In this episode, we talk with Travis Blackmore, who is the Executive Director of Lionhearts, a charity that helped distribute 2.3 million dollars worth of food last year, and has already served over 20,000 meals since early March in the Kingston, Ontario area. Travis oversees this charity and the great work they are doing, and is also looking to plant a church in Ottawa this September. In this interview, we talk about how Lionhearts started, how Oxygen church can work together with this charity, and what a potential digital launch of a church could look like. Lots to cover in the interview - We know you will love this story!
In this episode, we talk with Travis Blackmore, who is the Executive Director of Lionhearts, a charity that helped distribute 2.3 million dollars worth of food last year, and has already served over 20,000 meals since early March in the Kingston, Ontario area. Travis oversees this charity and the great work they are doing, and is also looking to plant a church in Ottawa this September. In this interview, we talk about how Lionhearts started, how Oxygen church can work together with this charity, and what a potential digital launch of a church could look like. Lots to cover in the interview - We know you will love this story!
Transcript of Podcast by Multiply Network
Created to champion church multiplication, provide learning and inspire new disciple-
making communities across Canada
May 13, 2020 – Travis Blackmore
Paul Fraser: Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast, a podcast created to champion church multiplication, provide learning and inspire new disciple-making communities across Canada.
Hi everyone. Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast. I’m so happy that you tuned in today. You’re going to love our interview coming right up. But before we get there I just want to say thanks for all the loyal listeners out there who month after month download these podcasts. We so appreciate you and your feedback and we’re grateful that we get to do this and hopefully help you in your faith journey and in your church multiplication journey.
We’re so privileged to have Travis Blackmore join us on the Multiply Network podcast. He is the Executive Director of Lionhearts, which we’re going to talk about in this podcast. Just to give you a quick look, they distributed last year $2.3 million worth of food into the greater Kingston, Ontario area. He is also thinking about and planning for planting a church in Ottawa. We talk about launching the church this September but without a building. A digital church plant launch. Man, we’ve got so much good stuff in this interview and it’s coming up right now.
Q. Well, Travis, welcome to the Multiply Network podcast.
Travis Blackmore:
A. Hey, Paul, thanks so much for having me, man. It’s awesome to be here.
Q. It’s so great to get to know you over the last few months. I love your heart and passion. I don’t know. I can’t help but cheer for you and I think people, once they hear your story and once they hear some of the dreams in your heart and what you are doing, I think you are going to get a lot of fans out of this podcast. I’m so grateful that you came on the podcast today.
A. Wow, man, it’s awesome to get to share the story of what God has been doing. I’m excited to see where it goes. I’m along for the ride just like anybody else!
Q. Yes, love it. Love it.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about you, your background and what God has done in your life and brought you to the point you’re at and then we’ll talk a little bit about the ministries you are involved in.
A. Sure. Yes. I grew up on the east coast in Saint John, New Brunswick ---
To all my east coasters out there ---
I graduated from Saint John High School. My dad was a pastor my whole life. We started in Saint John and moved around like any other pastor’s kid. We spent a lot of time in different cities. We landed in Kingston, Ontario. But you know growing up as a pastor’s kid I really resonated with the drummer on Sundays. I would watch this guy at the front and my dad was kind of a country-rock-rocky pastor so he was totally cool for drums back in the day. I remember sitting in the pew and thinking if that guy gets to make all that noise I want to do that. No one tells him to be quiet! (Laughter)
But that started really a dream in my little heart at the time. I began to walk the path of trying to become a drummer. I took lessons through high school. I played in all kinds of musicals. I have been in all kinds of bands and little did I know that my father ---
This is a great story. So I’m 4 years old and my dad used to bring me to the church, probably to get me out of my mom’s hair, and he would always put me on the drums. I couldn’t reach the pedals. He would put me on the drums and he would play “Petra” or “Stryper” or something on the sound system.
Q. Yes. C’mon. (Laughter)
A. He would hold my hands and try to make me do the drums. I would do my best to try to mimic what I was hearing. But here I was, you know, turning nineteen or twenty and my career took off. I managed to land a gig as a hired gun drumming for Christian bands touring. I did that for about 6 years all over the world, just unbelievable. Yes, that’s what I grew up loving. I grew up loving music and wanting to travel and play like these guys, big touring lights and stages and video screens and all that stuff. Never did I think I would actually succeed in that and then it happened, you know. God is good. He hears you when you’re little, he sees your dreams and if you stay faithful to him and there it goes.
