None: 0:06

Welcome to the Leading Conversations podcast sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network. On each episode, jd Paring will have conversations with church planting pastors and leaders from around the country. You can learn more about how to connect with Excel at the end of this podcast. Let's join JD now and listen in on this leading conversation.

J.D. Pearring: 0:29

Well, welcome to another Leading Conversations podcast from Accel Leadership Network. Today we are thrilled to have with us the brilliant Billy Claudio from Scottsdale Arizona. Billy, thanks for being here.

Billy Claudio: 0:42

I'm great to be here. Thanks for having me a part of your ministry. I love what you do, love the work that God does through you guys and planting churches all over the place, so it's been a joy to be a partner with you.

J.D. Pearring: 0:55

Yeah, it's been great. You guys host our Accelerate a couple times a year. We love coming down to Scottsdale. What's the weather like in Scottsdale today?

Billy Claudio: 1:05

Oh, people don't want to hear. It's beautiful 70s. I have this long sleeve shirt on and I've regretted it all day, so it's a short sleeve shirt day. It's just beautiful.

J.D. Pearring: 1:16

Well, somebody has to live in Scottsdale.

Billy Claudio: 1:18

Yeah, you know, the Lord called us and we were willing to take the suffering.

J.D. Pearring: 1:23

Good, good, good. Hey, tell us your story. Tell us growing up and what that was like and how you came to Christ.

Billy Claudio: 1:29

Well, I was born in a military family. My dad was in the Air Force, and so I was actually born in Arizona. It's kind of one of those funny things here I'm in Arizona now. It's one of those things because I grew up in New York and people think I'm from New York, but I was actually born here in this state because my dad was in flight training what.

Billy Claudio: 1:49

Air Force Base was that he was at the Williams Air Force Base and Luke as well, he flew the F-100s in the Vietnam War. I lived in Europe for a few years when I was young and then we planted where my father was from, which was in Long Island, new York, and was raised Catholic. My mom was a devout Catholic. Her side of the family was really devout. My dad's side was Catholic too. They just weren't so devout. They were, you know, more of your just kind of casual Catholics. But I was raised in that environment and some of our travels we took around. We left New York a couple times, ended up in Colorado where my mom had a conversion experience out of the Catholic Church. She got born again in the kind of charismatic renewal in the Catholic Church, oh yeah, started going to Bible studies and things like that. I was probably eight or nine years old when she started kind of going to Bible studies.

Billy Claudio: 2:45

We left Colorado, went back to New York and she kind of continued in that process. We slowly started not going to the Catholic church and just to small, you know, home Bible studies and things like that. It was actually at one of the home Bible studies that a guy had come in from Texas and was teaching and talked about Christ and what it meant to be born again and how to get to heaven. And you know, my brother and I I was 12, he was 10. And in that small group, you know, he said, does anybody want to come to Christ? And my brother and I, you know, at the same time said, yeah, we want to come to Christ and we gave our hearts to the Lord when I was 12, when I committed my heart first to the Lord, and my mom was like like all in, you know, we were. Anytime there was a Bible study, anytime there was a revival, anytime there was anything, you know, we were, we were there. It was she was a overboard kind of mom that church and Jesus became everything and everything else was secondary school, whatever, it didn't matter. Everything that was about about growing.

Billy Claudio: 3:43

So I grew up in a pretty um, churched environment, particularly when we had, you know, people come in that would be there for weeks and every night they would do something and we were there every night. So I hated it as a kid but I loved it because I was around. Uh, you know, I look back at my life, I go. I learned so much of the word of god so young, because I was forced in these environments. I could sleep under the chair if I wanted to, you know, fall asleep in the chair, but I had to be there. So you know, in my young, young spiritual life I was tried to be a faithful Christian. You know up and down kind of in my teenage years but you know, started, you know, a Bible study in my school and kind of tried to live my faith out as a young man.

J.D. Pearring: 4:24

Wow, Well, how did you get called into ministry? Did you think about becoming a priest?

