Welcome And Guest Background

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Welcome to the Market It Without Ma podcast, where we give you the tips, tools, and strategies you need to be successful. My name is Brian, I'll be your host today, and today we have a very special guest. He's actually the pastor of my church. Pastor Marty Collier has dedicated his life to helping people find and follow Jesus. He surrendered to ministry at just 16 years old and began serving as student pastor at the age of 19. Since joining Rush Creek Church in 1998, he has served on multiple leadership roles, including student pastor, campus pastor, and since 2019, lead pastor overseeing five campuses across Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Under his leadership, Rush Creek has continued its mission of removing obstacles and restoring opportunities for people to encounter Christ, grow in their faith, and impact their communities through the movement known as Rush Creek Loves. Marty has been married to his wife, Stephanie, for 27 years, and together they have three children. He is passionate about leadership development, community impact, and building a church that reaches people far from God. Pastor Marty, welcome to the show.

Sponsors And Studio Resources

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Before we get into the show, let's say thank you to our sponsors. Today's episode is sponsored by NouveauxDesk Co-Working, the home of Arlington's most accessible production-ready podcast studio. Whether you're launching your first show or leveling up your content game, Nouveau Desk gives you a professional studio environment where you can walk in, hit record, and create. But Nouveau Desk is more than just a podcast room. It's fully equipped business hub with private offices, conference rooms, and workshop and event spaces designed to help you host, collaborate, and grow. If you're ready to elevate your brand, your business, or your voice, book your next recording or your next tour at nuvodesk.com. Create here, work here, build here. Today's episode is brought to you by Nuvio, the all-in-one business platform designed to help you build, manage, and scale with confidence. With Nuvio, you can build your own website in minutes, manage all of your leads and customers through a powerful CRM. And if you're in the restaurant industry, you can run your entire operations using Nuvio's modern point of sale system. Whether you're a startup, a service provider, or a full-scale restaurant, Nuvio gives you everything you need in one place. Simple, connected, and built to grow with you. Discover why entrepreneurs are switching to Nuvio. Visit Nuvio.com and run your entire business on one platform.

A Calling Shaped By Loss

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Well, welcome back to the Market It With Atma podcast. And in this show, we typically talk about how to build launch, grow, and scale. And build launch growth scale, you know, it looks different. We use it in our marketing firm to helping build launch growth scale campaigns, build launch, growth scale websites. But that goes in every direction when it comes to business as a whole. And even in church organizations, build launch growth scale is a foundation, and we have Pastor Marty here to talk about, you know, and he's my pastor, so I'm kind of biased, right? But uh Pastor Marty here to talk about um what it looked like to build launch growth scale and your journey as a leader and leading uh the church of Rush Creek, right? And so you started ministry at the age of 16. Um that's pretty young, you know. Uh you decided, hey, I'm gonna um you know I'm gonna jump in. That's that's my calling, that's what I want to do. Uh, what led you to that to that decision?

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Yeah, no, first of all, thank you, Brian, for having me on the podcast. I love what you're doing and what your team is doing here, and I think this is so valuable, both for the faith space as well as business and leadership. So, yeah, I I sense from the Lord that that maybe vocational ministry, meaning um full-time uh vocational ministry inside of a church would be my future um at the age of sixteen. And really what led to that is um I lost my dad to cancer when I was 13. He was 47. Uh it was a pretty tra tragic event in my life, obviously. And um that same summer um God brought a a student pastor at our to our church that just invested in people in a way that I had never really experienced. And he just um me along with other folks in our ministry, both men and you know, young men and young ladies, um, he just uh gave a lot of attention, poured into us um, and he really just helped us see what he saw in us. And so that was very valuable in that time of me surrendering to the ministry at 16. Um and then um I didn't start into to ministry actually until I was nineteen. But um yeah, it was it was it was uh some family and life uh challenges that were going on, which caused me um to really be at a place where kind of my hands were open, like, God, what do you want to do in my life and what do you want to do with my life? What do you want me to do? And then placing people in my life who um just kind of spoke into me and um told me that that really essentially I was made for more than just to live and breathe and invited me into the journey of what would it look like if you were to surrender and give your life to a higher calling, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yeah. I think it's important because um when people look at um all the people that we have on, um, you know, you're you're the lead pastor, you're you're the leader. Um, but even you, right, like the the human side, people don't realize how human we are. I remember calling you about my dad who who also had cancer, that was very scary. Yes. Um and I believe had you had he not made it to that hospital, he would not be with us today. Um but um you know it's those moments that really uh changed the trajectory of who you are as a person and and and as leaders, like how do you um you're gonna have not just obstacles in business but in life itself, and how do you balance

Mentors And Learning Above Your Role

SPEAKER_01 6:32

that, right? Yeah. And so um you spent nearly three decades with Rush Creek looking back, what really originally attracted you to uh Rush Creek and its mission?

