Raising Leaders 2 Part 1 – Lawson Perdue and Max Cornell

Raising Leaders 2 Part 1

Raising Leaders 2 part 1 with Pastors Lawson Perdue and Max Cornell. In today’s episode of Grace for Today, discover how God’s blessing can be passed from generation to generation!

Raising Leaders 2 Part 1 Transcript

Praise the Lord, friends. I’m here with my good friend, Pastor Max Cornell, who pastors in Kansas City, Kansas, Charis Kingdom Church. Max actually came to my church, was my assistant pastor for three years, and then went and planted Charis Kingdom Church in Kansas City. We’re talking about raising leaders, not only natural sons, but spiritual sons. And in this program, we will share how the blessing of God goes from generation to generation. You’re gonna be blessed. Praise the Lord, friends. I’m so glad that you’re connected with us today. And we are sharing on raising leaders from 2 Timothy. And I’m so blessed and honored today to have my good friend, Pastor Max Cornell from Kansas City, pastors Charis Kingdom Church in Kansas City. And Max was my assistant pastor for three years. And then he went to Kansas City and planted a church. He’s been there, five going on six years, doing a phenomenal job. And we really think the world of you, Max, and your whole family, Molly, and your children, glad to see what you’re doing for the Kingdom of God.

Well, thank you so much, Pastor. It’s awesome to be here, and we love you and your family, and just thank you so much for having me.

Praise God. And you know, Paul is writing Timothy and he’s not only, I’ve been teaching on the family and we’ve been sharing on unless the Lord builds the house and raising leaders. But when Paul talks to Timothy, he talks to Timothy as a son in the faith, and he writes differently in Timothy. I actually taught this for years at Charis Bible College, and I never heard anybody else really say this. And then I saw some notes from somebody else and they were saying the same thing. But Paul teaches differently in Timothy than he teaches in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Romans. Really in those books, he’s teaching about the heart of the gospel. And the heart of the gospel is grace, faith, and righteousness, and grace is what He did for us, faith is our positive response to the gospel, and righteousness is the result of the gospel. So most of my teaching, especially like on Sunday mornings when I have a lot of people, focuses on the heart of the gospel, which is grace, faith, and righteousness. However, when Paul writes Timothy, he writes him as a son in the faith and he says, “Listen, Timothy, if you don’t do this, you’re not gonna make it.” I’ll give you an example from church. Years ago, my son Aaron came and he was growing into the assistant position. So before the service, at that point in time, it was a midweek service, I took up the offering. And I said, “Listen, we don’t focus a lot on tithing here. We focus on giving and sowing seed.” And after I got done taking up the offering, Aaron was preaching, and he said, “Listen, I wanna tell you what my dad taught us boys,” speaking of him and his two brothers, “my dad taught us to tithe.” Praise God. Because you know what, I understand, as a pastor, the power of tithing. I’ve heard many, many testimonies from people who tithe, and to tithe means to give a 10th, and how that’s worked out to blessing. In fact, I’m having Mark Hankins come in a week and he’s gonna be teaching on the program with me, and his wife Trina, and Mark talks about the tither’s blessing. A lot of times I’ll be testifying of different blessings in my life. He said, “That’s a tither’s blessing, Pastor Lawson.” And so I believe in that. But I taught my children, and the reason I taught my children, because I watched for years in church and people say, “Well, Pastor,” and they’d be somewhat condemned because, coming from a legalistic background, I’m not tithing. And I wouldn’t really say anything to them because I didn’t want ’em to be condemned, but at the same point in time, I saw how that worked out. And yet I’ve watched the testimony from people who are tithers, and how that has worked out very, very positively in their lives. So I’m speaking to the general congregation and I’m talking about we don’t focus a lot on tithing, we focus on giving, on sowing seed. And I like in my church, everybody to give with a sense of sowing seed, because it’s got a future to it, it’s got a harvest on it, and it’s not done out of a debt mentality. I don’t want anybody giving out of a debt mentality. But at the same point in time, I personally believe in the tithe. Now, I give much more than a tithe, but that’s just my mentality. But my son Aaron brought that up because I trained him and his two brothers, Andrew and Peter, both to tithe. And they’re all tithers and they’re all super, super blessed, praise God. And that’s not all there is to it, there’s much more to it than that, but that is a big part of it. So Paul writes Timothy and he says, kind of, “Son, if you don’t do this, you’re not gonna make it.” So he’s writing Timothy as a son in the faith. Max is like a spiritual son. We’re gonna jump into 2 Timothy 1. He says, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dearly beloved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God to Father in Jesus Christ our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers, with a pure conscience that, without ceasing, I have remembrance of you in my prayers, day and night.” Now, one thing, if we’re gonna make it in the realm of faith, we’ve gotta keep a pure conscience. And Paul talks about in the Book of Acts, he says, “I exercised to have a good conscience in the sight of God and man.” And we talked about it in 1 Timothy, I talked about it last week. If you don’t keep a good conscience, along with faith and grace, you know what, you’re gonna cause your ship of faith to wreck. So we wanna keep a good conscience.

