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Why We Are Still Assemblies of God? · The Jim Bradford Podcast

0:00
Chase Replogle: You're listening to the Jim Bradford Podcast, conversations on faith, life, and leadership.
0:04
Chase Replogle: I'm your host, Chase Replogle.
0:08
Chase Replogle: As always, thanks for listening.
0:34
Chase Replogle: Well, Pastor Jim, it's great to be together, and starting a new little mini-series here.
0:53
Chase Replogle: Sometimes we take long times with series, so I'm not sure exactly how many weeks we'll go, but I think we've crossed over 200 episodes on the podcast now, which is pretty remarkable.
1:02
Chase Replogle: It's been a lot of fun.
1:03
Chase Replogle: We've talked your books, my books.
1:05
Chase Replogle: We've talked the book.
1:06
Chase Replogle: We went all the way through the Bible.
1:07
Chase Replogle: So what we thought we'd do for a number of weeks here is just let listeners submit some questions, and we could have conversations around them.
1:14
Chase Replogle: So we've got a few already selected for the next few weeks, and I'd encourage people People, you know, come to the website and send us a message if you've got a question as well.
1:22
Chase Replogle: I'd be happy to get that out.
1:23
Jim Bradford: Right, yeah, that'd be terrific.
1:26
Jim Bradford: I mean, Chase is such a great friend, and you've moderated these over 200 podcasts, and I deeply appreciate you.
1:36
Jim Bradford: And even when we're not, we usually do four of these at a time once a month.
1:42
Jim Bradford: But we spend more time together.
1:44
Jim Bradford: I mean, we just like visiting with each other a lot.
1:47
Jim Bradford: We get along.
1:47
Jim Bradford: We get along, and we usually have a lot to talk about, and we can go for hours if we had the time.
1:53
Jim Bradford: So these will be very conversational podcasts, both of us contributing pretty equally to this.
2:00
Jim Bradford: And I'm approaching these next podcasts where we just field questions.
2:06
Jim Bradford: uh as a conversation just sitting here sounds great having a conversation with you and grateful for all of those of you who will be listening in and uh we hope that uh you'll hear the voice of the spirit somehow as we probably discover things ourselves and things may come clear even to us as we take them apart in dialogue
2:28
Chase Replogle: Well, our first question this week, somebody submitted, which is very simple.
2:31
Chase Replogle: I thought it was a great question.
2:32
Chase Replogle: They wrote in, why are you Assemblies of God?
2:35
Chase Replogle: Which is true.
2:35
Chase Replogle: Both of us are Assemblies of God ministers.
2:37
Chase Replogle: And so I've got some other questions I thought would kind of add to it.
2:41
Chase Replogle: But as we sort of unpack that over the conversation, maybe a good place to start is how you ended up in the Assemblies of God.
2:48
Jim Bradford: I grew up in Canada for the first 16 years of my life.
2:50
Jim Bradford: And so I was born into the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada.
2:55
Jim Bradford: which is the sister organization to the U.S.
2:59
Jim Bradford: Assemblies of God that you and I are part of now.
3:01
Jim Bradford: And so I was born into this.
3:05
Jim Bradford: I remember being a young teenager and just loving the church.
3:11
Jim Bradford: I felt moved upon by the Lord.
3:16
Jim Bradford: That's where I heard the gospel regularly.
3:19
Jim Bradford: When I was in grade school, like elementary school, I was living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and attending Calvary Temple.
3:29
Jim Bradford: Dr.
3:30
Jim Bradford: H.
3:30
Jim Bradford: H.
3:30
Jim Bradford: Barber was the pastor, who was probably one of the greatest preacher orators in kind of the British Bible teacher style in all of Canada, and probably the strongest evangelistic voice in all of Western Canada.
3:45
Jim Bradford: And you know, when you're eight years old, you're just sitting there, but I can still remember moments of just being impacted with the beauty of the gospel and his passion for the gospel and his clarity week after week articulating the gospel um and his commitment to a pentecostal lifestyle in a non sort of flaky kind of low emotional way uh but it was a very It was a Pentecostal church that saw people getting saved and filled with the Holy Spirit.
4:24
Jim Bradford: I was around people who had been healed.
4:26
Jim Bradford: I remember, especially in the church I was in in Toronto when I was a young teenager, just encountering people who had been like alcoholics and they met Jesus and they were delivered overnight.
4:42
Jim Bradford: All of these kind of...
4:44
Jim Bradford: Stories that organizations like teen challenge became known for you know I just as a kid was around people whose lives have been changed that way just from being impacted by the outreach of a local church and So I had a lot of Empirical evidence that there was a God and I would been moved on by the Holy Spirit myself and loved Jesus so you know, why was I Pentecostal Assembly of Canada?
5:15
Jim Bradford: It was not even a question that went through my mind.
5:18
Jim Bradford: It was like, why not?
5:19
Jim Bradford: You know, this is as good as it gets.
5:21
Jim Bradford: And then we moved to the United States, became a part of a church.
5:24
Jim Bradford: You know, we went, we moved, uh, the headquarters to my father's company was actually in a bit of a smaller town of only 30,000 people in Southeastern Minnesota.
5:36
Jim Bradford: And, uh, So there was one Assemblies of God church there.
5:40
Jim Bradford: It wasn't even that large.
5:41
Jim Bradford: But there was no question, we moved to town, and that's the church we went to.
5:45
Jim Bradford: There was no church shopping.
5:48
Jim Bradford: There was no suggestion we'd go to anything but an Assemblies of God church now that we were in the U.S.
