Drew Sams On Living A Curious Life of Wonder

I don't consider myself religious. But I am spiritually curious; deeply interested in faith. From Sikh kundalini master Guru Singh and Buddhist monk / tea master WuDe to iconoclast Christian pastor Rob Bell, the exploration of faith in its varying incarnations has been a fascinating, recurring theme of this show. Today, I continue the tradition with Dr. Drew Sams, senior pastor and head of staff at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. Hardly conventional, Drew is many things. Life-long surfer. Avid ultra-runner. Passionate environmentalist. Devoted family man deeply interested in social justice, nutrition, and wellness. And a progressive doctor of divinity with a take on the Christian faith that is inspiring audiences in Los Angeles and across the world. I think Jesus was an extraordinary guy. But I freely admit that conversations on the subject of organized religion can leave me queasy. Perhaps it's my personal baggage. I don't know. But I do know I really enjoyed this particular exchange — grounded and relatable, Drew made it fun. Today I unpack this pastor's personal journey to faith. It's a conversation about Drew's evolving perspective on God and Christianity. It's about the distinction between literal, allegorical and personal interpretations of the Bible. It's about the relationship between faith, consumerism and environmentalism. It’s a conversation about masculinity — cultural ideation around what a man “should be” versus the strength that can be mined through compassion & emotional vulnerability. But mostly it’s an engaging exchange about our collective moral responsibility to ourselves, our fellow humans, and the planet at large. Drew was great. So let's talk to a pastor! Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:04Speaker 01

  When my son was born, and I'll never forget the first time that I held him, I was immediately filled with love. Immediately, this being my son filled me with so much pleasure. And I was just so overwhelmed in that moment. And all of a sudden, something just unlocked in my brain. And I began to realize, he's actually never done anything to make me proud of him. He didn't get the grades to make me proud of him. He hasn't said the right thing to make me proud of him. I just, I love him because I love him. And in that moment, it was like a shift happened in how I could relate to God as Father. And all those concepts of pleasing God, even as I dug into the original language in the

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Hebrew and the Greek language, it's actually more of a be God's pleasure. And it's less of what I need to do, but to simply receive this thing that I don't have to earn, I don't have to somehow strive for.

• 2:02Rich Roll?

  That's Drew Sams, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:19Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody. How are you guys doing? My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. Welcome or welcome back to my podcast, the show where each week I go deep, I get intimate, I go long form with some of the most inspiring thought leaders and positive change makers all across the globe. People across all categories of health and wellness, fitness, nutrition, medicine, entrepreneurship, social activism, music, entertainment, and in the case of today's guest, faith. Today I sit down with Pastor Drew Sams and it went great. I think it was great. No, it was good. It was really, really good. Here's the thing. Although I consider myself spiritual in a nondenominational sense, I wouldn't characterize myself as particularly religious, but I am interested in faith and that is a theme

• 3:04Rich Roll?

  that we have explored at length on this show in its many different forms through many different guests. We've talked about Buddhism and Hinduism and even more esoteric traditions with Julie. And I did have Pastor Rob Bell on to talk about his Christian faith and that was great. I love that guy. It was such a cool conversation. Trying to get him back on the show soon as a matter of fact, again. But I didn't know about Drew Sams until I got an interesting email from my friend Wally. Wally is a lifelong Muslim who I met through our mutual friend John Sally. And Wally started attending Drew's sermons, his congregation out here in LA at the Bel Air Presbyterian Church. And Drew made quite the impact on Wally. So I started to look into him a bit and it was clear that

• 3:49Rich Roll?

  this guy was not your ordinary pastor. In addition to being an ultra runner, you can follow him on Strava, an environmentalist and someone deeply interested in health and nutrition and social justice. He's a guy that holds a unique and interesting and progressive perspective on the Christian faith and its traditions that really seems to be connecting with a lot of folks out here in Los Angeles, including some good friends of mine that I've since discovered attend his church. And I thought, yeah, this would make for a cool conversation and a cool conversation it is.

• 4:30Rich Roll?

  Okay, Drew Sams. So, this is a conversation about a bunch of stuff that, I don't know, admittedly, might make a few of you a little uncomfortable, or maybe it's just me. I don't know. I just have a lot of baggage around religion. Perhaps you don't, which is great, because we're going to hash it out on everything, from God to Jesus to faith to Christianity to the Bible, literal versus allegorical versus personal interpretations of all of this. We talk of veganism and how it relates to the Bible. Anyway, all stuff I'm hardly an expert in, but I'm really intrigued by Drew's perspective on it. We also get into the environment, our

• 5:09Rich Roll?

  cultural hyper-consumerism and materialism. It's a conversation about moral responsibility to ourselves, to our fellow human, to the planet and the animals. And it's a conversation about masculinity, how we define masculinity, cultural ideation around what a man should be versus the strength that can be mined in compassion and emotional vulnerability. Drew was great. This was super fun. It's informal, it's jocular, and definitely enlightening. So, let's talk to a pastor. Let's talk to Pastor Drew. Enjoy.

• 5:50Rich Roll?

  All right, Drew Sams, thanks for coming all the way out to record this in the container. It's super great to meet you. We're going to talk about God. We're going to talk about faith. We're going to talk about Jesus, Christianity. What else are we going to talk about? What should we talk about?

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Care for the environment, love.

• 6:06Rich Roll?

  I like that.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Mistakes.

• 6:09Rich Roll?

  I like that, too.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:10Rich Roll?

  So, you had emailed me, well, Wally introduced us, and you got on my radar, and then it turns out we have all kinds of mutual friends, Eric Bostrom, Anthony Zemiti, and you had sent me this beautiful, long email. And then, like, maybe a week or so later... When we were trying to schedule this, I went back and like searched my emails to find it again. And I just entered your name in like the search window. And I noticed like it pulled up every time your name had come up in my old emails. And there was an email from like 2015 in which you like friend requested me on Strava. From like way back, right? And I was like, wow, that's so cool. Like, like, how many pastors are on Strava? There can't be too many.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sure there's more than you think.

• 6:57Rich Roll?

  Probably. That's probably true. But that's cool. You're into the multi-sport lifestyle. You're into health and wellness and fitness. And we're going to talk about all of that as well.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  It's an honor to be here, you know, pulling up today. I was blown away. I'm thinking, I've driven past this place so many times going surfing. I grew up in Los Angeles and surfed Malibu. And this was the shortcut to the ocean from the valley.

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  It still is.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  It sure is.

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  It still is. It's funny. Yeah, a lot of people who come over here, they're like, oh, I always wondered who lived in that house. Like, I've been driving by this for years or riding my bike by or what have you. So cool. So why don't we, I think a good place to kind of launch into this is if you could just give some background or some context for kind of what your, you know, perspective is on faith and Christianity, kind of set the stage for us to delve deeper into it.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Well, you know, I grew up in Los Angeles and I really didn't grow up in a particularly spiritual home at all as a kid. My mom, though, was filled with wonder. Like, literally everywhere she went, and she took us with us, she was just always in the hunt for the wondrous things. So it would rain and she'd take us out looking for rainbows. We'd go to the park and we'd be looking for, you know, just things that would take our breath away.

• 8:18Rich Roll?

  Brothers and sisters?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, younger sister, two and a half years apart to the day, I'm really close to. And, you know, kind of growing up, she always raised us to say, you know, everybody that you meet, there's something of value, you can learn from them. And so she was such a shaper of my life, growing up, that as I, as I went through life, I just became a very curious person. And just filled with wonder and wanting to meet people and.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  You know, it's interesting, I, as I grew up, I, I went to Catholic middle school and high school and it was very religious and not spiritual. It really turned me off.

• 8:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  In many ways.

• 8:54Rich Roll?

  I know what that's like.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and I find myself-

• 8:58Rich Roll?

  So you grew up in the church, really? Like, your, your parents weren't involved in the, like, a local congregation or anything like that? That wasn't part of your?

• 9:05Speaker 01

  You know, a little bit. They sent me, but it was more for the fun and the games and, and then especially going to an all-boy Catholic school. I remember saying to my mom, like, "I'm never gonna meet somebody." And she's like, "Well, why don't you go to church?" And so, I went for the girls and I went for the games and I went for the, the fun, but, I mean, truly, I look back on that season and there were some great people, but for some reason, nothing stuck. And I, first, you know, I grew up, and I often tell people I'm a, I'm a recovering people pleaser. And then those who know me laugh because they know I haven't fully recovered. And so, I, I think I saw

• 9:43Speaker 01

  faith through the lens of, "I'm supposed to please, um, someone by my good works." And I felt like I never measured up. And that's where the religion came in, of just the, the doing. And I never felt like I did enough. And so, I lived with, you know, guilt, but then I would just get busy with life and sports and, and fun and, but really turned away from it.

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  To kind of hone in on that a little bit more. I mean, that idea of feeling like, if you do these certain things, that not necessarily in the eyes of God, but in the eyes of your community, like, you'll be able to be accepted or embraced, like, that need, like, that desire for approval? Is that kind of what you were, what you were mentioning?

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know-

• 10:25Rich Roll?

  What are you talking about specifically?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Exactly, that's it. I, I longed for approval from my friends, my teachers, my coaches, my parents. And, you know, when you're in the midst of it, you're just going through life. And at that time, I was moving so fast, I wasn't reflecting, I wasn't slowing down long enough to truly ask myself, "Why am I doing these things?" But as I've looked back, as I've reflected, I realize that-

• 10:52Speaker 01

  I was longing for my dad to say, I'm proud of you.

• 10:55Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  And, and he's never said, I'm proud of you.

• 11:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  To this day. And I was trying to find it everywhere.

• 11:04Rich Roll?

  The emotionally absent father.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Emotionally absent. He had tons of fun. I mean, he was the Chevy Chase from all those movies from the, the seventies and eighties. You know, he'd light up a room and people wanted to be around him and we always laughed, but there was this, this deep longing. I think it was really for him to say, you know, son, I'm proud of you.

• 11:27Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  And then that would spill over into every other relationship where that, it was almost like there was this void that wasn't being filled. So I looked for it elsewhere. So then I end up in college, uh, at USC. Imagine going from all boys Catholic school to the University of Southern California. That was a whiplash experience. And, uh, and faith was nowhere on my radar.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  But I wanted to, to fit in, so I.

• 11:56Rich Roll?

  Just typical college kid or like, well, yeah, what was your crowd like? Partying crowd, sports crowd, studious crowd. Like what kind of kid were you?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  You know, I, I go back to how my mom raised me. It was, I mean, the best way I could describe it. I was, I was a chameleon. I could, I could fit in with the athletes. I could fit in with the, the studious. I could fit in with.

• 12:19Rich Roll?

  Who'd you want me to be?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. Totally.

• 12:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  So even though I didn't do drugs in high school, so one of my closest friends was a heroin addict in high school and we were close. And then I was friends with a valedictorian and I was on the soccer team and I snowboarded and I, you know, so I was just trying to fit in everywhere.

• 12:38Rich Roll?

