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Real faith. Real life. Hosted by Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown of Sandals Church, The Debrief Podcast goes beyond Sunday conversations—diving into the questions, stories, and struggles that shape who we are. Thoughtful. Honest. Unfiltered.
Welcome to the Debrief Podcast with Matthew Stephen Brown, where we take your real questions about faith, the Bible, and culture, and give you honest practical advice you can trust. We're glad you're here. Now let's get into today's episode.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Oh my gosh. Everybody, if you're in your car listening to this show, it's not the volume. We have an Englishman on the show today. Guess Can you try to speak in an American accent?
Pastor Luke Bryant:No, not really. I could try, but it would
Pastor Luke Bryant:be terrible. But how do I'm from California, man. Yeah, you go. Is that good? No, that was terrible.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:But English actors always play Americans, and they do it so well.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah, it's because we speak better American than you.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yes, I know. I know. Well, it's your language. You guys invented it.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So hey, guys. We are here on the debrief today. This is not Tammy. He is not nearly as beautiful. He's not my wife, but he is my friend and super excited about you.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:His name is Luke Bryant, pastors a church in Liverpool. When did you plant one church? What year was it? So 2010,
Pastor Luke Bryant:actually, was when we planted, and I'll kinda get into the story, but thanks for having me on the Yes. Podcast got it. Really appreciate you letting the English Yes. In your in your podcasting filming rooms.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Thank you for our language.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. It was very gracious of you to allow me back into your country, so thankful. I'm thankful for that. So, yeah, 2010, Emma and I, my wife, we planted Liverpool One Church. And truthfully, I know it's the kind of thing that everybody says.
Pastor Luke Bryant:You know, we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't have a clue. But truthfully, we did not know what we were doing, and we did not have a clue. So we planted it in our living room, and there was 12 of us, 10 of our friends plus Emma and I, and things have just kind of moved forward from there. I think that, you we're not allowed to be called a church in The UK unless you're above 40 people.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:See, that's crazy to me, because you can literally call yourself a church if you're one person in America. You could have a you could have a herd of cats.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. Mean, could you could call yourself that, but you wouldn't necessarily be able to legally register Okay. As that. So I think that that would be the differentiation. But until you're above 40 people, you're not categorized as a church.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So Okay.
Pastor Luke Bryant:We were not a church for many, many years following 2010. Wow.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And now is that just a part of the Church of England, or where does that come from?
Pastor Luke Bryant:Know, I think that there are a number of denominations that would maybe subscribe to that way of thinking, and I guess it's probably protectionist in its theory, you know, because you don't necessarily just want absolutely anybody starting up a church and maybe slapping the sticker of a denomination.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Oh, that would be helpful, because that's what we have in America. Okay. Well, I've got a bunch of weirdos starting churches. Oh, you do? No.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Seriously. So during COVID so, you know, you guys went through COVID. I was on this Zoom meeting with our governor. He's very famous. Governor Newsom, he's running for president.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Have you guys heard of
Pastor Luke Bryant:Actually, I haven't.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yes. He's running for president. He hasn't announced that or anything, but so I'm on this Zoom call. So two things. One is do you remember do guys have Zoom meetings in The UK?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. So you know how that you can only see
Pastor Luke Bryant:the boxes that you We have the Internet as well. Yeah. We've got that
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:now. Yes. I think America invented that. Okay. No.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So I was not aware that I I you know, I was in this Zoom meeting with the governor, so he had shut us down. I wanted to reopen. I was pushing back, and I never thought about people seeing my facial expressions. So in the zoom meeting, it was the governor. And then my last name is Brown.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And apparently there were no pastors in California with a last name a. So it was Governor Newsom and then my face next to him. And every time he said something that I didn't agree, I was like, making all these faces. And then my phone His face can't lie. My phone starts blowing up, and people are like, we can see your face.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Anyways, there was a couple of pastors that worked for governor Newsom, and I kid you not. I'd be in a Zoom call meeting trying to get the church reopened, and they would have a if you guys are listening to the car, I have my cards. They would have, like, a piece of paper with tape that they put behind their desk and handwritten note that said pastor whatever. And I remember thinking pastor of what? Of whom?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And, like, these people were just made up clergy. And I I and I don't I don't mean that to be disparaging. I mean, there were a couple of them that if the aliens land on a spaceship, really these pastors were getting on first. Like these guys were crazy people. It was bizarre.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So I think that that's probably a good protectionist thing, but in America, we're so anti government telling us anything. It's like, well, who's to tell you you're not a church if you're one person or it's just your family that attends? I think a piece of it is
Pastor Luke Bryant:to do with, like, the legislative part. Like, we have a commission. So, you know, if any church wants to actually start out and register as a church, you've to go through a whole and that's a legal element. So I don't think that you're allowed to actually become that until you're above 40 people.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Yeah. So I actually think so to to get nonprofit status in America, you have to have a five zero one three, and so I think to have a five zero one three, you have to have a board, so that would have to mean probably a couple of people, but you could register as a church with just probably three or four people.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Right, okay. I mean, you could call yourself that, but you might not necessarily be legally recognized
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Well, as called Sandals a church for years, and I don't know if we were.
Pastor Luke Bryant:What? You don't know whether you were legal or not?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:No. I don't know if we were actually doing the right things. So, no, we we had another church, Magnolia Avenue Baptist Church, that we were kind of under their umbrella, so we did everything through them, so I'm grateful for them. Alright. So you started a church in 2010.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Why the name One Church? Was that because you started with one person?
Pastor Luke Bryant:We were just not very creative, and the first number is number one, and we thought we'll take it. Yes. No. You know what? I think that I think that I've always been really fascinated with the start of the early church.
Pastor Luke Bryant:When you kind of look through the scriptures and you open up the book of Acts, there's one really clear theme, and I think it comes out about 10 or 11 times this phrase of that the disciples were in one accord Yeah. In references that they were in unity. And I always kind of looked at that and thought, I wonder because when you think about, like, the disciples in Acts, they didn't have a church building. They didn't have a strategy. They didn't have a board.
Pastor Luke Bryant:They didn't have a five year plan. But what they did have was a lot of unity, a lot of being in one accordance with one another.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I love that.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And I always felt like, you know, what they experienced and just that whole sense of not only the Holy Spirit moving, but just the birth of the early church, that that was a real trigger. And I felt like if we wanted to see something similar, then we should probably go after that one thing that they went after, you know, two thousand years ago. And I think maybe you could tell me more, actually, being the Hebrew scholar that you are. I think that when you really look into what that means, there's a reference of them being of the same mind, but also of the same passion. And I just love that for me.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Liverpool is a very cosmopolitan, vibey kind of city, very passionate. And I thought that's that's the secret sauce. If you can just align people in vision and heart and passion, that's the kind of church that could one day change the world. And then I guess as well, someone had said something to me, and I don't know whether this is even true, but they said, hey, just so you know, in Liverpool, which is where we're from, the churches there have a reputation of they get to 100 people, and then they go bust. Like, they will split.
