#little me full on believed there was nothing but cowboys and deserts in texas

[transmascnepetaleijon]

as a child my biggest dream was to go to texas one day

[chiseler]

STEVE COCHRAN: The Rough and the Smooth

The Chase (1946) opens with a broke ex-serviceman finding a lost wallet, plump with cash and bearing the name and address of its owner, Eddie Roman. Being an honest guy—or, as Roman’s sidekick puts it, a “silly law-abiding jerk”—the vet goes to return it. As though wandering into an opium trance, he enters a classical-rococo-tropical mansion, a fantasy of vulgar magnificence. The front door is bedecked with cherubs’ heads (one of which swivels to reveal a peep-hole framing the unmistakable eye of Peter Lorre). The dazzling white interior is cluttered with marble statuary on pillars, crystal chandeliers, antique chairs, banana trees, all slashed by thin bars of sunlight falling through white shutters.

Eddie Roman, a Miami gangster, is at home amid this surreal decadence. We first see him sitting regally in a barber’s chair, crowned with a pearl-grey homburg, intently studying his pencil-thin mustache in a hand-mirror. He has reason to look pleased as he contemplates his handsome face, its square-jawed and thick-browed swarthiness lightened by limpid eyes and a deceptively sweet smile. Absorbed in admiring his appearance, he pays no attention to the girl kneeling at his side giving him a manicure, until her file slips and nicks his finger. ���I’m sorry, Mr. Roman, you moved,” the frightened girl gasps. “Yeah, but you didn’t—fast enough,” he replies, knocking her to the ground with a casual blow.

With a different actor, this whole set-up—the flamboyant interior decoration, the classical allusions, the dandified sadism, the ever-present sidekick played by Peter Lorre—might come across as heavily lavender-tinted. But Eddie Roman is Steve Cochran, who plays it straight in more ways than one. Cochran grew up in Wyoming and had worked as a cowboy before trying his hand at acting, but Hollywood took one look at his oily black hair and arrogant poise and pigeonholed him as a mobster. He took to the role with a patented brand of velvety menace, concluding that the way to play heavies was to assume that his characters had done nothing wrong, as they themselves would no doubt believe. Not for him the noir torments of guilt or anxiety or haunted memory. His gangsters were slick and unfeeling, and when he came to play deeper roles in films like Tomorrow is Another Day, Private Hell 36, and Il Grido, he plumbed the specific melancholy of men whose inchoate vulnerability is forced through the conventional expressions of machismo.

He was born Robert Alexander Cochran in 1917 and adopted the name Steve while acting in stock. (It suits him, perhaps for the same reason Lauren Bacall assigns it to Bogart’s Harry Morgan in To Have and Have Not, giving it a distinctive inflection that conveys, “You’re an overconfident jerk—if only I didn’t find you so attractive.”) Cochran left college and headed to Hollywood convinced he could be a movie star, but despite his looks and confidence he was no overnight success; it took seven years of provincial theater (including Shakespeare in Carmel) before he finally scored a contract with Goldwyn in 1945. The Chase was his first decent break, after a series of small parts in Boston Blackie programmers and Danny Kaye vehicles.

Directed by Arthur Ripley and gorgeously shot by Franz Planer, The Chase is a baroquely convoluted adaptation of Cornell Woolrich’s The Black Path of Fear. The centerpiece is an extended dream sequence that eschews the usual cinematic clichés but unsettles through jarring plot discontinuities; a maze of dark, disorienting spaces; and inexplicable poetic images like the woman weeping at a table bearing the half-eaten carcass of a watermelon, like something out of a 17th century Spanish painting. The film’s seemingly normal hero (the ex-serviceman, played by Robert Cummings) turns out to have a fragile mind prone to sudden white-outs. He’s almost as passive as Eddie Roman’s imprisoned wife (Michèle Morgan), who drifts around the mansion in draped Grecian gowns and a fog of hopeless terror. What she’s terrified of is her husband, and Cochran makes you believe that Roman is capable of even worse cruelty than anything we see him do. The calmer he is the more anxiously we wait for his outbursts of violence. His light voice, sweet smile, and hypnotic stillness create a deliciously sinister effect. Here and elsewhere, there’s something about the way Cochran’s hazel eyes catch the light, with a gleam that can register as tenderness or threat. It’s hard to pin down this luster, and that’s one of the best assets a movie star can have—some small thing that can’t be explained.

Though the bulk of his work was in B movies, Cochran appeared very briefly in Goldwyn’s great triumph, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Near the end of the movie, the beleaguered former airforce captain played by Dana Andrews—an intelligent, serious man stymied by a bad marriage and a humiliating job as a soda jerk—walks into his apartment to find another man lounging around in his shirtsleeves. It takes only moments to register the kind of heel he is: a self-satisfied, flashily handsome guy in a loud pinstripe suit, smoking and chewing gum and condescending to his married girlfriend’s husband. It’s his job to embody the crass, unscrupulous side of postwar life, the veterans who aren’t haunted by what they’ve seen, the operators who see money “lying around” for the taking. Cochran nails the type in under five minutes of screen time.

