(262) “Don’t Throw the Baby out with the Bathwater” with Mathew Reames

0:00 How much of your DNA has been put into the next generation so the next generation can do the things that you did for their generation and the ones that come after? Yeah. It's not always going to look the same. The generation that crossed the Jordan didn't cross the same way as the generation that crossed the Red Sea. Right. But they still crossed and they still entered into a promise. They still followed in the direction that was laid before them. God promises in Joel 2 .28 to pour out His Spirit on all humanity. Welcome to Global Outpouring, where we contend for that promise outpouring, and we equip for that outpouring.

0:44 so that we may engage in that very outpouring. I'm Philip Buss. And I'm Sharon Buss. Welcome to the podcast today. We have with us today our friend Matthew Reams that we've known for a good many years now, not decades yet, but quite a few years. He's a very dear friend of ours, and he is going to be sharing with us some things that are on his heart about that old adage, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Thank you so much for joining us today. We bless you, and we just want to say thank you for tuning in. But before we get started, we want to encourage you, if you haven't already done so, that you go to our website, globaloutpouring .net, and you sign up for our emails. There's a subscribe button there. And we want to stay in touch with you. If you don't mind us staying in touch with you, if you're liking this content, this would be a good way to stay in contact. And we also have an event tab there for you to click on so that you can see about our upcoming events. and especially this convention 2025. It's going to be an amazing time in the presence of the Lord in St. Louis at the St. Louis Airport Marriott, right across from the airport. It's so simple to get to right off of Interstate 70. And you can get there and you can come and join in with us as we worship the Lord in deep worship. It's May 21st through 24th. We're going to have deep.

2:18 deep intercession and deep study of the Word and wonderful openings from heaven. There's just always this open heaven that comes in this place as we gather together under the anointing. And Matthew is going to be one of our worship leaders, especially for the youth, and he'll be on our worship team on the platform as well. And so we're really glad for him to join us. And the speakers that we're having are Siggy Oblander and Tony Kemp. and Dean Braxton and Jeff Simons and Jean Little and myself. And so you're going to have a wonderful time of growing in the Lord. It's a family event. We have a nursery for the little ones and a special place for the children and the youth to have their own meetings where they can grow in the things of God as well. So come and bring your family and get into the pool.

3:11 It's going to be an amazing time. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. So, Matthew, we're so glad that you've joined us today. Thank you so much for being here. Absolutely. It's always a joy to be down here in the valley. Yes. And you're in the valley because you're going to be leading worship and speaking for us on our Friday night live worship. this week. And this podcast is going to hit a couple of weeks later, two, three weeks later. So, you know, people can go back into the archives and see that event on Facebook and YouTube. So just want to encourage people to really get tuned in to all of the content that we have to offer. It's not just this podcast. There's way more.

3:53 And there's archives that are just amazing. So, Matthew, tell us, since we're talking about convention, tell us what's your take on convention. You've been to a few. About how many? About eight or so, maybe? Probably something like that. Yeah, seven or eight. I'm actually very excited for this convention in specific. Yeah. It's always a good thing. Everyone is different. Everyone is unique. But obviously for the past few years. Travel has been weird. And, you know, we were finally truly on the other side of all the lockdowns and things. Yes. During that, it was not easy to have a big convention center type event. Yeah.

4:35 So we had a little convention center event right here at our headquarters. And, you know, for those of you that didn't get to come when they were here in Jasper, Arkansas, you really you missed out on some amazing presence of the Lord. Yeah. But. The presence of the Lord was never meant to just dwell here in a valley in Arkansas. And the wisdom that flows like a river from this camp and from these people, it's something that you need to enrich your life. I'm legitimately, I'm excited for what you're going to share when you preach at convention. I think sometimes, and I'm just going to say it because I have the mic and I can do these things, but I think sometimes people take for granted Oh, well, I hear Sharon on the podcast every week. I can tune in whenever.

5:24 And they don't always recognize just how much wisdom comes out when you take the time to teach. You know, when you're interviewing people on a podcast, you're not always really teaching. True. You're facilitating. And that's a blessing. But there's a great wisdom that comes when she teaches. If you don't believe me, go back and watch some of the previous conventions on YouTube. Some of the revelations that she's released have shaped directions for people's lives. Wow. And it's really easy to look at, you know, oh, well, so -and -so, they're famous. I have 10 of their books on their shelf. Well, I mean, you could have her books on your shelf. They sell them in the bookstore here. I have all of them, I think, unless you've put out a new one. Not yet.

6:11 I've got one brewing. Amen. You know, and then Pastor Tony Kemp, who's going to be there, you know, he's been with us. What is this, the fifth year in a row that he's been with us? Oh, more like seven, I think. He's a dear friend of mine. He's been a mentor to me and really, really affected the way I think about the prophetic ministry. Yeah. Disclaimer for all of you who are listening. I have very much disconnected from most of the outside prophetic world because. There's so many people with so many voices and some of them are lovely. But I really felt like I was getting caught up in noise rather than hearing the voice of God. And so one of my criteria of people that I pay attention to is I want to spend some time with you in worship. I want to see how you worship the Lord. I want to see how you pray. I want to hear when you teach something other than just a prophetic word, do your words still drip with the anointing that shows you've been in the presence?

7:22 And Sharon and Tony are the two that are coming that I know the best. And both of them are people that drip with anointing when they talk. And then Brother Jeff, who's coming, I got to meet him last year ever so briefly. But I've kind of kept up with some of the stuff he's been doing on the Internet. Yeah, his podcast. There's something important that God is using him to say that needs to be said. Absolutely. And I don't know him well enough, so I can't give him as high praise as I would you and Tony. But every time he starts talking about restoring purity in the house of the Lord, he starts saying things that I'm saying.

8:05 in my church and I'm saying in meetings that I'm at. And it's like, okay, I'm not crazy and I'm not alone. Hallelujah. And that's certainly, you know, those are the meetings that we're having in the main services, but I really want to encourage you, bring your family. Yes. Because we're going to have meetings for our youth and young adults. Obviously, you know, people of a certain age could decide why I'd rather be in the adult services. And if your youth really want to be in the adult services, I don't think anybody would tell them no. No, absolutely. But we're going to have time where young people are going to be able to gather. And I get to say young people now because I'm officially middle -aged. Oh, really? Yeah, I'm 38 now. That's the middle of what? 76. Okay.

