Full Interview with Duncan and Kate Smith! | The Surge 2020

growing up in nigeria to missionary parents i had a longing for god but i think because they were from an evangelical background even though they were hungry for god we didn't really have a an expectation of a personal encounter with the living god and by the time i was a teenager i was very rebellious but i'm so thankful for jesus that he kept pursuing me when i was 20 years old on the edge of a mountainside in the rocky mountains at estes park i had the most dramatic encounter with jesus and he rescued me he saved me from all my sin all of my guilt all of my shame was just taken in a moment as i realized the fullness of his love for me and what he had done and i remember getting up off that floor um just so filled with his fiery love and i was never the same again no it's amazing and i grew up in a christian home and my parents were methodists but they were always seeking after more of god and i was so privileged as a child to be taken to charismatic renewal meetings that were regional wide and we went to bible camps where i actually experienced the power of the holy spirit for the first time people were healed um people spoke in tongues worship and praise it was incredible and it was just part of my experience growing up and actually at eight years old i was led in the baptism of the holy spirit and it was just childlike faith because i was taken with this group of friends we were all under 10 years old and this this wonderful teacher she said okay i'm going to speak in tongues and i want you just to copy me and you know of course you can't copy tongues but we just went for it and you know i was i had a prayer language at eight years old that's amazing it really is and so my parents although they were methodists they as they were longing for more of god they ended up connecting with a local charismatic church and that's that's what we did we we joined that group and again just experienced things of the kingdom and um just had an expectation that there was more to experience of god well it was when i got to university that i realized wow i thought i was on fire but i looked into my friends eyes and they were so on fire and when i asked them you guys how come you're so on fire they said well we've been baptized in the holy spirit i said what you've been what you've been baptized in the holy spirit i thought he was like the dove i mean i didn't realize you could experience the holy spirit and and that set me on a pursuit for the baptism of the holy spirit that lasted nine months of prayer sometimes three hours a day just asking god for that that experience of being baptized with the holy spirit and i got gloriously baptized with the holy spirit through a ugandan pastor that came to visit our church that i went to at university and i too kate was just filled with the holy spirit and this prayer language just exploded out of me and i i was riding my motorcycle home and i just couldn't stop speaking in tongues it was just absolutely amazing amazing and i went off to university at 18 and and got with a group of radical believers and we used to meet during the week and pursue god together and you know a love for the nations came there as well and um just like i say experiencing more of the baptism of the holy spirit and i remember actually after i graduated university that's when i met you after you'd had that power encounter when your student union was in revival and you're absolutely tangible you know just a few days after i was baptized with the holy spirit i found out you can be baptized with the holy spirit more than once and it was amazing just a few days later at university standing as the speaker invited us to experience the holy spirit and encounter god and i stood there and i thought okay here's another moment nothing's going to happen but to my complete surprise with my hands held up in the air and i was right up in the nosebleeds and in this big room suddenly i felt this electricity going through my fingertips kate and all up from my feet and all over and it became so awe-consuming that i literally thought i was gonna die and i can remember all of a sudden for nine months i'd been praying lord make me like enoch who walked with god and was not and suddenly i realized maybe this is my was not moment and i was like oh no i'm not ready to go to be with you yet lord i want to get married i want to have kids i want to be a grandfather and and and i started saying stop stop stop and i regret that i said stop now because the lord did pull back just a little but what a moment i never recovered and that i think that's what set us up yeah with this longing for more of god absolutely and during my time at university when i was 19 during my summer break my parents announced to us that they were taking us to frankfurt germany to the fire conference with reinhard bonke and so we spent five days we were introduced to benehin and it was at the time when he would move his arm and rose would fall over you know in his early days of ministry and um but i remember the significance of that week because rhino bonkey you know he was doing stuff that i'd never even seen happen in the church in the uk at the time in the 80s he was lining people up and he was laying hands on them giving them an impartation of fire and i went up there and i received an impartation of the baptism of fire when i was 19 years old and that longing for god was just infectious so much so that a year later my sister and i volunteered to be ushers in the birmingham uk fire conference and again you know the power of god i'm i'm like okay if this is what the kingdom's like i'm in totally for it and okay i remember you giving me these two exactly because when i met you it was like two years later and i remember giving you these cassette tapes of this preacher who was an evangelist across africa you with your african nigerian background and i was i was duncan irresistibly drawn and could not stop listening no to reinhard bonkey and there was a fire