Special guest Arthur Nisly shares his passion for redemption from sexual brokenness. He started an organization to help men find freedom from unwanted sexual behaviors and to train others to do the same. In this conversation with President Zack Johnson, he shares his story of leaving El Salvador after 30 years and hearing God’s call to start this ministry. He explains why many stay trapped despite trying desperately to get free, why “symptom control” doesn’t last, and his approach of getting to the issues underlying addiction. He also gives practical advice on responding to others who reach out to us for help.
Mentioned in this episode:
• Hope Journey Guide – Arthur’s website
• The Freedom Fight – Free materials that Arthur uses
Special guest Arthur Nisly shares his passion for redemption from sexual brokenness. He started an organization to help men find freedom from unwanted sexual behaviors and to train others to do the same. In this conversation with President Zack Johnson, he shares his story of leaving El Salvador after 30 years and hearing God’s call to start this ministry. He explains why many stay trapped despite trying desperately to get free, why “symptom control” doesn’t last, and his approach of getting to the issues underlying addiction. He also gives practical advice on responding to others who reach out to us for help.
Mentioned in this episode:
• Hope Journey Guide – Arthur’s website
• The Freedom Fight – Free materials that Arthur uses
It is Friday, march 22nd 2024. I'm here with Arthur Knisley and, arthur, we don't have your bio printed on our website because you are one of our first guests on the podcast. That's not from Sattler, okay. So I thought I could just open by asking you your story, sure, how do asking you your story? Sure? How do you share your story? Where are you from? What are you about? Are you married? Do you have kids?
Arthur Nisly:Whatever you want to include, Okay, I grew up in Kansas, the South Central Kansas Hutchinson community. From an early age, I just knew that I wanted to be involved in missions. I didn't know what it would look like, and then, in my early 20s, I went to Costa Rica for two and a half years and then, while I was there, they asked me to come to El Salvador, where they were recovering from all the missionaries having left because of the Civil War there. I loved—I was a single pastor and I loved what I was doing and so I just told the people I'm going home to get married and I'm coming right back. I married my childhood sweetheart and it was about two years later that we moved to El Salvador and I worked there as the mission director under Amish Mennonite Aid, and my wife and I loved it. We thought we would be there the rest of our lives, and so 30 years of living there, we loved it. We thought we would be there the rest of our lives, and so 30 years of living there, we loved it. We thought that was a perfect fit. And then, in 2016, we had to come back to the States because of my wife's health, and that was a jolt unexpected. We didn't know what to do with that.
Arthur Nisly:And so I still remember the day I was driving truck for my brothers. Here I am, I'm almost 60 years old. I thought I was going to live the rest of my life in El Salvador and then, all of a sudden, I'm transplanted back to my home community and I'm trying to figure out what to do. I'm working for my brothers community and I'm trying to figure out what to do. I'm working for my brothers, trying to figure out what to do next. And so I still remember the date June 30, 2017. I just, kind of out of the blue, said so what am I supposed to do now? And I just it wasn't an audible voice, but it was a clear sense that God wants me to. I want you to learn how to help people who are struggling with addiction. And I immediately knew that meant my people conservative Anabaptists and that it meant a sexual addiction. And so you know, I would listen six, eight hours of audio per day while I was driving, and I was just trying to figure out what this looks like. My constant question was will this help my people? And so there was a lot of. You know, brain science is a big deal in sexual addiction recovery. And my question is always will this help my people or will this be something that is theory, that doesn't really make a difference?
Arthur Nisly:Fast forward to where do I learn? Where do I take training? Where do I get the step to dive in and start? And so I took some training and before I took the training, I sent the guy an email and said would you be willing to teach me? I don't have a significant sexual addiction story. And he said, sure, you can take the training, but I don't think anybody will listen to you. And I said, okay, that's fine, but I feel like God is calling me and I'm willing to take that risk. And so that's what I did, and basically he taught me about the technology he uses and how he goes about doing it. He didn't help me very much with a curriculum, and so I, but it felt safe.
Arthur Nisly:I said, if people come to me, it's going to be slow and I'll just keep working part-time for my brothers. And yeah, that's what I thought would happen. But the first person came to me via email and said, arthur, would you walk with me? That was 2019. And then I got busier and busier. Word got around. I think it was a God thing. And then in 20, june, the 29th 2021, was my last day of work for my brothers.
