Episode 181 - Darrin Gray - Leaders On Leadership
True leadership is found in the ordinary—a series of small, intentional acts that create an extraordinary impact. In today's episode, Darrin Gray discusses the concept of servant leadership. From loneliness and weariness to the crucial aspects of vision and abandonment, Darrin explores the layers of what it truly takes to lead. He highlights the need to stay true to values while dealing with the complexities of leadership in today's world. He discusses the intersection of spirituality and leadership, and how it can help find hope during difficult times. With his story, passion, and vision, Darrin encourages everyone to be part of something bigger. Tune in now!
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Darrin Gray - Leaders on Leadership
In this episode, I am so excited to introduce you to my new friend and brother in Christ, and my new acquaintance, Darrin Gray. Welcome.
It’s great to be with you.
Thank you. I connected with Tremendous Scott from somebody else on the military. He says, “That's what tremendous people do. The people you meet and books you read immediately connect with Darrin.” I sent him an email back. Darrin called me right away and got on my show within a week. Let me tell you a little bit about this tremendous individual you're going to learn from this episode. Darrin is an influencer, author, and he is a sports media producer who guides notable campaigns including the NFL-sanctioned SuperBowlBreakfast.com, The Bart Starr Award, and the live stream Indianapolis, HeGetsUs.com Campaign, which I know a lot of our readers who are avid football fans have seen a lot of those He Gets Us campaigns and more.
Darrin maintains an influential network of NFL players, coaches, and alumni. His expertise includes sponsorship, sports media, sports ministry, and mass mentoring fatherhood projects including All Pro Dad and co-authored The Jersey Effect: Beyond The World Championship, which is about Tony Dungy's Super Bowl team win. The show loves Tony Dungy.
Darrin, welcome. We are thankful for your time, especially coming up on Super Bowl season. I want to hear so much more about that. Let's get right into talking about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. The first price my father wrote this speech many years ago about what it takes to pay the price of leadership, he list four things. Firs is loneliness. We have all heard that statement. It's lonely at the top. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. We know Jesus experienced times of loneliness. Can you unpack for our readers what loneliness has looked like for you throughout the seasons of your life and, perhaps, if we have some readers out there that are in a season, maybe some words of instruction or exhortation that you can give to them?
First of all, thank you for having me and grafting me into a family that's willing to think about meaningful things like, “How shall we lead in the midst of a world that is scattered, tossed, media fragmentation, and all of the things that make our world little complicated now, and how can we bring truth in the midst of the chaos? How can we keep pace about what we're doing toward our calling but be at peace while we're doing it?”
Pace and peace sometimes seems too different things like their oxymoronics, but in my life, I try to practice both. I move out of pace in any given day. I'll have 40 to 50 interactions with people digitally and in-person, podcasts, and media, yet as I produce the NFL sanction programs, I want to make sure that I leave space for what I call the ministry of availability and make myself available for people. Sometimes people call this the ministry of presence. In other words, I'm willing to be present in your life, journey, and loneliness. Isn't an interesting that we're both a little less lonely after we do that?
It is sometimes lonely at the top of these projects when you don't have anyone else to look to aside from the Lord for the answers and you're constantly in discernment as it relates to what business moves we should make in order to advance the kingdom of God on Earth as it is in heaven. Most of my work from that He Gets Us campaign, Super Bowl Breakfast, the NBA All-Star breakfast, and the NCAA Wooden Keys To Life event, all of those are about guiding people closer to a relationship with Christ.
If we say that upfront and say, “You want to be a Jesus follower,” a lot of people on this show may be, “That's great.” In the world, there are lots of people that we call and designate spiritually open skeptics. In other words, they're skeptical about the divinity of who Jesus was and the virgin birth, all these things are a little quizzical to people who didn't grow up in the church, yet they're open. They have a God-sized hole. They know that they experience loneliness. They know they feel far from whatever a spiritual source sometimes called the higher power or something, but they know that if there isn't something more, then what is the purpose of all this anyway? Why are we even toiling, “Let's make a lot of money. Let's be merry and then we die.”
