Warren Mainard: Hello and welcome to the IMPACT Players podcast. My name is Warren Mainard and I am thrilled to have with me today for our podcast Husky Football legend, Greg Lewis. Greg has become a friend of mine since we had him speak in November at our monthly IMPACT breakfast gathering. Not only did we get to enjoy him sharing his story with us at the breakfast, but I personally got the joy of getting to stop by and visit him at his workplace a couple weeks later and just enjoyed some really great fellowship with him. And we didn't have this, podcast up and running in time to talk to him before his breakfast gathering, but I really was looking forward to circling back with Greg to talk a little bit about some of the things that he brought up in his presentation, but even to go deeper with, what IMPACT is all about, which is inspiring men to be great husbands, fathers, and leaders. And so, with that, let me say welcome, Greg. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast.
Greg Lewis: Thank you for having me, mate. Warren, I really appreciate this opportunity to share my faith and fellowship with you. It was a blessing when you came by and I got to show you a little bit about the work that I do but, you blessed me with some, football cards. And, you know to people, football cards may seem like a small thing, but it was sort of a connection back to my days at the University of Washington which I love and enjoy. And you had some cards with some very dear friends of mine, including one of Donald Jones, who, a lot of people may or may not know, but that's the individual who led me to Christ and was really influential in my getting to know the Lord and just having a great connection to him. So that was such a blessing to me when you came by. So, I really do appreciate you for that and for having me on the show.
Warren Mainard: Absolutely. And for those that are listening to this podcast and not viewing the YouTube, I am wearing a University of Washington hat and shirt. Greg is also wearing University of Washington shirt. We share a lot in common. We're both brothers in Christ husbands, fathers, leaders, but also, diehard University of Washington Husky fans. And, for those that don't know, we also have another podcast that Greg's gonna be joining on later this week, which is the Dawg and Duck show. So, we'll get more into Dawg topics on that particular interview. But for this one, we're gonna talk about some of the things that IMPACT is really all about, which is growing as a husband and father and leader. But Greg, it's funny that you mentioned the cards because I was probably eighth or ninth grader at the time that you were playing for the Washington Huskies. The Huskies were on an incredible upswing under Coach Don James which really had the crescendo with three Rose Bowls, a National Championship. And during that time, at the Husky Stadiums, they gave out these little Husky football cards. And of course, you being one of my all time favorite players, I had to grab as many of those as I could. But, you know, it's a great reminder because although the picture on that card stays the same, the man on that card continues to grow and change. And so, you're not the same guy that you were when you were 21 years old and running for thousands of yards for the Washington Huskies. But, you've continued to grow, you've continued to develop. So, so tell us a little bit about your journey, and you shared this with our men, but for those that may be listening for the first time, share us a little bit of your journey and what you're doing now professionally.
