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- [00:00]
Kevin Gentry
Hi there. I'm Kevin Gentry, and welcome to the Going Big podcast where we'll explore some of the strategies that can help you transform your effectiveness by 10xing your fundraising. Each week we'll sit down with some of the most influential business leaders, CEOs and nonprofit visionaries to talk about leadership, the power of giving, and how you can make a real impact. If you want to make a transformational change to the cause you're working on, this is the place for that conversation. Also, take a Look at our website, 10xStrategies.com that's T E N X strategies.com for lots of free marketing and fundraising resources. And be sure to sign up for the free weekly fundraising tips. Now let's dive in. Well, it's great to be with the Reverend Sam Ferguson, rector of the Falls Church Anglican in Northern Virginia. Sam, let's just go big right from the start, given the season for the benefit of our listeners. What is Advent, what is Christmas, and who is Jesus Christ?
- [01:08]
Sam Ferguson
Well, Kevin, thank you for having me. And those are the big questions, at least the questions that are on my mind as a pastor here. Coming into Advent. So Advent is just a word that means coming or arrival. And it's a word that the church used over the centuries to talk about Jesus coming. And Advent refers when we talk about Advent leading up to Christmas, it talks about Jesus first coming when he came as a baby with Mary and Joseph and then grew up and died on the cross for our sins. But Advent also in the Christian worldview, speaks to Jesus second coming, which will be at the end of history when he comes back. And so that's also one of the things Advent means and Christmas Christmas centers around the Advent or coming of Jesus this first time. And one of the real shocks of Christmas that can be lost on even a minister like me is in the Christian worldview, Jesus coming is the long hoped for arrival of God where God will deal with the evil in the world and the sin and brokenness in us. And this happens in the third decade of the first century. This is when Jesus was born. And you would kind of expect if God's going to show up and fight evil in a world where the Roman Empire is expanding, Caesar Augustus is welcoming that people will worship him. In some cases, Rome is really conquering and dominating people. Herod the Great, a client king at the time, has issued an edict where all the male boys that are recently born to Hebrew women will be killed because he's worried about a coming Messiah. You would expect that God's coming would be with an army to fight the bad guys and push back evil. And he would come as a king in the way you might anticipate thinking of Babylon or Syria or Persia or Greece or Rome. And a king would come and conquer with an army, and it would be very clear that he would rule through power, a type of power that could look like coercion, sometimes with a sword, or you can think of Louis XIV with rolling cannons out. So what's shocking about Christmas is that God's arrival is in the cry of a baby, a helpless little baby in. In a young woman's arms. And this is his way of defeating evil. And as Christians have reflected on this, they've realized it's because he came in grace. And God found a way to uphold both justice, where his son would grow up and die on the cross for our sins, and also mercy, where Jesus coming would say to the world, you can run to me. You can come to me. I mean, who is afraid of a baby? It's one of the most approachable things on earth. So that's what I'm thinking about. That's a long answer to your question. But when I think about Advent and Christmas, I'm thinking of the fact that when God came to fight evil, he came as a baby. And there's a deep mystery and beauty in that.
- [04:42]
Kevin Gentry
Wow. Thank you. Well, what. What part of the Christmas story is most meaningful to you? And if I could ask, what do you think? What part of it is most relevant to the world in 2024?
- [04:56]
Sam Ferguson
Yeah, I think, you know, kind of attached to what I said before. I think one of the things that's the most meaningful is the coming of God into the world tells me that God is pursuing me. So I'll just speak personally right now. The movement is not ultimately me towards God. In other words, my hope doesn't rest in whether or not I can get to God, but in the fact that God has come to me. And Paul talks about this movement of God coming to us in Philippians 2, where he talks about Jesus not counting equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but laying aside his glory, taking on the form of a servant right, appearing in human form as a servant and becoming obedient to the point of death. And it tells me that God's after me, not. Not in the form of coming with anger, but he's pursuing me to save me. So Christmas speaks of movement from God towards me, and that's a great relief. And I think in 2024, you know, I would say that one of the most relevant things about the Christmas story is that God wants to say to the world that he's approachable. I, you know, coming as a baby rather than a king with a sword drawn in his first admin, says he's approachable. And, you know, you can think, you know, I did an internship once at a huge pharmaceutical company and, you know, sat in a sea of cubicles, and many people listening to this can picture that. Maybe that's kind of your work environment. And every now and then, somebody brings their baby and they're out on maternity leave maybe, or paternity leave, and they bring the baby in. And when a baby's walked around in the sea of cubicles, everybody's reaction is, oh, my goodness. And there's something so approachable about a baby and a person with a baby. And so I do. I just think one of the things God has communicated to us at Christmas, to everybody who may think, well, God certainly wouldn't want to talk to me, look at my lifestyle, or look at the mistakes I've made, is he's approachable, you know, and he says, come to me. Jesus will go on when he grows up to say, come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. So he wants you to come to him. He's approachable. That's. That's the thing I think would be really relevant in 2024.