Q. Yes.
A. It can happen.
Q. Yes. But you are not doing that anymore? So you came off the road and where did God lead you next?
A. For sure. Coming off the road and being on the road for those 6 years, it sounds like it’s all glitz and glam but if you’re not keeping up on your spiritual life and things of that nature, it’s easy to slip real fast. That was kind of where I was at the end of the touring. I was very lukewarm. I wasn’t keeping up with my spiritual life whatsoever. In fact, when I came off the road I was probably at some of the darkest points in my life.
A close friend of mine said to me why don’t we do a small group at your house. People do that now but at the time I came off the road in the state of mind I was in, I looked at him like he had 2 heads. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I had been to Bible School for a couple of years trying to put together a band there, probably with some guys that you know to this day. They were all in Bible School to become pastors and follow the calling to preach and stuff. Here I was just trying to be a rock ‘n rolla.
Q. Yes.
A. So I came off the road. I said Yes, you know what Jeremy, let’s do that small group, if for anything else but to keep my wife from being upset at me, maybe coming back towards church and these would sort of help the family life.
Q. Right.
A. We started this small group and we were reading these books by a guy named Francis Chan. We started with the first book. These things were crazy to me, so foreign at the time. You know, read a book, it’s got a workbook and a DVD. I was looking at him like are we getting credits at the end of this thing or what? What’s the deal here? We did Erasing Hell which started to return some things inside me and made me remember some things as a child. And then we went into Crazy Love. That book talks about being really lukewarm and what that means in great detail. I remember reading in the third or fourth chapter of that book and getting down on my knees in the middle of my living room and surrendering my life to Christ.
Q. Wow.
A. Really, when I look back over my life that was the moment of surrender. Everything changed after that.
Q. Yes, yes. I’ll just keep adding to the story because you are right. Everything did change for you at that point. You started a ministry but it wasn’t like, you know, it kind of evolved. It started with one thing and went to another one. Can you quickly tell us that story because I want our listeners to hear what you are actually doing today and what you want to do tomorrow.
Why don’t you just walk us through that timeline on where you got to Lionhearts?
A. For sure. The verses in Matthew 25 where he talks about what you did for the least of these, when I was hungry did you feed me, when I was naked did you clothe me, when I was in prison did you visit me, all of these things were really in that book Crazy Love and I remember thinking oh my gosh, there was this incredible calling to help the “least of these.” I couldn’t help but think how do I do that? My skill is sort of in the drumming, music production world. Do I just go downtown and volunteer at a soup kitchen or something? What should I do? I remember chasing after and pursuing God with my prayers specifically for this. I remember praying what I realize are dangerous prayers now: God, wherever you want to take me, I'll go. Those are dangerous because you could be on for one wild ride if you really mean it.
Q. Yes.
A. There was a group of us and we had this opportunity with Costco in Kingston. We knew through a mutual friend they would discard a tremendous amount of produce for various reasons, not necessarily because it’s bad but sometimes things get damaged in transport and even if the boxes are damaged or whatever, they can’t actually go onto the grocery store floor because of the way they look or whatever. So they would be throwing those away. We went in for a meeting with them and they said they would be willing to try this with you. Here’s the catch. You need to be here 7 days a week at 7:30 in the morning, whatever is put on the dock you have to take, no matter what it is you have to take it out of here. You can’t sort here. Go somewhere. Sort it. Whatever you do with the produce that’s edible you can pass that out to agencies or whatever you might want to do with it to get it to the poor or whatever.
So we showed up on Day One all amped up thinking oh, man, look at the tremendous opportunity. God opened this door. It’s just fantastic. The door goes up and there’s eight hundred pounds of strawberries on the dock! (Laughter)
Like whoa! Eight hundred pounds of strawberries. My right-hand man, the Operations Manager for what became Lionhearts, who is still here to this day, he was with me that day. I must have had a look on my face because he turned and looked at me and said: “Smile.” I kind of just snapped out of whatever I was thinking and smiled and sort of started helping put them in the back of his little truck. We took it back to our church because we didn’t have a facility. So we’re sitting there looking at each other. What are we going to do with eight hundred pounds of strawberries?