Greg Lewis: Sure. So, when I left the University of Washington, I was fortunate enough to get drafted and play in the NFL for a few years. Unfortunately, part of football is injuries. And I had a major injury at the UW that resurfaced and I was forced to retire after only about three years. So it was a blessing, obviously, to reach a goal as a kid. You know, I always wanted to be a professional football player. So I reached that goal. And I remember when I finally realized that I wasn't gonna be able to play again. And I remember having a conversation with someone. Someone asked me was I really gonna miss it, or what's gonna be hard for me to walk away from football after all those years. And I said, well, there's some things that I will miss about it but, I, let me be very clear: football is what I do. It's not who I am. Who I am is a man of God. I'm a husband, a father, and I'm someone who is just trying to live my life in a way that's pleasing to God through his strength in the Holy Spirit. And having had that conversation and said that, thinking about that, that was 30 some odd years ago, that's truly what has been defined my life. And there's been good and bad. There's been ups and downs. I've had triumphs and victories. I've also had shortcomings and mistakes that I've made along the way. But through it all, God has been with me and kept me. So I'm still alive. I'm still, I'm pushing towards the mark and the prize of the high calling. When I left football, I got involved in finance and mortgage and I did that for several years, helping people buy their first home or get out of debt. And at a particular point in time when I was, when I thought was at the height, moving up that ladder and about to take over the mortgage world, I got a phone call from someone at the University of Washington saying that we're trying to recruit a ex-Husky to fill a position, athletic department where we get former student athletes to sort of reconnect and get reinvolved with the University of Washington as in as many ways as they possibly can. And I wasn't looking for anything, it just kind of came outta the blue. And I went and sat through the interview not thinking that I would engage, but something inside of me said, Greg, this is what we want you to do. This is what I've called you to do at this point in time. So I ended up leaving and becoming assistant to the athletic director at the UW in charge of Alumni Relations, where I had this seven year opportunity to get to know athletes who had come through the University of Washington throughout its history and all sports. And also got to open up windows of ministry to the current student athletes. When I was there at the University of Washington, I was one of a few leaders of color in the athletic department other than the coaches. And so there was a lot of opportunities that God gave me to speak into the lives of some of those kids who were coming from inner city backgrounds or coming from scenarios and situations that were very similar to mine. And they felt like they needed someone to talk to other than the coach. And I found myself there for many years having a chance to really witness and minister to a lot of kids, which kind of took me back to my UW days because you mentioned those championship teams. There was a lot of us who were in leadership: captains and prominent players on the team that were men of God. And I truly, am firmly a believer that that's what led to all the success we had. So having that opportunity to share with some of the student athletes that were there, seeing them impacted, and their teams impacted in some of the same ways when I was there. I know there were national championships and Rose Bowls won when I was on campus, from the 2000 Rose Bowl football team, the women's volleyball team, the softball team. There were other championships won. So I'd like to think that God had something to do with a lot of success over there. But after about seven years, I got an opportunity to go work on upper campus; working, supporting the President's office and the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity. What was interesting about that time is there were a lot of students who were coming to the University of Washington who didn't necessarily have the financial support from families to allow them to enjoy the college experience. And, you know, they were working full-time jobs and maybe didn't have all the support. So I was able to raise money to create paid internships, raise money to create paid work study opportunities, money to fund full scholarships, money to fund partial scholarships for kids who were coming from low income backgrounds, who were coming from economically disadvantaged, coming from just backgrounds where they didn't have the support that other college students had to give them that real college experience and opportunity to graduate and not have debt and not have to work two and three jobs. And so, that gave me an opportunity to really, I think, fulfill another mission. You know, just reaching back to kids who were like Greg Lewis growing up, but maybe they didn't have a great jump shot or weren't the fastest kid in the community, or couldn't run a football, but were equally as as motivated to go to school and to have success as I was. And we were able to get money for them to do that in other ways. Which led me to probably where I am now in some ways. Having been there, what I did realize is that higher education, there's usually a pathway that gets kids from where they are to higher ed and a lot of times they're impacted negatively along the way or they don't have some of the support that they might need to get to a place like the University of Washington which we go on record of saying is one of the greatest educational institutions in the world.
Warren Mainard: Amen.
Greg Lewis: Not just in the country, but in the world. And so I saw in organizations like the YMCA, where I'm now, or the Boys and Girls Club, where I was previously, those are organizations that create pipelines and create opportunities for kids to engage in education in a way that they get more support. They might find a mentor. They may find educational support opportunity. They may find a program that one of those organizations are putting on that creates that pathway to a place like the University of Washington. And, you know, I felt like it was sort of great that I was raising money for kids who were already there, but what if I could make a way for more kids to get there. And that's what, I think, I've spent my last, oh seven or eight years of my professional career doing, working for organizations. As I said first the Boys and Girls Club, now, the YMCA of Greater Seattle, that create opportunities for everybody, especially the young and those who need us most, to reach their full potential. And that's in the mission of the YMCA and every day, I get to be a part of helping someone change a trajectory of their life even. A kid may need some extra support, or may need a mentor, or may need some guidance, or might need a safe place, or might need an encouraging voice to help them get to their goals. And being someone who had that goal as an eight year old kid to play in the NFL and make it, you know it, I really believe it's God's work being there to help provide those opportunities for other young people. So, I know that was a long answer.
