Meaningful Conversations | Jonathan Evans & Emmanuel Acho

[Music] well welcome to our wednesday night series for august meaningful conversations all month long we're going to be having great conversations to encourage and challenge you with people that i think you'll find have something special to offer we're going to start off our first wednesday night with someone very familiar to us here in dallas at our church oak cliff bible fellowship because he grew up in our church emmanuel acho here's a young man who god is now using in a very unique way in our nation at a critical time his father dr sunny i chose served for many years as one of the pastors at oak cliff bible fellowship and now let's see what god is doing through his son emmanuel is really a blessing so let's get right to it as my son jonathan evans begins to discuss with emmanuel acho something very very strategic for the times we're in emmanuel what's going on my brother my brother man life is good life is great right now for me my friend man we're so glad to have you we're having you back even though you can't be here because of this whole colvin thing but we're able to have you back and what i mean by back is we grew up together and this is not newton this is not new for us yes we're family we're a fan of the achos and the evans have always been family and forever always be family so we're had glad to have you man man i appreciate it that people never realized because of how how grown we are now i'm like no no me in the evans is like we go all the way back literally because i was a toddler yes hey and speaking of that i literally have a vivid memory of both me and you crawling under the chairs at the family life center on sunday morning during church and and both of our moms reaching under the chair trying to keep us still and we looking at each other basically winking like i got you bro i got you let's let's keep this thing going let's keep so my dad's up there preaching and he's hot because i'm moving around man i can't tell you how much trouble we used to get into yeah i love it and look at us now and let's get less that's right that's right so tell us how's the family doing how's your dad doing dr suniacho we'll give some history on that your mom christy the whole family take us through everybody how's everybody doing man so it's obviously both my parents and me and my three siblings and everybody is great mom and pop's still in dallas um cobb's running the church running his private practice psychology uh mom's doing a little bit of everything her doctorate in nurse practitioning she's teaching she's helping she's just doing a little bit of everything both my sisters two of my older sisters they're phenomenal obviously chichi being the oldest working at a hospital she's great stephanie she's phenomenal my brother sam uh big bro the person who kind of paved the path for me going on year 10 in the national football league uh so he is this he's just been doing crazy things remember he was drafted to the cardinals played his first four years in arizona next four years in chicago the last year in tampa bay and this is year ten now and so he's doing a book um he's he's hanging out with the commissioner of the nfl just trying to save the world and handle all this social justice stuff and then i have recently moved to los angeles uh where i have a lot going on so all is good yeah so that's that's current and that's crazy people don't really know that our family is really structured the same so two older girls and two younger sons but listen it's all about the baby of the family that's what i've been trying to tell her okay that's what i've been trying to tell the people it's all about the baby of the family so that so that fast forwards us but when we rewind and we think about you know growing up at the church together people a lot of people may not know that your dad you know was really instrumental with my dad in building oak cliff bible fellowship my dad's ministry to what it is today and your mom and my mom uh just being sisters in the ministry i mean you how long were you at ocbf and what are some of the memories you have of just being at the church so i personally i think i was at ooocbf for 12 or 13 years i think pops was there for maybe 21 yeah and i think i might have been there for for like 13 but my pops for sure two decades my memory i remember most and if you walk into this church into oak cliff you can validate this memory because if you walk into one of the side doors you'll see a picture of a little six-year-old emanuel and an awana outfit with a little bandana scarf yeah and i prayed for the groundbreaking ceremony of the new worship building that was built dude you'd have to help me out but maybe 2003 maybe in like 98 i don't even remember yeah yeah there's just little me i might have i might have just been like ah maybe seven or eight years old yeah and i prayed um at the groundbreaking ceremony that was my most memorable good moment yes the most memorable bad moment you know keep that we don't want the bad moment no okay tell us tell us what happened as a kid i one day i don't know what got into me the communion cups that were in the back of the pews because there used to be the pews and back in the day i would like put him on the ground after church and i went around stepping on them and smashing just communion cups in like every single pew boy mom and pop oh my god people don't realize it's listen that baby child we can cause a ruckus but hey we grow up and do good things we do grow up and do good things it's amazing um our whole history just kind of being together and people always ask what is it like to be tony evan's son and you probably get hey what is it like to be christy and sonny acho's son and so when you think about your dad and your mom being raised in that household what was it like being their child and and take us back to you know the the nigeria stuff like what did they make you do make you learn make you go what was it like growing up man um people always ask me well they don't ask me now people tell me they say your parents must be incredible and they say your parents must be proud um and to that i say dude the biggest thing my parents ever did for me was when we would go back to nigeria every summer