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Record Live is a conversation about life, spirituality and following Jesus in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Today we have an awesome guest. He is a motivational speaker. A leadership and personal development. He's been a pastor. He's written some books and every time I hear this guy say something, I just have to sit in silence for a few minutes and ponder .
So he has a lot of wisdom to impart and I'm really excited to be having him on so everyone Meet Eddie Hippolite. . That's kinda, that's a kinda introduction. , no. No pressures. Anita. No pressures an . I asked Jared this before, Eddie, what has been the highlight of your day so far?
I think the highlight of my day. My daughter came from college today, and you know, she just drove in, picked up a few things from home and headed out, but she came and said, hello, gave me a hug, said peace, and she was gone. Yeah, it was a good highlight to the day.
Cuz I haven't seen her, for a few days now, you know, so, you know, we're kind of semi empty nesters now that she's at university, . So that was definitely the highlight today.
Well Eddie, you've had a lot of different roles over the years. I follow you on Instagram and recently I heard you say , I help people unstick themselves.
which I great. But can you tell us a bit about what life currently looks like for you? Life looks like, being in the area of ministry, but ministry, Being more to the culture now, in terms of my pastoral, career. I always worked equally as much in the church as I did in the culture.
And I've been fortunate to always have that as a part of, the future of my ministry. the way my ministry manifested itself. But now I am more in the culture than I am in the church. . So I've never seen myself as being outside of ministry. Ministry now is just not pastoring.
So I still work with churches. I still work with ministers, still work in the area of resilience, but now it's working with, outside organizations. Um, I'm in my writing season. I've been in my writing season. A couple of years now. So kind of writing and speaking and, it's, it's a combination of all, of all of those things.
Now it's good you know, when Rona crashed a party, the, the global party like everybody else, we had to just refigure how it is that we do what we do. And so it meant that so much more of my work was online. So over the past two years, I've traveled a Globe online.
But, what it's done, it has opened up, so much good relationships and so much good connections.
Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Now one of your most recent projects just on that is Four Questions. Yeah. , And they're really big questions and, we can talk a little bit about that today. Mm-hmm. , but in, in the start of that, project, you're writing about how, Corona impacted the world and changed.
Many people's, outlook. And it reminds me of, what Zanita said about helping stuck people get unstuck. How have you seen that this recent season, this past few years we've been traveling through, how is it getting people stuck? What do you think has changed for people that's really messing up with their heads and changing what they thought their plan for their lives was
I, I think what Covid did was disrupt our imagining of the world. You know, you go to college, go to uni, get a job, get a career, have a family, have job security, travel, do all of that stuff in a minute. Covid took everything.
literally everything, you know. And then governments shut down countries; governments told you you couldn't come outta your house; governments limited your freedom. There was just so much upheaval and I think what it did was forced everybody, well, not at first, reimagine the world, but actually take a stark look at the world.
You know, these things that we call freedoms. Like, so many people kind of realize that we have the freedom to believe that we are free until our freedom's taken. And so I think what it did was it put everybody in the place of reimagining what the world could be. I remember being in a conversation with guys from, my church plant in London.
And I knew them when they were teenagers. The four of us got in a Zoom chat just together, and they're all husbands and fathers, , and it was interesting talking to them and seeing how they were having to navigate being at home. That the children understand daddy at home, but the children don't understand professional working daddy.
But now professional working Daddy is having to work at home and the kids can't understand why I'm shutting the office door and why I'm keeping the kids out. And we just got into this whole deep conversation where we began to realize that we had made work the center of our worlds, and everything else was the satellite around which our lives navigated. But now, home was the center. And it was for them the shift of now making home the center and making work a satellite. And putting home at the center and family at the center. And so I think what Covid did was disrupt the way everybody saw the world. T he way in which they were able to relate to the world, and the way in which the world related to them.
And I think that's why it was such a, punch in the gut. And such a massive awakening. , And we saw it in the church, I think more than anything. We saw it, throughout Christendom and the churches and the way the church functions.
