August 1, 2023 • 31 mins
Stories of Mission and Ministry with guest Steven Grabiner
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Episode Transcript
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Music
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Welcome to Mission Sunlight from the Media Missionaries of Network 7 Media Center.
We are in our world headquarters studio located here in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the United States of America.
And wherever you are listening around the world, welcome. We're glad you're with us.
My name is Christopher Beeson and with me today is Dr. Stephen Gravner.
We'll talk to Stephen just a little bit through the program today about his credentials and what he is and what he does and a bit about his family and his history and past.
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But before we do that, I want to also introduce our director of production and engineering today, Jordan Wagner down there hiding in the darkness.
So we'll chat with him a little bit as we go along as well. But he's making sure that the program stays on track.
So Mission Sunlight Chat is a nonprofit Christian media production.
So if you'd like to know more, visit us at MissionSunlight.org. And if you want to give, you can click donate there.
(01:15):
Thank you in advance for whatever you're led to give your prayers, your money or any combination of these.
We're truly grateful for you. We appreciate whatever you would like to do for this work.
Now, just one more thing before we get into today's program. We need to grow.
We want to touch more lives for Jesus to share the story of Jesus, to spread the truth as it is in Jesus.
(01:36):
So please, if you can give your time, if you can't give your time, you can't give your prayers, you can't give monies, would you please please share the link to today's program?
Send it to a friend. Send it to an enemy. Posted on your social media. Text it to a friend right now.
Even snail mail if you want. Share Mission Sunlight Chat today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
(01:59):
And again, welcome to our guest, Dr. Stephen Gravner. I'm just going to call you Stephen.
That's perfectly good. Stephen, will you open us with a word of prayer as we begin?
Yeah, it'd be my privilege, Christopher. Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity to talk about how you transform lives, how you call us into service,
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how you use each one of us, and we invite your presence to be with us.
And we pray for all the listeners that something shared today would touch their hearts as well. In Jesus name. Amen.
Amen. Thank you, Stephen. And thank you for joining us today. My privilege.
I appreciate you sharing your time with I really didn't think about this as being the world headquarters, so I'm really honored to be here.
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Well, we're talking to two individuals in ministry. I don't want to say leaders because some people are just everyday missionaries.
And you have been a leader in ministries around the globe. And yet today you're I would say you're just a sidewalk missionary,
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just meeting people here in our community. And I'm sure I've met with you before through Zoom and so forth.
But your your experience has been broad and not to diminish it, but rather simple as well, depending on where you are.
And so I like that flavor of experience you bring. So before I get ahead of saying too much about the experience you bring,
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tell us a little bit about about yourself. Tell us about your present. What are you doing?
But then about your family, your work, your business. Well, my family is totally fantastic, tremendously loving and supportive wife.
Three kids, two of them are married, six grandkids. Totally fantastic time and really amazing.
We all like to be together for periods of time, but it's it's really great.
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So I'm so I like to hear you mention the six grandkids because I have a couple and I have a couple more on the way.
So I'm pretty excited. I'm not going to get to six this year. Just four. It's it's amazing. Totally.
That's right. They're a lot of fun. So I've got the one more child that means to get married and have kids.
But yeah, so about three years ago, I stepped out of my full time employment, which actually was a couple of major jobs.
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I was president of a nonprofit organization called Outpost Centers International,
where we served and networked about 200 ministries in about 85 different countries.
So that involved a lot of leadership training, coaching, a lot of travel.
And I was also a pastor of the church. And three years ago, I stepped out of that.
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And now I do leadership coaching. Pretty much.
That's my main focus with some writing that I'm doing as well.
So you were a layman kind of doing double time.
Well, actually, I'm an ordained minister. And so I went I had been a pastor for many years,
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took a break when my family and I moved to Africa and then came back.
And then we started a church plant and I was, quote, the lay leader, but actually an ordained minister.
So when your family went to Africa, are you saying you went there to serve as an ordained minister?
I went as a mission director for a project. And when I was there,
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I was given my local credentials from the local conference and did a lot of baptisms and had a district that I oversaw as well.
Where was that?
A country of Zambia. Great place. Very friendly people.
So that was when you worked with Riverside Farm.
That's correct. I was the director of Riverside Farm for just under 10 years.
So is that always a ordained minister position?
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No, no, no. I was actually the first director who was also an ordained minister.
So a little unusual. Very much unusual. And that's part of my background is
I grew up in a Jewish family and had a conversion when I was in my 20s.
And at that point, I was involved in lay ministry where I felt like I was called to get involved.
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And then later on, I went to school and I became an ordained minister and eventually got my doctorate in theology.
With Mission Sunlight, Jordan and I have had a slightly different perspective and experiences with mission work.
Jordan also has been a missionary with his family living in where were you, Jordan?
We were in the Congo.
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OK. Which one? I can't remember.
The Republic of Congo.
OK. Is that Kinshasa or?
Brazzaville.
Brazzaville. OK. Remembering your experience there too.
It's a unique experience to work in Africa. Different culture, different, just different.
Lots of different dynamics. And Congo is very different than Zambia.
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OK. So you you find yourself do you consider yourself retired now in the work you're doing?