that went into me as i listened to reinhard bonke preaching the gospel of jesus christ and i knew in my heart in that moment that that's what we were called to i knew that was what i was called i knew that was what you were called to and i remember one night i got down on my hands and knees on my face on my on my wooden floor at university and i said lord with all my heart i ask you that you would baptize me with a double portion of the anointing that you've given reinhard bonke so that i can preach the gospel of jesus christ and make him famous like reinhard bonke has made him famous in the nations and i said lord let if you've heard this prayer which i know you have let it be a sign that you'll answer it that one day i'll meet him and he will say those very words and lay his hands on me and say i give you the double portion and of course we got married and we started our careers you as an occupational therapist me as a police officer but there was this longing wasn't that dumb and we just knew we had to give our jobs up three years later and go to bible college yeah and we went to bible college again because we wanted more of god and somehow it was just like we were not satisfied or felt that we were adequ adequately prepared by god together and toronto had just happened that's right yeah this was early 1994 and our eldest jess was born yeah and we were like we want to go to toronto and we just at that time were as just started bible college um because we'd committed to that just before toronto broke out and i remember going up to murray nash's uh church in newcastle and we had never seen anything like it their pastors had just got back from toronto and the power of god exploded in the church and people bodies were everywhere one girl was pregnant she was just going like this nine months pregnant on top of her baby like this and i thought for sure that baby and i think we'll you know not recover from that but it turned out to be a revivalist and what was so amazing was it was a different expression of the power of god it's like you know i was used to people lining up and falling over in the power being slain in the spirit but people were doing all sorts of things yes and i remember even you started surfing yeah i did so you know it's like wow this is weird but this is so good so gone and people were getting up from the floor full of joy there was an outbreak of joy across the churches in the uk yeah it just changed the face of our experience it did and even going to bible college our bible college experienced revival for a number of weeks didn't it but you know when we finished when we finished bible college the lord opened the door for me to be an evangelist and we thought okay this is it we're going to work with this you know friend of rhinehop bonkeys and you know in a different ministry but be that crusade that mass campaign evangelist and after our just my very first trip to ghana i'm coming back from a hugely successful preaching to tens of thousands of people seeing the most extraordinary miracles including a paralyzed boy who couldn't walk walking and then running i came back thinking this is it and then the lord said i want you to die to your calling duncan and lay down your uh calling to be an evangelist and i and i i was so devastated i didn't even tell you did i that the lord had said that to me and uh for a whole month but then when i shared it with you you felt exactly the same and and we started a new career on the farm and you know that that was a very difficult time of of personally letting go of hopes and dreams and aspirations in god and we trusted god with a move and a career change into farming with duncan's family and you know we were in a busy season we'd already had our second of um three daughters and we were full-on you were studying i was raising kids without family support and you know during those times you begin to question and think wow did we really get it so wrong yeah god where are you where is this call for our life but we just waited and trusted and believed god in the obedience in fact i was so desperate to preach with no one to preach to that i would preach to our cows and and they would fan out and come across the field and then fan out chewing the cud just listening to the gospel i told him carry on preaching the cows will listen and you know these beautiful jersey cows with big eyes they they would just come come over and you know but we trusted god and and when we arrived in the area we got an invitation from our local church down there that there was um an evangelist from toronto curtis i know hey can you imagine and so you went to the meeting i was the first upcate and the moment he laid his hands on me i could see that fire in him wow and i went forward i was the first there and the moment he laid his hands on me i was filled with that same electricity and fire that i had had at university well i think that was the thing it was like a reconnection again oh this is a call this this longing this humber is not going away for for god for the holy spirit and that was kind of marked the journey for that season of time and then i remember ian and janice ross also came from toronto and we met them and we saw them minister together as a couple but really they introduced us to the concept that god is father and that we could live in the goodness of knowing god as our father father's life i know i mean we thought it was all about the baptism of the holy spirit and manifestations and joy and all of a sudden we find out that god is our daddy and that he loves us and that it's actually all about love yeah oh my it was the most extraordinary eye-opening thing wasn't it okay and yeah and we just began to pray lord if at all possible get us off this farm and baptize us with the father's love and give us a life where we can live giving the father's love away and also we had a secret desire we were in the middle of raising children and you know in that season it's very busy you know often life is messy always messy and and we had no