Welcome to healing the land with Kevin Mitschelen, brought to us by pure assembly.
Welcome to healing the land. This is Kevin Mitschelen. And as every week goes by, I'm just very amazed that we're able to do this and be able to take a little bit of time and talk about Jesus Christ in today we have
a friend, fast friend that's coming. His name's Kevin Moore and pastor Kevin Morin. And we're going to kind of explore some of the things that he's doing with a church that is being represented over noble County. Before we get to that, I just want to also share with you just a few things that pure assembly is doing with our organization and what what God has given to us. One is the 180 days of prayer, I hope that you'll look at at that at at our website. It's pure assembly, calm, pure assembly.com. So with saying all that, I want to be able to welcome our guest this morning. His name's Kevin Moore, and Kevin's Good to have you here. Oh, man, thank you. Thank you so much for your friendship, or our fast friendship, getting to know each other real quick, and also for the invitation. I really appreciate it, man. Awesome. Thank you. I first time I heard you was at a small church, and over and the church that I attend over napanee missionary and, man, I heard your zeal and your passion number one for Jesus Christ. So let me just start right there. You love Christ? Yes, I do. Yes, yeah, proudly, proudly. Jesus is my Lord. And my savior saved me Love me in the worst. And yeah, I'm crazy. I'm crazy about him, actually. Yeah. How did that begin? Well, I was a pastor's kid. And my dad, my dad became a pastor in the seventh grade. And, man, I love the Lord. I was a good moral boy didn't get much trouble. But in my high school years, I just didn't walk with Jesus. I was moral. I was nice. I was just good enough to not get in trouble, you know, too much trouble. And started dating, who eventually became my wife, Veronica. And at, we got engaged. We got married at 19. Okay. And whenever we get whenever we got married, we just knew we both knew the right way to live, but we had not been living it. And we just decided, man, let's give a heart to the Lord. Wow. So we knelt down beside each other in the by the bed and we gave our hearts to Jesus and have been passionately pursuing him since and up until then it was just like, be moral, be nice. Try your best. But behind the scenes, I wasn't moral and nice at all. And so that's how I came to Christ. And then since then, just four on Jesus, what do you want?
Yes, sir. Yeah, we'll do. And that's a big reason why I had I had to have this guy on the show. Yeah, because there is that drive. And there's that passion that I could see that, that there's this being on fire for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And, and then that also took you out a little bit to California. Is that correct? Yeah, I was a youth pastor. I was a youth pastor from 1992 to 2000, as you mean 9092, to Yeah, to 2000 as a volunteer, okay. And then in 2000, our church and ligonier was able to bring us on full time. And we were there for several more years, and then we went down to Southern Indiana, as a youth pastor. Then we went to Tulsa, Oklahoma and served at a mega church there as a youth pastor, okay, then we went to California, and I was a youth pastor there for a while. But while we were at, in California, we just really felt felt a call to not so much even just plant this one church, but to launch churches, to train leaders, and to send out shepherds that was kind of the clarion call that God gave me, I want you to spend the rest of your life doing these three things. So your disciple maker, tried to be Yeah, I tried to be and then, so we planted the church. And then, through a series of events, we just we thought we'd bronica and I knew for a long time that at some point, we're going to come back to Northern Indiana, specifically the noble County area, to just the best way I could describe it is when we left ligonier the first time is it felt like we knew we're supposed to go we knew we're obeying Jesus, but it felt like when you know when you're tying your shoe, and you do that first little knot, then you do the you know, you do the little rabbit here and there. That's how it felt. We just felt like the knot wasn't finished. There was unfinished work in noble county and through a series of events through through the missionary church through Nappanee missionary church, we were able and empowered to come back and plant and start the process of planting noble County Community Church.
Well, when you're talking about that, that you're approaching this in a in a different way, because prior to us being on the show, we had an opportunity to just kind of talk and see what God's doing in your life and in the ministry and and you have sort of a different recipe for things than maybe the standard
You've mentioned to us statistics as regarding, like the x generation. And could you can you repeat some of those stats? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think we were talking about how that, you know, whenever I play, I only played Madden, like one time a year, we had a thing our family called turkey bowl. And we at Thanksgiving, myself and my son's we play Madden. Why don't we play it once a year. So I don't really know the game that well. And so when we start playing, I pick my favorite team, the Colts and I pick, I find, I find a play that works. And I run that play literally, every single time. It's the only play, I run different variances of it's only play I run. And after a while that play doesn't work as well as it used to. But it's only play. I really know it's the play that I trust. And that play used to work. Yeah, so if I do it again, it might work. It might work again. And so I just keep playing and invariably I lose. It's kind of like the Chicago Bears back in the 70s. They kept me up.
