What if pastors have the same struggles, doubts, and fears as the rest of us—and they’re just doing their best to follow Jesus too?

In this honest and insightful episode of the Collide Podcast, we sit down with Pastor Grant Fishbook to explore the questions many of us have always wanted to ask a pastor. From navigating personal struggles to walking alongside messy people in a broken world, Grant shares the raw realities of being a pastor and a follower of Jesus. You’ll hear how transparency, humility, and grace guide his leadership and how God uses imperfect people to show others that Jesus not only loves them—but likes them too.

Meet Pastor Grant Fishbook

Grant Fishbook is the Executive Teaching Pastor at Christ the King Community Church, which has six campuses in Northwest Washington. With over two decades of ministry experience, Grant is passionate about teaching, shepherding, and helping people navigate life’s crises with Jesus at the center. He holds a Master’s in Global and Urban Leadership and is known for his transparent, down-to-earth approach to both faith and leadership.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why pastors are just regular people on a spiritual journey
• The role of transparency in leading and pastoring well
• How Grant handles personal doubts, fears, and the weight of ministry
• What it means to walk alongside “messy” people in real life
• The importance of allowing people to see the grace and goodness of Jesus up close

How This Episode Will Encourage You

If you’ve ever felt like you had to be “good enough” to approach faith—or thought pastors had it all figured out—this episode will be a breath of fresh air. Pastor Grant reminds us that God meets us in our mess, uses our struggles, and delights in our presence.

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Personal and Powerful - This study reminds us that God intersects with our lives in ways that are both deeply personal and undeniably powerful.

Connect with Grant Fishbook

Christ the King Community Church Website | Instagram

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Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday chicks colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories.

We value showing up as we truly are. So that's what you'll find here.

Walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with you.

I tell people as long as we are here, there will be, you know, pain inside of the church because we're human beings and we let people down. We disappoint people. We don't walk the walk, we don't talk the talk. We don't do the things we're supposed to do.

And sometimes we're a really poor representation. One of the hardest things right now, honestly, I don't think the church of Jesus is a good reflection of the love of the Savior and fact.

I plead with people, don't. Don't judge Jesus based on his followers. Like, please don't judge Jesus based on Jesus because he holds a different standard.

Hey, guys, welcome to the Collide Podcast. I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide, and I'm super excited to have Pastor Grant Fishbook on the podcast. Today.

We are going to have a pastor's tell all where I'm just going to bombard the guy with lots of questions.

Grant is the lead teaching pastor of Christ the King Community Church in Bellingham, Washington, which is up in the upper left corner of Washington state. It's a six campus network of churches with a passion for reaching people who are far from God.

And Grant has a passion for creatively communicating the Bible in a way that allows spiritually curious people to eavesdrop on deeply spiritual conversations. He has a love of leadership of the church and broken people, and that has kept him on the front lines for more than 330 years of doing ministry.

Grant holds both the Bachelor of Education and a Master's in global and Urban leadership. And Grant has been married to Laurel for more than 30 years, and they have two grown children.

And anyone who gets to spend time with Grant really is impacted by his heart and his character. So, Grant, thank you for being on the podcast today.

Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here today.

Yeah, well, you've impacted thousands of people's lives, and so I'm hoping to have a conversation about how you got into this crazy calling of being pastor, because it is crazy. And I want to ask you kind of all the questions that maybe Someone would want to ask a pastor, but have never gotten a chance to. Are you up for it?

That sounds great to me. Let's do this.

Okay. Well, I. I was thinking, you know, sometimes when people know a guy like you as a pastor, that's all they see, right?

They see this guy, and he's up on stage and he's preaching every weekend, and they can easily forget that you're a real guy with real feelings, real problems, real faith, real doubt, all this stuff. Do you ever feel like sometimes people forget about you being human?

Yeah. Well, yeah, I think sometimes there is.

There's this weird, you know, pastoral veneer that just because you've got a microphone strapped to your head, that somehow, you know you've got spiritual Teflon on your soul, things don't stick. You've got a bat phone. You can talk to God in a different sort of a way, have a different sort of an access.

And I'm like, let's just blow all those misconceptions right up out of the. Right out of the door. So, you know, every pastor that I've ever met is just as messed up as every other human being.

We may carry it a little bit differently.

And because, you know, you're supposed to teach from a position of authority, there is a level of spiritual confidence that I think people put in you. And there are times when I just shake my head. I'm like, oh, if you only knew. Like, if you only knew.

But I don't say that in that there's these deep, dark secrets, more along the lines of, oh, I have spiritual doubts. I question things all of the time. Sometimes things just don't make sense. Last Monday. Last Monday.

Laurel and I've been praying in through a certain series of pretty heavy things with regards to our own family and direction and those kinds of stuff. In a beautiful way, I'm so thankful. My kids both love Jesus and their husbands and their. Braden's wife and.

And McKenna's husband, Alex, they love Jesus, too. So we're thankful for that. We're talking about directional things.

And everything we were praying for went exactly the opposite direction of what we were actually praying, like 180 degrees in the opposite direction. And that causes a level of stress and tension. Like everybody else who's like, okay, God, what are you doing? And what are you trying to teach us?

And so, you know, we had to press in. But I think sometimes people just don't think pastors encounter those kinds of. What I would call, you know, they're not huge spiritual crises.

In any way. They're just moments when you go, God, what are you doing? What are you trying to teach me? What. Where do you want me to press in deeper?

What do you want me to actually do with all of these no's right now? Because I was really hoping and praying for some yeses.

