From Generation to Generation - Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer & Dr. Mark Labberton | Masterclass Episode 7

So you asked the question, how do you train up and lead the next generation? I think it's important that you let that generation have a voice. This idea that every Sunday we can guarantee that God's going to meet us in the 45 minute presentation, ladies and gentlemen, it is just not how it works in the sacred narrative. How does he give you a heart for such a specific place? And then to really see the stats and to really say, we want to make change and it's possible. You know, the hardest part in leading change is not where you leave and it's not when you get there is that spot in the middle to sometimes in your weakness, foolishness, not getting it. God's like, he just does it anyway. If there's a core issue in my faith and I can't see God right and I'll demand he does for me quickly, what my character can only handle slowly. How do you know what you're speaking into until you hear where they're coming from? I have to see that proper rest and replenishment wasn't in the way it was the way. I will borrow from what's on the inside of you and bring it out. So the quality goes in before the song comes out. Humility is this acceptance of who you really are, who God really is, that puts you in a posture to encounter God in a genuine and authentic way. Welcome to Voices from the Masterclass, a special faithfully podcast series brought to you by Faithly, preaching Masterclass and leading leaders collective. First Adam Derser with Faithly Stories podcast, live from the preaching Masterclass in Southern California. I'm excited to have two guests here that are incredible leaders in the body of Christ. Bishop Kenneth Ulmer, would you please say what's up to the audience? What's up to the audience? Hello everyone. You know, I had to ask somebody what your first name was because I just thought it was Bishop. I forget myself sometimes. Mark, would you please introduce yourself to the audience and say hi? Hi. It's great to be here. Thanks. That's it. Sure. That's the whole deal. Why is, I mean, we're here live at preaching Masterclass and next year for me is 30 years of ministry, which you probably think is just me getting started. I get that. This feels different than a lot of conferences. It feels like there's some weightiness to this room and this conference that I don't sense in conferences that I've attended or that I preach at. What is your takeaway from the preaching Masterclass and why this matters, why this being on a calendar for a leader that's busy and making this a priority is so important? You know, this is the first time that the preaching Masterclass has been integrated and joined with worship. Yes. I didn't know how that was going to work. But I have been blessed and impressed by how God has moved in each session to see pastors and leaders and ministry leaders also worshipping. Yes. And it highlighted to me the tendency, the danger of them being bifurcated separately, worship over here, ministry over here, passing over here, but it has been synthesized here in a way that is not only unusual but I think very refreshing. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think another way of putting that is that it's really focusing on connectedness to God, which is the worship component that's really vigorously present, not just from the stage or about the stage, but really the experience of the whole community that's here at the conference. And then the other part of that is being really aware of the fact that this all belongs to the church that this has actually meant to land in real space and time in communities for people who are called to lead and preach and do all the things that pastors and worship leaders are meant to actually engage. So I think it's an incredible combination and I think that's really authentically present and permeates what's happening here, which is one of the reasons I really respected this conference over the years. Mark, you said community. I think one of the things that's very interesting about this conference, preaching master class, is the room. Yes. The room is amazing. And I sit next to guys that I'm looking at and I'm saying, this is a guy that when I think about preaching or when I think about coming, I'm emulating and they're not even on the platform. I mean, Bishop, you've been here from session one on Monday evening. I mean, you guys are guys that I look up to and say, hey, I want to, I want to be a better communicator. I want to be a better preacher. I want to be a better leader. And there's guys like that that are just in the room. Why does the community of the room matter so much, Mark, and then Bishop? Well, I think it matters because it gives you a sense that you're really participating in something together first, but also that we're all really ultimately on the same playing field and that really, whether we're highly experienced, less experienced, highly known, lesser known, it doesn't really matter. The point is the gospel is needing to be lifted up. We're all sharing