Video Transcript: Lesson 6 Patient History: How Did We Get Here

Hello, welcome back to Christian leaders Institute. I'm John Kenny, and I am just so happy that you are watching that you're doing a just a wonderful act of  obedience in pursuing revitalization in your church or in your ministry. It's  definitely I'll say this 100 times throughout these lectures, it's very hard. It's very  challenging. But I don't know if there's anything I've done in ministry, that is  exciting, or as rewarding or gratifying, as seeing God breath new life into  something that that had been given up on. And I love it. And I'm so glad you're  you're with me in this and I look forward to the joy that you're going to have, as  you see God doing some good work in your life, and in your ministry. So this  lecture, we're gonna be continuing on, in our analogy that we've had the story of about going to the doctor, remember, the first lecture of this series, we talked  about going to the doctor, but them not even asking anything, you know, we  wouldn't feel very comfortable with a doctor diagnosing us without knowing what was wrong without even asking us or prescribing. So we we talked last time  about getting vital signs and how that really helps a doctor or nurse diagnose  what's going on with you, it gives him some information and how assessments  are going to help you with that as well. That's going to be your vital signs, and  you're going to be able to see what's going on kind of underneath the surface  internally, in the life of the church. Another thing, that if you go to a doctor, and  you know, you've got aches and pains, and whatever going on. And the doctor is trying to address the cause. Once the doctor takes the vital signs or the nurse  takes the vital signs, they will also take a patient history, right? They're gonna  want to know your medical history, they'll say, Have you How long have you had  this? You know, the aches and the pains and the fever and the cough? How long have you had this? Two days? Two months? They want to know that? Have you  ever had it before? What's your family medical history? Have other people in  your family had this? Do you have any other symptoms? How often do you feel  this way? All these kinds of things, right? And they might ask of any, like  Associated Diseases and those sort of things going on, they want to know,  really, what is your story, and between the vital signs in your description of  what's going on, and you giving them some background, some patient history,  they're really now in a much better position to be able to diagnose what's going  on? Well, you have this and this and this and your blood test says this, And  these numbers are here. And you've had this before. And you're you know, your  brother suffered from this and and that gives us a really holistic picture that the  doctor can then use to properly diagnose what is going on, so that he can begin  the process of making you more healthy, right? So as the doctor gets more  answers, really helps connect the dots. Now, your challenge in your position in  ministry is that you need to know the story of your church, wherever you're at or  your ministry in order to address today's problems. Okay, and your your your  task is really to, to dig into that, that history, to be able to see patterns and  trends and insights that will help you understand why your church is the way it 

is. Okay? So, obviously in Scripture, we've got plenty of biblical examples where we are told, you know about, don't forget your history, go back. Remember,  teach these stories, you know, don't let people forget where we've come from,  right? A few. So future generations will remember the Exodus story. That's really, you know, the commands of the Lord in Deuteronomy. That's what the context is there. And in Judges 2:10 we see that they had not done that. And it said that  that generation they did not know the Lord or His ways. Now why didn't they  know about the Lord in His ways? Well, because they didn't have any sense of  who they were or what their History was or how they got to be in the Promised  Land or, or what God expected of them. Right? So. So scripture, there's this,  there's this basis, there's this example of this command that God says, Don't  forget what I've done. You know, remember it, you know, who I am and how I've  moved in this place. Don't just forget about it. Don't pretend like you just showed up. And, you know, and I just showed up with you for the first time like, so when I got to my church, it was 156 years old, like God had done an awful lot of things  there. And it would have been foolish for me just to like, ignore that and be like,  well, I guess, God's finally ready to get going here. Because Because I showed  up, right? I mean, so we don't want to do that. We don't want to fall into the trap  of thinking that history has nothing to teach us. Because again, we want to  understand the history. So that'll help us understand more and more about why  things are as they are today. So let's pray. God, we acknowledge that you are  the God of history, that you have moved in our places, long before Lord we got  there. We are excited, Lord, to think about not just what you've done, but what  you will yet continue to do. So God, we just give you thanks, and praise and  help us to understand the importance of not of looking back in order to be able  to look ahead, we pray this in Your name, amen. So what I would challenge you  to do in talking about history, becoming a subject matter expert, that kind of stuff, is this is, again, make yourself the subject matter expert of your church and get  as much written and oral history as you can. You know, what are the big  moments? The big decisions, the things that change the trajectory, the things  that people still talk about that happened a long time ago? Or what were the  splits or the scandals or the seasons, where things were just going really, really  well? Things that really put the church on the map in the community? Those  kinds of things? Who were some of the significant people, why were they  significant? What did they do? What was their influence, really trying to get, you  know, just all those sorts of things, just really trying to gather that, pull it  together. Just so you know, like, this is what's happened here, before, okay. And  then really, I think, just praying for discernment, God help me to kind of  understand this help me to pull all these things together. So that I understand  why we are the way we are today. And so I have an idea. So how we can move  into the future, how we can, you know, hold on to the things that we want to hold on to, and how we can undo the things that we want to undo. Now, the important

