Speaker: 00:00:00

Welcome everybody to Gospel Talks podcast where we help Christians all over the world

become more effective in relational evangelism and discipleship.

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I'm George Benocca and with me today is Pastor Brad, how do you say your last name?

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Stilly.

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Stilly, all right, awesome, from Michigan and so glad to have you here in Denver and

excited to get to know you a little bit more.

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Pastor Brad is another one of our exchange trainers and he actually did two exchange

trainings this year.

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You want to tell, which church, two churches did you go to this year?

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I was at First Baptist of Hazel Park was the last one that I did.

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Okay.

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And then back in 2024, so you say this year.

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Yeah.

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That was just in the last couple of months.

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And then in 2024, we had a couple of sister churches close to us that we were able to do

trainings at First Baptist in Northville and Bible, the Lakes Bible Church, excuse me, in

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Walled Lake, Michigan.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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Awesome.

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Well, super exciting.

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if you guys...

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are in the Michigan Detroit area and you would love Pastor Brad to come and do an exchange

seminar at your church.

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He's up for that.

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So you can just email us info at exchangemessage.org or can email me, George at exchange.

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You can even email Pastor Brad at Brad at exchangemessage.org and so we'd be excited to

help you.

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So let's get into your life, man.

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mean, you're lead pastor now.

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at your church, you're the senior pastor there, you had a kind of interesting way of

getting into that role, but tell us, how was life growing up?

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What kind of family did you grow up in?

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Yeah, so I grew up in a family of believers.

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Both my mom and dad made their commitment to Christ in their junior high years.

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They met at a small church camp and grew up.

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and having a long distance kind of relationship with each other.

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I got married right after college and they raised four boys.

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So I'm the third of four.

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And that was a real blessing to be a part of a family that was committed to the church,

committed to the great commission.

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My dad actually left the corporate world.

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He was a successful computer programmer back in the days of punch card programming.

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And he left that world and actually went on staff.

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All of my memory as a kid was my dad on staff at a church, mostly in the realm of

education, but doing some assistant pastor work.

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And he passed on his love for education to me.

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And so what I wanted to do when I grew up was I wanted to be a basketball coach.

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And the way to do that was to teach and math was the easiest subject.

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So I became a math teacher.

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That was my career.

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the Lord...

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right mid-career, guess, is from my perspective, sort of shifted our gears.

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And I had started taking some seminary courses because I realized a minor in Bible wasn't

cutting it in the role I was in in church.

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was being asked to teach adult Sunday school and I felt quite inadequate.

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So I started taking some seminary courses and just for fun.

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And I was from a smattering of different places.

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As soon as I had finished that, our pastor suddenly resigned the position of pastor and

left our church without any pastoral leadership.

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And so, I was sort of thrust into that role reluctantly, in some ways kind of kicking and

screaming against what God was doing.

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But in retrospect, now looking back, we realize God was clearly in that.

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And so, yeah, it's been a joy to pastor the First Baptist Church of Wixom for the last 13

years.

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And God's doing really special things there.

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So, you you were an educator.

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Did you like being an educator?

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Were you content there?

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I mean, what made you kind of think, oh, this might not be it?

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Yeah, I loved it.

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I've loved education.

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In fact, that's really what has sort of driven my passion for preaching.

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I just love seeing the light turn on for people.

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there's no greater message than the gospel message.

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And so having the privilege of taking what I call Big T Truth, just...

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biblical truth, it's always right, it's timeless, it's life-changing, and it is the truth

that sets people free.

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having the privilege of studying that as a job, I mean, that is an incredible opportunity

in itself.

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And then to be able to stand up in front of our congregation week after week and just open

the powerful Word of God and teach it, I would say my style of a preacher is more of a

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teacher.

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And a coach.

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And so I use kind of my teaching and coaching background to cheer people on to live out

the great commission in their lives.

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And it's a thrill.

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Like I love it.

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I love what I get to do.

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And I realize it's a limited opportunity.

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Pastors don't live forever.

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We're all moving on at one time or another.

