Episode 271 - Cracking the Code with Rusty Rueff and Pastor Terry Brisbane

In this special episode of the podcast, we’re flipping the mic over to our co-host: Rusty Rueff as we interview him and his pastor, Terry Brisbane.

The two have been close friends for years and offer unique insight into what it looks like for entrepreneurs to partner with their churches. They’ve also recently co-authored a book called “The Faith Code: A Future-Proof Framework for a Life of Meaning and Impact.”

They join the show to discuss the framework they’ve developed and to help us see how pastors and entrepreneurs could work more closely together.

Link to the Book: https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Code-Future-Proof-Framework-Meaning/dp/1640656553

Link to Life Apps Teachings:

All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.

Episode Transcript

Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.

Hello and welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We've got a special guest for this episode who's going to sound familiar? However, listen, before today, we're flipping the mic over to our co-host, Rusty Rueff, as we interview him and his pastor, Terry Brisbane, about their new book, The Faith Code A future Proof Framework for a Life of Meaning and Impact. They'll also help us see how pastors and entrepreneurs can work together more closely. Let's listen in.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Feature Announcement podcast. This is a very special edition. It's infrequent that we turn the tables a bit and we interview a co-host. In fact, I don't think we've ever done that before in 300 or so episodes. And so today we have Rusty with us. Rusty is going to change seats, so to speak, and we're going to talk to him and his great friend Terry Brisbane about a new book that Rusty has come out with. If you've been paying attention to podcasts over the years, you know that Rusty is a part time sermon deliverer from his church in Rhode Island is very, very thoughtful about the way that God has worked in his life and the way that God works in work and has put together a blog that's got more than 3500 entries now or something like that. So he's constantly reading, constantly reading God's Word and trying to understand how that applies to work generally. And then as an entrepreneur specifically in this time, he's brought Terry and his great friend and pastor into the mix as well, and they're going to be talking about this book, Faith Code. So, guys, welcome to the program.

Terry Brisbane: Oh. Great to be here

Rusty Rueff: Good to be here on this side. This is nice to be on this side. And there's no prep on this site. We just show up.

Henry Kaestner: That's right. You show up. That's right. That's right. And I've got triple the prep today because not only you're not here to help me, but William's not here either. And yet I know your heart well enough, and I get a chance to meet Terry. We were just talking about before we went live six or seven years ago to get a sense of who you are and you learn so much about somebody by meeting their spouse, but also in meeting their friends, and their pastor. And that's a great privilege that I've had because I got a chance to come and hang out with you and David Brickner. Maybe we'll talk about that relationship here. And second. In fact, they would say, And so what are you going to get today? Today you're going to learn a little bit more about Rusty, the guy that brings you these stories every week. And then you're also going to get some frameworks about how to think about living, how to think about work. But most importantly, one of the things we can get to is this is kind of a timeless framework, and that brings us to God, the timeless God who loves us. And so oftentimes we miss this kind of core DNA that's been implanted in us, and we just can kind of crack the code on that. It'll bring us into a life of more peace, fulfillment, mission and shalom. So we're going to talk about all those things. But before we get to that and the substance of the book in the frameworks, etc., how did you guys meet? I wouldn't say you're an unlikely friendship and it shouldn't be that way. Entrepreneur should be great friends with their pastors all over. But you guys model that out. How'd you guys meet?

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I'll start and Terry can jump in. By the way, I totally agree with you, Henry. I mean, the relationship that I have with Terry as my pastor and my friend is a true gift from God. And I think anybody who doesn't take advantage of having a relationship with their pastor that transcends just being somebody who, you know, you shake hands on Sundays on the way out the door, or you occasionally get an opportunity to talk to. I think you're missing out on something that God wants to have for you. So here's how it happened. So Patti and I had moved to the West Coast for me to come to work for Electronic Arts. And, you know, when we moved out here, we come from Connecticut and Connecticut. We'd really had a difficult time finding a church that felt like us. And maybe it was because where we lived or just New England sensibilities, what I would say we were looking for was what many people would recognize as a seeker friendly church that the Willow Creek Association, you know, was known for like I would go online when I'd go out of town and I would look for Willow Creek Association churches, because I knew when I went into that church that I would find a welcoming spirit, I would find God's word. But I also knew that it would be a place where the arts and music would be integral to that. And that was really important to me, but also really important to my wife because my wife had grown up Catholic. And the Catholic Church in her mind was just a little bit, you know, I don't know the right word to use, not engaging maybe.