So I do think people kind of forget sometimes that, you know, criticism hurts when people question your faith just because you made a decision, whether it was an organizational decision or a decision decision, whether or not you're gonna open doors or not open doors, close, you know, go online or not go online, take away their coffee or put their coffee back, all of those things. You know, criticism hurts. And when people question your faith, as opposed to just the decision that you made, it can be a real challenge at times.

So, yeah, I think people forget that you're just a regular person pursuing Jesus to the best of your ability and trying to lead an organization that has a lot of facets to it. So Laurel and I are just real people, and I will include Laurel a lot in this because she is. I mean, you want to.

When you want to talk about partnership, that's what. That's what we've got. We have a partnership. We do this thing together.

I wish at times there was a different level of insulation, but she's fully engaged. We have to do life together, and ministry is always done together, too. So everything that affects me affects her.

Everything that affects her affects me. And sometimes it would be nice if it was just, you know, you're just regular people, not anything else. But that's not necessarily the way it works.

Yeah. By the way, your. Your wife is absolutely amazing, wise, and inspirational, and I love.

Oh, my goodness, they're nearing your story.

You guys have your own podcast, so y' all ought to go over and hop over and listen to their podcast. Grant. Let's talk about Grant Fish book before he was a pastor and had the bat phone with the direct line to God.

You know, answers and, you know, the spiritual Teflon, if you will, because I think that's helpful for people to understand the human side of someone who just said yes to a calling God had in their life, and here they are.

And when you're faithful to the calling, your leadership increases, your responsibilities increase, and people start to put you in on a pedestal and elevate you. But you. You were just a guy. You're still just a guy, but you were just a guy before your pastor. Who were you? What did you do?

What did life look like before God called you into this crazy ministry.

Oh, wow. So I grew up, I grew up in Manitoba, a really good Baptist kid.

Went to Faith Fellowship Baptist Church in Is actually my parents were a part of the planting team that started Faith Fellowship and that was both the good and the bad. So I love my upbringing. I love the fact that I was taught the Bible very, very seriously.

But there was a lot of religious stuff that went along with that. It was all about performance and image management and what you did.

And if you didn't show up X number of times per week, there was something wrong with you spiritually. I got addicted to this spiritual perfectionism that honestly has been one of the greatest challenges to unlearn. And I'm still unlearning it.

I fall victim to this spiritual perfection. Pharisaical, it's all about the rules stuff. I can get sucked back into that so easily and have to work really hard to let God be who he is.

And you know, having been a pastor for 30 plus years, to have to admit to people that one of my greatest struggles is letting God love me is a, is a pretty, that's a pretty deep well to jump into and try to figure out. And that's why I'm in therapy. I see a therapist on a regular basis. His name's Dr. Patty Ducklow. Ducky, if you're listening, hi. He's my therapist.

He does work. I tell people regularly, if you got a problem with your pastor being in therapy, you're in the wrong church.

Because I'm still trying to peel back layers of stuff. So a Manitoba kid, born and raised, went to Bible college. I'm not sure that was a part of the calling.

That's where the calling was solidified with me. But I remember the moment when the calling was solidified.

I was working at a camp up in northern Manitoba called Cedarwood, which was a foreign, you know, just an incredible place. And I met a kid named Eldon. And Eldon actually got kicked out of camp because he, he grabbed a knife at the wrong time, threaten somebody.

And I had to spend the day with Eldon sitting in an office while his dad came to come and get him. And I remember I was, we were just talking. Eldon was sitting on the floor.

I, for whatever reason we were talking and I just held my hands out in front of him. But I did it pretty quickly. I just held my hands out and he flinched and literally thought from his reaction, he thought I was going to hit him.

Even though we were just having a conversation. And I began to realize this kid was really, really wounded, hurting, scared.

And when his dad came and picked him up, he pulled up in this old beater van, got out. I could smell the alcohol as soon as he got out.

I should have stopped him and not let Eldon go with him, but I mean, I'm in my early 20s, I don't know. And when they drove away together, the look on Eldon's face when he got in that van was like, like, you help me, help me.

And I remember as they drove away, Jesus came and stood still, just kills me. Came and stood with me on the driveway and said, you have to do something about that.

And we've been trying to do that for the rest of, for the rest of our lives, make a difference in people's lives, realize that a lot of people live with a lot of pain.

So I'm this pre processed religious kid who loves and is addicted to looking right and the image management and all that garbage that goes with that kind of stuff. I'm going to jump through Jesus's hoops, you know, and one day maybe he'll be happy with me.

Because I was taught that it seemed like God was either Sad or MAD 100% of the time, never knew that he was actually joyful, and wanted to engage with his son who happened to be named Grant.

And so I'm living in this, trying to reconcile these two worlds of it's got to be right, perfect and good and the reality of it's really messy and I'm really messy and I have stuff that I need to walk through. And yet that's been the joy of the calling, has been working out that tension between the two, figuring out that, that God actually likes me.

I know that sounds like it's so elementary, but for me it's revolutionary and it's something I need to rediscover every single day. And I had an opportunity to talk with a guy yesterday after, after church. He walked up, his name was Terry.

And he said, so I, I prayed for the first time in my life today.

Wow.

I'm like, wow, you prayed for the. Tell me about that, Tell me about your story. And to be able to say, you know, Terry, do you know, like, he's like, I don't know where to start.

I don't know any of this stuff. I don't like church, I don't like God, and I'm not even 100 sure why I'm here. I said, well, Terry, let's start here. Do you know that God likes you?

I didn't even want to use the word love, I think he would have run out of the front door screaming. But do you know that God likes you?

That when you, when you said, hey Jesus this morning, that he moved to the front of the throne in heaven and he was so engaged in your conversation, like he so wanted you to talk. He's been waiting your whole life for you to say it. And he met you in that moment.

