145: Glory Bound Bibles

to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.

He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. From the underground bunker in Toadstuck, Arkansas, welcome to the

Ruled Church Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Nelson, one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas.

And with me today, we have Austin Chaney. And Austin, why don't you start out just telling us a little bit about who you are.

Yeah, so, well, as you said, my name's Austin. We've got a, I've been married to my beautiful wife now for four years.

We just had our four -year anniversary last month, and we've got three babies, 303.

Our oldest one will be three in March, and our youngest one will be a year old in July.

So we're pretty busy with these babies. But anyways, no, I actually just retired out of the

Air Force last year in November. I got medically retired out because they destroyed my back.

And so trying to navigate that, trying to figure out, like, as far as employment and helping support the family and stuff, we started doing this

Bible -reading thing recently. But, I mean, the way I even made it out here to Conway is pretty interesting,

I guess you would say, because being in the military. I originally was from Tennessee, up in the

Smokies, at a place called Lenora City. It's like 45 minutes outside of Knoxville.

And then I joined the military right out of high school. So I had a summer vacation for two months, and then after that,

I was playing down at San Antonio. And then I was there for six months.

I did my basic training, but then I was, my first job, it was called a taxi for a little bit, sanctuary control party.

And I did that for about six months, and then ended up, this is gonna be funny, but I ended up breaking my legs while I was there.

So then they re -classed me to the logistics career field, because they were like, yeah, you can't do this anymore.

And so, well, I mean, dude, my, our rucks, they go up to 60 pounds, but they ended up like killing my buddy on one of our ruck marches that we had.

Somebody had to carry him, and I had to carry his rucks. But I was also 120 pounds at the time.

So I was rucking with my body weight for four and a half miles, and 45 minutes was the cutoff.

It was terrible. So that's what ended up, I was already having issues before that, but that was just the nail on the coffin as far as breaking my legs.

But I got done with that. This whole time, too,

I was, I grew up in the church in East Tennessee. And I mean, we were just CEO Christians.

My parents brought us to church on Christmas, Easter, and every other Sunday when they felt bad.

And so, I mean, but my stepdad, he was also like not the greatest person in the world.

And so I remember growing up, I just asked those questions of how, God cannot be real.

Like, this is just a community thing. This is not, you know, I don't understand any of this at all.

And I understand how somebody could be like my stepdad and be a completely different person in church, but be a completely different person at home.

So when I left for the military, while I was in basic, they told us to go to church on Sunday because it's the only break you're gonna get.

Okay, and so for eight and a half weeks, I went to church on Sunday. And I only went to church on Sunday so I could get out of basic training for an hour and a half.

And we went right back to it. But even then, the sermons there were like wishy -washy. I was like, okay, so this is the same everywhere, right?

And so I was leaving basic training. While I was in basic, my brother had passed away on my dad's side.

He ended up drowning in the backyard. So they sent me home for four days to go to his funeral.

And then I had to go back to basic training. So I left basic training mad at God and a militant atheist.

And so I got my first orders to Korea. And then

I was there for a year. That was the best time I'd ever wanna have again. And then

I ended up, this is also other crazy stuff. I got accused of sexual assault while I was in the military because I touched somebody's ear.

Oh, man. Believe it or not, crazy. And so I made her mad.

It was 2014. So sexual assault was going on in the military really bad at this time. And so she was asleep in class.

I touched her ear and I woke her up. Well, she went to our first sergeant and said I sexually assaulted her, which I didn't, right?

So while I was in Korea, they gave me an article. This is the Me Too movement is when this was going on.

So they gave me an article 15 for simple assault. Like for people who don't know, an article 15 is just below getting court -martialed in the military.

So I ended up losing my assignment to England and I got sent to the armpit of Oklahoma.

They call it Altus Air Force Base, which is the military is where they send hopes and dreams to die.

Oh, man. It was bad. Anyways, I was there for four and a half years.

But while, going to Altus though is where I ended up getting saved though because I remember we were, our little group of people that we had,

I mean, we would come, I would come across people who'd say they were Christians and I would just berate them because I thought they were stupid.

