Why You Need Friends that will Literally Slap You in the Face

In this episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, you’ll hear Doug Smith being interviewed by Tom O’Boyle and Nate Devlin. The conversation originally aired on the Scattered Seeds Podcast. 

You'll hear me talk about: 

• The state of homelessness in Pittsburgh 
• Why we need friends that will literally slap you in the face 
• How I'm currently growing in my leadership journey 
• And much, much more! 

Resources Mentioned:

• The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene 
• Light of Life Rescue Mission
• Scattered Seeds Podcast
• Tom O’Boyle 
• Nate Devlin 

Connect with Doug Smith
Website | Facebook | Instagram | X (Twitter)| LinkedIn

Rate This Podcast: https://ratethispodcast.com/l3leadership

Transcript

Doug Smith : 0:00

Hey, leader, and welcome to another episode of the L three Leadership Podcast, where we are obsessed with helping you grow to your maximum potential and to maximize the impact of your leadership. My name is Doug Smith and I am your host. And if you are new to the podcast, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here, and I hope that you enjoy the content and become a subscriber. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while and it's added value to your life, it would mean the world to me. If you'd leave us a rating and review on whatever app you listen to podcast through, that really does help us to grow our audience and reach more leaders. So thank you in advance for that. Well leader . In this week's episode, you're gonna be hearing me be interviewed by my friends Tom o Boyle and Nate Devlin on their podcast, which is called The Scattered Seeds Podcast. If you have a subscribe to it, I encourage you to check it out. And in our conversation, you're gonna hear me share my story. I talk about the importance of having good friends. I share what we're up to at light of life and what's happening in the city of Pittsburgh as it relates to homelessness and so much more. I think it's gonna add a ton of value to your life. So let's dive right in. Enjoy.

Speaker 2: 0:57

You are listening to the Scattered Seeds podcast where every life has a story

Nate Devlin: 1:04

To hear somebody's story and to hear how the story of Christ and the Gospel intersects with somebody's life so that their story is taken up into the story of Christ. I don't , there's no better story to hear.

Speaker 2: 1:16

It's powerful when God has brought you through something. 'cause not only can you go, this is what God has brought me through. Maybe it can touch that one person.

Thomas O'Boyle: 1:24

I was a week away from leaving my career in the media and about to embark on the communications job, which I now occupy here at the church. Never underestimate the sovereignty of God

Speaker 2: 1:51

From dealing drugs to feeding hundreds. Today's guest has gone from being a bad influence to someone whom the Lord is using to reach others daily. Doug Smith is currently the Assistant Executive Director of Pittsburgh's Light of Life Mission, working with past guest Jarrell , Gilliam and Hutch to bring help to the homeless of the greater Pittsburgh area. So join Tom, Nate , and Doug as they explore the path the Lord has led him on and the slap in the face that helped him find it. Welcome back to the Scattered Seeds podcast, where every life has a story.

Thomas O'Boyle: 2:27

So, Doug, welcome to The Scattered Seed Podcast. Hey , it's great to

Doug Smith : 2:31

See you . Honored to be here. Yeah , I've been following you guys for a while , so love the work that you do. Oh, thank you. And fellow podcasters, I always love talk and shop with you guys. Yeah . What's ,

Nate Devlin: 2:38

What's the name of your podcast?

Doug Smith : 2:39

The L three Leadership Podcast.

Nate Devlin: 2:41

L three Leadership. Yep . L three . What are the three L's? Yeah , <laugh> .

Doug Smith : 2:44

That's what everyone always asks. Yeah. Learn, launch, lead . So we believe leaders should be in a continual cycle of those three things. Learning , uh, launching whatever's in their heart, and then ultimately leading wherever they are . Okay .

Nate Devlin: 2:55

Yeah. Is that an independent organization that you started,

Doug Smith : 2:58

Or It is, yeah. Yeah. Okay . I started around 2014.

Nate Devlin: 3:01

Okay. Any collaboration with Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation

Doug Smith : 3:05

Or , yeah , so it's actually, so I guess how L three started, and I can share more of my story later, but basically, my life was headed nowhere really, really fast. I was a drug dealer on my way to be a drug act alcoholic. My life turns around through Christ, and I ended up on staff at this church, victory Family Church in Cranberry, pastor Larry Benor . I don't know if you know him through your Geneva Connections, but I

Nate Devlin: 3:25

Know that name. I could trace it, I'm sure. Okay . But it's a very familiar name.

Doug Smith : 3:28

Yeah. He handed me a John Maxwell cd and , uh, I never knew there was such thing as personal development, personal growth. And I listened to it, and I felt like I was neo in the Matrix. I transcribed the entire lesson. I said, gimme everything you got. And so this passion for personal development just went off in me for years. Literally two or three hours a night I'd be listening to personal development and eventually got to a place where it's like, Hey, I wanna start doing for others what, you know, John Maxwell and others have done for me. 2012, I went through the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation Collaborative, and it was the first time I heard, for those listening, if you're not familiar, Reed Carpenter and Sam Schumaker, the whole vision of Pittsburgh being one day more famous for God than steel mm-hmm <affirmative> . And every time I'd get around that my heart would just explode with vision. And so much so that I called Reed Carpenter and I said, Reid, I feel called to do for my generation what you did for yours. What should I do? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And he just said, Doug just started gathering people and see what the Holy Spirit does. And so there was 20 of us on Mount Washington. We prayed over the city and I said, Hey, I don't know what it's gonna look like, but we're gonna develop leaders in our city, and we believe if we'll invest in , develop leaders in all sectors, that we can ultimately win this city for Christ. And so that was, yeah , almost 10 years ago now. And so we have a podcast that has over 400 episodes. We do mastermind groups. We've had a one day conference a few years. And so, and that's all a side project along with, you know, full-time job. And

Andocia : 4:45

At in dosha , we help transform visions into results. What does that mean? We often work with companies who are doing amazing things that have incredible products and services, but fail to communicate what they do properly and market themselves effectively. We passionately serve entrepreneurs, business leaders, and visionaries to see what's in their heart and their visions for the future come to life. We do that by providing fractional marketing, leadership, and creative execution all in one . That's what we call VCMO. With VCMO, you get a marketing director and a team of creative professionals to help execute all of your marketing needs, all for one monthly cost. How do we do all this? We do it three ways. Number one, we get your vision. We get excited about your mission and your trajectory as a company, and come alongside the see you go further faster. Two, we have a team of talented strategists and creatives to get all of the work done. And three, we flat out work freaking hard for you and your company. Reach out today. Let's start a conversation.

Nate Devlin: 5:46

So that was the short story of the long arc of your life. Yeah . So let's get into the , the details.