I mean, it was just one of those revolutionary things because Terry has a story. You could see his story painted all over his face. To me, that, that was one of the high points.

I mean, the other high point was hanging out with my wife on our back deck. We, we just had like three hours to kind of just talk and it was so good. I loved it. But talking to Terry was incredible.

So I live in the word of trying to reconcile those two things. And I really think that's my, that's a part of the calling. I love messy people because I'm a messy person.

I'm learning that God has a space for my mess and he wants to transform it and use it in other people's lives. If God can use my story, what an incredible honor to be able to participate in something like that.

So I'm a regular religious Baptist, Manitoba Canadian kid who's living in Washington state and every day is just continuously thrilled at the fact that God wants to have a conversation and is still doing a work. I mean he is being faithful and he's completing it. We've got a ways to go, but thrilled every day to be able to share that journey with people.

So God shows up to this 20 year old kid who you call a spiritual perfectionist rage Baptist. God's mad, God's sad. And you are almost rocked by this moment you have with this young kid where God says, I want you to help people like that.

And you said yes to helping people like that. You've been doing that for 30 years, from youth ministry to now being a teaching pastor of a mega church.

And high responsibility, high level of leadership, lots of people that you've helped.

Do you ever show up on a Sunday and you have to preach on something and have you ever struggled with what you had to preach on to the point that you didn't know if you were the guy to deliver the message?

Oh yeah, it happened on the weekend, it happened yesterday. So I talked about the Monday thing, right?

We're praying into these, into these important pieces for us and we're praying for yeses and we're getting no's like, no, no, no, no, no. And in God's sovereignty, I'm preaching on the parable of the persistent widow. Like, I'm just like God. I don't. I don't. I don't even understand.

You know, I. I think I'm. I'm learning the difference between an obnoxious prayer and a persistent prayer.

And I'm still figuring out why God calls us into ask, seek, and knock. Because that sounds a little. That sounds a little bit like it's like a formula. Just ask, seek and knock. Ask, seek and knock. Ask, seek, and knock.

And then, you know, I start doing. I start doing what pastors do, and I discover that ask, seek, and knock are, you know, they're present, imperative.

So it's ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock, and keep on knocking. And what I realized is my message on the weekend was for me, I had to preach it to me and then invite everybody else.

Hey, if you want to eavesdrop on this painful process right now, go ahead, because I'm living this right now. Like, I. I'm strugg with this beautiful balance. But, you know, I walk away thinking, here's what I've learned.

God is not the judge in that story, in the persistent story. And God is the opposite of the. Of that judge. The judge is cranky. He's angry, he's frustrated. And I learned that he's very different.

He's very, very different. And he's gracious and he's loving, and he wants me to show up. He wants me to help. He wants me to do. He wants me to.

To enter in and have a conversation with him that's fresh and refreshing. He wants to hear the cry of my heart. And so that's the beautiful thing that I am, you know, continually learning as I'm going.

So there have been times I'm just like, God, please get somebody else. Like, find somebody else to talk about this, because I'm not sure I can actually do what you want me to do. I just don't know.

But I think there's a beauty to that as well. There are weeks. So you and I share a friend in common. His name is Bob Marvel from Cornwall. There.

There are days when Bob and I are texting back and forth on Saturday afternoons, and we'll say something like, I just pray that this is one of those weekends when you could read the phone book and God would do something huge because there are so many times we don't feel qualified. I don't feel like an authority in any way, shape, or form.

But that seems to be the weekends when God shows up the biggest, and people will say, God, you know, Grant, I just. I. I heard from Jesus this weekend, and that's the highest compliment of all. Boy, if I can get out of the way enough to let Jesus talk, that's.

That's a win every single time.

So, yes, times when I feel incredibly unqualified and say, look, this is the best that I have for you, and I'm going to trust the Holy Spirit to fill in all the gaps, because this is all I have to offer. But I love being able to tell people I'm struggling with this. Yeah, this topic. I'm struggling with this topic today.

Let's not pretend that we've got this all figured out, because it's. That's simply not true. That would be deceitful.

Did you give yourself permission to pastor in that way? Or did. Was there a group of people who gave you permission?

Because the temptation for some people in leadership is when they feel inadequate or they feel like they don't have all the right answers or they have to preach and they aren't even believing in what they're preaching. They almost hammer at home more, and they just get up there and, like, pose. Right? They're just posers to. To give yourself permission to.

To show up on the weekend and say, I am in the valley on this one, guys. I am struggling like, I am. I am asking, seeking, and knocking, and I am not hearing yeses. And I am tired and ready to give up.

Like, who gave you permission to pastor in that way?

So I'm not sure anyone gave me permission. But what I learned was I did the most horrific experiment. I went back and listened to my first three years of messages at cdk. Yeah.

And it was horrible.

I was like, oh, there was the John Maxwell phase, and there was the Bill Hybels phase, and there was the Billy Graham phase, and there's the John Ortberg phase. Apparently, you know, I was just. Just mimicking and parroting people. And what I began to discover was it didn't work. I mean, God can use anything.

Let's make sure we say that God can use anything. He uses, you know, an effort and can do phenomenal work, actually, with those kinds of things.

But when I began to discover that it was in the middle of people's pain, if I could actually share the fact that this was not easy, that there was no formula, that I was struggling, but how God met me in that struggle, because I think sometimes we have to be careful that we don't just sit there and go, you know, oh, it's just so hard and I'm so broken and I don't have anything today whatsoever. It's just like, no. That to me downplays who God is in that moment. I mean, God's going to step in here, he's going to do something incredible.

