Continuing Your God-Ordained Purpose Outside Of The Church With Dwann Holmes
Figure out your God-ordained purpose today. How can you continue God's mission outside of the church? It's so important to incorporate your faith into your world so that you can help others. God is a miracle worker, and he has no shortage of miracles. All you need to do is to believe in the power of prayer. Join your host Chad Burmeister and his guest Dwann Holmes on finding your God-ordained purpose. Dwann is the CEO of The Global Institute of Church and Marketplace Prophets. She is also a leading pastor and an author. Learn what she does in order to continue her mission for God. Discover the power of prayer and more today.
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Continuing Your God-Ordained Purpose Outside Of The Church With Dwann Holmes
I'm here with someone who's across the state lines. Dwann Holmes is with GICMP. She's going to tell you what that stands for. I'm excited. We talked for 30 minutes before we kicked off because there's so much to talk about. Dwann, welcome.
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. It has been great chatting with you about how our lives mimic each other in ways like the Midwest.
There's always a rivalry between CU and Nebraska. I went to CSU. It's CSU versus CU. In 2021, it's CU versus UNC. They kept CSU out of the mix.
Everywhere I go, I say, “Go Big Red.” We wore red a lot.
First of all, tell me what does GICMP stands for. You have done this for years.
I have always done media and ministry. They have been merged together. GICMP stands for The Global Institute of Church & Marketplace Prophets. What we do is educate and mentor prophetic ministers, whether they are in the church or the marketplace living their life in LA. We try to mentor them to make sure that they are still representing God in a great way. We also help them see beyond their dreams, their visions and things like that.
Beware of false prophets. It must be grounded in scripture. Being able to be the behind-the-scenes of some of these important people in the world and keep them tethered to the reality of the gospel.
We love it. I'm always amazed at the people who sometimes call in. We have a prayer line. We service probably 20,000 people. You will be amazed at how many people need help or want help. They don't know where to go and necessarily have a church. When you offer them the ability to pray, be a voice and a listening ear, it's amazing who you find yourself talking to.
It's funny timing because I launched an app called 77Pray. The biggest thing humans have a problem with is this little thing called drift. We all of a sudden find ourselves, “Maybe I will go to the bar at 3:00 PM instead of 5:00.” 3:00 becomes 12:00 and so on. The whole intent of this app is it pops up, “It's 8:00. Did you say your prayer this morning? It's 12:00. Did you read a Bible verse?” It’s the basics of keeping us on track. There's so much AI being used for other things. Why not fit it for faith?
We are getting something similar to that together as well. It's so important to incorporate our faith into our world and help others do it regularly. I love that.
I always prayed before bed. My grandparents and parents are like, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep.” Ours was different than my best friends. “Watching guard me through the night. Wake me when the sunshine is bright.” That was a prayer of positivity. My best friend's mother taught him, “If I die before I wake, I pray to the Lord my soul to take.” I was always scared of going to my friend's house because I was praying about someone taking my soul in the middle of the night.
That was a prayer. It put the fear of death in all of our lives. That could probably speak to why everybody is afraid to die, even believers.
Take me back. You are such an interesting person. Did you grow up in Nebraska? When you were 5 or 6, tell me your first memories. What were your passions? What did you like to do when you were younger?
I grew up in Nebraska. One of the things I love to do was read. I would always have memories of watching 60 Minutes. As I grew up and got ready to go to college where I was going to major in Broadcast Journalism, I realized that it was because my dad would sit there and watch 60 Minutes every Sunday. We had to sit there and watch it as well. My mother was an English teacher. We had regular reading requirements. I developed a love for reading. I have written several books as well. I strongly remember reading, sitting down on Sunday night watching 60 Minutes and going to church a lot.
If you connect the dots from then to now, you have two strong memories, your mother with reading and your father with 60 Minutes. If you draw a line between then and now and think, “This is probably why I'm doing what I'm doing,” whether it's media and what you are doing, they are both intricately related to what you were into as a kid.
