Yesterday Today Tomorrow

Inseong J Kim: Hello, this is Inseong J Kim from Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. We have a special guest, pastor and author of the book Finding Connection in a Disconnected World: Unknown, by Keith Spurgin. Pastor Spurgin is with us. Thank you so much for being with us. Please share with us a little bit about yourself and also about the book.

Keith Spurgin: Absolutely. My name is Keith Spurgin, and I am from the Dallas, Texas area. I was a pastor for 27 years of a church we started and handed it off in November to the next generation, which I think is what you are supposed to do. That has been a great thing. My book came out in February, so I am doing lots of interviews and talking to people about the book. I have a wife named Susan, four kids, and a bunch of grandkids. That is a little bit about me.

Inseong J Kim: Which church is it? What is the church's name?

Keith Spurgin: It is called New Hope. NewHopeChristian.org.

Inseong J Kim: My daughter lives in Dallas, so probably they can visit the church sometime.

Keith Spurgin: That would be great. We would love to have them.

Inseong J Kim: I was fascinated about your book title, Finding Connection in a Disconnected World. Would you share a little bit about us how you ended up writing this book?

Keith Spurgin: I am happy to. We live in a world that is more technologically connected than ever. We all see that and agree with that, and yet more relationally disconnected than ever. That just has so many negative ramifications in our lives. Physically, psychologically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, disconnection is the opposite of what we were designed for.

We were designed for connected relationships that go the distance. Unfortunately, we live in a world that is more divided than ever. I just hope that this book, Unknown, helps move the needle a little bit closer to connection and unity for people and restoring relationships. We also live in a world where people just cancel you if they disagree with you. It is like, "I am done with you. You don't exist to me anymore."

I think that is the opposite of what God has called us to and the way he wants us to live. That is a lot of why I wrote the book, along with my own personal story in that as well.

Inseong J Kim: You said the number one factor that defines you as a follower of Jesus is the way that you love each other in the book. But I think when we look back at Jesus's time, they canceled each other too in that culture. They had Rome, the orthodox Jewish people, and then the followers of Jesus, and then sinners following Jesus. They were not communicating each other either. They were not connected.

Every culture has that problem of canceling each other. But in America, we were united by this number one character of kindness and love of Jesus. That is what I was really fascinated about. How do I know that? When people have problems with their car and don't know what to do in the street, somebody comes over and helps without fear of getting help. But these days, it is different. That is the sad part of what is happening.

Keith Spurgin: I love what you said about in Jesus's time, people canceled each other as well. I think that is part of why Jesus was so unique and stood out to people so much, because he was so inviting to the most unexpected people. The people that you would have thought would have disagreed with him the most were the people who loved him the most. In John 13, Jesus said, "By this, by your love for one another, everyone will know you are my disciples."

We think it is by what church you go to or what theology you have or whatever is going to define us as a follower of Jesus. It is really our love for God and our love for each other. That is really what Jesus said were the two greatest commandments: love God and love your neighbor. He lived that so beautifully. They tried to trap him into political arguments, asking if we should pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus said, "Show me a coin. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's." I love that response.

Inseong J Kim: What a beautiful connection that Jesus did at that time, because all the Jewish people hated Rome because they were oppressing them. But also, he reached the Romans, the Roman soldiers, and also the tax collectors who were hated. He reached the tax collectors.

Keith Spurgin: If you think about his team, that is one of the first things he did was build a team. He has Matthew the tax collector, who is basically a traitor to his people, and Simon the Zealot. That is a New Testament term for terrorist. He brings them together on the same team. I am just like, "Wow, who does that?" That is incredible.

Inseong J Kim: Basically, when we look at the background of each one of them, they should not get together.

Keith Spurgin: Not at all. Maybe Peter and Andrew and James and John because they were brothers and fishermen, but everybody else was out of step.

Inseong J Kim: I think we can relate to our culture that is divided now, so much and very unnecessarily. For example, we were so improved in racial issues since the 60s, yet we are still bringing it up to divide more. We were working on it. We were working really hard. It was beautiful until we really brought all this woke DEI and all of that. Before, in entertainment, there were a lot of mixed culture people invited, and in sports. We were working so hard to just unite this country with the beauty of arts and love and kindness, yet we are just escalating more problems and dividing.

