Adam La Barr: What is going on everybody? Welcome to the Biz Dad podcast. I am your host as always, Adam Labar. And today I am looking forward to a great conversation with Nate Wagner. If you have at all listened to my podcast, you may have ran across Wayne Wagner on episode 126. That is Nate's brother, a phenomenal conversation we had over there. And of course I was jumping at the opportunity to have a chat with you, Nate, and I am looking forward to it for sure. So Nate, if you can. please go ahead and introduce yourself, tell us about your family and tell us about your business.

Nate Wagner: Absolutely. Privileged to be a part of this. And Wayne just spoke very highly of you and what you guys are doing there. absolutely. So I am a father of three adult children, 22, 25, and now just recently 27. I've got a son-in-law who's 26. So Brianna and Dylan are married. They've been married a little over three years. Then I've got a son named Gabriel is 25 and then a daughter 22 is a senior in college right now and Our oldest daughter has a 10 month old little girl named Bella and so we are in the Grandparenting stages and enjoying every ounce of that Kids are all pretty local right now and so a lot of family time a lot of connection there and just enjoying this season of life with them and Get to do some cool stuff together My son just launched his own business doing some card detailing then ⁓ my daughter just took a position at church in the ministry and so that's kind of come full circle. You'll hear a little bit more of that story as we go, but just enjoying season with the family and ⁓ connections. We're up Michigan so we're dealing with a harsh ⁓ winter right now, looking for the weather to break and ⁓ enjoying some more time together as well. I think for on the business side of it, after 27 years of pastoral

Adam La Barr: us.

Nate Wagner: made a transition in the fall of 24 to launch something that I had been doing previously for about 15 years, which is working with pastors and missionaries and missional leaders, helping them navigate the emotional stuff, also just the professional side of the complexities of ministry and decision making, also just dealing with all of the marriage stuff around that, as well as just the strategic development and leadership development that comes with all of those things. And so in the fall of launched this full-time actuator leadership group, ALG, doing that in a couple different countries and within the West Michigan area and then all over a variety of different states, connect points there and get to work with a lot of different pastors and missionaries and mission executives that are doing some really incredible work and just walking with them, excited to kind of see them sometimes get out of their own head, sometimes navigate just the hard stuff and help them. really do great work, go further, faster, oftentimes is the way it's referred to, hopefully help them succeed in ways that God has called them to and steward ⁓ their and their gifts and in a meaningful way ⁓ while dealing with of the heartbreaking, challenging stuff that inevitably comes along in the process. ⁓

Adam La Barr: Yeah, that sounds like a phenomenal opportunity in business. ⁓ mean, I would, I'm definitely looking forward to dig into that a little bit more. ⁓ It got me excited just kind of hearing it. And it's one of those things that, you it, I was to somebody recently and they were talking about a lot of pastors. Like there was this wave of these folks kind of becoming pastors that probably shouldn't have been pastors. And then of course they have a fall from grace for multiple reasons. One, because we're all human and two, ⁓

Nate Wagner: Absolutely.

Adam La Barr: because they probably shouldn't have been pastors anyways. They didn't realize that leading this flock is more than just like, truly needs to be ⁓ calling. And you're kind of running your own business on top of it, right? Cause you're running a business while trying to lead a flock, while trying, like while going to funerals, going to hospitals, going to do all the stuff and dealing with divorces and having like, man, ⁓ man, like there is so much. It's not just, I get to be on YouTube and have this cool, this nowadays that seems to be a big thing is I'm on YouTube and look at me go.

Nate Wagner: Yeah.

Adam La Barr: So I look forward to kind of hearing how you dig into that, especially, you know, missionaries on a completely different level and different idea. But before I do that, I want to kind of rewind a little bit. I know we have some of the backstory from Wayne, but I'd love to kind of just go back in time and kind of learn what it was like for Nate growing up. What was your life like growing up, especially your parents, and kind of how did you end up eventually getting into ministry?

Nate Wagner: Yeah, so go all the way back to elementary school. Dad early on was a Christian school teacher making no money whatsoever and then eventually took a job at the nuclear plant. My mom was a nurse. Her career is probably the thing that funded much of kind of the family life and took care of things at a high level. Navigated some hard stuff for them, heartbreaking stuff in some ministry environments that were pretty toxic and took a toll on them. I think dad's anger was a challenge and so a lot of for many years growing up that had significant anger a lot of shame a lot of brokenness coming out of kind of a little bit of hyper fundamentalism and just really never getting to a place where he could lean into and live out the grace that the God had wanted him to live into and the freedom that comes from that and so that shows up as lots of high stress high pressure environments quick trigger reactivity and then as a

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: I mean, we've got I've got my older brother Wayne I've got a younger brother named Josh and a ⁓ well And so we all kind of walking through that environment and sometimes walking on eggshells It's of those things where I always talk about the ⁓ you Your nervous system gets out of whack and you're always in that hyper vigilant state and so family kind of feels like there's these good moments where we're away for a vacation and we're hanging out doing some cool stuff but then there was also any at any moment that could turn into something really dramatic and chaotic and so ⁓ kind

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: walk through all of that together. So, for us, went through Christian school, great experience overall of having just ongoing training, teaching, some really healthy dynamics as far as that goes, I think was really beneficial. A couple different Christian schools along the way. And for me, when it comes to career path, I read a biography about Nate Saint when I was 12 years old and decided I wanted to be a missionary pilot. That was my plan.

Adam La Barr: you

Nate Wagner: and that was where I wanted to go. so early on, kind of had that trajectory, began kind of move in the direction pretty good in math, felt like that was the path that I was on, applied for an engineering school to go into aeronautical engineering. That was the plan as of my junior year. Sometime during my junior that school had a glitch in their tech side of things. They lost all of those early applications and I had to start from And as a result, the scholarship that was given was not was not guaranteed and so I was scrambling. story short, over the course of several months of scrambling ⁓ was a school out here in Michigan named Grisboom that Grand Rapids School of Bible Music that had an aviation program. ⁓ I'm coming out to Michigan. Never been out to Michigan. Have no idea what to make of the Michigan context. Obviously it's cold and all of those things but so to move in that direction early in my senior year. Thought I might be able to come out and maybe play some college basketball that kind of thing ⁓ and ⁓ Spring of my senior year got a call from the coach saying that they were closing their doors and going in with Cornerstone Grand Rapids Baptist now Cornerstone University so that then became do I go do that or not? And so the decision was made just go out there for a year Let's evaluate things ⁓ we'll see what happens ⁓ out to Grand Rapids, Michigan went to Cornerstone within first semester met a very very special young lady and That of sold me on ⁓ the school more anything else. We started dating, realized early on due to finances and other things that the aviation track was not going to work out. Took math track for a while, ended up morphing that into a psychology degree. And during senior year of college, right after my wife and I Karla got married, right before the senior year, took a job as an interim youth guy at a church, just doing some part-time youth ministry stuff, ⁓ that morphed into full-time youth pastor, family pastor position, which then over time turned into the lead pastor position at that same church. And so I stayed at that same church for 27 years raised our kids in that church ⁓ really just had a challenging ministry season through that, but also some really beautiful, awesome moments and very privileged to have had 27 years in pastoral ministry, working with a lot of people. I say it all the time ⁓ that understood it meant to serve far better than I did and ⁓ just to able to have ⁓ even to this day, that just lifetime relationships over the course of those 27 years. And we left that God calling us out of that into something else, but probably the most difficult decision that I've ever made professionally was to finally leave the church context and move into something. We stepped into that when we were 21. It's all we knew until we were 48 years old and then stepped out of that ⁓ and launched this full-time.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah, that's, uh, uh, I would imagine a major leap, you know, like I was telling you before we started recording, my wife just retired from the military and that, that is, you know, after 20 plus years of, of doing that is one of those like, Whoa, like huge leaps, but 27 years in the same church leading this, this flock of people. Like, man, that had to be a, uh, a massive shift in your brain. So, um, which go ahead.

Nate Wagner: Note. it was the hardest decision. My wife and I were stressed about it. We prayed about it. A of decision making. Asked for lot of feedback from a lot of people in our sphere just asking for ⁓ their prayerful support this. ⁓ When we came the church though, by the time we brought it to the church individually and then collectively, unanimous support. They saw They recognized that for years that I had been doing ⁓ a lot of international that I had been doing a lot of training working with pastors all over the place.

