Gen Z Take Over Part 3 with Cole Terry

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam, [00:00:31] Speaker B: Pastor Zach, as other people call you, dad, welcome to maximum life. Code red. This is another Gen Z takeover. I'm Pastor Zach's son, Cole, and we're going to be doing a little bit of a conversation. Wanted to kind of do a little walkthrough of your history, your background, do a biography on the man who's normally behind this microphone. [00:00:50] Speaker A: Gotcha. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Do a little walkthrough of that. And so, so many people right now at this point in my life, I'm going through the kind of telling my story in two minutes or less. If you are meeting someone for the first time, just give us the broad strokes. Recap. Who is Pastor Zach? [00:01:09] Speaker A: Okay. I'm a follower of Christ, first and foremost. Raised in Alabama, pastoring now in Fernandina beach, and trying to do all we can, you know, with our family and leverage our time and our gifts just to get the message out, the truth of God's word. [00:01:26] Speaker B: Awesome. Awesome. Short and sweet. I like it. So, real quick, this is going to be a little bit of an unorthodox approach, I think, but I kind of would like, for my own sake to have you just walk through so we kind of know where we're at. Kind of set the scene. What are all the different houses that you've lived in? Where did your parents take you home? And then kind of, where did you move from there? [00:01:46] Speaker A: So I was taken home to a trailer. It was a single, wide, ugly, pink, single, wide trailer in Trinity, Alabama, on some land that my dad received from his mother. They came down in the 1800s and had land apportioned to them. If they would farm it, the government would give you land. So they came down and farmed that land. And then she had a portion of it that she had inherited, and a couple of acres of it she gave to dad to put the trailer on. And so Dancy Chapel Road in Trinity, Alabama, was the first house. And I was there until I was 15. We moved to Moulton. His dad's business grew, and that was the second. And then we've got where mom and I got married, lived on a river, moved to Kentucky, lived with my grandmother, moved back into a molten house. We moved to Eagle Point, Travertine, and we've been three here. So that's 11 houses. [00:02:49] Speaker B: And so the ones between, I know the lake house or the river house, and then Kentucky was it. You lived with nanny, your grandmother first, after. [00:02:59] Speaker A: Yeah, we did. We were just in a kind of a limbo. We didn't know where we were going to go. We'd gotten married. Carly had. Had. Really. Had she been born at that point? She wasn't born to the second house, but Carly. We were expecting a baby. A lot of things were up in the air. I went through. I had a really good job with a church as a staff evangelist, so it paid my house payment, it paid my insurance, and then I traveled and did evangelism. That paid everything else, but it was a good job. And I went through. The pastor of the church invited me to have a conversation about coming on full time. And we sat down and we talked about it, and it just wasn't. I wasn't feeling called to do that. And so he said, well, if I can't get you full time, I don't need you. And he fired me that day. First time I've ever been. Only time I've ever been fired. And we really had to figure out what was next. And so we put our house on the market. It sold quickly and couldn't decide for a few months if we wanted to stay there and do evangelism or if we wanted to go and do training for the pastorate. And so during that time, I lived with my grandmother Julie and I lived with Nanny. And then we decided to stick around Alabama for a few months. We tried that, and then eventually kind of settled on pursuing the pastorate, went up to Kentucky and began seminary training at that time. [00:04:39] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, let's rewind a little bit now that we've got that. Back to the. Back to that first single wide that was in Trinity. And so you came home to Trinity, Alabama. Tell me about life as a young kid, kind of before you were even six years old. [00:04:59] Speaker A: What was the home like? Went through a lot of health problems early on. [00:05:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:05:04] Speaker A: I lost my kidney. It never developed. And so we, at that point in time, that was a real serious thing. And so was in Children's Hospital. And I think dad had an encounter with the Lord at that time that I didn't find out about until many years later. But dad had a moment then where he was praying for me, was worried. And he said the Lord spoke to him and said, he's not going to die. He's going to live, and he's going to be a preacher. Wow. Never told me that until I surrendered to the ministry, because he didn't want to. To mess with that. [00:05:40] Speaker B: And he wasn't even a believer at that point. [00:05:42] Speaker A: Well, he would say that he was. He would say that he was a believer, but his life really hadn't reflected it. And, you know, with so Many people in the south, you have so much church around you that it's real difficult to nail down when a true conversion took place. But with dad, it was like his parents had 12 kids. His mother couldn't drive, so he was not raised in a church environment. They would attend occasionally, but as an adult, dad wasn't going to church. He had not been baptized, never. Probably at some point prayed a sinner's prayer. But right around a little after that time, I was probably 4 or 5 years old, dad had a real serious, what seemed to be a conversion experience, and his life radically changed. And so at that point, was he saved or not saved? God only knows. You know, I'll be interested to find that out one day. But, you know, he really sensed that God spoke to him, and I don't doubt a bit that he did. Yeah, you know, he had a few of those occasions in his life, and he didn't joke about that. [00:06:57] Speaker B: Yeah, paint a little bit of a picture before he was converted or had the experience where it kind of the shift really changed in his life. What was life in your home like before that? Because you've told me some stories of some pretty gnarly experiences that you had. [00:07:12] Speaker A: You know, I don't remember a lot, but I do know in college they ask us to go back in a psychology class and write a paper on, like, our earliest memories. And the. The earliest memory that I could come up with was a situation where dad was playing gambling, playing cards, poker or something with some of his friends. And they were drinking and dad won a hand, the best I could tell. And John McBride, who was dad's best friend, just drinking a lot that night. And he broke a bottle over my dad's head, and dad covered in blood. I remember that dad and John got in a fight, and then he took me down, put me in a cargo van that he went to work in, and we drove home. But really what stood out to me about it is I don't remember being shaken up by that which led me to believe that was normal. Well, I don't know that it was normal, but it wasn't just crazy abnormal. I remember the scene, you know, it was before you had to wear seat belts. The cargo van didn't have a back seat. So I'm sitting in the floor, we're driving back home, Dad's covered in blood, Mom's crying, and we're going back home. That was probably my earliest memory. And so a few other fuzzy type things like that that I can remember happening, but not enough detail. To really speak about them or know what was going on, you know. But, you know, dad was a. Dad was a hard working man. He was a. He was a wonderful father, but he was working a lot. And so every morning, you know, 4:35am he's out to work. And, you know, I remember him coming home exhausted and those, you know, mother started her business when maybe I was three. I remember going to that, that shop and, you know, just playing outside and all that. But I remember when my dad got laid off from work and he started hanging around the shop. But those were probably some of the earliest memories before we got into church [00:09:22] Speaker B: and dad really started following Christ around those early years. Our family has a big history in the music industry. And so one of them, Gordon, was a big time fiddle player and hung out with a lot of the greats of that era. Tell some of the stories. I know there's just a few that stand out to me, but some of the stories of you kind of seeing Johnny Cash walk into the room. [00:09:41] Speaker A: No, I never saw Johnny. I saw June. [00:09:44] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:45] Speaker A: We went out to the Cash spread, you know, and saw their house. I remember a lot of the Cadillacs and all that. But that, the time I remember going, June was so sweet. She was like your grandmother, you know. But we would have times like that when Merle Haggard would come into town. His, one of his sons would spend the night with us and he, and I don't remember him well, but I do know he just wanted to be around kids, you know. And so the Haggard boy would come over and spend the night with us and then they'd take him back to the, to the bus and they'd hit the road, you know. But, yeah, I remember things like that. I remember seeing John Anderson on his tour bus and we had some access to those things. We would go up to Nashville and I don't remember it well, but I remembered we could get in backstage at the Opry and that sort of thing going. Gordon would take me around when I was older and several of the greats of country music would, if they were playing in town, he would take me and introduce me to them. And, you know, it was interesting the way those guys carried themselves. Bill Monroe, a lot of those greats were so much what you would consider like a statesman. You always think country music, these guys are just sort of, you know, real nonchalant. They're not prim and proper. That wasn't my experience. Those guys stood up straight. They were dressed well, they were. And they spoke as statesmen. And I would put Cash in that category. Anybody who ever heard Johnny Cash in a private setting remembers it vividly, you know, and they all describe him that way. I think they're just so used to being on camera, they have to consider, you know, that everything they say might be captured. And so it was just an interesting, you know, as a little boy, it was like meeting a president or something. [00:11:47] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, that's cool. Fast forwarding to kind of 10 to 18. Just your. Your youth. I know early on I've heard some of the stories, like the bird bath and, you know, different things. You were kind of a. Not a troublemaker, but you got into some fun as a kid if you want to tell some of those stories. But if not, then going into high school, were you always like, what kind of a kid were you in high school? [00:12:13] Speaker A: So when dad came to Christ and we started going to church, we went to church. I mean, we were. I was raised in that environment. Not only that, I remember mother singing hymns at Christmas in particular, and I remember at home, I remember anything that they could provide me with in terms of, like, there was a cartoon called storybook that was like Bible stories or superbook, and