Episode 279 - Is the Church Winning? with Henry Kaestner and Justin Forman

As Christians, we can easily get wrapped up in this belief that the church is on the losing side of history.

We feel the shifting winds of culture blow away from us.

We hear story after story of major church leaders either leaving the faith or succumbing to some sort of moral failure.

It makes sense to ask ourselves: where are our wins? Where does the Church have victory in times like this?

In this episode of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast, Henry Kaestner and Justin Forman bring some clarity to those questions in a segment we call “the riff” where we bring listeners in on some of the internal conversations we’re having as a team.

They’ll share about some of the incredible wins happening across the world and give examples of Faith Driven Entrepreneurs who are solving some of the world’s greatest problems by stewarding their businesses and resources for God’s glory and the good of others.

Join the conversation by sharing your thoughts on LinkedIn or sending them to podcast@faithdrivenentrepreneur.org.

If you like this episode, you can follow, rate, and share the show. We publish new episodes every Tuesday with entrepreneurs and innovators who use their resources and influences for God’s glory and the good of others.

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.

Joseph Honescko: It doesn't take long to look out in the world and feel defeated. Wars, division, YouTube comments. It all seems so chaotic, even hopeless at times, and this might be especially true for people of faith. We can easily get wrapped up in this belief that the church is on the losing side of history. We feel the shifting winds of culture blow away from us. We hear story after story of major church leaders either leaving the faith or succumbing to some sort of moral failure. It makes sense to ask ourselves, where our wins? Where does the church have victory in times like this? Today on the show, we hope to encourage you with some answers to that question. As we kick off a new segment, we're calling The Riff, where we bring listeners in on some of the internal conversations we're having as a team. Our co-founders, Henry Kastner and Justin Forman, we'll talk about some of the incredible wins happening across the world and how a lot of them are happening through faith driven entrepreneurs who are solving some of the world's greatest problems. These are faithful men and women who are part of this movement, just like you. And we're all fighting on the winning team together. I'm Joey Honescko, and you're listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Let's get into it.

Joseph Honescko: Man, I'm excited to have you guys here chatting with us because like we said in the intro, this is a new segment. We're testing out a lot of new things in 2024 are going to play with some different formats. It's not that we're getting rid of the traditional things. We're still going to have interviews and stories that highlight incredible entrepreneurs from around the movement, but we're also going to play with some new things. The last few weeks, listeners have heard those compilation episodes with some various subject matter experts speaking on particular issues, and today we're starting that conversation around the riff. And it didn't take long being around the two of you guys for riff to become this vocabulary term for our entire team and is this is the source of the riff? Is that a Justin thing or is that a Henry thing?

Justin Forman: Oh, it's definitely not text and phrase, but it is one of those first things for me. But it's Henry and I were spending more time together years ago that I came back. I think it was from some trip, and I started talking about that with [....], and we're talking about something and I think I said, hey, I'm just I'm riffing. And he goes, oh, is that what you're doing? And it was a moment where I, you just recognized that so many conversations. The word riff was so much in Henry's vocabulary.

Joseph Honescko: Henry, help us out here a little bit. How would you define a riff?

Henry Kaestner: It's a freelance type of, like, kind of going off and what it is, it's a polite way for me to kind of distract people from the fact that I'm talking too much. If I talk too much about something I'm passionate about, if I give it a really cool name like riff, then it kind of legitimizes it a little bit.

Joseph Honescko: And I think that it's those conversations where we're riffing, where we're just going off is usually where we end up accidentally almost saying something that was like, oh, shoot, that was extreme. And one of those big ones that have come up recently is Justin like you started saying this phrase, the church is winning. And I was sitting there thinking like, man, Justin, I love the church. I am passionate about the church. I'm passionate about the Christian faith. But winning is something that I have a hard time with because when I look out my window, it doesn't feel like it is. So Justin, how is the church winning?