Because God does not want to waste your time. He wants to engage in meaningful conversation.

So I wouldn't say anyone gave permission, other than I finally began to learn that when I was honest, vulnerable and transparent, that people could relate to that in a different sort of a way. And that God would speak volumes through the effort of saying, I don't have all of the answers, but I do have some answers.

And it's going to start with this. Engage with God and you will never be disappointed. So to coin one of your phrases, plan a collision, collide with God's heart and see what happens.

You never lose. You always come out ahead in those moments. So I love the messiness of that.

I love, I love that the, the when people come up afterwards and go, well, that was, that was uncomfortably transparent. I'm like, okay, good. Then I think maybe we started in a good place.

Because I read my Bible, Jesus made an art out of uncomfortable, awkward conversations, especially with religious people.

Oh, yeah, Yeah, I did.

Oh, yeah.

Grant, we all go through seasons in our faith. Seasons that feel like dark nights of the soul or where we're in the desert or we're in well watered, you know, paradises.

Seasons of celebration and faith and healing, and then seasons of pain and loneliness and wandering and wondering where God is. How does your vocational ministry role leave room for your life to go through ordinary seasons of faith that most people find themselves in?

Well, I would say the traditional role doesn't allow for it at all. The traditional pastor box doesn't allow you to have sustainable rhythms, human feelings.

I would even say the traditional pastor box doesn't allow you to have good boundaries. So Laurel and I together have had to force some of those things. I preached on this a couple weeks ago, so I went through a really deep, dark.

A dark season, kind of 20, 10, 11 and 12. It was interesting that it coincided with CTK's greatest apex of attendance and buy in.

And I mean, we were running 4,000 plus on a weekend and I was dying. I was dying on the inside. And so I began to do some really deep work because I knew it wasn't sustainable.

I've lost two senior pastors in a row to moral failure. So I knew I did not want to go down that road. I'd seen the devastation of that. But I was struggling. And so I began to do my own study.

And what I found out was I would not have diagnosed myself as clinically depressed, but I had this dark rain cloud that followed me everywhere I went. And I wouldn't use words like depression. I was substituting other words like dark, blue, sad, I feel down today. And I began to discover two things.

I began to discover I was not alone. Statistically, most people have a struggle like this, if not a season of it.

I mean, there are those who go through seasons of darkness, but then there's other people who are. Who are clinically in that category. And my heart just goes out to them because I know how difficult my own season was.

But I wouldn't say I was clinically depressed in that moment. So I learned statistically I was not alone. But then I also learned biblically, I was not alone.

I began to study how many people I could find in Scripture who would describe themselves as though, like David uses the term, the water is up to my neck. Elijah said, God, I would rather die. Jonah said, kill me now. I mean, it was.

So I found that biblically, there were these giants of the faith who were brave enough to say, I'm struggling. And I thought, okay, well, if they can say it, then I should be able to say it as well. And that.

That just did something to know that I had company there. And now when I'm able to share with people, hey, if you're struggling with this, you have company.

You have great biblical people who will walk with you, and I'll walk with you. Like, I'll stand there and put my hand up and say, yep, I've been there and done that. That's been hard.

But let's talk about what's really happening inside. Let's plumb the depths. Let's not be afraid to go into this.

So I actually believe ministry sets itself up oppositionally for good health, rhythms, for. For. For honesty. I think ministry can wear against you in those areas. But I'd like to paint a different SO box.

You know, believe it or not, it was just a few years ago, I finally just said, you know what? Forget this. A pastor has to work six days a week and take one day off, and that's the one day that he goes home and is grumpy.

And it's usually Mondays. It was only a few years ago. I just said, forget that rhythm. I'm done. And I learned that because it had been modeled to me, that's just how you do it.

That's what it takes. So I try to maintain a Saturday through Wednesday rhythm now. I try to actually take vacation.

I try to get away in my own day and say, before I even get to the office, I'm going to spend time with Jesus. Forget the sermon prep. I actually just want to talk to my. Talk to my king, talk to my Savior, my friend. Like, I want to have that connection.

Because you can't give out of an empty well. And I will be on. I will tell you, I gave out of an empty well for far, far, far too long. And instead of giving living water, I was giving away sand.

And it. And it didn't help me, didn't help anybody, and I ended up in that really dark place. So I encourage all of our other pastors.

I'm going to try and model it differently. All the pastors in our network. I'm going to model a different kind of balance. I want you to know you can actually do this and not. And not wear out.

You can actually do this and spiritually thrive. Even though I'd never really seen anybody be able to do it that way. Now I'm learning there's actually really good models around all over the place.

But I think we're all just learning. I think we all got tired in the 80s of hearing another story of a pastor who had an emotional or a nervous breakdown.

And like, let's not do that anymore. Let's do something different.

A lot of people think that church leaders and pastors have a lot of secrets. And I'm just kind of curious. How do you stay true to authenticity while also preserving some small, safe spaces for your own private life?

Yeah, well, you know, unfortunately, a part of our story historically is that, you know, I served under two pastors who had deep secrets, and they devastated the churches that they were a part of. I think one of God's greatest gifts in being authentic and transparent is he allowed me to marry somebody who will not buy any of that from me.

Laurel just has no tolerance for, nope, I don't believe you. I don't. I'm not buying it. And she encourages exactly the opposite, which is, let's have a raw, transparent conversation. So stop hiding.

Don't try to hide. I don't want your line. We have kind of a. A bit of a ongoing running joke right now. When I get.

When I get really wordy and I get really talky talky talk, talky, talky talky, it means I'm trying to compensate for Something or cover something, and she's just like, so can you just say it in a few words? Let's just boil it down. And I appreciate that gift. It's hard sometimes. So, you know, I think pastors have no more secrets than everyone else does.