Virginia Mayo plays the wife he’s fooling around with, and they were paired frequently in the late forties, both typed as low-class, sexy but vulgar. They’re forgettable in A Song is Born (1948), Howard Hawks’s lifeless musical remake of Ball of Fire, but wonderful as a pair of greedy, backstabbing lovers in Raoul Walsh’s White Heat (1949). Cochran is “Big” Ed, a discontented second-banana to Cody Jarrett (James Cagney), who taunts him with sneering air quotes around his moniker. Cagney’s majestically psychotic performance fills the movie like a bellows, as he crumples inward under the pressure of his migraines and then explodes in gleeful violence. Big Ed is his opposite, cool and smooth, his stolid repose off-setting Cody’s trip-wire sensitivity. Cochran looks fantastic in a dark suit with a black shirt and light tie, and his best moments are tiny touches like the way he loudly spits out his gum before kissing Mayo, or blows smoke sideways in a beautifully nasty, smirking close-up as he quietly threatens to tell Cody who killed his mother if she walks out on him. If Cagney is white heat, Cochran is black ice.

He played a variation on Big Ed the next year in The Damned Don’t Cry (1950), one of those fun, full-throttle Joan Crawford vehicles that follows a woman as she claws her way out of dreary poverty, attains a pinnacle of penthouse luxury, and plunges from there into the abyss. Starting in the Texas oil fields, she winds up as the mistress of a racket boss (the terrifying David Brian), who sends her on a mission to spy on one of his regional under-bosses, whom he suspects of plotting to take over. That would be Cochran, who is not satisfied with the desert fiefdom where he lounges around swimming pools in white terry-cloth robes and saunters around nightclubs in loud sport jackets. He’s not a bad guy here, especially compared with Brian, but he remains devoted to the one Big Ed calls, “a very good friend—me.”

Cochran’s philosophy of playing heavies as though they were blameless did not mean he tried to make them sympathetic; indeed, it’s the utter remorselessness of his bad guys that makes them so bad. Still, it can be hard not to root for him in formulaic “crime does not pay” flicks like Highway 301 (1950), which opens with not one but three state governors solemnly addressing the camera, and then smothers all the action with heavy-handed voice-over. It’s tempting to just turn the sound off, because the film looks terrific, darkly glistening with rain-wet streets, sleek curves of forties cars, the matte sheen of good suits and perfect fedoras. Cochran, as the leader of a heist mob, wears an arrogant sneer as stylishly as his overcoat. When his girlfriend whines about feeling bored and neglected, he says coldly, “Why don’t you do something about your face? That ought to keep you busy for a few hours.”

He took a break from suave gangsters to play a cowardly redneck lout in Storm Warning (1950), an “exposé” of the Ku Klux Klan that proves nothing is more pusillanimous than Hollywood when it thinks it’s being courageous. Cochran cited the role as a favorite; he recalled being terrified by Klan demonstrations as a child and spoke of wanting to show how “shabby” they really were, of his pride at striking a small blow for racial tolerance. He was clearly sincere, and he later attended the 1963 March on Washington with fellow progressives like Marlon Brando; unfortunately, Storm Warning makes no mention whatever of the Klan’s attitudes towards blacks or Jews, depicting it as merely a racket to extort money from gullible hicks.

The film is further compromised by shameless plagiarism of A Streetcar Named Desire, with Ginger Rogers visiting her pregnant sister (Doris Day), who dotes on her crass but hunky working-class husband. Cochran, wearing a white t-shirt and sucking on a bottle of beer, lays on the dumb rube act a little thick, though at least he does not come off as a Brando impersonator. After a beautifully filmed opening in which Rogers witnesses a Klan killing in the deserted streets of a Southern backwater, and a powerful scene in which she is bullied into lying under oath about what she saw, the film turns luridly exploitative. Rogers is spied on and assaulted by her drunken brother-in-law, then publicly whipped at a Klan rally. This pushes the film’s wrong-headedness to absurdity: the culmination of the Klan’s evil is an attack on a beautiful blonde white woman.

In the 1950s, Cochran got tired of playing heavies and biting the dust in every movie; unhappy at Warner Brothers, he left in 1952 to form his own production company, producing a few change-of-pace films like Come Next Spring. But one of his very best roles came at Warners in Tomorrow is Another Day (1951), an unusually subtle and character-focused B noir directed by Felix Feist. Here he sheds his usual self-assurance to play a rough, unfinished man, drastically inexperienced and socially awkward—and does it beautifully. His character, Bill Clark, was sent to prison at age 14 for the murder of his abusive father. Released at 31, he’s a child in a man’s body, touchingly naïve but also insecure and truculent, readily falling back on violence.

Like Rip Van Winkle waking to an unfamiliar world, he wanders around town in a cheap, unfashionable suit, carrying his few belongings in a cardboard box. He’s drawn first to the new cars, studying one with boyish wonder; then to girls, hesitantly trying to follow one in the street. His uncertainty and sulky defensiveness are painfully exposed, whether he’s being teased for ordering three pieces of pie in a diner, or stumbling sheepishly into the dime-a-dance Dreamland, where ten cents buys sixty seconds of feminine company. Here he is easy pickings for Kay (Ruth Roman), a gorgeous, hard-shelled bottle blonde who demands trinkets in exchange for her time. When he obediently returns with a wrist-watch, she rewards him with a peck on the cheek and a “Thanks, Jim.” Still smitten, he shyly kisses her hand, and on learning she doesn’t get off work for hours, mutters, “I’m used to waitin’.”

