Discipling The Next Generation

As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. Who is sharpening you?

Who are you sharpening? Who are you living a life with, in community with? Are you going alone?

Are you an island? Are you Lone Ranger Christian? Or are you discipling and being discipled? And with me are two men who are passionate about that. There is a pretty big age gap between the two, but it's interesting how they share the same vision. One man, David Parsons, has an amazing ministry. He's been off and on mentoring me for like half a century, 50 years.

I'm 54 years old. He came to live in my house as a Bible student above the garage and just took me under his wings. He's passionate about discipleship. David, I want to hear your passion. Ryan Shea, an amazing Truth Network Podcast partner, brand representative, loves Jesus, author, spoke to our men's group this morning. David, what was it like to hear this guy speak this morning?

Talk to me about that. A young man speak and tell his vision, which is a rather new vision. He's just trusted Christ in the last number of years here, right? And so it's good to hear that and hear how God's worked in his life. He's opened doors. He's been able to make him effective and let him see that God uses the hurts and the brokenness and the issues and when you get hit by the pitch.

That's right. You know, and you weren't supposed to be and everything was going well. And now you're in a different situation. God has different things. And God takes our disadvantages and makes them his advantages. And he uses them for his honor and glory. He's always done. That's the history of God, taking a man and making him to be his man.

And he's doing that. And Ryan, that's good to see. And Ryan, you talked about that and you shared your story this morning and you got a rousing ovation from the men. But before that, you asked them to give themselves an applause and you made a compliment to all the old fuddy duds in the room there. Talk about what it was like to be next to David here, a little bit older than you, but on the same ministry track and being with all these guys this morning at the New Canaan Society at the lodge.

I love it, man. It's so encouraging to see men of all ages get together. But I think to see men of that age when the temptation is to sit around and kind of be on their own and isolate to see them get together, especially early on a Friday morning is super encouraging for someone like me.

So hey, someone his age getting up that early on a Friday morning to even get out of bed and to come speak, David is pretty encouraging. But God's working in this next generation. And part of that's happening through the God loves you bus you drive around all over town, right? The God loves you bus is a bus we had we go out and reach children, boys and girls and fatherless communities. And our nation is full of fatherlessness. That's a big plague in our country.

For the last 60 years, he has grown. And so to reach kids who don't have a dad who don't know who their dad is, who never been around a man that has a good positive male role model. And we take the God loves you bus, we go around, we tell boys and girls, the truth of Jesus Christ, how they can know him as Savior, how he wants them to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. And so we use it there. And it's been a great tool.

God has really amazed us how he's used it. We go into communities, kids flock around it. A lot of times kids will say, Mr. David, are you gonna be here tomorrow? And I say, Well, if you see the bus, I'm here. And the bus is like a great big billboard.

God loves you bus and Christian radio on there. We've helped sponsor it. We love what you're doing. Ryan Shay, you challenge these men this morning to kind of wake up step up. But you also challenge them. Hey, you said this comment, which encouraged me said, Hey, if one of you guys comes up to me and says, Hey, I want to mentor you.

I want to disciple you, or just pours into you. You got excited about that, didn't you? Absolutely. I think the persona is that kids are our generation is kind of against that. And we don't really respect those of the age or not really interested in what they have to say.

But I'll tell you, I think a lot of what we do we want to do will come from older generations pouring into us and a lot of us are completely open to it anyway, because I think we trust that the experience and the wisdom there is actually beneficial more so than offensive. Well, and Ryan, what are you doing right now? Tell everyone about your books. And then you've got this amazing prune popped podcast yet, Doug Elks on recently, you've had Zach Clinton, all these big time names. Talk about that and what kind of ministry groove God has you in, in terms of mentor the next generation. Yeah, so the book is called abiding living life abundantly. And it's about what a real relationship with Christ looks like, through abiding in him. And then similar in the john 15 passages, the word pruned in which he says, who those who are not bearing fruit, he proves that they may bear more fruit. So the podcast is really focusing on how God is using anything and everything to shape us more into his image through everything that we go through, whether that be good, bad suffering, win, loss, all these things, God is using them to prune us and make us more like him. So we've been trying to focus on just looking at life through that lens and that perspective.

And it really changes everything about what we go through and how we view ultimately what we go through. And your website or ways folks can learn about you. I'm sending your instagrams out all over the place. I'm sending your reels on Facebook, Instagram, Truth Network, of course, we're partnering together, you're one of our key brand ambassadors out there reaching this new generation. How can people find you?

Yeah, you can find me on all social medias. Or if you just Google Ryan Shay, there, there are plenty of things that we have set up, you can find all information for. So David Parsons, we need to quit complaining about all these kids on their phones and in the new media. And I know those are issues.

They are issues. We're not ignoring it. But we need to say, hey, let's introduce you to a young man named Ryan Shay, an illustrious athlete, you know, one of the top hitters there and God had a different plan. We're gonna talk about it a second.

