Living with Intention: A Youth Pastor’s Journey of Purposeful Wisdom and Creative Ministry
Welcome to The Main Thing Podcast! Each episode we bring you a concise, high impact wisdom lesson from one of the wisest people I know. Studying their wisdom and learning together, we all get just a little bit better at this thing called life.
In the labyrinth of life’s endless choices and pathways, it is the rare individual who walks with deliberate steps, who finds a compass in the chaos. Dylan Frercks is such an individual—a 29 year-old youth pastor whose spirit is infused with a wisdom that belies the conventional expectations of his age. For Dylan, this path is paved with intentionality, creativity, and an unwavering pursuit of spiritual depth.
In this episode, we sit with Dylan, whose story is not just a chronicle of guiding the young, but an inspired journey of living with purpose. Join us as we explore how this modern-day mentor navigates the challenges of youth ministry, bringing a unique perspective to the timeless quest for a life well-lived.
More About Our Wise Guest – Youth Pastor Dylan Frercks
Dylan Frercks is a ministry professional who has the challenging and vital job of mentoring middle school and high school students outside the classroom. In this role, Dylan comes alongside teenagers to provide hope, encouragement and a sense of belonging, while introducing them to Jesus.
Dylan’s journey in faith and service is underpinned by a Bachelor of Science in Religion from Liberty University. He brings a decade of experience in student ministry to his current role at River Ridge Church.
Dylan finds joy in photography, travel and exploring the latest in technology. He and his wife Elizabeth reside in the Charleston, West Virginia area.
Now, settle in and get ready … over the next nine minutes, you will discover why Dylan Frercks is one of the wisest people I know.
Resources
Learn more about Dylan on the River Ridge Church website
Take a look at the sermon he gave on short notice
Follow Dylan on Instagram [@dylanfrercks]
Connect with Dylan on Facebook
Credits
Editor + Technical Advisor Bob Hotchkiss
Brand + Strategy Advisor Andy Malinoski
PR + Partnerships Advisor Rachel Bell
Graphic Design + Social Media Chloe Lineberg
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Episode Chapters
0:03:24 – Called into action from the pastoral bullpen on short notice
0:04:59 – Dylan takes us inside the role of youth pastor
0:06:00 – Skip & Dylan riff on the lifestyle and mindset of a creative professional
0:08:30 – Dylan reveals his main thing wisdom
0:12:13 – What’s forming or de-forming us? Symptoms of media over-saturation
0:14:32 – Dylan shares encouragement for all of us over the long term
Keywords
Wisdom, Preparedness, Sermon, Youth Pastor, Spiritual Growth, Creativity, Content Creation, Purposeful Living, Relationships, Environments, Character of Christ, Growth, Learning, Student Ministry, Academic Background, Photography, Travel, Technology, River Ridge Church, Bible Studies, Disc Golf, Faith, Multifaceted Role, Passion, Continually Growing, Shaped, Intentional, Influences, Jesus Christ, John Mark Comer, Dallas Willard, Students, Middle School, High School
Full Transcript of This Episode
0:00:00 – Announcer
Wisdom. It’s an incredibly valuable asset, some would say more precious than gold. It’s attractive, appealing, admirable. Conversely, a lack of wisdom is the basis of immaturity, blind spots and bad decisions. Wisdom, it can be gained over time, but it can’t be rushed. But wisdom can be shared. That’s precisely what we are here to do right now. Today. We are here to hack wisdom, to distill it, to understand it and to process it. Why? To get better at life. Welcome to the Main Thing.
This is your new nine-minute podcast. I’m your host, skip Lineberg, and I’ve set out to interview the wisest people I know. We’ll see what we can learn from each one when they’re faced with an incredibly difficult, soul-piercing question.
If it’s your first time here, I’m Skip Lineberg and I’ll be your host today. Each episode we bring you a concise, high-impact wisdom lesson from one of the wisest people I know. Studying their wisdom and learning together. We all get just a little bit better at this thing called life.