8:52 I hang around with enough young people to no longer feel like I'm a young person. Oh, okay. You know, doing a lot of campus ministry and doing a lot of young adults and youth ministry in Kansas where I'm at, I'm not one of them. But the Lord has given me an amazing opportunity to pour into them. I have a great connection with youth and young people, and I don't really know why. It's just one of those things that the Lord does. But there are people that are coming that are going to be fasting and praying to hear from the Lord to specifically minister to your children and to your teenagers in a way that is going to be different than what you get at home. You might go to one of the greatest churches out there and praise God if you do, but there's going to be things that they're going to get when they come from an outside perspective.

9:40 And when someone who doesn't know them begins to tell them the things that the Lord's saying and it starts to confirm the things that you've been trying to say, that you've wanted to speak, it hits differently. Sometimes if we hear it too much at home, we undervalue it. But when someone who doesn't know us says the same thing, it's like it'll click in a way that it never has. Yes. And I don't know exactly how many youth are going to be there, but I've never met a single youth that came and invested their time. that didn't leave transformed. Glory to God. And then, you know, following that up a month later when we have our youth retreat here in the Valley, a lot of those youth, they came because their parents, their grandparents made them come to a convention, but something happened and they built into the community and they want to be here and be a part. Yeah. And that's important.

10:33 That's valuable for young people. And it's kind of rare. We're struggling. As a Christian society to know what to do with the next generation. We always have. I think you're right. The more the next generation becomes different. And certainly this generation is very different than previous generations. The more we still want to lean back into things we did 30 years ago. Prime example of this was I was doing a tent revival down in. A southern state. I'll be generous and not be specific. But one evening they said they were going to have a youth night and the worship band got up and they said, we're going to have a youth night. We're going to play youth oriented songs.

11:16 And every song they did were the songs that I did in youth group when I was in high school. Okay. And I've been out of high school for 20 years. So when they said we're going to cater to youth. They were thinking about their youth, what they were like when they were a young person. Right. That's not my heart for youth. Like, I want to know, okay, what is this generation like? Yeah. And then how can I facilitate bringing in the concepts, the anointing, the revelation, the heartbeats of God that I've experienced in a way that makes sense to their culture? Right. Yeah. It's not necessarily. trying to pander as some people do, but to recognize, okay, you think differently, but this is something you need to know. So I need to get it to a place that you get it and you understand it. Yes, absolutely.

12:09 That's my heart. Guaranteed that's going to happen at convention this year. Wow. Glory to God. That's tremendous. And I love the point that you made about watching how people worship. There's something about the worship at this convention that is unlike any other place I've ever been. I've been a few places. You know, something beautiful about worship in general is if the person who's leading the worship wants to, they can go deep all by themselves. True. I have a guitar. I can sit at home in my room and I can get into the presence and I can go have an encounter and lay out and do all that. But when I get around other people.

12:52 who want to press in, who want to worship, who want to pour it out on the floor, leave it all there for Jesus, then we go deeper. And one of the heartbeats of this ministry, we're having, what, the 50th, I think we said, convention. It has always been worship. That worship that we're going to do this year is not going to sound like the worship they did. In convention number one. Oh, yeah, you're absolutely right. Different instruments, different musicians, different songs, different styles. Yes. But the heart to get to the place where all we want to do is lay out before the Lord is what's going to drive the worship. Yes. For instance, Clarence is going to be there. Clarence and I are wildly different in our personalities and our approach to worship.

13:44 And yet when we get together and we do things, it is a joy and a delight. Well, at least it is for me. He can verify that on his end. But because it's not about, are they going to sing my favorite song? Are they going to play my favorite instrument? No, it's about, hey, I know that the Lord's about to show up. And I am going to worship with everything that I can. Amen. Yeah. And some people's worship is going to look a lot more outwardly exuberant than others. But if you're pursuing with your whole heart, even if you're just laying there, not moving, and we can't even see that your mouth's moving, that's okay because if you're fully in with your heart, you're stirring the atmosphere. Yes. And when you get enough people and you stir up enough atmosphere, things begin to shift. Absolutely.

14:43 I love that. Hallelujah. So, Matthew, tell me, what is the Lord speaking to you about these days? What are you meditating on? What are you ministering on? Well, I am a unique individual. Yes, absolutely. I don't know anybody like you, which is good. That's probably very true. I am a pastor on staff at Freedom Church in Lawrence, Kansas. Shout out to anyone who's in the Kansas City area. If you need a church home, we have Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. And you can find us by looking up Freedom Church of Lawrence. It's great. And so I'm on staff. I teach in our Bible college. I minister on our worship team.

15:23 I preach not every Sunday. I'm not the senior pastor, which is great because our senior pastor is awesome. But then on top of that, I travel. I do missions work. I do itinerant speaking. You know, basically, if someone says, hey, can you come and minister at our church? If I can get there. I'm going to get there. I'm going to lend my supply. Because in our church, we say we are better together. Absolutely. And if every person in our church is contributing, the church is doing better. And that's not just about money. It's about contributing your supply. We're not talking about money. We're talking about in the spirit. We're talking about supply. I mean, look, if people want to contribute money, that's great. Oh, sure. Money pays bills. That's great. But not everybody has money. Everybody has a time, a talent or a treasure that they can give. And in our church, time, talent and treasure is something that like you might as well have it tattooed on the inside of your eyelids because it's going to tell you so much. We are better when you are bringing your time, your talent and your treasure because you have perspectives.

16:28 I actually was just teaching in our Wednesday night service two days ago on. the spirit of prophecy and where the scripture says, we know in part and we prophesy in part. So if we're in church together, Sharon, and you're not contributing what the Lord's speaking to you, you're doing me a disservice. Very true. Because I only know in part. Right. But sometimes we become very introspective in our local church and we forget that our local church is part of a church in our city. True. And you may not always get along with your Presbyterian neighbors, your Baptist neighbors, your Nazarene neighbors, but there's parts that they understand that God has given them revelation that can be a blessing for us.