No, goodness, no. Self-employed is the word I'm still using.
Tell me about the work you're doing. What's it called?
And my organization is Percepta Perceptor Leadership Coaching.
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So I do coaching for pastors, ministry leaders, organizations. I work with organizations to develop OKRs, objectives, and then key results to help them move forward.
And personality assessments, 360 evaluations for a variety of different leaders.
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OK. How broad is that scope? Are we talking global? Are we talking here in the local Chattanooga area?
So I have had overseas pay overseas clients, leaders of ministries that were involved with OCI, quite a number of them overseas.
Currently, most everybody's in the United States. Currently, everybody is in the United States.
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OK. Actually, except for one person who wrote me this morning from Zimbabwe.
What are some of your favorite aspects of the work you're doing? What drives you?
So I look I look at what I'm doing as being an electrician or like an electrician to help people rewire their brains so that their lives are more impactful and fulfilling.
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And to to help people do that rewiring in a conversation, you can see when somebody gets like, oh, I never thought of that before.
So they get one of those aha moments and they look off to the side and they're really trying to figure something out and then something clicks.
That's tremendously rewarding.
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And to see leaders, I had a leader that I have a leader that I'm coaching who took something that came out of our recent experience and texted me a couple of days later said, you know,
I have the same problem with this other leader as I do with my daughter, and now I'm applying the solution with my daughter and it's making an amazing difference.
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It's kind of personality issues. So it's just tremendously rewarding to see people move forward and to realize more of what their thinking is.
Full disclosure, you and I have done some coaching together as well.
But it's neat to hear about that one leader with kind of the double aha moment of the double application of the principles they're learning and perceptive.
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That's great. I know you don't just do lay ministries.
I know you don't just do coaching. I know you don't just do pastoring.
You and I have talked about some of your worldwide outdoor adventures. You're not afraid of getting outside.
So what are some of your hobbies? What do you like to do when you get out?
Biking, a little less hiking now than I'm used to.
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Kayaking, actually, this summer we were supposed to be kayaking the inside passage, which goes from the Alaska-Canada border up to the till you run out of water in Alaska.
Unfortunately, some things came up and we had to postpone the trip till next year.
But so that's on the docket for next summer, hopefully.
And that's not just your traditional kayak.
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It's about 24 days, pretty much self-contained. Not entirely. There are some small towns.
Re-stock along the way. And you have to have a different kind of kayak for that kind of work.
Yeah, I have a 17-foot sea kayak.
Maybe we'll get out and see that sometime.
All right. Anything more about your family, you and your wife. Your wife's been along on this journey.
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She has. She retired early. She retired when COVID hit and she loves it.
One of her real strengths is helping people.
So she's able to take lots of chunks of time and go help some of her friends.
Well, Stephen, thank you for sharing that part. We're going to take a break.
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Just a reminder to our audience, you can visit missionsunlight.org.
It's a place where you can learn more and you may give there, too.
And I want to remind you, share the link to today's program or the entire show podcast platform with a friend.
You can do that by text, social media, even by email.
Take a moment right now during the break and share it with someone.
We'll be right back with more Mission Sunlight Chat.
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Welcome back to Mission Sunlight Chat.
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Our guest today, Dr. Stephen Gravner from Percept leadership, Percepta leadership coaching.
Thank you for getting that straight. Percepta leadership coaching and Jordan Wagner, our engineer today.
Stephen, tell us a bit about how you got here. You've described your life and experiences today.
How did you get here? What were your experiences growing up? Your influences?
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Just give us a little picture of your journey.
So as I briefly mentioned earlier, I grew up in a Jewish family.
I was bar mitzvahed, went to Hebrew school, had a tragedy when I was young.
My father passed away when I was 10.
And so it really impacted my life and picture of God.
So in my teenage years after my bar mitzvah, oh, it was the 60s and 70s.
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And we got into the lifestyle that was there, a lot of experimentation with drugs.
And then when I was in my early 20s, had a situation where three, it's hard to even call them prayers,
but they were like thought prayers, like, OK, God, if you're there, do this.
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And the three were I had a girlfriend who was an atheist.
I said, OK, God, if you're real, work in her heart. That seemed safe and distant.
And secondly, I prayed, I just want to know if Jesus is the way, the truth and life.
I need to change my life.
And the third prayer had to do with an article that someone shared about Orion's nebula.
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So I was with some friends. It was Christmas Day.
Everybody was imbibing of some illegal substance.
I wasn't because I had a sore throat.
And on the way home, my girlfriend started asking, why would Christ hate Satan?
And then before I could give any kind of an answer that I'd learned from my other friends,
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she started talking about the war in heaven and just opened up like, oh, yeah, there was this war in heaven.
And Satan was jealous. And I just had like chills.
Then we got back to my house and I started sharing something that my Christian friends had shared with me about Daniel nine.
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And as we walked through it, it was just clicked.
Canaan Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Sanctuary Service, Isaiah 53, Daniel nine, Jesus as the Messiah.
And I surrendered.
Just went to bed that night, surrendered, woke up the next morning really excited.
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I couldn't remember what I was excited about. But then I realized, oh, yeah, Jesus is the Messiah.
