Leading 25K Business Leaders to Christ in One Year (w/ Shawn Marcell)
On this episode, we’re joined by Shawn Marcell.
Shawn Marcell is President at LIFE SURGE, a movement that merges biblical values with bold business principles, helping individuals grow their influence, income, and Kingdom impact. They offer one-day, live financial and motivational events that target Christian audiences by combining biblical teachings with practical wealth-building strategies. Past events have featured figures like Tim Tebow, Phil Robertson, and various Christian influencers and business leaders.
Christian Business Leader is the podcast for marketplace Christians seeking to explore and apply God’s will for business for the purpose of cultivating Christ-Centered Companies.
Full Episode Transcript
Heads up: This transcript was created with AI, so you might notice a few typos or small mistakes. We recommend listening to the episode for the best experience!
SPEAKER_01 0:02
Welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast, where Christ following business leaders explore God’s will and ways for business. This show is a ministry of the Center for Christianity and Business at Houston Christian University and features conversations with today’s Christ-centered business leaders who are representing Christ faithfully in the business world. I’m your host, Darren Sheer, and if you want to make your work for leadership and company culture more Christ-centered, you’ve come to the right place. On this episode, we’re joined by John Marcel. John is president at Life Surge, a movement that merges biblical values with bold business principles, helping individuals grow their influence, income, and kingdom impact. They offer one-day live financial and motivational events that target Christian audiences by combining biblical teachings with practical wealth-building strategies. Past events have featured figures like Tim Tebow, Phil Robertson, and various other Christian influencers and business leaders. Sean, welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast.SPEAKER_00 1:08
There’s such a pleasure to be with you today.SPEAKER_01 1:10
Man, you guys are you guys are all over the place, man. You’re you got these one-day events happening across the country. Uh, tell us what’s been going on.SPEAKER_00 1:20
It’s been amazing. You know, uh, I think I was first introduced to you a couple of years ago, and so much has taken place. We actually launched LifeSurge in the height of COVID. So imagine, not the best business strategy, Darren, if you’re trying to launch a live event business when the world’s shutting down, but you know, God uh could see what we couldn’t see, and when everybody else was kind of running out, we were running in. Um and we started, and it took us several, you know, several months to get off the ground just to get a venue that would host us. And uh and now we’re we’re doing over 30 of them in major markets around the country. Uh, I want to say last year we had over 175,000 people live in person at a live surge event. Uh, and it’s just amazing. It’s amazing to see what God has done as he’s really awakened, I believe, something in the heart of believers that recognize that God has truly called to the marketplace. And uh and we’re seeing a revival uh in this space. And uh love, and I’ll share more about that with you maybe as we go, but it’s been pr it’s been unbelievable what God has done through LifeSurge and our education platforms.SPEAKER_01 2:27
Yes. Well, we’re gonna come back to Life Surge in just a minute, but first want to hear a bit of your origin story, kind of your faith and work origin story. When did you first realize God wants to be involved in your work and business?SPEAKER_00 2:39
When I was challenged by some of the students, I was leading in a Bible college. You know, I when I was leading a Bible school in a local church, a large church in Lafayette, Louisiana, and this is probably 20, maybe 18 and 19 years actually into my full-time vocational uh career. And I was challenging our students at your number one place to reach the losses in your workplace. Now, now they were students full-time, but they would do part-time jobs, and I was trying to get them to focus and look at look more just like a sidewalk Sunday school or serving in the church. Your number one place is to be out there in the marketplace, whether that’s barista, baggy groceries, uh delivering DoorDash, whatever it is, God’s called you, and that’s your number one place. And one of them made a statement through the course of that talk. And he said, Well, it’s easy for you to say, Pastor Sean. You’re you live in a bubble. I mean, it’s easy for you. And I realized right then, it’s like you know, sometimes when something pierces your heart and you realize there’s an element of truth there. And I realized I had never experienced it outside the context of the church. And and I just assumed it would be, you know, more powerful, easier for them. And so I made a decision right then to go get my real estate license. Not because I wanted to be a realtor, but because I wanted to do something outside the church walls. And I did that. I got my license and I decided to go with a large uh brokerage that was in town where I knew