Theology in the Raw - Recovering from the Death of a Child and Navigating Success in Ministry: Levi Lusko

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Levi Lusko is the founder and lead pastor of Fresh Life Church located in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah. He is the bestselling author of Through the Eyes of a Lion, Swipe Right, I Declare War, The Last Supper on the Moon, and Roar Like a Lion, the 2022 ECPA Christian Book Award winner for young people's literature. Levi also travels the world speaking about Jesus. He and his wife, Jennie, have one son, Lennox, and four daughters: Alivia, Daisy, Clover, and Lenya, who is in heaven. Levi’s latest book is Blessed Are The Spiraling: How the Chaotic Search for Significance Can Lead to Joy through Life’s Shifting Seasons Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology Indira. My guest today is Levi Lesko, who is a founder and lead pastor of Fresh Life Church located in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah. He is the bestselling author of several books, including Through the Eyes of a Lion, Swipe Right, I Declare War, The Last Supper on the Moon, and Roar Like a Lion. And his latest book is Blessed Are the Spiraling, How the Chaotix Search for Significance Can Lead to Joy Through Life's Shifting Seasons. I've known about Levi for a while from a distance, especially as we talk about in this podcast, when his daughter, his five-year-old daughter died while he was a pastor at his church several years ago.

And I've never heard about that, just being devastated by it. And I've been really just impressed with how he and his wife handled that devastating situation. We talked about that at the beginning of this conversation. And then we talked about just all things, all the way, I mean, just we went all over the map from ministry to preaching to stand up comedians to snowboarding to ice baths and our mutual fear of snakes and many other things. So really fun, free flowing conversation. Really excited for you to get to know Levi. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Levi Lesko. All right, Levi Lesko, man, this is, I can't believe this is happening. I mean, I've been following

your work for a while now and I'm just really excited to have a conversation with you. Thanks for being a guest on Theology in the Raw. Bro, for sure. I feel like, yeah, all roads were pointing this way. I was going to say all roads west or whatever, but yeah, I've tracked with you for so long. And it was about dang time we finally got to meet. I actually was in your church. You weren't there. It wasn't a Sunday even.

What was I doing there? Breaking and entering? Is this like a burglary? I think I was. I was robbing your church. I was in your church. The alarm was going off. I was carrying equipment out.

I think it was on my way. We went and visited Glacier National Park, I think. And was it then or was it... Yeah, I can't remember, but I'm like, oh my gosh, this is... That's amazing. I wish I would have known I would have come down. Oh man. We could have let you in through the front door and everything. Yeah. So I first came across your name when I heard about the death of your daughter, Lenya. And it just, as a father of three daughters and a son, I just, my heart, I just, I'm just shocked. I'm just like, how does anybody get through that?

And looking out from a distance, it just, I was so impressed with how you and your wife wrestled honestly, you wrestled honestly, but you did so in a way that you just still clung to Jesus. Do you mind talking about that? Sure. Yeah, no, absolutely not. Tell us the story. Yeah. So, as I think back on that period, that was 2012. So that's 13 years ago now. God just had his hand on it. I would say the same thing to you.

I don't know how I got through that. I think the nature of peace that passes understanding is that maybe none of us would ever know how we could get through our hardest day or our worst time, but the Lord, the grace of God, sustains us. As I look back on Linnea's death and her going to heaven, which is, they're both true, right? She died, but she's not dead. She's gone, but she's gone home. There's the human side of it, which was brutal. Everything you'd think it would be unimaginable. I did CPR until that paramedics got there because she had an asthma attack. She was five years old. She was in kindergarten.

And the week before there was the new town shooting, you know, all of these kindergartners had gotten killed. And I was literally holding her one morning, watching the news of the coverage of all the funerals in Connecticut. And I remember saying to myself, how do you plan a funeral for a five year old? And my mind wouldn't even let me connect the dots to her because I was just hugging her in the morning, watching the news.

And yet I remember having that thought. And then literally a week later, we're planning a funeral for a five-year-old. So the parts of that that are metallic and spiky and ferocious are real because we couldn't find a casket in time. They were saying we may have to bury her in an adult-sized casket because kids caskets have to get special ordered and we only stock the adult ones. Then they were saying, because it's Christmas time, we don't know if we can get a kid's one in time. Then they go, but we could bury her, don't want to exhume her later. I mean, this is like kind of stuff we're having to like process while also like

still having to be present and show up for our other kids. Because you know, we have other kids and so, and then it was Christmas time. So her body was in the funeral home during the Christmas day. And then we buried her the day after Christmas. Fortunately, the kids casket did come in in time, but having to thaw the ground out before we could dig a hole because when the ground is frozen, they have to put these big, you know, dethars in deep down to thaw the ground. Then they can dig the hole. Then the funeral, the graveyard that we picked was all full, so we had to find a different one. And then we found this beautiful little cute graveyard that, this

is wild. They wouldn't let us bury her there because we weren't members of that church. So I'm like, Hey, I'm a pastor. I'm a believer in Jesus. They're just like, Oh, no, no, this is a cemetery is only for our church. And so we found a third cemetery. So all of that was so, so gnarly. But then at the same time, as I look back on it, I just see God holding us. I see, you know, you even saying that, that you were a part of the church corporate around the world praying for us. And we're so grateful that I've heard a million people, I didn't know them, but they said, Hey, I prayed for you. I prayed for your family. And so God upheld us with that. And then I think you just have to just keep trusting him and keep coming back and grace heals you like a pearl is formed one

layer at a time over an irritant. And so that was kind of our experience with that. And by God's grace, today we can look back and point to a million things that God has brought that's good out of that horrible thing. From the cornea transplants that Linnea was able to give to the two people who received her corneas and they now see through her eyes to the ways that her story has captured people and helped them understand and process pain in their life. And yeah, so we're just, I'm amazed. I'm grateful. My heart says all that from a place of more healing than I could have at a previous point.

