Joel:       This is Joel Mains, David and Karen’s third child. I will be hosting with my father today. Hey dad, how are you doing?

David:     I’m doing okay. Getting used to you sitting there.

Joel:       Karen, my mom will be joining us in the future. Right now, we’re doing some in-depth father-son podcast together. So, this has been fun to get to hear your stories and talk through some things that maybe you don’t get to do normally on your podcast. If you are listening today and you’re kind of wondering what makes David Mains, David Mains, what are some of those stories, then you need to stick around because that is what we’re going to be talking about today.

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

Joel:       Okay, so dad this is our third podcast together. So, we sat down as a small little family of me and you and listened to the podcast. Well, I guess mom listened to it as well. And what was our takeaway from our last podcast?

David:     We need to have more energy.

Joel:       Right.

David:     We need to get used to this and not be upset by it.

Joel:       Yeah. So, we’re going to try to have lots of energy for you listeners today so we cannot lean back too much. I was trying to make you feel comfortable and I think we tip too far in that direction. So, as we get going on this and we learn hopefully we’ll get more and more enjoyable to listen to.

David:     And I’ve been reflecting quite a bit. It’s not normal for me to think back on things in my life but it’s an interesting time to think how the Lord has worked in different ways.

Joel:       Well, right! And as you age you think, these are some things I want to leave behind. And as your son, of course, I feel honored to be able to hear some of these things too. So, then clearly, we talk about these things. But this is a little more directed way to do it. So, one other thing I thought was, sometimes I maybe left some of your stories. I’m trying not to interrupt. So, but I do want to make sure I ask little details that may be interesting to the viewer. So, like last program we talked a little bit about your magic doing that and probably many people were hearing that for the first time. You used to do tricks.

Of course, you remember the slide of hands and all that muscle memory. So, when we were growing up and children would come to the house, you would often do, you know, disappearing coins and you know little tricks. Most of your big tricks were boxed up. But I thought what was your biggest tricks? What was one of your what was your grand finale when you did a show?

David:     The full evening show I put on as a college senior, it was, we had borrowed a large canvas mail sack from the post office.

Joel:       Okay.

David:     And they sealed me in there. The chaplain of the school did. And then, of course, you pull a curtain up so no one knows what’s going on. And a little while I came in from the back of the auditorium and said…

Joel:       …panting.

David:     I had to get out and get around through the basement, cut in the back. And when and I came up cut the rope so we could open it up quickly. And another classmate was the daughter of the chaplain.

Joel:       Okay.

David:     And she came out and he was kind of bamboozle.

Joel:       Oh, so he didn’t even know.

David:     She had no idea.

Joel:       Oh, that’s a good trick on him then.

David:     So anyway, that was… that was fun.

Joel:       And then I think as a mom listened to the podcast, she said, “Well, Donna was your assistant in some of those shows. So, Donna was your sister.”

David:     Yes, she was a great assistant because she was very beautiful. And yeah, it’s hard to describe what she had done. We had looked like a large post and tied her to that post and then I had one of these automatic smoke machines where you step on it, and it lights and poof.

Joel:       Right.

David:     And velcro is spoken she’s a step right up from all the ropes and came out. Welcome.

Joel:       Abra Cadabra.

David:     Yeah. Those are bigger. Those are not slight of him. But they’re their illusions they call them.

Joel:       Right and then we discussed how kind of that sense of delight you get at a show like that was important for you to incorporate into church sermons. And you know, later on in the radio broadcast. And then the 50-day spiritual adventure of course. And that was really interesting to me to kind of make that connection. I’m sure people who followed your ministry for a long time can think of many times either and even way back when you were pastoring Circle Church in the city. But finding the delight, in the best as a word, the showmanship that can go with presenting a concept in a creative way.

David:     Your personality, one way or the other. And either delightful personality or boring and I think in the last couple visits with you because this is new to me, I was a little bit boring. So, I’m going to if I have to make something up.

Joel:       Well, I didn’t think it was boring. I just think, you know, it’s good to have a little energy, and so we want to move on with this topic today. And we want to talk some more, either people or events that influence who you are, that made you who you are and something that is listeners listen that they can hear a little more about who David Mainz is. And so, I want to hear some more of those stories. I may interrupt a little bit today just to kind of make sure we’re locking down all the details.

David:     One of the areas where I was as a young minister trying to become comfortable was hearing God’s voice. And I early on in the ministry because we were raised in a greater Chicago land area, I fell in love with the Chicago City. We would be in the city a lot seeing different sporting events and so on. And I always thought someday, I’d like to be able to pastor in Chicago. I was in the suburban area where Western suburbs where. It’s West Chicago it’s not a name of geographic. It’s the name of the town in which we live. And many times I was working with Youth for Christ International. I was working at the Evangelical Free Church which was a large church in Wheaton which is right next to West Chicago. And I would say to myself, “I’d like to really be in the city sometime.”