Now, yeah, right, yeah.
But in the church world, Jesus has called us as Christians to make disciples. That's that's the touchdown to make a disciple. And the play that we generally run in the local church to make disciples is get people to come to church on the weekend, have a strong kids program, have a good youth program, hopefully, and let's hopefully get people involved in small groups. And if we run that play, we're going to make disciples. Well, statistically, when you look at the statistics, the, the baby boomer generation, about 80 to 85% of them were in some way form or fashion involved in the church. Yeah, not that they're all believers. But there, there have a Christian religious faith to them, they attend, they attend in some way, right. And then the Buster generation, which I'm on the tail end of that, it's 55%. And then the next generation, it's 15%. And now my daughter's generation, who's 13, it's 3% 3%. So as a body of believers who were trying to make disciples, water normally flows to the path of least resistance, this play used to work for us, this play is a good play, let's just keep running out play over and over again. And I want to say, I love like we were telling her I love the weekend gathering. I love a great weekend service, strong kids program, youth ministry. And, and and get people involved in small I love that play. In fact, we're going to run that play in some ways. But I feel like we need to, we need to add to the repertoire, we need to, if that's the one door, we've been asking people to walk through. culture has changed so much now that we need to offer different doors. Jesus is the only door I'm not talking about changing. I'm not talking about changing the message I'm talking about. How do we get people to, to experience the gospel, it used to be come to church, kid ministry, youth ministry, maybe we'll get you plugged into a small group. That door is not the only door that people want to walk through. Now we need to find other doors for them to find Jesus. And when you're talking about that, I was thinking again, we need to be able to present Jesus Christ. And that that's what that's what matters. That is the secret sauce in this whole thing. But we were also talking about you know, two years ago, things are different than they than they are today. The technology is different. You have all these different things that are hitting us that you know, mon COVID and COVID culture and right now you have you have so many odd things that we would have never expected. So how does the How does the How does this look like? What's the different play? I guess? Yeah. What's it look like? Well, for you, I think it starts I think it starts with you. We've got to look at things, honestly, you so many times we're doing the wrong thing, because we're not looking at something honestly to get I'm not saying that the play we've been running is wrong. I'm not saying Yeah, and I made a mistake. Because Yeah, because you do support that not only do I do it, yeah. I'm all for it. I think it's wonderful. It's beautiful. It's the body of Christ coming together as the accuracy of the there's, they're they're saints. They're they're seekers there. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's wonderful. And not only do I subscribe to it, I push it, I love it. However, we have to be honest and say, the world we live in is different, right? And this where we are now is is people. And not only I don't like it, I don't like anything I'm getting ready to say but it's the truth. Our friends, our family, our aunt and our uncles are no longer they're not looking for Jesus. They're not looking for Jesus.
But everybody's looking for answers.
I need help with my kids.
Should I get the vaccine? Should I not?
I don't know what to do. My mom's sick. I don't have two nickels to rub together. Or I've got so much money in the bank. Why am I so empty, but they're not looking to Jesus. They're not looking for Jesus. They're looking at businesses. They're looking at other nonprofits. They're looking at self help books. They're looking at self medicating, but they're not looking at Jesus, but everybody's looking for answers.
And the other thing is I don't like this either.
Nobody's even looking at each other anymore. But we look at is the internet. So everybody's looking for answers and everybody's looking at the Internet. So why don't we put answers on the internet. So that's one of the doors that we're opening is online content. We have a, you know, not only just a website, but we do Tuesdays tips and we do online content for marriage masterclasses and, and audio books that are free and we put things online to give answers. That's one of the doors.
And then, yeah, we just need to open up multiple doors, what we do, we have three different doors, one is online. The second one is organic, it's organic house groups, one of them meets in a coffee house. The other two right now we have we have a total of four groups. The other three meet in homes. So we do online, we do organic house groups that build into the on site weekend gathering. And I think we need to have multiple expressions of the gospel of Jesus Christ today, in a world that no longer is only going to walk through one door. Everybody's looking for answers. Everybody's looking at the Internet. So let's put answers on the internet. Yeah, not everybody's going to want to come to a weekend gathering. But everybody wants to have connection and community. At noble County Community Church, we talk about that there's three things that every human being longs for community purpose, and answers.