in that common enterprise. There's a feeling that you cannot do it alone that it's not ever meant to even be thought of as something that's the isolated act of the preacher or the worship leader who descends from Sinai and presents the tablet. It's really a communal experience of how we come to an understanding of the Bible and its implications and how we embody that in our worship and in our lives. I don't think I've ever, and I'm just flashing them back, I've never been in such a horizontal room. I've been in music sessions, conventions, I've been in preaching sessions, conferences, if they were all sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly hierarchical, but I've never been in such a horizontal community context like today. I've never seen a connection between the podium and the pulpit, like what's been going on. The vision that our has, and I honestly didn't know how it was going to work, it's a lot of ego in that room. But to see us all come to the leveling field of worship, and yet different calling, different assignments and everything, but to see the Holy Spirit create a unique unity, a unique unity in that room. I've never seen it, and I've been to a few of these. I've never seen it anywhere else. Bishop, you've been preaching for decades, Mark, you've been the seminary space and preaching and teaching. I come from a charismatic world that emphasized anointing over skill. That's fair. In this room, I'm noticing that there are not, it odds with each other somehow, that somehow God, the Holy Spirit can give you a plan and still be anointed, that I use the reference to David, that when they were looking for somebody to play for Saul, they found David who was both skillful and the Lord is with him. He's got this comedy, so to the leader that's listening right now, from your history, from your insights, the students and preachers that you've both raised up, help them understand the balance needed, the desperate need for both healthy skill set and their communication ability and the anointing and power of God to rest upon them. I think it's the synthesis that is the emphasis. I think it is bringing those together that is what God is certainly doing here, but what I think in the body of Christ is the kind of emphasis that God wants, it's not either or. There are certainly positions in guessing that anointing is there, but in terms of preparation and then even going to your various assignments, there is a space in a place where we all come together, where we all meet in a black tradition, we just say, we all meet at the foot of the cross. We all come there, no matter where we go from there, and that's what's been happening here in a very, very unique way, very unusual way. I think I said last night, this ain't happening in a lot of places. That's true. It's not happening in a lot of places, and there's something unique here that God is doing this, that is kingdom, kingdom glorifying is for the kingdom. As you expound on this mark, beyond preaching masterclass, when you're leading students, when you're raising up other leaders and leading in so many different spaces, why does this matter? Why does this synthesis to borrow Bishop's Word and why does that matter? One other ingredient in this, it's the anointing, it's the competence and skill, but it's also the fruit, and by that I mean, it's really also about the character. So it's an anointing, it's the authentic character, not that any of us have arrived and everybody's on a long journey, and it's about the competence. So, when all those things come together, I think often there's conferences about an anointing, some conferences that are all about skill. There's almost never for starters a conference about the fruit of the spirit and the presence of the fruit of the spirit in pastor's lives, like that is, but I feel like it's an implicit and sometimes explicit part of this conference, and that matters because that's part of what makes the gospel credible, it's when all of those things are present. Someone mentioned yesterday, I forget whose presentation it was, I'd never heard it before, but it rang a bell. Someone emphasized yesterday the value of the pastor, the preacher, that side, getting to know having a relationship with that worship leader. I've done both, but I've never thought about that. And I don't know me. I know guys and pastors whose worship leader they're on the payroll, you know, are they're on the staff list, but not relationship. And what's coming out of here is again a unity when they both stand before the congregation of oneness, of collaboration, of empathy, connection with each other, that is, again, it's very, very rare, and more than rare is it's unearthed of. You know, there's a fun fact in Fuller Seminary's history where there was a young, a young gish man who had plenty of resources. Where do we go? They want to fight young gish. At the time he was probably in his 40s. So at 48, I noticed that scaling for me. I feel like I used to think what's the youngest one is, and now I'm still feeling it. Yeah, mid 40s are still youngest to me. I'm sorry. Let's