Author: Paul

The Best Camera Systems & Equipment from a Professional Photographer

October 29, 2019 / / 0 Comments

On Episode 103 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with professional photographer, Arthur Morris, about the best camera systems & equipment that he uses!

Sections

Introduction
The Photo Editing Process
What Computer Does Arthur Morris Use?
What Arthur Uses For Hard Drive Backup
Checking off the Bucket List: Shooting Emperor Penguins
Arthur’s Future Trips
What is Arthur Up To Right Now?
A Photographer’s Week
Canon, Sony & Nikon: Three Major Bird Photography Systems
Go On A Trip With Arthur
Conclusion
More Episodes
Show Notes

The Best Camera Systems & Equipment from a Professional Photographer

Introduction

Paul: Welcome to The Edge of Innovation. Today I’m speaking with well-known, globally-known, famous… anyway, in my book, he’s one of the best photographers that’s ever lived.

His name is Arthur Morris, and he is known for his bird photography as well as other things, but just has been a tremendous inspiration to me, personally, to be able to go out and take pictures. And we’ve interviewed him before, and we asked him to come back to talk about some new things that are going on in his life and with photography.

Welcome, Arthur.

Arthur: Howdy, Paul.

The Photo Editing Process

Paul: Okay, so, you use Capture One. How big are these files? Each image, just in megabytes.

Arthur: O Lord, the Nikon one is 40 megapixels, so like 130 megabytes.

Paul: My gosh.

Arthur: So, the converted image must be about 200 megabytes.

Paul: Uh huh. And how much are they raw? How, how big are they raw?

Arthur: Well, I always get confused by file size and pixel dimension. So, I’m not the one you wanna ask.

Paul: Okay.

Arthur: I know they’re big-ass files. But don’t quote me.

Paul: Alright. So, you, you go through. You, you bring ’em with Capture, and what do you do next?

Arthur: I just converted one image. I grabbed it. I put it in a subfolder called “To do.” And then, I converted the raw file with Capture One, which is the only program that you can see the enlarged Sony images conveniently with.

Paul: I see.

Arthur: And then I processed one… I have a bunch of folders that I need to go back and edit, ’cause if you lose track in a few days, especially with the huge files of the α7R III, you can wind up with your computer full. I’m not near there.

What Computer Does Arthur Morris Use?

Arthur: Another interesting story about gear and technology, I switched from PC to Mac about five or six years ago. Went through two months of pulling my hair out, and then came to love Mac. So, for me, it’s just a thousand times better. I used to do Photoshop on the PC for 15 years, and every session, Photoshop would freeze. It would crash, and I needed to, you know, hold down the start button for ten seconds and reboot. Three or four, three or four times in a couple of hours, and it was really not fun.

Paul: Wow.

Arthur: And with with Mac, in six years, I’ve had to press the… do a hard reboot, I think, maybe once or twice… Where the machine froze, so a huge improvement there.

Paul: And what Mac do you use?

Arthur: One of the astounding parts of what I do is that everything is done on a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display.

Paul: Right. And you find that good enough?

Arthur: Everyone tells me I’m crazy and that I should be using an external monitor and a mouse, but I’m happy.

Anyway, back to the computer story. I had my 16-inch or 17-inch MacBook Pro for about five years, and about six months ago it was giving indications that it was gonna die.

I had everything backed up but for a day or two, and then it finally broke. It wouldn’t start. So, I drove over to Brandon, and I brought it into the Apple Store. They took it apart, and they came out, and they said, “Well, this machine will never work again, but, but do you have any idea why the motherboard is encrusted in salt and sand?”

Paul: Really?

Arthur: And I said, “Well, I have done a few slideshows at the beach, in the rain.” So, suffice to say, I’m taking much better care of my new MacBook Pro. And I was able to get almost everything off the old hard drive.

Paul: Wow.

Arthur: I do recommend solid-slate hard drives.

Paul: Right.

