Heart the Mission Podcast

Brian Owens was called to ministry at 14, then spent 14 years in the banking world watching every church door close and every business door open. He couldn't make sense of it until he landed at Upstate Church in 2009 and realized God had been building the exact skills the job would require. Then in August of 2021, after a hard bout with COVID and a run of medication that left his wife Sherry saying she knew her thoughts weren't true but couldn't stop them, Brian lost her to suicide. He walks Josh through that morning, what he told his four kids on the other side of the soccer field, the friend who showed up without asking a single question, and what he's learned since about grief in a public facing job, why every leader needs a counselor, and how a God who loves you is not always a safe one.

Dustin Dover didn't grow up in church. He was a skater punk in Acworth, Georgia, angry and picking fights, until a group of kids offered him a seat at lunch his freshman year and a lock in with free pizza turned into the gospel landing for the first time. Two years later his parents' marriage fell apart and his dad ended up in jail, and it was that same community that held him together. Now he's a teaching pastor at Upstate Church, leads connections across all ten campuses, and just wrote The Connected Church. He and Josh talk about why people will pay travel ball fees and bring their own chair for community but skip the one place built for it, the diagnostic questions every pastor should be asking, and where to start when you're wearing all the hats and don't know what's broken.

Shama Mrema was born in Tanzania, raised in Alabama, and moved back to Africa at eleven when his parents planted a church. At eighteen his dad dropped him off in Greenville with a used Jetta, one suitcase, and a crisp $100 bill. Then he got the student pastor job he had pointed his whole life toward, and it lasted seven months. Shama tells Josh about the legal pad of questions that ended his ministry career, delivering pizza in the same town where former students opened the door and asked "Weren't you a pastor?", and what God did with the years after: a viral song about Chick-fil-A, a comedy career nobody planned, and a last conversation with his dad.

Connect with Heart To Mission: https://hearttomission.comCheck out Brad and Studio 101: https://studio101recording.com━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ CHAPTERS━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━0:00 - Intro3:00 - Brad's Music Career11:17 - Family Continues to Grow17:03 - The Family Band23:01 Planting in Woodruff30:12 - Rapid Church Growth and the Issues that follow36:00 - Reaching the Unreached44:12 - Planting Roots in the Community56:30 - The Breakdown of Element Church1:09:06 - Brad Turning The Page on Full Time Ministry1:17:00 - A Word and Gift for Brad━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━👥 ABOUT THE GUEST━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Brad Phillips is the owner of Studio 101 and also fellow church planter with host Josh Bradley of their previous church Element in Woodruff, SC━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🎙️ ABOUT HEART TO MISSION━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Heart To Mission exists to develop leaders who finish well: pastors, planters, and everyday people carrying real weight. We have honest conversations with leaders who have lived through the highs and lows of real life.#podcast #testimony #churchplanting

▶️ Connect with Heart To Mission: https://hearttomission.com▶️ Check Out Bridget's Book "Trigger Warning" HERE: https://amzn.to/4w3j5Un━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ CHAPTERS━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━0:00 - Intro2:20 - Bridget's Book!9:17 - Traveling and Singing Family21:24 - The "Dream"36:38 - Help for Those Seeking It...40:48 - How will you respond?1:05:20 - Leaving and Growing1:09:20 - Becoming a Woman CEO1:16:00 - Meeting Her New Husband1:27:15 - Recognizing and Handling Triggers1:45:44 - This Side of Things...1:57:50 - Jesus Is Good━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━👥 ABOUT THE GUEST━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Dr. Bridget Trammell is a counselor, wife, mother,  speaker, and now an author of her Amazon best-seller "Trigger Warning"!Check her out at: https://www.drbridgettrammell.com━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🎙️ ABOUT HEART THE MISSION━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Heart To Mission exists to develop leaders who finish well: pastors, planters, and everyday people carrying real weight. We have honest conversations with leaders who have lived through the highs and lows of real life.#ChadMerrell #PastorStory #Redemption #NorthRockHillChurch #HeartTheMission #PastorPodcast #Christianity #Testimony

Be the church, not just a church service.When Walt Tanner and Chris Barrineau moved into a Fountain Inn garage apartment on 08/08/08 — newborn in tow, both jobs left behind, house sold, no insurance, in the teeth of the Great Recession — people told them nobody wanted another church. Walt's answer became the heartbeat of everything that followed: "40% of the people love the churches here. There's 60% that'll never go there — and we're going after those 60."Seventeen years later, that conviction has reshaped a city.In this conversation, Josh and Walt go all the way back to the beginning — a country kid from Mauldin, an architecture degree from Clemson, and a mentor who taught him that an architect's job is "to create the vision, not build the vision."Along the way you'll hear:The Brazil mission trip and the reflection-pond moment that redirected Walt from architecture to ministryThe (very persistent) love story of Walt and Betsy — and why March 4th is "the only command on the calendar""Double Trouble," a youth ministry full of "the wrong kind of kids," and the deacon conversation that sent Walt looking for a new fieldWhy Walt and Chris gave away their sound-system money to buy a struggling family a homeThe Fountain Inn Egg Drop, helicopters, Chick-fil-A cows, and getting competing churches to actually work together"Ghetto chic": five years in a 20,000-square-foot former grocery store with curtains for bathroom doorsThe merger with 100-year-old Fairview Street Church — "Your church isn't dying. We're standing on your shoulders." — and Miss Diane's tears: "I'm just glad to see there's life here again."This one will preach. Listen, then go be the church.Join our email list at https://heartthemission.com for new episodes and leadership resources.CHAPTERS:00:00 Cold open01:33 Meet Walt Tanner - Betsy, 20 years, and the boys05:53 17 years in Fountain Inn (it all started 08/08/08)07:50 Growing up in Mauldin: the country, horses, and a blue-collar home11:26 Old Greenville stories - Five Forks, the Reedy River, a Chevy Impala14:13 Clemson architecture & Bob Ellis: "Create the vision, don't build it"17:22 Called to ministry - Brazil, poverty, and a moment at the reflection pond20:55 Clemson as a mission field: the Third Day logo and 9/1124:39 The love story: the pump fake, the long pursuit, and March 4th35:35 First youth ministry - "Double Trouble" and "the wrong kind of kids"41:53 The North Augusta plant and the seeker/attractional years43:13 Called back to plant something missional46:05 Meeting Chris Barrineau - Youth Specialties, Saddleback & a rented convertible51:04 Launching Capstone: going after the 60%53:01 "Why another church here?" - what they chose to be known for59:26 Serving the city: the school partnership that started it all1:01:34 The Fountain Inn Egg Drop - helicopters and Chick-fil-A cows1:05:16 Radical generosity: giving up the sound system to buy a family a home1:09:45 "Ghetto chic" - five years in the old grocery store1:13:23 Merging with 100-year-old Fairview Street Church1:22:14 Miss Diane: "I'm just glad to see there's life here again"1:24:16 Advice to church planters: "Where does there need to be more light?"1:27:01 Josh's gift - a 1978 Case knife and a blessing

