Every Sunday, 17 Southern Baptist churches close their doors—and that number may be even higher across all denominations. In this urgent and eye-opening episode of Gospel Talks, George Binoka sits down with pastor and Exchange trainer Josh Musgrave to tackle a growing crisis in the American church.

What’s the difference between a church revitalization and a replant? Why do churches plateau—and what causes them to decline? More importantly, how can a church rediscover its mission and begin reaching its community again?

Josh shares real-life insight from nearly two decades of ministry, explaining how gospel-centered discipleship, a culture shaped by God’s holiness, justice, love, and grace, and a commitment to prayer can transform even the most struggling church.

If you’re a pastor, ministry leader, or church member burdened by what you see happening in churches today, this episode will give you clarity, direction, and hope.

Every Sunday, 17 Southern Baptist churches close their doors forever.

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I think all of us as believers and believers inside the United States see a frightening

trend.

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There is an increasing need for churches to be replanted and revitalized.

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Those are two different terms.

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I'm not even sure I know the difference.

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That's why we've brought on Josh Musgrave.

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He's one of our exchange trainers.

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He's a lead pastor of a church.

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in the Denver area, he's going to tell us more about it.

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But this is such an important issue.

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Can the exchange create a discipleship culture in your church change the trajectory and

prevent a good church from dying?

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Welcome everybody to Gospel Talks podcast where we help Christians all over the world

become more effective in relational evangelism and discipleship.

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I'm George Benoka, your co-host and with me today is Josh Musgrave.

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Josh.

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How are you, man?

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How's the Denver area doing?

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Thanks so much for being on the show.

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Yeah, I'm doing well.

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Denver's good.

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We had some snow this last week.

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Snow's almost all gone and now it's back to, think in most people's yards, it's supposed

to be flowers and grass and mines weeds.

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Weeds are horrible, man.

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They're a constant.

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It's evidence of the sin curse for sure.

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So always doing weed treatment in my yard.

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Josh, you're a, you know, I think been a church planner, been in revitalizations.

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You've been a youth pastor in the past.

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And now you're your lead pastor in a church.

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Tell us, help me even understand here because I don't even think I know the difference.

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What is the difference between a replant?

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How would you define that in a revitalization?

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Yeah, so George, I came to our church here in Castle Rock almost 18 years ago, and our

church was uh declining.

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And that's really the reason we need revitalization or replants is many churches are

plateauing or declining.

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The reality is once a church starts to plateau, it's only a couple steps from beginning to

decline or struggle in that.

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So.

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Couple of words that we kind of are gonna use.

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One is revitalization.

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A revitalization is probably what our family did when we came here to Castle Rock.

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It's restoring a dying or plateauing church.

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It's helping a struggling church be restored to vitality, to unity, and to missional

urgency.

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A revitalization is doing that.

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more quickly in a more structured way.

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taking uh an existing church is relaunched with, I'm sorry, not revitalization, a replant

is an existing church is relaunched with new leadership, new vision and new identity, kind

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of just re kind of a hard reset.

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So that's the primary difference is the revitalization is maybe more of a soft reset of,

okay, we were kind of plateauing or going in the wrong direction.

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Let's kind of put together a vision to get us out of this.

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And a replant is no throw it all out.

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We are restarting with what we got.

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Yeah, I don't know that I would say throw it all out, but yes, it is.

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It's wanting to honor the men and women who have served in the church and yet at the same

time, restore that missional vitality, that excitement towards sharing the gospel,

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reaching the community.

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You know, what happens in a church that is struggling is we start to think about survival

instead of actually meet, reaching our community.

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And we kind of.

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have a tendency just to turn in on ourselves and bringing in a new team, a new vision,

kind of giving everybody a new excitement and something to be able to strive for is what a

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replant is.

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It tends to be faster than a revitalization.

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And it tends to also, um I don't know, I've kind of wished that when we would have

revitalized, we would have known that replant was a thing, because it was something that

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would have been really.

