Derek Head

Derek Head is the head pastor of Riverwind Church in Newburgh, IN. In this interview we discuss his testimony, spiritual warfare against pastors, the importance of sabbaticals, what good community looks like, and more.

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This episode was recorded on September 5, 2025.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
All right, I'm here today with Derek Head, the head pastor at
Riverwind Church in Newburgh, IN.
And yeah, so if you just want tothere's any more introduction
that you feel like you need to give yourself, I mean, just jump
straight into your testimony. Yeah.
Thank you, Gunner, for taking the time with me here.

(00:21):
So I guess just starting off with how I got to where I am
today, it was, it's a little bitof an unorthodox story.
I was a, an atheist, a pretty avowed atheist until I was 25.
And so I was one of those that thought, you know, Christians

(00:45):
are scared people. They, they need, they need some
invisible deity to make them feel better about their lives or
to make them feel better about what happens after they die.
And that truly strong people or intellectual people would never

(01:06):
commit the intellectual suicide that it would take to believe in
some imaginary God. And so I made that pretty clear
to my friends. I made it clear at school.
There was at one point a girl inhigh school that I openly shamed
in front of a bunch of other people for standing up for what

(01:29):
she believed in. Which now I find remarkable that
a girl at 16 years old had the courage to stand up to somebody
like me who would embarrass her in front of a class full of
people. But obviously, as an atheist, I
didn't really have any answers to the really important

(01:52):
questions of life. And it doesn't take long.
You don't have to be very old for to discover how how
purposeless life really is without some transcendent
meaning, some transcendent purpose, something that goes

(02:12):
beyond yourself. And so I began to kind of
wrestle with some of those things.
I had made a series of bad decisions in my life, and I was,
you know, experiencing the fruitof those bad decisions.
And so at one point, kind of at this time period, I'd say I was
2324, I met a girl and her family were Jehovah's Witnesses.

(02:38):
And if I wanted to be with her, I had to begin to attend this
Kingdom Hall, which is their word for a church and, and, and
begin studying with one of theirelders.
And so I was smitten with this girl and I wanted to be with
her. So I was like, yeah, whatever.

(02:58):
OK, I'll do that. And so that went on for about a
year and the relationship soured.
And, and I, I I quickly decided I did not want to observe this
religion. They had all these rules.
You know, it's like you, you can't celebrate a birthday.

(03:21):
You can't celebrate Christmas. You can't.
Yeah. All of these things that I grew
up doing, you know, you, you were not allowed to.
Those were evil things, you know.
And so really what that did was that kind of catapulted me into
this journey of, you know what I'm going to, I'm going to arm

(03:42):
myself with all of the facts. I'm going to study the science
and the archaeology and the history and, and all those
things. I'm going to have an answer for
everything. I'm going to challenge them so
that I can just rest easy knowing, you know, you guys are

(04:03):
wrong. I'm right.
And so, you know, ironically, what happened was the more that
I looked into the science and the more that I looked into the
history, he and the archaeology and all of those things, I had
to come to a place where I had to yield and say, OK, this isn't

(04:25):
quite as open and shut a case asI thought it was going to be.
I mean, I thought disproving theexistence of any God would be
pretty easy considering the scientific advancements and, you
know, all of the, you know, all of the evidence that's out there

(04:45):
supposedly that that does that out.
That's what I was taught in school anyway.
And So what I did when I came tothat point, I was like, man, you
know, I think I have to. I think I actually have to say,
OK, there must be a God. There was no, there was no

(05:08):
sufficient or even agreed upon answer as to the basic number
one question. What's the number one question?
How did it start? I mean, no one has an answer for
that, but there's there's all ofthese theories, but still no one
has been able to demonstrate it with any kind of consistency.

(05:32):
How it started And so when I began to kind of look into those
things, I said, OK, maybe I haveto come to a place where I
affirm there is a God. And that actually really made me
angry because then you begin to have to ask another question

(05:55):
because the follow up question, obviously, if if there is a God,
then who is he, right. And now I could study history
and science and all of those things to come to the conclusion
that there must be or there's more most likely a God.
But how in the world would I engage in a study that would

(06:18):
tell me which God is the true God?
You know, that's not something that's verifiable by the
scientific method. And there's a lot of them, yes,
and there's a lot of them. So, so it was actually one day
and and my life would get, without getting into all the
details, my life had kind of really gone down the toilet by

(06:41):
this point. I was experiencing all kinds of
consequences of bad decisions that were made.
And so this is simultaneously going on and remember coming to
this point where I thought, OK, this is ridiculous.
And I I was, I was driving on myway to work one day.

(07:05):
And as I was driving, there was a guy that was coming off of a
merge lane next to me. And I didn't think anything of
it. But at that time, I was just
kind of in the height of my frustration and my anger in this
moment. And I actually audibly spoke

(07:28):
out, kind of yelled out in my car, God, if you are so powerful
that you can create galaxies andsolar systems and you can do all
of these things, why can you nottell me who you are?
And right at that moment, this car that had been traveling next

(07:50):
to me suddenly swerves into my lane of traffic, so much so that
I have to slam the brakes on to avoid hitting him.
Well, I get pretty close. I get pretty close, like within,
you know, a couple of feet of his back bumper.
And that was close enough to seewhat was just right in front of

(08:10):
me on his bumper. He has this bumper sticker.
And it says Jesus is Lord Now you know, I have seen that
bumper sticker my whole life, right?
But the timing of that moment, no sooner had that plea to God
left my lips that this all of a sudden event happens just out of

(08:33):
nowhere. And at that moment, I really,
tears actually just began to fill my eyes and, and, and I
said, I think God really just spoke to me.
I think God actually is powerfulenough to answer that question.
And he's just proven it to me byseeing this this happen.

