Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I'm here with Brent Henderson. We're at the pod pod studio. We've reconnected recently, maybe two years ago or so, three years ago, somewhere in that range. Had you on a podcast with pastors and then saw you at Panera, then saw you at Starbucks, and now we're meeting weekly.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like a new purpose. I always love that when, when God opens up something new and you're kind of like you've been feeling like you're in a fog, right? And all of a sudden God goes, all right, I'm going to let the sun just make that dissipate so we can start to see what I've got going. And he doesn't do it all at once, you know, it's like, oh, I can see that telephone pole now as I'm driving it. Oh, I can see that field now.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Right where we think we're in the middle of writing a book. I would say that's what we think we're doing.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say so, yeah, this has been one of those in a fog. The idea has been there for about a year, but there was no clarity.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: So let me just kind of come back. This is how this all really kind of got started. I'm sitting in the living room, my oldest stepdaughter, she was 21, and she, you know, she's trying to figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life. She's been managing a story here for a while, and so something comes up. She goes, I think I would be good at, you know, counseling or coaching. And I said, I think you'd be great with that. She goes, but didn't you used to do that? I said, you know, I was a coach. I was certified through a number of organizations, and I used to certified coaches. She goes, well, why did you stop? And I said, weird, you just said that. Because I felt maybe God was telling me to start doing coaching again.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: So I'm sitting at Starbucks, and I started going through my old notes again, just preparing kind of a deal. And this was after God had affirmed.
I was on my knees in my studio asking God, do you want me to do this again? And at the end of the prayer, I pick up my phone, I literally open it up, and there is a thing that says, unleash your inner coach. My last book was the roar within, and it's unleashing the powerful truth of who you really are, right? So anyhow, so I go, okay, God, I think that's you saying, start doing it again. I go to Starbucks. I'm working. I'm about to leave. And God says, I want you to stay ten more minutes. And I go, I got other things I want to do. And he comes back. Do you trust me? Well, I know when he says that, because I've had a lot of experience when he says those. Yep. So I stayed ten more minutes, and at the end of that ten minutes, Kevin, you come walking in and sit down, and I said, God told me to stay, and I think it's for you. And I didn't even know you coached. I didn't know all that stuff. And the next thing you know, God connects our path, and this idea for this book of discipleship begins to come up between us, and we both have a lot of ideas and passion around this area, definitely. And so it was like, we sit down and God just one Monday after another. Now, for the last, like, three, four weeks, it's just like an outpouring. It's like taking your coughing and dumping over it, spreading fast.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: You know, but it's. It's like. But it's that mess you don't want to clean up because you want to keep spreading because it's. It's happening. That synergy.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, sometimes you just go, God's got me onto something here, so I. I can't stop that flow. Right?
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: That's not in my purview. If he tells me to move, I've got to move.
Yeah. We'd seen each other a few times since we'd reconnected a few years back, but never really any conversations beyond, hey, man, good to see you. How are you? How's the wife? Et cetera?
Awesome conversation. I was there to meet with other people, and I was like, well, this is pretty fun. Let me talk to Brent for a little bit longer here, and they can wait.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And we sit down, and what ends up happening is we've got lots of scriptural things. We go, hey, this would seem to fit with what we're talking about, but what seems to be the thing that connects are the stories that you and I have been sharing of things where we've seen God do crazy things that were literally unexplainable. That's. You know, people always say, you know, when God's going to show up for something. Well, how would you say it? He.
God doesn't like to work through the improbable. Like, that could be God. I think God loves to work through the impossible. That has to be God.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: So, you know, it's God.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: So you know it's him.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Strengthens my faith.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: There's definitely. We both definitely have some of those stories where we know it was God. No question. I can't take any credit. I'm. I'm. And I shouldn't. That's the point. And that's how he makes it clear to us.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And we remember stories as humans and how many stories that we just share sitting in there that weren't planned. And we're going, write that down. Write that down.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Back to back.
