Kerry Wood, host 0:20

This is the Pursue Holiness Podcast, an official podcast of the North Carolina Conference of the Global Methodist Church. We are engaged in scriptural holiness, applying it to everyday life so that we can have the new life in Jesus springing forth so richly and powerfully within us that all we are and all that we do accurately reflects the true character of God. Thanks for being with us today. And I'm going to invite you, if you didn't get a chance to hear him, then you need to go and watch the YouTube videos on the North Carolina YouTube page. Just go to North Carolina Global Methodist on YouTube, you'll find it. And my guest is Shane Bishop. And Shane, I'm going to let you give the details about who you are because I don't want to get anything wrong. So just start with the quick what is the 30-second to 45-second bio of you.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

I am the senior pastor of Christ Church in Fairview Heights, Illinois. It is downstate, not upstate. So we are about 20 minutes from St. Louis on the Illinois side. I will be starting my 29th year there in a week. So I've been there a long time. When uh arrived, church ran about 200, uh, recently relocated. Uh the church runs uh well over 2,000 now. And uh, you know, however it is, people there's 2,000 actual human beings that are there sitting. Uh so the the church, God's just done some pretty incredible things through the years, and uh more than anything else. I I I I write, uh, I do some speaking. I love to spend time in Israel and take uh pilgrimages over, but in my heart, I'm I'm a pulpit preacher.

Kerry Wood, host 2:27

Absolutely. Well, we we saw that demonstrated tonight uh and earlier this afternoon, and one of the things that really jumps out at me is when you talked about falling in love with Jesus again. Can you describe a little bit about what that was like for you? How was it that that you fell in love with Jesus and what does it feel like to have that renewal?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah. We were talking about just sort of everything that we've been through since 2018 or so. And you you look at what the culture has been through and what the culture has served up. Uh I pastor a large and very diverse church. We we never really centered ourselves on where we sat on issues or even politics. We'd always just centered ourselves on we're here to connect people with Jesus, we're gonna disagree on a lot of things, and that worked great until it didn't. And so all of a sudden we start kind of hemorrhaging going through the kind of things that probably all conservative United Methodist churches did in that season. And then you throw what's going on externally, you've got these contentious political cycles, you've got uh cultural wars that are just going on everywhere, you've got this narrative that's really pounding on traditional churches as being haters and all these kind of things. And then right about the time that you got a denomination beginning to fracture, we we've got COVID. Uh right about the time COVID gets back, then we're doing all the negotiations for leaving the denomination. Then, you know, it's one thing to leave Egypt, it's something else to figure out which direction the promised land is. Where do you go next? And then my wife got cancer. Yeah. And in the midst of all these things, it probably could have just burned you up and burned you out. I had quite the opposite effect. Uh I just, everything I think that I'd ever thought of about myself, you know, I I I'm a pastor of a church that's grown for 20 some odd years, and we this and this and this. All of a sudden, a lot of those things weren't possible anymore. And I remember just feeling like a pitcher who'd been throwing for 25 years and never had a losing season. And I flipped over my old baseball card in about 2020, and all of a sudden uh you didn't, there was no way that you were gonna grow. There was no way to do a lot of those things. And it just occurred to me, uh, the numbers just really don't matter. The the faithfulness matters, and and the numbers are impossible right now, but the faithfulness isn't. And somehow through all of this, um a paradigm shift happened in me, and the things I cared about. I'm not gonna say I was offline, I wasn't, I wanted a lot of good things for the right reasons, but something just fundamentally shifted in me, and I just fell in love with Jesus again, realizing that any gifts I had were useless at the moment. Uh, there wasn't a thing I could do about anything, and I just had to lean into him and rely upon him and truly had a personal revival that I really believe is still happening.

Kerry Wood, host 5:37

That's great. Wonderful, praise the Lord. So, as a pastor who had been part of a church that started what we would consider to be mid-sized and has grown to be quite large, um, as you were going through that growth, were there places where the numbers became more important than they should have, and you had to rec recognize and step back away from that? Is that part of what this journey was?

SPEAKER_01 6:01

I don't think so.

Kerry Wood, host 6:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Yeah, I I think for us uh we were always an evangelism machine. I mean, we're really good at at sharing faith. And and I I think what my strength is as a pastor is reaching men. And and so I was an athlete all the way through, uh, continued to play at a high level of competitive uh athletes, uh, athlet athletics until I was in my early 50s. And so that was kind of my crowd. Traveled the country and and played with sponsorships, and I was always just with that crowd. So I think I kind of spoke from a different vantage point than a lot of pastors.

