Ministry on the Move

Season three closes with the McNeills back home in East Texas at Pine Hill Baptist Church, where Pastor Bruce Bailey has just led his congregation through its 175th anniversary. Bruce and Chris spend the first half of the conversation tracing the church's history — a settlement, a revival meeting, and nearly two centuries of continuity — before Bruce shares the covenant renewal prayer he wrote and asked his congregation to commit to together. From there the conversation turns into one of the most direct discussions this podcast has had about what's actually behind the decline of corporate worship in the American church, and it doesn't stop there — Bruce and Chris spend real time on spiritual warfare, deliverance ministry, and what it means to take the "weird parts" of Scripture seriously instead of explaining them away. Also referenced: Autopsy of a Deceased Church, a book Bruce has on his shelf and is working through.

Pastor Scott Johnston has pastored New Life Baptist Church in Wabash, Indiana, for seventeen years, after stops in Michigan, a hard-fought church plant in Kentucky, and nine years back home in Texas. But this conversation centers on August 2020, when a routine doctor's visit for his 20-year-old daughter turned into news no parent is prepared for. Scott is remarkably honest about what came next — including a prayer he prayed more than once that most pastors wouldn't admit to out loud. What follows is a story of a very specific, very detailed list of prayer requests, a surgery that was supposed to take two days, and an outcome that even the leading doctors on a national research study said they'd never seen before. Scott also opens up about how the experience reshaped his view of pride, ministry, and what it actually means to shepherd people through suffering instead of just teaching about it. Also referenced: Max Lucado's In the Grip of Grace, a book Scott returns to again and again, especially its chapter on baptism.

Part two picks up right where last week left off. Pastor Ross O'Dell finally answers the question Chris has been sitting on for two episodes: does the church replace Israel? Ross's answer runs through the grafting-into-the-vine image, a full walk through the biblical covenants from Adam and Eve to the new covenant in Christ, and a picture of Scripture's whole arc that's less about theological hairsplitting and more about the character of God. From there the conversation turns personal — Ross talks through a reflection on hell and the presence of God that reframes a familiar C.S. Lewis idea, then closes with a wide-ranging speed round: his favorite Bible character, why Monday isn't actually his hardest day, and a question handed down to him from a past guest that he wasn't expecting. Also mentioned: Ross rereads I Love You to the Moon and Back more than any other book outside Scripture, and counts The Mission among his all-time favorite films.

Pastor Ross O'Dell returns to Ministry on the Move for round two, two years after his first appearance, and this time the conversation goes straight into the deep end. Ross is gearing up to preach through the book of Revelation starting in September — a series he expects to take two to three years — and he and Chris spend this episode wrestling with how to approach a book most Christians either fear or oversimplify. Along the way: a linguistic detail buried in Revelation chapter 1 that quietly reframes how you read the whole book, a memorable illustration involving tree trunks and pruning shears, and a story about red heifers imported from Texas that's stranger than fiction. It all builds toward a question Chris has wanted to ask for a long time — one about Israel, the church, and a term most pastors are nervous to even say out loud. Ross starts to answer it right as we run out of time, so this one's a two-parter. Also mentioned: the book I Love You to the Moon and Back, which Ross has been handing out to his congregation for years.

Part 2 picks up on a shared conviction: that the version of Christianity worth chasing isn't one made in our own image — comfortable parts kept, hard parts quietly edited out.

From there, the conversation goes places this podcast doesn't often go — into what's actually happening at communion, why Lutherans baptize infants, and why being at peace with mystery might be a mark of mature faith rather than a lack of answers. Chris shares a personal story about his grandmother's funeral that ties it all together in an unexpected way.

The speed round is a good time, as always, and the episode closes with a question passed down from a previous guest — one that gets an answer more honest than expected.

Pastor Jim Pearl leads St. John's Lutheran Church in St. Johns, Michigan, and this is his first appearance on Ministry on the Move, though it's the McNeils' second visit to the church itself. Jim spent 56 years as a Catholic before Grace — capital G, in the Lutheran sense — got hold of him. He and his wife were searching for something more, found a Lutheran church that felt like home, and three years later Jim was ordained. He was installed at St. John's in February 2020, just weeks before COVID changed everything.

The conversation opens with the basics: the three solas — grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone — as a two-minute summary of Lutheran belief. Jim explains why liturgy matters to him: the sense of praying in the footsteps of 2,000 years of believers, and the biblical depth embedded in the readings and structure that some traditions may not fully appreciate. He places LCMS Lutheranism in the middle of the spectrum, between the more progressive ELCA and the more conservative Wisconsin Synod.

From there, the conversation turns to Martin Luther himself. Jim and Chris walk through the Diet of Worms — the two simple questions put to Luther, whether the books were his and whether he'd recant — and the humility in Luther's request to go home and pray before answering. Jim makes the case that Luther never wanted to start a new denomination. He wanted to reform corruption, particularly the indulgence trade that was exploiting poor people, and he remained, in his own mind, Catholic until his death.

The conversation lands on legalism — Chris's own reflection that we don't clean people up in order to bring them to Jesus, we bring them to Jesus and let Him do the cleaning. Jim agrees, and the two land on a shared conviction that this impulse, more than any doctrinal dispute, may be one of the things the modern church most needs to let go of.