Well, you know what, we pulled out the phone book and we started to go through and look up all the different places that offer food to the poor or who have food programs or whatever. We started calling them one at a time. We have some fresh strawberries and would you like some? The resounding answer was “Yes,” to the point where they would say we’ll take all you’ve got. I remember going I’ve got about eight hundred pounds. The little Costco containers? I have about eight hundred pounds in them. So she’s like we’ll take 10. No problem! We’ll bring them down to you. I looked at Shawn and I said: “What do we do now? We’ve got seven hundred ninety pounds of strawberries!” I started going like this all day long. We were passing them out. And we knew we had to go back the next day.
Q. Right.
A. That started basically what Lionhearts is. First and foremost it is a mass food rescue distribution network. We have tons, hundreds of thousands of pounds of food donated to us every year. We turn around, divide that up and we support thirty different agencies every week with a portion of the food. And here we are 5 years later and last year we did $2.3 million worth of food in the greater Kingston area.
Q. Did you ever in your wildest imagination think that you would be leading an organization that raises operational money but then also gets $2.3 million worth of food?
A. Not a chance. If you told me that 10 years ago in the middle of travelling in a tour bus or whatever, you know what, you’re not going to be doing this every night. You’re going to go over here and you’re going to feed the poor. I’d have been like you’re out of your mind!
Q. (Laughter)
A. But God gets a hold of your life sometimes and you really surrender, it’s amazing what he can do and have you do for his plan for you instead of maybe a plan for yourself.
Q. Yes, right. I’ve had it explained to me like you sign the contract but it’s a blank page. That is what surrender is like. You just sign the bottom saying God, I’m in, but I don’t know what I’m in for. He begins to fill it in after and you’re like, oh, that’s a much better story than I would have written. I’m so glad you’re the author and perfecter of my faith. Right?
A. Absolutely. I love it.
Q. So why is taking care of the poor so important to you?
A. Well, you know, that book really flipped my life upside down. Gosh, I think I’ve been through that book now 4 or 5 times, leading other small groups through it. I looked up to this guy growing up and I know my father did. I’m sure he had a lot of influence on my life, and my dad, probably a lot more than I originally thought. But he used to look up to another famous preacher, my dad did, David Wilkerson in New York City. I don’t know if you remember The Cross and the Switchblade and Run, Baby Run and some of the cats around that. But this one quote from David Wilkerson really stood with me through years and years of what we’re doing now. He was at one of these big preacher conferences or whatever and there was a group of young guys around him. They were all sort of chirping at him. Dave, how did you become so successful in one of the biggest cities in the world, you have a church in Times Square in some of the most high stakes real estate in the world, how did you do it? They were waiting for some sort of big philosophical answer or whatever. He turned around and said that if you want to know the secret to what we’ve done and what I have lived by my whole entire life is find the poor, love the poor, feed the poor, be with the poor and everything else will take care of itself.
Q. Wow.
A. I may have botched that and maybe not got every detail of that. But that was the gist of what he was getting at. Find the poor, stay with the poor, love the poor and the rest God will take care of. I can tell you the guy hit a grand slam with that, didn’t he?
Q. Yes.
A. And I’ve seen it play out over the last 5 years.
Q. It sure sounds like the Bible to me. Throughout the scriptures how many times, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times the Bible talks about taking care of the poor. But I think you are right. I think it comes out of a place of surrender because taking care of the poor is not easy. It’s not the most thankful job in the whole world. You could be doing everything you can and still not do enough, still not dealing with mental illness and all different types of things.
Why don’t you quickly tell us just while we’re on the Lionhearts topic because we are going to switch to something else here in a second. But you are responding to the Covid-19 crisis and we chatted offline previously, that you guys are working hard at not only being in Kingston but you are now in Ottawa. During the Covid-19 crisis what are you guys doing to help meet the needs of the poor in this season?
A. Right. Well, our unique position as sort of a charity food distributor gave us a unique view across the city of many of the different agencies that feed people day in and day out, week in and week out. When Covid-19 broke out it forced some of the smaller agencies in the city to either reduce what they were doing, if not entirely close for this particular season. There are many, many reasons. But sometimes their volunteer base is a vulnerable age. There’s a plethora of ideas. Plethora is a fun word to say!
