The Jim Bradford Podcast
The Jim Bradford Podcast
Why We Are Still Assemblies of God?
We're starting a new series answering listener questions. Special thanks to those who submitted questions. In today's episode, we talk about how we became Assemblies of God credential holders and what keeps us in the AG. We'll discuss some of the strengths of our movement and the challenges we face moving forward.
You're listening to the Jim Bradford Podcast, conversations on faith, life, and leadership. I'm your host, Chase Replogle. As always, thanks for listening. Well, Pastor Jim, it's great to be together, and starting a new little mini-series here. 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. It's been a lot of fun. We've talked your books, my books. We've talked the book. We went all the way through the Bible. 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. 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. I'd be happy to get that out.
Jim Bradford:Right, yeah, that'd be terrific. I mean, Chase is such a great friend, and you've moderated these over 200 podcasts, and I deeply appreciate you. And even when we're not, we usually do four of these at a time once a month. But we spend more time together. I mean, we just like visiting with each other a lot. We get along. We get along, and we usually have a lot to talk about, and we can go for hours if we had the time. So these will be very conversational podcasts, both of us contributing pretty equally to this. And I'm approaching these next podcasts where we just field questions. 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
Chase Replogle:Well, our first question this week, somebody submitted, which is very simple. I thought it was a great question. They wrote in, why are you Assemblies of God? Which is true. Both of us are Assemblies of God ministers. And so I've got some other questions I thought would kind of add to it. 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.
Jim Bradford:I grew up in Canada for the first 16 years of my life. And so I was born into the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. which is the sister organization to the U.S. Assemblies of God that you and I are part of now. And so I was born into this. I remember being a young teenager and just loving the church. I felt moved upon by the Lord. That's where I heard the gospel regularly. When I was in grade school, like elementary school, I was living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and attending Calvary Temple. Dr. H. H. 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. 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. I was around people who had been healed. 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. All of these kind of... 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? It was not even a question that went through my mind. It was like, why not? You know, this is as good as it gets. And then we moved to the United States, became a part of a church. 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. And, uh, So there was one Assemblies of God church there. It wasn't even that large. But there was no question, we moved to town, and that's the church we went to. There was no church shopping. There was no suggestion we'd go to anything but an Assemblies of God church now that we were in the U.S. And it just kind of stayed that way. I questioned leaving the Assemblies of God when I graduated from university. I'd been leading a campus ministry, the Assemblies of God had started, Chi Alpha Campus Ministry. We'd seen, after we shrunk to almost nothing, we saw a really major spiritual breakthrough when I was in graduate school. 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. It was all good. But a year later, we took 120 out of that campus ministry and started meeting on campus as a church on Sundays. 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? 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. His name was Dave. 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? And maybe this is our chance to go independent. And it was, you know, early 80s, it was becoming, you know, cool to not be associated with the denomination. Those winds are still blowing strong. And so he had no AG background himself, except he was a very active part of our new university church. And he was just offended at me. He said, Jim, how could you even think that? Like, don't you want accountability in your life? Like, you want to go independent? Like, that's against everything we stand for. You know, and he was just a young guy with no particular background. A.G. Blueblood in him. 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. So that was the end of that. I've never questioned being the assembly of God since.
Chase Replogle:How long have you had credentials?
Jim Bradford:I've had credentials since 1979. Yeah, that's great. 79. How about you? How did you get in?
Chase Replogle:You know, it's funny. I knew most of those details of your story, but I'd never—talking about it that way, it struck me as how similar. My parents—my dad grew up kind of nominally Methodist, so I think you'd be okay with me saying that. Really, they sort of had a spiritual awakening in their late 20s. 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. But there was an AG church nearby they started attending. And it's interesting how you said that because my dad was a state trooper. So we moved around the state a lot, but always in the state. And it was the same thing. We always found the AG church, which there usually was.
