Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Kerma Church Podcast.
About seven years ago, the Lord in His mercy, started stirring us. We found ourselves in a desolate place.
Juliet made a little bit of reference to it and he gave us an invitation. And I want you to hear. So we've got pastors leaders here.
I'm a local church pastor.
I spend all my time in the local church. I don't speak at conferences.
In the last five years, I've probably been out of this building five times.
Once a year they let me out. Okay, this is my home, this is my people.
This is where the Lord has grounded me. And we're doing this day in, day out, ministering to people, all the joys and all the difficulties. So I know what it's like to be in the local church. And the Lord gave us an invitation. And the first thing he said was, come and walk with me.
He said, I want to spend some time with you and I want you to spend some time with me. So I started that, that journey of every morning just walking with Jesus. The dog helps.
He always comes, but doesn't matter. This morning it was six o'clock, minus four and a half degrees. The dog didn't care. Jesus didn't care. It was just me walking with them, just spending time and starting my day off that way. And then with my Bible and then in worship. The second thing he says he invited us in was, I want you to enjoy my presence.
That I want you to get used to. You know, sometimes we get a bit confused when we say, come, Holy Spirit. He's always here. You know, he came and made his home in us. He doesn't just visit us occasionally when we give our life to Jesus, he comes in and he makes his home. But what we mean is that when we gather together, would you manifest your presence, Jesus? Would the glory come?
Would you come in such a way that our circumstances, our lives, are completely changed because you are here with us? And so we started to learn to enjoy his presence.
And as we gave time for his presence, for his presence, he came.
And that's the only way I can describe it. As we worshiped, it was interesting that our journey into his presence would probably surprise many. Our journey into his presence was joy.
You know, that as he came, joy erupted in our people. I mean. I mean, I was just sitting over there sometimes wondering what on earth is happening in this place? Because Joy, they're all dancing, cheering, because the Holy Spirit would just start bubbling up inside them. No one encouraged them to do it.
They just did. This presence of God would come. He's here now. He's always in this building. It's why we love this building that is actually falling down around us.
If you walked out some of those side doors, you go, oh, my goodness. What's holding this building up? But the fact that the. It is fine. It's fine. Well, it's fine at the moment.
Sometimes people pray, lord, shake the building. Everyone's going, no, don't do that.
But there is. There is a.
There's a sense of his presence. And that as we. As we gather in every day of the week, literally, to worship and enjoy him, he's here, and he's always the first one here.
It's not like we have to try and coax him in here. He's here. Actually, what we're trying to do is recognize that he's here because we come in with all our stuff.
So just enjoying him and knowing that he's here, he's for us, and that he has a plan for us as a local church.
And so as this started to happen, he gave us things to do. And there weren't many. It wasn't complicated, but there were a few things that he gave us to do. One was altar calls that his presence would come in the building. And he spoke to us about calling people forward to get saved.
And, you know, if you've been here before, you'll have heard the story. If you haven't been here, well, you haven't. So we started doing altar calls. Nothing happens. And, you know, we could call people, you know, if you.
If you've never given your life to Jesus, or if maybe you gave your life to Jesus a long while ago, come on down. Zilch.
And if you've led a church, you'll know what it's like, because there's always people that will give you advice on what you're doing wrong.
Okay? And they said, steve, what you're doing wrong is you need to look at the evangelist. Because what the evangelists do is they trick them so they get them to close their eyes so they're vulnerable. And then they say, you know, if you want to give your life to Jesus, put your hands up. And then once you've got their hands up, you get them to stand up. And then once they stand up, they're completely. Their covers blown. You get them to come forward, okay? And that is all good. It's just. It's not what he told me to do.
And I've read the book. I remember what happened to Moses. Do you remember what happened to Moses, the rock, the first time he gets to strike the rock and water comes out of it. But the next time he has to speak to it, but he strikes it.
And because he doesn't obey what the Lord says, he doesn't get to enter the promised land, which I think is harsh because it was just a rock and water. But the Lord takes this seriously. Do what he says. And you know, often we want to, we want to, I don't know, just give me a formula that will just work and I'll just do it. Well, the formula is listen to what the Holy Spirit says and do what he says.
That's the formula.
So we, anyway, so we would, we would call people, no one would come. And then I still remember the first person coming down the church went crazy because there was nine months of pent up disappointment and it was all released on this one person giving their life to Jesus. The pressure was enormous.
But you know, I mean, I've been praying the prayers like, lord, just throw me a bone, just throw me a bone. You know, just let someone come forward. And it was all on live stream and people would go, you know, we just really love your faithfulness and watching you fail.
