GC19 Leadership Panel

thank you for watching this session from gateway conference 2019 we pray this message is a source of hope and encouragement for you and your ministry for more information visit gateway to be blessed today in this leadership session we got a great panel and i'm going to introduce them to you you probably know all of them anyway I'm gonna start by introducing to who you already know and I've already been speaking to us today pastor Robert Morris our lead senior pastor here at Gateway pastor Jimmy Evans our senior pastor here at Gateway and what great words this morning right amazing amazing I want to welcome up to the platform now Pastor Samuel Rodriguez welcome pastor Samuel he's the senior pastor of new season Christian Worship Center in Sacramento California he's advised presidents he's the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference welcome him again if you would please when I welcome pastor Tim Ross pastor Tim Ross senior pastor of Embassy City Church and Irving his wife wife Juliet happily married loving each other loving the body of Christ welcome pastor Tim and finally pect her pastor Mark Driscoll senior pastor of the Trinity Church in Scottsdale Arizona and his wife Grace and their family happily married their families here at the conference this year so pastor mark welcome again him if you would please okay y'all ready to hear some truth bombs all right it's it's gonna happen okay what's your definition of a healthy church a healthy church well Christ centered bible-based spirit-empowered if it's completely feasible within the confines of one's community multi-ethnic and multi-confessional God and expresses the love of God there you go you get all those points pastor Jimmy and the any thing to add to that everything he said I think it's like a healthy marriage or family the in a in a good marriage you fight but you can process your issues and in a good church you have problems but you can process it and everything that Sammy has said but the end result of that is you can be a functional relational unit and because you love God and because you're Christ centered and biblically based but ultimately it means you can solve your problems if you if you find a dead church for an unhealthy Church if you find a dead marriage it's because they were unable to process a problem that became chronic and fatal when you see a see a dead church it's because they began to have a problem or problems and they just couldn't process it either because of their government or because of just the lack of relationship internally and externally or whatever so I just think a healthy church is a church where you're experiencing life you're experiencing community and you're able to do that perpetually and not get stuck with problems you can't solve these two guys I just want to say it said it great I just want to emphasize this one word and that's grace if you're if it's a legalistic Church it's unhealthy that's all there is to it if you're going to be legalistic and critical judgmental toward people you're pastoring people and if it's a place of love and acceptance and grace yet still you still preach truth Jesus was full of grace and truth but people are looking where you accept me as I am and the answer from God is yes now I'm gonna work on you but I will accept you as you are something grace has got to be in there let me ask you as as senior leaders and at every different stage that your organization has grown and has been at you've had to lead in a different way talk about how you balance what can be perceived as micromanaging at one extreme and abdicating on the other extreme so how do you find this place where you empower people and you're able to release in such a way that you don't micromanage but you also don't advocate all of my experience I find landmines by driving over them so that's that's that's how I learned things but when we were getting ready to plant the Trinity Church we went down and met with someone that maybe a mutual friend of you all as pastors John and Debbie Lindell down at James River assembly and as I hung out with them as a married couple very healthy loving and then met their wife and you know their spouse and kids and then their grandkids and the same thing has been our experience with the Morris family super healthy and then you get into the staff and then you get into the church and there's a consistency of culture and values and priorities and I asked how did that happen they said everybody on staff exists to carry forth the values of our family at the center of a church if you're gonna form culture and carry forth priorities that culture needs to start somewhere and if it doesn't start with a family good luck having a church family but if the pastor and his family have values and then the rest of the team carries forth those values I think it reduces the stress level because everybody's not trying to build their empires and silo but they're all working together for the well-being of the whole family one of the things I'm delegating for me it's just a natural math thing and I'd hate to bring them forward Mascis I know some of you hate it but a normal per can really truly manage three to five people normal now there are some superstars there Jesus only had twelve you know so you can't go over twelve I know that and even with the twelve yet he had three you know J Peter James and John but still as our organization grow like when Tom Lane he got the six oversights and we wanted to do two more we needed two more at that level so I told him take two of these and move them up and put three each under them and then you just relate to those two then when we wanted to get to nine at that next level then I said pull another one up and have each of them have three and then you've got three and so you're meeting with three and each of them are meeting with three I just I just know if you get over five or six oversights you're meeting with them but you're not