You Only Get to See the Next Step
My brother Erik runs two organizations in Indianapolis that use affordable housing to fund global missions work. He is the president of The Stone Table. He sits in executive leadership at Community Reinvestment Foundation, the nonprofit our dad co founded in 1992 and built one property at a time.
If you met him today, you would assume he planned it. You would assume there was a strategy, a five year map, a version of him at twenty five who could already see the shape of the thing.
There wasn’t. There was a music major who accidentally became an accountant, an accountant who accidentally became a pastor, and a pastor who got a phone call he never expected. Every single move happened one door at a time, and he never once got to see the hallway.
I bring this up because the people I work with, the coaches and consultants and experts who know they have something to say, almost never get stuck on the first step. They get stuck waiting to see the whole staircase.
She Married Him Specifically Because He Wasn’t Going Into Ministry
Erik’s wife Mandy grew up in a ministry family. She knew exactly what that life costs, and she had made her peace with it by deciding not to repeat it. She used to joke that she married Erik because he was a nice business guy. They would love Jesus, they would serve the church, they would not lead one.
Five years into the marriage, Erik turned to her and said, hey, what do you think?
I love that detail because it kills the myth before the story even starts. The myth is that people who end up somewhere meaningful had a sense of it early. That there was a whisper at twenty two that they were too scared to follow, and the whole story is just them eventually getting brave.
Erik had no whisper. He had a CPA firm, a young marriage, and a plan that specifically excluded the thing he would spend the next twelve years doing.
The Music Major Who Graduated in Accounting
Before any of that, he started college at Belmont University in Nashville as a music major. He wanted the music business. He has friends from those years who are still in it.
He graduated with a degree in accounting.
He describes himself now as a recovering accountant, and then adds, with the timing of a man who has told this joke before, that he is actually a terrible accountant despite having the degree. It gets a laugh every time. It also hides something worth noticing.
Nothing he studied was wasted, and nothing he studied was sufficient. The accounting degree is what made him credible to a board twenty years later. The music is what made him useful to a church he had not met yet. At the time he made each of those choices, neither one looked like preparation. They looked like a kid changing his mind.
That is what preparation almost always looks like from the inside. Unremarkable. Slightly embarrassing. Like you are behind.
Nobody Announced the Turn
Here is how the return to the family business actually happened, which is to say, here is how it did not happen.
Nobody sat Erik down with an offer letter and a transition plan. Our dad was getting close to seventy. The board was starting to think about succession. Tim, the co founder who first floated the idea of the whole organization over lunch decades earlier, was thinking about the future too. They needed someone who understood business but also carried the conviction that business and God’s work in the world are not two different things.
Meanwhile, in a completely separate conversation happening at his kitchen table, Erik and Mandy were feeling restless. Nothing dramatic. Just the sense that something was shifting.
And then our childhood pastor, who happened to be on the board, asked dad a question. What about Erik?
Erik calls it a convergence. Internal stirring on one side, external confirmation on the other, neither one arranged by him. He had no intention of returning to the business world. He had already decided ministry was where he would spend the rest of his life.
The point is not that a supernatural coincidence solved his career. The point is that the confirmation arrived after the restlessness, not before it. He was already paying attention before there was anything to confirm.
The Season That Looked Like a Detour
The Stone Table’s own website describes those twelve years with the word detour in quotation marks. Ten as a music pastor, then roughly four planting a church in downtown Indianapolis.
Erik does not use that word. He calls it a gift.
Not a sacrifice he made. Not dues he paid. A gift given to him, and here is why that language matters. He had left Nashville assuming he had left music behind. Then, in the late nineties and early two thousands, right as Hillsong was proving that churches could write their own songs and that those songs could be modern and good, he found himself writing and recording. Their last album got picked up by Integrity Music. There are still songs of his floating around out there.
He told me the royalty check arrives quarterly and covers dinner at Chili’s, which is roughly what mine covers too.
But he does not tell the story for the album. He tells it because he thought that door was closed. He had made his peace with closed. And then the Lord, in his framing, handed it back with a wink and said, I knew that was important to you.
Why He Says the Hard Part Is Your Friend
The line from this conversation I keep coming back to is not the sentimental one. It is this.
