LIVE Strang Report with David Bernard of United Pentecostal Church International - December 5, 2023

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Hello everyone, I'm Stephen Strang and welcome to this very special edition of the Strang

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Report live on Tuesday, December 5th, 2023.

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You know in my role as the founder and long time editor of Charisma Magazine, I have had

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an amazing opportunity over the years to interview many of the giants of faith.

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Everyone from David Duplesse and Lester Summerall, Brother Hagin, Kenneth Hagin Sr., Oral Robbers,

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I could go on and on.

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I've also got to know over the years the various leaders of the different denominations that

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make up the worldwide Pentecostal movement which also goes by other names, not everybody

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whose Pentecostal necessarily uses that term.

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But today I have the distinct privilege to be able to interview a new leader.

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His name is Dr. David Bernard.

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He is the general superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church which is headquartered in

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Weldon Springs, Missouri which is right outside of St. Louis.

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And he heads up the United Pentecostal Church which has 5.5 million members worldwide in

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238 countries and territories.

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That's just about everywhere in the world.

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And they have 43,000 churches.

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It's a major part of the worldwide body of Christ and in certain circles, even in Protestantism,

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not that much is known about the UPC.

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It's kind of like separate worlds in a lot of ways.

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But today we're going to learn about the United Pentecostal Church.

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So let me start by welcoming Dr. Bernard and thank you for taking time from your very busy

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schedule.

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I can't imagine what it's like running a denomination with 5.5 million members.

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And every one of them probably with a different opinion, right?

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Yes, it's quite diverse.

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And thank you for this opportunity.

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It's a privilege to talk to you, one of our leading publishers and authors that's promoting

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the Pentecostal Charismatic Movement worldwide.

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So I really am happy for this opportunity.

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Well thank you all.

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I want to get better acquainted with you and also the UPC.

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You and I are both sons of the Pentecostal Movement.

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I'm a fourth generation Pentecostal, believe it or not.

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My maternal grandmother, not that you care, but she was actually ordained as a single

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woman in the 70s of God in 1914.

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That's going way back there.

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That's amazing.

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And you're the son of missionaries to Korea.

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You grew up in Korea.

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Tell me what it was like growing up in Korea, which at the time was not, you know, it would

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have been not long after the Korean War that you were growing up there.

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What was it like?

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And tell us a little bit about the ministry of the UPC and that part of the world.

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Sure.

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So I'm second generation.

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My mother was a teenage convert.

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My father was maybe a child convert.

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And both of them were credential ministers of the UPC for over 50 years until they're

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passing.

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But we went to Korea in 1965.

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At that time was a very poor country.

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It was, you know, typical countryside mud huts.

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But of course, as everybody knows, Korea has rapidly progressed.

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And Korea is amazing because of all the countries in Asia.

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It's the only one with a very strong, vibrant Protestant church.

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And much of that is heavily Pentecostal.

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Now it wasn't always that way, but part of what my parents did, they had a two-fold ministry

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trying to establish the United Pentecostal Church of Korea as an organization, churches,

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Bible college, but also trying to minister to the larger Christian community.

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Because at that time, not many had received the spirit, but many were very hungry for

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the spirit.

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They were very conservative, Bible believing, repentance, seeking God.

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But they wanted people to come preach to them about the Holy Spirit.

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So my parents had a ministry of ministry of going to various churches and camps and so

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on.

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Another thing Korea was a dictatorship.

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So we had to be very careful.

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It was a pro-western dictatorship, but nevertheless, you had to be very careful not to say anything

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against the government.

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And you were closely monitored.

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Also our house was 25 miles from North Korea.

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So there was the constant danger that there could be an invasion from the North over

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the years.

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We had spies infiltrate even to our very neighborhood.

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So I can tell you all kinds of stories about that.

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So it was precarious time.

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At our school, we trained what happens if war breaks out, what are we supposed to do?