overseeing you're not managing you don't have the mental capacity to be able to be involved in what they're doing and we've heard that too from people they'll come in and they'll say well I'm eating the oversight but I'm not getting anything I'm not getting any feedback and so for me it's just a kind of a math thing that normal people can oversee about three to five people once you get over that you just had that so that's my thing of delegating it's not only do i delegate but i make the people under me delegate jimmy said one of the best things to me years ago was one of my leaders he said kick him out of the nest and fly beside him and he didn't mean kick him out of the church you know he meant let him get out there and make some mistakes don't do just job for him but give him feedback along the way and that's maybe one of the best leadership principles I've ever learned let me ask you because all of you have platforms beyond cedar pastoring but you know we're talking about what I was introducing you and you lead and run have speaking of it multiple organizations you you have a platform worldwide how have you applied that for your personal life in terms of the people that you directly lead for me because I have multi personality issues correct right now sorry that's just that right I have amazing unbelievable amazing people around me in each of our corresponding spheres and they are brilliant these are people that are fully committed and they complement me in my weak areas they make me strong and these are people that again they have my unbridled trust they carry our DNA our ethos as it pertains to the vision and mission of the organization so it makes it not easy but it makes it a bit more accommodating to the reality of our time schedule and so forth I know obviously being able to have appropriate folks that are part of your team is key over the years how have you guys developed leaders to the leaders that are under you and what are sort of leadership tough leadership choices you've had to make along that growth path because you got developed here so so say something nice so Wow hi so our church is four years old and in in our four years we have gone through these growth cycles and as a result of that we've had to prune grow develop and do it all again it seems like we've kind of launched a church every year for the last four years and so as a result of that I've just had to take it as it comes god what are we doing right now what is the season we're in right now and as we're growing how do you want us to steward what we're stewarding right now what I've learned is if you are not brave enough to make changes then you will look up a decade from now and you will not have grown internally to match what is happening externally and it will implode upon itself and so having courageous with individuals that are in your staff and in your leadership understanding that everyone has different capacities everyone has different seasons and a lot of the people that you plant a church with are the ones that are familiar to you but oftentimes there comes a point where if you're going to grow you have to move beyond what's familiar to you and get people that really have a capacity to take you to the next level it's very very difficult to have those type of conversations but you will not grow and be strong I think the right word is strong strength not growth you're growing but you won't have the internal strength if you don't make those changes it's great let me ask this question about just how you each of you as leaders have changed over the years is there anything that you have changed your mind about or your perspective about related to how you do ministry or how you Pastor people I mean clearly there's been something that you know you've evolved as leaders over time but anything stick out that's a recent change about how you Pastor people or how you lead your organization I mean for me the two things that come to mind are governance and in particular the Apostolic which pastors Robert and Jimmy have been very helpful to me I think that a lot of pastors ministries and leaders they're limited by their government and by their oversight and you know some years ago is reading a business book and a guy gave this analogy imagine there's a big cruise ship that's moored in a dock and you're standing next to it and you ask the question somebody asks you the question who's the most important person in relation to that boat most of us would say the captain said no the boat builder you can have a great captain on a bad boat and it's not going to end well and I think apostolic oversight so that the pastor has a a pastor and in my experience the only person who doesn't get a pastor is the pastor and he's the first person that needs a pastor she's the first person that needs a pastor is them in their family and and so I think once the APIs elack is in order and governance is in order then I think the rest of things sort themselves out that's been the biggest learning curve for me I'll talk about it in the main session tomorrow what happened in heaven with Judah with Satan and God was a governance for what happened in Eden with Satan and Adam was a governance for what happened with Satan and Jesus was a governance war and the fight is always over the governance because if you can change the person who's in sort of that seed of headship you overtake the entire kingdom and I think a lot of churches as pastor Jimmy has taught they're built for peace not for war and everything works until the enemy shows up it's great great any other any other insights pastor Jimmy yeah I'm curious because he referenced that even your comments there any insight you'd add to that the I completely agree with the governance is just a huge issue when I started in the ministry I was very motivated very aggressive and I was always frustrated with the Lord because he just didn't seem to be as interested as I was in the church and the and I had many conversations