TNG with Rick Lawrenson

Bestselling author, speaker, and advocate for Christian apologetics, Dr. Alex McFarland. Bestselling author and apologist, Dylan Burrows. Together bringing you truth.

For a new generation, this is TNG Radio. In Matthew 16 18, Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That's a real encouragement, the preservation, the perpetuity of the local church. And we're going to talk about the health, the care and the feeding of a local church today on this edition of the program. My name is Alex McFarland. Very glad to be talking to a longtime friend and colleague, Rick Lawrence. And I'm also glad because I'm down here at the ocean, although I'm not on vacation. I wish I were, but Rick, it is so good to be with you, my dear brother. For those who may not be aware, Rick Lawrence is the pastor of Nags Head Church on the coast of North Carolina, a guy that I have looked up to for a long time. Rick, I want to say you have shaped my life probably way more than you realize, and we're both Liberty grads. But you are the author of a brand new book, and I'm excited to talk about that. But first of all, I just want to say thanks for being on Truth For A New Generation Radio, and good to see you again, my friend.

Thank you for inviting me. It's always good to see you, and I'm glad you made a little detour in your trip to come by and stop and visit. You know, sitting here in your office with you, I well remember 20, 21 years ago when I came to see you one day with an absolutely ulterior motive. I wanted to preach at Nags Head Church.

And do you remember, I was down at Rodanthe at a camp. I made an appointment to come see you, and you were so gracious. You let me share about my vision for apologetics, and you did let me come and preach. And I just want to say thanks for two decades of encouragement and role modeling. And we've had you back several times since, haven't we? I guess you guys are gluttons for punishment.

Yeah, I guess we are. But we love what you do and love your ministry, Alex. Give us a little background on you and Gail and how God has worked in your life over these past decades. Well, we're both Liberty grads. We graduated in 77.

In fact, June the 18th. That's our 41st wedding anniversary. Congratulations. And it's been a long haul, but in the ministry almost all of that time. And God's taken us through a whole lot of journeys together. We have three children who are all grown, all here in Nags Head Church, all serving God, volunteering in ministry. And so we moved here to the Outer Banks in 1986, and then I became the pastor of this church in 1991. So it's been over 27 years, January of 91.

So we're excited to be here. We're at that kind of twilight era of our lives in ministry. I'm 62 years old and not sure how much longer God wants me to continue doing this, but as long as he does, I want to be faithful to him in preaching his Word and shepherding the flock that he's given me. Well, as long as I've known you, you are a faithful preacher of God's Word, and I think that's a big reason that the favor of the Lord has been with you. But as long as I've ever known you to be here, you've gotten a lot of accolades. I know Rick Warren years ago gave you a certificate of a purpose-driven church, and I see that on the wall right there.

And you've been covered in media and the newspaper, and you've done a lot of innovative things. When I think about Nags Head Church and your leadership, I've watched a lot of innovation that God's given you to reach people with the gospel of Christ. Because people hearing this all over the country, if you're vacationing on the eastern seaboard, if you come to the coast of North Carolina, don't forget to go to church on Sunday, and Nags Head is a good one. Before we go any farther, what's the website?

How can people find you? Well, the church website is just simply nagsheadchurch.org, and it tells a lot about our church, and that's our gateway to our church through the Internet, if you will. If you could describe Nags Head Church now, 21st century today, after two decades of your leadership, what is Nags Head Church? Well, Nags Head Church, we want to be a community of missionaries here on the Outer Banks, reaching our community, but then also the world. And we do a lot of missions things as well.

We're heavily involved in missions. We seek to be a church here. When people come to visit us, check us out, we want them to understand there's not going to be anything here that we're going to do to embarrass them, to threaten them.

We're going to do all that we can to love them. We're going to proclaim the Word to them and the Gospel, which we know is the only thing that really changes lives. And so we're an active church in our community, and we tell people we believe it's a sin to bore people at church. So you come to our worship gatherings, and we're very contemporary, and things move right along, and there's the use of video and our music, our band. They bring forth a great time of worship doing that. So it's a welcoming—we get a lot of people tell us how welcoming we are, and we strive to do that. Our folks are heavily involved in ministry. Over 90 percent of our church membership is involved in ministry here in the church. Amen.