I would say that all the time. By the time I started my TV news career, every time I would go speak, I would remember and say that. My first award as a TV news journalist was an award for writing a documentary. As you know, 60 Minutes is documentary-style. I won that while I was in college. Those memories and interactions at that age are foundations for where we go in faith and our career.
You said 20,000 people call in a year. What can they learn when they are out of sync with their God-given purpose and they are in sync? How do you know when you are right in alignment with what you are meant to be doing?
I have two favorite things. One of my favorite scriptures says, “The blessings of the Lord make rich and adds no sorrow.” What I find is that when people are not walking in their God-ordained purpose, there's so much sorrow around them. The other thing is that there are lots of confusion. The word says that God is not the author of confusion. When you look at people whose lives are out of sync, there's confusion and sorrow all the time. When that begins to happen, you have to take the time and steady yourself.
I always tell people, “Go back to the first word that God spoke to you.” They will say, “What do you mean by that?” Before you even knew what you wanted to do, what was that first thing that he put in your heart to do or maybe a prophetic voice confirmed with you that you were supposed to do that lit you up? Go back to that and see if you are in alignment with that. If you are not, it's time to start all over again or go to God, repent and turn your life around again. I know when I'm walking in my purpose, it's peaceful. It's not stressful.
There's a friend of ours named Arjun Sen who works with Tiger Woods. He's Tiger’s PR marketing. He's the former Head of Papa John's Pizza marketing. He did Panera Bread, CVS and all these major brands. He's a down-to-earth guy that anybody can talk to. His entire message at one of the retreats that we did was, “What are you 1 of 1 at?” Like you said with the scripture, it was amazing.
People will line up and pay you money that is above and beyond what you could normally expect because that's your unique purpose and skill. It's so easy. When I'm doing these conversations, it's not hard. I'm doing 70% of my day on these things and I'm like, “I don't care where the profitability comes from. I'm having a good time.”
I love the book StrengthsFinder 2.0. It talks about living in that strength and living in what you do best. As a whole, sometimes in America, we try to get people to focus on their failures. If we can get people even at a young age to focus on our strengths as Tiger Woods’ dad did for him, there's so much more that we can soar to when we focus on that one thing that we do well.
I have met with a woman and she talked about her story. She's leaning into her age. It was sad for her growing up. Her mission is to be a specialist in this area. There's something called MRKH. It's a long word. It's hard to even say it. Most physicians and gynecologists don't know what it is. It has to do with female part stuff that doesn't fully mature out. Imagine going through that and the doctor can't figure it out many years ago, it was harder than it is now. Even still, there are no specialists in this area.
You can see that she went through tough times in life. She was teased, boyfriend dating and all this stuff, yet she's able to hold her head high and go, “I know my ordained purpose.” I went on that show. He goes, “What's your assignment in life?” When you look at it as your assignment, it's like, “I better fulfill my assignment because I have been given something that I need to fulfill. What is that?”
That's what it has been like for me. Many times because I would cross over into ministry, I would try to leave my media background behind me or not do as much media. I like to tell folks, “When you come to our church on Sundays, we are going to be recording. I don't care what's going on. The mere fact that you are in the building means that you have waived your rights to anything.” We love media. We are always in your face in doing things. It's what we do and what I do. We do it pretty well. I agree. I cannot run away from media and ministry.
God-Ordained Purpose: The blessings of the Lord make us rich and add no sorrow. So when people are not walking in their God-ordained purpose, there is so much sorrow around them.
ScaleX, that's my company. You can't pull them apart. The mind is one line. Stay on that line. I'm using all those skills for years to say, “Let me help with your nonprofit. Do you want to grow Southeastern Food Bank and give food all over the world? Perfect. Let's use my tech. I won't charge anything because for me, it's a couple of hours but for you, it's a $10,000 a month business value.” I'm able to donate my time and skill that's worth a lot of money to someone and yet to me, it only costs me a few hours and it's fun.