Most of America, all but 17%, are antithetical what Christ was and is, and that's okay. It’s not my job to do the saving, but it's my job to position who I am in Christ each and every day in the things that I do and the show I participate in, etc., so that people might be drawn a little closer to ask me, “Why do I care about God? Who am I?” I know those are the things that we're going to talk about as we consider what leadership is. We'll call it kingdom leadership as we think about what we're doing to draw people a little closer to Christ.
You called it the ministry of availability and I love that. My father always told me that too. When people say, “I'm lonely,” and I'm like, “Who are you interacting with?” “No one.” I'm like, “This could be an issue.” When you are pouring into others, Zig Ziglar said, “The best way to get what you want is to help enough other people get what you want.” Serving is the best gift of all because it doesn't diminish. You meet with all these people. Do you ever feel lonely? Do you ever walk in a season of that? I know you're busy and you're pouring, but how do you handle it?
Not that often. What I've done a good job of doing is finding places where I can be dialogical. What that means is I can dialogue through interaction with another. I can get filled up. I can learn about myself and I can also help them solve their deepest problems and needs. I am constantly seeking out and finding places that are beyond the superficiality of modern culture. Most people are, “What about the big game?” Confession from a sports ministry guy, I barely watch college football. I watch a little pro sports, but never baseball, very rarely NBA.
I do follow the NFL pretty closely, but I say all that to say that I try to leap over like who's winning and losing in the leagues and get deeper down into, “What shall we do together to make ourselves better today?” I don't experience a ton of loneliness. it is probably the opposite. Perhaps I'll land a plane here, something like sensory overload, being spread thin, which you addressed earlier because of the pace that I keep wanting to be of service and be helpful to others. For me, it's learning a lot of times to say, “No, I can't help another today because I need to focus on my own well-being, my own family, and the things that are most important to me.” I don't know that I have terrible loneliness the way some people do.
I love that you brought that out because sometimes people say, “You're always pouring out to people.” I go, “I know.” I love that you said that dialogical. When I'm pouring out and people are coming back to me, that feeds me. If that's your spiritual gifting, helping other people unpack truth or being available, pouring out into other people feeds people like us. If it's not your gifting zone, yes, it will deplete you and you'll be like, “I got to get away from it.”
It's interesting that sometimes entrepreneurs get, “You're doing too much.” I'm like, “Don't ever say that to somebody that's truly in their zone because that's their lifeblood.” That'd be like telling my father, “You can't go hug more people or only sleep four hours.” He did it because that was his life force. It's very interesting that you said that, but for a lot of people, you have to watch the loneliness because it hits. For us, ministering to others' loneliness will prevent our own loneliness. That's a beautiful way you said it.
I'm a strategic arranger, grounded and has deep devotion to Christ. In other words, in any given situation, I'll look at all the problems, giftedness, and connections. I'll begin to strategically arrange inside any given conversation like, “How can I bring my best self to this conversation?” As a dialogical person, which many of us are and perhaps you are as well, we begin to learn about ourselves. We begin to get more and more clarity on who we are, why we exist, what our purpose is, and we're in that zone. It's fulfilling that it's the flow state of human development.
That's why surround myself with people who are way smarter and gifted than I am, then I try to be there to soak it up and understand. I had one of those with my longest-term mentor. I spent an hour and a half with him. I do that every 3 or 4 weeks. What are all the things that I have the complexity of the things that I'm working on? It's not much that he'll solve my problems or with his labor, influence, finances, or expertise. That's the life model that I follow.
I'm not there so much for him to bring finance to my projects. I want him to bring his whole life so that he can bring not his labor like working. It's his expertise that I want. It's his ability to help almost serve as my individual board of directors to help me to stay on point so that I can do what matters most first, do the things that matter, keep a pace, and be at peace while I'm doing those things. It's a pretty good way to live a life, I suspect.