on medical missions trips and i think my dad started that while we were at oak cliff because he would go with doctors nurses and um just people from oak cliff and from around the country and we go to nigeria for two weeks and just do free medical care then finally we built a hospital in nigeria back in like 2016 or so and then just started operating out of that hospital bro we used to just operate out of a shack we would bring a generator in and we would just turn what was essentially like an abandoned shack into a clinic for two weeks on end that's what taught me my humility bro um because growing up in a nigerian household parents were strict strictest yeah um and you know it's like curfew didn't exist because you weren't going out so you don't need a curfew if you're not leaving you know like yeah fuse exists for if you leave in a crib but if you're not leaving the house there's no need for no need um and so it was there were a lot of rules a lot of legislations but as i got older bro i realized like it was all out of love and so you know growing up in a very disciplined household it just taught me the act of discipline putting academics first respecting your elders um all those things that when you're a kid you're just kind of like for what but now as an adult i've realized everything my parents did paved the way for my success and i say this and i think your dad may have said it more is caught than it's taught right like there's a reason like i still haven't drank alcohol i never saw my parents drink not that anything's good or bad with it i just never saw it reason i don't really curse i never heard my parents curse um and then so the reason i am who i am and even now being a sports analyst or caring a ton about my fashion is because every sunday twice a sunday yeah i was listening to pastors like my dad or your dad yep and suited up and suited up suited and booted yeah they were suited to a t and so i've now realized like i am who i am because of my pops and because of my mom's yeah and i and i say the same thing you know again us growing up was very similar family structure or family dynamics family faith being able to watch your parents and carry that into who you are in every aspect of life but i have my own story though on when my faith became my own and everybody does and so that's what i want to talk to you about so when did your faith change from you riding the coattails what i always say i was riding the coattail of tony and lois evans for a long time i was just hanging onto the coattail and just letting them drag me with the faith that they had so when did when did emmanuel acho's faith become emmanuel acho's faith there are levels there are levels to faith there are levels to our walk there are levels to our uh christian life my senior year in high school um i was supposed to be like the star on the football team i was at this affluent private school and every game day every friday we would have like christian revivals and we would get into the parking lot at like 7 00 a.m an hour before school started me and like eight other dudes and we would just jam like kirk and just damn like some old school kirk franklin and just have a bible study 30 minutes prior to first period that was when i really kind of took ownership of it but then i said there are levels so that was like tier one then tier two i'm at the university of texas and you know university of texas it got sixth street yep yeah we go down on sixth street and so like when you get to texas that's when it's either i am going to break or am i i am going to become right you're either going to become or you're going to break and that's when i truly became the man um that i am because there are so many temptations so many things to bear you off course but i realized man even though i'm on this team with all these different guys i am going to stand for what i stand for if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything and so then while i'm at texas bro now i'm leading the small groups now i'm leading the bible studies yeah um and now i'm really being a catalyst for this walk but then it's that last level because now you go to the nfl yeah now the nfl was like college balls on steroids that's the difference between the nfl and college nfl you got money [Laughter] hey and what they say like um uh and you have money and now you have the ability to kind of have whatever you want that's right and so then you get to the league and i'm around guys like nick foles and when i first got to the philadelphia eagles my second year in the league i was i i just got there so there were players that had been there before me a strong group of christian people like nick foles super bowl mvp and 24 2017 and and i'm just kind of following under him but then i think like nick leaves and it kind of becomes my responsibility for a year at least in offseason to kind of shepherd that flock so i would make sure that the bible studies were taken care of i would make sure that um everything was going according to plan uh and then i leave the nfl and going to my working world of tv now bro and so my faith became my own and grew in different stages and i think it's still growing but it truly became my own senior year in high school and then college and then the nfl those were the three ticking points of faith faith growth and maturation yeah and that's great and that gives us a lot just in your testimony and where you are right now just uh you know because i know me i have the very similar testimony because me and you both played ball you know i was cheering you on too i had already moved on to college but i was i was hearing about these acho boys and i was like i know those boys them are my boys there was these acho boys in in in the dallas area and they're going to texas and when i heard about texas i was thinking oh well that's whack but at least they're going to college like you know that's cool but you know at least they're going somewhere you know what i'm saying i can still be happy for them because obviously i was at baylor and you know we didn't really become rivals until rg3 got there because because texas was looking at baylor like baylor like we're gonna beat them easy and then rg three rg3 got there everything uh got a little bit harder