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Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
The Risk of Dreaming with Brayden Lans
00:00
Hi guys, welcome to another episode of the podcast. My name's Jesse French and excited to be here with my co-host, who is? Chris Bruno, welcome back you guys. Yes, indeed. Hey, today we get to chat with our friend, Brayden Lans. Some of you guys might remember we chatted with Brayden earlier, a few episodes back, and excited to have him with us again today. So Brayden, thanks for taking some time. Yes, absolutely. Number two, conversation number two.
00:29
Here we go. Let's do this. Double header. Well, Brandon, kind of remind us just a little bit of who you are for many people that are tuning in for the first time. Give us a little sense of yeah, who you are and what your life holds right now at this point in your life. Yeah. Thanks again for having me. So I am a Colorado native. I was born in Denver, grew up in Estes Park and my family moved to Fort Collins in 2005. So I've called Fort Collins home since then.
00:56
and I grew up in a very Christian family. I wouldn't say sheltered, but just very, very Christian. And I've got two boys of my own, Avi is four, Benji is three, and I've been married to my wife Abbey for just over seven years now. So I got a lot of things going on around. I've run a coffee business and I'm the director of Half Step Ministries, which is an outreach ministry to high school students. I also build cabinets sometimes. I didn't even mention that.
01:26
What? Oh my gosh. No big deal. Yeah, I know. It's, sometimes it's like, why, how did I, how did I get here? I look back and think, how am I doing all this? I actually don't know. But I'm here. So it's working so well. Yeah. We are glad you are here. And yeah, the sprinkling. I also make cabinets that again, the depth and range of who you are just grows. So did not know. Yes. I thought you just mess with cows all the time. That's just.
01:55
You know, occasionally, the dabbing. Well, Brendan, I want to, I want to ask you about your, as you said, you have a lot of things on your plate and specifically as you think about half step ministries and the work that you and your wife have put in and the creation of that and the pursuit of that. I want to ask you about that and maybe just start with kind of a blunt question. Do you feel like that is a dream?
02:20
that you guys have been pursuing, like would you use that language to describe that space in your life? Yeah, absolutely. I think it was, I'd also use the word calling too, you know? It really feels like it's something that both my wife and I were made to do almost, just in the ways that we engage with students. And it started, you know, I think when you come to know yourself and you start to realize who you are and.
02:47
The things that feel intrinsic to you that aren't just like added onto your life, but like this feels like deep down near my core of who I am. And the dream started when I received it and we receive what we're now giving. And it kind of unlocked us. I didn't even know that this was possible. You know, I didn't even know that it was possible to engage students, specifically coming from the very Christian context that I come from, engaging students in this way.
03:13
Like it was exciting. It was so exciting to experience it. And it's like, well, I want to do that. Like I have a dream and to do it with my wife too, also super cool to be able to like follow this dream together. It's just awesome. So yes, I would absolutely use the word dream and calling for that. Yeah. I love that. So there's not like maybe a definitive moment or maybe there is, but like when do you think the dream started? Like the genesis of that, like how many years into the process are you guys? Yes. So
03:41
I guess my first exposure with a ministry like the one that we're doing now was in 2015. So almost 10 years ago was when this dream kind of caught. And it was in 2016 when we started the ministry here in Fort Collins. So the seedbed was Eastern Europe. We worked with a mission organization called Josiah Venture.
04:04
and they have a program called Fusion that's in about a dozen countries in Eastern Europe. And it's just basically, it's a music outreach program. It uses music to engage high school students and connect them to good community. And so experiencing that for the first time, especially in like a outreach kind of context, you know, I'd always separated out like there's the Christian spaces and then there's the non-Christian spaces and there's not really much in between. And so...
04:29
If you're going to be studying the Bible and worshipping and receiving a message, you're distinctly in the Christian space. And then if you're going to the lost, big air quotes, you're in the distinctly non-Christian space. And so it was the first time I felt like those two are really molded together in like not a weird way, you know, not like in a manipulative, like, hey, I'm just going to go share this five-minute gospel tract with you and try to force you into a decision or things like that. That's where I had some of those experiences too.
