167- Testimony: Powerful Renewal in the Holy Spirit- with John Knapp

167- Testimony- Powerful Renewal in the Holy Spirit (with John Knapp)

Welcome to Strength for Today's Pastor, conversations with current senior pastors and leaders which will strengthen and help you in your pastoral ministry. And now, here's your host, Bill Holdridge of Poimen Ministries. Welcome to Podcast 167.

Today we are with Pastor John Knapp of Calvary Chapel Green Valley in Henderson, Nevada. John's a passionate follower of Jesus and he and his fellowship that he pastors are experiencing a wonderful season and time of renewal in the Holy Spirit. So that's what we're going to be talking about with John today, to hear their testimony and to hear wisdom that the Holy Spirit has given them.

A little background, John's the founding pastor of Calvary Chapel Green Valley and has pastored for how many years, John? 

About 26 years. 

And I met John through being neighbors, practically, since I live about an hour and 15 minutes away and through the monthly senior pastor's breakfast that we have in Las Vegas.

So John, I remember I approached you as you were about to get in your car after our last breakfast together and I asked you if you'd be willing to share on the podcast. I've been thinking about asking you for a while and we were headed to each of our cars and about ready to leave. And I just sensed a strong nudging of the Spirit to go and ask you and I did and you said yes.

So welcome to the program. I'm glad you're here. 

Thank you. Just an absolute blessing to join you on the podcast. 

Amen. So tell us a little bit about yourself as a lead-in, just kind of a mini bio of sorts, your conversion, you're married, of course, you have children, you've pastored for 26 years or so, you just said. So give us some of the scoop. 

Yeah, so I got saved at Costa Mesa under Pastor Chuck and ended up from there in the School of Ministry under Pastor Carl Westerlund. And then shortly thereafter, a few years later, ended up coming to Las Vegas and planting a church here in the valley. And so we've been diligent in that work here for 25 years, 26 years now. And the Lord's just been really so good to us, so gracious every step of the way, just leading and guiding and helping us along. And I have three amazing young men and one of them is married, one of them is getting married here in March, and one single.

So we're enjoying this season right now that we're in here in Las Vegas. 

Amen. Well, you know, people that don't live in Vegas are a lot of misunderstandings about what it's like here. When people think of Las Vegas, they of course think of the Strip, but almost 90% or 95% or maybe 90 more than that don't even concern themselves with the Strip. It's a completely different life, but it's a great place of need. And talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, I think that every city, every town, every village needs Jesus. And so just being faithful, wherever God calls you and wherever God plants you. We live in the suburb outside of Las Vegas, and so very close to the Strip, maybe only a 10-minute drive to the Strip from our community.

And we just really see that every city nowadays really is just got such access to, you know, to the evils of the world. And so Las Vegas doesn't corner the market on sin, but every single heart is just so empty without Christ wherever they are. And so here we just continue to try and minister one heart at a time, trying to minister the love of Jesus Christ and really just sharing the truth of God's Word.

So we're blessed to be in this community. I think that, you know, it is surprising that really there is a conservative element to the communities that are outside of the Strip. And so that there is real strong community that really seeks to overcome the evil that there is exposure to in our city. But that's just, that is a blessing to be able to work together to build the kingdom right where we're planted. 

There's a line in Andrew Peterson's song, “Is He Worthy,” that says, “and don't you know that all the dark won't stop the light from getting through?” Amen. I just absolutely love that. And, you know, my limited experience living here for a couple years—we live about an hour outside of Vegas itself—is that the churches are doing well. There's life. There's openness.

And, you know, there's different kinds of darkness. Like I remember talking to one of the Calvary Chapel guys that goes around and teaches in a lot of places about being in Santa Cruz. He came and taught in Santa Cruz when I was there. And he said that's the darkest place he's ever been. And he's been in like 50, 60 countries preaching the gospel, defending the gospel through apologetics and all of that. He said darkest place he's ever seen.

But you wouldn't know that just visibly seeing Santa Cruz. A lot of people would put that moniker on Las Vegas, but it's a different kind of darkness. It's the darkness of people that know they need Jesus much more than they did in Santa Cruz.

And it's a darkness that, you know, when sin does appear, it's obvious. But it creates, I think, more of an opportunity for a sense of, we know we need Jesus. We know we're guilty.

We know that our lives aren't working. We know that we need to get fixed by God himself. You know, that kind of thing.