Whatever deepens our faith, whatever puts us in a position where we have to trust Jesus more, is actually our friend.
Sit with the implication. If that is true, then not being able to see the whole plan is not an obstacle to the plan. It is the mechanism. The fog is doing something. You would not reach for the hand if you could see the floor.
He follows it with the instruction, which is deliberately, almost annoyingly small. Be obedient for the next step in front of you. Then, he says, when your hair is gray like mine, you turn around and look back and you say, I wish I could have seen it all in the moment, but look how faithful God was.
He is careful to add that this does not mean the hard seasons stop coming. It means you are not alone inside them. That distinction is the whole thing, and most motivational versions of this story skip it.
The Part You Can Only See From Here
There is a phrase for this that showed up in our conversation and has not left me. You only see these things in arrears.
Erik cannot tell you why the music major mattered until you see the church. He cannot tell you why the accounting degree mattered until you see the board meeting in 2012. He cannot tell you why the twelve year detour was not a detour until you see the organization it prepared him to lead, one that needed a person fluent in spreadsheets and in calling, and could not find that person anywhere else.
Every one of those was invisible at the time. Every one of them is obvious now.
So here is what I would ask you to do with that, and it is not to relax. Looking backward at faithfulness is only half the exercise. The other half is looking forward at the unknowns and refusing to require a guarantee before you move. You do not know how it works out. You know who has had your back so far.
The people who need what you know are already searching for it. They are finding someone with less experience and less care, not because that person had the whole plan, but because that person took the next step in front of them while you were waiting for the map.
Take the step. You can read the story later.
Create your art. The world is waiting.
#createyourart
Full Transcript
Erik: I had no intention of ever being in full time ministry. In fact, my wife grew up in a ministry family and always joked that she married me because I wasn’t going into ministry. And it wasn’t because she had a bad experience with that, but she was like, I’ve done the ministry family thing and I’m just going to marry a nice business guy and we’re going to be a part of the church and we’re going to love Jesus and we’re going to serve that way.
We didn’t want to be in church leadership. And then five years into our marriage, I was like, hey, what do you think?
So when you say come back, I started my career in the business world. We were heavily involved in our churches. Many people are. God’s work in the world was always a central part of what we did as far as work, as far as a job. I worked for a CPA firm, and then for a few years back in the earlier days of CRF, I was a staff accountant. So I came along to help dad with some of the basics.
Darren: All that CPA stuff you have to do.
Erik: I say I’m a recovering accountant. The funny thing about me is I’m a terrible accountant, even though I have a degree in it.
So when you say came back, I worked for two or three years in the early days, and then all of a sudden, out of left field, found myself in full time ministry. That’s a whole story for a whole podcast. I never thought I would be in ministry, but then I spent twelve incredible years that I would say were, you know, life moves in seasons. I look back on that season now and it’s one of the richest seasons of my life.
Darren: Oh yeah. I was wrapped up in all of that.
Erik: You were a part of all of that with us.
Darren: A great ten year run as a music pastor, and then a church planter for about four years.
Erik: But what brought me back again was kind of unexpected. Once I was in ministry, I thought, well, this is where I’m going to spend the rest of my life. But then Mandy and I were starting to sense some restlessness, and just that there was change coming. And of course, our dad was getting close to seventy. So this was 2012 ish.
He was getting close to seventy years old, and I think the board of the organization, and our other founding board member, a guy named Tim Shroud, who really was the genesis of the idea. Dad took on the day to day and really built it from the ground up. But those two guys together, they were starting to think about the future.
They needed someone who had a background in business, who understood the business world. But really, at the heart of our organization is this idea that business and missions, business and God’s work in the world, go together. And so they wanted someone who could straddle both of those worlds.
Some of the board, it was interesting. I was starting to feel this. Dad was starting to feel this. There were these little percolating conversations that were starting to happen. And then out of nowhere, our childhood pastor, who was on the board at that time, came to dad and said, what about Erik?
So it was this convergence of stirring and then these external confirmations that maybe this is a dialogue we need to start having. I really had no intentions of coming back into the business world, but when the offer came, we just knew it was the Lord’s leading.