there would be a lot of people that I could interact with. And so we made a decision. I made a commitment to them. I’ll get my license and I’ll go and do the thing I’m asking you to do. If you commit to do it, we’ll come back weekly and we’ll talk about what God is doing in our places of influence. And that’s exactly what we did. And uh it was a big, it was a big learning curve. I didn’t realize it was gonna be a lot tougher to really figure out how do I truly make Kingdom impact in the marketplace? How do I really live out my faith? How do I connect my business practices with my faith in such a way that it actually moves, not just, you know, modeling integrity, we should do that anyway. But how do I intentionally reach the lost in the marketplace? And uh, and it was a journey and it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, but God showed me some things. I had no idea that that would be the catalyst to God calling me into the marketplace full time, but it was the beginning of that journey. And one other thing happened there, and I went to look at our boards now because we took pictures of all of our graduating classes, and now we have like three or four hundred people that had come to a school specifically to be trained for ministry. And when I looked at the board to see who was in full-time vocational ministry versus the marketplace, about 70% of them landed in the marketplace. But the whole time we were in the school, we’re talking about living the dream and doing God’s work. And then I began to ask myself, for those that didn’t go into full-time vocational ministry, did it go from living a dream to living a nightmare, that somehow they feel like God overlooked them or they weren’t called? And I really begin to wrestle with this idea of calling versus assignment. And I realize that all of us have a common call. We are to preach the gospel to the lost, we’re to love our neighbor as ourselves, we are to go and make an impact for the glory and kingdom of God. But the assignment looks different for different people. And that began my journey into the marketplace.SPEAKER_01 5:53
Yeah. And so, how much longer did you continue pastoring after that awkward moment?SPEAKER_00 5:59
For about another year. So, what happened was I I it just began, it was just nights and weekends. I would just kind of show houses or a residential realtor. And then it began to just take off. I mean, I was making great money on the side, it helped me pay for my daughter’s wedding. The my oldest child was getting married and for expenses that because you know, in ministry, you’re on a very tight, limited budget. So now I had some resources and I decided I didn’t really love showing houses, even though I enjoyed real estate. So I started learning about business brokering, and I started doing some main, you know, Main Street type business brokering sales for people who either want to buy a business or sell a business. Um, and and that kind of came naturally and it just seemed organic. And I just began my vision for the marketplace began to grow. My looking at how do I impact culture within organizations? How do I, how do I help people that are showing up every day on a nine to five, um, just trying to make it through the week, really realize that that truly is their mission field, that our work truly is worship and we’re ministers right where we are. Um, and so it just began to develop. And it was about a year into that that I began to feel a shift in my spirit. I couldn’t understand because I love, by the way, I loved every day of vocational ministry. I it was the greatest season of my life. A lot of people were shocked that I would actually step outside of vocational because they were like they assumed something must have gone wrong. There must have been some fall fall that happened. But no, it was just God changed that assignment and gave me a passion for it. Now I didn’t know the divine setup that was coming and how God was going to use that vocational season and that desire for vocation and for marketplace ministry, but that would show itself later. Yeah, how much later? Well, so I met a guy serving on a nonprofit board who was a business guy. And so we’re serving um that that was connected to the types of schools that we that I was leading at the church. And we needed a couple business guys because we’re all pastors. And so we’re like, let’s bring in a couple really high-level business people, entrepreneurs. And Joe Johnson was one of the individuals, and we just begin to connect. I had always known that there was something different in me as it related to that marketplace desire. I mean, I’d get in trouble in staff meetings at the church because we’d talk about a problem and I want to really analyze it and break it down. And, you know, I would lean more towards that type of uh um uh leaning, but getting to know him and hearing his passion for the marketplace and people and kingdom impact. So this is unique. I’ve only heard this type of thought process through ministers and pastors and uh clergy, and but yet he had a very distinct view of what could be done in the marketplace if you were truly leaning into it for kingdom purposes. And we just developed a relationship. And I would pick his brain, I would