I wrote a book called The Global Call To Marketplace Ministry. That's what it is. In this pandemic season, we've got to tap into our purpose as we prosper and be willing to help others. I love the fact that that's what you do. It's what everybody needs to do. That's what I call tapping into your marketplace ministry and recognizing where God can use you outside of the church to help others walk in their purpose as well.
You are so happy and I am the same way. I'm sure we all run into these roadblocks in life where you are like, “How do I get around that, under, around the side? Do I jump? What is it?” Is there something for you that was a tough thing in life that you are comfortable sharing with our readers that you made it through? What's your advice for making it through something like that?
When I think about that, I had two defining horrible seasons in my life and one happened in the middle of college. As a freshman in college, my dad was diagnosed with leukemia. A couple of months after that, my baby sister who was one and a half years old was diagnosed with cancer at the same time. I'm in Kearney, Nebraska. My brother, who was a year older than me, had gone off to bootcamp. My mom is at home with these two sick folks. I had another little sister.
I was driving back and forth to help. That's when I learned about the power of prayer for myself, not just looking at my mother pray all those years and that was when I learned the power of putting situations like that in God's hand. That helped me later on in life when I was a TV news anchor reporter for the CBS affiliate in Nashville. I won the Associated Press Award for The Best Writer in the state. Three days later, they fired me and let me go from my contract. It was a blessing in disguise but it was very embarrassing. It was like a dichotomy. “She's great but they fire her and here's why.”
I was all over the local newspapers and things like that. They decided not to renew my contract. The one thing that the General Manager told me was, “Dwann, go do your business.” I had started a business. It was very embarrassing. Imagine your face all over everywhere. You are used to being high and all of a sudden, people are talking about you and saying, “Did that happen?”
At that moment, I learned how to leverage the loss. People knew me for being on TV. I was like, “Let's pump this up. Come and be my client,” and it worked. In both of those moments, I had to look at the purpose of God and what was taking place. The fact of the matter is I told God that I was going to quit in August but they fired me in April.
God accelerated the plan for you.
I’m like, “God, you are in control and this is what you want me to do.” The media company that I started was totally faith-based. I was working with churches all across the country to help them with their media. That's what God was saying, “Do this.” He has a way of celebrating your purpose.
I've got to introduce you to my new friend named Anthony Wright who runs a business called Faith Based Investing. He wrote a book called Faith Based Investing. They go in and analyze your portfolio, your IRA. They look at all the bad stuff like, “Are these companies investing in God-principled companies?” He's gotten to work with the big players in Christianity.
He's getting all these introductions where one of the people is like, “You ran mine. I had no idea 60% of my stuff was funding anti-Christian principles.” He goes in. He's doing some very interesting things in the Christian media space that are still NDA-ish. I will make an intro and you can talk about that outside the show. You and he will be two peas in a pod.
We will do that.
We have already talked a little bit about how those challenges that you faced became a gift later. You wave the proverbial magic wand and it's like, “Poof.” Most people I talked to are like, “What do you mean? I'm already doing that.” There's always got to be something in the back of your mind where you are like, “If I could wave the wand and everything change in the world.” What would change for you or people over the world?
If I could change anything, I would change the wealth gap between races. I get to hobnob with some high-level folks. What I have noticed is that once African, Americans, and Caucasians start as friends and all of a sudden graduate, something happens right after college. That wealth gap goes down. What I found out is a lot of it has to do with investments that were made when most Caucasians were babies, even having more assets.
That's about educating, causing people like you and me to come together and say, “How can we do this better?” I'm doing that a little bit, but if I could change anything, I would change the start of people's lives so that they would have a better opportunity to be equal in certain ways. I know some folks don't understand that but look at the numbers and begin to see how certain cultures are educated versus others. Even in the middle-class, there's so much more that can be done to close that gap. I went to South Africa and I liked it. I was like, “I might live here a little while,” but then I was like, “I wish it would be closer.” We would be able to fly to places like that in one hour.
