Pastor to Pastor

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Jon Weece: Just felt like God was saying, "Let's leverage the resources of this church for the poor." And that was always my heart. I just feel like the bullseye in Jesus' ministry was the poor. Spiritually bankrupt people being the center of that bullseye. Anyone that doesn't know God is poor. I just want to leverage all the resources of Southland for the good of people that no one else was paying attention to.

Dave Stone: Hey everybody, welcome to Pastor to Pastor with Dave Stone. I am your host, Dave Stone, and we're glad that you're here today. A lot of podcasts you could be listening to. You could be taking a nap right now. You could be actually paying attention to the road, but no. Instead, you have chosen to be fixated and focused on this podcast. Thank you for being a part of it.

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Our guest today has spent over 25 years at Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky. It's one of the largest and most influential churches in all of the state. He's 52 years old, and he's very much in the midst of his pastoral prime. But for reasons that you're about to discover, Jon Weece actually decided to hand off his church and the leadership of it and to pursue a ministry of feeding the hungry.

Not the usual path that we find in the mega-church world. He's a man of stellar integrity, though, and he loves deeply and has modeled what it means to make sure the next guy wins. And if you are a parent, you are going to love this podcast. If you are a pastor, you will be a better pastor because you have listened to Jon Weece share his heart with you. And if you are a Christian who's involved in the church, you will want to lean in more closely in your relationship with Jesus Christ. I can't wait for you to hear some of the lessons that Jon has to share with us. Listen in.

Jon Weece, this is exciting for me. Thank you, brother, for being a part of this.

Jon Weece: Glad to be here, brother.

Dave Stone: Anybody who is watching this, those who watch on YouTube, they see a lion over my shoulder and they see a deer right behind you. We've got the battle going on at hand right here in front of us.

Jon Weece: Exactly right. You win, that's for sure.

Dave Stone: I don't know. That lion over there in Masai Mara where we took that picture, he was pretty contentious to sit there. He didn't have a whole lot of energy, it didn't seem like that day. Maybe he had just eaten.

Jon Weece: Probably.

Dave Stone: We first met in Missouri years ago, and it was when you were just a baby because I'm about 12 years older than you. But our families were involved in the same church. Your dad was a campus minister at the University of Missouri. Got me to many of my first college football and basketball games where I was exposed to cussing from the student section there. First cuss words ever learned were from MU, after the fight song, they had some choice words that they would sometimes say.

Jon Weece: Well, if you have as many losing seasons as they've had, you cuss a lot too.

Dave Stone: And I always say my claim to fame whenever I run into anybody from Lexington, I say, "My mom threw the baby shower for Jon Weece."

Jon Weece: That's true. I don't remember it, but I've heard that.

Dave Stone: I name-drop that a lot.

Jon Weece: Your mom and my mom have perpetuated that story quite a bit.

Dave Stone: Well, we both had godly parents, and so blessed by that. I'd like to dig into your home life a little bit because we have so many people who are listening who are in the Christian leadership world and their kids are under a lot of scrutiny in that fishbowl existence. But man, just give us a picture of what it was like growing up in a Christian home with committed parents who were in ministry. Give us some insights into what that was like for you.

Jon Weece: Absolutely. My parents never sacrificed me or my siblings on the altar of ministry or ego. They did a really good job of separating what they were doing with church work from what was happening in the home, but at the same time integrating it because you can't really completely separate it. I always like to say that my parents lived it out. We saw parents that not only preach from a stage but within the home deeply love God by how they loved each other.

My mom and dad were just affectionate and wonderful people. I can remember when my dad was dying, my mom crawled up in his lap one last time. There they are in their 70s and I thought, "I'm glad that's not the only time I've seen that." I saw that my whole childhood. Just deep affection for one another, which helped me understand God's love for me a whole lot better.

But then also just a deep love for people. Our kitchen table was a revolving door of characters. My dad loved to pick up hitchhikers. We went to a prison on Thursday nights and a nursing home on Tuesday nights. College students that they worked with were always at the table and I could bring buddies whose homes were busted. It was just a safe place.

Then we also had sacred time in the morning before school. My dad would read from the Proverbs just to help us remember there are wise people and there are foolish people, and you get to decide what camp you're going to be in when you walk down the hallways of your school. At dinner time, Bibles would be passed around again and we'd study the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. I've often said that's where I learned how to read, and that's not an exaggeration, just from listening to my siblings read through the Jesus stories. My parents just wanted us to fall in love with Jesus in very simple practical ways. They modeled it, as you've heard me say over the years.

Dave Stone: You might not know this, but your dad was my VBS teacher when I was in fifth grade. I don't know of anyone who has more of the Bible memorized than your father did. I mean that, it was such an inspiration to me. Our assignment as fifth graders on the second day of VBS, you could hear your dad saying it in that deep voice, like a radio announcer. He just had a voice that would compel people. If Morgan Freeman ever goes down, they would have pulled your dad in to be the voiceover for things.

Jon Weece: He was the McDonald's voice in the '70s and '80s. So a lot of those commercials were his voice when I was growing up, which is wild.

Dave Stone: Are you serious?

Jon Weece: Yeah, he did McDonald's commercials when I was a kid. I always told people it was awesome to hear him preach, but to hear him discipline you was a different ballgame. James Earl Jones coming down the hallway at you, it's not a good thing.