- [07:28]
Kevin Gentry
Thank you. Thank you very much. A few episodes ago, I interviewed Jim Shepard and Mark Dillon from the Generis Firm, and we discussed a biblical basis for giving. What do you believe is God's call to us about giving, especially this time of the year?
- [07:49]
Sam Ferguson
Yeah, God does not in the. In the church. So those of us who. Who have come to know God through Christ, our lives are based on grace. And the. The Greek word that. That we translate is grace, Karis. It literally means gift. And so the whole Christian life centers around God's gift to us. It's his gift of his own son. It's the gift of eternal life. It's the gift of acceptance and eternal love from him. It's the gift of his presence in our lives. And as I've tried to let that impact and change my life, I found that the Christian call to give is really a response and an overflow of what God has given to us. And it's interesting that, again, not to get overly bookish, but when the Latin translators translate the Bible from Greek to Latin, the word they use to translate grace, Gratias, you know, I'm probably not going to pronounce it right, but it's the root of the word gratitude. So you could just think grace creates gratitude. And gratitude, gratefulness to God overflows, I think, in wanting to give back to the things that are dear to God's heart. And I think everything from supporting the work of the church to wanting to give in such a way that lifts up people that don't have enough. Enough food or enough clothing pleases God's heart. And I think giving sometimes needs to be practiced as a discipline. That's what I've had to do in my own life, and I've always been shocked when I actually do it. It brings joy. It's very counterintuitive. But Jesus said it is better to give than to receive. And when I've practiced that, I use this image with our church here. Few weeks ago, I. I was thinking through how I would want to tithe in 2025. And, you know, even as a pastor, I feel like I want to hoard my resources. That's the, The, The. The reaction of my heart. You know, it's expensive. Life's expensive. You need all this. And I took some time to kind of pray through this. You know, I just set aside about 30 minutes to think and pray. And as I. I felt like, no, Lord, I want to give this way this year. And it's nothing extravagant. You know, I have a long way to go. But it, it. The image I used with the church was. It felt like I was walking back into my heavenly Father's house, where when I walked back inside, he said, sam, remember that all that I have is yours. This is all yours. I'm going to share what I have with you. I take care of you. Whereas when I was hoarding, it was like Sam living on his own out in the world, and I've got to have my own back, and it's just my pocketbook, and that's it. And when I thought about tithing, I just felt like the Lord was like, don't you come back inside where. Where everything that I have is yours. And, and that was. It's kind of like walking in an Arnia, like in the C.S. lewis novel. So anyway, that. That's how I've been thinking about it. Kevin.
- [11:11]
Kevin Gentry
Nice. Very nice. Well, I've heard you tell a story about when you were growing up, I think, in high school or maybe graduating, and a friend of yours got a certain gift, and then you got a gift from your parents, and the contrast of it and how you felt then, and then maybe how you feel today. Could you share that?
- [11:30]
Sam Ferguson
Yeah. So a lot of. And a lot of you will relate to this, listening. You know, one of the things that happens senior year coming up to graduation is a lot of parents or families get the graduates gifts. And in my senior year, one of my closest friends have been friends in second grade, he got a red Ford Mustang. And you just can't beat that as a kid. And my parents got me a Bible. And you know, it had my initials in it, my dad had written a note in it, but it just, you know, it just paled in comparison. And however I took that Bible to college, and I can actually remember a few nights in college, literally I was feeling torn between kind of a certain kind of party lifestyle and my own spiritual heritage of sitting and reading that Bible at my desk. And in, in one way or another, I mean, I could reach over my desk right now and grab that, that Bible. I mean, I become a pastor, I got a dozen Bibles sitting around. But. But that Bible has been on my desk or close to my desk since then, one way or another. And I thought what my parents were trying to give me was a relationship with God. And that's something that they can't ultimately give me, that has to come between God and me. But I look back now, years and years later, and you can imagine I graduated from high school in 2001, a Mustang from 2001. Now I mean, you'd be like, give me a break. And what that Bible represents to me, it's a gift that's value just continues to grow, even though I wasn't mature enough and I was too steeped in immediate gratification to appreciate the gift at the time. You can just imagine now which one looks more valuable to me. And that's been interesting and really neat to reflect on.