Well, we thought we would journal or document via podcast our efforts toward a book. So this is the start of that.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Do we. Do we even say what the book is about, or do we.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: My business partner would tell me that right now I'm flying by the seat of my pants, but I'm okay with that. I'm comfortable with that. I think we do. I mean, it's certainly on purpose, right? It's on identity, who we are. I mean, maybe let's. I think you should share all seven steps. Process.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: You know, the whole thing started off with, you know, I get to speak to tens of thousands of guys every single year, and when I'm done, I'm done. I leave. You know, I go home. Your wife says, how'd it go? How much money did you make? She does the budgeting, of course. When you're in ministry, you also have the financial aspect that you have to take care of and be responsible for.
I don't look at that side that much because money hasn't really meant that much to me. But for me, it's like, did they remember what I said? Did it change lives? And so finally, God said, brent, if you don't put something together to teach others how to do this, all those stories and the training stays with you because we only retain about 10% of what we just heard. And so this whole thing, I thought, well, God, how do I cause one of the number one questions that men. And in my last book, the roar within, I pulled 400 men, and I said, I want you to. What are the. Like, here's ten things. What are the big five? The top five you struggle with? And I thought it was going to be they struggle with lust or anger or whatever, but it wasn't. They were one of the five. But number one was lack of purpose. And seeing that made me realize that men do see the need, especially in the culture we live in now, that discipleship has got to happen somehow.
But God does it through the way that he's wired us through our stories, through our experiences. And so this whole thing came down. I said, well, then, God, how do I take a man and show him?
Kind of like, I hate where a plan. But yeah, essentially training, that's transformational. Not just being trained, but transformational training that helps him see that he was made by God, that he has a purpose, that he has a passion and all these things so that he can now go out and recreate and help others do that. So the book title as of right now, we'll see, is it's called the purpose funnel.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: And it's about discovering and living out of your purpose is what it's going to be about. So if I get these wrong because I don't have it, I have it.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: In front of me.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Oh, you do have it.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Heck, yeah.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Well, we start off with planned by God. I think that's essential. We have to understand and believe that we are here. The biggest question we have is, who am I, really?
Well, to know that we're planned by Goddesse, that sets the foundation and then that moves into we have a purpose. You know, we are God's workmanship, created to do good things in Christ Jesus. So then guys always say, how do I know what my purpose is? So then the next thing I talk about is passion. Now, what are those things that you can't not do or you'd find yourself curled up under an underpass somewhere. It's that thing that burns within you. It doesn't go away.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: So then you've got principles that God has set up. You know, if you have all these things, then what are the values? What are the principles that you're going to be setting the course for now? Because we have to do it God's way. We know if we've tried to do it our way enough times, we just mess it up. So what are the things that you're going to put up there and say, this is what God says to do, not what the world says to do. I believe in him. I'm going to do it his way. So we learn the principles, biblical principles, how to manage what we're going to be doing next. So then after you have, let me think, what is it after principles? Is it practice?
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: So now, when I was years ago in the martial arts, my sensei would always say, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. So we have to practice using the principles. That's the perfect practice. Right? And now we're weaving those things in. So we're practicing these things that God has given us and after you've done that, then you have to come up with a plan. What's that old saying?
If you fail to fail to plan?
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Then you plan to fail. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: So we have to have a plan. What does that plan look like? Are we looking at a plan? Something that could say, well, you have to have a five year or one year or one month or one week today it could be, well, yeah, I think that's. I mean, those are the basics of that, coming up with a plan for what God's called you to do. But then you have to have priorities. If you don't get your priorities right, none of these things are going to happen. We find ourselves scrolling, you know, Instagram or whatever, going on all day. And so that's where we get held up many times because we don't prioritize the things that are the most important. You know, like that curly from that movie city slickers and that one thing. And so when you're thinking about priorities, you have a could do list. If you're like me, you have a to do list, right? But you got to really look at this. You have your could dos. You have your should dos like, I probably should mow the grass. It's going to rain here in a day or so. But then you have your must dos. The must dos are the things that, if I don't do these things to move forward, that I have identified as really important, nothing's going to change. And when nothing changes, we begin to become in a fog, and then we're going, wow, what happened to my purpose? Well, a lot of times we kind of bring on the fog because we just don't follow on, follow through with the priorities that we've made.
