Chet Scott uses the Lord of the Rings metaphor to argue that real calling often means leaving comfortable roles. He mentors Cary Overbrunner, who went from youth pastor to author and entrepreneur, writing 14 books, helping 500 authors, and reaching over a million people. Courage, Scott says, is having more love than fear.
Chapters
One of the most searing moments in my life with regard to seeing someone become built to leave a very good place was I've talked to a few pastors out of leaving the church. Don't tell your rabbis this. And I didn't go about trying to talk them into leaving the church. It's just that through our work together, the eventuality was they decided their calling was to minister to the world from outside the synagogue or the church. Does this make sense? They're still very much. I didn't talk them out of their faith like they. They have a deeper faith as a result of leaving the shire. So I'll never forget one of my good friends, Cary Overbrunner, who I call PJ now because he works out with us. And he comes in the wintertime in his PJs because he gets cold. So his new name is PJ. He was a young guy. He was our youth pastor at our church 20 years ago. And I hadn't started built to lead yet. I was in the corporate world still. And he was just this eager beaver, you know, new leader in the church who's going to like change the world. You know, you could just see it in his eyes. He had this work ethic and belief. So I took him under my wing and said, hey, let me kind of. You're just a kid. He was your age. He was 23. Let me kind of help you out so you don't burn out here overnight. So I started to coach him. Even though I wasn't in the coaching business, I wasn't in Built. I was just a leader at a corporation. And I saw a young guy who I wanted to help. So I helped him and been with him ever since. And when I started Built to Lead, I just took him on as a gratis client. So I started taking him through all the built to lead stuff, you know, discovery questions, working on his core, getting clear on his opus. And it was clear that he wasn't meant to be a youth pastor. Okay. He wanted to write books. I said, you can write books and be a youth pastor. He goes, no. He goes, I want to write books. You know, like so many books that I wouldn't have time to be a youth pastor and an author. And so, long story short, he started to cheat on the church. And he started to. He told him he was cheating, but he was cheating. He was starting to write books on the side and still do his job during the day. But you know how it is. Eventually the writing of the book started to creep into the Day. So he wasn't just writing on the weekends at night. You know what I mean? He was cheating on the church. So I called him on it, and I said, you know, you're a pastor. Isn't this funny that I'm calling you a cheat? You know, and you're not cheating. I mean, but in the sense of what you know, you're not cheating on your wife. You're not stealing money from the pews. You know, you're not doing anything criminal, really. But your heart is not in your work. So in essence, you're cheating on them. You're giving them a dutiful. God doesn't want your dutiful. He wants your heart. And your heart is not here. And so he loved movies. So I took him and I made him watch one of my favorites, which is Lord of the Rings. I made him watch Frodo. Frodo's the guy who saves the world because he discovers this ring, and he knows he's got to take a mission and get rid of it because it's the root of evil. And so Frodo discovers this. But the story would not happen if he didn't take the Ring and leave the Shire. And I said, so, Carrie, here's what you're doing. I said, you've decided to take the Ring, but you're staying in the Shire. I said, do you realize you can't do that? You cannot take the Ring and not leave the Shire. The whole point is to. The whole point of the movie is Lord of the Rings means he leaves the Shire. He takes the courage to leave what is known. This current little village you're in called Powell, Grace, Brother, take the Ring, leave the Shire. And I said, your problem is you don't believe in God. You have a lot more fear than you do belief and love, because if you believed, you would run out of there like Frodo with the ring. And I don't remember saying it like it was in a. It was in one of our practices, and I had forgotten it, but he left, and he's gone on to author his Opus. And he's been a soul on fire. His brand is igniting souls. His name is company. He's written 14 books now. He's helped, like, over 500 authors write their books. He goes out. Not only does he write books, Opus, but he started a business that helps other people write their books. He's written, like 500 now. He just. His goal was to reach a million souls through his online stuff. He just eclipsed that. So now he's setting a bigger dream. Truly, God is smiling. But none of this would have happened if he hadn't had the courage to leave what was a really great gig. He was a really good youth pastor and he felt called to that, but it wasn't his ultimate calling. And I didn't tell him that. He told himself that. But then he had to really see how much he believed and have the courage to leave. Take the ring and leave the Shire. And a lot of us get clarity. Not unlike Stephanie earlier. But we ain't willing to leave the Shire. We have more fear than love. So courage is simply this. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is more love than that fear. When you have just a little more love, then you have fear. By the way, we never get rid of fear. We all have fear. I have plenty. I have fear every day. I just have more love. And when I study people like Derp and all the great clients that were blessed with at Built to Lead, I see a pattern of lots of fear. I mean, and lots of well founded fear. Like people have lots of stuff going on, bad stuff, hard stuff, long standing, grinding stuff that would wear out most humans and make them just go back to the shire and go to bed. And because of love, I see a lot of these people like Derp and others were privileged to work with getting up and getting after it and grabbing others and saying, come on, you can do this. And it's so fun. That energizes me so much that. It gives me courage to take on whatever challenge I've been putting off. Because we all put off. We can't take on every challenge. The whole good life is just gradually building up bigger and bigger challenges.