Warren Mainard: Yeah. That's great.
Greg Lewis: But that has led me to the Y where I'm the Executive Director at Meredith Mathews, which is a historic Y in Seattle. Been open since 1937, initially open to serve the black community cause there were no other Y's that were doing that at the time. And it has grown and evolved into a place where we really focus on making sure that the folks from our community, young or old, are supported. Their basic needs are met and that we look for ways to engage with our community to find out what are the needs? What are the things that folks need to reach their full potential? I have a board of directors that works with me, folks who either live or work in the community, and we identify those areas, and then we partner, we collaborate, we raise money, to provide resources and funding for all of those sorts of things. And the YMCA has Christian in it and it was founded and based on Christian fundamentals in a long, long time ago. And so I think that that still is a driving and motivating factor for us and our values and what we do at the YMCA.
Warren Mainard: Great. That's fantastic. And you've done a marvelous job from everything that I can see. It's been an incredibly challenging year for the YMCA along with so many organizations over the past year with Covid. And not only Covid, but what's been happening socially and politically right across our state, city, and world. And I know you've had to make some difficult leadership decisions...
Greg Lewis: Right.
Warren Mainard: ...to be able to keep the YMCA moving forward. Tell me a little bit about that. But before you do, maybe share kinda of what are the communities surrounding the y that you're at? What communities those are. And in a normal setting, IE not during Covid, how many young people are you, and families, are you connecting with on a regular basis?
Greg Lewis: Right. So, the YMCA at Meredith Mathews, as I said initially, was established in 1937 to serve the African American community cause it's in the historic, what's called the Central District of Seattle. Where there's a high concentration of African American families through a lot of reasons, you know, historically redlining and a lot of stuff like that. But a really strong, vibrant community that was proud and successful evolved out of that. And going from the late 1900, I'm sorry, early 1800, early 1900s... let me get my facts straight here before I say, all the way into the eighties and nineties. And then the community, started to change. Seattle's one of the fastest growing cities in the country. And so with all the technology that's come here, the community that Meredith Matthew sits in now is one of the wealthiest and fastest growing and becoming extremely affluent on one side. But you still have folks who right now are, you would call, economically challenged or disadvantaged to some degree. And then we serve from the central district all the way into the South Seattle and Skyway community, through area codes, or sorry, zip codes that have some of the highest, incidents of obesity, of diabetes, of cancer, of food insecurity, of needs for childcare, some of the schools that are underperforming. So that's sort of a view of the area that Meredith Mathews serves. And because of a lot of those challenges, we are intent on figuring out how do we impact those folks on a daily basis. My YMCA before Covid hit had about 4,000 what we call units. And a unit could be you as one individual or it could be a husband, a wife, and four kids. So we are around 4,000 units, which probably put us around 6,000 members. Many of those are young people who we serve in our, starting at the age of kindergarten, in our early learning childcare programs. We have camp programs that serve kids all the way up through young adults. Then we have a very, very active, what we call active older adult population at our YMCA that we serve and service in a lot of our health and wellness programs, and our volunteer programs, our community service opportunities for them, and building community. So we have a wide range of services and programs and activities that we have that engage individuals in healthy lifestyles. And right now, one of the big things that we are focusing on, because Covid especially has sort of opened a Pandora's box of mental health issues, health disparities, places where we're seeing where underprivileged and underserved communities are suffering. They're dying at a higher rate, they're being hospitalized at a higher rate, they're being unemployed because of Covid at a higher rate. And so we're really, really getting engaged in health equity work. We started Health Equity Core. We're doing, actually, a lot of research and documentation of the issues. And we're forming some coalitions to actually address the problems that we're finding while we're doing all of our regular stuff, impacting folks who may be, we have a program called Live Strong for folks who are undergoing cancer treatment. We have a diabetes prevention program to help people get off diabetes medication, insulin, things like that by changing their diet, changing their exercise habit, providing counseling. And now we're really getting into the mental health side of it. We have a mental health staff on site that all of our members can connect with and get services from because, due to Covid, we're seeing a high increase of folks who are suffering from mental health issues and number of suicide attempts, and kids are even thinking of suicide. So the YMCA is really trying to make sure that we are here for our community, especially in times like these.