Billy Claudio: 4:31

No, no, by the time you know we were, we were pretty well out of the Catholic church when I started my Christian faith and I had, you know, I think I I was around a lot of spiritual environments and I maybe had a little tug, but it wasn't there, wasn't a sure thing. I went to, I had decided to go to engineering school in Buffalo University and had gone up there, and I was up there for like two weeks and I sprained my ankle, like severely sprained my ankle, my first major injury of my life, playing basketball after classes. And you know, my mom my dad was like my dad was secular wanted me to, you know, get an engineering degree, you know. And I was school worked for me. I was a good, good student and my mom wanted me to go to ministry. So I called my mom when I got hurt, because my dad and I didn't have that much of a relationship. But I called my mom I'm like Mom, I'm hurt so bad I don't know what to do so and we lived about eight hours from Buffalo. She, when she heard me call, she left home that night, drove all the way to Buffalo, picked me up, took me home and two weeks later we were down in Tennessee and she had always wanted to go to a Bible college herself and she took me with her, basically, and said we're going to Bible college together. So I kind of was forced into this environment in a sense of again spiritual enrichment, because my mom really wanted to go to this place. But it is amazing, it is amazing really. I give God credit for forcing the situation. I wasn't unhappy going and I wasn't disappointed leaving the university to go to Bible college. My dad was really disappointed but I wasn't so disappointed.

Billy Claudio: 6:06

But when I was in Bible college I had the privilege of working with some other people and writing Christian theater skits, basically Saturday Night Live theater skits with biblical messages. And when we graduated from school we had lots of invitations to take our sketches to different churches. And so we began to travel to different churches doing our Christian ministry, drama ministry, and it just blossomed from one thing to the next to the next. We had one team, two teams, three teams, five teams traveling full time.

Billy Claudio: 6:41

So I went from going to Bible college to getting involved in ministering in churches and what we would do is we'd do a skit and someone would speak. Between the skit we'd do another skit, someone would speak. So a part of you is being trained as a communicator in between the sketches. You're almost like the pastor. Here you are, this young guy you know, 19 years old, 20 years old, standing in front of these churches, sometimes large churches. You know, 20 years old, standing in front of these churches, sometimes large churches. You know, sharing in between the skits. So the instructional side of it from many different ways was very valuable and I did that for about seven or eight years, you know raised up.

J.D. Pearring: 7:15

What was the name of the touring group? New Life Drama Company? New Life Drama.

Billy Claudio: 7:19

Company. Yeah. So actually it's funny I took back that ministry when I moved out to Arizona. I was here for about 10 years and when I left we got married with my wife. We left and began to do ministry on our own Drama Company. But when we came back at Arizona and started the church in Arizona, I took leadership over again and ran it for about eight years right up to COVID, and COVID kind of put a stop to all kinds of traveling ministry. But it was a pretty amazing ministry. A lot of great fruit came out of it, raising up young men and women to honor God. Many of them are serving in churches now, pastoring churches now. So it's been a blessing in my life to have that kind of legacy as a part of my history.

J.D. Pearring: 8:11

That's incredible. Now, how did you meet Don?

Billy Claudio: 8:14

Actually at the New Life Drama Company. This is an interesting thing, so everybody loves this story. I was the first place after we graduated Bible college. We went to this conference that the man that started the Bible college held every year in Gatlinburg, tennessee, and it was our first event ever as a drama company going out and doing something. So we did sketches at this conference and my wife came with her mother to the conference and she was 13 years old, so one of my responsibilities when I was there was to help with the youth ministry at the conference and so we met when she was 13. And it's funny because she she had a crush on me as the young guy that she saw on the stage and she so she had this kind of faux crush on me and and liked me. Of course I. She was just a 13-old to me, so I make fun of it now. I said we were cousins and from Tennessee, so it's no big deal.

Billy Claudio: 9:11

But, her siblings. Interesting enough, her siblings that are all older than her eventually went to the school I went to and joined the drama company that I was in charge of, and so she stayed in contact sort of with me through her siblings. And then, when she was 16, she moved to Tennessee with her mom, where I was, and you know. Again we met each other, but she was again. She still had a crush on me, but she was just 16 at the time and I didn't really get interested in her until she was 18. And then we got married when she was 19.

