The Days Grimm Podcast
The Days Grimm, "arguably Indiana's most comical, thrilling, and controversial podcast", This three-pronged mandate acts as a primary filter for their guest selection. The "comical" aspect is reflected in its official genre of "COMEDY INTERVIEWS" and its history of hosting local stand-up comedians. The "thrilling" component is evident in interviews with individuals who have extraordinary life stories, such as people who survived shootings, rare medical conditions, and combat. Finally, the "controversial" element is demonstrated by Brian & Thomas’ willingness to engage in difficult or unfiltered conversations, touching on topics like homelessness, artificial intelligence, and religious hypotheticals.
A crucial element of the show's tone is its tagline, "Brought to you by Sadness & ADHD (non-medicated)". This self-aware and raw positioning signals a modern comedic sensibility that embraces vulnerability and finds humor in personal struggle. The podcast's brand is not built on polished narratives but on the authentic, often messy, intersection of hardship and humor. The most compelling guests are those who have navigated a "Grimm" reality and emerged with a story to tell, and ideally, a sense of humor about it. This dynamic is the core of the show's appeal and the primary filter for identifying a story worth telling.
The Days Grimm Podcast
Ep. 231 Dr. Austin Maxheimer: Neighborhoods, Faith & Building Lasting Community
In this episode of The Day’s Grimm Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Austin Maxheimer—author of Neighborhoods and Jesus, community leader, and nonprofit director at Community One in Evansville, Indiana. From growing up in a small Illinois farm town to writing books on faith, theology, and neighborhood transformation, Austin shares a powerful journey of faith, family, and purpose.
We dive into his personal story of overcoming the party lifestyle, discovering his calling, and how his passion for mobilizing groups of people turned into a career dedicated to restoring struggling neighborhoods. Austin explains the concept of toxic charity, the importance of listening to marginalized communities, and why empowering residents to take ownership creates lasting change.
You’ll also hear us unpack the role of churches in rebuilding community, lessons from non-canonical gospels, and what Harvard research reveals about human flourishing. Plus, Austin gives insight into his writing discipline, the challenge of publishing in today’s world, and how disc golf keeps him grounded outside of ministry and leadership.
Whether you’re interested in faith, nonprofit leadership, or how everyday people can transform their neighborhoods, this episode is packed with wisdom, storytelling, and laughs.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- How Dr. Maxheimer’s early life shaped his faith and leadership journey
- The dangers of toxic charity and how to create sustainable change
- Why churches and community groups are vital for belonging and human flourishing
- Behind-the-scenes of writing Neighborhoods and Jesus and other books
- How to stay rooted in mission while balancing family, work, and passion projects
🔗 Listen now and discover how real transformation starts at the neighborhood level.
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[The Days Grimm is brought to you by]
Sadness & ADHD (non-medicated)
We're going to figure it out, man. Tell you what, I'm feeling real good about it.
SPEAKER_02:I was born late. Hello! Hello, hello, hello everyone and welcome to another thrilling episode of The Day's Grimm. My name's Ryan Michael Day. My name is Thomas Grimm. Hello, Thomas Grimm. How are you, sir? What if I did the whole interview that way? Like a South Park, one of those puppets. I'd probably fuck myself. Dude, probably not awesome to say. We've been the first 45 seconds. 10 seconds in, we're already editing stuff out. Sick, dude. How are you? Good. Who's joining us today? Joining us this week in the Today's Grim Shoebox is Dr. Doctor. Austin Maxheimer. Oh, yeah. We're going to talk about dentistry today, right?
SPEAKER_01:I'm just joking. It'll be a short conversation.
SPEAKER_02:I love the film The Hangover. Are you familiar? Oh, yeah. All parts. So they get to the check-in or whatever, and he's like, it's under doctor or whatever. And his buddy's like, he's just a dentist. If someone has a heart attack, definitely still call it the ambulance.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't even have as much technical expertise as dentistry.
SPEAKER_02:Well, what's
SPEAKER_01:up, Austin? How are you? I'm doing good.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks for having me, guys. Doing good. Hell yeah, man. Well, welcome to our little shoebox. You know, it's a good time to get in here because it's finally starting to cool down in the summertime. The studio gets a little warm sometimes, as you can tell. And Brian just got into disc golf. We know you're big into disc golf. Yeah. I am. Sick with it these days. Yeah. Big DG. Big DG fan. So how long have you been into the DG?
SPEAKER_01:Just a couple years. Really? Yeah. I played ball golf for quite a long time. What's ball golf? Yeah. Oh, like balling. Swinging the clubs. Yeah, okay, okay. But just one of my best buddies. We've been friends since high school. He got back into disc golf, and he just slowly drew everyone else in. And so we probably play three or four times a week right now. Oh, yeah, dude. Do you ever
SPEAKER_02:do– okay, so the way I got into disc golf was because I'm old. You know what I mean? So I can't play contact sports anymore, but I was big on football. We were talking about pre-show. So I got into Ultimate first. Oh, yeah. And I did like two or three years of Ultimate. I loved it. Ultimate Frisbee's fire. So much fun, dude. Like getting up under that thing and you're just like. Making the
SPEAKER_01:run. You know what I mean? Yeah, it is like the perfect combo for people who used to play football. Yeah, and I would play
SPEAKER_02:more soccer, but my foot to ball skills, dribbling and all that, I suck at it. But I just love running. But then I had a buddy introduce me to DG and I was like, oh, this is like Ultimate without all the running. Without all the running. Old man stuff. This is great, dude. I'm like having a cold beer. I'm slinging Frisbees, dude. Dude. Discs. I apologize. But yeah, man, that's super sick. So two years in, have you done any, I guess, tournaments or anything?
SPEAKER_01:No, I haven't cracked that yet. No? I'm not very good.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Can you keep up with your buddies? Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:I'm about middle of the pack.
SPEAKER_02:Didn't you win that, David, when we all went? Yeah. Us and Parsons. Oh, nice, dude. An interesting group to go play disc golf with. Can I say something? And I want you to tell me if I'm completely off. Exactly. Parson's not a good DG-er. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:He could be. How did he do? He's got a cannon for an arm. He just needs to play more. He showed up late that day. He is jacked. He is
SPEAKER_02:jacked. He's just a big guy. So I bet he could sling it. But he just doesn't seem like someone who throws a disc very often. No, he doesn't. Okay, that's what I think. He could be good. So him and I would actually be a good match. Maybe. Dude, the conversations were good that day. Yeah. That was the win of the day. You had two doctors out there throwing discs? Oh, Perry was out there too? Yeah, Perry was out there too. Shout out to Perry, dude. No, Perry's pretty good. He's all fours. Perry's a stud, dude. We were just talking about him pre-show. He's crazy, dude. But anyways, at any rate. Yeah, let's get a brief elevator pitch of who Austin is and what Austin does here in Evansville. Oh, man. But you have to refer to yourself in the third person. I don't know. Austin. Austin is... So, yeah, who are you? What do you do, brother?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Thomas and I were talking about it. Really, kind of the through line for my life is like... trying to gather groups of people and mobilize them on transformational mission. Like that's what I've done kind of ever since I graduated seminary first round, it moved back to Evansville. Oh, nice. That's what I've been doing. Uh, now that's looked differently. I was vocationally, uh, I worked for church for a few years. Now I work at a nonprofit where we do neighborhood visualization. So that's what I do day to day every day as we partner with neighbors to change their neighborhood.
SPEAKER_02:Like I, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:streaming services and so this idea of belonging where you live where you're rooted where you're like physically at is just not even anything on anyone's radar these days and so trying to recapture that
SPEAKER_02:I feel like the people that get the worst rap the homeless community. They get the worst rap. It is a community. But, I mean, is that something that's on your guys' radar?
SPEAKER_01:We don't necessarily. No? Okay. But we partner, because, I mean, so we do concentrate our work in high-poverty neighborhoods. And homelessness, by virtue of that, is part of it. It's in that area. Yeah. Yeah. But we don't specifically work with homeless populations. But, like, my best friend, or longest life friend we met when we were five, he works with homeless populations in Eugene, Oregon. And that's what he does, like, constantly is helping uh get them to the place if they want to to a place of where they permanent supportive housing is what they call it so well
SPEAKER_02:that's the potter's wheel place that you recorded that episode with parsons that they had like a community lunch thing that like fat homeless people and stuff that yeah yeah they have a
SPEAKER_01:diner yeah
SPEAKER_02:and then also shout out to nike dude
SPEAKER_01:uh eugene they've made it beautiful
SPEAKER_02:i'm a big runner so like you said eugene oregon all i can think about is yeah oregon state or Prefontaine. Yeah, Oregon University. They have a beautiful track and field. Dude, and their football field? Oh, yeah. There's nobody doing it better. It's all Nike money. Oh, God. They're just crushing it. So, Austin, were you born here in Evansville?
SPEAKER_01:No, I was born in Central Illinois, a real small rural farm town. No, but my wife's from there. What did you just say? Oh, you said Central? Oh, okay,
SPEAKER_02:okay. I jumped the gun. No, that's interesting. I got so excited. Are you
SPEAKER_03:from Centralia?
