This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we're joined by special guest Dr. J.R. Briggs, the founder and director of Kairos Partnerships. His list of ministries and projects spans the game of possibility from coaching pastors to instructing university students from authoring books to hosting podcasts.

J.R. Briggs, a wealth of experience wherever he goes. He and his wife Megan have two boys and live just outside of Philadelphia. So J.R., welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Brent. It's good to be here.

J.R., how do you feel about that? You have so many things going on. We had to figure out how to introduce. First of all, how do you feel about the title, Dr?

I'm still getting used to it, actually. I'm reminded sometimes that my technical title is Reverend Dr. J.R. Briggs, but...

I tell my students, please just call me J.R. I feel like I still catch myself going, man, Dr. Briggs, I guess that's me. I did that last night in class teaching and it felt weird. So to be honest, I'm still getting used to that.

Yeah, yeah. Excellent. Well, is there anything... How would you introduce yourself in addition to all those things? Introduce yourself for us?

I'd normally like to say that I just have four driving passions that inform how I live and what I do. Number one, following Jesus, number two, is equipping and investing in hungry kingdom leaders.

Three is growing fruit on other people's trees. And the fourth, my favorite, is I like to create good kingdom mischief. So just about all that I do gets wrapped up in one of those four expressions.

I really like the good kingdom mischief idea. That's pretty fun. So, J.R. why don't you talk about how you know Marty or how Marty knows you or what that relationship was like?

Yeah, Marty and I met. I'm even forgetting the year, Marty. Maybe you can fill us in here, but the epic trail pastor's conference is something that we hosted here in our town here on the north side of Philadelphia called Lansdale, Pennsylvania.

And we've seen so many of these Christian conferences around the country that kind of celebrate celebrity pastors. And I found myself looking around saying there's so many good pastors that are obscure and unknown, but are so full of wisdom and fruit and vitality.

And those voices need to be heard. And there are a lot of failed pastors that they need a safe space degree.

And so I just put out this crazy idea saying instead of a big pastors conference where we talk about our successes, what if they were there was a healthy and hope filled space to host something called the epic fail pastors conference.

And so I was kind of scared to death to put this on because I thought, can you imagine the headline epic fail pastors conference canceled due to low registration.

And I really wrestle that, but fortunately, several dozen people from around the country and even around the world that got on a plane and joined us and Marty was wonderful.

And so I met Marty through that, but Marty, what do you remember from that event?

I'm going to say it was probably 2010, because I think I just might have been 2011 because I just gotten hired by impact. I remember because I had it on my calendar. And I, and they asked me about if I had any conferences. And I'm like, well, I do want to go to this, this conference.

And I was called, I was like the epic fail pastors conference. So that was awesome. And I think it was the, was it the very first one you guys had done, I think, and it was forever.

Yeah, it was, it was absolutely, it was, it was incredible. I just, I wasn't incredible because it was like, it was incredible because we, you're right, we don't have spaces to talk about failure.

We even got into the place where, and honestly, J, I wonder how much even that conference and that conversation helped pave the way for me to make it, you know, working with college students, one of the things I love to talk about is please, please go fail.

Yeah, if you're not failing, you're not, I just wrote a letter to an elders, one of one of the elders of the church that we just moved away from daughter has a birthday coming up and, and one of the things I put in the letter is just don't be afraid.

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