thing about going back into the past is like, we don't want to like, like, we're  we're going to try to be what we were in 1963. You know, we don't want to live in the past, that's traditionalism, and that kills the church. And we'll talk about that  in a little bit in a future lecture, so it's not about traditionalism, but it's about  seeing and honoring what God has done through through the life and the history of the place you are at. And again, you'll begin to understand why why are things the way they are? Why do people think a certain way here about things? Why  are some things valued, and why are other things not valued? And what are  some of the hurts and trials that have introduced themselves that have created  an unhealthy culture. So just to give you a quick example of this, I'll talk to you  about my church again, when I got there. It was 156, 160 was 1850. And I got  there in 2006 was a hundred, Yes, 156 years old. So it was founded in 1850 by  a group of Dutch speaking immigrants, and the area was just being settled. And  they wanted a Dutch speaking church where their children had come to new  country, and they wanted to raise their kids in faith. And so it was a very ethnic  Church. The services were in Dutch and it was very family based it was a lot of  when the when the immigrants were settling, it was a lot of extended family. So  the church was a lot of family relations and that kind of a thing? Over the course  of time in the late 1800s, there were multiple splits that happened at the church,  the church burned down three times, within the span of about 25 years. There  was a time in the early 1900s, when the people have been settled here for a  long enough time. And then children were speaking English, not Dutch. And as  they grew up, then the church services switched from Dutch over to English. For the bulk of the 20th century, it was a very stable church. It was really the flagship church in our community. Again, it was it was made up of several very large,  extended families, kind of like five or six big clans, where it kind of seemed like  everybody was related. We were in most of the 20th century, the town I'm in is  was a very, very strong Christian community, like 95% of people went to church,  all the stores were closed, everybody went to a church. Then towards the end of the 20th century, there were three, just absolutely disasterous scandals with  pastors kind of one, right in a row. And my predecessor, it wasn't a scandal, but  he was dismissed very quickly after he got here, there was a period of a couple  of years between him and me, where they had gone without any leadership.  Okay, so that's kind of the situation I was walking into. And it wasn't until I'd been here for a long time. And I really started to focus on the history that I really  began to understand why things were the way they were, because our church  had almost zero evangelism. Okay. And, and, and it was like, Well, why was  that? Why did we have almost no evangelism, okay? Because the church was  started with this idea that the church is for us, it's for our kids, we want to raise  our children like, that was in the DNA of the church from day one in 1850. Right.  So it was always about our family and extended families, right. And then also,  the town was largely Christian for the first, you know, 140 years of its existence. 