Adam La Barr: .

Nate Wagner: a person they were supportive of, they understood, and they would have allowed me to stay there and retire in 20 years, ⁓ by grace of God they were also supportive and saying we need to just kind of free you up to go and we are fully supportive of that.

Adam La Barr: That's awesome. Do they still support you now with your ministry?

Nate Wagner: They do, we've got an active partnership and I've been back there several times and helped to lead some of their ministry teams into other contexts and just have close relationship with the pastors and the leadership that's there and just so grateful for them and the way that they've supported us ⁓ and ⁓ as made this leap.

Adam La Barr: want to rewind a little bit, go back to some of the stuff you were talking about in the beginning, right? Where you, you you mentioned some of the anger problems with your dad and he was a Bible school teacher and you I'll say that they, that fundamentalist side that you talked about, was, mean, the fire brimstone that came out and a lot of those fundamentalist churches led to a lot of that, you know. ⁓ But one that, that's, you know, I was a federal agent for a long time and I've arrested a lot of bad guys and ⁓ seen a of ⁓ terrible things you tend to that cycle of the abuse of dad abusing the child who then becomes a dad and abuses a child, it just becomes this cycle. And it sounds like you and your brother were able to not allow that cycle to continue. Not necessarily that, I don't know all of the details necessarily, but verbal abuse is sometimes worse than getting punched in the face, right? So how did you kind of, especially following in a similar mission of, leading a church, he was leading in a Bible school, but you ended up leading in a church, following in semi a similar footstep, but yet like pushing away the other stuff. How would you think that you and your brother kind of worked through this? What sort of conversation did you guys have, especially for somebody who's listening to this that may have experienced that and they're catching themselves being that angry dad or whatever it is? Like, how did you kind of step away from that?

Nate Wagner: You're stepping into the right territory on this one. As I listened to Wayne's podcast, I was kind of reflecting on that very question. week we were sitting together and I asked Wayne, how do you stop and reflect on how far we've come ⁓ and we are from, you know, from where we were? I think couple of things along the way, early on, by the grace of God, there were mistakes, there were missteps, there was abusive environment. That abuse came, know, weighing to me, me to my younger siblings. There was some verbal stuff, ⁓ some physical altercations. was some stuff that went on. that was messy and ugly. I think that was a part of it. I would say this though, two things are very true. Both my and my mom's prayer life, independent of of the rest of it, is something that... I don't know that we'll ever be able to fully quantify the impact of. prayed for us faithfully, they prayed for God's grace in our lives in a profoundly significant way. ⁓ And this day, there's nobody that prays more faithfully for me than my dad does. And so I in some ways, their prayer life is foundational in wherever ended up. The second is the recognition our family should be a statistic. We should have been blown apart. ⁓ There's no way we should end up where we are. We have four siblings, all of us, that are really proficient at what we do. different ways, in different arenas, my younger brother is a gifted artist, runs art in the Nashville area, does some incredible work there. My sister is a gifted graphic designer and does incredible work with what she does and gifting and those kind of things. ⁓ We all are proficient that and I think in some way, shape, or form, the decision was made that we were gonna break cycle. recognize the potential for us to go down the same path, us to just stay in that dysfunctional loop, but we're gonna break the cycle. And so I think my parents were both first-generation college graduates, they had a strong faith element while it was sometimes disfunctional. The home environment not always the most peaceful, but their prayer life their deep desire for God's glory to be revealed in what we do, and then as a family,

Adam La Barr: Hmm.

Nate Wagner: to say we're gonna break the cycle, we're not gonna continue on with this brokenness. ⁓ my brother would tell you honestly about his anger issues, ⁓ me it was just my own areas of brokenness and depression and despair and those kind of things and yet seeing right people step into our lives at the right time. There are a myriad individuals that were able to life and to a different possible vantage point and you can only aspire to what you can envision, ⁓ right? ⁓

Adam La Barr: Yeah.

Nate Wagner: that were able to give us the ability to envision something different, something better, or to model something healthy. think that's a big part of it for me is that there were a few individuals that I look at and say they modeled something that was an alternative to what I experienced and wanted to be a part of that ⁓ and able to pursue that stumbling along way but having just enough support in the process to sort through that.

Adam La Barr: Yeah, I mean, I think having those right people around and kind of building through that is all you can do. curious, well, I not curious, somebody hearing this that might not be a Christian, they may hear, ⁓ yeah, ⁓ parents super faithful in their prayer life, like amazing and still strong Christians. But hear you things about these anger issues and verbal abuse and all that stuff. ⁓ And it's one of things that pops in my head rather often is The church is full of the biggest hypocrites because we know that we're wrong but still do things, or we know that we need this but still do things that are wrong. And when people realize that it's not perfectionism that makes us get somewhere, it's following faithfully that gets us somewhere, because of perfectionism. I always talk to my kids, there's only been one perfect person to ever walk this earth, neither one of us are it. So it ain't happening. It's tough.

Nate Wagner: Absolutely. Absolutely. but there's still scars, there's still scars, right? And I never want to sanitize this or to diminish this because we carry the scars, the wounds are there, experienced healing and grace and restoration, but there's still pain, there's still struggle. I've got an inner critic that says, you are worth being believed in and you are worthy of being loved, right? And so that inner critic is there, that'll never go away. I have to constantly, phraseology often, I gotta that inner critic to stand down repeatedly. ⁓

Adam La Barr: I don't ⁓ Mm-hmm. No.

Nate Wagner: reach for hope. And so the that I can never do enough, the idea that I have to compensate ⁓ for past, the idea that I have to allow that shame to define me and tell me that I'm not, not only can I not change, but I'm not worthy of change and pursuing something better. ⁓ All that sits in the background as a part of that upbringing. And yet is still and the power of Christ that has been evident in that even while we wear those scars for the rest of our lives.

Adam La Barr: would you say is your, when moments of that creep and you obviously know it comes from, you know what it is, how do you ⁓ or ⁓ what thought do go through to not allow that to embitter you against those who've wronged you as opposed to just going, no, I need to look to God for this. ⁓ Because it can be easily just like, okay, I feel this pain. ⁓

Nate Wagner: for

Adam La Barr: don't like that person because of this.

Nate Wagner: Sure. different things are going on in my head. The first is... The gratitude that I feel for how far I've come in the healing and the restoration me the ability to extend grace backwards, right? To say, I just am grateful that I am where am and that God has healing into my life. The second is ⁓ when you about forgiveness, when you talk about the ability to just let go of those resentments, I know there's kinds of pie in the sky, idealistic ways of talking about forgiveness, ⁓ forgive and forget, of those things. ⁓ I think forgive forget is the dumbest statement you can possibly phrase, right?

Adam La Barr: True.

Nate Wagner: point is we are not capable of forgetting. Forgiveness is necessary because we don't and we won't forget those things. think understanding the impact that it's had, ⁓ I look at it from the framework of there's really five key things that are required for growth. The of the problem and what's needed make those changes. The skills. ⁓

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: that I developed to make those changes, the motivation to change the support system around me that can empower that change and then hope that change is even possible. And I think in some ways where I go is from my upbringing, I recognize that on all five of those, there were pretty limited dynamics in play. The recognition that this was wrong and something needed to change. In many ways, the culture we were in, it wasn't. It was just what was expected. It was normalized. The skill set, it wasn't acquired because there was nobody around to model something healthier or better. The hope that change was possible. What's the number one thing that is antithetical to hope is shame. When you're steeped in shame, there isn't hope that change is possible. Then the motivation, why would I change if this is the way life is and just this is all I know that's possible? And then ultimately the idea that there's no support system

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: system around to help me facilitate that anyway because they're all doing living out the same reality. so I think in some ways I look at forgiveness through the lens of ⁓ I need to release them of that responsibility or that ⁓ need to compensate for this. But secondarily is I just so much of was lacking and by the grace God in my own life those things have actually been pretty well established. And by a number of things those things have been ⁓ placed in my life and

Adam La Barr: Thanks.

Nate Wagner: a very different level than what they were for others. ⁓ so I'm responsible to steward that well.

Adam La Barr: Yeah, I've talked to people a lot on this podcast about I wish that I would didn't wait until I was in my thirties to realize that my dad was missing a bunch of tools, right? Like he just didn't have the tools that were needed to teach me the things that I felt like I should have had. But he had enough tools to not turn me into what he experienced. Right. And it was like, wow, like what like that is a feeling realize like, no, like for what he had, he did an amazing job.