Justin Forman: Yeah. Great question. You know, I think just to echo what you're saying, I love this idea of us riffing here together and collectively because it's everyone's movement. It's a collective thing. And this gives us an opportunity for us to share some of these things externally about some of the things God's speaking to us, processing through the team together, and really just check it in to see is, is this something consistent? But to get to your point, when you talk about winning, I think I think we're taught like something about winning from such a young age, whether it's sports or something. There's some energy, some enthusiasm, some momentum that I think people just it's contagious. They want to win. Now, to your point of what you're saying is, it is very easy to feel like we're on an incredible losing streak. Name your favorite team or the least favorite team. Growing up in Michigan, I could look at the Detroit Pistons. They went on, what, 27-28 game losing streak here recently, set the NBA record, most losses in a row consecutively. There was nobody in Detroit excited about the Pistons in that moment. Flip to the reverse. And you see the Detroit Lions going on a winning streak. And there's so much momentum. There's enthusiasm, there's excitement, there's energy. There's something contagious in it. Now people are more and more wanting to play for that team. And so when you look at that, I think there's something inside of that that is intriguing to think about. But I think we're winning a whole lot more than we think. I think that there is a media that promotes fear, that has business models on fear, that suppresses what God is doing any time that they can. And it's easy to get discouraged. And yet I think it's happening all around us. But I think that we have to start by looking at this more on a local level, like, where are the wins in my family? Where are the wins in my day? Where are the wins in my community, my church, and start to celebrate those stories because I think the wins are happening. Yeah, we are just combated by a force of people that are really overloading us with the negativity.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, so we are absolutely on a winning team that will ultimately win. And as Justin said, we all want to be on a winning team. And I was so encouraged the other night, many of you might know that we run this thing called inklings here in the Bay area for a regular men's group to encourage each other in the pursuit of faith family vocation like C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien once did. So we had our speaker on Tuesday. It was Bobby Grunwald, who is the founder of YouVersion and has helped develop online church. And he's talking about the different metrics. And just really his entrepreneurial story is just incredible. And actually we do have a podcast. It talks a little bit about that with Bobby. But what he said that really got me fired up was that last year, you know, this is something's been going on for 15.5 years. And there was a point in time where the YouVersion Bible was growing at five, six, 7% a year. And there are some people are saying, no, it's kind of reached the saturation point as as many people care about the Bible, you know, you got all the iPhones, the word's gone out, he said. Last year in year number 16. YouVersion grew 83%. And he talked about this, the engagement with God's Word. And then he said, lest you think it's just something we did necessarily, printed versions of the Bible increased sales at 27%. That's not likely something we're going to see as a headline. But the feeling I felt inside me was like, that's so awesome. I mean, it's just it was exhilarating. So why was it exhilarating? On one hand, it's awesome to see God's kingdom advance, just as he's talked about when Jesus came into [....] in God's kingdom. Um. That's awesome. But there's something powerful like, you know, go team. And this is a big deal. This is something that people are in this day and age, amidst all this bad news and people love and kind of talking about the fact that the church is just kind of old or hokey or whatever the case is. The reality is the God and the Holy Spirit are winning over minds as people seek real truth. And it doesn't stop just with scriptural engagement. Maybe it starts there, but in so many different aspects of what Justin and I and you Joey and the entire team fine. We're finding people winning.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah, I think it's such an interesting thing because for some reason, in my theological brain, I can kind of take a step back, and it almost feels wrong to say that the church is winning. But I think of the scripture where it talks about the gates of hell will not prevail. And the assumption there is that Christians, that the people of God are actually charging the gates.

Justin Forman: Yeah, I think there's something deep there that when you talk about this idea that we know that in the end, who wins? But celebrating the winning that happens to leading up to that. I think that there's two often times big gap. I mean, if I would put it this way, I don't know what the score is, but I don't think the score is as bad as what people make it sound like. I think if we really look around us, there's just a whole lot more wins. We've just lost sight of how to find it, how to celebrate it. And I think that's part of it. We even wonder, is celebrating it wrong? Like, at what point do you cross over from like, celebrations, excessive celebration? And what does it look like for us as a church to celebrate in a way that doesn't feel hokey or contrived or cheesy or forced, but really feel that that same natural feeling that you feel when you're in sports or anything else.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah for sure. And just a quick reminder, Henry mentioned that Bobby Greenwald episode is episode 53. If anyone wants to go back and listen to that. But I'm also thinking, we're talking about this victory, Justin, you were talking about it on a local level, but also on this kind of larger level. And this is the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, right? So the presumption there is that it's entrepreneurs listening. What is the role. Because I think that it's easy to think that this area of winning or Christian effort is the area of charities or nonprofits or churches. But maybe, Henry, I look to you for this. What is the role of entrepreneurs as they go out and do their businesses? How can they contribute to the wins for the glory of God? But using the gifts and the resources that we've had toward that end?