SPEAKER_02:No, my best friend is from Centralia, Jacob New, who's been on the podcast. How old is he? Just curious. They might know each other. He's younger than me. I think he's 33. Oh, okay. Yeah, he's 33. I'm 35. We're 44. Okay. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Centralia is really good folks out there. And then my wife is from, I call it Mount Vernon, but it's really Bluford. Okay. So Bluford outside of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So where are you from in
SPEAKER_01:Central? Yeah, it was, well, yeah, I was like actually born in Decatur, Illinois. Okay. That wasn't, that was just like the next biggest town with a hospital. And
SPEAKER_02:your dad was a preacher?
SPEAKER_01:He was a youth minister. When I was born, he was a pig farmer. Oh, damn. So he had a drastic life change when I was two years old. And so then he went to Bible college and that whole thing. So, yeah. That's sick, dude. But I moved to Evansville in sixth grade. So it feels like my hometown. What brought them to Evansville? Job. Yeah. Youth ministry job. Am
SPEAKER_02:I overreaching? And please don't feel free to not answer any question that makes you uncomfortable because I'm really good at asking uncomfortable questions. What was the life-changing event, if I may? Or is that reaching too far?
SPEAKER_01:Am I reaching too far? No, not at all. Yeah, that's easy. Let's hear some harder ones. It was really kind of your classic story of partier, drinker, family of alcoholics. Okay, you're talking about me. Settle down. Settle down here, dude. Catholics. He found himself at 20 with a kid and that's scary yeah and another one on the way and he didn't just didn't like the trajectory of his life and a guy from his local church just I mean he would go because my mom went type of like again classic story but this guy just saw something in him and slowly like drew out from him a different way of living I guess you would say so the live training event was you and your sister well Absolutely. Me and my brother and then my sister. Your brother and then the sister. They had three kids in four years. So my dad had three kids by the time he was 22 years old. And he
SPEAKER_02:wasn't Catholic or Mormon? No. Oh, Tom. Just a farm family. You gotta have those kids to run the tractors. You gotta watch Tom. He's very well versed in religion. He's read the Quran. He's read the Bible. He's getting into the Shadduk. I've been listening to the Odyssey yeah dude he's in the Odyssey now so he's
SPEAKER_01:like he's been sharing with me the notebook stuff the notebook LM I love the oh wait no not the movie no
SPEAKER_02:not
SPEAKER_03:the
SPEAKER_02:movie that that large language model that you can input your sources and it creates all the like you can ask it questions based on your input sources you can listen to an audio podcast it'll do a podcast for you yeah now it has video that overview with graphics it's incredible and the mind mapping where do we stand at Gosling's the notebook is
SPEAKER_01:everybody on board with the notebook it is a premiere i've actually read the book have you sparks yeah phenomenal exactly like the book yeah dude
SPEAKER_02:all the other ones not as great the notebook primo uh so like sixth grade moving i got so excited moving to like a new area right as you start like middle school i feel like middle school is when people start like slowly finding out little bits about themselves yeah you're finding uh character traits you know so like what was that being like the new kid in a you know but basically probably a bigger city
SPEAKER_01:yeah no that's a very pointed question because a lot of people talk about um evansville being a small town if you're from here you know because we got nashville indianapolis st louis the third biggest city in indiana yeah but the town i moved from was like 2 000 people so you think about the magnitude of scale of how comparative that was for me this was the big like coming here it was mind-blowing uh for living in the big city uh coming from the farm fields and so it it was a complete disruption of life at the that critical moment you know when you're hit puberty and all you're trying on different personas oh yeah so like I really became a people pleaser in that phase of my life which is something that I've had to overcome as an adult like because you just want to fit in right and you don't know anyone and so you're coming from like a religious
SPEAKER_02:family they're like just say shit one time like come on just say it you
SPEAKER_03:know
SPEAKER_02:like no I just can't I'm not gonna do it dude my dad would Well, hit
SPEAKER_01:me. I wish I would have invested all that time of sports into music because I love music now. But you just can't miss. You could not have made me play music because I would have wanted to be on sports.
SPEAKER_02:There's a feeling you get with the camaraderie that
SPEAKER_01:you don't get. Well, you were in the military. You get it more in the military. That's it. That's the
SPEAKER_02:only thing I can compare it to. But yeah, no, for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Which has fast friends, too, moving to a new city. That's a nice thing. Yeah, getting in sports, you're meeting a lot of
SPEAKER_02:friends and meeting a lot of people that are into the same things you're into and then sharing little tricks of the trade. When you're automatically plugged into a whole new church community to
SPEAKER_01:start. What was that like? And that was probably the coolest thing. I know a lot of people have bad stories about growing up in church. I didn't. I'm sure there's things in there. Religion just in general damages people. But for the most part, I was very happy. I felt well-loved It never felt like legalism or fundamentalist type of thing going on. You're using a lot of big words here, sir.
SPEAKER_02:I will let you know you are, in fact, the only doctor in the room. So legalism and feminism, would you say? No, not feminism. Would you say? Yeah, there probably wasn't any. Fundamentalism. Fundamentalism. Can you run me through what both of those words mean? Yeah, yeah, legalism. I'm so sorry. I'm a little slower than your average tater tot. You know what I'm
SPEAKER_01:saying? Yeah, well, I mean, I would say that religion just is Legalism. It's like
SPEAKER_02:a set of rules you got to live by. Yeah. Legalism.
SPEAKER_01:It's like the rules of religion. That becomes the center of your life is following these legalities. Okay, now what's the... Like don't drink, don't smoke, don't curse. Oh, yeah. You know, that's, you know, the classic religious ones, or at least in Bible Belt.
SPEAKER_02:Now the fundamentalism one, what
SPEAKER_01:is that? Yeah, that's taking even a step further. That's when you see like the ladies with the skirts and buns and women can't speak in church type stuff. Oh. Like, you know, like the extreme... further right. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:that's rough. You know, real bummer that I kind of grew up Catholic, and Catholics are more prone to the Older Testament style of Christianity. Yeah, a lot of legalism there. Still not the worst at it. There is worse out there. I've seen some pretty poor treatment of women in Catholicism. Not horrible. No one's getting hit or anything. But I'm just saying, yeah, not a lot of respect. It's dicey. Dude, my grandpa that came on talked about the nuns at school beating them. Dude, bro, nuns are brutal. Anyways, we're getting off track here. Hey, also, shout out to all the nuns out there. You guys are doing the Lord's work. So anyway, sorry, we did kind of divert. So like getting it through there, getting plugged into sports. Did you like do all that through high school, like from middle school to high school? So you kind
SPEAKER_01:of like that same group of friends. I played, uh, football and baseball in high school. All right. What were you better at? I was better. Well, I was probably
SPEAKER_02:better at football. It's always a fun question. You know, when, uh, Patrick Mahomes was asked that, what are you better at? Cause he played both all through high school. He was like, I'm way better. He said, well, I'm way better at however he talks. You know what I mean? I'm way better at baseball. Uh, And he was actually planning on going into the MLB right away. And then somehow he wound up in the NFL. I have no idea. Shout out to Texas Tech. But yeah, it's always fun to find out multi-sport athletes. I've only ever played football, a little bit of baseball. But it's always cool when you do both. Which did you like the most?
SPEAKER_01:And you're saying you were more into football? I hesitated a little bit because I did play one year college baseball. Oh, really? Where did you play it? Just that small Christian college that I went to seminary. yeah ended up going to seminary it's called Lincoln Christian College oh
SPEAKER_02:yeah in Illinois yeah is it the same as Lincoln Trails no that's in Springfield they get it confused a lot I know Lincoln Trails so like in seminary do they have you so like I always heard like when somebody went to seminary they had you like put like marbles in your mouth and talk or like you had to learn like weird what like you had to like learn to talk that was not my experience dude I just got lightheaded I laughed so hard oh my goodness what
SPEAKER_01:like what's seminary look like that's a great question because okay so I'll try to be short on this but when I first got married I was not like a professing Christian you know I was like agnostic you got married young right out of high school no no no so yeah I'm mixing these stories a little bit so I went to Lincoln for one year and that's where I met my wife played baseball played baseball but then we both transferred out and then we didn't see each other for five years and then we got reconnected and got married really fast you guys
SPEAKER_02:wrote letters or
SPEAKER_01:something yeah look at this good memory Yeah. We wrote letters and emails back and forth to each other. Where did you go? Where did she go? I was in Colorado working at Winter Park just off the ski season. How did
SPEAKER_02:you get plugged in with that?