Dave Stone: How did I never know this? I can't wait to call my brother and tell him that he was the voice of McDonald's as well. He's the voice of the Lord. I mean, he's got a lot of different voices there. Sounds like when he disciplined you, he had a whole other one too.

Jon Weece: Oh yeah. My middle name and a few other words.

Dave Stone: Sure, I was David Lee if I got in trouble with my dad. And then you hear that middle name and it was time to hang your head and know you're about to get a good spanking. But your dad said to us on the second day of VBS, he said, "Boys, I want you to read the Gospel of Mark and I want you to do it in one sitting." Not in bits and pieces, but I want you to read the Gospel of Mark in one sitting. I'd never done that in my life. Nothing had ever held my attention that long, but I knew that Roy Weece wanted me to do it and so I did it. How has Scripture memory played a role in your ministry and in your Christian life?

Jon Weece: My parents hardly gave us money for much, but if we would memorize a chapter or if we would memorize even books of the Bible. So I can remember growing up, and you know when you're a kid, your neural pathways are not concrete like they are when you're an adult. They're very elastic and so memorization's not a difficult thing. I can just remember devouring that, knowing, "Man, I'm going to get $100 if I memorize the book of James." You could buy a bike back then with 100 bucks. I remember memorizing James and Philippians, and you just keep going.

Dave Stone: How old would you have been, Jon?

Jon Weece: It started young. So I remember memorizing Hebrews 11 and Romans 8 when I was probably in second or third grade. Then moved to books fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. Then as you get busier in school, it becomes a little bit more challenging, but it's still a repetition in my life today. My dad always challenged my brothers and me when we were preaching to memorize the passage that we were going to preach on, metabolize it, take it in, really take ownership of it. That was impactful for me early on and I tried to do that as much as I could. It was challenging at Southland to do that every time, but a lot of times I had the text memorized.

Dave Stone: You are an inspiration to me. When I heard you preach right on that very first weekend of the year of this year, you don't know but that motivated me just hearing you talk about the Gospels and some of the things that you did growing up. That encouraged me, and I've got a book now that I write down the different verse for each day. You have to understand, I probably memorized five verses all of last year. But your message encouraged me to want to get into the word more as far as memorizing. I don't have the book of James or Hebrews 11 or Romans 8 all the way, but wow, what a great inspiration that you are. What a challenge for parents who are listening right now. Did you do the same thing with Ava and Silas? Did you encourage them in that same room?

Jon Weece: We did. We encouraged a lot of Scripture memorization and they did a lot of it. I know it's benefited them now they're young adults and solid followers of Jesus and have a lot of that Bible in their head and heart. I just always wanted my kids to know that eventually the Holy Spirit's voice and the voice of the Bible, they're going to merge. You're going to hear it, it's going to sound like your voice and that's what you want. You just want that to become such a common thing in your mind because that's where the battle is for everything.

Dave Stone: Well put. Now, you have been in ministry for over 30 years. You were at Southland for, I think, 25 plus years there in Lexington, Kentucky. After about three years, you became the lead pastor if I'm remembering all my numbers correctly there. But there was a stretch early on in your time at Southland or right before that when you were on the mission field. I can remember you telling me stories about being there in Haiti. How did that come about? What led you to Haiti? What was the desire to be a missionary, and then to go from that to serving in a mega-church and just a few years later becoming the lead pastor at an incredibly young age? How does this journey unfold?

Jon Weece: It's an interesting story. I tell people I was really shy growing up and still to this day. I'm an introvert, I'm not a big crowd kind of person. So God has a funny sense of humor. But my heart was always for people. I can remember going into hospital rooms and funeral homes and nursing homes with my parents. I just always wanted to be a doctor. I thought that would be a great ministry for me. So I was on that path to becoming a doctor, and God led me to Haiti for an internship one year teaching second grade in a school.

I fell in love with the culture. During that year, they were planting a church and they would have me do communion meditations, and then it eventually led to preaching my first sermon and handshaking and telling every Michael Jordan illustration I knew at the time. It was just a 12-minute sermon, I was so red-faced. From there, decided to go to Bible college and pursue that and just had this moment in college where it was like, "God, I want to talk to real people in real ways about real things."

He led me back to Haiti for four years and we planted some more churches, got to work with great people and see God do amazing things.

Dave Stone: You were single then?

Jon Weece: Single then through the whole stretch. Met my wife down there, which was phenomenal. God needed to break me. There were some areas in my life where I needed greater levels of dependence, and Haiti's a great place for that. So as much as you want to think Haiti needed me, it really didn't. I needed Haiti. It was preparation for what he was calling me to next, which was Southland. When I got to Southland, it was a wild turn of events there.

Just felt like God was saying, "Let's leverage the resources of this church for the poor." That was always my heart. I just feel like the bullseye in Jesus' ministry was the poor. Spiritually bankrupt people being the center of that bullseye. Anyone that doesn't know God is poor. From there, we have relationally, emotionally, physically, financially poor people. I just wanted to leverage all the resources of Southland for the good of people that no one else was paying attention to. God allowed me to do that, and it was a fun 30-year journey from Haiti to the end of my time in Lexington.

