Overview
Today on the podcast, I had the privilege of talking to Dr. Brad Johnson. He serves as an affiliate professor at Asbury Seminary and as the pastor of Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church. He holds two master of arts degrees, one in biblical studies and one in theological studies and also a Ph.D. in biblical studies, all from Asbury Seminary. He, his wife Christina and four sons, all live in Wilmore, Ky.
In today’s conversation, Dr. Johnson and I talk about his calling, how he came to be involved and now serve as the executive director for The Word is Out, and how and why having an informed faith is so important and leads to actual change.
Let’s listen!
*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.
Dr. Brad Johnson, Executive Director, The Word is Out
Dr. Brad Johnson serves as an Affiliate Professor at Asbury Theological Seminary and as the Pastor of Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church. He holds two Master of Arts degrees (Theological Studies and Biblical Studies) and a Ph.D. (Biblical Studies) from Asbury Theological Seminary. Recent publications include “The Form and Function of Mark 1:1-15: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to the Markan Prologue” (Pickwick, 2018) and “The Gospel of Mark” in the OneBook Daily-Weekly series (Seedbed, 2017). He lives in Wilmore, Ky. with his wife Christina, and their four sons (Sam, Luke, Matthew and Caleb).
Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast
Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.
Guest Links
- Connect with Dr. Brad Johnson
Transcript
Heidi Wilcox:
Hey everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Thrive with Asbury Seminary podcast. I’m your host, Heidi E. Wilcox, bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders, and people just like you who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep need. Today on the podcast, I had the privilege of talking to Dr. Brad Johnson. He serves as an affiliate professor at the seminary and as the pastor of Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church. He holds two Master of Arts degrees, one in biblical studies and one in theological studies, and also a PhD in biblical studies from Asbury Seminary.
Heidi Wilcox:
He and his wife, Christina, and their four sons all live in Wilmore, Kentucky. In today’s conversation, Dr. Johnson and I talk about his calling, how he came to be involved and now serve as the executive director for The Word Is Out, and how and why having an informed faith is so important to leading to actual change. Let’s listen. Dr. Johnson, thank you so much for being here today. It’s an honor to get to talk to you. Thank you.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Well, you’re very kind. Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be with you today.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah. Welcome. So we want to get to know you, so could you start off by telling me how you experienced your call to ministry?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. As I think back on it, as a kid growing up in, in rural Indiana, literally in the middle of corn fields so tall you can’t see out and gravel roads, there wasn’t much to do, but one of the things that we did do for social interaction, when we weren’t in school, was we’d go to church. And I remember just how different that world seemed. The building smelled different, we dressed differently, we talked differently. And I was sort of intrigued by it, but I didn’t know what to make of it. So I continued to stay involved in the life of the church, and then there was my life that was separate from the church for a long time. And somebody when I was in high school said, “Brad, have you ever thought about being a pastor?” And so I said, “Well, what’s a pastor make?”
Heidi Wilcox:
Right. That’s a great question.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they told me, and I said, “Absolutely not. I’m not interested in that.” So initially I think I said no to the call out of pocket because my priorities were just sort of askew.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
So I went on, just local county high school, farmed my way through college, paying that bill, ended up working in governmental affairs and legislative work, and really thought that would be my career, but sort of fell into an opportunity in my mid to late 20s to be a youth pastor. And prior to that, I didn’t even know what that was. And somebody approached me, and lo and behold, I was hired by a church and immediately felt that this was such a good fit. It just felt right. I mean, I didn’t have any theological training, didn’t have any Bible classes. I didn’t even know the Bible. I was just a kid from Indiana growing up amongst the cornfields, and I ended up getting hired by the largest United Methodist church in the northern half of the US at that point.
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And I was their youth director.
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And I don’t know why they hired me, but they did. And they were very gracious to me and very patient. But as soon as I fell into that role, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.
