← The BEMA Podcast
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- [00:00]
Brad Nelson
Foreign.
- [00:10]
Brent Billings
This is the Bama podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co host Brent Billings. Today we are joined by Brad Gray and Brad Nelson of Walking the Text to talk about the Lord's Prayer. They are former pastors, attended all of the same universities I think and obviously share the same name. I was going through your guys bios, I feel like there was maybe a copy and paste error. Like we've got Cornerstone University, Western Theological, Semin Area, Jerusalem University College. Is that actually true? Tell us more about who you guys are.
- [00:37]
Brad Gray
It's all true, man, it's all true. So yeah, we, we jokingly have to distinguish ourselves. I'm Brad the bald and he is Brad the hair, you know, so that's probably about the only difference that we have. But.
- [00:51]
Brent Billings
And this is Brad Gray talking. Just to clarify for people, this is Brad Gray talking.
- [00:56]
Brad Gray
Yes. Yeah, so we, we do distinguish it, especially on podcasts. He normally goes by Nelson and I'll go by Brad. Just sure that the audience isn't confused. But no, Brent, you got all that information, right? We've had a lot of the same parallel paths and many times on the same path at the same time.
- [01:15]
Marty Solomon
Well, Nelson, I'm going to have to get used to that. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.
- [01:19]
Brad Nelson
Yeah, so I was a pastor for almost 20 years. Ten years in Grand Rapids, Michigan and then another seven in Central Florida as a church planner. And I did my first trip to the land in 2008, Israel and Turkey. And from there, you know, our pastor I think did a verse by verse sermon series through the book of Leviticus. And man, I was hooked. Once you, once you get some Leviticus, some straight Leviticus, I mean, who doesn't want some more of that?
- [01:50]
Marty Solomon
Absolutely. I usually start these interview episodes out by talking about where I met the folks that we're talking to today. And I bet the first time I met you, you probably neither one of you will even remember it. I was some punk kid visiting that church in Grand Rapids. And I'll start with you, Nelson. I got invited to sit in your office and you probably don't even remember. You gave me this little packet of an assignment that a rabbi had given you about. Golly, am I going to get emotional as I tell this story? This is wild. You gave me this little packet of, the rabbi said think of as many questions as you can about this story. And you had written like a page and a half and this rabbi had given you like a packet of like single space, double sided of all the questions and you talked to me about hermeneutics and that that was probably some of the very beginnings, like the seeds of my journey.
- [02:43]
Brad Nelson
And.
- [02:44]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, that's where I met Nelson.
- [02:46]
Brad Nelson
What? Oh, my.
- [02:48]
Marty Solomon
Here's what's crazy.
- [02:49]
Brad Nelson
You must not. Did you have the beard then?
- [02:51]
Marty Solomon
I did not have the beard. You looked similar, although not as gray.
- [02:55]
Brad Nelson
Correct.
- [02:56]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, I had hair and not as much hanging off my face, so I definitely look different now. The joke, however, is, I think later that day, I got taken to, like, some weird back room and I shook the hand of Mr. Brad Gray, who looks about the same today as he did all those years ago.
- [03:15]
Brad Gray
So you said before we started recording that you were going to have quite the intro of how you met us. Yeah, I mean, I never knew that. I was actually thinking today. I thought the first time you and I had met was when you were with Aaron and Aphrodisias at that little cafe restaurant. I thought was the first time that we had met, but that's apparently not the case.
- [03:40]
Marty Solomon
Yeah. And I had actually, believe it or not, I had met you even before that day because GTI had said, you know, we really want you to go talk with Brad. And I'm like, brad Gray's not gonna make.
- [03:50]
Brad Gray
You know what?
- [03:51]
Marty Solomon
He's not gonna make time for me. And lo and behold, you said, come to my house. It was right before you moved to Nashville. Yes, I came and hang out with the Brad Gray in your office, and you encouraged me to no end. Brad's a fellow trip leader with us over at gti and. And I was able to just learn and gobble stuff up and. And then our paths have. You've been very generous with the way that we've interacted, so it's been beautiful. I knew you guys wouldn't even remember.
- [04:16]
Brad Gray
The origin story, but no, thanks for giving that. That is. That's remarkable. Fantastic.
- [04:24]
Marty Solomon
Absolutely. All right, well, enough about that. Tell us a little bit. I'm going to ask you, Brad, let's get some context. Tell us about your larger body of work. What's walking the text? What are you passionate about? Because there's so much. There's walking it. There's video content, there's audio content, there's the trips you lead along with me over at gti. Give us context of your body of work and what you're passionate about.