SPEAKER_01:You were just like, I want to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was drinking myself to death here in Evansville after my student teaching, and I was like, I just got to get out of here. Yeah. So I was going to go into the Peace Corps. Sick. There was a mix-up with the application. I ended up like, I got to get out of Evansville for a while. So I just went to Colorado to work one ski season while was waiting on my Peace Corps application to go to finish yeah and then my now wife calls me up hadn't talked to her in five years we were married five months later so it was just like real quick like drastic life change dude shout out to your wife living in Centralia dude I'm telling you
SPEAKER_02:so she when you got she was down in Lincoln too for that one year just that one year and then she went back to Centralia and you went to Colorado yeah nice dude so then you come back and you guys get married and everything in Illinois
SPEAKER_01:yeah married in Illinois lived in Southern Illinois and Breeze, Illinois. I'm getting notebook vibes from this story. Nicholas Sparks needs to pick it up. I'm not tearing up
SPEAKER_02:or anything yet, but golly, this is juicy, boy. This is juicy. I'm getting excited about your marriage. It's not even my life.
SPEAKER_01:But we just celebrated 20 years. Congrats, man. Yeah, thank you. Congratulations, dude. We made it, at least this far.
SPEAKER_02:Heck yeah, dude. She hasn't murdered you yet. No, but she is amazing. What's a side note here? I know Andrew Huberman no not it's actually not Huberman who's the guy Alex Hernandez the guy that wears the nose patch thing he was talking about like when him and his wife have arguments they leave the room and they text each other okay I didn't know like you guys like leave the room and write emails
SPEAKER_01:or something when you guys like that's the thing we adopted was to instead of yelling at each other well my wife doesn't yell me yelling at my wife and her you know curling into herself we just took like let's stop this let's go right out of thoughts and share them with each other in a more civilized format is
SPEAKER_02:there like a certain time that you wait to share your thoughts or do you just like all right i need five
SPEAKER_01:yeah it's usually there's hours yeah okay
SPEAKER_02:that's a cool thing i thought i thought i remembered something like that and then i just heard it the other day
SPEAKER_01:and i was like it works for us it has been good for us nice dude does
SPEAKER_02:your is your wife like really good at writing as well yeah she's an english teacher okay so she's an english teacher versus like a doctor author is she a doctor too? No, no, no. If we had two doctors... She's smarter than me,
SPEAKER_01:but she's not a doctor. She's smart enough not to pay those bills. Did she write your dissertation?
SPEAKER_02:Now that's my follow-up. She
SPEAKER_01:did do
SPEAKER_02:the grammar. Dude, shout out to your wife. She sounds super sick, dude. So when you come back and you guys get married and everything, do you go back to college again in that time?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so that's the thing. So for two years, I was agnostic, but my wife was... Christian follower of Jesus, and I was like, oh, I've got to deal with this. I live with this woman. You said, I have to deal with this. I did. You
SPEAKER_02:get up into bed, and you're scrolling to put something on TV, and she's kneeled there doing
SPEAKER_01:her nightly prayer. Oh, this is a real thing. This isn't just empty religion. This is a live faith in her life. And she's Catholic. No, no, no. She's Christian. Okay, okay, okay. Got it. And so it was through a very slow, long process those two years of reading a bunch of authors, having a bunch of conversations with friends and confidants, and through that process, then I ended up having, I guess, a reversion. How long does this process take? Those two years of just deep diving,
SPEAKER_02:of just kind of like ins and outs, and did you do any religious texts at this time?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like some books? Oh, yeah. Yeah? Okay. Yeah, a bunch of books, because I always have been a voracious reader, and so yeah just like devouring all these books voracious yeah
SPEAKER_02:you know what i mean i can't keep up brother uh i'm just gonna we're gonna roll past it this time we're gonna roll past it this time i'll do some it means like avid you know like a constant reader i'll get the context clues when i listen back to this in post um no man uh but that's that's exciting two years i feel like that's an adequate amount of time um to to like deep dive something that you weren't but you did grow up in church you did grow up in church and then did we ever get get to the point to where like was it just when you left home for college is when you kind of got away from church yeah it was about that time and did you like miss it or was it like a relief
SPEAKER_01:no no and that's why i was saying growing up i didn't have a bad experience so it wasn't a relief it was more like um you were just kind of indifferent just not the
SPEAKER_02:forefront of your mind you like you probably believed in god still at the time but you weren't like thinking about like what does god
SPEAKER_01:feel about what i'm doing practicing anything all right i got a hard i got a hard question
SPEAKER_02:for you let's get into some deeper material quick because I feel like just while in this part of the storyline, deep question, is that a sin? Is that a sin to be a church going gentlemen or gentle lady? And then you walk away from the church from, for whatever reason, you got to move or your dog dies and you got to bury him in Colorado, whatever. I don't know. You leave the church and then like, is it a sin to just not have God in the forefront? I mean, not necessarily all the drinking and partying and stuff that you were doing. Let's subtract that from the equation. Let's just say you move to a new city. and you just don't pick it back up, is that a sin?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I would say yes. But with the qualification of, I think we have, especially here in the Bible Belt and all the Catholicism and fundamentalist Christianity, I would say that we have a very inadequate understanding of what sin is. Inadequate is not good enough, right? Correct. I'm just making sure. Yeah, yeah. Make sure I'm staying up to pace. Yeah, yeah. Because I would say the classic mental image that a lot of people get, again, here in the Midwest, is the guy on the street corner saying, with the long list of dirty things you can't do, and calling people out for it. And I would, my current understanding of what sin would be, would be anything that takes you away from the relationship with the prime reality. So, which in my understanding would be God, but therein lies a way Yeah. Yeah. All those things would technically be sins, but I would want to separate my definition of that from the way it's classically understood. Yeah, because
SPEAKER_02:that's a tricky question. It is kind of a wordy... It brings a lot of baggage. Yeah, because church has only been around for 1,400 years. You know what I mean? So it's like, what about those other... You know what? I was proud of that. I thought that was a good question. It is. I loved it. No, it was good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeez Louise, dude. Here I am just hitting dingers, and you guys are like, well, it's a wordy... I was gonna say though two years is enough time to wrestle with it and to like come to grips with it and so like I feel like when you like finally have that reversion you're called back in there's like excuse me the highs like of a somebody that's really found their religion their own like a high for sure and then like do you remember what that first like down swoop was like was it like that first basically come back to Jesus meeting down swoop very technical term yeah down swoop do you recall that for down swoop.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know that I've really ever had a down swoop. You're just riding that white boat on fire, baby. That's
SPEAKER_02:awesome, man. In that two years, you get your first degree?
SPEAKER_01:No, so I did end up going to IU before I went out to Colorado. So I graduated from Bloomington, Indiana University just with an education degree because I thought, I didn't know what the heck I wanted to do, so I thought I could coach football. I could teach and coach football. That's like what I had in my mind.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's nice. That's Brian's dream. Just a whistle and a clipboard. That's right. I would have to have so many clipboards because I'd be snapping them. B-gap, bro. B-gap, bro. God, what are you doing, dude? You have to get a new tackle. No, yeah. No, I would thoroughly enjoy that. It's actually a solid move. I went kinesiology, like physical therapy route. That's where I wanted to go. And I was like... What, trainers? Yeah, I wanted to work with athletes in that sense. Yeah. so that way I wouldn't have to break any clipboards. You still might. Just for fun. No, that's sick, though. So you graduated from IU, and then you wound up in
SPEAKER_01:Colorado? Yeah, and then we get married. We have that reversion. Nice. So that's when we went to seminary, because I didn't know what to do. I was like, oh, I believe this stuff now. After your two-year journey? Yeah. So I did what we do in America. It's like, oh, what do you do when you want to go learn something more? You go back to school. It was just like that's that was truly my only thought how old are you at this I was 26 oh you're a young gentleman yeah yeah so I landed similar you know you asked what was seminary like so I landed seminary really with no expectations no real understanding of what the heck I'm I just there to learn more about you didn't even you don't even know anything about marbles yeah no nothing about marbles certainly not in my mouth so it was a little bit of a shock to my system which on hindsight I'm like duh but Almost everyone there are vocational pastors. And I'm like, well, yeah, that makes sense. But I did not go there to do that. I wasn't pursuing a job in a church or anything like that. I was just there to learn more about God, truly. That's the whole
SPEAKER_02:motivation. Did people look at you like a crazy person when you would tell them that? Yeah, a little bit. Or did they give you three different commentaries on each book? And that's like, hey, we're going over Genesis
SPEAKER_01:this week. Well, and I had a steep learning curve because I didn't go to I went that one year to Lincoln, but I didn't get, I didn't finish there. And so all these people had already had Greek, Hebrew, you know, theology classes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:They know like,
SPEAKER_01:yeah, they know everything. Yeah. But the cool part was it was the first time, like my mind really opened up. Like it was the first time I really wanted to learn something. So like proactively by choice. That's a
SPEAKER_02:big, that's a huge difference. So my four years, I graduated from U of E. My four years there was, it's different. different when you go to school and you're in a class that you're like all in. You're like, oh, this is my stake. I got four different highlighters. I got the sticky notes, dude. I'm recording the professor's freaking dialogue. You read all the books. You're in it to win it. So that's a unique thing to bring up because a lot of kids just go to school and they like half-ass it.