Arthur: The hard part there was getting the correct bay to put the old hard drive in.

Paul: I see, yes.

Arthur: So, Apple, AppleCare is generally pretty good, but they misled me.

So, of all things, I finally took it into town, to Lake Wales, to the local computer store, and the guy went online, and he found the right bay with the right number of things, and we were able to get all the stuff off. So, that was a happy day.

What Arthur Uses For Hard Drive Backup

Paul: Excellent. So, you bring up a good point with backup. What do you do for backup with all of these big files?

Arthur: My friend Patrick Sparkman is my technical adviser. When I can’t figure something out, I call him. He recommended a program to back up the Macs automatically. You just plug in. So, I have two solid-slate, two 2-terabyte solid-slate hard drives, and I, every couple of days, I just plug one in, and it automatically starts to back up. And I’m walking over to my laptop —

Paul: Is that Time Machine?

Arthur: No. Actually, it’s amazing how the brain works. All I did was walk to my laptop, with a dark screen, but just being in front of my laptop, my brain came up with Carbon Copy Cloner.

Arthur: Oh, okay. Good, yeah. That’s an excellent. We, we use that a lot with our clients.

Arthur: So, how the brain works is a mystery, because I couldn’t think of Carbon Copy Cloner here. So, when I got there, and I was pressing the button to wake it up, I could see in the top the “C,” the “C” icon, and there it was, Carbon Copy Cloner.

So, I have two of those. I actually have a third one I need to get going so I can give one to my daughter every two weeks.

Paul: Right. Now, have you ever had to use the backup yet?

Arthur: No, thank God. And, and one of the beauties of Carbon Copy Cloner, God forbid, is that if your laptop just won’t boot up, that you can plug in Carbon Copy Cloner and boot from that. Let’s say you were down in Snow Hill Island doing the Emperor Penguins, which I was, which I had the pleasure of doing last November. You could always just theoretically, plug it in. But I hope to never get to that point.

Paul: Well, yeah. It’s, it’s good if you never have to use it, but if you have to, you know it’s there, and that’s great.

Checking off the Bucket List: Shooting Emperor Penguins

Paul: So, now, you’ve shot pretty much… Would you say you’ve shot everything you wanna shoot, or are there some things out there that you’re saying, “I really wanna go shoot this”?

Arthur: In my life?

Paul: Yeah. What’s on your bucket list for photos to take?

Arthur: Oh, about a thousand things.

Paul: Really? Is it all in the bird world, or do you have other things that are outside of that world?

Arthur: Mostly birds. I mean, getting to the Emperor Penguins was a huge check-off on my bucket list because I never thought I would get there. Logistically, it’s really, really difficult, and it was an amazing trip. I can’t believe that I got there. It was ridiculously expensive but worth every penny for me.

You know, just not financially, not business-wise, but it’s just because it’s something I wanted to see. I wanted to get down there. It was a Quark trip, running in conjunction with Cheesemans. We got on the icebreaker Khlebnikov after flying down to Ushuaia, Argentina.

Paul: Wow.

Arthur: And we sailed four days to get down into the ice. One day, we spent drifting to the northwest. Because of a big storm, we couldn’t southeast, where we needed to go. Then we finally got down in the ice, and they weren’t sure if they could get close enough to the colony to fly us there.

And then we made some good progress, and then, I don’t know, by the fifth evening, they said, “We’re in great shape,” and we were six miles from the colony at Snow Hill. And then we had done all the helicopter drills, and they put you in groups, and they fly you by Russian helicopter
to the base camp, and then once you get there, it was a four-mile round trip to the colony. And we did three days, and boy, it was, it was thrilling, and by noon on the third day, I was not good.

A lady I met down there, who’s been down there a zillion times, convinced me to borrow a pair of sunglasses. And I said, “Snow blindness? I’ll never get snow-blind.” And by the third morning, I could not — once the sun got out — I could not even look at the colony, at the snow.