Doug Smith : 5:50

Yeah. Yeah. So , uh, I grew up in Wexford, went to North Allegheny and had a pretty normal family life, I'd say till sixth or seventh grade. And two significant things happened at that point. One is I got invited to go to a Baptist camp, which still exists, slippery rock baptist camp, right off the slippery rock exit. And for the first time I heard the gospel and my camp counselor brought me into the cabin and just said, Doug, do you wanna make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life? And I said, yes, now down right there, and prayed and invited Christ into my life. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And so instantly felt called into ministry. I wanted to be a pastor. This was in seventh grade. Wow. And they started bringing me to a church here in Crafton called Middletown Road Baptist Church. And I went to a church picnic right after that camp, saw this beautiful girl. And I said, Hey, I, I think I could go to this church every week. Yeah . <laugh> <laugh> . And so I did. I had a crush on it . It turns out it was the pastor's daughter. Oh . And , uh, I joined the choir. I mean, 'cause she played the piano and I could see her forehead sticking out from over the piano. So Yeah . You know , anything I could do to be around her. But the pastor started mentoring me, and it was, it was a beautiful thing. But at the same time, my mom got diagnosed with a rare nerve disease. If you've ever had your feet fall asleep or have pins and needles, she started having that 24 hours a day neuropathy, or what? Yeah , polyneuropathy. I'm not exactly sure what the term is, but Yeah. It wasn't Ms. A lot of people ask that, but the doctors ultimately didn't know how to treat it. Yeah. So she ended up using a walker, ultimately ended up in a wheelchair and really ended up in bed most of her life. So dramatically shifted the way our family did. Family. I went from having family nights every week to my dad working two jobs. He was a bus driver in our school district. He would drive for giant eagle trucks on the weekend. So he was never home. My mom was in bed all the time, so I had no boundaries. As a 13-year-old, which is a 13-year-old, it's like the greatest thing ever, <laugh> . But summer of eighth grade, I remember being in the woods with a bunch of friends. This kid pulls out a pipe and I'm like, oh man, this is what they tell you about in school. That's when I first started doing drugs. And by the end of that summer, fell totally away from God, wanted nothing to do with him , and basically stopped trying in school, determined that I would never amount to anything, had to go to summer school every single year just to get to the next grade. In ninth grade. I found out that my mom pipe, was it crack? No. No. Oh, thank God. No. No . But , uh, it was just marijuana. But that's marijuana. That's what I started with. But then I found out my mom had these posts called Oxycontins. And so it's basically synthetic heroin. And I found out there was a market for those. So I would steal pills from my mom and sell them in our high school. Got into acid and basically was just parting all throughout high school. Fast forward to my senior year, my mom had gotten so ill October of 2002 that she ended up passing away. And when she passed away, this was so strange to me. I , I grieved, but not in the sense that she was gone. I was actually relieved. 'cause the last six months of her life were horrible. I saw her suffer unimaginable things. And so when she passed, what did bother me and what I did grieve was I didn't know she had a relationship with Christ. But I didn't know why that bothered me. 'cause I didn't care at all about Christ. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . But every night I'm getting drunk, I'm getting high, and I'm , my head would hit the pillow at night and these thoughts would just come to me like, you're gonna be 70 years old one day and still be being tormented by the fact of you not knowing if your mom knows Christ. And so that torments me for about three months. And then one Saturday morning, literally out of nowhere, this woman calls me , uh, it turns out I'm related to her. She's a lot older than me. I had no relationship with her. I was 17 years old. And she called me and she said, Doug, I really felt like the Lord put you on my heart this morning. And he wanted me to let you know that I was actually a nurse in the hospital with your mom. And I led your mom into a relationship with Christ a few weeks before she passed. Wow. And I think God wants you to know that she's related to you. She's related to me. Yeah . In what , in what way? To this day? I don't know. Okay . I think she's my cousin. So we're , we're friends on Facebook. Yeah. I thank her every year. Yeah. 'cause that phone call, when she said that my niece hit the ground, I don't remember anything else. She said, tears going down my face. And, and I just said, God, whatever you want for the rest of my life, I'm yours. How old were you then? I was 17. That was the first time for me that I learned that one God loved me so much that he would have someone call me. Two. He loved my mom so much. I know a lot of us pray for loved ones who don't know Christ. And the reality is when , even when people lose people and they're not sure, I tell them, listen, God loved that person so much. Like God loved my mom so much that he sent, probably so many people were pathing . For whatever reason, it was this woman, Chrissy, who got the opportunity to lead her to Christ. Wow . And so that was the turning point for me. And then two weeks later, again, another God moment, got invited by a girl to a Bible study. This Bible study was started by a mom in our high school. I found out she was a mom, just had a passion. She felt like God led her to start this Bible study five years before I went there. And she was scared to death to start it. She ends up doing it. 150 kids were going to this Bible study from North Allegheny every single week. Wow . They actually had to reset the foundation of their house because of how many kids were going. Wow . It was just a mom with a passion for Christ. Huh . So I walked downstairs, I see a beautiful girl sitting on the couch. And I thought, I'm going to Bible study every week. And so I don't know how you guys are, but it wasn't the same beautiful girl. It wasn't No things didn't work out with a pastor's daughter. Yeah . Right , right . But , uh, but I did. So I saw this beautiful girl. It turns out it was the mother's daughter. I went out thing for daughter sake , <laugh> . I know. But I do wonder, I'm like, how many men actually follow God because of a beautiful woman they saw somewhere , uh, that followed God, probably a lot of , probably a lot <laugh> . Yeah. Right. Um, so to , to wrap up the story, basically I walked home from that Bible study, reignited a fire for God in me. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And I went home that night and I told my high school friends, one, I called my shot. I said, I met the woman I'm gonna marry, which was the girl on the couch. Spoiler alert. That's my wife today. Wow. My wife, she left Bible study that night and she went up to her mom and she said, I can't believe Doug came to our Bible study tonight. He's one of the most influential kids in our school. But he uses all of his influence for drugs, alcohol, partying, et cetera . If he ever got a hold of God, I think he could change the world. And for whatever reason, her mom felt led to start bringing me over their house for family dinners. Uh, her dad is the dean of, or was he just retired, was the Dean of admission at Carnegie Mellon University for 45 years. And they became a family that basically adopted me as a 17-year-old and showed me an entirely different way of life. They showed me what a godly family looked like. They showed me what godly father and a husband looked like. They brought me to a Victory Family Church where I ended up interning. And that was really the turning point, this family taking an interest. And I guess the last thing I'll say here is I was sharing my story with actually my , my tax advisor who went to high school with me. And he said, Doug, you know, I , I've known you for a long time, and how many people do you think that were in your situation actually make it out? Mm-hmm . And I'm an optimist by nature. I'm like, 50%. And he said, I, I would probably guess it's more like five. Yeah. And man, that broke my heart. And I had a younger sister who was living the same lifestyle that I did. She kept going down the same path. She ends up being a heroin addict. Unfortunately. And again, this is more the light of life story, but she ends up being a heroin addict. She came into our program at Light of Life, ends up giving her her life to Christ at Light of Life, which is amazing. But we lost my sister to an overdose in 2019. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um , which is devastating. But what made her go that way and me get out the reality is one, God obviously getting a hold of God early. But two, it was other people showing me another way. And I think that's the number one way that kids need to get out. When I think about kids in hard circumstances, they just don't have someone in to show them another way or model another way of life. Mm-hmm . And you know, for me it was my mother-in-law and father-in-law. It was my youth pastor. And without those three people, I would've probably continued to go down the same path. How

Nate Devlin: 12:52

Did you kick the substance? So did you have to go to rehab or did you just cold Turkey

Doug Smith : 12:57

Or? No, it wasn't cold Turkey. <laugh>. Right after I graduated, I went on a senior trip where I basically got high and drunk every day for 14 days. And then went through a church camp the week after. And that's when I would say I really rededicated my life to Christ. I heard about an internship at this church. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And I thought, oh man, if I'm working at a church like Laura , my wife, it wasn't my wife at the time. I'm like, she's gonna be super impressed. She's gonna think that's like the hottest thing ever. Yeah. Which she didn't, I didn't even know what an internship was like. Again, barely graduated high school, start working at this church serving youth ministry during the weekend on weekends. But on Saturday nights I'm going down to Pitt and getting drunk and high. My house was the party house. Dad was rarely home. And my mom was obviously gone at this time. So I'm living this double standard lifestyle for about nine months into the internship. And no one knows. Wow. And I'm having to party in my house. And there was this kid that was super annoying to me at the time, but he always wanted to hang out with me. And so I said, you can come over to my house. Well , I was having a party that night. I told my friends that were partying 'cause I'm like, oh, I'm gonna reach them for Christ. Hey, this kid from church is coming over while he comes over, I'm church Doug . But as soon as he's gone, it's on. This kid comes over, my friends are getting high and drunk on my front porch. He comes in, he goes past them, sees me, grabs me legitimately buy the shirt, pulls me into my mom's bathroom, physically slaps me in the face and says, yeah , no joke. No joke. I like

Speaker 6: 14:13

This kid. <laugh>. Yeah.

Doug Smith : 14:16

Slaps me in the face and said, what are you doing? And I said , well, what do you mean? What am I doing? Those are my friends. I'm gonna reach 'em for Christ. I don't do what they do. Yeah. And he said, Doug, I know exactly what you're doing. I know the lifestyle you're living. Wow. And you have three days to tell Pastor Larry who was leading the internship. And he said, if you don't, I will. And he left. And I wanted to kill this kid. Wow. And not only was I angry, I was deeply saddened. And I actually cried the entire weekend because for the first time in my life, I actually felt like God had a plan for my life. I felt like I had potential and could actually do something with my life. And I thought, as soon as I admit this, I'm done for it. Yeah . They're gonna kick me outta the church and I'm just gonna keep going down the same path. I go to the church. Three days later I meet with a youth pastor. I couldn't even look him in the eye. I'm crying. I stutter out the lifestyle I've been living. And I looked up and I expected him to say, get out. Yeah. Instead, he had a huge smile on his face. And he said, my nickname then was Bubba <laugh>. But he said, Bubba, I love you and I believe in you. And he said, the Bible says a righteous man falls down seven times, it gets back up again. Get back up again. But then he qualified. He said, but I can't continue to let you lead and live the lifestyle you're living. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . So you have a choice to make. So what are you gonna do? That was the, the draw a line in the sand for me. That was enough for me. And I met with all my high school friends and I said, you're not gonna see me at parties anymore. I'm not having any more parties. If you wanna go to coffee or movies, great. No one ever did. So there was a period of separation that I had to separate, you know, in a , they talk about new places. Yep . People with things. That's what I had to do. And so I had some lonely nights. But the beautiful thing is God ended up bringing some of my best friends in the world into my life. And I remember meeting with a kid that slapped me. Never forget this. And I said, Hey, I hated you, but I think you may have changed my life and I want to thank you for what you did. I told him what I did with my friends and he shared a quote with me that I share all the time. Changed my life. He said, Doug, let me tell you something about friends. Friends love you the way that you are, but real friends love you enough not to let you stay where you are. And that's when it hit me. You know, my high school friends were my boys, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But they were my boys. If I was on my way to be an alcoholic. But a real friend, a real friend was willing to literally grab me by the collar, slap me in the face and say, you're better than this. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And if it weren't for him and the grace that a youth pastor showed me, I would've been back on that slippery slope. Wow . So that was kind of the turning point for me as far as saying, I'm done with all of this stuff. I'm not looking back. And I never, did