Jim Bradford:Yeah, the
Chase Replogle:AG. Yeah. And that's where we went. Yeah. 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. That's where we went. So I grew up in AG churches, did all the AG things, you know, from Royal Rangers to youth camp. And just I look back on that. I'm really grateful for my parents just kind of consistent faithfulness. I think it shaped so much of my own sort of loyalty to just a group of people. But very similar, we started Bent Oak Church where I pastor. We started as a Sunday night Bible study, not even really intending it to be a church. We were sort of, I was kind of trying to figure out what was next after seminary and not really sure. 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. And it was... Well, let's do this. So I'm at least doing something. I have a master's degree. I feel called to ministry. So I don't know. We'll teach the Bible to some people and have dinner. 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. And most of them weren't attending church anywhere. They were kind of thinking that as their church. And we just felt the Lord drawing us to that group of people. And we had a very similar moment. We did that for three years. actually structured the church, kind of became a legal entity on our own. None of this had been through like church planting or any sort of office. And we ended up, you know, I brought it before the church as a matter of business in one of our annual business meetings. And we moved to the church into the Assemblies of God at that point. I had held credentials throughout, but it was a very similar situation where there was kind of a moment there. And we decided, no, I think, you know, at the end of the day, I thought I am Assemblies of God. 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. And so there was just a pretty strong, it's not like I would say I am Mr. AG, but there was a sense of gratitude and loyalty to what so many people invested in me. Yeah.
Jim Bradford:You graduated from... One of the Assemblies of God schools, colleges?
Chase Replogle:Yeah, two. I went to Central Bible College and then Assemblies of God Seminary.
Jim Bradford:Then the seminary. That's right. Yeah, that's right. You and I are similar in that our dads were not pastors, just active in the local church. Yeah, I have no ministry connections outside of my parents showing up at a church. 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. So, you know, I feel very loyal to the Assembly of God. I love the movement, but yeah, it's not like either of us had patronage. No, there's no family connections. I meet a lot of people who do, but I certainly don't. We're not related to anybody famous in the AG. It's a good journey. I really empathize with what you said. That's where my spiritual nurturing came from. I'm grateful. I've been disappointed sometimes, especially when I was in college. 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. And I found trying to find a church challenging, even an AG church, and then there's always things to be disappointed in. There's usually be smaller churches that maybe are struggling in some ways. But I don't know. I just always felt like I love the place that raised me spiritually.
Chase Replogle:Yeah. 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. You're pastoring again. 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.
Jim Bradford:We're a very people rich movement. 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. And we live in Springfield where the Summers of God headquarters is. You do contract work for the Assemblies of God headquarters in the discipleship area. You do writing and discipleship. I was an executive officer for a few years. And I pastor a church right next door to the headquarters. 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. And they're... They're really great people. Nobody's perfect, but I don't say that tritely. 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. For some reason, that's never been in my circle of relationships, although we have some bad apples. the influences of my life were always just positive and encouraging. And I never had a crisis of trust with most of the leaders I've met and I've worked with. So, you know, that's really up there. I think the right answer, though, is probably our confessional statement, our doctrinal statement. Christianity Today wrote an article years ago just... 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? And then they looked at, especially in the charismatic Pentecostal world, organizations like the Assemblies of God. 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. 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. 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. Right now, there are 3 million adherents in the U.S. for the Assemblies of God, but there are 67 million other adherents in the rest of the world. And that was our purpose from the beginning. to evangelize the world, to be the greatest evangelism movement the world has ever had. That was one of the motivations for starting the Assemblies of God. So a strong confessional statement and a strong commitment to missions. I think, especially when we're talking about global missions, we're at our best.
Chase Replogle:Yeah, I totally agree. For me, what the Assemblies of God does with missions is just one of its greatest strengths. I'm lucky to have some former missionaries in my congregation, to know a lot of missionaries. I'm always just so impressed with our missionaries. But also just to see the way, it's not just U.S. Assemblies of God sending missionaries, but the way all of the National Assemblies of God are beginning to send missionaries around the world. 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. And I just, that's a fun thing to be a part of. It's something, a meaningful thing to be a part of. I love knowing that, you know, we're a part of what God's doing through those missions movements.
Jim Bradford:It really, really does. And missions, you know, our philosophy of missions broke the mold a hundred years ago. 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. 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. I was just in Ethiopia two weeks ago, and there's an indigenous church. There's an organization on its own called the Ethiopian Assemblies of God. They're part of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, but they're not governed by the United States. They're not financed by the United States. Our goal is to get them self-sufficient, self-financing, self-led, and we're there just to serve and strengthen. So I'm there just preaching to their pastors and trying to equip them, but... And my brother-in-law is a missionary there, helping with their educational systems to train new pastors. 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. church. And that's been part of the genius. I don't know anybody who's doing it better.
