Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Missionize with the Missions Guys, a podcast of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, offering biblical and practical insight and strategies designed to equip and encourage missions leaders to carry on mission work. The goal is to fulfill the great commission from a church's local community to the ends of the earth. That is why we missionize. Now, here are your hosts, the Missions guys, Sam Roberts and Quint Richie.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Welcome to Mission Eyes. Thanks for joining us again. Today we are recording our final session. If you've been listening the last couple episodes, we have been at our annual evangelism conference where we've had the privilege to talk with a couple of our guests. And so this is our third episode there. And today we are honored to have Nick Floyd with us. Nick is the senior pastor of Cross Church in Northwest Arkansas. And so, Nick, thank you for joining us at Mission Eyes.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: Yeah. Excited to be here.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: And so in addition to serving at Cross Church, as if you probably didn't have enough things to do just with Cross Church and three campuses and what God is doing there, claim to fame kind of is maybe is serving as the team chaplain for the Razorbacks football team.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: So give us a little bit of insight into what that's been like the last few seasons.
[00:01:20] Speaker C: Yeah, well, this is. I just finished my 11th year doing this.
[00:01:24] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:01:24] Speaker C: So I started with Kind Coach Bielema and his second year, I think, is when I started and went through him and Coach Morris and now Coach Pittman. And so it's basically. It's usually me and our college pastor is kind of how it's done over the years of. We kind of split the duties where they do most of the team stuff. Team chapels. I think I did maybe three chapels this year.
But then really where I focus is the coaches. And we do coaches Bible study during the season every Tuesday or, excuse me, every Thursday morning for whoever wants to come. And really, it's anybody on staff. So we may have, you know, position coaches all the way to people in the equipment room, to girls that help with the recruitment office. I mean, it's kind of a hodgepodge of people in there, but it's. It's a great honor. It's a lot of fun.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:02:11] Speaker D: Awesome.
[00:02:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:12] Speaker D: Now, Nick, one thing that we do when we have a guest on our podcast is we want our listeners to know them a little more than just the questions we ask regarding mission activity within the church.
And so Clint has some personal questions to ask. Just a rapid fire, just to get to know Nick Floyd a little better.
[00:02:36] Speaker C: Sounds good.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: All right.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: Favorite meal Man, I love Mexican food. Probably if I'm dying tomorrow, I'm probably eating Tex Mex tonight. All right, I'm actually eating Tex Mex as soon as we get done with this podcast today.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: There we go. Favorite restaurant?
[00:02:50] Speaker C: Oh, I love Chewy's. I love local lime, which I think there's one in. Yeah, that's a great Little Rock as well as in Rogers. So those two I frequent pretty, pretty regularly.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: What's your go to relaxation spot?
[00:03:07] Speaker C: Man, I love a Friday with my wife, whether we're sitting at home on the couch watching TV or hitting up some Tex Mex for lunch, anything like that. But for vacation stuff, love the beach, love being anywhere near the water, eating seafood. Then I'm all in.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: All right, besides the Bible, what's your favorite book?
[00:03:27] Speaker C: Gosh, I'm a big reader. I don't know that I have a favorite.
My most recent favorite, I'd say is I read the Insanity of God by Nick Ripken. I'd never read that. No, it's not a new book, but wow is the right word. I was blown away, and it was page turner. And I'm going to use some of those stories and sermons just because they're striking. So I'd say my most recent read and favorite is probably that one.
[00:03:55] Speaker D: Yeah, Nick, along those lines, when I first read Insanity of God several years ago at Stuttgart, we made that required reading for any of our folks who were joining us on one of our international missions.
[00:04:09] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great idea.
[00:04:11] Speaker D: And we would have the plane on the plane would have folks taking out the Insanity of God, and they were able to have conversations with people, too. It was great.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: I had no idea what it was about. I thought for years I had heard it, thought it was a theology book, honestly. And I picked it up as just kind of a. Okay, I'm starting the new year. I want to want a good read to get my heart right. And gosh, I was blown away.
