Pastor Brian Hardee.

rian Hardee, pastor of Rock Creek Bible Church, located in the northeastern part of Kansas, loves being out in nature. He enjoys hunting and starts nearly every day in that pursuit. Even the unusual origins of his beginning to serve the Lord started outdoors. Just a few minutes into a conversation with him, one realizes his witty sense of humor but also his dedication to the Lord and helping people. He has a lot to say about reading the Bible, the role of women, and what the Christian experience is about.

ATTL: Did you catch anything this morning when you went hunting?
BH: No, I didn’t. But I wouldn’t want to have success every time, or it would get boring. If it’s easy, then there’s no reason to do it.

ATTL: So, what you like about hunting is the challenge of the pursuit?
BH: I grew up on a farm, and I enjoyed being out in the wilderness. So it kind of gives me an excuse to be like a farm boy again. I enjoy the pursuit of trying to get the game as well, but primarily I just enjoy wandering around the woods. When I was growing up, we did pheasant hunting, which is totally different from the turkey hunting I do now. I really enjoy turkey hunting because it’s in the spring and the flowers are out.

ATTL: Where did you grow up?
BH: When I was about 10 years old, my mom and dad bought a farm in Iowa, and we moved out of what was basically the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri, and went to live on the farm. They had grown up on farms, and they wanted their children to experience what they had experienced.

ATTL: Is pastoring a little like hunting in that you pursue people? 
BH: I guess I do since part of pastoring is helping people. Pastoring is a lot about relationships. You can get worn out with the administration of it and meetings, but there is real joy in helping people. I tell people all the time, “As a pastor, I get the privilege of seeing people at their very, very best and at their very, very worst, and often nothing in between.”

ATTL: When did you realize that you wanted to be a pastor?
BH: I trusted Christ as my Savior when I was about 5 years old. Then one summer at church camp when I was probably 12 or 13 years old, the speaker spoke about Jonah. When the week ended, they had a campfire service where kids could make commitments. Different kids were making claims like “I’m going to go back to school and read my Bible” or “I’m going to back and obey my parents.” I’ve always been really competitive. And I thought to myself, “I wonder what would be the biggest commitment I could make?” I decided that saying, “I feel like God is calling me to be a pastor” would top what anybody else could ever say. So I said it.

ATTL: When did you realize the seriousness of this commitment?
BH: Well, my mom and dad found out about it. And about a week later, we went back to the same camp for a week of family camp. And there was a little bookstore – more like a glorified closet – where they sold Sugarcreek Gang books, Bibles, stickers and pencils. My dad went in there and bought a new Scofield Bible, which back in that day and age was the ultimate Bible. He gave that Bible to me. I told him I didn’t need a Bible that nice. And my dad said, “No, if you’re called to preach, you need a Bible.” I realized my dad was taking this really seriously and I’d better take it seriously too.

I don’t know if the Lord called me by the campfire or when my dad gave me the Bible, but I really think God used both of those events in a significant way even though I was childish in the way I went about it.

ATTL: Now that you are a pastor, have there been times when you were concerned about the awesome responsibility that a pastor has in influencing people’s lives?
BH: I continually live under a thought that people are looking to me – not up to me, but to me. I just was reading about Joshua. I think it’s important to realize that it’s not who you are; it’s who you represent. And I want to represent the Lord faithfully. I’m not trying to be people’s answer. I’m trying to reveal God to them and help them discover their relationship with the Lord.

I think the Christian experience is a constant process of discoveries. As we grow, we find out more. We learn other things and discover elements about ourselves and discover how God meets needs. It’s a constant discovering process.

ATTL: Where did you pastor first after seminary?
BH: I was an associate pastor at Country Chapel in Topeka, Ks. for six years. Then I was the solo pastor at a very rural church in Leon, Iowa, for 12 years.

ATTL: Tell me about your current church at Rock Creek.
BH: Rock Creek Bible Church was started back in the 1970s in the little community of Rock Creek. Probably 20 people live there now, and back in the 1970s there might have been 30 or 40 people living there. We have about 300 constituents in the church, and usually have about 200 attending on Sundays. 

ATTL: So the church has more people than the community does.
BH: Yes. In fact, only about 10-20 people come from the Rock Creek community. The others come from other small surrounding communities and we also have some people who come from Topeka.

The church is no longer in the actual village of Rock Creek; it’s about a mile outside of town on three or four acres at the intersection of two major highways near Topeka. We’ve been in this location for 25 years.

The original church building in the village had been closed for a number of years. A man was working on getting it ready to open again but died. The community decided to finish the clean-up work and have the funeral at that building. Afterwards, they decided to open the church for Sunday services. In 1982 they relocated to where we are now and built a new building.

ATTL: When did you arrive, and what drew you away from Iowa to this pastorate?
BH: Their pastor was a friend of mine. He resigned and the church had another pastor for a short period of time. When that didn’t work out, the leadership from the church talked to me about becoming their pastor. We came in 2000. 

ATTL: Do you and your wife have children?
BH: My wife Charlene and I have a son who’s graduating from Moody Bible Institute this spring. We also have a daughter who’s living at home and a daughter who’s a senior in high school.

