The Hundred Year Old Tree: What Thirty Three Years of Knocking on Doors Taught Chad Temple About Building Something That Lasts
This post is inspired by our latest episode of the Create Your Art Podcast. Watch here.
Chad Temple has spent almost four decades building things nobody could see coming. Not the version people show up for once they are already impressive. The version that starts with a pay phone in the pouring rain and a wife on the other end of the line saying, “Chad, finish, and then come home.”
I sat down with Chad, who also happens to be my father in law, to talk about the thirty three years he spent running outreach and urban ministry for a church in Indianapolis, the leap he took in the middle of COVID to found iNDY Network, and the fear that showed up right alongside every bit of it. What surprised me was not that the fear existed. It was how little it had to do with talent, and how much it had to do with whether he would keep showing up on a day nobody was watching.
If you are building something right now and wondering whether the forty views or the fifty views mean anything, this conversation is for you.
The Big Splash Is Not the Point
Chad’s ministry, known as the Caring Place, eventually grew into something with three sixteen by nine screens, a light show, and pyrotechnics. Church leaders would visit, watch a room full of four hundred kids locked in, and ask him how he pulled it off.
His answer never changed. “It’s none of that,” he told them. “All the kids are here because we visited them all this week.” He watched their eyes glaze over every time, because the answer was too simple to be the one they wanted.
The production came later. What came first, and what actually mattered, was fifteen years of knocking on doors before anyone was filming anything. Chad did not start with the light show. He started in neighborhoods, in the rain, in the cold, showing up on the same day at the same time every single week until families could set their watch by him.
That order matters. It is tempting to look at anyone doing work at scale and assume the scale is the strategy. It never is. The scale is just what showing up looks like after enough years.
Why the Route Captains Mattered More Than the Screens
The story that stuck with me most was about a neighborhood the Caring Place had to leave for an entire year after losing its route captains. When they finally returned, another organization had set up an ice cream truck and a party the same day, trying to draw the same kids.
The kids left the party and got on the Caring Place bus anyway. When the woman running the event asked why, one of the mothers told her plainly: Caring Place was the only thing that had never left them. They had been faithful.
That is not a marketing outcome. It is what happens when consistency compounds over years instead of weeks. Chad’s team had four operating principles, and the one he kept returning to was this: God is everything you are and nothing you are not. Practically, that meant if the team said they would be there, they were there, blizzard or not. One winter, when the buses could not run, staff drove Snickers bars out to kids by hand rather than break a promise.
A father who answered the door that day told his son afterward, “That’s what makes you guys different. You always do what you say you’re going to do.” The boy cried. He had never seen that kept before.
“If you say you’re going to do something, it’s not that hard to just do it, which also keeps you from saying a lot of garbage you’re not going to do.”
The Fear Nobody Warns You About
When Chad stepped away from thirty three years at one church to found iNDY Network, the fear was not about logistics. It was about identity. As a pastor, people had quietly assumed he was living the Hebrews 11 version of his life, the version where the failures are smoothed over and only the faith remains. Stepping out on his own meant, in his words, that people were finally going to see the Old Testament version instead. The messy one. The one with nothing to hide behind.
That fear traced all the way back to a party he threw as a teenage youth leader. He and a friend set everything up for what they called a hallelujah party. Zero people showed up. Decades later, before every single monthly gathering with his partner ministries, that same fear resurfaces: nobody is going to come.
They always do. But the fear never fully leaves, and Chad does not pretend otherwise.
The hardest version of that fear showed up at home. Thirty three years of never letting his kids see him shake, and suddenly he could not hide it anymore. He was honest about not knowing how that landed with them, and honest that he still does not fully know. That kind of admission, on camera, from someone who has spent his career being the steady one, is rare. It is also the most useful thing in this whole conversation if you are the one currently trying to look like you have it figured out.
Stirring the Water, Not Cooking the Meal
Chad offered an analogy that reframes the entire conversation around effort and control. When he cooks with his youngest grandkids, he does not hand them a knife or the main ingredients. He hands them a bowl of water and asks them to stir it. Later, a bit of that water goes into the actual recipe, and at dinner, the four year old gets to say, “Pops and I made this tonight.”
That is true. It is also not the whole truth, because a bowl of stirred water did not make dinner happen on its own.
Chad’s read on his own story is the same. The work was real. The showing up was real. But he is careful never to mistake his effort for the source of what actually happened. “The water stirrer,” he said, “doesn’t ever get too arrogant.”
Whatever you are building, that distinction is worth sitting with. Effort matters enormously. It is also not the whole recipe.
What Strengthen, Connect, and Unleash Actually Looks Like
iNDY Network’s tagline is strengthen, connect, and unleash, and it would be easy for that to stay a slogan on a website. Chad treats it as an operating discipline instead.
Strengthening starts with a question he asks every partner ministry leader on their regular calls: not “how’s the work going,” but “how are you doing.” He has learned to notice when someone stops talking about a part of their work they used to bring up unprompted, because that silence usually means something.
Connecting means refusing to let good organizations reinvent the wheel. When one partner needed a van, iNDY Network raised the money, realized a mini bus was the better fit, and passed the originally donated van to a different ministry whose need came up right after. Nothing wasted, nothing duplicated.
Unleashing means vetting every partner ministry before making an introduction, so that when iNDY Network connects a church or a donor to a partner, there is no guesswork involved. One partner ministry told Chad directly: when you bring us somebody, we know we can trust them. That sentence is the entire model working exactly as intended.
The Encouragement, If You Are the One Standing at the Edge
Near the end of our conversation, I asked Chad what he would say to someone who has something they know they are supposed to build, but who is stuck listening to every voice telling them they are not ready.
His answer was not “ignore the voices.” It was to take them seriously enough to check them once. If a voice says you are not ready, double check that you are. Once you have checked it, the voice will keep saying the same thing, and at that point you are allowed to stop listening, the same way you are allowed to stop checking whether you turned off the iron after you have already checked it once.
Don’t ignore the voice completely, he said. But don’t give it more authority than it has earned either.
That is not a framework. It is not a five step plan. It is a man who has been doing this for almost forty years telling you the truth: the fear does not go away, the big splash is not the point, and the only way through is the same way it has always been. Show up. Do what you said you would do. Let the rest take the time it takes.
Create your art. The world is waiting.
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Full Transcript
Darren: Welcome to the Create Your Art Podcast, where we are awakening the artist within all of us, whether you call yourself one or not. Each episode we sit down with someone who is creating art in their field, because their story just might be the thing that gives you courage to create yours. And today we’re sitting down with the legendary Mr. Temple. Chad, thanks so much for being here.
Chad: Well, thank you for inviting me.
Darren: Yeah. And we got to say, Chad Temple, AKA Pastor Chad, AKA pops, because you’re also my father-in-law.
Chad: There you go.