Keith Spurgin: It is always a work in progress. We have always got to be working on it, always being intentional about bringing people together as opposed to pushing them apart. One of my favorite verses is when Jesus was sharing the Beatitudes and he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." That word peacemaker is very similar to the word bridge builder.

When we are bridge builders, we look like our Father. That is why he says you will be called children of God, because God is always trying to bring us together as opposed to pushing us apart. When we can connect the disconnected, we look like our Father.

Inseong J Kim: Extending the grace is hard in relationships because of this determination to divide of the culture, that if you are not with me, you are my enemy.

Keith Spurgin: We just don't have to live like that, but it is the choice that a lot of us make. If you disagree with me, you are my enemy, or you are dead to me. If you disagree with me, that means you hate me. It is just not true. None of us agree all the time. I don't agree with myself sometimes. My wife definitely doesn't agree with me sometimes, but we love each other and we choose each other.

I think a lot of times we just stop choosing each other. We choose ourselves. I think God calls us always to lay our own lives down for the sake of others. That means choosing other people even when we don't agree with them, even when sometimes we are not really happy with them, but we want to try to figure out how to love them well.

That is really the difference that Jesus calls us to and the difference that he makes in our lives. I can't do that on my own, because my love is finite. Fortunately, God's love is infinite, and that is the only way any of us can do it.

Inseong J Kim: You said, "There was all this external success and I was leading an organization meant to connect people to God and one another, yet I felt completely disconnected. I was helping people feel known while I felt deeply unknown." Would you share a little bit about that? I think a lot of pastors might relate to your feeling.

Keith Spurgin: Thank you for asking about that. I had a season where we started our first organization, which was a church, and it took off. It was one of those seasons where it was just growing like crazy and so many people were coming. Leaders from other parts of the country and around the world were calling me and asking for advice on how to build teams and build momentum. I thought to myself, "I've made it. I'm doing it. This is it."

Then one day about four or five years into that, my wife, who we had been doing this together, looked at me one day and she said, "I feel like you have a mistress." She didn't mean literally, but she felt like the work and all the people and all the things had become more important to me than she was. The irony of that is I think I am like most people, most husbands anyway. If somebody asks who is the most important human in your life, I would say my wife, Susan. But that is not how she felt.

I learned the hard way that I can't be the measure of how other people are experiencing me. I thought she was the most important person, but my actions were saying something very different. When she said that to me, "I feel like you have a mistress and I feel like I'm way down the list," I immediately felt unknown. She was telling me that she felt unknown and disconnected, but as soon as she said that to me, I felt unknown, disconnected, lost, confused, and distraught.

It took inviting some mentors and coaches into our lives and into our marriage. We actually took about a three-month sabbatical and then several years of hard work to bring that back together. I learned so much about how you actually build healthy relationships that last and where the other person feels valued. That is really the genesis of this book, what I learned in that process and how you do that. It is not perfect and I don't have all the answers, but it is part of moving the needle toward connection and unity for people.

Inseong J Kim: I haven't found a YouTube yet about this coaching about ministers, pastors, and pastor's wives and their family. I think it would be very good because we are trying to figure things out because we want to love people. But at the end of the day, the book of Ephesians, chapter six, is the prime example of the church and the core center that it talks about is the family, husband and wife, like a fundamental cell church.

From that, everybody copies those models to be a church. But somehow, this order got mixed up because culturally dysfunctional chaos came to America. As a pastor, we are dealing with a lot of dysfunctional family and lonely problems because of that overwhelm of need. The immediate family feels left out. What do you think about that?

Keith Spurgin: No doubt. Over 50 percent of Americans say they feel lonely and isolated, and most of those people have families they are living with. Even in our own homes, we often feel this loneliness and isolation. That is not only unfortunate, it is honestly tragic because of what I mentioned earlier; there are so many physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual ramifications to that.

If anybody is listening to this and you are like, "Yeah, that's me," the first thing I would say to you is think about in your own mind who is one person—not five people, not 50 people, not even three people—but who is one person that you would like to have more connection with, more relationship with? I know this takes a lot of courage because some people are dealing with anxiety and all kinds of things.

Bolster the courage, ask God to help you, go to that person, and ask them to go to coffee with you or sit down with them and say, as vulnerably as you can, "I would like to have a better relationship with you. Would you like that too?" and see what they say. If they say yes, then the next question is, "Okay, how do we get there?"