- [04:45]
Brad Gray
Yeah, that's great. So, yeah, just kind of high level. I actually went to college for business and did several years in the sports business world, and then after a few years realized, oh, I've got a greater Passion, and that is wanting to understand the word of God. So ended up going to seminary and graduated with a Master's of Divinity and then was like, oh, there's still so much more that I wanted to learn and moved to Jerusalem and studied for a year at Jerusalem University College. During the three years that I was in seminary, I was pastoring and then came back from Israel and pastored for another seven years and had started leading. My first study trip was in 2010. So that's been, you know, 15 solid years of leading trips. And it was just over nine years ago that my wife Shallon and I just had this short time period where we just sensed God saying, you're resigning and you're moving to Nashville and. And that's all you get. And we left shortly thereafter, arrived in middle Tennessee, didn't know anybody, didn't have a job, and really spent the first year. God, what in the world are you doing? You know, Marty, as you know, we plan these trips, these study trips years in advance. So there were several that I already had on the calendar. But as far as any other piece of God, what are you doing? What are we supposed to be doing? Had no idea. But at the end of that first year, really started to get an idea for what Walking the Text could be. And prior to that, Walking the Text was just a website that people could go to to sign up for the study trips. And nine years ago just came up with this idea of how do we create an organization strictly devoted to the original context of the Bible. And as you guys know so well, that original context is history, geography, cultural backgrounds, literary design, language, visual settings of the places. And so that's really how Walking the Text began. And it had the study trips, which it still does. We did started something called the Teaching series, which were these 15 to 20 minute TED talk like teachings on the Bible, which we've got over 200 of those that are all video recorded and you know, as a podcast as well, and discussion questions for small groups. We were doing a conference for a number of years that we put on pause just due to some things that would take more prominence over what we were doing. And then speaking engagement. So those were really kind of the four legged stool that Walking the Text launched from. And then during COVID we started working on the idea. Everything kind of shut down. Everything we were doing online accelerated because churches weren't prepared for the digital space. And so they were using all of our resources, which was awesome. I mean, we were designed. We're a crowdfunded organization, you Know, we give all of our stuff away that we create at Walking the Text for free. But we really started working on this idea for a global television series called the Sacred Thread, with season one being seven episodes on the Lord's Prayer. And we've been working on that project for the last six years and it's ebbed and morphed. And the full episodic television series, God Willing will be releasing right around Easter, so here in the very near future. But then in the meantime, in late November, we were able to officially release a feature film on the Lord's Prayer. And then in addition to that, a book that Nelson and I co wrote together on the Lord's Prayer called Bringing Heaven Here. So kind of the content ecosphere is we've got the Walking the Text stuff and then we've got three major pieces of content around the Lord's Prayer. A feature film, a book, and then soon to be released, a full seven episode television series. And so that's kind of at a very high level how we got to where we are and what we're up to. And we plan to do, you know, six additional seasons of the Lord's Prayer, tackling other parts of the Bible and other subject matters, but we've centered everything over the last six years, is creating this content around the Lord's Prayer.
- [08:54]
Brent Billings
I love that you said six additional seasons of the Lord's Prayer. Did you mean the sacred thread?
- [08:58]
Brad Gray
I'm sorry? Of the sacred thread. Correct. Yes.
- [09:01]
Brent Billings
So the sacred thread starts with the Lord's Prayer, but you're gonna, that's gonna be other things in other seasons. We have the season one of the Sacred Thread, we have the Lord's Prayer film, we have the book Bringing Heaven Here. For somebody who is just like, well, I have to do it all. What's the right order? Or is it like you don't need them all? You just like pick the format that works best for you. Like, what would you suggest people do? How do they engage these different ways of thinking about the Lord's Prayer?
- [09:27]
Brad Gray
Yeah, it's a great, great question. And really the big reason why Nelson and I wrote the book on the Lord's Prayer was because as we were putting together both the film and the television series, which Nelson is a co writer for the film and the television series, we just realized there was so much content that we could not tackle in a film or a television series. And we really wanted to be able to put it in book form. And so Bringing Heaven here has the context of the Lord's Prayer. But so much of what's in the book is just the personal implications of the prayer for your life. And so we recommend people watch the film first, which they can do at Angel Studios. So that's our distributor. And then once people have had a chance to watch the film, that will also provide kind of that visual context and odyssey for the deep dive that we do into the personal implications of the Lord's Prayer, which is what the book works you through. So we call the book a companion volume. It's its own standalone piece. You don't have to have seen the film or the television series to really capture everything that's in the book. But when you do them together, it's kind of like reading Luke and Axe, you know, alongside of each other. You realize, oh, yeah, the same people put this together and, you know, they. They ebb and flow between, you know, media content and book content as well.
