SPEAKER_04 0:00

Today I'm sitting down with someone many Arkansan will recognize, although probably not from the work he's doing today. Matt Mosler spent years in Arkansas broadcasting and became a familiar face in homes across the state. But at some point, his life took a very different direction. Matt left broadcasting, followed what he believed was a calling into ministry, and ultimately chose Palm Bluff, Arkansas, a community he wasn't from, and a community by almost every measurable standard was facing some enormous challenges. Palm Bluff was once a thriving and growing economic center of Southeast Arkansas. Over the past several decades, it has lost industry, population, businesses, and wealth. It struggled with poverty, failing schools, violent crime, family instability in neighborhoods that quite literally disappeared around it. But Palm Bluff is not just a story about Palm Bluff. There are communities across America experiencing many of these same problems, and we spend an enormous amount of time arguing about who's responsible without spending nearly enough time asking what actually works. Matt has spent years on the ground trying to answer that question through faith, ministry, mentorship, and now home again Pine Bluff, which is an effort built around education, accountability, and ultimately home ownership. I'm going to challenge Matt today. We're going to talk about race. We're going to talk about fathers, welfare, and government dependency, personal responsibility, crime, the church, education, culture, and whether some of the things we're uncomfortable saying out loud may nevertheless deserve an honest discussion. At times I'm deliberately going to play devil's advocate. Matt's actually lived this work. I haven't. So I'm going to put some difficult arguments on the table and let him tell me where I'm right, where I'm wrong, and where reality is much more complicated. But ultimately, this isn't a conversation about assigning blame. It's about something much more important. Can a community like Pine Bluff actually be rebuilt? And if it can, what does it take? Welcome to Extreme Sensibility, Matt Mosler. Well, Matt, thank you for joining us on Extreme Sensibility. Glad to finally have you here. We've been trying to work out times and uh glad that we've got you here this afternoon and uh talking about some subjects that are very dear to my heart, our hometown, and now your your town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It's such a dynamic story of a of a city, and you have definitely invested yourself and your energies and your family uh into this town that uh a lot of people have run away from and are continuing to do so. So, you know, when I heard that you were coming to town, um I wondered why. And so this is my opportunity to ask you. So Matt, let me know. Uh, you know, why did you pick Pine Bluff out of all the places in the nation that you could go?

SPEAKER_03 3:31

Uh well it it's it's not a short story. I'll try to shorten it, but um I I moved to Arkansas uh from Austin, Texas. I was in television for about 30 years and and we left Austin, Texas, came to Arkansas to work at the ABC affiliate here, that got its start in Pine Bluff.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:51

And so from the first time that we moved to God, look, I I didn't really know where Arkansas was. Right? I get this job at literal, I knew Arkansas was somewhere in the middle, wasn't really sure where it was, and and uh and then Pine Bluff, you know. But that's where the station was from. And so we we would end up doing a lot of activities all throughout the Delta. And I, you know, getting to to know the people and experience the culture, I I don't know, it just kind of got a hold of me. And so when I left television and went into full-time ministry, um long story short, I ended up going uh with a church called New Life Church. And I was a so I I got started in television in 1987 and uh and worked at a a TV station there. And when people know that you're a Christian and you're working on television, they come and ask you to speak to their youth group and their seniors group and speak in their churches, and so that kind of created a another profession where I I'd actually started my own ministry where I would go do revivals and retreats and things like that. And and uh and that continued all the way into Mississippi and all the way into Texas, and then finally here in Arkansas. And so I'd been doing that for since 1987. Well, that's you're a preacher then. You're like a gunslinger, right? You go into church, you get out. Yeah, let that pastor deal with the deal with the people. But I felt like God was calling me into fault into pastoral ministry, and I just didn't really want to do it. And so we finally did it in 2014. I felt like I was saying, we're closing this door, we're gonna open this door. And so for two years, I was at New Life Church as an associate learning how to pastor. And then after two years, the lead pastor approached me and said that we think that you're ready to be a campus pastor, and we would like you to pastor in this location that they were thinking about building in central Arkansas. Well, I you know, my wife and I prayed about it. We didn't feel like that was really where God wanted us to be. And so I said, Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but if you want me to be a pastor, I want to go to Pine Bluff. And they laughed at me. Because nobody everything in Arkansas moves northwest. Right. Not just money and jobs, but information, and nothing ever comes back. And so when we said we want to go to Pine Bluff, that was never really on their on their map. On their big plan. The wonderful thing about this church I belong to is they don't look at the map and say, we need a church here, we need a church here, we need a church here, it's where it's God moving, and then we'll get behind that. And so they jumped in with both feet and and we went to Pine Bluff because uh when you looked at the map of Arkansas, everything in our church was, you know, kind of Little Rock Northwest, although we're headed up that way, and nothing was going the other way. And and and there's a lot of people down in Southeast Arkansas that we've sort of forgotten.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Oh yeah.

unknown 6:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

And that was like a target-rich environment for me. I mean, you know, it was it was in some distress, it was in some turmoil. And if you're a dentist, for example, you want to go where people have bad teeth.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:55

So if you're a pastor, that's ground zero. Um, if you really believe in the transformational power of Jesus Christ, that's you want to go to a place like that. And so, yeah, they got in, they jumped in with both feet, and um, we've been doing it since uh 2017.

SPEAKER_04 7:10

Wow, that's impressive. I mean, and you are right, it is such an underserved area of the nation, uh, not only Arkansas. That was kind of uh one of the things that we looked at. Uh first of all, we were from that area, that's where I grew up. But why we stayed there and continue uh even today continue to serve the area with our medical practice is because of the fact that there was no one else there. And there was a great need for our uh services. And, you know, the people uh are so much more appreciative and open as well when they know that you're there. You don't have to be there. You could be in Northwest Arkansas or you could be in Austin, Texas, or wherever.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Yeah, it wasn't really part of the retirement plan. Right, right.

SPEAKER_04 7:59

Well, it's amazing how God works through us. But you know, y'all uh at least from uh watching and hearing, uh, you know, we got to meet for the first time uh today, but uh heard about you for a long time. Obviously, you were a fixture on our television uh you know for years. I'm very famous. Yeah, very, very famous. I'm kind of a big dude. But it it intrigued me, you know, when I did hear about Matt Mosler coming to Palm Bluff and what you were doing. I actually wasn't aware that you were involved in uh, you know, the church and in ministry and and uh you know were um as devout a Christian as you as you were.

SPEAKER_03 8:45

Well, that's kind of disappointing.

SPEAKER_04 8:46

Well, you know, I wasn't looking for that at that at that time, to be honest with you. But you know, when I did hear that you came in, it was at a time in my life that we were leaving, you know, where we had kind of made the decision that in order uh for us to uh financially and economically and just quality of life type things, that the town had changed so much in my lifetime in the wrong direction that I was looking at my children and and uh and just the uh the erosion that I'd seen in in the community. And we just felt like we needed to leave. It was almost like an uh needed to escape, you know, what was happening.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

You you could leave. Right, right. There's a lot of people that can't. A lot that can't. And so what do you do with them?

SPEAKER_04 9:39

Yeah. And I hated doing that.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

You know, it there were no, I'm uh look, I'm I'm not blind. Look, I if if I had small children, right, I'm I probably would make the same decision because it's just gotten into such distress. But you know, the stage of life that we're in now, you know, we believe that everyone has a soul and every soul matters to God. And they're this is an incredible culture of people that uh we we want to help find freedom. Right. And so we had the ability to do that at this stage in our life, and and it's it's been amazing. We love it.

SPEAKER_04 10:12

Right. Well, what you said, you and your wife, obviously, she's a key component to decision making in your household. You said y'all prayed about it. What what did she think about the idea? And then once you're gonna do that.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

Well, it's interesting because throughout our marriage, and we've been married 37 years now, I think. Um, we always did what I wanted to do. I'm I'm the breadwinner, she's the stay-at-home mom. We're gonna go here and I'm I'm you are my wife, goodbye, city life. You know, let's go to Green Acres. And and she has been such an amazing uh partner in everything, you know, sh the job that she did raising our children and and helping me do what I felt like I was supposed to be doing has just been amazing. But in this case, I'm gonna ask you to uproot from the community we've been in for 20 years and go down to Pine Bluff, which uh for those that don't know Pine Bluff, it's uh it's in what we call the it's right on the edge of the Arkansas Delta. It's you know, high poverty, it's got a pretty good crime rate, it's 80% black, it's it's a you know, it's it's gonna be a tough ask. So for the first time in our marriage, I said, I really feel like God is leading me to this community, but I'm not going unless He's gonna tell you to do the same thing. Right. So we took a drive down there, and it was it was late fall, early winter, something like that, and we got down there, and and when you got down to Pine Bluff at this time, there had been a building that had collapsed on Mound Street.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Okay, I remember.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

And the bricks of that building were all the way across this uh the yellow line in the middle of the road. And so instead of cleaning it up, they just put yellow tape around it. So we go down there, we thought this place looks like Beirut. Yeah, you know, and so I was just crying, you know, this is not where I feel like God is asking me to go. And so we go back home where we come back again, and we come back again. It seemed like every time we would go down, something else was and it took this took about a year.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:07

And finally she said, We need to, we need to go down there. And so when that was when she made that decision, I could not make this, it was gonna be hard enough to support me in what I felt like I was being asked to do. It's gonna be hard enough on me to to try to minister to a community like this if I've also got to drag her along kicking and screaming. I needed a partner in this. Right. And she's been an amazing partner. Yeah. So I need I needed her on the same page. And, you know, God does what he did what he always does.