  I think that, you know, I relate to that a lot. Like I have a very similar, um, story to that. I know what it's like to be a people pleaser. And I think the thing that gets baked into that, or, or perhaps overlooked is you look back on that, or at least in the time when you're navigating that, you're like, look, I'm, I'm great. I can be friends with all these different people. Like I'm malleable and you don't understand that, like you actually don't have a sense of self, right? You're, you have no, you have no like sort of bellwether, like no anchor that, or, or defining principles about who you are, what's okay. Where do those boundaries exist? You're just like available for everybody on their terms.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  And then I found myself.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  So contrary to myself, multiple times within an hour, as I spent time with one person and then going to the next, to your point, I lost myself in so many ways. And what was the hardest thing was, if I let somebody down, I would be crushed. Or if I'd hear through the grapevine from a friend of a friend of a friend that somebody thought I was fake, it was like I had to do everything to- Devastating. Yeah. And it's like, I didn't even know the person, you know? And yet, for some reason- It's exhausting, trying to be everything to everybody all the time, right? Hugely, especially in a big city. And I'm an outgoing person, so, you know, if I was

• 14:05Speaker 01

  trying to be everything to three people, that's one thing, but I was trying to be everything to hundreds of people. And so, really, it came to this, just this moment in college, I was a sophomore, kind of in the midst of searching, I, and I, and I still do, I studied every faith, eastern religion I was fascinated with. I, I visited temples and I spent time- You had this spiritual seeker thing- Totally. Going on the whole time. Totally. Yeah. It was, you know, and I think it goes all the way back to my, my mom raising me with this sense of wonder that, to see around us, that there's so much more than, not only what you can see, but there's just this greater, greater thing, and I was

• 14:50Speaker 01

  just searching for that. And, and it was in the midst of all that, that I met this group of people that, they were different than any other Christian I'd met before. They were fun, they were real, they were kind, they were gracious, they made mistakes, they weren't judgmental, they seemed to be very intentional and mindful about how they lived. And they didn't talk so much about what they did, but who they loved. And, and, you know, up until that point, I thought Christianity was just a long list of whats and hows. And during that time in this community, I realized it was all about a who? This person, Jesus, that actually, in all those years of Catholic school, all those times of,

• 15:36Speaker 01

  you know, popping in and out of church, I never really considered who this person was. And it just kind of began an exploration in that community, asking questions, not wanting to take things at face value and literally open up the Bible for the first time and reading it myself. And I was shocked at what I read in terms of how loving Jesus was. And it seemed like he was always railing against religious leaders. Like, Jesus is one of the most anti-religious leaders of what has become a world religion.

• 16:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you know, in certain respects, he's like this punk rock activist dude, right? And I think it's, you know, as we start to like enter this terrain of talking about Christianity and Jesus and the Bible. Like, I find myself, like, I'm just in total candor and honesty, like, I start to get uncomfortable. You know, it's so loaded. There's so much baggage that gets played in, that sort of like gets layered into this. And I said this when I had Rob Bell on, like, I'm down with Jesus. Jesus is freaking awesome. Like, what an amazing example to kind of like, you know, be a light post to like, guide our behavior and our decision-making and our thoughts and all of that.

• 16:52Rich Roll?

  But, you know, I don't affiliate with any particular religion. I have a checkered past with like, the church. And so when you start to, just the phraseology, like the words, I'm like, oh, man. Like, because I associate it with things that I either don't see eye to eye with, I disagree with. I have like, I actually feel like a, almost like a repulsion. You know what I mean? Like, how can we even like, talk about this? Because I associate these words with something that I can't affiliate myself with necessarily. Does that make sense?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  And frankly, and frankly, for good reason. I mean, there's.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  I think that there's things that I imagine you and so many listeners right now are, you know, you're leaning back, I imagine, listeners rather than leaning forward out of repulsion, for good reason. I mean, I think that, I love how Gandhi said so many years ago, "I love Jesus, but I can't stand you Christians," you know, to paraphrase. And there's so many things that Christians have just so tarnished the message of Jesus. And I know one of the things I said in my email to you is, you know, whatever the numbers are, you know, a recent study I read said that 71% of Americans identify

• 18:10Speaker 01

  with Christianity. Whether that's true or not, that's a significant number. And yet, I would imagine that the majority of those people that self-identify with Christianity have no idea what the Bible says about caring for creation, about God's intent for how we should interact with not only each other, but with animals. That God's love for us extends not only to us, but through us to every facet of creation. So I've actually found, even as I've read your books and listened to your podcasts and explored even through the guests that you've had on this podcast, there's so much alignment in what

• 18:53Speaker 01

  I find, wow, that's there in Scripture. I don't hear it from many pulpits or Christian authors, but I hear it so much on your show. And I hear it so much on, you know, many of the guests that you have. And what's, and maybe this sounds ironic, I think often we hear about, you know, Christians wanting to tell other people a certain message, but I actually want you to tell. The 71% of Americans, if that's the case of message and your listeners, I think, can have a huge impact on people who, if they self-identify as Christian, who own businesses,

• 19:32Speaker 01

  who are part of setting things into law. I actually refer your podcast to more Christians on this, on these topics, because I say, this guy has it right. And there's so much alignment there.

• 19:47Rich Roll?

  That's cool. I appreciate that. Yeah. And I've had, you know, I've had people from all walks and all perspectives. I mean, I've had Rob Bell, but I've also had, you know, Sikhs and Hindus and Buddhists and all, you know, all different kinds of traditions. I'm always trying to find, you know, the through line or the consistencies in the wisdom that you can string together, you know, sort of a purposeful roadmap for how to live. And, you know, I'll extract that from wherever I can get it. I'll take it from the Bible. I'll take it from wherever. You know what I mean? But thank you for the kind words. I mean, it is an interesting thing because we do live, you know, it's for the most part, like most people in the United States at least would identify as Christian, if

• 20:31Rich Roll?

  anything else. We're in a highly controversial, heated political climate right now in which, you know, religion has been politicized, both with Christianity, Muslim, et cetera. And it makes it very hard to talk about all these things. You know, it makes it very hard to like have an open dialogue about faith when we start to, you know, move towards a dogmatic version of that.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  And especially when it's reduced to soundbites, not in the context of a relationship, when it's across social media, when it's headlines, when it's, it's so, it's almost like, it's devoid of what real relationship and real community, what real candor can be. And so the fact that we can sit, you know, four feet from one another in dialogue, to me, this is so much of what it means to be human. And as you so often say, to be authentic.

• 21:29Rich Roll?

  So tell me what your perspective is on the Bible, Jesus, religion, faith, just a few

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Little tiny things.

• 21:40Rich Roll?

  But like, I guess what I'm getting at really is, you know, what is the difference between how you see Jesus and how like, sort of, you would imagine I kind of grew up, you know, inculcated in the idea of Jesus. Like, where's that, where's, where's that gap?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I became a dad a little over five years ago, and that was part of the journey, even for me, to understand this concept, you know, for those who have been around, either Christians or the Bible references God as a father. And for me, that was a loaded word growing up, too. Here I am trying to please my dad for him to say, I'm proud of you. And it wasn't happening. Whenever I talked or saw this idea in scripture of pleasing God, for some reason, I translated that in my mind to appease God, to do enough to

• 22:35Speaker 01

  measure up so that he'd say, okay, I'm proud of you. I transferred that longing of my earthly father to my idea of what, I mean, if he is a father, I guess that's, that's what I gotta do. I gotta make him proud of me. When my son was born, and that's a whole just miraculous gift of a story, of which it happened two years after a doctor said to my wife and I, I would give up emotionally and financially in having your own kids. It's impossible. We had struggled with infertility. And the short of the story is, we had a couple come into our life years before that, and they'd since moved away and called us up.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  They heard through the grapevine that we were struggling with trying to have a child. And they had us over for dinner, and they said, you know, I don't know how you feel about this, but we've been praying about this, and we wanna, we wanna help, and we'd be honored if you'd consider us helping you. You know, we'd be willing to carry your child for you. And this is over, you know, a meal that I haven't seen.

• 23:39Rich Roll?

  That's a heavy thing.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  I mean, and I'm thinking, like, what does that mean medically, you know?

• 23:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  And so, you know.

• 23:46Rich Roll?

  It's a logistic procedure.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's so, you know, fast forward four months after, you know, tears and, and just being overwhelmed with that generosity, we ended up moving forward with my wife and I, you know, our fertilized embryo, you know, biological child implanted into our friend. And nine months later, my son Judah was born. And I'll never forget the first time that I held him, I was immediately filled with love. Immediately, this, this being my son, you know, filled me with so much pleasure.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  And I was just so overwhelmed in that moment. And all of a sudden, something just unlocked in my, in my brain. And I began to realize, he's actually never done anything to make me proud of him. He didn't get the grades to make me proud of him. He hasn't said the right thing to make me proud of him. He hasn't, I just, I love him because I love him.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  And in that moment, it was like a shift happened in how I could relate to God as Father. And all those concepts of pleasing God, even as I dug into the original language and the Hebrew and the Greek language, it's actually more of a be God's pleasure. And it's less of what I need to do, but to simply receive this thing that I don't have to earn, I don't have to.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Somehow strive for.

• 25:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I like that distinction. I mean, that that takes it out of the the the sort of active quest of you have to measure up in a certain respect in order to earn, you know, like you're climbing some kind of ladder or something like that, as opposed to, you know, that love or that light shines indiscriminately, you know, and you can receive it or you can hide from it, but it's there irrespective of it. And there's nothing that you need to do to earn it, other than to make yourself available for it.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so good. And there's this moment in the in there's a book in the Bible in the in the Hebrew scriptures, it's Deuteronomy, and there's this question that God asked to people and says, Do you know why I love you? And he says, It's not because of this, it's not because of this, it's not because of this, but it's because I love you. And then you start to rationally trace it back. You're like, Well, wait a second. So the reason why God says he loves us is because he loves us? Yeah, but why? Because he loves us? Yeah, but why? I mean, what do I have to? That's where my mind always went, you know, well, you know, and so it's the circular argument that

• 26:34Rich Roll?

  You can never get to behind it.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Can't get behind it. And I found that my my life has just flourished when I just allow myself to rest in that. And they don't have to be that chameleon running around trying to please everybody because that's a that's a never ending ladder. It's a, you know, it's a dead end road, so to speak.

• 26:59Rich Roll?

  So how far, you know, when when did you realize that you wanted to be a pastor? Did you have another career first? Or I mean, you're sort of introduced to all of this, you know, when you were in college, but

• 27:10Speaker 01

  I mean, it's frankly, it's a little insane that I am even a pastor. I feel like

• 27:17Rich Roll?

  What was the plan?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. You know, I went to USC for business, you know, I was I was highly creative. I was really into art, photography. I wanted to go the marketing route. I was just fascinated with that whole realm of things. And then that that kind of transition began to happen in college where I wanted to to help people. So I switched to psychology. And I thought, you know, I could be a counselor. I remember, you know, growing up, there was mentors in my life and people in my life. And so maybe I'll just go down that route. I started volunteering at a camp and then I volunteered at a church and people began to say,

• 27:59Speaker 01

  you should become a pastor and immediately my reaction was no way, you know,

• 28:05Rich Roll?

  because?

• 28:07Speaker 01

  I'm not good enough. I was still kind of hung up on that.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  That kind of sounds lame, frankly. I had such loaded-

• 28:15Rich Roll?

  But I would imagine like you're like, well, pastor has to be some super pious dude, right?

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Well, especially going to an all-boys Catholic school, you know, they were great guys, but it was kind of this otherworldly, removed from the realness of life. You know, and I grew up surfing and camping and being in creation and just it felt very academic. It felt very ivory tower and removed. And it just became one thing after another where

• 28:47Speaker 01

  more and more people started saying it and worked for a summer with high school kids and absolutely fell in love with that. And applied to a school of psychology, a Christian school of psychology called Fuller in Pasadena. It's actually where Robert went as well. And in the midst of all that, the first week of orientation, there's people in my group that were saying, you know, as we're listening to you talk, it seems like you'd be better as a pastor rather than a therapist. I'm like, who are these people? Why do they keep saying this? So I ended up talking to the head of the school and I switched my major to Masters of Divinity. And it just literally became one thing after another where got hired and fell into it. And I feel like I haven't pursued it, but

• 29:33Rich Roll?

  the world of it opened up in front of you, right? And so how does that work when you, when you step into that, like, you know, logistically to like, they like, say, okay, you're gonna, you get a job at a church or like, how do you get your first sermon? Like, how does it all, how does that work?