listen to him negotiate deals and have conversations about startups and business and business adventures. And it was just fascinating to hear the rawness and the realness and the unapologetic nature of just solving problems and at the same time contextualize it in a biblical foundation. There’s this honor God, there’s this does this align to God’s word. And it just began to it set a hook in me. And he was running a real estate company at the time, and I had a little background now in real estate, selling houses. This was commercial. I had no experience in commercial. And so I just approached him and said, I feel like God is shifting something. What do you think about me joining you over the company? And it was entry level. I was in a cubicle, had no, no, no authority. I was just, and he said, he told me, He warned me, he said, You’ll probably starve to death. This commission only. But if you really feel this is the Lord, pray about it. I don’t want to pull you out of something that God’s called you to. And we prayed about it, felt let to go, and I just started. And honestly, it was tough. Um, but I knew that I knew God had shifted something. We kind of prepped ourselves and put a little money aside to kind of carry ourselves a little ways. Long story short, I ended up becoming the CEO of that company. Bring it to I brought it to the Inc. 500 two years consecutive. And that became the catalyst for the next business that we started, which we alluded to earlier, was Life Search. But at that time, it was just a concept of really inspiring the body of Christ to recognize that calling, that giftings, but the gift things they have in their life, and then use them to truly make kingdom impact and create resource uh for the glory of God. And that all started with a student challenging me to do the thing that I was preaching to them to do. That I had to go in a learning process that connected me to this guy, Jove, taught me a deeper level of business and understanding, and certainly getting into the executive level leadership of that company, it began to just really uh form what would become this last season that I’ve been in for the last five years.SPEAKER_01 10:40
Yeah. So, what did that first event look like? I mean, did you have the the big names that you have now? Yeah. How did you guys get that operating?SPEAKER_00 10:48
Yeah, it was horrible, man. It was bad. You know, we had some big names. So, you know, people like Tim Tebow and Nick Voyczyc and others, they, you know, they didn’t have any, they had nowhere to speak. I mean, everything was shut down. And so it was really a God thing because we could now access and people would take our call that would have never taken our call as a startup new new event business. Um, but I think um they they appreciated what we were doing, they saw the vision of what we were trying to do, then spotted the body of Christ to leverage their platforms for for Kingdom Impact. And but but more than that, I think it was also there was no one doing live events. So we we had to delay the first event like five times because it was in Tampa. Tampa was Florida was a little bit more open, they weren’t as strict on social distancing and mask at that time, and we knew that the evangelical community was gonna come and wear a mask, so we were waiting for that season to kind of be, you know, um maybe maybe loosened. And so we had to delay four or five times um for the event, but everybody was patient because it wasn’t conflicting with anybody else’s events. There were no events, and when we finally did it and thought, wow, this is gonna be amazing, hardly nobody showed up. And so when you say hardly, how many people were we talking about? I want to say they might have been, there might have been a thousand, fifteen hundred people where we were hoping for 5,000, 6,000 people. You know, I remember the second event was just as bad. And we had over six, we said, well, people aren’t buying tickets, and we’ll give away free tickets. We had 16,000 tickets claimed, and we had 2,200 people, I think, show up for the event. We had 5,000 chairs set up, and I think, you know, a couple thousand people showed. But you know what? It was powerful. I remember Matthew West was leading worship, and um, and we and you know, Nick Voyagers got out there and he preached like he was preaching to 100,000 people. And we just we just tried to do the thing God called us to do, and we were losing money. Um obviously it was very expensive to put these events on. Um, but yet we just felt like that was what God called us to do. It wasn’t until a few events later we were in uh what I recall in Orlando. Uh we were in Orlando and Priscilla Shire was speaking for us. And um, and it was just such, I just remember the presence of God was so strong. We had a few thousand people there. We went to a smaller venue because we figured we don’t need the 5,000 seaters right now, and um, and it was just such a powerful atmosphere where people were coming alive and that sense of calling for the marketplace, that sense of purpose and destiny. And it was just there was something special in that room. And I know it was the presence of the Lord, but um, we saw, I think, about 300 people make a decision for Christ at that