SPEAKER_04 12:37

Right. Well, once y'all got there, then uh you had New Life uh ministries. Yeah, New Life Church, yeah, church behind you. Um, they were there to support. Where did y'all start? I mean, where how did you decide?

SPEAKER_03 12:50

Well, the first so it was interesting because we got down there uh late 2016, early 2017, and I didn't know what to do. I'm still getting paid by the church, but we don't we don't have any church. What am I supposed to do? So I called some of the other pastors that had planted churches and said we just hang out in the community. So we would go to Walmart, you know, which is like the set it's the heartbeat of our town, and we everywhere we'd go and I'd just start talking to people. Right. And I'll never forget this one time I went to Walmart and I got there and and I parked about the same time as this other lady parked. There's a short little black lady, and and I park my car and I get out and I see her and I say, Well, how are you doing? And she looked at me like fine. Man, ain't it a great day? I said, Are you from around here? She said, Yeah. But you're not. I said, How do you know that? She says, Well, you're talking to me. And that was I've never forgotten that. Yeah. And getting in a community like that where you can begin to break down those barriers and lower those walls and open those doors. I mean, that that's what we did for about six or seven months, just talking to people about this uh this church that we were going to be bringing to Pine Bluff. And uh and trying to get to know the people, read a lot about the history. There's not a lot of books written about Pine Bluff, but uh you you have to dig to find them. But just learning more about the community and the culture and the amazing history of this town, that it was a city of freedom for the longest time. I mean, a lot of January the 8th, 1839 is when Pine Bluff became a city. And then during the start of the Civil War, it became a union city.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

It was, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

So as a union city in the middle of the South, you'd have all these freed and runaway slaves that could come to Pine Bluff. Well, when they got to Pine Bluff, they weren't property, they could own property and they own farms and they built businesses. And so what you had in Pine Bluff before the turn of that century was you had Main Street, you'd have a guy that used to be, you know, came from a family of slaves. He owned this building, but the guy next door whose family used to own slaves at this building, and they got along in remarkable synchronicity. It was that kind of town to the point where at the end of that century, you have more black millionaires in the city of Pine Bluff than just about anywhere in the country.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Right.

SPEAKER_03 15:07

And there's a building in it's the Hill Masonic Temple down there that that was built. At the time that it was built, it was the largest building in the country that was built with totally free black labor, black engineers, black architects, black construction workers. It was a monument to the rest of the country of what is possible when people operate in unity and freedom.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Right.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

And that's the kind of city Pine Bluff was. It was a city of freedom. Well, then all the Jim Crow stuff started and the 1900s rolled around and all of that is stripped away. Right. But I still believe that God intended this community to be a city of freedom, uh, but it's going to be spiritual freedom. And I think that's why he spoke so strongly to us to get down there as soon as we could.

SPEAKER_04 15:47

Well, I agree, you know, and that uh again, before I went on my journey, uh kind of downplayed uh the part that spirituality and faith played in rebuilding a life. I mean, you hear about it, you see guys going to prison and finding Jesus and all those things. But as I've gone through my journey, I've seen how foundational that is. And if you and the fact that y'all are focusing on this broken town. Um, and just so people know, I mean, we're we're sitting here because I'm from Pine Bluff, know it backwards and forwards. You've been there and invested a lot of your life into it. Um, but just for the people out there will kind of walk down uh the memory lane for me a little bit. And you've already started with some of the older history of where Pine Bluff came from. But um the reason we're this is so important is because I see Pine Bluff as a reflection of the impact that some of what we're experiencing in society now can have on all cities and all communities. And, you know, you when you see a town like Pine Bluff go from this vibrant city that it was, you know, up until the mid-80s to some degree, and the rapid collapse that it it had and everybody leaving and and running for the hills. Um, you know, you think about it's hopeless. You know, it's on the spiral. What can be injected into it to turn it? And you think about economic and you know, impact. You know, you know, can we put a bunch of money into it? Uh, can we improve the schools? Can we bring business? All of these things. But those have been proven time and time again that they don't always, the programs don't always work. Sometimes they make it worse. That, you know, industry fails because at a core, you know, spirituality and the morality and the accountability and the humility that that creates changes the person. And the person is who you have to invest in there. And what y'all are doing now is, you know, focusing on that core, um, I think is, you know, I'm just now realizing how important that is. I've always, you know, ever since we we've made the decision to leave Pine Bluff, I I looked out, I was like, I don't see how you turn this tide. Yeah. Um, but uh, you know, it and hearing you talk about that, um, it kind of at least my my neurons are trying to put this this together.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

And I well, you uh you can't you can't turn the tide. And I think that's one of the things that that people have to wrap their minds around that you know the Bible says, unless the Lord builds a house, you build it in vain. And spiritual freedom and economic freedom go hand in hand. Right. I mean, I think they're I think they're intended to go hand in hand. And we want people to be prosperous in this community. We want them to begin to build generational wealth. And I think there's been an intentional effort to re-enslave a population. And and so, you know, what we want to do is we don't want to make people comfortable in their poverty, we want to get them out of it. And that that begins with uh, you know, a spiritual rebirth. And you you nailed it a minute ago when you said humility. But uh that's that's a huge part of it.

SPEAKER_04 19:21

It it is and all of us. Uh and I've especially seen uh the loss of that in s in some of the more impoverished communities. Yeah. Um, because I do believe, just like I experienced, you know, it seemed like humility was a weakness, but it is in my mind now is it it is an essential um characteristic for succeeding in life. Um and you know, uh the you talked about mentioning that what we're seeing is almost an a new enslavement of people. And I know slavery gets thrown around a lot and it has different connotations, but that's what we see uh develop. And it was like a fast-forward for me over a 10-year period of time, but seeing what the remnants of what Palm Bluff was and the the vibrant community that it was, black and white, everybody intertwined um to the dissolving of that community and the impact that that had uh overall um in the in the people um and what what happened and the you know, we always look at the economic factors, the crime factors, all of these things. But if you bullet down to what was going on, one of the things that I witnessed, and even before uh, you know, I was Christian, I still recognize the importance of the church and our communities down there. And was I got to grow up the lady that helped our family, you know, when my parents were off and doing their thing is a black lady, and uh she would drag us to church with her. I mean, we we spent summer days at her house with all of her grandkids and everybody else, and you know, the the black churches were so vibrant, and they were big, you know, it was big community churches and um, you know, full of life, and uh and they they held everybody accountable. There was that communal accountability. And one of the things that I did witness as I got a little bit older uh was the, at least from my perspective, you can correct me if if I'm wrong on it, but it seemed like there was fractional. In those churches. And you started having all of these smaller churches that seemed like there was less accountability. It seemed like they were family churches almost, but not in the way that we use the family church. It was almost like they were families that operated the church. And um, you know, it just seemed like we started losing some of that that group, you know, uh of community uh within that uh within our community. Um I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 22:37

No, no, no, I I have uh I have a different take on everything that happened in the 1900s in Pine Bluff, because I think that, you know, as I explained back in the 1800s is a city of freedom, operating in freedom and unity. And then when all of the you know, all of the Jim Crow stuff, all of the, you know, all of the oppression began. I think what happened in Pine Bluff in the 1900s was sort of um I mean, understand, Pine Bluff boomed in the 1900s. It became the second biggest city in the state of Arkansas. But I don't think it was I I don't think it was the way that God intended. For example, you would have, you know, Pine Bluff, you would have f forty, fifty, sixty, seventy thousand square foot churches that were built in Pine Bluff. Okay. And you'd have a man of God stand in the pulpit preaching the freedom of the gospel of Jesus Christ while he's excluding three-quarters of the population. And I think God says that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. And so I think he just turned the city over. I don't I don't judging the city is a little harsh. I think he just turned this is the way you want to run it? Okay. And hands off. And I think that's when you begin to see this decline. Pine Bluff is the 16th most churched city in America, according to Barna. And there are more churches per capita in that community than just about anywhere in the country. Well, if there are more churches in that community than just about any community in the country, why does Pine Bluff look the way it does?

SPEAKER_04 24:06

Well, and that that's kind of what I uh I was getting at. It seemed like, and again, it seemed like there are a lot of churches. Yeah. But you look at the population, there's a ton of churches, but they're they're small, and it seems to me, at least the ones that I was familiar with, um and I'm not again not uh talking about the big ones, but it seemed like it took that population and it it split it up, and not all those churches were serving the same purpose. Yeah. Um and they were so church and the community of church was so ingrained in the social structure of uh of our people there, uh, and especially in in the black community that I was familiar with, um, when I saw that splitting, the accountabilities to each other seemed to split as well. Um but you know, I could be totally off on it. Again, my that was my perspective. I was a young kid. Um, and I just try to put pieces together on that. But you know, Pine Bluff obviously was suffering from a lot more than than church splitting or not splitting and racial divide and and those things. Uh, we had uh had a lot going on um in the 80s, late 80s, and into the 90s uh that really turned it on its on its ear. Um, you know, and one of those things, again, with that, uh I just look back at to why could it be so resilient for so long and then almost overnight become this 180 of what it was. And a lot of it to me, I know we lost some industry and things like that, but I got to, I was on the street there, I was dealing with it day to day, and the you know, the violence was real, and it wasn't just isolated. Um, you know, I go into school, junior high and high school, I got to see it almost daily. And it's not that these people came in from somewhere else. They were from Palm Bluff, they were uh products of what Palm Bluff was creating. Um and why did this happen? Why did we have this transition? Um and it why was it so rapid? Uh you know, so the the church thing was something that I've looked back at just I recognized it a little bit as I learned more about it uh and experienced it as a younger guy, but I reflected it back and asking the whys, the the what levers were pulled to make this this transition into what we became. You know, but again, back to the accountability and the and the social structures and and things like that. How do you feel about um you know the the single mother household, the the father's lack of responsibility in this? I mean, because most of the kids that I would say at the time that I was going through, it was probably, you know, they were it was probably 50-50, you know, uh, of uh having a uh a father in the household. Um and I know that's declined since then.