Kerry Wood, host 6:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

And uh we reached a lot of men, a lot of conversions. You reach men, you start bringing families. Uh, we just started growing and growing and growing, and uh we would hit plateaus, but you you had at certain plateaus, you have to rethink how you're doing church. You know, for example, we filled our building up. Then what do you do? Well, you're not you can't just build a bigger building. We had to go to two services. Okay, you're gonna go to two services. What style should they be? Then we went to three services, then we went to three services in a Spanish service, then we went to three services in a Spanish service, and an evening service that was different. And then all of a sudden you say, Is this sustainable? Is this even healthy?

Kerry Wood, host 7:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Um, and and for me, the the growth of the church created a series of crises that we had to prayerfully look at and respond to. So for me, there was always this dynamic of having to of our growth creating a problem and then having to address that problem. Uh, but I think that over a period of years you you get into that mode. And what not necessarily suffers, but what just sort of has been on autopilot is that personal relationship with Christ. It was fine, but I I think I could say I went for 10 years and probably didn't grow any. You know, I mean I didn't get shorter, I just didn't grow. And as a result of uh having to deal with a very different reality, I think it just put me in a different place and understanding how much I truly relied upon Christ. Yeah.

Kerry Wood, host 8:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

And without him, I I just don't have chance.

Kerry Wood, host 8:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

You can do everything right, and without Christ, you don't have chance. And I think that was the real shift for me.

Kerry Wood, host 8:21

Gotcha. Good. So one of the things that I've been picking up here at this session of the annual conference, the the Global Methodist Church has the the their mission is to uh make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe. Well, obviously, evangelism is a key part of that. It's integral to that. And so what what I'm seeing is that discipleship and evangelism, that is part of our going on to perfection to make sure we don't split those apart. Yeah. What are the ways in which you are helping to encourage people to to grow with their relationship with Jesus just as much as they're sharing Jesus to somebody else?

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Well, I've talked fairly extensively about how that mainline Christianity just stopped doing evangelism. And when you stop believing the gospel, then you're gonna stop doing evangelism. If you believe everybody's just fine, you're not gonna do evangelism. So I think we went for decades where evangelism, I even heard it called the E-word. You know, it was just something you you didn't touch. And then even in evangelistic churches, going through the pandemic and the disaffiliation and all of those kind of things, what evangelism was there uh kind of went away. Nobody's gonna, for example, you got a next door neighbor, new neighbor moves in. You're not gonna say, Hey, please come to our church. We'd love to have you come on Sunday morning at 11. And if you'd like, after church, you can stay. We're gonna have a big meeting about whether or not to leave our denomination. Nobody wants that. That's the drama they get on television, that's the drama they have at home. Nobody wants that at church. So what happened was we we just stopped inviting people. We got seeing ourselves as a part of a dysfunctional and possibly even apostate uh reality. Nobody's excited about things anymore. And so people aren't inviting people to church. So what I think a lot of churches did was they turned inward and they said, okay, well, let's just minister to us. And so I think a lot of churches are fairly good at discipleship if you define discipleship as uh, you know, Bible studies and book studies and talking about and trying to get people to believe the right things. But without evangelism, there's no reproductive system. And I don't see a gospel in the New Testament that exists without evangelism. I think failing to share faith is simply not a Christian option. And so discipleship has to lead us to evangelism. What has happened a lot of times is discipleship leads us to be do-gooders. And I think a lot of churches are doing good to death. I I'll go to churches sometimes. I'll say, what are you excited about? And they talk about all the good they do. Well, that's all great, but we're not called to do good. We're called to connect people to Jesus. We're called to make disciples. Now, that being said, we're gonna do all kinds of good, but that is not what we're specifically called to do. Right. So for me, being able to link evangelism to discipleship, being able to link evangelism to community outreach and missions. We're doing great feeding people, we're doing great doing a lot of things, we're just not telling people about Jesus. We're just not inviting people, we we serve people, but we don't invite them into a relationship with Christ. And so for me, it's never an either-or. I just want to help churches take what they already do really well, which is a lot of times discipleship and doing good, and uh turn it into a both end.

