The Discipleship Crisis | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Hey guys, it's me again, Ron and Hope Unfiltered. Real, raw, and relevant. And it's me without Hope. You know what? You talk about this thing being real, raw, and relevant. Hope is actually on the East Coast. I am filming this on the West Coast today, and we're at that point in our life where we're being the caregivers to her mom and dad, in particular her father, who we literally within days of this podcast right here, we just found out he had some unusual behavior going on. And I told Hope, I said, "Hope," I think she thought it was some medicine. I said, "That sounds like a stroke." And sure enough, found out that her father had had a stroke. He's about 83 years old and she's back there now and we're trying to be in the middle of making some very difficult decisions as her parents are aging. And so that's real raw and relevant. You know, it's just something that— it's a place that everybody has to cross. Everybody has to do it. And she is that primary caregiver. But, you know, being 2,200 miles away, it's tough to do that. So she's on one side handling family things, and I'm on the other side handling, uh, ministry things. So I know it's not the same when she's not here. And, uh, this thing was never meant— my podcasts are never meant to be a teaching. You have so many ways, um, you have Facebook Live, you have Redemption Online, you have The Vault, you have our Sunday morning services, our website. There's so many places, YouTube, to get my teachings and my sermons over decades. So the podcast was not another way to give you another message. That's not what I intend to do. But in the times where I'm doing it by myself, I either bring on a guest and try to have a conversation of interest, or I try to maybe talk about something that I don't do. Rants, you know, these people get on and say, my morning rant or my weekly rant. I don't do rants, excuse me. But I do have things that, um, I believe are that we need to be precautionary about. I do have things that I see trends that are somewhat, I guess, concern me in church and in church life and in Christian life as well. I do speak a lot of things that affect the world, but I want to come right back now and just talk to people that are Christians, and I want to challenge challenged you on some areas. So this is probably the closest thing you ever get to Ron doing a rant. I'm just not a rant guy. They— so, uh, number one, I— if I have things that I want to complain about, I go to God. Uh, I don't— I don't air my frustrations out on the worldwide internet. By the time I get to guys like you, I try to have something positive and uplifting and come with the word of God. But my personal feelings about everything, a lot of them don't matter because it doesn't matter how I feel, it matters what God says. And I've always tried to live that way. But I just do, I do have some things I want to talk about in light of current events and current state of the church. First of all, let me say this, uh, thank you for being with me. And, um, hopefully, hopefully by next week, uh, either she'll be back here or I'll be there and we can do this podcast together. Would you hang around a minute? I really think you're going to like what I'm going to say because I, I am prepared. This is a podcast where we literally shoot from the hip, blind, no script, unscripted, just talk and conversation and whatever's on our mind. You're getting it. But I did outline some things that I wanted to make sure that I covered in the talk that I have with you. And here are my thoughts on some things as we see current trends. We've just had a popular comedian a while back, you know, do some sarcasm and even satire in a little comedy skit when it had to do with megachurches. And I thought that was a very interesting take because this guy's a secular comedian. Don't know much about him, so I haven't studied. So if some of my thoughts are off, I have not Googled him. I don't know. And I'm not familiar with him as a person. Would just about bet, if I had $100, I bet 99 of them that he probably grew up in church or around it. And then did some satire about what an experience in a megachurch would be like and what megachurches are like. And when I watched that, a lot of other people thought it was very humorous. I didn't think it was that humorous. I thought, what a sad take on, an outsider's view toward who we are and what we do. It bothered me. And I saw a lot of people on the internet having fun with it. There were some people that were, you know, voicing some pretty terse comments about it, but a lot of people were just having fun with it. But I looked at it and said, it's not a good day when those who don't know God are saying, and I don't know about his personal life, I'm just talking about from a secular viewpoint, view us like that. So when they see us like that, I don't think that's a positive sign. Because I do think no matter how much comedic fun he wanted to have with it, It is in a way, some of the ways that we're looked at. I have been fortunate and blessed by God enough to pastor a large church since about '99 and 2000. I pastored a church of tens, I've pastored a church of fifties, I've pastored a church of hundreds, and I've pastored churches of thousands. And I appreciate God allowing me to do it. The challenge is, is real. The pressure is real. The glass house is real. Everybody having an opinion about your life is real. And those are things that a little Bible school could never prepare you for. And nobody prepares you for the day and time of social media in which everybody doesn't just have opinion, but they get to tell you about their opinion. There was a day where that wasn't true. If they had it, they had to keep it to theirself 'cause you didn't know 'em. But now everybody has access to tell everybody And I don't necessarily think that's a good thing. So getting, when it comes