The Church Answers Podcast
"The Day the Church Died" A Fiction Book Based on a Lot of Facts - An Interview with Kevin Mills
- Welcome to the Church Answers Podcast, presented by Chinese Associates. Chinese Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here is the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. - You are listening to the Church Answers Podcast. My name is Tom Rayner. As always, we want to thank Chinese Associates. Chinese Associates are the accounting firm for the church. In case you don't know how we align with those who are partners with us in ministry, particularly those who have a sponsor relationship, we don't go asking for them. We go in to develop a partnership in ministry, and then they began a sponsorship. We looked at different alternatives for, who is the best accounting firm for the church? We ended up with Cheney. Yeah, they're located all the way in California, but they covered the entire United States. They're of course, cloud-based software. They're already serving over 1,100 churches. And quite frankly, I cannot recommend anybody for churches more than I recommend Cheney and Associates. So I know you heard about them in the bumper, and I will just remind you, they are an incredible accounting firm for the church. We're delighted today to have Kevin Mills, and I've known Kevin, gosh, I'm trying to think when we first started meeting, maybe 2016, 2017. Anyway, let me say welcome, and you can answer my question, Kevin. - Yeah, Tom, thank you for having me, and Jess, thank you for having me, that Jess, you're my favorite Rainer brother, and I say the same thing to Sam when I talk to him, and I don't talk to him as much, but if he'll call me, I'll tell him the same thing. Yeah, Tom, I think it was 2016 or '17, you and I met at a Vanderblumen conference, and then I joined in 2018 in the church answers group. - Yep, if I recall correctly, I was speaking in the Houston building at the time, and you were there. - That's right, that's it. - I remember it well, I remember it well. Well, Jess, welcome to you too. Last time I saw you, you were preaching, and I was on the third row, which according to this podcast was about three days ago, so good to see you, good to have you back as our co-host. - Yeah, I love it, and it's always good when there's someone else to talk to besides you, so I mean, the fact that it's Kevin is absolutely amazing, but I'll take anyone, but definitely Kevin, so we're excited to have Kevin on the show today. - Would you two rather I just step away and just let y'all finish it and just have a happier time together? - I'm fine with that. - It sounds like, I mean, you're his favorite Rainer, and you wanna talk to him instead of me, so hey, I'm gonna stay, I'm gonna stay. - Hey, Kevin, you have written a new book, The Day the Church Dad. We have started featuring it at church answers. It's a fiction book, and I just wanna hear a little bit about why you wrote this book, when I read your manuscript, before it became published, I thought, this is a fiction book, but it's also a state of the church and state of culture book, all of the above, but just give us some background on that book. - Yeah, that's exactly it, Tom. And so it is a combination of what we see happening in the church, and specifically the decline of church, and I think your listeners probably understand and have read about the stats, and if they have not, they can go to the website graphs about religion, and they can do a deep dive way into the weeds about what we're seeing across the United States with the decline, and those who identify as being Christian, and the decline in numbers of baptisms, and those who attend church, and it has been a major, major shift over the past couple of decades. And I take that and I combine it with what we see happening in the culture, which is a shift away from Judeo-Christian values. And just for an example, 30 years ago, if you held the view that marriage should be between one man and one woman, that was generally accepted by the culture around us. Now, if you hold that view, that is considered by the culture to be bigoted and hateful. And so the views of Christians by our culture have become negative. Christians have become persona non-grata in their views. And so the book really combines those two. What I do is I put it in a fictional format. I think technically it's speculative fiction, which is a form of fiction where you take current trends and you speculate what will happen in the future. And so it is set in 2071, and it is a young researcher who looks back and identifies the reasons behind the death of the church. There's one other element that I include in there, and that is something I'm interested in, but just what our culture, what the state of our society will look like 40 and 50 years from now with things like AI and virtual reality and the internet and all the advancements in that. And as people are becoming more isolated and more focused on their screams, what effect will that have in our culture? It's done in a fictional format in large part because Tom, I know you love stats, you love graphs. If I give you a bunch of numbers and graphs and a six pack of diet coke, your Friday night has planned. Your is has long as there are no people with me. There you go. Most people though, their eyes tend to glaze over and the numbers don't mean as much. And so it's done in a narrative format to try to paint a picture of where we're going if the trends continue in the same direction. - Kevin, by the way, I'm fascinated by the book. I'm into it a little bit. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm into it a little bit. Obviously, I've gone through the whole thing. In some capacity, but actually sitting down and reading it and cover to cover them, I'm working my way through it. And even just the introduction, even the prologue, it just gravitates. And I can start to hear your heart in it. What point were you like, I've got to write this book? Was there a catalyst? Was there something with your church? Was it the pastoral heart? Was it just, hey, we got to turn this around? What was that moment you were like, this has got to be something that I have to put out there? - Yeah, I actually had a conversation with another pastor and he began to ask in that conversation, questions related to the challenges that our church members will face over the coming years. And I left that conversation and I thought just about the number of different things that could happen in the future that would cause persecution to begin to happen for Christians. Will church members, will Christians in America be thrown into arenas with hungry lions? Probably not. Will we be restricted from certain jobs because of our views? Will there be other persecutions? I definitely think so. And so I began to write out a bunch of notes and, you know, Tom, I know you've had this experience, what begins as a blog, just sort of grows and it took a long time, but eventually the book was birthed. - That's good. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, for me, you know, as, again, I'm loving it. I'm in the book, I'm excited about it. You know, there's an idea of like, okay, things aren't headed in the right trajectory. If you could kind of maybe, I don't wanna give away the whole book, if you could kind of say, hey, what's the greatest hope? What is it about the church and the potential to reverse some of these trends? Do you see what would be some of the greatest hopes you see for the American church coming ahead? - Yeah, I would say there are several. So one of the questions I get asked a lot by those who have read the book is, do you really think this is going to happen? And my answer is always the classic reiner, it depends. In one sense, if you were studying any other aspect of life, if you were a researcher and you were looking at any other segment of American life, and you were looking at the stats and the charts and the trends, you would say, yeah, this is exactly where we're headed, there's no doubt. I mean, there's just no question at all that as our culture becomes more and more anti-Christian, as Christians become more and more a minority of the population, this is where we are headed. However, I am an optimist by nature. Number one, number two, we serve a great God. It's not too late, we have a number of churches, church leaders, church ministries like church answers that are doing everything they can to turn this around. In fact, in the book, I name basically 12 reasons that the church dies, this researcher looks back and says, "Hey, here's 12 reasons that the church doesn't make it." Six of them have to do with problems within the church and six have to do with societal changes that bring persecution against the church. Well, the six deficiencies in the church, many of those church answers is right now trying to address. One of them is the death of evangelism. Well, church answers has several resources, the hope initiative, hey, how can we help churches become more evangelistic? One of them is theological shallowness, and church answers has a number of resources, including classes on membership classes, how to develop a membership class where you're very clear about your beliefs and helping people to understand their beliefs. And so I see a lot of dots on the horizon that are good and I'm optimistic that this book will not become reality, but I also don't want to be Pollyanna and just stick my head in the sand and say, what we see happening is not really happening. - We have got a lot that we want to cover on this book and that is why with the brevity of the church answers podcast, we are going to do a part two and a part three on this. Kevin, we don't have to address this exclusively when we get to part two of this podcast, but we're going to talk about the issue of moral failure and where you see that playing in, particularly moral failure of pastors and church leaders and how you see that playing into this possible death of the church. So thank you for being here, Kevin, for you listeners and for those of you who are viewing it on our YouTube channel, give us a thumbs up and subscribe there. For those of you who are listening on podcast, give us a rating and review. And always thank you, Chaney and Associates. Click on that link to Chaney and Associates. Find out about them and let them become the accounting firm. You don't need to be doing that on your own church. You need to be giving that to others. Stay tuned. I hope you'll come back for the next episode. We download them all at one time and a week. And this time we're dedicating all of them this week to talking about the book that Kevin Mills has written about the day the church died. We'll see you in the next episode. You have been listening to The Church Answers Podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Chaney will focus on finances. Also, please subscribe and give a review to The Church Answers Podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]