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We marched to the airport and your parents will pick you up along the route if they

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can.

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Otherwise, we'll put you on a plane.

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So it was interesting living in that kind of environment of constant threat and pressure.

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But yet it was a time of great revival in the church as well.

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Well, Korea is an interesting place.

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I told you before we went on the air that I've been there three times.

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I was at the World Pentecostal Conference once.

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I interviewed David Yonge Cho and the great church he has there.

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I remember one time when I was there, we stayed at some very modern hotel.

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And they had a total blackout.

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They were having some kind of air raid drill which brought home the danger of them being

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– you know, Kassol is relatively close to North Korea, which is arguably the worst

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nation in the world.

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And if ever you want a contrast between democracy and the West and communism as Korea, because

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North Korea at night is so dark and South Korea has so much light that they say you

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can even see it from outer space.

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It's just amazing the difference that's happened.

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But I'll just add something that I hadn't thought of until we started talking about

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Korea.

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But not long ago, I wrote a book called God and Donald Trump and wrote about the spiritual

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history of this New York billionaire.

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And he's from the Hebrides up in Scotland, his people are, and that was called the Jerusalem

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of Europe at one point because it was so fervent.

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And when he met with the dictator from North Korea – and I hope I don't murder his name

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as Kim Jong-il or something close to that – when they had that summit, it was in the

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news and I wrote about that.

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And there was a revival in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

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The northern part of Korea was actually the more spiritual part.

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And they called it the Jerusalem of Asia.

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And when I wrote about it, I was writing and contrasting Trump and the Korean dictator.

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And of course, neither one of them would have had any idea of this.

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But most of us have no idea about that revival.

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And I was speculating that in the revival, Kim Jong-il's grandfather was the son of

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a pastor.

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And had he grown up to be God-fearing instead of being an atheist, how different history

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would have been.

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So before we move on, because I have some questions about the United Pentecostal Church,

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I just wonder if what you could elaborate on this revival that happened.

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And what have happened not long after the Azusa Street revival, long, long before the

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Second World War?

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Yes.

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In fact, contemporaneous.

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So in the 1880s, Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries brought Protestantism to Korea.

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And in the early 1900s, there was a great revival in Pyongyang, which is now the capital

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of North Korea.

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It was called Pentecost.

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It was revival, repentance, where people would weep.

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They would stand in a congregation, the whole congregation, in weeping.

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They didn't have necessarily the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, but I do believe there

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are many who receive the Spirit speaking in tongues.

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But it was a huge revival.

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Of course, when the Communists took over, most of those Christians fled to the South.

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And actually, some of the strongest churches in the South originated with North Koreans

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who are fleeing communism.

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So we don't have any knowledge of organized Christian groups in North Korea because they've

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been suppressed.

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However, several years ago, I was reading in Fox News and it talked about a survivor that

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fled the country.

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And I collect the books of those survivors or those escapees.

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And this woman said she was in the room with a Christian that was beaten and was falling

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on the floor, bloody, beaten and collapsed, but she was praying and speaking in tongues.

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And that was the first statement I had of active believers in North Korea.

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So I pray that God opens the door for revival there.

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Amen.

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And let's talk about that because speaking in tongues, baptism, Holy Spirit, these are

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things of course that the UPC Church emphasizes.

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And while a lot of, you know, there are people in Pentecostal churches, this is well documented

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with polling from time to time, who have never, ever received the baptism in the Holy Spirit,

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yet they go to a Pentecostal church.

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In fact, once I read an article of how do you define a Pentecostal?

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Is it someone who goes to a mainline church who has received the baptism in the Holy Spirit?

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Or if you go to a Pentecostal kind of church and haven't received it, you know, I just thought

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it was a very interesting analysis, but I know that the UPC has a lot, you keep track

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of numbers of people who've received the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

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It's something that you emphasize that's important.

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How do you do that?

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How have you kept alive?