Arthur Nisly:So then on, I knew I could tell that I was going to have enough people that really wanted help, that I was going to be able to do this full time. I took the way of doing this for profit because I didn't think. I said why would we create a non-profit if we don't know if this is going to fly? And I've been amazed at the way that people are coming to me. This month of February, 10 different people went to the website and filled out the form and said can you help me? What's your website? Hopejourneyguidecom. Hopejourneyguidecom.
Arthur Nisly:Okay, so it doesn't take very long. I have two different sides of the of the website. One is I want to help other people and the other is I need help for myself, and I'll talk about that later. But but I have just been blown away with the, with the number of people who are just this looks like a safe place. It's not my home community, or maybe it's because I don't know anybody in my home community that I can trust, and so they contact me and we have that free discovery call and then we figure out if this is something that they want to do. Sadly, there's a bunch of people they have to wait. I'm so busy that they have to wait a couple of months, but I've hired a man to help me with keeping the people busy doing valuable things during the months that they're waiting for me, and so I'm really excited about that. And that sounded like a long bio.
Zack Johnson:But anyway. No, it's your story. That sounds like a long bio, but anyway.
Arthur Nisly:No, it's your story, it's my story, and I don't think of myself as a business administrator, but I'm having to learn how do you do this? Yesterday I was talking with I call him my mutual mentor, we spend time together once a month, and he just said Arthur, we have got to figure out a way to scale this so that we can have other people doing what you're doing, because if you do the math, we need dozens of people doing what I'm doing. I also train people. I teach them what I'm learning. Twice a year, two groups of 10. Twice a year, two groups of 10. And they two Monday evenings a month on Zoom. We talk, I teach them what I know, what I've learned, we discuss things.
Arthur Nisly:These men become friends, and so I guess it was last year, in March of last year, I was feeling this I've got to have a way to get people to help me. Most people expect to help people face-to-face, local, but we need more people. We need more people. We need more people to not just do local, and so the vast majority of the people will be talking, helping people locally in their local church or face-to-face encounters. But the need is so huge for people to tell people from a distance, and so I'm having people sit in on my sessions, these people who've gone through the mentor training I call them prayer partners. They sit in on my sessions and I tell them and they learn about what I do, and it takes it from theory to practice. And so we've been doing that for almost a year and I have like 10 men that are sitting in on my sessions.
Arthur Nisly:But we still haven't mastered this last step, to go from sitting in on sessions to daring to do what I'm doing. And we have some ideas. We're praying about this. I think we're going to be figuring something out, but that's where we're at right now. I love what I'm doing because God has given me an audience. Some men are really stuck, but not near all of them. Some of them are struggling less frequently and I get to work with them and to figure out what's going on, what's triggering them, and so I'm practicing, I'm learning with them and I've become very confident about what the primary triggers are. And so I'm practicing, I'm learning with them and I've become very confident about what the primary triggers are of the kinds of people that come to me.
Zack Johnson:So I'm really excited about that and the people that want to help others are going to be talking to people like that. Yeah, it's hard for me to keep track of all the questions I have for you. You mentioned a couple of things in your story that I want to touch in on and maybe I'll just ask some quick rapid fire questions. What are the general ages of people you're working with? Is it Good?
Arthur Nisly:question. I'm going to guess that 25 to 35 is the biggest group. I have a little bit more married men than single men. I thought it would be the other way around, but I'm going to guess. I have a couple 45-year-old men and lower 20s, but the middle I think. I'm guessing that 25 to 35 would catch over half the people that.
Zack Johnson:I work with, so it's sort of the concentrated ages young adult yes.
Arthur Nisly:It's either people who would like to get married but don't feel comfortable getting getting married, taking this into their marriage, or the people who are married and it marriage didn't fix it like they thought it would, and so it can be either way.
Zack Johnson:And then, how do you? How do you you find? Do you market your business? Do people find you? Is it word of mouth? What's the mechanism?
Arthur Nisly:There's people who write me these emails and say we can make your website more visible, but there's no reason to do that, because people I have more people than what I can help right now and how do they find you?