Darren: And you just said here a second ago, it’s special because there’s twelve grandkids. There’s so many grandkids.
Chad: There’s a lot. But twelve of them get to call you pops, and that’s pretty cool. Only twelve people in the world get to do that. I’m proud to be the pops of that group.
Darren: Well, they’re wild and crazy, and we’re glad we can send them to you every once in a while and you get to take care of them. My wife does the same.
Chad: Yeah, I get that, I get that.
Darren: Well, man, your story is so interesting and cool, even though you’re probably so close to it that you won’t think that. So we’re going to unpack a little bit of it together today, and I’m excited for people to get excited about what you’re doing. You are the founder of iNDY Network, a ministry network that is doing amazing things in the city of Indianapolis. We’ll get more into that in a second, but before this ever became a thing, you spent thirty-three years on staff at a large church here in Indianapolis, responsible for their outreach and urban ministry. For the people who don’t know that chapter specifically, what did that role mean to you?
Chad: Well, you know, it’s funny that there are people who don’t know that’s part of the story. After thirty-three years, it’s like, how do you know me now and not know that? It’s kind of mind-blowing to me, because it was so important.
I came here, long story short, as an intern back in 1986. That’s a long, long time ago. That’s where I met my wife, your mother-in-law. But I was on my way to New York City, because I was already in contract, already committed to doing a ministry up there. I took everything I learned up there and brought it back to Indianapolis, because while I was gone, that same church decided they wanted to reach into the urban areas. Another guy on staff took it over, then he went to Brooklyn, and I came here. I was fortunate to be here for thirty-three years. Thirty-three and a half, I’d say. It’s interesting, they didn’t crucify me on the way out, so I guess it was okay.
But thirty-three and a half years, and honestly, what a thrill. People have said many kind things about the Caring Place, because that’s what it was. But for me, it was just simply knocking on doors and talking to people. That’s really what it was. We had the Saturday programs, and that took a lot. We had buses, and that took a lot. We did things throughout the summers. We were involved in schools. There was ministry to homeless people. A lot of things branched out, but really what it was, was we would go into a neighborhood and we’d stay in that neighborhood. And I had volunteers, you can’t say enough about them, who would give twelve to fifteen hours a week. Now think about that. Volunteering. And we were able to minister, at the peak, to about fifteen hundred kids a week. But it wasn’t just getting a bunch of kids together. We knew all the kids, because somebody had been visiting them that week.
Darren: That’s what’s cool, and what I want to point out too, is the fact that you were showing up in these neighborhoods week in and week out for hours on end. You spent thirty-three years at the same place doing the work, and I think there’s something to showing up consistently over time. We made the joke earlier about the hundred-year-old tree, even though it’s ugly, it’s just impressive because it’s there. Which is funny in itself, that’s a total Chad joke, but we love it. When we look at it that way, I don’t think a lot of us have that in us right now in culture today, where it’s easy to just move to the next thing, move to the next thing. But your story has this thread of consistency over time. Can you speak to that a little bit? What kept you there, what kept you going?
Chad: Well, I guess because you do see the effectiveness. Honestly, these kids and these people we were working with, they have everybody in and out of their life. Families have people in and out. Whoever is around them, the community itself is very, very mobile. People, humans, are looking for connection. But for us, it was just a real simple thing. They weren’t a project. I wasn’t going to visit people because it was my job. I had made friends with people in a neighborhood, and I was going to say hi to my friends. That’s really what it was.
Darren: And often it can become a project if there’s a job piece related to it or a ministry piece related to it.
Chad: Well, there was some of that, because when you don’t want to, it’s raining, it’s cold, it’s dark. I remember one time I was in the Bronx, just got married, and it was pouring rain and cold and dark, and I just wanted to go back to Brooklyn, where our apartment was. My bride was there. I didn’t want to be out there. I remember they had pay phones, so I called her, because that’s all we had back then, put a quarter in. I said, “I just want to come home.” She said, “Chad, finish, and then come home.”
Darren: What a novel idea. Just stick it out and then come home.
Chad: But seriously, I would have a ball out there talking, knocking on doors, talking with people. Why? Because I knew what was going on in their life. Maybe this kid wasn’t going to be there Saturday because they were going to their dad’s house, and I already knew that, so I’d check in and say, “I know you’re not going to be there Saturday, but I’m praying you have a great time with your dad.” We became friends, somebody they knew they could count on. We had parents who knew, on my route or any of the routes we had, that the Caring Place staff was showing up at this time, because we always showed up on that day, right around that time. So there might have been something going on in their life that said, “Okay, we knew you were coming, and we needed to tell you this.” That’s impressive to me, because we honestly cared. So when people would say things like, “You’re just doing it for whatever reason,” there was always someone in the neighborhood saying, “You don’t know them. They’ve asked for nothing. They’re just here.” It really was an honor. We were just talking to kids, having a good time, talking with families, talking with moms and dads, and then we’d run the bus on Saturday and they’d get on and go.
I’ll never forget, and I’ll share too many stories.
Darren: No, I love the stories. Come on.
Chad: We had a neighborhood where the route captains had to step down, and I didn’t have any new ones, so we were gone for a year. That’s important. We were gone out of that apartment complex for one year. We got some new staff, and she had been with us before, so she knew what she was doing. I said, “Hey Stephanie, go here, we haven’t been there in a year, I don’t know what’s going to happen.” So she visited, and the bus rolls up, and there’s a party going on. The new community program manager had an ice cream truck out there, an event and everything going on. So Stephanie’s thinking, we’re not going to get anybody. And then all the kids left from there and came over to the bus, and she’s like, “All right, come on.” And this lady who had thrown the party comes over and is getting on the bus saying, “Kids, come on, you need to come back.” And the moms got up on the bus, looked at her, and said, “You come off of there. The kids are going to Caring Place. They’ll be right back when they’re done.” The lady said, “Why would you do that? I’m right here.” And the mom literally said, “Because Caring Place is the only thing that has never left us. They’ve been faithful.” Now remember, we had just been gone for a year, but there was such an understanding, such a feeling about the love that these route captains had.
Even when there was a shooting in one of the neighborhoods, I always knew that route captain was going to get a call, because a mom in that neighborhood was going to let her know this just happened. It was a Wednesday night, we were coming out of church, I’m driving up Post Road, I see lights on 42nd Street. I go, “What’s going on?” And that route captain, it was her neighborhood, got a phone call, a kid had just been shot and killed, and it was one of her kids. What’s amazing is that when Elissa was a route captain, when she pulled up there, there’s all these police and police lines, and she gets right to the edge and looks at one of the cops and says, “Is it one of my kids?” And the cop said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The guy standing next to her, I heard this from him later, we became friends, he looked at her and said, “My kids? This is a white lady standing here, how is this her kid?” And he goes, “Who are you?” She said, “I’m Elissa with Caring Place.” He said, “Oh, I get it.” That was the feeling out there. It wasn’t because of me. It’s because you had all these route captains who showed up, rain or shine, doesn’t matter.
