A Quest For Your Soul

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Now, The Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of It's Time to Man Up. Today, today, today, all the way from Jackson, Tennessee, with me today, Pastor Ronnie Coleman.

Welcome to The Man Up Show. Oh, it's great to be here. Thank you, brother, for having me. Well, it's a pleasure to have you on.

I'm excited to talk with you today just with everything that's going on there in Jackson, Tennessee, but also following you on social media and watching what you've been doing over in Africa, Ethiopia, right? That's right. It's amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. I mean, some of the videos and some of the things you're posting is just like, I'm like, wow, I mean, thousands, like when you do like crusades and all kinds of things over in Ethiopia.

Yeah, that's right. My pastor started going to Ethiopia about 20 years ago. He's an evangelist now.

His name is Don Witt. He's been begging me for years to go with him. And I've always had, you know, scheduling conflicts. Well, about three years ago, I finally said, okay, I can go.

And man, I was hooked. And so everything else has to move around that schedule now. Every year, the end of May, first of June, we go for about 14 days. And we actually just preach about eight, maybe nine days of the 14, because it takes so long to get there and to travel and to get back. And we're seeing well over 100,000 people saved every single time we go. It's just, it's amazing. You know, Nikita, when you hear people, you know, talk, even in America sometimes, you know, sometimes pessimistically or negatively, you know, God's dead or the church is dying. I'm like, man, God is at work right now, like I've never, ever seen before. You know, he's really doing a great thing.

And really, in Ethiopia, man, the power of God is just falling upon that country. Well, and again, and I can say, I can vouch and say, because again, I follow you on social media, and those are not exaggerated numbers. You know, there's an old joke, I'm sure you've probably heard it, Ronnie, we'll get into kind of your background here in a minute. But, you know, as an evangelist myself, because at the core of Who Call Off for Christ Ministries, you know, God made it clear from day one, you're an evangelist, you're a soul winning ministry. And so that's the very core of who we are. And I'm always trying to make sure I didn't become evangelistic, you know.

Exactly. I'm going to be an evangelist, but I don't want to be evangelist. In other words, I don't want to stretch the truth.

And you're not. So when you say you're seeing over 100,000 people every time you go over to Ethiopia and you do these crusades, I've witnessed, I've seen the videos, so I know. And I don't know if you know this, Ronnie, but you know, I've been to Africa more than one occasion. Did you know I had traveled to Africa?

No, I did not know that. So just a little quick backstory. And so I was introduced to an evangelist from South Africa in 1995, March of 1995. And we just clicked.

We just hit it off, we clicked. And spent about nine years under that ministry and being discipled and mentored and in that process of time made five trips to South Africa, Johannesburg and Durban and all around South Africa for pastors conferences and then other ministries, you know, working out in the bush and all of that. And from that then made several other trips to Angola, Africa to help build a church. Spent three weeks in Angola. That was actually my very first trip was Angola and then Uganda. Three trips doing crusades in Uganda and then Tanzania. And I did a crusade on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania. So I've made a total of 11 trips to Africa. And like you, man, I just fell in love with Africa and fell in love with the people.

I mean, the way they worshiped and just loved God. And is that kind of what kind of intrigued you? What intrigued you the most about Africa, Ronnie? Well, I think that's kind of the way I feel. I mean, I just love the people. And I've been to Central America and South America and Europe and, you know, a lot of different places, Romania. But something about the Ethiopian people.

I mean, I just really click with them and there's just something there. I mean, it's funny because the guy that we go with, Haile Tefera, he's like the Billy Graham of Ethiopia. He's a famous soccer player. And so he knows everybody and everybody knows him. And he sends, kind of like you, you know, from sports world into evangelism, he's made that shift. And so because of his soccer career, everybody knows him and he has favor in the country. So now he facilitates all these trips, these evangelistic events.

And anyway, he had never been ordained. And so our church in Jackson, Tennessee ordained him last month. That's awesome.