I think we are challenged to be more authentic, more transparent, and more real, because I believe God honors that every single time.

And so I do want to have a personal life, but what I know is my private life, my public life, and my personal life all have to line up with scripture. And that should be the goal of it. There should be no inconsistency.

I think when we start having a secret life, something that's off on the side that we don't want anybody to know about, or we're doing things in secret, boy, then we are on the wrong path, and it's going to get ugly really fast, because God will love you enough to force your hand. I've learned that, like, he will not stand for. He will not stand for secrets. He will expose them.

He will drag you out into the light and expose you because he loves you. And that's a difficult thing. So I do want to have. I want to have a personal life. I do want to have a private life.

I want things where I can do things with what, you know, Laurel and I love to escape. We learned a long time ago we can't escape here. It just doesn't work. So we have to go away.

And it's nice to be able to just walk down the street and not have somebody come up and say, you know, hey, I have a question. I was wondering, you know, or, boy, you look bigger than you do on the screen.

And there's nothing wrong with those things, but it's nice to have just private moments when you can go for dinner and just enjoy each other's company. And I love being anonymous with my kids, just hanging out, you know, so we normally have to hide in Seattle somewhere in order to be able to do that.

And it's great when we do get to. But I think that, you know, the key is you can have a godly private life, a godly public life, and a godly personal life.

There's no such thing as a godly secret life. It just doesn't go together.

So staying away from that and saying, I want to stay transparent and authentic, and that means you have to enter into the struggle. And I'm blessed with somebody who for 32 years has made the decision to enter into my struggles and my weakness and my victories at the Same time.

So I think it can be a beautiful partnership. And when, you know, we have. We have.

We have some single pastors here, and we want to make sure that they stay connected in with other people as well, that they've got good people who are asking good questions, so they never get. They never get dragged into, you know, the secret part of it. I just don't think God honors secrets ever.

I love that God put Laurel in your life. She's the minister to the minister.

Oh, boy. In more ways. Yeah. If you want to. If you actually want to meet the pastor of ctk, you should meet her.

Yes. I understand you have brought up multiple times that you've experienced firsthand the fall away of pastors in your life. And.

Yeah, and these are people who were role models to you, people who were your bosses, people who maybe in some ways, I. I'm assuming were heroes in some ways, and you kind of, you know, watch them fall and fail. What are the things that you.

You took from those experiences that you have now actually put things into place so that. That doesn't become your story?

Yeah, so I actually sat down with both of them. They've both since passed away. One from a heart attack, one from a brain tumor.

And I got to sit with both of them at different times, and both of them said essentially the same thing, which was, I made ungodly and evil choices. I entered into places and relationships I never should have been a part of, and God gave me a way out, but I never took it.

So I think it's important for all of us. I mean, the Bible tells us, be very careful when you think you're standing firm, because pride comes right before a fall.

And so I think there are protections that need to be put in place where, you know, here at ctk, you don't get a CTK computer if it doesn't have accountability software at some level. All of our offices have windows, and you're not allowed to put a blind over your window that you close.

We try to be really careful, you know, just in. In our relationships. And there are. I think you simply have to be wise, and you have to.

You have to always be looking, number one, not to get in the situation, and then, number two, look for a way out. When God actually gives that to you, it's been heartbreaking over the years to see the effect that those things have.

And so I think, you know, simply being wise and using your head, and I don't think any of us use our head all the time the way we should, but Looking for the God. You know, God says, I will give you a way out every single time. He's not the God of temptation.

He will give you a way out just whether or not you're willing to walk through that door when it's there.

Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think there's so many ways a pastor can be tempted. I know. You know, we might think of some.

Of some of the sort of standard things we've seen, like a pastor having an affair or something like that. But there's also just spiritual mindsets, pride.

Oh, boy.

This Pharisaical mindsets. Like there. There are sort of mental islands you can travel to.

So to have people in your life that can speak into your life and say, hey, like, I'm noticing that you seem very defensive. Or, you know, it just seems so important to have sort of small concentric circles of people who can speak into your life.

Not just that you're speaking into all these people's lives, but that there's people speaking into yours.

Yeah. And you have to be willing to give access, which is the hard thing, because one of the other things that.

That my two previous bosses both said, I said, did you have people that asked questions? And they were like, yeah, not really. But even if they did, I lied. So I think there are mental islands you can get to. I mean, there's the. There's.

There's regular pride, but then there's also false pride. You know, something I think we all need to learn more about. There's this idea of, I have to have all the answers. There's this internal pressure.

You know, there's. The whole time's flying. People are dying. I have to work around the clock and neglect all of the other things that's important.

And coming back to that, you know, that moment when we forecast out, what's the conversation God's going to have with you when you walk across the line? I don't think God's going to start or lead that question with, how big was ctk? I don't even think that's going to be in the top 25.

I think the conversations are going to be more along the line of, you know, do you love me? Did you love me? Well? Did you welcome me into those dark places? Did you walk with me? Did you work for me? Or did you walk with me Me?

Because I think pastors get that confused. I know I did and still do at times. Working for Jesus and walking with Jesus are two very, very different things. But then to.

To actually have moments where you stop and just take stock.

I think God's going to ask us a lot of questions about our family, our key relationships, how we treated people, how we entered into the conversation and dialogues with him. I think all of those are going to be in the top 25.

I don't think any of the things that we count now as important are actually going to be in that conversation. So I try to picture what that conversation is going to look like and then reverse engineer it from there.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of people would call you a professional Christian, right, that you paid to work for a church. And I'm just curious, how do you keep fending off that idea that ministry just becomes a job and a paycheck?

