Ascend - Apostolic Educator's Seminar 2025, Friday afternoon service

to say from the outset that I believe in Christian education. I believe in what you are doing and I believe that our Christian schools are the future of the apostolic church. that what we are doing now is we're still in in those baby steps moments. This is not a a peak for us. More and more apostolic leaders are recognizing the fact that it is through the valued Christian education experience.

It is through the doors that you are opening that we are transforming the apostolic movement. I believe that if time allows us, if the Lord carries, we're going to see a harvest as a result of your work in Christian schools that is going to change the way that we work. Would you bow your heads with me? Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, we give you glory for everything that we have received in this conference.

We thank you, mighty God. this is ordained of the Holy Ghost that we would be here, Lord, that we would be hearing these tremendous words that you have sent through these speakers today. I ask mighty God, Lord, that in this time we have together today, you would speak to our hearts, Lord, that you would touch us and change us, mighty God. We love you and we need you and we bless you in Jesus name. Amen.

I uh I want to talk today about creating a culture. Now, I am passionate about organizational strategies. Uh, but to quote a well-known business leader, man by the name of Ducker, you've heard of him. He said, "Culture eats strategy for lunch." And I believe that. I was asked a question last night after the service said, "How do we deal with all of the negativity?

It feels like there's criticism and complaint. We're constantly receiving the the negative from our parents and from students. How do we deal with this wave of negativity? Can I tell you this? You are not alone.

We live in a culture that is infected with so many sources of negativity. It is absolutely going to find its way to seep into the church and it's going to find its way to seep into the school. You're going to feel that it's personal. Satan wants to make you feel like you are somehow missing the boat. You are somehow falling short.

And as a result of that, this negativity validates the idea that what you're doing doesn't matter, isn't good enough, and isn't going to succeed. But I want to encourage you by faith to invest in a Christian school culture that will change the way that your stakeholders, including your teachers, your students, and your parents, witness and reflect upon what's happening in your organization. As Christian school teachers and administrators, there are some things that we are absolutely responsible for. We are responsible for the academic success of our children. Amen.

If our children are kept safe from the world, right? But they never learn anything, THEN WE'RE NOT A WE'RE NOT A CHRISTIAN SCHOOL. We're a Christian something, but not a Christian school. So, we're accountable and we've got to we've got to meet those achievement uh achievement milestones. We've got to be able to look at our test scores and look at OUR GRADUATES AND WHAT'S HAPPENING after graduation and say, "Yes, they are thriving." And a great deal of that is because our Christian school is succeeding.

You're responsible for academic success. You're responsible for your students being good human beings, right? If they walk out the back door of your Christian school and they are so disdainful of everyone else that they can't have a conversation with someone of a different political or religious persuasion because they're so convinced it's me and no one else. Then you didn't raise a good kid, right? They can't lead if they can't engage others.

We're responsible for that. WE'VE GOT A JOB TO DO. WE ARE WE are responsible as Christian leaders that we will have a healthy lifegiving environment in the school. Can I tell you that there are a lot I'm just going to be real honest. I have a real problem being honest.

It's not that I I'm not honest. It's that I'm honest all the time and sometimes I had to shut up. But I don't. Right. We have and I've not your church, okay?

Not your church, but we have a lot of apostolic churches in the world. Not in your neighborhood, not that you go to. They've got the truth, but they have a toxic environment. And so THEY HAVE KIDS THAT GROW up at 18, they backslide, at 25, they come back broken, right? Because they could not survive in the church environment.

toxicity is is is something that we have to understand. It's my responsibility. My responsibility that the environment is lifegiving. Our schools can be I mean we can we can make them walk the line, dress the dress, talk the talk, act the act, but if it's not heartdeep and they graduate and we see them like and they're everywhere else, we're responsible for that, friend. WE'RE RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT.

TH THIS IS NOT the kind of job where you can say, "I made it available. If you if you want it, here it is. If you don't, that's on you." College professor can do that, right? College professor at your secular college can stand up there and profess and say, "Here's what I know." And you either get it or you don't. And it it's not personal, right?

The professor is not responsible. There's no checking back in. But a Christian school is a ministry, an academic institution, a business, right? At the end of the day, we've got to have enough money in the bank to make payroll. Yeah, it's a business.

We've got a lot of categories that we fit in, and we've got to check every single box. You know what you're not responsible for? You're not responsible for people's hurt feelings when you do the right thing. You're not responsible for making people happy. You're responsible for making people healthy.

So, we exist in a world that there are a lot of pressures on people around us. We were just talking at lunchtime especially about boys and how we're seeing within our culture, every statistic, every number, every count is heading in the wrong direction for our boys. We're witnessing boys that are that are reaching high school graduation. They have no ambition, no v no no motivation, no dream. They they don't they don't know which door to go through because they don't know where success lies.

They have no idea. They look at their dad and their grandpa and say, "This is what dad did to succeed. This is what grandpa did to succeed. And none of those doors exist anymore. I'm in a very uh uh uh blessed financially, economically area.

I mean, our our community is is probably one of those places where where jobs are more abundant than you're going to find them elsewhere. But it's not a whole lot of variety of jobs. You can't just graduate from high school and get a factory job and take care of your family anymore. Those days don't exist. And we've not prepared our children for a world that is complex, that requires brand new skills, skills that their parents and grandparents never had.

And so our boys are disconnecting. They're unplugging. They're plugging into the video games. They're they're looking elsewhere for entertainment value. They're looking elsewhere for the things that will make them feel like they found some opportunity for success.