Kerry Wood, host 11:58

Let's also invite people to Jesus. Yeah. Well, I think part of the problem, especially, you know, I spent 20 years ministry in the United Methodist Church, and I think we completely mislabeled what discipleship was. We we called discipleship learning about Jesus. Sure, it was an educational process. And and we have lived through the greatest amount of information, books, podcasts like this one, uh, you know, teleevangelists, sure, uh, all these things that are telling us all the things about Jesus. We uh, you know, I went to seminary, we talked about all these things, the historical Jesus, the religious Jesus, all this and that, and the other, and we forgot about Jesus. And so as we recapture that sense of Jesus is personal, but he's never individual, then that puts us into the place of discipleship where we recognize that it's about the relationship with him, and therefore the relationship we should have with one another, and the relationships that we then are able to go out into the world. And that was what I heard, the enthusiasm that you gave to us tonight. And so what would you say to that? Am I on the right track? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

I think what we have called discipleship is essentially just education. But instead of educating people about something else, we're educating them about the Bible. But discipleship has an educational element, but the ends of discipleship has to be transformation, not education. Education is a wonderful means to an end of transformation, but if it becomes an end in itself, uh we end up with something, with a gospel quite other than what we see in the New Testament. It's a it's it's a one side of the coin sort of thing. And it becomes something that really lacks firepower. So I think you're exactly on that right track. Discipleship must lead to not just transformation, the sense I wasn't a Christian, now I am, but also just continual renewal in our spiritual lives, just falling in love with Jesus over and over. Just like somebody's been married 50 years. They've probably fallen in and out of love with their spouse a hundred times. Uh, you know, it kind of cools off. And but we've really got to develop that relationship. It's not just learning more. Right.

Kerry Wood, host 14:12

It it really has to be getting closer to Jesus. Yeah, it doesn't matter how much I know about my wife if I don't spend time with my wife. So it can be, you know, I know she loves ice cream, but if I don't actually go and occasionally get her some ice cream, then what good does that knowledge have for me?

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Right. And and some of the really people I know that are most antagonistic toward Christianity knew the Bible quite well. They just didn't know Jesus.

Kerry Wood, host 14:39

Right. And in fact, their study of the Bible led them to walk away from Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

That's correct. And so what I think the world needs today is not a conclave of well-educated Christians. I think what we need is more of a uh a place where we meet, we we are filled by the Spirit, we worship together, we live in community, and we become convinced that we actually have good news to share. And we go out into the world and in a winsome way. Right. We tell people there is we believe that through Christ is a life of peace and passion and power and purpose. I think that's a compelling message, and I and I really believe that's a message that the world needs to hear today. I don't think most people need to feel worse about themselves. Yes, they just need to know that there is another path and a path that leads to life and not death. And for me, that's really good news to share. And why would I be hesitant to share good news?

Kerry Wood, host 15:40

Right. So, what do you see as the the best way for us to move forward with that in mind?

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Well, I think individual churches would uh do well to kind of rethink everything. You know, the reality is it let's say you were a denominational church and now you're out. Most denominational churches were plateaued or dying, uh, which are really synonyms of the same. Uh, they were plateaued or dying. Well, now they've been through a lot and they're in a different place, but most of those churches are still plateaued or dying. Believing the right stuff doesn't necessarily in and of itself bring vitality to a church. There, there's more than that. And so I think it's a great time for all of us to ask ourselves, while we still have a critical mass, uh, to say, let's take a look at the gospels, let's take a look at the stuff Jesus said, let's take a look at Acts. Let's ask ourselves, is what we do, does it bear any resemblance to that at all? And in a lot of churches, I think the answer is really not so much.

Kerry Wood, host 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Just not so much. And so I think it's a great time to ask a lot of questions. What I try to do with my book, That's Good News, is just get people, let's get just start talking about evangelism. Let's just start having conversation about it. And let's look inside and let's look at where we are. But I think it all begins with just asking ourselves are we in love with Jesus?

Kerry Wood, host 17:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

If we are, it's gonna go one direction. And if we're not, all the programs in the world aren't gonna help us any.

Kerry Wood, host 17:16

Indeed. Indeed. One of the things that that we also heard was, and and this kind of goes back with what uh we heard from from Andy Langford last night, combining with what we got with you and friends. We'll have Andy on in a future podcast. But what I was struck by was you talked in firm for from 2 Timothy about fear and timidity. And we heard yesterday, 1 John 4, perfect love casts out fear. And just the you know, the the parallel and the power of understanding that perfect love casts out fear. Why are Christians so afraid of evangelism?