SPEAKER_03 27:47

I think well, I th I think that's the key. I mean, you could come up, you you can find all sorts of reasons why communities are dissolving, but I think I think the key is that the family is the thing that holds communities together. Right. And there, in my view, just research in this community and looking at at what's happened, I think there has been an intentional effort underway to destroy specifically the black family. And I I think it surprises people when you say statistics like in the late 50s and early 60s, the marriage rate in the black household was higher than that of the white household.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Right.

SPEAKER_03 28:27

85% of black kids are growing up in two-parent households in the late 50s, early sixties. Well, now the marriage rate is 30 percent and plummeting, right? And 75 plus percent of our kids are growing up in single-parent homes. What changed? You know, the big thing that changed was the war on poverty.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_03 28:45

And and I think there were a lot of programs that were instituted to help people out of poverty, to get them out of poverty. Well, as a result, you have the dissolution of the family. And and so I gotta be careful how I say this, but I just gotta tell you, I I think that there is a big poverty machine. I agree. I think people talk about big oil and big pharma and big tobacco. Well, there's big poverty. There's a lot of money out there right now available uh to keep people in poverty. There's a lot of power and money and influence to be gained by peak keeping people angry and offended and broken and poor.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Right.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

And just as an example, is like if you gave me $100,000 to get this family out of poverty, okay? So we we get them a job, we get them married, we focus on their kids' education. Okay, we can begin, they can begin to start building generational wealth. We can get them out of poverty. Well, what happens to the 100,000? Well, it dries up. You did what I paid you to do.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

Right.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

So I don't really want to get everybody out of poverty. I want to keep recreating a problem so that you keep paying me to solve a problem that I keep creating. Yeah. And policies and were were put into place that led to greater dissolution of the family so that you'd have to keep paying me to solve these problems that I keep creating. So when we got down there, we didn't want, again, we didn't want to make people comfortable in their poverty, but wanted to get them out of it. We wanted to help people begin to build generational wealth. And so, but you know, when a new church comes to town, what you want to do is you want to feed the hungry, house, the homeless, clothe, the naked, right? So we go down there, because that's what churches do, and we start giving food away and clothes away. We realize we're making the problem worse.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Right.

SPEAKER_03 30:31

Because they're they're picking up, you know, the chicken that we're giving away here and they're going somewhere else and picking up more, and then they're selling. So we wanted to make sure that we one of the things we tried to do was help people get out of this cycle so that they would be able to help people rather than be the ones that needed help. And so one of the things we hit on was the one of the greatest ways to build wealth is to own your own property.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

And so we started a program called Home Again Pine Bluff. And when we started this, I think probably 65%, it may be higher, of the residents in our city rented their living spaces. So the overwhelming majority of people in the community didn't own their own homes. And if I don't own my home, I don't own my street, I don't own my community, I don't own my city. I don't know if you've ever rented a car, but if you rent a car, you don't get the oil changed.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Right.

SPEAKER_03 31:26

You don't go detail it, it's not my car. So I can just do whatever I want in that car. Well, that same sort of mentality is in the city. If I don't own it, why do I want to pick up the trash or invest in the kids or coach the baseball team or whatever it is? So if we can get people to start owning their own homes, then you know the thought is we can begin to turn this thing around. So we took these old dilapidated homes that were in the community and we we had a couple of them donated, we tore them down to the studs, we rebuilt them as brand new homes, and then we rented them to families who wanted the opportunity to get out of the situation that they're in. Now, a lot of them have crime problems, drug problems, credit problems. And but we're gonna rent that to you. You have to be married, you have to have a job, and you have to go to financial education classes, home ownership classes, things like that. Well, we'll rent it to you for two years while you take all these classes. And at the end of two years, we then sell it to you for half of its appraised value. So you can go from poverty, relative poverty, to equity, $50,000, $60,000 in equity in just two years. Right. That's when you begin to build generational wealth. But one of the things they learn is that everything I do to my house to increase its value is going to put money in my pocket. But everything my neighbor does to his house to improve it, it's gonna put money in my pocket. Because as the value of his house goes up, the value of my house goes up, that's increasing my generational wealth. Well, now I have a vested interest in not just taking care of my home, but taking care of my street. I want my street to become valuable because as more people want to move into my street, the value of my house goes up. And and this is this is a total change of mindset. And one of the, you know, and one of the toughest things that we've encountered is getting people to believe that something like that's possible. And but one of the things we told them is that, okay, when you when you start investing in this, when you start getting into this program, the people that are gonna try to trip you up, the people that are gonna try to derail you, do not look like me. Okay, it's gonna be people in your community that are gonna try to bring you debt back down to their level. Right. You know, and that's Pine Blood's company. That well, that's but that's that's the toughest part of what we do. I mean, we we started building brand new houses to attract certified school teachers and police officers to pine blove. So if you're a certified school teacher, you get a $20,000 grant to buy a brand new house and police officer. And so we we built this or first responder. And so we built these first couple of houses. We wanted we wanted to make it available to this fireman who was going to our church. Great young kid, right? Early 20s. He was a firefighter, he was an EMT, he had his own business, he was doing some other stuff on the side. We wanted him to buy this house. It was at a really good price. You were gonna get favorable terms from the bank that was helping us out. So we asked everybody in his family, not one person in his family, told him to buy the house. Because nobody in his family, in his grandparents, Greg, nobody had ever owned their own property.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:26

So he didn't do it. Well, then a year later, we started building houses in another area, and he came to us and said, I really screwed up. I should have bought that house. So he ended up buying another one of the houses we built. And now he's on the pathway to building, you know, a future, not just for him, but for, you know, when he gets married and has kids for the next generation.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

To his family now. And I think a lot of it is, you know, I got to see this as well. It's that generational mindset. Um, you know, that we we have generations of people, not just in Pine Bluff, but nationwide, since the war on poverty and the policies that started on that. We have generations of people that are, you know, three generations deep, plus that no one has ever worked in that family. No one has held a real job in that family for generations. And there's an entire economy that is built around that. And like you said, it is structured. If you stand back and look at the methodology being used, it's not a whole lot different than methodologies that have been used to create to control populations throughout the history of humankind. I mean, the one of the most blatant ones that most people can relate to is, you know, how the American Indians were were treated. You know, they were uh brought in, their culture was pretty much destroyed. They were um concentrated, and their social structures were eliminated, and they were made dependent on the government for everything. And we threw in whiskey.

SPEAKER_03 36:03

Uh, you know, and one of the most one of the easiest ways for me to control your family and to get you in the big poverty cycle is to take that man and put him in the ground or prison. And and if I can take the man out of that household, then I can control the family and I can I can get him into the house. Or weaken him with drugs. Well, it's same same thing. Yeah, if I just I gotta emasculate him, remove him from the picture, right? So I become your daddy. So you have to come to me for that. And so breaking that cycle, getting people to understand that that you have a purpose and a plan and a future and a hope, that's the transformational power of Jesus Christ. That's the thing that will change the way that you see things. Right. And so then the next generation, we we try to rebuild the family, we try to get families back together, people back to work, and and restore hope in the future that I think God has for the city and for those families. And when you start seeing that happen, man, it's a struggle. But when you start seeing it happen and you see some of these families break free from this on this narrative onslaught that they receive throughout much of the popular culture, and you see them swimming against that stream and beginning to achieve, you know, purpose and hope and freedom, I mean, that's that's worth it all right there.

SPEAKER_04 37:26

Right. And it's possible. And I I commend y'all for approaching it in the way that you are. I mean, that's uh that is the way to do it. Um, you know, and the other thing that I mean, these individuals that are sw swimming upstream, um, you know, I've seen it so many uh times where you you mentioned that the the people in their own community and their own family are the are the biggest hindrance to them following this new direction. And you know, it it kind of breaks your heart to to see that happen because you see the struggle that they go through and also the social uh isolation that sometimes they have to live. You know, the pe the the um the family or the friends that they had associated with their entire life, they have to recognize that they're not doing them any good. For them to move forward in life, they have to leave behind their security, their blanket, their friends, their family sometimes. But, you know, also I I can only imagine that through proof in their success that they become, you know, a disciple to the process and uh showing that what they can uh can be achieved.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

Yeah, well, you hope so. And and uh you know the uh the battered woman's syndrome, you know, this idea that if you t you tell a beautiful woman that she's no good and worthless and ugly long enough, she begins to believe it. That's kind of what happens to communities like like Pine Bluff. If you get this continuous narrative that somebody like you can't achieve something like that, right somebody like you will never be able to do something like that. And you just keep getting this reinforced that you're not able to do this, you begin to believe it and you begin to internalize it, and then you begin to pass it on to the next generation. That's that's a spiritual problem that you know when you can when you can get to that route, then it's gonna open up the doors to economic freedom and and other freedoms that follow from that. But it's a it's a belief, it's a mindset that's got to change. And I'm telling you, man, that's that's the toughest part of what we do.

