A Minister in a Fraternity House

Nikita Koloff here, the devil's worst nightmare, with the It's Time to Man Up Podcast, where we talk to real men who have real stories who realize it is time to man up. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network.

The year is 2020. Can it get any crazier? One thing that's really helped me stay grounded, stay encouraged, is to be around godly pastors. Is there a role for the Church of the Living God in a chaotic year, a crazier, a political year, a virus-filled year like 2020? Well, I'm with one right now, and he agreed to visit with me some. He is Pastor Kyle Mercer, Two Cities Church. Look at the wall.

Look at that. Discipleship happens in relationships. I'm in your conference room. Pastor Kyle, I'm just glad you're still alive and talking to me, brother, with 2020. It's been a nutty year, huh? It has been an incredible year and a crazy year, an unprecedented year in many ways.

I heard someone recently say, has anybody tried dipping 2020 in ranch? Because that's the kind of year it has been, and so, you know, like, just real quickly, like all churches, or almost every church that I know of, we had to go online only in mid-March for about 15 weeks. We came back with one service on a Thursday night in June, and then we brought our church back with three services.

September 13th, I believe it was, the first Sunday after Labor Day, and so we're learning. We're growing a lot in this season. Obviously, there has been so much that has happened, not just COVID, but especially COVID over the last few months, the last seven months, and now, of course, as we look toward the end of the year, the election. Yeah, so you got the election, you got COVID, you got all that. I really loved how, and man, I'm always on the edge of my seat, you know, as a Christian radio talk show host, because I've been doing an old series on vote your faith, you know, vote not on the slick, you know, flowery words of a politician who'll say anything, but vote on the word of God, you know, and on what he says, and your faith speaks to that and should inform every part of my life, and so as soon as you brought up the subject of the election Sunday, it was in your remarks before your sermon on, I believe it was on judges, or on Exodus, yes, the Passover in the cross. I love that, but you did, you started to make a comment. I thought, oh no, what's he gonna, what's Heil gonna say, but will you speak to that real quick, because, you know, a lot of folks, you know, like have divorced their voting from their faith, just like we sadly, we divorced, you know, Sundays from Monday through Saturday.

Will you speak to that real quick? Yeah, and what Stuart, what Stu's mentioning here is just, you know, a couple, and I encourage pastors listening to try to do this, is at the beginning of my sermons, oftentimes I'll take a few minutes and just give an update, celebrate something, cast some vision for something. I took a moment this past Sunday to talk about our election, just kind of give some context. Our church, we are, don't talk a ton about politics, we are not a partisan church, it's not in the normal course of our life, we're not talking a lot about elections and politics, but at the same time, we don't want to be completely silent. We said, hey, look, we started saying, here's two reasons we've not talked about it a ton. The first reason we've not talked about this election a ton is because we feel like everybody's hearing about it everywhere. They're getting mailers constantly, daily, massive mailers, constantly, daily, massive mailers hanging out their mailboxes.

They're getting, their junk mail and their regular email is full of these kind of advertisements, whether they go on Facebook or they're listening to your radio, or not your radio maybe, but otherwise they're constantly hearing ads about politicians. We're not saying it's a bad thing, we're just saying people need retreat, respite, relief. So we wanted to provide that. Secondly, we just kind of, we wanted to reaffirm and say, hey, you know, we are not a political organization, we don't have an ultimate political mission. We teach the Word of God, we teach the Gospel. When you teach the Word of God, there are, on both sides of the aisle, there are going to be political implications and applications, but we tend to say, we say all the time, hey, look, we're dealing at things at the theological level, not at the political level, which for a lot of people, most things in their lives are either, they feel like because of the news and other things, everything's become political and polarizing, or we're trying to say, hey, it doesn't have to be, we're going to deal with that at a level underneath that.

Christians can disagree, debate, divide, discuss on all the ways to apply the truth that we're talking about. So that's what I was saying. And then what I had said was, you know, that I told a story of a young couple, the first premarital counseling I did when I moved to the city, I had a young couple, it was during the, we got here four and a half years ago, it was during the 2016 election. And this couple comes to me and they look very distraught. And this is our second or third session. So I sat down with them, I said, you know, what's going on?

I know engagement can be hard, what's going on? And they said, oh, it's not our engagement, our engagement's going well. And they said, Pastor Kyle, they said, who should we vote for in this election? And I don't know, you know, I hadn't been a pastor that long.

