Speaking Update and The Hall of Fire

Conversations That Matter podcast, my name is John Harris. You can probably hear it in my voice as I'm recording this that I'm probably not sounding quite 100%. And that's probably because I suspect I have COVID.

And I can see God's grace in the timing of this because I just did, I think I spoke like nine times, something like that. One was a podcast, one was a radio show, but then there was seven times I just spoke in person or did a session of some kind all the way from Kentucky to Tennessee.

And so it was pretty jam-packed. I really put myself speaking every day somewhere, sometimes multiple times a day. And I started to feel bad the night I went to bed in Nashville, just a little off. I wasn't quite sure what it was.

And I woke up the next morning and getting out of bed was just, I had to really convince myself to do it. I did not wanna get out of bed and the headache started and I was driving to the airport and I could just barely open my eyes and look at the light.

Even now I'm pretty sensitive to light. So I think right now I'm probably at the high point of the day. I've spent the entire morning pretty much just in bed with a pillow over my eyes. And with a high fever and the fever kind of broke.

It's early afternoon now, which usually in the afternoon is when the fever is worse. So I'm kind of surprised that I'm doing better. But my processing speed, everything is just subpar right now. And you can probably hear it in my voice, starting to get the classic sore throat and gunk, kind of all of that coughing.

And dizziness. And so I'm just okay enough, I think, to record this, but I can't even probably quite do that for long. But God's hand is in it in the fact that I was able to meet all the speaking engagements that I had scheduled.

And it wasn't until when I was leaving that I actually got sick. And I think I'm probably on the mend now. I know some people have experiences with COVID that last them two weeks. And I'm pretty sure this is, I haven't gotten tested.

I don't know for sure, but matches all the symptoms of the Omicron stuff. And for me, it's been about a day and a half now, maybe two days. And it hasn't been horrible. I was able to get from Nashville to Newark Airport back home and it didn't feel good at times, but I was able to do it.

So I just thank God for that. And thank you all for your support, for praying. I know many of you pray for me as I'm on the road. And that means a lot. And I think there were a lot of good things that happened.

I just wanna update you all on that. First, I went to a war room, which was a Jerry Dorris, Pastor Jerry Dorris put this on for people at his Reformation Church in Shelbyville, Kentucky. And that went really well.

The night before I was able to do a talk with children, men, women, war room was just for men, but the night before was open to anyone. And I did get there a little bit late. My flights, that was a little bit interesting.

My baggage went to the wrong airport. And because of a delay, I ended up missing a connecting flight. And so I got in about eight hours later than I should have. And that means I had to reroute to Cincinnati to just get there, even getting there late.

Because if I would have flown into Louisville, it would have been just way too late. So I drove down from Cincinnati in a snowstorm. And over some of those hills in Kentucky, it got a little sketchy, but I was able to make it.

And so I walked in late and was able to do that presentation. And then the next day, the war room, which I think I did three sessions at that, took place. And they said we had about 200 guys there. I felt like it was three or 400.

It just felt bigger than that. I don't know why. Could maybe be the way that the seating was arranged. But it was a really good time. I could tell guys were really connecting with each other. And I even told Pastor Jerry after it was over that I would be interested in maybe just flying out just to attend one of their war rooms.

Because it just is really put on very well. And of course, they had meat. They had barbecue, which that's perfect for me. I love barbecue. And so a bunch of guys eating meat and then talking about, in this particular one, it was talking about social justice and what Christianity teaches in regard to the ideas that social justice advocates.

And we did two sessions and then a Q &A session. And I think it just went really, really well. And got to meet many of you who I've only known online, but I got to see you in person, which was a huge blessing for me.

I really think the Lord uses that. He uses that to help encourage each other. And I could tell a lot of people were coming who were just really discouraged. Discouraged about their churches, discouraged about getting kicked out sometimes out of their churches because of this issue, undergoing church splits.

And they just really wanted to find a place where they could talk about these things and they could meet like-minded men. And there's a camaraderie there when you have just men together, too, that you don't necessarily get otherwise.

