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
Navigating Life's Storms Through Faith with Justin Kendrick
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Justin Kendrick, founder of Vox Church and the author of the USA Today bestselling book "How to Quiet a Hurricane: Strategies for Christian Endurance in the Midst of Life’s Storms."
This practical guide to reigniting faith helps all of us who feel stuck in our faith journey find inner strength to navigate life’s challenges.
The storms of life can leave you feeling exhausted and weak. In How to Quiet a Hurricane, pastor Justin Kendrick helps you develop a spiritual resilience that propels you past your weariness and anxiety and into lasting peace. You will discover:
- Why weakness is the starting point for spiritual strength
- How lasting endurance comes from understanding the love of God
- Ways to apply God’s promises to your daily life
- A freeing perspective on what it really means to be secure
- Why faith rooted in Jesus can bring you through any trial
When your heart tells you that God is far away, remember that he is the God who enters in. He is the God who uses suffering to conquer suffering. He is the God who empowers you to move beyond survival and into a life of victory.
Connect with Justin and order the book HERE
https://www.justinkendrick.com/
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Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
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I'd like to thank Justin Kendrick for coming on the Pivotal People podcast. Let me tell you about Justin. He is the author of Bury, your Ordinary and the Sacred Us, and he has just come out with a new book we're going to talk about today, called how to Quiet a Hurricane Strategies for Christian Endurance in the Midst of Life's Storms. Who doesn't need that? That's not all. He is the lead pastor of Vox Church, which he founded in 2011 with a small group of friends on the doorstep of Yale University, and today they have 12 campuses throughout New England, and I love the back of his book says this their dream is to see the least churched region of the US become the most spiritually vibrant place on earth. So, justin, that should keep you busy.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for joining us. It's so good to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Before we started I told Justin you know, I tell everyone, every single podcast guest, I read the whole book Not to be nice, which is impressive.
Speaker 2:That's impressive.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a gift to me. I can't tell you how much I'm learning and I love to read books written by faith leaders. So I didn't know Justin, so I read his book. It is so good, and before this podcast, I went on Amazon and I ordered his book that came out right before this. I went on Amazon and I ordered his book that came out right before this. So I mean it sincerely when I say that he's a great writer. He's a great communicator and a church planter. So, before we get to the book, could you share the story, justin, of starting a church in 2011 that, in only 13 years, has grown to 12 campuses?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been an incredible honor of ours. You know New England is a unique place. It is the least church region in the United States. We have a lot of unfortunate statistics about New England, you know fewer people read the Bible, fewer people go to church than any other place in the US, and it's very post-Christian and this is where I grew up. This is where I tried to get out of for years, you know, in ministry in my 20s, really feeling like hey, anywhere but New England would be great to kind of put down roots. It's funny, though, how God kind of sets you up for what you don't think you're prepared to do, and so my wife and I really, through our late 20s, started to feel this pull to really put our roots down in the Northeast and to plant churches, and we always had a vision of reaching multiple locations at the same time. Back in 2011, multi-site wasn't really taking root in New England. A lot of people were saying you can't do multi-site church in the Northeast, and so you know, through a journey with a really small group of people, it was an incredible ride.
Speaker 2:Our first church service was at a very famous bar called Toad's Place, downtown New Haven, Connecticut, right in the center of Yale's campus. I'll never forget the day my friend walks up to me we're setting up for the service and he says, Justin, the news is here and this is the first service we've ever had. And I said what news? He said all the news. I mean it was USA Today, it was CNN, it was CBN.
Speaker 2:We had probably nine or 10 news outlets that somehow had caught wind of this story of this church, starting right at Yale in a bar on Easter Sunday, and it just took off. And from the first day of our church we realized something special is happening here. You know, I had been in ministry a long time but that moment I knew God was breathing on this church and on this movement. And since then it has been a real story of renewal where thousands of people have met Christ, been baptized, families changed. It's really been the privilege of our lives, my wife and I, to just give ourselves with this team. That's still with us, that team from the beginning to this region, and we hope to do it for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so beautiful and I'm sitting here thinking I mean, first of all, I'm married to a New Englander, so all of my in-laws are from New England.