And my life took a dramatic change ever since then.
So the Holy Spirit studied you right into it.
Yeah. And I'm the kind of person that would study things out when people would tell them to me.
So I did a lot of research. I kept studying with my friends and with other people.
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And obviously, the Sabbath was very clear to me because I had grown up Jewish.
I found a tract many years ago that talked about what happened when people die.
And I used to use that in arguments with other Christians that death was like a sleep.
And everything fell together for me.
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Wow.
Growing up Jewish, were you practicing pretty consistently?
So we were reformed. We would go to temple on holidays.
When I was younger, my mom would ship me off to synagogue on Sabbath.
But she wouldn't come. But she made sure I went.
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And I went to Hebrew school Sunday afternoons and Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons as well.
And I remember jumping forward to your early 20s, this young lady that began to discuss theology.
That's not my wife.
So get us there.
So through my conversion, I knew that Jesus was the Messiah.
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I knew that Saturday was the Sabbath. And I figured he must have a people someplace.
I had some friends that were Seventh-day Adventists.
And I moved away to a college and studied with a dozen religious groups.
And my two tape measures that I would compare everything to were the Sabbath and what happens when a person dies.
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And I just became convinced that Seventh-day Adventists had the clearest understanding of Scripture.
So eventually I was baptized out there, began to work in ministry,
and eventually was led to work in a restaurant in New York City, 48th or any place, vegetarian vegan restaurant downtown near Wall Street.
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And my wife came down there to work. She was a great cook, very modest and helpful.
And we got married.
Was she raised a Seventh-day Advent?
She has been.
So her journey was totally different than yours.
Totally different and still is.
Wow, that's powerful.
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And so how do you end up pastoring in the Seventh-day Adventist Church?
So I was involved in restaurant ministry for quite a number of years.
We ran a restaurant, three restaurants in New York City.
And then we moved to the Boston area to help start another restaurant.
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And while there, the Conference Evangelist asked me to help him raise up churches.
And so working with him, I began pastoring one of those churches.
And that's when I finished my bachelor's.
And then I got a call to the ministry.
And that's when I finished my master's, went to Yale University, which was a bit of a drive from where I was pastoring.
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And then ultimately, as I said, I got a doctorate in theology and the Book of Revelation.
Okay. And then the jump from Boston to Zambia?
So I got called to be a pastor.
And while I was pastoring, a friend of mine had been in Zambia and asked me if I would consider coming.
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And years ago, years previously rather, I had made a list of things I want my family to experience.
And one of those things was I wanted my children to have the opportunity to grow up in a third world in another country for their own breadth of experience.
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And so my wife and I went over for a visit and loved it and packed up the family and moved over.
Remind me what the makeup of your family is.
So I have a daughter that's the oldest.
And she lives in Arizona.
She lives in Arizona, her and her husband and their two kids.
Pardon me.
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And it was most difficult for her.
And then I had the second child as a son, and he was raring to go.
And then the third child is the youngest.
And he what did he care?
Because he was just four or five.
They probably had the idea that there were, I don't know, monkeys and giraffes in Africa.
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So that'd be for lions and.
And so he lived there until he was like 14.
So he's very fluent in the local language and very acculturated.
Are the both boys here in the Chattanooga area?
No, one's in Chicago.
The younger ones in Chicago.
Well, that's a jungle, too.
That's a different.
You have totally different last night.
He lives in a nice area.
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Yeah, good.
So what else can you tell us about your journey?
What is there a story or something that you can share that was specifically to your ministry?
Two. Two interesting stories, if I can.
Neither one of them are glitzy.
I was doing Bible work for the Conference Evangelist and was kind of just wrestling with my call.
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And so I remember praying, Lord, you know, give me success or get me out of this.
And that week I had seven Bible studies going that week.
Every one of the Bible studies told me they didn't want to study any longer.
So I just prayed, give me success or get me out of this.
And then that week they all canceled.
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And, you know, I was just confronted with, oh, is this an answer to prayer?
And then I thought, you know, God's not going to answer that prayer by having people turn away from him.
And so I stuck with it and the Lord's blessed my ministry in lots of different ways.
So it gave you some sense of understanding God's character.
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Things don't always go smoothly.
You know, you could pray for smoothness, but just because you hit a rough patch doesn't mean God's not still working.
It doesn't mean it's not part of God's plan.
So that was a lesson there.
And then later on in my ministry, I would imagine this happens to every pastor, probably a lot of Christians,
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where I was struggling internally.
It was difficult to pray. It was difficult to study.
And I remember taking a shower and this thought really came distinctly to my head
that God is more interested in saving me than I wasn't being saved and just trust him.
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And I didn't have to manufacture anything.
I could just trust him.
And obviously he got me through that period as well.
I've had lots of other nice stories, 400 people baptized and, you know, things of that nature.
Churches raised up through evangelistic series.
But those were two very particularly meaningful ones for me.
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Okay.
We're going to take a break again.
Come back.
I want you to tell a little bit maybe how you would encourage others and give us a little bit of what your dreams,
what your hopes are and how you might encourage others to move forward with God at the center of their hopes and dreams as well.