with him about it I just is just like do you see all the needs that we have done here you know I've mean buildings we need this we need this me this and you know and I would characterize those years of my life I had a relationship with Jesus but it was like I was a bulldog on a leash trying to drag him I was not enjoying the journey and the thing that has changed in me is I completely trust the Lord his sovereignty his timing his desire to see the church grow because I questioned it when I was younger because that is it just was like I don't I don't know why you're so passive you know and he wasn't passive in the church that I was trying to to grow at that time is now very large in doing very well but it just takes time and when Pastor Robert was speaking this morning my greatest regret in ministry is stress and it was all self-inflicted the Lord the Lord never put stress on me but it was just that driven as' and and the driven this really was a mistrust of God's timing in his will it was life I've got to get this done or it's not gonna get done you know and and he was the means to an end it really was just a contractual relationship and today I enjoyed the Lord and I enjoy the church and I don't I don't wake up in the morning feeling like I have to manufacture anything my job is to obey the Lord you know and so that's that's changed in me that's great let me ask you about you know we're in a people business I think one of you reference this morning that you know it's not about a product or widgets we're in a people business so all of you I'm sure have stories about being burned by someone maybe someone you trusted so in experiencing betrayal how have you managed to still trust people how have you protected your heart so that these war stories haven't jaded you as a leader it's okay I'd like to just share a story I've got my wife Grace and our kids here and some years ago we were in the middle of a really complicated season that Pastor Robert and Jimmy met with us and were pastored us through it and loved us very well and I'll never forget for the first time in years I wasn't a pastor and I didn't have a church to go to and I forgot it was Sunday every pastor knows what Sunday is you know you've officially transitioned when you forgot it's Sunday so I got up I came out to the living room wearing my pajamas and there was grace and all the kids and I said what are we doing they said it's Sunday were having church at our house and so you know now I'm pastoring six people the six most important people and it was a very difficult season for us so one of the kids led worship one organized prayer one read scripture one collected the offering and he did he wanted to give the money to a single mom and so and so they said okay dad we decided you can you could do the sermon I didn't have anything prepped and I I stopped and I started praying and I was so broken we were so broken I couldn't stop crying and and I just opened the Bible and I felt like God said teach out of Ephesians 4 and there it talks about forgiveness versus bitterness and I had never seen it in the text but it says you know don't give the enemy a foothold but open yourself up to the Holy Spirit when we are hurt when we are wounded when we are sinned against when we are betrayed if we choose bitterness we are opening the door to the demonic to ourselves our ministry and our family Satan and demons never forgive anyone and they're never forgiven for anything only God does forgiveness and so I think sometimes what happens to ministry leaders and especially their spouses who really absorb a lot of the pain and their children who have to sort of suffer in silence there can be a bitterness either toward the Lord the church people in the ministry the circumstances and unless there's forgiveness I think then demonic torment comes into the family and so you know you forgive not to bless them but to bless you and let the Lord deal with them yeah so I was at a church for thirteen and a half years and when I transitioned from it the senior pastor totally rejected me and I had never experienced rejection at that magnitude from a person that influential and the only way I can describe it is that it cratered my soul and I remember the Holy Spirit gave me two choices he said this crater is going to be filled but what it's filled with is up to you you can fill it with grace and if you do people we will be refreshed in it for the rest of your life or you can fill it with bitterness and people were drowned in it for the rest of your life you will wind up preaching sermons not to the people in front of you but to the person that hurt you or you can feel be filled with grace and preached to the people in front of you of how God can heal you so it's a choice when we've been betrayed or when we've been rejected of how we're going to allow God or the enemy to fill us back up because we're going to be filled with something so let me ask you I think I know all of you have a desire to see your congregations be multicultural multi-ethnic pastor Tim you know the name of your church is embassy city and so I know particularly there's your heart on this would you talk to why that's important to you and how you see the church as a whole kind of working through this this issue so yes so we planted our church four years ago and went right on the other side of the airport dad kept us close to home and we the burden that was in me and has that has always been in me is for the kingdom of God to be advanced so when the name embassy city came to me while I was eating the worst nachos I've ever had in my entire life in Sydney Australia God will speak to you even if you're not in like the war room praying when he said embassy it just landed on me and resonated with me in a very strong way we had no idea when the Holy Spirit led us to earring to plant the church that the zip code that we were planning the church in was the most racially diverse ZIP code in United States of America Queens