Welcome to healing the land with Kevin Mitschelen, brought to us by pure assembly
was Kevin Mitschelen with the program healing the land, and I am stoked about this particular conversation. I love all the conversations we have. But I have one of my, one of my best friends here with me. His name is Pastor Gil. Michelle. I just call him Gil. But I am so grateful that he's been able to be a part of this program. We had a program several years ago. And every now and then we do get together and we still do a like a podcast with this. It was called his stories. And believe it or not, every now and then when I start to do this program, I'll say welcome to his stories like oh, no, no, no, no. And so we have to rerecord that, you know, but that's kind of the biggest gap that I might have, besides eight ohms, and ends and all these other things. But Gil, I just, I just don't know. So I have Gil Michelle, my friend here and a Christian brother. And we're just going to talk about God. And so Gil, I'm so grateful that you're here. Thank you. grateful to be here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I got a, we were talking prior to getting and doing the recording. Sometimes It'd be great if we just had the mic running. Right? Yeah. Then we should be good to talk to the engineer. Oh, my God. This is really good. I know. But we I asked you a question. What's life been like in the last four to five weeks? It was kind of like a job moment. A little bit? Yep. Would that make sense?
Yep. that would that would apply? Yeah, there. Yeah. about that. Yeah. You know, probably to anyone's surprise, you know, I got bit bitten with the COVID. bug. And yeah, it was, it was pretty, it was a pretty, pretty harrowing experience. I you know, Wonder getting sick, my wife had it first. And her conditions kind of kind of cleared up probably in that 10 days. She'll joke around and say off because you're old. So, but I think it had something to do with my prior conditions I have I'm diabetic, and what have you. And so it just, it lingered for a bit when got some alternative medicines and those, like, prove the liberabit. But then I wanted to kind of quickly descending and having to be hospitalized one time. And then they discharged me I think pretty materially and then Few days later, my wife was getting really worried and then wonder, taking me to the ER again, where I was hospitalized for the next four or five days again, and, and have been kind of on demand since then. So I'm doing much better than I was four weeks ago, but just daily gaining strength.
So what does that look like? When you're going through that process? And your relationship then that happens with God? Now hold on. Yeah, you
know, What's so funny? I will share with my church I was like, you know, you guys go away and he powerful You know, this epiphany Did you think God speak to you in the hospital? And I was like, you know, it's really something is absolutely no desire to pray. I just surviving. I think I picked up my Bible on the second last day and I was in the hospital. I absolutely have like, I was like, I'm not interested. And people like what? Oh, great leader. You don't have any deep revelation to share with us. I was like, I was tired. Yeah, I was. I was extremely tired. It winded me to get up and walk from my bed to the bathroom. And I was literally doubled over, like, out of breath and winded and so absolutely no desire to pick up a Bible. But when I got out and started getting my strength, the Lord really dealt with me. My wife was like, Hey, we're gonna go camping. We're gonna go to the woods. We're gonna go to a campsite. And I was like, I don't want God to talk to me while I'm being bit by mosquitoes. I'm like, No, I'm good. And she was like, you need to go. And so I went and we went with another family. They brought their camper as well. And we just we just sat we talked, and they refused to let me do anything which I was no good for anything anyway, but you're like, Don't pick up anything, you just rest. And God really began to deal with me. The deepest revelation I received with about the pace of life that I I was living I had been living at and you know, I think a lot of pastors will attest that they go, they do. They do they do? And they don't just get to be. Yeah. And you know, I don't like derive a salary or anything for my church. So I I'm also working and I'm making a living and I'm you're pitching your tents like Paul. Absolutely. And so man your tents not pitching?
Yeah.
Now you can't be your boy, you
can't make a man a pitcher. So yeah, it wasn't it was like, Man, I'm burning the candle on both ends. And, you know, I remember hearing someone say a long time ago, like God calls us to be living sacrifices, and not burnt offerings. And I was getting burned out and but I was hoping I was learning how to deal with it. But God really just began to deal with me about pace. And so I'm like, what, what's the use of doing doing doing if you don't have that personal intimacy with the Lord, if you don't sit at his feet, if you don't just sit and just have time to think and consider business coaches will even tell business owners that if you keep working in your business and not on your business, it'll never grow, you'll just feel like you're in this hamster wheel, doing all the things and never really taken time to dream and vision. And just sit, you don't even have to be thinking about some big grand vision, just have time to sit and think about what you did the day to day for the day or for the week. And I think, our our society, our culture is so ambitious and driven, that we don't we don't learn how to just sit. And so when I was literally in this campsite, I'm just the day would go by and I was like, man, just enjoying conversations and considering things. And the Lord really just dealt with me about pace.