Yeah, and I think that ties back to what you were saying earlier. The heart of the gospel is grace, faith, and righteousness. And grace teaches us the message that God isn’t condemning us. Romans 8:1, there’s no condemnation from the Lord. But if we’re going through life in sin, and compromise, and all these things continually, we’re gonna be fighting our conscience. Our conscience is gonna condemn us. But 1 John 3 says if our heart doesn’t condemn us, then we’ll have confidence towards God. And so this is a very practical thing. It’s God loves us, regardless of what we’re doing. But if we wanna have success in life, just like you’re saying about tithing and all these different things, there’s all sorts of practical principles in life that, if we’ll apply them, we’ll have success. And one of those is staying out of sin, living holy, living for the Lord. We don’t focus on that a ton in our grace circles, but it’s true, and we have to, we wanna live holy, not because God’s going to judge us, or be mad at us, or something, but because we want keep our consciences clean, and we wanna avoid all the negative consequences of sin.

I love that you brought up 1 John 3. I was actually thinking about it right before you brought it up. You went to Charis Bible College, Andrew Wommack’s the founder of that, I’m basically a spiritual son of Andrew Wommack, and I’ve known Andrew Wommack since 1978, so I’ve been listening to Andrew teach for over 40 years and his message changed my life. But Andrew is one of the greatest people of faith that I know. But I’m telling you, he keeps a very good conscience. And even if you think he’s wrong, he thinks he’s right. And you know what? He will not do anything to violate his relationship with God, to keep that pure conscience. And it talks about if our heart does not condemn us, then we have faith towards God. And really, people of great faith are people that know God, first of all, but they also keep a good conscience. And Andrew’s a great person, tremendous person of faith. And yet I know that he lives with a very, very good conscience. So that’s just a good example of that. And so he says, “Without ceasing, I have remembrance of you in my prayers, night and day, greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice, and I’m persuaded that it is in you also.” So when we talk about faith, you know what, it’s something that not only needs to be taught, but it’s also caught. There’s a spirit of faith. In fact, next week, Mark Hankins and I, and Trina Hankins, will be teaching about the spirit of faith. But there’s an attitude of faith. And so we can learn principles from the Word of God, but you have to have this Holy Spirit revelation of some things to really move into this thing called faith. And he says, “I saw this faith,” he says, “I see it in you, but I saw it first in your grandmother. I saw it then in your mother. And then I also see it, I’m persuaded that it’s in you too.” Praise God, so this is what, a generational blessing of faith. I saw this in your grandmother, I saw this in your mother, and now I see it in you. Now I don’t believe in generational curses, because I believe that every curse was broken when we came into Christ, that God is our Father, and we cannot receive any generational curse from God our Father. However, I do believe in generational blessing.

Amen.

Praise God. And so Paul said, “This was in your grandma, this was in your mama, I believe it’s in you too.”

Yeah, Timothy saw faith modeled in his parents, in his mom and his grandma. And I was just thinking as you were saying that, I saw faith modeled in Pastor Lawson. And a lot of the things I do as a pastor, I do modeled on, not your personality or something like that, where I’m trying to mimic you, but model the spirit of faith. You believe that you have favor and that God, the favor of God is on your life. And I’ve been around you, and we’ve hung out, and I’ve seen that modeled. And I believe that, I have favor with God. I have favor, financially. I have favor in relationships. And I believe that that’s something that’s been passed down to me through you. Praise God.

And so.

Now I’m gonna give an example of this. I’m on Max’s board. And he sent his books to me. Now, Billy Epperhart, this isn’t me, but this is Billy Epperhart, he’s the General Manager for Andrew Wommack Ministries. But Billy Epperhart says this about Lawson Perdue. Billy says that Lawson is one of the best, or if not the best financial manager that I’ve ever seen. That’s Billy’s testimony. Last year when I got your books, the exact percentage that I spent on staff, you spent on staff. And I called you and I said, “Max, that looks like Pastor Lawson did that.” Praise God?

Yeah. Amen.

And so there’s something that you saw that you caught from me, and you’re working in that. It takes time to build these things and develop ’em.