I would watch that every single day, you know, and so a lot of those early memories were just stories of scripture. [00:12:48] Speaker B: So that. [00:12:48] Speaker A: That has an impact on a kid, whether he knows Jesus or not. Sure. The truth never returns. Void. And they trained me in a way I ought to go so, you know, they gave me a Christian upbringing, and I'm incredibly grateful for that. I didn't know any difference at the time, but, you know, just as any other kid, we lived out in the country. It was on. Not really a farm, but we had a garden, we had horses. We had every kind of animal you could imagine, you know, so it was just a great way to grow up. A lot of freedom. You know, we knew all of our neighbors. And so I would get up in the morning in the summer and go hunting or fishing, whatever it might be. And a lot of freedom with that and not a lot of serious trouble. You know, I feared my dad when I didn't fear the Lord. But I really knew dad didn't suffer fools. He would not tolerate it. And so I would only go so far because I knew I wouldn't get away with it. And dad was disciplined me. Well, he was fair, but he was. He was. He was a big man. And, you know, and he. And I didn't. I didn't want to cross him. [00:14:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Were you. Did your friends and the kind of Kids in school, did they see you as a cool kid or what were you, the nerd or who were you? [00:14:08] Speaker A: I didn't, you know, I guess I probably at that point in time would have been considered kind of a country boy, you know, I didn't play a lot of sports. I played basketball, but because of the kidney issue, I couldn't play football. And that was the big sport. So I wasn't in that. I was friends with those guys, but I wasn't in. They experienced things I didn't experience. [00:14:32] Speaker B: Sure. [00:14:33] Speaker A: And so I got into the band. I picked up a trumpet in fourth grade or fifth and started playing, and I did really well with that, but I wasn't really a band kid. I could play the instrument, but I wasn't the personality and I didn't enjoy the things they enjoyed. I wanted to be fishing, you know, if I had free time. I wanted to get out in the woods. I wanted to get out on the water and just see if I could catch a little bigger fish than I did time before. But I had so many things I was interested in. There was this time when I wanted to be an astronaut. And so I would do really good grades if I was into the subject matter, and if I math, I couldn't pay attention and I would just drift off, you know, probably today they would call it ADD or something, you know, but so, you know, would either make straight A's in a class or C's and D's. [00:15:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Don't go too much into detail with them. I don't want to spend too much time on it. But who were kind of the kids that you ran with? Who was your circle in your childhood? [00:15:40] Speaker A: Well, you know, early on I spent a lot of time with my great great grandmother, which is very rare for anybody to know that many generations back. She was in her 90s. Blanche Coffee was her name. So I grew up around her. And then my great grandmother on my mom's side helped raise me. And so mom and dad were working, so I really. I lived in Trinity and had my cousins, Tatum, Zeke and Boone. If I was in Trinity, we got up every morning and went and did something. If I was in Moulton, J.J. hill lived across from my grandmother, and he was probably my best friend up there, but. But really probably the only kid around that Scott Rouse was a little older. I remember those things now. Scott introduced me to some heavy academic stuff. [00:16:32] Speaker B: Really? [00:16:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Scott at what age? Scott's. I think Scott's an attorney now. But this was when I was like 12, 13 years old. And Scott would. He would nerd out on Latin, and he would introduce me, and, you know, as a kid, could. Scott was probably 16 when I was 12 or 13. And Scott would teach me a little bit of Greek, a little bit of Latin, and just enough to, you know, recognize the letters or whatever. But it introduced me to someone who was far more educated than I was. And, you know, nobody in our family had been to college at that point. Dad. Dad dropped out of school in 10th or 11th grade, you know, and that just wasn't something that was normative for us. But I remember Scott introduced me to some great literature. Scott was fluent with Spanish. He would read the classics. And I remember him talking about that and noticing then. That's interesting. And today I had to catch up a lot. But that's my world today. Many times. And. But Scott, at the time, was probably the first exposure I had to something that, to me, was bigger than molten Alabama. [00:17:53] Speaker B: And then I know you have Brock, [00:17:54] Speaker A: and you had Brock and Vin. [00:17:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:56] Speaker A: So in high school, yeah, they. We were the three amigos. We did everything together as Brock Hill and Brock Nixon. [00:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Ben Sanderson. Okay, very cool. So I've heard the stories of you making girls cry from the stage and being a little bit of a heartbreaker as a country singer in high school. What was your first date? Mom's in the room. [00:18:18] Speaker A: She might be very happy to hear. [00:18:20] Speaker B: But what was your first date you ever went on? [00:18:21] Speaker A: The first date was a dance with Elizabeth Marsh. [00:18:24] Speaker B: Okay. [00:18:25] Speaker A: And so Elizabeth. It was one of those things. I think we were in junior high or something, and she was shy. I was shy. I just remember it was a very awkward experience for both of us. [00:18:40] Speaker B: But was it, like, fun awkward or just uncomfortable the whole time? [00:18:44] Speaker A: We were ready. We did not want to be there. You know, I think we were both happy we had a date, but neither one of us were real comfortable with the opposite gender, you know, but. So, yeah, it was just a typical. A Wonder Years experience. If you ever saw that show, people watching, some of them would know Wonder Years. I was Kevin Arnold, you know, and she was not my Winnie Cooper. She was not my. You know, I wasn't madly in love with her, but she. Neither was she for me. But we were friends. We had been raised in preschool together, and I'm thankful that she was there at that time. Maybe we could make each other fit in just a little bit more, you know, during that season, and I'm grateful for that. [00:19:27] Speaker B: So I know mom might have been a little bit more of a. Got around A little bit more in the dating scene in her years. I take it that you were not so much of a player yourself. [00:19:35] Speaker A: No, no. I did a lot of first dates, and really, you know, it would be people that were just dear friends, and an event would come along, and they. They needed a date, I needed a date. So we would. We would go out together. I was a romantic in the sense that I would get a lot of crushes back then, but never really pursued them. You know, I could. I could just flip out over a girl and she'd never know it, you [00:20:04] Speaker B: know, but been there, you know, that. [00:20:07] Speaker A: That was just. That was just. I didn't understand why, you know, I would just lock up with fear, but. [00:20:14] Speaker B: But. [00:20:14] Speaker A: And I'd play it off, you know, and then. [00:20:18] Speaker B: So you. You decided to go to college for music. When did you decide that you knew you wanted to go pursue that as a career, as an education? When Was that? [00:20:28] Speaker A: At 14, Marshall Louie taught me guitar. And dad was a drummer, so learning. Learning guitar was a big deal. I remember I was in the guitar class with maybe five or six other guys. Now, the other guys were academics. They were the kids of teachers, and the superintendent's kid was in there. And I remember they beat. They excelled over me in practically every area. But when we picked up the guitar, I was first of the class. They couldn't believe how quickly it came to me, which was just part of our family. But I picked it up quickly. I worked really hard at it. But I remember the first song when I sat down and figured out one by ear for the first time, then learning to strum and sing at the same time. And so I would go do these events. Dad bought in big time, and he helped me put a band together, buy the sound equipment. We enclosed our garage and made it a little rehearsal space. But I would go do county fairs, weddings. I would sing at weddings, did a few clubs. But under 18, you couldn't do a lot of that, Do a lot of bluegrass festivals. But, you know, probably when it really hit me that. That. That was almost like a superpower. When I was maybe in 10th grade, a few of us, as a benefit to raise money for the football team or something, we put a little concert on at school. And, you know, hearing people screaming in the audience was like, that wasn't me. I mean, I was not a rock star, you know, at all. But. But seeing that they kind of wanted to look at me like that. When I picked the guitar up, had the leather jacket, all those things, it was like. It was kind of like, you know, putting on your cape as Superman, you know, so there was just a. I'd never had that effect on anybody. So in and of myself, I know that that was not the way they perceived me, but when I picked up that guitar, it was different. [00:22:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:38] Speaker A: And so, yeah, you know, any. Any young guy, kind of. It's going to leverage that for his benefit. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:43] Speaker A: You know. [00:22:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I should know. So you decided to go off to college. You went off to. You wanted to go to Belmont, and you ended up not getting in because they, like you say, they kind of take those sats pretty seriously, it turns out. Right. But you went to UNA University of North Alabama, and pretty quick you had a change in course. So how long was it that you were first sitting in that car and listen to radio? [00:23:06] Speaker A: To my. To my recollection, it was the first day of school. [00:23:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:09] Speaker A: And, you know, they were having parking issues on campus. They were growing. It's still a growing school, but. So I parked about an hour before class started and listening to the radio, heard the preacher and, you know, for the first time I think, well, no, I take that back. When I was still living at home, I remember a fascination with Bible teaching. The church that we were a part of had a very accomplished pastor, but he would teach what I would call devotionally, and it wasn't text driven. And so I remember hearing a pastor one day on television and he was just opening up the Bible and taking it seriously. And I don't know why that captivated me, but it was fascinating to me. I think some of it was. It was ancient languages. I think that was something that had a weird fascination to me that I didn't understand. But he could open up this book that was in everybody's house that nobody really seemed to understand and show us things in it that we weren't taking seriously, you know, what God could do through prayer, how faith worked. And I remember watching it in my bedroom and locking the door because I didn't want anybody to catch me doing that, because here I was up on stage in leather jackets and guitars and. And I would sit in my room and turn the volume down, almost like I was watching porn. But I would watch that preacher, and it just made sense to me and it fascinated me. And so I remember that happening a few times. And then when I went to college, flipping through the radio, hearing what came to be a preacher, and I thought it was the news. And as I figured out it was a preacher, I had that same experience. Turn it down. You don't Want somebody to catch you doing that? And it just made sense. The word of God made sense. And I think as I went through drop ad and made it so I could listen to these preachers every day, as I would hear it, I was caught by the fact if we believe what they're saying, life would be really different. And then it occurred to me, maybe I haven't believed what they're saying. And then I remember kind of examining myself and going, I don't pray. I said prayers, but I didn't, like sincerely, on a regular basis, talk to my creator. And I thought, who in their right mind, if he's real and he made us in his image, who in their right mind could actually believe that there is a divine being that they could talk to and not have as much of that conversation as they can? And so it really, I think, unbelief the reality. If you walked up to me and said, are you a Christian? I said, sure. Do you believe in God? Everybody does in the South. You know, it's kind of my thinking, but it wasn't that kind of faith. It wasn't genuine faith that reoriented my life. And I think during those first few days of college, the reality of my disbelief was brought to the surface. And, you know, I remember in particular. So that would have been August of 94. By Easter of the following year, Josh McDowell was doing a series on evidence that demands a verdict and hearing that and going, really, it was the death of the apostles. All of those old stories are becoming more meaningful to me that I heard as a kid. The scriptures are beginning to kind of make sense and fit together. I'm seeing the storyline, and I remember when he got to kind of proving the resurrection, and he talked about the death of the apostles, and he made a statement, something like, whatever happened on that first resurrection day, those men, all of the disciples but John, John died of natural death. All of the others that remained, Judas went to his own place. But the other ten took the gospel into all the world. They went in different directions, preaching the gospel, planting churches, and they all died a martyr's death because of their claim that Jesus Christ was alive, that they saw him, they talked to him, they witnessed the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it occurred to me that if a person actually believes that, that changes everything. There's no way. There's no way you can get up in the morning believing that Jesus Christ is alive, that there's a God in heaven, that he's given us a Bible, and just live like everybody else. It was unfathomable to me to imagine that. And so I remember some sort of prayer as sitting on my bed in college with my King James Bible and saying, God, I don't know. I know something's happening here. I'm not sure what it is. Part of me feared that maybe I was going to have an entirely different faith than Christianity. What I mean by that is I thought maybe what true faith was was something different than I'd ever heard before. [00:29:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:22] Speaker A: And so I said, I don't know what this makes me. Maybe I'm in the wrong denomination. Maybe I'm. But whatever those guys were, those that died for their faith, I desire to believe the gospel as much as they did, and that the realness of God and the gospel just arrested my attention, and it radically changed me from that day forward. And, you know, went to college like I always had, but I would hear him talk about a devotional and you should have time with the Lord every day. So I went to the Christian bookstore and I looked for Charles Stanley's devotional. And as I'm there, a young lady from one of my classes saw me and she said, are you a Christian? And I said, I didn't know how to answer that question, because if you had asked me a year ago, I would have said yes. I don't know what this new thing is, but it's not what everybody at church has. It's the way it felt to me. [00:30:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I think a lot of guys my age feel that way right now, especially in the south and in Florida, where they're going around and there's something in them that's gone from a cultural Christianity to truly regenerate faith. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:42] Speaker B: And they're looking around and they're like, I don't know what I've got inside me, but it's not like what I'm seeing all around me. There's. There's a show going on around me that I'm not a part of anymore. [00:30:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I would. I would hear. I heard recently somebody, you know, Jordan Peterson, has been going through this. This pursuit of, you know, what is real and what he believes and all that. He's been in that for some time. And I heard him say one day, somebody said, well, Jordan, why do you not go to church? And he said, because I don't think they believe it. If they believed half of what they said, they would convey it with a different urgency and ethos and gravitas than they do. And I remember I couldn't have put it in those words, but that's what I felt. I felt like when I went to church and they went through these same hoops, they would sing these songs. And I wanted to just say, do you hear what you're saying? Do you believe it? Because if this is true, it should be sang differently than you're singing it. If what you're preaching is true. Are you just saying what you've been taught to say, or do you believe this? Because if you believe it, that changes everything. [00:32:02] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a big difference between singing I Surrender all and actually letting it go. [00:32:07] Speaker A: You remember the story with Townes Van Zant? You know, he's sitting in grade school and the science teacher's explaining that one day the sun's going to burn out and everything will die around it and all that. And Townes is sitting there. The whole class heard the same lecture, but Townes heard it and he went. He closes his book. He gets up and starts walking out. And she's like, where are you going? He's like, the sun's gonna burn out. You just told us that that changes everything. [00:32:37] Speaker B: Yeah, what's the point? [00:32:38] Speaker A: And so I think I had that same experience with Christianity, that Jesus is alive. That changes everything. And it appeared Vance Havner used to say, the church in America has been so subnormal for so long that if it only became normal, it would look abnormal. And that's what was happening to me. I had so taken my faith seriously that to people around me, I remember they were worried about me, like, maybe he's going to be overzealous or he's going to be weird about it or whatever. And I probably was compared to normal. I was praying, I was fasting, I was reading the Bible every day. Took a. Everywhere I went, memorizing scripture. That was a very abnormal thing. And it looked probably somewhat cultish to the people that knew me, but it's not even first base of normal Christianity. So the young lady in the bookstore invited me to the Baptist campus ministry. I went there, a young lady there invited me to church. Monica Garard, Monica Farris now invited me to church. Thankfully, it was a Bible preaching church. And I just absolutely was all in, you know, and still singing, still doing my shows and all that. And that was growing the opportunities, records [00:34:13] Speaker B: and recording demos, doing demos, like, you [00:34:16] Speaker A: know, that Muscle Shoals sound, you know, top. The same guys that were in the rhythm section were on my demos. So it was. It was some serious success for that. That age. Yeah. And you've got a city opportunity coming up. And that was. That Was the big. The biggest event I'd ever done. Do you want me to tell about that? [00:34:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So the largest concert I ever did. I was the headliner. We had a band called the Nashville Fat Cats was my backing band. They phenomenal. I'm talking. You know, if you're not ready. When they. When that train left the station, you know, it didn't slow down. This was a. A serious professional band. And the. Every. Every note sounded like the record, you know, so had. That was my. My backing band. I was the lead singer. We had the same sound and light systems that. That Hank Jr. Used. So everything was perfect. Thousands of people are there, and I remember getting on stage and, you know, it was so perfect. And I wasn't perfect. I could not. I couldn't. I couldn't keep up with that level of professionalism as a. As a band. I could. I couldn't blame it on the lights or the monitors. Everything was perfect. But it showed me, for one, how below excellent I was at that career at being a country artist. And that night. And I was wrestling with the call, so I told dad that night, don't take anything else. I'll finish out what we have, but don't book anything else. [00:36:09] Speaker B: And at that point, your dad was really doing a lot of the same stuff that you've done for me where he made some real investments. He helped you to get the fat cats to come support you. [00:36:20] Speaker A: I'm sure he was a manager to me. [00:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah, so he was a manager. He was, you know, I've still got the jacket. He had his name, you know, stitched into it. He was one of. Yeah, and he was. Was a real. Not just a good dad, but a good investor in you and really believed in that. And so what was it like when you came to him? I've heard some people who. Who've had crazy career shifts from, you know, one thing to something totally different that kind of made everything. All the investment before, totally null. How did he take it when you told him you wanted to go another way? [00:36:54] Speaker A: I was. I was worried about that. I thought, this is going to devastate him. And. But at the same time, remember, I was ready to die for it, you know, and I was almost looking for the opportunity. [00:37:08] Speaker B: And real quick, how long did it take you to get to that point from when you first heard that, that first radio sermon? You said it took you from August to April to really kind of get it and to fully be all in. Was it that moment in around Easter when you really kind of got to you arrived at that point or was it still progressing? [00:37:28] Speaker A: No, no, I was. I was. I would say by that point, there was fruit in my life. I was a true believer. [00:37:35] Speaker B: So were you saved that first. First day or. Okay, I don't know. [00:37:40] Speaker A: I may have been saved. You know, I look at it and I think it's almost like if you take a tree, you take a fruitful, Take a healthy apple tree, and if you starve it of water, nutrition, vitamins, sunlight, it's