Transcription
Okay, so people are coming in. We're going to let you know why these two guys are interviewing guys. You know what I'm talking about. Uh, we we do a theology broadcast called Radio. Uh, it's on YouTube. We interview pastors and teachers from all over the world. And we're unashamedly charismatic in the expression of the gifts. So we probably call ourselves continuationist, depending on what circle we're in, just because the term Pentecostal, charismatic, and occasionally have theological baggage to it. Um, so we teach on the gifts. We uh we train on the gifts in local churches. Um, but we we do this stuff online every single Wednesday for 45 minutes. We do a show specifically on the charismatic gifts, the abuses, the the, you know, how to how to practice these things, the deliverance ministry, all that stuff we touch regularly. So if if you're at a point you're like, man, they're really touching a lot of pastoral stuff, how to apply this, but I really want the theological guts of how the charismatic stuff works, we have archives and archives with the guys on this panel, um talking about the gifts of the spirit and how those actually flesh out. Um, so Michael, you want to introduce yourself?
Sure. And I'm Michael. I co-host with Josh uh every week. So it's Wednesday, but we also do a Monday show, a Tuesday show, and we're really trying to to dive into that word and spirit space where uh we can speak with into the theological issues of the day, uh but also really talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and answer all those kinds of questions. So I've been in a relationship with these guys. All of them have been on the show, on the Radio, at some point or another, but I think they've taken half of their churches when they've retired.
What's that?
They've taken half their churches when they retired.
Right. You make me sound like absolutely not.
I heard a couple O's like inherited maybe is the right word. So, uh, so why don't we do just a quick introduction? Maybe maybe start on the far end with you, Jeff. Uh, just a brief introduction to yourself and to your ministry, and then we're going to dive into a discussion about gifts of the Holy Spirit.
So, okay. I'm Jeff Wells, a lead pastor here at Woods Edge.
All right. So, I am Matt Chandler, pastor, lead pastor of the Village Church in Flower Mound for the last 18 years.
My name's Jack Darren. I'm not pastoring a church.
Congrats. Get a blossom. He was until Michael took it over.
And I'm Sam Storms, Bridge Church in Oklahoma City for about 10 months until Michael takes it over. We go snooze, you lose, you know.
Okay. So, so in this in this session, we're going to try to craft a conversation around pastors because this is the whole point of the conference. We're not going to try to get into the weeds of a lot of theology. How do we really engage our churches, create a culture, prophecy, healing, deliverance? Those things are normative. Um, so I want to start off asking a question about prophecy because I think every pastor in the room is going to think, you know, if I open the door to prophecy, someone's going to get on stage and they're going to say something theologically wrong. I'm going to have to clean that up. Okay. Uh, Sam used the illustration in your book, Prophecy, one time. Uh, you know, God is lonely.
Okay.
Okay. And then you got to get up and tell the whole room, Okay, God's not lonely. You know, maybe there's maybe there's a tinge of truth to this. So, how do you how do you pastor an audience in the midst when a prophetic word goes off, it's wrong, theologically? Care for the audience, but also not shame the person, just risk. You start, Sam. Talk to us through what you did there. And then uh yeah, it was actually a rather somewhat famous lady whose name I will not mention. I told Josh before who it was and he laughed. But uh, precious precious lady, and um, after it was over, we didn't draw any we didn't make any correction publicly at that time. We had a little break. So, I pulled her aside and I I know what she I know what she was intending to say. Namely, God wants a relationship with his people. He hung he hungers for intimacy with us as we do with him. He delights in it. Glorifies him when we u pursue him, and and of course she put language to it that suggested that God is somehow needy and deficient, and of course, Acts 17, Paul says God doesn't need anything, he's made everything for his own glory, so I just lovingly said, have you thought about the implications of what you said and is that consistent with what we see in scripture? And I think I know what you meant, yeah, that's what I meant. So when we came back out, she corrected herself, said I I misspoke, um, here's what I intended, but it was good that the correction was brought, she was very humble. Now, not everybody is, sometimes they'll get real defiant, get their back up and who are you to say that, and then they'll get real defensive about, well, I was I was right in the first place. Sometimes there's not much you can do about those people, but in this case, you know, behind the scenes without bringing shame or humiliation on this individual, we brought correction and she responded beautifully.
So, what you're saying is you you didn't take her out back and like stone her, you didn't excommunicate her.
So, I I love that uh just the way you you showed grace in the situation because I think that when we talk about prophecy, often times it's just it is a I mean, no one actually says stone the false prophet, but the label false prophet is pretty easily thrown out there. And um and Jack, I'd like to just address you as as one who's also, while you're not currently leading a church, has led a church into maturity in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. What would you say to pastors and leaders to put them at ease? Some of them are thinking, why not just not have that kind of mess to even have to correct if somebody's going to I'm going to put a prophet or a prophetess up on the stage and they're going to speak for God, something that might be wrong. That just sounds like a big fat mess. So, Jack, put us at ease.