5:53
Jim Bradford: And it just kind of stayed that way.
5:56
Jim Bradford: I questioned leaving the Assemblies of God when I graduated from university.
6:04
Jim Bradford: I'd been leading a campus ministry, the Assemblies of God had started, Chi Alpha Campus Ministry.
6:09
Jim Bradford: We'd seen, after we shrunk to almost nothing, we saw a really major spiritual breakthrough when I was in graduate school.
6:18
Jim Bradford: Three and a half years later, I finished graduate school, stayed as a full-time campus pastor, and was well-supported by the Assemblies of God district in Minnesota.
6:29
Jim Bradford: It was all good.
6:32
Jim Bradford: But a year later, we took 120 out of that campus ministry and started meeting on campus as a church on Sundays.
6:38
Jim Bradford: And I don't know, that was the one time where I really wrestled with, should we, as a church, affiliate with the Assemblies of God, or would this be our moment to go independent?
6:52
Jim Bradford: And I had a very good friend who was one of the elders in the church, and we're elders, we're all in our 20s, but I remember having a conversation with him.
7:05
Jim Bradford: His name was Dave.
7:06
Jim Bradford: I remember having this conversation with Dave like, you know, we're drawing up bylaws for our church and should we be AG or not?
7:14
Jim Bradford: And maybe this is our chance to go independent.
7:17
Jim Bradford: And it was, you know, early 80s, it was becoming, you know, cool to not be associated with the denomination.
7:25
Jim Bradford: Those winds are still blowing strong.
7:28
Jim Bradford: And so he had no AG background himself, except he was a very active part of our new university church.
7:36
Jim Bradford: And he was just offended at me.
7:41
Jim Bradford: He said, Jim, how could you even think that?
7:44
Jim Bradford: Like, don't you want accountability in your life?
7:47
Jim Bradford: Like, you want to go independent?
7:49
Jim Bradford: Like, that's against everything we stand for.
7:52
Jim Bradford: You know, and he was just a young guy with no particular background.
7:57
Jim Bradford: A.G.
7:57
Jim Bradford: Blueblood in him.
7:58
Jim Bradford: But he came at me theologically and experientially in a way like, I don't think you would do well if you didn't have some accountability.
8:10
Jim Bradford: So that was the end of that.
8:12
Jim Bradford: I've never questioned being the assembly of God since.
8:15
Chase Replogle: How long have you had credentials?
8:17
Jim Bradford: I've had credentials since 1979.
8:19
Jim Bradford: Yeah, that's great.
8:22
Jim Bradford: 79.
8:22
Jim Bradford: How about you?
8:23
Jim Bradford: How did you get in?
8:24
Chase Replogle: You know, it's funny.
8:25
Chase Replogle: I knew most of those details of your story, but I'd never—talking about it that way, it struck me as how similar.
8:29
Chase Replogle: My parents—my dad grew up kind of nominally Methodist, so I think you'd be okay with me saying that.
8:34
Chase Replogle: Really, they sort of had a spiritual awakening in their late 20s.
8:38
Chase Replogle: My dad got playing church basketball because he was a good athlete, and really a four-square pastor kind of led him back to the church.
8:46
Chase Replogle: But there was an AG church nearby they started attending.
8:48
Chase Replogle: And it's interesting how you said that because my dad was a state trooper.
8:51
Chase Replogle: So we moved around the state a lot, but always in the state.
8:54
Chase Replogle: And it was the same thing.
8:55
Chase Replogle: We always found the AG church, which there usually was.
8:59
Jim Bradford: Yeah, the
8:59
Chase Replogle: AG.
9:00
Chase Replogle: Yeah.
9:00
Chase Replogle: And that's where we went.
9:01
Chase Replogle: Yeah.
9:01
Chase Replogle: And even, you know, even at times through some difficulties or maybe some, you know, just differences of opinion or style or didn't really matter.
9:07
Chase Replogle: That's where we went.
9:08
Chase Replogle: So I grew up in AG churches, did all the AG things, you know, from Royal Rangers to youth camp.
9:14
Chase Replogle: And just I look back on that.
9:17
Chase Replogle: I'm really grateful for my parents just kind of consistent faithfulness.
9:20
Chase Replogle: I think it shaped so much of my own sort of loyalty to just a group of people.
9:24
Chase Replogle: But very similar, we started Bent Oak Church where I pastor.
9:28
Chase Replogle: We started as a Sunday night Bible study, not even really intending it to be a church.
9:33
Chase Replogle: We were sort of, I was kind of trying to figure out what was next after seminary and not really sure.
9:38
Chase Replogle: I had done some bivocational work as well, and there was opportunities there, and I was a little disoriented for a season in my life.
9:44
Chase Replogle: And it was...
9:44
Chase Replogle: Well, let's do this.
9:46
Chase Replogle: So I'm at least doing something.
9:47
Chase Replogle: I have a master's degree.
9:48
Chase Replogle: I feel called to ministry.
9:49
Chase Replogle: So I don't know.
9:50
Chase Replogle: We'll teach the Bible to some people and have dinner.
9:52
Chase Replogle: And by the end of the summer doing that, most of the people coming, many of them did not have an Assemblies of God background.
9:58
Chase Replogle: And most of them weren't attending church anywhere.
10:00
Chase Replogle: They were kind of thinking that as their church.
10:02
Chase Replogle: And we just felt the Lord drawing us to that group of people.
10:04
Chase Replogle: And we had a very similar moment.