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So it's a limited opportunity and I really enjoy it.

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That's awesome.

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Last episode we were talking with Pastor Joel and one of the main stays of him reaching

his neighbors was that he was a coach in the community.

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mean, sports don't often think of as an evangelistic route into a church.

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But I mean, could you tell us a little bit more like sports, how does coaching, what role

does a coach play in somebody's life and how could that be conducive to ministry?

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Yeah, so for young boys, for teenage boys, you know, it was...

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kind of the passion of my life to not just teach them how to play the game of basketball

well, but to be better men.

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And of course, if someone doesn't have their feet on the rock that is Jesus Christ,

there's a limit to the man they can become.

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They certainly cannot become who God intended them to be without that relationship with

Christ.

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And so the gospel, even back in my coaching days, was a real foundational principle for

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helping these young men who claim to be Christian.

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I was in Christian education, so these guys claim to be Christians, but many of them,

their walk with the Lord wasn't real.

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It wasn't affecting their daily lives.

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so transferring that over to pastoring people has been a pretty natural transition.

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I haven't coached basketball for years, but I really feel like in many ways I get to stand

on the

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sideline, have a front row seat to people's sanctification and cheer them on to live the

life God intended them to live.

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Foundational on the gospel.

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So, you know, it's interesting because we have a Christian school at our ministry and what

I hear teachers say all the time is like, it's in

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it's impossible to have a relationship with these kids and correct them, but I think

coaches do that all the time.

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Your coach is the one guy that he can like yell at you in one second, and the next second

give you a hug and be like, come on, go do it.

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And you're like, yeah, okay, I will do it, because I think kids know it instinctually,

your coach is in your corner.

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mean, you talk about coaching and discipleship, how has God used discipleship in your

church?

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How do you shepherd your people?

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You seem to be very effective at that.

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Your church is growing.

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God's done a lot of, there's a lot of amazing stories that come out of that church right

now.

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What are you exactly doing that's making that difference?

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Yeah, well, as is often true, the Lord has to teach the pastor or the leader of a church a

hard lesson in order for that lesson to gain any traction with the people.

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And so...

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probably about eight years ago, I was confronted by a traveling evangelist, an itinerant

preacher, on this idea of really following Christ in tangible ways.

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Of course, I think any Christian would say they were a disciple of Jesus or following

Jesus, but to do it in more tangible ways, more one-on-one, across the table with another

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believer, really pursuing

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Christianity together and pursuing truth together and living it out in real ways and

opening your heart to each other.

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And so I was confronted with this.

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I was kind of asked, what are you guys doing for discipleship?

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And frankly, I did not have a good answer.

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We were doing what I had had modeled for me.

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We were doing Sunday school.

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We were doing new believer curriculum for a few weeks with people who'd made a profession

of faith.

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But.

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real, tangible, one-on-one relational discipleship.

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That concept was foreign to me, and so it really pushed me to start exploring it.

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And through a series of circumstances, I became connected with some men who really

challenged this in my life.

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And the Lord had to do some work in me and bring me to the place where I was willing, as a

pastor, to submit myself to somebody who would lead me spiritually in tangible

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one-on-one exhortation and caused me then to be willing to enter into relationships,

lifelong relationships with new believers to coach them on living out the Christian life.

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And this became a journey not just for me but for our church.

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actually the exchange became, we call it stage zero of our discipleship culture.

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It's where all of our people begin as a

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robust understanding of the gospel.

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If they're a believer, it'll simply strengthen them and help them worship God for what

he's done.

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If they're an unbeliever, of course, it will confront them with the truth of the gospel.

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And that's sort of obvious.

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That's where discipleship begins.

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That's what it means to be a Christian, to follow Christ.

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But we start there, and it permeates the culture of our church.

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We say that

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everything hangs from the clothesline of discipleship.

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If there's anything we do in the church that can't be connected back to following Jesus

together, we just stop doing it.

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It has to hang from that.

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So, to go back what you're mentioning, you yourself are in a discipleship relationship,

meaning somebody's pouring into you.

