First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Jim McBride

Jim McBride tells about growing up in a carnival family and giving his life to Christ as adult businessman. With his new book RITE OF PASSAGE, Jim encourages fathers to be intentional about giving a blessing to their children. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 28 Jul 2011
Audio Format:: other

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

And so, you know, for me, that night was a culmination, was a rite of passage, you know, that I'll never forget, is when my dad communicated how excited he was that I had given my life to Christ in service to him. Today on First Person, we're going to hear the testimony of Jim McBride. Welcome to our program. I'm Wayne Shekert. We're here each week at this time introducing someone whose life has been redeemed by Jesus Christ and dedicated to his service. And you can learn more about First Person and viewer's schedule of upcoming guests at firstpersoninterview.com. Well, if you don't recognize the name of Jim McBride, just think back a few years to a movie called Facing the Giants and think of the burly opposing football coach in that movie who always had a candy sucker in his mouth. Well, that villain is actually a very godly man who is the executive pastor of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, and the executive producer of the movies Facing the Giants, Fireproof, and a new one out soon called Courageous. Jim is also the author of a new book just coming out this week titled Right of Passage, Teaching Parents How to Extend a Blessing and Guide Their Children into Adult Hood. More about the book a little later in today's broadcast. Jim and I recently sat down in my studio and began talking about his background, how he came to Christ and the difference that is made in his life. From the time of 1930 on my family always has owned a carnival business, all the rides, all the games, all the food concessions, and that was the life that my father was born into. And so he lived on the road going week to week different places, setting up and tearing down the carnival with his father and brothers. And so I was born into that same family business of the carnival. From the time I was old enough to walk, that progressed until the summer of my seventh year I wound up working at the end of a haunted house. I laid in a casket all day for $10 a day. And when people walked by there was a sign that said this little boy has been stricken by sleeping disease and they would peek in and I would slap the screen. And that was my summer job all my seventh grade year, but I guess the real turning point for me was when I was nine years old and I came out that year and my uncle had bought me an ice cream trailer. I was a 15 by 10 foot trailer and he basically started me in business on my own. Wait a minute, how old were you? Nine years old and at that point he said, I'm going to show you how to run the machines today and then you'll hire and fire your own help. You'll pay your stock and collect all the money and I'll haul this truck from one place to the next each week and set it in spot for you, but then you have to do everything else. Most kids start with a lemonade stand with paper cups. You started with an ice cream trailer with machines and many weeks we were playing state fairs mainly that year and so many times I would have two other employees, sometimes three depending on the day and many days finish up with $800 to $1,000 in my pocket and having to pay out all the stock and so a lot of times the milkman would come by and he would check to see if the stand needing stock and I would say yes sir and he'd say no I need to speak to the owner and I'd say well I am the owner and they would drive off and go find my uncle or my dad and say hey we need to know if you need anything for that ice cream stand and they'd say well the man that runs it is up there go talk to him and he said no it's just a nine year old or kid up there and he said well that's the man that runs it and so they would come back and I'd finally get the order but at nine running that business I began to learn some life lessons that my father taught me about going the extra mile if you're going to do it do it with excellence it didn't take very many times of him coming and inspecting something and asking me to do it a second time till something generated inside of me to want to do it to the point that when he walked in he was in awe and amazement not that he said hey you need to do it again but he said nobody's ever done it this good and so also another thing that he taught me was looking for the person who's your supervisor or the person over you and just find out what their headaches are and find out how you can help eliminate those headaches well you learn these lessons early then yes and I learned you know if you're going to supervise people I didn't have people working for me any younger than nine so yeah people mostly were adults that worked for me and ice cream stand and I learned if you're going to supervise people that are older than you then you need to understand what respect is and honor because people won't work for you if you don't have that and so at nine I learned a lot of life lessons and it wasn't long after that sometime around twelve or thirteen that he began to let me drive that truck up and down the highway and what state were you in probably shouldn't name the state but at 16 he bought a tilt a whirl which is a major ride and written many a tilt a whirl in my time I transferred then from from being responsible for an ice cream stand to being responsible for a ride and helping up that and and take it up and down each week