The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Courage: The Power to Stand Out Without Fear by Pastor Brian T. Lees

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Courage: The Power to Stand Out Without Fear by Pastor Brian T. Lees https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Power-Stand-Without-Fear-ebook/dp/B0F4M36X34 Stlqc.com As long as there is good and evil in our world, we will always be at war. Christians should not be afraid to admit they follow God. They should take an active stance to share the Word and to encourage others to seek and find Jesus. We gather our courage from a wide range of sources. Courage comes from within us. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to put one foot in front of the other and move forward. This book identifies courage we retain from past experiences. It encourages you to look back and learn from your accomplishments as well as your failures. Accomplishments enhance our confidence, and failures are learning lessons. Both contribute to the courage of moving forward. In Matthew 19:26, Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” This book identifies real-world situations where Christians have overcome what seemed to be impossible. It includes examples of raw courage we use every day. Some are easy, where others require us to reach out for help. From teenagers saving a town from a flood to addicts stepping up to get free, it identifies the power of raw courage. Courage enables us to do what is right at all costs. Biblical courage identifies Christians’ foundation to stand up and out. We should never be afraid to speak up, never hide our Christianity, and allow God’s grace to shine through us. For that to happen, we need to cling to our inner courage and never hesitate to use it.

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Today, we're an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking about his book called Courage, The Power to Stand Out Without Fear by Pastor Brian T. Lee's. We're going to get into with him. came out April 11th, 2025. Pastor Brian Lees lives with his wife's choice in a small village just outside Illinois's Quad Cities. He faithfully serves his communities by preaching at local senior facilities and acting as a point of contact for the area's Veterans Outreach Center. His ministry is centered on seniors, individuals, and assisted living, and their families offering encouragement, spiritual guidance, and capacity.

and compassionate support for those in later seasons of life. Through his work, Pastor Ryan is dedicated to bringing hope, connection, and faith to the communities he serves. Welcome to the show, Pastor. How are you? Thank you. Thank you. Give us any dot-coms, emails, or websites, wherever you want people to get to know you better on the interwebs. Since I have hearing aids, and it's hard for me to take a call without speaker, and sometimes it's hard. for me to decipher. It's best that they respond to me by my email, please, which would be pastor, period, Brian Lees at yahoo.com.

So, Pastor, give us a 30,000 overview of what's your book is about, courage. The inspiration for this book came from a lady named Sarah. We were at a sales conference. The leader was calling on people in the sales conference to name. something you're proud of an accomplishment you made, etc. They called on one person, they called on another. They called on me. I gave my response.

They called on Sarah and Sarah said, the day I became a Christian. There was a short pause. Then he called on somebody else and somebody else. And I noticed that Sarah left the room. I thought she was going to the bathroom. She never did return. The next morning of breakfast, I asked the lady that was sitting with her what happened with Sarah. Sarah, she said she went home. She didn't want people making fun of her as a Bible thumper.

And that's just wrong. We should never be ashamed, shy, or embarrassed to admit we're Christians. Oh, there we go. And so was that the inspiration then to write this book? Yes, it was, definitely. And I hope someday she finds it, she reads it. I hope it helps build her confidence. So tell us some of the tips or advice that you give in the book to people. I believe that we have confidence, but it takes courage to put that confidence in motion. We draw our courage from previous experiences, previous failures, from our education, from our teachers, from our parents, from a wide range of sources. And there are times we just have to stop and draw on that to take action.

And what are some of the biblical teachings? I know you referenced Matthew, I think, in the book. Give us some of those tease-outs. It's always about having confidence. And when other people have confidence in you, you need to have confidence in yourself. Mm-hmm. And we were told to go out and may be disciples, share God's grace and love with everybody that is receptive to that. Don't get me wrong.

I'm not telling people to grab a baseball bat and a gong and rock the streets banging symbols. What I'm suggesting is one of the pastors of my past, it was very influential to me, said, mention it. and if the individual is receptive, you can continue the conversation. But if not, change the subject and continue to talk. Don't run away. Being a Christian should never be a hard sell. It's an option that you do on your own. Yeah.

You give people that advice. Now, this isn't your first book that you've written, right? I'm sorry, Chris, I miss that. This isn't your first book that you've written, is it? Yes. This is the first one. I've got three more. that I've written. But this is the primary focus I'm working on now. I'm trying to build some

speaking engagements with us and get in some book signings with us. Ah. Do you have any coming up that you want to tease out to people and let them know? I've got a couple sources that are speaking with me about guest speaking, but we don't have anything solidified yet. All right. That'll be good to see and tour about. How has this helped your faith or maybe some readers? Are there any stories of people that have read it? And it's really given to me? Well, I want people to be able to contact me for more information, of course.