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So just before you had said, usually what happens is a church plateaus before it goes in

the wrong direction.

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Why do you think churches plateau?

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I think it's our nature to move backwards or to kind of find a place that's comfortable or

to find something that isn't striving forward.

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We also sometimes we run out of ideas.

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People tend to get tired.

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I mean, when I came to our church, we had a lot of people who were excited about the

church, but at the same time, they'd been ministering by themselves for so long, they were

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tired.

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And so

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That's one of the things that I think the exchange has really helped us do is to over the

years We've done the exchange over and over when I came to revitalize our church then was

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harvest Baptist Church We immediately started doing the exchange training We wanted people

in our church to be able to be confident in sharing the gospel and also to allow the

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gospel to impact their lives

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So I'm going to touch on something you just said, and you can decide whether we keep this

in the episode or not.

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So this is all easy to edit out.

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You just said, you know, they run out of energy.

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You typically show up to a replant or revitalization with maybe a church that has an older

population and the young energetic element is missing.

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that kind of, is there a rule of thumb you've seen where it's like if

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the entire staff of the church has an average age of what, you know, or if the church on

average is 55 plus or the majority of it, you've seen kind of a trend with that being a

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problem.

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think that does happen is churches that tend to stop changing do that.

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However, I would say there are churches that plateau that have young families in it.

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And God isn't...

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God isn't limited to only work with young people.

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uh

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He's chosen to use people of all ages.

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I think what we want in our churches is for our church to mirror in its age and in its

culture what our community looks like.

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And a lot of times what does happen in a church that needs to be replanted is it stops

doing that.

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So it may be an older congregation in an older community.

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That's actually healthy because it looks like it mirrors that.

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But when you're beginning to miss a people group that's in your

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Community that's when you begin to say hey, where is a disconnect?

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We're not actually reaching our community We're supposed to be after the Great Commission,

which is making disciples of all people not just one part

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Okay, I love that.

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That's a way better measure for a pastor.

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So it's not about an age.

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It's about are you reaching the community?

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Does your church look like the community?

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Okay, that's that's really good.

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So Okay, so replant versus revitalization covered that This is a big problem.

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This is a growing problem a growing trend that churches are closing The plateau is a big

problem

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being comfortable is a big problem.

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So what would be the solution for a church if being comfortable could be the start of a

downward trajectory?

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What kind of culture do you seek as a leader to instill in your church to make sure that

we're constantly reaching the community?

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Yeah, I think we want an enthusiasm for the gospel.

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And I think that comes in two areas.

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One is sharing the gospel, but also allowing the gospel message to impact your own heart.

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A lot of times the reason that we start to plateau or start to kind of decline is we may

be enthusiastic about seeing the gospel reach nations, but we're also like, maybe not

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excited about the gospel changing or making us different.

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I think the exchange focuses on four characteristics of God that really help us stay

focused and move forward to make Jesus, in our church we call it, make Jesus

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not-ignorable, make Jesus famous, him to be the most important thing.

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When we look at holiness, a lot of times a church can begin to plateau or decline because

of moral laxity.

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They don't care.

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Sunday is something that they do.

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They go to church, but then it doesn't actually change their life in that.

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But there's the other side of holiness, which would be like almost a fake holiness, which

is, hey, here's the rules.

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is the things that we're going to do.

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both the moral laxity and the other side of that moral legalism are missing the reality of

who God is as holy.

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We can't actually

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manufacture holiness.

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That's what legalism tries to do.

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We can't ignore holiness.

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It's a work that the gospel does in us.

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And as we see the absolute purity and beauty and holiness of our God, it ignites in us an

excitement and a passion to be able to share the amazing holiness of our God with the

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lost.

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And when that impacts our life, it then goes and impacts the lives of others.

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You know, that's pretty incredible because what you're proposing is using the exchange in

a way I've never thought of it being used.

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We would typically say this exchange is how you lead people to Christ, how you introduce

them to Jesus.

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You're saying not only this is how you introduce them to Jesus, you're actually saying

these attributes of God is what your church should look like.

