Kelly Lohrke: Episode Description

On this episode of The Inspiration Project, Brendan Corr talks to Pastor Kelly Lohrke, pastor of The Cure Church in Kansas City. They discuss Pastor Kelly’s difficult upbringing, growing up on the gang streets of East LA, why Pastor Kelly got into drugs, how long he was a drug addict, why he used to rob people, how God saved him, his miraculous transformation to serving God, what burning your ships means for Christians, why more Christians should strive to serve God more, how Pastor Kelly became a Pastor and the birth of The Cure Church.

Episode Summary

• Pastor Kelly’s difficult family upbringing
• Growing up on the gang streets of East LA
• Why Pastor Kelly got into drugs
• How long he was a drug addict for
• Why Pastor Kelly used to Rob people
• How God saved him from a drug overdose
• His Miraculous transformation from drug addict to Pastor
• What Burning Your Ships means for Christians
• Why more Christians should strive to serve God more
• The Birth of The Cure Church

Kelly Lohrke: Episode Transcript

Sponsor Announcement
This podcast is sponsored by Australian Christian College, a network of schools committed to student wellbeing, character development, and academic improvement.

Introduction
Welcome to The Inspiration Project, where well-known Christians share their stories to inspire young people in their faith and life. He’s your host, Brendan Corr.

Brendan Corr
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Inspiration Project Podcast where we get a chance to speak with those members of our faith community that have been able to find success in their chosen careers, but also be true to the faith to which they’ve been called. This morning, I’m talking with Pastor Kelly Lohrke. Pastor Lohrke is an author, a church planter, an itinerant speaker at Christian conferences and at churches. He’s the leader and the founder of the Cure Church Network. Pastor Lohrke leads a presence-driven network of churches based out of Kansas City in the U.S. and has been a pastor for over 29 years alongside his wife Esther. He values building healthy cultures of discipleship and evangelism in the lives of pastors and leaders of churches. He recently wrote a book, or released a book called Burn Your Ships, which is an encouragement to have an all-out approach to the discipleship of those that are professing to follow Jesus. Pastor Lohrke, it is so lovely to have you with us. Thank you so much for giving us your time,

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
Man, it is a great honour to be with you.

Brendan Corr
Kansas City. We know a little bit about Kansas City here in Australia, but can you give us a bit of a navigation and help us understand what Kansas City is in the modern world?

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
Well, it’s right in the heart of America, right in the very centre. I mean, literally go to the map of America, we’re right in the middle. It is a multicultural city, very diverse, very modern, but yet very traditional. So it’s a very complex city, but I also believe personally it’s going to be a place where God’s going to move and branch out, and kind of recover our country with the gospel, and there’s just great opportunity here. But when you say you don’t know much about Kansas City, how I ended up here. I’m born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and when my pastor told me to go to Kansas City, it was on a Sunday, “Go start a church.” I grew up never been to Kansas City. I grew up in the streets. I grew up as a drug addict, punk rocker, and I looked at my pastor and I go, “Do they even have cars there? Is that like an Amish town? I don’t even know,” and he told me, “You’re going to love it,” and two days later, me, my wife and my young son at the time, 30 years ago, got a truck and packed our stuff and we were headed to a city we’d never been before and started a church.

Brendan Corr
Well, I think you’re right in that Australians would know Kansas from the classic line in, “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” and we have sort of a caricature of what the Midwest is like. We know from some Hollywood movies and the way it’s presented in movies and TV. So I’m very interested to hear that actually it’s a very diverse, culture-diverse experience. Pastor Lohrke… I’m sorry, you finished. I was going to ask you in that sort of space, and I’d love to get more of your story of how a teenage punk rocker on the streets of Los Angeles is actually having a conversation with the pastor about going off and starting a church. There must be something to unpack there, but can I just set up maybe the framework of what our conversation might be over the next half hour or so? That move from a big bustling city of Los Angeles, which is renowned for its energy and it’s 24/7 go, go, go, and the sort of human nature of that, or what it does to human nature to be in that sort of space, and then moving to a place which is in the middle of, forgive the condescension, in the middle of nowhere, the middle of Central America. What have you noticed about people living in those two very different scenarios?