Sure. My book goes into the sources where you draw your confidence and you draw your courage. And a lot of times you don't recognize it. A section of my book says sometimes we have to go. back, go back to something we need to correct, we need to go back for something we need to learn. A prime example is myself. I played music my entire life, B-flat and E-flat reads, B-flat brass, keyboard, drums. I pick it up and they work for me, fantastic. And I always thought that my gift was music. And later in my years, I was playing a piano bar. And, and, you know, I was playing a piano bar.

we had some trivia. I had dug up an old song, I'd get by, and I started to play it, see if everybody recognized it. They didn't, so I started to sing a few bars, and nobody recognized it, but a guy behind me started singing at the top of his lungs, he sang the entire song.

And at break, I went back, talked to him, he and his lady, and they were in their senior years. He was in a band that was the very first song he ever taught, he sung to her. Oh, really? And that's when I realized my gift was not necessarily music. My gift was connecting with people.

My gift was entertainment. Ah. And it took almost my entire life to realize that. Sometimes we have to go back and learn what the true gift is from our experiences. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's why we have our stories, our lessons of life, you know, that we reflect on them. We think about our journey.

Sometimes, you know, sometimes we look back and we can pattern recognition, you know, mistakes that we consistently make or things that we consistently do that maybe aren't helpful to us and other people and we can go, maybe I should change that up. And that's just, I mean, that's just the way it is. When did you become a preacher and were you born into faith or did you discover it? Well, at a church that I used to belong to in another city before we moved here, The pastor had everybody pick a book in the Bible, and he had us give a presentation. And my presentation on Jonah, and that's what hooked me. I really felt a good feeling inside, sharing the voice in the Word of God.

I felt something I'd never really felt before in my life, even beyond entertainment. So I pursued that. And what was it that struck you about that story? With Jonah? Yes. Oh. What was it resonated? When they threw Jonah overboard.

And they like throwing people overboard? No, I'm just kidding. I just. We know biblically that the storm calmed and Jonah was swept out to sea. When the storm brewed up, I started saying the weather started getting rough. That tidy ship was tossed. If not for the courage of that fearless crew. No, wait a minute.

That's a different movie. His Island. But that's when I learned that I can actually relax and inject a little bit of comedy or bring a smile to people's face while I share the Word of God. And that's what I try and do. I try and relate everything to the real world and try and bring people into the connection so they understand the message I'm trying to give. And so when did you officially become a pastor again?

What is what? When did you officially become a pastor? I got my certificate as pastor here back in 2022. Oh, wow. And honestly, it's a shame that there's no churches in the area that are catering to the senior centers with the shut-ins. They go to the shut-ins for their congregation, but nobody goes to the senior centers that I am aware of. Oh, wow. And so that's why I focused my congregations and my efforts on.

And I've got a list of senior centers that want me to come and preach. That's got to be nice, being able to go to senior centers and stuff. You know, my sister's in a care center with MS and dementia. And, you know, it's pretty lonely at these centers. When I was a kid, my parents would take us to senior centers, and we would sing and play music. I think someone would play the piano. We'd sing whatever tunes there were.

and I like to apologize on behalf of that for me because I'm probably not a singer voice. A lot of people may not realize, but they may be in a senior center, but they still have communication with the real world. Our local ski team had a regional competition, and one of the teams from out of the area, they had a girl, a young girl,

way up on the top of the tier of a pyramid, and she fell and smacked a side. side of her head against the water. Oh, no. And her ears started bleeding. They brought her up, and of course they stopped the competition. And I'm looking around and nobody's doing anything. So I came out of the stands and I grabbed the microphone. I told him, I said, for non-believers, please give me a couple minutes. For believers, please join me a prayer. And I led him in a prayer that she was not seriously injured. The next Sunday at the senior center, two of the seniors had they heard about that. So a lot of people don't really realize, but they do have their hands

on the pulse of what's going on. They do hear things. Yeah, that's good. That's good. And I'm glad you're doing that work. What area of the nation are you in that you visit those places and support those folks? What area of what? What area of the nation do you work in? What state? Yeah, I'm basically in the Illinois Quad Cities. That's the border of Davenport, Iowa, and Illinois and I work both sides of the river I work both both sides of the senior centers there so when people read the book what do you hope they come away with I hope they realize that they may be a little bit of a cowardly lion if you remember the cowardly lion for oh yeah yeah he always never thought he had courage at all until the wizard gave him a medal

and pointed it out and I hope to read the book follow some of the suggestions, the real life stories are in there, go back and do an inventory of what they've done, gain some confidence in themselves, and then bring up some courage so they can go out and they can do some good in the world. And I don't care if it's just open the door for a senior with a walker that's coming up the sidewalk or helping a lady with their groceries or checking on a shut-in or something very, very major. But I hope this inspires them that they have value, they have skills.