The reason I'm telling you this is this is local church, this is what it's like. It always looks good in the conferences and on the stage and that we tell the best stories. But when you're trying to do this day in, day out and host the presence of God and follow what he's saying, and so we just did what he said and then one came and then another came, and then another came and another. And there were some weeks where no one would come and there was some services where they would just come in one service or not another service. And now even now, you know, there are some services, no one wants that. And we just wait and you know, we give a bit of time to them and we pray that the Lord will lift the lead off their feet and help them come down. And why are we doing that? Because there needs to be a point in everyone's life where they choose to follow Jesus, where we confess him with our lips and where we walk down and we say, I'm going to give the rest of my life to the Lord Jesus Christ and that there is a date and a time when we did it. Now some of us have amazing testimonies when we never knew, a time when we didn't know Jesus. That's a wonderful, wonderful testimony. But there needs to be a day when you said, I'm going to follow him. And I'm going to submit to His Lordship. You may never have. You may have never not known a time when you didn't know him, but there was a time when you say, yes, sir, it's time for me to walk with you, Jesus. And so as they come down, that's what they're doing. They're making that commitment. And I guess I would. I would. Matt, Come on, Matt. You were over there. He's moved. Oh, no, he's there. This is my friend Matt.
So Matt's. Matt's been on a. He's been on a journey. Okay. So I think you came to one of the first ever gatherings. We did. And then three years ago, and then we. We've had you up a number of times. And one of the things we do here is we model things. So I did an altar call in the leaders gathering. Actually, no one was saved.
He got saved. But do you remember what you said to me when I did that?
Do you remember what you. Is that it?
You said something to me like, is that what you mean by an altar call? I could do that. And then what did you do?
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Okay, yes. So two years ago, you put the challenge out to say, hey, would anyone else be willing to. Every single time you meet and invite people to give their lives to Jesus? Our context is not the same as Leicester. We're in a small market town, about 9,000 people, filled with mainly a bunch of Christians who've been a bunch of Christians for as long as Christianity's been in existence, I think.
But I just had this thing stirred because I want it. Yeah, I want to see God move in our nation. And in the end, I'm willing to do anything to see that happen. And so we began, beginning of 23, very much similar to Steve's experience. Nobody came.
And it talks about we've been crucified with Christ and we no longer live. If you're really struggling with that, just start doing altar calls. It will finally finish you off.
But what we did see through 23, conversely, was actually a number of people starting to come to faith, not on Sundays, but actually through other outreaches and other ministries in the church. But then last year, we made a sort of fresh commitment. You asked people again, forward. So it came up again and something changed.
And it was like what Steve just talked about. A lot of us have grown up in church, and the gospel altar call was awkward, weird and embarrassing, wasn't it? It was just like weird magic event. We all close our eyes and thank you. I see that Hand, I see that hand and you're like, did something really happen? And I just loved here where I think I saw Tim do first one, someone come up and you're like, hi, I'm Tim. And they say, oh hi, I'm Mike. You know, it's just normal, it's just part of life. And so we went back and, and just this year, like this last year to 24, we saw 34 people coming to front of church.
And it's just been something I'm seeing slowly creep into long standing Christians. This gospel, as Paul says, is something we shouldn't be ashamed of, that we have not misplaced our confidence, that the thing works. I haven't had any training on it. I don't know if I'm saying the right thing, but it's Jesus and if you invite people to him, they want to come. And I've loved it. Where we've seen. There was one lad who came to our church, he was working with someone in our church and he came in and you could sort of immediately judge where he was coming from. Not in a bad way, but how he was dressed and everything. And in 40 minutes he's up the front giving his life to Jesus because he said, I've never seen anything like this. Another lad in our church who's quite fringe, he's very cool, he's a nice guy. I'll call him Tom, cause that's his name. And it's a lot easier if you use their names than they forget what you're doing.
But Tom had a new girlfriend and he'd gone out for a night out on a Saturday night and left his girlfriend with his mum and dad, which was dangerous. So they started talking to her about Jesus. So she comes to church the next day, gives her life to Jesus, gets baptized within 10 days. I look over at her, Shannon, and like the next week she's just there, I mean, you know, worshiping like she's always known it. So then of course Tom had to get baptized as well, didn't he? So he gave his life to. So it's.
I'm like, why did. No, I went to Bible school for goodness sake. Nobody told me about this. It is the simplest thing. Every week I've got a face into getting over all the pastoral crap. Yeah, hear me. And all this stuff and all the things I'm not doing and we're not doing right and everything else and invite people to Jesus. Lots of times nobody comes, but it's the best thing I can possibly do with my entire life. Is say to come to him. Yeah.