Do you think that's about right? You know, I'm a rookie in living here, so you tell me. You're the vet. Yea or no?

I think that one of the things that is really amazing about the Las Vegas community is that they are hungry for community. And, you know, I grew up on the East Coast, and on the East Coast, it's very clandestine. It's very multi-generational within your own family.

And so your need for community doesn't really press you outside of your own family. But in Las Vegas, there's very few people that are actually born in Las Vegas. Most people end up moving here.

And so when they move here, they are hungry to gather into community. And so what you end up with is a very, very strong community within the church, which is something you wouldn't expect in the city of Las Vegas. So the church relationships and community, I think, are very strong in Las Vegas because of the transient nature of our city and how everybody is moving to Las Vegas.

That creates an opportunity to offer community centered in Christ. And I think that that's just an amazing place to be. That's awesome.

You know, Pastor Chuck, as you know, John, he would teach us a lot about learning your community and finding out where's the connection between the needs in your community and the gospel, and why is there a Calvary Chapel Church in that community. And that's what you're talking about, you know, in using the word community. Community is a tremendous drawing card, you know.

And when they come into your church, because I've been to your church, it's warm. It's accepting. There are no surprises. People can relax and worship God. They're not worried about the next thing that's going to happen in the service, you know. It's just good. It's just solid. 

Yeah, that's, you know, we try and be very welcoming. I think we're welcoming by nature because of the very composition of our body.

But then we also, you know, have greeters at the door, at the exterior doors. We have greeters at the interior doors. We have greeters inside of our lobby. So we want every single person to be welcomed three times before they even sit down in their seats. And so we put emphasis on that. That's great.

Yeah, and then my experience is afterwards, you know, people want to talk. They want to share. They want to linger.

It's great. So to our subject here, what we're going to be focusing on today, when I asked you to be on the podcast, I didn't know if you had a particular thing that was on your heart to share with pastors. So I asked you about that, if there might be a particular subject that if you were to be on our podcast speaking to pastors or with pastors that you'd like to share about.

And you didn't hesitate. You said the Holy Spirit right away. It came right out of your heart.

And then we chatted for a moment about what the Lord's been doing in you and in your fellowship. So we want to talk about that. So I'm going to put the listeners on the edge of their seats right now.

But before we dive into that, I'm also curious because you said in that brief conversation that you asked the Lord years ago for a single word at the beginning of the year that would be a light or a leading guiding principle for your church for that next year. And that was a wonderful thing. In that particular year, post COVID, as you were coming out of the COVID stuff, the Lord gave you the word forward.

And that was wonderful how the Lord used that, right? So talk about that and what's been the word for 2024? 

Yeah, so I got to give credit to my wife because she's the one that started this whole, the Lord giving her a word for the year. And I had been watching her do that for several years. And then she was like, you could ask the Lord for a word for yourself.

And I was like, that's a great idea. And so I did, I just asked the Lord, I was like, Lord, you know, is there a word that you have for me? And, and the first, the first word that he gave me was unity. And I was like, oh, Lord, that's, that is so good.

And, and I knew that that was from the Lord. And so I just started to look at the church through the lens of unity, started to look at my life through the lens of unity, started to look at my marriage through the lens of unity, and what the Lord would have for me in those, in those areas. And the Lord just really was so gracious and, and just started to gently lead me in showing me different areas and things that I could do to promote greater unity within our servants within our body within my own life.

And, and then the next year, it was forward. And it was time to get the church moving again. We had started gathering back after COVID and people were still kind of hesitant.

And so it was a real year of nurturing everybody and encouraging them, you know, gently that we've been through a rough stretch, but, you know, it's time to break the tents down just like, you know, in the wilderness, when the Shekinah Glory moved, you, you picked up your tent and you moved, you didn't have opportunity. And it was that kind of a thing where it's time now to get the body moving and to get yourself moving. And, and so that was just a really, really good year of just engaging the body and forward motion.

This, this year, 2024 has been the word thrive. And so that was just a wonderful word to just stop and to ask myself, you know, for my own self, what does thrive look like? What does thrive look like in my own life spiritually? What does it look like physically? What does it look like relationally? What is thrive? You know, in the season of life that I'm in, what does thrive look like? And then, you know, what does a thriving church look like? And, and so then everything started to, to come through that lens. And so I, I will share that with my staff.