What was happening in the city, Joel, is it they called a white flight. The white neighborhoods, the many of the people were moving outside of the city and they were being replaced by new racial groups mostly blacks. And I wanted to go back in the city. But how do you start something in the city or how do you get somebody to call you.

Joel:       Okay hang on one second. I just want to set the time here, so it doesn’t flow for people. So, we are talking the 60s then. This is pre-civil rights movement time. Or right concurrent with that?

David:     Concurrent.

Joel:       Okay. So, we have the urbanization of cities. The African Americans are moving in more dynamically. Maybe all the whites are leaving because there is racism issues. And they’re basically saying, “We don’t want people like this in our neighborhood. So, we’re going to go further west.”

David:     Yeah.

Joel:       …further out

David:     It wasn’t really all of the people. They didn’t change totally. There would always be a mixture that would be left. But that was fascinating to me. I wanted to be a part of it. But how do you get somebody to give you an offer? You know?

Joel:       When you say you want to be a part of it, you mean you want to be part of stemming the tide of…

David:     Yeah, I wanted to go back in. I didn’t want to be identifying with the people who are all leaving. These were a long-time church ministry. You can’t change a church building all of a sudden. And told it out to the western suburbs.

Joel:       So, what did the churches do?

David:     When my call is…

Joel:       Look, they basically they lost our congregations.

David:     Certainly, it would split. And there would be a remnant left and they wouldn’t be able to sustain what was going on. One way or the other, that was on my heart. And I remember saying to the Lord, “Why aren’t more of the ministers moving back in there? That was almost nobody did that. I’ll go, you know. And I said, “Lord, I’d love to be in there. In some way, give me a meaningful ministry. Just open the door.” But nothing opened.

Joel:       I’m going to assume you were ahead of your time in that then.

David:     I don’t know what I was, but I know what was going on in my heart. Somewhere there has to be the establishment of a ministry that grows, and people say, “We stayed here. And the Lord worked out an amelioration between the races.”

Joel:       Okay. So, at that point though you are how old? You’re in your 20s?

David:     I’m in probably in my early 30s.

Joel:       Early 30s. Okay that helps me. Yeah.

David:     I said this to the Lord, and I said because I was coming to the end of where I was working. There were pastoral changes and so on. And I wanted to be a senior pastor. I was still young, but I wanted to not preach once every four or five months, you know. And I had a call from a large church in the Peoria area. Peoria is one of the larger cities downstate Illinois.

Joel:       So, we’re talking mid America.

David:     Yes.

Joel:       For people maybe unfamiliar with the geography.

David:     We actually went down there. Karen and I, went together and they were to the place where they were asking us, you know, “Are you open to a call?” And that meant I would be involved for x number of years outside of Chicago, and yet I didn’t have any other offers. So, I said, “I need to pray about it.” And I left Peoria with Karen. And on the way back I said, “You know, it’s just not who I am in my heart, I need to get into the city.” I don’t know why that burden was there, but it was very strong in me. And I came back to the church where I was the associate pastor. The minister was gone a lot in meetings. Even then very seldom did he have me preach. So, I was wrestling with the Lord and saying, “I don’t know how to do this Lord? You know. Why don’t you open something up?” And there was a call from the church secretary from her office to my intercom. And she said, “There are some people here from Moody Church in Chicago.”

Joel:       Moody Church?

David:     “They want to see you.” Well, Moody church is a huge building. There weren’t a lot of people in it. And maybe three four hundred people at the most in that auditorium that’s seated a couple thousand.

Joel:       Well, and Moody is connected with Moody Bible Institute.

David:     Yes. I thought, “What are they doing here?” “They would like to talk to you,” they said. And so, they came back to my office, and they said, “We’re looking for a youth minister. We haven’t had a church pastor for quite a while. The man who had been the pastor was Dr. Alan Redpath. A gentleman, he was from the old country. And I got to know him very well because he would come back to the states, and he was a beautiful person and was very kind to me just because he came to know who I was because I moved into Chicago.

They wanted a youth pastor. They said, “This is what we have. We’ve lost almost all of our staff now because we don’t have a senior pastor. And with very good reports about you with youth…” I didn’t want to be a youth pastor but all of a sudden that was a possible way for me to get into the city. And so, I said, “I’m interested. I will do it. But as long as there’s not a pastor there, you need to guarantee that I will preach one Sunday a month.” And because I didn’t want to get stuck in that.

Joel:       Yeah, right.