You got to get comfortable with messes. Um, you know, Ephesians 4, God raised up uh pastors and teachers to train people to do the work of the ministry. People in the church are supposed to be doing the work of the ministry. And I don't know, I see the statistic all the time, but 50% of the pastors in America would resign if they could make a living at something else. And I think the reason is they're trying to do something they're not called to do, which is all the ministry in the in the church. We're called to be trainers and equippers. So, that that that's the first thing. And that means we're going to have to put up with some messes. Uh, and we we're not about making ourselves. I've made plenty of those as a leader of the church. And we would just teach people to be comfortable with that. And the second thing is never ever use the Sunday morning service as a training time. I would never come I would never we did this in Anaheim. I think it was a huge mistake. We would have maybe 3,000 people in the room. And we would have a two to five minute program pause after the worship. And anybody who wanted to give a prophetic word could stand up and shout out a prophetic word to thousands of people who and none of the people got up authority to speak to thousands of people. And we I heard some of the most ridiculous things. I heard famine coming. Revival is coming was a common one. And none of those things ever came true. And the people endured it because it only lasted two to five minutes. What what we were actually doing is teaching people how to despise prophecy. Uh, it's just irrelevant time. You can do what you like. So we would not come to church on Sunday morning and say, okay, who'd like to give a Sunday morning sermon? Why? Because we have a certain level of expectation of the giftedness and the authority of one who's going to bring that message and speak to the whole church. Why not have the same standard for somebody who's going to speak prophetically to the whole church? So use home groups, special training times, and all that to train uh prophetic people, and then and then a number of different ways to do this on Sunday morning, but only the most gifted people that you actually trust to address the whole body. Uh, let let them do it and uh and don't make the whole service prophetic, but uh you don't have to do it every time, but find a way that works for you with uh well-trained prophets who have a gifting and a character that you you trust to put on stage.
Okay. This question is going to be for Jeff. You guys pastor larger churches, and with that comes a kind of, you know, I could change the paint and lose three people um in a church of that size, and I think every pastor in here goes, I'm going to make some kind of transition that guides, I think that's why they're here, they're going, I want to do this more, there are going to be people I'm going to lose along the way. Now I've been around the Village, I've seen how you've been so patient with with with congregants, with staff, with all of those things. How have you navigated that space with wisdom, trying trying to think of their best interest? Obviously, you're going to lose some folk, it's going to happen, but you've done it in a way that's been gentle and caring. How do you do that?
Yeah, I don't know how to answer the question. I know that I actually deeply love the men and women of the Village Church. Um, we have endured much together over 18 years, um, and so I I want to lose them with clarity, not with what they're afraid of. And so what I was what I've been trying to do since 2017 is create spaces where I can teach a little bit, watch God show off. Sometimes God would force my hand, right? He would do something. I was like, "Oh, that's where we are, so let me teach on that." Um, and then I would do what I do every Sunday morning was, "Let's walk by this line. Let's walk through this line by line." And and then just go, "This is what the word of God says. We be serious about this. We got to be serious about this." And I at that point, we're going to be serious about the word of God. We got to be serious about this. Um, and so it was a and still isn't a very a multifaceted approach where if you do start in smaller rooms, then one of the things you're going to see is is you're going to find out what the red flags are. And what I found is the red flag is almost always the same. Um, across churches, people's concerns are the same really across churches. Uh, you will have people in your church that left really terrible charismatic settings and they think you're trying to take them there. And so you need to address that early on. Uh, you you've got people that have been trained, they've been discipled their whole life that all of this is nonsense and they've got a lot of television channels and stories and YouTube videos that confirm, right? They're not in pieces. They confirm. I was about to use an example. I'm not going to. The and and so you're navigating a space. I was navigating a space where here's what I know. Primarily the men and women of the church, they love the word of God. They love Jesus Christ. And they're really serious about seeing lost people coming into the following. I love those three things about them. And so I wanted to lead in a way that I owned it. I didn't put it on them that I had failed to teach them. Not that they had failed in some way. Um, and then I the earnestness at which I was asking the spirit to lead and guide and still like are we ready for what? And I'm still like here's here was the dream. It's funny because it actually happened, didn't matter, but like would the Lord show off in a kind of way that just everybody was like, sheesh, that's that's legit. You know, that's what you want, right? It's like an arm to go back or something. Who's going to complain about that? You know who some people in your church. So we I was just telling the story. I love that. My wife and Candace and I've got members that are here at an encounter. I felt like the