As a Christian school, we have a responsibility to see them well prepared. We talk about at our school three things. We want to see you prepared to lead in the community, lead in the church, and lead in the home. Lead in the community. What does that mean?

Well, you've got to understand how the world works. You've got to understand economics. You've got to understand the social skills necessary to be engaged in a very complex society. Lead in the church. I love the fact that our students can get up on the platform and they can be leading in worship and they can share the word.

I just shared with someone earlier today had a phone call from a pastor 10 o'clock on a Wednesday night. He said, "I don't think I realized until this evening how deeply our church has been impacted by the Christian school, but I looked around. God was moving." And it was the kids from the Christian school that knew what to do. They knew how to respond. Praise God.

We need to give them OPPORTUNITIES FOR THAT. BUT ALSO lead in the home. It it is not easy today to be prepared for marriage and child rearing. This is a this is a very challenging time in our culture. Listen to the voices within our society.

There is such strife, such contention from the political strife we see on a daily basis. I don't know about you, I've I've had a Facebook page since 2007, nearly 20 years. 18 years of Facebook. My Facebook page is full of more negativity and ugliness today than ever before. And I don't anticipate anyone's going to push a button and make it better tomorrow.

And in this environment, we're raising children in Christian schools, and we understand the responsibility that we have. But Satan is using this messaging to beat us down, to convince us that what we're doing is an impossibility. We're never going to succeed. That's the message that keeps coming back again and again and again. But I believe that what you're doing is going to reap a a a fruit in the future.

You're going to hear back from students and you're going to witness what happens in their lives after they leave your school and you're going to see you are planting the seeds today that are going to make the difference in the future. Now, here's some things that that we have to understand. I can't change what's happening outside the walls of my school, but I'm responsible for what's happening inside the walls of my school. I'm responsible for what happens in that child's life after the door closes behind him when he walks in in the morning. We have a few things.

I'm going to share some things, little mottos that we say relentlessly at our school. And one of them has that word relentless. We talk about relentless positivity. This world has so much negativity in it. The messaging is negative.

The criticism that's there. Our school has to have a heart that walks by faith, not by sight. And walking by faith means we trust God. It's going to work out. You cannot, as a Christian leader, you cannot fall apart every time something goes against you.

You must demonstrate the resilience we talk about in our children. Number of years ago, my aunt and uncle brought a kitten home. Now, this kitten was a beloved cat. They I mean, they're cat people, and I don't understand cat people, but this particular cat had a characteristic I've never seen in any other cat. And I've told this story a million times.

This cat from the time it was a kitten, you could lay a sock across his back and he would go belly to the floor and he would make the MOST TERRIBLE WHINING SOUND. JUST THE WORST, RIGHT? And it WAS A GAME THAT WE THE KIDS, WE all love to play. We go to Thanksgiving at aunt Aunt Sandra's house and take a sock and lay it on the cat. That cat lived to be nearly 20 years old and it would do IT ITS ENTIRE LIFE.

IT WAS A LEARNED BEHAVIOR. YOU TAKE A SOCK, YOU LAY IT ON HIS BACK, BELLY TO THE FLOOR. HIS NAME WAS WINER. Winer was nearly 20 years old, was at that point in life where things just weren't working anymore. And my aunt and uncle, if you're a cat person, you're going to dislike me after I tell this story.

But I'm sorry. Surely we outnumber the cat people here today. My aunt and uncle took Winer to the vet. It was that time. They checked in, sat down in the waiting room, and of course, you know, it's the vet and the dogs in the background are just barking and making all the noise.

Poor Winer had a heart attack and died in the waiting room, right? While waiting to be put down and my uncle just went up and said, "Uh, we're we're going to go ahead and cancel our appointment. Save $250, right?" He had a So, I I tell my I tell my teachers all the time, DON'T BE A WHINER. WELL, one of them actually wrote a wrote a book called Don't Be a Whiner about the cat that always whined. It's a I'm sure it's going to be a bestseller.

But uh we have to make certain that as Christian leaders we demonstrate the kind of resilience, faith-based living and positivity that sets an absolute expectation of we're in this together. We're a team. We'll work it out. Whatever the problem is, we're going to handle it. Right?

Whether you're a teacher or an administrator, there's nothing that's going to come your way today, tomorrow, or the next day, there's nothing that's going to come your way that you cannot work through. IN FACT, THE BIBLE says in the book of Romans, THE 8TH CHAPTER, THAT ALL THINGS ARE GOING TO WORK TOGETHER FOR your good. Now, I don't understand that sometimes. WE'RE IN A BUILDING PROGRAM. I'm so excited about it.

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DONE OCTOBER 20TH. Guess what today's date is? After October 20th, we're not in that building. You know why we're not? BECAUSE A TORNADO HIT OUR BUILDING in March.

We we broke ground a year ago, June, and we're so excited and I'm, you know, giving tours and taking people in. And I go to a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, and I get a phone call said, "Uh, the tornado has ripped the roof off the new building. Insurance paid out over a million dollars, set us back by months. We still don't have a final move in date, but they're laying floors today. Praise the Lord." But here's the deal, okay?

I can't control whether or not a tornado hits my building, but I'm going to tell you something. That was the will of God. That was the It was the absolute will of God that a tornado would hit that building. And nobody was hurt. Praise the Lord.

Nobody was injured. Nobody Nobody went to the I mean, it happened in the middle of the night. We got up and the roof was laying out in the in the field. One building in Monroe County got hurt by an EF0 tornado. I didn't even know they went down to zero.

There's an EF0 tornado that came in and hurt one building in the entire county, our Christian school. Tell me God's not doing something. I don't understand, friends, EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS. BUT I DO KNOW THIS. Whatever happens, God's going to take us through it.