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah, so um Rush Creek actually found me in a season of my life where I just moved to Texas um originally from Arkansas, and at the time uh I didn't I was in between ministry jobs, and so I didn't know how difficult seminary was gonna be. I was getting my masters, and uh Russ Barksdale, who was the lead pastor at the time, called me and just said, Hey, I'm looking for a student minister. Would you come and talk to me about that? And um and as he just explained, number one, um, I already had a love for just the mission of the church, and the mission of the church, every church that's a Bible-believing church, the mission is the same. Jesus gives us that mission. Great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, great commission to go to all nations, baptizing them. So uh I've had a a deep love for the mission of the church. And then the the specific expression of that at Rush Creek is um Russ just really wanted to reach people um who were far from God. Yeah. People who may have been what what we might would call de church, meaning that they they they had been burned by church before or they had an they had an understanding of church that was not um we felt like was not uh truly uh reflective of what God wanted the church to look like. And um God just drew my heart to really Russ and his vision for Rush Creek. And then I just fell in love with the people of Rush Creek. I mean, that was in 1998.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

And you you know, um not just Pastor Russ, but other mentors, like who were other mentors that really influenced you, poured into you, um, that made you, you know, um who you are today.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah. So the student minister that I mentioned that when my the summer that my dad died, um, he's still a part of my life today. And I still visit with him regularly. In fact, I was on a a podcast with him not long ago. Um he's a professor now at a at a Christian university. Um and then I've had a couple of um in my ministry, just the pastors that I've served under in ministry, and I've only served at four churches. Um but the pastors that I've served under have all just um invested in my life in specific ways. Sometimes in calling me out to do things that are outside of my comfort zone, and but always speaking into my life in a way that's calling me upward, meaning calling me to something that they see that I may not have seen. And uh Pastor Russ was no different. And every along the way from my when I was 19 to my second church was a larger church where I was a junior high minister, and then um Rush Creek and one other church in Alabama, um, every one of them have just had people, mostly my supervisors or my pastors, just pouring in, speaking in, helping develop my leadership, giving me opportunities that are a little bit above my pay grade, so to speak, um, because that's how you really develop your leadership.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Yeah. Yeah. I think that uh when and this is just a society thing too, uh um, but to your point, like doing things above your pay grade, um, those are opportunities to learn.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

And um a lot of people don't sometimes don't look at it that way. Right. It's like, hey, I just need to get paid for it. No, sometimes it's like, well, do you even have the experience for it? Right. Right. And if you don't have experience for it, you know, there's tons of stuff that I've had to do where I've had to learn. And once I've learned, I knew the value of it, yes, and I was comfortable in executing it, and then we could implement it right and then charge for it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

And so, um I think we miss the value of the education of every single day. I I think that we sometimes um we can get in the mindset in our world today of just like this is my job, this is my livelihood, this is what I do for a paycheck. But every day we should be learning something. Every day is educating us to to be better leaders, um, to to be better um delegators and to lead the people around us. And seriously, I have had a pastor who literally said, Hey, I'm going to invite you into meetings that um that I'm not inviting you in there to necessarily contribute. He wasn't trying to be disrespectful. He was just like, This is kind of above your pay grade. But you need to start seeing how leadership at this level happens.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Um, from difficult conversations to board meetings to um even some some situations where people were having to be let go, that kind of thing. And I'm just I'm just kind of a fly on the wall, which was such an incredible uh educational experience in my leadership.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

So you're telling me even in the church you have to let people go?

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Man, I don't like to say that, but um, you know, sometimes it's just not a great fit, and you don't realize it until usually they realize it also, and so that's what makes it better. But yeah, even in the faith space and in the churches, you sometimes realize someone's not a great fit, and you hope that you can find another seat for them on the bus. Yeah. If they're a loyal and a trusted employee and haven't done something unethical.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

But sometimes there's not another seat on the bus. Yeah. And um you want to graciously and as much compassion as possible just say, Hey, I think we need to probably go a different direction.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Yep, yep. And those are very hard uh decisions to make. They are period.