Today, you’ll hear from Dylan Frercks, a 29-year-old youth pastor who is an old soul, wise beyond his years. He has the challenging and vital job of mentoring middle school and high school students outside the classroom. Working as a youth pastor, Dylan comes alongside teenagers to provide hope and encouragement and a sense of belonging, while introducing them to Jesus. No, this is not a religious podcast and this will not be all about God. Don’t worry, because from this interview with Dylan Frercks, you will come away with valuable wisdom and insights from someone who finds creative ways to relate with others and build trust.
Here’s a bit more about our special guest youth pastor, Dylan Frercks. Amidst the fast-paced world we live in, Dylan advocates for a slower approach to life, emphasizing deep spiritual formation. He hopes to inspire us all to embrace a more reflective path in our spiritual journey. Dylan Frercks’s journey in faith and service is underpinned by a Bachelor of Science degree in religion from Liberty University. He brings a decade of experience in student ministry to his current role at River Ridge Church. Alongside his professional endeavors, Dylan finds joy in photography, travel and exploring the latest technology. Dylan and his wife, Elizabeth reside in the Charleston, west Virginia area.
Now, settle in and get ready, because over the next nine minutes, you will discover why Dylan Frercks is one of the wisest people I know.
0:02:58 – Skip Lineberg
Dylan Frercks, good morning, welcome to the show.
0:03:04 – Dylan Frercks
Hey, Skip, this is super exciting. I’m glad to be here.
0:03:05 – Skip
You are my second guest, who kind of requested to be on the show. Yes, and that’s on me. I’m so glad that we’re doing this and really should have asked you a long time ago. But here we are.
0:03:18 – Dylan Frercks
I feel like it puts me in a special position that I really feel like I have to perform well.
0:03:24 – Skip
Speaking of performing well, Dylan is one of the pastors at my church and, Dylan, last Sunday you were called out of the bullpen to come into the game on short notice. You want to tell us a little bit about how your Saturday night and your Sunday morning went.
0:03:40 – Dylan Frercks
Yeah, so I’ve been trying to put a high value on Sabbath and actually taking a day off. So I’ve been really trying on Saturdays to not do much work. And so on Saturday night at about eight o’clock my pastor called me and he said,
“Hey, Dylan, I’m starting to feel sick. I don’t know that I’m going to make it to church on Sunday. this has not happened in 20 years but I might need you to preach my sermon. Do you have a sermon ready?”
And I was like, “No, I don’t just like have a sermon casually ready.”
And so he sent me his. I took one look through it and then went back to watching The Hunger Games, because I was super invested at that point. I woke up on Sunday morning and confirmed with him that he wasn’t going to make it cause he was violently ill.
0:04:25 – Skip
Worse by that point.
0:04:27 – Dylan Frercks
Worse by that point, yep, and so I showed up at the church. I took about an hour to edit his sermon, to give it kind of my own flair, and then, after an hour of editing, I did about 30 minutes of practice and run through on my own. And then I went out and delivered it twice. It was 16 pages long, based on my formatting.
0:04:41 – Skip
Crazy 16 pages – and you have to fit that into a window of 30, 35 minutes.
0:04:47 – Dylan Frercks
Yeah, I tend to go over the window, but yeah, so I spoke for about 35 minutes, I think, with very little preparation, but it worked out.
0:04:59 – Skip
Folks will have heard me introduce you in the intro as a youth pastor. What’s that look like on a weekly basis? What kind of stuff do you do? How do you enjoy your role?
0:05:12 – Dylan Frercks
Yeah, so my role in the church is really multifaceted. I do primarily work with middle school and high school students. I occasionally work with college age students as well, and a lot of the time I spend my weeks doing things that are completely outside that scope, and sometimes it looks like prepping a Bible study. Sometimes it looks like you know, writing a devotional or something like that, or writing a blog for parents that they can, you know, learn something about parenting. Other times it just looks like meeting up at a coffee shop with a friend or with a kid and talking about life and, you know, laughing or playing disc golf or you know, it varies week to week.
The underpinning of the whole thing, though, is I just want to help people take their next step. And so I’m just kind of always looking for ways to do that and presenting every week to God and saying, Hey, what’s it look like to be faithful with this moment?