17:17 And when we come together in that, then we're all growing better, even when we have recognizing there's minor disagreements. We don't worship the same. We don't pray the same. But we worship the same God. We pray to the same God. But then you have certain towns and certain cities where, sure, we're a little more connected in the city. But what about the state? What about the region? What about the nation? Yeah. For me, my heart is always, if there's something I have that can benefit you, I'm going to be there. And I'm going to try and do everything I can. You know, I always teach people. I said, look, if I got a bed and a shower and I can afford to get to you, I'm there. It's not that complicated because you have a need, and if I have a way to fill it, then I'm going to fill it. It's very relational.

18:07 Unfortunately, and I was talking with a dear friend about this the other day, a lot of ministry is not relational. It's transactional. Ministers come in if you pay them enough. Oh, mercy. Ministers bless the people if they think it's going to have a big enough offering. Oh, my. And I certainly understand that. When you're well -known enough, you want to have services in bigger facilities because your name is going to bring more people. That's fine. If you're the guy that wrote the most recent prophetic bestseller and 550 people are going to want to hear you when you come to a certain city, you need a facility for that. But what if a church with 20 people wants something?

18:51 Yeah. They're not going to be able to afford to bring in some of those people. But they still need someone to come. True. They still need someone. And especially I love pastors, but sometimes pastors get wore out. You know, when Paul was talking with his disciples, he says, oh, I've been beaten. I've been shipwrecked. I've received the 39 lashes more than once. And then he finishes that thought. And I'm paraphrasing, of course, but he finishes that thought. And then on top of all that, there is the work of keeping the churches. Wow. And if you read that. The way it reads in my head is like, look, I've been beaten. I've been shipwrecked. They've whipped me bloody. But worse than all that is I have to do this work for the churches. And it can really, really wear on pastors. Yeah. So sometimes pastors, they need a voice to come in from the outside or they need an opportunity to go somewhere.

19:49 Yeah. So pastors, if you are in that place of, Stress, burnout, whatever. Come to the convention. Yes. Get outside of your service for a week. Even if you can't stay for the whole thing because you have to fly home, drive home, whatever, to make sure that you're there on time for Sunday morning. Get into a place where you don't have responsibility. Yeah. Shut off your phone for a day or two. Worship Jesus. Yes. And if your problems are significantly worse than that, there is absolutely no shame. And saying, hey, I am really struggling and talking to a counselor, talking to a minister and saying, hey, I need help right now. True. And if there's no one in your life that you can do that with, find out how to get a hold of me and talk to me. I will listen. I'm not a fancy counselor, but I understand we need those things. Let me just add. Right here. So if you are listening and you are that person and you have nobody to talk to and you want to talk to Matthew, send us an email at feedback at globaloutpouring .org and I will forward it to him. Amen. Or just go to globaloutpouring .net and fill out the feedback form. It'll come to the same place. So we'll connect you. Yeah, because your church needs you. True. God chose you and appointed you and put you in a place.

21:16 as a minister, to shepherd people, to serve a body. And sometimes serving takes everything out of you. There's no shame in that. The shame is when we get so caught up in serving that we forget that our well is getting dry and we need to get filled up. Or when the stress gets too high and rather than meeting with a therapist or a counselor or a fellow minister to get counseling, wisdom, healing, whatever. We just let it bottle until we break. And I've seen too many ministers break. Yeah. It reminds me of that thing that they always say at the beginning of your airplane flight, the flight attendant will demonstrate how these little oxygen masks are going to drop from the ceiling and you put yours on first before you help somebody else, because you're only going to be of just so much service to others. If you have oxygen yourself. Amen. Yeah, it's true.

22:17 So all that to say, the church world, it's kind of in a state of crisis at the moment. True. I mean, you can look on the Internet and you can find out about 100 scandals that are happening right now with pastors, ministers, leaders. Mercy to Jesus. That didn't act with integrity and righteousness. that got found out. You can read stories of churches that were struggling and had to close because the pastors couldn't do it anymore. The people couldn't do it anymore. You can read stories of people that are wounded, whether it's leaders or followers or whatever, and the sheep are scattering. Yes. And rather than Leaning into the word of God and truth, we're trying to fix the problems in so many of the wrong ways. True. You know, one great example is the movement they call deconstruction right now. Oh, mercy. It starts off with a very wonderful, genuine premise of what are the things that I've been experiencing and believing that are not true? Yeah. If there's things that I believe that are not true, I need to get rid of those things. Right. The problem is more often than not, when we go down that road, we don't have

23:51 anchors. There needs to be anchors that are unmovable. True. So I'm going to give you my top two anchors. Okay. Number one, Jesus Christ is Lord. Amen. Lord, Savior, Master, King, Messiah, whichever way you like to phrase it. He's the top one. That is not changing. Number two is the word of God is true. Yes. Even the parts I don't like. Right. I'll never forget. It was Francis Chan in his book Erasing Hell. He was talking about how 15, 20 years ago, there was a whole bunch of people trying to say that hell wasn't real and didn't exist. And there's still people in the progressive wings of faith. I will not call them Christianity because they don't believe Jesus is Lord and King and Messiah. But they basically said, well, our concept of hell is false. It's not biblical. It's not this, whatever.

24:53 Francis wrote a rebuttal and beautiful book. But one of the things he says in there is. Everything I read in the Bible is true. He says, I don't have to like something for it to be truth. And he was honest. He said the concept of hell is something he doesn't like because his compassionate heart breaks to think that there's anyone that's ever going to have to experience that. But his compassionate heart doesn't change scripture. It's true. And so those are my two anchors. There's a few other things that I have, you know, put some pins in that I'm holding a little more firmly. But those are my two main anchors. And so whenever I have a question about something, I can shake things off the tree. I can cut limbs off. Yeah.

