event, to start having a get-together, a Bible study, on Tuesday night at the museum there at RCR after this. So we can build up and possibly, hopefully, be able to send men to different churches and different areas and get them started. You know, iron sharpens iron, and my favorite things are now to...

There's two ways to look at it. My favorite things are Bible studies we have at the Ray Shop. I've got one that's a very personal Bible study with four or five men that's...

I think everybody needs to have one. There's nothing that we don't talk about, and it stays there. And then we have another Bible study, and it's about the same way.

There's about probably 15 of us in the engine shop, and it's just... I mean, I don't miss them. If I do miss them, it's because it's something big, and it's, you know... I tell people, I was thinking about this this morning when I was reading. You can go to church, you can read your Bible.

You can't read your Bible long without knowing it, but you can go to church and go Bible studies and all this other stuff, until you commit your heart to the Lord. You know, you're just going through the motions, and learning how to do that is a commitment, and it's something. And when you do, and the Holy Spirit comes on you, it's a life-changing experience for nothing but good. Sounds like a challenge from Mr. Mike Dillon himself right here. To get in the Word, you hear Stu say it all the time on here.

Get in the Word. It's the best text message you'll ever get from the Lord. And just, you know, I was talking to a friend the other day who was telling me a story about daring somebody to follow the Lord. He says, I dare you to try it.

I dare you, yeah. And you know what happened? That's a good way to say it. This guy took it to heart, and two weeks later, that boy got saved.

He called his friend, and he said, I just want to tell you a thank you. I appreciate you challenging me to go after it. That's one of the things that I always say, too, is this book, First Hour from Men, it's just a tool.

There's not a better self-help book in the world than the Bible. I mean, just get in it and look. I promise you, the rest of them, you'll just put them on the shelf.

They'll look cool. But you get into your Bible, but I tell people, don't take this book and do this challenge if you don't want your life to change. If you're happy, wear your hat. Stay there. Well, you mentioned the book a couple of times. If you get to come out, if you're local, you're in the triad here, and you're listening to this, and maybe you're intrigued. Hey, maybe you're listening right now, and you're part of the men's ministry team at your church.

Bring your men out. There'll be a lot of free resources. You can share that book included, a lot of other peripheral ministries you get to take part of, or at least be introduced to. But you're going to hear stories, you're going to hear the real life, the practical, tangible way that the gospel has made a difference in your life, in Michael McDowell's life, in Richard Payne and in Parker's music. So by all means, come on out and join us.

Let's get back to, again, why we're here. It's October, Pastor Appreciation Month. And, you know, I mentioned that we're doing this training. Our ministry for 14 years has provided a lot of one-on-one care for local pastors, for their families. We started this training to really build that, to scale it across our nation.

But, you know, there's one thing that I, not one thing, one story that I want to share. And, you know, just like in the military, if the enemy can take out the leadership, the collateral damage is extensive, right? We know that.

You can study war tactics. You always go after the leadership. Well, in the spiritual realm, the same thing happens. We fight an enemy. The Bible is very clear that our enemy prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. That's never more true than in somebody's life that's advancing the gospel message. If you're introducing people to Christ, if you're helping them walk closer with the Lord, there is a constant, full-court press, all-out attack against that.

And that includes our pastors. And a few years ago, there was a story, North Carolina story, about a pastor that went to jail for embezzling. And I've often thought about this story because it's so easy for many of us to point the finger and accuse that guy, well, how could this happen?

That's so terrible. But if you start peeling back some of the layers of that story and you look at what happened, and this particular pastor, we walked with this guy for several months through this whole process. And if you really start understanding, here's a guy that was under pressure. He was feeling burned out, which happens. It's happened to me before.

It probably happened at some point in your life. But he was asking for help. And at this church, they just kept patting him on the back. And they're like, Pastor, you got it. There's no trouble. You're going to be all right. And he said, I really need some help.

And they just kept putting it off. And one day, that pastor was at the local Home Depot, and he was picking up a pocket knife. And he says, you know, he's buying stuff for the church is what happened.

And as he's there, he buys this new pocket knife, and he says, they don't care that much about me. It's not that big a deal to put this on the church credit card. And it could happen to any one of us.

And a week later, same thing happens again, a small item, and a few years after that, and tens of thousands of dollars, now all of a sudden there's big trouble. And so from our perspective, yeah, those are bad choices, and there's consequences that come into play for them. No judgment on that, right? But if we could help people understand that our pastors need our prayer, that we're fighting an enemy, your prayers matter. Your input, your encouragement matters. So it's Pastor Appreciation Month. Encourage your pastor. If you're local to the Triad, come on out and enjoy the Hometown Men's Fellowship. Hear the testimonies from Mike, from Michael and others. Thanks to Dario for helping us with that. And we'll come back at you real soon.