I don't know if I had ever had somebody just directly come up to me and that bluntly say, you know, who do I vote for? And kind of how I respond to them was the same thing I said to our church on Sunday. I said, you know, I'm always, I try to be a Bible saturated, historically rooted, globally informed person. So as I look in history and I look in the Bible and I look around the world, you know, I see what have Christians always done?

And I think that's a good thing to do. When I don't know what to do, what have Christians always done? And I think Christians have always done three things. They've always read their Bibles and said, we want to be informed.

You know, the fact that Harvard was built within five years of us being here, I believe is the number. The fact that Christians have always valued education. So I want to be, I want to know the Bible.

I want to know the candidates, platforms, the issues, but in that order. And then I want to vote my conscience. You know, Paul is very big about never go against your conscience, have scripture and form the conscience, respond to that. And then at the end of the day, I think what we all have to do, no matter what happens on November 3rd, 4th and following is trust God with all of this and to say, you know, migrate to the churches. I don't know if things are gonna get easier or harder, but our mission has not and is not fundamentally changing.

Wow. And like, yeah, you think about like religious freedom and those kind of things. And you think about like, you know, God may have to take us Christians behind the woodshed, you know, maybe today. And, you know, the church in China, the church where it suffered and been under persecution has thrived. We're praying for his mercy, but we definitely aren't, we haven't earned much, you know, we haven't earned it or we've not, we've really compromised, you know, with so few Christians sharing their faith and show so few Christians giving. But not to belabor that, Pastor Kyle Mercer is the pastor of Two Cities Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. What would you say the mission of this church is? And what I love about talking to you guys, even before this conversation, before this interview, we were celebrating the success of another church. It was kind of neat to hear, like, instead of, oh man, how's God bless them? But y'all are celebrating that.

Why is that exciting? And why is the church needed more than ever? You're a local church guy. Talk about that. Well, we were just talking about this, Stu, but you know, one of the things we were saying is that as a church becomes more of a minority culture, I think everybody's realizing that. How fast does that happen?

What rate? But I think because we realize that more than ever, collaboration isn't just, as I've heard it said, not just a nicety, but a necessity. So, I mean, we're all about the kingdom over any one local church and the big C church or any individual local church. And we realize that every pastor is simultaneously the pastor of a church and a pastor of that church.

And so I try to live in those tensions. So we do celebrate the church advancing. Our mission, as you asked, is to reach every man, woman, and child in our city, and to give them repeated opportunities to see here and respond to the gospel. And there's a quarter million people in our city of Winston-Salem. So we realize we need to multiply and we need to collaborate with the churches. And even when you started your church, everyone's like, what are you doing to start in this church?

What are you thinking? There's so many churches in Winston-Salem. It's in the Bible belt. Tell us about that rationale, why we can't have enough of this kind of thing. Well, I mean, two things. One, we're just glad to join what God has been doing since the Moravians got here.

And maybe before, we don't know. Part of it is a deep conviction genuinely that every city, and I can't think of any exceptions, needs more churches, needs more good gospel preaching churches, and needs to join what God's already doing. And I think men like Tim Keller and others, who was a former pastor in Manhattan, he talks at length about, I guess, the research, and I don't know all of it, but that the new churches tend to reach new people.

They're more likely to reach a new type of person. They move into town, they move into Winston-Salem. One of the things they're often asked is, well, where would it be a new church where some new people were actually connected? Wow.

And that's what's going on here at Two Cities. And really, we're interviewing a local pastor who can kind of encourage and challenge all our pastors out there and everyone out there to get plugged in. Now, tell us real quick the backstory on Kyle Mercer. Now, how you came to Christ. You talk about it when you preach.

I love you. Integrate your testimony. And when you preach, you spend a little time at Duke University. How a pastor went from being a Blue Devil to a pastor is beyond me. But take us to the salvation story and then to how God really cemented some things for you in ministry at Duke in Durham. Well, thanks.

I'll make it brief. Yeah, so I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I've got great parents. And I grew up as a nominal Catholic. And all I can say is, I was not looking for God.

I was not going through depression, debt, divorce, death, any of those things. But God brought a godly... He was a junior in high school at the time.

His life... His name is Joe, joe.co. His life was radically changed. And I'm one of those people who was... God used a relationship, a friendship, and personal evangelism when I was in public high school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And the gospel became real to me. I grew up nominal Catholic.

