When the season ends, who are you?
You have probably built part of your identity around something. A job. A title. A role you have carried for years. Then the season starts to end, and a quiet question shows up: who am I without this? That’s the question three generations of Earlewine men sat with at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Daron pulled up to the table with his father, Dave, and his two oldest sons, Cole and Ty. Four grandparents praying. Two parents praying. One honest conversation about calling, fear, and what God does with a life when the path forward isn’t clear.
Saying yes when you cannot see the road
Dave Earlewine didn’t grow up in church. He came to faith as an adult, and within five years he answered a call to ministry, left home, earned a degree, and moved his family across the country to Arizona, a place they had no connection to. Where did the courage come from? A pastor named Willard Metz saw value in him and gave him room to lead. After that, Dave trusted a simple pattern: when God leads, God provides. He always has. That willingness to say yes shaped the whole family. Daron grew up watching his dad have faith conversations anywhere, at the racetrack, in restaurants, in places most people would never expect ministry to happen. The lesson stuck. You don’t need the perfect setting to make an impact. You just need to be present and willing.
The freedom to not know what is next
Cole is close to the end of his football career, and he named something a lot of us feel. Football is what he does. It is not who he is. When the final whistle blows, that label goes away, and he gets to discover what’s underneath it. Ty put it another way. He called himself a blank notepad, learning to find tomorrow fascinating instead of frightening. Both of them are learning the same truth their grandfather has lived for decades: God never moves. You just step closer or farther away. Dave’s advice for the unknown road was steady and simple. God is faithful. You don’t have to have every answer for hurting people, you just have to be with them. People matter. Whatever season you are in, that’s enough to build a life on, because you were created on purpose and for purpose. Want more conversations like this one? Reach out anytime at daron@daronearlewine.com.
Episode Summary:
Three generations of Earlewine men sit down at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to close out our IMS series. Cole is months away from his football identity ending and doesn’t know who he is on the other side of it. Ty is staring at a future that’s a complete question mark. And Dave, who came to faith from nothing and took risk after risk to follow a call, shows them what decades of trusting God actually looks like. If you’ve ever wrapped your worth in what you do, this conversation is for you.
Key Takeaways:
- Your identity is not your achievement. As Cole puts it, football is what he does, not who he is, and that distinction changes how you handle the day it ends.
- Courage to follow a calling is often modeled before it’s chosen. Dave’s willingness to say yes to God gave his kids and grandkids permission to take their own risks.
- God doesn’t move, you do. Stillness and the unknown feel threatening until you trust that He’s already everywhere you’re headed.
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Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Daron: Hey, welcome back to The Daron Earlewine Podcast. We’re at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. There’s cars on the track. Listen. Prep for the Indianapolis 500. I’m at my favorite place talking to one of my favorite people. This episode is with my son, Ty Earlewine. And here’s what you’re gonna hear in this episode. Are you a road course person or are you an oval course person? We’re not talking about racing. We’re talking about your calling in life. You’re gonna love this episode. Here it comes. Created on purpose and for purpose.
Daron: Hey, welcome back to The Daron Earlewine Podcast. Your host, Daron Earlewine, and we are still live here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway preparing for the greatest spectacle in motorsports, the Indy 500 coming up in a couple of weeks. Sitting out with my middle son, Ty Earlewine. Ty, welcome back to the podcast.
Ty: What’s up? I thought you guys would just be home.
Daron: You’re home for the summer. Cole’s home for May. We’ve got to get these episodes done. We’ve recorded at home. We’ve not yet done one in the studio, but I figured, why don’t we make our favorite place on earth the studio for the day. So we’re back here at IMS. We’re a year removed from our first sit-down with the family episodes. We checked back in after you’d been to college for a couple of weeks, maybe a month. Now we’re back a year later. So, you finished your freshman year at Grand Canyon University.
Ty: Yep. The wonderful, beautiful Valley of the Sun, Phoenix, Arizona.
Daron: True that. So first question is, looking back, what did you get right about your preparation and thinking about college? What did you get wrong?
Ty: I figured out a lot of things wrong, I’m not gonna lie. Went there, switched majors before the first quarter was even done. Kind of numbed myself. I was like, “Ah, this distance isn’t gonna bother me at all. I’m gonna be fine.” Got there and I was like, “This is a lot more difficult than I thought it was gonna be.” When you’re at a place so far away, you don’t have immediate access to family. I can’t drive home. I can’t really do anything like that. So I think I undervalued a lot of things going into college.