Yeah. And I remember I made one little girl cry and then we'd go to a party and talk about it. We were laughing about it.

I mean, it's not funny now, but that's just how bad I was at God. But I went to a

TZ Top concert on New Year's Eve in 2020. Yeah, it was 2020.

And during this time, I was also really bad in alcohol. I know people like to over exaggerate their testimonies here, but when

I say I should not have been driving home, I should not have been driving home at all. And I was three hours away from home on New Year's Eve.

Okay. Leaving a concert. Well, I drove home anyways and I got pulled over by a state trooper.

Okay, for speeding. Nothing happened. Dude didn't breathalyze me. Didn't give me the whole, where are you coming from?

Have you been drinking tonight? It's just like, hey, you're speeding. Stop speeding. See you later. Okay. So made it all the way back to the base and I get to the base,

I got pulled over by security forces on base. And same thing. They didn't get me, they didn't breathalyze me or nothing.

It was like the road was spinning, dude. I don't even know how I made it home. And so after I got pulled over by the police and the cops on base,

I kind of sat in my bed and it's like, you know, this is, how am I not? First of all, how am I alive? And second, how am I not in jail right now?

Yeah. And so, and I thought, just cross my mind, I need to figure out if God exists, because if he does,

I can't keep living like this. But if he doesn't, I'll just keep doing whatever I want. It doesn't matter. Yeah.

So I bought a Bible off Amazon. I was reading it for two weeks. I founded church while I was there.

And I started watching YouTube because my thought process was,

I don't need to wait for Sunday to roll around to be trying to figure any of this stuff out. I'll just look up YouTube sermons.

So I just get on YouTube, talk about Christian sermons. I was listening to, I've got four notebooks here just stacked up.

I was listening to Stephen Furtick and T .D. Jake and Perry Stones and other guys listening to a lot.

I have two Perry Stones study Bibles that I was using. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure it out. Let me say real quick, in case anybody's listening to this, because we've got folks from our church that listen to this stuff.

So these are not good people to listen to, but that's why it's funny. So, all right, keep going, keep going.

Yeah, no, that's why I was, but I'm reading my Bible at the same time. And my first book that I read through was

Matthew, of course, and then I went through Kings and stuff. But as I was reading it, and I was reading through Acts, I'm like, how come what

I'm reading is not what they're saying? And how come what they're saying is not what I'm reading? Like, why are we getting two different things from this?

Like, this doesn't make sense. Oh, man, yeah, yeah. I found this church in Lawton, Oklahoma, I was going to.

And it was a Baptist church. It was a backwoods Baptist church. And so, but while I was there, the pastors, they had a brand new pastor, they were all happy for him and stuff.

And he, I remember his first sermon we were there was his story of Jacob in the wilderness after betraying

Esau and getting his blessing, and how he changed the will of God. And so it took

God 21 years to bring about what he originally wanted for Jacob and his life. So we need to be careful not to change the will of God in our lives.

And I was like, okay, that's weird. And then the next sermon was

Adam being in the garden, had dominion over the earth, he could speak things into existence.

Basically, he was functioning as God on earth. And whenever we get saved, we have that relationship restored.

So we can do the same thing. And I think the craziest one that we had was when we get saved, we get appointed angels, and we have to pray to our angels to go forth and prepare the way and God's will for us in our lives so that we can walk in the kingdom of God.

Yeah, but I was just reading in Colossians where it's talking about blaspheming the holy ones.

And I just finished reading Acts where every time anybody would sit down and try to pray to an angel, they were like,

God, get up. I'm just, nope, don't do that. You know? So I went to him and was like, hey, this is what

I read. This is not what you're saying. How come I don't understand where this connect is.

And his response was, oh, you're not baptized in the spirit. You don't see what I see. So I go home.

I'm like, what is this, right? So I'm trying to figure out how do you get baptized in the spirit, right?

And then, so after about three months of this, I get orders to Turkey. While I'm there,

I go to the chapel and people don't understand that on a base, it's a chapel, not a church.

