Our Wildest Church Stories | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Hello!

Hello, baby! Tell 'em hey!

It's Ron and Hope Unfiltered. We are here with the Minister of Lunch.

Ain't seen you in 2 weeks. Tell 'em hey.

Here. Hey! Hey, guys. So glad y'all are here. We're on the East Coast doing our taping. This week, been running to and fro, hither and yon. Have had doctor's appointments every single day with my parents. So after this, I go to another one, another one, another one. Interesting, interesting week. But I'm glad to be here with you.

At least they're grateful.

At least they're grateful. At least they're grateful.

At least you got that satisfaction of it. At least they're grateful, right?

Yeah. I do.

Let me tell you, let's tell them what the woman said. We were at a restaurant the other night. We took our grandkids camping, trying to have one more big thing with them before school started back. And that's fun, but boy, it wears you out.

A lot of work.

So, we just looked at one night, we're not cooking, and we went to a little restaurant and we had everybody there. A young lady that comes to our church, a woman that comes to our church, and another lady saw us at restaurant. When they were leaving, they stopped by the table, very nice, and said, "You know, I know you've been taking care of your parents." And she said, "And I'm having to take care of mine." She said, "I'm in the exact same season you're in." And she looked at Hope and said, "Have your parents all of a sudden gotten mean?" And Ron, in the background, goes, "No." I just shut my mouth.

They're so grateful. They're so kind.

I'm like, "Well, maybe you're not alone, sweetheart. I don't know." She started laughing.

She said, "Mine have gotten so hateful and so mean." She said, "And they've been cussing too." I said, "Yep, my daddy too.

He's come up with flavorful words." Yeah, they've suppressed it their whole life. And now that they're losing their filter, they're letting it out. But anyway, we got something we wanna do. I'm just gonna be honest with you. It's probably gonna be more nostalgic for us Pardon me. Some of it's comical. Some of it's very powerful. But Hope and I are gonna do this for 4 weeks. And we'll take the '90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s and talk about in Redemption's history our most memorable moment. In the month of August, on both coasts, we're gonna be celebrating 35 years. I honestly can't even— I was in my car this morning, Hope, and I was thinking of something that I did And I said, "That's 42 years ago.

I can't even—" That's a long time.

Yeah, I'm thinking about something I did 42 years ago.

You hear people say this when you're in your 20s and even in your 30s. And you hear people say, "Life just goes so fast. Enjoy it while you have it." And you hear it and you're like, "Yeah, right." Until you turn around and you think—

I feel like my birthdays are on like a wheel on a car. I feel like they're just clicking off, boom, boom. And then as soon as you're through with your birthday, you're getting ready for Christmas. And it's crazy. But we wanna take, in the 35 years, we just feel like we need to take time to remember good, bad, maybe, and ugly. Some of the moments of each of those decades. And of course, the 2020s aren't finished yet, but we've had some eventful times since COVID and even in the 2020s. But we wanna start off with the '90s. And we want you to go with us because you probably learned some things about us and maybe about the history of redemption that you didn't. And a lot of stories you never got to hear. Maybe some of you have just gotten in on Mine and Hope and our ministry, you know, in the last year or so, and you don't even know any of this stuff. And it'll be very eye-opening to you, maybe even intriguing. But we just wanna start with the '90s. For those of you that don't know, yeah, we started the church August the what? 18th. August 18th. Why do I keep thinking 17th? August the 18th. 1991, literally, not figuratively, literally in a warehouse, a warehouse with 2 rooms in the front. Excuse me, 3 rooms, 3 rooms in the front and a bathroom. So you walk in a door, there's an office, a foyer. It's actually 4 rooms.

We had children's church.

Another room and a nursery.

I mean, but the room was like an 8 by 8.

I had an office with a hole to the foyer, and I went and got some blinds and did the blinds up and down. Remember that? Plastic blinds. And people would come through and go, "Hey, Pastor." Anyway, little foyer with a little loveseat in it. Little children's church room. When I say little children's church room, it would hold 10 kids. Yes. And I bought you a church typewriter for your birthday. Yes, so I could do the bulletin.