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Well, there's so much to it too, you know, I know a lot of people when they meet me for the first time, they're like, so do you, do you like work during the week? I mean, Sunday, just kind of like your day? What do you do throughout the week? And you know, now I've been pastoring for 13 years and I've been the head of staff and the senior pastor of the church called Bel Air Church in LA. And so much of my role is overseeing the staff and pouring to them and designing and motivate them and kind of unleash them to do the things that God has called them to. And it's tremendous fun. I mean, we're even exploring right now on campus, you know, what would it look like for our campus to be more of a civic space

• 30:35Speaker 01

  for the community, not just for those at church, a farmer's market right down the road closed down because they didn't have enough parking. I'm looking at our parking, I'm thinking, we've got so much space, this would be a blessing in the community. We had a cafe on campus that was just for the church and we renovated it and opened it up to the whole community and it's super intentional and sustainable and handmade items. It just got featured in Eater LA and we've got working gardens on campus. And so, you know, it's, it's

• 31:07Rich Roll?

  But that's the way it's supposed to be. And that's the way, at some point, it was, you know, it used to be that it was integrated into the culture of the community as sort of a, you know, a place where people would not only worship but congregate, you know, socially.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely. We've, we've, we've so institutionalized it that it's, it's almost lost its sense of, we talked a little bit about me losing my sense of self, right? I became such a chameleon growing up. And in many ways, the church, if I can, you know, kind of put quotes around that is, it's lost its sense of self in so many ways along the way. So the more that we can return to that blessing of the community fabric locally.

• 31:49Rich Roll?

  How do you think it lost its way? Like, what happened?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Well, so I did some, I did some doctoral work. I did a doctoral dissertation on the word remember. And the word remember, such a beautiful, beautiful word throughout Scripture. It's actually, it, it outnumbers the word believe five times to one in the Bible. And the word remember outnumbers the word trust two to one. And so there's the sense that when we forget who we are, we forget our identity, we forget what we're made for, we forget the beauty of relationships. When we have amnesia, so to speak, we can begin to adopt what the cultural narrative is.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  And so, part of my doctoral dissertation was tracing this through line throughout all the Bible that it's the story of people forgetting, God saying, "Now, this is what it's all about, and this is how I want you to live. I want you to care for the strangers among you, to care for those on the margins. I want you to care for creation. I want you to treat each other, treat animals differently." People would remember for a bit, then they'd forget, then they'd remember, then they'd forget. And so, part of my doctoral work was saying, "Okay, broadly speaking in the West and North America, the church has forgotten its purpose, and it's co-opted the story of consumerism."

• 33:15Speaker 01

  And so, so much of the language of church adopted consumeristic language, this idea that we're gonna get something from church, getting something from God. It's almost like we turn God into a commodity.

• 33:29Rich Roll?

  It's transactional.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Very transactional, rather than transformational. And so, it was simply this longing in the dissertation, and really, the kind of leadership that I hope to bring. And it's so, I just feel so underqualified doing what I do, but, you know, I long that it can be transformational, that we can kind of remember the beauty of this life that we've been given as a gift.

• 33:54Rich Roll?

  Well, you know, you're now presiding over, you know, Bel Air. I mean, you have this incredibly engaged, passionate, you know, congregation of people that absolutely love you. You know, it's like, I've heard about you from many different people. Like, there's a lot of people who are, you know, getting a ton out of, you know, being part of your congregation. So, what are you doing, what do you think you're doing that's different? That is like resonating with people, and attracting a certain, you know, contingent of person that perhaps, you know, the other pastor on the other side of town isn't doing?

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Well, on one hand, I, you know, you used the word repulsion a little bit ago and I, I never want it to be about me. And I think that sometimes our ego gets in the way. And I think one of the reasons too, why I didn't want to become a pastor is it became such a celebrity culture. You know, there's so many subpockets of everything in the surfing community, in the, in the writing community, academic community, in the Christian community. There can be these kind of like celebrity rock stars where, oh, it's so and so's church. Let's go to so and so's. And it just becomes this cult of personality. And so, I don't know, maybe part of it is that I'm not looking to step into the limelight and make it about me. But I think there's so

• 35:15Speaker 01

  much power in individuals within the broader community being activated. There's this word that I love. It's the word indispensable. And it's used actually in the Bible to describe the people in the church. And we live in such a dispensable world where in workplaces, people are disposed of, sports teams, relationships. But it's this idea that, that every single part is necessary to the whole. It's kind of like, you know, when you do a puzzle, of course, the corner pieces seem to be the most important. The edge pieces seem to be the most important.

• 35:50Rich Roll?

  You can't complete it without every piece.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Yes. And it's so frustrating getting to the very end and that one piece, even if it's like the boring gray, seemingly, you know, innocuous piece is, is not there. It's, it's not whole.

• 36:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's a, it's a problem. I mean, it's an incredibly disposable culture that we live in. We dispose of the elderly, you know, we warehouse them in places where we don't have to see them. We dispose of, you know, these single use items and they just end up in some Texas sized, you know, goo in the middle of the Pacific. You know, we dispose of our clothing items. We dispose of individual, like everything is ephemera, you know, and we've gotten away from that sense of permanence. And perhaps that's part of the remembering, you know, that you said earlier, like, how do we find our way back to what's important and how to value what it is that we have instead of just looking to the next thing and to the next thing?

• 36:47Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's culturally driven, right? At some point, or on some level, you have to exert energy to kind of, you know, tune that out because that messaging is so.

• 36:59Rich Roll?

  You know, diffused everywhere you look. It's it's incoming. So you actually have to have like a level of consciousness and awareness to opt out.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  And it's so hard to opt out to your point because we we we are so steeped in a consumeristic culture. I almost think that materialism is in some ways, if I could say it this way, is almost healthier than consumerism because there's a sense of value for a thing. You know, long gone are the days where there's family heirlooms that are passed down through the generations, long gone, or the days where we'd say, you know, this is where my shoes came from. This is where my shirt came from. You know, everything is anonymous to us now. And, you know, the whole consumeristic, unending cycle that is so easy to get caught up in.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  It's this, frankly, it's built on a longing, not for what we need, but what we want. You know, and our needs are are are finite.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  You know, as as humans, there's there's needs that are the same. You could argue across cultures around the world, but ones are infinitely stretched.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  And our, you know, our culture is is is stretching. You know, like, I really want a tent on the top of my car right now. You know?

• 38:20Rich Roll?

  That'll be the thing. Once I get that, then it'll be cool.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  And the crazy thing is, I look back on my life, and I have some of the things that I wanted, and it didn't fill that hole that I was looking for.

• 38:31Rich Roll?

  It never does.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  It never does.

• 38:33Rich Roll?

  But you always think the next thing is gonna. That is the plight of the human condition, right?

• 38:39Speaker 01

  And now I get just excited. It it I mean, I I'm in the midst of this, right? I get I get so excited when I hit click on buy now. I mean, I was reading some study recently that said that the the same part of your brain activates when you hit buy now than when you take a hit of heroin.

• 38:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  It's the same region. But then when it shows up, I have boxes that sit unopened for weeks because I've kind of mentally moved on to the next thing. So I'm I'm in the thick of it. I'm in no way perfect.

• 39:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  I'm on this journey with all of us, trying to figure out how to live more mindfully and intentionally.

• 39:21Rich Roll?

  So let's, let's move to the, the Bible and like unpack that a little bit, you know, I'm certainly no biblical scholar. I barely know, you know, what the average human being knows, or the average American knows about what's in the Bible. But I do know that the narrative is about how inherently conflicting it is, how it's sort of colloquial and outdated. Like, how do you, like, do you approach it? You know, how do you, you come at it from a literal perspective, from an allegorical perspective? How do you reconcile the inconsistencies? And, you know, sort of navigate those treacherous waters?

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are treacherous and they're, they're real. I mean, it's 66 books that have been put together that were written over 1,600 years and they use such different forms of human language. I mean, there's poetry, there's, um, eyewitness accounts, there's, um, moments of, uh, just very vivid, vivid, vivid, vivid, almost like, how can you wrap human language around this scene, you know, language? And then there's very mundane, earthy, real life. And I think when I consider all that, and I consider all

• 40:41Speaker 01

  the different genres of, of, um, of writing that goes into it, what's helped me is to look for those, those through lines. And so I got my doctorate in semiotics, which is such a weird word, right? What is semiotics?

• 40:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, explain what that even means.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Okay, you're an expert in semiotics. The listeners are experts in semiotics. You just don't know it's called semiotics. So semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and how we make and communicate meaning. So if you're outside, the sky's blue, and if I said, is it about to rain? Or is it a nice day out? Most people would say it's a nice day. And it's because the blue sky is a sign that signifies that it's not going to rain. It gets dark, it gets cloudy, that, that's a sign that signifies it's likely going to rain. So it's massively complex, body language, words.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Everything throughout life is, in some ways, you could say is language. And so when you approach it from that point of view, all of a sudden, these rich, amazing themes begin to jump out. So for example, in the beginning, the book of Genesis, it talks about how God creates everything, and it's just very good. And God creates, and most people don't know this, but it says that God reaches into the Adama, which is the ground, which just right there is so significant because God's willing to get God's hands dirty. So there's something about God willing to roll up God's sleeves,

• 42:15Speaker 01

  if I can even say it that way, that God gets in the dirt, which to me, symbolically, is so significant. And God reaches into the Adama and pulls out the, and the Hebrew word is Ha Adam. It literally means "from the earth creature." So we translate that as "the man," but it's literally mean "from the earth creature." So the very core of our identity, I mean, this is the Bible. This is what most Christians don't know, that God's original design was that we came from the earth. It says that God breathes life into us, and God puts us into a garden. And the first thing that God says, that first creature, the "from the earth creature," "And I want you to care for and cultivate the earth."

• 43:00Speaker 01

  And then it goes on to say, "Look, I have given you all these trees, all these herbs, all these plants that are good for food. And then all the animals that are here, I've given them herbs and plants for food." And I could absolutely make the case that God's original intent, and it's so clear in the Genesis 2 account, God's original intent was for a vegan existence.

• 43:24Rich Roll?

  Man to be vegan and man to be plant-based. Well, what is the, what's the, like, you know, "You shall sow the fruits of the earth," or whatever, that gets sort of pointed to as the argument that man is entitled to use animals for his own will?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Well, see, that's one verse that when you take it alone and you read your own cultural biases into it, you can say, "Well, there's permission right there."

• 43:51Rich Roll?

  Dominion over the animals, right.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Totally. But the word dominion, actually, in the Hebrew language, has to be coupled with all the other verses that talk about our care for the animals. You know, I printed out this list. There's a website called Blessed Earth that has verse after verse after verse of what the Bible says about caring for animals, about creation care. And what's amazing is there's all this imagery and all this language of God saying, "You are responsible for caring for animals. You're responsible for caring for all of creation." And I'm a big proponent of choice. I think that that's the beauty of humanity is that we can make choices

• 44:39Speaker 01

  and that we have the ability to choose. But there's a huge difference between choosing based on a preference and choosing based on a responsibility. And I think some people think that caring for the environment, "Well, that's just a preference." How I consume things, that's a preference. Actually, from my point of view, from a biblically grounded view, there's a responsibility there.

• 45:03Rich Roll?

  Well, we've certainly gotten far afield of that. I mean, we're living in a, you know, society that is at odds with sustainable principles. You know, it's only now becoming part of the common vernacular to even discuss these things. But, you know, the idea that we would be caring for the animals, I mean, that's just not something that we're doing.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 45:26Rich Roll?

  We're not tending to the earth in any kind of sustainable way, except on the fringe.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You know, one of the verses that is so fascinating is Hosea 2:18, it says this. It says, "In that day I will make a covenant for them," this is regarding humans, "with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword in battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lay down in safety."

• 46:00Speaker 01

  You don't hear that preached on. You don't hear Christians talking about that much.