Yeah. What's interesting, as you're talking about that, in my own little world, because I always race back to me, right. And this last weekend, we had a family reunion, it was a great reunion and everything built up the one thing that it's been difficult to try to explain what pure assembly does. Because the first question is, well, what do you do? And I said, Well, we bring people we try to bring people to prayer, and unity, we want to see the body come to together in unity and edify the Lord and I need to repent of things in my life and we call to repentance to as pure Yeah, yeah. And we tried to edify people. Yeah. And know what do you do? That's the next question. And like, well, in the past, we would you know, work with teenage kids and boom, they light up. Right? What do you do? What do you do? And but praying and what you're discussing, talking about of being in communion with God, we in the Western world anyways, we don't go there that we that's not their first thought, even as believers, but in the Bible that got it. You see, the disciples pray first, boom, then you see things happen. All the doing happens out there doing happen after the prayer time. Yep. And I can just so grateful that you were able to get that time with God. Yep. After you started feeling a little bit better. Yeah.
Yeah. And you pace, right. As a matter of fact, what the Lord began revealing to me is that, if you would pick this time upfront, to spend with me and to and to be when you go to do, it won't be really you doing it. And you talk about? You talk about the apostles, yeah. You spend time with the Lord. First, they prayed, Lord, grant his boldness by this and did it. And then the place was shaking where they were and you're like, Whoa, we clearly didn't do that. And doors open and the gospel gets multiplied. And this is my posts on the upper room. They're praying for all this time. 120 up in their upper room. Peters preaches a message 1000s come to the Lord is like, so if we would learn to do that work upfront with the Lord, the doing won't feel so much like doing right. It'll actually feel like we're just you along for the ride. I'm just along for the ride. It's really the Holy Spirit doing the work. So it makes it that much easier if quote, unquote, easier to do the work to do the do. If we would learn to first be Yeah. I love
that. Yeah. That's an incredible part. And and, you know, you you have a church in downtown South Bend called that church downtown. It is not this, but that church, that your church. Yeah. And it's just been covered with prayer. Yeah,
it has this past year doing COVID. One of the things I was just sharing this a couple minutes ago. One of the things that has happened is that the prayer culture in our church has changed. When you have nothing to do but pray, and people are like, well, what are you going to do? We're going to pray together and pray. And people like, hey, are we getting back together? more to do that together? We're gonna have to start having services like we are, we are gathering off of prayer.
It's like, No, no, no.
No, when when's the music coming? When's the good preaching happening? Like, we're gonna get there? So actually, for a whole year, we gathered every Sunday people like, hey, are we meeting? meeting, we're gonna pray that prayer. Wasn't was well attended. Training. People are not that excited. But we're like, so out of that core, but people were coming. Some people were coming, and we were praying together. And we would like we the culture of our church changed dramatically. There wasn't more attendance, there's actually less attendance. But the people that will come and we were praying, yeah. It's like, what if this became our norm? Like, this is what the early church did. They came together, and they prayed. And we kept asking, when are we supposed to open back up? When are we supposed to gather again? Just keep praying. Yeah. And members were dropping. But we were kept praying. And we're like, Lord, do we stop? Like, we need to stop the hemorrhaging? Like, we need to do something people are leaving. And he was like, Okay, keep praying. So every Sunday, every Wednesday, a group of women started praying on Monday, we became a praying church. Less attended, but a praying church. Yeah. And, and, and we were like, and we're okay with this. Yeah. If we don't grow anymore. If we come become a people who are dependent upon hearing the voice of God, and appealing to God, then I don't think we could go wrong. Yeah. So that's what happened. And that's, that's where we were. That's where we have been, we're going to continue to be a praying church. And we'll see what God does.
I love that incredible model. Because the one one thing I've shared this to other people, and I think I said these to you, I repeat my stuff in my stories all time, but I'm getting old and struggling to make a true day. But the one thing is that the best thing about 2020 is what the church had to learn. And that is the power of prayer, because you mentioned there's nothing else you can do. And if there's nothing else that I can do, what better thing to do than pray, then pray. Yep, it strips. It's like being on a cruise ship, and all of a sudden, everything. And now your rooms and everything have been totally vacated. And you're in the hall of his ship. And that's basically what you got, but you're floating. And you're going through just like you normally would, yep. But in a whole different way. And it's the full dependence upon God.