And you know, God was so good to us and so kind to us in all of that. Were you ever, did you ever question your faith? Were you mad at God? Did you fall into depression? Like the human side in the moment, what was that like? Yeah. What is it? What is it? E, all of the above? And I might go through all of those by lunch, you know? There was the first year, especially, you know, grief, there's no timetable to grief, but I found for me anyhow, that the 365 degree day Mark, like that, that was a real like passage of time in my grief journey because I feel like I navigated her birthday. We navigated a mother's day, father's day.

Then it was, you know, fourth of July, though it was weird ones that snuck up on us that were hard. I was holding Livy and we had a one year old and a two year old and then a seven year old and then Lenya had been five. So we still had a lot of daily parenting to do. And we now have a seven year old son as well. And it was hard to, when he got to five, the, I remember the day I counted the days out the day that he was exactly in the amount of days that Linnea lived. And then it

was going to tip forward the next day. That was hard. Like there were so many hard moments, but the first year especially, Preston, was every day a cocktail of everything you just mentioned, depression, anger, suicidal thoughts, incredible regret, crushing anguish. And at the same time, the thing that helped me the most is when I was one day, I used to drive around and I would just scream in my car, you know, just anger and just rage. Like the deepest, I would usually yell no, like just screaming no, like just I missed her. I wanted her. I didn't want her, you know, separated from us. And I remember trying to understand where the anger was directed. And it's the funniest thing. I never felt mad at God. I felt mad with God. Like I felt his anger flowing through me too. Almost like when he was in John 11 raging at the tomb

of Lazarus, he says he groaned and the Greek word is like the bellowing and snorting of an angry horse. I felt him saying, Levi, I'm angry too. I didn't want death to come. I didn't want sin to come. And then I was from that moment forward, I was like, wow, I'm not mad at God. I'm mad with God. And that was a real healing moment for me. Did you, I mean, you were pastoring a church at the time, a thriving church at the time, right? Was that right when the church really started taking off or? The church was at the 2012. We started the church in 2007. So we were five years in.

We were seeing the move of God really, you know, just all around us. Yeah. There was a lot to do. A lot of church life. I took a month off after I preached Christmas Eve that year. That was the big kind of moment. I had told the people in the hospital because my wife, Jenny, when we got in the car to leave, we had loaded the two girls up in their car seats and then Olivia was sitting in her seat and Linnea's car seat was empty. And I looked back in sitting in her seat and Linnea's car seat was empty. And I looked back in the rear view mirror and saw her empty car seat and we're backing out of the hospital space. I was brutal. And Jenny stopped me and goes, Levi, we can't

leave. You forgot. She said, Preston, she said, you forgot to invite the people in the hospital to church. And we have a big culture of invitational evangelism in our church and our family. And I was like, baby. What are you talking about? I'm not going back in the hospital so hard to leave. She's like Linnea would want you to So I was like, you're absolutely right about that so I went back in the hospital and I invited the Respiratory therapist and the nurse and the security guard and the doctors and the attending physician that who had just declared her dead her body Still under the sheet in there, you know, it's so fresh

I was weeping. And I said, what I managed to say was, hey, I'd like to invite you to church. If you come in my daughter's honor, I'm still going to go through with preaching. I spent all day writing the talk. I was going to give all preaching in her honor. And a number of people did come. And quite a few did end up responding to the invitation that day. And so yeah, the church was a part of it. Our church grieved that day. So, yeah, the church was a part of it. Our church grieved with us. And then I took a month off after that to really kind of heal and get some counsel and all that. How do you preach a couple days or a day after your daughter? That sermon must have been, I don't know. It's hard to watch. I've watched, I've looked it up

and seen it. It's hard for me to watch it because of the pain I could see that I was in. But in a weird way, Preston, it kind of was healing and therapeutic for me to declare in front of our church. I mean, I first get up and I'm just like, you see the red in my eyes and all that. But then at the same time, I just basically said, I still believe and I still trust and God's good and this doesn't change anything. Death was always the point for Christmas. And yeah, so I mean, I think it was important for me to do that. Yeah. Wow. So you planted the church in 2007. And so just in case people don't know, I mean, it really exploded, flourished in ministry,

grew in size, impact, lots of people coming to Jesus. What was that like? I mean, when you planted the church, did you plant it? You planted it, right? And tell us just so people can understand, tell us about the growth. And it's not in like LA or Chicago. I mean, you're in a, you know, not a very large town in Montana. It's true.

Yeah. We have one Walmart, you know, one Costco. We just got a Chick-fil-A. Yeah. That's a big day for the church though. You know, everyone went wild. Yeah. Jenny and I were in Southern California. We had gotten married very young and we had one child and I was a teaching pastor at a church in San Juan Capistrano. And it was really working, you know, the ministry and how like in the sense of I had always been a youth pastor. And so then I got called up to the majors, you know, or maybe that's backwards. Maybe I got called down from the majors to teach adults. But I was so, I was so surprised because I had only ever taught young people. And so they said, Hey, can you teach in the main church? The pastor had left.