Arthur Nisly:I've gotten to speak in several public, big public events and, uh, and it's just word of mouth, I, I don't understand. It's a god thing, I'm convinced. But people go to the website and then there's this free discovery call. Okay, I have a couple of testimonies there of people who talk about their relationship and working with me and, yeah, I start working with two new people a month. That needs to change, but that's where I'm at, and so if I have 10 people, if I do discovery calls with 10 people, and probably 75 of the people say this is what I want to do, there's no sense in waiting. They're willing to wait, even though they have to wait a couple of months. They just say I'm ready to do this. They're frustrated because they can't get on top of it themselves.
Zack Johnson:Right, and then maybe I'll just ask a little bit about. This is a fascinating topic, but what's your method? What do you talk about? What have your method? What do you talk about? What have you found? I'm guessing you train other people. What do you train them to do? What does it typically look like?
Arthur Nisly:In December of 2021, I found the Freedom Fight. Fight. It's a series of 64 videos five to seven minute videos that people watch if they're married and if they're not single. It's four, six lessons. I feel like it's the best thing I've found for people like us Good stuff, bible-based, and so I'm confident I have them doing that. I use a coaching software where I can assign homework assignments and I see their checking in forms, I see their crash reports, and so before each session, I just kind of go through stuff and I see where they're at.
Arthur Nisly:But my current philosophy is that I'm using the coach account. I'm using the Freedom Fight to cover basic teachings. They do a better job than what I could and my current philosophy is I'm going to follow the theme of emotional pain, the things that trigger them. I'm going to follow that, we're going to talk about that and we're going to teach them how to go to God with this stuff that is overwhelming to them. This stuff that is overwhelming to them, and men, frankly, are relieved to hear that someone believes that they don't want to do these things. They're used to having someone say you just need to try harder, you need to pray more good stuff, but it's not working for them.
Arthur Nisly:And so when I say my experience is that way over half of the triggers for the men that I work with is emotional stuff, and so my goal is to help them learn how to go from overwhelm, rejection, loneliness, whatever it is. I help them go from there to where is God in all this? What does God want me to know? How am I supposed to handle this? And I say your problem is not that you want to be known. Your problem is that you are immature and you haven't yet learned that skill, that skill of knowing how to diffuse those painful emotions. They haven't yet learned how to go to God and say God, where are you? What do you want me to do? What do you want me to know? So that's the skill I teach them. And the exciting thing is that when I can help someone deal with their emotional junk, the intensity of their sexual struggles drops dramatically when you can help someone deal with their emotional junk, the intensity of their sexual struggles decreases dramatically.
Zack Johnson:Yes, I very confidently say that give me some examples of emotional junk so I can wrap my mind. I am taking some guesses, but yeah, a big one is overwhelm.
Arthur Nisly:The other thing that I teach is that there can be multiple things that build on top of each other.
Arthur Nisly:So if you have had a fight with your wife, finances aren't well, you feel like you can't keep up, like other people are expecting you to do stuff. Just, there can be lots of different stuff that build on top of each other and all of a sudden, this person goes from I'm handling life okay to just kind of gasping and saying get me out of here. And my experience is that people very, very consistently, because of past history, because sexual release is pleasurable, because we have an enemy I don't understand all the reasons, but it just feels like it's a natural thing that when I'm overwhelmed, when I can't handle it, when I feel like I'm not good enough, I'm bored. People have gotten used to the dopamine rush of sexual release and then, all of a sudden, I'm teaching them to stop and all of a sudden, life is boring, and so that's another one that some of my guys are dealing with. Yeah, so those are some of the ones that I think of right off the top.
Zack Johnson:That makes sense. And then my string of questions might seem a little bit unrelated here, but you deal mostly with men and not women. And how do you defer women to somebody else? How do you think about that?
Arthur Nisly:I work only with men, but this is my chance. I'll just say that sexual addiction among women is a bigger issue than what we have thought, and the women who are trapped feel shame, additional shame, because women aren't supposed to have this problem. And so this is my opportunity to say women who struggle they're not weird, they're human and we need to help them. On my website, under the resources section, I have a list of women that are willing to talk to betrayed spouses Great, and I wish I had a list of men, but I don't. I'm still. I don't know who to refer people to when I'm when You're over capacity, I'm over capacity.