10:05
Chase Replogle: We did that for three years.
10:07
Chase Replogle: actually structured the church, kind of became a legal entity on our own.
10:11
Chase Replogle: None of this had been through like church planting or any sort of office.
10:15
Chase Replogle: And we ended up, you know, I brought it before the church as a matter of business in one of our annual business meetings.
10:21
Chase Replogle: And we moved to the church into the Assemblies of God at that point.
10:25
Chase Replogle: I had held credentials throughout, but it was a very similar situation where there was kind of a moment there.
10:30
Chase Replogle: And we decided, no, I think, you know, at the end of the day, I thought I am Assemblies of God.
10:35
Chase Replogle: And for me, it's always been a matter of this is the group of people that raised me, that taught me the gospel, that I sat through Sunday school classes, that saw me baptized in the Spirit, that sent me on missions trips, that educated me in Bible college and seminary.
10:50
Chase Replogle: And so there was just a pretty strong, it's not like I would say I am Mr.
10:55
Chase Replogle: AG, but there was a sense of gratitude and loyalty to what so many people invested in me.
11:00
Chase Replogle: Yeah.
11:02
Jim Bradford: You graduated from...
11:03
Jim Bradford: One of the Assemblies of God schools, colleges?
11:06
Chase Replogle: Yeah, two.
11:07
Chase Replogle: I went to Central Bible College and then Assemblies of God Seminary.
11:09
Jim Bradford: Then the seminary.
11:10
Jim Bradford: That's right.
11:11
Jim Bradford: Yeah, that's right.
11:12
Jim Bradford: You and I are similar in that our dads were not pastors, just active in the local church.
11:19
Jim Bradford: Yeah, I have no ministry connections outside of my parents showing up at a church.
11:26
Jim Bradford: Yeah, and I ended up graduating from the University of Minnesota instead of an Assembly of God church, you know, with engineering degrees instead of an Assembly of God school.
11:34
Jim Bradford: So, you know, I feel very loyal to the Assembly of God.
11:38
Jim Bradford: I love the movement, but yeah, it's not like either of us had patronage.
11:45
Jim Bradford: No, there's no family connections.
11:47
Jim Bradford: I meet a lot of people who do, but I certainly don't.
11:49
Jim Bradford: We're not related to anybody famous in the AG.
11:52
Jim Bradford: It's a good journey.
11:56
Jim Bradford: I really empathize with what you said.
11:58
Jim Bradford: That's where my spiritual nurturing came from.
12:02
Jim Bradford: I'm grateful.
12:04
Jim Bradford: I've been disappointed sometimes, especially when I was in college.
12:12
Jim Bradford: you know, you got to find a church of your own and you're not living with your parents anymore and you're in a different city.
12:21
Jim Bradford: And I found trying to find a church challenging, even an AG church, and then there's always things to be disappointed in.
12:30
Jim Bradford: There's usually be smaller churches that maybe are struggling in some ways.
12:38
Jim Bradford: But I don't know.
12:41
Jim Bradford: I just always felt like I love the place that raised me spiritually.
12:48
Chase Replogle: Yeah.
12:48
Chase Replogle: Do you, when you think about, uh, I think it'd be interesting to get into to just some of the strengths you see in our movement, especially, I mean, you've, you've grown up in this movement, you've pastored in this, you've served in leadership positions in our movement.
13:01
Chase Replogle: You're pastoring again.
13:02
Chase Replogle: Just when you look at the assemblies of God as a whole, some of the strengths, uh, that you think you see within the assemblies of God.
13:09
Jim Bradford: We're a very people rich movement.
13:11
Jim Bradford: And, uh, I know some wonderful, wonderful people that had a great influence on my life that I think are exceptionally gifted, anointed, smart, resourceful.
13:32
Jim Bradford: And we live in Springfield where the Summers of God headquarters is.
13:37
Jim Bradford: You do contract work for the Assemblies of God headquarters in the discipleship area.
13:42
Jim Bradford: You do writing and discipleship.
13:44
Jim Bradford: I was an executive officer for a few years.
13:46
Jim Bradford: And I pastor a church right next door to the headquarters.
13:50
Jim Bradford: Even in my congregation and your congregation, as Ben Tope grew out of that Sunday night Bible study in a home, we have some of the Assemblies of God leaders attend our churches.
14:05
Jim Bradford: And they're...
14:08
Jim Bradford: They're really great people.
14:10
Jim Bradford: Nobody's perfect, but I don't say that tritely.
14:14
Jim Bradford: I feel blessed that I've not been around people that later get exposed for being real two-faced, living a double life, being abusers.
14:28
Jim Bradford: For some reason, that's never been in my circle of relationships, although we have some bad apples.
14:37
Jim Bradford: the influences of my life were always just positive and encouraging.
14:44
Jim Bradford: And I never had a crisis of trust with most of the leaders I've met and I've worked with.
14:53
Jim Bradford: So, you know, that's really up there.
14:57
Jim Bradford: I think the right answer, though, is probably our confessional statement, our doctrinal statement.
15:03
Jim Bradford: Christianity Today wrote an article years ago just...
15:07
Jim Bradford: How come some certain moves of God come, and then in a few years they dissipate, and then that quote-unquote organization that sort of happened, that sort of housed that move of God, doesn't exist anymore?
15:23
Jim Bradford: And then they looked at, especially in the charismatic Pentecostal world, organizations like the Assemblies of God.