• 46:03Rich Roll?

  No, I've never heard that before. So what do you extract from that?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  It's this idea. So the word covenant is this rich word that says, it's like a binding promise where God is saying, "I want you to covenant with the rest of my creation, with animals, to care for them, to live responsibly with them." There's even, you know, many people have heard of the Noah story, you know, knowing the ark, and people can argue back and forth over, you know, the nuances of that, the literalness of that. But it says this, you know, "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants, after you, with every living creature that was with you, the birds, the livestock, and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you, every

• 46:49Speaker 01

  living creature on earth." And to me, when you go on and on throughout Scripture and you see how much God has interwoven not only humans into the beauty of this world, because there's such beauty in the diversity of humanity, you know, as people meet those they're working with, as they travel, there's just such diversity and such beauty. And to me, it just, it points to the creativity of God. But it goes beyond that. It goes to the diversity of plants and animals, things that even science is discovering. I mean, the fact that people are still discovering new species in the Amazon, in the depths of the ocean. And God says, "I want you to

• 47:33Speaker 01

  think thoughtfully and caringly and sustainably towards all these things." I get on board with that. And in my journey of faiths, I see there's a lot of alignment.

• 47:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that's a beautiful sentiment. And I certainly am in alignment with that perspective. I think it's, you know, something, you know, we would be better off if more people kind of lived in alignment with that, I think. But how do you, you know, then, however many chapters later, isn't, you know, there's like, you know, slaughter the goat and put the blood above the door, you know, like there's a million others.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  So how do you do with that? Totally.

• 48:14Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of brutality and, you know, the Garden of Eden and the seven days, you know, like it gets back to that, like literal versus allegory.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 48:23Rich Roll?

  Perspective. Like, how do you, how do you think about that?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so. On one hand, I try not to get so hung up on some of those. But I try to step back and look at what's this overarching narrative? And so if this idea that God, in a sense, you know, begins the story, as it were, in a garden. And God's original intent is for us to live in wholeness with each other, with creation, with God, with ourselves. And in the midst of that, there's a, there's a choice. You know, God says, "I've given you all these trees. Eat from all the trees, but that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, don't eat from it."

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Of course, they do what I would do, you know? I'm curious, right? And then the scripture goes on and says, "And their eyes were opened." And what's interesting is, "And their eyes were opened and they were ashamed." And they hid from each other, they hid from God, and they tried to cover themselves. And God shows up and God says, "What happened?" And they say, they blame each other, you know? The man says the woman, you know, it's her fault. Which we so easily do as humans, right? We want to pass the blame. And what God does is, there's the first sacrifice in scripture.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  And that's actually, it's a strong word, but it, there's a through line there. And sadly, and I do mean this sadly, and I do believe that God was grieved. It says that, "And God covered the first humans with the skin of animals."

• 50:10Speaker 01

  And I believe that it grieved God's heart to do that. As I look at the fullness of scripture. And it ends with-

• 50:20Rich Roll?

  Because that's a, that is a manifestation of eating from the tree, right? Like, that wouldn't have been necessary, have they just sort of-

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:28Rich Roll?

  Done what he wanted them to do, right?

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Because, and why I make that statement, there's many verses that talk about how God longs for things and kind of what it says the culmination of history will look like. Isaiah 11, for example, talks about how the lion will lay down with the wolf.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  The child will lay down with the snake. And there will be no bloodshed, there'll be no war. And there's all this imagery of if it began in a garden, there's this picture in the book of Revelation, it says that it's an end in a garden city, that it's actually going to be a return to how things were originally intended. And if it begins in a garden and it ends in a garden city, and right in the center of it all, when Jesus, as scripture says, defeats death and rises from the grave, kind of that Easter story and what Christians celebrate every Sunday, what's interesting is he's mistaken as a gardener. And here you have

• 51:31Speaker 01

  the overarching story of scripture, it begins in a garden, ends in a garden city, and right in the center of it, Jesus is mistaken for a gardener. There's these themes that I can't, I can't overlook and seems so rich to me. So that when I then filter all of that through all of scripture, there seems to be this sense that I make choices in my life, for example, to move towards garden time. And I found that even in my own life, as I've taken up gardening,

• 52:04Speaker 01

  I begin to enter a rhythm that just seems so much healthier. It's not focused on me, the gardener.

• 52:13Rich Roll?

  You're living in the rhythms of, of nature and the planet. I mean, there's that other part too. I was talking to Rob Bell about this recently. He's like, there's this whole section about, you know, how you have to let the land lie fallow after you harvest for a certain period of time, because you have to, the soil's got to come back, right? Like they're talking about, this is the Bible, which is something that clearly we don't do in our world of factory farming. We just like farm it until it's completely dead and then put a bunch of chemicals on it and try to revive it.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely. There's another verse that says, "If you must go to war, make sure you don't cut down the trees."

• 52:54Speaker 01

  So there's this, and what's interesting, if you must, so how I describe it, and I've heard others describe it this way, it's as if God is meeting us where we are in our brokenness. And the whole concept of the sacrificial system, I don't believe, is how God originally intended it to be.

• 53:13Rich Roll?

  What do you mean by that?

• 53:14Speaker 01

  In the sense that, you know, all those verses that you're referring to of, you know, sacrificing a goat and, and all these things, it was, later on in Scripture, it says that, that God gave us all of these things, all the things of the law, to show us how, on our own strength and our own flesh, we can't do enough. So this whole idea of human-made religion, because if you follow the narrative of Scripture, you know, it begins with a deep intimate relationship with God. There was no sacrifices in the garden. There was no Ten Commandments in the garden. And when we ate from that tree, the knowledge of good

• 53:53Speaker 01

  and evil, in a sense, trying to figure out things on our own, it began this long journey through all of that, ultimately, I believe, to win us back to God's original intent.

• 54:04Rich Roll?

  To come back to the garden, right? So with humankind, we have to go through our machinations with, you know, our projections of what all this stuff means and, and, you know, the doctrines and the institutions that, that come with that, that are imperfect and fraught with, you know, man's weaknesses and frailties and, you know, egos and all the like.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And, and then all the things that you and, and I and many get repulsed with, and I'll just speak for the church throughout history, I mean, just the awful atrocities throughout the world. And, and even today, when you, when you hear about Christian leaders who are, you know, wanting to do things that just seem absolutely fraught with. You know, this is destroying creation. This isn't caring for humanity. I believe that God is repulsed too. And yet God is, I see in Scripture so patient, so loving, keeps pursuing us. And that gives me hope and encouragement, even in my own life.

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  It's so weird how a certain contingent of, of like the, you know, very conservative, far-right end of the Christian faith gets aligned with these political values that are so patently at odds with the wisdom of the Scripture itself, you know, whether it's aligning with big corporations or, you know, certain, it's like, look, Jesus is all about like the poor, right? How can we help the poor like? But the values and the actions of the people at that certain far end of the spectrum are completely antithetical to that, right? So how does that happen? How do those people reconcile that in their own minds?

• 55:53Rich Roll?

  Like, how did the church get to that point where that becomes a sort of acceptable narrative and perspective?

• 56:02Speaker 01

  I think it goes back to this cyclical history that I see played out throughout Scripture. It's, we've forgotten, frankly, and that's why that, that word remember is so, I mean, the fact that it outnumbers the word believe five to one, outnumbers the word trust two to one. And it seems like the root of all brokenness is that we forget, that we get so mindless, that we get so wrapped up in other things, that we go through life completely unknowingly, without any sort of self-reflection, destroying ourselves, destroying the planet, destroying relationships.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  And I, and I don't presume to speak for other people, but I imagine that, you know, the far-right isn't thoughtfully reflecting on the choices that they're making and how they line up with Scripture. I think they've just kind of forgotten it along the way.

• 57:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's weird how this sort of conservative, I mean, the word conservative, I don't even know what that means anymore because it's, it's sort of been, you know, used in many different ways. But the idea that that perspective.

• 57:18Rich Roll?

  That is, you know, there's a certain sort of closed mindedness, I guess. Like, I'm treading very carefully because I don't want to speak out of school, and I'm certainly not out to, you know, malign anybody. But I'm trying to, I'm wrestling with this idea of that contingent, you know, walking around with a perspective that is so at odds with Christianity itself, and yet using it as a sword to push a certain agenda forward that I don't think Jesus would be too crazy about.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Not at all. And that's what's so, so shocking when I read these stories about Jesus, as I said before, you know, he gets upset, not with people who don't measure up. He doesn't get upset with people who make mistakes. He gets upset with people that think they have it all together, and who are highly religious, and who are saying, you've got to do all this to measure up, even though they don't have to live those lives themselves. It's this judgmental, hypocritical, condescending, condemning point of view that Jesus says, no, that's, that's, you're so missing

• 58:30Speaker 01

  the point. And I just, I love that invitation that I see, a patient invitation, and to say it this way, you know, to enter that garden time, and to enter those deep, meaningful relationships, and to re-remember, if you can even, I don't know if that's even a word, re-remember. Because I think, you know, latent within us is this, is the divine. It's how we've been created. The way the Bible says it is that we're made in the image of God. So, in some ways, it's unlocking, it's re-remembering, it's, it's bringing forth that which has always been there, but we've almost fallen asleep to or forgotten.

• 59:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, connecting with that, that primal nature, that we exert so much energy and effort into covering up, right? Because we're wearing, we have to put the mask on and go out into the world and adhere to certain social constructs, because that's what you do, right? And it's almost impermissible, or...

• 59:32Rich Roll?

  In many ways unthinkable to like, go back to that beautiful, childlike, perhaps naive place of indiscriminate love and wonder and imagination, right? That's not what adults do. We're not supposed to do that. If you're gonna do that, then you're being irresponsible, or you know, your eyes off the ball.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's amazing how even just looking at my son, who's five, and we've got one on the way, which is another miraculous story in and of itself, but

• 1:00:07Rich Roll?

  Congratulations.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Thank you. I know it's, it's pretty bonkers when I think about it, but you know, look at the wonder of my son. I took him camping this, this past weekend, and that's his thing now. He just loves being outdoors and, and how dirty he gets. And I think about, gosh, he's living into this from the earth creature-ness that, as you said a moment ago, is so primal, so part of the core of who we are. But we live in a pure L generation, you know, sanitized, every, everything and everywhere.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  There's this anonymousness to life that, you know, I go back and just to briefly go back to the beginning of scripture. The story goes that God gives the first human the ability to name the animals. And to me, that's so profound, because once, once something's named, you're in a relationship with it. You know, I go through a life and I pick up something and I say, what's this? You know, it doesn't mean anything to me, but the moment that I say, you know, I think of the name Chelsea. That was my first golden retriever. I think of my wife, Erica, my brother-in-law, you know, Rhett Smith. You know, when, when something's named, there's this deep relationship and how

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  we've so moved away from that, that we've, we've, we've forgotten that sense of, of deep intimate connection. And as you said, that, that childlike wonder.

• 1:01:45Rich Roll?

  Right, so you go camping with him and you're like, "That's the garden, right? Like, how long can I keep him in the garden?" It's almost like a defense against the inevitable gestalt of growing up and what that brings that will erode that relationship. And we're in a time now where, more than ever, we're completely disconnected, not just from the garden, from nature, from where our food comes from, from where our clothes come from, where all of our consumer goods, we don't know anything about them, we have no relationship. They have names, but I don't know how meaningful that relationship is to that, whether it's an inanimate object, or even to our fellow human beings, they have names, we didn't give them those names.

• 1:02:29Rich Roll?

