EP 54 - The wonder of God, Mark Lassey & Natanael Costea

every life has a story and every story is worth sharing your story my story and our story speak of victory and defeat joy and sorrow resilience and vulnerability they are not just our story they are christ's story in us they are kingdom stories from down under [Music] our church is on a holy corner there are a number of churches around us a couple of them quite large churches were very well known in the city and we are hidden behind in a small warehouse behind them a lot of the times as we drive in towards our little humble church at the back we're almost guided into the first church and then if we make it past the first car park we are guided towards the second church and somehow we navigate to get uh into a car park but along this beautiful stretch there's some beautiful churches and beautiful people some beautiful leaders among them it is uh mark lassie who is our guest tonight from kingdom city whom i've met at kingdom city i've come to to visit that church a beautiful church and i know quite a few people that go there and it's just a privilege now to have him on our show at kingdom stories from down under welcome mike thank you very much for having me it's great to be here it is a holy corner it is a busy corner on sunday isn't it so we've got crc we've got you guys of course yes we've got reality church yeah you've got us what else there's four of them yeah then then you've also got the uh the indians on the corner that make it just a hive of activities on the sunday so it is that do they come on sunday as well yeah on and at certain times of the year they'll have festivals and so it'll be four weeks of just pandemonium along this little corner and you would have cut deals with all the neighboring properties trying to work it out we've tried to some of them last a little bit longer than others but um yeah we we try as best as we can to keep a good relationship with most of them and you've got an amazing team i mean you guys are so well uh you know regimented you always have a lot of people in the car park doing the work which is just fantastic yeah well i think we we have to because we we really don't have that much space on our actual land so we've got to have some type of coordinated effort to make sure that we've got young families getting closer to the church people that you know have some type of uh i'm not sure um yeah we want to make sure that the people that need to get closest to the church get closest i love that because when i drive in with a family wagon yes uh we have a little tarragon yeah and uh having four kids we had to have a seven seater and every time i drive in there on sunday i can't priority they want to drive me at the front i think nobody can get a front parking lot but they want to drive in there thinking oh i should go and park there just because they're so kind to me yeah we've had some people just adopt a child just to get closer jump in we try to make sure that people people that battle to get to church particularly young families you know it's it's hard enough i've been had young kids and and you get to church you want to make sure that it's it's also dangerous crossing roads and going between cars so obviously it's a lot safer to have and the weather you know yeah that's beautiful were you at kingdom city from the beginning no my story is quite a long story in that um my parents became christians when i was very young about three years of age in perth in perth yeah you were born yeah no no i wasn't born here i was actually born in brisbane um and then we came to perth free a couple of years only and that's when my parents encountered jesus but then we quickly moved to melbourne i grew up in melbourne until i was 16 then to adelaide from 16 to 36 and then from 36 onwards in earth so i've done the whole loop of australia so um yeah i i've seen melbourne what were your parents doing in melbourne so they they became christians they received the lord here and they moved to melbourne yeah so we moved for family reasons to melbourne but then my parents actually became ministers so we started uh a small church in the southern suburbs of melbourne a place called frankston yeah and then there was a moment of time um in the 90s where we were actually going to move to south africa and start a church in durban wow um but it was right as fwd clerk and nelson mandela were handing over power so it was very volatile and we just couldn't get visas to get in so in the end instead of going to south africa we went to south australia well done still south yeah started uh started a church in glen elk my family on the beach so beach to beach franchising beach beach that's it and um and we were there for about five years uh eventually i i found my wife in adelaide and we got married at the ripe old age of 19. both of you both of us were 19 years of age um which is scary because i've got a 23 and an 18 year old now and for me to think that they're about or could get married she could have been married for four years they could have been married by by his age at my oldest age we were we were at least one kid and nearly nearly two kids down so yeah it's just a different time isn't it um but it did keep you out of mischief didn't it i think what it did do is it kept me focused yeah it kept me focused um we were integral parts of church life at the time we were in a in a small church um and then at um 25 we we launched out my wife and it was two sons at the time and and we actually did our own church plant in a southern australia in a south australia suburb called baraka and and pastored that for about five years before changing um handing uh handing it over and kind of amalgamating it with a church in adelaide called influences church which is a big church and i became part of the team there and yeah so it's been a really interesting journey of life and ministry and following jesus and just so you were in the early 90s in melbourne yeah early 90s in melbourne yes so i used to go to frankston beach oh did you two times yeah i lived in richmond i lived right in town okay okay but love the coast yeah did a lot on the coast a lot of friends around dandenong yeah so from daddy long you would go to frankston yeah well we lived just on frankston danny non grove yeah yeah i lived in i lived in many places laila bandura frankston seaford saint albans all in victoria so got around a lot yeah so i love melbourne i uh spent uh the beautiful age between 15 and sort of 21 22. yeah and living in richmond you know i was part of the life yeah city life went to rmit finished campbell high school and then went to rmit and used to walk the union back and just you know being there yeah i was was awesome and then we moved to perth or i moved to perth yeah richmond great spot yeah i've got some good friends i've got you used to work on the on the beach at la marina okay in um sigilda so almost every night i was in sigilda working at various restaurants and uh yeah interesting very interesting strange life great very street smart yeah yeah nothing much surprised you you know you had everything you know all the you know