You also talk about this idea that we can't have control of a future we haven't yet arrived at, which is sort of what we're talking about here with the unknowns of the pandemic. And that the unknown variables make it impossible to do that. So how do we respond to, I guess, the inevitability of change and unpredictability in this world?
I think the only place that we can respond to it is in the now—cause that's all we have. You know, I always say you can't go back and change what happened because it's set in stone and you can't go to the future and rearrange something that hasn't happened yet, but what you can do in the present, it's like that conviction of Paul, where Paul says, listen, I'm pressing towards something and I haven't already reached, so I don't wanna act like I've already reached.
But, resolving or forgetting what's behind me in the present. I'm deciding who I am and then I'm allowing that person to move forward with me. And I think the only way we get a mordicum of control over the future is to be settled with who we are in the present, settled with how we dream about the future.
, establish the values, establish the narrative, e stablish the conversations that you want to meet you in the future, and then move in that direction. I f it changes along the way, it changes, but there are gonna be fundamental things about you that are gonna remain and mature and develop so that once you get there, you, you haven't lost sight of who you are. You have a clear understanding of who you are. And Eddie, one of the things that you talk about or write about quite a lot is, the past that, you know, what you're saying about establishing ourselves in the future and having that solid foundation, you've kind of talked about, I guess maybe I'm putting it in my own words here, but reframing our stories. Or understanding the past so that we can have that solid foundation in the future. Because for many people, the past disrupts the present. It knocks them off kilter or it mm-hmm.
it's an excuse or it's something they carry with them that enables them to maybe make excuses for their life or, it can really upset them. You know, many times, traumas in our past impact how we are in the present. Yeah. But you've done a lot of work in
taking charge of our past to, to stabilize our present, to look forward to that future. Yeah. Can you just explore that a little bit with us? From my own journey— and I said it in Living From Here, my second book that, I broke a lot of things back there, and a lot of people. T here are some people who, they were worse off for being around me, because of who I was back there. But then at the same time, there are people who were blessed because of me back there. So there's a lot of things that I can't change about the past, but I think that the one thing that I can do is go back and examine my attitudes and my motives and my mindset.
Not to bring it forward, but to have an explanation, so that I don't torture myself. You know? There are some bones that you'll dig them up just to realize, nah, there ain't nothing to be found there. I ain't exhuming them bones at all. There's nothing to be found here, and so not everything about the past is gonna be resolvable.
Not everything about the past are gonna find healing from, but you cannot be afraid to look. You cannot be afraid to ask. You cannot be afraid to have the conversations. Because there are gonna be things that enable you to settle who you are now.
And not only that, I don't want to be a, a revisionist . I don't wanna be a revisionist of my history, but, I do want to reclaim some of the stories. I do want to look at the stories in, different ways. Like when my father said to me, "stand your ground and fight your battles like a man" at my engagement party.
And I said, "yes, dad I-I will, thank you, thank you." But in the privacy of my mind, I was, what? Like, "what you did for me, Chuck? Man, ain't no one listening to you, man, move." But obviously I couldn't say that, you know, because my dad walked away when I was five and, I was never raised by my dad. He never came back into the home again.
But I realized in my 15th year of marriage what he was saying to me. When Yvonne and I hit an impasse and he was saying, "stand your ground and fight your battles like a man." I realized that he was saying, "I know what's in me and I know it's gonna come up in you, and when it does come up in you, you need to be more for yours than I was for you. So stand your ground and fight your battles like a man." And so, you know, that wasn't revisionist of me, that was just the maturity that comes with time and the honesty that comes with time and realising. . Um, and using that grace and using that learning and using the little maturity you get from that space of growth and applying it to your journey.
On the topic of your journey, um, obviously you haven't always been a motivational speaker and a writer and you've got your own story. What was the turning point when you were young to where you got today, what was it that changed for you that made you change direction?