And we know you can find all those in Jesus. We just got to get them to listen. So how do we do that? We do it through online we do with organic groups, and we do it through on site gatherings. Yeah.
Totally go along with what you just said, Everybody has. Everybody has a story. And they want to be able to express that story in some fashion or in some way there's there's in there looking like you just said, even the person who might be that homeless person on the street, they're looking for answers, they're looking for a touch everybody is everybody is it doesn't matter who they are the richest man, the richest person in the CEO. That's one of the reasons why CrossFit so huge people, people are longing for community. You know, they're longing for a purpose. That's why people serve and help with the local t balls leagues, and they should do,
but they're there. Why am I here? Why am I here? And I think for us as the body of Christ, we need to answer those questions and say, you can find community here, and here's how we can help you discover your purpose and walk it out. And here's how we can and your purpose is more than just, you know, being a door greeter or, you know, serving on a ministry team. There's things inside of you that you want to do in the community. We want to help you do that. And then lastly is answers we want to give you answers for marriage give you answers for for parenting give you answers in your finances. Oh, and by the way, all those answers are found in the Bible. Yeah. And we're going to we're going to point you to that, but we've got to, we've got to go where they're looking. And so though those are, that's why we have those three doors. I love that. Thanks, Pastor Kevin, I appreciate that. We're, we're up for a real quick hard break here. And we're going to go to to that heartbreak pure assembly has been very gracious to be able to provide us with the funds to be able to have this program. It's called healing land and what we're talking about here, and we're going to talk a little bit more about this. I call it maybe a secret sauce or secret recipe but should not be secret. So we need to be able to get this out and because people
the program's called healing the land, and God wants to heal the land. He wants to heal you and he wants to heal me. And that is through Jesus Christ. So we'll see in just a few more seconds thanks.
I am dawn board member of pure and healing the land is brought to you by pure assembly. Your assembly is a nonprofit with a mission to heal the wounds of A divided and injured nation. If your prayer, unity, repentance, and edification, to learn more about us, check us out at www dot payoor. Assembly calm or find us on Facebook, just search for pure assembly. While you're there, we'd love you to like us to thanks for listening to healing the land.
Well, we're back. My name is Kevin Mitschelen. Again, thank you for being able to take your time to be able to listen to the program called healing the land. And we know your time is valuable. And so I thank you that you're investing This not only with us, but you're invested in this so that Jesus can be glorified and that's that's the goal in this whole program. And so because we do believe fully that God definitely wants to hold the land and he wants to heal you if there's some things that you're looking at, and you definitely want to find that healing and you don't know where to turn to, hey, we love to be able to have you go to our website, pure assembly calm. And our goal then is to actually get you engaged with a body of christ somewhere. We
We're not the church, if as far as a local church, and we'd love to get you moved in that direction. So
I have Kevin Moore with us. And I'm so grateful that you're here. Hey, thanks for being here. It's the interview of the Kevin's.
Yeah, I didn't, I didn't actually.
That's funny, Kevin's in this world. So I appreciate you taking the time because you're a busy man, that's very grateful for you to do that. We're very grateful that you've done this. In the way I've always approached this kind of time is I just imagine it's a little bit later in the day and I've gone past the coffee stage I kind of imagined just just sitting at a coffee brewery I don't know they call it breweries, but a coffee house, that might be the better way to put it and just saying, Hey, you know what? I saw this talk. And that's kind of the way I approached this. Now's the time.
When we're off the air for just a little bit. We were talking about some of that
recipe what God has given you for noble County. So can we go there? Is that okay to just talk? Yeah, kind of like the process? Yeah. Planting? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, typically what happens in a church plant is,
you you, you get to an area, maybe you do some service projects, you start to gather a core of believers. And once you get enough critical mass for your core believers, and you want it to happen as fast as you can, you start the you start the weekly weekend, gathering Sunday morning, Sunday night, Saturday, whatever it might be. And you start that very quickly. And that's the normal play. That's the normal, that's the normal and what happens because we've done that. And what happens is, is once you I know from experience, and again, I love the weekend gathering, but our goal is to make disciples and so once you start the weekend gathering, if you don't really have the other system set up for discipleship, what can happen if we don't really guard our heart and our systems is as I call it, the tail wags the dog is that everything becomes about man Sunday's comment. Yeah, we got we need three songs. The worship was off last week, how are we doing our transitions, make sure that the audio is better for this week, I gotta write the message. We got kids ministry, we've got this over here, I got a board meeting, we got this, we got to pay the bills for the rent for setup, tear down facility. And again, there's a beauty to all of that. Because those things need to be done to put on that program so that we can express the gospel. But what can happen is is that becomes the whole focus. The focus is Jesus never said do a great worship set. Jesus said, Go and make disciples. Now if we can make disciples by doing a great worship set, yes and Amen. Let's do it. And we hopefully will have a great worship set eventually. But that's not the goal.