- [10:49]
Brad Nelson
And there's a good relationship too, between the film and the series. So the film kind of all seven episodes condensed into a summary form. And most people, when they get to the end of it, they say, whoa, I need to watch that again, or I can't wait to get into the series. And then the series is going to go line by line, kind of a deep dive, 30 minutes at a time. And you probably hear the same thing with your episodes that your listeners say, man, I'm going to have to listen to that one three or four times. And context just kind of does that. So the film really is a great setup to go deep in the show.
- [11:26]
Marty Solomon
Absolutely, yeah. And let's talk about the film for a moment too. Like, the film is stunning. And Brent's got a really great question for later in our conversation. I can't wait to hear your answer to. But the film itself has. How did you get that kind of incredible footage? How many people did you have working on the ground with you? What was that process? And I know I've gotten tidbits here and there of some crazy stories of just how God kind of worked stuff out for you, but what was that process? Like, how did you get that kind of. This is not a half delivered project. There's some incredible shots and footage in that show.
- [12:03]
Brad Gray
We started off with the premise that we wanted to create the highest quality documentary series that had ever been done on the Bible. And it wasn't just because we wanted to be able to say that. It was just coming from the perspective that we should be creating the best material. We have the best story in human history. And when we started these conversations in early 2020. This is early chosen, you know, hadn't really become known yet. Bible project was just really coming to the fore. So this really great media space around Christian content has really blossomed in the last few years and I think we would all just say thank goodness for that. You know, Christian media prior to that was subpar and that's being generous. And so we wanted to do that and it was really God working in such an amazing way that only God can that. We ended up going with a six time Emmy award winning production studio that a senior producer of ESPN connected me to, only to find out that that CEO and founder of Evolve Studios, our partner Joel Edwards was sitting two rows away from me at the same church for several years. You know, and it was just this w jokingly say it was a match made in Franklin. Being here in Franklin, Tennessee. It was a really just the vision from the beginning was how do we do this with excellence and how do we give people this immersive experience through the biblical story? Marty, you know this well in leading people on trips, it's the place to teach the Bible. Like and you want everybody in the world to go and have a trip experience. But of professing Christians, 99.9% will never be able to go. And so we really began with the premise of how do we bring that experience to people not just in the United States, but all around the world that are never going to have an opportunity and for even those who did have an opportunity to help them to see things maybe in ways that they didn't even experience while they were there. And so we really set out to do that and to do that well. And we started off with the premise that we were going to build a seven episode season one. We were able to get a pilot episode completed and released in the middle of 2022. And then at the beginning of 2024, Mark Burnett, who is the executive producer of Shark Tank, the Voice Survivor, incredibly well known, arguably probably the most well known television producer in the world, saw our pilot episode and said, hey, I really want to be a part of this. I think that you guys are actually creating a new genre, not just documentary series, but the teaching content, the visual content, the immersive travelog aspect of it, I'd love to be part of it. And it was actually his recommendation that we do a feature film first. And so that's where, you know, we have seven episodes. And then we're like, okay, how do we do, you know, a more condensed abridged experience through the Lord's Prayer and then we'll do the full episodic series. So we ended up filming over the course of nearly five years. I mean, we were in and out. We were dealing with COVID we were dealing with the war post October 7th. We were dealing with six different countries that we filmed in. So we're in England, Greece, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, several places around the United States. And we surprisingly have a very lean crew. So if it's kind of like up to us, we're less than 10 being able to do everything we're doing. But I will tell you, and you'll just kind of smile about this, Marty, because it's Egypt. When we were in Egypt, we had like 27 people in our party because, well, if you're going to have a drone, it takes four people to fly a drone. And then they have to come with their cousins who are doing this. I mean, it's just all of a sudden it just. We were trekking with a lot of people. But if it's up to us, we're a crew that even with our on ground support, we're 10 or less to do what we needed to do.
- [16:14]
Brent Billings
There's a quote from Mark in your, in your press kit and he says the cinematography is spectacular, the content is exceptional. And you know, of course he's going to say that, he's a producer. That's, that's the marketing. But it is so true. Like it's so incredible. I've been to a lot of these sites, I've flown my drone in Israel. I know how complicated it is to get what you got. And it's just like that drone shot. You're walking with your interviewee at Capernaum and there's nobody there and you're with like, what in the. It's just unbelievable what you got. And I feel like it just captures things so incredibly well for people who can't get to Israel, for people who can't get to these places. I feel like it is such a good picture and I want a physical disk with a 4K uncompressed video. So please tell me that's coming. I will buy that so fast because it looks so good even at the web stream. So yeah, I love that.
- [17:11]
Marty Solomon
I'll swing over to Nelson, I'll ask you this. What's been the biggest surprise in this entire project for. And I mean, that could land in a lot of different places, but when you think about this whole thing, what's been the biggest surprise in the experience?