Dave Stone: I'm going to put you on the spot because it goes back years ago. I know you had some crazy things happen. You saw a lot of spiritual warfare while you were over in Haiti. What was one of the most outlandish things that you saw and really forced you to say, "Gosh, this is a prayer battle. I need to lean in closer to the Lord"?

Jon Weece: It's interesting. I think coming out of Bible college and going straight into a very dark place, a country that had dedicated its entire population to Satan in the 1600s, and seeing the manifestation of that in very physical ways. I'd seen a lot of demonic oppression growing up in fraternities and sororities and the ministry my parents were a part of. But actually seeing demon possession was a different ballgame. During Mardi Gras in particular, they mock the death of Jesus and celebrate it.

I would try to avoid some of the bigger crowds because they were high and drunk and just in trances. I don't know how else to describe it. Eyes rolled back in the back of their heads, and very scary individuals. This is not something you want to just tiptoe lightly into. I remember a man approaching me who was definitely demon-possessed and he spoke to me in English very clearly, so it wasn't his native tongue. Just trying to intimidate me and threaten me and he bit into a glass bottle.

This was my first encounter my very first year there. He just chewed the glass and swallowed it without any visible effects. No blood, no cuts to his mouth or tongue. It was just his way of letting me know that he knew I was a Christian and he wasn't for me or what I was bringing into the country. That only continued over the next four years and saw some pretty wild things down there that most people if I tell them, they're not going to believe it. But it's in alignment with what you see in the Gospels, demons getting people to hurt themselves and do other things to keep people poor, keep people away from Jesus for sure.

Dave Stone: So cool to see how God uses different things as preparation for later years. It had to be a come-to-Jesus moment when you're face to face with a demon-possessed man and he's sending you clear notice, "I know who you are, I know what you're here to do," and basically "I'll do whatever I can to stop you."

Jon Weece: Absolutely.

Dave Stone: So you come to Southland. Now you have this incredible change from being in Haiti and sharing the Gospel and probably living in just a single-room place. Now all of a sudden you're in Lexington, a prosperous thriving town, and you're part of this really large church. When did you start to say, "Well, I think I could be a preacher. This is something that I could see myself doing"?

Jon Weece: It's interesting, it took a couple years to get into that preaching rhythm. I'm sure you went through this as well, just getting your preaching legs under you. It's one thing to write a sermon every so often but to preach every week, that's a unique rhythm. I loved words, I still do. I love stories and I love the interaction of those things with a live audience. Again, just wanted to take God's word and put it on a sophomore shelf where everybody could reach it.

Southland gave me an incredible platform to do that. Very loving church, as you know. Wayne Smith was the founder and just would give the shirt off his back to anybody. So the good news was I didn't have to convince people to love their neighbor as themselves. They had that down. What I tried to do was just pour gas on that fire and help them see there are still demographics in Kentucky that no one's paying attention to, and we're going to be the church that pays attention to them. To their credit, they rose to the occasion and we started some cool ministries and served a lot of great people and just saw God work in amazing ways.

Dave Stone: There are a lot of churches that are listening that have mission statements, and for many of them, they might have a very simple mission statement: Love people and love God. That's what I think when I think of Jon Weece. I think of a person who loves people well and who loves God well. I'm flooded, I didn't really tell you what I might be bringing up or what routes that I might go as far as stories, but I'm reminded of early on in your ministry, you're going down to downtown Lexington. I hope I've got this story right. You just had a poster board. Is this accurate? Tell me what happened and what prompted you to do this.

Jon Weece: Yeah. I've done a lot of funerals. Still to this day, did one yesterday actually, and I'm going to continue to do them. I just want to meet people in their worst moments. At every funeral, you see this display of affection. People just hug and it's a powerful thing that we don't do on a daily basis. But man, we need it. Everybody needs it and so many people don't get it.

I created a sign in the early 2000s that just said "Free Hugs." The idea went viral, there were some weird things that happened with that. But I would stand on a street corner every Tuesday morning from 10:00 to noon in a busy area of Lexington and just offer it to anyone that wanted it. One of the very first guys that came across the street said, "Oh, I thought your sign said 'Free Hogs.'" Only in Kentucky would people think we're giving away free farm animals on a street corner. That was fantastic. He was very disappointed and walked off.

But there was a lady that rode up and she watched me hug probably 12 to 15 people and kept taking hits off her cigarette. Finally she said, "What's your sign say?" I realized in that moment that she couldn't read. So I told her what it said and I just went in for the kill. I hugged her and she started crying. I just held her there and this happened a lot. Very interesting how it just cracked doors open with individuals.

When I finally let go and she regained her composure, she very sincerely said, "Man, nobody's hugged me in a long time." I thought, "Man, that's all the more motivation to be down here." I'm just going to come because so many people go days, weeks, months without anyone paying attention to them, listening to them. That was fascinating. I never told people I was a pastor. I wore a ball cap and people just start telling me their stories. Got to go to the hospitals to visit a lot of sick people because of conversations that started there and baptized a ton of people too. So it was totally worth it and a lot of fun.

Dave Stone: I didn't realize that it was something that you did with regularity. It's tough for I think for our podcast listeners right now in 2026 hearing this because you've seen a lot of different things, but this was 20 years ago, right?