Warren Mainard: Greg, thank you. Thank you so much. And yeah, let me just say thank you for what you do and what you're doing. It's, it's amazing. And, you know, one of the things that I hate is how much vitriol people put out on social media about everything under the sun. And here's a guy like you, man, you're just getting it done. You're just doing the work. You're getting your hands dirty, you're making a difference. And, man, if we could just get more people involved in doing significant things to make a difference and stop spending so much time telling everybody else what they're doing wrong, I think we'd be in a lot better position. But there's so many things that I'd love to just dive into with what you shared, from talking about the history of a redlining and kind of the struggle with gentrification and the issues with obesity and and the difference between having high levels of affluence right next to poverty, the the mental health challenges that we're we're all facing. There's so many different things that you touched on in that answer. But one thing I would love to kind of dive into with you is just around the idea of developing young people. And especially as a organization that's focused on inspiring men to be great husbands, fathers and leaders. I look at the Greg Lewis that I'm talking to today, and there's character there. There's resiliency there. There's inner strength there. How did the Greg Lewis at 14 years old become the Greg Lewis of today? And how do we replicate that? How do wehelp other young men grow into that kind of a man?
Greg Lewis: Well, I hope that we can advise them to not make as many mistakes as Greg Lewis did and skin their knee as many times. So we don't have to pick them up as many times. But, you know, life is a teacher of many, many lessons. And if we're in tune to investing in how we take those life lessons and become better men, I think, that's sort of the path that we all have to kind of go down. Proverbs 3:5, I think is one of my favorite scriptures, when it talks about not leaning to your own understanding, but in all your ways, acknowledge God and he'll direct your path. So I've been on a path and a journey, and there are times when I leaned onto my own understanding. And that's when I made mistakes. I'm a father and a husband, but this is marriage number two for me. There was a time where I was married previously, had two beautiful daughters, and was hoping that that would be forever, until death do us part. And unfortunately, it didn't. And 15 years, after being married for 15 years, that marriage ended and I had to sort of refocus on who and what and why. God called me to be a dad and to be a father and a husband and a leader, and re-adjust and get plugged back into the Author and Finisher of my faith. I, you know, there's always, well, this person did that, or this person did the other. I believe that when I'm tied into God and I'm being led by him, he directs my path. And when I get off of that, that's when, there are mistakes made. And so, but having said that, God is compassionate, God is forgiving, and God has a plan for each and every one of our lives. So for me, it was a matter of forgiving myself, forgiving my spouse, that at the time, and letting go of some things so that God can sort of dust me off and give me another opportunity. And fortunately for me, he brought to me together with a beautiful, God-fearing woman. And we are raising our kids. So second marriage for her, raising our kids together and serving our community. And again, life teaches you a lot of lessons and you go through so many things. And I think we have to be prepared to stand strong. It talks about putting on the full armor of God. And even when you've done all to stand, then you still gotta stand.
Warren Mainard: That's right.