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
Well, yeah, good point. It was a big difference. I noticed in mid-America people were very, very nice. I mean, if you were the part of Los Angeles I grew up in, I’m an ’80s child, and there was a lot of gang activity, a lot of drugs, a lot of chaos in the streets, drive-by shootings, a lot of stuff going on there, and yeah, there was no awareness of anything back then. There was no… We only had Nancy Reagan saying, “Just say no,” and the young generation said, “Yes.” Come to America. I mean, come to Central America, and when my wife and I, we were… I just turned 25, 26, and we were young pastors and I’ve been robbed… I robbed people before I was saved and I got robbed after I got saved, I got carjacked a few times as a Christian, and then coming to Kansas City and a neighbour bringing me groceries, it just scared me. I’m like, “I didn’t trust these people.” They would wave to you when you drive by my wife, “Watch them. I think they’re watching our house,” and I was wrong. There was this heart of niceness that was here, but it was very religious, very bible belt, but when you peel back the layers, there was the same sin, the same lostness, the same thing there other than just the country politeness that was here. There was another thing, I know that it’s very diverse now, but 30 years ago, one thing I did not quite grasp, growing up in Los Angeles, there’s such a melting pot of nationalities and so forth, and I grew up in Southeast Los Angeles, so I was a minority, and when I came here to Kansas City, I didn’t understand the all white, all Black church. I didn’t understand that. It was my first time seeing that, honestly, I don’t think anyone intentionally did it, but somewhat of a segregated gospel. And see, my view has always been, there’s no culture but the Kingdom culture when you get saved, and that’s how I grew up before I was a Christian and that’s how I grew up when I got saved. So when I saw that, it was shocking. And then it was just bizarre. It was really bizarre because I believe when the gospels preach, the love of God touches everybody. There is no white church, Black church, you’re just a church, and I think we have to be… Go ahead.

Brendan Corr
If you don’t mind, I’ll come back to that theme because I’m really interested to know your thoughts and it’s been such a helpful thing for you to unpack that reflection of, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but the veneers of different behaviours that can mask, or that can appear from the same state of our human need, and I think what I’m wanting to explore in this conversation over the next period is what does discipleship look like, whether you are white, Black in Los Angeles, or Kansas, or Sydney, Melbourne, where do we come to the sense of commonality of our need and our response in discipleship? But if you don’t mind, Pastor Lohrke, tell us a bit about your story. You’ve described what seems like a very deprived or very confronting stage of your life when you were in Los Angeles as a teenager. How did you end up in that sort of a space?

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
Well, I’ll be really honest. I grew up as an only child. My mom and dad got divorced when I was six weeks old, so I never had a relationship with my father and I can look back and I definitely needed a father in my life. So there was a term back then called a latchkey kid. A latchkey kid was your mom working, you came home from school to a key that was hidden, unlocked the door, and you just stayed at home until your mom came home with no supervision. That was fine when I was really young, but when 12, 13, the area that I lived in… And my mom was not a poor person, my family didn’t come from great poverty. We would be considered middle class. I grew up very close. I lived on Compton Boulevard, like all the movies, but it was diverse. There were a lot of Latinos, a lot of Black, a lot of white, but this is the one thing that was happening: drugs were really coming heavy on the scenes. Our parents grew up in the ’60s. We’re in the ’80s, cocaine’s becoming big, LSD’s becoming big, and I remember all my friends’ ’60s parents did drugs, and I remember the kids did. Everyone had this open relationship, and so I remember experimenting with drugs at 13 years old, and 14 years old I’ve already done LSD and I’ve done opium, and obviously, marijuana, alcohol, all this stuff. Of course, when your mom’s not home and you have no father, you’re able to hide this for a while. And I remember telling my mom. I want to tell my mom how… I was so sincere about it. I want to tell my mom, this is what I do. I want to be honest. I’ve seen some of my other friend’s parents have this open relationship my age. So I’ll never forget I told my mom, “Hey, mom. I do drugs,” and I showed her my paraphernalia and she’s looking at me. And the next day she took me into the car and said, “I want to take you somewhere,” and my mom took me to a mental institution and she dropped me off there for eight months with teenagers and adults, and it was the most horrible experience. Now I have a great… The stuff I’m going to say, I have a great relationship with my parents. They know Jesus now, but they didn’t know the Lord. That was the thought then, that was a big deal in America back then, and I’m in there with some other kids and adults that some of them were legitimately mentally disturbed. There was big mental illness, suicide was going on there, crazy stuff, and I just wanted to get out and I’m trapped, and I literally broke out of that place twice to get arrested a few days later. The cops would find me, and that institution owned me. They were giving me more drugs there than I was getting on the streets. It was just a nightmare. So after eight months, I pretty much graduated because my mom’s insurance ran out of money and I’m out. And I came out angry, bitter, upset. They put restraints on me. Stuff happened to me when I was young in there, it was a nightmare, and I would gravitate it to the punk rock scene, anti-authority, anti-government, anti your parents, do what you want. And that was my tribe at the time, and the big deal, all the punk bands of the Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys and Black Flag, all those big iconic bands, they just kind of resonated with me. And again, I had no supervision, no discipline. And yeah, finally I’m getting kicked out of every single school in my school district, and then finally, I remember it was my birthday and I was 15 and I got thrown out my bedroom window by my two grandfathers, they were German, and said, “You’re not living here no more. The cops are coming. You’re out of control,” and that was it. I lived on my own after that. Go ahead.