Absolutely. I'll say this. And you don't even know this. And we I never told you this. But I was coming back. It was shortly after I got out of the hospital. And it was one of the first times I had to drive somewhere. And so I had to drive because my wife had to run out Sunday, she had two kids with her. And so I'm like, man, I need to get to the store and get pick up something but I don't really want to drive but I had to so I drove and I came back and I was coming down from Michigan Street and I saw you and I, I didn't have enough dress to even stop. But you're standing there on the corner for another post office with a big sign saying how can I pray for you? You're standing there by yourself. And I was driving I was a tear came tears came down my eyes. And I'm like, here's Kevin out here. Praying, asking people how to pray standing by himself. And and I went home like, I wish I could stand out there with him. But I didn't have enough strength to even how to get out of the car. So I'm like, well, that's not happening. But but it's like those type of moments. You're like, Man, this is this is what's really important. Yeah,
yes. Well, that brings us to the break already. It's hard to believe again, every time every time we do this show. I'm like, man, 14 minutes just has gone by. And so we're coming down to the last few seconds. But if you do have an opportunity, if you can go to pure assembly.com that would be wonderful. Pure assembly comm that that way, we can also connect with you. We'd love to be able to say hi to you. So we're going to have an advertisement for pure assembly and then we'll be back in a few seconds.
Hi, I'm Dawn board member of pure and healing the land is brought to you by pure assembly. Pure assembly is a nonprofit with a mission to heal the wounds of A divided and injured nation through prayer, unity, repentance, and edification. To learn more about us, check us out at www dot payoor assembly.com or find us on Facebook. Just search for pure assembly. While you're there, we'd love you to like us too. Thanks for listening to healing the land.
Well, this is Kevin Mitschelen. With the program healing land I would like to I didn't do this in the beginning of the program the last of the last segment and that is we at pure assembly are trying to do a Buddhist feel called the to the power of prayer. Weird, Gil and I, we were talking about in the first segment about the power of prayer. And we like to call if you're a pastor or ministry leader, or you know what just you just want to follow this and you want to see this, this particular model, go through, we're calling people for 180 days of prayer. And we're going to start that in September 1. So when this program does air, it's going to be about writing that that zone route, right? And at that time, so if you can take a look at our website, we just it's very simple. I love keeping things simple. And the more, the easier, the better. And so I started, I just pressed in awards, and what is it that besides just calling people to prayers, there's something that we could have people follow? Is there some sort of thing that we could have made by the calendar? I don't know. It's complicated. I don't want to get complicated. So um, as I was driving down the road, I actually ran out of gas one time, and which my wife actually graciously said, teenagers run out of gas. I don't know why you ran out of gas. You're not a teenager. You're 52 years old. And I go, you're correct. You're exactly right. That because I always tell my wife she's right. And keeps me married. There you go. She's a beautiful bride. I love her. She's listening. And I said, you're correct. But it reminded me God hit me really hard. And it reminded me that Guess what, if I don't pray, I ran out of gas. And I can't go anywhere, I can have the nicest, fanciest vehicle, the fanciest truck in the whole wide world, and the natural, but if I don't have gas in that gas tank, I go nowhere. And if you have a Tesla, you'll have electric in that car. You're not going anywhere, you have to power up. And the one thing that I found is that when we are able to pray a commune with God, things do change. And in ways, maybe we just don't expect, but they change. And so if you get an opportunity, go to pure assembly.com. That little plug here and you can find that area where we can talk about prayer. And it's the simple part is it's the Lord's Prayer, switch Jesus Christ. You don't have to follow that by by rote, you know, but at the same time, spend five minutes Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, spend five minutes, just five minutes on how to be your name, Lord, and giving him praise and then going to the next section. And there's that but we figured it out. It's about if you do eat sections, about 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes, you watch much more TV than 30 minutes or some gaming system, whatever Facebook videos, yeah. Amen to that. And, and so we got Gil back here, and like to be able to, we were talking about prayer. And I love Gil and Gil's heart is just always pointing to Jesus Christ. And so good. I'm glad you're on the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So we were talking last about prayer and in your church and in the in how things have changed. In your church because of prayer.