Things I think I got right, though. My rooming situation. The guys I lived with were great. My friends that I chose, they’re all great dudes. The connections I made were great. After I got adjusted to the distance, I had that moment of like, “Alright, we’re comfortable now. I’m not gonna sit in this comfortable. Let’s see how far we can take this.” Finding a church family out there, finding a church out there. Started the Bible study with the guys in second semester. So I got some things right, but I’m glad I got some things wrong too, because it definitely changed how I viewed myself and viewed college. Being okay with being wrong about a lot of the things I anticipated about college.
Daron: Do you remember a moment where you realized, “Holy crap, I’m 2,000 miles away from home”? That moment of, “I got this wrong, this is different.” Was there a moment that hit for you?
Ty: Yeah, for sure. You and Mom leaving, that was tough. I knew it was gonna be tough from the beginning, but that was the moment of standing in a parking garage, saying goodbye to your parents and then turning around the corner and being like, “Wow, I don’t see my parents again for weeks.” That riled me a little bit. Then the first time I got sick. The first time being homesick. If you’re close to home, you’re like, “Alright, let me go home for a weekend.” But it’s like, “No, you’ve gotta book a flight.” I came back at the seven-week mark, and you’ve got that day on your calendar and you can’t change it. You’ve gotta wait till that day.
That’s a positive and a negative for sure. The positive is I had to figure out how to take care of myself out there in different ways. The negative is you’ve gotta wait for those days to come home. I’d open the Life360 app and you get to see the entire country, because I’m all the way on the West Coast and you guys are all the way in the Midwest. That was definitely the moment of, “Holy crap, I am 2,000 miles away from my family.”
Daron: On the positive side, was there a moment, first semester, second semester, where it started to feel right? Where Phoenix kind of started to feel like home?
Ty: Mom’s not gonna like that you said home. The place that I feel comfortable. I felt it in the first semester a little bit. Wasn’t really recognizing it. Then second semester, I remember getting back. You had your friends, you guys are great guys. You start building relationships. And I’m like, “Okay, this is my school.” And then I have home back home. But it did start to feel like a family. The guys were building on each other and making good relationships. The distance won’t change. I’m always 2,000 miles away. But being able to build a connection and a community there, that was the biggest thing when I came back for that second semester. I’m not going in there with just Nate and Jackson. I get to go in there and I’ve got Noah and Jay and all of them. I’m going back to see my school family.
Daron: Let’s talk about that. For anybody listening whose kids are about to go to college, or maybe there’s some kids watching, one of the things that Julie and I would have to admit we got wrong is I think we underestimated the quality, or maybe not the quality, the amount of community we have here and you have here. You went to the same school system your whole life. You had some friends since kindergarten, second grade, all the way up. You had an amazing group of friends here. I think we were confident, like, “Ty’s great with people. He’s gonna meet people. It’s gonna be great.” Maybe overselling the positive. As a Type Seven on the Enneagram, I always oversell the positive. Mom probably had a more realistic perspective. But that was more difficult than I thought it was gonna be, and I think it was more difficult than you thought it was gonna be.
Take me through what did you have to do? What were the struggles of forming a new crew?
Ty: I literally talked about it with my hometown buddies. We were at Maddox’s house, me and Maddox and Adam. The biggest change for me was, like you said, same school system. I’ve been playing baseball and football with these guys forever. I’ve known him since the third grade. When I went to school, I was like, “I need to find my new Adam, my new Maddox.” The biggest change for me was: my new friends are my new friends. I can’t make old friends. I have so much history with these guys. We don’t have to talk for weeks on end and our relationships are the exact same. We’re still super close.
I had an opportunity where I made the decision to go somewhere that’s not in my community that’s so tightly knit and strong. I had to completely change my mindset of, “I am starting new, which means I’m actually starting new.” I have to make those new friends and make those new connections. Once I got there, Noah is Noah and Jay is Jay and all the guys that I met out there became important. I started to appreciate everybody a lot more. When you have a buddy that you’ve been friends with for 10 years and you’re like, “Oh, this guy doesn’t do this as good as that guy,” it’s like, no, they’re all amazing people and I’m so glad they’re in my life. But they’re all in my life for different reasons and on different timelines. These guys are gonna be with me through college and all the life change. My buddies here, we grew up together, they made me who I was when I walked into GCU.