Henry Kaestner: Some can be that way. Some have been really encouraged recently. Some have been really encouraging, but some can be not.

Rusty Rueff: Yes. And where she grew up in the Bronx and in New York, you know, it wasn't a place where there were a lot of young people. Okay. I digress. So we'd been out here and we'd started to talk about, you know, we really need to be in a church and we're living down in Burlingame and we were in the city on a weekend, and it was an afternoon either Saturday or Sunday. I can't remember. I think it was a Saturday. And we drove past on 17th Street and Valencia. We drive past and I look out the window of the car and I see a long line of people outside a building and they were all hip and cool.

Henry Kaestner: Was that Mitchell's ice cream?

Rusty Rueff: No, it wasn't. It was Cornerstone Church. It was Cornerstone Church. Right. And then the next day, there was an article in the paper about this Generation X church. So we said there's a place we should go visit. Not knowing anything about it other than, you know, this might be the place. So we went. And once we started going, we never stopped. Yeah. And so we'd been there. I don't know. We call him PT Pastor Terry. You know PT, I don't know how long we'd been there, but I said, you know, it's time for us to connect into the church. This time we've been coming here and we've now started direct our tithes here. It's time to connect. And so I reached out to PT's assistant by email and said, We would like to meet the pastor. And, you know, they don't know who we are, you know, And there's like, okay, he can meet with you Wednesday night after a Wednesday night service that they were having. And I said, Great, we'll come into the city for that. That would be fantastic. And I warned Patti, I said, look, here's the way it's going to work. We're going to go up. We're going to meet with them. We're going to introduce ourselves. And we're you get like 15 minutes and that's it. And don't expect anything else. Right. He's busy. He's got a lot of stuff going on. Don't expect anything else. Well, lo and behold, we went, we met, and I think we spent like almost an hour and a half. And so that's my side of the story.

Henry Kaestner: PT. What's your side of the story?

Terry Brisbane: I mean, it's hard to walk back in time and remember that moment the way Rusty does. I do know that I was joking with Rusty. If we were the young and hip church then we're now the oldest, the older church now and not as hip. And yet we still retain many of the the values and loves that were existent when Rusty first connected with us, when the world was a whole lot younger. And I think we struck up a friendship. There was a chemistry there, and there's a lot to explore in this question that you presented in post. Henry You know, because I'm sure every pastor and I'm sure others who are leaders wonder, how does this work? You know, how do some people get a chance to build a relationship and maybe others don't? There's a lot of nuance and there's a lot of things to explore just in that alone. How does that happen? And should it? In my case, it became a growth point for my life. I liked Rusty. I thought he was a very interesting person and he represented not only a sincere love for the church, which I saw that he was a if I can use this term, it may be a little dated, but he was a churchman. That is, he even though he was a CEO or working in the business marketplace at the time, in a very influential position, he had a deep love for God's Word and a love for the church. I mean, there were some convictions to him that I appreciated, and I recognize that he himself was an expert or yeah, that's what I would call it, someone who was well versed and learned in the marketplace. And there were things that I also could learn from him after. So there was an initial chemistry of just, Hey, I like this guy and he's a serious person. And then that evolved into more exploration. That created a friendship, even though he was able to do something that I also appreciated, he was still honoring the office of my role as a pastor, and I felt that there was a wonderful humility, and yet there was something about his life, his position, what his knowledge base was that I could learn from as well. And I guess what I'm saying is, if you put all those things together, the genuineness of faith, a kind of dispositional ease with one another, and then an ability for me also to learn something, right. It wasn't just giving, although I would do that. You always, as a pastor, have to weigh out your priorities just like anybody who's in business does as well. You know. Where do you place your emphasis? I have basic rules that I go by, and that's a discussion in and of itself. How do you establish where to give your time, priority wise and to whom? And what does that look like from a spiritual standpoint? And what is our responsibility before Christ? In my case, disposition, and we had a nice, complimentary relationship over time, I began to view him as a trustworthy person and someone who deeply loved the church. And he, Rusty, didn't try to impose his way of thinking about how things should be done. He just he just came to help be part of the community. And in so doing, it just treated the beginning at the embryo that ultimately allowed for what we've become now in this expression, which we didn't envision at the time, you know, years later, couple of decades now, this has evolved or it's flourished in the direction that we didn't anticipate. And now we're both being able to make contributions out of that relationship for the Lord and hopefully for the benefit of others, for the healing of many and for some who we know now are in the marketplace and are searching for a better understanding of life architecture and values and truth and how to be a follower of Jesus in these complicated times with tremendous anxiety. And yeah, a lot of things that can get us off course. So that's my long answer. Right.