It's interesting whenever I do motivational, developmental work, this question always comes up and I work in secular spaces and, I've developed, the discipline, and the skill of consistently talking about God in secular spaces without ever mentioning God . Because it is a, it is a skill —to move from an ethical and a value structured way. I can talk about God all day long. I can talk from a God-centered universe, without people assuming I'm a Christian or especially that I'm a minister. But the question always comes up like but what was it? At seventeen, I got saved . . . under the preaching of the late great Dick Barron in London. Uh, had a very troubled teenage, um, from 14 to 17, you know, through the juvenile court system, community, home schools, approved schools, detention centers. And at 17, I got saved. At 19, I walked away, and then at 25 I got found again.
And those were the two real poles. At 17, meeting God for the first time, walking away at 19, and then at 25 remembering I need Him. You know what I mean? Because you know who I didn't decide to be who I didn't nail down that I was gonna be in my teenage years. I just became that in my twenties with a vengeance.
So my twenties, was an adult replay of those turbulent teenage years. And at those two poles, it was Jesus Christ. It was a real dynamic intervention of the divine into my, into my lived experience. It was a real kind of coming of spiritual age, and God writing different things into myself, especially as a 25 year old about who I was and who I could be. I remember looking at my life from 25 in five year increments—who I was from five to 10— who I was from 10 to 15, 15 to 20, 20 to 25, and God just showed me a different future.
At 17 and at 25, it was my experience of God that were the two real earth-shifting world, -transformational spaces.
He enters human lives, makes promises, keeps his promises, stays in the journey with us, stays in the story with us.
I always say I'm the product of a praying mother and the grace of God . You know what I mean?
Hmm. . I'm curious, Eddie, to know what you've learnt. Reflecting on what you've just been saying, shifting from, I guess preaching in churches and pastoring, that's your main focus and now moving into the secular space a lot more. What have you learned both about God, but also about how to communicate God? Because I think a lot of Adventists oftentimes have trouble communicating God to the secular community around them. Mm-hmm. You know, we all might have our conversion experience or we know why we believe in God, but we have trouble actually passing that on. What have you learned about telling your story, sharing your story in spaces that perhaps has surprised you or that you've, noticed really clearly through this phase of your ministry?
I think with God I've noticed, God is a whole lot more conservative and a whole lot more progressive than I thought. Like, there's spaces where like, yeah, I'm straight conservative, I don't even try it. And other places where like, man, yeah, that ain't me. I've kind of learnt that with God.
I've learnt that I have to allow God to be God and stop trying to defend him because God is not a divine geriatric. I mean, God knows how to be God , you know what I mean? He don't need defending. He needs, surrender. And, I think that, and I say that specifically because I realize in the culture, especially when it comes to Christians, no one's listening to what we're saying.
They can't be listening to what we're saying because we're in this communication age and in this communication age, people are not listening to what we're saying—they're listening to how we're living. They're listening to us from the inside-out and I've discovered that it's God that's given them that type of spiritual intuitiveness so that when our words are affirmed, first by our actions, then our words have meaning. So for me, my Christian experience now, and my Christian witness now is really just being in that lived space with people.
And then when they get round to the conversations, having that conversation with them. You know, it's interesting, remember the story of the woman at the well. You know why it's one of my favorite stories. All Jesus wanted was water. Jesus weren't asking the woman nothing theological. Nothing. Nothing. He said, "Sis, can I have a drink of water please?" Well, how are you being a Jew asking me for a drink of water? Girl, listen, if you knew who was asking you for a drink of water, you would give me a drink of water. Believe me, you would get water from me. What are you a prophet? Jesus is like, well, yeah, I'm a prophet.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, but up to now. Read the story. We don't even know if Jesus got the drink of water. You know what I mean? . But what Jesus did, Jesus carried the conversation as far and as deep as she was willing to take the conversation until Jesus turned around and said, go find your husband.
That's when it turned the corner. Jesus was like, all right, she's ready. She's ready for a revelation. And so for me, , it's staying in that lived space and allowing their conversation to go as far and as deep as they want the conversation to go. I heard an Aboriginal elder say something.