25:43 But those two things are going to stay. Yep. Unfortunately, a lot of people, when they start shaking the limbs on the tree, they haven't placed anchors in those two things. And then you get in the deconstruction movement where they go from pruning trees to bulldozing forests. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. You know, we've been having a lot of wind lately. And Philip made the comment about. The fallout that comes from that, the limbs that break off, the branches that break off, is God's way of pruning the trees. Yes. And so they fall off because there's no life in them. And something has gone wrong. They've been eaten out by bugs or whatever. And sometimes you have whole trees that go down because they're rotten on the inside. And I think what you're talking about fits with that, that, you know, don't cut off a living limb. Amen. But it's okay to let go of the limb that has gotten rotten.

26:40 And it's not hard to look at all those things we talked about, all those scandals, all those places of brokenness and recognize the church is struggling. It's in crisis. It's broken. Yeah. And so one way people deal with that is deconstruction. They throw the baby out with the bathwater. They bulldoze the forest and they build from the ground up and it's never finished. Never kingdom anymore. Yeah. But on the other hand, there's people that like, OK, I'm still holding on to Jesus, but everything else gets loosey goosey. And I told you there's things I hold a pretty firm pin in.

27:21 One of my firm pins is the necessity of the local church. Because the Bible says. Do not forsake the gathering together of the believers, even more so as the day approaches of Christ's return. Right. I don't care what you believe about eschatology. We are clearly closer today than we were when that was written. Absolutely. And so we should be diligent. But what happens is when we have wounding in the church, when we see pastors that fail, we begin to think, oh, well, the problem are pastors. But how many hundreds of thousands of pastors are there that are straight and pure?

28:08 Amen. Tons of them. But when pastors become the problem, we have to replace the pastor with something else. Oh, that's an interesting thought. God actually, well, Christ specifically, divided the essence of his ministry into five giftings. True. You're familiar. The Ephesians 4 .11. They are the elders of the church. And you have the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and the teachers. And we have created structures around that, some of which is good. We need all of those in action in our church.

28:49 But some churches have decided, oh, well, pastors are the problem. The fix is we need more apostles. Or we need more prophets. And in certain cultures even, we've created hierarchies. The apostle is more important than the evangelist. The evangelist is more important than the teacher. I feel bad for teachers. It doesn't matter which system you go with. People always put the teachers at the bottom. They're some of the ones you need the most because the teachers will teach you what is true so you can build a solid foundation. Maybe that's why they're on the bottom. Yeah, that makes sense. We treat them like they're at the bottom when we walk all over them. But God didn't say, I'm going to give you apostles to rule over everything. I'm going to give you prophets to be next in line. I'm going to give you evangelists, then pastors, then teachers.

29:45 No, he said, I give these gifts to the body. For the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry. Right. And that's the part that we don't always hear. Lots of times people are focusing on the fivefold ministry without focusing on the purpose of the fivefold ministry, which is to ignite everybody in the body because we need all hands on deck. Because we're better together. Exactly. So what has happened, while some people have just said, it's all bad, burn it down. And certainly living where I live and seeing some of the things I've seen in my region recently, I have friends that are burning it all down right now. And I'm praying that I can give them a cup of cool water because don't make dumb choices when you react to things. Right.

30:32 But some people aren't in the bulldoze it all down phase. They're just like, oh, we need to shift and we need to change things. And there was a movement that started years ago where. We wanted to create hubs and networks. One of our sayings at our church is we want to create a hub for the Holy Spirit to move in our region. And so we love to network with other churches and other ministries to accomplish the will of God in our community. Good. But in places where we've believed that pastors are the problem, the local church is the problem, we've created hubs apart from the local church. And we've created ministries that don't have pastors. And what is the role of the pastor? It's the shepherd.

31:21 Right. And if you don't have shepherds tending to sheep, then you're going to have sheep that are going to fall apart. They're going to go astray. We need the teachers in every church, every apostolic ministry, every revival center, every hub, every this, every that. You can put whatever name you want to put on it. The only reason you're not calling it church is because church is no longer cool. And unfortunately, a lot of those ministries, they want to do all of the trappings of church. Right. They want to have the big meetings. They want to have the fancy speakers. They want to have the cool worship. They want the big offerings. But they don't want the responsibility of pastoring and shepherding.

32:03 Wow. And that's why we have a whole bunch of places that can ordain you real quick. Oh, wow. And send you off as the next hot shot minister. Oh, mercy. And you have zero connection and zero discipleship and no one actively making you grow. Wow. And no one you're responsible to. Yeah. You may have, if you want to be part of our network, you got to pay your fees, your dues, your whatever. That's not you speaking personally of your network. No, no. But that's what you're saying. That's what a lot of these networks, you know, they have dues, they have fees, whatever. I've been ordained twice. And neither ministry that I'm ordained through has ever required a dime from me. Hallelujah. And I've never had to pay a yearly fee to keep my license current. There's not, you know, if some ministry, some denominations, you know, they have a, you pay the fee for the license. Okay, whatever. But when you're paying for the privilege to be a minister and you're not ministering because the Presbytery, witness the call of God on your life, attested to it with the laying on of hands and commissioned you to go and do the work. You know, when Paul was sent out, Paul, the greatest of the apostles in most people's eyes because of all the books he wrote. And, you know, he was the loudest voice in the room. Sure. Well, maybe Peter. Yeah. Because Peter was clearly a loud mouth. But Paul was a better writer. It specifically said that when

33:35 Paul would go out on his missionary journeys, he was eager to come home to Antioch to tell of the things that the Lord had done. Yeah. And so one of the ways we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater is we have devalued the local church. We've devalued the necessity of shepherding. And in doing so, our hubs, our centers. Our whatever trendy phrase you want to use to not call it a church are not discipling our community. Wow. And if such and such, such and such apostolic hub in grand national city of Utah closes its doors, no one's going to remember. No one's going to care. The community will not be affected because you're not affecting your community now. Wow.

34:30 Yeah. The local church in scriptures always shaped their communities. True. Always had impact in their local city. Even if they were hated and persecuted, you couldn't deny that they were there and they were doing something big. Wow. Pastors are very missional. Pastors, they care about their sheep. They want to see you discipled and grow. When you call your favorite evangelist who you've given every month to because, You really enjoyed that message they preached on the TV that one time. And you say, hey, I'm in the hospital right now. I have such and such infection and they don't know what's going to happen. It's not the televangelist that's going to come to your hospital. Maybe if you live in a close enough community, your apostle, your prophet friends, they might show up. But if you're in a local church and you have a pastor, chances are your pastor is going to be there. And, you know, I do not say this. Let me clarify and be clear. I love apostles. I love prophets. I love evangelists. I love pastors. I love teachers.