With those new airplanes, that will happen very soon. What's interesting is my son is in engineering school. We talked about the first topic, which is the pay gap. He goes, “Dad, it's just math.” He agrees with you. He goes, “If you look here and there.” Getting to the reason code and solving for that, that's what we need to do. My personal belief is that the government usually isn't the one to solve it but private-public partnerships are going to solve it.
What I'm seeing with a lot of people, especially in tech is, there are these unicorns that are a billion-dollar company. A lot of people that I know are part of unicorn billion-dollar companies. They come from good places. They want equal justice, pay, everything. We are hitting that time in history where there's going to be enough people at the table that are like, “Let's roll up our sleeves and solve this business problem once and for all.”
For me, hearing you say that your son and you had talked about that, that's prophetic. That means that it's not just in the heart of Black people or certain folks. I'm in Florida. You are in Colorado. Is your son still in Colorado?
He's still in Colorado and at a fairly conservative school. It's probably 70% conservative and 30% not or something.
Is he at Colorado Mines? Where is he?
Yes, Mines.
One of my best friends in life, the Winbush’s, their son graduated from there. He's somewhere up there in Colorado, too. Engineering as well. There are probably so many connections that we’ve got to talk about.
My daughter is a social justice warrior of the family, too. My son understands the math and my daughter understands the action part of the math. I sit there in the middle and straddle both amazing kids and go, “You have to follow whatever God tells you in life to do and go do that. I'm not going to hold you back. I encourage you to do it. If you want to be a full social justice warrior, I will high-five you, praise and amen. Let's go. Be your own person.”
“Let us know where you are going so we can pray a prayer.” You get radical. Hearing you talk about your kids, I'm thinking isn’t it amazing when you get here at our age, go look at your children and say, “I stand in awe of God?” My youngest is getting ready to graduate from high school. I'm like, “I can't believe it.” We’ve got kids who are doing something.
This will be fun because you have talked to many people. Maybe answer this for you and for one of your people who have called in, something that was amazing. When did God show up in your life where you knew it was undeniably God where it's like, “That was it?”
God-Ordained Purpose: Go back to the first word that God spoke to you. Before you knew what you wanted to do, what was that first thing that he put in your heart to do? Go back to that and see if you're in alignment with that.
It seems like I have had so many of those occasions. It's going to be a funny story. We were going through a hard time in life. We needed extra money. I was listening to Dave Ramsey and he would say, “Go get a pizza job.” My children's father, we are divorced but at that time, he went to Domino's and they didn't hire him. I said, “What do you mean they wouldn't hire you? Let me go.” They hired me. I was like, “How much money do we need?” I'm clearly not in college but every time I go up, folks think I'm in college because I have this hat on. They are like, “Young lady.”
Here's God stepping in. The whole thing that I’ve even got a job at Domino's is God. I'm writing on that because I wouldn't do that. When I was driving, I would declare and decree what my tips would be. I would say, “He says we can make money doing this. I decree that I'm going to get a $20 tip.” I was trying it out. I’m saying, “Let me see.” The word says, “Life and death isn't the power of the tongue. You are going to get the fruit of what you say and eat.” Sure enough, the more I did that, the more it happened but the first time I did it, I said $20 and they gave me a $20 tip.
That doesn't happen ever. When I was a kid, we used to do, “Think of a number between 1 and 10?” Let's try it for fun.
I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 10.
I would say an eight.
My number was seven.
That was my first choice and I didn't go with my gut.
Here's what I teach people. Everybody is saying, “What does it mean to be prophetic? How do you know things?” I'm like, “That first thing that God showed you, don't even think about it. Say it.” That's how we minister to people on those phone lines because they are always saying, “You are so on it.” We are just letting God use us.
I used to be able to get that 1 to 1,000 when I was a kid. That muscle hasn’t been worked on for a little while.
What that shows you is it's okay to practice prayer.