And my faith has got to communicate THAT. LET ME TELL YOU WHAT YOU DO NOT HAVE THE luxury of being able to do. Bad news comes, somebody's misbehaving. Students are struggling. Coach, quit in the middle of the season.

You don't have THAT LUXURY. YOUR FACE HAS GOT TO SPEAK FAITH, RIGHT? Relentless positivity. YOU GET UP IN THE MORNING AND YOU BUCKLE IN AND YOU SAY, "GOD'S GOING TO GIVE US THE VICTORY TODAY. IT MIGHT NOT LOOK LIKE A VICTORY, BUT HE'S GOING TO DO IT." YOUR TEAM HAS GOT TO KNOW THIS, RIGHT?

YOUR TEAM HAS GOT TO KNOW THAT IF THEY COME TO you with an ABSOLUTE CALAMITY THAT YOU'RE NOT GOING TO fall apart. Your face has got to get the Holy Ghost. If you're a classroom teacher, your students need to have absolute confidence that no matter what happens, you're going to be able to handle it. We uh we relaunched our school. It's a long story so I won't tell the whole story.

This is our 51st year in our current building. But we had things were bad. 2014 I came on board and the heat didn't work in the building. It was February. I first visited the school February and the heat didn't work in the building and the wind blew right through the the the windows and and and it was a bad situation.

We had the lights turned off because we didn't have money to pay the electricity bill. hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. It was a it was not exactly a sensible sane thing to step into that say God's going to give us a CHRISTIAN SCHOOL. BUT I DID IT because I prayed and my wife said, "Well, if you want to," and so I did. AND WE HAD THIS ONE SITUATION AS SPRING came and things began to get warmer.

Snakes started coming out of the foundation. Now, not big snakes, little just little bitty things, right? AND I'M WORKING AND I hear screams and yells and AND SOMEBODY COMES RUNNING INTO MY OFFICE, THERE'S A SNAKE IN THE ROOM. WHEN I'M thinking snake, I'm thinking, right, my last high school, we had a six- foot long snake got loose and lived underneath the lockers for years. He would mol his skin and that's the only way we knew that he was still alive.

He'd come out and shed his skin overnight and go back in. We knew he was there. His name was Harvey. I'M THINKING WE GOT A SNAKE. I GO IN AND THEY HAD A CELL PHONE PICTURE OF IT WAS THE ONLY THING cuz it went back in a little crack and I mean it was like this big.

IT'S A WORM, FRIENDS. IT'S A WORM. It'll be a snake if it lives and it's not going to live because I'm going TO POUR CHEMICALS DOWN IN THAT LITTLE CRACK. RIGHT? YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT, WELL, WE JUST CAN'T HAVE SCHOOL TODAY.

THERE WAS A SNAKE IN THE CLASSROOM. You don't HAVE THAT LUXURY. YOU DON'T HAVE THAT LUXURY. THERE'S A SNAKE. WE STILL HAVE TO LEARN CHAUCER, RIGHT?

You have a choice. You determine YOUR CULTURE. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE. And relentless positivity is what it's all about. Now, I'm going to tell you this.

In in the previous session, I made a comment. I said, "If you fight the little fires, you won't have to fight the big fires." That is literally and figuratively true. I I was working at a at a a school, not an apostolic school, so doubt that it's anybody you've ever met, but uh mentoring a a leader and I was spending time with with their school leadership. And in one of my sessions with the head of school, she was talking about one of the parents in the school happened to be a very wealthy family that owned a well-known franchise restaurant location, big donor, constantly negative, just constant just poison the water, right? And I said, "Well, tell me about your conversations about this with that person." I've I've never mentioned it to him.

Oh, I said, there's our problem. You can't expect negativity to disappear from your culture if you're not actively engaged in combating negativity. YOU CAN'T JUST SAY, "I'M GOING TO BE A POSITIVE PERSON," AND HOPE THAT IT catches on. You've got to actively engage. Right?

So, another one of those sayings that we embrace at our school is lean in to awkward conversations. Lean in TO AWKWARD CONVERSATIONS. NOW, I don't know if awkward conversations make you happy. If they do, you're probably in the wrong job, right? There's some people that just seem to have great joy in having THOSE UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATIONS.

I DON'T I don't like them, and my flesh says no. But I do know this. If I procrastinate, the problem's not going to go away. It's not going to get better. If I will engage now, if I've got a parent, a volunteer, a coach, a teacher, surely you've never had a teacher at your school say something like, "I don't get paid ENOUGH TO DEAL WITH THAT KIND of nonsense." That's a double whammy, right?

That's like negativity on top of negativity. An ungrateful heart. If that makes it back to you, brother or sister, school administrator, you've got a cancerous lesion that must be addressed. YOU'VE GOT TO ADDRESS THAT. AND IT'S NOT GOING TO BE comfortable and fun.

But the more you do it, and the more benefit you see, the easier it gets. Lean in to those awkward conversations. I tell you this, stop emailing and texting and calling people when there's a problem. Your text and email and phone call is killing your organization. It's easy to deal with.

I'm a texting person. If Alexander Graanbell was truly the genius everybody says he was, he would have invented texting before he did phone calls. When my phone makes noise, I get mad, right? I don't want to talk to anybody. I'm I'm exaggerating.

But you know what it is? I can shoot a text. PROBLEM SOLVED. BOX CHECKED, RIGHT? You know WHAT'S NOT A LOT OF FUN?