04:57
but it just, it opened up a new, I guess, capacity or understanding of what it would look like to engage in Christian ministry. Because I actually thought I was voted most likely to be a missionary in my senior year of high school. Okay, yes. And when I got voted, I like did the biggest eye roll. I'm like, oh my gosh, they think I'm a good Christian. I don't know, I was being all angsty because I went to a Christian high school and I think I was done with the whole, I've been in Christian spaces all of my life, you know? I don't want to continue doing that. So I had a really negative context for
05:27
the word missionary or ministry. And so it wasn't until that was reframed for me that I felt like, oh, I actually feel like I would really love to do this. And the same with my wife. So I wanna ask you to, so you're like nine years into the process, into this story of pursuing this work. Has it felt, I have a guess to this answer, but.
05:50
I would imagine there has been a sense of risk and vulnerability in the midst of these past few years. Like, would you agree with that? Oh, yes. Oh my gosh. The risk, it. Yeah, say some more about it. And I don't want you to, you know, just open up your heart for the masses, but yeah, like that risk and that vulnerability, I feel like is a piece of dream, of our dreams. And so let's speak to that a little bit. Yeah, for sure.
06:15
It kind of actually ties into a lot of what I think was terrifying or scary for me jumping into fatherhood for the first time was, I don't know. I know how to do maybe this thing. We'd experienced the program. So my wife and I, we learned how to do the program of half-step ministries. It's called Fusion in Slovakia and that's where we did it. So we learned the ins and outs of how to run the program, but to create or to have the structure that supports a program or to have any kind of leadership within that space.
06:45
brand new. I have no idea what I'm doing. I got my degree in psychology. I had no idea how to run a ministry or anything like that. But as we stepped into it in 2016, it was basically like a, hey, why don't we just try and see what happens? And when it started to gain some traction, that was when I feel like it started to become vulnerable because it started to work and that meant we had to have responsibility for it.
07:10
My music professor in college, I think was one of my music professors. He was very, very insightful in one of our kind of classes. You know, it was, it was a voice lesson class. And he looked at me and says, Brayden, I think, I think I know what's going on. Like why you're not making progress in these things. He said, I think you're scared of responsibility. And I actually started crying immediately. He was a very wise man, but I was like, he's right. I'm scared of responsibility or I'm scared of success.
07:37
Because if I'm successful in something, I have to be responsible for it. And that started to come up with the ministry. You know, our church started to ask us like, okay, what are your plans? How are you going to grow this? You know, how are you going to fund it? How are you going to ask all these questions? I have no idea what the answer is. So to launch it, to go beyond its immediate kind of context, we had to make some bigger changes of actually establishing it as like a legit ministry, because we were just running it as volunteers, you know.
08:04
Abby, my wife, was a CNA and I was working at the Matthews House. Both of us had the Matthews House as an organization that works with youth and families here in Northern Colorado. So I worked a lot with the foster care system. We had lots of time on our hands just to plan and iterate and try things and whatnot. No kids at that point either. When it became time to, we got to take the next step. This is growing. We have to either come under another organization or come under the church or...
08:31
I felt like we kept getting pushed into this space where now the responsibility has got to be on me and on Abby to establish this organization. I searched for so long. In 2018, we had felt like, okay, we got to grow it. God wants us to grow this ministry, more churches to be involved and had some hard conversations with some leaders of ours that were asking questions that I had no idea the answer to and kind of assuming like...
08:57
I think sometimes I can present like I know a lot more than I do. I did a lot of theater and so I feel like I'm good at like, I can fake it till I make it. Yeah. But then when the rubber started me in the road and asking like, how are you going to fund this? And the answer is, I don't know. I had to start coming up with how are we going to do this? And I did not want to have to have the responsibility of running an organization.
09:26
Because I was not trained, neither was my wife, Abby. This is not what exactly we had thought we were getting into when we started, but we knew that we wanted to see youth reached for Jesus in this way. That was the core. That was like, this is where we want to see the church grown, this is where we want to see youth reached, is by engaging them in this way. Now how do we just create the structure that surrounds that? I love that, the idea of risk. I don't love risk, I love the idea of risk.
09:55
And what it requires of us as men. And I want to camp for just a minute in the hesitation that we often have as men to step into risk and the requirement that we have as men to step into risk. And then the effect of risk on what it does in our lives. So here you're talking about taking some of these risks and taking responsibility and all that kind of stuff.