They have the ability of doing something about it, and I hope they join hands with the rest of the community, because honestly, we need God in our world now more than we ever had. And so you're going to keep being a pastor and focusing on this. What do you see for the future of yourself? Are there more books coming out that you're working on? You've got three other books. I have another book out called Death of a Loved One that I wrote specifically for the loss of a spouse, and it gives us. constructive ideas on what to do with your time. It mentions the stages of grief. It mentions building a scrapbook of memories so that you don't focus constantly on the pain. I wrote another

book called The Foundations of Faith, which identifies the bridge where you come from your parents and churches guidelines into assuming your own responsibilities for worship. Oh. And when, do you haven't anticipated a release date for that? Yeah, the contact information is on my website, but I've also written another one, since I have a diverse background in entertainment, obviously. I have another one that's written for clergy that helps the pastures deliver sermons with higher levels of impact. That's on the site also. Oh, that's good to have. It's good to have.

You know, sermons, are those hard to write? I've always wondered about those. I've seen some fire and brimstone sermons and different things. Are those hard to write? What does that like when you do that? Yeah, my challenge is just... I think we're breaking up a bit. Could you repeat that?

Sure. Seek the Light. My ministry is not a nonprofit, so I cannot issue a receipt. And I'm old-fashioned. I buy a pack of gum or refrigerator. I want a receipt. So I can't give receipts,

so I do not collect ties or offerings. I encourage my congregation to ties to the regular church. I'm doing this for the work of the Lord, and I'm not banking any money or charging anything for my services. Oh, wow. Wow. That's quite generous and charitable of you. I intend to keep doing this as long as I'm capable of doing this.

And I hope to continue to write, and I hope that I'm able to get more of my word and more of my information out in the form of it. of guest speaking. That should be wonderful and insightful and you know maybe make more people have courage. I mean, you can believe what you want and a lot of people do. It takes a lot sometimes of different beliefs to get through this life. People need something to hold on to because it's it's kind of terrorizing and not very fun sometimes in life. I've kind of seen some weird things now with wars and different things. But hopefully it all works out. We'll keep our fingers

crossed. What would you say to people that maybe need more courage? Is there anything in your book that you wrote the axiom or saying that maybe can give people a boost out there? You've got to recognize that everybody's got some levels of courage. You already have that. I really have that. There are things that you do like opening door for a senior or sharing a conversation with the strangers as you're on a bus traveling from one point to another, you all really take some steps. They might be real small, minute levels of courage, but you already have some. You just need to build off of that.

You need to expand off of that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, sharing our things with each other, helping each other, you know, you bring up a good point. We should more often go to the care centers and, and, and, and, and, and, watch for these people. I always tell people, if you have a loved one in a care center, make sure you visit them at least once a week or multiple times a week. And, you know, it's lonely. And loneliness kills. Depression kills. And, you know, a lot of those folks, they're isolated to those places and they need as much social interaction as anyone else as a human

being. You know, we thrive on being social and interaction with other human beings. At least some of us do. There's a lot of people that they just like that phone. But what haven't we maybe covered that you'd like to talk about in this show? Is there anything we've missed so far? No, but I would like

to emphasize that if other people have confidence in you, you have to have confidence in yourself. Yeah. It helps the feet off of them. How do you know when people have confidence in you? How do I want?

How do you know when people have confidence in you? All you have to do is listen to the people around you. I mean, I've been in a situation where the topic is they're talking about something and another person who comes up. The pastor's been down that road. Tell us about, and they'll recognize you. They recognize you or they'll recognize your skill or your previous experience. And that's an indication to get you started.

Ah, as we go out, give people a final pitch out to pick up your book, order it wherever fine books are sold, and all that good stuff. My hearing age, I'm sorry. Sure, no problem. As we go out on the show, give people your final pitch out for them to pick up your book and get to know you better on whatever websites you have. Yes. Just jump right on out there and get a hold of it.

And if you grab a book and you got questions, my email's in there. do not hesitate to contact me. Don't hesitate, folks. Reach out to them and all that good stuff. And I believe they can also reach out to you on your website, right? S-T-L-Q-C.com. Is that right? Now, that's seek the light, which is my ministry.

Okay. And when I put my ministry together, I found out there's a gazillion seek-the-lights out there. Oh, really? The Q-C with it stands for Quad Cities, which is where my ministry was founded. seek to like Quad Cities, STLQC. What a fun thing to have you on. Thank you for coming in the show. We really appreciate it, sir.

I appreciate this, Chris. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thanks, sir, honest, for tuning in. I order it the book wherever fine books are sold. It's called Courage, the power to stand out without fear by Pastor Brian T. Lee's. Be sure for a show to your family, friends, and relatives.

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