Yeah, yeah, it's changed. And it hasn't looked the way we thought it would. You know, at the, at the onset of, of the pandemic, and churches kind of being forced to close and not meet in person. And we started live streaming, just kind of like everyone else, but we were doing it already, which is good. I'm so glad that we were to be live streaming. I was doing devotionals a few times a week. And it was like gaming. LSF is gaining traction. It was great. But churches started reopening. And we were like, because we were praying when I could, Lord, we don't want to follow the crowd. What should we do? And the Lord like, Don't open yet. Don't like, okay, and if time was going on, and people not church was like, hey, if we feel like the need to go elsewhere, we just need to be in service somewhere. And you know, churches not doing it right now. So we just got to go to another church, and we're like, okay, yeah, yeah. So and don't go into good churches, people that pastors and churches that we know of, it's like, there was no harm or whatever. But it was like, okay, but I've kept looking at the Lord like, well, what's How about us? So our churches were already a small church, right? Yeah. of maybe 80 people. 8090 people, but
it's an inner city. Yeah. Yeah. People a lot of times and I did about inner city church. People don't throw into the inner city. No, no, no.
People weren't coming out from Yeah, their subdivisions to be I mean, some people are coming from Carlisle. And yeah, so it was, that was cool. And our church is pretty well, like mixed. Yeah, racially, and stuff like that. Yeah, age wise, and it sounds all cool. But people just felt like, man, we need to we need to move on. And we're like, Okay, and so it was fine. But I was like, Man, that church is shrinking, and we're continuing to pray. And I thought everyone else is opening up, we should get back to this, you know, back to services. And what I realized, Kevin, is that we were really good at services. Were very good. I don't like to brag, but like, worship, the worship at our church, like music wise, he
is amazing.
Okay, so I'm like, man, we it's a Don't do a TED talk. Yeah, yeah. Focusing on God. Oh, yeah. Real quick joke on that show and set wasn't a Christian was like, Oh, that's interesting. You guys, do you mean the concert and a TED talk? Like, oh, wow, how are you looking church? Anyway, so the worship was good. It was half decent preaching, I guess, by me somehow, somehow feels really good. But so it looks like we did services really well. What we realized, though, is that when we started talking to people on how they were kind of processing through the pandemic, political stuff that was going on racial tension stuff, people were not doing okay, they weren't navigating those waters. Well, particularly like people inish in their personal walk in their faith. And so we said this when I was like, I said to our elders, team, like, we do services really well. We're not doing a good job on discipleship. And when what's been what's kind of revealing is that people don't have a real solid walk on their own. Yeah, it's almost like arch church like churches become like the shot in the arm. Like, let me get my head. Yeah, my good worship. My my, my good preaching. Man. I'm good for the week, or I'll come for a midweek, you know, for another hit, you know.
But it almost because the first time we ever heard that.
You know, yeah. Yeah, it's true. It is. And so people, a lot of people don't really have that walk with the Lord, what they, what they get high on what they get filled with his church, and services. So we're like, we're not doing a good job on discipleship. So finally, in May of this year, we felt that the Lord say, Okay, you guys can meet again. But not okay, you did. So it's not an audience style, sort of setup in our church, like it had been our worship team and preaching happen from the stage. It's more like, at all, so it looks like a huge a meeting, like all the chairs are in the sanctuary, but we change them to be in a big circle. Yeah. And we're facing one another. Yeah, we're talking through things instead of me preaching every week. There are times I do teaching, don't you? I mean, I do teach him and stuff like that. But it's like, mostly, I'm facilitating discussion around the scriptures. So we read it together. We reread it together, we ask, Well, what did you how did you read that, and then we start to discuss, and we are served to start at 11 o'clock, and at around used to end up between 1230 1245 those first few weeks, we were meeting at 11. People still hanging around at three o'clock. Because we're praying together, we're now eating together, we do a light lunch together. And like the level of connection is deeper with one another. But more importantly, people are starting to reconnect, to connect with the Lord in a new way. So you leave, they're being encouraged, feeling a little bit more vulnerable, accountable. Because we know like, every week, people are going to really be in your face about where you are with the Lord. And, and so even now starting to, like, grow a little bit too big, in my opinion. So like we're thinking about now how to splinter off into smaller groups, keeping the intimacy and the accountability and transparency so that people are encouraged to grow. And so just like my own pace, we're, as a church, our church went from like, 80, something to like, now, like 30 something Wow. And but I used to be like a little discouraged by like, man, everyone's leave leaving and gone. But now I'm like, it's this whole thing of quality over quantity. But what the Lord said to us, if you are faithful with this, and sowing into relationships, and making sure that people have you put your stock into people really authentically walking with the Lord, I'm telling you, it's not a bad investment. And you're going to see the results of it later. So we're just like, let's just be faithful with who's coming, pouring into them. And already, we're hearing a young lady's wanting to start another group like this in her apartment complex, another older gentlemen, x enforcer with gangs and stuff, like it's like, I want to start this in the senior committed community. I'm living in. A group wants to start on Laporte in new Carlisle. And someone wants to start a group like this in a local cafe and we're like, okay, yeah, like we don't have to rush. We don't have to, like we're not on this schedule to grow by X amount percent every year. Let's just make sure we are connecting with the Lord and doing this thing correctly. And let's just let things grow organically. Yeah. This mindset that we've kind of this business mindset that we've put on the kingdom is a little toxic. Yeah. And I think it's made us make decisions that are financially based, ego based.
