Faith Debate, a theological round table gab fest, a free for all forum with faith community leaders wrestling over the truth. In less than one half hour, learn more about what really matters than what most others learn in a week. The Faith Debate is on the World Wide Web at WFMD.com, keyword faith. Sponsored by Hilo Auto Sales and Tire Pros of Frederick. Are you ready for the clash of ideas? Are you ready for the sound of freedom? Let's get ready to rumble in this corner. Weighing in with a Master of Divinity from Reform Theological Seminary, the Faith Debate Master of Ceremonies, Troy Skinner. Last week, we announced that this month is the last month for Covenant Family Chapel to meet in downtown Frederick. Beginning next month, Covenant Family Chapel will be meeting in their new building in Woodsboro. Dr. Neil Achempong is pastor of Covenant Family Chapel. He's on the show again this week, like he was last. And he's friends with Clement Mbue, who is the pastor of International Tree of Life Church, also in Frederick. And we're going to end up talking a little bit more about the specifics related to the Covenant Family Chapel move to Woodsboro, but we're going to pick up where we left off last week first. And last week we started with Dr. Neal. This week we're going to begin with Pastor Clement and talk a little bit more about the transition days for International Tree of Life Church. We talked about the very early days, started with a prayer call that turned into a church thing worth about a half a dozen people showing up with some consistency. They got a blessing from a church that, well, charged them rent but didn't actually collect on that rent at first for a while, giving them a chance to get their legs under them. What was the next step? So the early step what welcome back by the way itself uh... the first step was uh... just getting started and figure out with the finances were finding a space so now you have a space and now it's three months in nine months in eighteen months in that were you seeing growth out of the chutes were all but we have fifteen people now we only had six six months a year later you're saying look we still have six three and they might not even be the same six that we started with how did the growth progression go and how did you handle that emotionally and how did you lead the people who were you know along on that ride with you Yeah, I think when God calls you, you know, it takes some time. You have to be patient with God. Because the Bible says that in the early church He was the Lord that was adding daily the number of those who were saved. You know, the hard things when you begin to implant a church, you know, you have, like you mentioned, you know, you may see these people Sunday and then the following Sunday you see they're not there. Maybe new people come. So it's kind of varies, you know, time to time, but you still have to preach to those people who comes there. And I think also God is also testing you. It's like a test. You know, if you faithful on little things, God is gonna give you more things. So, and he will test you for a period of time. So that was kind of, you know, where I find my motivation, knowing that I was not alone, that God was always there with me, you know, even where there were five people or 10 people. Some Sunday you may preach, there's 20 people. And then you think you're gonna see them next Sunday again, then next Sunday, then 10 people again, but you still have to preach. You know, you just have to preach like you were preaching to thousands of people. So, you know, and I think when God calls you, you know, he gives you the strength, you know, to get up and do what you do every day. So that kind of goes from there and with perseverance and just continue to pray and, you know, speaking to people, you know, inviting people. So you just go from there. Did you start the same way where you had maybe not that many people, but you treated it as though you had a lot of people there? Or did you treat, I'm wondering if some pastors would decide that, you know what, I'm not gonna do it as a typical sermon, I'm gonna pull up a chair and we're gonna have a dialogue and a conversation and handle it that way as opposed to standing up and preaching. Or did you write out of the gate, I'm preaching, that's just the way it is? it's a bit of both uh... i there are days where because of our focus as a disciple in work there are days where i focus more on uh... as if it was a small group that was sitting there actually it was a small group but then there were days where i would just go out and preach and see if i was dealing with thousands of people the uh... one of the things that actually guided me was the idea that i did have Some pastors who had just begun ministry, they would come and sit, so they would write notes from me. So then, anytime I taught, I was a little bit cautious that I was not just dealing with... Wrote notes, meaning like critiques? No. Would write my notes and take my preaching and would preach it, too. Oh, they were taking notes to steal your material. I was pretty much aware. I was pretty much aware that that was what they were doing. So I would invite them to sit and share with me. Sometimes they would share their own salmon notes that they have prepared and I would help correct it for them. Oh, people do that now. But they don't show up in person to do it, because so many sermons are online. So they go online and they listen. And you know how I know this is what happens? Because I'm a big audiophile. I consume audio all the time. I listen to lectures