disposable income to go to toronto but we asked the lord for an opportunity to get to toronto to experience some of the nightly meetings ourselves which was an amazing thing because just a few days earlier my family had felt from the lord my uncles and my father you know you're called to preach the gospel duncan you're not called to be a farmer and you're fully trained and you've done everything you've got your masters in business management you're already going to go but we just don't have any peace and we'd like to release you and they answered our prayers to set us free from the farm but it just was so painful at the time wasn't it because it felt like laying down our calling was one thing but laying down our inheritance and our family seemed to be a whole other level but we knew it was right and when god provided that yeah that second uh ticket yeah that we just knew that is the lord and we needed a time where we could hear again yeah god are you speaking is this the now time for us to launch into ministry you know um we were in our early 30s by this time and you know in many ways we'd done a few things but we knew there was a call of god on our lives well and i was shepherding at the time i was a shepherd yeah i was just slightly lower than the sheepdogs on the farm that i was on and we had this opportunity to go to toronto and we arrive and we're in this little conference on church planting i don't know how we got in but some friends led us into this it was a invite-only comment and uh and it was john arnold steve whit and fred wright and during that conference our lives were transformed and i can remember lining up in the prophetic uh you know presbytery lineup one one afternoon and i was talking with i think it was cameron wright and another man and i was sharing all my story and one of them said to the other you know i don't think duncan's ever met his heavenly daddy do you and i felt so offended kate i was like heavenly daddy what and i i'm not missing the father's love i i mean i know god our father but anyway i'm not sure about heavenly daddy anyway i knew that they were right well because the friend turned to the other and said no i don't think he has either and they said would you like to receive the father's love and i just held my hands out surrendered to love for the first time and this glorious liquid golden honey love of the father's love and affirmation and his words of love and affirmation just came over me it was like i was hit by a locomotive from the sky and yet baptized in liquid golden honey all at once and i was mushed to the floor and i with i've never been the same since the softness of daddy's love yeah entered my heart and transformed me forever yeah and at the end of that conference we we've received another impartation and i remember we it was like something hit us like a freight train and we were down under the power vibrating shaking it's like something like the spirit came into us yeah and we could we could barely move and i remember at that point john arnott coming over and kind of praying for us but he was actually wanting to talk to us but i think he soon realized that we were so kind of under the power of the holy spirit at that moment that we weren't going anywhere yeah i can remember him having his hand like this and he's talking to somebody and we're on the floor and i got up and i put his hand on my chest like this you know because i didn't really know who he was per se did i i knew who he was but you know i didn't understand fully how crazy that was to just grab his hand and hold on to it on my chest and you know we thought that was it we'd received so much we were ready to go back to the uk but what we didn't realize was john honor actually wanted to speak to us and it was like the beginning of our destiny being fulfilled at that moment he asked us for coffee and asked us for coffee and basically offered us you a job of all jobs tell us your story you said and when we finished our story you know it was it was moving for you and i and we were on the verge of tears and at the end of it um he said you know son i can really see that you're limping duncan and i said yes sir i am i'm limping and we were very broken won't we dull and he said one of the kindest things that i've ever heard anybody ever say to me and he said well i only trust a man who walks with a limp would you like to come and work with me and it just went so deep into my heart and i said you're the kindest nicest leader i've ever met in my life i'll clean toilets for you for the rest of your life if i can be on your team and clean toilets i'm used to cleaning calf stalls anyway and she sheep stalls so i'll happily clean the toilets around here and he said oh i think we can do perhaps a little better than that and uh we and and he offered us to work with him yeah and it just changed our lives it changed the course of our future and it was the beginning of our story unfolding and we went back home to the uk we shared with our leaders what god had done and actually we had a visiting speaker from south africa and we got to share this opportunity and he said if god is calling you to serve with john and carolina on their team then you must go you must go and it was like okay this is it and our leaders blessed us and we sold our home um within three months and we were in toronto with our three little girls what were they six yeah four and two and three yes uh ready to start a new life in toronto and join the team during that time on the farm it was a time of real healing wasn't it and our first realization that our hearts needed healing and i got this book that someone brought back from toronto and put in my hand the importance of forgiveness by john and caroline well i devoured that book for three days on the farm uh in the dryer barn i was able to read that book and my my copy is covered in dust and tears and i wept my way through three days of forgiving all the people that i knew i needed to forgive and my heart was transformed and during that time i heard