15:30
Jim Bradford: And the case they made was the Assemblies of God has had over the years a confessional statement that they've always united around that would be for us the 16 fundamental truths that you know our core doctrinal position that starts with number one um the the authority of scripture and um having that knowing that every credential minister has to sign off like yeah i buy into that statement of faith um has what is one of the factors that has perpetuated a movement that continues to grow and thrive.
16:14
Jim Bradford: Like right now, we may not be in the Jesus People movement or the Heart of the Charismatic movement like 40 years ago, but we're continuing to grow, we're continuing to thrive.
16:25
Jim Bradford: And movements like ours, as unpopular as denominations are, have become and the anti-denominational winds are blowing even stronger today than ever it's the independent the pentecostal world will be the independent charismatic churches that are growing fast and all of that but we've just been steady and part of it is we do have a confessional doctrinal statement that really is the heart of what we do and then our purpose from the beginning has been to pool our resources for missions So we started, the Assemblies of God started in 1914 with 300 delegates, met in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
17:02
Jim Bradford: Right now, there are 3 million adherents in the U.S.
17:06
Jim Bradford: for the Assemblies of God, but there are 67 million other adherents in the rest of the world.
17:14
Jim Bradford: And that was our purpose from the beginning.
17:16
Jim Bradford: to evangelize the world, to be the greatest evangelism movement the world has ever had.
17:22
Jim Bradford: That was one of the motivations for starting the Assemblies of God.
17:25
Jim Bradford: So a strong confessional statement and a strong commitment to missions.
17:29
Jim Bradford: I think, especially when we're talking about global missions, we're at our best.
17:35
Chase Replogle: Yeah, I totally agree.
17:36
Chase Replogle: For me, what the Assemblies of God does with missions is just one of its greatest strengths.
17:42
Chase Replogle: I'm lucky to have some former missionaries in my congregation, to know a lot of missionaries.
17:46
Chase Replogle: I'm always just so impressed with our missionaries.
17:48
Chase Replogle: But also just to see the way, it's not just U.S.
17:52
Chase Replogle: Assemblies of God sending missionaries, but the way all of the National Assemblies of God are beginning to send missionaries around the world.
17:59
Chase Replogle: Just that movement, it's not only been us, but that movement as Pentecostalism has spread to other places, missions is also a part for many of those churches as well.
18:08
Chase Replogle: And I just, that's a fun thing to be a part of.
18:12
Chase Replogle: It's something, a meaningful thing to be a part of.
18:14
Chase Replogle: I love knowing that, you know, we're a part of what God's doing through those missions movements.
18:18
Jim Bradford: It really, really does.
18:19
Jim Bradford: And missions, you know, our philosophy of missions broke the mold a hundred years ago.
18:28
Jim Bradford: It There used to be more of a colonization style of missions work where you go into a country, you finance everything, you make all the leaders accountable to you.
18:44
Jim Bradford: AG World Missions, from its inception, broke the mold and bought into what we would call the indigenous church model where our goal is to raise up a strong indigenous church.
19:01
Jim Bradford: I was just in Ethiopia two weeks ago, and there's an indigenous church.
19:06
Jim Bradford: There's an organization on its own called the Ethiopian Assemblies of God.
19:10
Jim Bradford: They're part of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, but they're not governed by the United States.
19:15
Jim Bradford: They're not financed by the United States.
19:17
Jim Bradford: Our goal is to get them self-sufficient, self-financing, self-led, and we're there just to serve and strengthen.
19:25
Jim Bradford: So I'm there just preaching to their pastors and trying to equip them, but...
19:28
Jim Bradford: And my brother-in-law is a missionary there, helping with their educational systems to train new pastors.
19:35
Jim Bradford: But the indigenous church principle has been potent because it's allowed strong national self-governing churches all over the world that aren't dependent on the U.S.
19:46
Jim Bradford: church.
19:46
Jim Bradford: And that's been part of the genius.
19:49
Jim Bradford: I don't know anybody who's doing it better.
19:52
Chase Replogle: One of the other things for me is I think the Assemblies of God has always seen itself as a sort of restoration movement in that it was trying to...
20:00
Chase Replogle: It was trying to be faithful to the early church.
20:03
Chase Replogle: It was trying to take the church in the sort of Acts 2, the beginning days, and ask, what does it look like to be that kind of New Testament church today?
20:10
Chase Replogle: And I've always found that to be appealing for a couple of reasons.
20:14
Chase Replogle: One, I do think it anchors us in the Bible.
20:16
Chase Replogle: We don't always get this right.
20:17
Chase Replogle: We certainly don't.
20:18
Chase Replogle: Every church doesn't get this right.
20:20
Chase Replogle: But at the heart of the movement is, what are we called to be today?
20:24
Chase Replogle: from the scriptures as a church.
20:26
Chase Replogle: And so there is a sense where we do find ourselves, even if perhaps, you know, it may veer off, we come back to that.
20:32
Chase Replogle: That's always sort of the consistency.
20:33
Chase Replogle: And it keeps us, you know, often the discussion, we're a fellowship, not a denomination, you know, draw that line however you'd like, maybe it's semantics.
20:43
Chase Replogle: But there is, it does feel like in our movement, there's a reluctance to fully institutionalize, that we do try to keep sovereign local churches, and we do try to keep being mission-driven, you know, sacrificially mission-driven.
20:56
Chase Replogle: And all of that, I think, comes from this idea of we want to continue to live and revert back to the New Testament model of what the Church is supposed to be doing.
21:05
Chase Replogle: And I've always found that there's always a hope that even if you want to see change, there's a way within the fellowship to bring back those things, or to call people back to what the New Testament model of the Church is.