so as a young man did you think that's what life was going to be for you the same as your father yes and was told that often by the family you know that one day you know you're going to be running this like my dad was and and that was a passion you know you you want to be a part of the of the family business and that was a big thing for me and when I got to through with high school and thought that was ahead where I for me where I'd be going I wound up going into the United States Marine Corps and serving for six years and somewhere during that time it added to what I'd learned as a young man it added through that sense of discipline sense of honor courage integrity integrity absolutely and then those things accompanied with what I had early in life created some new aspirations powerful say very powerful when there's the Lord come into your life Jim after the Marine Corps I went to work for a cable TV company managed it for a couple years and then I went to work for Coca Cola adding the principles that I'd learned of going extra mile I wound up very quickly becoming management so I wound up in Burlington North Carolina and I hadn't probably been to church in eight years other than to a wedding or a funeral and the Lord wasn't really a part of my life at all and my wife who was Christian we had four children by that time all under ten years old and she prayed for me she invited pastors to come to the house to visit with me many times they'd leave shaking their head but they would come faithfully each place we went and while we're there in Burlington I was sitting in my office one day and I probably had at that point a hundred and twenty employees reporting to me while working there one day I was sitting at my desk and working on some reports and I heard someone out in the hallway and it was a supervisor and one of his employees was talking to him and he says Mickey why don't you go to church with me on Sunday and before Mickey could respond I raised my head up I didn't know what was happening then but I know now and I raised my head up and I said well Scott his name was Scott K for I said Scott why don't you invite me to go to your church sometime and he said well Mr. McBride would you go would you go to church sir yes and I said well sure you tell me how to get there so he he wrote it down and he gave me a list and I went home and but what prompted you to want to go you know Wayne the only thing I know is that now looking back as the Holy Spirit was drawing me because to be it because I had no affiliation with anything of that type and I went home and you know I knew church growing up I'd been to church but nothing at that point and I went home and I told my wife I said we're going to Brookwood Baptist Church this Sunday and when I revived her and fanned her off and she she said really I said yes and we're going to Sunday school we're going to the whole the whole shit of it yeah so we went to Sunday school that morning and it was Super Bowl Sunday well you know I knew enough at that point I wasn't done I knew that I was a leader responsible for a lot of people we walked in and went to Sunday school when we're done with Sunday school I'm beginning to think I've got to get out of here and so I told my wife Sheila I said here's what we're going to do we're going to sit up in the balcony towards the end because you know I'm not feeling so good I've got a pain in my shoulder I'm thinking I might have to scoot out of here before this is over so we get up there and the pastor starts talking he said it's Super Bowl Sunday whose team are you quarterbacking are you helping people head towards heaven or towards hell with your actions and at that moment it was like it was nobody speaking but him directly to me holy spirit showed up again right amen and at that point I began to say you know my shoulder I didn't feel any pain in my shoulder and all I can think about was focusing on him so I started staring at the carpet thinking I'll just get this shoulder pain back now I'm out of here and so he's saying at that point he said you know it doesn't matter whether you're the CEO of a company or the sweeper in a company there are people that look up to you it might be your children somebody else's children a co-worker a friend but there's somebody who's saying Joe is successful and if I want to be successful I need to model my life after Joe whose team are you quarterbacking God's or Satan's and at that moment I'm thinking I need to walk down there and talk to him but I wound up I talked myself out of it at the end of the service but I told Sheila I said one thing we're gonna do we're gonna come back here tonight they were having a Super Bowl service they were gonna have their own commercials I told him I said well I'm gonna bring you some coats that y'all can use for refresh my shirt so I'm beginning to get a little comfortable but I come back that night I watch the service the commercials and the whole deal and I leave and I still haven't made any decision but that week I just cannot get it off my mind and so I'm talking to anybody who talked to me about what I heard Sunday well on Friday of that week I left message at the back of the door of the coke plant I said when these five men come in tonight I need to see them well usually those men would come in over a wide range of time but that particular day the first one came to my office at about three o'clock and when he knocked he walked in and I asked him I said Tommy tell me who Jesus Christ is to you and he started sharing his testimony and it was almost at the moment that he finished a knock happen on my door and the second man walked in and so same scenario and all the way through to the