but what was the difference in your football career just for a moment um how did you and sam balance your brotherhood and your football career going through texas and then y'all having different careers uh in the league and and how did y'all balance that that relationship man it was tough so my my junior year in high school playing my crosstown rival sam and i both played basketball at my high school st martin's we were playing my crosstown rival and every time i would get the ball the opposing team would yell shadow shadow saying that i lived in my brother's shadow and i remember that man and so my senior year after my brother has now gone to texas i'm like yeah i'm not doing that no more um and so we had a competition a sibling kind of rivalry we weren't really friends until he left so now he's in texas and i have to commit i'm sitting in my head coach's office matt brown he's in the college football hall of fame he's staring at me i'm sitting next to my dad my mom and my brother and matt brown looks at me and goes manual we uh we want to offer you a scholarship to university of texas you ready to commit and i just look at him stone cold and i say nothing because i didn't want to go to texas like i was tired of following in my brother's footsteps right finally um it was a long quiet drive home because sunny acho was just sitting there popping sitting there looking at me like kind of with a little undertone of disappointment yeah i ended up committing to texas two weeks later and now we do the brother thing like he's number 81 so why we're number 18 to have yep the palindrome 81 and 18. and um our careers we just pushed each other bro kind of like the iron children's iron thing my brother always says he had to set the bar high for me to make me go get it and that's why i attribute i attribute the majority of my success god my dad my brother because my the only reason i've accomplished what i've accomplished is because my brother made me go chase yeah and so that was kind of the that was the relationship that we've had is a um a competition but a friendship throughout and and this is why we wanted to have these meaningful conversations because there's so much that comes from you saying having someone your brother saying hey i had to set the bar high and taking that responsibility to make you chase to make you be all you can be and just just men in general learning that concept fathers to sons or or man to man iron sharpening iron and and woman to woman you know all of the stuff in titus what with older to younger and trying to get us to set the bar high and right now in our culture in general uh we're setting the bar too low and we keep lowering the bar to try to make people comfortable or to be um seeker sensitive or whatever the case is and really that idea of setting the bar high is the is why we're having these conversations so people can can take what god has given them and use that to set the bar high for people who are coming behind them uh because that's how we move forward and so i think that's important and so he set the bar high and you chased it because and not only did you play in the nfl and you did better than me by the way i have to i have to come in you did better than me i was in the nfl five years but very in and out practice squads getting carted off the field you know so i'm looking back at i'm like them boys doing it them is doing it so so you did better than me but god called you on uh obviously your brother's still playing god called you on and so um you're a analyst espn or fox or where are you at now tell us where you're at now as far as being my favorite analyst so i leave the nfl after four years because in the nfl vested pension annuity you get that after four active years of playing so i hit my four year mark i was 25 i'm looking around like i ain't got to tackle people no more okay i'm out and so um i leave the nfl and i stay with espn for four years then after my fourth year at espn fox recruits me to give me my own show um called speak for yourself so i'll leave espn i'm going to fox well it wasn't supposed to be speak for yourself they recruited me to go to new york to host a show called first things first um but then a job opens in la for speak for yourself and that's currently where i'm at la hosting uh speak for yourself every day 2 p.m central time on fox sports white and that's awesome man congratulations first of all on everything that god is doing in your life and you basically taking that up you know god brings things sometimes we don't take it up for whatever whatever reasons whether it's fear whether it's looking at ourselves to determine whether we can do what god's calling us to do so all of this success comes with god giving you the talent but you also taking it up and so man i'm proud of you with all of that now you know everybody wants to know how did these uncomfortable conversations with the black man get going i know it comes from what's going on in the culture but who called you how did it come about what what happened to make that thing happen and the way things have been going leading up to the point you are now man um i will tell you and y'all watching uh the story that i really haven't shared much publicly so after the murder of george floyd i was torn because i'm a sports analyst sports analysts are not supposed to talk about um things outside of sports right you know we hear people talking about lebron saying shut up and dribble or stick to sports so i was torn but before i was ever a sports analyst i was a human being and specifically i was a black man right and i said man i have to do something so at first i was going to call it jonathan questions white people had because i know so many of my white friends have questions right that they can't get answered right because they either don't have black friends or they're too scared to ask but as i was talking to one of my white friends she was like hey you know more than just white people have these conversations and they don't have these conversations because they're uncomfortable and i was like she's like so how do you think about feel about calling it uncomfortable conversations i was like nah it's missing something i said well i'm a black man so we'll call it uncomfortable conversations