New York was number two we had no idea but what we knew was that we wanted to fulfill the Mandate of Matthew chapter number 28 that we would go and make disciples of all nations now what's interesting is is that as an african-american there is a thought or a paradigm that people of color if you you are african-american or Hispanic then you're going to have a predominantly black church you're gonna have a predominantly Hispanic Church a predominantly Asian church and I'm like well I want to I want to reach everybody and I want everybody in this pool so I'm appreciative gospel and I have an expectation that everybody's going to show up and if only black people come here I'm gonna ask myself some questions am I only talking to them or am I talking to everybody in the room that's a decision that we have to make and when I when I open up scripture I believe I'm addressing nations not one particular ethnicity that's a decision that has to be made and so we made that decision our church is diverse and now people are scratching their head asking me how did you do this I was like um I read the Bible decided to preach the gospel to nations and people showed up and I think we over complicate it because I think the narrative in this country muddles us from having clarity on our assignment the whole black and white that exists in America doesn't exist in the kingdom so if the paradigm is Kingdom then you're gonna have a clear voice but if you're trying to speak to it from where America's narrative has been it's gonna always fall short of what God wants to accomplish in Earth i'ma stop so we we pastor our new season Church is a multi-ethnic Church we have five campuses Los Angeles Sacramento Stockton Reno so forth Burbank and it's the dye deed demographics are as follows it's 40 percent Caucasian which is code word for white we knew 40% african-american codeword for black and then the other 20% are confused that's our congregation that's our congregation it's a beautiful thing and I agree with Tim it's a beautiful thing and it was intentional day one it was the mandate of let's have a multi-ethnic church to build a you know this is we can't the whole focusing on on race and and and division and and the you know perpetuating a meta-narrative of like we're gonna be in racial reconciliation mode in America the Lord tarries for the next five million years so I don't even speak on the issue of racial reconciliation I speak about racial unity and and speak prophetically into the subject matter and and we don't what the beauty of this diversity is that it reveals Revelation chapter five you know all people coming together in the name of Jesus but if you want to see the answer to the racial angst in America it's more multi-ethnic churches it's not gonna be politicians solving it it's not it's not gonna be donkeys and elephants it's more multi-ethnic churches that don't elevate one concept over the other you don't go in there you don't even you don't even feed into the fodder of the racial divide you go in there you come together I do believe prophetically speaking when we have black white yellow and brown worshiping together something happens in the heavily so about a Down and that's what we experienced I want to make one more statement as it relates to that because I love that semi you said racial unity can we just put this to bed now there's no such thing as racial reconciliation it's not actually a thing and I'm very passionate about this to reconcile means to be means to restore to a previous relationship [Applause] where y'all want me to go [Applause] mankind cannot be reconciled to mankind unless they are first reconciled to their God racism is a is a subcategory of the spirit of division all isms is just another category of a spirit of division so the own that the first murder took place between two brothers that came out the same womb so he'll divide you if you both white one got red hair and green eyes the other one got blonde hair and blue eyes and so somebody's the redheaded stepchild so the spirit division works in every single country ours just happens to be racism and if we can get away from this word that doesn't fit contextually into Scripture and get back to being reconciled to God that's what second Corinthians chapter number five says that our job as ambassadors is to reconcile people back to God then we can be reconciled back to each other let me let me I want to touch on a couple other sort of cultural topics so let me ask you as it's pastors and leaders as you're ministering to people and your congregation who may struggle with gender identity issues or sexual orientation issues how do you minister with grace without compromising truth well we're all broken sexually the world is and we all are it's just what you do with it you know whether you admit your brokenness and take it to Jesus and submit it or you try to normalize your brokenness let me talk to gender I about gender identity in just a minute so Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden Genesis 2:25 says they were naked without shame and then they sent and when they sinned of course Adam hid from God and when God showed up he says you know where are you and he says I'm afraid because I'm naked and the Lord said who told you you were naked well he doesn't God doesn't ask questions because he needs the answer he was saying to Adam when you sin you opened a door and that serpent whispered into your spirit you were defective sexually and that's what happened because the the what makes the devil so dangerous is stealth is he speaks into our spirit and we don't know it's him in Ephesians 4:1 it says don't give a don't go to bed on your anger you give a foothold to Diablos and what happens when you go to bed on anger is you're sleeping you're in bed all these thoughts are racing through your mind and some of those are the devil you don't know it because you've opened the door through your anger well their sin opened a door for the devil to