Pivotal People
Join us in conversations with inspiring people doing amazing things. Their insights and experiences help motivate all of us to find our purpose that fits with our abilities, gifts and life situation. Get a "behind the scenes" look at successful people making a difference in the world and benefit from their advice for the rest of us. Our guests include authors, artists, leaders, coaches, pastors, business people and speakers.
Pivotal People
From Casting Nets to Casting Hope: Meet Steve Jamison, Author of 'The Most Valuable Catch'
How often do you come across someone who's made a shift from a life of commercial fishing to leading a congregation? Meet Steve Jamison, the lead pastor of Eastridge Church in Seattle. Steve's inspiring journey from casting nets for fish to spreading the gospel has been beautifully penned down in his book, "The Most Valuable Catch: Risking it All for What Matters the Most." We get a glimpse into his unique take on leadership, integrity, and authentic living through our enlightening conversation.
It's not every day that we are nudged by God to carry out an act of generosity. Well, Steve was, and he responded with open arms and an open heart. You'd be intrigued to know the story of how a simple food court in Puerto Rico led him to provide shoes for a pastor and his family residing in Cuba. But Steve's desire to spread the gospel doesn't stop there. His evangelistic outreach ministry, Jammin' Against the Darkness, has attracted sports figures who share their faith and inspire many.
Legacy, mentorship, and encouragement are powerful tools. As Steve shares his thoughts on these, you can reflect on how your life, irrespective of the stage, can be a tool for God's glory. Drawing from the life of Barnabas, Steve shows how starting small can lead to a significant impact. By the end of our chat, you'd appreciate the vision behind Steve's book and how it can transform lives. So grab a cup of coffee, tune in, and let Steve's passion, wisdom, and dedication inspire you to serve God and people.
Order Steve's book and additional study tools and extra bonuses at the website:
http://www.themostvaluablecatch.com
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I'd like to welcome Steve Jameson to the Pivotal People podcast. I'm super excited because I have just finished his book. It is so good. He is the lead pastor of Eastwood Church in Seattle, which is a big church, more than I think. It's two locations in the Washington area and a location in Ethiopia. Wow, he has just written a book called the Most Valuable Catch Risking it All for what Matters the Most. I've read it. In fact, I was a little concerned because I only had three days to read it and so I thought I'm just going to be able to skim it because I can't finish it. Well, I couldn't put it down and I read it in a day and a half and I've talked to my husband about it a whole lot. This is a book for men and women and everyone. I've already done too much talking. Steve, I just want to welcome you and thank you so much. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, stephanie, I just want to thank you for having me today and the kind words you've just spoken. I mean, you've just really made my day already. So thank you so much. Yeah, a little bit about me.
Speaker 2:I grew up in a family where my mother and father neither one of them grew up in a Christian home or knowing the Lord, and they had their own journey and out of that.
Speaker 2:The thing that's a little bit unique about my background, as you know from the book, is that my dad's a commercial fisherman. He's retired now, but back in that day he took me fishing with him on the open ocean when I was just 10 years old, and so I got introduced to a man's world really early in life, and that unfolded to some of the most amazing experiences that I could have had. I fished two different fisheries. One was Albuquer tuna, all up and down the West Coast, and Albuquer is just a two-man crew. So in our case it was my dad and me, and there were trips that would range usually around three weeks to a month at sea. The longest was 40 days at sea with just the two of us without seeing land, if you can imagine that as a young guy growing up and then he took me a little bit later to Alaska where I fished a different fishery, which was a long-lining halibut in the Gulf of Alaska, on a five-man crew and a lot of dynamic to that.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what. I did not know much about commercial fishing and your book is so entertaining because you tell really interesting stories about what happened while you were fishing and then you show that as a metaphor for our life and then a great life lesson. But I have a friend who's a commercial fisherman. He's a salmon fisherman, so I don't know the details, but if you read the stories it's a little bit dangerous and I'm not sure I'd let my 10-year-old go. But he's sitting here talking to us today, so I guess everything went all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a journey too, just even between my mom and my dad. My mom said that what won the day was when my dad said I don't want to take him out there in order to put him in danger. I want to take him there so he can be with me and experience this aspect of my life, and I love him just as much as you do, and that's why I want him to go with me. My mom was like OK, how do I stand in the way of that?