Pastor Luke Bryant:They will
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Start infighting. Like, there's a huge history of that. And I always remembered, well, I don't want that to be our narrative. I don't want that to be our story. So Liverpool One Church was birthed really out of the idea of we're gonna do something for the kingdom, we're gonna have to be aligned not only in our heart, but also equally in passion.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So that's where that came from out of Acts.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Man, I love that. That was great. I should have picked one church for sandals. That's better.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Why did you call sandals is that Sandals Church Sandals Church? Do you wear sandals?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. No. Well, I did in the nineties. So do you really want the story? Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:One of those. So I was a you would say football player. I was a soccer player. Real football. Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Real football. And growing up as a kid, you know, my foot always grew faster than my parents' budget for cleats. And so I didn't always have cleats that fit right. So I had really ugly toenails and feet, then I played in college. And by the time I started dating Tammy, whom you've met, my feet were hideous and I was embarrassed by them.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Seriously. Like Really? Yeah. I would not wear flip flops around people with flip flops is what we call, sandals. And, when I started Sandals Church, I I said I wanna I wanna start a church where people can see the very ugliest part of my life and still love me.
Pastor Luke Bryant:That's pretty powerful.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. And so then I came across Romans ten fifteen, how beautiful are the feet of those that bring good news. Mhmm. And I was like, boom. It's sandals, and that's where it came from.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And it's funny, you know, sandals has been around now almost thirty years, so people will tell me, well, was named this because of it. I'm like, that's not right. I know that's not why we named it.
Pastor Luke Bryant:It's funny because there's a shopping center now in Liverpool, and the shopping center is called Liverpool One. So people think that we named the church
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:after the shopping center and like come and get fed.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. I'm like, no. There was a Bible thing in there. I promise you.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So and then people say, did you name it after Sandals Resorts? Have you heard of that? It's like a Yes. Vacation destination. Grew up poor.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I was like, didn't know there was a Sandals resort. So that's not it. So real quick, I love I love your story. So Tammy and I heard you speak at ARC Ireland, and so those of our listeners who don't know what ARC is, it's the Association of Related Churches. Sandals gives money to this association of churches specifically for the purpose of church planting in Europe, and I love what you guys are doing.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:But your story is unusual because you had a career, you were a police officer, and you became a pastor, and you made that shift. And I think a lot of people that maybe are police officers in our church, they have a profession, they say, Oh, well, you know, the calling to be a pastor or a priest, that's separate from what I'm doing, but God radically changed and shifted your life. So how long were you an officer? What happened in your life to cause you to shift?
Pastor Luke Bryant:I mean, it's a great question. I think you know what? I was in the police force, as we would say, for just over ten years. Okay. And I think that when I joined into the police, I think, like everybody else, you're doing it really as a thirty year career.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. Because I know that you could retire young, great pension, gives you financial stability, and there's lots of options to do lots of different things, move up the ladder, progress. All of those options were there. So when I joined the force, it was very much so a case of I thought that I'd be doing this for the rest of my life. But I think that that's just the beautiful thing about the call of God is like, when you know that there's a call of God on your life, you can try and do anything else, but it keeps coming back to whisper to your soul.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And what actually happened was when Emma and I had got married, we really early on started to wonder, do we think that this is gonna be us for the rest of our lives? Emma worked in hair and beauty. I was in the police. Is this gonna be us, or does God have something else for us? And it was probably, you know, the Internet was just becoming a thing.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Twitter was maybe a thing, but you certainly you would not be aware of what's happening with the global church, the capital c church. And we'd only ever seen church done in a very, normal way for England, which would be very small in towns and villages. You'd meet with less than 50 people. Nobody knew ever came in. And if I'm really honest, that was a frustration to me because I always wrestled with the why am I not seeing on a Sunday anything that we can read about in the New Testament?
Pastor Luke Bryant:And it's not that people didn't love Jesus. It's just that our expression and pursuit of church was a frustration for me. So I think that what happened was we ended up, taking a trip out to Australia, and we went and we saw a church out there, in Adelaide of all places. Mhmm. And it was the first time that we'd ever seen a church with our eyes that we actually dreamt of in our hearts.
Pastor Luke Bryant:But we didn't know that that was it. There was just this like, okay, church can be done very, very differently to how we'd ever experienced it. So, you know, I think that once once we felt that that was the call of God on our life, that's what we pursued our absolute all with. And, man, we we walked away from our jobs. We walked away from our careers.
Pastor Luke Bryant:We walked away from absolutely everything in order to plant the church. But don't get me wrong. I love being a policeman. You're the biggest gang in town. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:It's a fun job. Yeah. You get to see some really crazy stuff. Every day is different. And I did a whole bunch of different roles in there, so I'm not one of these guys that left the police because I didn't like being a police officer.
Pastor Luke Bryant:That was great fun. I loved it. It was just that I really felt that God was leading our life in a different direction, and we wanted to throw it all into building the local church. Man, I
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:love that. Okay. This question's a doozy. How did your experiences enforcement inform or challenge your understanding of grace, justice, and faith? Well, I know.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's it's like an uneasy one, so we're Yeah. Jumping right
Pastor Luke Bryant:That we're going deep straight away. I tell you what it does do. I think that being a police officer actually is an amazing training ground for being a pastor.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Except I there's no verse where I can club somebody. That'd that'd be nice, you know, be like, you know, prayed three times. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I mean, I do think that perhaps the typical weapon that should be administered to pastor should be a taser. Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Because Can you imagine?
Pastor Luke Bryant:Well, we don't have firearms like you guys do
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:here in
Pastor Luke Bryant:The States.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's the wild west out here.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Well, we weren't allowed to carry guns, but they'd us a taser, and they'd give us some parva spray, which was
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:is that?