event. And we we did not position ourselves to be an evangelistic uh movement. It was, we figured, well, we’re gonna have Christians gathering and we’re gonna talk about inspiring them to go use their gifts for the for the Lord. And then when we gave the altar call, hundreds responded. Well, we made a decision right then and there. We’ll never do an event without giving people an opportunity to respond to Christ. Uh, I had I have the privilege of preaching the gospel at our events. One of the benefits of coming out of full-time vocational ministry, I guess, they said, Sean, you do it. Uh, last year, just to give you an example, last year, over 25,541 people made a decision for Christ at the light surge events in 2025. Say that number again. And right now we’re on physics to hit about 30,000 this year. Yes. Wow. Yeah. And at a Christian marketed event, because number one, I think people are bringing unsafe friends. I think people are interested in the concept the construct of what we’re doing and the concepts around faith and money and resources and making an impact and purpose behind your work. So it’s drawing people in that are even on the peripherals of Christianity, even though we’re clearly going to be faith-based and faith-leaning and very outspoken about it. And it’s just it’s awakening something. And one of the things I thought, you know, we took, we talk so much about how God has created works for us to do before the foundations of the world’s creation, right? He has works for us to do. But how can you actually ever live in the fullness of what you were created to be if you don’t know the creator? Right. And as we’re going through that day, we share that, we talk about that. And I think people go, listen, I want to be alive in Christ. I want to be everything He called me and created me and designed me to be. How what does it matter if I gain the whole world but I lose my soul? So what if everybody in town gives me all the accolades and pats me on the back, but I have I have no peace in my life, my marriage is falling apart, my relationship with my kids is struggling. I need Jesus, and that’s where everything starts. And so it’s been a powerful thing to watch what God has done at the at our events. You know, the the one day is inspirational, for sure, powerfully inspirational. But we also believe that the church has oftentimes been over-inspired and under equipped. And so we wanted to bring something that really not only inspired, gave vision. And if look, if that’s all it does, and it it ignites a vision and a purpose, maybe re-ignites something, praise God. But if you want to take next steps and you want to be part of a community that’s learning how to create wealth, how to steward wealth, how to make kingdom impact, we’ve provided that opportunity as well. And many have decided to join us on that journey.SPEAKER_01 16:00
Yeah. Wow. 30,000 people. So what do you do with those people at the end of the event? Kind of where how do you how do you kind of set them up?SPEAKER_00 16:12
Yeah, yeah. So immediately this is what’s great. Immediately upon making that decision, uh, they they register for a four-week next step program. So that that next Tuesday, this happens on Saturday, on Tuesday night at seven o’clock. We have people joining us online from that market where we’re talking about what does it mean to study God’s Word. We actually issue a Bible study challenge. Hey, this week we’re gonna all read this. Next week we’re gonna come back and we’re gonna talk about what God showed us in His Word. Then next week we’ll talk about prayer and we issue a prayer challenge. And then next week we’re gonna come and then we’ll go, we’ll go through that cycle. And one of the last ones we do is uh find a healthy church community. And so obviously, we help vet provide different context for them. Look, this week, your assignment is go to church with your family and then drop a picture in this group chat so we can see you celebrating in a local expression of faith. And if you don’t like the first one, go to another one. Connect with somebody on here who’s who’s connected at a great church. And so our role is to be a connector. We’re not trying to pastor, we’re not a church. We’re a for-profit business. We’re not a nonprofit. We have never collected one dime in donations from anyone. We cultivate, we create, we provide service, and people pay us for those services. But we also want to be a part of stewarding the body of Christ and this decision people are making. And so we call it faith search. It’s you make a decision for Christ, what’s next? And our goal is that hopefully these people who make these decisions will find a healthy church that they can plug into.SPEAKER_01 17:43
Yeah. So I’m guessing as as uh analytical as you guys are, like uh what percentage of those 30,000 will complete the four-week course and actually get plugged into a church.SPEAKER_00 17:57
Yeah, well, it it varies. You know, like in any, like in any church, you know, what 20% actually tithe or less. That would be a high percentage. Um churches, uh 10, 15 actually serve, do 90, you know, do most of the bulk of the work for the church. What we’re seeing is about 40% adoption rate on people saying, Yes, I’ll attend. Um, I believe that many of them, and we get the responses, they have a lot.SPEAKER_01 18:20