When Bill and Kay are mixed up in a killing, he panics, knowing that with his record he’s a “dead pigeon.” They go on the lam, but their route takes them far from the usual lovers-on-the-run formulas. Without a car of their own, they sneak into one of the vehicles being towed on a tractor-trailer, hop freight trains, and hitch a ride with a Joad-like family on their way to a lettuce-picking camp in Salinas. They start out hostile and bickering, and when Bill proposes in a motel room he does so by handing her a ring and saying churlishly, “Pawnbroker gave me a good deal.” But though he implies that marriage is a sacrifice to necessity, the truth is that he desperately wants her and has decided this is the only way he can get her. In the scene that follows, as they lounge on a bank above the railroad tracks, he tells her about the murder of his father and about his years in jail, where he earned ten cents a day as a welder. “You worked a whole day,” she says wonderingly, “Just to dance a minute at Dreamland.”

Bill asks his bride if she thinks people change, “I mean, inside.” She does: dying her hair back to brunette, switching her name to Kathy, she emerges from her cynical shell. But Bill never seems to change; in the end, when he’s betrayed by a friend and threatened with going back to jail, he reacts with blind anger and panicked violence. This incorrigibility coexists with his gentleness: when Kathy tells him she’s pregnant, his sullen face delicately opens into an angelic smile, but not long after she has to shoot him to stop him from killing the sheriff who comes to arrest him.  The ending of the movie is a cop-out, but the revelation that the whole saga has been driven by mistakes, lies, and misunderstandings has a certain fitting irony.

Cochran drew even more deeply on this strain of confusion and sorrow in Antonioni’s Il Grido (1957), another movie about life on the road. The title translates as “The Cry,” and the film is essentially one long, muted howl of loss. Dubbed in Italian, Cochran plays Aldo, a simple working man who has lived for years in a common law marriage with Irma (Alida Valli), with whom he has a daughter, Rosina (Mirna Girardi). The movie opens as Irma, without warning or explanation, tells Aldo she’s leaving him for another man.

Like Bill Clark, Aldo is a muddled mixture of gentleness and violence, an aching wound papered over with inarticulate masculine pride. His reaction to Irma’s rejection is baffled and ineffectual; his instinct is to lash out, but he pulls back from hitting her. Later, desperate to assert his authority, he beats her in front of a crowd of townsfolk, but it’s he who comes away looking weak and defeated, having now sealed their estrangement. Taking their daughter, he sets out on an aimless journey, a futile search to replace what he’s lost.

The real star of Il Grido is the wintry landscape of the Po Valley. Nothing could be further from the Italy of vacation fantasies than this grey, muddy, industrial wasteland. Thin, bare branches are traced on the fog, sprouting from pollarded trees like amputees’ stumps. Desolate fields of rocks, marshes, and flat sodden riverbanks are made even bleaker by factories and construction sites, gas stations and refineries. The relentlessly overcast, drizzly weather is like an expression of Aldo’s numb, mournful mood. Cochran’s face, beginning to look worn, blends in with the landscape; he’s still ruggedly handsome, but stripped of all glamour and self-assurance, an ordinary man suddenly adrift with no bearings.

Aldo is hardly a model father, as he subjects his little girl to a tough and lonely life on the road, but there are moments when he comforts her with heartbreaking tenderness, and you always feel that in his fumbling way he is doing his best for her. (Still, it’s a relief when he finally sends her back to her mother.) The structure of this episodic film comes from Aldo’s encounters with three different women, each a possible but ultimately inadequate substitute for Irma. A former girlfriend (played by Betsy Blair) and a sexy young widow who runs an isolated service station both offer him refuge, and he has a torrid affair with the widow, but both times he drifts away. He has the chance to go to Venezuela, but inexplicably tears up his papers. He winds up with a prostitute who suffers from malaria, huddling in a leaky hut made of reeds and filled with acrid smoke. Amid this wretchedness, he remembers visiting a museum with Irma, a poignant revelation of what she represents in his barren and messy world.

He is inconsolable, and the life and purpose just drain out of him, leaving him an empty husk. In the end, Aldo returns to the town he left, to find it roiling with mass meetings over land seizures, a chaos of bulldozers, ruins, blazing fields and armed police. But for Aldo, the last straw is seeing, through a window, Irma with her new baby, annihilating his hopes. It’s hard to think of another movie in which someone essentially, and convincingly, dies of love.

Steve Cochran had a great deal of practice at dying; having succumbed onscreen to many predictable violent ends, he topped them in 1965 with one of Hollywood’s most legendarily bizarre deaths. That he was only 48 is tragic, but that he died aboard a yacht with an all-female crew is irresistibly titillating. None of the young Mexican women (whom he had hired, allegedly with a view to making a movie about a real yacht captain who had an “all-girl” crew) knew how to pilot the boat, which drifted for ten days off the coast of Guatemala after Cochran unexpectedly fell ill and died of a respiratory ailment. This story left a somewhat lurid stain on his life, though it seems to have been nothing but a publicity stunt gone terribly awry.

