Category: Interviews

Episode 040: A Conversation with Matt Brown

For this conversation, we sat down with Matt Brown to talk about the joy and challenge of evangelism, and how to do it the Jesus Way.

 

 

Matt Brown: https://www.thinke.org/

Pre-order “Truth Plus Love”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0310355249/

 

When Billy Graham passed away it made me think, “What next step do I need to take to help reach this generation with the gospel?”

 

Pastors need people like me (evangelists) who are passionate about sharing the gospel outside the church… if you struggle with evangelism, find people who inspire you and find ways to step outside in your everyday life…

 

Billy Graham was great at clearly presenting the gospel… more pastors need to think about that, and about how they are giving people a chance to respond…

 

The reality is, there is Holy Spirit power when we preach the gospel… when we talk about Jesus and lift up Jesus God will move in a sovereign way and draw people to himself… we need to make more opportunities for this…

 

The way Billy Graham lived his life was such an example to all of us… nobody is perfect, but he lived with integrity and tried to avoid the stumbling blocks that leaders get caught up on… he lived a life of authenticity and was likable…

 

My question is how can we champion some of the opportunities (presented by the new media) to talk about Jesus and bring the Bible to our world… and how can we have the right spirit when we do it? Church leaders and Christians need to set the pace here…

 

For a long time in my own life, I thought intensity and aggressiveness was the measure of maturity… what I began to realize was that if we live lives of the fruit of the Spirit, with a whole lot of love and joy and peace and kindness, then the gospel is going to look really good to people…

 

1 Corinthians 13 says that if we don’t have love, our words won’t be heard… the gospel can’t be heard through a life of un-love… we need to ask ourselves if what we are about to say is loving, gentle, and full of the Father-heart of God…

 

There’s a difference between being bothered and being burdened… we really need to have God’s heart for people, which comes out in the fruit of the Spirit…

Episode 039: A Conversation with Lisa Bevere

For this conversation, we sat down with nationally recognized author and speaker, Lisa Bevere to talk about life, marriage, ministry, and her latest book, “Adamant.”

 

 

There is a challenge in our day to merge truth and love… we have to know the Word of God but also have the leading of the Spirit…

 

I started to see that everyone saw that the truth was fluid… I found myself wondering what was happening in our culture… many people are finding themselves overwhelmed by information with no clarity [about what is true] …

 

Jesus is our “adamant” which means “invincible” … Jesus is invincible, he is an unassailable refuge… and we are in an “unassailable refuge of truth” which is Christ…

 

There are a lot of people who know catch phrases but don’t know the Word of God… there needs to be a return to reading the Word of God in context… not just scriptures here and there but context…

 

Being a grandmother gives you long range sight… there are things you’re concerned about when you’re a young woman or a mother… but when you’re a grandmother, you see that what you were so concerned about didn’t really matter…

 

Daughters have questions, mothers have answers, and grandmothers have perspective… God has always been multi-generational… and things that kids can’t hear from parents, they can hear from grandmothers and grandfathers…

 

When women are empowered correctly, they are not competitive with each other… they are free to use their gifts of intuition and relationship…

 

A lot of times we get women trying to talk like men at the table when we need women to be women at the table and men to be men and both empowered and valued and put together…

 

John and I don’t focus on what we don’t have… we’ve learned that the grace lifts when we complain… I don’t really believe in balance… I believe that I’m always a minister, always a wife, and always a mother…

 

Stop trying to be friends with everyone… enjoy your children and don’t just survive them… enjoy your marriage… laugh at your future… focus on the people who are challenging and building you… be the friend you wish you had…

 

 

Episode 038: A Conversation with Clayton King

For this conversation, we sit down with Clayton King and discuss the leadership structure of Newspring Church and the value of healthy confrontation.

 

 

http://www.essentialchurchconference.com/

 

We have lead pastors, teaching pastors, and campus pastors… each one of our campuses has a campus pastor who handles the day-in and day-out and preaches occasionally…

 

Our lead pastors—there are four: a pastor of culture and vision, a pastor of ministries, a pastor of finances and facilities, and a pastor of campuses—serve together in a lead pastor role…

 

Then we have three teaching pastors who preach and teach and create the series’ we’re going to go through…

 

The team approach is a beautiful thing for us because it forces us to submit our egos to the Holy Spirit; you can’t hide from ego in that kind of space…

 

The system is important, but it’s really the goodness of the people that makes the system work…

 

There’s nothing like personal integrity… it is indispensable… for us, what we’ve learned is that the Holy Spirit wants to bring unity… and while there isn’t a model prescribed in Scripture, there are some bedrock principles…