It does.

And you know, in fact, I was talking about this recently. Ashley Terradez came here, him and Carlie of Terradez Ministries, and they started in our building. But the Lord had actually laid it on my heart, if he got a property, and I didn’t even know really that he was looking, but the Lord laid it on my heart for a couple months, if he got a property, to do a gift match for $100,000. Wow.

And then Ashley came and told me on a Tuesday, “Hey, I’ve got this opportunity to buy 26 1/2 acres, a 4,000 square foot residence, which we can use as a ministry headquarters, the way it’s owned, and it has a big shop on it that I can use as a TV studio. What do you think?” And he was buying it for $635,000. It has an actual value today of about 900,000. I said, “I think you need to do that, and build that equity in your ministry.” And I said, “By the way, I want to gift match $100,000 to do that.” But the Lord had laid down on my heart for a couple of months. And so later that week, this was on Tuesday, he was gonna be having a conference. And Friday night, Andrew Wommack was gonna be speaking. So I said, “Ashley, what I want to do is I want to gift match, and let me take up the offering on Friday night.” Friday night, I took up the offering. And in that offering, we raised essentially $288,000 in one day.

Wow. Crazy.

It took me, as a pastor, five years, five years, after I’d been pastoring for 13 years in Kit Carson, took me five years in Colorado Springs to save a quarter million dollars. And I raised a quarter, over a quarter million in a day. And within 30 days, Ashley got over $500,000. He didn’t even have to take a loan on the property. Praise God.

So paying for it cash, going in, it’s a miracle of God. Now Ashley’s sown a lot of seed.

He has.

But you see, there’s things that we see modeled in other people. And then we’re teaching them to other people, but they even go farther and go beyond us in these realms when we teach ’em these principles that come from the Word of God.

Well, and what you’re seeing there is not just, not just the principles, but there’s an inheritance that builds up over time. And so you worked very, very hard, I know, to get where you’re at. But one of the amazing things about you is you use your position to help your spiritual sons run further, faster than you did. And what’s happening is you’re, and I’m a beneficiary of this as well. I’m getting to do things quicker. You helped us purchase our building. This is amazing testimony. We bought it during the pandemic. I was stressed out to buy it. We’d made the agreement beforehand, and then the pandemic broke out, and I thought, I don’t know, I don’t know if we should do this. So I called you and I said, “Ah Pastor, this sounds terrible. Maybe we should try to get out of this.” And he said, “No, go buy the building.” And so we did. And that building has appreciated $700,000 in two years. And so my church has a million dollars in equity in this building, and our church is 5 1/2 years old.

It appreciated 70%. And you said if you wouldn’t have done that, it might have been hard. Now let’s go onto the next thing. Notice what he says. He goes on and he tells Timothy, “Wherefore I put you in remembrance, that you stir up the gift of God which is in you by the putting on of my hands.” So we’ve been together, we’ve worked together. There’s something that’s coming from this relationship. “For God has not given us the spirit of fear or intimidation.” That pandemic was trying to intimidate everybody. And it was really fear trying to rule. But he says, “But God has given us the spirit of power, and of love, and a sound mind.” I remember the phone call and I told you, “You go pray and call me back tomorrow.” And I told Max, I said, “Max, that’s only like three of your houses, just buy it. Don’t worry about it.”

And I said, “Well, I can afford my house.” But you were right. And see, and that’s the thing is I, as a spiritual son, I wanna listen and honor what you tell me to do. And beyond that, you’re on my board, so you’re my boss still. But there’s, to receive inheritance like this, there has to be honor involved. It can’t just be some kind of thing where I’m trying to take from you, or get your money, or something crass like that. It has to be a love relationship of honor, where I’m trying to learn and benefit from your wisdom. I’ve told lots of people, I called Pastor Lawson, and also pastor Greg Moore, who’s on my board. And without you guys telling me that, I might have backed out. I mean, God was speaking to me about how a righteous man swears to his own hurt and changes not. So I probably, I don’t know, but anyway, I’m so thankful that you guys told me to go forward with that, because now I wouldn’t be able to afford the building, probably. I mean, it’s miracle.

