The Church Renewal Podcast
The Church Renewal Podcast
Jesus Still Writes Letters (And Your Church Should Read Them): A Conversation with Dr. Ken Quick (Part 1)
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Dr. Ken Quick of Blessing Point Ministries joins us to discuss how Jesus speaks to churches corporately, not just to individuals, and how addressing a congregation's painful past can lead to healing and renewal.
The 8th Letterhttps://www.amazon.com/Eighth-Letter-Exploring-Churches-Discovering/dp/B08NDXBC1Z by Dr. Ken Quick
• Churches often don't realize Jesus has a corporate message for them as a community
• The letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3 provide a model for how Jesus continues to speak to congregations today
• The "Eighth Letter" model helps churches discern what Jesus would say to their congregation
• Corporate healing requires examining church history, identifying "hinge moments" where decisions created lasting impacts
• Blessing Point's three-month process includes historical examination, a retreat, and a solemn assembly
• Churches that take corporate responsibility for past failures experience remarkable healing
• Congregations must often "go back" to address unresolved histories before they can move forward effectively
• Spiritual gifts help believers understand God's perspective on various issues affecting the church
Books by Dr. Ken Quick
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Intro to Season 3.5
Speaker 1Welcome to Season 3.5 of the Church Renewal Podcast from Florist Coaching . Why is this 3.5 ? Because we weren't quite done with Season 3 .
Speaker 2Anyway , I'm Jeremy . I'm Matt .
Speaker 1Thanks for joining us . When we wrapped on Season 3 , there were some conversations that we left on the table , which we're giving you now in this mini-season . Pull up a chair as we sit down with some of our colleagues . We're privileged to be partners in ministry with these leaders and together we serve your congregation , hear the Good Shepherd and navigate through seasons of change . We'll also hear from some local church leaders Flourish has been grateful to work with directly . We'll speak with them about their personal and corporate experience . Thanks again for
Introducing Dr. Ken Quick
Speaker 1joining us . Let's get to it . In this episode , matt and Jeremy were thrilled to sit down with Dr Ken Quick from Blessing Point Ministry . The full interview is about 40 minutes so out of respect for your time , we've split this into two parts . Here's the first half , and we'll bring you the rest next week . Enjoy .
Speaker 2Matt , I don't believe anybody expected you and I to be back so soon .
Speaker 3You think they were dreading it it or they were looking forward to it .
Speaker 2I believe they were looking forward to it .
Speaker 3Oh , I hope so .
Speaker 2I know I was . We have a special guest with us today . We do so . I'll give you some of the history here , and we talked about this at dinner just before we came here . But I started working with a friend from seminary back around 2007 . And in 2008 , he came to me and said , hey , as he was working on his MDiv . He said I'm taking this class now with Dr Quick over at the seminary and I think you'd be really interested in the course he and I were both counseling students we were both doing . He was working on the counseling part of his MDiv , but he was , I believe , also planning to go on and complete his MDiv . And this course was called Exegesis of the Church and Culture , which piqued my interest , but I had no idea what it actually meant . And so , because my background is all in counseling , as we've talked about already this season , I was very interested to know what this was . And the more he told me this , I ended up auditing this class , even though I'd finished my degree a few months before , and that's where I met Dr Quick , our guest today . Dr Quick , welcome to the Churchill podcast . Good to be here , jeremy . Thank you for the invitation . I am thrilled that you're on this slate .
Speaker 2I know to tell some of your story , matt , that you only came into contact with Dr Quick's work a short time ago . You were using one of his books , the Eighth Letter , which we referenced , and some of the work that you were doing with a particular church , and I have been secretly lobbying to see more connection here . So the conversation here today is just to lay the table . Dr Quick , you have been a part of an organization called Blessing Point Ministries . Is that correct ? That's correct , and the work that you do dovetails nicely into the work that Flourish is doing . You work specifically with churches who are hurting , who are recovering from sin , pain , grief , loss , trying to understand who they are , where they are in their story , what God is doing with them and how to move
Hearing Jesus Speak to Churches
Speaker 2forward . Is that a rough yeah ?
Speaker 4I would say the focus of our ministry what we come into a church to help them do is to hear what the Lord of the church is saying to their church . That's a corporate message , not an individual message . I think people are used to hearing coming to church and expecting Jesus to speak to them . As an individual , they don't know what it means to have Jesus speak to a church about what's going on .
Speaker 2Is it fair to say that that's not just true for your average congregant , but that's also true for your average elder and pastor ?
Speaker 3Which is bizarre because , maybe as a fruit of our conversation earlier in the podcast season , I've been telling churches for a couple of months . I'm like , maybe as a fruit of our conversation earlier in the podcast season , I've been telling churches for a couple of months . I'm like you do realize that the entire New Testament , after the book of Acts until Revelation 4 , all of it is Jesus talking corporately to churches . So the biggest bulk of the New Testament at least the epistles , all of that is this what you're talking about Exactly . So why would it be bizarre that Jesus would have a corporate message for a church now ?