Paul: Wow.

Arthur: My eyes were just burning out of my head. Then I put the sunglasses on, and I was able to photograph through the sunglasses for the whole morning. And then I trudged through the snow and ice back to the helicopter, took a, a nap in the rest tent, wound up back on the trip, and that was our day. So, three days for the cost of about 60,000 bucks.

Paul: Oh my gosh. Really? Wow.

Arthur’s Future Trips

Arthur: But I was happy. But what do I wanna do? I wouldn’t mind getting to Australia, and that’s actually now a remote possibility because I just agreed to judge a photo contest and speak in the Philippines in November of 2020. So, I’m thinking, once I’m there, heck, it’s 12 time zones different. Australia can’t be very far away.

Paul: Right. That’s true. That’s very true. It’s probably farther than you’d wanna swim, but it’s probably pretty close.

Arthur: Sure. And then, I would have to do lots of work in advance, mostly with friends from BirdPhotographers.net, my educational website, as far as planning the trip logistically, you know, if I do a side trip to Australia.

Paul: Right. Wow. That would be really cool.

What is Arthur Up To Right Now?

Paul: So, what else is new? You’re experimenting with Sony, probably going to make that leap.

Arthur: Experimenting with Sony, doing something I should’ve done 15 to 20 years ago, and that’s have a comprehensive online gallery. We’re, we’re almost finished work on that. I’m working with a guy named John Ross with a company called PhotoFolio.

Paul: Oh, neat.

Arthur: So, it should be nice and beautiful and elegant, and we’ll announce that on the blog.

Paul: Cool. That’s fun. When do you think that’ll be ready?

Arthur: Oh, surely within a week or two.

Paul: Oh, really? Oh, okay. Well, that’s fun. Something to look forward to.

Arthur: Yeah, I started by going through about 8,000 images, picking about 1,200 of my favorites to distribute into the various galleries and sub-galleries.

And what else is new with me? My 73rd birthday on June 14th. In celebration, I shaved my head. So, I have this Scott Van Pelt for everyone is familiar with, SVP on Sports Center at midnight. And I got home. I did three trips in a row. I went to the UK to do Puffins again in June, end of June. Came home. Went to, to Galápagos at the end of July, beginning of August, and then I went up to visit a friend in Northern Ontario to photograph Eagles on her lake, Basket Lake.

Paul: Wow.

Arthur: Then I got home, and I was feeling run down, and I was doing a lot of couch potato-ing, and I said to myself, “You know, it feels nice to sit on this couch, but if I do that, I’m gonna be dead in one or two years.”

So, instead, I decided to go back to walking every morning between two and three miles, swimming every afternoon a little more than half a mile, doing all kinds of stretching for my shoulders, getting my knee back in shape. So, the next few days I’ve been feeling great, as good as I’ve felt in years.

A Photographer’s Week

Paul: Excellent. So, what’s on the agenda for the rest of the week? It’s Tuesday. What’re you gonna do the rest of the week?

Arthur: Well, today is Tuesday. Thursday, I drive over to Fort De Soto to teach a small workshop with four or five folks at Fort De Soto County Park in Pinellas County. I’ll be using my new Sony 600 and the Sony 100-400, and playing around with different cameras.

One of the things I didn’t mention about the A7R IV, compared to the previous version, the A7R III, it’s only marginally bigger. The dimensions are fractions of an inch bigger, and yet, the A7R III in my hand felt like a tiny toy. And the A7R IV feels like a real camera.

Paul: Oh, really? Interesting. Just that little bit made a big difference.

Arthur: Yeah. It’s a tiny bit, you know, one small step for man, one giant step for bird photography.

Paul: There you go.

Arthur: And then, their other body is the A9, which has, pretty much science-fiction-like autofocus.

Paul: Really?

Arthur: Yeah. With, with, at the cost of smaller image files. So, the great news is there’s supposed a Sony A9 II with 35 megapixels and a, and a slightly larger body. So, you can put me on the list for one of those.