Rusty Rueff: And I want to add one thing that he did that I think really validated the relationship was as a pastor, as he said, you know, he has to make his choices about priority of time and people. And who do you trust and who would you invest your time with? What he did and Terry, I don't think you and I have ever talked about this. He introduced me to an associate pastor. That's true, Pastor J.R. And he said, Rusty, I want you to spend time with J.R. and I want J.R. to spend time with you. And I could have looked at that in two different ways. So the first way I could have looked at it is like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I'm a senior executive of a well-known company. I'm trying to get connected into the church. I've got a bunch of talents. I've got some resources to bring here. You know, kind of like when you join a new board, you know, for a nonprofit or something, you have to make a decision, you know, how are you going to respond to how they're going to interact with you? And so I could have gone at it in one way and said, well, come on. What's this guy doing? You know, pushing me off. Instead, I looked at it the other way. I said he was willing to take I trusted a really trusted long term friend, senior leader of his team, and say to them, I want you to spend time with Rusty. I want you to devote time to him. And, Rusty, would you devote your time to J.R. And J.R. and I started meeting together once a week. He would drive down to my neck of the woods in Burlingame, in Millbrae, and we would get together once a week and we would have coffee and we would talk. And the Bible that I hold here in my hand, the one that I call my Holy Mess, which is soul written up and almost falling apart, you know, June 10th, 2003, from J.R.. You know, Rusty, thanks for the blessing. Love, J.R.. And through that relationship, there was a validation of, well, okay, this guy that just shows up out of nowhere, you know, is not a guy that's just going to take my time and run away. He's invested now in the church and in a member of my staff. And my staff is coming back and saying, you know, this guy, he's the real deal. It's great. And I think sometimes, Henry, what happens is, you know, we see some of these safeguards that I truly, honestly believe in my heart that pastors must have. Otherwise, you know, there's an enemy out there that could take advantage of them. They must have these safeguards. And we can misinterpret that as they're being standoffish or, you know, they're not, you know, so open or engaging or any of those things. I'm so glad I didn't take that path. What I looked at it was he's investing in me in a way that I wouldn't have imagined.

Henry Kaestner: Okay. So I want to get. At some point in time here to the framework that PT mentioned just a bit ago. But before we do that, I want to get a little bit more into your partnership. And it's a leading question, and I'll tell you where I'm going with it. I believe that one of the most missed opportunities we have is with entrepreneurs and business owners being in relationship with the pastoral staff at their church and vice versa, and that it's been a miss, entreprenuers feel, that pastors don't get them. Pastors don't feel that entrepreneurs get them. And there is, especially in a church environment, I've heard this from others and I felt it myself, where that pastor is just not really interested in getting really involved in what I'm doing six days a week. But he is interested in having me get drawn closer to Jesus in terms of discipleship. And yet there's this kind of this missing each other because where I learn about God and Jesus is in the workplace, that's where I am in. I need some practicality. I need something that I can operationalize because I'm an entrepreneur. I want you guys to riff on that a little bit because I do it and I want it to be a little bit because I want to get to the framework in the book. But Rusty, because I'm closest to you, I have a good sense about what you've been able to pick up from Pastor Terry. Pastor Terry, I don't know if I have the same sense from what you've learned by being in serious, committed relationship with somebody in the marketplace, what has that shown you in a way that's made you and maybe I shouldn't be so presumptuous about this, but. Well, maybe I should, because you've been spending 20 years in friendship with the guy. But what has made you a better pastor, a better disciple, a better friend in a better position to be able to minister to people in the marketplace?