35:39 We need all of them. And they all function in different roles. And there's not one that's better than the other. And there's not one that's worse than the other. And because we have devalued some at the expense, we devalue teachers. And so we're not teaching good doctrine. We're letting bad theology creep into our churches. Statistically, and this is like the Barna Group has studied this out, charismatic and Pentecostal churches are some of the most biblically uneducated in the world. And it shouldn't be. If you go back to the early days of Pentecostalism. The 1910s, the 1920s, you know, the post Azusa Street, when you started to have the Church of God in Christ and the Assemblies of God and everything rising up in the four square. Pentecostal theologians were on the forefront of publishing papers and theological treaties on what they believed and why. And even though there was much disagreement.

36:45 Between them and their cessationist friends who didn't believe in the Pentecostal outworking of the Holy Spirit, there was a level of communication. Hey, we're going to explain this using scripture. Yeah. Now we've gotten to an anti -intellectual place where, well, it's the Holy Spirit, so you can't teach that. You can only catch that. Oh, honestly. And if you need theology, well, I just need Jesus. Another area, you do need Jesus. You do need experience. But you need theology. You need to know the word. I teach in a Bible college. One of the things I expect is that my students will be able to explain what they mean when they say they speak in tongues, why they believe it's for today. I'm pro -speaking in tongues. I do that regularly. I think in some circles, though. They do it incorrectly. You know, when Paul talks about speaking out in tongues in 1 Corinthians 14, he talks about when you're in the church service and there's no interpreter, that's a problem. Right. And there's a lot of churches that don't even try to interpret. Yeah.

37:58 They just, you know, someone shouts something out and they move on. Oh, my. The thing about being charismatic is it's messy. I mean, you've been charismatic for a long time. Long time. So you know it's messy. Yeah. So a lot of churches would rather not do the thing so they don't have to deal with the mess. Well, yeah. Our church and my pastor, Pastor Brandon Stratton, says this regularly. He says, I am always going to pastor those moments. Good. And I am not afraid if something goes wrong. We're going to own it. We're going to deal with it and we're going to fix it. If something goes right and people don't understand what it is, I'm going to explain it.

38:45 Good. So, for instance, a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning, someone gave a tongue and someone else came and gave the interpretation. And our church is a growing church and a lot of our growth is not people that were somewhere else. It's organic people that are being saved out of. All kinds of lifestyles. Hallelujah. That don't have a grid for what this is. Yes. These are the exact ones that Paul's talking about. Right. So our pastor got up after that and he said, well, amen. Praise God. We're excited for the word of the Lord. Some of you may wonder what just happened because that's kind of a little weird when someone. stands up and shakamahanda, you know. Yes, I have influenced our church culture. People are now saying shakamahanda to reference tongues because somewhere along the line, that became my thing that I say when I'm explaining tongues.

39:37 So those of you that are listening, if you need to explain to tongues, you say sometimes you just shakamahanda, you know, but that might be a little strange to you. But what happens is the Lord was giving a word in a language of heaven to this person. And this person heard the word and interpreted it for us so we could hear the message God was given. And we believe that God speaks to us and it's a blessing. It's something to that effect. You know, it was a couple weeks ago. I can't fully remember how he did it, but he took 45 seconds. To explain what happened. Good. And then we moved on with the service. That's a good pastor. Sure. We had services because we are a church that believes in deliverance.

40:21 Good. Y 'all want to have a conversation on that sometime? We can have a different conversation on that. I know not everybody shares our views, but we actually did a teaching series on it. So we're willing to defend what we believe. Good. We had a service where a woman was getting delivered in the meeting. Okay. And we did not like. Have the ushers escort them into a private room in the back. And, you know, certainly there are times you do that kind of stuff. But it was a loud moment that everything was happening. And it was one of those we felt in the immediacy of the moment she needed delivered. And so we didn't mess around. And the worship team kept worshiping. The sound person turned the speakers just a little bit higher. The, you know, one of the other pastors started leading some intercession.

41:10 Drawing the focus away because we're not putting on a show. You don't need to see this woman's business. That's very good. But then she got delivered. Hallelujah. And as sometimes happens, when she got delivered, there was a scream. I don't know why that happens. It's a thing that happens from time to time. And after that, our pastor gets up and he says, hey, I want to thank you guys for bearing with us and interceding. We are Freedom Church. And we believe there are places in our lives where we need freedom. She just got free. And pretty soon we're going to give her an opportunity to tell her testimony about what God's done. But I want you to know that she was being tormented by things from her past. And the Lord Jesus just set her free from that right now. Beautiful. And thank you for worshiping and praying and believing with us for her to get free. That's tremendous. That's all we had to say. Tremendous. We didn't have to in that moment give the 45 -minute teaching on the Greek word demonizo. I'll throw down on that if I need to. That's great. But in the moment, people just needed to know she was being tormented.

42:22 She got free. Let's praise Jesus. Amen. Yes, Father. That's beautiful. Doing all that is difficult. It's time -consuming. Yeah. It takes effort. It's a lot easier. Just to do things and move on. Right. That's why we need pastors. That's why we need leaders that care. People with a shepherding heart. Right. Whatever title you want to put on your business card is cool. I'm not going to fight you. Well, the word pastor means shepherd. Yeah. And there are people who would call themselves an apostle that absolutely have a shepherding heart. There's people that call themselves a prophet that absolutely love people and have a shepherding heart and they want to see them succeed. Unfortunately, there's equally as many apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers, whatever, that don't have the shepherding heart. Honestly, there's plenty of pastors that don't have the shepherding heart. They just fell into the job. It's a job. It is. And it doesn't always pay enough. Most of the time, I think it doesn't. But you can't have a thriving ministry without someone who's shepherding the people.

