All right, welcome to the Ocean Water Podcast, the voice for Indigenous water rights.
Today I have with me, Kurt Johnston.
He has been-
Hello, man.
Yeah.
How you doing, Kurt?
Kurt has been a leader and a pastor for three decades plus.
He's been a pastor and a leader at Saddleback Church for 23 years.
Kurt has written 20 plus books.
That's on a professional note.
Pastor Rick seems to think that Kurt's quite a guy.
Kurt is the next gen pastor and he oversees all things, birth through college, and all
the campuses for Saddleback.
And then on a personal note, Kurt is someone that I met when I was 16 years old and someone
who just picked me up and took me surfing in his Volkswagen van.
So that's the context of how Kurt and I met.
And we've been friends since then and still surf and still drink coffee and still get
burritos more often than you would think.
Yes.
And you know the old saying, the student has become the teacher.
That's how it is with surfing with you and I.
I think when we met, I might have been better than you, but you've gotten better since you
were 16 and I haven't.
Thanks.
Well, we still enjoy surfing and coffee and really the lifestyle that we have hasn't changed
a whole lot, but our roles have.
So for people to get to know you a little bit today, start out with what is your favorite
food at your hometown restaurant?
Oh gosh.
Okay.
Our hometown restaurant is Baja Fish Tacos.
It's a very small chain.
I think there's probably five of them in Southern Orange County.
But my favorite go-to is basically like a burrito bowl with, I need not half and half,
I need a portion of each.
So it's steak and chicken.
But not 50-50, one of each.
So double the meat, but half of it's steak, half of it's chicken with lots of guacamole.
That's awesome.
I haven't had anything to eat it today, so that sounds incredible.
That's awesome.
And you forgot to leave, and I know you like iced tea, man.
You forgot to leave the iced tea out.
I am an iced tea guy.
Sweet tea is probably my biggest vice in life.
But I have laid off sweet tea mostly for about the last year and a half.
So on every birthday in our family, in our immediate family, on every birthday, I'll
cheat and eat unhealthy.
And yesterday we celebrated my son's 23rd birthday, and my cheat was to get a half sweet
tea, half unsweet tea.
So I was going crazy yesterday.
You're off the rails, man.
You're getting wild.
Off the rails.
All right.
So what are you doing these days, and how did you get into it?
How did I get where?
How did you get into it?
What are you doing these days, and how did you get into it?
Well I think like a lot of people in any chosen career, if you stay in it long enough, which
is interesting.
It's a little bit of a generational thing, right guys?
My age and older, probably even your age and older maybe, had a little bit more of a tendency
to pick a career, maybe even pick a company or an organization and stay with it for the
long haul.
These days that's less likely.
Just the way things, the way industry has changed and the way making a living has changed,
less and less people stay in one place for a long period of time.
Like a lot of people who would be in one quote unquote industry for a long time, I've been
in youth ministry since 1988, and I've been at my church since 1997 at Saddleback.
And so if you're decent at what you do and you stay in one place long enough, chances
are your role is going to morph and change a little bit over time.
And that's been the case for me.
I came to Saddleback as a junior high pastor, then I became the student ministry's pastor,
then we started launching campuses.
So I became the central support or the global youth pastor for the different campuses.
And now we've got 18 campuses, four of them are international in Hong Kong and Berlin
and Manila and Buenos Aires, plus 14 in Southern California.
And then I started, I was asked to add the children's ministry kind of under my leadership
portfolio.
So that's kind of what I do currently.
And then just recently I've been asked to sort of help us think through and support
the teams that lead our multi-site strategies.
So that's kind of a new area that I'm thinking about and working on.
So I'm a little bit of a jack of all trades at Saddleback, but I would say I spend a lot
of my time focusing really on kids and youth ministry.
Well, typical Kurt fashion that's really understated.
One of the things that I appreciate about you and look up to you, I know I speak for myself
and all my close friends is your loyalty, your humility, your hard work.
And what people don't know about you is how smart you are.