Launching A Multi Campus Strategy

SPEAKER_01 12:23

They are and as you grow, because you're you've you know, you guys launch multiple campuses, not just one. I mean, we started with the Green Oaks campus and now you have multiple location. You know, um, how did you how did that go about? You know, what what made that decision and what was the process of actually planning that out and launching those campuses? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

So this was again some of this I inherited. So um Russ Barksdale, who's the lead pastor at that time, um, invited me on to his staff again. So I'd actually left Rush Creek for a season um after I'd been the student minister, and I was serving in a church in Alabama for four years, and Russ had a deep sense that he wanted to go multi-side. Not that he thought Rush Creek was the end-all be-all, like the best church out there. He just thought if we can get as many um healthy, vibrant churches in different places around the community, um, that's easier and maybe long term better for the kingdom than trying to get everybody to come to one location from 15, 20 minutes away.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Um and so he in 2004 started having conversations with me about coming back to Rush Creek and leading what is now called our Mira Lagos campus. And so we prayed about it for about a year. And um he was having to kind of convince because that was new, pretty new at that time, uh, multi-site. Today that's pretty uh standard and pretty common. But um, so he invited me back in 2005. Steffi and I came back to Rush Creek and started as the Mir Lagos campus pastor. And um, and from there it kind of birthed this excitement. And once we saw that this was scalable and we could do this underneath the umbrella of Rush Creek, multiple campuses, then it was like we just started praying about how else do we want to do this. And some of our campuses came through what we would call revitalization, meaning they were a standalone church, um, but they fell upon hard times and were struggling to keep the doors open, so to speak. And they reached out to us and and we're like, hey, you know, if we came underneath the umbrella of Rush Creek, would y'all help us? And we saw it as an opportunity. If we could keep a light in a dark world, we want to do that to the best of our ability if possible. And so that's kind of how the multi-site strategy started. And uh there are lots of different ways you can do it. We chose not to go video, we chose to have live teaching pastors, campus pastors at each campus, which is not always the easiest or the the cheapest. Um, however, we just think that that relational value is super important. I mean a campus pastor who um leads their staff and leads the people at each congregation because when someone like O'Brien is going through something, they're they're not thinking about calling or texting the guy on the video screen that they have no relationship with.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

They're when their life falls apart or when tragedy strikes them, they want to go to someone that they know, that they love, and who they feel known by. Yeah. And so um that's the reason we kind of have done multi-site the way that we have.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Wow.

Rush Creek Loves And School Partnerships

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Kind of leads into our next question about the Rush Creek Loves, right? So, you know, church isn't just a building, right? It's not. And so what how did that movement of Rush Creek loves like what what what urged you to kind of launch that campaign and saying, hey, Rush Creek loves?

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah. So it's really the heartbeat. Um, you know, in the Bible, because we're a church, this is kind of our leadership textbook, so to speak. And it's not that I don't read a ton of leadership books, but but we get we get a lot of who we are and what we do from God's word. And in first John chapter 4, verse 19, it just says that we love because he first loved us. And and that really sparked this idea of we want everyone within a three to five mile radius of each one of our campuses, we want them to feel and know the love of Jesus in a way that's tangible and real, which means we got to get outside of the four walls of a building that we have sometimes thought to of as a church, right, and mobilize an army of people to go and be the hands and feet of Jesus and to be the love of Christ in this community. Um and at the same time, we would do something where we were getting into our schools, uh, about 32 different local schools in the area allow us to come in the week before school starts and just partner with the teachers. Teachers have a lot of hard work to do as they prepare for the start of school, from organizing desks to cutting out handouts to setting up their classrooms to painting walls, um, even um outside in flower beds and just trying to beautify, if you will, the school to the best of our ability. And so at first, Brian, I'm gonna tell you that schools were very skeptical. And we started with this idea of Rush Creek loves, like we want them to know that we love them because if they know we love them, they may get a glimpse of God's love for them. And um and so that's how we started. And it didn't start as 32 schools, it started probably as five or six, seven or eight. And then as schools started, the ministration started trusting us and realizing that hey, um, we're not just coming in um and and kind of uh throwing the Bible down their throat, so to speak. We're we're coming in partnering with these teachers. Yeah. We're showing them the love of Christ, we're serving them. Um, and as opportunity comes, we just say, you know, is there anything we could pray for you and your family? Um it has been incredible to see the response of these teachers. And so that kind of has spread to where now our reputation, I think, in the community is that we are a church that loves. And so we have just hung on to Rush Creek Loves, and actually it's really now part of our vision statement of Rush Creek Loves, helping people find and follow Jesus. That's who we are.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

That's awesome, and that was funny because my next question was about partnerships. But how you know you mentioned schools, but how important is it, not just schools, but other nonprofits, um, other local leaders, like you know, making sure that we're building that trust throughout DFW, how important is that? Um, even at a church level?