Brendan Corr
Were you out of control? Was it something that-

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
Oh, definitely. Definitely. And it was just like there was fights, there was drugs, there was everything. Then I’m selling drugs, and the biggest problem about selling drugs, I was good at it and I made a lot of money and I had my own house time I was 16 with some other people, and it was just a nightmare. It was a nightmare that I OD’d. That was one of the times I… When I OD’d, it was one of the times I had to really encounter my father, because he showed up to the hospital when they’re pumping my stomach and he’s angry at me, and I have no relationship with this man. I was bitter, didn’t care, and came out and kept doing what I’m doing. I would say this: Sin’s fun for a season, but then that season’s up and there came a time. I have hepatitis, I’m shooting up coke and heroin. I’m 19 now, I’m not the big tough punk rocker fighting everybody, I’m a skinny junkie, and I lost everything, and I remember someone was trying to kill me and I needed a place to hide out. Now, this is where the story of discipleship really comes in, and my Christianity. I had nowhere to go, and this Mexican family that came out of the gangs, I did not know they were Christian, but they let me live in their garage. I’d never met them before. They let me hide out in their garage. Now, I got blue hair, leather jacket, big old Doc Marten boots, and I’m not a Christian, and they opened up their home to me and they weren’t even really preaching at me at first, they were praying for me, and I’m living there for about three weeks, and I started these crazy dreams about hell. I never had dreams about stuff like that. I started freaking out. I thought it was just having just crazy stuff from the drugs, and then I went on a binge. This is pretty much how I got saved. I went on a three-day meth binge. It was 1987. It was called something else back then, and I… No sleep, did some violence, ran somebody off the freeway. We ransacked someone’s house. I was probably the most evil person of my life those three days, and I came home to this garage and I opened up the garage door and I literally, this is the God-honest truth, I fell on my knees. Something threw me down and I just started crying. I said, “God, I…” I didn’t even know why I was saying, “God, I can’t take this no more. I mean, if You’re real, I need You. Please help me.” I cried and prayed. I didn’t even know I was praying for two hours. When I got up, Brendan, I never smoked, I never drank, I never did drugs again in my life. I literally went to the front house of the garage I lived in, I knocked on the door and I told this man, I said, “Look, something happened to me right now and I’m crying.” I go, “I think I became a Christian like you guys,” and I don’t know, they prayed for me. Hepatitis doesn’t leave you. They prayed for me. I went to the doctors and the hepatitis was gone. It was a miracle, and I like, “Oh my God, what the heck happened to me? I cannot…” I didn’t understand anything. I just did know I didn’t want to go back to what happened. I felt like I won a million dollars. I just was so happy and reality began to set in my life, I don’t know anything. So I go to this church the next day on a Sunday. There’s 1200 people right in the hood, right in East Los Angeles where you see all the movies over there about us and the gangs. There’s 1200 gang members in this church, and the only other white guy that I can see is the guy on the stage. He’s a country guy from Oklahoma, the pastor. God gave him this incredible move of God that nobody knew about reaching the two most notorious gangs in East LA, F13 and 18th Street, and here I come in with blue hair and I’m thinking, “I’m going to get killed because these guys would chase me when I was not a Christian,” and I’ve seen all of these gang members getting saved, and that’s pretty much how I got saved.

Brendan Corr
That’s an extraordinary story, Pastor Lohrke. I’m listening to your story. I’m perhaps a bit older than you. I grew up with the story of David Wilkerson and The Cross and The switchblade in New York, and I’m hearing the same thing. God just-