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We certainly hope you've been encouraged and blessed by listening to the program today.
We have more to come, but we need to take a break.
Remember, you can give it mission sunlight dot org and you can share this program with anyone right now.
Thanks for doing both or either.
We'll be back with more mission sunlight chat.
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Our salvation is a day to day matter, isn't it?
The real principle of the Sabbath is reconnecting ourselves with the Creator.
We must learn to abide in Jesus' name.
We move ahead with our mission objectives, recognizing that we are serving together the Most High God.
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Welcome back to mission sunlight chat.
We are talking to founder of Percepta Leadership Coaching, Dr. Stephen Grabner.
Stephen, thanks for being with us.
Our engineer Jordan Wagner is with us today.
Jordan, as you've been listening, if you've got anything you want to ask or jump in with, be glad to hear from you as well.
Stephen, you talked a bit about where you are today and your history, how you got here.
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Where do you want to go?
What are your dreams, your hopes?
Do you have any hard plans of forward motion for you, your family, your ministry?
Just what's ahead?
Well, several can go in several different directions.
Obviously, with my ministry, the great desire there is to help leaders learn some lessons that a lot of leaders don't learn until much later in life.
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I don't know if that's really even a possibility, but at least to give them the opportunity to hear, to challenge their thinking, and to perhaps try new ways of changing.
One of the great problems with leaders is that we're painfully unaware of our own habits, we're unaware of our own tendencies, so we continue to make the same mistakes.
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And so helping leaders become aware is really important.
And I suppose it's important to me because I've been through with many organizations where the leadership failed and it wrought havoc in people's lives and in the ministry and large collateral damage.
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So that's a particular concern for me.
Thanks for sharing that.
Can you give our listeners and our viewers a final challenge to things they're wrestling with and considering in just day to day sidewalk ministry, whatever they might be doing?
What would you share with them?
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Well, one thing that comes to my mind, the first thing that comes to my mind is don't be afraid to walk into situations that might intimidate you, that you might not feel you belong in.
I know myself and lots of leaders have, individuals have held back from thinking, oh, that's not for me or I don't belong in that room or something like that.
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And don't let that mindset keep somebody back.
But move forward.
And as it says in Scripture, you don't know what's going to prosper this or that.
So have the confidence that God's leading and step forward.
Yes, there's certainly a place for becoming equipped.
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But even when we become very equipped, there's this tendency called the imposter syndrome where we feel like we're just a fake.
And if everybody knew how just a fake we were, you know, we'd be exposed.
Nobody would trust us or want us a part of their.
The truth of the matter is almost everybody suffers from that.
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We're all struggling.
You know, we're all in the same boat. We're all part of the fallen humanity.
If somebody has more talents than you do, praise the Lord for the gifts and skills that they have.
But you have gifts and skills as well.
And so to utilize those gifts and skills as God gives you opportunity is a very strong opportunity for fruitful ministry.
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So don't give up.
Don't give up and keep moving forward.
Don't hesitate to go into rooms you feel you're not qualified to be in.
But go in there and see what God's going to do.
Once I was going through a tremendous struggle, I remember my father gave me the advice of keep moving, Christopher.
God can turn you to the right of the left as long as you're moving.
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You're moving. That's exactly right.
Jordan, any closing thoughts for our program today before we wrap up?
I'm reminded of something that I recently saw that said that when God calls us, he doesn't call us with who we think we are.
But he takes into account who we think we are and he equips us with what we need to do to do what God calls us to do even before we think we can do it.
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So I think that's important to remember to go along with that.
And if we move in him, then he'll he'll equip us and he'll move us to where we need to be.
He is the great equipper.
And the great caller. Yes.
And faithful is he who has promised this and he will do it.
Let's have a word of prayer and then we'll wrap up the program.
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Father in heaven, thank you so much for the time with Stephen with Jordan and hearing this word of encouragement.
People everywhere every day just need to know that they they're called every one of us and that they'll find the encouragement of the equipping of the Holy Spirit and find it through other lay people like them.
Thank you for hearing our program and hearing our prayer and please bless whoever is listening right now that might just need to have that encouragement from your throne of grace.
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We praise you and honor you for all that you've done and for the opportunity to share with missions and my chat in Jesus name.
Amen. Amen.
That's today's program from the media missionaries of Network Seven Media Center.
This has been Mission Sunlight Chat with our guest Dr.
Stephen Grabner. I'm Christopher Beason, your host and again today's engineer, our director of production, Jordan Wagner.
We thank you for joining us. We thank you for sharing our show with your friends via text, email and on your social media platforms.
(30:48):
We also thank you for your gifts and your prayers, especially, especially your prayers.
That's all today from our studios in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
This is Mission Sunlight Chat.
(31:26):
Thank you.
Music
(00:22):
Welcome to Mission Sunlight from the Media Missionaries of Network 7 Media Center.
We are in our world headquarters studio located here in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the United States of America.
And wherever you are listening around the world, welcome. We're glad you're with us.
My name is Christopher Beeson and with me today is Dr. Stephen Gravner.
We'll talk to Stephen just a little bit through the program today about his credentials and what he is and what he does and a bit about his family and his history and past.