The Lord provided. My best friends in college were literally dorm right across the hallway. Two steps and you’re there. Open door policy at all times. So that was the biggest change: appreciating how many friends you can have and not comparing anyone.
Daron: How did you know what you were looking for? You went from a 4,000-person high school to 25,000 at GCU. Did you actually think it out or did you just sense it?
Ty: Obviously, there’s the faith side of everything. Sometimes I struggle with that too. When you first meet somebody, usually the first question you ask is not, “Hey, how much do you love Jesus? How much does Jesus impact your life?” That’s not the best first line, and it takes a lot of courage to do that. Sometimes it can come off a little weird. So it was really just finding commonalities. Everybody played high school football or some high school sport. Everybody liked watching sports. Every Saturday and Sunday, we were sitting in our living room for hours watching sports together.
When I was looking for friends, I thought, “If these people are gonna support me in life, I need to be able to enjoy the conversations with them and connect with them.” We’ve got to have some commonalities. I’m not saying people can’t be completely different and still be great friends, but if you’re going to live on top of each other for eight months, I would at least enjoy my friends. I got lucky that the people right across the hallway were those people.
The commonality of life is so easy. You can connect and network with people. When I switched majors, Noah was the same major. So I started being in the same classes as Noah in the second semester. First semester I was with Jackson in the same classes. Me and Jackson got super close after working all summer together at the warehouse. That was a relationship I didn’t think was gonna take another step because we’d been friends our entire life. You and Brent were friends in college, so we’re in the same situation: we’ve been friends our entire life, but we lived in completely different worlds here. He’s a Heritage, I’m HSC. I’m always playing sports. He was playing soccer. Just a very busy schedule of life.
Whether it was working all summer together at the warehouse or when we got to school and the whole first semester, we had classes together, doing homework together. That relationship was such a core for me. I talk to Jackson almost every day. That’s not something I was doing when I was 17, 16 years old. I’ve cherished that because he is really strong in his faith. He’s helped me so much this year. The Bible study, inviting me to church every weekend with him and Brenna. When you think, “Oh, this is my good friend, we’ve been friends for so long,” and then you realize, “Can we be more friends to each other?” We opened an entire new chapter of our life. In the last 365 days, me and Jackson have a longer chapter in one year than we ever had 18 years before that.
Our families would hang out and me and Jackson always extended those hangouts and spent the night. But then when you’re living with them and you’re functioning with them, keeping the room clean, going to class, helping each other out, I would say this last chapter, using Jackson as an example, and same with Nate, was a great rock for me. It was just a really cool change in my mindset.
Daron: We’re not throwing stones at anybody, but there was also an element of figuring out who you do not want in your crew. Was there a process of, “Man, I’ve gotta make decisions. Nobody knows me. I could create any kind of life I want, right? Mom and Dad aren’t there to tell me, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that.'” What was that process like?
Ty: That was definitely true. For anyone going to college, when you first get there, you’ve got welcome week, your first week’s class, and any person that talks to you, you’re like, “This could be a friend, because I don’t have anyone.” Then once you start reading who that person is, you kind of start seeing it. We always joke about it with all the guys in our core group now. We started with like 20 people of, “This is our friend group, guys, girls, everything.” It kind of just started funneling itself out. I really didn’t have to do a lot of work. People started hanging out with different people that they were more close with and those friendships became mutual. If I see you, I’m gonna say hi. I didn’t have any bad blood with anyone.
It just started figuring itself out. We always had the door open. People kept coming around. People just started filing out in their own ways. That was the biggest change.
[Mid-roll: Rogue Collective Coaching ad]
Daron: Hey, sorry for the interruption here in the podcast, but I wanted to take this moment to invite you into something. If you’ve ever been in a place in your life where you’ve just felt stuck. Felt like maybe you’re just spinning your wheels. You’ve been thinking, “There’s got to be more for me. I listen to the podcast all the time and I hear Daron talk about on purpose and for purpose. I have to discover my purpose.” Well, that feeling is right. You do need to. And I want to help you. I want to help be a guide for you to step into who God created you to be. That’s the purpose in the design of what we do with Rogue Collective Coaching.