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Is that kind of what you're, okay.

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And it's what's the heart of our church should be.

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These things are intrinsic to the nature of Jesus.

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And so as the body of Jesus, the church goes out into the community and wants to grow and

thrive, these pieces should be mirrored in us.

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Another example of that is God's justice.

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Justice is God's commitment to uphold righteousness by punishing sin,

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and restoring what is broken.

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When we see God's justice rightly, it's going to move us into the community, not away from

the community.

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I think sometimes we think, you the world is gonna come and get us.

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And genuine justice is pursuing the community with God's gospel.

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should move us to a passion for the lost, to restore what has been broken in our

community, to help people groups and thing and.

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communities that have brokenness in them, but also it should help us to be able to share

the gospel.

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In fact, if we just look at restoring brokenness in the community, helping people that are

broken, we miss the real heart of Jesus' justice, because his justice addresses all people

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with the reality of the gospel.

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So God is just, and he invites us to see his justice and then to go into the world and

model his justice by

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restoring what sin is broken, sharing people the glory of the gospel that puts people's

lives that are broken together and helps them understand.

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And also that happens not just with sharing the gospel.

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We wanna do it with our lips, but also getting into our community and helping those.

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Okay, so that's God's holiness, God's justice.

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How have you seen God's love and grace play into that formula as well?

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Yeah.

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So God's love is an assurance that I think ought to impact me.

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And then I want to pour it out into others.

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You know, assurance that God loves me.

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He cares for me.

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I'm, I'm his child.

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As I look at the exchange that God made for me, my sinful record for his righteous record

so that now I am

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no longer guilty and full of shame, but I am now holy and righteous.

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That beautiful exchange that God has given to me.

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Jonathan Edwards said this, the creation of the world was to give vent to the loving heart

of Christ.

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And as we see that in the Word of God and in the world around us, that love that deeply

impacts and transforms us,

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will ignite in our hearts a spark to have other people know about it.

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An example of this that I often think about is I love my wife.

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It would be really weird for me to meet someone and not tell them about my wife and my

family and what's going on because my heart is consumed by it.

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I love them.

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But oftentimes our relationship with Jesus is different.

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And when we allow God's love to assure us for us to be able to look at Him, looking at us

in love, and then that impacts our life in the world around us.

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We love people rightly.

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then what I think can happen is then we're like, well, I want to share the gospel, but how

do I do that?

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And that's where the exchange then also gives us tools.

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You know, I think sometimes we're like, man, I need to be able to share a 45 minute

presentation with somebody and sit down and

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able to answer every single question that they have.

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And yes, we want to be able to do that.

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But the exchange Bible study has been such a wonderful tool for our church to be able to

just hand to someone and say, hey, look, give this to your lost friend and say, hey, read

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through lesson number one, and then we'll talk about it.

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And it's a loving relational way to be able to share the gospel that empowers us to be

able to use the grace that God has filled us with to be able to

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share his holiness and justice and love with others.

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I think another piece of this is just the reminder that God has enabled us to do

everything that he's called us to do.

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The Great Commission seems like, especially in a replanting, church that needs to be

replanted.

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Our church when I came had 10 elderly adults.

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I...

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had two babies at that point, a two-year-old and an infant, and we brought the age down to

75.

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And the people were wondering, how do we reach our community?

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How do we do this?

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And the Great Commission seemed like such a, so far out of reach, but God's grace enables

us to do what He has called us to do.

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We have a tendency when we forget God's grace to turn in on ourselves when we're

struggling to say, oh, woe is me.

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and God's grace enables us so that we can look out to the world around us.

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Grace calls us to throw ourselves at the foot of the cross, to know I can't do it.

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And that ability to know I'm not sufficient, I can't do this on my own, is what empowers

God's, not really, God's grace is powerful on its own, but it's what throws us upon the

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grace of God that takes people who may be shy, they may be,

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different than their community around them, but then places them into a community.