 

One of the decisions we made after our change was that we were going to quit reporting our numbers… we wanted to be more focused on discipling and shepherding our people… We changed the culture so that our pastors and shepherds were part of the family…

 

We’re also more open to the Holy Spirit… his presence and gifts… we’ve sensed a fresh wind and fire, a revival, where we’re seeing people healed at our gatherings, where we’re praying over and for people and sharing prophetic words…

 

We are not telling people “This is the only way to do church”; we are saying, “This is what the Holy Spirit has told us to do…”

 

Every church has opportunities to make changes… and we should seize those opportunities… but don’t make them quickly or out of panic… don’t get in a hurry… slow down, take your time, and labor before the Lord… and God’s church will prevail…

 

When you embrace healthy confrontation, while it is hard in the beginning, eventually it becomes normal… once an ego has been exposed, bruised, and then recovers, as a team we’re less likely to get hurt or take offense… it’s a maturing process…

 

http://www.claytonking.com/

Episode 035: A Conversation with Louie Giglio

For this conversation, we sit down with Louie Giglio and discuss the Passion movement, worship, and everything in-between.

 

I love that crossroads of life that is the university moment… we said yes to God and 22 years later we’re still gathering students… it’s not a conference really, or an event, but a purposed movement praying God will open eyes to see what life is really about—the glory of God…

 

We weren’t trying to build a monument; we were trying to be a fuse, we wanted to be an explosion, we wanted to see God start doing something that was unexplainable…

 

When college students come in, everything they’ve learned up to that point suspends… The university is a crossroads of life… people stop deciding for what their parents believed and start deciding what they believe… and that’s where you want to be standing—with the person of Jesus…

 

Early on [in the Passion movement], there was a presumption of “normal American life”… now we’re on the backside of the greatest economic depression in our memory, with lots of instability, and kids now are anxious and depressed and have so many conversations every day that they don’t even know who they are anymore…

 

But there’s also a belief [with this generation] that our voice matters… people want to congregate now… they believe there’s something more than the old school American dream… they want to make their lives count…

 

When I was younger I thought that way you make the biggest impact on the world is that you go to most places you can and speak to the most people you can speak to…

 

At 40 I had a wakeup moment where I realized that you make the greatest impact by staying in the same place for a longest amount of time to see the reproductive power of the gospel at work in the generational cycles that come… I wanted to root somewhere…

 

The calling to lead worship is holy… the heart of worship is still someone who worships in their closet, they like the lobby better than the green room, they like the mirror of the Word better than the mirror, and they come to lead the people and not to lead the songs…

 

There are 1000 people out there who know how to lead songs… we need leaders who have an anointing and an authority to lead people…

 

 

RESOURCES

Episode 033: Drawing the Best Out of Your Team

For this conversation, we were joined by Ted Egly from the Center for Creative Leadership to talk about what leaders can do to get the best out of the teams and organizations they lead.

 

The research says that a high-performing team has three things: they celebrate wins early, they slow down in order to power up, and they are willing to change…

 

In my experience, the celebrations that are most powerful are the ones that affirm or encourage those who are actually moving the mission forward…

 

This really means that pastors have to be mindful of what is happening in their ministries… sometimes when the church gets to a certain size, ministry leaders lose a sense of what is going on…

 

We need to give ourselves white space [in our schedules] to slow down in order to be more intentional about what we’re doing…

 

Routines and rituals are all about being intentional about the script that you’re writing for your week, month, and year… you need to set them up so that you’re not just pulled by the emergency of the day…

 

I tell pastors all the time that if they’re preaching every Sunday, it’s a mistake… it’s hard to be creative that often… I use my weeks off to do exactly what we’re talking about: planning, leadership development, etc.…

 

We’re married to the mission, but we date the model… the model is going to change… sometimes we get stuck in a model that used to work…

 

The pain of staying the same has to be greater [for you] than the pain of changing… pastors need to make assess whether the pain that comes from change is worth it… a lot of times for pastors, the perceived pain is greater than the actual pain of the change… usually, it brings relief to the organization…

 

We can prepare people for the changes that are coming by having the conversation early with a core group of influencers and letting them speak into the process…

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Assess yourself: which of Ted’s three elements of a high-performing team do you think you and your team are best at? Why did you give that answer?
  • Which of the three do you need the most improvement at? Why do you think that?
  • What is one thing you can begin to do this week or month that will help your team perform at a higher level?

Episode 032: Prayer, Unity, and the Kingdom. A Conversation with Pete Greig

In this conversation, we were joined by Pete Greig to talk about the role and purpose of prayer in the local church and how we can contend for unity and revival within the Church. We were so encouraged by the stories of bridge-building that are unfolding through the 24-7 prayer movement and we hope that it blesses you.