(00:51):
But before we do that, I want to also introduce our director of production and engineering today, Jordan Wagner down there hiding in the darkness.
So we'll chat with him a little bit as we go along as well. But he's making sure that the program stays on track.
So Mission Sunlight Chat is a nonprofit Christian media production.
So if you'd like to know more, visit us at MissionSunlight.org. And if you want to give, you can click donate there.
(01:15):
Thank you in advance for whatever you're led to give your prayers, your money or any combination of these.
We're truly grateful for you. We appreciate whatever you would like to do for this work.
Now, just one more thing before we get into today's program. We need to grow.
We want to touch more lives for Jesus to share the story of Jesus, to spread the truth as it is in Jesus.
(01:36):
So please, if you can give your time, if you can't give your time, you can't give your prayers, you can't give monies, would you please please share the link to today's program?
Send it to a friend. Send it to an enemy. Posted on your social media. Text it to a friend right now.
Even snail mail if you want. Share Mission Sunlight Chat today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
(01:59):
And again, welcome to our guest, Dr. Stephen Gravner. I'm just going to call you Stephen.
That's perfectly good. Stephen, will you open us with a word of prayer as we begin?
Yeah, it'd be my privilege, Christopher. Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity to talk about how you transform lives, how you call us into service,
(02:20):
how you use each one of us, and we invite your presence to be with us.
And we pray for all the listeners that something shared today would touch their hearts as well. In Jesus name. Amen.
Amen. Thank you, Stephen. And thank you for joining us today. My privilege.
I appreciate you sharing your time with I really didn't think about this as being the world headquarters, so I'm really honored to be here.
(02:43):
Well, we're talking to two individuals in ministry. I don't want to say leaders because some people are just everyday missionaries.
And you have been a leader in ministries around the globe. And yet today you're I would say you're just a sidewalk missionary,
(03:08):
just meeting people here in our community. And I'm sure I've met with you before through Zoom and so forth.
But your your experience has been broad and not to diminish it, but rather simple as well, depending on where you are.
And so I like that flavor of experience you bring. So before I get ahead of saying too much about the experience you bring,
(03:32):
tell us a little bit about about yourself. Tell us about your present. What are you doing?
But then about your family, your work, your business. Well, my family is totally fantastic, tremendously loving and supportive wife.
Three kids, two of them are married, six grandkids. Totally fantastic time and really amazing.
We all like to be together for periods of time, but it's it's really great.
(03:57):
So I'm so I like to hear you mention the six grandkids because I have a couple and I have a couple more on the way.
So I'm pretty excited. I'm not going to get to six this year. Just four. It's it's amazing. Totally.
That's right. They're a lot of fun. So I've got the one more child that means to get married and have kids.
But yeah, so about three years ago, I stepped out of my full time employment, which actually was a couple of major jobs.
(04:27):
I was president of a nonprofit organization called Outpost Centers International,
where we served and networked about 200 ministries in about 85 different countries.
So that involved a lot of leadership training, coaching, a lot of travel.
And I was also a pastor of the church. And three years ago, I stepped out of that.
(04:50):
And now I do leadership coaching. Pretty much.
That's my main focus with some writing that I'm doing as well.
So you were a layman kind of doing double time.
Well, actually, I'm an ordained minister. And so I went I had been a pastor for many years,
(05:13):
took a break when my family and I moved to Africa and then came back.
And then we started a church plant and I was, quote, the lay leader, but actually an ordained minister.
So when your family went to Africa, are you saying you went there to serve as an ordained minister?
I went as a mission director for a project. And when I was there,
(05:35):
I was given my local credentials from the local conference and did a lot of baptisms and had a district that I oversaw as well.
Where was that?
A country of Zambia. Great place. Very friendly people.
So that was when you worked with Riverside Farm.
That's correct. I was the director of Riverside Farm for just under 10 years.
So is that always a ordained minister position?
(05:57):
No, no, no. I was actually the first director who was also an ordained minister.
So a little unusual. Very much unusual. And that's part of my background is
I grew up in a Jewish family and had a conversion when I was in my 20s.
And at that point, I was involved in lay ministry where I felt like I was called to get involved.
(06:25):
And then later on, I went to school and I became an ordained minister and eventually got my doctorate in theology.
With Mission Sunlight, Jordan and I have had a slightly different perspective and experiences with mission work.
Jordan also has been a missionary with his family living in where were you, Jordan?
We were in the Congo.
(06:46):
OK. Which one? I can't remember.
The Republic of Congo.
OK. Is that Kinshasa or?
Brazzaville.
Brazzaville. OK. Remembering your experience there too.
It's a unique experience to work in Africa. Different culture, different, just different.
Lots of different dynamics. And Congo is very different than Zambia.
(07:11):
OK. So you you find yourself do you consider yourself retired now in the work you're doing?
No, goodness, no. Self-employed is the word I'm still using.
Tell me about the work you're doing. What's it called?
And my organization is Percepta Perceptor Leadership Coaching.
(07:34):
So I do coaching for pastors, ministry leaders, organizations. I work with organizations to develop OKRs, objectives, and then key results to help them move forward.