not going to produce fruit. It's not a bad tree, but it has to have certain things to produce fruit. So I think. I really don't want to be critical about other pastors at all. But for whatever reason, what the pastor was doing did not connect with me. And it may have just been not my time, but I was starved for truth and reality and genuine faith. And when I was surrounded with it in college, suddenly I became fruitful. And so if it wasn't conversion, it felt like it. [00:38:39] Speaker B: And I've got so many friends today, especially down in central Florida, that were in Gainesville or came from there or some are still there that. I mean, just in my experience, it's hard to find that kind of fruitful preaching that at least connected with me and connected with my friends. And so. And there's some that have gone and have found really good churches, and they're growing and on fire now. And then there's others that are. They're still. They're clearly converted, they're clearly believers, but like you said, they just haven't found that healthy soil to really begin to thrive yet. And that's such an important thing in pastors today. [00:39:13] Speaker A: I look back, you know, we had a large church. Church was at that time was probably 1200. There were, you know, 80 or 90 in the college department, which is huge for Florence. Yeah, so it was a college town, but it was reaching a lot of college kids. But I remember the kids who grew up in that church didn't seem to take it as seriously as I did. And so it wasn't just that, hey, if you put somebody in a really good church, really good preaching, they're going to be on fire for the Lord. No, there were quite a few who weren't. It was just the opportunity of the preaching, met what God was doing in my life, and the two just converge at the right time. So generally, if you take someone who's serious about their faith, that's a true believer, and you put them under great preaching, they're going to flourish. But occasionally, I would Say people have to get out of their norm and have a reset. So it's not unusual for a young person to go to college, try a new church, and suddenly take off, you know, and so that happened to me. I don't try not to judge people who are in great churches, but if they're truly preaching the word and if you genuinely believe those two things should produce fruit. But, yeah, I could get to heaven and God might say, no, you believed in Jesus early, but you had no water. [00:40:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it was just dormant for a long time. [00:40:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it could be, but I tend to think, no, I. I came to Christ in that months before, from starting college to Easter. [00:40:56] Speaker B: So go back to your dad when you first told him that you wanted to totally abandon the music and go all in on ministry. How did that go? [00:41:03] Speaker A: Well, I wrestled for probably months, and that's not uncommon. If God's calling you, you'll go through this season of, is he calling me? Why would he call me? And that just seemed so bizarre to me that he wanted me to do anything for him outside of being a serious Christian, you know, And I had. You know, I had my own issues. The flesh doesn't give up, the devil doesn't give up. So I would think, well, he can't use me. I'm not perfect. I struggled with lust. I had just the normal struggles of a young man, you know, and. And I thought, how could he ever use me? There's things in my life that are not perfect yet. And of course, you learn later. I've been doing this for over 30 years now. They're still not perfect, you know, but. But at the time, you know, I think early in your. In your walk with the Lord, everything feels like a big sin, you know, so anything I would wrestle with, it felt like a huge, huge issue. So I thought, he's not calling me. Surely not. And it would kind of get better, and then it would recur. So that was. You know, I sought counsel from one of the pastors of the church, and he told me, zach, he said, it will get to the point if he's calling you, it will get to the point where you will know that if you don't do this, you might go on to glory, like you might go on to. You might die, because it'll be that real and that serious. There will be no running from it. You'll either surrender or the Lord will take you home. [00:42:49] Speaker B: God's gonna get his man. [00:42:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And I believe that. So one Sunday morning, he made it that clear. And I was singing in the choir, took my choir robe off, walked down to the pastor and said, God's calling me to preach. And he prayed for me, went through all the stuff that they do. But I went home that day and I said, I guess I need to tell my parents. And I thought they're going to be disappointed and upset. Call home, dad answers. Dad, today at church, I walked forward and told him, God's calling me to preach. And he said, okay, tell your mom. And handed the phone to mom. And she was gracious and she had seen. She had kind of had a suspicion something was going on. She had seen that whatever it was for me was different than anybody she knew. So dad got back on the phone and he said, I found out later he had started crying. So when he got back on the phone, he said, I've been waiting 19 years for this phone call. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, when you were a baby, had the kidney removed. He said, God told me very plainly that he wouldn't die. He'd be a preacher. He's going to preach for me, I think, is the way that he said it. So, you know, already at that point, I was ready to die. I was ready to die for my faith. I kind of would envy the Charlie Kirks, you know, but by that time, there was no stopping me because I had that internal call and I had this dad that's saying, affirming, yeah, this is real. And I've expected this. So it felt like something out of the Old Testament to me. So there was no stopping. When I started preaching, I was all in. That's awesome. [00:44:48] Speaker B: Before I want to get to. To meeting mom and kind of how that went here in a minute. But before we do, what were some of your favorite moments with your dad when you were kind of in college or a little bit before, as you were kind of coming into manhood. What were some of your. Your most impactful moments with him or conversations? [00:45:05] Speaker A: They, strangely, they were. They were riding on back roads, eating ham sandwiches, listening to music. You know, it wasn't really anything that you could plan or set up. I love working in the yard with dad. You know, dad always had a real well landscaped yard. And I remember listening to Percy Sledge and singing Bark and, you know, doing the landscaping. Building things with dad was a lot of fun. But when I got into music and he was into music, he was my first drummer, you know, so that was the one thing that we could kind of, you know, in every other way, dad was my superior. But with that, it Was like we were more like peers. And so that was kind of a cool gift. You know, I'm really thankful for that time. And so. But at the same time, at that point, I was not following Jesus. [00:46:05] Speaker B: And. [00:46:05] Speaker A: And I was a mean kid. I was mean to him. I remember being impatient, losing my temper. And you know, in retrospect, I think, why did he tolerate that? I don't know. I still don't know. But I think it was the one thing we had. He didn't want to lose it. But yeah, we would get into. We really didn't get into fights. But I really regret the way I dishonored him sometimes. And I've remembered it for years. [00:46:41] Speaker B: And that started to change at one point. You've told me some of the stories of as you kind of came to Christ and really began to mature in your faith. I know you told me the verse of, children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right, and honor your father and mother. And it doesn't say on your father and mother when they're right, just says to honor them. So your worldview started the shift. [00:47:04] Speaker A: I haven't talked about this very much, and I don't know that if I've explained it to you, but because there were some things with the movement I'm about to talk about that were errant that I don't want to put the light on or whatever, but a huge impact on my life was going to a Bill Gothard seminar. And it was so strange, it was so cutting edge for its day, but they would literally sell out arenas and you would not. And Bill Gothard wouldn't be there. It would be a video projected on the screen of him leading you through this day of teaching. And it was three or four days, but it would just be real, principled, practical application of what scripture said. And so he would say things like God ordained authority. And there's a structure of authority in the home where the dad is the head and under him is the wife. And then you have the kids. The wife is told to subject herself to the leadership of her husband in the Lord. So if he's leading in a godly way, then she's to trust God to lead her through him. And so you have God, husband, wife, and the two of them are the authority over the kids. And so kids are told to obey the parents. So again, if that's true, then God is responsible to lead through the father, the mother, to the kids. So there were some things that God, if he were going to speak to me about something or reveal his will for my life. Sometimes it would come through directly from scripture, the Holy Spirit, but many things. Where do I go to college, what kind of car do I buy, where do I live at all that stuff. God would speak through my mom and dad and I had to learn not to trust them, but to trust God to be big enough to lead through them. And so it occurred to me that when I'd been hateful to dad and short tempered with dad, it was not just dishonoring to my dad, it was a lack of faith. And so I go back to dad and I apologize to him. I said, I'm so sorry and I meant it with all my heart for the way I talked to him. And I said, I'm going to purpose. I won't be perfect at it, but I'm going to purpose to really obey you as my dad. Even though I was 19 years old. [00:49:52] Speaker B: So this is early on in your. [00:49:54] Speaker A: Yeah, early in my walk and may have been 20, 19 or 20. But I told him, I said, I'm going to trust the best I can. I'm going to trust God to lead me through you. And dad was not a controlling man. But there would be a few things that he would say, now this needs to change. You need to take more responsibility here. You need to do this. And he was right. So I would begin to trust God to lead through dad. And here's what I saw when I did that. And dad saw, I'm going to listen to him and I'm going to obey as long as it's in the Word. You know, not violating scripture never was sure, but I'm going to obey my father. It made him take his faith more seriously because he didn't want to mess me up or mislead. So he prayed more, he was in the Word more. And during that season, dad went from being a nominal church member to being a deacon in this church because of my submission to his authority. So the Gothard Seminars, basic life principles, had a huge impact on me. Great preaching at my church, having young people that took it as seriously as I did, all of those things began to shape my soul. [00:51:12] Speaker