Former Mega Church Pastor Dr. Allen Hunt Interviews with Matthew Kelly
Matthew Kelly:
Hi, I'm Matthew Kelly, and welcome to Profoundly Human. My guest today, Allen Hunt. Allen, welcome.
Allen Hunt:
Thank you, Matthew. Good to be here, man.
Matthew Kelly:
Great to be with you. Big questions to start with.
Allen Hunt:
All right.
Matthew Kelly:
Are you drinking coffee, there?
Allen Hunt:
I am.
Matthew Kelly:
And you're a big coffee drinker, a not so big coffee drinker? What does that look like?
Allen Hunt:
I don't handle caffeine that well. I'm pretty wired to begin with, so one cup of coffee a day is about it for me.
Matthew Kelly:
Very, very good. What about favorites? Favorite food?
Allen Hunt:
Favorite food? I like barbecue, I like mashed potatoes, but nobody does food like Italian.
Matthew Kelly:
Okay. What about favorite band? Musician?
Allen Hunt:
I'm a Tom Petty guy.
Matthew Kelly:
Tom Petty guy.
Allen Hunt:
Yeah, Tom Petty. Yeah.
Matthew Kelly:
Favorite Tom Petty song?
Allen Hunt:
Petty's life has been... I mean, his career has spanned the same as my lifetime, I guess he came on the scene when I was in junior high or high school and obviously died a couple years ago as of now. And he's from north Florida near Gainesville, Alachua County. I don't know, his stuff has spoken to me. If I had to pick I'd go with his Southern Accents album, which is the least known, probably the least popular one compared to all the stuff that people typically know. There's some really good stuff on there, but the song Southern Accents speaks to Anita and me very much.
Matthew Kelly:
Brilliant lyricist.
Allen Hunt:
Yeah.
Matthew Kelly:
Just fantastic lyrics, just mm.
Allen Hunt:
And loves music, man. He was the guy that would pull other musicians to... he was humble enough, there wasn't a lot of ego there, and he would pull other great musicians and guitarists just for the love music to get them together. People that wouldn't even talk together, he'd get them in the studio and just really trying to promote the craft and the art of music and guitar. Really big fan.
Matthew Kelly:
Yeah. I mean, Traveling Wilburys is a great story. He got Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison-
Allen Hunt:
George Harrison, yeah.
Matthew Kelly:
... together, and there's some big personalities there, some big egos there and some of them notorious for not being able to write with anybody. So to get them to do two albums and tour together at that stage of their lives, it's fantastic. What about-
Allen Hunt:
And you start with coffee. I mean, there's a great Petty coffee story, all right? After he died, about a year or two, somebody had done a long... oh, it was a guy who wrote the biography of Petty. And I can't remember his name and he published the biography and they, and they came to him and said, "As you reflect on Tom Petty's life and your work with him on this book, anything that stands out?" And he goes, "Yeah, there's one story that didn't make it in the book." He said, "Petty drank coffee all day. And he had some really bad lifestyle choices, so he probably needed the coffee to keep going." And he said, "And Petty was always in search of the perfect cup of coffee." And so he said, "What was fascinating was he was with somebody, but I don't remember remember if it was somebody who was interviewing him or a musician. And they gave him a cup of coffee and he goes, 'This is the best cup of coffee I've ever had. This is like the perfect cup of coffee.'" Of course he did it in that weird voice is.
Allen Hunt:
And the guy says, "Do you know what it is, Tom?" And he goes, "No." He goes, "It's Maxwell House." And Petty didn't believe him. Penny said, "I got to go back and see how you made this." And he says, "Well, part of it is how we make it." He goes into this guy's kitchen and there's one of those Bunn-O-Matics they have in restaurants, it's almost like a commercial grade, had a Bunn-O-Matic in his kitchen. And the secret was each scoop of coffee was perfectly leveled off and made in this Bunn-O-Matic. So Petty goes home and he buys all that stuff and for the rest of his life, that's what he drank, Maxwell House.
Matthew Kelly:
... That is a great story.
Allen Hunt:
The perfect cup of coffee.
Matthew Kelly:
That is a great story.
Allen Hunt:
I can't believe that Maxwell House hasn't done anything with that.
Matthew Kelly:
I can't believe it didn't make the book. What about favorite movie?