Everybody shares a building. The Muslims share the building. The Mormons share the building. The non -denominational share the building.

Everybody shares my building. And so you have 8 ,000 different services. You don't have a report back to service.

You have a Protestant service. So what does that mean? Non -denominational. Anything under the blank goes.

So while I was there, everybody, there was a handful of guys who were like, hey, so what's your denomination?

It's like, I don't have one. Oh, so you're non -denominational. No, that's a denomination. I don't have one anymore.

I'm trying to figure this out. And then whenever I settle, like consciously, that's what

I'll be. Right now, I'm still in that research phase, right? It's a dude told me, he saw me at my

Perrystone Study Bible. And he said, you need to watch American Gospel. So I went home at night, put it on Netflix.

I watched it. It was a Monday, okay? I watched that movie 12 times in a week.

Oh, wow. I finally was like, this is it. Yes, this is what

I've been reading the whole time. I'm not crazy. And so I thought I was doing these guys a service.

So I go to the chapel. It was like, guys, we got it all wrong. And they were like, no, you got it wrong.

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, you got it wrong. And then I remember one girl was like, you've been watching that American Gospel movie.

So I was like, yeah, actually, how did you know? But I called the church back home. The pastor and all them was like, you're getting it all wrong.

And the pastor was like, no, you're going to hell. You've been watching John MacArthur. And then he had a big group thread that he had.

He told everybody in the group thread to not talk to me. It was kind of devastating, because I'm like, this is it, right?

I finally found it. And so I had to watch these guys.

So I watched, first guy I looked up was Paul Washer. And believe it or not, it was not the most shocking sermon.

It was what is the gospel? And just being in tears of like, finally. A real sermon.

And then, now this is where things get cool. Some guy, they got a new chaplain a couple weeks later, and I spent the whole year with him.

But I made an appointment at his office and I asked the question of, where is everybody? And where are all the

Christians at? Everybody says they're a Christian. And he said, welcome, welcome to how it is, really.

And I was like, this is crazy, you know? So I spent a whole year with him.

He really helped guide me and shape my understanding of the Bible. And so right before I left

Turkey, I lost my assignment to Germany, and I had to pick where to go.

And I was like, hey, how about Little Rock? Well, come to find out, that chaplain that was there with me, he was a member of Grace.

And so he was like, you need to go to Grace. And he was at Little Rock. So when I got stationed here, the first Sunday I showed up at Little Rock, I also met my wife that first Sunday, which is another funny story.

We went on a date the next week, and then we were married six months later. But yeah, while I was there, and it was,

I think you do all the admin stuff for the seminary now, right? I think that was last I heard.

Some of it, yes. Well, I'm not, no, I do, well, sorry. No, I do more like admissions.

Is that what you're saying, or administration? We weren't, they were still in the admissions part, because I think they do a lot of interviews now with students and stuff.

But I mean, I'd already been talking with Pastor Jeff a whole lot, because our church was only 100 people at the time.

It was right before the big COVID exodus. And so the seminary was still trying to get its feet on.

And so I was also enrolled at RBC at the time. And I was also working on my other bachelor's at the time, because a single dude,

I don't have nothing else to do with my life. And I went out to eat lunch with Pastor Jeff. And Pastor Jeff was like, hey, you should come to my class in the seminary.

And I was like, I'm already really busy. Like, I don't have time. He's like, ah, just audit the class.

And if you keep up with the assignments, we'll just retrograde it. And if not, don't worry about it. I'm like, okay.

So I'm going to his class, and two weeks later, Danny comes up to me and says, hey, we need all this information from you.

I'm like, why? He goes, oh, because apparently Jeff Johnson has made you a student. So, yeah.

And a year later, I was like, you tricked me. Like, I became a seminary student without even really trying.

So that's how I've ended up in the boat worm right now. But all I have to say, my military career, my whole plan after getting saved was,

I'm going to make it 20 years. I'm going to retire. I'm going to get my pension checked. And then after graduating seminary,

I'll be able to pastor a backwoods church. Because you know, backwoods churches really can't afford, just because of the way people are today, they can't really afford people with MDiv educations because they exist in this ivory tower where people don't want to, you know, they don't want to go to Enola, Arkansas with four people after going to seminary for four and a half years.