Speaker 1:And he taught you so many life lessons in fishing you share. Those. So many of the concepts in your book just really grabs me. I'll tell you one in the beginning well, not in the beginning, maybe in about the middle of the book you talk about integrity. I'm not going to read it, but in Romans 12, verses 9 to 18, paul really talks about the characteristics of integrity and the characteristics of being a positive disciple. And you said this how are you doing with these benchmarks of integrity? The people around us in our homes, at work, in church and in our neighborhoods are looking to see if our faith is real. Being a genuine disciple, as Paul describes, really does matter. And when I read that, especially now, steve, my gosh, people are really watching. And I think John Maxwell had a great quote you shared talent is a gift, but character is a choice. In fact, we create it every time we make choices to either cop out or dig out of a hard situation, or to bend the truth or stand under the weight of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amen. Another thing, stephanie, that I'm bringing out in that part of the book is really the concept of restoring the sacred trust of leadership, and when you think about it today, how many people have lost their confidence in everything from government to business to education you just go down the list and personal relationships. We look at things as just being interchangeable parts, and yet there's no fulfillment, there's no joy in that kind of a lifestyle, and even people who have walked away from church or walked away from faith just saying, hey, I don't need that, I can get what I need while I'm at the gym and things like that. And I talk in the book about the sacred trust of leadership there's a call on every one of our lives to live transparent between us and the Lord, to live a life that's authentic before God, but then to also live that life to others and as Christian leaders today.
Speaker 2:To me, this is really big and it's a challenge. Every single one of us. We need to be understanding how significant it is to be living in front of our people, that kind of love, that kind of respect towards them, honoring them, and then for them to see the other side of what I call the sacred trust of leadership is that, just as people have high expectations for their leaders, they should have high expectations for themselves. And you know what I'm saying? That they should be giving that same back to their leaders that they expect from them. And I just say, if we could come back to this and just understand, nothing is more important to God than us.
Speaker 2:Christ gave us life for us. We can have a real relationship with them and the church. We are the people of God. That's what we are. We're not just an organization, but we're the people of God. And if we could just rediscover this aspect, that it's a sacred trust God's given to us, I think we really could see a revival of faith and just relationships and I think everything could really take a positive step forward.
Speaker 1:I agree. You had one quote a commitment to integrity protects us from all kinds of heartaches. So it's not just about, you know, being authentic with other people. We've all suffered from making poor decisions. It just protects us. So, anyway, there's so much in this book I cannot possibly pull it out. It's on Amazon. You're all going to buy it. I loved your stories about generosity and how we really want to listen to when God nudges us. My husband and I took a hike yesterday and I shared this with him. I shared your perspective. I shared your story about the shoes. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:And can you share that story? It just was so beautiful and such a great example of how we need to listen to God's nudges.
Speaker 2:Yes, amen. I was doing a evangelistic outreach. Kind of the big story here is I was in Alaska fishing with my dad and God really spoke to my heart about changing my life, called me into ministry. Through that process of finally submitting and yielding, I went and I got educated, went down the road of developing my life to follow God and he took me to a number of different places. One of them was developing an outreach called Jammin' Against the Darkness and we did big arena events all over the country featuring NBA Christian players, a few NFL guys, a few Major League Baseball mainly NBA and that took me to San Juan, puerto Rico. So that's why I'm telling you the background here.
