This is the Truth Network.
Somehow, I always bump into this man of God when he is just back from a life-changing trip. Pastor Jeff Johnson, you are on the radio. You are pastor of Mount Biscuit Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. It's been almost three years since your church voted to leave the United Methodist Church. And things have gone downhill for you guys ever since.
Talk about how bad it's been.
Okay. Oh, it has not been bad. It has been good. God has opened the floodgates and sent us so many people. The majority of our people joined Mount Pisca by profession of faith.
And it is just truly amazing, the people that God is sending us from literally everywhere. And some of my favorite people that He's had joining are ethnic people. I've had a lot of ethnic people join from Vietnam, from Ghana, and the church, it seems like every year that I'm here, and I'm in my 11th year, looks a little bit more like heaven every year.
So when you all voted to stay with a Lord, and to stay with God's word and what God says about truth, about marriage. And you join the global Methodist Church. Things got better. As you're growing, you have a diverse congregation. The Lord's working at Mount Pisca in the church, and you've seen this all over the world, haven't you?
I would really not say since we chose to be with the Lord because I think there's a lot of good people on both sides, but I will tell you that I think we stood with the Bible. We stood what the Bible believes. I can't tell you that I understand it all the time. I can just say that I try to live by it. But it seems like the more we lift up biblical principles, the more God adds to our number.
And you just got back from something that you told me was the closest thing to heaven you've ever seen. Tell us about that. Pat, you went a little bit far away, you're a little bit jet-lagged right now. I can't believe you're doing this interview with me, but we are in a coffee shop getting some caffeine. Yeah, I went all the way to Johannesburg, South Africa.
I flew from Greensboro to. To Atlanta, Georgia, and then from Atlanta, we made the 16-hour trip to Johannesburg, and then we were about probably 30 minutes out. And it was just amazing. I was part of a delegation from North Carolina that represent the Global Methodist Church. We have 400 churches in North Carolina.
And we were part of a delegation from all over the world. There were 47 states. 47 countries and they released In just a little over three years, we have 7,250 congregations around the world. Wow. What was it like to be in a room?
Didn't you tell me that they sang one praise song? In many different languages. What was that like?
Well, what was really interesting, opening up, it was Chris Tomlinson's song, Holy Forever, and it was just amazing. We had one of our singers in our church that passed away this past year of cancer by the name of Paul Rothlinger. He used to sing that song. And I was listening to this song and what really caught me is they didn't do it in one language, they did it in like ten, and they just kept going over and over and over, and all these people were singing their heart out. You didn't really know the words, but you knew what they were saying, Holy Forever.
The whole conference based on the beauty of holiness. And really, what they were really saying: if we really want to get back to who John Wesley and what we are, it is about loving our neighbor. It is about loving people who are different than us. It may be vote different from us that look different from us. But it was a strong holiness movement.
I've never in my life took Holy Communion. I took Holy Communion on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And they were constantly, every speaker was talking about the beauty of holiness. Wow. And that really compels An evangelistic fervor doesn't talk about that because now you're thinking about reaching souls to the point where you were expecting just a couple hundred kids and how many showed up for that little outreach you did?
Well, they had an outreach in a place called Sileta, one of the poorest places in South Africa. It was. It's worse than probably anything I've ever seen. They had no running water. The running water spigots were on outside of the on the corners of each corner.
Electricity was kind of iffy. Most places had five to eight kids living there. Most homes were about a 20 by 20. And they had done a lot of research in the area and they were doing several things and they were expecting about 150 kids. And the day that I was there, they had over 700 kids there.
And they ran out of everything and all the people were doing just singing about Jesus. It was just, it was really, it was really remarkable to see something. In America, we don't have the kids, and they have kids literally everywhere. We were able to travel 16 hours with you from Atlanta to all the way down to Johannesburg, but You went, and why are you so on fire right now? Even though you're jet lagged, you're already getting up for this coming Sunday sermon to preach the word verse by verse through the scriptures like you're doing faithfully.
What gets you so excited? What revs your engine about even telling everyone: take us there real quick. Take us there and wake us up a little bit. Give us a little shake-up, wake-up here. That's It was almost like you were in heaven.
And you were looking back down at Earth.
Okay. and you were just seeing all the people. and you were you you had an opportunity to just say how everything kind of fit together. You saw so many people love the Lord. I saw the way they were worshiping.
I saw how friendly they were. And just to see everything come together. They were telling us that our annual conference right now was the third largest in North Carolina in the world. And they say that in our next general conference will be in six years, that we will probably be number ninth or tenth, that Christianity. is growing so fast around the world.
It's like they cannot get enough of Jesus. And it's like in America we have too much of Jesus. We're running our churches by having all the bells and the whistles, and all they have is Jesus. The songs they sing, they dance, and they're happy, and they have so little. We talk about the emphasis on God's word because you left a denomination that spent more time on social issues and very little focus, if any, on biblical exposition, on the power of the gospel.
