The Night God Showed Up

There have been over 200 blog posts about Pop Goes the Church this year, and I decided a few months ago to stop posting about them. I thought it might get a little old to you if I linked to every post about the book. I’d rather be known as someone who resources leaders to build churches, rather than a guy who pimps books (even though I’m convinced my books will help resource leaders).

However, I discovered a couple recently which were very meaningful to me. I share the first one here:

Ryan Akers pastors the Warrenton Wesleyan Church in Missouri. He read my book, then built a message around it at a family camp he was leading for his district in the Wesleyan church. Some of his words…

I have preached many times but I have never felt the heaviness of God’s spirit as I did Monday. It was truly amazing to preach where I literally felt like a puppet and God was sending the words out of my mouth. The atmosphere was electric and every single person in that room felt something. I told some people that after I was done I felt like I had just sky dived because the rush and excitement was so great that my adrenaline was so sky high I was almost shaking. It was pretty amazing and my description sounds cheesy but if you could have been there you would have felt it. I knew then that God was in this message more than any message I have preached and I couldn’t wait to see what he would do next…

Ryan goes on to explain that the next three nights, three other speakers talked on the same topic…using the culture to be relevant. He continues:

God had planned this from the beginning. Every single speakers message flowed perfectly from the previous speakers message and none of us talked before hand except me and Steve. Amazing. I believe God was using these messages to awaken this district. There was truly a new excitement to go back to our churches and get to work to do whatever it takes using whatever methods and expending whatever resources to begin to reach our communities in creative and relevant ways. God showed up here this week and it..was…incredible.

I am humbled that God used Pop Goes the Church to inspire change in a community I will probably never visit.