Henry Kaestner: Well, I think that we can all just understand that we're instruments of God's power for his glory, and that that's really cool, and it delivers more joy and satisfaction than any other thing that the pattern of the world would tell us would deliver that type of satisfaction. And I think when we look at people in the marketplace, just some quick examples I think of. I think about Anthony Tan, who has gone out there with this, uh, ridesharing and all of Southeast Asia unapologetically, uh, despite being in so many Muslim nations under God's power for his glory, he's winning. Grab is winning. Grab is the dominant brand in Southeast Asia, having firmly subplanted Uber. And he's winning and he's bearing witness to it. But it came out of his Christian faith. And just saying to God, what's wrong in the world and how can I fix it? And I just realized that taxis was no longer safe for the rider or the driver. And so he wanted to fix it. Uh, I think about, you know, I live here in Silicon Valley, so I maybe I tend and trend a little bit more towards technology, but you don't need to look any further in virtual reality to think about Renji Bijoy at Immersed or Quinn Taber at Immersed, two of the leading AR VR players out there and technology, and both of them having started their business because they wanted to be solving a problem that would advance God's kingdom using what their gifting was. And, you know, we've got hundreds and hundreds of examples like that, but it doesn't stop there with just technology and with entrepreneurship. But you know what? It's a big part of it that does. Because Christ followers ability to bear witness with excellence in the market, whether it's a mark series at a cloud factory or whether it's Hobby Lobby, Hobby Lobby, you think about, you know, the heroes in the world and what the green family has been able to do. They crush it. They crush it by every metric that matters. And then with their incredible abundance, they have made such an incredible impact in society. They're winning, chick fil A's winning. And those are some of the stories that everybody knows about. But they shouldn't be discounted just because they're out there in popular culture. And there are thousands of faith driven entrepreneurs that maybe some of them inspired by them, but more importantly, inspired by the fact that there's God who loves me so much, as messed up as I am, loves me so much that he's given me the gift of life now and forever. And it's out of that joy and gratitude like I want to do it all. I want to bring every gift I have. And for me, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a business guy. I know something about code. I know something about AI or web 3.0, and I want it to be bring it to the altar as my meaningful form of worship in an endeavor to bring about God's kingdom.

Justin Forman: I think one of the fun things, I mean, part of this episode we're trying to draw into some of the conversation wrapping internally is that we talk often with faith driven, that we don't want to be prescriptive, that we want to just really be there to support the work of what God's doing. Non prescriptive movement. I think we've looked at winning so prescriptively. I think we've seen it as like, oh, we're winning, win this ministry that we give to does this we're winning, win this company you know has a great product. It scales it to some of these things in it. I think that sometimes we get so focused in on how we play the game versus winning kind of the game. And I mean, certainly we want to have good values in that. But what I'm getting at is a.

Henry Kaestner: Run the race as if to win it.