about a meeting that ken got was going to be speaking at this revivalist from sunderland and i knew i had to be at that meeting and i asked kate honey will you look after the girls i'm going to this meeting and my heart was on fire again listening to him preaching and i couldn't get him because there were so many hundreds of people uh that he was praying for but as he went out i followed him running out across the car park in the rain and i i remember just getting to the car he was uh just getting in and i arrived the senior past this our senior pastor was had just handed him an honorarium check i assume in an envelope and i said oh excuse me i'm so sorry but uh ken do you have one more prayer please and i was standing to the side rear of the car and and uh he said okay and he got out and he came over to me and he just laid hands on me and i received this impartation and the power of god hit me and i fell down right into a puddle but i didn't care because we were so hungry for jesus three months after arriving in toronto john arnott asked me to be the executive director and i found myself overseeing 10 departments and 160 staff and that was an enormous privilege and totally unexpected for me i in fact when john invited me into his office and asked me to do that i said no way i just can't possibly do that and anyway i'm called to be an evangelist and i tried everything to get out of it but john was adamant that the lord had spoken to him and so i said to him i know i can't do that and he said you're right duncan you can't but we'll do it together and when he said that with that fatherly love that he has i knew okay i'm 33 years old but if you're gonna do this with me john i can do it and we work together for the next eight years innovating and turning the ministry with the holy spirit's leadership turning the ministry from being the gathering phase where when we first arrived thousands of people were still arriving at nightly meetings night after night after night to being a ministry that whose eyes and focus was upon the world and it was amazing it was amazing for me it was a little bit more difficult for you wasn't it yeah three months after arriving in toronto my mum actually died over in the uk so that was a very tough time for me i was grieving i was in toronto raising three young children with no family support just a you know church support and i was so grateful for the support i got from the church in toronto um but for me i was home and huddled down and kind of in hiding and confinement really and it was tough seeing you succeed but it really threw me into the lord to trust him for my season of growth and leadership and just a few years later john asked us to lead the youth and young adult network and we began pastoring young people and found so much joy in that together yeah it was like our night job it was like my night job but you're right kate it became a context for you and i begin to work together and just prior to john asking um if we would lead the youth and young adult network uh i had been to ghana which was my very first trip internationally uh about two and a half years after i had arrived and in june 2002 coming back from ghana all excited i went to be with john and in john's hotel room in montreal he was speaking at a revival um he said how was your trip to ghana and i said it was fantastic john but all the ghanaian pastors those that had never heard of toronto and the revival they said to me so you're from the toronto airport christian fellowship uh is that like a church in the terminal at the airport the international airport and and i suddenly realized john that you know toronto airport christian fellowship is a great name for everyone who's heard of the revival because we all knew as the airport church or the toronto revival but in ghana it didn't really make a lot of sense and and he said well and we laughed together and he said well what are your thoughts and i said well it had occurred to me that the signature conference catch the fire that we have every october now september um it would be a phenomenal name for our international ministry and john said i love it dunk why don't you start catch the fire ministries on monday morning when you get back to the office and that's exactly what we did and we birthed catch the fire ministries and so here we here we were catch the fire ministries reaching the world and we began to innovate with things like the international leader school of ministry which we affectionately call ilsam and dave richards and i uh had the joy of the lord just birthing that ilsam into our into our hearts and we just began to reach the nations with events all over the world but at the same time we also started the youth and young adult network so we traveled together to the nations just such a great joy together baptizing people in the love of the father and introducing them to the power and the fire of the holy spirit and you know we love that um but there was a growing sense that really we were called to church plant yeah and the raising of leaders and the raising of leaders and and just you know our first trip to toronto was about attending the church planting conference and the holy spirit began to just start speaking to us it's time to go yeah it's time to go on a mission and um relocate and this was a big deal it's like how do you leave a revival and actually go and pioneer well god had already spoken to me in april 2004 while i was on a a trip to raleigh north carolina and while i step got out of the airport driving along in the car the holy spirit spoke to me and said i want you to plant a church here one day well there were trees everywhere i was thinking what this is no place to plant a church well of course it didn't take long to discover that the entire city was inside the forest and uh and that there were three phenomenal universities and so many hospitals and and that it was a perfect place to plant a church and have been on god's heart for so long and people have been praying for revival for so long and