David:     Again, it was a fascinating thing how that opened. And then my heart kind of beat fast. I remember telling Karen, you know, this is something the Lord seemed to be in that. Maybe I have the door to get back into the city once again. And that’s how it happened. I came into the city, and I was to preach once a month. And I enjoyed that time, but the first month ended and I hadn’t been asked to preach. And then the second month. And then I got to the committee and said, “You know, I was supposedly to preach once a month.” Because I knew I was going to get stuck in that one role.

And they said, “Well, we weren’t sure the board would pass that because you’re pretty young and this is an established pastorate, you know. So, we said, ‘let’s hope we can open that in time.’”        But they didn’t tell me that, you know. And maybe that was of the Lord. So, I would get in.

And they said, “We will schedule you, but we have guest speakers coming for many weeks. And so, it would be several months off.” When I said, “Okay, but you know, that’s not fair to me.”

Joel:       I’ve never heard of this story.

David:     In the meantime, they called the minister. And so, I preached one time and that was it. The minister, it was Dr. George Sweeting, who was from the east, and he had experience in terms of intercity work. He was very gracious to me. He also had the option to choose his own staff, which they had told him. And he had an individual he had in mind he wanted to bring in there.

Now, I was really stuck because I was not only not able to preach as I had been told. I had a minister coming in and said, “I’d like to have somebody else in your position. And I’d like for you to look for another place.”

I talked to him and said, “You know, I’d really like to stay in Chicago. Would you be open to me going to another church that would be in a different neighborhood? Would that be a problem to you?” And he said, “No.”

Joel:       As a Moody Church? Or just what do you mean?

David:     It would be on my own.

Joel:       You would still be on staff then?

David:     No, I wouldn’t be on staff, but it wouldn’t bother. I thought, you know, I’m not going to start a ministry in somebody’s home across the street from a Moody Church. Dr. Sweeting was a good man. He’s been a good man all his life. I respect him highly. And he, basically did nothing but encourage me.

I’d gotten into the city, but now I didn’t have a job. So, that’s how Circle Church started. Where the Circle Exchange is the key interchange of roads in all of Chicago. That’s the hub. It’s where they built the Chicago Circle Campus and named it after the interchange, I guess. But that’s how God answered my prayer, strange roundabout.

Joel:       So, is this a person or an event or what is this influence on your life?

David:     In terms of my burden for the city?

Joel:       No, as far as our topic for today.

David:     I’m just thinking in strange ways that God answers our prayers.

Joel:       Ok.

Joel:       He put it on my heart. It was kind of a roundabout way. He got me into the city. In fact, what happened was now I preached every Sunday because I was starting a new church. We started with a handful of people and in God’s providence, it grew. And I was in there 10 years. But it’s just very fascinating to me how the Lord doesn’t say, “Okay, you’d like to go into the city. I got an opportunity for you here.” Bingo.

Joel:       Right. So, why do you think that is?

David:     I think for me, it was so that I would not have any question about what this is where I was supposed to be. Because starting a church from scratch is not easy.

Joel:       Right. Especially at a time where the demographics are changing rapidly.

David:     Yeah. I found in all of the time that I was there that there were also indications that God said, “I’m in this. I’m with you. I’m putting the pieces together.” It just said he doesn’t always lead in the way you think he’s going to lead. But that relieved that burden. I was doing what I felt God wanted me to do. And it was a very exciting time for me those 10 years.

Joel:       Okay. And so I would say growing up, that I mean I would have been not even around at that point. I mean when the church was going on, I was. But very, very young. But I’ve seen in your life with you and Mom, many times that God seems to work that way with you. I would call it a God has a sense of drama for like, it’s not going to go the way you necessarily plan it or think. But I’m going to bring it about. Just you don’t get to choose. You just kind of have to follow along. Would you say that’s been indicative of your life?

David:     Yeah, I would say that that’s very much that way. There needs to be a willingness. You put it on my heart. I’ll trust you to work it all out. And that was good. I would say for the first year and a half, they were bad sermons I preached because I was not accustomed to having to produce sermons that often. But at the same time, there were not many people coming to the church. Those early years it didn’t catch until some months had gone by. We began to get a group of people. We started from scratch.

Joel:       Well, I want to go into in depth on Circle Church, maybe in another podcast. So that’s good. But I want to keep us moving here. As we talk about before we go, what is my takeaway from this? If you would say to me in relation to God and life. What would your takeaway from that be? What would be my takeaway or a listener?

David:     I would say that there need to be times when in quiet you’re saying, “Lord, I’m doing my best to discern what you have in mind for me. And if I make a mistake, it’s not because of disobedience, hopefully. But it’s just because I don’t have the perspective that you do, and you need to guide me.”

I can give a real fast illustration on that. As I was past the time, I was in the city and was with the Chapel of the Year Ministry.

Joel:       The radio broadcast?

