Kenny Luck
18 min read ⭑
“My obsession is helping men transform so that instead of being agents of injustice, they can become agents of God’s love and justice. That comes through a relationship with God and getting a new identity in him.”
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
There’s a place that my wife, Chrissy, and I love to go to. It’s an Irish restaurant called Dublin 4 Gastropub in Mission Viejo, California. They have a special booth in the restaurant called the Snug. The snug is a four-person booth set off from all the other seating. It’s sort of built into a wall.
The reason I like it is that it’s a place where you can really have an intimate conversation and good food, and it’s very private. So you’re not battling all the ambient noise of the restaurant. (After all, it gets pretty loud in there.) It’s sort of like you have your own little cone of silence in the Snug.
I love bringing my girls there. I have three kids, and I love going there with Chrissy. We love going there with other couples, too, because it’s just a place to have intimate conversation. And of course, the Reuben rolls are great. The white mac and cheese is great. The Guinness brown bread is great. But the main reason I always like to go to Dublin 4 is that there are no triggers there; you get good, hearty conversation; and of course, the food is comfortable and they serve Guinness.
Jaël Vallée; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?
Since I was in junior high and high school, I’ve always been working. I’ve always had one, two, even three jobs—it was just the family way. I worked at a yogurt shop. I worked at a liquor store on Sundays bagging ice and stocking. I worked at a junior high—I worked a lot. I was doing sports and school and just this crazy life and the way I would find relief, interestingly enough, is I would sit out on the back porch and stargaze. I would just look up. I’m from Northern California—more specifically, from the West San Jose-Saratoga-Cupertino area. So growing up, I would sit out on the back porch of my house and I would just stargaze. It was peaceful and I felt content. It reminds me a lot of when David says in Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” I really connected with God—before I was really even an active Christian—just by looking up at the stars.
Now, fast forward 40 years later, and I’m still going back in the backyard. It doesn’t matter how cold it is. Even in Southern California right now, it’s 38 degrees at night, but I’m back there. I’m in my boots, bundled up, the firepit is on, there are no lights on, and I’m just gazing up at the stars. I think there’s something about staring at order and then living in chaos—seeing such design and order. I think your soul longs for some of that—the practice of being in nature and seeing its beauty and complexity in its order. I think the soul that’s in chaos needs that.
We can all identify with taking a deep breath when you’re looking at the ocean or taking a deep breath when you’re looking at a great vista or view. For me, it’s just looking at the stars and the moon and just realizing that this tiny blue ball is floating, literally, three spaces from the sun at an exact angle. There’s the right chemical composition and the atmosphere for me to take air into my lungs and see this design in order. My life gets pretty crazy. There are ups and downs every day, but I’m in the backyard almost every night. I turn the firepit on, I light it, I put on my big UGG boots, and I just stare at the stars.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
When you talk about abiding issues in your life and family formation, it’s the long-standing things that really kind of linger into your adulthood that you struggle with. As a Navy brat, the last of seven children, and the son of an alcoholic, I grew up in a home where there was constant chaos and not a lot of visibility. I was the youngest of five boys and two girls, and by the time I came along, my dad was essentially forbidden to interact with the last three children. My mom heroically stepped in because of some of the treatment my first five siblings were getting and said, “You’re not going to have anything to do with your last three kids.”
There was good reason for that, but there was also a loss. A real loss in that sons and daughters idealize their dads. I’m sure he had some shortcomings, but there’s still that longing to be identified with him, accepted by him, and approved of by him. So when that’s missing, there’s a desire inside for sonship and daughterhood. That’s certainly my story from an early age of looking for approval, intimacy, and affirmation in some group or with friends, and I think that’s abiding.
The love of God is my failsafe. His love has pervaded my soul to a point where I don’t wonder if I’m worth loving because I know Christ and I feel and sense his love. But I would say there’s a part of me that feels like I have to earn it with performance. I come from a military family, and before my dad would pay any attention to me, I would need to mow all three lawns, sweep and mop the garage, and make sure my room was ready for a white-glove inspection. And I’m not kidding about that. To get the crumbs of my father’s approval, I performed.
I think we all have certain injuries or tendencies when we’re young that we bring with us into our adult lives. I’m all about being diligent in my faith and in serving God and other people, but I can easily drift into a performance mentality. And when I do that, it’s never enough. If you live that way, you’re never sure if you’re good enough, which isn’t the case when you’re living in the permanence of God’s acceptance. I wrestle with trying to truly rest in the permanence of a just God’s unconditional love and acceptance of me. There are parts of me that feel like I have to earn it and that I have to perform my way into God’s—and other people’s—acceptance.