You sort of hide behind your smile and your surfing, but behind all that's this super
super, super, super smart guy.
And you always have led the team.
So that's sort of a back, that's sort of a backhanded compliment.
People have no idea that you're smart, Kurt.
That's the genius of it.
You're a little bit that way.
Well and I resonated with when you interviewed Drew Tevez and you guys were talking about
our generation, you didn't tell people if you were smart or what.
I mean, that's me.
I grew up super poor and in a super humble family and there just wasn't room for bragging
and self-promotion or anything.
I don't know if there wasn't room as much as it just didn't even exist back then.
And our family, when you're dirt poor, you don't have much to brag about, right?
So kind of talking about yourself wasn't something that I grew up with.
Yeah.
Well, that's something that we've all had to learn and process and get around and then
also kind of like step back into this space now where how do you have a voice because
you want to pass on some of the lessons from the school of hard knocks and all the things
that you've learned over the years?
How do you then find a voice not because you're trying to promote yourself but because you
really care about passing along some of the stuff that you've learned and also helping
people that are half our age think clearly about different things.
So we're all trying to figure that out.
Well here's my thoughts on that.
Because I've written quite a bit, I often get people asking me, hey, how do you write
a book?
I want to write a book.
How do I write a book?
So I think my advice for writing a book might be the same for somebody who wants to have
a voice, whether it's podcast or I just want to have more influence.
But what I'll typically say is I think there's three things to having influence or to writing
a book would be, do you have something to say?
Do you have something to say?
Do you have a compelling message?
Do you have a compelling story?
Are you the one to say it?
Right?
And then the third one kind of follows up on whether or not you're the one to say it
is do people want to hear it from you?
So do you have something to say?
Are you the one to say it?
And do people want to hear it from you?
And all of those I think have to work together.
And I'm not sure if there's a magic formula.
But a lot of that, do you have something to say?
Are you the one to say it?
And do people want to hear it from you?
A lot of it comes from longevity and just being faithful in what you're doing and what
you're called to do because the longer you're in it, the more likely you already have something
really good to say.
You've got experience, you've got wisdom, you've got insight.
You're the one to say it because you've been doing it for a long time.
And then oftentimes, people will want to hear it from you because you've got something to
say and you're the one to say it.
The only thing that messes up, I think, whether people want to hear it from you is your posture.
Are you coming from a place of humility versus pride?
Are you a know-it-all?
Are you a self-promoter?
All that kind of stuff.
That can hurt whether or not people want to hear what you have to say.
Well, what do you wish to help with people understand the value of learning on the job?
What do you wish that you had known when you started out?
Oh, gosh.
I think I wish I would have known when I started out that so much, for my job, it's ministry,
right?
It's local church ministry.
That's all I've ever done since I was 22.
I wish I would have known that so much of what we think matters in ministry doesn't
matter and so much of the stuff that we undervalue is the stuff that matters the most.
I wish I would have known that.
So being a really good speaker doesn't matter as much as I thought it did.
Having the biggest youth group in town doesn't matter as much as I thought it did.
Having a really cool room to meet in doesn't matter as much as I thought it did.
What matters is the stuff that isn't sexy, but it's the stuff that changes lives, right?
It's being there for people.
It's showing up when a kid's having their tonsils out in the hospital.
It's making the phone call to the dad who just lost his job and just saying, what can
the church do for you?
It's the nitty gritty ministry matters way more than I thought it did when I first got
into it.
What's interesting is as culture has shifted and as the rise of more mega churches and
social media and blogging and podcasting and all that, if we're not careful, it's really
easy to think that's all the stuff that matters.
But I think what still matters the most hasn't changed in my 30 years.
I mean, 30 years later, I can still go to the hospital and visit the sick kid.
30 years later, I can still make a pastoral phone call to a family.
30 years later, I can still respond in a timely manner to a family in need.
That's the stuff that I wish I would have... I kind of undervalued that early on, just
the value of the nitty gritty.