just focus on the youngest. Just how many decades is that yet? Anyway, he had observed in his church 10s over the years that often there wasn't a good relationship between the preacher and the music person, and he started a center at Fuller called the Brem Center for worship theology and the arts, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary. And it was all about how do you bring the arts and music and all of the dimensions of worship that that involved, alongside the preacher in a work that ends up being one shared experience of worship leadership. And it's a transformative thing to see it in this way, and I'm just really, it has been a life giver to me and sounds like the same for you. Yeah, I'd been interested to see where this goes, will it be duplicated, or who else will catch this vision, what will it look like, when it crosses a broader ethnic racial line, the denominational lines, you know, it will be eventually going to see what God does with this, because I think it doesn't stop here. One of the things that I think has been fantastic is the conversation in the hallway, you know, it's like, you know, Bishop, I want you to expand a little bit, but as we were walking in here, you were holding court as it were in the hallway, and a pastor that I oversee his church in Austin, Texas and helped to Bishop, he was ready to give you an offering for the hallway conversation. Please, every leader that's listening that doesn't have the opportunity to be in the hallway, can you expand on what you were sharing in that moment, because Pastor Dan, under literally was writing notes down in his phone and quoting you from a hallway conversation, give it to a spaceship. You know, I didn't mark time in wherever you wanted, you know, I'll just shout him down from over here. But his whole A's think, I think for me, for me, and I dare speak for my generation, but I don't know that we have modeled well generational relationships. I don't know that we've not modeled it well. My generation was, I got mine, you get yours, you know, and so even a conversation in the hall like that, very rare, very rare, not unheard of, but very rare. And so, but I think that's part of the ethos that's here, the, that's okay here. And it'll be interesting to see where it goes. So what was, let us peek in, what was the, what were you expanding on, what were you, you know, what were you sharing in the hallway, give us, it was about Moses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so I stepped down, my wife won't let me say a step down, I was outside 41 years past being a church in LA, 45 years in ministry, and how long goes that two and a half years ago? It's been the roughest two and a half years of my life. Wow. I'm 77 years old. It's been the roughest two and a half years of my life. Your, your rhythm, your, I had a professor at Oxford, she said, we order our lives around the rhythm of our relationship with God. That'll hit the listeners about three o'clock this afternoon. We order our lives. The priority is a rhythm with God. And she was a Catholic nun, so she said, I get up at a certain time, a worship, a certain time, my study of England. And so in the last two and a half years, my rhythm has been off. You know, for 41 years, I had a certain rhythm that's off. And so I'm, I'm still, I'm finding, well, then where do you fit? What, what do you do on Saturday nights now? Right. Yeah. What do you do on Saturday nights? I had a professor who said Sunday comes every seven days. After about two years after he retired, my best friend, Jack Hayford, we were having breakfast one morning and Lloyd Oak of your other best friend said, Jack, you've been traveling, how's it going? You've been busy. And Jack said, the phone doesn't ring like it used to, so it's this whole transition period. So I think there's a generation of us who are saying, wow, how do I steward these 45 years? What do I do with this 41 years? You know, and then a guy will stop you in the lobby and say, wow, what about this sort of that? And God will bring it back and you say, hey, maybe this will help. Maybe this will encourage you. Watch out for this. Don't make this mistake I made. And to have an atmosphere that allows that, that accommodates that is very unusual. Yeah, I think one of the things that's been true for me, because we left our position at really the same moment. So for me, too, the last couple of years more has been very challenging. I think though the thing that has oriented me is that so much of my life has really been defined by ministry in a university in college setting and by young adults who are in places of tremendous formation and early experimentation and figuring out who is God in their life, how are they going to serve, what are they going to be and do, and so on and so on. So I think what has kept me most vital has actually been continuing to cultivate those core relationships with people who are now two generations at least behind me and who I need to learn from for starters. I'm very aware that I'm learning a ton and it keeps my mind and my perception of what's going on around