Nate Wagner: Absolutely. Thank Absolutely.

Adam La Barr: Like I can't blame my dad for not doing X, Y and Z. He had no model. He had no nothing. He had a super abusive stepfather that was a massive problem. And it's like, yeah, he didn't put that on me. Like good on him. You know, like what a deal for me, right? Sucked for him. What a deal for me. So, know, I constantly am telling folks to keep an understanding of the tools that somebody had when they're raising you and understand what tools you have raising your kids.

Nate Wagner: Yes. Absolutely.

Adam La Barr: And how can we get more tools? That's one of the reasons I love these conversations, because I can build up more tools in my toolbox. So yeah.

Nate Wagner: Absolutely, no, that's exactly, and I think that's grace, right? Grace is me looking at another person and saying that they did the best they could with what they had. And I choose to believe that. And I think my father, knowing his background, knowing the sexual and physical abuse that he endured growing up, and the fact that he did the best that he could with what he had, I'm immensely grateful for it, even while I will carry some of the wounds from that for rest of my life.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, yeah, and that's just the fact that he dealt with that of abuse and became a Christian and, ⁓ you ⁓ led way like that's something else. All right, going into the college, right, you meet your wife, Kayla, right? ⁓ Carla, dag It was written down, but it was three pages back. So Carla.

Nate Wagner: Absolutely right. Carla, Carla, Carla. Yep. That's right. That's right. right.

Adam La Barr: you meet Carla, you start realize, boy, ⁓ I there's a future here, you know, lower 20s, early 20s, and then ⁓ off we So what was the conversation like for you kind of going, hey, I'm going to go into ministry, which we all know is a great way to have a massively secure lifestyle with lots of wealth and all the stuff, right? So what were conversations like? Did she grow up a Christian as well, or was this more of like something that you brought her into? How'd that kind of all work?

Nate Wagner: So I'm gonna try to see if I can pull together three or four different lines of narrative here, because it is a pretty fun story. So grew up in a Christian home, pretty to Grand Rapids, great Christian She's got a couple siblings, ⁓ grew up in the recognized that however her dad, kind of a consummate salesman, he passed away this past September after a pretty. pretty quick bout with pancreatic cancer. So, was a hard lot, was 79. But for him, the idea that she was going to marry somebody, initially we weren't in the church, I'll get to that. the fact that we ended up in pastoral ministry, it wasn't exciting for him. And it wasn't the idea of being a pastor, it was the idea being dependent on a church. And so, he really struggled with that, and that insecurity. She and I together in college, the thought was, she was a social work major, I was a psych major. We thought we were going to go do inner city ministry

Adam La Barr: Yeah.

Nate Wagner: non-for-profit context and that's the path that we thought we were on. So we weren't really looking at it from a financially lucrative side of things anyway, just excited about that path ⁓ ⁓ our senior year the choice was made to go into ministry. Our shifted to let's go this and let's just see what happens. I would say the first several years of ministry it was a year-by-year thing. We never envisioned it was a long-term play. I didn't look at it from I was called into pastoral ministry early on. It was just

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: Here's an opportunity, let's go explore it and let's see what happens. this church called us, they had just lost both their senior pastor and their youth pastor due to some really high stuff. And so when I showed up, there was a lot of reservation, you why would I even step into something like this? ⁓ But things happened. One is they had a parsonage that had four bedrooms and a nice living room. ⁓ it was, were living a 425 square foot apartment. ⁓ And so the of moving into something like that was pretty appealing. Six months into marriage. other is I met with the pastor that was leaving and I said, you know, tell me your story and he shared his perspective and said this church needs somebody who have the courage to help lead it forward into a more missional mindset and get out of some of the challenges that been steeped in for many, many years. And I had lost ⁓ a youth pastor high school that was one of more significant mentors in my life. ⁓ He was pushed away we were in a pretty hyper fundamentalist church and he was to be too progressive. so for me ⁓ idea and then the senior pastor at the time said if you've got enough fight in your belly to do this, this church really benefit from that. He was talking to a Jersey kid who was pretty cocky, who ⁓ was in some ways probably looking for a fight. so the idea of stepping into something like that and taking that on head was pretty appealing to me. And so I went back to my wife and said, hey, I think here's an opportunity for us to step into this. She's like, let's try it. But again, short term, let's just kind of get through college and let's see what happens. Never envisioned that this was going to be a long term play. And so as it progressed, ⁓ there's an anecdote our story that's pretty powerful.

Adam La Barr: Hahaha

Nate Wagner: powerful. She went back to get her master's degree and she was in a class. was talking to a friend in the class and she said, ⁓ never knew we were going to go into ministry when we got married. And the prof looked at her and smirked and said, that sounds like a reason for an annulment as far as I'm concerned. That there's pretenses there. And so she came home, told that story and we laugh it just because again, as you identified, pastoral ministry has its own unique challenges, ⁓ limitations and ⁓

Adam La Barr: Yeah.

Nate Wagner: something that we have on and we did for a long time but ⁓ envisioning it was going to take the toll on us that it did ⁓ that it was going to be uniquely as uniquely challenging as it was.

Adam La Barr: Yeah, I could imagine that it is massively uniquely challenging, you know, and just some of the pastors that I've talked to. ⁓ Tell me a little bit about like the actual structure of how that works. Like lot of people don't understand the inner workings of being a lead pastor. I kind of talked about it a little bit at beginning. You are like running a business, there's a budget, there's a team that you're leading, there's all of these things. you know, have structure just like a business and you've got a, ⁓ the Bible kind of lays out.

Nate Wagner: your

Adam La Barr: how that structure should kind of look. But what is that like for you kind of into that, starting fresh, solving these problems, figuring out how this goes?

Nate Wagner: There was so much a kind of a. the idea that we were who we were, is how we operate, these are the restrictions, this is what we demand of our pastors, that was really highly and challenging early on. And so over time, some of that got dismantled, ⁓ took some challenges, had some tough meetings, people left, people stood in opposition. Eventually, we ended having a church split because there was strong resistance to what I believe to be the missional approach we were taking and the way we we were trying to operate in a much more assertive way of trying to reach the lost and trying to have a gospel presence and our mercy ministries caring for people well in that context became more more prominent. And for many it was like, you're not taking care of your core people. This is something where, you know, we're not getting the things that we want out of this. And so there was a huge church split that happened back in 2008. That was, it rocked us. That was incredibly painful. But we look back on it and realize that group of people went started their own church and God's doing some work in and through them and God's big enough that can bless both sides of it, right? And so we moved forward and that freed us up to start to think more missionally, more strategically about how do we reach the lost, how do we care for people, and how do we have a gospel presence in this community? And so ⁓ that's we got to do from essentially 2008 with a lot freedom ⁓ all the up until when I stepped away 2024. And I would say by grace of God, that continues to be there. their focus, their philosophy of ministry. And God has blessed them over last year and a half and they're doing, I would say, probably better than anything that I did while I was there. That church continues to grow and expand. gentleman that was with me for 20 plus years is now the lead pastor and God's doing some incredible stuff in the midst of that. ⁓ to your specific point, preaching in many ways is awesome. But it's probably less challenging part of pastoral ministry, It's what people see. Everybody says you work one day a week, you get up, you preach a message. ⁓ preaching piece of it is the most easily context and to be and strategically developed. rest of it is the ministry development, the leadership development that comes out of that, the navigating, the tricky politics that comes with that, trying to work within the confines of a

Adam La Barr: Yeah.

Nate Wagner: a team of leaders and helping them get on the same page and move together towards that preferred future being able to deal with all of the cultural stuff from a theological and a philosophical ⁓ that can true north, that can cultivate a culture of grace, ⁓ and can be a voice of hope in the midst of that. so that's a challenge that you take on in the pastoral ministry. ⁓ It a myriad of complexities. You get hit with a number of different things in any given moment.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: 247 on-call piece of it immensely challenging where you're having a week you've got multiple teaching, programmatic things going on and then ⁓ there's sudden death or there's some other kind of crisis that happens that you need to step into. ⁓ And you're being pulled in a variety of different ways. And the that I say all the time is the models in culture that are to pastors work against them being a human being having a thriving marriage and being a passionate Christ follower. It works against those things. It is a current that pushes you in the opposite direction of being a healthy ⁓ a thriving marriage, and a Christ follower. So you have to work against that current of the way the model is given, the expectations that are placed on you, all those things, to be able to pursue those things. And it's why so many pastors struggle ⁓ in their marriage. why they struggle relationally. It's why they struggle emotionally and otherwise, because they don't recognize that there's a, this is working. against them and they don't know how to overcome those unique challenges.