Speaker 1:Well, I also love the Jammin' Against the Darkness ministry. That's amazing. You can talk more about that.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you, but in this particular case we were getting ready to do an event the Roberto Clemente Arena in San Juan, puerto Rico and it was busy it was just like right down to crunch time but right across the street was a mall, and so we took our team over there and they were mostly local pastors and leaders who were working on this, and we went into a food court just to catch a quick lunch and get back to work. And while we were there, I watched this guy and he took his tray and he went over and was ready to take what he wasn't going to eat and put it into the trash. And I watched as another guy walked over to him and spoke to him, reached out, put his hands on the tray and asked him in Spanish not to throw the food away, but asked him if he could eat it, and so that really caught my attention, as you can imagine. And I went over and I said, hey, do you guys know who this guy is? And the story began to unfold that he was a pastor who was actually from Cuba and he, you know, in Cuba, even though he called me this country you can't go out with your family, but certain people get permission to go preach somewhere else, but they have a limited amount of time and they have to, you know, have to come back. So this guy had been given permission to go to Puerto Rico and preach in Puerto Rico, and the next day I didn't know this at the time, I found this out later, but the next day he was going back to Cuba.
Speaker 2:So, anyhow, I was looking at this, I'm watching this, and what I'm finding out is that this guy has been just living in poverty in Cuba, and he couldn't stand to watch any food go to waste, because so many days he and his family some days weren't being given any food at all, and other days they were living off of one meal a day. So to watch anything go to waste, he just couldn't even fathom that. And so he'd asked you know, hey, can I finish this? And then one of the guys next to me nudged me because this guy was leaning down and he said Look at the guy's shoes. And I looked at his shoes and they were just, you know, all full of holes and I thought, okay, we're in a mall, we ought to be able to get this guy some shoes. And so I asked my interpreter if he could help me. You know, find a store and go buy this guy a pair of shoes.
Speaker 2:As it would turn out, this mall did not have a shoe store or any place that they could find shoes in, so we had to go outside. It became inconvenient, you know. We had to go outside, get into a car, drive down the street and find a shoe store, and so when we went in there I told him just pick out a pair of shoes, I want to buy you a pair of shoes. And so he found a pair and his face just came alive. He was just beaming and when I saw that I thought to myself Wow, tell him to get two pairs. And so he went to get another pair, of different type, whatever.
Speaker 2:And I just started thinking about my wife, you know, because I traveled so many years and different things and I just knew, hey, we're all in this together. If he needs shoes and he has a wife, his wife's probably in the same place. So when he came back I said through the interpreter how about your wife? Does your wife need a pair of shoes? And this guy reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that was cut to the outline of his wife's foot. And so he went over and we got a little you know the little shoe rack and saw what size it was, and I said, hey, why don't you buy two pairs of shoes? Pick them up for your, for your wife? So while they're looking at that, I just don't know me, I wonder if he's got kids. And so when he came back, I asked the interpreter to ask him if he had kids. And he reached back in his pocket and pulled out another piece of paper cut to the outline of his daughter's foot, and so we went over and saw what size that would be. And then he told me that he had a little boy and he just stretched his fingers between his thumb and his first index finger and that was the size of his boy's foot, so he didn't have to cut a piece of paper for that one.
Speaker 2:And so we walked out with eight boxes of shoes. We went out to the car, put them all in the trunk and I'm feeling the time pressure because we've got this event with the NBA guys and everything and I'm off running this errand. But I was in for a surprise because when I sat down in the car, this pastor asked the interpreter if he could talk to me for a minute and share a story with me. And so we just sat there in the car without even moving, just listen to the story in the parking lot, and he told me what I said to you about how many days they went without food and some days it would be one meal. He made $9 a month as a cab driver and that's what he supported his family off of.
Speaker 2:And so basically he said that he was preaching and teaching people in the church that God loves us and God takes care of us. And so he said one day his little daughter said to him "'Daddy, if God takes care of us, "'how come we don't have food to eat? "'and how come our shoes have big holes in them'. And he said that just drove him to his knees and that he wept and cried before God. And he said he felt like the Lord said you know, in this trip that's upcoming when you go to Puerto Rico you're gonna meet a man and he is going to buy shoes for your entire family. So prepare for it. Draw a line around your wife's foot. Draw a line around your daughter. Figure out what size your little boy is.
