All right, welcome to the Ocean Water Podcast. This is the voice for Indigenous water rights. So we'll get into a little bit of that later. Today I have with me my good friend Ralph Moore. For those of you who don't know Ralph, Ralph is someone that I look up to, someone that I admire, someone that I get advice from, like a mentor of mine. Ralph is 74 years old. Ralph spent four plus decades pastoring and starting churches.
And he started with a little humble Bible study and all along the way has helped guys been very open-handed and helped people take 10 people, 20 people, 30 people, 40 people, 100 people, whenever they felt led to start new churches. And here at this point in his life he can look back and see a network of over 2,400 documented churches. And so Ralph is someone that I just have such a respect for. And so I get to spend a little bit of time with you today, Ralph.
So I just want to give everyone a little bit of a context. For our friendship we could probably spend an entire 25 minutes just talking about how we met. It's hard to believe it was only a year ago. Not even, I guess, huh? Yeah, but so thanks for your time today, Ralph. If you could do all of our listeners a favor, some of them are going to be getting to know you for the first time. Can you tell everyone where you like to eat in San Diego these days, which is where you live?
Oh, my favorite place to eat anywhere in the world, and I can find it anywhere in the world, is McDonald's. I'm a total McDonald's freak. It's hard to beat two double cheeseburgers and a french fry. Oh, my gosh. That's exactly what I get all the time. That's awesome. So what are you doing at this stage of your life, and then how did you get to it? Well, actually, I started out a frustrated kid. I went to a big church, actually a mega church in Oregon as a kid.
Saw a lot of hypocrisy, very frustrated, felt I wanted to be an architect, felt God called me to be a pastor. He didn't like that idea, but I went along with it. And I got to a Bible college, and I worked in a small church. Started out with four junior high school boys. Their names were Jeff, Dan, Dudley, and Jimmy. We lost Jimmy within a year. I'm still in touch with the other three. That was in 1965. I believe in long enduring relationships.
Worked with those kids until they were sophomores in college. We started out in a, sitting in a parking lot with no shade from the sun. It was September, beastly hot. Grew the youth group never to more than 30 kids. If I'd pop an event, I'd have maybe 300 show up. But made disciples, and that was the only thing that really lasted. And then after about seven years, four years while I was in college, three years they paid me. I planted a church with 12 people.
And pretty soon we planted another by accident, almost. And then we started planting churches. And like you said, it's grown to like 2,400. I run a little website. The address is ralphmoore.net. And my goal is to help younger guys along. And the way I put it is to help you become a leader you'd want to follow. Because we've all been asked to follow leaders that we didn't like or we didn't respect, who demanded loyalty. They led from position and commanded some kind of authority.
And we can see through them. And so I just want to kind of help guys become somebody that they would want to follow. My focus is really on smaller churches and church plants. I know that some guy with, you know, I've pastored a couple of churches of a couple thousand. Some guy with 4,000 isn't going to want to listen to what I have to say.
I'm looking for the guys of churches of maybe 500 and less, especially new churches like yours, because those are the guys that are, they're looking to change. They're looking to change the world around them. They're not caught up in gathering a big congregation. They want to do something that's outward instead of inward. And so that's kind of what I'm up to. I do a blog, I do a podcast. I put up a bunch of sermons from my days in Honolulu, wrote some books. I got a bunch of freebie things.
So I just want to do what I can to help. I'm retired. I don't really need any money. So, you know, I travel around a lot. I still raise money and go to third world countries, although the pandemic is kind of goofing that up a little bit. But I do what I can. And you know, the Lord still made me strong. And so I want to use it for him. So awesome. Is there anything that that current Ralph would have told young Ralph?
Like, is there anything that you wish you'd know when you started out that you didn't that you you look back? Well, I can look back at the at the big regret that I have. And that's that we started all these churches. And it's really hard for me to call it a movement. We'll call it that. It's really hard to call it a network, because when we got started, we were in a denomination. And when we planted a church, they pretty much owned it. They wanted it that way.