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Why does happening with United Pentecostal Church regarding the baptism in the Holy Spirit?

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Well we emphasize the Holy Spirit as part of what we call full salvation.

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So we start with confessing faith in Jesus Christ for pinning of sins, but in the typical,

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say Sunday morning service, we'll make an appeal for repentance, but we'll also make

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an appeal for the Holy Spirit.

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So we make it a major feature.

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And I'll just give an example.

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My wife and I started church in Austin, Texas in our home.

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We grew it to about a thousand people on the regular attendance roll.

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And so I tracked, if you looked at say everybody aged 10 and up, 90% had received the Holy

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Spirit speaking in tongues.

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Wow.

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Of course we had people coming who hadn't received the Spirit, who loved the church,

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but that's a very high percentage.

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And I think that's because we have a consistent emphasis.

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It's an expectation.

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This is supposed to happen.

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It's supposed to happen soon.

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It doesn't always happen for everybody immediately, but generally within a few weeks or months

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of coming, they're going to be filled with the Spirit.

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Well, that's a beautiful story.

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And it makes me realize that I received the baptism of Holy Spirit at age 11.

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I mean, a lot of people wouldn't take it seriously of a kid that age, but I knew exactly what

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was happening.

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It was something that I wanted.

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And it's something that kind of kept me through those difficult teenage years where I started

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asking a lot of questions that probably I shouldn't have asked or at least I needed some kind

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of answers for.

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So I'm very glad to hear that.

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And it's amazing that you pioneered a church.

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You founded a church that grew to that size.

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I mean, that would be considered a megachurch.

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So you've seen church planning over the years.

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How are things different now, especially in your own denomination compared to when you

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were boots on the ground, so to speak, in Austin, Texas, pastoring a local congregation?

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Yes.

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And let me give you a little background.

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We started that church and during my pastor, we started 16 other churches, which we call

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daughter works.

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So if you add those all together, it'd be about 2000 constituents, but we set them up

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to be self-governing.

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Of course, Austin, as you probably know, is quite a liberal city.

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Only 10% of the population claimed to be evangelical Christians.

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So in a way, we kind of got a head start on what's happening across the U.S. to answer

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your question.

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I think what's happening is our nation is increasingly secular, post-Christian, post-modern,

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meaning they don't believe in absolute truth.

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And so years ago, when we would start a church and still a very strong way that we start churches

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is through teaching home Bible studies and just try to have a home meeting, teach a Bible

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study, try to win some people.

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If they want a church, then we start a church.

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But what's different now is a lot of people don't even believe in the Bible.

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So you can't just say, Hey, I want to teach you a Bible study and show you what the Bible

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teaches so that you can obey it.

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They might say, well, the Bible is a book of ancient myths.

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But what I think is great about the Pentecostal message and experience is we have the word

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and the spirit.

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So if you have the word only, the word is powerful.

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But in a culture that doesn't honor the word, you're kind of stuck.

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If somebody says, well, I believe the Bible, you can show them who Jesus is and the plan

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of salvation and Jesus died for your sins.

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But if they don't believe in the Bible, you're kind of stuck.

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But in our post-modern culture, you can share your personal testimony and everybody is conditioned

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to believe people's truth, to believe their story.

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So they're going to listen respectfully.

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And if you can get them in a small group or church service where they actually feel the

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presence of the Lord, then that's something their philosophy doesn't account for.

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They can't explain.

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And so you have the power of the Holy Spirit, which in turn can lead them to the word.

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And so I say we need, in a post-Christian world, we need a balance of the word and the

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spirit.

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And that's what I've been emphasizing is if you're going to start a church, you've

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got a minister in the power of the Holy Spirit.

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It can't be just social grouping, it can't be just we have the Bible, it has to be the

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power of the spirit.

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Well I agree with you 100%.

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In fact, that's why I wrote this book, Spirit-Lead Living, an Upside-Down World.

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The world is really upside down.