Pastor Luke Bryant:It's like a CS spray. It's an incapacitance, and in fact, funny story. One of the things that you've gotta do when you're going through police training is that if you wanna be eligible to use parvo spray, you have to be willing to experience it, and it's at a reduced rate. But honestly, mate, having that stuff sprayed in your eyeballs Yeah. Is the worst pain you'll ever experience in your life.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Like, you're actually physically trying to gouge your eyes out. But anyway, I digress. I do think that it was mean, I it is a deep question. It's a big question. I'll tell you what being in the police has showed me, how broken the world really is.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. You see you see you see really hurting people. Here's what I said. So we have a huge conflict in The United States, just with police, whom I love, and we desperately need that role. And just a society that sometimes feels unseen, unheard, and taken advantage of.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And I always say this when I speak to police is you're expected to be at your best when you experience us at our worst. And a lot of people don't realize that when there's a domestic violence call, a couple is at their worst. And you're expecting an officer every time to be at their absolute best. And I certainly think that we, you know, we need to expect excellence from police officers. We just had an instance in New York City last week where police officers were hit in the face with ice balls, and I saw a black police officer.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So in our in our culture, right, that's a whole set of issues because of how black people have experienced police, historically, but this police officer get a snowball in the face. And I just thought this is dehumanizing. So, you know, so it goes both both ways. I mean, citizens can be taken advantage of, but police officers can be taken advantage of, and I think a lot of times in America, we forget that cops are people too. I I think I think
Pastor Luke Bryant:the biggest tension is, and I could say this because I've experienced it firsthand, is that 99% of your daily business is dealing with a particular grouping of people in society. Mhmm. So where the police often fall short, and I've definitely been guilty of this, is, you know, you end up doing a stop check on the road, and all of a sudden, you are met with somebody who is a very decent member of public society, and maybe he's doing some wonderful things all around your city and your region, but you don't always realize that straight away. And that can be very difficult because what you end up doing is, you know, there's a different way to speak to different people in the sense of some people only understand one language, or at least they do in The UK in terms of how the police system works, and that you end up incorrectly addressing one person over
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:here Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. Because you've only been dealing with people over here for 99% of the time, and your week, your month. So I think that that is a trap that we get wrong oftentimes, and it does get us a bad name, and I think that, you know, it's it's a real challenge. But you do see some messed up stuff.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:What would you say even in ministry, you know, my wife and I, we have a church of thousands, and we will harp on and focus on the negative experiences and the bad person. And and it can really jade.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So you're so in in police work, right, you're not you're not getting called to go pet bunnies or to, you know, do a three legged race or whatever. Right? It's it is this is this is challenging situation after challenging situation, difficult person, know, lying, being violent, being cursed, you know. And so it's it's easy to, you know, miss out on that opportunity. So I a good friend of mine's a cop, and his mom needed help in Oakland, and Oakland is a challenging city in California.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And they were lost and she's an old lady. She asked the cop, she said, Hey, can I have directions? And he said, move along, lady, move along. And she she's, she thinks she's in her mid seventies, Sandy, sorry if I got your, your age wrong, but she said, my son is a police officer. And if I needed help, he would help me.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And he had to snap out of it.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Because he's trying to move people out of a sporting event.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:They're drunk. They're cursing. They're whatever. And, you know, and he he had to go, oh, you're a human being too. Yes, ma'am.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I'm sorry.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. You're probably outside of this environment, our biggest fan, our biggest supporter. Yeah. You would be our biggest advocate, and then making that switch is incredibly difficult because you don't always know how.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And then sometimes they're they're nice, but they're not. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And more often than not, you're not met with the
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Kinda like a deacon, right, in the church? Okay. So what did you what did you learn about grace, justice, and faith? Know I know those are heavy.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. You know what? This is what I'd probably say, is that this would be my takeaway of my career in the police. It would be that being a cop definitely shows you that you can restrict someone's behavior. Mhmm.
Pastor Luke Bryant:You can restrain what they do with their hands, with their Yeah. Whatever. You can restrict behavior, but it's only Jesus, and it's only by the grace of God that can actually change someone's heart. Mhmm. And I think that that does create a big tension.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Mhmm. Because on one hand, you are employed to go and do a job and keep law and order. Mhmm. But really, that comes about from heart change, not just restricting someone's liberty and their behavior. So I think that what it actually has made me aware of, in light of when you think of how much resource, how much energy, how much power is given to the police force, they can do a lot, but they can't change someone's heart.
Pastor Luke Bryant:The only thing that can change someone's heart is the grace of Jesus Christ. It's coming into that real and authentic relationship where you can be open and transparent and allow God to do a deep inner work from the inside out. That's life changing. Being in the cops as I look back, it it wasn't really life changing. It could be life restricting, but not life changing because that's the power of grace.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah, man. That's amazing. You didn't know this about me, but I was in the military. Guess what I did?
Pastor Luke Bryant:I did not know that about you. Tell me what you did.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Because And I I was
Pastor Luke Bryant:a cop. Were you really?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I was. I didn't know that. The worst police officer in the history of the United States military.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I think So how long were you in the military for?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Three a years. So I was only active duty for a year and a half. And so back in the nineties, they had a program where you could serve in the summers and then be in the California National Guard during the year, and I blew my knee out in soccer. Oh, wow. Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It was it was brutal. And so it was it was a it was a tough time of my life, but the military taught me a lot. And I'll tell you, here here's what it taught me. From an early age, I realized the danger of officer, I had power over people and had the law supporting me. And I think in ministry, ministers let it go to their heads when they have the power of God over people.
Pastor Luke Bryant:That's very true.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so I had to, as a young man, was aware that, oh my gosh, have to regulate and manage the power. I don't have the power. The United States Army has said, I have the power to arrest a fellow soldier, you know, a fellow person serving, and I realized, and I saw it go to people's heads quickly. And so in ministry, I've seen the same thing.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Really?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You know, you stand on stage, you speak for God. I'm not God. I'm a sinner, and I'm broken just like everybody else. It's his voice through me, and I've watched it ruin people. You know?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It, I are you a JR Tolkien fan and all? So the Hobbit, the one that the one
Pastor Luke Bryant:Oh, sorry. Okay. Tolkien. Yeah. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:No. Not really.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I'm not a
Pastor Luke Bryant:big fan.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So the the line the line that always sticks out to me in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is that it was the smallest and the most unknown among us that would save us. So the hobbits, right, are these halflings. So so that think about that word. They're a half human. Mhmm.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Halfling. And so but it's in this little guy and only he can manage the evil of the ring, which is power, which is authority. And I think that in ministry, we have to be very, very careful. And as sandals grew, I started not having power, but I was in charge of more money than I ever dreamed, more resources than I ever dreamed. I had people reporting to me.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so I'm grateful that as a young man, I learned, oh, and you know, in the police force, in the military, there were not so good people in power. And I interacted with them. And I don't know if you interacted with people in power. And I lot, you know, Jesus said, don't be like the leaders who Lord it over you. You know, you know, you know how the Romans are, but if any of you wants to be great, he must be a slave.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:If anybody who wants to be first, he must be last. And so I think that, you know, authority is an important thing, but it's a dangerous thing, and so we have to be really careful.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Well, I did not know that that was I know. Part of your history, my friend.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I was not aware of that. Like a cop.
Pastor Luke Bryant:No. You look pretty scary to me. Yeah. I look
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:like someone who might be wanted by the cops. You you look like
Pastor Luke Bryant:how you do with that mustache you
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So throw you were asking earlier if I I had long hair, and when I had long hair, everywhere I went, I'd get stopped by the police. I'd have people try to lead me to Jesus. Aw. I was a pastor of one of the largest churches in Riverside, and literally people would try, bro, you you look like you need the Lord. And I'd be like, okay.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So all that went away when I cut my hair. Cross the land. Yes. It's funny. Okay.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So how has Liverpool's unique cultural identity? And for those of you guys who don't know, that's where the Beatles came from. Right?
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. I mean, Liverpool is renowned for a number of things, but like, the Beatles for sure, sport, absolutely massive. But actually, it was one of the major ports that every transatlantic slave that came from Africa to The Americas Wow. It all would come through Liverpool.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Okay.