(08:57):
And so that day I'm just really kind of shaken up.
And right after work that day, Idecide to go to a bookstore and
and I picked up an old King James Version of the Bible.
And I decided, you know what, I'm going to take this home and
I'm going to just start reading it and, and see what it says.

(09:22):
And, you know, I had read a version of the Bible with the
Jehovah's Witnesses. They have their own translation
of the Bible where they've changed keywords and phrases to
match their theology. So would you consider that not
the Bible? I would consider that not the
Bible. That is that is a a work of men

(09:43):
that has been twisted from God'sword.
And and you know, the example I found was immediately when I got
home that day and I don't know why I open to the book of John,
but that is where I decided to start reading.
So I open to the book of John and I see John 11 and it says in

(10:06):
the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the
word was God. And and immediately that just
smacked me in the face because Ihad read that verse in the New
World translation. That's the translation of the
Jehovah's Witnesses. And that verse reads in the

(10:29):
beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word
was a God lowercase G and and sowhen I saw this and I and I saw
that the word was in the beginning already existing.
He's also with God in some mysterious way, but is God.

(10:52):
And then you go down to verse 14.
You see that it is this word whoput on flesh and dwelt among us.
Suddenly it was by the time I had reached verse 14, it was it
was something clicked that it was like the lights had been
turned on and all of a sudden I couldn't explain how I knew it,

(11:16):
but I just knew that everything in the universe revolves around
the person of Jesus Christ. I didn't have any other anything
else to go off of. The 1st 14 verses of the book of
John was what I needed to know that that everything in the
world, everything in the universe revolves around the

(11:36):
person of Jesus Christ. It's all about him and that from
that point forward, I just couldn't get enough of his word.
I read for hours and hours and hours, days and days and days.
I even, I was a graphic designer.
So I had this big computer monitor and, and so it was big
enough that I could, on one side, I could have like the,

(11:58):
the, the work I was doing. And then on the other side, I
got to have like Bible gateway open and, and have the
scriptures. I just couldn't stop reading the
scriptures. I mean that it was like there
was this hunger and this thirst in me that couldn't be quenched.
And I just wanted to know more and more and more and more.
So that began the journey for meat age 25.

(12:19):
And that was October of 2003 when that happened.
And, and, and, and it was from that point also that I said, you
know, like everything that I wanted to do with my life, if
this book is true, I just want to spend the rest of my life
declaring these truths. And so that was kind of like

(12:41):
that was a major turning point in my life.
And I began to pursue study after some years after that in
and start Bible college and go through all the courses and then
found myself in ministry and then then eventually a senior
pastor position here at Riverwind.
So that's kind of the long and short of it.

(13:05):
Oh, that's a great. I've always really enjoyed
listening to your testimonies. And it also was just so
interesting is like how God, because on every episode I have
the my guest share their testimony and so I get to see a
lot of different ones. And it's, it's so fascinating to
me how God will, how many different ways God reaches out

(13:26):
to people just depending on thatperson's personality or how they
perceive the word world. Like, like for you, like a lot
of it came down to like logic and, and facts and like looking
at history and science. And I was, I was curious, like,
do you remember anything specifically about the science
or the history that you looked at that that convinced you that
there was a God? You know, I, I would say that it

(13:48):
was almost a like a combination of, of, of scientific facts that
that kind of built up and compounded upon one another.
You know, when I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm looking at, you know, the
age of the universe and the, the, the, the, the travel of the

(14:09):
speed of light and then the, the, the age of the earth and
how there were these inconsistencies and some of the
shortcomings of popular dating methods and things like that.
I mean, I just, I was always taught that all of this was
quote settled science. And and when you see that, that

(14:31):
there are people, believe it or not within their own field that
disagree with major portions of what we are taught in school is
scientific fact. That is that to me was like, Oh,
well, so you guys don't even agree, you know, and then when
when you look at all of the problems with evolution and

(14:58):
what, what they call abiogenesis, you know, where how
can non life produce life? And in the fact that the fact is
that that hasn't, there is no working theory on how that can
realistically take place. And so it was it was kind of a
combination of all of those things together.

(15:20):
When I was like, wait, there's awhole lot of holes in this.
I thought this was open and shut.
You know, I, I thought all I gotto do is assemble my facts and
I'll be able to debate all of these, you know, believers.
But that was not what I found atall.
And if there were someone listening who is who's like

(15:41):
either a non believer or they'rea believer who's maybe having
some doubts, which isn't a bad thing.
There's difference between a doubter and a skeptic, but
that's a whole nother. I'm getting to the point where I
can say I talked about this on the show before but I don't know
which episode it's on. But I feel like I talked about
that before Doubter and skeptics, but like, if there's

(16:03):
someone who's interested in looking at this stuff, where
would be a good place to start? Yeah, you know, I would.
I always tell people that whenever you are really
seriously going into the study of any subject, you need to be
willing #1 before you ever crackthe spine of a book, you need to
be willing to say I am going to try to put aside all of my

(16:27):
biases. Now, of course, for us as human
beings, that's wholly impossible.
But if you can go into a study of a subject with the, you know,
with the understanding that, youknow, hey, what I believe right
now might be wrong. And, and I'm willing to accept

(16:48):
that if that's the way the evidence points, then you are at
least going to be open enough to, to, to, to, to have your
mind changed. You know, so whenever I started
studying and, and another thing that I tell people, so put your
biases aside. The other thing is, you know,

(17:10):
make sure that when, when you stand on an issue, that you know
enough about what the other sidebelieves that, that you could
make an argument for or against either.
And and so, you know, read the bet, read, read Darwin's Origin

(17:31):
of Species, you know, read that,try to understand what he's
saying, how some of that, you know, maybe beyond our
intellectual capacities, but butbut understand what it says.
And then go read the best of what some of the, you know,
current scholarship on the creationist side is teaching.

