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Rick Sessoms from Freedom to Lead International | Leading with Story – Part 2

The Ministry Growth Show
The Ministry Growth Show
Rick Sessoms from Freedom to Lead International | Leading with Story - Part 2
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This week on The Ministry Growth Show, we’re joined by Rick Sessoms, Founder and CEO of Freedom to Lead International and the author of the book Leading with Story. In this episode, Rick and I discuss the power of story, we share our thoughts on the implications of storytelling for the Church in a digital age, and we spend some time discussing orality and reaching unreached and unengaged people groups that are primarily oral tradition cultures. If you’re interested in story and storytelling, you won’t want to miss this episode. Enjoy!

Relevant Resources:
Freedom to Lead
Lifeway Mission
Lausanne Movement
Iain McGilchrist
Mike Metzger
Leading with Story by Rick Sessoms

Transcription:

SPEAKERS: Rick Sessoms and Zachary Leighton

You’re listening to the ministry grow show brought to you by reliant creative, the creative agency for gospel centered ministries, find out more at reliant. creative.org.

Zachary Leighton  00:09

Welcome to the ministry grow show, a podcast dedicated to helping churches and ministries grow and make more effective impacts for the kingdom of God. And an ever changing digital world. Whether you’re building and growing a gospel centered ministry or leading a church, if you want insight into the strategies, struggles, challenges and successes of other ministry leaders, you’ve come to the right place. And it’s interesting because I don’t think that anyone’s theology would argue with the fact that we serve a God that stepped into our mess and Mattis, he meets us where we’re at, right. And yet, when the church goes out to reach and unengaged, unreached people, we’re not meeting them where they’re at. The reality is that they’re in that that they’re in these digital spaces, they’re in there consuming content, like you said, story content six days out of the week, that’s where their attention is. That’s what they’re spending their time doing. And we’re not trying to we’re not reaching them where they’re at, we’re not stepping into where their attention is, and meeting them where they are, even though our theology would say, that’s what we need to be doing. And so, or even those that would argue against story, and it has to be practical, it has to be logical, it has to be literary based. arguing against the, the theology that they are teaching. Right. And so it’s, it’s changing that mindset is, is a question that constantly, I’m thinking about, I’m

Rick Sessoms  02:08

yeah, thank you, you’ve, you’ve hit on something is very important there. Mike Metzker would say it this way. He said, our theology may be true, but it’s not meaningful. And the way to close that gap, is people act on what they perceive to be meaningful. And the way to close that gap is through story is when we can identify with something that is, is touching our own human experience. Yeah,

Zachary Leighton  02:45

I mentioned earlier that I think that we are moving in the West, we’re moving very quickly into an oral tradition, culture, and a communication structure within this society. I saw a recent stat from the US government that said 22% of all eighth grade students are, are completely illiterate. And another 42%, are considered functionally illiterate. And two, so together, that adds up to a 64% of America’s public school students who will either drop out or graduate without ever being becoming proficient in reading. And so you see this, that nobody, you or me or anyone is arguing in support of illiteracy, right? That’s not what we’re saying here. But the reality is that there is a significant shift taking place in our communication structures within our society, and I think globally. And so how do we how do we prepare for that? How do we, again, as the church if we’re called to meet people, where we’re at in the same way, our God meets us where we are at? And to model his behavior, then, like the models that we’re using, have to there has to be a shift.

Rick Sessoms  04:03

Yeah, right. And true. I completely agree with you. I think that personally, I think that the beauty of story is that good, good stories, effective stories have multiple levels of understanding. When when Jesus told stories, on the one hand, the non literate farmer, Middle Eastern farmer and could understand what he was talking about, and could relate to it. But he has his stories have also been mined by intellectuals and scholars for the last 20 centuries, to mine the depths of that story. And so the beauty of a great story is that there are multiple levels and that your people that are non literate, and those that are highly literate, can relate to because my my bias is that we’re all hardwired for story. And the power of story is that is that it can traverse those different levels.