That’s more than I expected.SPEAKER_00 18:22
Well, that’s initially the come on the first call. And but generally speaking, a lot of the people I think that are there that are making the decisions had some affiliation or connection to a church. Yeah. And they’ve been gone or away for a long time. So a lot of them, they’ve just been away from the Lord. I’ll tell you what’s been remarkable. When we go to the more progressive areas like Seattle, San Francisco, um, we see the most result, most response, as much as 40% of the crowd respond to Christ. Wow. Now that’s that’s insane. So as a former pastor, you know, it makes me think, well, how is that even possible that 40% don’t know if they died today, they would go to heaven? Because that’s I make sure and frame it that way. I want them to, I want to wrestle. Do I know that I know I know Jesus? Have I, if I stood before the Lord today, would I do I even know if I’m right with God? Many of these people are connected to a church, going somewhere or have some affiliation, but they’re not even sure where they stand with the Lord. And so that’s a discipleship issue, if you ask me. We’ve got, you know, there’s something missing, there’s some dots not connected about making a decision, truly repenting, turning my life over to Jesus, and then trusting in him as my savior. And so that’s why we thought the faith surge was so important, because we didn’t want to be a we’re not a surrogate church. We simply wanted to make sure that they had some avenue to get plugged in. And what I also realized is at the end of the day, uh, no one’s responsible. Like for my kids, I raise my kids. I’m ultimately not responsible for what my kids choose to do, but I am responsible for what I give them the opportunity to do. And so, us as leaders, we have to make sure that we are at least giving opportunity for people to grow and take those next steps. And so that’s what Faith Surge became. Because for for the first couple of years, honestly, we didn’t do anything. We we let them, we would we would provide them a pathway to call. If you need help, you need prayer, do you need a Bible? And we did have a lot of engagement, but we didn’t have a mechanism by which they could go step by step and actually get plugged into a healthy community, and that’s where that was introduced over the last several months.SPEAKER_01 20:27
Gotcha. Is there any way? So I think it was maybe my last podcast guest that told me that we spend something like 88,000 hours at work during our lifetime. Um, not nearly as many at church. Uh so discipleship, if it’s gonna happen, is gonna have to happen in the market, in the workplace, where we spend virtually all of our time. Uh, so it’s awesome that people have a place to go on Sunday. Hopefully, they get into a group of some sort during the week, um, you know, have coffee with somebody during the week, but the the discipleship and the context for living out the Christian faith is going to be in their everyday life. So is there any way in which you’ve been able to kind of uh kind of house the deployment of the faith surge component within the actual companies where these people work?SPEAKER_00 21:26
So we we haven’t taken faith surge properly, which is just a name, a naming convention for our next steps. But what we have done is you know, we have an entire uh surge community because of all those people that come through, we have a lot of them ultimately become our students. Now, those we walk with a lot closer. So these are people who actually pay to come through our education. And I mentioned earlier there’s about 16,000 of them right now are part of that ecosystem. For them, we have regular, we actually have Bible studies and all around kingdom uh. Kingdom deployment within the marketplace and how to live your faith in the marketplace, how to maybe even do Bible studies or how to do different things within your workplace context. We call that Kingdom Surge, and it’s a weekly call that we do. The Benham brothers are very involved in that. They’re true disciplers to the marketplace. And so we have integrated that at a heavy level within our Surge You, we call our Surge U community. Well, how we’re discipling our people. Like to your point, 90, what, 99% of the people that are involved in church are in the marketplace. They’re not in vocational ministry. So the real work, the real discipleship should be happening outside in those contexts. But the church, I think, oftentimes, and I know I didn’t, I didn’t really understand how to equip effectively entrepreneurs, business leaders to truly live out their faith in that context. I literally had to go get my real estate license to go practice and figure it out and fail and then try something different before I can kind of understand where those opportunities existed. And it wasn’t really that hard. Some of it was just being bold and just loving people. And when somebody asked, when you ask somebody how they’re doing and they actually share a problem ministering to them right then, don’t worry about like, how can I pray for you? And can we pray right now? There were some very simple things, but then there’s other very practical things. I