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... It was trying to be faithful to the early church. 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? And I've always found that to be appealing for a couple of reasons. One, I do think it anchors us in the Bible. We don't always get this right. We certainly don't. Every church doesn't get this right. But at the heart of the movement is, what are we called to be today? from the scriptures as a church. 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. That's always sort of the consistency. 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. 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. 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. 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. Yeah,
Jim Bradford:exactly. And there's a fair amount of, in the Assemblies of God, there's a fair amount of freedom that that affords us. Like the churches you and I pastor are technically autonomous local churches. The autonomy of the local assembly is a highly valued ethic in the Assemblies of God, which means they don't own our property. They don't tell us what to do. 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. So there's a lot of autonomy, a lot of freedom and everything. The downside is that there's no, sometimes there's no one to take your hand, you know, but I'd prefer that. 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. Nobody's going to be telling you how to lead. You can take advantages. I mean, the movement provides leadership resources and things, but not leadership control. And so... There's a huge difference between being resourced and being controlled. And yet, there's accountability for us as credentialed ministers. There's freedom. Nobody's going to take our hand. I mean, we've got to listen to God. We've got to figure out, we've got to work with the communities that we pastor. But on the other hand, if we do mess up, God forbid, there is accountability that does protect the local church. They could yank us out of our pastoral positions. They could dismiss our credentials or put us through restoration processes. And there's pretty well-designed restoration processes for fallen ministers. So it's kind of a safety net. 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. In a good way, lack of control. Freedom on the other hand. Accountability, freedom, and kind of our credentialing falls right in the sweet spot between those two.
Chase Replogle:You know, I'd also be interested to hear you maybe reflect on some of the challenges that our movement's facing. 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. So when you think about where the Assemblies of God is, what do you see as some of the challenges we're facing?
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. We're generally considered a denomination. We're not that technically, but I just think because that's the perception. 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. That just smells fishy to them, that kind of reeks of control. They're going to want our money. It's just still not really cool to say I belong to a denomination.
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. I've experienced that often with
Jim Bradford:members. Yeah. 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. And that becomes a growing number of people, unfortunately. I think the other big challenge, most evangelical denominations are declining right now. Southern Baptists are experiencing significant decline right now. Most denominations are experiencing decline right now, except the Assemblies of God. We've been maybe plateaued for a couple years than this past year to have shown signs of continued growth. 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. So, I mean, what most denominations wouldn't give to have that. 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. You're a wonderful pastor, but you're under 40. And I'm like, way over 40. 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. How do we... 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. So as somebody under 40, how do you look at that whole thing?
Chase Replogle:It is a big question mark for me. 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. And it's significant. I mean, half at least. And so I do worry that... for some reason, we're struggling to train and raise up ministers. We're also struggling, I think, to keep young ministers. And I think that's an area for us to explore. Do
Jim Bradford:you know why?
Chase Replogle:Part of it you know, particularly with young people, I think we're getting into something broader than the AG right now. There is a pull right now to more historical forms of Christianity. 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. I think a lot of people are attracted to historical, historically liturgical forms. 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. So, yeah, I see that move happening a lot. 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. And I think that's led a lot of young people to sort of question. 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. But I think that's unfortunately led some people to kind of the pendulum swing to another side. So I think that accounts for part of it. 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. 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. Nobody respects, you know, becoming a pastor these days. 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. And so it can be hard to sustain that work for a lot of people. I don't know if we've carved out good models for how to solve that problem yet for young ministers as well.
Jim Bradford:I do appreciate what I see more recently the Assemblies of God doing with their CALLED initiative. Yeah. You've got a teenager who feels called into vocational ministry who's a part of a local church. 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. being prepared to actually be credentialed, thinking about where they might serve in ministry. So I'm encouraged by that as I watch that from a distance. Because I feel like the movement's trying to make some progress here with younger credential holders.
Chase Replogle:Yeah, I certainly think that's true. 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. 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. You know, I would love to see us as a movement. 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. And I think that can only continue if we know the first century church, if we know the scripture as well. And so that's one for me I... I hope we continue as a movement to grow and cultivate biblical literacy. My
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. 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. 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. Now it would be more, well, I'll go out and be a youth pastor or a children's pastor. I run into very few 22-year-olds who feel ready to pastor a church or want to pastor a church. That's the complexity issue you were addressing earlier. But we really need a whole generation of under 40 folks stepping up to the plate like you have. And the educational piece is really, as a movement, we've got to keep our eye on that.
