The Next Level Podcast “Re-opening”

Pastor Mike and Cory are joined by Dr. Dino Pedrone. They will be discussing church “re-opening”.

Hello, hello and welcome to the Next Level podcast where our goal here is to help you get to the next level in your relationship with Jesus. Today we are joined by a special guest Dr. Dino Padron of Dino Padron Ministries and him and Pastor Mike are discussing the reopening of churches.

Without further ado, we’re just going to hop right into the discussion. We hope you enjoy and we hope you’re blessed. So, Pastor Mike, you know, as we’ve kind of been opening up. So when did when did the open door church officially reopened you remember the day or.

I do very well. We opened the last Sunday in May, I think it was made the 25th. And it was kind of exciting because it was 40 days after the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. And so it was the day of Pentecost.

And I just really felt like the Lord put everything together and we reopened with a wonderful service outside. And we just had a drive in service, and it was a very momentous day. The reason is because of the fact that we had a great response.

And then I preached on we see Jesus, you know, my focus was to really help our church family not to see the things of the world or the politics or even the fear, but to see Jesus through all of this.

You know, Pastor Mike, there were several people that told me that was a highlights service for them. And I commend you for doing that outdoors like that. And especially speaking on that topic. I think that’s an excellent topic.

And I think I think when you’re away from something you love Julie, then you come back, it’s so meaningful. And that day I understand that it was really meaningful. It was very emotional for me because it had for months I had been preaching to empty pews.

The only people that were there the praise team and then the IT people. as soon as the music was done, the IT people left me. The praise band had cut out as well. And so I was just there in the auditorium by myself, just ranting and raving, enjoying, you know, imagining that there were at least a couple people who had downloaded this service and were watching it on internet.

But anyways, so it was really touching for me because it was the first time the congregation had come back and my prayer had always been that God would regather, just like he was regathering Israel, that he would regather his flock back on this hill, which is 600 Miller Street, and it is the lighthouse of our community.

Yeah. It really is, it really is that, Mike, amen. Yep, so I think that’s great. That was awesome. I actually was out of town, but I was able to live stream and you could just, even watching on the internet, you could tell that, you know.

it was it was like it was back like it was just something was back you know something that we were all kind of missing was was back so kind of in light of that so that was kind of like our kickoff service do you think that that kind of helped you know kind of get the ball rolling in terms of reopening kind of full -time do you think that kind of like provided a spark or like a you know we got to get this done sooner rather than later kind of deal absolutely it was the impetus of helping the people to take the step because i know that a lot of people wanted to know where where does the pastor stand on all this and what is his perspective because i really hadn’t had a lot of conversations with the members beyond a few that i had been calling checking on a few of our older members making sure they’re okay and their needs were met but i really had not had a lot of engagement with the bulk of our congregation and so i think that it was renewing for them and that i came with a different spin i didn’t come with a political speech i didn’t come with a medical analysis but i just came and said see jesus see jesus in all of this and even though we don’t like this new reality we’re in see jesus uh sorry about that uh see see jesus fox news let me know there’s a breaking in news i’ll see jesus is just breaking in the news believe me yeah don’t make me laugh dude okay yeah not a better setup so i agree with that um so what did you find were kind of some of the the more challenging things and in reopening in terms of you know logistics like what was what were some of the bigger challenges that you faced you know maybe it was a tough decision maybe it was um you know figuring out how to kind of follow all these new these new protocols,

what were kind of some of the tougher decisions challenges? Yes, so I think some of the tougher things was that just having to say, okay, we’re going to streamline everything and we are going to just go back to simplicity.

We’re going to just gather. And then I had already, you know, we had laid off so many staff members, how are we going to logistically make this happen? Dr. Padron, I don’t know when you were engaging pastors, some of the things that they were sharing with you that may be their challenges, but those were some of ours.

Yeah, you know, there’s a number of issues that I think about as we discuss this very important topic. But one of them for me is I’ve talked to a lot of pastors. who go on livestream now. They never done livestream before.