I saw this show one time and they had these kids in Australia. They were blindfolded. Their teacher was there holding colors, red, yellow, blue, green, black and orange. They would flip it 30 feet away. The teacher would read it and they connected energetically to the teacher. They could know the color. This is the present day. You are like, “That's a muscle we have not practiced and used for many years.” The unconscious competence is the Holy Spirit and Jesus is inside of you. When you can tap into that, that thing runs at four million bits per second. Your normal thinking runs at a slow pace. Why not go to the faster-running engine? It’s pretty easy.
The 77Pray app, which the sticker is getting a little rusted out, I couldn't come up with the name for the longest time. I talked in front of a group of 150 CEOs including Kevin Harrington from the Shark Tank. One of the guys in the audience goes, “I have an idea what you should name it, 77. I will tell you offline what it's about.” I go, “Cool. I like it.” Malik is this guy's name. He pulls me aside and goes, “It's Matthew 7:7, ‘Ask and it shall be given to you. Knock on the door and it shall be opened.’” Like you said, ask and it shall be given. “I need $20.” It doesn't work every time.
With the first prayer, I had a year of God kept showing up telling me about Noah. We were on a hike and the guy does Bible study. I go to Florida and say, “Would you humor me and randomly flip to a verse?” He goes, “No.” Then it was Noah's Ark. I thought he was going randomly flip but it was already preordained and planned.
I go to Noah's Ark in Kentucky. I'm like, “God, I saw Noah's Ark. What's the punch line?” We put the app out and the first person to be prayed for is Noah McLeroy. He's 22 years old. He has double pneumonia and then COVID. It all goes declining for eight days to where he's in the hospital at 28 beats per minute.
I'm like, “I saw my son get healed from prayer. Rich, we’ve got to get this thing going.” I call him and he goes, “Good news. God talked to me.” I go, “What are you talking about?” He goes, “Right outside my door in a low deep voice.” I go, “Tammy does not have a low deep voice. What are you talking about?” He goes, “No, the thunder.” I hang up and called my mom. I go, “Mom, you are not going to believe this. We are praying for this kid Noah.” She starts crying. I go, “Why are you crying?” She goes, “Thirty minutes ago, I opened the Bible verse and it said, ‘God talks through thunder.’” I'm like, “I can't make this stuff up.”
Two hours prior to that, he wasn't going to leave anytime soon. Thirty minutes after I build the website, I'm going to start doing emails out to people saying, “Pray for Noah,” as a way to drive people to my app. I was like, “I didn't think of that.” That's a good little hack that we figured out. I’ve got an email, “You can take the site down. Noah is going home. No oxygen is required. He's fine.” I'm like, “What?”
That was the first miracle of the prayer app. Isn’t that awesome? You were asking about these defining moments or miracles. I was at an investor real estate conference. I'm sitting to myself because I'm trying to focus. Some folks asked me to lunch and I go to lunch. They talked about how God said that they could see that we were going to connect.
The lady next to me tells me that she's deaf in her left ear. I said, “Do you believe that God is a God of miracles?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Catch me after the workshop. If you want me to, we will pray. We will believe God for a miracle because that's what he does.” Sure enough, after that class, she's running after me. I'm like, “Let me go to the bathroom, pray real quick and say, ‘God help me.’”
I come out and put my hand on her ears. I said, “What's the problem with your ear?” She knew everything that needed to happen. I spoke to that, put my finger and said, “In the name of Jesus, be healed. I commend your ear to open,” and it was open. I said, “Turn around and walk that way. I'm going to clap and see if you can hear.” She could hear. She started bawling. I knew that was one of those moments where God wanted to show up in the marketplace, not for me but for everyone else there. She was taking care of this older guy. He came ecstatic and amazed at God. I love when God shows out like that. It's amazing but he does it in the marketplace.
If Google was a thing many years ago and you could say, “Show me the number of miracles performed on a per capita basis.” My human mind tells me, “It's more because Jesus is coming.” In reality, I'm quite positive that the same number of miracles happens all the time, a bird that can fly, a star that's in the air, the Earth that rotates in the middle of nowhere are all miracles. You can't stack rank it and say, “There's more now than there were then.” They are everywhere. You just have to open your eyes.