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
God was really doing something right there with David. I remember Wilkerson and also Sonny Arguinzoni was one of his disciples that started Victory Outreach here in our states, and same thing. There was a need, man. It was just still the fatherless generation. People were looking for the father, and here’s what’s interesting about discipleship, Brendan, is that I’m saved for about a few weeks and two things happened that changed my life, okay? I don’t know anything, I’m just going to church and I can’t even explain what’s happened, just this joy hit me, but I’m still… It’s bizarre. So this is going to sound… Hopefully this will help parents. I know you reach the Christian schools, but I have a Christian school right out the door of our church here, and some parents, man, their kids, even though they’re trying hard to raise them, the enemy tries to rip them off and I want to encourage parents and young people that are battling things, Jesus is the answer. He is the answer for this. Don’t give up on Him. He’s the cure for everything in your life. But I remember about three weeks ago, something began to happen to me in that garage, very demonic, I felt like a spirit was attacking me, something scratching me. I know this may sound bizarre for your viewers, but there was a warfare and I had no idea about spiritual warfare, but this kid that never grew up in this, every night something physically attacking me, and about the third week, I ran out of that garage about 3:00 in the morning with no clothes on, terrified, and I’m pounding on the front door of that house, and this man let me in, opens the door and there I am, my hair’s still crazy, I’m skinny and I’m like, “Dude, there’s something in the garage,” and he’s looking at me, and I’m going to tell you, this changed my life. He didn’t tell me, “Do you know what time it is? I have to be at work at 5:00 in the morning.” He didn’t tell me, “Dude, you’re scaring my kids and my family.” He didn’t tell me, “Go back in the garage.” He said, “Come in.” He put me on his couch. He put a blanket on me, got on his knees and started praying for me. That day, I think about that day. If he would’ve closed the door, because my view of Christianity was so ugly, all the music I listened to everything about was anti-God, I would’ve just probably said that Christianity are a bunch of hypocrites, but he opened the door and that day I seen Jesus in a Mexican. That day, I seen Jesus in a man, and I’ve realised the only Jesus this world is going to see is the one that lives inside of you and me, and then a couple of weeks later, we had a men’s meeting. These two things changed my life and made me who I am today as a disciple. I was 19. We went to this men’s meeting. There was about 600 men there, and this man was preaching on integrity and everyone’s from the streets and everyone’s shouting, “Yeah, we need to be men of integrity,” and it was great. I’m quiet and afterwards I get in this guy’s car that I’m staying in his garage, and he looks at me, he goes, “How did you enjoy it?” We’re just getting to know each other. And racially we’re completely different backgrounds. God just broke all that. I was probably his first white friend and I started crying and he goes, “What’s the matter?” I go, “I just realised I don’t know what that word is.” He goes, “What do you mean?” I go, “I don’t know what that word integrity is. I don’t even know how to spell it.” I go, “Dude, I got kicked out of every single school in the whole district. I can’t read, I just realised,” and I’m bawling in this guy’s car. I go, “How am I going to get a job? I can’t sell drugs. Am I going to have a family? What am I going to do?” And I’m just bawling, and he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, “Listen, it’s going to be okay, Kelly. Meet me after work every day at the front house,” and he got a big Webster’s college dictionary and we read the Bible together and looked up every word. He had no idea that I was going to pastor, he had no idea that I was going to plant 15 churches, I was going to fill up three passports in many countries preaching the gospel. I’m just a dirty little drug addict that got saved in his garage. He discipled me. I did not know how to pray. He literally knocked on the garage door early in the morning and said, “Hey, we got to pray.” I’m like, “I don’t even know what that is.” He goes, “Just kneel down next to me and listen to me,” and I would hear him pray for his family, pray for his walk with God, pray for people in the church. I was being disciplined and it impacted… I’m a teenager. My whole life changed because somebody took a risk. It’s funny when you… We always in our church, our benevolent ministry, we want to help Christians coming up, but this guy took a step of faith. I wasn’t a Christian, hoping that I would get saved. Was it 1 Corinthians 10:38, “I become all things, all people that they might be saved,” and the next verse says, “And you should imitate me as I imitate Christ.” That’s my story.

Brendan Corr
That’s an amazing story, Pastor Lohrke. I’m struck by so many aspects of that, that I would love to talk with you about. We might not get the chance to explore it all. Just that quick account, I’m struck by what… At the very earliest point of your encounter with God, you experienced the reality of the supernatural with an unmediated encounter with God. You came into that garage and something forced you to your knees and you call out, just you and God, and you have this direct connection with the divine, and then you have an encounter with the gospel incarnate in that fellow who was running the house in front of you, and so right from the beginning, you’ve got this assurance of the supernatural, but the manifestation of it through people that it’s in relationship. What a journey.

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
It was a divine appointment, man. What makes the story great, Brendan, is that we’re both still saved. He’s a pastor and I’m a pastor, and we get to share this story around our country. We’ve shared it on 700 Club and other networks. He’s a great man of God. I’m forever grateful that he took a risk on me. So maybe that’s why I’ve been so impacted and expressed in my discipleship and pastoring. We want to reach those that nobody else wants. The Christian community, at least in our country, has been salting the salt, not salting the earth. We’ve just been trying to gravitate other people from one church to another, the better building, the better programme, the better worship, but our world is falling apart. It needs Jesus. This young generation is sexually confused, they don’t even know their identity, and yeah, I’m passionate about… This is why we called our church the Cure Church. I want this generation to realise there is one answer for everything, that is Jesus. He’s the one who created you, the one who died for you. And that discipleship-

Brendan Corr
It’s a wonderful mission that God has called you on and clearly He has walked with you from those early moments of encounter and getting your own identity in Christ sorted to unfolding the journey that you’ve been on for the last 30 years or so. And another thing I want to ask you about, Pastor, is we talk about discipleship, and what my understanding was the call for individuals to have an attitude of discipleship, and then you were talking about, “I was discipled,” that there was something external. There were some others that were part of that experience as well. Can you help put those two things together, or-