all the prostitutes all the pedophiles were there all the drug addicts everything man that place i mean even on the back lane where the restaurants were were you know we'd find people sleeping next to trash cans yeah to lock everything you know cars it was pretty shocking but that was the period so melbourne and then uh how was available for you yeah on i love melbourne i think every every person has a bit of a nostalgic attachment to where they grew up and really to this day i kind of consider myself an honorary victorian like for football um you know when it comes to state of origin and stuff like that i would i would follow uh follow victoria but funny enough um even though i was i grew up in in melbourne i've always gone for west coast eagles wow so that's interesting i was always the odd one out at school but i just started enjoying football eagles were quite a new team so i thought oh they're new to football and you have been here for a living yeah i i started here my dad followed the west coast i was just kind of one of those things i thought i i liked i liked the newness of of the teams did you play footy when you were i love footy yeah footy was my it was my number one sport yeah played for for a couple of teams in frankston and schools and i went down to a school called flinders right down in tai hab which is right down the base of mornington peninsula and yeah i played football all my life awesome still do it yeah masters now i i i played when i first moved to perth yeah um and i found that i'd play on saturday and it take me to about thursday sort of going to recover just in time and i thought no this is i think um the first game that i played i got um i got elbowed in the eye and came away with a massive black eye and then had to get up on sunday and preach it was the same it was a different it's not a great look when your pastor gets up there with a massive shiner i thought ah we'll leave it to the young guys did you go through a period where you backpedaled uh in your teenage years or not so much yeah it was a very brief period god was really kind in that as i was finishing high school and starting that kind of just thought process of what do i do i i don't want to just do what my parents told me to do yeah i want to have my own expression i want to be my own person um and so i just started for about six months near the end of high school just kind of throwing a bit of caution to the wind now i grew up in a in a really legalistic kind of setting um no tv which is not always bad yeah which it wasn't bad in terms of protecting um so we no tvs no radios uh you know like just just very conservative yeah and i'm sure you there's a lot of us out there that you know that's that's how people experience god and so they wanted to provide that for for their kids um yeah i think that the problem is you you're taking the ability for the children to grow up in it to develop their own convictions it's like you need to do this because we told you to yeah and so i started to kind of want to develop my own convictions yeah which even trying to develop your own convictions um and forming your own thoughts and processes and and questions yeah was just not done yeah um and so i started that but at the same time the church that we're at um there was a a nice young lady called kelly and i knew she came from a a really rough background and was making you know god the center of her world and so i i knew look if i was to to have a have a relationship with kelly i had to choose and so that really was was my protection is yeah um hey if i want to be uh in a relationship with kelly i'm gonna have to kind of choose of my own voice and which direction so yeah that was that was about it and so that was the motivation yeah a couple of years later we were married so was it was she hard to get it was interesting because it was i think we both kind of started liking each other now the good thing and the bad thing is in in a small church there's not many options so that's like we're about the same age you like me we like you there's not much hiding so i wouldn't say it was hard but um it was still you know it was still a bit of a dance isn't that it's like who's going to admit that they like each other first and um yeah but it was and how long did the courting go for yeah probably about two and a half years okay so yeah it was a fair dance yeah it was it was a it's a reasonable dance yeah do you know what i mean like it wasn't and your parents they they were okay with it yeah they they were happy um i think my parents dream was just to find somebody that loves jesus number one and everything else is kind of secondary so what was your dad's strongest points um my dad's strongest point was like he was he was a driven person in that he really wanted he wanted people to encounter god and he wanted them to to grow in their their understanding of who god was um and so he was passionate about it he's passionate about discipleship he was passionate about growing the church and he did a really good job in in in protecting our family from a lot of things that we could have got distracted with so i'm really i look back now and all of us there's six kids in our family all of us are in in ministry positions i've got a sister in uganda as a missionary i've got um a brother who's a pastor in in kalgoorlie my um another my youngest brother worship leads on church on sunday my sister's integral part of church so we're all part of ministry ministry and life and and adding to the body of christ so i look back and i mean there's many things that you could point at as parents and go oh man you could have done this better this better but the outcome is six kids that love god and and they're all ministers so the impact is massive yeah so it's beautiful that he didn't lose his kids as some pastors do they win the church but they lose their family yeah that is what is really good he never grew maybe a massive church but he grew a healthy church yeah and a healthy family yeah which is probably the greater balance of the two i think so i think if you look back as an old person and go hey the sum total of my life is kids that love god yeah i think you'd you'd be pretty happy with that if that was the only thing that you are able to achieve i think that legacy on its own is hey we've got our kids that make heaven their home is this still ministering is it still uh he does a bit um in terms of guest speaking and doing stuff around the place so he he still loves preaching that's his you know i think that that ear of pasta just they they find a sense of value and they they've got so much life experience i'd love to get him on board one day yeah yeah for sure he'd love to do it and your mom what are you up to these days ah my mum's all over the place she's just she's a ball of energy and that she just loves to take after her um in in some ways like she's she's a creative force force yeah so she she doesn't like to be tied down every time you call her she's she's at some craft group or something i think she's rolling boats on the swan river or up chopping down trees she just she can't stand still so she's she loves