And so I really think it was a good time. And this, I need to show everyone this. This is something Pastor Jerry showed me. This is his place in his house where he meets with other guys. And it's really neat.

It's very creative, but it's definitely a room that you feel, I don't know, it just evokes something within you. That's, anyway, here it is.

All right, everyone. I want to show you Pastor Jerry's war room.

Not war room.

Hall of fire.

Hall of fire. Okay, so this is the room that men in his church come to hang out and learn how to preach and learn about counseling. And so they have a board here. What do you do with the board? Is that for like

It's the white board. So we'll have men exegete their text, give us their outlines. We'll help them form their propositions or just kind of, how do we look at the text? How do we go from an exegetical outline to a homiletical outline is typically what we're doing on the board.

And this is once a week you all get together?

We do. Okay.

And you got swords on the wall. Why do you have swords on the wall? Is that just because men like swords?

Yeah, it's just manly. This is the hall of fire. So the hall of fire in Rivendell is the place that Bilbo read his poems and Eric Gorham got up and finished one of his poems for him, wrote some lines and did that kind of stuff.

And in the War of the Rings, I think it's the Fellowship of the Rings, it talks about how this is a place that you might fall asleep in and that kind of stuff. It's just a cool

Wow.

So we just picked on that theme. So I've got steam, glam drink, and then I had a few other swords just for decoration.

These Civil War swords on the wall.

Yeah.

And then over here you have some drinks, some adult beverages and a refrigerator for any other, I guess, drinks. You might wanna keep cool.

Yeah.

You have your little fire and then you have tobacco products.

We do.

As well, yeah. And then you have Gandalf's staff.

Yep.

You have a monument, which I'm sure is racist somehow. And so this is the Sauron's eye. What is this on?

So this is a generation one Alexa. So the wig word is computer, but I've just put a eye of Sauron on top of it so it looks like Barad-dur, you know.

You know way too much about Lord of the Rings. So does it automatically play? Oh, there's the cigars.

This is an old, different.

Turkish, that's Turkish.

That's just a decorative thing.

Oh, man. Okay, so does it. Automatically just play the theme from Lord of the Rings when you walk in?

When I walk in, it plays music from the Lord of the Rings, the whole soundtrack by Howard Shore.

So it'll.

Automatically.

Yeah, I mean, I say the wig word and it lights everything up.

Wait, let's do it. Can we turn it off and then turn it back on or no?

Yeah.

All right, how do you?

So it'll get kind of dark in here.

That's fine.

Computer, put the fire out.

Okay.

All right, so.

Let's let it stop for a second. It's still thinking. Computer, fire up. Welcome to the Hall of Fire. Enjoy a bowl of the old toby and perhaps a pint of the gaffer's home brew.

Oh my goodness.

How did you get it to program it that way?

That took a while, but I got it figured out. And then I have to do the whiteboard separately. Computer, turn the whiteboard on.

Oh my goodness.

This is amazing. All right, so once a week, you have the leaders from the church come and they sit around here and you discuss church. Is this where you have elders meetings?

We do not have elders meetings. We have elders meetings in the church. We meet every Friday morning for a couple hours to pray with the body and just talk about issues. But here, usually Monday night or Tuesday night, it depends on schedules.

The person who's going to be preaching, which is, I preach more often, but those are coming. We will come in here and just work through the sermon together. You'll allow them to present it. If they have some trouble spots, we'll talk about it.

So we all break out the Bibles and we just discuss.

Wow.

For hours or for, it depends?

Yeah, we usually start at six and finish around, you know, nine, 30 or so. People are ready to go. We've covered a lot.

So this, is it different being in, this is a guy's room, clearly. Does that change the dynamic? Like as far as you're meeting in a public place like the church, does it change when they're in here, they're more comfortable?

I don't know.

I think so.

Yeah, I do too.

Yeah, we're just hanging and we talk about everything. And that's the one thing we do with the Jay Adams Counseling Casebook. This just helps us. We just, we'll read a case and then we'll just chop it up.