- [13:37]
Kevin Gentry
That's a great story. Thank you for sharing it. Well, this is the Going Big podcast. We think about going big in a transformational way, about solving big problems, thinking about things in a big way. How can giving change our lives?
- [13:56]
Sam Ferguson
Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. And it's a good question because it feels counterintuitive. It's like, how can having less of something I think I need, like money or time, add to my life positively or change my life rather than taking away from it? And I think there's probably a lot of ways it changes us that are positive. A few that come to mind would be one. I think for a Christian, giving begins to draw you back into a reality that's always true. Which is of your dependence on God. And it's always better for your sense of peace and for your decision making to be leaning on God rather than walking independently of God and giving, particularly when you give big. Because if you give big, it hurts, right? There's an element where you're like, wow, I, if I decide to tithe 10% kind of pre tax this year, whoa. And you start to think, what else could I do with that money? And you're thinking, well, I'm gonna have to depend on God for those other things. I have heard so many stories of people who say how God just shows up. And what that does is it begins to teach your heart experientially that God's real. So it makes dependence on God experiential because it's like you actually need to lean on him. You know, I think it giving attaches you in your heart to things outside of yourself in a way that's, that's emotionally connective. So for example, if a family were saying, you know, this year we want to give to a school, an international school, we want to support a student. Next thing you know, they've got a picture of that student hanging on their refrigerator and, and they're connected now to another human being. And that's impactful. They're invested in a school apart from the school their own children go to. And I think those things are impactful. You start to give to your local church, you start to think more deeply about what the church teaches about their, their children's programming. And so it, it cultivates and it, I think a healthy attachment to other things beyond your immediate attachments. And I just think that's a form of maturing and growth and I think it changes us as a person. The last thing I'll say is I do think it, I've experienced this in my own life and I'll just say this has always been a challenge for me. I remember being taught to tithe in my house growing up and then three or four years of college going by and I was working these part time jobs and realizing I've never tithed the whole time I've been in college and having a moment where I tried to add up what I had made and plan to tithe on it and how hard that was. So this has always been hard for me. But I do think when you start to tithe, it's kind of like it starts to teach your heart to dream a little bit more, to believe in miracle. And it's kind of like a farmer who's like, well, when I stopped hoarding all my seeds and started sowing them, I started dreaming about a big harvest. And so I think the more we sew into God's kingdom, the more we're going to start to dream about the things he's doing. And that's been my experience. I remember when I decided towards the end of college that I was like, I need to go back and tithe. And there were these two missionaries I had met from Korea. I was in Philadelphia, and they'd come over to do missions to students in Philadelphia. They had evangelized me right on the street and were discipling me. And, you know, I thought about, I want to tithe, like, I want to give and support their work. It just changed the way I started thinking about the work of missionaries. And, and because I, I started, I became a farmer in that field. And so those are just a few ways I think it enlarge. You think it's going to shrink you and it ends up enlarging you anyway. Yeah, those are some thoughts.
- [18:20]
Kevin Gentry
Yeah. No, that's, that's terrific. And we know from the Bible the Lord loves a cheerful giver. And, and, and as Jim Shepard shared earlier that, you know, it's. Is it a generous gift? Is it maybe a significant gift, or is it a sacrificial gift? And that's a really generous gift. You're saying a lot of terrific stuff. Well, switching gears just a little bit, our society today is even more secular, Increasingly secular. Church attendance continues to. To drop. Broadly speaking, you lead a very large church in Northern Virginia. How do you think the church today reaches people? I know you have a broad range from very mature believers to seekers or very new converts. There are a lot of immigrants who come into Northern Virginia, and they may not come from the same faith background, a Christian faith background. They may come to the Christian faith. What, how, how does, how do you think the church reaches people in our modern society?