(17:53):
Because there are very compelling arguments that are
coming out of some very, very well educated people.
Somebody I'd been introduced to,and I think I just stumbled upon
him, but Doctor James Tour, Harvard professor, he speaks to
many of these things. So this is specifically the

(18:15):
problem biologically of life, you know, being coming from
nothing, from non life. And it you can, you can find
1000 reels on Facebook or Instagram of, of just some
little snippets of some things that that Doctor James Tour is

(18:36):
saying. And and he makes some compelling
arguments in the other direction.
So I would say we have a wealth of information out there,
whether it's, you know, on social media or online or in
books. Just research enough to know
who's the best on both sides andgo go into it with an open mind.

(18:57):
Yeah. And so which one makes more
sense? And so now that you're a
Christian and you know the truth, you know that you know
the truth, you still go into like reading a, a secular book
or a that's embarrassing. I got to turn this off.
We'll just do it again in 10 minutes.

(19:19):
You still go into reading a a sacred book or a book from a
different world view with an open mind.
Yeah, yeah. You know, I would say probably,
yeah, I want to approach everything from as objective a
standard as I can. Yet when when it has been proven

(19:41):
to me time and time again, it makes it easier to see.
I have yet to encounter anythingthat doesn't doesn't further
confirm what I believe now. And, and so that is, you know,
hey, so that's kind of the, that's the advantage.
But also, you know, maybe from objectivity standpoint, also a

(20:04):
disadvantage of, of knowing the truth.
You are, you're, you are less likely to be swayed by others
arguments, which people may charge you with being biased
when you, you come to that place.
But you know, hey there, there really is actually only one
truth, you know. Despite what our culture wants

(20:27):
to say today about, you know, truth being relative and her
truth and his truth and your truth and my truth, there really
actually is only one truth and all evidence points to that.
If you have. If you.
If you are. If you are evaluating the
evidence from the proper worldview.
Yeah, Lecrae said once in a song.

(20:50):
If, like if we all have our own truth, What if my truth says
your truth is wrong? Right.
You said it way more poetic thanthat.
Yeah, right. And that's, yeah.
The great inconsistency and irony of the atheistic worldview
or the secular worldview is theythey have nothing to stand on.
It is it is feet planted firmly in thin air.

(21:13):
You know, there there is nothingelse that that there is no
objective truth that you can stand on to make any kind of
objective statement whatsoever. So you can make a statement like
that, but it ends up being self contradictory, right?
You know, there is no truth. Well, if that's true, then

(21:35):
that's not true. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, something I found just since I've become a Christian
because I, I like reading and and doing research and I'm a big
history buff, is whenever I I'm looking into something that is
from not a Christian worldview, from whether it's secular or
from another religion, going into it with an open mind and

(22:00):
then also looking at the Bible and what the Bible has to say
about it and other Christian thinkers.
I mean, every time it just like you're saying, it just further
confirms what the Bible has to say, right.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, once you
once you know the truth, once you begin to see the world
through a biblical lens with, you know, with a biblical

(22:23):
worldview which we will be developing our entire lives
because there's God is infinite,then we can't know all his ways.
You begin to look at alternativeopinions and, and, and writings
through that same lens. And, and you're able to, I think

(22:47):
rather than going in saying, I'mgoing to see if this person can
change my mind, really what you do is I think we're more going
into that go and saying, I want to seek to understand their
viewpoint because that's really,that's really where we can see
how can I, you know, for, for other people that are influenced

(23:09):
by this teaching or this writing, how can I understand
where they are? That is going to aid us in our
attempt to help them to see the truth, if we can address them on
their level. So I think that's the real value
of, of looking at these things written by unbelievers,

(23:31):
especially things that are extremely popular.
I even go so far as, like, TV shows, you know, that are
extremely popular today. What's the world view that
undergirds the main narrative ofthat TV show?
That helps me understand the wayculture is thinking about

(23:52):
things. And if I know that, then I can
identify those bridges to the gospel in my conversations with
them. So I think there's value in
that. Yeah, absolutely.
And like you were saying about like it's important to know what
the other people are thinking, like what their arguments are
going to be. Just like like I'm a big fan of
debate and any any time you're in a debate class, it like if

(24:15):
you're in a serious debate classor debate club or whatever, you
don't get to pick whether you defeat whether you're for the
topic or against. Like if the topic is or if the I
think it's called topic. It's been a little bit, but if
it's like we should replace our coal power plants with nuclear
power plants, it doesn't matter whether you agree with that or

(24:36):
not. You're going to get assigned to
one side or another. So you can learn to thin both
sides. And an important part of having
a good argument is knowing what the other side's going to say.
And you know, Robert Albert Mohler?
Yeah, Yeah. He, I went to a college visit to
Boyce College in Louisville, andwe got to take a tour of his

(25:00):
house while we were there, whichwas pretty.
Cool. And his basement, he has a
massive basement and it is full of books, floor to ceiling
books, like they're on the bookshelves and like covering
the stairs. He's got a personal librarian,
which is, is in the basement. It's like that's their job.
Yeah, that's their like one job is to to take care of his

(25:20):
personal library. That's amazing.
I like, I can like it's got to be 10s of thousands of books and
most of them aren't from a Christian world to most of them
are like there's plenty about Christianity and there's a lot
of Bibles in there, but most of them are like from other
people's world views. And he said they're the personal
library was telling us like he hasn't read through all of these

(25:42):
books, but he's read at least a part of all of them.
And you can point out any of them and he could tell you about
each book. And so he, he just takes in all
this knowledge and you listen tohis podcaster, you listen to him
speak and he just super smart guy, super knowledgeable and he
just soaks in all his knowledge.And, and so he knows like he can
come at things from multiple sizes.