Heidi Wilcox:
Really? How did you know?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
I looked forward to it every day. I would stay late. I would work Saturdays. I would work holidays. I felt like there was purpose in my life. I wasn’t very good at it, and I didn’t really have the right attitude at that time, if there is a right attitude. But it just was something I wanted to do, and I couldn’t imagine anything else that seemed like a better fit, if that makes sense.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that does. So how do you think about… Because everyone’s call story is different. Yours, it sounds like it started with somebody asking you if you’d thought about being a pastor, and then you got this job and you really enjoyed it.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
So how do you think about how God calls us, how God called you?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great question, Heidi. So for Asbury Seminary, I teach a course called vocation of ministry, and one of the five major units that we work through in that course is on calling. And we talk a lot about discernment, calling, types of calling, what you’re calling, what you’re called to. And when I was a kid and someone said, “Hey, Brad, are you interested in the ministry,” it was the ministry. It was being a pastor. That was as broad as my vision was, and our vision. But now we tend to think more in terms of being called simply to ministry. And that can be a pastor, it can be a chaplain, a counselor, a teacher, a missionary. It can be a mom at home raising kids. The word vocation means calling. What’s the Lord calling you to do?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And I think that those callings can come in so many different ways that it’s hard to categorize them. Some people get these huge calls that are like burning bush moments. Some people hear a still small voice. Some people run from the call. Some people are called, like Abraham, just to take one step. Just go. Get the car out of park and into drive, and then I’ll tell you how to steer. Right?
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And so for me, there was just that seed that was planted when someone said, “Brad, have you ever considered the ministry?” Now, that just opened up a new way of thinking about me potentially being in that role, but then as life progressed, there were different benchmarks and mileposts that I think clarified the vision, refined the trajectory, closed off some doors and opened up other doors. It’s a journey. I mean, calling is a journey, right?
Heidi Wilcox:
It really is. And I think for most, even if you have a burning bush moment, I still feel like it’s one step at a time.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
That’s right.
Heidi Wilcox:
Little bit, yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
It is. It is. Yeah, absolutely.
Heidi Wilcox:
So you mentioned that you’re a professor at the seminary, but you came as a student first.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
I did.
Heidi Wilcox:
So how did you get… There may be some milestones that I’m jumping in the middle, so if there are, feel free to fill those in, but how did you get from being a youth pastor and then come to being a student?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. So I never saw it coming. Yeah. Who would’ve guessed? Who would’ve guessed? Had I known what I would end up doing at the time, because of who I was, I would’ve worked against it because that wasn’t my vision. But I’m so glad that the Lord didn’t show it to me back then, because I would’ve fought against it, and I wouldn’t trade this for really anything. Being an indie race car driver would be kind of cool, but other than that.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes. Yes. Yes to that.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. I was born blocks away from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and we could hear cars during qualifications.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh wow. So you had it in your blood.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So as a youth pastor at this really big church in Indianapolis, I think that because the clergy were so gracious to me and patient, they were very gentle, but at one point they did say, “Brad, have you thought about some theological training?”
Heidi Wilcox:
Always a good thing.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Always a good thing. Yep. And I asked, “What would that look like?” And they said, “Well, it could take a number of different forms. One of them would be, you could go to a local seminary here in town and just take some classes.” And I said, “Sure, I’ll do that.” So I did a semester and really did not have a positive experience at all, so much so, Heidi, that I decided I wouldn’t go back for a second semester.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh wow.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And I really didn’t want to go back to seminary at all, because I made an assumption that all seminaries were alike, that it was the seminary experience.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Right? So years later, I met, and I hope at some point they’re listening to this because I’d love for them to appreciate the significant role they’ve had in our lives, but Bob and Jill Riggles. Bob was a student finishing master’s work here at the seminary in ’98, and they were doing youth ministry, and we got together and would partner with them and became good friends, dear friends. And Bob at one point said to me, “Brad, have you thought about going back to seminar?” I said, “No.”
Heidi Wilcox:
“I’ve thought about it, and that is a hard no.”
Dr. Brad Johnson:
That’s right. Yeah, I’ve already answered that question. And Bob, in an incredibly general way, in a way that only he could ask, said this. “Would you consider a day on campus at Asbury?” And I said, “No.” And he sort of pressed back, which is a little out of character for him, but he said, “Would you do it as a favor to me? Would you just go visit?” So I reluctantly said, “Yeah, I will.” So Christina and I left Zionsville, outside Indianapolis where we were living and working, on a Monday night at about nine o’clock after a church meeting.
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. That’s quite a trip.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. And we drove down here in the dark, in the snow. It was snowing that night. And I’ll tell you this, Heidi. I know the date. It was February the 22nd of 1999 when we left the Indianapolis area, and we arrived here about one o’clock in the morning. And as students visiting campus, we had a room reserved for us at what was then called the Beeson Manor.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, yes. [crosstalk 00:10:47]-
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah, back in the day. Now the Asbury Inn. And we rang the doorbell and we woke up some guy. He stumbled to the door and let us in, showed us to our room. And folks at home can’t see this, but I am holding the folder that was on the bed in our room.