Alas, Cochran’s off-screen behavior rarely enhanced his reputation for seriousness. He seems to have been amiable and well-meaning, and neither his chronic womanizing nor his penchant for reckless driving and flying were anything out of the ordinary in Hollywood. More damningly, Don Siegel claimed he had trouble catching Cochran “even slightly sober” during the filming of Private Hell 36 (1954), though you’d never guess this from his sharp, nuanced performance as a corrupt cop in love with a nightclub singer (Ida Lupino, who co-wrote the script). His character, Cal Bruner, is callous, vain, and morally shifty—a plainclothes dick who tackles and fatally shoots a robber, then readies himself for a date with perfumed aftershave while complaining that the “miserable creep” ruined his new suit. He’s a guy on the make, lightly detached from everything except his own concerns. Yet when Cal falls for Lily, a canary with an exhausted voice and bone-dry sense of humor, he becomes someone we care about. He has better taste than we would have expected (Lily—who seems older than Cal, though Lupino was a year younger than Cochran—is no brainless babe), and more substance.

“You know, somewhere in my dim past I seem to have heard this before,” Lily deadpans when Cal makes a pass. “I’ve said it before,” he replies readily, “To all shapes and sizes. Only this time I mean it. Don’t ask me why.” Cochran and Lupino have serious chemistry (the scene where he unties the halter neck of her dress and massages her naked shoulders is a classic of Code-era steaminess), but Cal and Lily also connect on some deeper level, making us believe these two what’s-in-it-for-me types surprise themselves with genuine feeling. When he sits at the bar watching her croak out a hard-hearted ditty called “Didn’t You Know,” his eyes brim with a clear, soft light. In this part, Cochran layers cool selfishness and tender warmth so closely, nothing thicker than a razor could separate them.

by Imogen Sara Smith

[notanotherbaptistpodcast]