Zack Johnson:And so, and then I want to ask you something about. In your story I think I caught understood right that a lot of people look outside their own community for help and as opposed to within their own community, and so do you see the relationship that as a benefit, to be removed from somebody's other circles of relationships, or is that? Is that not a benefit when you're trying to help somebody that wants to overcome their addiction?
Arthur Nisly:Well, my first comment is that men who are struggling, sensitive men who are struggling, will go to their church leaders, and the church leaders do the best they can, but they don't know what to do, and the tendency is to heap on shame.
Arthur Nisly:And if you heap on shame, other people learn it's not safe to get real, and so there are people who just say it's not safe. I can't think of anybody that I could talk to and so they. I think my model I'm kind of shifting, but I think my model is better because I don't take them out of their current environment. There's other residential programs that I think are probably the best thing for men who have to have high walls around them and to not be able to be naughty. But the men that come to me almost all of them are able to make significant progress and they're glad to be able to talk to someone, and they're always checking me out after their first big crash. They're watching me to see if I'm going to be judgmental, if I'm going to be helpful, if I'm going to help them get back up again, or whether I will shame them like everyone else has. And so I lost your question.
Zack Johnson:Where were we? It was more about the benefit of being outside community versus inside community, and what I'm going to get at with that is if you're over capacity, is it a benefit for communities to train up their own people, and then should they be aiming outside of their own? Should it be community to community or within community?
Arthur Nisly:No, my stated goal is that in every conservative Anabaptist church there be, everybody knows that if you're struggling with this, that Jack is the person that you talk to in our church and that people will say I'm so glad he's talking to Jack. That's what I want. And, and just to just for the record, when men come to me within two or three months, I want them to start to have someone that they can talk to, someone that they can. They can, uh, when I'm struggling, they need to have someone local that they can talk to, because I can't for 20 people I can't say call me anytime, day or night. Yeah, I can't do that.
Zack Johnson:So your goal is to train up local, Absolutely Local helpers for local people.
Arthur Nisly:And most of the 35 men that I've trained are doing that local Great.
Zack Johnson:And then I want to talk a couple of questions. In your story you had that moment where you approached the person doing the training and you said I don't have this in my past and they said people aren't going to listen to you. I'm guessing. What's been your experience with that?
Arthur Nisly:Is it true to you? I'm guessing what's been your experience with that? My experience is the exact opposite that people assume that if you don't have a story, you want to stay away. But God has given me a heart and whenever I see somebody for the first time, I talk to them on the phone, because face-to-face Zoom is scary. But whenever I see somebody the first time, I just I can just see who they're going to be once they're free and I'm just so. I get so excited because I can. I can see.
Arthur Nisly:I feel like a granddad because I have these men who are getting married and they're at a good place, they're useful in their local churches, and so my goal is to have men the men that I train for them to lead out in their local churches, making it safe to give help. And my premise is that if men, if we have a basic framework that helps us to understand why people act out in the first place, that we can walk with them and we can help them. And it's the people that are harsh, are the people who don't know what to do, the people who are harsh just think well, he's still struggling. I've told him to pray more, I've told him this and it's just kind of this feeling of well. I just heard a story recently of someone who, when the church leaders found out that he had some level of struggle, he's on their radar now and they are saying before communion, you need to disclose how well you're doing so we know whether to let you partake of communion.
Zack Johnson:That's the wrong way of using communion doing so we know whether to let you partake of communion. That's the wrong way of using communion. Um, so coach me, coach me through that. Let's say that I'm in a men's small group like a, a normal, regular, um men's group that meets and somebody confesses as a sexual sin. Let's say to four people what, what do the other? What should the other men do in that group, on the spot that somebody confesses because I've. This is a really real, a really real scenario where I think there's like a there's a little bit of awkwardness to know, do it? Do I pray for healing? Do I say something? Do I say nothing? Do I give them a hug? Uh, do I avoid it? What? Do I bring it up in communion? Do I pull them aside and say make sure to solve this before taking in the part of the lord's supper? Yeah, there's all sorts of interesting dynamics. So what, what would you say to people who experience this but don't really know how to interact or have okay?
Arthur Nisly:so the question is um a group of four or five people who are meeting locally and one of them discloses I had a bad crash, yeah I either one way or another.