Heidi Wilcox:
Your admissions packet.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
My admissions packet, and it’s got my name and the date on there and all that. And I kept all of this. And I woke up the next morning early, and it was a short night of sleep, and I was aggravated. Agitated, in fact, because I felt like I was wasting my time, because I’d already done the seminary thing and didn’t want to do it again. So Christina and I had breakfast in the student center cafeteria. We met with our admissions counselor in that office, attended a class, went to chapel in Estes, were warmly welcomed there by the student community, had lunch, another class, toured the campus, met with financial aid, and then had our final meal at the student center. And Christina asked me, she said, “So what do you think?” I said, “I don’t know. What do you think?” And she said, “I think the spirit is here, and I think you need to be.” And I said, “I agree 100%.”
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
So the Lord, just in that span of about eight hours, just radically changed my heart toward this, from absolutely not, to I can’t miss this. So I enrolled in classes that fall, but Heidi, I want to share this with you. As a youth pastor at a church then in the community of Zionsville, I remember coming into the building on a Wednesday morning following this visit on campus. And February in Indiana is pretty miserable.
Heidi Wilcox:
It is.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
You’re so done, and it’s not a pretty winter. I just remember thinking, why aren’t our local churches creating the kinds of climates that I just saw in Wilmore, Kentucky?
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And Heidi, as I literally walked through the doors into the building, I could see over my shoulder a vision of a big pipeline about six foot in diameter going to the seminary in Kentucky and coming straight to a local church. And I felt the Lord was saying, “Brad, I want you to be that pipeline. I want you to bring what’s happening there to the local church.”
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And that picture’s been with me ever since. And so that’s when I just really got serious about preparing myself for ministry, so I started taking classes as a commuting student, driving down here every week and back. After four years of that with a little bit of work online, we moved here for me to finish up. This was 2004. Sam, our oldest son, was 11 months old, and we thought we would be here for 16 months and we’d go right back. That was 2004. Yeah. Funny how that works.
Heidi Wilcox:
It is funny how that works. A lot of folks wind up doing that. Since you stayed, how do you see that vision of becoming a pipeline to bring the Asbury experience, for lack of a better term, because it will contextualize for every local church, every place they are.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
You bet.
Heidi Wilcox:
How do you see that vision coming to pass in the last 17 years?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. So I kept thinking, we’re ready to go back. We’re ready to deploy. We’re ready to launch. And there were delays, delays, delays, and the big delay was… Well, the initial delay was that when I finished my master’s work, the seminary offered me a two-year contract as a teaching fellow teaching Greek.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh wow. Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And so there’s a much bigger story to that, but suffice it to say that I accepted that position and I taught for two years. At the beginning of the second year, the seminary was funded by the Amos foundation, or the Amos family who owns the Aflac insurance corporation. The seminary was funded for a PhD in biblical studies, so I was in the first cohort-
Heidi Wilcox:
Nice.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
… of people for that group. I’m sure, I’m convinced that there were eight slots and seven applicants, and that’s why I got in. So what happened was, the seminary sort of broke the mold a little bit for teaching fellows, because now we had a PhD program. And so as I continued to move forward in the PhD program, the seminary continued to renew my contract, so my two-year contract in ended up being eight years. So we were really thinking we were going to go back, go back, go back, but we kept tarrying here. So I finished my PhD in 2014, having taught for eight years, and my position went back to rotating fellows, and so I became an affiliate professor here at Asbury Seminary, teaching part-time. So I’ve continued to teach, but it’s interesting because I’ve been by and vie… No, I’m sorry by and try vocational-
Heidi Wilcox:
Really?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
… for quite some time.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Because you also, you’re the pastor of Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church, and you’re the executive director now for The Word Is Out.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Right.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, so how do all those things juggle together?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. Sometimes it’s not pretty. Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. And one of the things I say to folks whose call is like mine, a little bit unconventional, is sometimes excellence isn’t defined by being the best at what you do, it’s just keeping all the balls in the air, not letting anything drop.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Somebody told me recently that obedience to God, to calling, to whatever you want to put there… Well, not whatever you want to put there, but obedience is, or calling is long obedience in the same direction.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Same direction. Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. I think that may come from Eugene Peterson. I’m not sure.
Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. Yeah, I didn’t know who. A friend had said it to me, but I didn’t know if that was original to her or-
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. I may be misquoting that, but I know that quote, and that’s such a good word. Such a good word. So for us, I’ll have to admit there was a little bit of an identity crisis for me when I got my PhD, because it sort of by default took me out of my teaching role, which I had really loved. Who would’ve guessed that I would’ve been passionate about teaching Greek to first-year seminary students every day, all day? But I loved it. Absolutely. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. But the Lord closes doors and he opens doors, and so a year after I… Well, I guess it was a year before I actually defended and got my PhD, I was licensed in Kentucky as a local pastor. So it was 2015 that I got my PhD and I took my appointment at Wesley Chapel, which is just this great little congregation here in Jessamine County.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And I love being a pastor. I love those people. They are just phenomenal. And so that’s my opportunity to contextualize it. We’ve had all kinds of mentored ministry students who have been phenomenal. We have faculty come and preach. We have folks on staff and students come and give their testimonies. We see international people coming and going. It’s just been great. But more than anything for me, it’s been the opportunity to really help people understand the Bible, what it is, what it’s not, how it works, how to read it, and what the big story is in there of which they are a part.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. I’m interested, so how do you do that? How do we read the Bible? How do we understand what it is and what it’s not, and then how do we make it true for us?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah. Great.
Heidi Wilcox:
Because I don’t think about those specific questions consciously every day, but those are my questions all the time.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. So I don’t know why, but in the last several days and maybe couple of weeks, Luke 24 has just been in my space, the account of the two travelers on their way to Emmaus who are overtaken by Jesus the day that he disappears from the grave, the first Easter Sunday.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And they don’t recognize Jesus. It says that, “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” And in my devotions and conversations and hearing other preachers, this passage has constantly been hitting me. Even in conversation with a Kenyan woman who’s a missionary, this conversation came up on a Zoom call. And it’s the idea that when you meet Jesus, he can interpret scripture for us. He wants to do that. He wants us to understand it so that we know about him, we know the story, we know where we are, we know the trajectory. But it’s not enough just to know about Jesus. We got to know him.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And it was when he sat at table fellowship that their eyes were opened and they recognized him. So again, I’m getting hit by this in all directions. Right now I’m reading N.T. Wright’s little book on the Last Supper. I forget what it’s called, but just a book about the Eucharist. And he draws on this, Luke 24. He says, “These two things have got to happen. We’ve got to understand the word, and then we’ve got to be in fellowship with him and others, and this is how our eyes are opened.” So this all began for me when I took my first course on inductive Bible study, IBS, right?
Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And I happened to take my first course with Dr. David Bauer-
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
… the gospel of Matthew, the Bauer hour of power, right? So many of us know it.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And like so many other folks, it just blew my mind how I could actually learn to see, how my eyes could be opened to see things that I wouldn’t see, to see them accurately, to see them impartially, to see them entirely, all that’s there, only what’s there. And I began seeing the world differently. I mean, I’m reading scripture differently for sure, but I’m reading other works differently. I’m watching movies differently. I’m listening to songs differently. Because there are obviously words, but there’s also shape.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Right?
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And when you really begin to pay attention to something, you begin to see the shape of the thing. And I just fell in love with the inductive Bible study, so let me just get right to the heart of things here for me. And Christina really helped me see this within the last few days. My role here at the seminary changed in 2000… I think it was ’14, 2014, when I was no longer full-time. And at that moment, we began asking ourselves, “All right, God, what are you going to do? What’s next? What do you…” We kept thinking it was going to be a full-time faculty position somewhere, and I applied for lots, and some opportunities that we just didn’t really felt like we were right for, other folks felt like we weren’t right for those positions. And doors just kept closing, kept closing. And one day, I think it was the fall. It was the fall of 2018. I showed up on campus to go see someone, my good friend, Brian Yeich, who’s-
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
… yeah, on staff here in the Provost’s Office, and we’ve been in an accountability group forever. I went to see him on a Monday morning, and I had a headache and I hadn’t showered, and I had a ball cap pulled down low over my eyes, trying to sneak in. I needed to see Brian for a minute. And Brian was on the phone, so I just waited out in the hallway. And David Bauer walks out of his office and he sees me, and I’m trying to hide, right?
Heidi Wilcox:
Uh-huh (affirmative). The incognito.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Incognito. Yeah. David says, “Brad, do you have just a minute?” I thought, oh no, not today. I said, “Sure, David, I’ve got a minute.” He brought me in and he sat me down. He’s said, “Brad, you know that I’m on the board for an organization called The Word Is Out, right?” I said, “Yeah, yeah.” Because a few years before, I’d met the founder and the president, Alan Meenan, who is an Asbury alum, and so I knew about the ministry and how the ministry was really committed to training up pastors and laypeople overseas in hermeneutics, which is understanding how to interpret the Bible.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And the means, of course, is inductive Bible study. And I knew David was involved. He said, “Well, we’re looking for somebody to join our ministry and to assist Alan. Would you have any interest in that?” I said, “Let’s talk a little further about that.” So we did, and I ended up flying out and spending the weekend with Alan, who, at that time, lived in California. And Heidi, I was compelled by his vision of reaching people and teaching them how to read the Bible.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. And so for me, and I think this is really true to inductive methodology, the end game is not to be a perfect reader. It’s not even necessarily to be a great reader. It’s to be a better reader. So without going into all the details, that journey has been like a courtship, and now I’m the executive director. And in a part-time capacity, which frees me up to teach and pastor. But I get to bring all these worlds together, right?
