Troy Marshall Kennedy Podcast

Summary

In this episode, Troy Kennedy introduces his book 'Hero Worship' and explains his background as a worship leader. He shares how his journey led him to discover the need for a deeper relationship with God and a desire to become more like Jesus. Troy outlines the 12-week journey of the book, which focuses on practicing the rhythms of Jesus' life. He encourages readers to approach the book with fresh eyes and an open heart, ready to be transformed by the teachings and practices.

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.
Amazon Link
Christianbook.com

Takeaways

Hero Worship is a 12-week journey to become more like Jesus.
The book focuses on practicing the rhythms of Jesus' life.
Readers are encouraged to approach the book with fresh eyes and an open heart.
Engaging with the practices can lead to a deeper relationship with God and transformation.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background
02:25 Unexpected Change in Ministry
04:23 Discovering the Need for a Deeper Relationship with God
06:09 Becoming Like Jesus through Hero Worship
09:07 Practicing the Rhythms of Jesus' Life
12:14 Challenging Basic Practices
15:02 Engaging with the Book and Practices

Creators & Guests

Host
Troy Kennedy
Husband, Dad, Pastor. A disciple of Jesus. Author of new book "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus." https://t.co/Zgr4SrEOab

What is Troy Marshall Kennedy Podcast?

Jesus always has more life for you than you have known. How do we follow him and discover what it is to flourish and thrive in today's complex, challenging world? How do we have the intimate relationship with God our hearts long for? Troy Marshall Kennedy responds to these all-important questions as a veteran pastor, teacher, and author. Join us as we explore rhythms of life and practice to help us love Jesus, become like Jesus, and share Jesus in our everyday lives. Season one episodes will accompany Troy's new book, "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus."

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.

Well, welcome everybody. My name is Troy Kennedy and this is Hero Worship. And for the next 12 episodes, we're going to be walking you through the 12 chapters of my new book, Hero Worship, a 12 week journey to become more like Jesus. And I give you a little bit of a framework for how the book works, um, how, where it came from, who I am, and this will all be material that is meant to augment your experience with the book.

As a transformational journey to become more like our savior. So, um, starting off with this is who am I? Maybe you're listening to this. Somebody recommended it to you. Maybe a friend gifted you the book and, uh, you know, you never heard from me before because I'm a first time author. Well, I wasn't intending to be an author.

Truth be told, a little bit of background on me is, uh, I've spent most of my life as a professional musician and a worship leader. I, I worked in a number of different churches in Southern California. And 17 years ago, God called, uh, my wife and I with our brand new little baby toddler boys to move to Kansas City to a wonderful church out here in the Western side of Kansas City.

And, uh, our boys don't really have much. Memory at all of Southern California other than vacations to go and visit grandma and I my whole world was being a worship pastor I had this wonderful background this wonderful experience of being kind of a Forrest Gump of worship pastors where I Spent time with the likes of people like Tommy Walker and Rick Muchow and Stan Endicott and I sang in wonderful events with the promise keepers and got to do lots of different recordings and Um was on staff at saddleback church with rick warren for a while and really had an amazing time got to be kind of uh mentored by tommy walker, uh, who's a really well known worship guy in in the los angeles area and so Uh, this was my whole life.

All I ever wanted to do was be a singer songwriter and then be a worship pastor passionate about the local church Moved out here to Kansas City 17 years ago and, uh, was continuing along that trajectory. Really had a wonderful time and basically I spent 32 years of my 34 years in ministry as a worship pastor.

And I had no intention of writing a book. I wrote a lot of songs. I recorded, uh, you know, a few CDs and did some different things. But God brought me here and really changed the trajectory. of my ministry. And I didn't know it was coming. I didn't, wasn't anticipating it. And I'm so grateful that he did. So a little briefly about the book.

So in about 2015, we did a series here at my church on John chapter 15. And fundamentally it says, Jesus is saying, I am the vine and you are the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing. If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit. And this just, this idea had resonated with me so powerfully because I, up until then, I, you know, had been up to my eyeballs in Christian stuff since I was like 17 years old.

I sang in Christian groups and toured and went to Christian colleges and then Christian university, and then got out, had a Christian band and worked in churches. And I just, you know, my whole life was like in this. Kind of Christian universe of, of, uh, doing Christian stuff. And then God opened up my eyes.