B: That seminar, I haven't heard you talk about it before and so I don't know, I'm assuming there must be something like you said, something errant about it that maybe we don't need to get into. But it's interesting. The structure of sounds a lot like, I mean the subject matter sounds like a lot of the stuff that really hits today among younger generations. And if this was you know, mid to late 90s then. I mean, the early Internet's coming about, but it's, you know, social media quite yet and you can't really minister in that method. But so that's like the earliest iteration of something like that, like a simulcast or like a touring message. [00:51:50] Speaker A: It really, you know, it's like a, like our central Nassau campus. That happens every Sunday there. Well, you know, one of the most life changing experiences I had was through a projected preacher. So I knew that worked. But at that time, it's hard for me to even explain how out of the norm that was. Who would drive to Birmingham? And I'm talking thousands of people sit in a room with a notebook and watch somebody who was on a projector up on the screen. Why can't the guy just show up live is what everybody was thinking. But I'm telling you, and it wasn't cool. They would sing a cappella and he was not a great singer, but he would lead the songs. And it was an unusual anointing on him, which doesn't make someone perfect. You know, God can anoint a very imperfect. You look at the Samsons of the Bible who were far from the Lord in their heart, but had an anointing on their life. And so Gothard, I don't know where he was at with Jesus. You know, there were accusations made later that he did some things that were unethical. But I can't argue with the fact that God's anointing was on his life and what he was teaching that I heard was true. And so those two things together are really powerful. [00:53:22] Speaker B: It's interesting to me that like you said, with a crooked stick, God, really, it seems like that's one of the early seeds of maybe kind of what the media ministry. Why that is so important to you today? Maybe because you've got that and the radio ministry. So many different things that impacted you at a young age. That's cool to see. [00:53:40] Speaker A: You know, when looking back, one thing that dad did that was really cool is like he was an early adopter with a lot of things when it came to tech. But, you know, we had a camcorder that was portable, you know, a video camera. Yeah. [00:53:56] Speaker B: And he was the guy at the family reunions that was capturing it. [00:53:59] Speaker A: He captured everything he could, but he would let me play with it. And these are, you know, looking back on it, those were very expensive toys. [00:54:09] Speaker B: But. [00:54:10] Speaker A: But I would learn them. I would figure them out pretty quick. I would learn how to do real rough edits. So I would shoot A movie. And, like, I had to put together a soundtrack. I had to put costumes. I had to come up with a storyline and play all the parts. And I had to, you know, rewind to the right point and stop it, pause it, hit record. All those things had to be done. I did it in my room with what I had, and I would make these little movies, you know, and it was pretty cool, you know. And then as I went through high school, when we would have a project, like in government, we had to do a project. Well, I put a movie together, and so those kind of things, learning how to edit, how to do text overlays. When the Internet came out, you know, I spent. I think it was like the first website was like $2,100 for a college student in 1994. 6. That was a lot of money. And so I knew I could only do it one time. So if I paid this guy to do it, I told him, I said, I can't afford to do this every six months. So what I'd like to do is to pay you to do it, and you show me how you do it. And he was nice enough to teach me some HTML and programming language to help me get the right software. And so I was able to do the updates myself. And everything we did, we just kind of had to do it the hard way and learn and be innovative. And so sometime in ministry, I think mostly here, because the church allowed me to do it, I looked at and I thought, what could I do if I took all of those experiences and leveraged it for the gospel? And that turned into, you know, video ministry, radio ministry, podcasting, all this stuff, you know. [00:56:09] Speaker B: Cool. Well, let's get into conversation about Mom. You first met her Sunday school class, right? [00:56:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:16] Speaker B: Just tell us kind of briefly how that went down. [00:56:18] Speaker A: So I had surrendered to ministry. I think I'd preached my first sermon. [00:56:21] Speaker B: Okay. [00:56:22] Speaker A: And I was. I was aware of the fact that I would not. Because what happens when you're. What you've experienced with music, there's an iteration of that that happens in ministry. You would go into these churches, and you're 20 years old, standing in front of all those people, you're well dressed, and you're commanding the room. And it was very normal to have three or four girls kind of following you around after that, your age. And I thought, oh, I never understood, why do preachers fall? I never understood because they're not cool. You know, I'm not cool. They're not cool. You'd have these guys who were losing Their hair and overweight would be on television because they had an affair. And I thought, why? Who's doing that? You know? And so it occurred to me as I was traveling and getting this new reputation as the young preacher, that there were people who were just drawn to that, you know? And so I knew I needed a wife if I was going to be faithful in ministry and make it that I needed a wife. So I began praying. My pastor was preaching through Proverbs, and he said. He said, you know, it says here, a godly wife is from the Lord. Maybe you should pray about that and ask him to bring you one. So I remember praying, I'm not going to ask for another date. I'm not going to ask for a girlfriend. I want a wife, and I want her to be godly, virtuous, all of those things. First, it would be really nice if she could be pretty. [00:58:01] Speaker B: And you had a clear idea in your head of kind of what you were hoping for. [00:58:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I wanted Jackie Onassis, I wanted Jackie Kennedy. That a saved version of Jackie O was sort of what I had in mind because I wanted her to. I wanted to be proud of her, you know. And so I remember praying for that. And, son, it was. For me, it was really quick. Like, that was a Wednesday night that he preached, that I went home, said, okay, every day of my life, I'm going to pray that till I meet her. And so I began praying. And that Sunday in Sunday school, the church was very strict, and they were strict about guy girl relationships. So as an outreach leader for the college class, they trained us. You go to young men and welcome them, get their information, ask them to sit with you, make it a good experience for them, but don't start being a player. You know, I think they told everybody that. They might have just told me that. I don't know. But that day, that Sunday, the volleyball team from Shoals Community College came to our class. So you've got all these tall, beautiful young ladies at church at one time. And the young lady who was over college outreach invited me to help her, said, I can't get all their names before class starts. Would you help me? So that's how I got your mother's name and number. And just she was majorly on my radar, and I wasn't so much on hers at that point. [00:59:41] Speaker B: Was she in your league at that point in time? [00:59:43] Speaker A: No, no, she's never been in my league. But again, at that time, what you lack in attractiveness physically for a Christian young lady, you know, attraction happens on different levels. And the acronym PIES is what you can remember it by. There's physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. Physical, I never thought of myself as maybe more than a six, you know, five or six. But intellectual, I was beginning to excel. Emotional, I could really befriend. Some of my closest friends were girls, so I could emotionally connect with them. And spiritually is where I was really excelling. So all of those things together, I think, made it possible for me to connect with her. But, no, she was beautiful. I mean, absolutely beautiful. And just. But when I saw her, I knew she was the one. You know, it was one of those things. It was like, okay, now the rest of my life will be committed to winning her, you know, And I did. Worked really hard at it. [01:01:10] Speaker B: But eventually you got her, and then you lost her, and then you got her, and then you lost her back and forth. [01:01:14] Speaker A: And then finally a lot of indecision there. But I wasn't. I was certain. [01:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:19] Speaker A: And so eventually. And one day, it was one of those moments that God spoke to me and said, whoever believes in me will never be ashamed. So believe it. I've told you, she's your wife. You believe it, and you'll never be ashamed. [01:01:34] Speaker B: And was that the day driving across the dam that happened, or was that [01:01:38] Speaker A: that particular time was on o' Neill Bridge, going from Florence into the Shoals? And I remember vividly, I didn't know that was a verse in the Bible, but that came to me just very clearly. It applied to her. And then again, I was reminded of it going over the bridge, going back home on Christmas break. I remember that happened again. What I didn't know is she had the same experience in Winston county or Franklin county that I was having in the Shoals. And that same night, we both had an encounter with the Lord where he revealed to us that we're to be married. [01:02:16] Speaker B: And what was the song that was playing when you were. We're driving that? You told me there was a song playing going across the bridge or the dam or something. Was it. [01:02:23] Speaker A: There was. There was a time when I was just about to give up. [01:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:27] Speaker A: And Superman and Green Lantern ain't got. [01:02:30] Speaker B: Oh, sunshine. Superman. [01:02:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:32] Speaker A: That. That song was playing. I remember. And, you know, it just kind of. I'm going to make her. Yeah. I'm going to. I'm going to stay after this until I convince her to marry me. And, yeah, it got to the point of just total despair. It was either going to be. And this is one of those things I wish that I Could open up people's heart and give them something here. I had moments of despair like everybody else does. That's as predictable as anything. But I also had these moments of, okay, you're either going to go into depression or you're going to let this motivate you to go to a new level, find a new gear. I learned how to do that early. So I have bad days, I have bad seasons where things don't go right. But I've always been able to look at it and say, oh, this is one of those. This is when you go and find new gear. And I did it for that, and it worked out. You know, those victories are the sweetest. You know, when you. When you really have to trust God and find a