Yeah, bulletin.

Some of them people, they don't even know what a bulletin is, Hope. They don't even know what a bulletin is. And then we had a little nursery room right here, a bathroom, and then you open another door and it was a cinder block, gray cinder block warehouse with 2 loading dock doors, as I remember, on the back wall, 'cause it was an industrial complex. And that was our first meeting.

Do you remember what our rent was?

$1,200 a month. $1,200 a month. And I thought, "How will I ever pay that?" Jesus. I remember when I— and I signed the contract in faith 'cause I'm like, "However—" It didn't have any air conditioning at all. And it had a gas heat thing. Way up in the corner that was about yay big. And in the winter months, it couldn't heat it and it was loud. It was like a garage. Whoo, you know, just like a gas heater up there. So the building had no heat and no air. Stay with me. I laid the carpet. I've never laid carpet in my life. And I took a roller and just rolled glue like paint on the floor. And I laid and cut the carpet and tried to get the seams right. We bought little vinyl curtains, like shower curtain material, hung them over the loading dock. We took 2x12s from Lowe's, flipped them on their side. And I'm not a carpenter either, just my name on. And we put plywood over the top of it, nailed it. That was a stage. And I had—

We put some weight on that stage too.

I had a couple of Radio Shack microphones. We had a keyboard, a digital keyboard that was outdated and donated to us. And we had a boombox that we would plug through the sound system. And anybody who sung a special, that was our— that was the way we did it. We had like a $69.99 boombox plugged into a sound system. Sung a special. And— I had two little speakers on tripods that I had bought from Emmanuel College out of their storage. You know, they didn't even have A-class equipment and I was getting stuff that they had quit using two or three generations ago. And guys, that's how we started our church. I had three people committed. It was me and Hope Carpenter and our minister of music who was still in college in his last year. He committed to help us. And that was all we had. That was the only commitment we had to it. So we went into our first service in August, and I call it the service with mom and them. Everybody who loved us, every cousin, aunt, uncle, everybody, extended family. Yeah, my mom and dad, your mom and dad, everybody came to that. Friends we went to college with, some of them drove over from school. And we had 72 people in our first service. But the second Sunday— We had 11 or 12. We had 11. I remember well. When Mama and them weren't there no more, they went back to their church, we had 11 people. And I do remember, Hope, I tell people I went and laid my head in your lap. I remember doing that, but I don't know if I did it that Sunday. But we had this tiny, tiny, tiny little apartment at Turtle Creek. Remember that? I do. Tiny little apartment. And I do remember going back, "What have I done?" We do.

We do. It was gonna be way harder than we ever imagined. Yeah.

Well, what have I done? I've launched a church. I have 11 people. I've committed to $1,200 a month by contract.

Ooh, but it'll stretch your faith to believe that.

I do remember what I've done. That feeling of, you know, have I screwed my life up and am I gonna screw hers up with me? And I do remember feeling all the feeling of being a little bit overwhelmed. And I was only, what, 21? 22. 22. And I remember feeling those feelings and— That stage, we did Royal Rangers and set up a teepee.

People don't know what Royal Rangers is.

Royal Rangers was a Christian version of the Boy Scouts. So to try to get some kids in there, we did that. I had a guy— Jim Grubb. Jim Grubb, who's still—

Was over it.

He is still at our church today. Still with us. I appreciate people like Jim Grubb. 85 years old. Went and set a teepee a real teepee up in the parking lot. And there were people coming just because their kids wanted to go to that teepee thing. So Jim Grubb was our first real draw. He had a teepee out in the parking lot and the teepee was our children's church. I mean, you just do what you gotta do. And 'cause we just had two little tiny rooms. But when we started getting 20 or 30 kids and stuff, it was the teepee. But I remember this, me and you had 2 cars, not old jalopies. We'd had them in college. They were older cars, but they ran. But I remember our cars were the church bus.