So if you’re curious, or you know, “Listen, I’m not curious. I know it’s time for me to take action.” Here’s your call to action. Go to RogueCollectiveCoaching.com. Click the button that says book a discovery call. Jump on a 30-minute conversation with me. We’ll talk about where you are and if Rogue Collective Coaching is your next step to help you become who you were born to be. RogueCollectiveCoaching.com. Book a discovery call. Can’t wait to chat with you. Let’s get back to the episode.
Daron: We now have on-track action here at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. If you’re driving right now, you’re not being passed by an Indy car. It’s just the background. That’s us in the studio at the track. Another big change for you. Because of the time change, Mom and I got a text message at 2 AM, which was 11 PM to you, which freaked us out. We thought something was wrong with Ty. There was nothing wrong. There was something very right. You’d gotten there about a month and you said, “I chose the wrong major. I think God has something different for me.” Take me through that process.
Ty: Basically, I had been trying to be an outlet in faith for my buddies for the whole first semester. You and I had talked about it a little.
Daron: You went as a physical therapist.
Ty: I went in as pre-PT. So I was taking a bunch of biology and sciences. I also realized I don’t enjoy learning about science. To each their own. It’s cool in some ways, but it just wasn’t my core thing. Funny enough, we were sitting around the living room: me, Noah, Jay, and Nate. I finally asked the guys, “Guys, I think I should switch my major. I think I should work in some sort of faith-based thing and some sort of business thing. What should I do?” And they were all like, “You’re not a physical therapist. You speak to people in a different way. You carry yourself in a different way.” Those guys honestly almost made the decision for me. They said, “If you feel this itch all the time that this is what you should be, why are you not scratching that itch? Why are you not diving into this? You’ve already taken a leap of faith to move across the entire country to come to this school. And you’re not enjoying classes, you’re not enjoying homework, you’re not enjoying any of this. You would enjoy it so much more.”
That’s when I knew those guys were really good dudes. They looked me in the face after knowing me for a little over a month and said, “You are not this person.”
Daron: They saw something. We talk about this all the time in the podcast. You were created on purpose and for a purpose. So we’re trying to step into that. The conversations I have around the country are exactly this: it’s a major sticking point for people figuring out why they were freaking put on earth. What am I supposed to do? They saw that in you. There were, I’m guessing, other times where God was leaving little signposts, little crumbs on the path of, “Hey, maybe over here, maybe over here.” What was some of that?
Ty: I’d say it was less of crumbs in the road and more like full course meals on the road that I was just not eating. I was in a place where I took 20 eighth-grade kids to camp almost back-to-back years. Big leader at FCA. I got asked to speak at FCA. Got asked to speak at Young Life. I’m going back to FCA on Wednesday at the high school. Even my old linebackers coach at JC texted me. I made the joke about, “Yeah, I don’t want to be the kid that keeps coming back to my high school and being weird.” And he’s like, “Well, if they’re having you back, you planted a seed here. You had a foundation here.”
Now that I sit, once I made the decision, I was like, “Yeah, I saw all the signposts.” But I had made this decision in my mind that being a physical therapist, working in sports, was what I wanted to do. And then I realized, “That’s cool, but that’s not what I’m supposed to do. That’s what I want to do.” If you ask any kid in the world what they want to be when they grow up: astronaut, NFL player, MLB player, rock band, whatever their interest is, that’s what they want to be. That was my moment. Those are my interests, but that’s not my foundation. My foundation is, humbly saying this, I’ve been given a gift. I can speak to people. I can do this. I enjoy the way that business works. And I also enjoy the faith side of business.
Interning with you this summer, getting to see all the background stuff of, “There’s a lot of admin work here, but the foundation of everything we do is faith.” I don’t know how I didn’t realize earlier. I would go into tests and homework and I would be so nervous. But I would go speak at an event, walk in there, and I’d be like, “Are you nervous?” “No, I’m really fine. I’ll figure it out. If I stumble over my words, I’ll figure it out.” When I did make the decision, I was like, “What was I doing?”
Daron: When you look back at some of those full course meals you weren’t eating, were those experiences really fulfilling to you? Sometimes you can look back and say, “Yeah, I helped out with Young Life, I did that, it was cool,” but it didn’t bring your soul to life. Is that something you look back on, like the way you felt and what it meant to you being part of those things stood out to you?
Ty: A hundred percent. If I put it on a school scale, if I was in ACP Chemistry my senior year and got an A on a test, “Sweet, yeah, I got an A. That was great.” But then I would go hang out once a week for an hour and a half, two hours with my 15-year-old eighth graders and I’d come home and be like… Obviously a test and that are different, but I’d come home or I’d have to write a little talk for those and I’d sit there thinking, “I’m having so much fun.”