You talked about weariness. My father said, “In life, you're going to have some people that are always doing way more than what's required a lot less. Some do less.” Our bodies are all going back to the Earth from once we came. Our spirits live forever. Our souls do, but the body is the temple and we want to finish the race strong. Leadership has a very physical element, too, and you of all people being in sports, everything's in the spiritual world, but we still are walking around in the human form now. How do you combat weariness?
I get filled up by being with people. It's the exact opposite of my wifey, who is depleted by that. I say that to say that it's enlightened me to understand who people are and what it is that they need, but the way that I combat weariness in some ways is to surround myself and to talk to each day the people that I care about, the ones that get me and that understand this extraverted leader, highly passionate, and constantly loves to arrange things for the accomplishment of kingdom purpose. I do that with people.
There are many people like my wife who need to withdraw from people in order to solve for their weariness. I rest with her. She's my sounding board. She is my everything, my bride that I met when she was twelve years old at the Fontainebleau Hotel because I had ridden my bicycle from Anderson, Indiana at fifteen years of age to Miami Beach Florida. I met her there. That's a crazy story and it's all true.
When we began to date and then ultimately married many years ago with four children and all the things that fill us up, those are the things that are purposeful, meaningful, and valuable that they lie beyond the mundane, the family, and the things that all of your listeners are committed to like being a better father and mothers and more committed to their kids and their grandkids for the sake of seven generations from now, for the sake of people that can think about their children's children. When you begin to think like that, like, “How do I leave a legacy that is meaningful and true of my value?” that keeps me on point, helps me not to grow weary, and continue to pursue those things each and every day. How do you it? How do you not become weary?
Servant Leadership: When you begin to think, "How do I leave a legacy that is meaningful and true of my value?", it keeps you on point. It helps you not to grow weary and just to continue to pursue those things each and every day.
A lot of it is physicality. I reclaimed my health a few years ago. I talk extensively on the show with that. I dialed in my spiritual walk too. I got saved when I was young, but I didn't have a deep relationship with Christ. Realizing that the Holy Spirit was in there all along waiting to be my greatest advocate of all and as a leader realizing, “You can't get it right without the right people, the right partners, my Peter, James and John, my inner circle and my spouse.”
He's the exact opposite of me. He is my everything, and having that one to go to. It's the whole body. It's the mind, body, and soul, and reading great books. Whenever I feel like I'm going to suck my thumb or want to throw in the towel, I realize I haven't been in the word, good books, hanging out with tremendous people, and walking my dogs enough. I then get back on it and it happens.
We would be remiss if we didn't bring forward the scripture Matthew 11 about this, “Come to me all of you are weary and carry heavy burdens because I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy to bear and the burden I give you is light.” That's the New Living Translation. All of us have this sense that it's almost like we hear those words, “The burden is easy. Yoke is light,” and we go, “That's for other people. My burden is heavy. I've got to carry all this. I've got to do all the changing.”
For me, the principle from sport, from what I've learned from the world of sport that's very transferable back here is what we call AO1, Audience Of One. When you serve an audience of one, ultimately, the audience of one, God, is responsible for the results like, “I'm going to go play my hardest. I'm going to give it my all. I'm going to stay committed and be the best father I can be within the confines of the energy that God gives me that day and the appointments, passion, and all of that, but in reality, I'm not responsible for saving the world. I'm responsible for doing the work and letting the results fall into place.”
Tony Dungy says, “You don't win on emotion. You win on execution.” “What did you do with the gifts and abilities that I gave you?” How you use those is what I believe defines life, and not that I won't be emotional from time to time and live in that passion and emotion, but the way that we ultimately win, it's about sacrifice, significance, and things that lie beyond success. That's a little bit about my story.
The way that we ultimately win is about sacrifice, significance, about things that lie beyond success.