Billy Claudio: 9:41

So pretty, it's a special story. I mean, when she tells it it's much better coming from her perspective, because she had that love for so long for me and I, you know, obviously she had unrequited love for me because she was just a kid to me when I first met her. But it's a beautiful story and you know, we were friends well before we became, you know, lovers in our lives. So that really has helped us in our longevity in life. We're friends and no, that's a great story. So you know, it was kind of just a large timing that we felt like we were supposed to go there and we began to work as associate pastors, youth pastors, there at that church and we were there for about five years and it was great for us because the truth, you know, being with those pastors really helped us in preparation for the call. We had to come out to Arizona, which is a really unique thing. That happened, we had to come out to Arizona, which is a really unique thing that happened getting us to Arizona.

J.D. Pearring: 10:52

Well, talk about that. How'd you get to?

Billy Claudio: 10:53

Arizona? Well, we were. So we were in this church and our pastor would have guest speakers come through and there was a woman he had come in to speak at the church and since she was there, he basically had to come to our staff and do a leadership teaching. And she was teaching in the leadership to the leadership leadership team about prayer, the importance of prayer and like when you feel like the Holy Spirit comes on you to pray for someone, you should just stop whatever you're doing and just pray because the Holy Spirit's inviting you to participate in something. At that moment she said like, for instance, every time I drive up through Scottsdale Arizona, I get this burden to pray for a great church up there that God wants to raise up, and so I just pray. And then she just moved on and started teaching more about what she was talking about prayer.

Billy Claudio: 11:35

Well, it's like when she said those words about a great church in Scottsdale Arizona, those words left her lips, hit me right in my chest like great church in Scottsdale Arizona. I was like my wife was in the meeting as well and when we left the meeting I was like, babe, you know, when she said this specific statement about a church in Scottsdale, arizona. Something happened in my chest Like I just felt like I think we're supposed to go start that church, and her eyes got really big. She said I felt the same thing. So it was like, well, guess what we're doing. So we knew really from really an oracle from the Lord. It was to us, you know she said it, but it was like God spoke to specifically that I want you guys to go start that church in Arizona. So we told our pastor and nine months later we were in a U-Haul driving out to Arizona and we didn't know anybody.

J.D. Pearring: 12:21

You didn't know anybody, so it was the old parachute dropped.

Billy Claudio: 12:26

It was yeah, I would never recommend anybody to do what we did. We were my wife and I were formed to be able to manage that kind of stuff. But obviously when I look back and I see how people do it now, I'm like why didn't anybody tell us? You know, there was no preparation, there was no people we connected with, there was no support group that we knew. We didn't take any financial support with us. We just sold our house and said, well, this is our nest day. We're going to use to plant the church and see what God does. So it was a lot of hard work in the beginning but again, we were kind of made for that kind of start.

J.D. Pearring: 13:00

What was the first thing you did when you just got to town and you didn't know anybody?

Billy Claudio: 13:04

Well, the first thing we did, we had a friend that had traveled through the area and he had said hey, you know you guys are going to go out there. You know there's a church. I knew that was out there, that closed down. Maybe you could. You know it was in a house church, maybe it would be something you could use. So the first thing that we did was we wanted to go find that place that he said was closed down because it sounded like the right kind of place for us to start. And this is a funny story. So we're looking for this place.

Billy Claudio: 13:27

We kind of have an idea generally where it is in Scottsdale and we were driving, you know, I'm looking for the kind of road where maybe a sign would have been on a building or whatever. And I see this house that has this little, what looks like a sign been scraped off. And I said, babe, I think that might be the spot. And of course we look at the property it's got a house and behind it's got a rather extra large garage and I'm like, oh, it's got a house and behind it's got a rather extra large garage and I'm like, oh, that's probably where, that's probably where they were meeting in the church. So you know, we go, knock on the door and there's no answer. And so we knock again no answer.