And it's funny. Yeah, it's funny because we had pastors coming from a lot of different churches because a lot of different groups had been over with him. And so our music at our church, we're just, I mean, we're just kind of full-blown wise.

I mean, it's exciting, it's high energy, it's worshipful. And so because I knew a lot of these, and I'm not being negative, I'm just saying a lot of these pastors came from more of a traditional background, you know, and, you know, hymns, first, second, fourth, verse, or whatever. And so I said, you know, I told my daughter, who's a worship player, I said, maybe we need to tone it down a little bit for the ordination service. And so I highly heard me say that. He said, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. He said, your church and your music is like Ethiopian music. So he said, I want you to be you. This is my ordination.

This is what I want. Well, go ahead, I'm sorry, finish that thought. She's a little bit afraid to leave the country with little kids at home, but I just connect, man, I really do.

I love it so much, and I just look forward to going every year. Well, I want to say this, because I've made 11 trips to Africa, right, and I've been in, I just stopped counting at 1200 churches in America that I've preached in, right, so it's well exceeded that, but I've just stopped counting there, okay. And when it comes to worship, I'm going to tell you, well, I remember to your point, the very first worship set or setting in Africa that I said, and I was just like taken aback, Ronnie. I was like, wow, I mean, you want to talk about diving into the presence of God and it not stopping, right?

Like, it goes on sometimes for hours before they even get to a message. Well, we had one crusade that was one of the last ones I did while we were there in June, and we had over 6000 people saved in that one crusade, and so after the crusade was over with, they had celebration worship. And this was because of what God just did, so we already had worship, then we had, I preached the gospel, and then after that, so many people got saved, so we had a celebration worship time. And you're talking about, wow, man, I mean, it is heaven on earth, brother, and it lasted another hour, hour and a half. Yeah, high energy, right?

Just so excited, you know, because of what God has done. You know, we could learn a little lesson from that here in this space. We could. Now, I have a question for you.

Okay, this is a, and you may not have an answer, but you made me think of something. Okay, so I didn't grow up in church, you know, I did, if we went, it was, you know, probably Christmas Easter, if we went, right, in a traditional Lutheran church, you know, not to beat up on any tradition at all in any way. But I've always wondered, and I've never really asked the question, but you just made me think about it, and that is, you mentioned, you said the hymnal with first stanza, second stanza, fourth stanza.

And I've been in a lot of traditional churches who do that very thing. Okay, why do they skip the third stanza? I've never, I don't know. Who started that? Why do they?

I've even led, I can't think, I'm just loud, but I've even led music before, and I just skipped three, I guess, because everybody else did. I don't know. That's a good question.

Okay, so, okay, hold on. So it must be like cutting the ends off the ham, and the daughter says, Mom, why do we cut the ends off the ham? Well, because that's how Grandma did it. Mom, have you ever asked Grandma why you cut the ends off the ham?

No, I haven't. Let me go ask her. Grandma, why do we cut the ends off the ham? Well, because my mom had a pan that was too small, and so we had to cut the ends off the ham for it to fit in the pad, right?

Exactly. I was raised Southern Baptist, so, I mean, we, you know, we think victory in Jesus and blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, and all these different, you know, just as I am, amazing grace, and I have them memorized, but I bet you I don't have the third verse in that. We never sang it. I'm going to research that, or maybe somebody out there listening can email me.

Go to coop.net and email me the answer to that question, okay? Why do most traditional churches not sing the third stanza or the third verse or what? First, second, and fourth. Open up your hymnal.

We sing the first, second, and fourth. I'm like, okay, whatever. All right, all right. Move it on, move it on, move it on.

So you've got this amazing, so how many trips to date then have you been to Africa at this point? You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Nikita Koloff here, and I am excited. Did you hear the huge announcement, the big announcement?