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Is this like a lay person in your church?

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Okay, is this guy a pastor?

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He's not.

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okay, this is like a...

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touchy thing with some pastors.

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You hear this a lot.

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You hear some people say, the pastor can't really have relationships or friendships with

people in the congregation.

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He needs to have friendships with other pastors somewhere else because people will burn

him.

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So how did you navigate that?

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Was that the hesitancy in the previous model or?

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No, I don't think that was necessarily the hesitancy.

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However, I felt like, I don't think it's right for pastors to expect of their people what

they're unwilling to do themselves.

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Yes, I prayed over the men in our church, selected a man that is significantly my elder.

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He's old enough to be my father.

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He's a spiritually sensitive man.

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He's mature man.

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He's proven himself faithful.

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And I asked him if he would be willing to meet with me regularly to exhort me.

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And I'm very clear that that's the purpose, that he is to exhort me.

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So,

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We read a book together, we study scripture together, we spend time in prayer, but before

we conclude every meeting over coffee and a sandwich, I ask him to bring an exhortation,

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which he has prepared for me.

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And he will pray all week long about, what do want me to bring to Pastor Brad?

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And he will often say, hey, this is gonna feel a little bit like a confrontation.

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It's not meant to be, it's just me bringing scripture.

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This is what think the Lord wants.

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And so many times what he has to say is exactly what I needed for that week.

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And so I actually feel like my following this layman in my church is a bit of a lifeline

for my own spiritual health.

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So you're able to be transparent with him.

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100 % transparent.

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Wow.

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And you never feel like, I hope this doesn't come back to bite me.

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It is risky, but I trust him.

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I think that's a really healthy thing.

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I experienced the same thing.

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are actually, there are like three men at my church that I feel that way with that when we

go out to lunch, it doesn't really feel like I'm your pastor.

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I mean, they would say, you're my pastor, you are discipling me, but they would also say,

but we wanna hold your hands up, you wanna hold your arms up like, know, Aaron.

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So like they held up Moses' arms.

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So I know, I think every leader needs that.

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I would say it's harder for him than it is for me.

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Really?

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He feels awkward.

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And the first couple of times he would apologize.

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Like don't feel like this is right.

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But I told him, said, I'm asking you for it.

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You're not inserting yourself where you don't belong.

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I'm asking you for this.

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And it has turned out to be a wonderful blessing.

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It's great to be able to share with my church that I was having a conversation with my

discipleship leader and here's what he was teaching me.

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And I think it conveys a healthy humility.

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that the pastors of this church are men following Christ, just like we expect you to be

following Christ.

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So you were an educator, your father was an educator, so you kind of went from growing up

not in a ministry home to growing up in a ministry home.

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Do you miss education?

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I do, I do.

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Preaching gives me that teaching fix, but it's...

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know, a couple hours a week that you're actually preaching.

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I love study, so that has been a good, you know, segue into preparing for messages.

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I also get to teach in formats like Sunday school and small group classes, so that's

helpful.

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Actually, in our church, the administrative part of the work is a heavy burden.

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And so, my...

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My teaching past serves me very well in the type of pastorate that I've been called to,

given the support staff that is around me.

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And it's been a wonderful fit.

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I would never have guessed that.

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I never thought that.

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In fact, I sort of made a promise to my fiancee before we were married that pastoring

wasn't in my future.

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That I would be an educator for life.

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And the Lord had the...

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work on both of our hearts to help us embrace the role we're in now.

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Is Mari okay with it now?

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She is, she loves it.

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Okay.

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Yeah, God's changed both of us.

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Through a process of years, it wasn't instantaneous, it took some whittling away of our

own self-will, but God has shown his will to be much, much better than our plans.

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So I asked Pastor Joel this last podcast episode, I'll ask you the same question.

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I actually got this idea from you the other day.

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Take us through what is life, a week in the life of Pastor Brad.

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What does it look like day to day?

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What's your life look like?

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Yeah, well, I'll start with the Lord's Day.