Adam La Barr: So when you said the model kind of pushes against that, what do you mean by that?

Nate Wagner: You it well, you are expected to be a CEO. You are expected to be able to show up in crisis and step into really broken situations and just be readily available to do that. You need to be the primary communicator on the stage teaching theological truth in a relevant, accessible way. And then you've got to be the one that in the midst of all of the difficult decisions, you've got to be a primary decision maker that can discern what comes next at every given moment while trying to bring a leadership group along in that process and figuring out how to help them collectively do

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: this. so there is ⁓ be present. Yep, absolutely. ⁓ figure out how to not allow it to be come all consuming ⁓ ⁓ you can always justify doing more.

Adam La Barr: and still have date nights and raise kids and be a loving dad.

Nate Wagner: putting healthy boundaries in place are incredibly challenging because you can justify skipping anything you need from family dynamic because of the kingdom work, because of the perception that this is necessary and I just need to go do this and so my kids need to take that hit. Just had a pastor I was sitting with last week and he was walking through kind of where they're at and they're in a really tough situation and he just said, I just need to recognize that we need to sacrifice, my kids need to sacrifice, my wife needs to sacrifice and that's just the call to ministry. And I said to him, I affirm that, I sell that I will absolutely lean into that and there is a nobility in what you just said there also has to be a threshold. What is that level of sacrifice and does it have a diminishing return and is there are there implications on your kids and on your marriage that should not be accepted if gonna lean into this to be able to do the work in the ministry and where is that threshold ⁓ and just said I'm not telling you what the threshold is I'm telling you you at least need to acknowledge there is one and and willing to lean into that then discern what that should look like.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Yeah. mean, I'm to butcher it. You'd probably ⁓ do better job of reminding me what exactly it says, but it's something along the lines of, a father who doesn't care for his kids is as good as an unbeliever, right? ⁓ And it's one those that if you... ⁓ I remember I really, I don't know, junior high maybe, my pastor had said something the lines of, the devil doesn't necessarily care if thinking about something bad. He just cares if you're thinking about something other than what God wants you to do, right? ⁓

Nate Wagner: I'm sure. I'm sure. fraction.

Adam La Barr: and it's a distraction. All the matters, right? You could be thinking about the best things in the world, right? You could be sitting in church while the pastor's talking and thinking about how much you love your kids. That's a distraction, right? Like paying attention to what's going on. And the same thing can happen as a pastor, as a leader in a business, as a whatever. Like we could be ⁓ focused ⁓ our position, we're doing, what we believe we're called to, that we completely are distracted from the things that we're called to do first.

Nate Wagner: Yes, sir.

Adam La Barr: Because we're not called to be a pastor first, we're not called to be a business owner first, we're called to be a husband and father first, right? A follower of Christ, husband and father, that's it, you know? ⁓ So, I love that you're talking about that. Yeah.

Nate Wagner: Absolutely. Those are your covenant relationships, right? And I think this is where, I'm not gonna give the specific percentages because it depends on where you go with Pew Research, you can go to Barnard Group, you can go check this out. a high percentage of pastors whose marriages are struggling. A high percentage of pastors are, of the numbers is two out of five pastors are ⁓ for a potential exit strategy at any given time, right, or have considered that in the last year or so. The of them that look at their kids and say, our kids have taken, this has taken a toll on them and we're struggling with our kids and or now parenting them as adults because of the work of the ministry. There are so many different

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: disadvantages, so many different challenges and so many different things that I think are insidious in the toll that they take. It's hard to quantify, hard to recognize until oftentimes the signs start to show up and oftentimes at that point you've got a lot of work to do to clean that up.

Adam La Barr: For sure. Yeah, like putting that in place at the beginning is wise. which I'm curious that to go down the path of what you do now, like that probably something I would imagine that you work with folks a lot. And one of those things that I like to talk to folks a lot about. I mean, I'm in the business world a majority of the time. And so like talking to folks about that and their

Nate Wagner: Absolutely.

Adam La Barr: with their business life is important to me. So I would imagine you do the same thing now and talk to me a little bit about this coaching group and what it looks like for leaders, especially in ministry, because positive that it will relate a lot for business folks who are listening as well.

Nate Wagner: Yeah. And this is the crossover. mean, between Wayne and I, when it comes to leadership, strategic development and doing a great job of being intentional and missional what you do, that's that's where our intersection is. Right. And that's what I love about that. One of the biggest things that I do is we just talk about resilience. resilience is not just the ability to bounce back from hits. ⁓ the ability to recover, find joy ⁓ meaning and fulfillment in what we do. It's a pathway to thriving conversation. ⁓ so I'm always asking, ⁓ do we deal with all sides of this? ⁓ it be the current rhythms and habits that we establish now to maintain that long term? How we deconstruct all of stuff that's the residue that you're carrying? ⁓ And how we begin to put that in place and then how do we help you ⁓ you want to get to and what the path is to be able to pursue that. So I spent a lot of time talking about resilience ⁓ the lens of healthy habits, ⁓ recreational activities, putting healthy boundaries in place. There's matrix that I use. It's bonding and boundaries, right? It's like high bonding, which is the connection, high boundaries. What are the boundaries that you've got in place? And ⁓ I kind of walk them through the different elements of that. But if you, the whole point of it is if you have high bonding, which means you have deep connection with people, but you have low boundaries, there's one word for that and that's called chaos. it is ⁓ the case with people in ministries, they feel like they have the responsibility to connect with people and to be present and accessible to people, but they don't feel like they have permission to establish boundaries. And that is the pathway to chaos. so what do healthy boundaries look like? How do we establish them? How do we put them in place? And then how do we help you develop habits and patterns of recreational outlet, of management, ⁓ of able to get the sleep that you need, get the exercise that you need, ⁓ being to have just the way to think along the lines of a resilient mindset about how to approach different things. There's a difference between pressure and responsibility, right? One of the biggest things we talk about is is stewarding the stuff that I can control. Pressure is found when I'm trying to take responsibility for things outside of my control. When I'm trying to an outcome, when I'm trying to take responsibility for how somebody else interprets me or perceives me or feels about what I had to say. I feel the pressure to try to appease everybody. We thrive in the face of responsibility, we get crushed under the weight of pressure. And so asking the simple question, what are you actually responsible for?

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: as a pastor, a ministry leader, as an executive, what are you actually responsible for and what do you think you're responsible for that you're not, you're focusing and spending so much time and energy on that's not moving the needle ⁓ that you're being crushed under the weight of? How do we get you freed up to be able to focus on things you are responsible for and if other people may disagree, free you to not take responsibility for things that you shouldn't be? ⁓ And then a big part of that pathway to resilience and figuring out what that looks like.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: get you to focus on those things and free you up and put other people around you that can take on some of those other areas and really empower that. But delegation, even idea that I should delegate, we can think about that conceptually, but as soon as I start to do it, it's yeah, they may not do it as well. Yeah, but I feel like I still should be doing this. One of the things I'm asking pastors do regularly is get them down to 35 times a year in the pulpit. Too many pastors are preaching too many weeks a year in the pulpit. And they believe that that's responsibility. And I'm saying two thirds, two thirds of the time being in the pulpit so that you can have healthy rhythms, so you can do the other work in the ministry. You're at 45 plus in that pulpit. There is a toll that that takes on you that is not sustainable in a healthy, productive way. And so we're trying to even just put some of those parameters in place. And yet there's this sense of, can't do that because I'm going to be critiqued. I'm going to have too many people expect me to do more than that. And yet I'm going, hey, if we can get you

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: that place and we can fill some other things in and empower some other people, we can free you up to do more meaningful stuff that needs to be done that needs your attention to help you establish better habits patterns and some flexibility and some freedom that your family will benefit from immensely.

Adam La Barr: you're to be growing your younger leadership to become strong pastors themselves, right? ⁓ ⁓ they never have the opportunity to stand on a pulpit, they're never going to like, they've got to grow outside of it and make that happen. So ⁓ I love that. I want to go back because you, want to get this definition properly because said something about the responsibility and those are the things that are in your control. But can you define the pressure versus responsibility one more time so I can make sure I have that?