That, I, I, I came to the point where I realized there has to be more to my walk with God, to my relationship with God, than all the Christian stuff I had been doing. And what I really discovered was, I was living a life that was kind of legalistic, that I was trying to be a good boy, and I was trying to, by the power of my will, bear the good fruit that you see talked about in scripture.

And so when I hit this John 15 passage, where Jesus is saying, no, no, no, you must remain in me, you must abide in me, in order to bear real fruit, fruit that lasts, fruit that's sustainable, fruit that is going to mark you as one of my disciples. And it's not that I hadn't seen that before in scripture, but it just hadn't become as real to me in that moment.

And at that point I just decided, I'm tired of trying to be a good boy. I've been trying so hard, and I don't want to try so hard anymore. I want to intuitively become the kind of person that does what love requires. And so I began this journey to seek Jesus and to, to say, well, what, what, what is my part in this?

How do I participate in the work of the Holy Spirit? How do I say, here I am, I'm available to you. I want to be like Jesus and I want to get close to Jesus. I want to understand the fellowship of the Holy Spirit in my everyday practical coming and going living life. And. So this began this journey of hero worship and the idea of hero worship is like, look, we become like the things we worship, whatever we turn our souls, we turn our hearts towards is the thing that we tend to emulate.

We are transformed by that admiration, by that thing that we honor, by that person that we inevitably emulate. You know, in the book, I talk a bit about professional athletes. You could say Michael Jordan or. These days, if you're a Kansas City Cheese fan, you know, you, you love our wonderful quarterback. Um, and so you kind of learn to throw with a sidearm and you learn to, to stick your tongue out, you know, as you're running down the field and, uh, you want to wear the same shoes that he wears and you want to wear the, the brand of clothing, all of these things.

We, we want to be like these people we admire. Well, who is more admirable than Jesus? Patrick Mahomes is a wonderful guy. He's a wonderful quarterback. He seems to be a really authentic, really authentically honest, humble, nice guy. But who is more admirable than Jesus, who starts a movement 2, 000 years ago, and we're talking about him today.

He's in the backwoods of the Roman Empire. He's of a family that has no status. He's in, he's at a place called Nazareth, then he goes to Bethlehem, and he's born in, you know, in the lowest possible circumstances. And spends the first 30 or so years of his life working as a builder, as a tecton. And then he opens up this public ministry.

And he invites all these guys, these 12 disciples to come close to him, people who they had no status, they had no power, they had no authority, most of them were basically, definitely not 4. 0 students, if they had been really great students of the Torah, of Scripture, they would have been tutored under some other rabbi, but these were the guys that didn't make the cut, these were the guys who, they didn't have the right stuff, To become a religious, educated, academic kind of a person in that culture.

Jesus chooses what appears to be the least likely people. A tax collector, a zealot who might have been more or less a terrorist. He, he chooses fishermen, he chooses everyday people like you and I. To do something extraordinary, and he invites us into that life as we come close to him, as we get to know him.

And so for me, it's like, I want to quit trying to be a good boy. I want to just be like Jesus. I want to come close to him, and I want him to change me from the inside out. Every day I want him to rewire me. I want to bear the fruit that comes from a relationship with him instead of trying to bear down and will it.

So it became this journey of hero worship and I wasn't trying to write a book. I was writing something for the small group of young adults that have been meeting in my home for quite a few years. And I thought, well, maybe we can, we can look at the scriptures. And we could say, what are the things that Jesus does in the basic rhythms of his life on earth here that we can readily emulate?

We're probably not going to jump in the water and raise somebody from the dead or heal a blind man, but, but what did Jesus do? And as you look through the scope of the Gospels, you see this wonderful rhythm, this coming and going kind of rhythm that Jesus has in the mundane workaday life. of people in Palestine in the first century.

How does Jesus, being who he is, being the example of the ultimate flourishing, optimized human being who is in deep fellowship with his heavenly father, how does he handle the day to day? And how can we follow him in those things? And so in the book, we have 11 practices, and we call them practices because what we're learning to do is to practice Being like Jesus in the mundane so that perhaps we can respond like Jesus in the challenges of our everyday lives.

We want to be changed from the inside out to intuitively do what love requires. And so... I call it a 12 week journey. I was writing more or less a devotional for our little, our little group in our home. And then it kind of became a little bit more and a little bit more. And, and it seemed to be really helpful for people who did it.