And so the way we're planting is a little bit different. Knowing where we are in culture where we need multiple doors, we started to think, Okay, what are the doors that we need? And how do we walk people through them? And also, how do we walk our body through them to where we have the full expressions of the gospel of online, organic and on site? How do we build that? And so what we've started is is online and organic groups kind of go hand in hand. So we've launched some things online in October, it'll go to kind of like a whole new level. But we started putting content on we do Tuesdays tips on our Facebook page. We've got our app we're getting ready to launch our landing page. We do video messages every week on our app, we have a thing called online answers. Where there's a marriage masterclass, there's an audio book called something needs to change its problems people and unanswered prayer to free audio book, we have the dip, what do you do when your child is struggling? All of these are like little mini, five minute series of of messages that are in videos and audios that are all available online. And we push them we promote them. We get those out there and people are watching them and they're sharing them and they're commenting about them. So we've we started that, but then tandemly Now we also we do our house groups, and we raise up and we train up house leaders and we do a big thing on the training side which we talked about off air, right, but we train up our house leaders that out of health and wholeness. They basically gathered together with people that they know, and they do just a few things sounds kind of familiar like x 242. It's the Bible fellowship, breaking bread and prayer. And we read the scriptures together, I put together a short little 10 minute 15 minute video message that we all watch as well that leads to q&a discussion. So there's Bible, there's fellowship, there's breaking bread of snacks or a meal, and then we always pray together. And so what we're doing is is we're setting up our systems for training up house leaders to lead house groups all throughout noble County. And once we get four groups, which we have now. Now we'll start meeting once a month on site, worship kids ministry message
preaching prayer. Yeah, food afterward. It's an on site service. Yeah. From what I understand, it just kind of reminds me of the way coffee was made. Maybe I'm too much coffee.
So but you know, when I was a kid that used to percolate, right, yeah, you didn't have the instant coffee. Yeah. So what I'm thinking and there was a pastor that I know, his name is Gil, Michelle, and he was he was talking about the same kind of thing, what you're allowing with the small groups, when you start, it's that it's that discipling, that's already taken place. That's it. That's it, and it's percolating up until eventually, you have the full cup out of out of prayer flee out of health and wholeness of our believers.
We will grow into that weekend gathering. Yeah. And now once we get four groups, we'll meet once a month. When we get eight groups, we meet twice a month. And then when we get 10, maybe 12 groups. Now we'll meet every week, but by the time we start meeting every week, I've got all of our online system set. We've got an online team, we've got online curriculum, we've got all of our online stuff set that's used now for our house groups, right? And our house group system of how do we recruit leaders? How do we, how do we train leaders? How do we raise up disciples, that's all set. And now we also have our weekend gathering is set. We've got a teacher and a pastor, and a kid's director and a youth director and all of those programs, programmatic things. So we're going to run that on site weekend play. But we also we're just going to set the play up for house groups first. And we're going to set the play up for online first and out of online and out of house groups. We get that on site. But by the time we get the on site, now we have three full doors for the community to walk through some people there. Listen, we in we've we have tracked this through the years. By the time people come to the church physically to visit, right, they've already been watching or listening online for months. Let's Don't run away from that. Let's embrace that. There's some people that they're going to watch for months before they ever come to a house group. They're going to watch for months before they ever could that's okay, we're sharing the gospel with them. There'll be other people who they don't come to a house group, but they come right to the to the on site. That's okay. Right. There'll be others who just go to the house group, and they don't come to the weekend. That's okay. It's all one church. Now we want to express all three. But we want to, we want to launch the church and not have the tail wag the dog. Yeah, we want to make disciples and I'll be on we talked with this off air.
I love the weekend gathering. I love big gatherings. I love that. And it's so hard for me even right now with four groups, we're meeting once a month, I'm like, let's go race to this.