Q. Yes.
A. Anyway, we’re sitting here looking across the city and we approached our partners because we noticed there wasn’t a charity food program operating during the dinner hour. There were lots of lunch programs, various lunch programs across the city, but nothing in the dinner hour. We had been piloting a ‘to-go’ meals program which we have been doing for about 6 months. And we brought that to the city and public health and reviewed it with a few partner agencies and they said that would really help in what is happening right now.
Q. Right.
A. We launched a ‘to-go’ meals program. We started with one location. There are now 4.
Q. Wow.
A. With that first location opening on March 18th, we gave away thirty-seven ‘to-go’ meal packages. We were committed to being there every night, 7 nights a week and within 2 weeks we saw that number of thirty-seven on the first night rise to over two hundred fifty meals ‘to go’ every night.
Q. Wow.
A. Now that’s within 2 weeks of March 18th. Here we are in May we have 4 locations in the greater Kingston area, including Napanee. We are doing over seven hundred meals every night.
Q. Wow.
A. We have 6 full-time chefs volunteering their time to cook these meals and just over the Mother’s Day weekend we just breezed over top of the twenty thousand meals have gone out since March 18th.
Q. Incredible. Wow. That’s cool, man. It would be so easy just to stay in your lane and just go hey, we’re just food distributors. We don’t do the work, you know, like hey, aren’t we doing enough and it’s like no, there’s a need, there’s a gap. I love your heart. I love your team’s heart and love those sous chefs that are volunteering their time. What a great story. Many of them wouldn’t have faith, right? They wouldn’t have a faith background, they are just there to help the poor? That’s incredible.
A. Yes, absolutely. It’s one of those things with Lionhearts you don’t have to believe in God to sort of realize people need a hand up or people need food or dignity or whatever. So when people come in to volunteer for Lionhearts they could be from many, many different walks of life. We have no idea. We just know we have one common thing that drives us on our side to say hey, their reason might be because God, their reason might be because this, fill in the blank. But the majority of what we do we find it is such a great way to share our life or our story, or whatever, working side-by-side with others who may not see it exactly the same as us. And doors just fly open.
I know we’re going to switch lanes and go into some other stuff here but maybe on a future podcast we could talk about some of the other Lionhearts categories like our Fast 101 Program which is Fighting Against Sex Trafficking 101. We have a whole program designed for that. We also have a live music café that operates on Saturday nights, both in Kingston and in Ottawa, which brings in country and classic rock artists and we bring people in off the street and just love them with coffee and stuff and try to give them something to encourage them at the end of their week. We could maybe talk about some of that stuff on a future podcast. There’s a lot to get into in one spot. Right?
Q. Well, there’s so much stuff we could talk about. I think there will be people out there maybe leading in the church world that might be interested in partnering with you guys. We’ll figure out a way to get you guys connected because this is an excellent ministry that is doing some incredible things. I want to honour you Travis, and your wife and family who sacrifice a lot to make this happen.
But if you weren’t busy enough ---
A. (Laughter)
Q. If you weren’t busy enough doing that, raising money during Covid and all these different things, the Lord has put a dream in your heart. Why don’t you tell us what that looks like because it relates to church multiplication?
A. Yes, for sure. I always told my dad I wasn’t interested in being a pastor. And he said: “That’s good. Never go into this unless you feel called.” If I didn’t feel as strong a calling I wouldn’t be here, you know. You see what different pastors go through and that kind of stuff. It can be one heck of a roller-coaster ride. Right?
Q. Yes.
A. Anyway, when things were flipping around in my life we began an outreach at a local night club here in Kingston and we would do worship, what I would consider at a professional level from what I had been used to, touring with bigger lights and sound. It’s kind of common now in a lot of churches but back then it wasn’t as common for a church to have multiple moving lights and all the lights were off and you had big production and screens and all that sort of stuff, What was different for us was we did it at a night club, which was in the heart of downtown, sort of right in the middle of where there’s a lot of interesting aspects that happen on the street.
Q. That’s a nice way to say it!
A. (Laughter) It’s politically correct.
Q. Yes, I know. It’s a nice way to say it. There’s a lot of interesting aspects of culture that are expressed in this particular part of the city. I think we all know what you mean. So we’ll just keep moving.
A. Yes. After this I’m going to go into politics and run for office. I’m kidding.
Q. You should. Maybe God will lead you there. Anyways, keep going.
A. I’ve got a face for radio! We began to partner with this night club and we would bring folks in off the street. We would give them cokes. We would give them something to eat. We also used it as sort of a rejuvenation station, I don’t know, recharging station, let’s try that.