One last story, they all come to mind.
Darren: I love it, I love it.
Chad: If we said we were going to be there, we were always there. We had four principles we operated under. One of them was that God is everything you are and nothing you’re not. Which, from a theological point of view, that’s horrible, but from a person’s point of view, you’re representing Christ. You came into the neighborhood saying, “I represent God.” That means if you’re honest, God’s honest. If you care, God cares. If you’re faithful, God’s faithful. So I used to tell the staff, if you say you’re going to do something, you better do it, better be there, because you’re repping God.
A blizzard hit one time. We could not run the buses, there was no way the buses were getting through, but we had promised every kid Snickers bars. So what are you going to do? Every staff member showed up, because they knew we were going. They figured a way, everybody got there, loaded all the Snickers bars up in everybody’s cars, sent them out to their routes. They were going to knock on every door and hand the kid a Snickers bar.
Chad Michael was knocking on a door, it was a two-story apartment, and the dad leans out and says, “Who is it?” He says, “Chad, with Caring Place.” The dad comes down and says, “What are you doing here?” He says, “Well, we promised the kids they were getting a Snickers bar, so we’re here to deliver it.” The dad said, “That’s what makes you guys different.” Chad Michael said, “What?” He said, “You always do what you say you’re going to do.” He called the kids over, and he was crying. He’d obviously grown up in a situation and dealt with it, because that wasn’t the norm for him. That’s what I’ve tried to tell other ministries. If you say you’re going to do something, it’s not that hard to just do it, which also keeps you from saying a lot of garbage you’re not going to do. If it sounds good but you’re not going to do it, don’t say it. Stick to what you know you’re going to do. It’s a simple thing, but it had to be instilled in the volunteers. I had the best volunteers in the world, I’m telling you. That’s what it was, and it’s all those principles. We had four that we operated under, that being one of them, and that controls you, doesn’t it? There’s certain things you can’t do and certain things you have to do.
Darren: Yeah. And it sounds like you make the decision before the decision has to be made. It’s kind of like a wedding, isn’t it?
Chad: Very true. You made a decision before you had to make the decision. I decided I’m with you forever, and not with any of you, before I ever had to make that decision. I made it, and I stuck with it.
Darren: Yeah. And again, it speaks to, I know that you say it was the route leaders and all that, and that’s true, and you led. You were the point lead on this organization that showed up and did what it said it was going to do. If you just look at that small piece of the whole story, we just showed up when we said we were going to show up. The change that happened, a guy saying, “This is what makes you different.” You show up, people go, “No, let them in.” They’re speaking on your behalf. It doesn’t matter if it’s a ministry or a business that you run. If you do it this way, people are going to notice, and then they’re going to come to your defense. Some people will look in from the outside and say whatever, especially in the day of social media. But no, you keep showing up and keep doing what you’re doing. There’s a principle there for all of us, whatever art it is that we create. Show up when you say you’re going to show up, and do what you say you’re going to do, and there’s impact that would be made in the long haul there.
Chad: And don’t worry about the big splash. You don’t have to impress everybody with a big splash, because the big splash goes away. We would have people come see what we were doing, other churches, and we’d have a room full of kids, four hundred kids or something, big screens up there. It was amazing. We ended up with a real production, but that’s not where we started. We started with a little record player with the little piano keys, with Cheryl being our sound person. That’s saying something. That’s where we started, and then we ended up with three sixteen-by-nine screens and a light show, pyros, all this kind of stuff. People would come in and say, “How do you get all these kids here?” I said, “It’s none of that.” They’d say, “What?” I said, “That has nothing to do with it. All the kids are here because we visited them all this week,” and you could almost see the lids of their eyes shut down, glaze over, because that’s what it is. Guys, they show up because of a relationship.
I’ll never forget, two different times, we used to do a giveaway for my birthday, donuts and a drink, and it was funny because it was never actually on my birthday, and it was supposed to be a surprise, but I was handing out the flyers to the kids on my route myself. Believe me, kids believe anything you tell them. So I’m picking up kids for that Saturday, and two kids got on that I hadn’t seen in a while. I said, “Guys, you haven’t been here in a minute, what’s going on?” They said, “Pastor Chad, we heard it was your birthday, we had to come for your birthday.” I said, “All right, thanks.”
And one time we did the story of Esther, remember how she walks into the king without a promise, there’s no promise. So we had a No Promise Saturday. This was Mel, Keaton, Glen Palmer, and me, we were doing the planning at the time, and we said, “Let’s do a No Promise.” We told all the kids all week, “You’re not promised any giveaway.” We always had something, but this time there was no promise. The flyer said, “No promise.” And was our number a little lower? Yeah, a little bit, but it was a great number that Saturday. We were off by maybe a hundred kids, and when you’re running fifteen hundred, you’re fine. But amazing, why did they show up? We asked them. Now, did we have a giveaway for them? Of course. Because we said, “God may not promise anything, but He always gives you exactly what you need.” So they came, and it was fun. But again, the idea is they were coming out of relationship, not only for the item.
Darren: Yeah, and how does that happen? It takes a minute.
Chad: Yeah, because the first time you knock on the door, you’re just a white guy. Literally, we were told that. “You’re just white people trying to save Black people.” I said, “That’s interesting, I never thought of that.”
Darren: And what’s amazing is when other people told them, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Chad: Yeah, and that’s what it was.
Darren: And what I love, and I’m going to frame this in my own understanding for a second, is the idea of, a lot of us in a business role or creating something, like starting this podcast, right? A few episodes in, and anybody who has started anything like this has this emotion where it’s like, “Forty views? Really? That’s all this work?” I made you come sit down with me, and there’s forty views on this video, or “We hit fifty, look at that.” We all want that big splash. We all want the moment where we walk in and see the three screens and the light show, but we forget that at that time, what got there was probably ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years of investing. So for me, what does it look like at episode a thousand compared to episode twenty-eight, or whatever we’re at right now?
It speaks to so much truth that I think we often miss, just the simplicity of showing up and doing what you say you’re going to do. It’s not an overly complicated thing, but it’s a really hard thing to do, because we all want it fast, especially in today’s culture of virality, where a video gets a million views, the second one doesn’t. That’s not reality. Real relationship is built over time.
Chad: Yes. And that’s what we see with you guys, and how you show up. Even what you’re saying, do you really want a thousand or a hundred thousand people seeing your very first few episodes, when you’re still working stuff out, still trying to figure it out? So what you don’t know, and what you’re not doing yet that you will do later, isn’t hurting you for not doing it now, though you might need it. Not enough people caring isn’t the point. The point is for you to fulfill what you believe you’re supposed to do, and let the rest of it settle.