SPEAKER_01:Because that's what we think we're supposed to do or have to do. Get the paper and get
SPEAKER_02:done and get a B and you'll be straight. You'll be good to go. A B. D's get degrees. There you go. B's get you jobs. For the kids at home, anybody in college. Get a B. A B is A-OK. That should be your goal. So you found yourself driven to this. Almost immediately? Every different course you were in, they put you through? Every class. So hungry for it. That is insane. But what does it look like? Is it literally Just like chapter by chapter breakdown of like- Did you
SPEAKER_01:live there? Yeah, walk me through the actual- Yeah, we lived there. We moved there as a family. So I got three kids. My wife was pregnant with our second child when we moved there. Nice. And then I have a stepdaughter. So the five of us moved up there. We lived on campus for almost four full years and just kind of like rooted in that community. And like on hindsight, you can see the design of life- But I needed that because I had just come out of 10 years of the party scene. Wildness. Yeah, I needed it. You're like a feral animal. Yeah, yeah. Like a caged raccoon. I had to learn how to socialize without alcohol, all the things. And so I needed that time kind of set apart so it was really healthy for us and our family. But yeah, I mean, it's just like any other university or college experience in the sense of you just have a course. So it's not like we're going book by book through. the Bible. We'll have Greek, Hebrew, Old Testament theology. I did take a few classes that were like... I really wanted to go after the things I had a lot of questions about, so I did take a class on Revelation. Oh, dude, Revelation is my...
SPEAKER_02:It's your jam? That is my favorite. It's so good. It's so delicious. It's a nightmare. It's a fever dream. It is, dude. You wake up and you're sweating through your shorts and your shirt. That's my... Oh, yeah. I'm into that I joke all the time like I kind of want to be around when it happens I mean I think that'd be sick dude I was like mad the other day and I was like I wish revelations would just happen so I could know that it's right you know what I like I wish that like like people would just disappear and I'd be like that's the way you know what I'm saying like that's maybe lower your arm Jesus Christ oh my god oh Elon Musk over here he's like that's the way I like Did you hear about the whole Elon? Oh, yeah. I saw it. Jeez Louise.
SPEAKER_01:I was defending him. And then I was like, no. So funny. Yeah, that's bad.
SPEAKER_02:That's pretty bad. Bad PR. There is bad press. That's bad press. Anyway, so you're diving into these. So you chose a couple classes. What was it like having to learn two new languages?
SPEAKER_01:Because
SPEAKER_02:they're different.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it was Hebrew. True in what? Greek. In Greek? Yeah, the biblical languages it's used, yeah. So, I mean, I didn't actually have to learn the languages. All you have to do is learn how to use the languages. Like looking up the actual translation of the word? Yeah. Oh, okay. So, it's not like I could go to Greece today and like, oh, you know. But, yeah, I loved the language courses. In fact, I almost went into vocationally into something called... Bible translators, which goes to other countries like India and goes into these dialects and does biblical translation for these communities. Do those
SPEAKER_02:folks get a bad rap? I think they do, don't they? Isn't there a bunch of beef on biblical or just religious translation? Not even just with Christianity, but both with Judaism and with the Quran. There's a bunch of beef with how they get translated from the original text, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not mistaken? Yeah, you're not mistaken, because, like, I just want to make sure I'm not stepping onto it. If you think about the different translations of the Bible, like, there's websites that you can go to, and it'll show you, like, what the NIV says, the New King James, the New American Standard. Yeah, and they can all have wildly different, like, directions. Like, one sentence could mean three different things, right? Yeah. Yeah, so.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, prepositions are wild. So, like, there's words, there's a word in Greek that has, it can mean, like, in a on, among, next to. And so when you think about utilizing that in a sentence, it can drastically change the meaning. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:Jesus is on me. No, no, Jesus is in you. Or he's among us. Okay, well, maybe he's around us, but he's also in you. You're not on Jesus, though. That sounds violent. Yeah, but then like... No, no one's on top of Jesus. But then there's also terms of that day that people wouldn't use today. Right. So it's like translating this phrase into like something. Yeah, I just thought that that was a fun mention because like maybe there's, we likely have a lot of listeners that are not religious. So I think that that's an interesting fact that I learned a few years ago and I don't know if like people that aren't religious don't know that. Yeah, it's pretty wild, dude. Well, because like there's no such thing as Iscariot like in translation. What's Iscariot? What they said Judas was. Judas Iscariot. What does that mean? So there's like people don't know what Iscariot is. Yeah, they don't know what it is. Shabber. There is like a theory. That's what we say now. There was a theory that like scariots were taken from a word that was like Greek for like assassin or something. What was it? A bag of silver too? S-O-B. A bag of silver and like some property or something. You ever heard of the gospel of Judas? It's one of those non-canonical... Oh, yeah. He got his own book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The non-canonized... Which is always... I'm glad you bring that up. I'm fascinated by the non-canonized books. Why? Why do they exist? Why were they not chosen to be in the Bible? What's the... Do you know much about... I assume... Yeah, yeah, yeah. How does that work? Why are there... There's like a dozen different non-canonized... The Gospel of Thomas. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The quickest and easiest answer is complex stuff. Yeah. could spend the next hour talking just on this one topic so we won't bore all the listeners with that but the easiest way is just what they call apostolic authority so the 12 apostles well 13 if you count Paul they are those who wrote those books they're the ones that are immediately canonized like they're the ones that are recognized by the faith community these are the ones that are in because they walked and talked and saw Jesus with their own eyes so that would be the number one So like the Gospel of Judas, that wasn't written until in the 200s. And so that would have... Right, just been off from the story. The author would never have been even included, even thought to be included, because there was never any question that it was written so much later than the possibility. And that one's far out.
SPEAKER_02:That one's a bit out there. Is it really? Yeah, but the Gospel of Thomas is pretty cool because it's just sayings of Jesus. There's no like... Well, I mean, there is some parable, but yeah, there's like... It's like Jesus said this, and then later on Jesus said this. It's just like a quote book. Yeah. No, the Gospel of Judas is wild, but we don't have to go into that. That's not what we're talking about. No, no, no. We can do that on a topic-based episode. No, I only three or four years ago found out about the non-canonized books.
SPEAKER_01:I had no idea. They're super interesting. You can learn about the Christian faith by reading them. But the validity of it is
SPEAKER_02:arguable. Yeah, but then the Catholics have how many extra books? It's like three? Yeah. three extra books in the Catholic Bible that aren't in the others.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, no kidding. Because those are the ones that were written in between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It's like Enoch and some others. Oh,
SPEAKER_02:yeah. I know Enoch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard the term Enoch before. For sure, dude. Wild stuff. When did you write your first book? Was that during your...
SPEAKER_01:No, yeah. So I wrote the first book from couch to community with a buddy of mine when I was 32. So that's 12 years ago, which is crazy to think about. Yeah. There
SPEAKER_02:it is. Did you have your doctorate before this?
SPEAKER_01:No. I had a master degree. So I had a master of divinity, completely useless degree. Now I have a doctorate of ministry. These are the two. Don't call me if someone's sick, like you said. Still
SPEAKER_02:call a doctor if someone has a heart attack. Chat GPT knows more about your body than I do. Still call a doctor.
SPEAKER_01:So by this point, I did join a staff of a local church here called One Life in Evansville. Oh, yeah, I know One Life. Yeah, and so I was hired to be the group's director. Okay. So small groups, like meeting people's living rooms and stuff during the week. I was the director of that, overseeing that ministry. And guess where your leaders are of these small groups on a Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m.? They're at work, right? So I was just trying to think of ways to help form and shape and develop my leaders. And so I would just write a lot of content. I would just develop a lot of content. And over the course of my first couple of years on staff, I think I wrote over like 300 blogs, just had all this content. And we did a keynote speak at our annual leadership conference. We had like 120 leaders there. And I cast this vision for what if our Christian communities were not just holding tanks for Christians, but they actually went out into the world and transformed it, right? Like not mission trip, but like local? Yeah, locally. Yeah, dude. Like we should be transforming the world. And I think that that's something that people that even are not of faith would value if they saw Christians actually bringing good transformative works to our city, right? Yeah, just out there making a difference. Yeah, making a big difference. And so it kind of cast these like three shifts that we believe our group's ministry needed to make. And so my buddy, Zach Bilo there, co-author. Love that last name. Pink. He comes up to me afterwards and was like, was that all your own original content? And I was like, well, I mean, what's original content, right? We borrow from everyone in all things. But yeah, yeah, I put it all together. He's like, we need to put that into a book. So we did. We just put all that content into a book. I sent it to like 20 publishing companies, not knowing at the time that you need to have literary agent and cold reads are almost impossible. Oh, yeah. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's a mess. I didn't know anything. Anything about that? Well, one of the publishing companies actually picked it up, Group Publishing. Shout out to Group. Yeah. There's no name, authors with no platform, no prior experience, and they just read the manuscript and believed in it and published it. And so that really started kind of the writing journey. So after that
SPEAKER_02:first book, you're instantly motivated. You get the acceptance letter of that, and you're like, I got to start on my next?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, so ironically, by the time... was actually published in 2014 and the dust had kind of settled on it in 2015 the thing that we did in 2013 that became the catalyst that whole initiative had failed oh damn like went down into glorious flames it was just so what the second book was Mover and Maker was like a response to why I believed that failed and so I was just kind of writing out and processing my thoughts and that became the second book and so each one of these books just really uh happened uh but i will say um i've shared with this before i can't remember thomas if you heard this but um i read stephen king's book on writing and he had a line in that book that unlocked writing for me as far as writing books and publishing books he said everyone says they want to be an author they want to write these books it's still the number one aspirational goal for americans still every year to write and publish a book yeah well but only only 99 percent of people don't do it well only one percent of people actually do it so um but steven king in in his book on writing he said anyone anyone can write uh one page a day anyone whether they work full-time or not one page a day and if you write one page a day you can publish a 365 page book every year for the rest of your life and he said even if half of what you write is crap you can still publish a book every other year for the rest of your life and i was like oh my god Oh, so I just started as a discipline, a rhythm of discipline in my life, writing one page a day. At least a page a day. You still do that? Yeah. I take two days off, so I have a goal every week to get five pages down, and I still do it. That is intense, brother. Knocked out a
SPEAKER_02:page yesterday. That is intense. Like camping. That's wild, dude. Now, this Below fellow, did he work with you on the second book?