Oh Lord, I had to go pick people up every Sunday morning.

Our cars brought people to church and took people. So that's the kind of people. We did call ourselves Redemption Church. Outreach center. And we were truly outreach because the first wave of people that came to that church really had nothing to offer it. Down and out. They needed everything and offered nothing. My first drummer came in drunk and I had to fix him a pot of coffee. And I remember being there early in the morning, making him drink coffee. That Italian guy, was it Tony Cipriello? Tony Ciprillo, an Italian guy. And him and his girlfriend, who we thought was his wife, they were homeless. And then finally, when they found—

when we found out it wasn't his wife, it was his girlfriend—

No, I had already raised money and had people do a housewarming for him because I got him a job at the Pizza Hut and got him an apartment. Jesus. And so, we brought him and his wife up and let the people bring them housewarming. And then after that, After that, he said, "Oh, I'm not married. This is my girlfriend." I said, "Well, we gotta get y'all married." He said, "Well, I gotta get divorced first." He said, "We both gotta get divorced first." He said, "We're still married." I said, "What?" He said, "Yeah, my wife's in Indiana." And I'm like— Jesus. And I got 'em standing up in front of the church, people getting them nightliners. And they had moved in together.

So, we thought they were married. I'm telling you. It's redemption. That's redemption.

And then the second guy, he didn't last long. And the second guy that was my drummer was the guy that pulled a gun on me. 'Cause I went to his house and he was drunk and his wife was in the top of the house telling me, shouting, "He's crazy, he's crazy." He was playing Hank Williams Jr. in a big speaker. And on his front yard, I pulled up and he cocked a shotgun. He had on Wrangler jeans and no shirt. And he looked at me, he said, "Sing." And I started singing that Hank Williams Jr.

song.

<LYRICS>All my rowdy friends have settled down.</LYRICS> And he was the first person, well, I guess Tony would've been first, but he was like one of the true people that I led to the Lord there. And he hung in there a little while. He's the one when we had a choir special, it was one of our first.

No, that was Tony Cipriello. We had our first choir special and he played the wrong song. A whole different song.

Yeah. A whole different— So I had the choir singing one thing, he had a whole different tempo.

And we were singing a different song. I got so tickled that I had to turn around and look at the wall because I was giggling so hard and couldn't— I couldn't sing.

And here's the crazy thing, the level of the giftings that we have in all of our music and creative ministries now, and to think, We had people playing the whole wrong song.

See, that ought to encourage y'all. You don't end up where you start if you'll just keep going. Oh, me.

Just keep going. Some of this I'm remembering as we go along. And so finally, that's '91. '94, I have a gentleman that I lead to the Lord. Benny Willimon. I think Benny Willimon's gone on to be with the Lord now.

Yeah, he passed away.

And Benny Willimon was a contractor and a realtor, construction and realtor. And he came to the church. I don't know how these people got there. And he was facing losing his license. He was a single father. He said, "I can't lose my license." But coming back from a South Carolina game, drinking and got a DUI. And he asked me, would I go to Columbia with him and vouch for his turnaround? And he was coming to church. Yeah, he was. In front of the judge, so that the judge would fine him, but not suspend his license. So, I went with him. I spoke to the judge on his behalf. And the judge, you know, did fine him, but did not suspend his license. And we came back.

I was so happy.

We came back, and he had a little something. He was one of our only members that maybe had any income coming in. And he said, "I wanna get you in a house." Well, that was—

That's when we were in the house that had no heat.

Yeah, in the house that had no heat. He said, "I wanna get you a house." And I'm like, "I might could pay the payment on a little house 'cause I'm paying rent now." We didn't have down payment. But I didn't have any down payment at all. We didn't have any savings, any cash. And he worked something. I hope it was legal. I'm not sure what he did.