me, at tuna, I think in a way that it wouldn't otherwise. And then what it is that I have to give, which isn't necessarily what I think I have to give, it's often something else that comes about that they, that they intuit more than I understand. So I might be saying something that I think I'm hoping is useful to them. Is it almost like I thought I was going to give this, but they were pulling this out of me and they were doing different things. Yeah, and they're pulling out I think things that I would call instincts and intuitions and sort of those, those gut level facts about how we have lived in the world and the ways that we've tried to embody and live the gospel, articulate the gospel and to feel people's curiosity in what was beneath that. How did that actually get formed in you that you would become a person who wanted that, right? So it's been very surprising to me because it's continued to help me, first of all just give praise to God that in fact God has been faithful over these decades and that there's been a deep work that has been going on and I still need and that that's been life-giving to me. I think it's less obvious to me what I'm bringing in most cases and it's more obvious to me that my being there feels even more important. I just don't know what it is that I'm actually bringing and I'm just happy to be in the setting and I hope to offer transparency and vulnerability and accessibility honesty in the middle of conversation. I get on something because I ask that same question and I'm sure it's the whole self-value and how you see yourself. I said this morning, I find myself in a position now where I see stuff but I won't go there. God takes Moses to a mountain, he lets him look over and said, you see that you ain't going and so I'm coming to rest with there are some things that I will see that I won't experience. But there's a generation, the guy who stopped me was a Joshua and that guy, the Joshua was will go farther than he will see. He can't imagine how far God's going to use him. And so it's that dichotomy and yet the value of knowing that this journey will encourage those who will go further than you will go. And that's what we do in academics always, they're going to go further than we can but the reality of that, when you're living that and when you're in that season, at least for me, it's still an adjustment. Let me ask you this question, you referenced Dr. Jack Hayford. And being in New York, my dad's church comes from the Brooklyn Tabernacle, first daughter church to be launched 40 years ago. I sat at many a junior's restaurant in Brooklyn where Dr. Jack Hayford was pontificating on something and he was incredibly brilliant in a lot of ways, spirit field life Bible which he compiled is still my favorite study Bible in the New King James, I love it. How important is developing community and relationships to the longevity of ministry? Essential, completely critical and totally essential. Yeah, I just can't imagine a life of ministry without deep friendship and collaboration and partnership with people who are sharing similar context and also living and working in ministry is settings that were totally different than the ones that I was in. So I found the richness of that of the deep sustained relationships over decades. Give me, give me, give me some of the, like, help me understand what that looks like. Because my pastor, Pastor Urbanard, would say that his generation, and he's 72, he just passed the Vitton to Pastor Malvanard, you asked me about the installation just last month. He said there were a lot of colleagues in his generation. We preached for each other, we went to each of these conferences. That doesn't sound like a colleague. That sounds like deep relationship. You say, Jack Hayford was my best, but that's a different kind of relationship. That's very different. Some of the lonely, I mean, Eugene Peterson paraphrases 1 Corinthians 4 and 9 and he says, here's what ministry is like. Peterson says, ministry is like being on a stage in a theater where no one wants to buy a ticket. He paraphrases, he says, here's what ministry is like. It's like being on a stage, God puts you there in a theater and no one wants to buy a ticket. There's a connection, especially with this generation, this generation is big on connection week on commitment. Who's following? Who's influencing? But not commitment. I met two guys on my knees in a prayer meeting. Hollywood Presbyterian Church, Jack was on one side, Lord was on the other side. I wouldn't have made it without these guys and they're both gone now. So I'm struggling now. Right. I'm 77 years old and Jack's gone, Lloyd's gone and I'm struggling now because I feel like I'm out there by myself again and that knitted community fellowship. I mean, who do you call? Who do you call? A guy called me, a true story. A guy called me one day, he said, I got a share of some news. I just paid off my mortgage and he says, I don't have anybody else to call. I want to tell you because all my other friends are still paying more. They're jealous. You know, he said, I need to tell somebody