SPEAKER_04 39:48

Well, so much of our society now is focused on uh the immediate gratification loop. And one thing that uh faith kind of uh in order to be faithful, you have to, you're playing a bit of a long game, you know, you're looking at eternity. Um, and so it I think it helps shape not only purpose, but also the mindset of everything doesn't happen immediately. Yeah. And it's okay if it's hard. It's all right. You know, it's still a direction. And you can accept some hard times because you have some resilience. Uh, you don't have to blame everything on everyone. Uh, you can accept that burden is part of your process and your journey. And it gives you, at least from my perspective, just a lot more ability to absorb uh rather than just react and naysay and and give up uh on that. One of the things that uh I was really impressed with, because I think that uh again, part of the mechanism of our poverty machine is the lack of financial knowledge. Uh financial literacy should be a core curriculum starting in elementary school, in my opinion, and should follow through the students through till you know they're graduating in 12th grade. I don't know that it's even taught at all now, but the fact that y'all are requiring that as part of this process is wow. I mean, that that has to be um, you know, uh a beneficial thing. Well, it's eye-opening.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

Yeah, you know, it's kind of funny. We'll have people come into our our our office and they're, you know, they may be having some issue of some sort. And and so we'll we'll do the you know, we'll do the income asset debit kind of thing. And okay, here, how much money do you make? And you put that on the board. Okay, this is how much money you made. Now take home money is what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Right.

SPEAKER_03 41:55

All right, now what are you spending it on? And then you write that list down, and then you get to the end of it, and I say, well, it looks like you should have probably about $2,000 left over at the end of every month. Do you? No. Well, how come? Right. And then you start thinking about all these things that I spend my money. A lot of people have income that they can begin to use to build, right? To build with, but um that financial education is is is enlightening for a lot of people because they begin to believe, you know what, I might be able to make this happen.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

Right.

SPEAKER_03 42:29

If I exercise a little bit of discipline, if I begin to save. And and one of the things we require is that you open, you know, we we charge the rent that we charge for two years is below market. So we're these houses that we redo are three bedroom, two-bath. They rent for about a thousand bucks a month or more in Pine Bluff. We rent it for $650. So we encourage you to open up a savings account and begin to save money. You know, try to save the difference. And so at the end of two years, you get five, six thousand dollars in the bank. And they're like, you know, that's unheard of. But it's possible if if if they're taught about financial education, if they begin to realize that I I might just have the resources to climb out of this. And and and repairing there is you know, you talk about a target rich environment. The people that want to exploit this community for credit to get them, you know, you can you you got the credit, now go buy whatever you want, and then their credit rating gets destroyed. So even if you can afford the monthly payment for one of these new houses, you don't have the credit score to get the mortgage. And the mortgage is, you know, for the houses we're doing is hardly anything. But in in the rent houses that we do, we require them to set up, you know, have a bank account. And a lot of them have never had a bank account.

SPEAKER_04 43:45

Yeah, I had lots of employees.

SPEAKER_03 43:46

And their rent is taken out of that bank account, right? So they pay their rent on on every two years, they're paying it on the same time every month. Well, the bank that works with us looks at that two year rent paying period as established. Establishing credit, so they're able to give them the mortgage. And so some of these people that may never have thought that they could ever own a home are now able to own their own home and own their own family and own their own future because they exercised a little bit of financial and we're gonna help them out any way we can, but they're taking control of it and giving people control over it is another one of those things that builds self-esteem that kind of reverses this narrative, too.

SPEAKER_04 44:27

Yeah, you know, they have to uh everyone has to be accountable for their their actions, good, good and bad. And uh that's part of that that learning process. But uh I'm in, I mean, it's amazing how everything aligns in that uh just that home ownership. I know what it meant to me when I first came. When I got my first house, it wasn't much of a house.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:52

Um we had to go to three different banks and and finally got it. I don't understand why the third bank even thing.

SPEAKER_03 44:58

Yeah, I think it's I think it's really important to throw to throw in here because I think this is critically important is this growing up the way I did, you know, my dad taught me certain things. This is the way that we do things. You have to understand that there's so many people in this culture that the entire system was arrayed against them. The entire system was organized to try to destroy and control that family. And so that's the only thing that they've known going back generations. Um I and and and we don't want to so we don't want people to think that they're victims, but I also don't want people that are on my side of the equation to look down upon this community and this culture like they've really screwed things up. Right. They didn't have they didn't have the infrastructure around them that was encouraging them and supporting them and fighting for them like so many people that grew up in in the community that I did.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Right.

SPEAKER_03 45:59

And so I gotta that's one of those things I have to be really careful not to say, well, these these poor dumb people don't know any better. They no, they they've been victimized in a lot of ways and targeted for destruction. And and in my view, and I think the black culture may be the most influential culture on the planet. And I think maybe that's one of the reasons it's been targeted for destruction for so long. I mean, we we do uh we have 18, 19 churches in our campuses in our church now. We do a thing uh once a year called the Collide Conference, where we bring all of our young people together to have a big, you know, conference air, Christian celebration. And and so we took some of our kids to Pine Bluff up there a couple of years back, and and you know, there's 2,000 some odd kids there. And so we have this little dark spot in the middle of these sea of white faces, and some of our kids are looking around saying, you know, this is not my culture. Right. This is, you know, I'm this, I'm like, listen to the music they're playing. Right? When I was your age and we would go to a youth event, we were doing things like, we are one in the spirit. That music that we're listening to on these stages in our churches is totally influenced by black culture. The rhythm, rhythms, the sound, the melodies, the clothes that the kids are wearing totally influenced by black culture. You've got pasty little white kids in Lithuania doing hip-hop. That's not their culture. That's the influence of this culture. And so you, you know, you expand that to think, well, what if this culture that has been targeted for destruction for so long, why was it targeted for destruction? Because it's so influential. And if you can get this influential culture to begin to glorify God rather than self, you'll create a revival that will sweep the world. So I'm not down there to help out these poor people. I'm down there to hang on to their coattails because when this culture gets unleashed, it's gonna be explosive.

SPEAKER_01 47:55

Right.

SPEAKER_03 47:56

That's that's the exciting thing about being down there is looking forward to what happens when people begin to operate in unity and freedom because it will unleash a revival that we won't know what to do with. Right.

SPEAKER_04 48:08

Well, that uh is a beautiful picture, you know, and I um I know that y'all are making a difference with individuals. It is that generational mindset. And it's also, at least when I was a kid running around down there, the uh, you know, because there weren't the strong male figures in the home. The next thing was who had the flesh, who had the bravado, who was getting the chicks, all that. And those were the gangbangers and drug dealers on the corner. Um, not even on the corner, really. They were driving around in the cool rods and you know, had everything. And so that became really the only uh examples of success that these uh young guys had and girls. Um and it was just uh, you know, they weren't educated in the realities of how economics worked. They weren't it there was nothing expected of them either. Yeah. Uh there was nothing expected of them by anyone in their own groups and their own cultures, and they uh and all that I ended up seeing from that is just this everybody out for their own. Yeah. Good. It was a hopelessness in that though. It is. It's a hopelessness.

SPEAKER_03 49:35

Yeah, it's just everything I see is right in front of me.

SPEAKER_04 49:37

You know, and also, you know, when you talk about home ownership, when you own your own home and you have a family, you have something to lose. Yeah. And so that, I mean, there's a lot of me, especially early on, as I transitioned out of violent adolescent mentality into being an adult and a responsible adult. I didn't follow through on actions because I had to reflect and look at what I had to lose. The most dangerous I ever was, and a lot of the people I ran with ever were, were as young guys, first of all, you can't understand consequence. I mean, that you can talk about it all day, but your brain just doesn't seem to click to understand it. But it was that you didn't seem to have anything to lose. You didn't have it a, at least I was surrounded and had male role models that were good. Um, but I looked across the aisle at some uh um uh classmates and saw that they they didn't have that. They felt like they didn't have it, didn't matter. They were going to prison anyway, or they're gonna end up dead. I mean, you might as well do whatever you can.

SPEAKER_03 50:53

Yeah, if my future is just the ground to prison, then why should I pick up my the trash on the street? Right. Why should I do my homework? Why should I mean if that's that's it's a hopelessness there.

SPEAKER_04 51:06

And we we got to see it. We did the scared straight. They still have that going. I don't know if they still do that in the schools where we went to the the prison that's just south of Pine Bluff. And I remember walking through with some of my classmates. It was like a family reunion. It wasn't a scared straight, it was a visiting everybody and you know talking to their uncles and cousins and everybody else. And you know, that it was funny at that time, but it's sad. It is really sad that that is the future that they accept. We saw it in medicine as well, and I design prosthetics. Um a lot of our um patients that were middle, upper class, you know, when they would have an amputation, it'd be the end of their world with a lot of our um lower economic uh uh groups. It was just accepted. Yeah you know, it was like, oh yeah, Mom I and everybody, everybody else has a leg cut off due to diabet diabetes and poor nutrition and poor uh that was just an accepted part of of life. And, you know, it's just a it's a settling and it's insidious in the way that it it happens and and what effects that rip ripple out from that.

