No Veteran Left Behind: How Churches Can Restore Hope, Healing and Purpose - Ricky Bonczek

Thank you. Ricky Bonchek retired from the Marine Corps in 2016. He is currently the Veterans Outreach Coordinator for NRB's Veterans for Christ Ministry, where they are currently working to help every church in America start a Veterans Outreach Ministry while providing a support system churches can look to for resources to help heal their veterans. How commendable. Having watched his friend die from alcohol dependency just a month after his retirement, he has seen firsthand the need for something more than the VA or sending vets on trips for them to heal. They joined the service for a reason. Many times that reason is for nothing more than to serve a greater purpose. And when they get out, many lose that purpose. NRB wants to help reestablish their purpose. This is the Countercultural Mom Show. I'm Tina Griffin. Let's celebrate Veterans Day together with Ricky Bonchek, Veterans Outreach Coordinator for NRB. How are you doing? I remember when I met you two years ago, and I'm like, it's this guy. Rock on. How are you doing, Ricky? Thank you for jumping on the program. I'm doing good. It's been a couple of years. I think it was Dallas before convention started. It was it was before I even started kicking this thing off. So it's great to see you again. Absolutely. I remember our quick chit chat in the hallway. It was a really nice meeting. I think it was like for 15, 20 seconds. We talked. You gave me your info and I said, we've got to do this. So thank you for jumping in the mix. I'm sorry. It took a while. No, it's good. It's good. I appreciate you having me on and looking at that picture is, I have since then lost a couple pounds. I was just going to say, I have to bring it up again. You look really good. You were phenomenal then, but you look fantastic today. So you must be running around America helping veterans and it just kept falling off. What did you do? I've been trying to. So long story short, I got broken throughout the Marine Corps and it's taken me a long time to try to recover. And this is one of the ways that, you know, finally I've got to the point where I'm out of pain. I'm able to actually do stuff and I've started to shed some weight. So I'm trying to get back into, you know, the Marine Corps size again. Well, you look great. You seriously do. You look like a massive warrior, but I also thought you were a warrior when we met at NRB. You were a man on a mission. We did a quick exchange and I'm like, that guy is a real deal. He's coming on. Obviously, you care about vets. Tell me about your history of being in the Marine Corps and how did you get connected with NRB to do this branch for Veterans for Christ? I think that is so cool. Yeah, so I was in the Marine Corps. I retired in 2016. I was a helicopter mechanic. I really, really loved turning wrenches. I love what I did. Unfortunately for me, I got to the point where I really couldn't function. I was walking around with a cane. I was on a ton of pills. I walked with a cane for a year and a half. Um, I was on, I was on all the pills that you can think of. It's, uh, it took nine years to get off everything. Why were you on pills? Did something happen where you needed pain meds and then it became an addiction or just, it was mandatory. You take them. Well, it wasn't an addiction. It was a pain management thing. I've got, Oh, it's yeah. So I've got compressed Press, bulging, and herniated disc throughout my entire spine. Yeah, I've got nerve damage in both my arms, my right leg, both my labrums on my hips are torn, I've got bad feet and a bad tailbone. So the food is medicine or food is poison. And prior to knowing that, I was eating too many foods that were inflammatories. And what ended up happening is that pain would just radiate throughout my body. And surprisingly enough, I ended up kicking Kicking off all of the bad drugs by cutting caffeine. That is absolutely phenomenal. Were all of those things that happened to you with your body, what you just rattled off that list of 10, did that happen while you're serving the country? It did. It did. I always joked that I was on a broken torque waiver because, you know, the military, they always have, you can get in for this, you can get in. There's all sorts of different waivers. And I always used to joke that I'm really strong. So I was good at picking up heavy things. I was good at breaking torques. And as a young, dumb kid that was strong, I was really good at doing that. And I think over 16 years, I ended up just breaking my body to the point where I just... I wasn't physically able to do it anymore. Man, oh man. Well, you are a man on a mission today coming out of the Marine Corps in 2016. The last, what now, over a decade, you've been pounding the pavement helping vets. How did you get connected with NRB? And I love the National Religious Broadcasters event. I've been going, I think, for a decade. Everybody out there are real people, major connections. But how did you get connected with NRB to then create this new branch for vets? That's phenomenal. Yeah. So there was there was a transition period. I kind of got into government contracting. So I was out. I was I was it was part of God's plan prior to me even knowing that it was God's plan. I was I was talking to foreign dignitaries. I was talking to generals and I was talking to CEOs that ended up kind of fizzling out. Our first customer got kicked out of the