Speaker 2:The beautiful thing about this story, stephanie, is that he'd been there, he'd preached. The next day he was going home and nobody around him knew this story. He didn't ask for shoes, he didn't tell anybody about this need. He was walking by total faith. He was just waiting for the moment that God was gonna fulfill this word. And you know, I'll tell you what. I went back that night, got on my knees and I just thank God that he allowed me to just be a part of someone else's miracle and I just couldn't, you know, I just thought, wow, think about the day he got home. I've never met this guy. I have a friend of mine who does ministry in the Caribbean and he's looking to put together a trip for me to go to Cuba either in January or February. I don't know if I could ever find this guy, but wouldn't that be fun to see this guy, you know, and what it would have meant to his family to see him come home with not even one pair of shoes for them, but two pairs for each of them.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you that story was just one of many incredible stories. I was telling my husband about that story on our hike yesterday and I said but what's so amazing? Yes, you had this amazing connection with God when you realized that he gave you the opportunity to be in the story. Maybe he gave other people the opportunity to be in that story and they ignored the nudge, but when you think about gosh, it gives me goosebumps. You'll never know how many generations are gonna be impacted with that story because he went home and he told that story.
Speaker 1:And when you talk about faith, having a real story in front of you, here are the eight boxes, the shoes, here are this outline of the feet that I did. You know, we just don't know, but we do know. We do know it's something amazing and wonderful this side of heaven. We might not know the details. I hope you go to Cuba and I hope you find it.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, wouldn't that be fun. Another thing that happened there was when I was praying that night just on my knees back at a hotel and thanking God that I didn't miss that moment. I mean, I think these moments come to us and we just gotta be careful that we don't just blow by them, but let the Holy Spirit prompt us. And I felt like the Lord said you know, it would have taken that guy years to have saved up the money from $9 a month to be able to buy those shoes for his family. And I felt like the Lord said I'm gonna send some people to you who are gonna help you in the place of ministry to get where. It would take you a few years for you to get there, and I don't know the exact timeframe.
Speaker 2:After that, but Kevin and Louise Palau contacted me and they said hey, we know you're doing an event in Washington DC. Could you use any help? And I was like, oh yeah, I could use help. They sent me you know, louise's youngest son, andrew, and sent him to DC to just come alongside help me. We became incredible friends. You know, today Andrew is one of the great evangelists in the world. So you just never know what's gonna come out just of a moment of God's prompting in your life.
Speaker 1:I like to think of it. As you know, God can answer people's prayers however he wants to, but if he nudges me, I don't want to miss it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:I want to be a part of that story, so I made notes of your book because I didn't want to miss so many things. You talked about a concept that again another one my husband and I discussed on our hike the idea of preserving the catch, never giving up on people even when it's messy and painful. You can do a better job explaining that than I can.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I'm talking at that point about legacy. You know, the thing about the book is in the most valuable catch. It's interesting because I just preached this at our church yesterday. But in Matthew 4, when Jesus comes to the Sea of Galilee and he speaks to what would become his disciples some of his disciples he says come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And what the Lord was just basically saying is I want you to come out of your background, I want you to come out of your area of making a living. I've got something bigger for you than just making a living, and the most valuable catch is for us to, you know, be kingdom heart, kingdom mind, and first walk with God, but then allow that to flow into other people's lives. And all the way through the book I'm talking about how God speaks to us and how he builds our confidence that we hear from him. And one chapter is about untying and heading to deeper water.
Speaker 2:And by the time I get to what you're talking about, I'm talking about legacy. And I'm talking about how, even when we were in Alaska, we had to take care of the fish. If we didn't take care of them very carefully, everything we worked for would be lost, and I'm talking about how. Legacy is not what we accumulate. Legacy is not what we spend or use for our own comfort. Legacy is even as my friend Mark Batterson would say is what we're investing in other people. It's that, and so I tell the story in the book about a very messy thing when we were going to take the fish from Alaska all the way to Seattle and we had to pull, you know, thousands of pounds out of the fish hole and I actually got on my, you know, just laid out, with all my rain gear and everything, and my friend was pushing me by my boots, you know, deep into the fish hole and they were sending me ice and I had to re-ice the whole boat so that the boat could make the trip all the way to Seattle and preserve the fish. It was messy, slimy it was. It was one of the most horrible, you know, jobs you would want to do.