0:06:00 – Skip
Dylan, creativity is a common thread that we have. We are both creative content producers, communicators. We like to explore new things. I’d love to hear you talk a minute or two about being a creative person, living a creative lifestyle, being open to learning and discovery. How do you approach that in your world, in your life?
0:06:23 – Dylan Frercks
Yeah, I love creativity. I was raised in a family where the arts were really pushed with me. So I started playing music pretty young, back in elementary school and I’ve always been kind of a creative type.
In fifth grade, my school had a website design team, and I was picked for that, and so I was coding in fifth grade making a website for my public school, and then, when I started getting access to like photo editing, my friends would want cool profile pictures for MySpace and I would edit photos for them for MySpace and they were horribly corny and weirdly vibrant and stuff.
As we look at teenagers, which I work with a ton, listening to their music and listening to the things that are kind of infiltrating their life really shows me where their heart is and the things that they care about.
Our church has the core value of: we never stop growing. And I really kind of just want to be that type of person. I want to keep growing. I want to keep learning and keep progressing and you know, I recognize that I still have rough edges that God needs to work out. And he does that so often through a good book or a good album or a good movie or something like that.
0:07:24 – Skip
That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing that with us.
07:29 – Announcer
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Unlock those 192 extra minutes of wisdom for yourself for as little as $9 per month through the Patreon platform. And when you become a patron, you also get access to wisdom essays, behind the scenes glimpses and access to special patron-only wisdom gatherings. Head over to Patreon.com/TheMainThingPodcast. Go unlock your 192 extra minutes of wisdom.
0:08:30 – Skip
Dylan Frercks, what’s the main thing you’ve learned in your lifetime so far?
0:08:36 – Dylan Frercks
Skip, the main thing I’ve learned in my lifetime so far is that, whether intentionally or not, we are all being formed by someone or something.
0:08:46 – Skip
Oh wow, we’re all being formed by someone or something.
0:08:51 – Dylan Frercks
Yeah.
0:08:51 – Skip
Take us inside it.
0:08:52 – Dylan Frercks
So as I look at life and I don’t want to take full credit for this thought, because it’s been boiled down a lot through one of my favorite spiritual teachers, which is John Mark Comer. As I look at life, I realize that, whether it’s because of our family or our friends, or the music we listen to, or the culture that’s surrounding us, or the ads we see on TV, or the culture that’s surrounding us or the ads we see on TV, or the pictures we see on social media, whatever it might be, that we are all being formed or, as he would even put it, sometimes deformed into a certain type of person. And as a Christian, of course, what I’m looking for is I want to be formed into the character of Christ. As I look at the book of Galatians, chapter five, and I see the fruit of the spirit that is what I’m looking for in my life. And I ask myself all the time: am I looking more loving and peaceful and patient and kind and good and all those things that we see in scripture. I’m always kind of asking myself that question of am I getting any closer to that?
But I also recognize in my life that there’s been times that, through bad relationships or bad friendships, or just an unhealthy kind of consumeristic mentality of media or things that I’ve been deformed into a certain person as well. And so here’s the thing, though: everything wants to have a formative, shaping influence on our life.
I talked in a sermon recently about how ad companies spend millions and millions and millions of dollars to tell us a certain message that they want us to buy. And I kind of mentioned it in my sermon that we buy the message a lot. Like there’s a lot of times that we are sold an idea and we buy it hook, line and sinker. And it really changes us into a certain type of person.
And so you know, kind of my main thing is that idea of we either can be intentional about what we’re being formed by. As for me, I’ve decided in my life that’s going to be Jesus. For other people of different faiths and stuff, that’s fine. They have other things, and they have other things they want to be formed by. But we could also kind of unintentionally be deformed by things if we’re passive about that growth.
There are so many pieces of our life that we just haven’t analyzed and we haven’t asked ourselves, What is this doing to me?
Or it’s boiled down into another big leader. It’s Simon Sinek. Start with your why. What is your why?