country for funding the money to terrorism at the time. Jeez. Um, we basically, what ended up happening is I shut down the business. I became a stay at home dad for a while. Um, my, my wife came on board with NRB and Troy Miller, the CEO, um, was talking with my wife. I volunteer with a, another organization that helps veterans, um, in fishing. So he, he asked, Hey, would he be interested in, in helping out in the ministry that I'm thinking of? And she's like, give him a call at, ask him. So we met for lunch and he kind of, he laid out his vision. And it was very much a Peter Parker, Uncle Ben discussion. With great power comes great responsibility. Yes. And I always kind of use this joke because I'm talking with Troy. He's a Navy vet himself. And he saw the problem. And he's like, listen, NRBs, we have a lot of resources at our fingertips. And if we're not doing more. good than what we're already doing? What's the point of having all this anyways? Yeah. So two years ago, I came on board to help Troy bring his vision to light. I absolutely love that. Plus the whole connection of you being a part of NRB and doing what you do for helping vets, which we're going to talk about here in a minute. All the connections through NRB is such a phenomenal thing to have at your fingertips because all of the people that you can meet at NRB and through NRB, either through the outreach that they have, the different events, the actual year conference, you have the newsletter, so many different ways that everybody that can hear about what you're doing for vets through NRB because that can then broadcast it to the globe. I mean, it's such a phenomenal idea. Just to give everybody a little background here, you're currently building the infrastructure for this outreach program. You work on everything from building relationships with partnering churches to 501c3s, all to help provide care for veterans. So tell me more about NRB and why you're getting involved with the veterans through that aspect. Yeah, so we've coined it the Veterans Ministry Initiative. We have initiative partners. Thank Our first partner that we initially started off with was Preston. And when they're really our, um, Our model program, Pastor Graham and Troy are really good friends, and Troy was kind of mentioning it to him, and he's like, hey, this is what I want to do. And Pastor Graham was like, we've already got that started. you. Why don't you come down and take a look? So we took a look. We saw the luncheons that they provide. We showed up on a Tuesday, and there's close to 400 veterans in there. That's so cool. Where were you located? Where did this happen? So, so this is Dallas, uh, Dallas, Texas, Prestonwood Baptist, um, down there. Uh, so they were, they were one of our initial partners, uh, and then that ended up rolling into first Baptist Dallas. And then from there we have Coral Ridge. That's over in Fort Lauderdale. Um, they recently, they just had their appreciation lunch. Um, just a couple, I think last week. Um. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West was their keynote speaker there, a really, really great event, what all of three of these churches are doing. And really the goal behind this initially is to help mitigate veteran suicide. That is so commendable. Do you know the rates? I know it's pretty skyrocket and it just is harrowing. We did talk about veterans in the past, different series on the program. There are so many vets that land up dead because of suicide, which you can talk on, and homeless on the street. And that to me, both are just. It's disgusting to me. This should not be happening. Like it makes my blood boil. Explain to me, do you know the stats of how many vets end up homeless? How many vets end up committing suicide because of, I'm assuming PTSD, loneliness, lack of vision, lack of purpose, being alone once they come back home? Fill us in a little bit on that. Yes, right there's a multitude of topics within each one of those topics. The veteran suicide, we always hear the 22 a day. The VA did a study, and it's closer to 17. But unfortunately, now once we start to incorporate alcoholism, we start to incorporate substance abuse, we start to incorporate the other things that our veteran corps is doing to themselves to go ahead and just try to cope with the pain that they have going on, whether it's post-traumatic stress, whether it's TBIs, the traumatic brain injury, a lot of times they go hand in hand with the PTS. Yes. Um, And so once we go and take those numbers, it's upwards of 44 a day. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. We all know how critical sleep is, yet I've had major sleep issues for years. I just discovered WaveWatch and I'm finally sleeping through the night. The WaveWatch is a wearable device that delivers hundreds of sound frequencies throughout your body, supporting your body's natural systems. Did you know that each living thing vibrates at a unique frequency? 