So the idea is, after retiring at 20 years and getting a theological education from a legit seminary, being able to pastor a small church, and they don't have to support me financially like that because I already had my pension from the military, but God brought things 10 years sooner than I thought whenever I got injured while I was in service and they ended up medically retiring me.

So now we're just trying to graduate seminary and supplementing our income during this time is doing the

Bible rebinding thing. Well, first of all, brother, that,

I had no clue. I mean, I think that I knew some of this stuff, but like the in -depth of this testimony, brother, that's amazing.

I mean, I'm just over here walking around in our church parking lot, worshiping

God, just praising God for His mercy and providence in your life, brother, that's an amazing story.

God is so good. I'm just as surprised as you are, dude. You have, I hated

God. Yeah. It wasn't even, I didn't wanna say that He didn't exist.

I wanted Him to exist because I wanted to hate Him. Yeah, yeah. That's the best way

I could put it. Also, thank you for your service. I'm partial to the

Air Force. My grandfather, he retired as a colonel in the Air Force. He actually joined before it was the

Air Force, and then he retired in the early 70s. He passed away in 2009.

So I'm always grateful to hear about Air Force guys and I'm sorry that it didn't work out the way that you wanted, but God was in control of the whole thing.

But thank you for the time that you did serve our country. I'm not complaining.

I mean, I do miss the military. I miss it a lot. There's a lot of aspects about it that I enjoy, but it definitely wasn't answered prayer.

Had I, while I was in, Little Rock was not good. People wanna throw around the term toxic leadership all the time, but it really means they're not getting their way.

This leadership is really bad. They took, so we planned having our baby because I wasn't supposed to deploy again until 2025.

This was 2023. And so we were gonna have about 18 months of being home. I'd be home for her birthday.

I'd be home for when she's born. Well, two months after she's born, they swapped my deployment band without me knowing, which is illegal, okay?

They can't do this. And they were able to do it, but it was a backdoor thing.

It was because they changed it. I don't really feel like getting into the minutiae of it is important. Long story short, they did it, but the reason why they did it is because of this one guy.

Had he deployed, he would have lost, our commander was kicking people out for not being able to deploy.

Mind you, this guy has already gotten out of three other deployments and going to two overseas short tours, which everybody else has already done.

He was just not a good person. He got kicked out recently for sexual assault, real sexual assault. So just putting that out there.

They're protecting the wrong guy, right? And so me and Cy were like, you're playing with my family. Like I can't, we can't be in the military.

And this is our conviction. It doesn't have to be everybody's, but mine was, I need to be here for my family.

It would be one thing if we were treated honorably. But you're sacrificing my family for this one guy who is not a good guy at all.

And so like, even they were trying to get, trying to get me to work on Sundays purposely because I knew

I'd go to church on Sunday. And that was their whole thing was, we're going to make you work on Sunday to show that we're not in charge of you.

That turned into a big deal. It was toxic leadership, dude. Who does that, right? Yeah, it was really bad.

So it was an answer to prayer. We prayed that I wouldn't get deployed. And then lo and behold,

COVID gave me a heart problem at the time. So I didn't deploy that round. Next year rolls around. They kind of did the same thing.

And we prayed that I wouldn't deploy. And then boom, you got a back problem. And so finally, I guess God was like, well, we're tired of you asking me not to deploy.

So we're just going to get you out of this completely. So here we are. I didn't miss any of my children's births.

I didn't miss any of their birthdays. I've been home for everything, which has been a huge blessing. Wow, brother.

Wow, what a story. And I invited you on to talk about Bible rebinding, but man, there's so much there.

Let me ask you a couple of things before we do get into the Bible rebinding. So is your trajectory, is your plan still to be an elder, to be in church leadership one day?

Or has that changed? Yes, that's still where we're aiming.