And I ran a couple other groups of people through it from our church here. And, uh, everybody said, yeah, you know what? This is moving the needle for me. I'm getting closer to God. I'm understanding more what it is to center my heart and my life on the person of Jesus. And really understand what it is. to live a life in loving worship and admiration of him.

I spent almost all of my career as a worship pastor, this, and having this idea that we want to turn our hearts, our minds, our emotions, our souls, our wills, our bodies. In the direction of the Savior, because there's nothing more healthy and nothing more calibrating in your life than to declare the gospel of Jesus Christ through music, because it engages you in your emotions, in your, in your thoughts, in your will, in your soul, it engages you physically, it is this holistic way of turning your life in the direction of the Savior to recognize one more time that He is God and you are not, and that is a very good thing.

And hero worship as a, as a book is an extension of that heart. How do we take the whole of our lives or the way we think that is transformed, right? By the renewing of our minds as we focus our hearts and our lives on Jesus, the author and perfecter, the pioneer, the completer of our faith as Christ followers.

So Thank you. Amen. I came up with this idea that we walk through these things that we can emulate Jesus in and spend a week focusing on him, asking questions about the scriptures that describe a particular practice. What is it for us to practice these things as a way of getting closer to him and becoming more like him?

So it's 12 weeks of that kind of journey. And if you have a heart to want to get closer to the Savior, if you have a heart to see your mind and your, your emotions and your will and all of these things recalibrated in the direction of the one who loves you the most and knows you the best. Accepts you the way you are and loves you enough not to leave you the way you are, then I would invite you to go on this journey of hero worship.

Now, some of you who've been walking with Jesus for a while, you might say this kind of sounds like Christianity 101 because some of the chapters of the book are things like Jesus prayed, Jesus knew scripture, Jesus fasted, Jesus rested, things like that. And you're getting all that. That kind of sounds.

Pretty basic and I've been walking with God for a long time and I, you know, relatively mature and I know the scriptures really well. I just would want to challenge you to lean in as if it's the first time you've seen that thought, you've seen that idea. And let the Spirit of God as you make yourself available to Jesus in this journey.

To transform you, to turn that truth that you already know like a gem. Let it rotate in a way that the light refracts through it. You see colors, you see angles, you see the sparkle of that truth in a way that you've never seen before. And that you see it, not as a set of propositions that you understand, that you know, but as a way of knowing the heart of the Savior.

As a way of knowing Jesus desire for you to flourish in imitation of Him. So dig into these things. Some of these practices will be really intuitive for some of you, some of them, they're going to be really difficult. My wife automatically does some things just without even thinking that are very, very Jesus like.

And other things are not as natural for her as they are for me and vice versa. So you're going to find that some of these, uh, these 11 different practices that you walk through will be really intuitive and easy and others are going to challenge the heck out of you, but not to find a point on it. So I challenge you to dig in, to enjoy the journey.

And the whole time, maybe do this with your spouse, do it with your family, do it with your small group, do it with some friends, or do it by yourself. And read in the first week, read the introduction of the book, which gives you the kind of the theological framework for the whole thing. And then in the first, uh, or in the second week, after you read that introduction then, the idea is to read The next chapter, read the actual chapter on the first day and then do the practices for the following six days.

If you get hung up, if you get stuck, if you don't have time, don't worry about it. This isn't, um, we're not scoring any points. It's not a legalism. It's meant to be a helpful framework for you to get close to the Savior, for you to know the presence of Jesus, which is the presence of the Holy Spirit in you as someone.

who has received that gift from God. So read the first chapter on the first day, do the practices in the next six days, and then do the, do the same thing for the remainder of the weeks. And I will have an episode of this podcast to sort of augment that experience for you for every one of those weeks. So this next week will be Jesus prayed, obviously Jesus prayed, Jesus walked in fellowship with his father, but how do we follow him and emulate him specifically in that?

📍 And how do we open up that aperture in ways that we've maybe perhaps never thought of? So, read the practices, jump right in. If some of you, um, prefer your books digitally, you can get this book now on Amazon, uh, in a Kindle format. Um, you can also get the hard copy at christianbook. com and Amazon is a hard copy if you like.

I'm actually going to be recording the audio book. Of hero worship this summer. This is I'm recording this right now. However you engage with it, however you enjoy it, I just ask that you prayerfully apply yourself.

You get as much out of it as you put in. Apply yourself to these practices and you just watch how Jesus moves in your heart and in your life. God bless you, and I'll talk to you next time in Hero Worship.