Zachary Leighton  05:10

Well, hey, this has been really incredible. I want to make sure that we take a moment to hear from today’s sponsor, but when we come back, we’ll continue our discussion on story centric leader development and story with Rick Sessoms from freedom to lead international. Are you looking to grow your ministry but don’t have the money and marketing knowledge to make that happen? There’s good news. Google offers an advertising grant to churches and ministries that is worth $10,000 per month. This means that if your ministry is a 501 C three nonprofit, you are eligible to receive $120,000 per year in free advertising dollars. This allows you to place ads at the top of Google search results pages, and drive 1000s of visitors to your ministry website every month. Our sponsor, click nonprofit helps your ministry acquire this Google Ad grant and manages your Google ads to ensure you get the most out of the grant. Let’s schedule a free consultation that click nonprofit.com. To learn more about how this grant can help your specific ministry mentioned the ministry growth. So when you sign up to get 20% off your first three months of management.

06:17

Welcome back to the ministry growth show. We’ve been talking with Rick Sessoms about story. As we get back into the conversation, I want to spend some time discussing story driven or story centric models for leadership development. And I want to spend some time exploring this idea and question posed by who you already referenced Dr. Fred, Fred kradic.

Zachary Leighton  06:40

And restated in your book, where Craddock asks, Is there room for the story to serve as a major vehicle for communicating truth? With that, quote in mind, how should we think about that question, in light of the gospel, the church, and the ministry and nonprofit sector as a whole, one of the one of the most powerful statements that I think you made in your book is from a biblical perspective, the story doesn’t just illustrate the gospel, the story carries the gospel. Right. That’s profound. And so in light of that statement, and Dr. kradic question, how can we begin using stories and stories, strengths, models within the church for the sake of the gospel?

Rick Sessoms  07:21

So you’re asking me, how is that question? Or can we

Zachary Leighton  07:25

win at both?

Rick Sessoms  07:29

I certainly think we can. It’s going to take some work. Because as we’ve stated before, I think the church has been conditioned to have communication directly, and the concepts laid out to them, and then maybe some stories sprinkled in to lighten the atmosphere, to maybe bring some light or some refresher as people are falling asleep or whatever. So I think it can, but it’s going to take some time. tell you a story of what happened to me just to show you the the contrast. And I was in Ethiopia several years ago. And we were still in the process of trying to hammer out this whole curriculum that we’ve developed. And I was with a group of Ethiopian leaders. And one of our my colleagues from West Africa was there observing and watching this whole thing is I was teaching. And we were telling a story about a it was a fictional story that we’ve written about a man who started well in ministry and ended poorly. So it’s about finishing well. And as we told the story, I you know, I told the story. And then as as I typically did, we would sort of make sure everybody understood the story. So we go back through the story and sort of retell the story. And the conversation during that part was very lively. And I was, you know, I was saying, you know, let’s tell me about Dr. Gula, or whatever his name was. And while I was going through it, and finally, then I switched, and I did what I would typically do to an American audience. Now, how does this apply to you? And suddenly the room went silent. And nobody would speak. And afterwards, we were debriefing about this and my colleague, her name’s France lease. She said, You do realize you offended the people in the room. And I said, What do you mean I offended the people in the room I just asked question. How does this apply to you? She said, what you were doing is you were asking them directly To apply it to themselves, and it’s of course, in a shame culture, that’s a, you know, in a context that they won’t respond. Here’s the point. The point is, is that in shame cultures, that’s why story works so well. And that’s why they prefer story. Because it’s indirect communication. They no good well, that you’re talking about Dr. A Gula. But you’re really talking about them, although never saying so. But the moment you turn him say you, it becomes direct communication. And so that’s why story is so powerful in these shame cultures. We don’t live in a shame culture, per se, we live in a guilt, innocence culture. But I believe that we have more shame elements in our culture than ever before, as we’re being affected by other cultures. So, for that reason, the indirect communication, as I think curtain guards said, is much more, much more effective, because it allows people to peer into the situation and see themselves in the context, rather than are telling them. And as Fred Craddock said, it’s actually an insult to many people, when you’ve told them a story, and then say, then hold up a mirror and say, Isn’t that you in a mirror? That’s an insulting statement. So in a story, the power of it is being able to allow people to peer in from the outside of the third person, and discover that for themselves. And that’s very real in many African cultures. But I believe it can be true in ours as well. And that’s the that’s the beauty of going to a movie. Nobody stands up at the end of the movie, and says, Here are the three points I want you to take away from this movie. But it’s, it’s something that we’re allowed to stare into our coffee cup at the end of the movie, and discover for ourselves.