The other thing I think I wish I would have known earlier on was how if you don't really
pay attention to the stuff that you know matters, but you take it for granted, how quickly it
fades away or how quickly you can lose sight of it.
So I'll use an example of Jesus first in ministry.
Jesus-centered, Jesus-focused ministry.
We would all say, well, of course, that's what the church does.
And yet, because we just assume that's what the church does, that's what we're about,
if we're not careful, the church, youth groups have really gotten good at this, can become
and Jesus instead of Jesus and.
What I mean by that is if you take your eye off the ball and you just assume, of course,
we're all about Jesus, if you're not careful, you start doing all these things.
We do small groups, we do camps, we do activities, and we talk about Jesus as opposed to no,
we talk about Jesus.
We're Jesus first and we also have small groups.
We're Jesus first and we do camp.
We're about Jesus and just that understanding or that realization that if you take your
eye off the ball of what's most important and there's, you know, obviously Jesus first,
but there's 18, 20 things that we would say in ministry are really, really important.
And you can't just assume that everybody all the time for all eternity will remember that
those are the most important things unless you're constantly ringing the bell and pointing
people to this is what we're about and this is what we do.
And we do some other stuff.
It's real easy to get caught up in all the other stuff and then you kind of lose sight
of the stuff that matters most.
Wow.
Mike kept so many notes I'm taking.
So what do you find yourself curious about these days?
Yeah.
Well, I think you asked that question at the most odd time in ministry's history, right?
If you would have asked me that question two months ago, I think I'd have a totally different
answer, but it's impossible for you to ask me that question right now without thinking
like what's the church going to look like when this is all over?
And I don't know if the church is going to be radically different in, I don't know how
much church is going to stay online and all that kind of stuff.
I definitely think if we don't walk away with one or two or three massive learnings and
one or two seismic shifts that we have to make coming out of this, I think we've missed
an opportunity.
So that's what I'm new to on is that I'm fascinated by the fact that this has brought old school
and new school have collided in this season when it comes to ministry.
Praise the Lord, we live in a new school world.
If this had happened 20 years ago, 15 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, the church's
ability to meet online and to continue functioning without gathering, I think would have been
non-existent.
So that's the new school that's forcing Zoom meetings and online services and all this
crazy new awesome stuff that's always existed.
We just never tapped into it because we didn't really have a need.
But it's also forcing us to go back to some really old school practices of phone calling
our people.
How are you doing?
How can the church pray for you?
Are you in need?
We can drop off groceries, handwriting notes to our congregants and mailing stuff.
There's just some really kind of old school ministry that has got left by the wayside
that now even though we're benefiting from technology to keep the church moving, we're
also kind of being forced or maybe if we're shrewd and smart, we're re-embracing some
of the older ministry practices that we never had to rely on for the last 20 years that
some of us are going back to a little bit.
We can't rely on programs and fancy youth buildings.
We can't rely on amazing worship bands.
I mean, we can.
If you watch Easter, holy smokes, some of the best part of Easter services was how the
worship teams were doing worship.
But it's still different.
We can't rely on so much of the stuff that we've relied on.
It's making me rethink relational, incarnational ministry.
Like how do you really go to people even though we can't go to people?
What's that look like?
I'm rambling a little bit because it's a great question and one that is constantly on my
mind.
What are we thinking about?
And so for me, the biggest thing is just what are we going to hold on to when we come out
of the season that we'll look back and say, you know, that was a tough two or three months
or whatever it's going to end up being, but wow, what a gift.
What a gift to the church.
What a gift to families.
You know, for all the squabbling and fussing and fighting, I'm sure that's going on with
families and trying to homeschool kids and kids going stir crazy.
When it's all said and done, what a gift.
I know it doesn't sound like it right now and I'm an empty nester.
So it's easier to say this than if I was living it.
But what a gift for parents to have prolonged family time right now that we just don't have
anymore.
And so I think coming out of it, it's what do we want to hold on to?