It’s amazing. And you know what, we’re gonna come back in just a short, after a short break, so stay tuned, and we’ll share more of this story with you. Blessings. Praise the Lord, friends. I am so excited to be sharing with you this great teaching I’m sharing from my series on 1 and 2 Timothy on Raising Leaders, part one and part two. Also my wife’s series on Unless the Lord Builds the House. And then we have a special addition, Faith That is Taught and Caught, by my wife Barbara. And you know what, we are making these things available to you because we know the principles in these will help your family, just like they’ve been a blessing to us. And you know, we’re not talking about something that doesn’t work. We’re talking about something that we have proved in our own family, that we have proved in our church, for years and years and years. You know what, the Word of God is true. And when you live your life and conduct your family by principles of the scriptures, you will find the blessing that God promises in His Word. So we want you to call us today and get this product. Thanks. Praise the Lord, friends. I’m so glad that you stayed tuned. We’re talking about fathers and sons, naturally, our natural house, but also spiritually speaking. And Paul is speaking to Timothy as a son in the faith. And he said, “Listen, Timothy, God hasn’t given you a spirit of intimidation, a spirit of fear.” And what was happening, Timothy saw Paul imprisoned for preaching the gospel, and he was thinking about backing down. But Paul said, “No, you got a spirit of power. You got a spirit of love. You got a sound mind. You have a mind that’s well instructed and corrected in the Word of God.” Amen.

Amen.

You got a good clean mind. So he says, “Don’t be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but be partakers of the afflictions of the gospel, according to the power of God.” And so sometimes, when we’re operating in the gospel and believe in God, sometimes there are challenges that come. It’s very wrong image to think that because you’re believing God, you’re never gonna have any challenges. In fact, many times we probably have more, but we overcome more.

That’s right.

We win more. We have more victory on that. And so he goes on, “Who saved us and called us with the holy call, not according to our own works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began.” There is a purpose for your life that God had before the world began. Isn’t that amazing?

It is. And that gives us faith in these difficult times, like you’re talking about, because even when we were in that process, like we were telling that story about us buying the building, it’s not like the pandemic caught God by surprise. He had provision, He knew what was going on all throughout that situation. And so we just needed to step into the blessing that He’d already provided.

What was amazing, Barbara and I were out preaching for you, what, two or three years prior to when you bought this building?

Yes.

And our plane, our flight got delayed for some reason, and I knew you were looking for a building. So since our plane was delayed, I got online and looked around and I found that building. Man, it’s like three minutes from your house. And I told Max, I called him and said, “Hey, we need to go look at this.” And so we went and looked around the outside and we called the guy, he got us in, we looked around. And Barbara said, “Listen, we need to buy this building for a million to 1.1.” And you know, they had it at 1.3 or four, they wouldn’t even budge. But something happened, and the Holy Spirit spoke to you, or you had somebody through ministering for you and said, “It’s coming back around,” and you went back and we bought it for 1,050,000, right in the middle of what God spoke to us two or three years prior.

Exactly.

You got a fantastic deal. God blessed you and helped you. And now the real estate’s really appreciated, and you’re receiving the benefit of that.

Amen. And that’s a good point on the other side too, because when we first looked at it, it was too early and they wanted too much money, and we weren’t quite ready as a church, and so we were just patient. And sometimes you have to be patient while you’re waiting for the blessing to come, and you taught me that too. I would think a lot about that story you would always tell when you were here and you first moved to Colorado Springs, and you were asking and praying the Lord, “When are we gonna get a building?” And God spoke to you and said, “Faith’s a journey, son, enjoy the trip.”

I remember when He did it. I built my first church when we moved to Kit Carson, Colorado, and 15 months from when we moved there, we had a church building built, paid for, paid for cash. Of course, this building is 120,000 square foot, that building was 5,400 square foot, so you could fit about 20 of those inside of this building.

That’s amazing.

So this is on a little bit different scale, in a different world. But at the same point in time, we came here, and we were a year or two into the deal, and I was out in Bear Creek Park, walking around, praying, on a Saturday afternoon about Lord, when are you gonna give me a building. Where are we gonna be? And he said, basically, “That’s for me to know, and you not to know right now,” He said, “Faith’s a journey, enjoy the trip.” And so I just walked with God and you know what, we didn’t buy our first building until we were here in Colorado Springs, we bought it in the end of 2008, but we didn’t do the build out until 2010. We leased it back to the owners that we bought it from for a year and then started the build out. We bought at the very end of 2008. We started the church in 2001. And then we moved in in October of 2010, so we’d been here nine years. When we moved in, my sons had all graduated from high school and went to college. And I was actually so thankful that they had, Peter was a freshman in college, and Aaron was going into his master’s program, had done his first year, they both came back and worked for me, but it took so much of my time and so much of my effort, and it was so taxing on me personally, building that first building. And doing that build out, it’s stressful, financially, different areas. It was a new realm.

I understand.