We get distracted, right? You've got your emails, you've got texts. You get all kinds of stuff you're taking, when really what you need to do is you need to set a certain part of your day and say, this is the most important thing, and I am clearing my schedule to make sure that this happens. Well, guess what ends up happening. How you feel about yourself at the end of those hours. You go, I just accomplished something. And now how do you feel better about yourself? Do you have less peace or more peace?
Do you have more joy or less joy? This goes back to being able to look at how those things that are happening, how do they make us feel? Can we see whether we're following God's plan?
Well, he will bring you the fruit of the spirit. That's one of the ways you know how to be able to move forward with stuff. Is it great indeed to the flesh or fruit of the spirit? And then kind of lastly, as we bring all this back to the conclusion, so if you've done these seven things and you've stuck to them, what is the benefit? What is the payoff? Well, here it is.
First of all, it creates productivity.
We can see that things are moving forward. You can look at yourself in the mirror when you see that you feel good about what you've done. You're doing kingdom work and it is so rewarding. But the end goal with productivity is to profit people.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: It's a lot of p words, Brent.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: It is a lot of p and prayer.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Overarching. Right.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: And overarching, you know, praying through this whole thing. So we do have a lot of p words.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Intentional.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: Yes.
And we do have a great story about a p word.
And then with the, the university, when those guys ran back to the bushes where I was hiding.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. Yes, very much the p word.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Funny story using a p word.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: It is a, it is the word p. P. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Two more letters after the p. Go.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Ahead and get that.
I think it'd be, well, let's give him one teaser story from the book. Here we go.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: So it was back, I don't know what year it was. Probably in 1991. I was, I had been touring with an artist and I was off the road and these college groups, the college was right behind my house and there was a backstop, a soccer backstop, and these guys that were rushing this club were hiding behind this thing and they had a bunch of tomatoes and they were going to throw them at these girls who are going to be rushing for a club that were going to be in front of the backstop, not knowing that these guys were hiding. Well, I hear them making this plan because my house backed up against this field. So I get my camouflage on and I get a couple dozen eggs and I belly crawl out there and I get inside these bushes and Im not even, not even 20 yards away from these guys and I can hear their plan. And I get myself all situated and covered with leaves and Im hiding and being patient, being a hunter. I love that kind of stuff.
Pretty soon it's dark out. These two guys come running over to the bushes, pulling down their flies, like.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Right where you're at, right?
[00:12:47] Speaker B: I mean, 2ft both of them.
And the one guy yelling, I gotta pee. And he goes to start to pee and I reach out of the bushes and I grab his leg and I said, not here, you don't. And he freaks.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Oh, my word.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: But it's. It's. It's like one of those things, you know, in a weird way, God sees what we're doing.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Wait, wait, wait.
That would cause me to pee my pants.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: I think it would cause you to do more than that.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Probably the other p word. Poop.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, I don't know how to explain that yet, except for, you know, I can laugh at the story. There was nothing but God. Is nothing mean in it. But God sees what we're doing. And I think sometimes he just loves to be able to do those little things that let us know that he was there.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: That's awesome.
You know what? Let's call that a good place to stop for today.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Brent, love you. Thank you for being a part of this journey with me now. And, well, I really should say thank you for allowing me to be a part of your journey. That's what I feel like it is, and I love it.
This will be a book by Brent Henderson with Kevin Hough. That's what it will be.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: That's a God journey. You know, iron sharpens iron. I've been sitting on this for a while, and like I said, God brought Kevin to my table and Starbucks right when he said to stay and wait. A and so I'm going to be obedient and I'm excited.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: Yeah, me too. All right, well, we don't know when we'll record the next one, but probably next week, so we'll talk to you all soon.