You said that with your wife, kids, and the generations, it lies beyond. Everybody thinks when they're younger, it's fortune and family. Probably with the sports people, it's winds and rings. We're talking eternity. When you touched on it, why I was feeling depleted and why most people fear weary is they don't understand their father. They don't know their father. You help people deal with the absence of an Earthly father. I was blessed with an unbelievable Earthly father, but I didn't know my heavenly father.
When you read Matthew 11, if you don't know God intimately, you hear those words, but you don't know it. I understood, “Why would I worry?” I worried before because I didn't understand the character of God, and until I understood the character of God and knew it beyond the shadow of doubt, I started realizing, “I'm basically reading the Bible, but I'm not even accepting it because I don't understand who God is.” That's where a lot of Christians falter because we don't understand. For one second, we could be like Paul and go see what is the beyond before we get to heaven.
When Paul was blinded by the radiance of Christ, he turns from his old ways like, “I killed Jews. I am opposed to all things Jewish,” and now he receives that indwelling and then continues to live the rest of his life to be the most prolific Christian author in the history of the world.
Like you said, the legacy is the most important thing that God will look to us. He's a jealous God. He'd much rather have us in heaven now because he loves us so much. All he wants to know is that every day down here, we are falling deeper in love with him. That's what I want on my report card when I get to heaven. Like you said, everybody has that hole, even the famous NFL supports people. I can't imagine that world, the pressures, and the higher up they get. Surely they look at it and say, “All this could be over in an instant.” We see it, but we don't have as much to lose. They truly see it, and to orient them into that is such a joy.
We are very privileged and sheltered from our physicality. In other words, our ankles, knee, hands, heads with a concussion, all of the head trauma, and chronic encephalitis that my peers in and around the NFL have to face, it's part of the job. They do have a wonderful abundance financially, most of them. We're not going to let them off the hook. They still need to do what it is that they need to do to claim a relationship with Christ to get their academic, athletic, social, and spiritual dimensions in line.
Do they have the playbook? There's the academic. Do they have a social? Are they grafted into the team? Do they know their role, when to speak, and when not to speak? Academic athletic got to be great. They got to have the physicality and then the spiritual dimensions. This is what Tony Dungy taught me years ago when I write in my book, The Jersey Effect, about this world championship season. It's the guys that are chasing after all four of those dimensions and want to get a little better each day in each of those four, those are the ones that are most well-adjusted.
There are many of them in and around the league. Certainly, we hear about some of the people who are having trouble, but that trouble is not a sign, whether it be mental or otherwise. It's a sign that they need somebody to come alongside them and be their guide. That's what I'm privileged to be able to do, and perhaps we're doing a little bit through this session with your readers that are all wrestling with, “How do I live a life of significance? How do I live a life that's less lonely and more committed to be the best version of myself?” Hopefully, if we can do that a little bit, we'll get a little better in the process too.
Servant Leadership: Trouble is a sign that people need somebody to come alongside them and be their guide.
No doubt you are on what Tony Dungey was talking about from what you shared. There was a book I read when I was a teenager my father gave me. We republished it. I recorded on an audiobook called I Dare You by William H. Danforth. He was the president of The Boys & Girls Club. He had youth camps. This is back after the Second World War. It's a four-square life, your checker, the physical, mental, and creative which is your followership, charismatic personality, and spiritual.
You must have all four areas to live a successful life, to live a solid little grounded life. Too many feet people focus on one. That's where they get that character malformation or the square collapses because of one of the legs. He hits all of them from posture to breathing air. It's old school, but old school is best. I love that you're you're still living that. That's the basics, the four tenets because we are body, spirit, mind, and soul. We better be taking care of all four of them. We talked about loneliness and weariness.
Charles talked about abandonment, not like in a fear of abandonment or if you're in pet rescue like me, abandoning an animal, but he says, “We need to abandon what we like to do and want to do in favor of what we ought to do and need to do.” He always told me, “I'm always surprised I'm even remotely successful because, at any given day, I do more to contribute to my failure than my success.”