Speaker 2:So you know we're a little different are from New England.
Speaker 1:So you know we're a little different and I'll tell you what he was raised in church and we live in Atlanta, which is the Bible Belt, and we're involved. I told you before we started, we're involved in Andy Stanley's North Point Ministries and if you're on a spiritual journey, your whole life we're older. Whole life we're older. Your faith progresses as you get older, ideally, but in his case moving to Atlanta and going to a different kind of church and hearing God described in a different way really did change how he felt about his faith dramatically.
Speaker 1:It transformed his faith. He would tell you that. So I'm interested in. You said least churched area Well, I mean, certainly there are lots of churches and his family. What is it when you said renewal? What are people coming from? I mean, is it how they're viewing God? Great question, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that New England in particular is pretty post Christian, post CatholicCatholic, so a lot of people grew up with the Catholic faith, but it was grandma's faith, or even great grandma's faith, and so they attended church two, three times a year.
Speaker 2:That's my story growing up, and we believe in God, we believe in the importance of religion on some level, but there's no application to our lives, and New Englanders, historically, are hardworking, fast-moving, wealthier individuals, and the gospel and the revelation of grace through Jesus, the perfect forgiveness of sins, substitutionary atonement, the divine exchange where Jesus takes my place on the cross and I receive, by his love and his mercy, complete forgiveness of sins, is a stunning idea.
Speaker 2:It's an idea that, especially for New Englanders, has just been unknown. I can't tell you how many times we'll preach the simple gospel, clear, beautiful, glorious gospel, and people are weeping, weeping because they've never really heard that there's a God who loves them, and so for us, just the privilege of actually spreading that good news has been so transformative for the lives of so many. And you know there's this in a good way I'm using this word the deconstructing of, you know, identity based on performance and realizing that God accepts me and then I obey out of love for him, not out of a desire to earn his favor or acceptance. That reversal that happens in the gospel has been like fire across New England these last number of years, and so it's been a privilege to spread the gospel.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. And in your book and we'll get right to that you start out right out of the gate talking about embracing our weaknesses.
Speaker 2:And by the way.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to say it now in case I forget. If you go to Justin's website, he has a six video series, six sessions, which walks you through the book and really with a workbook. So people can use this and it's absolutely free, you don't have to buy it.
Speaker 1:People can use this with small groups or just with your family or just by yourself. I watched a few of the videos. They're short but really powerful messages, so you've consolidated a thought from an entire chapter, and then the speakers and the videos are sharing real life stories, so you get the sense of application from the concept and the one I just watched.
Speaker 1:One of the ones I watched was the whole idea of embracing our weaknesses, so the idea of not having to earn God's favor I'm thinking about. Okay, so this guy started a church on an Ivy League campus. You have people who have been high performers and no one's told them. No one's let them off the hook yet. That's right.
Speaker 2:They need the gospel more than anybody else. I call it. In the book there's a whole section called the weakness paradox, and it really is. It really is a paradox that liberates. And we spend our whole lives pretending we're strong enough. You know, and I think whether it's COVID, whether it's the political crisis of our age, whether it's just the rise of anxiety culture, all of these things have produced this melting pot of people who are realizing more and more and more that I can't handle life, that I don't have the inner framework to handle trials, and that's really what the book is all about.
Speaker 2:But I start with this idea that if you want to be made strong God's way, then you have to first actually come to terms with yourself, come to terms with your weakness. And a lot of times in our faith we say well, I can handle about 80% of life. It's the other 20%, god, that I just need a little assistance on. And we have to kind of blow that up as a myth and show no, actually you can't keep your heart beating, you can't keep your lungs breathing. We operate best as human beings when we operate from a place of utter dependence on God. This is why Jesus started the greatest sermon in history with.