to rejoice with me. I paid off my mortgage. Same guy calls me about two and a half, almost two, almost three months later. He says, I got to have triple bypass surgery. Same guy. Who do you call when the best thing that happened to you? Who can you share it with? Who do you call when the worst news you've gotten? Triple bypass. He says, man, pray for me. Same guy. Who do you call worst thing? Who do you call best thing? Third question. Is it the same person? Well, it's a very interesting ministry. It can be a lonely business, a lonely business, and that tight community is a gift, a gift, man. I came to Christ when I was in college and I had the good fortune of having some students that were a few years older than me who invited me into Christ in a deeper way than I had yet even begun to discover. And then they invited me into their own lives, which was the thing that was so transformative. I had had really good friends. It wasn't at all like I had an absence of friends, but I had not had friends that became soulmates to me, which is what those relationships with Jack and Lloyd were really. They were, they carried each other's souls in the work of ministry. And I have to say, I've been blessed with people who have walked with me in that way. I hope I've walked with them in that way. And that is through thick and thin and up and down. And it's definitely over time, isn't it? It's not just a seasonal thing. It wasn't like that was a good chapter. It's like, no, no, it's the long road. He said something. He said, you know, who can you share the best thing with? Who can not share the worst thing with? And are they the same people? Yes, very interesting. Because I want to ask you about that because when I think about friendship, brotherhood, I don't think the litmus test is, can you weep with those that weep because misery likes company. Can you rejoice with those that like if I got blessed, are you upset or jealous or insecure about my blessing? Or like the guys that I know that I count as brothers in my life, the one commonality is not race, ethnicity, even the area of the country they live in or the area of the world they live in. We're spread out. It's the fact that I know any one of those guys I can call them and share. This just happened. It's one of the best thing to happen to them. And they will rejoice with me as if their family they were blessed as well. What does that really look like in authentic relationship? I think it's a number one. I think it's a gift. I think it's a gift. Number one, number two, I don't know that enough of us pray for it and maybe not even want it. A friend of mine, national figure, I call my name everybody. Calls the name everybody would know it and everyone knew him. No one knew him. Right, right. He fell, man. It was national scandal and everybody said, did you see that? No, I didn't see that. Did you? None of us knew him. Everybody knew him. None of us knew him. National man, if I call time everybody knowing it. But these levels of how many doors do we have to go to get to the person's heart? I think it's a gift. I think when the scripture tells us to outdo one another and showing honor, one of the things that I have to say has been true by God's grace is friends that have taught me about rejoicing over other people's honor. And it's partly because they're free from themselves. So they're not, everything is not actually brought back to the benchmark of where am I in this picture. In light of your breakthrough or success or whatever may have been, they're free from themselves. They're free for the greater cause. And therefore, they're just always happy to be able to celebrate the next good thing. Right? And there's something about that that also in these cases has always shared the other part of the story as well. So it is also possible to tell them the bad news, the right difficult news, the painful news. And the fact that that's being contained, I think it's really a statement about the bigness of the gospel actually. I think it's a statement of a big gospel that takes hold of their whole life and that just gives them freedom to live in this open space, rather than to feel cornered or living in a guarded space or a self-protected space. They're not like that. They're not being self-protective. They are being kingdom oriented and kingdom celebratory and kingdom identifying when whatever the scale of emotion at any given moment might be. I'm not saying that we don't have disappointed each other over the years. I'm not saying that we haven't, we've sometimes avoided having the hardest of conversations. But I think we've usually called ourselves on that over time and circled back and recovered that ground. I want to go to the other side of that conversation because Bishop, you alluded to he said, everybody knew him but nobody knew him. And he said, sometimes people don't want to have that level of vulnerability. And why is being at least honest and vulnerable with some... You can't do it with everybody, I get that. But with some people in that authentic place of relation, why does that matter? Well, again, I think