Nate Wagner: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yep. That's not right. Absolutely. Yeah, so responsibility is I'm stewarding, I'm taking responsibility for the things that I have the power, the ability to influence and directly control. That's responsibility, is stewarding that which I have control over. Pressure, I don't experience pressure unless I am taking responsibility. am feeling the weight of things that are outside of my control. So you think about it from an athlete working with a college baseball player ⁓ who the to win every game with every pitch. They can't win every game. In fact, they're not responsible to go win the game. They're responsible to throw pitches and work through the batter lineup and all of those kind of things. But when they put on too much pressure, this is where we've seen it with athletes. You get the yips. you can't even do, your physiological ⁓ is diminished because you can't do the most basic things because you're feeling the pressure. ⁓ entire nervous system is reacting to that pressure. And think in a of leadership environments, ⁓ we take for everything.

Adam La Barr: Yeah.

Nate Wagner: We feel the weight of that. We feel like all of it lands on us. Everything lands on our shoulders the reality is there are certain things that we are responsible for and are things that we're not. And the truth is, you and I both know ⁓ business can do the right way, but due to a number of different things can still struggle. and still fail the wrong environment with a number of different factors. And so when they feel the weight and that somehow all of this is on their shoulders ⁓ every failure is their responsibility, ⁓ will be crushed under the weight of that. And will chase, they will a lot of things that they think that they need to take responsibility for when they don't, which distracts them the things that actually would move the needle ⁓ that need their What are the things that you are the only person that can do it? And if you do it, it has the potential to move things forward. and what are the things that you should not be involved with, but you feel expectations, you feel this internal need to chase that, and that becomes a distraction and ultimately takes you away from the things you should be, and then you feel the weight and are crushed under the weight of the of those things.

Adam La Barr: what sort of structure inside of the church, inside of the organizations is needed to help make sure that we're doing protecting the leaders of these organizations?

Nate Wagner: So within, whether it be a board of elders at a church or a board within an executive structure, it's first of all, being able to identify the key leader. What is your role? What is your responsibility? What isn't it? Right? One of the things I love about, you know, what you heard from my brother is he's got a team in place where they've done a really good job of saying, these things are not on your shoulders. You should not be doing that. You go do what you can do. With other pastors, it's having elders, deacons, whatever, however you want to set up the structure that are going to take those things off of

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: their shoulder, whether it be pastoral care, whether it be being in the hospital. One of my favorite things that I was blessed with is I had a team of people that became really focused on doing our senior adults care ministry, community care. And so they would come to me and say, hey, this person needs your attention. Hey, this person needs your attention. But by and large, they were the one doing the care because ⁓ I love to go show up at a senior adult's home and spend an hour just hanging out? Absolutely. If did that for one of our senior adults, I got nothing else I can do in that week, right? That can consume me.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: And so I need people that are involved in those things, taking care of the individuals, sharing, developing ministries, those things. And then collectively figure out, where does Nate's fingerprints to be present? Where does he need to put time and energy into that? And other people that are taking on those things, ⁓ that being delegated out and they can check them off my list. I don't even have to spend mental energy on them. ⁓ You we maybe have a monthly gathering or a quarterly gathering where those things are coming back into play, ⁓ but has to be a number of things that recognize if a is expected to do 50, 60, 70 hours a week without a break. And there is this, for me it was for the last five years from really from COVID on, I was about 70, 75 hours a week. And it was just, it was unsustainable. And part of it was because of the other stuff that I'm doing, but it was just this grind that you get stuck in if you don't have other people, a structure that says, not only are we gonna delegate this, but we're gonna say to our pastor, say to our leadership team,

Adam La Barr: Hmm.

Nate Wagner: are not allowed to take this on. This is not yours. This is not yours to carry. Let's put you in a position where you are focused on the things that you need to be exclusively focused on and take the other things off of your shoulders and have a structure in place and to have a ministry model that is relentless in figuring out how to take more and more of that off of the shoulders of the key players.

Adam La Barr: So as you were kind of learning all of this growing up in the church and being a and still trying to raise strong kids yourself, like what sort of struggles did you guys kind of have? What sort of conversation did you and your wife have to have to go, hey, ⁓ no, some things need to change here or some adjustments need to happen here?

Nate Wagner: year. Yeah, we learn more by mistakes than we did successes. so that's part of it. I think a couple of things. Number one. I needed to get to the place where I trusted my wife's emotional pulse on our kids. so I just had to be in a place where if she said, hey, they need your more attention. Hey, you to take some downtime here. Hey, we need this. Like I just, I just needed to trust it and I just needed to do it. And we needed to be in a place where she had the right to rein things in, whether it be short term or long term that she had that right. For a while, I was trying to, I'm trying to prove something. I'm trying to, I'm trying to be successful. I'm trying to put it out there and, and, my kids are struggling cause I don't have the time

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: I need to and so we had to figure out how many nights a week could I be out how many nights a week that I need to be home because putting the kids to bed and being present for that became such a huge part of that in that time and so we got to the place where three days a week I could be gone four nights week I had to be home so that was of it the other part of it for us was we started to have time where if I Overdid it in a week or two I needed to make up time back home within the next week or two she gave me that space to do it, but I had to make up that time and I had to show her where and when I was going to make up that time. that cop time became just a normal way that we operated together. The is and this is something that I would we did the right thing even though it had challenges. ⁓ By the our kids were early teenagers we were very honest with them about the struggles. We were very honest with them about what the tensions were. No, not individual people. We weren't given names ⁓ but our were early on brought into conversations about the

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nate Wagner: challenges of ministry, what we're working with, how we're struggling through that, what are some of the tension points to this at this point. And ⁓ of the memories for that was I through a season that I was dark. had nine, at the I had nine. ⁓ couples that were in the process of getting divorced. was working very closely either in the clinical environment or in the pastoral environment. I was going through some depression. It was painful. ⁓ came home one night and my wife was around the table with the three kids and they're laughing and they're giggling. They're doing ⁓ you could dream of as a dad coming home to. That was happening. And I was done. I was empty. ⁓ I walked over the table and said, hey, I love you guys. I'm going to bed. And eight o'clock at night, I climbed into bed. ⁓

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nate Wagner: And the door was open and I was listening to them talk and they're like, what's wrong with dad? What's wrong with dad? What's wrong with dad? mom said, do you, you know how it feels like when we lost ⁓ when you lose a loved one, do know how you feel the loss of that? And they're like, yeah. And they said, well, dad feels when people go through divorce, he feels like there's a grieving and he's feeling the weight of that. And they started having an entire conversation around that where she shared some of the stuff that I was walking through with couples and that kind of stuff. I remember in bed and thinking I would have never given that language to them, ⁓ but listening my wife frame that for And then I got up the next morning and all three of them came to me hugging me said dad we're praying for you. We look like it was just I I'll never forget that moment because it was just evident of us just having candy conversations They needed understand I wasn't gonna hide it from them I didn't want them to take responsibility for it ⁓ But I wanted them to understand that this isn't them like this isn't a this isn't a personal thing with us I'm just carrying stuff right now that I don't know how to ⁓ to ⁓ emotionally still show up the way that I want to show up

Adam La Barr: Hmm. Yeah, I completely get that for sure. That's one of the things that was hard with the back when I was an agent is dealing with some of the child things and dealing with some of the things. It was just like, I can't bring this home. Like how do you shut this off? know, being a prior military guy going to combat, how do you shut those things off? How do you like, yeah, it's not your kid's responsibility to hold that on their shoulders. got to say something, I've got to do something, I've got to ⁓ find a way. And it's one of the reasons I tell people all the time the top two decisions you can make in your life, ⁓ Jesus and marrying the right person. ⁓ in your case, obviously, it seems you've done that, right? And that right person is what helped your kids get through that moment of like, is it What do we do? I don't know. Your dad's just through a lot right now. And man, ⁓ man, make a... Again, doesn't make everything perfect.

Nate Wagner: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Adam La Barr: Doesn't mean that everything's going to go well because you're a Christian that married an awesome person. But man, ⁓ man, does it make your life a whole lot better if you're not.