place in yourself that you didn't know was there. Those are the sweetest wins to me. [01:03:52] Speaker B: One of the hardest questions for people my age who are looking for a wife, God specifically, they're. They don't have life figured out yet. They may have a steady enough job, but they don't really know if, you know, if a kid comes along, it's going to be a stretch and going to have some stuff to figure out. Did you have life figured out pretty good by the time you proposed, or were you committed to just kind of figure it out as the punches came? [01:04:18] Speaker A: I don't know that I have it figured out today, but, you know, it was when it comes to finances, I was making good income, and again, it was a limited season when I was the young preacher boy. And you've experienced some of this in the church, they take ownership. You're the preacher's kid, you're almost like theirs. So they're very supportive. And that won't be that way in 10 years. So you need to see that coming. Yeah, you'll be a grown man. You're a grown man now. But like right now, where somebody goes and they put $100 in your tip jar, that'll be $10 eventually, so just. That's normal. So I had that in that season of life, and I would go preach, and the offerings were generous most of the time. And so it was enough. I think a big struggle at every generation is like, when you now you're out on your own. When you get married and you begin a family, you'll want to begin it where you left us. You'll think, well, I need a house like Dad's got. I don't need to be, you know, two cars, all that. That's hogwash. You need to go to what you can afford. And that's your entry point. And most people are not as far from that as they think they are. Sure. And so that's kind of where we were at. I knew that I could provide for her and give her a good life. It wouldn't be as good as I wanted to, but she knew what she was signing up for. She was marrying a preacher. We're not known for being wealthy, but we knew that the Lord was calling us to do ministry together. She traveled with me everywhere I went, and it was great. It was a fantastic start to our life. [01:06:19] Speaker B: And speaking of traveling everywhere that you went, I believe your honeymoon was in Destin, Florida, is that right? And so that was the first inkling that you guys got that you might end up on the beach one day. How did that go down? [01:06:31] Speaker A: So we got married on July 1st, and it was the 4th of July fireworks show. We were out on the dunes just watching the fireworks. And for me, there was just this moment of I'm supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be in Florida on the coast, and I'm cut out for that. And, you know, everybody kind of wants to be at the beach, right? I thought they did. And. But for me, there was just something there that I knew one day that's where I would be. And so, yeah, when we came here, just, it was like, oh, okay, I am supposed to be here. [01:07:07] Speaker B: Yeah, awesome. So how old were you when Carly came along? I knew you were this. This was still in Alabama. [01:07:15] Speaker A: You're still, I think, 25. [01:07:17] Speaker B: You're 25 at the time. Okay, so 25 years old, you have your first kid. Were you ready for it? [01:07:25] Speaker A: I know you're never ready for it, but, you know, I'd never held a baby, so it was really strange. I remember. [01:07:35] Speaker B: I don't think I have, actually. I might need to. [01:07:37] Speaker A: You know, a newborn baby is scary to hold, you know, for the first time. And you just so are. You know, man, I've broken so many things. I don't want to hold somebody's kid, you know? And so I remember when she was born and we went home, like, they put her in our car, strapped her in the car seat, and said, good luck. And I'm like, is it legal? This is a human. Is it legal just to let us take her home? And it felt so strange. But I told her this week. She had a birthday this week. It had never occurred to me that I may have a girl. I didn't have. I didn't have. Didn't play with girls growing Up. I just didn't have sisters, didn't know how to raise a girl. But I remember when we saw in the ultrasound, you're going to have a girl. A loyalty of, okay, she's mine. This is my little girl, and I'll do anything for her. You know, when she was born, just that sense of, you know, out of all of the people on this planet, God gave this person to our family, and I'm not going to make him regret that. What he gave to me was a serious gift, and I'm going to take care of it. And so I felt that way with all three of you, that whatever this human being with a soul that could have been born anywhere at any time, God let him be born here. And that brings something out of a parent. [01:09:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So you're at that point, you just had Carly. You're still traveling on the road, doing traveling evangelism, going all around Alabama and different. Different surrounding regions. Was it easy to live kind of on the road, so to speak, with a kid? [01:09:35] Speaker A: Well, it was getting harder and harder because as she was growing and when you came along, you know, the hotels were the same size, but they felt like they were getting smaller. [01:09:43] Speaker B: Sure. And were you getting enough sleep? [01:09:47] Speaker A: Well, early on, you know, the first few months of a baby, you don't sleep very much. We had. The managers would call and tell us we got to get that kid quiet, those kind of things, you know, but, you know, you feel it now. You know, you're at that age now that you rented a car to come home, and I'm like, I wouldn't do that. But you've got the energy to do it and to miss some sleep. You can go on just a few hours of sleep better than I can today. But, yeah, I loved the road. I loved the road, and I presumed I'd do that my whole life, you know? [01:10:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I. Was there anything major that happened between Carly coming along and me coming along? Because it wasn't very long. It was maybe a year and a half. Were there any major life events that I wouldn't be privy to, seeing as I wasn't quite alive yet? [01:10:45] Speaker A: There was a lot of adjustments because we decided to live in molten, and there was a lot of adjustments. [01:10:54] Speaker B: And that's when you went from the Shoals to Moulton. [01:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:10:57] Speaker B: Okay. [01:10:58] Speaker A: And there were a lot of adjustments of we knew how we wanted to do our life, but we didn't know how that fit with church. We didn't know how that fit with our parents. She's got two Sisters. So there was a lot of that, you know, when you were born and you had a spell with pyloric stenosis and you had that surgery. It was a very close for us. It felt like we could have lost you. And we're up there with just dozens and dozens of people praying in the hospital, hoping you would wake up. And you woke up the next day. I had to go preach. So I left mother with you in the hospital to travel to the Shoals to preach a youth camp. And we couldn't afford not to do that. So it's funny to me now people will have babies at church, and they're like, I need two months off. I'm like, wow, things have changed. Yeah. You know, I didn't get any time off. I was, you know, preaching that night, you know, but. But you. You just have to make ends meet, you know? [01:12:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I come along in 2003. Carly comes along, 2001, I believe I was about three when we moved to Kentucky for the first time. You had your. Your first church that you decided to pastor. Why did you decide to move into pastoring instead of evangelism? [01:12:34] Speaker A: I was very fortunate in evangelism to always be booked. And I loved traveling, I loved preaching, but I didn't love. I was beginning to develop some leadership abilities. And I would recognize it's not just being anointed or like, for example, Billy Graham. It seemed like he was so anointed that he could walk anywhere and people would get saved. But I began to recognize all of the effort that went into a crusade and how if you walk into a room of 100 people and those hundred people are saved and you preach the gospel, it doesn't matter how anointed you are, nobody's going to get saved. So I would notice with guys like Graham, they were anointed, they were godly. They were prayer warriors. But they had a machine that they would build that would start months before a crusade to make sure lost people were there and ready. So I began to do that on a smaller scale with our events. And I would go in, I would, you know, for. For me, it was more like weeks. I would work and get the crowd there. And it worked. We saw a lot of people, thousands of people come to know Christ. And it began to occur to me all that I did to set the stage for that harvest that was there, and it worked will be undone the week I leave. And if I'm going to have a lasting. And the local church was my passion. Jesus said, go into all the world make disciples. The apostles interpreted that as planting churches. He said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. So I was a local churchman from day one, and I really wanted to see great churches. And so my joy in the harvest was beginning to be affected by frustration that there's only so much I can do as a guest. And I heard John MacArthur say one day, he said, you know, if I weren't a pastor, I probably would be the pastor's nightmare, because I have so many ideas and things of how I think it should be. And I was becoming that person, and I was getting a little jaded. And I said, you know, I really probably need to go into the pastorate, began to pray through that, and then pursue it. And that. That's where I've. It was best for my family, my gift set. I could teach deeper things there and still reach lost people. So it was just a great fit for me. [01:15:32] Speaker B: And so your first church you took in Danville, Kentucky. [01:15:35] Speaker A: Lancaster. [01:15:36] Speaker B: Lancaster. Okay. And do we live in Danville or why am I getting Danville? [01:15:39] Speaker A: Caitlyn was born there. [01:15:40] Speaker B: Caitlyn was born there. Okay, okay. And how far is that from 15 minutes? Okay, okay. [01:15:45] Speaker A: I don't know. [01:15:45] Speaker B: I've been telling people I lived in Danville for a long time. I lied to them. [01:15:48] Speaker A: That was a big city. We lived in the country. [01:15:50] Speaker B: Okay, Lancaster. Gotcha. So Lancaster, Kentucky. And we were there for what, like, three years or something like that. And Caitlyn was born at the end of it, right before we moved. What was the. The experience in Lancaster like? I know it was. [01:16:06] Speaker A: It was. [01:16:07] Speaker B: It was a great, great experience. From what I've heard, what were some of, like, the highs and lows [01:16:13] Speaker A: I had developed as a preacher to the point that if somebody heard me preach and you said, well, how big is this church? Assuming he's a pastor, they would have presumed I was in a larger church. So most guys go into churches of, like, 50. My first church was a church of, like, 250 in a county seat town. And great people gave me so much grace. I learned so much. I made mistakes, but they gave so much grace to me as a young preacher. And the