SPEAKER_03 52:26

Well you gotta you gotta paint a new picture. Um because it's shocking uh how acceptable it is for especially these young ladies that think that it's just normal to be beaten. It's just normal to be sexually abused. That the number of the kids that come in and out of our church, you would be stunned at the number of those kids that are are abused in some fashion, and that's just normalized. It's normal to have your family members in prison. And you have to begin to paint this new picture that even if your uh conception may have been an accident, your creation was not. God did not make a mistake creating you, and he created you with a purpose and a plan in mind. There is a future, there is a hope. He didn't, you know, this the circumstances of your conception may have been, you know, could have been an oops, could have been violent, could have been ugly. That that happens, but the creation, only God can create life, and he didn't make you by mistake. And getting people to cling to that, that there may be a future and a hope for me. There may be more to me than even I know that there is. And that you talk about the importance of of faith, of of uh spirituality, of a relationship with the God who made them and loves them and has a purpose and a plan for them. But that's the only thing that's going to radically transform them because they begin to believe maybe there's more out there, you know, than what I can see right in front of me. Maybe there is a future, there is a hope. And when you begin to paint this new picture, uh choices begin to change. And things that horrible things that have become normalized, you you come to the realization that that's not normal. That's not the way God intended it.

SPEAKER_04 54:21

Right. And uh, you know, forgiveness is a big component of that. 100% and that is um, you know, carrying that burden of hate and blame and uh victimhood. Yeah. Is again, it's it's a weight, it drags you down. And I always not always, but I thought of forgiveness as a little bit uh like you were giving for that other person or that other thing or that other event. It's really for you. It's for that unburdening. So you can stop wasting that energy and focus on what's really beneficial for you. Uh it's just amazing how much we carry with us uh with that. And and faith helps in that process, it helps in that enlightenment of purpose and the big picture of life. And I believe forgiveness is a is a key to that because I see again, look experiencing it and looking back. I know it's two white guys sitting here talking about race relations, and that's taboo. Um, but I got to live it, and you're living it right now. But one of the things that uh we talk about everybody can be a victim. Everybody's been a victim at some point in their life. You know, we have been done wrong by somebody or something. But the existence in victimhood is a whole different thing. That becomes a mentality, a way you operate daily. And that's what I see right now that's being propagated is that there is this mindset of victimhood. And in that is the racism that is being beaten over everyone's head. Either you are racist or you are suffering from being, you know, uh a victim of racism. What are you what are your views on that right now? I mean, is racism truly what is holding back? Is it is it as big a deal as what we are being told in the media or social media? I mean, what are you seeing on the ground?

SPEAKER_03 56:36

How do you define racism first for answer?

SPEAKER_04 56:39

Well, I I have a Webster definition of racism. I mean, that if we want to talk about true racism, it is believing that your race is superior. Yeah. Um and but I believe that that is not what we're talking about anymore when we talk about racism, at least in the public. Uh racism to me right now is any, first of all, it can only occur from white populations to other uh minorities. Uh apparently it cannot occur the other way, which I I disagree a hundred percent because I got to experience it in my life on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_03 57:25

I mean, you just you just there's there's no way I can answer this without getting some slings and arrows from some science. That's a great question, Gabe. Thanks for throwing me back in the back. That's what I'm here for. Uh but you mentioned a little bit ago something about victimhood. I I think you have I think we have to understand that some of that's justified. I think that there has been an intentional effort to to to victimize, to control, to destroy a particular population. I think that's very, very clear.

SPEAKER_04 57:55

Very, I'm very much clear.

SPEAKER_03 57:56

Now, whether I claim victimhood, that that's that that's another that's another subject. When you talk about forgiveness, um yeah, some of this is justified. But I'm what forgiveness is, is I'm gonna I'm gonna unload that on God. I'm gonna let God deal with that. And I'm not gonna let you have control over my future. Because if I keep claiming to that, yeah, I was done wrong. This is there's a lot of things in society that are, you know, that are kind of working against me. I I can I can hang on to any of that stuff. But what all that does is just weigh me down from my my future and my hope and my success. And so forgiveness is we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I like I'm gonna, God, I'm gonna let you deal with that because that's too big for me. But I understand that I've made a lot of mistakes and you forgave me. I have to have a mindset where I'm gonna forgive other people, I'm gonna let you deal with that. But I'm gonna try I'm gonna get as close to you as I possibly can so I can begin to live the life you created me to live. I mean, there's a some of this victimization is warranted because I think that there's a lot of things that people have to own up to. But living your life as a victim is just going to hold you back.

SPEAKER_01 59:11

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:13

Now, when it comes to racism, yeah, I think I think racism is is I I think racism is is is real. I think it is preached. But one of the things we try to do in our church is try to get people to understand that the best way to explain this is uh is just to tell you that a year ago this month, I thought I was gonna die. I mean, it's just I I had this. I'll try to shorten the story, but I had pancreatitis. I didn't know what was pancreatitis. All I knew was that for the past for three years prior to last year, I'd been just bloated and cramped. And I didn't know, I thought maybe I was just getting older. I couldn't button my jacket. This is what happens when you get older. Well, this one particular day last year, this month, I'm driving uh from Whitehall, Arkansas to a place called uh DeWitt. And so you go in this road called Swan Lake Road, which is a French word for the middle of nowhere. It's nothing but farmland. Very familiar with that. And my stomach had distended to the point where it's touching the steering wheel. And I thought something inside of me had burst or some little alien was gonna come out, right? I'm sweating. I'm in real trouble, and this is different than anything that's happened to me up to this point. And I know that I'm in critical condition here. So I call 911. So my name is Matt Mosler. I'm driving a silver F-150. I'm headed to JRMC, and I need you coming this way because I don't I don't think I'm gonna make it. I'm headed on Highway 88, gonna turn on Rob Road Road, gonna turn on Highway 63. I need you coming this way because I don't know where I'm gonna stop. But I and you know, this is not really the way that I had pictured my storybook ending, you know, blowing up on the side of a country road. But if it's God's will, you know, I make it all the way to Pine Bluff when the ambulance passes me, and we end up getting to the hospital, and they tell me that it's pancreatitis, and you spend a week in the hospital and flushing out the pancreas. And anyway, so I end up losing like 20 pounds of bloat, which is kind of nice. But then I have to do these follow-up appointments. And on this one particular follow-up appointment, I go into this doctor's office because they're gonna do some MRI or CAT scan or something. And I go up to the window and I sign my name on the little clipboard and I give it to the lady behind the sliding glass window, and she looks at it and she says, Matt Mosler, Matt Mosler, why do I know that name? And and I I you my go-to answer is usually, well, I used to be an exotic dancer in Little Rock, and and sometimes they laugh, but then other times they go, No, that wasn't you. And she said, No, you're a pastor. And I said, Yes, ma'am. She says, You have that church in Jefferson Square. I said, Yes, ma'am. She said, My son started going to your church. And he he started going all the time. And he really liked you. I said, Something happened to your son? And she said, Yeah, he he was battling with drugs and he was trying to get clean and he had a fentanyl overdose and he died about a month or so ago. And I said, And right there in the in the waiting room of that doctor's office, I have an opportunity to, you know, to minister to her, to tell her that, hey, look, in the middle of this uh drug stuff that he was going through, he went to church. He was trying he was seeking for something deeper. And I'm I'm praying that he found it. And because he found that, that uh that he is now in heaven and waiting for you to be there. And so we prayed right there in the emergency room. And and then the nurse down at the end of the hall screams my name, and I gotta go back and get this MRI or whatever it is, and the lady says, Wait, wait, wait, wait. I I need to tell you that you have no idea what this means. I said, I've been praying for God to give me some answers. I've been praying to God that He could help me understand this and to bring me some peace. You have no idea what this means. And I went, Yeah, I do. Because I've I've come to understand that the only reason I exist and the only reason you exist, the only reason any of us are even breathing air is to be a conduit for the Spirit of God that lives within us to operate through us to answer people's prayers and to meet people's needs and to point them to hope through Jesus. That's the only reason I'm here. And so all the money or the fame or the power, none of that's gonna, if I don't use all of these things that I work really hard to achieve, to use those to bring him glory rather than me, it's it's useless. And when you begin to look at other people as if we are all just instruments for God to use to bring about his glory, it changes the way that you see other people.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:39

Doesn't matter what they look like, it doesn't matter the circumstances that they're in, it doesn't matter where they are. Again, their conception may have been an accident, but their creation was not. Every single person on the planet has the ability to be filled with the spirit of an almighty God. And that includes everybody I see. And so, how can I be racist? How can I look at people different than me any other way than that they have the potential to be a vessel of the Spirit of God?

SPEAKER_04 1:04:06

It's definitely a unifying force.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:08

It changes the way I see my purpose, but it also changes the way that you see other people. And so we try to, you know, that's one of the things we teach in our church is that because my church is probably 60, 40 black, white, you know, and and and getting people to understand that it's not this that really matters. It's the God in us operating through us, impacting the world around us. And if God has given you a particular influence, like I believe the black culture has this amazing influence, then let him use that influence for his glory. Right. And I it it just changes the way that we see ourselves and the way that we see other people. So yeah, I believe it's real, but I'm just not going to participate in it.

unknown 1:04:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:49

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:50

Because it's it's counterproductive. And I I want I want to unleash the potential in every single person. You talk about the number of churches in in Pine Bluff and you know, the fact that if we have that many churches in this community, and and and on that Barna study, you looked at the 20 most church cities in America, probably 18 of them were in low-income, high crime, high black areas. You know, well, how could they be in those conditions if you have this many churches? It's because we've stopped acting like conduits. And we go into a church and say, God bless me, God help me, God meet my need, God, what can you do for me? Rather than how can I be used as an instrument, a vessel? The Bible calls us his inheritance. You know, how can I be used to impact other people? And too few churches are really embracing that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:42