  But those relationships are not as deep or as meaningful, I think, as they once were in a culture where you only knew 100 people, because we were living in villages. And that's not the world that we live in right now, right? So this divorce from that tactile experience that you're relating to, allegorically from the garden, is something that is not really part of the human experience if we don't want it to be, unless we exert a tremendous amount of energy and intentionality into making that connection.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  And one of the greatest gifts my sister ever gave me was a little book that said, "Plants of the Pacific West, Western States." And it's this little handheld book that literally you open it up and it says, "Does the tree have three leaves or four leaves? Are they pointed?" And you choose one, then you move to the next page, and you could literally...

• 1:03:31Rich Roll?

  Like a decision tree.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  It's a decision tree, right, to know what the trees are. And so, I had a buddy, Mike, that lived near me.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  And every morning, we would, we would get up, we had kids around the same time and we'd go on a hike. Locally here and we'd have our kids on our packs when they were young and I would carry this, this little guide. And I, I'd try to figure out what the trees were and as, as uh, my son got older, uh, we would walk under these pepper trees. And I knew that they were Peruvian pepper trees, didn't, had no idea what they were before and I would always grab them. Uh, cause in the book, it said that they smelled just like pepper and I would grab a leaf and I'd crush it and I'd put it, you know, right up next to him and he'd smell it. And as he grew up, I, I kind of, frankly, I forgot about that experience.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  And we happened to be walking in a completely different part of town and he was, I think, three at the time and he looks up and he says, Dad, that's a pepper tree. And it was like this moment of, oh, that's the garden right there. The fact that he knew and, and he says, grab a, grab a leaf. It smells like pepper. And I, I just, I've, I've wanted to make more and more choices like that where I can know the source of things, uh, the names of things to, whether it's roasting my own coffee or growing my own vegetables or brewing my own beer. I mean, just getting closer to the source, closer to the ground, as it were. And that has helped me in so many ways, getting back to that garden time, that rhythm.

• 1:05:05Rich Roll?

  So you have, you have a vegetable garden? You're growing, growing some of your own food?

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, earth boxes are the, uh, the thing and it's out of control. Um, I just keep buying more and more and my son and I just love it. And, and following the seasons and, you know, it's tough in LA when, when it gets scorching hot and I, I go out of town and, um, come back and my, my tomato plants are fried. Yeah.

• 1:05:29Rich Roll?

  We're, we're traveling so much. We took a stab at it like a year ago and then everything, I feel like a terrible like ambassador of the plant-based lifestyle because I failed at doing that, you know, the, the home gardening thing, but we're just so busy all the time. Like we gotta figure it out. It's super important, but.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  But even with that though, like I think the more freedom that we have, there's, you know, life is so. Full of seasons and I know I can't do everything all at once.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  But when I can pick and choose, I mean, even the little things like I have a cup of coffee every day. And about eight years ago, I decided, you know, I'm going to hand grind my coffee. My wife thinks I'm ridiculous because it, you know, it squeaks and

• 1:06:11Rich Roll?

  Hipster pastor.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  No, I don't even think of it that way, but it's in the sense of like, okay. I would go through life and I would have this mindless consumption of coffee. I wouldn't even think about it. I'd, I'd, you know, press a button and there it would be. But there's something about the work that goes into it. Even if it's coffee that I've roasted, it's now taken 10 days to get to, you know, the optimal moment. I, I, as ironic as it sounds, there's, I'm finding more and more joy in the, in the mundaneness of work and it's, it's grounding me in some ways and centering me in so many ways.

• 1:06:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're like, uh, there are active meditations that are connecting you with, you know, with the garden, right? Liter- quite literally, right? So it's a really interesting concept. Well, first of all, are you, so you've been plant-based? Like you're, are you like living?

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm gonna be, so I'm gonna be straight.

• 1:07:14Rich Roll?

  Be honest.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah. So I'm, and some, some people make fun of me for this. I'm, I'm vegan before dinner. And I know that

• 1:07:22Rich Roll?

  Like Mark Bittman's vegan before six.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Oh, I've heard about that. That's right. That's, I haven't read that yet. And so of course, I mean, I have a vegan friend, Wally, who you know, and, and, you know, he gives me so much grace in the midst of that, rather than like, well, you're not, you haven't gone all the way, you know, and, and shaming me and such. But I've appreciated he's invited me in this journey of really being thoughtful and thinking through things. And, you know, it's interesting. I, my, I got a text from a buddy a week ago, Kevin. And he said, you know, he is a, he's a manager of a large sushi restaurant in, in Los Angeles. And he texted me, had no idea I was coming on this podcast. And he said, let's talk vegan.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  And he said, I never thought I'd say those three words. And, uh, you know, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law in Texas, I mean, they're, they're Headed that route. My sisters and her, her husband are vegetarian. And so kind of on this journey of I'm gonna, I'm for sure gonna end there.

• 1:08:29Rich Roll?

  The signals are, the signals are a lot. You're sitting in my, in my container right now. Come on, man.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  I know. Well, and even going back, and even going back to scripture of reading through some of these verses that frankly, I had skimmed over. It's convicting. It's challenging.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  And, you know, I go back to the, the moment when I read Finding Ultra, the first time I read it, I was on vacation with my wife and I, I finished it in one day. It was the plane ride there to Hawaii and, and on the beach. And I saved up and I got a blender. And since then I've been doing green smoothies and, um, and, uh, you know, it began to shift for me of realizing, not just from a health perspective, but then as I started opening up scripture, realizing actually my faith has, to go back to the responsibility side of things, this isn't just a preference that I'm gonna choose, which at first it was, but I'm beginning to realize there's this responsibility that I believe

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  that God is, is looking at me not only as a human being, but now especially as a leader in the community and as a pastor, um, the type of impact that that can make. Um, again, when it's grounded in this responsibility that God, I believe, gives me and us as a mandate to care for animals and care for creation. This could be the tipping point right here.

• 1:09:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I think it's, it's an interesting idea to explore. You know, I think there's a certain, there's, there's an alignment of behavior with attitude and perspective and, and philosophy that derives, you know, for you from that scripture and, you know, from what you've said today, like that message is pretty clear and it imbues you with a sense of responsibility to, you know, speak to these issues of sustainability and environmentalism and our sort of collective responsibility to care for the animals. So where we all have, you know, like you said also, we're, we're all human beings. We're not perfect. We're not, you know, like far from it, but where, where can

• 1:10:31Rich Roll?

  I identify areas in my life where my actions are not in alignment with those activities? And I think diet's super emotional. Uh, you know, our food system is one of those things where there are blind spots and we're sort of almost, uh,

• 1:10:49Rich Roll?

  Compelled to not be able to do the math and see where our food comes from because they don't want it that way, you know, is it better for the, for business if we really can't see that kind of stuff and there's laws erected to prevent us from really fully understanding that. But when I look at, you know, look back on when I was writing Finding Ultra, like I had a certain experience and a certain perspective that had to do with shifting my diet. And now, five years later, six years, you know, that has evolved. And when I began, I just didn't want to be fat. I didn't want to feel lousy. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to be an athlete.

• 1:11:28Rich Roll?

  It was very self-involved. It was about me and like, how am I going to be better? Now, that has evolved into being mostly concerned about the environmental and ethical implications of the food choices that we make. That was not the case, you know, when I began this, I had to grow into that myself. But I really believe that food is a portal for self-actualization. Perhaps it's the first portal for self-actualization. And by self-actualization, I think there's space to build in that idea of remembering or remembrance. It's like self-actualization is, you know, becoming the best version of yourself, connecting to that most natural,

• 1:12:11Rich Roll?

  primal version that you were kind of birthed into, that you are meant to be, right? Our journey as humans is to sort of discover that and to grow into that, rather than run from it or escape from it, right? And I think food is a way to initiate that process for people.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  And what's interesting, when you, when you talked about that, that portal to self-actualization, one of mine went to was, most people don't know this, but the first command in scripture is a positive command. And the first command that God gives humans is eat freely from all the trees of the garden, which is so interesting. I mean, so even in that sacred text that I draw.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  The foundation for my life from, that is the beginning point as well for humanity. Would you say that you moved from the choice based on preference to choice based on responsibility? In that journey of choosing a plant-based? Like you said, it was health in the beginning.

• 1:13:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think so. You know, I recall a very specific moment when, you know, after I had made this change and was sort of getting some attention for it.

• 1:13:20Rich Roll?

  Some folks from PETA came and they did an interview with me and they said, you know, what about the animals? What's your perspective on that? Like, how do you feel about? How we're, you know, how we're sort of treating you? And I certainly like, I'm a compassionate person, like I think factory farming is terrible. But it wasn't like, it wasn't the main driver, you know? And I'd always like been like, well, I don't know about like, you know, like I had visions of throwing blood on people. You know, like a lot of the crazy stunts and stuff that go on, like I didn't really, I don't associate with that. So animal rights activism was not part of my mental calculus and I didn't know that it ever would be.

• 1:14:00Rich Roll?

  But now I find myself, you know, really caring about that, you know, in a way that I didn't expect. And I think it's also catalyzed a journey into thinking about what does it mean to be a man? And what is that, that, how do I associate masculinity? What is my relationship with masculinity? What does masculinity mean? And as men, you know, how do we be a positive masculine force, right? And I think there's a lot of people that are confused about that. Or we've created gender norms around masculinity, I think are somewhat unhealthy. Like to be an animal rights activist is to be weak, right? When in fact, to be compassionate is the ultimate strength, right?

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Hugely. And, you know, the word meek, which is a word that describes Jesus, I think gets a lot of bad rap, simply because it rhymes with weak. But there's, that word for meekness is actually the, the word that's used to describe when you, when you bridle a wild horse, that has all this strength, that has all this power, and yet it restrains its power for the sake of the person riding it. And so this, this picture of Jesus, which is filled with power, the fact that he would wash other people's feet, might come across

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  as, as kind of weak and emasculating, but it is. I mean, the most powerful masculine, strongest thing to do is have the confidence to say, even, I'm sorry, or I messed up. How can I help you? How can I serve you? How can I put you first? That's a great point. I mean, it's so needed in our, in our society right now.

• 1:15:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know how we can find our way back to that. I think it's really, I think it's interesting how, you know, men think of themselves and how society breeds a certain perspective on masculinity that I think is, is unhealthy and is, and is, you know, making a lot of men unhappy too, you know, being confused about how they're supposed to behave and act.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  Well, and there's so many perspectives right now, and we live in a world, you know, the global village, that there's, there's messages across the whole spectrum of what a man should be. And so, going back to me as the recovering people pleaser, you know, if I was to just put that on the lens of my mindset, you know, what, what does it mean to be a man?

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  I could see so many conflicting messages out there that it takes a lot of strength and really, I think, a healthy intentional search to find out truly what that does mean. Because there's so many conflicting messages out there you latch on to.

• 1:16:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, your dad's generation, you know, Chevy Chase from, you know, the like the National Lampoon movies. I mean, that that sort of baby boomer generation and sort of provide for the family, you know, being emotionally available or emotionally vulnerable with your kids. That's not part of like how they grew up, right? Like, it was sort of, it was, it was clear, like, this is the role that I fulfill. As long as I do that, like, it's cool. Everything else is kind of like secondary. Now, we have to do that, but then we also have to be the super emotionally available parent who's co-parenting and doing just as much with the school, like, all these other things, like, and balancing, I think, that becomes tricky for, you know, I'm only speaking about men because that's

• 1:17:42Rich Roll?

  my own personal experience, but I think it becomes difficult or tricky for men to try to figure out how they're going to excel in all of these things, right? And the pressure that they put on themselves to be able to fulfill that role.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  Well, it seems like it's just getting complicated exponentially, too, as just as culture is moving faster and faster. And, and as I said before, just this global village idea, that there's, there's so many perspectives that everywhere you turn, you're not enough. And it's exhausting. And there's a frenzied pace of, even I find, you know, when I go on social media, that there's this moment of like, oh, I'm not.

• 1:18:32Rich Roll?