- [19:29]
Sam Ferguson
That's a really good question, too, Kevin, and I certainly don't have an exhaustive answer, but a few thoughts. One is I, I remind myself a lot that God is at work in the world calling people to himself. You see this in the Bible a lot. And I remind myself that the Lord is out there drawing people to Himself. In other words, it's not ultimately just what I do. And that gives me more confidence, a little more practically. I think there's a way to think about kind of drawing people or at least getting them interested in the church. There's ways to think about it. Collectively as the church is gathered. And there's ways to think about it as we're scattered in our individual lives. And I think when I think about as we're gathered on a Sunday morning, I think about creating a church experience that is very friendly. So I always think the sermon begins in the parking garage for us. You know, did somebody, did they feel like as they left the parking garage and walked in, they were greeted by someone who said hey, head right that way. And, and, and that happens at our church. So I think a very welcoming, hospitable place is important, I think. And again, I'm assuming here that, that, that you have a visitor coming or one of our church members has brought a friend from work. And so I'm thinking what is their experience going to be like? So I think warm and welcoming church. I think beauty and meaning are attractive. And there's a beauty to a community of people that are from very different backgrounds and aren't kin. Right. They're not biologically related, but who really seem to love each other and sing and worship the Lord and have beautiful worship. There's something about that that actually doesn't really happen anywhere else. I mean people go to like a Taylor Swift concert or a U2 concert concert or a sporting event, but by and large it's this very unique beings assembling together to sing is very unusual. And, and that's something I, I want to catch people's eye and say wow, they're, they're cheerful, they're happy. I think in, in preaching to try to speak in a way that's clear and, and touches on felt needs that, that an, an average person would have inviting people back to church. I think the, the collective gathering, we need to think about it as missional. And one of the phrases I've heard people use is, is it's a compelling community. There's something compelling about the experience of it. And, and then just to encourage your, your folks at your church, hey, bring a friend. And one of the things we do is we, we have at our church what I think are very easy on ramp Sunday. So we, we do handles Messiah during Advent. And I always say, hey, if you have friends that like music, this is going to be a, you know, one part of Handel's Messiah. I'll give a little sermon, you know, eight minutes. We have lessons in carols. This is just examples from Advent where we're going to sing people's favorite hymns. And I say, hey, invite a friend here. I think the other areas of, of helping, you know, in an increasingly non Christian culture people meet. Jesus is going to be very relational in, in our individual lives. And over time, people need to notice something a little different about us if we're Christians. You know, in, in Russian literature, there's a character, a type called the Holy Fool. And for listeners who, you know, back in college or whatever had to make their way through Brothers Karamazov, this would be Eliosha, the younger of three brothers. Eliosha is studying to be a monk in a monastery. And his father, there's family problems and he has to leave the monastery. And he's very innocent, very godly, and he goes out in the world and a lot of times he seems like a fool because he's so godly. How he treats women, how he looks at money, he gets walked on, taken advantage of because there's almost a naivete in him. And yet people find him so attractive because there's no guile in him, there's no pretense. And I, I, I've always found in that character, like there's something compelling about a holy person. Even when they know they might get made fun of a little bit. But they're, they're just, they are kind and warm, they're, they're humble, but doesn't mean they're weak. You know, they're not operating out of a spirit of fear. But I think there's a quality to the Christian life that could be described as holiness that glows over time. And I think it's peculiar. I think it's going to look foolish. Like if somebody at your job said, wait, you give 10% of your income away every year to a church? That's so foolish. They might say that, they might not, oh, you spent half of your vacation doing a mission trip. But they might after a while say, wow, that's very unique. So I think, I think our lifestyle over time needs to be something that has a quality to it, that is attractive. And at some point then we need to actually, I think intentionally, you know, over a cup of coffee, say to a friend, hey, would you ever want to read one of these old accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth with me? Mark is only 16 chapters. I just love to read it with you. It'd be a lot of fun. Would you want to do that and just ask? And I think there's more people who'd be willing to do that than we realize. And I think that takes. The individual Christian has to cross the pain point, right? When you just do acts of service in your community, you don't really cross a pain point, except maybe using your time and money. When you ask a friend or a colleague if they'd like to read the Gospel of Mark, you cross a different pain point. And I think a lot of Christians don't want to cross that pain point. It's like as a former basketball coach teaching a player to use his left hand, it's like, I know you can shoot a right handed layup. I want you to go to your left. And that's an area I think we need to boldly say, Lord Jesus, in the next two years, who am I going to invite to read the Gospel of Mark with me that doesn't know you and just see what happens?