Greg Lewis: Cause there are things that are gonna knock you down. There are things that are gonna hurt you and you might forget your shield of faith, or you might not have on your helmet, or your feet might not be shod at some point when you get your toes scuffed up, but then, you gotta put it back on. So for me, it's just knowing who God created me to be. Once, when you're a new creature in Christ, all old things have passed away. All things have become new. And, you know, that's something that I pray every day, God, I'm new today, even more so than I was yesterday. Forgive me of my past thoughts and things where I wasn't connected. But today, I'm on a new journey and I'm on this journey with you, and I'm open for you to show me what to do. And when I mess up, I'm gonna ask you to forgive me. And then I'm gonna try to keep going. So I think it's really that. And then the other piece for me is humility. First you know who God made you and who you are in Christ, but then you put on humility because you know you're only that in Christ. And you know that that only operates through the Holy Spirit moving through you. And I want God to, he's renewed the right spirit in me and giving me a new heart. And I want him to use me to reach as many people as I can. I appreciate your ministry and what you do, and when I came to IMPACT Players, I saw all those men there, you guys are impacting and it just fired me up. I left that day, just kind of fired and charged up. But we all have a ministry. I've been, I coached girls basketball for 25 years and that was my ministry.
Warren Mainard: Yeah.
Greg Lewis: I worked at the, I was telling you about the time when I worked in the athletic department, and that was my ministry. And now I'm here at the Y and I don't get to interact with the kids as much cause most of the things I'm doing are working with community, other community organizations to connect and form collaborations with them. I'm talking to funders and donors to try to raise money. I am working with my staff to lead them in our operations, but I do get to interact with the kids sometimes. And those are probably the best opportunities because when you have an opportunity to impact the child's life and know that it's sitting them on a trajectory that can lead to them accomplishing their goals, I think, that's the joy that God's put in my heart. And so, I try to get up every day thinking, God, how can you use me today to do your will cause it's not mine, it's yours that I want to be done. So just, you know, like I said, knowing who God has made me knowing that everything that I'm going to do, he's gonna ordain and he's going to give me the strength to do it. And then staying humble and allowing him to use me because I truly believe he's given me a heart for my fellow man. I don't care who you are, what nationality you are, how much money you have or don't have, or what your perspectives are. I'm willing to hear and listen and share the one thing with you that God commands us all. And that's love. Just love people. And to me, that's what it's all about. It really is.
Warren Mainard: Yeah, that's beautiful. And you kind of started off that answer by joking and saying, well, I hope I wouldn't have made as many mistakes as I did. But the truth is that we don't, we don't really learn unless there are mistakes involved in.
Greg Lewis: Right.
Warren Mainard: We can either learn by making our own mistakes or we can learn from the mistakes of others.
Greg Lewis: Yeah, learn from mine, you guys.
Warren Mainard: And I mean, I think the lesson in that right, is that, if you're a young person, you're going to either, you're either going to make the mistakes yourself or you're gonna humble yourself and learn from other people, you're going to get a mentor in your life. You're going to find somebody who can coach you through those things so that you don't go down the wrong path. And then realize, oh man, now I gotta turn back. But it's interesting. You're talking about, being on your second marriage and we're getting ready to start a new series of cohorts with other men in our IMPACT ministries. And one of the cohort studies is a study I'm writing right now called "Do Over." And it's just about that idea of like, whatever, wherever you are in your life, whether it's in your career or with, with your marriage, with your parenting, or even in your relationship with God, there's always an opportunity for a do-over.
Greg Lewis: Yeah. Yeah.
Warren Mainard: And that's what... the Bible talks about grace. And grace is about that opportunity to get a second chance.
Greg Lewis: Absolutely.
Warren Mainard: And that you can, you can rebuild from wherever things have crumbled. And I just think it's a great story that you're the man that you are today, not only for the successes and the trophies that you've accumulated, but also for the struggles and the losses that you've tallied as well.