Matt’s Big Announcement – Transcript

Matt: Welcome to Not Another Baptist podcast. A weekly podcast about what two pastors are learning in the trenches of church revitalization. My name is Matt Henslee and I'm the pastor of Mayhill Baptist in Mayhill, New Mexico, and the managing editor of LifeWay Pastors. And I'm joined as always by none other than- Kyle: Kyle Bueerman, pastor of First Baptist Church of Alamogordo, New Mexico, director of Replanter Development for the North American Mission Board. And I am proud to carry the banner, to wave the banner saying that we need to return to 1920s fashion in the 2020s. Matt: Hey, man, I bought three suits while I was on vacation. Kyle: I saw that, man. You're going like ... Yeah, up there. Things are about to get spiffy up on the mountain, man. Matt: Going to get spiffy. So, is part of that fashion going to involve suspenders? Do I need to get those too? Kyle: So, I'm planning on getting some matching suspenders and bow ties, yes. Matt: Okay. Kyle: Because that is ... So, if you just kind of Google like 1920s fashions, that's a lot of what pops up along with like tweed suits. So, vests, if you have a vest, matching suspenders, and a bow tie. Matt: Well, I should have kept that in mind when I bought the suits that are not tweed nor do they have a vest. But I was kind of snarky and I asked my mom, "What did people wear in the 20s?" And she just looked at me and said, "I'm taking you out of the will." To those that are listening, my mom was born in 1938, but the ongoing joke in our family is that she was close personal friends with Moses growing up. So, yeah. And speaking of, dude, I just got out of the car. Kyle: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Matt: From 550 miles. From VFW to Mayhill. And do you know what it's doing outside right now? Kyle: It's snowing. As a matter of fact, it is snowing. Matt: It's snowing. Kyle: In the desert, believe it or not. Well, I think I walked into my family and I said, "Hey, guys, it's s-raining." And everybody was like, "What?" I said, "Well, it's like a rain/snow mix." Yeah. I'm on my way back home from the church, there were definite snowflakes mixed in with the raindrops on my windshield here in New Mexico. Matt: What I can say is outside of our house right now, it is totally white. It's sticking. Kyle: That's awesome. Matt: And it's like a Christmas miracle and it I love it especially. I think that was one of my grievances is the fact that anytime I go out of town it snows, and it did this time. Kyle: I would say. And a big one, right? Y'all get a big snowstorm- Matt: A big one, yeah. Kyle: ... out there. Matt: And then, I came back and was expecting it to be like a thousand degrees and no snow in sight, but it is very cold, and it's snowing. Kyle: That's awesome. Matt: And so, I don't know. I guess we need to go back and record another Festivus episode. Kyle: Oh, don't worry. I have grievances on this one. Matt: Oh, yeah. I'm sure you do because ... Is Jason Garrett still the coach? Kyle: Yes. Jason Garrett, after like five meetings with the Cowboys. Yes, he is still the coach. So, I'm retracting my Festivus grievance. I kind of tempered that. No, I'm offering a full retraction. The Cowboys are at the top of my grievance list at least until today. We'll get to that in a minute. I have other grievances after today. Matt: Oh, man. Oh, man. It's so good to be back. My mom and dad's house is like 80 degrees, and so we came home, and I had forgotten that I turned the heater down because we'd be gone. Kyle: Right. Matt: And I came in and it was like 55 degrees in the house and I was like, "Oh, this is amazing." And then my girls are like all wearing their jackets and stuff. They're like, "Daddy, can we turn on the heater? I was like, "Uh, not yet. Not yet. Let's just savor this moment for just a second." Kyle: So, I actually have a story about when we were up in Clayton in the northeast part of New Mexico, it got cold up there. And we left for our Christmas break or something and same thing. I turned that heater way down to like 55, 60 degrees. I don't think we had any pets at that point except a fish we left behind, and somebody came in to feed it. I did not consider the fish when I turned the house to like 55. And so, this fish's name was Ranger because he was red and blue, and I think I froze Ranger to death over that Christmas break because it got too cold in the house. So, yeah. Matt: It was just a metaphor for the ongoing Ranger's play-offs. Kyle: Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yep. As dead as a floating fish in the tank. Matt: Did you have a good Christmas? Kyle: I did, yeah. We went to my in-laws, Michelle's parents, in northeastern New Mexico and we saw quite a bit of snow. It was one of those ... Man, it was great. So, we got to their house. We drove up on Christmas day and got to their house, and I did not leave their house until I went to go fill up my truck with gas on Saturday morning before we headed back. So, it was great. Just one of those Christmases where you're just with some family and have a good time. Lots of cards, lots of dominoes. We had a great time, so. Matt: We don't do any cards, we don't do any dominoes. It's pretty much just football on TV. And it doesn't matter if it's high school, college, pro, it's just on 24/7 for my dad. And you'll ask him what the score is. And this time, my dad, there were moments where those that are listening know my dad, his health is failing pretty quickly, and there's times that he's just kind of there and somewhat vegetable. I mean, he doesn't really talk, he won't really respond. But I mentioned, I was like, "What's the score?" And he said, "Well, you can see the score yourself." I was like, "Whoa, that's the Dad I remember." Kyle: That's good. Matt: We had a good time. And what's always nice is my mom is ... She like forces Rebecca and I to have dates. And because of where we live and some of that kind of stuff, we don't often get dates unless the girls are in school, things like that. But my mom wanted like unhindered time with the girls to clean, and they learned how to iron, and cook, and all that kind of stuff. Kyle: Oh, hey, that's a productive trip. Matt: Yeah. And then we just went to- Kyle: So, for a homeschool family, we count those as school days where those things happen. Matt: Yeah. No, you count that. Yeah, totally. Kyle: Like when we were at Disney, we went to the Hall of Presidents. "Okay, kids, this is a field trip now." We're checking off all these days. Matt: I love it. But we had a good time and I went to Whataburger twice. Kyle: Oh, wow. Matt: I went three times over Thanksgiving, but just twice this time. I was trying to "new year, new me." I didn't want to overdo it. And we did go to In-N-Out to have a lesser burger along the way, and that slider was just what I expected. But yeah, it was a good trip, so. Kyle: Good, good. That's awesome. Matt: Yeah, we're glad to be back. And as soon as we finished recording this, I think I'm going to take a nap. I'm tired. Kyle: That's great. Well, hey, speaking of the trip that you made today, there was some news that broke while you were