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
Yes, I can, and that’s a great question because I think there’s a big misconception. Discipleship, as I pastor and preach from my stage or my pulpit, I can preach about discipleship, but that’s not discipleship. I can have a class on discipleship and that’s still not discipleship. I can write my book about discipleship, but it’s not. It’s just teaching about it. Discipleship really is imparting your walk with God into an individual. You must spend time with people. That verse I just read, it’s 1 Corinthians 10:38, Paul says, “I’ve become all things to all people that some might be saved,” but the very next verse, now he’s talking to the church, is chapter 11:1. The King James put verse one of chapter 11, which if you read the original manuscript, verse one is in context with the last verse of chapter 10. It’s supposed to be verse 39, and some translations actually separated it into, “And you should imitate me as I imitate Christ,” and that word, which you probably know is the word. It literally means carbon copy. So Paul is saying, “I’ll do whatever it takes to get somebody saved, and I’ll humble myself, I’ll become a servant to all, to help somebody that they might get saved,” and he says to the church, “You should copy me.” So we have to ask ourselves this question as Christian leaders, “Are we living a personal life that’s worth copying? Is our devotion… Not our charismatic preaching,” because anyone can preach. Not everyone can preach. I’ve missed the mark many times on sermons, but really the best sermon in life is not the one I preach, but the one I show them and live out in public. And just like this man at the very beginning, the embryo of my walk with God, teaching me the basics. I didn’t even know what a dad was until I saw him, or a husband. How he treated his family, got to be a part of his life. Now I understand my story is very unique, but probably at the school you’re a part of, there might be some people without fathers, they might be there, but they might be absentee, and then some of them, they just don’t know how to be a father. They weren’t taught what a father is. But in our church community, I encourage the men in my church with single women, father these young disciples. You know that move of God, when I got saved I told you in East LA? It was mostly teenage gang members that didn’t have any dads, and our pastor never treated us like kids at age 15, 16. That’s why I became a pastor at 25. I got saved at 19, married at 21, and announced as a pastor at 25, because somebody treated me like a man, not a little boy, not a kid, and I learned man skills.

Brendan Corr
That’s the thing I’m seeing with more clarity than before. This conversation with you is helping me see the complementary nature of those two things, that it’s all good and well to preach a message to the young people or have an attitude of discipleship, and be sold out for Jesus, and give it all up or put it on the altar for God. That needs to be what the younger person’s response should be, but that’s nothing if there isn’t the other side, if there aren’t disciplers.

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
Have you ever thought about 2 Timothy 2:2? We have no word of his father, only it mentions his faith in his mother and his grandmother, and he’s a half-breed. He’s half Jew, half Gentile. There was a problem with that with both sides, and Paul comes on the scene and calls him a son multiple times, and he says this in that scripture, “Timothy, the things you’ve seen and heard in me, commit to faithful men who will teach others also.” He’s a very, very young man. Paul says, “The things you’ve seen and heard of me, now you commit.” In other words, I poured my life into you and he’s challenging him, “Don’t pay me back with homage, but now you commit it to others who have committed to faithful men.” That’s four generations of impartation of discipleship. And I think the gospel of, forgive me for using this term, of me-ism. We structured churches of it’s all about the main people. I’m pastoring because somebody gave me an opportunity. I’m doing something for God because somebody gave me an opportunity, and I think my generation and older needs to… We’re not going to be the head forever. We need to start passing this on to a younger generation, and if we care about… Now, if we care about our ministry more than the gospel, that’s a problem, but when I die, I want the gospel to still be preached.

Brendan Corr
Amen. Yeah, that’s wonderful. Another point that stood out to me, I wasn’t familiar with the Greek word that you used, but you made reference to carbon copy. Follow me as a carbon copy, and I’m old enough to remember carbon paper and you had to press-

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
I forgot how old we are, yeah.

Brendan Corr
Exactly. It’s not just running through a photocopy or scan, or whatever it’s nowadays. But I remember that idea of the pressure that you had to exert from one layer to the other layer, and that’s a beautiful image to me, I think, that the disciplers, it’s not just recommendations, not just encouragement. There needs to be some exertion, some… Compulsion may be too strong a word, but you’re picking up my sense that you’ve got to be in contact. It’s got to be up close and direct to transmit the things that need to be passed on.

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
You’re absolutely right. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to address something on the scary part of discipleship, because the body of Christ… We live in a tabloid generation. We are so attracted to the negative, okay? So yes, there’s a lot of churches and pastors that have fallen short and they’ve abused their authority, but what’s happened because of social media and the news, we magnify it and we ignore all the good stories, and then what happens is you have a culture of Christians that are afraid of trusting. We’re afraid of trusting, and we’ve changed… You already know, words don’t mean the same as they used to. Holiness used to be a good word, now we call that word legalism. Accountability was a good attribute, now we call that, “Oh, you’re controlling me,” and we have this fear, and the word cult is thrown out there so much when somebody demands for you to live the gospel. But we gave our life to Jesus, okay? That means it’s not ours and somebody has to live what we’re preaching. Jesus said, “We’re the light of the world.” Somebody has to live it and then somebody has to impart it. So I would say to anyone out there, it’s really trendy to use the word disciple, I like this, but I think there’s an old saying, and I teach this, this is disciple. Every man needs a Paul, somebody to speak into their life. Every man needs a Barnabas, somebody that’s their equal or someone they can be at their… And everyone needs a Timothy, someone they’re pouring into. So it’s one thing for… I think one of the greatest things for me to my guys is to say I have somebody in my life that I let spiritually speak and hold me accountable. I’m not a fan of pastors telling people to do something that they’re not doing, and it’s better to live it out and it’s better to show them it’s okay. And the issue of trust is a big deal, and you may have been wounded out there, you may have been hurt and maybe you might’ve brought your hurts from your father into the Kingdom, and you have trust issues, or you went through an issue where people and spiritual leadership let you down, but not everyone is a crook. Not everyone is fake. Don’t let the enemy and the prince of the air with media that magnifies this stuff, not everyone’s… And here’s the one thing: If everyone around you is, you don’t have to be that. You can be a real man of God, a real woman of God and impart into somebody else.

