Bio:
In the summer of 1998, Brian Mosley filmed a documentary about a missionary team living in a remote part of Tanzania for the sake of the Gospel. This was the start of a lifelong desire to serve God in ministry.
 
Brian started RightNow Ministries in 2000 under the wing of a media ministry called Bluefish TV that had been creating video resources for the church since 1977. RightNow combined the media creativity of Bluefish TV and a passion for helping people put their faith into action. RightNow Media is challenging the church to be bold. Their team is committed to serving the church so that millions of people can be unleashed on mission for Christ.
 
Brian graduated from Baylor University and then married his high school sweetheart, Julie. He serves as an elder at Allen Bible Church.
 
About:
On today’s show, Ray travels to McKinney, Texas to speak with Brian Mosley, President of rightnow Media. Brian shares unique perspectives on the challenges of leading as an introvert, the importance of consistency for your team, and seeing your work as worship.
 
Quotes:
“It’s not up to us to do what God wants to do through us.”
 
“Consider others before self; Christ above all.”
 
“Not everyone has a pastor; almost everyone has a boss.”
 
Key Takeaways:
1. Pay attention to the transitions – they are the biggest opportunities for mistakes
2. Inspect what you expect
3. Create consistency for your team
4. Influence comes through the people you’re working with
5. You don’t have to prove yourself to other people because it’s not about you.
 
Links:
Rightnowmedia.org
Rightnowmediaatwork.org
 
Full transcript:
 
Ray: Well, hey everyone, this is Ray Hilbert. I am your host here at Bottom Line Faith and we would like to welcome you back to another episode of the program where we have conversations with the most amazing Christ followers who are in business and in leadership in the marketplace. And I am really excited. I am in the studio today at RightNow Media. I have the incredible opportunity today to interview the president at RightNow Media, Brian Mosley. Brian, welcome to Bottom Line Faith.
 
Brian: Yeah, thanks Ray. This is awesome. Glad you guys are here.
 
Ray: Brian, I’ve been looking forward to this opportunity for us to have this conversation a lot of people know about right now and RightNow Media and the things that you’re doing, but I’m not sure everybody knows the story of how this got started. Why don’t you help our audience understand a little bit more about right now how you got started in the story? I think it’s fascinating.
 
Brian: Yeah, the story of the ministry kind of coincides with a lot of personal stuff as well. So the ministry has been around for 40 years and my grandfather was a pastor and really became passionate about world missions and thought, how do I help my church just get more involved in world missions? And so he and my dad began traveling the world filming these documentary stories. And this was back in the late seventies the thought was, again, how do we use the power of the screen, share these stories of missionaries, help our church just get more plugged in. And maybe they’d go, maybe they’d give, maybe they’d pray. The next few years they began creating more and more of the documentaries and it turned into a ministry. And so between the late seventies and late eighties they traveled to 47 countries filming stories and missionaries. And again, the whole idea was how do we put the power of those stories on the screen, help the North American church get involved.
 
So that was the very origins of the ministry. And then in the late eighties that transition from documentaries to creating like Bible study material could go right into a church. So that was VHS at that time. And the thought of there was, how do you get the power of the stories, not on a broadcast screen, but right into a Sunday school class or small group. And so that kind of started the next chapter of the ministry for many years. Then creating and producing all of this Bible study content. So our passion is a ministry for years, has always been serve the church, create great content, you know, use the power of that screen to help tell stories. And that has continued on up to today even though it looks a lot different than it did back in the 70s.
 
Ray: You grew up in the home of missionaries or pastors, right? Did you ever imagine that this is where you’d find yourself or did you feel this calling from an early age? Help us understand that.
 
Brian: When I was growing up, grandfather had been a pastor and had resigned from that to do the documentary ministry for many years, and so I kind of had this church and ministry background through him and then I just grew up in the church. My dad was, and parents for that matter, were just faithful Christians and brought us to church and so I always was connected to church, connected to my faith. It was probably, I guess in late high school where I started to really wonder, of course you know, what’s next? As I head into college, my other grandfather was an engineer and so I was decent enough at math and I thought, Oh, maybe I’ll go do that. I didn’t know what an engineer did, but I just knew that it involved math. And so I kind of explored that. But it was late in high school. I had a chance to do a video project and an English class and that really opened the world up for me.
 
And I thought, Oh, I really like, you know, telling these stories, using this equipment, communication, you know, aspect of things. I just, all of it fell into place and that’s what I knew I wanted to pursue. And you went to a fine institution and I know you’re going to want to talk about this.
 
