Toward a Pentecostal Strategy for the City
One of the questions that seems to come up in this course discussion is how to change the world around us with a more positive and effective approach toward using the Gospel of Salvation. In this particular module, the difficulty addressed is ethnocentricity. The particularity of our search then arrives at the more detailed question, how can we change the culture (respectively subcultures) of our church congregations? This is a drastic move from a closed circle toward an outreach community that many congregations are unable to accomplish. How do we then empower such congregations to be transformed into cultural reach-outs to a single ethnos or multiple ethnic groups?
Problem
The problem in the first quarter of the 21st century has been incongruity of our church strategy with the times we live in and the mindset they occupy. We’ve been preparing the church for the multicultural battle, all and while we should have been equipping the saints how to rebuild the walls since the battle has been lost.
We’ve been equipping leaders for the ministry while the church ship has been sinking only to end up with well trained captains of a sunken fleet. And in a doomed attempt to reconcile the reality of the ministry with their training, they have turned to wave walkers who briefly surface for breaths of fresh air during Sunday worship only to return to the deep blue walk of their daily ministry never finding their lost piece of eight.
For the battle was lost long ago before the present generation of ministers ever came to existence. They know not the battle. They’ve only seen the ruins that were left within the broken walls of the church. And they have been struggling to reconcile the incomputable of what church eldership has been teaching them to battle against with the Nehemiah calling for restoration, which God has placed upon them. For the answer has never been in building a New Jerusalem for a fresh start, but restoring the old Jerusalem and its former glory to a new state that reclaims our history and heritage.
Context
Recent analysis of migrant churches in the United States reveals that the predominant majority of them are located in cities which have a high influxation and concentration of immigrants. Such localities are called “gateway cities”. Immigrants typically enter the United States through one of these cities and settle there. These areas contain over half of the foreign-born population in the United States as follows:
Strategy
Asking the right questions is important, but the answers cannot be generic for all ethnic groups or cultural settings. There is a strong need to be flexible and observe changes in culture, but not to change the message of the Gospel or compromise our witness. Several common things are noted in any cultural setting where our ministry is involved:
First and foremost, people of all cultures prefer to be personal with a purpose, rather than being project driven. No one longs to be part of someone else’s project. Yet, our very existence demands personal purpose, which could serve as a great cultural catalyst in a church ministry.
Secondly, cross cultural ministry is not done merely on relationships, but on being real in the relationships. The greatest halt of ministry work is when people realize the relationship with the church has not been a real one, but merely a part of a program or a paradigm.
Finally, our cross cultural model for ministry should not be just salvation oriented, but soul oriented. There is a great difference between writing down the number of saved every Sunday and actually caring for the eternal well-being of the saved souls. In fact, this is so fundamentally determinative that it should be the goal in mind of every new church plant.
This new translation took several years to refine through multiple revisions, re-readings, and new re-translate where needed in order to produce an interlinear with priority advantages and distinctive features as follows:
John Francis Corcoran: Bishop, Pastor, LCDC III Counselor (June 26, 1947 – March 17, 2023)
John Francis Corcoran was called home to Jesus on March 17, 2023, after a lengthy and well fought battle with cancer.
John was born in Waterbury Connecticut on June 26, 1947, to John and Eugenia Corcoran, the eldest of their six children.
After high school, John joined the Air Force serving two tours in Viet Nam at Ben Hoa, as well as Greece and Germany. He retired as Master Sargent after 23 years, his last post was Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. During his career in the Air Force John had assignments as a recruitment officer and a Supply Officer, which took him overseas. John had a strong faith and was called to the ministry serving as Church of God Ministry to the Military from 1978 to 1985 leading a church in Greece. John earned many medals and awards during his service. John became a Church of God ordained Bishop in 1988, and served in many pastoral assignments, his last at Rejoicing Life Church of God in Miamisburg, Ohio where he served a diverse congregation for over 30 years before retiring. John had a love of learning earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Biblical Studies and Pastoral Ministries in 1986 from Lee University. He went on to continue his education obtaining a Master’s Degree in 2002 in Counseling from the Church of God Theological Seminary, and was in process of concluding his dissertation for the doctorate degree when he fell ill. John had a very active and full life.
