“After my youngest son went to Heaven, I was trying to get ready to go back to work, and I could not tie my shoes I was so weak. I questioned the Lord, “How can you expect me to go back on the air and do this show when I can’t even tie my shoes?” The Lord replied in my spirit, “Now you are ready. Your problem was never that you weren’t strong enough. Your problem was that you weren’t weak enough, but now you’re ready. Now I can use you like I never could before.”
Rick Burgess is the co host of The Rick and Bubba Show, which is heard and seen by 1.5 million people weekly. Rick is also the director of TheManChurch.com, which is a hub for resources and a strategy designed to reach and disciple men. The strategy is currently being used by hundreds of churches across the nation and around the world. Rick has authored and co authored several devotionals for men including the How to Be a Man series, Transformed and Sin Always Matters. Rick also does marriage conferences with his wife Sherri, they have 5 children Brandi, Blake, Brooks, Brody and Bronner. Rick’s eulogy for his son Bronner was the number one most viewed video in the world on YouTube for a week in January of 2008.
He has been married to the former Sherri Bodine since 1996. During a marriage counseling conversation with the pastor who would marry them, Rick was confronted with the sin in his life that could not be justified for anyone who claimed to have been transformed by the power of Jesus Christ. “I realized that I only believed in Jesus in a historical sense and that I had never truly become His disciple,” Rick said. “It was only then that I submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and my life has never been the same.” Rick is a frequent speaker at church services and youth and marriage conferences, but his true passion is men’s ministry.
Rick is calling on the modern church to put into practice what they say every Father’s Day, that a man’s family will follow him if he will lead them. “Let’s teach our men how to be the spiritual leaders of their homes,” Rick said, “If you take the men of the church from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity you will solve a lot of problems in the church and in our world today.” Rick’s Spirit-filled message at his youngest son’s memorial service was the most watched YouTube video in the world the week it was posted.
Sherri Burgess
I said to God, “But we were so happy. We were so happy, God.” And I heard Him say to me in my spirit, “But I want you to be holy.”
Rick and Sherri Burgess were married February 10, 1996. Although she had sought the Lord before that time, she had never truly surrendered her life to God. She said she could sense God’s presence on her wedding day and felt that she was in the right place at the right time for the first time in her life. She was baptized into Christ two months later.
She said she could feel the weight of the years filled with guilt and shame wash away in that baptistry at Lakeview Baptist Church in Oxford, Alabama. She has lived in the light of Christ ever since. Even when darkness tried to overtake her on January 19, 2008 when her two and a half year old son, Bronner, “went to Heaven,” as she calls what happened that night, she learned that God’s power is even greater in her weakness and brokenness. She sought answers from God through prayer and His Word and found them. She was certain that the answers weren’t just for her or for her family but for everyone. She said, “God had a message in the taking of my son. So many people want to know why. And He knew I wouldn’t stop searching until I had some answers. I don’t know why all of it had escaped my attention before, but scripture is filled with the teaching that those who are truly children of God will suffer in this life as He suffered. But God got my attention, and I hope that my pain can help you understand yours.”
Sherri is the author of Bronner, A Journey to Understand. She has appeared as a guest on numerous radio and television shows sharing her story across the nation. She was a Women of Joy speaker for the 2017 spring season and speaks at Women’s Conferences and other church events throughout the southeast. She and Rick have also taught together at marriage conferences and other Christian events. Sherri writes a blog entitled In Between Heaven and Earth. You can connect with her through facebook, twitter, and instagram.