Ray: Where’d you go to school? Here in Texas?
 
Brian: Yeah, I went to Baylor university. They have a great program for communications. I had looked at a couple other schools and they really had, I mean, faith driven, but they also had just this hands on, you know, get to use the gear, get to tell stories, get to really put it into practice early on. And so I loved it and spent my college career there and, really felt like I’ve benefited from not only the classes but just everybody around me.
 
Ray: I really love the idea there was cutting edge mindset back early on about telling these missionary stories. And I remember as a kid sitting in church and listening to missionary stories, but I think I would’ve enjoyed seeing some powerful documentaries more than just hearing the stories, right? But at some point in the not too distant past, you guys really locked in on a business model that really began to scale the organization. Tell us a little bit about that, how that kind of came about and then what day to day is like here at right now and how you are equipping the church. And then I want to talk about the RightNow Media at work platform. So with this history of always trying to serve churches, I thought was again, how do you put great content in front of people and help guide, use that to inspire people to action?
 
Brian: Started with documentaries then went to VHS, eventually DVD, but about six or seven years ago made the big transition like a lot of the world from kind of a physical product to a streaming, you know, digital product. There’s good and bad about this analogy. You know a lot of folks who said it’s kind of like Netflix for the church and I mean there’s a lot of truth to that. There’s a lot of, not truth to that, but it creates a great picture of just that model we’re set up as a nonprofit. Those early days when we were doing mystery documentaries, it was all donor driven and we started doing VHS and DVD content. It was, you know, we were looking to sustain ourselves financially based off the sales of those resources and thankfully God provided. And then that idea has continued into today where we offer a subscription streaming subscription to a church where they get access to this huge library of video content and they can then use that, you know, in their homes.
 
And there’s Bible study classes, youth ministries, whatever context our team is creating a lot of that content. We’ve also got to partner with a lot of great content creators and put their content into that library so that those churches have access. So there’s about 17 or so thousand churches that have access to the content for us, that’s a win, you know. Getting to serve the church well, but we’re in this weird hybrid of we’re still set up as a nonprofit, but we want to run and generate, you know, revenues to sustain what we’re doing. And so we try to be really wise with how we’re spending the monies and I’m investing those into creating, you know, new content, new ways to serve the church. But we are not as best we can. We’re not looking to go, okay, we’re donor driven. We want to say no, we want to be self sufficient in this.
 
Ray: Absolutely. And so at some point then there really began to get this focus in on the marketplace and I want to talk about the work as worship concept and some of the events that you do, but this really became an organizational passion. How did that come about and what’s that all about?
 
Brian: I would say about five or six years ago, we really started to kind of open our eyes to, there’s a lot of folks whose day to day lives are spent in the marketplace and so all they’re learning about God and who God is and how God manifests in their life. If it doesn’t take place in the marketplace, it’s not lived out in the marketplace and they’re really, you know, forsaking a big part of their life. We’ve always had the passion for our content to help people live their faith out. There was certainly, again, from those early days, a lot of folks on the international mission side of things and we’re still passionate about that, but just this realization that, you know, most people aren’t waking up today thinking, how do I get to Africa? How do I get to India? But they do want their lives to count and just started looking around and going, how do we partner with, how do we create content? Who out there already working in this space of encouraging and validating those that go to work every day? And so yeah, you mentioned that idea of work as worship. We ended up kind of rallying around this phrase of all of life should be worship including our work and we don’t often think of that. We usually think of worship as just a music thing and so we thought, gosh, if we can kind of help people frame up this idea that even my work, it can be an opportunity to worship God, then maybe that gives them a perspective going into work that’s different than they’ve had before and I’m really excited about that.
 
Ray: Obviously at Truth At Work, that’s the space that we’re really passionate about and serving Christ followers in business and in leadership. Would you mind maybe take and give us just an example or two of the type of content or the type of materials or lessons? Our audience here at Bottom Line Faith are primarily business owners, executives, leaders in that sort. What kind of content might I find? What kind of help might I find to build my company helped me as a leader, as a Christ follower?
 