Nate Devlin: 16:26

You stay in touch with him? Yeah . The , the slapper. Oh

Doug Smith : 16:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. <laugh> . Yep . I thank him. Gratitude's a really big practice . Does he still

Nate Devlin: 16:31

Slap you or <laugh> ?

Doug Smith : 16:32

No, he lives far away, thankfully.

Nate Devlin: 16:34

Yeah . <laugh> . Yeah .

Doug Smith : 16:36

I don't let him know anything that's going on in my life or I keep him at a distance.

Nate Devlin: 16:40

He , he might enforce change. <laugh> . <laugh> . That's right.

Doug Smith : 16:43

Yeah. I learned my lesson there,

Nate Devlin: 16:45

<laugh>. Wow. So that's high school. What happens after high school? Do you go to college?

Doug Smith : 16:50

Yeah. So my father-in-law, I don't know if I would've gone to college. He CMU guy, well , <laugh> my mother-in-law pretty soon after I started attending bible study, got diagnosed with brain cancer. It was lung cancer that went through her brain, had a tumor. And so that was a whole journey that we went through with her family. And we lost her in 2004, I think. I just started going to community college. 'cause that was the only option I had. And , and Mike was really big on my role in my life. But at the funeral, all these people were here and the president of Carnegie Mellon's there. And he gives a speech and he thanks me. And he said, Doug, I just wanna thank you for your part in our family. Hopefully I can talk you into going to CMU. One day I'm like, I barely graduate high school. I can go to CMU. Like, this is it. I'm gonna go to Carnegie Mellon. What do I need to do? I talked to my wife's brother and he's like, just talk to dad. Ask him. So he's shoveling snow one day and of course I'm trying to be a future in-law and help. And I just said, Hey Mike, what do I need to do to get into Carnegie Moen <laugh>? And he just looked at me and laughed and said, I think you should apply somewhere else. <laugh> . So he broke all of my dreams. And uh, that was the end of that. But I would've never survived. So I went to community college for two years, which I loved. And then went to Robert Morris, ended up on staff at Victory Family Church and Youth Ministry afterwards. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And then had an identity crisis in the middle of that, which ultimately led me to going to light of life where I've been for 14 years. And I'm happy to dive into any of those stories . Yeah .

Nate Devlin: 18:03

Let's go into the identity crisis. <laugh> . Yeah . Really? That sounds like, what , what was that? This was right after graduating high school.

Doug Smith : 18:10

Uh, no. So this is

Nate Devlin: 18:12

Mean Ministry will do that to you.

Doug Smith : 18:13

Yes. Yes. So I'm in youth ministry, young 20 something in ministry. What did I wanna be a mega church pastor. What was

Nate Devlin: 18:19

Your degree in it ? Robin

Doug Smith : 18:20

Morris . Oh , business. Business. Okay . Just as general as possible. Okay. And I wanted to be the pastor of Mega Church . Why? For me it was about influence. My hero at that time is John Maxwell. Yeah. I'm seeing what John's doing. I wanna make a big impact with my life. If I had to summarize it, if I'm able to speak to, you know, thousands of people every week, that's how I can make the biggest difference. Yeah. I think especially in today's world, you know, you look on social media now, what kids wanna be YouTube influencers and Yeah. There's a money element to that. But I think more than anything, people wanna make an impact. I , I guess I'll just share openly. So , oh yeah, I'll , I'll say this. So there was a hire of someone over me and I didn't necessarily get along with this person. It went from one pastor who I was under Larry Bettencourt , who was like, Hey, you can do anything to a leader. That I felt like the impact he had on me was, you can't do anything, you're worthless. So I went back to almost the beginning of where I was in high school. Okay.

Nate Devlin: 19:06

So you'd been there a couple years, had

Doug Smith : 19:07

Been serving, been there a couple years. Understand . And I loved it. And then I call it the grace lifting for about two years. I really just didn't enjoy it anymore. I would walk around the offices with my head down, not, I had no passion. I end up leaving the organization 'cause Larry asks me to help him plan a church champion Life church in Chippewa, which is still there today. So we leave, we're in Chippewa, we started in Black Hawk High School is where we started .

Nate Devlin: 19:28

Okay. Yep . Mm-hmm

Doug Smith : 19:29

<affirmative>. So I went there and he's like, Hey, I want you to come with me, but I can't pay you. And so I was looking for a job in business, et cetera . And the identity crisis was, I went from being on staff at a big church to a startup with no people, to making money, to not making money. How

Nate Devlin: 19:42

Old were you then?

Doug Smith : 19:42

27. 26. 27 20 . Okay .

Nate Devlin: 19:45

Were you married

Doug Smith : 19:45

Yet about to get married? Yes. So,

Nate Devlin: 19:47

So you're about to get married. You leave a steady job with income and an influential church in the community to obscurity with no income. Yep . So big confidence Boost <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Doug Smith : 19:58

So looking for a job in corporate. Had a consulting gig lined up, but they're like, Hey, we can't start you for four months. I walk out just God moments again, going back through my story. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . I walk out this interview, it was 7:30 AM from the consultant company , uh, at Panera Bread. Monroeville, my phone rings. It was a woman that went to Victory. She was on staff at Light of Life. She was the development director at the time. And she said, Doug, I know you're looking for a job. Uh , a position at Light of Life just opened up for the volunteer coordinator. Why don't you come work for Light of Life for a year and then you can go work on the church when they can pay you. I ended up interviewing, got the job, and for around six months, I'm working at Light of Life. I'm doing this church thing and I'm just depressed. 'cause I'm thinking, I see no path in me making an impact. I actually told my friend this , um, you know, I'm ashamed of that . I said it this way, but because my dream was to work in a mega church , I said, man, what am I doing working at a homeless shelter? But by the end of that first year, I had totally fallen in love with light of life. And I fell in love with the work that we do. And I fell in love with the north side . I fell in love with our city. So about a year into my time at Light of Life, I started getting that spark back. And I was a horrible volunteer coordinator. Let me just be clear. Like the worst I am , I have no administrative capacity. But you're all vision <laugh> . Yeah . Well, my boss said, Hey, you're really good with people. Yeah. Why don't you get into fundraising? And they threw me into fundraising. And now I've been there for 14 years. Ended up being the development director. But that was really a game changer for me at the same time. And you know, I mentioned my sister earlier a year into my time at Light of Life, my sister came to me, she was five months pregnant with my nephew mm-hmm <affirmative> . And she said, I need help. And I said, what do you mean you need help? And she said, I'm a heroin addict. Wow. And , and I had heard rumors that she had done that and I had no idea what to do. 'cause I had never gotten into that. And so I reached out to our program director and for nine years Light of Life walked me, my family and my sister through her addiction. She was homeless twice. Had two kids in that time period. Wow. In our program three different times. Third time she was in our program, rededicated her life to Christ , as I mentioned, and was clean for 18 months, which was amazing. I felt like I had my sister back for the first time in 15 years. Wow. Um, but like I said, unfortunately , um, she ended up relapsing and , uh, she had overdosed 32 times in her lifetime, which is crazy. And that 33rd time , uh, we lost her. But, you know, I guess a few takeaways from, from that, as I share that is one, you know , uh, mark Batterson always says, God wants you to get where God wants you to go more than you want to get where God wants you to go. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And like, I had no idea that on the other side of light of life would be my sister being helped by our program and re and giving her life to Christ. I had no idea that I had fundraising ability in me. I had no idea that one day I'd be helping lead the organization overall. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And, and ultimately this will just be the identity piece. A few years ago, I felt like I really realized that that dream I had of being a , a lead pastor, God fulfilled in me working at light of life, light of life, we're connected with 300 churches instead of being at one church, I feel like I could see what God's doing all over the body of Christ in Pittsburgh. I'm connected in the business world, I'm connected in the government world. It's beautiful. But I would've never seen that. And then with my sister, you know, if you would've told me at any point in my life that I would know someone, let alone a family member who would ever be in need of a homeless shelter. Yeah . I would've never believed you. And Right . What I've come to learn through my sister story, and now 14 years of meeting the men and women who walk through our doors daily is we're all one or two decisions away from being the exact same place these men and women are at. Yeah . We're all one or two paychecks away. Right . From being the same place. Yeah . And when people realize that, it changes everything. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And I , I tell people, if you had to go through a fraction of what some of these men and women have had to go through, you'd be lucky to be in the same position Yeah . That they're in. And so we really encourage people to get to know the people's story. The work we do is life or death. Right. Like Right . Yes. We have stories of testimonies. We're not gonna post all of the people we lose on a YouTube post. You're gonna see stories of transformation. We have plenty and God's done amazing things, but we also lose people all the time, which is devastating. We always say we stand on the gates of hell and as long as someone's breathing when they walk through our doors, there's hope. Right. And then lastly, the faith-based element of what we do, because Christ is the center of what we do. My sister is now in my future and not just in my past. Mm-hmm . And so even when we lose in the natural light of life, we still win eternally with Christ. And so it's just cool how God kind of wrote that whole story and brought it all together. Mm-hmm . Yeah .

