All right, welcome to today's Water Talk. I have one of my closest friends here today, Drew Tevez. And for those of you who missed the first time we've done this, Drew and I met in 2012 and immediately started surfing together. Drew and I have surfed in Mexico at Todos Santos all over San Diego, the ranch in Santa Barbara on one of the better surf days of my life. We have surfed Tavarula in restaurants in Fiji. We've surfed in El Salvador. And in March, we're going to go to Indonesia together.
So Drew and I's friendship has revolved mostly around surfing, but we're also pastors. And Drew is coming up on celebrating one year of him and Trish starting Aloha Church. And then I'm like a year behind Drew. We're just a little over a year of doing Ocean Water Church. So today I thought it'd be fun if we would just talk informally about some of the lessons that we've learned along the way in this new chapter of starting churches. So good to see you, man.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm stoked to see you, Betty. Yeah. Hope that I can have enough information for you guys. I'm a father of four, and I got to drive and go pick up my kids pretty soon. Earlier today, we had a couple over to do premarital. So your life is always just integrated and entwined, and just like ministry and lifestyle can all get just put together. So you guys got to watch your time. That's a big lesson. You know what I mean? Marriage is first. Family's first. Say no a lot.
And always just say yes. Just say yes to being available to God using you the way he's uniquely created you. And I think it's oftentimes hard for maybe sometimes a lot of people to find how God's uniquely created you, not to please anybody else. You know what I mean? That's a big thing is I want to please God first, not the church you work for or denomination or people's expectations of what they think you should do as a person in ministry. So check in your heart first, right?
Like a lot of people I think get into ministry or different things because they want to prove to themselves, prove to God, or they think if they climb a ladder to success. So whatever it is. So when you and I talk to people, Ryan, we're always, we're always trying to sense the motivation behind why people want to do things, right? So whether that's ministry or just getting into surfing or why are you posting on Instagram? It always comes out of what's inside their heart.
And Jesus was always checking the heart motivation of people. So that's a big lesson that I've learned is my own heart. And then trying to have wisdom and discern the motivations of why people are coming onto our team, why they're saying what they want, why do they want to be given out, whatever that is. So that takes some experience, I guess, and being in tune with what the Holy Spirit is doing in your life. I just made a whole lot of stuff right there. But that's fine.
It's nice to do one of these with no agenda. No, no. Yes. Normally. Yeah. So this is really nice. I think you're right. You know, heart and intentions matter. You know, following Jesus is all about your motives and your intentions, so much so that he had to remind us that in Matthew that it says, do not judge, lest you be judged for the measure you use it, it will be measured unto you.
What he was talking about there was, well, the reason this conversation happened in the first place is because we always get into troubled territory when we become over concerned with motives and intentions. But they matter. You know, our own motives and our own intentions, they absolutely matter. Christianity at its heart is a heart and spirit led relationship. It's about getting the heart and the intentions of Jesus into our daily life and actions. So that's what Maria mostly reminds me of.
She's wonderful, but she's always usually reminding me of stuff that's going on in my heart. And so it's good, man. Very, very good. I know you're having your two year anniversary this Sunday at Dan and Tori Pines, and I'll be there. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited to be there. I'll save some tacos for you. I know Mark will be there because I spent time with Mark yesterday. I know he's coming. And I asked Bobby if he would come. Bobby will be out of town. Oh, right. It'll be a big party.
Yeah, but yeah, that'd be so that's two years. So that's clear. That's two years of when we launched public services. But as you and I know, it's more about like three years because the first whole year was like a study in my house. You know, Bible study in my house. Doing ministry, serving. So that's a whole nother topic of how to start churches or whatever. It's just love. It's the Holy Spirit led and God always pours fire on where he's moving.
So it was just something in our house, a Bible study, you know, doing ministry, building a team, and that's growing and that's the next growing. And then your leadership experience and how God's wired you, that just kind of helped build the structure and vision and plan and strategy and motives and vision and all that. But then all in the meantime, why we're doing church, right? Why we're doing church is because the harvest is plentiful, the workers are few.
So there's a whole lot of people out there who want to experience the Lord. For us, it was we wanted two people, two kind of groups. We want to reach people who are wanted Jesus, but we're just kind of fed up with the hijacked version of what has become the church, right? That's a whole other topic, right? So we just started gathering people at beaches and home, being the church kind of old school, really simple. And those things started to grow.
We have a couple of mini churches now that are way bigger than the mini church I have at my own house, which is awesome. We want to just keep pouring fire and resourcing to all those people. And then after about a year, we finally were able to get a school that's a mile from my house. The past six months, we haven't met at that school. So our two year anniversary is going to be at another church that my friend runs because God provides on their grass because it's one big church.
Just want to have everybody else win. And that's the beauty of it that goes back to again, why the motives of doing it, right? Am I trying to build Drew's name and be, or we're just trying to bring Jesus to San Diego because a lot of people are hurting, especially now, right? Especially now is a great opportunity. I believe we're in a revival. Everybody's praying for a revival. I believe a revival is now where Christians just have to really seek like, I got to seek the Lord on my own.