Brian: So kind of a phrase we’ve used around here is that not everybody has a pastor, but almost everybody has a boss, right? So the people in these companies, you’re Christian owner leading a company, you look around at your team members that may not be going to church, they may not have a pastor that they look to for spiritual advice or counsel, but you’re their boss and you happen to be a Christian. So how do you then influence them for Christ? So we’ve tried to create content in a couple different areas. Some of that content is very much aimed at the, you know, workspace. So it’s how to help build solid teams and create a culture there that’s not only Christ honoring, but that really helps the team itself flourish. And so we’ve created content with a Patrick Lencioni or some people from Chick-fil-A and some people from Popeye’s Chicken, just other great business leaders who have, who’ve lived it and had it. Practitioners.
 
Ray: Yeah, exactly.
 
Brian: Here’s how we’ve done it. Here’s ways that in your company you can help build, you know, build into the culture. Then there’s a lot of content also that is really just aimed at how did you help that person’s individual, you know, their moms, their dads or husbands or wives, they like all of this. They have questions about maybe it’s addiction issues or mental health issues or parenting issues. How can you, again, is that Christian business leader influenced them by putting content in front of that says, look, Hey, we all have parenting questions. I want to point you to some resources that may be helpful for you and your spouse. So it really has that kind of better at work and even better at home. How do we help you really live out just being a more flourishing, you know, person.
 
Ray: And in full disclosure, I want our audience to know we at Truth At Work, we’re subscribers. We leverage the content on a regular basis, not only at personally do I do this personally, but also with our members across the country. And that’s the finest, finest content. And you don’t do it in a second class way either. Could you comment on why such a commitment to excellence?
 
Brian: Yeah, thanks for the encouragement by the way. So we’ve always felt like there’s so much competing with our attention, you know, and so, that was true 40 years ago when we started. It was true 30 years ago and it’s even more true today because we all have these screens in our pocket and these screens all around us. And so everywhere we look, there’s the opportunity for us to be kind of distracted by whatever’s going on that screen. So we felt like if we’re going to put something on that screen, it needs to be worthy of holding their attention and we certainly believe the content is always worthy of holding their attention cause it’s usually, you know, biblically based or somebody’s story about their faith. But then the question is, well, does the quality of that content also then capture their attention?
 
So we try to place a real high emphasis on that and our team does a great job of that. If you would watch it yourself, that’s a good sign, right? So if you’re looking at it going, okay, this is something I would watch, then that’s a good sign. At the end of the day we’re representing the Lord and we want to do it with excellence and that’s that worship, right? I mean, as we worship through using our gifts and saying, Hey God, this is what you’ve gifted me with, I want you to do it to your glory then yeah, you don’t want to ever do in that second class. Whether it’s creating video content or accounting or whatever, you know.
 
Ray: What would be the best way as someone is listening or a view in our conversation, what’s the best way for them to learn about RightNow?
 
Brian: Yeah, our website RightNowMedia.org, kind of has all the information about how we’re serving churches and it would link over to our serving businesses.
 
Ray: So Brian, thanks for the background. A little bit of the history, a little bit of what you’re doing here at RightNow Media. You’ve got a great organization, beautiful building, God has blessed the organization. I want to do something I know you’re not going to be comfortable with; I want to talk about you.
 
Brian: Okay.
 
Ray: So as you’ve kind of developed over the course of your leadership, I want to talk about some of the lessons you’ve learned. I want to talk about maybe some of the mistakes you’ve made along the way and those sorts of things. So kind of growing up, who was your like role model? Who mentored you, who kind of shaped your worldview on leadership?
 
Brian: No doubt, the first person who comes to mind is my dad and I’ve had the privilege of getting to work with my dad for the last 20 years. Of course, honestly, growing up in the home before that, you know, you’re just always around him. So my dad has been that example for me for my whole life. I think I always, you know, I think back to even like being a student in high school and I think I always kind of sought out older men and just wanting to be around. And I don’t know if there was necessarily any like formal mentoring program particularly happening, but just organically, I just always wanted to be around these other guys who are a little bit ahead of me in their journey. And so there are definitely other guys, you know, in the youth ministry, the church where I grew up, or even when I got to college, certain professors I tried to just spend more time around. But if I were to look at the long haul, I’d say my dad is for sure that person.
 
Ray: Could you just maybe share a specific, either principal or maybe your dad had a certain saying or a certain way of leadership, but something practical and tactical that continues to influence you today from your dad?
 