ATTL: May is Mother’s Day month. In what lasting ways did your mother influence you as you were growing up?
BH: My mom has been a model of living out her faith – not acting it, but really living it. My mom and my dad both have been extremely consistent in this. There isn’t anybody who knows my mom who doesn’t know that she’s a Christian. It’s not something pious; it’s a simple, gracious, loving spirit. She modeled that at all different levels. She also was always active, teaching in Sunday School, and supported my dad in every way possible. She was submissive to him, yet there was no question that she was her own person. 

ATTL: What advice do you have for mothers in the church today – women who are so busy in the lifestyles that we lead now?
BH: You can never go wrong loving your kids. Spend more time with your kids. My wife has been a home-school mom. She’s made a lot of sacrifices of things that she could have, for the sake of spending time with our children. Her mom and dad paid her way through Bible college so that she could have a degree in Christian education so she could be a Christian schoolteacher. She says the best Christian school in which she could have taught was her own. She has been a tremendous influence in our home.

I hear women asking, “Well, what about women’s leadership in the church?” I think that the most tremendous opportunity of influence that women have beyond what men have is in being mothers. And what they can do within a home by simply loving and raising their children – it is phenomenal the difference they can make. You can’t go wrong with loving your kids.

Pastor Brian Hardee.

ATTL: When you’re troubled, what passage in the Bible do you turn to that really comforts you?
BH: Obviously, a lot of people would say the Psalms. But I tell people all the time that my favorite book of the Bible is the one I’m preaching in right now. It just seems like wherever you are in the text, it really is a help for whatever you’re going through. I’m preaching through Philippians right now, and wow, what a book! It’s just incredible. There isn’t one particular book I turn to. If I stay up on my devotions, it’s amazing to me how encouraging God’s Word is as a whole. I try to read through the Bible every year – although this may not sound very ambitious. I find that you read just enough of the stories and enough of the doctrines and enough of the psalms that you’re constantly finding help in different areas.

ATTL: Why do you think that there are so many people today, even Christians, who really look at the Bible as a historical book and lessons learned, rather than God’s living Word to us today?
BH: Spurgeon said once, “The Bible sheds a lot of light on its commentaries.” I think a lot of people read about the Bible. I love reading books by Max Lucado, Chuck Swindoll, David Jeremiah, John McArthur, and other great authors. But I find you can’t read enough of the Bible. I find most people are reading books about the Bible rather than just reading the Bible. People tell me they don’t understand the Bible when they read it. I tell them, “About the 20th time through, it starts making a lot of sense.” They laugh, but I think, if you really claim to be a Christian, what is your reason for not reading the Bible continually? The more and more you read it, it makes more and more sense. People who don’t see the Bible as much more than a historical book or kind of an encyclopedia are just not reading it enough.

ATTL: When you get to heaven, besides Jesus, who is the first person from the Bible you want to meet, and why?
BH: I preached on Ephaphroditus in the book of Philippians yesterday, and so today I think I wouldn’t mind seeing that guy. He was a phenomenal guy. He was from a family of means. His name is a play off the word “aphrodite,” from which we get “aphrodisiac.” The idea of that is to be self-serving, to get what you want, grab all your gusto, live for yourself. And yet he spent his whole life for others. The Bible says he came nigh unto death risking his life to take the Bible to others.

There are a lot of people like him that I’d like to see when I get to heaven. There’s the guy in the Old Testament who was the servant for King Ahab and yet he was caring for 200 Hebrew prophets secretly on the side. Jabez, whose prayer is famous. There are a lot of little, insignificant people in the Bible – people like me. I’m never going to be a Billy Graham or a D. L. Moody. But I’m trying to fill the little spot in the world where God puts me and do the best I can in this spot. There’s a lot of people like that who make up the Kingdom of God, and I admire those people who are about what God gives them to do.

ATTL: What are some of the differences in pastoring a rural church as opposed to a suburban church, and does it pose special challenges?
BH: In the church I pastored in Iowa, there were 10 deacons and elders, and seven of them were related to each other. That’s typical in a rural church; there are a lot of family connections. It’s a challenge when the people in a small rural church share their prayer requests because everybody knows the person the prayer request is about, even if it’s a coworker on the job.

ATTL: For you, what is the best thing about being a pastor?
BH: I enjoy pastoring; I really do. I can’t believe that God has allowed me do this with my life. I don’t look at being a pastor as being hard work. In fact I keep wondering what day I will actually have to go to work. I feel like I haven’t worked a day yet. Well, there’s one exception – when we didn’t have a church secretary, I had to do the bulletin. That was pretty close to work. But we have a secretary now, so I don’t have to work any longer.

Seriously, I’ve found pastoring is a tremendous pleasure. I derive my greatest pleasure from simply seeing ordinary people who are a part of my church living for Jesus Christ in their world. It’s absolutely thrilling and a privilege to see people living for the Lord.

To download Pastor Hardee’s sermons, visit http://www.rockcreekbiblechurch.org/. To read his daily blog about hunting, nature and other musings, visit http://gobblercomin.wordpress.com.