We're really beneficial with the military benefits that we've gotten, because I still have my

G .E .I. Bill while going to seminary. So after I graduate seminary, I plan to use my G .E .I. Bill to either get my master's in theology or my doctorate.

I would love to be in ministry. I really do think God has called me to pastoral ministry.

And a lot of the benefits we have now is kind of the preliminary providence of these things.

But ultimately too, I'd also like to get my doctorate to teach in the seminary as well. So yeah, that's the plan.

Amen, so tell me what you love about the church. I'm not talking about Grace Bible Church specifically, although you could share that if you want.

But I'm just talking about just generally, this is the Rural Church Podcast. So I'd like to ask guys, what is it that you love about the church?

Dude, when I first showed up, it's the same thing. What I love about our church in particular is after being in Turkey for so long, and I went back home for a little bit in between going from Turkey and Little Rock.

I ran into Pastor Walsh after like a month and a half. The best thing about being here at this church is

I don't have to evangelize my own church. We're all on the same page. It's so easy to have a conversation about spiritual things with people.

And so when you go out and you worked in Sodom and Gomorrah for a year, for the four years of the

Little Rock, and your soul is vexed, you wanna be able to go to a place you could talk about, this is what

I read in Matthew today, or this is what I read in John today. And people now look at you crazy.

Everybody's on the same page. Yeah, this episode's coming out right after one that my brother here and I did on just the beauty of a true church.

You know, and it's like so many people don't know what they don't know. You know, they just, they've accepted, or some of them have accepted it unknowingly, and some have pursued it.

And that is just this surface level, I've got God in my pocket, and I'm checking off the box by going to church sort of Christianity.

And they just don't understand the blessing and beauty of real church with real fellowship, real

Christians. And it's a sad thing, really. Yeah, I know.

And like going to a church where men have conviction. I mean, because my military career at the time, it's really weird.

You hear about it now, Pete Hegseth, but there really has been a big feminization of the military is really trying to make it neuter.

Everybody's on the same team. There's unity and diversity kind of thing. It was getting bad for the longest time.

So masculinity really just being gone, I guess this is kind of a byproduct. But going to a church where you can, everybody's traditional values are cherished because their traditional values are biblical values.

And everything is, how do I? Man, what I'm trying to say is going to a place where men have convictions and you can talk to them and they don't dance around the bush and they don't try to make you feel better about something or, oh, well, you know, that's just how we feel about it.

Like they give you a straight answer. This is how it is, like it, take it or leave it.

It's just, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know how else to put it in words. They just, they're men of conviction. And so it's encouraging to me.

If it hadn't been for Grace, I don't know if, and I hate to say this, but just being honest,

I don't know if I would have the convictions I had while I was in the service when they were coming at me saying, hey, you're going to have to work on a

Sunday, being able to say no. Because I was thinking, I don't know if you know who

Mr. Irons is, but I mean, in those moments, I was thinking Mr. Irons and him being as convicted as he is about certain things and just thinking like, you know, what would

Mr. Irons do in this situation? What would Jeff do in this situation? And so that's kind of how I was handling it, thinking through all the biblical preparation

I had with my own studies, but how would they handle what they weren't? And so that's another benefit of being at Grace.

Yeah, it's funny you said, if not for Grace, and that applies in more ways than one, doesn't it?

If not for the grace of God, and if not for Grace Bible Church.

Well, amen, brother. We love the church on this podcast and that's, man, that is an amazing, just amazing

God's kindness to you. So let's shift gears and let's, okay, you've mentioned

Bible rebinding a couple of different times. I know that you've kind of said that you pursued that, trying to think of power ways that you could help provide for your family and such, but what was it,

I mean, what was it that really attracted you to Bible rebinding and really, like, how did you get into it?

I did my first Bible rebinding three years ago, but it was because I was wanting my own

Bible rebound and I started looking online and I think the cheapest decent place I could find was like 400 something dollars.

Like, this is crazy. And it was an eight month wait at the time to get it back.

It's like, this is crazy. And so it was, and no shade on this guy, but it was the post -TenerbrouseBullocks guy that I found, because he gives all kinds of marketing, word of mouth marketing from James White when he goes and preaches.