Somebody who's unhappy and I give them a call and say, "Hey, have you got time tomorrow to drop into my office? Let's talk this over." But you will problem solve by meeting someone in person that you will never fix the situation via text or phone call or email. You have got to engage in personal face-to-face conversations. Now, I want to spend the next few minutes talking about interactions, right, of this nature. Now, if if you're going to brag on my school, I want to hear what you have to say.

If if you're a parent and you're having a great experience with one of my teachers, I want to know that because I'm gonna quote you, right? But I in my flesh, it doesn't make me delighted to hear you complain and critique and criticize. But one of the most important skills or traits of leadership is the ability to actively and supportively listen to someone else's complaint. Okay? The ability to listen to somebody else say, "I'm unhappy and you're the reason." Nobody in the flesh gets a kick out of that.

But you will never succeed as a leader until you have learned to have those conversations in a healthy environment. Okay. So I'm I'm sitting in I'm observing a leader who I am mentoring and the conversation is between a a school administrator and a parent and I'm the fly on the wall. Okay. Real story happened in the not too distant past within the last calendar year.

I'm just observing. I'm not there to to lead the conversation. I'm there just to listen in and then give feedback immediately. This parent came in and this parent was on fire. Okay?

You've never had parents who who didn't come in and demonstrate the fruit of the spirit. Right? This was an apostolic minister and like he had had enough and he was upset. And I'm watching the administrator, RIGHT? THE PARENT HAS GOT ALL of this to get out of his system.

And I'm watching the administrator and here's what's happening. Her face is going to war, right? She's not saying anything because we've been talking about active listening. She's not saying anything, but she's breathing, right? And I can tell it because I can hear it, right?

Eyes are like narrowing to slits of anger. BODY LANGUAGE. CAN I TELL YOU NOTHING good came out of that conversation. In that moment, we had to spend some time reflecting because THE ADMINISTRATOR'S RESPONSE WAS DEFENSIVENESS. THE ADMINISTRATOR'S RESPONSE WAS, "You're wrong, and I'm going to let you say what you're going to say, but then I'm going to tell you why you're wrong.

You are not going to win." If this is about you or about your ego, you must divorce yourself from your ego. If someone takes shots at you, you've got to care more about the mission of the school than your ego and your reputation. And you've got to stay laser focused on your mission. I am here to lead this school. I am here to work through this problem.

I know we're going to find a solution. I know we are. Okay, so active listening means your face has the fruit of the spirit. Okay, let's back this up. You've got a parent who's called you and you know that maybe this never happens at your school.

Maybe your parents just come and cry sweet tears of how thankful they are that their child gets to be in your class and go to your school. All right, you can check out for a minute and snooze this through. But for SOME OF US ON THE RAREST OCCASION, WE GET A CALL FROM SOMEBODY WHO IS BEING USED BY Satan to sew discord obviously, right? BECAUSE IF YOU'RE NOT ON MY SIDE, YOU GOT TO be on his. They're mad, friend.

They're mad. Like they are cranked up mad. So here's what you do, okay? You don't try to solve this over a phone call. They call you and they're angry or they email you and they're angry.

And so you say, "Well, we're going to sit down face to face. This is my brother in Christ. This is my brother in Christ. I'm going to spend eternity in heaven with you and we're going to work through this, right? I need you to come in." Now, when they come in and they're just as cranked up mad as they can be.

Can I just give you a little hint here? They they've already kind of told you how mad they are and they've already kind of told you what it's about. They didn't get a chance to get everything up, but they a big part. They will feel absolutely foolish if they try to maintain that level of anger and vitriol if you are being pleasant and sweet. Like they can't do it right.

Your your fruit of the spirit is kryptonite to their bad attitude. So what you do, they walk in, you're having a face-to-face meeting. Now, with a brother or sister in Christ, you don't sit on the opposite side of a desk. Get out from behind your desk and you sit down with them and you tell them, "Now, I want to make sure I know in your email you said this and in our in our conversation on the phone, you you kind of told me what's going on, but I want to make sure that I fully understand what's happening. Can Can you tell me the story?

Just start at the beginning. Give me the context in the background." And then just let him talk, okay? And you sweet love him with your face and you're looking, okay? and you're listening and you've got positive, you're nodding this way, okay? You're nodding to let them know, I'm hearing you.

I'm hearing you. This is important to me. When when they come in and their anger level is up here and you don't go up there to match them, they're going to feel real silly and so they're going to come down here. Don't embarrass them for that. We'll just let them come in for a landing, right?

when they get down here and we're brothers and sisters in Christ again, right? We're on the same team. We've got the same purpose. We want to see your kids succeed, right? When they finish giving you their complaint, there are two figurative tokens sitting on the table there in front of you, right?

There's a token that says, "This is a really big deal." And there's a token that says, "It's not really that bad a situation. All right, those are the two tokens. By the way, this works at home as well. Okay, works at home. It works at church.

It works anywhere. You got two tokens. One of them IS THIS IS A BIG DEAL. WE'VE GOT TO TREAT THIS SERIOUSLY. And the other one is it's not that big a deal.

Whoever picks up the this is a big deal token first is going to win. Okay? Because each of you have to pick up a token. And if you pick up the this is a big deal, I'm so glad you brought this to my attention. The only token left for them on the table is well, it's not that bad a situation.

Okay? If if YOU REACH FOR THAT, IT'S NOT AND I WATCH THIS. I WATCH THIS EVERY TIME people say, you know, they got a complaint. this so- and so in your class was did this or that to my precious child and my precious child was just walking along and that other kid just waloped him out of this out of the blue. It's not what happened.