Billy Claudio: 13:58

So I turn around to go and you know, dawn's like what do you think? I think somebody lives here, babe, I just I think this is somebody's house. Now the church isn't here, someone lives here. So as I turned to go, she opens the door and says hello. I'm like hey, shut the door, what are you doing? This is someone's house. And so I get her to start walking away. And we walk about 10 feet and someone opens the door and says oh, I'm sorry, I didn't hear the door knock. What is it?

Billy Claudio: 14:21

And so it was actually the first person that we met that we told the story about what we were doing and they were like oh, I know the guy that you guys did ministry with, you know, back in the day. Well, if you guys want to come in and you know I don't own all this, I'm just leasing this house right now but if you want to come, and you know, pray in this building, and I've got some friends that maybe would come pray with us, and you know who knows what God will do. And that was the first thing that we did, coming that, god just kind of orchestrated us connecting with someone that said sure you guys want to come pray. We're not really going to church anywhere, and so it was it was the beginning of connections that started.

J.D. Pearring: 15:00

Wow, that's amazing. Your wife is a fairly bold person. To open the door and just say hello, yeah, crazy is what I'd call it.

Billy Claudio: 15:13

Now the church grew. Talk about that, just planting it and getting it. Yeah, it took about. From that point on, it took about nine months to go from, you know, praying regularly to actually getting to our launch date where we had our first service, where we rented a local school and, you know, put a team together and, you know, started building people to be a part of that team. And before we had actually come to to phoenix, we had stopped through, uh, tucson, arizona, where we had known someone that kind of was a little supportive of what we were doing, and so we had a couple people that had promised to come and be a part of our first service. There's an instrumentalist and you know, some singers that would help us. Uh, in the beginning, both my wife and I play and sing a little bit. So that was. We had some things that were helpful for us in the beginning. But nine months from that time when we knocked on the door, we had our first launch service and I think we had, I think, 30 or 40 people at the launch service, so, and went from one school to another school and then the Lord orchestrated a an amazing miracle for us, which is, you know, I love the stories that that happened.

Billy Claudio: 16:15

Like this we were meeting in a school and, um, we were probably running about 150 at the time and there was a church that our kids were, uh, going to a charter school at that. I had met the pastor there, um, and he was actually filling in for, you know, a transitional time in the church. And just one day the Lord put him on my heart and I called him and said man, I was just thinking about you today and I wanted to see how you're doing and just see if I can pray with you over. And he out of nowhere, says, hey, have you ever thought about a merge? And of course it's like no, I had even thought about a merge. I didn't. I didn't know you could merge churches, I didn't know that existed, um and uh. So we started a conversation where, you know, the church wasn't doing very good. There was only about 30 people that were at the, at the property, um, where we actually meet now. Uh, there was about 30 people that were there and, um, we got into conversation. I met with his leadership team.

Billy Claudio: 17:10

Our leadership team came over and met and we orchestrated a merge together of Oasis Community Church and the church that was here, friendship Community Church and, of course, I had a stipulation. It's like I can't change the vision of what we have as Oasis and it's either going to be and I wasn't trying to get the property, but I never even considered Emerge but I said this is what it would have to look like. I know this might be a no-go for you, but I just have to share my heart of what God's wanting us to do and if you're okay with it, great. If not, no worries. You know we're still going to be friends. But they were like yeah, we love that, had about $300,000 in debt on it, so it was a pretty amazing miracle.

J.D. Pearring: 17:55

You're a trailblazer on that, because back in those days that was a lot more rare. It's happening more and more now as the baby boomers are aging and there seemed to be a little bit more open to that than they were in the olden days, 20 years ago. Yeah, but yeah, how did that?

Billy Claudio: 18:13

merge go. It went really good. It was. You know, I knew it would be dicey in some ways, just because you know you're connecting two different organisms together and you know, as you start sharing the same vision. The biggest key for me was, you know, the leadership connection. So I was at that time. I wasn't even full time at that time. I leadership connection, so I was at that time. I wasn't even full-time. At that time I was. I was only part-time because, again, we hadn't raised a bunch of resources. I didn't have my. You know, I was working, making money on a regular job.