online. I listen to podcasts. I listen to talk shows. I mean, I'm constantly consuming spoken word stuff. And I've heard pastors in different parts of the country the exact same as a nation the exact same quote-unquote personal story i think there's not that much difference between also have a lot of time but word for word so you know people are doing that and and it does it takes the edge off your you know your respect a little bit late i think it's going to be inspired by somebody or and i've actually you know i i preach on occasion and and i've used somebody else's example uh... you know their personal example but i think by saying i was listening to a sermon the other day and i heard the pastor share a story where he said this i don't try to claim it as my own so yeah At what point did you get to where you consistently had more than a dozen or a dozen and a half people? When did you feel like you turned a corner? More than... We turned a corner a little bit early. Then it got stale for about a year or two. I think we turned a corner after six months. We had more than what we began with. and then it became stale uh... for i think a year or two then we started growing up again and then it got stale again and that's how it's been see if you hit these plateaus you hit these plateaus you went from like you know a half a dozen to twenty or twenty five yeah and then went from there to what to forty years ago then it went to about forty then it went to about sixty then it went to about eighty and whenever you get to a certain point you you you can feel that okay the numbers are not changing one of the things i have done in ministry and one of my mentors used to say all we we started from genesis and went to exodus and we got to numbers unity moved to joshua and uh... he will crack that joke just to remind me that do not focus on numbers because that would discourage whatever you're supposed to do and so when i got to a point i stopped counting even though my ushering team would still take account for us to for the purpose of planning other things that we're going to do like printing of brochures and what not you don't want to print less than the people who showed up and so on so um... it's been that story it's up and down but then there's a consistency in terms of those who are committed so you know if i said these are my church members i am not pointing to the number of people who show up on a sunday morning because there will be sunday mornings where the entire room is full and there will be days where it will be like half full And there will be days where it's even below the half. I want to clarify what we mean by these numbers in a second, but first, is it similar in your church's history? Yes, it's very much similar. There's always people, I mean you can have a certain number of people, but there's always that number of people that You know, you see them, they kind of like, they love the ministry, they're ready to sacrifice. And sometimes you will see that there is a great number of people who will show up, but not all of them, you know, always going to be there. And the number varies. And for me, for example, I always look at ministry or church as a lifetime. Sometimes you hear a ministry or a pastor celebrating 40 years. You say, if they can get to 40, you're just starting like, what, seven years? You got a long way to go. So it's a lifetime. It's not just like two months, three months, or six months, or two years. So you know you have time for the work of God to grow. So that kind of like, you know give you encouragement you know that to lifetime thing is not something you say for two or three years so i think on your website it says something like forty ish people in the church i think is what i saw and neon if you just made up that number top your head or the the eighty you throughout is like what you think of as in the size of your currently it's more than that so but when you're when you're cat and I agree with you. We've got to be careful not to be counting the number of fannies in the seats, because that's not really what it's about, right? We're not called to have huge numbers. We're called to be faithful. And God provides the numbers if He wants to. He's going to move people to show up and to respond and stuff. However, as a practical matter in the things we're talking about here, when you say there's 40 or 80 or 100, are you talking about members? Are you talking about any adult? Are you talking about family units? Are you talking about bodies, including children? Like, what are the numbers that you're throwing out? For our church, when I say the adults, averagely on a Sunday you might meet about between 80 to 100 people. uh... but that is adults uh... when you want to talk about kids we have a very large number of kids because in my own home i have about four i've visited they have eighty adults and seven thousand children it's a lot of kids with us we tend to put a lot of focus also on raising that generation because uh... they actually just end up replacing the adults and then uh... then uh... are you'd ministry also there are not that many i think they use is about fifteen or so but when you take that your ministry they're pretty much the outnumbered the adults and so to me which is what my mentor taught me that god counts souls not adults and so he said son anytime you count your church membership you must add the adults to the children and to the youth and so when we put all of them together we we're spending about two hundred even though some people would only say oh they're two hundred adults