Allen Hunt:
Close second would be Godfather. You and I share that one. But number one, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Matthew Kelly:
Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Allen Hunt:
I mean, it's just a classic
Matthew Kelly:
Bueller.
Allen Hunt:
Bueller. Bueller.
Matthew Kelly:
What do you love about it? What is-
Allen Hunt:
Do you know when Ben Stein's calling roll in the classroom there?
Matthew Kelly:
... Yeah.
Allen Hunt:
Do you remember the name that comes after that?
Matthew Kelly:
No.
Allen Hunt:
Bueller, Bueller, Fry, Fry. This is a great movie. I forgot the question. What was the question? Fry.
Matthew Kelly:
Did you skip school like that as a child?
Allen Hunt:
I had a good friend who did, and I always admired that, because he could get away with it. I was the one that always got caught. I think that's why I like Bueller, it was sort of my fantasy life. I wanted to be like that, but I was always getting caught.
Matthew Kelly:
Tell us about childhood. What was it like growing up? Where did you grow up? What are your significant memories of your childhood?
Allen Hunt:
Most of my childhood was spent in a little town in western North Carolina called Brevard, this is a town about 7,000 folks now. It's right in the middle of Pisgah National Forest in the mountains. Beautiful place. Waterfalls, kayaking, mountain climbing, all that kind of stuff. My folks worked at a little small Methodist college there that had about 500 students called Brevard College. It was a really, really good place to grow up, because it was safe. People knew each other. I would spend just practically the whole day, either walking around town or riding my bike around town, never felt unsafe. Good school system. I grew up on that college campus, so I got exposed to lots of cool stuff in the fine arts and the athletics program, lecturers and things that... There was a life that I had as a kid of a professor and the business manager that allowed me to just get exposed to a lot of cool stuff.
Allen Hunt:
It was a good childhood. Baseball was at the center of it. Like your son Harry, I can identify with him. Everything was about baseball for me. Everything. I learned to read by reading the box scores with my brother. Got up every morning, I was a big Dodger fan, 7:15 in the morning on WPNF, they would give the West Coast baseball scores because obviously the Dodgers were playing long after I was in bed. Played baseball as much as could. A big baseball field in our backyard. Our neighbor was a retired plumber and he got tired of having the foul balls coming into his yard. So he came out one day and he brought these huge like telephone poles and we go, "Mr. Osborn, what are you doing? He goes, "Well, I'm building you a backstop." He puts up four big telephone poles and gets chicken wire, has some other guys helping him. We had this backstop in our backyard, it was often Fenway Park in our backyard.
Matthew Kelly:
Wow.
Allen Hunt:
It was cool. It was cool. It was a good childhood, it really was.
Matthew Kelly:
What position did you play?
Allen Hunt:
Short stop. Yeah.
Matthew Kelly:
And did you have a favorite Dodgers player?
Allen Hunt:
Yeah. And this was the '70s, so that infield of Steve Garvey at first, Davey Lopes at second, and Bill Russell at short and Ron Cey at third, The Penguin. Those four guys, that infield, those were my guys. Yeah.
Matthew Kelly:
What broke them up? Do you remember what broke them up?
Allen Hunt:
Yeah, it's been a while. I think it was when Steve Garvey, I think he got traded to the Padres after a pretty long run, I think he was the first one. And then I think Ron Cey's contract ran out and he signed with the Cubs. So they probably had a, at least a six year, maybe an eight, possibly even 10. I mean, Bill Russell and Davey Lopes at second and short were there for forever anda day. But those four guys, that was fun. It's back when they were playing The Big Red Machine. If Harry had been alive, he and I would've been at loggerheads [inaudible 00:07:50].
Matthew Kelly:
Loggerheads. What was the feeling like when your favorite players got traded as a kid?
Allen Hunt:
Oh, that was tough stuff. That was tough stuff. That was tough stuff. You're not sure who to be more mad at and you're sad, you're devastated, but you're also mad. And is it the player's fault? Is it the general manager's fault? It was like a divorce.
Matthew Kelly:
And that didn't consult you.
Allen Hunt:
Yeah. Nobody asked my opinion. I just wanted to be able to speak into the process. Didn't seem like too much to ask. I was eight. I had things to offer.
Matthew Kelly:
I got a lot of that going on at the house at the moment.
Allen Hunt:
I bet you do. I bet.
Matthew Kelly:
It's like every day I'm getting update on the trades.
Allen Hunt:
I bet, I bet.