SPEAKER_01 17:53

I think in some ways we we've got this thing uh messed up. I think at times we look at ourselves and we say, well, we're full of fear, so how do you get the fear out? Wrong question. The question is perfect love casts out fear. The question becomes, how do we get perfect love in? The when we get it in, it will cast things out. When you walked into this room, you didn't have to figure out how to get rid of darkness. You said turn on light.

Kerry Wood, host 18:19

Well, I did have to find the light switch, and that was kind of hard.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

I understand. The light drives away the darkness. It does. I think what we really need to do is look in our own churches, look in our own lives, and just get at this revival component. We need to learn to worship. We need to learn to passionately come before God. We need to learn not just to go to church like spectators and evaluate. We need to understand that when we're at church, we are the worshipers. We play to an audience of one. We're not rating the preacher and the band. Uh God is rating us. Are we truly worshiping? Are we bringing something there? For me, if I'm the problem, there's a solution. If everybody else is the problem, I'm rudderless in an endless ocean. And so for me, I'm always gonna say, I'm the problem. If I am, let's address it. And for my way of thinking, a big part of the problem is we just gotta say to churches, let's get the Bible out. Let's get into the word, let's ask very hard and serious questions, and let's commute foster a community where we can really grow in the love of God and in the love of neighbor and do it in an authentic way, in a in a non-chip on your shoulder kind of way. I don't think chip on the shoulder, I don't think chippy Christianity is gonna play well. I think we've got to stand firm in the word, but I think it has to be motivated by love and by a genuine desire to see, to want the best for people.

Kerry Wood, host 19:54

Right. And we can't expect people to change their behavior if we judge them on their behavior by our standard before they even have had a chance to learn what that biblical standard even looks like.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

We'll never lead anyone to Christ if deep in our hearts we think we're better than they are. Never. And so I I just love this idea of church being a community where we invite people in. I tell our folks, find people that won't fit in here at all. Just give them an invite, see what happens. And if you do, we'll treat them really well. We'll treat them really well. And if they don't, we'll get new ushers. We'll treat them really well, and I'll share the gospel of Jesus Christ with them. And you invite them into a small group. Let's just see what happens. Let's just see what happens. I would like to get back to a more kinetic form of Christianity.

Kerry Wood, host 20:43

Yes. Yeah. Well, I think it has to be relational. If all if we look at evangelism as I get to put notches on my Bible for every win that I get, that's already the wrong attitude.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Well, and I don't see anybody even doing that. To be honest with you, I would feel better if even people did that. I feel like a lot of folks would have to improve to even do it wrong. I just feel like nothing is being done. And I think you're right. I think God can't bless nothing. I look at the miracles. You know, Jesus is out there, everybody's hungry. What's Jesus say? Give me something, right? Give me something to bless here. And I want to equip churches and encourage Christians to give God something to bless. I feel like if you're out there and maybe you got a uh notching kind of Christianity and and all that, and you're a little pushy in evangelism, you know what? I bet you you'll grow into being more effective. But at least they're out there sharing the gospel. I I feel like somebody out there not doing a great job is still infinitely better than 3,000 people criticizing them and doing nothing.

Kerry Wood, host 21:45

Yep. Yep, indeed. So, do you draw a distinction between the spiritual gift of evangelism and someone telling good news to someone else?

SPEAKER_01 21:57

What a great question. I do. I believe that all. Christians are called to share the good news. And I believe there are certain Christians who have been gifted by the Holy Spirit a particular gift in evangelism. And I think those people aren't necessarily better evangelists, because I think if you spread the gospel, if you sow enough seeds, you're going to get results. That's promised in the word. But I think the people with the gifts are the people who train, who just live and breathe it, who encourage people in evangelism, who train folks how to do it. I think that's where that gift comes in. So it would be sort of like, you know, giving, let's say financial giving. Do I believe that some people have a real gift of giving? Absolutely. And God blesses those folks, and all churches need those folks. Do I also believe that all Christians should give? I sure do. And so for me, it is something that is asks of all Christians that we share our faith. And then God has equipped some to really equip the church to do that. And some people are, some people, let's face it, have better personalities for it. They're more outgoing. It's it's sort of like sales, right? Some people are just really good at sales. Uh, but some people are more inclined. But my thing is everybody has their own way, and the only wrong way is not doing it at all.