If they say no, I know that is really painful and really hard, but at least you know the answer then. Sometimes we are pursuing relationships with people who don't want it. You don't know that until you ask the question. You can assume it and imagine it in your head, but you don't really know until you ask the question. It is risky, but without risk, there is no passion.

What we want in relationship is passion. We want real relationships. If you ask people what kind of relationship they want with the most important people in their life, nobody says boring, stagnant, stale, same old, same old. They all say they want it to be adventurous, alive, and there to be passion. That is what we want, but you don't get passion without risk.

You may have stopped risking with people in your life, and that is why your relationships feel so dead. The only way you get passion is to risk. The same thing is true with our relationship with God. People sometimes come to me and they will say, "I feel like my relationship with God is just dead. It's not alive." I always ask them the same question: "When is the last time you took a risk with God?"

If you step out in faith, the passion is going to go way up. You are going to be like, "Go, God. You've got to show up." If you want passion in any relationship in your life, you have to take some risk.

Inseong J Kim: Like you said, the balancing with giving priority to your wife as a minister and taking a risk with the relationship with the flock to save their lives, there is a lot in it.

Keith Spurgin: I would say this to pastors: your relationship with your spouse, if it is not good, that is going to negatively impact the entire church. On the other hand, when your relationship is really good, that is going to positively impact the entire church because everything flows out of that center relationship. First, your relationship with God, then your relationship with your spouse and your kids.

That is going to overflow to everything else. It cannot help but impact it. Prioritize it, because when that is good, everything else is going to be a whole lot better.

Inseong J Kim: It is not a really similar situation or example, but my husband is a dentist, and we see emergency patients. We are hanging out, and suddenly an emergency patient calls and we have to go back to the office to help them. What is the boundary? It is very difficult to pinpoint what is the fine line. Our relationship, having a lunch together is important, and seeing the emergency patient.

It has to be really well communicated and supportive. Everybody's different and value different. Until I had a toothache and the root canal that I had to go through, I realized that's really painful and devastating when you cannot find a dentist. After that, I am more empathetic and supporting him seeing the emergency patient. We drop everything and I go together and help him. Ministry might be a similar situation like that.

Keith Spurgin: It is. The thing that we had to do, and this is where some coaches and mentors helped us so much, is we had to say, "Everybody's going to have emergencies, but we have to have some time that is just for us." Every week we would have a date night for just me and my wife. No phones, we're not answering the door if we're home, we're not taking calls, we're not doing anything.

Then we also had a family night with our kids. At least two nights a week was just about our family. The rest of the time, I was pretty available. But I can't always be available, because if I am always available, then nobody is a priority in my life. I've got to have some time that is just for the people that are most important to me, if they really are most important to me.

I am sorry, I am not God. I can't be there for everybody all the time. When the church grew and we had a staff, that helped because we could rotate different times and people could find help from somebody else. No matter whether you have a staff or not, your family needs to know that there is at least some time that is just for them and that nobody else gets to interrupt that.

That is so powerful. It just speaks life to your most important people. When you explain that to your other people, in this case, your church, they are like, "Oh, that makes sense." We had small groups, so we would say, "Go to your small group leader." If you go to the hospital, call them. That really helped as well. There are ways to do it, but if you have to be all things to all people, then you are not going to be anything to the most important people.

Inseong J Kim: Balancing and managing the situation is so important. I would love to have another interview to talk more about Unknown, what you feel in a church, and also talk about Gen Z and their loneliness for the new generation ministry. There is a lot in this subject. You have two minutes to tell us about how you want to communicate to listeners, whether it is pastors or even church members, about this unknown and relational issue we are all encountering in our time.

Keith Spurgin: As I said earlier, people listening to this right now might be feeling, "What do I do next?" I would just say have the conversation. That is the main thing. Have the conversation that you are wanting to have and don't hesitate. You need it and the other person probably needs it as well.

If people want to get a hold of me, they can reach me at KeithSpurgin.net. They can find information about me, how to contact me, and some blogs. There is also a way to buy the book there, or you can buy the book anywhere books are sold, especially online. It is available everywhere. It has been great to be with you. Thank you so much.

Inseong J Kim: Thank you so much for being with us. I love the book title, Unknown. Thank you so much for being with us today, Pastor Keith Spurgin. Thank you.

You've been listening to Yesterday Today Tomorrow with Inseong J Kim. You can also find more from Inseong J Kim at InseongKim.org. Thank you for listening to the show.