So, at the closing, he took his commission and signed it over—

To the down payment. —as our down payment. Signed it over to the bank as our down payment, and they accepted it. And so, he paid the down payment first to get in this tiny little house, but it was ours. And it had heat. And it had air conditioning. And so— It had expensive heat. Yeah, it was expensive heat. Electric. Because the house was not built well. And so, it was like, went, like the air blew through the house in the winter. But the long and short of it is all these miracle journeys. Then we had Chase at that house. We had Chase with no insurance. And— We paid him off about when he turned about 7. Yeah, about time he graduated, I think we paid him off. And so, we had Chase with no insurance. And I gotta tell this testimony. So I'm sitting there in that new building we built in 1994, which was 9,600-square-foot metal building, just a square. And if you wanna call it an office, I had a chair with a picnic table from Walmart that I called my desk. And Deborah Mahaffey, I think she volunteered at that time. To be your assistant.

No, no, secretary back then.

And she said, she went back in and she said, "There's a gentleman here to see you." She called his name. I didn't know who he was. And back then, you saw anybody at any time. And so I'm like, "Sure." And he came in there and we had paid Chase's bill down to $3,000. From $13,000. From $13,000 and was still making payments on it. And he— guy drove up. I'll try to say this without crying because this is so God. Just always God showing us hope. Just stay with me, I got you. And he came in, he said, "I'm so-and-so," and he owned a pest control company. And he said, "You have—" Was that Leland? That was Leland Harvey.

He's gone on to be with the Lord.

He went to be with the Lord. He stopped by there and he said, "You have a debt I'm supposed to pay off." And he said, "It's $3,000." Yeah, I remember. And I sat there, I said, "Yes, sir, I do." And it was to the hospital. And he sat right there. Now, eventually they started coming to the church, about his whole family. But he stood there and I said, "Make a check out to," I think it was St. Francis Women's Hospital. St. Francis Women's Hospital. And he walked out that door and I got in my car and drove straight to the hospital. And when I handed them that check, I remember feeling like I had gotten out of prison. Because we had a $13,000 debt 32 years ago. And to us, Hope, that was— we made what, $17,000 a year? My first year, we made $8,600. So, you're talking about a debt that was equal to my yearly income. Well, that was overwhelming to me. And just those kind of miracles, our life was what I call littered with stuff like that. That happened to us. Tell me something you remember about the '90s.

Well, you forgot, 'cause you already went to the building we bought. You forgot about the air conditioning story.

When we moved— they've heard the air conditioners. I've told them that one.

When we were in the little rental we were renting, we put some air— we raised money.

We put in— $5,000. $5,000, 'cause I ran a lap. Yep. Remember I said, "I'll run a lap around the church if we can raise $5,000 to air condition this building." But I put in the lease that when we go, the air conditioner goes with us. So we set it up on a stand. We didn't even mount it to the ground. We just set it on a stand to make it have a temporary feel, 'cause we knew sometime or another we was gonna be leaving. So the property changed hands. And the property changed hands, we got the contract to build the new building. We borrowed $250,000, I remember, to buy the land and build that square building. We went and bought that building at a metal supply store and had it delivered on a truck. It was $40,000. And they literally laid it on the ground and we had to assemble it. That's what they call a pre-manufactured building. And so I come out one day and all of the air conditioning units are bolted to the ground. The concrete and have his company imprint screwed on them. And I immediately called him. And so, you gotta understand our church. This guy was gonna go to bat that those air conditioners were his. I said, "Well, pull the lease." Well, he had pulled that last page from it. It was an amendment to the lease. He pulled that amendment. So let me tell you what I did. I went to church and got some of our new converts.

Who hadn't been saved long.

No, they weren't sanctified. They were saved, but they were not sanctified. And we literally got in the back of a truck. At night. At nighttime in camouflage and drove there and pulled them air conditioners out of the ground. Baby, I still had possum kingdom in me at that time.

You put them air conditioners in the back of a truck. In the back of a truck with camouflage. Took them to— To Birdland Drive.