Zachary Leighton  11:58

Yeah, that allows us to learn something about ourselves. When we, when we watch a story play out, we relate to the character in that story, what they’re going through, what their what their challenges and struggles are that they’re overcoming. And realizing that, hey, I’ve got similar challenges and struggles in my own life. And what that individual learned in that story directly applies to what I’m experiencing my own.

Rick Sessoms  12:22

That’s why story is such a universal tool. And so powerful, because it allows us to do that no matter how sophisticated we are, to go through that process. We do it by automatically. We do it by nature.

Zachary Leighton  12:40

When you were telling that, that story of holding up the mirror for the audience, that the story that came to mind was when Nathan challenges David and tells the story. You’re the man. And then he’s like, Hey, that I’m talking about you. Right? And

Rick Sessoms  13:00

I think David already had that figured out. But that was my interpretation.

Zachary Leighton  13:06

Interesting. And we talked about this a little bit, but the primary way in which God has chosen to speak to us is through his word, right, which simply is both a grand narrative of his redemptive work but also a collection of stories. So within Scripture, we see this redemptive narrative and drama of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. How is this literacy focused world, reshaping and compressing the gospel for the sake of simplicity and efficiency? And how’s that harming our worldview on on feelings and emotions?

Rick Sessoms  13:43

Well as a huge question, my mind first goes again to our person we referred to a number of times, Fred Craddock. He, he mentioned that, that we all know that we need to, to communicate faithfully what the Bible says. But he said, I think we violate the Scripture, this is his words, he thinks like we violate the Scripture, when we ignore how the scripture says it. So for example, we generally and again, this is the way I was trained, we generally approach every genre of Scripture with the same way of preaching it. So we’ll preach the Psalms, the poetry, the same way we would preach Roman. When Jesus, typically when Jesus says once upon a time, there was a man who fared sumptuously. We say Now there’s three things you need to learn about, about wealth. And we go on and talk about all the most insured, that’s not what Jesus said. He told the story. And so But what if, as a starting point, we were to say, Okay, how is the Scripture telling this story? And begin to pay greater attention to that? As opposed to just what is the Scripture communicating? How is it communicating it? And I think that would dramatically adjust our preaching our approach to the preaching. The task of communicating the scriptures. Hmm.

Zachary Leighton  15:31

That’s interesting. On that last

Rick Sessoms  15:33

question, again, I’ll probably went off on a tangent, but no, that’s good.

Zachary Leighton  15:37

Well, so the question was, with this with this biblical narrative in mind, right? creation, fall redemption restoration. On my, that’s how I generally see the entire biblical narrative broken down, I might break it down a little bit differently. But that’s not for today’s discussion. But how? How is how’s the literacy focused world reshaping and compressing the gospel? For the sake of simplicity and efficiency? And how is that harming our worldview on feelings and emotions? In the first part of your book, you talk about how, and we’ve, we’ve addressed it here today a little bit. The, I think that, at least in the West, there’s a fear of the feelings and emotions of how we’re wired. And our story has a way of addressing both sides, right. Whereas, like, we’re, the Holy Spirit, to a lot of places is just a retired author, right? It’s not this living and active. It’s not God living an active in our lives. We’re, we’re fearful of the feelings and the emotions of our faith. And so there’s that literacy focused worldview, or it kind of plays to that, right.