Heidi Wilcox:
And they all fit. Maybe on the outside, they might not seem like they fit, but they all fit so well together.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
They do, seamlessly.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And it’s an extraordinary opportunity, and I never saw it coming. Never saw it coming.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s beautiful. I love how the Lord does things like that, and just, yeah, opens the next right thing as we seek him. I want to know, because I didn’t know what inductive Bible study was before I started working here, so would you care to define that for listeners who maybe have been like me, who are like, “I’ve heard this word. I don’t know exactly what it means”?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. So it’s really two things. Number one, it’s an attitude. It’s a disposition. It’s a way of thinking about and approaching scripture that assumes, in this case, that we’re going to read the whole Bible, not just individual verses and take those potentially out of context. And specifically, we recognize that the Bible is comprised of books, 66 books. So we read books as entire units, books as wholes, so it’s typically a book study. We begin any of our study prayerfully, praying that the Lord would just open our eyes. We begin by looking at the big picture of a book as a whole, sort of like you might look at a whole play or a musical, a stage production. And then we start looking at the big units, what we might call the acts, act one, act two, act three.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And then we start looking at the scenes, the subunits within that, as pieces of that bigger story, basically going from a forest level perspective to a tree level perspective, from the whole to the parts. And this is really the second part of inductive Bible study, which is a certain method, a prescribed method. There are steps. It’s logical, it’s orderly, but it’s not rigid. It’s dynamic and flexible. So we start with the big picture, reading the book as a whole, then we look at the major parts, the minor parts, then we look at the details. So we spend 90% of our time just observing, really close examination. And once we’ve done that, then we begin asking questions. What does this mean? Why is it here? How could it potentially be useful today? So we go from an observation phase to an interpretation phase, and the answers to those questions give us the meaning.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
What does this mean? Well, that’s interpreting. And once we’ve interpreted a passage or a book, then we move on into the application phase, the so what. Not everything that’s reported in the Bible is something we’re commanded to do today. There are things that were specifically in that context. But there are lots of things that we are expected to, so the application phase is asking the questions, what are we called to do today, and what does that look like in my own life? What am I going to do about this? So observation, interpretation, application. Always, always, always moving from evidence, what’s in the text, to our conclusions, rather than starting with some conclusions and then trying to find evidence to back it up.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Right?
Heidi Wilcox:
So The Word Is Out is helping people create and have an informed faith?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So here’s what we’re seeing in Africa in particular. Church is growing like crazy, exponentially. That’s a good thing. Here’s the challenge. The church is growing on the basis of two problems. Number one, a very limited knowledge of scripture, maybe a handful of verses that a pastor knows and preaches only and always. So it’s a very limited perspective on the Christian faith. And secondly, they’re being highly informed by the importation of Western health and wealth gospel, sometimes preachers who are radically Pentecostal appealing only to the ministry of healing and prophecy without giving attention to the larger needs of the church.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
So people in Africa are actually being harmed by the church because pastors are, quote, receiving revelations from God that are unchecked, ungrounded, and then they’re asking their people to do ridiculous things. So here’s some of the things that I’ve learned, because we have a very strong ministry presence in the nation of Zambia, South Central Africa, the capital city of Lusaka. Lael Zulu and his team are doing an amazing job. Lael’s a graduate of Asbury.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes. Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
We’re getting these reports that pastors are asking their parishioners to eat grass-
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh my.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
… because they are the sheep of the flock. Sometimes pastors are spraying their congregants with insecticide.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Pastors are asking parishioners to buy pieces of wood so that the Lord blesses those people by giving them houses.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And sometimes pastors will exorcize demons from a household if something bad happens to the family, if they’re experiencing misfortune. And the demons are always thought to be in the children.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And if the exorcism doesn’t work and the misfortune continues, the pastor will escalate the exorcism on the child. This is atrocious.