Speaker 2:And what I'm saying is, if we have a son or a daughter who aren't in the place that we would want to see them, if we have friendships that have frayed, if we've got you know things in our lives that aren't what they should be. We have to realize that we can't give up on it, that you know God calls us to sow and to pray and to believe and keep leaning in and, just you know, understanding that as we work with him, we walk with him. He's got dreams and plans that we are yet to see unfold and that whole aspect of God being able to do things. He's at work in ways we can't see, but we've got to, you know, be in that place of sowing our lives, that he has something to work with.
Speaker 1:I loved that and the whole idea of legacy. This is what you said. It's not about what we accomplish Now. First of all, your explanation of legacy turned my thinking 180 degrees.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:So it's not about what we accomplish. It's about what we sacrifice for someone else's success the chain of mentoring, coaching, the fruit we grow on other people's trees. It's measured by every blessing we bestow. And you have a quote Leonard Sweet. I don't know him, but what you do is your history. So many times you think what we do is our legacy. No, what we do is our history. What you set in motion is your legacy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great quote. He's a great thinker, great theologian and some of that other stuff was even Mark Batterson talking about planting under the people's trees, and just beautiful stuff of what legacy really means.
Speaker 1:And also I'm 60 years old, so now I'm kind of looking at taking more of a role in coaching and mentoring. That's where we can leverage our experience Right. It's not just what we do now, it's what we can help 20 other people do.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right and what we have. Everybody has a journey and every life has stages and we need to be asking God to lead and guide us in every stage of where we are in our life and to be a steward of that influence we have. I'm basically the same age bracket you are. We have a different level today of opportunity, a different level of experience and understanding and it's kind of like the real seasoned pastors. There's all kinds of things that when we were young we'd think, oh my gosh, the wheels are falling off. And yet you'd watch one of those seasoned leaders and like nope, we're just going through this, we're going to be okay, and I think we've got so much to offer at whatever stage of life we're in. But I think it's really important to see that we can sew into other people, we can help them and sometimes what we may think is a small thing will be a huge thing in the outcome of their life and their ministry.
Speaker 1:That's right, and we just have to have faith in that because, as I always say, on this side of heaven we may not see it, but hopefully we can. Well, you also talked about just the very basics early on in the book that everyone could benefit from hearing this. You had some really good advice for how, as you said, at every stage of your life, we can identify God's purpose for our life. I mean, that's a big one, but isn't that what everyone wants? We all want fulfillment. We all want to feel like what we're doing matters. That makes a difference, and if we're Christians, we want to be doing that for God. You said the business of the church is spreading the amazing love of God to everyone, near and far.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right so okay, so who am I? Maybe a, you're retired mom. How can I do that? So what is just your practical advice for where people can start with that exploration?
Speaker 2:I think the most important part of it is to realize that you have a role and it can start small, but faithfulness is what opens the doors in front of you. The Bible will talk about your gift, makes room for you. And one of the things that I wove all the way through the book is one of my favorite biblical stories and it's the story we're introduced in Acts, chapter four, to a man named Joseph. It just says he's a Levite and here's the early church just taking off and there's all kinds of needs. And the Holy Spirit prompts his heart and says hey, you know what, joseph, you've got a piece of land. You could sell that piece of land. And so he took it and he sold that piece of land and he had no idea that that was going to be a catalyst for the rest of his life. The Bible says that the apostles he brought such encouragement. He just sold a piece of land, he just did what he had the ability to do and he took the funds and basically laid it at the feet of the apostles. But the Bible says that he brought such encouragement to the leaders and the early church that they changed his name. They changed his name to Barnabas, which means son of encouragement.