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And when they're impacted by God's holiness and they see that rightly, they're imaging

God's holiness and wanting other people to be able to see that, something they can't

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manufacture.

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And God's grace allows us then to go to those broken people and show them God's justice

that restores us to Him and takes us who were not right with Him to be right with Him.

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wants to then show his love to them and grace enables us to be able to do all of those

pieces.

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You know, the other thing I love about that word grace is there's a generosity that comes

with grace.

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And I think a generous church is a very attractive church.

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A loving church is a very attractive church.

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A church that believes in right and wrong is an oasis in today's society, right?

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And even with holiness.

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And I think what sometimes happens, we get caught up in the trends and we get caught up in

the idea that we have to be popular.

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and that that's what people want.

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But oh there's an increasing number of studies that show what people are looking for in a

church is that it's not like the world, that it is like Jesus.

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And I think the more that our churches can reflect Christ, really that's the key to being

salt and light.

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And if we don't have that and we've lost our saltiness, I think as churches, we are doomed

to an even bigger problem than just a downward trend in that we're not even doing what

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Jesus told us to do.

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Um, practically, go ahead.

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we want when people to come into the door to be confronted with the person of Jesus, to

see Jesus in our church.

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And Jesus is holy.

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We don't want to be moral just for the sake of moralism.

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We want to be holy because it's who Jesus was.

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And when people see us, they see an authentic Jesus-filled culture that

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That's beautiful to people, to the lost who don't know Jesus.

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Yeah, I love that.

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So practically, what did you have to do to get this into the culture when you showed up to

replant?

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What did you have to do to actually make your church discipleship oriented in culture?

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I think a lot of that was just relying on God's grace to do the work.

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We have, we tried a whole lot of stuff.

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think one of the things that we did is we tried stuff that if we failed, it was okay.

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We wanted to create a culture that was, you know, not perfect, but also that was okay to

fail and then try something else.

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We tried all sorts of stuff to be able to get into our community.

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Some things worked, some things didn't work.

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I think one of the things that we did,

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faithfully was over the years we've continually trained people to use the exchange and to

be able to share their faith.

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We're going to be given all sorts of opportunities to get into the culture.

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We have neighbors across the street.

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We have all of this stuff around us.

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But do we, giving people the tools and the confidence to be able to rely on God's grace is

something that's really important.

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One of the things that I did

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years ago was I decided any time one of my neighbors is outside, I'm going to walk across

the street and talk to them.

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I'm not as faithful as I now as I used to be in that.

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But I think it's one of those areas where God's put me here to be able to reach these lost

neighbors that don't know Jesus yet.

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So how do I take what God's given me, these opportunities and utilize them and see God

work?

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But I think the story with our church has been a story of when God

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decided to work, our church grew.

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We grew deep in our church.

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We saw our church, but not necessarily grow in numbers.

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And when God decided to place His gracious hand on us, which was really the whole time,

but to allow us to grow, there wasn't like one, you know, silver bullet of thing that we

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did.

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was simply, we were teaching people the gospel.

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We were teaching people how to share the gospel.

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And then God began to grow us and

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be able to reach our community in that way.

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So don't know that there was like one certain thing that happened, but it was faithfulness

that when God blessed, he blessed in an amazing way.

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How integrated is the exchange into the life of your church?

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How often do you train people?

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How much do you use it?

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Yeah, I, in our preaching, so we preach as a team in our church.

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I'm not the only preacher.

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I do most of the preaching, but I try and help our preachers.

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When you share the gospel, try and utilize the exchange.

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And it's not because we want it to be repetitive or this is the only way to share.

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There's great other ways to be able to share the gospel.

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But we're in the pulpit shepherding and teaching people to be able to share the gospel and

equipping them so that when they hear us,

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from the pulpit use terminology or use illustrations that they have seen or been taught in

the exchange, it equips them to be able to do that.

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So it's one of the things as in our preaching team.

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We have tried over the years to be able to have the exchange, have dad come down and teach

the exchange.