So I had heard Jesus is God and people are sinful and Jesus is Lord and sin is terrible. But all that became very personal. So I gave my life to Christ at 16, felt immediately, genuinely, immediately called to full-time ministry within the first month.

I was just like... It was in seed form, but I felt like that's what I want to do. I can go on, but basically the real short version is I end up down here in North Carolina. I go down to Elon University and I get involved with campus outreach there. A great ministry.

I grow a ton. I end up going on staff with them. And then later I end up at Duke where I could tell some really exciting stories. But I spent about four years at Duke doing a fraternity ministry. So ministry to the fraternities.

That's all I did. Those are the only people... Some parents may go wink, wink, nod, nod. Yeah, he's going to minister to the fraternity.

What kind of party's going on? But what a mission field. But what was the biggest takeaway from that in your own life to be in that kind of context sharing the gospel?

Man, I mean, learning a lot, praying a lot, just needing the gospel, needing to see the power of the gospel, realizing I had never been around so many people who were far from God but close to me. I mean, I would meet somebody and they would say... I'm from New York City and I'd say, yeah, sure you are.

I'd say, where from? And they'd say, oh, the corner 85th and 7th or something like that. And you're like, wow, here's a guy who literally grew up in New York City. And what would be so interesting, genuinely, I remember meeting with very well-educated guys, freshman, sophomore, juniors, and they literally... The Bible illiteracy of the average young American millennial is... That would be educated in everything else. That would be going to a top 10 school like Duke and yet they wouldn't know the difference between the Old Testament and New Testament. They would have no understanding of even what Christians believe. Part of what I would say to them is I want to tell you the gospel so that you can genuinely either accept or reject it. I want you to actually know what it is because it's not even in the public square of ideas for the average person, certainly at Duke.

That is something else. Give us one going away story that'll kind of give us a challenge, especially of that mission field. You have a heart for missions. You have a heart for evangelism.

I love being around you. You're challenging your people to go out to make disciples. But give us maybe a story from Duke that would encourage us a little bit from that experience as a campus minister going to frass to lead them to Christ. Well, my favorite story and the first story that jumps to my mind is I started taking classes there so I was a Duke Divinity student while I was doing that. So that was kind of my Roman citizenship to get around the campus. To be able to be a chaplain on the campus or do what you did, you had to be in their divinity school, which I'm sure is a bastion of conservatism, right? That's for another podcast and radio conversation.

But I will say this. So I remember I went around to some of the Christians on the campus that I did know from my church and I said, what is the craziest fraternity? And I particularly, it's a philosophy of industry and an understanding of scripture that where did Paul go? He always went to the heart. He always went to the center.

He always went to the hardest place. So I remember saying, what is the hardest attorney? And they gave me the name, two or three different people. And they actually told me, oh, you do not want to go there. You don't want to talk to them.

And that was exactly what I said. I'm going to go to the, that's, you know, I just, I'm going to go to the hardest attorney. I went up to the fraternity house. I knocked on the front door and without knowing, this is, this really happened, without knowing who was in charge there, some guy opens the door at the fraternity house and I say, hey, I would like to talk to your president. And he turns around.

I can vividly see it in my mind. He turns around, looks upstairs and goes, Jack, someone's here to see you. And I thought, well, I know Jack's the president's name.

That's all I know. And Jack came downstairs and I said, Jack, hey, I'm Kyle. And I went and did some things. And I said, I'm a student here at the divinity school. Have you, has there been anything offered to your attorney for spiritual leadership? And he said, well, no. And I said, so I know you guys financially you're getting ready and academically you're getting ready and socially you're getting ready. I said, there's nothing, no one's coming to offer you anything for spiritual leadership.

He said, no, they haven't. I said, well, I'd like to be your chaplain. And I said, I'd like to come and I'd like to speak at your next chapter meeting and offer to be your chaplain. And he said, it's Tuesday at eight.

Wow. And I said, I'll be there. And that began a journey. I had to get ready in about 48 hours to speak to about a hundred fraternity guys who did not want to hear from me. Wow, the craziest ones.

And that, yeah, the craziest attorney. And from there I ended up having administered about 10 different fraternities, which is really cool. How did that experience impact you being a pastor now of a local church here? Would you say I had a lot of influence, I guess, on your whole testimony? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it put in me just a conviction of the power of scripture. I found that when I tried to talk about a bunch of, I don't know, go back to what you're talking about, issues of the day and all this kind of stuff, they were somewhat helpful, but they had their guard up. But when I would just say, guys, can we take, what I did in all my studies was either, hey, can we walk through the gospel of John or can we walk through the gospel of Mark and just let the power of the word and the life and ministry of Jesus Christ speak for themselves?