it's a lot of ego in what we do, man. I think there's a guy, well, this one is known, unless it was not, it was on TV. It has been said that Jimmy Swaggerd said to someone after that whole thing. He said, I know where I missed it. And that Jimmy said something like, I would never let people pray for me. They would come to the altar after Crusader or whatever and Jimmy would say, they said, oh, brothers, where can I pray for you? And Jimmy would say something like, no, no, no, let me pray for you. And the report that Jimmy said, I messed up. I felt it was my position to pray for them, you know, they hands on them, but I never allowed people to pray for me. That's letting people in, that's letting you in, you know, because I need to tell you what to pray for. If you're going to pray for me, I need to say what to pray for. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that happened in my own conversion was that that it was really about reordering power and that the power that I already as a successful teenager in a whole variety of ways had already been an achiever. And somehow when I came to Christ, it was like, you know, actually this is not that journey. This is actually not that journey. I mean, that has its own utility, perhaps, and it will have its own usefulness or not. It'll also throw huge problems. I want you to be oriented to something that's really different than that. And I do think it was really at the beginning of my faith that there was this new vision. I had definitely grown up in the feeding trough of, you know, success over success over success leads in certain directions. And I'm not unaware that I've had quote success over since becoming a Christian. I'm just saying that is marginal compared to the question of who am I and am I free to actually be in Christ in these settings, which then means not being hierarchical in my fundamental condition is it's not being hierarchical, hierarchical. It's about being aware of the, that we all are together at the foot of the cross in this fundamental way that I am as need of, needful of the gospel that I may be proclaiming as anyone else in the room. Like that is a baseline to me. And I do think that that has at least given me some greater freedom. I think it becomes a problem for the reasons you were I think suggesting, which is that the whole nature of the enterprise, the enterprise that can be Christianity is threatening to all of these instincts, which is where then the closest friendships can call us on those things and help hold up mirrors and say, look, you know, I just think we need to really think again about what's going on. Threatening is a good word. Threatening is a good word. I have been sometimes painfully paid aware. Very simple question. How are you doing? How are you doing? And again, people who know I, two and a half years ago, step down. And it's almost like, do you really want to know? Right. Well, let me tell you what's really happening. I'm struggling, man. We have a hard time. I don't know where I fit. I don't know how I make ends meet. And there's like this, don't tell me that. You're supposed to be doing good. You know, the annoying thing is on you. And so it's been interesting to see how people respond when I honestly, and sometimes I told a lie, I said, I'm doing I'm, you know, just get it wrong back. Because I know it was a challenge, a threat of a word. No, no, you're in your, your, your dish or that. You did that. But I'm hurting, man. I'm struggling. I don't know what to do with this new season. I don't know how to handle this news. I've never been here before. And I don't know what to do. And, and, and since you asked, let me tell you, and they said, oh, don't tell me. Don't tell me. Right. Right. And that's a, that's the paradox. And I don't know what to do with that. That's tough. I gotta be honest with you, I've done a whole bunch of these over the last two days. And this is the first time that I'm getting to the end of it. And I'm thinking, we need a part two gentleman. You know, Bishop, I mean, this is, I mean, I've got all types of ideas of what you should be doing. So, if you want, I'm gonna give you my affirmation. I got ideas that lead, lead is collective, all those retreats I leave, and Bishop Ronner, and you need to come and hang out and raise up some younger leaders. And President Mark, I mean, I'm not even sure what the right title for you is, Dola Doctor. It's into this and the that. I got an honorary doctor in Divinity. I walked out an aisle one day. I've got none of the background for you. Or the pedigree. But let me just say this to both of you gentlemen. Thank you for your vulnerability, your authenticity. This has been one of the realest conversations that we have hosted. And I think is resonating with leaders that are watching and listening all over the planet. And so, I'm passed to Adam Dürs. So, my guests here have been phenomenal. You're going to want to continue to follow us at Faithly Preaching Master class. God bless you. Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. 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