Thomas O'Boyle: 24:01

I found that the people that are attracted to light of life have had that kind of very dramatic turning point in their lives where they really see both the problems and the victory with great clarity. Right. Yeah. Because Jarrell Gilliam was a past guest on the A podcast you Yeah . Used Gill's story and sermons, you know .

Nate Devlin: 24:23

Yeah. He and I also did the , the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation. We are in the same cohort. Oh,

Doug Smith : 24:27

That's awesome.

Thomas O'Boyle: 24:27

Oh, you were, I didn't know that. I love j Yeah. Jarrell iss great. I remember some of the stories he told on on our podcast. It just seems to me that the people that are attracted to it have a very acute understanding of standing at the gates of hell as you just explained it, that both empowers them and gives them empathy for the kinds of situations that people face. Yeah. Does that make sense to you?

Doug Smith : 24:50

Oh, for sure. The real heroes of Light of Life are our program staff. Right . The things that they do on a day in and day out basis. But I would say no matter what position someone has in the light of life, it's a calling. So a similar Right . Church ministry, if you're not called to it, you're never gonna last. Right. And especially the work that we do, when I look at our program staff, I mean, the things that they deal with on a daily basis, you could pay them $5 million a year, but if they're not called, they're not gonna do it. And so I'm just so grateful that we have people that God taps on the shoulder and say, I need you here. Yeah. And , uh, it's been amazing to see them do the work they do.

Nate Devlin: 25:18

Right. Do you feel like you're now in the place that God made you to be?

Doug Smith : 25:23

Yeah. So when I went through that identity crisis, one thing that was helpful is my pastor said, Doug never put a period where God puts a comma for me. Why did I have an identity crisis? It's because I was like, I'm gonna be a megachurch pastor. That's it. There's no other option. That's it. Right. That's why I experienced disappointment from that transition in my life. I've lived loosely with open arms of saying, God, I'm very content with where you have me now, but if you're calling me to something else, just make that clear. I'm never again gonna say, oh, I'm gonna be the executive director one day of light of life, or I'm gonna do this with L three leadership. Like, okay, God's been faithful enough in my journey and written a beautiful enough story that I just trust him of, Hey, I'm where I'm at supposed to be right now, but if you want me somewhere else tomorrow, just let me know. Yeah. But

Nate Devlin: 26:01

You really like the work you're doing. Oh, I love

Doug Smith : 26:02

It. Love it, love

Nate Devlin: 26:03

It. Yeah . So what's the next big project for Light of Life? <laugh>?

Doug Smith : 26:06

Yeah. Well , yeah, Jarrell , if you've had him on the show, he has no lack of vision. <laugh> . That is for sure. That man is a visionary through and through. So right now, the thing we're focused on is historically, I would say at light of life, we've been more reactive. And what I mean by that is, you know, we've been around for 70 years and we would wait for people to come to us, say , you need food, come on in, you need shelter. What we haven't done as much of is being proactive and helping prevent homelessness. One thing,

Thomas O'Boyle: 26:28

Policy

Doug Smith : 26:29

And yeah, policy plays a part, but then also just preventative. So we've started a lot of outreach services over the last few years. So we have a , a food pantry that's now providing over 10,000 meals a week, serving 167 families on average, and over 60 other partner agencies. We have a , a donation center that literally has served over 40,000 people this year already by providing in kind items. And then we just acquired a furniture bank. So now we can actually furnish a home for a family in need for $275. It's incredible. Mm-hmm . So our next big project is we're actually about to sign a lease on an outreach hub that's really , really close to our current location. That's huge. And so we'll be able to bring all of those outreach services under one roof. Mm . That'll be a big thing. And then I think the other thing we're looking into is just how can we expand housing for people in need? Whether that's buying additional transitional housing, whether it's finding an old building or an old church that someone may have and saying , Hey, could you turn this into a shelter and running it. So we're really looking at how can we expand our services beyond, you know, the , the two buildings we built in our capital campaign, I would say were the foundation for what we needed to do, the work we do. And now we can really focus on scaling and, and expanding our thumbprint beyond just the north side. Yeah .

Thomas O'Boyle: 27:36

Jarrell had a piece in the Post Gazette over the summer talking about Pittsburgh being at a critical juncture. We must decide whether to prioritize solutions that transition individuals out of homelessness or go the way of San Francisco and the Tenderloin and that kind of thing. And I think he's right. I, I cycle a lot and I've been cycling a lot this past summer with my son who just moved back from California here. We would usually cycle out to McKeesport, but some days we would go the other direction and the number of homeless encampments. Yeah . That are in Pittsburgh, you would pass three to four encampments of 10, 20, 30 people. Yep . Some of which had bars right in front. I remember one particular tent that we passed that literally had alcohol outside on a stand. And it was shocking to me. And so when I read that piece, I thought he's right. I mean, we might be on the cusp of something. Can you explain for our listeners, 'cause everybody sees that mm-hmm <affirmative> . And I think for the typical suburban person in the North Hills or the South Hills, they encounter it and they're fearful of it. They say, what, what is going on? Yeah . This is, this seems like chaos unleashed what's going on right now in the city of Pittsburgh and what are ways that it could be fixed?