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You can give monthly, annually, or one time. God bless you for making a difference around the world. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com 3 times, 3 years in a row, and my pastor is 72 or 3, and he just basically told me this last trip, he said, I may have 5 good years left, and he asked me to take over the trips, and then, so I'm 55, and so we're just going to keep that baby rolling, you know? And then I'll pass it along to somebody myself, but it's really neat because we do the evangelism.

There's groups that come in behind us and do more conference stuff, discipleship stuff, follow-up stuff. I mean, I'm an evangelist. I call him my pastor. He was my pastor growing up.

Now he's an evangelist, but he's a true, what I call, harvest evangelist. But we go in and we do the evangelism, and then we have other groups come in behind, but that's our heartbeat, and that's kind of the way that we're wired. So we just try to stick with our gift mix. Yeah, which is smart, right? Let me stick with my giftings and utilize that.

Yeah, I always tell people, work on your gifts and staff your weaknesses. There you go. That sounds like a Henry Ford principle right there. Just going to throw that out there. And somebody's going to be like, wait, I don't know what the Henry Ford principle is. I don't know, but that sounds good to me. It is.

For sake of time, I won't explain it, but somebody just can go research it. Okay, so you talked about a high energy church, Jacksonville, Tennessee. Tell us about Soul Quest Church. When did it start?

What's going on in Jacksonville, Tennessee? Well, I pastored several churches in Tennessee and in one in the Pensacola, Florida area. In 2006, I happened to be in a conference in Dallas, Texas, and a pastor's conference, and God just gripped my heart. Long story short, God called me to plant this church way back in 2006, and I knew what it was going to be called. I just knew where it was going to be.

There was never a question. I just really felt strong about planting a church that went after lost people. Not transfer growth. Somebody gets mad at First Baptist or First Methodist over here, and they come to your church, and then they get mad at your church. He goes, no, not transfer, but really reaching lost people, the unchurched lost people.

I wish I could say I was obedient in 2006, 2007. We did it, but because of different circumstances, in 2013, I left the church. I was pastoring in Florida. It was a great church. It's really one of those churches that had an 1,800-seat worship center. It was one of those churches that a lot of pastors have scratched and clawed to get to, and if they ever make it to that church, they're like, man, they've arrived. It was a great church.

Had great staff. I had about 32 people under my leadership, and it was a wonderful church, but God called me, and I could not shake that calling. Finally, I said, baby, we've got to do this thing. So we loaded up the moving truck and moved back to Jackson. In 2014, April 13, 2014, we launched Soul Quest Church with 123 people, I think it was, that first Sunday. We grew from 123 within about two months. We grew from 123 down to 32. So we were doing really well. Nice. Come on.

Gideon's Army. Yeah, man, but you know how the first Sunday, all your friends and all your family and everybody came over to support you. And we bottomed out about 32 people, and then from that point on, we're nine years old now. This past April, we turned nine. And we've grown. Just a few weeks ago, we had almost 2,000 in attendance.

So God's just been really good and blessed us tremendously. We've been in four different locations. We're still in a rental location. We're actually meeting right now in the chapel at Union University.

It takes about 1,100 people. And we've bought 25 acres of land, and we are waiting on the architect and the civil engineers and all those guys to finish up their work. And our plan was to break ground and build our first phase one building starting in the month of June, this month.

But it looks like it may be July before we get started. But that's kind of history. That's where we came from. My daughter is my worship leader. My son was on staff for five years, and then he felt a call to plant his own church. So he's in Knoxville, Tennessee now. He planted Heart and Soul Church, and they're booming.

They're already up to almost 300 people in attendance in less than three years. So God's just really moving in a lot of places, and we're just along for the ride, and I'm trying not to mess anything up, you know. Right, right. That's the key, right, to just kind of stay out of God's way, right? Yeah, just preach the Bible, you know, just preach the Bible and preach it with urgency. When God called me in 06, I don't know where it came from, but he gave me Mark 2, verses 1-12. It just is crystal clear. And he gave me the phrase—I'm not being super spiritual here, but I'm just telling you God just pressed upon me the phrase, Whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes. And that passage in Mark 2 was when the four men found a paralyzed man, maybe a friend, and they brought him to Capernaum where Jesus was having a house church. And you know the story, many of you listeners know the story, they couldn't get the paralyzed man into Jesus because it was standing room only. And so they went up on the roof and knocked the tiles out. In other words, they did whatever it took to get their friend into the presence of God.