Paul: Interesting, interesting.

Arthur: I guess it’s sounding more and more for another fire sale, this time with my Nikon gear.

Paul: Yeah. Well, so far, we’ll see. I mean, if Sony doesn’t shoot itself in the foot with something, and it meets your expectations, it sounds like it’s an incredible advantage.

Canon, Sony & Nikon: Three Major Bird Photography Systems

Arthur: One, one of the nice things for teaching is that I have good working knowledge now of the three major bird photography systems.

Paul: Yeah, that’s true.

Arthur: Canon, Sony, and, and Nikon.

Paul: Again, I go back to our comment earlier. It would’ve been unthinkable to think that Sony would be a camera company, even ten years ago, and it’s just amazing that they’ve come to the top of the game, if you will.

Arthur: Well, there’s a lot of, sort of, Sony backlash from folks who just — pretty confident folks — who just say it’s junk.

Paul: Really?

Arthur: Or garbage. But I’ve made lots of nice pictures.

Paul: Interesting.

Arthur: And I’m happy. So, time will tell.

Paul: Absolutely. Well, is there anything else you’d like to cover today in our talk?

Good Photographers Make Good Pictures With Whatever Gear They Have

Arthur: You know, with all this talk about gear, and the latest gear, and 61 megapixels, it’s important to remember that good photographers are gonna make good pictures with whatever gear they have in their hands.

Paul: Right. Amen.

Arthur: And I know lots of folks that are shooting cameras that are four, five years old, three or four generations, supposedly improved, and using the older Canon lenses, the version one of the Canon Super Telephotos. And guess what. The good photographers are making great pictures. And then you run into folks who have two of the best of everything, the most modern lens, camera body, and they have no clue as to how to make a good picture.

Paul: Right. Well, it’s definitely a craft. You know, you have your tools, but you have to know how to use the tools. And, if you’re a woodworker or a painter, all of those things, it’s really the synergy of the tools and the artist.

Arthur: It’s funny, ’cause I often use woodworking to complete that analogy. I say, hey, if you put me in a state-of-the-art machine shop with the fanciest table saws and circular saws, and the greatest tools in the world, the most likely result would be that I would cut my hand off.

Go On A Trip With Arthur

Arthur: Then, last thing I’ll mention is that I’m hoping to get back to the Galapagos one more time, and I’m planning a trip for October of 2020, but I need at least eight or ten folks by this December.

Paul: Oh, wow, okay.

Arthur: If anyone’s interested, they can go to the blog at BirdsAsArt-blog.com, and click on the “Email Artie” button and get in touch. And the same thing, I’m gonna, hopefully, make one last trip, a land-based trip down to the Falkland Islands with, with just four photographers, but you’d better be a happy camper for that one.

Paul: Very cool.

Conclusion

Paul: Well, excellent. Well, we’ve had a good time here talking with Arthur Morris, renown, world-renown bird photographer. Birds from all over the world fly to Arthur for their picture to be taken. It’s not exactly that way, but it’s been such an inspiration for me to get to know you and your work and your books and your websites, and it’s been fantastic, and I appreciate you coming on now a second time and we’ll look forward to your, now, new journeys with Sony.

Arthur: It’s been a pleasure as always, Paul. I enjoy listening to your voice, and perhaps we’ll be able to include the link to the new galleries when we get this online.

Paul: We definitely will. So yeah, there’ll be a whole bunch of links to all of your sites, and as soon as that’s online, we’ll include that, as well.

Arthur: Thank you very much.

More Episodes:

This is Part 2 of 2 of our conversation with Arthur Morris! If you missed Part 1, you can listen to it here!

Show Notes:

Is Church the Place for Innovation?

September 3, 2019 / / 0 Comments

On Episode 99 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with Mark Dever, the senior pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, about whether or not church is the place for innovation.