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So really the goal is to bring partners on into this initiative, whether it is a church, whether it's a charity, it doesn't really matter. They all kind of fit into the same group. And really, again, you've already kind of mentioned NRB is a great place for connections, a great place for network. And that's really what we're trying to provide is that network connection in between the church, the charity and the veteran. And this isn't we're not stopping the veteran for going directly to the resource list that we're creating, but really we're doing a disservice to the pastor and to the church if we don't have services that they can go ahead and provide their veterans if we're trying to encourage them to start an outreach program from within their church. I think it's such a great idea. Then people can all know about it, hear about it, spread the message. Like everybody's doing their own little thing. We got to connect the dots and make it happen faster for people in need. I just, I love that mentality. What does implementation look like besides what you already explained? So really, all they have to go to is our website. It's nrb.org backslash veterans. You can go through it right through the NRB page itself. You're going to end up coming to our page. Scroll down a little bit, and you end up finding the, I believe it's the get involved part. You click on that tab. I'm interested. So if you're interested, it's, it's, um, It's right there. I'm interested. You click on that. You go through our statement of faith, because we all want to make sure that we're on the same page for the statement of faith. So whoever goes through it, just verify that we are all on the same page. And you fill out that form. It goes directly to me. And I'll either give you a phone call, I'll shoot you an email, and we will try to figure out how NRB can help you. help your pastor, whether your church, whether you're a veteran that wants to start something. I don't think. On the veteran side, it's difficult. And I know your pain when you're going to the pastoral staff trying to get something done. From the pastoral staff, I see your pain as well, because the average pastor, if we're going to do a visualization of what their daily plate looks like, We're combining a Thanksgiving and a Christmas dinner. It's overflowing. But the great thing about this is I don't need the pastor. And what I mean by that, we can get an associate pastor. We can get a deacon. And they reach out to the veteran corps. The veteran corps is what ends up doing all the heavy lifting. I see exactly how you do what you do. And that makes complete sense to me. It's like a team within a team. I think it's such a great idea. And I was even rolling around my brain here with thoughts that it could be a vet that starts something at their church or a vet spouse or anybody that has time on their hands that loves America and wants to help their vets. Our vets. Our vets. This is just phenomenal. Once again, everybody, the website, nrb.org forward slash veterans. Check it out. It'll be a link in the show notes surrounding this episode. Their mission, vision, what you do is right here on the website. I think it's absolutely fantastic. I absolutely love NRB. So just the fact you're connecting with them and working within them is phenomenal. When will implementation start? Has it already started with those three churches? Like what is your plan of action for plastering this all throughout the country and how can we help? Yeah. So, so it's already started. Prestonwood has had a program for going on, I think five or six years now. And, and one, one of the other things that we would really like to try to do is break down some of the tribal lines in between some of the churches. And if I got it, we may not have, for the most part, our core beliefs are, are pretty similar. But if we can go ahead and we can support together our veteran corps, and what was amazing is to actually watch. So I watched the implementation of the program at First Baptist Dallas. We have a weekly call, I talk with those guys, and Prestonwood, they've got a mobile museum. They've got six 27-foot storage units filled with military memorabilia, and a lot of it focusing on the chaplaincy corps going all the way back to the Civil War. So they showed up to First Baptist with the Prestonwood table and tablecloth. So we have the Prestonwood Veterans Outreach or PVO tablecloth at First Baptist showing their support and time and time again, whether, and it doesn't matter which direction, what's going on is they're like, hey, we've, we, one of our members has a family member up near you and they need some assistance. Can your handyman ministry go check it out? Reaching into the handyman ministry, what ends up happening is Once we get our veterans healed, the family gets healed. Once the family and the veteran are healed, now our veterans get bored. We don't have as many problems to focus on. We're fixed. We're all created to serve. And the government's done a really good job of increasing our skills and abilities to serve even at a greater level. So our veterans are looking around and they're like, hey, pastor, your homeless ministry is kind of messed up. Awesome. Go fix it. Hey, you need a handyman ministry. Good. Take it on. I love this. And plus, it's coming from vets. And it's sad to say, but they can use it for God's glory. If vets have landed on the street and they got the help that they needed, they know how to best serve people that are on the street if they've lived there themselves. Coming from someone that has run real business and a warrior mentality because they've been on the battlefield and now they have another battlefield and now they're off. They have the training and they know how to go back in as the one serving, providing, helping, praying over, assisting instead of being the ones that are depressed, suicidal, drinking drugs, alcohol galore and everything else. I have chills