(26:03):
He knows all different sizes. Yeah, and that's what he knows,
what he's talking. About yeah, that's something he
talks about. He's like, you got to know what
the enemy's thinking. Yeah, Yeah, that's right.
That's right. Yeah.
I think too often we would settle for building straw men,
you know, caricatures of anotherworldview.
And and that's, that's easier todebate, that's easier to debunk.

(26:26):
And I think it's Christians who follow the God who is truth.
Our primary aim in all of our interactions, especially with
the unbelieving world, is that we represent him well.
We represent the truth well. And that means even if we are
arguing for the truth, we also must engage with the truth of

(26:51):
their belief. You know, we can't, we can't
make up some, you know, easier to debunk imitation of what they
believe. We have to, we have to really
dig in and do the work. And I think sadly, you know, I,
I don't think that there's a lotof Christians today who want to

(27:12):
invest that much time in it. And that's, that's really, I
think something where we've maybe lost our way a little bit
in contemporary American Christianity is, and we have
fallen into, I think what is represented by the larger
culture that we really kind of just want someone to tell us

(27:34):
what to say and tell us what to believe rather than going and
doing the hard work of, of, of researching and studying and
knowing it for ourselves. And I think that's a detriment
to, you know, the way that we engage with the world.
Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of complacency

(27:55):
there because it's where we're at in society and and in America
it's it's easy to just sit at home with your own people and
not worry about the rest of the world.
Right. I mean, even look at look at the
way that social media is, you know, set up.
I mean, I can just, if someone has a viewpoint that I don't

(28:16):
agree with, like I can just hit the ignore button or unfollow
button and and then, you know, this algorithm picks up what my
preferences are and then I'm only going to see what I already
agree with. And I think that teaches us that
that that kind of lulls us into a, an intellectual laziness.

(28:38):
And, and I think that's a, that's a formidable enemy in
today's culture that we, we haveto fight.
Want to shift a little bit, How do you use this idea of like
knowing what the what other people have to say about a
certain topic and just being informed of all, all the
different arguments? Whenever you're like writing a

(29:00):
sermon, you're doing other pastoral duties.
Yeah. You know, I think that one of
the things that that a good sermon needs to include is it
needs to be able to obviously understand the text as it was
intended to the original audience.
Because once we understand what it meant in its original

(29:21):
context, then we can begin to accurately pick out those
principles, those timeless principles that still apply to
us 2000 years later. And then how do you take those
principles and then kind of evaluate those or, or practice
those in, in our contemporary context?

(29:44):
And so, so a lot of my sermons contain, you know, will, I will
talk openly about, you know, thesocialism and Marxism and
homosexuality and abortion and transgenderism and all of those
things that are kind of the hot button topics of the day.
And I don't bring those up just to be, you know, provocative.

(30:08):
I bring those up because that isthe context that we are living
in. And Christians need to
understand how to answer those things.
What is the proper way to see this?
I've just seen too many Christians, I've seen too many
churches kind of bend the knee to the cultural narrative and
just just swallow what's being put out there in the name of

(30:32):
compassion and empathy and things like that, that that are
good in and of themselves. But they become weaponized when
they're used to tell a Christian, what if you don't
endorse this view? Then you aren't loving your
neighbor. You know, if, if you don't agree

(30:53):
with this lifestyle, well then you, you are a hateful bigot.
You know, those, those are the things that Christians kind of
we shrink back away from those things.
We don't want to be seen like that.
And so we try to, we try to justlove people without telling them

(31:15):
the truth. And, you know, that's not what
we are told to do. We are told to actually share
the truth in love to the world around us.
So it's finding out how to speakthe truth, but to do so in a way
that is gentle and respectful without endorsing, you know,

(31:35):
those those policies or lifestyles or agendas that go
along with them. Yeah, I think what you're
saying, truth and love is another one of those areas that
if you take either truth to the extreme or love to the extreme,
you've gotten into a ditch whereyou're falling into sin.
Absolutely, while trying to do agood thing a lot of times.

(31:56):
But if you've got too much love without the truth, then you're
not. I mean, they don't have the
truth and they're not being saved.
You get too much truth without the love, then you're could be
being harsh and they're not going to want to listen.
Then they're not being saved. Yeah, and you know, both sides
of those, both, both ditches that you could end up in make
your words meaningless. Yeah, absolutely.

(32:17):
You know, if it's all love and no truth, your words are
meaningless. If it's all truth and no love,
they're not going to listen to you.
So your words end up being meaningless, you know?
So yeah, it is, I think, the constant aim of a Christian to
walk that balance between truth and love and not compromise on
either of those. Yeah, absolutely.

(32:38):
And just following that about you being a pastor, I've had a
few pastors on the show and and it's always kind of difficult
for me not to ask the same questions over and over.
Yeah, so I have a question. I don't.
Think I've asked before to me. So, well, yeah, what do you

(32:59):
think is the hardest part of being a faster?
Oh man, I know that's a loaded. Question.
Well, it's a it's interesting toask that question because I just
got back from sabbatical. I just, yeah.
That's why I thought of. It 8 weeks off and, and that was
so it's 8 weeks off after eight years of ministry here.
And boy, I tell you, I didn't realize.