Heidi Wilcox:
It is terrible.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
So Alan, the founder of The Word Is Out, would say, “People are starving in Africa and they need to eat, and people are taking them food. And that has to happen, but there’s a more underlying problem that even goes up to the political level, the governmental structures level.” And Alan would say, “It’s like the bathtub’s running over. It’s just running over, and everybody keeps running to get a bucket.” He says, “I want to turn the faucet off. We want to make systemic change. And if people understand the word and can apply it properly, we can see a difference in the lives of people, the lives of nations.” History shows that this has happened before.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Totally.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
We’ve got a track record-
Heidi Wilcox:
Totally.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
… of entire nations repenting. The miracle in Jonah is not that Jonah got swallowed by a great fish, the miracle is that Nineveh repented.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, so one of the ways that The Word Is Out is doing it, and you mentioned this in your answer just a minute ago, but is to create centers for biblical understanding, and you can correct me if I’m wrong about any of this, but that aims to take acquaintance with scripture to engagement with scripture. Can you tell us a little bit more about the centers for biblical understanding, what the teaching process is like, how these get established? And I’m asking a lot of questions in one, but-
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. That’s all right.
Heidi Wilcox:
And how you’ve seen these centers create the systemic changes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. So the idea is that by doing workshops, seminars around the world, we could identify folks who really have capacity. And this has been the work that Alan Meenan has done so well. We’re still early on in this program, but we call this initiative our Champions program. For instance, Alan went to Africa. He did a large seminar for hundreds of people, and through that process came to know Lael Zulu, and saw in Lael real potential. Lael had a passion. He had the ability. He just needed an opportunity. So Alan crafted the Champions program, and that resulted in a memorandum of understanding with Asbury Seminary, an MOU, which is an agreement whereby The Word Is Out would pay to bring Lael to Asbury and cover his living expenses for he and his wife, Susan, while they were here. The seminary would provide the tuition. So Lael actually was a student of mine in Greek. Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s awesome.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And a great Greek student, so this has been great to reconnect with him. He came, earned an MA in biblical studies, and then we deployed him back to Zambia where he established a training center. So he was doing seminars, conferences for pastors in the nation of Lusaka, which is such a great place. If you ever get to go, by all means, go. The food is just wonderful there.
Heidi Wilcox:
I bet.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
But pastors started coming to his conferences, and he began teaching them inductive Bible study, just using the David Bauer, Robert Traina industry standard textbook, and just doing it in phases. And so he started in 2016. Now he has a team that he has trained up, people who can teach the courses and assist him, people who could in fact, if given the opportunity, create their own centers. And so they’re now going into outlying provinces and doing training and figuring out ways to establish centers there. And they’ve even been asked to translate Dr. Bauer’s book into their native language.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s awesome.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. So Lael is hitting it out of the park. This is the model that we want to perpetuate. Our second champion is ready to deploy. That’s Carol [Lynn 00:35:29], who just graduated in may from Myanmar, or from Asbury Seminary. She’s from Myanmar, which was formerly Burma. So talented, so gracious, so warm and engaging with people. She’s going to be fantastic, but she can’t go back to Myanmar because of the political coup and the civil war that’s developing there. So she’s seeking temporary protected status here in the US, and we’re connecting her with various Burmese communities, Burmese-speaking church communities, and she’s establishing relationships there. And there are stories there we could tell at another time, but she’s doing an amazing work.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s awesome.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
So we’re excited for her, and now we’re looking for our next champion to bring.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. How does that process work? Do you find them? Do they find you? If a student is potentially listening to this, how does this process work for them?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. Again, as we were saying about calling, it’s hard to categorize. In Lael’s case, he attended a conference that Alan was speaking at. In Carol’s case, Carol was doing her Master of Divinity at the Myanmar Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. One of her professors knew Alan and said, “Hey, Alan, we’ve got somebody here who is really sharp.” So that’s how that conversation began.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, so it’s kind of like a recommendation. People get recommended.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
It can be.