Start meeting once a month, and we'll figure out the house groups on the backend. But the thing of it is, is water flows to the path of least resistance. And I think one of the worst things that I could do is to go back to what I thought was working pre COVID, right and just run the same play. Because the truth of the matter is if we're honest as pastors, attendance was down pre COVID finances in the big church was down Pete of giving was down pre COVID. Now there's some there's some pockets that weren't but I'm talking about. Yep. Across the overall. Yeah, we were already seeing decline. And COVID just kicked it into high gear. So we don't want to go back and just do what we used to do God, what what's the fresh thing that you're doing? And again, not getting away from the message of Jesus? But what multiple ways can we share Jesus to where people will actually say,
I might watch that. So you check that out? Do you think you mentioned the generation of the 3%?
Maybe it's an obvious question. But
do you see, obviously you see that model? what you're talking about being able to reach that 3% in a way that maybe they haven't seen before? I hope so yeah. You know, again, I don't I don't like it. That's just Unfortunately, our children are looking at screens. So how do we, again, I don't like each ad, I'm just how do we engage with those screens? And I think that I'm 50 years old, so I'm recruiting some people who are a lot more than I am that's not going to be modeling. But
when you look at culture today, the idea of I'm going I've don't know anything about God. I really don't know if there is a God and and even with the political world that we're living in. I'm going to go to it. I don't know anything about Jesus, but I'm going to go to a weekend church gathering. Some will, but many won't. And there's 30% statistics say there's about 30% that are in the Christian going to church love Jesus going to church rotation. Yeah. Been there. 70% head don't. Yeah. And the 70% that don't they're not going because they don't want to not
Nothing that's
got to be honest about that. So what can we do to this and the goal is not necessarily get them to come to church, the goal is to get them to love Jesus. Now we'll get them to go to church. But how can we meet them where they are Jesus came down from heaven. Get my preach on here. Yeah, Jesus came down, Jesus came down from heaven. And he met us where we were. And he put on human flesh. And he ate with us. And he laughed with us. And he became one of us. What does it look like in today in 2021, for us to get out of the offices of our church buildings, to get out of our homes, and actually live life with people who don't know Jesus in such a way like Jesus did to where people will say, I I'd like to find out more. And I don't I'll be honest, I don't know what all that looks like, I obviously we don't have all the answers and what some of the things we're doing might work. And some of the things may not, but we want to look at the world, honestly. Yeah. And how do we engage them with the gospel. And I think if we would do it in online ways, I think if we could raise up people to actually care enough about their family and their friends, to invite them to their home, for the Bible, to have fellowship to break bread and prayer, then people will begin to find community, people will begin to discover their purpose. And people will have answers. And some will do it on the weekend gathering, some will do it in house groups, and some will just check it out online for a while. And honestly, we're okay with all three. But we want to meet people where they are, so that we can draw them to Jesus. And that's, and I've been in ministry a long time. That's the goal. And as a guy who has been in ministry for a long time, it can be very easy to mark my success by other things. Besides that, and feel like I did a really good job. People laughed at my message. And my sad story building was full. We got money in the bank, check it off the list. I'm a good pastor. Maybe, maybe. But am I making disciples? Yeah. And so as we're launching, that's not only what we're doing, but that's what we're hoping to do with others as well. So let me ask you this, how would a person be able to get ahold of you if they wanted to? Yeah, a couple of ways. If you want to,
you can download our app at just go to anywhere you download apps, and it's noble County, noble County Community Church, if you want to reach me, the best way is grow more@gmail.com, it's gr o w. And then m o r e, like my last name, grow more@gmail.com. And wonderful, oh, that's it's always good to be able to connect with a person who connects. And I just kind of last few seconds here, I just want to just say that I love your heart and your passion for Jesus Christ. And that's that's really what matters. And what you were just talking about is, is the name of Jesus Christ being proclaimed throughout the world. And if it involves, hey, we need to get more creative on on a device that I touch. I think it's estimated that I touched my phone about 2500 times a day. Wow, that's a lot of times to touch a phone that probably already touched it. This is mid day, that when we're taping this, I probably I touched it, maybe 2000.
Because you're constantly in sofa if someone can, if we can, if the church can engage however, it needs to engage their souls that that need to be eternally saved for 10,000 right years from now, a million years from now, and which will have eternity together. So saying all that, thank you, Pastor, thank you for being here. Thanks for being with us, folks on healing the land. God bless.
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 at WWW dot pure assembly.com that's p u r e assembly.com. Or look for pure assembly on Facebook.