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Yeah, it's so important because um most of our people have heard about our reputation or have experienced us before they ever walk through the doors of a building. And um, and that says a lot because we want them to have experienced our love and our um a desire to serve the community before they even walk into our one of our locations. And when that happens, the the walls for them, whatever barriers they had to church or to faith, um, kind of is broken down to some degree. And so from one aspect, um, it's helped us kind of tear down some walls for individuals. But the other thing is I just think that it's so important that the the community in each one of our um cities that we serve in, whether it's Grand Prairie, Mansfield, Arlington, that they know that ultimately we're for them and we want to serve them. Because again, that gives us opportunity to really come alongside as a church then and say, hey, we're about more than just trying to get a ton of people to come into a building. Right. Like we're about wanting to serve you, help you, love you, care for you, meet needs within the community. And when they start to see the legitimacy of that and the authenticity of that, it makes them a little bit more open to what's the message and why are they doing this. Yeah. Which goes back to we love because Christ first loved us.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

That's awesome.

Pandemic Leadership And Public Criticism

SPEAKER_01 20:55

And but you know, it's funny because um um we talk about build launch grow scale, and uh the next phase of this this show is grow. And uh you came in during a time where um you you came in as leadership and then all of a sudden a pandemic hit.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yes. Didn't have that on my radar.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

No. Um, but when we talk about growth, like a lot of people when talking about whether that's churches, organizations, nonprofits, businesses, they think grow, it's like, oh, I'm growing, but really there's a lot of growing pains.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Uh a lot of painful, you know, things that happened throughout our even as a business organization. So talk to us through what happened. Uh, how did you how did you um overcome that uh pandemic?