We'll spend a solid, you know, whatever hour just talking about how we would approach this, what scriptures we would need to bring to bear or something like that. And once we've exhausted that, we may go to another one or sometimes there's issues that people are dealing with and they wanna bring it up in front of other guys.

Wow. Wow.

That is, it's such a comfortable place to work on something in my mind. I don't know, it's just, it hits you really nice.

I often will come by myself when I'm working on my own sermon. I'll move all these chairs and I just sit and turn one of the chairs around and I'll just write out my sermon on the whiteboard.

Wow, wow.

All right, so I got a question. What's your favorite part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy? Favorite scene?

Favorite scene, my favorite book is the Fellowship of the Rings. I like just that first one, the whole meaning of Aragorn specifically. I really enjoy Aragorn.

Okay, I have a confession I haven't read. I started the Fellowship and I trailed off and I never finished it.

That's so sad.

I heard The Hobbit.

That's so sad.

I know, okay, so.

There was a point in time where I read these books every year.

In Turkish, too.

I do have Turkish. This was not, no, this was too hard. This was me attempting something that I couldn't do. I understand the words, I can speak it, but it's using a vocabulary set that I had no idea.

And I've studied Turkish for years, but.

So, all right, so I love the Lord of the Rings movies, which I am gonna read the book, probably this year, but the favorite scene I have from the movies is when they're in the Mines of Moria and Gandalf has his speech to Frodo.

Is that your favorite part of the books, or?

I like that part.

You like that part, okay. You have a few favorite parts. To me, that's the whole thing is that part. The whole movie is like that.

Yeah.

That, yeah, anyway.

So, this is really cool. I wanted to film this because I just think it's such a good idea, is a room for men. In fact, you got lights that aren't even turned on, so this can get a lot brighter in here if you wanted to, but the mood right now is really relaxing and it's just, it's a safe space for men.

How's that?

We don't need safe spaces, but it's, I don't know. It's really cool. It's really cool that you take people here to work on things and you have, it's more of a study than it is a man cave.

Yeah.

Yeah, so.

The men really love this place.

Yeah.

I mean, they long for this. They'll ask, hey, when are we gonna do this again? Those are coasters.

Those are Ayers-Saron coasters.

Yeah, well, that's, I needed to buy, I needed to buy an Ayers-Saron to do my,.

Yeah. To do my, Oh, yeah. My door.

All right, okay. Well, I just wanted to show you all that. I hope that you can one day make,.

Man, it's changing.

I love this.

I'm gonna do this.

I don't know when.

This was made by a member of our church. That was his contribution to this.

The Hall of Fire.

The same gentleman who was shooting the film Joel Sticker, he made that.

Man, he's an artist. He did a good job.

He truly is. Truly is.

Wow.

All right, well, any final thoughts you wanna share with people?

Not really.

Not really.

Okay, all right. Well, this is the improved man cave that everyone should have if you're a Christian man. You need a pulpit in there. You need some Lord of the Rings stuff. You need a lit up whiteboard, and definitely swords.

Swords are a must, so. All right, well, thanks for sharing that with us. Appreciate it, Pastor Jerry.

Yep.

So that's Pastor Jerry's Hall of Fire, and now I want one, so I'll probably have to get a bigger house. I just don't have the room for it here, but one of these days, I'd like to have a Hall of Fire at my own house.

I thought that was pretty interesting. After that, I was able to travel down south, and I went to Cannyville, Kentucky. I think I'm pronouncing it correctly. Cannyville, Kentucky, and Pastor Richard had me speak on false teaching from Romans chapter 16, and then we did a podcast as well, and we had barbecue again, which was just great.

That's speaking my language right there, and several people came from the surrounding area and got to meet, again, many of you that I've only known online, which was definitely a blessing, and after that, I traveled south to Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Richard came to this particular event, Pastor Richard, but Brian Schutte is the one who organized this, and I spoke at the Kew Coffee Shop, which it was a number of churches, apparently.

It was, I don't know how many were represented, five or six, perhaps, from the local area, and people came out. I don't know how many people. We probably had 80 people in there, something like that, 60, 80, and again, just a really good time, talked about social justice, did a Q &A, and a lot of people coming from churches where their souls are vexed, or they are looking for the exit door.