I go through cycles where God presses the pause button and says, “You know, I’m not really interested in your activity. In fact, I really don’t even need you. I just love you because I made you. And I don’t love you any more right now at this moment than I did when you said you wanted to know me when you were 17. I pride myself on working hard, but all that stuff doesn’t apply to my relationship with Christ. God loves me through what Jesus did and not what I could do. I struggle with that sometimes—like I’m not doing enough. But God is very gentle with me. He always reminds me that his love isn’t about what I can do to earn it. It’s what Christ did for me and how he accepts me because I believe and trust in his Son.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
My obsession is reaching men. I got activated in doing men’s ministry and outreach because of some of the justice issues I was exposed to. My wife was involved in human trafficking. We started looking at it and I thought, It’s rooted in broken male culture.
Then I started looking at things like the orphan epidemic and fatherlessness and the aftermath, emotionally and practically, for women and children when there is an unhealthy, insecure man in the picture. Having experienced that in my own family, I’ve recognized it in society in some of these justice issues that are very visible and popular. People are talking about the fact that we have to raise awareness and rescue the victims and rehabilitate and reintegrate them. We do have to do all of those things for people suffering injustices, but when you dial into the root of what’s going on, you can put at the center of a lot of these justice issues the heart, character, and conduct of men. Often, men are either the consumer or the source of these injustices.
And so for me, my obsession is helping men transform so that instead of being agents of injustice, they can become agents of God’s love and justice. That comes through a relationship with God and getting a new identity in him, which takes over their energy and leads to an expression that blesses women and children as opposed to creating suffering and pain for them.
I’m really passionate about reaching men in cities. We’re doing what’s called a Dangerous Good City Transformation Conference where I tour with some of my close musician friends, including Brandon Lake, Mack Brock, Chris Quilala, and others from Jesus Culture. We get together in the city and gather a few thousand guys to create an immersive experience that’s transparent from a masculinity standpoint.
The messaging is a little different from that of the culture. We’re saying that it’s okay to be strong and loving at the same time. The person who best models this is Jesus. He was strong and he was loving. He was tough and he was tender. He was compassionate and he was courageous. So we build a conference around that theme of Jesus being who we want to be—dangerous with goodness. He’s the model of healthy masculinity, and you can have an identity in him. You can be in community with other men who have an identity in him, and that identity and community lead to bravery in your choices to love God and love people where you work, where you live, where you pray, and where you play.
We’ve done these conferences in Los Angeles and Austin. Six weeks after a conference, the guys get into little groups and do what’s called a City Servolution. We have 700 to 1,000 men’s groups of five that came to the conference and we repopulate serving opportunities across the city. They go through a small-group experience and then they go serve their city and they show their city what a Spirit-empowered community of men looks like. It looks like men being dangerous with goodness.
That’s just a dream for me—to see the narrative flip for men so that we’re not all toxic, broken alpha guys, we’re not abusers, and we’re not power-play guys who abuse people when we’re given power, strength, or influence. I want to let whatever city we’re in see a movement of guys in the Spirit of Christ, loving and serving others. That’s a big emphasis for me and it’s taken a long time to build up to this. My book Overflow: Setting the Holy Spirit Loose in the World You Live In, which comes out in March, speaks to that theme a little bit.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I have a structural way of energizing myself every morning. I always wake up each day, like it says in the Bible, to set my heart and my mind on the truth. I say, “This is the day the Lord has made, and I will rejoice and be glad in it.” And then I say, “Holy Spirit, show me. Holy Spirit, lead me. Holy Spirit, control me.” And that is a daily rhythm and discipline that I’ve had for many, many years that sets the context for my reality. I belong to the Creator of the universe. It’s his. He has an intention and vision for me because he created me, and I want to align with that. That’s why I say Psalm 118:24: “This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” It reminds me that I’m living in God’s day. I didn’t create this day. I’m living in a day, and he created me with an intention and a vision for it. The way that intentional vision gets realized is through the person and presence in partnership with the Holy Spirit, Christ’s Spirit in me. I have a direct connection to that intention and vision, and I can keep in step with that.
Then throughout the day, I focus on how the Holy Spirit is leading me. That’s the challenge for everybody, including myself, whose faith is in Christ—how do we know that it’s the Holy Spirit leading us, the Holy Spirit controlling us, the Holy Spirit speaking to us?