You know, sometimes it is. Sometimes it is a job and a paycheck. It's like, it's discipline.

Like, I got to go to work today like everybody else does, so I'm going to go and do my job.

I think the way you fend it off is by coming back to the fact that it's rooted in a personal relationship with Jesus and that if you're not walking with Jesus, working for Jesus gets really twisted very fast. So coming back into those moments, how do you actually start the day? How do you. How do you finish the day?

How many times are you talking to God through the center of it? I talked about this this past weekend. I'm kind of trying to develop a new prayer discipline. And it goes like this. God, I know what I want.

I know what I want, but what do you want? So when I walk into a meeting, it's like, God, I know what I want. I have an agenda today. But what do you want to come out of this time?

As I meet with so and so, or as I meet with so and so? And I'm finding it's revolutionizing the way I kind of look at the day, and it's the way I approach the moment by moment. And it's become.

It's become a lot more fun to be able to enter into those moments that way, Just like God, I know, you know, we're supposed to. Okay, it's time for church council again. We got to go through the business, all the rest of it, but God, I know what I want.

I want to get through the agenda. But what do you want today? Where are the interruptions?

Where are the moments when you want to show up in a different sort of a way and give me eyes to see what's really happening in this room, not just relationally, but spiritually? Give me an insight into discernment. And if I see something, help me to have the courage to go with it.

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Now I want to talk about your kids for a minute. You raised PKs, pastors, kids.

For those that don't know what a PK is and for people who aren't pastors, they don't necessarily understand the pressure that comes with that on children. There's a lot of pressure.

I'm curious how you protected your kids from the social, relational, emotional and spiritual pressure of being a pastor's kid.

Well, first of all, let me brag about him a little bit because my kids are. I love my kids. I mean, Braden and McKenna have been such an incredible gift. They really have. And the fact that they're both walking with Jesus is.

Is our greatest joy. They married people who love Jesus too. And we're so proud. We don't have two children, we have four. And we don't do this in law stuff. They are.

Alex is my son. Olivia is my daughter. And we love them. We love them so much. They're such a gift.

I think one of the key things was we actually let our kids make their own spiritual decisions and we tried to actually get them outside of this, this pressure thing. It's like, no, we just want you to be you and we're going to have honest conversations. Laurel is. It was absolutely brilliant and still is as a mom.

Like, she just doesn't let parenting become a default. She actually enters into it purposefully. She has a line. And it's so true. Like, you're never not a parent.

Your role changes, but you're never not a parent. So you're the safe place, your wisdom, your guidance. Sometimes you're a conscience, sometimes you press in.

And Laurel has done this so much better than I have because she's willing to engage at really high levels. But a part of that was empowering our kids to make their own decisions. So we would have. We didn't make our kids go to children's church at ctk.

If they wanted to be in the big room to engage with dad up front, we thought that was awesome. We just wanted them to engage. They didn't have to come to our youth ministry. We wanted them to have a really good biblical community.

So we let them decide, how are you? How do you want to have biblical community? And the cool thing was they made.

They made choices to enter into biblical community as they were going along. And now as we see them in a small group and they're part of a premarital ministry here. Alex and Kenna are really involved at Reach Church down in.

In the Kirkland area. And they give. They're serving, they're doing all of those kinds of things.

I think a part of it was we allowed them to make their own spiritual decisions. We allowed them to have their own spiritual struggles.

They both have, all four of them have really unique connections with God that are very, very different.

And so instead of, like, doing the pressure thing, which to me was just stupid, it was more of an encouragement to, how are you going to connect with God? We want to see it. We want to see it when it's hard. We want to see it when it's good. When you're frustrated, when you're crying. We get it.

We're going to walk with you in those moments and praise God. They. They fell in love with Jesus, and they're still in love with Jesus today.

And so they never really did the pastor's kid thing of their own accord. And because we tried to make space, we wanted them to be known as Braden and McKenna.

And now Braden, Olivia, McKenna and Alex, they're their own people. And they don't. They're not public property. They don't have to be public property. I don't want them to be. To feel that pressure. And so now they.

They just enter into their own relationship with Jesus. And we're so grateful for that.

I love that. That's awesome. You know, I'm gonna bring up something that you get a lot of grief for.

And for those of you listening who don't know this, you live in Texas or Florida and you've never heard of Grant. He's an amazing preacher, and he gets a lot of grief for crying. And in fact, the church I go to, Bob Marvel, is the Pastor.

And he makes fun of you, which is pretty funny. You guys have a banter back and forth, but yeah. Why do you think some people assume that a pastor crying is a pastor manipulating?

I think it's because for a lot of.

Unfortunately, it's been people's experience that they see somebody turn it on and turn it off emotional, and there's something that seems very disingenuous. So, unfortunately, I think a part of the reason they make that decision is because they've seen it abused. I hear that question a lot. So, Grant, I am.

I'm emotional. When I feel the Holy Spirit working inside, it just bubbles out my eyes. That's just it.

I will give your pastor a really hard time because every time Bob says, you know, I'm having a grand fish book moment, what that means is he's actually crying. So. So. And apparently it happens fairly regularly at Cornwall. So apparently I'm rubbing off on Bob, and I think that's cool.

But I do believe that, you know, people are cynical and. And they're. They have reason to question. I understand that, but I know our staff gets asked, you know, is that real? And they always.

I think one of the answers that I love is they'll say, well, I'll tell you what, why don't you come back for a month or so and see whether or not somebody can fake that on a consistent basis in a moment that actually makes sense. Because I don't think I'm that good of an actor.