life and loves to be part of anything and everything yeah she you know the the young kids say phone my mom's got fomo she hates missing out on anything and as growing up what do you what are you fond of her what what are the memories that sort of stay vivid and alive in you yeah mum was was always entrepreneurial so she always was trying she was doing something and she was great at roping us kids into doing it so she had you know enthusiasm yeah she had some type of business idea or plan or um mum was very good at bringing structure to our house um in a way that i've never seen before like by the time we got to school we had the house you know we vacuumed lunches made bathrooms clean wow we we grew up and our routine was um a bit of bible reading and prayer at seven o'clock in the morning we'd read a proverb every single day and have a bit of devotion and and prayer time before we get into our chores and i just i look at the structure and the discipline of doing that for six kids and and man that's a that's a feat in itself so but how powerful that is because those healthy habits yeah i mean they just you we probably don't realize how much they did in you yeah i i think that's a huge part of of why us as kids are where we are is that the discipline yeah resiliency you know and i think it's kids sometimes you don't appreciate it like not most of the disciplines that you have but um as a pastor and as a as as a preacher and as a teacher there's there's many things that i i learned from from those years beautiful and um where did you get married in in the in the church in the same church yes and my dad married us um yeah we we got married uh you know in a little church in in the the foothills of adelaide beautiful on saturday night in um i think it's uh bellevue heights which is just under flag stuff hill no so yeah it was it was a great great time it was a great time um i mean the the thing i love and miss about being part of that small community church is just you know everybody yeah everybody knows you um you know like most things there's good things and bad things but the fact that you grew up with such a tight-knit community is is a great thing beautiful beautiful and then uh you moved to adelaide and started your own journey or you were in adelaide but you started a church in italy yeah okay so your dad's pastoring your church and yeah again a new ministry yourself with your wife so what happened is we just got married um my dad and my mum moved to calgary to take a church over here we stayed in that church and um over the course of a few years we end up serving in a in a local church there and worship led and become part of it and kind of did my apprenticeship as a pastor there did you do studies as well in ministry not in that in that denomination it was kind of a more of a hands-on um i did my studies a bit later on uh went to uni and then um started my own church when i was 26. okay so what what part what denomination were your parents part of oh it's called the potter's house okay yeah no good okay and then uh when you started your own church was it a yeah that was a potter's house oh that was important yeah so the potter's house um has a real vision for discipleship and just planting so pretty much the the the idea is they they raise up and their wives and just say hey we're going to equip you for you know the next three or four years and then really and send you out and um some sink some swim yeah some some work and um yeah we we i have a good friend i don't know if you've ever met him marius chrysanne yes i know morris he he he planned to church in his streets out of policy yeah in fact i think we got sent out at the same conference wow yeah i'm not sure when that was it must have been 15 years ago and this was a vigil right yeah i was there oh wait i was there in church i came he was my do i see no way he was he was going to take over the youth leadership of my church and then he left then with his body's house yes which i didn't mind in a sense because i knew his he was going to be limited in the church again ethnic church yeah a little bit legalistic yeah great church but limiting for his potential and for our potential the generation the new generation's potential yeah so then he went got equipped at police house and i know he was released he went to ipswich yeah i actually visited him there as well and encouraged him and built him up and lydia i know them yeah so yeah so you so we got launched into our ministry to start our churches same with a another guy called chris murns okay who started at jungle up so wow yeah small world it's a small world isn't it yeah wonderful and you were sent back to adelaide yeah so what would happen is on we would all come from all over the country and would end up at the the beach bar congregation where they would host the conference and then on the friday night they would say going into if switch going into baraka adelaide mark and kelly lassie and so then we would start our journeys so wonderful yeah all dressed up in suits and seasons yeah back in the day we looked like gw and we all didn't mormons yeah it worked for that era it actually worked yeah it was good and look i think to raise up leaders is wonderful yeah for general lay people probably a bit too too tight yeah but i think for leaders wonderful yeah and i think that's because you have the structure you've got this then you can embrace it keep the liberty yeah and it keeps young men focused yeah um and that's for a lot of well there's a system there's a path yeah very goal orientated um there's a sense of hey if you're a man this is what you're called to do you make the decisions we'll send you off and get you done um yeah i think the unfortunate thing is from that era i think i would be the only person still in the ministry yeah it's interesting because my marriage did come back yes and uh i have asked him to to come and partner with us and he said that i don't want to do ministry yeah i'm happy like i'm going to i think they're going to c3 and joondalup if i'm not wrong uh in hebron heights at uh where jonathan kell used to be and um but he said no i'm i'm going to the marketplace yeah and uh yeah you're doing very well from what i hear yeah he runs a plumbing maintenance plumbing maintenance business in fact he services our factory as well oh yeah yeah now he's doing really well he was always he was an entrepreneur he's a hard-working young man again he got married early um we ordered three children and uh just you know thriving and wonderful wonderful leader yeah massive potential massive potential this is great well what a what a generation you know um and so you're back in italy now you're planting a potus house church yeah from zero yeah from zero i was literally uh myself my wife two kids um and like we did fabulous yeah we did it hard you know we there was no income was there no income i i had my own business at the time so i was working a full-time job what were you doing i had a building company at the time and then we we went into franchises got had wendy's franchise um and so that was supplementing so you you're a licensed builder or you