Doug Smith : 28:50

Yeah. So homelessness is very, very complex. A lot more complex than people think. Yeah . Again, I think most people think, oh, they just made , made bad decisions, or Oh, they're just a drug addict. But the reality is Darrell took one of the city council members out for , uh, outing with our outreach team. And so our outreach team goes out to those living in camps to build relationships. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And I think they ran into five or six individuals. And literally the solution that would be needed to help that person get out of homelessness was different for every single one. And they need teams around them and resources around them. So I think that's one understanding that's complex, but even how people get there, do you know, Darrell often uses this example that I love of Niagara Falls. If you looked at Niagara Falls and just said, Hey, how would we ever stop Niagara Falls from flowing? You'd say, it's impossible. It's , there's too much force. But in the 18 hundreds it actually did stop flowing. And it's because if you went upstream, the tributaries I believe froze up and basically stopped all of the flow. And so what we say is, if you go upstream from homelessness of what's actually causing it, those issues need dealt with. In 2022, I believe the country had over a hundred thousand opioid overdose deaths. Yeah . Through the year. So that's a huge issue. You have lack of affordable housing in Allegheny County for every a hundred families looking for housing. There's only 37 units available that are affordable. And so that's a huge, huge issue. You have inflation and just everything going on. Again, we're all , uh, most people are one or two paychecks away from having experienced homelessness. You have an eviction rate on average, there's 40 evictions a day in Allegheny County that's over 200 a week. And so, and then you have, I didn't even mention mental health and the mental health thing. Even post covid we've seen go to another level. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um , we think it's because of a lot of the fentanyl and different things that they're putting into drugs, we're just seeing mental health issues that we've never seen before. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And to be honest with you, like I don't think many organizations, including psychological hospitals, et cetera , are equipped to actually handle, you have all these different issues coming together causing people to experience homelessness, I would say, as far as the encampments and things in our city . So one, we have to deal with all of those issues and hopefully we can do more on the preventative side from stopping the flow of people experiencing homelessness. And then just as far as what we can do in our city. Yeah. The best way I heard it described there was this guy, he was an executive director of a mission in San Antonio and he was on one of the news stations, and this was when Trump was president in 2016. I guess Trump saw him and he said, let's see if we can hire that guy. The White House contacts him and says, Hey, can you write a white paper on how to solve homelessness nationally by tomorrow night at 6:00 PM The guy does it. He gets hired by Trump for a period of time. And then the transition worked for Biden for a period of time and that ultimately didn't work out well for him. So he left, his conclusion was, I don't think you can really make a huge impact on this through politics. So he's actually created a documentary that we are just showing private screen , got get the invite . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah. So he partnered up in Hollywood and there's actually a documentary this phenomenal and a movie coming out called No Address. And I'd really recommend if you wanna kind of get on the documentary side, if you want a real understanding of, hey, what's actually happening in homelessness in our country and what are solutions that that real missions and other organizations are doing to solve it, you need to see this. And again, we have several private screenings coming up. I think it'll be available to the world in spring or summer of next year. The movie's coming out in February. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . That's more of a side note. But he made this comment to me once, he said, Doug, if your city is making it easier to get high and harder to get treatment, you're headed in the wrong direction and you're gonna end up like in La, Philly, San Francisco, et cetera. If your city is making it harder to get high and easier to get treatment, you're heading in the right direction. And that's where, you know, Jarrell would say, I think in the city of Pittsburgh specifically, we're at a crossroads. What I will say that's been very positive in our city is Jarrell has done a great job of being a bridge to other organizations. You know, the mayor often says when he came in is like, we're one of the most isolated cities as far as organizations in the world. Everyone's doing their own thing and no one's working together. He's brought people around the table. Organizations are coming together saying, what can we do about the problem? So I'm optimistic in the sense that I do believe the mayor wants the right solutions and wants the right things to happen. And he's getting the right voices around him, I would say. And so we're hopeful that we'll go in the right direction. I know that's the direction he wants to go. And yeah, a lot of things impact that. But for us it's like we're gonna keep doing what we're doing and have been doing for 70 years and making adjustments as we go. So

Nate Devlin: 32:58

Is it your assessment that on balance, we're at a 50 50 split right now in terms of addiction and, and treatment in terms of the more or less, so we're, we're right on the cusp of going one direction or the other.

Doug Smith : 33:09

Yeah . And the easier to get high, it's probably going a little bit to the wrong direction. I mean, that's just my own personal opinion. So we're 50 , I don't have a lot of data

Nate Devlin: 33:15

About that . 51% . Yeah . Yeah . Is your , is your anecdotal, so there's still time to make adjustments, but if we don't, I think so Momentum's gonna swing

Doug Smith : 33:22

And then it's coming around people, you know, Dre talked about in his article, housing First is a , is a really big push from the government. Yeah. I

Thomas O'Boyle: 33:28

Didn't understand what that meant. Yeah. So

Doug Smith : 33:30

Housing First is basically let's just, let's just get people off the street and put 'em into housing, which again is important. But Housing First actually statistically has only worked for about 25% of the homeless population. What they've done with Housing First is they put people in homes, but they don't put any wraparound services around them. Jarrell always says the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety, it's community. We're really big on community light of life. Like we want you to have a healthy community to be a part of, even if you're living in a camp, if you're with other people, it's still community. If you're in a camp with community and then you get pulled out and you're put in a house, it is great. You have a house, but now you're alone and isolated, the odds of you making more poor choices od et cetera, go through the roof. And so what we would advocate for is what , uh, I forget who called it this, but Housing Plus, we had

Thomas O'Boyle: 34:08

A guest recently who was Vlad who talked about the lack of social capital. I mean, he's an economist, so that's the language he put it in. But a lot of homelessness results from a lack of social capital. It , it's, they don't have a network Right . To rely upon, you know, maybe it's family or whatever that network might be that would enable them to get the help they need.

Doug Smith : 34:31

Well , and , and that's why we have a street outreach team. It's the relationships. 'cause believe it or not, people do want to stay on the street. It's not like if you just went to every campus and said, Hey, who's ready to get the services? Not everyone's gonna go with you until we say the light bulb goes off. And for us, I don't know when the light bulb will go off. I don't know how long it'll take, but when it goes off, we wanna have the relationship with you where you call and say, Hey Lloyd, from Street Outreach at Light of Life, I'm ready. I don't wanna live like this anymore. Can you, can you help me? Can I come in for a night of shelter? Can I get into one of your long-term ? Can you help me get housing? That's where the social capital comes in. And I think we need to do a lot more on the relational side. I always use the example, there was a guy that we helped, he was in the street. He was actually a mayor of an encampment for 17 years. He was on, on the street and one , he

Nate Devlin: 35:12

Was the mayor of an

Doug Smith : 35:13

Encampment mayor. Yeah. Yeah. They had their own system . They like the mayor.

Thomas O'Boyle: 35:15

Yeah . I mean literally.

Doug Smith : 35:16

Yeah. There's leadership within camps. Not every camp, but this one. They had their own way of getting food and all these different things and you never wanted help until one day for whatever reason he did. So our street outreach team was able to work with other organizations. We were able to get him housing on the north side. He actually volunteered with us for many years. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Uh , yeah. It's like, that's one example. 17 years on the street is a pretty long time. Yeah. But the light bulb went off and we were helping him get off the street and he's now helping people that were in the same position he was. Wow . And so that, you know, for us is ultimate win. So

Thomas O'Boyle: 35:42

You have people in your organization that actually try to meet with folks in the encampment and try to bring them back into some sort of solution. Yeah. Is the problem now so overwhelming that there's so many of them and so few of you that it just can't?

Doug Smith : 35:56

I don't think so. Not in Pittsburgh. So that's where we're hopeful for our city. We're not at a point where it's like LA where it's like, you know , what is it 60,000 or a hundred thousand people in ? Yeah . Yeah . It's not Skid Row .

Thomas O'Boyle: 36:05

It's clearly not that many.

Doug Smith : 36:06

Yeah. So I would say that's where we're still hopeful with overall in our county. If I had to guess the actual number, 'cause again, the way they count isn't always effective, but I'd probably say there's three to 4,000 people experiencing homelessness. Yeah . And , but again, that doesn't mean there there's three to 4,000 people in a campus's . Yeah . But you , that's people staying in shelters, that's people couch surfing with their family staying in abandoned buildings that no one see , like Yeah.

Thomas O'Boyle: 36:28

Yeah. But your capacity to deal with it is what, a couple hundred tops.

Doug Smith : 36:33

Right. That Yeah . And that's where we need other organizations and that's where we need to grow and work. It's gonna take all of us. The reality is the city's not the answer. Light of life's not the answer. Bethlehem haven's not like it's all of us coming together Yeah . And trying to tackle it . So we may have different philosophies of care. Yeah . Um, but again, sometimes you need that, right? Like some light of life might be a great place for one person, but the, the other shelter down the street may be a , a great place for someone else. And so that's where it takes a lot of unique approaches and a lot of people coming around

Thomas O'Boyle: 36:59

Help . But in its totality, the system doesn't have enough capacity to deal with three or 4,000. Right.

Doug Smith : 37:05

And that's where I think we're looking for creative solutions.

Thomas O'Boyle: 37:07

So that's why you want the housing first, housing

Doug Smith : 37:08

Plus housing , I would say yes.

Thomas O'Boyle: 37:10

Yeah. Housing plus

Doug Smith : 37:11

That , that's part of it too. It is gonna take multiple strategies and multiple organizations all working together to really put a dent in this .

Thomas O'Boyle: 37:17

And is that starting to crystallize? I mean those organizations talking to each other and some sort of buy-in on the part of policy makers who are saying, this is enough of a problem. We have to

Doug Smith : 37:28

Yeah. I think , I think the right people are at the table where they are in the process. You know, I can't really speak to at this point, how far

Nate Devlin: 37:33

Does , uh, homelessness spread into the suburbs? Is that something that that occurs or is it mostly concentrated in the city?

Doug Smith : 37:39

It's probably more than you would think in the suburbs, but you don't see it necessarily. If someone experiencing homelessness may be someone who has nowhere else to go, they're couch surfing . Like they're , they're still considered Right, okay . Homeless. Yeah.

Nate Devlin: 37:49

Okay. Because obviously the addiction and the drugs are gonna be in the suburbs. Folks are doing what they can to hide it. But also it's, many times it's celebrated. It's not, it's not hidden. My suspicion was we're not seeing homelessness in the suburbs, but that can't mean that it's not here.