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And that's a discussion for another day, except as it pertains to you and your ministry.

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And we've got to have the power of the Holy Spirit.

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Now, did you notice how I just kind of slipped that in there?

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Yes.

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I read your book and I agree with what you're saying.

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It's for Christian life and ministry, we need the fullness of the spirit.

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And you know, there's always been a tension between good and evil, of course, going all

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the way back to the Garden of Eden.

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And there's always been people that have been hostile to the church.

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But what's happening is it's more and more and more intense to where there's almost

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persecution in a way that most of us American Christians never thought we'd face.

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But the good thing is that it's separating the believers from the unbelievers.

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Because at least down here in the south where I live, there was an awful lot of cultural

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Christianity that was kind of gray.

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You know, you said the right things and went to the right church, but did not live for

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the Lord at all.

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That gray is disappearing.

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You're either hot or you're cold.

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And I believe that the Pentecostal message in the experience and you know, salvation

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with deep repentance as opposed to just intellectual agreeing with the tenants of Christianity

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and being baptized in the Holy Spirit, which is almost always an emotional experience.

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It's emotional just because you're so happy to experience God's power in that way.

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And it gets people turned on.

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I remember them telling jokes about when someone received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, they

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need to put them in a closet for three months because they're just so radical.

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I mean, you know, it's a joke, of course, but you almost have to have that intensity

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to put up with all this wokeness and anti God kind of stuff.

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What do you think?

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Yes, I agree with what you're saying.

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So several things that you said resonate.

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So first of all, there's always been sin, but it seems like sin is being promoted and

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glorified as never before from the government itself, from the media, the entertainment

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industry.

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It's seen as the norm.

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As Isaiah said, they call good evil and evil good.

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So that's what's different about what we're seeing in America today.

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And the second point is you're exactly right.

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We've kind of we've kind of coasted in America on cultural traditions, on institution supporting

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Christianity or at least moral values, but that's not the case anymore.

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So that's sad as an American citizen.

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I'm very sad to see that.

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But as a Christian, I say, well, wait a minute, I like to use this phrase.

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We have an unfair advantage because when every philosophy is accepted and every religion is

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promoted, we're not just another philosophy.

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We have the power of the spirit.

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And so when people are there really to listen to 10 different belief systems, well, when

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they come and encounter us, they there's something different.

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We have an advantage and we need to press home that advantage.

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Another thing I say it forces us to be apostolic.

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It forces us to be like the apostles.

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Think about it.

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The early church started in a biblical environment, Judaism, but when expanded to the Gentile

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world, it was a pagan world full of idolatry, abortion, infanticide, all kinds of sexual

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and morality promoted from the very top.

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But they were able to have revival and growth in a non-Christian environment.

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We've got to do the same and we can.

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And again, I say the Pentecostal movement is perfectly positioned because we have the word.

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We still believe the Bible is the word of God and we have the spirit.

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There's power.

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God will confirm his word was signs following as the end of Mark says.

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So I believe just like the first century church, we are positioned to the 21st century to take

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advantage of the cultural confusion.

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And yes, there'll be persecution and ostracism and ridicule, but that just forces us to pray.

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It forces us to rely on the Holy Spirit instead of our intellect or our ability or our cultural

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background.

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Amen.

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And when things get worse, people get more desperate for the truth and for power.

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And I'm a couple of years ahead of you, but I can remember the anti-Vietnam war era and

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the summer of love 1967 where it seemed like a whole generation was tripping out on LSD,

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where there were riots at the Democratic National Convention, where there were three high-profile

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assassinations in the 60s.

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Things were getting worse and worse and worse.

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And what happened?

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In that environment, the Jesus movement happened.

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And many of the leaders of the church today came out of the Jesus movement.

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They would have been late teens, early 20s, back in that era.

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So the Holy Spirit was poured out in the Roman Catholic Church.

