08.08.21 — Ben Debayle Interview Reflection
Reflection over interview with Ben Debayle — Managing Director at The Surge Project
After a previous interview with Michael Kurt this past Spring, I was connected to Ben. Michael and Ben became friends from their time at Texas A&M together. Both have found incredible success in different arenas of life, and both have continued to find a way to be a part of one another’s walks as well.
Ben Debayle is the current Managing Director at the Surge Project, a non-profit organization that sends trained local pastors to plant self-replicating, spirit-filled churches across the world. He graduated from the Mays Business School in 2010 with a degree in Finance, and has had a wide array of professional experiences in his life. Ben is married, with two daughters.
I decided to take a day trip to the Dallas/Fort Worth area so that I could sit down in-person with Ben. We went to a little restaurant in Keller called Seven Mile Café. I knew I was in for a wild ride when he ordered the vegan migas (kidding, kind of).
How did God lead you here and how did you learn to discern His will along the way?
Ben came from a Christian home. Over the course of his childhood, his love and devotion to God increased dramatically. He was always known as a spiritual leader amongst his friends. With this trajectory set in his early years, he planned on attending Bible school after graduating from high school. But ultimately, he didn’t have peace in his spirit about it. So instead of going down the vocational ministry route, he decided to go to Texas A&M instead.
This is, in essence, Ben’s decision-making model in life: “Is there peace in my spirit here?” He told me that “God’s will for our lives is not some big revelation. If you know the destination, then it’s not faith.” He cited the story of Abraham in the Bible as an example. In Genesis 12:1, the Lord says to him, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show.” God didn’t give him a specific destination or end point, but rather a task to follow blindly. Ben calls these tasks, “assignments.” He told me that God gives assignments for certain seasons. His only responsibility is to be at peace with and trust the places that God has him right now. When he trusted God with his assignments, he was able to wait until he sensed the grace of the season had gone, and then he pivoted. This is how Ben determined when it was time to move on to another opportunity in life. He was constantly asking, “What’s my next assignment?”
Early on in his life, Ben made the decision that he was going to take the risks that his friends would not. This was fueled by his entrepreneurial spirit. He loved being a part of businesses being built, being on the ground floor with different start-up teams. His inclination to take risks is clearly shown in the wide variety of experiences that he has had. While his friends were more focused on building their careers, Ben was focused on developing a skillset and relationships. The consequence of this was that at face value, it looked like his friends were finding monumental success while he was barely scraping by. His friends were starting out of college with $70k, $80k, $90k salaries. His first job out of college was with a brand-new real estate office, and since his salary was purely commissioned-based, he walked out of that first year having made $8k. But overtime, these entrepreneurial pursuits of his put him on the path to where he is now.
Today, he has a position at a company that he would not be qualified for if he hadn’t had the skills and relationships he had collected along his journey. When comparing the path he had found himself on verses his friends, he gave me the illustration of a graph with two curves: 1 with an exponential growth (his career) and 1 with a linear growth (his friend’s careers). “An overnight success is 30 years in the making,” Ben told me. He is where he is today because of all the struggles and difficulties that he went through previously. He simply followed the peace, even when it was contrary to his logic and reason. No assignment he found himself in was ultimate, but he was present and devoted 110% of himself to each one. He remained a good steward of the opportunities in front of him, and God continued to give him more as a result.
How well have you balanced the demands of work, family and faith? What would you have done differently? What did your relationship with God look like in the workplace?
Ben told me that he is a “very high drive person.” He viewed this ultimately as a weakness, not a strength. When he gets stressed and in a hurry, he gets into trouble. That’s when his priorities get all out of whack. This was something that he had to become increasingly more conscious of over time, or else his relationship with his wife, children, or the Lord would become tense.
“It’s all about the pace in which you move forward,” Ben told me. He recommended that I observe the pace of life that Godly men and women have taken over the entirety of their existence. If you are only walking, you won’t progress and grow at the speed you are capable of. But, if you are constantly sprinting, you’ll burn out. One must also be able to know when to utilize rest in their life. With this in mind, Ben told me that he has realized that his priorities remain in order when he paces at a “determined, fast, brisk walk” through life. In this way, he is able to live in a sense of divine rest so that he can best honor his commitments to his faith, family, and work.
Ben recommended that I read the book “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” by John Mark Comer.
Tell me about the Surge Project. What is the problem you are seeking to solve, and how do you solve it? What is your heart behind this organization? What is your specific role within the company?
The Surge Project was founded by Larry Stockstill, who was the Lead Pastor of Bethany Church. He is a very missions-minded individual with a strong conviction for providing local churches for all of God’s people across the world. The Surge Project uses the New Missions model to train local peoples of nations overseas to plant a church in their own communities. After they plant the church, they continue to check in on its health over the course of the next year. Although they don’t have a 100% success rate, Ben told me that they use the “fruit-bearing approach.” They gauge the success of the plant on whether or not it is thriving over time. Ben’s current assignment there is to scale Surge globally through his focus on their operations.
This was the point in the conversation that I told him of my involvement as a Sales Intern with Vanderbloemen, a company that helps Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring and succession planning services. We were both able to acknowledge that Vanderbloemen solves a need in this country, but Ben was sad that this was a problem that even existed. The philosophy held by the Surge Project is that ministry within in the local church is best done when sons and daughters within the body are raised up into leadership to continue the congregation’s work. When this happens, the leadership within a church remains a culture and DNA-fit to the body and their unique needs. I thought back to my time with Vanderbloemen and had to agree — often times the churches who had the most successful transition in leadership with candidates that we placed were previously members of their congregation. And it’s no wonder! They knew the ins and outs of the church and its people in a way that no one else who was moving from a different community ever could. This is something that I will continue to have to chew on and see how this principle holds in the corporate sector of our country.
A Personal Note to Ben:
Ben, thank you for giving up your valuable time to allow me to pick your brain on some of the harder questions in life. I really enjoyed our time together. Just from our brief interaction, I can tell that you are a man who is madly in love with the Lord. I wish I could fully express the weight that your words had on me, so I hope that this reflection begins to show you a fraction of your impact. I appreciate the way that you not only spoke about your own life and experiences, but you asked me about my own and you listened intently. I left feeling very encouraged after our interaction. I look forward to continuing these conversations as our relationship continues to grow and develop over time. God bless you and your family, Ben!
Until next time,
Gray Beasley