driving, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. Matt: And it wasn't Jason Garrett getting fired? Kyle: No, it was not. Sadly, it was not. Matt: No. And I don't quite know what the news you're talking about, but I'm sure it was great. Kyle: Okay, fine. So, I'll share it. So, earlier today, our friend Dr. Bart Barber, pastor of First Baptist Church in Farmersville, Texas announced that he is nominating you this summer in Orlando at the 2020 Southern Baptist Convention. He is nominating you to serve as president of the 2021 SBC Pastors' Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. And so, my first item of business is to say that we need to have Bart come on the show because I have many questions. Yeah, in fact- Matt: The first one is- Kyle: For recording, I know we don't have video for this, but I'm legit drinking out of my RC. Sproul "what's wrong with you people" mug right now because I thought that was appropriate for the announcement that came out today. Matt: Yeah, yeah. And let me just say, it's a wonderful thing with just the timing of it was that I drive from Dallas to Abilene, and to get us out of the traffic, all that kind of stuff. Kyle: Yeah. Because y'all left early this morning too. Matt: Oh, yeah. Kyle: You were on the road early. Matt: Yeah, we left about 5:45. And so, we got to Abilene, saw a dear friend of mine who's a pastor there, and visited with him. And I sat in a Corvette that has my name on it, but he won't sell it to me because he's trying to save me. He doesn't want me to die. But yeah, I sat in it. But the best part of that story is I set the alarm off because the windows are down and it was locked, and so I just reached in and like unlocked it. And then in the middle of this showroom, people are trying to make sales and all kinds of stuff, and it was just honking uncontrollably. They couldn't find the remote for it. And so, it's just honking and honking and honking and there's Matt Henslee sitting in it like, "Hey, guys." So, yeah, it was fun to sit in, and we had a good time, but all that to say then she gets in the car, Rebecca drives from Abilene to Artesia because there's absolutely nothing. Kyle: Nope. Matt: So, there's very little ways for her to get lost because there's really no turns or anything like that. So, she just drives that part. And then I get us back up the mountain, and of course that was through some snow, so that was fun. And we made it home. But all during the time that the announcement happened, it was while I was in the passenger seat when I was going to take a nap, but my phone is just going absolutely- Kyle: Well, so I do feel better that you were texting me and responding on Facebook and Twitter while you are not driving. So, kudos there. So, I was slightly worried. I was like, "Man, he is responding a lot. If he's driving, we're going to have a talk." So, okay, good. Good job. Matt: Yeah. So, I didn't do that, but I have to tell a story that's kind of off topic. But regarding driving is I did the first part of the drive. Three of the girls were in the back. So, we still have our car in the shop. So, we took the truck, which meant we spent like $10,000 in gas. But three of the girls are in the back, and then Gracie, our youngest, was sitting in the middle between Rebecca and I. Rebecca is sound asleep. The other three girls are sound asleep and I think that Gracie is asleep. And we're driving along, and the next thing I know, she screams at the absolute top of her lungs, "Daddy's speeding. I just saw the sign, it's 70 miles per hour and you're going 73." And I about had a heart attack. And so, yeah, I said, "Go back to sleep." Matt: So, we're raising a few legalists, I guess. Kyle: Well, I will say, Matt, that if you drive the speed limit, you don't have to worry about that. Matt: This is true. This is very true. And I also know that if we did get pulled over that the first person to speak would be that daughter, "Yeah, he was speeding. Kyle: "Daddy was speeding." Matt: Yeah. Kyle: "I told him to slow down, but he didn't listen." Matt: Yeah. But it was really awesome and encouraging because ... Not of the sense of, " Hey, hey look at me" or anything like that. But people reaching out to say, "Hey, we're excited." Because my heart, as you know, is of course for the local church. But for fellow pastors that it doesn't matter if you've got 50 in your church or 5,000, there's great, phenomenal days of ministry where it's just downright magical. And then there's days of ministry where you're barely hanging on by a thread. And probably that's the lion's share of those days. And so, at times, especially those, you're in a small town. For New Mexico, you're in a big town, but it's still comparatively a small town. I'm in an unincorporated town of like 60, and it's easy to be isolated. Matt: And so, the fact that you can encourage pastors of all ages, all sizes, all backgrounds, all that kind of stuff, to really be the [inaudible 00:13:37] of one another, lifting each other's arms, and saying, "We're in this together." I mean, we have one goal. Kyle: Yeah. Matt: Whether we're in a church of 5,000 or 50 is that's to advance the kingdom. And so seeing that, it had nothing to do with me, but seeing that from people of championing one another and in encouraging fellow pastors. Kyle: Yeah. Matt: That's the only reason I'm still on Twitter, I mean, because there's not a whole lot of redeeming quality at times. Kyle: Right. Matt: But to say that I can send a tweet or a direct message or a text to somebody that's in Hot Springs or somebody that's in Florida or all over the country and just say, "Hey, it's worth it. We're in this together." Kyle: Yeah. Matt: And so, to kind of have an opportunity for that with this has been an encouragement. So, it made the drive go by very fast. It also meant that my phone stayed plugged in the entire time because- Kyle: I'm sure it did. Matt: ... it was just non-stop. Kyle: Oh, man. All right. So, let's talk about this nomination just a little bit. So, we know that right now you are serving and have for the last three years at Mayhill Baptist Church in the booming metropolis of Mayhill, New Mexico. Matt: Yes. Kyle: So, tell our listeners, because we've alluded to some previous ministry experience that the both of us have. As we've shared, we have 33 combined years in ministry. But just tell us a little bit about what that ministry history looks like for you. Matt: So, it's been just about everything, whether it's student ministry, music ministry, both of us have similar kind of past into the pastorate or at least a senior pastorate. And in one very brief stint as a children's pastor, but God graciously saved me out of that. But no, we love children's pastors too, but that was not what God had called me to. And but the- Kyle: That was a sanctifying experience is what you're telling us. Matt: Yes. Yeah. So, I really started at 16 with an opportunity to help launch a contemporary service at a local church in my hometown and as a music minister. Probably too young to be doing that kind of stuff, but it was great. It was at my memaw's church. And she's like, "I don't like the music that you'll