Social media is king. We know about everything.
I'm so excited. You live close. I will go see you at a CU and Nebraska game or something.
I live in Florida. My friend's son is like a nephew to me. He got married in Colorado. I'm sure we will be coming back.
I go to Sarasota once a quarter for five days. How far are you from that part of town?
I don’t know how far Sarasota is though. I’m in North Florida.
God-Ordained Purpose: In America, people try to get you to focus on your failures. You need to focus on your strengths. There's so much more than you can soar to when you focus on that one thing you do well.
It's an hour South of Tampa.
That's probably 3 or 4 hours. It’s not that far. Tampa is two and a half for me.
The last question is fairly obvious but I'm going to ask it anyway because it's one of the best questions of the whole show. What role does faith play in your journey?
It plays every single role that you can imagine in my career. I truly believe that when you walk by faith and not by sight, God will guide you into every situation that he wants you to be in so much. As a TV news anchor reporter, even though I applied for jobs, every single job that I took from Lincoln, Omaha, Savannah, Birmingham to Nashville was because somebody called me about it. I knew that it was time for me to go on to that next job. It wasn't because I applied. It’s because those are the ones that came.
Faith is so important. One of my biggest desires is to see every believer begin to embrace who he or she is wherever they are and to not be afraid of their faith. We live in such a canceled culture where it seems like they want to cancel our faith as Christians and highlight everyone else. Even in casual conversation like I did with my friend, Becky, saying, “Do you believe in miracles?” She was welcome to that. The more that we open ourselves up to that and have faith in God will do wonders not just for us but for those we serve and in our career.
It seems like the more things pull in one direction, the world has a yin and a yang to it. It's not going to go out of balance. The light overcomes the darkness. We have to lean into that and follow the path. NEEDTOBREATHE is one of my favorite bands. I get to see them at Red Rocks. The song goes, “The banks of the river.” Think of a raft on a river. It's going to get rushing sometimes. Sometimes it's calm. Sometimes there might be a fork and you have to make a choice. The banks to me, that's God. If put your raft down, take a good seat in it, hang on for the ride and enjoy the waves on the way down.
Know he's in control.
Dwann, this has been fabulous. Thank you so much for investing some of your time with us and sharing your stories with our readers. If people want to reach you, what is your website? They may want to call your hotline. That sounds like a good idea.
That one is INeedPrayerNow.com. Some people go to GetProphecyNow.com. You dial in and make an appointment at whatever is best for you, then we pray for you. I'm launching our Prophetic Chaplaincy Lines. It’s like our crisis lines. We have done some phases of them but we are getting ready to do it. I'm excited about those. They are called the TRY-GOD Line. We are going to put that out there. I'm going to have to get with you and see if we can help each other.
If you need help reaching out to people, we are pretty good at that on half of my other business. I will introduce you to Anthony Wright. You and he will have a great dialogue. What an amazing conversation. God is the only person who could arrange this divine intervention. Thank you so much for being here, Dwann.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
I will catch you on the next episode.
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About Dwann Holmes
Dwann Holmes is an award-winning journalist, emmy-nominated producer & marketing executive called to to leverage leaders into new levels of Kingdom Manifestation. Holmes combines her 30+ year media background with ministerial insight to show God's 5-fold ministry leaders & Pastors how to easily evangelize on and offline.
As FOUNDER of the GLOBAL INSTITUTE OF CHURCH & MARKETPLACE PROPHETS, Apostle Dwann is a Prophetic Authority to the Nations called to set-order and build systems of accountability for God's Kingdom mouthpieces across the world.
Apostle Dwann is also the Founder and Lead Pastor of Global Prophetic Life Training & Worship Embassy.
Whether in the pulpit or auditorium, Apostle Dwann walks in Miracles, Signs & Wonders bringing healing, hope & prophetic revelation to all, particularly those called to Marketplace Ministry & Prophetics.
Apostle is also a serial entrepreneur, real estate investor and professional voice-over artist.