You know that's not what happened. You know that they didn't get the full context or story. They're lying little teenage child has told them HALF THE STORY AND YOU KNOW IT. But if you grab for that, this isn't all that bad a token. This isn't all that bad a situation, right?

You leave them with no choice but to reach OVER AND GRAB THAT. YES, IT IS A BAD SITUATION TOKEN. If you will say, "Wow, this is a really important. I am so glad you brought this to my attention and we're going to work together to find a solution." You watch how fast they have to reach over and pick. Well, now it's not it's not that bad.

And I'm sorry I lost my temper earlier. You'll bat a thousand. You'll bat a thousand. But you got to know which token to pick up first. You cannot do that if you're operating in the flesh.

Your flesh does not want to be at fault for anything, right? You've worked hard. You you're working hours that nobody sees. You're investing in these children. You love these kids.

You've gone over and beyond and above and you're doing this and now you're going to get called on this. They're going to complain ABOUT THIS. YOUR FLESH wants to say, "Listen, buddy. LET ME TELL YOU THE TRUTH ABOUT your little brat." But if you've got your eyes on the mission, you're looking at somebody. And can I tell you something?

When people come in to to to talk to you in your classroom or in your office or wherever it is that they encounter you, right over there, and sit next to you at the at the ball game or wherever you happen to be, whatever it is you happen to be doing, they're bringing like a whole suitcase full of their life with them. That parent who's super angry, that probably has very little to do with what happened at school, but that's one thing they can do something about. They may have financial issues that they feel powerless to to react to. Health issues, family issues, who knows what's going on in their life, and they can't fix any of that. But you've got a conflict at school.

Well, bless God, I know exactly what to do. I'll go in and get this all off my chest. If you take it personally, you're gonna lose. They may leave your school. They may stay, but you're going to lose.

We're talking about building a culture. Can I tell you this? And I don't I'm like anyone else. I don't like criticism. I don't like criticism.

I love my wife more than life itself. I mean, I get ooey gooey romantic feelings. I can talk about her. I don't like to hear her say things that she's picking fault in. I don't like it.

I know it's true, right? I'll walk into church on Sunday night. I've been in the prayer room and I've cried and snotted and prayed and I'm ready to whip the devil and she'll say, "You better check your nose. I don't WANT TO HEAR THAT. I'M WALKING IN THE STRENGTH OF THE HOLY GHOST.

RIGHT? If I'm smart, I'll listen because in every piece of criticism, THERE'S PROBABLY SOME GOOD ADVICE I NEEDED TO HEAR. I'm not perfect. My mom says so, but she's biased. We are called to do a valuable job.

Mercy, folks. We're responsible for the the the the children of the church. They've been entrusted to us. They've been handed to us. And we're carrying them like like their precious, fragile eggs.

and also carrying them like like like they're little sticks of dynamite because if we if we drop the ball, bad things are going to happen. We have an enormous responsibility and we've got to keep our eye on the prize. Keep our eye on the prize. Keep our eye on the prize. Number of years ago, let me share this with you.

This is and this is one of those lessons learned. I was a young teacher. My my assistant principal, who is my direct report, had been activated to full-time military duty. My my principal was dealing with health issues within his family and he had to miss a lot. And so I'm a kid, right?

I am an absolute kid. I am just getting started. And he puts his arm around my shoulder. He said, "I'm going to be out a lot this year. I need you to kind of look after things.

I had no position, but I had responsibility. I need you to look after things." So, we're doing dismissal this this one particular day and a man shows up and he's huge and he wants his daughters, but there's a problem. He's lost custody to his daughters, no longer allowed legal access to them. We've got a court order saying so because we got a copy of the decree and he shows up at dismissal time and I've got parents everywhere and students everywhere and both of my bosses are gone. Hallelujah.

What a great day. Right? And he comes in and he says, "I I'd like my daughters. they they weren't sent out. And I knew and the office knew.

He's not taking those kids. And so I in a very diplomatic and kind and friendly way try to explain to him, well, sir, you know, we have a court order and your name has been left off of the pickup list, so we're not allowed to release. And he went ballistic, right? He went ballistic. And so I I I I locked the school down.

Like he's mad and he's saying things that he shouldn't say and he's calling me names. And I lock the school down. and that his two little daughters were taken to an undisclosed location where they sat in a locked room with a teacher and I had to go through every car cuz we didn't see him leave. Like he just stormed out of the office but didn't see where he went. So the sheriff's deputy had to come and we go sweep through every vehicle on this property before we could start releasing kids and sending them home.

AND I'M STRESSED AND THIS GUY IS I MEAN he's really let me have it. YOU'RE GOING TO HEAR FROM MY LAWYER AND I'm Jesus help us Lord. TWO WEEKS LATER IS OUR CHRISTMAS program and their marriage is back together again and they're SITTING IN THE AUDITORIUM JUST HANGING all over each other. And my job was to walk through the auditorium with a smile on my face and greet every single person in that building. And so I shook their hand.

It's so good to see you. I'M GLAD. THE LAST TIME I SAW YOU, I HAD TO HAVE THE SHERIFF'S DEPUTY SWEEP THE PROPERTY. But I didn't have the luxury of treating this as a personal affront. I just happened to be there when they were going through their worst days.

Brother Mloud quoted Sister Harpole last night and and that was words that we all need to hear. And in in in a Christian school like you get a front row seat into what's happening in the living room. I'm going to tell you that that we can come to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night with our suit and tie on and our hair all dead and we can shout and dance and roll on the floor, go out the back door and nobody knows what's going on in our life. But you can't do that when you've got somebody's kids in your classroom day after day, week after week, month after month. You're going to see things.