- [17:23]
Brad Nelson
Yeah, for me the, the biggest surprise was the contextual nugget in the second expression of the prayer. You know, most people recite it as Our Father who art in heaven, but in the Greek it's, it's in plural. And so, and actually, if you go back into the Hebrew scriptures, Shemaim, the word for heavens is always in the plural. And that is not incidental, that is a whole rabbit hole on this way of viewing the cosmos and how God relates to the cosmos and how we're supposed to relate to life in light of that arrangement. And so what you get is this simultaneous picture of like these three tiers of reality. There's the, like the earth where we're standing, and then there's the atmosphere all around us, which they would think of as the heavens. And then far up above it you have this firmament and in this dome like structure you have the stars and the moon fixed to it. Then above that there's waters above the earth. And far, far above all of that is the throne room of heaven where God dwells. And so you get this picture of this God who rules and reigns above it all, who sees it all, knows what's happening and is fully in control. And yet the heavens comprise all of that space right down to where we are. And so then you get all these stories in the scriptures of a God who moves near, especially when God hears the cries of his children, whether that is Abel's blood crying out from the ground in Genesis 4, those who've been hurt by the sin and wickedness in Sodom and Gomorrah, Hagar and Ishmael crying out in the wilderness. It's just, it's a God who is, yes, rules and reigns above it all, but he's with us in it all. And part of what is happening to pray our Father in the heavens on a daily basis is to get that perspective shift. Because this is true for me as a pastor. I've seen this true for so many people. When we're going through difficult stuff, we get really hyper focused on what's wrong. And when you pray our Father in the heavens and you zoom out to that heaven of heavens and see things from God's heavenly perspective, there is, there's this shift that takes place. There's a guy by the name of Frank White who started noticing a phenomenon with astronauts who had gone into space and had the opportunity to look down at Earth from the perspective of the heavens. And it's a profound spiritual shift that happens in them. And you actually see this same dynamic at work in the letter of Revelation where when you get to the judgment scenes, I think it's Revelation 6 through, like, 19. John interrupts himself 10 different times to sweep his listeners up to the Heavenly Throne room as if to say, hey, all this stuff that's really hard right here, don't forget to see it from this perspective. Because when you see it from this perspective, then you can come to it with new faithfulness. And so that has been a game changer for me. When my wife is having a hard day, I will text her a picture of the earth and just say, you know, don't forget to zoom out. Don't forget that new creation is coming, that you are a daughter of that new creation. And you've been tasked with bearing witness to that right here and now.
- [20:57]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, I love that. Brad, when you think of it, from the things you've experienced in this project, what's one of your favorite things that stands out to you in this whole journey of making this?
- [21:06]
Brad Gray
One of the things that was just remarkable, and Brent alluded to it, just even with the drone footage of being in Capernaum were all of the opportunities we had to film incredibly, usually congested sites with nobody there. The whole project has just felt like one miracle after another. And to be sure, when you're doing something like this, the opposition is just as intense. I mean, just the hard times that we've gone through as an organization, personally challenges as a result of taking on a project of this magnitude. And just the opposition has been there. But the ways in which God has shown up in ways that you can't explain without God's hand directing things. And I think just even from the filming of our pilot episode, it was actually during COVID it was November of 2021, we were able to get into Egypt. That was not the issue. The issue was being able to get into Israel as we filmed our pilot in those two countries. And, you know, we got word about 10 days before we could actually leave that Israel was opening. And we were actually doing the Infusion Bible Conference in Parker, Colorado, and literally moved my last talk up an hour and a half so that I could get done, go off stage, get into a minivan, fly from Denver to Chicago to pick up the rest of our team and to fly over. And we were able to film. And literally we got back, and two days later, Israel shut down again. And we just had this very small, concentrated window that we were able to get into both Israel and Egypt to be able to film the pilot episode. And that entire trip is a podcast discussion all to itself of just what we had to navigate and the ups and the downs. But then we. We actually. Then that was for the pilot episode. And then when we went back to the Middle east to film the rest of the feature film and the rest of the seven episodes, we were in Israel, and it was in April of 2024. And our first day there was when Iran sent the 200 drones to blow things up in the country. And we were in Jerusalem, and our film team literally went on top of our hotel and they were filming the Iron Dome blowing drones out of the sky. And then we were like, this is probably not smart. We should probably get into a bunker. Right, right. But it was this moment where the next morning, nobody knew what was going on. Nobody. This had never been done in human history. No nation had sent 200 drones to try to blow up another nation. And so there was a lot of questions. Is this just the beginning of a much bigger escalation? All of the countries around were very, you know, tentative about what was going on. And we were sitting in the lobby of the Jerusalem Hotel and we just were praying, God, what do you want? And we just got done at the end of our prayer time and just sense God saying, I didn't fly you halfway around the world to fly you back after two days. You have a job to do, go do it. And when we just really stepped into that, it was like every site we went to, it was already thin because this was post October 7th, and the ramifications of Gaza were, you know, were still very much in play. But then when a drone attack comes to a country, anybody else that's just kind of there for, you know, casual purposes, they leave, you know, so it was already thin as it was, but literally we showed up at sites where we did not have a permit for