Pastor Luke Bryant:In fact, to tell you a brilliant story, actually, my wife actually launched a women's conference in an arena that's just right in the center of Liverpool, but it's right on the same place as the dock where all of the Transatlantic slave trade markets used to take place. And I think that it's a really beautiful story to think that, you know, only a hundred and something years ago, we would be selling human lives on that land, and now that same piece of land is being used to lift high the name of Jesus. And we talk about reclaiming that piece of land right there, that Docklands. But, yeah, the Beatles were massive. Sport is massive.
Pastor Luke Bryant:You know, it's a pretty it's a pretty vibey city. You will love it when you go.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I know. I'm going for the first time to be at a conference at your church. I'm super excited. Glad
Pastor Luke Bryant:you're gonna be there.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Hopefully, we're gonna help some churches get planted.
Pastor Luke Bryant:For sure.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Let's do it. I'm looking forward to Okay. So how has Liverpool's unique cultural identity influenced the way you relate the community? Because it's it's it's a it's a cultural, really, phenomenon that is produced, I mean, the Beatles, shaped every form of music there is. Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So what's it like to pastor there?
Pastor Luke Bryant:You know, one of the things that I would say is, very unique about Liverpool is that on one hand, I think that the saying that they will give you the shirt off their back is so true. Everybody is very, very warm, and they would not like to see anybody else go without.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Mhmm.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So there's that piece of it. But what comes with that is a very brutal pursuit of you're gonna have to be real with me. Mhmm. If you try and fake it until you make it, it's not gonna go down well. If you wanna be showy, if you wanna be, like, pristinely presented and immaculate with your words and make yourself out to be further on in life than you really are, that doesn't go down very well, which actually has probably helped me because I'm not that immaculate, and I'm not that pristinely presented all of the time.
Pastor Luke Bryant:But the reality of it is is that authenticity is key. I mean, and I'm sure that that's the same here. And one of the things I love about you is that you're very open just about your life, your fellowship of Jesus. And I think that that's that gives people faith to follow because it's not like you from every time that I've ever heard you speak, and you're an amazing communicator, but one of the things I always take away is that you're never trying to impress people with your latest revelation. You're just trying to connect people with who you are and what you've learned about God.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And I think that that's a beautiful thing. And I think that for me, that's what I found in our own city is that people will warm to you so long as you're real and that you're honest.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Oh, I can't wait to go.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And rather than trying to live this perfect life, you live a transparent life that says, hey, this is me not doing great right now, had a major blowout with the wife this week, and I wish it wasn't the case, but we did. We had an amazing argument, but now we've kissed and made up, and all is good, but this is me. Or this is me, and I've been struggling with. Or this is me, and this is what I'm dealing with. I found that our church have always been very receptive to that.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I love that. They don't buy into I'll fake it till I make it. That doesn't go down well. So I hope that maybe I hope that I I heard this phrase once, actually, as a church planter, you've gotta be strong enough to start, but humble enough to finish. Amen.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Oh.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I haven't heard that, but I'm gonna use that.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Well, I feel like that's I I wanna I think that we've gotten to a certain stage right now where I feel like we've been strong to start, but am I gonna be humble enough to finish? And that level of humility, I think, is something so important we tell all our team back home. We say, hey. Listen, guys. I have one question for you.
Pastor Luke Bryant:What do you wanna do as we build church, as we grow, and develop the kingdom? Do you wanna be part of a humble success or a proud failure? Because the choice is yours. Mhmm. But if we're gonna do something great for the kingdom, let's make sure it's a humble success Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And not a proud failure.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I love that. That's probably why you know, so, you know, you reached out and said, hey, can we spend the day together? And I told you, was, oh, my week is full. And Tammy is like, she's like, no, make time for him. You know, this is the week of our anniversary and birthday.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And it's she said, I love how he speaks. And I she said, we she said, we connected so quickly with Luke. And I remember that. You know, I don't know what to expect. I'm not well, I guess I am part English.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:But Yeah. What percentage are you English? You've done all the tests. 27%. Think was yes.
Pastor Luke Bryant:What's the rest of you then? Irish. I I'm sorry.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. I know. I know. I know. So We love the Irish.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. So and then I think, like, 1% Welsh, actually. Okay. Very, very small percentage of Welsh. So but I think that's the thing that we connected almost immediately with you and really what God is doing through Arc Europe.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It is a bunch of real guys. And so, you know you know, my perspective of I I think we went to England for the first time in 2012, and we went to Saint Paul's Cathedral. Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. So it was, but I went down below in the basement to the snack bar with the Oh, yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:With the bishop and and, you know, what do they call them? The vicars?
Pastor Luke Bryant:Okay. Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Not a lot of joy. It was it was pretty
Pastor Luke Bryant:It was a heavy, heavy brunch.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It was pretty intensely negative experience, and so that was my baptism, so to speak, into the Church of England, which has not been my experience now at HTB with Glenn Barrett, our friend.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Those guys are amazing.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. So God is moving, but I think what I think what globally what I think God is doing, He's always after the real church, people who are authentic, and that's what God is blessing and growing. You know, institutions can build big buildings, but movements thrive and run on authenticity. You know, last week when I was preaching, when the Pharisees and the Herodians try to trap Jesus, they basically say, we know that you're the real deal. You don't pull any punches.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You are who you are. Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not? Right? So they compliment his authenticity, but then they try to get him on theology. And I think what I love about what you and what you're doing, Jamie in Dublin, Ireland, you know, all the guys, God is moving, and it's exciting and it's beautiful and it's real and it's raw.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And I hope that you don't ever change that because, you know, my wife and I were drawn immediately to you, your story, just, you know, it it invokes a desire to listen and to learn when you have a teacher, you know, that's that's humble, and that was you. And so I appreciate that. Well, thank you.
Pastor Luke Bryant:That's very kind of you to say. Thank you.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Alright. What has been the hardest internal challenge the Church You Planted has faced? Is it that you can't tase or spray pepper spray in the church members' faces?
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. You know what? That would be a helpful tool to have on the front row. The offering was just
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:a Yeah. I am kidding. You guys, if you could see my staff's face right now, they're all like, can't believe you just said, that's called humor.
Pastor Luke Bryant:It was a joke.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. You know? I mean, I I I'd be tempted if there was a verse in Leviticus, thou shalt pepper spray.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. I'm sure that chat GPT can create you a
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:verse that
Pastor Luke Bryant:can make that fit somehow, some way. So what was the most challenging period for the church?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. For you.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think the church planting, full stop, is an incredibly difficult thing. And I would say to anybody, whatever you do, don't do it. Just don't.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Unless you are called Yeah. By God. Yeah. And if you are, it doesn't matter what else you do, you're always gonna feel like you're living outside of the bull's eye of God's will for your life.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So I think that it's challenging on every level. As I look back, I think that there have definitely been three times that I look as being these were the most challenging times, but one way more than other. The others I think the first time was definitely financial money, you know, when the church has no money, when we as a family were broke, you know, unbelievably you know, we quit our jobs. We cashed in our pension. We cashed in our savings.