church grew. It doubled in size, more than doubled in size in those three years. [01:16:54] Speaker B: You got a new building, I think. [01:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah, we built a new building. I remember when we built that. I really wanted them to build a less expensive building, and they wanted the Cadillac. They wanted to build the most expensive version of what we were building. And I knew in my Heart. I may not be there to even see it open, but I tried to tell them that, and they wanted to go for the big one because you sort of presume the way things are is the way they'll always be. And so when they built it, it was not long after that that I began to. Papa got sick. My dad got sick. His kidneys began to fail. And I said, I'm the only child, and I have a responsibility there. And so I was. Caitlin was born, and I'm like, I've got to get closer to my parents, you know? [01:17:46] Speaker B: Yeah, let's go down to Athens, where we moved. After that, we were in harvest. Was the church. Give a little bit of a background on papaw's health concerns and kind of what he went through. What brought us back to Alabama? [01:18:00] Speaker A: Well, dad had severe arthritis when he was in his twenties. And the only thing that would help it was a medication that would also destroy his kidneys. So he knew that would make him able to work and be productive, but it would likely put him in the grave early. So that began to happen during that time. And so we came back, and dad had, for the first few years, a productive life. He was. Still had a lot of energy, but he was. You know, there were certain things that he had to begin to kind of reign in. And eventually we had to move them in with us because he was falling and had to go on dialysis and all that. [01:18:48] Speaker B: And that was. My first memories were in Kentucky, probably about three or four years old. And then immediately when we come to Alabama. My childhood was living with mom, dad, Carly, Caitlin, and then Nana and papa were in the house with us. And so he was with us for. I guess we probably moved back. It would have been 2008, early 2008. And he was with us until 2015, I think. Is that right? Was it seven years that we lived together? [01:19:18] Speaker A: Right. [01:19:18] Speaker B: Okay. [01:19:19] Speaker A: And maybe not quite that long. I was thinking it was shorter than that. Three or four years. Was it, Julie? [01:19:25] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah. No, we moved down, and then we didn't move in with them until later. Yeah. So we lived in east limestone and kind of in the country of Athens, Alabama. First couple years at Capshaw, we were there for nine years. Capshaw Baptist Church. Did it get off to a good start, or was it bumpy, or how [01:19:43] Speaker A: did that started out? Strong? I brought a. My worship leader from Kentucky with me, and it started out really strong. You know, he was. He was a 10 on worship. He was one of the best worship leaders I've ever Heard and just super gifted. So he was. The two of us made a really good team. The church quickly grew, so we came there. So the church in Kentucky was running like 4, 500, maybe up to 6. Capshaw was like 425. So I remember we went down in size when we came There may have been smaller than that, but anyway, it grew rapidly. But it was such a strange chemistry. The chemistry between a pastor and the people means a lot. And there you have. We calculated at one point some 70% of the men in that church were engineers. And thank God for engineers. They make the world go around, you know, thank God for engineers. But they are very different than an entrepreneur. And I was always entrepreneurial, building, you know, ministries and all that, and those engineers and I really didn't see eye to eye. And their job is finding problems. I would take that personal. It wasn't personal. I was convinced after a while, but I was like, man, we're winning. Things are going great. And they would always see the problems. So there was just difficulty with that 2012 we went through. We still think of it as the year from hell. I had Chip Dean, who was the best student pastor I've ever seen. He went to a megachurch during that time. We had. Poffenberger was our senior adult. He was like a father to the ministry. What was his name? John Poffenberger. Right. I thought that was right. So he passed away of an unexpected heart issue. And then that great worship leader that we had went through a moral failure during that time. That was. It was very tragic. It was unforeseen. And so, you know, suddenly I was faced with some curveballs that seminary doesn't prepare you for. And I had to lead through that time. Simultaneously, there was a little bit of a hostile takeover taking place in the church, and I really had to be a wartime pastor. And I'm comfortable with that. I was almost too comfortable with that. But I led him through that. We won the battles. And when everything. When the dust had settled, I just began to have a little bit of. I missed. Something's not right. It's too easy now, you know, And I got comfortable. And that's one thing here. I love what's happening at First Baptist. I just never want to get comfortable with it, because it seems like when you get comfortable, the Lord starts stirring. [01:23:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And so we're in that church. You've got a little bit of turmoil brewing in the church all throughout that time, and just difficulty. You've got Papaw getting his health conditions worsening. He moves in with us for the last three years or so of his life, from I think it was 2012, right. At the same time, all that's going down. He's moving in with us. And then he was with us for about three years. And then I'm growing up. I'm from probably eight until 14 or so, or roughly the ages maybe six. And then Carly's around the same age. Caitlyn's a young kid coming up. So you've got a lot on your plate that you're juggling. Finally, Papa comes to the end of his life. He passes away, Nana moves out, and we're stuck in this big old house. And tell me about what that those last kind of stretch of the Alabama season was like. [01:24:15] Speaker A: You know, it's hard. It humbles you to be in a home that you look at and go, I can make the pavement on this home. But if the. If the air conditioning unit, if the H vac unit goes out, it had two. I'm not sure I can repair it, you know. And so during that time, we were just stretched way too thin, and we just needed to reset, you know, and get to a place that now, with them not living with us, we could afford to make it work. So it was either you're going to do that in Alabama, but Julie and I had a moment during that where it was like, we've done what our duty to my dad. I've buried my father. Now where do we want to be? What do we want to do with the remainder of our life? And I remembered that moment when we got married. Yeah. And our intention was to go to the beach and to serve there. And so we looked, and there were two churches that were looking that were Baptist churches for a pastor. One in Sarasota and one here. [01:25:33] Speaker B: And tell me about the Sarasota I know you visited a couple of times. Tell me about what that visit was like and kind of why that didn't pan out. [01:25:41] Speaker A: It just didn't feel like home, you know, we got there and it was great people. Church had been through a lot, and I knew I didn't need that. Like, I didn't need to enter into a time where I had to keep them in recovery mode, you know. But we got there, and that culture is just so radically different than this South Georgia, North Florida culture. We were interviewing with both, and they were aware of each other, and they both extended an invitation to come be the senior pastor. And so it came down, you could have your pick of either one. This was a much more conservative environment. And culture locally. And so we just said, you know, generally you're going to make disciples in a place where you fit. There are missionaries who go countercultural, but they almost fit there better than they did at home. And so if you took me and put me in New York, I probably feel like I could figure it out. I'd do what I had to do if the Lord called me there. But natively, I'm going to be most effective in the south in a more conservative environment that I would choose to be in anyway. [01:27:10] Speaker B: And what's interesting is that, yes, I agree, but in another sense, you kind of are the countercultural missionary here. And at least in a stylistic sense, because in Alabama, if you think of. The average person thinks of what an Alabama preacher looks like, they're probably thinking the buttoned up, you know, suit and tie and real conservatively dressed preacher over there. You don't look. Didn't look anything like you look here today. Back there, you were the guy that would try to go against the grain because that was normative there and there. People would probably be shocked to see you wearing skinny jeans or ripped pants and, you know, a black T shirt and trying to look like the creature. [01:27:49] Speaker A: Some of that's just growing up. [01:27:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:51] Speaker A: You know, but at that point in time, yeah, you wanted to be a little bit of a shocking, edgy preacher [01:28:00] Speaker B: and so just grab the attention of [01:28:02] Speaker A: people who were looking. Yeah. And that was. I was kind of wrestling. Not wrestling with it, but influenced by Mark Driscoll and some of those guys. And it seemed that the Lord was using that approach. And so I tried to go into that. Never was good at it. Never was good at being cool. You know, when I came here, again, I'm growing up, I'm pastor of a First Baptist Church. And I really kind of said, you know, I think I'm just going to do what I want to do and. And be the man I want to be, not try to play a role. [01:28:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:40] Speaker A: And for me, that was just, I want to be a Southern gentleman. [01:28:43] Speaker B: You know, I think that's the time when you kind of found your. I mean, people have said it about you. You're kind of McConaughey esque swagger in town. [01:28:50] Speaker A: I don't feel that, but. [01:28:51] Speaker B: Well, I know you don't feel it and I don't think you're supposed to, but I've. I think people can kind of see you went from being a little bit of an Alabama. You were the pastor general who had to kind of just stand up and do what you had to do behind the scenes, and then publicly, you're trying to be the cool guy, and like you said, you're figuring it out. And then you kind of. You came here and you decided to lean into just what felt true to you and started. [01:29:16] Speaker A: Well, the cool thing about coming here, you know, I just lost my father, and, you know, I hope you don't go through that for a long time, but it really does do something to you. Well, coming here, I. I didn't see this. I didn't expect this. But there were just some great men, like truly, truly great men. And it felt like I had half a dozen or a dozen dads that were replacing my father, and my father would fit in here really well. So I got here. One of the first men that I met was Steve Simmons. And Steve's just one of those guys that if you've not met someone like Steve, people