And personality assessments, 360 evaluations for a variety of different leaders.
(07:55):
OK. How broad is that scope? Are we talking global? Are we talking here in the local Chattanooga area?
So I have had overseas pay overseas clients, leaders of ministries that were involved with OCI, quite a number of them overseas.
Currently, most everybody's in the United States. Currently, everybody is in the United States.
(08:18):
OK. Actually, except for one person who wrote me this morning from Zimbabwe.
What are some of your favorite aspects of the work you're doing? What drives you?
So I look I look at what I'm doing as being an electrician or like an electrician to help people rewire their brains so that their lives are more impactful and fulfilling.
(08:41):
And to to help people do that rewiring in a conversation, you can see when somebody gets like, oh, I never thought of that before.
So they get one of those aha moments and they look off to the side and they're really trying to figure something out and then something clicks.
That's tremendously rewarding.
(09:04):
And to see leaders, I had a leader that I have a leader that I'm coaching who took something that came out of our recent experience and texted me a couple of days later said, you know,
I have the same problem with this other leader as I do with my daughter, and now I'm applying the solution with my daughter and it's making an amazing difference.
(09:26):
It's kind of personality issues. So it's just tremendously rewarding to see people move forward and to realize more of what their thinking is.
Full disclosure, you and I have done some coaching together as well.
But it's neat to hear about that one leader with kind of the double aha moment of the double application of the principles they're learning and perceptive.
(09:50):
That's great. I know you don't just do lay ministries.
I know you don't just do coaching. I know you don't just do pastoring.
You and I have talked about some of your worldwide outdoor adventures. You're not afraid of getting outside.
So what are some of your hobbies? What do you like to do when you get out?
Biking, a little less hiking now than I'm used to.
(10:14):
Kayaking, actually, this summer we were supposed to be kayaking the inside passage, which goes from the Alaska-Canada border up to the till you run out of water in Alaska.
Unfortunately, some things came up and we had to postpone the trip till next year.
But so that's on the docket for next summer, hopefully.
And that's not just your traditional kayak.
(10:36):
It's about 24 days, pretty much self-contained. Not entirely. There are some small towns.
Re-stock along the way. And you have to have a different kind of kayak for that kind of work.
Yeah, I have a 17-foot sea kayak.
Maybe we'll get out and see that sometime.
All right. Anything more about your family, you and your wife. Your wife's been along on this journey.
(11:02):
She has. She retired early. She retired when COVID hit and she loves it.
One of her real strengths is helping people.
So she's able to take lots of chunks of time and go help some of her friends.
Well, Stephen, thank you for sharing that part. We're going to take a break.
(11:25):
Just a reminder to our audience, you can visit missionsunlight.org.
It's a place where you can learn more and you may give there, too.
And I want to remind you, share the link to today's program or the entire show podcast platform with a friend.
You can do that by text, social media, even by email.
Take a moment right now during the break and share it with someone.
We'll be right back with more Mission Sunlight Chat.
(12:14):
Welcome back to Mission Sunlight Chat.
(12:39):
Our guest today, Dr. Stephen Gravner from Percept leadership, Percepta leadership coaching.
Thank you for getting that straight. Percepta leadership coaching and Jordan Wagner, our engineer today.
Stephen, tell us a bit about how you got here. You've described your life and experiences today.
How did you get here? What were your experiences growing up? Your influences?
(13:02):
Just give us a little picture of your journey.
So as I briefly mentioned earlier, I grew up in a Jewish family.
I was bar mitzvahed, went to Hebrew school, had a tragedy when I was young.
My father passed away when I was 10.
And so it really impacted my life and picture of God.
So in my teenage years after my bar mitzvah, oh, it was the 60s and 70s.
(13:27):
And we got into the lifestyle that was there, a lot of experimentation with drugs.
And then when I was in my early 20s, had a situation where three, it's hard to even call them prayers,
but they were like thought prayers, like, OK, God, if you're there, do this.
(13:53):
And the three were I had a girlfriend who was an atheist.
I said, OK, God, if you're real, work in her heart. That seemed safe and distant.
And secondly, I prayed, I just want to know if Jesus is the way, the truth and life.
I need to change my life.
And the third prayer had to do with an article that someone shared about Orion's nebula.
(14:20):
So I was with some friends. It was Christmas Day.
Everybody was imbibing of some illegal substance.
I wasn't because I had a sore throat.
And on the way home, my girlfriend started asking, why would Christ hate Satan?
And then before I could give any kind of an answer that I'd learned from my other friends,
(14:45):
she started talking about the war in heaven and just opened up like, oh, yeah, there was this war in heaven.
And Satan was jealous. And I just had like chills.
Then we got back to my house and I started sharing something that my Christian friends had shared with me about Daniel nine.
(15:06):
And as we walked through it, it was just clicked.
Canaan Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Sanctuary Service, Isaiah 53, Daniel nine, Jesus as the Messiah.
And I surrendered.
Just went to bed that night, surrendered, woke up the next morning really excited.
(15:27):
I couldn't remember what I was excited about. But then I realized, oh, yeah, Jesus is the Messiah.
And my life took a dramatic change ever since then.
