Joel:       Hello, welcome. And I don’t sound like David Mains or Karen Mains, but I am related to them. I am their third child. My name is Joel Mains. And when you say you’re the son of somebody, you don’t always get the picture of a 55-year-old person, but that’s what I am. We are here today doing something a little different. So hopefully you enjoy this as you listen, because I am going to take my dad and take him out of his element here a little bit, and we’re going to try something different with the podcast.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his son, Joel Mains. Here’s David and Joel Mains.

Joel:       So, I’m talking with you, dad. Good morning. So, we are sitting here and I’m going to throw you some… we’re just trying something new, I guess is the best way to say it.

David:     Probably should say why mom is not here.

Joel:       Yeah, okay.

David:     We’ve had long discussions. She has books she’s trying to finish before we go, and I said you’ll never do it if we keep podcasting all the time. And so, she said, “Well, what am I going to do?”

I said, “Okay, we’ll figure out what to do with the podcast for a period of time till you get that first of three books you say you have to write before you die.” And so, we’re giving her that break.

Joel:       So, we’re giving her a break absolutely. And then for you, you’re getting a little bit of a break because I’m throwing my dad a little curveball here because if you know anything about him, he’s done radio for many, many, many years and every program has been thought out. My parents will practice a podcast before they go on it and that just goes from your broadcast training. So, you’ll kind of run through it, get your head around it, but it’s a lot of work. You always have your key sentence that you go with.

And then you said, “Well Joel can you do this interview?” And I said, “Yes, but I don’t want to go through all of that because I think I don’t want you to…”

Well sometimes I say you put a lot of work in it, and it gives you some stress and that bothers me that as you get older, you’re adding stress. So, I said, “We’re going to do this like you know podcasts are different these days they’re not like a radio program.” And so, if we can just have a discussion that’s laid-back.

David:     I said you were in charge and that’s unusual for me as well.

Joel:       That felt immensely wonderful when you said that actually. So, if you could say it again I would like that.

David:     I said you will be in charge because you’re asking me to go to territory I’ve not walked before.

Joel:       He’s practically sitting in this stool in a fetal position.

David:     Because I have no idea where we’re headed.

Joel:       Right. No key sentence to fall back on.

David:     You understand.

Joel:       But my hope is as you’re listening you get to maybe hear my father in a different way. And also, because of the way you do your programs which are very thematic you always have a key sentence. If you haven’t picked that up as you’ve listened, start listening in the future when they’re back into their more regular programs with mom and things like that. And you will hear that there’s always a key sentence and that’s important to you.

David:     Maybe not today.

Joel:       There won’t be one today. That’s right. But I do think one of the downsides of that is that does mean you can’t have more of a conversation about your past. And when you first started talking about this broadcast Before We Go, I was kind of excited because it was like okay good, you’re going to get to say things before we go. Right? Before our time here is done. And that’s really good. But that also means with the thematic focus we can’t just go back. And I can’t, you know. It’s this will be more of an interview. Tell me about your past. Tell me about growing up things like that. That’s also very interesting to me as your son because I get to hear these. Probably these are going to be some stories that I’ve heard before but maybe not. Maybe I’m going to hear seeing things for the first time as well.

When I was in high school, I ran for student council president. And then I actually became student council president in high school. And I came home, and I was quite excited about it of course. And then then you told me that night, you said, “Well I was doing council president too.” And I said, “Oh my goodness why in the world did you?.” So then, I had no idea of that.

David:     So interesting.

Joel:       So, if I had not one, I guess that would have gone to the grave. So, mom will be back, and the regular programs will be back. But for a little while, you and I are going to we’re going to try this method. So, I’m going to take him out of his element. A little bit here folks. So, I hope you enjoy that.

David:     It’s not interesting already I can hardly wait to hear what I’m going to say.

Joel:       I can’t wait either.

David:     At this point in time, I have nothing in mind to say.

Joel:       Okay so you are how old now?

David:     I am 87. I will be 88 in August.

Joel:       So, you were born when?

David:     1936.

Joel:       36. Do you know who’s president in 1936?

David:     I didn’t even know we had presidents. No, I don’t remember but I’m assuming it was probably FDR.

Joel:       FDR?

David:     I don’t know I may be wrong.

Joel:       Okay. Who’s the first president you remember?

David:     The first name that comes to my mind is probably Truman.

Joel:       Truman okay.

David:     Yeah, I remember the Truman-Dewey presidential election.

Joel:       That’s the one where they misprinted it in the tribune?

David:     Yeah.

Joel:       Dewey won.