I just know when God touches my heart, I get emotional about things and it becomes very raw because the message of Jesus is very personal for me. I mean, I've seen. I know firsthand what my story is, and I know what God is doing in my life. And when he. When he works in my heart, I just. I.

I tend to get very emotional about that because I'm so honored with the fact that he would. It's never lost on me that the spirit of God is stirring something inside of my heart. I mean, how beautiful. What a gift that is. And so I want to. I.

I never want to gloss over that. I actually asked God years ago because I felt like my emotions were getting in the way. I asked God to turn it off, and he was like, no. Nope. You're.

You're. Bet you're better with it than without it. And so let's just make sure that it always stays real and authentic. I'll tell you what. The day I.

I cry for effect, I will quit and walk away. That would be horrifying. To me.

And people giggle, they laugh now when they show up at ctk, it's just kind of a, it's just a part of, it's a part of a part of the thing. And people will ask me straight out, like, is that, is it real? Is that really you? I'm like, yeah, that's really you. That's, that is really me.

I mean, ask my family. I, I get emotional at home. When we have tender moments in our home, I get emotional about those things. And I'm not afraid to say that.

I think, I think tears are a beautiful thing. I like to share them with people.

It's interesting that we live in a culture where we question people's motivations when they show emotions because we were made to have emotions. And in all my experiences with you, it really speaks to your tender heart.

I've had conversations with you, with your wife, where you're talking about your kids, you're talking about her, her story. When you're talking about people's life change.

I mean, even today when you were talking about being a 21 year, 20 year old kid and you, you are hanging out with this boy and this drunk dad comes to pick him up. I mean, you're just tender hearted. And I love that about you.

And I think God is using that to meet people and invite out some of those emotions that maybe been lodged in there for decades too long. They're there for a reason. So I, I love that about you. I had to bring it up, you know, thanks.

It always seems to raise its head somewhere.

I wanted to ask you, you know, everybody has days at work where they want to quit. Do you have days where you want to give up?

Yeah, absolutely. There are days when, when, you know, the bride of Christ, boy, I love her to death, but, but the bride can be mean sometimes.

She can, she can bite and be snippy and have a really, really bad days. But I think it's the, you know, the beauty of it is you love the bride of Christ because Jesus loves the bride of Christ.

You know, Jesus loves the church. There is no plan B. And so you, you have to be willing to walk.

You know, there are days when I, you know, I do, I want to give up and walk away just because I'm frustrated. You know, the church is not perfect. It's full of people.

And, you know, as long as I tell people, as long as we are here, there, there will be, you know, pain inside of the church because we're human beings and we let people down. We disappoint people. We don't walk the walk, we don't talk the talk. We don't do the things we're supposed to do.

And sometimes we're a really poor representation. One of the hardest things right now, honestly, I don't think the church of Jesus is a good reflection of the love of the Savior.

In fact, I plead with people, don't judge Jesus based on his followers. Like, please don't judge Jesus based on Jesus because he holds a different standard. And so I do get frustrated.

There are days when I want to quit, but for 30 plus years, I've kept coming back. God's gracious with his church, he's gracious with me. But yeah, there are days when I think there's got to be an easier way to do life.

But I love what I do. I love, I love the people that I do it with. I love the privilege of being able to have had a front row seat for more than three decades.

And I'm excited to see what God does next.

I have to ask you, a lot of people that are pastors get hate mail, and I hear that because I'm friends with a lot of pastors. I'm also in ministry. And it seems like people forget you're human and they just will let you have it. What does that do to a pastor spirit?

Well, first of all, I look at, I look at hate mail in a couple of different ways. Number one, I'm glad that they felt at some level safe enough to send it.

I tell people here at ctk, if you don't have the courage to sign it, I'm not reading it. So when I get letters like that, I'll look to the end.

And, and if there's not a signature there, I mean, if it's email, it's coming with a signature anyway. But I'll tell people, if you don't have the courage to sign it, I don't have the.

I'm not going to take the time to read it because you need to own what you're going to own. And they hurt, they hurt, they sting, they stay with you. You can have a phenomenal week.

And people can be, you know, you can just be in a sweet, sweet spot. One of those letters, they don't own me the way they used to own me, but they'll wreck me.

It's just like really like, this is, this is where it's come down to what I realized, especially in this, you know, we're coming out of the COVID season. I realized how disposable Churches and pastors were.

It didn't matter if you've done, if you've done their kids wedding, if you've showed up in there when they're in the middle of marriage crisis, when you've loved or done funerals for their parents, it doesn't matter if you didn't share their opinion or their politics, you were out. And that was, that was really heartbreaking.

And it's one of the reasons why I try to have a good relationship with my therapist because I have to talk through and process that stuff. And it's. I spend a lot of time with pastors who, who shed a lot of tears with me over the fact that it just, it just hurts.

And I think saying that it doesn't hurt is just a lie. I think you just learn to handle them in different ways as you're going through.

One of the greatest things that a guy told me one time was, you know, in that moment, that person's not the enemy. That, you know, the writer of the letter is not the enemy. They're a victim of the enemy.

And so that actually allows me to have a different level of compassion. And I try to be biblical as well. I mean, God says, don't murder people in your, in your head.

So I try not to think really evil, carnal things, even though sometimes it's just like, wow, like, this is horrible. Like, if you had to sit on the other end of this, how would you feel about that? And I wish people would gut check a little bit more.

But I also understand how spiritual warfare works. The enemy wants to. You mean he prowls around looking for someone to devour boy.

And if he can discourage you, if he can take out the shepherd, it says that the whole flock will scatter. And so I understand that there's spiritual warfare involved in that too. So I try to hold them lightly. I don't do it very well. I am a people pleaser.