43:29 Yes. Jesus' commission was to make disciples. You know, if you read the five Great Commission passages of Scripture, he tells you what to do, when to do it, where to do it, how to do it, and what your metric is to know that it's working. Okay. Just unpack that a little bit. Sorry. Yeah, I guess that was a bit of a statement. Everybody knows when they think of the Great Commission, they think of Matthew 28. You know, go into all the worlds, make disciples, teaching them to obey, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Right. Sometimes we think of Mark chapter 16 where it says, and these signs will follow them that believe. In my name they will cast out demons, cleanse lepers, heal the sick, raise the dead, speak in new tongues, etc. Luke gives his rendition. John gives his rendition. And then in Acts, right before Jesus goes up, the famous one that every Pentecostal loves, you shall receive power. When the Holy Ghost comes upon you. I don't know why, whenever I read that passage, I hear that deep Southern Pentecostal voice come out. And unfortunately, maybe you're a quick -witted listener and you caught it. When I quoted it, I only quoted half the verse. I stopped it when the Holy Ghost has come upon you. The verse continues, so you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. Right. And so there's this commission. We are to go into

45:02 all the world. We are to teach and disciple. And we're going to baptize. And we're going to do it empowered by the Holy Spirit. Right. He's going to come upon us. We're going to be a witness. What does witnessing look like? It looks like teaching, discipling, baptizing. What happens? When the gospel is preached, signs and wonders follow. So when the gospel is preached, people are going to be healed. People are going to be saved. People are going to be delivered. The dead are going to be raised. I haven't had a chance to experience that. We're going to be able to pick up deadly serpents and drink poisons and not die. However, that does not mean that because Mark 16 says these things will follow, that we should expect that every service needs to have all of these things. Right. A firm disagreement with the snake handling churches. Right. I agree with you in your disagreement. But in some ways, I honor their commitment because they take it seriously and they believe that all these things should happen. We have people that believe that because Mark 16 says they will speak in new tongues, you're not a believer if you don't speak in tongues.

46:13 But those same people are not handling snakes. Right. We pick and choose the parts that are most important to us. What Mark was actually saying is you're going to do the thing from Matthew. You're going to do it by the power from Acts. You're going to do what Luke and John said. And this is what it's going to look like. These things are going to come as a natural outcropping. Right. And we saw that. Paul got bit by the snake, shook it off. Right. You know, did Paul go chasing snakes and saying, come and bite me? No. But when it happened, for the sake of the gospel, He moved on. He was fine. Yep. And so we're told by the Lord what we're supposed to do. Discipleship is at the center of all of it. Yes. And yet discipleship is on the periphery of most ministry. That's sad. Yeah. You know, every one of the apostles made disciples. Yeah. Paul very famously. Not only did he make disciples, but we see him training his disciples to take over for him. We get the letters to Timothy and Titus and Philemon and things. Timothy was very clearly being told not just how to be a Christian, but how to do the ministry. And that's important. A lot of our ministries today are not doing that. And then when the figurehead leader dies. There's no one

47:45 to continue the ministry. Right. And a mantle falls to the ground because there was no one being discipled to take it up. Yeah. And some of our churches haven't always known how to properly disciple. And God bless them as much as they know they try and do. Which is why we who know that, hmm, I did not get fully discipled into the position I'm in right now. I'm having to learn on the fly how to live my current life. I need to make sure that I fix that going forward for the next person. Very good. Because, you know, just because I'm the third generation of this ministry lineage, I shouldn't be the last generation. Right. The only way I should be the last generation is if the Lord returns and there are no more generations. Right. And that requires discipleship. Yes. But discipleship is messy.

48:37 It requires shepherding. It requires time and intentionality. You know. One thing I love about Pastor Tony, who's coming to our convention, is he pastors pastors. Yes. He pastors us. Yeah. He no longer has a home church that he preaches at week in, week out. But he has a handful. I've never asked him how many. I mean, I know he's doing that for you guys because you've talked about that. But he's pastoring you. He's discipling you. I'm sure in the conversations that you guys have, he's pouring wisdom to help pull you to that next level because he wants to see you succeed. He wants to see you equipped to do the work of the ministry. And then he wants to see you actually do the work of the ministry. The equipping part's not enough if you don't actually do anything with the equipping. True. Just because you got a degree and a certificate doesn't mean you actually did ministry. Right. And there's a whole bunch of people that have certificates, they have ordinations, they have this, they have that, that aren't doing an ounce of ministry. They just have a collection of anointings that they have in their little home museum. Oh, I got anointed and impartation from Benny Hinn. Oh, I got anointing and impartation from Smith Wigglesworth. I got anointing and impartation from this and that. You know when that impartation has taken hold. Right. Yeah.

50:03 I have an acquaintance. He's a bishop in a black Pentecostal church in Oklahoma. He got direct impartation from his father and he walks like his father. Beautiful. His father's in his 80s, 90s now. Wow. His father received direct impartation from Bishop Mason, who was the founder of the Church of God in Christ. Okay. One of the leaders at Azusa Street with Brother Seymour and all of those. You can actually look at what Bishop Mason's ministry looked like. Yes. And you can see the heartbeat of that and the fruit of that in Bishop Weber. Beautiful. Now, Bishop Weber is a hip man of the 21st century. He dresses different. He talks a little different, you know.

50:54 But you can see the inheritance of discipleship passed down from his father, from Bishop Mason. That's what kingdom is supposed to look like. Yes. How many of these centers that have divorced themselves from the local church are actually doing that? How much of your DNA has been put into the next generation so the next generation can do the things that you did for their generation and the ones that come after? Yeah. It's not always going to look the same. The generation that crossed the Jordan didn't cross the same way as the generation that crossed the Red Sea. Right. But they still crossed and they still entered into a promise. They still followed in the direction that was laid before them. Yes.

51:37 Amen. Beautiful. You know, this idea of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it's so easy when you're hurt or when you're disillusioned to just want to close the door on it and walk away. Oh, yeah. But that's not kingdom. That's not God's way. And when you are willing to throw out the body of Christ, what are you doing to the head? Absolutely. It doesn't work to have just a head without a body. We have to have the body. Oh, I mean, that's dismemberment. Yes. And what do we call the people that come to church? Church members. And we have a whole lot of ministries.