You know, I’m known on the east side, but knowing my name and ten bucks will buy you something at Starbucks. It’ll buy me something too. People knowing my name is irrelevant, it really doesn’t matter. It feels nice, sure, you walk in somewhere and people are talking to you, but again, it’s what’s behind that, that’s what matters. What got you there, and like you said, it’s just showing up. It’s not that hard. It’s a whole lot easier to do that than to build out something that’s a huge splash right off the bat.
Imagine all these businesses that might be big now, they started small. You look at the beginnings of any restaurant, they’re always these little things, and they grow. But if someone’s going to come in now and try to beat them at their own game, they’ve got to start so high. I’m not trying to beat anybody at their game, I’m just doing what I know is right, and the simplest thing is to just do what you say. It’s called integrity. It works.
Darren: What a great reminder, because it’s often forgotten, and I think that’s a beautiful part of the story we got here. I want to talk a little bit about what we’ll call the leap. You went from thirty-three years at one location into what is now known as iNDY Network, taking this idea of helping other ministries. I had a front-row seat to watch you do this, so I’m trying to fill in some of the blanks. But basically you went from thirty-three years at the same place to all of a sudden building your own thing, even though you built the Caring Place underneath it as well. What was that leap like? Did you feel ready to do that, or was it very much, “I have no idea, we’ve got to build this thing as it goes”? Walk us through that part of your journey.
Chad: It started, and I don’t even know when the idea started, but there came a point where I’d been at the church for thirty-plus years, and they gave me thirty days off. It was the middle of COVID, so I didn’t go anywhere. I just sat and wrote out this thing that was on my mind, and it became iNDY Network. I showed it to some people, and they looked at it and said, “Man, that’s definitely necessary.” People in the urban area, urban ministry type thing, said, “Okay, that’ll work.” So I field-tested it that way.
But you know, the detail thing is not my forte. I thought I had all the details figured out. Oh man, I got that figured out, yeah, this is perfect, it’s going to go off without a hitch. And then you fall all the way down the flight of stairs, because you only saw three steps, not twenty. I didn’t know all those were there.
But I’m very simple, I have to keep it simple, because I’m not that smart. What I figured was, we need to have something. I’m seeing a problem, that there are these standalone ministries and programs who are struggling, either financially, or because they’re always having to reinvent the wheel with what they’re doing, and this other need comes up among the people they’re serving, so they’re reinventing that too. I saw it as a wasting of God’s money. Why are you reinventing the wheel? And then, not only that, but personally they’re going through their own struggles, and yet they’re trying to lead a ministry. I know what that’s like. I said, I didn’t have to be alone. I was on staff at a church, right down the hall I could go to Glen and say, “What’s going on, where am I at?” and he could talk me through it. I remember when I was ready to throw in the towel on everything, and Mel, or Glen, or Dave, one of these guys would say, “What are you thinking? Here, you’re good, I got it.” Their words kept me on my feet.
Darren: They call those the doorway decisions, right? My brother, who was on staff at a church for a long time, has talked about the idea of having an office across from somebody you worked with, and most large decisions or ideas spurred from leaning up against the doorway, going, “What do you think about?” And a new thing gets built, a new thing saves you from quitting. This new ministry, this new business idea, it happens in the doorway.
Chad: The dumbest idea is you just say something stupid. The Christmas Store was just a dumb idea we had, and it grew into twenty-plus years of doing amazing things. So yeah, that’s what I had. I’m realizing these standalone ministries, they’re part of a church, and there’s some that a church really wraps their arms around, and others that don’t. Some of these are church ministries themselves, but they’re smaller ones. So what I realized was that it would be really good if they had someone who just said, “How are you doing?” Because health issues come up, and what they don’t need is me connecting them to somebody else to get more ministry done. They’ve got enough. For most of these people, it’s a second thing, they work, plus this extra thing, and they’re putting in a lot of hours. So they don’t need me giving them more. What they do need is maybe someone saying, “Are you okay? Okay, so you’re trying to do this, if I pick up this corner of the table, can you move it a little easier? Okay, let’s go.” That’s what was birthed in me, to just do that for people. That’s what started it.
Darren: I love what you said too about the idea of them reinventing the wheel a lot, because when you’re in that kind of service mentality, whether it’s a for-profit or a nonprofit thing, you want to help. So when somebody comes with a need, even if it’s way left of center from what you do, you want to help them. What I’ve seen in iNDY Network, as I’ve paid attention, is that you allow them to not have to reinvent the wheel, because you go, “Hey, there’s actually somebody here that can do that.” Now you connect the dots, it’s like, “Don’t reinvent the wheel, stick right here, we can help. It doesn’t have to be you, let’s partner with this,” and now we start to see how the network plays its part. The secondary piece is that you can be that doorway help for them, where they go, “What do you think about this idea?”
Chad: Well, and all those ideas fall into different categories. One is, “Don’t do that, I’ve done it, you’re going to lose your mind.” Another is, “You know what, it didn’t work for me, but maybe you can make it work, it’s not a bad idea, I just was a failure, maybe you’re not.” The other is, “Hey, that’s a great idea.” So wherever it falls on that spectrum, that’s kind of the advice you give. But you’re right, these ministries are doing amazing things, and yet it’s too easy for mission creep to happen, because the need is the call. Remember, the need was the call for them to start what they’re doing, but if you stay in that mode all the time, you’re going to find yourself trying to do too much, and then you’re good at nothing.
Instead, these people are great. One of them, A Dwelling Place, they work with families, family preservation, helping them get equipment they need, beds, stuff like that for their kids. They also have a discipleship program now, called Dwell’s, doing really well. They’re just amazing, two ladies doing amazing work. They had a situation come up where they just needed family help, housing type stuff. We were able to connect them with somebody in our network who’s doing it, and to me, that’s what’s so exciting about it.
By the way, they told me this, I wanted this to be a piece of it, but you don’t know if it is until they tell you it is. I wanted everybody connected to iNDY Network, whether it’s the partner ministries, churches, businesses, or individual donors, to have confidence in what we were doing. We wanted to hand them an assurance that if we bring these people to you, they’re solid. We do that because we vet everybody. Our network isn’t, “Hey, everybody come on in,” which I’ve got no problem with that kind of networking, that’s a lot of what happens at those things. But that’s not what this is. This is a community, this is a confidence, this is a trust situation. So we vet everybody, and we’ve had a few where it just wasn’t going to be good, or I didn’t really know, “I’m not sure you’re really doing that, you’re talking, but I don’t see much happening.” So we’ve kept them at arm’s length until they could prove it. Some didn’t, some are no longer with us, or they never really were.