Nate Wagner: She's been, the non-anxious presence and she's the stabilizing force in so much of what we do. And the one, she's the glue. mean, my son, last year Mother's Day, we were sitting around the table just kind of celebrating mom. And he said at the table, you're the one person in this world that knows everything about me. don't hide anything from you. You know all of me and you're the only person in this world that does. I was like, there's okay. There it is right there. Like how powerful was that? Like 24 year old kid making kind of acknowledgement to my wife was a pretty significant.

Adam La Barr: nice. Yeah, 24 years old, don't know what, think that was around the time my mom told me to stop telling her things about what I was like as a kid. ⁓ was like, I didn't want to know any of this stuff. ⁓ I definitely remember that conversation. sitting there, I told her one more thing ⁓ she was like, I always thought you were such a good kid. Perhaps we should stop telling me stories so I can keep this in my brain about how good of a kid you were.

Nate Wagner: There's some of that. There's some of that. There's no doubt. There's no doubt.

Adam La Barr: So what is the plan now as you're continuing to grow? Like what size are you wanting to bring this? What's your reach you're trying to go? I mean, you already said that you're in multiple countries. You're doing things across multiple countries. So what does this ALG look like now as you're currently and where are you trying to grow to?

Nate Wagner: Yeah, it, gonna, I'll say something and then I'll back off of it. So ⁓ I've got several speaking engagements over the next three months in different environments. And somebody in my role steps into those environments. They do the speaking engagement with the idea that they're gonna get clientele out of it. And if I'm transparent, like. I can't do that. I can't step into that space. I've already done this a number of times where I'm like, I'm not looking to take on more clientele as a result of that. I'm tapped out as far as what I can strategically do this season. Now I do take on new clients. We do new those kinds of things. And I collaborate with, so I've got some individuals that I collaborate with that I'll bring in to help me with projects. I've got a number of ⁓ clinicians coaches that I partner with can refer to. so strategically do that. What I'm trying to figure out is how to reproduce myself. and bring people along in that process to really be able to expand that. Not from a monetary perspective, but just to continue to increase the ministry impact and the Kingdom impact. And so trying to bring people along, I oversee a counseling agency at a Christian university where I bring interns in and I get to train those interns. And one of the powerful things is being able to work with those interns for a year, year and a half, and then to be able to launch them into the marketplace and then to be able to refer to them and have people within our sphere that we're not working collectively

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nate Wagner: and I know where they're coming from. know philosophically, theologically, and clinically where they're coming from, and how do I, I can refer people into those environments as well. And so, there's a lot of that collaborative stuff that's happening, but trying to reproduce myself in a way that I can bring other people along, and whether that becomes directly under ALG or just through strategic partnerships. That's something that we're working on. Working with a couple other non-for-profits, being able to figure out how do we ⁓ our leadership care? How do we put the resources resources in place to be able to bring other people that have a common mission like I do and free them up to go do that and resource them to go do that, whether that be internationally or regionally or nationally, working closely in that way. So most of it is done through collaboration. Most of it is done through just developing other individuals that I can empower then I can support as they step into that space. And so it's hard envision how we do this ⁓ under the umbrella in the short term long term. I want to have team of individuals that can be that are under this umbrella that have a common understanding of what we're trying to accomplish. In some ways clinically I'm a dinosaur right so I look at spiritual integration as essential what we're trying to do. Not in a not I'm going to do pastoral therapy but I want to be able do integrated Christian care and what we do. want to be excellent ⁓ in our clinical support

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: and how we step into trauma and how we step into really high acuity situations. I also want to bring the hope of Christ. I want to bring a spiritual lens into that and I want to equip and train other leaders to do the same. And want to be able to put other people within our umbrella that can help to facilitate that in different contexts. And so ⁓ a of it's reproduction. A lot of it's also putting materials together ⁓ that and other organizations can utilize. And so we're building some of those materials right now and trying just have maximum kingdom impact. But that tension,

Adam La Barr: Yeah.

Nate Wagner: of versus ministry impact ⁓ a tension that I think I will coexist with for the next 20 years of my life, trying to figure some of that out. ⁓

Adam La Barr: Yeah. Yeah. So what are your thoughts on that monetizing versus Kingdom Impact? Where does that sit right now for you?

Nate Wagner: So yeah, we're in a healthy place, but if I'm going to continue to expand into, when you're working with. some pastors in some context, the churches have resources, they've got the means to be able to provide funding for that. ⁓ a lot of churches and lot of missionaries don't. There's just no resources. And so ⁓ able to be present with that, beginning to partner with a group called the Chord Group out here in Grand Rapids area that are ⁓ a of Christian leaders that are investing financially in this region and ⁓ wanting empower and equip and support me as I go do some of that pastoral care and some of that missionary care that we're involved with. And so ⁓ look

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: at ways to partner and to resource them And so it's continuing to develop those opportunities. ⁓ then for me, it's how I reproduce these these models, these healthy practices in clinicians that can take in and run with it. ⁓ And sometimes that's a that it's a clinician that has an actual licensure and counseling, sometimes that's just a Christian coach. ⁓ Sometimes that's somebody who's a director. Sometimes that's just somebody who's an executive that has some training in executive coaching, putting that through a biblical or Christian lens that can help to do that in a holistic way. And so those are the things that we're working on and developing. when my brother and I talk a lot about it, his take is, I just want to free you up to go, be able to say yes to the right things and not have to say yes to the things that are just for the monetary side of it. And so how do we do that? However,

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nate Wagner: There's a pragmatic component to that. so how do we financially get the means that we need have to be able to go do the international work and then be able to support the other leaders and just do full pro bono environments where there's just no need for that financial support to be present.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. How do you know what the right things to say yes to are? talk to lot of folks in that are like EOS and they have their core focus and all of stuff inside of their EOS framework that's teaching them kind of what sort of setup do you have inside of your mission to say, this is where we're going.

Nate Wagner: So there are elements of EOS that are certainly part of that conversation, by the way. of like what's on mission, what's not, where does it fit into what we're trying to do, core value stuff. The other side is I've got a few key people, including my brother, that are part of those conversations, right? Like, know, do I say yes to this? Do I expand into that? Is this one where I need to make sure that there's a monetary side of it before I say yes, you know? ⁓ And putting a lot of things in front of individuals that I trust that are de facto bored, right? And that can say, hey, let's ⁓ yes this, let's not do this. But the other side of it is percentage.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: is percentage of my time is gonna be spent doing things where there's no monetary component to it? ⁓ what percentage of the time do I need to spend? How clients do I take on where there is a monetary piece to it? ⁓ And I think we're trying to find that balance as and thinking through is this a 50-50? Is this a 70-30? What that and how do we think through that? so trying to come up with the right ⁓ structure and the framework for that is a work in progress and I've got several voices that are speaking into that.

Adam La Barr: Yeah. good. I love it. So you to ask anybody listening here like hey this is the support that I actually need this is who we're kind of looking for this is the growth I mean you kind of implied a little bit of things here and there ⁓ but literally if you were to if there's somebody listening to like boy this sounds fun like what are the things that you're really trying to plug in right now who are the resources what or who or what are the resources that you're saying hey ⁓ these are things we need right now

Nate Wagner: ⁓ that's a great question. So need to have individuals that are looking at it from a holistic development lens and saying, I want be a part of equipping leaders and helping to game changers in the long term. And I want to be a part of that. And so people that want to collaborate on that, I want those conversations with them. Other individuals are saying, hey, I just want to financially come alongside of that. I want to support that. I want to be a part of equipping leaders and keeping missionaries on the field. We've got the percentage of missionaries right now that go overseas. I think the number is as high. I just asked this of a national leader recently who's doing a lot of international stuff. I the number is 80 % of missionaries that go overseas with the idea of doing a career in ministry overseas are back home within two years. 80%. That's a terrifying thought. And so I want to be in a place where we can come alongside of those missionaries to support them, to help keep them on the field, to help them find a pathway to thriving. so financially being able to support other clinicians and other individuals that can be involved in that work where they're doing it and we can finance them to do it. So that I can say, I don't want you to, so a caseload is maybe 30, 40, or maybe 30 sessions a week for a Christian clinician that gets this, that understands the mission of it. Hey, will you back off the tool? a week and when you take on five to ten missionaries and just and we're gonna backfill that we're gonna financially support you in that and we want you to just be available to care for missionaries obviously a of its virtual ⁓ but to able to care for missionaries that are doing that and back off of some of your monetary stuff and we will backfill that financially so that we can put you in a place where we're caring for those missionaries and making that to them and so I want clinicians that are open to that ⁓ and I want that are willing to come alongside of that and support that ⁓ and to say we want to be financially

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: involved in that and that's why working with a core group has put me in a position where they're the non-for-profit that can take that on that they can be the resource bank and they can be the one that helps me to be able to empower those leaders and do that in a substantive way over the next decade plus the hope. ⁓ ⁓ what I said.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. When you say clinicians, are you specifically looking for like licensed folks?