Chase Replogle:And one of our strengths is God uses His Spirit to empower people for ministry, absolutely. But I know... continuing education, continuing to learn, finding resources has been such an important part of maturing that gift that has been in me too. 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? I do want to get one more question in. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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. How have you navigated love for a fellowship, participation in a fellowship, and navigating at times perhaps even some disagreements?
Jim Bradford:Right, and I have disagreed sometimes. 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. 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. I wanna be a person who shows loyalty. That means if there's things I disagree with, first of all, that's the real world. I mean, where am I gonna go that I don't at some point disagree with somebody? who's in leadership about something. So you're living in a fantasy world. You're going to end up never going to church if you go too far down that road. So I just believe prayer affects things, and I want to keep my mouth shut. Just pray about it first. And then I'm often conscious of extending the benefit of the doubt. Rather than mistrusting at the first sign of... 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. And I know their hearts. I mean, they're good people. They don't always make decisions I agree with, but I know their hearts. And I want to extend the benefit of the doubt. If it becomes a matter of doctrine or moral conscience, that would be the game changer for me. 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. It's possible somebody in the organization could hurt me so much that I just give up. I hope that doesn't happen. I've been hurt pretty badly by a few people in some of the churches I pastored. Never been hurt by denominational leaders, but I have been. That's what makes you a pastor in part. You get hurt by people who are disloyal and who stab you in the back and are just viciously critical some days. So, you know, I'm not going to let just intellectual disagreement or personal hurt. 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. We're stronger than that. 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.
Chase Replogle:Yeah, I am, you know, I'm a big fan of Eugene Peterson as a writer. Don't agree with everything, certainly. He started off as Symbols of God, though, actually. He was originally a Symbols of God minister, became Presbyterian later. 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. 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? What is the commitment? 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? Is the line my particular conviction on something, or is it my conviction to the commitment that I've made? And I think there's an important tension there. I don't think that's always an easy answer. I think it takes discernment of the spirit. I think it takes wisdom from others. 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. 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. 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. I've often found that to be true for me.
Jim Bradford:Yeah, that's really true. You hear a lot about honor culture these days, of course. It's been a big part of the independent charismatic movement, which at its extremes insulates leaders from accountability. But there is something about submission and honor that is biblical. And I like the way you put
Chase Replogle:that. 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. Well, there's so much we could talk about. We probably should have made this multiple episodes, but we're trying to do a question for each of these. I mean, I think it would be appropriate, if you wouldn't mind closing us in prayer, just for our movement. 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.
Jim Bradford:Yeah, and for those of you listening who are not Assemblies of God, thank you for Indulging us. Just indulging us and agreeing with us in prayer. Father, thank you. We want your church to prosper. No matter what organizational denominational label it operates under, we want the living church of Jesus Christ globally to prosper. 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. 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. For the sake of your kingdom, we pray you'll prosper it. 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. And right here in the U.S., I pray you revive us afresh. I pray you raise up young leaders who will help move the Assemblies of God into its future. I pray for grace on the general superintendent, the assistant superintendent, the general treasurer, the general secretary, the director of U.S. missions, the director of world missions. all of whom are personal friends of Chase and me. Lord, I pray you'll touch them. I thank you for their hearts. Give them wisdom to do what's right. Give them grace. Give them vision. Give them heart. And I pray for the 38,000 Assembly of God ministers in the United States. I pray, God, you'll touch them by your spirit. Energize them. Keep them pure. Keep them right. Keep them close to your heart. Give them unfailing faith. for the people they're leading, for what your church can be. Bless those pastors that are leading churches of 20, 30 people. Bless those who are leading past churches of 5,000 and 10,000 people. My God, touch them all by your Spirit. Give us fresh heart. Help us to love your church, which you bought with your blood. And we pray the Assemblies of God will move into its future with fresh anointing and strong leadership, and God-glorifying aims, Lord. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
Chase Replogle:You've been listening to the Jim Bradford Podcast. We would really appreciate it if you would take the time to leave us some feedback on the show. You can do that by leaving a rating or by typing out a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And we hope you might consider subscribing to the show. We're looking forward to a lot of the conversations to come in the weeks ahead, and it would mean a lot to us if you'd be a part of those. If you have questions or topics that you would like to ask Pastor Jim to hear him cover, we'd appreciate it if you'd take the time to send those in. You can do that by email by going to questions at jimbradford.org. We'd love to be able to take a look at those and get them featured on the podcast. As always, thanks for listening until next time.