Jon Weece: Yeah. It's funny because it snowballed. I realized a lot of the people I was interacting with downtown rode the city buses. So I started riding the city bus to and from the church to the downtown area. That gave me another opportunity to interact with people that maybe churches were overlooking or missing. A lot of mental illness, a lot of Vietnam vets that just were struggling with alcoholism. Made a lot of cool connections there.

We created some cool ministries out of that. One of them was the Dollar Club. We just encouraged everybody every Sunday to give one extra dollar. Whatever our attendance was that Sunday, we gave that amount away to one person in need every week. It was just based on riding the city bus. So it's fascinating how when you put yourself out there and you begin to see real needs of real people, then God begins to give you vision and ideas for how to practically, tangibly meet those needs. Don't always recommend what I did because it was dangerous at times, but at the same time I just met some great people and glad I did it.

Dave Stone: I love the way you're approaching this. I think a lot of people have a different stereotype of what a mega-church is like. Every story I've ever heard from you, the things that I hear second-hand from your members about you, all of these things all fit this same scenario of you having this compulsion, this desire to find people who are overlooked, who have been ostracized by society, maybe who need a second chance, could use a hug, and those are the people that you reach out to. So I think that was indicative of your time at Southland in the way you led and you kept those people forefront in your mind.

Jon Weece: Tried to.

Dave Stone: Jon, you've always been a creative genius to me in a variety of different ways. I love your stories. I'm wired that way. I think people resonate with stories and connect. I remember years ago, I'm walking down memory lane and thoughts are popping in my head as I talk to you. Am I remembering correctly? I know you did this sermon, and you were the first person that I ever saw do it, where you just took poster boards and you stood up and you just would let people read them and then you slid them out. Did you do the entire sermon with that or was that like an eight-minute introduction?

Jon Weece: No, it was the entire sermon.

Dave Stone: Didn't say a word the whole sermon?

Jon Weece: Didn't say a word from beginning to end. I came out with a stack of like 250 white poster boards and we had written sometimes just one word, sometimes a statement, and I would just hold them up and the camera would capture it and put it on the screens. Some of it was poignant, some of it was humorous, just back and forth and as you said I would set one down, pick up the other one. Didn't ever have to say a word and at the end of it you could hear a pin drop, but it just had a profound impact on people because it just goes to show that we limit preaching sometimes to these structured sermons.

I'm a big homiletics geek, I love thinking about sermon structure. But that one in particular just resonated with me in my heart in my office because I thought, "I don't think I need to say anything on this one. I think I just need to let the people interact with the words on a page." That's the way God presents himself. We have a book, and words matter, and they're the glue. Logos is like cosmic glue. In the beginning was the cosmic glue that held everything together and it was Jesus. So in my mind, I just thought, "Let's give it a try. It's a little bit of a risk," but it paid off for sure.

Dave Stone: Everybody leaned in and it was so powerful. After I saw it and others saw it, I know you were at a national convention and you were asked to do a similar thing. It was so compelling and so riveting. So what a creative way to approach this and so out of the box. What was the scenario that caused you to do it and why did you do it?

Jon Weece: We had a plane crash, interestingly, sadly in Lexington. It was a Delta flight and 49 people in our community died instantly. I think I had 11 funerals in nine days. We did a lot of different things at the church to try to take care of those families and the first responders. It was just another ministry opportunity for us, but a weight, a level of grief I have never seen or experienced in my whole life, probably never will again.

That following Sunday, they wanted us to do some kind of tribute service. We're already on TV, but they were going to broadcast it to a bigger audience. So I thought to myself, "How can I communicate the love of God in the midst of pain in a way that actually causes people to want to lean in?" And so that's where the poster board idea came from.

Dave Stone: Really?

Jon Weece: Yeah. I stacked them up. I had 300 of them or 250 on a table and I just held them up one at a time. Sometimes there was one word, sometimes there was a phrase, a verse. There was humor, there was poignancy. By the end of it, you could hear a pin drop. To this day, I still have so many people that remember that and will reach out to me and say thank you for what I said, and I didn't even say anything. It was just based on the way that God reveals himself to us. He reveals himself to us in a printed way on a page. I thought, "That's powerful." I read Scripture and it's quiet. So you don't sometimes have to say anything. You can just let the words do the communicating for you.

Dave Stone: Let's talk a little bit about your transition. You're 52 years old. You have led this thriving congregation for two decades that's grown to huge numbers in Lexington, has such a great reputation throughout all of the state of Commonwealth of Kentucky. And yet at 52, you handed it off to a guy who had been being discipled by you, Scott Nickell, who is doing an incredible job and has that same gift of loving people and communicating the Gospel. Take us through it because there are a lot of people who are listening trying to figure out when do I make that move. They might be in their 60s, they might be in their 50s, who knows? But how did it work for you? I know there's not a one-size-fits-all, but talk us through your thought process.

Jon Weece: Again, when I was a kid, one statement that my parents drilled into us repeatedly was, "We want to leave people and places in better shape than we found them in." That seemed to be Jesus' MO for ministry. I remember going into a bathroom in an airport that was just destroyed. There were paper towels and soap and water everywhere, and my dad just started cleaning it up and invited me to join him. That was just an ethos that my parents established in us.