Billy Claudio: 18:38

While I was doing pastoral work, the church actually was buying. This is an interesting thing and for you know, church planners, it doesn't wherever you might come from. What we did is we grew, this church grew as our economics grew. The church actually would buy a day of my time back. So they were, we were working for me to go full time.

Billy Claudio: 18:58

But there was like, hey, can we the type of work I had? It gave me some flexibility and they said, well, can we buy a day back so that you can just fully be engaged with church on that day? And so we had actually bought in three days of my time back up to that period of time. So it was kind of a blessing. But he was full-time at the trip we were going to, so right away when we make the merge it's like I'm going from part-time to full-time, he's going full-time. So we had to work through just the relational context and one of the goals I had was I just wanted to make him feel valuable, important, that his life mattered and, even though he was going to be second in leadership, that that was going to be a safe place to be. So I worked really hard at trying to manifest the beauty of that in the beginning, you know, caring highly for where he was, because I knew it was going to be tough for him.

J.D. Pearring: 19:41

That's really a sign of honor, and I think that's one of your characteristics, that you do honor people. Hey, what was your side gig? What was your job? I did window washing window washing.

Billy Claudio: 19:52

Yeah, one of the first guys that I met, his brother, was had a window washing company and you know I found out I could make a couple hundred dollars a day doing window washing and I had flexibility of schedule. I could work even you know, early mornings and you know I could be done with my window washing by you know nine, 30, 10 and have the day. So I just have to say you know I, uh, my wife and I worked, really worked, really, really, really, really hard the first few years and it was, uh, probably probably a little out of balance. But you know, when you're, when you're, when you have this vision, this drive, this desire, um, you know you put all your eggs in a basket. You just drive and drive and drive and drive and, um, you know I'm thankful for the work ethic that we had. But you know, over time, if you don't shift that, that, that, that drive and that work, it can catch up with you and there can be, you know there can be some payment that you pay because you don't take care of yourself and inevitably that is what happened to me.

Billy Claudio: 20:46

I, I had a physical breakdown because of, you know, we just worked. I just never, I just always worked hard. I never took breaks. We didn't take vacations. If I was ever gone, it was never more than one weekend and my mindset with that kind of stuff and taking care of myself was just work hard. I'm working for God and just got to work hard. That's just life. So I had to learn a lot in ministry.

J.D. Pearring: 21:12

Can you talk about that physical breakdown? Tell us about it.

Billy Claudio: 21:15

Yeah, it was. Uh, you know I, I noticed that I was getting kind of tired on, kind of. You know, I was being you know eight hours I was tired, seven hours, I was tired, six hours, I was tired. I just started getting tired in shorter fashions, um, and I eventually got to the place where I had just zero energy Like I had. I'm sure my adrenal glands were blown because I was just I'm always the kind of a go getter and you know, if you ask me to do it, I'm going to step up to the plate and get it done, even if I should have said no. I probably didn't say no because I was smart enough to say that's not a good idea, but I had basically just got to the place where I was, I was, I was worthless, I and I was, I was worthless, I, and when I say it I mean I was literally. I just had no energy.

Billy Claudio: 22:01

When it came to sermon preparation, I got to the place where I'm a very creative soul I creativity is just a natural part of my, my, my dynamic and I would sit here and I would stare at my screen in preparation for sermons and for two hours and have two lines on the screen. I'd call my wife and say baby, you got to come down to the office, you got to come help me. And she would just sit there and she's a very gifted communicator, very gifted speaker. She would come in and say what's the burden? You know, what do you feel like the Lord's doing? And she'd just start talking to me and start writing and start talking to me and start writing and start talking to me and just be right. And she'd say how about that? And she would pretty well craft the sermon. And on Sundays I had enough energy to deliver a good sermon, but obviously I'm broken at this stage.