SPEAKER_01:No, I asked him to. He helped contribute some thoughts to it, but then he bailed. He's actually the first person I met in Evansville, Zach Bilo. Oh, dude, shout out to Zach Bilo. We went to Don Mattingly's restaurant. You remember that?
SPEAKER_02:No, we were just talking to somebody about that. Casey's Duggar. Casey's Dugout. The owner, Casey Cowan? Keown? Keown, I think. I'm so bad. It's the K-E-O-N-W-N name. I don't know how to say it. But anyways, he's a nice fella. But yeah, I don't know the restaurant you're talking about, but we were speaking about that just recently. It's so funny you bring that up. So did you ever do co-authoring throughout your adventures? You've done multiple books, but was that first one the only one you did co-authoring on?
SPEAKER_01:No. So Heavensville was three of us. That was a project that the Evansville Christian Life Center did uh and so i was just asked to contribute and so you can see the other co-authors there that was my favorite writing project because it was the this was a the brainchild of jeremy seacrest and he uh just let me write he was like just send me a bunch of content and i'll curate it into a book and i was like that is glorious that is could you imagine just like freewheeling like this podcast just oh yeah but then you someone will manicure it into this beautifully uh put together excerpts and put them all together yeah we're actually
SPEAKER_02:a hiring one of those if you know anybody so
SPEAKER_01:that was fun and then Minding the Gap I did a fun project on this one at which our friend Dr. Burnett who you have we mentioned a couple times so I wrote that book is only about 90 pages and then I asked like five or six people to write responses to it and so that's what is based on your dissertation no no this is but this is a conversation that came in my head uh during my demon program yeah like i really crazy that a demon program for doctor
SPEAKER_02:and ministries i'm sorry you just passed over that oh you're stupid play on words
SPEAKER_01:no that's that's like that's how we call it demon yeah demon
SPEAKER_02:oh demon demon yeah doctor to ministry yeah but it's a demon oh my so it is a play on words don't be a dick but i'm just saying how they abbreviate it it's funny i can't go it we meet once a week at Every week at minimum to do this podcast, he pulls out three play on words every single time. I'm like, dude, this is too much. I'm losing sanity. I don't feel safe saying anything around him. Golly. It's a fun dynamic for the listeners. So you came up with this idea, and it's just a theology of measurement? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you explain that a little bit? I want to spend a little time on this one. This sounds interesting. So what do you mean? So it's a conversation you had in your head, and so this book was essentially your brainchild?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I was processing a theological presentation that one of my professors in my doctorate of ministry program, my demon program...
SPEAKER_02:You guys are pumped on this, dude. I don't like it. I don't like it at all. All right, we'll quit. Well, I think my house is haunted, so let's just keep the
SPEAKER_01:demon stuff to a minimum. Yeah, we are upstairs. But yeah, no. Yeah, so he presented this idea that the... Okay, we're going to have to get a little bit into... No, you're okay. I'm here for you, brother....ancient Near East cosmology. Near East? Yeah, yeah, where the Bible's written. Okay, okay, gotcha, gotcha. Israel, Palestine... So, you know, when the Bible was written, when Christianity, Jesus, all that landed in first century, well, it wasn't first century then, was it? No, no, no. It was zero centuries. It was just whatever it was. It was just like, we don't even know what time it is,
SPEAKER_02:bro.
SPEAKER_01:Like,
SPEAKER_02:we ain't even got
SPEAKER_01:sundials out here. Yeah. So, the thought world that just everyone had in there was a contained system of oneness. Like, that was just how people thought. All of this is one. And that's just the same thing about materialistic science today. It's like atoms, neutrons. It's all just connected into these elements. And anyways, they didn't understand that then. They just didn't have the scientific development. But this is the same thing. If you think about a witch doctor, how do you produce outcomes in the world. Well, I need a little bit of hair. I need some blood from this animal. We've got a voodoo doll over here. Right, and then I've got to
SPEAKER_02:pay this hobo to go actually do the work of murdering this guy. That's so bad. Hobo is not a good term. You can just say homeless gentleman. You can't say homeless gentleman either, dude. It's traveler. They're travelers now. You can't say Travelers of the evening. Oh my gosh. I'm working with his political correctness.
SPEAKER_01:It's not going well. Have you seen Movement? No. We're measuring the gap on that. Yeah, yeah, mining the gap. So the idea is like you can manipulate the oneness if you just know enough about it. And if you didn't, like if the witch doctor's spell didn't work, oh, it's just because I got to learn more. I got to go back. I got to add a toenail. Got to do some
SPEAKER_02:alchemy,
SPEAKER_01:yeah. And it's the same in scientific laboratories now, right? The only reason we can't solve every problem in the world based on a worldview of materialism is that because we simply don't have enough time and knowledge. If you give us enough time and knowledge, we'll figure it out. Well, Christianity would reject that premise in the sense of like there is a transcendent reality. There is something we call God or a prime reality or whatever that exists in a different reality. Different plane. In a different plane than what we do. And so when he breaks through into reality in the form of Jesus Christ, then we get like a disruption of the natural world. And so that's why, like classic Orthodox Christian faith would say, you can't save yourself, right? Like you have to believe in Jesus, and then through grace you're accepted, and you can't work towards your own, like that's part of what is so damaging about Catholicism is that you have to do everything right, you know, or then confess, or we have to do all these rituals. So Minding the Gap was just trying to take that thought of, like, oh, if the center of the Christian faith is that we can't control the outcomes that we want to see in the world, like we can't produce them, only at least the ultimate outcomes we'd like to see, then we have to be mindful that there's a gap between what we do and the outcomes we desire to see, that we can't manipulate God to produce the outcomes or else we then become God. We put ourselves in this. And this is the root of the conversation you're having in your head yeah so I basically just lay out the the it's not even an argument just like a presentation I'm not even saying like I agree with this or believe in it I just like it's rocking my thought world I'm having a lot of life just thinking about it here it is here it is now you five guys just respond to it and so Perry contributed that and some others there and so that was like one of my favorite writing projects because I genuinely want it to be a conversation I want to have more conversations about it uh from people that have read it and at least understand the principles that's
SPEAKER_02:so
SPEAKER_01:exciting dude
SPEAKER_02:uh and then also shout out to you because there's what one two three four people four other people on that book yeah those are the four the responses yeah three gentlemen and a lady that responded uh or no it was four four gentlemen
SPEAKER_01:i did ask a couple ladies that i asked asked 10 people but only five actually responded so yeah it's just it's nice i'll be old white guys
SPEAKER_02:it's nice that you said by austin and friends print I think it's nice that you have five friends. I have like two, and I'm related to one of them. You know what I mean? So they're hard to find. So good for you, brother. Yeah, good for you, dude. You're crushing it. I'm going to take a bathroom break real quick. Bat in a thousand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Will you double tap all the cameras on the way out? And we're back. Okay, what were we talking about, dude? I don't remember.
SPEAKER_01:We were just talking about Minding the Gap. Let me close that one down. Yeah, if you guys want to read it and contribute your own part to it, it, then I will, when I republish it, the 10th anniversary, I'll include you. Oh, no way. So are you going to have
SPEAKER_02:a 10th anniversary re-release? Maybe.
SPEAKER_01:That'd be sick, dude. I didn't publish it until 2020, so it's got a ways to go yet.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:like four years and change.
SPEAKER_02:Dude, that's okay. Do you think, so you haven't re-released anything, have you?
