Interview with LeMont Rich

TNG Radio, where today's culture and timeless truths come together.

It's reasoned, relevant content apologetics, worldview, and answers to the questions that you need to know. From Alex McFarland Ministries, this is Truth for a New Generation Radio. And now the man who preached in 50 states in 50 days, speaker, writer, and advocate for Christian apologetics, Dr. Alex McFarland. I love in the book of Ephesians how it says that the church is growing up into the head who is Christ. Welcome to TNG Radio.

Alex McFarland here. I am so excited because if you've listened to this show for very long at all, you know that we love the church. We know that the local church is God's organization to bring the gospel to the world. I define the church this way. A group of born-again believers banded together for the purpose of world evangelization. And the Bible has a lot to say about the church.

In Matthew 16, 18 Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Ephesians 4, 11, and 12, Jesus said that he called out pastors, teachers, and evangelists for equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. And whenever I meet somebody who is encouraging pastors and helping grow the church and really being used by God to help contribute to the fulfillment of the great commission, whenever I meet people like that I just want to get to know them.

And I've got a very dear friend with me today. His name is Lamont Rich and he is a part of the staff of Karras Bible College. Many of you know I teach out here in Colorado.

I fly out to Colorado and teach and we're going to talk about what Karras is. But we're going to talk about the church and leadership and pastors and those in ministry. And Lamont, you are the director of church relations for Karras. Well, my official title is pastoral relations manager. And so we give care to the pastors across the nation, especially where Andrew is heard on radio and television and conferences and things where he's being heard, places where he's being heard.

And so yeah, we give care to the pastors. Amen. Amen. Andrew being Andrew Wommack. Do you know yesterday what a thrill for over four hours he and I recorded television. And that was really an honor. For those that may not be familiar, give an overview of Andrew Wommack Ministries and Karras Bible College and events you say he's preaching around the country.

Yes, yes. So we just got back last week from a conference in Texas. He did what we call a GTS conference in the Dallas metroplex area. And so part of my role is to go into the state and some of the cities a week or so ahead of time and just begin to meet pastors and have a build relationships with pastors ahead of the conference. And our hopes is to get them to come to the conference, get them to meet Andrew and other pastors in the ministry and then whatever we can do to just help pastors. Andrew is such a gracious and he's had such generosity. He just wants to give whatever the Lord has given him to pastors.

He really does. Whatever they need. He says, Lamont, let's give it to them. So whatever resource it is, whether it's a book or DVD series or whatever it is that can help them in their church and disciple their people, he wants to give it to them. And then it's just to build a synergy, have a certain unity to come alongside a brother and say, you're not alone. You're not by yourself. We all want to stand with you for through prayer, pastoral counseling and just through the word, you know, and building, building a relationship to where, you know, sometimes pastors, pastors sometimes don't have anywhere anyone to talk to, you know, and they often deal with things alone. And it's not been a good thing to do. You know, many of them have found because, you know, the enemy wants you to feel isolated. But we want to come alongside them and say, no, we are your brother. We want to befriend you. And, you know, and we know the way to become friends is to show yourself friendly. And that's what we're doing, showing ourselves friendly.

We're not trying to get anything. We just simply want to get whatever we can to you and help you. It can be a lonely road. It really can. It can be a lonely road, but it doesn't have to be. And it's not meant to be. We do understand that pastors they've, they've trusted in certain ways and, and because of that, they've been hurt and, and they've been misunderstood a lot of times.

And so instead of just trying to get over that, you know, sometimes they turn inward and they just, they just don't trust anyone. And, and we want to just say, Hey, we love you. We want to encourage you in the assignment that you have, because God has put a call on their life as a pastor. And we just want to be the one to, to help, help blow the trumpet for them and, and, and encourage them and strengthen them. Because, you know, as I often say, even though they have a call to their church and it is about the church, we want them to reach the goals that God's given them for the church. But really it's, it's bigger than their church as well, because we believe that as the pastors go, our nation goes, so this is our nation as well. And so you started off with the scripture in Ephesians, we're talking about equipping the saints and we know that's the role of the pastor. And if we effectively equip the body of Christ, we can go out and we can take over in the marketplace and, and we can reach the, we can become the school board president. We can become the chocolate chip cookie committee president.

Yeah. And we need Christians to permeate leadership at all levels of society. We need that.

And the pastors are the one that has the authority and has the influence to pour into their people so that the people can go out and do the work of the ministry. And I believe when we do that, the Bible says, righteousness exalts a nation. And I believe in America, righteousness will return to our nation. Amen. Well, our future depends on it. We've got to take a brief break. Folks don't go away. We're talking with Lamont Rich of Karras Bible College and his role to the pastors of America.