Heidi Wilcox:
It can be, yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. Or we may just run into somebody somewhere and think, wow, this person could do this.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. If they have a recommendation or are interested, how do they connect with… Do they connect with you? How do they get in touch about this?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. So if they’re here in the Wilmore area, they can certainly reach out to me by email, by phone, by carrier pigeon. I don’t care what, right? Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, and we’ll link all that in the show notes, too.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. [Deanna Spangler 00:37:22] is our associate of administration and development. She’s here in Wilmore. She’s available, as is Joy Ireland, who does some good work for us in a really pastoral sort of way and curriculum writing. So we’ve got people here, but the easiest thing to do would be to go to the website, TheWordIsOut.com, and just generate a message.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. For sure. Well, like I said, we’ll link all of that on our Thrive website in our show notes so that people can easily find that and connect with you. Because you talked about the Zambia Center For Biblical Understanding and how that’s spreading, how have you seen pastors’ lives change? You mentioned the pastors without a correct understanding of scripture. How have you seen change created for them so that they can then lead their congregation in a true way?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that question so much. I was in Zambia in 2019 for Lael’s annual conference exhibition in seminar, or exposition in seminar, and one of the folks that he has trained up is a gentleman named Bishop Bright Kombe, who pastors multiple congregations. Really such a neat guy and a dynamic communicator and a great thinker. He was presenting to the conference, and at one point he was talking about the abuses of these clergy who think they’re doing the right thing.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
But he described this picture of an African person lying on the ground, and the preacher, the pastor, was standing over the person with the pastor’s foot on the neck of the person, saying, “What is your problem? What is it that you need? What demon do we need to exorcize from you?” And Bishop Bright, because he’s just so funny, he just said, doing the voice of the guy laying on the ground, “Well, the problem is you’re standing on my neck. That’s the problem.” Right?
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
But he understood that something’s wrong, and people aren’t getting it. So he teaches at the center there in Lusaka and just shows people how to allow the word to speak to them in its fullness, the whole thing. If they do a study of the book of Romans, let’s say, or Galatians, which they did Galatians the year I was there, you could just see people in the congregation making these connections, seeing how this story of the Christian faith makes sense and centers upon the atoning work of Christ. They never heard that before, right?
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
They just hear, “Well, if you give to the church, the Lord will bless you,” or, “If there’s something wrong with you, we will try to cast it out.”
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You can forgive me for this question, but since there is so much twisting that happens, and we’re talking about the Zambia… I’ve experienced it in the States too with my church experience, that things get twisted, and so rules get put in place, or whatever have you. How do you safeguard that the truth is the truth, to avoid some of the human error that comes in and creates things that weren’t meant to be, but then get handed on as true?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. That’s such an appropriate question. In the Wesleyan tradition, if we want to know something about the nature of God or the purposes of God, we can appeal to our traditions. We can appeal to our personal experiences. We can appeal to our reasoning capacities. God’s given us all of those, and they’re valid, but the one way that trumps all the others is we can appeal to the word. We can appeal to scripture. So drift happens when people move away from the word, when they don’t read it, or when they read it at a surface level without really probing its depth and richness, or, and I think this is what mostly have happens, they appeal to it only to support what they presuppose is true.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Right?
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
They just look-
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s an easy thing to fall into. Yeah. No, go ahead. I interrupted you, but yeah, that’s an easy thing to fall into.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. It really is. And so back to talking about Eugene Peterson, Peterson actually wrote the forward to the IBS textbook by David Bauer and Robert Traina, because like David Bauer, and like Alan Meenan, and like Billy Abraham, whose loss we still mourn, Peterson was a student of Bob Traina’s when Traina was still teaching at the Biblical Seminary in New York. But all four of these people, Bauer, Traina… I’m sorry, Bauer, Abraham, Alan Meenan, and Eugene Peterson were profoundly impacted by Bob Traina’s methodical approach to scripture, taking it seriously at face value and refusing to extract from it only what one wants. Right?
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And so I think really what’s at stake here is whether or not we’re going to follow the gospel of Jesus or a version of the gospel that we manufacture for ourselves. Right?
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And I think that’s the issue. And so for me personally, Heidi, my journey in faith has really been characterized by milepost encounters with scripture.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
I can point to those moments. And so at this point, I’ll simply say… Well, let me say this in two ways. Number one, I came to a saving knowledge of Jesus at age 16, reading the New Testament in the bathroom behind a locked door. That’s just how it happened for me. And I was just a kid, and I didn’t know IBS. I didn’t know anything, but I met Jesus.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes. Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Right?
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
I met him. And I said, “He’s mine, and I am his. Praise God.” However, I’ve matured. That seed has grown. My seed’s not finished growing. I’m not there yet, but I’m growing. And so for me, and this is true of Christina and my family, we have found such a sweetness to human existence. And the word that’s been on my mind of late is flourishing. We are flourishing, because our lives, to the best we can, reflect Jesus’s vision for the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God on Earth, just as it is in heaven.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
And so we’re trying to live as fully as we can into the sweetness of abundant life that Jesus offers. When we pray, your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven, we’re asking heaven to come to Earth. And when Jesus came, he brought it with him. So at our little home here in Kentucky, we’re living into that, and it’s an amazing vision. And I challenge people, if you’ve got a better world view, if you’ve got a better offer for good living, let’s have it. But good luck with that.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Dr. Johnson, this conversation has been a delight. I have one question that I ask everyone who comes on the show, but before we do that, is there anything else that you’d like to talk about that I didn’t know to ask?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
At this point, I don’t think so. I appreciate your questions, and it’s great, and I’ll think of six things as I walk out of here.