I'm like, “You look pretty successful to me.” He's being very honest with himself and allowing the Lord to say, “Charles, this isn't the highest and best use of your time. You need to stop dodging this phone call. You need to stop kicking this can down the road. I've called you to do this. Make that call.” Abandonment is very much like hyper-focus or intentionality because nothing is guaranteed. Can you unpack that for us how you stay with a sense of urgency and a sense of focus?
“I ought to do it. I can do it, but will I do it. What will I do today? What shall I do that will make a measurable difference?” I keep a chart that people won't see. Each one of these represents a relationship that I'm connecting with. It’s about 50 people that I need to have a form of contact with. People might call it customer relationship management. I do use some of those tools, but from a practical sense, how will I connect with this person? What will I share with them that will guide them toward the outcomes that I'm seeking to create in the cases of the campaigns that I'm a steward of, the events that I produce, and then at a national and a local level, that gets this campaign?
How can I draw people close to that? How can they help support that with their labor, influence, finance, and expertise to bring their life to the project? As I think about it, I try to be in the will as much as I can. Sometimes that means “I will say no. This is out of scope. This doesn't fit me. As much as I like to help you, let me get you to somebody who might even be a better service and might be more uniquely equipped to handle so I can stay on task with the big things, the big rocks that I seek to move in any given week.” That's how I try to stay disciplined. My yes means yes when I commit to things as our time here.
It is important for our readers, writing the stuff down and plotting it out because otherwise, we get hit with a million things. I can't imagine how many things come your way. You were sharing with me a little bit earlier about what you did and some of the thoughts from that. Would you unpack some of that with our readers?
It was a tragic situation. I learned that my two sons, Evan and Prince, and a young homeless man that we brought into our lives in fourth grade and now a college graduate and gainfully employed young man at their childhood friend who slept in my home, I suspect and prepping for this eulogy. I suspect he slept in my home over 100 times. His name was Aiden. He's no longer alive.
Aiden was in a domestic violence incident. He was killed. It was tragic, but it wasn't just some other man out there. It wasn't a statistic far from me. It was like,“I've got this kid's number in my phone. He played on the high school football team that I was the chaplain of. I fed him. I took out my wallet. I cared for him in countless places.” When we were the closest is when I was helping to guide the national fatherhood movement All Pro Dad. We were doing mass mentoring projects all over America, leading stadium events, and resourcing countless fathers.
That's all relevant to this story. I had been with him and all these places, reaching, and, in many ways, being a father figure to this young man. He made some bad decisions and it led ultimately to his death. Because of that, the only hope we have is in Christ, yet in the midst of that, a lot of people are hurting and feeling far from God.
As my two sons, Prince and Evan, spoke at the funeral and then I tried to make sense of all of that in a broader eulogy, I found myself sad that it could come to this. This tragedy could impact my family and community. It's hard. I found myself reflecting on that on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The days leading up to Thanksgiving were difficult. I called my own pastor and said, “I need to sit. I need to talk. I need to get clear on how it is that I address of this.”
It wasn't easy. It angers me that this could even happen in the world that we live in. There are a lot of people who are lonely, angry, depressed, far from God, and having relational challenges. Clearly, that was the case in this situation. Tragedies will befall us. How we respond to that tragedy defines the character of who we are, so trying to point people toward Jesus and invite people to know him and rest in him even when bad things happen to good people. That's the messy little truth of a sports minister speaking inside of a funeral.
Tragedies will befall us. How we respond to that tragedy really defines the character of who we are.
Sometimes I get hung up as Christians about, “It's bad. How could this happen? It's going to get worse.” I'd love that you talked about that. We can touch on it. We feel it. Christ grieved. He was a man of sorrows. Deal with it, but realize that this is the best we're going to have now, but this is the worst we're going to have now. We have to get people focused and oriented towards that because part of it is abandoning, “How could this happen in our community?” It can happen in any community.