And the board said, could you step in as an interim teaching pastor for the church? And I said, all I have is like kid sermons. And they're like, well, just give those. And I drove home, I'll be like, Jenny, it worked. I gave this talk and it seemed like they liked it. And the church responded well to it. So the board said, hey, we're gonna take away interim

and just make you the teaching pastor for the church. And Jenny and I both felt a level of discomfort with that arrangement because we hadn't had the chance to grow into the leadership that we knew that we needed to have to teach thousands of people and lead in that regard. I always felt like I needed, I would one day lead a church, but I knew I needed to grow up with the church. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. So we felt like the Lord was calling us to maybe take us up a faith and start something that we could grow alongside of it. And Montana had been presented to us as a right mission

field by someone who said, Hey, Southern California, there's life-giving, you know, churches, you could throw a rocket, saddleback, or hit mariners. They're all over the Southern California area, the kind of church that we would lead. Montana, especially at that time, it was far more Bible-belty. Little churches with the 10 Commandments in every yard. There's great churches, but there wasn't the kind of church atmosphere that Southern California has. So someone had said, off-handed, you should move to Montana church. And it was almost more like, you know, and I took it like, oh yeah, I'll pray about that. But like, you know, but deep down the Lord never let me forget

that. And so we began praying about it and feeling like, man, this is what God wants for us. And so we took the step of faith and moved to Montana and literally like started a church that next weekend. We invited people around town, 14 people came to the first gathering. We met above a bar on Main Street. It did grow very quickly by, I don't know what standards there are. We didn't have a team. We didn't have a strategy. We just literally started a Bible study and it grew into a church.

By Easter, which was three months later, we had had 100 people and then on the one-year mark we had grown to 300 people. It's just like you said, people coming to know Jesus grown from there. The surprise of our life has been the national demand, which came out of nowhere. It didn't make ever any sense because what's Montana? We're so off the radar, especially 2007. We started the church before there was an iPhone, there wasn't Instagram yet. We were, you know, buying ads in the newspaper, like literally to invite people to church. We used to create MySpace codes where people could paste it into their MySpace page to come to church. Yeah, that's funny. That's our story there. Yeah.

It's Kalispell, right? Kalispell, Montana, yeah. It's a beautiful area. My gosh. Don't tell anybody. Has it grown a lot since you've been there? Without a doubt, yeah. Especially pandemic and then the Yellowstone TV show has kind of thrusted onto the national radar for sure.

Yeah, glacier is, I went to glacier once and we actually didn't stay long. It was the most stunningly beautiful place. I think I've been to one of the top five at least, but it was very crowded. I was like, oh my gosh, it's like wall to wall people and everything. I live in Idaho where we've got beautiful mountains.

The mountains don't quite rival glacier, but beautiful mountains and hardly any people. So we actually drove back early and spent a week in the mountains of Idaho. But man, I was jaw-dropping. Like, you're just like, kind of like when you see the Grand Canyon in real life, you know, it's like, oh my word, this is just stunning.

Did you go to the East side or the West side? Oh gosh. We drove, we drove, I think through the whole thing. What's that road to the moon or road to the sun? Going to the sun road. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was dragging a trailer behind my minivan. They let you do that on the sun road?

No, they didn't. I got arrested. I got arrested. I got a ticket. I got arrested. I blew through the sign that says no trailers. I'm like, yeah, who's going to enforce that? Sure enough, they enforced it and they made us leave the park

on the other side or something. So it was not the best experience, but stunning, stunning, stunning. Yeah. They call it the crown of the continent and it is something else. You know, it's, I have friends who, who have been to the Alps and they say it's the closest thing in America to the Alps. And it is, it is jaw-dropping, especially on the East side. You know, so if you went through, you come out at Browning that the east side of the park, that's to me the most, the part that's the best. And us, us locals here know like when to go and did not go. You're not going to go really in July. I mean, and if you are, you know, there are

parts you can get to that are less Disneyland ish, but it has definitely, I mean, there's a, I think, I mean, this, this is an old number, so it's probably way more than that now, but they used to say a million visitors every summer would come through Glacier. Wow. Wow. How have you handled the, and I bet, what word should we use here? Success probably, maybe success is probably fine, but man, I mean, you planted a church and it's grown tremendously, and then you're thrown into more international spotlight, just all this attention.

How have you handled that? Because that can break somebody, or cause affairs, or money laundering, all the stuff that comes with being thrust into the spotlight. You throw affairs and money laundering? Well, fortunately, there haven't been any of those. Okay, good. We'll get that out. In answer to your question, how have I handled it, it would probably all depend on the day. Some days great, some days terrible. Fortunately, I got to slow cook with the church growth. So that wasn't immediate. Opportunities grew.

I think in God's wisdom, a big part of him sending us out here was so we could have deep formation. If a tree has wider branches than roots, it'll topple under its weight, right? So you have to have equal and opposite roots to the branches. Otherwise, you can't sustain anything in your arms. When we moved out here, I had already spoken in a couple of large 12,000, 15,000 gatherings already prior to starting our church. And that was kind of part of the Montana seems crazy because it's so disconnected from Nashville, from the Christian industry that we had already started to get a little bit of opportunity in front of.

So I remember journaling like, Lord, if you've called us to have influence and you desire for us to do this, Paul wanted to go to Rome for a reason. It's the center of everything. And if you want to reach culture, you got to be in a place that you can do it. And it felt opposite to move here because of that. But I felt like the Lord was testing us to offer up Isaac and if he wanted to, he could raise him up. And that is exactly what happened. If anything, our obscurity, our wilderness are being hidden for whatever time it was. Because really after Linnea went to heaven,

things accelerated a lot because of the first book. We wrote through the eyes of a lion and told her story. That's where we started getting asked to go to Cape Town or getting asked to speak in Ireland or those opportunities from people who read the book and wanted to hear about. But by then, at that point, it was 2016, 2015, 16, we had been up here a decade and we had had a decade of every week teaching a congregation and dying daily. So I think hopefully some of those things were there to where we weren't paying attention to press clippings. It was less disorienting because it happened slowly from our perspective.