Terry Brisbane: Okay. I'm going to answer that question from a different angle of approach. I want to suggest that not all pastors are uniformly the same. I know that's you're very well aware of that. Just like every business leader is different, every entrepreneur's different. There's probably more similarities, but there are distinct differences. Some are more by nature, I would say, people oriented. Love meeting needs, love, caring and take a very pastoral shepherding approach. Others such as myself, not that I would push those things aside, but my primary gifts tend towards leadership. And I'm a pastor and a CEO as well. So there are things that I'm responsible for that definitely overlap with business and the marketplace. It's just that my world is a world of primarily being a doctor as well of the soul and a teacher of the way of Jesus. And that's exactly how we constructed our book, by the way. We tried to stay in our place of predominant expertise, but that overlap is what I'm trying to get at. That's where I found I could learn a lot. Now I'm in a nonprofit ministry, right? Church. My primary mandate is not to make money. I don't answer to necessarily the same kind of shareholders or the same kind of a board. I have actually a little bit more autonomy to lead the church, predominantly as far as cornerstones concern its founding pastor in that regard as Cornerstone is in here in the city of San Francisco. But I had a lot that I could learn about principles, about the marketplace, about how to engage people who have I'm going to use this word people who have a degree of power and means no one trained me how to do that. That was not my world. In fact, if anything, I think I was uncomfortable with people who had an abundance of resources or power or perhaps a reputation because I didn't want to cater to that and be a respecter of persons. And as a result, I think I may not have actually properly known how to engage the way that Rusty helped me. He didn't even know he was doing it. But as time went on, because of his humility and genuineness but his skill sets, it allowed me to learn things about a kind of way of living that I was not necessarily as knowledgeable about. And I had to learn. I had to learn not to allow. I know this is going to sound super strange to maybe just some of the audience, but sometimes pastors are reluctant to reach out or push too far into a relationship with people maybe in the marketplace who are great leaders or who have an abundance of resource because it's the exact opposite reason. They don't want to feel like they're catering to someone just because. Well, the Book of James talks about it because they are rich. And how do you do this at the same time, realizing that here's a person who has gifting and capacities and a knowledge base that can not only help me to minister better to people across the board, but also can help me understand, you know, how to be a missionary in a city that's filled with people who have an entrepreneurial heart. So how do I do that? But what I'm saying is this depending on the type of person we are, some people struggle with, I'm attracted to that person because of what they can give us. And I guess maybe part of me was afraid of that in my own heart. I didn't want to be owned by anybody. I just wanted to be able to do what Jesus asked me to do, not as a respecter of persons. And so for me personally, that was one of the best things the Lord did through our relationship. It helped me to learn how to engage and how to be okay with that in my heart, because my initial tendency was, I don't want to do this because, you know, why would I give this person preferential treatment?

Henry Kaestner: I think that I follow that. What have you learned generally about So you're in a unique spot. Silicon Valley, San Francisco, known for the number of entrepreneurs in the innovation and the creativity that happens in the marketplace. Is there anything that you've learned about the needs of a Christ follower by engaging with Rusty or other business people? That helps you say, You know what, I actually need to camp out on this passage more in Ephesians because I have sense that when somebody is dealing with always trying to sell something to somebody or trying to raise capital or battling with channel conflict, I'll fill in the blanks on these different things. My sense is that folks in the marketplace need to camp out on this more because, you know, there's idols for all of us, Christ followers, and especially all that live in America. We're all susceptible to elements of the American dream. But my sense is that people in the marketplace that are where I serve are particularly prone to this level. And I don't know that I got that before really engaging with Rusty or somebody else.

Terry Brisbane: Yeah. I mean, it gave obviously greater insight to the unique challenges that are faced by entrepreneurs and business leaders in Rusty's case. He is an executive, a leader working at a high level. Also watched him transition into the challenges of becoming a CEO and all the unique pressures that went along with that. It became apparent to me that they're just like everybody else today. You know, you might be really skilled in one area of your life, but you might have another area where it's very deficient. And I'm not suggesting that was Rusty, but it did give me insight to the fact that there are real needs here. There are real pressures that are being faced. We sometimes miss the fact that success not only has a price tag, but sometimes it's illusionary. It may appear to others that you have everything you've achieved, but there are certain pitfalls that go along with that. You can become consumed and out of proportion. You can have a very weak soul. You can have relationships that are disintegrating. You can be filled with anxiety that is almost crippling. The pressure itself of succeeding. And then what do you do next even after you have. That's a hard thing. Those are hard things. Those are real things. Those are things that if people aren't careful, they'll start to try to fill that. I'll call it that tension, that pain, that stress. How about that? With things that are not helpful and we start to justify doing things that are very damaging to ourselves, easily fall into addictive patterns. We become toxic in our relationships. So I've learned a lot about that just by watching the pressure cooker that many of our audience is obviously having to deal with. And, you know, success is an interesting thing because what is success? Is it achieving? Is it getting the funding? Is it building? And what next? And we have an entire chapter. I'm just trying to go back to the book, but in the faith code, we talk about what is true riches and what do we do with what Jesus taught us there about what is really valuable, about how we love, how we work, the way we heal, you know, all these things, right? So, you know, we could go off on that.