Justin Forman: Yeah. But what we're getting at is there's this idea, it's like there's some massive problems. I mean, as you said, media is putting darkness in overwhelming fear based things all around us and drawing the attention to it in the church. So oftentimes we can get fixated on how it has to be done. And, oh, it has to be done this particular way. And what we're rallying around is this idea whether it's building, whether it's giving, whether it's investing in the next company, there's wins happening in all of those different ways. And if you're trying to get that foothold on this beach of darkness, whatever the issue may be, you're not just going to try and take that with just one. You're going to have the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines. You're going to need it all to take that. And I think as a church, sometimes we have focused on it has to be done through charity or it has to be done through this. And I think there's a freedom of thought. Now that's saying let's get less focused on how, but let's get more focused in on solving the problem and really tackling it from there. Now, we don't want to cause long term harm by helping to the point of hurting, but let's use all the things that are at our disposal.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah, it's not a matter of pitting these things against each other, but actually seeing how they work in unison that it's charity and entrepreneurship and investments. It's all these different pieces kind of uniting. I want to take a step back real quick here, just because I feel like we're talking about winning and we've given some great examples, and I think that the three of us kind of have a sense of what we're talking about. But I wonder if there's a way, even just to define what we mean by winning there a little bit. And, Justin, maybe I'll throw this to you because I've heard you talk about this a little bit. But when we say winning, right, I mean, it doesn't negate the fact that there are issues in the world. There are serious problems that need solutions, but that there are wins happening within that. So maybe you can just help give a little bit of definition and clarity around what we mean when we say the church is winning.

Justin Forman: Yeah, well, I think that it starts with this idea of nobody starts a venture and just says like there's one single line outcome 30 years from now, and we wait until that moment. You find those mile markers all along the journey that you're celebrating, and you're drawing attention to each one of those wins winning the day, the hour, the week, the game, whatever it might be. And I think a lot of what we're talking about is there's wins happening every day. When you look at the Grab story and you think about every person that now has safe transportation into that, when you think about every job that's created, everybody that can create more opportunities to provide for their family. Each one of those is a win. And how do we find that way to celebrate it? But we've talked a lot about, um, Bob Buford Leadership Network halftime, his book, if you remember halftime, he had that tagline of from moving from success to significance. And it was so instrumental for so many people that we've talked to. We've been on video shoots on the other sides of the world, in Singapore or wherever it is, and you can talk about the impact that that's made on people. But I think the more that we film those stories, as we've recognized, there actually is a halfway point before we start talking about winning that when we quoting Bob's line from success to significance, there's a surrender in the middle of that. And I think that when we see these stories of winning and winning, maybe at scale or sustainable or consistent or over time, there's a moment of surrender. And I think about whether it's the Greens or Casey or others along the way, that there was this point where God took them to a place of surrender, and once he got them to that place of surrender, that's when he saw this things happen. That's when you saw the significance or the scale. And I think that we just have to make sure that before we're so focused in on winning, we also have to recognize the point of surrender.

Henry Kaestner: It goes back in the Bible, as they were building the Tower of Babel were winning. They were building the biggest building that had ever been built. But they're building for the wrong reasons. And they didn't win, you know, really poorly. And I think just in your on is something there is so important, which is how do we know we're winning and we're winning the right game? Or are we running in the right currency, in the right points system. And if we're winning in terms of and I've got to ask this to myself all the time, what is winning? Is winning the approval of my peers is winning the dollars on my bank account is winning the number of sales or is winning? Been able to be drawn closer to God and knowing God and His love for me more. What's really the winning? And then when you think about winning, it's okay. So that sounds soft, but you know, maybe the Bible kind of like makes it a little clear to us and that is that, um, we can get a return. I'm an investor and an entrepreneur by background, and so I love the guaranteed return. And it's not the guaranteed return of the parable and the talent so much. It's the guaranteed return that comes in the parable of the sower. If I can keep the thorns at bay, the worries in the world and the deceitfulness of riches, I will win. Man. That's awesome. So you know what? I am winning. I'm winning. And it's because I have been given this insurmountable lead in this race by virtue of the fact that when God looks down at me, he doesn't see an investor that's in the top quintile or the bottom quintile. He sees his beloved son. I have an insurmountable lead. Do I feel that? Does that give me the power to just continue to just to run the race out of joint gratitude for that? Or does it give me a sense of complacency because I get such an insurmountable lead? I can just kind of sit and, uh, and just kind of wait until the game's over.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah. I'm hearing this language of surrender being a key piece of this. I think identity is maybe another one. I guess one of the questions I'd have would be, we are hearing these stories and we've highlighted a lot of them. You've mentioned grab. We have a video story of that on a YouTube channel on our website. Uh, you mentioned a bunch that we've talked about on the podcast. As much as these are growing, it still seems like there's a large crowd of entrepreneurs, Christian entrepreneurs, faith driven entrepreneurs who maybe are still struggling with what it means to win or what are the barriers that stop us from winning.