Greg Lewis: Yeah. Those scars and those wounds and those battle marks are things that have definitely strengthened me. And, I think, again, if you're humble enough to say what, I am fallible, I'm human. I make mistakes, but I can learn from them and I can use this to not only better myself, but also share my story with someone else, then God puts you in a position of restoration. He puts you in a position of regaining. You think about the story of Job and he lost everything. I mean, everything. And God renewed and restored everything to him and it wasn't necessarily any fault of his own. Sometimes we go through things and challenges and we're not fully equipped at the time to handle them And we fall and, like I said, we get messed up or tripped up. And, but, when we call on God and we acknowledge him and his strength and ability to renew us, then he can mount us up back on wings as eagles, and renew and restore our faith, and we can march on. And so I thank God for that. I think that for the opportunities he's given me in my life, where I never deserved him in the first place before. I can remember, just before I gave my heart to the Lord. I had started hanging out with the guys at the University of Washington who were from LA and had a kind of a different cut to them. If you want to call it that. And I started putting on this tough guy mantle, and we were getting into fights at parties and drinking and stuff. I hadn't even really engaged in for most of my life. But being a young 18 year old, coming from a place where my mom kind of sheltered me quite a bit and wanted to spread my wings a little bit and to the point where I remember twice, just before I did get saved, that, I was in a situation where I had a gun pulled on me a couple of times. And those situations could have ended really bad, but God had something else for me and he pulled me out of that when I didn't deserve it, when I didn't... it was nothing that I did, it was nothing that I had earned. And he pulled me out of that, cleared the whole situation up for me. And he's used me, and again, I've failed him. I've fallen, I've made mistakes and he's forgiven me, dusted me off and continued to allow me to be his child.
Warren Mainard: Yeah.
Greg Lewis: I guess sometimes I have to look at it that way. We're like God's kids sometimes my kids mess up and when they mess up, sometimes I got to correct them, but I don't love them any less, and I still... all my thoughts towards them are good and not evil to bring them to an expected end. So I see a lot of that father son relationship with my son and my older daughters, even when they were young, that I reflect on my relationship with God and how he deals with me.
Warren Mainard: Yeah. We may not always, not every man is a father, but every man is a son. And we all have a heavenly Father. And Greg, as we wrap up this, this portion of the IMPACT Players podcast, it's... we're recording this in January of 2021, coming out of 2020, which was just one of the most difficult years that any of us can remember. And, Seattle is a city that was a major story for a good part of this past year. There's been a lot of national news around some of the events that took place down in Capitol Hill, which is not too far from where you guys are at.
Greg Lewis: Not far at all.
Warren Mainard: A lot of questions about the future of Seattle and the leadership in Seattle. And I just for one, and am so grateful that you are working as a leader in Seattle right now. And I think, for those that are listening online, I think that that salt and pepper beard we were talking about, that's a badge of honor. And that's a sign of wisdom, and it's something that our city desperately needs right now is men of character, men of wisdom, men of faith, who are not working out of a political agenda, but working out of a kingdom agenda to try to bring light into the darkness. So as we kinda wrap this up, just maybe tell me, tell anyone who's listening, how can we support you? How can we encourage you? Come alongside of you in any way to just give you strength and support? It seems like to me, God has you in a position of leadership in Seattle for such a time as this.
Greg Lewis: Well, I appreciate that, and I'm certainly not, it's not lost on me that God has given me a platform and opportunities to speak into people's lives and to, hopefully, point them in the right direction so that we all can benefit from people who are doing things the right way, leaders who are making good decisions and that sort of thing. I think we all have an opportunity to have empathy. I think most of us are used to seeing things from our perspectives all the time and seeing things from our circumstance all the time. And we don't do a good job of trying to not always make the judgements based off of what we know and what we've been through. Too much is given as much is required. I believe that there's some different sides to that particular verse of scripture. I, there was an individual who came into the Y a few weeks ago, and since Covid, we have these strict, policies and procedures to keep everyone safe.
Warren Mainard: Yeah.
Greg Lewis: And part of that is our showers aren't open and we're limited to the people who are active members so we can know who's coming in, who's going out. This individual came in and he didn't, he was homeless. He had been to the Y before, I'd seen him. And we had let him come in from time to time, take a shower, clean himself up, that sort of stuff.
Warren Mainard: Yeah.