[00:04:33] Speaker D: So it's a great documentary on that, too.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: I heard that. I've not watched that yet. That's awesome.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: What about favorite podcast?
[00:04:41] Speaker C: You know, I'm always listening to podcasts, so from a sports talk, I'd say the Herd with Colin Cowherd I hit almost every day. But on a Christian perspective, I love Grow Leader with Chris Hodges, who's out of Alabama.
I'll do Craig Groeschel, obviously.
Those are. Those are a few of mine.
[00:05:02] Speaker D: Yeah. Good.
[00:05:03] Speaker C: I love listening to stuff at all times.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:06] Speaker C: Favorite genre of music, man, 90s R&B. Is that Appropriate to say. Yeah, no, I love that. I love worship music, obviously, as well, and my most recent is I've gotten a little bit into country music. I'd never really liked country music growing up, but my wife loved it, and so I enjoy it these days.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: What's the first concert you attended?
[00:05:31] Speaker C: Oh, gosh, the most meaningful. I don't know if this is the first, but my favorite concert I ever went to was right after DC Talk released the Jesus Freak album, and they came to our church, and I was in probably sixth grade, and it was maybe the greatest moment of my life. I love that concert.
My favorite to this day. It's amazing.
[00:05:53] Speaker D: Good stuff.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Favorite place to visit.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: You know, I've only been there twice, but I love London.
I'm kind of all in on that. And so I plan to go back a lot, but I've loved that, the history of it, and it's just a magical, magical place. I love it.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Last one, Favorite sport.
[00:06:16] Speaker C: Oh, football. There's no doubt. There's not even a. There's no distant second. I mean, it's at any level. I love high school, football, college, NFL. I'm all in. I'm all in all the time.
[00:06:28] Speaker D: Awesome. Nick, one thing that I've always appreciated about you is the desire you have to invest in pastors and other leaders to help them grow in their leadership. What would you say to those who listen? Are those two or three key leadership principles that you've learned over the years, and they could be applicable regardless of the context, regardless of the size of the church, and these are vital leadership principles for success in ministry?
[00:07:05] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say two come to mind.
I don't think we ever outgrow. Humility of pride is a killer. I've seen it a killer in my own life. I've seen it kill other people. So I think humility at any level of any leadership or life in general relationships.
Second one, maybe connected to that, is just a desire to grow. There's zero reason why we shouldn't be growing in the world in which we live. We talked about podcasts. I mean, it's overwhelming. And every day, almost especially probably during the week especially, I'm listening to something, and so there's zero reason not to read or to listen to podcasts. I mean, just so. But I think that goes with humility. People who feel like they got it all together and they don't have to grow anymore. They. They're prideful and they don't grow. So I think really they're connected in. In many ways. So I think those connect at any level of any church.
[00:08:09] Speaker D: Awesome.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: How is a way or what do you do to not settle in complacency? Yeah, I mean, when you look at what God's done at Cross Church, just, you know, almost coast on that. How do you continue to push yourself to grow in that sense?
[00:08:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I, I really do try to try to read pretty regularly. I try to listen to stuff regularly.
I've submitted my guy, my life to three other men on our team who just in a, in a sin situation. You know, like, as far as, like, I want, I want to battle against sin in my own life. So I don't want to be com. I don't want to be growing as a great leader, but complacent in my own life against, in battle against sin. So I've, that's another way. I've just recently just submitted myself like, man, I want to do this for the long haul. So I want you all to ask me questions.
So, I mean, all those I think are part of it. And even something that we're doing, I just told our team about it yesterday is. And it comes off the Grow Leader podcast of Chris Hodges of they had an episode called Mentors and Models. And so we've challenged everybody on our team. And I'm doing this myself of this year. I'm going to have a mentor. I may not even meet that mentor. It's basically just somebody that you're going to listen a lot to, read their stuff or maybe it is an in person mentor and then a model of church that you say, I just, I want to learn how they do it more. So we've encouraged everybody on our team this year to have a mentor and a model. So that's another way we're doing it. Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: We talked about the leadership development and your desire to invest in that area specifically with pastors. And a few years ago you initiated the Called to Lead conference. The tagline to that is when church leaders grow, the whole church feels the impact. Would you elaborate on that and tell us what's ahead for that conference this year?