Brian: I mean, a couple of kind of little thoughts or quips come to mind. He always would make a big deal about anything. If there was a transition going on, he would say, you know, there’s, this is the biggest opportunity for there to be a mistake, you know, for somebody to get misunderstood or misinformed or misaligned. And so really, really, really, if there’s a transition in terms of a person moving from a team to team or a new endeavor, it’s about to happen over, communicate over, you know, spend as much time as you feel like is required to really make sure everybody’s on the same page. And so I always think about that anytime there’s something new to announce or some new thing going on is don’t pretend or think that they all know what is going on.
 
I mean, make sure that you’ve over-communicated in mass and when I want. So that’s one. And then another little phrase that I remember comes to mind is just to inspect what you expect. You know, if you tell your team member, Hey, here’s what we’re expecting to do, then you don’t have to go micromanage them. But don’t just never go back around and say, Hey, did that get done or did you accomplish that? Or how did it go? I mean, just just check back in and say, Hey, what happened? You know, we were expecting, we talked about this happening. Did it actually happen and what happened and if it didn’t, why not and what can we do to make sure that it does happen the next time?
 
Ray: Those are great insights. Fantastic. Tell us a little bit in your role as president here. Is there such thing as a typical day? If so, what’s that look like or kind of what’s the big rocks, the big things that you’re responsible for here? Cause I want to lead that into some of the other leadership questions.
 
Brian: That’s a good question. I don’t know if there is a typical day and I’ve thought a lot about, especially in the last probably seven or eight years, just what is my role like compared to maybe other people. I know they’re in some sort of, you know, leadership or president type role in an organization. And I sometimes wonder, I don’t know if I even feel like I am truly like the business person that sometimes these other people are my background in content creation. So I come from that perspective and I’ve kind of gone to school these last seven or eight years, learning.
 
Ray: What is it like to now run the organization?
 
Brian: So I think a typical day for me is spent a lot with the people on our executive team. I mean those are the folks that I work most closely with. And so there’s one on one meetings and kind of regular meetings and I’ve not always been best at that. I mean I’m more of an introverted personality so I can find myself, you know, it’s easy for me to just find myself in my office doing my thing at my computer and after myself, you know, it’s those people out there that are making things happen and make sure that you’re asking questions, helping them where you can. And so that’s where I have to pride myself to get out of my office, you know, and go do that. But most of my time is spent trying to engage those folks on our executive team some way, shape or form.
 
Ray: So how would you describe your leadership style then?
 
Brian: So I am highly focused on, I say this, this is the funny thing and again I ask these introspective questions and so I don’t know if I’m not like Mr. Sociable, like I’m not like Mr. Hey, I’m going to small talk you to death. But I’m really, really concerned about the team dynamic. And so I’m always looking to make sure that there’s harmony within the team. We’re going to make sure that people have their questions answered, looking to make sure that people are working well together. And so that I would say team and culture, you know, float to the top of the list in terms of things where I spend most of my time or most of my thoughts. And then I would say the other thing stylistically is I’m a big believer in just kind of a consistency.
 
And I think if you create consistency, if you are consistent as a leader, you create consistency for your team. There’s actually a freedom that comes from people knowing kind of the routine and the patterns because then they don’t get tripped up on something that surprised them. Especially when you have a big part of our team is a creative team. You know, and I think with creative folks there can sometimes be a resistance to structure patterns. But I think when there are an appropriate number of structures and patterns in place, it actually frees them up to be more creative. And that’s true I think for anybody, even not creative, but I think my personalities are pretty consistent, you know, kind of regular type schedule. And I think that bleeds into the way our team operates.
 
Ray: Sounds to me like, and I’m guessing here, you would have a real aversion to drama.
 
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Cause that’s the antithesis of routine.
 
Ray: Yeah, absolutely.
 
Brian: I hope I don’t generate drama and if there’s drama going on, I tend to, my temptation is to run from it. Although again, as a leader I shouldn’t run from and I need to go and try to figure out how to reconcile it as best I can or whatever I’m equipped to do.
 
Ray: As you think about over the course of your leadership, what’s maybe though a mistake or a decision that you made that you wish you had done differently, but you know, if you could kind of go back and change something or do something differently, what would that be?
 
Brian: I guess, you know, probably two things come to mind and not that these are the only mistakes I’ve made, but just kind of off the top of my head. One is real practical speaking. I mean years ago when we were printing some books to go along with our resources, I remember, I don’t know if we were in a hurry or if for some reason we just overlooked, we kind of use some filler text on the cover while we were designing it. And then nobody went back. I mean, I say nobody, I didn’t go back and look and determine, Oh you know what that was filler text went to print, you know, 15,000 units, you know, 30, $40,000 later we get them back and I’m, you know, you instantly see it, Oh that’s not the right text on the cover of the whole thing. And I mean in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t like the worst thing ever, but it was just a reminder then in a constant kind of lesson since then of again go back to those processes, just put some processes in place to make sure that you minimize those kind of errors.
 
