Refill with Randy – Leap of faith leads to unexpected opportunities
By Randy LeBaron
Good morning! Grab your favorite cup. Fill it up. And let’s start this week right… TOGETHER!!!
With those words I started filming my first “Refill with Randy” video back in October 2019. Now, 4 years, 80 videos, 100s of blog posts, and over 2,000 cups of coffee later I thought I would look back and share a little about my “Refill with Randy” journey and why I still believe that having a conversation with someone over a cup of coffee is much more conducive to creating a culture of true connection and understanding than debating topics over social media. Trust me, I know from experience.
So, back in July 2019, I took a leap of faith and stepped out of my position as Lead Pastor of the Albion Free Methodist Church to start the non-profit Go Scatter Ministries. The problem was that I wasn’t quite sure what that would entail or even how I would make a living. All I knew for sure was that I felt God leading me to expand my territory while at the same time remaining in the community I had grown to live and care about since moving here in 2004. Over the past four years I have been blessed with the opportunity to connect with many folks from around Orleans County through my various roles as evangelist, preacher, teacher, Chaplain, Bereavement Coordinator, etc. but also by simply drinking coffee and engaging in conversation with others… often strangers… at least at first.
It was this idea that inspired me to start recording “Refill with Randy” with the premise that I would talk about a topic or interview a person or organization that I found inspirational all while enjoying a cup of coffee along with the viewer. I initially launched the videos in November 2019 with one being posted each weekday morning on Facebook and, for the few non-FB users, YouTube. After a few weeks I realized how much work it was to record, edit, produce, and post the videos and changed the frequency to once a week on Wednesday mornings. Even then I looked at the views and likes and thought it was a lot of effort with little reward until, that is, I started receiving analytics from Facebook.
The stats showed that in the first month the videos had been shared over 14,000 times in 32 countries. I wondered if this was a mistake until I started receiving calls and messages from pastors in other countries that led the way to me producing ministry training videos that were translated into Swahili and other local dialects to be used in Kenya in addition to being invited to speak at conferences over Zoom in Africa and India. Imagine that, drinking coffee and talking about social and spiritual topics that I thought might appeal to those who already knew me in the vicinity led to reaching thousands in other countries that I did not know.
So somehow Refill had a global appeal, but I didn’t want to trade that for local connections so I simply started frequenting local coffee shops. I initially found a group of men and women, mostly retired, that frequented Tim Hortons most mornings. The great thing about this group was that they talked a lot about everything from politics to religion, often from opposite sides of the fence, and yet they could still joke with one another and would make it back the next day to continue the conversation over a hot cup of dark roast. In 2020 I was interviewed on The Family Life Network and it was this experience that led me to share that more problems could be worked out in our world if there were more coffee shops and less 24-hour news networks.
The real gift for me was that I have made some great friends over the years that I still get together with to this day and that includes a special group of guys and girls from ARC. Jonathan Doherty was someone I got to know a while back when I was part of a Men’s Group that met at Dunkin Donuts. I invited him to join my group of friends and he eventually invited me to join his group of friends. Even though Jonathan is no longer with us his memory lives on as the ARC Self-Advocates continue to meet every 2nd Monday & Tuesday from 10:45-11:45am at Tim Hortons and you are all invited to join us!
So that’s my Refill journey in a nutshell. I came. I saw. I coffeed. Let’s grab a cup together sometime and chat.
See you in 2 weeks!
Pastor Randy