Heidi Wilcox:
I’m sure. I will probably do the same. It’s easy to armchair quarterback a podcast after you’ve done it.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Absolutely.
Heidi Wilcox:
But thank you, seriously, so much for doing this. The one question that I ask everyone, because the show is called the Thrive with Asbury Seminary podcast, what is one practice that is helping you thrive in your life right now?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. That’s great. I’m so glad that we can talk about this. Years ago, in fact, my first year as a seminary student, I had Steve Siemens.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
I had Darrell Whiteman, I had Ken Boyd, and I had Bob Tuttle. And Bob Tuttle sort of always scares me, asking me to do crazy things, as he would do. But he told me about a spiritual practice that he had adopted years earlier, and that was reading through the whole Bible in a year’s time. So every year he would do that, and he would take notes in his Bible, and then he would give that Bible to someone and go get a new Bible.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, I love that.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Which I thought was so neat. So I decided, maybe I should try reading the Bible in a year. And he said, “It’s not that hard. It’s three or four chapters a day, but you got to do it every day.” So I messed with that for a while and kind of dropped it, but in 2013 or ’14, I committed to that again. And I actually followed a reading plan, which is easy now. Actually, I do it on my phone. I’ve got the scripture right there on my phone, a reading plan. There are other folks from my church are doing it with me.
Heidi Wilcox:
Nice.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
We’re doing it together. We post comments and we encourage one another. But now every morning, I start my day with coffee, the perfect bowl of oatmeal, and Heidi, I’m telling you, I can make a perfect bowl of oatmeal, and my word of God. And the night before, I look forward to that time. So working through the Bible in a year’s time is so doable. I can’t tell you how doable it is. Read quickly. You don’t have to get bogged down. You could do it in 15 or 20 minutes a day. Just find a time during the day when that works, but do it, because despite a number of things that don’t make sense, you’re going to see the big picture.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes. For sure. I’m doing that this year for the first time.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Are you?
Heidi Wilcox:
I’ve never done it before. I listen to the Bible on an app on my phone, and so it reads it to me, I guess.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah. Perfect.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Perfect.
Heidi Wilcox:
I love it, though. But I want to know. I said this was the last question, but it’s not. What are you learning about God this year, because we’re almost to November when we’re recording this, that you didn’t know December 2020?
Dr. Brad Johnson:
So I think this year, what has really struck me relates to what I was saying earlier about Luke 24 and the pilgrims traveling to Emmaus, is this idea of understanding and seeing. Jesus says, and he’s quoting Isaiah from the Old Testament, he says, “These people have eyes, but they’re not seeing. And they’ve got ears, that like their eyes, are in perfect working order, but they’re not hearing.” And I’ve taken that to heart, and I’ve even taken that to the point of thinking about conversations I have with people in my life.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Am I really hearing them? Am I really seeing what’s going on here? And I think the Lord this year has just been inviting me to see better, to have my eyes opened. And this is such an important theme throughout the entire scripture. As I think about it, if I remember right, Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened to a dark reality, because they deviated from God’s word, which was, “You can have it all, but I’m going to give you one boundary.” One stinking boundary. And I’m just thinking, we’re messed up, but there’s hope.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes. Yes.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Because we have the word, and we can understand it. And when we sit down at the table with Jesus, he’s not a stranger because we know about him. We’ve already heard all about him. Now we get to meet him in the flesh. It’s like your favorite celebrity who you’ve been following and stalking for years, and then they show up. There they are.
Heidi Wilcox:
I love that. I love that so much. Thank you so much again for being on the podcast today. It’s been a joy. Thank you so much.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah, me too. Me too, Heidi. Thanks for your questions. Thanks for your journey and the work that you do. Keep on keeping on.
Heidi Wilcox:
Thank you.
Dr. Brad Johnson:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Dr. Brad Johnson. I hope you enjoyed this conversation and learning about how God is using everyday men and women to accomplish his work in the world. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. And if you see Dr. Johnson or are connected to him on social media, be sure to tell him thank you for being part of today’s conversation. As always, you can follow Asbury Seminary in all the places, on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @AsburySeminary. Until next time, I hope you’ll go do something that helps you thrive. (silence)