Zack Johnson:I I sin sexually, okay, um, let's say either in pornography and the things associated with pornography. And, yeah, what's the steps there?
Arthur Nisly:The most helpful thing that we can do is to understand where it's coming from. My basic premise, and here again, you have to understand the people that come to me are people who are broken, who are distraught, who are saying I hate this, this is not what I want to do, so I'm I'm not. I'm not saying that what my position is is for everybody, but because there are people who are sneaky and who like their lifestyle and don't want to change. So I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about men who are deeply grieved about what they're doing. They don't want to do this and they want to stop, but they feel powerless to stop. To those people, I think the biggest thing that we can do is to believe that they have good intentions and to join them in being curious about what's going on. And so I do two things.
Arthur Nisly:When someone is crashing pretty regularly where did it happen? Where did it happen? How are you feeling at the time? And we're trying to come up with practical things that they can do to stop the behavior. But I'm not like a lot of people who say praise, the Lord Jack is living in victory for three months now. That's not where I'm at. I say we live in victory.
Arthur Nisly:We don't do that stuff so that we can get underneath to what's really going on. If you think about it, the man who gets drunk is covering up stuff. His wife screamed at him, he lost his job or whatever, and so life is overwhelming and he gets drunk. And so if we can help him to not get drunk, what's going to happen? The stuff underneath is going to come bubbling to the surface and we'll be able to look at it, to work with it, and so my model is the big reason to stop the behavior. It's sin, so we stop the behavior. But it's not just that's our final destination. It's to help us get underneath and to understand what are the driving things underneath that are driving it.
Zack Johnson:So it's dig, dig into the person's life a little is right, but.
Arthur Nisly:But we're going to be able to get there if we can help them stop the behavior, and so I do practical things to help them stop, and then we do. The second thing we do is to help them identify what's going on inside and why they feel those things. A lot of men are not very emotionally aware, and so I get to walk with them, I model that for them, and then the third step is to teach them how to. I call it two-part journaling. Often it's a letter to God I'm feeling this. I'm feeling this. This is why I'm feeling it.
Arthur Nisly:So where are you, god? What am I supposed to do with this? What is the godly way to handle this? And learning to connect with God and to get his perspective is going to calm me down in significant ways. Plus, they learn to have a personal relationship with God, and that excites me. So I get to help people. Way over half of the men that I work with experience really significant victory with. They no longer go there because they know that it's not so much that I'm a bad person, it's just that I didn't know how to find freedom, and then they develop that relationship with God. That's what I get to see.
Zack Johnson:That's what excites me. I guess you, from what I understand, you view or I think I agree with this that people aren't. It's hard to talk about this stuff. When you talk about it, you are nervous, you're afraid.
Arthur Nisly:But I'm not nervous anymore.
Zack Johnson:But so how do you, what are some of these barriers that people have to approach you, to approach anybody, and how do you overcome some of these inhibitors to talking about this?
Arthur Nisly:See, I have the blessing of having done this for a couple of years with a lot of people and I very confidently can tell them with a lot of people and I very confidently can tell them. I often tell guys early on. I say I don't think your problem is that you have too many sexual hormones. Your problem is that you haven't yet learned how to go from emotional overwhelm to calming yourself down. So when men hear that it gives them hope I'm not this wicked person, it's just that I haven't learned that skill and they have hope they say, oh, it's a game changer to understand, because before this they are asking themselves questions why do I do the things that I hate? That's a big question.
Arthur Nisly:I claim to love God and I'm sure I'm never going to do it again, but then I did it again and their self-confidence and their understanding of what's going on just goes out the window. They just I don't know what's going on. And so I think people when they do a first crash report, they're kind of checking me out to see if I'm going to beat up on them or if we're going to dance around this. If someone tells me I kind of messed up, I say I don't know what that means. I want to know what you did, how long you did it, how soon you got up afterwards and they just know that and we very quickly can get past the shame and we diagnose what's going on and we'll try whatever to be able to help them. So I don't know what it's like to feel shame. When they understand that I'm glad to be with them and that I'm not putting them in a box, their way of looking at it changes and they're glad to be with me even though they have a crash report.