Earlier today, when Cole was doing his podcast, I was sitting over there and I’m looking over my sermon from yesterday and I changed like half of it. I’m thinking about the same things, but I want to change things. I had so much fun doing it. I’m rereading Romans 12, all these points making sense. That’s so enjoyable for me to do. I love doing that.
I don’t love, even if I had to make a presentation. It happened at school too. I had a big essay in my Christian Worldview class that GCU has every kid take. 3,000 words. The only assignment the entire year that I was like, “I want to do this early.” I did it Monday, did it Tuesday, took Wednesday off, did a little bit on Thursday, edited it on Friday. The whole week my guys were like, “Are you exhausted? Are you tired? Is this essay a big burden?” I’m like, “I’m having so much fun writing this. I get to break down my entire life, all my beliefs.”
In my mind I was kind of comparing it to church. I would get that hour at church, that “church high.” It was just cool. But I felt like that was what that was. You went to your church thing, you got that feeling, and then you had to go work on your faith by yourself and then you got that feeling again next week. And now I’m like, “Why would I not? This isn’t a drug where it gets less effective. Why would I not want to be on this Jesus high all the time?”
Then I switched into that and it was so great. The guys would tell me, “Thank you for leading the Bible study.” I would tell them, “Please stop thanking me. I love doing this.” I also had plenty of time. I was only a business major this semester. It was extremely easy. Next semester I’m adding the theology minor. I told them, “Please stop thanking me. I’m doing this because I love to do this. I love to see you guys come.” I messed up, those guys messed up. We wouldn’t do the readings. Everybody’s hour and a half before Bible study catching up on all the chapters. We did Matthew, we did Romans, we did Proverbs. Every week people would be like, “Oh my gosh, we’ve got Bible study, I haven’t read it all.” And I’d be like, “I’m the leader of the Bible study, bro, and I haven’t read it all either. This is clearly a problem.”
But it was so fun. Every day, I got to sit there for 20, 30 minutes, put some worship music on, get out my notepad and think, “What do I want to do today for the Bible study?” Every day I was like, “What’s the coolest thing we can do today? Let’s everybody pray for one another. Let’s pray as a group over everything. Let’s sit for 10 minutes in silence to some worship music. Let some guys catch up on the reading, some guys journal.” There were all these different things. I’d get done with Bible study and be like, “That wasn’t even work at all. That was fun.”
Daron: What I love about it, man, is paying attention to what gives me the most life. Not, “Yeah, but this job would make more money or this would be more prestigious.” Giving yourself permission to ask, “What has been the thing that has brought me most to life?” I love some of the stories you told me about the Bible study, being catalytic and using some of your creativity. So you switched to business, minor in theology for next semester. I want to talk a little more about the desire to start the Bible study going into that first semester. Where did that come up?
Ty: A little bit of it for the first semester was fear. We all didn’t really know where we were in our faith. We didn’t know how people would react if we said, “Hey, you guys want to do a Bible study?” We didn’t know if people were going to be like, “No, that’s so weird.” But the crazy thing was, and I didn’t even ask if I could say this, but Jay in the first semester had two or three encounters of just unconditional love for the Lord. Went to two events, random people came up to him and were like, “I want to pray for you right now. They told me I need to pray for you.” Jay was so confused.
One night, I’m sitting in Noah’s room with a couple of other guys, and I finally got enough courage and said, “Noah, should we start a Bible study?” Noah was like, “Yeah, why don’t we have one?” I’m like, “I don’t know. What are we doing?” So we made that decision. First week, we’ve got five guys, whatever. Our core group. Cole’s still playing lacrosse, so he’s there for the first little bit, then he’s got to get out of there. Then we get a text from Andrew Schertz: “Hey, what are you guys doing?” “Hey, we have Bible study today. Bring your boys.” Then we’re at 10 guys. The guys right next door, Garrett and Seth, every week a bunch of these guys are coming to our room on Mondays. “What are you guys doing?” “Bible study. Feel free to come.” Then we’re at 12 guys. Everyone keeps connecting in different ways. We had to change the time to fit Cole in for his lacrosse schedule, and Garrett had work. We were figuring out all these things.