You have to process it, as you did, but that's wonderful that you oriented that. That's not where our hope is. Our hope isn't in the communities. No matter how much we try and clean them up and we're here to do that, that won't happen until it's over. We did loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. The last thing is vision. I can remember I would sit as a kid and listen to people like Og Mandino, Zig Ziglar and and others. I'm like, “These guys are smart. They must have a chip in their brain that makes them these visionary types.”
I hear the Bible verse about, “Where there is no vision, the people perish,” and I'm like, “What is this thing? Are you born with that or whatever?” My dad's like, “Vision is seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” I'm like, “That's much more practical. I can get my teeth on that.” With the different groups that you're in or starting, how do you hone your vision, values, decide what to work with, and decide what's next for you in your life because I know you have so much more to pour out?
I’m going to be clear on who I am, what I stand for, and how I will communicate that in the small daily things that I do but also in the projects that I align myself with. This is all about trust. Those of us who are trustworthy people operating in a world where trust is hard to gain and easy to lose, how shall we conduct ourselves? What project shall we put forward in public ways? What is better kept private? What are the things that happen inside the confines of the locker room or the chapel services that will never hit the light of day ever?
They matter a whole lot because of the small things that make a big difference. Discern constantly which ones need to stay hyper-private and then which ones we can elevate into the nation's consciousness. He Gets Us Campaign is to say, “Let's all come back a little closer to Jesus now. How can we attend to those things that matter, that love, kindness, and caring for our neighbor even when it's uncomfortable to do so?” My vision is imperfect, but understand that it's set from a Biblical framework or a biblical worldview to the extent that I can and then stay focused on, “Who Jesus is in my life?”
I love that you talked about the small things, too, because vision have this BHAG, Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. I remember when I was in the military, one of my favorite quotes is, “If you can't get them to salute when you tell them to salute or wear the clothes you tell them to wear, how are you going to get them to die for their country?”
I love that you are talking about vision is the small things. Your big vision is built on your little small things and for a lot of the entrepreneurs out there who are partnering or doing different things with other people. I love that you talked about projects that align with who you're going to align yourself with and to make sure that they are back to your core values and convictions because there are a lot of things that look good, but if they're one degree off, that's bad. That’s not going to end well.
One of the greatest coaches of all time in the NFL was Chuck Noll. Chuck Noll was the coach that took Tony Dungy under his wing and ultimately Tony became the defensive coordinator for, which Tony's higher calling was not so much to play pro football, which he did for four seasons. It was to coach. They want to now broadcast and influence the world through his win in some way and his gentleness of spirit and his ability to articulate things about football but point people toward Christ.
Chuck's quote, which I think we need to reflect upon more often in our society, is that essentially, extraordinary leaders, which he called champions, tremendous leaders and champions, he'd say, “Tremendous leaders aren't tremendous leaders because they do extraordinary things all the time.” They're tremendous because they're willing to do ordinary things better than anyone else. They're willing to understand what plays they're supposed to run, what their part in the play is, when you block, when you run, and when you pass.
I was in rookie training camp. I'm there and Chuck lays that down. Here I was, “This is Tony Dungy going on to do amazing things in the world.” He was telling me that I needed not to worry so much about the extraordinary but to focus on what my role in the ordinary was. You go, “That'll preach in my own life every single day how I prepare for meetings and how I get clear about what it is that I should bring forward in any given conversation to reflect the love of Christ, even when it's uncomfortable to do so.” That's what I'll do in the midst of this important conversation about leadership and what it takes to be a real champion.
You needed not worry so much about the extraordinary but to focus on what your role in the ordinary.
Thank you for sharing that quote. That is absolutely beautiful and biblical. We talked about loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Anything else that you would like to share with our readers on the topic of leadership that we haven't touched on yet?