speak and whoever controls your sexuality controls you and you for generation at the control Society so Satan has always been after sex that that's the thing that he prizes because he can corrupt an entire society through that so Adam and Eve were genuinely deceived by Satan and didn't know it the first thing the devil ever did to humans after the fall was deceived them sexually so when a person says you know I think I'm I think I'm a woman in a man's body or a man in a woman's body or whatever they're they're genuine there's a man named Walt power and he has a website called sex change regret dot-com 41% of people have such a nation's attempt suicide those are not happy customers and the reason they attempt suicide is it because when they wake up after their surgery they realize they're not different down there they're dead down there okay it wasn't a sex change operation it was a sex removal operation and it's all it's all a lie it's all a sham but those people genuinely believe that Walt Hauer his grandmother dressed him up his little girl when he was grown up and he became sexually confused I thought it was a woman divorced his wife went through the surgery realized he was not a woman after the surgery were announced it now lives as a man and helps other people to come out of that on his website tremendous testimonies on there about that the devil is a liar and a deceiver and when you have a wound in your life we live in a very very broken world very broken families and that produces broken sexuality and so whatever it is I mean whatever the the outworking of that is sex addiction pornography you know homosexuality transsexualism or whatever and by the way the Tim was talking about not believing you know in reconciliation you can't change your sex there's no such thing as the transsexual but we can't deem ourselves God and then say what sex we are it's a lie but it's the elephant the room in our society because it seems like it's politically incorrect if you love a person you help them to do the right thing and what I don't want to do is go I won't be unkind to anybody but I believe as a church we have to say you know sexual sin is wrong whether you're a man addicted to pornography or whether you're a homosexual or whether you're a transsexual or whatever it is just sin is it's all okay and we want to help you we we want to compassionately help you not judge you not call you names not reject you but we want to help you but we cannot help you without the truth of the word of God we have to we have to help you to understand what God's Word says about this so it has never been as needed as it is today in the world the truth of God's Word sexually in our culture but there is a war and part of the war is to intimidate the church from addressing those topics but work were the only ones that have the credentials to do so everyone else is quiet yeah I think this issue is so public and it's the civil rights issue of a generation that I think it has changed the landscape for the church I think we used to be divided unnecessarily you reformed or Arminian cessationist charismatic pre-trib post-trib now it really is two people walk into your church and say can we use the building and will a pastor officiate our wedding and it's not a man and a woman how you answer that question in our day really divides the church from whatever teams we had down to to everybody who says we cannot do that is on this side and everyone who says we can is on this side these are the only people that still have the Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ because the gospel is about repentance and the demonic counterfeit is tolerance and you can't preach the gospel unless you call someone to repentance and so failure to call people to repent of sin and instead to tolerate sin is to try and save their feelings while damning their soul which is not really the most loving person thing we can do for the person because if we're concerned about their suffering we should be most concerned about the worst suffering that lasts forever and so to me you know God's love tolerates us as we are and then transforms how we behave and God loves you enough to take you as you are but he loves you too much to not make you like Jesus and so you know and we we we worship a guy who was a virgin I don't know if anybody thought about that like yeah that I me today that would be an additional miracle we could add to the list there's a 33 year old man who's a virgin that's a miracle no one lived a more full satisfied globally impacting god-honoring life than Jesus and he did it while celibate and so you know whatever your desires are if you practice celibacy that's the spirit of self-control and that's the character of Christ and this pastor Jimmy indicated it doesn't matter if you're single married homosexual heterosexual whatever you are self-control is a fruit of the Spirit and repentance is a requirement of the gospel right great answers great answers Pastor Samuel let me ask you to shift gears to different topic but it's still cultural and there's obviously many studies and maybe just even what we sense and know that there's a generation behind us a younger generation that just is fallen away from the church not interested in the church so how do we go after the next generation how do we reach them what's your congregation doing what are you doing to leave what are you seeing that God is doing to go after the next generation as you look around the world so what we're not doing is this important as what we are doing what we're not doing is sacrificing truth on the altar of political expediency what we're doing is preaching truth with love there is a generation that is seeking what is real what is authentic what is transparent what is truth so we're not drinking the kool-aid what we're doing is sharing truth with love and demonstrating through our actions through our compassion and again there's the X Factor there's that Holy Spirit factor that if