21:17
Chase Replogle: Yeah,
21:18
Jim Bradford: exactly.
21:18
Jim Bradford: And there's a fair amount of, in the Assemblies of God, there's a fair amount of freedom that that affords us.
21:26
Jim Bradford: Like the churches you and I pastor are technically autonomous local churches.
21:33
Jim Bradford: The autonomy of the local assembly is a highly valued ethic in the Assemblies of God, which means they don't own our property.
21:41
Jim Bradford: They don't tell us what to do.
21:44
Jim Bradford: They don't select who's going to, like Central Assembly, Ben Oak, the pastor, those congregations select who their pastors will be, not the denomination.
21:55
Jim Bradford: So there's a lot of autonomy, a lot of freedom and everything.
21:59
Jim Bradford: The downside is that there's no, sometimes there's no one to take your hand, you know, but I'd prefer that.
22:06
Jim Bradford: You know, it's, it's like a former general superintendent of the Sims of God used to use the phrase kind of tongue in cheek, ecclesiastical Darwinism, you know, And even when you become credentialed, and it's one of the things I love about our movement, the credentialing system, because the credentialing means that you do align with what the movement's all about, but it leaves you an amount of freedom.
22:35
Jim Bradford: Nobody's going to be telling you how to lead.
22:37
Jim Bradford: You can take advantages.
22:40
Jim Bradford: I mean, the movement provides leadership resources and things, but not leadership control.
22:44
Jim Bradford: And so...
22:45
Jim Bradford: There's a huge difference between being resourced and being controlled.
22:49
Jim Bradford: And yet, there's accountability for us as credentialed ministers.
22:57
Jim Bradford: There's freedom.
22:58
Jim Bradford: Nobody's going to take our hand.
23:00
Jim Bradford: I mean, we've got to listen to God.
23:02
Jim Bradford: We've got to figure out, we've got to work with the communities that we pastor.
23:05
Jim Bradford: But on the other hand, if we do mess up, God forbid, there is accountability that does protect the local church.
23:13
Jim Bradford: They could yank us out of our pastoral positions.
23:17
Jim Bradford: They could dismiss our credentials or put us through restoration processes.
23:22
Jim Bradford: And there's pretty well-designed restoration processes for fallen ministers.
23:27
Jim Bradford: So it's kind of a safety net.
23:29
Jim Bradford: But I feel like our credentialing kind of gets at that sweet spot right in between accountability on one hand, but no control on the other hand.
23:37
Jim Bradford: In a good way, lack of control.
23:40
Jim Bradford: Freedom on the other hand.
23:42
Jim Bradford: Accountability, freedom, and kind of our credentialing falls right in the sweet spot between those two.
23:50
Chase Replogle: You know, I'd also be interested to hear you maybe reflect on some of the challenges that our movement's facing.
23:55
Chase Replogle: I mean, as a leader, you've sort of seen some of that firsthand, but I think even just as a pastor, you have awareness of, you know, no movement is perfect, and the times we live in create challenges in and of themselves.
24:07
Chase Replogle: So when you think about where the Assemblies of God is, what do you see as some of the challenges we're facing?
24:12
Jim Bradford: I think the non-denominational wins that I mentioned earlier— I just think it makes it harder to kind of functionally, although we're technically a fellowship, we're like a denomination.
24:29
Jim Bradford: We're generally considered a denomination.
24:31
Jim Bradford: We're not that technically, but I just think because that's the perception.
24:36
Jim Bradford: You know, those wins, you've got people who won't become a part of your church because you belong to a quote-unquote denomination.
24:45
Jim Bradford: That just smells fishy to them, that kind of reeks of control.
24:51
Jim Bradford: They're going to want our money.
24:55
Jim Bradford: It's just still not really cool to say I belong to a denomination.
25:03
Chase Replogle: It's one of the downsides of the freedom and flexibility of the Assemblies of God can also mean that perhaps they've had a really bad experience at an Assemblies of God church and then sort of painted all Assemblies of God, the whole denomination with that experience.
25:16
Chase Replogle: I've experienced that often with
25:18
Jim Bradford: members.
25:18
Jim Bradford: Yeah.
25:19
Jim Bradford: With as many millions of people that have been a part of an Assembly of God Church just in the US over the last 100 years, yeah, that's inevitable.
25:28
Jim Bradford: And that becomes a growing number of people, unfortunately.
25:31
Jim Bradford: I think the other big challenge, most evangelical denominations are declining right now.
25:39
Jim Bradford: Southern Baptists are experiencing significant decline right now.
25:43
Jim Bradford: Most denominations are experiencing decline right now, except the Assemblies of God.
25:48
Jim Bradford: We've been maybe plateaued for a couple years than this past year to have shown signs of continued growth.
25:55
Jim Bradford: So we've been a movement that has continued to do that, and over 50% of Assemblies of God constituents are under 25 years old.
26:06
Jim Bradford: So, I mean, what most denominations wouldn't give to have that.
26:10
Jim Bradford: However, one of my concerns is, and this is why I'm going to kick it right back to you, because you're under 40.
26:19
Jim Bradford: You're a wonderful pastor, but you're under 40.
26:23
Jim Bradford: And I'm like, way over 40.
26:26
Jim Bradford: But I noticed we've been kind of plateaued while the median of under 40 credential holders, while the median age of the average ordained minister, which I am, is now in the low 60-year-old category.
26:42
Jim Bradford: How do we...