Matthew Kelly:
What about, who is the most interesting person you've ever met?
Allen Hunt:
This sounds packaged, but it's my wife, Anita. After we had been dating six or 12 months, I said to her, "You're the only person that I don't ever get tired of being around." And I think that's when I knew I need to marry this lady. Because most people, you spend some time with them and you're ready to move on. But with Anita, I just never got tired of being around her. I still don't get tired of being around her. Part of that's being infinitely interesting and just part of it's her great qualities. But I know that sounds cheesy, but it's my wife.
Matthew Kelly:
We can talk a little bit about that later because one of the things I've experienced with you as a friend, as a speaker, as an author, is that very often you will say something that does feel cliche or packaged or however you want to call that, but when you start one packet, it is astoundingly unique and interesting. And I think as we've just experienced, because I don't think most people, in considering who to spend their life with, consider what you have just considered, which is, do I get tired of being with this person? Because if you get tired of being with this person when you're dating this person, what is that going to look like-
Allen Hunt:
A lifetime's a long time.
Matthew Kelly:
... It's a long time.
Allen Hunt:
It's funny because I like change. I don't like routine. I like to do different stuff. And even in my life in ministry professionally, I've done different kinds of stuff. I like that. I couldn't do the same job for 40 years. And people always will ask Anita, "Doesn't that bother you that Allen's... he likes change and likes to explore new stuff and all that kind stuff?" She goes, "No, because I learned early on I'm the only person he never gets tired of." She took that as this sort of, "Okay, this'll be fine. Allen may do different kinds of stuff, but he's my guy and I'm his gal."
Matthew Kelly:
Powerful.
Allen Hunt:
She's a good one.
Matthew Kelly:
What are you most excited about at this time in your life?
Allen Hunt:
Well, as you know, I mean, and you and I have talked about this in a number of settings, some publicly and some privately, I mean, this is a new chapter for me, going to be 59 here in a couple months. We got seven grandkids, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and six months old, total chaos and bedlam. And it's a new season, a new chapter, where a lot of my adult life was focused around my job, my career, my ministry, my reputation, my achievement, my accomplishments, all that kind of stuff. And most of that stuff doesn't really make much difference to me anymore. And it's a new chapter and I realize, hey, I've got a good 20, and if I get lucky, 30 more years with a different kind of perspective. And my grandkids now matter a lot more to me than most things.
Allen Hunt:
And it's a time that I explore some things that I never got around to in the past, things that I wanted to do. Because I don't have to be quite as accomplishment driven. I can be more relationship driven. And in some ways that makes me sad. Because as I look back, I realize I probably wasn't as relationship driven as I would've liked to have been over the last 58 years. But it's also a great opportunity for the next 20 or 30 years to be more relationship driven and enjoy people more than got to drive, got to drive, got to drive kind of thing.
Matthew Kelly:
What are the grandchildren teaching you?
Allen Hunt:
How to drink a lot of coffee. I guess they're teaching me two things, one good and one not so good. The good thing, they're teaching me to rediscover joy in a much simpler, purer way, because there's just a lot of joy and discovery and wonder. The pleasure of wonder as they discover things and I get to show them things. What they're teaching me in a bad way is this is a tough culture. This is a tough culture to grow up in. Obviously we're still early, the oldest one is six, will be going into first grade next year. But I can see that 10 year old, 12 year old window out there when the world begins to change.
Allen Hunt:
First of all, grandparents don't become less important, you get more interactive with sports, with music, with friends, with phones, with technology. And I know how the technological sector, the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world are targeting those folks in a very aggressive way. And so really trying to give a lot of thought to how, how I can help walk alongside them. Because it's a really different world than the one my kids grew up in. And so obviously a very different world than the one that I grew up in. And so trying to help prepare them for that. That feels a little more sober, somber than the joy and the wonder, which when they're three and they're five and they're seven, that is just off the charts.
Matthew Kelly:
How would you describe yourself to someone who had never met you?
Allen Hunt:
That's a really hard question. I actually don't know. I think, again, it sounds packaged and cheesy, I'm the king of Velveeta here. I think I would simply say I'm just somebody who's really trying to love God. Because really, at this point in my life, I think that's who I am, that's who I want to anyway. And really, I don't need them to know a whole lot of other stuff about me besides that.
Matthew Kelly:
What matters most to you at this time in your life and how has that changed?