but we don't have two hundred adults we have And those are people that you consider to be the flock that you are charged with shepherding. Yes. That's your congregation. So you might have additional people who are visitors. Yes. Or, you know, people that come in and out. And so the same thing... Yeah, it's pretty much the same thing. You have a lot of kids at your church as well? Yeah, we also have a lot of kids in the church as well. They outnumber the adults? I'll say quite about the same. It's pretty close? Yeah. So you said there's 40-ish, I mean I don't even know the exact number. There might be 80 or 90 people in the building? It might be more than that. That number probably we didn't update it yet. I think when you, when we count the number of people is basically the one who really support the church, they're there. But some people come and visit here and there, you may see them today, maybe after a month they come, maybe sometime when we have a special program, but people who really been involved as far as not only supporting the church with their time, and also financially. People like Tive Church, or you know, when we have different program you know the support those are the people that you know that we see regularly at churches. Just like you're talking about the committed members. The committed, yeah. Those who just. Yeah, I know some churches that count their membership by basically by households, by family units. You know, so let's say we have, you know, 43 families. Well, that could be 43 people that are all single. That's not likely, but that could be. Or it could be families of 10. It could be 430 people. So, but that's an interesting way of thinking about it, too. I think that that's helpful in a practical sense as far as dividing up the workload among the leadership. pastoral visitations and they're gonna make disciples of family units are going to visitations in the home and that sort of thing uh... makes sense to break it up that way and i think one point that he made this true sometime when we can we only come out of but everybody of the souls you know children you have children fifteen years old fourteen years old and some of us in in some churches where the the choir their children you know if the fourteen years old playing drums you know i think it should count for me because one you're praying for them yet you're interacting with them you're teaching and discipling them you know their name they know yours i mean you're investing in them as much as you have anybody else i think you know and and their people a person's a person no matter how small the the problem with the uh... the 21st century churches we tend to put too much focus on adults and forget the little ones but I believe that we've been called to raise a godly seed and we should never forget them and so I have to be reminded by my mentor keep telling me don't do that it's interesting though because i i i'm not disagree with you i think you're right however uh... the adults are the fish were trying to catch but we use their children as the bait so we have all these children's programs so we're trying so we're trying to cater to those young families the young kids so we have all these wonderful things for the kids to do And so we put a lot of energy into the kids, but the reason is so that if the kids come, so might the parents. And a lot of times we've seen, like for example in our church, you know, when parents visit for the first time and they bring their kids, you have all the Sunday school for children. When a child loves what they do there, you know, when the parents try to bring them to another church, they'll say, Mommy, you know, I want to go back to that church. Because they love it. And, you know, it's also one of the things. Yeah, that's the voice of Clement Mbue. He is the pastor of International Church of Life, or the International Tree of Life Church in Frederick. It's a church that's about, what, eight or so years old now, I think seven? Seven, yeah. In your eighth year, beginning of your eighth year. And Pastor Nila Champal from Covenant Family Chapel, and your church has been around for, what, a quarter century or something? On Chet Street, most of them are like that, but we're the youngest out there. Yeah, we've been around since 2005. Even with your roots down south of here, down by D.C., that started in 2005? Yes. Yeah. Okay. When did you move to Frederick? What year was that? I came here, I think, on the last day of 2004. Hmm. Hmm. Came here December 31st, 2004. That's when I moved to Frederick. okay but the church already existed before that right that's the best time when it is listed before uh... come in here when i relocated most of the people who were in the church were students and they had completed school and they left. Because it was more of like the beginning like a compass ministry. And so when I came here I had to begin all over again. So I stayed home for about a whole year and then close to 2006 we began all over again. So let's talk about some of the practical matters early on. You had to find a name for your church. How did that happen? wants to go first was a good story well as far as the name you know i was praying also i mean i was thinking i say okay i need to come out of the name and i was actually praying in you know and then came in my spirit a tree of life church and uh... and then a few days after my wife uh... was also praying and then he came to say you know i was praying and then uh... i saw him you know uh... god give me a scripture in the book of revelation i think revelation chapter