Speaker 4I think that part of it comes with our concept of the closure of the canon , that Jesus stopped speaking , interesting , okay .
Speaker 4And so anybody that's going to say that Jesus spoke to me we usually think , hmm , you haven't picked this in the Bible .
Speaker 4Yeah , there's a problem here . But we think that when Jesus , especially in the book of Revelation Revelation 2 and 3 , blessing point is really built on the foundation of those letters , the seven letters that Jesus spoke to the seven churches , because he comes to the end of every one of those letters and he says he who has ears to hear , let him hear what the Spirit says . And it's interesting present tense , what the Spirit says to the churches . And we have come to believe that that's a model that he was presenting , that in the last book of the scriptures , to give the churches a model to let them know how he would communicate with them from that point onward . And so that's really what we help a church to do . If you've been working in the eighth letter that's the principle of the eighth letter is that you're now struggling to hear what Jesus is saying , what the letter would be that he would write to your church in the model of Revelation 2 and 3 .
Speaker 3It's interesting . I've been very influenced in my leadership of Flourish by a ministry called Vital Church . I ran into Vital Church in maybe 2012 , 2013 , 2013 for the first time and it was as a volunteer working with the church , helping to do interviews related to a church diagnostic , or what we call a church health assessment . And you're trained as one of these volunteers that you know . They have a standard note-taking sheet that they want you to follow . It's a structured interview for a church . And the last question I don't remember what the exact form of their question is . I know what the form of the question is that we use now , which is you're asking a congregant , hey , you know . So you know Revelation 2 and 3 , like Jesus' message to the churches , and we'll give a couple of features . Like out of the eighth letter . We'll say you know , jesus reintroduces himself , he commends them , he critiques them , he corrects them and , you know , tries to encourage them and , you know , keep them a kick in the butt . You know a lot of the time right roughly and I'm like .
Speaker 2so what that's ?
Speaker 3King James Version . That's the bad version . You know . What would you say ? What
The Eighth Letter Model Explained
Speaker 3do you think if Jesus came here and was going to speak to this church ? What do you think he would say ? And I've done this hundreds of times now and almost every time people are like their posture changes , their thought process changes , they get out of their own maybe pain or gripe or preference or desire , and it puts them in a completely different mind . So to me , having seen this out in the field at work , I'm kind of like this is a formalization of what we've done informally and it's great , it is , yeah , and I don't know . But what fruit have you seen , as you've seen churches wrestle with that question ?
Speaker 4Well , when we come into a church we usually let them know that it's about a three-month process . We do a seminar to kind of shift the paradigm of the church , to stop thinking just as individuals and start to think corporately what that would mean as a church , and then we set them on the task of kind of going through their history . So it depends on how long the church has been in existence . You know kind of how deep the challenge is of that . But churches usually will go through board minutes and if they're a congregational form of government they'll go through church business meeting minutes and they'll highlight them along the lines of Revelation 2 and 3 , where Jesus commends the church for good things that are happening . He will articulate challenges that the church may be facing I know where you live , where Satan's throne is , and then he'll critique them . But I have this against you and five of the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3 got critiques . So this is not an uncommon or a surprising should be a surprising thing that Jesus would have issues with things that may have happened historically and then the final thing is he will give them advice or wisdom . I advise you to and give them input , and so they will do that for about six weeks and then we will come in and do what we call a historical retreat and we will walk that church through its history and our focus is really at that point on .
Speaker 4Again , part of the way we get people out of their individualistic Western kind of culture thinking is really emphasize spiritual gifts . That's when Jesus says he who has ears to hear , let him hear what the Spirit says . So what we understand is that every believer has been given a gift or gifts of the Holy Spirit and that those gifts enable us to get in touch with kind of the heart and the feelings of God on various issues . Sometimes those things are in tension with each other . So when we're going through a history we may come to a church that has experienced a moral issue that was very , very painful to . The church broke trust , the pastor had an immoral relationship or something like that , and that broke trust with pastors and for 40 years after the church struggled to get over that , they didn't trust pastors when they came in .
Speaker 4The church I was in in Toronto had an elder board that precipitated a split and so I came in 10 years after that split took place and every time we would have a church business meeting . I noticed that the church I think the way most pastors think is the way I thought is that when I came in , that was then . This is now . That was them , this is me , everything's new . But a boom , it's perfect . The board is blank and I can start to write whatever I want on it . And , you know , with God's leadership , I can , you know , we can create ministry here , not knowing that the history was now corrupting our ability to lead , corrupting my and the board's ability to lead the church . And it wasn't just what was going on within the church . This was , I think , an experience of the discipline of God at a corporate level .
Speaker 3It was in the psyche of the church , but God was also wanting to do something Right . How did how did they begin to grab a hold of ? Oh , god might be wanting to do something among us .