be doing, but I think you'll be a great fit." Kyle: "I don't like these folks music either, so let's just send you over there." Matt: Yeah. And so, that's how it kind of started. And even before then, I was fortunate to really be raised as a pastor, for lack of a better word, by the associate pastor of my church growing up, where we spent every week in hospitals or nursing homes. And he constantly said then, he said, "I don't know what you're going to be called to do at 30 years old or 50 years old or whatever, but you'll never outgrow the need to remember those that are often forgotten." Kyle: Yeah. Matt: And so whether that was these old folks in a nursing home or people ... We've told the story about the person that was not deathly ill, but when I prayed for him, I said, "God, if it's your will that they die, let it be a peaceful." Kyle: Yeah. Matt: I think you remember that. But spending that time with him really kind of set that DNA for me of the forgotten people, whether it's nursing homes or hospitals, that kind of thing. Even as a youth pastor at 21 or 25, I was spending time in nursing homes and retirement homes and so forth because it's just easy to forget, because out of sight, out of mind, that kind of thing. But they need to hear the gospel and they need to continue to grow. And so, to pour into them with the free time that I had them. And so, that kind of charted the course for all of my ministry, it was always kind of a ... I don't want to call it well orbed in that I was doing a great thing, but I might've had the calling to be the youth pastor at this church, but I was still serving these people that were kind of in the shadows. And so that, I guess, just was just kind of ingrained in me. Matt: So, then now as a pastor, of course there's still the nursing homes and hospital visits, all that kind of stuff naturally as a pastor that you're going to do. But because of that just upbringing in the ministry, I've also thought of the pastors that are in the middle of nowhere. They don't necessarily have somebody in their corner, their church might be struggling. We've talked about it before. Maybe the waters of the baptism or the baptistry haven't flowed for a while and you're trying to figure out, "Why am I even doing this? Nobody even cares." That kind of thing. To remember that's why we wrote the book, of course. Kyle: Yeah, that's right. Matt: Is that God is doing an amazing work in Dallas Fort Worth and he's doing an amazing work in Mayhill, New Mexico, he's doing an amazing work wherever. If there are people there, they need to hear the gospel, and so we can work together and encourage one another. Through that, the opportunities with LifeWay Pastors and some of that came up where I can write for the pastor of the church of 5,000 or the church of the 50, and encourage all of us to work together because we ... Southern Baptists are at their best when we're worshiping together, when we're working together, when we're advancing the kingdom together. And so, it doesn't matter if you're preaching from a pub table as you do or the actual pulpit as I do, or the church that has four hymns or a church that's all contemporary. All of us, wherever we're at, we get up on Sunday morning with the same calling and that's to preach the word. Matt: And so, to encourage guys, whether they're in the middle of nowhere, whether in the middle of city, whatever, to fall in absolute love of Jesus in proclaiming his word that can say that I am doing a good work, even if nobody else notices it. Matt: And because I'm doing what God has called me to do. I'm caring for these people that others have forgotten or look past. And so, that I guess kind of brings us up to today is it started at 12 years old in the nursing homes and the hospitals. And then now is pastors of all sizes, all ages. It's nothing but just encouragement and reminding one another, as I need to be reminded, what you're doing actually matters. Whether there's a hundred people or a thousand people, it matters. And that those, a hundred people on Sunday need to hear the gospel just as faithfully as the church of 10,000 or whatever. And it doesn't that matter how big your flock is that there is no insignificant pulpit. And because all of them are significant because all of them are used by God to push back darkness and advance the kingdom. Matt: And so, it's neat to kind of come full circle, I guess, now, and see that though I'm still very young in the ministry that I hope to still be doing that at 70 years old or whatever. When I'm as old as Bart at 80 years old or something, still loving on and encouraging pastors younger than me, older than me, in bigger churches than me, smaller churches than me, all of that. And so, that's a neat opportunity with this nomination. Kyle: Yeah. And as we've talked many times here on the show, both of us are serving in normative churches, meaning, so kind of the definition of normative church is under 250 in worship on Sunday mornings. And the normative churches are over 90% of the SBC. So, you coming in as the Pastors' Conference nominee, you're coming from a place, I think, where most of our listeners, most of the SBC is guys who are not preaching to thousands every week, but are preaching to, like you said, everywhere from 50 to a hundred, most of our SBC churches. And again, we don't discount the mega churches. They do some incredible work for the kingdom and they have some incredible resources that all of us benefit from. But I think it's important that we hear from a normative guy. Notice I said normative, not normal. That's not a term I would ever use to describe Matt Henslee. Matt: This is true. Kyle: Normative. Matt: Yeah. Kyle: All right. And again, I'm a pastor serving in a normative sized church. So, as a normative sized church pastor, tell us just a little bit about kind of your goal or your vision. And I know it's early in the process, but what are you kind of ... How do you envision the Pastors' Conference going if you are in fact elected as president in June? Matt: Well, I think first we should maybe coin a new term. That I am normatively abnormal. How about that? We'll go with that. Maybe that could even be the theme of the conference. Kyle: I'll allow that. Yeah. Matt: No. Kyle: Normatively abnormal. Matt: Yeah. But so, as I shared, there there's no greater joy than serving the local church, and I would be tickled pink if God would allow me to stay here until I'm 75, 80 years old. I love this town. I love this place. I love the people, and it's a great joy to serve. God has also given me a heart and I believe a calling to serve and encourage pastors in the trenches, like I said. Whether urban or rural, which I can't even say that word, but the middle of nowhere people. All over is one of my greatest joys because I really want to see myself as a friend and a champion of pastors of all stripes. Matt: And, as we know, ministry is awesome, but like with anything, there's ups and downs. It's a roller coaster. There's times when it's great. There's times when you're like, "What am I doing?" Joys and sorrows and all of that, and I believe we can put together a Pastors' Conference