So when they thought about spreading the gospel, or evangelism, spreading the gospel, that kind of stuff. It was like, like, in another country, it was like it was  over there it was. So when we talked about sharing the gospel, like, with  neighbors and stuff, as strange as it sounds, it was completely foreign. They had for 150 plus years, they had not thought about it that way. It was the church, like, it's for me and my family. And if we're going to share the gospel, we're going to  write a check for a missionary who's like, 1000s of miles away on the other side  of the world. There was also very little accountability at the church. And so that  was very frustrating, because people would show up to meetings and people  wouldn't be ready to go and, or there would be some conflict, and it would not be dealt with very well would kind of just be ignored. And it was like, it was just kind  of, it was just a hard place to be. And so when I thought about the history,  though, I realized, well, there were lots of family relationships. And, you know,  it's hard to confront, you know, Uncle Larry at church on Sunday, when you're  going to his house for dinner right afterwards. And, you know, that so and so  was running a meeting, but nobody showed up, or they came unprepared. Well,  that's my nephew. And so these kinds of, and there was already tension there  between their wives. And so nobody wanted to stir the pot. And that was like,  Let's just all get along. And. And then, we had these unhealthy kind of family  dynamics, like I said, that kind of were carried into the church life. And so  because the church had operated this way for, like, over a century, like a century and a half, that was so ingrained in the culture, that wasn't about to change  overnight. And even at the end of the 20th century, when a lot of these clans  started to break up, and we became a little more transient people who came into the church, they just started to function the way the people who remained did,  right. So they just became, they were just kind of copying what they saw. They  were going to kind of morph into whatever we were whatever culture existed.  And so even though some of these things had their origins from like, 100 years  ago, people were acting that way today because that's just the way the culture  is. And then the people that were going to come after them, they were going to  act that way, because they were acting that way. Okay. I also learned that I was  really frustrated that my, it seemed like everything had to come through me. And  I was the choke point like that we just didn't have a lot of leaders. And I was just  over functioning in a lot of areas and departments just kind of doing way too  much. And then I realized, like, Okay, so in our, in the Dutch background, and  I'm not Dutch, but in the Dutch background, the pastor used to be called by the  Dutch word Domine. And that means lord. So that's what the pastor was called,  lord. And so the pastor had all the authority, every you know, you couldn't do  any, you couldn't sneeze without asking the pastor. So when I got there, and I  was trying to do all these things, I became very frustrated, that I didn't have a lot  of leaders to work with. And it just seemed like kind of everybody was sitting on  their hands waiting for me to do something. And then when I realized, well, that's

how this church that was the culture. That's that's what this church has been, for a really long time. Even though they don't call me Domine. They haven't for a  pastor at our church for many, many, many, many years. That's still part of who  we are. And that was really why we had very little lay development, like we had  no structures in place for people to grow as leaders for people to be identified as leaders, for people to train as leaders. We didn't have any kind of apprenticing  anything like that it was, it was a very flat leadership structure, like it just was not really healthy at all. But again, I only figured that out. Once I understood the  history, and it couldn't be as simple as like, going back to the evangelism. If we  just have an evangelism class, we'll do better at that no, like, it's never been  valued. We've never talked about it. So if I do a class, it's great. Three people  will come but then nobody will ever do it. Or with lay leadership, it's like, well, I'm going to try to really develop people to take over ministries, but they're not ever  going to see themselves as being somebody who has any authority or any  responsibility. So was like, a lot, a whole changing church culture. And also,  because of the pastoral scandals that had come before me and the pastor who  had been forced out, there was just a lack of just a real lack of trust in the  leadership, whether it was me or elders or deacons, there was just a real  disconnect. And it was kind of funny, because somebody would be an elder for  three years, and the congregation would just trust them. But this person would  try to get the congregation to, you know, believe in them and trust them. But  then as soon as that person stopped serving, and they were part of the  congregation, they immediately had a sense of distrust about those who were  leadership, even if it was their friends, the people they just served with. Because as we went through the church went through those scandals, the church and  trying to protect the privacy of like the pastor's family, like the wives and the  children who were involved. They just didn't say much. They didn't give a lot of,  you know, they didn't give the dirt on why that happened. And so the church felt  very distrustful, well, why is this happening? And why aren't you saying  anything? And so after that happened a number of times, the congregation just  was like, we don't we just don't trust the leaders. We just don't trust leaders. And so there were some good things, though. I learned as well, that the church,  whenever there was a season of adversity, the Lord was always very faithful to  it. And it led it during dark times. This was really encouraging to me. And it was  something we could share and say, Look, you know, whenever the chips are  down, God has always showed up, he's always been faithful, like when we've  needed him most God has never forsaken this church in 156 years, he is  present. He is here, through fires and scandals and splits the Lord has a  purpose for this place, and he makes himself known when we need him to.  Okay, that was a big thing. I also learned a bit about the critical role of  leadership, and that whenever the leadership was strong in the church and good pastors, the church would thrive. But then whenever that there were 

