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

0:00 Hello everyone, I'm Stephen Strang and welcome to this very special edition of the Strang Report live on Tuesday, December 5th, 2023. You know in my role as the founder and long time editor of Charisma Magazine, I have had an amazing opportunity over the years to interview many of the giants of faith. Everyone from David Duplesse and Lester Summerall, Brother Hagin, Kenneth Hagin Sr., Oral Robbers, I could go on and on.

0:41 I've also got to know over the years the various leaders of the different denominations that make up the worldwide Pentecostal movement which also goes by other names, not everybody whose Pentecostal necessarily uses that term. But today I have the distinct privilege to be able to interview a new leader. His name is Dr. David Bernard. He is the general superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church which is headquartered in Weldon Springs, Missouri which is right outside of St. Louis. And he heads up the United Pentecostal Church which has 5.5 million members worldwide in 238 countries and territories.

1:30 That's just about everywhere in the world. And they have 43,000 churches. It's a major part of the worldwide body of Christ and in certain circles, even in Protestantism, not that much is known about the UPC. It's kind of like separate worlds in a lot of ways. But today we're going to learn about the United Pentecostal Church. So let me start by welcoming Dr. Bernard and thank you for taking time from your very busy schedule. I can't imagine what it's like running a denomination with 5.5 million members. And every one of them probably with a different opinion, right?

2:12 Yes, it's quite diverse. And thank you for this opportunity. It's a privilege to talk to you, one of our leading publishers and authors that's promoting the Pentecostal Charismatic Movement worldwide. So I really am happy for this opportunity. Well thank you all. I want to get better acquainted with you and also the UPC. You and I are both sons of the Pentecostal Movement. I'm a fourth generation Pentecostal, believe it or not. My maternal grandmother, not that you care, but she was actually ordained as a single woman in the 70s of God in 1914. That's going way back there. That's amazing. And you're the son of missionaries to Korea.

2:53 You grew up in Korea. Tell me what it was like growing up in Korea, which at the time was not, you know, it would have been not long after the Korean War that you were growing up there. What was it like? And tell us a little bit about the ministry of the UPC and that part of the world. Sure. So I'm second generation. My mother was a teenage convert. My father was maybe a child convert. And both of them were credential ministers of the UPC for over 50 years until they're passing. But we went to Korea in 1965. At that time was a very poor country. It was, you know, typical countryside mud huts. But of course, as everybody knows, Korea has rapidly progressed.

3:35 And Korea is amazing because of all the countries in Asia. It's the only one with a very strong, vibrant Protestant church. And much of that is heavily Pentecostal. Now it wasn't always that way, but part of what my parents did, they had a two-fold ministry trying to establish the United Pentecostal Church of Korea as an organization, churches, Bible college, but also trying to minister to the larger Christian community. Because at that time, not many had received the spirit, but many were very hungry for the spirit. They were very conservative, Bible believing, repentance, seeking God. But they wanted people to come preach to them about the Holy Spirit.

4:15 So my parents had a ministry of ministry of going to various churches and camps and so on. Another thing Korea was a dictatorship. So we had to be very careful. It was a pro-western dictatorship, but nevertheless, you had to be very careful not to say anything against the government. And you were closely monitored. Also our house was 25 miles from North Korea. So there was the constant danger that there could be an invasion from the North over the years. We had spies infiltrate even to our very neighborhood. So I can tell you all kinds of stories about that. So it was precarious time. At our school, we trained what happens if war breaks out, what are we supposed to do?

5:00 We marched to the airport and your parents will pick you up along the route if they can. Otherwise, we'll put you on a plane. So it was interesting living in that kind of environment of constant threat and pressure. But yet it was a time of great revival in the church as well. Well, Korea is an interesting place. I told you before we went on the air that I've been there three times. I was at the World Pentecostal Conference once. I interviewed David Yonge Cho and the great church he has there. I remember one time when I was there, we stayed at some very modern hotel. And they had a total blackout. They were having some kind of air raid drill which brought home the danger of them being – you know, Kassol is relatively close to North Korea, which is arguably the worst nation in the world.