But don't you uh I mean, at least I go to this. Um I would say that uh that mindset, which I agree a hundred percent of uh the humility that you have to lay down to be that with. With faith, of being a vessel, of being able to be used, of being an example of it, it goes in conflict with what is being uh pushed as far as the victim uh mentality. I mean, it's hard to have both of those. Yeah. And I just uh back to the churches and the the how many we've got in in Jefferson County and the situation that we are. It it you know, I just see it as like you're experiencing right now with the people that you're touching with your church and your message. You see what the effect can be if the message is pure and true. And people are embracing working, letting God work through them. So, you know, the population, you know, of church-going people being fractured out in these all these churches there. Well, you know, what's going on? What message is being taught there? Um, I have an idea. Um, I think that it is not necessarily always focused on God. I think that it is a conduit of the victimhood mentality and the blame game, and not being a resilient soldier of Christ, but instead manipulating the scripture or the pastoral position to perpetuate the dependency and the elevation of the self in that chaos. Um, you know, that's one of the problems. Again, I've been against church and organized religion most of my life because of the hypocrisies that I witnessed within it. That's what turned me completely away from Christianity. And in my mind, validated all the questions I had about Christianity and organized religion in general. And so, you know, the responsibility of being a religious leader is pretty substantial. I mean, we're talking about one of the most, if not the most consequential uh components to a foundation of a human, not a Homo sapien, a human, um, which there is a vast difference in my opinion between just a biological bipedal ape that we are and what a human actually embodies, and that is the soul. And that is a spiritual component of us and a powerful one. And, you know, I just again I know I know I'm I'm I'm talking as I'm thinking, which is sometimes dangerous for me, but you know, I can't keep uh help but keep coming back to uh to the failures in in the church that I see just in perpetuating almost in some ways, and I'm not talking about your church. I'm I'm just talking about in generalities in these impoverished areas, what's going on there? I mean, do you have any insight? Uh I've it's been a while since I've been you know on the back roads and sitting in the pews there.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:32

Um it's a hard message to preach to people to tell them that it's no longer you who lives, it's Christ who lives in you. That's that's not a very popular message to tell people. Uh it's like one of the best ways for you to achieve everything that you that you were created to achieve is to give up on your dreams. Now that doesn't make any sense at all. But the Bible makes absolutely no sense to the uh to the human mind. For example, you want to be rich, give all your money away. You want to be first, you gotta be last. You want to be a leader, you gotta be a servant. You want to have victory, you have to surrender. It's it's upside down thinking. Okay. And so to tell people that, okay, you need to give up on your dreams because when you when you become a fully devoted follower of Christ, uh, then you understand that it's no longer I who live, it's now Christ who lives in me. And so the things that I think are right, the things that I think I want to do, the dreams that I have for myself, I have to put those on the shelf and pursue pursue him and his purpose and plan for my life. And what happens is I as I give away all of that, in turn, what God does is he gives me his dream. Right. And he gives me and his he the Bible says he will give you the desires of your heart. That doesn't mean he will give you what you want, which isn't what a lot of churches turn it up to say. It means he will plant within you his desire, his dream, his purpose, the reason that he created you with a purpose and a plan in mind. That's the dream that we have to, that we have to cling to. But but you're telling people, you know, the Christian message is dying to self and living for Christ. And uh I, you know, I want to be in control of my life. I want to have some control over my future. I want to, okay, well, if I give all my money away, guess what the Bible says? He'll give it back to you. Pressed down, shaken together, overflowing. He'll give you back more than I give away because you know that that's his he wants you to be joyful, he wants you to be happy, but uh he he he he wants if I humble myself therefore under his mighty hand, he will exalt me in due time. He wants to exalt you. He just doesn't want you to exalt you because he knows when you try to exalt you, you end up with a cheap imitation of what he wants you to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:10

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:11

And that's a that's an unpopular message to preach in a in a culture like we're in today. And and and I don't want to be critical of other churches because there's the I mean we are uh we are not the best church in in the world. And we make I make lots of mistakes. And but I think that message is one that needs to be, you know. I I think what happens is so many churches are focused on increasing the numbers in that church. And so I want to I want to water down that message to increase the numbers in the church, and you end up robbing people out of the life that God really intended them to live. And so um you know dying to self is the key to living the abundant life. It's just you can't get it on your terms. Right. It's gotta be, it's gotta be his terms, and his ways are so much better than my ways and so much higher than my thoughts.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:06

You know, it all comes down to that uh submission.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:10

Well, it's uh it's like we're we're we're in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. We never this was again, this was not part of the plan.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:16

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:16

But when Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life, he's the way. He's the way is not a direction, it's a person. And the closer you get to that person, then he sort of directs you wherever he knows it's gonna be most pr productive and and and powerful and useful. And you just have to surrender to that.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:35

Right. And I think it's always good to have a plan, but it might not always be God's plan. You've got to be flexible with it. You gotta be flexible with it.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:41

Well, but I want to But see here, yes, I if I believe that God's given me certain gifts and talents and abilities. And I have a responsibility to take the gifts, talents, and abilities He's given me and hone them razor sharp. I want to be the best, I want to take the gifts that I have and make them to be really I'll give you a really good example of this. In the book of uh in the Bible, there's a story about a guy named Daniel, and Daniel's one of the boys that are taken captive when Persia takes over Jerusalem and all they take all the boys back and they, you know, the best and the brightest. And Daniel gets involved in what they call the school of the magi, right? Well, you know, later on there's this king kept called Nebuchadnezzar that has this dream and nobody can interpret the dream. So he says, Hey, bring me the head guy. Bring me the leader. And the leader turned out to be Daniel. Now, Daniel at this time is 85, 90 years old. He'd spent his entire life working his way up that school until he achieved a position of incredible influence where the king's asking him to interpret this dream. God wants you to hone your gifts. He wants you to work as another Lord. He wants you to get really good at what you do. Uh but the influence you gain, the money you gain, the fame you gain is absolutely worthless unless I unless I make sure that God knows these are extra tools in your toolbox to bring you glory, not me. Right. So he'll bring you, he'll, he'll bless you, but understand that the blessing that he blesses you with is not for you. You're it's to be a conduit so I can pass those blessings on to others. I can pass that influence on to others. Right. That's just that's but that's upside down thinking, which is not really popular in our culture.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:19

And I, you know, the I've as I've gone through my journey of revisiting all of these uh things, these notions and uh observations that I've had throughout my life, especially involving churches, religion, and and religious leaders, um, you know, one of the things that definitely uh was almost laughable, and I know it's portrayed in in comedies and is the spectacle, you know, our our evangelist on TV and uh the flair and all that. And um, but it occurred to me in a conversation with a friend uh last week is that in a way, sometimes the spectacle is necessary if it's used in the right way to garner attention for the glory of God. Uh because if you uh if you're trying to reach the masses, they're shiny things that attract the masses. Just like the gangbanger that you know I grew up with, he always had what attracted people to him. It was a nice car, it was gold, it was a money in his pocket. And then from those attractions, he was able to gather a following, had people looking up to him, wanted to emulate him. And what it occurred to me is, you know, even through uh normal lives, we all have that opportunity to be a bit of a spectacle. Um, you know, either through, hey, that guy is, you know, he's got it together. You know, he's a hard worker, he's got a successful business, or he's successful in working, you know, got a great position, works hard, got his stuff in order, family's doing good, all of those things. But as long as you give the glory to God because you have been following and you are a vessel for his message, you know, those aren't things that should be ashamed of, as long as they're in the right context. Um, you know, it's just like uh getting the message out, getting the attention so that you can get the message out. Just to be honest with you, if there was some, you know, guy in rags standing on the side of the road preaching amazing gospel, I'm not gonna pay attention to it. You know, um, but in a different setting, in a business setting, for instance, uh you know, having a nice dinner and a guy that I've uh uh witnessed his success and he's intelligent and he's put together, and then he opens up, about that's gonna have an impact. And uh, you know, so uh how do you see that balance going?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:19

I mean, well, I I I've never made a lot of money, you know, and it's funny, people think you work in television, you make all sorts of money, but there's only one Oprah. Right. Right? She made it all, man. I mean, I so I've never really made a lot of money, so I I can't really speak to that aspect of it. But I think the thing I think the spectacle that is the most attractive is joy. It's contentment. Um and I I hate to use me as an example because I've screwed so many things up, but in every TV station that I ever worked at, I I won people to the Lord. And and I just remember this one time that this there was a lot of things going on in our life at the time, and and my co-host at the time said, How can you be so happy when all hell is breaking loose in your life? That was a spectacle. Because she knew the things that were going on, and yet you can still laugh and be joyful because there's this there's this inner peace, this inner contentment, this inner life is gonna be hard, man. Right. Life's gonna it it's gonna hit everybody. I mean, nobody's gonna get through this thing unscathed. But but if you have a it it's the it's this peace that surpasses understanding. And the thing I find most attractive about in people is not the amount of money that they make or how successful they become, but it's it's the joy that they have um in in in the pursuit of whatever it is God called them to pursue or whatever they are enduring. And um, yeah, so I mean that that's you know, I but but on the same token, I mean I when you're in when you're in television, you have a platform right and and people recognize you. And and I remember when I uh there was a story I read a long time ago when I first kind of got into this, you know, using television as this platform to to go into churches and schools and such. It was there's a story about uh about Moses when he first encounters God and and God tells him, I want you to go to the most powerful man on earth and I want you to demand that he release a slave. So it's a big ass for a shepherd. And Moses comes up with five great excuses why he didn't want to do what God was asking him to do. And then finally, you know, uh God says, Well, what's that in your hand? And he said, It's a staff. He's a shepherd, right? This is this is what it this was his profession. He says, Well, throw it on the ground. Throws it on the ground, turns into a snake. You saw the moon. You know, he picks it up, turns back into a staff. God was able to use that staff of Moses to part the waters of the Red Sea, to get water out of a rock, to bring manna down from a but when you think about it, God was able to use an element of Moses's profession to bring glory to himself. Right. And so you start, you know, I started asking myself, well, what's what's my staff? You know, what element of my profession of my life can I be using to bring him glory? And it was the it was the celebrity that came along with television. Right. And you use that as a vehicle to bring glory to him. And if you do that, then he'll open up other doors of influence for you in that process.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:38