I will share that with my leadership and encourage us to head in that direction. And so, so this has been a really, really fun year with that word thrive and the wonderful things in, in the church this year. The people had a target.

You had a target, something that the Holy Spirit would be helping you work with, you know, and I can imagine that post COVID year forward. What a word. I mean, we're not going to just sit here and bemoan the horrors of COVID or the challenges of COVID or any loss we experienced of COVID. We're just going to move forward. Time to move forward. I love it.

Yeah, that's great. So I'm guessing that the word thrive for 2024 has something to do with what the Lord's been doing in terms of the ministry of the Spirit in you and in the church. 

Yeah, well, there's no doubt that that there's a connection there. But the work of the Spirit in the church and that started a few years back that, that started, I was at a Superbowl party and it was ending and somebody had asked, did you hear what's going on in Asbury? 

And I was like, no, I haven't heard about it. And they were like, the college is just in full-fledged revival. And so we started to look it up on our phones and we got home just a couple hours later and my wife was like, I want to go. I want to go to Asbury. I want to see this revival myself and let's get on a plane. And she was already looking up airline tickets.

And, and I was like, you know, hey, this is exciting, but I can't just, you know, jump on a plane like that. And, but I did, you know, begin to follow it. And within a day or two, the Lord had just so touched my heart.

We were just undone by what was happening there. And the Lord told me, he says, I don't want you to go to Asbury. I want you to bring Asbury to your church.

And so I immediately gathered my servants and my leadership and my staff, and we held a meeting right away to show them what was happening in Asbury. We showed them some clips of what was going on and, and how they were just praying and how the spirit had just so fallen on them. They couldn't leave.

The kids just had a regular chapel. It was just a regular chapel, nothing special. And at the end of their regular chapel, nobody left.

And they just started to do some extended worship. And then the spirit just dropped. And these kids were just on their face.

They were weeping before the Lord. They were repenting. They just continue to worship.

And they never left the sanctuary for like days and days and days. And, you know, and so, but, but in that, the Lord, you know, told me that he wanted our church to become a praying church. And that he said that, you know, and he wanted me to become a praying pastor.

And so I confessed that to the leadership there, you know, that, that the Lord's told me that I'm not a praying pastor, but that it wasn't a condemnation. It was an invitation. It was an exhortation, encouragement, you know, climb up another step.

There's another place that I'm trying to, to lead you to. I'm glad that you're saying that, John, because, you know, I think of James 4 a lot, you know, and he will draw near to you. That's, that's an invitation from God himself.

And he says, if you will do this, I'm inviting you. So I'm the initiator. Don't get this confused in your mind.

You didn't initiate this. I'm the initiator. I'm inviting you.

You draw near to me and I'm going to draw near to you. And that's what you're experiencing. And that's what we all experience if we, if we will do that.

So I was confused, you know, I mean, again, when the Lord speaks to you, you receive it. You don't always understand it, but you start from a place of by faith. Okay.

I didn't understand, you know, when he said, you know, you're not a praying pastor. And, you know, because I pray with my wife before we get out of bed in the morning, you know, last thing I do is I pray, you know, I close my eyes. I pray before every meal.

I pray when I open services, I'm, you know, I don't open a meeting without praying, you know, but yet the Lord is telling me, you know, that, you know, that you're not a praying pastor. And so I was like, okay, Lord, you know, you have, you have to start to show me then, you know, what, what you're talking about. And, you know, we have a prayer meeting at our service.

We've all at our church, we've always had, you know, once a week, a weekly time of prayer. It's always been very small. It's always been, you know, typically try and do it on a Saturday morning.

And we've had different, you know, faithful people that have come. It's always been, you know, very small. And when I talk to other pastors, that's the challenge.

I think that, you know, it's pretty common theme, you know, that the prayer service is the hardest service to really, you know, get going. But the Lord told me, you know, to that, that you've got to lead it. And so prayer, the prayer ministry wasn't something that I could just delegate to some deacons and ushers.

And, you know, and what we would do is have a weekly prayer service. And then on once a week, we would do altar call once a month. And then on that one, we would do it right before the service on Saturday night.

And it was a bigger, it was a bigger service. But I started to attend the prayer service and started to then just pray and ask the Lord what to do with it. And that was when he, you know, led me to turn it into a full service, not just a prayer service, but to move it into the sanctuary and have worship for it and to start to do that.