Pastor Luke Bryant:We lived broke. We lived off that for the best part of a year, and we were trying to be full of faith. And then we got to the end of the year, and we had nothing left. And I was the guy then having to ring the bank and be like, I'm so sorry. I'm gonna lose my house.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And, man, I felt like a failure then, and I think that the church was in a really difficult place too because the church couldn't pay its way, and no one was coming. And you know what? Consistency is probably the biggest strength any church planter can bring to the party, and that's probably what we've had. But financially, there's been seasons where it's been tough. I think there's been other times where ministry has been hard too, just because of things happening, so money and ministry.
Pastor Luke Bryant:But without a doubt, I'm like, you know, in 2016 when my wife was diagnosed with cancer, it came as an absolute bolt out of the blue. And what had actually happened was we just moved into this new theater in town. It was this incredible £21,000,000 build. It was like an absolutely standout venue. We'd managed to contract with them.
Pastor Luke Bryant:We had our first Sunday in there, and at that point church was still small, but it was significantly larger than what most churches would run at in England. So there was probably at the time maybe 300 people coming to church, and it was just one of those moments. You know when you go home and you kind of go and you don't have many of these moments as a church plan, so you go, that was a great day in church.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:That Sunday was that great day. And man, there's been many others where you come home and you're like, that sucks. That was terrible. That's horrible. I quit.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And then you just agreed to give it one more week, and here we still are fifteen years later on. But I remember we did church that Sunday, and man, it felt amazing. But then the very next day, you know, my wife was diagnosed with cancer, and man, like, in those seasons, it makes you question everything. Yeah. Because in those times, when you sit there and your consultant goes, you know, I'm really sorry to have to tell you this, but you have cancer, and you have a battle ahead of you, and we don't know how this is gonna work out.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I mean, bro, the church was growing for the very first time. We got three boys that were trying to keep on the straight and narrow. We've just taken this huge contract with the theater, and now we have to fight cancer. I mean, without a doubt, that season in our life was the most difficult ever. And hey, I'm so sorry.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I get emotional every time I'm
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:talking about it. Apologize. You know?
Pastor Luke Bryant:The reality of it is is, like, that that season was just weighty on every level imaginable, because it tests everything. It tests your ability to get out of bed as a man. Mhmm. It detects your faith and the realness of it with Jesus. Like, are you gonna trust me whilst you're in the trench?
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. In the same way that you did do on the mountaintop twenty four hours earlier on. Mhmm. Like, and then you've gotta kind of figure out how do you how do you lead through trauma? How do you lead through crisis?
Pastor Luke Bryant:So without a doubt, that was difficult because difficult for us personally, but the church was small enough that everything was still centered around my wife and I. We were the planters, so every Sunday still had to happen. And that season was just horrible. Like, when you're living in a hospital for the best part of eighteen months, you're going through chemotherapy, No husband ever wants to hold his wife's hand through those seasons. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Like, it is it is it it's tough. It's it's horrible. And then when you pray prayers as a church planter, and you pray prayers like God, I pray, and I remember Emma and I kneeling down on the floor of our bedroom, and we prayed, God, we pray that somehow, some way that you would use this for your glory when you don't know how it's gonna work out. It's the most difficult prayer that you'll ever pray in your life. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So that's tough. Yeah. Turning up for church on a Sunday and being big faith Yeah. Pastors and big faith men and women and believing God for the best whilst it feels like your home life is falling apart and you're living your life in a hospital, that's tough. So without a shadow of a doubt, I would say that's been the most difficult season, and it's been an incredibly long journey that we've been on.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And I've gotta say this now because sometimes I forget to go there, but my wife is beautiful, fit, strong, and healthy. She's been given the all clear, and she's been dismissed from the hospital now, and we we feel like we're far enough away from that. We've done three years now of not being in a hospital, which is just, it's the best thing ever. You know? It feels like life is feeling normal again for us.
Pastor Luke Bryant:But I say all of that to kind of say life does have the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and I don't think that that's even specifically related to being a pastor. I think that's just what happens as a follower of Jesus. You know, Jesus spoke about, I promise you, you're gonna have troubles in this world. Amen. And I think that that is something that we've just gotta be willing to go through knowing, we gonna go through it full of faith and trusting God for the best even when you've seen the worst?
Pastor Luke Bryant:Or are you gonna allow your faith life to implode? And if we had have allowed that, it makes me wonder would Liverpool One Church even be there today? Yeah. I don't know what would have come of it had we have chosen to quit. And the temptation was massive, you know, but honestly, it's been my greatest joy, and it's easy for me to say this now, but some of the most difficult things we've been through with money, with ministry, with health, I'm grateful to the Lord for those journeys now because I'm telling you what, you can read about who Jesus is on the mountaintops, but you know who he is in a very personal way when you walk through hand in hand with him when your life is abased in a valley.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So I feel like my faith becomes real in the struggle
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And you get strong from the struggle. So that would probably be the most difficult season of our world. And you've maybe heard part of that journey before, but I don't think there's anything like
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:a health struggle like that takes you out and very almost did for us. Yeah. I mean, so and I I want our you know, for those of you who are not watching this on YouTube, you know, they can't see your tears, but I hope they they felt it in the car. You know, the apostle Paul says, you know, I've been beaten. I've been shipwrecked.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I've been left for dead. I've been, you know, betrayed, lied to, starved. And then on top of all that, he says, I have the burden of the church. And so what I what I hope our listeners would do is pause and pray for their pastor, support their pastor. We know they used to call us reverence in society because we were revered.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And now because institutions have abused that, churches have abused that, reverence and priests have abused that, You know, just like in police work, you know, you got a few bad eggs that ruin it for the countless number of officers who lay down their lives to protect us. So it's true in every institution, but in the church especially, we've robbed ourselves of the beauty of a spiritual protector, father, friend, teacher because we read something on the Internet or watched something on YouTube. And those stories are real, but the reason they're stories and they make the news is they're not happening every day. Very true. You know, the Internet very exposed the Internet exposes the extreme and the unheard of.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:That's that's why, you know, the things that rise to the top are the nuttiest story of the day. And so I I hope that, you know, we have people that listen to the debrief that go to other churches. Love your pastor. Pray for your pastor. Support your pastor because, I mean, just just imagine your church coming to church, you know, and there was probably a weekend where they're like, you know, I didn't like Luke's message today.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Right? And maybe they let you know in the lobby. You know? I I mean, you know what I'm saying?