Then once we started it, everybody was like, “We’re never not doing this.” Next year, the guys, I literally said in Texas today, “Hey guys, sorry I’m a day late this week.” We’re trying to do it in the summer. I don’t know how well it’s going to work. We’re doing a test run for one summer. We’re in Psalms, so it’s short chapters. The main question everybody asked us at Bible study was, “Where are you living next year? What room? Are we doing Bible study?” From day one, since it started, it just skyrocketed.
Same with the Easter thing. We had like 18 dudes in my dorm room, trying to fit everybody in this living room area, which for 18 full-size men is not a very great thing. Absolutely unbelievable Easter Bible study. So great. The crazy thing about the Easter Bible study was, because we did the readings, we were in Matthew reading through all that, the guys were like, “I don’t think I’ve ever sat down by myself and read the story of Easter.” Which changed so many things.
You’ve got to make a personal decision. All of my friends were from out of state, minus Logan and Andrew, who live an hour away from home. You have to make a personal decision to go to church on Sunday. Your mom’s not waking you up, picking out your outfit. Your dad’s not waking you up, whoever’s taking you to Easter. We had to make a personal decision: this is the time we’re going. We’ve got to find a ride because nobody had a car. All the guys were like, “This is by far, by a hundred yards, a whole touchdown better than any other thing that I’ve done for Easter.” When you go into the big events of Christianity, you’ve got Christmas and Easter, and Christmas as a kid outshines Easter. You get presents, you get all this stuff. So how in the world are our Bible study and everybody reading changing Easter for us so much?
That was the only Bible study I was worried about all year. “Did I make the right plan? Are we talking about the right stuff? Are people going to show up?” We started at five o’clock and literally five o’clock hits and only eight people are there. And I’m like, “It doesn’t matter, same impact.” We always talked about it: whether there’s four people or 18, it’s great. Then everybody started flooding in. It was so awesome.
Daron: You also reached out to us to talk about the potential of interning with Blackbird Mission this summer. Shame on me, Mr. Purpose Development Guy, I didn’t see that sooner and instigate that conversation. What was the whole process of you thinking, “You know what, maybe this is what I should do for my summer”?
Ty: A little parts to it. First, I had no job. I needed some way to find work. And I didn’t necessarily want to go back and work at the warehouse. I loved working at the warehouse. I loved working under Joe. Joe’s the best boss. He’s great. But I needed somewhere to work. Then when I had that decision to switch majors and change my life around, I was like, “Well, this kind of works great. If this is what I want to do, I can get some experience.”
When I first texted you, you were like, “I don’t know how it’s going to work. I don’t know what you’re going to do. I don’t know how you fit into the company.” Now I’ve got shadowing opportunities and help with Worship on the Water. I’m doing all these other things. People would ask me, “Where are you working this summer?” And I’d say, “I’m working for my dad.” And they’d be like, “What’s your dad doing?” “Well, I’m working for my dad, but he works for a nonprofit ministry called Blackbird Mission.” Everybody was like, “So you’re working for your dad, but you’re not.” Yeah. My dad has this opportunity that I can use. It’s a great outlet. Life has connections, and obviously my father’s a very big connection. I could have gone and interned for Young Life or whatever. But at that time, and still, business is the major and theology is the minor. I want to see the business side of the world and I want to see the ministry side of the world.
I felt like this was the best opportunity to see both worlds. However it ends, say at the end of this summer I’m like, “This is exactly where I’m supposed to be.” Or I get to the end of the summer and I’m like, “Maybe I’m just an all-business guy, still love the Lord, but I just work in business.” Or I get to the end of it and I’m like, “Business is cool, but I want to go full in on ministry.” I have three exits to go on now. Why would I not take advantage of that?
Daron: It’s a little bit unique. Faithful podcast listeners know that a year and a half ago we started Rogue Collective Coaching, where we’re doing purpose development coaching in businesses now all over the country. It’s this unique opportunity that God’s invited us into where we’re business as ministry. It’s beginning to shape my mind and new ideas that I had never really thought about before. I’m beginning to really feel that the marketplace is the frontier of very authentic kingdom work. Which is unique for me, because for 25 years I’ve just been in nonprofit or local church work.
I remember we did sit down your senior year and went through the Spiritual DNA, like we did with Cole his senior year. We were having lunch going through one of your last sessions. I was looking through all your results, and we hadn’t even started Rogue Collective yet. We were just dreaming about it.