What have we learned?
What are one or two big changes that we're going to make as a result?
Yeah, I know that's been in a way this has brought my family and I close.
That's been a wonderful benefit of all that.
Just dinner and trying to watch movies together every night, it's been wonderful.
What is something that you have failed at?
Well from a minister, a couple things, a couple things come to mind instantly.
I think I failed at all.
What category do you want?
Do you want friendship fails, marriage fails, parenting fails, leadership fails?
Whatever.
All over of Jesus, just failings of my loyalty to Jesus.
Pick a category, I'll give you a handful of fails.
But I have failed and I've corrected this, I think, but I think it was a failure, a significant
failure and it's what sparked that conversation about if you take your eye off the ball.
I think one of my failures came to surface a few years ago and that was when we were
interviewing a lot of kids who have grown up in our ministry who felt called to ministry
and they wanted to be interns with us for the summer.
And we were interviewing five or six or seven of those kids and part of that interview I
would ask them, hey, let's pretend we're at summer camp and I'm a teenager and I asked
you to lead me into a relationship with Jesus.
How would you do that?
And Ryan, it was shockingly disappointing.
These are kids who are the cream of our youth ministry crop.
They felt called to ministry.
They wanted to intern with us and I would say way more often than not these students
had a really, really hard time articulating the gospel, helping students understand a
true need for Jesus.
I mean, I would get answers everything from, well, I would just tell them to run into God's
arms, just run to God.
Okay.
Well now what?
I'm running to God.
I'm running to, now what?
Oh, he's just going to hug you.
He just wants to hug you.
Okay.
I'm hugging God.
And that would be the end of their ability to explain what life in Christ means or why
we need a savior or how do we enter into new life in Jesus.
Or the far extreme would be just rattling off the talking points perfectly.
But if I gave them a question or I pushed back, they wouldn't know how to explain it
in any language.
They just knew the Roman road, but they knew that they had the Roman road memorized.
They didn't know how to make it conversational and personal.
They couldn't defend it.
And so for me, that was a massive failure of our youth ministry that I'm the leader
of is failing and helping our students really understand.
And these are kids who are Christians and love Jesus, but they really don't know how
to explain that or defend it or articulate it in a way that shows that they really do
truly understand it.
That was hard.
And so that's where we started making some adjustments to Jesus first thinking we've
created a uniformed way that we teach students to share their faith and to defend it.
And we're just trying to kind of turn the tide of that.
And I think we have largely, but it's tough.
I mean, go to any church in America under any pastor and there's gonna be a whole bunch
of people in that congregation that the light bulb hasn't quite turned on fully.
It's still kind of going off and on.
And the pastor is doing a great job.
So it's not all on me.
It's not all on us.
Part of the adolescent development process is they just don't get it all right away.
But it was a little bit of a reminder.
And then I've also failed just super pragmatically.
I'm an ideas guy.
If I wasn't in ministry, I think I would be a failed entrepreneur failed because I have
had so many.
I do know that you have purchased 53 website domains.
I purged it.
I purged it a month ago.
Ryan, Ryan, I had over, I had over 100 website domain names.
I've got over 100.
And I've worked with friends to pitch little company ideas here and there.
And what it's done for me is it's made me realize I'm a pastor.
I'm not a business guy.
I'm not.
I mean, I think I am an entrepreneur because that's how I think I'm a creator.
I'm a create, but using all that energy and all that gift, all those gifts into the ministry
setting is my contribution to the world.
I'll let somebody else have to deliver, you know, socks in a creative box monthly, all
those dumb things, all other people worry about how to do that kind of stuff.
But if anybody watching has those skills and they want to come to me with some ideas, I'd
be happy to, I'd be happy to partner and just take a little skim a little off the profits
once you do all the hard work.
Probably going to happen.
So good.
Well, we're, we're definitely going to have to do a part two at some point.
You have so much, so much to say.
Let's make a little bit of a pivot.
And what would you describe as the as the current sort of water situation in the world?