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mean, Sunday obviously is the pinnacle of the week for me and for my staff.

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We love Sundays.

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Like, we do not look at Sundays as the hardest and most busy day, although it is.

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But we just absolutely love Sundays.

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There's an incredible energy in our church.

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We often describe our church as a happy and healthy church.

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People just really enjoying getting together and learning biblical truth together.

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So on Sundays, I often teach our starting points class, which leads into a class on the

gospel we call the exchange class, and then how to give the gospel to others.

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We do that in our Sunday school, and I often lead that.

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But then,

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I preach three out of four Sundays a month and I really enjoy that.

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I have two very capable preachers on my staff that I try to get into the pulpit as often

as I can.

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Sunday evenings we do community group gatherings and I lead one of those community groups

and it's a real joy.

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have most of the people in my group are

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new believers, not just by design, but just by happenstance, they're new believers, and we

have a wonderful time of studying scripture together.

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Mondays are almost always meetings.

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I meet with the school staff, I meet with the individual pastors, and then I meet with the

group of pastors.

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It almost takes up the entire day on Monday.

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We're recapping Sunday, really, and trying to start the week off efficiently.

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Tuesdays are typically

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study days and then often if there's a project that needs to be done, the staff jumps in

and does it on Tuesdays.

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Wednesdays are also study days, but we do our visitation on Wednesdays.

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Take a day off on Thursdays and then Friday, we're prepping for Sunday.

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It's all about prep for Sunday on Friday and Saturday and kind of fallen into a schedule

that I really, really love.

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In fact, when it gets disrupted a little bit,

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It unnerves me and I love to kind of get back to that routine because it seems to work

well for our ministry.

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You know Pastor Joel's schedule is almost identical.

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So it would be interesting to see if Pastor Matt's schedule is pretty similar too.

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no, that's wonderful.

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So one of the things you just said earlier is that if your ministry is like a clothesline

where you hang up laundry, that everything, that clothesline for you is discipleship and

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every ministry hangs on that.

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I know from being a pastor in a church, I'm the outreach pastor at a church, that it's

very hard to infuse discipleship, evangelism, which evangelism being an aspect of

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discipleship, into a church's culture.

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So what did you do coming in at a church that was already existing?

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Did you have to change, make cultural changes?

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Did you have to like basically tell your leaders, look, you know, did you have to force

this a little bit?

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How did that look like?

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Did it create any conflict?

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mean, people-

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If there's a cultural change and people struggle with that, so how did that all go?

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There were many, many steps along the way and it took some time.

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Our church has fully embraced it now, but it did take some time.

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How much time?

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I would say a process of perhaps three years.

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There was some significant pushback.

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Here's a little known fact perhaps or a little admitted fact about believers.

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There are many true believers who struggle.

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with talking about their inner man.

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They have a hard time talking about their faith, articulating the gospel, sharing their

sin issues, confessing their faults one to another, praying for one another, looking

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another believer eye to eye, and having soul level conversations.

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Most Christians that I know struggle with that, unless they're coached, unless they're

taught, this is what it looks like, this is what it can accomplish.

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And so, yeah, we did several things.

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We actually, I had some guest speakers come in and address my leaders in particular so

that they would buy in.

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I publicly explained what I was going to do personally.

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I do, I have three.

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I have the guy that I follow, the guy that I lead, and then a mutual, we call it a mutual

discipleship relationship where we are helping each other, stimulating each other

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spiritually, iron sharpening iron.

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Those three are always going on and have been going on for years and years.

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I've had some short-term ones that I share with the church, but those are the long-term

core.

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And the church knows who these people are and very transparent about those relationships.

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So talking about that has helped.

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We selected discipleship materials that people can use not just for a few weeks, not just

for a year, but can spend the rest of their lives studying together.

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That's a chore.

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but it can be done.

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we have the exchanges are stage zero and then we have a curriculum that they use for the

first year.

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And then after the first year, we have a discipleship pastor who guides them into Bible

studies that they can use perpetually from that point on.