watching you can't meet Steve and him not make an impression on you. And so I remember learning, I thought, I'm going to watch him, and I want to be like him when I'm his age. And so I began to just watch how he handled conflict and how things didn't rattle him. [01:30:25] Speaker B: Was there some turbulence when you first got in that you could kind of [01:30:28] Speaker A: see that here, here, it was almost scary easy. You know, the church had been through a lot, and I think they just wanted some stability. [01:30:38] Speaker B: And so when you say conflict, it's just kind of naturally what you're going to have. Any time two people get together. [01:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah, no. Conflict for Steve would be much larger. You know, he would go through things with the civic government, you know, him wanting to build something, and they would. Seemed to undercut him. And he just went through some things like that. And he would let me be a pastor to him. He would come to me and share his heart. We'd pray together. But at the same time, I was watching him more than he was watching me, probably. And Mallory Smith. My first Sunday here, Mallory comes up to me and says, hey, somebody said, you like to fish? And I said, yes, sir. And he said, well, I'll take you from time to time. And I thought, okay, that probably will never happen because men talk. But we've gone, gosh, every month or two for nearly 10 years. And again, this was a guy who was a CEO of a very large corporation. And so I'm meeting people of means. I'm meeting men who've accomplished a lot, who've been through a lot. But there were things that I needed to learn, and they Just began to kind of show me how to be a man in middle age, more than anybody had ever taught me. [01:32:00] Speaker B: Yeah, we've got a lot of very generous people in this church in this area. But when we came, the church was, I believe it was $12 million in debt. And there's a really cool story that kind of ties your time in Alabama and your roots back into the current time. Do you mind sharing some of how we kind of started to dig our [01:32:21] Speaker A: way out of that well, you know, probably looking at the fingerprints of God on the story. In my first church, the first Sunday, in my first church, I preached the installation sermon. I'm walking out, there's a guy who's, I guess probably then he might have been late 40s, and I was like early 30s, late 20s, something like that. And he kind of took me under his wing. He said, let's go to lunch this week. I said, okay, where you work at? He said, I work down at the bank. So First Southern national bank down in Stanford, Kentucky. I go down and assuming he's a loan officer, it ended up he was the president of the largest privately held bank in Kentucky and had been blessed in financial means more than anybody I'd ever known, and just super down to earth. He was a follower of Jesus. He was serious about his faith, and he began to invest in me about how to disciple people of means. And so he would show up and say, hey, what are you doing tomorrow, Jess? I'm a pastor. I'm probably going to be studying, praying, meeting with people. He said, well, be at the airport at 7am I'm going to fly you to Fort Lauderdale. And he would fly me on a private jet to Fort Lauderdale to go to a conference and hear the band that preached when I got saved. Charles, Stanley and Andy and all these, a small group of people with, you know, great impact. And so he did that. He took me into some meetings that were monumental historically. And, you know, I guess he kind of taught me how stewardship and generosity worked. So money was just never an issue. Yeah, never, you know, paid off the debt in our second church. Always had plenty of money, just never, never was an issue. So when we come here, they're $12 million in debt and they're kind of frightened about it. I just wasn't, because the Lord had just always provided that. And I knew that the money that we needed was in the community. All you got to do is reach the community and the money will take care of itself. [01:34:47] Speaker B: Sure. Do you mind telling the story of the going back to how Mamaw and her watching tv. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's the story I've got to find. [01:34:57] Speaker A: So we began to see large checks come in. Like, you know, I'd been here just a few weeks. And I mean, at that time, you know, average Sunday, we might bring in 30,000. And suddenly we were getting a check for 30,000. So it was doubling our income on a Sunday, week after week after week to make. To kind of lay the groundwork. When my grandmother passed away, she again, I told her earlier she couldn't drive, so she couldn't go to church unless somebody took her. And she would watch radio preachers. And she had been donating a little bit of money. 15, $20 a month. [01:35:46] Speaker B: And which grandmother was this? [01:35:49] Speaker A: My dad's mother. [01:35:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:50] Speaker A: And she would send like 15, $20 a month. She was on Social Security and very limited income, but she would send checks to James Robinson. Now he's got life today it's a large media ministry. But he was an evangelist, like Billy Graham. She would send him checks. And in the 80s, there were a lot of scandals with televangelists. So when we saw that, we didn't know who he was. And we thought to ourselves, who is this guy taking my grandmother's money? You know? But he ended up. He was a faithful preacher and did a lot of great things in the kingdom still dies. But she was investing in his ministry. Okay, fast forward. [01:36:32] Speaker B: And like, how big were those checks? [01:36:34] Speaker A: Whatever. She was $20. [01:36:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:36:36] Speaker A: So not much, but there were a lot of them. She'd been doing that. She kept the receipts for just years, doing that. [01:36:43] Speaker B: And she wasn't a wealthy lady by any means. [01:36:48] Speaker A: So when we came here and suddenly we were getting these very large checks, eventually I felt just kind of like, you know, if somebody's going to give that much, I need to at least say thank you. And I didn't know. I wasn't privy to who it was. And so I asked the financial secretary if she could give me the name. I knew the checks were coming in and it was from one family, so they told me the name. I don't want to say the name, but I reached out to the couple and said, look, I'm kind of hesitant to do this, but I don't want to violate your anonymity. But I also don't want to violate our gratitude. And I said, I've got to choose to either never reach out to you or and you maybe think that we're not thankful, or to run the risk of saying thank you and you Being upset because we found out who you were giving and what you were giving. And he was very gracious. He said, you know, the Lord's been good to us. He again, was a big leader in a corporation. And so as I got to know him, I said, well, how did you come to know Jesus? And he said, of all things, it was a James Robinson crusade. And in that moment, it was like the Holy Spirit just said, you see, you know, her sowing the seed and us reaping the harvest. But he was like, you know, just trust me. Just trust me. Yeah, there's no. There's nothing he can't handle. [01:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's the faithfulness of the. I mean, you see the story in the. In the Gospels of the poor woman with a little penny, and that's all she's able to do, but she was faithful with it, and your grandmother was faithful with that over years and years, and that ended up paying off dividends. [01:38:44] Speaker A: You know, God has a flair for the dramatic, whatever else he is. [01:38:50] Speaker B: And I've seen that. I've seen that more in this church than I've seen in my life anywhere else. And there's some cool stories. [01:38:56] Speaker A: He really, the way that he does things is just not always straightforward. He will let you, for his own reason, get into a mess. And right when you think nothing's going to work out, he shows up. And that's just his way. You know, the God we worship is a dramatic God. You know, he has a personality. And he's not. He's not. He's an engineer. He's. He does math, he's a scientist. He's all these things. But probably if I had to put him in one box or give one label to his style, he's a great storyteller, and so he will step into your situation and say sometimes, if you would only trust me. And when you do, many times, you'll say, you see, whoever believes in me will never be ashamed. [01:40:05] Speaker B: And so we're coming down to 20, 26. We're coming right off the heels of the Maximum Life annual dinner was last night, as we're recording this. And you've got a lot of projects in the works. You just released a book. You have two podcasts going right now. You've got the radio ministry. The church is doing great. There's a new campus that just finished being constructed and has opened up a lot of awesome things happening. God's been faithful, and you've been faithful to do the work and to let God work through you. Where are we Going from here. Where is your life going? [01:40:47] Speaker A: I'm afraid to say, but I've not even scratched the surface of the plan. It's far bigger than me. It's far bigger than what we've done so far. I feel like at 50, I'm beginning to just figure a few things out. Productivity is the main thing. That if I could save you the time and teach you productivity, how to leverage your time in a way that will get traction early. I wish I'd learned that much earlier, but I feel like I've just figured it out, how to be productive in the areas where I have strengths. And so from between here and the next 10 years, I'm building something, and I'm building a great church. I hope we want to put two more campuses in and see both four campuses flourishing. Building a media ministry that I think its biggest days will not be with me. Like, I won't be the person on camera. We're going to have to find people that God's raising up, but I think we can capture it. So building pipelines and distribution points. We figured out how to do publishing, stepped into that world, and we're cranking books out right now that are pretty good, if I say so myself. We're pleased with them, so all we can do is be faithful. And then I just got a hunch that at some point God's going to step in and say, okay, now you're ready. And he's going to introduce us to the world in a new way. [01:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah, that's awesome. Well, Pastor Zach, dad, thank you for taking some time to sit down and kind of share your story with everybody. I appreciate you asking me to do it. It's been fun. Thank you for everything that you do as a pastor, as a leader, as a father to me, as a husband to my mom. And you're my hero, and you're the guy that I aspire to be one day. And so thank you, son. Thank you for taking the time, and I appreciate. Look forward to doing this again soon. [01:43:02] Speaker A: Good job, by the way. [01:43:03] Speaker B: Thank you. I appreciate it. Appreciate it. And how do we close this off? Normally, just. This has been Code Red. [01:43:09] Speaker A: Thank you for coming on Code Red. [01:43:10] Speaker B: Thank you for coming on Code Red. [01:43:11] Speaker A: There we go.