(33:22):
I think I, I knew I needed it, but I didn't realize how much I
needed it. And I, and I think that, you
know, one of the heavy burdens every week is for me.
And I know it may be different for other pastors because I know
that there are varying levels of, of where your emphasis and
your time is. But I've always had I, I think

(33:45):
just born out of a high regard for the truth of God's Word, for
the sanctity of it, for the holiness of his word.
I've wanted to walk into the pulpit every week in fear and
trembling. You know, I, I want, I don't
ever want to forget the fact that I will be held accountable

(34:06):
for every word that comes out ofmy mouth, especially speaking
from that place in a position ofauthority in a church.
And so I spend 20 to 24 hours a week, you know, writing sermons.
And that can feel like that can feel a really heavy burden to

(34:28):
lift every single week. You know, you work so hard on
it, you put so many hours into it, and then you give it on
Sunday. And then the next week it starts
all over again. You know, So that is, that's one
of the really, I think, heavy burdens.
But I want it to be a heavy burden.
I know that I could probably go out there having prepared half

(34:50):
as much as I do, but I I feel like God is worthy of the best
that I have of me being in my study of me, you know, pouring
over the scriptures, studying what others have said about
these passages. But but you know, so, so

(35:12):
sometimes that doesn't work out.I mean, that is that's what I
want to do. That's what most weeks I do.
But there there are emergencies that come up for people.
There are marriages that need someone that to counsel them.
So I would say perhaps the biggest burden of ministry is

(35:35):
every week you do have to preach, but you never know from
one week to the next what's coming.
You know what you're going to, what you're going to have to
encounter. You know what what darkness
you're going to have to battle and that takes a toll on me and

(35:57):
you know, and would have discovered also that takes a
toll on my family, you know, because you can say all day, I
won't take my work home with me.It's just it's there.
You know, I'm trying to shepherdpeople.
I'm trying to love people. I can't stop loving them when I
get home, you know, And so if ifthere's somebody that's in, you

(36:19):
know, a real crisis, it's hard for me not to, you know, not to
think about them when I go home,not to worry about what's going
on with them when I get home. So it's just kind of the
culmination of all of that. And and you know, the way that
that just sometimes that just doesn't relent.
That continues to make you feel just weighed down.

(36:44):
And so it was, it was I didn't stop worrying or stop loving,
you know, the people here while I was on sabbatical.
But we set up a really good system where our elders
shouldered more of those responsibilities, where our
staff members committed to carrying out their ministries as

(37:05):
well when I was gone, as they dowhen I'm here.
And just so me being able to step away and say I know that
the flock is being cared for gave me a respite.
And I think that was that's necessary.
Yeah. And I mean, that goes straight
into my next question, which is like, besides obviously like

(37:28):
getting rest and or vacation or whatever, like why are
sabbaticals important? Yeah, I think for those reasons,
you know, not only are you dealing with the emotional, the
physical and and, and the spiritual needs of the people

(37:49):
that you know, God has entrustedto your care, but but we can't
forget also that there is under the surface of all of that,
there is this spiritual war thatis taking place.
There is a real enemy that is doing real things, you know, in
in the world. And I tell you I never felt more

(38:16):
attacked than whenever I began serving in church ministry.
Now I had been a part of a couple of para church
organizations before where I wasand what's that?
So so like we have a, you know, a place that that serves

(38:36):
underserved children and families in a part of town.
And then I also served. Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, I was just saying, Is thatthe Dream Center?
Yes, you're talking about. Yeah, yeah.
What was? The Dream Center.
I didn't know I could say it. So I just do I need to take that
out? No, I don't.
Not, not for me, but and then I was also a corporate chaplain,

(38:57):
which is I would go to differentworkplaces and just share the
gospel with people, listen to their problems, pray with them,
you know, and those are both great things.
And I felt like I was really kind of working in the mission
field and that was those were very rewarding things.
But there was something different whenever I actually

(39:21):
began working at the church. Working in a biblical church
does something. It's it's as if it paints a
bullseye on your back and and the enemy is going to start
throwing things at you. And there been lots of

(39:42):
different, you know, examples ofthat for me and for my family.
But I warn now, anytime we're engaged in the hiring process
here, I always warn people almost like, you know, I really
want to hire you, but I'm going to try to run you off right now.
Like, understand that being in church ministry, you are going

(40:06):
to be more open to attack. I've seen it over and over and
over again. In everyone that has ever, you
know, been on staff here and I think it's because, well, I
mean, what is God's chosen instrument to bring about his
will on earth? It is the church, you know, pair
of church organizations do a great job filling in specific

(40:28):
needs, you know where they are. But but it is the church.
It is the church that God has chosen as His instrument to
bring to advance His Kingdom in the world.
And I think so for that reason, the enemy focuses his attacks on

(40:48):
on the church. Yeah, absolutely, Paul says
somewhere in the Bible, I, I want to say that this actually
like this exact same, same thinghas come up in the past two
interviews. Really.
Yeah, and Paul says, he says pray especially for your pastors
because they are highly susceptible.