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I think we are on six different times that we've had people trained.

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Dad and I are excited about doing something this summer.

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He's gonna come in and we have a Sunday school hour for adults.

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We call it our Calvary Institute and this summer, Dad and I are going to be teaching the

exchange in our Calvary Institute together, really trying to be able to equip and help our

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people be passionate about sharing the gospel.

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We try in our new members class to encourage each of our new members along the way as the

next exchange training comes in to be able to take that and be able to

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move forward.

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So we try, I think I want to make it more integrated, but those are kind of some of the

ways as we have continually over the years done training, we utilize it in our preaching

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and then we are trying to be able to see what it looks like to be able to put into our

Calvary Institute.

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I'll get back to you on how that goes this summer.

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I'll be excited to hear how that goes.

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You as a replanter, revitalizer over the years, it's very important that the people have a

certain mentality in a replant revitalization and that the lead pastor or the leader has a

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certain type of temperament and mentality.

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What makes for a good replanter and what makes for a church that's ready for replanting

and ready to

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to grow again as far as, you know, heart, mind, kind of the thought process going in, the

kind of temperament that's important and what doesn't work so much.

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Yeah, I think if a person's personality is fairly rigid, like here's how we're gonna do

it, they're probably gonna really struggle in a replant scenario because we want to be

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able to see the beauty of what has kind of started to decline.

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We want to be able to honor, know, there's people in our church who are super excited

about a vacation Bible school they've done.

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five years before and all these people came out and I was like, well, they're not here

now.

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Like, what was the good of it?

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But it would have been really foolish for me to say, well, whatever.

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And so we look at and say, look at what God has done in our history.

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So maybe a person who appreciates history appreciates what God has done and then be able

to say, look at what God did.

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Don't we want to see God do that now?

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I think it's also a person who is strategic about making change.

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there are times in which change needs to happen right away, but there are also times when

that change doesn't need to happen right away.

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mean, example for that is when I came to our church, our church was used to having someone

sing a solo before the preaching.

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The pastor that was here before me, Ed Nelson, said, Josh, you're gonna do that.

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And so for almost a year, almost every single Sunday, I don't know why I was the one who

did it.

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My voice isn't great, but I sang a solo before that.

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But it was something that was important to our church that for me wasn't a hill to die on.

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it wasn't, it wasn't that important.

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There bigger things.

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There were bigger things to happen to get people inspired and excited about the gospel and

be able to move out into the community.

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And so I think, know, rigid personality can be a difficulty in that um honoring and

respecting history, looking at what God has done in the past, and then also helping people

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look through that lens of what God's done in the past and say, Hey,

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This is what we want to do.

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I think the psalmist said that, David said that.

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He's like, I remember when I would grow up with the throng and there would be great

rejoicing.

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And he says, when I was downcast, I remembered what God did and it inspired me to see him

do things in the future or see him do things now.

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And that's what we want to be able to do is instill in people that like to just genuinely

love people.

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Just help people know, hey, I love you.

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I wanna walk with you.

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I wanna be able to lead you.

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Leadership that's effective isn't running ahead and yelling and saying, hey, hurry up,

come this way.

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And it's not, here in Colorado, we have ranchers and we always think it's from behind,

poking them with a whip.

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And leadership that is effective, especially in a replant is, here's the next right step.

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Let's, as a church, walk into that green pasture.

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Or, hey guys, this is gonna be hard.

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uh

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difficult spot right now.

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Finances are tight.

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Let's walk through this valley together with our Savior and see Him work.

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Yeah.

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Well, and you've been through that valley.

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leadership, walking together with people is really important and helpful in a replant.

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So it's not just someone who says, hey, you guys have a whole lot of stuff that's broken

and I'm here to fix it.

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We're not going in as a repairman.

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We're going in to say, hey, let's do this together.

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Let's do this as a team.

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Yeah, I love that.

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think you hit it pretty much on the nail or the nail on the head.