So we started to do that on Tuesday evenings. And that then I began to feel like, you know, the Lord was starting to talk about that, that there needs to be more of an afterglow, that there needs to be more of a welcoming of the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit that needs to be a night of engagement with the Holy Spirit and where the Holy Spirit was free to, to really move. And so we started to, started to press into that format, we started to see the Lord moving in the prayers for the sick, we started to see people being healed, and, and lives being changed and touched by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And, and then so we were having that piece of it going on, at the same time that what we're trying to do, what I'm trying to do is to lead people into the presence of the Holy Spirit and just connect them with the presence of God. So that it's not that you know, God, you know, God in your head, but are you experiencing his presence, and in his presence is the fullness of joy. And so, so, so engaging God and allowing, you know, the heart of God.

And so, so we're having the anointing going on the back, but we're having everybody press in and moving more towards an openness to the, to the move of the Holy Spirit. I have to admit, I am encouraged. I'm encouraged hearing this.

Um, just those words that the Lord spoke to you, you know, you're not a praying pastor, are those the words? I mean, I understand what you mean by that. There's a difference between making sure there's a prayer meeting on the schedule and, and just really engaging with it. And I'm encouraged by that.

And I'm, I'm challenged by it too, John. Thanks for sharing that. It's, it's, uh, wonderful.

And I remember a breakfast that we had after this started happening in Vegas and the, the, the meeting was on fire that morning. It was just talking about these things that the Lord was beginning to do and had been doing in, in Green Valley Calvary Chapel. Uh, and, and the other guys got excited.

Lord, bring, bring a reviving of Your Spirit in us, bring a reviving of Your Spirit in us Lord, bring it. Yeah. And I think what's really set me, you know, really got me going here also was this quote that I read that I really pondered deeply.

And it said, I think people are going to come to faith in Christ today more because they know they are broken and in need of a healer than because they know they are sinners in need of a savior. And I think that, you know, today what's happening is that our culture is so divisive and everybody has got their philosophies and everybody has their arguments and their positions. And I think that, uh, that Christianity can become just another philosophical position, another voice, but what's different is the transformational power that is in Christianity that is in Christ.

And so if we're not connecting people to the power of God and in transformed lives, then we're just a voice amongst other voices. When we see Jesus's ministry, we see that it was accompanied with, with healings and deliverance and manifestations and demonstrations of the power of the kingdom that, that is at hand. And so I think that, you know, in, in our church, I don't want just sound theology.

I think that in the beginning, when I was the first pastor, do you know, my biggest fear was that I wasn't going to teach proper doctrine. You know, I was scared to death, you know, that, uh, that, that I'm not going to teach, you know, uh, soundly. Uh, but you know, once we've got sound doctrine, you know, down, you know, then it became, you know, now it's a passion to see people's lives changed.

And, and it is the power of the Holy Spirit that changes life. So I don't want dead orthodoxy. I don't want just solid biblical teaching. I want engagement with the power of God that changes and transforms lives. And so that is only going to be found by a pressing in into the deeper move of, uh, of the spirit. And so that's what, that's what we're inviting our prayer service now called our renewal service, because it is about coming and sitting and pressing.

I believe that you cannot come into the presence of God without being changed. That the presence of God, when Moses went into the presence of God, he comes down, he's glowing. Just, that's just the manifestation of being in the presence of God.

And so, you know, we can read the scriptures and not be in the presence of God. We can sing worship songs and not enter into the presence of God. We can be praying and not enter into the presence of God.

And so it is that inviting and the presence. I remember the pastor's conferences, you know, when Chuck was alive and we would do these afterglows and we would press into the presence and, and the Holy Spirit would just be doing this work in our hearts and, you know, and in my life. And those were some of the sweetest, uh, the sweetest times.

And so, you know, allowing that, that access to the Holy Spirit and to the presence of God and giving the body of Christ that opportunity to engage God, uh, on that level. And we're just seeing that that is just, uh, is really having impact in, in our church and in the lives of those that are attending. Additionally, it's, it's growing and it continues to, to grow now.

And, um, I had a lady say to me the other day, she said, if I could only come to one service of the entire week, she said, it would be these renewal services. They're, they're the favorite service now of just coming and pressing into the presence of God. But we all with unveiled faces beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being changed by the Lord, by the Spirit.