[00:09:56] Speaker C: Yeah, we started Called to Lead during COVID It was in the middle of a staff meeting and somebody said, you know, years ago I attended this online conference and that was when nothing was open. And so for the first two years of Called to Lead, we did it online and had a far reach. And then we said, well, let's bring it in person. And so we've done that for probably, I guess, three or four years now in person. And it's our desire just to invest in pastors. And we have people come down from Missouri and Oklahoma, but mainly it's a service in many ways to Arkansas Baptist pastors. That's our tribe and that's who we want to love and be a part of.
And so we're looking forward to another great year. I don't have the speakers nailed down yet. I need to do that like yesterday. But we've got about seven or eight months.
[00:10:50] Speaker D: That's a fall conference, correct?
[00:10:52] Speaker C: It is, it is. It's right in September, usually mid September. And so it's a free conference. So would invite anybody who's listening to this, come on up to northwest Arkansas. And it's usually we have breakouts in the morning, and then we do kind of a quick run in the afternoon of sessions and you're done by 5:00 at the latest. So it's kind of a good. You can drive in and drive out, or you can spend the night with a team and whatever you want to do.
[00:11:17] Speaker D: Yeah, so is there a site dedicated to that, Nick?
[00:11:20] Speaker C: Call Deleed. Yeah, calldelete Live is where they can find more information.
[00:11:26] Speaker D: And do you have sessions there from previous conferences that they can go and, you know, listen to?
[00:11:34] Speaker C: I should know that and I don't.
[00:11:35] Speaker D: I'm not really sure.
[00:11:36] Speaker C: Yeah, sorry, I don't know. No, that's fine.
[00:11:38] Speaker D: Should have run that past you before.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: No. You can ask me many questions that I will not know the answers to. I tell our church people, you'll be surprised at all that I don't know is going on.
[00:11:46] Speaker D: Humility. Humility.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: Humility or stupidity. One of the two.
[00:11:53] Speaker D: Now, Clint, I knew Nick for several years, kind of from a distance, but I really got to know him when the two of us served on one of our committees here at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.
[00:12:07] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:12:07] Speaker D: That was that infamous budget formula committee where every five years we would look at the budget and we would determine, hey, what percent stays here, what percent goes out? How's this divided? All that good stuff.
And what I walked away from that time together, Nick, was just this desire, this passion in your heart for the nations.
I mean, you don't have to be around Nick Floyd too long to know that a driving force in his life is the passion that is there for reaching the nations. So would you take a few minutes, Nick, and speak to us not only about the importance of a pastor having that heart for the nations, but how that drive was developed in your life. How was it mentored? Where did that come from.
And how does a pastor who is listening develop that heart for the nation into the culture of the church?
[00:13:12] Speaker C: Yeah, well, you know, my father was obviously a big influence in developing a burden for lostness. I was raised in the church in which I pastor, which is a unique thing. And if there's one thing that cross church is moved by, it's lostness.
I could stand up and, you know, I could give some weird ideas on a Sunday morning, but if the church believed that it was going to help us reach lost people, they'd go with it. And that's how committed the church is to it. So I was raised in that environment, but I think one of the things the church has done well, way before I ever was in the seat that I'm in, is it really was an Acts 18 balanced approach to missions. It's not many churches are like, well, we're going to focus only on our community and we don't care about missions or honestly, happens in our context a lot. Way more of we're going to be all about missions. And we've not baptized somebody locally in a long time. And so really, Acts 1:8 calls us to, you know, local, national, international, and that's, that's really what we're trying to do. Our mission statement is based off that, reaching Northwest Arkansas, America and the world for Jesus. But, you know, one of the things that came out in the budget formula committee all those years ago helped me maybe crystallize and verbalize some things of. It's not a different quality of lostness. A person in Fordyce is just as lost as the person in Bangladesh.
But there is.