Yeah, that's incredible. From the time that you became a Christian and God called you into ministry to the very present day, how have you seen the American spiritual landscape change over the years? Man, it's changed tremendously.

You know, I became a Christian in 1966 when I was an 11-year-old boy. And what I've seen happening, especially in the last—well, really since this century began, I think there's been a huge shift in spirituality. We're seeing, for example, we hear a lot about the millennials drifting away from church, and that they want to be spiritual people, but they just can't relate to the church. And we've seen, of course, all the moral shifts in our country and in society as, sadly, I think amongst Christian people—and I talk about this a lot to our church, how important it is not to adopt the worldview of the world, but our worldview needs to come from God, from the Bible. And we've got to trust him, and we've got to have wisdom, and we have to walk with discernment, because it's really hard these days, harder than it was when I was a younger man, to stand for the truth of the Word of God without getting some repercussions.

Right. We're talking with Pastor Rick Lawrence of Nags Head Church. He's the author of a brand new book called The Replanted Church. And when we come back, we're going to talk about this, because Rick, studies show that something like eight out of ten churches are plateaued or declining. And so for some insights on jump-starting the church that's maybe kind of coasting, you don't want to miss this with Pastor Rick Lawrence and Nags Head Church. Stay tuned. We're back after this.

We'll be right back. First Peter 3.15 tells us to be ready always to give an answer for the hope we have. We're instructed to be prepared to defend our faith. This is Alex McFarland for the Life Answers teams, students we train at North Greenville University, a leading Christian college in South Carolina. The Life Answers teams are made up of students who will inspire and equip your congregation. These apologetics teams we train speak in churches to youth groups and train Christians of all ages to address key issues of our times from a biblical perspective like, is there a God?

Is the Bible true? What about gender and moral issues? Call me at 864-977-2008 and we will arrange for the Life Answers team to come to your church and give a presentation that will benefit your people for years to come. 864-977-2008 and always be ready. Welcome back to TNG Radio. Alex McFarland here. We're continuing our conversation with Pastor Rick Lawrence of Nags Head Church. I do want to remind you as you hear this, people will be traveling across the country to our apologetics camp at North Greenville University and we're so excited. We've got people from about 15 states coming to learn how to defend their faith.

Young people, middle schoolers, high schoolers, and you can keep up with what we're doing at TruthForANewGeneration.com. We've got two big national conferences this fall, fall of 2018. In September we'll be in Murfreesboro, TN right there, 30 minutes from the Nashville airport.

Middle Tennessee State University, we're doing a debate. At the conference we've got Josh McDowell coming, Jay Warner Wallace, more than eight apologists and Christian worldview speakers. Then in October we're going to be in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, October 26-27. Wherever you are, you will not be disappointed.

You will be inspired, you will be informed and equipped, mobilized and dispatched so that when you get home you can live more consistently for Christ and hopefully implement worldview apologetic strategies for your discipleship and evangelism programs. For the conferences we do, and then we've got several coming up over the years and months ahead, go to TruthForANewGeneration.com. Truth, F-O-R, TruthForANewGeneration.com. Right now I want to continue our conversation with Rick Lawrence, the pastor of Nags Head Church.

He's also the author of the new book, The Replanted Church. And part of the reason, Pastor Rick, that I wanted to have you on is because if we've gotten this correspondence once, we've gotten it 500 times, people write or they call and they say, �Our church has kind of run out of gas. We're not seeing growth. We're not seeing evangelism. We'll get a blip here and there and then people move on.� And studies show � I know H.B. London, a focus on the family, ten years ago he was telling me that 82 percent of churches are plateaued or declining. And a plateau doesn't last very long.

I mean, if you're not going up, you're going backwards. Dr. Darrell Bock Before the break, you told us about the landscape of the 21st century. What was Nags Head Church like when you and Gail arrived 20 years ago? Dr. Darrell Bock Well, we got here in 1991 and actually we began attending the church a little bit before that. And it was a church, a small congregation of I would say 20 or 25, what we might call active, regular members.