Henry Kaestner: I want to go off on that. So much of the book revolves around what it means to live a good life. You know, the success that you see some of these Silicon Valley CEOs achieve. You write by in answering the question, it means constantly revisiting four phases of life. And here we come into it because I love frameworks. So you talk about framework, you talk about design perspective, evaluation. Talk about that a bit.

Terry Brisbane: Yeah. I mean, Rusty you are okay, if I just jump in and do that.

Rusty Rueff: Go ahead

Henry Kaestner: And I'd love for you to tell it for the listeners here. One of the things that's really unique and I think really helpful about the way the book is set up is it starts off with a theological concept by PT and then Russ. He comes in and talks about some of the application about how he sees that working out in a business life. I think that that one two combo is really helpful. So yeah, let's absolutely, let's do that here. Why don't you start. Rusty why do not you fill in?

Terry Brisbane: Yeah. And I want to also acknowledge that was beautifully phrased, the way that you framed the very book itself. Henry We both will overlap into the others lane periodically. So it's not completely siloed and nor should it be. I mean, Rusty is wrestling with biblical principles at times, and there are times where I will jump into life management and business principles indirectly, leadership principles, certainly, because you all know we can't lead anything beyond where we lead ourselves. However, having said that, we go back to the framework, we talk about the framework, we're talking about basically the foundations, the foundational principles by which we live. We use a quote from Archimedes, the great Greek engineer, mathematician of ancient days. He talks about give me a lever long enough in a place to stand and I can move the earth. Of course, Jesus talked about if you have faith the size of the mustard seed, you can see that mount be moved. I mean, there's a real similarity there. The idea of a place to stand. That's what we talk about, frame. We talk about really our foundational principles. Jesus mentioned I will like I'm the one who hears these sayings of mine and these words and does them to a wise man who builds a house that truly lasts as true a business as well, I would imagine, because it has eternal consequence. And that's part of the reason why we talk about futureproof. But that's another discussion. The framework, the foundation, the way I describe it, the idea of design, it has to do with the sense of growing, building, cultivating. So think of a a good analogy would be you have a foundation that is solid. You start to build a framework and you can see the frame of what's the structure, and then you have to fill it in. I like to think of the filling in as the perspectives that we talk about how do we tie things together so that these concepts encouraging everyone to engage on a daily life implementation approach. You know, how we love, how we work, how we relate, how we heal, how we deal with our own self-inflicted wounds, how we forgive all those things. Right? That's the perspective piece. And then we talk about evaluation. And when I mean evaluation, we're talking about honest reflection. We're talking about a commitment to maintain quality and then, of course, a principle that so many business leaders would know and understand the idea of continual adjustment. We have to ask why? Because according to Jesus teachings of Scripture, we're all prone to drift. And I include pastors and spiritual leaders. I can drift. So we need to constantly remind ourselves of our foundational principles, the structure that we're building with our life, and then how that's actually showing up. And then, like I said, we evaluate it. And then if I can anchor with this, we talk about having a steadfast commitment, but also. Cultivating a kind of vital optimism is anchored in the hope of Christ. That Joy. It goes beyond even our circumstances when we're building on the right things in the right way. We're being honest and humble. We're being accountable. We're bringing others in the conversation. The remarkable aspect of this will be that we will be shocked at the good that we can do for the Kingdom of God in ways seen in ways not seen in ways that will be obvious in the generation of our lifetime. Listen, here's the part that goes in the future futureproof. It's like an arrow shot through time. The Lord doesn't return. First it will have an effect on generations, some of whom people we will never actually meet or see, who will become part of a connected faith story. And we will be part of that story. So it is worthy evaluating. And that's the last part. That's the capstone for me. And it requires, like I said, continually looking at our own hearts before the Lord and readjusting, making adjustments. And last one, I'll add. It has to be seasonal, too, because every season is this unique transition point. And that means we revisit these principles in different seasons and stages of our life. If we can do that, the oddity would be if we didn't have a life that had blessing in it that extended beyond our own lifetime.