Pastor Luke Bryant:Maybe they started a Facebook campaign about it.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. And what they don't understand is you have three boys at home who are afraid of losing their mom. You're a man of faith. You've trusted God. And and write the gospel messages, God is good, God is loving, and God cares.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Mhmm. And all three of those things feel very threatened by your wife battling terminal cancer. And through that, you lead through suffering. It's why, for Sandals Church, we're in the book of Matthew, it's why all of the gospels spend the most time in the last week of Jesus' life. It's the most it's the it's the hardest thing any human being has ever faced.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And leading through that stress and sweating drops of blood is where we become the pastors that we are and the things. And so I say this to Sandals. I don't know what the story is in The UK, but in 10, America will be 10,000 pastors short. Wow. Because it is high criticism, low pay, high education, high expectation, and nowadays people can critique everything you say, everything you've ever done.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And, you know, I've been at Sandals long enough to watch the church shoppers go to another church and come back. They do like this circuit, and, oh, you're back again. Great. Look forward to the next time I offend you on your I thought that
Pastor Luke Bryant:was only us in Liverpool.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:God, dude. It's it's it's a cancer in the church that people don't understand. There is no perfect pastor. There is no, you know And and and it's funny because Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:What the reason why they do that oftentimes is they will leave one place and go to another because they perceive the place that they're leaving as being some way restrictive or Yeah. Maybe there's a degree of accountability. Well, I call that discipleship. Yeah. And then they move to somewhere else, and the moment that they have the same level of discipleship Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:They wanna go somewhere else. I'm like, that's not how the kingdom of God works. The most powerful thing that you can have happen as a follower of Jesus is commit to taking your mask off, being intimate Mhmm. Relationally with other people who can ask you hard questions so that they get to see what's going on on the inside of you. That makes you way more like Jesus than your Facebook campaign, YouTube videos, or your blog, or your this and that.
Pastor Luke Bryant:But choosing to be committed into a life giving relationship, that really is the secret source to following Jesus.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Amen. Amen. So pray for your pastor, support your pastor, Cause you don't ever know when they're going through Luke's story. I I remember vividly, I didn't battle cancer the way that your wife did.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So I don't wanna make it equal at all, but they thought I had throat cancer. And so I had to have surgery, and I think I was 31 or 32. We had three kids. You called me to start a church, you know, and that's when the internet first started coming out, so I Googled. I didn't know it was Googled then, but I researched, you know, throat cancer in pastors, and of course it spits up every example.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I bet. And I remember the Sunday before I had surgery on a Monday, a family said, We're leaving the church. We're just not sure where you're headed. And I thought, To the hospital tomorrow to have throat surgery. That's where I'm headed.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You self remember that if I could have mace sprayed pepper sprayed, that would have been the moment. You've just earned pepper spray in the face. And this family left our church as I'm standing there thinking
Pastor Luke Bryant:You have no clue.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I have no clue. I don't know if I'm headed anywhere. Don't know if the Lord's taking me home. And so it's just very, very difficult. And, you know, if we're not careful, we'll have no leaders.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. And, you know, I'll I'll tell you this story because when Emma got diagnosed, I remember one of the very first times we'd gone into the hospital and we had a meeting with the consultant, but it was the very first time that we had started to find out exactly what particular type of blood cancer it was that she was dealing with. And I remember that the receptionist at the hospital had managed to get home, and she recognized us from church. She managed to get home to our house with gifts and flowers and cards, and in essence, our children before we'd even been able to. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And sometimes people think that they're being helpful. Yeah. When actually, you kinda gotta go, hang on a second. Yeah. He's a pastor.
Pastor Luke Bryant:But the truth is they're just human beings trying their best Yeah. To follow Jesus. And I think that we talk a lot about how, you know, the pastor should be gracious towards the church. You know, maybe this will be my Facebook campaign if I was on Facebook, which I'm not. But I do think that there's gotta be a grace applied to them.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And I understand that we're gonna be judged to a different level according to that which we teach. I understand all of that, but at the end of the day, they're just human peep they're human beings. And I do think that there are times when people have tried to really be helpful
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Where actually it's been really destructive and painful. And it's like, I'm probably similar to you, Matt. And, you know, your wife is amazing too. You guys have got friends. You've got a circle that are close to you.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And likewise, Emma and I, we have a circle of people that's close to us. And I'm gonna make sure I'm gonna be listening to my circle for the direction for my life. They're the ones that can be praying for my life. So if you're in a church right now, be a blessing to your pastor because you expect him to be a blessing to you. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:But make sure that you're praying for protection for your pastor and for their family because for real, I don't think what they do, I don't think what you do is easy by any stretch of the imagination, but you're either gonna be a help to them or a hindrance to them. And sometimes when you think that you're being helpful Yeah. Man, you're being a hindrance.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. And I think it's you have to manage the privacy of your pastor carefully. So oftentimes pastors will have celebrity attention, but not celebrity salary. Let me divide that. Celebrities in our culture, right, they get all the attention, but they also have a ranch in Wyoming that's a compound that they fly to, and they only have to fly in and make an appearance at the movie thing to do a podcast or whatever, but they're not doing life day to day with people.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Pastors have the attention of a local celebrity, but not the income to create the privacy. And so that parishioner wanting to be loving informed your kids that something terrible was wrong with their mother before you had an opportunity to sit down and tell them. And so we just have to be careful that we that we we honor that. And I remember years ago, we took the kids on a road trip, and we drove far away. You know, America's big, thousands of miles away.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And I asked the kids, what was the best part of our trip? And you know what they all said? No. Tell me. Not being interrupted at dinner.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Right. Okay. Nobody came up to you, dad, and wanted your attention.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Right. Okay.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And that that broke my heart. Wow. You know? And and for anybody who wants to say hi, I'm not saying never say hi, but read read the room. I get it.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Is this is this the moment? Family time. Yeah. Is this my family time, or or what is that? Because every sentence begins with I hate to bother you, but
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. Yeah. And so so And the book undoes everything that you've just said.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so pray about it. I mean, because sometimes it's a Holy Spirit moment, right? And the Holy Spirit is saying, you know, like like, if you just found out you have cancer and you need prayer, man, that's different than you just want to say hi. You just want to know me to know your name. I mean, you know, that's a that's a self centered request.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:But if it is a an emergency, man, that's fine. And so we need to be careful that we manage that because it's a difficult it's a difficult thing to manage. Like when I go out with my kids, I always wonder, am I running this moment for them? Because I'm a distraction. See, people think attention is great, not with everyday life.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Know, you and I were at coffee today and, you know, he bought our coffee, but I met him for the first time. I didn't know. Yeah. And so I only picked up on it when he said pastor. Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:That that was it. And and that was wonderful. Thank you for my coffee. He
Pastor Luke Bryant:was a great guy. Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:He was a great guy. But but but I don't know when that is or where that is, and so my kids have had to read that. So to make sure that you you you give families, you know, appropriate space to be families. Yeah. And so that was great, man.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You are so good. Okay. Here we go. We're going to switch. What rhythms or habits help you stay spiritually, emotionally, and mentally grounded, immense, amidst.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I can't even pronounce English words. I'm intimidated by an Englishman. Alright. Mentally grounded amidst, it's that silent d there, the demand of leadership. How do you the English say amidst.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Do you pronounce the d? No. Amidst? Amidst. Amidst.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I think
Pastor Luke Bryant:what's the best way for me to answer this? You know what? Well, I'll tell you one thing funny, actually. I feel like I've not been doing this particularly well. Okay.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So to try and combat this and to try and create some really intentional switch off time, I've just started to play golf. Okay. And I'm terrible. Yes. I am five weeks in, horrible.