Q. For people’s faith?
A. Yes. A lot of churches, let’s be honest, even though there are some churches that are sort of turning the page, if you will, and there is more lighting and more production, there are still the vast majority of churches that don’t have that and can’t enter into that lane for a lot of different reasons. That really sparked something within me. Later on in time that idea eventually morphed into what became Lionhearts and we stopped meeting at the night club. The food program took over. The human trafficking program came in. The Embassy Café came in where it was really meeting the needs of the street people in a different way. We began to run more in that direction.
Enter a phone call from a mutual friend pastor of ours, Jeff Hillier. He called me in the middle of the day one day. I’ll never forget it. He said: “Trav, whatever happened to that night club thing you were doing in Kingston?” I just sort of explained the ins and outs of all of that and how it sort of morphed and changed over time. He said: “Well listen, what would you think about coming to Ottawa and partnering with Community Pentecostal and launching a church that looked like that, with similar ideas, similar goals and maybe aim it at university students, young professionals, that kind of thing. What would you think about that?”
A. I’m sort of… wow. It was interesting at the timing of his phone call because Lionhearts had just begun moving into Ottawa with some of our food partners. It was almost like God dropping little signs along the way to say that maybe this is the direction I would like you to go.
I obviously responded that I needed to pray and talk to my family, talk to my Board, talk to those things and seek that out. But ultimately we felt the call, as my dad put it one time, to look at going into that. We picked up our family. We moved to Ottawa and began running down this lane of church planting, satellite planting, whatever you want to call it. There’s a bunch of different names for it. But essentially it is multiplying a church.
Q. Yes.
A. Let’s take a kick at the can. Right? See if we can change some lives of some young people, university students and young professionals maybe geared toward that particular age group. That’s what is bringing me to Ottawa and I’m sort of here running in that lane right now.
Q. Yes. It’s just at the early stages? Well, not early because you guys have been thinking about this for some time. But Covid-19 has hit and that puts that launch date this September ---
Like you were thinking actually last September but for whatever reason it just wasn’t going to work out timing wise. Here we are looking at this September as a launch date. You are pulling a team together. You are raising money for it. You are putting lots of effort into this new church plant called Oxygen Church. But you might not be meeting in person. So what are you thinking? Are you still thinking of launching? You and I have talked about it but what are you thinking these days?
A. It is kind of one of those things where I don’t know, some people might resonate with this, but any time it has come up over my life where someone said oh, you can’t do that, or that’s going to be really difficult or I don’t think you will be very successful, it has kind of almost been fuel on my fire.
Q. Yes.
A. Here’s this little kid from New Brunswick who always dreamed of playing the drums. No one ever makes it from back in the country in Atlantic Canada. You could never be a touring drummer. And I was like, well, watch this. It sort of happened, through much perseverance and opening doors and lots of prayers and whatever. It’s the same with the food thing. Oh, you guys could never handle hundreds of thousands of pounds of food and we’re just kind of like, we’ll learn. We’ll grow. We’ll adapt.
Q. Yes. We don’t know that yet. We’ve never done it.
A. Right. And I’m going to have a run at it. Watch me. So with the church things, gosh, we seemed to have things lined up. We had a fantastic venue right in the drop zone in the City of Ottawa that we wanted to meet in. We had our launch team, our launch crew had been raising money, getting production ready, etc. etc. And then Covid hits. Right? It sort of hits ‘pause’, it seemingly hit ‘pause’ on anything.
Q. Over everything.
A. On everything.
Q. Yes.
A. Not wanting to stall in any way, I’m always kind of trying to talk to God and say what is this? What does this mean? I’m sure in all of this he’s trying to show us different things in our lives, the plan he has for you, he’s got that thirty thousand foot view of stuff, you know, stuff that he sees we can’t see. And I’m trying to roll and adapt and listen to what he’s thinking.
Q. Yes.
A. I just brought it to the team and I said you know when this all comes back around will the school even be prepared to rent. Will they have a policy in place? What if they don’t?
Q. Right.
A. What can we do? How can we pray into maybe something we weren’t expecting and the idea of launching virtually came up? And what kind of mountain is that to climb? No congregation base. We’ve got an Internet connection. We’ve got some ideas and some great examples of online churches. I mean, there’s no shortage of those.