Greg Lewis: And this individual at this time came in and none of, I wasn't there. And the folks who were there were younger, membership team people. And they were like, sorry, unfortunately due to Covid, we can't let you come in. And this individual, at some point just really freaked out and went off and started threatening and breaking stuff and then left. And so my team was like, I can't believe this individual did that. We've helped them out in the past and this sort of thing. And what I told my team at that time, I said, well, let's think about this for a minute. When you guys leave here, you're going home. You're gonna go to a place with a roof and food and a shower, and all of those kinds of things. So it's absolutely unreasonable for someone who has all that to act like this because they're told they can't use the restroom or take a shower, brush your teeth. But if you had to leave here and there was no restroom to go to, and a place to take a shower and food and comfort or someone who's going to give you a hug or tell you things are going to be all right or going to look out for you, you might react in a different way. So a lot of the issues I see going on out outside in our communities, there are people who are hurting, there are people who are coming from circumstances and situations that you or I may not have experienced, and we're not dealing with some of the same things they're dealing with. And yet we judge that based on our perspectives and what we see. We have to do a better job of understanding that people are hurting out there, that people are going through a lot. And at the same time figure out how do we become part of the solution and the healing instead of arguing and fighting and debating about what folks are doing. And I think if our leaders can sort of harness that sort of thought process, and the folks who are in our communities who are supporting our leaders can have those viewpoints, it'll go a long way to us actually coming up with better solutions. Cause there are solutions to some of this stuff. There really are. And I think if we can put aside our own thoughts and sometimes agendas and policies and politics and all of those, and think of it from a human perspective and seeing it from other people's experiences, we might have a better chance at doing that. so when I'm reaching out to individuals to help support the things that we're doing, that's what I ask them to do. And when folks can get, what I've noticed is when people can get to that level of understanding, then they're willing to help. And there's so many smart people out there or resourced people out there that can make a difference. When we can get them to think on that level, I think that's when we start to see change. And that comes out of that heart for God as much as we see all the craziness going on and we know Satan is out doing his work and killing, stealing, and destroying God is still in control. And if we would humble ourselves, seek his face...
Warren Mainard: Yes.
Greg Lewis: ...and pray God will heal our land. And I fully, fully, truly believe that.
Warren Mainard: Yeah. I agree wholeheartedly. And as you were just telling that story about the person that got upset, I just, I was reminded of a few years ago, I listened to a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr. on the Good Samaritan. You may have heard this story, this sermon before, but in light of that story, he frames this question, or these two questions this way, he says, for the religious man that passed by and did nothing, the question he, he asked was, "If I help this man, what will happen to me?" But for the Good Samaritan, the question that he asked himself was, "If I don't help this man, what will happen to him?" And I think if we would just begin to get our frame, our questions right and begin to practice that empathy that you described, we would all be in a better place. Hey, Greg, thank you so much for being a part of this podcast. It's an honor to be a friend and to serve men and young people in our city together. And please continue to know that you are a welcome guest at IMPACT Players at any time. We'd love to have you around as much as you're able, but we're so thankful for you and want to continue to support you in any way we can.
Greg Lewis: I appreciate that. And I definitely will come back and enjoy breakfast. Please pass along my thanks again to the folks who prepared the food. I don't usually eat breakfast, and so that was just a blessing for me to start that day off with a great breakfast and with the fellowship, just the heart for God that I witnessed in that room and the fellowship and just the people who were there for the right reasons was really a blessing. And you're doing great work, so please continue what you're doing and God is really, really using you. So thank you for coming into my life and bringing another brother that I know can pray and will pray and will support and, and I offer the same to you. So thank you.
Warren Mainard: Absolutely. Thank you Greg. And thank you for everybody who joined us to listen to this. Please be sure to tune in also to the Dawg and Duck Show as I'll be doing a separate interview with Greg talking some Husky football. So stick around and we will talk to you guys again soon. Thank you, Greg. Thank you.