Sections

Innovation & Entrepreneurship in the Church
Is Church Run Like a Business?
What Does the Church Try To Accomplish?
How a Church Measures Their Success
Running an Organization
Training Up Other People
Is Church the Place For Innovation?
Starting Another Organization: Is It a Good Idea?
Encouragement For Entrepreneurs & Innovators
Five Sources To Find Out More About Christianity
Entrepreneurs & Faith
Conclusion
More Episodes
Show Notes

Is Church the Place for Innovation?

Innovation & Entrepreneurship in the Church

Paul: So, welcome to the Edge of Innovation. Today were talking with Mark Dever from Washington D.C.

So, do you think you’re an entrepreneur?

Mark: Well, in that I don’t mind trying new things, yeah. I think I’m an odd entrepreneur in the sense that I tend to be kind of traditional, conservative and extremely, by nature, content. So, I don’t feel restless or driven but I think I do work as hard as entrepreneurs tend to work and I think I’m very willing to try certain kinds of new things.

Paul: So, you’re mixing innovation in with entrepreneurship. And they’re very close and they’re very intermingled. Where do you think that there has been innovation in your work in the church? Or is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? It’s a fairly big subject.

Mark: I think I’ve worked to recover older, more biblical practices that have been largely lost in too many churches today and I’ve put those back in a modern church.

Paul: I see. Well that’s re-innovation, if you will. That’s cool. Do you think that there is room or opportunity to innovate in the church?

Mark: Yeah, sure. I think it can be done very badly and I think it can be done very well. But yes.

Paul: So, what’s some examples of that?

Mark: Well, badly would be if you change, if you innovate in the message. That would be a very bad thing. Badly would be if you create a kind of legalism where you’re requiring things that Jesus Christ did not require. Innovation could be a good thing if you are thinking of how to achieve your goals for your church in ways that haven’t been thought of before but work well and are consistent with what you think are good and true

Is Church Run Like a Business?

Paul: So, do you think that your church, do you run it like a business or is that fundamentally different?

Mark: Oh, I think it’s pretty fundamentality different. For example, when my salary is discussed by the elders, I literally leave the room so that I know nothing of those conversations. So yeah. We’re not trying to personally make money. We don’t profit in that sense.

Paul: Do you have customers?

Mark: People who are members of the church, who attend here, may think of themselves that way. We don’t use that as an image because it makes the customer, king and we understand that God is king and we understand that He has revealed in the scriptures what we should do, believe, have, and so we don’t think that’s just up to the individual’s choice.

What Does the Church Try To Accomplish?

Paul: I see. So, you have a thousand people coming to services. You are having an impact in their life and they’re having an impact in the people around them’s life. Do you think that the church, this particular church, accomplishes a lot and if so, what is the primary accomplishment that you would sort of extol?

Mark: That we try to be faithful to what God has revealed in Scripture and we try to help other people do that, to live in a life of love of God and love of neighbor as we should. So, that’s what we work for.

Paul: So, it’s very different, it’s a quality of life.

Mark: Right. It’s not a quantity. It’s not find me a metrical thing, like we can count it up.

Paul: Right.

Mark: So, for example Paul, our church has as a building, one large room that, I think, can seat about a thousand people. Well that room has been full for ten years so we’re not having growing number of members. Our number of members is kind of static at about nine hundred and fifty to a thousand. And what we try to do is, try to serve them as well as we can. We have people die or move on, so we’ve always got sort of more space for people who want to come in but success can’t be seen in our percentage of numerical increase each year.

How a Church Measures Success

Paul: I see. So how do you measure success?

Mark: Just by whether or not we evaluate ourselves as being faithful in being and doing those things that we’ve been called to be and to do.

Paul: I see. So, the teachings of the Bible, is what you’re saying. Do we fulfill those? Do we understand those?

Mark: If we have a husband who is abusing his wife and we do nothing to stop him from doing that, then we understand that we’re failing. If we act and stop him from doing that and we help the wife and we help the children, then we understand that as success.

