Welcome to Living My Faith, a weekly show that celebrates the everyday believers who are walking with Jesus not just on Sundays, but in every area of their lives. From relationships and parenting to health, habits, and home, our guests share how they keep their faith at the center of it all. Hosted in Jacksonville, Florida and supported by Christ-centered partners, Living My Faith is a space where real life meets real faith. Today our host, James Fenimore, spoke with Carol Gilham and Johnnie McLaughlin.
Carol Gilham
Founder of Dart & Dagger Collective
Website Address: https://www.dartdagger.com/
Johnnie McLaughlin
Founder of Disciples of God Sent, Inc
Website Address: http://www.disciplesofgodsent.org/
Transcript:
James:
Hi and welcome to Living My Faith. I’m James Fenimore, and today I’ve got a very special treat for you. In fact, I’ve got two of them. Joining me are Carol Gilham and Johnnie McLaughlin. Guys, how are you doing?
Carol:
Great.
James:
Thank you so much for joining me today. And I already warned you, Johnnie, we are chivalrous men here. So we’re going to go to Carol first. Carol, we start the show with one simple question. How are you living your faith?
Carol:
I am living my faith through the way that I am raising my children, and then the way that I am running my business.
James:
Beautiful. So you get to live that through your family and your work, which I think is something we should all be doing no matter what, I’ll be honest with you. But I love to hear that. Johnnie, what about you?
Johnnie:
Just always looking for an opportunity to share my faith. If I’m in front of somebody for more than a minute, I’m talking about Jesus. I lead a prayer walk once a month. I’ve got one coming up this month on March 14th, and then next month on April 11th at Memorial Park in Five Points. We meet at the statue of the globe with the angel on it at 5 p.m.
We discuss what the plan is, we pray, and then we go and we share our faith. We pray for people, even for people that don’t feel comfortable sharing. It’s a great opportunity to witness.
James:
It’s beautiful. That’s incredible. You guys just go for a walk and just kind of chat and pray. That’s beautiful.
So Carol, I know you said your family and your work. For a lot of people at home it’s easy, right, to pray over dinner, teach their kids, read the Bible together. But when it comes to work sometimes it gets a little hinky, gets a little different, right? Especially with all these HR compliance laws if they’re at a bigger company.
But how do you live out your faith in the workplace or at your work through your work?
Carol:
Well, it’s different for me because I left the workplace and started my own business. A lot of it was so that I could do that and do it the way that I wanted to do it.
But I think it’s kind of intertwined. I think the story about the way that I raised my kids and the way they do it through my business is that when I was trying it with my daughter, I had this prayer that I prayed for her. I prayed that she would be so confident in who she was and who God created her to be that she’d have no room for judgment or comparison.
And so I think I prayed that prayer for me too, you know, that she would be and that I would be so confident in my identity that I could just live freely the way that God would have me live and love freely.
And so it’s funny that I focus so much on identity because that’s kind of what I do for a living now. I focus a lot on brand strategy. So if I can help a company understand who they are as a brand, then they can be freed up to do everything else that they want to do that much better.
And so it’s the same for us. I think if people can really know who they are, our unique value proposition to the world, what value we bring to others, then we can be freed up to love other people and do the things God is calling us to do.
James:
That’s great. I know we briefly spoke about this, having your identity in Christ first and then you can figure out what your brand is. Because the fact is, if we have our identity shrouded in Christ and it is really deep in that, we have that confidence and we know where our anchor is.
So like you said, doing the brand strategy and then coming up with their identity with their brand, now they have their anchor. So it’s very similar.
So I think that’s beautiful that you’re able to kind of just go out on your own. Congratulations. And the name of your business, I’m sorry?
Carol:
Dart and Dagger.
James:
Dart and Dagger Collective. So there you go. We got it. We had to support each other’s Christian businesses.
Johnnie, going to you now. That topic of having your identity in Christ, how has that impacted you?
Johnnie:
It’s everything. I mean that’s where I find my value, my worth, my confidence, my peace, my joy, my hope, my mission, my purpose. It’s all found in my identity in Christ.
And God’s called me, I think, to wake up others to recognize their identity and to accept the calling that He’s placed on their life. He’s not concerned with our abilities. He’s concerned with our availability to what only He is able to do.
So the only way that we can exercise that and see it come to fruition is to step out in faith and give Him an opportunity to do what He does.
Like His word, if we go forth, we will not come back void.
James:
Yeah. You know that one word, confidence, it just keeps coming up. When you have that identity and you have it locked down, you know where you get your strength from, where you get your peace from, where you get really everything from, you are just confident in the world. And I really love that.
Carol, going back to what you do professionally, you find that identity for people. What does that process look like?
Carol:
Well, you keep saying confidence and I have to share this. I just started a newsletter for Dart and Dagger Collective, and I wrote a whole piece about imposter syndrome because I think as professionals we have probably all felt it at some point.
And it really goes back to confidence. I stole a quote from Pastor Joby, which is where I go to church and where he goes to church.
He says identity precedes activity. And in the newsletter I wrote identity precedes confidence.
So if you can just really truly understand who you are and what you are good at and where your lane is, then you can really truly be confident in that. And then you can champion other people and you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room.
You can just understand your value and your seat at the table. And then it frees you up to champion everyone else and what they are good at and what they bring to the table as well.
And so I build bridges and these connections, which just really opens up the world to so much, even nonprofits and the place that they are in right now.
I don’t know. There are just so many things that I think it all starts with confidence.
James:
Well it’s interesting because it feels like whether you’re a person or a business there are so many of us that just kind of don’t know what we’re doing, where we’re going, or even who we are. And when you have that, how can you be confident in anything?
As an individual, if you can just lock down and remember who Jesus is in your life and all the good He has done and will do for you, and even as a brand knowing who you are as the brand, now you can go out into the world.
But how are we supposed to go out and make disciples if we don’t know who we are as a disciple? And that is the Great Commission. That’s what we are called to do.
Johnnie, as far as the initiative that you have with these prayer walks, how do you help people find you? Is it just anybody at the church or do you call people over at the park?
Johnnie:
Right now it’s very grassroots. My church, Church of 1122, is advertising it as a serve opportunity on their website. But I’ve got several hundred people in my phone that I send messages and invitations to.
I’m not on social media. My website is being worked on, so I don’t have anywhere to send anyone to right now.
My phone number is (904) 554-1623. Feel free to reach out and I can help you with that.
Again, I’m open. It’s really word of mouth and people inviting others that they know.
People that we meet on the prayer walk actually come back on the next one to join us. It’s just being confident and extending the invitation.
And on the confidence thing, it’s really knowing who your father is. Do you know who my father is? And that’s how I feel.
I feel impervious. Even the enemy himself is like a dog on a leash. He can only do what my dad allows. And if he’s allowing it, it’s for me to grow to be more like Jesus. So praise God.
James:
I love that. Do you know who my father is? We’ve all heard that in a very different context before.
But now you’re right. It’s a totally different posture to take and say that out loud.
Carol, Johnnie, I can’t thank you enough for joining me today. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I know our audience is going to take a ton from it.
If anybody wants to find you guys, all your information will be right below this video, so don’t worry. We are going to get your names out there because I know people are going to try to reach out to you.
But thank you so much for joining me today. Really appreciate it.
Carol:
Thank you so much.
James:
This has been Carol and Johnnie. Again, all the information will be below this video, so please reach out to them.
Thank you so much for joining Living My Faith. I’m James Fenimore and I can’t wait to see you next time.
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