  Like, somebody else is always living a better life.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Totally. It's so true, right? And I have to be mindful, so I've chosen to, you know, be mindful of, gosh, do I, what do I portray? Because I don't want to perpetuate that, you know, when I post, when I share, I don't want to unknowingly kind of perpetuate this, this is what it means to be, if I haven't really thought through it in a way that causes somebody else to say, gosh, that's the, that's the life I want, that, you know, Drew's measured up to. Whatever it is, because I'm on the journey with everybody else trying to figure this out.

• 1:19:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's unprecedented, you know, this relationship with these devices that we have that are, you know, making it more and more difficult to get back to the garden, you know, it's just like, we're never bored, ever. There's no, you will never like, children today will have no idea what it means to be bored because you will always have that device that will entertain you.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Rich Roll?

  And what does that mean? Like, what is it? What are the implications of that?

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  And to not have to wait. So like garden time, I think about how long it takes for my, my tomatoes to grow. Uh, the corn, I mean, it's, and there's a lot of work in the waiting. So it's not a passive waiting. It's an active waiting. And that's so rare because now I can click a button and it can show up same day. It can show up in two hours. I can, I've been gone of the days where I could go to a, you know,

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  a blockbuster video, you know, I download it all. It's instant. So even choices that I've made to go more analog, you know, getting back into vinyl and reading paper books.

• 1:20:10Rich Roll?

  Hipster pastor again. Yeah, it's good. Now I'm getting a picture.

• 1:20:16Rich Roll?

  No, it's great. So when does the, the, the cycling, the right, like the multi-sport endurance stuff come into your life? Well, you always done that stuff?

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I grew up playing soccer and, you know, with soccer, you, you run a lot and I ended up, uh, playing through college and, uh, you know, after I graduated, I'd run here and there and, you know, but really frankly, I kind of fell away from it. And no joke, I read your book, uh, in 2012 and it just, it made, it was deeply, deeply inspiring. And I, I made this choice of, you know, I, I've got to, I've got to make a change. And I had struggled with, with, with, uh, lower back problems. I got hurt playing soccer. And so I had this mental idea that, you know, I'm, I'm never gonna. I'm never going to really get back to the level of of running that I used to.

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  And my brother in law, you know, who we talked about, Rhett, you know, and he read your book.

• 1:21:15Rich Roll?

  I was trying to remember when I, I think I got introduced to him or he reached out to me around the time of Finding Ultra. And did he, he has a podcast, right?

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  He does.

• 1:21:24Rich Roll?

  So I think I was a guest on his podcast like a long time ago.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Years ago, yeah, yeah. So he is just, I mean, I've got deep respect for him. And, you know, he writes and he, and he continues to do the podcasts. And so we would talk about running and finding ultra and he was living in Texas and I was living in Los Angeles. And so both of us kind of kicked up the running again. And I began to meet other people that kind of, you know, I could tag along with. And so the midst of that, I met Anthony Zemidi, you know, a guy that you know, and I mean, this guy's run 50 mile races.

• 1:22:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So Anthony, for the listeners, he's a, he's a rock and roll drummer. He's a lot of things, but he's a, you know, he's a, he's a professional musician. But he's also an accomplished ultra runner. I met him in Whole Foods just randomly, like we just struck up a conversation in Whole Foods and we've become friends and our kids go to school together now. But yeah, like I see him out on the trail and he's killing it, man. He's a, you know, he's a super strong runner and he's part of your congregation.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You know, and, and what's been fun too, even on some of the runs that we've done together, you know, he's out there so much more than I am. But, you know, we've been on runs together and I remember one day he was saying, you know, I don't want my running to just be about me. I don't want it to just be this selfish thing, but I want it to somehow make an impact and, and, you know, help others. And he kind of did this charity run last year and he ran, ran the backbone trail here in California. I think, what is it like 67 miles or so?

• 1:22:59Rich Roll?

  It's not a joke.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we did it in one, one go, got Ubered up to the trail and raised money for, for a charity called Hope Heals. And, you know, in the midst of just spending time with him, with other people, I just began to. To start pushing myself more and frankly, I think changing my diet, I, I, I lost weight. My back pain went away and I did the Sean O'Brien last year.

• 1:23:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Just under seven hour.

• 1:23:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  The one that I did the June, I'll call the junior Sean O'Brien, the 50 kilometer.

• 1:23:34Rich Roll?

  50 K, okay.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  Anthony did the 50 miler and that was my first, you know, beyond a marathon.

• 1:23:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  And it was, I had this moment where I was

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  just up there in tears because I, I physically didn't think I'd be able to get back out and to enjoy things. And I had even developed allergies and I had this like, years ago, this, uh, this deep chest thing that when I'd cycle locally, I would just start wheezing on the hill climbs. And I, I took milk out of my diet and it went away.

• 1:24:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  And, uh, so it was like, all these things came together at once and I'm up on the ridge. You know, on the home stretch, looking out over the Pacific Ocean and down to Malibu Creek State Park. Knowing my wife and my, my four-year-old son were at the end of it. And, and frankly, I may trace it all the way back to that stretch that I read Finding Ultra. And, um, you know, it's been such a joy, but let me share this.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  A couple of months after that, and I know this is going to sound like it's shifting gears, but a couple of months after that, you know, I'm, I'm still training for more races. I did the Ray Miller, I did the Sean O'Brien. I'm thinking, okay, this is my, I'm plotting races out. Okay, I'm into this. I'm going to catch up to Anthony, right? Yes, it does, right? And so I was, you know, I friend you on Strava, right? In the midst of all that years ago and, uh, but in the midst of the leadership, uh, that I do in the church as a recovering people pleaser, when I have to make decisions, um, that are necessary decisions sometimes when you run an organization, where you have to let somebody go, uh, I had to make a really, really tough decision last summer.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  That was just so hard to make and.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  I went into hiding after that. And I didn't know I went into hiding. And eight months went by. Then I didn't run a foot. And I'd been on this like three year stretch of just, you know, building miles, building miles. And then I go for eight months, no running. And I was at the, uh, the opening, opening day of the Dodgers. Somebody invited me and I'm with this guy and you know, he says, hey, you run right? And then it's all of a sudden registering like, man, I haven't ran in a while. And I started telling him about Strava and I opened it up and I go in and I realized my last activity was two days before I let this guy go.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  And I'm sitting there in Dodger Stadium and this guy's talking to me. And I, I literally had this time stand still moment where I'm beginning to realize, oh my gosh, I stopped running because his wife follows me on Strava. And I was so embarrassed that I had to make the choice to let him go. But if I was out running and she saw me on Strava, that she would say, why is this guy out enjoying his life when he ruined ours? And all of a sudden that moment, that self-reflection, you know, all that came rushing in and I realized,

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  man, I haven't recovered from people pleasing. And if I'm not intentional, it's going to destroy aspects of my life that I've begun to build up. And I, I lost the miles. I, I had started gaining weight.

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  The vegan before dinner was starting to

• 1:27:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  Stretch less and less.

• 1:27:16Rich Roll?

  Vegan before lunch.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, before I wake up, right? Vegan before I wake up, you know?

• 1:27:20Rich Roll?

  Well, that's really interesting. I mean, that's, that's some great self-awareness, but to have that occur and have that amount of time go by without being able to do that math and then, you know, sort of dawning on you, yeah, there's that weird.

• 1:27:38Rich Roll?

  Boundary thing, like, what is it okay to allow into your mental, emotional space? And what isn't? And I think there's, there's sort of a weird, maybe you could, it might be helpful to think of it. I'm like, like I said, like I'm, I deal with the same stuff, like I'm a people pleaser. So I'm sharing this from my own struggles and experience, but there's a, there's almost a reverse ego thing that goes on. So by that, I mean, when you say, oh my gosh, I have to let this person go. How unbelievably devastating this is going to be for them. Because of course they want to stay with me. You know what I mean?

• 1:28:23Rich Roll?

  Like there's a weird attachment of your own sense of importance that gets built into that, that heightens the whole thing.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:28:31Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? And it's counterintuitive because you're like coming from this place of like, who am I to fire this person? How, what an awful person I am. But there is also that escalated sense of the, the importance of the whole affair. Like, oh my God, this person will be scarred and devastated for the rest of their life because of this thing that I did or did not do.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  I'm almost maybe in that moment thinking too highly of myself that I could literally ruin somebody for that decision.

• 1:29:02Rich Roll?

  Right, you don't have that power. You're not that powerful, right? So for all you know, you gave them the greatest gift they've ever had because had you not let them go, they would have never found this other thing. You know, circumstances arose that made it necessary for you to make this decision. And that's just information. And that person may take that information and course correct and end up in a much better place. We don't know that, but maybe that will help give you a little bit of peace over that or help inform the next time that you have to do something like that.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good. I'm gonna, I'm gonna chew on that for a while. Yeah, you know, and it's crazy in the midst of, of all that.

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  The lack of self-awareness for me to not even know that eight months had gone by.

• 1:29:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  You know, talk about forgetting. I, I, I fell out of the rhythm. And the fact that somebody said, well, how long has it been? I wouldn't have said eight months in that moment. It took me literally opening up my phone to see when that last activity was, and I did the math and it was just

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  mind blowing, but that's, that's a good word for me.

• 1:30:15Rich Roll?

  The, the, the suffering that you yourself shouldered with shame and guilt and remorse and all of that.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:22Rich Roll?

  Punishing yourself, right? Right back to like being in Catholic school as a kid.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. I forgot, right?

• 1:30:29Rich Roll?

  So, forgot. The running though, I'm interested in, in how you, uh, how you kind of perceive what that means to you. Like I, cause I think of it as sort of an act of meditation. It's a spiritual practice for me, you know, and it, it, it opens me up. It makes me available. Like, I could go on for hours about like my relationship to endurance sports and how I think that that informs my spiritual life, my emotional life, my mental life. Like, do you have that kind of relationship with it? Or how do you think about it?

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  So I'm my best self when I'm surfing, when I'm running, when I'm mountain biking, when I'm out in the broadest sense, when I'm out in the garden and there's, I find that I'm a better husband, I'm a better dad. I'm a better son.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  I have greater clarity.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  And so it would, I'm like stuck and maybe you can, may help me think through this for a moment. I, I, on one hand, I feel like, gosh, if I spend all this time with just me,

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  man, it's a little selfish because I can, you know, use that time to be there for my wife, for my son, for those in my congregation, my friends, my family. But then I also find that when I choose to do that, and frankly, I've just, when I do choose to do it, I just wake up earlier than everybody else, you know, and try to get that time in. Ironically, then I am more available and I'm actually a better person. So I, I slide back and forth between those two things where it's the guilt of all the time away. But then I, then I'm like, but I'm no good to anybody right now because I'm, I'm not giving from a full well, you know, it's, it's dry and it's drained.

• 1:32:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you can't take care of others unless you're taking care of yourself. And if you're getting sustenance from this activity, that makes you a better servant. So it's part and parcel of who you are and what you do. Now, that scale may slide too far. You know, when you start, when you go, okay, I'm going to go from the 50 to the 100 and then you're training, you know, like there's extremes, of course, but at what point do you get what you need from it in order to be that optimal servant, to be as available as you possibly can for your congregation, for your family, et cetera. You know, like I interviewed Russell Simmons for the podcast and we spoke about this in the context of yoga and meditation. He's like, it's not negotiable. He's like, I don't care if I have a meeting.

• 1:33:00Rich Roll?

  I don't care if it's the most important meeting ever, if it conflicts with yoga, I'm going to yoga. And he's like, it makes me a better servant overall. I'm willing to make that sacrifice. And he has no, he's not, you know, he doesn't have pangs of guilt over it. He's just like, this is the way that it is and this has been proven true in my life and this is the rule that I adhere to.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  That's so good. You know, and it's the irony that I'm talking about grace and love and, you know, God doesn't design us to be motivated through guilt and yet here I slide right back into it, you know?