 

Every transformational movement of the church through history has begun with a movement of prayer…

 

We’re experiencing around the world an unprecedented coming together of the Body of Christ in our lifetimes… we’re facing profound challenges and we need each other and we’re long past thinking that one tradition, approach, or celebrity Christian leader is going to have all the answers…

 

It is in the present that Christians are worst at finding God… if prayer means anything at all, it means that we learn to encounter God in our present circumstance… and until we can find God in the present, we will never find him anywhere else…

 

I am praying for revival more than ever, but I am wary of revivalism… not only does revivalism keep Christians immature, but it is blasphemous insofar as it refuses to worship Jesus Christ as he is manifest in our present reality…

 

Prayer is not so much an activity of the church as it is the very heartbeat of the church… we don’t pray to get people saved, we get people saved so that they can pray…

 

I pray for the church in America with a great deal of gratitude but also pain… the blessing of America to the nations is beyond calculation… but the pain is that I see such division and I am deeply concerned…

 

The church’s prophetic voice must be based in the revelation that God is a reconciling God… and so when I see profound divisions around race and class and wealth and politics, it breaks my heart… my prayer for the church in America is for reconciliation…

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • What most stood out to you about Pete’s comments and why?
  • Is prayer the “heartbeat” of your church, or just one of the things that happens? How can you begin to change this?
  • What would it look like for you and your ministry to move towards greater reconciliation and unity within the Body of Christ in your area? How can prayer be a stimulus to that end?

 

RESOURCES

Pete’s books, including Red Moon Rising, God on Mute, and his most recent, Dirty Glory, are all available on Amazon.

Watch a short film about Pete’s Vision

Episode 016: Mental Health and the Local Church

As we launch the second season of the Essential Church Podcast, we sat down with Kay Warren and Tommy Hilliker to talk about the Church’s role in serving those facing mental illness.

 

One study showed that 71% percent of clergy do not feel prepared or equipped to handle a mental health crisis… it’s not really talked about in Bible college or seminary…

 

Reducing the stigma starts with the value: What are we going to be known for in our community as a church? At Saddleback, we want to be known as a church that cares…

 

Half of all mental illness shows signs by the age of 14 and 75% by age 24… so when parents are looking at their kids and they notice behavior changes, they need to pay attention to that…

 

In the church we’ve been too quick to call those behavior problems or blame the parents, and all that does is perpetuate the shame…

 

When it comes to suicide prevention, parents are terrified that if they bring it up with their kids for fear that they will plant the idea in their child’s mine… that has actually proven not to be the case… when you actually ask the question, kids are usually relieved…

 

We’re not usually very good at helping our kids articulate their feelings… make a list of “feeling words” and give them to your kids…

 

It’s almost like mining for gold with your kids… we have to work hard to help them talk about their emotions and feelings…

 

We don’t wait until people are in stage 4 cancer to help people… the earlier we address mental illness, the better…

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

1 – Do you and your team feel prepared to help people struggling with mental illness? Why or why not?

2 – To what extent is the culture of your team, church, or family safe for people to admit their mental health struggles?

3 – What can you do to better equip yourself, your team, and your church to identify mental illness when it manifests and lend a helping hand?

 

RESOURCES

National Alliance on Mental Illness – https://www.nami.org/

Mental Health First Aid – https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/

http://kaywarren.com/

Episode 012: Blending the Contemplative and Charismatic

For this episode of the Essential Church podcast, we’re joined by Pastor Rich Villodas of New Life Fellowship in Queens, NY to discuss the contemplative and charismatic traditions of the Church.

We started noticing that we had lots of gifts, but not a love of love and character… our church went in search of something more to try to balance out…

 

I think we have to root the contemplative and the charismatic streams in the ground of a robust Pneumatology… the intent of the Scriptures is the coming of God’s presence among his people…

 

If the Holy Spirit in John 3 is depicted as wind, then we have to make space for a multi-dimensional Spirit who comes to people in different ways…

 

I see the two married together – these are various, great manifestations of the grace of the Spirit, whether in power or in stillness and silence…

 

What often happens is that you have one sector of the Church that has a narrow view of how God has manifested grace through the ages, and then they get into their enclave or stream [to the neglect of others]…

 

We often don’t pause to see the myriad of ways God has come to us through the centuries…

 

When we swung the pendulum, I think we swung it too far… when you look at Corinthians 13, you don’t see Paul saying that once you get your act together, you can use your gifts again… he just says to use them with love…

 

What this is looking like for us is that I’m teaching on it more… we’re offering more trainings for people… more and more we’re creating space in our worship gatherings for moments of pause to recognize that perhaps God wants to do something right now…

 

For me it feels like I’m getting back to my roots…

 

Pursue the work of the Spirit in your life and don’t put restrictions on what shape or what narrow tradition it needs to take…

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • What did you think about Rich’s discussion of the charismatic and contemplative streams? Which do you most identify with?
  • Does your church have a culture that is open to the multifaceted work of the Spirit, or are your boxes narrow?
  • What can you do to expand your church’s receptivity to the full range of the Spirit’s work and power?