that particular location, and people granted us permit on the spot. And these were for locations that have never seen a cinematic camera before. Yeah, I just used that moment, you know, from Star Wars. It was like we were showing up and they were like, these are not the drones you are looking for. I mean, we had people in our group that were helping us and guides, you know, who are Jewish, not messianic. And they're literally asking us the question every day, what is going on? I've never seen permissions granted like this. I do not understand. And our response was, hey, Jesus is real. He wants his story told. And it was just site after site after site. And so, you know, Brent mentioned being at Capernaum. There was nobody there. We got access to the Church of the Holy sepulcher. Nobody is in the shot. We got Gethsemane, which I've never even been on the interior of Gethsemane. And we were granted three hours to film in the oldest grove of Gethsemane. And we actually had a moment where we were. We were up at a bunker area right on the border of Lebanon, Syria, in the northern part of Israel, in. And we were filming a shot in the film where you see Mount Hermon in the background. And 45 minutes later, after we left there, a rocket hit that place, you know, and so we had these, like, close calls. It was like every morning we just woke up and said, God, are we supposed to go and redirect our path if it's not going to end well? And God, in his just graciousness, provided us these experiences that I don't know we'll ever be available again. I mean, really, I hope that Israel will continue to be flooded with tourists, that people will be able to go to Jordan and Israel and Egypt and be able to experience, and that war will not preclude people from travel again. I mean, that's. That's our hope. But to have this window in time where God opened up these opportunities. Like, literally, as people are watching what they're watching, they're seeing the actual sites and locations, and they're seeing, like, we didn't paint anybody out. They are literally just silent, quiet areas that we had full access to do whatever we needed to do to be able to tell the story as best as we could.
- [27:04]
Marty Solomon
When you tell that story, like, the story has, like a. There's a purpose here. Like, there's something that's been drawn together. What is not just your personal hope, and this question's for either of you, like, not just what do you personally hope people get out of this? But. And this is the beginning of a larger project, I think. If I understand the whole sacred thread and where you hope this whole thing goes, what do you suppose. And our best guesses are probably something that God chuckles at. He probably has something even bigger than we could imagine. But what are your best guesses of what people take away from? What seeds get planted? What fruit starts to get born from this Lord's Prayer, this movie, this project? What do you hope people come out of this with and what they see?
- [27:44]
Brad Gray
Yeah, and that's. That's a great, great question, Nelson. I'll tackle just why we started with the prayer, and then you can kind of tackle maybe the larger vision we have for this. You know, it was seven years ago Where I was actually wanting to do something with walking the text in the teaching series around the Lord's Prayer. And I was just sitting and reading the Sermon on the Mount. And I got to the place where right before Jesus gives the Lord's Prayer, Matthew records Jesus saying, and when you pray this, then is how you should pray. And I just had this moment where I was like, oh man, I actually think Jesus meant this. And it was like a critical moment for me where I'd been a pastor for more than 10 years, I'd been leading biblical study trips, you know, had lived and studied in the Middle east, all of this. And I was like, I do not say the Lord's Prayer on a daily basis. And I've got caught into the same thing that so many other people do, which is for most people, the Lord's Prayer is really familiar. And that's where the familiarity, you know, can be a hindrance because we think we know something and we just kind of set it aside and we don't recognize that, you know, our belief is, is that the Lord's Prayer is the most powerful thing Jesus ever gave us, that is the most underutilized. And so for me, it was just this starting with this in depth journey of, well, I want to understand this prayer in a way that I'm transformed by it. And as a result of that journey, I began to realize, oh my goodness, the Lord's Prayer is actually the greatest distillation in the entire Bible for understanding who God is, why Jesus came, and what our purpose is here on earth. That this wasn't just a prayer. Jesus was teaching people to pray. It was the very prayer that was animating his daily life. And when he's giving it to his disciples, he's like, this is what the story is about. This is what I am about. This is what you are to be about. And what it did for me is I started like there was a shift where I was way more laser focused on a daily basis for understanding that I want to be part of the kingdom of God advancing here on earth as it is in heaven. And so I think one of our big objectives is that people would rediscover the Lord's Prayer. Most people won't be discovering the Lord's Prayer, they'll be discovering it in its original context, but really rediscovering that this is the blueprint for life, this is the blueprint for daily living. That when you want to wake up every day and going, God, I want to be about the most important things, there's no better place to anchor yourself than with the Lord's Prayer. And so through the film, through the book, through the television series, we hope that the people of God reinstall this thing that was supposed to be, you know, part of our daily rhythm. In fact, with the Didache, the early church discipleship training manual that dates to the late first century, early second century B.C. they list the Lord's Prayer. It's the first place we have it outside of the Bible. And at the very end, it says, and you shall pray this way three times a day. Which meant for this particular Christian community, they were like, everything is the Lord's Prayer like three times a day. We are anchoring ourselves around it. And so our hope is, is that it's not just an amazing, immersive odyssey through the biblical text and seeing these places and have people's faith come alive in ways that they haven't maybe had before, but that this would be a prayer that people are not just praying on a daily basis, but living it out. And we believe the most powerful thing that the church can do is anchor themselves around living out the Lord's Prayer on a daily basis.