literally all over my body and I do a lot lately on this program, but I have a special place in my heart for vets because they are literally willing to die for the cause. of our country for God, for the right reasons. That is just absolutely phenomenal. This is as close as I get. I wear garb, but I love America, but I'm telling you the flag always, I will always literally fight for America. Vets, I just want to tell you, thank you so much for what you've done, what you're doing today, how you're making a difference. Ricky, for you and your team, for NRB, everybody out there that is working behind the scenes tirelessly 24 seven to help our vets. become warriors here in America to do their ministries, their giftings after they've already served a lot of times overseas. Here are seven signs you may have a parasite. My biggest issue, because I did have parasites, was teeth grinding. Skin irritation and unexplained digestive issues. The other indication that you could have a parasite is eating after 7 p.m. and craving sugar. My name is Kim. I'm the Worm Queen and the inventor of the Parify Kit. Let's go over it. Parify. It's your parasite cleanse. Sustain. It's your candida and your bad bacteria cleanse. Metal Flush. It's your heavy metal detox. Cinnabon. It's your binder. You take Parify and Metal Flush three times a day and sustain two times a day. You can take them all together. The kit comes with instructions. Cinnamon is your binder and you take that at night. We have a nut-free option. 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How can churches and veteran organizations and us today watching and tuning into this program, Counterculture Mom, right here, Counterculture Mom Show, how can we help you do what you do better to help the vets here in America? Yeah. If you're a pastor of a church and you want to have some sort of veteran presence, and I understand that everybody's not a Prestonwood. Prestonwood's a giant facility. If you're a smaller church, it can be as small as a potluck. I've got a guy that called in. He's like, hey, this is what I'm doing. I was like, amazing. Send me the flyer. And he's like, oh, flyer? Like, yes, make a flyer, send it. We'll try to get more people around. He's like, oh, I got to tell you really quick, people tuning in right now, I just got to interject with the flyer. You go to AI Chat GPT, say what you want in the flyer, that beast in under two minutes will have a flyer made. So no more worrying about who I got to hire and $500 here and seven days there. Literally, there are benefits to AI. Okay, proceed. I just want to let people know you can make a flyer in three seconds. What'll take longer is actually setting up the potluck and And making the food and eating it. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So whether it's a potluck, whether we've got some course curriculum that we're starting to do small groups. If you're a veteran that wants to start something within, really all you need is one door. Hey, pastor, can I just get a door? You start small. You can start with a Bible study. It doesn't really matter. We're working with a couple of different ministries that are out there to actually come up with course curriculum that we can send you for free. That it shows up, you go through, you start to study and you start that group. And what that ends up doing is it stems into multiple different ministries from within that church. The pastoral staff sees that these veterans, they're no longer consumers. They're contributors. They're helping the church grow and they're healing from within. And then they're healing outside of the church walls. I love this. I could talk to you for like an hour, three hours. Stuff from the 20s is firing off of my brain right now. Plus, when we give back to other people and help serve, we are healing at the same time by giving back and serving other people. It's just phenomenal. Ricky, you absolutely rock. Once again, everybody out there, definitely check out this fantastic website. So nrb.org forward slash veterans, get involved, check it out, set up a potluck. I know a lot of women tuning in right now are probably saying, I love making food. Let's do this. Go ahead and do it. Make it happen. And then tell all your ladies, put it on your Facebook post, announce it at the church, put it in the bulletin, announce it on the radio, do a podcast on it, send it out through your email, send it out on social media. Look at this. Just in like three seconds. I don't know what you guys are doing to me today with the tapings. It's getting nuts. Secondly, Definitely check out the Instagram right here. Get connected with them at NRB Association. That's NRB Association. Check it out. Follow them. Stalk them. They are a good organization to stalk. Ricky, I tell you what, buddy. We met two years ago, NRB. I think it was your wife that grabbed my arm and said, get over here. I know you got a podcast. My husband's got to totally hem and haw and say what's going on. And that 15-second exchange landed this. God knew. And God knows what he's going to do as a result of you coming on the program today. So everybody out there? Let's help our vets across America know that they are loved. They are appreciated. They do have a purpose here in America still today, and they can give back in so many different ways. Ricky and his team are helping make that happen. Ricky, I'm watching you. Keep up the excellent work, and I'll see you at NRB in D.C. this next year.