David:     Dewey won. Yeah. I don’t know because I’ve not been asked those questions before I’m kind of putting it together because if I say Roosevelt and then he died 40 years before.

Joel:       Someone’s going to fact check it?

David:     Yeah,

Joel:       Okay well I’m just trying to place it. So, the America that you grew up in was very different than it is now. Because I feel the America now is not what I grew up in. I’m not trying to get political here but just you know cultures progress and change for better and worse.

David:     It was a different world.

Joel:       Right.

David:     I was raised in Quincy, Illinois which is about 50,000 Southern Illinois not the Chicago land area. But that life that I knew then maybe is still experienced some in smaller communities or farm communities but it’s very different to me. Yeah so, you’re right.

Joel:       Yeah, and so not rural. You were not in farmland but surrounded by farmland.

David:     That’s correct.

Joel:       A small little city surrounded by farmland but kind of Americana.

David:     That’s fair.

Joel:       And not too far from Peoria, Illinois.

David:     Would be bigger.

Joel:       Yeah, but Peoria was kind of like… what was the marketing thing they used to say, “Well if it plays in Peoria then…” because it was Peoria was kind of like kind of a conglomerate of like Americana. And so, they would the marketers would go to Peoria and try to see if they could get their stuff to fly. But Quincy’s not too probably fairly close to that but smaller.

David:     I would assume that you got it right.

Joel:       Okay. So, did you grow up in a church home?

David:     I was in church more than I was in the home. I look back and more of late I’m incredibly grateful for that upbringing.

Joel:       What does that mean though when you say you were in church. I know you’re teasing here, a little, but you were going to church Sunday obviously. So, then Wednesday as well?

David:     Twice Sundays, Wednesdays, yes.

Joel:       Why would you go twice Sunday?

David:     Because they had an evening service on a Sunday.

Joel:       So, how did that work? You would go and then you would go home eat and then go back to church?

David:     Yeah, it was a big thing when they stopped having evening services. Church was our life. That was it. I am very grateful for it. At the same time, I was over-churched in some ways. I’m looking back and church dominated our lives. My folks were were church people. And not only Sundays, but you know, other days of the week. Even though dad worked a full-time job. He was a traveling salesman. So, he was gone a lot. But they had very powerful conversion experiences. It was up in Chicago.

Joel:       Your parents did?

David:     Up in Chicago. Paul Rader is a big name. Not for the generations now but that was a huge name. He was the pastor at the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle. I had them drive me by that later in my life because I heard stories about it all the time. And it’s now a large grocery store. But dad was converted and probably mom as well under his ministry. And it profoundly affected their lives. Neither of my folks, this was depression.

Joel:       30s.

David:     30s yeah. 29, 39. In that time frame. Those are the big years, but people couldn’t work. My folks they remember that very much.

Joel:       I don’t think anyone who lived through that was not affected by it. I mean I remember when Dobby, who was my grandma, and the other on mom’s side passed, and the house had to be cleaned out and stuff. But it was drawers of rubber bands, and you saved tin foil. And it was all this idea of, well you never know. So, save everything because who knows when you’ll need that twine. So, clearly those are people who’ve been affected so profoundly by that extended period of depression.

David:     It doesn’t, in my memory, I have no memory of depression you know. But yeah, and they talked of it often. It’s the reason mom and dad, as far as I can understand, left the Chicagoland area because there wasn’t work. See dad was the last of five brothers. His mom was a widow. His dad died when he was like one or two years old. And his dad was a lawyer. So, he was a professional man. But basically, dad grew up with very little. And he never got through high school. That bothered him. But he became very successful.

Joel:       So, when you say he didn’t get through high school…

David:     Mom didn’t either.

Joel:       So, neither your parents graduated high school. How did that work? I mean… Now, I don’t think… Well, I guess you could drop out but…

David:     Yeah.

Joel:       It was just not done it wasn’t as strange back then though.

David:     People had to get work somehow, they didn’t have money.

Joel:       Right.

David:     So, yeah, he, my dad, was a very intelligent man. But it wasn’t school training. It was a certain Moxie, a phenomenal salesperson. And people liked him very much. And he was a genuine individual. He was a Christian in every sense of the word. And so, I look back, they were wonderful. I never thought, you know, the dad and mom graduated from high school. They were just my parents, and they were great.

Joel:       Well, they made their way in the world.

David:     They did very well my dad earned a lot of money. He got into buying buildings and everything. And he was well known in the business world. But I was just, you know, I was a kid. I was just observing.