Speaker 4Well , I think the reality , this is where you now are confronted with . I have this against you ,
Walking Churches Through Their History
Speaker 4and I mean just to hear the Lord of the church say that . So , when we went through our history in Toronto and when we work with the church now , when they go through it and they come to those moments what we call hinge moments , the Kadesh Varnitas , moments of a church's experience where obviously a decision is made or a choice is made that has a corporate impact of pain on the church and people respond or react to that pain . At that point , have they dealt with it in a way that is pleasing to Christ , to the Lord of the church ? And if the pain continues throughout , then it's the reality that they did not , and so they need to go back . They need to go back to that moment and figure out what it was that Jesus wanted them to do , take responsibility for what they did , and then sit and repent and then choose to do something different , and they often have to go back . The final step in our three-month process . So there's a historical retreat where we walk through the history , and the final step is a psalm assembly , which is usually four to six weeks after the retreat , where they invite people back who may have left the church wounded and the leadership will take responsibility for the specific things that Jesus told them about .
Speaker 4And we have seen churches healed of stuff that you would not think . You just think somebody just throw a stick of dynamite in this place and it would be better than to keep enduring the pain that this church is generating and its members . But if they listen to Jesus and its members , but if they listen to Jesus , surprise , surprise , he is able to heal them . And I'm in a church right now doing an interim with a church that I worked , did a lead through a healing heart process 20 years ago and they had had five immoral pastors and each one worse than the one before . And the last , the second to the last one , had a stable of women , women from the church , 14 of them To that he was immoral with . He had a walking club that were all women he had affairs with from the church and you think how does the church feel from that ?
Speaker 4But that church did the hard , scary work of assessing what Jesus was saying to them about these events and why they took place and what it meant to elders who weren't protecting the congregation , didn't do their due diligence to kind of see what was going on . But they did that . They did it in a corporate solemn assembly kind of thing where they repented , took responsibility , asked for forgiveness , called people who had left the church . Many of them came back and that church was healed . And I'm back in the church now , 20 years later , and it's
Healing Through Corporate Repentance
Speaker 4still a healthy place . That's incredible . So I mean now again , ken Quipp couldn't do anything like that . That is what the Lord of the Church does . He tells us that's what he'll do , so it shouldn't surprise us that he does it . But most people are just not used to kind of seeing that happen at a corporate level .
Speaker 2This is why I wanted to get us together , because , matt , I'm going to quote you badly- what did I do ? From earlier in the season . You said if we fail to wrestle with our past in the present , we're doomed to repeat our past in the future . Did I get that right ? That's pretty close .
Speaker 3That's pretty good . That's pretty close , yeah , and it's interesting . We have a church that we're working with right now as a client , my coach , the pastor . They were on the edge of calling the solemn assembly , they were working with a thoughtful transitional pastor and COVID hit and they got short-circuited and they're still kind of stuck . I did a strategic plan with them last year and here's a group of leaders committed to the church , committed to the new pastor , sharp young guy , and they're like you know what ? One of the things we're going to have to do in order to go forward is we're going to have to go back . We can't not deal with it .
Speaker 3And they had this terrible thing happen that they actually called the pastor disaster . They lost two pastors in like two weeks and yeah , it was , it was a really it was . It was super , super bad and and I think that that that sort of you know , we're recording this a little bit for Halloween , but sort of that ghost in their closet . It's like the new pastor is kind of like . His ideas are good , there's nothing wrong with what he wants to do , he's being patient and thoughtful and he's a good preacher and it's like there's like sand in the gears and the thing is , it's hard for people to go forward until they've gone backwards and kind of dealt with their grief and the loss that all of that represented . And so , yeah , it's in the middle of it , with a church that got stuck because they were trying to do it well , and then , you know , covid added a layer on top of it .
Speaker 4So yeah , Christ doesn't let you go . Covid added a layer on top of it . So yeah , christ doesn't let you go . I mean , you know , just like we've experienced I think all of us in our personal lives . We may want to forget what just took place .
Speaker 1You know , we may want to say that was then .
Speaker 4This is now . You know , I'm forgetting what lies behind , I'm reaching forward to what lies ahead , and but Jesus doesn't .
Speaker 1Let us do that . We're stopping our conversation here and we'll pick up in next week's episode . Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching . Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them . We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that this day dawned , jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it . When pastors or churches feel stuck , our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy .
Speaker 1If you have questions or a need , we'd love to hear from you . For more information , go to our website , flourishcoachingorg , or send an email to info at flourishcoachingorg . You can also connect with us on Facebook X and YouTube . We appreciate when you like , subscribe , rate or review our show whenever you're listening . It can be hard for churches to ask for help , so when our clients tell us who referred them , we'll send a small gift to say thanks . A huge thank you to all our guests for making the time to share their stories with us . We are really blessed to have all these friends and partners , and a special thanks to Crosspoint Church in Arnold , maryland , for generously letting us use their space to make today's episode . All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists . The Church Renewal Podcast was directed and produced by Jeremy Seferati in association with Flourish Coaching , with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you . Bye for now .