Allen Hunt:
Well, I mean, I think it goes to the two previous questions. What matters most to me is, as somebody who's really trying to love God and somebody who's trying to help prepare his grandchildren for a life, and somebody that realizes that my shelf life is a lot shorter than my grandkids. And the most important thing to me is my faith. And I want my grandkids to have that. Really, the most important thing, and this is for Anita and me, it's not just me, really, the most important thing for us is trying to pass our faith onto our grandkids and trying to have that DNA of the Catholic faith, of Jesus Christ, of the Eucharist be embedded in them. Because I really believe that if we can do that, A, we will love them well. And B, the stuff that I was just mentioning that I'm a little suspicious and skeptical about when they start hitting 10, 12, 15, and the technological world opens and everything's changing and getting bombard with social media. That if we can embed that now, that gives them a much higher chance of coming through all that in a healthy, whole way, rather than just getting battered by the waves of the culture. Passing on that faith and embedding and in the grandkids, that would be it, it really would.
Matthew Kelly:
When you look back on your life, your faith journey, is there a moment where you say, "Okay, at that moment, the faith became mine?"
Allen Hunt:
Well, I guess I'm Catholic because as a Protestant, a lot of times it's like, "This is the moment." And that was never my experience. My experience was there's been a lot of moments. It reminds me of an old Methodist bishop actually from my old life. He said, "Yeah, people ask me, 'When were you called to preach?'" And he says, "Well, the last time was this morning." and in some ways, to me, that's sort of this... it's this ongoing journey. And so, I mean, first moment was probably my confirmation. We had confirmation in the Methodist church. And so I remember when I was being confirmed at First Methodist Church in Brevard, North Carolina, Dr. Tuttle was our pastor, marvelous guy. And Dr. Tuttle, the week before confirmation, he met with us. I don't remember how many of us there were, there was maybe 20 of us, I guess. And I think we were sixth graders, if my memory's right. And he said, "Now, next week's the week. This is a big moment for you. And I want you to be sure that you're doing this and not just your parents doing it. This is you."
Allen Hunt:
And so I went home to my dad ,because I knew better than to ask my mom this question, so I asked my dad, I said, "Dad, Dr. Tuttle says I need to take this seriously. Why do you believe? Why are you a Christian?" Dad had grown up in a Methodist parson, his father had been a Methodist preacher and his grandfather had been Methodist preacher. And so I assumed it was going to be something related to that. And he goes, "For me, it was, I started thinking about after Jesus died, those 12 guys, those 12 apostles gave up everything and they scattered. They didn't just all stick together, they scattered across the earth. And none of them ever recanted. And they all told the same story. And it was so powerful that it had changed their lives and they gave up everything to go do it, in many situations, which either they were going to be persecuted or executed." He said, "So that told me clearly something happened." And he said, "Now, that was good enough for me."
Allen Hunt:
The confirmation was a big one. Then I got into high school, I, like a lot of folks, wandered off into the other paths. And I was always a little too curious, I had too many questions. Like our high school youth director was an older woman, I think she was maybe 70 years old. And we had this youth group of, I don't know, 40 or 50 high schoolers. And I wanted to... "Can we go visit the Catholic church and see how they do it? Can we maybe go visit the Mormon church? Could we maybe go to a synagogue?" And she just got tired of my questions. So she asked me not to come back, said, "This is probably not a good fit for you." Yeah, I have the red badge of honored of having getting thrown out of youth group. My parents were so proud. It's like, oh my gosh.
Allen Hunt:
So I wandered away and then I got into my twenties and I started dating Anita and we started going to church together and I had a real reawakening then. And so that was another moment. And then there was a call to leave the business world and go into full-time ministry, so that was another moment. And then when Anita and I went through a two or three period of intense suffering, that was another moment. There's been a lot of moments when it's been a renewing of the faith really is mine. It's not somebody else's that I'm trying to appropriate or do to please, this is my faith and this is why I believe and who I am. That's a long answer. Sorry about that.
Matthew Kelly:
[inaudible 00:20:25]. How does God amaze you today?