So the Holy Spirit studied you right into it.
Yeah. And I'm the kind of person that would study things out when people would tell them to me.
So I did a lot of research. I kept studying with my friends and with other people.
(15:52):
And obviously, the Sabbath was very clear to me because I had grown up Jewish.
I found a tract many years ago that talked about what happened when people die.
And I used to use that in arguments with other Christians that death was like a sleep.
And everything fell together for me.
(16:14):
Wow.
Growing up Jewish, were you practicing pretty consistently?
So we were reformed. We would go to temple on holidays.
When I was younger, my mom would ship me off to synagogue on Sabbath.
But she wouldn't come. But she made sure I went.
(16:36):
And I went to Hebrew school Sunday afternoons and Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons as well.
And I remember jumping forward to your early 20s, this young lady that began to discuss theology.
That's not my wife.
So get us there.
So through my conversion, I knew that Jesus was the Messiah.
(16:57):
I knew that Saturday was the Sabbath. And I figured he must have a people someplace.
I had some friends that were Seventh-day Adventists.
And I moved away to a college and studied with a dozen religious groups.
And my two tape measures that I would compare everything to were the Sabbath and what happens when a person dies.
(17:21):
And I just became convinced that Seventh-day Adventists had the clearest understanding of Scripture.
So eventually I was baptized out there, began to work in ministry,
and eventually was led to work in a restaurant in New York City, 48th or any place, vegetarian vegan restaurant downtown near Wall Street.
(17:42):
And my wife came down there to work. She was a great cook, very modest and helpful.
And we got married.
Was she raised a Seventh-day Advent?
She has been.
So her journey was totally different than yours.
Totally different and still is.
Wow, that's powerful.
(18:04):
And so how do you end up pastoring in the Seventh-day Adventist Church?
So I was involved in restaurant ministry for quite a number of years.
We ran a restaurant, three restaurants in New York City.
And then we moved to the Boston area to help start another restaurant.
(18:27):
And while there, the Conference Evangelist asked me to help him raise up churches.
And so working with him, I began pastoring one of those churches.
And that's when I finished my bachelor's.
And then I got a call to the ministry.
And that's when I finished my master's, went to Yale University, which was a bit of a drive from where I was pastoring.
(18:51):
And then ultimately, as I said, I got a doctorate in theology and the Book of Revelation.
Okay. And then the jump from Boston to Zambia?
So I got called to be a pastor.
And while I was pastoring, a friend of mine had been in Zambia and asked me if I would consider coming.
(19:14):
And years ago, years previously rather, I had made a list of things I want my family to experience.
And one of those things was I wanted my children to have the opportunity to grow up in a third world in another country for their own breadth of experience.
(19:36):
And so my wife and I went over for a visit and loved it and packed up the family and moved over.
Remind me what the makeup of your family is.
So I have a daughter that's the oldest.
And she lives in Arizona.
She lives in Arizona, her and her husband and their two kids.
Pardon me.
(19:57):
And it was most difficult for her.
And then I had the second child as a son, and he was raring to go.
And then the third child is the youngest.
And he what did he care?
Because he was just four or five.
They probably had the idea that there were, I don't know, monkeys and giraffes in Africa.
(20:21):
So that'd be for lions and.
And so he lived there until he was like 14.
So he's very fluent in the local language and very acculturated.
Are the both boys here in the Chattanooga area?
No, one's in Chicago.
The younger ones in Chicago.
Well, that's a jungle, too.
That's a different.
You have totally different last night.
He lives in a nice area.
(20:42):
Yeah, good.
So what else can you tell us about your journey?
What is there a story or something that you can share that was specifically to your ministry?
Two. Two interesting stories, if I can.
Neither one of them are glitzy.
I was doing Bible work for the Conference Evangelist and was kind of just wrestling with my call.
(21:10):
And so I remember praying, Lord, you know, give me success or get me out of this.
And that week I had seven Bible studies going that week.
Every one of the Bible studies told me they didn't want to study any longer.
So I just prayed, give me success or get me out of this.
And then that week they all canceled.
(21:32):
And, you know, I was just confronted with, oh, is this an answer to prayer?
And then I thought, you know, God's not going to answer that prayer by having people turn away from him.
And so I stuck with it and the Lord's blessed my ministry in lots of different ways.
So it gave you some sense of understanding God's character.
(21:55):
Things don't always go smoothly.
You know, you could pray for smoothness, but just because you hit a rough patch doesn't mean God's not still working.
It doesn't mean it's not part of God's plan.
So that was a lesson there.
And then later on in my ministry, I would imagine this happens to every pastor, probably a lot of Christians,
(22:19):
where I was struggling internally.
It was difficult to pray. It was difficult to study.
And I remember taking a shower and this thought really came distinctly to my head
that God is more interested in saving me than I wasn't being saved and just trust him.
(22:43):
And I didn't have to manufacture anything.
I could just trust him.
And obviously he got me through that period as well.
I've had lots of other nice stories, 400 people baptized and, you know, things of that nature.
Churches raised up through evangelistic series.
But those were two very particularly meaningful ones for me.
(23:08):
Okay.
We're going to take a break again.