For a number of years, I served as the President of a center for serving leadership. You hear the word servant leadership. In fact, the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership was founded in Indianapolis, which is the city that I live in. It is a unique vantage point for that system but myself and many other leaders because I stand on the shoulders of many. Dr. John Stahl-Wert was the leader that I worked with. He's out of Pittsburgh. John pioneered a simple book that was essentially parabolic in nature.
It was a modern-day parable about a busy dad who was an amazing leader and a consultant to the titans of commerce, but he left his son behind on the journey. The son was, “I need your help.” It's called The Serving Leader. It's wonderful. It's a tremendous read and influenced my life greatly. I found myself serving with John and being a proponent of this system, which was present tense. Servant leadership, servant becomes an adjective. In the case of serving, it's, “How do I serve you today so that you might be a little better?”
What we began to build upon is sometimes it takes an upside-down pyramid. It's not the achievement all the way up to some high success. It's turning that upside down and knowing that we can serve the many, but before we serve the many, we first have to serve the few. Who will we serve? The little things. Doctor John began teaching me as I learned from him about how to be a great decision-maker, how to upend that pyramid, and focus on those little things that would ultimately lead to this big kingdom vision of bringing people together, creating community, and then helping people find their place that they can believe and belong, place that they feel a place of belonging and they can believe in something beyond themselves.
In so doing, they can ultimately become the best version of themselves, which I hope is a Jesus follower. I hope to see them in heaven and be inside that mansion one day with all those that I've encountered, but the truth is I won't know. The tens of thousands of people, perhaps many times more that I've encountered in all of the media work that I've done, yet I stand undeterred. I'll continue to fight the good fight.
We are that cauldron called together to consider how we might get better or how we might put our feet to the fire a little bit, ask hard questions, and think about things of significance in this conversation. My hope is that this touches someone inside your network and ecosystem. They can learn more about me @DarrinGray2020. You can find me in Linkedin, Meta, Instagram and Facebook. If you want to follow along, join that journey. That helps me and ultimately allows me to encounter your readers in a digital world. If somebody wants to have a deeper conversation, the four things that drive my day-to-day business practice, which are the things that I have to do to put bread on the table and to do the things that matter, I produce three events that I helped to co-produce and do sponsorship development for. That's the Super Bowl breakfast.
You can learn more at SuperBowlBreakfast.com. If anybody's coming to the Super Bowl on a Saturday before the Super Bowl, the single greatest event for Christ of Super Bowl weekend, 1 of only 5 NFL-sanctioned events. There are hundreds of events that will be happening in Las Vegas in 2023, New Orleans in 2024, and San Francisco in 2025 because I'm always working three years out with the work that I do in and around the Super Bowl, but that NFL-sanctioned event is truly remarkable. The real good guys of the faith will come forward, Mike Singletary and Anthony Muños, the greatest line that of all time, Tony Dungy, and we'll give away the Bart Starr Award, which is a very significant award for character and leadership. We're blessed to do that. That's one thing. I need sponsors, ticket buyer, and participants at that program simply to find that. The next is called the NBA All-Star Breakfast. It’s AllStarBreakfast.com.
That happens the very following weekend in Indianapolis at the NBA All-Star Weekend where we do the exact same thing scaled for the NBA, and then a few weeks later, we do that at the NCAA all-star weekend. We call that one KeysToLife.us. If you google that, you'll find. It's literally a who's who of college coaches across America because one thing is true. Almost every college basketball coach in America goes to the NCAA Final Four weekend whether their teams are playing or not.
We do ministry in and around that space to make sure that their resourced properly so they can bring back into their own teams, the academic athletic social, and spiritual tools that they need to help their teams grow. All three of those, we are actively seeking sponsors that want to affiliate themselves with these amazing NFL sanctions and NBA and NCAA strategies. That's a big deal. That's something that your readers might be called to.
If they are, then please connect with me and I'd love to tell them more about that. My main thing is called the He Gets Us Campaign. I'll bet there's a significant number of your readers, about 70% of them, who have encountered that campaign either through our Super Bowl ads, Maui classic ads, and all the things that we're doing with our very large-scale campaign for Christ.