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so I think also just kind of knowing you a little bit, I'm sure, and we don't need to get

into it, but there are scars and there's a price that comes with jumping into a

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revitalization or replant because change is hard.

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Yet change is a necessary ingredient.

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Now we're not changing doctrine and we're not changing Christ and we're not changing the

gospel.

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None of those things should change in a church.

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But there are some things that are what I would call sacred cows.

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a sacred cow is something somebody's attached to, but you know, it really is not helping

the bottom line of the mission.

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And so when we go and try to change and sometimes you touch somebody's sacred cow, they

bite and it could be a hard thing.

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And so I think

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pastor who does this kind of thing.

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It really is a labor of love and you know, you bear some scars, but I think the reward on

the other side is worth it because all of a sudden this church starts reaching their

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community with the gospel again.

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And honestly, if churches don't do this and we don't engage in this type of ministry, that

number could be even more dramatic than 17 churches closing every Sunday.

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That's just in the SBC.

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We don't know how many churches and other denominations are closing every Sunday.

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And my guess it's probably way more.

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And so we really, we really need to pray that God would do a work and allow these churches

to be effective in their mission again.

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Anything else, Josh, before we, before we sign off.

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I think one of things that's just important through this is we can have all the right

strategies, all the right tools, but if we don't go forward in prayer, it won't move

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forward.

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And so I think inspiring a struggling church to be on their knees with the Savior, willing

to obediently respond as He works, but I think that moving forward in prayer is something

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that's so important.

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In our church,

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We have had a weekly prayer meeting every Wednesday morning, I think it's for 16 years

now.

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It may actually be 17 years now where people have come.

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It used to be in our church building.

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Now it's a local coffee shop.

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And we just bring our people before the Lord and we pray for them.

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elders meetings, we call them shepherding meetings on our Monday nights aren't so much

strategy meetings or what are we teaching here or here.

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We do those things, but most of that is Lord, how do we reach our community and we pray

and we spend time bringing people before the Lord.

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But I think prayer is one of those areas that a church that is struggling has to lean

into.

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love that.

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that's, uh, think Oswald Chambers said prayer is not the thing we do before the great work

of ministry.

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Prayer is the great work of ministry.

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And, and sometimes we miss that, um, in ministry because we're, we have the Martha problem

and we forget that Mary was the one that was commended.

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well, Josh, thank you so much for coming on Gospel Talks Podcast.

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And thank you so much for your time.

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We're praying for you brother.

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And you're doing a fabulous job there in Denver.

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And can't wait to see what the Lord will do.

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You have to come back on when you try your experiment with the Calvary Institute, put in

the exchange in there, tell all these other pastors how it worked.

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Yeah, this fall I want to be able to kind of get some tools and ideas for how does this

work inside of a Sunday school class.

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So yeah.

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Cool.

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Well, we love you guys.

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Please pray with us as we pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth

laborers because the harvest is plenteous.

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The opportunities, there is no shortage.

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There is a labor shortage of believers who are willing to go out and see what the Lord

will do.

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Thank you guys for listening.

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If you like what you heard, please share this with somebody.

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Subscribe, hit that subscribe button.

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Leave us a comment on the podcast.

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It really helps us in the ratings and

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If you don't know the exchange of ministry supported by donations and the books don't

really pay for the overhead, but we have very, very generous donors that God has brought

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our way that have really underwrite the ministry.

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And we would just ask you guys to pray and consider what God might have you do, but just

for $10 a month, if you'd be willing for $10 a month to give a reoccurring donation every

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month.

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A donation like that really goes a long way in helping us help churches.

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We give our material away for free to missionaries all over the world outside of the

United States and North America.

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And we're able to really sell our books for an extremely low cost.

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If you know what books cost, you know what it costs to make them.

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We really sell them for almost next to nothing.

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we really want to be able to keep doing that kind of stuff for the kingdom of Christ.

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And so a donation like that

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That's something the Lord lays on your heart.

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We'd love to partner with you.

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Thank you guys for listening.

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We will see you next week.