(41:08):
I mean, we're all susceptible totax from the enemy, but the
enemy focus in focuses in on on pastors and and fathers and and
men who are in in leadership roles and especially pastors
because there is that. I mean, you, you say before like
people have like this church heard of like, Oh yeah, I went
to church from my pastor. You like he ended up like

(41:30):
cheating on his wife. And I was like, well, if the
pastor can can do that, then we're like, why am I even here?
And so he does that. And a lot of times it does take
down the rest of the church. And so it's it's hard.
It is an effective strategy. You take look at our society.
You take the Father out of the home.
What do you have When you have chaos, you know, you, you can

(41:51):
attack the pastor. The pastor falls, you know.
The flock is usually scattered, You know, I mean, it is an
effective strategy and the enemyuses it often.
And that's why I have to also remember in this war that if I'm
on the front lines of that war, that I need to make sure I don't

(42:11):
ever get too comfortable. I don't ever get to a place
where I think I am not one breath away of committing some
of the most heinous things that we've ever heard about a pastor
doing. There's a moment that I think,
Oh, well, I wouldn't go there, you know.
Oh, I am. I am laying there waiting for
the enemy to to do it to me. So, yeah.

(42:35):
So I think that's important. I remember who it was but
someone quoted was saying like you're only ever 5 minutes away
from ruining your life. Yeah, absolutely.
And I bet I could, I bet I couldreduce it down to one.
Yeah. See, that's what I thought when
I heard that one. I don't know, I'm thinking 30
seconds, but I mean, what was anything?

(42:55):
Yeah. And and is it Galatians that
Paul talks about the armor of God that.
That'd be Ephesians 6. For the spirit of Ephesians and
he talks about like put on the armor of God.
And I was listening to a lectureabout spiritual warfare like
about a month ago and the guy was saying like don't it says
put on the armor of God doesn't say anything about taking it

(43:15):
off. Like just having like this
constant vigilance against attack from the from the EU one.
Why did I say that? What were you talking about?
Yeah, it's just like pastors falling and.
Yeah, there is some I don't. Remember, yeah, it'll come back
to you. On that note, though, you know,

(43:36):
I think that we've also kind of in the church today, kind of
we've lost the urgency by which we are supposed to keep watch.
You know, if you got that picture of, you know, the
soldier in the tower at night that is keeping watch, what
happens if he falls asleep? You know, well, an entire army

(43:58):
could come in and invade while he's sleeping.
And, and I think that's the attitude that we're supposed to
have over our own souls, over our own hearts, like always,
keep watch, don't fall asleep. And it's so easy to do.
Yeah, yeah, I, I remember what Iwas going to say.
So just kind of like with the, you can ruin your life in 5

(44:20):
minutes, like just having that constant vigilance because it's
as soon as you let your guard down, the enemy is going to come
in and get you. Yeah.
And I think even like in the screw tape letters, CS Lewis
writes about the demons, like whenever someone's got that,
like, like they've got the spirit in them and they're like,
they're doing good. They're like, oh, I'm on fire
for Jesus. Like they like kind of, they

(44:42):
hold off and they wait for the perfect moment.
They wait for them to let their guard down, and it's a scary
thing. Yeah, that's something I have to
remind myself is, you know, to prepare for when I'm weak, while
I'm still strong. Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, I, you know, I thinkkind of illustration of that
point. You know, I, I, I work out three

(45:04):
times a week because I sit in myoffice so much during the week.
If I don't do something, I'm going to be, you know, way out
of shape. But the other last week I was
doing some bicep curls and I don't know, my form must have
been bad or something, but I injured my trapezius muscle up

(45:24):
here on the top. And so man, I want to go back in
there. I want to get I don't, I was in
a rhythm, you know, like I was. I had a routine going and it
gets it gets a lot harder after 40 to keep that routine going,
you know, but but I have had to now stop and I feel this
weakness, you know, that I'm notin there.

(45:47):
And I think there's there's so much of that too, that that you
meant so much about working out and athleticism that Paul writes
about in his letters, you know, comparing the Christian race,
you know, to to that. And we have to be really careful
with, with how we run that race,you know, because in any moment,

(46:10):
like we can, we can have that strength take taken from us,
especially when it comes to the point that we're relying on our
own strength and not abiding in the vine like Jesus has called
us to. Like keep remembering apart from
me, you can do nothing. Apart from me, you can do

(46:31):
nothing, you know, and, and I think for ministry leaders
especially, that's one really easy place to go.
It's kind of something that God spoke to my heart during my
sabbatical was, you know, I had,I had come to a place where I
was really think I was, I was relying more on my own strength

(46:52):
to do the job than him. And that sets me up for a kind
of injury like I have on my trapezius.
You know, I am not able to bear this weight.
I can't lift this myself if I don't have his health, I don't
have help from outside myself. I will get injured and that will

(47:14):
injure my ministry afterwards. So yeah, it's got to be, it's
got to be of him and he must increase.
I must decrease. And it's, it's only, it's, it's
that paradox of only as you get lower, only as you recognize
more of your weakness, your humility, does God then give you

(47:34):
the strength that you need to dosomething as heavy and important
as ministry for his church. Yeah, pride comes before the
fall. Yeah, absolutely.
That's a cliche, but the shades are a cliche for a reason.
That's right. Absolutely.
That one's for sure. I have one more question about a

(47:54):
sabbatical. Yeah.
Are sabbaticals like biblical? Is that found in the Bible?
Yeah, I think, you know, even the illustration of well, you've
got, you've got an illustration of Elijah having to go away for
a time. He kind of got, you know, worked
over by his fear of, of Ahab and, and, and ran off, you know,

(48:15):
and he sat in a cave for a whileand God kind of ministered to
him there. But also, I think the, the
greatest model that we see is, is Jesus himself when even in
the midst of a crowd of people let's you know, he's, he's
healed several and there are, there's still a line of people
that want to be healed. You know, you see Jesus just