two uh... when the bible talk about uh... the tree of life so when she say that that to me was a confirmation about the name so it's something that i had in my spirit But for her to mention that to me was a confirmation that God wanted us to go with that name. So Tree of Life Church. And when we tried to register for the church, that name was already kind of taken. We couldn't use Tree of Life Church. Then we had to add International Tree of Life Church in another way. You know, God is the God of nations, so international just... And then when you take off, you've got, you know, spawned churches all out of you, you know, the church plants that spring out of your church, you'll live up to the international part, right? Yeah. How'd you come up with Covenant Family Chapel? uh... it's just a basic scripture of my two twenty eight nineteen the going to all the world and preach the gospel because our focus is more about discipleship uh... my focus more is discipling the family entity and then if it because of the family entity that forms the church the ones you deal with the family you then you're dealing with the entire church and then uh... that is the basic thing so i wanted to name the church family church and i said now i have to make sure that it makes sense but and i wouldn't say it was much prayer but the family thing actually came out of our purpose in terms of my two twenty eight the addition of the way covenant uh... came into being when i began to think through that okay we're not just going to deal with families but families who do have a covenant not just with themselves but with god himself And that's why we came down to Covenant Family Chapel. Fortunately, when I decided to register, there was no... Nobody had that name. And why did you go with chapel and not church? Instead of church. Because the concept of chapel it's a little bit different it connotes the idea of worship i wanted to just send a message that we're not just here to gather as an organization but we're here purposely for worship and that if you walked into this place your focus first of all is not a pastor is not the church organization is not or any of these things here you're just here to focus on God and that has become our focus sometimes I'll pray for the sick I'll pray for church members but I'll prefer to teach you so that you can do it on your own so you do not become dependent on me because that is what discipleship is all about. Has it ever caused any confusion where somebody say, oh, you're the pastor? We're the pastor. You say Covenant Family Chapel. And they're like, oh, chapel. So it's not a church? Yep. I've heard it a couple of times. Because I remember when I was registering, the lady said, oh, why don't you make a church? And I said, lady, just write down exactly what I put down. I said, everybody makes a church. And I said, I know, but you just make a chapel for us. So, we've mentioned it a couple of times. I'm going to mention it again here before we wrap up this version of the Faith Debate Show. Covenant Family Chapel currently meets in downtown Frederick on 2nd, like right at the corner of Market and 2nd. Yes. Like right off the corner, like one or two blocks. 2nd and Market. Yeah, but two buildings down from the corner or something like that? It is the second building from the corner. Oh, but that's only for a few more weeks. And then starting October 5th, you're going to be meeting in Woodsboro on Copper Mine Road. Copper Mine Road, 1010307 Copper Mine Road. As soon as you come off the Woodsboro Pike, onto copper mine road you cannot miss it it's a huge war vicar property so if you want to visit them before they move you got to do it these next couple of weeks and then you can uh... check out their new digs starting in october and then your church meets on the west end of the golden mile correct inside for those who know inside there used to be a dandy restaurant does it still smell like grease or anything in there? not really you could go there and get hungry i don't know alright uh... there's something i want to ask and that's lost a hundred called to mind and maybe i'll bring it up next week show whatever it was i had one last thing i want to bring up and i really can't remember what it was hate when that happens is a sign of old age that's what that is anyway anyway thank you both for being on the show uh... clinton buoy is the pastor of international tree of life church in frederick uh... pastor neil a jump on his shows coming up here in just a few minutes you'll hear his uh... sermon right here on 930 WFMD, that airs every Sunday from 930 until 10 o'clock, right after the Faith Debate show. I'm Troy Skinner, you can find us online at wfmd.com, keyword faith, get you there, you click on the drop down menu and find the Faith Debate, you click there, you can see a picture of us, remind me, we gotta take a little selfie so I can post it on social media and on our website, I almost forgot to do that, we have to do that. So you'll see our handsome faces. And you'll get kind of a teaser of what's coming up on the following week's show. And if you miss some shows, you can see what's aired recently. And all the shows, at least over the last couple of years, are there. And you can listen to them via podcast. And I strongly encourage you to do that. It's fun sometimes to listen to. We have the same panel usually two, three, four weeks in a row. Listen to all of them in a row. Just make it an evening. who needs to be next week thanks so much for listening will be back one hundred sixty seven and a half hours from right now