That's what, yes. But see, John, what you're saying is so important to me because you weren't, you weren't primarily seeking an experience with the Holy Spirit. You were seeking transformation.

That's what you wanted to see happen. You had your eyes on that prize. And, and, and as the Lord began to speak in you and in your leaders and in the church body, uh, that's what was, that was the effect of encountering God and encountering his presence, his transformation, but keeping transformation at the forefront.

That's what God is after. It's the power of God being demonstrated. It's being manifested.

That is the testimony, right? That's the witness. Our testimonies are about transformation. Uh, and so that, that is the power of God made manifest.

And here's the thing I, people are broken today and our world is broken and our culture is broken. And I think that there is an identification with brokenness more so now than, than ever before. I think that this next generation looks at, looks at the direction that everything is headed and they don't have hope in that we're heading in the right direction and they're broken and they, they need solutions to their brokenness.

I don't, what they don't want to hear is just another philosophy. But when the power of God is made manifest, when, when it's changing hearts and lives, that, that now, that was what started the whole Calvary Chapel movement. It wasn't just verse by verse teaching, verse by verse teaching was a part of it.

It was hippies that were strung out, whose lives were absolutely broken. They were desperate and all of a sudden Jesus took hold of them, washed them, cleansed them and set them right. And then when their life was changed, do you know what they did? They went and grabbed every single one of their friends and they said, you have to come with me because I've been radically changed by this.

And you can be radically changed by it today as well. And that is what is going to bring revival is when people's lives are being radically changed by an encounter with the true and the living God that is transformational. And that is what will set the church on fire.

And when the church is on fire, then everybody is going to come because it has the answers to their problems. And that is what I believe the Lord really wants to do. 

I agree. Back to Andrew Peterson's song again. It starts by saying, do you feel the world is broken? And everybody echoes, we do.

Do you feel creations groaning? We do. And do you know that all the dark won't keep the light from getting through? We do. Is it good that we, I can't remember the last part of that, but just a powerful thing.

And you're right. You're absolutely right. I was there in the middle of the Jesus movement in Southern California. And it was need. We knew we needed the Lord. And we came together because we were hungry for that and thirsty for that. And we didn't have to have evangelism seminars. There was none of that. It was like with one hand, reach out to Jesus and with another, bring a friend. And that's what was going on. 

And I think that that same brokenness that was going on in that generation where they chased an ideal, they chased the ideal of love. And they thought that if you could just let love out of its containment and just set it free, that love would change the world and love without boundaries.

But they then discovered that the relational collateral of love without boundaries and that and that left them broken and disillusioned and empty. And then they found out that, you know, that love, what they had been chasing, you know, is real. It is the most powerful, but he has a name and his name is Jesus.

They discovered that. Right. I mean, it just, you know, that changed a generation.

Well, I believe that we're at that same place where this generation lost in their iPad and their technology, they're lost within screens. They have no sense of community and identity. The future looks bleak to them, and they are desperate for hope and they're desperate for life and they're desperate for love.

And all of that is the same beckoning of Jesus Christ to this generation that I believe that it was. So I believe that we are primed in the same fashion as we were, you know, back in the in the Jesus revolution days. But they have to be able to discover a place where the power and presence of Christ is there to meet their brokenness and to fill them.

And so that that is the church. And so I believe that the power of the Holy Spirit needs to be present now to encounter the broken and the lost because they will identify it with their need for healing. Amen.

I couldn't agree with you more, John. I was talking to a pastor yesterday and he told me about his daughter going off to college. I said, oh really, where'd she go? University of Washington.

I'm going, oh boy, you right in the middle of the lion's den. And, you know, one of the most liberal universities in the whole country. But he said, it's amazing what the Lord is doing.

She found a community of believers there that are on fire. And there are there's this one group that sounds like what's going on with your your refresh service. Is that what it's called? Refresh service? Renewal.

Renewal service. A hundred days straight. They're just and these are students.

They're just hungry, hungry, thirsty, thirsty. And they're finding Jesus. And that's that's the community that she's in.

She's in in some ways more of a Christian community than she was in home with her own church. Because, I mean, it's just surrounded by people that have the same passion. And that's to seek the glory of God and to know him well and let him work in their lives.

That is, I believe, what the Spirit is doing. And for me, I will tell you that trying to lead these services was terrifying for me. To kind of press into the afterglow and not really having experience with how to lead one and how to establish this.