That’s because that’s the silly stuff and that doesn’t, that didn’t even matter and yet it does cause its finances and its mistake and all that. So that’s on the kind of littler side of things. Let’s say the bigger side is, especially as we’ve grown a lot in the last several years and our team size has grown and some of the different issues is for me, I’ve recognized looking back, there’s times where I wasn’t as focused on that team health and that team culture and just realizing, okay, there’s opportunities for me to be more present, more involved, not because I have all the answers, but because if I’m not connected to her, aware of what’s going on, then I can’t ever help somebody when they have a problem coming up. So I definitely recognize the last few years. Again, more of an introverted personality and a task guy. I mean if I can go knock out tasks, I know it’s business, but sometimes my task needs to be more focused on the people, the team and the culture there.
 
Ray: Yeah. And so as you’ve described yourself, this introverted project, process oriented person, do you struggle with vision? Do you struggle with, I don’t want to say being that motivational guy or that motivational leader, but like, okay, this is where we’re going next. Is that a struggle or how does that work?
 
Brian: And I think it’s a great question. I’ve wrestled with that a lot, wondering. Okay, yeah, where’s my giftedness there? Where’s my role? Even there, I think we, I would say it is, I’m definitely not the rah rah guy. I mean I’m not going to just be a flood of great, you know, words and inspiration in front of a team and a meeting. My hope is that my kind of, the way I’m living or the way I’m, you know, just routinely kind of trying to carry out the mission is inspiration.
 
I mean I definitely, we have all team meetings and you know, I try to communicate to the whole office and all that, but I don’t see my strength is that rah rah person, I try to look for other ways to make sure that vision is cast, you know? And again, that’s also then relying on team members, you know, and trying to empower them and say, Hey, you know, you may be good at this and even if you’re not, frankly, you’re the team leader of that team. So you need to be a part of caring and casting that vision. So it’s not all on me.
 
Ray: And do you have, I don’t mean names of course, but do you have particular leaders on your team that can kind of step in that place? Cause that’s maybe their more natural gifting or their style is, I’m talking about some more of that like energy kind of leadership.
 
Brian: Yeah, I think there’s similar team that naturally carry that. And then there’s obviously the balance too of even though there may be a key integrate leader, they’re not the president. And so there’s an aspect of, you know, what do they feel comfortable enough trying to carry and also what does the team really respond to, you know? And so I still feel like I bear that burden of that kind of chief communicator, you know, more than anybody else. But I also don’t want to be the only singular point of it.
 
Ray: You know, as I’m listening to that as what you’re describing for yourself, there’s, the world kind of sees this certain profile of the rah rah leader. And yet we know when we read and like Collins work about the best leaders are the ones that are steady, consistent processes and so forth. There’s probably someone listening right now who maybe wishes they had a different personality, maybe wishes they were more of that rah rah person. Would you just take a moment and offer a word of encouragement to that one person that’s like maybe they’re discouraged or whatever and like, I wish I was more this or less of that. What would you say to them?
 
Brian: It’s so tempting to have kind of what I would call a what if mindset. You know, what if I was more like, what if I had that? And I’ve done it and I still do it. You know, you look at other leaders, I think my encouragement would be, I mean God’s created you who you are, you know, you don’t have to prove yourself to others and you just have to do what God’s called you to do. And that’s hard. I mean, again, I still wrestle with, okay, where’s my role and how am I supposed to, what does the team need of me and what am I supposed to do and what am I equipped to do?
 
But I think at the end of the day, and I’ve read, you know, some, like you said, Collin’s work, whatever, and this is highly encouraging to me because I’m like, Oh, okay. It’s actually true. That, you know, there are good leaders out there who aren’t just the real, you know, boisterous, outgoing, you know, personalities and those are great reminders. That’s where there’s just power in stories too, right? I mean, you guys tell stories here through this podcast, we love telling stories. Why don’t you just tell us people’s stories? You get a little peek into what life is really like and you go, Oh, they are a great leader and they’re like me or I don’t know. Those stories can relate in powerful ways.
 