5:54 And if ever you want a contrast between democracy and the West and communism as Korea, because North Korea at night is so dark and South Korea has so much light that they say you can even see it from outer space. It's just amazing the difference that's happened. But I'll just add something that I hadn't thought of until we started talking about Korea. But not long ago, I wrote a book called God and Donald Trump and wrote about the spiritual history of this New York billionaire. And he's from the Hebrides up in Scotland, his people are, and that was called the Jerusalem of Europe at one point because it was so fervent.

6:39 And when he met with the dictator from North Korea – and I hope I don't murder his name as Kim Jong-il or something close to that – when they had that summit, it was in the news and I wrote about that. And there was a revival in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. The northern part of Korea was actually the more spiritual part. And they called it the Jerusalem of Asia. And when I wrote about it, I was writing and contrasting Trump and the Korean dictator. And of course, neither one of them would have had any idea of this.

7:19 But most of us have no idea about that revival. And I was speculating that in the revival, Kim Jong-il's grandfather was the son of a pastor. And had he grown up to be God-fearing instead of being an atheist, how different history would have been. So before we move on, because I have some questions about the United Pentecostal Church, I just wonder if what you could elaborate on this revival that happened. And what have happened not long after the Azusa Street revival, long, long before the Second World War? Yes. In fact, contemporaneous. So in the 1880s, Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries brought Protestantism to Korea.

8:06 And in the early 1900s, there was a great revival in Pyongyang, which is now the capital of North Korea. It was called Pentecost. It was revival, repentance, where people would weep. They would stand in a congregation, the whole congregation, in weeping. They didn't have necessarily the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, but I do believe there are many who receive the Spirit speaking in tongues. But it was a huge revival. Of course, when the Communists took over, most of those Christians fled to the South. And actually, some of the strongest churches in the South originated with North Koreans who are fleeing communism. So we don't have any knowledge of organized Christian groups in North Korea because they've been suppressed.

8:50 However, several years ago, I was reading in Fox News and it talked about a survivor that fled the country. And I collect the books of those survivors or those escapees. And this woman said she was in the room with a Christian that was beaten and was falling on the floor, bloody, beaten and collapsed, but she was praying and speaking in tongues. And that was the first statement I had of active believers in North Korea. So I pray that God opens the door for revival there. Amen. And let's talk about that because speaking in tongues, baptism, Holy Spirit, these are things of course that the UPC Church emphasizes.

9:34 And while a lot of, you know, there are people in Pentecostal churches, this is well documented with polling from time to time, who have never, ever received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, yet they go to a Pentecostal church. In fact, once I read an article of how do you define a Pentecostal? Is it someone who goes to a mainline church who has received the baptism in the Holy Spirit? Or if you go to a Pentecostal kind of church and haven't received it, you know, I just thought it was a very interesting analysis, but I know that the UPC has a lot, you keep track of numbers of people who've received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. It's something that you emphasize that's important.

10:16 How do you do that? How have you kept alive? Why does happening with United Pentecostal Church regarding the baptism in the Holy Spirit? Well we emphasize the Holy Spirit as part of what we call full salvation. So we start with confessing faith in Jesus Christ for pinning of sins, but in the typical, say Sunday morning service, we'll make an appeal for repentance, but we'll also make an appeal for the Holy Spirit. So we make it a major feature. And I'll just give an example. My wife and I started church in Austin, Texas in our home. We grew it to about a thousand people on the regular attendance roll. And so I tracked, if you looked at say everybody aged 10 and up, 90% had received the Holy Spirit speaking in tongues.

11:03 Wow. Of course we had people coming who hadn't received the Spirit, who loved the church, but that's a very high percentage. And I think that's because we have a consistent emphasis. It's an expectation. This is supposed to happen. It's supposed to happen soon. It doesn't always happen for everybody immediately, but generally within a few weeks or months of coming, they're going to be filled with the Spirit. Well, that's a beautiful story. And it makes me realize that I received the baptism of Holy Spirit at age 11. I mean, a lot of people wouldn't take it seriously of a kid that age, but I knew exactly what was happening. It was something that I wanted.

11:44 And it's something that kind of kept me through those difficult teenage years where I started asking a lot of questions that probably I shouldn't have asked or at least I needed some kind of answers for. So I'm very glad to hear that. And it's amazing that you pioneered a church. You founded a church that grew to that size. I mean, that would be considered a megachurch. So you've seen church planning over the years. How are things different now, especially in your own denomination compared to when you were boots on the ground, so to speak, in Austin, Texas, pastoring a local congregation? Yes. And let me give you a little background. We started that church and during my pastor, we started 16 other churches, which we call daughter works.