Like, I got this Bible, they're free, right? So everybody wants them now, right? Yeah. So I went and looked them up. I was like, this is crazy.

I can't afford this. And so I'll just do it myself. And so I just started learning how to rebind.

My first one's atrocious. My mother has it, because it's a Bible only a mother could love. But I just started doing it as a hobby and really hardcore doing it.

This started hardcore doing it earlier this year after getting out of the military,

I needed something to do. And so - When you say earlier this year, you mean 2025? Yes.

Yeah, not 2026. I didn't start doing it hardcore last week. Yeah, because I was like, because this is coming out, people will listen to this in February.

And I just wanted to make sure that they understand that, no, he didn't start in 2026. No, I just started doing it a lot more in 2025.

I had been doing it before that, really. And so that's when I just started buying more equipment so I could start doing more things for people.

But I wanted to do it mostly because, and I was doing it for free at the time, because it's like, as long as people pay for materials, because I understood people wanted

Bible rebinds, not because they wanted the biggest, fanciest Bible they could bring to church with them on Sunday, but they have their own personal

Bibles they've had since they were teenagers or even kids in some instances. And they don't want to get rid of it, but it's falling apart.

So like how, and so we've just approached Bible rebinding as more of preserving the sentimental copies of God's word that you have, more so than a luxury watch piece.

Yeah, I know that. Actually, it was when I graduated seminary, is when

I, sometime, my wife sent off my Bible to somewhere. I think it's California somewhere.

And she did it without my knowledge. It was literally one day I was like, where's my

Bible? And like, I was like, I just must've misplaced it somewhere. So I was using another one for a little while.

So at that time, I had a Bible that I really liked to read from. And then

I was using another one to preach from. So the one I like to read from is hardback. And so I go to my chair one day, it's not there.

Well, I can get kind of scatterbrained. So I'm like, well, maybe I misplaced it or maybe a kid moved it.

Well, so I went like that for a few days. Finally, I'm like, guys, where is my Bible, that I like to read from and that I've had since like 08.

And finally, my wife's like, oh, I sent it off as a surprise. Well, when she sent it off, the guy, terrible story.

And I don't even know his name, but apparently he passed away. And so it was like, it took forever to finally get that Bible back.

But once I got it back now, because it's a nice leather cover, it's the one

I read from and preach from. And so I love it. I mean, I'm a big proponent of getting your

Bible rebound. And like you said, the sentimental aspect of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so it's like trying to, like there's a few guys in our church. One guy, his Bible got split open.

It's the NIV study Bible. No, no, sorry. It's the Reformation NIV study

Bible. And some of those notes in there are solid, but they don't even make it anymore, right? But he loved the notes.

And so he let me rebind it for him. But it was talking to him that I had the epiphany.

I started telling everybody else too. People wanna go, somebody was wanting to buy the

MacArthur premium edition, which a lot of these editions, when you buy them, the premium, premium editions, it really isn't premium.

Like they're still using the cheapest goat leather they could find, because it's crossway. They gotta make a dollar. It's not even hand -stitched around.

And you can just tell it's premium. It's faux premium. That's probably a good way to put it.

It looks premium. It feels premium. But it's not really, like it's not really premium.

It's mass -produced. And so somebody's wanting to spend $300 on a MacArthur pregnancy study

Bible and talking with them. It's like, dude, just buy the $40, $50 one that has gilded edges on it already.

I can rebind it for you for the same price you're gonna pay for that thing at this point. And it'll be way better and personalized to you.

And so that's what I've been doing with guys like that. Amen, wow, that's good.

So anything else you wanna say about, I know we've been going a while. I'm appreciative of the conversation.

But anything else you wanna say about your business or Bible rebinding, anything like that?

Well, I mean, it's something we enjoy. My wife helps me out a lot. She's our customer service rep.

She's our sales marketing manager. And she's my manager. She makes sure I'm staying outside and not getting sidetracked from the home.