But once again, you know, the Lord is just continuing to draw me in a step of faith and just lead me and guide me. And so it is just something that, you know, that I'm so encouraged in and that I so look forward to every week. I keep thinking of scriptures as you're talking.

You know, asking it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened to you.

So everyone who asks receives and him who seeks finds and the one who knocks the door should be opened. And you guys are just knocking and seeking and asking and he's doing it. And he's doing it.

And it's changing the temperature. It's becoming the engine to our church. And we're seeing it impact every area of our church is being impacted by the life that it is imparting through these services.

And so that is just an incredible blessing. One other thing that I'd like you to touch on and then I want you to go into the two-minute drill here because we're wrapping up. But I know how these afterglow services go.

I mean, I was part of all of that in Costa Mesa when I was in Southern California and we've done them ourselves. And, you know, a lot of listeners or a lot of people who hear about this kind of a service, they think, oh, it's going to be weird. There's going to be something that's going to be inexplicable.

It's going to be scary. It's going to be and all those kinds of things. But with doing things decently in an order, you know, if there's a tongue, there's going to be an interpretation.

Don't sweat. You know, nobody's going to make you do anything. You know, you just seek the Lord.

Just come and seek the Lord with us and watch what happens. And the gifts of the spirit will flow as the Lord wants to do that. But I think we have in our community of Calvary Chapel, you know, we've been blessed with good examples of balance in that area.

We're not extreme in the way we do these kinds of meetings. And I say do you know what I mean? The way we lead them. Yeah.

The way we lead them. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that, you know, again, you know, we open up, you know, so if you want to know the format of what we're doing, you know, we begin with a couple of songs of just inviting the presence of the Holy Spirit. And so just a couple of worship songs. So five, 10 minutes of worship songs.

And then we move into a time of adoration, a time of where we invite the body to just call out praises to God as you feel comfortable. And so people just start to pour their love out to God and the attributes of God and their love for God. And so that'll go on for, you know, five minutes or so a little while.

And then we might go back into another worship song and worship again a little bit. And then we come out of that. And, you know, as we're as we're worshiping the Lord and as we're in his presence, you know, then then the first thing that we're aware of is how holy he is and how unholy we are.

And so that leads us then into a time of just confession and repentance and just get your hands clean before we're going to go ask God for anything, because, you know, we are going to enter into a time of intercession. But before we ask him for anything, we want to be right with him and we want to align our will to his will. And so it's an alignment of our will into his will.

Let's get that, you know, taken care of. So, you know, we get that taken care of and have this time and it's private confession. We sometimes have opened it up to public confession if you want to, you know, confess.

And that's powerful, too. Sometimes people will, you know, pop off with confession here or there. After we have worshipped and confessed, it's at that time that I'll say, you know, if you're here for a healing, go ahead and head to the back.

And we've got the pastors back there with the anointing oil. And, you know, and we'll pray for you. The rest of us now, we're going to start to move into more of what we would call, you know, our afterglow time.

So now, you know, we've got thirty five minutes on our services, one hour. We've got about thirty five minutes now. We'll start to move into just a public prayer.

Pray whatever is on your heart out loud. And so people, you know, will pray that. Then I'll open it up and say if the Lord's given you a prophecy, you want to come and share.

If you have a praise report, you want to thank God for anything. If you have a scripture that the Lord's putting on your heart. So we have a microphone that I'll have a handheld mic and people can just raise their hand.

I'll walk over to them and let them share whatever the Lord is putting on their heart. And we'll continue in this in this atmosphere now while the others are being prayed for and anointed. When they're done, they come back and join the rest of the group.

I like to sometimes stand them up and bring them all to the front to worship right before the altar. So the whole group moves. I try and not make it the same pattern per se, you know, every single time.

But these are the general pieces and the component pieces that are involved in it. Sometimes what I do is I have them. I do what I call our thirty second prayers.

So I'll pop off a topic and then everybody all at once pray out loud for thirty seconds and go. And so then I'll change our topics and rotate them through on that. Sometimes I'll bring them up to the altar and we'll worship and then I'll break them into triads, into threes and fours, and then have them clustered there.

And I'll give them a couple of prayer topics to work through. We do set the parameters of, you know, does anybody one of the things that I've done in the past is I've asked, does anybody have the gift of interpretation of tongues? And so I asked for that first. And if nobody has the gift of interpretations, which I've never had anybody raise their hand yet.