What is the thing you’re going for? I think so often that’s dictated to us by culture. It’s like, my why is so I can have a big, nice retirement, or my why is so that I can look like I have my life put together … and my why is so I can go on big trips or whatever that thing is.
I think that having a nice house is perfectly fine if that’s what you want, and going on a nice trip I’ve been on some great trips, and I love that, and my wife finds a lot of joy in that. And I like taking pictures and it’s fun, it’s good and we get to experience like the good life that God created us for through some of those things. But if those are our why, then I think that maybe the bigger issue is we haven’t really figured out what we’re living for—and because of that we’ll just kind of take whatever we can get.
0:11:57 – Skip
You’re only fully alive when you’re traveling. That would be sad, wouldn’t it?
0:12:00 – Dylan Frercks
Yeah
0:12:01 – Skip
Because you’re taking maybe what, three trips a year? So you’re only fully alive for three weeks out of 52. That would be sad.
0:12:08 – Dylan Frercks
Yeah, that would definitely be sad, fo2 sure.
0:12:13 – Skip
Dylan, for folks who are listening, who are trying your main thing on for size right now, and they’re saying, Do I really need to live this way? What are some symptoms or some signs of unrest that they might be feeling … that would indicate to them that they need to spend more time practicing your main thing?
0:12:33 – Dylan Frercks
Yeah, I want to be sensitive here, because I’m a person who’s been to therapy and loves it. I’m a person who’s had mental health issues and acknowledges that those are very real, too.
0:12:44 – Skip
Me, too.
0:12:45 – Dylan Frercks
But I also recognize that in the moments in my life where I am being deformed by certain messaging and things like that, that I do become more anxious and depressed. And there isn’t hope to life … and there isn’t joy, and there’s not things that I want to experience … and there’s not happiness, and I’m discontent and all these things. It’s really interesting to me that as we look and I talk to students about this all the time as we look at this up and coming generation, one of the things they’re feeling is more anxious, more depressed, more discontent, all those things. I think it’s also correlated with this more pervasive media landscape we live in. I think it is much more difficult now to be formed by our main thing, whatever that main thing for them might be, because we’re constantly inundated with other messages from other places. And one of the safeguards I think we need there is to be honest. Like do I need constant access to Instagram or Twitter or YouTube or the news or whatever it is.
I talk to people all the time and they’re like, “Yeah, I just I have this pent up stress or this anxiety, or I’m getting more angry, or I’m just feeling like there’s something going on in my heart.”
I’m like, well, that’s the warning sign that you haven’t figured out what’s forming you yet. And a lot of times, if you ask people like, Hey, what news are you watching? They will acknowledge that the news they’re watching is probably not helpful for them. That would be great for us to just have that filter of saying, Okay, like, what is the thing in my life that’s causing this? Can I get away from it? Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t, but it’s worth trying at least.
0:14:19 – Skip
Yeah, very good advice.
0:14:23 – Skip
Dylan, as we wrap up here today, any encouragement or intentions that you might wish to share with our audience of growth-minded wisdom seekers. Audience of growth-minded wisdom seekers.
0:14:32 – Dylan Frercks
Dallas Willard, in his book “Renovation of the Heart,” used to talk about this idea of one of the primary things that stops us from change is thinking that we’re not capable of it. And so I want to remind your audience and the people that are listening that we are capable of change, but it is a long process. And so the encouragement is: this figure out your why. Figure out what you care about. Figure out what you want to be formed by. Make that your true north, and head in that direction.
0:14:59 – Skip
We can change.
0:15:00 – Dylan
Yep.
0:15:01 – Skip
I love it. Great final thought, Dylan. Great place to leave it. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom today. I will see you Sunday.
0:15:11- Dylan Frercks
I’ll see you Sunday.
0:15:13 – Announcer
Wow, that goes by incredibly fast, doesn’t it? Time flies when you’re hacking wisdom. I hope you’re left wanting more.
Sync up with us again next time on The Main Thing for nine more minutes of wisdom.
~~~~~ Transcribed by https://podium.page ~~~~~