And you know, as I got older, I knew how to push back. But when I was young, I didn't. And so we just got part of our DNA was once you're out the door, I'll still meet with you for a little while then. But somebody else owns you. Well, then we begin planting more independent churches. We planted Calvary chapels and Baptist churches, even a Methodist church along the way, kind of as somebody had a background someplace else, we'd disciple them and then release them.
That's kind of always our thing. Make disciples and release them. And it never really caught up that we should be networking these people. And, you know, in those days, we didn't have the tools we have now. When the internet first kind of came on, I started a thing called, I think it was called CP forum dotnet. And I gathered maybe 500 pastors through that. And I would publish things that they wrote a blog thing, really. And we didn't have smartphones.
I mean, that that only happened, what 14 years ago, we didn't have email. I used to work in Japan, a lot still do. And everybody in Japan before email, before the invention of email, everybody in Japan had fax machines in their homes. And you know, it's marvelous thing that you can write to somebody and they can be asleep. And then when they wake up, they can answer you back. I mean, exactly what email is, they had kind of invented via fax machine.
So I went and bought a fax machine because it would take five days for a letter to get to Japan. And it was just in like the year 1998, 1995. And so, you know, there's all this technology now, which would allow us to really do some pretty powerful things in networking. And one of the things that I'm finding is the podcast, I'm building a network, partly by interviewing guys like you. And then, you know, I get to meet your friends or whatever. And podcasts have become pretty powerful tool.
I just put out a little video that isn't online yet. It will be probably within a week of how you could, if you're a network leader, maybe of five to eight churches, how you can kind of archive information and your thoughts and whatever via a podcast. And it's very inexpensive. And so, you know, my main advice to young Ralph Moore was, hey, stupid, you should network people a lot better than you think you should. So I'm still learning, you know, getting old, but I'm still learning.
Yeah, why I appreciate the humor and also just for our listeners, Ralph hasn't slow you said you were retired, but you haven't slowed down one bit. I know in the next 12 months, you'll be in Russia. I know you'll be in England. I know you'll be in Japan. I know that you take guys with you. You and you and Rick Warren need to team up and do some sort of energy seminar. I don't even know if that's a thing, but it's really inspiring to watch.
You start to make a note of people that you want to end up like, and you and Ruby are joyful and adventurous and just as happy as ever. So thanks for that. Well, thank you. Yeah. So what are you curious about these days? Like what interests you? Two very different things. One is technology. Just before we started today, I'm kind of rebuilding my website and I don't really understand what I'm doing.
You know, I understand a lot because I poke around, I learn things, but somehow I just managed to delete the whole blog portion of the website. I can find the post, but I can't put the page back up. So I know where I'm spending my afternoon. And honestly, it's kind of fun for me. I like the challenge and enjoy. You know, it's like every three weeks I'm learning a new piece of software just because I'm trying to build out my ways of communicating with people.
And the other entirely opposite thing is I'm learning to paint with acrylics, you know, like oil painting only with acrylics because it dries faster and it fits the lifestyle of somebody who travels a lot. But yeah, I bought a little book. It's got 54. You do five inch by five inch paintings and each one is a lesson. They're pretty stupid, really. I mean, you start out pretty simple. But actually, I'm about maybe eight lessons in and I tried to paint a lighthouse.
There's a lighthouse that I used to go to a lot when I was a kid and I found a picture on the internet. I'm painting it. And it's really cool because as I get older, I know I got to slow down at some point, you know, the travels. Right now, I can't travel anywhere. It's crazy. You know, I'm supposed to go to England and Ireland in about two months and I'm not sure that it'll be safe. And so that's kind of changed my world.
So I was looking for a hobby because I never my hobbies have been restoring cars and writing books and now I guess technology. But I wanted a hobby that was no stress but I could obsess because I'm kind of an obsessive person. And so something I could just go into and go nuts on it. But if I had to throw it away, well, no big deal. It's a kick. I used to surf a hundred years ago. I was a surfer. No, I wasn't. I was never a surfer. I just used to surf because I was never any good.