When we come back on TNG radio. From I am a Watchman Ministries, here's today's I am a Watchman Minute. Being willing to step out for God and do the unusual is a mark of spiritual maturity. Consider the prophet Ezekiel. He was the son of a priest from a very distinguished family, but God told Ezekiel to do things that many thought were undignified. For example, in his preaching, he utilized drama and shadow puppets and miniature props. He cut his hair and burned some and buried some and threw some to the wind.

Once he allowed himself to be tied up for 430 days. He was radical for God, but also righteous before God. Ezekiel was a Watchman and Watchman faithfully followed God's leading.

Period. The I am a Watchman ministry is here to help you grow in Christ and as he leads, be radical for God. Are you willing to be radical for God? Be bold, be faithful, be a Watchman.

I am a Watchman.com. If you're a Christian parent, you of course want to instill a biblical view of life in the hearts of your children. If you're a pastor, you want to offer ministry that draws young families to your church. This is Alex McFarland encouraging you to check out my new book and video curriculum, The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask About Christianity. Why do bad things happen? I interviewed hundreds of children, ages 5 to 12, and we address actual questions from actual children, the spiritual issues that are on the minds of your kids.

Did Jesus ever sin? The book and video lessons are great for groups of any size and was produced with the goal of equipping kids to stand strong for Christ in any situation. The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask, the book, study guide and video series, you'll find it at afastore.net.

That's afastore.net. You know Romans 1 16, it says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes. That's what your kids need before they go to college. And that's the theme for the 2019 TNG Christian Apologetics Youth Camp, July 29th through August 2nd at Camp Cale, North Carolina. Speakers include, of course, Alex McFarland, along with Daniel Ritchie, Andy Lorentzen and Miki Addison. Exciting worship every night and rock solid teaching every day.

And yes, it's a summer camp with all the summer camp activities your kids would expect. The TNG Christian Apologetics Youth Camp, July 29th through August 2nd at Camp Cale. To learn more and to register, call 800-YES-GOD-1, 800-YES-GOD and the number one, or email info at truthforanewgeneration.com. In the midst of a culture obsessed with relativism, Alex McFarland is a voice you can trust to speak the timeless truths of Christianity in a timely way. You're listening to Truth for a New Generation Radio.

Welcome back to TNG Radio. Alex McFarland here, and we're going to resume our conversation with Lamont Rich. But first, the summer camp is coming up, the Truth for a New Generation Summer Apologetics Camp.

Listen up folks, it's July 29th through August 2nd. We've got great speakers like Will and Miki Addison from the American Family Radio Network. Daniel Ritchie, one of the most inspiring speakers you will ever hear in your life. Andy Lorentzen, one of America's premier youth experts.

He's a great speaker and he's really an expert on youth and youth culture. I'll be there. Now we're going to do all the fun camp stuff, ropes course, kayaking, you name it. But we're going to have 15 sessions on worldview, apologetics. What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?

How do I defend my faith? Last summer we had students from nine states. They loved it. Listen, mom and dad, youth leader, parent, your teens will love this. And I know we have young people listening. This is the summer camp experience that you don't want to miss. Truth for a New Generation.

Here's what you do if you go to the website truthforanewgeneration.com. It's coming up quick, but you still have time. July 29th through August 2nd. And it will be a five day experience that will touch your life forever. So we hope to see you there. Well, somebody that God is using to touch lives is my friend and colleague Lamont Rich. He's on the staff here at Karis Bible College where I come to teach several times a year to teach apologetics, biblical worldview and speech and debate and other things as part of their school of practical government. But Lamont, before the break, we were talking about the church. And nowadays studies show, I know I read Barna and different statisticians who say that church attendance is declining. Easter weekend on Fox News on Good Friday, it said church attendance is plummeting and this has people worried and rightly so. But the growth of the church depends on the health of the church, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. Yeah. And so the health of the church is very crucial because especially now, we want to reach the next generation.

Yes. We've got to get the young people. And I believe the young people, because of the way we're doing church in a lot of ways, we're not grasping or not catching the young people into church any longer. And I believe that's one of the key reasons why church is declining because we are not reaching out.

We're not reaching out. We're staying within the four walls and it's just expecting them to come in, but we have to reach out to them and compel them to come into the church and then I do believe church needs to be relevant as well. Now that doesn't mean that we have to look like the world, act like the world and do what the world does, but we do need to have a relevant gospel that's relevant to the way we communicate the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ today. And so I believe that's a big part of it, even with dealing with technology and things like that. Things have changed from three decades and four decades ago.