- [31:39]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, you did a really good job in the book of making that case. It was not gimmicky, but I was like, okay. And then towards the end of the book, I believe, Nelson, you have a chapter where you connect the Lord's Prayer historically, possibly to the Kadesh prayer, which I had, the Mourner's Prayer. I had just lost my father when I read that. And so there was this depth of like, oh, this prayer. This prayer has legs. This is not just a liturgical expression that's ancient and old. There's a sense of, if the word power feels right, like, there, this is the most, like you say, the most underutilized. So the case was made. Well, at the beginning of the book, and then later, I'm experiencing. I really do think that there's something to this. So I appreciate you saying that, but, Nelson, you were going to talk about the larger project as a whole.
- [32:26]
Brad Nelson
Yeah, well, going back to the genesis of this all was around Covid. And one of the interesting things that we discovered as we were all at home trying to be Chip and Joanna Gaines and update our homes, was the place that everybody was turning to was streaming platforms.
- [32:44]
Marty Solomon
Yeah.
- [32:44]
Brad Nelson
Americans alone in 2020 streamed 15 million years of content. And so, as followers of Jesus, not able to do the work that we were accustomed to doing leading people to the land, I mean, we say, okay, we stand in this tradition that says where are people? How do we go embody this new creation, this good news, where the brokenness is, where people are? Well, people are on streaming, so how could we take this message to that place that's only going to continue? And so the fact that we can continue to create this kind of content with the cinematic quality that will compel very choosy audiences about what they give their attention to, I think is a really big deal into the future. But it doesn't just stop at reach. It really moves then towards that transformation that Brad was talking about, about living this out. And I had the privilege of. As I was writing, my wife is my ideal reader. So she would come home from work every day and I would just assault her with the day's writing. She didn't have a choice. She was going to listen to what I had written that. But she was just. I mean, in a way, very rabbinic, just ruthless with the questions, with the pushback, with this one question in particular.
- [34:08]
Brad Gray
So what?
- [34:09]
Brad Nelson
And I will never forget, we were walking around cul de sac, and she said, okay, that's all well and good. How can this prayer help me pray for our daughter? So I just kind of started riffing line by line and applying it to the situations in my daughter's life and seeing how that prayer transformed the way we're engaging our children, the way we're bringing our children before the Father, the way I'm even praying with my children, with my littlest one. And this is kind of like the micro story that I hope everybody experiences. So, you know, my wife knows what's in the book. She was a part of it, and now she's reading it. And she said to me about three weeks ago, I am so moved by chapter one, this idea that God is a loving father who comes crashing, knocking things over into people's lives when he hears his kids crying. But that I am one of the ways God does that in the world. And she had just gotten a text message from somebody who said, I'm hurting. I'm not coming to this event. And she said, it dawned on me. I am the Father in this moment. I am a representative of the Father, and I am meant to go crashing into this person's life as a member of the community of Jesus. And that is what I hope everybody experiences. That's what it means to live out the Lord's Prayer.
- [35:38]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, it's beautiful.
- [35:39]
Brent Billings
Yeah, I remember. I think it was maybe 2020. Did you do a little miniseries in the teaching series on the Lord's Prayer? Yes, I Don't know that I listened to it right when it came out, but I had all this baggage from coming out of the Catholic Church and I kind of threw the baby out with the bathwater and I absolutely set aside the Lord's Prayer and that series broke those chains for me. And I feel like I continue to run into more and more resources. So when you say that you have that hope that people will. I understand that hope and I've experienced that. And I absolutely hope that it becomes so much bigger because of all of these works. So thank you for doing that.
- [36:19]
Brad Gray
Thanks for sharing that.