There wasn't anything going on for the children. Oftentimes, we would come as guests to the church for Sunday school and I would take my three children back to a room and teach them a Sunday school lesson that I had not prepared for, but they had nobody there for my kids. Dr. Darrell Bock And you were a visitor. Dr. Darrell Bock I was a visitor.

Dr. Darrell Bock Wow. Dr. Darrell Bock But I tell people that I describe the church then as � it was a church in the 1990s that was still doing church as though it were the 1950s. And you looked around the church and the people who were there were primarily people who looked back at the �50s as the good old days. And so there was no vision for reaching the current culture, the current community.

They weren't reaching them at all. In fact, they were not only declining as a church, they were probably just a few years from closing the doors. That's the church that we came to. And we prayed about coming here when we were invited to come and thought, you know, God, why would we � I mean, there's nothing there for my family.

I've got three young children. But God had me drive past this church building daily in my job that I was working in construction and every day I would drive by it and it was like the Spirit would be whispering in my ear, you know, I could do something there. That's a great location. The community is booming. I could do something there.

So when they asked me to come, I said, okay, let's give it a shot. David maybe need a shot in the arm. Replanting essentially is saying, look, we're going to kind of wipe the slate clean and start all over again. And there are a lot of churches that that's what they need. There are a lot of churches that their community around them has changed so much that they're no longer reaching. The community around them doesn't look like the church, but yet the church continues to shrink and there's a neighborhood around them, all around them, and they need to replant that church. The folks there need to call in a new pastor who looks like the community around them and say, hey, we're kingdom-minded here. This is not about our church, my church, you know, this is about Jesus' church and we want you to come in, here's the building, here's the keys, reach this community. And that's a replanting as well, but that's not what we did, but that's another way of replanting.

Darrell Bock And that's what the title of the book means, really, isn't it? Same location, but really, essentially, for all practical purposes, a different and new church. Richard Averbeck Right, right, in very many ways, exactly. Darrell Bock Why are people afraid to embark on a new thing when we know it's God's church, it's not ours, he has promised that he would build his church, but why is it hard for people � because I've seen this, you know, many places where the neighborhood changes, the staff and the church doesn't look anything like the current neighborhood, people aren't being reached, but it's almost like people kind of dig their heels in, like, we will hold our ground. Why are we afraid to really let God do the driving? Richard Averbeck I think it's because of the unknown, you know, and right now we're doing a series just started Sunday here in our church from Hebrews 11, and Sunday I preached Hebrews 11, 1, 2, and 3. And, you know, faith is evidence of the unseen, you know, and I think it's a lack of faith, largely.

I think it's a lack of compassion. I think we settle in and we get comfortable with us for no more, and we look around and everybody we see in church, we know them, and so we're very comfortable with that. But we forget who we are and why Christ has saved us, and he didn't save us to be comfortable with our holy huddle. He saved us to reach this world and to go into the world and reach the world with the gospel, and that's a scary thing for a lot of people. Dr. Darrell Bock We're talking with Pastor Rick Lawrence of Nags Head Church, the website again, nagsheadchurch.org. We're going to continue getting into his book, The Replanted Church, because even if your church is thriving right now, we all want to reach more people with the gospel. We all want to see souls saved and the Great Commission furthered.

So stay tuned, because we'll be right back with more of our conversation with Pastor Rick Lawrence of Nags Head Church, the website again, nagsheadchurch.org. For centuries, the Bible has inspired humanity and shaped the very world we live in. But how do we know this book is the Word of God and not merely the words of men? What we believe about the Bible is based on what we believe about its source. The God Who Speaks explores the evidence of the Bible's inspiration and authority through some of the world's most respected biblical scholars. We have essentially a dual authorship, so it's true to say that Paul wrote Romans. It's equally true to say that God wrote Romans. He says we saw this, and that sets the Bible apart from almost everything else in the ancient world and its religious pantheon of gods and goddesses. The God Who Speaks is a feature-length documentary from the American Family Association, available now at TheGodWhoSpeaks.org.

Welcome back to the program. Alex McFarland here with Pastor Rick Lawrence. The book is The Replanted Church, which is a great book. I've read it. I can honestly say I've read your book, which if you're going to interview somebody, it's good to actually have read the book.