David:     We would travel to different places, and I was speaking at Mount Hermon in California. And we met a couple who were ministering that same week. We’d kind of alternate. His name was Ben Patterson. His wife was a Loretta. We established a wonderful relationship. One of the things he said to me is, “Have you taken the Myers-Briggs temperament test?” And I said, “I don’t even know what it was.” And he explained to me, and this became very popular.

Joel:       So we’re moving on to another influential story.

David:     Yes.

Joel:       So, the Myers-Briggs test for people, there are going to be many people with no idea. It’s a personality test. It’s very popular. So, it’s not something fringe, but it breaks the personalities. I think it’s the 16 types. They may have made even some more categories now. But a way you answer 100 questions probably or something around that.

Would you prefer if you went to a party? Are you tired? Or when you meet people are you more excited? Or finding out your personality?

David:     When the phone rings, do you run to grab it, or do you just ignore it and let somebody else answer?

Joel:       And this is used in ministries. It’s used in offices often. And more people right now, a popular one would be like Enneagrams. I think it’s what is called. I’ve never done that one, but kind of the same kind of way, personally. So, you’ve never heard of this and he brings us up to you and we’re talking in the 70s then or 80s?

David:     Yeah. He actually had the book. It’s called “Please Understand Me.” And he said, “I’d be happy to take it.” So, we’re just talking, and I did it and probably finished it off in a matter of 15 minutes, something like that. And then you look at the results. And it said a characteristic attribute of you is what people talk of when they think of, I’m trying to get the exact term, it would be a field marshal.

Joel:       This is what you came up as.

David:     I came up as…

Joel:       After you were testing that said, this is your personality.

David:     You’re a field marshal. You would like to have great armies who you could organize and use to your leadership.

Joel:       Get the troops moving kind of thing.

David:     You know what, when Ben said that to me, you come out on this test as a field marshal. And all of us said, “By golly, I’ve been looking for that all my life.”

Joel:       Interesting.

David:     That’s part of what called me into Chicago. How do we put together the pieces that would see a movement of God’s spirit in the city of Chicago?

Joel:       Right.

David:     But all of a sudden, never hear of the test before, but it clarified in my mind who I was and made me comfortable with it. Because that’s many times in my life, I’ve acted as a field marshal even though I’m not an official field marshal, just organizing the troops and how we put this together. I can do something on radio, but if I get a several hundred, maybe a thousand even, which passed that mark of you pastors to preach the same topic at the same time in your church. I’ll introduce it Monday on the broadcast, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then on Sunday. You review it. And introduce a new topic. That’s the field marshal in me coming out. And I can give numerous illustrations of that in my life.

But how did that happen? God needed to say, “David doesn’t think of himself in a leadership role the way he could because people respond to him.” He somehow, the Lord, had to show me what he wanted to. But it wasn’t through the normal channels that I think of. But that had a profound effect upon my life. Yeah, I’m still that way. I still say, “If we did it a little bit differently, could we have a maximum result bigger than what we anticipated?”

You know, and then you have to sell people on that.

Joel:       Right.

David:     And I don’t mean in a bad way.

Joel:       Painting the vision.

David:     You have to paint the vision and you have to show how God is in it. And then people respond. And you know, that is very interesting to me. It was kind of like with the people in scripture when the angel appears to them and they say, “I have a job for you.” “Who me?” You know, “What am I?”

Well, I didn’t have visions, but I had this awareness of God’s presence in a strange way. I’ve had that numerous times in my life. And I just say, “Lord, you’re incredibly creative how you pull these things off.” And sometimes even then I’m reluctant to respond, but I’ve come to the place where I trust those nudging of the Lord more than I used to.

I’m looking back on my life a lot right now. And I’m saying, “Lord, you know, is there another of those times coming in my life?” I’m an old man now. And then I realize a lot of times in scripture, God gets this, I’m an old man or I’m an old woman.

Joel:       Yeah, right. I passed my prime, you know, Abraham and Sarah.

David:     Yes.

Joel:       And I also think also about the scripture that says, you know, to the holy, all things are holy. So, someone could look at some tests like that and be like, oh, well, this is pseudoscience or whatever they might want to classify it as. But for you, it was something where you could say, “Wow, I am seeing myself in a way that we would at this point look at your life” and say, “Yeah, No, that was a God ordained way that something that you needed to get in line.”

David:     It’s kind of neat. You feel as though it’s amazing to me that you would give me your attention, God, and say, “I need to nudge you because you’re kind of rut it here. I need you to get out of that rut.”

But I think he does that not only with people like myself in professional ministry. He does that with people all the time. It just, and there is that sense that says, I’m not going to minimize this. I’m almost going to say, “You’re speaking to me, you’re serviant his listening.” And it’s a little scary. But yeah, I’m here.

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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