So, Lord, would you send us somebody that will have the interpretation, the gift of interpretation? Then I say, well, tonight we're not going to be exercising tongues if we don't have, you know, the gift, the interpretation with us. And then, you know, and so but people sharing the scriptures that the Lord's putting on their heart, the prophecies, just the encouragement and exhortations that they're doing, they're growing in it. They're getting, you know, more comfortable.

There's more freedom that is in it. And then, you know, generally, I try and close the service off with a, you know, like a how great is our God, you know, or real anthem song towards the goodness, the power, the grace of God. And I, you know, I bring everybody to the front in front of the platform and we and we close with that song.

And so it's just a one hour format. But but it is really, really impactful for that one hour. Yeah.

Thanks for sharing what you guys do and not just the do you know that that could be a technique. But I know what you're saying. You know, you're you're sensitive to the Lord.

You're asking him to lead each time. There's variation. But this is the general template.

But thanks for sharing that, because those are all biblical elements. You know, how can you go wrong when you do something together that's biblical? Well, in a prayer service, we follow the acts model. Right.

I mean, we've heard that before, you know, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and then supplication. And so this is just that opened up with a little bit more freedom and pressing forward. That's great.

So we're going to wrap up, John. So I invited you, as you know, to share what we call a two minute drill. Any final words of encouragement directly to senior pastors or perhaps lead pastors or even church leadership that might be listening to this podcast? Yeah, something that's really been ministering to me lately is George Mueller's autobiography.

And if you've never read it, I just want to encourage you to pick that book up. I don't believe that you can read that book and not be encouraged in your own life. And one of the things that's really been, you know, 25 years I've been senior pastor and George Mueller in the forward on it, it said, he said that he never, ever studied the word of God for others.

It was always just about himself. And that really challenged me back to my own faith and continuing to grow in my own relationship with the Lord. I think that it's easy to start to be concerned with everybody else's faith and feeding everybody else and taking care of everybody else.

But that book just really just has sparked in me that faith, that trust, that heart that's just flat as glass with all the pressures and problems and challenges of being a senior pastor, being able to take and give everything to the Lord, trust him in all things, and then continue to grow in my relationship with the Lord. I think the renewal service also has sparked a continued growth back in my own relationship with the Lord. And so if you're, you know, if you're feeling stale, if you're feeling routine, if you're, you know, plateaued at a place, I want to really encourage you to continue to get back to, you know, your first love, which was your own relationship with the Lord and how amazing God is in your own life.

And from that, the strength of the ministry flows from your own personal relationship with the Lord and continuing to keep that. So George Mueller's book really was great for me. And so I would encourage everybody.

I bought it for all of our staff. I gave it to, we have a school. I gave it to all the teachers.

Just really an ability to just spark our faith and trust in the Lord. Yeah. Thanks for that resource.

Thanks for sharing that, John. That's wonderful. I've enjoyed our time together.

This has been wonderful and just trusting the Lord to do a good work as a result of what he's doing in you and in your fellowship. And now through this podcast, may the Lord just really bless it in my heart, in your heart, in all of our hearts in Jesus name. Thanks for joining us.

Yeah. Thank you, Pastor Bill. Thank you for just this incredible opportunity to come and to share and to sit with you. I appreciate you and your involvement in our community here as well. It's great. It's wonderful.

So Strength for Today's Pastor includes other helpful podcasts on the subject. We, Poimen Ministries, believe in the perpetuity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And we believe also in the necessity of the Holy Spirit for a fruitful lives of ministry.

So, “Are We Charismatic Enough” with Pastor Paul Berry and a number of other titles. So I invite you to take advantage of those as well. But I think we've gotten some really great tools here.

Our team loves the church of Jesus. We love His pastors. And so if you'd like to reach out to Poimen Ministries, the announcer will give you the details in how to do that.

And until the next time, may the Lord fill you with his wisdom. Bless you personally and use you greatly as you serve him in his kingdom. In Jesus name.

Strength for Today's Pastor is sponsored by Poimen Ministries. You can find us at PoimenMinistries.com. That's spelled P-O-I-M-E-N Ministries.com. If something in today's program prompts a question or comment, or if you have a topic idea for a future episode, just shoot us an email at StrongerPastors@gmail.com. That's StrongerPastors@gmail.com. 

May the Lord bless you as you serve him, his pastors and his church.