Joel:       Right. Okay but this is what made you. People, you know, listen to you on the radio for years. Or I would say, you know, with the Chapel of the Air Radio Broadcast. Or whatever, you know, you were a broadcaster of a certain level. You were not a Dobson. You weren’t a Chuck Swindoll or something like that. But you were kind of in the middle, as far as maybe people knowing you. But people have always kind of thought of you as someone with integrity. Thinking maybe different not of the box, not theologically, but you were more fireside chatty as far as your tone. Is that fair?

David:     That’s fair. Yeah.

Joel:       Would you take those?

David:     My mother’s brother was John Jess. He was her younger brother. And he was a depression person as well. You know, those were difficult days. He didn’t have an education that he would have appreciated because he was a real thinker. But in those days, they have not been repeated. You had to live through them, I guess.

Joel:       You were talking about the depression?

David:     Yeah, the depression. And then not long after that, the things that I remember most of all as a young boy was a war.

Joel:       World War II.

David:     World War II, yes. Of the five brothers, all the other brothers went to war, but dad didn’t. I don’t know why. I don’t know if that’s just true, but he was the last one, so they kind of left him alone, I think.

Joel:       The government, you mean?

David:     Yes, the government, thank you. Because dad was the one who was supporting his mom. She came and lived with us, my grandmother.

Joel:       What was her name? I’ve never met her.

David:     She was a big part of my life.

Joel:       What did you call her?

David:     I don’t remember what we called her. Her name was Ida Myers. Now, the reason her name was different is that after her husband died, later in life she remarried. But then the new husband died as well. So, grandmother came, and she was a part of my early years. I would say the first eight, ten years, grandma came and lived. She lived in a trailer behind our house. And she was a big part of my life. Yeah, and she was a church woman as well.

Joel:       So, when we think about what influenced you and then your ministry, of course, you grew up in these heavily churched homes. Now, I think of grandma and grandpa as people with a simple faith, in the best sort of sense. They were not like someone who would…

David:     He wasn’t a seminary trained or anything like that.

Joel:       Right. Just a salt of the earth kind of but dedicated in their faith. Is that fair?

David:     It was the biggest thing in their lives. Yes, there’s not a question about that in my mind.

Joel:       And did grandma… I know she played piano and as she got older, she had passed from Alzheimer’s. Sometimes grandpa would need to go out, so I would go spend time with grandma. And one of the things we would do is she would play at the piano. And there was always the hymns. She would play at the Old Rugged Cross or something like that. And we would sing it. And then we’d sing a couple more and then she’d flip back. And then you’d be like, “Oh, I love this one.” Of course, it would be Old Rugged Cross again. So, you’d sing it again as she progressed. But did she play in church?

David:     Yeah, all the time. My dad was a good vocalist, not in a professional sense, in a crooner sense, I guess you’d say. But again, church was everything. Dad was responsible in many ways for the building of a church, a Baptist church. They began that congregation. It’s a very large church now in Quincy. I haven’t been on that for years, but that was his life. It had been profoundly affected. In fact, dad was a good musician, self-trained. I don’t know how, he never took lessons to my knowledge, but he was a good piano player.

Joel:       For sure, of course. Amazing.

David:     His older brothers, they played in orchestra that was going as a pleasure ship across from the States to Europe and back. And it was an opportunity for dad to be a part of that as well. They were going to use their brother thing to make him a part of the deal. And my grandma, Myers, said, the devil got three of my sons, they’re not going to get Douggie. So, she refused to let him go, which was really interesting.

Joel:       Which changed his life, for sure.

David:     It did. It really did. It’s very funny talking about past. I haven’t talked about these things, and I think. That was a part of my childhood. I had an older brother, and I had a younger sister. My older brother, Doug, has died. He was an orthopedic surgeon. And was my protector. It was good to have an older brother like Doug, and then my sister Donna is still alive. So, we knew who we were. We were Christians. There was no question about that, even though I didn’t understand what that meant for a long time. And I never intended to go into ministry. But you don’t always know exactly what’s going to come in terms of your future.

Joel:       Never say never.

David:     This is interesting to me and you. I don’t know if it’s interesting to anybody else.

Joel:       Well, I think it’s interesting for people who maybe want to know about you. When we think about where you would consider yourself growing up, would you have used the term evangelical?

David:     Yes, I think so. When I was growing up, and now I’m getting later in my thinking into high school and such, Billy Graham began to emerge on the scene. And I think he’s the one who coined that word for the most part. And evangelical, you were evangelistic. You were wanting to let other people know the good thing that you had found in Jesus.

Joel:       Right. I would say evangelicalism at that point. I think there’s been shifts in it but was very Bible focused. The Bible is where we find our truth. A personal relationship with Jesus would be very much part of that.