When I got to Southland, that was one of my goals: "Man, I want to leave this place in better shape than I found it." I think with God's help and with a phenomenal team, we were able to do that. But when Scott showed up, it was just clear that he was the guy I needed to pass the baton to. I watched him interact with God, I watched him interact with his family, I watched him interact with our staff and our leaders, and then the church family. There was just this really good rapport with everyone.

I deeply love him. He's one of my closest friends and my brothers now. I just felt this urge: "Man, this is the right person," because he's enough younger than me. I wanted someone younger than me. I also thought the church took a risk on me when I was in my 20s, which is crazy to think about. At the same time, if we're going to set Southland up for future success, we need to continue to cultivate and develop younger leaders. I knew he was the guy. Then it just became a timing issue.

I took four years. We were able to keep it under wraps for three, and we worked privately, quietly behind the scenes with our leaders. A lot of prayer, a lot of really good conversations. They wanted to make sure I wasn't the Alcoholics Anonymous acronym there of HALT: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. We worked through all that. Was I feeling any of that or was that the reason I was leaving?

When I was able to say, "No, that's not it. I just think this is what's best for the church." That's the question I think every leader has to ask: What is best for this church? Because there's this comparison thing where we look at other churches and we look at other leaders. I think we can definitely glean some things from other people. But at some point, we have to look at the church we've been called to serve. I'd been washing dirty feet there a long time and I knew Scott was the right guy.

It just became a timing issue and we worked through it behind the scenes, made the announcement. I told the church, "I'm not leaving you for somebody else. I don't even know what I'm going to do next," which is scary. Not financially secure. There's a lot of things that go into that with your family that you have to really work through. Emotionally it's hard. You go through a little bit of grief. I heard Bob Russell say one time it's like one foot in a wedding, one foot in a funeral.

There's a lot of truth in that. I just was feeling those emotions too. But we took a year before I actually passed the baton and stepped down. That gave people time to really interact with the idea and get comfortable with the idea and also to see Scott as the right guy. It just became so clear. We were growing like crazy. That was the other thing people were like, "Man, you're leaving when it's just booming," and I'm like, "Yeah, but this is the right time." Now on the other side of it, I can definitely see God's hand all over it. Couldn't have gone smoother, but that was God's leading and prompting in it.

Dave Stone: And how old is Scott now?

Jon Weece: He's 45.

Dave Stone: There are so many similarities of our situations because I was in my 50s when I handed things off to Kyle. He and I talked about it four years before. His exact response four years before I left and he said to me, he said, "I'm not sure that I want it."

Jon Weece: Really? That was Scott. Scott said the same thing. Exactly. He was close enough to the flame where he was like, "Yeah, I like the seat I'm in. Not so sure." But like my wife, he came to Christ at Southland as a little boy, single-mom situation. So there was this real heart for the church. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I just felt like he deserved a shot to lead. I know that's not always the case, but I wanted to see him step into that role because I felt like it was the next step for him.

Man, just love him. I wish I could protect him from some of it too. But at the same time, our church is in great hands with Scott.

Dave Stone: Well, you said something at the transition weekend when you rode off into the sunset a few months ago. You said to the congregation, I wrote it down. You said, "We need Scott to win. We need him to win as a preacher, as a husband, and as a dad." Man, that just hit me. It was so beautiful.

Jon Weece: Yeah. I love his kids. You know, you've been there and I know you love Kyle and his family too. I've done everything I can for his family and I'll continue to do that. They all know that. I would go to bat for any of them. I just want him to at the end of his run be able to say what I can say, which is my family didn't suffer as a result of what their dad did. My kids don't resent Jesus because of what their dad did or they love the church more. I want Scott's kids to be able to say the same thing.

Dave Stone: Yeah. And I know that they will. You recognized these are peak leadership years. Kyle was 44 when I turned things over to him, right about the same as what you're saying. Now, when you became the lead pastor at Southland, how old were you?

Jon Weece: I was 29.

Dave Stone: I knew you were in your 20s and the church was running what at that time?

Jon Weece: Between 5,000 and 6,000 people. So it was big.

Dave Stone: So you stayed who you are. You didn't try to be Wayne Smith, you didn't try to be Mike Breaux. You were Jon Weece. You said, "This is how God made me," and the imprint that you left on Southland and on Lexington is incredible because they have picked up on that love. And yes, that's been a common thread with previous leaders there. But there's no question that that's how you're summed up.

For our listeners, I went to this final weekend of Jon's last sermon there at the church. Let me tell you, it was different than any other one that I've ever been to because he didn't let there be much fanfare. He put all the attention on the church and on everybody else and on Scott. Everybody afterwards, we were all saying the same thing: It was so Jon Weece. It was so much like you, and God got the glory.

Jon Weece: Well, I told our elders, I did an evaluation every year and my goal was the same every year: I just wanted to grow in humility and kindness. The position in a big church, it threatens both those things. On the humility front, people tell you you're awesome and it can create pride. And then on the kindness front, they tell you you're a terrible human being. It can make you mean. You get both. You get the praise and the criticism and I just knew I don't want the compliments to go to my head and I don't want the criticisms to go to my heart.