they come into our sanctuary or we reach them wherever it be a Starbucks or whatever it may be that there is something called the presence of God and the old term charismatic or other would be the anointing first John 2:27 and the anointing of God will be there and we have this crazy belief system because I've experienced it and I've seen it that if we interact with truth and love God shows up and he honors and he convicts and he changes I went to a mrs. true story there's a guy named Aaron who witnessed it there was three guys that were there this is back in the day so this is back back in the day and but back in the day I mean panic in the day and I went I was a youth pastor and I we just came from a meeting and we stepped out into that time I would eat McDonald's I've been delivered by the blood of the Lamb I no longer engage and that's sort of behavior and I've been set free but we I went to McDonald's and I ordered a quarter pounder with fries in a milkshake what I'm giving you now has nothing to do with the story you just wanted to give you the listing of what I ordered because we're done with fries are still the best fries out there in the industry arguably because I just just think they aren't or something about it back to the story so we went there to story I went there we just came out from a gathering there's a young lady taking our order and I asked for the order and she starts crying right there now me being me I'm self-conscious I went my god is my breath that bad right now right but it wasn't she starts crying man she starts weeping just weeping it hurt her life shift manager comes over says are you alright she went no he came over finish the order we went back you know we'd have no idea what's going on we went back and were eating she came around came to our table and said hey I'm so sorry I apologize I went no where is she went are you a priest I went sort of she went yeah listen I'm not weird I've never done this I don't know you I just so help me god I'm not weird and I've never done this but the moment you started speaking something came out of you and hit me so hard and like I've never done this and I just feel like I need God and I've done some bad stuff then I need to share with someone and I need God and she went are you sure you're a priest I wasn't sort of and we assured him right there we prayed over her I mean we prayed in Jesus name she confessed and declared Lourdes Lourdes neighbour because I do believe the best way to reach the next generation is by living a holy healed healthy happy humble Hungary honoring life and changed the world one of the things then these everyone's against her in it but it's preaching the gospel but I really really encourage you to study Jesus is teaching from a Jewish perspective you won't believe how much of it you've missed you take the parables even like the Good Samaritan that was a parable a Jewish parable for hundreds of years taught by rabbi before but he was totally switched around and he was honoring the the rabbi for passing on the other side of the road from from a person it was and Jesus took their culture and shared the gospel so I just feel like it is the gospel and yet we can share it in the generation in which we live Jesus didn't share any illustrations about airplanes because they're learning the airplanes but he did share about an ox in a ditch you know he shared about a seed because there were a lot of farmers he said you know he talked about a pearl of great price he did he just he was one of the best teachers in the world and he would he would say think about you know the hours and how Solomon all of its wasn't raves ease think about the birds of the earth think about he was a tremendous teacher and he used humor there's a whole bunch of humor in the Bible you know they came out and said well you're Beelzebub because you cast demons out by Beelzebub he said you cast him out by well they didn't cast them out you know and so there are a lot of things I'm just saying it is the Gospels exactly what these guys said and yet it's okay to present the gospel in an entertaining way in a in a creative way that people will listen to it but but do preach the gospel don't don't just entertain make sure you put the gospel in there because that's the only thing it's the power of the gospel is the power of God and salvation to everyone who believes it is the gospel I mean let me shift the context of marriage and pastor Jimmy you obviously found in marriage today many years ago still do it you had an XO conference this weekend and why is this still such a problem in the church why is there disconnect and people saying and identifying that they think marriage is right and yet marriages in church are statistically about the same in terms of divorce as we find in the world what where's the disconnect well I'll say this comment not directed at anybody in this room but in general churches don't care anything about marriage they don't they don't talk about it publicly pastor Robert and I went on a little tour one time speaking and I spoke on marriage and pastor Robert spoke on money and every pastor at every church we went said those are the two things I don't like to talk about and they wonder why they're broke in our churches full of divorce and so the marriage is the number one felt need in every community in the world it's not the number one need it is Jesus is the number one eight but if I give you Jesus in marriage I've changed her life if I only give you Jesus you're gonna go to heaven but you're just going to be miserable all the way there and so the first institution God ever created was marriage before the church before government anything else was marriage in Genesis 1 and 2 and it is the foundation for every other institution on earth and as goes marriage as go Society and whenever to the degree that marriage has crumbled in America you have juvenile delinquency financial problems you have all these problems but it all tracks back to