SPEAKER_01:No. I did self-publish Neighborhoods in Jesus, which is the last book we ever talked about, and then it got picked up by an actual publisher, and so it's technically a revised edition
SPEAKER_02:okay very
SPEAKER_01:sick dude yeah very sick and that
SPEAKER_02:was picked
SPEAKER_01:up by
SPEAKER_02:who uh hunter movements publishing
SPEAKER_01:yep
SPEAKER_02:oh very nice dude very nice which this one's pretty cool because you're basically talking about like what you said started like basically what you moved to evansville for so it's like 360 like hey this first theory failed but
SPEAKER_01:here's the newest theory yeah this is just highlighting and really focusing on my dissertation research and my life experience in doing neighborhood work
SPEAKER_02:very sick dude I do want to get into the meat and potatoes and by the meat and potatoes I mean like we touched on it a little bit but like you know taking getting your what you explained it a little bit earlier when you first introed yourself into the podcast if I don't know why in my head militia rings a bell is what it sounded like you were like you were like getting people together out in the streets I know it's not a militia but you were like getting your friends together like these christian folks and like going out and changing things in in communities that need it right and i needy communities isn't the right term what's the term i'm looking but i'm just saying like like what we talked about in the beginning like communities kind of eroded away from society yeah that's what i want to get in like that's what people are hungry for is like getting plugged into these communities and i forget who it was but there's like a study that's talking about like churches are the best place to actually have like a community and to like replace that with something else, one won't hit the same. You can be in a book club, which is a community, but you're not getting the same out of that book club that you would from just attending a church.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's super interesting, because this is not a, you know, it's just social science, but Harvard did a global study on human flourishing, and the outcome, we actually got to go to Boston and sit down with one of the main directors of that research program. Very nice. It was so cool. We got to go to lunch with him. And he was like, yeah, you guys wouldn't be surprised to learn that on a global, across faith, like faith, nationalities, ethnicities, populations, whatever, he's like, the three things that most people have in common in a flourishing life is a faith community, part of the faith community. That wasn't specific to Christianity, but a community tied to faith, a happy marriage, and a meaningful work it's like these are the three things that produce flourishing lives and it's like well yeah faith marriage and work it's like
SPEAKER_02:that's how it goes global study I would like to dive into this like the I don't know how much time we have left on the pod but I would like to get into this a little bit so okay so walk me back to the beginning like how does it how did it start how did this like going into the community and having like a tangible like direct like hands-on you know attack if you will yeah I don't know why everything is so violent in my brain
SPEAKER_01:you're a military guy
SPEAKER_02:militia attack kill everything I don't know you're just bringing your best self yeah dude I feel like this is a job interview for me and I'm like I'm no but uh but yeah dude so like walk me through like how did how did this become a thing like how did how did it begin
SPEAKER_01:yeah I have as long as I can remember I've always been fascinated by movements and Like, things that actually change stuff. Okay. You know, for the better, obviously. Right. But even negative movements, like the famous one, like Nazi Germany. Like, that's a fascinating...
SPEAKER_02:Shout out to Bosnia. Nobody talks about Bosnia anymore, dude. Bill Clinton really doing the most out there, dude. My boy Billy really setting... You know what I'm talking... You got 10 years on me, so you know a little about Bosnia. Absolutely. I remember that in the news cycle. That's a very unique... Yeah, that's a way to bring it out of... So it is interesting. It's interesting how the ebbs and flows of movement and just, oh, this is the normal now. How to rally people. Yeah. Now we salute this way. It's like, this is
SPEAKER_01:so weird. So you're fascinated by that. I've always been fascinated by movements and how they start. Even as a kid, the hippie movement, all that stuff was always just so interesting to me. But I've always been a very peaceful person. I've never owned a gun. you know no commentary on other people to do just personally like the idea of killing someone like the most revolutions that have happened in history unfortunately come with a lot of death and with a lot of atrocities or even the more peaceful ones sometimes they end cult of personalities movements like they end they end kind of nasty
SPEAKER_02:yeah where like a monk sets himself on fire yeah Jonestown
SPEAKER_01:Jonestown. That one, not great. David Koresh. Not Koresh. A lot of, so these like, the thought of like, okay, how might we as a society move, have like a genuine peaceful revolution? Like, how could you see revolution and transformation but in a way that's peace? Like, instead of violence or positive instead of negative or good building up instead of destruction?
SPEAKER_02:Have you ever seen the picture of the little girl and like her sunday dress and she's got a daisy and she's like putting it it was like a vietnam era i don't know if it's a photograph or a painting but she's like putting the daisy i think it's a photo in the rifle of a uh such
SPEAKER_01:a powerful image
SPEAKER_02:that is how you have you have to be willing to unarmed and bear all i'm thinking of like a like a child that's a grown ass that's a
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's not the one. I know the one you're
SPEAKER_02:talking about. That dude could vote. This girl I'm talking about is watching Sesame Street. You know what I mean? I think it's a painting. But here nor there. The point is, basically, you have to be willing to... Baskin has a lot of great pieces on exactly what we're talking about, too, that street artist. I think it's Baskin. But anyways, you have to be willing to stare death in the violent the aggressor. You have to be willing to stand in front of that and say that this is wrong.
SPEAKER_01:You have to be willing to do that. Your life might end. Termination's a real option. Yeah, a real option.
SPEAKER_02:Well, didn't you do a study talking about the percentage of people in the church that felt like a call versus not a call? Like it was part of their religious beliefs to actually do work in the community and then it wasn't necessarily a calling for some people?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's one of the... That's part of my discipline. research was finding out what motivated people of the Christian faith, anyways, to actively engage in neighborhood transformation. What did you find in that? Well, golly, it was so fascinating. But so I found, you know, it was the design of the project to kind of glean these things out, but we discovered five biblical concepts, and the one that all of my interviewee participants, they all said calling this That's the one Thomas was referencing. So this sense of call, like that there's a higher purpose that now my life needs to engage in. All of them had that sense. But then I also found three catalytic, like things that initially catalyzed engagement and then three things that sustained them. And so it's just a wealth of information or wealth of research. None of it would really be surprising like if you looked at it you'd be like oh yeah that makes sense but then just to be able to like affirm like no this is actual real social science data yeah you're putting it on paper that's it's not an opinion it's not a thought like this is actual sociological
SPEAKER_02:research there's 50 human beings that I talk to but you kind of pulled all that information into this yeah
SPEAKER_01:yep yep it's all in there that'd be cool yeah
SPEAKER_02:but that's interesting I do want to go back to just okay so the meat and potatoes how this thing starts and we were talking about like how do you have like a peaceful... Yeah, peaceful revolution. Like a peaceful revolution. Yeah. And I was kind of... I think... Do you agree that you kind of have to look the aggressor? Or do you find... Do you have a different
SPEAKER_01:thought? No, no, no. I agree. And I think that that's one of the many problems of the current state of Christendom right now. Christendom, not fallen. Yeah, sorry. Christ kingdom. I'm speaking to a slow person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the kingdom of Christ. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Is that we've gotten soft, and especially American, like, that's why you look at the global population explosion of Christians is happening in South America, Asia, and it's because they're doing that. They're facing down death, and they're answering with love. They're answering with community. They're answering with transformation. Just like the early church, the first 300 years, you know, Christians weren't in power. They were the powerless. They were the marginalized. They were the ones being persecuted and killed in coliseums. Romans were just out here schwacking them. Schwacking them. By the dozen, dude. Think about this, okay? This is one of the most fascinating... Sorry, not funny. Sorry, not funny. It's history. It's history. But this is one of the most fascinating thoughts in my mind that I think, again, it doesn't matter if you're of the faith, just to observe it, it's so fascinating to think that within about 250 years, 300 years, a movement Yeah. Yeah. come to power through violence. They were persecuted those early years. They were persecuted. They faced down death, just like you said. And I think that that is like, I don't know. I think that is one of the most interesting things that we need to account for. I think more people need to process that. It's possible. We can overcome greed and destruction and pollution and all these things with love. We can truly transform society. worlds uh in our own eternal world and external world by acts of love
SPEAKER_02:it just had you just have to come at it with i think what what is important is like your drive like where where your heart's at what's your what's your um you know uh main objective and that is like a peaceful revolution then you go to the antagonist and you're like hey man let's like positivity spreads just as well as negativity and like that aspect of like somebody cuts you off in traffic you can choose to be mad and that affects your driving or like the same as if you like wave or open the door for somebody that like changes their direction maybe in a positive direction.
SPEAKER_01:We're not willing to face down death anymore. We're too comfortable. We're not willing to flip
SPEAKER_02:over tax tables in
SPEAKER_01:the temple anymore. Hang on a cross. I'll
SPEAKER_02:tell you what, I'm here for the violence so if you guys are recruiting come on with it. No, I'm just kidding. But yeah, dude, honestly, yeah, they're are a lot of people that are afraid of violence. They're just like, oh, he's got a gun and let's go away. Let's just do whatever he says. They're the majority shareholder. Let's just do whatever they say. That's a bummer.
SPEAKER_01:That sucks, dude. You know what I mean? I would like to think that I would stand in that moment differently.