Ty: We had talked about it, yeah.
Daron: I thought, “I think this is what this is gonna be. I don’t know yet.” But I remember saying to you that day, “Dude, looking at how God’s created you, I think you could become a phenomenal coach with what we’re doing.” I’m excited, man, for this summer. You’re shadowing me on some Zoom calls. We’re going to travel to Wisconsin and Oklahoma. You’re going to get to be around business leaders as we’re doing purpose development and ministry with them. I’m excited for you to walk through it in a super curious way, asking, “Okay, God, is it more like 80% business? Is it more like 80% ministry? What does that look like?” I’m excited to help you walk through and continue to find what those full course meals of fulfillment and joy God has for you.
You’ve gotten to sit through a few coaching calls this past week. You’re gonna run all of our Worship on the Water events that we do with Pub Theology and Blackbird Mission this summer. We got to go to one speaking engagement. We got to go to a hospital call.
Ty: Yes. We really mixed it up. That was a fun day, but also a lot of prayer that day with everything that happened.
Daron: You’re two weeks in. What are some things you’ve noticed or that have pricked your interest?
Ty: Sitting in on some of the coaching things has been great. The weird thing about some of the coaching conversations is, those are conversations I’ve randomly had with my friends about what their life’s telling them right now and how they should change it. I had that conversation the other day. When people tell you things that are really hard to hear, you don’t speak. You’re just an outlet. You take it in and then you can say some things, but you don’t need to focus on saying the right thing.
In some of your coaching things, it feels like such a serious conversation, then one of the guys cracks a joke and it’s like, “Oh, it’s fine. We’re being vulnerable, but you’re not taking a test on who you’re supposed to be. You’re figuring it out.” I’ll be vulnerable, I’ll say the right things, the things I want to say. But at the same time, I’m just having a conversation with the guys.
With the speaking engagement, I’m not speaking with you. I’m in the corner. I’m filming. I’m doing these small things. It’s so cool because I have no real religious impact when I’m there, but the amount of people who came up to me asking how I’ve been, how excited I am to work. I’m really excited to get a firsthand view of your world, but also kind of see how people view me. You’re 48, you’ve got all these years in the church. I’m a 19-year-old kid deep in the mud, still trying to figure out how to live my life. And these people are still seeing me as, “This is a person.” I’m not a kid. I’m still a teenager, I’m 19, but people come to me in such a different way that I really enjoy.
I made a joke to Mom about how my hand gestures have changed. When you’re younger, people will give you a fist bump or dab you up. Now everywhere I go, it’s, “Hey, nice to meet you.” And I’m like, “Oh, did I shake that guy’s hand right?” You don’t have that subconscious thought in your mind, but I love it because I like to be professional. With my Enneagram type, I’m an eight or nine. I can do things, but it might not be in the orderly fashion of how Cole would do things. I’ll have a to-do list, but there are no numbers there. They’re all dashes. “Get your laundry done, read your Bible, do these things.” It’s just a to-do list. It’s been so cool to see how my personality works and to see that, even though I’m built this way of an unorganized organized person, I still have this gift of being professional when I need to be. I don’t know how many times in my life I’ve really had to be professional. In high school, you don’t really have to be super professional. So I’m just so excited to be seen in a different way.
Daron: For Cole, from his junior year in high school, “I am going to be a D1 football player,” that has been his lane. In his episode we talked about how the past four years for him have been this, “I am locked in on this journey,” and then he’s beginning to realize, “Oh, there are other things here,” as he steps into that, discovering new things about himself. What’s intriguing about your journey is you’re going into your sophomore year next year, you changed your major, but you’re not laser-focused on, “This is the thing I have to do.” Does that give you a sense of anxiety, like, “Oh, I don’t freaking know what my life is”? Or do you see it more as an adventure, where you’re kind of, “Well, we’ll figure it out. See what God has.” Do you wish you had a laser focus? You’re in this uncharted, “Let’s figure it out” journey. What’s your take?
Ty: For me on the uncharted side, some anxiety comes with it. I’ve had a little more anxiety even this summer than I normally have. Making sure I get everything done. Keeping the Bible study at school going over the summer, working with you, trying to figure out different things. And I’m still figuring out the best time for me to go work out. I’m not a morning person. I’m already up at eight in the morning. Being honest with myself, I’m not getting up at six in the morning every day to work out.