And so I do. And so being a healthy church is one of the key things that we need to do to grow our body. As you interface with pastors across America, what are the issues you're seeing that bring fatigue and burnout? What are some of the top things that the American pastors are struggling with?

Oh, that's a good question. And one of the things that I have been seeing is pastor, we just, we have too many irons in the fire. We are trying to do everything instead of doing the one or two or three things that God has showed us with excellence, with excellence. And so we get burnt out because we're trying to do everything. Everything can be a good thing, but it's better to do a God thing than just a good thing.

Come on now. Preach it. And so, and so I think that's one of the key things for pastors and those in ministry experiencing burnout. You know, in the book of John, you can go through the book of John and Jesus showed us, he said, I only do what the father show me. And that's why he had the success that he had is because the things that the father showed him was the things that he spent his time on. And so he didn't do, even though he had all the power and all, all the wisdom, all the knowledge to do it, he only did those things that the father showed him. And that's what brings the father pleasure.

That's what pleases the father. I think we've got to stop. If you're not called to build a homeless shelter, we know a homeless shelter is good.

If that's not your call, support your brother down the street where it is his call. Amen. And don't try to do it because you're, you're just wearing out yourself and you're taking away from time that God given you to do the thing that you are called to do. Do you think that, um, pastors feel this expectation that their congregation is wanting them to be Superman and you've got to do everything and pastors probably they do things that they know they might not should be embarking on, but there's this expectation of performance they have to achieve. I definitely think that's a part of it. But the thing about it is I think we have been the ones that have, have given that perception to the body, to the congregation. And so, you know, we have to, we have to back up and we've built our churches a lot of times on our personalities.

Uh, you know, it's been personality driven. And when you build a ministry based off of your personality, it's, it only now means they've gotten used to seeing your personality involved in everything and they want you a part of everything. And so therefore if you're not at church, if they find out you're not going to be a church, they're not going to come.

Listen, I've had many pastors say, Hey, I want you to come preach. I'm not going to be in town, but don't tell, don't tell anybody. Cause if, if I'm out of town, my people won't show up. They won't show up. That's messed up.

That is not the right way to build. We've got to build a brotherhood and we've got to show the body. We are brothers. We are all one body. Proverbs 17 and 17 says a friend loves at all times and a brother is born for a time of adversity, you know? And so it's when we build that unity of togetherness, you know, Psalms 133, the Bible says that when we come together, that's the place of commanded blessing. And so we can't just expect them to put us on a pedestal.

We need to teach them that, Hey, if it's going to be me or if it's going to be my brother from another mother, let them, let them spring the word today. Amen. Amen. This is great folks. Don't go away. It's getting good. We've got to take a break.

TNG radio is back after this with our dear friend Lamont rich. As we take a break, let me tell you about three tens, three books that will answer questions that come your way from others or even yourself about the Christian faith. Book number one, 10 answers for skeptics. Today's skeptics are looking for authenticity, integrity, and straightforward faith. And in this book, you'll learn how to answer intimidating questions, identify the root issue behind those questions and dismantle the spiritual bombshells dropped by non-believers.

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That's Liberty.edu backslash explore to learn more. Welcome back to TNG Radio. Alex McFarland here with Lamont Rich of Cares Bible College, and I'm so thrilled to hear of their outreach to the churches of America. Lamont not only lifting up the arms of pastors that need encouragement and a fresh vision, but also promoting unity within the body of Christ. Listen, if we, the 345,000 Protestant churches and something like 130 million adult Christians, if we ever decided to link arms and unify, we could steer the future of this nation. It's almost like I quote this every week, Lamont, but in John 17, 21, Christ prayed for unity father, that they all may be one.

Oh, any one that the world would believe thou has sent me. Alex, let me tell you brother. See, now you just, my spirit is leaping now. Hallelujah. Because that's the key. Let me tell you one of the number one things that the, that the enemy Satan has done is division in the body because the world is looking for a manifestation of the sons and daughters of God. They can't find it because they don't see one body, but they're hungry. They're hungry for it. People think teens and college kids aren't spiritually hungry. They are.

They are hungry. They are waiting for the church to become one head and one body. And so you said it in John 17, when Jesus prayed for the disciples and those that were to come after him, he said, father, make them one for you and I are one as you and I are one. But here's the key. I grew up in church, Alex. I went knocking on the doors.