He had a love of God and people and poured himself into serving others within the community. He served at Kettering Behavioral Center working as a Psycho-educational Group Leader and Adult Behavioral Care, Chaplain and Firefighter for Xenia Township’s Fire Department, served also with Scioto County Sheriff and Miamisburg Police Departments as Chaplain, and a Crisis Team Management Leader. His biggest love, outside of pastoring, was teaching Chaplain classes to the many churches in the Midwest area.
He is survived by his devoted and beloved wife Lois, sons James (Lisa) and Doug, daughter Joan (Ryan)Bloomingdale, grandchildren Jonathon Hudson, Julia Schmidt (Brian), Kaitlyn Martinez (Victor), Alexandria Corcoran, Elizabeth Robertson, Justin Corcoran, Kieron, Jaxson and Weston Corcoran, great grandchildren Lilliana and Lucca Martinez and Hazel Schmidt, sisters and brothers Cathy, Jamie, Patricia, Maureen, and Bobby of Connecticut. Maureen’s husband, Art, and John were very close friends.
He was preceded in death by his first wife, Julie Ann, his daughter Elizabeth, sister Mary Jean, and parents John and Eugenia Corcoran.
John was a great man, a faithful servant of God and a man of many talents. He has left a huge hole in our hearts and lives, but we rejoice in his graduation and in the echo of his favorite verse from Philippians 4:8: “Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of a good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
Military Honors will be held by the Combined Honor Guard along with a Celebration of Life beginning at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 6, 2023, at the Grace Baptist Church, 851 S. Elm St., West Carrollton with Pastor Randy Ballard and Pastor Doug Criswell officiating. The family will receive friends from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (1 hour prior to service) on Saturday at the church.
Inurnment will take place at the Sarasota National Cemetery in Sarasota, FL.
Please share your condolences at www.swartfuneralhome.com. Sympathy, Love, and Thinking of You cards may be sent to The Family of Pastor John F. Corcoran, C/O Swart Funeral Home, 207 E. Central Ave., West Carrollton, Ohio 45449
The pastors who kept looking back imagined a culture governed by Christian values and refused to see the world for what it was increasingly becoming.
Over the last decade, Christian America died.
As much as some Supreme Court decisions in the early 2020s made religious conservatives think they were winning the culture wars, any sense of victory was short-lived.
The overwhelming identification of Generation Z and Generation Alpha as having no religious affiliation transformed America into a thoroughly post-Christian culture.
All of this put Christian church leaders into one of two camps: Leaders who wanted to move forward and leaders who wanted to look back.
The pastors who kept looking back imagined a culture governed by Christian values and refused to see the world for what it was increasingly becoming. Churches led by those leaders saw a decline.
And the culture wars of the early to mid-2020s that conservative Christians believed they were winning by ensuring their candidates ran for Congress and Governor positions proved only to momentarily shore up a dying worldview. Power and coercion couldn’t reverse the tide.
In the process, that faction in the church alienated the next generation of unreached people from Christianity even more deeply.
The leaders who looked forward acknowledged they were in a post-Christian culture and decided to advance a decidedly alt-Kingdom centered around the Gospel. They saw renewal and growth.
Bottom line? The leaders who kept looking back never moved forward.
In the last decade, dying churches saw digital church as an obstacle. Growing churches realized it was an opportunity.
As little as 15 years ago, most growing churches were primarily physical organizations with a nominal or underdeveloped digital strategy.
Throughout the 2020s and early 2030s, the dual trend of declining church attendance and decentralized attendance changed everything for growing churches.
Growing churches stopped treating church online as an afterthought, realizing that since everyone they’re trying to reach is online, becoming a digital-first church made them more effective.
The paradox, of course, is that the more leaders built community online as a church, the more it resulted in growth in their physical locations.
Ironically, churches that focus primarily on physical attendance only saw declining attendance. Churches that focused on digital connection saw the opposite.
Over the last decade, dying churches saw digital church as an obstacle. Growing churches realized it was an opportunity.
Dying churches confined ministry to their buildings. Growing churches didn’t.
As the digital revolution exploded over the last ten years, almost everything shifted out of central locations.
Everything from work, to shopping, to food, fitness, and entertainment shifted to digital and distributed access (i.e., accessed by people when they wanted and where they wanted.)
Dying churches confined ministry to their buildings. Growing churches didn’t.
Pastors of expanding ministries long ago made peace with the idea that the number of people not in the building on Sunday now greatly outnumbers the number of people who are inside the building.