Speaker 2:And so you know, it's these little things of just saying I want to be engaged, I want to be involved, and you know you're talking about a mom or even a grandmother, whoever it is. Wherever you are in your life, there is a place of fulfillment, there's a place of the kingdom just waiting for your faithfulness. And as you step into it, you know, a lot of times we say God, you know, if you'll just show me, you know, show me. We want to see a movie picture, we want to see the full thing and full color. And then it's like if I could see that, I would, I would follow you. And God's just like it works. Opposite of that, you follow me. Isn't that what Jesus said? He said follow me. And they started. You know, people came and Jesus would always say come and see, come and see, get involved, come and see. And that's the story of Barnabas. I love this because Barnabas becomes what so many people could be and should be today. That's the unsung hero. You know, we hear about Jesus. Obviously he's the greatest of all of our faith, and then we hear about, like the apostle Paul, and we think about Paul and all the significance, writing almost half of the Bible and all the things that Paul did.
Speaker 2:I don't think we'd be talking about Paul if it wasn't for Barnabas, because Barnabas came in at the crucial moments of Paul's life. I encourage everybody to read this. You know, when Paul was trying to even come in after Jesus revealed himself at the Damascus Road, and later Paul was trying to come to Jerusalem and even get introduced to the apostles. Here are the men of faith and power right, and none of them believe that Paul. You know, back in that moment, saul, that Saul was really authentic, and you know who it was that went across the street and risked his life. It was Barnabas, and so Barnabas risked his life to bring him in. I'm just saying this. There are relationships, there are opportunities that will change someone else's life. That could be as simple as walking across the street and just giving somebody the benefit of the doubt when no one else has that grace for them, and so there's a great story all the way through of Paul and Barnabas.
Speaker 1:I love that story you do such a great job of explaining in the book and you know I don't tell enough people this, but this podcast is called Pivotal People because when I sat down to reflect on my life journey over the past 20 years and really put the pieces together, I discovered or perhaps I just observed for the first time closely that there were some people. Had they not been involved in my journey, it wouldn't have turned out the way it did. And I called them Pivotal People and I made a list of them and I started. You know finding them on LinkedIn, some people I hadn't talked to for 20 years, some I had never talked to in my life 22 years and I reached out to them. And now I encourage people to do that because, first of all, not one of them made me feel like I was being weird by reaching out to them. Every single one of them appreciated it. It taught me how important it is to be an encourager, to be the unsung hero.
Speaker 1:And you know, many of them said I had no idea that I had that impact and so, wow, it doesn't cost anything to give people the gift of encouragement and it doesn't cost anything to go back to those people and say, did you know you were such an encourager. One of the women I met and had lunch with her and she looked at me and she said it is overwhelming to realize this. Don't you want to overwhelm people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what is so awesome about that. And the other part about the story of Paul and Barnabas is that even when John Mark failed and they were going to go on the second missionary journey and Paul was the one initiating that, he's saying to Barnabas let's go and visit all those churches and let's go see what God has. And Barnabas says, yeah, let's get John Mark and Paul's like no way. And this is a really amazing moment to me in the Bible, because here is Barnabas, the guy that gave Paul the benefit of the doubt when no one else would. Now the shoe's on the other foot and it's kind of stunning that the Apostle Paul could not muster the same grace towards John Mark as what Barnabas had already given him.
Speaker 2:And in that pivotal moment, barnabas chose to stay with his character. He chose to stay with who he was as an encourager. And I always say this I think one of the most key moments in the Apostle Paul's life was when Barnabas walked away and held to his conviction of not letting go of John Mark, giving John Mark grace, benefit of the doubt and a future opportunity. I'm speculating here, but I think that when Barnabas walked away and Paul saw the back of his head. It began a moment where the Holy Spirit probably prompted him, because from that moment on, what do we see about Paul? He becomes a mentor of young leaders Timothy Titus, you know, I mean all these people and that's what his legacy is. His legacy is mentoring young leaders and handing them the baton of the future church.