And she's also the office coordinator with the children as I work out of my garage.

But no, it's actually been really beneficial both of us working together. And I really enjoy it as well.

Because it's really rewarding to see, like I don't know if you know

Mr. Stevens, but he had a Bible his mom gave him when he was first saved 35 years ago. But he couldn't use it anymore because it was falling apart.

And so I rebounded for him and being able to put it back in his hands. He was really ecstatic.

And that's really the rewarding part. And we asked, the bottom, I still think it's too high, but it's really as low as we could go is around 250 a rebind.

We can make cheaper options if people are on a budget. It just, we wouldn't be able to use high -end materials.

But compared to those 10 of our flex, which is $550 a Bible right now, it's still really affordable, right?

But a lot of people aren't understanding that it comes to rebinding is somebody will show up and they're thinking, oh,

I thought this would be like 100 bucks. That's how much the leather costs alone just to do a Bible.

And so, and they think paying $30 for a Bible makes the price of the rebind lower.

And it really, it doesn't because of the cost of the material. So it costs us $130 a

Bible to make, the materials alone. And then the added cost on top of that is just because it takes about three or four days to actually get it completely done.

And so if you divide the labor between everything, we're working way underneath minimum wage.

That's why it is what it is, but we do repairs too. So we don't have to completely recover a

Bible as long as the cover's intact, I can fix all the pages and give it back.

I've done a handful of those too. And Bible rebinding, just it makes a great, so if someone's listening to this and they're thinking,

I wanna do something special for an anniversary or a graduation or a birthday or Christmas, of course we're a little, well,

I'll tell you this, honestly, this is coming out in February and I know we're so far away from Christmas and I know

I'm always talking and thinking about Christmas, but really right now is the best time to actually start thinking about that because sometimes it can take some time.

So if you start in February thinking about Christmas, well, that gives you a few months to figure it out.

But anyway, I think a Bible rebind is a great way, is a great gift to give to someone to help prolong their

Bible and there's nothing more precious to us than the word of God. Isn't it an amazing thing, brother, that we have the word of God in our own language,

God's word in English. It's a beautiful thing. Yes, and not only that, but not only do we have

God's word in our own language, but we get to pick which English we want it in as far as the translation, we get to pick the cover that it's covered in and we can buy as many as we want.

I mean, it's a definite, it was thinking about this the other day, I was talking with Shane's dad about manuscripts and how somebody in the old church only had like part of Peter.

That's all their Christian knowledge was, was like part of Peter, that's it. And how blessed we are today to have all these other different, because he's asked me a

Bible translations and I told him the, after being in seminary for a bit, I've just come to the realization the best translation is the one you read.

As long as you're reading the translation and it's not the message, the new world translation or the passion translation, you're good to go.

We're really blessed, you know, and the Lord tells us to whom much is given, much is required. And look,

I have no problem. So let me say again, like I have no problem that there's so much access to the Bible.

You can get the Bible on your phone, you get the Bible online, you can buy a really inexpensive paperback

Bible and all those are great. But you know, my case or plea for a solid

Bible, a Bible that will last, even a Bible that you can pass down to your, perhaps your grandchildren or even great grandchildren one day.

I think that's why I'm in support of good quality covers.

And that happens only through what you get things like you guys do, you know?

And I know, like you said, I've heard of, I don't know if I've met Jeffrey Ross or not.

I've certainly heard of him. I know he does good quality work. And I'm sure that there are other guys out there that are doing good quality work.

But I wanted the opportunity for people to know about you, because sometimes people get might get in the same boat that you're in and they're like, well,

I can't afford $500 and I don't wanna wait eight months. So am I just stuck? Is there anyone else out there?

And so I wanted them to hear about you. Yeah, that's what we've realized starting this.

There really was a big demand. And because there really is, I think there's about 30 rebinders that I know of nationwide that are doing high -end rebinds.

And Jeffrey Rice is one of those guys that are on top. And there's a handful of other guys that are up there too. There really is not a lot of people.