fifth guy sitting in the room and he finishes up so at that moment when the fifth one finished I told him I said you know guys there's nothing I need more right now than I need to know Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior can you help me with that we'll continue talking with Jim McBride and learn of his heart as a father that's coming up today here on first person next time on first person we'll talk with a family who have turned their grief into comforting others you know God promises us and we hold onto this promise that he will use the hardest experiences in our lives and he will use them for our ultimate good he will use the worst things we can imagine for good and we have just been so blessed to see him do that Nancy and David Guthrie join us to share their story of hope in the midst of grief join us next time here on first person we're talking with Jim McBride on this week's program Jim's new book is out this week called right of passage God has given him the gift of leadership and good business sense but I wanted to know about him as a father after coming to Christ and I began to grow and promise keepers were really key in my life and but I began to fellowship with a lot of men and begin to be in accountability groups and sitting in prayer groups and one of the things I heard a echo back and forth many times were guys saying you know I never knew if my dad really loved me or I didn't know if my dad was encouraged by what I was doing if I really had his blessing and so I heard that among men I heard it with women I said you know I want to do something different you know I even with my own dad I knew that he loved me but I you know wasn't sure when I left the carnival business and I went and all these different things was where he was with all that because he wasn't very vocal about it and so many dads aren't yes that's right a lot of dads are quiet and it's like you should know I love you and you shouldn't have to ask and I wanted to do something different to really give my kids a 25-year jump start on life knowing that when they left my home that they were going forth with their father's blessing with his love with his encouragement and to surround them with a board of directors if you will that would provide spiritual council form I began to pray and Sheila and I discussed and prayed through how could we do something different with our children something that would be a rite of passage a moment for when they would move and from boyhood and and from being a little girl to being a man and a woman when when God began to move you in this direction how old were your kids my kids at that point were in their teenage years my oldest was around 17 and so that was something we began to pray through and looking at the elements I wanted to have some topics that they would talk to that someone would talk to them about and as I prayed about it I began to line up the spiritual board of directors people that when my kids needed to hear from someone they would who would they look to if it not me and my wife but this some other people around them interested people yes topics that came up for me and I suggest in the book that you know that these are flexible you may have different topics but mine were faith hope love purity integrity and family and so with those topics that border directors I put a person with every topic asked them to pray through that topic what they would say to my child on that topic and then give them an ebony's or a memorial stone something that would remind them in the future of that conversation when you stop and think about it this is something that cultures have done through the ages and we somehow have lost that haven't we absolutely you know many cultures many other faiths have some kind of rite of passage some kind of moment that marks that child from moving from being a young person to being responsible and so the I talk about that in the book to the Maasai tribe in Africa bar mitzvahs and mat mitzvahs and and why there's a need for us to do this and so being very intentional about it and in your case you actually have a almost a service that you go through with your kids right yes it's a ceremony it's very intentional once I line up those border directors that are people that are familiar with them once I line them up I stationed them on a trail for the guys and the the girls are in a indoor environment but they go start the day I pray with them and then I started them on the journey and they go and visit with each one of those people on those topics the family person is someone that's maybe a grandparent who talks to them and gives them that but Jim you've got to have a relationship with that child that they will they'll accept this from you they'll accept this ceremony from you if you if you wait until ceremony time to say here's what we're going to do and you have no other relationship with them they're going to reject it or absolutely this this ceremony is not the the end all and there's a lot of work it has to go on both sides of it one to prepare your child and prepare their heart to receive it but then also you know when you acknowledge that there's still a whole lot of parenting it has to happen on the backside it's just a point that where your child has a I like to say that what I'm trying to change is when somebody sits down with my son or my daughter in the years to come and ask him when did you become a man or when did you become a woman their response will be when my dad said I was yeah or let me tell you what my dad did well I love it for so many reasons not the least of which what it says and what it communicates to to the young person who's going through that ceremony prescribed