They got over their insecurity about smaller in-person crowds and saw the expansive potential of reaching people wherever they were and connecting them with each other.
Pastors of growing churches long ago realized that full rooms never guaranteed a fulfilled mission.
Another shift happened regarding how church leaders think about church buildings:
Pastors of dying churches kept using church online to get people into the building.
Pastors of growing churches used their buildings to reach people online.
On-demand sermon access reaches people when they’re ready, not when you’re ready.
Live events still have a great role in the life of a vibrant church, but they’ve long since been eclipsed by people who access content and schedule gatherings on demand.
Leaders who released control of a centralized calendar to allow people to figure out for themselves when they wanted to meet saw a far greater impact than leaders who didn’t.
And when centralized gatherings happen, leaders of growing churches quickly got over the fact that, despite a full room, far more people accessed their ministry at other times. And as a result, their mission kept growing.
Pastors of growing ministries quickly understood two underlying realities behind on-demand access.
First, they knew that on-demand access reaches people when they’re ready, not when you’re ready.
Second, when it comes to accessing messages and ministry content, they realized people don’t care if a message is new nearly as much as they care if a message is great. Hence, access to their message archive continued to grow, and they positioned it for that.
In the 2020s, churches that gathered people kept falling behind, while churches that connected people continued to grow.
In the 2020s, churches that gathered people kept falling behind, while churches that connected people continued to grow.
The shift wasn’t that hard once the pastors of effective churches realized that for years, the culture had increasingly relied on services that leveraged existing infrastructure.
For example, what small groups accomplished for churches in the 1990s and 2000s changed how churches approached gathering people mid-week. Essentially, a decade before Airbnb and ride-share services like Uber and Lyft emerged on the scene, innovative church leaders stopped building massive Christian education buildings and started ‘Airbnbing’ people’s homes for community.
The home-based small group model morphed into micro-gatherings and home-based gatherings for worship and other church events.
Leaders of growing churches never felt threatened by the fact that they couldn’t ‘see’ the people they were ministering to. They built the structures and systems that led to the church being ‘one’ wherever it met, much like multi-site churches have done for decades.
Connecting people eclipsed gathering people for the same reasons that on-demand content eclipsed live content. You gather people when they’re ready, not when you’re ready.
Insecure leaders, operating out of power and control and needing to ‘see’ the results of their ministry, could never make this transition. Healthy leaders did.
Growing churches made community and connection the goal of their ministry, not content consumption.
Growing churches made community and connection the goal of their ministry, not content consumption.
In a world that started drowning in content in the 2010s, adept church leaders realized that great content was no longer the compelling advantage it used to be. Sure, bad preaching could kill a church. But great preaching alone no longer guaranteed its growth.
Here’s what astute leaders realized in the 2020s. Scarcity drives value. The more scarce something is, the more value it has.
When something is scarce, it has enough value to make people change their patterns (physical, financial, or time patterns, to name a few). Conversely, mass availability drives down prices and perceived value.
For centuries, attending a local church was the only place most people could access a sermon. The 21st century changed that forever.
What became increasingly scarce were community and connection. So among growing churches, all of their content drove people to community and toward connection.
Growing churches made community and connection the goal, not content consumption. Declining churches continued to make in-person and online content consumption their main goal (Watch this!!! Don’t miss this!!!) and paid the accompanying price.
Make the goal of all staffing (digital or in-person) community and connection.
Because, after all, that’s far more at the heart of what the Christian church is all about than content consumption ever was.
A final but important point.
Dying churches kept staffing for a world that no longer existed. Obsessed with getting people into a building, they continued to make digital ministry an afterthought.
Growing churches didn’t abandon physical gatherings. They continued to make their in-person services deeply personal and meaningful and staffed accordingly.
But they also doubled down on digital, realizing that everyone they wanted to reach was online and that many they would reach wouldn’t live near a campus or, if they did, would be willing to drive to one.
So pastors of growing churches followed Craig Groeschel’s advice back in 2020: They went 100% in on digital ministry and 100% in on physical ministry.
Then they went a step further: They made the goal of all staffing (digital or in-person) community and connection.
Because, after all, that’s far more at the heart of what the Christian church is all about than content consumption ever was.
Change, Critics, and Coaches
The leaders we criticize today will be the leaders who coach us tomorrow.