With God's credit, God gets credit for all that. I was able to grow in those areas because of leaders that held me accountable. Scott and I have had this conversation a lot. When you step into leadership, you sacrifice privacy for accountability. I never wanted to be somebody that was held in high regard. I was just like everybody else. I might be a few steps out in front of the church, but I'm not above them.

Man, our church allowed me to be who God made me to be, and I'm so grateful for that. Following Wayne and Mike, Wayne was one of the best pastors, shepherding was his jam and he was really good at it. Mike was one of the best preachers I've ever been around in my life. I'm kind of in the middle there. I like to shepherd people and I like to preach. I just didn't want to be someone I wasn't created to be, and that church allowed me to be that person. So just so grateful for the run there.

Dave Stone: I love what you said about you wanted to grow in humility because I have often said that one of the reasons why I left when I did was because it's tough to leave the longer you stay when so much attention is put on you. And I was finding that I was enjoying the notoriety of the church more than the responsibility of the church.

Jon Weece: Great point.

Dave Stone: It's a wrestling match with your own ego and it's spiritual warfare in a different form rather than the demon-possessed guy eating the glass bottle. Instead, it's ingesting pride and it's ingesting all these other things that feed your ego. People see you in front of a lot of people and so they think, "Oh gosh, they must have their spiritual act together." No, I just happened to be put here and I struggle.

I was on an airplane last night, Jon. A guy who was drunk, and he would say he wasn't drunk but I would say that he was. He kept talking to me and I was listening to Scriptures, these memory verses that I'm trying to learn, so I was reviewing them. He kept interrupting me. "We're going down now, aren't we? It's about time we start heading down." So we got in this deep conversation and he was going to a funeral of somebody who had committed suicide. After us talking for about five minutes and it turned real serious, this burly guy said, "Would you pray for me?" because I'd revealed reluctantly that I was a pastor.

Once you say you're a pastor, you have to take both AirPods out and you've got to give your attention. So I'm like, "Okay, here I am, I'm just working on a verse talking about what religion is in James." It's like, okay Lord, I understand. He teed that one up. So I unplugged and Jon, he grabs my hand and he says, "I want you to pray for me and I want you to take my hand as you pray for me." We weren't close to landing. It ended up being another 30-minute conversation of him sharing his heart and his life and telling me how he turned his back on the Lord.

"What can I do?" I said, "Well, you can receive Christ." He shared a story of how when he went in the army, he said, "I told God I am forsaking you now."

Jon Weece: Wow, that breaks my heart.

Dave Stone: He said, "Because I'm going to be a total blank." And he said, "You will want no part of me." Anyway, it was a great conversation, hopefully some more good things will come from it. I said that's the beauty of Christ: anytime, anywhere, to anyone.

Jon Weece: Man, so good.

Dave Stone: He said, "Yeah, but why would he forgive a blank-hole like me?" I said, "Well, because he did me." Your worst sin is not that you said 'I want to forsake you, God.' Your worst sin is that your one sin put Christ on the cross. So here we're getting this deep conversation and I don't know how much he could understand but he kept saying, "You'll never know. I can't believe you sat next to me. I can't believe you sat next to me." Marty, so if you're listening right now as you're driving down the road, throw a prayer up for Marty. Pray that somebody is being brought into his life that can take that next step with him.

I'd love for you to talk just a little bit about what it is that you are going into now. You've started a brand new ministry, and I am so excited about this. I know there are a lot of people in Kentucky who are very excited about it, those especially who love to hunt. But how you're dovetailing this concept. boonebrothers.org is the website and it'll be in our show notes. How did it come about? You are so passionate about it because you're always caring for the overlooked and unseen. So talk me through it.

Jon Weece: Years ago, I was reading some biographies on Daniel Boone, Kentucky's native son, and realized this is a solid Christian guy. He said the greatest moment in his life was baptizing his 10 kids. I had a Bible study for men that I was leading at the time, men that hunt, and we had five campuses. So we had these Boone Brothers chapters that we had started. We met every Monday morning and I was writing curriculum.

Fish and Wildlife reached out to me about potentially feeding children. I said, "Man, I'm all in on that." Met with an Amish meat processor in Casey County, Kentucky, and they created a recipe that kids loved. We started slipping them in backpacks and just had incredible feedback from the jerky that we were creating because it was shelf-stable and didn't need to be refrigerated. These are kids whose parents might be incarcerated or both parents are addicted to meth and so they have no one paying attention to them. It's 21% of kids in Kentucky go to bed hungry at night. That should keep all of us awake. It should bother anyone that's an adult.

So when I stepped away from Southland, I didn't know this is what I was going to be doing. But it just kept snowballing and becoming more and more clear. Finally on the other side of the announcement, Alison looked at me and she's like, "I think you'd be disobedient if you didn't at least pursue this opportunity and try to grow it." So I just surrendered it to God and said, "God, if this is what you want me to do, let me know." One thing after another, every three days he'd put somebody else in my path that was critical to what we were doing.

Now we're trying to get into every school system across the state. We partner with hunters. Fish and Wildlife pay the processing fees and we have 80 processors across the state. We're partnered with Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry and another great organization. As of this week, we're partnered with beef producers so cattle farmers are now in the game and we're going to be producing a similar beef jerky as well for kids that are hungry. We have 27 Fish and Wildlife departments across the United States that want us to come and do the same initiative in their states. A lot of opportunity and we can feed a lot of kids with a very natural resource that's readily available for all of us.