The episode closes with a shared conviction: the church has time to lose in denominational infighting it doesn't have. The real work is going outside the walls, being the hands and feet of Jesus, and remembering that the fight was never supposed to be with each other in the first place.

Part 2 opens with an idea that reframes the whole conversation: contemporary worship music may have quietly become the new catechism — the primary way kids absorb what they believe about God, often shaped by an industry more interested in selling a product than teaching theology. Kolby ties this to a broader pattern of outsourcing — dinner to restaurants, the lawn to the neighbor kid, and spiritual formation to church staff. He shares a gutting story about a woman in her 70s who told his wife, in tears, "I've lost my children" — not to death, but to a faith that never took root at home despite years of youth group and mission trips.

Kolby pushes back hard on low expectations for kids, telling the story of training children as young as sixth grade to lead their peers to Christ, and of a twelve-year-old girl named Ellen who memorized the entire book of James because her leader challenged the kids to memorize it alongside her — and did it himself.

The conversation turns to what a pastor can actually control: guarding his own walk with God, guarding his family, and preaching truth without manufacturing revival through manipulation. Real change is a move of the Holy Spirit, not a program.

The speed round covers "God's Smuggler" as Kolby's most-reread book, Joseph as his favorite Bible character, and a funeral story — a grieving, atheist mother who tried to climb into her son's casket to hug him one last time. The episode closes with Kolby's testimony: assurance of a calling since age seven, and a moment years later where God asked him to trade his ambition for something simpler — sitting on the porch with a cup of tea, content even if everything else were stripped away.

Kolby King is a camp pastor who stepped in at the last minute for his mentor Bubba Wright at the Watering Hole Cowboy Church youth camp. He holds a doctorate in biblical archaeology, with a dissertation focused on the final week of Jesus' life and the culture surrounding it — but his testimony starts earlier than that.

At 15, despite years of church attendance, Kolby realized he didn't actually know God. That drove him to start reading Scripture on his own, and within a month of devouring the New Testament, his life changed. By 18, God placed him as pastor of a small, dying inner-city church in Oklahoma City — poverty-stricken, no baptisms in a decade, surrounded by prostitution, addiction, and violence. He learned ministry there in the most unfiltered way possible: door to door, sitting on porches with men holding beer cans, watching a woman who'd been prostituting herself to fund an addiction give her life to Christ.

The conversation turns to a hard truth Kolby has carried since: the church in America has largely lost personal evangelism. He tells two stories about passing by people in need — once at a revival, watching person after person walk past a homeless woman digging through a dumpster, and once with his own family in Washington D.C., choosing to steer his daughter away from a homeless person on a subway grate rather than stop. His wife's response afterward cuts straight to the point: his daughter didn't just miss an opportunity to help. She watched her father see a person in need and walk the other way.

Kolby lays out three things he believes have to happen for real revival in America: the church has to return to the foot of the cross, the gospel has to leave the building, and the next generation has to be reached — not through church attendance alone, but through parents taking spiritual leadership at home. The conversation closes on what the gospel actually is, and how easily it gets reduced to head knowledge instead of surrendered lordship — including a story about training sixth graders to lead their peers to Christ, and a pushback email Kolby received objecting to the word "Lord" in a gospel tract.

Part 2 with Paul McQuery moves from the practical realities of pastoring a small church into a long, thoughtful conversation about eschatology.

Paul contrasts his years at Valley Grove — a mid-sized church with a full staff — with Blue Grove, where he's the only paid staff member and everything runs on volunteers. He talks about earning trust in a new church: the advice to change nothing but your underwear in the first six months, and his personal rule that no one should ever have to question whether he loves them.

From there, the conversation shifts into eschatology. Paul walks through the four major orthodox frameworks — dispensational premillennialism, historical premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism — using Romans 11, Matthew 24, the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, and the significance of Noah to work through where he lands and why. He holds his convictions firmly while giving every other view a fair hearing, anchored in what Albert Mohler calls theological triage — knowing what's primary, secondary, and tertiary.

The speed round covers Boaz, Joseph, and Joshua as favorite Bible characters, the Bee Gees, Moonlighting, and fishing as the best way to waste an hour. Paul closes in prayer.

Paul McQuery pastors Blue Grove Baptist Church — this is our first visit there, though Paul has been on the podcast before and pastored Valley Grove in Stephenville when the McNeils sang there for several years.

The conversation centers on Paul's decision to leave a thriving church — attendance up, giving up, double-digit baptisms, deacons telling him the church was better than when he arrived — for a smaller, rural congregation less than a third the size. He walks through why: a lifelong passion for small communities, a conviction that numbers were never the measure of faithfulness, and a clear sense that God was calling him there. His philosophy on transitions: "You are where you are until you're not." He stayed fully pastoral to Valley Grove — funerals, hospital visits, everything — right up until the move.

Midway through, a tornado warning cuts the conversation short. Chris and his family cleared out, drove 30 miles south, waited out the storm, and came back to finish. It's real, it's unplanned, and it's part of the episode.

The conversation closes on why obedience rarely makes sense in the moment — Moses got his sign 40 years later, Abraham was told to go without being told where. Faith, not logic, is the whole point.