12:29 So if you add those all together, it'd be about 2000 constituents, but we set them up to be self-governing. Of course, Austin, as you probably know, is quite a liberal city. Only 10% of the population claimed to be evangelical Christians. So in a way, we kind of got a head start on what's happening across the U.S. to answer your question. I think what's happening is our nation is increasingly secular, post-Christian, post-modern, meaning they don't believe in absolute truth. And so years ago, when we would start a church and still a very strong way that we start churches is through teaching home Bible studies and just try to have a home meeting, teach a Bible study, try to win some people.

13:14 If they want a church, then we start a church. But what's different now is a lot of people don't even believe in the Bible. So you can't just say, Hey, I want to teach you a Bible study and show you what the Bible teaches so that you can obey it. They might say, well, the Bible is a book of ancient myths. But what I think is great about the Pentecostal message and experience is we have the word and the spirit. So if you have the word only, the word is powerful. But in a culture that doesn't honor the word, you're kind of stuck. If somebody says, well, I believe the Bible, you can show them who Jesus is and the plan of salvation and Jesus died for your sins. But if they don't believe in the Bible, you're kind of stuck. But in our post-modern culture, you can share your personal testimony and everybody is conditioned to believe people's truth, to believe their story.

14:02 So they're going to listen respectfully. And if you can get them in a small group or church service where they actually feel the presence of the Lord, then that's something their philosophy doesn't account for. They can't explain. And so you have the power of the Holy Spirit, which in turn can lead them to the word. And so I say we need, in a post-Christian world, we need a balance of the word and the spirit. And that's what I've been emphasizing is if you're going to start a church, you've got a minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. It can't be just social grouping, it can't be just we have the Bible, it has to be the power of the spirit.

14:43 Well I agree with you 100%. In fact, that's why I wrote this book, Spirit-Lead Living, an Upside-Down World. The world is really upside down. And that's a discussion for another day, except as it pertains to you and your ministry. And we've got to have the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, did you notice how I just kind of slipped that in there? Yes. I read your book and I agree with what you're saying. It's for Christian life and ministry, we need the fullness of the spirit. And you know, there's always been a tension between good and evil, of course, going all the way back to the Garden of Eden. And there's always been people that have been hostile to the church. But what's happening is it's more and more and more intense to where there's almost persecution in a way that most of us American Christians never thought we'd face.

15:32 But the good thing is that it's separating the believers from the unbelievers. Because at least down here in the south where I live, there was an awful lot of cultural Christianity that was kind of gray. You know, you said the right things and went to the right church, but did not live for the Lord at all. That gray is disappearing. You're either hot or you're cold. And I believe that the Pentecostal message in the experience and you know, salvation with deep repentance as opposed to just intellectual agreeing with the tenants of Christianity and being baptized in the Holy Spirit, which is almost always an emotional experience.

16:13 It's emotional just because you're so happy to experience God's power in that way. And it gets people turned on. I remember them telling jokes about when someone received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, they need to put them in a closet for three months because they're just so radical. I mean, you know, it's a joke, of course, but you almost have to have that intensity to put up with all this wokeness and anti God kind of stuff. What do you think? Yes, I agree with what you're saying. So several things that you said resonate. So first of all, there's always been sin, but it seems like sin is being promoted and glorified as never before from the government itself, from the media, the entertainment industry.

16:57 It's seen as the norm. As Isaiah said, they call good evil and evil good. So that's what's different about what we're seeing in America today. And the second point is you're exactly right. We've kind of we've kind of coasted in America on cultural traditions, on institution supporting Christianity or at least moral values, but that's not the case anymore. So that's sad as an American citizen. I'm very sad to see that. But as a Christian, I say, well, wait a minute, I like to use this phrase. We have an unfair advantage because when every philosophy is accepted and every religion is promoted, we're not just another philosophy. We have the power of the spirit.