You’ve done that before, Pastor Mike, but many others have not. And they found in some ways new people. I remember one man who told me he has about 75 on a Sunday, but when he started doing livestream, he had over 2 ,000 staying with him with the views, which is really quite remarkable when you think of it.

I think that when the gospel appear to be shut down with our churches, the gospel in a sense was exploding, despite the fact that many churches were not even open yet. Down here in South Florida, we have some of the mega churches.

One church I think of that has 10 ,000 people, they just recently opened up. They had Thursday night teaching, and that was it, by livestream. But they just recently opened up. And I think that if I remember correctly, they have maybe five or six weekend services.

But then there are other churches that are very small that have held all these livestreams that have happened. Another remarkable thing to me is, as you know, I travel most Sundays to a different church, or I’m in a conference somewhere.

I’ve had very few cancellations. I have a lot of friends that I talk to who do the same kind of ministry. And some of them have had a lot of cancellations. Some have had a nun that many of the music groups have almost no engagements right now because people are not doing it.

Just before we went on today, I had a fellow call me, a dear friend of mine called me, and we’ve had to reschedule a meeting into April because his wife has the COVID. And so they have to be very careful there.

But I think it’s the old saying that in the sovereign will of God, God works all things for his glory and for his good. When things do not look good, God may be doing some of his greater work. God is always at work, even when we don’t know it.

One of the cautions I have in Pastor Mike, you may think about this in some ways as well. local church. We believe in the local church. The Bible says not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the matter of some is but exhorting one another and so much more to see the day approaching.

The church needs to be regularly meeting and regularly gathering and so I know there’s controversy across the country with some pastors and churches and many people are looking at it from the standpoint of well the government’s not going to tell me what to do and the medical teams are not going to tell me what to do.

I’m going to do what I believe God wants me to do and I kind of feel like we get out of we got out of sorts and maybe not even quite Christian about that sometimes when we over get overwhelmed by that.

If you face any of that Pastor Mike in your situation there with the open door. Well we’ve been very fortunate that our governor has exempted churches religious organizations to all of his orders recommendations of how we should limit the number of people in our buildings, as well as any outside events.

So after consulting with several lawyers, as well as our insurance company, the leaders and I, we decided to go ahead and start moving forward, but we would do everything in a small group setting. And I kind of liken the gospel to water.

You know, water finds a way to get where it needs to go, and the gospel finds a way to get out, whether it’s going to flow through the internet, whether it’s going to flow through small groups. Now, all my life, Dr.

Padrone, I sat under people like you and professors and great pastor conferences, some of the greatest preachers in America, and they said, look, go out there and have big, large days and bring in the most crowd that you can, and then try to harvest out of that crowd souls to save and start discipling them.

Now I’m having to do everything upside down, and I’m doing everything in small groups. I’m assigning new believers, mentors, one -on -one, and we’re getting ready. We’re going to have a, I just met with our leaders last night, and we’re going to have a big push for Thanksgiving, but here’s how we’re going to do it.

We’re going to have multiple services, and we don’t want more than 150 in each service, but I’m going to preach all day, but I’m going to try to start bringing our people back and start reaching out, but everything has to be in small format now.

I like that, yeah. Now, is that the Sunday before Thanksgiving or the Sunday after? Yeah, the Sunday right before Thanksgiving. We are going to make that push. You know, what I might, what I might need is times during this period was I had engagement up in Buffalo, New York.

The pastor there has two campuses, and so what they were doing is that they were meeting outdoors. They were not meeting indoors. I’m not sure that you were not even allowed to meet indoors, so I flew up and the friends and pastors that dared your friend of mine and got with him and here there was this huge windstorm that went through and so they couldn’t meet outdoors so we went indoors doing the exact same thing you were talking about which it is the open door and I was there with the praise team and the technicians and I thought you know I could really done this from my home down in Florida without having even come up here but it was interesting we had all these people on live stream but the goal was to meet indoors and have a big service that day and so I think I think a lot of it is just see what God’s doing in the moment don’t you think?