Ray: Well, Brian, I really appreciate the fact that you’ve really, I don’t want to just say kind of grown comfortable that God has created you as a leader in a certain way and you don’t have to try to aspire to be anyone else. And that’s an encouragement to any leader, right? Who’s listening to this. They don’t need to be anyone else. Just be the best them that God has created. And so with that as kind of the backdrop. I’d like to talk a little bit about the integration of your faith here. Obviously here, this is what you’re all about. This is that kind of environment. How do you balance where you don’t worship the work here, where it becomes the thing, right? And how do you keep that? You understand what I’m asking? Can you talk a little bit about that?
 
Brian: A couple of quick thoughts come to my mind. We really try to be careful about not being people’s church, you know? And it would be easier, even tempting to be like, Hey, we’re doing all this Bible study staff and we’re making sure there’s this community and this kind of spiritual growth aspect. And none of that’s bad obviously, but because we as an organization are so passionate serving the church, the last thing we want to do is for our own team to feel like, Oh my church is at work and I don’t know, I don’t want really to get plugged into a church outside of that. And so in some respects when I hear stories of either other companies in the way they’ve kind of conducted stuff, I almost feel like we try to lean the other direction at sometimes a normal soap so to speak, company would do it because we don’t do a lot of Bible studies at lunch.
 
We don’t do a lot of like worship and prayer times. And maybe we should, I’m not saying that’d be bad, but it’s just that idea of Hey, you’re here to work and it can be worship to be here is work. You know, your actual work can be worship. But then we do want you to get out of here on the weekends and the weeknights and go enjoy your family, enjoy church, serve there, you know, get plugged in elsewhere. And then as far as actually worshiping the work itself, we just have to remind ourselves always that it’s apart from God, we can do nothing. We want to work hard, we want to work diligently unto the Lord, but at the end of the day, it’s not up to us to do what God wants to do through us. And so there’s a relief that comes when you know it’s not all dependent upon you. Obviously balancing there. I think God wants us to, again, work hard and work diligently, but at the end of the day, he’s going to do what he’s going to do, whether our team succeeds or not, he’s going to work the way he wants to work and so there’s a freedom that comes from that.
 
Ray: It takes some pressure off too, right?
 
Brian: It takes the pressure off. Yeah. That really our job is just to get up each day, trust the Lord, do our best, but the results are in his hands ultimately.
 
Ray: Yeah. Right. Looking back over the course of your life and work and career, what would you do differently? What would you, if you could like hit that rewind button and go back and change? Is there anything that comes to mind?
 
Brian: I think I can. I can answer kind of two as I think I can honestly say when I look back, there’s not really anything major that I would change. There’s no path or choice. They would go, Oh wow, that really kind of got things derailed. I look at what God’s doing in my life personally, but also just as a ministry, I’m just so thankful for the story that’s unfolded. It doesn’t mean it’s been perfect, doesn’t mean you’re going to jump mistakes, but I really am thankful for the way that stories come together. I do think kind of going back to what we talked about earlier, just personally and looking at yourself as a leader. I think if I were to do it all over again, I would emphasize, I would make sure there’s a personal emphasis on people earlier on in my kind of career and just going, okay, make sure you’re investing in people.
 
Make sure you really are attuned to what the team and the people around you need or are looking for. I don’t think I was ever completely ignoring it, but again, I think personality wise it was easy for me to get back folks on a task. And I think at the end of the day in a leadership role, it’s going to be your influence and the influence only comes through the people that you’re working with. So I think if I were to do it again, I would want to make sure that early on in my, whether you could go all the way back to college or even just early days working you’d say, okay Brian, be more focused on the people around you and listen and learn and just be comfortable with them because that’s where it’s all going to happen.
 
Ray: It really is about people even in the day of technology, right? And people being connected on social media. At the end of the day, it’s still about this, right? Like you and I, eyeball to eyeball, flesh to flesh. That’s where real transformation occurs and real connection and community. Well, you may have answered the next question in that last question and so we’ll see how this goes. But because you talked about if you could go back and do that differently, you didn’t invest more on the people side, but if you could go back, what would be the one piece of advice in your first year in your career that you wished you had heard or that you would have known in that first year in your work career?
 