And that's, you can't give that to anybody else as a pastor, right? Seeking the Lord on your own, the same way a brand new believer has to seek Jesus on their own every day. And that's the best way to do it. So keep it simple. You and I are on the same page of that for sure. Yeah, we are. We're on the same page about a lot of things. And I do, but yeah, I really sense God moving as well. In the last month, I've baptized like 10 people in the ocean. It's awesome. It is awesome.
And none of it was planned. I went to Adam's son's birthday party, who, a kinnier who turned 13. And I went down to Riviera, went to his birthday party and I show up and it's a beautiful day. And long story short, his birthday party turned into a baptism. Oh man, that was great. He got baptized, his sister, his mom, his dad, their other two friends. They all wanted to get baptized together. That was beautiful. And then Julie's mom said, hey, I'd like to get baptized soon.
We went back a few days later and she got baptized. And then Sunday night, I got a call at nine o'clock at night and Bobby, Bobby Rams, you know Bobby, and Bobby had had his next door neighbors over to his house to watch the football game. During the football game, Bobby led his neighbors to the Lord and called me and said, hey, they'd like to get baptized. So last night, Maria and I went down to St. Clemente Pier and we had another baptism and what I, you know, got. Yeah, that's so dope.
It's awesome. Yeah, you can't plan that kind of stuff. You can't strategize or put it on the goals or fill out spreadsheets. I mean, you can. That's nothing wrong with that. But just allowing God, I think we've, we say we want to slow down our lives, right?
Slow down our lives to allow the Holy Spirit to interrupt our lives, you know, to allow the Holy Spirit to just find times you go into your friend's house, invite it like Bobby going to party that you're slowing down your life and you're being with people. Ryan, that is like, that's hard to teach because that's unfortunately not always taught in the systems that sometimes in the entrepreneurial business of planning and church strategizing, right? It's like a lot of it is service planting.
People want to plant services, right? But I think now with the world and how you're doing church is awesome because you're allowing the Holy Spirit to just move in your life. And I mean, if you look out, that's how Jesus did his miracles. He did it at a wedding, right? He showed up to a wedding, did a miracle, fed 5,000 because they're just out there. So they didn't like strategize or plan all that, which is we're not against that. But I think it's how the God moves.
And we see God move even more in those instances, right? But you have to slow down. Americans want to plan our whole life and have everything. We want to plan so much that we don't need faith, right? We want to climb a ladder, strategize, have financial health and wealth and all the stuff so that we don't need faith. But faith is really the only way to please God.
And when you're doing ministry like this on shoestring budget and grassroots and living rooms and borrowing stuff and getting people giving you chairs and in people's houses, it is like definitely you see your faith grows. At the end of the day, to have strong faith, you have to use it. So praise God for all this opportunities and hardships, right? Yeah, it is. I think you do learn to depend on God. And I do think that if you just build relationships, a lot of wonderful things will happen.
So our guys group meets on Fridays in the back of a coffee shop up here in St. Clemente called Sur that our friend Mark and Adam started. And two weeks ago, Bobby invited his neighbor, this guy Woody. Woody's this giant guy. He's a Navy SEAL and a real tough guy. He's actually going to deploy in two weeks. And so yeah, and then Bobby had them over and God moved. And that's a beautiful thing.
I think when you and then today we met for lunch to kind of celebrate last night and Adam came and helped me with the with Adam and Bobby helping with that. Isn't that great? And today we were having lunch and then Adam's friend, who he's been friends with since high school, came to have lunch with us today. And then he asked if he could if he could go to Indonesia with us. So now he's going to come. So it's nice when you see God moving through sincere friendships and relationships.
It's an awesome thing. Yeah. Yeah, man. What a journey. Yeah, it's good. So it's well, I'm excited to to be here on Sunday and to celebrate with you. I was there for your launch in the one year. Yeah, a lot of times there for your launch. I was not there when you when you started gathering people in your home. Although I think I did come one time. I think I came once to say hi. Yeah, I think you did.
And then the first time you and Trish have a service at Michigan High School was wonderful to be at. I got to be at your one year. I get to be at your second year. And what are some you have a lot of younger people coming to Aloha a lot of it's awesome. What are some things that you might you might share? You might say to some, you know, some guys in their 20s that are that are thinking, well, I really love God and I really love people.
Maybe God's maybe God's tapping on my shoulder to help me start a church. What are some things you might say to those guys? Yeah, that's a good question. We do have some young guys that are they've told me I feel like God's coming to be a pastor to start a church. There's a lot of routes people take is like the education route. There's like seminary, which is all good. Bible knowledge. That's all good. You know, we always believe it's a biblical principle that, you know, we equip the called.