i got home in april 2004 and said to kate honey the lord spoken to me we're going to raleigh north carolina to plant the church that didn't go down well that quickly and we'd literally just settled in toronto we just planted in churches around toronto with the gta with the the young adults and i said to duncan if the lord's in this then there'll be a time into this and sure enough it was four years before the vision was fulfilled and we were blessed and sent out from toronto to go and pioneer and extend the family and we were going to call our church catch the fire well because we were leading cats we were leading catch the fire right to do that and we went with john's blessing and the holy spirit showed up he turned up surprisingly it began to feel like we hadn't left toronto and we just realized how faithful he is to come when we honor his presence it was extraordinary when we do an ill song or we do a conference people encounter god's transforming presence and and their lives are transformed but the holy spirit began to show us that the the father's love and the healing of life's hurts and the power of the holy spirit and the fun yeah the joy of the kingdom is not really at its greatest expression until it's in a community where the whole community are receiving the father's love and then giving that love away and to one another and we realized that the encounter of the father's love and the grace of our lord jesus christ the power of the holy spirit it's only 50 percent when it's coming to us and us experiencing that the other 50 percent is literally when we become the conduits in the lord's hands of giving that love and that experience away to others and there's nothing like community for that to happen and of course that's the church the body of christ is the community of believers that the kingdom of heaven is touched and and we've discovered haven't we kate here in raleigh and planting churches all around the world that this revival is never going to end it is just an unstoppable force of love absolutely and now we're in the generation where our kids our grown-up kids are already in ministry and experiencing god and they're carrying these values of the father's love and the river of the holy spirit to the nations and beginning to lead all sorts of incredible things in churches and ministries and you know the lord fulfilled that longing that was in my heart to meet reinhard bonke yeah and just before we left about two years before we left toronto to come to raleigh the holy spirit organized a most dramatic encounter with reinhard bonke and he was eating lunch at a restaurant and when john and i heard about it and carol we were eating lunch at in toronto at the church and when i said to john john ramash has just told me that right now bonkey's in his restaurant half a mile down the road john turned around and he said come on duncan we're gonna go and see him and the lord orchestrated as he came striding across the car park towards us an amazing meeting and him and carol hugged and and greeted each other and then john turned around and he said like any father would duncan you can do reinhardt bonkey's uh accent and of course john's very cheeky like that and he said why don't you show reinhard bonkey how you can do his german accent well i just about had a heart attack in the moment but i knew this is no moment to be shy so i did my reinhardt monkey accent and then john said yeah and you can do a nigerian english accent too duncan because you grew up there why don't you do that and i'm like charm stop but he loves having fun and that's what we love so much about him and i did a nigerian accent and the name of jesus and reinhardt just lost it laughing and somehow that endeared him to both john and i in that moment in a special way and john turned not knowing my secret prayer that i had prayed all those years ago at university turned to reinhardt bonkey and said reinhard bonkey he said reinhardt it would be a great honour for me if you would lay hands on my son duncan smith my spiritual son and give him an impartation of the anointing in your life and to my joy reinhard said it would be my pleasure and he just i knelt down in front of him and he put his hands on my head and he prayed heaven down over me and i was completely mushed to the floor and that glorious anointing that double portion he said i give you the double portion and i just crumpled into a heap in that car park and god filled me with such a love for souls and for the lost and i was never the same again and i would and we became wonderful friends with reinhard bonke and i'm i'm so blessed to have phoned him not not long before he went to be with jesus and he he said duncan are you going for it and i said reinhard we're planting churches and establishing churches all over the world that are winning the last with that double portion of anointing that you gave us and that anointing is upon catch the fire kate that glorious anointing that is just where god's so hungry for the lost is upon us it's upon john and carol it's upon kate and eyes upon all of us and but it's whole churches whole communities communities like like a gigantic fleet of shipping vessels reaching the fish that are in the ocean the last are coming home yeah and here we are in this this decade of a billion soul harvest and we've begun and it's such a time yeah for the harvest absolutely and i'm so glad that we're anointed to bring the good news of the gospel of jesus christ in the father's love in the grace of our lord jesus christ with with the transformation of the inner man and the healing of life's hurts and the power of the holy spirit in signs and wonders and miracles kate this is a revival that will never end

Channel: Catch The Fire

Views: 248

Rating: 4.1111112 out of 5

Keywords: christian, church, encounter god, toronto blessing, john arnott, carol arnott, presence of God, Gods presence, christianity, conference, worship

Id: MdFuw51f600

Length: 36min 21sec (2181 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020