Brendan Corr
Yeah, that is so true. You’re exactly right, Pastor, that trying to get back to the assurance of God’s ordained mechanism or bringing maturity to his church, visions for the difference between expressive individualism, it’s just about me, and we can adopt the attitude of, “I don’t have the right to hold people into account, or to instruct, or to disciple, because their expressive individualism is their right to explore,” or as you suggest, the abuses that we see and the fear that we don’t want to step into that sort of space can rob us of what is the proper God-ordained way of saying this is how he will build His church.

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
And there’s a fear, like I said, of people trusting, but let me tell you, there’s… At least over here, we’ve seen there’s a fear for preachers, that they’re afraid to preach the solid gospel, pick up your cross, deny yourself and then come follow me if you want to be my disciple. They’re afraid to preach on issues of… I mean, I’m going to be honest, the culture, I feel, has moved the church more than the church has moved the culture., And I think we could all get mad at our social media posts and see everyone, the world’s gone crazy, the world’s confused, lost, woke, whatever you want to call it, this young generation, corruption in governments. I blame the church. I blame us preachers. We are the pillar of truth. The gospel changes… So when I got saved… Here’s what happened: When I got saved, the first thing I did, I stopped doing drugs and I got a job. I paid taxes, then I got married in the church. I started a family. I became a productive member of society because of the gospel. The gospel changed me because someone was bold enough to tell me the truth, and I think we’ve… Well, we’re afraid to talk about the things that Jesus talked about. You know what one thing did motivate me too? It’s going to be taboo for maybe some that are hearing this. I didn’t want to go to hell. I found out about eternity and I found that I was going to hell, and we’re afraid to talk about that, the eternal judgement , because we’re going to get branded as mean old people. Jesus spoke twice as much about hell than He did heaven. That should move us. How do you not want to spread the gospel? It’s not to spread the gospel to grow a ministry, it’s to spread the gospel to save people, that their sins can be forgiven, they can be delivered, have a new life, and that is a motivating factor. Yes, I know it’s because Jesus died in love, but why did Jesus die? So I don’t have to go to hell. Why was He born at Christmas? A saviour was born so I don’t have to go to hell. And we got to be reminded about that and not be afraid to say that and not be afraid to be hated. We live in this culture. You can’t be a disciple if you want everyone to like you, it’s not going to happen and we have to be secure. Jesus said, “If they hate me, they’re going to hate you.” It’s not you. Don’t take things personally. They’re going to come at you on social media, they’re going to… As long as you’re not hated for your hate, you’re hated for your love. That’s what’s important. I’m sorry to be all preachy, but I am a pastor.

Brendan Corr
No, no, it’s lovely. I’m right there. Amen. And it’s speaking to my heart too, so thank you for that. You’ve been describing, and while I haven’t had a chance to read your book, which we’ll talk about in a minute, some things I want to unpack with you about that, but there is this sense that we’re talking about a radical discipleship, a very… We’ve been using the term sold out for Jesus and it’s all in a line and take up your cross and be discipled. You’ve got a story that matches that. You’ve got a radical transformation and it seems like the connection from a life of excess, a radical transformation in a conversion speaks to, yes, a life of radical discipleship. What about the kids that don’t have your story, that they’ve grown up in a Christian home and they’ve come to a Christian school, and the church and faith has sort of always been there in the background, and sometimes it’s more central and less central? What does discipleship mean for them or how does this message of radical discipleship connect with them?