marriage and so the church pastor Robert has asked me to do a marriage conference at Gateway every year since the church started and whenever we have a conference marriage conference they'll say how many of you from are not from Gateway Church probably 50 to 60 percent or not because the world around us is very interested in relationships in marriage and we are the only entity that can teach them how to be married Muslims can't teach how to be married Hindus can't teach how to be married atheists can't teach how to be married the government can't teach how to be married only the Church of Jesus Christ can teach how to be married and whenever we teach people how to be married we are blessing them we're giving them something that's very important to them and a lot of them have been divorced that's right they don't mind you talking about marriage as long as you don't talk down to them and when I say well you may have been married three or four times but just let this be the last one that's what I say to them and so I talk very openly about it but you're gonna reap the harvest in your church of the seed that you sow and so I'm gonna do a marriage series here in in February all through the month of February child marriage and so Ronnie Goines who is on the board who's a friend of pastor Roberts was coming out of a restaurant one day with Pastor Robert and my son Brent who's the president of marriage today was walking in that restaurant and pastor Robert said Brent you need to talk to Ronnie Goines and he has a church in Arlington and so here's Ronnie's sir Ronnie talked to Brent and here's what Ronnie said to to Brent his wife we're starting a church and they had 17 people in the church and the church wouldn't grow and they were getting really discouraged and one day his wife his wife's name's Nikki and Nikki said running why don't we just stop trying to grow our church let's just buy some of Jimmy's marriage materials and let's just start a marriage minister let's just help people in their marriages they did and their church is now 5000 people that's his testimony and he said we we have the greatest leaders we have the greatest men and women in our church and all we were trying to do was just to build marriages and people to started gravitating so marriage is something that people want desperately see people have the desire for marriage they just don't have the hope for it because most people don't believe that they can be successful in marriage and so whenever you teach on marriage and you give them hope in marriage and I say this and I mean this sincerely if you don't like talking about it just show my videos show my mind nobody else's and good matter the best but I promise you start showing marriage videos and it people love it people will thrive about that so I think it is a demonic attack against our society and the church to get us to be silent about topics that we need to be talking about and marriage being one of them okay let me go to a topic that's been in the news recently and you sort of touched on it this morning talking about stress and what people in the ministry feel but there's there's been some recent examples of church leaders who've struggled with mental health depression suicide and I mean others have struggled with suicidal thoughts is that something you any of you have experienced or would care to share about or do you have any advice or perspective that you would share with folks here today who may be struggling in one of those areas yes so I am I have a younger brother who's 17 months younger than me that preceded me in death he was killed in a single auto accident on September the 17th of 2004 I am a very optimistic person easygoing high tolerance for stress but when he died it devastated me and for four months I was in the the darkest days of my life literally and spiritually I was angry at God I told him I would never preach for him again I found out something about God during that time he's not petty it's a revelation for some of you all God's not petty you can throw the biggest fit you want to and he'll just be like are you done cuz I railed I mean I I did it all and um the darkest day is I was at my parents house and I took my father's revolver and I was gonna in my life that's how deep and dark the paint was and it was nothing but the Holy Spirit that kept me from pulling that trigger what I realized is I had not verbalized for four months my feelings I felt my feelings but I never put my feelings into words and here's what I came to understand whatever does not come up whatever doesn't come up and out through words will come up and out through actions if you're physically violent it's because you don't have words for your anger if you're trapped under the secrecy of pornography it's because you don't have words for your desires if you're struggling with depression or suicide you're filling that pain but those words are escaping you or you are avoiding putting those feelings into words that will help people help you the church has been very very dismissive of those with mental health issues we've we've always we've almost treated it like a separate category and let me say this is well for all of my Pentecostal charismatic people all terkoz are not the end-all be-all all a good sermon does is open up a can of worms that's it I mean I I mean you have a good altar call and people the altar was flooded all you had was a bunch of worms at the altar popped open those people now have to sort those worms and it's gonna last a little bit longer than that prayer they got at this altar so if we're not being champions of counseling if we're not being champions of people getting the care that they need whether it's freedom ministry spiritual guidance or some people need clinical counseling some people need a peel you'll take insulin if you're diabetic to treat your to treat something that's going onto your body well your brain is an organ - and if it's sick and it needs some help you might