Pastor Luke Bryant:But now I'm finding that golf is increasing my stress levels more than anything else.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:That's what it does to me. I I can't play. I'm too competitive.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So the one thing that I'd created to kind of, you know
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Give me some silent time and just kind of Yeah. Go and chill is now becoming the biggest source of stress. And actually, I've spent way too much money on it. I haven't even told Emma yet. So so I'm trying to play golf as well.
Pastor Luke Bryant:But but this is one of the things. I am not you know, like some people are so super regulated, and they're like this time between this time and every single day, I am not quite like that. I'm a little bit more flowy with it, but I'm flowy with it in the sense that when you read the Gospels, Jesus did not often do miracles. Yeah. He did do them.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. But he didn't do them often. The only thing that we're told in the text that Jesus did often was withdraw to a place of solitude to spend time with the father. So I think that what I am trying to learn the art of is making sure that every day there is a moment where I withdraw to spend time with the father, and I find that I'm a better person when I've done that. Yeah.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I know on my own internal clocks and radars, if I'm a little bit off, a little bit short, you know, a little bit, I don't know, aggressive with a staff member or whatever, I know it's rooted in, hey, like, how is your removing yourself to a place of solitude time? How's that working out for you? Because when that is low, I'm typically not great. But when that is good, everything else seems to flow better. So I do think that we've gotten into a habit of taking a Monday off where we try our very best to kind of not connect with the church world.
Pastor Luke Bryant:It's not easy though, and you'll get it. It's not always the easiest of things. And then just trying to have a daily rhythm and habit of trying to put Jesus first. And if I can't do it first thing in the morning, I'm not a morning guy. But to have a window every single day.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I guess as well, though, it doesn't work for everybody. So I'm so jealous of my wife's devotional life. Yeah. I look at that and I'm like, man, I I that's why she's an amazing preacher. Her devotional life is better than anybody that I know.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I'll give you three points and tell you a stupid joke and we'll have a great time together. But she will take you deep in the word. And I've always been like, why can't I develop a devotional life that's multiple hours every single day and it's just not my wiring? And I kind of feel like me, I'm a mover. So I'm a prayer when I'm walking or driving.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I'm not a, like sit down at my desk and open up a Bible kind of guy. I'm a mover. So so long as I have time to move and kind of invite the Holy Spirit every single day, I feel like I'm in a good place. But for me, the word has to come first, prayer second, and then I'm like, man, I create a time of moment to worship. If I can do that, I feel like I'm in a good place.
Pastor Luke Bryant:How do you do it? What's your normal rhythm?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. So I would say I'm not a rhythm person either, but I've had to become very regimented in order to maintain. So for me, if I don't read my Bible first thing in the morning, I skip my Bible reading. Okay? So I to do it in the morning.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So my personality is like, I don't even come into my office. You just saw my office to do my sermon. I would rather talk to all the staff. Right. So so these beautiful people in this room are a distraction from my my study.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So I actually do my sermon at home alone.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Okay.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Because I'm so social. God God has created me as a social being, and so I will put every relationship above and before my relationship with him. And so I've had to Which
Pastor Luke Bryant:is an incredibly authentic and honest thing for you to tell your listeners to. Yeah. You know, because as a pastor, you're not supposed to disclose that. You're supposed to tell everybody how nailed down you've got it.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:No. No. No. No. So I so I have to I I literally get my wife laughs at me because I do the same thing every day.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:My schedules are the same. I get up. I have coffee with her. I read my Bible. I go to the gym.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I go to work.
Pastor Luke Bryant:K.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So it's it's the same thing every day. I do disrupt that to surf. So if the surf is up,
Pastor Luke Bryant:I I You said nobody ever in Liverpool, by the way.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Well, the water's cold where you are. I one of the things, especially as you age, I think when you're young, you prioritize joy over responsibility. I think as you age, you prioritize responsibility over joy, and neither person is a healthy person. So a young person that's always pursuing, pursuing pleasure and joy is a dysfunctional human being. You know, and so you're a mess.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:If you just are pursuing the things that bring you joy over the things that give you responsibility. But as we age, I think we eliminate joy in the name of responsibility, but then I'm not a good husband. I'm not a good pastor. I'm not a good, you know, anything because I have to have that outlet to experience joy. And so surfing is one of those things.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Snowboarding is one of those things where I just, okay, I'm up here in the mountains. I'm feeling a bit of exhilaration. And so, you know, and as I'm aging, right, I have to I have to throttle that back a bit because I can't take a fall the way that I used to.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So You're not as as elastic as you used to be, mate?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:No, man. When you in your fifties, when you fall, you feel it in every bone. You break stuff. Yeah. Dude.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So so I would say for me my dad says it this way. I think I'm I'm my mom was like your wife growing up. So every single morning, my memory as a kid is waking up, going into the kitchen, and my mom would be at the table with her Bible open writing in her journal.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Right. Right.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And I mean, so so I got that from her. My personality is in many ways more like my dad, but my dad would say this, that structure binds anxiety, and I've always been an anxious person. Okay. That's very good. So structure, no knowing what I have to do tomorrow That's very good.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Decreases my anxiety. And so, so I'm a rhythms guy. I actually struggle on the weekends. Like, I'm off this weekend. We heard Fredo preach.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I actually struggle. Like, what what am I gonna do with my weekend? You know, what do I do when I'm not sermon prepping? And so I have to be careful when I'm outside of that. But but I would say I am not the person I need to be if I haven't heard from God.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so I don't know about you, but some pastors, their sermon time is their quiet time. Those are separate things for me. Yeah. I I I don't know what you do.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I feel like I've been in seasons Yeah. Where I have fallen into my quiet time being sermon prep. Yeah. But what I found is that that is not conducive to building a relationship with the Lord. It will give you content for your message, but it doesn't take you closer to Jesus.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And I think that is a mistake. When you interlace those two things together, you end up missing out on the very reason why you're called to follow Christ. It's a dangerous place for any pastor if the only time you open up the word of God is because you need three points for your message on Sunday, and you're like, God, speak to me through this word because I've gotta speak to these people this weekend. I don't think that that's a healthy thing. I too have to have them completely separate.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Otherwise, I know that my natural trajectory would take me to a place where I'm going, okay, I'm speaking on Sunday. You better speak to me, Lord. I need this now. I feel the pressure. It's coming.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So until I get right with Jesus and get that relationship healthy and flowing, I'm good for nothing.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Amen. Yeah. I think people that only go to church when they need something from God and a pastor that only goes the word of God when he needs a message from God is a dangerous church. Dangerous.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And and I think that we have a lot of people that live their lives that way. Alright. Last question. What would you like the church planting movement to look like in Europe in the next ten to fifteen years?
Pastor Luke Bryant:Oh, wow. You know, it's it's funny when you think of, like, Europe and The United Kingdom, when you think of its religious heritage and, like, take England, for example, you know, we are now considered to be a very post Christian nation, but we were once a very Christian nation. Our laws, our societal values have all been built upon scripture. And where I look at where the natural trajectory of where we're heading now, unless we do something about this, we're gonna end up in a not great place, you know, because we're now generations removed of people. We have people for real who will come to church, and this happened just this Christmas gone, and they will say things like, so hey, this Mary and Joseph story, this is a Bible thing, is it?