Rick Sessoms  17:07

Yeah, I have to, I have to confess, to start with that I’m, I’m not a touchy feely guy myself, personally. Yeah, and I grew up to be rather suspicious of emotion, because I saw it abused in the church, and I go into stories and tell of the, some of the crazy stuff I saw. And, and it, it, it, you know, sort of turned me off. So for a lot of years, I struggled with it, because I prefer to go to somewhere where somebody was thinking, you know, and, and using their brains, but then I went to, and I went to good seminaries, but it was, it was kind of cold, because everything was was back to fax. And, and, and it’s interesting that we because of our industrial age, we do look at efficiency as a high in high regard, it’s it the whole modernist model of efficiency was input throughput output, and you can get the most output you can get from the least amount of input and throughput, the better off you are. That’s what Henry Ford sold, sold cars on that whole model. So the efficiency thing, we got it honest, through a hole for last 200 years. But efficiency applied, the Gospel gets tricky. Because emotions are very much a part of our makeup. And I would say that most of us the most important decisions we’ve ever made in life, the life changing decisions include all of us, every part of us acting, including our emotion. And if emotions are extracted from it, it’s likely that those those decisions and those life changes will be short lived, we can be convinced of something but it’s not going to move us very far. The other thing is that I think we do use the word efficiency. We have sort of shrunk the gospel to you know, I don’t mean to pick on Bill Bryan he’s one of my heroes of the faith but his you know, his four four spiritual laws thing you know, where there’s four statements and you come to Jesus and Bada bing bada boom it’s a little bit truncated. And the other fact is, you know, Bill Bright also did the train, remember the, the fact drives the train and the faith comes next and then the feeling is the caboose with the idea of a caboose comes along some trains don’t even have a caboose forget the caboose, you know, and it’s and it’s in oral cultures. In story centric cultures, it’s often the opposite. If you’re not experiencing something, it can’t possibly be real. And that involves the emotion it. And so when we go into these cultures and talk about leadership development, we don’t talk about a curriculum, we talk about the better developmental experience. Because we want them to experience something, we want them to feel something with these with these stories. They’re absolutely true. But the meaning attached is attached through the feeling, if you will, it’s it’s ours raining just this morning on a piece that someone wrote on great storytelling, great storytelling requires that we get in touch with how we feel about something. If it doesn’t do that, then it simply leaves us with a collection of facts. And I think that, oftentimes, again, the whole literacy world has, has pushed aside emotions as these pesky little distractions. But But far be it, you know, in some of the people that are specialists that I respect, they’re looking at the scriptures and asking the question, How did these characters as they related to one another, how did they feel? What was the emotion going on here, among these people, and it really brings this stuff to life, when we begin to look at it from that perspective, but you’ve got to dig in. And there’s not a shortcut to that. And it sort of blows efficiency out of the water. And so if efficiency is our goal, then emotions tend to take a backseat.

Zachary Leighton  21:45

Yeah, you might know him. A guy named Ravi Jaya, Quran, we’ve had him on the show before runs a ministry called medical ambassadors International. And he was, and I think he still is a part of loosen, loosen movement and loose on conference and all that stuff. But he talks about this balance between word and deed we see in how Jesus models ministry, it’s the The deed is never separated from the word that the the the the experiential healings and things that he was doing in that space, was never separated from the truth or his compassion was never separated from his truth, they always work hand in hand and supported one another. And he was, I think, what you’re talking about us speaking to both sides of our brain, he was speaking to the whole person. Yeah. And and I agree, I think that we’ve compartmentalize things and created two different sides of two different camps, if you will, one on the emotional, experiential, how do I feel about this side and the other on the intellectual logical? Like, how do I think about this, and what is theologically and doctrinally sound and and they become at war with one another when we don’t consider all these things from a more holistic perspective. And so literally,