 

 

RESOURCES

Way of the Heart (Nouwen)

Streams of Living Water (Foster)

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (Scazerro)

God’s Empowering Presence (Fee)

Sober Intoxication of the Spirit (Cantalamessa)

 

Episode 011: The Church and Race

For this week’s podcast, we’re joined by Pastor Derwin Gray of Transformation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina for a conversation on race, diversity, and leading multiethnic churches.
 

 

Episode 011 – SHOW NOTES – Derwin Gray – The Church and Race

 

We believe that the church is God’s primary vehicle to transform the world, and for us, being multiethnic is intrinsic to the Gospel…

 

Theology is for ecclesiology… God wants a family… and this message isn’t preached… we’ve stripped the Bible of its context and we wonder why we struggle with discipleship…

 

A homogenous church would have been unthinkable to the Apostle Paul… God’s fulfilling his covenant with Abraham must be a front burner issue or we are going to have an underdeveloped view of the gospel…

 

When racism is rarely preached in a church, you can believe that a lot of racism is [present] in that church…

 

I have a pretty good name in Charlotte, and I thought, “If I get treated this way, imagine how people who don’t have my privilege will get treated, constantly…”

 

I think the church is the answer… our Sermon on the Mount ethic needs to shape how we live and move and breathe…

 

We as the church must become a classroom to teach the world what love looks like…

 

Here’s the thing: we haven’t been taught how to do this… we need churches that know how to do this to teach other churches how to do it…

 

You can’t cultivate a multiethnic church if you don’t lead a multiethnic life…

 

You can’t be a consumer and play on a team, but you can be a consumer and be in the church… in the church we’re actually designing our services for you to consume, and so no wonder we struggle with it!

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Do you believe that the gospel speaks to racial issues? Why or why not?
  • Is your church homogeneous? Why?
  • What can you and your church do to begin to move towards a greater engagement with racial issues and greater ethnic diversity?

 

 

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Derwin Gray – The HD Leader

Episode 008: Restoring Fallen Leaders

In this episode, we’re joined by two incredible leaders, Pastor Jimmy Evans and Pastor Tom Lane. Not only have they led faithfully in local churches for most of their lives, they’ve also played integral roles in restoring fallen leaders back to health. So we sat down with them and asked them to share their wisdom. We pray that it blesses and encourages you.

 

Episode 008 – Restoring Fallen Leaders

 

Repentance is everything… everything is possible when you’re dealing with a repentant leader

 

Don’t go faster than the heart of the person you are trying to restore… 100% of my response [as a leader seeking to help restore another leader] depends on the person’s heart…

 

The sin did not happen overnight… so to expect an instantaneous restoration is unfair and impossible… the foundations of people’s lives need to be rebuilt…

 

The goal is not just to restore them to ministry but to restore them to being a healthy human…

 

The temptation is to try to deal with this from the perspective of “How quickly can we get everything back the way it was?” This is not the goal if you are focused correctly. We’re trying to restore you to your loving relationship with God…

 

There are four things you have to do when there’s been a failure: 1) stabilize the situation, 2) walk in a process of [adapting to] the new reality, 3) reactivate your giftedness, not for vocational purposes but for volunteer purposes, 4) move into a vocation that God opens up…

 

Under the best scenarios, it’s usually about six months per step, IF the person is humble, broken, yielded to God, and submitted…

 

When the person in authority is the one who created the offense, they cannot stay in the home of the people they’ve hurt… for the body to heal and for him to heal, they need to go to a separate place to get healing…

 

In every restoration, there has to be a public repentance to the extent that the offense was public… and afterward, there is a public act of forgiving that leader…

 

The fallen leader has a responsibility to show repentance, and the church has a responsibility to show grace… with those two things in place, we can see miracles happen…

 

 

RESOURCES

Pure Desire Ministries – puredesire.org

Gateway Network – gatewaynetwork.com

Tom’s Book – Foundations of Healthy Church Government

 

© 2023 Essential Church. Designed by Quema Labs.