Allen Hunt:
Well, again, I'm Catholic. I chose Catholic. And one of the reasons I chose Catholic was the Sacred Heart of Jesus, from St. Gertrude the Great to St. Margaret Mary, to the Gospel Luke chapter 15, and the prodigal son and the lost sheep and the lost coin. The overwhelming love of God and how little I think we're able to comprehend that. Every once in a while, maybe you have it, one of those moments where you at least begin to go, "Whew." But that to me is what's amazing, is that at the center of the universe, and actually what holds everything of all creation together is that divine love. If God withdraws that, it's not that the universe blows up, the universe just disappears. Because it's the love that's holding it all together. And yet that same love is applied exponentially and overwhelmingly to you and to me, as people made in His image, that to me is what amazes me. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's-
Matthew Kelly:
Yeah, very much so.
Allen Hunt:
... that's where I'm at.
Matthew Kelly:
You talk about that love being withdrawn. And for some reason, what flashed into my mind is I think so many people experience that with their parents, of that love being withdrawn and it can shatter their lives. How do you see the parentlessness that our society's experiencing, particularly the fatherlessness, in relation to people's inability to ponder the love of God or experience the love of God, or be exposed to love of God?
Allen Hunt:
Whew. That's a good one, man. Yeah, the decline of the American father is probably the great tragedy of the 20th and 21st centuries. I mean, you know the statistics as well are better than I do, I mean, when you go to the prison, the greatest predictor is an absent father. And when you grow up in a chaotic... I mean, I love single moms and the heroic work that they do, but kids need a dad and a mom. One person is just not able to do both of those. It's asking too much. I mean, if the mom tends to maybe nurture and keeping the nest, well, and the dad... I mean, again, that's the generalization, but the dad tends to push out and get the kids to try to spread their wings and become... there's a healthy tension there between nurture and adventure and that kind of thing.
Allen Hunt:
And so if you grow up in a more chaotic, less stable setting, and you've experienced part of parental love, but not all of parental love, and you're exposed to things because you don't have two engaged parents in your life, a lot of your life becomes more... First of all, if you haven't really experienced love, the idea of a loving God is almost like a foreign language. And you also are, excuse me, you're facing more dangers, you're facing more hurdles in your life. I mean, so your life becomes much more of a survival contest than a thriving contest. I mean, I think about something that Father Mike, our mutual friend, said in a talk, I don't even remember if I was there or if I watched it on YouTube or something. He said the millennial generation was defined by... they came to the conclusion life is hard. And the next generation, I think he calls them the I generation, is instead saying, "Is it worth it?" There's almost a despair.
Allen Hunt:
And I think a lot of that is because that fatherlessness and life is so challenging because economically you're disadvantaged, educationally, you tend to be disadvantaged, you're exposed to more dangers, it does, it becomes more of a survival of the fittest Lord of the Flies kind of thing, to exaggerate a bit. But there's less stability in your life. And I think the greatest gift my dad gave me, I mean, my dad was not a high curb appeal kind of guy. He hated speaking period, let alone speaking in public. He was an accountant. He was very quiet, very reserved. Oftentimes you would never even know he was in the room. But the greatest gift he gave me was the consistency, the steadiness, the stability. I knew every single day he was going to come home from work. Every day at 5:30, he was going to walk through that door. He wasn't going to be drunk. He wasn't going to be angry. He wasn't going to be violent and he wasn't going to not show up.
Allen Hunt:
And I didn't really appreciate that until I got to be about 17, 18. In high school and college, I start to encounter people that it didn't have that kind of stability that gives you a home base that you can count on because then you're able to go out and explore the world and explore your own gifts and explore things for yourself as opposed to the whole world just being chaotic to you. That gift of predictability, consistency, stability was an incredible gift that he gave me that I didn't appreciate until a lot later.
Matthew Kelly:
When we talk about these things, and it could be this issue, it could be 20 other issues, one of the things I've noticed is that people get uncomfortable, people get defensive, people get in a place if they're affected by what you're talking about right now. If there's someone watching and they are divorced and they are raising their children maybe solo because there's an addict or whatever, it's hard for them to hear what you're saying.
Allen Hunt:
Yeah, totally agree.
Matthew Kelly:
Because it has deep and sometimes heartbreaking implications for their life. How do we develop in people the maturity to be able to say, "Hey, my situation is broken, either through my own fault or someone else's fault, but I can still see that is the best way." Do you know what I'm talking about? I
Allen Hunt:
I do. I do. And I mean, it's not like an absent father is a new invention. I mean, there were a lot of dads that didn't come home from World War II. You had a lot of women who found themselves at the end of World War II as single moms. It doesn't mean it can't be done. It doesn't mean that it can't be done heroically and well. It means it's harder. And it means that statistically it's going to be more challenging. The probability's not zero, but wouldn't we all prefer to go for the probability of 80%, 90% positive outcome than the 50%, 60% prob probability of a positive outcome?