for the guy on cloud nine, that life is great, church is growing, God is clearly at work. As well as the guy barely hanging onto a thread to remind him that, yes, God is still at work, that God still is working in and through and perhaps in spite of me, and even in all of these struggles. And so, I wholeheartedly believe that the Pastors' Conference can be relevant for the "nobody" as well as the somebody. The guy in the middle of nowhere, the guy in the middle of the growing city. Matt: Because as I said, Southern Baptist are at their best when we're worshiping together and what a joy to come together for a Pastors' Conference of a room full of pastors and their wives and maybe lay leaders, all of that together, all different. It's a little small taste, an appetizer, I think, of heaven. We're going to worship together. We'll sing together, all of that kind of stuff. But also come together for that simple call to cooperate and advance the kingdom. Matt: And because no matter what your size is, we all have the same job description. And so, it's not just other duties as assigned by the deacons. It's the call that we've been given by God to push back the darkness and advance his kingdom by proclaiming Christ. And so, I realized that pastoring and can lend itself to isolation, especially those of us that are kind of in no man's land. And so, my prayer is that it will be a time for kind of like that [inaudible 00:26:39] of lifting each other's arms up and saying, "We're in this together, we're going to fight together. We're going to have our disagreements, we're going to have our differences, but we're going to come together around unity in this endeavor, this call to reach the world as we preach the word." Matt: And so, whether I have a beard when I do that or not, that still remains to be seen. Kyle: That was going to be my final question, by the way. Matt: That was the Bart's thing. I've said that I've given up the autonomy of my beard to Bart Barber, and that's kind of scary. Kyle: But to be fair, Bart doesn't drink coffee, so I'm not sure his opinions can be trusted on facial hair. Matt: This is true. But then we could wonder if we should even care for his opinion for the Pastors' Conference. Kyle: That's true. Matt: I'm kind of worried, like what does this do to my cred? I mean- Kyle: He has no facial hair and he doesn't drink caffeine. He doesn't drink coffee. Matt: He's a Cardinals fan. He hates the DL. He hates coffee. He doesn't just not drink it, he hates it. Kyle: You mean the DH, the designated hitter. Matt: Yeah. He hates all of these things and he doesn't even not have a beard. He doesn't even have sideburns, man. So, you could not find a more opposite, like odd couple than Bart Barber and Matt Henslee. But I did, hey, I got to say I burned them back. As he said something about, I made the comment, I said, "Yeah, my cheating Astros or whatever." He said, "Hey, there's always room in the National League for another fan of the Cardinals." And then I just responded with "Mark Maguire." And then he said, "Fair. That's fair.' So. Kyle: Oh, goodness. Well, this is going to be a fun six months as we lead up to June, and I will give you time to a win me over as a supporter, to win my endorsement for your Pastors' Conference nominee. Kyle: Man. So no, let them be the first to say congratulations and this is a big deal. I'm excited for you. I'm excited, first of all, to have a normative sized pastor be nominated for this role, and I'm excited that it's you. And so, I think it's going to be a lot of fun to get to see this process unfold in the next few months. Matt: I appreciate it, brother. Kyle: Mr. Nominee, are there any closing thoughts that you have today? Matt: It's still snowing. Kyle: Oh, nice. Matt: Yeah. Kyle: It's still snowing in the desert, dude. I'm telling you, this is like a New Year's miracle. Matt: It is. Kyle: This is the way to kick off the 20s, right? Matt: Yes, it is. Kyle: With snow on the ground. Matt: The roaring 20s. Forget that, it's the snowing 20s, baby. Kyle: The snowing 20s. Matt: I think we can enter the ice age. Kyle: Hey, if that means that there is skiing that can happen often, I'm down with that. Matt: Yeah. Kyle: If it means there's not snow in the desert, but there is up on the mountain, and I can be up there in 30 minutes and on the slopes, I'm good with that. Matt: Yeah. Kyle: So. Matt: And I do need to remind you, Kyle, we don't pay the bills for this podcast. And so- Kyle: Oh, that's right. Matt: ... I need a moment to also think Southwestern, not just for their sponsorship of this podcast, but also for the way they have trained me at Southwestern, through my Mdiv, and now as I pursue my doctorate with them in expositional preaching that they've really helped me become the pastor that I am. People like Dr. Queen, we've talked about it before, Dr, Priest, all of these guys that are there, they truly are practitioners and they get it. And so, it's not this ivory tower of academics, but these are people that have been in churches and are in churches. I think of Dr. Darnell, probably one of the leading systematic theologians in the SBC, if not the leading systematic theologian, yet he's also preaching at a church and leading in that way. And so, to be a part of that seminary has been a joy and so we encourage you to check out SWBTW.edu after the show. And I don't know how- Kyle: And in your ... Oh, go ahead. Matt: I don't know how all of the ins and outs of the Pastors' Conference works, but if there's a way for this an official word of [inaudible 00:31:14] for the Pastors' Conference, I can also promise you it will be the CSB. Kyle: Hey, that's your first campaign promise, right there. Matt: It is. CSB bibles for all. No, I don't think I can say that. It would be awesome if the CSB wants to do that for us. But if John the Baptist used the Christian Standard Bible, if Jesus used the Christian Standard Bible, if the apostle Paul used the Christian Standard Bible, then for crying out loud guys, get a copy of the CSB, baby. Kyle: Let us remember, you are being nominated as the SBC Pastors' Conference president and you cannot spell SBC without CSB. Matt: Hey, well done. Kyle: There you go. Thank you. Matt: So, visit not SBCbible.com but Csbible.com after the show, and you can find the translation that Kyle and I both use in our devotionals and our sermons. My sermons are better, but still same Bible, same word. And we're grateful for both of them and the way they have helped us bring this to your ear holes. Matt: And so, until next time, visit us at Not Another Baptist podcast. Follow along on Facebook for more news as the Pastors' Conference, all the news so forth comes out for that and other encouragement that we'll put on Facebook or on Twitter at NAB_podcast. And since I still have not made coffee since my return and you are drinking coffee in your coffee mug, why don't you send us out, brother? Kyle: All right. Well, as I'm drinking in my "what's wrong with you people?" mug from RC Sproul, may your coffee be as black as night and as black as is mine. It's a sharp mug. And as bold as the gospel you declare. Matt: See ya in Orlando, baby.