• 1:33:36Rich Roll?

  You're a human being.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33:37Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:39Rich Roll?

  So, and I, and I do too. You know what I mean? Like when I'm, when I'm out, when I'm out training, I'm like, I should be with my kids. Or when I'm riding my bike up PCH and I see the people surfing, I should be like, I should be surfing, like whatever it is I'm not doing is what I feel like I should be, you know what I mean?

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's, it's, it's the, yeah. Well, I think, look, we're in community right now and we're sharing this real thing that we're, and we're, you're, you've invited so many people into your community through the podcast and I think there's something powerful about that when you can open up and you can say me too. I mean, that, that phrase is so powerful. You know, I, I people please too, and I, you know, there's moments of, am I being selfish? Well, me too. There's, oh, you too? Okay.

• 1:34:29Rich Roll?

  But I appreciate the fact that you've come here and been open and vulnerable and honest. You know, as somebody who is, you know, quote unquote pastor. Okay, so does that mean this person has all the answers? And they're supposed to be able to be answering all the questions that I have? And you've come here and said, I don't know this, or this is what I'm struggling with, you know, and shared your humanity, and I have a lot of respect for that, like that you came here in that spirit.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  That's how my mama raised me.

• 1:34:59Rich Roll?

  We gotta like, bring this sermon to a close pretty soon here. But I don't want to end this without kind of tapping into a little bit about, you know, I want you to, I want you to share, like, what do you, what do you want people to? When people think about the Bible, when they think about Jesus, when they think about Christianity, like, how do you want them to feel? And what is it that you want them to understand about it? That has been important to you, that you think gets missed? Or gets lost in the morass of, you know, cultural obfuscation around these ideas?

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I've just been, I've been overwhelmed with these truths that are numerous. First, that you're more loved than you'll ever imagine.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Like, I think about my son, who, as a one day old, couldn't wrap his mind around how much I, as a father, loved him. And, and yet I loved him, because I loved him, because I loved him, because I loved him. And so there's this, this desire, this longing, that, that people would just know that they're loved, that they're enough, that...

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  There's this beautiful passage in Zephaniah, it says that, "Don't you know that God rejoices over you with singing?" Which is such a beautiful picture. And so that's the first one, that people are more loved than they'll ever imagine. The second, there's, there's so much meaning all around us. And to live a life filled with wonder and curiosity, ask questions. I mean, I think that, who said it? The examined life, the unexamined life is a life not worth... Is it Socrates? It's old school.

• 1:36:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's old school. I don't know who exactly said that, but...

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  So just this idea of, of, you know, search, ask questions, explore.

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  Spend time with strangers, get to know different cultures. To me, that's, that's God's longing for us. Longing to be with the other, and there's just so much beauty in that. And that's why I think that I've so respected your podcast, because you've brought such a diversity of voices to, that I think is a model just for healthy community. And then third, is simply that that people can live into their indispensability. I think that, you know, there's only one Rich Roll, there's only one Drew Sams, there's, you know, only one each of the listeners, and there's people in their life that I'm not in their life. And they can make such an impact

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  through their words, and through being present, through listening, so much more. And I feel like if we were more mindful as humans to the impact that we can make relationally in our choices, it would just be such a better world as we go through.

• 1:37:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think people feel disenfranchised and feel like their story doesn't matter, or their vote doesn't count, or who cares what I think. You know, I think you're right. I think we all have a story, and I think we all should be telling our story, you know? I think we have stories we tell about ourselves, and then we have different stories we tell the world about ourselves. I think the sort of spiritual journey is to align those things in a healthy way, and to overcome whatever negative story it is that you're telling yourself about yourself into telling a more expansive one, and then ultimately allowing that story

• 1:38:37Rich Roll?

  to be in service of others.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  That's so good.

• 1:38:41Rich Roll?

  In service of others. Yeah, they feel muted, or they feel disempowered, and they don't feel like their story is important to anybody else.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  And then when they try to unmute it. Through certain ways that they feel like this is the only culturally impactful way, where I've got to somehow project this certain persona, whether in person or social media. They're still on mute, but it's this projected sense of self that is that, you know, in my own experience, it was the, who's the me that you want me to be in this moment? Chameleon-esque type thing. But there's so much value and beauty in, in people.

• 1:39:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, or I would think, you know, from your perspective, as sort of, you know, looming over your flock, so to speak, I think most people are really disconnected from who they are and, and social media just further confuses that. And there's a sense of who they think they're supposed to be. But it's that, that journey back to the garden, right? Like, who are you really? Like, let's, let's connect you with who you really are. Like, take my hand and let's walk down the path and try to do that math for you. You know, how can I get you back to who, you know, you were as a child? What was important to you then? What brought you joy? How can you connect more deeply with that as a means to, you know,

• 1:40:14Rich Roll?

  not only express that more fully in your life, but as a way of, you know, moving you in the direction towards tapping into that, you know, authentic self that will allow you to discover the best trajectory for you through life.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  My church should hear that, what you just said.

• 1:40:35Rich Roll?

  I don't think I could repeat that, but anyway. Yeah, right. I mean, do you like, it's, it's, it's that journey to self-actualization, right? But it's a, it's a connecting back to that original self.

• 1:40:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's this sense of, yes, I'm a pastor. That's true, but is that the truest part of me? Yes, I'm a dad. Yes, I'm a husband. Yes, I, I surf. Yes, I'm a vegan before dinner, you know? But is that, I mean, those are true things, but is that the core of my identity? And that's, that's something that I care a lot about too. And I, I talk about frequently of, you know, really to get to the truest sense of who we are, we're not what we own, we're not what we do. We're not a reputation. There's something much, much deeper, much more profound, much more eternal,

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  much more sacred, um, much more earthy, you know, and it's this, as I would describe it, it's that we're,

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  that we're beautiful beings created with purpose in the image of God. And there's deep value and deep responsibility.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  And then this idea of life can be an opportunity to unlock it, not only for yourself, but to help others unlock it for themselves. That's why, you know, the, as you often say, you know, unlocking the most authentic version of yourself is, is it? I mean, that's the core. It's the truest part of who we are.

• 1:42:03Rich Roll?

  So when someone comes into your, into your church who's struggling, how do you take that person on and, and lead them? Like, what do you think are the biggest obstacles that people sort of self erect or, or create for themselves? That are barriers towards unlocking that best self within?

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I think it fits under those three categories. I am what I own, you know, and some people who, um, you know, they've just lost their job and they come in and they say, you know, it's not about losing their job, but it's the fact that they're going to have to move out of their zip code. And now they're not in Brentwood, but they're Brentwood adjacent, you know, and all of a sudden, or now I'm on the south side of the boulevard. And I mean, they're, they're devastated because they've put their identity in, you know, my sense of self is this is where I, this is who I am. This is where I live. And that's such the, the, the dark side of consumerism because, you know,

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  these things don't just have value in and of themselves, you know, we, we accumulate these things so that we have a sense of identity through the clothes we wear, what we drive, where we live.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  But it's more than that. It's, it's, it's, uh, you know, it's our reputation and that's my story, you know, of,

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  here's the grapevine that somebody said something about me and it's, you know, and now I'm devastated. And so now I've got a, Somehow fix that and I see that so often, you know, or it's what we do, it's our accomplishments. And so, you know, in our, in our church, we've got a lot of highly, highly accomplished people that sit on multiple boards and they're the head of corporations and, you know, they're pro athletes and they're, uh, you know, doing really well in Hollywood and they're devastated because they haven't gotten the part or the promotion or the raise or whatever it is. And for me, I just, my approach is simply being with

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  somebody, asking questions, listening and being willing to walk with them on the journey of peeling back the, the layers of the onion, so to speak, just to get to the core of who they are and just and sharing my story along the way, giving people permission to be vulnerable themselves.

• 1:44:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's important, like, is that opens up the door to make it safe, right? And you're dealing with, like, when you deal with high achievers, like, it's not safe to be vulnerable, you know, and that tight grip on

• 1:44:48Rich Roll?

  a social identity premised upon zip code, job, car, house, all that sort of stuff. It's so deeply, uh, imbued into that sense of self, that to even begin to parse that or to get somebody to understand that they are more than that and that that is actually irrelevant is very difficult. Uh, when it gets stripped away, it gets a little bit easier, more painful, of course. But when you're part of that, you know, matrix of interconnected, you know, sort of the social strata of especially in West LA, when we're talking about Los Angeles, like, this is, like, this runs deep, man.

• 1:45:33Speaker 01

  So deep. You know, there was this moment a year and a half ago where I, I did a sermon on,

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  On one hand, so many of us have no idea the level of oppression that has been caused by what we're wearing to church today. And I talked about how, you know, we have no idea and we're culpable for that. We just don't even know that we're culpable. And I just kind of started, you know, sharing some stats and the realities of just the messiness of what we've created. And somebody came up to me afterwards, really upset. And they said, you know, you don't know, because I, this is what I do for a living. And I own this massive, massive, you know, and on the board for this massive, massive chain of stores.

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  And I've visited those areas and it's not true. And I want to talk to you about it. You know, so I'm thinking, oh, man, you know, what's this going to be like? So I'm literally speaking to somebody who-

• 1:46:35Rich Roll?

  Who's an expert in this field or-

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  But who is perpetuating-

• 1:46:39Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  You know-

• 1:46:40Rich Roll?

  Pushing those buttons.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  I'm pushing those buttons. And they were, they were-

• 1:46:43Rich Roll?

  Are you talking about the garment industry specifically?

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  The garment industry, yeah. Very, very big and influential, you know, multiple, multiple brands. And, but the beauty of it is that he approached me. He didn't write me off. And we had lunch and it stretched for hours and we've become friends. And I see there's a work that's going on in his mind as he's beginning to process things. You know, now that we're just on this journey together. So I'm on a journey, you know, I'm just a dad, a husband, a pastor, and I'm exploring these things. And he has tremendous influence globally. He's on the same journey as well.

• 1:47:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  And the fact that we can invite one another without shame to self reflect on those things-

• 1:47:30Rich Roll?

  Well, that's how you move forward productively, right? At first, you have to have a safe way to communicate in a productive way.

• 1:47:39Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  And when there's space for that.

• 1:47:41Rich Roll?

  Other than just pointing fingers at each other.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  Yes, totally. Because it could have, it could have devolved to a, you know, back and forth email. You know, and then you lose the sense of humanity in the body language and of so much of communication that happens. So literally, sitting down for a couple hours, sharing a meal together was what unlocked it. And I think that, you know, the world talks about so much about, you know, what do you stand for, what do you stand against? And I would love if humanity could just sit longer and sit with people rather than just stand up, stand up, stand up. But, but let's sit with one another and talk and dialogue and go on this journey together.

• 1:48:19Rich Roll?

  Did you see the documentary, The True Cost?

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  I haven't seen that yet.

• 1:48:23Rich Roll?

  Oh, you should, you definitely gotta see it.

• 1:48:25Speaker 01

  Maybe I should sit down with this friend of mine and watch it together.

• 1:48:27Rich Roll?

  Um, yeah, it's a documentary about the impact of fast fashion on, you know, on human rights and on environmental rights, like just these, having these factories and this sort of perpetual machine of constantly churning out not just new clothes all the time, but like super cheap clothes. And, you know, what is the meaning, what is the impact when you go to an, an H and M or one of those kinds of stores and buy a T-shirt? And let's trace that back and see, you know, let's connect those dots all the way back to the, you know, proverbial garden.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  That are now, as I understand, designed to wear out quickly so you can then buy the newer thing quicker, right?

• 1:49:10Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, of course. And everything's a dollar, you know, everything's so cheap. Why is it so cheap?