(48:38):
kind of break away and go off and it says, you know, that he
went off to a desolate place to pray.
And, and, and so I think that I think that's even modeled for us
by Jesus in his ministry. I think God built it into
creation when he rested on the 7th day.
So he's telling us from the beginning, this is important for

(49:03):
you to observe. Yeah, and being a passion that's
like full time full. Time.
It really is. And like, you're working on
Sundays too. It's like you're going to save
work. Right, right.
So, yeah, so I try to take Mondays off every week, but
usually that just means I'm going to do some work at home,
you know? But but, but yeah, I think the

(49:27):
sabbatical is it. It was more popular maybe in the
past than it is now. We really even had to educate
our congregation on what a sabbatical is, why it's biblical
and what it is for, you know. And so I think any church that
has the means, if they want to see longevity in their pastor,

(49:51):
then they should implement a a policy of sabbatical, whether
that's every five years or, you know, however, however many.
Yeah, I think it's, I think it'simportant.
If anyone listening to doesn't know what sabbatical is like,
you should have like googled it by now.
We say it like 50 times. It's a it's like a break.
Yeah, it's a, it's a time of rest, but it's, it's a rest with

(50:14):
intention. You know, it's, it is, it's,
it's, it's modeled off of that Sabbath rest that Israel was
supposed to take, you know, on the 7th day.
Where it, where it wasn't just you're, you're watching your
binge and Netflix all day. You know, it is an intentional,
purposeful rest. You're, you're seeking the Lord,
you're spending time in his word, you are praying, you are

(50:39):
in the midst of my sabbatical. It was 8 weeks.
I took three days and I went to a desolate place like Jesus did.
And it was actually not desolate.
It was really nice, but it was aplace of solitude.
Some friends of ours that have like a lake house, they said,

(50:59):
hey, you could go there if you want to.
And I went there for three days.I fasted and prayed and just
studied the scriptures and just ask the Lord.
You know, I had a prayer list ofabout 10 major things that I was
asking the Lord to do. Just starting with my own heart,
moving to my family, moving to my church, some people that I

(51:23):
knew needed prayer, needed really intense prayer.
And you know, that was a sweet time.
And I thought, you know, that after not eating for that long,
like I would be, you know, really irritable, but it but but
I wasn't. I mean, it was God.
You've said man does not live onbread alone, but by every word
that comes from from you. And and that's, I really felt

(51:46):
him sustaining me, you know, in that three days just with his
word. And it was, it was really close
and intimate time with him. Yeah, Yeah, That's awesome.
I mean, as a pastor, you do a lot.
And I know that that your congregation really, really
appreciates that. And I know you've like you're

(52:06):
saying earlier, like whenever you go home, like the job
doesn't stop and you're still eating.
I mean, you're pretty much always on call.
And I know that you've you've been there for me in the middle
of the night before and I definitely appreciate that.
So I mean, one thank you for man, you know, God really
appreciates that too. Well, I tell you what, man, you
know, those are the moments thatmay be the most inconvenient,

(52:28):
but those are the ones that are usually the most meaningful, you
know, and, and those are the ones you walk away from you
going, man, God, thank you for letting me be a part of that,
you know, So thank you. Thank you for calling me.
Thank you. So so you mentioned this idea of
a sabbatical being arrest with intention.

(52:50):
I really like that idea. I never heard of that before.
Yeah. And do you think Sunday should
be like that too? I think so.
I think if more people recognized recognized Sunday as
the Lord's Day, I think that. Not your day.
Yeah, not your day. That, that, that, that, that he

(53:11):
deserves the glory and the honorand he's, he's, he's worthy of
far more than one day, you know,but if we, if we could stop our
laborers and, and really seek him intentionally with our
families around a table, it doesn't mean everybody's on
their knees in there. You know, they've got their head
bowed and we're going to do thisall Sunday.

(53:33):
That's not what God means. It he, he, you know, it is.
Spend time with your family, gather around the table, talk
about what God's done in your life.
Celebrate him, you know, that's a, that's a rest from everything
else that the world gets every other day of the week, you know,
and, and I think that I think we'd be healthier as churches if

(53:56):
we if we took that more seriously.
Yeah. You got anything else to add on
that I. Don't think so all.
Right. I got one last question.
All right, just down the road, because we're at the church
right now. Just down the road is is it a
Hindu temple? It is Hindu temple down the.
Road it touches our property. Yep.
They're next door neighbors. And so whenever I went to church

(54:23):
here, we did a bit of ministry there.
Sort of it it was. I remember.
That complicated, but what is itlike to have them down the road?
Like in what kind of like how doyou all minister to?
Them well, so we've tried several different methods of,
of, of making contact with them.We have we've invited them to a

(54:47):
dinner where we would serve authentic Indian cuisine.
We have gone just to, we've, we've actually allowed them to
use our field for parking for some event that they were doing,
you know, obviously making sure they weren't doing the event on
our property, but just trying toextend kind of a, you know,

(55:10):
friendship to them. And, and that hasn't gained much
traction, but we meet weekly on Wednesday nights at 6:30 for a
corporate prayer. And, and, and so one of the
things that we do in every corporate prayer night is, is

(55:32):
praying for the people in that temple.
And it's, it's praying for God to lift the veil from their eyes
to, to transfer them from the darkness to the light.
And, and we've, we've often goneout with hands joined facing the
temple and, and, and praying those things, you know, praying

(55:53):
God, please have mercy on the people that go there.
And, and for the past three years, we have prayed God
specifically just send us one person.
If you could just send us one person, one person is the
beginning. And we would you see them grow

(56:14):
in Christ, see them have a heartfor their own people and that we
would be able to then send those, send those people back
out to the Hindu temple as missionaries, you know.
And so that's kind of the vision.
That's what we've been asking God for.
And two weeks before I came backfrom sabbatical, we just had a,

(56:36):
our first Indian person show up in, in, in our service doesn't
speak English. So now we're looking into AI
translators and things like that.
But I, there has never been an Indian person that has come to
any of our services. But now after three years of
praying, we have 1 and that's exactly what we've prayed for.