He said, "Ed, we don't teach the young people their culture until they ask. Because when they ask, they're ready to learn. But if you have to constantly chase, chase, chase, you're forcing it on them." So I said, well, what is the way around it? "We just live it. We live it with pride. We live it with openness. A nd we live it in such a way that they are forced to ask us the questions. But when they ask, they're willing to learn. And I was like, snaps. So I think for me, that's my approach to ministering to the culture and ministering in the culture. Yeah. W hen it comes to standing alongside people, you wrote in your book, "Choosing to remain an island in the face of an oncoming storm can cause you to be swept away."
Mm-hmm. . Um, For people who are struggling and for people who are thinking about this idea of resilience, can you flesh out what it means to invite people into our journeys there? You know, inviting people into your journeys is allowing yourself to be honest about where you are and how you're doing.
My approach has always been you need to find your own small space where you can be honest And, I think it's about allowing yourself to find people that you can trust, because as humans we are wired to live interdependently. We are not wired, as I said, to be islands.
We are wired to know ourselves within the context of human relationships. We know that we can love because of our context with another human. We know that we can be strong or we can be impatient, or we can be angry, or we can hate... because of our contact with other human beings, we're wired to know ourselves in that way.
And so there's a part of us that has to trust. It's intuitive, it's counterintuitive as human being not to trust another human being. You have to trust because you are limited. You you are limited, so you have to trust. And so I think the important thing is finding relationships with people that you can allow yourself to be honest with you can allow yourself to be naked with emotionally, spiritually, socially, ethically. That you can allow them to see you as you actually are. So they can help you be who you actually are. B ecause you know, the struggle and the depression is a narrative based on a time and a space that you find yourself in. But it's not actually you. It's just a part of the world that is happening to you, a part of life that is happening to you and that you're responding to.
But you are more than that situation. You are more than that narrative. And so, for me, the important thing is, about accountability and the accountability that comes from community. Finding good friends, finding good mentors, finding good accountability people, you know, whether it be people that you know and you trust personally, or just a therapist, , right? You can go to once a month and get it all out. As you were talking, I just reflected on the deeply relational nature of God and I guess how we are made in his image. You know, that idea that we need connection. I've heard a lot of, um, 30 something. I've heard a lot of people in my age group say it's really hard to make friends as adults.
It's really hard to find those connections. Do you have any practical pointers for people when they're looking for that? Maybe they feel isolated by life, by, you know, not, connecting recently with the church community, or sometimes church communities can be unsafe places. We have to acknowledge that sometimes it's hard to find people that we can be completely vulnerable and completely transparent and can give us that accountability that you're talking about.
I think the first thing that we have to accept and recognize though, that a human relationship, that allows you to be totally naked and transparent, takes time to grow. That that don't just happen. T hat takes time to grow. And so I think the first place that we can do is just create social networks. . One of the struggles for a church community is we don't understand it, but we spend most of our life being divorced from the broader culture. You know, unless we work with them, we don't really have association with them cuz we don't know how to be around people that don't do a lot of the things that we do. We don't know how to be around them when they do what they do. Drinkers and smokers and people who club, and people who party, and people who just live life outside of what our spiritual norms and our spiritual values are.
And so we don't know how to actually do life with those people. But if you allow yourself, the opportunity just to socially, just journey with people, you know, there, there are, there are organizations that get involved with things within your community. There are things that take place on your road. Your road sometimes has a Facebook page that you don't even know about. You know what I mean?
And so I think that there are lots of spaces of social interaction and also you can create spaces of social interaction. You can create spaces in which people can gather around, projects and around hobbies and around special days. There are lots of things that we can do. We are wired as Christians, to be social, but within the Christian bubble. And I think what you can do is extend all of those things outwards that you would normally do in that space to include other people.
And I think within that space, that's where you'll begin to find solid people. There are friends that I have who are solid go-to friends, and they are not Christian. They don't espouse Christianity. They have no plans on being a Christian, but they love me and they love being around me, and they love my faith. And when they come to my house for dinner here, they bring non-alcoholic bottles of wine and they're drinking at my table when I feed them. Why? Because my experience has rubbed off on them. Now when I go to their house, I don't bring wine because I don't drink, but I'm not mad with them when they put their wine on their table. I'm like, no, I'm, you know, outside of all of that, there is much more to a person's life. So I think we have to be actively involved in creating those communities of connection, those contexts of connection. Mm-hmm.