[00:14:44] Speaker D: It needs the gospel just as desperately.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: They're going to the same hell apart from a saving relationship with Christ. But the quantity of lostness, I mean, I was again, I mentioned London earlier, and my wife and I were in London for our 20th anniversary in December.
And I'm walking around with countless people from all over the world, by the way, And I'm thinking, I mean, we've got to do something about this. Like, it's just, again, it's not that they're any more lost than the person in Little Rock or Fayetteville, but there's just a ton of people around the world who don't even have access to the gospel. So some of that's the driving factor of, you know, to try to answer your question of it's just that the quantity of lost people is just vast across the world, and that calls us to do something about that.
[00:15:45] Speaker D: Awesome.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: And I guess the way you guys have been able to stay focused on that. You know, you mentioned, you know, your dad did that. That was his legacy. And then you stepping into the seat you're in now, continuing that, I guess that's what's really amazing from the outside looking in, is just the longevity of being driven by lostness.
[00:16:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: And we talk a lot about creating a culture of evangelism. You know, is there a couple of keys that you would say has driven that to be able to stay focused? You know, because think about it. You've built buildings, you've added ministries and everything, but the driving force has been the lostness that surrounds you.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, we measure it. I know that that's a.
Some churches don't like to do that. Yeah.
But we talk about how many people are we seeing make a profession of faith, how many people are seeing baptized. If it's not happening in a student ministry, we ask questions like, why is it in happening? So we're. It's almost an expectation that God desires to move and wants to save people.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:16:47] Speaker C: And so, you know, I think you. You enter into a. A kids ministry, or you enter into a student ministry or a college ministry, or you enter into a Sunday morning at any one of the campuses. We may be preaching on tithing that day, or we may be preaching on marriage that day, but we're going in with the gospel and we're going to open up the time for people to be saved. And so I would just say we measure it. We expect God to move, and we try to adjust things to fit the mission. We can feel good about ourselves with if the budget's good or if people are there, attendance is good. But if we're not seeing people saved and baptized and discipled on their walk, I mean, that's kind of failure at the main thing. So that's a little bit of how we try to keep focused on it. And we don't always do a good job at that either.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Recently, Cross Church just launched Cross Seminary. For our listeners that may not be familiar with Cross Seminary, would you give us your pastoral perspective? Kind of the why the need? What's the goal? What do you expect that the impact across seminary to have across the convention across Arkansas.
[00:17:55] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, we're thrilled about it.
I would have never imagined in a million years that we would start our own seminary, but really what it came as a result of. And people may not know this whole story, but God's done a major work in our college ministry. We're right next to the U of A at our Fayetteville campus. So for many years now, we've had a thousand or so college students be involved. Even this past, the past two weeks, I think we had 1100 last Wednesday night, over 1300 the week before. So we feel like we're in a movement of God among college students. And what we see is these students, they're coming, they're getting saved, they're getting baptized, they're getting discipled, and then God's calling some of them to ministry. And you know, it's, we're seeing, it's a different day to where if you say, okay, your next step is you're gonna, you're gonna move to Fort Worth or you're gonna move to New Orleans or Louisville or Kansas City even, which is not far, and you're gonna, you're gonna then go to school for two or three more years.
We're not seeing a whole lot of them that are making that step.
And we've seen them do the online route, which is fine, but I took some online classes in my day and it's a different deal.
And so we really were burdened to take care of what God was doing with our people. That's the number one driving force. If we didn't have C3, which is the college ministry, we would not be doing the seminary. But we also saw this as this is our main funnel to get people to the mission field. And so we began to research it and began to figure out, is this really what God's calling us to? And so last this past August, we launched Cross Seminary and we had 44 students in the initial class there. It's a two year degree Master of Theological Studies. And we believe that that is the basics of what you need to be in ministry. Now I've been in a big M. Div Guy my whole life. I have an M. Div. Always told people to get an M. Div And I would, I would, in fact, I'd still say for, if you're going to be a senior pastor, go ahead and keep going. We just announced a partnership with Midwestern where they have agreed to take our full degree and basically you can continue with them and do think 36 more hours, you can have an MDIF from Midwestern. So we're grateful for that partnership.