They lowered him down through the roof, and when he got in the presence of God, then Jesus did what Jesus does. And so our philosophy, our mission statement is we're a church doing whatever it takes to reach people far from God and to help them take their step towards spiritual maturity. And so we do a lot of crazy, wild, creative, out-of-the-box things at our church just to get the lost people to come in, and then we give them the gospel.

If you would appreciate this, I think you would like this. We did a series called Wrestling several months ago, and I had a bunch of the wrestlers on stage, these big, huge cardboard cutouts, and we did a whole series centered around wrestling. We dealt with Jacob wrestling with God, and we talked about spiritual warfare and so many different things. And because of that whatever-it-takes mentality, man, probably 90% of the people that are in our church today got saved in our church, or because of an event we did as a church. So we don't get a lot of church people from other churches.

Well, I say good in a good way. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, anybody's welcome, of course, but we are unapologetically going after the hopeless, the helpless, the hurting people. Matter of fact, if you go after hurting people, you'll always have a crowd to preach to because there's so many of them.

Ronnie, it sounds awfully biblical. I mean, you guys should just throw that out there. So Jackson, Tennessee, I don't know. It can't be that big a community, right? How big a community is Jackson? Well, actually, if you go Google Jackson, Tennessee, fastest growing city in the nation, you'll find us. Right now, we're the fastest growing city in the nation. Now, I got another question. Here's another fun question for me.

It kind of ties in with that, why did they leave the third stanza out of the hymn. Who determines what's the fastest growing city in the nation? I don't know. Who determines that? They go by the, I don't know what they go by. It's gone from like 130,000 to 180,000, you know, in the last several years.

No, I get it, but you know what I'm saying? It's like there's eight gazillion cities in America, but who's that person who's going around to every single city in America going, oh, that was not growing a stanza, that one over there. I don't know, but we heard that. We were like, we're like, we're just like, we got people to reach.

Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome. So we're not, you know, we're right in the middle between, right on Interstate 40, between Nashville and Memphis. So, you know, we got two big major metropolitan cities and then we're kind of, you know, right there in the middle. But, but, you know, it's, we have everything, pretty much everything that a lot of large cities have. But just a little bit smaller, like say 100.

In our metroplex area, about 150 to 180,000. No, that's, that's, that's great. Well, and again, you know, follow, follow, you know, the Soul Quest Church, follow what you do on social media as, as well. Now, before we run out of time, we're almost out of time.

We're winding down here. How, how, how would people find out more about Soul Quest Church? Well, they can, they can go to our website at Soul Quest, S-O-U-L-Q-U-E-S-T church, soulquestchurch.com or it's soulquest.church, either one. Also, I'm on social media, Ronnie Coleman Ministries, so we, you know, we, we, we use social media a lot. And as a matter of fact, when we first started the church, we did billboards, we did direct mail, we did everything. But I tell you, what's worked for us more than anything in the world is the personal invite and social media. Well, and I think, yeah, I mean, that, that speaks volumes.

I mean, the bottom line, there's still nothing like face-to-face conversation. I don't care what anyone says, you know, as you said, the personal invite, face-to-face conversations. And, and, and I'm looking forward to, I know in here in the future, you've invited me to do some, some men's, you know, I have a real heart for men. I know obviously you have a heart for men as well. We're going to tag team, so to speak, and do some men's conferences together.

And now let me ask you this, were you a wrestling fan growing up? I know not everyone is. Oh man, what are you talking about? Absolutely. Yeah.

