The Dream He Couldn't Shake

Host Justin Forman sits down with Chris Tomlin, worship leader, songwriter, and founder of For Others, for a conversation about what happens when the platform God gives you turns out to be for something bigger than the thing you're famous for.

He was 18, knew three songs, and had never led worship in his life. At the end of a youth camp week in East Texas, the speaker put a hand on his head and prayed that God would make him a psalm writer for his generation. Three decades later, the man whose songs the global church sings on Sunday mornings is in statehouses talking about the 400,000 kids in America's foster care system.

Chris Tomlin helped shape modern worship music from the inside, back when radio stations told him his songs were "Sunday morning music" and nothing more. It took three albums before one got played. That same pioneering instinct — hacking a trail where no template existed — is what he brought to For Others, the organization he founded after a dream he couldn't forget and a question from his pastor he couldn't answer. Today For Others convenes best-in-class child welfare organizations, states, and donors around a single goal: ending the foster care crisis in America.

Key Topics:

• The prayer at 18 that set the trajectory of a 30-year career, spoken over a kid who didn't have any songs yet
• Pioneering a new category: why radio wouldn't play worship music, and what six years of knocking on doors taught him
• Hebrews 13:15-16 and the conviction that worship which doesn't change the world isn't finished yet
• The dream of a filled stadium and an abandoned baby in the street, and the decade it took to understand it
  Good Friday Nashville: why he decided to give away every dollar before he knew there would be any
• 400,000 kids in foster care, 400,000 churches in America, and the math that lit him up
• Building For Others as a neutral convener rather than another agency, and why that became the secret sauce
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Chris's story is the entrepreneur's story in a different key: no template, no permission, no clear next step. Just enough light for the step in front of him. If you've been sitting on a calling you can't fully explain yet, this conversation is a case study in what obedience looks like before the plan exists.

The Richest Person in Heaven

Host Justin Forman sits down with John Maxwell, leadership author and founder of EQUIP, for a conversation that reframes what it means to build wealth, take risks, and finally stop being embarrassed about the gospel.

It started with a cassette tape colored pink by accident and a five-dollar ask to 39 strangers in a Jackson, Mississippi hotel conference room. Four decades later, that same instinct — just get good, and add value to people — has made John Maxwell the bestselling leadership author in the world and the architect of what may be the largest quiet evangelism movement on the planet.

About John Maxwell: John Maxwell is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and founder of EQUIP, a global leadership training organization that has trained over six million leaders in every country in the world. He has written 92 books on leadership, with 14 more underway. Through EQUIP's "Beyond Success" small group curriculum — now running in over 191,000 groups worldwide — more than four million people have come to Christ in the last six years.

Key Topics:

• How a $5-a-month cassette tape club in the 1980s became the foundation of Maxwell's global platform
• Why insecurity, not disagreement, is what actually keeps entrepreneurs and pastors apart
• The theology of risk: why Maxwell believes potential only exists outside of safety
• Rethinking the "financial finish line" — and why picking a number for significance beats picking one for security
• The real difference between accumulating wealth and stewarding it
• How Maxwell "crossed over" from 25 years as a pastor into the secular business world — and what it cost him in credibility before it paid off
• Inside EQUIP's Beyond Success model: training leaders first, then earning the right to ask a single, permission-based question about faith
  
  

For entrepreneurs wrestling with what to do with what they've built, this conversation is a direct challenge to the idea that safety, security, or a finish line is ever the goal. Maxwell makes the case that the biggest regrets aren't what we did — they're what we were too afraid to try.

From a Billion Downloads to a Bigger Vision: Bobby Gruenewald on Building the World's Most-Used Bible App

Host Justin Forman sits down with Bobby Gruenewald, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of YouVersion, for a conversation that pulls back the curtain on how a donor-funded ministry built and scaled the most downloaded Bible app in the world.

Bobby just crossed a milestone: 1 billion devices with a YouVersion app installed. But instead of celebrating the number, he's already recalibrating around a vision for 3 billion by 2033 — because for Bobby, "more" was never the compelling part. In this conversation, he walks through the funnel metrics, the streaks feature, and the machine-learning-driven personalization that power YouVersion's engagement strategy, and connects every one of those business decisions back to a theology of stewardship, humility, and trust.

Key Topics:

• Why YouVersion measures success by daily engagement (DAU+4), not downloads

• The donor-funded business model — no subscriptions, no data sales, no ads

• How Bobby's team uses passive personalization to meet people where they are

• The "streaks" feature and the psychology of habit formation

• Why Bobby hires learners instead of experts

• Stewardship vs. ownership — and what the parable of the talents has to do with company culture

• Why "problem casting" is a broken fundraising model, and what to do instead

For entrepreneurs building anything mission-driven, this episode is a masterclass in translating business rigor into Kingdom impact — without losing the soul of the mission in the process.