Henry Kaestner: I'll give you one, I'll give you one. Uh, one is that I think the Christians are afraid of talking about winning. So I want to give a shout out to my friend Darrell Heald, who's helped me to understand this concept a little bit more clearly as we've been talking about, well, how does this impact ministry and not for profit? So he's like, I'm not talking about the word impact anymore. I'm talking about winning. I think that there's something about Christ followers and appropriately so that needs to have a sense of humility. I just finished reading The sermon on the Mount again, to be very clear, humility is extraordinarily important. And yet we had to feel really good about how we're part of a winning team and feel good about the celebrating it in a way that doesn't point to ourselves but points back to God. And that's difficult. And it's just as difficult as like, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. And then over here it says, you know, do these great works in such a way that people will see them in honor of your father in heaven. And so those things would seem to be attention, except the thing that really helps us in this instance, about glorifying a father in heaven is that's the end goal. And so part of it is surrender. Part of it's also just like, what are we really winning for? And then we have to check ourselves. And it's, you know, it's Proverbs 16:2 and 21 to all of a man's ways seem pure to him, but his motives are weighed by the Lord. Do I want to see myself win, or do I want to see God win? If we really get it and we really celebrate when God's kingdom is advancing and that's what's going on in our heart, I believe it'll build. So, you know, the other thing, and this is what guys, ladies and gentlemen who are listening to this. Why we call it a riff. It's another way to excuse the fact that I'm long winded, but I have to give you this one last illustration and it's as follows. What's the biggest thing when you think about in terms of the kingdom advancing on Earth? What's the biggest example that we might look at? Well, it's revival. It's one in the Hebrides. There are few, if any Christ followers, and then all of a sudden the entire Hebrides islands worshiping God. How did these things happen? And that's a game that was, you know, clearly there's some winning going on there. What did that look like? It all comes down to heart posture. Like Justin started on in this riff. Right. So these two guys are in a barn in the Hebrides praying for a revival. And one of them had been in Psalms that day and had been at the psalm which talks about, you can't approach the mountain unless you have clean hands and a pure heart, said, you know what? Maybe we should stop praying for revival. Maybe we should start praying that God might tell us where our hands aren't clean and our hearts are not pure.

Justin Forman: Yeah, I think I love how you're pointing back into history, because I think that that's one of the things that we miss. There's a winning tradition here that we've overlooked. There's a winning tradition throughout history that has a very rich history. But when you look back, the church has that rich history of the first orphanage, the first hospital. There's so much in our history, and I don't know if it's we haven't told those stories well enough. Over time, we've lost sight of them over the generations. We've been drowned out by things. But I think we have a responsibility to tell those stories. But to tell those stories in a way that doesn't inspire people to then fall in a line and check a box, but to write the next story. And what I'm getting at is I think when we look at entrepreneurs and investors, it's an interesting thing that oftentimes we're asked for something accessible, simple, something we can do give check a box. But what really makes us come alive is when we get into this idea of like, you're inviting me to solve a problem. When you really ask me to start solving a problem, you're pushing into the very DNA of that entrepreneur, of that investor. And I think that's part of the problem. I think over the years that we have, um, taken very talented entrepreneurs and investors, and maybe it's a conference, maybe it's a video series or whatever it is, but we've turned problem solvers into attendees. And we've just taken away the very superpower, the very unique DNA that's there. Instead of affirming that DNA and finding out ways to use that more. And so I wonder how we find, um, reclaim our history. We reclaim that rich winning tradition, and we also change the invitation and change what we're asking people.