So, when we get into your ministry, and we’re going to go back, but as far as why are people interested. So, you were primarily starting out in Christian radio, which we’re talking Moody. How many stations were?

David:     We were on about 500 stations.

Joel:       500 stations. Okay, pretty huge impact, 15-minute broadcast daily.

David:     Six days a week.

Joel:       Yeah. But Christian radio was not really evangelical in that sense. I would call them more fundamentalists. Is that fair, or no?

David:     I think it’s fair. You’re talking about before my days. But there was a huge schism within the Christian church between the liberals and the conservatives. Both sides had good things and both sides had bad things.

Joel:       When you’re talking liberal though, we’re talking what? Are you talking mainline churches like Methodists and all of that? And then the conservative would be you’re talking an evangelical then or the fundamentalist? Or just are you talking just in broad strokes?

David:     I’m talking broad strokes, yeah, because you could be Methodist and that doesn’t say whether you’re conservative or liberal. One side was far more in terms of the concerns of social things that were happening today became a little bit more political and so on. But both sides, I look back and they both were part of the kingdom of God.

Joel:       Right. I think growing up, the amount of people who have asked me, what is it like growing up in the Mains household or David Mains as your parent? Or when people don’t know you and they’ll say, what did your father do? And I say, well, the radio ministry, people have all sorts of questions about that.

David:     These are your friends in school?

Joel:       No, just people I meet. Sure, of course, just conversations. But when they ask me about you, I tend to say that he was a practical theologian. That’s how I describe you.

David:     Oh, that’s fair.

Joel:       Which is you are not a theologian who’s the expository verse by verse. I’m not talking, as far as judging these things, but just as who were you. You are, what does the Bible say? How do I make that applicable to my life? We live our theology, so if I’m not living it, then the value comes out of its living, living it out kind of thing.

David:     The authenticity of what you say you believe affecting your life.

Joel:       Right, but you are not as interested in clever or like you were in a preacher who loved acronyms or those things. I’m not sure you were against those, but you were if we came away from a sermon, if we went to another church or something and you’d listen, you would be like, well, is there a takeaway from that? Is somebody going to know how to live a better or more authentic faith? And I think that did make you unique in the ministry. And that’s why people probably resonate with you because there was always something that could take away. So, the question when you say what’s interesting to people in this is where did that person come from?

You know, what about that? Because I don’t think that came necessarily from grandpa and grandma, because they were not, they were very simple faith. Believe in Jesus and live out your life. You were a little more systematic. So, when did you think that started coming into your ministry? Because I don’t think you were taught that in seminary when you got the seminary. So that was a unique voice throughout all your ministry. Probably you were talking early ministry in the inner city with Circle Church, 50-day spiritual adventure, things like that. But where do you think where’s the nugget of that or the digenesis of that for you?

David:     I don’t have enough time to even respond to your question, but I heard it and I will say, give me more time.

Joel:       You know, podcasts do go longer these days. So, you know, I know we’re going to he’s looking at his watch everybody. So, we’ll wrap this one up here. But are you going to answer my question? Are you going to hold it as a teaser or what are you going to do?

David:     I will not try to answer it today. I’m very time conscious.

Joel:       Yes,

David:     You know. And I just say that’s too big a question to ask me at this time. But I promise I will, and you’ll probably forget what you ask anyway.

Joel:       I have the luxury as your as your son of doing that. I do want to add this caveat that one thing about my dad is he did so much radio over the years, which of course, when you do a radio broadcast, you’re down to the second you’re purchasing time. So you have to turn in a broadcast that’s X amount of length. But because you did that, you became so conscious that someone could say, “Well, David, we need you to go for a minute and 32 seconds” and you could extemporaneously do that. And you would be within a second or two, I would say. Is that fair?

David:     It’s a little repulsive. It just you do it so often. You’re very time conscious.

Joel:       Right. So, this whole idea of winging of podcasts is I’m really stretching everybody. So, but OK, I’m this is what I’m going to do because I can I want to make sure you’re comfortable with this process. I’m going to let you end this. Can you wrap this up so we can do this?

And then as we pick this up, I’ll get better at maybe getting through the content in the right amount of time. But based on what we’re talking about today, do you have a wrap in your head at all or no?

David:     You’re asking things that I haven’t talked about because how I communicate doesn’t follow the procedure you’re doing. But it’s helpful to me and I’m grateful. It’s been interesting to me. So, keep doing it and we’ll probably go back and my bottom line is be “Thank you, Jesus. You’ve been very kind to me.” I feel like I was one of the fortunate who was given incredible home, incredible parents and so on. But we’ll talk about it more.

Outro:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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