Nate Wagner: Mostly, but I'll be honest with you, I've got a couple of spiritual directors that I work with right now who have taken and gotten some certification as spiritual directors, and for some of our missionary wives, for some of our other, of our other mission leaders, like that's all they need. ⁓ shouldn't say that, but not all. What they need is somebody that can step into that space and help them ask questions about ⁓ God is in this, where is healing to be found, and help them move through that process. Individuals do coaching, I've got a couple of guys that do coaching that I've been able to bring in and say, hey, I just want you to come alongside, help them be strategic in development, because for a lot of missionaries, it's ⁓ similar the pastorate where they're being asked to do 10 different things.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nate Wagner: They're really skilled at two of them. and they're just being stretched into the areas. How do we put them in a position where they can get the support and some of the coaching necessary to go do some of those other things really, really well? to be able to have people are able to say, hey, I'm going to sign up for that, I'm going to show up and I'm going to support them and I'm going to, whether it be weekly or bi-weekly, whatever else, you're going to get a coaching call and we're going to support you in developing those and figuring that. And so with pastors too, ⁓ the coaching of pastoring is a part of it. I've got so many pastors that just ⁓ day to day

Adam La Barr: Nice.

Nate Wagner: trying to make hard decisions that are just looking for that support. The counseling coaching side for pastors has, that stigma's gone for most of them. Obviously there's a segment that they still see that as a challenge and they still see all kinds of stigma around it. But for a lot of them it's like, no, I'm gonna go do the coach and I'll tell a pastor all the time, if you don't want counseling but you want coaching, let's just do that. We'll figure that out. And I can distinguish between the two, but in many ways what you need is somebody who's gonna help you ask better questions.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: somebody who's going to help you turn problems into a process, people who's gonna give you the language and the categories for what you're dealing with, and then somebody's gonna help you identify a preferred future and figure out what the steps are to get there. There's coaching and counseling involved in all of that, right? And how do we do that? And how do we you in that endeavor? ⁓ how do we break down the walls of resistance that you are experiencing to the freedom to actually be able to go and do this unencumbered?

Adam La Barr: Yes. mean, the Bible does tell us to seek wise counsel, so perhaps we should be open to seeking wise counsel and receiving said wise counsel in whatever area, you know?

Nate Wagner: And a lot of it needs to be outside of your own context. That's the other side of it is you need to have healthy, wise counselors within your context, but you also need to have people outside of it who have different vantage point and are as beholden in the same way as others would be within that context.

Adam La Barr: Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm. So what does this look like now for your kids? Like, what was it like for your kids kind of growing up inside of a church with pastor dad? then now, know, I mean, you obviously, sounds like you were traveling a lot before as well doing overseas work and stuff. What was like for your kids? What sort of conversations did you guys have as far as guide and grow them to where what you're seeing the fruits of now?

Nate Wagner: So a couple pieces of that that I think are just gracious providence. So early a youth leading missions trips and then ultimately starting to do international trips of my own, ⁓ I got the point where I would not take a trip unless I could take a kid with me. And so a lot of times those kids, least one of them would go with me on the trip. And so it got to be special time with dad, And so we got to involve that. ⁓ My oldest went with me on a myriad of international trips down to Guatemala other places to the point where ended up going down and spending six months in Guatemala doing her own ministry project when she was out of high school. And she did that. She came back from that next season ⁓ of our based on some

Adam La Barr: Mm. Nice.

Nate Wagner: of the experiences she had down there is there was a season of rebellion and resistance and she came to me she said dad Christianity has been the family business for my entire life and I don't want to be a part of the business anymore and so we spent about a year or so working through all of that together. It was hard it was messy it was painful by the grace of God her boyfriend at the time was a conduit to and a bridge for us to be able to maintain that connection and eventually brought that back around she now the relationship I with her, she's 27, there's beauty in that, there's just, I'm so immensely grateful for the restoration and the healing that's happened there as we walked it through together. as I said in the opening, she's one that just took a position ⁓ at church, at our church, ⁓ as ⁓ part-time ministry director. And I to her the other day, the thought that coming full circle of where we to where we are, you're the one in the family now that's now working for a church again. And that is only God's gracious providence.

Adam La Barr: you Yeah.

Nate Wagner: and her to be receptive and responsive to the Holy Spirit and to allow for the healing to happen and to recognize that ⁓ did it imperfectly. There were unique challenges. There are pains and struggles that our kids went through that I wish I could have protected them from. ⁓ But we see that now. And so they, ⁓ we collectively at a different church. They all grew up in the same church. We've now all landed at a different church. And that's awesome. I've got a wife who now is involved in children's ministry there, a daughter who's jumping into some ministry.

Adam La Barr: Yeah.

Nate Wagner: stuff there. son is jumping into some stuff and figuring that out but we're all kind of saying hey we're together. There's I early on when the pain of ministry was the highest I had wrestling match with God probably when my kids were early adolescence in elementary and I just said God if I'm gonna do this you need to their heart open to you. And they need to, you need to keep your heart, their heart open to us as parents. If my kids hate the church, hate Jesus and hate me of my pastoral ministry, then I royally. And so I ⁓ got, know, you ⁓ have job to do. Your job to protect ⁓ my kids' Keep their hearts towards the Holy in love with Jesus, in love with the local church, ⁓ and keep them connected us if I'm gonna stay in pastoral ministry. I know it is not story that a lot of pastors have. It is our story.

Adam La Barr: Yeah.

Nate Wagner: that God's grace that has remained to be the case. And He has protected that without and pain and heartbreak, but it's there. And we continue to walk this out together and still have pretty candid. We have a Sunday, this Sunday afternoon, we have a family meeting talking about goals and ⁓ objectives 2026. ⁓ And of this is gonna come out there, right? What is next steps for us and ministry stuff? Where am I going? ⁓ And does this all fit together for us as a family?

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So you said, it Brianna that said that she didn't want to be a part of the Christian, like, was she saying she didn't want to be a part of the ministry or was she saying she didn't want to be a Christian?

Nate Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She was really struggling with the faith side of it. She was saying, know, Christianity has been the family business. I'm not sure I'm open to it. ⁓ stuff as well. And so for her, there was about 10 months to a year where questioning And so... Her story is such a powerful story because a lot of pain and she spent ⁓ time down in Guatemala and with an organization that there was some spiritual abuse and just some really heavy handed stuff that we were unaware of until she got back. And that that became really challenging for her. But God waking her up in the middle of the night and she couldn't sleep. And she somehow that God was trying to talk to her. And so she started getting up and going out into the living room and just took her journal out and started writing. over the course of several months, met her in a significant place and just radically began to open her heart back up to him and brought radical into her heart and opened her to ⁓ the work he was doing. And there was a death of a close friend that was a part of that journey for her. There's a variety of different things, but we stayed in the process, but...

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: I'll tell you in spite of and because of our role, God did some pretty powerful stuff to bring her back to a place of healing. And she is a remarkable young lady who loves Jesus, passionately pursues him, is constantly asking me about where I'm at in things and bringing stuff to me that challenges my thinking on stuff. And just super excited about where she's at in the journey. But it was, was hard. It was a hard part of it. And I think the other piece of the story I think is important is the boyfriend that she started dating. He and I didn't like each other. I was resistant to him. For the first year and a half, I kept saying, this isn't the right guy. What do we do? And he had, I had taken her in a lot of different international ministries. She had never left the area. And so I just felt like he was reigning in her horizons. And I felt like it was the wrong fit. God deeply convicted me year and a half into their relationship. The Holy Spirit said so clearly, Nate, you go all over the world equipping and coaching pastors and ministry leaders. there is this young man sitting right in front of you that your daughter loves that you're not investing in. You've got a job to do. And if there's a gap between where he is and where you want him to be, you better start investing. ⁓ so I started to pour into him, started to love on him, started to encourage him. ⁓ then within a year is when we went through that season with my daughter. and he was the one that stayed connected to her, stayed connected to us, and was the bridge to bring some of that back together again. so that's part of our story. He's a rock star. He's an incredible dad. He loves my daughter well. He's a hard worker. Super with him and so grateful for him. that journey one that Spirit of God deeply convicted me. And I look back on that now and just say, I don't know where we would be if I hadn't to the Spirit's leading on that one because he has been such a huge part of our family.