Q. Yes.
A. I think the church has kind of shown that, no matter if you are in China, they are going to meet in people’s basements and it is going to flourish and it’s going to fly. They are not on the Internet. They are not able to meet in person in a church in public. There’s lots of stories of that.
Q. Of course.
A. And here we are in America thinking wow, man, maybe this will stall. So I was just putting forth the idea of a virtual launch and going can we make that happen and what does it look like? Is it unique to Ottawa? I’m sure somebody out there has launched virtually before. What can we learn and maybe we could do that?
Q. And to be clear, this isn’t a soft launch.
A. No.
Q. This is like THE launch of the church and you know a launch, as you and I have chatted and are aware of other great models of church out there, but the launch big model gets self-sustaining pretty quick and you need three hundred to four hundred people on your first week or whatever. It is geared for suburban high-density cities.
A. Yes.
Q. You kind of grip it and rip it and high production and all that and that’s what you were going for. But now it’s like what happens if we’re not meeting in there until next September, like 2021? There’s no outside rentals until 2021 September. I like this idea. We’re going to be watching closely what you’re doing and journeying with you.
But what excites you about this idea? I feel like this is build the airplane in the air type of thing, you know. We’re on the runway about to take off but there’s still stuff we need to be building in the air. What are you excited about with this particular digital launch or virtual launch?
A. I think it’s the challenge. There’s a challenge. But ultimately there’s a call to try to reach people.
Q. Um-hmm.
A. And let people know there’s a God who loves them and cares for them.
Q. Yes.
A. And there’s that personal touch you can still have, regardless of whether you are in the same room with someone or having a Zoom meeting or phone call or whatever, to be in the same room there’s a certain thing that happens there absolutely. I don’t think there will be any sort of substitution quite to that extent. Right. There’s something about being in the same room with six hundred people all lifting their voices and their hands, all in the same room.
Q. Yes.
A. There’s something there. We know what that is. Right?
Q. Yes.
A. But it’s not like the Holy Spirit doesn’t exist if there isn’t a bunch of us online singing. He is still glorified. He is still magnified. So if we can accomplish something different, for a different age such as this age where every church is now trying to figure out how to stream. Right?
Q. Right.
A. Or make sure their cameras are level. (Laughter)
Q. Yes.
A. Hit the record button, you know.
Q. Don’t put on a face filter. Don’t record a whole message with a face filter? Yes, yes, I got it.
A. Don’t put the “KISS” mask on when you go to preach. (Laughter) That could be bad.
Q. It’s not appropriate! (Laughter) But you are right. Everybody is experimenting with online. But I think you make a good point. What happens if this experiment turns into a big part of our future? What happens if this is the new normal and we can’t meet in groups for a significant amount of time, large groups? I agree, that’s the one thing I miss and I think it’s the same thing that everyone misses. I’m hearing stories of churches saying when we get back together there will be no messages. It will just be an hour and fifteen minutes of worship. There’s just something about getting together in big groups like that.
I am fascinated by how all this is going to roll out. I’m grateful to be on the journey with you Travis because I think is going to be really interesting. So we’ll be watching closely.
Now I want to bridge the two. How do you see Lionhearts and Oxygen or “O” Church connecting or working together?
A. Yes. With Lionhearts right now it is a charity. It is a full out charity, registered Canadian charity, helping to feed the poor, helping to rescue people from sex trafficking, helping to bring people in off the street and give them some dignity back and friendship through a café, etc. etc. We have a ton of churches in the area that we partner with and they will send volunteer crews or get them into our rotation of volunteers. So that to me is a big success story on Lionhearts part. We have Anglicans working beside Catholics working beside Baptists working beside crazy Pentecostals. Right.
Q. Agnostics. Everybody is there.
A. Literally, and everybody in between.
Q. Yes.
A. So my favourite thing about Lionhearts that I guess I’m opening a church is the fact that I can I guess lead by example to say hey, listen. I know it’s not easy to want to go. It sounds like a great thing. It sounds like everybody would be onboard to go and help the poor. But let’s face it a lot of people don’t because there is something uncomfortable about mental illness or seeing it in person. I’m not sure if this guy is tweaking out because he’s on a meth trip or because he’s just schizophrenic and he hasn’t had his medication today. I don’t know. So there’s a million ---
It’s not comfortable for regular folks.