Billy Claudio: 22:48

So I've been invited at this time to a pastor's group that just kind of do life together. And they said you know, would you come and just be a part of us? You know just a couple of senior pastors that are just sharing life with each other. And they said you know? So I started hanging out with them, talking with them, and I find myself in this situation and I tell them. I tell them, man, I'm not doing good. This is what's going on in my life. This is where I'm at. You know, I don't know, I think, I just I think I'm gonna have to get out of ministry because the church deserves better than me. I mean, I can't hardly work and you know, I mean they don't know how bad I am because on Sundays they think I hit a home run, but they don't know what I was doing all week long, just barely getting to the office, barely having energy. I can't even do sermons.

Billy Claudio: 23:30

So one of my pastor friends said well, when was the last time you took a sabbatical? And I'm like a what? You know? A sabbatical, an extended break? I was like I don't even know what you're talking about. What do you mean? An extended break? Well, you obviously wore out, you know, and they started talking to me about vacations and they talk about and they're like, dude, you've just, you haven't taken care of yourself, you've ran yourself down to where you have nothing and you need, you need a long break to recover. And you know, by the grace of God, maybe you will. And that was the first time I ever heard about a sabbatical. And they came to my elder team and said, hey, listen, you know we love your pastor. You know, we know you love him. Would you, would you allow him to have, um, you know, a sabbatical? And they. They helped me get, get my first sabbatical, which was a three month break.

Billy Claudio: 24:13

Um, that I was just, basically just at that stage. I went and did nothing. I went to my father's house in New York and, man, just I was so tired. They just did, I rested and did nothing. And, um, by the grace of God, that sabbatical I wasn't completely well when I got back I was so depleted. Even three months of not doing anything.

Billy Claudio: 24:36

I got back I realized that it was some, was some major adjustments need to happen in my life. I needed to figure out how I needed to recover so that I could do this long term, and so I began to really seriously look at my life and go what decisions do you need to make? They're going to let you continue to gain strength, get your ministry capacity back, get your mental capacity back, your spiritual capacity back. And again, thank God, in my weakness I didn't have a moral failure. But I can see why people do Right. You know, if you get wore out, this is some of the things with when people get wore out, they make bad decisions and I'm grateful that that's not my story. But when you get so weak and so depleted, man, you really are. Confusion from the enemy is pretty easily found because you're a little bit lost when you feel that way. So I'm grateful.

Billy Claudio: 25:21

But it took me probably a year, after my three months gone. It took me about a year of me changing my schedule, changing the way I demand what I demand of myself, to get back to health. And from that point of time I'm like you know what I've got to make sure that taking care of my mental, spiritual well-being, my physical well-being, has got to be really important if I'm going to do this for the long term. And so I'm grateful for what I went through. It was really tough, really challenging, but it taught me something really important spiritually, which is to take care of. You got to take care of the vessel that God has given you spiritually, which is to take care of. You got to take care of the vessel that God has given you for your future. And I'm happy to say I just I just did my third sabbatical, which was so 14 years ago, is my first one.

Billy Claudio: 26:06

Seven years I took another one. Every seven years I take a sabbatical and I just got back from from my last sabbatical three or four months ago, and I just want to say man, it's just, I'm revived, I'm refreshed, I'm in passion and again coming out of the going into the sabbatical I was tired and wore out again, not like I was the first time, but it's like they're so important because they make you get back into a healthy dynamic where your passion comes back alive and your vitality. So it's I think it's a really important thing that people commit to do.

J.D. Pearring: 26:31

Yeah, well, that's a great word. Can you talk a little bit more? What other rhythms did you change after that? After that physical time where you're going? I'm worn out. You said you came and made some changes. Sabbatical every seven years.

Billy Claudio: 26:45

That makes sense what else I did? I did change the way we do our our, our vacations, because you know again, I never would, would miss, every ever, two weekends in a row. Um, it was always just one weekend. And you know when you it's funny, when you're gone and you have to speak the next week when you're coming back, you're really working that week. You pretend like you're not but you are because you have to get ready for your that weekend. So I learned to take a little bit um, when I take my breaks, I've learned to make sure that they're protected breaks, that I'm not working while I'm on break, that it really is a vacation time. I've learned to, instead of taking little bits here and little bits here, I've learned that for my wife and I, taking a little bit longer vacation at one period of time is better than little short pieces, because the older I've gotten, it takes a little bit longer to find the benefit of taking the break. So I've again taken a little bit longer ones. Now.