52:20 We have a whole lot of wounded people that are dismembering. Some of them are dismembering themselves. Yes. But you need to be rooted. You need to be planted. I know we're mixing metaphors because there's all kinds of metaphors in Scripture. But one of the metaphors in John is that he is the vine and we are the branches. Right. And a branch that is in him is supposed to bear fruit. Right. You know what I've never seen in my entire life? What's that? I've never seen a tumbleweed that bears fruit. You're right. It's because they're uprooted. Yeah. They have no life in them, no connection. They're just blown about by the wind. Yes. And we have a whole bunch of people that are not rooted and grounded in the ultimate vine, which is Christ, but in the vine of the body of Christ. And they're not producing fruit. Right. And they think they're great because, you know. I'm a tree. But just like the trees that have been cut down by the wind here, you're not going to go into the forest and expect them to be producing peaches. Right. Or even acorns.

53:22 Or even acorns. Another metaphor it uses, it calls us living stones and it says we are the temple of the Lord. And so you get those people that say, I don't have to go to church. I am the church. Let me be very clear. That is a lie. That is not found anywhere in the Bible. You. are not the church. You are a living stone that Christ is using to build the church. One stone does not make a temple. True. And in our hyper -individualistic society, we want to do bad all by ourselves. We don't want to have to be connected.

54:03 When you're a stone in a wall, That means there's room for another stone to be pressed up on top of you. It can be uncomfortable. You're stuck. You don't always get to move the way you want to. Why? Because God is building something. Right. And I would rather feel stuck knowing that he's building something and I'm a part of it than be one of those broken bricks that gets put in the dumpster because we didn't need it for the wall. Wow. And there's all these consistent metaphors throughout scripture, the vine and the branches, the living stones in the temple, the body and its members. When I was teaching last Wednesday, I said, you know, we're a body with many members and I'm probably the long lobe of the liver.

54:53 You might be the pretty painted fingernails. And I had at least three people come up to me since then and say, wow, that stuck with them because. Whenever somebody wants to talk about you're the body, they go like, well, you might be the heart or you might be the head or you might be the mouthpiece. We all know that talkative brother. We think you're the mouthpiece. No. You don't hear someone say you're the long, low liver or you're the pretty painted fingernails. But the reality is we all serve different purposes. Right. And he needs all of us. That's the problem is we want all the trappings without the connection. We want the Thanksgiving dinner, but we don't want to have to cook. And there's too many people that when they can't get it, then they just burn the whole thing down and they leave the gospel entirely. We haven't gotten far enough into this movement to be able to track numbers of what is the rate of deconstruction in. different denominations.

56:01 And within Pentecostal charismatic circles, is it higher in Pentecostal holiness style churches, Assembly of God Pentecostal churches, modern charismatic churches, the prophetic movement? All of those places, you're still seeing people that are falling away. And we know the Bible says that's going to happen, says there's going to be a great falling away. Right. The problem is, Because we know the Bible says that, it's easy for us to not feel concerned about it. Oh. Well, they had to fall away. There's a great falling away. Oh, my, my, my, my. And certainly there has to be a great falling away because the Scripture says. But does it have to be them?

56:48 Right, right. Could I have done something differently? to prevent them from being one of the branches that gets cut off and cast into the fire. Yeah. We've had people in our church that have left. Unfortunately, that's just the downside of life. Some of them left for great reasons. You know, they got a new job, a better job, moved across country, got married, you know, whatever. Those are good reasons. Yes. We've had other people that have left because they got offended, because things didn't work out the way they wanted, because they didn't get a position they thought they should have had, saying the right thing to them at the right time, you know. And some of those are legitimate things where, hey, people might not have talked to you the right way. Yeah. But I'd rather fix that. Yes. Come to me. Let's deal through it. Yeah. I've told my church staff that every one of you, if I offend you in any way, first off, know that that's not my heart, even though it will happen because I'm a very straightforward person. But number two, if I do it. Come and say, hey, this happened and I'll fix it. We'll fix it. We'll work through it. There's not a single person that's left our church over the five years that we've had our church that I wouldn't love to have come back and be a part of our fellowship anymore. Right. And that's because there's something that God's birthed inside of me where I have a genuine love. for the people in my church.

58:16 Amen. Even the ones that I think are strange. You know, my church is not all perfect, lovable people. And yet I love all of them. That's life. I know. Yeah, that's normal. We need that in the body of Christ. Yes. We need to want the people back. If you've had your church, if you've had your center, if you've had your hub for 20 years and it's never had new people come in, That's worrisome. Yeah. Because if you're fulfilling the Great Commission, you may never get bigger. You may never become a megachurch. Right. That's not necessarily a goal. No. I mean, you know, praise God for those churches that do accomplish those things, especially the ones that do it rightly and disciple their people well. But if you have a church of 25 people, but it's constantly growing. And people are getting saved. Your community is being transformed by it. If you have a church of 100 people, 500 people, 200 people, it doesn't matter. I have a friend whose church has never gotten significantly more than about 50 people.

59:23 And his church has had a lot of turnover. The people that are going there now, almost none of them went there five years ago. Wow. But most of the people that have left his church have left for good reasons because God has done great things in their life. And sent them on to a new assignment, a new place. So it's not that you have to be a bigger church. It's not that you have to have more, more, more, more people. Yeah. But you have to be discipling people. People have to be growing. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we forget sometimes the importance of prayer for the believers. That, first of all, the believers, the members of the church should be praying for the pastor and the fivefold over them. I think a lot of these people who have fallen recently, if they had had a better intercessor space, I don't think they'd have fallen. Obviously, they made choices, but I think they might have had the grace to say no if they had had more intercession.

1:00:26 That's something only God can say. But there's also the element of prayer among the fivefold for the sheep. That if the sheep are not prospering, is there enough prayer going on for them? And so, you know, it's important to have the intercessory team, but it's also important for the pastor to be praying. And in that prayer time, the prayer life of the pastor or whatever position that a person might have in the body, the Holy Spirit can show us things to pray for. And I think a lot of times we try to deal with things without praying. And I really feel like we're missing a link to the leading of the Holy Spirit that would cause a spirit of wisdom of how to deal with people so we can prevent some of this church hurt that's going on because people haven't learned how to speak the truth in love. Yeah. Prayer is a huge part of it. The other side of that coin, I think, too, is we need more authenticity.