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And growing up at Pentecostal, we barely even thought the Roman Catholics were saved.

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And maybe a lot of them weren't.

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But the Holy Spirit renewed an awful lot of people in the Catholic Church.

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And I'm not going to judge who knows Jesus and who doesn't.

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But it changed the Catholic Church in significant ways.

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It was a revival, and I believe that we're on the cusp of that real revival you don't

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really recognize until after the fact.

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But I think that we're in an era kind of before the Jesus movement, and I pray that that happens.

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But I want to get back to talking to you about the UPC.

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There's a UPC church in our area called Promise Church.

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It was passed by a fine young pastor named Ryan Lloyd, and I reached out to him to find out.

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And he told me that you have a lot of experience with coming over systems to support the local

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church, which apparently have been very effective.

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And so I wanted to ask you if you could kind of elaborate, because there's so much that

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we can learn from what you're doing in the UPC.

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Well we are seeing steady growth in numbers of churches around the world, but more specifically

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here in the U.S.

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And that hasn't always been the case.

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But in recent years we've seen steady growth.

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We have what we call North American missions, and it's geared to help church planters.

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So we have an initial program called Launch, where we have a meeting and we tell them what

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they need to do.

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We do come along with some financial support, and we try to teach them and train them.

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I've written a book called Growing a Church, based on my experiences of how do you start

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from scratch and how do you grow a church?

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Is that book available on Amazon so somebody watching could get it?

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Yes, yes.

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Or the direct website is PentecostalPublishing.com, but it's also available digitally and it's

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available on Amazon.

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Growing a church is the basic resource, and then actually the story of our 18 years of

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starting the church from zero in our home to a thousand is called Reaching Austin.

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Well except, sorry to interrupt you, but to me the 16 spin-offs is pretty significant,

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because each of those congregations, while it may be smaller than the mother church,

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has the potential to take off and explode.

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And exactly.

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And some of them have started churches, and that's also a way to reach different areas

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of town, suburbs, small communities that it's difficult to support a church, maybe in isolation,

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language groups, ethnicities.

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So that leads to, we have this plan, so we emphasize Bible studies.

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So go to a new town or a new area of town, start teaching personal Bible studies.

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If you get people interested, have a little home friendship group.

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If they're still interested to have what we call a preaching point.

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So we officially designate that we're having one weekly service.

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And it may be a rented facility, a home, school, neighboring church, maybe a denominational

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church that only uses their sanctuary one time a week, and we get permission to use

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it another time.

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And then if that becomes, people definitely want to have a church, then we transition

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to what's called a daughter work.

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And that means it's supported by a mother church, but the goal is for it to become a

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self governing work.

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And then it will go progress maybe some years until it's solidly established.

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We look at three criteria.

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Self governing, does it have its own people who can lead it?

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Self supporting, can it pay its own bills?

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And self propagating, can it attract new people, win new souls through its own efforts, not

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just the efforts of the mother church.

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And when it reaches those criteria, then we recognize it as a self governing church.

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We're basically congregational, so we're not hierarchical.

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And so it's kind of, you might say an entrepreneur model, but I'm saying it shouldn't be a lone

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ranger approach.

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It should be a team approach.

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And so we really guide people through that Bible study to a friendship group, to a preaching

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point, to a daughter work, to a self governing church.

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Maybe not all of them go through every step, they can go at any point in there, but that

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gives you a means of starting new churches.

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Well, that's excellent.

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And you know, we were talking earlier about the upside down world and how difficult things

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are getting.

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And I believe that during this time, we Christians have to work together, you know, even with

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doctoral differences, you know, Protestantism has a long history of doctoral distance.

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There have been huge fights in bygone generations between should you sprinkle or should you immerse.

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And differences on communion and all kinds of church government.

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And a lot of those have kind of gone away, partly because Christians have found they

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have to stand together because we have an adversary who goes around like a roaring lion seeking

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who he may devour.