with a black man and um i shot the very first episode and this is how you know it's a god thing i was looking at a text message today and uh the last my studio call time was at 11 a.m before i shot the first episode may maybe may 31st and um the last text i got at 10 56 was from a friend discouraging me from doing it he says hey emmanuel i just don't think it's a really good idea this isn't the way and i literally respond back and i say i'm going to go as god leaves and i go i do the first episode had no idea what was gonna happen um within three days i have like 25 million views and mind you it wasn't like i was a big name like i was a name but i was by no means a big name before that 25 million views six days later i get a call from a no caller id number and if a no caller id number calls you it is either really good or it is really bad yeah exactly exactly and it was matthew mcconaughey academy award winner matthew mcconaughey he says emmanuel i want to have a conversation i said all right matthew let's do it in three days that's what i'm taping episode two he said let's do it tomorrow okay yeah tomorrow um oh a week goes by i get another call from a no caller id number this time it's oprah hey emmanuel i love what you're doing i would love to have a conversation with you we hop on facetime we sit there we talk i let her know my heart let her know my goal let her know my intention am i just want to bridge this gap in this racial divide she says well i stand behind you i stand with you um i'd love to partner with you on the project so i have a book coming out uncomfortable conversation with the black man that's actually an oprah imprint so she is um she's putting her stamp of approval behind this book so we've partnered to write that it'll come out on my birthday november 10th obviously you can pre-order it uncomfortablecombos.com but um that's how it all came about man and since then over i want to say 56 million views on the series my favorite episode and this is for this audience okay i sat down with um a white pastor last week carl lentz the lead pastor at hillsong church in new york city and i asked the questions bro that so many black people like myself have wanted to know why is the white church silent right america's brokenness was founded by white christian men carl you are a white christian man what can you do to remedy this problem that your figurative forefathers put us in you know i said what would jesus be doing right now in your opinion would he be marching would he be posting black squares on instagram well then why aren't people doing it um so i just had four this is for the church for anybody watching this was a very compelling conversation you can find it on my youtube my instagram my facebook anything else and this isn't this is not an advertisement this is a i said oprah's oprah told me jonathan she said whenever you're doing a show ask yourself what is your intention what is your intention and my intention was to let black people feel vindicated and and white people feel challenged and called and that happened in that episode i want my black brothers and sisters to feel like yes why has the church been so silent um and it was it was powerful man so the whole the series has been powerful is that episode out that episode you're talking about now when does that come out the one with carl lentz came out this past tuesday so it's been out for for four or five days it dropped okay july 28th um so they can they can check that out thankfully it already has over a million views across three four different platforms so the world has been moved by it but i just encourage i implore um my my black brothers and sisters to watch that and my white brothers and sisters so much knowledge i'll tell you this this is what stuck out to me most bro and then i'm about to get excited now because i almost jumped about my chair when he said it yep carlin said the problem with american christianity is that we think the bible said blessed are the peacekeepers and it really says blessed are the peacemakers he said that pivotal difference is a problem in our society because in order to be a peace maker that means you have to go find war you have to go find depression you have to go find the hurting to be a peacekeeper you can just say oh it's peaceful around me i'll keep the peace but to be a peacemaker you have to go find war and boy when i say almost shouted so that's real good conversations they haven't been about me bro they've just been for the sake of the world talking dialogue so we can mend our racial divide man well listen man we're proud of you and we're so happy to hear from you and what's going on and everything that you have going on and i just want you to know that that that that your local church your your family that you grew up with is just excited to hear from you and all of those um uh that are hanging out with us to to have this conversation and it was a very uh meaningful conversation but before we go just tell everybody how they can follow you what's coming up how so that so that they can see everything that you have going on so and be blessed by it amen to that um you can follow me on facebook emmanuel acho it's really the emmanuel acho that's my facebook page that's where i post uncomfortable conversations um typically on tuesdays every tuesday or every other tuesday uh my instagram and my twitter at emmanuellacho and my youtube acho um that's where i push all my content out because i own all my content all these uncomfortable conversations they go out through those channels there have been amazing conversations now with over 55 million views so watch them share them be challenged by them but more importantly challenge the world with them so we can really heal what we have going on thank you brother love you man ocbf family and everyone watching we're just so excited that you joined us i hope you thought this was a meaningful conversation because it was great to catch up this is week one get with us next week as we continue with these conversations [Music] you

Channel: Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship

Views: 10,646

Rating: 4.927711 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 9hJytCk9GZc

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020