Paul: I see. So, you actually get into the messiness of human interaction.

Mark: Very much so.

Running an Organization

Paul: Yeah, that’s very interesting. So again, revisiting the idea where you didn’t go to school for organizational management. You didn’t go to school for how to run an organization. You went to school for church history, I guess?

Mark: Yeah. Historical theology. Yeah.

Paul: How did you make that leap to running an organization?

Mark: Well, when you become the pastor of a church and then that church grows, you will end up having a certain amount of responsibility for that organization.

Paul: But is it just, you pulled it out of your hat or did you take a secret management class someplace or is it just that you were born with it?

Mark: I’m guessing born with it. It’s interesting. The seminary I went to did make us take what they called a leadership course, where we read books at the time by Ted Peters, folks like that. And I have to say all the stuff that we read… In Search of Excellence.

Paul: Yes. Tom Peters.

Mark: All the stuff I read seemed kind of obvious, so it didn’t seem unusually insightful to me. it seemed true, but I didn’t need somebody to tell me that kind of stuff.

Training Up Other People

Paul: So, what I’ve struggled with as being a leader is, well, I know it’s right, do it my way. And I’ve seen many leaders struggle with that. Has that been a problem with you?

Mark: Not so much. I’m a big believer in training up other people and then if you can get other people learning to do things, you’re multiplying.

Paul: Right. Okay.

Mark: So, I’d much rather have it done not quite as well but sufficiently well, and moving in a good direction by a new person, and then help them to learn how to train others also.

Is Church the Place For Innovation?

Paul: So, now, you have all of these members. Would the members say that your church is innovative? I guess you already sort of answered that question. And is a church the place to be innovative?

Mark: I think the fundamental answer to that is no.

Paul: Okay.

Mark: But you could misunderstand that. I think it’s fine if the church tries, you know, an new air conditioning system, a new PA system, to sing a new hymn. I think that’s fine. If you think the church needs to have new things like that in order to survive, I would say well that’s not true and I would say it’s basic marching orders have been laid down very clearly for thousands of years in Scripture and what we want to work at is to continue to be faithful and try to follow those instructions.

Starting Another Organization: Is It a Good Idea?

Paul: Now, you mentioned an organization 9Marks. Why did you start this? You have a church who is functioning well. Many times with business, you hear, “Focus focu,s focus!” And so, it’s very usually dangerous to take a tangent and go off and do something else because it dilutes tension and venture capitalists look at it and say, “No. Stop half of the things you’re doing and do the other half twice as well.”
So, you went off and started this thing called 9Marks. What was the impetus for that? What was the point? What was the problem you were trying to solve?

Mark: Well, it was actually some friends who started 9Marks kind of with me. It was more their idea to start an organization, the marks of a church, that is talking about are things that I had noted and I had taught and even written about. These friends thought, “Mark. You’re doing this well enough in this church, let’s try to reproduce some of these things you’re saying and doing and teaching.” You know kind of like a Harvard business review.

Paul: Oh, okay.

Mark: Best practices kind of stuff. Let’s share this with other pastors so they can see what’s going on and maybe develop resources that would help them improve their churches.

Paul: And has that gone the way you expected it? Better? Worse? When you started it, it sounded like you were a reluctant traveler. “Okay, you guys are interested in dong this, I’ll come along.” Is that fair or… and how has it worked out?

Mark: I think that’s fair. It’s gone well. It’s been around for twenty-one years. And yeah, if you go to the website 9marks.org, look on a church search map, you’ll find about four thousand churches in the U.S. that have affiliated themselves with this, saying they agree with these marks of a healthy church.

And we have produced lots of content for free, you’ll find on the website. And probably about sixty different titles, sixty different books of which I’ve only written, oh, five or ten of them. Not a lot of them, and most of those are being translated into many different languages around the world. Almost every week, I’ll receive some copies of some 9Marks title that’s been translated into – this last week, Polish. And you know, it just keeps going.