were doing carpentry work i was doing drafting and then i had um contractors doing building and stuff like that stuff yeah ice cream yeah wendy's ice cream so we had a franchise in one of the shopping centers nice um and the ministry platform yeah i love the i love the duplicity of having having marketplace experience and and i did that for most of my ministry life yeah same year i'm still doing it now yeah and so i i love the the relatability of that um and then i so we started and we'd set up every sunday in the university in morrison lakes and we'd set up and pull down and set up and pull down wait for people to come and then you know see if they're coming and i think um it was interesting because we did a big outreach and plan but in our university it's probably a bit like this corner i think there was four churches wow just launched in that type of thing so we would do all the groundwork and i'm sure that everybody went to some other church because it wasn't coming to our house um but we grew over the next probably um three or four years and we had about 40 or 50 people and in terms of the the denomination we were with that that's really good and it was a healthy bunch of young people and you were discipling people it wasn't just the sunday people you were actually spending time with these guys yeah well i that's that's all we had you know so you you needed to disciple people because you needed you needed practically for the church to run so there's you know there's no there's no room for spectators you need somebody pushing the button somebody playing the drums looking after the kids so yeah it was it was a it was a really i'd say it was a hard time but it was an enjoyable time as well and i often say when you start these journeys one of the greatest gifts that god gives you is the this beautiful gift of ignorance yeah you don't know what you don't know so it's just like would i do it again probably not but i'm happy to do it yes let's let's just get into it so we we did that for four years um and then after about four years i just felt something shifting in in my spirit and it was really kind of i think growing up in in that denomination and seeing the world very very black and white so that was part of potter's house as well yeah that was part of potter's house so yeah that was that was the experience that i've had all my life from three years of age so that felt natural natural yeah that that was christianity that was christianity and and we knew that you know from a lot of external um christians that we were perceived as you know a bit on the cultish yeah that the cutting edge and hyper legalistic but you know we don't know anything else it was working it saved you it saved yeah family it's interesting when you say it was working i i think i i think working is relative yeah and depending on who you ask and sure you know like if i ran down the the road and i said i i'm a fast runner you might go yes until you see usain bolton that's you know what i mean it's relative and i think that's for me one of the things that i realized is is while it's it's good to say it's working um was there more yeah it was limiting it was limiting that's what i that's what i generally said and that's what i said before you know i think they're great but they're limiting and so i i had a revelation of of god in that i i realize more than anything it's not that i don't like to use they were right we were wrong we were right that was wrong i think the best way to put it is we're incomplete yeah are you willing to admit you're incomplete big question is the big question yeah and i think that was the the issue it's like where how do you get that awareness i think god has to understand it yeah um because if you as soon as you say it's incomplete um you have to do something about it you have to do something about it and it's either increases fear or increases faith and so for a lot of people you've got to still question you've got to you've got a question if you don't question that's what where the problems that's when you fit in their mold yeah and i think um for me i i was happy most of my life with the with the safety of the black and whiteness but all of a sudden when you're offers boundaries and it's safe say it's safe safe for the family same for your children say for you yeah but when you you become a leader and when you become a pastor and now you have to enforce enforce that's when all of a sudden the weight of it was like i actually don't have a conviction about some of this stuff i could live within those boundaries but for me to enforce yeah and so i never i just didn't have the confidence yeah i didn't have the confidence to think i i'm going to come when people have and so you know there was a couple well used an example a couple had a tv yeah and so for me it was like you're not allowed to have a tv if you're in ministry you're not allowed to have a tv and and it's funny because i think how legalism often works it works in the nuances of language so it's not that having a tv was sinful no but the first thing that you did when you backslid was got a tv it's a it was a form of rebellion yeah and so it's it's a massive aggressive way of you know condemning a behavior without saying hey we're not condemning it so it's like we're washing our hands clean so but if it sits badly on you or if it sits on your head that's your call but we'll just make your world smaller and so i remember having this conversation with somebody that you know in the process of discipleship we're like all right we'd love for you to lead a small group but one of the things that we're going to have to talk about is switch off or give a liberty yeah and they're like but we don't feel it's an issue we don't watch it that much and then you know i went but yeah like part of me is just like i'm just telling you this is the thing now and and then it was like but i'm the pastor yeah you have to do what i tell you and i remember that conversation and going i don't think that cuts it i don't think i can come up with any theological backing for it i can i can maybe stretch some bows and you know come up with something that might sound but i've actually got a scripture but i won't say it on camera because then people use it i'll show it to you afterwards um yeah and i think it's one of those things that you go wait a minute you know drinking's another thing um and there's all these these things that are you could say they're not wise yeah um or there's a better way yeah but when you're trying to enforce a stand as a law as a law on it um i just never felt comfortable and so i i started questioning in my own spirit and saying all right god why why do i have an issue and i think the the turning point for me was first corinthians 8 you know paul's writing to the corinthian church and he starts talking about the food offered to idols yeah and he starts to talk about you know the different factions in the church you know the ones that won't eat the food because of the the perception that it has well if they we the food looks like we're backsliding or it looks like we're partaking and then there's others that won't