To Birdland Drive where our new building was being built. And I was out there at 10 o'clock next morning, I heard sirens. The po-po had come. And the police had come up there and were getting ready to handcuff me, had turned me over the hood of the car. And I started hollering, "They're mine, they're mine, they're mine." I was 25 years old and I'd never been in really in any legal trouble.

Oh, wait a minute.

You'd been in a jail cell a time or two. Yeah, but not legal trouble. Not legal trouble. My mama don't know that. Legal trouble. And so, the guy stopped. He said, "This sounds like a civil matter. This is not criminal." He said, "Y'all gonna have to figure this out in court." So I kept the air conditioners. And I went to court.

And we had the back page of the lease too.

I went to court. I had that lease. This other guy was rich, drove up in his Mercedes convertible with his hotshot lawyer and a stack of papers about that big. I didn't have no lawyer. I can't afford no lawyer. I walked in there by myself with like a 3-page lease. You walked in there with God though.

I walked in there with God.

And this is my first time ever being in court. And I walked in there and judge let me speak first. And I told him and I said, "Here's the lease." The judge did not even let the other guy talk. He hit the gavel, said, "Frivolous lawsuit. Mr. Carpenter, you are free to go." I turned around, ran out that door, but I stood at the door and listened. And that judge made that landowner stay and he wore that guy out for trying to steal a church's air conditioner. Good for him. I mean, wore him out and just gave him a spanking after I left. So here again— God. No lawyer, no stack of papers, nothing. And he didn't even let the guy speak. He just said, "This lawsuit's frivolous. You're free to go." And wow. Kept our air, didn't we? We did keep the air. We had air conditioning, didn't we? We did. What else you remember? I remember those were good days, but I remember your dad won the lottery money in Georgia.

Yep. He had never played the lottery. My parents lived in Calhoun Falls at the time, and the closest— city was 15 minutes across the bridge in Georgia, Elberton. And his coworker said, "Sandy, I'm going across the bridge." He said, "I'm gonna go buy a lottery ticket." He said, "You want one, Daddy?" He said, "No, I don't play the lottery." He said, "Come on, Sandy, give me $5. I'll buy you one." And so, Daddy gave him $5, got a lottery ticket. He brought it back to my daddy, and that night, I was on the phone with my dad and we were just talking. It was like 11 o'clock at night and he was going, "22, 61, 12. Wait a minute, Hope. Wait a minute." He'd say it again. Then he said, "Judy, Judy!" And he hung up the phone. My daddy won $100,000 that night from the Georgia Lottery. And so, he wanted to pay his tithe. Off the lottery. Off the lottery. So, he was gonna write a $10,000 tithe check to the church.

We had a dirt parking lot. And the city was on me to get that thing paved. And I had a guy say he'd do it for 20 grand. And I had a board in the church at that time, board members. You know, now you can't do that. You gotta have— after you reach a certain place, you gotta have 'em from outside the organization. But back then, my board was church members. And I went to them, and I remember one of 'em had a real struggle.

Taking it on.

I remember you used the word "taint." I said, "That's tainted money, Pastor. You can't use—" Because there's a lot of people that felt a real certain way in the Holiness church about gambling. Real strong feelings. And I remember I came out of that and I can still see a deck of cards to this day and I'll twitch a little bit. But anyway, he says, "Tainted money." And I remember I got upset 'cause it was half my money right here. And the guy didn't wanna accept the money. He said it was tainted money. I said, "You're right, it's tainted." He said, "It's tainted enough." I said, "It taint enough." I said, "I need $20,000 and it's only $10,000." And so, that was the way— I remember the guy let me give that as down payment and pay the rest off. He went and he paved our parking lot. Another miracle from the Georgia State Lottery. Thank you. God provided.

And anybody else who wins the lottery, we will take your 10%.

So long and short, 'cause I don't see a clicker in front of me. I don't know how much time we've been on here. We're coming to the end of that little building. We're filling it up.