17:39 And so when people are there really to listen to 10 different belief systems, well, when they come and encounter us, they there's something different. We have an advantage and we need to press home that advantage. Another thing I say it forces us to be apostolic. It forces us to be like the apostles. Think about it. The early church started in a biblical environment, Judaism, but when expanded to the Gentile world, it was a pagan world full of idolatry, abortion, infanticide, all kinds of sexual and morality promoted from the very top. But they were able to have revival and growth in a non-Christian environment. We've got to do the same and we can. And again, I say the Pentecostal movement is perfectly positioned because we have the word.

18:24 We still believe the Bible is the word of God and we have the spirit. There's power. God will confirm his word was signs following as the end of Mark says. So I believe just like the first century church, we are positioned to the 21st century to take advantage of the cultural confusion. And yes, there'll be persecution and ostracism and ridicule, but that just forces us to pray. It forces us to rely on the Holy Spirit instead of our intellect or our ability or our cultural background. Amen. And when things get worse, people get more desperate for the truth and for power.

19:05 And I'm a couple of years ahead of you, but I can remember the anti-Vietnam war era and the summer of love 1967 where it seemed like a whole generation was tripping out on LSD, where there were riots at the Democratic National Convention, where there were three high-profile assassinations in the 60s. Things were getting worse and worse and worse. And what happened? In that environment, the Jesus movement happened. And many of the leaders of the church today came out of the Jesus movement. They would have been late teens, early 20s, back in that era. So the Holy Spirit was poured out in the Roman Catholic Church. And growing up at Pentecostal, we barely even thought the Roman Catholics were saved.

19:50 And maybe a lot of them weren't. But the Holy Spirit renewed an awful lot of people in the Catholic Church. And I'm not going to judge who knows Jesus and who doesn't. But it changed the Catholic Church in significant ways. It was a revival, and I believe that we're on the cusp of that real revival you don't really recognize until after the fact. But I think that we're in an era kind of before the Jesus movement, and I pray that that happens. But I want to get back to talking to you about the UPC. There's a UPC church in our area called Promise Church.

20:33 It was passed by a fine young pastor named Ryan Lloyd, and I reached out to him to find out. And he told me that you have a lot of experience with coming over systems to support the local church, which apparently have been very effective. And so I wanted to ask you if you could kind of elaborate, because there's so much that we can learn from what you're doing in the UPC. Well we are seeing steady growth in numbers of churches around the world, but more specifically here in the U.S. And that hasn't always been the case. But in recent years we've seen steady growth. We have what we call North American missions, and it's geared to help church planters.

21:17 So we have an initial program called Launch, where we have a meeting and we tell them what they need to do. We do come along with some financial support, and we try to teach them and train them. I've written a book called Growing a Church, based on my experiences of how do you start from scratch and how do you grow a church? Is that book available on Amazon so somebody watching could get it? Yes, yes. Or the direct website is PentecostalPublishing.com, but it's also available digitally and it's available on Amazon. Growing a church is the basic resource, and then actually the story of our 18 years of starting the church from zero in our home to a thousand is called Reaching Austin.

22:06 Well except, sorry to interrupt you, but to me the 16 spin-offs is pretty significant, because each of those congregations, while it may be smaller than the mother church, has the potential to take off and explode. And exactly. And some of them have started churches, and that's also a way to reach different areas of town, suburbs, small communities that it's difficult to support a church, maybe in isolation, language groups, ethnicities. So that leads to, we have this plan, so we emphasize Bible studies. So go to a new town or a new area of town, start teaching personal Bible studies.

22:47 If you get people interested, have a little home friendship group. If they're still interested to have what we call a preaching point. So we officially designate that we're having one weekly service. And it may be a rented facility, a home, school, neighboring church, maybe a denominational church that only uses their sanctuary one time a week, and we get permission to use it another time. And then if that becomes, people definitely want to have a church, then we transition to what's called a daughter work. And that means it's supported by a mother church, but the goal is for it to become a self governing work.

23:28 And then it will go progress maybe some years until it's solidly established. We look at three criteria. Self governing, does it have its own people who can lead it? Self supporting, can it pay its own bills? And self propagating, can it attract new people, win new souls through its own efforts, not just the efforts of the mother church. And when it reaches those criteria, then we recognize it as a self governing church. We're basically congregational, so we're not hierarchical. And so it's kind of, you might say an entrepreneur model, but I'm saying it shouldn't be a lone ranger approach. It should be a team approach. And so we really guide people through that Bible study to a friendship group, to a preaching point, to a daughter work, to a self governing church.