eat the food because of the the supernatural power that might be transferred from the food and um and then there was the people that just ate the food and nothing happened and nothing happened and and then paul goes it's the mature ones that eat the food and i was like wait i i thought that's the other way around well i thought the mature ones would be no and of course paul qualifies it goes but if you know me exercising my freedoms would cause a brother to stumble then hey i'll go take my freedoms i'd rather keep yeah and i realized most of our rules and regulations was to keep people fearful and immature um don't get a tv because if you get a tv it might come into your lounge and it's like okay and we're going to make the choices for you it's exactly how i parent you know when when my kids were five and six i'll make all the decisions i'll tell you what to eat i'll tell you when to go to bed but if i'm doing that for my 18 year old and 23 year old there's an issue yeah and so what i realized is there was some behavioral things that while they weren't bad they were incomplete and they were providing a platform to keep people fearful and immature and i realized i just didn't want to be that pastor i didn't i didn't want to be that person i didn't want to be fearful and i didn't want to be immature yeah i wanted the ability to to be able to journey some of these things out sure without the fear of guilt um yeah guilt and also i chose at that time to leave uh and and resign my position as a pastor because i also understand that if if i'm part of the potter's house i'm part of that denomination yeah my my choices to do things that don't align yeah um are uh are really not there because i think ultimately when when you're part of something yeah um your choice to become part of it god's got i think god cares more about unity than you going on your own journey of course so for me it was like i don't i don't want to be somebody that causes issues in that movement yeah by going on my own journey so my job is to remove myself from it yeah you couldn't honor the earth you couldn't honor the people you could not in the movement and i didn't i didn't want to cause issues and i think people have asked me about that and i said and to this day it's a deeply personal journey yeah that i went on and even people that i know and my brother's still part of that movement um you know i celebrate him talk to him about church all the time but what i don't do is i don't share my journey with him no because god did something in me god awoken something in me um and it's a new reality it's a new reality and so what i had to do was make choices um i chose now in the process of me choosing the church group that i was that the church that i was leading and the elders there then um got together and chose to follow me and so we end up starting our own little independent church for a while before we end up um becoming part of influences but i think i i was i was very very aware of the responsibility that i had um in leading people yeah more than any time before mainly because i've seen a lot of people do it really poorly yeah so even in that process where i started to really go through and question some of the deep convictions that i had i i didn't change my behavior i didn't go and buy a tv the next week i didn't start drinking i didn't do no no need to create yeah i didn't because i i think for a few things it i wanted my word to still carry away if i change my mind you know one thing like you were never that person yeah anyway you never you just wanted to escape it's like a teenager yeah yeah um and so i really thought god you gotta help me you gotta help me navigate this and i feel that that season um was one of the most beautiful seasons of god revealing his grace to me i never understood grace yeah i never understood that jesus just didn't die for my sins of the past but he died for them in the future that i that the idea of losing my salvation by an action um wasn't what god intended with the cross it wasn't this temperamental thing that anything at any time by switching on the tv at the wrong time yeah yeah and that's that's what i had in and i think for me it was this it was learning to breathe it was learning that god was this beautiful good and kind and loved me um and it was really like letting god as the father aspect of him i knew him as god as a lord and master yeah but there was a facet of him and that's why i think that the understanding of incompleteness in any of our theologies or any of our perceptions of who god is is essential to looking at him to learn yeah or else we're just trying to reaffirm what we already know which i think is a really dangerous place for us to yeah you're right it's interesting because we had similar journeys you know i was in the romanian pentecostal church grew up in that church i loved it i was fully immersed in it you know every night of the week seven days a week i was there monday night i was leading the children's orchestra so i was conducting tuesdays i was leading the youth wednesdays we had service thursday we had brass so i played the trumpet in the russ friday we had choir saturday we had outings sunday two services it was every day i would fast once or twice a week yeah i would be there every night fully committed i would donate maybe 20 to 30 percent of my income to missions and ministry and church and um this went on for almost 20 years wow you know and uh the reason why i left is very simple i was frightened what i was of what i was becoming i just realized that i was like them you know i was growing into this not me yeah monster yeah you know i could fake it yeah yeah i think that's what i mean i was doing it naturally but it wasn't real it wasn't me you know there was no i could tick the boxes no problem i think for me um that's where i left yeah and i never looked back a lot of people say you'd be back you'd be back yeah i said you know you know all i need to do is go there once and i'm you know for five years i'm i'm done you know but i love the people and i love everything that goes on in there as you know as a community i love the community and i'm still connected with the community but once again you know when i realize you know what is working behind even though the lord is working the church of people are saved and being delivered there's also this overwhelming um holdback that holds people yeah in a um in a bondage yeah uh which is even though may seem spiritual yeah it's still they have they have no freedom no they don't know their identity yeah they they know it maybe from the book a little bit yeah but it hasn't sunk in yeah they don't fully experience the fullness of the spirit you know with all the gifts and just the freedom the freedom of grace the freedom of power the freedom of anointing the freedom of ministry uh some touch it every now and then you know as a as a seasonal or once or i'll pray for somebody once but it's not a way of life yeah i remember thinking about you know my parents had an incredible um encounter with god when they got saved and they were they were two very broken people um and god changed like