SPEAKER_02:You don't know until you get there, man. It's a different ballgame. Partnering with communities for Inside Out transformation like are you teaching people like hey this is how you get like a group of people that have a same like-minded goal and like this is how you build that
SPEAKER_01:some of that's in there for sure but this is specifically in the context of what we would call uh like marginalized neighbors people that have uh experienced marginalization um like the classic bad neighborhood you know the neighborhood i like okay we i told you guys i grew up in in rural uh Illinois, even in a farm town of 2,000 people. My mom said, you can ride anywhere you want your bike in the summer except for there. It's like the bad neighborhood usually characterized by dilapidated abandoned housing. Or just a bad house on the block that has overgrown grass. You could go and maintain there. Now imagine a whole neighborhood or 50% of the neighborhoods like that. I grew up in a trailer park, brother. I'm in one of those neighborhoods. A couple
SPEAKER_02:trailers blew up. in my neighborhood you know what I'm saying like it's not a lot of friends wanting to stay the night and have slumber parties you know what I mean
SPEAKER_01:so it was my experience through doing all this community work for a very long time that a lot of people meaning well like genuine motivations of goodness but the way that they projected that change onto these communities that they come as the experts they have the answers they want to provide the interventions and then they project that onto these neighbors and these communities that those neighbors didn't necessarily ask for. They're like, thanks for the food, but we don't have
SPEAKER_02:electricity to
SPEAKER_01:keep this food cold. Yeah, and so the idea behind this is we're flipping that. The neighbors that live in the neighborhood are valuable, of infinite worth and inherent dignity. Like a CI, dude. Yeah, you guys got
SPEAKER_02:like CIs.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. Confidential informants. Confidential informants. They're on the ground. Yeah, boots on the ground, dude. They're experts. They call you from like a star
SPEAKER_02:60. number from like a pay phone or something yeah they don't tell any first names you know you got something like that boots on the ground
SPEAKER_01:yeah that's right no we go
SPEAKER_02:door to door and you're relying on these individuals for like yeah we listen to them yeah yeah what's your biggest problem what's your second biggest
SPEAKER_01:problem yeah what and what's your big what's your biggest strengths like what are the good things that are going because we want to find positive deviance let's polish those yeah yeah absolutely so so yeah it's partnering that's what that is is like inside so instead of projecting change onto communities you build genuine relationships with neighbors and then you let them change their own community from the inside out you just give them resources well no I would say
SPEAKER_02:it's like matchmaking like this dude's plumbing's leaking but this dude's you know a plumber but like needs carpenter work and they can help each other is
SPEAKER_01:that certainly part of it yeah yeah that's in fact that's one of our priority goals in the TP Park neighborhood where I live and work and play and it's like they want to do they want to take care of neighbors basic needs by themselves So there's this great book called Toxic Charity that explains a lot of this and he tells a very powerful story. I'll be quick about it. No, no, no, you're good. But he tells this really powerful story of he used to be like the classic suburban white guy coming in and bringing Christmas presents to needy families in the inner city in Atlanta. And he noticed over and over and over again that if the father was present, he would oftentimes leave the room. And so finally... That guy that
SPEAKER_02:was bringing gifts. Yeah. So that guy, say that again, so sorry. If he came to give kids presents or whatever, the dad of those kids would leave the room.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And so he had gotten to know one of these fathers and so he pulled him aside and was like, hey, I've noticed this thing. When the father's present and when we bring these presents, the mom is usually happy and smiling. The kids, of course, are super excited to get it. But he's like, but the father's just almost always leaving. He's like, yeah, because what you're communicating to my kids is that I can't take care Shame. And now you're buying my kids presents for them. And so it's this idea of like toxic charity. We're reproducing narratives or sometimes literally destroying. This is a real story of one of my friends in my doctor of ministry program. He's from Kenya. He's my best friend that I met in that program. His name is Michael. He knows a guy that was one of his friends that he grew up with whose main t-shirt manufacturing company was put out of business because of all the free t-shirts that America sends over there. So not only are we like, that's toxic charity. By trying to help. Genuinely. You could have gave the money to that shirt maker. Well, right. Let him do his own business so that he actually can produce economic viability for his own community. And the money would have stayed in that community. In that community. I swear, dude. So by trying to clothe these kids, which is a good motivation, we're actually destroying their communities. And so this is the idea of toxic charity. And so this is what we've done in a lot of neighborhoods in America is through the social welfare state is that we've reproduced these cycles of dependency that lead to the destruction of communities and then trap people in poverty. guess what? You stay there. Like we're all pretty much, I mean, of course there's exceptions to the rule. The American dream can theoretically. Yeah, dude, our
SPEAKER_02:podcast is going to take off someday. One day. I don't like the way this guy is setting. He's like, listen, this podcast sucks. It's always going to suck. You guys are always going to be very mid. You're going to find somebody that's going to come in and give you guys a bunch of money. It's going to be toxic charity. We're going to shut the podcast down. Uh, no, but yeah, no, I see your point though. Um, cause you're just, you're, raised in it man all of your credentials are there all of your tangibles are there all the you know what I mean it's like that's all you've ever known that's all you've ever that's all you're gonna be able to exhaust
SPEAKER_01:yeah so that book is all about flipping that
SPEAKER_02:it's wild you know fun fact fun fact just so some people that grow up in like in poverty and then they grow up to be like a really great athlete of sorts you see it in like the NBA and the NFL all the time oh yeah they'll make these million dollar contracts. And then they just blow through it. And then when they get out and they're not getting that paycheck, where do they wind up? If you're not a Hall of Famer, if you're not a Hall of Famer, it's just... And again, not being a dick, I'm just pointing out the obvious. And they give NFL players and college players classes on money management. And they're trying and they're trying, but these guys aren't getting it. They're just like... Chains and cars and wheels and houses. It's like, ah, God. And they wind up right back where they were. It's a valid point, though. You know what I mean? Because that's all you ever know. One of the beauties is that could be a burden to somebody else. God tests people in different ways. You being poor is one test, but giving somebody a bunch of money, that's a whole other test. What do you do with it? You know what I mean? Yeah. Invest it. Give it to people. Do something positive with it. I don't know. That's a big... Okay, now... I'll tie up my portion on this. I just want to know, what's the end goal here? This is a relatively new child. This is a new thing you're birthing. Where do you want to see this go? What are your aspirations? Or maybe just from you personally, what would you like to see this grow into? I
SPEAKER_01:would like to see a lot of local churches adopt this approach. It's currently just York congregation? No, our church doesn't even do it. It's funny. So I work for a non-profit and we practice this.
SPEAKER_02:Have we said the name of the non-profit? It's Community One. Did we say that earlier and I missed it?
SPEAKER_01:Okay,
SPEAKER_02:I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_01:We skipped right over that, brother. I'm so sorry. Community One. Yeah, dude. So dope. I've been working there almost eight years now. It's just wild to think about. Nice, dude. Getting old. I became a grandpa this year. Nice, dude. Are you really a grandpa? For real. Oh, good lord.
SPEAKER_02:That's like a whole... Different things just change your whole life perspective. You think having a kid changes your life perspective, and then when your kids have kids, it's not. Now you've got to start watching Wheel of Fortune
SPEAKER_01:and Murder, She Wrote. Lean into it. Get
SPEAKER_02:the slippers for the house, dude.
SPEAKER_01:To answer this question, I'll say this is the first time I've ever actually tried to sell a book
SPEAKER_00:okay
SPEAKER_01:like all the other books I wrote I just wrote right this one I'm reengaging in social media for the first time since 2020 yeah the
SPEAKER_02:posts are good
SPEAKER_01:unfortunately my daughter's doing most of those that's that's great and
SPEAKER_02:unfortunately that's the best way to get media out
SPEAKER_01:in mass no it's the only way now yeah it's
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:so but what's super so what's fascinating about this to me is that the writing industry has been disrupted of course as ever Everything has been... So publishing has been disrupted, and now you cannot get a manuscript written unless you have a platform, even by a literary agent. The first question they ask you is, what's your platform? I'm like, well, I got off of social media four and a half years ago, so not much. Are
SPEAKER_02:you guys doing LinkedIn? Are you guys doing
SPEAKER_01:LinkedIn? You didn't have your blog anymore? No, no, no. And so... But a friend of mine, a very good friend, she sent me a screenshot from a writer called John Acuff, and he was interacting with someone on his social media platform. Clever. Very good interaction. Yeah, and it said, hey, John, I want to be a writer, but I don't want to do all the marketing and stuff in order to sell my book. Correct, yeah. And he wrote, in the response, he goes, that's a journal.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it's not wrong. And so my friend sent me that. That's awesome. And it was like a dagger to my heart because I had said the exact thing before. I'm like, I just want to write. Can't someone sell my books for me?
SPEAKER_02:Pull
SPEAKER_01:up
SPEAKER_02:Bill's IG. Will you open another tab and pull up Frank Bill's IG, please? I'm so sorry. No, it's fine. Do you know Frank
SPEAKER_01:Bill? I don't.