1:01:32 There is a paradigm, and I'm sure since you've been around ministry, especially charismatic ministry long enough, there's a paradigm where the leader needed to appear bulletproof and like they were Superman. And so when they had struggles, because they were the leader and they were at the top of the pyramid, there was nowhere for them to go and get the help they needed. Right. We are actively working to cultivate an atmosphere in our community where we're open and we're honest when we're struggling, you know, and we haven't always been good at that. The beautiful thing is that when things fall apart and you have to go through those times, you get the opportunity to try and fix it for next time. Yeah. Because life is not sunshine and rainbows. Yeah. It's not about. getting hit it's about how many times you get hit and keep moving forward get back up get back up you know who would have thought i would have been quoting rocky balboa you know life is going to continually throw things at us whether we're in ministry or whether we're believers what have you yeah but bible says when you confess your sins one to another he is faithful and just to forgive you and cleanse you of all unrighteousness but on top of that we are willing to confess when we've been caught. Some of us are willing to confess after we've done a thing.

1:02:59 Praise God for the ones that confess before they're caught. But I think some of us need to begin to confess when the temptation comes. One of the big struggles in the world today is sexual addictions and things like that. When you're being tempted, don't wait until you've already fallen to then say, hey, I got this problem. Right. Say, hey, you know, I'm really struggling with these things and the devil's at my door and I'm feeling lonely and I'm feeling like if I'm not careful, I'm going to give in and fall. You need to have someone that you can go to and say that to who's going to sit with you, who's going to pray with you, who's going to do. You know, sometimes it's just as simple as, OK, why don't you come over? Let's watch football. You know, do something that's taking your mind off of that thing. Being in the company, certainly praying for one another is important. But sometimes just being present with somebody and giving them something to do that's pulling them away from the thing that's tempting them is a blessing.

1:04:04 And a lot of ministers don't have that. A lot of church people don't have that. And we've created a system in many ministries. Not all, certainly not all, but in many ministries where there's a deep disconnect between the leaders and their people. Yeah. And that's not necessarily how it should be. No. And to comment on that issue and really any issue of temptation, everybody is temptable with something, you know. And bottom line is, one of the things that I have learned is just get down on your knees and pray through.

1:04:44 Even if you don't have anybody to share it with, get down on your knees and the Holy Spirit will give you the grace to walk past it. The other thing I was thinking was a story that I heard from a minister that I've known for many years. And he never said what his temptation was when he was young, so we won't read into that. But he was agonizing over it with the Lord. And the Lord said, quit looking at that. And start doing what I told you to do. And when he just focused on what God had told him to do, six months later, he realized that whatever that thing was, wasn't a temptation anymore. That God had dealt with it just by him stopping the focus on the trouble that was bothering him. Well, Matthew, would you pray for our listeners and just let the Holy Spirit lead you? Sure. Father God, how great you are. I love that we can call you Father.

1:05:46 Because that is such an intimate name. Yes. And the identity of God as Father, it informs so much of even what we've talked about today. Because you as a Father, you disciple and you shepherd and you love and you care for and you facilitate our needs and provide for us. Lord, I pray that... you would instill into your servants the heart of the Father. Hallelujah. That leaders in the body of Christ would be equipped with that same heart that you had to be able to disciple, to challenge, to strengthen, to comfort, to build up the body of Christ. And Lord, I pray for the body of Christ that we would be the kind of people that are deeply rooted and connected. God, it's always been your heart to grow your family. You've always wanted sons and daughters. You've given us the spirit of adoption by which we can cry, Abba, Father. And Lord, I pray that as a leader in areas where I have failed your body and I have ostracized your sons and your daughters, not just me, but... Leaders all over the world where we've made sons and daughters feel disconnected from the family and even led to them falling

1:07:19 away from the faith. God, I repent. Show us the way that you love your sons and daughters. Show us the way you serve your children. Fill us up with that heart and that passion. Reconnect the members of your body. Yes. No longer allowing the body of Christ to be dismembered and scattered. But bring us together. Fill us in with unity. Yes. Father, I pray for church leaders and ministry leaders around the world, for the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, the teachers. I pray that they would come into a greater sense of unity and fellowship with one another. the hierarchy and competition within the body of Christ and its ministers, that it would begin to break as men and women seek after the Father heart of God. They seek after the equipping of the saints. They seek after the training and the preparing for the work of ministry. Yes.

1:08:22 Lord, give us the diligence to fulfill the deep work of discipleship. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Lord, you have never given up on your church. Amen. You have never forsaken your bride. Yes. We who are the living stones, Lord, fit us and join us together. Yes, Lord. And where we've been for a while and we've allowed the mortar between our bricks to start to erode, God, come in with the fresh oil of the Holy Spirit to rebuild the wall and restrengthen its connections. Yes, Lord. Hallelujah. Lord, we give you glory because we want to be. deeply rooted and grounded and found in you and in your heart. Yes, Lord. I bless the people that are listening today, and I pray that whatever it was that they needed to take away from this, that it wouldn't just be, well, I listened to the podcast. I'm good. I move on.

1:09:21 But that it would root inside of them and begin to bear fruit. And in areas that they are doing well, God. Rejoice over them in areas where they need to shift and change their paradigm and think differently, God. Give them grace and passion to do so. Yes, Lord. Build up your body. Strengthen your church. Yes, Lord. Make us to be a light into this dark world. Yes. In the name of Jesus. Amen. If you enjoyed today's podcast, Please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

1:10:03 Your review helps the podcasting platform suggest this podcast to other listeners who are also looking for a great move of the Holy Spirit. Check out our website at globaloutpouring .org to find out more information, read our blogs, connect with us, and donate. You can also browse our web store for life -changing anointed books. Until next time, this is Sharon Buss. And I'm Philip Buss. God bless you with his overwhelming loving presence.