Darren: Yeah, it just made sense. It’s funny, when we were talking to dad, he was saying, as he was walking through his story, there were all these moments where it wasn’t like, I had this idea, I went and chased it down and I built it. It was very much, I just walked through the next open door. I feel like as I’m thinking of your story as well, and even mine in some weird way, that’s just in our family. It’s just, whatever the next step is there. Yeah, that seems like a good one. Let’s take that.
Erik: I think sometimes we want the Lord to show us the whole picture, and we are at our best when we are trusting the Lord. So I think sometimes he doesn’t show us everything, because he wants us to just grab his hand and take that next step.
I always tell people, whatever deepens our faith, whatever puts us in a position where we have to trust Jesus more, is actually our friend. We want the Lord to show us the whole thing, and he says, just hold my hand and take the next step. I think there’s something beautiful there.
So I would concur with that. Be obedient for the next step in front of you. And then when your hair is all gray like mine, you turn around and you look back and you’re like, I wish I could have seen it all in the moment, but look how God was faithful. Look how trusting God’s sovereignty took care of us. It doesn’t mean you don’t walk through really hard times, but it does mean he’s always with you in every moment.
Darren: That’s so true. And to speak to this ten to twelve years in ministry, especially within that music pastoring side of things, building something relatively rich and meaningful. We were writing songs before writing songs was cool. Before every church was writing songs. We were in the early days of that.
Cutting edge right here. This guy led the cutting edge.
Erik: No.
Darren: But what did that time mean to you? I know you spoke to it, that it was a rich time, a meaningful time. But what did that really mean to you, those years in ministry?
Erik: Yeah, as I look back on that now, I think that was a gift from the Lord to me. And hopefully it was a gift to other people as well.
It’s funny, people ask me how I got to where I got today. No one would ever take the path I took, because I started out as a music major in school, Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. I thought I wanted to be in the music business. In fact, I have a lot of friends who still are in the music business that I went to college with. That’s what I thought I wanted to do. So I started out as a music major and then graduated with a degree in accounting. That was my journey.
But music was always a part of who we were. Even when I was working in the marketplace in those first five years of my career, we were volunteering at the church. I had interned under the music pastor there. Music was just such a part of what we were doing.
So I had left Nashville, thought I had left all that stuff behind. And then we found ourselves, this was in the late nineties, early two thousands, this was like the early days of Hillsong and this Australian group coming out of, we can write our own music, and music can actually be cool and modern and all of those things.
We were kind of following that lead, had some friends out of that church who helped us with that. And the Lord, I think, gave me a gift to do all of the things that my heart had longed to do in that capacity. So we ended up writing songs, recording albums. As you know, our last album was picked up by Integrity Music and we’ve got some songs floating around.
Darren: You get that mailbox check every once in a while. Mine was like forty seven cents last time. I’d have to take my family out for dinner.
Erik: Yeah, you do get it once a quarter. You get a royalty check. You can take your family out to Chili’s.
But it was a gift to me. I say it was a gift to me because I think we had really, really good fruit in that season that I hope is still paying dividends in people’s lives that I don’t even know today. But I think the Lord was taking me beyond that. That was a time where he said, man, I’m going to give you the desires. Delight yourself in the Lord, he will give you the desires of your heart. I look back on that season with such joy.
Our friends, Nathan and Trish, were a part of that with us. We had this community, this family of people that we worked together with. We were doing this out of a local church, and it was beautiful in so many ways.
But I look back on that and say, sometimes the Lord just gives you a little gift. I think he winks at me every once in a while and says, you know, I knew that was important to you. And here you go.
Darren: That’s awesome. That’s beautiful to think about. Just that idea of the gift of it. So often you’re onto the next thing or the next phase, and you don’t stop and go, that was really cool. That was really beautiful.
A lot of times you only see these things in arrears, in looking backwards. I think we have to look back and see the faithfulness of God in the beautiful seasons and in the difficult seasons. But then, as we look out into the future and we see the unknowns out there in front of us, I think we have to use God’s faithfulness in the past to remind us, I don’t know how this is going to work out, but he’s had my back for a long time and I know he’s going to have my back again. When I keep him first.
Create your art. The world is waiting.