But let's let him I mean, I guess I just like in front of in front of 200 minutes morning, when I introduced you, I pulled up your Instagram. And you're talking about godly dating. And in this hookup culture, you're talking about purity, you know, and honor and Christ in that area. David, how important is David Parsons with your ministry, how important is we get this message out to these young people. They're listening to guys like him, aren't they?

Extremely important. The new movie that's out there called Forge. If you've seen that movie, folks, that movie tells you, if you don't, whoever goes after these kids will get them. The world's going after them.

Disney, that world, the Hollywood world is going after them. That whole culture is going after these kids. We need to go after them with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is the only hope they need. And we need to go after this culture. And we need to use this electronic media, this whole video series, this whole. handheld telephones, that's where it is. That's where they own all the time, the whole world is. And we need to see that we need to get out of the building, get out of the walls of the church and go out after the kids.

The first two letters of the word gospel are G. Oh, wow. We need to go. They're not going to come until we go.

And then it's like a foreign field. And really America to come that way. We're so separated from the world. And the world's not coming to the church looking for the answers.

The church is, it needs to go be the salt in the light. You know, it is do those things. And that's how we do it by going out after them. They're out there. And they're looking for him.

Sports is a vehicle. So be it. What about you, Dave Parsons? Well, who came after you when you weren't really interested in this stuff? And suddenly now you're mentoring all these thousands of people. A lot of men came after me, I got involved in the business world. And that way, even as a believer, some men came after us. And I one thing I learned is a man shared with us every man needs three men in his life. You need a Paul, a Barnabas and a Timothy. And that is very important.

And Howard Hendricks shared that years ago at a large meeting. We need to go after these men and businessmen, so many men, just even believers have never been discipled. And we need to sit down when there's not just Bible study is sitting down at a table with a cup of coffee or whatever. And just sit there and talking God's word opened up the word and looking into it and talking about each verse and letting God speak to us.

He does that. And it's a process of discipleship that is so important. How can people connect with you learn more about your ministry, you have a website, I know you do a lot of work with IMB, you're working with these inner city kids, you're mentoring a lot of men who people have just kind of thrown out their cast offs, no one cares about me, but you're going after them and disciple them.

Yeah, marginalized. How can people reach or connect with you support your ministry, they can connect with me at missioncenternc.org. That's missioncenternc.org. I love it. Ryan Shay, one curveball changed the trajectory of your life. You may not even be sitting here right now. You might be playing for the Expos, the Dodgers, you know, you might be playing for the Brewers or the Cubs, or the White Sox, but you're sitting here at the Truth Network world headquarters on Truth Talk, talking about how Jesus has changed your life and how God's using you to really touch and impact others. You've spoken to college teams, you've spoken to pros, you've spoken to clubs, FCAs, you spoke to our big men's group this morning. You really blessed our guys. It was really a blessing. But talk about that curveball transformation real quick as we get out of here. Yeah, I mean, one of the craziest moments of my life because it changed the trajectory of what I thought I was going to do. But honestly, it really just it continues to push like the point of the podcast is like one even some seemingly small thing that I didn't agree with or like in the moment. Like obviously wouldn't be where I am today, you know, and I think as people in life, we have two options when we face these kind of realities is you can either question, doubt, get mad and get bitter and just ask like, why didn't I get in my way? Or you can step back and understand that maybe there's a greater picture going on and maybe you're just an instrument to be used in a greater story than your own. You know, I think sometimes you think joy is just like when I get what I want, you know, when my story goes the way I wanted to. I feel like joy really is understanding that you're a part of a much bigger story, you know, and like your part is really important.

But honestly, it's not as important as the main character. And I think that's when you can find sustaining joy in what you do because of who he is and what he's doing in your life. Ryan, I can't remember exactly how you said it, but David and I were both blessed by what you said about getting past this destination addiction and seeking the heart of God instead of all this performance identity. Will you just touch on that real quick as we get out of here?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think a lot of us have destination addiction, whatever age you are, that basically says once I reach blank, then I'll be happy. Once I have this, I'll be happy.

Once I do whatever. And it's like, no, you have to choose joy in today because if you don't choose it today, like you're never going to choose it tomorrow, you know? And so I think sometimes we get so caught up in what we want that we don't steward today's assignment well when God has given us so much today to be faithful with. So a lot, especially my generation, we look forward to the future. Once I get this, once I get married, once I have the kids, it's like, then I'll be happy and sustained.

It's like, no, God has given you the gift of today and you can make the most of that right now, wherever you are. I love it. Give your website shout out one more time for folks to learn more about your podcast and follow you on the Instagram. Older people, that's IG.

IG stands for Instagram. Tell everyone how they can find you on the Facebook too. The Prove Podcast with Ryan Shay on the Truth Network.

You can search up on all streaming platforms. And then if you just Google Ryan Shay, R-Y-A-N Shay, S-H-I-E-H, you can find all things about me on social media, websites, all that kind of stuff. Awesome. Now we're going to let y'all go so we can go mentor someone. And we got to go speak. We're going to go share with a college baseball team, college basketball team. And we're going to, what should our message be, David Parsons?

Give us some mentoring here as we get out of here. Oh, tell them the truth about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. The only hope for this world and for them.