I oversimplify the answer by believing that if I have a thought that directs me to do something in a moment that shows a love for God and love for people, it’s the Holy Spirit. I will take a risk in that direction at that moment, and that’s how I know it’s the Holy Spirit. You really can’t miss it, but it’s a simple thought with many expressions, and you can positively bring that into any space or place that you occupy. That’s how I sense God’s presence and set my mind. I ask the Spirit to fill me and direct me. Then if I get a thought that shows love for God through some expression or love for people, I do that. And that’s how I know it’s God.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So spill it, which spiritual practice is workin’ best for you right now?
Having come off a two-month sabbatical for the first time in my ministry life, the lessons I learned revolved around winning slowly as opposed to hurrying. The pace of my life is very disciplined, and I have a standard discipline in the morning, but I feel like it’s sped up. I was very calendar driven before this sabbatical and I didn’t realize that there are very few places to admit in life how overwhelmed your soul can become. There are very few safe places. So one of my big lessons coming out of the sabbatical was to slow down. I’m going to really slow down. I’m going to struggle with being quiet versus surrounding myself with a lot of noise. I’m going to slow down for the moment, for people, for what’s in front of me instead of always thinking about what’s next. I’m focusing on themes of slowness, making time, and decluttering my schedule so that there’s time to have quiet.
I’ve actually re-instituted waking up before everybody each morning. There’s external quiet and then there’s more internal quiet, because it’s one thing to slow my body down or to be quiet externally, but it’s another thing to quiet my mind. I think everyone can identify with that ongoing conversation you have with yourself in your head. Maybe you had a bad conversation that week and it keeps replaying in your head or you have responsibilities and concerns that are difficult to silence.
I like to slow down, wake up before everybody else, go into my study, settle into my cozy chair with my big afghan blanket, put my hand over my heart, and just breathe. That has been really working for me. It creates internal silence and external silence. I put my hand on my heart because it’s a posture of sincerity. This is a new thing for me, but I put my hand over my heart and I say, “God, I’m here for you alone right now.” So that morning rhythm of finding a comfortable place to experience internal and external quiet is what’s working best for me right now. It helps me let God know I’m in that space for him alone. I tell him that and then I’m quiet.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources—lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are some resources that have impacted you?
The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer is the most influential book I’ve ever read. It’s not very big, but you can only consume a couple sentences at a time. It’s about who God is and has taught me that my life in God will never outperform my view of God.
What’s so great about that book in particular is that God gave me a life moment that affirmed the power of having a right view of God. I was in Mexico and was jumping off a cliff with about a 40-foot drop with my then-11-year-old son. I felt my 6-year-old daughter tap my backside. I turned and saw her standing there in her little Ariel bathing suit in her Ariel goggles. She said, “Dad, I want to jump off, too.”
It’s one of those things where, as a parent, you’re thinking, You don’t want to do that. You’re just seeing people yell, scream, and have fun, but you don’t really want to do that. So I put my dad voice on and said, “Okay, let’s step up to the edge.” I looked down and she was holding on to my hand, and this is high, and she looks at me and then she squats. I was thinking, What is going on? So I say, “All right, I’m going to count to three,” and then I felt her squeeze my hand. All of a sudden, this image of my wife came into my brain saying, “If anything happens to my daughter, I’ll have your head.” So I had to give my daughter the safety speech because her squatting legs and hand squeeze communicated to me, Yeah, I’m ready to go.
I said, “This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to count to three, we’re going to jump, and we’re going to go 20 feet below the waterline, but you’re going to be okay. Then we’re going to come back up.” She looked at me and nodded yes, so I said, “Okay, here we go—one, two, three!” And we jumped off. It happened exactly as I said it would. Afterward, we swam to the stairs and she stopped us and said, “That was fun, Dad. Let’s do it again!” We got up the stairs to the top, and I said, “Jenna, you have to tell me—you would never do something like this. What got into you?” And she looked at me and said, “Well. I was really scared, but I said to myself, ‘I’m with my dad and everything’s going to be okay.’”
I thought That’s the greatest theological lesson. It relates to the message behind The Knowledge of the Holy. My daughter’s view of me, right or wrong, was that I was strong, I was going to make sure she was okay, and I love her. Because there’s no way I’m going to let her get hurt, she can take a risk 50 times her size—as long as she’s with me. I thought to myself, Isn’t that true that my life in God and my experiences with God will never outperform my view of God?
If I sat down and had coffee with a man, I would just say, “Well, tell me what comes to your mind when you think about God.” I can reasonably project his spiritual journey based on what he tells me he thinks God is like versus who he really is. It’s important that we understand very clearly who God is as a person so that our experience with him can be authentic and meaningful.
We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season—and tell us what it’s done for you.