And so those things hurt. And unfortunately, some people know they hurt, so they, that's how they're going to hurt, I think.

But I, we have to remember this. Like, I think people, if you go to church, remember your pastor is a person. It hurts.

And more than ever, you know, we've been living in this divisive, polarized season where people are exiting ministry left and right because they're being torn apart and they're humans and they're processing stuff and they're trying to figure stuff out and, and they're getting eaten alive. Like when you talk about, you try not to murder them. In, in your heart.

It's hard not to want to pull out the self defense and murder someone who's murdering you. Right? But what, what do pastors need from their people right now so they don't lose heart and give up?

You know what, obviously prayer is huge. I do, I covered that. We just. So we did a memorial last week for one of our praying grandmas. Her name was Virginia Hobbs.

Laurel and I got to be with Virginia right before she passed away. And Virginia actually had a prayer chair in her living room.

She was in that prayer chair every morning at 4am and she told us, I pray for you and Laurel every single morning, every morning. And she had a picture of us and she would hold it in her hands and she was praying for Laurel's miracle.

My wife has a, has a degenerative eye disease. And Virginia prayed like she prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed.

And I, I promise you this, when Virginia got home to heaven, Jesus and her had a conversation about, about that. It was so amazing. But we need prayer.

I, I think it's also, you know, sometimes we hear, you know, I meant to send you something because, you know, God really spoke to me at that thing a couple of weeks ago. If God prompts you to send encouragement, send it. Actually send it. You, you have no idea what that balance could possibly be.

Here's something else that I think is really important. If you do love your pastor, every once in a while, ask two questions. Question number one, how are you doing?

Question number two, how are you really doing? Because I think as a pastor, we often get caught up in the great Christian lie, right? I'm fine, I'm good.

But when somebody presses in and just grabs you and like, you know, puts a little more pressure on, in their hand, on their shoulder, like, no, how are you really doing? Then we have an opportunity. We can lie, or we could say, you know what, it's tough right now. Just pray for me.

Or maybe we'll even go further and be, you know, more personal. I don't know. It depends on the person. But to ask those questions and to sincerely wonder, how are you actually doing?

What's what, what's one thing I can pray for you about?

Those things mean so much and to verbalize support out loud or write a note, you know, when I get a little thank you note, I can live off of that for like three, four days. It just means something when it says, you know, hey, Grant, God spoke through you on the weekend. Thanks for being faithful. That means a lot.

I hope you guys take Note on that. I am as well. You've been pouring your Life out for 30 years. You've been sacrificing and investing and saying yes to the call.

And times have changed and people have changed and staff has changed, but you have remained faithful to what has got. What God has called you to do. Why do you keep saying yes?

So I'm trying to figure out why that hit right in the center of my heart right now. Because I can always tell that when I get emotional, I keep saying yes because Jesus keeps saying yes to grant.

And now does that mean that every prayer answer, every prayer request gets a yes? No.

But he says yes to me every day when he gives me life and breath, it's like I'm waking you up again for a purpose and for this season right now, this is your purpose. And so, because he said yes to me waking up this morning, I'm going to say yes to him and live out this calling.

And I'm not going to stick a platitude like it's the least I can do. Actually, I would love to think at the end of today, it's the most I could do.

The most I could do was to show up and say yes to him in every moment, saying yes to this incredible podcast, saying yes to being able to have this conversation with you, saying yes to the quiet time that I had this morning with him, which was such a gift. Oh, he just, he showed up today. It was. It was awesome. And that's a lot for a Monday morning. So I keep saying yes because he keeps saying yes to me.

And, and, and I'm so thrilled and honored to be able to be a small part of what God is up to. And until he tells me to say yes to something different, this is the calling. And I'm excited to be able to. To just step into it every day.

Well, Grant, thank you for saying yes. I know there's so many Terry's out there, young, 20 out there.

Yeah.

There's other leaders who are grateful for your yes. So thank you so much for saying yes to God's calling.

For those that are listening, I'm sure there's people that are going to want to go and hear your sermons and hop on your podcast and all the things. How can they follow you and check you out?

Wow. So I actually do my podcast, or Laurel and I do a podcast together. She actually is the host and moderator, which makes it so fun.

It's called Continuing the Conversation with Grant and Laurel Fishbook, and it's on all the major Podcast deals and it really is unique. Laurel can't see faces so she has to ask questions and people have to use their words.

So it has a very different dynamic to it and I'm just super proud of it and what it is that she does. So you can find the two of us there.

Also do a thing called Jesus Net Live which is every Tuesday morning I do a live global question and response show on YouTube which is amazing.

So I'm answering questions about spiritual dynamics from 13 year old kids in India, from people in Sri Lanka, Singapore and I never know the cultural context so it's really amazing. We had a fifth grade boy from India who wanted to know basically how to share his faith in his Hindu classroom, knowing that he would get beat up.

Like what a privilege to answer that kind of a question. Oh my goodness. So we do that and then any everything else is on CTK Church. I'm on Facebook and Instagram.

It's always just like at Grant Fishbook and so love to love to hear from people and connect with people that way.

Awesome. Thank you Grant for hopping on the Collide podcast.

Absolutely. Thanks Willow and thanks for everything you guys are doing with Collide. We love your ministry so much. I've said this before, I'll say it again.

Anything we can do to help you guys, you know where we are.

Oh, you guys are the best. And for those of you listening, keep colliding and know that God likes you and God loves you and he will collide with you.

Have a great week and we'll catch you next week.

Thanks for tuning in to keep up with us.

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