do believe that one of the things we’ll be looking at later as we evolve as an organization is small groups and uh call them masterminds within communities to help people truly bring this concept to their churches. Because when you’re at the work marketplace, you’re fishing in a stock pond. Jesus said the the harvest is white unto harvest, right? The the fields are white unto harvest, and that he was just praying for laborers. The truth is if we will just be kingdom-minded, which is one of the things the Ben and Brothers said, they say this, they say, how you see yourself will determine how you behave yourself. So if I’m just a lawyer, well, I just show up, I nargue law, I get a paycheck. Uh, but if I see myself as a kingdom advocate, as someone who brings justice to injustice, and I begin to lean in as a minister in that space, then my awareness of the people I’m doing business with changes. My negotiations change. The way I interact with customers change, how I do life is impacted and influenced. And I’m a minister on mission. I just happens to be in the legal field. And I think it’s so important that believers begin to understand that true mandate and calling. Because when we stand before God, the Great Commission applied to all of us, not just pastors. All of us are called to go and fulfill the Great Commission. And um, and I think that we we we put that in a different category. It’s it’s it’s that whole secular and sacred divide that that has become, I think, um a barrier to seeing God move and revival happen in America today, because it’s the same kind, and by the way, I was the biggest propagator of it, not intentionally, but it’s the whole concept of church and state, that the language itself creates this barrier of distinction. So when I talk to you as a congregant on a Sunday morning preaching, and I’m talking about your secular job and your secular work and your secular this, and somehow the church is sacred, but what you do is secular, well, it frames it that just go survive the secular experience and then come back on Sunday to the sacred and we’ll all get recharged. And that’s a problem. When I understand that there’s nothing secular about anything I do, that as a believer, everything God redeems it all. And if it’s secular, it’s sinful, and we have no part of sinfulness. Everything I do is for the glory of God. And that also it that also impacts the work that I do. It’s a total reframing that if we truly did, it would change even the way we disciple, I think, the people in our church.SPEAKER_01 26:12
Yeah. So when you tell business leaders to go make disciples in their company, what does that look like? And maybe what’s one of the best examples of somebody who’s getting that right?SPEAKER_00 26:24
Well, when I when I talk about go make disciples, I talk about provide opportunity for your faith to even be revealed. Start start there. Do the people that work for you even know that your prior priorities and core values come straight from God’s word? Have you set it clear that listen, we are a Christ-honoring Bible um uh believing uh leadership. That’s who we are. This is my these are my core values, this is what I’m anchored to, and I want to build my life and my business in a way that honors and pleases God, which also means that I honor and I take care of my neighbor, which you, as my employee, falls into that category. I don’t think if you if you ever talk about it, if it’s not, it can be reflected in mission statements, it can be reflected in core values, it can be touched on without without it being forced on anyone. Um, it can you nothing prohibits us from being bold about who we are and not hiding the light. The biggest problem is when you hide your faith and your in your business context, then there’s no hope for the person who’s seeking hope. And so for us in Life Search, we decided we were gonna be very bold and clear. Now we have hired people who they don’t have fellowship with Jesus. We’ve hired Muslims, we’ve hired all kinds of people that are really good at what they do, but they’re gonna experience Jesus in us. And we had Bible studies that were voluntary, we would open in prayer. And listen, you don’t have to participate, but we are going to be praying to open this day. What happened was that people began to give their hearts to Jesus. My executive assistant, uh, one morning at 7:30 in the morning comes into my office and I feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Number one, because I was listening for the Holy Spirit, because I’m thinking kingdom, and how do I lead from a kingdom? He comes in, and I had known that I fit sense the Lord been working on him. We had been having some conversations, and I just asked him directly, hey, are you ready to give your life? Are you at that place yet? And Darren, I kid you not. He falls back in his chair, puts his hand over his heart, and he just begins to weep. He’s like, Yes, I’m ready to make Jesus the Lord in my life. Well, long story short, he was leading our Bible studies the last two years in our in our voluntary Bible study. So it’s just do we as business leaders even create an atmosphere or an opportunity for people to know we love Jesus, that his values and what his word says dictates how we do life and how we treat one another? Um, and do I have avenues for people that if they’re looking for that, um, as the Holy Spirit leads, um, we can answer that call. I think just that baseline is just an important thing. And most business people I I know, they put a lot more energy into their, you know, to their PLs and their revenue strategies and their different and their different KPIs, um, and never even give thought to how am I creating a platform for Jesus to be introduced into my into my workplace dynamic.SPEAKER_01 29:11