It wasn't overnight. Yeah, when it happens overnight, almost. It's exciting and adrenaline rush it can be. I don't think humans were made to handle that and few people handle it well. But yeah, the slow cook, it sounds like, I mean, your heart is primarily, you're a local church pastor. That seems to be your- That's it. I mean, Preston, for the first seven years, I did a Wednesday night Bible study and a Sunday morning sermon and I didn't have an associate pastor that was carrying teaching

loads. So I was doing two Bible studies every single week. There's not a lot of time to get in trouble. It's like you're studying your focus. I did 54 weeks through the book of John and then 40 weeks through the book of Revelation, like just verse by verse teaching, teaching, teaching. We were just excited to watch people come to know Christ. Yeah, the opportunities existed of traveling and speaking, but it wasn't, I don't know,

I think also there wasn't Instagram until later on. There wasn't the perception of any kind of national influence in the same way that kind of, I think someone coming of age now where you blow up on TikTok or whatever. I feel like things have been exponentially increased in complexity with high visibility these days. It's so hard to imagine a world without social media being omnipresent. And yeah, it's just been a few years. It's crazy to think about Myspace. Yeah, you do, like what that's done. Yeah. Because I mean, I would get

interviewed by Relevant Magazine and you kind of knew that was like, oh wow, that magazine gets sent to every church in America or wherever, but it just didn't have the same, it didn't have the same, I think, visibility that today it has. And instantaneously so. that today it has, and instantaneously so. Are you a recent college graduate or in between jobs, or maybe you're just looking for a spiritually meaningful cross-cultural experience? If this is you, then you need to check out the Global Ambassador Program with ELIC, the English Language Institute in China. Okay, so it's not just in China anymore, they actually work in several different countries. The Global Ambassador Program, or GAP, is a personal and professional development program where you will be immersed in the

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To learn more about GAP and take the next step, Go to elic.org forward slash t-i-t-r. That's e-l-i-c dot org forward slash t-i-t-r. What's your favorite thing about ministry, your particular ministry, and what's the most challenging thing? I mean, both come down to people. I mean, all my greatest stories are people's stories. All the, I mean, I heard this weekend of a miracle, of literally a miracle of somebody. We're in a series on prayer right now and we're talking about the power of prayer and using the different tools of prayer, supplication, intercession, general prayer, adoration, Thanksgiving.

And someone from our church had a $110,000 tax bill and they were just really stressed about it. Wow. And then they said they really hadn't prayed much about it and they prayed about it. And I just got the story. And then the next morning they got an email out of nowhere from the IRS saying that it's been forgiven. They don't have that anymore. For no reason.

What? Why? No real explanation. Wow. And just hearing that, that stands out. That's not like every day here, a story like that. And to me it's like, man, would that email still have come without them crying out to God as a supplication? Maybe. I don't know, but I think it's powerful. And so to hear someone just going, hey, light bulb prayer really is real and works. I love that. I love seeing, I spoke this week at a youth conference and gave an

invitation. Was anybody like to give the life to Christ and to watch young people get out of their seats and come forward? That's a high, you can't, like the joy of watching someone respond to the gospel and then the problems of staff and people and just all of those reality HR issues that even Jesus had to deal with. You know? He had some HR issues for sure. Are you on the road quite a bit? Like, or how do you manage like, pastoring in a thriving local church and traveling and speaking internationally? Like, do you have limitations pastoral thriving local church and traveling and speaking internationally?

Do you have limitations on how much you travel? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I usually do 40 Sundays a year, 30, 37 Sundays a year. And fortunately, now we have a great team. There's a number of capable communicators. My wife does more speaking. She early on didn't communicate much. It just depends on the season. In a season of carrying a new book message, there's going to be more demands on your time and that sort of thing. But we're pretty selective. We're picky. I had a season where I did too much. This new book I'm writing out of, I'm 42, about to turn 43, 38 to 40 was a complicated time in my life. And I think in large part, there was a season where I was hitting it too hard,

traveling too much, burning too much of the candle at both ends. But I'm at a healthier place now. I've learned how to better rest going into busy seasons and not just try to recover coming out of them. And so yeah, I mean, it's time, it's day by day, but the cool thing is for us, we homeschool our kids. And so like even on a busy trip, I always take one kid or my wife with me. And so like Clover and I just got back from a run of dates, you know, where we did

six cities out, you know, cause as you know, leaving the rural airport is half the battle. Once you're into a major hub, it's way easier to connect around. So we'd prefer to kind of stretch them out and, you know, hit them hard and then, and then come back and be here. But we played tennis every day together. We bring our rackets, we go find public courts, play a game of tennis every day and find a coffee shop to do our work in. She'll do her school, I'll do the work. And with Zoom and everything, we can still be a part of the regular

church life staff anyway, you know? I did the same thing early on when my kids were younger, especially take a kid on every trip. And yeah, so many memories. I mean, I remember speaking in Orlando, you know, and brought a kid and of course we went to the Universal Studios and like, we still talk about those trips or I try to, I love to, I give priority to speaking requests during baseball season if they're in a, especially the Dodgers are in town. So they've been to a few games, you

know, after, after speaking and, Get a little butter beer. What's not to love? So they've been to a few games, you know, after speaking and- Get a little butter beer. What's not to love? A little butter beer, yeah. I think I had two different Orlando trips, so I took two different kids and now they're older. So now-

But have you taken them to that new Cosmic Rewind at Disney World? No, I've never been to Disney World actually, just Universal. Well next speaking engagement that comes in Orlando, you can tag on a little time at Epcot. And there's this ride called Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind. Dude, it's like Space Mountain, but in the future. Like, it's like what Space Mountain could be,

you know what I mean, if it had a glorified body. It's incredible. Well, I'm a big Space Mountain fan. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I don't have any requests in Orlando coming up, but hopefully I will in the future. Any Orlandans? If you're hearing, you can get Preston Sprinkle for cheap now.