Adam La Barr: Wow. Yeah.

Nate Wagner: incredible young man who loves Jesus loves my daughter and is doing an incredible job as a young dad. ⁓

Adam La Barr: That's so wonderful to hear. That's an awesome story. I tell my kids, well, my boys, my little lady, she's only three, so she doesn't quite get some of this right. But especially my oldest, he's in sixth grade, and I talked to him, said, right now, you're a Christian because mom and dad bring you to church and you believe, but you have that faith like a child because this is what we've told you. One day, you're gonna have to make this decision by yourself. And you're gonna have to, you're gonna struggle, you're gonna fight, you're gonna not believe in things like there's gonna be doubt, there's gonna be all this stuff. And just know that's normal. You're gonna have doubt, you're gonna have struggles, you're gonna, you know, potentially walk away for a little while. Like you're gonna have to make the decision yourself. Not because dad and mom bring you to church every Sunday. Because right now we bring you to church every Sunday, we bring you to youth group every Wednesday. ⁓ like that's where you're going, you know, and you like it. But day you're not.

Nate Wagner: Excellent. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Adam La Barr: day you're going to be Brianna and go, you know, don't think this thing is for me anymore. And then you have be able to know that you could talk to your dad, you could talk to your mom and say, hey, these are the things I'm struggling with. And I'm here with you in your doubt because we've all been there, every single person. So everybody listening to this, all of your kids, everybody's been in a world of doubts if you've been Christian for longer than five minutes, right? So being able find the people, be around the right folks.

Nate Wagner: 100%.

Adam La Barr: which is why, hopefully, I can encourage my kids all the time, you are the five people you're around most, surround yourself with the right people. Proverbs even talks about that, Like the hang out the wicked and the righteous hang out with the righteous type of thing, right? So I just hope that I can encourage my kids to do that. And it sounds like ⁓ your daughter at least found a boyfriend who was willing to fight with her and go through all of that. I can't remember his I always forget his name, but ⁓ he's...

Nate Wagner: I'm sorry.

Adam La Barr: professor out at Biola. His was big in the evangelical world for a long time, and now he's got his own

Nate Wagner: Yeah, you're talking about Sean Madalia.

Adam La Barr: Yes, Sean McDowell. There we go. our powers combined, we got this. But I loved, he always a story about how he went to his dad talking about how he doubted a bunch of stuff. And his dad was like, that's awesome. That's great. What do we do when we doubt? What do we do when we have questions? We go and find answers. Like you're not in the wrong spot for doubting. Go and find answers. Go read books that are antithetical to Christianity, that are kind of telling you the other side. Go read books that are telling me this side. The more you learn about it, the more you're going to grow. That's the best you could do is when you have doubts, go and learn. So I love it.

Nate Wagner: And I think, and I would go one step further and say, in any kind of that's growing, there will be ongoing doubts, right? Like that's the point is because if I'm gonna go from where I am to where I need to go next, there's there's discomfort, which is gonna bring doubt into play. and the willingness to see doubt as part of that journey and to embrace it as something to be worked through rather than something that should make me pull back or withdraw or check out is such an important part of the faith journey. And so I think those doubts continue to creep up and you just got to continue to figure out what to do in them how do we think through them and how do we bring the right voices in to support us in that.

Adam La Barr: And I think that we also need to realize that there are some things we just don't know. Like, it was just an unanswerable doubt. But do we have an overwhelming evidence in the other direction? Yeah, yeah, we do. Right. So things we just don't know, right? There's things in our business that we just don't know. We don't know what's around that corner. We don't know how this thing works. We don't know what lever I need to pull next. But we have a general idea of what we're looking at. So we pull a lever and see what happens, you know, and go from there. ⁓

Nate Wagner: And I would say there's branches of Christianity that try to dismantle all of that, where they want to say everything fits into boxes, everything's explainable. And I think authentic faith means that there's mystery, there's things that I don't know, there's things that I don't fully understand, there's things I won't understand this side of eternity, ⁓ I'm willing to trust that what I do know of God, what he has revealed, is more significant and will empower me and give me the security that I need to overwhelm anything I don't know about him, right? Or that I might discover

Adam La Barr: Yeah. Yeah.

Nate Wagner: along the way. And I think it's the confidence that what we do know is good enough, while knowing there's going to be mystery that we got to be willing to wrestle with and not be arrogant enough to suggest that mystery should somehow be more powerful than the security of what we have had revealed to us.

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm. Man, I love it. Well, we've had a phenomenal conversation here, Nate. We've bounced all over the place. Is there anything that you definitely wanted to discuss, definitely wanted to chat about that we have not gone over yet?

Nate Wagner: I just think, I think just from a, from a biz dad, I've listened to a couple of your podcasts and I just think you've got, you've got such good voices, strong perspective on business development, those kinds of things. And I think it all comes back to, do I understand what it means to be a leader that can show up intentionally? Can I be a leader that adds value with confidence? Can I be a leader that is a voice of hope in every environment he steps into? He recognizes that it needs to be a stabilizing force. My brother and use the term a lot, a net investor, right? Somebody who goes from being a consumer to being an investor and sees ourselves as a net giver, a net investor. And then I think so much of this, and this is what I love about your podcast, is there's just insatiable curiosity. leaders are insatiably curious. We just want to know. We want to understand. And we ask great questions, and we continue to pursue that. So think there's some common dynamics. And some of those things I just identified are some of our family values of this is who we are as people. And in whatever arena we're in, we're going to show up intentionally. We're going to add value with confidence. We want to be a voice of hope. We want be people that are known by love, not by

Adam La Barr: Mm-hmm.

Nate Wagner: not by the other things that we've accomplished or may achieve or by the past that gives us shame, ⁓ who Jesus is and what he declares about us. And we're known by love and that gives us the freedom to then go be a non-excess presence and a stabilizing force that step into and are able to be a blessing and to invest ourselves. And so ⁓ I those are so many different dynamics that come out in your podcast that I've just appreciated. And you of hear from that from so many different leaders and just grateful for the work you're doing and the privilege of just being part of the conversation.

Adam La Barr: you you Thank you, sir. I greatly appreciate it. having these conversations. ⁓ never know where they're going to go, what we're going to talk about, how things are going to turn out. I surprised on every podcast and it's a lot of fun to just keep asking questions and figure out where we go. So I thank very much, Nate, for jumping on. I'm very happy that your brother referred you over so that we could have a conversation as well. I love what you're doing over at ALG. I think it's awesome. I would love to chat with you offline and chat a little bit more about that as well. if folks are hearing this, maybe they a calling towards what you're kind of doing, or maybe they want to help you in one way, shape, form. What is the best way for folks to reach out to you?

Nate Wagner: Yeah, you probably have the link, but the actuator group Gmail is a simple one. There's a website, actuatorleadershipgroup.com is the website that's You can go on there and hit a link, in conversation with me. That would be pretty easy way to do that. And then there's a phone number there as well. You can grab ahold of ⁓ just trying be as accessible as possible and being responsive ⁓ to the that are there. And I say to leader, sometimes it's not me that I can't be the one to step in, but I've got a network. I've got a network of relationships that I can refer you. can be that first phone call sometimes. Maybe can have the first conversation and then figure out what do you need and how do I help resource you. And so been a great privilege that I've had as well to work with so many leaders ⁓ that are with other leaders, we're working with our teams and churches and figure out how do we just create a network where we can the person, ⁓ we can find the support to put around you.

Adam La Barr: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, Nate, I greatly appreciate again, you spending some time your story, talking to us about what you're doing. I love you have great anecdotes as we're working through this different stories that folks can grasp onto and, and use for a source of hope or a source of guidance in what they're going So I thank you for a presence here and, providing a lot of value. So everybody listening, I thank you all so much for joining. If you found value in what Nate was sharing, please share this with somebody else. Please let them know where to Nate and how to get a hold of him. Please like and and comment below what your favorite part about this podcast was. ⁓ And then ⁓ look forward hearing from each and every one of you. Again, Nate, thank you so very much. Thank you everybody listening and we'll see everybody on the next show.