Yeah. And even if you don’t get to write the mission statement and the core values, chances are there is something biblical about the core values that your company has, right? And so there is a jump-off point for a great conversation about, oh, well, yeah, integrity is one of our core values. Like, what’s your what’s your source of integrity?SPEAKER_00 29:34
Yeah. Well, that’s exactly right, Darren. You can take any core value because all those core values, this is like most of our laws in America, are based on Judeo Christian value. And so, what is your hope? What does your inspiration come from? Where does your sense of intrinsic value come from? You know, so when, hey, Sean, or you know, Darren, you do such a great job, man. You’re always punctual, you’re always in time, you always seem to be bringing fresh ideas. You know, why are why are you so motivated? Now yeah, I just teed you up for an opportunity to brag on Jesus, to talk about your faith, to talk about honoring him, right? There’s nothing that prohibits us in the marketplace from sharing our testimony and our faith. Um, and it’s it’s generally because of intimidate, we’re timid or we’re concerned about how we’ll be viewed. Um, but if we’re going to make impact, we’ve got to lift Jesus up. Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I draw all people to me. And so we we we hide oftentimes the thing that we say is the most important thing is our faith in Christ, our hope of salvation. Um, but but just being but just being honest about your experience. I don’t know how I could separate, you know. Hey, Sean, I see, man, you do a lot of great stuff with your family and your kids. Hey, why is that important to you? You know, I can share my broken family, I can share my dysfunction. And man, Jesus stepped in, he healed me, he saved me. Now I want to raise kids that love God and love people. And so we’re focused on that, you know. So I there’s always an opportunity to share. You know, hey, what’d you do this weekend? Man, I went to a great church, man. Pastor preached, it was this great word. Like that literally, we have to make a conscious decision not to share our faith if if if we’re not, if you truly are living a life fully alive in Jesus. Yes.SPEAKER_01 31:16
Sean, what has been? I know it would be hard to narrow it down, but your favorite or one of your top favorite talks given at a life surge of uh that’s that’s an easy.SPEAKER_00 31:28
I was uh we were at the Cow’s Palace in San Francisco, and I’m backstage and we’re about to go out and I’m about to have to preach the gospel. Ed Milette, I think, was uh doing his segment, very powerful uh message that Ed does. And I’m following that, and I’m about to walk out on the stage, and somebody who was had been working at that venue for years and years and said, Hey, did you know that Billy Graham preached a message here on this stage at Cal Palace? My legs, my my legs went numb. And I’m telling you, I was like, Oh God, like, why didn’t you just tell me that?SPEAKER_01 32:06
It’s a hard act to follow.SPEAKER_00 32:07
Oh yeah, it was like, but it was just the surrealness of it, like that that in a place that also had rock concerts and they had pictures of people that from every different you know background that had been in that place, but but God’s word had also been preached there. There have been many, many moves of God we’ve seen in California, even though we see a lot of stuff going on today, God has always moved and over over time, and and the just sort of soberness that I have an opportunity to stand in the same venue that Billy Graham did, and who knows what God could do. And we that was when we saw over 1,400 people make a decision, stand to receive Christ. And it was just so sobering to think that here I am in a marketplace context. We’re talking about creating resources and investing in the stock markets and real estate and um kind of work as worship, and that God, it was like a culmination of all those days in ministry. The challenge from that student, Sean, well, what about you, Pastor? Sean, why don’t you go learn how to get the market reach the marketplace? Going through that journey, end up at the, you know, end up in the real estate company, having to learn through very difficult times how to even do commercial real estate, ultimately launching it and funding this in the middle of COVID, you know, and I say fund the owner, the founder, and walking that that very grueling process out. But now to be able to stand in front of several thousand people and preach the gospel and seeing all those worlds culminate into that one moment and lives changed. For me, I I it’s it’s hard to even put into words what that experience was like.SPEAKER_01 33:39