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And I think that we can learn from each other over the years.

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I've seen a lot of my role through charisma and the other things we do as being bridge

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building.

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We're just trying to help people understand each other.

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We've done a lot of that in the black community, which is almost like a world unto itself.

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But there's a lot that we can learn from the black church and the black church.

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Well actually, among Pentecostals, because it started in Azusa Street, led by a black

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man, it has been integrated in a way.

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And in my city at least, the churches that are integrated are the spirit filled tongues

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talking type churches, much more than the more liberal churches.

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That's just the way it is and the way it should be.

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Heaven's going to be like that.

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So I just think there's so much that we can learn from what you're doing.

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I know that there are things we will never agree on.

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You probably didn't agree with about half of what I said.

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I think I agreed with everything you said.

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I felt like I was amen, Charlie, here just saying amen, amen to everything you did.

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But I want to wrap up and give you the last word and ask you again to tell people who

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are interested in finding out more about David Bernard or about the United Pentecostal Church

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how they can get more information and especially get that important book that you referenced.

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Well thank you for all your kind remarks and the time.

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And I would say I agree with some of your main points.

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We of course as the UPCI have some very definite doctrinal beliefs, but we know God works far

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beyond us and we want to partner and we want to recognize what God is doing.

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And even some of the denominational churches, it's amazing.

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Some of them have gone very liberal.

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They've declined.

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They have a few older people left.

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Many times they're letting us use their buildings and some have asked us to pastor their churches.

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And so we have Pentecostal pastors of Methodist churches and Christian churches.

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In some cases they have given us buildings or sold buildings at favorable rates.

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So I'm very thankful that God is opening these doors and we want to be open to whatever God

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is doing in these last days.

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So I'll just summarize by saying if you're interested in what I'm doing, I do have a

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podcast on YouTube and a lot of other platforms called the Apostolic Life in the 21st Century.

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And I just deal with a lot of practical subjects, some doctrinal, some cultural.

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So if you like that kind of stuff, my books are on Pentecostalpublishing.com and many

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of them would be on Amazon as well.

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The book Growing a Church is a more how-to.

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The story, some people like the teaching format.

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Some people just like the story form.

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So the story form is reaching Austin.

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It just says how we did it.

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Year one, year two, victories, defeats.

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I'm honest about things that tragedies as well as triumphs.

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It's not just a glorious story, but I do include many, many miracles.

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Healings, raising of the dead, casting out of demons.

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I give you firsthand, personal accounts that I was part of, witnessed, experienced, prayed

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for.

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It really did happen.

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The gifts of the spirit, prophecy, the whole thing, everything.

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It's all in that testimonies in that book, Reaching Austin.

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But I do also want to mention something I think is important and that is diversity.

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We have to be intentional about reaching every segment of the population.

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And I know there's a church group growth idea that you can reach people mostly like you,

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but I really think we have to go beyond that.

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The church has to reflect what the church is going to be in heaven.

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And so we've tried as the UPCI to be intentionally diverse of reaching every ethnicity, every

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language group.

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And in the U.S. right now, our proportion of African Americans and Hispanics is just

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exactly pretty much the population.

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Our constituents, according to the latest survey, yeah, about 20% Hispanic, 13%, 14%

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African American.

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So we're trying.

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We're not where we want to be totally, but God is helping us in.

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Well, congratulations on all that you're doing on your leadership.

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You're obviously a very strong leader.

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I want to thank you for sending me the Apostolic Study Bible.

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It arrived yesterday.

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It's a beautiful, beautiful Bible, which would also be available on that website.

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If you enjoyed this podcast, share it with your friends.

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Let's get it to go viral.

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Check out Dr. Bernard's podcast that he mentioned.

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And tune in again Thursday, 4 p.m. Eastern time for another edition of the STRANG Report.

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We're going to talk about Mike Bickle and what's happening at IHOPKC.

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Thank you for watching.

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God bless you.