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  And, and I don't know why this value, and frankly, I hear it a lot. This, see, this is a distortion among Christians, frankly, where there's such a high value of getting things cheap, almost like, and I see it culturally even beyond Christianity, where, oh my gosh, I got this shirt and I got it for so cheap, that this value of cheapness is so accelerated beyond.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  All the other things that we should be valuing.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  You know, and what's interesting is, is I've, as I've chosen to be more mindful and intentional. And in some ways, I have to save up longer to pay for things that do cost more.

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  You know, some people have accused me of, of being pretentious or like uppity. It's almost like, oh, well, you're,

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  you know, you're just, you're kind of a snob then if, if you have to have like sustainable clothing. Is that just because you want to like be hip? And I, you know, and I sit with people and I talk to them about it. I said, you, or is it that it's actually more snobbish and self-centered and uppity to say, no, I want it now and I want it fast and I want it cheap and I want it, you know, not thinking and caring about anything else.

• 1:50:36Rich Roll?

  That's an issue of how a narrative is getting framed incorrectly. You know what I mean? Because the, the idea that like patronizing

• 1:50:47Rich Roll?

  a business that's creating a sustainable product that isn't negatively impacting some indigenous community and is creating a, a product that will stand the test of time and last longer. Yeah, it's going to be more expensive. So you're pretentious for buying that? Or are you, you know, aligning your actions with your values in a, in a, in a very tactile, real way?

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. And this choice of, okay, I'm going to buy much less and I want it to last longer. You know, and I'm gonna, sometimes I'm going to refuse things that are given to me as gifts. And I want to recycle things and reuse things and repair things. And you know, it's just such a different, different approach that, and, and maybe it's my self-recovering, people pleaser sense that when somebody says you're just being uppity, I'm just, I'm, you know,

• 1:51:40Rich Roll?

  That's their perspective. That's speaking more about the, you know, them than you. You know that, right?

• 1:51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good.

• 1:51:46Rich Roll?

  Have you seen the minimalism documentary?

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so good.

• 1:51:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's good, right?

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  So good.

• 1:51:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  So good.

• 1:51:52Rich Roll?

  So True Cost, you gotta watch True Cost.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's my next one on the queue.

• 1:51:55Rich Roll?

  All right, man. So we gotta, we gotta wrap this up. For somebody who, who is interested in, in your perspective, perhaps they want to learn more about where you're coming from. They want to, they want to tap into the. The Jesus energy, they want to like, you know, learn more, like, what can you tell them? Like, read the Bible? Like, what, you know, what is the, what is a starting point for somebody who maybe is new to these ideas, or maybe they're coming out of a negative, you know, association with a past church experience? What's your suggestion?

• 1:52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, boy. I, I think that relationships are the key to it. So, um, you know, if truly 71% of Americans self identify as Christian, perhaps some listeners have coworkers or neighbors or friends that, you know, they wonder like, are they Christian? But, you know, I think what was, what happened for me was in college is, you know, I found some Christians that, that deeply were respectful and non judgmental. So I'd say first, if they have people in their life, just ask questions to start there. Man, the Bible is such a convoluted, seemingly from the surface, if, if you don't have the, the context and, you know, the background

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  and the patience to begin to wade through it, you know, it could be overwhelming in some ways. And so for me to learn how to read scripture with other people that were mature was super helpful. Um, you know, people can hit me up on Instagram, Surfer Drew.

• 1:53:35Rich Roll?

  Surfer Drew, man. And if you're in LA, can they, can anybody just come and catch your sermon?

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bella Church, uh, they can look that up online. And we've got a killer, uh, we call it a coffee lab and, uh, and food space where, um, there's just some really beautiful things.

• 1:53:53Rich Roll?

  Beans that you've hand, hand grown.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  No, no, it's much better. I don't want to ruin it. My sister works there and, and my brother-in-law actually run that. And it got featured in Eater LA. It's called Parable Coffee Lab. And, uh, they make everything from scratch. And there's, it's all vegan, vegetarian, and just, just beautiful. But yeah, all, everyone's welcome. So we have, we have such a variety of people that show up and, and are actually shocked that they show up and they say, you know, I thought it was me this. And I just feel loved and accepted and, and challenged and inspired. And it's such a, it's, it's so much fun.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  Which is odd to say, it's so much fun when I'm talking about church, but I mean, you know, people like Anthony Zemidi and it's just real life people on the journey together.

• 1:54:37Rich Roll?

  He's a great dude. So what's the sermon gonna be about this weekend?

• 1:54:42Rich Roll?

  Do you work, do you spend the whole week like writing it? Like how does, what's that process like?

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  So I get up really early in the morning and I, actually I do a lot of prayer because I feel like, man, who am I? I mean, it's this constant, you know, who am I to get up in front of a group of people and, and, and share from my heart and from scripture. And so a lot of it is, you know, God, help me, give me wisdom. And I, and I'm, I just, I'm voracious in my reading and research and, you know, I love drawing upon a variety of things. And so we're in a series right now on the book of Ecclesiastes. And there's a, there's two truths. There's the under the sun truth. It's kind of like, kind of the

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  human, non-spiritual point of view, you know? And so what's work look like? What's eating look like? What's pleasure look like? What's the meaning of life look like from a non-spiritual, just human point of view? But what does it look like from a divine perspective? And so this idea of two truths, we've been exploring. So yeah, I mean, it's the whole week. I, I, as I go throughout the week, I'm, I'm constantly allowing the experiences of my life and the community to speak into it. So often I'll go into, you know, a Sunday and the illustrations are from Saturday night, Friday morning, you know, in the midst of the week. It's a lot of, a lot of creativity that, that,

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  you know, I attribute to, you know, God as the source.

• 1:56:13Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, it's, it is a lot of creativity. I mean, literally to come up with a new sermon every week, like basically coming up with a TED Talk every week, right? A long, a long TED Talk.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So I often, I joke around, I say, you know, I'm, I'm the full-time head of staff at Baylor Church and then I volunteer as a senior pastor because I, I mean, I frankly, I max my time in the leadership. You know, there's a church and a preschool and a huge staff and it's, you know, and I'm a young leader trying to. I'm in no way perfect and I make mistakes and I'm, you know, constantly, I've got some great mentors in my life speaking into my leadership. So then, you know, it's super early in the morning, late at night, throughout the day, it's this unfolding writing of itself. And, you know, I don't take up a manuscript and just read from it, but it's, it just comes from me. And people say, you know, do you remember, do you rehearse, do you memorize

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  it? And I said, well, if you were to tell me your life story, have you memorized it? Or do you know it? And they said, well, I know it. I said, so you can tell me your life story without notes? And I'm like, well, yeah, because I know it. I said, it's kind of like that, where I just, I try to internalize it and it becomes part of who I am, that it's from a place of knowing rather than memorizing.

• 1:57:31Rich Roll?

  Well, when I get back from Ireland, I'd love to come and hear you deliver one of your sermons. And let's get Anthony and let's go for a run.

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  There you go. Hey, we're right at the end of Dirt Mulholland, so.

• 1:57:41Rich Roll?

  Oh, is that where you, that's where you, that's where you live?

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  Well, the church is on Mulholland, and literally, you know, I live right down the street. So that's where I, that's where I start, at the Nike Tower, top of Sullivan.

• 1:57:53Rich Roll?

  That's cool. That's my turnaround point usually.

• 1:57:55Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 1:57:56Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, I come from this side, and then I had, that's usually where I, you know, turn it around and bring it back. So we'll make it happen.

• 1:58:04Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 1:58:04Rich Roll?

  All right, cool. Thanks so much, man. Yeah, super fun, really inspirational. Thank you for being open and honest and vulnerable. Like I said earlier, it's inspirational what you're doing. It's really cool work, and I look forward to learning more about it, and I want to see it firsthand. So if you'll have me.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:58:24Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  You had me today?

• 1:58:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right. So you can check out Drew, Surfer Drew on Instagram. Where, does the church have a website or any other place where you want to direct people who want to learn more?

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, ballerchurch.org is a great place, and my contact info's there. And, you know, it's like anything, you can read about stuff online that, you know, is just the summary, but it's, it's the real life of people that you get to know that's the real deal. So would love to meet people in person if possible. And then the podcasts are on iTunes, Baller Church, people from all over, download it and listen to it.

• 1:59:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, you put the sermons up on iTunes?

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's cool. That's great. Yeah, definitely let people know that.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  I'm such a rookie at this, you know.

• 1:59:10Rich Roll?

  I thought you went to USC for marketing.

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  I know, man. I'm forgetting all these things. Yeah, Bellar Church, they can look it up. I think it's still under either Bellar Church or Bellar Presbyterian Church. And you know, our whole catalog's there. So the video and the audio of just my sermon. And so it's crazy. People will like be in town. They're like, dude, I'm from North Carolina. I've been listening to your messages. And I'm like, you know, that's surreal for me. And it's just great that that's out there to be blessing for people.

• 1:59:38Rich Roll?

  Good talking to you. We did it. How you feel?

• 1:59:40Speaker 01

  Feeling great. Honored to be here.

• 1:59:42Rich Roll?

  All right, good.

• 1:59:42Speaker 01

  Honor.

• 1:59:43Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Peace.

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  Plants.

• 1:59:48Rich Roll?

  All right, we did it. How you guys doing? Was it good? You okay? I thought it was cool. I loved it. It was awesome, right? If you enjoyed that conversation, give Drew a shout out and I'll put links up in the show notes. Again, check out our new meal planner, meals.richroll.com, or click on Meal Planner on the upper menu on my website, richroll.com, for just a dollar and 90 a week. You can change your life, you guys. No downside there. If you would like to support this show and my work, there's a couple of simple ways to do it. Share it with your friends and on social media. Leave a review on iTunes. Make sure you hit that subscribe button on iTunes. That's super important. We also have a Patreon set up for those who want to financially support my work. And I really appreciate everybody who has done that. It means a lot to me. There's a banner ad for our Patreon page

• 2:00:33Rich Roll?

  on every episode page of this podcast on my website. So you can check it out there. If you would like to receive a free weekly email from me, I send one out every Thursday. It's called Roll Call. Basically, five or six things I came across over the course of the week, a couple of articles I read, a documentary I watched, a video I enjoyed, a product that I'm digging, or I don't know, what else? Maybe, what else have I shared in there? Just cool stuff that I come across. It's like, I'm not trying to sell you anything. There's no affiliate links here. It's just as I go throughout the week and I read something, I make a note and I put it in my little notes thing on my computer. And by the end of the week, I usually have a bunch of cool stuff that I thought would be cool to share with you. And that's really all it is. So if you sound, it sounds like something that

• 2:01:15Rich Roll?

  might be interesting to you, you can, you can get it. All you gotta do is give me your email address and you can add that in any of those email capture windows on my website. That's it. I want to thank today's sponsors, Bowl and Branch, the first honest and transparent bedding company that only uses sustainable and responsible methods of sourcing and manufacturing. Go to bowlandbranch.com today for $50 off. Your first set of sheets by typing in the promo code RichRoll. And Harry's, a superior shave and an affordable price. Friends of the Rich Roll Podcast can visit harrys.com/roll to redeem your free trial set, which comes with a razor, five blade cartridge, shaving gel, and post shave gel. All you gotta pay is shipping. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show this week from behind the scenes.

• 2:02:00Rich Roll?

  Jason Camiello for audio engineering and production and help with the show notes and configuring the website. Shawn Patterson for graphics and theme music as always by Analemma. By the time you're listening to this, I will probably be right in the midst of competing in this Odo Low race in Sweden. This will go up, I think, the evening before the competition. So I will catch you guys up on how that went on the flip side. I'm a little nervous, I'm a little scared, I'm excited, and just trying to front load all these podcasts before I have to leave for Sweden, which is what I'm doing right now. But I'm just going on and on and on. I'm blathering. All right, you guys, have a great week. I'll see you back here soon. Peace, plants.