And the simplicity of just doing it every week. Because we have a number of people that have come to church that Sunday to say, this is my Sunday. I'm coming to give my life to Jesus. I've sat for a few weeks. I want to do it this Sunday because you're doing it every week. And when you. And it's great as well, because you don't have to do like a new members class and get people up to introduce themselves, because you've already done that. Because they walk up and you say, hey, this is so and so. And everyone cheers. And we all stand together and we pray together to ask God to just come into their life. So thank you, you guys. Thank you.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Thank you.
We had a traveler girl, gave her life to Jesus. And she went. Went back home and started telling her friends about Jesus. And they were travelers, so they'd moved out the area. And so a number of her friends, there's about six of them, all wanted to give their lives to Jesus. So they went to six churches to try and give their life to Jesus.
In the end, she gave up and came here. They drove here. I can't remember where from and that. It was an evening service. And Rachel was. I remember Rachel was preaching and she got up to preach and they were like, so desperate to give their lives to Jesus. They just couldn't wait. They just walked down the front and she's like, what do I do?
I remember, you see, why do it every week? Because the Lord wants to bring people to get saved. Where can he bring them where they can meet him?
And some of you might go, well, I don't even know that altar calls are biblical. The church was birthed at an altar call. Remember Acts 2.
Many other words. He testified and exhorted them, saying, be saved from this perverse generation. Strong language.
Then those who gladly received his word were baptized. And that day about 3,000 souls were added to them. Now that's an altar call.
There's your biblical proof for altar calls. That's how the church started.
We had another girl who phoned up one of her guides and just said, hey, can I talk? She knew them from school and said, can I just talk to you?
My life's not going so well. And said, sure, sure. She said, you know, her opening words were, I think I need a savior.
She said, I've talked to some Christians and they told me not to get my hopes up.
That was her second words.
And he said, well, come to church and give your lives to Jesus. Let's see what Jesus can do.
And she came. The first time she came, she walked down the front and gave her life to Jesus.
Where can the Lord send people to give their lives to Jesus? Can he send them to your church?
The answer is yes, if there's any doubt, you know. And as we did that, it was interesting that the Lord started speaking to us about healing.
As I've read a number of revivals and moves of God, it's interesting. They often start with salvation and then healing because God is interested in the whole person.
And so we're going through exactly the same process. You have the local church, you call people forward to get healed. And the same people are coming forward every week. I know what it's like. And everyone can see it. They get healed. And so we're praying our best prayers to see people healed. And again, the Lord spoke to us. The Lord is very practical and often it's very simple. And he said, the problem is unbelief.
He said, the people don't believe and nor do you.
One of the things you're going to find is the first disciple we make is us.
You are the first disciple Jesus wants. He wants, you know, the command, Go make disciples. You are the first disciple.
And he said, what I want you to do is I want you to write a song and I want you to sing the song whenever you pray for the sick. And when you sing the song, the faith will rise in the room and I will heal the sick.
So that's what they did, and they wrote Beautiful Face.
And now every. Every Sunday morning, we make a space for praying for the sick.
And just like before, it started off nothing, and then there was a trickle and a headache got healed and a foot got healed. And we've seen cancers healed. We've seen brain tumors healed. We've seen heart conditions healed, and his power comes, and we'll do it tomorrow morning. So if you're here and you're sick in any way, we're going to pray, and the Lord is going to come and heal tomorrow morning.
But as. And you know, how do you do that in the local church? And there's a part of the song, and it's almost theatrical, okay, because it gets quite noisy at the end. And again, that's by design. Why? Because that's the bit where the demons start screaming.
And again, I don't mind demons screaming, but I don't want to give them any. Any limelight.
So that's where they make the noise. Why? Because the glory of the Lord comes and sets people free and delivers them, and they get healed. And then often I see them walking forward because they've just got healed to give their life to Jesus. Because, you know, people in the world are asking a question.
Is your God able to rescue me from the hole that I find myself in?
It's a really simple question. That's all they want to know. Is he powerful enough to turn my life around and rescue me from the pit and put my life on a trajectory of life and living?
And our answer every time is yes. It's why we said this morning, is the cross enough? Yes, it is the heartbeat of God.
And the purpose of the church is to represent him here on Earth, to invite people into a living relationship with him. And the word for salvation, sozo, means the healing of the whole person, freedom, the healing of the spirit, the soul and the body, so that we put on Christ and we start this amazing new life. Paul talked about justification. The moment somebody walks forward, we are justified. Just as if I'd never sinned. And then the journey of sanctification, where daily we're becoming more and more like the Lord Jesus.