Even Grace and Truth Books and Conway, they refer to us about four or five people a week because they show up there trying to get their

Bibles rebound. And so it's really nice to, I mean, I hate to tell somebody no because of the price.

If we can make it work, we'll make it work, right? Because it's not really about the money. It's more about trying to, we wanna help other people out, but we also have to meet our budget at the same time.

Yeah, yeah. But other than that, I mean, people, they weren't even aware.

They were sending somebody out to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where there's another guy doing Bible rebinds.

So there really isn't a lot, there's not a lot of people doing this. So it's nice knowing we can put our name in the hat.

It's been another option for people. So how do they find you guys? How do they get ahold of you?

How do they reach out? Right now, we're getting a lot of our orders through word of mouth, through phone numbers and stuff.

So if you, 501 -733 -2833, it's my wife's phone number. She's been handling all of our customers as our customer service rep.

But we have an Etsy shop as well where I already have some pre -made Bibles that are up. I'm gonna put more up soon.

And that's Glory Bound Bibles. You can just Google it and it'll show up. But we also do confessions as well.

I don't know if you saw it, I know you're a big confession guy, but the 1689, you can either buy it from Tom Askell's modern translation that he did, or you can get the paperback, little tiny black 1689.

But we can also do, we do those too, or hymnals. I just rebounded a hymnal recently for Miss Irons.

And so, yeah, those are not $200, those are definitely way cheaper. But if somebody wanted a more personalized hymnal or a confession, we could do that.

I just rebounded my VHS. But they can find us right now on Etsy, Glory Bound Bibles or Glory Bound GB.

They can find us on Facebook that way too. Or they can reach out to my wife at 501 -733 -2833 or gloryboundbibles at Gmail.

The address for it is glorybound and the initial is GB. So gloryboundGB at gmail .com.

They can just email us, we'll reach out and we'll coordinate with what people want and we'll get them fixed up.

Wow, that's, hey, I'm gonna have to, when we stop the recording, I'm gonna have to ask you about one of the confessions.

That's a great idea. And the hymnal, that's a great idea too. So, and I guess you could probably do other things.

Like if someone had a favorite copy of Pilgrim's Progress or something like that. Yeah, we can personalize a lot of stuff.

And so we have, there's a lady in Monmel right now reaching out to us because she wants us to rebind a medical book that she's had.

It's 100 years old. I guess it's passed down through her family. But I mean, it's not a religious book per se, but I mean, we can even do that too.

But yeah, I just did a Hymns of Grace and all of them. So, cause you can't really get those customized at all anywhere either.

And I wanted a nice confession that wasn't paperback. Yeah, no, that's great, brother.

That's really got my wheels turning right here. This has been, I don't know if anybody else in the world is gonna listen to this.

I sure hope they do. But I have been greatly benefited and encouraged by our conversation today, brother.

Well, I appreciate it. It's definitely nice to know. Do you have anything else you wanna say as we wind down?

No, that's pretty much it. I just wanted to really talk about our Bible rebinding and how we really just wanna meet people's needs or help them preserve their copies of God's word.

As long as they keep reading the Bible and we give it back to them, that's really the only reward that we appreciate.

Of course, this is how we support seminary right now while we're transitioning and studying. And Bible rebinding really helps us do that as well as all the medical appointments

I have to go through for the issues the military give me. It really helps out.

So yeah, that's it. I guess that's all I wanna say. So glory bound rebinding.

Glory bound Bibles or glory bound. Okay, glory bound Bibles. Glory bound rebinding was already taken.

Oh, so don't check out those guys. Glory bound Bibles. Well, they haven't used the name in five years either.

Okay. But it's out there. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Well, I'm grateful for you, brother.

I was grateful to hear your story today. I'm grateful for what you do. Godspeed in being a husband and a father and a seminary student and a church member and a retired military personnel and a

Bible rebinder. You've got a lot of irons in the fire, brother, but may you use it all and steward it well for the glory of God.

Yep, yes, sir. Definitely try it. I appreciate it. Yeah. Well, thank you guys for listening to this episode of The Real Church Podcast.

And I hope you'll check in with us next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.