need to get something and I know you're believing God for a breakthrough and you want it to happen until then take that pill so that you just won't be crazy on Tuesday for no reason I'm believing God for my healing well until then take that pill I just I I lived my life in silence for 11 years because of a sexual assault and molestation that happened to me over six six month period of my life after living in that silence for 11 years and and and finally sharing it with my parents and six months later giving my life to Christ I was 23 years ago then having this dark season that I had for four months with my brother and I was saved and I did know Jesus and I knew Psalm 23 and I still almost took my life I've just made a decision that I'm not going to lie about where I am based on position or what I do as a leader if you ask me how you doing I must say not good if that's if that's the reality of where I am right now because we can over spiritualize stuff to our own detriment and then blame people for not caring I can't care if you conceal I can only care what you reveal thank you really thank you for that vulnerability and I mean I think sometimes what people need to hear is just the freedom to be able to talk like you lived in silence for 11 years and sometimes just hearing someone on a platform like this who has had that kind of struggle will empower and release someone to do the same thing to come out of be able to talk we got about four minutes left so I want to ask you probably a real deep question that I can only ask you for about a 30-second response okay but I'd like each of everybody answer if you can mr. pastor Jimmy I wanna start with you will work back this way then with Pastor Robert here's a question if you had to do it all over again what would you never do again what if I had to do it all over again you would never do what I would never are you glad you started with me I would never well when when I came into the ministry the Lord had healed our marriage but when I came into the ministry the church became the priority in my life and Karen and the kids I really lost a couple of years with our kids when they were little because the church was consuming me and pastor Robert was talking about you know Sabbath I didn't have a Sabbath for many years and any time I took a vacation I was writing a book I was just you know driven I would never do that again ever it wasn't worth it and the the Lord would have blessed me and my family and the church if I would have trusted him and put my put him first not the church in my marriage and family in their right order and then the church here but part of the reason that I did that was because of a bunch of very demanding people and I allowed them to have more of a voice in my life than the Lord and my family and it was a huge mistake I burned out several times really bad and and that was one of the times that I was just kind of talking with Lord saying hey aren't you helped me out here you know and the problem was with the Lord the problem was with you know it was just very driven and and I deeply regret it and I would never do that again thank you thank you Pastor Mark yes I think about it there's a lot but I I started ministry get saved at nineteen married at 21 was a senior pastor at 25 and in a had ID to do it over again I wouldn't be a pastor unless I knew who my pastors were and so I was a pastor but I didn't have a pastor and so you know Paul says Timothy Titus onesimus you're my sons he says to the Corinthians you have many teachers there's a lot of podcasts we don't have many fathers and so as a young man I would have greatly benefited from being humble enough to submit to godly fatherly Apostolic pastoral oversight and leadership because all you can do is minister out of what you know and where you are and if you're 25 and a new Christian everything you know fits on a three by five card that's all you got you know and so sometimes you've got to borrow wisdom and insight and priority from someone else and this is not a just a plug there are some people here that I've invited into the Gateway Network this is where being part of something have some people to talk to have some people to set up your governance have some people to look at your schedule have some people to just think back best practices have some people ask how's your marriage how are your kids because this pastors we look after all these people and my question is who's looking after you and your family that's great thank you Pastor Tim if I had to do it all over again what would I not do I would not have spent so much time trying to please people I serve people but I realized the only person have to please his God thank you pastor Sabol I would not start drinking Starbucks yeah that's about it pastor Robert they brought me back in I would mess our drinks I was and I would not I would not have worked as hard as I did without the revelation that Pastor Roberts went with why he's one of my elders the revelation of the Sabbath I lost too many days of my kids growing up doing ministry doing Church and I would not do that again indeed thank you best Robert well the second part of that not the first part I don't drink Starbucks with the second one's gonna be buying answer I would not have worked his heart because if you look around and see what God's done a gateway if you think it was because of hard work I think that's idolatry to accredit a man with it it's God that did it and I think God would have done the same thing and I would have gotten enjoyment it's great thank you you guys I honor you we honor you your incredible leaders and pastors and thank you for being vulnerable with us today can you give a welcome or a thank you to our pastors thank you guys very much [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Gateway Conference

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Id: ppG8ofGq7Zw

Length: 58min 32sec (3512 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 06 2020