- [36:20]
Brent Billings
I have one more question about the book. I have one lighthearted question too, but one about the book for Nelson. What is your role? How did you guys figure out how to write a book together? I was reading through and it's like you're quoting Eugene Peterson and Frederick Buechner. I was like, oh, he's like the Reed dent to Marty. But I was like, I don't know if that's quite the right analogy. You guys have different approaches. You are different, actually different people. Even though you found yourself in the same place so many times, you were different people. So what is your role? Like, what is it like to write a book together? And how did you guys figure out that balance?
- [36:52]
Brad Nelson
What a great question. It took a long time and I think we both were almost at the breaking point because we got about maybe less than a year from the due date when we realized we are going to have to change up our approach altogether. And part of that was just driven by the fact that we're trying to co author this book. But Brad is also responsible to be in these five different countries all over the world for weeks at a time. And it's hard to communicate, but there are deadlines and deadlines are deadlines. And we do have a very. We're both cut from the same cloth. We both love context. But you know, I jokingly say Brad is a walking, talking Bible encyclopedia. I mean, truly, you could cut that guy open and you're going to find anything from like 400 B.C. to 200 A.D. it's in there. And I. I am similar. I mean, I enjoy that stuff. I read the books, but I'm more of a storyteller, I'm more of a poet, I'm maybe more of a pastor because I did it for so long. I really want to turn the corner into okay, so if we really are going to live this out, that demands some really hard questions of us. And it's going to thrust us to Engage the story of our lives with a new kind of gravity. And so that's where you get Eugene Peterson and Frederick Buechner and those writers who kind of pull us into that kind of stuff. So it was definitely a little bit of a dance where there were some chapters that got written five or six different times and written again and. But Brad, I'd be curious what you would add to that.
- [38:40]
Brad Gray
It was really challenging. And the great thing is that we've now figured out the madness for us to be able to work together with a book. And I think that was the thing that was so shocking, I think, for both Nelson and I, is that we have been best friends since college. I've always jokingly said, he's the other half of my brain. So the moment I'm stuck on anything like it's one called a Nelson. And I'm really strong in the contextual side. And then I gotta work really hard on the application side. Nelson is really quick with the application and then probably has to work harder just in digging up the context around it, which works beautifully together for us to be able to. Cause he'll call me up and be like, hey, help me to understand what's going on here. I'm like, ah, here's the 10 connections. And then I'll call him up and saying, hey, here's the core idea that the text is emerging. Like, what are other great stories that we could tell that would actually illustrate this for people? And he's like, here's five to choose from. I mean, he's kind of like the encyclopedia of stories. And we just work really well together. And we've been doing projects, we've done conferences, we've done speaking engagements, we've done tons of stuff. But doing a book together was uniquely challenging. And it was also kind of a morphing process because I get to serve as the host of the show and the television series or the film and the television series. And so. And I've also written before, so I'm a published author. And so we were originally going to make this more about, hey, this is a book that I'm writing and Brad is helping. And then as we got into it and as Brad mentioned, oh, like I'm over filming and creating and executively producing, you know, this film and this television series and being the host and the writing and all of that, I didn't have the space. And so then it was actually, Brad, you're going to need to do more of the lion's share of the work. And we moved from kind of a Brad Gray with Brad Nelson to we're co writing this. And we initially thought we would just mimic what we're going to be doing with the seven episode series and have one big chapter on each phrase. And then we realized this is too much for people to handle. Our editor was amazing. Carrie was incredible. And she came back to us and she said, actually, I think we need to double the amount of chapters. I think you each need to take a chapter and give your unique voice based on that particular phrase. And so it was still a lot of collaboration. It was still both of us getting together and going, okay, what's the unique contextual insight? What are the major things we want to pull out from the text? And then what are the stories we want to tell? And then where do those stories parallel with our own personal stories? I'll tell those stories in my chapters. You tell your stories in your chapters. And when we finally figured out kind of the secret sauce, it felt like magic. But we did have a couple of moments where we're like, man, our friendship is really being tested here. But it's like anything, like when you work through something so difficult. He and I could now move to another subject matter. And we have the blueprint, we have the working sauce for how we're going to be able to do it. And just the fact that we both had to wrestle so hard through the content, through all the. So what's. How is this different from the film and the television series? Because we didn't just want it to be the same content in three different forms. The book is so incredibly rich. And just the response that people have had to both the film and the book that are out have been. They've been way higher than we could have ever hoped for. And it's just the grace of God. An incredible team. And we've also just been wrestling with this material for six years. And the more that you wrestle with something, the more it gets inside of you, the more you're able to communicate it in a way that it can be transformational to other people.
- [42:31]
Marty Solomon
That's pretty encouraging to hear because you articulated this next book I have coming out soon, I wrote with Redent, and it was the same. And it's good to know I'm not crazy because it was. It was super. Like, we're like best friends. Like, what in the world? Like, why is this so difficult? So I'm really glad that two other good friends have the same. I was just going to blame Reid, but it sounds like it's actually a Universal experience. But, Brent, you've got a lighthearted question that I can't wait to hear the answer to, so you need to ask it.