Speaker 2:Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the whole kingdom. And so there is a poverty of spirit and awareness of my own brokenness and you know, I think, a lot of people, we spend our lives trying to ignore that or blame others for that. You know, it's my mom's fault, it's my, my ex's fault, whatever. But what we need to do and it's not that those things aren't true, many times people have hurt us, but what we need to do is actually come to terms with the deep flaw in us. And what I unpack in the book is the more we see our brokenness, the more we can be made lovely through Christ. And so this is really the beginning of a life of spiritual endurance.
Speaker 1:And you talk so much about the transformation. So much about the transformation, how God's love, accepting his love, transforms us. Just elaborate on that, yeah it's so good I have highlighted his book with so many highlights that I can't even read you the highlights.
Speaker 2:So I'm just going to let.
Speaker 1:Justin tell you about his book.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's good. Yeah, there's a prayer that I've read. You know, if you have any type of Bible reading in your life, I'm sure people have read it again and again and again. I know for me I skipped over it for years. It's a little tiny prayer.
Speaker 2:In 2 Thessalonians, chapter 3, paul says May the Lord direct your heart to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. And that little prayer changed my life because, first of all, it tells us that if you really want to be made strong, if you really want to have a life that endures trials and struggles, the love of God is where your heart needs to be. And I love how Alexander McLaren, one theologian he talks about how this is describing like a house, and the outer room of the house is the love of God. And so strength comes to us when we enter that house, when we enter the love of God. That's the first place our heart needs to find the truth, not just that God loves the world or God loves my friend, but that God loves me, that he really loves me. And there's a lot of evidence and I walk through a number of different cases of evidence that God's given us that he really does love you and if I come to believe that myself.
Speaker 2:Now there's an inner room and that's what Paul's praying for. May the Lord direct your heart to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. And so the outer room is God's love. But once I enter that room, I can enter a room within the room, and it is the steadfastness of Jesus that the very strength that Jesus had to endure the cross, can be my strength that I can live in his endurance. May you be strengthened with all power. Paul prays, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy. And so a lot of times we come to God and we say, god, I can't handle this. Well, that's good. That's a good place to start, because that's the weakness paradox right, admitting that we're weak, but then learning to actually enter into his love, believe in his love and then find the strength of Jesus in us for the circumstances we're dealing with in life. There's a real way to do that, and I kind of walk the reader through it in the book.
Speaker 1:You talked about this in your video. You talked about the concept, which is the first time I've heard this and I loved it.
Speaker 2:Head, heart and hand. Yeah, Can you?
Speaker 1:describe that. That's like the framework of the faith journey.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yeah, I think it's funny when you talk about Christian growth and I've been a pastor in ministry now for over 20 years and met with so many different faith leaders over 20 years. And met with so many different faith leaders and, not to overstate it, I've read every book I can find on spiritual formation and growth. It's been the passion of my life. Discipleship how do we grow as Christians? And for me, as I've explored those things and learned from dozens of different voices throughout history, I think that a lot of times we have a simplified view of spiritual maturity. We say, well, you've got to grow in your knowledge of the Bible. Well, that's important for sure, and people do that. And then we find that they know a lot of Bible but they don't love their neighbor, right, and it's like, hey, that's, that's not maturity. Or then you find others that are like, no, it's really just about serving others. Well, that's good, serving others is great. But a lot of times people are serving others but they don't know basic truths about God. And so this idea of spiritual growth really comes down to three components, and it's first our minds be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That's your head, but then it's your heart, those are your affections, the things you desire, and we transform those through spiritual disciplines. You know, richard Foster wrote the book on this. You know the celebration of disciplines. Yeah, there it is, yeah. And then the third is hands, where we actually learn to practice our faith by serving others. And all of those things work together, not through our own effort, but through Christ in us.