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
That’s great, because I think there is a perspective problem about our salvation. We look at sin as different. There’s no difference between LSD and lying. There’s no difference between hating somebody and heroin. There’s no difference between… Sin is sin, and sometimes when we grow up in church, we feel the security of being in an environment, or our parents brought us, or even in a Christian education. Thank God that you won’t have to experience some of the things in life that bring greater penalty to your flesh such as imprisonment or addiction, but until you look at you have to get saved just like the drug addict. You have to get… You’re a sinner. You are no less the sinner than I was, and if someone’s listening, whether it be a religious Christian family that’s putting their kids in school to protect them, and God bless you, I wouldn’t put my kids in public school or my grandchildren either at this time. I want to do my very best that I can if the Lord gives me that ability, but at the end of the day, your personal relationship with God, you still need repentance. And you have to have your mind and your heart, “I needed Jesus just as bad as the wickedest person on Earth. I’m no different.” That’s one thing we have to have. We can’t categorise, “Well, this person was really, really bad…” No, there’s none righteous. No, not one. We were all lost, and that’s the one perspective that helps us. That makes your Christianity radical, because you have been grateful. The Bible says those who are forgiven love much. That’s perspective. The very beginning, change your perspective. I know my story’s unique. I know my story… And I’m glad it inspires me, but if you did not have those challenges that I did, please don’t walk away feeling ultimately better than someone like me. Not that I’m saying that in a condescending way, but like, my Lord, I never looked at my Christian… I was just as lost as Kelly was as a young man. Even though I grew up in church, I still needed to be Born Again, because it’s always… Even in the Old Testament, it was the second, third generation that started turning away from God after God delivered them. They just got comfortable and they let compromise in. Sold out discipleship, to me, that my book is called Burn Your Ships, and it comes from this great explorer Cortés, who went down to Latin America and he was in a long journey and most of us know our history. When his men finally came to the shores, they ran in for supplies and he had a few men grab torches and they burned their ships and said, “You know what? We’re not going back. We’re all committed. The only way that we can even possibly go back is if we conquer and steal the enemy ships,” and we have to come to a point, am I really all in Christianity? One of the Bible prophecies of the last days is the great falling away. 1 Corinthians 15:58, the last verse in the chapter. The whole chapter is that one about the rapture, the resurrection of the dead, and it says… I love this, because Paul says, “O, Death, where is your sting? O, hate hell, I’m not afraid of you.” In other words, it says, I’m not afraid to die. ” He says, “I’m not afraid to die. I’m all in. The worst thing that will happen to me, I’m going to be resurrected.” Then he says, the very last verse, “Therefore,” meaning I’m not afraid to die. Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of God. You have to ask yourself if you’re all in, are you immovable? Is there something that can move you from your faith? Is it the right trial? Is it a tragedy in life? As crazy as my story is, I’m going to be honest with you, some of the worst things that ever happened to me happened to me after I became a Christian. I mean, I lost a child. I went through hell. My wife almost died while I was pastoring. I’ve been through some bizarre things, but I have to ask… Here’s the other thing, you’ve probably seen. We always look at the bad happening to us, pulling us away from God. What about the good? What if you got so blessed with such a good job and money, would that pull you away from God? The right girl? The right guy? Am I immovable? And we have to get right back to our prayer life. God, take anything out of me that would pull me away from You, because You are number one.

Brendan Corr
You’ve moved exactly in… because I wanted to ask you in relation to your book, Burn Your Ships, and I was familiar with that story of Cortés, and I wanted to ask you young Christians today, what would be the possible ships that they would need? What were the out routes? What were the escape hatches? What were the things that would carry them back from their commitment to the new land of discipleship? You started to unpack some of those, relationships, success, hardship, trial, ambition. It’s such an important thing to realise that we’ve got to put those things on the altar, we’ve got to put the flame to those things as much as well to really follow.

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
Yeah, and so this is going to be scary, what I’m going to say, to some, because I know you have a plan for your life and your parents have a plan for your life, but I’m going to ask you something. The greatest prayer you can pray is not my will, but your will be done. Now, some of you, God might want you to become a lawyer for Him, a doctor, but what if God wants you to walk away from something like that, your ambition and do something for Him? Usually our answer is, “Well, it’s not sinful to do that.” Where’s our Christianity become, what’s my least commitment to God and still go to heaven? And we have to get to a point where it’s a real relationship, not this flaky Christianity, “Well, God didn’t tell me no,” but… Well, get down and pray fast, “God, what do You want from my life? Who do You really want me to marry? Not just the most attractive person, but who’s my soulmate to fulfill Your purpose?” Now, that may be in the workplace, but that might be also in the ministry and the Kingdom, and when we get down and say that, and then unfortunately, some Christian parents, they’re living through their children, and I mean, the greatest thing your kid can be is just saved, loving Jesus, putting God first. Now, what if God calls them to the mission field and walks away from the greatness that you had ambition for them for? Could you be proud of them and encourage them? When I became a pastor or a Christian, my family never saw me go to church, and it was bizarre. They started getting mad at me. They weren’t saved yet. They were like, “Why are you in church all the time and why are you going to this country?” And I’m like, “Man, you were not that concerned for me when I wasn’t a Christian, when I was going to bars and clubs. Now you’re worried?” And that’s something… Back to your question is Burn Your Ships. I had an encounter in that garage. I got a piece of chalk and it’s in my book, and I drew a circle around myself on the concrete floor, and I just started praying and fasting, “God, I’m not leaving this circle till You speak to me and touch me. I don’t want to ever go back. You gave Your life to me. I’ll do whatever You want. If You tell me to pull my car over in witness to somebody, I’ll do it.” And we have to get beyond what God can do for me instead of what God can do through me. What can God do through me? We read the book of Acts, and here are all these awesome stories and inspirational books, like mine, but that’s my story. I want to challenge your listeners to go create their own stories. Stories that will be read about in the tablets in heaven when we get there and the angels, and our spiritual forefathers will look and say, “Man, we were cheering you on when you made an impact in that family’s life.” When you shared the gospel, you witnessed someone on your job, or even if you’re at school. Even at Christian school, I’m not dumb. Not every kid that goes to Christian school is a Christian, and you just said, I’m going to share the gospel at my school or even at a public school and I’m going to make a difference, and if I get in trouble, I get in trouble. I’d rather you get in trouble for God than anything else. I’m not going to let government authorities or anyone stop me. I’m not saying to be civilly disobedient, but we are called to put Jesus before any law of the land.