Speaker 1:Wow, and that's why we need good pastors to figure this stuff out and explain it to us. And you also said that what might have looked like a negative Barnabas and Paul separating actually was a positive, in that now they had two ministry teams and they reached twice as many people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think God spoke to both of them through the process and I think that's what's so great, just like your story of people who spoke into your life and influenced. You didn't even know that they left such a mark on you and yet you've gone out and you have blessed and done such amazing things in your heart, in your life, and it's amazing what all God can do.
Speaker 1:It is amazing what God can do and I think that at my age I do know people, particularly women, who say you know I'm done. What more could be done? I went two years ago. I went to a workshop. You probably know Bob Goff. I just went to one of his workshops. It was a speaker's workshop, so I pretended I wanted to be a speaker. Honestly, I just wanted to meet Bob Goff. And when he asked what I did, and oh, I'm retired. And he was so funny, he's like we don't do retired, we don't do retired. What's next? Yeah, so I think we might think we're retired. But again to your book. We actually can have a really important role by being encouragers. We don't have to be the young person with all the energy. Just find young people with energy and just encourage them to death.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, Just the whole place of. In the middle of the book there's a chapter about the crew and the fact is that every single one of us have a part on God's crew and it doesn't end because we hit a certain age or that we're too young. We all have a role. We all have a part in what God is desiring to do. It's like a big mosaic or a jigsaw puzzle and if we're not engaged, if we're not in, that piece is missing.
Speaker 2:But when each one of us just yield ourself to the leading and the guiding of the Lord, he will take us right where we are and it will be like a Joseph If we'll just do what he's given us to do and follow what he tells us to do. Maybe it's just speaking, a word of encouragement. I could tell you about people in my life who became some of my best friends and it only started because of a word of encouragement, Sometimes just a compliment hey, you did well on that. And people respond to affirmation and people who notice what you're working on and what you're doing and where you're living your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you said in your book I love that you said and be very specific, be very specific, notice exactly what they did, because then it's authentic, you're paying attention, it's sincere, it doesn't feel like empty flattery and all of us all of us can remember just a few words that someone who was important on our life said to us.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And we hang on to that. Well, I could talk to you all day. I'll tell you what I wish. I lived in Seattle. I'd be going to your church every Sunday.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:So where can we find you? First of all, your book is selling now.
Speaker 2:Yes, my book, the Most Valuable, catch the place. It's on all the platforms, but I really would like to steer people to my own website, themostvalablecatchcom, and you can get you know hardback book there, but we also have all kinds of other things that are not on Amazon. We have nine master classes. These are like moments where I'm teaching on different parts of the book and the concepts. So this book is designed to be a tool for any individual, but if you're a part of a small group, this is really an incredible you can tell from our conversation. This book just stimulates conversation and insights to the big things that every one of our lives are built upon. And then there's even this thread of this relational piece that so many people have talked to me about with. You know the relationship between my dad and I that is missing in so many people's lives, and so there's stuff in here all the way through at so many different levels. But anyhow, all I'm saying is there's a study guide that comes along with it. You can get if you go to TheMostValuebleCatchcom. There are master classes.
Speaker 2:I also did an audio book. Read it myself, so you can get that. But I really want to make it a tool for people to really help them and to be used by that. If you want to go and get the book, you can get it on any platform Amazon, barnes, noble, any of those but I want to encourage you to come to our website and take advantage of even some discounts and got an incredible price on a bundle. If you want to get the master classes and stuff you get.
Speaker 1:This would be really great for a small group Bible study. For sure this would be for both, as I said, both men and women, in all ages.
Speaker 2:So thank you.
Speaker 1:Great. I just want to put the website and the show notes TheMostValuebleCatchcom. I just want to thank you so much for sharing your insight with us live. It's going to help a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and thank you so much for thinking of me and having me and just having a heart for the book as well. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate it and I'm going to pay attention to how it's doing and we'll have you on when your next book comes out.
Speaker 2:All right, all right, stephanie, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
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