Encouragement For Entrepreneurs & Innovators

Paul: So, is there anything you’d like to say to would-be entrepreneurs or innovators or business people? Anything at all?

Mark: Yeah, just as a Christian, I think business is hugely important. It’s productive. It created wealth. It gives jobs to people. It helps people meaningfully organize their time to do things that help other people. So, I love business people, men and women. I love to see their creativity, their productivity, the blessing they are to others. So, as a pastor of a Christian church, I just couldn’t be more encouraged by men and women listening podcasts like yours Paul, and trying to get better doing what they do, because if they get better doing what they do, it’s going to help everyone around them. So, I’m super thankful for good business people.

Paul: Well, that could be a good oxymoron. Good business people.

Mark: Well you know what I mean. You know what I mean.

Five Sources To Find Out More About Christianity

Paul: No, I’m just saying, but it could be. Very much so.

So, let me go back. So, you’ve talked about Christianity, You’ve talked about what it is. I would imagine a lot of people listening to us don’t really know what Christianity really means. They may have a notion of it. Where would you direct them to be able to learn more about what you say Christianity is or what you believe Christianity is?

Mark: Okay, what I believe Christianity is. I’ll give you five sources you can go look at.

Talk to a good friend of yours who’s a Christian. That’s number one, a friend. Get him to explain it to you.

Number two, go find a good church near you and let them explain it to you.

Number three, grab a good book. I’ll mention two: C.S. Lewis, called “Mere Christianity” or Greg Gilbert, a book called “Who is Jesus?” So that’s C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity”, Greg Gilbert, “Who is Jesus?” These books would very briefly explain to you Christianity.

You could yourself pick up a copy of the Bible and start reading the Gospels about Jesus. I would encourage you to read Mark’s Gospel. It’s short. It’s the shortest of the Gospels. We think it may have been the earliest written.

And finally, I would tell you go to the 9Marks website and just look up, just type in the word “gospel”. Because that’s the basic message of Christianity. G-O-S-P-E-L. Just type in “gospel” and see what articles come up and read or listen to some of the resources you find there.

Paul: Okay, well, we’ll put all those links in the show notes so people don’t have to furiously write them down.

Mark: You could also put one of capbap.org, so if they want to hear any of my teaching, they are there for free.

Entrepreneurs & Faith

Paul: Excellent. What would you, if you were to meet with a would-be entrepreneur, has really no experience with faith, what would your conversation be like with one of them?

Mark: Well, it happens from time to time, I mean that’s not just hypothetical. One of the guys who helped us start 9Marks, actually gave us several hundred thousand dollars to get started. He was just a businessman who lived here, a few doors down and he just liked what he saw happening in this church. He thought if other churches became more like this, it would help communities they were in. So, he gave us money to try to help us get started.

So, conversations can vary a lot. They can have a personal interest in faith themselves, they can just like some of the things that we’re doing and want to be a part of it, so it varies a lot.

Conclusion

Paul: Very cool. Any other things you’d like to cover or talk about?

Mark: No, I mean, it’s been a good conversation.

Paul: Alright, well, we’ve been speaking with Mark Dever, the senior pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D.C. and I guess you’re four blocks behind the supreme court building?

Mark: Exactly.

Paul: We’ve been talking about a church in Washington D.C. where Mark is the teaching pastor? Do you have a particular title?

Mark: Senior pastor.

Paul: Senior pastor. So, you’re old is what they’re saying?

Mark: I’m very old.

Paul: Oh my gosh. Well, did you actually get to meet Jesus?

Mark: After a manner of speaking, but not in the way you mean it, I think.

Paul: Okay. Well, we’ve had a good conversation and we’d love your feedback.

More Episodes:

This is Part 3 of 3 our interview with Mark Dever. If you missed part 1, you can listen to it here!

And if you missed part 2, you can listen to it here!

Show Notes:

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