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Man, it was probably the most challenging leadership lesson and um obstacle I had ever faced. And um no one ever dreamed that this would happen. And yet we found ourselves, yeah. So I am less than five months into being the lead pastor of. A church that has five campuses, six at the time, with Hanley. And then this pandemic sweeps sweeps through. And the the story very quickly is I'm on a study break and my wife is with me. We have um a mission trip with students in Mexico. And so our student pastors are calling us saying, hey, listen, they're they're shutting down. We're gonna have to come home early. At the time, my executive pastor decided he was actually stepping away from Rush Creek and was going back into corporate world for a job. And so I'm on this study break, and in one week, um we're sending our kids home early because of this pandemic. Um we have my my staff is shrinking, and then I come to face the the reality of um there's pressure of we gotta we gotta not meet in person, which for a church that's a really big deal. I mean, granted, we were already online with our services streaming, and which I'm thankful for, but still um the body and the church, what we do is all about people. Yeah. And so gathering is a big part of what we do. And starting in March, that second week, I believe in March of that year, they're like, Yeah, you can't gather in spaces like that. And it was uh it was challenging because um I had to gather with my leadership, we had to make decisions, uh, send out communication, and then you just had the onslaught of people who agree or disagree with your decisions of not meeting in person. Then when we did start meeting in person, masks, no masks, um, it was just a storm of any decision you made there for a while was the wrong decision for about half the people.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Yeah, yeah. That's tough. That's tough. And and everybody felt that in any business or church or whatever, everyone felt that yeah, because it's like um, you know, and you we all know this during the pandemic there was mixed um beliefs. Sure, right? And so it was it was definitely a tough storm to to face as as an as a nation and as a community. Um, so it's just interesting that's like, hey, I I didn't realize, you know, that um it would affect that much, right? And then it did, and we all shut down. And then um, as leaders, it was like, you know, I think it was good though on a on a on another point because throughout leadership, because it taught leaders like to your point, leaders, um, somebody said something to me a long time ago when I was working for um for a gym. I'm like I say the gym's name, but um there was a there was a um leader uh and he was the vice president, um, and I actually did not like him very well, okay. But um I did take a lot of what he said um and and remember that even now today as a leader, and one of the things he said was, um, Brian, do you know why leaders get paid the most? And I was just like, I don't know, because they do the the best work, and they're like, no. I was like, because they can manage the facility best? And they're like, nope. I was like, um, I don't know, because they can produce, they they they did they generate results? Nope. No. Every answer was no. And he said, because they get judged the most. You know why they get judged the most? It's because they have to make the hard decisions. Yeah. And not everyone is going to agree with those decisions. And he was just like, and you know, you've heard the saying, heavy's the crown. Yeah. Well, there's a crown of weight that pulls down leaders because they're wearing this crown and it's a crown of decisions, and each decision is under a microscope. Yeah. It's like, wow. You know, and then the the the larger your your leadership role, the more responsibility, the more you'll be judged. Sure. And so I thought that was very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Yeah. It's the first time that I had faced that much criticism before in my leadership and my decision making. And, you know, a man that I still love and have a ton of respect for, um, Russ, who's one of my spiritual mentors and pastor before me, you know, he told me, he said, Marty, until you sit in this seat of lead pastor, you'll never fully feel the weight of that leadership. I was reading something the other day, Brian, that just said, I don't I don't know if I agree with this uh definition of leadership fully, but um it certainly resonates with me that leadership is letting down people that you love at a rate that they can handle. Leadership is letting letting people down that you care about, that you love, but doing it at a rate that they can handle. And there's a lot of of discernment in that definition of leadership from the standpoint of knowing what's the rate that they can handle. Yeah. Because we've seen leaders who've made decisions that were too fast, too quick, too broad, and it destroyed the company or destroyed the church or split the church. Um, and and yet you want a leader to love and care about the organization and the people and the staff, but yet you know that you're going to let some of them down at some point. And you still have to be willing and uh able to make those decisions and do so at a rate that they can tolerate and they can handle.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yeah, there's a lot of grace, you know, sure uh required on both ends, I believe. Yeah. Um of managers and employees, um, staff, community leaders, and um community, you know, members. Yep. I think there's uh that we forget that. You know, um it's hard, uh, it's very hard uh when you're growing and scaling. Yeah. Uh because every decision, like I like you said, is uh under a microscope and not everybody's gonna agree. It could be wrong for some people and they won't disagree and they won't like it. And because they don't like it, they may view you differently. Sure. Right. And so I think that it's it is tough. It is tough being a

Consistency Across Campuses At Scale

SPEAKER_01 28:22

leader. Um so um scaling, as you going growing these churches and uh possibly even planting new churches in the future, how do you keep consistency?

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Yeah, well, we have an incredi I I have a credible team around me, number one. And uh I think any leader recognizes that um they're not always the smartest or the greatest in the room. And if you don't have a team of people around you who um are experts in their fields, so when I say that, I'm I'm saying a communications team around me, uh executive team around me, who is helping us make sure that um we use language um like this is above the line, below the line. And so we recognize that every campus is gonna have an expression of their own personality that may be a little bit different, but those core principles and those core values and the things that are above the line, we want to be the same at all campuses. And we want to serve under the same vision. We want to make sure that, you know, man, we're we're valuing people, we're wanting to make sure that we're pursuing generosity, um, that that we really, really are choosing joy in our day-to-day work. So I just have a team of people around me that are helping me make sure that that template is stock and standard for each one of our campuses. And that's not always easy. Um there's ebb and flow in that. But um yeah, that's that's what's helped us. And at the end of the day, uh for for us as a faith-based organization, that's not just based on the bottom line or a dollar. We're based on the what drives us is overall impact in the kingdom of God and what is going to position us to be able to have that greatest, the greatest opportunity to make the greatest impact. And if that means that we're eight campuses or ten campuses, or if that means that we're two campuses because we were able to to launch a campus out to be its own self-existing church, then we don't see that as a loss. Um, we see that as a win for the kingdom.

SPEAKER_03 30:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Um, I read a book years ago by JD Vere uh Vance. No, no, no, JD Greer. Sorry, J.D. Greer. J.D. Vance is the vice president, sorry, um, called Gaining by Losing. And um it just challenged your thought process in you know, when you have someone, let's just say, leave your company and go start another company. Um in the business world, that probably is um challenging and difficult. In the faith space, uh, that should be really encouraging and exciting, is that you you had the opportunity to develop and to train and to equip a leader to feel equipped enough to go and launch something that is now gonna have maybe uh a greater impact than it could have had underneath your building, underneath your roof, um in in a different space. And so it's helped me just kind of realize that man, at the end of the day, we want to be kingdom builders, not just Rush Creek builders.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

That's awesome. That's awesome.