I passed out tracks and I think those things were good and should be good. But my problem is this. I wish we had done the one thing that Jesus said would work. And that is if we become one, he said the world would believe and that's what we need to do. The biggest gospel tract we could ever give this world is if the family of God would unify and come together. That's the place where there's a commanded blessing.

And so what are we waiting on? Whether you're Baptist, whether you're Pentecostal, whether you're assemblies of God, whatever it is, let's come together and unify so that we can reach this world. Jesus said it himself.

He said the world will believe when you do that. You know, if, like you say, there's all these denominations and hey, that's okay. But if you're a follower of Jesus, we're family. We're family.

We're family. D.L. Moody, one of my heroes back in the 19th century, D.L. Moody said, any friend of Jesus is a friend of mine.

D.L. Moody said this. He said, God is pleased when Christians work together. That's good. Then that's true. You know, scripture, Ecclesiastes four and twelve says, though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.

And a three strand cord is not quickly broken. The two of us working together. And that's what we want to do with pastors.

We want to come alongside pastors because we Andrew believes that if we come together, we can do more together than each of us can do by ourselves. You know, I love that Ecclesiastes passage. A three strand cord is not easily broken. So I'm reading this article about rope.

I was, I'm a farm boy. We were going to take an engine out of a truck and I had to figure out what kind of cable could lift a motor. So I'm reading about this. Well, a cord or a cable or a rope tensile strength is how much weight it can hold. So if you've got one strand, it can hold X amount of weight. If you got two, but if you've got three strands, it's not triple. It's 10 times the amount. So one plus one plus one equals like 10. And when the body of Christ comes together, there is power in unity.

And now I want to, I can hear it. People are saying, well, wait a minute. Are you talking about compromise? No, we don't compromise things like the deity of Christ. Jesus is the son of God. That's a hill we die on. Jesus died on the cross. He shed his blood to wash our sin away. Um, we, that's a rock on which we stand, but within the body of Christ, listen, we don't have the luxury to be sequestered away from each other.

The body needs the body. Listen, you know, for me, some people believe in the rapture and some don't. That's, that's no big deal to me. You know, for those of you, we agree Christ is coming, but we agree Christ is coming. We agree. And so let's agree where we can agree and let's get together where we can be together so that we can win those to Jesus Christ that he died for and so that we can win them back to, back to the father for just a second. Talk to me about prayerlessness because there's power in prayer. There's power in corporate prayer. Talk to me as you travel this nation, Lamont, what do you see about the state of our prayer life? For the church, I believe right now, I don't, I don't think we're, we've been in a good spot, uh, because we are not coming into agreement in prayer with the will and the word of God.

We are, we are praying a lot of stuff, but it's, we haven't aligned ourselves with the word of God. And I think that's one of the keys of getting things accomplished, you know, and so people call things prayer. And so take, uh, healing. Some people that do believe in healing. So I know some people don't believe in it, but for those that do believe in healing, you know, those that the very ones that say they believe in it, they will pray, but they don't pray adequately are the right way. They don't pray biblical principles about healing. And so they say, if it's your will for me to be healed, then Lord, I'll be healed.

Well, it was his will because he died for you to be saved and he died for you to be healed, you know? And so that's what, when I'm saying prayer, we've got to wish we are doing things what we call prayer, but the power of our prayer lacks the word of God coming into alignment or agreement with the word of God. So praying the will of God. And, you know, I read in John 15, 16, where he says, um, if you pray in my name, according to my will, I will do it. Yes. And so when our prayers and our life and our whole orientation is to the word of God, the will of God, the son of God, I, as a child of God will see the power of God. That's it.

That's it. Because, you know, when it, when it boils down to it, Alex, his word will not return void to you. Do you have a website? I care, his Bible college website, very simple carrisbiblecollege.org. And then for the Andrew Wommack ministries, simple AWMI.net.

Well, Lamont, God bless you. Thank you for what you're doing. Well, thank you for all you're doing to help the churches, the pastors, the ministries of America. Hey folks, our website, newly redesigned truthforanewgeneration.com.

Keep us in prayer and hey, tell somebody about Jesus. Truth for a New Generation serves nationwide, featuring a multi-year conference tour and student led club program to equip teenagers and those who lead them to live for God, creatively communicating a compelling Christian worldview to the next generation. TNG radio is made possible by the friends of Alex McFarland Ministries, P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. That's P.O.

Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. Call us at 877-YesGod1. Or give online at truthforanewgeneration.com. While you're there, listen to program archives, read Alex's blog, invite Alex to speak at your event or contact Alex with a question or comment, truthforanewgeneration.com. Thanks for listening today and join us again next time as we bring you more truth for a new generation on TNG radio.