Chad Merrell should not be a pastor.He was a 22-year-old warehouse supervisor married to a full-blown opiate addict. He found his 3-year-old son locked out in ankle-deep snow, in a diaper, while his wife watched from the window upstairs. He lost his driver's license. He drank himself into oblivion every weekend his kids weren't with him. He was the guy in your church you'd quietly wish would stop showing up.Then his pastor and his dad called him within 16 hours of each other and told him the same thing: "It might be more sinful for you to stay than to leave."Then a Pennsylvania judge, in the most father-hostile family court in America, wrote him an airtight custody order so unprecedented it's now illegal to write.Then a hungover Saturday morning happened in a pool house in Pennsylvania, where a woman named Amy grabbed his face with both hands and prophesied that he would one day pastor God's people.Six years later, he was sitting in an auditorium when the pastor of First Baptist West Monroe announced, to him and everyone else, that he was their new recovery pastor. He had no idea.This is one of the most honest pastor stories we've ever put on this channel. If you've ever felt like your past disqualifies you, this episode is for you.

What do mission and identity look like when grief has taken everything from you? In this episode I sit down with pastor and AMS leader Dwight Easler, who lost his son Benji in a tragic accident. We talk about the overwhelming weight of that loss, what it does to a leader's sense of calling, and how Dwight has continued to show up faithfully in ministry in the middle of his own devastation. This is not a how-to episode. It is a testimony, and it is one worth hearing.If this conversation resonated with you, subscribe to the Heart the Mission newsletter at heartthemission.com for regular content designed to help pastors and church leaders lead with clarity and courage.

Adam didn’t get a pause button.In this episode, Adam shares what it looked like to lose his father and keep leading anyway. While his family grieved, he stepped into a new reality overnight, carrying the weight of pastoral leadership and the responsibility of becoming the patriarch in his family.This is a conversation for the leader who is still showing up while life is falling apart.In this episode, we talk about:• What grief does to your focus, energy, and leadership decisions• How to lead a church when you feel emotionally empty• What changes when you become “the man of the family” overnight• The difference between performing strength and living with steady conviction• What it means to persevere without going numbIf you’re carrying weight you didn’t ask for, this one will help you name it and lead with a steadier footing.Subscribe for more conversations that help leaders see what’s blocking their mission and move forward with confidence and courage.Want coaching or a mission reset for your church or team? Visit Heart the Mission at heartthemission.com.

This isn’t a highlight reel.It’s an honest conversation about ministry, identity, burnout, leadership, and what happens when calling costs more than you expected.Pat Gillen shares the real story behind church planting, team failure, resilience, family pressure, and learning to trust God when success disappears. No hype. No formulas. Just lived experience and hard-earned wisdom.If you’re leading, pastoring, planting, or wondering who you are when the work falls apart—this one’s for you.

In this powerful conversation, Hank Parker opens up about the pressures leaders carry, the hidden weight of expectations, and how easily identity can get tangled in performance. This is not the side of Hank you see on TV or in the outdoor world. This is the honest, unfiltered version—the man behind the accomplishments, the trophies, and the public persona.If you’ve ever felt like you had to keep it together, stay strong, or perform your way into acceptance…this conversation is going to hit home. We talk about calling, identity, regret, pressure, leadership, fatherhood, and what happens when the spotlight fades and you’re left with the real you.This episode is a gift to pastors, Christian leaders, and anyone navigating the tension between external success and internal peace.

So many leaders are burning out, driven by unsustainable momentum instead of a clear, God-given mission.The problem often starts with leading from a "borrowed identity." This episode is the solution.In this powerful conversation, I sit down with Will Gunter to discuss the most important foundation for any Christian leader: Personal Identity.We explore the "BURDEN" of leading from a place of validation-seeking or "shoulds" and how to find the "MISSION CLARITY" that comes from authentic, God-given purpose. This is the core of the Heart the Mission pathway.

Josh Bradley talks with Charlie Swain about life, leadership, and finding clarity when things don’t go as planned.From heartbreak to hope, Charlie’s story shows what it means to keep leading when the path gets hard.