Investing In Young Leaders With Purpose

SPEAKER_01 31:53

And so um what excites you uh the most about the new leaders coming in, the new generation?

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Yeah, man, um, you know, there's been a lot of debate about uh millennials, younger generation, and just to be honest, Brian, I feel like that people have have sometimes given them a bad rap um from the standpoint of man, I see a lot of great leaders. Now, um I think that that um they still have to be willing to to be teachable, but what I have found is if any young leader that's willing to be teach uh teachable, like coachable, and they're humble, um man, there is any the it's it anything is possible for for them. And when I have found leaders like that on our team and on our staff, we look for opportunities to invest in them, uh, to give them greater responsibility, to to expand their leadership, um, and then we keep coaching them to be able to hopefully be able to do this at a greater capacity, whether it's in Rush Creek, at Rush Creek, or somewhere else. Um, but I'm really excited about young leaders. Um, they're they really want to make a difference and they want to make an impact in the world today. They want their lives to matter for something. Um, and that right there is very encouraging and exciting to me.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

That's awesome. Yeah. Purpose.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Purpose. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Yeah. Um, it's funny because I'm millennial, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

Uh I mean, you've heard all the stuff, and it and it's like I feel like people give them a bad rap sometimes. And the reality is I think young leaders, um, man, they want their lives to matter. And they want to do something. There's the reason why you're here, the reason why you do this podcast, the reason why you have this company. You want at the end of the day, for you to have invested your life in something that matters, purpose.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

And and I think I talk about that with my staff a lot too. It's like you're you're not just building a website. Right. You're not just doing video, you're not just doing podcasts, you know. Um you're equipping people with things and resources they need, you know. And um, it is hard. Uh it is hard because sometimes, and we battle with this all the time, is um, you know, it is a service. Uh I always sometimes I joke about it. I say it's a um it's a um uh thankless job, uh, because if it goes right, it's great, it's great, but there's not really much thank yous. But if it goes wrong, it's all our fault. So um but but um but at the end of the day, is you know, are we making a difference in these business owners and these um corporations? And you know, they have staff, they have people, um, and is our marketing making a difference, right? And so um it it's a tough job too. It's a tough job.

Defining Legacy As Hope

SPEAKER_01 34:51

And um, so wrapping up here, you said legacy means leaving Rush Creek healthier than when you received it. Um so what is that what does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

You know, um to me, healthier than when I stepped in would just be that um we all are replaceable. Like every single one of us in whatever jobs we have, uh anyone is replaceable. I I would hope that whenever God calls me out of Rush Creek's leadership, um, that Rush Creek is able, because of my time there, to just continue on without missing a beat from the standpoint of hey, our mission is still the same. Like that was given to us by Jesus. Um our community, the world is still broken and in need of God's love and hope and he's placed us here to be able to be that light in an ever increasingly dark world. Um and man, I would just say if there's one word that I want my whole ministry to be summed up in, it would just be, you know, someone who gave hope who just helped people see that there's hope. Um I think that that many people, whether they're in the faith space or not, uh just struggle with a sense of hopelessness at times. And um that ultimately, there's deeper things there, but that ultimately reveals the foundation of their identity and who they're looking to for their hope, which is where in the faith space and in churches and as a believer, I feel like that that my mission in my whole ministry is to help people see that they have hope and value because they're loved by God that created them and has a plan for their life. And if they can begin to taste and see his goodness and his love for them, um, I think their perspective changes and I think their identity is grounded in something that lasts.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

That's awesome. Well, Pastor Marty, thank you for jumping on this podcast, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Thank you, man. It's been a joy and an honor. Um, love what you guys are doing, and thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

Thank you, thank you. Well, you've guys heard it. Um, even churches um have the journey of build launch grow scale. Um, you know, you can find Pastor Marty and and the church of Rush Creek at rushcreek.org. Uh, and on there they have plenty of social medias. They have Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, no, not the TikTok, right? Just Facebook and Instagram. Just Facebook and Instagram, but they also have a podcast themselves, right? So go and listen to that. Um, so if you want to find out more, also just a shameless plug. I am a volunteer drummer sometimes, sometimes uh once a month. Um come see me drum. But uh thank you guys for listening to the uh Market It With Hatma podcast. My name is Brian, and we'll see you next time.