Allen Hunt:
I think to be secure in who we are and say, "This is the circumstances that I've got," whether I'm divorced, or my husband was tragically killed, or my husband, went AWOL or what have you, or your wife for that manner, that this is the circumstances I've got, and I'm going to maximize those circumstances. But my hope for my children is that they'll have this because it's going to be an... I mean, we have always wanted our children to have it better than we have. And so let me help my kids be prepared so that they'll have an easier path of this than I've had. And so their probability may be 50%, 60%, 70%. I want to set them up so they realize, hey, if you do this, the probability of your kids having a little better life than you've had is 80%, 90%.
Allen Hunt:
Yeah, I mean, we have to accept life is messy. We are broken imperfect people. And so things happen. At the same time, it doesn't mean you say, "Okay, anything goes." And we're going to pretend like all these produce the same outcomes because they don't. So let's at least aim for the bullseye and we at least hit the target. Let's don't just shoot the arrow and let it go wherever it goes.
Matthew Kelly:
Yeah. You've mentioned your father, your grandfather and your great grandfather.
Allen Hunt:
Right.
Matthew Kelly:
Your family has a heritage of ministry. Walk us through your family history a little bit from that point of view.
Allen Hunt:
Obviously I grew up very Methodist. My grandfather was a Methodist pastor in Mississippi. And he had two sons, my dad and my uncle. I come from a very small family. And-
Allen Hunt:
... uncle. I come from a very small family. And my uncle went into the Methodist ministry as well. And so I just read an interesting book that a friend gave me, I think it came out three or four years ago. It's called Born of Conviction.
Matthew Kelly:
Hmm.
Allen Hunt:
And it's written by historian, so it's a little dense. It's not spellbinding like a Ken Follett novel, but it's a great accounting of the Methodist church in Mississippi in the early 60s during the Civil Rights Movement. When James Meredith integrated Ole Miss, first black kid to go to Ole Miss, and the state just went nuclear. And the Methodist church was silent, didn't say a word institutionally for about six months. And so a group of young pastors got together and they wrote a little statement that they had published actually in the New York Times and some other places.
Allen Hunt:
And by today's standards, I mean, the guy that wrote the books, by today's standards, this is pretty vanilla milk toast, but by 1960, whatever that was, 1961, '62 Mississippi standards, this was... Basically, it was we're all made in the image you got and black folk and white folk ought to be able to worship together.
Matthew Kelly:
Mm.
Allen Hunt:
And that was sort of a whew, a big kind ax right down the middle of the Methodist Church of Mississippi. And I'm an emotional guy, as you know, my grandfather was one of the leaders that tried to kind of hold things together and lead the church to become a better version of myself. So I'm very, very proud of him. He was a leader and really one of the two key leaders that was trying to kind of hold this together, but also help the church be the church, not be the white church, not be the segregated church, and to help the church become a better version of itself. So I'm proud of him for that. And the pressure was pretty high.
Allen Hunt:
And so my uncle and a number of young pastors, it almost became impossible for them to be able to serve churches because the churches oftentimes had very strident segregationist leadership, not all, I don't want to paint two broad of a brush, so 20 or 30 of the young pastors, maybe even 40, had to leave Mississippi and go be elsewhere. And so my uncle, who I'm also very proud of, moved to Southern Indiana and was a Methodist pastor in Indiana for 40 years. And I always remember the Bishop in Indianapolis called up my Uncle Robert and then my uncle's brother-in-law, so the two of them were both pastors, and the Bishop said, "I hear you got a few problems down in Mississippi, so I want you two to know, I'll be glad to have you. I've got two pieces of land that I've wanted to start new Methodist churches on. If you'll come, I'll give you the land and you start." And so Robert did that and planted what ultimately became the biggest Methodist church in Indiana for a long time.
Allen Hunt:
So I grew up in that kind of church, Methodist faith, Christian. My dad, as I said, was very, very shy. He was the older of the two sons, felt immense pressure to become a pastor, but would rather die than speak in front of anybody ever. I remember at our wedding, at our rehearsal dinner, he had to get up and make just a little welcoming speech and say a prayer. And he had his notes and it was