Henry Kaestner: And then we celebrate the minor and major victories along the way in a way that's public enough that people can see the momentum shift and we celebrate the winning, and then people jump on the bandwagon. Detroit Lions start winning and you're in Detroit or any other place in the country, and you're seeing a whole lot more Lions jerseys and hats because you have some noticeable and reportable wins. But if a bunch of Detroit Lions fans went to the game and the Lions won and they're like, I don't know if I want to really necessarily celebrate the win. And I just, you know, it's kind of embarrassing to be a Lions fan. So when I go back to my school or my workplace and I can really say that I'm really a Lions and I'm kind of like a covert Lions fan. Then nothing happens. As Christ followers, we have to go out there. We have to find the wins. Celebrate them, join the winning team. Put on the jersey if you will. And then we'll find that other people will join us.

Justin Forman: I think what we're seeing here as we talk about this villain is, I mean, this is an epic quest. I think too often times we've been invited to vine. This is like we're sacrificing or trading down. But, man, we're invited onto this epic adventure. And how much more fun is it to do it with friends? Like people want to win? But gosh, it feels good to win with a team. It feels so much like. I mean, you see the camaraderie. I think not too long ago there was one of those videos, the junior national hockey team celebrating their win, and they were singing the anthem. And gosh, you just saw the camaraderie and you saw the emotion on the screen. And yet we have to recognize that's harder than it sounds. I think it was you, Henry, you were talking about the other day, the challenges of. And maybe it's not even just specific to men, but you're drawing it out with men or just men later on in life. It's harder to make friends. It's harder to find that new band of brothers. But man, when you do and you do it around a mission, there is just nothing like it.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah, just a couple numbers here. 1 in 5 men say they have no close friendships. Only 25% of men say they have at least six close friends. And that's fallen quite a bit since 1990, where it was above 50%. So it's actually getting worse. These numbers about friendships and male friendships. The Surgeon General warning came out because it's not even just a social isolation, but this actually ends up having effects on our literal health. It has connections with Alzheimer's, high blood pressure, inflammation, all these health conditions as well. So it's not even just that it feels good to be part of that team. It's literally better for us to be doing these things and to have victory with one another, right? I think that that's a powerful point.

Justin Forman: I think it's a powerful point because I think that we've looked at it as a luxury item. I think we've looked at this in a way that we think that, oh, that's nice if we have it, but I'm fine if I don't. What you're pointing out there in the statistics is that's not the case. It is no longer the case. Loneliness is real tech, whatever it is. Walls, division. I mean, I think about that in our kids and the isolation of what technology has brought. And there's a lost art of making and building friendships. And I think one of the things that's encouraging about this conversation is when we are building right now, media, there was a phrase told to us by a small group pastor that it spent years in developing community. He says. If you aim for just relationship, sometimes you get relationship, but rarely can you turn that conversation on mission. But if you aim for mission, a lot of times you're going to get mission, and relationship becomes a natural byproduct. It's stronger than most relationships.

Henry Kaestner: You go ahead and say, hell, go make friends. I mean, theoretically, you could cozy up to somebody, take off shopping, okay, you know, what's your handicap? And that's great. Oh, you went to [....] I went to Stanford or whatever. No no no no no. You meet that same person within the context of working on a house to shelter single families or something like that. You've got this mission, and all of a sudden you just become friends and you've got this bond that is like friendship and like, dog years, and it's just so much more.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah, yeah, we've got a couple episodes in the future this year that we're going to talk about friendship, and maybe we'll do another riff on that as well. But time is running out on this one. We can't riff forever. Um, so we're going to close here. But hey, if you're listening to this and you want to join in on the riffing, if you've got some thoughts about the church and if it's winning and the wins that you're seeing in the world, reach out to us and let us know. You can reach us at podcast at Faith Driven entrepreneur.org or hit us up on LinkedIn. We post every Tuesday when we release these episodes, and we'd love to just carry on that conversation, but we want to hear what you're thinking about these topics and have you jump in and join in the riff in that sense. So thanks for tuning in this week. Thanks, Henry. Thanks, Justin, for joining me, and we'll catch you all in the next episode.

Joseph Honescko: Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you with content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn't have to be. We've got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms, and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There's no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at Faith Driven entrepreneur.org.

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