- [26:21]
Kevin Gentry
That's awesome. Well, I know you've been really encouraging that kind of behavior. I'm going to try to get the nerve to do that this year. Sam, I'd like even you'd expand a little bit more. You've written a lot and preached a lot about the relational import, the importance of being relational. The false Church Anglican, for which you're the rector and have been for a number of years, is a very prominent and influential church in the Washington, D.C. area. And it has a big impact for the kingdom. How do you balance that? You've been already talking about how you're balancing all these different things. How do you balance that? Calling will say, with also the need to reach out to the local community right there in Falls Church, Virginia. How do you, how do you address that?
- [27:10]
Sam Ferguson
Yeah, I don't think I've done a good job of that. I'll just start with, you know, the analogy I use sometimes to myself is if a couple's newly married and getting married coincides with them buying a new house in a new neighborhood, and if for the first two years they're not doing a great job serving their neighbors because they're trying to figure out how to be married, that's okay. And so there's a season I felt, you know, I've been at Falls Church five years where I felt like I'm learning how to be married to this church. I'm learning how to care for us. I'm learning how to run. We have plus 50 plus people on staff here. I'm learning how to run a staff, a vestry, a budget. And that's just taken a lot of internal focus. But it has always been on my heart to say, okay, Lord, I want to be out in the community. And so I think sometimes there's a danger in saying things. I say this to myself that Are just remain too abstract. You want to be in the community. It's like, of course everybody would say that. It's like saying you want to share the love of God with people. Yeah, of course. What I do in my own head and try to be a little more concrete is I say things like, okay, I ought to get to know or meet the fire chief and the police chief that are closest to my church building this year. I hear the ambulance go by, I hear police sirens, I hear the fire truck. You know, it's just the nature of you're, you're, you're in a building multiple days of the week. And so what do these groups represent? They represent servants to this local community who serve every type of person. Right. You know, fires aren't respectors of person. So rich, poor. And I say to myself, well, if I got to know them or at least went to meet with them and said, hey, I pastor this church, you probably have driven by it. I'm wondering if there's any way we could serve you this year and it could be as simple as would you okay, if we just prayed through your list of firefighters regularly by name that the Lord God would protect them or another thing I think about, and I'm saying all these things, I better do them now. But, but the other thing I think about is getting to know the local principles and saying, hey, you know, we've got a church with 2000 members. I bet you I could get you 50 volunteers without trying very hard if I did that. What would you want them to throw their energy into in a way that creates no work for you at all? And it might be, you know, would they do a baked good sale to raise money so that kids who can't afford graduation gowns could get them this year or help with to it, Help with funds for field trips for, for unapproached kids. Those are things that when I think get out into the community, I think this would be concrete and it would be a way where our approach to the community is one of service rather than showing up and be like, well, hey, we look around. We, we've decided you have these 10 problems and here's how we're going to solve them. It starts more by listening. And I think these are things that not just a church but individuals can do, families can do over the course of a year. They could say, hey, let's draw a circle around our house, a two and a half mile radius or maybe a one mile radius. And let's just pick two things this year that we're going to pray for, but they're going to be things where we go and we meet the people leading them. And our only question is, hey, how could we help out this year? So those are some things that cross my mind. But Kevin, honestly, you know, and folks out there who are running a small business or running a church can relate. You know, it's easy to say these things. It's hard to create the time to do them. And that's a challenge for me is looking at my schedule and blocking out times to go out in the community and befriend people.
- [31:17]
Kevin Gentry
Thank you. All right, well, a few more questions before we wrap up. And you just mentioned challenges. Technology. You know, the iPhone is, is nearly ubiquitous today. There are lots of wonderful, amazing opportunities that come to us all from continued innovations and technology. But there are a lot of challenges and a lot of risks and I expect you see that firsthand. What, what do you tell, for example, parents of young children today? Any, any thoughts on, let's just say social media in particular?