to large churches, I appreciate the fact that those churches have resources. And I appreciate the fact that we have the resources to do something like I'm doing right now. The cameras and the lenses and the lightings and the technicians and the engineers and all this stuff, that's not cheap. But to be able to get the Word out to the world, it takes resources. It takes resources. And to do it and do it at a high level, especially. And I'm thankful that I've been in one of those where, you know, we've been able to build buildings and we've been able to do things and we've been able to impact our communities and we've been able to do missions and we've been able to do productions and we've been able to do conferences. And the list goes on of things we've been able to do. And that all comes with having resources. And I'm grateful, I know what it is to have zero resources. I know what it is to have some resources, and it's a whole lot more fun to work expanding the kingdom when you have the means to do so. That leads me to this. I am very aware of the need to be culturally relevant to the generation you seek to serve. When I was younger, I'm not going to say when I was young, I'm still young. But when I was younger, especially in my 20s, excuse me, and about 30, I was doing things innovatively and things outside of what was norm. And it got a lot of attention, both good and bad. And because of that, I would catch the ire of the previous generation. And I remember the 60-year-old guys turning around me, and I'm 28, 29, 30, and just battering me. And so you weren't taking near as much punishment from the world as you were taking from the church. And everything I did was wrong, and I'm going away from traditions, and God's not gonna bless you doing that way, and why are you trying to be a rebel? Rebelled everything you've been taught. And I just got battered for all that stuff. But God helped me to stay straight ahead. And ultimately, that was blessed. We made it through all the battles and God blessed us and we were able to touch some people and expand the kingdom. So I am very aware of singing relevant songs. I'm very aware of relevant production. I'm very aware of shifting to technology. I'm very aware of shifting to social media. I'm very aware that as soon As soon as you turn on that camera, you no longer speak to people inside a wall, you speak to people who want to get on anywhere on the planet. So you can't talk about the restaurant down the street, or you can't talk about your best friend who's down the road, because people watching you in the Philippines don't know that place down the street and don't know Joe across the road. So you can no longer talk like you're just talking to the people just sitting right in the room, because in an instant with a Facebook Live or a YouTube Live, you can be talking to the whole world. And so it changes everything. And you got to understand, I was preaching before all of that. And when I say I was preaching before all of that, what the late millennials and Gen Z, what is their norm was my shift. That was not my norm. My norm was you could only impact more people by building bigger buildings and getting more people in the building. So everything was about how big a building can you afford to build and how many people can you pack in there and how many services can you handle during a day? Because that was how many people you got to minister to unless you were one of these small group of people that got to be on TBN and it took this astronomical amount of money and there was an astronomical waiting list and the people that were on there were gonna be on there for 40 years and they weren't giving up their time slots. So unless you were one of those ministries that had that kind of favor, you ministered to what sat in the room. And then all of a sudden the internet happened. So you gotta understand my world shifts where your world you grew up with But that what was natural with you was intentional for me. So I told somebody the other day, we was in a little setting, I said, I was with about 25, 26 preachers, and I told them, I said, you guys need to understand, I've said, I've probably reinvented myself about 5 or 6 times, and I'm only 57 years old. And that is not easy to do, because once you find something that is successful and God's blessing it, it is hard to shift from it. It's very difficult because if you've ever seen God bless it with His success, you just want to stay right there. But then comes in the teaching of wine and wineskins. You got to understand, you can always give up a wineskin. What you can't lose is the wine. The wine is the God-made things. It's worship. That's God-made. Discipleship, God-made. Preaching, that's God's idea. None of these were man's ideas. These were God's. It was preaching as the foolishness of God meant to build the kingdom. That's what the Bible says. Worship started before mankind ever came into the picture and will be there in all of eternity. The angels are around the throne worshiping right now. Okay? Make disciples of all people, baptizing in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Ghost. These are God ideas. These are wine. How I disciple? That's wineskin. The songs that we sing? That's a wineskin. See what I'm talking about? Do I use a prop? Am I a topical preacher? Do I use props? Do I use production? Am I expository? That's a wineskin. And the Bible says that if you don't update your wineskin, you will lose the wine and the skin. So I have always held true to that scripture, Mark chapter 2. You can't minister to new generations with the previous generation wineskin. So every new generation that I want to reach out to, I've got to change the skin. I don't particularly enjoy, honestly, a lot of the sounds of this generation, but I sing all of them. Why? Because Ron's already saved. I'm not trying to get Ron to church. So this right here and my church services are not a place where I