26:45
Jim Bradford: I think that's probably one of our greatest challenges, how we get a new generation, not just of young people and young adults who attend our church, but actually become credentialed ministers and go into active pastoral ministry.
27:03
Jim Bradford: So as somebody under 40, how do you look at that whole thing?
27:07
Chase Replogle: It is a big question mark for me.
27:08
Chase Replogle: I look at the number of men and women that I went to CBC or AGTS with who are not in the ministry, who were on that track, who may have even served for some number of time but are no longer, or the number who have either gone independent or gone to another denomination altogether.
27:24
Chase Replogle: And it's significant.
27:26
Chase Replogle: I mean, half at least.
27:29
Chase Replogle: And so I do worry that...
27:32
Chase Replogle: for some reason, we're struggling to train and raise up ministers.
27:36
Chase Replogle: We're also struggling, I think, to keep young ministers.
27:39
Chase Replogle: And I think that's an area for us to explore.
27:41
Chase Replogle: Do
27:42
Jim Bradford: you know why?
27:42
Chase Replogle: Part of it you know, particularly with young people, I think we're getting into something broader than the AG right now.
27:48
Chase Replogle: There is a pull right now to more historical forms of Christianity.
27:52
Chase Replogle: I think the sort of the destabilized historical moment we find ourselves in where people feel uncertain about the future, they feel change is happening so fast.
28:01
Chase Replogle: I think a lot of people are attracted to historical, historically liturgical forms.
28:08
Chase Replogle: You see a lot of people moving towards like an Anglicanism or even like theologically robust kind of, you know, like a kind of reformed Calvinism as well.
28:18
Chase Replogle: So, yeah, I see that move happening a lot.
28:22
Chase Replogle: I do think for all that, you know, I'm Assemblies of God because I'm Pentecostal as well, but, you know, there's been a lot of experiences people have had in Pentecostalism that have not always been of the Spirit, though they've been sort of hung on the Spirit.
28:36
Chase Replogle: And I think that's led a lot of young people to sort of question.
28:40
Chase Replogle: I grieve the fact that, you know, we've been unable to sort of separate what is genuine of the Spirit and what has sometimes been abuses.
28:47
Chase Replogle: But I think that's unfortunately led some people to kind of the pendulum swing to another side.
28:52
Chase Replogle: So I think that accounts for part of it.
28:54
Chase Replogle: And then I think there's a broader, you know, I think it's just harder to be a pastor these days than it used to be.
29:00
Chase Replogle: I think, you know, you look at the statistics on the reputation and credibility of ministers in our culture, you know, it's not a dignified choice.
29:08
Chase Replogle: Nobody respects, you know, becoming a pastor these days.
29:11
Chase Replogle: And for a lot of people, it may mean being by vocation It may mean, you know, when you factor in student loans, sometimes it can be hard to do the pastoral job in the average size Assemblies of God Church with the kind of student loans you may carry.
29:25
Chase Replogle: And so it can be hard to sustain that work for a lot of people.
29:29
Chase Replogle: I don't know if we've carved out good models for how to solve that problem yet for young ministers as well.
29:34
Jim Bradford: I do appreciate what I see more recently the Assemblies of God doing with their CALLED initiative.
29:40
Jim Bradford: Yeah.
29:40
Jim Bradford: You've got a teenager who feels called into vocational ministry who's a part of a local church.
29:48
Jim Bradford: Maybe they're at a youth camp and God really touches them and they feel called that they're trying to begin to track with those students while they're still in high school and help them with the steps to getting the education they need.
30:06
Jim Bradford: being prepared to actually be credentialed, thinking about where they might serve in ministry.
30:13
Jim Bradford: So I'm encouraged by that as I watch that from a distance.
30:19
Jim Bradford: Because I feel like the movement's trying to make some progress here with younger credential holders.
30:27
Chase Replogle: Yeah, I certainly think that's true.
30:28
Chase Replogle: Another one of these areas for me is, I do worry for, I always think, I have this little saying that your strengths usually create the shadow, and like the higher the strength, the taller the strength, the longer the shadow, the things you're best at tend to cause the things you're worst at.
30:41
Chase Replogle: We are so good at missions, we're so good at planting churches and just moving the kingdom forward, that I do worry about education and biblical literacy, both in the pew, but also Also within our ministers, you know, kind of a lack of continuing education opportunities, cost of education.
30:58
Chase Replogle: You know, I would love to see us as a movement.
31:00
Chase Replogle: I sort of alluded earlier to one of the things I love about the AG is us being sort of driven by the model of the first century church.
31:07
Chase Replogle: And I think that can only continue if we know the first century church, if we know the scripture as well.
31:13
Chase Replogle: And so that's one for me I...
31:14
Chase Replogle: I hope we continue as a movement to grow and cultivate biblical literacy.
31:19
Chase Replogle: My
31:19
Jim Bradford: disclaimer here is that the last statistics I saw around that educationally for qualifying people for ministry maybe are three or four years old now, but for the last 15 years in general, only about 25% of our credential holders came out of a traditional four-year Bible college or Assemblies of God university, where they have ministerial majors or missions majors.
31:55
Jim Bradford: That means 75% are being educated in more online ways or less concentrated ways than maybe a person I went to Bible college for four years, which used to be the model years ago.
32:12
Jim Bradford: And then I just had this impression years ago that when a young person is 22, graduated from a Bible college, then they go out and pastor.
32:26
Jim Bradford: Now it would be more, well, I'll go out and be a youth pastor or a children's pastor.