Growth based ego, ego, like
people Ask you like, as soon as they ask you pastor a church, how big is your church? I mean, will you run any
misers? It's like when you're in college, what your GPA? What's your GPA? Yeah,
it's almost like how much do you earn, like, how much you make what kind of car you drive by the sizing up when it comes to areas of the kingdom, which is just, it's unhealthy. And I love, love now getting together. Not that I didn't before, but I love it even more. When we get together on Sunday. And people are like, well, what's what's planned? Like? I don't know, how does the session is gonna go? I don't know how the word is gonna go. We started on one thing, a guy comes in off the street. We're talking about the prodigal son. This guy was a prodigal son. Yeah. And man, the healing that happened that Sunday, this guy is bawling on his knees crying out to God. We surround him in prayer. That Sunday went particularly long, but no one was looking at the clock.
What is it just Sunday.
Awesome Sunday. And then we have lunch. And we're just praising God for what he's done. And it's just we can program God right out of things if we're not careful. And so anyway, I say all that to say like, in the same way, my personal pace has been adjusted. We've done the same thing. Now. It's, it's now happening with our church, and many people in our churches lives. And so we're like, let's go after the real. And let's go after what's really true and authentic. Those things that are true those things out of good report, though, think, put your heart and your mind on those things. And we've made a decision as a church to try to do that. And as a result, it has been yielding some really good fruit. I mean, we're really early in on this. We've been only doing it for a few months, but it's been it's been really rewarding.
And I what's interesting, too, is you mentioned the model, but actually, I see more and more different people trying to go into that. That area. You know, Francis Chan. Yep, I talked about some of those themes thing. I actually read
his book, so he told me, I hate what you're doing. You need to read Francis Chan and I'm like, Okay. Oh, well, that's a good company.
there's a there's a gentleman that he's trying to do something noble County. He's trying to do this some of the same exact thing. Were you talking about? The spirit I say that because the Lord is moving in a direction that is exciting to see. When we're coming down. Dog come down last few seconds. Man, Doggone it. You said that now, two times. I've said pray please. Pray we'll hear later. But you know, it's fun to just sit down with with a really good friend. Yeah, talk about Absolutely. And and to see where God's moving you and where he's moving your family but he's also moving the church in which he's he's given you the ability to unsullied? Praise God for what he's doing. And I'm glad you're able to get through COVID Me too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And boys sometime we need to be able to hear your beautiful wife's voice. So yeah. So anyway, we're down to zero seconds here. And I just want to say thanks to those who put some money into the program so we could be will air this on the radio. And so praise God for that. And if you get to do get a chance, go to pure assembly, calm, pure assembly calm. I'll say one more time for your assembly Comm. We'll see you over there too. Thanks, God bless. Bye.
Second Chronicles 714. If my people who are called by my name, humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked way, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land. Healing the land is brought to you by pure assembly. Pure assembly is a nonprofit with a mission to heal the wounds of A divided and injured nation through prayer, unity, repentance and edification. For more ways to get involved and to be a part of their ministry. You can reach them@www.hp your assembly calm. That's p u r e assembly.com. Or look for pure assembly on Facebook.