Billy Claudio: 27:34

But my flow in my life, I had to give myself permission to enjoy what I needed to do, to rest, which is, for me, I like to play golf, and you know golf takes, you know, four hours, you know, sometimes five hours, you know, depending on where you're playing. But I had to give myself permission, not only permission, but I had to basically tell myself you got to, you got to do enough of this so that you're stay healthy for the long term. And you know, I play a couple of times a week now and I do it with you know, I do it with joy, I don't do it with guilt playing golf. I do it because I know when I play golf everything goes away. I'm doing something that supplies joy to my soul. Even if I play bad golf it's still. I can find joy in being able to say I'm out, I got these.

Billy Claudio: 28:25

It actually was my mission field. My golf course is my place where I've got 30 or 40 guys at church because I play golf, because I get to be a testimony around. I'm not a pastor when I go play golf, I'm just Billy playing golf, right. So it's been the place where I've got to live my faith. I've got to impact the lives of people.

Billy Claudio: 28:45

I just you know I got a guy that just you know this year just committed his life to Jesus at Easter, you know. And he's now engaged in the church and you know professional, that I met playing golf, you know. So it became a thriving thing, not just for me in my well-being mentally, for my well-being in my physical health, but in my spiritual journey of leading people to Jesus. It's the place where I meet the secular people. Golf is where I'm around people that don't know Jesus, and so I get to live out my faith, which anytime you lead someone to Jesus, it's like heaven on earth. You're like this is amazing. I can't believe I got to do that, you know. So it feeds me multiple ways.

J.D. Pearring: 29:23

That's amazing. That's incredible. Now you've already given us a few tips, Give us one last leadership tip for the church planters and leaders out there.

Billy Claudio: 29:36

Well, I think you know I would say there's two in particular. You know, take care of home. I think that's really important. You know, I look at my life and I go. If I, if I didn't have what I have with my wife, you know, things could have gone difficult and I'm just so grateful that that I worked hard at having a happy home. You know, making my wife happy, figuring out what it takes to make her happy and doing the hard work to supply what she needs from me and again, vice versa, she does it for me as well.

Billy Claudio: 30:01

But I think that's so important because life is a pastor, life's tough, church life is tough and you don't want to go home to toughness. You want to create a place at home where you're. You know it's sweet and a blessing and, again, that takes work but it's worth it if you do it. And then I would say you know, personal development. You got to keep doing things that inspire, encourage and enrich you. And going to conferences, going to things, events that are done outside of you are, you know, when you do your things at our church, where we kind of develop and train to me, those are necessary all the time. We need that outside impact to break us out of whatever the enemy's trying to bring into our lives, and I think demanding ourselves to be fed on those extracurricular things are just a critical thing for, I think, long-term health in somebody's spiritual life.

J.D. Pearring: 30:49

Well, thank you, that is wonderful, and you're somebody who's been doing it for the long haul. That is wonderful, and you're somebody who's been doing it for the long haul, but you've got a long landing spot ahead. You've got lots of time ahead of you.

Billy Claudio: 31:01

I do I appreciate you.

J.D. Pearring: 31:02

I appreciate what you're doing there. I appreciate how you pour into other pastors and church planters and leaders and you utilize your platform and your church there to help others. So thank you so much for being on. I'd love to hear your story today.

Billy Claudio: 31:15

Thank you, JD. I appreciate being a part of it.

None: 31:19

Thanks for joining the Leading Conversations podcast. We hope that you found it both helpful and encouraging. At Excel Leadership Network, our focus is on the church planter rather than the church. If you'd like to find out more about us, visit our webpage at excelnetworkorg. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. See you next time with another leading conversation.