All you've got to do is tell him he's throwing in an Epcot ticket. Yeah, right, right, right. How did you learn how to preach so well? Where does that come from? That's not normal. did it come just naturally? And I know you're going to say, Oh, I'm just, it's not a big deal or whatever, but like, no, I've worked really, really hard at it. And the Lord gave me a gift and I've tried to develop it. And I've been grateful. I've great. I've, I've been fortunate enough to have incredible mentors around. Skip Heitzig,

pastor of Grow Up Under in New Mexico. He's maybe one of the greatest expositors in the face of the earth. Really? Greg Lorry, evangelist, mentored by Billy Graham. I've had close proximity to Louis Giglio and Craig Groeschel and these just men who have been done the long obedience in the same direction. I've studied hard personally. I mean, I went to three whole semesters of Bible college, but then I really just have been a self-learner and the craft of it I've loved. I mean, I was two years old when I first said I wanted

to be a pastor. So I've literally all, yeah, I was told my mom I wanted to be a pastor, I was two years old when I first said I wanted to be a pastor. So I've literally all, yeah. I was told my mom, I wanted to be a pastor when I was two years old. That's weird. That's not normal. That's a, wow. Do you remember why? I mean, I pray I don't remember, but I mean, as an early, the earliest memories, what was it about being a pastor that-

Yeah, my dad was a bivocational church planner. So he had, he owned and operated radio stations, also worked at TV stations like Fox and different things like that. But he would have a church plant. He planted a number of churches. And so I grew up in the mix of all of that. And watching my dad study to preach, I would help him look up cross references. Back then there wasn't computer software to do it. So there was this big treasury of scripture knowledge where you look up, you know, or strongest concordance, you'd look up a word or a verse, and then you'd look up all the different cross references where that verse shows up. And I would sit there and help him,

like with a rule, I'd go down the line and tell him and he would look them up. And so I just was intrigued by the process of writing a sermon. And then yeah, that's literally it. So you do study it. You obviously have a more natural, or you might say spiritual, obviously spiritual gift, but you also hone that craft. What does that look like? Do you go back and re-watch your messages and say, I could have done this differently or read books on preaching? What do you do? All of the above. I mean, Spurgeon's lectures to my students, a whole book about communication, John Stott's Between Two Worlds. I devoured those because I wanted to grow in it and learn. And you can't do anything about what gifts

you've been given or not, except earnestly desire the better gifts, but you can take your gift and bring a return on it. So I have studied very much the craft of communication. I would dissect sermons. I would listen to sermons from pastors. I would write them down. I would try and extract the outlines, figure out the flow of it. Everything from like an Andy Stanley one point sermon with a whole sermons one point to a

more defined outline with three application points. Then I love studying stand-up comedians. How do they communicate with no notes? How are they riffing and reading off the crowd? I've always just loved, loved, loved communication. So yeah, I would listen to myself too. My first sermon, I had a tape cassette and I would actually say the sermon into the tape recorder, play

it back, okay, think about it, make changes. But I used to get so nervous, I would throw up every single time. I don't know if that was your experience. I had a obnoxious fear of public speaking. I didn't like saying my name out loud in class in sixth grade when they would go around. I would start to get sweaty. I would just start to like, oh, to get that throw up feeling, just to say my name out loud. I remember the first time I was in, my first, I was been saved for a year. I was 19 years old, was at a Christian college and my roommate,

who was also the chaplain, asked me to share my five, a five minute testimony on the day of prayer, an outdoor thing in front of a few hundred people. And that was the longest, most miserable six weeks of my life where he said, it's in six weeks, so you have time to prepare your five-minute testimony, which you shouldn't have to prepare. It was the worst six weeks of my life. I just wanted to kill myself. I wanted to throw it, not literally, but I just...

Sure. And I remember the second I got up there and I wanted to just, I just wanted to just collapse in a pool of anxiety. And the second I started opening up my mouth, it was okay. It was like, and then I saw people engaged. And then it started, you started to get this energy and I was like, and I got done. I was like, I got through that. That was crazy. And it took years for me to, it never went away, but definitely, obviously it gets a lot easier. I don't have as much anxiety. I feel like in the last couple of years, it's kind of come back a little bit. I get more nervous now going up and speak. And I, again,

once I start speaking, it's fine. But I mean, people are like, why are you so nervous? And I'm like, you're sitting there in front of, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of people, they're all staring at you. Like they're, and you have, and you're sitting there in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people, they're all staring at you. And you're standing between God and them saying, mediating something about the creator of the universe. And you have to get it right? If you really think about it, it's terrifying. Yeah, I hope it never goes away.

The fear, the awe, the anxiety, the trepidation. Yeah, I think there's so many aspects to it. Just the human mechanics aspect of it is weird to people to stand and listen to you talk. But the awe part of it, the let not many of you become teachers thing, the stricter judgment thing, that's intense. And then there's the whole Millstone thing too, which is kind of a big thing to remember. So I think all of that is similar for me. I went up on stage at church to give a testimony from summer camp and I accidentally kicked over a guitar that was in the guitar rest from the worship leader, knocked it down the stairs. I was like, this is not going. But similar fear throwing up. But then once I click in, Spurgeon called it, the unction comes and then it's on. It's like the

awe of God fills the room. There's nothing like the moment when it gets quiet, when you just feel like the oxygen sucks out, everyone leans in. I love that. I love, I love communicating. Hmm. I'm right now just, I, we have our, um, annual Exiles of Babylon conference next week and I'm the host of the three day thing. And for the first time, I'm actually giving a separate talk to, usually I just host it, you know, which is a, and man, even right now, just my heart is just, I can feel it right now. It's like, I'm going to be on stage in front of, you know, I had maybe a thousand people, you know, for three days and managing the speakers and this, that, transitions, remember everything.