Henry Kaestner: You said something in there. I think that was really, really important because you get at some of the ambiguity around things like how do we define success? What's the point of it? How do we know if we're there or are we going after the right thing or not? And in this concept, evaluation is what we're doing. And if we have the right framework, does it leave us with this sense of vital optimism? So many different frameworks that lead with what the Earth would say, the world would say is success will leave the person who's achieved it with the sense of a cynicism and just jaded ness. And you see that in collections of successful people that don't know Jesus. And to some extent I find it creeping into my own life. And but there's a joy. It was based on the rock. There's a vital optimism, and we know how the story is going to end. We can look at all the things are going around us in terms of the geopolitical environment, and we can just find that, you know, if we haven't designed with right framework, we can be left with a sense of depression or just like helplessness. If, however, we design the right way, we can say, Well, we've been successful on this because we're left with this sense of vital optimism. And that's that I want to spend time reflecting on that. I think that was great. Rusty, why don't you comment on that, too? Why don't you also talk about how you see that framework apply in the life of an entrepreneur? Because you know our audience so well.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, sure. So what I love about yeah, let me say it. What I love about what we did is, you know, we took a metaphor of the technology world. You know, frameworks and platforms and applications and tried to turn it into something that, you know, we all could relate to and understand. And you know, what you walk away with, we hope is what Terry just talked about, how we internalize this faith code and how we're being and our ability to have a wonderful gift from God to go directly to the source code. Right. Which we have in his scripture that we can constantly be testing ourselves against and going back to when we think that the framework is getting shaky or, you know, it's not exactly where we want it to be. But at the same time, if that's all we did, we'd be missing out because the other side of the framework is then the doing piece is externalizing the framework, taking it into our work, the things that we do, the relationships that we have, the cultural influence that we might have around us, our health, the way we have fun, we recreate, we enjoy our life. And if you think about it and you let the framework actually drive your life, you will carry everything about your being into your doing and you're doing Henry will give you, which is what we write about in the faith code, a chapter called The Irresistible Attitude. Right to have an attitude of joy, of hope, of encouraging others, of feeling like life can be something that if we continue to tap into it, it can be abundant and joyful and flourishing, which is what the God of love wanted us to have. Right. I mean.

Henry Kaestner: A life have it to the full. Tell me about frameworks. I want to get into something because you introduce in a book. I think that's interesting. So an original, maybe not the original, but an original framework that we see in Scripture Ten Commandments, where sometimes we look for a list of do's and don'ts. But you have this great emphasis on grace and love throughout the book and even suggest that healthy framework as presented in the Ten Commandments is about grace and love and not just a sense of rigid do's and don'ts. So I want to be careful about overstating what you guys are talking about in terms of frameworks. It's this attitude towards joy and grace in the sense of this abundance, and with the result being joy and this vital optimism we talked about, but not necessarily this rigorous sense that's constraining us. Can you unpack that both. Maybe PT you start off with it about how you view the Ten Commandments that might be different than most people who might interpret it as a list of do's and don'ts?

Terry Brisbane: Well, first off, the Commandments were built like a constitution for a nation that didn't have an identity, that it was absolutely a gift of grace. There's no other way around it. It was as if God was giving them something that would allow them to have a framework to build something that even now, if you think about it, it's still there in some form. It's what God used to bring forth Messiah. Jesus. The law in its most condensed form. The commandments were actually words of grace. Even though they look like very constrictive rules, they were designed to help bless Israel as a people. And of course, the ultimate fulfillment of that is Christ. So we're not trying to live in the Old Testament, but at the same time, you see the consistency even when we get to Jesus, it says he was full of grace and truth. It's not one to the neglect of the other. This is this beautiful tension in the Scripture that is constantly being revealed to us. God deals with us out of the place of boundaries for our own well-being. Every one of those rules that God gave to Israel was designed for their blessing, not for their hurt. God never gives us things that are designed to cheat us. This is the thing. God's commandments, as we're told in the Scriptures, are not grivious. At its core, it's not meant to keep us from some. That's the lie. If you want to get back to that, that goes all the way back to the beginning. The first recorded human being and that family there that fell into the broken place in our sin and part of world. What was the suggestion that this boundary for you is to your detriment? But the truth of the matter is, God never does things to our detriment. His laws and rules and principles are boundaries designed to safeguard is no different than a guardrail on the side of a highway around a very dangerous cliff that's designed to save me. People say I don't want a guardrail. I don't need that. Yeah, well, you can go your own way. But the Bible tells us our own way is the way of foolishness, and it leads to death. And ultimately, it is the loss of freedom, not the gaining of freedom. The beautiful thing is when we honor the law and walk, submitted to his truth. We gain freedom. We lose it when we go our own way because we so easily fall into bondage. What God is trying to do was spare his Old Testament church from the pain of the culture that would destroy it.