Somebody's not good leading, whether in terms of integrity or effectiveness the  church would go down. And so just being reminded this critical role that if I  would commit myself to, you know, the right practices and to be the right kind of  man that God wanted me to be that this church, that history said that the church  would respond to it, that God would honor it and things, positive things could  happen through that. Okay, also learned quite a bit about this Power of unity,  that the church, again, during really strong seasons, was united, it was together,  they had a common way of thinking about things and what they wanted to  achieve and what they wanted to accomplish. They loved each other very much. But I also learned that it was worse during the times of division, when there  wasn't unity the church stalled, declined, there was tension, you know, the  church split, lots of people left, all that kind of stuff that so that if we were going  to go forward in in revitalization, like, if we could somehow stay unified, we can  stay connected, we would, we would be, we would have a lot of wind in our  sails. favorable thing. And then also, one of the things I learned from our history  was that the church always thrived when it understood and it met the needs of  the community. So in the beginning, when there were new immigrants and new  people, new Dutch settlers would show up in our town, and they would be  welcome and drawn in the church did well, because it just understood that need  the church grew quite a bit when it went from English or one on one from Dutch  to English, because it realized the community had changed. And if they were  going to have effective ministry, and they were going to reach the younger  generations, they needed to do it in English, it couldn't be in Dutch anymore.  When there were times where ministries needed to get updated a couple of big  significant ministries in our church that ran away for a certain way for 50 years,  and then some radical change came in and it to meet the needs and to be more  relevant to what was going on in our world. The church really thrived. So these  are the things that you know, kind of really, I learned. And as I learned them, one again, it helped me understand this is why things are the way they are. It helped  me share like, very positively, like, God's been here. He's good, he's faithful, we  have nothing to, you know, fear in terms of God not showing up again, if we do  the things, or if we become the people that we have been in the past, okay, so  it's really critical. And I found that in engaging, I would certainly say with the  older generation of our church, how important this was when they had a sense  that the past was honored, the contributions that they had made in the past were recognized and appreciated and the sense that we acknowledged that we're  standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. Like, it just made them  feel a part of what we're doing now. You know, we weren't just like, okay,  everything that's ever happened here is garbage. And now it's bad. And now  we're going to do something else that's actually good for once. You know, that  just turns everybody off, who's been around. So we're celebrating God, we're  honoring God, and we're acknowledging the work of the people who have come 

before us. And that just really brought them into the revitalization process. Again, we weren't trying to live in the past. We're not trying to recreate the past, but we  want to learn from the past. We want to honor the past, so that we can live in the present in order to do effective ministry in the future. So kind of putting it all  

together. I would encourage you to once you've done your assessment, which  again, I really, really encourage you to do an assessment to get those  assessment results and then to share them with readership. share those with  those who took it, you know, kind of let people know this is where we're at.  We're not embarrassed, we're not ashamed. This is who we are. We're going to  go forward from here. I would also challenge you then to whatever however you  do this sharing the history, share it the good history, the bad history you like,  learn from your mistakes, learn from the seasons of success, right? And then  kind of the third stage is really share a draw some lines of cause and effect  between the two. Okay, so we're, we really struggle in this area of an  assessment, why is that? Look to the past, because that's why you're doing  things the way you are now. You know, we've never valued this. You know, we're not, we're not, we've never thought this was never an important thing for us.  Well, why is that? Well, there's a reason because other things were important or  whatever. Okay, so, draw, draw the lines here. And we want to always, of  course, we want to celebrate the good now, doing the assessment and taking a  medic, like our medical history, or patient history of your church. That's a lot of  work. It's certainly you're not going to do it overnight. But I want to challenge you to do both. Because I think it's one of the things like if you just listen to the  lectures, but you don't really engage in this process, like nothing's gonna  happen, like, we're having a nice chat, and you're learning some things about  revitalization about me and my church, what we've done, but if you don't do  these things, like nothing's gonna happen. And that's just my challenge. And,  you know, for us, the history ended up being like a booklet. You know, it's kind of a more formal thing. And it doesn't have to be that it can be, you know,  whatever, whatever form you want it to be. But like, if you don't know what your  church has been through, you're not going to understand why it is the way it is  now. And you're certainly not going to be able to then figure out how to make it  better how to make it healthier, right. So I want to just end here with a blessing  for you guys. Love you guys. I appreciate what you're doing. Let's not forget the  you know that the Lord is in charge of all of this. This is his church. It's his bride.  He died for it. And he's empowering us to do it. So what if you're watching this?  Read this along with me as just our final benediction and just a reaffirmation of  the power of Christ. He is before all things and in Him, all things hold together,  and he is the head of the body, the church, Lord Jesus, we thank You that You  are the head of the church. May we be found faithful in our day? And May those  Lord in the future who look back on us find much faithfulness, and much to build  on? We pray this in Your name, amen.