Brian: So this may be unique to me, but I think it can potentially apply to some others. So you know, I graduated from Baylor and I start working here at the ministry, which by the way, it was never my plan. I mean that was again, growing up, that wasn’t where I thought I was going to be. It wasn’t what I, you know, was in the calendar for me, so to speak, but through a lot of great events. And then God led me here and so graduated, come here. And so now I’m working in a ministry where my dad is the president and I put a lot of pressure on myself, especially in those early days of, well, I don’t want to be treated certain ways just because I’m Marty’s son. I wanted to be my own person with my own productivity and all that. And so I put a lot of pressure on myself to I think prove myself to others, which I think can be true even if you don’t have that family dynamic, you know. You’re starting out, you just think I got to prove myself, prove myself, prove myself.
 
Brian: Which again, there’s a healthy aspect of wanting to be effective and productive and you know, contributing to what you’re doing. But I think there’s also a danger of thinking, again, it’s all about me and that just becomes a very selfish mindset, right? If I’m proving myself, I mean myself is in that phrase, it’s about me and just going, okay, if, again, if I were advising somebody to starting off, I’d say again, as best you know, today, lead, serve, contribute in ways that God has equipped and prepared you to do. And know that you don’t have to prove yourself to other people. You need to be excellent at what you do, but it’s not about you. And so you just have to so hard to not be selfish, but you just have to take the focus off yourself and go, it’s just not about me. And I think early on in our, and even as we get older, it just, it’s so easy to make it all about ourselves.
 
Ray: That is such a deep kind of observation. And here’s what I’m processing as I’m listening to that. So the Christian faith is the antithesis of performance. The Christian faith is about trust. It’s about grace. It’s about mercy, but trusting Christ, right? And not having to do anything to have relationship with him. It’s just a trusting relationship. And yet in business and in this world’s economy, it’s all about performance. Do you have any words of encouragement on how to address that or balance that out? If I’m a follower of Christ in the marketplace, I’m trying to lead a business, produce results, or I’m working for a boss or whatever, how do I balance those things as a follower of Christ?
 
Brian: My best thought would be, it probably boils down to our motivations. If our motivation is to lift ourselves up, or if it’s to make ourselves look better, then we’re going to work really hard only to lift ourselves up. And at the end of the day, it may work for a while or it may accomplish some of the goals that we have in mind. But there’s, you just see and hear stories time and time again of people who’ve accomplished great things, only to felt very unfulfilled or unsatisfied because again, they’d made it all about themselves. So again, a lot easier said than done cause we’re all tempted to look at ourselves. But I think probably it boils down to motivation. And if we are motivated to work unto the Lord, then man, you want to work with excellence and diligence and work hard. Because you feel like I’m contributing and it doesn’t have to be just in ministry.
I mean, I think if you’re in a corporate environment and you’re thinking, yeah, this is my job. I want to do this job to the best of my ability. I believe God will bless me through that, but it’s not just about me, me, me, me, me.
 
Ray: I actually think that’s very helpful to me. I wrote that down. I think that is a great way, and I don’t know that it’s possible to have a 100% totally pure motivation. But it’s kind of that predominant thing, right?
 
Brian: And so that’s, again, I know we keep coming back to it, this is worship, right? I mean, we can get to go to church and worship like we typically think and sing songs and think, I like that song. I felt good with that song, but then that’s putting, it’s on me. You can go, well, it doesn’t matter what song I sing. The goal here is to worship, right? Every turn, I’m convinced. We’re tempted to either look at ourselves or look at God and it’s so easy to look at ourselves. I think the challenge constantly as a Christian is how do I view God in this situation, this conversation, this opportunity, whatever it is.
 
Ray: Oh, that’s fantastic. Marty’s your dad. Right? And is he still involved with the organization here? The ministry?
 
Brian: He is, I have been really thankful with the way that has kind of transitioned. It’s been about 10 years now since I’ve been the president of the ministry. He was really intentional years leading up to that to just, again, not a structured mentorship, but just a very organic, you know, exposing me to a lot of leadership. And then over the last 10 years, it really has been a very healthy transition. He’s still very much involved, but it’s a behind the scenes role.
 
Brian: And so he doesn’t make public announcements, he doesn’t speak to the whole team. He’s here to help and is a big help. That mainly to me and our executive team kind of behind the scenes.
 
Ray: And you have four children.
 
Brian: I do. Four kids. My wife and I got married right after college. We met in high school and now we have four kids.
 
Ray: And so in your dreams, you know, God’s got plans, but in your dreams, do you see any of the kids come along behind you?
 
Brian: It’s hard not to at least think that, but I tell you, I really have tried and tried to be careful not to put any pressure on them to try to follow in footsteps.
 