Henry Kaestner: So I love that what you're getting at here is what's the motives to why? And I don't think I've ever spent much time thinking about why did we get to ten commands and know what the Ten Commandments are? But why? To guide us. And so you've given us a different perspective on that, which I get. It's awesome. He gave it to us as a gift, as a love in grace.

Rusty Rueff: As a father.

Henry Kaestner: Who loves his children and knew that he loves his children. You have a four year old. You give them some rules because it's for their own good. It's not because you're trying to constrain them, it's because you want to see them flourish. And without those rules, they're not going to flourish. So but it brings me to the question of motive and why. Okay. So now you've helped us understand a bit about why God, brought us the Ten Commandments. Why did the two of you write this book?

Rusty Rueff: Well, there's a story behind it, because it originally started with a presentation that I made 20 plus years ago when the iPhone came out and we started to get applications and there's an app for that. And I, I gave this presentation at Purdue. Are you building your life as a platform or an app? And it resonated. And because we were in conversation, because Terry and I we're in constant conversation, you know, I shared with him, you know, I mean, this presentation and it did this and people commented on it. It was Terry's idea. Along the way, he said, well, what if we turn that into a message series? And we did. We had a message series called Life Apps where he taught. And then he had me do a little video segment. It's really cool videos that I would go out and shoot all around the Bay Area with the audio visual team that were just a like applications. And so we did that and then that went really well at the church was 12 part series. And then we kept talking about it, We kept talking and we kept talking and you know, one day we said, you know, we've done all this. Maybe we'll turn it into a book. And it would have been a lot easier to go back and do another video segment than writing a book. But, you know, it took us eight years, eight years from the time we said we ought to write a book to, you know, getting that book out in September.

Henry Kaestner: Can the videos be found?

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, they're on Cornerstone SF.

Henry Kaestner: if you really want them. You read the book, you know, like, Gosh, I need more of this. And I just I need more of Rusty. And I want to see what Rusty look like eight years ago, and I almost got the rusty Rusty. We did a we did a session, a podcast episode, maybe like number seven or eight where you said, Hey, I've written a framework on something and people continue to come in looking for that, right?

Rusty Rueff: Oh, yeah, that was number 16. It was episode 16 that we did together and I had just thrown out there, Hey, I've got this one page roadmap framework where you can distill the entire company and your goals and objectives and align the entire company on one page. And yeah, how many episodes are we now? 500 plus or whatever, you know, and we still get people.

Henry Kaestner: The problem is now when people ask it, you know, if it comes from episode six or episode number of 500, actually, I don't think we have 500 but FDE and FDI combined, right? We probably do. Okay. So now I want to get back to the framework. So we've looked a little bit about why framework you went ahead and had this original series. It went well with people in the marketplace and like, let's work on this and let's go ahead and put together a book unless you want to make more comments on that, if I missed it, because otherwise, I mean, getting into acronym CARES, I like acronym, I like frameworks. Rusty you use CARES to talk about and define love.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah. One of the things you'll find in the faith code is I love acronyms because I think acronyms we can remember, right? And it's just a nice way of capsizing thing. And so, you know, we say that love cares. It's obvious, right? Love cares. But if you take apart the word cares, what we say is it's C A R E S. But first of all, love is creative. You know, we're made in the image of God. And you think about, you know, the times when you really are expressing love at the highest level that you can, you know, with somebody else. Many times that involves creativity, right? That we love to be creative in our love. So love is creative. Secondly, we say that love is abundant. That we are to love abundantly. And that the resources of the world are limited. But our power to come up with new ways to be regenerative, if you will, with love, that's not limited at all. So love, love should be abundant. Thirdly, we take the word R. We say love takes and encourages responsibility. And I think we all know that, you know, the people that love us the most and the people that we love the most, there's a sense of responsibility that comes with that relationship. And there's a sense of responsibility that comes with love. And, you know, we were given the ultimate love of God to forgive our sins. And that was a gift. But with a gift, you don't just take a gift and throw it out. You take the gift and you take a responsibility with that gift. Fourthly, we say that love empowers. You know, love is not top down. You know it's not. Do what I say. But really, love is bottoms up. So, you know, what do you think? And that people can bring all their gifts to bear. And then lastly, love stewards. You know, I love to acknowledge the fact that everything we have ultimately belongs to God and should be used for his purposes. And when we have many abundances and a lot of something or even a little of something. You can go back to that word responsibly. You know, we are to steward something that we get. So, you know, love is, you know, in this time of, you know, where we use the word generative, you know, all the time with generative AI, it's regenerative, it's a win win, and it's a cycle that we can play over and over with that word cares. And that's the concept we put out there. And, you know, if we do that, I think, you know, love can be a cycle for us and we can run it over and over and over and over. And it just gets better and better.