Rick Sessoms  23:11

I don’t know if you remember in the book, but I made a reference to a to a neuro bot neuroscientist His name is Ian McGilchrist, that rings a bell, in his book called divided brain in the making of the West. And it’s a fascinating book, I would highly recommend it. It’s not an easy read, but it’s worth reading. It talks about what is classically been called the two hemispheres of the brain, the right hemisphere, and the left hemisphere, and course is not easily is not as easy as that. But there’s more, they’re more likely are different. It’s kind of like a Mac and a PC computer. They both have microprocessors. But there are differences. And he makes the point that the right hemisphere of the brain is the hemisphere that was typically receives input from the environment. So this raw data that comes in through our senses and so forth, is received. The left hemisphere is supposed to take that information and categorize it, make it meaningful, meaning make it understandable to us. It makes sense of life sort of thing. So we have these categories. So when we see a person say oh, that’s a, you know, that’s a girl or that’s man or whatever. And so, that these, these two hemispheres are supposed to work what he calls reverberated, believe reverberate Utley, which means back and forth as the left hemisphere is creating new categories, logical categories, based on the data it receives and the right then the right hemisphere condensed to provide further information to sort of adjust What the left hemisphere is category. So it goes on throughout life, you get the point. So the brain functions best when both categories are functioning at their optimal level. The problem is, is that over time in the Enlightenment period, the left hemisphere began to take over. Because the focus was on rational thinking. Right now I’m not, I’m not Pooh poohing the enlightenment of the Enlightenment, a lot of good about it. Right, but one that the bad part was it, it moved to abstract thinking, abstract reality. So that word, what we were thinking became the primary part of reality. And that’s where a word and D word and other input experience began to be separated. And so the Enlightenment focused on saying, I think, therefore I am. See, that’s where that came from. So it’s, my knowledge makes me who I am. And that gets separated from experience. And what happens though in that is that the left brain becomes a bully, in that process. And because it’s more sophisticated, it’s the it’s the hemisphere of language, is the hemisphere of concepts and logic and rational thinking, scholastics, and so forth. And so it becomes the bully, and the right hemisphere is continuing to read receive this input. But the left brain eventually says, I’ve got what I need, let’s move with it. And sort of begins to see the left the right hemisphere, as unsophisticated. And so as you’re looking in a society like ours, leadership begins to see knowledge and Scholastic and rational thinking as primary, or experience and emotion becomes at best secondary. And that’s where our problem arises. Hollywood has come back and said, Hey, you got it wrong. We’ve got to bring experience back into the mix. And that’s why they’re winning culture. And the why the propositional preacher stands up on Sunday morning and says, this says the Lord had been able to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, it can’t compete. Because we’re, we’re not allowing this new experience to, to impact our left brain. The rational side of our brain, we’re still living in that invite enlightenment space. Does that make any sense at all I know, that’s down the rabbit hole. But it doesn’t.

Zachary Leighton  27:45

And I’ve, I’ve thought a lot about this within. Like, one of the things that I struggle with, as a creative within the church is the creative, the creative side of the church. And what we’re producing is, for a long time, it’s getting better, but for a long time was so awful, and, and films so bad. I mean, for the first time, the chosen, I mean, for the Passion of the Christ was the first good piece of media content produced by a church in a year, or maybe hundreds of years, you could argue, where and then the chosen again, is the first piece of media that’s like, Okay, this is high quality, great acting really great script writing. It’s visually. It’s like, it’s great storytelling, and how has it taken us so long? And I’ve thought about, like, how did we get from the Renaissance era, where the church was the driving force in art? Right now, you could argue the stuff that was coming out wasn’t necessarily all that great, you know, but we won’t go down that rabbit hole. How did we get from that? Where the church was producing, and driving culture and art, to where we are. So left behind, in, in what Hollywood is doing?

Rick Sessoms  29:08

I believe, Zach, it was the enlightenment.