Pretty much more clumsy. So but you know, a number of years ago, I had two friends that drowned of minor heart attacks when they're in the water. And so the last couple of times I went out, I'd be out there for two hours and catch two waves and you know, I travel a lot so I'm never in shape. And so I'm all, you know, jelly arms and I can't even lift the board over my head. You know, 11 foot board, by the way. I get out of the water. I can't get the board over my head.
I have to have somebody carry the board off the beach for me. And so I thought, you know, I'm going to have a stroke or a heart attack that wouldn't kill me on land, but it will kill me in the water. And so I quit. I did stand up paddling for a while and got just the point where I was ready to catch waves. And then the guy was doing it with kind of blue tire and we didn't go out anymore. I was still when I was still in Hawaii, but happy to be back in California.
Love the weather in San Diego and just the vibe of Southern California is just so cool for me. Miss Hawaii. Miss my friends. Don't miss the weather. Don't miss the humidity. But I sure do miss the beauty and I miss all those wonderful people. I know so well. Well, I know Drew Tedes and I are glad you're here. Well, I'm happy, man. You know that when I met you, it's like I still only knew a half dozen people in California.
And so our friendship has blossomed and I have such deep admiration and respect for what you're doing. And you know, I was at your first Sunday night session in the coffee shop. And I heard the vision for all these different countries in the world. And you know, the cool thing about surfers is they travel a lot. And so I know, you know, place people in what India, Indonesia, a couple places in Latin America, Puerto Rico, in a startup church. That's amazing vision.
And I know you're going to get there. It's cool. Thanks, Ralph. I, you know, kind of kind of a good segue. You know, what is kind of your your understanding of like the the water situation in the world? Well, you know, when I before I met you, actually after I met you, I was praying that the Lord would help me find a way to to put some money into, you know, I don't have a lot of money, but to put some money into water, because it's such a desperate thing.
I read a book called The Bottom Billion, and it's about poverty in the world. And there's seven billion people in the world. And most of the wealth is is in the top three billion. I mean, the top billion are are wealthy, wealthy. That's us. And then the next two billion life is is quite tolerable. Most of us could go to to Greece or to some countries in Latin America, Chile and Chile and live there. But when you get to the bottom billion, there's just no chance for these people.
And they have no access to the oceans. So they they can't get their goods to market. But the biggest problem is there's just lack of water. And of course, you guys aren't doing anything in countries where there is no access to the ocean just because of the nature of what you're doing. But I've been praying, Lord, I want to do something about water and help me to do that. I've been looking into microloan sites and how you can invest in those people.
And that's something that might work pretty well alongside of what you guys are doing. But so one day I was praying about this and I already was, you know, putting a little bit of money into to ocean water. And the Lord said, stupid, wake up. And so I'm just excited about what you're doing. And I know that that that right alongside of water is health, that people without clean water get sick and they die younger and they age quicker and they have higher infant mortality.
And so I'm just excited about what you're doing and then that you're bringing living water with you because you're bringing Jesus with you and planting churches. And that's kind of what my life's all about is making disciples and planting churches. So I see the two link up, I'm pretty excited about that.
Well, it's it sounds like one of those meaningless cliches that we've heard in church before where you hear people say, well, you know, you you know, you meet people at the right time and and I don't know what other meaningless cliche I could possibly refer to when I describe hugging. I was just three days removed from a terrifying decision that I made.
And it was just a total God thing that you and I have have met really through Drew and then developed a genuine friendship, you and Drew and I. And and that has just been a total encouragement to me. And you're right about about water, about the about it being the bottom billion problem. And one of the one of the reasons it's such a problem is people don't understand that it's a problem.
And also, because when we talk about this, this conversation that we're having today being a voice for indigenous water rights, what we mean when we say that is there are there are little pockets of people all over the world that simply don't have the infrastructure whereby they can have their own water. And what what we do, for example, in El Salvador is we've put in the system and it provides water for 38 families. That's about 300 people.