Ray: Sure.
 
Brian: I want them to obviously pursue where God wants them to go and they’re excited about what they know of what happens up here. But that both excites me, but it also scares the pants off me to think about. I’m trying to, you know, I think God has done something remarkable. You hear all the statistics. I mean, I guess I’m now technically third generation and there’s not a lot of companies that have a third generation that continues to under 10%. So to think of it going one more. I just fear failure for their sake, if I can be honest with you, you know? And I just don’t want that pressure for them. So that’s the good news is it’s in the Lord’s ideas.
 
Ray: Right. I am so grateful for the time that you’ve invested. I really just have one more main question here, but before I ask that question, tell us one more time. If folks are wanting to learn more about RightNow Media, what’s the best way for them to get connected, get plugged in or learn more from a church perspective?
 
Brian: RightNowMedia.org is the website they go to and learn kind of how their church get plugged in and if they are a company and they want to have that library of content for their employees.
 
Ray: It’s RightNow Media@work.org and so that’s just a way for them to learn more about that and I’m going to just say again, we at Truth At Work, we leverage particularly the RightNow Media at work platform, there is tremendous, tremendous content in there. Our businesses use it in their leadership. I’m thinking of a company that has 2,500 employees and I was just speaking with them last week and they were talking about how valuable it has been for their leadership development. And you’re not paying me to say that.
 
Brian: Thank you.
 
Ray: It is true. And so we’re grateful for the ministry here, just in how you’re impacting the local church and businesses and so forth. So thank you and your team.
 
Brian: I appreciate that encouragement.
 
Ray: Well, Brian, I have one question that’s always my last question. And we’ve reached that time. It’s based out of Proverbs chapter 4 verse 23 where Solomon writes, he says, above all else, guard your heart for from it flows all of life. And so what I’d like you to do is we’re just talking about your kids, right? And that generational passing a baton and that kind of thing. I want you to imagine that you’re at the end of your time, this side of eternity, and you have a chance to gather your family, your friends, maybe your associates here at the ministry at RightNow, and you have a chance to pass along the single most important piece of advice. And I’d like you to pass that along now to our audience. So I want you to fill in the blank for us, okay? Above all else…
 
Brian: A phrase that we use would be considere others before self and Christ above all. Real simple, above all else, put others before self and Christ above all. Simple to say, I should say, but hard to do and everything and every situation you find yourself in, if you can, through God’s power, think of the others around you before you think of yourself again, that temptation, think of ourselves, but then above all else, consider Christ, what is Christ and how does he intersect this particular situation?
 
Ray: That is really good. It’s just another way of saying, seek ye first the kingdom of God, right? Putting Him above all else, but then place others and love them. Love your neighbor as yourself.
 
Brian: Exactly. Yep.
 
Ray: Is there anything else you want to share with us today here at Bottom Line Faith? This has been, I’m so grateful, but thank you. This has been so much fun. But anything else you’d want to pass along?
 
Brian: No, I mean I appreciate you wanting to, you know, share a little of this story. We’re grateful for the work you guys do and serving business leaders and those out there looking to champion faith in the workplace. I think these kinds of relationships and conversations are fun because it just shows that there are a lot of other folks out there who are passionate about this and as we link arms, God just works through these kind of partnerships. So I’m grateful for it
 
Ray: And I’m very grateful that you agreed today to be on this side of the camera.
 
Brian: Yeah, I don’t like that, but I did it for you, Ray, just for you.
 
Ray: Very kind. Well folks, we are concluding our conversation with Brian Mosley here at RightNow Media. We’re in McKinney, Texas. If this is your first time tuning into Bottom Line Faith, welcome. We’re so glad you’ve joined us. Hey, go to the website, BottomLineFaith.org, scroll down to the bottom. You can subscribe. Become a regular consumer of the program here on Stitcher, Apple, Google Play, all the normal podcast platforms. You’ll find the content there. But I want to ask you for a personal favor if you’d be kind enough and go give a review on the program today. That’s what helps to get the word and spread it out across the globe. And we are international with the program. We were just looking at some statistics last week and we’re blown away with what God is doing with the program here at Bottom Line Faith. So tell your friends, tell your family, tell your neighbors. But most of all, faithfully serve God each day in the marketplace. And so until next time, I’m your host here at Bottom Line Faith, Ray Hilbert, saying so long, we’ll see you soon.