Funny enough, to put my life in an analogy of me and Cole, we’re at the track right now. My life is the road course and Cole’s the oval. I’ve got all these S’s and all these different turns. I’m going fast and I’m going really slow. Cole for the last four years has been all throttle, never hitting the brakes. Then you get in the corner and you’ve got to let off a little bit. For me, it’s been, “I’m going really fast, I’ve got to get to this turn.” I’ve enjoyed it a lot because if I do the exact same thing every single day, I’m going to get bored.
Daron: You need a left turn and a right turn.
Ty: I need to be able to turn my steering wheel both ways. That’s just how God made me.
Daron: I love that analogy, dude. You’re really good at analogies. It reminded me, and I’ve shared this in the podcast before, I was talking to Bob Taylor speak one time. He’s the guy that created Taylor Guitars. He said early on in life, you’ve got to discover who God created you to be. He said, “Two categories I see: there are ‘half-to’ people and there are ‘help-do’ people.”
To bring it to your illustration, there are some oval track people. They have to go fast and turn left. There is no option. This is what I have to do. Then there are some road course people. “I can go left, I can go right, I can go straight for a while. I might end up in the grass, I don’t know.”
Ty: The wall’s not there.
Daron: What I want to speak into your life, dude, is to not let that be a value comparison. Just let it be an understanding. “I’m 19. I’m still figuring out what it looks like to be professional, what it looks like to handle my schedule.” For somebody made like Cole, it’s, “You go straight and then you turn left, and then you go straight, and you turn left, and you do it for 500 miles as fast as you can.” For you being like, “That’s cool, but that’s not how God created me.” Nothing bad or right or wrong about it. You’ve got to know that this is the way God wired me and this is the race that I run. This is how I win.
I’m excited to watch you walk into that, man. The same way I’m excited to see what God does in Cole’s life next, but to see you weaving your way through those signposts that God gives you, figuring out what is bringing you the most joy, what’s bringing you the most fulfillment. It comes back to listening for God’s voice. “No, it’s over here.” I think you’ve done a phenomenal job in that process. I’m excited to see what this summer brings out, even more clarity for you.
Ty: Thank you. I agree with that. I’m really excited. Like you said, “You’re going straight, turn left for 500 miles,” I would probably get through about 200 miles and then get bored and wreck my car. At Grand Prix, you’ve got 80, 85 laps and you’re going through and going through, and you get all these different turns. If I was going in circles for 500 miles, that 300-mile mark, unless I have like Adderall or something to keep me on the track, it’s not happening. I’m getting bored, I stop paying attention, I hit the concrete and just bounce right off the wall.
Daron: I’ll say this as an encouragement to someone listening or watching. If you’re in a parental role, knowing if you have more than one child, part of your job and the honor you have in raising kids is discovering as quick as you can who God has created them to be. How do you give light to that? Not saying this is exactly how everybody in our family has to be. We have a culture. There are some non-negotiables for us when it comes to faith and Christ first. But after that, let’s figure out what kind of mission God’s given you, the way he’s created you, and let’s fan that into flame.
Ty: For sure.
Daron: I’m excited to see what that looks like, Ty. I’m stoked that we just get to actually hang out all summer long.
Ty: I’m really excited. We’re gonna have a lot of adventures.
Daron: It’ll be fun. Today being one of them, we’re shooting podcasts with the Indy 500 car in the background. Hopefully people can hear us.
Ty: It’d be so funny if we had this whole conversation and every couple seconds it’s just, “What did he say to him? These points aren’t connecting at all.” And then randomly, “Yeah, I’m a road course.” People are like, “What?” I really hope you guys can all hear this, because if not, it’s going to make zero sense. Thank you for having me. I always love doing the podcast because I like talking to people. It’s always fun.
Daron: We’re gonna have a blast this summer. I can’t wait to continue to see what’s the next left or right turn that God takes you on. I know you’re doing a great job at it. I’m stoked to at least be in the car with you.
Ty: Yeah, a little two-seater.
Daron: Maybe we’re back to back. We’ll figure it out. I don’t know. But it’ll be fun. Awesome. Thanks for being back on, man. Appreciate it. Can’t wait for the summer. And until we talk again, remember these three things. God is for you and not against you. He’s near you and not far away. And he’s created you on purpose and for purpose. Thanks for downloading this episode of The Daron Earlewine Podcast.