Doug Smith : 38:03

Oh, for sure. And and with opioid epidemic, yeah. We're seeing a much younger population, a much more suburban population, just 'cause of the drugs and how easily accessible they are. And

Nate Devlin: 38:10

Yeah . Do suburbanites tend to migrate then to the city? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah . Because of drugs. Yeah. Okay. And it just concentrates there. Yeah. Okay. Hmm . This is a, not only a noble but a biblical endeavor to serve those who are addicted and enslaved by addiction and who become homeless. What is your sense of how the church intersects with all of this work? What does the church need to do to be helpful?

Doug Smith : 38:31

Yeah. I think they could do more. Uh , I know one thing in Drone and Ice Heart is to help equip churches to have their own shelters. Whether that's on a rotating basis of like, could you turn in a part of your church to a shelter for a month and house 15 people. I think being educated is one thing . I think that's imp Like you guys are having questions like, Hey, what is, what's really going on? Yeah. I think a lot of people are asking those questions. Mm-hmm . Uh , we get them all the time as far as how churches can help, specifically a light of life. So we, we have thousands of volunteer opportunities every year. If you've never been to the Mission, we'd love to come give you a tour. Then obviously financially supporting the mission's, always a huge blessing to us as well. We're primarily run by private funding, so individual churches, businesses, foundations. We get a very little government funding. We're very grateful for that. But yeah, asking the church, what can we do in our community? Is there a homelessness issue in our community that we don't know about or don't see? And how can we help with that? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . I think that could be a , a great charge to the church.

Nate Devlin: 39:23

Well, let's talk about leadership. 'cause that seems to be the other thing that you're very passionate about. And you got this podcast three L What are the three Ls again? Learn,

Doug Smith : 39:29

Launch, and lead.

Nate Devlin: 39:30

Obviously that was a , an interest from the time you read Maxwell. Yeah. Why the fascination about

Doug Smith : 39:36

Leadership? For me, I think leaders are the ones that make, make things happen. When you influence a leader, you're not just influencing one person, you're influencing everyone that person influences. Sure . And so I think it's the quickest way that you can make an impact in the world. And for me, I've just always related with leaders. That's who I like spending time with. What

Nate Devlin: 39:50

Kind of leaders are you trying to develop? What , tell us about the three Ls.

Doug Smith : 39:52

Yeah. Learn launch , lead learning is all about personal development and growth. I don't think we ever have a finish line in our life where we've arrived or need to stop learning and every level of leadership you go to, you know, I , I'm in my fourth or fifth position at Light of Life. Every time I've stepped up in leadership, the learning curve there has been so, so huge. Mm-hmm . And so this is why, and , you know, peer learning is so important. Getting mentors, I'm huge on mentorship, but I talked about people showing me another way. When I started interning at the church, Larry, the youth pastor, would bring in leaders from the community such as yourselves, and they would share with us. And after they spoke, Larry would say, Hey, if you connected with them, you should ask them out to coffee and then bring a list of questions. And this is actually how the podcast started. He would say, you should come with a list of questions and ask them ahead of time. And he gave us this whole process, follow up with a thank you note. And so I started asking leaders out once a month for, I did it for 10 years. And after 10 years, all my peers started saying like, wow, you could spend time with all these cool leaders. I wish I could. I'm like, you probably could if , if you just asked, yeah , you'd be surprised. We'll spend time with you. But that's when I saw an opportunity. I thought, well, what if I started recording my conversations with leaders instead of just me having coffee with them. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And share them with the world. And that's how the podcast was born. But again, learning, learning, learning, learning, and then launching is, hey, at some point you gotta go to the next level. At some point, if you have a dream in your heart, you have to launch it and go for it. So that's what launch is all about. And then lead is just how do you make an impact in the world? At the end of the day, it's great that if you learn and you have a great position in your organization, but what are you gonna do beyond your four walls, whether that's your house or whether that's your church or your nonprofit or business. That's gonna make a huge impact. And that looks different for everyone. But we really encourage people to , to ultimately go after their biggest contribution they can make with their life . Mm . Mm-hmm

Nate Devlin: 41:27

<affirmative> . What are you currently learning?

Doug Smith : 41:28

About a year and a half ago, almost two years now, I got promoted to assistant executive director. So I went from leading a team to leading an organization. I'm Darrell's only direct report , so I oversee the entire leadership team. It's the first time in my career that I've ever had to really take a deep dive into finance, take a deep dive into operations, take a deep dive into hr, take a deep dive into programs. That's a huge learning curve for me. I had opinions, this is really helpful, <laugh> , I had opinions of what I thought about all those areas. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And what we could do differently. But Jarrell was super helpful when I got into this role, talk about learning. 'cause I was like, Hey, I wanna , I wanna take a learning tour. I wanna go in each department and spend time there. And he said, Doug, let me give you three beautiful words that you should lead with. First. He said, lead with curiosity. Here's the three beautiful words. Help me understand, help me understand, and then don't say anything. Just listen. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Hey, help me understand. Like, why do we run the shelter like that? Help me understand why you talk to that person that , like, instead of me coming in and saying, Hey, I'm just gonna learn as much as I can. And then once I have a full understanding and I buy in with the team, then I can start to make changes with them, not to them. And so we're really big on, we call it do with versus do to , we don't wanna just do to , to leaders. We want to do with them and come alongside, get buy in and lead together. So I would say that's probably the biggest learning curve for me, is learning organization versus the sales department. Mm-hmm .

Speaker 7: 42:41

How do you lead in a family? Oh,

Doug Smith : 42:43

Yes.

Speaker 7: 42:44

Yeah . Have four kids.

Doug Smith : 42:44

Yeah. Fifth on the way. When ,

Speaker 7: 42:46

When's your wife due?

Doug Smith : 42:47

January.

Speaker 7: 42:48

And what , what's your wife's

Doug Smith : 42:49

First ? Laura . Laura. Yeah. I'm very passionate about this. So I'm married to my high school sweetheart. You guys heard my story. It took me 10 years to grow into the man I needed to be, for her to say yes to me. I always say she's smart, <laugh> . Yeah. She's very smart. Yeah . Um , so I'm grateful for that. We've been married now for, we're going on our 13th year of marriage, five kids. And my wife is an executive at a software company. So she oversees North America sales for a company called Avala . And so we have very busy lives. A few years ago we, we found this organization called Family Teams. They're based outta Cincinnati, Ohio. Guys name's Jeremy Pryor. And they've really helped shape our, our whole philosophy on leading our team. And it's really seeing your family as a team. He had actually spent two years living with a Jewish family in Israel. And he said what he learned through that experience is, Western culture will tell you it's all about the individual. Raise each of your kids as individuals. Send them out to make their own individual contribution. And that'll be great. He said, but biblically, you'll never see that. And you won't see that in Jewish families either. What you'll see is this whole notion of a multi-generational family team on mission. And it's everything that every individual does is ultimately to come back and contribute to the family at large. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And so it really gave me this vision of if we're intentional with leading our family, right? Why are we having a lot of kids? I read the statistic that if you had four kids and a generation biblically is marked by 25 years, if you had four kids and each of those four kids had four kids and so on and so forth, over the course of 12 generations, which is 300 years, your family tree would populate the earth with more people than the population of New York City in the course of 300 years. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And if everyone had this whole vision that got passed down of, Hey, it's all about our family team, you could literally make major change. And he argues that you can make major change within five generations. If you really do it right, your family could have a huge impact running for office and all these different things. And that's kind of shaped our philosophy of why we wanna have a lot of kids and , and how we wanna lead our family team. As far as how we do it. Honestly, like the , the number one tip I always give people is we have a weekly family team meeting. This also came from family teams. And so I hate it 'cause I'm not a detail person, but I love the outcome. My wife and I meet every Saturday morning on average for an hour and a half. And we go through everything. We go through our calendar, we go through our finances, we go through our family, we talk about our marriage, we talk about our kids, we plan. And that keeps us on the same page and keeps us grounded and keeps our marriage healthy in general. That's been a game changer for us.

Thomas O'Boyle: 45:08

How long have you been doing that? Oh ,

Doug Smith : 45:10

Uh, it's probably been five years, six years. I feel, I mean, you guys have kids. I'm like, yeah, at some point this all just blurs together. I'm like, what, what day is it? What year? <laugh> ? So , but it for a while , at least five years. Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas O'Boyle: 45:20

Are you the leader of the family or is it more you're the coach because it's the team? Or how does that play out?