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We have people that have been doing discipleship together now for 10 years and plan to

continue indefinitely.

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So we did that.

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actually, here's some.

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physical evidences of discipleship.

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We purchased high-top tables and placed them all around our building.

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Every available spare space got high-top tables with two chairs at them.

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And at those tables, we have discipleship information.

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We encourage people to use them and to publicly study the Word of God together.

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We actually built an addition on our church that is essentially a new foyer.

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The main feature of the foyer is a giant bookcase that is all of our discipleship

materials.

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We make them available to anyone who will use them free of charge.

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It's a large investment every year, but it's part of our culture and we want everybody to

be involved.

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We don't want anybody to have an excuse.

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And then I think the biggest thing is we talk about it all the time and nothing happens

without a consideration of how is this going to be used in discipleship?

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How can you encourage your discipleship partner or partners through this ministry?

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So what kind of resistance did you face in all of that?

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Mostly on a personal level.

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Leaders, deacons, elders, pastors who were uncomfortable having transparent soul level

conversations.

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That, when I say that, when I hear those words come out of mouth, I think that's a little

bit ridiculous that church leaders would have trouble with transparent soul level

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conversations.

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But boy was it true.

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and they really struggled with that.

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And it immediately put some people on defense.

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And you know why, Brad, are we doing this?

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I've never heard of this.

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This is not what we've been in the past.

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Are you sure this is right?

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Is this a flash in the pan?

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Is this a permanent shift?

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What is this?

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And the way that I tried to couch it was we're not trying to do anything radically

different.

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We're actually trying to do things biblically.

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We consider the Great Commission to be a whole life endeavor.

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It is not about seeing people make a profession of faith.

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It's actually about integrating them into church life.

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Jesus said, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bringing them

into the church family, and then teaching them all things I've observed, all things that

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I've commanded you.

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You can't teach anybody all things that Jesus commanded them in a few minutes.

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That takes a life, and that's life on life for life.

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And that's the culture that we try to get people to embrace.

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Why do you think people have trouble opening up?

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Christians, why do you think Christians specifically have trouble opening up?

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Is it pride or?

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I suppose it's just the feeling of vulnerability that somebody might think I'm not the

person I've created publicly.

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Or perhaps I'm shallow in some areas and I don't really want that exposed.

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I think for a lot of mature Christians, it's just a lack of practice.

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Many Christians don't have an avenue to talk about their faith other than evangelism.

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It's quite interesting.

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If you're hesitant to share the gospel, but it's the only time you talk about your faith,

then you never talk about your faith.

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And we like to see that in reverse.

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If you are...

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quite comfortable talking to a believer about your faith and get articulate about your

faith and what you're learning in Scripture and how the gospel is dealing with your sin on

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a daily basis, then you're much more comfortable talking to your neighbor who's an

unbeliever about your faith.

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But you gotta, I mean, find a place to practice it.

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The safest place to practice it is with a friendly believer over some coffee at a table in

the church with a curriculum that's provided to you.

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I mean, it's just...

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It's a win-win, but getting people to understand that takes a little time.

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That's the coach Brad coming out right there.

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You need to practice it.

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So if you were talking to a pastor today and he comes to you and says, there's, evangelism

is not part of the culture of our church.

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What advice, what would you tell him?

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What would you lay out in front of him and say, okay, this is how you go from there to

there?

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Yeah, I think that some terms have to be defined.

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Like, I would say that our church would have considered itself evangelistic prior to our

current culture of the discipleship beginning with the exchange.

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However, if you just pressed the issue, the evangelistic meant that our pastors always

share the gospel.

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We're encouraged to bring unbelievers to church.

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we hand out tracks, right?

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And I've tried to teach our people, like living out discipleship and the Great Commission

is so much, not only deeper than that, but it's so much more fun than that.

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Like it's just, it's an exciting opportunity, but most of us see the Great Commission as

sort of a guilty obligation that we really struggle with.

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And this is not just parishioners, this isn't just people sitting in the seats.

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This is pastors, church leaders, elders, deacons.