Snap back to today. Will all of this happen? Who knows. But if even parts of this are remotely true, it’s clear that the next decade will involve massive change.
Change also comes with a lot of criticism. But as the wiser leaders realized, the leaders we criticize today will be the leaders who coach us tomorrow.
The sooner you start to change, the brighter the future becomes, and the more effective your ministry will be. Change is hard, but irrelevance is even harder.
CAREY NIEUWHOF
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March 1, 2023
There is a good reason we signed off our final 2022 newsletter with our slogan of 30+ years: “Revival must go on,” after our Revival Harvest Campaign was extended five times over a four-month period last year.
Revival runs deep in our family roots. During the Great Bulgarian Pentecostal Revival in the 1920s, my grandmother was miraculously healed on her death bed from tuberculosis, saved and filled with the Spirit along with our whole family five generations back.
Exactly 70 years later, I was saved in the post-Communist Revival in Bulgaria prophesied by Danish journalist Johny Noer, who openly challenged the communist authorities with the words: “Let my people go!” I was filled with the Spirit and called to the Ministry within two weeks time. Having never seen anything like this before, without any prior theological training or spiritual experience, I witnessed over 300 students getting saved in the little mountain church where I began preaching.
In 1995, I saw another revival among the Bulgarian immigrants in Chicago, where within one short summer of organizing the Bulgarian Church there, some 100+ were saved and 64 of them became members of the Narragansett Church of God where we held meetings.
I was blessed to preach multiple back-to-back revival meetings again through the summer of 1999 in South Carolina and then again in the early 2017 in Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas and across Europe in the fall of that same year. But all this did not happen until after the 2011 Tennessee tornadoes, when we saw the cloud of His glory over a youth camp we held in the mountains of Bulgaria in a grass-roots student revival that just could not be stopped by the establishment. It was then that we distinctly heard from the Spirit to move to our current location and wait for The Revival. And even after we gave a word at the Regional Church of God exactly nine months before the massive school revival of Delbarton, West Virginia broke out there in 2016, it just didn’t feel this was it.
A little bit over ten long years have now passed in this location of daily prayers for revival and if all the fasting through years was to be added, it will probably amount to a good fifth of that whole time. If we have learned one thing through this long period of fervent waiting, it is that revival cannot be faked. Oh, you can try of course, but you ain’t fooling God with it. Neither can you fake healing – and this word in particular should not be taken lightly in the new reality of our post-covid world.
And if the Spirit is indeed doing a new thing in our day today, it will not be tongues, gifts or offices, but a return to Biblical holiness. For holiness cannot be faked either. It is transparent before both men and God. And just because people do not like the political church run by a corporate business-model any longer, it does not make them a mission field. But it does call for a harvest that no one has gathered yet! And for this reason, REVIVAL MUST GO ON… until the Holiness of God prevail!
2022: Revival Harvest Campaign
2021: Revelation Revival at Cookson Creek
2018 Revival Harvest Campaign: REBUILDING the WALLS
2017 Prophetic Revival in Bulgaria: The Search for Holiness Continues
2016 School Youth Revival Takes Over Delbarton, West Virginia
2016 110 Years ago, the Azusa Street Revival Began with a Fast
2016 The FORGOTTEN ROOTS OF THE AZUSA STREET REVIVAL
2015 Why Revival Came? by Dr. Charles Conn
2015 La France District Revival
2014 25 Year Revival Cycles in Bulgaria’s Protestant History
2014 Revival Harvest Campaign 2014 in Varna and Signing of the Scrolls
2013 End of Days Revival Series
2012 12.12.12. Revival at the End of the World
2012 Revival Harvest Campaign 2012: Revival Must Go On…
2011 WAR ON THE SAINTS: Revival Dawn and the Baptism of the Spirit
2011 Historic Pentecostal Revival Tour in Bulgaria Continues
2009 Revival Begins in Chicago
2008 Revival Bulgaria 2 Film Released
2007 Revelation Revival Continues
2007 Revival in Bulgaria Again
2006 Mission Maranatha in Revival
2006 Healing in the Midst of Revival
2005 Revival in Bulgaria Again
2004 Revival Harvest Campaign Results
2004 Is There Revival in Bulgaria?
2003 Postcommunist Protestant Revival in Bulgaria