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to be honest, Ryan.
I would only describe it based on what I've learned largely from you and hanging out from
you and being exposed to ocean water.
Like most people, I knew there was a water problem.
I knew that a whole lot of people don't have access to clean water.
I knew that a lot of the big illnesses in the world, not in America, not in America,
but all over the world, a lot of the problems and sicknesses are caused by people having
little to no clean water access.
And I knew that there's a whole bunch of nonprofit organizations that are out there digging wells
and trying to trying to help figure it out.
I didn't understand anything about the, the desalinization options or technology until
you started really immersing yourself in it.
I didn't understand really how the church could really play a big part in it until you
started, you and I started talking.
And to me, that's the most exciting part about ocean water is that those two things that
you're you're going after desalinization as your method and you're using the local church
as your as your method.
Right.
Or as your model of how to get it done.
Those two things to me are what set ocean water way apart.
And there's room for everybody.
There's room.
I mean, there's room for everybody.
I just love the angle that you're going after it.
I think it's I think it's super sustainable.
I think I think the only way any real significant nonprofit work in the in the Christian arena
in the faith based arena is ultimately sustainable is if it's local church based, not local church
funded, but local church based like using using the local church as as the people in
the field doing it.
Yes.
Because that's you know, those those local churches or the local church isn't going anywhere.
No.
You know, if Ryan if if God blesses ocean water and you start a thousand churches all
over the world doing clean water as their mission, their evangelism, their their ministry
to the community and you get old and you close ocean waters doors and there's no successor
to take it over.
Who cares?
Exactly.
The work doesn't stop.
The work doesn't stop because you've got a thousand churches that are doing it on your
behalf on the kingdom's behalf.
And so to me, that's that's the key.
Yeah, when when when I when I really understood that the local church needed to champion local
water rights for the indigenous.
Yeah.
Well, that's when that's when I knew it was time to take a very big jump in after being
trained at Saddleback and doing what we're doing now.
And it's it's why I've chosen to do this this podcast, because if someone else was having
this conversation, I'd be happy to go support them and help them to do it.
We want to be this is important and we want to we want to be that voice for it.
Yeah.
Well, and you're you know, you're you're a micro example, I think, of why the pivot
mattered before you pivoted.
Ocean water was showing up as an NGO and delivering water filters and educating people.
But if you quit doing it, the network would have quit.
And then you then you pivoted and became a church that's planting churches to do the
work.
And now that the opportunity for exponential ministry and for this thing to outlive Ryan
Dallamator is is significant.
Especially at this moment in time when so many of our younger leaders, all the people
that are half our age are just so bored, they're just so bored, absolutely bored with church,
bored with the way they've experienced life.
And, you know, you look at the world, you look at one hundred and ninety seven countries,
you look at one hundred and eight of those countries that have direct access to the ocean,
you look at tens of thousands of beaches all over the world that they don't even have a
church in the needy places.
And so we just pray that we can start to have this conversation and that God will start
to call the people that, you know, he taps us all on the shoulder, right?
It's how we're sitting here.
And you think that God just starts these little things in your life, like way back in high
school when I went surfing with you, he tapped me on the shoulder and he tapped you on the
shoulder, so we're kind of hoping and praying out of this that by having this conversation
that God will start to tap some people on the shoulder so we can make a difference in
people's lives.
I had a feeling when you and I got together today that this was going to go fast.
I had 10 questions, I think we got through six of them.
Maybe we could come back in a couple of weeks, Kurt.
You have so much that needs to just be heard and a lot of note taking from a lot of people
that are going to listen to this.
Maybe we can come back and do a part two in a couple of weeks.
Would you be open to that?
Of course.
Sorry.
I got a little bit long.
No, no, no, no, that's exactly how we want this to roll.
And I think I can say on behalf of everybody, thank you so much for your time, man.
I was taking copious mental notes as you were.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me, bro.
Love you, dude.
Have a wonderful day, everybody.
You too.
See you.