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You bring up the Great Commission, you bring up sharing the gospel, and there's

immediately a defense saying, I'm not good at this, this is not my gift, I'm uncomfortable

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with this conversation.

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I don't think Jesus intended that of His disciples at all.

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When He said, all power is given unto me, He was saying, hey men, this is something that

you can do through my power, and this is an exciting way to live, making disciples,

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integrating them into church life, teaching them all that I've commanded you.

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And so for us, making that jump, that really had to begin in me.

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The first time that Jeff Musgrave visited our church, I leaned over to my wife and I said,

I don't know any unbelievers.

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None.

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Now I had neighbors who were unbelievers.

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I had never successfully befriended them.

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I had some inroads into the community, but I had never followed those to a point of fruit.

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And so I had to get right myself and realize that if I was going to lead my church in

being fruitful disciples, which is what Jesus told us we were to be in John 15, right?

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If we're plugged into the mind, we're going to be fruitful disciples.

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If I was going to lead my church in that, it had to start with me.

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I had to show them the example of what that looked like.

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And so the Lord had to take me through a journey of...

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justifying my own inadequacy, feeling guilty, feeling afraid, not articulating my faith.

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Here I was preaching the gospel, but having a one-on-one with somebody about my faith,

that was asking an awful lot, right?

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And so I had to get to the point where I was really comfortable with it.

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So it took a journey for me.

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But I would say it starts with really learning to articulate the gospel clearly.

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in a way that is worshipful.

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What I love about the exchange is it's theocentric.

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It's about God, not about the need of my unsaved friend primarily, but about God, who he

is.

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And developing a sense of awe and worship and joy and sharing those truths about God.

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You know, the command is for us to proclaim the truths about God, not to make converts,

but to proclaim his glory.

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And so getting energized about that, getting comfortable with that, practicing that.

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And then, you know, getting used to this daily or not, maybe not daily, but weekly, just

reiteration of faith and biblical truth and memorizing scripture together and praying over

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one another.

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It takes some time, but I'm just telling you, once a church has developed that culture, as

a pastor, this is going to sound a little fleshly, but pastoring is a lot more fun.

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It's a lot more fun because when I come down from the pulpit on Sunday,

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most of my people are doing Great Commission Living, I can go find one or two other

people, have a soul level conversation with them, guilt free, let the rest of the

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congregation trickle out of the parking lot and have done my work for the day, because

I've been equipping the saints to do it.

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And I find greater joy in seeing the saints do the work of the ministry than for me trying

to do it all.

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and churches will never grow if the pastor's the only one doing it.

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You have to multiply yourself as leaders.

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And in your church, the church growth mechanism, the primary church growth mechanism is

that multiplication of that core group.

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The bigger that core group is, the more people you can reach.

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And so often what we do as pastors that stifles church growth is we think we need to do it

ourselves and we're not doing ourselves any favors.

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Those are often the pastors that burn out.

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Those are often the pastors that leave.

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ministry disgruntled.

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so man, I just really commend you on the culture that you've built there.

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It's not an easy thing.

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And I know when there are changes that have to be made, some people are uncomfortable,

they have to leave.

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But when you know what you're doing is what God wants, it's worth the cost of doing what's

right, to do what's right and to let God bless it.

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So, well, Pastor Brad, thank you so much for being on the podcast and just that's

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Wonderful story, wonderful life story, and if your church is interested in an exchange

seminar, I know Pastor Brad would love, especially in that—in that Detroit area or

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anywhere else that you guys would be interested in.

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We would love to make that possible.

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So Lord bless you guys.

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Thank you so much for listening.

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00:29:08,714 --> 00:29:10,285

Appreciate all your support.

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00:29:10,285 --> 00:29:18,360

If you could hit that subscribe button if you haven't already, that helps our podcast in a

big way, helps us climb in the ratings, and so we're just thankful.

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for our audience, our listeners that have been so faithful and supportive.

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We will see you guys next week.

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Thank you.

409

00:29:24,316 --> 00:29:25,477

Yes, sir.