Oh, we need to move. What was the second thing we did?
This book. We've got a really young congregation, and there is a lot of bonkers stuff out there.
And one of the things you'll learn and, you know, leading churches is people actually don't do what you say they do. What you do, what you do is way more powerful.
And so the Lord a few years ago said, go and buy a new Bible and buy an expensive one.
So this is goatskin Bible. My eyes are not as good as they were. So it's a new King James. Not because I wanted a new King James, but it had the best print so that I can see it. Okay? So I bought this Bible, and every now and again in church, I'll talk about my new Bible and I'll let them feel my Bible. You know? You know, just. This is. You know, I'm going to pick on you guys because you're on the front. Feel that. Doesn't that feel nice? Isn't that nice? It might not be your color, okay. But that is. It is a nice Bible.
And some of our. Some of our youth set themselves to reading the Bible in a month.
And so it was a fast from social media and tv. And I think some of them are doing it now. Yeah. Yeah, some of them are doing it now.
I set myself a goal. I didn't want to read it in a month because I probably wouldn't remember any of it. But I did set myself a goal, that the Lord would speak to me out of every chapter of the Bible. So last year I went through the Bible and I wrote notes from every chapter of the Bible that He would speak to me because this is his word.
Now, you will hear lots of words, but this is his word. So he told me to get a new Bible. And then he said, you are to tell people to stand when you read the Bible.
So why don't you stand? We're going to read the Bible.
Find Matthew, chapter 7, verse 24.
Told you I wouldn't let you go to sleep.
Where is it? Matthew?
The thing is, it takes a bit longer when you're in the local church, doesn't it? And you're trying to fit everything in and it's much easier just to put it on the screen.
And what you need is a Bible, not a phone.
It's okay. You can hide them. It's all right. It's okay. This is your first time here. There's no condemnation for those that are in Jesus Christ. That's in the Bible. It's all alright.
I love doing that. What did I say? Did I say 24?
Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken them to a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house. But it did not fall, for it was founded on rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house. And it fell. And great was its fall.
And so it was when Jesus ended his saying that the people were astonished at his teaching. For he taught them as one having authority, not as the scribes. You can take a seat. You see, I know it's.
That's a Sunday school passage that we love to teach our children, but we build our churches on the rock of the Word of God, Jesus Christ. He is the Word.
And so when we stand to read the Word, we're elevating the Word of God above every other word.
And so we're teaching our young. This book is true.
This book can be trusted.
You know, I think last night you had your plumb line.
This book.
You can build your life upon the words of this book, but we stand because they remember. And I remember when we used to stand. I stand, I stand. Why can't I just sit and Read the book. You know, it's on my phone, but it starts to go in because the up and down, up and down. We're standing in the presence of the Lord. He is more important than us. His words are more important than our words. He is the Lord. We are his people. We are the sheep of his flock. We do what he says. And when we do his words, we build on the rock.
We're not just hearers of the Word, we're doers of the Word.
And so it's been a really important thing for us to do what the Bible says.
You know, most churches have a krache, right?
Does your church have a creche of some kind? Yeah.
No. Oh, there's a few. Oh, no. This is a trick question. You ever can be saved, you know, so most. And the reason we have a creche is to get rid of the crying babies so that they won't mess up church.
But hardly any churches have a new life group for the people that God brings in to go to so that they can have instruction. You know, the Salvation army, when people got saved, they would walk them to work and they would walk them from work home. Why? Because the temptation of drink was so much on them. And they walked with them to break the power of their old life with them.
And so we started New Life and it's just a five week course and we said we'd do it every week. And I remember the pushback of the team going, well, there's no one here.
Can't we just do it once a month?
You know, how many of you have a baby and you just feed it once a month?
Ah, just leave it in that room over there. It'll be fine. We'll get it out once a month so that there is a sense of care.
And so. And Rachel was really good and she just kept going and she just kept going because people were coming forward, but they weren't going there because it wasn't in our culture yet, it wasn't in our DNA that you get saved and then you go to new life until the first one went and then another one went. And now it would be rare that no one's there. Very rare that no one's there. And Sometimes they're like 15, sometimes they'll have four, but it's every single week so that they can get saved on Sunday and then go on Tuesday.
The other thing we did that the Lord had us do was it was Tim's school of ministry. He'll talk a little bit about it tomorrow morning.
But for the people that had been Christians for a while, it's really interesting. Something happened in church and I don't quite know where it happened, where we all had to do leadership training, but we didn't have any disciples.
So we trained leaders, but we didn't make disciples.
And so we. We looked at our church and it was an illiterate church.