Kerry Wood, host 23:16

Right. I I agree with you on that. Well, I appreciate your time with me. We've already spent 20 minutes, so I want to give you a chance to give me whatever final thoughts that you feel like the Holy Spirit has given you that you would like to share with us.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

I feel like that we have an exciting opportunity in front of us right now. I feel like not since Paul was walking and sailing around the Mediterranean Sea, has there been a better opportunity to share the good news of Christ? I look at young people today. Uh they don't have issues with the church. They're just lost. Their parents did. They have all kinds of issues. These young people today are just lost. Uh I feel like that we've got some really good news, and I feel like we have a particularly receptive audience in young people today. But we have to be willing to share it. And we have to be, you know, if you're fishing a lake, there's two things you need to know. Number one, you need to know where the fish aren't biting, and you need to document that. And the second one is where are the fish biting? And you need to document that. What we need to do is we need models, we need people out there who are saying, hey, we're really reaching a lot of young people. What we've done in the past is saying, well, that church is really good at evangelism. Let's give them an award, let's make them something other than us. It's sort of like Paul. You know, Paul's a missionary mutant, he, you know, God just particularly, he's not like us. But the fact is, we need to be more like Paul. So let's take churches that are doing this well, and instead of giving them awards, let's let's learn from them. And let's ask ourselves, why are preachers who are reaching a lot of young people, what are they saying? Where are they finding connect points? Churches that are reaching young people, where are they finding connect points? One of the things about our church, our strength is we're intergenerational. So I can't compete for 20-year-old hipsters with churches that are only trying to reach 20-year-old hipsters. I can't compete for 80-year-olds with churches who are only trying to reach 80-year-olds. What we do really well is say, if you want an intergenerational church, uh, I don't think anybody's better than us, and we're all going to give up a little bit of personal preference to have that. And so for me, uh presenting a church that is welcoming to people, a church that's winsome, a church that young people look at and say, you know what, they really do some good things. When they see people that are actually in good moods, that act like life is not a sentence uh but a gift. I I think that there's so many subtle things that aren't hard, you know, just to say to somebody, hey, when you're out, put a smile on your face, you know, be polite to people. Try to, you know, talk like you weren't raised at sea. Uh those kind of things. I think there's just so many little things that churches can do to be more winsome, to offer a more powerful witness. And I think there's a very receptive world. So what I'd really want to say is the gospel's good news. If we share it, we will get responses, and our churches need to be ready to receive people and make disciples of them when they do come.

Kerry Wood, host 26:27

That's a great word for us, Shane. I really appreciate your willingness to give me some extra bonus time, so to speak, because you were up at dark 30 this morning. You started off in a completely different part of the United States. You landed down here, you gave us the inspiration that we needed to hear. You you brought the Holy Spirit's presence among us. Well, the Holy Spirit was already here, but but you helped us to experience the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. And now you gotta fly back and head on to do your next big thing. So thank you so much for taking the time to be with me. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

My next big thing, tomorrow we'll be cutting up some wood uh that uh we need to get out of the way and haul in it in our cabin. So for me, it's been an absolute joy to be here. I I came for one reason, uh, because I felt that the Holy Spirit prompted me to come. Uh and I praise God that it's been a good connection, and I'm glad that whatever it is God has invested in me was an encouragement to you all. It's it's a great honor in my life.

Kerry Wood, host 27:27

Thank you so much. Wow, friends, Shane just really nailed it in so many ways, didn't he? The good news of Jesus Christ, falling in love with him and sharing this with others. I love that Shane is not telling us anything that depends on the size of a congregation to make it effective. He didn't give us anything that is dependent on being a 3,000-plus member church. Whether you've got 30, 300, or 3,000 or anything in between, falling in love with Jesus and letting that be the motivation through which we make an impact into our communities is a timeless, sizeless thing. It's not about the numbers, it's about sharing the love of Christ and letting God take care of everything else. That's what pursuing holiness is all about. If you enjoyed this podcast, please take the time to share it with others. We are on Facebook, you can share it through that, or you can put anything out on X, Twitter, whatever you want to call that these days. We have pursuitholiness.org as our website. You can leave us an email at PursuitHoliness at ncglobalmethodist.org. There are many ways to reach out and engage with me. If you have ideas about a future podcast, please share that so that we can keep going with the good news of what God is doing here in North Carolina. And I look forward to seeing you next time.