Okay. I would have already probably, I would have probably already said woo, but I thought you might have. You wolfed me. You know, I, I, I, you remind me of that often on social media. You throw that woo out there a lot. So you may want to, when we're together, you may want to watch your back. I'm just saying. I'm going to watch out.

If there's a metal chair, if there's a metal chair around, you just might want to have eyes in the back of your head, Ronnie. You know, a lot of churches say amen and hallelujah or glory to God or whatever. Our people say woo. Oh my gosh, are you serious?

You've conditioned them to say woo. I've got three men's conferences left this year, and they're at, you know, and you're going to be with me, I'm thinking two of them. One here in Jackson and then one in Missouri.

Missouri, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it.

And if anybody's interested in those, you can go to fightcampmensconference.com, fightcampmensconference.com, and it lists the ones that I have left this year. I'm using you and two, and I think Hank Parker, the, uh. The fisherman, right? Yeah, yeah, he's great.

That's awesome. Well, you know, okay, give me one real quick before we run out of time, give me one of your favorite, besides the Nature Boy Ric Flair, give me one of your favorite wrestling memories. It was Jerry Lawler, who was it? Well, you know, because I'm so close here, it was, you know, Jerry Lawler, Jerry the King Lawler, Bill Superstar Dundee, you know, some of those guys, handsome Jimmy Valiant. I don't know if you remember him or not.

Well, Boogie Woogie Man, when he and I were on the same card, the Boogie Woogie Man. I like Sting, you know, I like Sting, and some of those guys, Shawn Michaels, and you guys, and I just, you know, I just like, I like wrestling, you know, and it comes across, I think, in my preaching style. They say, man, you preach like a wrestler.

I said, well, you know, I was just influenced by that and playing ball all my life, you know. Yeah. Well, and the truth, you already kind of touched on it, but, you know, even the wrestling series you did, you know, Ephesians 6-12, right, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, and of course, Jacob wrestles.

So there is, you know, wrestling has some deep roots and goes way, way back, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you and I, to be able to, you know, utilize that for ministry only seems natural. And so, well, I'm amazed at all that you're doing, I really am, and it's been such an honor to have you on the show today.

And folks, if you're ever out that way, in between Nashville and Memphis and Jackson, Tennessee, you're going to want to check out Soul Quest Church. And then for all the ministry you're doing, you know, over in Africa, and just the conferences and everything you're doing, Ronnie, I'm just amazed. And I look forward to partnering with you, or you might say tag-teaming with you for the gospel and helping to win some people to Jesus, right? That's what it's all about, brother. It's been an honor and privilege.

Thanks for having me. Well, at the end of the day, and I just want to encourage all you out there as you are listening to Ronnie's story. And, you know, do keep Soul Quest Church, keep him and his family in your prayers as they reach out, not only to that community, but around the world. I want to encourage, you know, just as the Lord has directed me and given me numerous opportunities, now 36 different countries and territories that I have personally had the privilege of traveling to.

As mentioned, 11 trips alone to different parts of Africa, Asia, South America, Central America, Europe, and beyond. And so I want to thank all of you out there too, not only for tuning in each and every week and all the encouraging messages that I hear back from you. Ronnie, can't wait to team up with you and just keep up the good work. And to your family, we say God bless you guys and look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you, brother.

Appreciate you having me. And thank all of you again for tuning in each and every week. And as I've said before and will say again, go out today and have a God-filled, God-blessed life. This podcast is made possible by the grace of God and your faithful prayers, support, and generous gifts. May God bless you for your continual contributions. Go to koloff.net and donate today.

Hi, Nikita Koloff. Be sure to check out The Man Up Show, now available on television, broadcast, and podcast. Go to MorningStarTV.com or the Truth Radio Network. Check out your local listings or better yet, download the Truth Network app today. If you are enjoying The Man Up Show, would you help us spread the word? Tell your family, tell your friends, tell your neighbors to download, subscribe, and leave a comment. Nikita Koloff here.

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