One of these ministries actually said to me, a couple of weeks ago, this is a Pastor Chad moment, “When you bring us somebody, we know we can trust them.” That’s what we want, and I want that from every donor, every business partner, every church partner, because churches want to do more, but who are they going to connect with? They don’t have the leadership bandwidth, or the budget right now. You don’t have to start an afterschool program, Mike Wilkins has a great situation going, connect with them. Instead of opening a pantry, because you don’t even know how to do a pantry, you just get food in and give it out, that’s not quite it. So why don’t you connect with Church of Living Water? Darlene will train you. I tell people all the time, she’ll train you, and she laughs, she says, “I’m not that good.” I say, “You’re awesome.” She can train you, how many tables, how to set them up, where to get the food, how much you need. When you do that, there’s a confidence that everybody they bring to us is legit. I might not need them right now, sure, but when I do, I know.
Darren: Yeah, I’m just sitting here thinking how many times in my life, if I just tried to reinvent the wheel of something, this idea of longevity, sticking it out over time and doing one thing with excellence. In my entrepreneurial journey, there’s a new idea with every passing moment of the day, “Oh, we could do that,” and it’s like, calm down, stick in your lane, get really good at that. There’s been a handful of conversations, I talked to my dad a few weeks ago, my brother a couple weeks ago, and there’s a lot of these overlapping ideas of just showing up, staying consistent, staying in your lane, that’s really where the impact is made, and that’s where the thing happens. It’s not three points of a sermon and “Here’s three points to a better you today.” It’s, no, it takes time. It takes time. It’s not the fun, cool thing everybody wants to hear.
Chad: Well, it depends on what it is you’re trying to do also. You’ve got to remember, God is having a conversation with everybody in this world, and you, as His servant, are part of that conversation with everybody who surrounds you. Some you’re going to be with for a very short time, so you’re a word or two in that conversation. You might be there a little longer, you might be a sentence, a paragraph, in this conversation. Maybe as time goes, it might be a whole chapter, with people like my parents, we’re in the same family, so we’re going to be together a long time, we can become a book in that conversation. But really, how do you do that? Just by showing up and being who God wants you to be.
The arrogance, think about that, and it wasn’t meant as arrogance. Look, in the eighties and nineties, when I was starting out, we were trying to be a one-stop shop. We actually said that, “Caring Place will be a one-stop shop, they come here, they get everything.” Now I look back, that was really arrogant, and we never did succeed. We didn’t mean it to be arrogant, we were trying to serve people, because that was the thing, you wanted to serve, you wanted to help, when somebody comes with a need.
Darren: But even in that sentence, what I hear is, you go, “We’re a one-stop shop,” but what iNDY Network is actually becoming, to use that term in a better way, is a one-stop shop only because you have the connections and the people around you that you do. So somebody can come with any kind of need, and you go, “Here’s the connect,” and they can stay in their lane and stay healthy and do what they do best, and you facilitate their health, as well as make sure anybody that needs help can get it. There’s some beauty in that too. So even though you might not say it’s a one-stop shop, there’s the connection piece.
Chad: We know somebody, “I know a guy,” that’s how it all works.
Darren: That’s awesome. Quick pause here. If you are thinking about starting a podcast, or have already started one, and it’s not driving business results like you’d like it to, we would love to help. At 1898 Creative, we install a proven podcast system, a strategy that helps you leverage your message to attract premium clients without adding more to your plate. So if you’re ready to turn your podcast into an authority engine, book a call over at 1898creative.com, and let’s build something awesome together. All right, now let’s get back to the conversation.
So thirty-three years at one place, you step out, you launch this thing called iNDY Network. Whenever you create something new, like you said, you spent thirty days writing, whenever you create something new and you start to bring out this thing that you feel you’ve got to bring to the world, there’s often some of those voices back there. What were those voices telling you about this whole process? What was some of that fear and resistance you faced during that time?
Chad: People are going to realize that you’re a failure. People are going to realize that you’re a phony. That’s the voices. I was at a church for thirty-three years, I was a pastor for thirty-three years, which means I lived like an angel for thirty-three years. No, it doesn’t. It means that you have failed. You have lived more the Old Testament character life than the Hebrews 11 version of their life. Have you ever noticed that? If you watch Abraham, he failed a lot of times, but you read about him in Hebrews, he was a man of faith. If you look at Moses, watch him, but you see him over in Hebrews chapter eleven, he’s a great guy. King David even, your daughter and I were having a conversation the other day about that, she was like, “What, David did some crazy stuff, he messed up, and he’s a man after God’s own heart, how do you balance that?”
That’s what I’m saying, I lived like the Old Testament guys, but people, because I was their pastor, thought of me in the Hebrews chapter eleven version. Now that I’m stepping out on my own, they’re going to see the Old Testament version, and that’s not good, because I’ve got nothing to hide behind. In order for this thing to fly, these people have to believe in what we’re doing, and so I was scared. Every time we do these monthly get-togethers with the ministries, every time I get scared that nobody’s going to show, because I’m worried, are we really living up to what we say we do? Do these people really need us?
And also, because the very first party I ever threw, when I was a youth leader, a teenager, we were throwing this party, a “hallelujah party,” because one of the youth leaders got super spiritual, so me and her were there setting up, and guess how many people showed up? Zero. And that has lived with me ever since.
Darren: That has been a mark on you from day one, I’m telling you.
Chad: You think I’m kidding. Every time we’re about to do a lunch, I’m thinking, “Nobody’s going to show, nobody’s going to show.” And then they do, and I’m asking, “What are you guys doing here?” And one of them said, “Every time I walk out of here, I feel like I can make this happen.” Another one said, “I came in here with five things I needed, four of them were already taken care of.”
Darren: They stood in the doorway.
Chad: They stood in the doorway. In fact, we might need to rename those things, maybe this is “doorway conversations.” There’s got to be a “stand in the doorway.”
Darren: Get in the doorway.
Chad: Get in the doorway. Sorry, dad, if you watch this. But yeah, that’s it. So I think a lot of what you just said, they’re going to think I’m a fraud, nobody’s going to show up, what if what I’m providing, nobody actually needs. These are foundational fears, foundational things that I think a lot of us wrestle with when we create anything that brings something out into the world.
Darren: All of those fears, I think all of us would raise our hand and say, yep, every day here. How do you, and I don’t mean that lightly, I mean it’s different when I’m feeling it myself versus watching you feel it. It’s cold, because I look across the table at you and go, “Come on, Chad, this is amazing, build it, go, dude, why would you not?” And you’re going, “But what if nobody shows up?” And you look across the table and say, “Dude, this is awesome,” and I’m like, “Nobody’s going to show up.” The worst one for me, Darren, was my kids.
Chad: What were you scared they were going to say?
Darren: I just wanted to be the strong dad. I told them, you can emulate me in everything I do except one thing, and that’s the way I drive. Other than that, you can copy me in everything. I wanted to be the strong dad, and when everything fell apart, I’m standing there, watching Lauren tell about a situation when the doctor looked at her and said something and she was falling apart, and she looked at me, and I was just looking at him, “Okay, now what are we going to do?” Inside I was destroyed, but you can’t do that, she’s standing there. That’s what you want to be, and when my life was shaking, I didn’t want them to see that. I didn’t want them thinking, “Well, that’s a failure.” Especially after thirty-three years of never seeing me shake.