Absolutely and I think adaptability is key and as we our culture is changing quickly and that the American church has got to realize some of the things that they’re doing are from an American perspective, our brothers and sisters all around the world are already doing a lot of small group stuff.

You think about in different churches and communist countries, they’re meeting in small groups in homes, underground, not kind of staying off the radar. They don’t have massive facilities or properties.

And I just think that the American church is gonna have to understand some of these things. But listen, whether we’re preaching the gospel through social media or radio or in -person or off -campus, online, whatever works, I mean, you’ve seen Dr.

Bedrone, even in the educational world, how it’s changed over the years. Well, it really has. My daughter, as you know, teaches online for liberty graduate program. And she oversees the Davis college online program.

And I’ve talked with her different times about what’s happening there. My son is a high school teacher in a prep school, plus he teaches in a couple of universities. And many of the students are not in the classroom.

They’re home still on video. And I think that this has brought some families closer together doing this. I think it’s revealed some issues in some families where families are not getting along very well.

But when the word of God goes out, it goes to our conscience. And after our conscience, it comes into our own families and then to the church. And then the government has its say. And I think all of us are learning priorities to a greater extent that we’ve never had before.

And I really think, Pastor Mike, that’s a good thing. I think it’s a positive thing that we see happening right now. But I think we have a ways to go on this, don’t you think? Absolutely. It’s hard to get people to change, but making those paradigm shifts are gonna be essential for the healthiness of the church as a body in America.

And when we think about how can we have our greatest impact, and we got a whole new generation that’s coming along, that is totally cut the cord. They’re not watching television, but they are connected to their social media.

They’re connected to their phone and different devices that they have. How is it that I can effectively mentor them, make disciples for the glory of God, and to be able to share Christ and engage people in spiritual conversations?

I think the church has got to realize things are going to be different. It’s not that all that different is bad, it’s just that we recognize we’re in a new season. Yeah, we are in the new season and things aren’t like they used to be, that’s for sure.

I just bought a book about Dwight Eisenhower, who was the president when I was a child. And Dwight Eisenhower’s world was, in many ways, there are those who say in that century, that was the golden. that was the golden decade, the fifties, and it was a good decade, but boy is it ever different from then.

I remember the controversy over John Kennedy running for president in 1960 and winning, and I remember Richard Nixon lost and many said it’s because they cheated up in the Chicago area, and Richard Nixon said I don’t want to have a recount because this would be bad for the country.

Well we’re not like that at all today, we’re in a whole different era today. It’s a whole different world, and I am more committed today, and I know you are too Pastor Mike, to the authority of scripture today, the importance of the word of God really changing our lives from the inside out.

We need the word of God, and I think there are many vehicles right now, the amount of Christians in America that are born again is going down, but yet the gospel of Christ is the only thing, when you think of it, it’s the only thing that gives people satisfaction and peace and sight.

There is nothing else but the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Pastor Mike, you and I have had the privilege of preaching that for a lot of years, and I think it is our day to stand up and really be heard, and I would commend the pastors today to this is our day, this is our day to, you know, leaders are dealers in a hope it was Napoleon Bonaparte that actually said that, and leaders need to step up and especially those who have the authority of the word of God.

So the various things happening in our churches, the leadership that have to make big decisions based upon what’s going on in the community, there’s a golden opportunity today to talk to people about Jesus.

Yeah, and I think that’s, I’d like to illustrate that real quickly, just you know, this past Sunday, had a young couple that Terry and I took to dinner lunch after our morning service, and they got connected to our church through our online worship services during COVID, and then when the doors opened they came in and wanted to meet the church and what they told me I said you know why the open door church there’s a lot of options a lot of great churches in our area and they said you know what was unique about the open door church is that there wasn’t a lot of pretense it was a very simplistic service and we enjoyed that you opened the bible and taught us and we as a young couple we had never seen that before what we had seen is a lot of music and we had seen a lot of drama and a lot of what we considered showy stuff but we’ve never seen someone just open the bible and teach verse by verse and you know Dr.