I’m reading a book called A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing by Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer. There are a few reasons this resource is indispensable to me. The first is that I’m a pastor. And secondly, I bumped into some pastoral leadership that creates ecosystems for staff and members that can get toxic and unhealthy.
When you read Matthew 23, you see very well-intentioned religious men abusing people in the name of God. Jesus has a very strong word for them in the Scripture. As a pastor, I’m finding that people just stop going to those churches and they might even stop going to church altogether, which is a travesty. So Chrissy and I are reading through this book. We’re only about halfway through, but we’re bumping into a lot of folks who’ve been really injured by unhealthy church culture.
The Hebrew word for good is tov, and the authors of this book are talking about having the emphasis be on the goodness of God and not so much on the person. It’s about rightly relating to people you’re connected to within the body of Christ, what that looks like, and how to build a culture where there’s generosity, reciprocity, and outreach. A true community is not so much built around a person but rather around who God is and God’s people.
Right now, at this moment in our culture, I think a book like this speaks deeply to me because I want to reach people who are searching for a conversation with God. I want to create a space for them to get to know him and to experience and sense him. But as a lead pastor, I know they shouldn’t be thinking about me. They shouldn’t be talking about me. It should really be about Jesus, getting to know him, being in his presence, and letting him tell you the truth about who you really are. I want to create spaces where people can let God speak to them.
So as a pastor and as a leader, I’m really enjoying this book, and I think it can speak to every church pastor and every member. We need to become a part of that body we see in Acts 2-6, literally transforming neighborhoods and communities through the story of our encounters with Christ and then loving people sacrificially. That’s when people know Christ is real—it’s through our sacrificial love for them. And that’s what this book is all about.
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
The coolest thing I’m doing right now is music. I’ve partnered with someone in starting a music label called One Stone Collective. We started it for a couple of reasons. One is that when we do the Dangerous Good City Transformation Conference, we’re actually releasing anthem music to go with the Dangerous Good movement. In the men’s movement of the 1990s, there were anthem songs that helped activate the men. It was really cool, but it’s been 30 years since we’ve had a music movement aimed at men.
That said, the songs we’re working on aren’t necessarily exclusive to men. We started a label and are working with some great people everyone would know. We’ve done 22 songs and released four on an EP that’s called Resolve, which you can get on Apple Music. So I’m really proud that we’re going to release the EP and these other songs.
I think when the focus is on God and we’re pouring our hearts out, things happen. For example, in Austin, we did an extended worship set and there were men in those settings who were unilaterally healed. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was no altar call, and there was no prayer team—just men who heard a theme and wanted to tell God how much he meant to them. And stuff started going down—the unexplainable, the supernatural.
How do I know that? The next day, I preached in the church where we had the event, and a guy came up to me and said, “I’m real new at this. I’m a new Christian. I had only been coming here a couple of weeks, but I was listening to the music last night at the conference. Normally, I can stand up for maybe five or 10 minutes before having to sit back down. I also typically have a cane in my hand. But last night, the music was just so alive. It was lifting me up so much. I thought, I want to stand. I want to sing this song to God. And all of a sudden, I felt this very warm presence come over my body and I threw my cane. I threw it into the aisle and I started moving around. I can’t explain it. I don’t know what’s going on, but God touched me!”
That’s part of the reason I’m excited about doing this. There’s something that happens in the context of worship where there’s justice, integrity, and authenticity. God bypasses the intellectual and goes right to the soul, and it touches people so that they’re able to release faith toward God and God can breathe back on them in specific ways.
There were five or six more guys just like the one I mentioned earlier. There was no coaching, there was no mental manipulation, and there was no encouragement. They were just worshiping God and God chose to supernaturally touch their bodies and heal them. So, I’m excited about that and I want to do it more.
God loves to move in ways we least expect him to. When was the last time you set aside your expectations for how you thought God should act and simply marveled at what he was doing?
King David wrote: “Come and see what God has done, his awesome deeds for mankind!” (Psalm 66:3, NIV).
What if we took that encouragement to heart today and worshiped God for who he is, what he’s done, and what he’s still doing now?
Kenny Luck is an ECPA Platinum Award-winning and best-selling author of over 20 books for men. His latest, Overflow: Setting the Holy Spirit Loose in the World You Live In, came out in March 2023. As a thought leader and expert on men and culture, Kenny is called by God to revolutionize men’s ministry and free men spiritually. God is using Kenny to reach over 100,000 men weekly through the Every Man radio show and the Facebook livestream of his weekly men’s meeting. Kenny and his wife, Chrissy, are parents to three awesome Millennials and live in Trabuco Canyon, California.