get to do my preferences. I have another generation of songs that I prefer, but the one before me, they loved hymns. I didn't care anything about singing a hymn. So I started singing a lot of Integrity Hosanna, and I started singing, but rest in peace, Ron Cannoli, who passed over, and the Clint Browns and the Fred Hammonds and the Israel Houghtons. Those were the music I cut my teeth on, and they got onto me because I abandoned the hymn book. The hymn book was sacred to those people, but to me it was just a wineskin. Well, now we're in a day of CCM and the music has changed radically from what I first built the church on. The worship experience has changed. So what do I do? I abandon those songs. Why? Because it's not about my preference. It's about reaching a generation. And the next generation will never touch God with the last generation's song. Let me say that again. The next generation will never touch God with the last generation's song. So what does that mean? What does that mean? That means a person like me has to constantly shift and move the wineskins to be relevant to a generation in the hopes that the wine never gets lost. Because what I don't want to lose is the worship. What I don't want to lose is the ability— what is God using in preaching? Okay, I don't want to lose the preaching. The methodology doesn't matter. Okay, discipleship used to be Sunday school. I didn't do Sunday school. I went to Wednesday night and cell groups. Well, the Sunday school people like to beat me to death. Why? Because I'm abandoning something. It wasn't wine, it was a wineskin. God wants them to be discipled. If you do it in a Tuesday night cell group or Sunday morning Sunday school, I don't think God cares. That's just a wineskin. So what is Mark chapter 2? Always update your approach so that the real thing God wants to release from heaven never gets corrupted, defiled, or lost. That is my challenge. And that's why I said I've had to reinvent myself several times over to get to this point. And one of the things that I'm so grateful for, and I mean, I am so grateful and I say it all the time, is I am 57 years old and I see this, both actually on both coasts, our buildings packing out with young adults, 18 to 30. And so that tells me on some level, We have succeeded because naturally a 57-year-old would attract 50-year-olds because a seed produces after its own kind. So if that's where I am, that's usually what I attract. But you leave what's natural and shift to what's intentional. And when you shift to what's intentional, you can be cross-generational, which I think sometimes is harder than cross-cultural. Ministry. So I said all that to say this. I got some things I want to run down. I got just a couple of more thoughts here. The present-day church, and we might break this in some clips, and I'm sure I'll get some feedback. The present-day church to me is organizationally based on a corporate model, which is driven by consumerism. Most really large ministries today, you couldn't tell their corporate model much different from corporate America. I don't care how many people are sitting in the room or how much revenue they're turning. That is just not a biblical model. The Bible says that the church is built on the foundations of apostles and prophets. We don't even have churches that even believe in apostles and prophets, much less let the foundation of it be apostles and prophets. When's the last time in most of these churches you've heard the term elders? When's the last time you've heard the word deacons? Deacons have a specific anointing and assignment in the house of God. Elders have a specific assignment and anointing in the house of God. I have them all. When's the last time you heard of the teaching ministry of the church and the evangelistic ministry of the church and the apostolic ministry of the church? Most people, especially on the East Coast, the West Coast are still learning me. Most people don't call me pastor on the East Coast, they call me apostle. Why? Because you call 'em like you see 'em. You know a tree by its fruit. I am far different than a nominal pastor. Nothing wrong with pastor. It's not good or bad, it's different. I'm just different. I'm very expansion-oriented. I'm very, let's try something new. I'm very pioneering. I'm very get bored easily. I try to get people around me that are innovative and have better ideas than I do. I love change. I can't stand things that stay the same. I shift it on purpose. Those are antithesis of a pastor. A pastor, let me get in my comfort zone, let me stay here, because his desire is to bring comfort to the sheep. My desire is to make the sheep extremely uncomfortable extremely uncomfortable. Why? Because I will offend you to move you. I don't want you to stay at the same place. And I will offend your mind to move your heart. I wanna teach you something you've never heard. I wanna give you revelation that you've never had. I wanna have you experience God in a way you've never experienced him. That is not the way a nominal pastor's gift is built, okay? But I need the pastors around me, and we have care pastors in the church. Why? They bring personal to my public. And you need both. And they're not independent of another, they're all interdependent on one another. The Bible says in the church, there are captains of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands. And they all have specific assignments and gifts they carry to affect different people in different ways. You don't ever hear anything about that. Let me read to you Acts chapter 2. Remember, a lot of people quote Jesus. Well, we need to do like Jesus, need to do like in the church, we need to be like Jesus. You got to understand, when Jesus was going around in his ministry, there wasn't a church. Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection birthed the church. You got to read past Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John to get to the life of the church, because we preach about the life of Jesus. But now this living, breathing thing that Jesus has spawned and birthed from his death, burial, and resurrection now has to be brought and amassed into an orchestrated army. What does that look like? It's not only called an army, it's called a house. It's not only called a house, it's called the house of God, the army of God, it's called the family of God. So this thing has got to have a family element, an army element, and a house element. Okay? Now, when you look right after the church's birth, let me give you this right here. I'm going to read Acts chapter 2:42 and 43, and then 46 and 47. Listen to this. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread, prayers. Then the fear of God came upon every soul, and many signs and wonders were done through the apostles. So it continued daily in one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. Okay, now, the Lord added daily. The second thing I think we need to be concerned about, I didn't say we're doing wrong, I said I think it needs to be a concern, is we have made church and the gathering together of the saints, when they gathered together, it was a place of signs, wonders, and breaking bread, community, and it was a time where they read the Scripture and they prayed. All right? The gathering in the temple, which was the collective, was never the place where they wanted souls to get saved. Did souls get saved? I'm sure. But there was lifestyle witness. God didn't add to the church on Sunday. God added to the church daily. He didn't wait till there was a collective worship service and scripture study led by the apostles. It was the daily lifestyle that was infectious and people were taught to lead others to their faith. Okay? When they came together, that was growing in worship, growing in a community, and growing in the apostles' teaching. But God added to the number every single day. We today don't teach anybody to reproduce their faith on a daily basis, but we want to wait till we can get everybody together on Sunday and get everybody saved, which means is we have to bring down the entire experience to a baby. If I am giving you an experience where the only time you can get saved is in our corporate gathering, then I can't ever carry the corporate gathering past about a 2 or a 3 because the people getting saved don't know what's going on. So there we have started our seeker movement. Okay. Now, when you do that, when you take the adding to the number daily away and God only adds to the number Sunday, then you have removed discipleship. So what's happening? We have churches larger than I've ever seen. We have churches that are boasting numbers of salvation more than I've ever seen. And we have the most scripturally and spiritually illiterate generation I have ever seen. I am seeing a new generation go to a meeting and worship 2 hours and go out the next night and live like a hellion. Are they bad people? No, they haven't been taught. So what is wrong when our buildings are full but our culture is deteriorating? That tells me what's in the building is having no impact on the culture. Okay, why? Because there's no discipleship. There's no putting off of the old man and putting on the new. There's no getting up every day and putting on the full armor of God. There's no teaching people how to have the mind of the Spirit. There's no teaching people how to be led in the Spirit. There's no teaching people about moving in signs and wonders and the authority of God. There's nobody talking about casting out demons. We just send people to counseling or give them a Xanax. They cast out devils. There's no revelation of Scripture. Okay? So if the model that we're building on is a corporate model that is consumer-driven, then I am teaching you to come to my church while my church serves you. Jesus said, "You don't come to be served, you come to serve." I don't come and try to make Jesus like you. You take up your cross and you follow him. Where is that? I don't even hear teachings on crosses. Why? You know why? Because the cross only has one function, to die on. And Jesus said, "Don't come here for me to entertain you. Unless you eat my flesh and unless you drink my blood, you have no part with me." Who's teaching that? I don't hear it anywhere. Okay? So the model is corporate, it's driven by consumerism, and now the services have become entertainment-based. The model is corporate, driven by consumerism, and we entertain the consumer and we sustain it because behind the wall we have a corporate model. And everything of how the house of God is supposed to be built has been totally and completely abandoned. I can tell you right now for a fact that some of the leaders of the largest churches in America could not talk intelligently about fivefold ministry. And that's the 5 smooth stones of David, which slew the Philistine and then allowed all of Israel to charge the whole Philistine army and overtake them. What were the 5 smooth stones? Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Those are the executionary stones of God by which we lead God's people into triumph. Nobody's talking about anything like that. Now, are these bad people? No, I know a lot of them, wonderful people. But this thing shifted in the early 2000s, according to my estimation. We all right up into the '90s, the early 2000s, something started happening. And by 2010, 2010s, everything was changing into a seeker movement, consumer-based entertainment model. And I go back to the comedian. He put in our face what we have become, and the world laughed at us. But when I read what's supposed to be happening, fear came upon everyone, signs and wonders, steadfastly in doctrine. You don't have any Christians today that know any doctrine. The 5 cardinal doctrines: salvation, sanctification, baptism in the Holy Spirit, divine healing, and second coming. I couldn't graduate the first freshman year of