Can I tell you this? Can I just be honest with you? This is the state, the true state of the apostolic movement right now. We've got wonderful, wonderful, loving people whose lives are sometimes a traumatic, nasty mess and they're battling things and they can they can hold it together for church on Sunday night, but they can't hold it together 24/7. And you deal with those things.

As a Christian school educator, you're going to see some things that are going to shake your faith in others. You're going to see them make decisions. you're going to see their their their their difficulties and the the PARTS THAT NOBODY ELSE GETS TO SEE. AND THEN YOU GOT TO keep your mouth shut because it's a privacy concern. You don't have the luxury of responding in the flesh.

You are on a mission. Bible tells how how Jesus when it was it was that time and he knew that he was approaching that time toward uh crucifixion. One one says that he set his face. One writer looked at remembered in his face. He he set his face toward Jerusalem.

The other he said he fixed his eyes toward Jerusalem. There was a noticeable determination. Jesus knew where he was going and he wasn't going to turn to the right and he wasn't going to turn to the left. He had a mission. I'm going to Jerusalem.

Everybody says, "Don't you know the situation's a little dicey there?" And Jesus said, "I've got a mission to accomplish and nothing's going to dissuade me from that. If you will absolutely pick up the cross of Christian education and say, "I believe that what I am doing is important. I believe that what I'm doing is going to make a difference. I believe that what I'm doing is going to change lives and SAY, "I WILL NOT BE DISSUADED. My flesh does not get to tell me if I'm having a bad day." That's not my my students concern.

I can't walk into a classroom mad at this or mad at that. I observe classrooms. I've observed classrooms in a number of cultures and I sit walk into a classroom rather unexpectedly and unannounced and the teacher's up there on a political rant just ranting away doing more damage than good. Negativity, criticism, critiques and complaints completely in the flesh. Curriculum left abandoned because it's not about mission.

It's about my opinion. It's about my feelings. It's about striking out or lashing out. And that's not what a Christian school is for. That is not what a Christian school is for.

We are called to love people with the love of Christ. That that sermon last night was so beautiful, so powerful. I told brother Mloud, one of the most powerful sermons I've heard in my entire life. This is it's not about me. It's about him.

It's not about my flesh. It's about him. We are showing forth. We are demonstrating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in everything we do. And I tell you this friends, I if you if you don't deal with the criticisms in a healthy way, it will destroy you.

Okay? Physically, we we know like we know what the studies show the the impact of stress. It impacts physically like physically affects your heart when you're carrying a lot of stress with you. I'm going to give you some things to think about. You have a difficult job.

You're working with the most explosive materials. That's the That's the human nature. If if you were working in a dynamite factory, and it just so happens that I worked at 16 years old in a dynamite factory. 16 years old. I had a boss and the boss had big important things to do elsewhere, I guess.

So, they left the 16-year-old kid with with the guys in their 20s. in their 20s and and and they taught me how to drive a stick shift in a dump truck at the dynamite factory. I am not making that up. Raise my hand to heaven. God is my my witness.

I learned how to drive a stick shift at the dynamite factory. And they would put me in there and they would say, "If you run into anything, all of us are going to die." It wasn't like, you know, three on the tree or four on the floor. Like it was like all of these, right? I've got stories to tell. A stressful stressful moment.

Now, at 16, I could walk off and like, you know, I wasn't exactly shallow, but I wasn't exactly a a picture of depth either. You, as an adult, you're working at a dynamite factory where everything's explosive and you know, your your life is under the microscope. Your your methods are under the microscope. You got state testing coming and it's going to reveal whether or not your class has been EFFECTIVELY OPERATED. YOU'VE GOT ALL OF these forms of accountability and then you've got the ones who are there to pick pick everything you do, right?

You got the ones that they have their phone call ministry. You know what I'm talking I had I had a lady I had a lady come in like, "Are you are you for real?" And she told me, "Several other parents have reached out to me to tell me about their concerns." And I'm thinking, dear sweet lady, nobody cares what your opinion is about any of this. They're not calling you. You're calling them. And they're bringing you all of their trash because that's what you do when you find a dumpster.

I'm sorry. I told you I have a problem telling the truth. And so I'm I'm loving and I'm listening and I'm, you know, I'm I'm I'm I'm invested here because she's got precious kids at my school and I don't want them to turn out like their mother. But I'm I'm right back there again driving that dump truck in the dynamite factory. There's so many things I can say or do that's going to go wrong.

It's a stressful job. It's a stressful job. Can I tell you this? You can't take that stress home. You can't bear it in your flesh.

You can't allow it to define your life. All right? Now, some people find it easier to do than others. But this will affect your marriage if you do not find a way to decouple yourself from the stress of of this environment. Anytime you're in ministry, you've got to find some way to release yourself from the weight of what you're doing.

I'm gonna I'm going to teach you this, okay? You have to intentionally and consciously unplug from a spiritual environment so that you can plug in elsewhere. I walked into this conference yesterday in our time before service. We're praying. I prayed the prayer out loud.

I I I I pastor a church at home. I can't have the church on my mind right now. You're on my mind. Okay? I can't be pastor right now.

I I lead a school at home. The building could be burning down right now. I can't be there, right? I can't. I said, "Lord, help me to unplug and plug in." We're battling spirits.

When you feel that anxiety in your heart, when you feel that weight, when you feel like you've been in a battle, that is spiritual warfare that's going on. And you've got to recognize like brother Mloud mentioned last night, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. It's not that parent that you're in at war. It's not that student that you're at war with. So when you walk off the campus at the end of the day, you need to with intentionality say, "Lord, I'm unplugging from this place." I know that teachers are teachers all the time, year round, day round.