Zack Johnson:And you have a. I'm guessing you've seen transformation in positive testimonies. Yeah, lots, there's hope.
Arthur Nisly:Yeah, there's lots of hope. Just yesterday I had a man. We had my last meeting with him. He's going to get married before too long and he and I agreed together you're good to go. It doesn't mean that I know you'll never crash again, but you have the skills, you have the understanding and you're going to be able to keep growing, because that's what it is. You keep growing. If you had a crash because of this, okay.
Arthur Nisly:So we learn, we grow, we close that door, we're more careful to stop the behavior, but we're also looking at what's underneath and what's causing this, and I'm just really excited about the chance I have to work with men consistently. We're discovering that dealing with the emotional issues brings the level of sexual temptation back to a manageable place where people can get. Sure, if there's provocative content, sure, I'm going to be drawn there, but I can think clearly. I say clear thinking. Arthur can say why would I do that? That doesn't help me to get to where I want to go. No, thank you. That's where we that's the kind of men that I help create.
Zack Johnson:Amen, and then there's going to be switching gears a little bit, and you mentioned something about the decision between nonprofit and for-profit. Do you have a business model that allows you to support yourself to do this work? Yes, I charge a monthly fee For the people talking to you. Yes, all right. Yes, tell me about it. I haven't heard about people paying a monthly fee and I'm really intrigued by this.
Arthur Nisly:Well see I get to say that I am proving that Anabaptists will pay somebody if they think they can help them, and I'm proving that this is a business model that really does work. So I charge a monthly fee for the weekly meeting and I charge a monthly fee for the weekly meeting and I charge a monthly fee for the twice a month and then downgrading to once a month before they graduate. Right now I'm working hard to improve the mentor training and I'm working with men who are prayer partners. So I'm doing things that I didn't used to do and the finances are tight. I have a lot of software as a service expenses, I Zoom, and many, many others that I use, tools that I use. I think this is a model. I'm really excited about it Because I can train men and they can watch me for a while and then either my dream is them working for me or one of the men that I trained is in the process of starting up um.
Arthur Nisly:He made the decision that, because of his people group his, his people is probably going to be better for him to to do uh, do it on his own um, but it really is important for men to have skin in the game. I. Other people may disagree with me, but for me to offer somebody this isn't going to cost you anything. I think it's wrong. I think it keeps the relationship transparent when he's paying and it's enough that he's going to think twice about just letting this drag on and on.
Zack Johnson:And for people I guess for people considering that it might be intrigued by this as a way to make a living do you think there's room for the I hate to say that industry it's not an industry, but is there room for more people to make careers out of this?
Arthur Nisly:I'm convinced it is. That's why I said we need a dozen people doing what I'm doing. The model that I would really like to see is that men take the training and maybe in their 50s or 60s, when they have learned a lot, that they be able to offer to mentor, like this, and see where it goes. What I did was I quit. I went from four days a week to three days to two days and then I quit. I don't think of it as a business, but that's what it is. It's a way that I can pay my expenses and I am. It's more than once a week, a couple times a week, that I go out to the kitchen and I tell I work from home. I tell my wife you can't believe what I just saw happen and I get these opportunities to see people having a live encounter with God and having these aha moments and it's wonderful. I love what I'm doing.
Zack Johnson:I get to see people change and yeah, yeah, Well, I guess if you had you explained your website that there's a place to go if you want to help people, a place to go for people who need help, would you have any sort of general next actions for those two categories of people to share with on you, sure?
Arthur Nisly:Yeah, if you want to get help for yourself, just there's the two categories and then click on free discovery call. Listen to the couple testimonies there. I think it's four different men who share their testimony about life transformation and then there's a schedule, a free discovery call, and so they'll do that. We'll get the email, we'll reach out to them, I'll give them a scheduling link and they can look at the options and they can schedule a time to talk to me. It's 45 minutes and they tell me their story and I tell them whether I think I can help them and then they get to decide.
Arthur Nisly:I don't have any problem with people saying I want to talk to my wife, I'll get back to you. That's perfectly fine, because they know what I offer. They know how long they're going to have to wait. So that's that part, yep. The other is help others. That's that part of the website. That's that part of the website. Very quickly you'll get to a link that describes in detail what I offer. And, just for the record, I am the May group. I have seven people out of the ten. As soon as I expect, before the end of this month, there's another publicity event the end of this month. I'm afraid that it's going to fill up and then I'll have a group in September. But basically there on that, I describe everything. If you want to ask questions, you could reach out to me and I'd answer your questions. But those are the next steps.