Over and over.

We're filling it up twice. And so we need another building. And during that time, we were really believing God to give us a breakthrough multiculturally. It really had not happened really at all. Maybe here or there somebody came in, but I remember one day and it was Robert Gray. It was actually 5 people. Robert Gray and—

That's when we called her Pinky.

Pinky, yeah. Robert Pinky. Rosetta. And it was Ken Hodges. And Gina. And Gina. And it was Carol, who ended up being my— Bailey. Carol Bailey, who ended up being my assistant for 20 years. They walked into service and sat on the same row. And I don't know, Hope, I don't think they were the first African Americans to ever park the doors of the church, but it's the first time we had. And I remember in my mind, something clicked. This is it. This is my breakthrough. This is it right here. This is my first fruits. I've been preaching this for 8 years. This is 19— '98, '99. And we had a door and I ran outside that door and came back around to the front and I saw them going out to their car and I stopped all of them. And I absolutely begged them. I told them, this is my vision, this is my heart, this is what I want to do. I think I may have even said the words, I believe you guys can be the first fruits of this breakthrough we're believing here. Very, very instrumental. Oh my gosh, Ken. I drug Ken all over the world. He was my armor bearer. He had his own company. He's retired military. Very astute man. Wonderful, wonderful man. Carol was my assistant. And Robert Pinky were elders and over our care pastors and became very instrumental. But after that, and Tommy Barnett and the multiplication anointing in that service, Everything broke into what we now call this wonderful people called Redemption. And that is a summation of the '90s. You know, we have a lot of details because we actually built another building in '98. And but it was '98, '99, new building, multicultural breakthrough. That building held 1,000 people. And that building was the one we went to 5 services. That was crazy days. Saturday night, 8, 10, 12. And 4. Sunday morning and 4 o'clock Sunday afternoon. That was crazy days. A service at 8 o'clock. I mean, we're starting praise at 8 o'clock in the morning. And we did that. Well, we didn't build the new building until '04. Yeah, a long time. And those were very tiring years. But those were very rewarding years. And it mushroomed into this gigantic, wonderful thing that today we still call Redemption 35 years later. And I don't know, some funny stuff, some miraculous stuff, maybe some stuff that'll build your faith. I was talking to Matt Jackson, one of our church planters, last night, and I just reminded him of a few of these. He was a little bit discouraged, you know. Things don't always go like you see 'em or plan 'em or put down on your chart.

It's always harder than you think and longer than you think.

And so, I was just— I went back to some of these obstacles and talked about how God came through to build his faith and give him that testimony. And so, even you, the little things that seem so insignificant to a God who's running a universe, to be— to send a guy from a pest control company to pay off your doctor bill. That's a good God. That's a good God. So, anyway. So good.

Well, thanks for being with us today. Listen, if you are free, wherever you are all over the world, if you're free, or you could make it a priority to come join with us to celebrate our 35th year. In California, on August 16th, Bishop Kevin Wallace will be with us. It's going to be Holy Ghost throwdown. It'll be a throwdown. It'll be so good. August 16th, in California. Or August 30th in Greenville, South Carolina. And Ron Carpenter will be preaching. Holy Ghost Throwdown. Come join us. 35 years. Redemption.

We'd love to have you a part of the celebration. If Redemption might have been a part of your journey, you may have attended at one time or another, and maybe you're just intrigued, say, "You know what? I'd just love to be back in the middle of that." We would love to have you back in the middle of that. Maybe you've never been and you gonna take a trip and say, "Well, you know what? They're doing anniversary service. Let's go check it out." Let's celebrate. Come celebrate with us. 35 years we've been doing this. And I told y'all in front of Hope on a podcast a while back, I still believe the greatest impact we're supposed to have has not happened yet. Hasn't happened yet. And so many amazing stories, but still great things are yet to come. So we love you guys and we appreciate you giving us some of your time.

It's Ron and Hope Unfiltered, real, raw, relevant.

See you soon.