by mom and dad but also to have those role models to look up to and to have those role models take that seriously so that they know that they're being called to be accountable in these kids lives as well yes one of the key moments is when we finish up the journey and we go back to the house and we have lunch and then I take a moment to start around that table and I call out each one of those board of directors and I may say to Joe Joe I appreciate the prayer warrior you've been for me and for my wife and for our family and I will after I affirm him I'll say no Joe I'm asking you if you'll stand and look my son in the eye and make the commitment to be that same kind of person for him and we do that until all the way around the table every man is standing and my son is sitting down and at that moment I look him in the eye and I tell them I say the enemy is going to try to tell you all your life that you're the only person that is has your particular situation you need to keep it to yourself and don't share it with anybody else and God's word said that there's wisdom in many counselors and these people are standing making a commitment to be a godly counsel for you and to pray for you and so there's a time when a little boy stands sits down but I'm calling out the man in you just stand up and to look these men back in the eye and make a commitment back to them like they've made to you. This is for young men and young women. Yes my daughters when all those women are standing standing up and I call out the woman in her a special moment that follows that is when scripture says that a good wife is a crown to her husband's head and after all that's their standing I share with her that if she'll give me the liberty I want to acknowledge that is the key man in her life right now since she's not married that I want her to know that she has been a crown to her father's head and I pull out a full crown and place it on her head right before I pray the prayer of spiritual blessing over her life as her father. Well our listeners can read more about this as they say in your book right of passage subtitled. A father's blessing. And it's wonderful it really is but before we leave I want you to circle back to your own father going through what you've gone through as the father now become that son again and talk about that. One of the great moments in my life I'll never forget is the night I went to help my dad he's still in the carnival business today and even while I was working at Coke and then later in the church I would take my kids and go to places he was help with carnival business and let my kids get their you know feet dirty hands dirty whatever great fun yeah they loved it now and one night when we finished up at around midnight chain of circumstances had led to me doing something with a ring that I had that belonged to the great uncle who started the carnival business and he had gave it to me and I felt led to the Lord to give it away to his daughter and so I gave it away and did not ask for anything because I believe that was what God was telling me and my dad had heard about it so that night when I let all the kids go and it was just me and my dad in Manassas Virginia underneath the stars raking up the trash out of the stand that he had been running all day he called me over to his side and he put his hands around me and he said you know you don't know that I know what you did with that ring and I want you to know that when you told me that God you love God that didn't mean anything to me and I thought oh my goodness where's the said it and he said but when I saw you living for God that meant everything to me and he said I had this ring and he pulled out the ring that I have on my right hand now he said I had this ring made and it's made from gold that belonged to several different people in our family and I had these seven diamonds put in it and I had the ring ring and on my hand and he said you know I had this ring made as a symbol of your father seeing you living and loving God and I want you to have it as a gift from your father and you have my blessing and so you know for me that night was a culmination was a rite of passage you know that I'll never forget is when my dad took me to his side underneath there and not only acknowledged me as a man and told me he loved me and he and I had his blessing but communicate how excited he was that I'd give him my life to Christ and was in service to him. You gave a blessing to your kids and you received a blessing from your own father. Yes. How great is God? You can't out give God. You can hear how tender this big man's heart is because of what Christ has done in his life. Jim's book will be released this week by Moody Publishers. Again it's called Right of Passage of Father's Blessing and we'll put additional information and links to the book and even a Facebook page on our website firstpersoninterview.com. Jim is a member of the team at Sherwood Baptist in Albany Georgia which is about to release their latest film Courageous on September 30th. Following the success of facing the Giants and Fireproof Courageous will again challenge people spiritually through its excellent storytelling and we'll provide links to more information at firstpersoninterview.com and between now and the film's release we'll be featuring some of the cast members here on First Person. Our website firstpersoninterview.com contains an audio archive and a schedule of upcoming programs firstpersoninterview.com or facebook.com/firstpersoninterview. Next week we'll talk with David and Nancy Guthrie. Now with thanks to my friend and producer Joe Carlson I'm Wayne Shepherd. We'll see you next time here on First Person. [Music]