Yeah. And it’s it’s it’s even more special to me to hear that story, knowing that Billy Graham famously said that one of the next great moves of God will happen in the marketplace. And and he prophesied what was what was gonna come happen. Yeah.SPEAKER_00 33:56
And we talk about that, you know. That’s one of the things I think when I begin to see during all these people coming to Jesus, I thought I sort of wondering, like, you know, because I some people said he said revival, or I think he it’s proper words, I think he said move of God. But you know, um to revive means to reawaken, right? To come alive again. It means something was once alive, it died, or it’s lost its way. It’s it’s it’s it’s it’s become dimmed, you know. And I really believe that if the marketplace, which is believers, which is almost all of us outside the few that are serving as a full-time pastor in some kind of capacity, if we came alive to the calling and the missional construct of what it could be, um, that would bring, I think, revival and and a move of God across this nation. Because then now, now there’s purpose and destiny and sense of calling to the thing that we’re out there doing, cultivating, creating, stewarding well. And if God gets the glory, that’s not hokey, that’s not weird, that’s not, you know, that’s not coming to my Sunday morning service. That’s letting me live out the testimony of what Jesus has done in my life in front of me. And that’s powerful. And by the way, bring them to church. I I believe church is God’s plan A, there’s no plan B. I, you know, I’m still all on that, on board with that. But that is not the construct that we saw in the early church. It was not about the temple, it was not about even the house church. It was about people out in the community going, making an impact, and then truly modeling what Jesus had done in their life. And that’s where revival was coming from. It was wherever they were at. He says, as you go, preach the gospel. And I just think that as we go into the marketplace, as we go into that negotiation, as we go into that new business venture, as we go, preach the gospel, share the hope you have in Jesus. And man, I’m telling you, everything Billy Graham saw will be it is coming, I think, to fruit.SPEAKER_01 35:55
It is. Yeah. It is. Amen. Amen. So lifesurge.com is the website. Yes, and and so at the on the back end of the events, kind of what is the opportunity that you invite people to participate in going forward and kind of the membership community? What can people expect from that?SPEAKER_00 36:15
So, our mission, our mission is to inspire, train, and equip people to surge their resources and influence for Kingdom Impact. So we really look at it like this is inspire, train, and then equip. So life surge is a day of inspiration. If you’re just looking to be inspired around other like-minded people, you’re already on mission, you just want greater alignment, maybe you just need you want to have B12, spiritual B12, just to sharpen. Then man, Life Surge is a great experience. But there are gonna be many people that want to actually figure out how to create resources so that they could be more generous, make more impact in that area with resources. And so we we are an education company as well. So serge you, we we do um, we we uh train and teach in the investment market, so in stock trading and things like that. We also teach people how to um invest in real estate among all the different uh verticals. Uh, we also help people start and skill business. And so when the US there’s gonna be, I’d say 80% inspiration, great teaching, great motivation, but there are opportunities that we create that if somebody would like to go and spend more time learning and discovering um that area of real estate investing or stock trading or business development, we provide classes for that. And then if they choose to go further, they can actually join our education. So those opportunities are always given. Why? Because inspiration is great, but inspiration comes and inspiration goes, right? And so what we want to do is give people practical next steps so they can have a community of people that walk with them in order to maybe develop those skills and then put them into action. And so we do provide that as well. And that’s where our surge you community has grown and now over 15,000, 16,000 people are part of that. But that’s that’s a secondary offer that’s optional when they come to a life surge event.SPEAKER_01 38:00
Yeah. Praise God. And praise God for 30,000 people getting saved this year at Life Surge events. So yeah, everybody go check out life surge.com, find out when an event is coming near you. And um, thank you so much, Sean, for spending time with us and helping us grow today.SPEAKER_00 38:17
Well, thank you, Darren, for investing in the marketplace and people and lighting them on fire to go reach their communities. Yes, sir.SPEAKER_01 38:25
Great to reconnect with you, Sean. All right, you too. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Christian Business Leader Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and tune in for the next episode as we continue exploring God’s will and ways for business.
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