overnight no drugs no alcohol you know burn their tvs got their their record smashed them and awesome and just had you know and it was it was a movement of god it was it was you know the jesus people movement there was a sanctification movement that just swept through and and my parents were byproducts of that and to this day when when they talk about it it's like it happened yesterday it's good you still get so much real to them yeah um but as the time went by i remember as i as i was in that church that that happened probably early 80s and you know it moved and and that denomination and many others just had amazing revival through the 80s and 90s and then i feel like something began to shift and i remember watching it and thinking what's what's going on here and as i began to pass to myself i realized um for my parents when god showed up there was this amazing encounter and they they they did something as a response to it they they got rid of things that they felt represented their old life so they got rid of their drugs and their alcohol they got rid of their music and their tvs they stopped going to cinemas and listening to fm radios some of them quit jobs some of them change jobs some of them cut off friendships and then comes my generation and instead of transferring what happened they did something really subtle they they said when god showed up what we did is we did x and we did y we got rid of this and we did that and we started this so for you to get god to show up you've got to do this and what was lost was you did it as a response to god you're trying to get me to do it to manipulate to get god on my side so so it's rather than being led we're trying to lead and it's the dryness of it yeah and so i remember we we did we had all the form but no power and so you'd see and i've seen ultimately i think so many denominations and movements of god lose it in that transition yeah and what happens is the older patriarchs in those movements um feel like power is getting slick they become more and more legalistic to put you know the same songs in the same style and the same things and you see it in a different church and i i see it really in in ethnic-based churches you know it's like when god showed up we did this we had the power we have it only works in that form and yet for the next generation that means this is nothing dead yeah and so what what is replaced what replaces holy ghost power is nostalgia yeah and so you have songs that we sung like if you go to some of these movements they're singing the same songs that that we're saying in the 80s yeah and preaching the same messages that we preached in the 90s oh yes and that that i remember these two single sermons and we're undressing the same you go there and it's could you ever could you ever do that that uh vickery sermon kind of talk you know no no and uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i came from america yeah it was a very i mean i remember growing up and you know some of the blokiest aussies that you've ever seen and that hey can you burn it can you close something farther a guard and you're like but um i think for me it was i just want god yeah and if if god asks me to give up something man it's not an issue and now as a father and as a pastor and as a leader my my heart's desire is let's get rid of stumbling blocks yes let's let's make it real let's make it real and if it's not real yeah change everything or change nothing whatever it is let's make let's make the gold jesus yeah let's talk about who he is he says if we lift him up he'll draw men unto himself and i find so many places are now talking about their movement more than jesus yeah their movement is saved i'm so glad for this i'm so it's like let's just talk about jesus yeah let's let's be enamored with who he is let's let's discover just you know preach a message last sunday um and it was simply entitled jesus is way better than you think that's right and and it is like the more you the more you know the more you should realize you don't know not the more you know the more it confirms what we already knew no you're right it drives it draws in here so um you moved back to perth yeah and that's when you joined kingdom city or you had another journey with yes i i went from um i went from the influencers i went to influencers i was there for about six years oh you worked with them yes i was i was on staff there and that's that's a charismatic church yeah yeah i mean that's that's a new breed founding pentecostal churches in the nation so you were totally free there you had a new level of yeah i think with any were you filled with the holy ghost uh in in the in the polish house yeah yeah okay were you operating in the spirit or not so much to a little professor um i wouldn't say prophetic i think one of the one of the the the things with with certain denominations is that they create a patriarch called system with giftings it's like oh you must be this person it's special that's reserved so they created yeah almost a job description or a level they had explained before and um you could say thus says the lord that that and exactly and that was always dusted the lord and of course you had to be over 50 to do that yeah you had to have great hair bald hair or a mustache you know like every now and then a lady would do it and it would be she had a head cover oh no we didn't have the head covers but it was it was it was definitely uh i don't know if you should be doing that do you know what i mean and there were just the nuances and the kind of probably the passive aggressive kind of we just won't comment on it we'll just let it slide um but i just never felt confident i i you know there was times where i said god i don't i don't feel i don't feel the confidence to say thus safe the lord my voice definitely wasn't deep enough and i didn't have a mustache um but as i came out i think influences was was great at teaching yeah about the gifts um and there were some great passes pastor ashley evans brad bonhomme um greg johnson people and i went to college there as well and and just had an a little bit more of an understanding so it was the same as paradise church kind of yeah paradise became influencers when i was there okay um yeah so sorry just the name change yeah yeah so i was familiar with paradise okay but not so much yeah so i think paradise got changed to influencers yeah ten years ago okay all right um so it's the same actually evan she's changed the name that's it um and a lot of it was paradise was the suburb that it was in so as it grew to multiple campuses and paradise oh it's hit it anyway yeah it's weird most people just assume that it was like church lands yes you know exactly that's what i passed as it was just a beautiful name it's just a great name so i um i i learn a lot there i learned i i think um we the the denomination that we had was very isolated and the way that it isolated was making everybody else um either lukewarm at best hypocrites at worst um and presented them the reason why their churches are growing is because they're diluting the scripture they're not preaching the full truth which made you us