That's a good idea. How can people find the book? The book is found on Amazon. You can go to Amazon.com, type in my name, Lawrenson, L-A-W-R-E-N-S-O-N, and it should pop up. I also have a website that links it, and that's simply RickLawrenson.com.

You go there, and there's a link right to the book. What were some of the hurdles? And I do want to say, with all sincerity, it is an honor to have you on. I'm in a different church almost every weekend, 45, 46 weekends a year, and I have been for 20 years. And I've watched from afar and seen what God has done through you here, and it is exciting. Surely though, there had to be some hurdles along the journey, and what were some of those, Rick? Well, you know, when you deal with people, you're dealing with people who are none of us are perfect, and there's going to be some obstacles along the way. There are going to be people who resist any kind of change, and there are going to be people who not only resist but will outright oppose you and try to stop you and try to stop what God is doing, frankly. And it's sad, because I really think, for the most part, those people are Christian people, but if I can say it this way, they just don't get it, and they've lost their sense of purpose, and they're in a church that maybe has no vision, and so they don't see anything of value to changing.

And so there was opposition, a good bit of that. Those are some of the hurdles that we experienced early on, and occasionally experience even now all these years later, but it's with far less frequency, because now we've established the kind of church God wants us to be, and people come in understanding that. And if they don't want to be a part of this kind of a church, then we encourage them to find a church that they are more comfortable with, and we'll help them do that even. Darrell Bock It's been said that there are 345,000 churches in America, 350,000 somewhere in that neighborhood, and yet right now – I just read a statistic this week in prepping for this interview about the rise of nones, N-O-N-E-S, and millennials and younger that don't believe in God.

What's the disconnect? I mean, more than a quarter million Protestant churches, more than half a million ordained clergy, Barna says a hundred million adults that are born again, and yet our country seems to be getting progressively darker. Please help us understand this. Dr. Darrell Bock Well, I think the biggest disconnect, especially for the millennial generation, is that they never – I won't say never, that's a big word – but too often, as they viewed professing Christians live out their lives in the community, in the church, whatever it might be, they did not see genuine Christianity.

They saw no passion for the Lord, and they didn't see – they saw – I hate to use this word, because it's used so much against the church, but they saw a lot of hypocrisy. And I think my generation had the greatest opportunity to change the world when we went through a revival in this country in the early 70s called the Jesus Movement. And I lived through that, and I saw that, but ten years later, it was like, you know, where was it?

And that generation, which is my generation, had the opportunity to so impact the future, and I think we dropped the ball. I think we just kind of let it go. Darrell Bock Can God give us a do-over? Joe Fornear Oh, I believe so. I hope so.

You know, I think that's the only hope for America. Darrell Bock We're almost out of time, regrettably, and I want to do this again, but talk to the person who kind of assumes that all the chapters have been written, and they need to get a fresh vision for what God might do in the days ahead. Joe Fornear Yeah, I like to say to people, well, if your heart is beating and your lungs are breathing and your brain is making waves, God's not through with you yet. God can do amazing things. He can change and resurrect still. Darrell Bock And if he can heal the sick, raise the dead, he can breathe life into a congregation.

Joe Fornear That's right. Darrell Bock The Replanted Church is a great book. I would encourage you to read it wherever you are in your journey for Christ and in your local church, and they can get it at Amazon.com or RickLorensen.com.

There's a link to it. Darrell Bock Well, you've got ministry work to do, and I've got to hit the road, so we're going to have to go. Thanks for listening, folks. And tell somebody about the show, but even more importantly, tell somebody about Jesus. Narrator Truth for a New Generation, in association with Alex McFarland Evangelistic Ministries, exists to equip Christians with a biblical world view through conferences and camps. For information about upcoming events, visit truthforanewgeneration.com or give us a call at 877-YES-GOD-1. That's 877-YES-GOD and the number 1. TNG radio is made possible by the friends of Alex McFarland Evangelistic Ministries, P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. That's P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. Or give online at alexmcfarland.com or truthforanewgeneration.com. Thanks for listening and join us again next time as we bring you more Truth for a New Generation on TNG Radio.