Come back.
I want you to tell a little bit maybe how you would encourage others and give us a little bit of what your dreams,
what your hopes are and how you might encourage others to move forward with God at the center of their hopes and dreams as well.
(23:33):
We certainly hope you've been encouraged and blessed by listening to the program today.
We have more to come, but we need to take a break.
Remember, you can give it mission sunlight dot org and you can share this program with anyone right now.
Thanks for doing both or either.
We'll be back with more mission sunlight chat.
(24:00):
Our salvation is a day to day matter, isn't it?
The real principle of the Sabbath is reconnecting ourselves with the Creator.
We must learn to abide in Jesus' name.
We move ahead with our mission objectives, recognizing that we are serving together the Most High God.
(24:37):
Welcome back to mission sunlight chat.
We are talking to founder of Percepta Leadership Coaching, Dr. Stephen Grabner.
Stephen, thanks for being with us.
Our engineer Jordan Wagner is with us today.
Jordan, as you've been listening, if you've got anything you want to ask or jump in with, be glad to hear from you as well.
Stephen, you talked a bit about where you are today and your history, how you got here.
(25:05):
Where do you want to go?
What are your dreams, your hopes?
Do you have any hard plans of forward motion for you, your family, your ministry?
Just what's ahead?
Well, several can go in several different directions.
Obviously, with my ministry, the great desire there is to help leaders learn some lessons that a lot of leaders don't learn until much later in life.
(25:39):
I don't know if that's really even a possibility, but at least to give them the opportunity to hear, to challenge their thinking, and to perhaps try new ways of changing.
One of the great problems with leaders is that we're painfully unaware of our own habits, we're unaware of our own tendencies, so we continue to make the same mistakes.
(26:13):
And so helping leaders become aware is really important.
And I suppose it's important to me because I've been through with many organizations where the leadership failed and it wrought havoc in people's lives and in the ministry and large collateral damage.
(26:39):
So that's a particular concern for me.
Thanks for sharing that.
Can you give our listeners and our viewers a final challenge to things they're wrestling with and considering in just day to day sidewalk ministry, whatever they might be doing?
What would you share with them?
(27:00):
Well, one thing that comes to my mind, the first thing that comes to my mind is don't be afraid to walk into situations that might intimidate you, that you might not feel you belong in.
I know myself and lots of leaders have, individuals have held back from thinking, oh, that's not for me or I don't belong in that room or something like that.
(27:30):
And don't let that mindset keep somebody back.
But move forward.
And as it says in Scripture, you don't know what's going to prosper this or that.
So have the confidence that God's leading and step forward.
Yes, there's certainly a place for becoming equipped.
(27:54):
But even when we become very equipped, there's this tendency called the imposter syndrome where we feel like we're just a fake.
And if everybody knew how just a fake we were, you know, we'd be exposed.
Nobody would trust us or want us a part of their.
The truth of the matter is almost everybody suffers from that.
(28:18):
We're all struggling.
You know, we're all in the same boat. We're all part of the fallen humanity.
If somebody has more talents than you do, praise the Lord for the gifts and skills that they have.
But you have gifts and skills as well.
And so to utilize those gifts and skills as God gives you opportunity is a very strong opportunity for fruitful ministry.
(28:47):
So don't give up.
Don't give up and keep moving forward.
Don't hesitate to go into rooms you feel you're not qualified to be in.
But go in there and see what God's going to do.
Once I was going through a tremendous struggle, I remember my father gave me the advice of keep moving, Christopher.
God can turn you to the right of the left as long as you're moving.
(29:10):
You're moving. That's exactly right.
Jordan, any closing thoughts for our program today before we wrap up?
I'm reminded of something that I recently saw that said that when God calls us, he doesn't call us with who we think we are.
But he takes into account who we think we are and he equips us with what we need to do to do what God calls us to do even before we think we can do it.
(29:33):
So I think that's important to remember to go along with that.
And if we move in him, then he'll he'll equip us and he'll move us to where we need to be.
He is the great equipper.
And the great caller. Yes.
And faithful is he who has promised this and he will do it.
Let's have a word of prayer and then we'll wrap up the program.
(29:54):
Father in heaven, thank you so much for the time with Stephen with Jordan and hearing this word of encouragement.
People everywhere every day just need to know that they they're called every one of us and that they'll find the encouragement of the equipping of the Holy Spirit and find it through other lay people like them.
Thank you for hearing our program and hearing our prayer and please bless whoever is listening right now that might just need to have that encouragement from your throne of grace.
(30:21):
We praise you and honor you for all that you've done and for the opportunity to share with missions and my chat in Jesus name.
Amen. Amen.
That's today's program from the media missionaries of Network Seven Media Center.
This has been Mission Sunlight Chat with our guest Dr.
Stephen Grabner. I'm Christopher Beason, your host and again today's engineer, our director of production, Jordan Wagner.
We thank you for joining us. We thank you for sharing our show with your friends via text, email and on your social media platforms.
(30:48):
We also thank you for your gifts and your prayers, especially, especially your prayers.
That's all today from our studios in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
This is Mission Sunlight Chat.
(31:26):
Thank you.
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