Right. And that's when I felt like I was actually making traction into people's hearts. And the teaching of sin and grace was becoming real for people. That's the voice of Pastor Kyle Mercer, Two Cities Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. If you could speak real quickly, as we wrap up, about the importance of church to people. One of the Barna statistics, if it's true, which is scary, says that over 40% of Christian radio listeners that would listen to a show like Truth Talk with Stu Epperson, our show, over 40% are unchurched. Would you speak to the importance of really getting plugged in and maybe the things to look for in a church, the importance of the word, things like that that you found are axiomatic to Two Cities, kind of be a pastor to pastors right now and also to everyone out there that really needs to get plugged in, but they've been putting it off and maybe with COVID kind of lighten up, they can get back. That's great.

Yeah. Well, we say here that every Christian needs a church and that, you know, everyone's wants someone to say, can you be a Christian and not be part of church? And I say, well, okay, maybe.

It's very unique. And that would be like being a baseball player who's not on a baseball team. And I said, if you've talked to someone and they say, I play baseball, you say, what team? And they go, well, I'm not on a team.

You go, that's weird. Then who do you play catch with? Yourself? Who do you play against? How do you do batting practice?

You hit it into a fence? And, you know, every Christian needs a church just like every person needs a home. Now, are there people who do not have homes?

There are. They're called homeless people. We feel bad for them. We have to create entire ministries for them.

And it is obvious every time we look at them that things are not right with them. And so I would say that, yes, absolutely every Christian needs a home. It's impossible to obey the one another's of scripture if you're not a part of church.

I think you need to go, okay, what does it look like for me to forgive other people, real people, embodied people that I know? What does it look like for me to love one another, to carry burdens? So, you know, what do you look for in a church?

I mean, I think you mentioned the main thing. I think at the end of the day, it needs to be the preaching of the word. It is the word of God that creates the church. It's not, you know, the wrong understanding is the church created the word.

No, it's the opposite. It's actually that the word creates the church. And I think that people can handle a lot of different things in a church, a lot of different secondary issues.

If the word is the truth of the word is taught and applied to people's lives. And it's also recently we had Pastors Appreciation Month. We speak as a pastor to other pastors to challenge them to be vigilant and to be in the word, to be men of the book.

You know, it seems like we're dancing around that. We're telling a lot of good stories, a lot of, you know, interesting analogies. But will you speak to how important that is in your pulpit, but how important just challenge the pastors out there? I know a lot of them look up to you, but just give a word on that. Yeah, well, Stu, thanks for asking me to do that. I mean, genuinely, I would say to pastors, thank you for your ministry.

Thanks for what you're doing. And I know this last year I feel for pastors because this is not what the average pastor signed up for. 2020, there was no, what do you do with masks in my seminary class?

You know, how do you walk through a global pandemic? So let me just say to the pastors, first of all, thank you. And second of all, yeah, I would just say lean into the word. The word is the power of God.

It is what controls, it is what convicts, it is what comforts. And, you know, I just, to me, that the whole ministry, the entire ministry is what we call our ministry through this radio program is open Bible, open life. I would just encourage pastors to lean into both, to end the season, continuing to open up their Bible, that's authority, and open up their lives, that's authenticity. And I think what people need, I think the power that happens is when we open up our Bibles and open up our lives, whether that's happening from the pulpit or if that's happening around the dining room table or during a community group. Yeah, wow. Pastor Kyle Mercer, how can people find out more about, Pastor Kyle, about your church, about Two Cities Church, others that want to learn, maybe listen to your sermons?

What's the best way? Easiest way is twocitieschurch.net. Everything you'd want to find, sermons, content, our YouTube channel, get to our podcast, find out about our church and what we believe.

It's all on the website. Okay, if you think he's electric on this interview, you should hear him preach. And I caught a little bit of his sermon Sunday when he was talking about the Passover and talking about the cross and how they connected. Brilliant. But I really enjoyed that one part.

And your associate is in here too, and he's going to smile when I say this. You talked about how they had to eat fast. You said, I'm a fast eater. You see, I enjoy, you're also, you're also can talk fast and preach fast.

I do talk very fast. But there's work to be done, right? Amen. That's right. That's right. That's right. Anyway, God bless you. Thanks so much.