Zachary Leighton  29:10

That, as you said that I was like, that’s what happened. Right? We were we were what creative side is the right brain, right? So we were right brain focused for all of the Renaissance. And then we take a hard one at and go enlightenment, and completely focus on the logical side of the brain. And it completely disrupted what was going on and taking place in the Renaissance. And I don’t think we’ve been able to recover. I mean, I think we’re starting to see some shifts in what is being produced by the church, in the art and music landscape. That left side of the refreshing thing

Rick Sessoms  29:45

to see. Right. The vast majority of the evangelical church to this day, will go to church on Sunday morning and they’ll say I’m a better Christian because I know more now than I did an hour ago. Yeah, it has nothing to do With experience, and that can’t compete with culture that is attaching meaning every day of the rest of the week, to, to their reality. Yeah, can’t compete

Zachary Leighton  30:12

on and when we think about this, from our perspective as an agency trying to help the church function well, in this marketing space, one of the things that we talk about a lot is, I think, and we talked about this offline, but I think the church is doing a relatively decent job at creating knowledge based information transfer, knowledge based transfer. We’re broadcasting our sermons in our weekly Bible studies in our biblical training, and you can go online and get a seminary online for super cheap, like, we’re doing that side of the brain really, really well. Sure. And yet, it has very little effect in the digital space, it’s having very little effect at competing with what the the world is doing the secular world in that space. And I believe it’s because we’re not starting first, or at least incorporating with what we’re doing in that side of the brain and that side of the space with stories. So if we categorize, we would categorize content in three ways. Inspirational, educational, and informational. Now those second two educational and informational content man, within the global church, we’re killing it there. We’re putting out all kinds of great stuff. But it’s not accompanied by any inspirational story driven testimony focused content now, we’ll pastors and ministry leaders across the board will tell you oh, I’m storytelling, I’m, we’re storytelling with our sermons. We’re storytelling with what we do with our ministry. It’s not the case, right? We’re not, we’re not comparing that educational information or information that we’re sharing with the world with story. And it’s never going to land because we haven’t emotionally engaged with anybody yet. That has to be their education and information, absolutely have to be there. But in support of somebody who’s been emotionally engaged first until I’m emotionally engaged, I’m not ready to hear your Bible training. I’m not ready to hear all the stuff that you have in support of whether the Bible is truthful or not. Right, like, and then to your point earlier, where were we are, what’s going on in the world and the culture in which we’re living like, story. You can’t argue with story. That’s my experience. That’s what God did in my life. There is no argument for that. I’ve watched him work, my life is transformed. And you can see the difference between how I acted yesterday and how I act today. And this is what happened, Christ transformed my life. Let me tell you about it. And now I’ve been in the somebody has been emotionally engaged by that life transformation, that story or testimony. And now they’re starting to be ready to receive some of the stuff that we’re already doing.

Rick Sessoms  33:05

aside as an encouragement to your listeners, regardless of who you’re talking to, whether it’s a Muslim, or a Hindu or a Buddhist, my own experiences, they’re open to hear your story. And so learn to tell your story. Well, yeah, because they’re not ready to listen to your apologetic. Right. They’re not ready to listen to your argument, or your even propositions, but they will listen to your story. And they’ll listen to it gladly because it’s part of their culture. Be ready to listen to theirs as well, by the way.

Zachary Leighton  33:43

Yeah. Can I tell you my story, but I don’t want to hear what you have to say. Probably land Well, man, this has been good. Okay, so with, with some of that stuff in mind, we’ve talked a lot about a lot today, right? For ministry leaders listening to this episode. How can How can their ministries, How can their churches, how can the church start moving tangibly in a more story centric, story driven story and formed direction were some tangible ways in which we can start effectively reaching an increasingly oral tradition culture and start pushing back on this area of with the secular world is really dominating right now. And how can we push back against that and start breaking through some of that noise?