I think sometimes we can get frustrated when we run things in the church and be like, why aren't they coming to our stuff? But then we never do the opposite. Exactly. Exactly. You know, I've always said, you know, at helping churches figure out how to navigate the culture, I always ask the question, if your church was to close, would the community miss your local? And if the answer is no, it's because you are not here.
Well, every church closed for two years. The question is, did the community miss it? So I think those are part of understanding where we find ourselves and how we reestablish proper relationships now that everything is back open again. You, mentioned a little bit before about this idea of surrender and I once heard someone say, victory is in surrender, not struggle. And I think surrender is one of those things that, for me, if someone has said , just surrender or give it to God or something , I'm always. Yeah, but how? W hat does surrender actually look like? I once heard you talk about it in a way, for me that was a light bulb moment, and, and so I'm wondering if you can share what surrender looks like.
I've always believed that the struggle for the Christian isn't conversion. The struggle is surrender. Conversion simply means that I've turned my mind and my heart towards you. Surrender means I'm keeping some of my heart and my mind to myself. A what the spirit does, the spirit comes into the human experience, and the spirit begins to grow the love of Christ and the heart of Christ and the mind of Christ into our human experience.
And what we do is we fight that growth. T hat's what we do. The difference between the church at the cross and the church at Pentecost is vastly different. People think it was after the cross that everybody came together. No, no, no. It was after Pentecost. And even on the day of Pentecost, when Peter preached and baptized 5,000 on the day of Pentecost, Peter was a nationalistic, separatist, racist Jew.
National straight, but he was a surrendered, nationalistic, separatist racist Jew. Now he was on that space of no longer fighting, and so the Lord sends him the, the vision of the sheep with all the unclean animals and says, arise can and eat. He says, Lord, I can't do that Mad. But don't call it coming.
And then, oh, and then he says, go to that house. And he goes to the gentiles and he confesses to them. I have called you common and unclean, but I realize, and he had fellowship with them, but when the Jews came around, what did Peter do? Peter went back to being a nationalistic, racist, separatist Jew. Why?
Because he was still on that journey of surrender. And surrender meant that he was fighting the growth and the change the Kingdom was trying to bring in his experience. And so when we talk about surrender and give it to God, you have to be honest and recognize where is it that you are fighting change? Where is it that you are fighting growth? Where is it that you are fighting transition? Because that is your journey of surrender. What did the spirit do? The spirit sent still-growing Paul, Mr. Oh, the things I don't wanna do, I do. And the things I do I don't wanna do and I don't what to do. Help me. What do I do? He sent still-growing Paul to still-growing Peter. And Peter said, he showed me the better way. Paul said, I showed him the better way. There are myriads of ways in which we fight the change and we fight the growth and we fight the transition.
We fight it through procrastination. We fight it through excuses. We fight it through projection. We fight it through denial.
But that's the true work. And it's difficult. I ain't gonna lie. I struggle with surrender. I struggle. My journey in ministry.. I remember while I pastored my gospel was Jesus relationships and service. And love, and just being accused of being a preacher of low and no substance. Eddie Hypolite? He's a preacher of low and no substance.
Why? He talks too much about love and he talks too much about Jesus. And I remember one day saying to Jesus, I don't wanna talk about love no more. Please please. It's too hard. Lemme go back to the easy stuff. Lemme go back to the Beasts and the prophecies and the, and the Jesuits and, and you know, please lemme go back to that easy stuff.
Thi this love thing is too hard. I remember one time writing a sermon in tears. I don't wanna preach this. You're like, boy, I ain't giving you nothing else to preach. I dunno what to say. It's either gonna be this or the Eddie Hypolite show. You work it out . I don't wanna preach it. You know what I mean?