So all those things being said, after it happened, I was really glad that my kids were all in college, and that I had that, that wasn’t happening while my kids were all home in those teen years that are so important for dads to be involved in their children’s lives. And so we wanna be involved, but God has a purpose and we wanna move into His purpose. Now he begins to talk about how this purpose was given to us in Christ before the world began, but it’s now revealed by the appearing of Jesus who abolished death, brought to life in immortality through the gospel. He says, “Whereunto I’m appointed a preacher and apostle, teacher of the Gentiles, for the which cause I suffer these things. Nevertheless, I’m not ashamed, for I know who I have believed in,” that is so important, “and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which we’ve committed to him against that day.”

Yeah, the faithfulness of God, the character of God, ultimately, is what enables us to trust Him. And the more we know who God is, the more we know the love of Jesus, as manifested and demonstrated through Christ, the more we can reach out in these difficult situations, even when the world’s going crazy, and there’s a pandemic and stuff, and we can take the risk that God calls us to take. And we don’t take risk for no reason, but when God says step out and do something, and He spoke to me to buy the building, and the pandemic didn’t change that, it didn’t change the Word of God to me. And so we have to step out. But to bring this back around to what you were saying about fathers and sons, there’s a grace on your life to deal with buildings. And that’s showing up in my life.

So we modeled this, right?

Right.

So my children saw my faith modeled in their life. I’m first generation, saw the move of the Holy Spirit, saw the power of God. And I believe that needs, every generation needs to see it. And if you don’t renew it by the third generation, there’s an old saying about grandpa planted the tree, the son sat in the shade of the tree, and then the grandson cut the tree down. But that third generation, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you gotta get it to the third generation. And so my sons saw the effects of what revival, I was part of the charismatic revival, really baptized in the Holy Spirit at the end of that, they saw that in my life and they saw how that affected me. And so that affected them personally. And they have some revelation, but I’ve gotta get this thing renewed, has to be renewed in my grandchildren so they can carry on this thing to the next generation. I believe part of generational blessing is this personal relationship, not only with Jesus, but the Holy Spirit. And he really talks about that later. And he says the good thing, he says, “Hold fast to the form of sound words which you’ve heard of me in faith and love,” every good church needs faith and love. But then he says, “The good thing which was committed you, keep by the Holy Ghost, which dwells in us.” And so it takes the Holy Ghost to keep what God’s given us.

It does, and like you said, every new generation needs a fresh encounter with the Holy Spirit. It can’t just be something where we’re mimicking the generation before us. It needs to become personal. We need to take those principles that our fathers and grandfathers have taught us and apply them in a real way, so that we become a voice, not just an echo. And you know, that’s the thing I’ve always appreciated about you is, we’re have the same heart, but we have different personalities. And you’ve never tried to get me to be like you, personality-wise, or preach like you. You’ve given me space to be myself and excel as the minister God called me to be. I’ve taken these things and made ’em personal, and it’s awesome, and I’m excited to see the fruit. I have four kids and they ran a service for me, Pastor, while I was gone this Sunday.

Wow.

My oldest son did the offering, he’s only eight, and our kids did the service and stuff. So we’re dedicated to this. We’re trying to get that third generation raised up in the things of God.

Well, you know what, kids that grow up, my kids grew up in the church, and they worked. My son Andrew played the piano here and played the drums. Peter served and helped us in different areas. But they grew up in the church. And when they’re personally involved, this is one thing, if we can get our kids personally involved in ministry, it helps them move into the next generation and carry that faith.

That’s right.

from generation to generation. Well, we’ve been teaching from my series Raising Leaders and we’re actually teaching from 2 Timothy 2. And this is Pastor Max Cornell from Kansas City, Charis Kingdom Church. If you’re in that area, you oughta go to a service. Blessings.

[Narrator] What does it take to raise godly children? In this package, containing Unless the Lord Builds the House, Faith That is Taught and Caught, and Raising Leaders, parts one and two, you’ll learn spiritual principles and practical advice to help you raise up the next generation. You can get this special package for $49 when you call 418-4000, or visit CharisChristianCenter.com.

Friends, I’m Pastor Lawson Perdue, and I love church. I’m excited about church. You know, Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.” And I want to invite you to come to church, whether you’re in Colorado Springs, or wherever you are in the world, you can connect with us online, Sundays at 8:30 and 10:30 AM, or you can just get on our website and watch us at CharisChristianCenter.com. Blessings.

[Narrator] Thanks for watching Grace for Today. This broadcast has been made possible by our faithful partners. If you would like to become a partner, need prayer, or have a question, please call us at 418-4000, or to partner online, go to CharisChristianCenter.com/Give. You can write us at PO Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80962. See you next time on Grace.