Dave Stone: It's high in protein and it's good for them. I remember when I first heard some of these statistics. I was going to play golf with a guy who started the largest agency in the state of Kentucky in feeding homeless kids and feeding those kids who don't have a nutritious meal and the only one that they got was at lunch at school. He started telling the statistics to me and I didn't believe it, Jon.

Jon Weece: It's alarming.

Dave Stone: I didn't believe it. I did my own research on it and I found that he was exactly right. Even when there's not school, these kids don't have something to eat because they look for that. They're glad they're having school because of the fact that they're going to get a meal because of the government providing that.

Jon Weece: Within probably 20 minutes of my house, if you drew a concentric circle around where I live, there's 5,000 children that don't eat between Friday and Monday. When they go home for the weekend, there's no food available to them. They're reliant completely on the school system for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When there's a snow day, like we had a week and a half here in Lexington, those kids are not eating. That creates all kinds of behavioral issues.

I was a school teacher in Haiti, so it creates all kinds of behavioral issues. I remember a little girl passing out when I was giving a spelling test one day. She was just hungry. She hadn't had enough to eat. Concentration becomes an issue. One of my goals is I've just continued to say hungry children become angry adults. We want to keep that from happening because hopefully a generation from now we see incarceration rates and drug addiction rates go down because we did what Jesus asked us to do: I was hungry and you fed me. We're just trying to be faithful to that Matthew 25:35 verse.

Dave Stone: I love the way you're approaching this. It's not just for hunters, now you're tying in cattle farmers, a variety of different people. If somebody's listening and they are in the Kentucky area and they love to hunt, what do you tell them to do?

Jon Weece: Go to our website and you'll find a processor in the county near where you live. You can drop that off and just say, "Hey, we're donating this to Boone Brothers." Kentucky Fish and Wildlife will cover the costs of that. You have no expense, which removes the excuse. With your regular hunting license, you get three does per year, and then every other doe beyond that's just $15. As you know, we have a real doe issue in the state of Kentucky. We're trying to partner with farmers to minimize crop damage for them. Striking this balance between food for people, food for animals is an issue. You can definitely play a role in the conservation side of it, but also in feeding hungry children. Just go to our website, boonebrothers.org.

Dave Stone: I want to wrap with talking a little bit about ministry because I think you've done it so well for so many years and you're going to continue to from a different seat. I know you'll be Scott's biggest encourager. I know that you'll give him space to lead and you're diving into the Boone Brothers ministry and making a huge difference. It sounds like not just statewide but in the years to come, it's going to be nationwide. God just keeps opening those doors for you.

But I love the way you approach ministry. You don't candy coat that there are tough days, that there are challenging moments. You shared a story in your final sermon there on Alexander the Great that I think is a great inspiration for every Christian leader to hear. Do you mind sharing that?

Jon Weece: Towards the end of his life, as you know, he had his army pushing through Asia and there was legitimate battle fatigue. A lot of his army wanted to turn around and go home. They'd had enough. It's said that Alexander the Great stood up in front of them and removed his clothing and his outer garments so that his bare chest and his bare back could be seen. In front of his soldiers, he did a 360 so they could see him. Then he declared, "I want you to notice that all my scars are on the front of me because I've led you into every battle and I've never turned my back on any of you."

I just challenged our church. I said let's be the kind of church because Scott's going to lead us onto the battlefield. He's not afraid to do that and we need him to do that. God's going to be speaking through him and guiding him to do that. But let's not be the kind of church that stabs him in the back. He's expecting to get wounds from the front from Satan, but he shouldn't get any from his brothers and sisters behind him. I think that should be true for every church and every pastor. I'd love for that to be the case.

I can say this, you've been there too. Some of my best moments and some of my worst moments have been in ministry. Some of them have been because of my own doing, my own stupidity and foolishness, but a lot of it's just been caused because Satan's real and he gets us to believe that people are the enemy. They're never the enemy even when they're being mean towards us. So if you're in a down moment, discouraging moment, man, I'm here for you. I love you. I understand. I'm praying for you. Like Nehemiah, we need you on the wall. Just handcuff yourself to that wall and stay up there and keep fighting because people are never the enemy. Satan wants us to turn on them and we shouldn't. We just need to recognize he's the one that's getting people to stab us in the back at times.

Dave Stone: I like what Jeff Brum says. When we look at non-Christians or we look at people who are not acting Christ-like, remember they are not the enemy. They are victims of the enemy. It's a good reminder. So if you're a church member and you just listened to that Alexander the Great story that Jon shared, keep that in mind the next time you start to criticize or gossip behind the back of a Christian leader.

For those of you who are Christian leaders, hear that and I think that oftentimes God wants us to be a person who is upholding other Christian leaders in our area. One of the great things I've seen Jon do is Jon has poured into plenty of other Christian leaders around the Lexington area and rather than us being jealous of other churches or what somebody else is doing, what if we just prayed for them? What if we just wrote an encouraging note? I'm telling you what, it could make a huge difference.