32:31
Jim Bradford: I run into very few 22-year-olds who feel ready to pastor a church or want to pastor a church.
32:37
Jim Bradford: That's the complexity issue you were addressing earlier.
32:43
Jim Bradford: But we really need a whole generation of under 40 folks stepping up to the plate like you have.
32:52
Jim Bradford: And the educational piece is really, as a movement, we've got to keep our eye on that.
33:01
Chase Replogle: And one of our strengths is God uses His Spirit to empower people for ministry, absolutely.
33:07
Chase Replogle: But I know...
33:08
Chase Replogle: continuing education, continuing to learn, finding resources has been such an important part of maturing that gift that has been in me too.
33:17
Chase Replogle: So I think that's, you know, it's not even that it should be a disqualification for ministry, but how do we continue to equip our ministers along the way?
33:24
Chase Replogle: I do want to get one more question in.
33:26
Chase Replogle: We're running out of time, but, you know, a lot of people, we alluded to the fact people leaving the denomination are perhaps a bad experience.
33:33
Chase Replogle: You know, we don't have to get into specifics, but you can't serve in a fellowship for 20, 30, 40 years and agree with every decision that's been made or agree with everything that every leader has ever said.
33:44
Chase Replogle: And I often find when we voluntarily commit ourselves to a group of people and we see things perhaps going a direction other than we would like or seeing concerns, there is a temptation to sort of move on, to look for another organization, something else.
34:00
Chase Replogle: I always thought this was one of the arguments that the Catholics are kind of compelling on, that the risk of Protestantism is it devolves into every man a denomination, right?
34:09
Chase Replogle: So eventually it's, you know, at the end of the day, it's what I think, and if you don't align with me, I'm on.
34:14
Chase Replogle: How have you navigated love for a fellowship, participation in a fellowship, and navigating at times perhaps even some disagreements?
34:22
Jim Bradford: Right, and I have disagreed sometimes.
34:23
Jim Bradford: And I don't want these to sound trite, but I think our first knee-jerk response has to be keep your mouth shut and pray.
34:34
Jim Bradford: I'm not gonna, I get frustrated with, I watch people come and shopping for churches in our town and the first thing they don't like, they're out of there.
34:43
Jim Bradford: I wanna be a person who shows loyalty.
34:49
Jim Bradford: That means if there's things I disagree with, first of all, that's the real world.
34:54
Jim Bradford: I mean, where am I gonna go that I don't at some point disagree with somebody?
34:59
Jim Bradford: who's in leadership about something.
35:01
Jim Bradford: So you're living in a fantasy world.
35:03
Jim Bradford: You're going to end up never going to church if you go too far down that road.
35:08
Jim Bradford: So I just believe prayer affects things, and I want to keep my mouth shut.
35:16
Jim Bradford: Just pray about it first.
35:17
Jim Bradford: And then I'm often conscious of extending the benefit of the doubt.
35:22
Jim Bradford: Rather than mistrusting at the first sign of...
35:28
Jim Bradford: something i don't like i i want to give the benefit of the doubt i don't want to stop trusting i don't want to become one of those kind of cynical people who just never trust anybody and certainly our trust level in institutions and organized religion even is you know we've had some bad things happen in the broader christian world than I can understand people being cynical and mistrusting, but I personally had the opportunity, and you have too, of working close to some of our denominational leaders.
35:59
Jim Bradford: And I know their hearts.
36:01
Jim Bradford: I mean, they're good people.
36:02
Jim Bradford: They don't always make decisions I agree with, but I know their hearts.
36:07
Jim Bradford: And I want to extend the benefit of the doubt.
36:10
Jim Bradford: If it becomes a matter of doctrine or moral conscience, that would be the game changer for me.
36:17
Jim Bradford: If I felt like Like many people in the United Methodist movement and parts of the Anglican movement, the splits between the liberal caucuses and the conservative caucuses, if I felt like the organization that I'm staying loyal to is identifying me with things that are clearly immoral or outside of biblical doctrine, that I think would be the make or break.
36:47
Jim Bradford: It's possible somebody in the organization could hurt me so much that I just give up.
36:53
Jim Bradford: I hope that doesn't happen.
36:55
Jim Bradford: I've been hurt pretty badly by a few people in some of the churches I pastored.
37:02
Jim Bradford: Never been hurt by denominational leaders, but I have been.
37:06
Jim Bradford: That's what makes you a pastor in part.
37:09
Jim Bradford: You get hurt by people who are disloyal and who stab you in the back and are just viciously critical some days.
37:17
Jim Bradford: So, you know, I'm not going to let just intellectual disagreement or personal hurt.
37:26
Jim Bradford: I mean, we've all, after a few years, if we're still in the ministry, you know, we've had to get over that.
37:34
Jim Bradford: We're stronger than that.
37:36
Jim Bradford: So for me, it would be if the Assemblies of God started representing moral positions or doctrinal positions that I didn't agree with, that would be the make or break for me.
37:47
Chase Replogle: Yeah, I am, you know, I'm a big fan of Eugene Peterson as a writer.
37:50
Chase Replogle: Don't agree with everything, certainly.
37:52
Chase Replogle: He started off as Symbols of God, though, actually.
37:54
Chase Replogle: He was originally a Symbols of God minister, became Presbyterian later.
37:57
Chase Replogle: But I heard him one time speaking about, you know, when he agreed to become, in his case, Presbyterian, he had made a commitment that this group of ministers in their dialogue fellowship and their voting would set set the sort of standards as well as articulation of belief and that there was some voluntary submission he was making to that group.