- [42:57]
Brent Billings
Yeah. So in the film, and presumably in the series as well, you have Yehuda, who is one of our guides in Israel, and you're interviewing him, and right at the end, he gives you a little bit of a hard time about how you don't have any hair. But otherwise, he was just like, this delightful guy. How did you get him to cooperate? Because I feel like he's just always given us a hard time about everything. And he just, like, who is the Yehuda on screen? Because that's not the Yehuda I know.
- [43:29]
Marty Solomon
Yeah. Who is this Yehuda that ends up on film?
- [43:32]
Brad Gray
Oh, man, I love that, man. You know, he and I have. And I don't know if it's, you know, how other guides relate with Yehuda. Like, everything's super smooth with me and Yehuda, you know, so actually putting together that scene was really easy. And there was a couple of moments, even things he was saying. I was like, okay, you've never told me this before. This is great. You know, And I actually felt that with all of our scholars, like, we would do these conversations, and I would be sitting there in the middle of the interview going, I'm so glad that we're recording all of this, because I just want to stop them and write this down for myself, you know, he was fantastic. And he's actually in another episode, so we have him in one scene in the film that will also be in the first episode, but then he's in a later episode as well. And, yeah, he was. He was delightful. He was delightful.
- [44:24]
Brad Nelson
He is disagreeable in the most lovable way.
- [44:27]
Brent Billings
Yeah, it's exactly.
- [44:28]
Marty Solomon
That's it.
- [44:29]
Brad Nelson
The last time I was with him, I made a joke to him. I said, you know, Yehuda, you're not getting any younger. Like, who's my future guide here? And he challenged me to a race to the top of Masada.
- [44:45]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, that sounds about like him. He'd probably look at you and be like, I'll be fine. I'm worried who I'm going to be guiding when I'm. Yeah, absolutely.
- [44:51]
Brad Gray
Yeah. He's like, wait a minute. You're going to. You'll be unfit to do this before I will. You know, he's like. Drinks from the eternal waters of youth, man. It's incredible.
- [45:01]
Brent Billings
Yeah, Yehuda is delightful. I'm excited that we get to share him with the world. A little bit through your film. So thank you for including him.
- [45:10]
Brad Gray
Yeah, absolutely.
- [45:11]
Marty Solomon
Well, guys, thanks for being here. Where can people go to find you if they want to be more connected to. I think you mentioned this in the. In the book or somewhere. You talked about how you couldn't believe thelordsprayer.com was available, but lo and behold, yeah, one more miracle to add to the list.
- [45:26]
Brad Gray
Oh, man.
- [45:27]
Brent Billings
Hand of God, for sure.
- [45:29]
Brad Gray
Yes. Yes, it is. I mean, we didn't buy it off of anybody. It was just sitting, sitting there on GoDaddy. I literally could not believe it. And. But yeah, that would be the primary place for people to go with respect to the film, the book and the television series is thelordsprayer.com and then if people want to access, you know, 200 plus teaching videos and everything else we've done at Walking the Text, they can go to walkingthetext.com but thelordsprayer.com is a great place to go first.
- [45:59]
Marty Solomon
Listen, I always tell people, you've been on my list for a long time, Brad, to have you on the podcast. And the day that you came, I knew I would tell people, Walking the Text is the good stuff. And once you find it, just remember, just remember us, everybody, because you'll find a treasure trove of just really, really good content over there. It's excellent.
- [46:18]
Brad Gray
I appreciate that, Marty. And man, we're so grateful to be on with you and Brent and appreciate you opening up your audience to us and having a chance for us to collaborate on seeing God's kingdom advance here on Earth as it is in heaven.
- [46:31]
Marty Solomon
Absolutely, absolutely.
- [46:32]
Brent Billings
Longtime listeners will remember us recommending your book, make youe Mark Way back in session two.
- [46:39]
Brad Gray
Way back. There you go.
- [46:40]
Brent Billings
450 episodes ago. So.
- [46:42]
Brad Gray
Oh, wow.
- [46:43]
Brent Billings
It's a long time coming.
- [46:45]
Brad Gray
Yeah. That's amazing.
- [46:46]
Marty Solomon
All right, well, I will have all.
- [46:47]
Brent Billings
The links that we talked about in the show notes for this episode. You can find those in your podcast app or@baymaudiscipleship.com you can use the contact page on the website to get in touch with us. Please reach out to the Brads if you want to connect with their work. Almost an endless amount of resources. If you have not already engaged their stuff, you have to check it out. So do that. And thank you all for joining us on the Bama podcast today. We'll talk to you again soon.