We're in this battle together. It's not something that we need to argue about and compete with a church down the road. Instead, we're trying to reach lost people. It's similar to the analogy of 21% of kids are hungry and going to bed hungry. Yet there's a spiritual hunger of more than half of our culture easily that is just in spiritual need of the food that Christ can give.

I've got so many notes. That was a rich conversation for me just to get to listen to. First and foremost, I love it when Jon called us to lead in a way that doesn't cause your family to resent Jesus. That was at the forefront of his transition of leadership with Scott. Success doesn't matter if your spouse and your kids quietly grow cold toward Christ because of your ministry. It all starts with integrity, and Jon is the same man that he is at home as he is on a platform when he's preaching.

So many cool stories and insights. I love the way he unpacked the messages with the cards. What a creative way to preach. Just him being down downtown on the streets of downtown Lexington and for him to do that repeatedly week in and week out just as a chance to connect to people and to hear their hearts. He has this burden for those who are often overlooked and ostracized and he's always reaching out to the people that everyone else has forgotten about. I think that should be at the heartbeat of every one of us in pastoral leadership is to want to look for the people that Jesus would have looked for and to minister to them.

Jon reminded us to not let compliments go to our heads or criticism go to our hearts. I'm sure that you get plenty of both as a Christian leader, but stay humble when they praise you and kind when they question you. And remember people are not the enemy. Jon Weece stepped away in the middle of success because he believed that it was best for the church, because he had had someone who had been preparing and who was ready for that.

There were so many takeaways that I had but the bottom line of listening to Jon was how well he loved people, how well he loved the overlooked, and I think there is a correlation between the way he loves and the way he loves God's word. I think that there is something to be said for the fact that at an early age, he started memorizing God's word and that found a home in his heart.

I was really struck by that phrase when he said the more you get into God's word and the more you memorize God's word, the more the voice of the Holy Spirit will sound like your voice. It's because we're becoming conformed into the image of Christ. I never had thought of it like that: the Holy Spirit's voice sounding like my voice. But yes, that's what will happen if we're in the word and if we're memorizing the word and we're relying on the word. How was it that Christ handled temptation? He went back to the word. It is written. It is written. It is written. There's power in God's word.

I want to key in on memorizing God's word and how important it is that we get our kids started and our grandkids started at a very young age. I like the idea of paying them to do this. I thought that was a great suggestion Jon had. It reminded me of a funeral service that I did over 20 years ago. There was a family in our church that had a two-year-old that drowned in the family swimming pool. I ended up doing the funeral service.

When I was over at the family's house that night when they'd returned from the hospital, I was there with them. After we cried together, they started telling me stories about Jacob and they told me about a Bible verse that he had memorized. He's two and a half years old. Psalm 119:160. It says, "All your words are true." Every time he would walk past the refrigerator, those words were written up there and he would just say that verse, "All your words are true." He would sometimes hit the refrigerator as he would say the word "true."

At the funeral service, I said, "Isn't it interesting that a two-year-old memorized Scripture and isn't it interesting that the only verse he could say was the very verse that God knew we would all need to remember?" When tragedy strikes, we're tempted to question God and to doubt his word. We wonder how we'll make it through. But God didn't give us the Bible so that we could pick and choose what to believe. The truth of Scripture is what will carry this family through the years ahead.

Maybe all you can do is whisper it through your tears. But what I want to do is I just want to list some different promises that are found in God's word and I want you to quote the verse that Jacob had memorized as a two-year-old. I know you won't be able to say it really loud but I just want you to say it because you need to hear Jacob's words from God's heart in the Psalms.

I read, "He heals the brokenhearted," and then everyone at the funeral refrained back to me, "All your words are true." I read, "Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest." They said, "All your words are true." I said, "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me." They said, "All your words are true." Something happened during that funeral service as I was in this section because the more verses that I read, the louder their response got coming back to me.

I said, "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. All your words are true. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. All your words are true. I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. All your words are true." And then I prayed this. I just prayed, "Father, we thank you for a hope that is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and we thank you for loaning us a little boy to teach us a very big lesson that all your words are true."

I'm going to take a second to remind you about our pastoral care line. It's a completely free support line for pastors and their families. It's staffed with former pastors and licensed counselors. It's a great chance for you or your family to receive confidential support and encouragement. You can call us at 1-844-4PASTOR. That's 1-844, the number four, and then the word PASTOR. Or you can click on the link below in the show notes.

Let me also remind you about the boonebrothers.org to check that out. What Jon is doing, this is a powerful ministry. If you are a hunter, especially for those who live in Kentucky, check out boonebrothers.org. In the next year, it'll be in 27 different states. Be praying for him as he's helping to feed hungry kids and make a huge difference.

Well as always thanks for listening to Pastor to Pastor. We drop a brand new episode every Tuesday that's designed to encourage, inspire, and to challenge you. Leadership can be lonely. We call this Pastor to Pastor for a reason. It's to remind you that you're not alone. So until next time, I'm Dave Stone saying God bless.

Male Voice: Live your truth. A lot of people say that, don't they? But truth isn't something we decide. God has decided it for us and it's our job as believers to share his truth with a world in need. All I'll encourage you to do that through my podcast, Refocus with Jim Daly. I visit with fascinating guests about important topics like gender confusion, cancel culture, and more, while helping you share God's love with others. Listen at refocuswithjimdaly.com.