Zack Johnson:Okay, great, and then I'll leave it with some open-ended questions here. But do you have anything else you would like to talk about or share, about your burden for God's people or your vision for the future, or anything at all?
Arthur Nisly:vision for the future or anything at all. I think about Ezekiel 37 and the word picture of dry bones and how those dry bones become a mighty army. I think there's a lot of people sitting in church who aren't very active in their openness to doing, to working, to accepting opportunities for ministry. All that stuff changes and my dream is to see dry bones become a mighty army, and I don't know of any church that says we have too many people in ministry, we don't know what to do with you. Please just sit on the bench. I don't know of any church like that. We all have lots of things that more people could be doing, and so my dream, my vision, is I need to tell you this story I used to be a missionary and that was just everything. That was everything that I did.
Zack Johnson:I feel like I need another podcast just to ask about El Salvador. But maybe another time, maybe another time. Yeah, here I am.
Arthur Nisly:I've come back to the States, I've left my people. I felt like my wife and my giftings, that was just perfect. And my giftings, that was just perfect. And so here I was in the States a couple of years and I was double-guessing myself because a church in Pennsylvania asked me to speak on mission, and so I was thinking through all that stuff I was preparing for that, and I'm just kind of feeling like, did I really hear God right about staying here in the States and helping men heal? And right after that, before I actually went to the missions conference, I had one of the men that I was working with, say Arthur. I contacted the mission organization. I wanted to do it before, but I knew that I was in no shape to be able to offer myself. But now that I'm doing well, my wife and I are going to go to the mission field and that was just a confirmation to me that God is calling me. I'm still a missionary, but God is calling me to prepare men that are dry bones to become a mighty army.
Zack Johnson:And then the other thing you mentioned, this goal of having one person in every church. At least one person in every church is there is a funny word, that question is there a title or something that you use in your mind for that person? Uh, like a, a certified addictions counselor, or what's the what's the goal?
Arthur Nisly:if you could state it one more time Well, it's for us to go as a people, to go from sweeping it under the rug, ignoring the issue, or making people do public confessions, hoping that it will shame them enough that they'll stop.
Arthur Nisly:It doesn't shame people enough, because this is a deeper issue. But everybody learns that in this church it's not safe to get help. So I don't know what the right name is. I don't know what the right name is, but it's somebody that my guys, as they get ready, as we're starting to talk about them graduating, I say I want you to one of these next Sundays after church, when you're in a conversation with somebody, just drop this bombshell, just say you know, I'm really glad that I'm not struggling with pornography like I used to, and I warned them there's going to be a dead silence and then you're going to say, oh, why did I do what Arthur told me to do? And then the conversation resumes. But very consistently, people will come to you afterwards and say, uh, tell me some more, I want help because you're planning the seats for somebody else.
Arthur Nisly:Yeah, to grab on that might be dealing with it and and one of the things that I tell the men that I'm, that I'm mentoring is you need to, uh, you need to help other people get free. That's part of your protection to keep to, to not get sucked back into the old ways of living great.
Zack Johnson:Well, we are just about approaching the the time limit when our audience loses their concentration and signs off here. But, arthur, thank you so much for joining us today. And then we have a conference tomorrow at Sattler. It's called Therefore Go and we're actually a student arranged a lot of the conference this year for their capstone. And what will you be talking about tomorrow at the conference?
Arthur Nisly:I'll be talking about equipping communities to help people who experience sexual addiction.
Zack Johnson:Amen, and it's part of the commission, it is. It's part of discipleship, that's right. Yeah Well, thank you so much. And if you're a Sattler person, go to our website. I'll tell you what to do there at Sattler. Sounds good. And then your website one more time Hopejourneyguidecom. Hopejourneyguidecom. Hopejourneyguidecom. You can find out more about your work there. That's right, all right, thank you so much, arthur. God bless you.
Arthur Nisly:I'm glad to be with you yeah.
Zack Johnson:1.