And yeah, it was hard. But that's the process of surrender because you have to leave yourself behind and sometimes you are afraid of, you're afraid because you can't see . . . You can't see all of the person that God has waiting for you down the road. And sometimes that's , I ain't gonna lie. That's scary. If you can trust that he knows what he's doing, you can trust the result that you can't see. . Yeah,
Your consultancy business, your current ministry is called Empowering Your Resilience. And I like that.
I'd like to touch as we finish up just on the concept of resilience.
Having resilience. H ow do we get our, our resilience empowered? We don't wanna steal your thunder and, all stuff you're doing. If you can give us some practical help, how do we as, as everyday people, as Christians, as people who are struggling to surrender... how do we find resilience? How do we foster resilience in our lives, in our kids, in our families, in our churches? How do we discover, some of that resilience that we need.
Resilience is not just the power to bounce back. You know, in a dictionary definition, and even a psychology, definition is the ability to bounce back, the ability to, find yourself again after trauma, after upheaval. What is missing is why is that we're able to do that.
We're able to do that because we remember the narratives that the trauma robbed us of, and that's what happens. Upheaval, trauma, loss. It creates a narrative. You believe that narrative and you forget who you were. And I think my work in resilience is enabling people to remember the narratives that define who they were.
So I think from just a practical point of view, you know, with our kids and with our friends and helping people unstick themselves that we can all do is just ask: what stories are you telling yourself, right? What are the things that you've forgotten about yourself?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going through this now, but what has this made you actually forget about yourself? And sometimes you forget that I am actually a patient person. I am actually a loving person. I'm actually much more determined. And so the question is then, well, why are you believing this now?
Well, I'm believing this because of this situation. All right, well, let's now begin to deconstruct this situation and reconstruct the way you think about yourself. And I think what it is is that now spurs people out. Actually, hold on. I'm not just this weeping willow, this, wilted flower. And then you begin to come back because you remember who you are.
Uh, one of the reasons why I, I always say you journey in community is cuz sometimes you know, you'll be friends with Zia and Zia finds yourself in a space and I'll say, Hey, Zan cha, you remember that time in, you remember that time when we was at camp and you said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and sat just like, oh my gosh, how did I forget that? And all of a sudden the thunder just shines in her mind again. Because what happens is when we journey in community, she may say something and I think, oh, that's so precious. But because she's so brilliant, she just throws out all these Starbursts everywhere.
Cause she's just brilliant, you know? And I'll catch it and I'll put it in my pocket and without even knowing, Zia finds herself in a space one day when she's down and I pull out that Starburst memory and I'm saying, oh, Zia, I remember, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, oh my gosh. And I think those are the ways in which we enable people and we empower their resilience.
You remind your children and you remind your friends and you remind your loved ones and you remind your colleagues.
It's the remembrance that empowers resilience. Because people come back to who they actually are. They make their journey back to who they are and then they grow further from that person too. And so, yeah, I think, I think that's the way we can do it.
You know, help people remember their stories, help people remember who they are, help people journey. You know what I mean? And that's how you create, create good culture as well. That's
I love that. Well, thank you so much for everything you've shared. I feel like we've just scraped the surface. But I do know that your book Four Questions is actually a free book, so you unpack and the audio book is free as well, if you are, if you follow me on Instagram, go to the link in my bio, or you can go to my website, which is EYRLTD.com Go there and you'll see on the main page. And just download it. And, and, and please enjoy it. Do the work.
I have a friend who is a counselor and she would just listen to the audio book and she wrote to me and she said, you know, in the audiobook on the second question, how are you, you asked the question like, how am I, and this says, yeah, so how are you? And I asked the question, and then I asked the question the second time and she said it threw me off.
Because I honestly felt that this was the first time, at least during this period, that anybody had even asked me how I'm doing. And she said, I paused it and I ran and got my journal and I started writing down how I'm doing. And then I continued listening. So I always said to people, do the work.
Do the work. I think you're gonna, you're gonna benefit. That's great. Well, Eddie, we are really privileged to have you with us today. Thank you so much for your time.
It's a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you.