There's an energy there for sure. I'm more excited than anxious, but it's like 60-40. 60% excited, 40% anxious. It's a weird thing, man. You mentioned stand-up comedians. I was literally going to bring that up because I think, I don't know who I heard from years ago said they study stand-up comedians. And at first it sounds sacrilegious, like, oh, you're just trying to like be funny. It's like, no, no, they get up with no props, no notes, nothing.

And they're able to hold the crowd's attention. Obviously, we're not comedians, we're preachers, you know, that, you know, should go without saying, but their ability to communicate effectively is really profound, you know, their cadence, their timing, voice fluctuate, you know, all those things, I think, are not insignificant. How did you, like, is that, can you expand on that? Like, what is it about stand with comedians that you... All of the above. I think it's just the craft. Outside of the similarities to, it's an oration. Like, I would say the same. I love listening to a John F. Kennedy speech. I love, I love, God gave us this ability to speak.

He created the world by speaking. So there's something to speech that triggers and resonates and touches and lands. One rabbi said, words create worlds. So I'm a fan of that. And a stand-up comedian with timing and precision and like Jerry Seinfeld, like I used to dissect and parse. Why does it resonate with us so when he talks about it and how his punch lines would hit? Obviously, devil's advocate is, Paul said, we did not come to you with persuasive speech. And yet there is still something I think that God's honored by us, stewarding well, a gift

he's given to us. The parable of the prodigal son's been called the greatest short story ever written. So Jesus was a good orator. The Sermon on the Mount was spellbinding, you know? They hung on every word on the road to Emmaus and their hearts burned within him as he went through the whole Old Testament and showed how these things were concerning him.

So there's something of that. And then you watch someone like Kevin Hart or Dane Cook back in the day or Nate Bergetse. It moves us. And then also the whole experience of a whole room responding to content together is very interesting. I've learned the concision from comedians. You can say something that takes 10 words and it's less powerful than if you could say the same thing in six words. Just something about that power of concision that I've learned from comedians. And yeah, the choice of words, you can say, you know, you can have a dozen synonyms,

you know, and that one word though will just hit people the way that, you know, 10 other words wouldn't. I mean, Martin Luther King is, I mean, I know he's, of course, he's a great orator, but I don't think people understand how powerful he was. I mean, because he, his oration skills were off the chart, but he was, I mean, a brilliant thinker. I mean, he was primar... Before he went into social justice activism, he was a PhD from Boston College. He was primarily a theologian. So you combine his profound speaking abilities with just his intellect and being able to make things clear. And oh man, it's... I got a kick several years ago listening to just his old sermons that aren't well known. And it's just he, oh my gosh. Phenomenal. Isn't it funny though, too, like, because you think about like presidents,

how they have speech writers. And so all these great, you know, presidential speeches, like, it was written by like this group of thinkers, you know, they just get up and it's an interesting thing. Yeah, yeah. You, okay, so going back, you mentioned prior to COVID, you went through, you were maybe doing too much. Is that what your latest book is about? The Blessed are the spiraling. Is it narrating that season of your life or? Without a doubt. Yeah. It's essentially lessons from my midlife crisis is how shorthand for it would be. Can you unpack that? Yeah, unpack that.

Yeah, I'd love to hear more about that. Sure. So I'm 42, about to turn 43. The average life expectancy worldwide is 72. So my father died at 72. And if you're 18, you're 25% there. If you're 36, you're halfway there. So it's pretty wild.

In America, we do live longer, but there is something to this midlife point. I don't know very many people who have made it through the 38 to 42 kind of divide without having some sense of disorientation. For me, a big part of it was because I started doing ministry so young, I was always a young pastor. That seeped into the groundwater of how I saw myself more than I realized. Until it was challenged, I didn't know it was there. How it got challenged was I had this epiphany dawning on me like, I'm not old, but I'm not certainly the young pastor anymore. What does that make me? So it just kind of was this challenging period of trying to figure out how to face up to the shifting seasons of life. Looking

back and the reason I call it blessed or the spiraling is that it was such a wonderfully rich time, not going through it, but on the other side of it because now I'm kind of on the field again and the time in the locker room at halftime gave me the chance to get my bearings, reevaluate my perspective. Changing seasons require new strategies. And so I have a new marching order, so to speak, for the second half of my life as opposed to the first. And there was also, as you mentioned, the pace I had been running at in my 20s and 30s was just not sustainable. I flew a couple million miles with Delta Airlines, traveled all around the world, wrote eight books. We planted our whole church network of Fresh Life churches,

not to mention all the other things, all the kids stuff and life stuff. And I think I just got to a point where the odometer was saying, hey, we need an overall of the engine because you can't live by sugar-free Red Bulls alone. And, and so that two year period was a lot of hard work and also a lot of unprocessed trauma that for my child that I know it sounds cliche to say, but there was a lot of stuff I just had never really dealt with. I had faced as a young person that I had just kind of shoved down. And so exploring some of that in counseling and coming, making some connections on how some patterns emerged of my response to people who I feel like were going to hurt me or betray

me or not be emotionally available to me, that helped a lot in my marriage, in my parenting, in my leadership. And then there was also just some of the place in the clan, you know, so to speak, the young warrior can't stay the young warrior forever. He has to learn to see himself as the father, as the elder, and then eventually the sage of the tribe. And I think we all want to stay Luke Skywalker forever, but life calls for us to take on the mantle of Yoda. I think I'm not Yoda yet, but I want to see myself more as Obi-Wan Kenobi, perhaps, in these days. So that's kind of what the book's about. You kind of have some Obi-Wan vibes. You can pass. Yeah. I accept.

pass. Yeah, I accept. This episode is brought to you by Beeson Divinity School, an evangelical seminary at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Beeson offers a robust master of divinity, forming students in person in a community oriented model of theological education. I know several faculty members at Beeson and can easily testify to their priority for theological integrity, intellectual honesty, and their passion for the church. Now thanks to a generous gift, Beeson is offering new full tuition scholarships for the 2025 to 2026 academic year, making its flagship degree more affordable than ever. Okay. So these are full tuition scholarships covering the costs of tuition and fees for three years. This is the average time it takes to finish the master of divinity.