Speaker 2:In the book I have a whole chapter about union with God. That it's actually, you know, this is the climactic teaching of Jesus I am the vine, you are the branch. Apart from me, you can do nothing. And so it's not enough to just like, try hard, although Dallas Willard said you know, god's not opposed to effort, he's opposed to earning. And so, yeah, we do need to not try to earn our salvation, but we do need to work it out, and we do that by the power of the Holy Spirit, in union with Jesus, as we develop our minds, serve others with our hands and cultivate a heart that loves God through spiritual discipline. So that's kind of a holistic view of how people grow, and it's really the bedrock of why I wrote the book and the philosophy behind growth in the book to become a person who endures.
Speaker 1:But it starts out with the. You know, Paul, talking about the renewal of my mind.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And it's not the just trying harder to be nice. That's right, we're just going to try harder to be nice Then everyone's going to think I'm nice and they yeah.
Speaker 2:then they're going to and it's so gradual, you know it's like.
Speaker 1:I can tell you that I've seen transformation in my husband. We've been married 33 years. My sister told me that she had seen transformation in me over the past 10 years. All I know is I have much more peace and contentment and joy than I ever had in my life, so good I don't know how it looks on the outside, but the more we embrace this whole idea. Justin, that sounds so simple, but this whole idea that God loves us exactly as we are.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:That's the only thing I want my two adult sons to really know.
Speaker 2:So good.
Speaker 1:Because if you really know that, then it's a domino effect.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:That's so so important. Otherwise it's like we work backwards. Well, what can I do to get God to love me? That woman at church? She's nicer than me. I better do more of what she's doing, and pretty soon we're crazy people.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's so good.
Speaker 1:It sounds so simple, but you have such a beautiful way of describing it, and you also reference a lot of other writers, which I always love to see the bibliographies of good writers, to see who they're reading, although I think it's really hard to read Dallas Willard, so I'll just let you tell me what he says.
Speaker 2:He can. He can be tricky, I agree. Yeah, he can.
Speaker 1:You have some questions for your book and they're also good, but here's one that I really think we can all relate to. In your book, you mentioned the increasing number of both church leaders and members walking away from their faith. What do you believe are the main reasons behind this, and how can people develop the strength to endure and remain steadfast in their faith?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, great question. I think we have an issue in the church today when it comes to gifting versus character. Right, we celebrate gifting, and oftentimes the character isn't there in the background, and so, you know, thank God for the great gift, but that person gets elevated quickly or inappropriately, and they don't have the infrastructure on the inside. And so really, the goal of this book is in response to not just leaders crumbling but Christians crumbling. You know, as a pastor, I've seen more than I would ever, you know, hope to have seen people just walk away from Jesus, walk away from church because someone offended me, or because they didn't do it the way I thought they should do it, or because, you know, god didn't change my circumstances when I prayed and I asked him to. And I relate it to math. You know I was never a huge fan of math in school, but I always did okay.
Speaker 2:But you know the basics of arithmetic. Most of us grasp right One plus one equals two. That's great. But we take that type of thinking and we bring it into the conversation with God and with the way he works, and so we expect well, if God is good, then my marriage will be perfect. If God is good, then my body will be healthy. If God is good, then fill in the blank. One plus one equals two, right. And then life doesn't work that way and we're shattered, and we're seeing this on a mass scale. God, how could a good God let blank? How could a good God let this happen? And so there's this crisis that's going on right now, especially amongst Christians, where we feel like God hasn't held up his end of the bargain. You know where we say God, I thought that if I followed you and I was a nice guy, then my life would be easy, and my life's not easy. And so you didn't do your job.
Speaker 2:And what I try to show in the book is that you know that God's math, his goodness, is a lot less like arithmetic and a lot more like trigonometry or calculus. You know that the equation is far more complex, and we have to be willing to learn about a God who is more complex than we are. We can't ask God to operate at the level of our reason. If we do that, we're actually trading places with him. We're actually expecting God to come down to our level, and that doesn't make him God anymore. Expecting God to come down to our level, and that doesn't make him God anymore. And so we have to embrace a God who is complex enough to do things we don't understand.