Doug Smith : 45:26

I view Laura and I as the leaders, we're the leaders of the family. We're the coach . And yeah, I mean, right now our kids are eight and under. We see ourselves and say, we need to coach and raise these kids up to be awesome adults. Jeremy Pryor always says, don't parent for the next generation parent for your grandchildren. And if you parent for great grandchildren, you'll parent your kids' rights. And that's always settled. Well with us, Jeremy Pryor, the founder, family teams. Oh, the fa Yeah .

Nate Devlin: 45:46

What

Thomas O'Boyle: 45:46

Place does the Bible have in this schema?

Doug Smith : 45:48

For us, it's essential to everything that we do, you know ? Mm-hmm . We , I mean, we go to church every week, every Saturday night we have, we try to have a sabbath, a Shabbat meal is what we call it, and have a multi-generational, so we try to do a mini Bible lesson. And again, our kids are so young, but mini Bible lesson, and we reward kids based on their behavior and character. And so , you know , I , for us, like I always look at Laura's family talking about being modeled in a different way. Laura can remember, and her siblings being three or four years old, and her mom always said, cast this vision of like, Hey, you guys are gonna be world changers for Christ. Like you're gonna change the world. And that's really what we wanna do, is like we, we pray over our kids and we cast this vision of , Hey , if you follow God, you're gonna make huge impact. And we're just believing God that you'll be world changers as you grow up. And we're doing our best to , to raise them that way. Well,

Nate Devlin: 46:32

You're very, you sound like you're very interested in cultural engagement. You sound very optimistic. You can't be afraid of engaging the culture and therefore risking some level of conflict. You can be optimistic, but you also have to not be conflict averse. In your experiences with all the leaders that you've talked to, is that, are those necessary qualities if you're actually gonna be a leader that's gonna see change? Do you have to have optimism and a willingness to get in the scrum? A little bit.

Doug Smith : 46:57

Yeah. On the optimist side, I would say yes. I mean, what do leaders do? They , they provide a vision for a better tomorrow. I mean, at the end of the day, no matter what you're leading, Hey, our team could be better today than it was yesterday. Hey, I can be better tomorrow than I was yesterday. Hey, our organization could be our nation, could be our , like, that's by nature part of the definition of leadership, in my opinion. Yeah . On the optimist front, on the thick skin, this is the area. So if I had to , to evaluate myself, I would say historically, I've been all optimist. And the growth area for me in my thirties has been developing a tough skin. So when you say that it resonates, and I don't know how this will play out. I, I felt like every year I do a yearend review, and then at the end of every decade, I do a decade review and I write like these 30 page reports on my life. And I , when I turned 30, I felt like God spoke to me, said, Doug, in your twenties I gave you a foundation to build your life on. In your thirties, I'm gonna give you something to say. And in your forties, I'm gonna give you a platform to say it. So far that's worked out. I I I , I always tell people that, Hey, that sounds really nice. If I had to , if I would've known what I've had to go through in my thirties to have something to say, I wouldn't have signed up for it. It's not been fun. Right. Um, but we'll see how that plays out. But I say all that to say, I think God is developing a thick skin for me, and I do the things that I'm looking into now. I'm like, okay, I've, I've hesitated to like put myself out there to risk. I care a lot about my reputation. I'm naturally a people pleaser. But I think that's the next level of growth for me. I've grown in it a lot in my thirties, but I think publicly doing that is gonna gonna be a really challenging growth season for me. Yeah. If

Nate Devlin: 48:22

You're gonna have a platform from which to say something, you become a target. Yeah. Because you're elevated, everybody sees you and everybody wants to shoot you . Yep . If you're gonna actually be effective in moving the needle and casting vision and being a leader and helping people to, to be motivated to implement that change, it is coming after you . Yeah. And you have to be able to not only withstand it, to be able to stand what you're envisioning in terms of where you're going, requires the capacity to stand. I just love the way in which Paul talks about it in the epistles. I think it was in Ephesians, he just over and over again stand. Mm . You know , um, having done all that you can to stand now stand firm. Yeah . Just to stand, stand, stand. And so this necessity to be unmovable in terms of a retreat, but also the capacity to advance requires a certain level of, I'll just say toughness. Yeah . To be able to push through things and make a way forward. And , um, yeah.

Doug Smith : 49:16

Being an optimist, it's easy to think like, I want to think that everyone will always think well of me and think the best of me. Like that's what I want. Right. I've been listening to this guy named Patrick Beda and he's just really challenged me. There's this book I'm reading right now because of him called like the 33 Strategies of War. And it's like, man, there's some evil people out there, <laugh> , who, you know, and the Bible says, man, we have an enemy that comes to steal, killing to destroy. And that's a reality. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . That's true. And so I think the optimism in me has to also deal with the realism of, Hey, life isn't this warm fuzzy. Everyone's great. Those things are happening. And I , I'd say the only, the one thing that's really helped me in my thirties, I had the opportunity and privilege of having lunch with John Maxwell and I asked him about this people pleaser thing. 'cause this was me, especially in my mid thirties. And he said, Doug, I had the same problems as you did. And my CEO Mark Cole had the same problem. And he said, I came to Mark one day. I said, mark, the good news is you're a great leader and everyone loves you. The bad news is your leadership isn't good enough to get them where they need to go or the organization because you care too much about what they think about you. Yeah . And he's like, well, what do I do with that? And John's like, I had to make the decision early that I would always love people, but I would not depend on their love. I would say that again. 'cause that changed my life. I'll always love people, but I won't depend on their love. And for me, what I recognize in that is part of the reason I'm afraid to put myself out there is because I'm way more dependent on the love and admiration of others than I like to admit. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And I , hopefully, I'm speaking for a lot of people, but that's a real challenge for me. But in the times where it has gotten tough and I had had people speak against me, that's really helped. It's like, well , hey, I'm gonna love you anyway. And I was a

Thomas O'Boyle: 50:41

People pleaser too. What do you really Yeah, I had that same problem.

Doug Smith : 50:44

What'd you do about that?

Thomas O'Boyle: 50:46

Uh , I grew up <laugh>. I

Doug Smith : 50:48

Grew up, okay. Yeah . Say more.

Thomas O'Boyle: 50:50

It's not my podcast. It's your <laugh>. But , um, well, you had to go through some, you had a Oh , well, I got, you know, I have a story that I actually did share . Let his podcast , podcast episode 100. Yeah. Yeah. He tells a story. Yeah . Okay .

Doug Smith : 51:03

You had to go through some pain.

Thomas O'Boyle: 51:05

Oh gosh. Yeah. Enormous amount of pain. I think that's actually, we've been, my wife and I have been engaged in the periphery of light of life for a , a long time. It's gotta be at least 25 years. Wow . And we've been giving for a long time. And we've been doing the food collection here for a long time. That's kind of the predicate for the question I asked earlier, which is I think people who have had enormous change in their lives, and I am in that category , uh, everybody's story is different, but I'm definitely in that category. Um, have had to face themselves, have had to look in the mirror, have had to do a very, very candid assessment of who they are before God. And, you know, have that metanoia moment of I'm going to either choose life or choose death. Hmm . And I had that very profoundly in my life, not really wanting to face reality about what you are doing. You know, the slap story that you told the people when I had difficulty, who figuratively slapped me. I didn't have anybody physically slap me, but did that to me were far more beneficial friends than the people who said, oh, you're fine. You're doing, you're doing well. You're walking with the , you're discovering yourself or something. Yeah . Yeah . You all that crap that you , you learn is crap. And the person who told it to me straight and said, this is where you are and this is where you need to be, was a far more beneficial friend Yes. Than people that wanna please you. And that is a predominant sin. It is very, very hard to speak truth into people's lives. Yeah. I have learned, hopefully with wisdom and through God's grace, that that ultimately is what brings about learning and launching and leading. Yeah. You cannot ignore your own sin. Hmm . You don't realize how much the darkening effect of sin can be on your mind. Yeah . For me, that is one of the big learning curves that I had from leaving Tom 1.0. Hmm . Wow . To Tom 2.0 , uh, in my life. And I , I credit God's grace, Jesus Christ with that change, but light of life has always had a , a special allure to us, Louise and I both, where the change element is so front and center at a place like light of life, when you get to the precipice of hell, yeah. You have no other choice but to change. I've been there personally.