(56:57):
And so I can't help but think this is God's God's answer to to
our prayer and. They're coming in here not
knowing any, they don't even understand the the message, but
they're coming in here. Yeah, she, she, it's, it's a
woman and she's sitting there. She has a Bible.
She has some exposure to Jesus. I don't know her story.

(57:18):
Abraham from India is going to be with us this week and he in
and so he and I and her are going to sit around a table and
see if we can have some dialogue.
But but she, she sits there withher, her Bible open and she
looks and she nods. So I don't know how much she
understands, but I, I see it as the beginning of, you know, of,

(57:43):
of something God's going to do there.
That's going to be awesome. That's amazing.
I didn't even know about that when I asked.
Yeah, my point was like, you guys aren't going down there
with torches and pitchforks. Right.
Yeah. Any opportunity we can to build
relationship with them is what we're trying to do.
And you think that's a that's animportant way of of ministering
to other religions is showing them love.

(58:04):
And stuff, you know, when I wentto India and, and I asked a
similar question of some of the,you know, some of the Christians
that were there. It's like, how do you go to
speak with people who worship these, you know, many, many
gods, these many idols. And they said, well, what we

(58:27):
don't do is we don't go in thereand say all your gods are trash.
You know, we don't go in there and say all your gods are wrong.
Here's the true God, follow him said really?
We show them and tell them aboutthrough actions and words, how
much better Jesus is when they see how much better Jesus is

(58:52):
than anything else. We don't have to tell them to
get rid of their gods. They throw them away of their
own free will. You know, they, they don't, they
see when you see Jesus, you don't want that other stuff.
And so that's kind of the, that's the mentality that we've
tried to bring into this. We can show them the love of
Christ that we can tell them with our words, the gospel, that

(59:16):
we believe that that God is the one that does that work in their
hearts and and he takes it from those efforts.
Yeah, before I became a Christian, I looked into a lot
of different religions and mostly with Christians help.
Like he really initiated that and yeah.
And, and what I saw was like you, like we went, we took a

(59:39):
deep dive into like basically the, the quote UN quote saviors
of all these different religions.
And then you looking at, then looking at Jesus.
And I mean, just to put it bluntly, like Jesus is way nicer
than a lot of those other guys. It's way nicer.
And, and I mean, you see this other religions that are
demanding like sacrifice and Christianity demands sacrifice,
but not like your kids or like yourself or something like that.

(01:00:03):
Like it's there's a difference in between like violence and and
and love laying down your life for others.
Yeah, yeah. Because Christ was willing to
take a pawn, the judgment on himself for what we deserved,
which frees us to be able to live lives of worship to him.

(01:00:27):
That's why we can approach others in love, because we've
been saved by God's love ourselves.
And there's just nothing else like that.
There is nothing else like that in any other religion in the
world. There's a, there's a church
history book that I have and I can't remember the author at

(01:00:47):
this moment, but I'm one on the first page of that church
history book. He writes, Christianity is the
only religion which features at its core the humiliation of its
own God. You know, and I mean, and when
you understand the power of that, there's just nothing like

(01:01:10):
it in the world that God would be willing to do that for
somebody like me, for this atheist, you know, who would
make fun of people, Boy, I didn't deserve his grace.
And you know, none of us do. There's a song that we sing in
church that it says something like like no other king would
would step around from his throne and like the ruler of the

(01:01:33):
entire universe and to humble himself as a baby.
I know that song. That song is.
That's a great song by City of Light.
It's yeah, we sing that song here, too.
Well, that's all I have. All right, man, do you?
Have anything, I mean, we there's no time on that.
We can talk about whatever if you have something you want to
talk about. I'm good.
I'm good. Yeah.

(01:01:54):
In fact, I think I probably haveto go pick my kid up.
Oh. Well, I'll pray this out.
All right, all right, Dear God, thank you for this beautiful day
and this opportunity to to talk with Derek here.
And Lord, I just pray that that you will place a hedge of
protection around him and his family.
Lord, I pray for his his ministry here at Riverwind as

(01:02:18):
the head pastor. God, he needs help and all of
his endeavors here, Lord. And I pray that you'll just
comfort him and draw him and hisfamily close to you, Lord, to
protect them from the from the plans of the devil.
And God, I pray for Riverwind that you'll, that you'll
continue to bless them and, and grow them and Lord that you

(01:02:39):
will, that you'll do great things here with the with the
congregation. And Lord, I had just, I lay
this. Oh, and I, I pray for that
Indian woman who, who's been coming here and, and been
listening to the messages and reading the Bible.
Lord, I just pray that that you will draw her close to you.
She's not already a believer that you will that you will make

(01:03:03):
yourself known to her Lord and that that she and and Abraham
and Derek have a good conversation this week.
And Lord, I just laid this podcast down at your feet.
I want you to have all the gloryfrom my God.
And I just pray that you will use this episode to to help
someone out today as they're hearing it, that I can bring
them comfort or clarity. Lord, that you will just be

(01:03:27):
glorified through it. And Christ name I pray.
Amen. Thank you brother.
You're welcome. Thanks for coming.
On Absolutely.