SPEAKER_02:From Corden, Indiana. He's a bestseller. He's been on the... Nice. Yeah. Dude is
SPEAKER_01:a killer. I have to talk to him.
SPEAKER_02:This is what he does. Hold on. It's scroll down scroll down to like his past all our stuff he has been on the podcast this is what he does though like that book right there that's his crimes in southern Indiana okay he's co-authored some stuff but he pumps up other authors he like he pushes out other people's shit all the time back to dirt the dirt is his newest book that he came out with a year and a half ago he's got a new book coming out yeah and he's just constantly boosting himself and boosting other authors that he reads and believes in and appreciates and he it's just all like this is a prime example of like coming from a New York Times bestseller that's him the little guy on the left next to that big guy yeah yeah he's not that little in person that's just a tall that's just a big SOB but anyways my point is to your yeah to you know help drive the point home that you're getting to you know that you're trying to make is that like if you're gonna be a writer dude you gotta do this I know cuz no one is a better at for you than you no one knows your shit better than you know your stuff
SPEAKER_01:you know what I mean yeah we got to go to we had the opportunity when our first book was published to go to this future the church summit and I talked to a guy there who he was publishing his second book nice his first book had sold 50,000 copies and he was his goal for this one was 200,000 because 50,000 copies to sell is basically made him one year salary that's all so that's to think about how much you have to sell right so his goal for this one was$200,000 he felt like that would give him enough in his account to like truly be an author for the rest of his life I think he actually hit that mark too but he told me good on him that he had over 380 appearances in the last calendar year that's another thing like that's how much he was working it you have to and it was really defeating for me what's his name is this him no no no what was his name that guy's name was Drew Dick Drew Dick hell yeah D-Y-C-K hell
SPEAKER_02:yeah no I mean I mean Sorry. No. Like, yeah, Drew Dick? No, no, no. No, I just meant like, hell yeah, good for him. No, absolutely. That dude, it sounds like he, so like.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so he was all in. Like, he was going for it. Yeah. And I just have never been able to do that. Frank's talked about that too. It's just not what I want
SPEAKER_02:to do with my life. Circuiting. Like, when you're putting something out and you have like a strat, like a strategy pre-release, if you coordinate everything just right and you plan your cities out and you spider, I mean, most of the time these people Does he have an agent, I'm assuming, that he works with? They're helping coordinate all this stuff. Once you get a book that sells 50, then you get people knocking on your door. You're getting emails like, hey, who's representing you? Exactly. It's like, my cousin. You see this Alex Ramosi? He just wrote a book called The 100 Million Money Models, and it was the fastest-selling nonfiction book, having sold over 2.9 million copies within the first 24 hours. And it actually broke the world record but he was talking about like all these like top five rich quick schemes. Well, like all these type five people that are authors, they were all like politicians. And he's like, I feel like an entrepreneur should be up there. Yeah. So like he wrote this book and then like went on a crazy campaign. Hermosi's dope. He always has a breathing strip on his nose. I don't, I think he's got some serious medical conditions. Yeah. He's got sinus issues. He's a dude. He crushes though. Yeah. He's fire. Yeah. He wears the dopest hats. Um, but anyways, uh, But, yeah, dude, honestly, I commend you. Get in the social medias. Let your daughter do whatever she wants with it. She is, man. It's great. If she needs you to, like, talk for a video, listen to her because she knows what she's doing, dude. Exactly. You know what I'm saying? You got to trust her. You got to pump this stuff out, dude. And I feel like Wes Latrell from Wally Opus, he's been doing some really cool shorts of just, like, talking points. Like, you can even take those posts of, like, just the, you know, the quote that she pulls out and just talk. Yeah, he's a grinder, dude. Yeah. Yeah, Wes grinds, dude. Yeah. Yeah. along this moment or like journey of neighborhoods in Jesus was there like a moment where you just wanted to like throw in the towel like I'm done with this book or like I'm not gonna release it and like what pulled you through that moment
SPEAKER_01:yeah a couple times yeah so I this was this is technically my third try at this book alone so I started writing after my dissertation I wanted to do like a popular level presentation of my dissertation research okay it was so boring I was like falling asleep writing it you know like if I can't enjoy this like who the hell is so I shelved it and then I wrote and so that was a low point and then I got this idea of really incorporating more of the stories from the actual neighborhood work we did and also came back alive and got the second kind of wind in its sails and that's when I was able to get the manuscript done. But then I sent it out to almost 30 different literary agents and publishing companies. Not one of them even read the manuscript. What? Yeah. They didn't even open it? No. What's your platform? And if you don't have a platform, then they're not going to read it. Do you guys have MySpace? Where are you
SPEAKER_00:guys at,
SPEAKER_01:dude? So that was a super low point. Now, I had self-published several books before, so I had that experience. So I was like, well, I have this manuscript, so I'm just going to go ahead and self-publish it. And then when it got picked up by Hunter Movements, there was a low point in that where you're like, it's never going to get done because I had a real editor, which was an awesome experience. Helen, shout out to Helen in the UK. She was freaking amazing, so much fun to work with, and she had that great accent. All my
SPEAKER_02:family's English. I get it. Yeah, they have horrible teeth and awesome accents.
SPEAKER_01:Dude, I love the English. But that was like a year-long. Oh, yeah. the things I was writing about every day, or at least every week in the neighborhood work. And so it was like, I would share a story, and then the next day in real life, another amazing story would come from these principles and practices that we adopted in this work. And I know stories of real neighbors with real names that have transformational experiences through practicing in this work. And neighborhood-based organizations like Renew Church here in the on the Lamasco Initiative that they were seeing incredible life come from practicing what we were talking about in this book. And so it was just like having those real experiences tied to what I was developing and creating was so meaningful and allowed me to keep going through several, not just one, like several low points. Just the results of the work and like just feeling alive from it and
SPEAKER_02:journaling that whole week. week and realizing like hey this is powerful yeah hell yeah heck yeah dude that's awesome yeah seriously man so all your books are available on Amazon they are even this one I didn't see this one on there yeah yeah yeah okay okay I only saw the four on there oh this one is available as well yep Neighborhoods in Jesus and we'll have do you have we might just link your like your name page on Amazon you can just link the website and through the website you
SPEAKER_01:can scroll down and click on each book and it takes you yeah my My friend made this for me just to collect all the books into one place. Very nice, dude.
SPEAKER_02:Very nice. Okay, perfect, dude. Yeah, this link will be in the description for sure. We'll get you hooked up. And anybody that's interested in this kind of work, man, seriously, click that link and give it a peek, man. Yeah, seriously. Do you have questions, comments for us, for the Days Grimm podcast or anything like that? Anything
SPEAKER_01:weird, maybe? No, I'm just curious, like, what are your guys' experts And secondly, what's the conversation that you haven't had that you want to have? I'm going to
SPEAKER_02:answer both questions with one. My aspirations and what I want to happen would be a direct conversation with Barack Obama. Oh, nice. Dude, honest to God. I thought he was going to say taxidermist. He's been talking about how he wants to get to taxidermist. Dude, hey, if anybody knows a taxi, you send them my way because I'm trying to get a taxidermist up in here. Okay. So that's like immediate goals. But future goals, yeah, man, I want to interview Barack Obama. That'd be fire. Yeah, that'd be lit. I don't know, just like... like more like just like uh i don't know we've been interviewing just like people and it's like we're pivoting to do people that that we want to talk to not just like random whatever yeah like there could be like a quote influencer evansvillian influencer and That's great, but if Tom isn't into whatever it is they're trying to influence, and if I'm not into whatever they're trying to influence, what's going to wind up happening is we're going to have this really great person in that's probably doing really great things, and it's just going to be a flat conversation. As opposed to today, lively, you're in it, you're squeezing the juice. You can feel the difference. When you watch one of our podcasts, not to say all of our guests have been great, but when we're just not really squeezing it, at least I can tell. Post-production, I can tell. So that's kind of what we're kind of re-angling towards. But I think podcast is the future of social media in an aspect. So like, you know, Zach and I jokingly call me, I said I want to be the podfather of Evansville.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I've got a couple ideas I want to pass you on. You guys might be the ones to do
SPEAKER_02:it. We're very optimistic and again, we're all about helping folks out, man. I can't wait to dive into Navy We're heads of Jesus. Can't wait to talk to you about it. Once I finished the book, it would be, well, that's a gift to you. Maybe we both read it. I can't read. So, um, you know, I'll do the audio book. You know what I mean? I'll do the, uh, uh, I'm joking. But Austin, you could have done anything on your Sunday night and you came in and hung out with us and talk to us about your book. Yeah, man. On the Lord's day. Seriously. Thank you so much, brother. Um, and thank you to the listeners and the viewers. If you're on the YouTube, uh, Click subscribe. Check us out every Tuesday, 8 a.m. Episode's dropping like fire. I think this has been another thrilling episode of the Day's Grimm Podcast. My name is Thomas Grimm. My name is Brian Day. And this has been Dr. Austin Maxheimer. Thank you, Austin.