And so we wanted them to understand the story of the Bible.
We wanted them to be able to join the dots up. We wanted them to understand from Genesis to Revelation. We wanted them to have a basis for understanding what's happening in the world through the eyes of the Bible, not the world dictating the Bible.
And so isn't it funny that we're back at gospel services, church Bible study and the church prayer meeting?
Our forefathers knew what worked.
And, you know, it really is simple.
And so the other thing, and the last thing I'll say and we'll finish is we started to pray.
And we just started to pray in this room every Tuesday. So we have a rhythm in this church. So kind of Monday nights is training. Tuesday nights is new believers and prayer. Wednesday nights is youth. Thursday nights is students.
Friday nights is the arts and the worship stuff. Saturday, we try not to do anything apart from tomorrow.
And then Sunday we do all our services. But we started to pray and we called it revival prayer. And it really is the powerhouse of anything that happens here. There is nothing that happens on a Sunday or in a conference that hasn't happened at revival prayer. It is birthed in prayer.
It's where the crazies are free to be crazy. It's where the flag wavers can run around with flags. It's where the proclaimers can proclaim. I mean, sometimes it's like a zoo, sometimes it's not okay, but it's a place where people can encounter.
There's time to minister to people and to weekly calling out to the Lord. We pray and worship for a couple of hours. None of the lights, none of the stage. There's the keys and a guitar, and we just worship the Lord.
We talk about, you know, not having all your ducks in a row. You know, New Year's Eve fell on a Tuesday, so we thought, oh, we'll do revival prayer. We'll do it a bit later and we'll pray in the new year.
Hundreds showed up.
We couldn't move in this place. Our worship guys were like, thanks.
But you know what? It was amazing. We just got to worship and pray.
Hype. Just the presence of the Lord worshiping him with a guitar into the New Year, declaring his goodness and all that he's going to do in 2025.
You see, I'm telling you these things because sometimes we come to these events and think there must be something kind of really special that's happened. And there is something really special that's happening happened. The Lord Jesus Christ, he's the special, he's the main event.
But as we've gone on the journey, he's given us really simple things to do.
And as we've obeyed and done what he said, he's taken us on the next bit of the journey. And I often say this at these meetings, and I'm going to keep on saying it. I am grateful to our church that has let us go on the journey.
I'm grateful for the people of our church that let us make the mistakes, that when it all goes wrong, you know, when it's a bit awkward, they just cheer us on because we're all trying. We're trying to take a journey with the Lord Jesus and we're trying to figure out, how does the local church become the hope for the world?
And if this isn't happening in the local church, how will they know about Jesus? How will they be saved? I love the Crusades. I love the big gatherings. I love it when, you know, it's Franklin Graham, you know, comes into town. It's wonderful. It's wonderful.
But it's the local church that does all the work. It's you guys that are doing all the work.
And as we started this journey of hosting the presence of God, it was really simple. He said, do an altar call. When I'm there, do an altar call. I've bought them to get saved. He said, heal the sick. Demonstrate that I am more powerful than the world.
Put your hands on them and speak, healing and cast their demons out of them. Pray.
Pray that I would breathe on this land once again. Call out to me.
Be like that widow in the judge's door. Don't stop knocking until I open the door, because I want to answer your prayer. But it's the hunger. God loves hunger in people's hearts. And he said, this is my word.
Teach it, build upon it.
You know, a long while ago, I learned, if you just have the Bible, you tend to dry up.
If you just have the spirit, you tend to blow up.
If you have the spirit and the Word, you grow up.
And we want to grow into all the fullness of Christ.
And so we want the infilling of the Holy Spirit. We want to obey this book and Jesus says I only do what I see my Father doing. You don't have to be chrome a church. Do what he's told you to do.
Do the bit that he's told you and be obedient and do exactly what he's told you to do. If he's told you to hit the rock, hit the rock. If he's told you to stand when you read the Bible, stand when you read the Bible. It's those simple, obedient things and keep doing it. If I tell you one thing, they'll tell you I'm a dog with a bone. If the Lord has told me to do it, we're going to do it. And we're going to do it until he says we stop and do something else.
And we'll pray for the sick singing beautiful face until the dead are raised.
I mean it, all right, because I prayed for three dead people now and they haven't been raised. But I'm going to see the dead raised all right.
And I'm not. I'm a local church pastor, Lester.
I'm not a superstar preacher, but I'm going to see the dead raised and I'm going to see the sick healed and I'm going to see a church that is full of the Holy Spirit, who are healthy, who are loving Jesus and who are full of joy. Because that's what he's called me to do here in Leicester.
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