you know as small you know you had many scriptures to back it up why is the road narrow and you know where the remnant and all this kind of language and and so going there all of a sudden i realized man these people are passionate about someone else they just want to see seoul saved and particularly was yeah was so passionate and and we would do everything for that five ten minutes at the end of every service to go hey this is your chance and i would say particularly in adelaide more people had their first encounter with jesus at paradise slash influences than any other church in the state and the thing is even people if they wanted to bring somebody to church for the first time they would take them there 100 they knew that they will that's an altar call yes there's going to be an encounter yes and most likely they will respond yep and it's all and it was presented in a way that was contemporary so it was it was it was a friendly way to experience god yeah um and so i learned a lot and was there for about um six years and then just felt god shift and journeyed that with pastor ashley and ultimately i got a phone call from the acc australian christian churches over here to run youth alive so i moved into wa to run youth alive was a paradise part of ecc yes okay yeah so um the the evans family were they ran they were superintendent of andrew evans was the national president before brian houston so it was it was part of their dna so i moved over here and ran youth alive and just started going to kingdom city as my local church awesome so i did that seven eight years ago now wow are you still with your fellow no i uh when i started on staff at kingdom city i handed it over to a great man called john mess wonderful well done and now you're a campus pastor or a you know you you yeah i do a bit of roaming now so um we've got five campuses now yeah across king city so that's just yeah just in perth um i think there's i'm sorry um about 24 campuses worldwide from london to dubai i've been to dubai oh have you yeah oh fantastic yeah jai and daniel great passes botswana cambodia um and over covered crazy things have happened where we've started our online church and through that um we've now got a campus in johannesburg and mexico uh delhi and india wonderful um so it's funny because um our senior leader pastor mark hasn't been to any of these countries and yet there's thriving churches that have started uh so so my role on sundays is to travel around and support the campuses preaching leading and seeing and during the week i help connect our business leaders our men and also create bridges with outside community and really start to uh try to help equip people outside of our church about our church there's a lot of ignorance as you would know about particularly pentecostal churches um in the greater community and um trying to start to bridge some of those gaps i think it's getting better yeah i think it's very well you're probably aware i mean we have a north network here a geo network of pastors that we meet on a regular basis um there's a sterling every there's a lot of networking going on around the city a lot of prayers i think it's getting much much better yeah for sure i know hcc on their own have their own networks as well yeah there's about 80 churches but a lot of the other smaller churches or smaller nominations independent churches they they now they network more than before which is great yeah i mean you have the luxury of having so many people that you can count on so basically you don't even need to go outside yeah and that is one of the beautiful things about being part of a have a great team is we do have that connection but i also love hearing journeys and stories and catching up with people yeah and your greenhouse uh platform is wonderful and you know the body gets so much you know and the fact that you guys release a lot of content in the podcasts in the video class and also what you've done for the city with the conferences yeah uh at the convention center what you guys have done at the show grounds i mean a lot of people have no idea like you know i've organized you know big events throughout the world for over 25 years and i know what it takes to organize these and just to get the favor to be able to be present there yeah i mean i i rejoiced i went with my wife i said no i want to go to show when kingdom city is there because we want to spend the night there yeah and just you know enjoy the presence of god and it was beautiful then just to see muslims and hindus dancing with their kids and you know around carols phenomenal absolutely and also in the city what you guys have done you know with the concerts and phenomenal phenomenal you have to be almost blind not to see what god is doing in the city yeah i think with the voice as well and you know the panels now next month again you know where where your leaders are opening up to the wider body to answer questions and being vulnerable in jemima as well and i think it's phenomenal thank you yeah i know you guys are doing a great job we don't look up to you as we have to be there no we cheer you on just know that we want to have a strong church in the city we need strong churches and you need little churches in the suburbs in the suburbs as well for sure and i love aces is planning another church in um work worry yeah disciple church yeah yeah uh and i saw that as well um you know it's only like 10ks from where i am or seven kids from where we are in la mala now phenomenal i think there should be a church in every suburb i said to somebody every every primary school and every high school should be a church yeah you know around the community so there's so much work to be done in the city and it's phenomenal yeah um now you have three sons three sons phenomenal yeah 23 18 and 13. wow so yeah it's a fun household i love having sons i don't know what i'd do with with daughters but there's always some bastards i've got one son and three girls oh really daughter so yeah and he's upset oh is he he wants he wants he wants another how old are you um seven five and three and baby yeah congratulations i'm probably older than you and i have a baby i'm glad i'm glad i passed the baby season yeah so yeah he he cried when he found out that the last one was gonna be gone we couldn't console him it was just comforting you know it's difficult but it is beautiful what's the legacy what would you like to leave your kids and you know grandkids i think i think for them to have an understanding i think one of the things that i've been really pondering on lately is what does it mean to have a real relationship with god that lasts into your 70s 80s 90s for the rest of your life and of course for for us that grew up in different seasons of church and different seasons um my heart breaks for all those people that we used to do church with in their job started so well so passionate so driven um and i see them either indifferent at best to god resentful at worst and i think wha why what what what's missing what what was missing yeah what was the what was the thing that caused them to walk away and not come back and i think that it's