Rick Sessoms  34:39

Well, without at the risk of repeating myself, I would say first of all, to make yourself aware of the power of story. become convinced of its primary place in pretty much all cultures today, and how it is affecting cultures. worldwide. That’s, that’s first. Second, I’d say a good place to start is to learn to tell your story well as leaders, without going into a lot of abstracts without a lot of a lot of concepts, but tell your story. Create it with characters, and I don’t mean made up characters, but real ones is share that share the tension, share the struggle, share the goal. Think about those different elements of your story and, and learn to tell it well and use, employ the emotional sides of it. Don’t be afraid of sharing. Somebody said that to tell a good good story, you’ve got to get in touch with your own feelings, and how you feel. So that’s a place to start. And then after you’ve learned to tell your own story, then learn to then help others train others, coach others mentor others to tell their story well. When we begin to do that, and we begin to see the impact of our story on other people, we will have our our view of story will go up. But until then, my my sense is the church will continue to be suspect at it. But it’s when we see and when we recognize the impact of our own stories, both on our own lives and our own journeys and on our journey on the lives of others, then we begin to see the power of story in a more in a broader sense. So start with us and build out from there.

Zachary Leighton  36:51

On selfish plug we have on our site roulant creative.org/courses. You can take there we have courses on how to tell your test

37:02

for sure. Yeah, like there’s there’s plenty of content out there that that both we have created and others have created to help you in that space. Obviously we’re thinking about this from a marketing perspective and and ministry growth side of things but

Zachary Leighton  37:19

brick Sessoms book, I’m in the middle of it right now. It’s it’s been eye opening for me leading with story is a great way to start. There’s a lot of stuff out there that that can help you begin framing your mindset around this. Man, Rick, this has been really, really fun for me, I appreciate you being on the show. If people want to learn more about you. Learn more about your ministry. See if there’s anything that you can do in partnership with some of these organizations that are listening? How can they get a hold of you

Rick Sessoms  37:50

go to our website, freedom to lead.net or you can email me directly at Rick at Freedom to lead.net lead just like the name of the organization dotnet. Rick at Freedom elite dotnet it’s been a joy to be with you quite a privilege. Thank you. Yeah, can I

Zachary Leighton  38:09

pray for you real quick as we wrap up. Fathers, thank you so much for Rick, and thank you for this. This was a really uplifting conversation for me. And thank you for all that he’s doing to answer the call you place on his life. Lord, I pray that you had blessed freedom to lead. I pray that You would bless Rick that you would just continue to help all of us testify of what you’re doing and how you’re transforming lives. Father, we know that you are active in some incredible ways, all over the world. Transforming shifting mindset, changing lives rescuing, healing, redeeming, although you are active in this work to redeem humanity back to yourself. And there are millions and billions of stories to testify of what you’ve done in everybody’s in in believers lives what you’re doing and those that don’t know you yet. You’re moving and active. And we recognize that and we want to be better at testifying of what you’ve done, for Your glory for the edification of your church. And then for all the other areas in our ministries and lives that is applicable. Lord, we love you. Thank you again for this conversation. And In your name we pray. Amen. Man. Rick, thanks so much for being on the show. Appreciate it.

Rick Sessoms  39:24

Great to be with you.

39:25

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Chris Scotti from Three Sixteen Publishing | From Off-Limits to Open Hands: The Power of Scripture

Many ministry leaders believe their people need better apologetics, stronger programs, or more persuasive outreach strategies. But what if the real need is simpler? What if Scripture itself—faithfully read and faithfully shared—is still the most powerful evangelism tool in your church?

Ministry leaders carry a quiet concern.

You believe in the power of God’s Word. You teach it. You preach it. You defend it. Yet many in your congregation still feel unsure how to approach Scripture on their own. Some are intimidated. Others assume the Bible is for pastors, scholars, or “more mature” Christians.

And when it comes to evangelism, the anxiety grows. You wonder how to equip ordinary believers to share their faith without overwhelming them with technique, training, or pressure.

But what if we have overcomplicated something that was meant to be simple?

What if Scripture itself is still enough?

This article will help you rethink how to make Scripture accessible in your church, recover confidence in the Word’s power, and equip your people for simple, faithful evangelism.

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