Speaker 2:And that's really what the goal of the book is is to help us begin to unpack some of the deeper answers, some of the calculus of the goodness of God, some of the more complex equations. So it's not just one plus one equals two, but it's human choice plus God's sovereign plan plus, you know, his providential hand in history. Divided by the evil in the world, divided by, you know, demonic presence in this world and other people's choices and society's corruption equals, you know. And so this is a much more complicated scenario. But the more we grasp the complicated scenario, the more we can trust the heart of God displayed to us through Jesus, and that really is our anchor that we may not always know why he does things, but we know what the answer is. Not it's not because he doesn't love us and it's not because he doesn't care, because the gospel is proven once and for all that he does, and that really becomes the foundation of our faith in times of trouble.
Speaker 1:By the way, he said that in the book and I highlighted that One of the quotes that in your video that I loved it. When we go back to the title of the book, you know, how to quiet a hurricane. Let's talk about this for a second. You know what are hurricanes to people? We might look around and see that. Let me just pick an issue climate change.
Speaker 1:We might look around and say the political process, or we might look around and say the new building that's being built down the street that we don't like. But then when a real hurricane hits, when a loved one has a serious diagnosis, it's amazing how those other things fall away. I'm not going to worry about the big building. I can't do a darn, you know. I'm not going to worry about these big issues. I can't control. But God, I need a miracle.
Speaker 1:I need something here, and the quote I loved was we need to tell our storm how big our God is, instead of telling God how big our storm is.
Speaker 2:Wow, I wrote that. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like, whoa, is that good? And you go back to the whole idea of the sovereignty of God and we cannot possibly know the whole big picture.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And I love that calculus analogy because calculus is the hardest class I ever took in my whole life and don't ask me to do a problem now, because I would have no idea.
Speaker 1:Someone who might be listening to this might be like you know. I really don't like that church that my parents made me go to, but this guy, he's kind of making some sense here. So let me ask you this question For those who are new to the Christian faith or who are struggling with belief, how can your book serve as a guide or encouragement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, you know, I love in the scriptures we get a very different picture of doubt, right, you know, in our culture we're kind of taught to doubt everything. That's like the narrative we get today. You know doubt the politics of other people, the intentions of religious leaders, the financials behind every corporation, doubt everything, doubt everything. And then in the faith community we're often, it seems, told to doubt nothing. You know, like, hey, how dare you doubt? And so I think for a lot of skeptics or seekers, they feel like they're not sure what to do because they don't know that they trust the whole religious process. You know the church, but they also they don't want to just take it all hook, line and sinker, you know. And so if somebody is listening to this today and they say, well, you know, I'm kind of like half in half out, and they say, well, you know, I'm kind of like half in half out, I don't know if I can trust Jesus, I would encourage you to follow the example of Thomas in the Bible.
Speaker 2:You know, thomas in the scripture is pretty well known and he's well known for doubting, right, like doubting Thomas, you know. And so he isn't there. The resurrection account tells us that he wasn't there the day that Jesus appears to the disciples and he says listen, guys, I don't even think you saw Jesus. I've got to put my hands in his scars and actually see him for myself if I'm ever going to believe. I mean, thomas is pretty hard hearted and I think maybe somebody listening they could relate to that. You know, I really need some evidence before I believe.
Speaker 2:But one thing that Thomas does that a lot of people don't realize is that, rather than isolating and rather than avoiding, thomas stays in community, he lingers, he stays with the disciples day after day, and I think it's eight days later that Jesus appears again and there's Thomas with the disciples and this time Jesus says put your hand in my scar, no longer be disbelieving, but believe.