- [31:56]
Sam Ferguson
Yeah, the, the research on the impact of social media on young people is often pretty negative. Its effect on anxiety would be one example and a lot of people are writing on this now. Jonathan Hate would be one. He just put out a book, I think called the Age of Anxiety. And so I haven't announced this from the pulpit. I haven't been overly prescriptive from the pulpit, but in one on one scenarios or in small classroom settings, I say things like, your kids shouldn't have a smartphone anytime before high school and if they don't absolutely need it in high school, figure out a way for them not to have it. But definitely not in middle school. But again, I don't say this. Every family is different. These are one of these things where you may be able to figure out a way to do it. So I don't mean to be overly prescriptive. It's the same thing with given. Right, giving. Right. Kevin, you don't say to people, if you don't give this amount, God doesn't love you. So I don't want to be heavy handed. I think with social media, I don't have any social media. And one of the reasons I'm thankful for that is because, you know, I don't feel the pressure to, to write an op ed every evening. Something bad happens in the world and I think a lot of pastors do. And, and that's a lot of pressure. And so I think I would encourage parents, and I do encourage parents to keep their kids off Social media for as long as they can. I think it's very hard to do. I, I know a lot of stories where one family won't give their kid a smartphone. They won't have them on social. That young teenager has a friend and they have a social media account on their friend's phone. So I think it's tough. I certainly think inside the home there needs to be a level of control over screen time. And that may mean no screens. Go upstairs or into the bedroom. You know, we have a little basket we put them in. Or it could be. There's a, and these, you know, there's, there's an app for all this stuff. But you can control how much time the computer's on, right? Yeah. Okay, you've got your 30 minutes. Now. I think that's really important. I just got, I have sitting right here. I don't know if you can see this. This is called a light phone. L, I G H T It's a dumb phone. You can text and you can make calls. I've never used it. I literally got it a few days ago. And I'm planning on trying to work out in my own life. Is there at least a 1:24 hour period where key people in my life would have this number? But I, I don't, I don't have my phone with me, my smartphone. I leave it at the office because, you know, even if, you know you shouldn't be on email because you're taking a break, it's very hard not to check email. And, and so. Yeah, so, so. And then you're like, well, I've got my music on my phone. And you end up reaching for it and next thing you know you've got an email and there goes the next two hours. So, so I'm, I'm, I haven't tried that yet, but I've been thinking a lot about this personally and, and I think parents could get their kids what they call dumb phones. Say, hey, if you need to call 91 1, if you need to call home, you can. But you, you don't need to be on Instagram, you know, while you walk around school right now.
- [35:27]
Kevin Gentry
Nice. Thank you. Sam, how did you come into the ministry? I. Okay, I'll, I'll give away that. My wife and I have, of course, been a part of the Falls Church for a long time. Our kids were baptized, raised there. You're a very important part of our lives. The church is, certainly, is a very important part of our life. So I know you didn't always think about the ministry, but tell us about how you came into the ministry.
- [35:52]
Sam Ferguson
Yeah, it was very unexpected. In brief. I. I grew up in a Christian home, but I didn't have a whole lot of interest in. In Christianity all the way till heading off to college. And that wasn't because I didn't believe it just, you know, that it's like the penny didn't drop, you know, the light switch hadn't gone on and. And it. So it just didn't matter a whole lot to my heart. And then about two thirds of the way through college, several things happened. The death of a very close friend, relationship with a young lady not going well. You know, a little broken heart in there. And then also, I think vocationally, you know, I'd worked at a pharmaceutical company. I did. I worked up at IBM for an internship. And I was able to do this while I was in college. And that afforded me a different way to start to think through my own gifts. And so all those things were converging in a way that I think I was turning to God. You know, death, heartbreak, and then the question of meaning and vocation. That's a nice little recipe for at least wondering if there's a being out there who might want to help you through these things. And so I started, like, right around when I was turning 21, I started really, really crying out to God on my own. And my mom had gotten me. Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren one Christmas before. And then I had the Bible that I'd been given high school graduation. And I'd always. Every morning of my life, almost every morning when I was growing up, I'd come downstairs and either I'd see my dad doing his quiet time or I'd see where he had done it, because I always sat at the counter and I knew that was his Bible notepad and pen. And, you know, and so part of it was like, oh, I kind of have a wagon track for this already. You read the Bible and you pray with God. And I started to do that and it was like God just sweeped me up in his arms like he had been coming after me. And it was like the light switch went on. And so the first thing that happened was very quickly I became all absorbed, like, oh, my goodness, if this is true, it changes how I look at my friends. It changes how I live. It changes how I think about what I'm going to do with my life. And I felt, honestly, it was a really hard season in one way because I felt very odd at college all of a sudden. Like a religious fanatic. And I'd met these two missionaries from Korea and they were, they led me through a 40 day Bible study, you know, and here I'm meeting with these two missionaries. I don't want my friends to see me because they're like, this looks weird. And, and in the midst of all that, and this is a strange part was it was like the Lord somehow just communicated deep in my soul, like, you're going to be all in and there's, you're not going to fit anything else in. Like you, you are going to be a minister for me and you're going to be a pastor. So it's kind of like my conversion or my awakening for me personally was like a call to be a pastor. And I didn't even know what seminary was. And so then I tried to do a church plant in inner city Philly. My last year college, first year out with a couple guys, we called it the Philly Church Plant. Ended up meeting at a rescue mission in North Philly on Tuesday nights and ended up being a huge outreach to kids. And then I ended up being a high school basketball coach in Philadelphia Public League and was all inner city work. And I thought, you know, this is where the Lord wants me to minister. And then during that time I had some really good mentors. Say you, you know, you, you're not, you're, you, you're not sustainable what you're trying to do. You don't know anything. You think you're going to plant a church, you know, you need to go get some training and, and then anyway, let led to going to seminary and everything like that, but it very much was like within a couple month period of an awakening in faith, it just felt like you're, you're a pastor. And, and honestly it just has been the most enthralling, thrilling, wonderful, hard thing. You know, the Lord's answer to the big prayer for me was I said, I want to have a meaningful life. I want a meaningful vocation. And it was like, be careful what you ask for. And he has answered that. And, and not a lot of people I know have this blessing, but the Lord has given it to me and I don't know why, but the integration between vocation and identity and passion for me is so tight that it's, it's just a real, I'm thankful, you know, I would do what I do for free. So anyway, that's, that's kind of how it came about. And I was 21, 22, and then by the time I Went to seminary. I was 25, so. So worked in the inner city doing ministry and then went off to seminary and. Yeah, ended up at the Lord brought me to False church, a great church where I. I learned how to pastor under John Yates. And then the Lord, that church called me to, to be the rector. And so I'm very honored.
- [41:15]
Kevin Gentry
Well, we are all blessed by the path that the Lord has chosen for you and that you've taken. Sam, what is it like to be a pastor today? Especially young pastor. I know you must be in touch with others. Just give us a perspective on that. You will always put on a great, positive, brave face. But what's it like?
- [41:38]
Sam Ferguson
Yeah, you know, I'll preface my answer with saying, you know, I only know the experience I've had. So I don't know what it was like to be a pastor in 1776. Right. You know, you know, in Washington. So there have been other hard times or during the Black Plague, but I think it's hard. I have a lot of peers who are quitting, and I think one of the reasons is I do think we're in. We're living through a time. One is because of technology, how connected we are. People are very divided. And you feel a pressure to weigh in on incredibly complex situations that many people treat in an overly simplistic way, like immigration or race in America, patriotism, nationalism, an epidemic like COVID 19. Your view on the efficacy of wearing a mask. And the truth of it is, I just want you to know your pastor doesn't, doesn't know anything about this stuff. Okay. I mean, maybe a little bit, but if they've been trained, they've been trained to read church history, a little Greek and Hebrew, some theology, they've been trained in homiletics, a little bit of pastoral, a little bit of counseling. But how to do citizenship vis a vis a multiple thousand mile border is such a complicated dilemma that when you have people say, well, if you say this, you're a racist. If you don't say this, you're. You're a racist, it's incredibly hard. And then silence is commenting. So that has been excruciating. And you feel like you need to prove your morality all the time. So. Oh, well, I'm so glad you weighed in. Now I know you care. And it's like, well, could you just give me the benefit of the doubt? Like, maybe I'm not a jerk, maybe I'm not a closet racist, maybe I'm not a white supremacist, you know, but. But you I mean, it's been incredibly psychologically hard. And I think these issues are important. I think pastors need to be able to courageously lead in them. And I certainly haven't always done a sufficient job, but I feel like sometimes, and