And and so it's interesting how God will use just something so small. One of the things that that I've thought about recently is how everyone's in love with changing the whole world, but they're not in love with helping like five people. Right. And just how backwards that is and how if you actually make it your goal to help five people, you'll eventually help a lot of people. But if you make it your goal to help a lot of people, you can often help no one. So what do you think of this?
What do you think of desalinization? What do you think of that as an idea, as a concept? Well, other than San Diego, which is kind of leading the whole United States in terms of desalinization, they're desalinizing enough water for almost a million people, I understand. And if it can work here in wealthy Southern California, then it certainly ought to work in other places.
And, you know, knowing that you found a way to do it for what under ten thousand dollars that it costs to build a plant is just very exciting because people who are listening to you and I talk, there are some people who could actually kick in ten thousand bucks and go and sponsor one. And the cool thing is that what with your connections and Drew, my pastor, you know, my I'm going to I'm going to put this I'm going to put your podcast on my podcast.
I just want to take your recording and put it on my podcast because I you're saying some pretty cool things that I want other people to hear it. But you know what? What our little church, Aloha Church, my pastor, Drew Tevis, I grew up in the church I pastor in Honolulu. Now he's my pastor.
And what you guys are doing now, Salvador, seen two startup churches really get out of themselves and invest hugely, huge percentage of income and time and whatever in another country is just very exciting to me just to be part of it. I'm thrilled. Well, and that's a good segue. The backdrop that I have behind me is is yes, it's a nice photo, but it's also a personal photo. The guy inside that that tube right there is is Drew and I's good friend.
His name is some pop. Oh, he has no formal, no formal training, no, no massive background. And yet right now, El Salvador is there under martial law. We have like strong government recommendations for our behavior. Thereon if you go out of your property line of your home to the grocery store without permission, without a form, we're taking you to jail. And right now, our friend Sopapo this week is providing water to all 38 families in Palmes and Porto and food.
Wow. And I took I took those photos and Drew and I were literally almost got trapped there because of this crisis and changed flights and came home. And the last day that we were there, we turned over the keys and all of the responsibility to the guy in this photo. And then and then COVID-19 hit and Sopapo called me and said, I can't believe all of the responsibility that I have. And I just and I just laugh and I said, well, brother, welcome to the club. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it is cool.
And yeah, it's it's it's been just it's interesting to see how you know, God just keeps wanting us to sort of take the next step. That's kind of been like my a little bit of my journey. Do you have anything else that you want to you want to say to myself, to Drew, to anybody? You know, who's going to who's going to tune in on this today, Ralph? Yeah, I got some advice. Keep on keeping on. You know, we said back in the day, we'd say keep on trucking for Jesus.
But I think that relentless pursuit of a purpose, relentless pursuit of a purpose. Purpose is the most valuable advice that I can give to anybody. It's all about persevering. And you know, I can't tell you the number of times I just wanted to quit. You know, I went to two different Bible college and seminary and all that. And so I don't know how to earn a living other than being a pastor. It's probably a very good thing because there have been a lot of times I would have quit, but I didn't.
And I'm so glad that I didn't at this point in life because I can see fruit where where I used to think I was staring at a blank wall someplace. I saw I now see fruit and just keep on keeping on. Keep doing what you're doing and and and follow the path where the Lord leads you. Thank you so much, Ralph. I think I can say on behalf of everybody who's going to hear this today, wherever this is shared, thank you for your time and for the wisdom that you gave to give off to us today.
And then one more favor, if I could ask you, you've got so much to share. Could we do this again in the next few months and do a different set of questions so we can keep getting what we can from you? Yeah, I'd love it. I really love it. Thank you so much, Ralph. Appreciate it. Okay, so a couple things. One is, do you have Dropbox? Can you send me the recording? I do. Yeah. Good. Yeah.