Badrona I thought about how you know that’s the way I grew up I mean I cut my teeth on Dr. Jerry Vines and Dr. Adrian Rogers and Dr. Jerry Falwell those kind of people and there’s a whole generation that’s never heard the word of just simply taught and practically taught to them in a way that they can use it in their life Yeah, you’re making an outstanding point, I believe, about that because we need the Word.

We need the Word of God. I believe, Pastor, there’s a God that people want, but He’s not the God who is. And the God who is, we learn about when we hear the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

And people want a certain kind of a Santa Claus. They want a genie and a bottle. I guess we all want that in some ways, but that’s not reality. It’s not what it is. And the God of the Bible is a marvelous thing to understand, the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning, the end, the first, the last.

And I think the couple, in saying that to you when you took them out to eat and had that fellowship, I think they’re saying something that I think many are thinking if they’re not saying it. But we need God’s Word today.

We need the Scriptures. We don’t need a lot of the fanfare that we see in Christianity today, which is, it doesn’t help people at all. The prosperity gospel, the theologies that take us into a feel -good relationship.

We need the Bible. We need the authoritative Word of God. And again, God ordained the church is the place where we come and we worship and we grow together. But really, we’re going to be a little bit like China and some other places, I think, in the days to come.

I’m not a prophet at all, but I feel in the next decade of 10 years, it’s going to be really different, different than I have any idea about. There was a research done once by The Economist magazine back in the 1960s, and they wanted to research the next 10 years and make predictions what was going to happen.

So they went back for quite a few years and see what the predictions were. And they found out the predictions of the next decade were never even close. And I think that’s the way it is. You know, when you come into the 2000s, we never saw 9 -11.

And if you’d have told me about COVID, I would have said, that’s never going to happen. I was speaking at a convention in Florida, Bradenton, Florida, when this thing broke out, and the pastors were getting up and they were making these bold statements, how they’re going to, they’re not going to close their churches.

Well, most of them hadn’t closed in three or four weeks. They didn’t know what they were talking about. It’s a different world that we live in refreshing because I think that a whole new generation is coming along that’s looking for authenticity.

And I think they’re looking for something that is real. And we have a great opportunity as preachers of the gospel to present to them Christ and a real relationship with Him and kind of just, you know, step aside from all the other stuff and get right down to what it really means to know Christ.

Yeah, yeah, my wife and I were traveling one time pastor and in a conference I was a Saturday night we were going to church Sunday morning we stopped and had breakfast at the motel we were at and I noticed a man kept looking at me and I look over at him he’d look away and I go look back to my wife then I look over he’s looking at me again I said to my wife no he’s looking at me that guy whenever he wants and she said well look away you don’t know what he wants and so uh as I was walking out to the car he followed me and he said could I talk to you and I said yes and so he said to me he said I noticed when you had your breakfast you prayed I said yes he said who are you talking to and I said Jesus he said can Jesus help me I’ve never forgotten that can Jesus help me and here he had just come back from Iraq he had gone through a lot of heartache over there and he came back and his wife had left him his children had left him he had no friends and you know that story is probably a bigger type of story like a lot of people have than we ever imagined today and people need Jesus they need the word of God I’m so glad the opener church has been doing that for all these years and pastor Mike I’m I’m so happy and proud of you and the work that you do there and the way that you stay close to the scriptures it’s refreshing to hear and refreshing to know about test test test all right well we really hope you enjoyed that conversation and if you want to get more of it we’ve got good news for you we’ve got a part two coming out very shortly where pastor Mike and Dino will finish up that conversation and always remember in Christ there’s hope worth having.