On gospel center teaching, literally studying God's Word, preaching God's Word as every pastor and shepherd should be doing. Yet there was a different flavor to this United Global Methodist folks. These guys were. It was word-centered, and the votes, the agreements, the disagreements were founded on solid doctrine. Talk about how refreshing that was and how important God's word is, central to every ministry from your pulpit.
all the way to Johannesburg and the the 49 countries represented there at this big conference. You know, a lot of times I think when you talk about social issues, it's almost like they tickle their ears. They're always changing. Even if you look at the news spend for a certain month, it's not the same thing, it's constantly changing. You know, the grass withers and flowers fall, but the Word of God stands forever.
And I think when you base it on the Word of God, and you keep it about the Word of God, that's what really draws people. And I think those biblical points are just timeless, timeless when you can sit there and do that. And right now in the Global Method Church, Two things that are very important. The most important thing in the global church is the local church. It's not a hierarchy, it's not who the bishop is, it's not what conference you're with, it's the local church.
What is the local church doing to win people to Jesus Christ? What is a local church doing to raise people up to be disciples of Jesus? And I think the other thing that we do is a very strong emphasis on the Word of God. It is a very strong emphasis. The Word of God changes lives, it contains everything necessary for salvation.
And so you really got the best of a couple worlds. You have a denomination that's really focused. Really focus through their, I would just say it's a very strong evangelical denomination. And they're not telling me what to preach. They just want me to preach and preach God's word.
And when I was looking. At all these even the the church that we went to Soweto, There was a global Methodist church right in the middle of the worst slum, one of the worst slums in the world. And I kept thinking, what would I do? I walked outside the church and I was surrounded by people all around me and one of the people says, You got to get out of here. We've had people kidnapped around here for ransom and there's eyes on you.
They know you're not from around here. Would you please step inside? But we were right in the middle one of the hardest hit places. And um that's where we need to be. There was one of our bishops, his name was Bishop Mark Webb.
and we were leaving that day. And he was there right in the middle of them. And he's a tall guy, and I saw him. And when I became a Global Methodist pastor, he had his name on my. on my certificate when I came in there.
And he wrote in a blog there. He said the greatest day. have general conference. Is being right in the Soweto community. Isn't that something you're challenged to cozy, comfortable American Westerners like me.
Get us out of our comfort zone. Wake us up to what God's doing, what God's church is doing around the world. From this past experience, just your heart. What's your here's a here's a big megaphone on Truth Talk Live with Pastor Jeff Johnson. He's our special guest right now, Pastor of Mount Biscuit Church in Greensboro, historic Greensboro, North Carolina, right near the Guilford battlefield.
You have Revolutionary War heroes buried just behind your church in that beautiful place we've prayed walking for. Pastor Jeff, what's your wake-up call? To the American church and to individuals out there listening. Maybe they've gotten stuck. Maybe they're so obsessed with their problems and depressed that they're not seeing lost souls around them.
What would you say as we get out of here? I don't really want to point my finger to anybody. If anything, I want the finger at me. It's really what I'm going to do, how am I going to react, how do I really process, what am I going to do with what I saw?
So I'm doing a presentation next Wednesday night, trying to really think through. One of the reasons I want to go down there, there was a Venezuela delegation, and we just sent them a bunch of money with relief work. I'm trying to work together, get a Global Methodist church, and a trip there, and I want to work with Samaritan's Purse. I got Roy Graham coming up and speaking at my church in a couple weeks. And I want to do a meek mission.
I want to go to Liberia next year. I want to go see that pastor again. I want to go, he's got five, he's got five kids, and he has actually been trained by the AACC American Association of Christian Counselors. We had a lot of that in common, too. And you know, what are you really gonna do with it?
I'm looking at going back to Thailand, so I'm kind of looking at my schedule. What could I do? How can I really maximize my time? But I do know this: when I really get fired up, and I really throw out vision, people and be a part of it, but it's hard. to be impacted when you didn't see it.
And I think that's probably the biggest reasons why God had me where I went there. He saw me see it. And now that I saw it, what am I going to do about it? They don't look like you, they don't talk like you, their lyrics to their praise and worship music is in a different language. But man, they love Jesus.
They didn't need to see the body of Christ like that. That's what heaven will look like. But in the meantime, we're praying God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven, right? Pastor Jeff, is that what your prayer is for the American church and for believers to wake up? It is.
It it is and and just I believe and read too many books, we have to support Indigenous leadership. We have to support boots on the ground over there. Indigenous, by that, you mean people that speak the language already, it's a lot cheaper to give them money than to. Put a Westerner through all that training school and all that, and have to start over, even though that may be the design of God. But Indigenous, they're there.
They need help.
Well, I'm going to go next year. I'm hopefully going three mission trips next year, three different ones, spread them out like I did this year. And but I want to go, but I want to go and support them. I want to go and help lift them up. You know, I want to help meet some legitimate needs that they have.
And I know that passion, I know that money follows passion. And I'm looking forward to that and really Trying to have almost like habacuses and habacate 24, really have a clear vision, write it down where runners can run with it. Truth to climb.