Bible school till I had those 5 cardinal doctrines down pat. You got a whole building now that could not even tell you what those 5 cardinal doctrines are. You got to understand, I learned those things in Sunday school as a child. Now we got people been in church 20 years and don't even know they exist. Jesus didn't say get everybody saved. He said make disciples. That's exactly what he said. And he said make disciples in every nation. I'm submitting to you that maybe our approach has to change as we teach people to personally be evangelistic. And I tell people about Jesus all the time. I tell people testimonies all the time. When I see sick people, I testify of how God healed me. When I see somebody on drugs, I testify of how God broke it off my family. When I see somebody whose marriage is in turmoil, I testify of how God restored mine. When I see somebody down and out on their finances, I tell them how many times God has turned mine around and did miracles and given me favor. When I see somebody trying to believe for a job or trying to believe for an open door, I talk to them about how God has opened doors no man can shut. And those are my testimonies. Well, let me hear about your God. Well, tell me about your God. I had a billionaire the other day come sit down, it was about 6 months ago now, come sit down in a meeting with me. And billionaires usually don't go and sit with preachers. And after we got through talking about a business deal, he wanted to buy some of our property. He sat down and he started asking me questions about my ministry. Then he said, well, tell me about your God. And I said, "What is that?" That's God adding to the number daily. But if the only thing I have to get you saved is in church, I'm going to forfeit discipleship to bring you in. I need to be bringing you in by my lifestyle, and I need to be building you up at the gathering together of the saints. That is the biblical model that I see in the Word of God. Let me show you one more thing and I'll quit. Ephesians 4. This is the closest I'll get to a rant. Just want to express some concerns that I have, and I'd be willing to hear your thoughts on it in the comment section. Excuse me here. There we go. Ephesians 4. Let me tell you my job description. Ready? Ephesians 4:11. And he himself gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for edifying the body of Christ, till we come to unity in the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, reaching the full measure of the stature of Christ. Paul told Timothy, "I labor not till Christ come for you, till Christ be formed in you." My labor is Christ being formed within his people. It's got to be everybody's labor to bring Christ to them. But my job is to labor till Christ comes in them. We have really abandoned I think almost a full abandonment of the discipleship principle, which is why conduct does not change once people get saved. Behavior does not change. Lifestyle does not change. And culture deteriorates. But when I disciple you in the things of God, your personal culture changes, thereby changing the culture that you live in. And I just wanna submit some of this thing to you. Maybe you could tell some other people to watch it. Maybe you enjoy it. And maybe you disagree with some of these things I say, but I'm coming at you pretty much from the Word and what the Word says about it. But we need to get back right here. And I don't mind the props. I don't mind the games. I don't mind maybe some of the silliness if it doesn't get too juvenile. Sometimes I watch it and it's just, I'm like, "Come on, guys. Come on. We getting too silly." Where is the generation of expository preachers good preachers who can take the Bible without a prop, without a production, without any type of games, silliness, anything going on, and take it and break the bread to the people. I was taught to take the Word of God and break it down and feed it to the people where they can first get milk and then eat the meat of the Word of God and attain the full measure of the stature of Christ, not just have an entry-level experience, and keep 'em there through entertainment. I think there's a wholesale shift that needs to take place and it needs to start in our pulpits. So I know a lot of the people I'm talking to on my podcast are not ministers. I know I have other places, my fellowship, they're mostly ministers. But I do believe that most of the people that watch me for the most part are Christians on this podcast. And most of 'em do care about the state of the church and whether or not the kingdom is doing its job in the earth today. And these are just some of my thoughts. Thoughts on things that maybe need to concern us and some things that— there's some old ditches that we need to go back and dig and some old wells we need to go back and replenish. And the Bible says we also need to be repairers of the breach. We need to make a bridge back to some of the things we got lost that God didn't want us to lose. You can always dump the wineskin. You don't want to lose the wine. Amen. You know what? It's Runnin' Hope, real raw and relevant. Little bit on the serious side today. Okay, closest thing you ever get to a Ron Carpenter rant. So take it, text somebody, tell them about it. And if you want to, go get my Ron Carpenter AI app, download it. It could be a great discipleship tool for you. Check that out. A lot of people are using it and getting a lot of good out of it. It is using technology along with 30 years of teaching and preaching to bring about answers to your questions in the time and the day in which you ask them and need some answers. I love to serve you that way, and it's absolutely free. So download that, and until next time, hopefully you'll see my better half's smiling face, and we'll get on here and be not so serious, but cut up and laugh a little bit with you. And until then, it's Ryan and Hope, Real Raw and Relevant. We'll see you real soon. Be blessed.