And well, I mean, you look at Jesus' life as well. I mean, he was God on earth, he was a son of God, he could have done anything he wanted to. Um, he could have made us all follow him. There was no power that he didn't uh possess, but he chose to perform miracles in front of people that needed to see it so that it reinforced what he was in a way that people could understand. Because you can look historically, at least I did, and uh, and this was part of the reason before I kind of had an awakening, that I dismissed some of uh what Christ did because a lot of the miracles that he performed were miracles that existed in other religions. In other words, their head guy performed this. He walked on water, he raised the dead, he could he did this. So these people were familiar with those stories, and Jesus performed the same miracles. The difference is he performed them there, and people witnessed it. The others were just stories. And it occurred to me as you know, talking about spectacle and the importance of that, is he performed those. He didn't have to do that, but he did it to show the of who he was in a way that people could understand, and it broke open that that barrier that they would have had otherwise. You know, it's talk is cheap, you know, and people are wired that way. But if you see it and you witness it, and you can say, oh, it didn't really happen. That's what I did. I used to say, no, it didn't really happen. That they just carried on these uh, but you look historically again, you can't deny the written record of what went on, but even more so, you look at the disciples, you don't look at necessarily how they lived, you look at how they died.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:54

At any point, these guys could have renounced it and said, Oh, my bad, this didn't really happen. No, I'll follow you, Mr. Roman, or you, Mr. Hindu, or whoever, you know. No, they died horrible deaths. And the only reason someone would die the way that they died, except for one, I can't remember which one didn't actually get crucified upside down or stoned, or uh, there was one that he let lasted a little while. But uh all the other ones suffered horrible deaths is because they witnessed the miracles and they witnessed the resurrection. Yeah. And they knew.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:35

Yeah, they had an encounter with Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:37

And that's what really got me because I try I try to look at things as logical explanation, historical reference, all of that type of thing. And there's uh, but I never it sounds simple, but I never put that together in my own head because I was corrupted in the way that I was looking at things. And um, you know, so it's we all, I believe, have that opportunity to be a spectacle in our own ways as long as we give that glory to God. Bring people in, don't beat them over the head right away, relate, show them how you've succeeded or how you are happy or joyous, or success is measured in so many different ways, how you're fulfilled, but then let them know why. And you know, that's what I'm looking for now. The Lord has blessed me immeasurably in so many different ways, and you know, I I'm wanting to use those to show others why, you know, how did I end up there? This is part of the plan. Yeah, I worked hard, went through a lot, learned a lot, made a ton of mistakes, you know, got my butt handed to me many times. Um, but uh there's a reason I'm here and it's uh trying to give back at this point. And you know, you're you're a shining example of that. I mean, you've lived most of your life doing that, and that's admirable. And I had a whole different perspective on this just last year. Yeah. You know, if we were sitting down talking right now, I would we would I wouldn't be quite as uh understanding, you know, about uh why you do something and and what the real angle is and uh all of those, but it it's been definitely been eye-opening. And again, back to that uh a lot of forgiveness comes with understanding too.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:55

Yeah, I think I you know, I listened to your story, and I think the thing is you had an encounter with something that was real.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:02

And so these people that are witnessing, you know, these miracles that Jesus is doing, they had an encounter with something that was real, and that's the thing that will transform your life, is when you have that encounter and you realize that God is not just some theory, he's not just some you know, idea that they had, you know, a couple of thousand years ago. He's real, right? And he can transform your life. And and one of the best, but so many of us miss that. We we're familiar with the idea that there is a God, but we never give him an opportunity to operate in our lives. And when you when you humble yourself under his mighty hand and you say, Hey, I'm I'm giving up my dreams, I want to live your dreams, that's when God has, you know, a whiteboard to operate with, to begin to operate through you, and you begin to see God show up, and you're like, Okay, maybe this, maybe this thing is real, and then you want You want another taste of it. You want another taste of it. And it just continues to grow. But if you never, and how do you give them an opportunity to operate through? You just, you take some crazy chances. You take some, uh, you know, I remember one time we were, we were, uh, I think I'd left the TV station and and I was driving down this one highway, and I and I passed by this building, this old dilapidated church in Scott, Arkansas. And uh the church building was leaning this way, the steeple was leaning that way, and it was gonna fall down any day now. But they had poured a 4,000 square foot slab right next to that church.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:37

And so I would drive by that, going duck hunting down in Stuttgart, and I say, Oh, good, they're gonna build them another church. And then the next year I'd drive by and the slab's still there, and well, I guess they're raising money. And then the third year I drive by, well, they must be in trouble. And the fourth year I drive by, I hear God speak to me in a very high tenor voice, and he says, I want you to build them a church. And I'm like, Well, number one, God, I ain't got no money. And number two, you've seen me build, right? So we're gonna have to question this. Well, the two weeks later, I run into a guy at this church that I was working at, and he said, You know that little white building on the highway, that little white church? I said, Yeah. He said, I really feel like God wants me to build them a church. I was like, All right, two witnesses. And long story short, we end up building a 4,000 square foot church, totally donated labor, everything was donated, all of this stuff was we we hand them the keys to a brand new church because we just took a we took a step. In fact, when we started this, I had this contractor work with us and because I don't know nothing about nothing. And he says, okay, if you're gonna build on this particular day, you need to, you know, you need to have the walls up, but then you need to order the trusses today so that when we get the walls up, you can put the trusses on. I said, Okay. What's a trust? And explained it to me, oh, that little triangle thing on top of that. All right, where do you get those? Home depot? He says, No, and you gotta get so there's a place called River City Trust in North Little Rock at the time, and he handed me a piece of paper and I handed it to the guy. I need these. And it was 53 trusses. Okay, and he says, This is a church project, right? I said, Yes, sir. Well, I'll tell you what, I'm only gonna charge you $5,300 for that. I said, Okay. Now, at the time I had $300 in my ministry account. And so that was like, okay, did God really ask me to do this? Right. I stuck my hand out and said, okay. Now I don't know where I'm gonna get $5,000. But we ordered the trusses. I get a phone call um a week or so later from this guy who was a pastor down in England, Arkansas, and he said, uh, and they had done a story in the local paper about what we were gonna do. And he said, Hey, I've driven by that church a number of times. I've always felt like God was wanting me to do something, help them with a build a church there. And but when I saw this article in the paper, I uh that I felt like that was my burning bush. He said, uh, I don't know what I can do to help, but can I give you $5,000? Would that help?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:56

You know, it's things like that. And then so you take that step of faith, God shows up. Yeah. I want more of that. Yeah, I want more of that. And it's just this pressing on toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. You can, you know, you can never attain it. You just keep, and it just keeps getting cooler and cooler. Right. You know, and and when people begin to to get a taste of that and become a conduit for his spirit to operate through, man, it's a great, it's a scary way to live, but it is it's just so great.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:26

It is faith.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:27

100%.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:28

I mean, that that's where faith really meets the road.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:32

But in way too many churches, faith has become an acronym for a fundraising program. Right. You know, but it when you take steps of faith like that, when you actually step out beyond what I know and what I can control, and all of a sudden God shows up and does amazing things that there's no way you could possibly do, then you're like, okay, maybe there is a God. You know, let me keep pursuing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:53

I think you know, you uh you can look back through your life and see all of these points in in your life where it doesn't make any other sense other than God intervene because you didn't understand it right then.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:08

Yeah, I can see those points behind me. I just wish I could see them ahead of me.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:11

Right, right. And I think, you know, that's what keeps us if we knew what was ahead, then it might might change our growth as a as a human and as a as a servant of God. And um, but it it is. And I I still struggle from that. That what you're describing is absolutely terrifying. And in our uh society now, you know, you would say, well, that's reckless.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:38

You know, that's reckless. Um, but once you experience the reality of how this all works, uh, because it is supernatural. It's not, it's not of uh earthly per, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:54

It's like faith is a muscle that needs to be exercised, you know. And the first time you you walked into the gym and you picked up a 50-pound weight, that that bad boy was heavy. Well, the more you work out in the gym, pretty soon 50 pounds are nothing. Right. You know, now you're picking up faith is that muscle that needs to be exercised. You take that shot, you take that shot, and then he shows up here, and then you take this other step, he shows up there. And so the next time you feel like God's leading you to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to move from the house you've been in for 20 years and go down to this unknown menu, you're like, okay, I don't know what's gonna happen, but I know he's gonna show up.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:28

Yeah. Well, talking about Pine Bluff again, since that is a big part of it. So the you have the magic wand. Say you got a hundred million dollar donation. Yeah. What would you do with it? Where do you where do you how would you utilize that? Would that be what Pine Bluff needs? Or a billion dollars.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:53

Right. You know, one of the things that so I I think ownership is a big deal. And and um but what we we can help people own their homes, and when they own their homes, they own their families, they own their future, get rebuilding that ownership. But we also know one of the things we want to try to inspire people to do is start own their own business. Start uh becoming entrepreneurs. Start we we gotta we gotta teach the value of work again that that has been targeted for destruction. And there's so much value in work. And we just preached this past this past Sunday before God gave Adam a woman, he gave him a job.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:36