look, I'm, I'm. Our church is in metro Washington D.C. right. So it's intense. But I feel like sometimes I want tell people, you know, you didn't hire me to write two opinion columns a week in the Washington Post, and if you would offered me that job, I wouldn't even interviewed for it. But you know, the, the local minister, you know, we're, we, we, we, we. Our field of practice is morality. And so anything that feels like it touches on morality, we can kind of think we should be an expert in. But the truth is a lot of these issues aren't about morality. People are moral on both sides of them. They're about the complexity of huge, large scale social, social interventions that are hard to measure the, the efficacy of their outcome. And it's not moral. It's, it's sometimes just people have different means to achieve the same desired ends. And so that's been really hard. I think people aren't doing great a lot. I think there's a lot of mental illness in younger people and that's, that's challenging. But man, I tell you what, the Lord, does he ever leverage weakness and challenge? I mean, he loves it. It's like you want your minister feeling a little bit weak all the time because that seems to be how the Lord likes to work. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for the gospel right now. And, but yeah, it's, it's. I hear from a lot of people, I'm blessed. I think we have a great church and I'm really well loved by our church. But I think the level of conflict in the background and the level of situations where the pastors just don't have any idea what to say or do but are kind of condemned if they do say something or if they don't is hard. And I don't want to sound like a wimp. You know, it's okay for things to be hard, but anyway, that's, that's been a challenge for my peers and myself.
- [46:16]
Kevin Gentry
Well, you are indeed loved by our church. And ladies and gentlemen, who might be listening, if you want to find out more, you can check out the Falls church Anglican Online TFC anglican.org A lot of Sam's past sermons. And you can check into future sermons as well. Sam, close us out. Let's let's go back to the theme of Christmas. What would you leave us with to really encourage us and what would you recommend? I know you don't like to recommend and be prescriptive, but encourage us in a way by giving us something that you think we should do as we, as we approach this Christmas season and head into the, into the new year as well.
- [46:58]
Sam Ferguson
Yeah, I would just leave you with the, the big idea of gift, that grace is gift. And so Christmas, obviously you're buying gifts for people, etc. Etc. But that the great image in our church is when we have communion, when we go forward, people come forward with your wife, you're watching this with empty hands. They have nothing, they bring nothing. And we put the bread in their hands and then they take some wine. And I always think what that represents is God wants to give you himself self. He wants to give you God that, that he is your portion. And, and it takes a while sometimes to cultivate a taste for God because, you know, our taste bud, spiritual taste buds are dull. But just, just know that there's a lot of blessings you're praying for this Christmas and I hope the Lord blesses your socks off. But the gift is him and, and ask him to help you receive him into your life more and more. And the little prescriptive practice would be I would challenge you this Advent to serve. And that could be as simple. And that's a great way to actually get out of a cul de sac of pain is to get out a little 3 by 5 or 5 by 7 note card or a yellow sticky note and just write down the name. If you're a student, if you're a parent, one or two people that you want to serve in the next few weeks. And you could do that by praying for them. You could do that, say, I'm going to send them an encouraging text once a week or I'm going to buy them a gift. But what you want to do is you want to think on them and pray for them regularly. So you keep the little sticky note in your wallet and just watch what happens to your heart. You go from being sometimes like a stagnant pool to a spring that's flowing just by saying, you know what? Who am I? I'm that guy that serves Bobby this week. That's who I am. I'm thinking about Bobby or Sally. So that would be the little prescriptive, exciting experiment to do this Advent is pick somebody to serve and serve their socks off.
- [49:05]
Kevin Gentry
That's a great way to close us out. God bless you. Sam Ferguson, thank you for being with us today and all the continued best to you.
- [49:12]
Sam Ferguson
Thank you Kevin for having me. This has been a joy to talk with you.
- [49:17]
Kevin Gentry
Thanks for listening to today's Going Big podcast. Hopefully you were inspired to go big for your cause. Remember, this is all about transforming your effectiveness by 10xing your fundraising. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe or leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also catch this episode on YouTube and also there are lots of resources available to you at my website which is 10xStrategies.com. That's t e n x strategies dot com. You can sign up also for our free weekly fundraising tips. This is all about helping you get to the root causes of some of the biggest problems in society today by transforming your fundraising and your effectiveness. Thanks again. We'll see you again soon. Bye.