Q. I agree. I agree.
A. I remember going through that book Crazy Love and I remember thinking when I stand in front of Him one day is my excuse for not going to help the poor ---
Like I could just throw money at it. Sure. And that’s needed. Don’t get me wrong. It’s needed.
Q. Yes.
A. But for me personally to stand in front of the Lord and go hey, I didn’t go to them because I wasn’t comfortable. And the look in his eyes when I hear those words come out of my mouth saying that and then watching him walk to the hill, whipped, beaten and broken. And I wasn’t comfortable to drive a few kilometres in my car, knock on the door of the soup kitchen and say hey, can I help?
Q. Yes.
A. I wasn’t comfortable? That’s going to be my ---
I couldn’t live with myself. To see it come to a point where I guess I get to sort of set the example and say listen, lock arms with me. It’s not going to be comfortable but we’ll go through it together.
Q. I actually think that is more what discipleship is rather than telling them to go. You actually take them with you. I think that needs to be more the model of discipleship. It is what Jesus did. I mean, he would teach to thousands but there were only a few that were called his disciples and those were the ones who travelled with him or followed him around, with him for weeks and maybe months on end, just travelling around.
I’ve said this to you before. I think Travis that is going to be the unique part of this story is sometimes we start a church hoping to help the poor and you’re doing it backwards. You are actually helping the poor and now you want to start a church. Because I think that’s great. I think both can be effective. But I think having the DNA to take care of the poor already there to me seems like a natural connect.
A. Yes. I agree. It seems so natural to just want to at this point. It didn’t in the beginning. I didn’t feel comfortable to go there but I knew I had to get over my own self worry or uncomfortableness and go you know what, I can’t stay there. I have to go.
And we found other people who felt the exact same way. They’re like, ah, I want to help the poor so much. I want to go on a missions trip and it’s cool. It’s great for that one week and I don’t do anything else for years. And you’re like well, there’s a mission field right in your city. Every day, 7 days a week, there are people ---
We hear stories every week where they come to The Embassy because we are the only people who will call them by their first name out of the whole week, this little coffee shop is the only place they get to hear their first name called. I tell our crew all the time: I’m like, that’s not you calling their name. That’s Him.
Q. Yes, through you.
A. He’s working through you, he lives in you and he works through you. He wants to call them by name. He wants to draw them to himself.
Q. Amazing. Travis, this has been inspiring and encouraging for me. I just want to thank you.
I want to leave you with one last question. What would you say to an entrepreneur out there who has a crazy dream? You talked about surrender. That was the first step. But God has put something in their heart. What would you say to that entrepreneur out there wanting to start something maybe beyond them and they don’t have all the answers. What would you say to them?
A. Pray. But then put it to the test. Find it in the Bible and if you got it there, that’s number one. Number 2; take it to a pastor, a leader of some kind, you respect and know will give you a balanced view of it. Number one they will pray with you about it but maybe they will offer some wisdom and some guidance and walk some of it with you somehow.
Q. Yes.
A. I wouldn’t be scared to run at it. Sometimes God puts those things in your heart and you’ve got to put them to the test. And then just go at it. Wisdom is asking others maybe you’re not used to it, maybe that’s not where your degree is in, but I don’t have a degree in Charity. I’m a Bible School drop-out. I loved Bible School. I wish I had stayed in it. And probably one day I will finish it just to say that hey, I did it.
Q. Yes.
A. And I got that degree. And I could go further and get a Master’s or a Doctorate. I would like to have those things for myself now, not because of maybe where it would get me. It’s just the challenge for myself.
Q. Yes.
A. Don’t be scared if you are an entrepreneur. It can be scary. You will be scared but the Holy Spirit is with you. Consult with a leader. There’s wisdom in those people and in their knowledge. They have been through more things. Always look to surround yourself with people that are better at things than you are.
Q. Yes.
A. I heard that somewhere.
Q. It’s true. It is absolutely true. Those are really great thoughts to close this out. We’ll catch up with you again once “O” Church launches and maybe we’ll do another interview and you can tell us all the things you are learning from the digital world.
Travis, thanks for jumping on today. I really appreciate it.
A. Paul, thanks man. It really means the world to me to be on here with you. I’m praying for you and what you are doing. Thanks for what you are doing for our whole crew out here across the country. You’re awesome, man. Thanks.
Q. Thanks so much. Have a great day.
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