They're not sure what to do, though. They're not sure if there's even a church in the local area that is not compromised on this, and just very eye-opening to hear the stories that people have, but I think many people were encouraged by that, and it helped.

You can see when you're talking to an audience when the light bulb goes on, and they kind of understand what's happening. It's hard sometimes to put your finger on it, and that's one of the things that, hopefully, my being there was able to accomplish, so, and of course, shared the gospel at every venue, and then after that, I traveled south to Nashville, where a friend of mine, Marshall, put on a whole event that a number of churches were represented there, and I want to say there was probably 80 to 100 people at least there, and talked about social justice, and did a Q &A, and similar stories.

Apparently, there were some people there, as well, who weren't quite on board with, or I should say they probably were on board with a social justice bandwagon a little more, but they came out anyway, and so I think there was some fruit that took place.

Two people that I really wanted to meet who ended up showing up were Mark Devine at Beeson, and then Mark Coppinger, who's formerly at SBTS, and it was really good meeting with them, and hearing what they had to say, and so, anyway, I'm looking forward to doing it again when I'm feeling a little better, and not as sick as I am now, but I just want to thank you all for your support, and I'm gonna be probably laying low the next few days, depending on how quick my recovery is from COVID, but I wanted to give you a little bit of an update, and I do see the hand of the Lord on a lot of this.

I do want to ask you all, though, for your continued prayers. I definitely sense your prayers as I'm on the road, and I'm so thankful for them, but I could really use your prayers just for, there's just a lot of projects this year.

I'll just be honest with you, there's a lot of things that could definitely have the potential to cause much stress in my life, whether they be family issues, or just issues surrounding the podcast and the film, and there's just a lot of projects, and so I'm trying to prioritize things as best as I possibly can, and invest my time in the most effective ways.

That's not always easy, though. I have to pick and choose, and sometimes that means giving up things that I really would like to do, and so I could just use your prayers for wisdom. I'm thankful to be getting more involved in local church ministry, since we just moved back to New York, and discipleship and college ministry and music ministry are kind of where I'm getting involved, which is great, but there's just so many things.

There's so many good things that I'd love to be involved in, and there's also the pressures of people who really want me to review certain books, or speak about certain things that I'm not quite an expert on, and so I'd have to do a lot of reading, and so there's that.

There's my house situation. I'm still remodeling some things upstairs, and that's going slowly, because of everything else, so anyway, all that to say, I just really appreciate your prayers on that. I wanna be able to prioritize correctly as best as I possibly can, invest my time wisely, and of course, make sure that the first things, the priorities that need to be there, taking care of my spiritual relationship with the Lord, and my relationship with my wife, and my ministries at my local church.

These are fundamental things in my mind, and so I appreciate all of you who are supportive, and I will have more coming later, hopefully next week, more podcast material, but I may, for the next two or three weeks, do just a few episodes.

It may not be quite as many as I'm used to doing, just because I do need to take a little bit of a breather, and focus on some other things, and so it doesn't mean I'm going away at all. There's still gonna be podcasts coming out, for sure, but I really wanna focus on the quality, and I wanna really give you tools that are gonna help you, not just get a podcast out, to get a podcast out, but I wanna give you things that are really gonna benefit you in your life, and that's the purpose of this.

I'm doing this because I think the Lord has, at least for now, for the temporary period that I'm in in my life, he's given me a platform to be able to communicate with people, to give them some truth, to encourage them on this issue, because it's not slowing down.

Social justice is continuing to make inroads, and so my goal is to continue helping, and that's the main thing, is just to help, not just to get a podcast out, so I do have some material that I'm looking forward to getting into, and we'll see when I'm able to get the next podcast out, but hopefully next week we'll at least have one or two.

So that's the update. That's what happened over the last week, and I couldn't do this without your support, that's for sure. Thank you for those who donate, and donate through Patreon, and just in your prayers, of course, they mean more to me than anything else, so thank you once again, and God bless.

More coming.

Bye now.