38:19
Chase Replogle: And his point was, what does it mean to make a commitment to something if the first time I disagree, I decide to break that commitment?
38:27
Chase Replogle: What is the commitment?
38:28
Chase Replogle: And so I saw on some issues that I think he did not personally agree with, I saw him really struggle to decide whether Where is this line?
38:38
Chase Replogle: Is the line my particular conviction on something, or is it my conviction to the commitment that I've made?
38:44
Chase Replogle: And I think there's an important tension there.
38:46
Chase Replogle: I don't think that's always an easy answer.
38:48
Chase Replogle: I think it takes discernment of the spirit.
38:49
Chase Replogle: I think it takes wisdom from others.
38:51
Chase Replogle: But I do think opportunities of disagreement, it's so easy for those to immediately shift our attention to an opponent or to the problem.
38:59
Chase Replogle: And what I learned from him that I think has been helpful is it's also an opportunity for me to really reflect and study and open my own heart to the possibility that maybe I'm wrong, or maybe there's more to it, or maybe this is a place where God is asking me to humbly submit myself to something.
39:15
Chase Replogle: I think that's an important tension that all of us sort of, for the sake of Christian unity too, have to at a bare minimum wrestle with as well.
39:24
Chase Replogle: I've often found that to be true for me.
39:26
Jim Bradford: Yeah, that's really true.
39:28
Jim Bradford: You hear a lot about honor culture these days, of course.
39:34
Jim Bradford: It's been a big part of the independent charismatic movement, which at its extremes insulates leaders from accountability.
39:46
Jim Bradford: But there is something about submission and honor that is biblical.
39:50
Jim Bradford: And I like the way you put
39:53
Chase Replogle: that.
39:53
Chase Replogle: I say that as a pretty independent thinker, too, so I'm not one to turn my mind off, as I know neither are you.
39:58
Chase Replogle: Well, there's so much we could talk about.
40:00
Chase Replogle: We probably should have made this multiple episodes, but we're trying to do a question for each of these.
40:05
Chase Replogle: I mean, I think it would be appropriate, if you wouldn't mind closing us in prayer, just for our movement.
40:09
Chase Replogle: So, for the Assemblies of God, for all the good, for the challenges we face in the day ahead, the Lord would just continue to lead us by His Spirit.
40:17
Jim Bradford: Yeah, and for those of you listening who are not Assemblies of God, thank you for Indulging us.
40:22
Jim Bradford: Just indulging us and agreeing with us in prayer.
40:24
Jim Bradford: Father, thank you.
40:25
Jim Bradford: We want your church to prosper.
40:27
Jim Bradford: No matter what organizational denominational label it operates under, we want the living church of Jesus Christ globally to prosper.
40:38
Jim Bradford: We thank you for the many movements of your spirit, for the many expressions of your spirit in various denominational groups and independent groups and house churches in And thank you for the Assemblies of God.
40:54
Jim Bradford: Thank you for how formational it's been in Chase's life, in my life, in so many hundreds and thousands of people's lives in our country and millions of people around the world.
41:06
Jim Bradford: For the sake of your kingdom, we pray you'll prosper it.
41:08
Jim Bradford: We pray our mission will be undeterred, that we will continue to be passionate about taking the gospel to those who have never heard, I pray that we'll continue to be passionate about building strong national churches around the world.
41:24
Jim Bradford: And right here in the U.S., I pray you revive us afresh.
41:28
Jim Bradford: I pray you raise up young leaders who will help move the Assemblies of God into its future.
41:33
Jim Bradford: I pray for grace on the general superintendent, the assistant superintendent, the general treasurer, the general secretary, the director of U.S.
41:45
Jim Bradford: missions, the director of world missions.
41:46
Jim Bradford: all of whom are personal friends of Chase and me.
41:50
Jim Bradford: Lord, I pray you'll touch them.
41:52
Jim Bradford: I thank you for their hearts.
41:53
Jim Bradford: Give them wisdom to do what's right.
41:55
Jim Bradford: Give them grace.
41:56
Jim Bradford: Give them vision.
41:58
Jim Bradford: Give them heart.
41:59
Jim Bradford: And I pray for the 38,000 Assembly of God ministers in the United States.
42:07
Jim Bradford: I pray, God, you'll touch them by your spirit.
42:09
Jim Bradford: Energize them.
42:10
Jim Bradford: Keep them pure.
42:11
Jim Bradford: Keep them right.
42:11
Jim Bradford: Keep them close to your heart.
42:13
Jim Bradford: Give them unfailing faith.
42:15
Jim Bradford: for the people they're leading, for what your church can be.
42:19
Jim Bradford: Bless those pastors that are leading churches of 20, 30 people.
42:23
Jim Bradford: Bless those who are leading past churches of 5,000 and 10,000 people.
42:29
Jim Bradford: My God, touch them all by your Spirit.
42:32
Jim Bradford: Give us fresh heart.
42:34
Jim Bradford: Help us to love your church, which you bought with your blood.
42:38
Jim Bradford: And we pray the Assemblies of God will move into its future with fresh anointing and strong leadership, and God-glorifying aims, Lord.
42:50
Jim Bradford: We pray in Jesus' name.
42:53
Jim Bradford: Amen.
42:54
Jim Bradford: Amen.
43:02
Chase Replogle: You've been listening to the Jim Bradford Podcast.
43:04
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43:08
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43:12
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43:15
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43:21
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43:28
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43:32
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43:35
Chase Replogle: As always, thanks for listening until next time.