Pastor Luke Bryant:And we're like, yes. This is a bible thing. This is centric to our faith, and people are just not aware anymore because we've removed it from our schools. There's no more Christian assemblies where we're saying the Lord's prayer. It's been removed from many places.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So it means that now there are multiple generations that have just not had the same level of exposure to church that maybe my parents had when they were growing up. So it makes me very passionate to make sure that we don't slip too far. In fact, it puts a fire in my belly to say that it really is the local church that's gonna be the hope of the world, so therefore we've got to plant some more churches. You know, with regards to church planted in Europe, I don't know exactly what it's like here for you guys, but we in England, I can speak for, but I think that Europe would be able to say the same. We've really experienced some incredible growth in this last sort of two years.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. There are a lot of people I don't know. Are you guys familiar with the the term the quiet revival?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I am, but our our listeners are not. So go ahead.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Okay. So basically, it it's come out of, a school of four because a lot of the metrics now in the data is showing that church attendance in the sub 25 category is now on the rise. Now when you really interrogate the data, it's not solely strictly relating to the Christian church because it the the poll actually covered a wide range of faiths. But in the main on top of that statistical data, we are now able to say from looking back over the last twenty four months, a lot of churches in certain church spaces have seen some really great growth. Like for example, just at the start of this year, so we're now what, the March, we at Liverpool One Church, we've had 49 people come to faith.
Pastor Luke Bryant:That's amazing. This is the start of this year. We've not experienced that level of salvation before. It even feels quite different to us. In the last twelve months, we've grown by 23%.
Pastor Luke Bryant:We've not had that growth level before. So it feels like this is a really good thing that the Lord is doing, but it's not just us that's experiencing it. This is being felt by the church wide across The UK and Europe. And the idea is really that there is this new sense of longing and wanting of people to pursue real faith. Because for a long time, again, I'm not too sure how much this relates to The United States, but a lot of people have been told, hey, just you do you, hon.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. You pursue your faith, your truth, whatever you think is right. And now people are saying, well, that's not working out for us
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:because Yeah. People are looking
Pastor Luke Bryant:the place where they're leaning into for the first time ever is the church, because they're wanting not something which is easy, they're wanting something that is real. And there is a really deep rooted sense of a pursuit of truth, and it's being termed the quiet revival. So I think that in conjunction with what we've started to do with ARC, the Association of Related Churches, we in The UK planted in Europe, sorry, last year planted five churches. There are six churches that are gonna be planted this year at least, but we have a further 19 churches that are in the pipeline to be planted, and we we're only just getting started. Mhmm.
Pastor Luke Bryant:So it is incredibly exciting. So there is a part of me that wonders, and I'm not gonna say this is my faith goal, but maybe it is my faith goal. Like, for real, there's a thousand cities in Europe that all have a population size of 100,000 or more. I would love to put a church in every city in Europe. I think that that's what the future landscape of church planting can look like.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And I do wonder if we don't do it, who's going to?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Amen.
Pastor Luke Bryant:Now is the time, because if we don't move now, clearly the spirit of God is doing something new. I've I've been in church world almost my entire life, Matt. Yeah. And I've been a church plant for fifteen years. I've never seen what is happening now.
Pastor Luke Bryant:We baptized nearly 200 people last year. We've not seen this before. So now we are. It just makes me so encouraged because we have a new breed of young church planting couples throwing their hand up in the air saying, we're willing to risk it all. We're willing to bet the farm, sell everything that we've got to be a part of a church planting movement, so that gives me great hope that this is what we could do.
Pastor Luke Bryant:I mean, wouldn't it be a great story? I don't know. Maybe in ten years time, we'll come back and do another episode Yeah. Of the Debrief Podcast. Wouldn't it be amazing if we planted a thousand churches around Europe?
Pastor Luke Bryant:Yeah. I mean, is that achievable? Probably in our own strength, absolutely not. We'd be crazy to think that. But I tell you what, if God breathes his life and energy and we're in full faith that it can be done, why not?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Let's go change the landscape in Man, I love that. I love that. So just so our listeners know, we're a part of what you're doing. We were able to help support those five churches that started last year. We look forward to how many are we gonna start this year?
Pastor Luke Bryant:We're definitely we've got six that have got start dates, and there's a further 19 in the pipeline. And your imports and willingness to sow financial seeds have been incredibly invaluable. So even just on behalf of the churches that are still yet to plant, I wanna say thank you to you, Sandals Church, for your willingness to love that part of the world. And it means so much. It really does.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And you can count on us. We'll be there again in June to support whatever churches you guys deem, and that's because Tammy and I know what it's like to start with nothing and to trust God with everything. And so for all of our listeners, you know, sometimes it can feel like they talk a lot about money in church, and I get that. But the reason we have to talk about money in church is because that's the God that most people worship. They come to church and give God lip service, but the truth is what drives them, what motivates them, what gets them up in the morning is their money.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so this money that, you know, you guys give, we take a portion of that and, we, we give it to, arch churches in Europe. We trust them. Our job is to give it. Your guys' job is to steward it, and that's how we run our church here, and that's what we want to do for you guys. But I would just say that you know you're maturing as a Christian when you develop a mission mindset, and there's a lot of churches with missions.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:We want to be a church on mission. So good. Where everybody is saying, It's not just about me and my local church, but it's about the capital C Church and what God is doing around the world. And here's the thing, none of us would be Christians today unless there were Christians in Europe. They came here, revival came from Europe to us.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Americans' Christian heritage is because of a European Christian heritage, and so it's just so important for us to give back because Europe has so blessed us, and they need a great movement. And so let me encourage you guys, continue to give at Sandals Church and just know we're gonna support Arc. I look forward to Tammy and I being there in June at your church,
Pastor Luke Bryant:the church I that you am pumped. Yeah. So that church that was in a living room a few years ago is now gonna host the first ARC Europe conference, and I'm truly I'm delighted that you guys are gonna be there. Yes. Truly delighted that you guys are gonna be able to participate in that conference.
Pastor Luke Bryant:And, man, we we cannot wait to have you.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And I'm gonna I'm trying to bring I'm trying to recruit some heavy hitter guys that can hopefully give some more money to what you guys are doing because it's so important. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening. If you like this podcast, you can show your support by going to sandalschurch.com/support. That's kind of what I was just talking about. And if you'd like to submit a question, go to sandalschurch.com, the debrief.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:The show is only as good as the questions that you guys ask. And let me just say this, your guys' questions deepen my faith, help me in my study, because oftentimes there are things I've never even thought of that you've seen in the scriptures, and it helps keep my faith fresh, and I love to learn. So I look forward to seeing you guys next time on The Debrief, and I love you all. Thanks for listening.
Celeste Contreras:Thank you for listening. We hope this conversation helped you grow in your faith. If you've enjoyed today's episode, make sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss what's next. You can also stay connected by following us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for behind the scenes clips, highlights, and more ways to engage with the community. We'll see you next time right here on the Debrief Podcast with Matthew Stephen Brown.