In fact, it's the most ambitious campaign for the sake of Christ in the history of the postmodern world. Think about that. I love what Billy Graham did at the time. He did it stadium by stadium. There was some newspaper advertising and it reach hundreds of thousands, perhaps, even millions of people. This particular campaign is reaching hundreds of millions of people. We're grateful to be able to push it forward and then in cities across America. Indianapolis, Memphis, Seattle, Kansas City, and Nashville were beginning to build out city-based strategies where local leaders can get involved and advisory teams and then help us with their labor, influence, finance, and expertise to help us build a network of churches so strong that they can receive what we call the explorers.
These are the spiritually open skeptics that encounter the communications campaigns that we draw into a digital conversation and then invite them to join us for prayer, church, or conversation. Every one of your readers can apply. Those who are Jesus followers and who meet some very basic criteria can apply to become a receiver of explorers and you can literally receive those folks in your town by ZIP code where you are because by the hundreds of thousands, they're coming to us each month because they're encountering this amazing campaign, HeGetsUs.com.
They come in the digital ecosystem, “I want to learn more about Jesus. I need to have a conversation,” all the way down to our death-to-life strategy, which is our suicidal ideation and prevention strategy. There are a lot of people that are hurting so much. They're thinking about taking their own life. They don't see the point of going on, so we connect them immediately. In less than two minutes, they're connected to a very specific strategy with a real human being who will communicate with them and try to talk them off of whatever ledge they're on.
The other ones that are less urgent, we route it to the local church, but when the urgency is high because folks are prone sometimes to bad decision-making when they're depressed, lonely, weary, upset, and all the things that we talked about, at the start of the meeting, some folks don't have the resilience to know what to do, but they're coming to the He Gets Us campaign in droves and then we're building a network that is strong and durable.
Thousands of local churches have already signed up. Every single one of your readers can get their church signed up for. It doesn't cost anything. We will scholarship all the churches that your readers represent. All they need to do is log on to HeGetsUsPartners.com. They're able to get their churches signed up and onboarded to receive the explorers. Those are the four things I care about. That's my job. That's how it is that I build the kingdom on Earth as it is in heaven and then find a way to find men and women who to want to give, connect, and ultimately be a part of the greatest story in the history of the world. That's Jesus's story.
Servant Leadership: Ultimately be a part of the greatest story in the history of the world, and that's Jesus' story.
That's quite the love story. I got to love a good love story. Thank you because a lot of my readers are at a place where, “How can I go onboard with stuff like that? How can I serve in my capacity?” Thank you for giving to identify specifically how we can connect with you, but how we can help you, brother? You've been such a tremendous resource for us and a tremendous resource to many. Thank you so much for everything that you have shared with us on what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I know you have greatly blessed our readers.
It's been my privilege to be with you. Thanks for the work you're doing to improve the lives of all those you encounter. Godbless you.
Readers, thank you so much for paying the price of leadership. Never forget, you'll be the same person that you were in five years than you are now except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read. Make them both tremendous. If you like what you read, please be sure and hit the subscribe button. If you do us the honor of a five-star review, that would be beyond tremendous. Please share this with somebody out there who is looking for something or wants to grow in leadership, fellowship, and connect with tremendous people like Darren and the work that he's doing. To our tremendous tribe out there, thank you for paying the tremendous price of leadership. Have a wonderful rest of your week.
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About Darrin Gray
Influencer, Author, and Sports Media Producer who guides notable campaigns including: the NFL-sanctioned SuperBowlBreakfast.com Bart Starr Award and Live Stream Indianapolis HeGetsUs.com Campaign and more.
Darrin maintains an influential network of NFL players, coaches, and alumni and his expertise includes sponsorship, sports media, sports ministry, mass-mentoring fatherhood projects including @AllProDad
Darrin co-authored The Jersey Effect Beyond the World Championship, about Tony Dungy’s Super Bowl team.