These scholarships won't last long. So if you want to further your theological heart and mind, I highly, highly encourage you to apply at BeesonDivinity.com. Okay. That's BeesonDivinity.com. Check out the link in the show notes. Where do you see, if you're allowed to even say, and maybe you have your own non-public thoughts, but a DC yourself next five, 10, 20, 30 years doing what you're doing? I mean, or yeah, what does that look, what is your, if you can imagine your future, what do you hope to see?

Yeah. I love the written word. I'm such a fan of it. I think you give someone a 40-minute talk or even a two-hour long podcast in long form, and it just can't compare to the 13 or 14 hours that someone's going to spend with you when they invest the time to read a book. I know how my life has been shaped by reading Tozer, C.S. Lewis, or any of the great authors, the books that have shaped me. I certainly know anything like that, but I want to offer that to people. And so for sure, publishing, I'm so passionate about. But I also, I love the local church. I love our church community. And so for sure, publishing, I'm so passionate about. But I also, I love the local church. I love our church community.

And so, yeah, I mean, I do see myself staying in, unless God redirects my plans. But then we're also part of that season of readjustment has been a renewed focus on leadership events. I kind of for a while, I was like, I don't really want to speak to leaders. It just didn't give me the same level of joy that I'm finding in it now. I think part of that, you know, move from just a success mentality to a significance mentality has to involve mentorship and speaking

to leaders. So I've been more willing to take on speaking at conferences that are pulling in leaders as well as anything with young people. We launched a youth conference and it's been so fun to focus on that next generation. I got saved in summer camp, so kind of that paying it forward mentality. So outside of the normal stuff, if God allows us to stay in our church and keep writing, raising up leaders, and reaching young people are kind of my marching orders. Yeah. You know, most people are like, that speak and write, they kind of are primarily one and then they do the other. I always thought because you're such a great communicator, you're a speaker who

also writes, but it sounds like, I mean, is writing, would that be your, if you had to pick one or the other, would you pick writing? Is that, or is that too- Well, I'm sure long-term, I will be, there will be a day where I'll be a crazy old hermit in a cabin writing just books. I think it's more sustainable to sit at a typewriter than to take the pounding of incessant connections through Minneapolis, you know, on the way to Atlanta or whatever. So I do see that coming. I agonize over where, I don't use ghost writers.

I agonize over every word. I love the process of writing. So yeah. That's a true writer. A true writer agonizes over the words. That's a true writer. I love one of my manuscripts, 80% done, 85% done. It's been through several drafts.

And then your content's down, your argument's there. And now you can just pour on each sentence and say, how can I make this sentence move from good to great to beautiful? What are my, how can I structure it? How can I love that process? It's so much fun. Yeah, I love that scene in A River Runs Through It

where the dad keeps saying, again, half as long, you know? Oh, yeah, that's right. Yes. Make it more concise. Make it tight. Say more with less. The editing process, I usually overwrite. I usually end up 10% reduced in the editing process.

So I usually overwrite knowing that it's going to come down. I've got a book right now I'm working on. The contract says 60,000 words. I swear it could be 150,000. I'm like, how am I supposed to cut this down? And he's going to give me some grace and hopefully I can come down a bit. But yeah, that's, that's, that's hard. Who would, there's a famous writing expert. I forget his name, Arthur Quillicouch, maybe murder your darlings. Oh yeah.

Stephen King quotes that in on writing. Oh yeah. That's right. And I'm like, I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with that.

I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with that. the writing expert, I forget his name, Arthur Quillicouch, maybe murder your darlings. Oh yeah. Steven King quotes that in on writing. Oh yeah. That's right. Yeah. My little secret person is I don't ever write in contract anymore. So I write all my books without a deal and I shop them after they're done. I'm going to do that next. I think. Yeah. I've done that once. I've done that once. It was so freeing. It was so freeing. So that's what you can do. I can tell myself, I don't have to do this. I don't have to do this. This is what I want to write. And I wrote Last Supper on the Moon that way. I wrote this most recent book that way. And it's just a wonderful thought that it's a little secret. I don't even tell my

agent I'm writing. And then eventually it's all, I'll call surface like a orca. I'd be like, Oh, it's done. Here it is. I'm totally going to do that. There's light. I had this constant hum of stress and anxiety when I have a book contract hanging over me. Now I love writing. So it's not a bad thing. But every, every moment that I'm not working on the book, I feel like this little bit uneasiness and the thought of, and again, I've done it once and it was so freeing. I wrote what I wanted to and I didn't have the pressure of a deadline. Yeah, my first book deal was a two book deal and I hated every minute until it was done because it was like, I have to do this. And I don't know, whatever it is with human nature or whatever. Now, kids' books aren't that way. With the kids' books, I've worked more cooperatively

with the publisher because that's more, Tommy Nelson is the kid's publisher and they're, Kids books aren't that way. With the kids books, I've worked more cooperatively with the publisher because that's more, Tommy Nelson is the kids publisher. That's definitely less, I don't have the high confidence that I could just write it and it would all be accepted as it is. So wait, a Kalispell. Did you know Eugene Peterson?

Yeah, I do, right? We spent some time together. A mutual friend connected us, and we had a wonderful afternoon. One of his last guests he took in, actually, before he took his last turn. And it marked me forever. Yeah, it was amazing.