Henry Kaestner: So, so much more that we can talk about on this subject and maybe we can have the opportunity to because we've talked a bit about the relationship between an entrepreneur and a pastor, and I'm richer for the experience. So much of what we do, by the way, at faith driven entreprenuer for in partnering with the local church is one of the 12 marks and so many of our faith driven entrepreneur groups. In fact, most of them happen at a local church, which connotes some level of partnership with pastoral staff and how important it is that the entrepreneur is brought into the local church. We'll talk more about that maybe on another podcast. We'll also have an opportunity, hopefully to talk more about the faith. Go in the meantime, go on buy the book, buy the book, Get a sense for this future proof of concept and so many of you. And again, it's so much fun. I told this to Rusty. I go to Uganda, I get off the plane, a woman picks me up and she says, I'm just jet lag and feel like I could use some encouragement. She says, I got to tell you, I love the podcast. You want to know who my favorite podcast co-host is? I'm sure she's going to say it's me. I'm sure of it. And of course she didn't. She said, It's rusty. So if you want to know more about Rusty in the way that he thinks about things, faith code, we've got to check it out. So just in a couple of minutes we've got left. I do want to finish out, as we do with our podcast, which is what are you hearing from God through his word? Both of you, PT I want you to go first and then Rusty circles out.

Terry Brisbane: Uh, two things. Probably the first one. In times like these Galatians six, you know, let us not be wearing what we are doing for in due time, we shall reap if we faint, not stay with the good thing. Watch your soul guard. Your heart is what I'm hearing. And that really does lead me into my other one, which just from Colossians two six. And now, even as you accepted Jesus as your Lord, here's the phrase. Continue to follow him. I love that. Continue. you must continue to follow him. And for me, that again, goes back to something I alluded to earlier when we were having our discussion. Watch out for drift. Watch out for drift. A little folding of the hands. Be careful. Just because we know something doesn't mean we're going to do it. We need to practice what we want others to follow, and we want to make sure that we are taking seriously my own soul. So when I talk about how the Lord is also speaking to me, I think I'm hearing and I heard the phrase somewhere, but it's been sitting with me. The goal is progression, not perfection. I want to keep growing. I want to keep that growing. Yet I want to keep pursuing vital optimism. I want to do what the Lord asks me to do. I want to be wearing, well, doing so. That's what's on my heart right now. I want to stick with it, run a good race.

Rusty Rueff: It's awesome for me at Cornerstone in the summer, read a New Testament reading plan that Terry and the team put out and I follow along and I really got stuck in. Paul's letters to the churches because I think Paul's just amazing as he carries, you know, one message to another church and another, and he learns along the way and, you know, they just get richer and richer. And in second Corinthians 13 five, a, a verse grabbed me. It just grabbed me. And I haven't been able to let go of it. And it is examine yourselves to see if your faith is really genuine, right to see if it's really genuine. Test yourselves. If you cannot tell, the Jesus Christ is among you. It means that you have failed the test. And it just convicted me. And where I am right now is I am examining and I'm testing to make sure that Jesus Christ is among me and among the things that I'm doing. And. If he's not, there's no grading on the curve. It says here it's pass fail. It's pass fail. And it's a new standard for me.

Henry Kaestner: There's two things we got left. Let me suggest that is almost impossible to do that by ourselves. And that, I think is part of the lesson that I've seen in the way that you've been in relationship with PT with David, so that you can examine each other. It's hard to do by yourself. I'm grateful for each of you. I'm grateful for Rusty, for our friendship. I'm grateful for the subject matter of the book and help him understand. So why did God give us a [.....]? There's so many different things I picked up from. Until next time, Rusty and I are signing off. God bless you all.

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