[00:20:21] Speaker D: Yeah, that's big.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: So we don't have a bad relationship with the other six SBC seminaries. We love them, we're all products of them.
We're taking care of what God's doing here. And we think we have the unique opportunity to do something that's different of a church based, church centered seminary that is all about preparing men and women to go serve in local churches. And so, I mean, we're very frank in saying we're not trying to build scholars, although we want pastor scholars, you know what I'm saying? But academia is not our number one objective. It's not our number one goal. They're working in the church alongside of us and it's a two year degree. And the best news of all is because of the generosity of the people of Christchurch, these students can go with fully funded tuition, meaning they go to seminary for free.
And, and so we are very excited about that and believe it's a great option for us to really, our first and foremost people we want to serve is Arkansas Baptist.
We feel like we can do that and we hope that they come up here for two years and we send them back all across the state to go pastor churches be youth pastors.
We've got a good amount of women as well in the program who can go back and work in student ministries and women's ministries and all kinds of, you know, stuff in the local church as well.
So we're just trying to prepare men and women to serve God in the local church.
[00:21:49] Speaker D: And one of those first students is the son of a team member.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: That's right, James McCormick.
[00:21:56] Speaker D: Yeah, James.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Yeah, James is doing a great job.
[00:21:58] Speaker D: Awesome.
[00:21:58] Speaker C: The key thing that we're doing is, and I've said this, I want them to be in a theology class in the morning on Wednesday morning, learning the deep things of God. So in that way, yes, we're building scholars, but, and then I want them to be in a, in a Wednesday night preteen class where they're dealing with a kid who was bullied in the lunchroom. Like that's where you stay normal in ministry, real life, people. And so that's a part of the degree is you cannot do the degree without local church alongside of it. So I think the vast majority of them, 98% are doing that through Christchurch. And then we have three or four that are doing that with other local churches in northwest Arkansas where they get the practical side of that. So we're thrilled. We believe it's our number one way to get people to the nations. And so we're making a heavy investment in it.
[00:22:47] Speaker D: Awesome. Thank you for that. Hey, as we get ready to wrap our time up, just want to say a personal word of thanks, Nick, for the message you just delivered.
The title of that message was Yielding of Personal Revival.
I'M still processing through some notes that, that I took on that. And I'm gonna encourage those who are listening whether you attended econ or whether you did not go to absc.org econ and listen to this message. Listen to it multiple times.
Just a simple message that says, here's what personal revival, here's what revival within the church, within communities is all about. It's saying what I have, I give to God.
That's incredible. Thank you so much for that. I may have some questions as I process through more of that and grateful for the opportunity of back and forth on emails to ask those. But as always, we wanna give our guests a final word. So would you leave our listeners with a word of encouragement?
What would you like for them to the only time that you have to speak into their lives. What do you want to say?
[00:24:17] Speaker C: Well, I would just say don't do it alone. You may be at a single staff church where you're the only person.
There's somebody in your association that cares about you. There's somebody at the convention that cares about you. There's somebody at a church like Christchurch. We love you.
I was talking in the worship center with a guy who's a Bible occasional pastor I've just become friends with and he lives in Pocahontas, I'm not mistaken. And just don't do it alone. You need somebody to text when you're about to give up or about to do something stupid. And I just say, don't do it alone. If you don't have anybody right now, find somebody. Life's too short to go out alone. Ministry too hard to go out alone. So I know the ABSC is here to help in any way. We're at Cross Church or we're here to help in any way. And you know, God uses other people. That's part of the, part of the message even today is God uses people and God uses people in our lives to help us stay strong when we can't. So that'd probably be my encouragement.
[00:25:19] Speaker D: Thank you, Nick. Sure. Appreciate that. And thank you for being with us today.
For those of you that are listening, hey, thanks for following along and we'll see you again in a couple of weeks.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: Thanks for joining the Missions guys today. If you liked what you heard, rate and review us on your favorite podcasting platform. And to keep up with what is happening in Arkansas missions, visit absc.org missions.