We're all the time under the even when you go to church, you're you're still under that that microscope. But in the spiritual realm, you're getting ready to walk into your home. And your home needs you to be completely present. And you need to be able to lay some things aside. Now, if you are dogmatically committed to the approval of everybody, don't look at anyone.

Don't point fingers. But there are people in this room who have to have the approval of everyone in their life or they cannot be happy. That is a control issue. That's a pride issue. Okay?

You need help. You need healing. You need deliverance. You cannot you cannot hunger for someone else's approval so much that it makes you go home at night and be less than your best with your family. You cannot.

You've got to realize I am doing my best. I am giving my best. There are limits to what I can do. And when I walk off at the end of the day, it's in God's hands. And I will not live with that hanging over my head.

If someone dislikes, if someone disapproves, if someone doesn't want me, that's their business. I'm going to love them. I'm going to pray for them. And I cannot be affected by their opinion of me. Get freedom from them.

Now, I'm going to tell you that that as a as a teacher in a Christian school, as an administrator in a Christian school, you probably go to church with some of the people that you are ministering to. This is a this is a difficult relationship. When I started our school, we had zero people on our campus. We weren't anywhere close to being accredited. We had zero people on our campus with college degrees and I had no money.

Okay? So, we had to start with people who were willing to work for almost nothing. We didn't receive vouchers, so we couldn't pay a whole lot of money. We started off with a dozen kids and God blessed us and we grew from there. But in those early days, I was recruiting people to come be a teacher at the school with the understanding number one, I can't pay you very much and you still have to go back to to school.

you have to get your bachelor's degree and you've got four years to do it in. And I had a core of people who said, "Yes, I'll do that." And I had some pretty precious people who had been there for decades and said, "I'm not going back to school. I can't do that." And so they had to take other roles or they had to leave. But we made up our minds. This is what we're going to do.

I recruited people right out of the pews, right? I rec I recruited people in in our local churches. Some of them had associates degrees. They were close. They had never gone back and finished that bachelor's degree.

They had to come in. I said, "Now listen, when you come to work at the Christian school, you're a professional and you represent the Christian school. You are an educator. You're a teacher and it's everywhere you go. So when you walk into church on Sunday night, it's not going to be like it was before because you just you had a job elsewhere and you came to church and worship.

But now you're responsible for these kids' children and you represent the school everywhere you go. You don't have the luxury of being able to set that aside in public. just set boundaries and say, "I don't want to talk about that at church. If you'd like to have a meeting with me at school, let's set something up, but I've come to church because I need to be in the house of God." And and parents have been respectful of that most most of the time, right? But you have to say, "This is this is this is what I'm doing.

This is this is what I am." I I had I had I hired a teacher. She was a phenomenal teacher, wonderful teacher, amazing teacher. her her family had adopted children quite a bit younger than her. These were her siblings. She had her siblings in class.

And I insisted that her siblings not use her first name. You will not call my sister. Do it again and see what happens. At this school, she is your teacher and you will refer to her by her professional because she's a professional, right? Can I tell you something?

Your professionalism is your superpower. It's your cloak. Right? If if you're going to get down, I'm going to tell you this, and I mentioned this earlier. I'm trying not to repeat things that I said in the first session, but if you're going to take it personally, if you're going to get angry when people are angry with you, you're letting down your cloak of professionalism, and then it just becomes a tugof-war, and you're not going to look good.

If you're pulled over by a police officer who is personally offended that you were that you were speeding, he does not look good. That's not a good look, right? If the judge in front of the the the whole courtroom loses his temper and and says things that are less than professional, people don't say, "Well, the judge must be having a bad day today." They say, "That judge has lost his mind." Why? Because he's wearing a robe. And the robe signals to the rest of us he's here to do a job as a professional.

You have a robe of professionalism. And you don't let that down. You don't let that down. You're a professional. You're a professional.

You handle it. You handle it. You handle it. When When you get to your house, though, when you get with your people, it's a it's a it's a difficult balancing act. Many of you married, many of you with children, many of you with other things that that that you want to do, your close loved ones.

And there's a balance there where where you want your loved ones to be aware of what's going on in your life. Okay? You want them to know how to pray, but at the same time, if you go home and you belly ache every single day, your family is going to be so tired of your job, your family's going to say, "We've got to get out of this environment. We've got to quit. We've got to look elsewhere." Because you cannot take the the the stress of work and bring it into your home and pour that into the water everyone's drinking and not expect it to poison the well.

It absolutely will. When you walk into the house, you unplug from the school. You just you just let it go. Okay? When you when you leave the school, don't check your emails in the evenings, unless you're just one of those weird people that won't check them during the day, right?

But but be present with your family. Be present with your loved ones when you come to the house of God. Yeah, we've got to be professionals, but be be present in the house of God, right? I cannot tell you how many times I have had stressful meetings with parents and I'm telling you our school does not get like the little perfect role models. Every once in a while we will and it's like having a weirdo in the school like what do we do with this one?

Right? Healthy home life makes A's wants to do something right. I I tend to get people like, you know, I I and I I won't go overboard here with details, but I mean, I've had I've had parents that they they were so upset with the school, right? So upset with the school. Like, you called 911 on your own kid and had the police come to your house, but then you're upset the way that that I disciplined your child.

Like, we're all in this together. We love that child. We want to see them succeed. You're struggling. I'm struggling.