You gotta have a J-O-B if you want to be with me, you know what I'm saying? Uh and work is is valuable, but you know, I with that kind of money, we would uh money, money's not gonna solve it, you know. Uh money won't buy you everything, but it will buy you a boat. Right. Uh it will help to uh to create uh a place where people can go to where we can uh teach and train and mentor and and motivate them not just to get back to work, but also to uh to bring some capital investment into the city, not government investment, but capital investment. And one of the things we're trying to change about the community is that in a lot of communities like Pine Bluff, there's this narrative. You know, our community is known colloquially as Crime Bluff. And because that's the dominant narrative in this community, then you don't have private business investing in that community. You know, you don't have people willing to take a shot. But one of the examples that I use to try to encourage this private investment in this community, because you got you still got about 38, 40,000 people there that do have money. So you had a you had Chick-fil-A open up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. There is, and by the way, that is a God thing, okay? The very first sermon I preached in Pine Bluff, I said, you will know that God is in this ministry when we get a Chick-fil-A in Pine Bluff, and bam! So you anybody, all these people trying to take credit for Chick-fil-A, it was my prayer, baby. But you had a place like Chick-fil-A open in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. And and what this lady did, that the owner of Chick-fil-A, so she hires, you know, hundreds, 140 people right off the bat. And within a couple of months, she fired half of them. Because here's the standard.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:22

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:22

And they didn't meet the standard. So you fire half of them, and then you hire another 40-50, fire half of those. Hire another 40-50, fire half of those. But what you're seeing is that every time it that standard is rising. And if you go to that Chick-fil-A right now, the the way that that Chick-fil-A is operating, the standard has increased. And kids that are working in there are beginning to see the value of that hard work, the payoff for that hard work, and the standard is rising. Companies need to invest private capital income in that city, but understand it's gonna be a little rough at first. But you're you need to be we need capital investment to begin playing a role in rebuilding uh a community that has been targeted for generations for destruction. So it's gonna take some rewiring of the way people think. But the more capital investment is in there, Chick-fil-A's doing really well. It's doing really, really well. She is now uh reaping the benefits of this hard work that she's endured for the past several years. It it is a great place right now to begin to invest in, to begin to uh uh to move into that community and and buy some of these houses, rebuild some of these neighborhoods, because I promise you, if you don't do it now, it's gonna be too late because that community is about to explode. Right. And now is the perfect time to get private investment in that community. So that's that's what we're dreaming at. Pine Bluff will celebrate its 200th year, it's it's bicentennial, January the 8th, 2039. So that's 13 years from now. And when that rolls around, we're gonna see the marriage rate above 50%. We're gonna see more kids in two parent households, we're gonna see a lot of private investment in that community. We're gonna do marriage, we're gonna do more marriages than we do funerals. I mean, that is our benchmark. That's that's what we're shooting for. And we got 13 years to do it. So we need some help from some of these private investors to to help us out, help a brother out a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:17

Well, I like the the uh you know the the thought process because me looking at at investing in Pine Bluff, I mean, I mean, you know, you look at your capital expenditure and your time frame, your return on investment, and usually those are fairly narrow. But there are corporations, obviously, that have the capacity to play a longer game in that and have the capacity to slowly evolve a community back to a functional uh employment base, because that has been one of that's been one of the greatest crippling factors to to Pine Bluff, in my opinion, is that the employment base for a lot of our lower skilled to middle-level uh jobs has not been there. Um, I mean, my uh uncle used to, he had a developed uh because of the need, a van service that drove all over Southeast Arkansas every morning, gathering people to come work at Tyson because there weren't enough people locally that could pass a background check or a drug test to even employ. Yeah. And so they were having to spend the money to send out vans all over Southeast Arkansas to pick up a few in McGee and a few in Dumas and a few here and there just to fill those positions. Um and they're not, they weren't horrible paying positions, they were pretty decent paying positions.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:48

Um and, you know, when a business or corporation looks at that, you know, okay, we could do that in Pine Bluff, or we could just go over here and do it where, you know, we've got less of a long-term um or a Yeah, I think what you're gonna do too when you do that is you I maybe the maybe the most effective thing that we've done in coming to Pine Bluff is uh we have given people hope. Um like there's uh there's kind of really two groups of people in Pine Bluff that you can kind of separate. There's a group of people out there that expect you to give to them. Okay. And so they're not gonna serve, they're not gonna help, they're not gonna expand. But there's another group of people that have been giving and giving and giving and giving, and nothing ever changes. So they stop giving, they stop helping, they stop serving. And so when we come to Pine Bluff, when we invest in Pine Bluff, like what we're hoping some of these other businesses would do, it's gonna, it's gonna mo it's it's like the cavalry coming to town and it's gonna inspire and encourage and motivate people to get back involved and and begin to get this machine going again because it's still an incredible city with amazing resources, right there in a port, got an airport, it's got everything you need phenomenal except hope.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:12

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:13

And and and right really, I'm speaking right now to anybody that owns an Italian restaurant. Come to Pine Bluff right now. That would be really good. I'm gonna pray an Italian restaurant into fruition now, but but it coming in there and coming in there with excellence and intentionality, uh, it's gonna it's gonna get people mobilized again to, you know what, my city's not finished. Right. There's still a lot of hope here, there's still a lot of life here. And that's why I'm I'm so in uh optimistic about the future of this community because it's a we, I mean, I people don't believe me when I tell you this. Because when when you tell people that you move to Pine Bluff, they give you that look. Yeah, you know, like I remember I went to go to the port of Little Rock one time to pick up something for my son, and I I backed the trailer up into this thing, and and I get out, and the guy that owns the warehouse recognizes from television, he said, What are you doing now? And I said, Well, I I pastor church in Pine Bluff, and he gave me that look. Right. And then he said, Where do you live down there? Right. You know, and down there is not just a geographical description, right? And that's this image that people have of this community. And but we we we love it there. I've met some of the I have some of the best friends I've I've made in my entire life in that community. And I I I think it's uh I think the narrative of Pine Bluff is not the reality. And I think it's important for people to know. And it's not just Pine Bluff, it's a lot of communities like Pine Bluff that just are waiting, like I like that battered woman, they're just waiting for somebody to believe in them again. And when that begins to happen, that begins to generate a lot of forward momentum.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:54

Right, right. Well, it all goes back to those and touching the individual and you know, how that individual can spread out and create more, uh, either from a business owner deciding that that's gonna be his calling or her calling is to uh come back and really truly make a difference in a community, whether it's pond bluff or you I mean, there's thousands of palm bluffs really around the country right now. Um and, you know, the one of the things that I got to see in traveling to third world countries um is the relatively small sacrifice that can make a massive impact and change people's lives. The things that we take for granted that uh can absolutely not only change people's life, but change generations after them by changing their life. And you know, uh Pine Bluff, I think, has that capacity to be that um that engine that could, you know, just gonna it's gonna take a little uh focus and you know, not ignoring the bad because the bad's real. Yeah, it is, but coming up with actionable methodology uh and not expecting immediate returns on it. Um hundred percent. So and that's a difficult thing right now when everybody's in chaos, but I think that's part again part of the part of the process uh of uh of controlling and of uh propagating you know poverty and uh everything else is maintaining that division and that chaos and the hopelessness and the questioning and uh the attack on everything that becomes a foundational, fundamental part of the of the self, you know, and uh hopefully through efforts like you have uh going in Pine Bluff, um, we're starting to make a change and because it's always gonna be home to me. Um I can I am critical of it. Uh I've got wonderful uh memories and I have some pretty rough ones. Um, but I do want to see Pine Bluff and I want to see all of the Delta uh come back. It was such a vibrant, amazing society and culture uh that uh is just being eroded and destroyed. And uh the United States and the world for that matter will be less um beautiful, you know, because of the of the loss of that if we allow it to happen. So I commend your efforts definitely and and I have a whole new uh perspective of what y'all are are doing, and and uh I I believe that you're directly in line with what that community needs and how you need to approach it because it's worth the fight. Yeah, yeah, you know, you immediately go to crack down on on the crime, get more serious. And I know all of that has an an effect. We absolutely don't need to back off of it, but how do we prevent it in the first place? You know, how do we change that individual and that mindset and again that hope that they have for the future? But um, you know, and I guess it it will hopefully just come in in full circle. Uh life seems to be a cycle, and we gotta hit bottoms to appreciate, you know, where where we end up. And you know, maybe that's what Pine Bluff was meant to be, is meant to be an example of of what can happen and and what can be rebuilt.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:41

So we believe we believe it can. I mean, it's it's it's gonna be fun to watch.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:46

Right, right. Well, I appreciate your efforts. It's uh, like I said, a lot of special times and people there, and there's still a lot of great and wonderful people in that community, and I'm I'm hoping the best. And hopefully I can help out a little bit here and there as well as you know, bringing attention to to what's going on there in a more positive light, and uh and we can all benefit uh from that shining example that Pombliff becomes in 2039.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:15

2039, baby. Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:16

That's the year. Yeah, we'll we'll revisit that and see where we're at. But uh well, Matt, I can't thank you enough for your time with us here. And uh I think we've covered some great topics. Hopefully didn't get us in too much trouble. But uh thanks, Gabe. You tried. You tried, baby. But there they are things that uh, you know, it's uh it's a challenging time right now, all the way around. There's a lot of uh things up in the air, and um hopefully be able to work through that with God's grace and direction, and I'll be better for it. So, but again, I appreciate your time. Yeah, take care.