Speaker 2:And I love that picture because what we learn is, if you find yourself in a position where you don't really trust religion or you don't really know if God is good, I would encourage you, just spend the time and the space around those on the journey and as you ask those questions, as you linger in community, jesus will walk in the room and he'll show you his scars and he'll answer those deeper questions not always with you know, a pure explanation. But with himself and what I've discovered is when we encounter him for ourselves, just like you said, we realized that the questions we were asking, they're not as essential as we thought, because knowing him, experiencing his love personally, is the answer that we were actually looking for in the end.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious, we didn't start with this, but you obviously had your own conversion story. And I bet it's probably pretty relatable for folks who are listening. So could you tell us just a little bit about your story?
Speaker 2:That'd be an honor. So I grew up in what I would call a non-practicing Catholic home in New England. We were kind of twice a year Catholics. We would go to church on, you know, eastern Christmas. Mom and dad were divorced when I was seven. My dad moved out just before I turned seven years old and life in our home was was not easy, you know. We went through a lot of struggles, a lot of challenges. My mom got remarried.
Speaker 2:My childhood, you know, my parents loved me for sure, thankful for that, but it was uh, it was. It was not, you know, a place of peace in in those early days, especially just the fact that there wasn't any active relationship with God that I had. And it wasn't until I was a teenager that my dad started attending a church in downtown New Haven, connecticut, and brought me and I can remember as a teenage kid going to that church and just being like this is ridiculous, I don't, you know, I wasn't into any of it, you know. And then one day Pastor Todd Foster, pastor of a church in downtown New Haven, still a dear friend of mine preached a simple message about the gospel and I can remember that it was like a light turned on in my heart. All my questions were not answered, all my problems were not solved, but I felt the magnetic pull of the Spirit of Jesus to open my life and I remember that day, just opening my life to God and experiencing this encounter with the peace of God, with the presence of God. Now I'd love to say that after that moment, you know, everything was easy.
Speaker 2:No, actually, the next two or three years were really tough for me because I was living in a home where my family did not understand what was happening with me and I didn't really even understand what was happening with me and my friend group through high school was changing, and so those first few years were tumultuous years as a follower of Jesus and I was always feeling condemned and I didn't understand the gospel and I was still battling with that old life. It was that transition moment for me. But I can say this for sure that when I encountered the love of Christ for myself, it was like Paul on that road to Damascus I couldn't go back and I never considered going back because of that encounter with Jesus. And Jesus progressively revealed himself to me more and more and more, and what I discovered is that the gospel is not just spiritually transformative which it is but it's also the most intellectually satisfying, most psychologically stabilizing truth in the world, that, of all the faith journeys that there are, of all the belief systems that there are, the gospel really does provide better answers for life.
Speaker 2:And the more I dug in, the more I saw his love for me and the truth of the gospel. And, yeah, I have fallen more in love with Jesus since then, every day, and that was gosh almost 30 years ago now. Yeah, I'm so grateful, so grateful for God's kindness and his patience with a guy that wasn't even looking for him, and so that's the short version of my story with Jesus. But since then I've seen my family transformed and I'm grateful for that too.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that is so beautiful. So I want to thank you for the privilege of being able to talk to you face to face at this. I say to everyone this podcast is such a gift for me because I get to read books from wise people and then I get to talk to them and I know how busy you are. So thank you so much. I'm going to promote the heck out of this episode. I hope a lot of people hear it. Where can people find you and where can they find this study and learn more about your ministry? Because even if you're not in New England, you can certainly watch his sermons online.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have 13 years of sermons on podcasts and on the website and everything else, and so we try our best to just get resources in people's hands to help them grow. Justinkendrickcom has a ton of free resources on it workbooks, prayer guides, a number of things we use for how to acquire a hurricane. Also, voxchurchorg is another just huge, you know, kind of resource pool of opportunities just to grow, stretch your faith and continue to lean into a relationship with Jesus. So those are probably the two best places on all social media platforms. Just search my name, justin Kendrick or Pastor Justin Kendrick, and you'll find me there. Yeah, thank you. It's a privilege to be on the show today.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much and I wish you great success with book sales.
Speaker 2:Thanks.
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