Doug Smith : 53:39

Another thing I'm passionate about, I think I'll add value to listeners, is we talked about this, I think leaders hit a point of pain and usually some point in their journey. And if they can either, like you said, go the healthy way or unhealthy, and if they go unhealthy, and my pastor told me once, he said, I think only about 2% of Christian leaders actually make it to their finish line intact and actually fulfilling the call of God on their lives. And that as a young 20 something always scared me. And I , so I , I'm really interested in longevity. For me, it's all about community. So I lead one of the mastermind groups. I lead, I call it a pastor mind . There's 13 of us all ministry leaders in our city pastors. And , uh, the vision for this is that every leader needs a community in which there are three things fully known, fully loved and fully challenged. Fully known means, Hey, I have a place where I can show up and , and share my stuff. I can share the worst of me. And number two, I'll be fully loved. Just like that youth pastor loved me and said, Hey, you've fallen. It's okay. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . But then also fully challenged. Sometimes I don't need a hug and a high five, sometimes I need a slap in the face, literally or figuratively. And that, that's what this group does. And so we've been meeting for three years and to see these guys come together, it's been a beautiful thing. We've cried together, we've laughed together, we prayed together. And one of the guys that was sharing with us, we, we brought in a pastor from Florida that mentors me, and he said, guys, when you're struggling with something, like you don't have to tell everyone. You don't have to go on a podcast and confess all of your sins, but you do have to tell someone. He said, the people you need to tell are the people in this group right here. Why? Because they couldn't care less. And it's because they couldn't care more. Man, I found that to be so true. And , and to see these guys that we've been meeting now for three years, every one of them has come to me in tears saying, I didn't know how bad I needed this group. It was like, what did you need? And at the end of the day, it was friendship. And I think leadership can be so lonely sometimes. And so that's why I encourage you , like, it's so rare to have someone speak the truth and love to you, like you said, but if you as a leader, unless you intentionally seek that out, it's rare that it's gonna happen to you. So I , I don't know what you guys did to intentionally seek that out, but for me, it's been that group and through mentorships that I have found, given people an open voice to speak into my life anytime with anything that they see has been super fruitful.

Thomas O'Boyle: 55:35

And the best friends have that, that slapping incident that you described wa was the pivot point for your life.

Doug Smith : 55:43

And I'm talking about 20 years later.

Thomas O'Boyle: 55:45

And so it , you look back on it and you say, this is the most beneficial thing that ever happened to me. One story I told in my podcast was my relationship with Jack Welch. Hmm . Okay. Supposedly the greatest manager and executive in the history of Yeah . You know, and I wrote a book about him and , um, don't , how don't read his leadership books. <laugh>

Doug Smith : 56:03

<laugh> . I've read one what's, what's that called? It's Yellow.

Thomas O'Boyle: 56:06

No . That any , it's been a long time at any cost. It was the contrarian view of Jack Welch. But , um, Jack Welch, you threatened to sue me 12 times. You know, in the course of the book I was, I was writing about him . It turned out that those incidents in my life, I gave God great thanks for bringing that to me because it , it was the fiery furnace that I needed that was a pivot point in my life. And so you , and you're

Doug Smith : 56:31

Gonna make me listen to the podcast to get this whole story right. <laugh> ,

Nate Devlin: 56:34

<laugh> . I

Doug Smith : 56:35

Have , I I interview people all the time. I have like 30 questions. Anyway.

Nate Devlin: 56:39

Well ,

Thomas O'Boyle: 56:39

You know, do what you wish. Right . Thank you for sharing your story.

Nate Devlin: 56:43

It's a powerful

Thomas O'Boyle: 56:44

Story. Yeah. I'm glad he slapped you.

Doug Smith : 56:45

Thank you. Thank you both. And thanks for scattering seeds all over over the world through this podcast.

Nate Devlin: 56:49

<laugh> , thanks for littering. Yeah . <laugh> <laugh> you said? Yeah . Yeah .

Thomas O'Boyle: 56:56

And keep up the good fight at Light of Life. Yeah . Say hi to Hutch too.

Nate Devlin: 57:01

Hush <laugh> .

Doug Smith : 57:02

He's every, I've never met a volunteer who, that's not their number one staff member.

Thomas O'Boyle: 57:05

Yeah . Yeah . That's great . Well , he's a past podcast, I guess too .

Nate Devlin: 57:08

We had Hutch, we well, we went to Light of Life.

Thomas O'Boyle: 57:11

Yeah , we did.

Nate Devlin: 57:11

And did the podcast there two ago .

Doug Smith : 57:13

I think I do remember this two years ago. So , quick story to end on Hutch, if you don't know Hutch, Hutch is one of our graduates in our program. Yeah. And he is on staff now. He's a , he works in our kitchen. He's phenomenal. Yeah . One of the greatest people. We, we had a podcast for a short period of time in light of life, kind of like you did at the end. Like, Hey, is there anything else you'd like to say? And Hutch goes, well, I dunno if I'm allowed to do this or not, but if there's any single ladies out there listening, I'd love to tell you out for a burger. And he started going through this whole pitch all it was so beautiful. Unfortunately we haven't been able to find him a wife yet. But , uh, so if you're a single woman out there listening, great

Nate Devlin: 57:46

Man name much

Doug Smith : 57:48

Hu . I love you.

Nate Devlin: 57:50

That's

Thomas O'Boyle: 57:50

Great. Yeah. Thank you all . Thanks Doug. God bless you .

Speaker 2: 57:59

I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award me. On that day. Paul spoke those words to Timothy near the end of his time in ministry. It had been a long road and a hard one filled with trials, tribulation, and moments of pain. In fact, as he was writing this second letter, he was sitting in a prison cell in Rome. But Paul was content because the Lord had sustained him. During the interview, Doug brought up the statistic that many who are in leadership positions in the faith, whether it be pastors, nonprofit workers, or other positions tend to burn out sometimes before the work is fully done, leaving the task to others. Even the prophet Elijah passed his mantle onto Eisha. So how can a leader keep going through the fiery trials? How did Paul? First and foremost, it comes through the acknowledgement that we can't, without Christ's power, sometimes we get so caught up in the desire to fulfill the call and to please those we are serving or to please the Lord that we start drawing on our own strength to do it. And sometimes we start overdrawing from our own strength to do the work rather than resting on the Lord and standing in faith. We have the promise that faithful is he who calls us. He will do it. And I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Jesus himself told us that our role is to be a branch that cannot produce fruit unless it is drawing from the strength of the vine. So acknowledging that we can't carry things without him and being content with the reliance on Him that produces in us is a large step forward towards actually being able to be resilient enough to walk the path laid out before you. Another step is surrounding ourselves with others who are pressing onto the mark of the high calling. EU was the last of job's friends to speak, but he was the one who pointed his friend back to the Lord. It was a bit of a proverbial slap in the face. Though sometimes you do need a friend who will give you a physical slap in the face too, though that is thankfully much less common either way. This journey is not one we were ever intended to complete on our own and out of our own strength. After all, God himself told Paul, my strength is sufficient for you. So don't despair. If the path is hard, it's a chance to re yourself even more strongly in the Lord. Who is your strength to do your call and your shield against the enemies along the way. We are called to do great things, whether it's to lead one dying woman to the Lord, or to feed hundreds who have nothing else over the holidays. Each of us has a purpose in God's grand design. And we have the God of the universe ready to step in and give us the strength we need to obey him. We just must surrender our striving and our ambition. But as Paul said, that's how we gain Christ and a relationship with him is worth the laying down of every accolade and plan that we can come up with. So my question, dear listeners, this holiday season is, are you ready to rest in his strength and let him lead you all the way to the end of your race? He's waiting for you. If you wanna know more about how to start a relationship with Jesus or how to grow in your faith, you can contact our show at info at the scattered seeds podcast.com. Thank you for joining us for another episode at the Scattered Seeds podcast. We hope to have you back next time on the show where every life has a story.

Doug Smith : 1:01:35

Well, hey, leader, thank you so much for listening to my conversation from the Scattered Seeds podcast. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. You can check out the Scattered Seeded Podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts, so I encourage you to do that. I also wanna thank our sponsor, Ann Dosha Marketing Solutions. They are the producers of this podcast. And if you are looking for help with your organization's marketing, I cannot recommend them enough, you can check them out@indosha.com. That's A-N-D-O-C-I a.com . And as always, leader, I like to end every episode with a quote. And I'll quote Jim Rohn who said this, he said, the challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude. Be kind but not weak. Be bold, but not bully. Be thoughtful, but not lazy. Be humble, but not timid. Be proud but not arrogant. And to have humor, but without folly . Love that quote. Well , that's gonna wrap up today's podcast. As always. Remember, leader, don't quit. Keep leading the world desperately needs your leadership. We'll talk to you next episode.