You know, so people feel called to do it. I always ask I always ask a question I say, why? Why do you want to do this? And then I say, like, who do you love? Like, like, who are the people that that you love? Because that's what it's about. It's about loving kind of a certain group of people. If you're not loving people now, you know, it's going to be tough to switch that loving people because you can get so caught up in like starting the business of a church nonprofit planting services, right?
Planning meetings, planting services. But we want to plan a movement we want to live changed. That really light bulbs changed. So that's a big shift. I think sometimes people are handed down an idea of church services, people on stage, people honoring people who are on stage. But not everybody is that a lot of people just like the grassroots movement. I would tell those I tell those people, hey, start something in your house, start a mini church. Gather some people. Gather some people.
Meet their needs. If you love the word of God, it goes in your heart. You start to love the things God loves. God loves his people. You start to love God's people. You start to want to meet their needs. When you start meeting their needs, you start to see the overpouring outflow of God in your life in their life. And that's really what a church is. It's a family. People called out to know God meeting each other's needs.
It's it's doesn't it's not all it's not services and all that stuff that's in the Bible. It doesn't have that in the Bible, right? So when you read just the Bible, it's unnamed places by unnamed people at birthday parties at football games, right? Baptizing people. So it's just very organic. That's what I tell people to do. Just start loving people, gathering them right where you're at today. Don't wait to have a certificate.
Don't wait till you're 50 years old to have a denomination and raise a million dollars and have a building campaign. You know what I mean? Like you could do it now. So we need a lot more young people loving on their friends right now because a lot of pastors, as you know, the average age is like one hundred and sixty five. So we need to lower that average down. You know, some young guys pasturing, baptizing people, gathering people, they can do it. They have permission and they're released.
And guys like us are going to help them and try to support them and coach them. And really, it's just being available, not being afraid of failing. Yeah. I love what you said. And you and I are both well, there's two ways to lead. You can lead like this, which is I have every decision. It's my thing. I'm in control. I'm in control. This signifies control. Yeah. A controlling leader is a fearful leader, right? We learned that. Or you can lead like this, which is how you and I try to lead.
And that is open handed. And the reality is, Aloha is not your church. It's God's church. Ocean water isn't my church. It's God's church. The people that come to Aloha aren't Jewish people. They're God's people. The people that come to ocean water, they're not Ryan's people. They're God's people. All we get to do is be involved in their lives. And when people, when God's moving in someone's life, you're just open handed and you say, I'm behind you.
And the thing about leadership is if people will follow you, then you're the leader. It's not rocket science. So if you're open handed like this and you give people permission and you notice that other people will follow someone, that's called leadership. Because leadership is not a title and it's not an order chart. It's influence.
Yeah. If you notice a person who has influence and you notice there's a person that a lot of people will follow and then you're open handed, God can move and do beautiful things. And I just want to say to anybody who's watching this that's younger and you might feel like God's tapping you on the shoulder, I want to say, Drew and I are open handed and we will love you. We will support you. You have permission and you're called.
You don't need all of the traditional pedigree or resume or boxes to be checked in your life. You don't. In order to feed. You don't have to raise a year's salary. You don't get a building. You don't have to do that kind of stuff. You got to love people. Yeah. And you also don't, you also, one of the things it's not talked about a lot. I know you just have like two minutes left, but you know, actually the less money involved the better.
A lot of the time, you know, when you just keep it around Jesus and the Bible and food and so many beautiful things can come out of that and God can pour water and make something grow. So that's right. Everything you have is in your house. Basically, I think I just preached that Elijah and the widow, she only had a jar so of oil. So I was a sermon coming out of me. How's the wonderful message on Sunday, by the way, I watched it. Thank you for that.
Tracy did a great job sharing at the end as well. So yeah, a little touch. Everybody likes the Trish. That's that's everybody's favorite part. I work, I work all week. There's a message and Trish gets up there from a heart and everybody, everybody likes that part. So hey, right on. Whatever the Holy Spirit teaches people are all good. So hopefully young people watching this, you know, hopefully a lot of 20 year olds watching this that are feeling like it's a it's not as far as they think.
You know what I mean? It's not as so far out there. It's like right in your, there's always people right around you. You can gather and start love. You have to have all the answers. You don't have to know about the dinosaurs or know the book of Revelation. I don't even teach on the book of Revelation there. Young people. I'm like, whatever. I taught my whole life and we never talked about Revelation. Jesus coming back. Just be ready. He's coming back soon. Maybe not tomorrow.
Yeah, love, love people. I go with John. John in the New Testament talks about loving people over and over and over again. So that's a good message. Love people. Love one another. Love you. Love you. Love you, that. Well, thank you. Get hot. Love you. Yeah, man. I wanted to see you guys. Yeah, I'll see. I'll see you this weekend.
I just kind of wanted to get a little informal chat about some things you've learned in the last last couple of years, getting a little hot and going right out of your home and with you and your wife and your family and your home and seeing how it's progressed just really stoked, really honored to be a part of it. And I love you, dude. I'll see you this weekend and have fun picking up kids. Thanks, bro.