10:24
stepping into those risks? The first thing that comes to mind is feeling the closeness of the Lord. Hmm. Especially growing up in a Christian context, and you know, my parents are Christians, they're on the worship team. And so I was always at church, always around Christianity in some way, shape or form. And it was only really in the last decade that I felt close to the Lord. And you know, when we take these big steps, these big leaps of faith, like quitting our jobs at the end of 2018,
10:53
We started 2019, we had no jobs. Our one job was support raising to get half-step ministries off the ground. And we still got bills to pay. It was not like, yeah, we're in this cush season of life, we'll just jump out. But we were provided for, just out of the woodwork. People that we never knew even were aware of what we were doing. We always had exactly what we needed. But the crazy part was in feeling the closeness of the Lord, there's been maybe one time where we've had what I feel like is more.
11:22
than what we needed. We've only ever had just exactly what we needed. And I actually don't like that, if I'm honest. Let's be honest here. I would rather, I'd rather have fat stacks of cash just sitting, you know, as that could, and especially my wife too, like, we came from very different backgrounds when it comes to money. I'm like, I'll eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for three months. I don't care if we don't have money for it, but she is very different. Like, no, we should probably have like some savings of some kind.
11:52
But going into that journey, we had exactly what we needed. And I don't think I would have really felt the closeness of the Lord and that risk of just taking it. Like I am in actual position where unless the Lord comes through, like we don't meet our budget this month. And every single month we've met our budget. Sometimes it's been down to the wire, sometimes we're way ahead. But I don't think I ever would have experienced that closeness of the Lord had I not taken that risk and stepping out in that way.
12:21
How has that closeness invited you? Where has that closeness invited you, I guess I should say? What has it done inside of you? Man, I guess the first thing that comes to mind is it's helped me to just be okay with myself. I think I mentioned this in the last episode that just the fact that I showed up is enough. I think in a lot of ways, I had this idea of what success would look like, meaning
12:49
that we are fully funded in three months or we're overfunded and we're still not fully funded. Four or five years in, we're still working on that. But time and time again, I have felt like when I have to sit with the failure or at least maybe not the failure, but the lack of meeting the expectation or the hope, like we're shooting for this number, we're shooting for this date to launch a new half step or shooting for this thing and it doesn't happen. We've experienced way more failures than successes in this journey.
13:18
and not letting that be a deep reflection on who I am, but actually letting the Lord say, you know, you're actually just enough. Whether or not you succeed in this, you're just enough and that's okay. Which I would say, Brayden, is it's a significant thing to be able to sit in that space and to actually receive and live from the words that you just said, especially when the pursuit that you're involved in...
13:43
is incredibly personal to you guys. Like it is this unique expression of your wiring and your goodness. And it's not just a nine to five gig, right? At some random place, like no, this is deeply personal. And yet you're able to say, hey, it is not an indicator. It is personal, but it is not the metric of my worth. Like that feels like a massive amount of settledness and maturity needed to be able to hold that dynamic.
14:10
Well, I'll give credit where credit is due in that I have been surrounded by some incredible people that continue to remind me of that and say that to my face. Cause you know, if I'm honest, most of the times when I'm with just me and the Lord, I don't just automatically feel that like settledness, you know? Now that I was, that settledness I was talking about, I think I probably made it seem like, oh yeah, that's just natural to me. Or like, that's where I sit and that like, no, actually it's usually worry, is like where I tend towards.
14:39
But I will say I've received, I know I have received so much blessing and encouragement and being seen. And like with first story and second story, when people started to have resistance to this ministry, right? Like especially church leaders, because it's a little bit unconventional, you know, we're inviting messy kids into our space. We're creating a space that is specifically for messy kids and especially messy kids that the church hasn't necessarily done a really good job of engaging.
15:06
like the theater kids, the kids with mental health issues, the kids who identify as LGBTQ. When there was resistance to us engaging that, especially bringing them into quote, unquote, our space, it was easy to believe that when somebody said, I don't like half set ministries, that they were saying, I don't like you, Brayden. I don't like you, Abby. And it was really hard not to believe those because you're right. We're putting our hearts online. We're not just trying to... I'm not just trying to build an accounting firm here. If that fails, whatever.