Lord wanted to heal. It was a simultaneous shoulder and hip and um this guy, not not a Christian, friends dropped him off, just back from Iraq. Really in a tough spot, depression, dark, and he had been shot. Um there's hip and it was automatic roll with his shoulder. So they pop both him and had to lift weights. He had no and and so he was freaked out that I just said it's a it's a hip and shoulder. It's recent. Um you've been stuck, you don't work out. So he comes forward and he happens to come to Landon Carl, one of our elders who's a former army guy and did a couple tours in Iraq. Well, Landon doesn't want to dress the head and shoulder, share the gospel with Landon, shares the gospel with him and then brings him over to me and he's just like a mess. I mean, he looked like a ghost. So we pray for him and he says some words out loud that I won't say here and God just heal it like right there, just heal him, and then he broke and asked Jesus to save him. And so we just like literally watch the book of Acts play out right there, just like literally, just like you read this man, you you won this, and then there were a couple really key people in the church like that was really strange. So then I I wanted to there is a point where you said it so well, Josh, you will not keep everyone, and and I think the the pain in it is if we're honest, there's some people that leave our church and that's actually we're grateful for that. That's that blessed attraction, you know, you're just like, "Thank you for hearing my prayers." And and then there are people that you you baptize them, you visit them in the hospital, you you wept with them or their wayward child, and and now you don't preach the gospel anymore because you're into this. Um, and that stuff hurts. But you have to, for me, it was a I want to make sure I'm hearing from the spirit. I'll be really gentle. I don't be able to My wife says I don't have one to four. I just have five to 10. And and so I need to be gentle here, compassionate at backgrounds that are very real with very real hurt and and try to lead with that knowledge. And that's how I tried to do it. Slow, intentional, small so that when things blow up, I can get in there and pastorally address them. Um, wanted to make sure my my staff was all on the same page. We want something to happen and some dude that's on staff to counsel on the exact. I don't know what's changing right now. So did a lot of work with staff. So So that's how we've done it.
Amen.
Jeeoff. I was going to do the same thing. Actually, I might pause and just make one comment and uh because Matt, when I hear you talking, you talk about clarity, leading with humility, creating spaces, and why you didn't use this word, but the boldness to actually continue to step forward. These are really all principles of just general leadership. So for pastors and leaders who are here, and we we talked about moving to the gift of the Holy Spirit, um yes, it's important that we begin to to understand just how the gift of the Holy Spirit work, but but it is general principles of leadership that you've applied in other areas of your church. Just apply to this area.
Yeah.
So, don't get drier in counseling if you don't get your doing.
There you go. I could have just said that.
So, so Jeeoff, same same question to you. Talk to us about uh how you I've heard you say that you that you've been a functional, although not a technical cessationist, but a functional cessationist. You've begun moving your church. Talk to us about your leadership and moving forward in that.
All right. Just a preface comment. Um, I have really been excited about this week and hopeful and prayerfully God would use it in a great way. I'm just so excited to get here Monday morning. I had a fabulous night Sunday night with Jack pre uh conference uh day, Saturday morning, Saturday night and so excited about what God's doing and what God's going to do and open a letter without a return address early that morning. Somebody in the church uh out of here. And so little dose of reality that everybody's not going to love it. And um do you feel guilty about that? Uh, I'm sure we did. I'm sure they weren't there Sunday night, Jack. So it was just the idea of what we're doing. So just a reminder, and like Matt, I've been at our church forever. You know, I started the church 28 years ago. And so I've got a lot of chips here, but not enough to keep everybody here. You know, a few thoughts. One is that a great group of elders who are right with me, lock step with me on all of this. And um we have never been a cessationist church in theology, though practically a lot we have. I think it helped us that in some ways we kind of had a twostep process. In 2002, um, we became very intentionally focused on prayer, the church of prayer, and it was a good segue. We just were too late in taking the rest of the steps. But, um, I read I read Jack's book, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, and that it was such a big book in my life. And then I influenced by Jim Cymbala to move into prayer. And we began a prayer service on Wednesday night in August of 2002. We've been doing it ever since. And the first and and we've always prayed for healing. Sometimes we prayed the whole time for healing and the whole service, but other times parts of it, we always pray for healing. And in the first semester that we began doing this, the first few months, we had two dramatic healings. And I think that was encouragement to all of us. Oh, yes, God does heal and in remarkable ways. Uh, but but in some ways we did not complete the movement, the natural movement. I haven't read anything, part of the prophecy. At times I would read a prophetic word on Wednesday night. Somebody would give me a paper. I read it, make sure it was good. But hardly anything and and haven't really pursued the gifts like we should have. I felt freshly convicted that by your challenge this morning that um but we have somewhat believed in all the gifts and practice some of them.