Brendan Corr
Yes. Yes, I love the way you’re describing this story, because I think there can be this notion that a life of discipleship is one that is quiet and reflective and tightly scripted, but in actual fact you’re calling or God is calling us to the richest adventure that we could possibly imagine. That if we would accept-

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
We’ve got to be reminded that all of… You’re right, the adventure. Let’s just be reminded, all of the apostles that were disciples preached the gospel and were killed. Let’s just not forget that. Only one lived and he was boiled in lion oil. And so let’s get really back to this, because again, I’m not preaching martyrdom, that you need to go out and die. What we need you is go out and live for Jesus and let the chips fall where they may, and I look at it like this: You have one life. You can’t choose what time in history you were born in. We could have been born 2000 years ago, but God didn’t let that happen. Life comes, but God knows before we’re in our mother’s womb. We could have been born a hundred years ago. No, God wanted us to be alive in 2024. Now, for the Christians, He wanted us to be alive and chose us to be a part of His kingdom. He didn’t just save us to get us off drugs and alcohol and stop cursing and looking at pornography. He didn’t just save us to get us out of hell. Those are the benefits. He saved us to be a part of His plan on Earth. That is it. Jesus gave us two real commands. Love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and your neighbour as yourself, and go into all the world and preach the gospel. Really, you do those two things, you’re good. So I don’t know how long I have or you have or anyone listening, everyone’s got an amount of time that God gave them on Earth. Some much younger than us, but you have so many years, so many months, so many days, so many moments that God gave you that you’re supposed to be a steward of as a Christian. And when you die, He’s not going to ask you if you are a Baptist Assembly of God or whatever group of Christianity you affiliate, what He’s going to ask you, “What did you do with my son? What did you do?” Now, you may not be going to hell because you’ve been saved, but what about the judgement of Christians? In 1 Corinthians 3 it says, “Jesus will take our life works,” He used the word works, “And he’ll light everything we did, and we will receive an eternal reward, some gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or stubble.” Now, this is important. This is not preached a lot, but this needs to be known to a Christian. Christians will be judged and the Bible says, “Whatever survives the fire will be your eternal reward,” and wood, hay, stubble are earthly materials. The Bible says they’ll be burned to ash. Gold, silver, and precious stone are eternal. Now, the only thing that’s eternal on Earth is the human soul. That’s the only thing. The things that we did for seeing people get saved and meet Jesus are eternal. Christians today, they just care about going to heaven. They’re not thinking about the eternal millennial ring, how we’re going to be ranked in the kingdom. I just want to get to heaven. That’s like us sending an athlete to the Olympics to represent our country, and when they get there, they just say, “I don’t care about no medals. I just want to get a T-shirt.” And there’s a lot of Christians, they just want the T-shirt, but why would you not want to go for gold? Why would you not want to give your best to Jesus? Because He gave the best for us. That’s going to make this world better, and it starts off with the parents pouring their Christian life, disciplining their children, impacting them that the curse of divorce and abuse in homes is broken and they have a better life than you because you poured the gospel into them.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. Pastor Lohrke, I’ve so enjoyed our conversation and I’m just so reminded of the fact that where we’ve come through. We started off by talking about the difference between Straight Outta Compton and East Los Angeles, and the gangs that were there, and then the veneer of Bible belt niceness in Kansas City, and the reality that everybody has the same need for a saviour, everybody has the same radical need to encounter Jesus, and everybody has the same opportunity to live a radical life of discipleship that will open them up to the very best of what God wants for them and that they could give to God. And perhaps what has stayed with me through our conversation is that Jesus is the answer, that you’re leading a network of cure, the Cured Network of churches, where-

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
All my pastors, almost all of my pastors got saved in my church, discipled at my church and launched out of my church. I’m not collecting people that are already out pastoring and starting a network. That way, it’s very indigenous. I believe that’s the model of the New Testament. Win one, build one, and send one.

Brendan Corr
Yeah, that’s beautiful and I can see that your commitment is that it is not your church, it’s not your ministry that is the cure, it is Jesus and our encounter with that. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your insights. We really appreciate it and we’ll be praying that God continues to lead you on that wonderful adventure to which He called you in that garage so many years ago. God bless you.

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
My book, it’ll challenge you on discipleship. It’ll make you want to tell people about Jesus, and that’s what they need.

Brendan Corr
Indeed, we’d love all of our listeners to get hold of Burn Your Ships by Pastor Kelly Lohrke. Thank you and God bless.

Pastor Kelly Lohrke
God bless you. God bless you. Bye.