15:36
That person didn't need accounting. Maybe that's why it failed. But like, no, we're building a ministry that is deeply, I feel like is deeply connected to who we are as individuals and our calling. And it was mostly, I wouldn't say only met with resistance at the beginning, but there was a lot. And it was easy to believe that that was a reflection of me and my character and Abby and her character. And it wasn't until, yeah, again, I'll bring up Grove again, just being seen and blessed like
16:06
for who I am and letting that being something that sinks in like deeper and deeper every single year. That is what I think started to show me. And I think give me the grit or I guess the determination to keep going after it in the midst of the trials and the failures is reminding myself of like, not only do I know who I am, but actually that Jeremy sees who I am, Jesse sees who I am. Like, it's not just in my head. I've heard it and they've spoken it over me. And not just in like an encouragement,
16:36
been seen. That took a lot of vulnerability to admit I need to be seen and I need to be encouraged. I need to be told who I am so that I can continue following this dream. I wish I could say it was on me, but a huge, huge, huge part of it is the encouragement and the seeing of my first story that has been given to me that really has been a bedrock for, I think, just continuing on.
17:05
this stage in your journey as a man, as a father, as a ministry leader, what are the risks that you see on the horizon ahead? The risk of the responsibility of success right now, actually, I think is a huge one. Because we've developed the program to a point that I feel proud of it. I feel proud of...
17:31
tweaking and the adjusting and really settling in what are our values and really being able to say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, no, this is what we're for, this is not what we're for, this is what we are, this is not what we are. And not letting the definition of the program be defined by outside sources or what people like or what people don't like, but really what is truly in our core, what we believe is right and true for this ministry. Having gone through that over the last nine years, now comes the risk of like...
17:59
Okay, I've got to really try to be successful in getting the word out or like growing our supporter base or letting other churches have the materials and the training to do it themselves or risk putting it out there and people not liking it, right? Or rejecting it. And so we're entering into a season now where we've got the program, we like the program, now it's growing the ministry that surrounds it, that supports it. And I'm the director.
18:26
I'm the director of Hashtag Ministries. And so if something is going to move forward, it's got to be initiated by me. And so the risk is also, what if I initiate in the wrong direction? What if I start heading in the wrong direction? I have to course correct. It's not on somebody else's shoulders now to be like, well, actually, maybe you should go, like, I have to be the one to decide. Or like, obviously amongst counsel and not by myself. But there's a head and it's me. And that's scary.
18:53
And I hear that, Brayden, and I can hear that through the ears of many men listening right now, that there is something about many of us that are in the place of like, if it's if not me, then who? And I'm not saying that in the sense of like without Jesus at all. But there is risk in just part of being a man on this earth, there is risk. And I need to step in, I need to show up, I need to be present as we've talked about before. And that involves risk.
19:22
Every time we show up, there is risk. Every time. So, well, Brayden, tell us where listeners can find you. Where's Half Step Ministries? Tell us how to get in touch with your coffee business. Like all the things. Tell us where to find you. Cabinet mate, like I want the cabinet scoop. Don't forget that. Cabinets, yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, the coffee is isolation.coffee. We roast here at Fort Collins. I will be the one roasting your coffee if you get it there.
19:49
The ministry is Half Step Ministries. You can find us at Half We're also on Instagram, HalfStep.events, or HalfStepministries. That's a great way to engage with us. That's a whole team. That's also not just me and my wife. We've got an awesome team of volunteers with us doing that. Super fun. The cabinets, I work for another guy. I'm a contract employee, so I don't have my own business. I just bake. My brother-in-law, he has his own business. So maybe I could plug. Austin Gibson, look him up.
20:17
There you go. You know Austin? Good dude. Yeah. Yeah, you know Austin. You know Austin. Yeah. So yeah, that's where we are. Well, Brandon, thank you for inviting us into your story. Personally, in the ministry, so, so, so grateful that you exist, that the ministry exists, that you have said yes to follow the calling of Jesus to start the ministry and to do what you're up to. And so grateful that you're a part of the Restoration Project community.
20:47
Yeah, thank you. Thank you guys so much. I mean, I've learned a lot from you guys just in terms of what it means to be an intentional man, to be seen, to see other men, to really show up. So thank you. Thank you for inviting me to speak and share my story and just for how you, you've played a huge part in my own story as a man. So appreciate it. Yeah. Well, thank you and you're welcome. Good to be with you today. Thanks so much. Thanks, Brayden.