24:15 Maybe not all of them go through every step, they can go at any point in there, but that gives you a means of starting new churches. Well, that's excellent. And you know, we were talking earlier about the upside down world and how difficult things are getting. And I believe that during this time, we Christians have to work together, you know, even with doctoral differences, you know, Protestantism has a long history of doctoral distance. There have been huge fights in bygone generations between should you sprinkle or should you immerse. And differences on communion and all kinds of church government. And a lot of those have kind of gone away, partly because Christians have found they have to stand together because we have an adversary who goes around like a roaring lion seeking who he may devour.

25:05 And I think that we can learn from each other over the years. I've seen a lot of my role through charisma and the other things we do as being bridge building. We're just trying to help people understand each other. We've done a lot of that in the black community, which is almost like a world unto itself. But there's a lot that we can learn from the black church and the black church. Well actually, among Pentecostals, because it started in Azusa Street, led by a black man, it has been integrated in a way. And in my city at least, the churches that are integrated are the spirit filled tongues talking type churches, much more than the more liberal churches. That's just the way it is and the way it should be.

25:45 Heaven's going to be like that. So I just think there's so much that we can learn from what you're doing. I know that there are things we will never agree on. You probably didn't agree with about half of what I said. I think I agreed with everything you said. I felt like I was amen, Charlie, here just saying amen, amen to everything you did. But I want to wrap up and give you the last word and ask you again to tell people who are interested in finding out more about David Bernard or about the United Pentecostal Church how they can get more information and especially get that important book that you referenced. Well thank you for all your kind remarks and the time. And I would say I agree with some of your main points.

26:28 We of course as the UPCI have some very definite doctrinal beliefs, but we know God works far beyond us and we want to partner and we want to recognize what God is doing. And even some of the denominational churches, it's amazing. Some of them have gone very liberal. They've declined. They have a few older people left. Many times they're letting us use their buildings and some have asked us to pastor their churches. And so we have Pentecostal pastors of Methodist churches and Christian churches. In some cases they have given us buildings or sold buildings at favorable rates. So I'm very thankful that God is opening these doors and we want to be open to whatever God is doing in these last days.

27:13 So I'll just summarize by saying if you're interested in what I'm doing, I do have a podcast on YouTube and a lot of other platforms called the Apostolic Life in the 21st Century. And I just deal with a lot of practical subjects, some doctrinal, some cultural. So if you like that kind of stuff, my books are on Pentecostalpublishing.com and many of them would be on Amazon as well. The book Growing a Church is a more how-to. The story, some people like the teaching format. Some people just like the story form. So the story form is reaching Austin. It just says how we did it. Year one, year two, victories, defeats.

27:55 I'm honest about things that tragedies as well as triumphs. It's not just a glorious story, but I do include many, many miracles. Healings, raising of the dead, casting out of demons. I give you firsthand, personal accounts that I was part of, witnessed, experienced, prayed for. It really did happen. The gifts of the spirit, prophecy, the whole thing, everything. It's all in that testimonies in that book, Reaching Austin. But I do also want to mention something I think is important and that is diversity. We have to be intentional about reaching every segment of the population. And I know there's a church group growth idea that you can reach people mostly like you, but I really think we have to go beyond that.

28:39 The church has to reflect what the church is going to be in heaven. And so we've tried as the UPCI to be intentionally diverse of reaching every ethnicity, every language group. And in the U.S. right now, our proportion of African Americans and Hispanics is just exactly pretty much the population. Our constituents, according to the latest survey, yeah, about 20% Hispanic, 13%, 14% African American. So we're trying. We're not where we want to be totally, but God is helping us in. Well, congratulations on all that you're doing on your leadership. You're obviously a very strong leader.

29:21 I want to thank you for sending me the Apostolic Study Bible. It arrived yesterday. It's a beautiful, beautiful Bible, which would also be available on that website. If you enjoyed this podcast, share it with your friends. Let's get it to go viral. Check out Dr. Bernard's podcast that he mentioned. And tune in again Thursday, 4 p.m. Eastern time for another edition of the STRANG Report. We're going to talk about Mike Bickle and what's happening at IHOPKC. Thank you for watching. God bless you.