one thing to walk away from organized religion or a church absolutely but the the problem that we have is church organized religion and god for most of these people are so intrinsically connected and what that makes for me you really realize and the weight obvious how do i present god what what's my god filter to these people that are listening is that god wants more from you god's demands do what do i do i put the put do i put the weight of their relationship with god on them do they walk away feeling tired from their relationship with god do they walk away feeling released if they walk away from church because i i think it's one thing when we talk about discipleship um to put the weight on us yeah you know you the disciplines yeah but the disciplines without the passion are dry and i've seen the byproduct of that and so i think about the legacy that i want to leave behind whether it's in my family or with people at church um and and it's simple i i want people to know god's good god goodness is who he is yeah kindness is what he does yeah and i think people know that god's good but often they don't feel or experience his kindness sure and if you don't get people to see that or often i think no i'll rephrase that we all experience his kindness but we don't often credit him for it yes so it's a bit like a title it's a bit like a teenager you know you parents never do anything for me yeah and as parents you could go sit down and you'll give me a little list but i feel like our job as as pastors should be let's let's talk about that connection yeah um you know i love that when when moses says to god show me your glory on mount sinai yeah and and god's response is i'll stay there i'll let my goodness pass by you yeah and i feel like that's that's a picture of god it's like god show me how amazing you are and he's like i'll show you how good i am yeah and i feel like if we can impart that even when people walk away from god or walk away from organized religion there will be this oh god so good i i'd be i'd be silly not to go back yeah you know because it's that it's that prodigal son what what does he remember he remembers that his dad was good yeah and it drew him back into a relationship i feel like there's so many of our contemporaries that think about god and they think about the rules and regulations they think about all the things they can't do and they go i don't know if i want to go back to that yeah and you see them and you talk to them and you encourage them to come to church and they're like oh sunday's my only day off or sunday and i'm like oh but it's not about that it's about it's about you experiencing god's goodness again yeah do you remember that and so many of them are like no i don't remember so i just i think about my sons and i go i want them to walk out and go wow i i've forgotten how good god is yeah oh man remember how good god is i think that's the that's the job and god conversation that he has in you know job 36 seven and eight and it's that you know you appreciate this growing up you see job and god having this intense conversation you know joe joe keeps a great attitude for so long and that was me and and so it's like i did this and you know and finally he cracks and goes god it's not fair really what he's doing he's trying to go god come down to my level so i can understand you and joe god says to job who is this who darkens my counsel without knowledge brace yourself like a man and i will ask you a few things wow and i've always had this you know this this harsh father figure pastor gone who are you to question me just do what you're told you know it's not for you to know the mysteries it's for you to just just be obedient and then of course you realize like god's good why he wouldn't god's god's not into patronizing and belittling people so what would he be doing i realized what he was doing was something so beautiful is joke who is this the ask questions without knowledge and understanding and then then he takes him outside he says see the stars see how they stay there you don't have to worry about that do you see how the wind flies through the air you don't even know where it comes from and it works all by itself there's this beautiful plastic so see the hawk does it fly by your wisdom yeah and you follow it yeah like it's just like for a chapter and a half it's god not belittling him awakening job yeah to realize man i don't know i know nothing and it happens i don't worry about any of this yeah and it just works yeah and what god was doing was going job you can either know everything or trust me on everything you can't have both and of course job's response my favorite passage is such knowledge is too wonderful for me yeah and i think that's that's what i want to leave with people the wow of god not the why yeah the why is like why god joke god come down to my level by the end job's like oh god i'll just look up to you and i think if we can do that so people walk away just going in the midst of the craziest season you know we deal with people struggling with with cancers and families breaking apart and in the midst of that if they can look up to the stars go down through the ocean and go the oceans come here and no further i didn't have to worry about that last night i swear god wow you're so kind yeah i think if we could do that i think discipleship discipline would just be a byproduct of going man i just i love god you know that's what that's what i want to that's what i want to be part of is just in a way like john the baptist i must decrease and he must increase if at the end of the day we just leave every surface service going i didn't know that about jesus did he how good is he that's beautiful thank you so much for you know going deep with this because this is beautiful thanks for coming on the show i'm sure we'd have so much to chat about really value what you shared with us and your life story and just the way you opened up and uh just the way you talk about god man this is really precious thank you all right so good what a beautiful story hey and you probably realized how his face just lit up as he shared the goodness of god my prayer is that you really experience this goodness of god and you empower those around you to also step in faith and just seek god for who he is and just be marveled at his beauty and i'm sure this content is valuable to you and if that is the case we'd love it if you could share it with other people so others can be blessed by this and benefit from this and if you have anyone that you think should be at kingdom stories from the ananda uh just send me a a text or a comment and let me know especially for people here in perth western australia because this is the people that we want to profile we thank you for joining with us share this content subscribe to our channel both on youtube podcasts apple podcast whatever you consume this content we look forward to seeing you next time take thank you for joining us on kingdom stories from down under we'd love it if you would subscribe rate and share these stories with your wider community and remember every story is worth sharing including yours [Music]