That guy's a saint. Oh my gosh. Yeah, what a man of God. So what do you do for fun when you're not writing, speaking, traveling? Those things are fun. But tennis, I play a lot of God. So what do you do for fun when you're not writing, speaking, traveling? Those things are fun, but tennis, I play a lot of tennis. All my kids, my wife, we all play tennis. We have enough where we can have a doubles court and a singles court going simultaneously.

We love that. I fly fish. I love snowboarding uphill and downhill. We do the uphill snowboarding where we, where's the skins on our, on our boards. I do it in resort though. I've never done it in like avalanche territory. I just do resort laps for cardio early in the morning with a headlamp in the dark. And then we also, we love camping and boating, all the, all the paddle boarding, anything outdoors.

And then cold bath and sauna. I'm a big cold bath and sauna. I tried that last year and man for six weeks, I was doing it. I was dedicated. I felt amazing, but I can't stand the thought. Two things I can't stand snakes snakes and cold water. I fell out of the routine of the cold baths and the thought of going back, even though you feel amazing, when you get out of three and a half minutes, five minutes in a cold bath, you have like five hours of crazy adrenaline, clarity. You feel amazing. You feel like you can conquer. I mean, right? I mean, you did the hardest thing you're going to do all day. I hate snakes too, by feel amazing. You feel like you can conquer. I mean, I mean, you did the hardest thing you're going to do all day. I hate snakes too, by the way, terrified of snakes, but

cold bath is my muscles are craving it right now. Like between my traps, I just, that's amazing. I need to get back into it. I need to socially. Do you ever do it socially where you have like, no people come over and do it. It's so much easier having people than you have peer pressure and you're cheering each other on, like my kids will get in, like I just, it's so fun. What temperature? Are you like really cold?

I mean, we break through the ice to get in in the winter. Oh gosh, yeah. Oh gosh, okay. I need to, I honestly, the thought of, I would build myself up to it, it'd be this whole like the, kind of like preaching. I was like, ha, gosh, you know, and I get in the first 30 seconds, you're just like, I hate this so much.

But then it chills out. Then like, when you start catching your breath and like, then a minute in, you're like, all right, when's the three and a half minutes? And then by two minutes, you're like, I'm good. And then you go past the three and a half, four minutes, finally, like, this is, you know, they're like, I need to get out because I'm going to kill myself if I don't. But, and do you get in the sauna for that? What do you do next? I didn't know, because they say, um, you want to warm up naturally and I would do it. So I started in the winter time in Boise. So yeah, I'm walking through snow barefoot to get there, jump in, get out and I get out and I feel

like a Viking. I'm like, ah, I come into the house. I was usually listening to like, you know, I won't lie, you know, often I'll listen to Metallica or ACDC while I'm in there. And I come into the house, I'm like, ah, but I just, I fell out of it. I cannot get back into it, but I need to. They say the benefits are better for the fat burning and all the things if you warm up naturally, but that also is just intense. So I get out and get in the sauna instead of the sauna. Okay, yeah. I don't have a sauna, I've got a hot tub. I could jump in the hot tub.

That's pins and needles though. Yeah, that's good. That's too much whiplash. I snowboard too, man. The hardest thing moving to Idaho from California, a couple of things was the lack of multi-ethnicity. And I fell in love with surfing. I started when I was 35,

which is way too old to start surfing, but I did it for, no, no, 30, 32. And I did it for eight years, which eight years of surfing is not, I could barely get up and then I moved to Idaho and I just like, I was like, how am I going to surf? I can't surf. But then I took up snowboarding. I grew up skiing, but I took up snowboarding.

I just fell in love with it. So much fun. Oh, so much fun. We have a mountain 45 minutes away and me and my son go all the time. Incredible. No, it's so fun. Sit on the chairlift. You're talking.

You're not really on your phone. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. It's good. It's funny. My wife's from California. She doesn't have the same nostalgia I have for it,

because I grew up. Like, I walk into a ski lodge, and it's like Ratatouille for me. I go back to my childhood. My wife walks in, and she's like, it smells like sweat and chili. What's the matter with you? She doesn't like it. She doesn't see the warmth. I'm like, it's so cozy. This is where I feel alive.

Did you surf? You grew up in San Juan, Capistrano? Well, I grew up in Colorado, but then lived in California before we moved to Montana. And I did take up surfing. I was long boarder and I didn't do any ripping on a short board, but just so fun. It's addicting. It's so hard. It's one of the hardest sports to pick up. I mean, you're navigating just the condition, just your body conditioning. And it's like nothing else.

And then to read the wave, and then to catch the wave in the midst of, if it's a good wave, there's going to be tons of people on it that are like yelling and screaming at you. I mean, there's so many factors. I just got back from Costa Rica. And quieting your mind the whole time to the presence of sharks,

which is like always kind of on your mind out there. That's, for some reason, that's never, yeah, that's never been a fear about it, even though California does have shark attacks. I actually, well, the first time I went surfing, there was like a baby shark that was cruising around and I got out of the water, but yeah, that's. Oh dude, I would go to Hawaii for a while every year and my friend who would take us out

I'd be like, what's that? Collection of flowers on the beach with the cross. He's like, oh well tiger shark, you know Oh, okay. Well, there you go. That's crazy Well Levi, hey, man, this is so fun. It was fun getting to know you and again your book is a blessed are the spiraling It just came out April 1st. No joke. Interesting date to release a book. But I encourage people to check it out and all your books.

Yeah. I really appreciate you, your ministry, and it's been a fun conversation, man. Bro, I loved it. I mean, this was a good first date. Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it again sometime. So good. Absolutely. So good, absolutely. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.