I’ve always shaken. All those fears have always been there, they never saw them, but now they’re adults, and they’re going to see them, and I’m the one not knowing what to do. How do you stand up underneath the weight of that fear? I don’t think I did. You have to ask them, you’re married to one of them.
Chad: Yeah, that’s true. I think they saw a side of their dad that wasn’t that positive.
Darren: I think that’s okay. You think that’s okay?
Chad: Man, I mean, I still think they like me. I think they still know that I’m a man of my word, I think they still think I’m a solid Christian. I don’t know, maybe when your kids are little, you want to be their superhero, and when they get older, you’re not, but I was trying to hold on to that maybe too much. I just didn’t want them to see me going through something where I was the weak one. I don’t know why I’m saying this on camera.
Darren: You’re good, dude, you’re a good interviewer. But I’ve never talked about this, so maybe you shouldn’t even put this part on. But that’s the, I don’t know, that’s it, you know them as well as, or better than, I do. I mean, that’s a real fear. I’m looking at it going, man, my kids are small, and, the side tangent here, we went to our first All Pro Dads at school this morning. It was like being a part of that, and in that portion of the thing, they asked the kids a couple of questions about leadership, “What is a leader, how do you know if somebody’s leading?” And they asked, “Who do you think is a leader, who’s somebody in your life?” And I mean, dude, three-year-old Indy doesn’t really get it, or gave some kind of answer, and Vinyl doesn’t really get it, I think he said a superhero, which kind of fits. But Story, who’s twelve, ends up saying “me,” and it’s like, that’s the answer I wanted her to give.
But I echo what you say, of, “Am I just saying that because it’s expected, like saying ‘Jesus’ on a Sunday, because you’re supposed to say that?” I echo the fear of, I don’t want to show myself as weak, I don’t want to show myself as not leading well. That’s a real fear you have to wade through.
Chad: Yep, and I don’t think it ever goes away.
Darren: It hasn’t yet.
Chad: And I think that’s part of what drives you to them, because you want to be a person of integrity, so you do what you say you’re going to do. You want to be seen as a leader, you want to be able to say to your kids, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” So you’ve got to follow Christ. And the worries, that fear, not knowing what I was doing, because I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know my head from a hole in the ground. I knew what I was doing over here, I could do what I’d been doing for thirty-three years without even thinking about it, I didn’t even need God anymore to do it, which, that’s a problem, that’s a real problem. So stepping out into this, I found myself talking to God every morning, just sitting across the table, like I’m across from you, saying, “I don’t know what I’m doing with this, what should I do here, God, You do still love me, right? Okay, You are still here, right?”
And then having the fortitude to not make a decision when you don’t know what decision to make, that’s really hard to do, when you’ve got people going, “You have to decide,” but I don’t know what to do yet. And how do you not know what to do? Because, “That looks like it’d be right,” but I don’t have any clearance on that, because I’m not in charge of this thing, God is. That sounds super spiritual to non-Christians, and even some Christians, but I’m telling you, what kept me sane, what kept me going through all that, was the fact that I’m sitting there talking to God every day, saying, “God, until I feel like this is right from You, I ain’t doing it. So You’ve got to tell me, and then I’ll wait.”
Darren: Yeah, I will echo the fact that whenever you’re creating something that is yours, in the sense that it’s your ideas that you’re bringing out into the world, for you, iNDY Network, for me, 1898 Creative and even this podcast, you have this fear, this shaking, the voice in your head saying all the things. It’s the hardest thing you will ever do, but I also say it’s the best thing for you, because it forces you to realize it doesn’t all rely on you. It forces you to do what you do every morning, and go, “Okay God, I don’t really know what You’re saying here, or why You’re saying this, or what’s happening, I have no idea what ends up, and I’m just going to keep walking.” I think there’s something to that. You didn’t want to show yourself as weak, but yet you did the most strong thing you could do, which was wake up every day and say that.
Chad: True. That’s a way of thinking about it. So my kids might have seen me shake a little bit, but they also saw me do probably the best thing for me to do, which was go, “God, I don’t have this figured out, I don’t know where it’s going to end up, and not only that, not worrying about it.” Here’s the thing, if I do believe that God is doing something and I just jumped on the wave, that’s all I did. If I’m riding His wave, when He ends it, it’s over. And see, I was afraid when I was at the church that long, I forgot that God was my source, I started thinking the church was. So when I walked away from that, I’m going, “Uh-oh, my source is gone.”
But thank God, in that process, He’d been talking to me, and some miracles happened, it was really amazing. But right at the end of that year is when Cheryl was diagnosed with cancer, and all that. I was like, “God, what’s going on?” I couldn’t even really put my effort into starting anything, you know what I mean? So He kind of sent me into a tailwind there. But it was almost like, “Are you going to trust me?” This is the thing, Darren, if iNDY Network folds tomorrow, and I sure hope it doesn’t, God has me, I don’t have to worry about it anymore. When we’re thinking that whatever we’re doing is our source, whereas what we’re standing on, we’re in a lot of trouble. When Peter, when Jesus walked on water, I’m convinced He was not walking on the water, nobody can, but the Father was suspending Him like a marionette, and I think the same thing with Peter. He was just being, and the same thing with you and me, everything we see that we’re supposedly doing, that even people think is miraculous, no, it’s all because God is keeping us right there. If the water goes away, I’m still going to be right there, because it wasn’t holding me. 1898 Creative is not holding you, iNDY Network’s not holding me. You’re doing this because God has either stirred it up in you, or because you stepped out and God said, “Like that,” and I’m going to do that with you. He’s a good dad. And if we understand that, then that takes some of the fear away, because it’s like, “God, you have me, right? Okay, we’re good. Step out.”
Remember the old song, “I’m going to step out on nothing and land on something.”
Darren: There it is. It’s really cool until you have to do it.
Chad: Yeah, well then, looking over the table, I’m like, “You got this,” and check that. He’s got you. The minute I’m out there, “Oh Lord, what’s happening,” you know? But man, that’s such a good reminder that I think we often forget, and I think that’s what this whole conversation has been today, just this reminder of, it’s not overnight, it happens over time. And it’s really, sometimes things happen in our lives that get us to leap out into something that’s going to be filled with fear and uncertainty and all those things that we decided on, but it gets us to a place where we go, “Okay, well, we’re just going to trust.” I think that’s the best place for us to be.
Darren: Keep walking that out, it takes a lot of time.
Chad: I remember Johnny Carson, my dad used to watch him every night, and he was talking to a guest, and the guest was saying he had been an overnight success. Johnny said, “Yeah, it’s amazing, after twenty years, how you’re an overnight success.” Twenty years to become an overnight success. He also said one time, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Because people say it’s all luck. The harder you work, the luckier you get.