We're all in this together. and the parent come in and just really want to twist my arm. And so I smile and I grit my teeth and I say, "No, as a professional, you call the balls and strikes." Now, the batter may not like how you call it, and you've got a responsibility to call it the right way, but at the end of the day, your responsibility is to call balls and strikes, not to please the batter. And you can't go home at the end of the day. Think about that umpire going home at the end of the day.

So, man, I I called a strike and it was legit and he's so mad at me. He'll never talk to me again. I'll bet he's talking about me behind my back right now. You got a job. You're a pro.

You call balls and strikes and then you just keep walking. And you have parents that'll come back later and say, "Wow, I am very thankful that you kept your cool and that you helped our family through that situation. It's a difficult situation." You know, we don't get our sometimes we don't get our our our fruit. We don't get to enjoy that gratitude. I'm going to give you just a couple of of little instances here where where God has I want to wrap up with this.

God has allowed me much later to receive that reward. Not instantaneous, but much much later. My first year of teaching, I caught a student cheating. I knew he cheated. He knew he cheated.

He erased his answer. I'd marked it wrong. He erased his answer. Put like, "You marked You marked my my test wrong." And and no, I said, "You I can see where you erased the wrong answer and wrote the right answer in there. I did that during the test.

You just marked it wrong." And I had no proof. I had no evidence. I changed the grade. I knew he lied. I knew he cheated.

But I didn't have any evidence. His parent came in. The principal came in. It became a big deal. I said, "Fine, I'll change the grade if that if that's what satisfies you.

There you go." And then I dropped it. Never brought it up. Loved that kid. He was a freshman. Went had him in my class all the way to his senior year.

That was 1996. He graduated class of 2000. In 2013, I got a phone call from that kid on a Sunday afternoon. He said, "If I die tomorrow, I don't want to die with it on my conscience that I lied to you as a freshman. That has bothered me this whole time.

It took years." He called. He said, "I should never have done that. And it made me feel so terrible that you handled it with grace and you didn't treat me any differently after that." He said, "That is worn on my conscience all of those years." I talked in the earlier session about that first year the church bought me an a leather bag. I was so proud of that thing. Didn't have it any time at all.

I mean a matter of days and kids duct taped it to the bottom of my my desk. Ripped the cover. I mean I mean I continued to use it for years because you don't throw something out just because it's ugly. But it made me so angry. A year ago this past summer, I had a box show up on my front desk.

That was 19 It was Christmas of 1996. All right. In in the summer of 2024, I had a $500 leather bag show up on my front porch. A lady said, "I was telling my husband about how bad I felt about what I did to your leather bag in high school and told him, "One of these days, I'm going to buy him another bag." And my husband said, "No, you won't. You'll say that for the rest of your life." So, she got on Amazon and ordered me a leather bag and had it delivered to my house.

It took a lot of years. It took a lot of years, but she made it right. Okay. Those those students my first year, my first year, I'm telling you, I didn't have any tools. I didn't know how to manage a classroom.

I was I I at at the beginning of the year, I found that if I yelled, like they would all be quiet for like a minute, and it was all that I need. It was just a minute to catch my breath. And then they start up and then after a month or so in school, I could yell and they just didn't listen to anymore because yelling doesn't work, right? Yelling does not work. AND I WOULD AND THEY WOULD just 1996, we're coming up on 30 years ago.

Two of the boys in my US history class from then, we we've started a podcast together. They reached out to me earlier this year and they're like, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool to do a podcast together?" Yes, it would. Yes, it would. These are two guys that I could have rung their necks when they were in high school. You know what?

If you wait till 30 years after they've been in your classroom, they're the same age as you, right? They're the same age as you. I'm the only one doesn't have gray hair. They're the two gray-haired looking old guys. And I'm like, "What's the matter with you?

It's not funny." Like, "Yeah, well, I think it's hysterical. It took 30 years. I just dropped this in there because here's what I want you to know. You're not gonna get the pat on the back today. It may be heaven before you get gratitude for what you've done.

Okay? Unfortunately, they may be saying those words over your casket someday and never say them in your hearing. But if you do the right thing, if you love them for Jesus, they'll never forget you. My little hometown of Dawson Springs, I was standing in line at the bank. My neighbor My neighbor was in his 70s.

His hair was snow white. Thought he was the oldest guy in town. He uh he walked with a limp and he kind of shuffled and we had one little bank and there I am, a teenager standing in line behind him at the bank. Okay. But standing in front of him was a precious little lady who was nearly a hundred years old.

She was 98. And I got to listen in on their conversation as he reached up and tapped her on the shoulder and he said, called her by name. He said, "You won't remember me." He said, "But, uh, I was in your first grade class 70 years later, standing in line at the bank. I was in your class in first grade." and she said, "Well, I don't remember you, but I'm glad that you said something." And they just kind of connected and talked about life. He said, "You gave me the only paddling I ever had." She's 98 years old.

98 years old. And she said, "Well, I'm glad that you gave me an opportunity to apologize for it. I'm sorry that I paddled you when you were six years old." He said, "Oh, no. Oh, no." No. He said, "I deserved it.

I deserved that and a whole lot more." She said, "If you can still remember how it made you feel 70 years later, I want you to know I love you and I'm sorry that I paddled you." He cried, "I love you. You're one of the most important influences in my life." And they hugged and I got to stand there and witness the whole thing because magical things happen in small towns. 70 years later. 70 years later, if time lasts, your precious little kindergarter could be 75 years old, remembers your name, remembers your class, remembers your investment, remembers your love, remembers how you made that student feel. What you're doing will make an eternal difference.

And I'm so thankful. God bless you. I'm praying for you. I believe in what you're doing. God's going to change the apostolic movement through Apostolic Christian Schools.