PHILIP ANTHONY MITCHELL | Contend (Ep. 985)

Kyle Thompson (0:00)

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He's still on the couch, astonishing. Sell your car today on carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply.

Kyle Thompson (0:30)

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Hey guys, real quick, I just wanted to remind you that we have an official Undaunted.Life store. You can go to shop.Undaunted.Life or check it out in the show notes. Guys, we're always going to have hats and shirts and a bunch of other awesome stuff. Go there, support us, wear the mission. Again, it's shop.Undaunted.Life.

Check out the link in the show notes, shop.Undaunted.Life.

This is Undaunted.Life, A Man's Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. All right, guys, we've got a very special guest on the podcast today. His name is Philip Anthony Mitchell. So if you guys have been online and if any of your social medias know that you are a Christian, you have very likely been shown a clip of him preaching. He's an absolute firestorm, just an unbelievably ferocious preacher. He is the lead pastor and founder of 2819 Church in Atlanta. And he's also the founder of the 2819 Institute. And he has a new book out right now called Contend Standing Boldly for Biblical Truth While Winning the War Within. Now, I don't really say this very often because you never know how an interview is going to be received and you never know how it's going to age. There's all kinds of things. But his interview coming out around the same time as my interview with Chuck Swindoll, I don't think is an accident.

Obviously, the impact that Chuck Swindoll has had on Christendom, the story's been very well written because he's been in active ministry for over 60 years and Philip Anthony Mitchell, in terms of most ministries, he's still relatively early in his walk in terms of being a lead shepherd, even though he's been doing it for a decent amount of time.

But the difference of being in the room with someone like this versus trying to pull it off digitally is significant, it's substantial. And I'll say for me, I knew I could probably get this interview digitally, but I was like, no, I gotta try to pull this off in person, either here in Oklahoma City, in Jacksonville, where I could obviously use the 1122 studios or to go ride to them in Atlanta. And that's what we ended up doing, I came out to in Atlanta. And he and I didn't get to interact very much before we started recording, because as you can imagine, when you're trying to release a book, which is already in the top 10 on Amazon Best Sellers, and when we did this interview, it was two weeks before the release of the book, right? He's back to back, wall to wall. Oh, and also he's got to write sermons and then deliver them on Sundays, right? And just, we hit it off from the very beginning.

And then right when we get into the interview, if you've ever watched Philip Anthony Mitchell preach, or if you've ever watched an interview with him, you can tell he's a very serious guy. He's always very serious, very stoic, he kind of keeps things to the point. He feels this overwhelming burden for the gospel and getting it to the ends of the earth. He feels this burden as being the shepherd of his flock. But as I was reading his book, and from what I know about his bio, it's just you can see his life is marked by all these different, I guess, hinge points or times where it's like, okay, from this point forward, life's just gonna look a little bit different. And so that's what I focused on in this particular interview, as you'll see, because he had a very early moment in his life, and this was, I guess, in his adult life, it was an early moment. He was experiencing suicidal ideation, but then Christ found him, he got saved, however you like to or prefer to say it. And then he had a couple of interesting experiences that changed his life irrevocably in terms of his personal life and his own ministry work we had whenever he was in Israel, whenever he went to Jerusalem, and then there was another thing that happened in Turkey thereafter, we discussed that. And then when we get all the way to the end, the question I ask him at the end, because I was like, hey, in terms of turning points, hinge points of your life, it's not just the first three things that we discuss in our discussion and all the things that we went into in between, there's still a last part. There could be another turning point. I asked him about it. And what's interesting, you won't see any video of this, but after the interview was over, we just kind of, you know, I was dabbing him up like, hey, you know, thanks for having me, that kind of thing. And he just grabs my hand. And it was the hardest, like it was the hardest dab of my life. And he just holds it. And he was basically like, I can't believe you asked me that question. Not like an accusatory mean way, but he's just like, I've never been asked that before. I just can't believe you asked me that, dude. Bro, why'd you ask that? Why'd you ask that? And then we got to have a very interesting conversation thereafter that'll remain between the two of us. But this is an incredible interview. I could feel it while it was happening, just the connection he and I were making over his content, over ministry in general, over him just knowing that 95% of the people that are going to hear this are gonna be men, shout out to the 5%ers. But what is he doing to equip these men? And you could tell he really took that tact as we went into this discussion. Just like with the Chuck Swindoll interview, I really think this is one that you should watch. Again, I almost watch none of my content. So if there's ever a problem on the YouTube video or something like that, please let me know because I probably won't see it. I just listen to stuff. But this is one, maybe just listen to a one-time speed and just really, really glean some of the wisdom from the one and only Phil Anthony Mitchell. And so guys, without further ado, let's get into it.