So there is, I don’t, I don’t say this for people to go, “Oh, I have a dream, and then just lay around until God does it.” No, you’ve got to work, that’s a lot of work to do, but knowing that your work alone is not going to make it happen. You know, we talked about recipes, because we both like cooking, but I’ve told people, if I was going to cook with one of my grandkids, depending on their age, they’d say, “Pops, I’m going to cook with you.” “Okay, cool. Here, I’ve got a bowl of water, I need you to stir that.” I’m not going to give them the thing to cut, I’m not going to give them the main part of the meal, but I do need the water, and you know what, I probably need something in the water, so I’ll put it in there, and stir it, and then I’ll take a little bit of that and put it in the recipe we’re making, and at the dinner table, that four-year-old can sit there and say, “Pops and I made this tonight.” And that’s true. Now put yourself as a kid stirring the water, and let God be making the recipe, and you and God did it, yes you did. But just remember, the water stirrer doesn’t ever get too arrogant.
Darren: What a great analogy, I’ve never even thought of it that way.
Chad: That’s because I’m the hundred-and-fifty-year-old tree.
Darren: So true, so true, you old man. The beard is not premature.
Chad: It’s really long-term.
Darren: All right, well let’s circle back a little bit to iNDY Network here. The tagline of iNDY Network is strengthen, connect, and unleash. I love that. When you sit down with these ministry leaders, some of whom are probably tired, a little frustrated, maybe feeling like they’re these solo things out there by themselves, how does iNDY Network come alongside them and actually strengthen them, instead of just being, “Oh, you’re a part of this network, and when we need you, we’ll call you”? How do you balance those two things together?
Chad: You’ve got to remember, it has to be something given from their side as well as from our side, they have to want that. What I’ve actually had to ask myself, because I can be kind of harsh, and yet I haven’t been that way within these ministries. I’m thinking, “God, am I actually helping anybody, or am I just being a Santa Claus?” And then I realized, they haven’t needed it, right? It’s not that they’re doing something wrong, it’s that some are just struggling. Now, listen, there are other ones doing great, they’ve got a huge grant, they’ve got this. Then I’m just walking along, and so I walk along always trying to remind them of what it is that they’re really doing.
See, so the strengthening comes in this way, keeping in mind what it is that they’re really trying to accomplish. Now, they might be Anthony Beverly, working with Stop the Violence Indianapolis, which is about reducing gun crime. You might be Michelle Shelburne, who leads Sanctuary Indy, trying to work with the chronically homeless, getting them off the street. Or you might be Darlene Stout, Church of Living Water, where they’re going into food deserts with mobile pantries feeding people, it’s awesome. There’s a whole bunch in between, twenty-one right now, looking for three more that might be coming on. They’re all doing the same thing, just in a different form. Number one, they’re trying to meet needs, because if you meet a need, you can change a life. But because they’re Christian organizations, they also know, if I get that person to meet Jesus, they get a new life. Though they’re very good at changing lives, these are great organizations, go on our website, look at any one of them, they’re all excellent, and we keep adding more.
I’ve told all of them, I know people who are really good Christians and they’re horrible at what they do, and I know people who are really good at what they do and they’re horrible Christians, I don’t want either one. We’re looking for people who are really good at what they do and really good at serving Christ. So number one, I try to keep them in mind of this: don’t forget what you’re doing, because when you’re out in that world and you’re in the social realm, there’s a lot of pressure on you, that if you want to be at the big people’s table, downplay the whole Jesus thing, or we’ll relegate you to the little kids’ table. I tell them, “Guys, you don’t need the big table, you’re at God’s table, don’t worry about them, you don’t have to kiss anybody’s back end to get there, you do what God has called you to do.” That’s a strengthening, that’s a “don’t forget what you’re doing.”
Strengthening also comes in the way of, when they have issues that come up in their own personal life, whether it be health issues, family issues, something that’s going to trip them, or even a question they have in their mind, something they’re just struggling with, that’s what we’re there for. We have the opportunity, because we have a set monthly call, or meetup, a one-on-one that I try to keep with each one of them, and schedule sometimes keeps it from happening, but at least it’s there, it’s an opportunity.
The other strengthening thing is, “Hey, what’s a big project you’ve got working right now? So you’re trying to carry this whole table by yourself, well, if I grab one corner, are you good?” “Yeah.” “All right.” So one of them needed a van. We went and raised the money for the need to have a van, and then we realized, “Oh, it’s not a van, you need a mini bus.” Well, the money that came in was enough to buy that, but the van that was donated was able to go to one of the other ministries whose need came up after that. And I go, “So this is solving a problem for you, right?” And they said, “Are you kidding me? This is phenomenal.” That’s the kind of thing we’re doing. Do we have that all the time? No. Last year, in-kind and in cash, we were able to give out around thirty thousand dollars, which I know isn’t a lot, but we’re young, we’re getting there. This year we’re going to be up close to ninety thousand, or something like that, which to me is exciting. Where will we be next year? I don’t know, we might be back to ten, I don’t know.
Darren: Well, it’s just like when we talked to my dad a few months ago, at this point, he started his nonprofit that was supposed to give all this money to missions, and I don’t think they gave anything away for years. By the time you would have given up and said, “This isn’t working,” was the time he started to go, “Oh, here’s the first thirty-thousand-dollar check, here’s the first ninety-thousand-dollar check,” and now, all these years later, we’re talking forty-plus years, now it’s in the millions, and you look at it and go, again, to your point earlier, of the three screens and all the lights, and everybody goes, “Oh wow,” it took time.
Chad: Thirty grand, ninety grand, that’s a start. Even like your dad, he was faithful, right, in what he was good at, which I’m not good at, I’m horrible at what he did, but I’m good at knocking on doors and talking to people. So that’s what I did, and it worked. Now I think I’m okay with sitting and listening to somebody and trying to hear what’s really going on. What I look for when I’m talking to people is, are they talking in only aspirational tones? If they are, they’re not doing much. There’s nothing wrong with having a dream, but at some point you need to, I drive a stick, you’ve got to press the gas before you take the clutch off, or it’s going to die. That’s your aspiration, that’s what I want to do, but at some point you’ve got to ease off the clutch, or you’re not going anywhere.
What we’re looking for is not people who are just pressing the gas, we want the one who’s having a hard time getting into first gear, and getting into that. So certain things they were talking about that they’re not talking about anymore, or the look on their face, or something. I was meeting with one about a month ago, and my first question is always, “How are you doing?” And it would always start with, “Well, this, this,” and they’re talking about the ministry, and I’d listen. “That’s awesome, I love all that, but that’s not what I asked you. What I asked you was, how are you doing?” Because if you really look under that tagline, it says strengthen the minister, connect the ministry. We need to strengthen them. So then there are times they’ve called me, “Hey, I’m going through this,” but not as often, more because we’re having that regular time, almost like that regular visit I used to do every week, they know I’m coming. “Okay, Pastor Chad, this is going on.” And man, I absolutely love it, so that’s what it is.
How do I know I’m strengthening? I didn’t, until we were at an event, and I had some of the ministries with me, somebody got a district council, and we were there, and I’d invited some of them, and said, “You all have got to meet these pastors, and more than that, they need to meet you, you guys are amazing, you don’t have to count out any of these.” So a guy walks up to me and says, “Hey Chad, what are you doing now?” because he knew I had changed things. I started telling him, and I noticed that one of the ministry leaders, our partners, was across the table, and they’d finished their talk, they were kind of listening in. And then you get nervous, not for him, I got nervous with her, because I’m about to say, “We strengthen, we connect, we unleash,” am I actually doing that? That voice came back again and said, “Uh-oh.” So I said, “Well, this is what we do,” but I said, “you’d have to ask her, that’s what I say we do, you have to ask her.” And she came around and said, “They’re doing exactly what they said they’d do.”
Darren: Wow, that was amazing to me.
Chad: So how do we do it? It’s really by looking at them and treating them the way I used to treat the families on my route. You’re not a project, you’re a friend. I’m really doing Caring Place on a different level, I don’t know anything else. Whereas before, what I used to say about the Saturday program we ran was, if I could visit my route without having the Saturday Sunday school, I’d do it. Sunday school took a lot of work, I missed all my kids’ ball games, a lot of money, fuel we were spending, at the time, gas wasn’t as much, we were spending fifteen hundred dollars a month in fuel, now it would be closer to three grand or more. Plus we were doing bus repairs, it was insane, at times we were ten thousand dollars in the hole just on bus repairs. If I didn’t have to do that, well, it’s almost like I’m at that now. I’m visiting a route, and I don’t have the Saturday Sunday school, all I’ve got is the route, and it’s awesome, you get to walk it and stay, “Can we strengthen you?” And then we go, “Now you can connect over here.” We’re not even waiting for them to get to a certain level, they’re in the network, they’ve already met that. I just want to make sure you’re okay before, in fact, I will decide, well, not that I decide, that sounded very arrogant, but I’m not going to connect you with people who want something from you when you’re struggling, I’m going to connect you with people who can help you do what you’re doing right now. Then when you get stronger, then this one’s ready, this one needs something and this one’s able to do it. So there have been ones I’ve kind of done that with, just because I saw they were having maybe a struggle.
Darren: Well, I love the work you’re doing at iNDY Network, and I love the parallels too, between what you did before and what you’re doing now. I think often we feel like it’s this new thing, this crazy new thing, in my story going from music to more video stuff, oh, it’s a new thing. But then you start to see the parallels in everything, and you go, oh, it’s just building upon some of those things that you learned and knew before. As we kind of wrap here, what would be something you would say to somebody out there who has this thing they’re trying to build, whether it’s a network, a ministry, a business, something they feel in them, they want to do it, but all those fears are creeping in, all those things, they’re like, “How do I step out of this boat and actually get into the water and figure this out?” What would you say to encourage them, to strengthen them today?
Chad: Well, the easy thing to say is, “Ignore all those voices,” but I’m not going to say that, because you shouldn’t, those voices are there for a reason. Think them through. If something’s saying “you’re not ready,” well, double-check that you are ready, and then once you’ve double-checked it, the voice is still going to say “you’re not ready,” but I already checked it, so I am. It’s not the nutcase, you’re only a nutcase if you keep checking the iron to make sure you shut it off after you already double-checked it, you’re not in that case if you check it once, you’re only in that case if you keep doing it and let that keep you from leaving the house.
So don’t ignore those voices, but don’t let them control you either. I would say, especially if you’re a Christian, you’ve got to talk to God, you’ve got to understand you can do nothing without Him. Period. There’s nothing else in that sentence, without Him we can do nothing. Go with Him, does that mean that with Him you’ll have to do nothing? No, that’s not what that means, but He will lead you, He will guide you, He will be that other voice in your ear. There’s an old song, “Are you living in the old man’s revel, or are you listening to the Father of Lives?” And one of the verses is, “Deep inside you, the spiritual battle, a voice of the darkness and a voice of the light, and the voice you hear is going to win the fight.” That is so true in this. The voice saying “you can’t,” they’re real, and they’re actually right, you can’t. But the voice that says “I told you to” is also real, and it’s more powerful than “you can’t.” So make sure you listen to the right voice. Don’t ignore the other ones, but use them for what they’re there for. Pain is so you’ll go to the doctor, you don’t want to lose pain when you get hurt, there’s nothing wrong with having that voice, don’t ignore it, but don’t give it more than it’s due.
Darren: And that’s why we call you Pastor Chad.
Chad: So good, also because I’m old. Well, you know.
Darren: Hey, I want you guys, this is the call to action here, I want you to go to iNDY Network, and I want you to find an organization that you can actually get behind, and not just follow, get behind and not just follow. There’s awesome organizations that you’re working with, and I think there’s a lot of people who go, “I have a heart for gun violence, I have a heart for helping people in homeless situations, how do we help them?” There’s a lot of things that are in your heart, and you can go to iNDY Network, which is indynetwork.org, correct?
Chad: Yep, indynetwork.org, that’s right. Darren, can I add one other thing?
Darren: Yes, please.
Chad: No, I know you’re winding down and that was a perfect ending, so sorry, editor. But all of that I was talking about is how we minister and work with our partner ministries, but there’s a way that we try to work with the businesses and the churches too, and that is to be able to say, “What are you interested in?” They might be interested in homelessness, they might be interested in gun violence, might be something else. So when we find out what floats your boat, what excites you, okay, I have someone that you ought to connect with. So when they go to that website, find it, there’s something out there, and if you can’t find something there, hit me up, email me.
Darren: And that’s what’s beautiful, is that it’s not just the individual that needs to go to indynetwork.org, it’s the organizations that do as well, because you go, “Hey, you can actually make an impact through the organization you’re working in or leading in some way,” and there’s something powerful there too.
Chad: Marketplace mission, somebody should write a book on that. Inside joke to my brother, shout out.
Darren: Anyway, well Chad, thanks so much for coming and chatting about this, it’s super fun to hear these stories. The last few episodes have obviously been family, so it’s been very cool for me. Again, if seven people listen, it’s still cool for me. It’s just so fun to hear how you guys are creating amazing things, and I call it art, you’re creating art in your field in some awesome ways. So thanks for doing that.
Chad: Thank you, dude, this is awesome.
Darren: This is awesome. Thank you, and thank you for listening. Before you go, I want to give you this reminder that you are an artist, and the world is waiting for what you have to say. So go out and create your art, and we’ll see you here on the next one.